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- [00:02]
Chris
This is to the Point a Rhino.
- [00:06]
Ken Goodrich
Experience voted one of the top home.
- [00:09]
Chris
Services, marketing and operations podcasts.
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Michael Franzese
Cutting through the and getting to the point.
- [00:19]
Ishmael Valdez
Hey, what's up?
- [00:19]
Chris
To the Point, listeners. It's your boy, Chris. Do you hear the sleigh bells ringing? Santa's close. It's almost Christmas time. It is. It is December 23rd. Hopefully you're prepared. I'm excited to give this gift to you. And that is the gift of our Best of episode that we do every year. And listen, we have a bunch of episodes all throughout the year. There's 52 weeks in a year, we're doing an episode a week. So it is hard to pick the favorite ones, but we just put together a handful that kind of stand out either to me or to Chad and just like to share them with you. And so we have a handful of them and they're in no particular order, but I'm excited to share them with you. We had so many good episodes this year, so many good episodes and very impactful episodes. So I thought, you know, the best thing to do is just maybe share with you an overview of like the theme from, from this year's Best of. And that's really around, you know, reputation over revenue type mentality, a people feel, considering people first, you know, in a very evolving digital landscape. And then, you know, words matter. You know, I did, I got to do a keynote presentation at Tommy's event this year on the power of words. And it's not just the words that you say, but it's how you use the words. You know, just being thoughtful around what you say and how you say it. Also, you know, you'll get a lot of insight into how to tackle 2026, you know, market from some of the leaders in the industry's perspective. So we're gonna kick this thing off, you know, with obviously one of the legends, one of the guys who's been on to the Point multiple times, Ken Goodrich and his clip. And this was from Rhinox earlier this year. And really it's around, you know, the power that us contractors have and how many lives you're able to touch. And not just your own employees, but your employees families, the opportunities that you as a contractor are able to give. Not your own family and their families, but also, you know, how you're impacting your clients. So let's go ahead and just kick this sucker off. This is from episode 200. Let's see, that's 263 with my man KG.
- [02:29]
Ishmael Valdez
Ken's probably one of the most successful business owners here. And he's. And like he said, he's traveled the whole United States looking at businesses inside and out. And there's a lot of things that we all do good in this industry. And everybody can pick up one thing that, you know, NextGen did good and Morris Jenkins does good and service champions. But there's, there's also. What's the, what do you think is the one thing that, that, that they don't do good? Ken, nobody talks about the. Everybody talks about how Leland, you know, grew his business on memberships and next gen was on marketing and all that. Like, what's the one thing that you see most businesses do, like, not as good as they should be doing. What's the one common thing that everybody kind of misses in the industry?
- [03:15]
Ken Goodrich
Well, I'm just going to stick with the leader. I haven't met many leaders who would do something like, I'm going to get in that airtime 500 group and I'm getting on an airplane right now and I'm buying a business so I can be in that group and get the education I need to build my business. You know, it's. Don't get stuck. There's always an answer, there's always a solution. And you just got to focus in, say, I'm going to find this answer and get it done. I think that's, I mean, we can go into some finite details of the H vac industry, but to me, I just never let anything stop me.
- [03:58]
Ishmael Valdez
Guys don't let, like, look, there's a lot of, there's a lot of changes in our industry going on right now. The one thing that you guys got to always realize is that we're operators for a reason. Okay? There's one thing that, you know, private equity could come in here and teach us a bunch of things with it, you know, which is a good, very good things in, into our industry. At the end of the day, what separates businesses from a successful business from a, from a shitty business is the drive that the operator has, the vision that he has, the execution, the execution that he has. So don't ever take, you know, your, your power that you have for granted, okay? You, as an operator, CEO, owner, you have the power to change a ton of people's life. You have the power to, to mold your business how you want to do it. And that's something that nobody else is going to take that from you, okay? So when you're looking at just numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers will tell you one thing. Your internal gut feeling and that, that. That sixth sense that made us, you know, CEOs and successful business owners is. Is what's always gonna differentiate yourself from a good business, from a bad business. Okay?
- [05:00]
Ken Goodrich
And I'll say the last thing. We're done on the way driving here, I'm talking to this guy, a big operator that has a business, has business in San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. And he did a PE deal, and, you know, he was crying about, you know, they don't listen to me, blah, blah, blah. And I said, listen, here's what you need to understand what we created and the way we had to come about it. Most of us in this room is completely irrational to a. To a classically trained business person, right? They look at it like, what the hell is going on here? But it's just. It's our Rube Goldberg machine that we built because we did. We didn't have any resources, we didn't have the education, but we pulled it off. We figured out how to put that together. And I said, so, you know, don't get down on about that, because no one's going to understand it but us. And I said, you know, I think what you need to do is go talk to them, say, listen, we need to work together. You respect me for what, I'll respect you for what you know, you respect me for what I know, and let's somehow come together, and I'll help you dissect my rub go Goldberg machine that I built and take it to the next level. And I think that's the rub that goes on there because, you know, we're special.
- [06:32]
Chris
There we go. See, that's the right way to kick this thing off with some positive vibes from a man, Ken Goodrich. I always love having him on first off, but I always love sharing his perspective. Okay, so now let's roll into this next episode with my good buddy, our co host, Mr. Chad Peterman, also known as Chad EP, Pastor Chad. 22 Savage. The Ron Collieringa. Pick one, whichever one is your favorite. Well, that's who this particular clip is with. And this is just around enjoying the journey. Some of my favorite episodes that we get to do throughout the year are the episodes that Chad and I get to do together and just talk about, like, the same shit that we talk about when we're together, you know, as friends. Right. And just hanging out or with our buddies in the industry. And this one in particular is just around enjoying the journey because the journey is the destination. This is actually a great segue to. To close out this podcast and I. And I heard this from all people. Matthew McConaughey. Okay. It was. The journey is the destination. Yeah, the journey. Yeah, the journey is the destination. So enjoy it. Because it never. It never actually ends. Like, you're always constantly working on something, and so. And I thought that actually is so true. Think about all the entrepreneurs that we know who've sold their businesses but still keep the Geigers, the good riches like these. They. There's not an end. Like, they don't have to keep going. There's not an end. But that is. That's, you know, enjoy it. Because if you just, you know, if you think about this process, like, it. It's. The journey is the fun, the excitement, the learning, the. All the things, and that there really is no destiny. I mean, you could. You could say, yep, I'm retired. And maybe that's your destination. That's fine. That's fine. But while you're in business, you know, the journey just keeps on going like, there is no destination. Right. Just keep working at it like that. You're constantly learning. And remember two things. When it's hard, you know, you're actually learning something if you're trying to figure it out. When it's hard, you're actually learning a valuable lesson that's going to take you to the next step. So when it's hard, think about it from that perspective. Like, there's definitely days where I'm in here and I'm like, this shit sucks. Like, this is hard. What am I doing? And then I have to, like, reset my brain to be like, okay, whatever I'm learning right now is going to help me for this next phase. And so there's a little bit of mindset to it. Yeah, Right.
