← Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
From Donut Shop to $80M Brand Growth with No Capital and CEO Profit Coaching with Luke Peters
00:35:16
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- [00:00]
Luke Peters
Well, as far as profits, you know the lowest hanging fruit is raise your prices. That's the lowest hanging fruit series on that one. This all goes back to your kind of product market fit and even in service businesses you can differentiate your product and your delivery. Right everybody? Companies have done that over the years. Whether it's through professionalism or little add ons on the side or different upsells or just building a great brand that people will trust.
- [00:26]
Podcast Narrator
Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want action tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.
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Tersh Blissett
Today's episode is brought to you by one of our show partners, upfrog.
- [01:16]
Sponsor Representative
Upfrog is the OG when it comes to pricing transparency online. They find system replacement leads through paid ads and have developed an entire system to drive those hard to find system replacement opportunities. Nurture the leads and book them into sold systems before your team arrives to.
- [01:31]
Luke Peters
Help you grow your business.
- [01:33]
Tersh Blissett
Learn more @UpfrogIO I want to give a huge shout out to Market Storm for sponsoring today's episode.
- [01:38]
Sponsor Representative
You've heard of Google Ads, Facebook ads and SEO, but did you know that there's an entire ecosystem like 80% of the Internet that ads can be served on that you've barely heard about?
- [01:46]
Tersh Blissett
That's where Market Storm operates.
- [01:48]
Sponsor Representative
They leverage data science and AI to build customer profiles for your ideal customers and get your ads in front of.
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Luke Peters
Prospects before they are ready to hire a pro.
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Sponsor Representative
Planting your brand in their minds early.
- [01:58]
Tersh Blissett
And often to chat with a team about how they can help you grow your business, visit Marketstorm AI.
- [02:04]
Sponsor Representative 2
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- [02:46]
Tersh Blissett
Hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope you're having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching Service Business Mastery Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tersh Plissett and Josh, our co host is not with us today. He's double booked on something. I think he's actually presenting on stage somewhere so good luck to him for that. But I am excited to have Luke Peters on the podcast today and Luke is a CEO, coach, investor and founder who built NewAir from the garage set up to leading home appliance brand generating 80 million in revenue and 600 million plus in cumulative sales with no outside funding which is really cool. He scaled through Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy and other major retailers before successfully exiting in a mid 8 figure private equity deal. Today through Apex CEO he advises founder CEOs on growth, profitability and exit strategy using the proven framework focused on alignment, product people and margins. He's a father of six and the avid surfer. Luke blends hard won business experience with practical leadership coaching to help CEOs scale without burnout. Welcome to the show Luke.
- [03:59]
Luke Peters
Pleasure to be here. Looking forward to it.
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Tersh Blissett
I have four kids, not six, but I feel like one of our life coaches told us many years ago that having one child is like two on one and then you have two children and it's like man to man defense and then you have three and it's zone defense and four, it's just like free for all. And then I couldn't imagine 5 and 6.
- [04:23]
Luke Peters
It's funny because growing up it didn't seem like that. Right? It was like we just did whatever we wanted. So it's a different world now and I guess probably harder, more challenging.
- [04:31]
Tersh Blissett
Tell me a little bit about yourself and your background and we can get started there.
- [04:36]
Luke Peters
Sure, yeah. Grew up and running a dealer shop, that was the family business. So we all learned how to work, we all worked on cars, we all, you know, built up engines and it was kind of in the, that would be in the 80s. It was fun to have a fast car, muscle cars and work hard. It's kind of my upbringing wasn't really into school. I did get into it once I got into college and finished with a microbiology degree and I so I actually had a pool service business in college. Paid for my college. Love that business. You know, you walk around the flip flops and a tank top and headphones on and it was great. And if it was too hot you walked right into the pool to cool off while you're cleaning it and so that was fun. You get to turn a wrench, you know, because there's repairs. And actually, interesting thing about being a pool man is you got to know a little bit electrician work. You got to know some plumbing, some pipes, and, you know, a few bits and parts of the other trades. You got to know a little bit of everything to finish the repairs. So that was cool. But then moved on to, you know, what I thought was real work. Didn't like that. Saw my little brother making a lot of money. He never went to college. Okay. He's driving around a sports car. You know, nice title, hazardous waste scientist. He's selling stuff online. I'm working for the government, and that's basically where I started. New Air out is just kind of understanding, hey, this is where things are going online. And initially we started selling H Vac stuff online.
