← The Home Service Expert Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Even if you're not the market leader, act like you're the market leader and do the things that market leaders do and eventually you become that leader.
- [00:07]
B
Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Melo. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes. But I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes N O t e s to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299 and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward/podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today I got Brian Soy with me. He's based out of Cleveland. Brian is the brand strategist, author and marketing leader with more than 30 years of experience helping companies clarify their message, focus on customers, and grow with purpose. As president of Aspire, Brian has guided owners and executive teams from small entrepreneur entrepreneurship businesses to 5 billion dollar organizations to close the gap between what their brand promises and what customers actually experience. He's the author of Blue Collar Branding and Trade Secrets and a top 100 marketing influencer known for translating strategy and a simple, actionable frameworks. Brian also serves as a marketing director for Gorg Gor Gor Gor Jank Gord Yank Home Services and publishes Entre Worship, a journal exploring faith, leadership and work. When branding invites customers into a clear story, Brian believes businesses don't just grow, they endure. I'm really excited to have you on today, Brian.
- [02:19]
A
Yeah, thanks, Tommy. I'm really appreciative of being here and grateful for the opportunity to just spend some time talking with you.
- [02:26]
B
So let's just talk a little bit about what your last 30 years have been about, what you're excited about, where you're at today, what you're looking forward to.
- [02:34]
A
Yeah. So the last 30 years is just, it's been a long journey, lots of different experiences. Started off as a generalist designer and spent a little, little bit of time in that early days also working as a part time professional with American Greet and that was a little unusual, doing greeting card design, a lot of calendar design. But as the agency started to grow, my freelance business started to grow. Broke off to start doing what I ended up calling Aspire my marketing agency and as you just said in the intro, been able to work with entrepreneurs well under $500,000 up to some fantastic multibillion dollar industry leaders and deal manufacturing, financial sector. Some of our clients when I worked with Aspire included Vitamix Electronic Merchant Systems which is a large small business merchant services provider and just again a wide mix of businesses that gave me a really well rounded opportunity to be cross disciplinary. But over time decided it was really better to just really start specializing and focusing. So that's more or less what I'm doing now.
- [03:51]
B
I love it. You know, I've really, since I got rebranded by Kick charge in like 2018, I just, I really had no idea what a brand really meant. And you start, we see Nike, we see all these companies that, that hired Tiger woods and Roger Federer and there's just so many good branded companies out there and you think about their slogan and you remember them, they're top of mind and you'll pay more for like a Rolex than you will for other brands. What's the common branding mistake you see leaders making today?
- [04:26]
A
A lot of leaders, let's just keep it very broad, struggle with clarity about who they are, what they do and why it matters. And when they do that, they struggle leading their teams. But where it really matters, where their customers don't always connect with how their service or their product can make their life better. You know, I define branding as the story that people tell themselves about your product or service and why it matters to them. So if leaders aren't leading with that clarity, then the customers get confused.
- [05:02]
B
So yeah, you know, so you probably go back to the mission, vision, core values and I think there's a lot of books I've read about that. Some people say what makes you different? Well, we work weekends, we do background checks, we're open 24 7, we run emergency. Anybody could be that. So how do you really develop? What are the, where do you start? So.
- [05:27]
A
It'S got to start with the owner and then you know, what's his vision for what the business is going to be or if it's A leader in organization. So if we're talking about home services, you know, what's the vision that the owner has? What's a vision that he's going to be able to set that people want to follow? Like essentially saying, I'm going to take us here and you give the owner a choice or you give the team a choice. To follow or not to follow. The mission then is what you're doing to and how you're, you're accomplishing that vision and then building that around a set of core. We call them shared values. What are those shared values that when someone comes into the firm, they can agree to and know that by following those values, they're upholding, in essence, the brand of the organization.
- [06:16]
B
And when you, when you think about branding, I love this stuff, by the way, I'm eating this stuff up. We just changed the mission, vision and core values. I, I don't think it needs to stay the same throughout the company. The legacy of the company, I think you, you grow and then you kind of retool. Do you believe that?
- [06:33]
A
Yes. So, interestingly enough, I sat with the owner. So I'm the marketing director at Gorejank Home Services now full time, and they were a longtime client of ours. Early last year, owner approached me and asked what it would take to be 100% devoted to them. And you know, as an agency owner, that's a question that sometimes can either go to one of two ways, like what's it going to take? Or. But it went the positive way. And so we sat down yesterday and worked through our. Actually we did awake sort of with the mission and combined it with. Sorry, with the vision. Combined it with our mission and define five core values. We've floated around this idea of five or seven and we. It's more of like an update versus a replacement.
- [07:23]
B
Yeah, I think that's what we did too. It wasn't necessarily a complete replacement. You often say businesses are too close to the problem. How can owners step outside their own echo chamber to see what their brand means clearly.
- [07:39]
A
Yeah, it's like to say it's hard to read the label when you're inside the bottle. So it's a matter of talking, you know, talking with clients and customers, taking a look at, you know, when it comes down to it, your reviews tell you a lot about how your customers can see the business. If it's internal, you know, asking your. You're doing like a 360 with your team that could be anonymous in case they're uncomfortable telling you how you're doing with leading them, Asking your C suite team or the coo, the cfo, whoever, that the leader relies on the most to just give candid feedback without fear of retribution or blowback. That's a hard thing because I'm sure you feel this sometimes too. I felt it in 30 years of agency leadership. It's, you know, that cliche, it's lonely at the top. You can't always trust that you're going to get the feedback you want when you need it. So it's just, it's important to find some different ways, whether anonymously or using what's already available to you, to step outside and just look at your business objectively.
- [08:56]
B
I was on with Gary Vee last week and he said if he could go back into his 20s, he would have had a lot. He calls it kind. Candor is you could have an open voice, open feedback. You should praise more than you criticize, but it needs to be very honest and we need to be honest with each other. No one should not see something coming. And there's, you know, you're only as strong as your weakest link. So we need to. You might not fit our company is that it sits today or you might be on the wrong seat. I don't think that's easily obtained and it's something I think every company should be striving for.
- [09:29]
A
Sure. Yeah. It's one thing I learned very late in the agency time of my career was the people that you start with may not be the people you end with, which is sometimes when you're in a smaller group, you know, we had six at one time and, or up to six, you know, people change, the personnel changed and just knowing how loyal some of those people were that they weren't going to make it all the way through to the end because, you know, I had to make a hard decision to put the agency on pause so I could take on this full time role. And it was challenging to know that I had, I wanted to be very fair to my team that I had in place still and make it a very positive experience for them to in a sense, transition to their next. And from what I understand, they've, you know, our art director has made a, you know, a great transition, but it was tough, you know, knowing that, you know, that was going to change. And then to the candor part, you know, again, something I just learned over time is it's best sometimes to have this conversations and you do two stars and a wish. So two little points of praise and then, you know, but we could tweak this thing, we could do this better. And that, that softens that critique. We don't want to call it criticism, but more of a critique.
