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To The Point - Home Services VIP Room Podcast
The Business Playbook We Wish We Had 10 Years Ago
01:05:51
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- [00:02]
Chad Peterman
This is to the Point a Rhino.
- [00:06]
Chris
Experience voted one of the top home.
- [00:09]
Chad Peterman
Services, marketing and operations podcasts. Cutting through the and getting to the point.
- [00:17]
Chris
Hey, what's up to the Point, listeners. It's your boy, Chris. This is gonna be a fun episode. You know why? Because my man Chatty P on the other side has Lil Pete, as I call him, real name Julian Peterman, sitting on his lap at home. He is on dad duty today, so I'm sure you'll be able to. You'll be able to. To hear a little Pete on this episode of Time or Two until Granny gets there to help out.
- [00:41]
Chad Peterman
She just pulled up.
- [00:42]
Chris
Oh, there's Granny.
- [00:44]
Chad Peterman
Yep, there he goes.
- [00:47]
Chris
Well, hey, buddy. It's actually perfect because this is, you know, just a me and you episode. And you know what? Surprisingly, believe it or not, buddy, these actually do really well. These podcasts was just you and I do really well. The one me, you and Aaron was awesome. Like, it actually also did really well. Yeah, it was probably because of me and you. Not so much Aaron, I'm guessing.
- [01:07]
Chad Peterman
Oh, you know, naturally.
- [01:10]
Chris
Hey, real quick, before we jump into this thing and to all the listeners, just so you know, here's kind of what we're going to talk about in this episode, so I'll come back to it, but we're. I think the title is going to be the business playbook that we wish we would have had 10 years ago. That's. That's what we're gonna hit on. I'm gonna hit on the marketing side, the people and leadership side, the operations and scaling side, and also a little bit of a legacy and perspective to close this bad boy out. But real quick, before we get started, two quick things. Number one, Chad, it was fun to see your green screen recordings for our Redbird roofing video this morning. I didn't think you were recording those until tomorrow.
- [01:51]
Chad Peterman
So. Yeah, Jared had a. He had a busy schedule tomorrow, so we just did. But, yeah, my acting was on point. I think you're scared.
- [01:59]
Chris
Your scared face is dialed in. I'll tell you. Actually, it worked out good because it allowed me to kind of just play off of what. Of what you did. So I'll be curious to see how that thing pans out. But great job, man. Your acting skills are improving.
- [02:15]
Chad Peterman
You know, it's. It's like, you know, recording on two sides of the country. Always interesting. You were. You play. You were played by a microphone stand with a shirt on it.
- [02:27]
Chris
Awesome.
- [02:28]
Chad Peterman
Yeah. I was like, jared, what do we got working here? He's like, That's. That's Chris. So that's who you're gonna look at. I said, okay. Sounds good.
- [02:38]
Chris
That's actually cool that the guys can work together to figure that stuff out for us with green screen.
- [02:41]
Chad Peterman
It's pretty cool.
- [02:42]
Chris
Yeah, the. The one with the own. If you saw my email on it. But the one we're supposed to record for November with the Thanksgiving theme. He's like, oh, I want to get a video of you guys hugging. I was like, oh, can we please do that? Because Chad loves hugging. Let's make it a long hug. I'm like, wait, why did you even recommend hugging? Like, what the hell are we doing? Why are we hugging?
- [03:03]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, leave it to the creative guys.
- [03:10]
Chris
I just imagine you and how much you would love that.
- [03:12]
Chad Peterman
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- [03:14]
Chris
Real long, awkward, Keith Mercurio hug.
- [03:16]
Chad Peterman
Yeah.
- [03:18]
Chris
Okay. Hey, listen, I'm gonna jump into some dad jokes before we get started. And, you know, because now this is rolling out in October, I thought it was appropriate to roll out some Halloween jokes. What do you think?
- [03:27]
Chad Peterman
I think that fits.
- [03:28]
Chris
Okay, great. And since, you know, Julian's there, you can, you know, recite these back to him. He probably won't get it. Maybe Blake will have a better understanding of this, but if nothing else, you can tell them to Emily. I'm sure she'll really appreciate them.
- [03:40]
Chad Peterman
She loves my jokes.
- [03:42]
Chris
Oh, I'm sure. Okay, here we go. And actually, for all the listeners who've been listening the last few weeks have dad jokes have gotten progressively more vulgar. You could say not my fault, but progressively more vulgar. These are pretty clean. Okay. Just some good, clean Halloween jokes. So why don't skeletons fight each other? You're a smart guy, Chad.
- [04:10]
Chad Peterman
They don't have a bone to pick.
- [04:12]
Chris
No, no, no. I thought you were gonna get it too. They don't have guts.
- [04:19]
Chad Peterman
I get it.
- [04:23]
Chris
I saw you processing over there, though.
- [04:25]
Chad Peterman
Yeah. You know, trying to think of it.
- [04:26]
Chris
I thought you had it. Okay. This one, probably a little bit harder. Why do vampires. I wanted to switch it up a little bit. You know, skeletons, vampires, lots of different characters. Halloween. Why do vampires not want to become investment bankers?
- [04:42]
Chad Peterman
Oh, God. Where do we start?
- [04:47]
Chris
This is the easy one. I mean, where there's so. So many answers.
- [04:51]
Chad Peterman
The real answer.
- [04:52]
Chris
They hate stakeholders.
- [04:56]
Chad Peterman
Okay.
- [04:57]
Chris
They get killed by the stakes, you know?
- [05:00]
Chad Peterman
Yeah.
- [05:01]
Chris
Okay. Okay, last one. What do you call two witches who live together? Hey.
- [05:17]
Chad Peterman
That'S really.
- [05:18]
Chris
Got. So impressed. You got that? Yeah. That surprised me. Okay, good job. I was just about to give you a clue. You didn't even need it. Yeah.
- [05:26]
Chad Peterman
It's gonna be a hell of an episode.
- [05:27]
Chris
It's gonna be a hell of an episode. I'm so impressed with you right now. Holy crap. Just keep it rolling then. Because I, you know, the. I'm impressed you're on one. Like, let's keep it rolling. So I'm going to jump right into this episode again. We're talking about, you know, the playbook that maybe Chad and I wish that we had 10 years ago or what I've experienced, you know, with different contractors 10 years ago. So we'll go with mostly just probably going to interview a lot on this, Chad, and kind of get your perspective. But let's go and let's start to think, like, not too high level, but let's start to think as tactical as you can and start with on the marketing side of things. So what's one marketing channel that you wish you doubled down on earlier and which one turned out to be a complete waste of money?
- [06:15]
Chad Peterman
Yeah. So I would say early on. So I think, you know, branding, huge believer in. I think it's definitely something. We did not rebrand our trucks. So what most people know us as until 2021. So, like, we've only actually had that truck and actually this name. We were not always called Peterman Brothers since April of 21. Now people are like, you guys have been that forever. I'm like, no, it's actually just been four years, five years. And so for me, like, it was always like a. We had white vans with letters. I mean, they looked nice. We didn't look like we were selling candy to kids or anything like that. They were nice. But like, I only think of like when we were smaller and growing, like, if we would have pulled the trigger on that sooner. I think it's, it's, you know, it's a big investment, right? You gotta get it. You gotta get the brand built. You gotta have the story behind it. You gotta wrap the trucks and so on and so forth. And like, I just think like, the way people know us now, like, could they have known us then? I always tell the story of like, what convinced me to do the, the branding. Like, what was like, the last straw is like, we got to do this is I met with a guy who I'd like.