- [08:51]
Chad Peterman
But, you know, one of the things I'll share along those lines that here recently I've kind of adopted, that's. That that's kind of helped me out. And I think it's more so helping out with kind of when times are tough, you know. 24. Yeah, 24 was not our. Was not a great year for us. Like, it was tough. It was hard. Like, we were struggling, like, trying to figure things out. And the one thing that I've kind of wrapped my mind around, and there were times when I would get down and be like, God, do I know what I'm doing? Like, how am I going to figure this out? Like, oh, God, I just. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing anymore. The one thing that I kind of latched onto was very similar to what you're saying is that our lives, if you choose to write a book about your life at the, at the end, when you retire, when it is, and you're going to write a book about this, the challenging times are the most important part of the story. And they're the times when you get to write the narrative of how you handled that tough time. And so anytime we face adversity, I think to myself, this is going to be a good chapter in that book. It's going to be, times went, times were tough, times were hard, we were backs against the wall, we couldn't figure it out and then write the rest of the chapter. This is how we figured it out. This is what we did. We bear down, we focused on this, we did this, we made this slight change here and here's where we are. And so that's kind of been my, like, mental picture of like, how to deal with tough times is like, hey, this is a great chapter in the book. You know, you can write a book about all the great things that happen, but no one gives a shit. What they care about is when you're struggling or when you had a tough time and you figured something out and you persevered and you made it through. And to me, that's kind of the mindset that I've kind of adopted.
- [10:41]
Chris
There we go. So if you take anything away from that, take this away that, you know, it's all about the mindset and the mindset that you've adopted, right? If you think it's bad, it's bad. If you think it's gonna be good, it's good. You are what you think you are. So I always love Chad's, you know, perspective around that. I think he's one of the most level headed guys that I know. So I appreciate when we allow him to, we give him the stage to share, you know, where his head's at and what he thinks and how he likes to run the business and just his life in general. Okay, this next clip is with my friend Jeff Duden. That was from Episode. This was from episode 274. And Jeff Dudens, the CEO of Homefront Brands, who's a client of Rhinos, but also a friend of mine, got him to come to us first, Rhino X this year. To have him there and have him share with some of our group was awesome. But he was also an undercover boss, if you didn't know which is a show back in the day. I thought I always wanted to be on, but he was talking about, how do You. Chad was asking Jeff about how, when you're in the franchise business, and that's what Homefront Brands is. As a family of franchise brands, man, you are basically dealing with a ton of entrepreneurs, right? A bunch of entrepreneurs who might not actually know how to run businesses. And they're. And they're hoping that that playbook that Jeff, you know, gives him or whoever the franchisor gives them, that they're able to actually run it. You have to give them a lot of support, because you can be a creative, you can be someone who is, you know, very outgoing, but yet you don't know how to integrate the things into the business. So there's a vast difference between being an entrepreneur and an integrator. You know, someone who can actually do the things. And so Chad's asking Jeff, you know, from all the hundreds that he. Of individual franchisees he works with, how do you balance that? How do you. How do you balance between being an entrepreneur and an actual integrators? So enjoy this clip with my man, Jeff Duden.
- [12:40]
Chad Peterman
Jeff, I got a question for you. Just as it relates to entrepreneurship, because obviously all three of us are passionate about it. How do you kind of balance that? You know, I think all three of us are kind of freewheeling, like, hey, yeah, I got an idea here. I think we can build this. And, oh, look what I've learned. I could build this business here, and so on and so forth. My wife reminds me constantly, like, you do realize there's only ten fingers and you can't have more things going on than what I can count on both hands. How do you balance like that with. We all know, too, that we need those integrators, those people that can take our ideas and flesh them out. How do you. How do you balance kind of. Or like, what's your philosophy in working with those people who, you know, kind of hold you in check? And, you know, I think we've all probably ran into people in our lives. Obviously, Chris is married to his that, you know, are able to execute and able to keep us on the rails. How do you kind of navigate that relationship?
- [13:35]
Jeff Duden
So I heard maybe two questions. So how do you decide what you do? Because you can do so many things. You can take your entrepreneurial skills and your energy and you can put it to anything. And I think over the course of my life, when I've gotten into too many things at once and I had a genius attack and I thought I could start this. After you lose money in a couple of deals, you start saying all Right. I've got to put some decision filters around this. So there's a couple. Number one is once you decide, like, once you have success in a business and maybe you have an exit, then it's like, all right, I'm not going to do any businesses that don't have the potential of this. And I said, I. I said it to somebody else who called me and used to work for me, and he's like, I'm going to do this. I want to do this. And I just kind of said, no more. I'm not doing any more shitty little businesses. You know what I mean? Because I saw the business, I think it's a great opportunity. I think you can make money. But it was not. But I just didn't see how it would scale. So right off the bat, you know, you're going to cut off 90% of the things that you could get distracted with by saying, I'm only going to build 20, 50, 100 million. If it's. If it can't get to $100 million, then I'm not going to do it, like, at the end of the day. I mean, so, like that. And then, you know, kind of a Dan Martell thing, I guess, although I've never heard him say it is. You have to. And I coach our franchise owners to. This is. All right, if I wanted to make $100 an hour, then I can almost do anything. I can, you know, if I want to make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, if I want to make $500 an hour, now that's different. Okay, Now I've got. If I'm going to. There's. Now my subset of things that I can do is much smaller. What about $5,000 an hour? Or what if I said I need to make $25,000 an hour? @ the higher up you go, the more limited your options become. And how do you calculate that? Well, I calculate that through exit, right? So I say, all right, how much money can I make? How much value can I create? And what do I know that this is going to be worth? And how much money do I make along the way? And I've been involved in maybe 15 different businesses since 2019. And some of them, there's a handful of them, met the requirement, my dollars per hour when we sold those businesses and whatever, but the majority of them didn't meet those requirements. They ended up being a little bit more of a drag. So I really learned to get disciplined about, you know, what's my return on time in terms of dollars. And value creation. And then what's my minimum? Like, if. If I've spent 35 years developing these skills, these resources, these networks, what's the minimum that I'm willing to get involved with? Because at the end of the day, like, I don't want to be broke and tired.
- [16:25]
Chad Peterman
Too. By now, you've probably heard how much of a proponent I am for Bluon. But I'm not the only one. When you talk to service managers using Bluon, the stories all sound very familiar. Nick Christensen over at Herbal Heating says his team saved 46 hours in just the first month. Between the parts lookup, wiring diagrams and AI troubleshooting, his techs are solving issues faster and ordering the right part the first time. It's even streamlined communications between the techs and the parts department. They just screenshot over the right part from Blu on and send it over. It's simple, it's accurate, and it works. And yeah, Peterman Brothers is definitely seeing that impact too. Do yourself a favor, click the link in the description and book a quick demo to see it in.
- [17:14]
Chris
Action. Attention to the point listeners. Branding has never been more important. Is your brand in serious need of an upgrade? Do you have a new company and need a new brand but don't want to wait six months or pay a ridiculous amount to get it done? If your brand looks like everyone else's, well, guess what, you are everyone else. But Prolific, they build brands that dominate from the first Google search to the driveway. Prolific Brand Design can help you be more of you because you are the unique difference that sets you apart from all your competitors. So let's be real for a second. Your brand is either winning you customers or costing you money. Just ask some of our clients like Ken Goodrich, Ishmael Valdez, my boy Chad Peterman, and even myself. Prolific Brand Design is the creative pros behind some of the best home services, logos, truck wraps, websites, and now email marketing campaigns. Wouldn't you love it if your email marketing open rates were 30, 40, 50% and. And don't go into the spam folder. Hell, that's how we roll at Prolific. So check them out at prolific brand design.com and ask for the to the point promo. Prolific Brand Design be more of you. Be prolific. Yeah, I'm gonna say this. I don't envy Jeff's position. Like being an entrepreneur is difficult enough. Managing, you know, a couple people for me is hard enough. I cannot imagine managing, you know, know all these individual franchisees and all the things that come with it like that takes a special Human. Human being. Okay, listen up this next podcast. One of my favorite episodes this year was with the. I'll say former mob boss, the only living and free crime boss. Top what? Top 30 Most Powerful Influential crime bosses in the history of our country who is no longer in that life and comes and just shares, you know, some of his information on the podcast with us. And I learned so much from Michael Franzes, and, man, I got to ask all the right questions in that. I asked about who shot, who killed John F. Kennedy, Where's Jimmy? I asked like, all the, all the things you think about with somebody who's been in the mobile. Uh, and this was from episode, if you want to go back and listen to it, because it was so freaking good. 2:58. And, and, and this actually was before Rhino X. And he got to come and speak at Rhino X with Ken Goodridge, which we also turned into a podcast episode, which was fantastic. But I was asking him, you know, how do you. How do you lead people that, you know, are willing to kill you? Like, that's about as high stress, high stakes as it gets. And obviously that's the odds of that happening to you are slim. The point was, how are you leading people in a high stress environment like this? And when the stakes for him were obviously ridiculously high in general, in business, you know, the stakes can be high for us. You know, we're trying to lead people whether things are going good or they're good going, like whether it's a great market or a hard market. And I just wanted him to share from his perspective and obviously an out of control, potentially out of control environment. How does he keep control and lead people and get them to follow him? So enjoy this episode with my man, Michael Franzes. You know, I mean, did you have to lead people like you. Were you. You have people out doing some of these, like, doing the work, like, doing the work for you. So you're having to lead these people. Like, what were you running this? Like, it was just a legit, like, hey, this is the business, and these are my, this is my management team or this is my leadership team. And is. Is that kind of what a day, like part of your day looked like was you had, did you have like meetings and like that around the business and stuff like.
