Keep Them Coming Back with Proven Client Retention Strategies

Speaker 1 Don't always go to your technician, your installer, your manager, because you're not going to get all the raw information that you should be getting.

Speaker 1 You should always talk to the consumer, especially in the early stages of doing business when you have less than 10 people.

Speaker 1 Your ass should be on the phone with a consumer, finding out what's wrong with it because the reviews are telling you what's wrong inside the operation.

Speaker 1 The reviews are giving you a glimpse, giving you an insight of the operation that you're not seeing. That's why people are going in there and obviously complaining of it, right?

Speaker 1 And our jobs as entrepreneurs, our CEOs, and operators is to pay attention to the consumer and pay attention to what they're saying.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Speaker 1 Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mellow.

Speaker 1 Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

Speaker 1 To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you.
Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299.

Speaker 1 That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.
Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.

Speaker 1 I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.

Speaker 1 Now, let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Sexpert.
Today, I got two of my great friends, Travis Ringen, Ishmael Valdez.

Speaker 1 Tom Howard, unfortunately, couldn't make it. Not the first, not the last time.
Ishmael is a pro when it comes to. Actually, Ishmael's best trait is definitely recruiting.
He is a beast.

Speaker 1 And Travis is just really analytical. He puts his mind to something.
He'll figure it out. How are you guys doing? Good, Thomas.
Thank you for inviting us, buddy. And congratulations

Speaker 1 on your podcast. Thank you.
Yeah. Is this the best podcast in the industry? Sorry.
Is this the best? Yeah, no, it's number one. Thank you.
It's actually number 10 in business in all of North Carolina.

Speaker 1 Congrats, man. Honestly, congrats, because that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort.
So that's the best. It just takes consistency.
Never missed an episode since 2017, not one week.

Speaker 1 Never missed one.

Speaker 2 I thought you were going to tell me Ishmael's best quality is talking about himself.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do.

Speaker 1 Thomas, his best quality is talking about himself. It's good to have you guys.
You know, I just, you know, it's interesting because Tom Howard, we talked to Aura a lot with Service Titan.

Speaker 1 It seems like right now, 80% of the businesses are going down for the first time in Service Titan's history. and 20% are actually rising to the occasion.

Speaker 1 And Tom's been flying around the country, making a lot of phone calls, trying to figure out what's going on. What do you guys think?

Speaker 1 I don't think they're going down. I think they're struggling, though, for sure.
So, I don't think they're going down per se.

Speaker 1 I do think some of them are going to go down, but I wouldn't say the vast majority are going down. They're struggling for sure.

Speaker 1 And I believe the struggle that they're having is due to lack of innovation. If I could, yeah.
I mean, they're down on revenue for sure, sure, for sure.

Speaker 2 The data shows that. And, you know,

Speaker 2 we had our heyday there through

Speaker 2 COVID and everyone was at home. Moved up, you know, speaking in terms of HVAC at least, like moved up a lot of those replacements, replaced those systems early.

Speaker 2 We also had the housing boom that, you know, really played into that. So those systems all came up at one time.
But there's definitely major shifts in consumer sentiment and behavior.

Speaker 2 They're holding on to their money right now. Election years are always tough.
So I think we're seeing a lot of different things that are changing the way consumers are buying.

Speaker 2 And, you know, the people that are adapting are growing and the people that aren't are struggling and going backwards.

Speaker 1 But I think that,

Speaker 1 you know, there's $4 trillion sitting along the sidelines, $4 to $5 trillion. And one thing we've learned through COVID is we're essential, home service.

Speaker 1 And I think private equity, venture capitalism, rich people. are like, where could I put my money? Not putting it into hotels, not putting it in nail salons because if COVID 2.0 comes out.

Speaker 1 And by the way, AI is not taking our job. AI is not taking our job.

Speaker 1 So I was on a podcast with Leland Smith the other day. And man, that dude is still a GOAT.

Speaker 1 That's my boss. He's sharp.
Yeah, he is.

Speaker 1 He just kept talking about lifetime value and how much their list means a lot and how much having past customers that they've done work for. And, you know, he's a little old school with the mailers.

Speaker 1 And I think you guys have been working long and hard at a newer way of thinking about it in this new day, day and age, about being in front, top of mind of the clients at all times.

Speaker 1 So I'm a big fan of Nuve. You know, Ishmael called me up one day and said, do you want to make an investment? And I said, absolutely.

Speaker 1 You guys, you've been traveling to Armenia and just, you got different developers all over the world.

Speaker 1 Tell me a little bit about what you guys think about holding the customer.

Speaker 1 I don't, I don't know who to pick, but tell me a little bit about what it's, what it's all about, because a lot of people have heard this this and they think Nuve is just a thermostat, but there's so much more to it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, the cost of paid search is up drastically. You know, some searchlight data said 28% in the last two years or since 2022.

Speaker 2 And one of the things we know, you know, every private equity did go to the trades, right? And part of that is you're not going to outspend private equity in marketing. They've got massive budgets.

Speaker 2 So they're driving the cost of these leads up. And one thing that, you know, we wanted to solve as a group is, you know,

Speaker 2 everyone is always going to paid search to get a new customer. But, you know, we've seen all these

Speaker 2 testimonials where like, hey, I started remarketing my existing customers. And man, those databases are so valuable.

Speaker 2 That's what Leland's alluding to is if you can reach those existing customers, then there's so much more there. And they already trust you for the most part.
Right.

Speaker 2 And so what we set out to do is look at how we can retain these customers and what the road or the speed bumps on that road are, how we make it easier for a customer to reach the contractor than Googling, because right, Google is a convenience thing, like they do that.

Speaker 2 But at the end of the day, the best case is they get on, they Google your name because they remembered it, and they click a paid ad, which is going to cost you several hundred dollars, most likely, depending on the industry and location.

Speaker 2 Worst case is there's someone conquesting your great brand that you just paid kick charge to create. and they're going to a competitor now, right?

Speaker 2 And so our goal that we set out to do is how do we help customers, you know, know, really build a moat or a contract

Speaker 2 build a moat around these customers and make it easier than Google to contact them or proactively reach out to them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Ishmael, when you got involved, I know you saw something there.

Speaker 1 It's dangerous getting into the tech world because a lot of things can go wrong, but it seems like you guys have nailed it.

Speaker 1 I think you went about it a little bit slower to make sure the tech was right. You tested the shit out of it, made sure that it works every time.
And what do you, I know you get a lot of of ideas.

Speaker 1 You're like, no, it needs to do this. It has to have this display.
It needs to be able to hit the button and make a phone call.

Speaker 1 Talk about some of the things that this thermostat actually does and why it's important from the consumer standpoint as well. Well, the consumers, to them, it's just a regular thermostat, right?

Speaker 1 They could download the app, they could control it, they could turn it on, they could turn it off, they could put their settings menu.

Speaker 1 Like to the, we didn't, that's the one thing we didn't want to mess with because we didn't want to mess the consumer,

Speaker 1 how they interact with the thermostat. What we did want to do is build a tool for the contractor to be able to communicate with that consumer and to be able to

Speaker 1 keep them away from Google, right? That was our main thing. If you go back to how air conditioning, what happens in a customer journey when the consumer needs you,

Speaker 1 we all do the same thing. Every customer does the same thing.
They go to the thermostat, they turn it on, they figure and the unit doesn't turn off. What's the first thing they do?

Speaker 1 They go on Google, they go on Yelp, they go on Angie's this, they go on search to be able to look for somebody to be able to come and service them, right?

Speaker 1 And when I started paying attention to that consumer behavior, I noticed that they don't do that in the alarm industry.

Speaker 1 When something goes wrong in my alarm, right, I have ADT, you probably have Bell or whatever other, when something goes wrong with it, I go to the panel.

Speaker 1 And if something's wrong, the number's right there, the logo's right there, the company information is right there.

Speaker 1 That's the one part that as me and Travis and Tommy and Tom and obviously yourself too came in.

Speaker 1 That's the one part that we wanted to solve because that's where the contractor loses the control of the consumer.

Speaker 1 They go to the thermostat, it doesn't work, and then they go on search, and then search does whatever they do, and they just pawn that lead to whoever bids better, right?

Speaker 1 And that's the problem that we wanted to solve, and that's where the original concept of Nuve came about.

