[Interview] Million Dollar Contracting Series: Hiring & Managing Employees - Part 12 - BPMP #173

Speaker A: All right, home service pros, welcome to episode 173, the Battle Plan Marketing Podcast. We have Mr. Kim Hopkins on board again to review his awesome book, Million Dollar Contracting. Kim, welcome back to the show, sir.

Speaker B: Thank you, sir. Nice, uh, to be here.

Speaker A: Yeah. So we got broken up by holidays and New Year's and a bunch of stuff happening on, mostly on my end. My apologies for the delay, but, uh, let's talk about, uh, some of the last couple of chapters and then we'll recap. So a big one. Everybody's kind of problem is hiring, retaining employees. So let's start with finding them, maybe some of the best avenues to find them. And then how do we hold onto them?

Speaker B: It's hard to find them. Let's just admit it. Like, actually, you can find people all the time. You can go down to skid rowing and find people. But if you want to find a qualified person for the job you're looking for, you know, there's technicians in the field and there's, uh, office workers. And, uh, office workers are easier to find for sure because you can train people to do white collar type work, to be a receptionist or, you know, other, Other kinds of work. Yeah, there's some specialized. Like if you get large enough, then you're going to need an accountant. Uh, that's going to take some skill, bookkeeping and whatnot. But in terms of telephone skills, what you're looking for is first, honest, ethical people that hopefully are healthy, they don't get sick a lot. And I have no fixed ideas about males, uh, versus females. I'm very clean on, uh, it's all about meritocracy in my company. So women, men, women, um, different races, sexual orientation, none of it matters to me.

Speaker A: None of it matters.

Speaker B: Um, no, what matters is can they answer the phone, you know, in a proper way? And then can they communicate that they're friendly and competent? And are they friendly and competent? And if they are, uh, that's a good, good start. And most of the people in my company do answer the phone. I've got. I've got two people that do bookkeeping who sometimes answer the phone, and they certainly handle their own phone calls. And then I've got four dispatchers that do. They each have their skill set, but all of them can talk to people on the phone. That's just a, uh. Do you speak English? Good, that's a start. You know, do you. And. But basically they have to have social skills coming into it. Um, we do, uh, testing on our office personnel, but it's it's like different skill sets, like, different tests to. Are they, you know, socially compatible or are they. Is this the kind of job that they should want to do and whatnot. But in truth, it's been a very long time since I've hired anybody. Uh, I've got the same crew, uh, and I'll talk about the office, then we can talk about the field. It'll be. They're similar in certain ways, but is

Speaker A: that testing a, uh, like, uh, interview test or. What kind of testing? How are you, uh, assessing their. Their language skills, their, you know, personality, uh, that kind of thing?

Speaker B: Yeah, all of that. Okay, I'll, uh. I guess I'll back up a little bit. Like, we want to hire somebody hypothetically. And it's been at least five years since. Well, maybe five. So what you do is you. You put it out there, you know, with any of these agencies that you're looking for. It's been so long, I've forgotten who they are. Plus, I don't do it anyway. But you put it out there that you're looking for somebody, and you describe what you're looking for, who you're looking for, what the salary can be and what skill set they need to have. Okay. And then, uh, a lot. Uh, you're going to get a lot of responses. At least we always do. Like, a lot. And so we're very polite. So we always respond to everybody. We say thank you.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: We're not, you know, your resume doesn't work out for us or whatever we say. And then let's just say that there's 10 people that stand above the rest that they may be. Okay. And by the way, if. If the first batch don't really measure up, none of them do. You don't have to break. Break your heart and hire one of them. No, go and put another at it. Like, wait till you definitely have at least the potential of what you're looking for.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then. Okay, so let's say there's 10 of them, though. So then you do interviews, uh, on the phone with those people, and you can hear. And so probably half of them are going to go away just. Just because they. They just don't have the skill set you're looking at.

Speaker A: Skills.

Speaker B: Yeah, Good communication skills. And you can, uh, often tell emotional issues just by. At least we can or I can, you know. Okay. And so you'll come down to, like, let's say there's three people left, and what they can do is come into the office and do testing, an IQ test. A skill set test. Like let's say that you're hiring someone and you want them to be able to do, uh, work on the computer. Well, how are they at Microsoft? How are they at, you know, WordPress or whatever it is that you feel like you need. And typing speed, that's a good one, you know, and so we do all of that, or at least we do when we need to hire someone. So then you get somebody and let's just say that's enough to convince you that this person's good. Yeah. Try look at their record too. Where have they been? What have they done? And if they, let's say they've got, they got out of high school in let's say 2020, let's just say. And now it's 2026 and they've had 11 jobs. Well, guess what? Like they have a 12th one pretty soon.

Speaker A: Future ex employee. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, there's, there's a lot to learn, but just don't, don't settle like you don't need to settle for office people very much because there's so many people in high schools that are just taught to get little menial jobs and, and some of them are very bright people. And you, you can turn them into fantastic employees.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: We started eventually, uh, looking for college educated people because our company is a little more sophisticated now. But, but many of my office workers didn't go to college, uh, because, but they're great now. You know, they, they learned on the job. Uh.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: There's actually a. Yeah. And you know, we're contracting here. We're not, we're not like, uh, you know, a multi story building insurance company that you're working your way up the corporate ladder. It's, it's definitely at least not my company, you know, we're doing, I'll call it $5 million a year. Companies don't need that level of.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Expert.

Speaker A: But you do want the good personality, good language skills. Doesn't have to go to college for that. Of course you can have that out of, uh, you know, whatever. Uh, not even out of high school.