- [07:32]
Chris
He.
- [07:33]
Chad Peterman
Their office is literally down the street from ours and he, I met with him for coffee and I was like, hey, man. Like, you guys are blowing up. Like, what are you doing? And they had the wrap trucks with the brand and all this. Like, you guys are blowing up. Like, how many trucks you got rolling around? He's like, I think we have four. Four. And I'm like, you got to be shitting me. Like, this is my market. I should know what's going on. And yet that was, like, the thing that told me, like, oh, I get it now. It's because they're recognizable. You see them rolling down the road, and I think, you know, I think a lot of people have jumped on that bandwagon. So I'm excited to see a lot of these companies that are, you know, just starting out or a little bit smaller and looking to grow, like, because they've embraced the branding piece, I think is, you know, is going to, you know, make. Make a huge difference. Um, so for me, that's the big one that we didn't do for a long time, and I wish we would have done sooner.
- [08:26]
Chris
Yeah, that actually is a great piece of advice, like, that you personally experienced. Uh, and I remember your. I remember your logo before and after. Um, yeah, so I knew of the business before and after, and it's significantly different.
- [08:41]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
Yeah.
- [08:41]
Chad Peterman
100%. Like, that was one of the worries, I think. Cause we, you know, it used to just. Peterman Heating, Cooling and Plumbing, which was a mouthful to. I hate it when people ask me where I worked, like, oh, but, you know, now it's really easy. Peterman Brothers.
- [08:56]
Chris
That's it.
- [08:58]
Chad Peterman
So, yeah, that was the one thing, I think, looking back, I wish we would have done sooner. But, you know, it probably, you know, it all worked out. So here we are.
- [09:06]
Chris
And you just had the traditional red and blue. Yeah. On the white. On the white van. I love that you threw out that. We weren't giving out candy to kids. Very Halloween videos on that one. So.
- [09:16]
Chad Peterman
Yeah.
- [09:17]
Chris
Yeah. For those of you looking to. To get a brand done and, you know, there's a couple great options out there, but one of our sponsors, Prolific Brand Design, is one of them. It's done plenty of logos for a lot of home services. This is a great time to plug it, by the way. There you go. Right up. There you go, buddy. That was perfect. Okay. Okay. So the. The back half of that was. What's one of these marketing decisions that turned out to be a complete waste of money? Or the one that has that you still. When you think about it, you're like, okay, that's the one that, like, gives me the most pain.
- [09:52]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, that's a good question.
- [09:54]
Chris
Or it could be even just the one that you're like, you thought it was going to be so much more than what it was than what it turned out to be.
- [10:02]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, man.
- [10:04]
Chris
And maybe you need to think about this too, from not your current size business. You know what I mean? Yeah.
- [10:11]
Chad Peterman
So let me, let me. Let me spin it this direction because I can't think of like one in particular, but I think this will provide some context. So what I will tell you is when we were smaller, I was in charge of the marketing, right? And so it was kind of this like spray and pray approach. It's like, I don't know anything about marketing. I guess we get into the val packs and the money mailers and the newspaper and the, you know, this. This was like, we didn't have. We didn't have the dollars to be on tv. We did some radio. That was a thing type thing. But I would say just for listeners, I think the key is. And we talk about this all the time, and I think it's become more mainstream. But like back in 2015, even, which is crazy to even think about, like, it. You didn't. Measuring marketing, like, yeah, we put like a different phone number on there, but it wasn't something we were like, looking at religiously. And I think that's been a really powerful thing that, you know, you obviously talk about a ton and a lot of people are out there. Talk is like understanding what's working. Like, I don't think, like back in. Back in the day, like, I don't know that we knew what was working. Like, it was just like, well, we're spending money on marketing, so. And the business is growing, so I guess it's working. And I just think we could have been so more. So much more efficient with our spend that, you know, we were just doing things to just say we were doing marketing. Right. It was just like, put it out there, you know, make some copy, do. Do this, do that. And we never really meas measured it. We didn't look at offers. We were just very, I don't know, like, just novice at the whole damn thing. And I think that, you know, it taught us a lot of lessons, but I think we could have probably learned those lessons a little, you know, a little more cost effectively. But I think that's the biggest thing with. With any marketing. I don't know, like, hey, stay away from this. And you know, we see it still today being in different markets. Sometimes a certain marketing piece works really well in a certain market, but it doesn't work in this other one. Or it works for three months and then all of a sudden it just falls off a cliff or you know, all of these things. So I think like, people are always asking me, like, what, what my marketing like, spend is. Like, what, what do you spend on? What percentage do you spend on this? What percentage? Yeah, I mean, digital's pretty consistent, but all of the other stuff, like, it ebbs and flows like, okay, we're gonna do more here, we're gonna do less here. We're gon this market, but we're not going to do as much in this market because it just doesn't seem to work or whatever it may be. So I think that is, is critical. And then I also think too, when it comes to measuring marketing is being realistic about, because we see this a lot, is are you converting these leads? Because there's marketing which generates leads, but then you start looking at roi. Well, ROI is pretty closely tied to performance. And we see this most notably in like an area where we've got, let's just use an example. We've got a really good electrician, but in another market, you know, maybe the electricians just aren't as great at closing and selling big jobs. Well, like if I got one electrician who can, I can give him four leads and he comes back with, you know, 50 grand and then I give another one and I've got all of, I give them 20 leads, but they come back with, you know, 12. Well, then I'm going to look at that marketing source and say, well, that doesn't work. Well, maybe it works, but you're converting sucks. So I think that's important to think about when you, when you're analyzing a marketing source is like, are we doing our job out in the field to make the most of this lead? And sometimes, yeah, maybe it's a bad lead, maybe you're running into credit deads or something like that. But I think a lot can be said for. Are you doing your part? You know, you talk about it all the time. Well, I can send you all the leads, but if you can't book the damn call, I can't help you there.