Speaker 1 I think there's something there that I really like about Nuvet too, is being able to turn the unit on before summer hits.

Speaker 1 being able to test the stuff because typically the one hot day in whatever city or state you're in, you go to hit it and it doesn't turn on, you get flooded with calls.

Speaker 1 This allows you to kind of test before that day.

Speaker 2 And I wouldn't, you know, I would challenge everyone that like it is just a regular thermostat, but there's features there that are really a benefit to the end user, which is the customer, right?

Speaker 2 The homeowner. You know, the remote testing that you're alluding to, I know, you know, if my wife and I have to schedule an appointment, it's like, well, who's going to be home?

Speaker 2 you know what's your schedule look like the remote testing avoids another visit in the home right and then the the remote monitoring that we can see you know, live and historical data, we can pinpoint issues, the ability to get ahead of problems.

Speaker 2 You know, if that system breaks, the contractor can proactively reach out to the customer and say, hey, you know, I know you're at work.

Speaker 2 I know you're at dinner, you're out of town, but we're going to alert on your system. We need to get you set up.
You're a VIP in our system.

Speaker 2 We need to get you set up for an appointment as soon as possible.

Speaker 2 So there's a lot of benefits that come from it, but we did design it to be a look that customers are familiar with, something they want in their home and to function like a normal thermostat day to day.

Speaker 1 I love it. I love it.
So all this data, all this stuff, it's, it's, there's a lot of things coming out right now in the home service space.

Speaker 1 And I think what you guys are just trying to do is keep it simple. Yep.
You're trying to make sure that they're aware and just look at the data.

Speaker 1 So what are some of the things you guys can notice from that is going to be an issue? from the data. So

Speaker 1 looking at the runtime on the units, we were able to see like, hey, if we do these remote testings, when it's, 80 degrees outside and we'll test out the unit for 15 minutes and be able to see like, is it pulling down the temperature or is it pulling up?

Speaker 1 right just with that data we're able to see like hey the unit's running efficiently or no it needs somebody uh it needs somebody to get out there if the unit's taking an hour two hours to cool down your house obviously there's a performance issue and we want to get out there which leads back to the point that travis is is is is saying monitoring these systems and being able to call your consumer before they even know that there's a problem.

Speaker 1 That's the second problem that we're solving with Nuvet. The first problem was the customer journey, taking control of the customer.

Speaker 1 The second problem is being able to go above and beyond for your customers, for your existing customers

Speaker 1 before it breaks down. Because look, everybody's chasing replacement leads.
Everybody's chasing leads right now. Now, imagine if you're a consumer and

Speaker 1 a contractor and you're calling the consumer saying, hey, there's something wrong with your unit. We need to get out there before they start searching for somebody else.

Speaker 1 That's a huge problem problem in the industry. And before we keep talking about NUVA,

Speaker 1 Tommy, I do want to say, like, the point of NUVA and why Travis got involved in it and Tommy and Tom Howard and we're all collaborating in this project is because we notice that there's things in the operation.

Speaker 1 We notice that contracting is not, you know, smooth, everything runs perfectly. Like there's still kinks in there that needs to be worked out.
Marketing needs to be more efficient.

Speaker 1 The operation needs to be run

Speaker 1 way better. Like there's problems in the industry that we all need to team up as young entrepreneurs.
Right.

Speaker 1 And that's what, like, that's probably like the dopest part of working with Travis and Tom Howard and yourself. Like, guys, we don't have the answer.

Speaker 1 And Nuve is not the answer for everything that we're going to solve.

Speaker 1 We need everybody in the industry that are, you know, starting their businesses or have their businesses or see that there's something wrong in the operation to come in and help us out and keep and keep innovating the operation and keep and keep making it more efficient because making an efficient operation only leads to more more profit right you know it's funny i was listening to dan pena and i also uh jeff bezos recently and they said the thing that makes a visionary so powerful is their ability to fail like if you're in baseball and you got a 300 batting average that means you're hitting three out of 10 and that's world class right and everybody just it's the people that sit and wait and they wait for these innovations they don't do anything about it.

Speaker 1 There's so many companies I know that are, we're just not ready yet. We're not going to do this.

Speaker 1 Everyone at this table jumps in head first and we figure it out. We jump out of the plane, we build the parachute.

Speaker 1 It doesn't always work.

Speaker 1 And we're okay failing. Yes.
Like failure is okay. And there's one thing to take away.

Speaker 1 You know, there's a lot of things going to be in this podcast, but there's no special day that you're like, finally, I get to work on this project.

Speaker 1 Finally, I'll take a chance and expand or whatever it is. Now, obviously, don't expand unless your current market that you're in, that you are located in, is killing it.

Speaker 1 I think some people try to expand too quickly. Or add a service.

Speaker 1 They add a service when they suck at their current service.

Speaker 1 Or they expand or they add a service thinking that that's going to repair the operation. That's not always the case.

Speaker 2 But yeah, Tommy, the perfect time will never come for sure.

Speaker 1 You know, Leland said the other day, and I just really enjoyed his wisdom because he's older and he's just, he was, he was just on. He was perfect.
And he said, you know, Tommy, I was invested.

Speaker 1 I was involved in this best practice. It's kind of like we are.

Speaker 1 All of us. But they sent in their financials each month.

Speaker 1 And he goes, I was the worst one out of all seven of the companies I was involved in.

Speaker 1 One day they told me, just sub out insulation and sub out hot water heaters. He goes, so he subbed it out.
He goes, we didn't train on it.

Speaker 1 We just mentioned it. We sold 30%.

Speaker 1 And I like that idea of subbing out before you get good at it. We've been talking about this a little bit at A1.
It's just, see if it's got merit. My top 20% of my guys are begging for more.

Speaker 1 You know, everyone's like, we got to work with the bottom 20%. We got to bring the 30th to 60th percentile up.
I'm like, dude, our assassins, our ninjas want more to sell. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, and Leland was right. He's like, my, my top two guys made a million dollars.
He's like, they did 7 million each. And I'm like, man, our guys, our top guys want more.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, let's give them more than rather than everyone focuses on the bottom instead of focusing on the top. In sports, though, who do you focus on?

Speaker 1 Do you think Tom Brady was at practice and they were focused on what he wanted?

Speaker 1 Do you think that Wayne Gretzky, do you think that, you know, I could go on and on sport by sport, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, like those guys were like, how do we become better? And I feel like

Speaker 1 as a home service company, we're always like, our top guys are fine. We don't give them the love.
We give them love, but I'm saying like they want more. They want more to sell.

Speaker 1 They want more things to be able to offer.

Speaker 1 I'm really like, I told everybody this weekend, I'm like, our top guys need to get fed more. They want to make more money.
And you know what?

Speaker 1 They'll make two, 300 grand, but I think they should be able to sell more things and be able to make as much as an HVAC guy. Yep.
There's no reason why they shouldn't.

Speaker 1 There's no reason why they shouldn't. And not always like how you're bringing it up, like, hey, the top guys should be fed more and more.

Speaker 1 The one thing that you can't teach people, Tommy, is the hunger

Speaker 1 that somebody has inside of them. Like those bottom 60% people that you keep

Speaker 1 that you're mentioning that, you know, are just showing up to work, clocking in, clocking out, those people are just always gonna live their life like that.

Speaker 1 No matter what you tell them, no matter how much you pay them, no matter what roads you lead them to, no matter what, like, no matter what you do, I promise you, those people are comfortable living their life, clocking in, clocking out.

Speaker 1 And you're right, we do need to keep feeding the top performers and innovating the way we, you know.

Speaker 2 And top performers only have so much time in their day, just like everybody else. So if you give them more verticals, they're already producing.

Speaker 2 Anything you're not giving them is?

Speaker 1 Well, this idea of recruiting I think I used to think I could find like there's certain attributes that really make a person stand out like they tell a great story they get good eye contact But here's what I figured out recently they have responsibilities.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they've got a wife. They've got kids.
They've got a car payment.

Speaker 1 They got goals They've got big goals and they want more but it's the people that still just and you might you might meet a 22-year-old that just hasn't stepped into the responsibilities yet.

Speaker 1 They're still out there. I mean, I'm sure both of you guys have worked with early 20s that just haven't they just don't have enough pressure.