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Tersh Blissett
What year was that?
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Luke Peters
That was 2001. So this is right after the dot com bust.
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Tersh Blissett
Yeah. So that's been a while ago. And did you have much pushback on doing it online at that point in time? A reason I ask is because I feel like nowadays there's a very, like, polar opposite spectrum. Like, you should sell online, you should post your prices online. And then otherwise they're like, Amazon's gonna take all our business if we start doing this.
- [06:13]
Luke Peters
Okay.
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Podcast Narrator
Yeah.
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Luke Peters
So back then, Amazon wasn't dominant, and we were selling products, not service. And it was a good time because online was. Everybody would go there to buy electronics at that time, even 2001. Okay. So electronics was where you would go, but if you wanted to buy a heater or an air conditioner or whatever, you wouldn't really go online. You'd still buy that at the department store or, you know, some wholesaler or commercial, depending what you're buying. And so it was good because there wasn't a lot of competition on that side of the business. You follow? So, yeah, so it was really nice. I mean, you could rank really good for all these top terms, selling products that were not electronics. And it was pretty good for a couple of years until everybody figured that out.
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Tersh Blissett
That's funny. There's a saying. Marketers ruin everything as soon as they figure out that one good way to rank. Then all of a sudden, they just capitalize on it. I give Josh a hard time about that. So what did newair do exactly? Or what does it do?
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Luke Peters
We design and distribute, like, amazing compact appliances. So we usually go into niches. So we'll go into wine coolers instead of selling, like, large fridges, you know, for the Kitchen. There's plenty of brands doing that. And I like to sell or create stuff that's a little bit different. So we get into sort of the blue ocean, right? This is like the marketing mindset. Okay. You go into the red ocean where everybody is. Margins are going to be just totally wrecked. And it's going to be. You're going to be going uphill, basically. So I want to be going, you know, with the current of the river, I want to be going downstream. I want the momentum and flow going with us. And so you could find that in some of these niche categories. So ice makers. And then when ice makers got popular, then, you know, you do the different types of ice that different enthusiasts would want. Yeah, like a chewy, a whiskey ice, stuff like that. You know, wine coolers, different kind of beverage coolers. You know, we have a cooler that gets down like below freezing. So cool stuff that you're not going to find. And it's also sort. A lot of it is like, I want to have not I have to have those types of products.
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Tersh Blissett
Do you feel like having a product like that is easier to make better margins on because it's a want product versus a need?
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Luke Peters
The products that you can make, the best margin is when you own all the ip. I mean, if you're selling a fridge, okay, you don't really own. You don't really have a lot of exclusivity, right. Because it's a rectangle with a compressor. And then of course you're going to design it how you want. But there's. You're not excluding other competition from coming into that market, really. So. Yes and no. But if you iterate and then come up with new ideas, then you can get some good margin. Definitely. And when you're selling a product, you know, what are margin expectations? Okay, they're like, your expectations are like in the 10% range for net. Net net profit. Okay. Maybe gross profit might be, you know, 40 to 50%. Okay. And then. Then you're going to have your different, you know, contribution margin and SGNA.
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Tersh Blissett
So.
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Luke Peters
So if you finish around 10 or higher, you're doing pretty good in most categories because you can scale a product business, typically you can scale it higher than a service business. You should be able to scale it higher. Right. So the service business should be doing, say, 20% net profit margins. You know what I mean? Because it can't get. It's a lot harder to get a $50 million service business than it is a $50 million product. Think it is.
- [09:12]
Tersh Blissett
I mean, I agree with you, especially if you're able to export the products across the country and across the world. But no, I, I agree with you 100 there, but you've transitioned now into the coaching side of things. And with that being said, what's the, the. I, I mentioned it in the, in the intro, but what's your, the, the method or your, the platform?
- [09:40]
Luke Peters
The system.
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Tersh Blissett
Yeah, your system. So mine is optimize, automate, delegate. So, you know, optimize the process prior to automating it and delegating it. Explain yours.