Speaker B: The main thing about college is it, it qualifies them as people that are willing to put their nose to the grindstone and happen. That's actually the main thing. It's not actually what they learn.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: What they learn in, in a, in an educational system of college is not pretty much what contractors need in their office.

Speaker A: Agreed, agreed. It's voluntary discipline. Right. Or I would say, uh, sports, uh, if they played and organized sports At a high school level or something that would, that would be that same kind of person, dedicated, you know, used to hard work, practice. All these things, you know, we don't really want to do, but we realize they make for a better game or better output.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. So anyway, that's, so that's the part about hiring them. Essentially you eventually. And of course you need a, you should have legal stuff set up like a hiring contract and an employee handbook and all these things. Especially in California. You got to be really good at disconnecting.

Speaker A: Too many lawyers on the wrong side of the law.

Speaker B: Well, even on the right side of the law, you know. Okay, so with, with that understood. Now here's the, here's the big deal. You finally get somebody. Well, the last thing you want to do is for them to go away. Now often it takes like two or even three years to get someone to be full, fully in, in sync with what's going on with the company. And of course, companies changed in the last three years while they've been working, and now they're like way on board. They're uh, a team member and they get along with everybody. So the next big secret is first you gotta be successful. Gotta have money coming into the office. Okay, sorry about that. But you do. Once you do, you, you give a whole lot of it to your employees. Like I have a system where I've explained it to them. Look, I'm the owner, so I get a third of the profit after all expenses. And you know, my book goes into how to figure that out. Then I want a third of what's left over as the owner. But then I need a third. The company needs a third to expand, to handle any emergencies or whatever. So. But that leaves a third. And you guys in the office, you get that third. And like we have some every quarter, that's every 13 weeks, they get like $5,000. Every single one of them. Or like maybe one time I think it was 8800 or something. Like it's not always that, of course, but think about that.

Speaker A: Because, uh.

Speaker B: Oh, and you pay them well, you pay them if you want to. Like I start my guys off, you know, whatever the, the base salary is of a new person that joins the FBI, it turns out that that's what I paid guys to start. Um, and they um, then they get a bonus. And like if it's 5,000 average, that's a $20,000 on top of.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: You know, let me put it this way. I don't have any hourly wage. People Unless they're the first year maybe, but after that they, they're all on salary. But to do that you have to have at least double what minimum wage is. You know, I mean these guys are all making. Oh yeah, I got six figure income people working in uh, definitely uh, now and then. They have been totally trained for years and years to do certain things, answer the phone a certain way, talk to customers, handle, you know, the businesses are coming, whatever they do. Um, here's my, here's the dirty little secret. So they're incredibly well trained and they fit like a glove in my company and they get paid super, super well. So first of all they would think I'd be nuts to quit. I make, I mean I'm here to make money and I'm making more money than I could ever assume m I could make. And then the second thing, it's, it's hard but true fact, they can't go anywhere else and get anything the money they're making because you know they're, you know, they're not, they're not multifaceted business executives. You know what I mean?

Speaker A: So. Right. They have one y.

Speaker B: Right, right. So not that that's bad. As long as they're connected to a company that stays in business and they make, you know, quite good more income than they would expect to get at their end of a 40 year career with just a regular job. And I like it when people buy houses. My guys buy houses in LA. You know, it's, it's right for fixer

Speaker A: upper costs 1.2 million.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, something like that. You know, so, and we, and we managed to do all of that by being friendly and happy with each other. I think the morale is pretty high and I try to treat people well. Um, I think I do a decent job of it. No complaints. I mean we have one Christmas party, you know, every year somewhere and you know, just, I'm not, I'm not skillful at anything. I think Mark, I've tried to tell you this many times. Guy who never himself went to college, who never I could not even. I was unhirable. I had to start my own company really. To

Speaker A: persistence. Right. So persistence and uh, the desire to keep growing, keep learning, make mistakes, keep going.

Speaker B: Yeah. Incompetence is one of my best things.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, I'm really good at it. But I'm also very good at learning, as you just said, from mistakes like owning them. Like if you, I think I've probably said something like this. If you go on a vacation and you leave your Front door unlocked. And don't be, you know, somebody came in and stole everything. Uh, where were the police? Why didn't they handle this? Why? You know, how about you take a little responsibility.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Uh, keep your door locked and you know, almost always that's, that's, that is going to open the door to handling like you've got to always when you have a problem, like ran out of gas, car broke down, uh, customer wasn't home, customer didn't pay you because they left before you. Like, whatever the issues are, you can't blame anybody. You got to say, what can I do so this does not happen again.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: If you own every single thing, see, that allows you to. It opens up the door to a solution to say that, right. Criminal's bad because they stole from me.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, the next time it'll still be a bad criminal stealing from you.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: If you say I shouldn't go out, uh, like and uh, get mugged at 2 in the morning in a bad part of town, maybe I won't walk there next time. That's taking responsibility for that, you know.