- [10:52]
B
Yeah, we used to call that a shit sandwich where you'd say, hey, your tie is great, your shoes are great, but, but tighten up your belt, you.
- [11:00]
A
Know, the smudges on your uniform.
- [11:03]
B
Yeah. So what does your agency specialize in? I just want to get the download of like where your core competencies were with the agency.
- [11:13]
A
So our core competencies were working with service businesses and then over the last six years pivoting to home services. So over that time we'd worked with a number of, in addition to the company I worked for full time now Gorjank, a number of other H vac electrical and plumbing companies, some privately held, some franchised. And it was just much more enjoyable for me to focus on one sector of business. And I mean, you probably understand this well yourself. It's almost more challenging to market and promote a service business than it is to market a product business. So for instance, H Vac, we install products, but we sell a service.
- [12:05]
B
Right? Yeah, yeah. So when it comes to the agency side, you come up with the creative. I mean, did you guys. Because there's media buying, there's tv, radio, billboards, there's Google optimization, there's lead aggregators, there's the branding on the side of the truck. There's, you know, there's endorsements, there's door to door teams. There's so much going on. Where did you find your sweet spot?
- [12:33]
A
So our sweet spot was a brand first approach where we're very conscious of not only the visual identity in the marketplace, but what was the story that we're telling inviting customers into and how we then amplified that story into the marketplace. For instance, one of, you know, right now we're in Northeast Ohio. We have two strong seasons, the hot season and the cold season. We have two shoulder seasons throughout the year, or essentially like the four. But I had another client that was down in Myrtle beach in South South Carolina. So they have a market that's in rentals, they have one that's in the city. And the mix for each of these different markets has to be different. So our sweet spot was really understanding what strategy is necessary to communicate most effectively and use the marketing budget most effectively in those marketplaces. So, you know, typically the approach was, and again, this is what we are well known for is I call it the core to three strands where we have, you know, strong Google business profile optimization, strong Website and then at minimum, one lead source. And you know, when you have those three things as the foundation for your marketing, then you can build on that with other lead sources that are going to be most effective in your market because not all markets are the same and you have to continually be adapting.
- [14:07]
B
I love it. So I found that most companies are going to be one of three things is going to be their, their brand story. I'm the cheapest, most affordable. It's probably the worst one. We, we're the best. We offer trademark parts, we show up prepared, we honor our warranties. So that's like the trust of you'll, you'll let me in your home and you'll do the job right and you've got great technicians and you've got new trucks that are reliable and you'll honor your warranty work. And the third one is we'll be there lickety split. We'll be there. We'll come out at 11 at night if we need to. We're seven days a week. We're going to show up. Holidays, nights, weekends, we come out right away. Other than that, I, there's a lot of things in between there. But Morris Jenkins in North Carolina does a great job. They offer till midnight seven days a week. And they got guys, that's how they run their schedules in three, three different layers. And they picked up, they've been around since the 50s and they went on that. The other guys I know from your experience, what are some of the things that could be the core message when you think about the story?
- [15:12]
A
Yes. So the one I, I'm going to go back to again and again is the one we use at Gorjank. We'll talk about rapid response service, but we don't want to be the one that someone calls and you know, at midnight. We're not the one. We're not the ones who go out at midnight. We do have extended hours, but we constantly talk about our mission is to make your home safe, comfortable and healthy. And that ties right into the services we deliver. It ties into how we deliver the service. And you know, we don't want to compete on price because there's going to always be another company down the street. Instead of having the $119 tune up is going to have a $59 tune up. Right. So that's. We're leaning into value versus the lowest cost. We're leaning into what's going to let the homeowner know that we're a partner for them versus someone just coming in and being as efficient as we can to do a transaction.
- [16:19]
B
You know, I got an opportunity to meet Roy Williams, the wizard of ads and kind of studied. Read his books. And what I like about what he does is like his first commercial I think he did was Rolex. And it was this long one minute thing about, you know, you've accomplished everything you want in life and you've made it. You're at the top of Mount Everest, the wind's at your back, you've made it. Rolex, you deserve it. And you know, it started to make Rolex into something like when something goes, well, I get married or I accomplish something in business, or I have this, I finish a, a race or whatever it is, you deserve a Rolex. And I like Rolex because it's so clean, like there's all white around it. It's not like complicated. And it just, it's. They've got the crown and the gold. I'm just thinking, you know, you wrote the blue collar branding book. What, what advice would you give when someone needs to be thinking about how to establish themselves in a market with a lot of noise? More noise than we've ever had.
- [17:21]
A
Yeah. So look at the competition. You know, pick your top three or five competitors that you feel are the ones that are the, are that you're competing against. And look at how. Let's just start with the trucks. You know, are there trucks completely wrapped? And if you want to differentiate, go in between. Don't just stick with a white truck, stick with one that's, you know, got a very beautifully applied company name, the services you offer, phone number, you know, it's, it's not about being like everybody else. It's about differentiating yourself from everybody else. So again, that's always contextual to the marketplace. And I mean, I, I travel enough around the country, I keep my eye open for, you know, what people are doing, what, you know, we're driving, we see trucks on the road. I don't remember the name of it, but we were down in Florida somewhere and their whole brand was around a yard gnome and a pink truck. Very memorable. But you know, sometimes I just wonder, like, what do people think when they see that? Is it, is it professional or does it come off as too cartoony or caricature? Ish. So that, that differentiate, differentiation that we need to do needs to align with the message that we want to project. And again, I think professionalism, respect for the customer, knowledge and expertise, um, those can be reflected in how things are designed and the way they look.
- [18:57]
B
Yeah. You know, you remember the Maytag commercials where the guy's kind of standing around, nothing was breaking, he didn't have work to do. I just, when I designed what I wanted for a one, I, I just thought, when I told Dan Antonelli with Kickstarters, I said, I want to have that old fashioned feeling. The guy's coming out, he's clean, he's respectable, he's just going to do the job right and he's going to fix it the right way, not the easy way. And what I learned is telling stories like about my mom and my grandma and how I was raised. I'm a Midwest guy and they got to get to know me, they got to get to know who they're buying from. And I, I try not to make very, very little of my ads on tv, radio and billboards transactional. I'm wondering from your perspective, how much should a company be spending on branding versus direct response?
