← The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Leadership Skill That Gets More Valuable as AI Takes Over
01:30:47
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- [00:00]
A
What's the biggest tech myth in the trades?
- [00:03]
B
That software solves problems. Humans still want to connect to other humans. It's important to still find ways to do that while not ignoring this important tool. Because if you don't use this important tool, people who are using this important tool are going to run you over. There's a balance to be found here. The more that we introduce silicon as sort of brain replacements into these, into our companies, I do think that the humans are going to need extra special attention to make sure that they still feel valued, maybe help them out a little bit and someday later that will pay you dividends. But don't do it for the dividends, do it because that's another human being.
- [00:43]
A
There's so many people that understand the trades but they have no idea where technology is going. I think at a 1 we're running 23 different softwares right now.
- [00:52]
B
Really? Yeah, yeah.
- [00:54]
A
Everything from the cameras in the trucks to make sure you're driving. Okay. To inventory to automations, to email sequences to. There's so many different software. So tell us what you're excited about, what got you to where you're at now and yeah, just the passion stuff.
- [01:14]
B
I mean now's a really exciting time to be somebody interested in technology. I mean I, I came up in the trades like you said. I, I went worked at my dad's shop in the Atlanta area and I worked in all sorts of roles there. Right. So I was a technician for a while. I moved into the office. I mean I was trying to find my place, right, because like it was something to do, it was like a skill to learn while I was in school learning film and theater, like I didn't really fit in this world. And so when I started getting involved in it, I was trying to find my place because like I don't, I don't look, I don't speak, I don't act like the other contractors. When my dad takes me to these sorts of like events and you know, best practice groups and all of these things. I always felt a little bit alien. But I also felt like if I can figure it out, if I can just figure it out, I've got something to offer here. Because I was, I was just weird. And it's kind of good to be weird because I had these skill sets that didn't quite over overlap very often in very many people where I was learning all of this stuff about the trades. You know, working out in the field, working in a business and then also being this sort of, you know, theater nerd technology Nerd. Just like totally what you would typically think of as a different person. But I was building both of these skill sets and I was like, these worlds don't talk well together, but they're about to have to. You know, this was maybe 10 years ago, so I was like, you know, surface setting was coming up really big and technology was just kind of starting to encroach its way onto this industry. I was like, I don't know that this group of people speaks this language, but they're going to have to figure it out. And I feel like I can help. So that's when I started the YouTube channel Blue Collar Nerd while I was still at my dad's shop. And it was just talking about technology and the trades in general. But we use service Titan, so service titan was one of the topics and those videos in particular just really got traction. So some steps in between. I did service titan consulting for a while with mutual friend Tom Howard, who now also works with me over at ServiceIt, and he's, he's the head of my department. But it's been an exciting journey to see, see it all happen, see technology get so incorporated into the, to the trades and to see where it's headed now with, with AI. It's a really exciting time. I'm just excited in general. I don't necessarily have all the answers of like, what does this exactly look like in 10 years? I have some ideas, I have some theories, theories, but I don't pretend to know for sure. I'm just really excited to see.
- [03:48]
A
Yeah, listen, it's a good time to be in the trades. I'm talking to real estate agents, brokerages, developers, and they all want to buy an H VAC business. They're all like, I want to get into plumbing, an H Vac. And I'm like, the problem with most of these people, they're super smart, but they don't have any idea how to run this business. I mean, there is so much to it. And I'm not going to belittle them, but I mean, I know CIOs all over the place that run big, big, big businesses, from GE to you name it. And they're, they're amazing at what they do, but you got to have certain skills to be able to recruit A plus players that are blue collar. Some of these guys didn't have a good mom growing up, or their dad left or they don't know how to manage money. And I think it's our turn, though. I think Covid changed the Game. And that's why everyone's looking at this industry going. It's not going anywhere. 10,000 baby boomers a day retiring. 12% of them own a business. And you know, I interviewed Ara and I think it was 2017 or 2018. And he goes, I just wish people would use the software the way it was intended to be used. We got the best practices and they always try to make it their own. But now you have to. At a company our size, we've got all kinds of custom things that no one else does. And like Wrench Group and Service Champions and, and these massive companies, Apex, I guarantee you their software setups don't look the exact same. And there's different things you could do. It's a pretty robust software. When you're talking to most people that are just getting into the game with ServiceTitan, what are the hardest things to get going on?
- [05:22]
B
I mean, like you just mentioned, they're trying to help people understand, especially if they're transitioning over from a different software, that Service Titan works a certain way. It's one thing when we're talking about Wrench Group or something like that, you know, a big PE company having certain customizations like that, that makes sense. But that's not typically. When I'm talking to people, I'm typically talking to a smaller shop, you know, 10 million or below. And when they're transitioning over, they have a lot of preconceptions about this is how we do things. This is how we've always done things. Using it the way that it's meant to be used is just going to be easier for you long term. Just let the little things go and use the software the way it was intended. Because there's a lot of huge successful companies using Service Titan, using it within its constraints. There are constraints within any system, any software, any frame of anything. If you use it within those constraints, you're just going to have an easier time versus banging your head against the wall trying to figure out a million workarounds for how do I do it the way I used to do it within this new system? It's just not worth the hassle.
- [06:39]
A
Yeah, no, you're right. You know, what we recently did is a couple years ago, we extracted all the information for every main thing intact. Sam, Sarah. Service tying to build a data lake so we can manipulate the data how we want to see it into power. Bi Is that something you see a lot of companies doing when they reach a certain size?
- [07:01]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's great. I mean, integrations is different. And it's also once you hit a certain point, once you've used Service Titan to do everything that it can do, then you start to understand better. Okay, what does it really not do that I actually truly need? Not just because it's a habit, not just because I don't want to retrain people, not just because it's uncomfortable to go through a new learning curve, but what do I actually need that is a gap that needs to be filled. And then you can start to do these more advanced things like integrating into a power bi or. I used to use Zapier a ton at my dad's company, Zapier's API system. It's a software that lets you connect other softwares. So I would use that to connect Servicetitan to Slack, for example, which was our communication system, so that anytime certain events occurred that weren't tied into Service Titan's native alerts, I could send an alert to a manager in Slack. Like this particular technician was at this particular job for a suspiciously short amount of time and they left with $0. Hey manager, maybe you want to call them real quick and check, like, why were you there for 15 minutes and you left with no money, what happened, that sort of stuff. But you know, when you're ready for that and you have to have somebody in your company who can do that or you have to have a good third party partner who can do that
- [08:21]
A
for you, I find that most companies don't have that person. That person. I luckily had Adam Cronenberg in 2017 and he was obsessive and learned how to use the system and build the price book. You know, there was no price book pro for garage doors. We were the first garage door company on it.
- [08:40]
B
Yep.
- [08:40]
A
He, you know, Ara and Vai both told me they think their number one failure point is getting people on the system. It's difficult. And Service tighten is a big company and there's a lot of different use cases. There's roofers getting into it now. There's commercial, there's every business, there's, you name it. What are some of the biggest hurdles to accomplish when you get into Service Titan?
- [09:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, onboarding is tough. Onboarding is tough. Like you said, the challenge partially stems from the fact that Servicetitan, it's a huge software that serves a lot of different verticals, a lot of different industries, and a lot of different contractors do things different ways. And Servicetitan is now not as new a company as it once was. I mean, that sounds stupid to say, but There's a lot of old stuff like laying around that people will tell you, yeah, I use this. And there's just so many backend features, backend ways that Service Titan can be configured to customize it as much as possible, that it starts to become cloudy to a regular, everyday user. What Service Titan can and cannot do. It's a tough challenge to overcome. This goes even beyond onboarding. You could be on ServiceTitan 5, 6 years and then be talking to somebody else and look at their Service Titan account and say, what's that button? Why do you have that in your menu? What does that do? Why aren't you using this? You don't have that. That's just a super common experience that I don't personally have a good solution for. Like, even if, if I were in charge, I don't know that I, I can tell rnv, hey, hey, you guys just need to do this. It's tough because there's so many different feature sets that serve so many different types of people, and onboarding is always going to be tough just because change is hard. Learning a new system is hard. It's scary. It's just kind of a terrifying thing because all of your company is funneling into this thing. It touches, you know, by design. It touches every piece of your company, including financials. It's. It's a tough thing to be confident enough going in to say, okay, I know how to do this. Everybody knows their role, everybody knows what they're going to do. And here we go, we're going to pull the trigger and also have that all happen in a reasonable amount of time. That works for both Service Titan and you, the client. We make it work, but it is, it is very challenging.
- [11:11]
A
It is. And a lot of people I've met, a lot of companies that should be on service time, but they think it's too expensive. And I know they're never going to be a big company, right? I mean, they're a decent size.
- [11:21]
B
Ideally. Ideally, nothing's expensive because ideally, you're getting an ROI on everything that you, that you're putting your money into. Ideally, it makes you money.