Speaker A: So, yeah, I like it. So, you know, in there was implied and is stated it a few times was, you know, being on the. A great relationship, uh, first as a mentor and then over time you're getting a little closer with your employees. The days of ruling with, you know, an iron fist, uh, there's still a lot of, you know, these kind of people. Sorry, you know, don't go down that road.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, you gotta be honest and ethical yourself to, to make all of this work. You know, there's a whole other pattern where you can threaten employees and make them so upset that they can't even think that they're worth looking for another job. You can find bad ways to do stuff and there are plenty of. It's all about the person. It all comes from the top. It's a trickle down. Uh, you know, I'm a, I'm a guy. I admit I'm ignorant about many things and I like other people to do well. You know, all those kind of things trickles down. But I've seen companies that, you know, the, the employees are terrified of the people above them and those people are terrified of the boss and the horrible. Uh, it's, it's like a, live a life that's a little more cheerful than that. Okay, so that's the office people in the field. The way it happens is it's really hard to find a qualified tradesman. So what we. Fortunately I've got enough years into it that I found one really good guy and then he had a helper. But you know, see, helpers turn into journeymen if you hire the right helper. This is the absolute key. Like you get a guy that's not very good with his or her hands and they're, they come up late and they do this and they do that. Like, you know what, you don't want to spend three or four years teaching them when you can get somebody that's bright eyed and bushy tailed and smart. And you want just like office people. You want really qualified people that you want them smart, you want them to have a good character, be honest and you know, relatively cheerful about life and stuff and relatively young. Like you don't want to hire a helper that's 90 years old. You know, you want the guys that are willing to crawl through addicts because they're still thin.

Speaker A: You know, I'm not going to get the job. What do you say? What do you say, man?

Speaker B: Yeah, like there's a place for everybody and um.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker B: I'm, I've got, you know, I'm old Now, I'm 71, you know, and I've got several people in my office that have stuck. I have people that have been there for over 20 years, you know, and so uh, yeah, everybody's older, but we're all good at what we do, you know, and, and it's, it's a little too late to hire someone who's 50 as a helper out in the field. They just don't have, you know. But anyway, you find good helpers and then you turn your helpers, you grow them into journeymen and that with one exception, one time in, in, in all the years I've been in business, was it different where we finally paid money for one of these employment, you know, agencies, and we paid them like, wow. Uh, it was like a lot, you know, 10,000 or $15,000. But we got a journeyman and he's been with us now for seven or eight years. Oh one time. So I don't think that was kind of like a fluke, uh, to do.

Speaker A: He was already a uh, skilled journeyman.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: And, and, but he also fit in with the way our company works. And so uh, mostly to hire people, you find friends or relatives of the people that are already working in the field. That, that's been our success. I'm not saying it's great, you know, I probably, I mean I've seen people on your Podcast before that are, I'm $25 million this week, you know, or whatever they are.

Speaker A: And. Right.

Speaker B: I mean, they're way impressive and they're way smarter and they know what they're doing and they have opportunities and you got to have a company that can attract the right tradesmen, and those are the companies that pay well. You got to pay them well and you got to have consistent work. Those are free.

Speaker A: Um, and with your bonuses and profit sharing, it's like, uh, what is. Tommy Mellow would say, uh, let, uh. Their dream has to fit in your dream. Like, they have to be able to grow and achieve what they want. Like you're saying buying a house in Los Angeles or wherever. Um, so these are their dreams. Right. We all want to. Well, not all of us, but if I can categorize, you know, we all want to have a family, you know, buy a house, roll, save for retirement, so on and so forth. So that's all gotta fit within working for you. Yeah.

Speaker B: The way I look at it is I have to have a game. I have a game. I wanna. And I kind of succeeded in a sense. Like, I, I wanted financial freedom. I'm not like independently wealthy. I'm.

Speaker A: What is it? There's.

Speaker B: Maybe I am financially free. I, I just don't have to worry about money. I don't have to earn money anymore, you know?

Speaker A: Yeah, your money can make money.

Speaker B: Right? Uh, uh, that was my goal and it took a long, long time to get there. But on top of that, I wanted to have health. I wanted a happy family. I wanted a nice place to live. You know, I wanted certain things okay. And I wanted to do it by exchanging my skill set with other people to help them. Like the, uh, customers that call in being an electrician, they call in for electrical work. And we, you know, we put in some recessed lighting for somebody at their house. We rewire an entire apartment complex before the city shuts them down. Like, we do things that the owners of these places say thank you. Like m. We gave you money, you gave us the product we wanted. And I say to them, thank you, you gave me money which buys the products I want.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: Like it's, it's, uh, it's not what's. What's known as a zero sum game. Which is only one person wins.

Speaker A: Right, Exactly.

Speaker B: A lot of contractors that are zero sum game people, like, they, they try to do the cheapest work they can and get away with stuff and cheat their employees. And ah, you know, you want to have a mutually beneficial thing going on, which is what I do. But so my think is I have a game. My game is to do what I said, like have this company and it helps people and it get exchanges for money and all that. And then people come along. Their game, from my point of view, professionally, isn't as much. Like they just say, look, I just want to come to work. I want to work for eight hours and I want to go home and I want to drink a beer and watch some tv, you know, okay, well, that's their game. And their game fits within my game, see?

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Anybody that wants to work in my company, I have to have a big enough game for their game to encompass. Be encompassed in that, you know, so every employee has a different game, every one of them. But.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, they.

Speaker A: All.

Speaker B: The ones that fit are the ones that are still there. You know, I've gone to a lot of employees over 45 years.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I imagine. Yes. You know, you have a common theme I've noticed through all the guys and women that I've interviewed is that they prefer to hire, uh, that helper who works with their journeyman or master and, and train them on your way of doing things, your processes, rather than hire that journeyman, like you were saying. Um, now both can work, of course, but it seems to be a common theme that people that. I don't want to untrain you and then train you in my way. I'd rather just take you as a greenie and train you along the way in our processes. Do you agree with that or what do you think?