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Luke Peters
Yeah, alignment, product, people, margins. Okay, so, so you're, you're, you're looking at the, the main thing is a lot of people talk about like, you know, the getting everybody aligned and leadership and about your product, but where I separately focus on is margins. Okay, So I really. Because I, people totally undersell themselves on the margin side. And then when it comes to the people side, I kind of focus on what I call alignment. Because on the alignment side, it's more than just getting your leadership. It's getting the whole company behind a purpose of what they're trying to achieve and communicating that throughout the whole company, which is usually the weakness, by the way. Most of the time, leaders don't communicate that well enough. Maybe they think they have, but they haven't. And it's worked really well.
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Tersh Blissett
When does the alignment begin? I know that in the perfect world it would be during the interview process, but sometimes we hire really fast when we should be hiring slow and then it bites us later.
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Luke Peters
Alignment is. So what you want to do is you want to think about it as like going to the gym. It's like a continuous thing you do. It's like setting a rhythm for the company. That, that's how you want to think about it because. So it'll start with your meeting schedule. So what do your meetings look like? You know, are you doing one on ones with your top leaders? How are they done? Most people, the big miss there is most people don't hold their leaders accountable. Okay? So they're doing the one on one, but they're not actually holding them accountable. You're later, they got the same problems. It's like, look, at some point you guys got to have that hard conversation. But that's, that's a rhythm you're producing because it's, you're creating accountability and an expectation. And then so the first thing is just make sure you have a rhythm with meetings. And then beyond that, it's setting up like your company values and your culture and your goals for the Future. And that's how you're going to get alignment. And then, you know, the eos's system is really good, by the way people use it.
- [11:44]
Tersh Blissett
I'm getting ready to ask you your thoughts on eos.
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Luke Peters
Yeah, EOS is. EOS is great. I mean, there's a few weaknesses we can get into, but EOS is great. But the main thing, it's not really. Everybody has to do everything that's in eos. The biggest thing I see is even if they're running EOs, people are not holding people accountable. Companies are not holding their leaders accountable, even though they're doing EOs. Right. So that's kind of. It's like you could do a small version of EOS and just have your goals and your rocks and your meetings and then your company meeting, which gets everybody aligned because you're saying, hey, you want to share what the business is doing with everybody at the company? Even up to sales and maybe even profit, depends how far companies. But I think people are too afraid to say, hey, you know, we're doing, we did 5 million last month. And, and they're, they're thinking that everybody that, you know, the, the rest of the company is going to think that they pocketed 5 million. And that was just the top line. Right?
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Tersh Blissett
There's so often that that's, that's exactly what happens. And we, we started doing a one truck exercise. Are you familiar with that concept? The one truck exercise? So basically the, for a technician, they would write down all of their expenses for one truck to get one truck across, like to get to a customer's home, what it would cost. And so like, they figure like, okay, what are you, what are you spending on Yelp advertisement and all these other things. And so then you actually break down that what they think it cost versus the real numbers.
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Sponsor Representative 2
The real numbers.
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Tersh Blissett
99% of times when I've done this, the real numbers are a lot less than what they think they are. So in reality they're like, once they've added all these things up, you know, your Facebook advertising, your SEO plus your overhead expenses and everything else, like any of like your team expenses, then all of a sudden they're like, okay, I just realized that you don't make as much money as I thought you made whenever you get one truck to this job site. And also it makes them realize that every time they leave a job without collecting and collecting any money, how much it actually affects the company. By doing that, like zero. Zero ticket jobs are costing.
- [14:01]
Luke Peters
Definitely. Yeah. And I think part of it is like, you know, if you're the leader and you're paying everybody well and you're treating everybody well and those are all things you need to do because you want to build good core values and you want that everybody to feel like there's something in it for them. Okay, that, that's, so you want to create that culture, right? But on the flip side, if you're making a lot of money, should you really care? Do you really need to hide that? Like that's it's your business, okay? And you're, you're, you're doing the best for everybody on the team. You're probably paying them above market and all those types of things. So I think too many people are just too sensitive to that and they, they, they just overthink it, you know, like as far as, like, because it's very valuable for you're, you know, a company in different departments to show profitability and understand where the underperformance is. And because if somebody doesn't know the why behind something, like we might say, hey, we need to do this or we need this KPI but they don't actually understand why unless the leaders open up about the business and say this is why. And then when they understand the why, they can kind of buy in more.
- [15:04]
Sponsor Representative 2
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- [15:48]
Sponsor Representative
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- [16:24]
Luke Peters
Still skeptical.
