Keep Them Coming Back with Proven Client Retention Strategies

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. You should always talk to the consumer, especially in the early stages of doing business when you have less than 10 people.
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. 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? And our jobs as entrepreneurs, our CEOs and operators is to pay attention to the consumer and pay attention to what they're saying. 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... week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing,

sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you.

First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

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 ask the team to take notes for you.
Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299.
And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.
I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.
Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the home service expert today.
I got two of my great friends, Travis Ringen, Ishmael Valdez, 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.
And Travis just really analytically 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 on your podcast. Thank you.
Is this the best podcast in the industry? Sorry. No, it's number one.
It's actually number 10 in business in all of North America. Congrats, man.
Honestly, congrats because that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. It just takes consistency.
Never missed an episode since 2017, not one week. Never missed one.
I thought you were going to tell me Ishmael's best quality is talking about himself. Thomas' 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 and 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. Yep.
And Tom's been flying around the country making a lot of calls, trying to figure out what's going on. What do you guys think, Ishmael? 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.
I do think there's some of them are going to go down, but I wouldn't say the vast majority are going down. They're struggling for sure.
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.
For sure. The data shows that.
And we had our heyday there through COVID and everyone was at home. Moved up, speaking in terms of HVAC at least, moved up a lot of those replacements, replaced those systems early.
We also had the housing boom that really played into that.

So those systems all came up at one time.

But there's definitely major shifts

in consumer sentiment and behavior.

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.

And the people that are adapting are growing and the people that aren't are struggling and going backwards. But I think that there's $4 trillion sitting along the sidelines, $4 to $5 trillion.
And one thing we learned through COVID is we're essential. Home service.
And I think private equity, venture capitalism, rich people are like, where could I put my

money? Not putting it in hotels,

not putting it in nail salons because if COVID

2.0 comes out. And by

the way, AI is not taking our job.

AI is not taking our job.

I was on a podcast with Leland

Smith the other day. Man,

that dude is still a goat.

That's my boss. He's sharp.
Yeah, he

is. He just kept talking about lifetime value and how much their list means a lot and how much having past customers they've done work for.
And he's a little old school with the mailers. And I think you guys have been working long and hard at a newer way of thinking about it in this new day and age, about being in front, top of mind of the clients at all times.
So I'm a big fan of Nuve. Ishmael called me up one day and said, do you want to make an investment? And I said, absolutely.
You guys, you've been traveling to Armenia and just you got different developers all over the world for manufacturing. Tell me a little bit about what you guys think about holding the customer.
I don't know who to pick, but tell me a little bit about what it's all about. Because a lot of people have heard this and they think Nuve is just a thermostat, but there's so much more to it.
Yeah. The cost of paid search is up drastically.
Some searchlight data is at 28% in the last two years or since 2022. And one of the things we know, 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. So they're driving the cost of these leads up.
And one thing that we wanted to solve as a group is everyone is always going to paid search to get a new customer. But we've seen all these testimonials like, hey, I started remarketing my existing customers.
And man, those databases are so valuable. 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? 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 Google is a convenience thing.
They do that. 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.
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. And so our goal that we set out to do is how do we help customers really build a moat or contractors build a moat around these customers and make it easier than Google to contact them or proactively reach out to them.
Yeah, Ishmael, when you got involved, I know you saw something there. It's dangerous getting into the tech world.
A lot of things could go wrong, but it seems like you guys have nailed it. 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 I know you get a lot of ideas.
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. 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? 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. That's the one thing we didn't want to mess with because we didn't want to mess the consumer, 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, to 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 a, when the consumer needs you, they, we all do the same thing.
Every customer does the same thing. They go to the thermostat, they turn it on, they figure that, and the unit doesn't turn off.
What's the first thing they do? They go on Google, they go on Yelp, they go on Angie's List, they go on search to be able to look for somebody to be able to come and service them, right? And when I started paying attention to that consumer behavior, I noticed that they don't do that in the alarm industry. 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.
And if something's wrong, the number's right there. The logo's right there.
The company information is right there. That's the one part that as me and Travis and Tom and obviously yourself too came in.
That's the one part that we wanted to solve because that's where the contractor loses the control of the consumer. 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. And that's the problem that we wanted to solve.
And that's where the original concept of Nuve came about. I think there's something there that I really like about Nuve too, is being able to turn the unit on before summer hits, 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. This allows you to test before that day.
And I would challenge you, Schmoll, that it is just a regular thermostat, but there's features there that are really a benefit to the end user, which is the customer, the homeowner. The remote testing that you're alluding to, I know if my wife and I have to schedule an appointment, it's like, well, who's going to be home? What's your schedule look like? The remote testing avoids another visit in the home.
And then the remote monitoring that we can see live and historical data, we can pinpoint issues, the ability to get ahead of problems. If that system breaks, the contractor can proactively reach out to the customer and say, hey, I know you're at work.
I know you're at dinner. You're out of town.
But we're getting an alert on your system. We need to get you set up.
You're a VIP in our system. We need to get you set up for an appointment as soon as possible.
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.
I love it. I love it.
So all this data, all this stuff, there's a lot of things coming out right now in the home service space. And I think what you guys are just trying to do is keep it simple.
You're trying to make sure that they're aware and just look at the data. So what are some of the things you guys can notice that is going to be an issue from the data? So looking at the runtime on the units, we're 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? Just with that data, we're able to see, hey, the unit's running efficiently or no, 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 saying, monitoring these systems and being able to call your consumer before they even know that there's a problem. That's the second problem that we're solving with Nuva.
The first problem was the customer journey, taking control of the customer. The second problem is being able to go above and beyond for your customers, for your existing customers.
Before it breaks down. 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 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. That's a huge problem in the industry.
And before we keep talking about Nuve, Tommy, I do want to say the point of Nuve and why Travis got involved in it and Tommy and Tom Howard, and we're all collaborating in this project is because we noticed that there's things in the operation. We noticed that contracting is not smooth.
Everything runs perfectly. There's still kinks in there that needs to be worked out.
Marketing needs to be more efficient. The operation needs to be run way better.
Like there's problems in the industry that we all need to team up as, as young entrepreneurs. Right.
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.
And Nuva is not the answer for everything