Speaker B: Um, well, I think journeymen, they. Yeah, they have to. We have an admin system where they have to learn the admin system. They have to learn how we operate. And, you know, that, that part's true. And, and that's the cool thing about helpers. They, they show up with the journeyman and they have a couple years to learn the whole admin system because every day they're watching the journeyman do that.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But. But if you're going to hire a journeyman, they need to know the. A lot about electrical, in my case, or plumbing or roofing. You know, they, they need to know the basics. And, and really, uh, most of the basics are going to be the same in, in any company. When electricians need to know, you know, the amps times volts equals watts, they got to know that, you know, and, and so there's a lot. If they're going to be hired as a journeyman, they better be a journeyman. And my problem Isn't that they don't know the system, our system of admins, so to speak, and how to do stuff on their smartphone related to billing or something. That has to be learned for sure. Okay. But if. If they don't know, mostly they don't know. They think they're journeymen. They think they're really good. They think they're great and they're not like, they. It's amazing how, uh, 20% of journeymen, uh, that think they're journeymen really are journeymen. Uh, you know, that's all I can say. I don't know why that is. Of course, I'm not a union guy, so it's pretty likely that commercial or industrial union electricians are very knowledgeable way past what I do. I don't do industrial stuff. They know I couldn't even work as a journeyman in that arena, you know, but in terms of what we do, which is a lot of redo, uh, of residences, commercial, that's already been built and whatnot. Yeah. It's about 20% of the people that claim that they know how to do it. Really know.

Speaker A: Wow. So, um, that's.

Speaker B: Our helpers know more within a year than almost any journeyman. That applies.

Speaker A: Crazy.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: One out of five. That's pretty bad.

Speaker B: Right? So then how do we keep our journeyman? Okay, well, first, don't do things that are so annoying that they quit. Just, they don't even care about the money after a while. They just, they couldn't stand the admin or they hate the fact that, like, they were supposed to go to a certain job and they wake up and now they're going, they're not there. Or, uh, you know, you got to have an environment that works for them.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And so, like, we have really nice trucks, really well stocked. I mean, really nice. They're all Mercedes. And they got like, ladders that the tall, uh, you can lift down. You can have like these special lifts for the ladders. And just on and on about how. And then we don't even have them come to the office. We say, yeah, park it at your house and wake up and go to the job and then come back to your house. There's zero that saves about an hour and a half a day.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, and. And they like stuff like that. They like to earn money when they're working, not drive around and drink coffee in a shop somewhere. And, you know, so we kind of

Speaker A: feel like their own boss. Sort of. Probably.

Speaker B: Very much so. Yeah. In a minute I'll mention that. So they, first of all they have a good work environment and second of all they make a crapload of money. I mean, and yet our, and yet we don't charge, we may charge like 10% more than another contractor maybe, you know. Okay, okay. But we have clients that are happy to pay that 10% because of this, the number of people in the office that service them and answer their questions. So the exchange is there, but we're working on the upper echelon of clients that way. And so the electricians, again, they got six figure incomes coming in. I mean they're not like $500,000 a year, but they've crossed that six figure line anyway. And they uh, buying houses, they have families because they're honest and ethical or they wouldn't be in my company. And that means they have stable family lives pretty much.

Speaker A: And right.

Speaker B: Uh, kids, by the time they have kids, it's a career for them. They're just like, yeah. And they get so good. Like you can't imagine when electrician's been doing the same kind of work for 20 years, how amazingly good they are at the things that they do. So they make a lot of money, they like the environment that they're working in and so they're not going to want to quit for that reason. I said I was going to get back to something but I forgot what it was.

Speaker A: Um, no, I've lost track too. Um, but they're also, they're sharing in profits so they're incentivized to do.

Speaker B: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Pay by production. Yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, like, oh, I know what it was. Yeah. So yes, in a sense every one of them is like their own project manager.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Every one of them. Like we'll send them out to a job, the simple one is install an EV car charger or something like that. Now in the, in the office, I, my guys are trained enough and I have a computer program that the customers fill out forms and stuff first that tells them approximately what it's going to cost. Actually exactly what it's going to cost if they give us the exact right information.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: When they say it's 20ft, we say, okay, well we're going to call it 25ft just in case. Get out there and it's 90ft. You know, sorry, looks like, funny to me, we, we never once every, um, out of a hundred jobs, if our guys go out to jobs, we'll get 99 of them because we've already pretty much told them what it's going to be. And even when it's way more expensive, we'll say, well, yeah, see, 20ft at $8 a foot is this. 90ft at $8 a foot is that like. M sorry, it's 90ft. So you know, uh, so there's that. But project managers, they arrange to get their own material to stock the truck with. They, they talk to the customer, they don't have to really sell them, but they just have to do the, the admin when they're done and then they collect money and then they move on. That's, that's like a service call or like a three hour job or whatever, you know, and then there's, we do a lot of uh, multi unit apartment complexes where we're replacing every single sub panel because the insurance companies don't like that brand or something. So we'll. And there's like 40 of them. And so 40 of them times 1,050 is a bunch of money. And the journeyman on that job just keeps track of what they do. And that journeyman has a helper and maybe he has two helpers. And hey, they do 10, uh, panels in a week. They get X amount of dollars. They do 20 panels in a week. They make double, right? And in fact they make way more than double because it's not just their time. Material gets better, uh, spent and whatnot. So you know, basically if they become skillful enough to manage jobs properly, they end up with a lot of money and they never need to ask me, the owner, I guess, for a raise because I can just say to them, look, you made, you know, uh, $2,000 last week. That's great. This guy made $4,000 and he did about the same amount of work, m like the type of work, but he got twice as much done or he didn't have to go back for a correction or whatever happened. And so he's making more like. And here's why we've analyzed that. What you do is you blah blah blah when you should do da da da, why don't you try that? And then they get better and better at it. So they're making pretty much a lot of money because they become very good project managers of their right? And they manage, they manage the helpers. The helpers are the only people in my company that really work by the hour. And it's like a privilege to get onto this, uh, pay by production system.