- [21:06]
Michael Franzese
That? Well, you got to understand something. You know, I had, I had a number of made guys when I, When I was made a Captain Kap, I had about 15 made guys that were under me that I had to.
- [21:18]
Terry Bradshaw
Manage. Got.
- [21:19]
Michael Franzese
It. And these guys are always something's going on where you got to sit down with them and straighten it out. And you know, who got involved in another family, whatever. So that's a big part of your life when you're a copper regime or captain in that family. I had to manage my own crew, you know, of other guys, which I had a lot right. And then I had. Between gas and everything else, I had probably 300 guys under me, you know, working in our operation. So, yeah, you have to manage. And one thing I learned, I'm not good at everything. You know, people used to say to me, michael, you're a brilliant businessman. And I'm going to tell you, I'll be at your conference. There'll be a lot of people there that are a lot smarter than me. Business wise, no question. Very successful people. You've told me about it. I'm sure I could probably learn from them now. But I had a talent. I realized that I wasn't good in everything, and mainly because I didn't.
- [22:12]
Chris
Want to be good at.
- [22:13]
Michael Franzese
It. This doesn't work for me. I don't want to get involved in this. I don't want. So what did I do? My talent was this. I always had this motto. Do what you do best. Delegate the rest. So I would find the right people to do the job. And then my job was to motivate them, give them the incentive to work hard for me so that they felt rewarded. And that's what I did. And I was a fairly good judge of people. I knew when somebody was doing right. Not, you know, and I kept myself to a pretty strict standard with the people that work for me. You know, I give them so much rope. But, you know, there's times where you have to part ways. Even whether. Even when you like somebody, you know, even with family at times, you have to part ways. You know how it is. So, brilliant businessman. No, but, you know, I found out in life it's so important to know how to manage people. Manage people. If you can. If you can accomplish that and have a little bit of a sense of business, I think you can go a long.
- [23:11]
Chris
Way. You see, that's what I love about Michael. Like, he even just has that old mob voice. So when he just talks, I just like to listen to him talk. I mean, listen, if you're into that kind of stuff, like, these are the kind of cool. I mean, listen, if you're a contractor and you're into the old mob crime bra stuff, it was a pretty cool episode. And I just love listening to the stories. It's pretty good information, you know, from somebody. And again, like I said, if you didn't hear the episode from Rhino X. Yes, you go back to listen to that with him and Ken. Ken did a fantastic job of asking him great, great questions and how it pertains to our the contracting world. So this next episode is with my buddy Ish. He came into the studio and I actually thought it was the best podcast that he and I had done together. It was the most thoughtful. You know, the more I get to know him and understand him and the more comfortable that he has become speaking and being open, the better he is getting. If we, if we could just get him to really reduce the amount of F bombs, I think we could really got something special with, with old Ishi boy. But this, this clip was actually really, really good. And this is from episode 281. And we're talking, he's talking about graduating from an employee mindset to a CEO mindset. And I think all the things that kind of are in between. And he talks about some of the cons that are mentoring in the industry and like sharing information that they actually have never done themselves. So they're kind of giving feedback on things that they've not actually done, maybe they've been a part of. And I know that really frustrates him, but I thought it was a pretty good, a pretty good perspective for him to share from his experience not only as an influence in industry, but have been influenced by others in the industry and seeing what other I use air quotes influencers are doing and saying in the industry and whether that's true or not and what to look out for. So enjoy this clip from my boy Ishi. I have an opinion on this too. And before I do want to, I do want to talk about your new Bay Network, but this is on my mind. You know, I can't remember who I learned it from. And maybe Ryan, if you remember who it was from on the podcast, it was, it was. Somebody had asked me or said you should always take a look. If you're, if you're at the top, if you're the CEO of the business, if you're a general manager, if you're a whatever in leadership, if it's you just, you're the, you're the technician is you have to look at any, any of these situations, which by the way, every contractor fucks shit up. Like everybody messes stuff up all the time. We mess stuff up often. And the worst thing we can do is not learn from it, ignore it and ignore it can't do that. So. But you also have to think like, I have these conversations with people and I'll say, even though they're like four layers below me and something went wrong, I'm saying, what was my part in this? And maybe it's like very far removed, but I'm still trying to think about, was there something, what could I have broken? Was there a system I could have put in place better? Should I have checked out more like. And it challenges you think about what is my role now. You might not come up with anything, but if you switch your thinking to that way, I think you find more solutions faster. I think that's a really good way for those that, that are you're leading to look at you and say, oh, they're always looking for like, so you can't be a technician. Say, oh, you know that, you know, Mrs. Jones, she's, you know, she's just a. No, you still got like trying to figure out what it is. Now we know that some people can totally be unreasonable and you're always.
- [26:32]
Ishmael Valdez
Going to have that and that's part of being in business. But the one thing, like you said, you can't ignore it and you got to do something about it because what's the number one complaint.
- [26:39]
Chris
Is. And.
- [26:40]
Ishmael Valdez
You. And then this is ghost to you. What is the number one complaint that every freaking contractor has for you? Where's the leads? Where's the leads? How come I don't have any leads? And it's like, bro, like, how do you expect to have leads when your yelp rating is 3.8 with like 100 reviews and your competitor has 7,000 with 4.9? Like, how do you expect to have leads when your Google rating is 4.4 with 200 views and you have next gen and service champions and Pro Skill and all these guys with 10, 20, 30, 30,000 reviews? Right? How do you expect to have that. How do you expect to get leads in the, in the shoulder season and customers gravitate to your company when you don't, when you're not doing your part, when you're not doing your part or making sure the operation set properly to making sure that every customer has the right customer experience to enable to be able to go in there on Yelp and Google Frictionless and start reviewing about your company. So operators out there that are always fucking complaining. And this is one thing that I learned in my mentorings that I'm doing with, with my contractors and the, and the network that I'm growing with Nuve is I am learning that these guys have fucking excuses for everything. And the dope part about like this, I don't know what other networks do or whether mentoring platforms do. They don't bullshit me, bro. That's the one thing. You cannot bullshit me because I've been through that fucking grind. I've grown a company two times already. I know what, what it is when customers are complaining. I know that when you're, you know, coming up, if I come up say, hey, why do you have 4.2 star rating on Google and only 200? Oh, it's. Cuz, it's. I'm like, okay, cool, so you, so you're not paying attention. That's what, that's the real business. Exactly. And I've. And I call them straight up, bro, and, and sometimes I, I feel like I go too far for them and then I, I go like, man, they're not going to want to talk to me again, bro. The next week, Ishmael, can, can we have another one on one, Ishmael, or can, can you show me like, how to like, bro, like some of these contractors need to be called out on their bullshit. And, and that's what I've been learning the last, you know, eight months that I've been doing these mentoring.