Speaker 1 They don't have the pressure because you still have mom as a backup, mom and dad.

Speaker 2 Of course, hey, man, whenever we got someone that was married with kids, I was like, yes, this person's going to be responsible.

Speaker 1 Married, what else is the, what other things are attributes you guys? Think about your top 10%, like the killers. I got one.

Speaker 1 What I've found out in the top performers and Nextion and across, you know, other

Speaker 1 businesses that I've seen, the top performers are always like, you know, grabbing the better car, grabbing the better watches, you know, going in there and getting the second house.

Speaker 1 So they're building financial pressure in themselves to be able to perform. And that's one of the key attributes that I always look at when I, when I'm recruiting people.

Speaker 1 And, you know, you said at the beginning, at the beginning of the podcast, you know, I'm relentless in recruiting, man. I love recruiting.
I love talking to people.

Speaker 1 But when I do recruit it, I kind of put them through a journey. of asking them questions of where they're at in their journey just to see where I'm going to place them in the operation.

Speaker 1 Because you walk in and it's like, yeah, I've been, you know, I have my four kids. They're out of college already.
Mortgage is paid off. You know, wife is good.
She doesn't work.

Speaker 1 Like that's not going to be a super hungry person that's going to show up to work and want to fucking innovate the wheel or nothing.

Speaker 1 But you come up with a 25-year-old that just got married, had their first kid, they're about to, you know, look for their first house.

Speaker 1 That kid is going to show up to fucking work every day and trying to grind down and make as much money as you can. So those are the things you got to pay attention to.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 That reminds me of that.

Speaker 2 Jerry, who's in the the room with us here, just sent me a meme that's like, boy, math is buying a bigger boat, so I have to work harder.

Speaker 2 So it's those guys, but there's two other attributes I would say that I've noticed is that typically guys that have had, or guys or gals that have had a little bit more of a rough upbringing, they've kind of got a chip on their shoulder.

Speaker 2 They want to prove themselves. They want to prove the world wrong.
I've never seen higher producers than those guys. Like they have something to prove and they'll go out and do it every day.

Speaker 1 And so when I was running ProSkill, you know, responsibilities, a family, and then you know a rougher upbringing was always the guys that really went out and produced for us yeah you know it's funny how you brought that up trees because you know the ones that are rough around the ages too are dope too like i've had like the top performer that lean in was talking about that made over a million dollars worth at nextion he's been there for four years he's made you know i think he's gonna make like nine nine hundred thousand this year at nextion tattoos neck tattoos fucking you know tattoos all over like you can tell he's not a well pop but once you hear him speak and the way he carries himself the confidence he has when he presents and all that is uh is dope so like a little rough around the edges is not always a bad thing those people are always uh you know there's always some kind of molding that you could work with yeah well i you know it's funny because ken goodrich and i were talking actually did a podcast with him recently and he goes dude he goes my daughter tells me all the time

Speaker 1 what motivates me is when somebody tells me i can't he goes I'll never forget the day I was in a hotel room and it was like, I got to see the grandmaster.

Speaker 1 He's like, this older guy would like grant you. He'd look at your financials and tell you what to do.

Speaker 1 And I walked in there with my spreadsheets and I finally got picked on and I went in there and he goes, what's this crap? Get rid of the Excel sheets. I don't trust them.
And he goes,

Speaker 1 and Ken goes, well, listen, my first goal is I'd like to, you know, after I buy the real estate, I'm looking at, I'm going to buy myself a jet. And he goes, I'm sorry, Ken, but you're.

Speaker 1 you're not a jet material. You'll never own a jet.

Speaker 1 Just get that dream out of your head because a guy like you will will never own a jet and kid ken's like he walked out of that room and goes i'm buying enough jet i will buy a jet and that chip on your shoulder that when people tell you you can't and you're right that it's it's like the people that might have had a little bit rough childhood or parenting that people said you're never going to amount to anything oh yeah and that's important because listen i i think we all learned at a young age the people that really produce a lot it's like we had to go out on our own and i'll slow the like we've learned to work hard no one was going to give it to us we had to make a move.

Speaker 1 And there's a lot of people.

Speaker 1 These guys might do good in business, but they're more entrepreneurs. Like, let me go sell.
You handle payroll. You deal with the legalities.
You do the EIN number. You do the taxes.

Speaker 1 You do the call center. Let me just do important stuff.
Well, it's super important. Of course.
But the sales side, it's so funny because I look at what Fetchitech did.

Speaker 1 They hired Dan Antonelli with Kick Charge. They rebranded it.
You know, these guys right here. And they took the customer list.
They hired a few good players.

Speaker 1 And the sales,

Speaker 1 it wasn't like some crazy marketing. The marketing was good, but it was reaching out to the list and monetizing the existing lists.

Speaker 1 And it was good service for a long time, just putting a few good sales guys up. And

Speaker 1 to lead on to that, there's some companies out there that are struggling, Tommy, that are looking at like, man, is it my average ticket? Is it my repair? Is it my conversion? Is it this? Is it that?

Speaker 1 It's your fucking sales department. Like, your sales department covers up so, let me rephrase this.
your sales department covers up so many fucking mistakes in and out of the operation. Like,

Speaker 1 there is nothing, there's almost nothing in the operation that sales can't cover. Yeah, and

Speaker 1 we're forgetting about that because we're so focused on KPIs and driving and marketing and custom acquisition for customers, and Google, and all this stuff.

Speaker 1 We're so cluttered in all those numbers that we forget that we are fucking sales before, we're a sales mission. Tommy and Leland talked about he's like every morning from 7, 8 a.m., role play.

Speaker 1 He's like, and it doesn't stop.

Speaker 1 And what's nice is he goes, I had good guys that would come teach my guys that didn't have it. They'd role play, they'd role play, they'd role play, they'd role play.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of people are like, it's time to train again. And I'm like, training never stops.
Training never stops.

Speaker 1 It's like, and you know, I just had a meeting. What we did, and this is very complex, but it's the only way I knew how to do it.
We looked at how much per job, because we're in 44 markets. right

Speaker 1 so we looked at how much each phone call as a dollar amount goes into the the managers and all the helpers salary so it could be a warehouse guy it could be the manager and we got anywhere from nine dollars all the way to forty dollars and we figured out the happy number is 17.

Speaker 1 so if you want more help in a market but we're going to hire a lot more coaches We're going to bring a lot more coaches to go in and work.

Speaker 1 Smaller markets are going to be on a plane a lot and bigger markets are going to be full-time. And that's their only job.

Speaker 1 Their job, one of the things I used to make a mistake of is be like, okay, you're going to be recruiting. You're going to be training.
You're going to be doing this, this, this, this, this.

Speaker 1 And we always give our best guys more work. We're like, even though you're very working 60 hours, I'm going to find more for you.

Speaker 1 And you're like, and then you, then you watch them fail and you're like, what's wrong with you? So I'm like, this is your soldier.

Speaker 1 I already started writing up all kinds of bullets and everything they're responsible for because these guys need to know. Like, what does my calendar look like? What does my day-to-day look like?

Speaker 1 What is I at 8 a.m., what am I doing? At 9 a.m., what am I doing all the way through? When I'm sending guys back to Phoenix, what am I looking for?

Speaker 1 What's the software I'm using to hold them accountable? Is there an LMS learning management system? All these things.

Speaker 1 And if there's like training,

Speaker 1 and so many people, how long have you guys settled for B players? I mean, in the early days, dude, that's the number one problem that the industry has.

Speaker 1 The number one problem that the industry has is that we all settle for B and C and D players because there's not enough A players. That's the major issue.

Speaker 1 And I'm talking as a

Speaker 1 high, high out of this universe spectrum, looking at the operation in, is we do not have enough people, enough A players or enough good people working inside the trades.

Speaker 1 That's the number one thing we got to fix as a, as. as a team, as LSD, as

Speaker 1 entrepreneurs, as the next generation of contractors coming in.

Speaker 1 If we can fix where, you know, people want to be plumbers, they want to fix garage doors, they want to be AC technicians, they want to do that.

Speaker 1 If we can fix that side of the spectrum, then we don't have to worry about the 20% of your company driving 80% of the revenue. That's right.

Speaker 1 Right now, we're doing that because there's only 20% that we can recruit.