that we're going to solve.

We need everybody in the industry

that are starting their businesses

or had their businesses

or see that there's something wrong in the operation

to come in and help us out

and keep innovating the operation

and keep making it more efficient

because making an efficient operation

only leads to more profit, right?

You know, it's funny.

I was listening to Dan Pena and also 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, it means you're hitting three out of 10. And that's world class.
And everybody just,, it's the people that sit and wait and they wait for these innovations. They don't do anything about it.
There's so many companies that know that we're just not ready yet. We're not going to do this.
Everyone at this table jumps in head first. Then we figure it out.
We jump out of the plane. We build a parachute.
It doesn't always work. And we're okay failing.
Like failure is okay. And there's one thing to take away.
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. 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. I think some people try to expand too quickly.
Or add a service. They out of service when they suck at their current services.
Or they expand or they out of service thinking that that's going to repair the operation. That's not always the case.
But yeah, Tommy, the perfect time will never come, for sure. You know, Leland said the other day, and I just really enjoyed his wisdom because he's older and he was just on.
He was perfect. And he said, you know you know tommy i was invested i was involved in this best practice it's kind of like we are all of us but they sent in their financials each month and he goes that was the worst one out of all seven of the companies i was involved in one day they they told me just sub out it insulation and sub out how water he goes so he subbed itbed it out.
He goes, we didn't train on it. We just mentioned it.
We sold 30%. 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. Everyone's like, we got to work with the bottom 20%.
We got to bring them the 30th to 60th percentile up. I'm like, dude, our assassins, our ninjas want more to sell.
Yeah. You know, and Leland was right.
He's like, 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.
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? Do you think Tom Brady was at practice and they were focused on what he wanted? Do you think that Wayne Gretzky, do you think that, you know, I could go on and on, sport by sport, Colby Bryant, Michael Jordan.
Like, those guys were like, how do we become better? And I feel like 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 they want more.
They want more to sell. They want more things to be able to offer.
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? 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.
There's no reason why they shouldn't. There's no reason why they shouldn't.
And not always like how you're bringing it up, like, Hey, the top guy should be fed more and more. The one thing that you can teach people, Tommy, is the hunger that somebody has inside of them.
Like those bottom 60% people that you keep saying that you're mentioning that, you know, are just showing up to work, clocking in, clocking out. Those people are just always going to live their life like that.
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. And you're right.
We do need to keep feeding the top performers and innovating the way we... 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. Anything you're not giving them is...
Well, this idea of recruiting, I think... I used to think I could find...
There's certain attributes that really make a person stand out. They tell a great story.
They get good eye contact. But here's what I figured out recently.
They have responsibilities. They've got a wife.
They've got kids. They've got a car payment.
They've got goals. They've got big goals, and they want more.
But it's the people that still just – and you might make a 22-year-old that just hasn't stepped into the responsibilities yet. They're still out there.
I mean, I'm sure both of you guys have worked with early twenties and just haven't, they just. They don't have enough pressure.
They don't have the pressure because they still have mom as a backup mom and dad. Of course.
Hey man, whenever we got someone that was married with kids, I was like, yes, this person's going to be responsible. What else is, what other things are attributes you guys, think about your top 10%, like the killers.
I got one. What I've found out in the top performers in NextGen and across other businesses that I've seen, the top performers are always grabbing the better car, grabbing the better watches, going in there and getting the second house.
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'm recruiting people.
And you said at the beginning of the podcast, I'm relentless in recruiting, man. I love recruiting.
I love talking to people. But when I do recruit it, I 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.
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. 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.
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.
that kid is going to show up to work and want to fucking innovate the we are nothing. But you come up with a 25-year-old that just got married, had their first kid.
They're about to look for their first house. 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.
That reminds me of that. Jerry, who's in 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.
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 got a chip on their shoulder. They want to prove themselves.
They want to prove