- [11:29]
A
That's the problem is they don't look at it as an investment and they don't understand attribution when it comes to marketing and inventory control. I will say serviceten has some work to do on inventory, but I know that they continue to impress me every single month, every single quarter. I mean, I could see how it's almost like there was a rebirth. I watch Ara. He calls me all the time more than he's ever called me. Vahe takes my calls and he's like, we're gonna make that work. Like, I had a lot of problems with schedule engine, which, you know, scheduling pro and no one had a solution. And Valhe goes, we're just going to give you the. We're going to give you the whole setup, build your own as long as we could use it before develop, we'll give you the keys and you can build it however you want. And that's pretty cool that we have the opportunity to work with the founders that are still that engaged in the business. You know, what do you say to somebody that's I must get 10 calls a month. I only got four technicians, but I want to get on service type. And typically I'll just call Tom Howard and get them on. But what is that magic number of when to get on the service?
- [12:40]
B
I don't know that there is a magic number. I think there's a magic mindset. I think it really depends what your goal is and are you really clear on why you want to do that and if that's really what you want to do? Because I genuinely don't think there's anything wrong with just owning and operating a small company. And maybe if just owning and operating a shop where it's you and maybe one other guy that helps you out and that's just to support your lifestyle and you're happy with that, there's genuinely nothing wrong with that if that's what you want, if you're really clear on that. And it's also nothing wrong with wanting to scale a huge multi generational nationwide franchise that you're going to eventually sell to a PE firm. Nothing wrong with that either. As long as you clear about why you want to do that and really clear about the fact that's truly what you want to do. I think you have to understand where you sit to understand is service titan right for you? And if it is right for you, then just plan as if you're going to go on serviceitan from day one. Maybe not everybody has, you know, I don't know what the number is. If serviceitan has an internal number of like you have to have this many managed text before we'll let you on. I think that number exists, but I'm not, I'm not familiar with it. It's not my department. And maybe not everybody has the connection to just like get in when they're first starting. But if that's your goal, if that's your plan, just Know you're going to end up on service titan at some point and go with something that's going to transition over well to service titan. That's most things because it's in serviceitan's best interest to make sure that whatever software you're coming from, they're able to get that data over for you. But you know, don't go looking for something super new, super niche. Don't just look for the cheapest thing because it's like, oh, this guy just came out with this software and like let me use that. And then it's going to be difficult for you to transition. Just use one of the other ones. Just if housecall Pro is a big name, use housecall Pro for a little while. Transition over to service site and when you're ready.
- [14:29]
A
I've heard a lot of smart people that I've been around at a lot of. I've been hanging around with Goldman Sachs a lot. And this common theme seems to be coming up. Build a software that's AI first. That it starts out with AI and it's built with the agents and it's built to run the HR department. What are your thoughts? Just looking into the future, a couple years. Things are changing. Look, the LLMs are getting smarter. Google is still very important, but not quite as important. I trust ChatGPT more. I don't use it for demand services. I still use Google. But where do you see the future going as far as software?
- [15:11]
B
It's an interesting question. I'm not 100% positive, like I kind of alluded to at the beginning, how this is all going to shake out. It's a big boom right now where like everybody's AI first, everybody wants to be AI first. The stock market is very focused on AI. If you're not saying AI on your earnings call at least once, like nobody's interested and that can't last forever. At some point this is going to shake out and some of this stuff is going to fall to the wayside and some of this stuff is going to be the way of the future And I'm not 100% sure where that sits, but I am sure that it's not a fad. Right. I don't think AI is going anywhere. I'm just not 100% sure what's going to stick. I look at some of this, the social media stuff. I think if you're using over leveraging AI for like your ad copy and stuff like that, I think that sort of stuff is probably going to fall to the Wayside. And it's going to become more a tool that you sort of use a little bit to help you build creative and help you come up with stuff. But I think certain aspects, a human element to it is really important, and people kind of get grossed out when that's missing. Like, for example, Coca Cola has been taking a lot of flack for one of their holiday ads. I don't know if you caught wind of this, but they put out a holiday ad that was like, very obviously AI generated pretty fully AI generated, and it wasn't good publicity for them. People pushed against it pretty bad. They did not like it. Because it's one of those things where people still want a human element. People don't just want you to put in a prompt and then feed them, here's this. Buy my product. Um, humans still want to connect to other humans. It's important to still find ways to do that while not ignoring this important tool. Because if you don't use this important tool, the people who are using this important tool are going to run you over. There's a balance to be found here, and the only way to find it is to start playing around.
- [17:22]
A
Do you think that that's going to hurt Coca Cola because are people not going to drink it because they didn't like an AI commercial? Or do you think any news like that gets them on headlines? Get the news talking about them now? They're popping up all over the Wall Street Journal and every major. You know, Seattle, New York. What are your thoughts when something like that happens?
- [17:42]
B
You could say that. I mean, you could say any publicity is good publicity. And maybe there's some truth to that. It's hard to say because it's Coca Cola. You know, they're an enormous company, and so the hit that they're going to take from some people getting upset about their AI ad is like a little drop in the bucket that you could just attribute to margin of error. Like just looking at their bottom line, you're going to say, was that because of the AI ad, or is that because any other million factors, this tiny little fraction of a percentage drop, who cares? But it matters more for smaller companies. I think when you're trying to build a name in a local community, a hit like that could be more noticeable and more meaningful than it would mean for Coca Cola.
- [18:27]
A
You want me to read you my latest radio ad?
- [18:30]
B
Yeah, let's do it.
- [18:32]
A
So I don't ever try to do like this. Must sell today. All price, you know, need to sell for cheap. We're Doing a close out. I'll do it real quick. And it's kind of written kind of like Ken Goodrich. So it's called Garage of Dreams. And the, the ad is about a Kawasaki and it's a warm, nostalgic tone and you hear the rev up of 125cc dirt bike echoing inside of a garage. When I was a kid, my dream wasn't a mansion, it wasn't a yacht. It was 125cc Kawasaki sitting right there in the garage. Chrome handlebars, knobby tires, smelled like oil, grease and freedom. That garage, that was my castle. Today I'm Tommy Mello, founder of A1 garage door service. And I'll never forget that feeling. We don't just fix garage doors. We bring the dream back to life. Where dads tinker, where kids daydream, where bikes get tuned up and memories get made. Your garage isn't just a door, it's a gateway to everything that matters. So whether your door is stuck, squeaking or screaming for help, A1 will be there. Fast, friendly and always ready to roll. Because somewhere out there there's a kid dreaming of a dirt bike. And a garage makes that all possible.
- [19:56]
B
I like it. So did AI have a part in helping write that?
- [20:01]
A
Yes, it did. So basically.
- [20:04]
B
But it wasn't. But you didn't just put a prompt into into chatgpt and say that sounds good and then put that on the radio.
- [20:11]
A
No, what I did was I asked ChatGPT to ask me 100 questions pretty much twice a week. And when I started doing great, this
- [20:20]
B
is the right way to use the tool, right? It's to collaborate with you, it's to help bring the ideas out of you, not to do.
- [20:27]
A
That's all real. I had a Kawasaki, it was the 1970s, but it was like my dream. And so I don't lie to people,
- [20:35]
B
which is beautiful, right? That keeps the human element that's about you, that keeps the authenticity. You're just using the tool to like help bring the ideas out of you versus using the tool to give you ideas. I think that's a totally different way to use it and I think that's probably the better way to use it for something like that, you know, you.
- [20:54]
A
I just had a company out here that does YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. And they don't know how to do LSA or PPC. They don't run service, they just run mini splits in H Vac and they're doing about 10 million to the bottom. And they said they use AI to help produce 10 new ads a day, and then they figure out the one that work and then they, they run with it. You got really involved in YouTube a decade ago. I'm curious, how big is your YouTube channel?
- [21:24]
B
Well, it's. That's a complicated question because now all of my Service Titan related YouTube content goes on the Service Titan YouTube channel. So the Blue Collar Nerd YouTube channel doesn't really grow that much because it's pretty rare that I'm actually putting content up on there. I still do, but most of the content now goes up on The Service Titan YouTube channel, which is mixed in with other stuff.
- [21:43]
A
I love how you did that. How important do you think? I guess the question is, do you think entrepreneurs should still be investing in classic advertising or should it just all be social media and online advertising?