Speaker 1 The other 80% are working at Google, at Facebook, at Service Titan, at all these other companies because of all the things that they do for them. We need to fix the recruitment problem.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 2 we definitely do. And I think we've started to see a push in that, you know.
But, you know, unfortunately, a lot of the training we do today is reactionary. It's not proactive, right?

Speaker 2 So it's like, oh, well, my guys aren't doing this, like you alluded to, but we got to train again.

Speaker 2 But if we were proactive and held people accountable to the standards that we require in our company, how many of those B players would actually be A players?

Speaker 2 Because a lot of these guys are going to need the support. They're going to need their hand held to build these, to learn the processes within the company.

Speaker 2 And I see it in every company I look at is that, you know, there's always going to be the guys that go above and beyond, but there's a lot of really good B players that could be A players if they had the help and support that they need.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and experience. I think I see it all the time.
I mean, look, I've never seen, I remember, what was it, eighth grade was the first football team I was on.

Speaker 1 And all of us didn't know how to scrimmage. We didn't know even really how to, you know, we knew there was We understand how football works, but we, when the snap happens, what goes on?

Speaker 1 And we had to practice, practice, scrimmage, practice, practice, practice. Then we need special teams to coach us on certain things.
Then we need to learn how to run the drills.

Speaker 1 What drills are you guys running out there? What plays are you guys running? What scrimmages are you practicing in the home or are you practicing in your training center?

Speaker 1 And it's not only sales because listen, if you can't find the price in Service Titan, if you can't take somebody through Service Finance, Green Sky, or Good Leap, if you can't, have you ever bought your own product?

Speaker 1 If you've never ran through, if you can't run your your wife through Goodlea very quickly and efficiently, how do you expect to self-financing?

Speaker 1 If you can't find the parts effectively, if you don't have the tools, one of the things, the reason I buy tools for Avatex is because they showed up with like their grandpa's blue gun.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, okay, we need all the right tools so that we'll never be, because I don't have tools to do it quickly and efficiently, I'm never going to sell it.

Speaker 1 And so there is, there is some things in the price book and stuff. And I think sometimes.
I always say this. I used to tell people to raise their price.

Speaker 1 I'm like, don't raise your price until you raise your service. If you can't get out of it, raise the value.

Speaker 1 Raise the value yeah amen you know last bachman i listened to a uh instagram post he did and he's like dude at last freedom event tommy mellow was saying raise your prices 10

Speaker 1 we went back and we raised everything in every one of his businesses 10

Speaker 1 they lost two clients total out of everything yeah and that's what's crazy is like there's a certain lid on that though i think we all know there's

Speaker 1 And I don't raise my prices like, you know, Tom told me, he's like, the two, every time I raised my prices, two things that was like, really stood out was like, my garbage disposals cost like three grand.

Speaker 1 He's like, that was a mistake because, like, there's certain things you could get at Home Depot and Ace hardware that you don't just capacitors and garbage disposal,

Speaker 1 those ones are tough that you could just Google it. But that reminds me.

Speaker 1 So, if there was something like a Nuve, but not the contract that didn't give all the insights, I guess it would be comparable to a Nest as far as you could go on your phone, you could look at the temperature, you can adjust the temperature.

Speaker 1 Why would anybody in a track

Speaker 1 across north america why would they still buy nests over nuve because we are the we are the first uh i mean why why not buy new vae because we are why not buy it or why buy why would they even be thinking about

Speaker 2 like it's almost a rhetorical question right thermostat built for contractors by contractors you know obviously nest echo b these guys totally tuned the contractor out when corner rollout they went straight to the consumer but contractors are the largest installer of thermostats in the nation, right?

Speaker 2 So why cut them out? So that's really another thing, just a problem that we saw. New Vey had all these warranty issues.
They came to the contractors or Nest.

Speaker 1 In 2018, Nest had 2018-19, Nest flew me out. It was me, service champions, Bell Brothers, Phil from ASI.
It was like five of the top contractors in California in 2018.

Speaker 1 They flew us all out to Google headquarters and they had the big fucking problem in the industry. And people don't know about this because it was an exclusive meeting just for us five.

Speaker 1 and their meeting was like hey we have so many you guys we're gonna give you guys free leads everything everybody's gonna have free leads and i'm like why free leads oh it's because we sold all these thermostats and we're having all these customers call us and they're you know they don't seem to know how to install these thermostats and we're just having too many warranty issues so they're not free leads they're warranties and that's the one part that i did not want that we at new vid did not want to skip we did not want to go around the contractor we did not want to just sell this to the public because look at we can literally call Goodman right now or call Home Depot.

Speaker 1 We have the relationships where we can grab Home Depot and be like, hey, put this on your shelf. It's going to be the next best thing next to Nest, right?

Speaker 1 We can do that, but we didn't want to do that to our fellow contractors. And that's one of the main things we want to.

Speaker 1 And isn't there?

Speaker 1 I'm not in the day-to-day.

Speaker 1 I'm a big fan, obviously. I put my money where my mouth is.
Oh, yeah, you do. But the deal is, is like, what happens if another contractor goes out to ABC or call ProSkill? Yep.

Speaker 1 And ProSkill installed this thermostat. And now

Speaker 1 next gen they try to get into the settings.

Speaker 1 How does that work? So the contractor will get notified. If they try to get into the settings, they'll see the logo in there.

Speaker 1 So once the contractor tries to get in, the original contractor will get notified. Then you have the option to be able to contact this customer and be like, hey, you have another company out there.

Speaker 1 You're at risk. Probably still under warranty.
Yeah, it's probably still under warranty.

Speaker 1 Hey, you're at risk of voiding the warranty if you have anybody else work on our systems that we've created which right now there's hundreds and thousands of people out there that worked on a unit a next gen unit right and there's a nest or an echo bee or a honeywell and they called somebody else because we couldn't get out there soon enough or they forgot who did it and guess what we lost that customer nobody even knew we didn't you think that somebody called next year and say hey i'm about to go with somebody else no we just keep losing customers that's why our retention and this is across all platforms in the home service industry, is less than 10%.

Speaker 1 Our overall retention is less than 10%.

Speaker 2 It goes back to, you know, Tommy. I know all three of us sitting at this table are just got on early on reviews.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you get a one-star review and it's like, hey, let me talk to the customer. If I can talk to that customer, I can turn the experience in the review.

Speaker 2 If I can't talk to the customer,

Speaker 2 I've got no shot at it. So the whole thing is like, hey, if there, there is a process.

Speaker 2 If you want to fire a customer we can remove your logo no problem but no one can go in there and just steal the thermostat and own that wall that that you installed the device on and that really goes back to looking at the alarm industry and how they retain at such a high rate and it goes back to two things that we really reached a conclusion on a that they have a subscription model that gives customers the peace of mind that it's their house is being monitored for their safety and Nuve does that through monitoring of the HVAC system for their comfort.

Speaker 2 And then B, is that they have proprietary hardware, as Ishmael talked about earlier, in the home with their logos on it.

Speaker 2 So, you know, Nuve is locked down to the contractor that installs it, and that will never change. That'll never come off the contractor's dashboard unless the contractor chooses so.

Speaker 1 So, you know, in a fast-paced industry, how do you balance staying true to the basics while also adapting and pulling on these new technologies?

Speaker 1 Because I know some people are like, dude, I can barely log into service titan.

Speaker 1 And I don't, they don't understand their their

Speaker 1 finances completely. Like, how does this work? And that's the one aspect when you asked us, hey, you know, to the consumer, like, how do, what, what, what different, that's what we didn't want.

Speaker 1 We want the consumer to know it's just a regular thermostat. We don't need them.
We don't need to teach the customer something else.

Speaker 1 We don't need to go out there and, you know, retrain your technicians on everything, how to wire it, how to like.

Speaker 1 to the consumer and the technician, we want them to know, just install this thermostat, put it on the wall. Now on the back end, that's where we come in.
And you're handling it all.