- [28:40]
Chris
Programs.
- [28:41]
Charlie Sanders
Yeah.
- [28:41]
Chris
So. So I actually, I want to talk about that real quick because one of the things I was trying to think through is, you know, each time I do, we do these episodes, I'm always just trying to think, you know, sometimes I overthink on what I want to, what I want to get from it. But sometimes what people need to hear is like the harsh truth of, you know, the situations and, and that, you know, we, you know, we talk about marketing companies. We talk about, like you just said, everybody wants leads. Yeah, I don't believe, I honestly don't believe that any of the, any of the digital marketing companies that I know that are serving the trades, those that I have relationships with, there's a bunch now, but I know a handful. I don't think anybody is just saying, man, I can't wait to fucking take their money and suck. I don't, I don't believe that.
- [29:20]
Ishmael Valdez
About. I believe it. I agree with.
- [29:22]
Chris
You. But when you get bigger, it is harder because you have more people that you're responsible for that have to follow a process and way more pressure and you have way more contractors. I think we have something like 1200 clients or something crazy like that today. And a lot of account managers. Hardest fucking job in this company. I think is being an account manager because you're the one managing your feelings as the contractor trying to manage. You're actually executing. Oh, that's what it is. So I don't believe it. But where you have the chance to make it right is when the customer complains, you find out, is it real? Is it not real? To them it's real. So you gotta like sift through the truth, of course. But the only way that we get better is by feeling the pressure of those shitty moments. Right? And that's just, I think Peterman will say that's like a chapter in the book. He's like, oh, it just was the shitty chapter where I learned a lot and then the next chapter was better. So you are working with a lot of contractors as part of the NUVE network and doing, still doing one on ones and stuff like that. So I'm curious in like today's market, you know. Cause you're what, how, how far removed now from next gen? Two years. Two years. So you, so you've been doing, you've been busting your ass on the, you're working one on one with these contractors. What are you like, what are you hearing most from them now? Like what's the biggest pain points now? And I'll bet you some of these are the same pain points that we hear all, you know, last 20 years. But what are the, what are the most of the pain points that you're having to deal with now or help or help them see that they're doing wrong or fixing or.
- [30:42]
Ishmael Valdez
Whatever? The main thing that most contractors are doing wrong that I'm like beginning to realize is that they, because, because you're a CEO, because you're a general manager or you're in charge of an operation. What I'm seeing is that there is no, there's nobody, nobody on top of them to hold them accountable. So lack of accountability is probably, probably one of the biggest fucking things that I've taken away from my new networks. That one on ones and mentoring that I've been doing with these guys that most of these operators are employee based operators. They haven't graduated their mindset into being a CEO, into being an entrepreneur, into being an operator. Most of these guys, 90, dude, and I'm not talking about 1 out of 10, I'm talking about 9 out of 10 contractors that I'm talking to right now that I'm trying to help them, you know, fix their operation or increase leads or, or you know, grow their revenue or grow their profit. Whatever, whatever. The, the, the, the Pain point that we're dealing with. 99. The vast majority of the, of the, of the fall falls in them where since nobody's holding them accountable, there's really no metric for them to follow and they have no direction. So they're just, they're just being employees again. And I'll give you a perfect example. There's this lady in Idra back east, I think she's in Tennessee, $5 million company. And she just, and she's just having problems with, you know, recruiting and market. And she shows me an email that she sent to her employees. And the email is like fucking three paragraphs with an intro. And I'm like an Idri. You need to stop being an employee. You will never ever catch any real CEO operator. You will never catch Steve Jobs sending a three page email. Our emails are simple, man. We have no explanation to our employees. We just got to give them direction. And that's what I've been learning about these CEOs, that yes, the fault is, most of the faults is in them 100%. You can't be blaming the marketing company, you can't be blaming the weather, you can't be blaming the situation that they're in. You can't be blaming cash flow anymore. They got stuck in a place where they're, it's their own fault and they need somebody to get out there and give them direction. The. Now on the flip side, where, where, where, where I'm, where I get frustrated is there's a ton of mentors out there that don't know what the, they're doing and that they shouldn't be mentoring people and that they shouldn't be, you know, charging people for anything because number one, they haven't built anything. Number two, they were an employee and they had a successful exit or they, they were an employee and they helped another company, whatever, and now they're mentoring. And that to me is a huge red flag. Like when you're going to choose a mentor, number one, make sure that there's results in there, right? Because how many people do we know are gurus in the industry now? And what have they.
- [33:28]
Chris
Done?
- [33:29]
Ishmael Valdez
Right? What have they done? So to answer your question is, look, we have a huge problem of CEOs right now with employee mindsets and we need to, and we need to put, we need to, we need to start graduating their mindset into, into a CEO. And we have a bigger problem of fucking cons coming into our industry and trying to infiltrate and lead these people just to take their money. That's the, those are two problems that we gotta face as in the industry right.
- [33:56]
Chris
Now. Okay, now I know I said the Franz east episode was one of my favorites, but this next one clip that we're going to share is actually a few clips in one is my favorite of the entire year. And it's because this one isn't so much about the contracting world as it is about the resilience of a human being in the absolute worst case scenario. And this one was with my, one of my, one of my best friends, Charlie Sanders, who, you know, built it, came from note from literally the desert, like the middle of nowhere. The episode was so good. It's episode 284 and I've known his story and I wanted to share his story. And he owns underground power company, so he's digging trenches basically, you know, for power lines and things like that. Turned this business from nothing and then into this big company, then sold it to a Fortune 500 company, absolute great success story. And he just bootstrapped it and grinded him and his wife and built this amazing company. And right in the middle of due diligence with these guys, like they're in the middle of their deal, their daughter Hope, who is my daughter's best friend, commits suicide at 13 years old. The fact that that even happens at 13 years old blows me away. But how do you recover? I mean, you have a big business that you're trying to lead people. How do you recover? I mean, listen, you still like, you have to, you know, personally have to figure out how do I, how do I recover before I can even lead a human being again. And just to have to have him talk through that so open with me, I thought that was such, so powerful because there's a lot of people that are actually going through the same thing. Maybe it's not immediate family, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a, you know, friends of friends. A lot of people go through and never talk about it because the stigma on suicide is always negative. And so I wanted him to share his story in hopes that it helped somebody listening also get through or to share with someone that they know. And you know, when you, when you talk about suicide with other people, it does help them. And the, and the amount of feedback that we got back from that episode was fantastic. Especially me personally. I had so many people reach out to me saying thank you for the episode and to Charlie directly. So I just, it'll pull out a couple clips that I thought were, that were for sure worth sharing. And I hope you Enjoy them. And again, no, please go back. If you didn't hear that episode, go back and listen to it. It's episode 284. You're spending thousands to make the phone ring. But if your CSRs aren't picking up or converting, you might as well light it on fire. And what are the largest businesses in the country doing about this? They use Avoca, the leading AI platform in the trades. Hundred million dollar businesses like H.L. bowman are operating with only nine CSRs because Avoca handles up to 80% of the calls. Plus Avoca follows up with your leads, grades your CSR calls and helps you strategize. So my suggestion, go with the leading company. Check out Avoca AI. That's ab O C A I click the link below to the point. Listeners, listen up. What if the biggest thing holding back your business isn't marketing or hiring, but your bennies? The benefits for home service companies, a better 401k can be the difference between great techs and losing them to the shop right down the street. Basic Capital, our newest sponsor, is the only 401k built to actually put your team on a real path to retirement. Companies that switch over see higher participation, happier teams, and dramatically low turnover because your crew finally gets a plan that's a true benefit, not just a checkbox. Don't wait until your best people walk. Make the move and click the link below to get 12 months with 0 employer fees when you join Basic Capital. So I want to, I'm going to make a hard transition, so let's take a drink first. I'm drinking Knob Creek maple syrup. Knob Creek smoked maple. What are you.