- [21:57]
B
I don't think it's an either or. I think it's yes. And I will say that to truly do social and especially YouTube, right, it's not just like something you sort of throw some money into or let an ad agency handle for you to, to really do it right, it's. It's a job in and of itself. It takes a lot of effort. You've either got to hire somebody or you've got to be that person yourself. I think it's really cool if you can be that person yourself. Like, you're pretty good at this, Tommy. Being the face of the company, being the one on the camera, being the one, like that really helps build that, that personal trust with, hey, you know, that guy owns this company and I trust that guy. Like, I've built some rapport with that guy. It doesn't have to be that way, but I do think it helps. But I will say that, like, if, if you're gonna do, you know, quote unquote, do YouTube or even Instagram or Facebook, YouTube's the hardest. Facebook and Instagram are still hard. You have to make really actual, helpful, genuine pieces of content. 99% of, like, contractors, if I just go on their socials, it's just like ads. It's just like, you know, pictures, you know, $99 tune up and Merry Christmas and Happy Valentine's Day from Ace Heating in there. And it's just like, it's not serving anybody. That's not, that's not content that anybody cares to see. There's got to be value there. If I, as a, you know, member of your community, don't get any value out of following you, then why would I do it? It's just kind of pointless. And at that point, if that's all you have capacity for, I would say don't bother. Like put all of your attention to the traditional advertising. Put all of your attention into the ppc. Put all of your into figuring out how you know you can best leverage AI LLMs and stuff because they're, you know, they're recommending things and they're eventually going to have to figure out how to monetize recommendations. I'm not too excited to see what that looks like, but it's probably coming. So you might as well like start heading down that road and figuring that stuff out. If that's what you have the capacity to do right now. I think your time is better spent there. If you're really going to do social and especially YouTube correctly, that's a, that's a job. Somebody's got to have that job. And it takes effort, it takes time and it takes creativity. It takes a lot of your attention.
- [24:10]
A
You're right. We started working with you ever heard of the book Endless Customers?
- [24:15]
B
Sounds familiar, but I don't think I've read it.
- [24:16]
A
Marcus Sheridan, his first book that he came out with it was they ask, you answer. You know, the things that AI is looking for to make it simple is schema data. You got to make it easy for the AI engine to read. And they look for five major things. But we're getting ready to load in all of our background checks. We're giving the machine as much possible, things to know we're credible anytime we win a best place to work, anytime we win anything, anytime we get a great, like we're submitting so much, we're like, let's let the machine know us more. And some people are like, oh, there's a lot of people out there that are just anti technology. And my guesstimate is they're gonna get buried here in the next two years.
- [25:01]
B
Yeah, it's not a good time to be anti technology. I mean it has never been a good time to be anti technology. I think that was a real losing strategy from the beginning. It was always very frustrating for me. There were some people like that in my dad's company when I was coming up because I came in, I started getting my hands on operations and I'm a technology guy. I was introducing new technology related things and the people who would really push back against that never really had a good reason. They were just like, well Richard, I'm old. I'm like, okay, you're still in the workforce, right? Like you still want to provide value Right. This is what the workforce looks like now and this is only going to get more true as time goes forward. You can't just say, well, I'm old, I haven't been paying attention. And so therefore that's my excuse to not have to learn new things. That's not a good winning strategy if you really want to be, you know, moving up the ladder here.
- [25:55]
A
I know what you mean. I mean, that's a prerequisite. You got to be able to be comfortable with an iPad if you're going to work here. I mean, that's, that's simple. How should owners think about the ROI on service time beyond just, we bought the software.
- [26:10]
B
Yeah. It's important to understand, right? Software doesn't solve problems for you. That might sound kind of weird for me to say, but like, software solves problems in so much as that. Like a nail gun builds a house. It's a tool. You have to understand how to use the tool. It's a lot easier to build the house with the nail gun than without it. But you can't just, you know, buy the nail gun and then be like, what the hell? Where's my house? I bought the stupid nail gun. Like, I gave you the freaking money. Service titan. Like, why isn't this all done? Why isn't this taken care of? Why isn't my price book perfect? Why isn't this and that. It still takes a ton of effort. It takes a ton of effort on your part to get it set up the way you need it to be set up, to use it on a day to day basis. And you've kind of got to let go of this concept of being done. It's just not how it works. It's actions. It's things that you do as part of running your business. Service Titan is part of that. Service Titan is part of your business. It's never done. You're using it, you're maintaining it, you're doing it every day. Like, when are you done brushing your teeth? When are you done going to the gym? Ideally never. It's just something you have to do. And so I think that's the right mindset to have around it. Make sure that you understand to get the ROI out of it. It's not just, hey, I bought this thing. Pro products too. Hey, here's the money service item that. This sounds great. Obviously we want things to be as automated as possible and that's only going to get more the case going forward as AI gets more and more involved. But, but even so, you've Got to remember, you're competing with other people, probably also on service site, and you've got to be bringing something to the table. If everybody's dispatching with Dispatch Pro, what's your special sauce? What are you doing? There's ways to configure Dispatch Pro. There's still strategy involved in how you're going to set that up to best serve you and what you want and what your goals are. And you have to learn it. You have to understand how it works in order to properly utilize it to stay competitive. So I think that's really just the most important thing is understanding the ROI doesn't just come from the fact that you put money in and then it's a magic box and more money comes out. You put the money in and then you have to do the thing, then you have to learn it, then you have to do the work, then you have to figure stuff out. And don't be afraid to play around with stuff. I think a lot of people are really concerned with breaking things, and that's just part of the process too. You probably will break things, but it's okay. That's the only way to figure it out sometimes.
- [28:44]
A
You know, we're in 25,000 homes a month, not the best ticket average compared to H vac plumbing, electrical. And, you know, a lot of people are like, man, you got it easy. You're in the garage door industry. But the cost to book a call is only about 100 bucks less than eight tracks. But the tickets are massively different. So, you know, I look at the different founders out there, the different CEOs, and I'm like, you know, without sounding cocky, I'm like, once I'm able to sell something for 20 grand, don't get me wrong, we have plenty of $20,000 door sales that go in a week. But it's kind of expected that a five ton unit's going to go from 14 to 20 grand, depending on what it comes with and whatnot. I'm just excited because the whole model that we built translates to every other industry. So we can plug and play. We've been very, very disciplined to stay in our industry. But when you're in 25, 30,000 homes a month, the capabilities are endless. The hard part about H Vac plumbing, H Vac in particular, and roofing is the seasonality, you know, and you had, you had to kind of work around that. And I'm talking to some of the biggest players in the country, and they typically lose money a few months out of the year. Because you want to keep your installers on board. They might not go to lose very much, but their goal is to break even. It's just interesting. It's another battle that I've never had to deal with coming from the H Vac industry. What are the pros and cons?
- [30:18]
B
Pros are that there is a lot of money in it. The cons are that there's is a lot of variability in it. It's kind of just like what you just said. It's. It's really tough. Especially, you know, it is seasonal and there's variability depending on where you just happen to be in the country or in the world. You know, the shoulder seasons look different in Georgia than they do in California, than they do in New Jersey, than they do in Florida. There's just a lot of variability and it's. It's hard to know exactly what that's going to look like. You can do yourself a lot of favors. Like if you're going to. If you're thinking about opening up an H Vac company and you know, you're between California and Florida, you're going to have a. Probably an easier time in Florida. Just it's. It's hot all the time, really humid, you know, especially as the further south you go. Like there are just advantages to being in different parts of the world in that particular business. It's also, like you alluded to, very tough to balance what do you do in those slower seasons. It's difficult on people's mental health, to be honest with you. It's tough when you come off of that summer when things were looking so good and start moving into those shoulder seasons. Even though you kind of know, especially once you get some experience under your belt, you understand this is the nature, this is the flow. We're going to lose money these few months or whatever. We're going to barely break even. But it's still tough on people. I see it kind of wear people thin. The anxiety builds up because you only live in the present moment, right? That's the only thing that's real, that feels real. And so when the money's not coming in, it doesn't feel good. It's a tough mental journey to go on, to really come to terms and be at peace even when the money's not coming in because it's all part of the plan, you can logically understand it and it's still weigh on you a lot emotionally. It's also an emotional weight to worry about your employees. When you have this team that you built up and people that you respect and respect you and trust you, and then there's no work for them and they start getting anxious. They start getting concerned. If you're not already in a good, solid, peaceful mental place that's also gonna. You're gonna feed each other in that, in that way too. Your employees are gonna be more anxious. You're gonna be more anxious. You're gonna have to find the balance of like, well, I don't want to just hire people in the summer or just to let them go in the slow season. That is one strategy. Some people do do that, but some people just don't feel good about it. It's finding what's gonna feel good for you, you know, productive and make you the money you want to make and give you the life that you want to live.
- [33:08]
A
So if you had to quit right now, you don't work on the blue collar nerd or service titan, and you had to pick one industry and you were going to just make a bunch of money, what would it be?
- [33:23]
B
I mean, it would probably be H Vac. Just because. For the simple fact that that's what I already know. And there's a cost to learning something new. Like, if this scenario is like, I'm going to go start the company. I don't want to start a garage door company. I don't know enough about garage doors. Tommy would crush me. I don't know that I want to start a plumbing company. I don't know anything about plumbing. I need to find somebody with a license. I got to get a license myself. H Vac, I already know. So for that reason, I would go H Vac. Not because I think it's necessarily the easiest thing. I don't know. That's just what I did. That's just the company my dad happened to start in 1992. And so that's what I happened to learn. And I think pays to just lean into your competencies versus getting real attracted to shiny objects. And, well, that guy's making a whole lot of money over there. What's he doing selling. Selling stock options. Huh? Let me learn about that. What's a covered call? You're selling covered. Like it's a whole different world if you don't know anything about it and you're making decent money doing what you're doing. You just need to lean more into it to really accelerate it to some degree. There's the entrepreneurial mind is a little bit ADHD by default, and we just can't help but to play with the shiny Object that we see, I think that to some degree, that's okay. When you feel that pull, you're doing a podcast right now. That's not Garage Doors, but it's a thing. It's just. It feeds you, I'm sure. I don't want to speak for you, but when I feel it.