- [14:10]
Chris
Yeah, I, I think that. Well, yeah, and, and I think half the battle still is that how do they know? Right? Because some people like, you know, but you have a, you know, you've got, Matt, you've got a team of people like, you guys look at these metrics. And a lot of the smaller companies don't have the, the person or the time to do those things or, you know, for whatever reason. So the, the thing that I've always looked at is how can I, how can I Rhino Chris, who's been this nearly two decades, right, for doing digital for home services contractors. But is how do I do it for them? So that way they, they know what they don't have to worry about somebody doing it for them. And, and because I completely agree with you, the conversation really has to be if I'm a marketing company, my job is to bring you new, new opportunities to sell something, right? Like that's the job that you've hired me to do. But you have some stake in that too. You have some accountability in that as the contractor. And that's oftentimes where there's always a miss is there should be two metrics that we're looking at. How are we performing and how are you performing? So to your point, your roi, your performance, that's really important for the marketing manager, the marketing coordinator, or you who's listening, who is all things to pay attention to because you can make a really poor decision because of your performance. But putting it on the marketing company, because if the marketing company says, hey, crystal clear, you only brought in 100 service leads and 50 install leads and so, and so is booking at a 28 rate. But hey, even though you only closed X amount in revenue, what's the pending revenue that can't, you know, that you've got proposed, that hasn't closed yet, that came from the lead volume. Like you have to take into consideration all that stuff. It's just no one's willing to do the work to do it. But now, you know, now with all of our, you know, most, most digital marketing companies I think today have some variation of like pretty decent reporting with just all the technology where it kind of brings it full circle is like, you know, we're able to, with Rhino Tracks 2.0, we're able to do, to do the integration with Service Titan. So I can pull in the revenue and attach it to each lead source, but I can also, I also want to see the pending proposals that didn't get closed and what does that revenue look like? Because that will give me a, a different, you know, maybe instead of it being a 7x, it's now a 12x if we would have closed all that. So it's just, you need to look at the actual opportunity. So no matter which, you know, marketing channel that you do, you should be able to measure it from end to end to find out is it your marketing company or is it you or is it both, you know, and then you can make a good decision. And I want to piggyback off that on Another quick thing that you talked about, and this is for everybody listening, that I think this will be really helpful. It depends on where you're at with the business too, right? Because you really got like three forms of marketing. You got your branding that you can do, you've got direct marketing and then you've got creative marketing. Creative marketing being like radio, billboards, tv, like that where you're trying to create interest, right? It could also, that also kind of falls into the branding category. Whereas like direct is like you're like you know, somebody specifically looking for exactly what you do with no business name in mind, I. E. Google or now Chat, GPT or whatever your LLM platform is. But you can buy that customer, right? And that's the world that I'm in. But it's more expensive, right? Because it's a demand. It's a demand lead. So it just depends on where you're at with your business. You know, if you, if you're in a position where you can't spend money on branding because you need business now to even survive, well, probably ought to consider doing some direct marketing versus some creative advertising, right? Like Chad, you didn't do that stuff until much later, much bigger when you said okay, now I'm not just going to do or it's you're doing and you're doing all of it. Now you can start to do more things and work on the brand and I'm a big fan of working on the brand but you have to like perfect example is with Redford. We pumped so much money into OTT and our branding right out of the gate to try and build it quick in a small little area, right? We tried to look like the like you, you like you say. We tried to look like the big fish in a small pond.
- [17:57]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
You're spending thousands to make the phone ring, but if your CSRs aren't picking up or converting, you might as well.
- [18:04]
Chris
Light it on fire.
- [18:05]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
And what are the largest businesses in the country doing about this? They use Avoca, the leading AI platform in the the trades. Hundred million dollar businesses like HL 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 a B, O, C A. Click the link below.
- [18:39]
Bluon Representative
If you've been listening to this show, you'll know that I only talk about tools that actually help our team and bluon is definitely one of those. At Peterman Brothers, our techs are using Bluon every single day. It's become their go to resource. It really is like having a senior tech in your pocket. They can scan a unit, get all the model data, wiring diagrams, parts, and even troubleshoot. With Bluon's AI, we've seen fewer callbacks, faster fixes, and happier techs. And that's why I'm such a big believer in Bluon, because it actually works. So do yourself a favor, click on the link in the description and book a quick demo with the Bluon team to see it in action.
- [19:24]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think too, on the branding side of things, like, we were able to do that because you created the brand and the story. Like, don't go spend money on branding if you actually don't have a brand to brand. Like, like, you better have something behind it. Like, if we, like, it would have been silly and like, I guess maybe that was like, you know, something we fell into. Like, if we would have done branding with our brand when we first started, it probably wouldn't have worked real well because our trucks looked like everybody else's trucks and, like, there was really no story crafted on it and all of this stuff. So, like, make sure you get the brand right and everybody has a story. Like, I've had people ask me that. Like, I don't really have a story. I'm like, I'm sure you got one in there. And if you don't make one up to a certain degree, I mean, don't be dishonest. But I mean, like, make up a story. Like, you know, I've seen all these ones that, like, I saw one the other day. Like, they have like a mascot and it's like, oh, yeah, this is our, you know, something. I mean, I don't know if it's true or not, but it seemed interesting. So, you know, maybe that's a reason to do business with them. I don't know.
- [20:34]
Chris
Yeah, well, well, and that's actually some people aren't creative enough to do that too. So it's good because this is perfect because this has given me so many good plugs. We. We used Prolific brand design for our Redbird roofing brand, and we did create a brand story. That's what Chad's talking about. It's super important to have that brand story, not just a logo and pro. I've said I've sat through a few now where Prolific just does that. Like, they've already got a brand. We're not Trying to create it, but they're. They're helping them come up with the actual brand, you know, the brand story because they couldn't do it on their own. So you can do those little services, but. But that's really important to tell that story because that's actually what really matters. That's how you start to, like, connect the feelings to. To the business.
- [21:10]
Chad Peterman
For sure.
- [21:11]
Chris
Okay. So I'm gonna pivot off of it. That's probably the most we've talked about marketing and branding on an episode in a long time, for sure. And one of the. Some of the feedback I got at Pantheon, because we were just there, I guess, a couple weeks ago when this airs, is people were asking us to do more like, of talking around marketing and branding. And I guess we don't. I don't know why. I guess I don't know why I dodge it so much. Maybe because I don't want people to feel like it's a Rhino podcast, but we should do more of it because we both do it. So. Okay, I am going to ask one more quick marketing question. You know what? No, I'm gonna skip this one because you kind of covered it already. I'm gonna switch over into your. Probably your favorite topic, which is like, people in leadership in the business. And this is gonna be more so around, like, another question that you get often we've talked about this is when did you, like, what was your first major hire? Right. And you probably have a perspective from today versus what you had, say the 10, you know, the 10 years ago or whatever. But what's the first leadership hire you wish you had made sooner? And how did waiting too long to make that hire cost you? Or some variation of that.
- [22:30]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, so one I wish I would have made sooner. So there's a number of them, a lot of them.
- [22:38]
Chris
Real quick, real quick. If you can. And if you can't, it's totally okay. But if you can maybe preface it with, like, where you were at in that. In the. Like, what is the business at and the size, like, so somebody can reference it.
- [22:49]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, I mean, because, like, if I were to say, like, here recently, it's been like, bringing in a really good cfo. But, you know, not everybody needs a CFO right now. So let's take it back to. And I've talked about this ad nauseum, but, like, I feel like we had no, like, the call center was just like, answer the phone, you know, like, we had Ashley and Pam and Christy and they answered the phones. Hell, I even answered the Phone. Sometimes when we didn't have enough people, you just answered this. Hey, how's it going? But like, we had no process. Process, no procedure. It wasn't. We weren't looking at booking rates. We were just. Just pick up the phone, you know, can we answer the phone? And so, like, for me, I wish I would have found somebody and even I could have done it, but I just. I wasn't focused on it. Right. It wasn't a thing. And so anybody, anytime I get a chance, it's like, where's your call center at? Like, we need to focus on that. Like, I've done. I did. I did the call center thing at the roofing conference that we were at in. Wherever the hell we were at. I don't think you were. Hoffman was there at the. Yeah, in. In Dallas. And then I'm doing another one in February, and it's all on call center. Like, these are the things you need to focus on. And so for me, it was like, if I could have found someone who was like, really good at that and knew all of the things, like, I think that would have, like, propelled our business. Because I often think about, like, all of the business that we lost because we weren't focused on answering the damn phone. It's just like, market, see what rings, pick it up. You know, I still laugh. I mean, like, the. The amount of detail in process we put on when a sales lead comes in today. Like, the way we want to handle it, how quick we want to get out there. We used to. I kid you not, when I first started, I did a little bit of sales. I know I was the worst salesperson ever in the history of H Vac sales because I can't. I can't ask for the sale, you know, and so I would. I would come back my desk and we would have. We. There would be these little service tickets on there. And this is in 2015. Okay, 2015. So not that long ago, we would be on service tickets and they would take a message because they didn't know what my schedule was because I was just route running sales calls. And they would write the customer name, address, phone number, needs quote for AC and furnace, and then I would call them back to schedule. I don't know, honestly, how we stayed in business. Like, looking back on it, you're like, that is the dumbest thing we would ever. I mean, we still laugh about it to day. We're like, you remember that? Yeah, that wasn't the best practice ever. But it all goes back to how we book Calls and the importance that you're putting on leads and all of that. Like, we didn't call them leads. They were just service calls. Everything was a service call. And I bet there's a lot of businesses out there that are still kind of in that thing, but I think you can, you can propel your business forward. I tell people all the time, you don't need to spend more money on marketing. You just need to book all the calls that come in. If you do that, your business will probably double. I'm just gonna guess. So that, that would, for me, that's the one. Looking back when we were smaller and trying to grow and trying to find our footing and where are we going to go and how are we going to take this? Like, if I would have found someone who was like dialed into that, like, I think it could have been really cool.