- [19:46]
A
Well, that's a great question because I don't know if there's a formula. So typically when someone asks me that, I just say it depends. So you think about the customer journey. A lot of times marketers will talk about funnels and it's not so much funnel anymore, it's more of a journey. And the customers are coming through that journey. And until they become familiar with you and until they know who you are and you've, you've created some curiosity, they're not going to be able to take the next step and move through the middle of that journey. So you could say a third, a third, a third, a third branding at the top or at the beginning of the journey, which would include your trucks, which would include television, could broadcast CTV a third in the middle with display ads just so that when they see your truck or when they've visited the website, they start to see more ads to continue force that familiarity. Right. Retargeting and then that bottom third and may not even need to be a third. It may be a quarter of capturing that, you know, demand capture. But also where you, you would have a short funnel to get them from Google to your landing page or to your call center. So roughly a third, a third, a third. But I think it all depends on the type of, you know, one depends on your budget and it depends on the size of your market. You know, in Cleveland we have half a market because six miles north of where we are is Lake Erie. So we don't have, you know, where the center of our office is. We can go east and west, slightly north and deep south but we don't have the same overall market as a lot of companies do. So our mix tends to be, you know, I would say a third up in brand building and awareness and a third in the middle, which is really critical right now. We can talk about that in a second and then a quarter to a third at the bottom or at the end of the journey. See, I still find myself talking about funnels versus journeys. The customer journey is more like a pinball on a table than it is a straight line because there's. They see an ad or they hear a radio spot and then they're going to soccer practice, and so they forget about you until they see it again or they hear something again. So they're. They're popping in and out of your ad ecosystem all the time.
- [22:30]
B
What's a healthy amount to spend if you're growing as a percentage of revenue? I've heard 5% with established companies with a lot of service agreements. I spend 14%. I've seen people that are attacking taking market share spending. 20%.
- [22:47]
A
Wow. So typically 10 to 12% if you're in startup or growth mode, 5 to 7% if you're in sustain mode. 4% might be a little low.
- [23:04]
B
10% or 5% might be a little low. You said.
- [23:08]
A
Well, I'd say 4%'s a little low.
- [23:10]
B
Yeah, 4%.
- [23:11]
A
5 to 7% if you're in a sustaining mode, if you're really in a growth mode. 10 to 12%. And that's based on feedback and conversations I have with other agency owners and then hearing and watching what other people are doing in the marketplace place.
- [23:28]
B
You know, when. When Ken Goodrich spent the money, he went to kickcharge, got the brand. He went to Roy Williams, one of my buddies. Ghetto wasn't doing very well at the time. They had to do a complete turnaround. And, you know, he told the stories about holding a flashlight for his dad. And it's been part of the community since 1940. And they bring out the flashlight that they've given to the customer. And that was like. And Dale, their top sales guy who worked there for a long time, said, tommy, when we really be created the brand and people learn to trust us, they would welcome us in. And they were already buying from us. It was just a matter of what. And as we. It was. We made it affordable for them with monthly, low monthly payments. The ticket went from 12,000 to 22,000. Because people, they weren't competing. We weren't comp. It was like they were calling us and they were we were their only phone call, the only clients. And then they opened the door and they'd have lunch waiting for us. They just loved us because they got to know us through the radio. And I think what they did is they identified their avatar and then they, they literally didn't do a couple ads. I mean, they were. Every other ad on the radio stations they were on, it was like, I think their goal was to hit 50% of the population at least five times, meaning if they were young children, old people, if they own an apartment, it didn't matter because they looked at those, they could be referrals or whatever, but they definitely spent the money and I think they went hardcore. And then if you, you stop doing that, it could go away pretty quickly. It's like it takes a couple years to build the brand, and it could go away in like six months. You got to stay top of mind. I think that's why you were talking about awareness and making sure that you're, you're not just lowering it too much. What's your thoughts on that?
- [25:18]
A
Well, that's, it's interesting because there's data behind that as well. So I'm familiar with another company that was doing some TV spots. Again, awareness building, launching residential into a new market, combining that with some programmatic ads, which is again, in the kind of the middle of the customer journey. And what we saw, and they showed me in the data, was that when they stopped doing the broadcast, the conversions and opportunities from the middle of the funnel dropped dramatically. And unfortunately, combined with the changes Google made last year to keeping everybody on their website instead. So that whole awareness building so that people remember you has to be constant. That's my opinion. And that's, that's the way we operate. That's, that's the way we operate at Gorejank. But that's been constant for everybody I've ever worked with. This is again, this idea that just keep, keep in front of them so that you become familiar and eventually, you know, in a sense, famous. But they remember you and then they recommend you.
- [26:29]
B
I, I have a mentor and a buddy named Cameron Herold. And he said what they did at 800, got junk in his painting business he was involved in, is when the guys have their two days off, they go park their trucks in a busy location like a Home Depot or a Costco or something well lit up right in the front, like the first parking spot that everyone walks out and sees it. And you want that right around your ideal client. So like in Phoenix, you probably want to go To Scottsdale. Right. And by the way, Phoenix is a huge market. There's great, great markets everywhere. But it's something we haven't pulled off yet because you got to build systems around that. You're gonna get some stuff stolen. You're, you know, you're gonna get some flat tires and maybe a catalytic converter stolen. But he goes, it's worth it. He goes. It'll rarely happen because it's well lit up, and you got to work a deal out with the Uber to get the guys, you know, back home from there. Hopefully it's close to their house and then back to the vehicle. But that's a simple way. He calls it parking. Park in the right spots that get a lot of traffic and.
- [27:33]
A
Clever.
- [27:33]
B
What do you think about that?
- [27:36]
A
No, I think that's great idea we have. So where I live, about two miles away, are two of our technicians, and our technicians take the trucks home. One of them is on one of the most highly traveled streets in the next city over, and people are. And people are seeing our trucks, like tens of thousands of people a day just parked there when they're home at night. And we use that to our advantage, too. We use beacons in our trucks so that we're capturing attention and mobile data from clients that are potential customers in the areas we serve. So, again, trucks are literally a rolling billboard. So that's why I think it's important not to have too much on the truck because you want it to be quickly readable and memorable from the way it looks. I've seen your trucks. They do convey that the red's great. I think not too long ago, you shared a photo of your truck in a parking lot, and all the other vehicles were white. That was awesome.
- [28:44]
B
And you stood out.
- [28:45]
A
It was red.