- [34:57]
A
Yeah.
- [34:59]
B
When I feel a creative pull, I don't. Yeah, right, right. It feeds you in a different way. So I think it's good to understand those things about yourself and not push against it when it's actually serving you. Because for me, when I get random creative endeavor hairs up my butt all the time, I'm like, I'm just going to go do that and I just can't help myself. And that's okay as long as I'm real clear about what am I getting out of this and what am I not getting out of this. If I feel like starting another YouTube channel purely for the goal of making millions of dollars, that's maybe a different conversation I need to have with myself about why that and why do you want those millions of dollars? Really get clear on why I want that. Why? I think this is the right path. I know this is getting kind of outside of the question that you asked, but this is just where my mind goes. I think staying in your core competency is good if the goal is maximizing return. If the goal isn't maximizing return, which is okay, by the way, sometimes you're really burnt out on what you're doing, and it's just time for a change, that's okay, too. But when you make that change, just understand you're probably going to take a financial hit for a little while because you have to learn something new. That's okay. But you have to understand those things going in or else you're just going to keep jumping because you're just going to give up really quick. My goal is just to make a lot of money. So I'm just going to go over here and I don't even really. I haven't really had the conversation with myself about why I even want to make a ton of money. I haven't really had a conversation with myself about what this emotion is that's making me feel uncomfortable with what I'm doing now. But that guy's making a lot of money. Let me go check that out and see what he's doing over there. Pause. Figure it out. Understand a little bit better why you're feeling that pull, why you want to make that money, and then decide, is that what I really want to do.
- [36:47]
A
I like it, I like it. It sounds like something Mercurio would say.
- [36:52]
B
Yeah, we're kindred spirits, I think, me and him.
- [36:58]
A
I'll tell you, 2017, 10 years into the business, I always tell people, 19 years into this industry, the first 10 were practice. We got on the service site and I got to meet all the legends in the space. They invited me out. I actually asked them, can I go to your shop? Every hundred million dollar shop I went into, I learned so much from Leland and Ken Haynes and Ken Goodrich and Paul Kelly and Keegan Hodges, and you name it, I mean, I was out at their shops learning. And then I started the podcast and every 30 podcasts I hired somebody as a consultant. And then I met al Levy in 2017 and he taught me about system standard operating procedures, manuals and checklists. So 2017 was like a trifecta. And I'll tell you, the podcast has helped the business grow probably more than any other thing, because if I'm struggling with payroll, not even like a service tight and payroll question, but just trying to understand pay for performance, I'm going to get that person on the podcast that wrote the book on it, you know what I mean? Or, or if I'm having a real big HR turnover issue or internal net promoter score. The podcast has done well. I'm not like world class interviewer. But the good news is it's got the audience that people want to get on it. And that to me, I mean, selfishly, is the coolest thing because I know there's a thousand other people, maybe 10,000, that need to hear the same thing. And so one guy told me, man, you were 17 million when you started the podcast. If you want to grow to 100 million, listen to the first hundred. If you want to grow to 200 million, listen to the next. So you could kind of, you kind of go through there and figure out what you need, because I've had every which thing and I love talking software. So I'm glad you came on. Typical, typical questions I always get is everyone seems to get stuck around 5 million. And I think it's a trust issue. And I think they don't learn how to delegate and they hire people that are below them instead of that are better than them. But what is your take on the $5 million sticky point?
- [38:59]
B
Maybe I'm not the best person to ask because by the time I left my dad's company, we were about at that $5 million sticking point and having trouble pushing past it. I've always been a process guy. I think lack of process is part of the problem. Once you start to scale at a certain point the whole like this person needs to ask a question and the next day somebody else has a different question. Let me put out this fire. Put out that fire. Answer this question. Answer that question. That has to go out the window. There has to be some other way that people understand how to do their jobs. That removes all of the he said, she said. That removes the shame of having a question. Because you know that's. That's part of what processes do too is like remove shame and embarrassment for people that are like, I know that this. My boss told me how to do this yesterday. I forgot. I don't want to ask them again. Like it's if it's on the. If it's in the process and there's different softwares for this I happen to like one called Suite Process and one called Trainual are the two I typically recommend to people. Just a place to house your processes that's searchable so that when people have a question, they don't have to go to you, they don't have to go to the manager. They can go somewhere and figure out what is it that I'm supposed to do. And then it helps managers too. When there's a failure, it becomes not an individual's fault. As long as the individual followed the process, it becomes the process's fault. We remove all of that. He said, she said crap. We remove all of that. I told you how to do it. Well, no, you told me how to do it that other way. No, that's not how I told you how to do it. Forget it. Did you follow the way that it's written here? Yes. And something still went wrong. That's not your fault. We have a problem in the process. That's fine. We're going to write something new in the process so that next time this doesn't happen. We've learned something. We can't account for everything, every scenario in the process from day one, that's okay. We expect this sort of thing and it just removes all of that guilt and shame and blame and anger. We don't need to do any of that stuff. If there's a process in place. That's. That's really my number one tip and really the only one I feel qualified to give just based on where I exited a company.
- [41:08]
A
I know Train, you'll really. Well, I'm going to look in this suite process. What I like about
- [41:15]
B
yeah Triangul is probably A little bit better. Suite process is a little bit more cost effective. It just depends what stage you're at. If you're just starting and you're like, isn't Google Docs good enough? Go with suite process. It's going to be less expensive for you and it's going to do the job just fine. If you're really at a point where you're trying to scale and get the best of the best. Triangul is probably. And I've got a video on Trangule, by the way, if you guys want to check out the the Blue Collar Nerd YouTube channel and you're interested in training, well, I've got a video on it. You can check out exactly what it does.
- [41:46]
A
I love it. How can automation and AI be used to support people instead of replacing them?
- [42:05]
B
It's a big question because it's so broad. I think it's very context specific. I don't think. Yeah, go ahead.
- [42:18]
A
I know all my competition and I know all the competition and H Vac and everything I'm looking at in the future and roofing and gutters and pest control. It's usually those who are willing to fail and take the first step. So I didn't make the company go 100% AI voice. I don't think it's there yet. You got service dance, came out with some great things. You got broccoli, avoca, lace, same day. The question is, when does it become better than the human? And you still need humans, but you need to do top grade. So the question is you got a huge heart where you're just going to make room for everybody because the largest companies on the Planet have cut 70% of their HR team because of AI. And there's things going on that I will just say your feelings and this is, I'm kind of stretching here from the question, but I understand what it is to be loyal, but I also understand what it means to be loyal. If there's 1250 people at a 1 and we've got to move away from 30 because it's the better good of the other 1220, is it the right thing to do? That's how I condone it in my brain. What are your thoughts?
- [43:29]
B
Yeah, I mean, the good news is that we're in an industry where a significant portion of our workforce works out in the field and AI is no significant threat to them anytime soon. When it comes to a csr, I think it becomes important to start if your intention is I like these people and I want to make sure that they have a place in this company. I think you're still going to have CSRs for, for the, for the foreseeable future. I don't think 0 CSRs is the move. I think you could. But yeah, I don't, I don't think, I don't think zero is going to be the move for quite some time, if ever. But it's going to be probably fewer. Like that's the whole point, right? Is that these, these tools relieve some of the excess so that people can focus on other things. So you have to figure out as an owner, as a manager, what are those other things going to be? What other things can these people do and learn that would provide more value than this other thing that now a machine is pretty competent at? And so they don't need to do it. At least they don't need to do it as often. There are still plenty of things. It just depends on what is that person interested in. What are you, where are your gaps? What, what, what do you need filled like we were just talking about earlier. Hey, if you're going to do like social media, truly the right way, that's going to be like a big job that's going to take a lot of attention. Cool. Maybe that's something that you know somebody in their 20s and 30s, maybe they're their CSR for you right now. That might be right up their alley. Maybe they went to school for marketing. Maybe they, maybe they have always aspired to like do on camera work and stuff.
- [45:08]
A
Cool.
- [45:09]
B
Like that's, that's the perfect scenario for them.
- [45:10]
A
But it depends somewhere else on the bus. I agree with you 100%. Yeah, no, 100%. When it comes to leadership roles in the home service space in the next decade, how do you see technology changing that?
- [45:31]
B
Sorry for leadership space. How do I see technology changing?
- [45:33]
A
Leadership. Leadership. Yeah, leadership. I'd probably throw culture in there.