Speaker A: Profit sharing.

Speaker B: It's really more like profit sharing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so it usually takes about two years and during that time we just make sure that they get paid quite Nicely. Uh, as helpers, you know, whatever the going rate is in the city of Los Angeles for that. But they're all looking forward to when they get their own van. And now they're the journeyman. They're going to triple their income immediately.

Speaker A: Sweet.

Speaker B: So they. And then we don't lose them either. Like both the electricians and the office workers, you would ask, how do you keep them? Retention.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Make them very, very happy and, uh, have plenty of income coming in. And that does the thing.

Speaker A: And you got them. Yeah, exactly. They become more efficient, they become more productive, they make more money.

Speaker B: And then, of course, the customers are loving it and they'll pay 10% more, which is all that. I get 10% out of my company. Um, you know, everything else is to the people in the company, you know, and they are very, uh. They get so skillful that they're really, really good. It's like this upward spiral of happiness. And then the customers get really great jobs done.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, ah, by the way, customers never get mad if you do. If you charge X amount and you. You get done quickly. They're happy. They're like, wow, uh, these guys are really professional. They, like. I remember this one. I had this palm tree when I moved into the. The neighborhood house that I live in now. And I hate. I. It's like. It's like the lower mountain level of like, we're in Lock fornta, which is above Los Angeles kind of. It's like a higher altitude. So there's a lot of. There's oak trees and there's pine trees. And, you know, this is not where I want to see a palm tree. So. So there's this giant palm tree. It's like 100ft tall or something. And the first thing I did when I moved in is I had. I got a couple bids to cut it down. And it was like, I don't know, 500 bucks or whatever. You know, this is like 20 years ago. And so the guys come in and they're like five of them. They do this, and they climb up and they do this. And, uh, like two hours later, there's no more palm tree there.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I'm like, hey, I just spent 500, which was more like a thousand dollars. Like, in two hours. You'd think I'd be mad. I said, no, I'm really impressed with these guys and I'm happy to have it done, you know?

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, yeah. And you saw the process and professionalism. They had their stuff together. You're happy to, uh. You don't want to be there watching them or worrying about them or for eight hours. Right. So.

Speaker B: Right. Like that's exactly right. And. And they futz around. They come back the next day because they forgot their chainsaw, you know, whatever they're with. Yeah. And that's. See, when our guys stick around a long time, they get very, very good. So now they even go faster and better and make more money. And the customers are happy, happier. So they refer us more work and then we have more work to pay more guys to do, more money. And you know, it's upward.

Speaker A: It just steamrolls from there. That's that. Uh, you know, I did one on a book my dad gave me. Quality is Free as a title of the book. And I'm going to greatly simplify it. But do great work, be on time, be friendly, great. You know, fair price. And that's the cheapest way actually to do business. Maybe the most expensive up front, but it's the cheapest way in the long run because now you're getting repeat business. You're getting referrals, reviews, whatever. Case studies, whatever you want done is. It gets done. Your business grows, uh, organically way faster.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it gets to where promotion. I have a whole. In the book we talk about promotion and expenses of it. It gets to the point where I don't. I have to consider promotion. Hiring another person just to handle the phone calls coming in to talk to the people. I'm not paying, you know, Google for ads or something. I don't need to do that anymore. I just need to. I just need to handle the customers coming in. It doesn't start like that, but as time goes on, you know, like on our. If you looked on our Google, the electric connection Google, uh, uh, your maps, you know. Uh, yeah. Like it's like, you know, one through five stars or five through one stars or something. And five stars is like all the way across, like 500 or something. And then there's this little speck on. On five. I mean, on one star, I was like, it really makes a difference when customers see stuff like that. They.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: They want to call you. And they will. Look, I have no. That's what I use Google for. Just. I don't. Or they see our truck go by. Uh, no customer just frankly calls. Hardly any will just call. They'll look online and they'll see what your reviews are. So it's pretty critical to have happy customers, as you were referring. Yeah.

Speaker A: 100%. Yeah. 661 reviews out there. 5.0. Nice.

Speaker B: Yeah. Look at the. If you're looking. Look at the. Look at where one star. You can, like Carly, even see it, you know, on the. On the.

Speaker A: Yeah, there's one little sliver of a yellow. A slice of pizza. Not even. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: And. And it's important on, um, the reviews, by the way, to always respond if somebody says, yeah, 100. Thank you, that's a great review. Really appreciate it. Or really bad one is, oh, sorry, we couldn't help you. But, um, we actually, uh, you know,

Speaker A: or do not argue. I see that, uh, way too often. So you get those one. And by the way, you know, people want to see you have a couple of bad reviews. Nobody's perfect, as they say. Uh, but also that when you have that bad review, how you reply to it is super important. Take it offline. I see, uh, so often that a contractor, uh, will now argue. It's like, hey, Ken, you know, you were. You did blah, blah, blah. And, uh, we didn't guarantee da, da, da, you know, or whatever. And, uh, man, you know, I'm done. I'm not doing business with you. You're arguing with your customer online. I'm done. And moving on to the next guy.

Speaker B: Yeah, ours says stuff like, well, we tried to reach this customer, but they, uh, you know, didn't leave their name. We're not even sure this is our customer. We. We really couldn't find the job that they're referring to. Or they'd be, uh, every now and then there's one who says, oh, yeah, you know, when we had the inspector come out and he found other issues on the other side of you're building, you know, we. That just wasn't part of our contract. And, you know, we like, We. We try to, like, be rationalizing, but occasionally, very occasionally, we'll say, oh, yeah, we were late to that job. You're absolutely right about that. We try always hard. And, you know, did you see our policy about, like, you get a service call for free, which we gave you because we were late.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, so, yeah, yeah, just, you know, use a good language.