- [28:46]
B
Yeah. Super pops. You know, I'm very proud of what we built. And. And I think Dan did a great job, and he's got case studies all over the site. The show booking rates go up, conversion rates go up, average tickets go up. And, you know, I always say this on the podcast, but you might think 30, 40 grand, that's a lot of money. But you're betting the future of your family and all the people that work with you and the potential clients that are going to come through the door. And it's like, you know, to build a brand takes a few months to get it right. And. And you got to do market analysis. You got to. You got get a trademark on it. You got to make sure that you get the copyrights and to do it comprehensively and do it right. You just don't want to go to Fiverr and just throw something together. And Dan always makes fun of it. Sales, service and installation. Like, of course you do all of that. Like what? Like. Or you've got like Yelp all over your stuff. Or the bbb, like, so you're just making their brand bigger. It's like you don't need everything you do on the side of the truck and you don't need every. You know, if you're A plus, the bbb, they can look you up, but you want them to just remember you. You want no distractions. You want them focused on your logo, your brand, what you do, and it's gotta pop. And some people call themselves some crazy stuff. And I'm like, I like to have the name We're A one Garage door service. By. By the way, it's not the best name. A1 fell first in the phone book. But A1 means quality. A1 is like, yeah, we're A1. We're top notch. So I got lucky that at least had meeting because I was just trying to be number one in the phone book in 2006 and seven. But it's amazing how many people, they're like, how do you get so many great clients? And I'm like, well, we market to our avatar, you know, and now most people don't have a clue.
- [30:31]
A
We.
- [30:31]
B
We did a whole analysis of all of our top clients in our database. We're able to build an avatar. And that took historical data. And I know if you're just starting out, it's hard to figure that out.
- [30:43]
A
Right, Right. But you can make some. I don't want to say assumptions, but you can say, this is the type of client we'd like to work for. And some of that is demographic data, how much their house is worth, what's their income. But some of it, I think, needs to be behavioral data, you know, so for Gorge Inc. We look at people who want to keep their family safe. So that's a security motivation. We want to work with families that want to nurture their family, keep them comfortable, and then protect the value of their home. So we're looking at those behavioral mindsets that they have that prompt them to make decisions the way they do, and that gets baked into all of our messaging. And the tools that I use give me feedback on this. So I tend to be a little. Sometimes I tend to be a little less than optimistic, let's just say. And. And my. My tools will say, yeah, you're you're being too negative. Let's, let's reframe this positive, because that's what the prospective customer is going to want. They don't want you to lead with fear. They want you to lead with optimism.
- [31:58]
B
Yeah, well, we've always hear fear, uncertainty, and Dow sells. But you got to be very careful when you're doing that. I think that's more when you're in the home. You could talk about air quality, because it is, it is a big issue. But I don't know if you want to lead. The magnet doesn't need to lead with that. Like, one of the things I'll give you an example of an ad I've been talking about for a long time is how do you create direct response with, with branding is, you know, the garage door is the smile of your home. It's 268 return on investment. But most people don't know that all those nasty critters, the spiders and the mice and all the other bugs are coming through the bottom of the garage. If you got a bottom rubber that's not tightly sealed or over five years old, let us come out and take a peek. And let's keep those nasty critters out of your home, because it's true. And it's the number one entryway. When it gets cold, they all come through the sides. It's the easiest entry point. And that, by the way, what's on the other side of the garage, the kitchen. So that is probably leading with fear. And so is a. Is your door noisy? You know something, you don't want to be stuck missing a day of work or missing your daughter's dad's dance recital. But I do, I do understand where you're coming from. What are your thoughts on that? Because those, those are going after direct response. Those are like, make a phone call now. Like, I never thought about that. I should call them.
- [33:19]
A
Yeah. Now, I mean, we use the same thing, but it's typically posing a question. Like you posed a question, you know, are there critters getting into your garage door? You know, we'll say, did you get a quote that just seemed a bit high? We'll give you a second opinion at no cost, no obligation. So we'll take a look at the quote. You measure the home, give them a cost that we, we think based on the size of the furnace they need. You know, we will talk about, are there contaminants in your water? We, you know, refer people to a website that has all the municipal water tests.
- [33:53]
B
I got the Site. We started selling water. Yeah. Fluoride and the. I mean, there's like 10 things that are way over the health limits. Sometimes a thousand, sometimes 10,000 x sulfur and all kinds. I mean, when I saw that, like, literally, like, I'm like. So I tell clients, look, you might have an RO system, but you're not showering with this water, are you? Your kids aren't showering with this water. You're not cooking with this water, are you? And I mean, yeah, that's a big deal.
- [34:21]
A
Yeah. So. But you know, you point out a problem and you agitated a little bit, but then you present the solution and what life's going to be like when they buy your solution. So it's just, it leads into the conversation naturally. But there are other times where you can say you made this investment now in say a new H vac system. This membership's going to help you maintain that system so that it stays running at peak efficiency. You know, because, you know, we lean into memberships as well. They're just a strong part of the business and keeps you in the customer's homes twice a year.
- [35:02]
B
It's a good thing to sell memberships. What's the difference between a brand that looks good and one that actually drives revenue?
- [35:09]
A
Oh, that's a good question. Brand that looks good and one that drives revenue? Well, see, a brand that looks. Well, is there an example of a brand that you can think of, a brand that looks good but may not drive revenue?
- [35:25]
B
Yeah, I guess that question is I'm writing a new book and one of the major things we're looking at is what do we want the person to feel like when they see the book. And so we're gonna go really wide with the book instead of like a normal book. And like, there's a lot of things that go in just to the colors, but you're right. Like you could look like a great brand, but you're not sending the right signals, I guess. And I guess you already went into that. Yeah.
- [35:54]
A
Well, let me think of it. So since you mentioned books. So over the last 15 years at Aspire, we designed a lot of books for people. And one of the books we designed was hardcover, about 142 pages, printed inside on a parchment. The outside was black linen on with a foil stamp title. It looked like it was an old book full of ancient wisdom. And what's the book called? That book over time? It's called the Win Without Pitching Manifesto. And it's a, it's a, it's a book for creative Services. Basically anybody who's in an advisory type of role who wants to sell more business without having to do a pitch. And it had 12 principles in there. But if that had, if that book had been done as a paperback print on demand, it would not have carried the same weight from a branding perspective for the company that it was designed for as this one. That, you know, when it shows up and you feel it, the only thing missing is that ancient wisdom smell. You know, it's just, it's a gorgeous book and it's, it's driven millions of dollars of revenue for that company.