- [45:46]
B
I mean, I think it's going to become really important to. Nurture human relationships more intentionally. The people in your company that you really want to be a part of your team long term, make sure that they're not feeling too threatened by anything that you're doing. I think there has to be a certain amount of empathy and care when implementing things that there is fear around AI, there's excitement and there's fear. So if you're implementing things that you have reason to believe might make some people in your company nervous about being replaced or not being needed anymore, and that's not what's in your heart, that's not your intention I think go ahead and get ahead of that conversation because otherwise the fear is going to take over and people are just going to start getting squirrely and looking around and seeing what else is out there and what else they can do because they're just nervous. So I think empathy really becomes important. I laugh because maybe it sounds a little cliche or cheesy or corny, but it's truly what I believe is that the more that we introduce silicon as sort of brain replacements into our companies, which I'm not against, by the way, but I do think that the humans are going to need extra special attention to make sure that they still feel valued.
- [47:24]
A
You want to hear something really scary?
- [47:27]
B
Yeah. Yeah, scare me.
- [47:32]
A
One of my buddies, Robert Ciardini, he goes by Bob, he wrote the book Influence, a lot of great books, and he believes the future of human evolution will be to become 100% silicon.
- [47:47]
B
It's possible. I mean, I'm really into longevity science. And one thing that truly excites me about AI is the implications for longevity. This might sound really crazy to say, but I don't think it's impossible for a human being to at least biologically live forever. Now if you get hit by a bus, obviously that's still going to do it, but I don't see any evidence or any reason why biologically, if we can figure it out, if we can delay the processes, everything that I've seen points to, that should be possible. If we figure it out Now, I
- [48:28]
A
don't want mitochondria and cellular regeneration is the key.
- [48:32]
B
Yep, yep. Immune regulation stuff also super important. A lot of aging is related to breakdown of the immune system. I take a drug called rapamycin, which is typically used in like organ transplant donors, but it shuts off something called MTOR temporarily. MTOR is really important for like building. It's, it's your body's building mode. So if bodybuilders talk about MTOR a lot and there's nothing like MTOR is good. You need mtor, but as you age, it has a tendency to get stuck in the on position, which is problematic because when MTOR is on, autophagy is off. And autophagy is your body's cleanup process where it goes in and eats away at old cells that aren't, aren't behaving correctly, becomes cancer, becomes all sorts of things. So stuff like that just really interests me. And I think that the introduction of AI to develop new drugs, I mean, just, just, just getting a taste of it with the like GLP1 agonists ozempic, tirzepatide, those, those things that are helping people lose so much weight. That was a fantasy not too long ago to, to just have this thing that you inject once a week and the fat just melts off of you. That's real now. And that's just a tiny taste of what I hope is coming. Maybe off topic, but that's the sort of thing that really gets me going when it comes to AI.
- [49:54]
A
I'm about to, by the end of the month I'm doing a five day fast. And during day four and five you're at maximum autophagy. You're basically in keto phase and that's, and if you do that once a year and a few other things, you really significantly reduce your chance of cancer.
- [50:13]
B
True. Yeah. I've done a three day fast. I've never quite gone to five. Three was my maximum. Um, and I, I don't know, I, I, I'm, I'm sticking with the rapamycin for now. I'm kind of hoping that that handles the autophagy to, to the, to the degree that I need it to. This is all like early science stuff, right? So I, I can't like point to a study and say look, rapamycin is just as good as fasting. Fasting is a more guaranteed way, but it's also, it kind of sucks. How do you deal with it like, but by the time you're on day four and five, do you just kind of forget about it?
- [50:46]
A
No, I've only gone four days so five is going to be a pain. But, but I'll tell you, your body starts to really just your brain turns onto this crazy level where you just think clearer and you're not as hungry,
- [50:58]
B
but you're running on, you're running on pure ketones and it's a kind of a cleaner burning fuel.
- [51:03]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's gonna be fun because I'm also, I've had a boot on because I screwed up my two ligaments in my ankle. So I had a boot on for a few months. So now I just getting Back to my 220. I'm 230. I was 230 seven this morning. So that's part of not just the autophagy but part of just getting also
- [51:25]
B
a little quick, quick hit of diet. Yeah, that'll do it. When I, I'm already skinny by default. So when I did a three day fast I was looking kind of anemic. I had to, I Had to bulk up a little bit.
- [51:36]
A
Yeah, that's the thing for me is I lose the weight of my face and I just want to make sure I don't get like 2:22 is probably the perfect weight. You know, we talked a little bit about the ratios you talked about. A lot of the guys out there are doing the work. They're not going anywhere. I think the most important thing that I'm looking at that I haven't paid attention to is improving that ratio. People out in the field collecting checks from the client versus to support staff that are in direct labor. And that ratio should continue to grow for the next few years. And that's very, very important. I don't think most people track that. It's one of the things that Levy taught me to start looking at.
- [52:14]
B
Yeah, it is important. It's especially important right now. Right. Which is kind of going back to your other question of like, what do you do with excess office staff? The answer can be nothing, but you just have to grow that ratio. If you grow that ratio of, it kind of levels itself out anyway and you're just overstaffed for a little bit. So that's, that's kind of one strategy to deal with that.
- [52:34]
A
What skills will the next generation of operators need that weren't required before?
- [52:44]
B
I mean, AI using AI is the obvious one, but I think tying directly into that is like better human skills. I'm a millennial. My generation really had a quite the drop off on the like soft skills, broadly speaking. Obviously there's exceptions, but very anxious generation, not very good at talking to people. If there's a self checkout, I'm using it. It's been a challenge for me in management roles for sure. And I think because I grew up with technology, I don't know what future generations are, how they're looking in that department. But I imagine it can't be much better because the technology just keeps growing and growing and the necessity to interact with other human beings, you just order a doordash if you want some food. Like there's just less and less reason to have to look a stranger in the eye and hold a conversation. And when there's, when that's not something you kind of built the skill of doing, it starts to become really uncomfortable. It gives you anxiety. It's something I'm actively working on in my life is like anxiety. Just like anxiety over speaking with another human being. Something like this, for example. This is uncomfortable for me. Like having a conversation recorded unedited. When I make a video, I Have full control, right? Like I'm editing that thing. If I feel like I don't like the way I worded that, or I said that weird, or I embarrassed myself there, I just cut it out. Can't do that here. If I embarrass myself, I embarrass myself. And coming to terms with that is a skill. I think it's a skill that's going to be important for newer managers to have more new leadership to have is dealing with that, dealing with other human beings, having conversations with other human beings, interacting with, relating to them, picking up on signals, like just basic social stuff. That sounds stupid to say. Maybe for somebody who grew up not having to really think too much about that, but for me and for other generations, I think building those skills pretty intentionally is going to be important.
- [54:56]
A
You know, you talk about IQ versus eq, which is emotional intelligence, and it's few and far between. I see people, I mean, I work with a lot of people, and I'm like, I think emotional intelligence is trying to view a situation through the other person's eyes on how they're being treated. And it's a way of looking at yourself and kind of judging yourself and saying, am I living up to par? Am I treating them with respect? And, you know, there's so many people within this company right now, I don't even know their names. So I had to create a software. It talks to our payroll software. I know their birthdays, their anniversaries, their work anniversaries, their kids birthdays, their kids names. And I also know when someone had their best day ever or their worst day ever. I think it's important if they have their worst week or worst month that I just say, hey, is everything okay? Instead of coming down on them and saying, you're gonna get a performance improvement plan. You know what I find out? If someone's sick, their mom's really sick, they're not thinking straight, they might be going through a divorce, their kid might be sick, their kid might be going under surgery. And I think when you can see these things and the information tells a story, and if you could look at that, but just asking the question, but unfortunately, if I spent an hour with every single person per quarter, there'd be no time left.
- [56:17]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's true. But I still think it's really important that you think that way. I think we, we can lack that in the trades. And it's, it's a, it's a, it's not a good leadership style, in my opinion, to be super authoritarian. And to just, we, we, we kind of forget that the people who work for us are people. And, and sometimes I, I, I see it a lot. The way that people talk about their employees makes me uncomfortable. There's, there's certain, like, lack of acknowledgment for their humanity that, like, if, you know, when people don't like the way I'm implementing something, they're fired. When people ask, you know, question my leadership, they're fired. And people, it's just like, man, let's have a conversation. Let's, let's. Like you said, somebody's underperforming. They might be going through a really hard time, and they might be a star employee for you later, but right now they're taking care of their elderly grandma who's not doing very well, and it's taking up a lot of their time and they're tired. Maybe help them out a little bit, and someday later that will, that will pay you dividends. But don't do it for the dividends. Do it because that's another human being.
- [57:36]
A
Well, the fact is, I'll tell you this. Would you rather be loved or respected?
- [57:43]
B
I don't see them as different things.