the world wrong. I've never seen higher producers than those guys.
They have something to prove and

they'll go out and do it every day. And so I was running pro skill, 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 you brought that up 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 works at next year 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 next Tattoos neck tattoos fucking, you know Tattoos all over like you can tell he's not a well pot But once you hear him speak and the way he carries himself the confidence he has when he presents and all that is Is dope so like a little rough around the edges 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 cause Ken Goodrich and I were talking, I actually did a podcast with him recently and he goes, dude, he goes, my daughter tells me all the time. 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.
He's like, this older guy would like grant you and look at your financials and tell you what to do. 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, 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 it. I'm going to buy myself a jet.
And he goes, I'm sorry, Ken, but you're not a jet material. You'll never own a jet.
Just get that dream out of your head because a guy like you will never own a jet. And Ken's like, he walked out of that room and goes, I'm buying enough a jet.

I will buy a jet. And that chip on your shoulder, that when people tell you you can't, and you're

right, it's like the people that might've had a little bit rough childhood or parenting that

people said, you're never going to amount to any. And that's important because listen, I think we

all learned at a young age, the people that really produce a lot is like, we had to go out on our

own. We've learned to work hard.
No one was going to give it to us. We had to make a move.
And there's a lot of people. 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. You do the call center.
All the important stuff. Well, it's super important.
Of course. But the sales side, it's so funny because I look at what Fetchatech did.
They hired Dan Antonelli with KickCharge. They rebranded it.
These guys right here. And they took the customer list.
They hired a few good players and the sales. Of course.
It wasn't like some crazy marketing. The marketing was good, but it was reaching out to the list and monetizing the existing list.
And it was good service for a long time and just putting a few good sales guys in. And to lead on to that, there's some companies out there that are struggling, Tommy, that are looking at like, is it my average ticket? Is it my repair? Is it my conversion? Is it this? Is it that? It's your fucking sales department.
Like your sales department covers up. So let me, let me rephrase this.
Your sales department covers up so many fucking mistakes in and out of the operation. Like there is nothing, there's almost nothing in the operation that sales can't cover.
Yeah. And 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.
We're so cluttered in all those numbers that we forget that we are fucking sales before we're a sales machine. Tommy and Leland talked about, he's like every morning from seven, eight AM role play.
He's like, and it doesn't stop. And what's nice is he goes, I had a good 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. I think a lot of people are like, it's time to train again.
And I'm like, train never stops. It's part of the culture.
Yes. 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.
So we looked at how much each phone call as a dollar amount goes into the managers and all the helpers' salary. So it could be a warehouse guy.
It could be the manager. And we got anywhere from $9 all the way to $40.

And we figured out the happy number is 17. 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.
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. 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