Speaker B: And then, because there are people that have told me, I don't even look at the good reviews, I look at the bad reviews.

Speaker A: Exactly. A lot of people will just click on that one right there, that one star. And look at how many people, you know, how many there are.

Speaker B: And how did you handle them? They. They want to know, how did you handle that?

Speaker A: Were you a pro or. And what was their complaint? You know, you can almost tell by the complaint whether it was A Karen or not. Right. Um, I feel bad for all the Karens out there in the world who have that name.

Speaker B: We had a, one of them recently. Well, ah, a couple years ago that wrote.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I took him to the garage to do the work. Uh, and he, he gave me, he kind of like looked, he rolled his eyes. It was like really rude or something. And then, uh, you know, I always investigate these things. And it turned out like we said, okay, how far is the EV car charger gonna be from the panel? And is, you know, panel in the garage? Well, panel's in the garage right about here. And then this goes here. So it's only like 10ft. No big deal. So we go out there. This is my favorite one of all time. There was no panel in the garage. There's no electrical panel in the garage

Speaker A: the other side of the house.

Speaker B: Yeah, she was complaining because she goes, well, I don't know anything about electricity. Well, you told us your electrical panel was in the garage. It's kind of. Most people know what an electrical panel is, you know.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And she was really upset that there was nothing there for us to connect to. Oh, man. So we got like a one star review and we, we try to be really polite and everything, but, you know, it's one of these ladies. I've never written a bad review, but these guys are so bad that I thought that, you know, I know you've never written any review, lady. Like, what about the nice reviews too? Anyway, it. You gotta. It's a game to play and it

Speaker A: is a game to play.

Speaker B: On that note, do you have that reviews. You can use bad reviews to get

Speaker A: business to your advantage? Absolutely. That's how you should look at them. Uh, well, first and foremost, taking care of the customer. And then, you know, use it to your advantage.

Speaker B: We have that. We have the luxury of doing good work. Like almost always if something wrong, um, we'll fix it for free.

Speaker A: So there you go.

Speaker B: No, no way. We. It's really hard to give us a bad review that we don't look good at the end when we reply to it.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that's a common thread, by the way. Also of all the people I've interviewed, their custom where their companies are extremely highly rated. That seems to be a company policy is, hey, you know, we're all about making you happy. So if we did something wrong, we'll be out there, we'll fix it for free.

Speaker B: But we'll never, um, submit to someone that says, if you don't give me this for a cheaper Price, I'm going to give you a bad review.

Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead. Goodbye.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, we actually, if they do give us a bad review, we just write right in their response. We didn't, uh, acquiesce to your threat.

Speaker A: Your blackmail did not work on with us. Do you, uh, on that note, um, you know, I just had a bunch of guys come out for painting quotes and I'm amazed at how many, uh, you know, don't have a lot of reviews. And then they, uh, when I ask them all, they don't, they don't automate it. They have nothing. You know, they're just hoping a customer will give them a review. So on that note, I, uh, know you use Service Titan. You have, you guys automated that. Uh, how do you, how do you work it internally in your, your company?

Speaker B: We actually built our own program.

Speaker A: Oh, that's right. I remember you saying that.

Speaker B: Where every single job we do, half an hour later they're getting an email asking how did we do exactly? And then we, uh, have it all set up. Five stars. And if it's five stars, it goes to like, let's say Google. If it's 4, 3, 2 or 1, it goes to an email directly to our customer service department who immediately looks at it and handles whatever it is. And then we often get five star reviews after that.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: I, I called, I told them that I was unhappy, um, with a sick door thing, and then they came right out and fixed it. Five stars, you know.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really important thing. You trade your every single review you can get. We're not fanatical about it, but, yeah, uh, there are guys out there that are like, man, they do a job and then they, they haven't even done the job yet and they're asking you for yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, or referrals. I love those sales features. Yeah. Ridiculous. How about you earn it first? Yeah, exactly. Uh, but you automate that. So however you're doing that, um, when the job is done exactly, you know, half hour hour later, boom, you know, email and a text goes out. Um, how do we do. And you can do that. Two stuff like you're doing, do you sell that to other companies?

Speaker B: Well, we did for a while. I had a, another company called Happy Contractor and we were building websites for other contractors around the country and we also had. Yeah, it was called Review Generator. Um, have you stopped that, Tim? Yeah, pretty much. Because there's another company out there that does the same thing. And look, it's, there's lots of really time consuming really, it's not just a review thing. I mean, just anything other than electrical. I have found, even I had this whole business concept. You build a website and then let's 25amonth. You sort of rent the website, but at the same time you maintain it and you add something each week. And, you know, you can do that. And we did it and we're still making some money. I mean, residual income is where wealthy people can do that. So we have done it, but what we realized is focusing on electrical

Speaker A: or

Speaker B: I don't know what 5 million divided by, you know, however many hours in a year is, but it's. It just doesn't. It's so much more lucrative to do that than websites, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah. Doesn't pencil out. Well, there's a lot of software out there now and almost every CRM, uh, has a review automation feature. So if, you know, listeners out there are using something, find out if your CRM has that and engage if not.

Speaker B: Yeah, do it. It's really important. And always review, reply nice. And.