- [38:09]
Charlie Sanders
Drinking? I'm drinking Eagle.
- [38:10]
Chris
Rare. Yeah. Okay. I know you don't like this, the maple stuff, and normally I don't either. But this one is one I really like. So this is going to be a pretty hard transition too. And it's. And just everybody that's listening knows too, like this is a pretty hard pivot. And it'll probably be the, I think the most difficult part of the conversation because this is far more difficult than anything else that, like his childhood that he came up and how or how he grew up. But it's such an important, important part to the story because as we sit here today, you work under a Fortune 500 company that bought a company that you started from scratch. You and Kelly started from scratch, built into this great business and you could still continue to scale. And you guys are both extremely valuable leaders. Fortune 500 company, you guys are very valuable people. So you Mean a lot to this big ass company who has tens of thousands of employees. Like some crazy.
- [38:59]
Charlie Sanders
Number. Yeah, I think we're 60,000.
- [39:00]
Ishmael Valdez
Employees.
- [39:01]
Chris
Okay. So a little bit more than.
- [39:02]
Charlie Sanders
10,000.
- [39:02]
Chris
Whatever. 20. Some odd billion dollar organization. That's got to feel pretty damn.
- [39:06]
Charlie Sanders
Good.
- [39:07]
Chris
Absolutely. But you know, I say that knowing that, you know, once you get. When you're going through all this, it's already hard enough. And then back in, it would have been March 1st of March 1st of 2021, probably the most, if not the most difficult day of your entire life by far. So you mean that's when you're, that's when your life would change forever. Now, obviously, you have not sold this time. You were still. You're in.
- [39:34]
Charlie Sanders
It. We were, yeah, we were mid acquisition when, when this.
- [39:37]
Ishmael Valdez
Happened.
- [39:38]
Charlie Sanders
And. Yeah, so. And obviously that put everything on hold, but you're, I mean, you're just.
- [39:43]
Chris
Reeling. I'll, I'll never forget it. I, I can, I know exactly where I was when I got this phone call. And it, it's. This is one of those situations where I get a phone call and my wife tells me that Hope, your daughter, Berkeley's best friend. Berkeley's best friend, my daughter's best friend, has passed away. So, you know, and it's something to where I was like, what? She's.
- [40:11]
Chad Peterman
13.
- [40:12]
Chris
Yeah. You know, and March 1, 2021, the beginning of the year. And the thing that no one likes to talk about and you don't quite understand is how someone dies. People automatically always wonder, like, how did they die? What.
- [40:27]
Ishmael Valdez
Happened?
- [40:28]
Chris
Yeah. You know, and people don't like to talk about suicide, but it's a thing that has to be talked about. It gets swept under the rug so much because of the stigma.
- [40:35]
Charlie Sanders
Attached.
- [40:35]
Chris
Absolutely. And the hardest part for me, for you, is that you are the one that found.
- [40:42]
Charlie Sanders
Her.
- [40:42]
Chris
Correct? Right. Nothing else matters in that moment except for like that, that is it. Like, how do we fix this? And you, who are naturally a fixer, right? Like you, that's what, you grew up in that space. You can't, you can't fix.
- [41:01]
Charlie Sanders
That. There's no.
- [41:02]
Chris
Fixing. There is no fixing that situation. And anybody who's listening to this, who's, who's ever been through it, can completely relate to Charlie more if you know a friend, you know, you can relate. I mean, my God, like, to us she was a daughter, so we felt.
- [41:15]
Charlie Sanders
It. Yeah. Oh.
- [41:16]
Chris
Yeah. And you know, and it was heartbreaking for us. And having to tell Berkeley was.
- [41:20]
Charlie Sanders
Like. Yeah.
- [41:21]
Chris
Awful. Right. Like, having that was, was awful. And so we. We all got to go through it, you know, together, but I just can't, you know, in that moment, though, you know, I wondered a few things, you know, as we went through, like, the days and the weeks moving.
- [41:35]
Ishmael Valdez
On, I was like.
- [41:38]
Chris
How. You know, like, these guys have all. You know, I get. We have. We all have our personal lives, but they also have a big business, a lot of people relying on them, and you can take a little bit of time, but, like, what's this thing gonna look like for them? Are they gonna recover from that? I don't know that I could recover from that. But, like, maybe just talk through. What was that time like for you? For you, you know, you, Kelly, the family and like, the company, because you had that little company, didn't grow a whole bunch between 20 and 21. Like, you're dealing with all this stuff. Maybe just kind of talk through, like, the raw, like, what. What. How did life go for you at that point? Across the.
- [42:17]
Charlie Sanders
Board? I mean. I mean, we went on autopilot. I mean, like, this was a Monday more or Monday afternoon, I think. We. We didn't even. We didn't care about. I mean, we didn't care about the business. We didn't care about anything. We couldn't. We couldn't focus on anything other than our family at that time. And we still have two kids that we got to take care of and do that, but we're just on autopilot. I mean, thank God we have our ATC family. Everybody. Everybody just jumped in and covered. Covered us. Our client. Our client was understanding. I mean, I have personal relationships with a lot of our client, so once they heard, they're like, yep, we get it. My phone stopped ringing. Everything went to my number twos and threes, and we're all. We'll all. They all work. Our client worked with our. Our employees to make sure that a lot of the stress was off of us. And they will get. We'll get through it. And they kind of took it over there. I mean, I think we were gone a month, I think, before I actually stepped back in. Once we were able to get hope buried and everything else. And we're. Then we went back, and at that time, none of those guys are with us or salespeople or. So our work was dillwindling down, and which kind of helped me because then that kind of lit a fire, like, hey, I got to get back, and I got to go do my job. Which was a great break from day to day thinking about a hope. And, yeah, it got my mind off of it a little bit, so that it for sure helped push me in the right.
- [43:56]
Chris
Direction. I wonder, you know, did you ever, when I thought this was going down, did you ever consider of, like, just walking away from it all? I'm just.
- [44:07]
Charlie Sanders
Saying. I.
- [44:07]
Chris
Mean.
- [44:08]
Charlie Sanders
Done.
- [44:09]
Chris
Yeah. I mean, I don't know how you can't.
- [44:11]
Charlie Sanders
Honestly. No, absolutely. So. So, I mean, I didn't know if we were going to be able to go. I mean, so. Yeah, I mean, I didn't know how, especially that first month, like, I'm, like, I didn't know if I could go back to work and I mean, would I. Would I be there even if I was at work? Am I going to be the same? You know? So we pushed harder into the acquisition because then I needed to make sure that everybody ATC was.
- [44:39]
Chris
Okay.
- [44:39]
Charlie Sanders
Yeah. You know what I mean? No matter if me and Kelly kind of fall off the deep end, at least they get there's somebody to come backfill and make sure that they get through this. But as we kept going, it's like you said, I mean, it's our reputation. So we just got back into the grind and then, I mean, we don't want to disappoint anybody, you know, and made a commitment to Quantum, and I want to make sure that we. We did our part. So that kind of helped me push through those, like, push through the hard times, because that's the only thing you can do, just keep.