Thank you. And then you watch them fail and you're like, what's wrong with you? So I'm like, this is your soldier.
I already started writing up all kinds of bullets and everything I'm responsible for because these guys need to know, like, what does my calendar look like? What does my day-to-day look like? 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? What's the software I'm using to hold them accountable? Is there an LMS, learning management system? All these things. And if there's like training 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. 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. And I'm talking as a high, high out of this universe spectrum, looking at the operation in, is we do not have enough people, enough A players, enough good people working inside the trades.
That's the number one thing we got to fix as a team, as LSD, as entrepreneurs, as the next generation of contractors coming in. If we can fix where people want to be plumbers, they want to fix garage doors, they want to be AC technicians, they want to do that.
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. Right now we're doing that because there's only 20% that we can recruit.
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.
Yeah, we definitely do. And I think we've started to see a push in that.
But unfortunately, a lot of the training we do today is reactionary. It's not proactive, right? So it's like, oh, well, my guys aren't doing this like you alluded to.
We got to train again. 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? 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. 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.
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. 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? And we had to practice, practice, scrimmage, practice, practice, practice. And then we need special teams to coach us on certain things.
Then we need to learn how to run the drills. What drills are you guys running out there? What plays are you guys running? What scrimmages are you practicing in the home? Are you practicing in your training center? 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? If you've never ran through, if you can't run your wife through good leap very quickly and efficiently, how do you expect to sell financing? 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 all the techs is because they showed up with like their grandpa's blue gun.
And I'm like, okay, we need all the right tools. So that will never be, because I don't have tools to do it quickly and efficiently.
I'm never going to sell it. And so 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. I'm like, don't raise your price until you raise your service.
If you can't get out of the service. Raise the value.
Raise the value. Yeah.
Amen. You know, Lance Bachman, I listened to an Instagram post he did and he's's like, dude, at last Freedom event, Tommy Mello was saying, raise your prices 10%.
We went back and we raised everything in every one of his businesses 10%. We lost two clients total out of everything.
And that's what's crazy is like there's a certain lid on that, though. I think we all know.
Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I don't raise my prices. Tom told me, he's like, every time I raise my prices, two things that really stood out was my garbage disposals cost like $3,000.
He's like, that was a mistake because there's certain things you could get at Home Depot and Ace Hardware. Capacitors and garbage disposals.
Those ones are tough that you could just Google it. But that reminds me.
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.
Why would anybody in HVAC across North America, why would they still buy Nests over Nuve?

Because we are the first... I mean, why not buy Nuve?

Because we are...

Why not buy it or why buy it?

Why would they even be thinking about...

It's almost a rhetorical question, right?

Thermostat built for contractors,

by contractors.

You know, obviously, Nest, Echobee,

these guys totally tuned the contractor out

when they were out.

They went straight to the consumer.

But contractors are the largest installer

of $0. contractors, buy contractors.
Obviously, Nest, Echobee, these guys totally tuned the contractor out when they went straight to the consumer. But contractors are the largest installer of thermostats in the nation, right? So why cut them out? So that's really another thing, just a problem that we saw.
Nuve had all these warranty issues. They came to the contractors.
In 2018, Nest had... 2018-19, Nest flew me out.
It was me, service champions, Bell Brothers, Bill from ASI. It was like five of the top contractors in California in 2018.
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.
And their meeting was like, hey, we have so many leads for you guys. We're going to give you guys free leads.
Everybody's going to 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 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 Nuve 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, we can literally call Goodman right now or call Home Depot. 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. 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 wanted to sell. And isn't there there i'm not in the day-to-day right i'm a big fan obviously i put my money where my mouth is yeah you did but the deal is is like what happens if another contractor goes out to abc or call pro skill yep and pro skill installed this thermostat and now now they tried it now next gens they try to get into the settings.
So 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.
So once a 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.
It might be. You're at still under warranty.
Yeah, probably still under warranty. 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-chain unit, right? And there's a Nest or an Echo Beer 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. You think that somebody called NextGen and said, 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%.
Our overall retention is less than 10%. It goes back to, you know, Tommy, I know all three of us sitting at this table were just got on early on reviews.
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. If I can't talk to the customer, I've got no shot at it.
So the whole thing is like, hey, if there is a process, 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 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 their house is being monitored for their safety. And Nuve does that through monitoring of the HVAC system for their comfort.
And then B is that they have proprietary hardware, as Ishmael talked about earlier, in the home with their logos on it. So 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.
So in a fast-paced industry, how do you balance staying true to the basics while also adapting and pulling on these new technologies? Because I know some people are like, dude, I can barely log in a service site.

And they don't understand their finances completely.

Like, how does this work?

And that's the one aspect when you asked us,

hey, to the consumer, what different... That's what we didn't want.

We want the consumer to know it's just a regular thermostat.

We don't need to teach the customer something else. We don't need to go out there and, you know, retrain your technicians on everything.
How to wire it. How to, like, 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.
Of course. That's where all the back end onboarding comes in.
Where all the dashboard training comes in with all messaging centers and all that 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 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? How do I get customers to buy into this? And so now we're kind of going down that path and seeing how we can help them with that. Let me hear a little bit of that.
And Travis just came up with a... Dude, I want you to talk on it, Travis, because what we did right now on that whiteboard on how we're going to teach these contractors how to monetize the monitoring.
And you nailed it right in the head. Well, I think one of the things that people really want to see is like, what's the ROI on this product? And how do I go to market with it? And the reason I got...
I 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.
Every time we put a new system and we put in a monitoring thermostat that Train made, right? And what we realized real quick is like, man, we know when these systems are broken. 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.
We'd get ahead of the issue. We'd get out there.
We'd fix the issue. My brother, who is the marketing genius at every company we do together, he's very good at it.
It was like, hey, what if we put these on old systems? What if we could capture these leads and create these same customer experiences, but with equipment that needs to be replaced? And we're looking at a replacement lead back then, it's still several hundred dollars. 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. I mean, there's so many different ways you can look at it.
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 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, most guys are adding 10 to $20 a month per device. So 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 literally a no-brainer. It's a no-brainer to get it for sure.
But my upfront where, Benny 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. I'm literally just locking in replacement data like crazy.
And, but it's a cashflow thing, right? Like, you know, fortunately with our exits, we'd be able to do that. We understand that other guys have the...
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 this can work at scale.