Speaker A: And, uh, like you said earlier, you're not even getting that call until they've already, they've already been around the block and looked you up on, you know, all over the Internet. So you're not even going to earn that phone call for that quote possibility or job possibility unless you have online presence. And. Which starts with, you know, reviews on whatever, you know, platform you want to. Google's probably number one. Uh, I don't know about trustpilot and those. They're all good platforms, but I don't think people look there.

Speaker B: You know, they do, uh, Google and Yelp.

Speaker A: Google and Yelp, exactly.

Speaker B: Those are the two. And Yelp is. They're more, uh, what's the word? Discretion.

Speaker A: You know. Yeah, they're.

Speaker B: They're much harder to get a.

Speaker A: You know, they are.

Speaker B: The customers themselves are more picky, but at the same time they're more detailed. And like, I know Yelp does a lot of restaurants, but. But also trades. They do a lot of.

Speaker A: Yeah, they do it all. Um, what's weird about Yelp? Two things, right? So A, they have a policy in their terms of service, you're not allowed to ask for Yelp reviews, which is ridiculous. So you can't really automate that without the endangered and endangering your listing on, on Yelp. And. And then B, if you do ask people, or if somebody just goes on Yelp and, uh, writes a review for your company, if that person is not an active Yelp user, has other reviews on Yelp does it occasionally, at least then they will just simply bury that review on Yelp. It'll be there in the. Whatever that page is. That where it's not shown doesn't calculate in your numbers. So don't ask for Yelp reviews unless they're an active Yelp user.

Speaker B: They. What?

Speaker A: They.

Speaker B: What Yelp wants you to do is put something, like, on your website that says, see us on Yelp. Like, not ask. Exactly, Just say that. And I, I don't think that's very effective. I don't know what happened with Yelp, but we're actually. It's gradually getting more and more contacts from Yelp. We never advertise with them, truthfully. I advertised one time with them, um, like 20 years ago or 15 years ago, and I'm not making this up. We got less business than, um, we didn't advertise with them. I don't know how that could possibly be true, but now, I don't know. We're getting a couple a week.

Speaker A: You're probably ranking a little bit better internally on Yelp searches in.

Speaker B: In some way. Yeah, it's. It's kind of help.

Speaker A: Searches are. Well, they're like Google, right? You get the ads first, but they, uh. On Yelp, it's kind of deceptive in my opinion, on how they're listed. Like, you might have 10 ads above the organic curve.

Speaker B: And even when. Even when they go to your own website, ad or not ad, but they're listing. They have like three ads right on top of it.

Speaker A: Right on top.

Speaker B: You know, right above. Anyway, I kind of wash my hands of Yelp. Other than. I don't mind every. About every other day somebody's calling for, yeah, we're probably doing thousand dollars a

Speaker A: week from just Yelp.

Speaker B: It's very surprising. I don't even know how it happened. Uh, I'm happy, though.

Speaker A: Organic. Yeah.

Speaker B: Customers are more discriminating on Yelp, for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they are. They are. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. But, you know, you, uh, every company out there needs to have a Yelp listing.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: So definitely. Uh, because you'll see companies that don't have a Google list. Well, Google will usually scrape and capture it from somewhere else if the owner has not created a listing. But Yelp does not do that. So you have to initiate the listing on Yelp. Yeah, crazy. Crazy. How about, uh, bilinguals? That play, uh, it's got to play a factor for you and, uh, in all your positions, or. No.

Speaker B: Okay, I've got, I've got Electricians, uh, a bunch of them are bilingual, you know, Spanish and English, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, with an odd language that never matters thrown in here and there, you know, I know. I'm Finnish. Well, good. If a Finnish customer shows up.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Doesn't speak English, you know. Okay. But, uh, and then in the office, I've got like, one, two, I think two that speak Spanish and English. Three.

Speaker A: Yeah, do that.

Speaker B: But I gotta say, we rarely have homeowners that only speak Spanish. You know, it very occasionally can happen, and we can cover that. We do have, uh, some property management companies that some of their clients have. A lot of them. We don't. We can't help them with some Asian language, you know, like Vietnamese or Chinese or something, you know, we just don't have that. But generally, no. You'd be surprised. In la, you'd think it would be very. Yeah, it's not. It's not that important.

Speaker A: Mild. Wild. Well, if your clientele is, you know, of a. Speaking, uh, another language as well, then obviously some of your employees must do it. So if you find your customers that are speaking other languages and prefer a second language, make sure your CSRs do as well.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it. It can also. That's a good. That's a good point. Yeah. I mean, it can help with sales. Like, it's. Oh, uh, Padre. Good. You know, let's. Let's. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's not a huge factor, but it is definitely something. And it's not. It's not a negative to have somebody that can speak more than one language. And so.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: I thought you would have run into it more. So I'm. I'm kind of surprised.

Speaker B: I would think so, too. But it's not that big of a deal.

Speaker A: Most people are bilingual who speak Spanish.

Speaker B: I think people. The people that hire us are, uh.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, there's weird. A certain level of commerce and affluence and everything. The customers that reach out to us. Yeah, they. They pretty much speak English. Pretty much. Yeah.

Speaker A: They're bilingual.

Speaker B: Um, Bilingual. They still. Yeah. But anyway, uh, it's not. That's not a big deal.

Speaker A: Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Anything we didn't touch on about employees you'd like to. You'd like to add to that, Kim?