- [26:10]
Chris
Do you think that. First off, I always love this topic because it's so, so true and it's usually almost in every scenario somebody has something to fix there.
- [26:18]
Chad Peterman
Yep.
- [26:19]
Chris
I mean, with our, with our, with our own company and with Redbird, we're like, hey, no, we're good on leadvine. We need to focus on our sales process and our, and, you know, just this, all of it. Like, how are we answering our phones? Are we doing a good enough job of booking these leads? And like, so it's just constantly trying to learn. But this is like companies of all shapes and sizes, like Rhino. You know, I don't, most people don't know this. We don't advertise a whole lot, but we have a CSR coaching team in house and they are badass now. They're small and like Gettle, perfect example. Like, we work with Gettle and, and they're constantly trying to improve their rate. We work with any hour and we, you know, constantly trying to improve their booking rate. These, these are big, well built, you know, huge companies, like some very sophisticated and yet they're still getting CSR training. So I, I want to know from your perspective, what's the headcount you think before you actually bring in like a csr, like a, like a manager of that team? I don't know that I have a good feel for it other than like, well, once you have, you know, three, four people, could one of those people be the manager? I don't know. But like, you know, before you actually have to bring in a human being to manage a team. Because I think, you know, most people are thinking about it as an expense. Right. Like, not like you said, damn, I wonder how much we lost in sales. No one's really thinking. When you're small, you're not thinking about it like that. Most of them aren't. They're thinking about, oh, this is just another, you know, salary I got to pay or another, you know, employee got to pay for. And they're not thinking about the outcome of making. Of tightening up the, the booking. The booking rate on phone calls.
- [27:46]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, I mean, I, I think a huge mindset shift is your. And I got this from visiting places. Think of businesses where their call center are salespeople. So like, you know, here locally, Defenders, ADT Security, like they're selling you over the phone. So like, you go in one of their call centers and it's like, what is going on? I mean, we were down at. It's like a year ago, down at all my sons moving and they're selling moving quotes over the phone. It's like, it looks like kind of like Wolf of Wall Street. Like people are just going on the phone and they got scoreboards and all this stuff is going on. And I think even in our industry, even in H vac, plumbing, electrical or roofing or whatever it is, your people that are answering the phone are salespeople. Like, you may think, well, the customer called in and they already want something. So how hard of a sale? Yes, it's easier than selling a new system at someone's kitchen table, granted. But they have to sell it because the important. If you place the importance that you place on them being really good at their job is only going to set your technician up for success down the road. Like, huh. I talked to Susie on the phone. She was just. I mean, Tommy talks about it all the time. His mom answering the phone. You know, hey, Tommy's got to come out. He's great. He's got to do awesome this stuff. It's the same thing. Like, if you can have a really, really good experience, that first impression, then you're going to win business when you get out to the home. And so to me, I mean, to answer your question, I mean, we just, just had a meeting about it. We're like, well, we have this person, this person and this person answering the phone. And you're like, well, yeah, I see the hold cues or the missed calls and they're calling people back. We're like, well, shit, we can't do that. So to me, it's not an expense. Like, you need to be able to answer all of those calls. And if you can't, then you need to bring in Somebody because think about the revenue lost. It's like an opportunity cost. Like you're never going to be able to measure it because you don't know what those customers needed, what they were going to buy, anything like that. So to me it's, it's super important I think for the build. Like I would think if you had three or four CSRs and I think you're probably, most listeners are probably sitting there. If you've got like two, you probably need three. If you got three, you probably need four. Now when you get bigger, yeah, you can start to hone that in and what numbers you need and stuff like that. But I would think my, my suggestion would be like you have a team lead, like someone who's maybe not answering as many calls but is making sure everybody's doing their thing but still picking up some overflow. And I mean our supervisors today still do that. Like when it gets really busy, everyone's on the phone, like you just gotta do what you gotta do. But you know, that happens, you know, three, four months out of the year.
- [30:35]
Chris
Yeah, you know, I think actually I just think about that. I can't remember if I've talked to you about this or not talk to you about this. I'm sure I've had to have talked to you about it, you know, because I used to have you. If you, you will remember this. We used to have at Rhino like 80 some odd call listeners. Like that was their only job, was to listen to every customer's phone call. You remember that? Like we don't have that today, but it's crazy here in the United States. So like those are, those are a lot of, that's a lot of labor cost to listen to our customers phone calls. But the reason we did it is we wanted to know exactly what the outcome of the call was. But in the same time, like during the same time we could also, we could also score how the CSRs were doing on the calls like individually and then give each of them notes individually. And that was such a labor intensive process. Whereas today, you know, we have our coach AI tool which basically has taken millions and millions and millions of our phone calls over all these years, plugged it into an AI machine that we created, you know, to spit out, okay, here's a real time, here's this overall call performance, you know, for whatever, whatever lead is on the specific agent. It gives the coaching notes, it also gives the coaching on sentiment. Right. Which has been the biggest pain in the ass is trying to figure out sentiment. But now it's like something like 99% accuracy. Like it's so freaking good. Well, the reason I shared that is this is like a type of tool. Like again, we haven't rolled this thing out. We'll probably roll this thing out as an a la carte option in the near future. Actually, it might even be now. I just, I don't even know. But the point was it allows someone to be able to manage the CSR team without having to do all the call. He already gives you the notes, ranks the, ranks the technique or ranks the CSRs for you, tells you, oh, it seems like of the 400 calls they took, 28 of them are the same objection that they can't overcome. Like, so it even tells you what needs to be coached on it. And it does it all for you when. That's the beauty of AI today. So. So I guess for what I'm saying is for anybody who is smaller, like the 3 to 4 or the 2 to 3 CSRs, is there are tools like this that can help you. That's not completely going out and finding somebody to manage it while you're smaller.
- [32:38]
Chad Peterman
Yeah.
- [32:38]
Chris
But you also got to have somebody use it to do something with it too. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to shift gears one more time real quick because we kind of talked about your main hire. We kind of hit on this CSR thing and paying attention to it, but finding somebody to pay attention to the overall performance call handling performance of the business. And by the way, if you're the person answering your own phone call, take a look at yourself too, because you know if you're doing a good job or not. Okay, now let's flip the switch and let's go to the bad hire. Okay, so we want to talk about a little bit of hiring mistakes. So what's one bad hire that hurt the most? If you have one that stands out to you? I have one that stands out to me. But I'm asking you, and how would you prevent that mistake? Today I want our listeners to hear what a bad hire was.