- [16:25]
Sponsor Representative
So were a lot of folks until they tried Price Guide. The tool my friend Marcus Sheridan built specifically for home improvement companies. The results, More trust, way more leads and more AI visibility. You can have your estimator live in under an hour. Less than $30 a month. This is the future. Check it out at www.Price Guide AI. Now back to your episode. Today's episode is powered by Ciro Systems.
- [16:56]
Sponsor Representative 2
Sarah is all about removing the clutter.
- [16:57]
Tersh Blissett
And unnecessary touch points to run your.
- [16:59]
Sponsor Representative 2
Home service business profitably.
- [17:01]
Sponsor Representative
They use AI dispatching to get the right tech to the right call automatically and job time efficiency to ensure your entire team runs like a profit generating machine.
- [17:10]
Tersh Blissett
Get a tech upgrade for your business at. Get Sarah Tech Service Business Dash mastery. Do you feel like a manager or owner can get to doom and gloom whenever they're presenting numbers? Like, hey, we're just, we're not making it. We're, you know, the perception is we're not going to cover payroll next month if we don't sell these, you know, if we don't sell seven jobs this month.
- [17:37]
Luke Peters
Yeah, but that, that's part of being a leader. So the leader has to, you got to suck it up and you got to be a little bit different. Right? So yeah, because the thing is everything that you say as the leader will be interpreted in a way that you might not think it's being interpreted right.
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Tersh Blissett
So every word during the water cooler talk after, after the meeting.
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Luke Peters
That's right. That's right. So every word matters. So yeah, you want to be transparent, but you also have to be a leader and know, okay, what's, when's the right time to say something and maybe not. So people that just like spit out their guts, you know, that, that, that can, that can be problematic. I think you got to act like a leader. They gotta look up to the leader. The company needs to look up to the leader.
- [18:14]
Tersh Blissett
So that's a good transition into something that a business owner told me a long, long time ago. And that was when I was promoted from, I was a technician and I became a service manager and I was friends with all the technicians at the time and immediately he said, can't be friends with them anymore. Like what? Like you can't be friends with them anymore. You can't talk to them the same way and all this other stuff. I was like, well, one of the guys lives in me, lives with me. He's my roommate. Like, like this is gonna be awkward. And what's your take on that?
- [18:51]
Luke Peters
I don't really have a take on that one specifically. You know, I don't know what's right or wrong there. I just know that I might have a little bit of the opposite perspective. Like, I did every job at the company, okay. So if somebody looked at me and I drove a truck to work and if someone looked at me, they're not like, oh, you know, this guy's too good for loading products in the warehouse. I mean, I did it all and I knew how to do it all as the company grew. And I. So I think, I think it's, I mean you, you want everybody to respect the leader of the company. They don't have to like you, but they, but they need to respect you.
- [19:21]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah, and I agree with you 100% too, because. And I was the same way. I started off as an apprentice and then worked my way up. And so like all the technicians knew that, but the new techs that came on, they had this, they, they could have possibly had the assumption of otherwise. And yeah, I, I agree with what you're saying through my experience, because I tried doing exactly what that business owner told me to do and it ended up hurting, damaging several friendships that I had with technicians. And I was like, you know what, this is for the birds. Like, I'm going back the other direction. And, and it was fine and it worked out great. Um, and so yeah, it's, I agree with that. Moving on though. Like, what's some of the like lowest hanging fruit and that you're seeing in the world of profits and stuff as far as the coaching clients go?
- [20:13]
Luke Peters
Well, as far as profits, you know, the lowest hanging fruit is, is, is raise your prices. That's the lowest hanging theories on that one.
- [20:20]
Tersh Blissett
With that though, everything's getting so expensive. I, I was looking at our price book recently and I was like, oh man. If back when I was a technician, which has been many, many moons ago, if I caved this price out, somebody would shot me with a shotgun like. But now that's literally the price that everybody's giving. And I know of people who have not updated their price book in a year or two. And the supply houses are, they're updating prices every month, you know, a quarterly at least.