- [37:13]
B
Have you ever heard of Jeffrey Gitter?
- [37:17]
A
Oh, yeah, the Little Red Book.
- [37:18]
B
He sells a lot. But it's this really nice cover with this really nice. And it's, it just smell like the pages and they're gold on the outside. It just feels like an expensive book.
- [37:29]
A
Yeah. And it's got those. My copy has those rounded corners. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's. It's a beauty. Yeah, it's a beautiful book. We designed an, you know, we just designed other books, but I know as soon as you change. So when you talk about, you know, the design of the book actually helped create this company's brand, visual brands, because I did a monogram on the COVID They adopted that as their logo and that's what just set them up for success since I think it was 2010 when that book was published. So we're. We're 15, 16 years in, I think, you know, companies that invest in their visual identity and their, their brand are shown and I don't have the data at hand, but research has been done to show that drives revenue more than, you know, a, a company that's just winging it. You know, they. Everything's Times New Roman on plain white paper. You know, it's projecting an image about your company. Like you said about your logo. You wanted your visual brand to convey quality. The name says quality. You want it to have that vintage feel to it. Authenticity. Sometimes I see things that they look like modern spacey, like Star Trek Y. And I'm a type designer as well. And looking at type and seeing something like a, a home service brand of any kind that has something that just looks still futuristic. It doesn't, it doesn't resonate. It just doesn't fit. It's too slick.
- [39:11]
B
Yeah. No. You know what's interesting is when I started with Al Levy, I had every color of the rainbow. And he goes. No, he goes. And by the way, he took a picture of my truck and he brought it in Black and white. And he shows, show me what pops in your, in your truck and your vans. He goes, they don't pop. He goes, you should be able to look at it in black and white and it should pop out at you what you're trying to say. And you know, it was a good little litness test and I still think a lot of people are listening. Like I should think about the brand more, but we can't afford it. But what's your take on it? That people say I can't afford to build the brand.
- [39:52]
A
That everybody's building the brand for you. And then you're letting your, if you can't, if you think you can't afford to build your own brand, that means you're allowing your clients or customers or the public to build it for you. So they're seeing whatever is available to them and forming an opinion about it. But if you decide to just invest in, you know, a professionally designed logo and then applying that logo to uniforms, to a, to the trucks, to invoices, to every customer touch point where it's relevant, then you start to take control of that and you start to control the conversation a bit more. And you may never be able to completely control it, but at least you're informing and guiding it. But if you just rely on the perception that other people make about your brand without ever responding to that, then you're playing catch up. I mean, you don't know what other people are saying or thinking or the perception that they're carrying with them. So I just think it's a bad idea to give up on it and to say you can't afford to do it because what would it cost you? What does it cost not to do it?
- [41:06]
B
That's a great question. And I think there's a lot of people, I was at this, that my buddy's house and he's a flipper and a really big real estate agent. He had all these different trades there. And this electrician, he goes, the guy's doing really well. It's called Save On Electric Services. And he's like, I want you to do a little keynote speech. Ten minutes. And I said, I never want to be discount. And I didn't know the name of his brand till I saw later. And I said, I don't want to be known as discount garage doors because that's the client I'm going to attract and save on. And I, I, I didn't, I didn't realize this, but I used to do bni and I still, if I open up a new market. I will attend to BNI and get the, get the word of mouth out there and get people talking about us. But if people are waiting for only networking, like man, like you're never going to get big. Like I could pay, I know exactly what it costs per lead. I know my exact booking rate, my conversion rate, my average ticket. Therefore I could pick the revenue I want. I just got to have great capacity planning and be able to have a flywheel for hiring and training. And you know, if you refi rely only on referrals and you don't like, he who could pay more per lead will always win. And I feel like a lot of people, they're like, man, I got more business than I could handle. And I'm like, then raise your prices. You know, like and you got to have those key metrics down those KPIs, you know, how do you think about those things?
- [42:33]
A
Yeah, no, I agree. We're constantly taking a look at what's, you know, what's the return on the ad spend, number of leads coming in. I think they call them opportunities. Number of opportunities coming in. Because at some point they're always going to be an opportunity for someone to interact with that person who's calling or submitting a form on the website or starting to fill out the scheduler. You know, it's if, if you're not using and looking at the data to drive your business decisions, you don't know where that money's going and it could be wasted. You know, for example, we, we use a platform called Searchlight to.
- [43:18]
B
Very familiar with Searchlight.
- [43:19]
A
Yep, yep. So we use Searchlight for our revenue analytics. And once I started full time In July of 2025, I started looking at all of that data really closely and realized that one of the aggregator platforms that the company had been subscribing to for a long time produced very little revenue for the investment. And the quality of the leads that came in from it were not the greatest. So we just decided to reallocate, end that relationship and reallocate elsewhere. But if I hadn't been looking at the data, I would not have known that. Another example is just last week we did some analysis on. I mentioned earlier that in 2025, early 2025, Google made some changes to start keeping searchers on Google's website. You're probably familiar with zero click search. So people search for a result.
- [44:18]
B
Yeah, the AI snippet. Yep, yep.
- [44:21]
A
The Google business profile. And the, the realization we had was that that's changing the way Google is then Using the websites that so many of us invest so much money in. So the role. The website needs to change, the role of the Google business profile needs to change. Especially with LLMs AI searches.
- [44:45]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:46]
A
Which get way more credit than they actually need right now because they're, you know, based on the research I'm seeing, there's not that much activity from them.
- [44:57]
B
I agree with that. I think it's going to start changing. But you know, that's where it comes really making sure you got the schema data. We're building another website for the AI engines to read and we're doing Marcus Sheridan's whole playbook on, you know, we're comparing ourselves to other companies. We're comparing parts. We're, we're winning awards, we're. We're giving, we're starting to feed the machine our background checks. We're giving as much information as we possibly can because we know what's coming and we plan on winning that game in spades.
- [45:27]
A
Yeah. What about pricing? Are you going to be putting pricing on?
- [45:30]
B
Yeah, we are. We built a price calculator. The pricing needs to be out there. That's one of the biggest things in Endless Customers is put the prices. But it doesn't mean we're giving all the price or exact pricing because we still need to get out there. It's like I could give you the price of a transmission, but your transmission might not be bad. We got to look at the other things going on. But we're being very transparent. We're trying to build this is happening whether we like it or not. I'm not a big fan, but I'm sold on it. I'm sold that this is what needs to happen for the new buyer Persona.