- [33:24]
Chad Peterman
So, I mean, I've had my fair share for sure. Everybody will. It's part of it. I think for me, it's been not being clear on what I actually wanted the role to do. Like, that's when I've made my worst hires. Like if you make a hire and you don't have a really. I mean, everybody probably has a job description, but do you have KPIs for every position? And we don't yet. We're working on it. But that person needs to have KPIs and can they actually do this? I think it's also important to talk to people before you hire. Like one of the, one of the main roles that I always get because I feel like as companies are growing, it's always looking for that marketing person. Right. It's like, how do I find the marketing person? And I think for me it was like, well, I'm not creative. I need someone who's like super creative. Right? And it's like, okay, well that worked for a minute. But then as you get more strategic and you're trying to figure out what source is working and all of this stuff and I think we made some, we made some bad decisions on that. Not that they were a bad person. It's just like in this industry, you are not a marketing person. You are a lead gen person and you need to be skilled in. You need to have a digital background. In my mind, you need to have digital background and you need to be really comfortable with data. Like, I don't care what the ad looks like, I care that it works. So if black and white is performing better than this big, colorful, fandangled ad, then let's run the black and white one. But I think so often we're looking for like a marketing person who's like super creative and can like do all of these things. And it's like, to me, you almost need a data scientist who can choreograph. Because most of your marketing people, most of your marketing things, if you want to run a print ad, they'll design the damn thing for you. Yeah, you need to know, okay, don't do this, do this. Make sure this is featured, not this. There's some basics for sure, but I think it's just someone who's really into the data because that's what marketing is all about. And we talked about it earlier. If you don't know the numbers and how your marketing's performing, you are going to blow a lot of money and wonder why my company's not growing and I'm not making any money.
- [35:59]
Chris
Yeah, dude, you actually hit a really good point. I'm glad you. I, I think this is something that's worth kind of hanging on for just a second and talking about. Is this marketing manager, marketing coordinator role. Yeah, I think it gets misunderstood and I actually, and, and I know for a fact there's a lot of marketing managers and marketing coordinators that killed companies. And the biggest problem is, is that one, when you are a marketing manager coming into a company and You Chad doesn't understand xyz. Well, it's easy for you to get sold on it, right? Because one they're in marketing because they usually got good chops, right. They kind of know what to talk about. But do they really? And most I shouldn't say that my experience has been is I've worked with a lot of marketing. I had a call just, just yesterday and I got a, I got a web analysis from their marketing coordinator. Right? A web analysis from the marketing coordinator. And it's focused on the metrics that they were focused on to use as to determine success was website traffic. So which, okay, yeah, you got to get people on the website but it's so easy to manipulate that number, right? That's not a metric that you actually should be paying attention to. And events now. And this is like kind of a one off deal. But the point is like, like a good marketing manager knows how, what metrics to look at to determine success for their marketing partners. That's it. Lead, volume, cost per lead, like you know, per channel. A marketing coordinator is the person that executes on the manager's plan, right. Or is the one that follows up to get the data. But really what you have to be is like here's a perfect example. When I became a cmo, like an actual traditional CMO when I shifted over from CEO to CMO early on, that's basically a funnel math position. Like I could come up with some great ideas and say we're going to do this and I would pass it down and that person would execute. But really my job was to only pay attention to the numbers. That's it is what are we spending and what's it generating a business for us and at what cost and how are we performing on it. Right. And then that was my job. I was managing the math by the way. Hated that part of it. But I learned a lot.
- [38:15]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, well, I think that's it. I think that's a good point. Like when you think about interviewing this marketing coordinator, marketing manager, like ask them what, what was the last campaign you ran and what was the data around it? If they can't answer that then you probably know you got the wrong candidate. Like I think that's the one thing I always look for. Like in, you know, we're kind of looking for a marketing person and I found a resume the other day and like the thing that was like intriguing about it was like the fact that they put in there drove this percentage of sales reduced spend by this much. Like to me that said okay, this, this is a marketing person that may be worth talking to because they actually don't, don't put, develop creative and really fancy stuff and creative design and all of this. Like, there's a place for those people on your team at some point in time, but most of that can be outsourced. You need the person who's going to dive into the data and know how you make money. This is always so Matt, who you met at Pantheon and met before, but you know, he always, he always says the first day of orientation for anybody on his marketing team is he takes them through. This is how this company makes money. You need to understand how it makes money. And I thought that was so genius. I was like, oh, that's so perfect. Because you need to understand how the business works and then, then figure out how marketing fits into that. Like, oh, okay, they need leads and they need good leads and this is a better lead than that one. Okay, perfect. Well, this is what we want to do.
- [39:57]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
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 a job done? If your brand looks like everyone else's, well, guess what?
- [40:13]
Chris
You are everyone else.
- [40:14]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
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.
- [40:33]
Chris
Or costing you money.
- [40:35]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
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 don't go into the spam folder. Hell, that's how we roll at Prolist 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.
- [41:11]
Chris
Be prolific.
- [41:12]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
Look, I've seen every new tech tool in the trades. When I first saw Contractor Commerce years.
- [41:18]
Chris
Ago, I thought, cool idea.
- [41:20]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
But will homeowners really buy systems and do estimates online?
- [41:25]
Chad Peterman
Hmm.
- [41:26]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
Well, they are big time. Summit Heating did over $500,000 in installs with instant estimates. Peterman Brothers is crushing it with their filter subscriptions. It's not theory anymore. It's actually happening. So, yeah, Paw Paul's not crazy.
- [41:44]
Chris
This is the future.
- [41:46]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
The future is now. Go to contractor commerce.com and see it for yourself.
- [41:51]
Chris
Yeah. Work it backwards.
- [41:53]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, yeah.
- [41:55]
Chris
Because how else do you know how to, what call to actions or words to use or whatever, what creative to use to get to the end result, which is that. That lead or that type of customer too, by the way. And when you start thinking about plumbing, H vac, electrical, there's lots of variables within each of those, especially plumbing and electrical, you know, that you could be creating, you know, putting together creative to go after. But I think that's an important conversation to have because I've spoke with so many marketing manager who will literally lie to protect themselves at the. At the, you know, risk of hurting the actual company overall.
- [42:32]
Chad Peterman
Yep.
- [42:33]
Chris
That happens so frequently. And it's just because, you know, the owners think they know what they're talking about. And then. And then if the marketing company defends themselves or they're like, well, of course you're just defending yourself at the marketing company. That's. Oh, my God, we should just put out the metrics that matter. Like, these are the things that your marketing person should focus on. Like these metrics right here. Then we're all on the same page and they're like, there is no protecting yourself. Like, this is the number.
- [42:57]
Chad Peterman
I sent some new. I sent a newsletter spawning off of this podcast named Metrics. Metrics that Matter.
- [43:04]
Chris
Metrics that matter. Okay. Metrics.
- [43:07]
Chad Peterman
Hot off the presses.
- [43:09]
Chris
Hot off the presses. Okay, I think we got something here. Metrics. Okay. And I'll just have. I'll just have my data analysts at Rhino just create the metrics that matter and keep plugging in. Okay, perfect. Okay, we're gonna move on past that one. My God, we're already 40 minutes into this thing. Okay, I'm gonna shift gears one more time. We're gonna go to operation stuff. Some. Some operations questions. And I know you like talking about this too. I know another guy that really loves talking about this. His name is Ken Goodrich, who hasn't been on here in a while. He's like, keeps texting me to. To come on and. And not keep texting me. But he. And I've been texting back and forth about quite different. A bunch of different things. And he's like, I gotta get down there, down there. He spent a little bit more time up in Scottsdale and Tahoe, which is good for him. I'm glad he's doing that. I mean, excuse me, in Vegas. And Tahoe but he loves to talk about systems and processes. Right. Like the E Myth is like. The E myth is like what he talks about often. It was his foundation he did, you know, wrote the H Vac E myth.