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

To add on to what you said, just to be able to save one truck roll, bro.

That pays for the thermostat itself.

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.
My system seems to work. What do we do? Yeah.
Roll a truck. We 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.
Give it time so it could go down. It's 95 degrees outside.
One truck roll pays for the thermostat. One click pays for the thermostat.
One click pays for that thermostat. One truck roll pays for that thermostat.
For $49 more, you retain a client for fucking life. How simple is that? I don't know how to slice it in.
We haven't gotten into the messaging center where you can send messages to your customers. Create great customer experiences so that you're memorable.
Create demand leads through offering specials. Or it'll probably tell you when it's time to change your filter.
Yes, that too. And we already have something planned for that.
And what about this new wireless thing you guys are working on? Explain that. That's Travis's specialty right there.
Yeah, so on the tech side, I ran service install sales for a long time at ProSkill. And one of the things we know coming down the pipe, and it's here in some of the California and on the East Coast, is everyone are being incentivized to switch to heat pumps.
The problem is if you live anywhere where the infrastructure is older, there's not enough wires to run these heat pumps. And fishing wires through an old brownstone, cutting drywall, it's...
What is it you're running wires for the heat? For the new system, it requires more wires than the original yeah yeah 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 which everybody has at least two wires even if it's just a heat yeah i've tried to hook up a nest before there's like eight different colors and like it's crazy it was years ago.

I was like, I don't have a cap 5 wire.

Yeah, exactly.

So that'll… and like, it's crazy. It was years ago.
I was like, I don't have a... So with that, it'll...

Cap 5 wire, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So that'll then communicate wirelessly

with an onboard module

to an interface module

at the air handler or furnace.

And that'll communicate completely wirelessly

to the outdoor unit.

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.

So that would eliminate about 90% of your wires for a system.

90% of your wires would eliminate.

And so that's important because we're all going to heat pump systems.

The federal government is subsidizing it greatly to push that way.

And so if you got to run a wire to the outer unit in the thermostat, that's a whole other install crew on the job for the day.

So we can, you know,

you know, if you got to run a wire to the outer unit in the thermostat, that's a whole nother install crew on the job for the day. So if we can, you know, for fractions of that cost, of that labor cost, give you a wireless system that just, you know, does that no problem, then it's a huge win for them.
That you can install in 10, 15 minutes, right? Instead of being there running wires, cutting drywall. So back in the day, and they still have these.
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.
When the battery dies, if it's not hardwired, but that's something. I think it's a better thing than having to wire.
There's all kinds of stuff you got to wire, even on a garage door. Tommy, you sound like a technician for a minute.
I know what I'm talking about. You sounded a little bit smart, but Cat5 wired to your thermostat? That's an atomic bomb right there.
Yeah, well, I don't know. We don't run stranded wire.
I guess Cat5 is not stranded. It's just a 22 gauge.
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. First, I think you're the best I've ever seen to it.
Whenever there was a bad yell, you'd get on it like white on rice. You would get on the Google reviews.
What exactly did you used to do when you were in the heat, the thick of it on bad reviews? I know you've created a culture that you just don't accept. You give back to the customer.
You give back the money. You just say, what are you going to do? Number one, I would jump on the phone.
And this was in the early stages of NextGen. I had to do it so I can show my management team because they're like, oh, well, we'll call them later.
And we'll get to it. And it's like, no, no, no, no.
You have about five minutes. When that review is post, 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.
You have about five minutes to reach out to them. And that's the culture that we created at NextGen.
As soon as one star review came in, I gave everybody a five minute timer. 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. This means 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. One bad review.
Yep. About 100.
This is from Yelp. And it takes 22 good reviews to cover a bad review.
Yeah. So once I learned that, I built a culture of urgency on a bad review.
And then what I did, and 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, you know I think well first of all a lot of customers I mean some will go