- [46:03]
A
Absolutely. And what. And the companies that don't do that are going to get left behind. So you think about, made me think about that. That's just part of your brand, how you're showing up in the marketplace. You know, I like and we all have this, this dream that we're going to dominate our marketplaces but in reality there's going to be one or two that dominate. So I like to say that if you're. Even if you're not the market leader, act like you're the market leader and do the things that market leaders do and eventually you become that leader.
- [46:38]
B
What do you guys use as far as the call center? Do you use a Volca or lace or broccoli or. I know, same day. There's a lot of different softwares.
- [46:48]
A
Yeah, we're using Lathe for our call center, which everybody loves because of the feedback it gives, the coaching it gives. That's been three to six months that we've been using that and it's actually dramatically improved our closing rate. So we've invested a lot in coaching, not only the call center, but our technicians. Rilla. There's platforms like Rilla that do that. We're very much committed to that continuous learning and that coaching because, you know, if everybody improves, you know, 1% a day, then by the end of the year, by the end of the month, whatever, you know, we can see a.
- [47:29]
B
Market improvement that, you know, I talk about feedback. You could take Rilla, you could take Lace, but you got to be able to have a feedback loop that's constant and you got to have. You're just trying to make little tweaks. You're trying to get to make 1% better. Like you said, I'm a big fan of Lace. We're on Lace. I love Boris. You know what? I just started using that. You'll be, you'll get a kick out of is mantle.
- [47:53]
A
Maybe you're not familiar with it.
- [47:55]
B
You got to check out. It's M A N T E L. I can give you the information. But what it does is it allows the client to kind of do their shopping when you're with them. So let's say the wife is at work, the husband's at work. It's on the technician's iPad. And first thing it shows you is all the work we've done in your, your area. And it zooms out a little bit. If we haven't done a lot of work in that area, like a newer market. So you get the social proof and it goes through kind of. The guy's a big fan of Robert Sheddini and influence. So you're, you're using all these influential things. And the average ticket has gone up $1700 and the conversion rate has gone up 18%. And this is like a home run. And they build their pricing directly. And so it's a performance paid thing. You don't pay a monthly fee. It's based on what you sell and it just builds it right into it. And the coolest thing is what you're going to love is it builds in the finance fees, so the dealer fee. And it's all transparent. It's not like you're tricking the clients. You could do a no, no plan all the way till 2029. And they like to work with companies that are 10 million or more because it's It's a lot of work to get it all together. But I'm telling you, like some of these companies, whether it's real estro, you know, these different companies, we. We actually built our own because I wanted role playing scorecards built into it. We built one called Phil Spark. And it's not quite where those other ones are at, but it will be because we're putting the money into it. And I just love knowing on what's going on in the field. How is this guy selling so many memberships? How is this guy getting a review on every job? How is this guy selling our top product of springs? How is this person getting at such a high conversion rate and starting to work? Like when you could study these things and build a library and assign them to people and then they, they kind of get the aha moment they gotta like. And a lot of that goes into hiring winners that are competitive, that like to know the score. But man, this is my jam. Like when I talk about conversion funnels, like I am a CMO. Like I'm not a CEO. Like I'm not a good CEO. I'm more of a CMO. Like I think there's three types of CEOs. One is a CFO that becomes a CEO. So the CFO, the financial guy. One of them is the operations guy, One of them is the marketing guy. I'm far more the marketing guy. A mix of operations, sales, culture. I'm not good. I mean, I can read a balance sheet, but not, not like, not like my people in my FP and a team. Like, I look at it, I'm like, huh, explain this a little more. You know, what is. And they're just like, well, it's right there. And I'm like, okay, I know how to read it. But like, where are we missing what's going on? I want to look more into why. Why are the. Why is labor so much higher in this market and we dig into it and yeah, we're paying guys minimums in that market because it's new or this or that and what we were flying guys that market. So what's interesting is, and it's probably a failure point of mine is you would think I would try to get better at my weaknesses, but I'm here on the podcast with you talking about what I love. So I want to take what I'm great at and make myself continuing to be the best and then hire for everything else, right?
- [51:00]
A
And that's, that's what a great leader does, is understand what, what his or her strengths are, and then complements those strengths with other people's strengths. Have you ever read the book From Strength to Strength by Arthur Seabrook?
- [51:17]
B
No, but I'm going to write it down. From Strength to Strength.
- [51:20]
A
Yeah, it's really fascinating because. And I read it because I'm later in my career going to be turning 65 this year. And what is fascinating about this book is how he studied how younger thinkers from up till about age 45 are. You know, they're more innovative, they're faster physically. We think faster, but. And that's their strength. But they call it fluid intelligence. But after that, we, we have crystallized intelligence where we're taking all of our previous experiences and synthesizing them into new ways of thinking. And, you know, it's coming to that realization that we don't have to be good at everything we do, but we have to recognize that those strengths in other people and give them the opportunity. So delegate those responsibilities to them so that the or so that not only can you thrive. So you. Speaking of you, but also the organization thrives and prospers around you.
- [52:23]
B
I'll tell you, the best advice I have about getting the right people is an equity incentive program. When I learned that every public traded company and every private equity company and every VC uses equity as a resource to put golden handcuffs to attract the right talent and keep them, it changed everything for me. And by the way, it feels really good when the company does make a transaction. And a lot of people that put in the effort, they feel like owners, they run like owners. Jack Trout wrote a book called A Stake in the Outcome. And man, if you look up kkr, something interesting that they do, it's called.
- [53:03]
A
Oh.
- [53:05]
B
Kkr. They did it with a bunch of companies. I'm trying to think of the name of it, but it's, it's an equity program for everybody. Kind of like an esop, but much better positioned. And. Oh, man, I'll think of it here in a minute, but I'm gonna read that book. Oh, it's killing me here. Okay. Um, Ownership works. It's ownership works.org ownership works.org. You know, there's, there's a book called Story Brand, and it's a pretty good book. And there's 2.0. I haven't read the second version, but it's creating a story brand. What are your thoughts on that?