- [44:14]
Chad Peterman
The.
- [44:14]
Chris
He's wrote. He wrote the E myth Plumber, which is coming out. I don't know if I just like, ruined that or not, but if we did, There you go. Surprise. It's coming out soon.
- [44:22]
Chad Peterman
Early, early release. The early.
- [44:25]
Chris
Early release for you. First heard it here. Okay, so when you look back, what system, what system or process do you wish you had implemented earlier that would have saved you years of headaches? And you already talked about the csr, so you can't go down that path.
- [44:41]
Chad Peterman
Yep.
- [44:42]
Chris
So what system or process you wish you'd implemented earlier that would have saved you years of headaches?
- [44:49]
Chad Peterman
The turnover process in H Vac sales. Yeah. I think so many people miss on this and it's just like you're hoping that you get a turnover and this, that and the other. So I'll take you through the whole process. So here's how we think about it. So I know that a system has to be over 10 years old for me to turn it over. In most cases, right. It's out of warranty, it's getting older, so on and so forth. So it's important that this process starts. I know you said you couldn't talk about the call center, but it starts in the call center. You should be asking, what is the age of their equipment on every single phone call. I don't even care if it's a plumbing call. What's the age of your H Vac system? Like you can weave it in there somewhere. We need to get that data because that data allows you to be productive, especially given that we're doing this in August. And here in the Midwest, we are in shoulder season where the weather is beautiful outside. But that means that most people are not using their H Vac equipment. So once you know how many. So if you got a hundred customers and you know that 40 of them have over 10 systems, the first thing you need to do to be effective at a turnover process is you need to make sure that you have those leads on the board. Most people are like, oh, we didn't. We don't have an install for tomorrow. Well, how many opportunity calls did you have on the board today? What do you mean? I don't. We don't. What? Well, yeah, you got to have the opportunities in order to do them. You're not going to probably get a Lot of marketed leads in 70 degree weather. So making sure that you have that and then making sure that the technician is dialed in on their process. Because so many times we never coach on this turnover process. We coach on turnovers with our technicians almost every single week. Like the only time we take a break is when we're super busy in the summer. But like we are coaching on it all the time. What objections are you getting? How are you pitching it? What does it look like? All of these things that you have to go through over and over and over again. And so you get that process dialed in and then you've got to have a really good turnover process. If you're running in home comfort advisors, what is the speed at which you are getting that CA to the house? Because the longer that wait time, your close percentage is going down quickly. That's why we do virtual sales. Now that's a good plug for Ken, he's the one who created it. So there you go. Someone was asking about that the other day. They were like, that is such a novel idea. I go, no, got it from Ken. That's who did it. So, but anyway, so like there's so many steps to taking a service call that is an aged opportunity call all the way to system sale. And to me it's like you've got to focus on that. Like you should know how many opportunities you need to put on the board every day because you should know your close rate on turnovers or you should know your turnover rate. So ours runs on maintenance calls, so not a service call. We're aiming for about 15, 15 to 20% of the aged maintenance that we run. We should turn and so we know that number and then, so you take that down to then what do we close turnovers at? So we want to close them at about 65% so we know that number. So then you should be able to predict how many installs you're going to do every single day. Now imagine what impact that would make on the business if you could predict that. You can fill your install board when it's 70 degrees outside. And you can. It's possible, trust me. You don't have to sit here in shoulder season going well. We haven't had any work. We haven't had any work. We haven't had any work. Is it going to be as plentiful as when it's 95 out? No, I'm not telling you that. But you can sustain and keep the guys busy through shoulder season if you're proactive and really work the whole system through. You can do it, dude, that was really good. Thanks.
- [49:02]
Chris
You were on one.
- [49:04]
Chad Peterman
It is literally like, we, trust me, for years and years, we were like, oh, it's September. We're not gonna have any work. Like, it's just. Is what it is. Where today, like, do I fill all my crews up? No, but I can still. I mean, we're still putting in, you know, 15, 16 systems a day when it's 70 degrees outside side.
- [49:23]
Chris
Yeah, that's great. You said, you said right before you got into that, oh, it's August. I'm like, bro, it's not August. It is.
- [49:29]
Chad Peterman
Did I say August? It's September. I don't know what month it is. It's almost October, for God's sakes. How did we get to this point?
- [49:36]
Chris
And this podcast actually is out and it is already October as people are hearing this. But your point is made and I actually appreciate it. I can tell you're a little passionate about that. I am. That's actually good. You gave, you gave the listeners some metrics on how. What you guys look at as a good benchmark. So I appreciate you doing that.
- [49:53]
Chad Peterman
That.
- [49:55]
Chris
Okay, so let's. I'm gonna just ask one, one question around expenses and. Because there's definitely, like, things that you take on that you're like, this is really expensive. Perfect example. When people switch CRMs, they think about, oh, if they're switching to service it and it's more expensive, or you think about, oh, man, the onboarding. Or it's probably a mixture of both. Like, both of them are a big deal, but they cost, you know, there's. It costs a lot, you know, so what's an expense that. That you use that or that. That you used to think, man, this is too expensive. But now, now you're like, hey, but this is a must have for scaling. So it's easier to see when you're bigger to think about it, I think. But you know, what's like maybe that first, you know, big expense that you, you know, that you took on that you're like, oh, shit, I could not have scaled without that. That expense spins.
- [50:49]
Bluon Representative
Yeah.
- [50:49]
Chad Peterman
I mean, I think the easy answer is service titan, right? That one's easy. Let me try to think of something else. I mean, obviously having a good software that has good reporting capabilities and all of that. I'm trying to think of like, yeah.
- [51:03]
Chris
While you're thinking about it. Yeah, while you're thinking about it. Let me just address that real quick because it's. I think it is a Good answer. And I do want to try and get something else out of this. Yeah, but, but that came to. Not to mind naturally, because to me that seems like it's such a critical piece of scaling these businesses. Do they have to have it? Are there other serums that can be used? Yeah, there are, I think. But we were just talking through this on like man, we use in our roofing business, you know, Acculinx is a serum that we're on. We will be transitioning to service time, but it's a big lift and it's much more expensive. But with the experience that we both have on what it can do to actually help scale your business, it also helps it make it easier, you know, to manage process and pricing and structure and it does all these other things for you that's a part of that, that expense. So yes, the serum could be one of them. But wait, maybe what's something else that comes to mind on, on an expense?
- [51:58]
Chad Peterman
What's something else that's expensive?
- [52:02]
Chris
Well, and remember, remember, expensive is relative, right? To.
- [52:05]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, for sure. Like what do you get the biggest bang for your buck?
- [52:09]
Chris
Yeah.
- [52:10]
Bluon Representative
Hmm.
- [52:13]
Chad Peterman
Man, I'm like drawing a blank here.
- [52:17]
Prolific Brand Design Representative
Well, well, let's.
- [52:18]
Chris
So let me. I'm gonna bail you out.
- [52:21]
Chad Peterman
Appreciate it.