- [45:11]
Chris
Push. Yeah, I think that's pretty thoughtful, you know, to go through something like that, but still kind of be thinking about how you leave everyone.
- [45:18]
Terry Bradshaw
Else.
- [45:18]
Chris
Right. You know, and like, securing the future. I mean, obviously Quant is publicly traded, and I'm a. I have stock in Quantum. Keep. Keep doing what you're doing. I appreciate it so much. We did that because of you. We believed in.
- [45:32]
Charlie Sanders
Atc. We appreciate.
- [45:34]
Chris
You, you know, but it is, you know, in some ways, though, too. It's like you do kind of get back into a routine, you know, and. And I think routines can be good. I think routines can be bad. But once you're back in that routine, you kind of just are like, you know what? Like, we might as well just keep going and see what else we can do and accomplish. And. Yeah, seems like that's what you like, what you guys have been doing, for sure. So I. I just, you know, I wonder. I figure we should use this opportunity because, you know, hopefully 30,000 some odd people hear this. This.
- [46:08]
Charlie Sanders
Episode.
- [46:08]
Chris
Yeah. Pretty cool. Is there something about Hope or her spirit her heart or her story or anything that you want people to remember her by her or who don't know her, like, know about her.
- [46:21]
Charlie Sanders
Like. Yeah, I mean, she was just. She was so loving and innocent. She was one of those ones. She's fragile. She was like, super fragile girl. I'm. She would get in trouble for doing. Leaving her clothes out, this and that. I have to raise my voice. It's. She's in a room just crying. Not. And not throwing a fit, not yelling, not screaming. Just in there. And then I'd have to go in and like, hey, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, we just gotta. We just gotta put our stuff away, we gotta do our homework, whatever. Whatever the case would be. But like, me raising my voice to her just like, breaker. But she was just so gentle, so caring. I mean, she loved her pets and her friends. Like, she. She loved big, for.
- [47:08]
Ishmael Valdez
Sure.
- [47:09]
Charlie Sanders
Yeah. She's all about the.
- [47:10]
Chris
Love. She was super sweet and like, once you could get, like, you had to be closer to her, I think, to get her to open up a little bit to you for sure, you know, and when you did, you kind of got a pretty cool version, you know, of her. But yeah, she's total sweetheart and, you know, she. She looked like you.
- [47:29]
Charlie Sanders
Did. She was my twin, for sure. I mean, Kelly, poor girl look like.
- [47:34]
Chris
Me. Yeah, I. You know, it is. I mean, this is the kind of part of it where I just kind of sit here and I think through like, all the good memories I have of her and then being kids. Oh, by the way, fun fact, you'll remember this because this is how Charlie and I. I met was. I'm not gonna tell the whole story. Not all of it, but yeah, we are kids with the North Valley Christian Academy. And, you know, the girls were young. I mean, they were right girls. And so we're at a father daughter dance. I think it was.
- [48:03]
Ishmael Valdez
Like.
- [48:03]
Chris
Yeah. I can't remember if we were. It was like the 50s or.
- [48:07]
Charlie Sanders
Whatever. Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, 50s sock hop or.
- [48:10]
Chris
Something. And the girls were friends that we had. You know, we hadn't like, quite met.
- [48:13]
Charlie Sanders
Yet.
- [48:13]
Chris
Yeah. I remember asking Charlie, who's this big, like, tough man's man guy? And here I am trying to be funny, say, well, you want to dance? And he said, nope. I was like, okay, this guy is not easy. He's not picking up on my jokes. Okay. But then, you know, it was funny because then from there, like, we hung out one. Like, the first time we hung out, it was. I can't remember if it was reach out on Facebook. And then Kelly researched me like she would always do and find out like who is this guy? Can we really hang out with him? Is this somebody we can hang out with? Because you know, never know like if they're gonna, if we're gonna work out. Yeah, it's a Christian school. And then it turns out that night we hung out for what, four or five some odd.
- [48:53]
Charlie Sanders
Hours. Yeah, I think, I think, I think you guys came to drop Berkeley off at 8, 9 o' clock and 3.
- [48:59]
Michael Franzese
O'.
- [48:59]
Charlie Sanders
Clock. We round closed the, closed her.
- [49:01]
Chris
Down. That's how he.
- [49:04]
Charlie Sanders
Knew. But it just went, it went smooth. It was, you know, and when you're having a good time, you don't want it to.
- [49:09]
Chris
End. Yeah, man. And that's cool. And so I'm, I'm, you know, I, I think that I'm just grateful for everything. Like we're so thankful for, for you guys on like so many different levels and like, you know, with our, with to our listeners. I really hope you have somebody in your life that's like that too. And you know, and maybe not necessarily it's went through what Charlie's went through, but you know, somebody that you're close with that you can kind of share things with, do life with. Because at the end of the day, like all this hard work on this business and stuff has got to be more than just business. Like it's like what is it applying to your life? Like your livelihood, your personal life, your memories, like all the things that actually really matter. There we go. That's about as vulnerable as it gets. Like you can't think of a worst case scenario than that. So let me remind you, if anyone is having any issues or if you yourself are having any issues, let me remind you that you know, your worst day is someone else's dream, right? And if you don't know how to work through it, you don't want to talk to anybody else, at least call the suicide hotline. It's pretty easy. It's literally three numbers. 9, 8, 8. If you dial 9, 8, 8, it'll take you through a few steps and you can figure out, you know, who you need to talk to. It'll give you some direction on places you can go, people you can see. All kinds of different things to help you get through it. Because I promise you, it's never as bad as we make it in our head. Okay, this next episode, a little more enlightening, is with my boys, the LSD crew. I'm committed to 2026, changing the name of that group. I've never done LSD, but sometimes I'm sitting in that group. I wonder if. If some of those guys are on it from some of the questions and shit that we talk about. So as much as there's a lot of. We're just having fun, having a lot of conversations, kind of catching up, you know, when we have our monthly calls, it's 80% kind of, you know, you know, us playing around, talking, making fun of each other, busting each other's chops. Most, mostly Ishmael at 20% is always really, really good stuff. But one thing that we typically do is we'll close out the call with like a final thought. You know, everybody kind of goes around, talks about some of their final thoughts. And so we did it on this. On this episode 287 where Tommy basically cuts me off and says, chris, we got three minutes left because everybody's trying to stay on schedule. And so he. He kicks it off and just shares some of the closing thoughts. So I just thought it'd be good, you know, because the closing thoughts were great because we're kind of talking about just the business in general and where we need to be focusing on and, you know, and. And even, you know, 2026.
- [51:34]
Ken Goodrich
Stuff.
- [51:34]
Chris
So. So these are. Are mixture of the groups closing thoughts in this.
- [51:40]
Tommy
Clip. Chris, we got three minutes. Why don't we all have one minute to close out on whatever? I don't. Unless you want to go over, because I thought you had a.
- [51:48]
Chris
Tight. Oh, we only got. We got three minutes. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. This is my adhd, baby. Thank you for keeping me in.