- [57:45]
A
Well, let me ask you this. Is there anybody that was around you, a coach, a teacher, an uncle, a grandparent, maybe mom or dad, a cousin, a boss that completely changed your life in a good way? Like, you think about this, and they taught you a discipline, or they had you face a fear, I don't need to know who, but just you have a person, okay? So if you think about that person, you know, for me, I had to respect them before. I love them because they said, you're not going to play in the game until you keep your grades up. But they made sure I got a warm meal every night when my mom works three jobs. I think the thing is, if you respect somebody, and the book I'm thinking about, that I think you should read is Firm Feedback in a Fragile World is if you respect somebody, you're going to be honest with them, you're going to talk to them, you're going to communicate with them. And even when they don't want to hear it, you still got to be willing to have that conversation. And it's not easy, especially, you know, I'm out right at the edge of a millennial. But if somebody cares about you, they're going to want to pull the best out of you. They're not going to let you make excuses. Now, the guy that's saying, I'm Going to fire people. The problem I have with that as you pick these people, you brought them on board, you interviewed them. You must be a bad judge of character if they're not living up to your expectations. And maybe you didn't set the expectations right. So every time someone does that, they got to look deep in the mirror and say maybe you have the issue.
- [59:23]
B
Yeah, agreed.
- [59:26]
A
I want to do a speed round with you to close us out and then I got a few closeout questions. So this is called Rapid Fire. The most underrated service titan feature.
- [59:41]
B
Dynamic pricing.
- [59:45]
A
Dynamic pricing. And tell me what you love about dynamic pricing.
- [59:49]
B
It just takes so much work out of managing your price book. I'm starting to hesitate to call it the most underrated because more and more people are starting to use it. But every time I hear somebody not using it, I'm just like, what are you doing? Why not? It's just such a no brainer to me.
- [60:04]
A
Give me an example of how it's super effective.
- [60:09]
B
Well, you know, prices are changing a lot, costs are changing a lot. You have to update your prices that you charge to the customer in order to stay above water and make sure you're still hitting the numbers that you need to hit. That's a big pain in the butt to do manually, especially with how often prices are tend to be changing right now. Tariffs doing this and whatever is going on in the world, so much stuff is affecting it. When you have dynamic pricing, you don't have to worry about it. As long as you have your price book built correctly. Where your materials are properly tied to the services that you're selling, the price just adjusts itself automatically. You don't have to think, okay, we're spending more on this. Let me go adjust the prices. Let me go have somebody go and mess with the spreadsheet. None of that's necessary. It just takes care of itself.
- [60:54]
A
What's the biggest tech myth in the trades?
- [60:59]
B
That software solves problems.
- [61:01]
A
I like that one. What's one metric every owner should know? Just down to the. Down to the decimal
- [61:14]
B
net profit.
- [61:16]
A
Couldn't agree more. I also think to get to profit, you gotta know your cost per lead, your booking rate, your conversion rate and your average ticket. If I was to just put out some simple KPIs that this is how we build our budget, this is how we buy companies.
- [61:36]
B
Yeah, let me go over that one more time. Cost per lead.
- [61:39]
A
Yeah. So your cpl. You know what, we'll do something fun real quick. I'll do this with you and I've done this on the podcast, so. Well, let's just use some imaginary numbers. I'm just going to pull out my calculator. Go ahead and tell me your goal this year. What do you want to do in revenue?
- [61:58]
B
Oh, this year, Tommy, I'm looking to do 11 million.
- [62:01]
A
$11 million. That's a good goal. So you got 11 million rev. Next thing I need to know, what is your booking rate? And I consider booking rate your contact center, so that includes social media, Yelp, Angie's list. I want to know what's your booking rate? Mostly the phone calls, but a lot of form fills, too. Blended. What's your booking rate?
- [62:20]
B
Yeah, right now, Tommy, I'm at 82%.
- [62:23]
A
82%. So 0.82. And then let's look at your conversion rate. And conversion rate rate means we're face to face. So that means I knock on your door today to earn your business.
- [62:37]
B
Yeah, we'll say I'm at 70%.
- [62:41]
A
And then the final one. Oh, average ticket is the next one. What is your average ticket?
- [62:48]
B
Blended?
- [62:49]
A
Yep.
- [62:50]
B
Service and sales, call it 1200 bucks.
- [62:55]
A
Oh, that's going to be a problem. Okay, then what is your cost per lead?
- [63:02]
B
250.
- [63:04]
A
$250. So I'm going to type in here $11 million is my goal. We're going to divide that by point A2, and you'll see the number go up because you're not converting, you're not booking all the calls. And then you hit equals, and you do divide that by point 7.7. And then we see the number went way up because I lost 30 more percent. So now I need to do basically 19.1 million. And then I need to divide that by 1200 because that's my average ticket. I need to run 16,000 leads. Then I multiply that by my cost per lead to 50, and I'm spending 3.992, so about $4 million. So unfortunately, I'm spending in the high 30s, the marketing dollars to be able to get to that. So how could I fix that? Well, I could increase my booking rate to 90%, try to get my conversion rate up. But the biggest thing that's outlier here for me is I got to raise that average ticket. So I look at these and say, what's reasonable? Because I could play with any of these numbers. I could probably drive down my cost per lead to 200 bucks, and I could probably get my ticket to 2k. So let's run this again. So I needed to spend, remember, $4 million to get 11 million. So now let's go $11 million again. Divided by 0.82 equals. Divided by point 7 equals. Divided by 2000 equals times 200. Now, what do you know? I'm at 1.9 million. So all I did was take my service ticket average from 1200 to 2000 and take my cost per lead down a fifth to 200. And I literally cut the marketing spend in half.
- [64:50]
B
Yep.
- [64:51]
A
And as you play with these numbers, you obviously want to increase booking rate, increase conversion rate, increase average ticket, and decrease cost per lead. So when we buy a business, the one thing usually they're beating us on is the cost per lead. Because they've been around for 30 years and they got customers and stickers and their GB, their GVP are killing it. We might be new to that market, we might be going into that market. So we buy them and then we look at their booking rate, conversion rate, average ticket, and we know within 90 days they're going to be the same as ours. So we might pay 7 extra that business. But the effective multiple goes down to two because we raised all those. They weren't. But, you know, the average client of service times. Back in the day, I remember there was a report it was 45% booking rate. So it's hard to believe. And everybody I know says, oh, I'm booking at least 90%. And I'm like, no, you're not. You're not.
- [65:48]
B
Yeah, check phone numbers again.
- [65:49]
A
You're not counting the parts calls, the social media stuff. You're not counting. You're not counting the weekend, the holidays, your closed Sundays. You're not counting the nights. You don't answer. Oh, and then, oh, that's out of your service area. Why aren't you counting out of your service area? People go, because it's not in my service area.
- [66:05]
B
But if you counted it, that's the biggest thing I see, too.
- [66:07]
A
What's that?
- [66:09]
B
That's the biggest thing I see, too. We've actually had that problem we were developing. I forget which product manager I was talking to, but we were developing something that I think it was for smart dispatch, actually. We needed information about the booking rates and we were getting weird data and we dug into it and we found out that one of the reasons we were getting that weird data was that people were falsely reporting or falsely reporting. They didn't think they were falsely reporting, but whenever they got a call that was like, oh, we just don't provide that service or it's out of our service area, they perceived it as Unbookable. They would classify it in the software as, like, an excused call.
- [66:47]
A
Yeah.
- [66:48]
B
Excuse. That wasn't. That wasn't an opportunity. It's like. But yes, it was an opportunity. You just happened to not want to do it. That's not the same thing. So we had to kind of reframe their thinking about what that. What that button did, what that meant.
- [67:00]
A
Well, here's the question I would ask them, is why are you getting out of service areas if you're not counting it, you'll never be able to put a magnifying glass on it and say, we're advertising in a zone of valpack or our radio ads are hitting this area that you're paying for. So unless you know it's a problem, it'll never get investigated, number one. And number two, most people that call in for parts, I could convert them into a client. So people call in and say, hey, I'm thinking about buying a hot water heater. Do you guys wholesale them? No, we don't. Sorry, you're gonna. We could. We could introduce you to where we are. Supplier. That is an opportunity to say, what are you looking for? Well, what's going on? Why don't we come out there? Doesn't cost a thing. We'll look at it. We could get you an amazing value. Like, I just think it's such a mistake.
- [67:47]
B
But anyways, you also give yourself a big blind spot to market signals. Like, people might be screaming from the rooftops that they'll throw money at you if you provided this one particular service, but you don't, and you're just not considering it an opportunity. It never hits your radar that, like, oh, if we provided this service, how many extra customers would we have had? What could we sell that service for? Like, you'll just miss the signal altogether.
- [68:10]
A
Well, I would also ask, what pay per click campaign? Why are my LSA clients. I do plumbing. Why are they calling for insulation or pest control? Why are they calling for.
- [68:20]
B
Yeah, well, it's just totally off the mark like that. Yeah.
- [68:22]
A
I mean, I would ask myself, though, like. Like, give me an example of a service. Somebody would be asking for that. If I was an H Vac person, I might not do, like, why would I be getting those calls?