Speaker 1 of course that's all that's where all the back end onboarding comes in where all the dashboard training comes in with all messaging

Speaker 2 train on like turning on the thermostats pre-working it like you guys will handle that from the new there's not like if i am the contractor that owns the hvac company or the general manager or coo or whoever you guys are going to help train on turn these bad boys on this is how many people that have come to your jobs and tried to work on the unit without you knowing like all that yeah so so you know we rolled out in the way that we thought it would be done we're getting the feedback you know from contractors constantly in our network of like hey we need help with this or that and so you know as you said part of it is building the parachute we try to predict what contractors want and need help with the most like one of the things we're getting feedback right now that a lot of contractors need help with is like hey how do i sell this to my customers like how do how do i get customers to buy into this and so now we're you know we're kind of you know going down that path and and and seeing how we can help them with that what is it let me hear a little bit of of it.

Speaker 1 And Travis just came up with a, dude, I want you to talk on it, Travis, because what we did right now in that whiteboard on how we're going to, you know, teach these contractors how to monetize the monitoring and did you, you nailed it right in the head?

Speaker 2 Well, I think one of the things that people really want to see is like, you know, what's the ROI on this product, right? And like, how do I go to market with it? And the reason I got, you know, I

Speaker 2 jokingly say, the reason I got dragged into this project by Tom is that I had over 5,000 customers at ProSkill on monitoring. These were new systems.

Speaker 2 Every time we put a new system in, we put in a monitoring thermostat that Trainmade, right?

Speaker 2 And what we realized real quick is like, man, we know when these systems are broken.

Speaker 2 This is really valuable data because we're turning a negative experience for a customer of like, hey, we just put in this really expensive system. It's not working.
We'd proactively call them.

Speaker 2 We'd get ahead of the issue. We'd get out there.
We'd fix the issue. Right.
My brother, who is

Speaker 2 the marketing genius at every company we do together, he's very good at it. Was like, hey, what if we put these on old systems? Like, what if we could capture these leads and create these same

Speaker 2 customer experiences, but with equipment that needs to be replaced? You know, and we're looking at a replacement lead back then, it's still several hundred dollars.

Speaker 2 And we're putting in a $300 thermostat that basically locks us into getting that lead when that system breaks. And so the ROI is such a simple thing.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's so many different ways you can look at it.

Speaker 2 You know, the cost of the thermostat is cheaper than someone clicking on one of your pay-per-click ads right so we can reduce truck rolls by looking at the historical data you know most guys are going to spend 300 plus dollars to roll a truck there's the monthly monitoring that you know we don't charge a set like a fee per device that's in the contractor's tool belt they can charge you know most guys are adding 10 to 20 a month per uh device so you know within a year they're basically paying for the thermostat so there's so many roi cases on it that if you really add them all up it's it's literally a no-brainer it's a no-brainer to to to get it for sure.

Speaker 2 But up front, where, you know, Finny and I talk about this all the time, like if I was starting an HVAC company today, I'm front-loading every customer that I go in their house that has a 10-year-old system, they're getting a free thermostat, free thermostat, free thermostat, free thermostat.

Speaker 2 I'm literally just locking in replacement data like crazy.

Speaker 2 But it's a cash flow thing, right? Like, you know, unfortunately with our exits, we'd be able to do that. We understand that other guys.

Speaker 2 have the, you know, it's going to be harder on the cash flow as they start their companies. And so we're working on ways to show them that that this can work at scale.

Speaker 2 And once we show that, it's going to be so easy for them to

Speaker 1 add on to what you said, just to be able to save one truck row, bro. Like that pays for the thermostat itself.

Speaker 1 How many times have we gotten called and been like, hey, my system's not working? Automatically, what do we do? Roll a truck. Hey, you guys were here two weeks ago.

Speaker 1 My system seems to work. What do we do? Yeah.
Well, and that's like roll a truck.

Speaker 1 Keep rolling trucks for the same reason over and over when we could have just logged into their NUVA dashboard, looked at the monitoring and told the consumer, hey, you just turned on your system 12 minutes ago.

Speaker 1 Give it time so it could, so it could go down. It's 95 degrees outside.
One truck row pays for the thermostat. One click pays for the thermostat.

Speaker 1 One click pays for that thermostat. One truck row pays for that thermostat.
For $49 more, you retain a client for fucking life.

Speaker 1 How simple is that? Like, I don't know how to slice it in.

Speaker 2 We haven't gotten into like the messaging center where you can send messages to your customers,

Speaker 2 create great customer experiences so that you're memorable, create demand leads, you know, through offering specials.

Speaker 1 Or it'll probably tell you when it's time to change your filter. Yes.
Yes, that too. And we already have something planned for that.
What about this new wireless thing you guys are working on?

Speaker 1 Oh, explain that. That's Travis's specialty right there.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, so on the tech side, I

Speaker 2 ran service install sales for a long time at ProSkill.

Speaker 2 And one of the things we know coming down the pipe, and it's here in some of the, you know, in California and on the East Coast, is, you know, everyone are being incentivized to switch to heat pumps.

Speaker 2 The problem is, is if you live anywhere where the infrastructure is older, there's not enough wires to run these heat pumps and fishing wires through, you know, an old brownstone,

Speaker 1 you're kind of drywall.

Speaker 1 What is it? You're running wires for the heat pumps. For the new system, it requires more wires than the original one.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, so we've designed a system where it requires two wires to the thermostat, which is just your 24-volt power and your common wire, right?

Speaker 2 Which everybody has at least two wires, even if it's just a heat.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've tried to hook up a NS before. There's like eight different colors and like it's crazy.
It was years ago. I was like, I don't have a

Speaker 2 so it with that.

Speaker 1 It's a five wire, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 So that'll then communicate wirelessly with an onboard module to an interface module at the air handler or furnace. And then that'll communicate completely wirelessly to the outdoor unit.

Speaker 2 So basically, as long as the thermostat's going to the existing location, it'll power on, communicate wirelessly. You can run any amount of wires.

Speaker 1 So that'll eliminate about 90% of your wires for a system. 90% of your wires would eliminate.

Speaker 2 And so that's important because we're all going to heat pump systems. You know, the federal government is subsidizing it greatly to push that way.

Speaker 2 And so if you can, you know, if you got to run a wire to the outdoor unit in the thermostat, that's a whole nother install crew on the job for the day.

Speaker 2 So if we can, you know, for fractions of that cost, of that labor cost, give you a wireless system that just, you know, that you does that no problem, then it's a huge win for me.

Speaker 1 That you can install in 10, 15 minutes, right, instead of being there running wires.

Speaker 1 So, back in the day, and they still have these.

Speaker 1 The problem I had was batteries because if you're not installing wires, there was a lot of battery issues because there's some systems that work off of like the keypad typically now works off of a battery.

Speaker 1 Yep. When the battery dies, if it's not hardwired, but that's something, I think it's a better thing than having to wire.

Speaker 1 There's all kinds of stuff you got to wire, even on a garage door.

Speaker 1 Tommy, you sound like a technician for a minute.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 You sounded a little bit smart, but Cat 5 wired to your thermostat. That's an atomic bomb right there.
Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 We don't run stranded wire.

Speaker 1 I guess Cat 5 is not stranded.

Speaker 2 It's just 22 gauge.

Speaker 1 So a couple of things real quick. I want to kind of pivot a little bit because I think there's a lot of companies.
Let's just jump in real quick.

Speaker 1 First, I think you're the best I've ever seen to it like your yell. Whenever there was a bad yell, you'd get on it like white on rice.
Like you would get on the Google reviews.

Speaker 1 What exactly did you used to do when you were in the heat, the thick of it on bad reviews? Because I know you've created a culture that you just don't accept.

Speaker 1 Like you get back to the customer, you give back the money. You just say, what is it going to happen? Number one, I would jump on the phone.
And this was in the early stages of next gen.

Speaker 1 I had to do it so I can show my management team because they're like, oh, well, you know, we'll come later and, you know, we'll get to, and it's like, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 You have about five minutes when that review is posted.

Speaker 1 You have about five minutes to get to that customer while they have that anger issue, whatever it is that they have inside that they want to talk to you about.

Speaker 1 You have about five minutes to reach out to them. And that's the culture that we created at Nexion is as soon as one-star review came in, I gave everybody a five-minute timer.

Speaker 1 My assistant would send it over on a screenshot and put it on the group message with all the management team. And they would have about five minutes to get rid of it at all costs.

Speaker 1 This means, you know, giving money back or talking to the customer, giving them free services, whatever it took, because one bad review, and this is from Yelp, costed about $100,000 worth of business.