- [52:22]
Chris
So there's a couple ways that I can think about it. And that is, you know, you let me talk about it from the CRM is one thing, marketing could be another one. Right? Because you don't quite understand how marketing expenses, what they produce. You just think about writing the check and not what actually provides you in the end. Also, I want to say, like, I think it's good to think about what are your, what are you offering to your employees, right? Like what sort of benefits or what sort of, you know, like remember we've done this forever and we still get to do a variation of it now. But at Rhino, even as we scaled from me and Anna to you know, 250 people or whatever, like we still did that once, you know, that we don't do it today. Now it's, it's like basically once a quarter, but we would do the one Friday at least once a month where we would go and do community service. So like nobody's doing work, right? Like it was, I mean we had to flip flop, right, because you can have nobody answer the phones. But, but at least one day a month we're here, we are spent, you know, paying everybody's salaries to go and just do community service together. And when we went to market to look at private Equities. They were like, what? Yeah, what you're doing what? Because it is a big, you know, but employee churn was. Was very low, you know, in that time, because it was really good at kind of building that, you know, the team and kind of going and doing something together. I'm just throwing out an example of how you can think about it as like, damn, like, that's why. Why would I do that? That. But I'm thinking long term. Like, one, I did a lot of good with it, a lot of good with it. And. And a lot of people got to do a lot of good with it. So I feel really good about that. But it was really good for the culture of our business. Like, I really love that part.
- [54:17]
Chad Peterman
Yeah. So I'll say one, I'm going to say two things. One, I'm going to kind of transition the question out, but I think it's still in line with what you're talking about. But, you know, one of the benefits that we do, that, like, super simple, but people absolutely love it, is. I don't know where I got this idea it was from somebody, but that we give your birthday off. So it's a paid PTO day. Is your birthday. Yeah. I may have taken it from you. Hell, I don't know. It was someone. I didn't come up with it.
- [54:43]
Chris
Give me credit.
- [54:45]
Chad Peterman
Thanks, Chris. The beautiful people at Rhino are proud sponsors of that benefit here at the Peterman Brothers. But it was like the silliest thing. Like, sometimes I feel like the sillier the thing that you give, the more impact it has because it's like those little things. But people love having their birthday off. Like, it's like the one thing that's like, yeah, I never get rid of that benefit. Like, sure sounds like a plan, but I can't think of an exact thing. But the one thing I think is important to say here, mainly because we've been at what seems like we've been at a number of conferences over the month of September. And at all these conferences, there are a lot of vendors and a lot of these vendors have different solutions. And to your question, a lot of these solutions could end up being those things that you can't. That have a huge ROI and that are things you look back upon. You're like, how did we ever operate without this thing? But I think it's important to view all of these options in that lens. Like, what is this. What ROI is this thing going to give us? Because I think so many people are stuck in these, like, shiny Object syndrome things. I mean, the one thing that. The one thing that made me think of that was talking to some of the vendors at Tommy's conference, and they were all like, dude, we booked so many demos and all of this stuff. And I'm like, like, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Like, it's good that they're checking it out. And obviously, I wish all the vendors. I mean, a lot of them are our friends. I wish them all the success in the world. Hell, you were a vendor there. You know, I wish all the success in the world, but it's like one of these things where, like, I feel like contractors, like, yeah, we're running this and we got this and we got that. And I'm like, does it work? Well, we're not real sure. Okay, well, maybe just, like, scale back and start over and make sure that one works. And so I think that's the important thing is like. Like, you know, trust but verify. Make sure that everything is working properly, or else it's going to turn into an expense that is costing you money because you're not even using any of the capabilities of this new tool.
- [57:03]
Chris
Yep. Don't. Don't. I mean, don't go a mile wide and an inch deep.
- [57:06]
Chad Peterman
Yeah.
- [57:07]
Chris
This conversation so many times, I actually want to throw on one more quick thing to our listeners that I thought was a really cool benefit that we have done differently. I don't know if we still do this today or not, which sounds really bad. So, Ryan and Rio, you guys have to tell me, this is like, a thing. Do we still do the Masogi benefit? No. Okay, that's gone. So we blame private equity, not Chris. Nana, I would love to bring that thing back. Let me tell you why that was such a cool thing. And. And, you know, it's. The typical things are, oh, you can get massages, you can get your house clean, stuff like that. I love the house cleaning thing because it's always cool when you can come home and not have to do that. You can just kind of. Kind of spend time with your family. Right. And you don't have to worry about having somebody clean the house. You come home to a clean house, it feels good. And I love being able to give that benefit to people. But the misogi was something I learned from a guy named Jesse Itzler. Like, back in 2019, I took my leadership team to Georgia. That's back Still. When Tall Paul was still. Or our vice president of sales. And we learned about this Musogi benefit. And it Was we would give the. The employee, or as Tommy says, the teammate, the a thousand bucks to kind of go and do something that they won't forget that you're like, it's. This is the most memorable thing. Like you went skydiving. You'll never forget the. The time that you went skydiving. And we gave them that opportunity and paid for it for them. Now, does something directly come from that? No, but it's all part of the culture of the business is like, how cool to do something unique like that that most others don't do. But you gave them that experience, and they might not have gone and done it. Like, Elliot wanted to go to. To do the ice. What to do? Is it Wim Hof. He wanted to go do, like, the ice thing in, like, Switzerland or wherever the hell that Wim Hof guy is.
- [58:44]
Chad Peterman
That sounds like Elliot. That sounds right up his alley.
- [58:48]
Chris
And clearly that's a little bit more than a thousand dollars. But I was willing to give it to him to give him that experience, and we would do that once a year for everybody, which is a cool benefit to give him, you know, because when you treat somebody like that, like, this is where I kind of go with it is it's just different, and it makes people feel a little bit more special. It's not so work related. But then ultimate hope is that they continue to work really hard for you when it gets hard. Right. Because you're taking. Taking good care of them. Okay, I'm gonna shift gears one more time, Chad, because we're kind of coming up on the end of this thing. I missed one question I. I wanted to hit on, but I'm gonna go switch to, like, maybe let's have a legacy question or perspective. I think we're two. We're too young to talk. Like, I mean, you're too young to talk legacy.
- [59:29]
Chad Peterman
You know, we're just getting started.
- [59:33]
Chris
I got four, maybe five in me.
- [59:36]
Chad Peterman
And then four, maybe five in you.
- [59:38]
Chris
And I'm tapping out. What's the hardest lesson? Actually, you know what? No, no, I'm gonna change this one up. If you're. If your younger self, if Little old Chadwick. By the way, everybody who's listening, that's his real name, Chadwick.
- [59:55]
Chad Peterman
No, it isn't.
- [59:57]
Chris
Well, I'm doing that to you, man. Pete. Pete Peterman. If you're listening, and I know you have been, you missed a good opportunity to call him Chadwick. If you're, you know, if little Chad was listening to this episode, what's the one play what's the one play the one thing that you would tell him to. To run immediately. To do immediately. And, and this might be, this might take you back to your first aha moment with your next star partner when you're like, oh, do what Jim did, do what John did. You know, like do this. If you're talking to little old Chad, little old Chad, the Ron Collie ringer who's listening to this podcast, just trying to be something great, trying to be something special, trying to be a little giant.
- [60:49]
Chad Peterman
Yep.
- [60:50]
Chris
What is it that you're telling him to go and do and do now? And by the way, this does. This can be anything. I don't care if it's business, personal, whatever it is. Like what, what would you, what would you tell Lil Chad?