right to

right to a review. Sometimes they do give you the opportunity, but we don't listen to them till they leave the review.
But I think one of the biggest things that we can take away from reviews is listening to them, right? And my guys, I'm sure you guys have experienced it. I'd call the technician on the job and be like, hey, what happened here? Oh, customer's crazy.
Yeah. 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. And so don't miss the opportunity just because you're getting the negative feedback.
There's typically a lot we can learn from it. 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.
You should always talk to the consumer, especially in the early stages of doing business when you have less than 10 people. 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.
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.
And our jobs as entrepreneurs, our CEOs and operators is to pay attention to the consumer and pay attention to what they're saying. Because look at your scale, my scale, Travis's scale, we have hundreds of thousands of clients.
i have a million in my over one 1.1 million now we can't like you 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's one quick thing on that i had a 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 want to hear that. I'm like, even if we're wrong, you apologize and you listen and you say, we're going to solve this.
We want to make you a happy customer. 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 know we say like, here's what I would do. It's kind of like a, I'd say, listen, that's unacceptable.
Like if the technician did something like really wrong, I'd say, listen, they're getting. If the technician did something really wrong,

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.

But I'd say, sign this just as a warning.

And I send it back to the customer.

Like I take a picture, I send it to the client and say,

thank you for making our company better.

And 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 all of a sudden, the review would come down. And that's one thing too, as 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 Mello, saw this and he's like, he's livid at this.
So we got to figure out what is this going to take? And it's not like a bribe. You don't want it to solve.
What is it going to cost you to take it down? So I'd say like, listen, 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. I'm going to beat that.
I'm going to give you a couple hundred dollars because your time. It wasn't a bribe.
It was like, your time is worth it. Tommy, you just laid out three freaking huge golden nuggets for your, for your audience.
And I don't, I think you should repeat them because the screenshotting of your employee, dude, that is gold right there. The, Hey, plain good cop, bad cop, what your managers and Hey, the owner's going to find out and he's going to get rid of that is another is another huge, huge point.
Some of these things that you brush over, 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 deal with all these bad reviews coming in, what you just said right now is a goldmine. Well, they can rewind it, but here's another quick thing.
If you keep a Yelp account open and you log into it in each one of your CSRs do it, 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, so you tag it. And you guys probably spend different time.
Jerry might be on Facebook. You might be on Insta.
You might be on X. And knowing where your customers hang out is important.
Look, even on here I have... So Travis has 13 LinkedIn followers.
Killing it. We've got on here that's basically the following.
You know, it's funny, the, the, basically the following.

You know,

it's funny,

Tommy,

that we're over here talking about reviews and,

and like how we could help and all that.

And we,

next to us,

Travis is probably the best image across the board and all home service

platforms.

I think,

what do you have five stars across everything?

Like perfect five stars,

not 4.8,

not 4.9,

4.8,

4.9.

Just,

they've done study after study,

after study here,

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 then you just read it and the clients will like just read it and be like, 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 ahold of you now over a dozen times. 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. 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.
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.
And we want to make this right. You haven't gotten back to us.
We'd love to hear from you. 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 mother.
That video is the best way to respond. It's a link within the,

it could be Google or Yelp or Angie.

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

or how do I get that down?

Well, there is, you want to hear something? This is a strategy that a guy does by every company he consults. He literally, and this is malicious in a way, but he literally writes his own one star, but he makes it sound very, very foolish.
Yeah. What's your biggest weakness? I work too hard.
What they do is they take that review and they use that for their social media ads. And everybody reads a one star.
So they put that one star review and it looks just crazy. And just underneath it, it says, see what everyone else is saying.
And that turns into their ad. That's a good idea.
The other thing I was going to touch on that, 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. And all Garrett would do is, it's what you said.
There's one audible I'd take on it is he'd listen and he'd just go, okay, okay. 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 what do you do for a job? He'd say, what can I do to make this right? Typically, what they ask for is far less than we're willing to give. Far less.
A lot of times you just got to go back out there and get it working right. Just listen.
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.

And so, especially for these smaller guys

who a couple hundred dollars back on a job

that was a couple hundred bucks,

there's a lot.

It's a big hit to cashflow.

So you don't always have to offer up money.

Being willing to listen,

accept responsibility and make it right.

Those calls last 30 minutes most of the time.

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 day.
The one thing I will say though, and I got this from Leland, is that I will never apologize for pricing. Yeah.
That's the one thing I got from leaving. 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 I think it's a dope-ass model.
But the second thing, he's like, Ishmael, 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 want to. He'd say, listen, he gives money back all the time.
I think what you say is, listen, what other options did we give you? Because we've got like for A1, we've got 10,000, 25,000, and 80,000 cycle. So what, I don't say this to clients, but here's what I want to say.
Where would you like me to save the money? Would you like me to send out a fallon or did you want me to put cheaper parts? Is it the labor or is it the

material cost? Because I could give you cheaper cost

materials and I could give you really bad labor

that are the felons out there.