- [51:56]
Tommy
Line. I'll close out with one thing that I thought was I just read this and I shared it with a lot of you guys, but I think most of you guys already know this. And it's just a quick thing about PayPal. PayPal hired a head CEO of content. This is what you need to know. The job pays over $200,000 a year. The mission is simple. Make sure the CEO, Alex Chris, is visible, consistently posting. This isn't about getting likes. It's about building trust with investors, inspiring employees, and keeping PayPal top of mind against competitors like Apple Pay and Google. PayPal is proving that in 2025, the personal brand of the leader is as important as the brand of the company. Takeaway. Visibility is no longer a nice to have for leaders. It's part of the business strategy. If your audience cannot see you, they will forget you exist. If they can see you often enough. With the right message, you shape how they think before they ever speak to the company. The difference between a CEO who shows up online who does not can be millions of talent, attraction, customer trust and deal flow. So the stuff you're doing and all you guys are starting to do this, it's not really an option anymore. I noticed Gaynor's posting a lot more, but every one of us should be thinking about not trying to post for likes, but posting for intention. We can attract one employee, co worker. That could change everything. One, one client, they could put in a massive order and just introduce you to 10 great people. So I think that's my, my.
- [53:18]
Ishmael Valdez
Takeaway or my last thought, my closing statement, guys, I'm going to do with reputation over revenue now more than critic, now more than ever because of private equity coming in and all these AI tools getting used, where people are going to start losing their reputation and people are going to kind of get lost in the technology. I want to make sure that everybody, you know, Warren Buffett always said that the one thing that, you know, they could lose money in a quarter, they could lose money in a month, they could lose money here and there, but the one thing that could, they could never lose is the reputation. And I believe right now the home service is in the middle of a, of a turmoil where, you know, people are fighting for revenue or reputation when it should be always, always should be, always be led with reputation. You can never lose the reputation of your company and the integrity of your, of your, of your company with your.
- [54:03]
Daryl Bingham
Clients. I'll just say I'll keep it pretty simple here. I think, I think it's an opportunity for people need to get reignited with their businesses and get excited about the future. Right now, I think, you know, home service is still a great industry to be in. It's a great opportunity to build great trade people. And I think just focusing back on the people of the industry that do this work, making sure they get the right skills, the right trait, the right ability to do the work, the right support, mentally, physically to do that right and make sure that we're out there. This, this workforce is young people. Right now there's a lot of young people. We just did a study in our own business and our average age, age at our business right now is 30 years old. And in the field, 50 of our field is under 27 years, under 27 years old. So like, we have to understand the workforce, who we're working with and what we can do to develop these young Most of them are young men. So it's understanding young men and what they need today to succeed in life and how we can provide for them. So I guess I'll just leave it as like, reconnect with the workforce. Never lose connection with the workforce and who you work for in a business, because those are the ones that make it happen for us and realize what chapters of life your workforce is in and understand how you can build your business to support them while taking care of your customers, reputation, all those great things. So that's what I'll just say.
- [55:15]
Chris
Quickly. We got event season coming up, so I will say that, you know, we're not in the same market we were during COVID Things have changed, and I think people have become complacent at times and they're trying to run their business the same way. But, you know, we're going all going to be at these events. We're going to learn a lot. But your business grows at the speed you make decisions. So I used to always wait for it to a system to be perfect. I've learned really well from Ishmael that you just got to roll it out like one step forward is better than no progress at all. So don't be complacent and make your decisions and. And, you know, see it through.
- [55:50]
Chad Peterman
Yeah. I'll just say in the. With all this technology coming about, people can get scared and they can get complacent, or they either get complacent or they get scared or whatever. And then some people are just going to jump on it and, and accept it and have it with open arms. And like Travis said, you can't do business the same way you did before, whether it's Covid or whether it's technology changing or whatever else. In the words of Vahe Gazoian, the founder ServiceNow, he said, look, in the world of knives, a gun has appeared, and you're either gonna be the one holding the gun or you're gonna be the one carrying the knife, trying to battle it out. You get to decide. And I'd recommend hopping on the technology and making sure you have every tool possible in your arsenal to be able to.
- [56:32]
Chris
Win. Master Chad. Bring us home.
- [56:34]
Chad Peterman
Baby. All right. Yeah. I mean, I think to kind of piggyback off Tom's point, I think that, yeah, there's a lot of great technology out there, but I think that a lot of people need to understand that technology is not going to solve the problems in your business. It's going to enhance your business that is run by all of the blocking and tackling that you're paying attention to. These businesses are super simple. It's when we start to go outside the lines and think this new idea is going to solve it and we don't have to pay attention to the building blocks that got us to where we are. Again. I can guarantee you that everybody here runs very big businesses. But if you talked about what are the five most important things, I would imagine booking rates going to come up, conversion rate, average tickets, all of the building blocks. It's not going to be like, yeah, we started using this wild thing and now we don't have to pay attention to that. So, you know, as the macro environment changes rapidly around us, technology is introduced, I think it's important to continue to focus on the building blocks of what got you.
- [57:36]
Chris
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- [60:59]
Ken Goodrich
Market. Yeah, the stock.
- [61:01]
Chris
Market. Yeah. So, so what, like, what, what are you thinking about it? Obviously, like, really what I care most about is for us, our, our industry, gates back plumbing, electrical, like our world. What's your take on what this is going to look like next year? I think our listeners are trying to figure it out. We're getting close to, to.
- [61:19]
Ken Goodrich
It. Well, look, I've operated in many very difficult economic Times. You know, 9, 11, the Great Recession, this small recession, that tech, tech bubble, all that stuff. Certainly, Covid. Right. Like, I've operated in all kinds of difficult times and, you know, the way I look at it, what I did in those particular times is I just push the throttle forward on the advertising and I went out and took the business to be had. You know, you can't say that, you know, the recession that there was Much demand. You know, the gdp, you know, it suffered right then, but we grew at 35% CAGR from 8, 9 and 10. So we doubled our business or better inside that period of time in the recession when everybody else was retracting. Not a lot of guys made it actually. So I think you just got to, you know, what do I think it's. I think customers are holding onto their money. I think we all got to admit that we pulled a lot of demand forward in the early or 20, 21, two maybe. We put a lot of demand forward. So you know, we're paying for it now. It's like all these tax deferred things we do, right. You eventually got to pay the tax. So I think that's going on the, you know, we've got a lot more sophisticated competition than we used to, deeper pockets, you know, driving up the lead costs and driving up labor costs, driving up management costs, things like that. So changing of refrigerant changes, I mean it's been kind of a difficult few years for a lot of, a lot of business owners and some, and a lot of PE guys too. I think they underestimated, you know, how much, how much street knowledge you got to have to run one of these businesses. You know, it's still kind of a street guys game. And so there's been a lot of, some failures, a lot of toe stubbed, all kinds of this going on. It's. It's going to be tough year. So it's going to be a tough year. But you know, you got to go out, you got to go out and get it like, like always. And this is not a time to be retracting and counting your pennies and trying to let's just weather the storm. It's go out and get the business and you go out and get the business and it's not, don't you don't fight the fight with the digital fight. You got to have the digital going. But you know, I've always been a big believer in brand and relational brand stories. We're dealing with homeowners on their most valued asset, right. Their home. Right. Their most important thing they have. And we're dealing with them and that in that level. We have to communicate with them on a personal level and emotional level and touch a heart. That has to be the mission of the advertising and I can't seem to get many people interested in that, but I know it works and that's exactly what we're going to do with our new business. And that's what we're doing with our new business and it works. So leading into 26, just to sum it up, you got your headwinds. Don't find better ways to market. Don't go head to head with every knucklehead that's got a bunch of cash and there's throwing, driving the pay per click cost through the roof. Go to some more relational branding, guerrilla type marketing where nobody else is at and go take your.