Speaker 1 One bad review. Yep.
About a hundred, this is from

Speaker 1 22 good reviews to get to the best. To cover up that.
Yeah. So once I learned that, I built a culture of urgency on a bad review.

Speaker 1 And then what I did, and you know, I'm not saying you guys should do it too, but this is a good idea where it worked is we would hit the bonuses of every executive and director and manager in the company that had control over that experience we would hit the review so for a three-star review they would get ding 100 off their bonus a two-star review they would get 200 and a one-star they would get 300 off their bonus so this you know i'm not saying you guys should do it to that extent but that's how serious we were taking that next gen and we would we had a flawless uh you know

Speaker 2 i think well first of all a lot of customers i mean some will go right to a review. Sometimes they do give you the opportunity, but we don't listen to them till they leave the review.

Speaker 2 But I think one of the biggest things that we can take away from reviews is listening to them, right? And my guys, you know, I'm sure you guys have experienced it.

Speaker 2 I'd call the technician on the job and be like, hey, what happened? Oh, customer's crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then you realize like, hey, man, these customers aren't as crazy as we all think they are. They have legitimate complaints that we need to listen to.

Speaker 2 And so don't miss the opportunity just because you're getting the negative feedback. There's typically some a lot we can learn from it.

Speaker 1 And don't always go to your technician, your installer, your manager, because you're not going to get all the raw information that you should be getting.

Speaker 1 You should always talk to the consumer, especially in the early stages of doing business when you have less than 10 people.

Speaker 1 Your ass should be on the phone with the consumer, finding out what's wrong with it because the reviews are telling you what's wrong inside the operation.

Speaker 1 The reviews are giving you a glimpse, giving you an insight of the operation that you're not seeing. That's why people are going in there and obviously complaining of it, right?

Speaker 1 And our jobs as entrepreneurs, our CEOs, and operators is to pay attention to the consumer and pay attention to what they're saying.

Speaker 1 Because look at your scale, on my scale, at Travis's scale, we have hundreds of thousands of clients. Yeah.
Like we can't. I have a million in my over one 1.1 million now.

Speaker 1 We can't like imagine trying to listen to all of them at once, but the reviews will always tell you the truth. That's, you know, well, here, here's one quick thing on that.

Speaker 1 I had a lot, I remember Adam used to jump on a call with a client and he'd always say how we were right. We did the right thing.
And I'm like, they don't want to hear that.

Speaker 1 I'm like, even if we're wrong,

Speaker 1 you apologize and you listen and you say, we're going to solve this. We want to make you a happy customer.

Speaker 1 And so many times my management over the years has been like, but we didn't do the wrong thing. And I'm like, I'd always say, like, here's what I would do.
It was kind of like a,

Speaker 1 I'd say, listen. That's unacceptable.

Speaker 1 Like if the technician did something like really wrong, like I'd say, listen, they're getting written up and I'd have them just a warning, sign it say, This is to appease the customer, don't worry about it, it's not even going in your file.

Speaker 1 But I'd say, you sign this just as a warning, and I send it back to the customer, like I take a picture of it, send it to the client, say, Thank you for making our company better.

Speaker 1 And they'd call up, they'd call up, and they'd be like, Please don't let this guy get fired. Like, I didn't mean to take it to this level, and like, all of a sudden, the review would come down.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and that's one thing, too, is I've learned is listen, our guy right now that does the review, kind of the reputation management, he goes, he says, Hey, the owner, the founder, Tommy Mellow, saw this and he's like, Living.

Speaker 1 He's livid at this. So we got to figure out, like, what is this going to take? And it's not like a bribe.
You don't want to decide what's going to cost you to take it down. So I'd say, like, listen,

Speaker 1 what do you do for work? They'd be like, well, I'm a teacher. Well, listen, you probably make like 50, 60 bucks an hour.
We wasted two hours of your time. There you go.
I'm going to beat that.

Speaker 1 I'm going to give you a couple hundred dollars because your time, it wasn't a bribe. It was like your time is worthless.

Speaker 1 Tommy, you just laid out three freaking huge golden nuggets for your audience. And I don't, I think you should repeat them because the screenshotting of your employees,

Speaker 1 dude, that is gold right there. The, hey, playing good cop, bad cop with your managers.
And hey, the owner's going to find out and he's going to get rid of. That is another huge, huge point.

Speaker 1 Like some of these things that you brush over, like I...

Speaker 1 I promise you, your listeners would love to hear you say it again because those three things that you just said right now to all the little guys that are trying to figure out how do I figure, how do I deal with all these bad reviews coming in?

Speaker 1 What you just said right now is

Speaker 1 another quick thing.

Speaker 1 If you keep a Yelp account open and you log into it and each one of your CSRs do and they go to find friends and they type in the client's email address, it'll show you if they're a Yelper or not and how many reviews they have and if they're a one star, if they leave all one stars.

Speaker 1 So you tag it. And you guys probably spend different time like Jerry might be on Facebook.
You might be on Insta. You might be on X.

Speaker 1 And knowing where your customers hang out is important.

Speaker 1 And, like, look, even on here, I have so Travis has 13 LinkedIn followers.

Speaker 1 Killing it. We've got on here that's the

Speaker 1 basically the following ones. You know, it's funny, Tommy, that we're over here talking about reviews and like how we could help and all that.

Speaker 1 And we had next to me, us, Travis, is probably the best image across the board in all home service platforms. I think what do you have? Five stars across everything?

Speaker 1 Like perfect five stars, not 4.8, not 4.9. Yeah, 4.8, 4.9.
Just they've done study after study after study.

Speaker 1 Here's another secret sauce is when you get a bad review and it's unreasonable, like stupid, like I went to Home Depot and you just read it and the clients will like, just read it and be like,

Speaker 1 so I respond with a nice paragraph, but I also say, see my response on this YouTube. And I go, hey there, Mr.
Jones, we've tried to get a hold of you now over a dozen times.

Speaker 1 And I want you to know that this is troubling. No matter what, whether we're wrong or we're right, it doesn't really matter because at A1, we're trying to make sure you understand.

Speaker 1 We're trying to make every client satisfied. We know you're going to tell your friends, your neighbors, and your family all about our company.
We want to represent this company. Started in 2007.

Speaker 1 My mom used to work for the company. And unfortunately, I can't get to every client's house like I used to be able to.

Speaker 1 And we want to make this right. You haven't gotten back to us.
We'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 1 But in the meantime, if anybody's reading this or watching this video, I want you to let you know that I'm going to take care of you just like I take care of my own mom. Beast.

Speaker 1 That video is the best way to respond. It's a link within the, it could be Google or Yelp or Angie.

Speaker 2 You know, a couple of things there is that I've been told a lot that a 4.8 or 4.9 is better than a 5.0. And I always ask the same question.
So, should I ask people to leave me one-star reviews?

Speaker 1 How do I get that down? Well,

Speaker 1 you want to hear something?

Speaker 1 This is a strategy that a guy does, or every company he consults.

Speaker 1 He literally,

Speaker 1 and this is malicious in a way, but he literally writes his own one-star, but he makes it sound very, very foolish. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And what's your biggest weakness?

Speaker 1 I work too hard. What they do is they take that review and they use that for their social media ads.

Speaker 1 And everybody reads a one-star. So they put that one-star review and it looks just crazy.
And it just underneath it, it says, see what everyone else is saying. And that turns into their ad.

Speaker 1 That's good idea.

Speaker 2 The other thing I was going to touch on that,

Speaker 2 you know, my brother and I used to call the one stars till we realized that we had someone a lot better to call the one stars, which was our general manager, childhood best friend, Garrett, who is still managing ProSkill today.

Speaker 2 And all Garrett would do is, it's what you said.

Speaker 2 There's one audible I'd take on it is he'd listen and he'd just go, okay,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 2 And at the end, he'd be like, oh, I'm so sorry for that. And instead of saying, hey, what's your time worth or how much, you know, what do you do for job? He'd say, what can I I do to make this right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Typically what they ask for is far less than we're willing to give.

Speaker 1 Far less. And so a lot of times you just got to go back out there and get it working right.
Just listen.

Speaker 2 He had a goal of never giving any money back. He's like, I can make them happy without giving them any money.
And he usually almost every time did.