- [68:34]
B
It's the number one thing. It's like duct people call for duct cleaning, and a lot of H Vac people have a preconceived notion that there's no money in duct cleaning, and so they just don't offer it. So even though they're getting 1,000 calls a month about duct cleaning. They're just like, oh, we don't offer it. And they never, they never hear the signal that people would like to have.
- [68:50]
A
That that's a, that's a really good excuse and a cheap call to go out and look at the system. So I agree with you. What's the best first automation to implement
- [69:04]
B
first automation? Something simple I would say like a custom alert that service titan doesn't natively do.
- [69:10]
A
Okay, and then last question for this rapid fire system or people Systems or people? Which breaks first?
- [69:19]
B
Which breaks first? Systems.
- [69:26]
A
Well, this is my answer. What if it's the systems that get the people? There should be a system of how you hire and if you're not hiring the best people, you got a broken system. So yes, it goes back to systems. Always systems.
- [69:44]
B
Chick, chicken or the egg. The system is the egg.
- [69:46]
A
That's always it. Richard, is there any books that completely changed everything about you? Like it could be the bible, it could be anything. I'm a business autobiography reader. I read more self help books than anybody. But it could be fiction, it could be anything.
- [70:08]
B
There's a book changed. Everything about me is strong, but it definitely made me rethink some things. It's a book called Die with Zero by Bill Perkins.
- [70:17]
A
Yeah, I have it. It's a great book.
- [70:19]
B
It's a great book. I think it's especially important for high net worth individuals to read. But even for, for myself I'm doing okay. But I'm not a super high net worth individual. But I am a saver by nature and that book really helped reframe some of my thinking as to why am I like this? Is it really in my best interest to be the way that I'm being when it comes to how I'm managing my money? It really changed my perspective on some things. I think it's a great book and it's an easy read. It's not too long.
- [70:49]
A
I think one of the. Yeah, it's a blue cover with yellow die with zero. And one of the main things is like a trip when you're 25 is a lot different than you're 75 unless we're right about longevity. So correct. It's, it's. I do say there's seasons of life and let the compound interest like work hard in your 20s and 30s so you're paying your future self. But also get Jesse Itzer's big ass calendar. Make time, slot it out. Get make time for your family and your friends and make time for fun.
- [71:19]
B
Right? Yeah, the Concepts Just. Just to give people sort of the short version, like Tommy just said, there's seasons to life. And so money is sort of more valuable to you when you were younger versus when you're older. Like, for example, it would be probably pretty rare for somebody to say that they would trade places with Warren Buffett right now, because Warren Buffett's in his 90s.
- [71:40]
A
Yeah, he's loaded.
- [71:42]
B
But, but, but so what? Like, what good does that do?
- [71:45]
A
He's gonna die, and his quality of life isn't what it was that. That our quality of life is.
- [71:50]
B
Yeah, so what. What good is the money at that point? And so it's. It's like, if you're gonna. If, if you have a goal to take a ski trip and to go to the opera, you should probably go on the ski trip first. When you're younger and more, you know, able to do that and go on, save the opera for later. And if you're gonna give money away, you should probably go ahead and do that while you're alive versus waiting until you're dead and can't see it and have no control over how that gets spent. And the people who you're giving it to are older and the money is less valuable to them as well. Things like that. It's a really valuable book, I think, for people to read.
- [72:22]
A
I've got a big plan. I'm not giving a BYU like Tom Howard, but it's a pretty good goal. Yeah. Philanthropy, helping out the people in your own backyard. Before, I've always said, listen, if everyone's not killing it that I work with and doing well, or a single mother has ball tires on her car, what's the point of helping out all these other causes? It's like, why wouldn't you want to help the people that are struggling that you brought on into your family, into your business? It makes no sense. And so, but it's hard because if you give, your CFO will tell you you got to charge them taxes. And so I'm working on a special 513C. But next question, how do people get ahold of you if they want to reach out? Richard?
- [73:12]
B
A few ways. Facebook is usually an easy one. Send me a message. Leave me a comment on the Facebook page. I've also got a website, blue collarnernerd.com that's where you can buy Blue Collar Nerd's ultimate service Titan Guide, which is a product I've built out, where it's a big video library, searchable, where you can learn how to use pretty Much every aspect of Service Titan that the challenge with my day to day job in Servicetitan is that there's always new stuff coming out. And so my time is typically spent covering new things. And so this is something I built that let me go back and cover everything. All the stuff that's been there for years, all of the settings pages, just how to use ServiceTitan full stop. Like I said, searchable. All the videos are transcribed and so you can find what you're looking for without having to watch hours of content. And it's meant to be a guide, not a course. And so it's meant to be something that people can keep on reference to, go back and check and refresh their memory and as they're going through a certain process, go into the guide and I'll walk them through. They're all videos of me, just self built stuff, no AI voices, nothing like that. So that's been my kind of latest project.
- [74:21]
A
I love it, man. I'm excited to see what you do there. Finally. I'm just going to have you close us out. Any topic, anything you want the audience to hear. Maybe we didn't talk about something, but you get the stage.
- [74:36]
B
I'll take a. Do we have like five minutes? I think something that has been on my mind lately and I've kind of alluded to it a little bit in this podcast. I think it's important for people to figure out and get really clear about what their goal is and why, why, why is it that you're doing what you're doing? Tommy's sitting with me right now for an hour and 15 minutes on a Saturday. I would bet that he knows why, because he doesn't have to. He definitely doesn't have to. So, like, it's important to understand for yourself why is it that you want what you want. So there's this exercise that I think is important for everybody to go through where you just really sit down and ask yourself, what's, what's my goal and why do I want it? And the answer has to tie to some underlying value of yours. So the answer can't be a thing and the answer can't assume something about another human being. So, for example, why do I do what I do? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is like, well, I need to make money. Cool. Money is a thing though. So I have to go a level deeper. Okay, well, I want a bunch of money because I, right now I'm living in this townhouse. It's great. But I would love to Build or buy a nice house with, like, a pool, outdoor kitchen, like a theater room, a game room. Okay, cool. House is a thing. So I've got to go a level deeper. Why do I want that particular type of house? Well, I want that particular type of house because I can entertain in it. I can bring my friends in. It's a place to hang out. It's a place to build connections. It's a place to make memories. Okay. So now I've kind of gotten to that core value. Like, that's. That's the thing that's really driving me. It's like I want connection with other people in my life. And that's sort of the thing that's really driving when I dig those levels deeper. Okay, cool. That's. That's one of the things. What else? Well, I really value health and longevity. Okay. I need money for that. So that's another, like, thing that's underneath money. Because, you know, whatever you think about the healthcare system, it's probably not great if your goal is to, like, prevent disease and live as long as possible. It's really geared more towards, you know, dealing with disease once you already have it. So insurance isn't really going to help me when it comes to this type of longevity goals that I have. And then if I'm really honest with myself, and this is why it's such a valuable exercise, is because it helps you weed out the things that you're not actually, you think you're doing it, but you're projecting something else. And you have to actually divert your attention elsewhere to deal with that problem versus what you think you're doing it for. Because if I'm really honest with myself, one of the reasons I do what I do, I work as hard as I work or whatever, is that I want to prove myself. You know, like, I grew up being told I slept too much, I was lazy. The way that I thought about work was not going to. Not going to work in the real world. Like I was. I was living this fantasy. The way that I worked just wasn't realistic. I couldn't sleep in, I couldn't work late at night. I couldn't have that sort of schedule. I was not a hard worker. And I just knew deep in my bones that that wasn't true. And I wanted. I just want to prove it. I just want to show the world that, like, that's not true. That's not me. Money doesn't actually solve that problem for me. So that helps me weed that one out and say, okay, that's a different sort of issue that I need to deal with a different way. Because no matter how much money I make, that's never going to be satisfied. There's no amount of money that solves that problem because it's not something that can be bought. One other thing I'll call out is that you have to be really careful when doing this exercise about using other people as your reason. It's not that they can't be your reason, but it's an easy thing for your kind of ego to hijack. So a common thing is like, well, I'm doing it for my family. I'm doing it for my kids. I'm doing it for my wife. Maybe. Maybe you are. But, like, let's think about that for just a second. You know, sometimes you'll say that, and then I'll talk to your kids, I'll talk to your wife, and they're like, man, I wish my dad would work less. I wish he was at my last play, my last recital, my last ball game. And they'll talk to the wife, and they'll be like, man, I wish he would work less. I feel like I barely see him anymore. They'll talk to the person and be like, yeah, I'm doing it for them. Now, hang on. Because you can't decide that for them. They have to be a part of that decision. If you're doing it for them, there's got to be an actual need, and they've got to actually be receptive to that. It's different when it's like a baby. Obviously, they can't decide. But if you're doing, you know, if you're making 200k and you're saying, I'm doing it for my family, let's really just, like, dive in and ask. Maybe that's true. And maybe, you know, your dad was an alcoholic who couldn't hold down a job, and you want to be just the polar opposite of that. You want to prove that you're not like him, and that's more about you than it is about the family that you're saying you're doing it for. I'm not saying that from a place of judgment, but I do think it's worth analyzing that and understanding it about yourself so that you don't end up working your life away for a particular goal that you're never going to reach because the thing that you want isn't there.