- [20:55]
Luke Peters
Okay. This all goes back to your kind of product market fit and, and even in service businesses you can differentiate your products and your delivery. Right. Everybody. You know, companies have done that over the years. Whether it's through professionalism or little add ons on the side or different upsells, or just building a great brand that People will trust which in, in most, at least in the nicer neighborhoods, people will pay extra. Okay. For a brand, for a name they can trust and somebody that's, that they, you know, that's going to come back if something breaks or that they could call down the road and fix something else. So what I see. Okay, so let's back up. So how does so, so let's say someone's running a business and it's, let's say a smaller business because I see this, okay. Usually when I coach, the clients are a little bit bigger, but smaller company, million dollars, let's say, right. A couple, you know, handful of employees, million dollars with one founder. That. And that founder is often not paying himself a salary. Okay. And not very much and taking maybe a draw. Okay. And so the total amount that founder's making maybe a hundred thousand. Let's say if the founder makes a hundred thousand. So the founder thinks they're making 10%, but they're not because they hadn't even paid themselves a salary yet. Right. So you see this and what does it mean? It means there's something wrong with that product market fit. They're under bidding. Maybe that's fine when they're smaller, they're trying to get jobs, but it's going to backfire because it's going to keep them from scaling to be able to hire good talent.
- [22:21]
Tersh Blissett
What happens whenever. Have you seen a situation where the owner, they're pricing things that's probably about the same as their competitor is pricing, but they still aren't making like they're still not, they don't, they don't have the money to pay themselves. Still, is it because they're too small and they've hired too many people potentially? That's kind of what I imagine the case may be. But then, so like in our world, there's a lot of people who want to brand like they want to spend $60,000 on, on their brand really fast and versus waiting until they're, you know, 3, 4, 5 million dollars a year before, like rebranding and that because that gets expensive as well. But in my mind, like that might be an unnecessary expense if, if you're not even paying yourself a salary yet.
- [23:19]
Luke Peters
I mean, listen, there, there's always a ramp up until the company makes money. That, that's fine and that's normal, but it can't be too long. I mean, you have these companies that go three, four years and I make any money. So. And they're always hoping for tomorrow. They're always saying, okay, When I, when I get scale. But I mean you should be profitable. I think you should be profitable from the beginning. But I mean the beginning meaning probably a couple hundred thousand because at the beginning you have, you do have some just base costs. Okay. Your first a hundred thousand. It might be kind of hard unless it's just you. Right thing that's in there now that wasn't in there when I had my pool business was advertising costs. Okay, so, so, so you, you didn't really have, you had like the penny saver. You had, you had the, you know, the phone book back then. Right now you've got more advertising costs. So that needs to be built in. And then kind of to your question, okay, your pricing's the same as your competitor, but you're not making a lot. That probably has to do with an efficiency in a leadership issue. Okay, how many jobs? How long has it taken to get the jobs done? How quick and efficient is the team as far as allocating to new jobs? It probably has something to do with that.
- [24:20]
Sponsor Representative
Thank you to companycam for supporting today's episode.
- [24:23]
Tersh Blissett
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Sponsor Representative
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- [24:32]
Tersh Blissett
Try that for free for 14 days and get 25 off of your first two months at companycam.com forward/svm. And do they even know those KPIs to start with? Like what you don't track, you can't measure. So that's, that's an extremely important point you make there really fast. I was thinking of something else and then it just, it zipped right, right past my brain. I know that you aren't necessarily. I, I know that most people don't want to give like a rule of thumb and I, I don't either. But I'm going to ask you anyways as far as margins go, like where, where should we be looking at and how often should you be looking at your margins? Do you it. Do you really need to job cost every single job that you go on on a daily basis or is it something you can look at once you've done your P. Ls? Once a month or.
- [25:28]
Luke Peters
Okay. It's one of the most important things you want to have visibility into margins. And it depends what kind of job, what kind of service business. Right. If they're all like residential small jobs and of course it's hard to go look at every single job, you know, if they're commercial, you actually should know the margin for everyone. If you have a sales team or you have different operators that are in charge of different branches of or divisions of your company, you should know, let's say you got five team members in different branches of the company. Let's say each one you should know what the margins are. Okay. So that it's, it's, you can kind of understand especially if someone's commissioning or bonusing off sales and their margins are going to be impacted and maybe they're, you know, low bidding on some of these sales. So it's super important. I mean you can do it in an, you don't have to, you know, I've run businesses from real simple software that we even wrote ourselves back in the day, you know, to real complex erps, you know, that, that, that we're operating on now. And, and I've seen them all. You can estimate margins very closely by literally just jobs on Excel. Just look at your job, just pick 10 jobs and run them on Excel. And, and you can get real close to what your contribution margin is going to be. But, but the bottom line is like if a service business is under 10%, that's not good. So 10% net profit, gross margins are going to, you know, gross margins are hard one to talk about because it depends and sometimes people build up their gross margins different ways. Okay, but, but yeah, if you're under 10%, I mean that's, you know, that could just be a, a long hour job that you have. Right. It's not. If you want a business, you got to get it. You need to be paying yourself as a CEO a comparable salary. So you know, in the area you're in, not 75,000, like a real salary and still be making 10%. And if you are, and if you're up 15 or 20, you're gonna, you can get picked up by private equity and have a great exit at that point.