Speaker 2 And so, especially for these smaller guys who, you know, a couple hundred dollars back on a job that was a couple hundred bucks is a lot.

Speaker 2 It's a big hit to cash flow. So you don't always have to offer up money.

Speaker 1 Being willing to listen, accept responsibility and make it right lasts 30 minutes most of the time there i just mute and i go back up right and i do the same thing it's been years since i've done it but i didn't mind but it's a tough job to have it is because you're talking to unhappy customers all the way so once the one thing i will say though and i got this from leeland is that i will never apologize for pricing

Speaker 1 That's the one thing I got from Lee, you know, I've had many conversations with him and the one thing that stuck out with me, there's two things that stuck out with me that Leland brought up to my attention was his membership model, which I admire and that you know i think it's a dope ass model but the second thing he's like ishma i will never ever i don't care if they go on yelp and google and facebook and bash on my company about my pricing i will never ever apologize for my pricing well leland's got 100 cash back if you wanted but he'd say listen he gives money back all the time yep i think what you say is listen what other options did we give you because we've got like for a one we've got ten thousand twenty five thousand and eighty thousand cycle so what i don't say this to clients but here's what i want to say where would you like me me to save the money?

Speaker 1 Would you like me to send out a felon or did you want me to put cheaper parts? Is it the labor or is it the material cost?

Speaker 1 Because I can give you cheaper cost materials and I can give you really bad labor that are the felons out there. You know, which one did you want? You have a saying, though, that you say all the time.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I heard you say a couple of...
Skilled labor isn't cheap and cheap labor isn't skilled. That one too.
But you said,

Speaker 1 do you want me to,

Speaker 1 I will match their pricing when they match our service. There you go.
I love that. Yeah.
That is, that's a, that's a dope as well. Did you want us out there the same day?

Speaker 1 You ever go out to a job where they're like, well, we've got a friend in the business all the time. Where is he?

Speaker 1 Oh, he's off this week. He's out of town for that.
He's in Europe for the next two weeks. Where is he going to be next time that you need him after he does the new equipment?

Speaker 1 It's interesting. So one last thing here I want to just talk about because

Speaker 1 I think this number one topic, I think, at A1 is recruiting. And recruiting is different than hiring.

Speaker 1 It's different than putting out an indeed in Glassdoor as a recruiter and monster and Craigslist ads. It's actually going on and recruiting.
And I've always liked to build people from scratch.

Speaker 1 I mean, great installers, though.

Speaker 1 I like experience. I do prefer experience with a great installer because it takes years to become really, really good.

Speaker 1 What are some of the best tactics and strategies you guys have implemented to obviously pay more and make sure the world knows that you, you feed your guys a lot.

Speaker 1 You always had, every time I came to NextGen, you were getting 20 vehicles lettered in the parking lot. I'll give you guys, I'll give you guys

Speaker 1 that I've recently discovered in the last couple of years. All the technicians and all the installers are on Instagram.
All the technicians, all the installers are on Instagram.

Speaker 1 All the managers, all the sales guys, all the older clients, they're all on Facebook. So depending on the position that you guys are trying to recruit for.

Speaker 1 But how do you, where does it, so it says that where they're a technician at on Instagram? How do you know that they work? Based on your profile, it attracts the people that

Speaker 1 you're marketing to. Like, so on my profile, if you go on there, it says, you know, plumber, HVAC, all that.

Speaker 1 And when you're doing ads it goes based on that so that you'll still you'll start attracting those kind of people so technicians younger crowds if you're looking for you for for hungry sales guys too they're all on instagram every single one of them probably tick tock now

Speaker 1 not yet okay but probably too young still

Speaker 1 yeah um i i told the same thing to chad peterman and last time we had a meeting he's like ishma you were fucking you're 100 right he's like i put an ad out on on instagram for technicians and and installers and we got so many people applying

Speaker 1 Yeah, and the problem that most of these, you know, PE groups and older generation that are used to running those type of businesses, they're still looking for technicians on fucking Indeed, on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 They still think that there's technicians, that they should put an ad on the newspaper and technicians are going to keep flooding.

Speaker 1 This is a whole different world we're living in, man.

Speaker 2 I think too,

Speaker 2 again, going back to the position.

Speaker 2 If we're hiring a technician, we want someone with technical capabilities, right?

Speaker 2 Like, so we found that, shout out to Discount Tire, they do a great job of teaching customer service, but those kids are hustlers and they want to work hard. They know how to work with their hands.

Speaker 2 We recruited a lot out of like the diesel mechanics because a lot of those kids, they went there because that's their hobby. They've been wrenching on cars their whole life.

Speaker 2 That translates really easily into the trades. And so we look for people with hands-on technical experience, even if it's in a different trade.

Speaker 2 They almost always came out to be a great technician, especially if they had the background in customer service.

Speaker 1 That mentality that you just said, Tommy, about we only hire people that are brand new to the industry because we want to mold them into what we want to do. That's an old school mentality, man.

Speaker 1 I guarantee you, there's people at Nexion right now that would do better at another company. And just like there's people at other companies that would thrive at Nexion.

Speaker 1 Right. And in all different.

Speaker 1 Let me explain one thing. My happiest, best performers aren't leaving.
You could offer them equity, $100,000 signup bonus. They're not leaving.

Speaker 1 So, what you get is somebody's disgruntled leftovers, typically,

Speaker 1 unless you're actively recruiting them and they had a bad day, bad week, bad month, bad quarter. There's something that went wrong.

Speaker 1 Maybe, maybe they're just not getting the TLC they need, but it's much, let me explain the difference between window washing garage doors

Speaker 1 and like HVAC and plumbing. Like, HVAC, you got to go to, like, you've got to go.
Like, it's, it's a harder skill to learn, right? And so, plumbing, you got to get like, you got to become

Speaker 1 peers, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I would definitely be looking to steal technicians in those industries because it takes five years.

Speaker 1 But if I can make somebody, I think you need to do both. If I had to build a company only off of stealing other people.
I did. Well, you did, but

Speaker 1 you stole like literally. I didn't steal.

Speaker 1 Whatever you want to call it. You got great guys and you gave them more flexibility.
Like Daniel, he doesn't have to work as much. You gave him a more flexible schedule.
And yes,

Speaker 1 that's how I started A1, really was 2015, even though I'd already been in business for eight years.

Speaker 1 I got a guy from Precision, but this guy was a really good guy, he didn't like selling parts for like that.

Speaker 1 So, we taught him how to sell more parts, give better warranty, show up the same day with a branded truck. And he taught me a lot, he taught me a lot about disc profiling and everything else.

Speaker 1 And uh, I think both work, yeah, and I don't have a favorite. I think you got to mix both.

Speaker 1 The problem that most people do is that they only recruit when they need to, or when they, or when they think they need to.

Speaker 1 recruiting is a it is a 365 job when i was at when i was heavily involved at next gen there wasn't one day that i was like oh today i'm gonna recruit every

Speaker 1 day you never let a good person there was never a day that i wasn't texting somebody calling somebody trying to get more sales guys trying to get more installers trying to get more technicians if i heard somebody was doing good at another company i would figure out a way to get in their facebook their instagram figure out a way to who they were and start talking to them so the problem is most people most most companies only recruit when they think they need to.

Speaker 1 And recruitment is a full-time job that has to be done no matter if you're slow, if you're super busy, doesn't matter. You just have to keep doing it.

Speaker 1 Well, especially like people are like, I just don't have enough business to recruit, but their booking rate's at 68%.

Speaker 1 So you should be recruiting a CSR. Yeah, there you go.
And if your top guys are not getting great jobs, your dispatcher is probably not doing their job correctly.

Speaker 1 So you should be recruiting a dispatcher.

Speaker 1 And, you know, Leland made it very obvious that he cares more.

Speaker 1 he goes listen even if i take a zero profit on a job to get 40 off i did that to keep my install trucks working right those installers need to make their bread too they gotta make money and i i just really dude i've hung out with leland a couple of times but just hearing like

Speaker 1 it's it's like ron smith it's like paul kelly it's like those guys they might be

Speaker 1 not as into the new technology, but their stuff is tried and true and it's been tried and true for a long, long time. And they've just got their principles and they don't sway off their principles

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 i mean look service champions is very very well oh yeah i mean in in the scheme of things looking at every company he's probably the most consistent yeah it doesn't have swings doesn't go way up and way down it's just right down the middle and he doesn't look for this rapid growth he also doesn't have rapid drops yeah i think that's the one thing we gotta study i think that's the one thing we got to learn learn from our old generation was that consistency of not being able to do have those huge swings swings in profit and revenue.