- [80:00]
A
What do you think about people? I want to go a little bit further here. What do you think about people that say there's no better place than when I'm at work. I really love. I'm a workaholic, and I love
- [80:15]
B
Depends. I would do this exact exercise, man. Because some people, that's really true. They get something. There's something that ties to a core value of theirs that is related to what they do for work, that it doesn't feel like work. Or even when it does feel like work, there's meaning the. There's some deep reason why I'm doing this that makes sense to them. So if you can do that exercise and you can get to that core value, valid, fine. But if you do that exercise and you get to something else, that's like, maybe I'm using work as an escape. Maybe I'm using work to get away from something else. Maybe I'm using work to dull an emotion. Because when I just sit alone with my thoughts, I don't like what comes up. That's a different story.
- [81:04]
A
Cameron Herald has been a coach of mine, and he said, if anybody tells me they love to work, I don't even want to be their friend. He goes. The first thing I ask him is, what did you like to do when you were a kid? What did you like to do when you were a teenager? What sports did you play? Did you love playing the flute? Find out something that you love outside of work. One of the things that I think, because I've been doing some of the same things and you got to peel back that onion, is I write down six Fs, family and friends, Faith, fitness, finances, future, self, and fun. And then I got to have strong goals that are the exact recipe. And I don't set them as the year. I set them weekly or monthly. Like, I want to get this many steps. I'm going to get this much protein per day, and then I gotta sign off and make a commitment to the people I care about. Now with faith, the commitment that I'm gonna go to church, I'm not gonna tell my workout buddies, I'm gonna tell the person. It's a different accountability partner. Sure. So if you could create this accountability around it. But, yeah, you know, I would say coming from a broken family, deciding at the age of four that money was never gonna be a problem for me and my family. Never getting married yet, but I'm engaged. No kids yet. You know, what I'm starting to do is smell the roses. That's why we're building this house, and that's why we just went 10 days to Costa Rica and, you know, die with nothing. Die with zero is a good example, is, you know, live. Live your best life. And I like to keep my brain busy, though I will say that, like, I like to learn. I like to read. I like to be involved. I. My mom always asks, why do you get on your cell phone when I'm here? I'm like, well, Mom, I really put. When I was in Costa Rica, I really thought a lot about this. Like, when we were kids, you used to take us places, and we go to movies and we go bowling. Like, we never just sat there for hours. And maybe that's a skill set I need to work on. But you come to my place, we're going to be playing golden tea or darts or shooting pool or going out there, going for a walk. I have a hard time. I wouldn't do well in Italy. I can't just sit at the table. Especially in this world where we're talking about Minnesota and Ukraine and. And Iran and. And the.
- [83:25]
B
The.
- [83:25]
A
The most conversations we're having is something that's completely out of our control and it doesn't make us happy. But anyways, I.
- [83:34]
B
Have you tried. Have you tried meditating, Tommy?
- [83:37]
A
Something on my list this year.
- [83:40]
B
I would give it a shot. It's not that what you're saying is necessarily flagged to me as in any way problematic, but I think it's just a helpful thing for a person in general to do, especially in the age where there's nothing wrong with wanting to keep your mind busy. I think where it becomes problematic is when you kind of can't help it. Sometimes I'll just be sitting on the couch trying to watch TV with my partner, and I'll be looking at her, and suddenly, like, my phone's in my hand, and I'm like, oh, I don't want to be on my phone. I want to be, like, having this moment. So I'll put the phone down, and then a couple minutes later, like, the phone's just in my hand, and I don't. It wasn't intentional at all. That, I think is problematic. And that's something meditation has kind of helped me with. And a lot of people will say, yeah, I've tried meditation, and it's not for me. I'm bad at it. And that's like the exact. Like, if you're bad at it, that's the exact signal that you're the person who should be meditating. It's like, I've tried to go to the gym, but the weights are so heavy. Like, I can't. I struggle to Even lift the lightest weight. Like, okay, great. That's a sign that you should be lifting the weights. So, like, when your mind wanders off and you're like, no, bring it back here. And your mind wanders again, and you're like, damn it, stay focused. And then your mind wanders, like, that's a rep. That's what meditation is. And that's the skill you're building. You're strengthening the frontal lobes of your brain, which is the part that, like, deals with executive function and, like, overcoming more the amygdala, which is more like the emotional part of your brain. And us as humans just generally will use activities to do the whims of that amygdala. I feel this particular emotion come up in me, and we're not even necessarily conscious of this. You have to really pay attention. It's kind of a skill to become aware of it. Like, something comes up in me, and so I'm going to get on Facebook and scroll. I'm going to get on TikTok and scroll. It could be vices, too. I'm going to reach for the alcohol. I'm going to watch some porn. I'm going to do whatever the vice happens to be that's coming from that emotional part of the brain. And the frontal lobes are what you're strengthening in meditation, and they're what let you be more in control and make those decisions outside of just being driven.
- [85:57]
A
You know, there's a guy named Gino Wickman, and he said he sold his business Eos, sold the vast majority, and he woke up very depressed. He had piles and piles and piles and piles of money, and he felt like he was missing part of his soul. Because sometimes your business becomes your identity.
- [86:18]
B
Yeah, real common.
- [86:20]
A
He said, you know, Tommy, when I got the help, you could do ayahuasca. There's ketamine, there's different chemicals. You could do counseling. You could do meditation. He said, the one thing that I'll tell everybody is when you face your fears and you confront them, most driven individuals think it's going to destroy their edge. It's going to get rid of the piece of them that built what they have. But he goes, it doesn't. It sets you free. You'll still have the edge. You'll still be just everything you were, but better. And that really resonated with me because I do need to meditate. You know, there's certain things of prioritization, but it's not hard. I own my calendar. It wouldn't be hard. The best people that I know in my life are good at meditating, so it wouldn't be hard. The good news is I do walk a lot and I live in my own head and I breathe the fresh air and I'm in the sunlight and I get that activity. I was pretty depressed, and I don't mean like depressed of most people, just I wasn't myself when I couldn't go on my hour walks a day because of my boot, because of my ankle. And that was the number one thing. Get back to your long walks. That's when I'm in the zone. That's when I go to bed, I fall right asleep. That's when I'm smiling the most. So I will start meditating. Any particular meditation practices you recommend?
- [87:41]
B
It's a deep rabbit hole, man. So kind of no. I would, I would just be careful about kind of the. More like app driven stuff. I think that meditation, it's tough, right? I generally consider myself a man of science. However, I do think it's unfair the way that we in the western world treat, quote unquote, alternative medicine, where we sort of define alternative medicine by all the stuff that doesn't work and then once we scientifically validate it, then we take it out of that bucket of alternative medicine and we just call it medicine. Meditation is one of those things that like for a long time was just like kind of this hippie bs and then science sort of validated pieces of it and then they're like, oh, actually this isn't hippie bs. Let's take it out of that alternative medicine bucket and we'll move it over here. And now you'd be hard pressed to find like a psychiatrist, a psychologist who wouldn't recommend meditation as a basic practice. But I think we've only scientifically validated like a tiny piece of it. There's a big piece of this tradition that people have been doing for thousands of years that maybe there's something too, maybe not, I don't know, but I think it's still worth considering. What's the other stuff? Maybe let's not just distill it down to what is in this app built by this Silicon Valley startup and let's consider these other things that were behind it and really look into it. That's just my, that's sort of a, just a, my personal feeling on it. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. If you want to use Headspace or some app like that just to dip your toe in, I think those are going to, going to get you some benefit, too. I just. I don't know, I have a certain respect for. For the tradition of it, too.
- [89:27]
A
Well, I'll tell you, we went a lot of places here and I actually really enjoyed it. I got a lot of notes. I had a lot of fun and looking forward to seeing you soon. I know you'll be a pantheon. Where do you live?
- [89:44]
B
The Atlanta area, Georgia.
- [89:47]
A
Well, how often do you get to Phoenix?
- [89:51]
B
As often as I can. I mean, I used to go to the. Wasn't Phoenix, it was Tempe. But I used to go there reasonably often for blue collar success group. Kenny Chapman.
- [90:01]
A
Yeah. Chapman's out here? Yeah.
- [90:04]
B
Yeah. So when I was with my dad's company, we went out there and I love Kenny, like me and. Me and him and Chris always got along really well. So we keep in touch, too. But I haven't made it out there in a while. I'd love to come out.
- [90:17]
A
Well, next time you're here or if you want to set something up, I'd love to have you. And this was a great time.
- [90:23]
B
I'm happy to do it anytime. I'd love to come again.
- [90:26]
A
Cool, man. Well, listen, I appreciate you. I think the audience got a lot out of this, and I hope you have a great week, my brother.
- [90:32]
B
You, too. I appreciate you.