- [27:23]
Tersh Blissett
I agree with you there. So I'd be amiss if, for, if I didn't ask you this, but what is your take on AI and is it affecting business in a positive way, negative way? And in the future, do you think it'll be positive or negative?
- [27:39]
Luke Peters
I don't know. That'll be positive. Socially, I don't, I don't know. I can just see a lot of problems with AI personally. So, so I'm glad I was born when I was born. But yeah, I don't know, it's, I think it's going to be kind of sketchy and I think socially I'm not sure about that.
- [27:56]
Tersh Blissett
I can't imagine being youth in today, like preteens and then like your whole adulthood, you're going to grow up with this.
- [28:04]
Luke Peters
Just walking around talking to something that doesn't exist. It's, you know, so. And I ask AI questions all the time, but it's like, you know, so, so I think it's, it's, it's a, it's a multiplier for each person. Okay. But I haven't seen. I'm sure they're coming and I, and I'm invested in some, some early stage stuff that you know, but it's going to take time to get into the market where AI is going to actually be like another employee at the company. Right now it's sort of a multiplier. Okay, so, so, okay, so you can make more content, but so can your competitors. So you can probably analyze contracts quicker, you know, and, you know, but everybody can do that.
- [28:39]
Tersh Blissett
Now with AI, I believe that everybody should be at least using it for those types of things. Because if you're still doing manual labor, as far as that goes, I think that's gonna, you're right. You hit the nail on the head. It multiplies your productivity, but it also, like if you, if you have bad productivity, it's gonna multiply that as well. Like if you're, you know, garbage in, garbage out.
- [29:02]
Sponsor Representative
Yeah.
- [29:02]
Luke Peters
And some of the output's pretty bad.
- [29:04]
Tersh Blissett
Some of it's terrible.
- [29:05]
Luke Peters
Yeah, some of it's terrible. I mean, you still have to go in there and edit it, but it, but it can, you know, listen, I was, I'm, I'm actually creating a new product. I can't really get into it because I got a trademark and patent it and everything. Right. But I mean, it was super helpful with AI helping me. Like I'm going to use a patent attorney anyways. But as far as helping me conceptualize which parts of the product I can are patentable and all these types of things, I mean, that was incredible. You know, so it really, it's super helpful. But I still am having to make the final decisions at this point.
- [29:36]
Tersh Blissett
I'm working on a book. Like, sure, you could have AI write out a whole book. It's not going to make a lot of sense. It's not going to have depth to it, but using it to help with the outline and flush out ideas, like chatting back and forth with it and like, okay, that's actually. All right, that's good. Oh, that's garbage. Like, just completely ignore that. Don't repeat that one again in the Future and that type of stuff. I've had that conversation with my chat GPT voice several times, and then I'm like, all right, we got to start a new thread because you're just going in all the wrong directions here.
- [30:07]
Luke Peters
Yeah, that's funny.
- [30:08]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah. So if people want to learn more about you and what you have going on, what's the best way for that to happen?
- [30:14]
Luke Peters
Find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn or at ApexCEO Co and on LinkedIn, just look at Luke Peters.
- [30:20]
Tersh Blissett
For those who are thinking about, you know, hiring a coach, what is like the best target audience for you? Who are the ones that have are the best fit for you?
- [30:29]
Luke Peters
A word coach is like a sort of a repellent for a lot of guys, you know, so it's like. But there isn't a better term. I'm basically like, I grew and sold a business. I'm basically like an advisor. So I can come in and hopefully and just make them more money.
- [30:43]
Tersh Blissett
Really.
- [30:43]
Luke Peters
It's like, whatever they're going to pay me, it's going to be multiplied by how much more money I should be able to. I'll put the pressure on me and I should be able to make that for them. But you typically, companies have to be, you know, they got to be over 3,4 million before it makes sense for them. Yeah, typically.