- [53:56]
A
So I was going to ask you what you thought about it because I'm Storybrand certified. I have been since 2017. And when it comes to creating A story that resonates with your customers. I have not found or even helps motivate your team. I've not found a better model in the last 30 years. In fact, there's a. If you listen to Don's podcasts, recently he's revised it to with what he calls the Peace framework. So it's a much simpler approach where you identify a problem and it's easy for anybody in home services to identify a problem and then empathize with the customer about that problem. Once they understand your empathy, share an answer with them about how you could solve the problem, what change is going to occur and then what the end result's going to be. And you use those five steps to. To complete what we call the. It's the curiosity. No, it's the enlightenment. Curiosity. Enlightenment commitment triangle. So you're getting them curious about why they should care. You're enlightening them. And then you, you. It's like a house. You take them up those five steps to the front porch, and then. So it's like you. You've got them to call you. Then you. You explain why this is going to help change their life in some way for the better. A transformation versus a transaction. And then you call them to commitment. And that's where you get the. Enter the front door of the house and they buy from you. But I think it's a fantastic framework. Again, I'm in my ninth year. No, tenth year. Tenth year now. Ninth year. And over the last nine years, it's. It's transformed the way I've done business. It's helped our business grow. During COVID we had the best years ever because storybrand led into getting some new clients. And it's been transformational in Gorjank's growth since we started implementing it with them in everything from the website to emails to scripting. Just unreal how much revenue it's helped drive.
- [56:08]
B
You know, I became really good friends with Sebastian, and he talks about the company story. And something I do during orientation is I say something really simple like, Look, Mr. Jones, I gotta tell you something. A1 this company's been with me in good and bad times. I mean, when we went through Covid, they were communicating with us daily. They take care of us. You know, I could work anywhere I want in the country. I can work anywhere I want with garage doors. I'm certified. Sometimes I think I'm a certified badass. Excuse my French, but I'll tell you, I trust a one for my family and so does my wife. And so do my kids. And you should trust them, too. It's not a crazy story. You could actually bring in more of a story. Sometimes I say, hey, tell a story about how I started. Tell a story about how my mom came into work. Tell a story about how I was in the truck. And then I'll call customers myself to make it right. Even though we service 25,000 clients a month, tell them that we buy more garage doors than anybody on the planet, and we get that. We build a Frankenstein of a door. We buy this part from this manufacturer. We're the only company I know in the garage industry that does it. And if you get that story right, because they're buying from you, they got to know and like and trust you, but they also got to know, like, and trust the company. And they need to feel loved. And that's the empathy and that smiling when they tell something funny or having empathy when they say something not so good about what broke. And if you do that correctly, I mean, you're going to make a sale.
- [57:38]
A
Yes, I wonder. So interesting, though, but what if you entered that story? What if you only talked about your company kind of in an authority after saying to the customer, you know, understanding, hey, understand, you've got these broken springs. And, you know, I know that can be like. Because if you get locked in, in your house, you can't get your car out and it's an emergency and then lead up to that, you know, we're. We're a one. And, you know, my family trusts a one. You know, that's why you should, too, and kind of build the front of the story first. Or it's about the customer.
- [58:13]
B
Yeah, you have.
- [58:14]
A
You can't.
- [58:14]
B
You can't use the company story right when you walk in. You got to identify the pain. I mean, you got to. We spend 30 minutes minimum getting to know the client. I would say diagnose the person before the problem. The doctor walks in and he says, let me look in your ears, your nose, your throat. Let me have you cough a few times. He's going to ask you, he's going to say, brian, you know, what's the alcohol use? How much you working out? What's your anxiety level? How's the family doing? Any cigarette smoking, Any recreational drugs overall? What would you say? So, so you got to get to know the people a little bit before you come with solutions and do the tests. And if someone walks in and says, like, I've had guys that walk in, oh, it's a broken spring. I got the stuff on the Truck. How often do you use the door? Who sleeps upstairs to the opener? Make too much noise. Let's, let's go through and talk about everything. The guy's got a kegerator in the garage. I'm going to start talking about beer because I like beer. I want to find out, you know. And then they start talking. You see them light up, you see the client light up. Or other times you say, so how old's your dog? And they're like, oh, that's my daughter's. You know, he's a good dog. But they don't light up. But they might have a Harley. You say, have you ever been to Sturges? And they're like, oh man. Last year we went to. And they just started talking. And customers, if you find something in common, we started trying and we're not quite there yet. But if they're military, pair them up with military. If they're someone that, that just had kids and we could get that over the phone, we, we pair them with a tech that just had kids. Because you buy from people that are.
- [59:43]
A
Like, you sure, sure. And you buy from people you like. Absolutely have those conversations. So curious. So what else do you do for your customers to ensure that they just have a memorable experience that they want to tell somebody else about?
- [60:01]
B
Yeah. So number one, the first experience is on the phone. So we've got the GINA acronym, which is my mom's name of. It's not just booking the call, but it's the way we book the call and we smile and we have empathy and we say, oh no, I'm so sorry, you're stuck. You pick the right company. Listen, I'm going to send out our best technician. I'm going to tell you a little bit about him and his family. And he's such a great dad and he's been a player here today, one, one of the top notch players for seven years. So you got to book the call. Right. The next thing is the profile through Service Titan. It's got to have a picture of the family. Why you love fixing garage doors. So we're working on a, a really, really. We're actually using ChatGPT right now because everyone's got a good one. But I wanted a little bit more systematized on. You'll answer a bunch of questions and then it'll spit out the stuff we want and putting pictures in there. And then the next thing is we. We always offer coffee. Hey, listen, I'm stopping at Starbucks. What could I grab you if you come to my House. My fiance is going to cook for you. So reciprocity. The next thing we do is we park in a visible spot. We always have our tools with us. And we knock the door. We never ring the doorbell. Strangers ring the doorbell and then we smile. We gotta play with the dog. Playing with the dog is a big deal. So playing with the dog is important to me. And just those little things like if they know you love their dog, they're gonna buy from you. The dog's got like the sixth sense. And one of the things I learned also from Robert Chedini, as we're working on is listen, we'd like to give you something. You, you're a great client. You could pick deco hardware kit or pick this garage door armor. We want to give you something as a gift today. And then they walk out to their truck and they say, listen, you know what? You were a really amazing client, Brian. We're just going to give you both what we decided as a company. I called my manager. You're amazing. We're just going to give you both that. Those little things really stand out. And then I'm buying compressors because we're in your garage. I want to be able to make sure your tires have the right psi. I'm just making sure I don't have any liability of somebody like. So my lawyers are working through that. But, you know, and if we could, we'll take out the garbage. I had a guy pick weeds the other day. We helped put a Christmas tree back up. Like one thing above and above and beyond outside the scope. And we don't. My technicians aren't allowed to sell doors. They're allowed to turn it over to a product specialist that's on the phone. I got 20 of them sitting in front of three computers. What's in stock. We could build the door on your home. We could tell you all the promotions we got going on. So. And we're going to offer you a door. Almost on every single job we're going to say, listen, have you ever thought about a new door? Are you happy with this door? Because quite frankly, I don't feel comfortable. My job is to offer you everything, Brian. I don't care your color, I don't care your age. I don't care if you're male or female. I don't care if you're in a low income house. I'm going to offer you everything and let you decide. And if you say, tommy, that's more than I wanted to spend, no problem, Brian. Let's just pick another option. So there's. There's some examples of what we do.