Which one did you want? You have a saying though

that you say all the time. I heard you say

a couple of times. Skilled labor isn't cheap and cheap labor

isn't skilled. That one too, but you said

do you want me to

I will match their pricing

when they match our service. There you go.
I love that. Yeah.
That is, that, that, that's a, that's a dope best. Did you want us out there the same day? You ever go out to a job where they like, well, we've got a friend in the business all the time.
Where is he? Oh, he's off this week. He's out of town for the, he's in Europe for the next two weeks.
Where's he going to be next time that you you need him after he does the new equipment. It's interesting.
So one last thing here I want to just talk about because I think that this number one topic, I think, at A1 is recruiting. And recruiting is different than hiring.
It's different than putting out an Indeed and Glassdoor as a recruiter and Monster and Craigslist ads. It's actually going on in recruiting.
And I've always liked to build people from scratch. I mean, great installers though, I like experience.
I do prefer experience with a great installer because it takes years to become really, really good. What are some of the best tactics and strategies you guys have implemented to obviously pay more and make sure the world knows it? You feed your guys a lot.
You always had, every time I came to NextGen, you were getting 20 vehicles lettered in the parking lot. I'll give you guys something 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.
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... 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 you're marketing to.
So on my profile, if you go on there, it says plumber, HVAC, all that. And when you're doing ads, it goes based on that.
So you'll start attracting those kinds of people. So technicians, younger crowds, if you're looking for hungry sales guys too, they're all on Instagram.
Every single one of them. Probably Tic Tac now.
Not yet. Okay.
Probably too young still. Yeah.
I told the same thing to Chad Peterman. And last time we had a meeting, he's like, Ishmael, you were 100% right.
He's like, I put an ad out on Instagram for technicians and installers, and we got so many people applying. And the problem that most of these 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.
They still think that there's technicians that they should put an ad on a newspaper and technicians are going to keep flooding. This is a whole different world we're living in, man.
I think too, again, going back to the position, if we're hiring a technician, we want someone with technical capabilities. 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. We recruited a lot out of 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. 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. They almost always came out to be a great technician, especially if they had the background in customer service.
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.
I guarantee you there's people at NextGen right now that would do better at another company. And just like there's people at other companies that would thrive at NextGen.
Right? Let me explain one thing. My happiest best performers aren't leaving.
You could offer them equity, $100,000 sign-up bonus, they're not leaving. So what you get is somebody's disgruntled leftovers.
Unless you're actively recruiting them and they had a bad day, bad week, bad month, bad quarter, there's something that went wrong. Maybe they're just not getting the TLC they need, but it's much...
Let me explain the difference between window washing, garage doors, and HVAC and plumbing. HVAC, you've got to go.
It's a harder skill to learn.

Plumbing, you've got to become five years.

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

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 you stole literally... I didn't steal.
Whatever you want to call it. You got great guys and you gave them more flexibility.
Daniel, he doesn't have to work as much. He gave them a more flexible schedule.
And yes, that's how I started A1 really was 2015. Even though I'd already been in business for years, I got a guy from Precision.

But this guy was a really good guy.

He didn't like selling parts like that.

So we taught him how to sell more parts, get 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.

And I think both work.

And I don't have a favorite.

I think you got to mix both.

The problem that most people do is that they only recruit when they need to or when they think they need to. Recruiting is a 365 job.
When I was heavily involved in that next year, there wasn't one day that I was like, oh, today I'm going to recruit. Every day.
You never let a good person go away. 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 companies only recruit when they think they need to.
And recruitment is a full-time job that has

to be done no matter if you're slow, if you're super busy, it doesn't matter. You just have to keep doing it.
Well, especially people are like, I just don't have enough business to recruit, but their booking rate's at 68%. So you should be recruiting a CSR.
And if your top guys are not getting great jobs, your dispatcher's probably not doing their job correctly. So you should be be recruiting a dispatcher.

And Leland made it very

obvious that he cares more. your top guys are not getting great jobs.
Your dispatcher is probably not doing their job correctly. So you should be recruiting a dispatcher.

And,

you know,

Leland made it very obvious that he cares more.

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.

Those installers need to make their bread too.

They need to make money.

And I,

I just really,

dude,

I've hung out with Leland a couple of times,

but just hearing like,

it's,

it's like Ron Smith.

It's like Paul Kelly.