- [65:08]
Chris
Business. There we go. KG gave you the best advice. You know, if there's headwinds, there's always going to be headwinds at some phase in this business. But it's how you, it's how you face it, right? Just go full steam into it. It's like the old, the old saying of when there's a storm, bison don't run away from it, they run into it. So that way they can get, you know, they're not afraid to run into it. That way they can get through it faster. It's just perspective. You know, you can run away from the problems, you're always going to have them as the business scales. But if you run into them, you can learn faster and you can get through them faster and you can move on to the next thing that is positive for your business. Okay, so the last clip of the Best of and there again there's so many more best of clips that we could have pulled. But we got to keep this thing, you know, short and sweet for you guys because we got to keep your focus, you know, and it's only last so long, just like mine. This last clip seems like a pretty suitable way to finish out these episodes and that is with a four time Super bowl champion, Mr. Terry Bradshaw, ex Pittsburgh Steeler NFL commentator, probably one of my favorite commentators. So it was awesome to have him at, at Rhino X. I mean he's such a great personality. He has so much wisdom and he makes it so much fun. This was from, we ended up turning that, that interview into an episode and that was episode 277. And this is just around him defining resilience. I mean you think about it when you're a professional athlete, you know, you four time super bowl champ, like that's a lot of really cool moments he had, but there was a lot of not cool moments for him that he went through, through challenges he went through with coaches, challenges he went through with his career. And at that high of a level with all these people watching you to fail. Well, how do you get through those things? So I thought he did a fantastic job of sharing with the group on how Terry, the Super bowl champion mvp, defines.
- [67:09]
Terry Bradshaw
Resilience. Resilience came for me. The definition of it, or total understanding of it was when I wanted something so bad and someone else got it. Now, do I. Do I say, okay, I'm not as good as that person? Well, I could say that they beat me out, or can I. Can I push ahead? And can I be. Can I be better than them? Can I throw the ball better than them? Can I run faster than them? Am I going to. I used to use those saying, it's like, I have the title and the deed to my dream. So if I give up on that, that's a lack of resilience. And so I. I found that you have to understand who you are. Got to understand who you are big time. I don't care if you're 16, 17, 20, 30, whatever that is. And then you have to. You have to have a direction in your life. And you're never too young to have a.
- [68:17]
Chris
Direction.
- [68:18]
Terry Bradshaw
Never. Don't you, don't. You don't have. Well, you'll find out what he wants. I've got friends that have children right now. Even the other day, some friends of ours in Hawaii that are staying with us, they have a son who's 24 years old, and he starts a job, quits a job, starts a job, quits a job, starts a job, quits a job. And I said to him, I call him, you know, well, I'm not gonna tell you what I call him, but I. I call him and I just said, he's gotta. He's gotta. He's got to get grounded. He's got to figure out what it is that gets him out of.
- [68:47]
Michael Franzese
Bed. All.
- [68:48]
Terry Bradshaw
Right? And then plow through it, man. Start gathering all you can. And failing. Failing is just part of life. And if you really love what you're doing, it's just a setback. That's all it is. It's just a setback. And then you dust yourself off. You try to figure out, what is it, okay, why did I lose my job to Joe Gilliman at 74 in Pittsburgh? Why did Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty beat me out in college? That is a joke. How did that happen? That was never.
- [69:26]
Chad Peterman
Happened. All right.
- [69:28]
Terry Bradshaw
You. And why did I transfer to Florida State? And only to get there and have the athletic director tell me, you better. But back Louisiana Tech, we're being. We're going to be filed on for tampering charges. You got to go back. And I had no money. And so back in the 60s, Coca Cola bottles, empty ones were nickel. You getting. You guys are way too young to remember this, but you could get a nickel. If you took them back, they'd give you a nickel form. So I went in all the little roadside travel lodges and I would go in because they had. Outside in the little hallways, they'd have the empty bottle stack. I'm gonna tell you, I stole them. I stole Coke bottles and I have any money. I stole Coke.
- [70:18]
Chris
Bottles. Terry Bradshaw.
- [70:19]
Terry Bradshaw
Rhino. Oh, I know, I know Rhino. But I stole Coke bottles and that was the only way I could get home. That's what I used for gas money to get back to Louisiana Tech. And then I had to face the players who I knew, who I had already known in my, in my mind. They did not want to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. They did not care that we lost. And I knew it. That's why I transferred and decided to go back and. And a whole new another side of Terry had to come out. And it did. But, man, resilience is just pretty simple in any business. It's just, okay, here's what I want. Here's where I want to get to. Here's my goals. I'm on this journey, which is fun. Journeys are great. I'm on a journey right now. I'm 76 years old. And someone said the other day, when you're going to retire, and like in the tombstone, Doc Holliday said, what? Retire? It said, no, I'm just reaching my prime. And that's kind of the way I feel, you know, So I. It's pushing forward, not giving up. And if you do give up, that's not what you're supposed to be doing anyway. Go find out what motivates you, stimulates you, get you out of bed, excite you about life, and then, you know, plow through.
- [71:35]
Chris
It. There we go. Terry said, just plow through it again. This all just comes down to, to mindset. And that's really my hope. From these, from these clips that we shared, from the best of is, you know, you can pull from each of them what you want. Some of it will be applicable towards business, some of it's going to be applicable towards you as a human being. Some of it's going to be applicable to just the way that you think about life in general. And we shared a lot of variation of clips in here from, you know, Ken sharing his wisdom, you know, my guys sharing their thoughts. An ex mob boss on how he, you know, leads through the most high pressure situations. If you've dealt with any, if you dealt with any suicide in your life or just loss in general is like, how do you get out of these funks and keep moving forward? How do you deal with headwinds and keep moving forward? How are you going to be resilient in 2026? You know, I got to think about the same things as a leader in my business. I got to think about the same things with this podcast, like how can I up the game and be better for all of you that are listening and continue to listen and are so loyal in 2026. And you know, a lot of times it's just getting your feedback, you know, that helps me kind of know the direction of what I, what I should do or where we should go. And you know, part of the plan is just continuing to bring on people who are successful that you don't.
- [72:56]
Charlie Sanders
Know.
- [72:56]
Chris
Right. So that way you can say, oh wow, okay, never heard of this person, but they just took their business from 10 to 20 or from 20 to 30 or 30 to 50 over the course these last couple years. When the market's been challenging, if you say how do they win? How do they get through it? And then you can relate how you can get like, I want to continue to find those in 2026, you know, and I think it's been cool that we've seen, we've seen a nice changing of the guards. Will say from the legends of this industry, the Geigers, the Goodrich, the Hanes, the Leland Smiths, the Jimmy Hillers, like all these guys who've been big players. And we're seeing the current day operators also becoming successful and we brought a few of them on. Daryl Bingham, Tony Patino from Abacus, Darlingham from Parker and Sons. And I want to start to share some of the more of those stories too. The current day operators. And that's what we're going to pull into Rhino X 2026 and we're also going to share some debates, you know, on maybe old tactics versus new tactics, things like that that I want you guys to hear. And of course we'll turn those into podcast episodes. But for now, listen, go enjoy your Christmas, go enjoy time with family. Make sure that you take some time to just sit and reflect on what does your year look like from a business perspective, from a personal perspective, what do you need to change? An upcoming episode we're going to have is around goal setting. I have to do the same process every single year, whether it's professionally, spiritually, if it's personally, whatever it is your health, whatever your goals are, just be thinking about that stuff. But do not forget to please take time and reflect and just think about what is next year going to look like for you. Be crystal clear on what it's going to look like for you. Just know that in any, any way that you're. You're going to run into some issue, some challenge, something is going to come up that's going to be a roadblock for you, and you've got a decision to make. Are you going to get through it? Are you going to avoid it? Are you going to let it take you down? My hope is that you see that you can absolutely get through it and you chase down whatever the goals are that you put in place and you win. And in some way that this podcast is a little part of your journey that helps you push through it. So listen, have a Merry Christmas and I excited to be on this journey with you in 2026. You don't got to do everything, but you got to do something. No. Zero.