- [63:02]
A
Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, there's a. I'm going to make sure our. Our leadership team listens to this section in particular. Just. I mean, there's just a few things in there that I thought were really good. It's, you know, you know, especially just that personal connection, you know, because you've probably found this, too, and I know you hire for that, but those, the technicians, not wanting to feel like they're salespeople or the service professionals, they're uncomfortable with that selling. So we're really working hard to make sure that that experience is not just about walking in, doing the service, but also looking for opportunities. And we've equipped them with a simple sheet that has some accessories that can make the air cleaner, the water healthier, you know, surge protectors, things like that. Just to make the home safer and to lower that feeling that they. They have to sell, but also to give them opportunities to make more money.
- [63:56]
B
Yeah, they're. They're always frustrated. They don't. The problem is if you were to close your eyes and I have the guys do this in orientation. I want you to really think about sales, and I want to write. Write down what you think, and it's never positive. And a lot of that came from the Great Depression and thinking about money and, oh, we're eating. We're reading like rich people at Thanksgiving. But Daniel Pink wrote a book to Sell as Human. And Joe. Joe Chrisara, probably we just talked about buying this book. We buy this book for. We buy a Go for no for every technician that goes for training. The book's called Go for no. And I'm going to start buying them what Should We Do? By Joe Cressara. But what I like to tell people is I don't need you to be good at sales. I want you to be a good human being. I want you to smile. I want you to be quiet after you ask a question. If they offer you iced tea, I want you to take it. I want you to be on one knee when you're presenting, because that's just respect. You don't need to be great at sales, but you need. If I teach you these skills, you're going to be better in your home life. You're going to have more success. You're going to have more friends, more deep relationships. This isn't just about garage doors. This is about changing your life.
- [65:09]
A
Absolutely. And that's, you know, and again, just, you know, I'm relatively new to being familiar with, with how you think about your team. But that's one thing that's really impressed me. It's not just about the performance in the field, it's about their performance in life and how they care for their family and how they, they grow and mature too. And because, I mean, I'm sure you've got seasoned professionals who've been with you a long time, but there's always a lot of young, young new employees coming in, depending on the markets you're in and the markets you're opening.
- [65:42]
B
Well, that's why I got a personal brand is because a lot of the people, 62 guys just graduated and most of them were there because they follow me and they wanted to work under. I'm not cocky about it. I mean, I've got a lot of humility. But look, I do care. We've got a dream manager. We're getting a second one towards the end of this year. We want to teach you how to have money go into your account and then have it go into other accounts. One's a vacation account, one's a future self. Your retirement one is a. So vacation house, you know, and we'll get split it up however you want. It helps create discipline. We're getting a full, a full time agency to help fix credit. I want to know what your dreams are. I want to know what your goals are and I want to help you accomplish those. If you're not happy with the way you look or your weight or your teeth, let's talk about what we could do to get that remedied as quick as possible. And the dream Manager helps the whole family move in the same direction.
- [66:36]
A
Is that through the book Dream Manager?
- [66:38]
B
Yeah. So they're certified through that? Yeah. But Brian, let's wrap this up here. How do we get a hold of you if someone wants to reach out.
- [66:50]
A
You know, the best way is through my gorjank email. It's Brian Soy s o-o yorjank.com g o r j a n c.com or on LinkedIn? That's always another good place. I'm pretty active there.
- [67:06]
B
And then obviously we talked about a lot of books. Is there any books that you think the audience should take a look at that will change their outlook?
- [67:15]
A
Well, in the home service space, if I may, I'd love for them to take a look at blue collar branding. I just got a fantastic feedback from one of our partners on LinkedIn about it. He called me last week and he had just received it. He said he had just gotten home from an event and he was spending more time with the book than with his family. And he got in a little bit of trouble with that. And he said, he goes, I've got a lot of buddies who've written books like this for the market and you're the first one I've ever called to tell him how great the book is. So that, you know, in the space, you know, even though it's more for advisors, you know, this idea of winning without pitching and just talking about the value of your business is good. So that Win without pitching manifesto I think is really helpful. And you know, StoryBrand 2.0, you mentioned that it's listening to the Story Brand podcast with, with Donald Miller. You can pick up so much about how to market your business more effectively just by listening to that podcast. But StoryBrand 2.0 is fantastic. And I know Don's been simplifying the framework more and more. And then when it comes to leadership, you know, you're talking about Dream Manager, the Story Brand, storybrand hat, and the, what do they call it, the coaching division. They've got some tools, you know, for helping people create their life plan, you know, those kind of things. There's just a lot, you know, it's just I tend to read a lot to try to absorb a lot. So do you know, and if you're a home.
- [68:55]
B
Sorry, if you're a home.
- [68:58]
A
Yeah. If you're a home service, business owner, operator and you know, you've got a team, one book I'd really recommend is, is called Business Made Simple. This book has everything I wish I would have read 30 years ago and known about, like how to teach employees that they're actually revenue generators and not expenses, how they should show up. It's just a fantastic book about. What a value driven professional should be like. And if we're thinking of everybody in our office and everybody in the field as professionals, then it's just a common way for everybody to think and to teach to.
- [69:42]
B
I love it. So much good information. I'll let you close us out though, brother man, anything you want.
- [69:48]
A
You know, one of the things I had to really think deeply about as I transitioned from, you know, we still have the agency, it's in quiet mode. So I am an owner, but coming out of ownership after 30 years into a business, I had to think about this idea that, you know, ownership can be in the business, but ownership's a mindset and for any, anybody who's on a team to show up every day with this idea that ownership is a mindset and that you have a set of responsibilities, you have a role, you have things you're accountable for. Just have that ownership mindset and then just take it and run with it. That's what I lead it, you know, would leave everybody with is, you know, no matter where you are in an organization, you lead from where you're at and you own what you what you're responsible for.
- [70:36]
B
I love it, Brian. I really enjoyed this and I'm looking forward to seeing you here in the near future.
- [70:42]
A
Yeah, thanks Tommy. We'll see what we can do about getting out there to visit you guys.
- [70:45]
B
I love it.
- [70:46]
A
We'd love to see your operation.
- [70:47]
B
Yeah, anytime. We'll set it up with Ashley and I appreciate you. Have a great weekend and talk soon. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at A1 garage door service. So if you want to learn the secrets that help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward/podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.