- [30:57]
Tersh Blissett
So you mentioned earlier on in the show about accountability and holding people accountable. How do you hold your clients accountable and how they holding you accountable?
- [31:07]
Luke Peters
That's a good question. So how do I hold them accountable? Sometimes they are hard to hold accountable.
- [31:12]
Tersh Blissett
As a business owner with add, Like, I know how that goes.
- [31:15]
Luke Peters
It seems like everybody's got add, you know, so, yeah, it is. What I want to do is I want to give them the simplest answer going forward. Okay? So, like, things don't have to be so complicated. So I guess I turn that around. Instead of saying, okay, how do I hold them accountable? I turn it around on myself. This is just kind of my approach is saying, okay, how do I make it so that it's easy for them to be accountable? Okay. And that's typically means I got to come up with, I have to really understand the business and I have to find just a one or two big movers that are going to make a lot of profit or a big change for the company. And if I find that they're going to want to do those things, you know, and usually it's obvious things like the margins are bad. Okay, we dig into sales and we understand, hey, this is where we're screwing up. And it's. There's some adjustment on the bidding process, sometimes even on the AR collecting processes and things like that. You know, there's so many areas where, like, the CEO is not actually looking at these things. The cash movement and cash collection processes. And, you know, if I go find one of those, okay, big win, then we move on to the next one. So we keep it simple. And then how they hold me accountable is I give a 90 day upfront guarantee. Okay. So, you know, I'm going to more than pay for what I cost in those 90 days. And so it should be pretty obvious.
- [32:23]
Tersh Blissett
You know, one of the biggest downfalls to the quote unquote coaching industry, coaching world is the immense amount of busy work that I feel like is given out. Well, you have to do this to get these results. Well, I'm going to give it to somebody else to do it, but then you don't have ownership in it like that.
- [32:40]
Luke Peters
And so, yeah, I don't give assignments. I know how I was. Okay. I'm usually saying no to busy already. Yeah, yeah. You don't have time. You're running a business. So it's like, you don't have time for all these Mickey Mouse games. You just want to know, oh my gosh, my head of sales sucks. Gonna have to replace them, I guess, or I'm gonna have to consider it big things for the company. You know what I mean? Because you can change all these things, but if your head of sales isn't doing their job, three years later, you'd be in the same place. So I'm looking for the big stuff.
- [33:04]
Tersh Blissett
And it's. Sometimes someone from the outside looking in can spot things a lot easier than us when we're like, right in the middle of it all.
- [33:12]
Luke Peters
It isn't. I'll tell you, like, I do like running a business. I'll be honest, you know, which is probably dumb for me to say this, but I'd be running a business like the consulting business is. Okay. Okay. Because CEOs are busy and they're. And it's hard. Like, you know, if you're going to take on my services, you're like, you know, luke, how are you going to make me 100,000 this year? I don't see it. And I know my business, right? So it's hard to close deals. And I'd much rather be on the other. So I'm actually starting a business. Cause I'm like, man, this is fun, you know, when I'm working with clients. But I don't like begging, you know, trying to say, hey, guys, you know, trying to prove something that I've already proven by, you know, growing and selling the business. So it's in the consulting world's an interesting world. Everybody on LinkedIn is a consultant. Okay. You go onto LinkedIn, everybody. It's a crazy world. I think it's kind of ruined it. And I'll tell you what, when you get a handful of good clients, it's a lot of fun because I get a look under the hood of all.
- [34:03]
Tersh Blissett
These companies and it's the best satisfaction is whenever they have success. And then you're like, you were right with that. I'm like, yes, I'm glad I was right.
- [34:12]
Luke Peters
I would just had an engagement. We cut a million dollars in expenses when you get in there. It's a lot of fun.
- [34:17]
Tersh Blissett
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you hanging out with me and chat and going through this and kind of like opening the hood and digging deeper than just service level stuff.
- [34:25]
Luke Peters
Yeah, you got to. It's a lot of fun.
- [34:26]
Tersh Blissett
All right, man. Well, we appreciate everybody's hanging out with us. If you have any questions at all, we'll make sure to put all of this notes and information in the show notes of the podcast episode. But until we talk again next time, I hope you have a wonderful and safe week. We'll see you.
- [34:48]
Podcast Narrator
Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are working one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating, and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.