- [61:04]
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- [63:03]
Chad Peterman
So I think for me it's more on the personal growth side. Now that can mean a lot of different things like read books, listen to podcasts. There's so much Information out there. It's great. You know, obviously, be careful who you listen to. But I think the biggest thing for me, like, just thinking back, like, so I started working in 2011, and it was probably 2015 before I ever, like, talked to another contractor. And that sounds weird in today's environment with all the conferences and stuff, like. Like, I think I spent the first four years. I don't know that I ever went to a conference and met any other contractors. I don't know that I, like, went on a shop tour. Like, I never, like, asked questions. And some of it was like, I didn't even know what questions to ask. I didn't even know what the hell we were trying to do. But I think that, you know, and a lot of it is like, these. I get so many questions and great questions and conversations at, like, these events where people are coming up and asking like, hey, how do I do this? Or, hey, this seems to not be working. How do I fix this? And a lot of it are, like, really simple answers. But, you know, it's not that they're stupid. It's just that, oh, I didn't think of that. And I've had many. Hell, I probably had some of those today. Like, what in the hell are we doing? Why didn't we do it like that? So I think the more you can get out and network and interact with people, you know, shop tours are great. Go see those and find out what people are doing. I mean, you know, I still talk about it today. The first, when I went to Morris Jenkins In 2018, it changed. Like, sounds weird, but literally changed probably the course of our business. And Jonathan and Brandon down there still joke with me. My COO was down there, like, a month ago, and he's like, well, we told him to do that in 2018. You guys still aren't doing that. And I'm like, well, okay, sorry, sorry. You guys are, you know, got it all figured out. If you ever want to feel bad about yourself, go there. They've got a lot of shit figured out for sure. But, like, stuff like that, it's like, I still remember that I could still walk you through their building with my eyes closed. Like, I just. It soaked it all up. And I think the more of that that people can do and see what's possible. For me, that was the biggest thing. Like, once I saw it, I'm like, all right, it's possible. We just got to figure it out. And I think so often, you know, you get stuck, there's no growth. You're Struggling, you're fighting up against it. Seems like you're hitting your head up against the wall. And sometimes the unlock is just seeing that it'. And for me, that's what it was. I mean, I've been, you know, fortunate enough to go to a bunch of great ones, whether it be Horizon or, you know, obviously, Morris Jink. I mean, just a ton of shops, and it's like, holy crap. Like, we got to get our shit together because these guys are crushing it.
- [65:56]
Chris
Yeah. And you went and saw other places too, like that, are you? Yeah. Which is. Which is cool. I think that's a really great answer for a couple reasons. One, it gives you a chance to see what's possible. Right. Or what is currently being done that you could do. But it also gives you the visual. And I think visual cues, like you said, you can walk through it with your eyes closed. You also, these visual cues create, you know, a feeling in you, which then creates some sort of action if you really want it. Because if. Now, if you can see. That's why visualization, I think, is such a cool thing. And I did visualization for a long time. Like, we just kind of sit there and think through as if you've already accomplished the thing, so you can kind of get the feeling of it.
- [66:34]
Chad Peterman
It.
- [66:36]
Chris
That's a. That's a, like, trained technique, you know, like, nobody. I listened to podcasts that taught me how to do this, and I just did them. And it feels weird sometimes. Like, you know, at Home Service Freedom, I talked about, you know, I. When I had was, I did a keynote for those who are listening. I did a keynote presentation at Home Service freedom. There's 1500 contract or something like that. Chad and I did a. An exercise with the crowd to say, you know, what's three things that, you know when you think about yourself today? What are the three things that you would say, you know, to yourself in the mirror? And then what are three things you would like, just, you know, you would like yourself to be. And the point was, is, like, talking to yourself was important. Like, how you talk to yourself is super important. And people feel like it's weird. It's not weird. It's very normal and very. A lot of very successful people kind of talk to themselves. It doesn't have to be verbally. Right. But, like, you definitely are like, you know, it's just like if you're an athlete, like, you're sitting here thinking, like, okay, like, you pump yourself up however you do it or. Or whatever, before I go on stage and speak I'm still talking to myself back there, like telling myself, you know, okay, this is what I want to accomplish on this thing and I belong here. And I, because I have this skill, like, I like pep talk of myself, but that's really important piece of it is to, to be able to visualize like what you want and what you're working towards. And the best way to do that is to go see the things that you want to be like. Because once you see it with your own eyes now you can, can, you know, you can see what it actually looks like, what that, what is where you're trying to go actually looks like. And you have that in your brain. Absolutely.
- [68:04]
Chad Peterman
I will tell listeners though, just as a disclaimer, I've been trying that exercise that you did at home, service freedom. And I keep telling myself that I'm going to be taller and I not, not getting any taller.
- [68:14]
Chris
It's not a magic mirror, bro.
- [68:16]
Chad Peterman
No, no. So can't visualize that. But business wise, yeah, it works great. But height, now, it's not going to knock. Not going to get me up to the six foot range, I guess.
- [68:27]
Chris
Listen. Did you hear that, listeners? Did you hear that? Chad came to us with jokes. He came to us with joke. Instead of a dad joke, it was a Chad joke.
- [68:39]
Chad Peterman
There you go.
- [68:40]
Chris
Booyah. Okay, here's my piece of advice. It's gonna be very simple. Take action, right? I've said this many times from stage, but you know, ambition without action is useless. So you know, it's great. They have all the ambition. You can go and to visit the places and do the things and write down the, and meet the people. But if you do nothing with it, it's no good. It was a complete waste of time. So just take action. If I'm gonna tell little Chris, Little Chris Mason calls me a little boy. I'm gonna call myself a little Chris. I would say take action, man. Like I've always pretty much dreamed, you know, dreamed big. And I've went after everything that I thought I could do, even when like, it seems completely unreasonable because I just. But I've. That's the gift that I know that I've had for myself is I'm not afraid to take action, even if I don't have all the shit figured out. So to everybody listening, take action. Go and try the things and be okay with failing and be okay with being embarrassed because on the other side of that stuff is something incredible if you actually keep chasing it down. You have the vision and you go see the things so, dude, great episode today. Thank you for, for, you know, just playing along with all the. That we come up with for these episodes. That was. That was fun.
- [69:48]
Chad Peterman
Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully it helps. I mean, there's a lot of. To me, this one was. Is really good because there's a lot of stuff you can just take action on. Yeah, go. Go do it.
- [69:57]
Chris
Yeah. We talked marketing, we talked leadership and people, we talked ops, we talked, you know, perspective, you know, goals, all this stuff. And. And it was good, man. Good episode. So I, I listen, Lil Pete did not disrupt. Was not disruptive at all through this. Like, Granny came to save the day. You tell her I said. You tell her I said hello, by the way, and that I miss her.
- [70:20]
Chad Peterman
Noni is a godsend. She's. She's the greatest. I love that I hit the lottery in the mother in law lotter.
- [70:26]
Chris
For sure. Yeah. I. I get to share a. You know, we. Whenever I come in, I get to stay in. In her room, so I'm always grateful.
- [70:33]
Chad Peterman
Exactly.
- [70:35]
Chris
All right, man, well, listen, I'm gonna hop off here. You're gonna hop off here. We're gonna go do our thing. You get back to little Pete. I know it's later there. You know, sun's going down a little bit sooner there, so. And I gotta get myself ready to go to the Cardinals game with my son, so. Appreciate you, bro. To all of our listeners, we, like Chad said we gave a lot of tactical information here. Chad's shared some really great stuff. Stuff. Hopefully I was able to give you some things that you could take away with it. And as we, as we always say, you ain't gots to do everything, Chadwick.
- [71:05]
Chad Peterman
But you gotta do something.
- [71:07]
Chris
No. Zero days.