Speaker 1 Like, that's the one thing that we do give, that I give back, that I give credit to like our founding fathers, Paul Kelly and Leland Smith and all those guys, that they were so consistent in every aspect of the business, not just revenue, not just, you know, average chicken, all that profit-wise, they were just always steady and figuring out what.

Speaker 1 Well, what they've learned, and I tell people all this, I tell this all the time, is I say,

Speaker 1 It's crazy what people think they can do in one year, what they overestimate what they can do in one year, and they underestimate what they could could do in 10.

Speaker 1 Because if people really think

Speaker 1 you're going to quit your job, you know what Leland told people?

Speaker 1 He'd go, if you're going to take that tech, if you're going to go take like to the technicians, if you're going to leave, you better take that manager, that guy, that guy that does the warehouse, that CSR and that dispatcher.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, Victor was one of the guys that left. And he goes, when I went to this different infrastructure, I didn't even know my numbers.
I didn't know what I was getting paid.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they promised me way more commission. But it's like, if you don't have the infrastructure of like,

Speaker 1 like if you go into an old person yeah in in california there's like lawsuits like you don't get their like second person walk there and make sure that you you talk to their kids yeah they're like there's so much infrastructure you have to build into those companies and it's not easy to just build the infrastructure it is is a having a high retention is what how how other people will see um an operation be like okay he's got a really good infrastructure if his retention is really high if your retention is really freaking low employee retention is really freaking low, and people are coming in and out, is because there's no structure, there's no infrastructure, there's no support inside the operation.

Speaker 1 But what most operators tend to do is, well, they were two princesses and they wanted the best causes, they tend to blame everybody else when it's like, No, I fucked up.

Speaker 1 My operation is not ready for those eight players. My operation was not ready to recruit this many people.
You know what I'm saying? So that's a huge it is.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll tell you this: I talked to Keg Goodrich about this. I said, Where are you at?

Speaker 1 Because we just had 50 guys, we got 50 guys training right now next door in the the training center and these guys never felt 140 degrees in a garage they never felt zero degrees in detroit or wisconsin in a garage and he's like you're never you're never going to get below 35

Speaker 1 i mean 35 turnover when you're when you're training that many people you just take it it's a part of doing business and i have found that when someone's never had a job that they live in their car basically it's like because i'm there's no way that even if i recruit all from existing garage business, I couldn't recruit enough.

Speaker 1 So I've got to build, I've got to build homemade technicians.

Speaker 1 And it's just a part of doing business. Like, I'd love it to go down more.
But then again, we have this kind of, you've heard hire, slow, fire, fast. It's not necessarily fire.

Speaker 1 We just micromanage them till they quit or get better. Oh, your standards are just higher than what they could, you know, fulfill.

Speaker 1 And that's tough because you can't tell a lot by a guy from a couple of weeks. You got to get him the training.

Speaker 1 And I've, I've been wrong so many times where I'm like, this guy's, there's no way this guy's going to be good.

Speaker 1 And then I've seen guys that I'm like, this guy's gonna be this this guy I interviewed a while back this was like years ago now he's like dude he's like I go how would you handle the situation and he's like I could take apart a gun with my eyes closed and he's like used to be in the military and this dude blew my socks off and I'm like this guy's gonna be an ace nope no good so final final thoughts here um

Speaker 1 Technology is a big deal. Anybody that doesn't understand this idea of client retention with Nuve, I think is

Speaker 1 missing the boat. And I think they should, if they want to get a hold of you guys about Nuve, what's the best way to do that? Easy.
NuveHome.com. Nuvehome.com.

Speaker 1 We made it super simple for you guys to put all your information. Our reps will contact you like ASAP and get you on the board for demos.

Speaker 1 You know, obviously we got a ton of, I think we got over 4,000 contractors that are still trying to get the product out. But, you know, we'll get there.
We're hiring people.

Speaker 1 We're, you know, we got a new facility in Irvine popping up in the next 30 days where we're going to be able to onboard way more people than what we're doing.

Speaker 1 You know, we're taking onboarding and post-onboarding series. As you can see, you know, we're putting a lot of effort.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be doing post-onboardings next week just to listen to all the complaints of like where we missed the boat because this is an ongoing new technology, new

Speaker 1 way of doing business. So it's all new to us.
So we're going to figure out. These are coaching a little bit too.
If they sign up for Nuve, you're giving them some time to talk them through more.

Speaker 2 It's not just you're signing up for the technology and keeping the customers, but you're also kind of making yourselves available to give them some some group coaching yeah yeah we're doing regular calls we're going to be launching here in the next 30 days or so we meet regularly help them on you know how to monetize a thermostat you know that obviously new bay is going to be the core principle of what we're talking about but also how we can hop them help them in their operations overall

Speaker 1 and so guys if you don't know these guys hang out a lot they're Facebook group service avengers Ishmael started that group and there's a lot of great contractors that go in there I'm part of that group.

Speaker 1 It's not quite the size of home service expert, but

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 just give me some final thoughts. Travis, I'll have you close this out.
You know, roadmap.

Speaker 1 We really want to talk about the roadmap for Nuba because there's some dope-s things that Travis has been innovating in the industry.

Speaker 2 So yeah, the roadmap's pretty exciting. Tommy, you alluded to it with the wireless.
kit that we're coming out with. We have our version 2.0 launching.

Speaker 1 Game over on 2.0.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Q1 next year. Full, you know, bezel-to-bezel screen.
It's going to be really, it's really attractive device. We've got our sensors coming out, water sensors, you know, to detect leaks.

Speaker 2 Again, just another way to get the contractor back in the door, get that alert.

Speaker 1 To monitor them.

Speaker 2 To monitor the system. Seal.

Speaker 2 We have a carbon monoxide sensor that's going to be built into the thermostat.

Speaker 1 For the first time, for the first time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, first time ever. And, you know, for guys, for guys that aren't HVAC contractors, that's important because right now, if we go to put in a furnace, we have to buy a carbon monoxide to do it.

Speaker 1 Which is 40 to 50 bucks.

Speaker 2 So we're just including that in there. It's just one less thing, get some past inspection.

Speaker 2 And then you also get alerts if it's triggering that, right? Which is, again, a safety for the homeowner.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 2 yeah, we've got an awesome roadmap. A lot of things we're really excited about.
This is just the beginning.

Speaker 2 And the best part is, is that our early supporters get to help us, you know, steer that ship and decide what products they want and need.

Speaker 1 I love it. Istron, what do you got to close the sale, bro? Man, honestly, I'm just happy to congratulations on the podcast.

Speaker 1 Number one, number two, I'm happy to work with Travis because I'm learning so much with him. Work with Tom, which he probably meets with us once a year, but it's okay.

Speaker 1 Just like he does, just like he does in all his projects, he just delivers it to us and we work for Tom. But just working with Thomas has been, I mean, with Travis.

Speaker 1 And like right now, we had a two-hour whiteboard master session right now. And just his point of views has been pretty dope.

Speaker 1 So to me, I'm excited about what the future holds because we're solving a huge, huge problem in the industry, which is the customer journey.

Speaker 1 And, you know, if we could keep helping contractors, why not?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's amazing. Listen, if you guys, newvehome.com, I appreciate you guys listening to the podcast.

Speaker 1 One quick thing that Ishmael just did that I think some of us forget to do is thank our team and who we get to work with and really be appreciative because they come with a different point of view.

Speaker 1 and they come with knowledge and they want to be respected. They want to feel like they have a voice.

Speaker 1 So if you're turning this podcast off, why don't you just make a phone call to your general manager, to your CSR manager, to your dispatch manager, to somebody that's important in your company and say, I really appreciate you.

Speaker 1 You mean a lot to this business. And thank you for following my dreams.
Anyways, over and out here. Thank you for listening to the Home Service Expert.

Speaker 1 Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

Speaker 1 I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization.

Speaker 1 It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

Speaker 1 So, if you want to learn the secrets to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700-plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Speaker 1 Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.