It's like those guys,

Thank you. And I just really, dude, I've hung out with Leland a couple of times, but just hearing like, it's like Ron Smith.
It's like Paul Kelly. It's like those guys.
They might be 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. And I mean, look, Service Champions is very, very well.
Oh, yeah. I mean, in the scheme of things, looking at every company, he's probably the most consistent.
It doesn't have swings. It 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. I think that's the one thing we got to learn from our old generation was that consistency of not being able to have those huge swings in profit and revenue.
That's the one thing that I give credit to 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 average chicken, all that profit-wise, they were just always steady and figuring out what- Well, what they've learned, I tell people all this, I tell this all the time, as I say, 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 can do in 10. Yeah.
Because if people really think you're going to quit your job, you know what Leland told people? 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. 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. Because yeah, they promised me way more commission.
But it's like, if you don't have the infrastructure of like, like if you go into an old person in California, there's like lawsuits. Like you don't get there, like the second person to go out there and make sure that you talk to their kids.
Make sure 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 is having a high retention is how other people will see an operation and 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, it's because there's no structure.
There's no infrastructure. There's no support inside the operation.
But what most operators tend to do is well, they were two princesses and they wanted the best cause. They tend to blame everybody else when it's like, no, I fucked up.
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.
Well, I'll tell you this. I can't get rich about this.
I said, i said where are you at because we just had 50 guys we got 50 guys training right now next door in the training center and these guys never felt 140 degrees in the garage they never felt zero degrees in detroit or wisconsin in the garage and he's like you're never you're never going to get below 35 i mean 35 turnover 35% turnover. 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 there's no way

that even if I recruit all from a business

and garage or business, I couldn't recruit enough.

So I've got to build, I've got to build

homemade technicians.

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. And it's not necessarily fire.
We just micromanage them until they quit or get better. Or your standards are just higher than what they could fulfill.
And that's tough because you can't tell a lot by a guy from a couple of weeks. Like you got a lot of get them.
And I've, I've been wrong so many times where I'm like, this'm like, there's no way this guy's going to be good. Then I've seen guys that I'm like, this guy's going to be...
This guy I interviewed a while back. This was years ago now.
He's like, dude, I go, how would you handle the situation? He's like, I can take apart a gun with my eyes closed. He used to be in the military and this dude blew my socks off.
I'm like, this guy's going to be an ace. Nope.
No good. Final thoughts here.
Technology's a big deal. Anybody that doesn't understand this idea of client retention with Nuve, I think, is missing the boat.
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.
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.
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.
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. We're taking onboarding and post-onboarding series.
As you can see, we're putting a lot of effort. I'm going to be doing post-onboarding next week just to listen to all the complaints of where we missed the boat because this is an ongoing new technology, new way of doing business.
So it's all new to us. So we're going to figure out...
You guys are coaching a little bit too if they sign up for Nuve. You're giving them some time to talk them through more.
It's not just you're signing up for the technology and keeping the customers, but you're also making yourselves available to give them some group coaching. 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 how to monetize a thermostat. Obviously, Nuve is going to be the core principle of what we're talking about, but also how we can help them in their operations overall.
And so guys, if you don't know, these guys hang out a lot. They're Facebook group, Avengers.
Ishmael started that group, and there's a lot of great contractors that go in there. I'm part of that group.
It's not quite the size of home service expert. So just give me some final thoughts.
Travis, I'll have you close us out. Roadmap.
We really want to talk about the roadmap for NUVA because there's some dope-ass things that Travis has been innovating in the industry. 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.
Game over on 2.0. Yeah, Q1 next year.
Full bezel-to-bezel screen is going to be a really attractive device. We've got our sensors coming out, water sensors to detect leaks.
Again, just another way to get the contractor back in the door, get that alert. To monitor them.
To monitor the system. Seal.
We have a carbon monoxide sensor that's going to be built into the thermostat. For the first time.
For the first time. Yeah, first time ever.
And 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 detector. Which is 40 to 50 bucks.
So we're just including that in there. It's just one less thing.
Get some past inspection. And then you also get alerts if it's triggering that, which is again, safety for the homeowner.
So yeah, we've got an awesome roadmap. A lot of things we're really excited about.
This is just the beginning. And the best part is that our early supporters get to help us steer that ship and decide what products they want and need.
I love it. Ishmael, what do you got to close us up, bro? Man, honestly, I'm just happy to...
Congratulations on the podcast, 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.
Just like he does, just like he does in all his projects. He just delivers it to us and we, we work for Tom, but just working with Thomas has been, I mean, with Travis and like right now we had a two hour whiteboard master session right now.
And just his point of views has been pretty dope. 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.
And if we could keep helping contractors, why not? Yeah, that's amazing. Listen, if you guys knew vayhome.com, I appreciate you guys listening to the podcast.
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 and they come with knowledge and they want to be respected. They want to feel like they have a voice.
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. 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.
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.
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