Speaker B: I don't. You know, just in everything, finance, employees, um, banking. Like, my attitude is, it may seem simplistic, but the golden rule, it works for me every time. Like, just treat people like you would like to be treated and, you know, the. Another way of looking at that is take the point of view of the people if you want to communicate with them so they can understand you. And if you really can fully understand what a customer wants from you, show up on time, don't drip oil on my driveway. You know, deliver what you promised, do a quality job. You know, they. You gotta know what your customer wants. You know, in the same way, you gotta know what your employees want. You know, you gotta know what you want. Uh, you. But. And then you try. What would you like? You know, I always am asking myself, well, what would I do, like, on the job? Um, would I want to spend a hundred thousand dollars if I've got a $5,000 way to sell for now, and, uh, give. Give the customer both options so that they now have your knowledge with their desires. Like, in other words, they. They have a goal, you know, they just don't know about electricity. So I can. I can fill in that part, and then they can determine. Oh, well, I guess with my insurance company, I don't have to do that this year. I can do it next year. I'm on. I'm with them on that, you know, then.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That's what you should do. But they needed my knowledge, so, yeah, that's kind of our sales technique, is we just tell them the facts of. So they can make an informed decision and we honor their goals. And, you know, quite often their goal is to get the damn job done. But I've seen, oh, man, hundreds of thousands of dollars of jobs come in because I've told people, you don't necessarily have to do this now.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Blah, blah, blah. And somehow that just clicks a little switch for certain people where they say, you know what? Like, let's do it.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Here's your options now. Uh, temporary fix versus permanent. Good, better, best. You know, just giving the options to the, you know, the customer.

Speaker B: Yeah, the better. Best thing is, is. Is interesting if you, if you do it with a pure heart, it's a good thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, wherever it applies. Exactly. Yeah. If you're. Yeah, there's all kinds of tricks out there, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: We.

Speaker B: And I deliberately don't have my electricians go to special sales, uh, technique schools and stuff like that. I like to keep them just plain and honest and just do the job they're there to do. And it's worked out really well for me that way.

Speaker A: Do you. Do they go or do you. When a supplier comes out, or do suppliers have classes occasionally? Right. New equipment or whatever. Is that a thing in your industry? At all. Or, or not really.

Speaker B: Well, in our industry. Yes. Like if we're wiring up a nuclear power plant, but we're not, you know, and so, and not so much like we're. We stay abreast of, you know, all the, uh, everything from like 20 years ago, it's gone. You know, there's still light switches, but now, you know, there's cell phones to control everything and there's. Oh, yeah, doorbells that look at people and.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, all you just sort of gradually learn it as you go.

Speaker A: I see.

Speaker B: And, uh, there have been a little training, not directly from my company, but just from learning on the job. Oh, read instructions. It's a brand new thing. And now we know about that. Like, someone just told me about a smart switch yesterday. Uh, switch. What's a smart switch? And apparently no. A circuit breaker. A smart circuit breaker. And I'm somehow. With your smartphone, you can turn off a circuit breaker.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: Like. Which is fine, but I was trying to explain to this lady, like, why would you want to. Like, I don't understand why, why would you.

Speaker A: You got a house fire. Okay. Turn off the main breaker, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, she was a landlord, had four. Four units. And I, I was saying, well, you know, you're going to have four meters and your tenants are going to pay the bill. So, like, you don't really have to worry about what they're going to spend. Like, they're the ones. Uh, uh, she had some kind of weird idea. But the point is, if, if we ever installed a smart circuit breaker, there'd be instructions right there the first time. And a lot of these systems come and go. So we, we just sort of have learned. We learn on the job. And it's like thermostats have completely changed.

Speaker A: You know, everybody's upgraded. So, uh, that's a good thing. Like smart, uh. Or a good question. How much a business is smart business? You know, uh, lighting H Vac, uh, thermostats. Like you're saying, do you guys get involved in the H vac thermostats or, or that's.

Speaker B: We kind of stay away.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because it's an H H Vac thing. We know. We know how to take four wires and connect them, but still, it, It.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's their thing. But do you get a lot of smart home any kind of, uh.

Speaker B: Well, not, you know, it like it used to be the system called X10 and then it kind of fell apart. It's, it's, it's really simple to do it now. Like, if if they want to have like let's say three lights, three switches for the same light or something in three different rooms, we can, you just put in a module that has a frequency that, that does it and.

Speaker A: Oh, wow.

Speaker B: Um, so we learned that, we learned that, I don't know, 10 years ago and it doesn't take a long time to learn this stuff.

Speaker A: But no, we don't.

Speaker B: We're not like a specialist in uh, low carbon usage of a house. Like, although I'm going to talk to a guy tomorrow about it. I think he's going to give me a lot of business actually.

Speaker A: Low carbon usage?

Speaker B: Yeah, they want, they want to get rid of um, gas heating and get electric and stuff and they need an electrician to do their installations for them. And what I.

Speaker A: Nice apartment building or that's what they are focused on.

Speaker B: Yeah, apartment buildings.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that was a lesson in an earlier episode for the listeners out there was, you know, Kim spent a lot of time, uh, you know, focusing on referral partners and bigger customers like that. So that's, that's uh. You want to close with a word on that at all, Kim?

Speaker B: Well, yeah, like if you're going to promote, try to find the least expensive way to get the most business. And the best way, although most people won't do it, is do cold calls backed up with a, uh, a website that has a specific page for whatever you're promoting. Like if it's, let's say, property management company, you make a whole page on your website about property management, how great you are, have some referrals on there and some other stuff. Then you, you make, you find a list that of all the property management companies near you and then you literally, this is where you got to pay your dues. You just start making phone calls and well, uh, who would be the person to talk to? Oh, here's their email. Then you send them an email. Like there's a little system and it's really slow. Like a week, two weeks, three weeks can go by. Nothing happens. Like let's say you only make 10 calls a day, but still like 30, 40 calls later. Finally something happens. But what it is is from like two months ago when you were doing it, somebody now needs something. But, but the thing is that's now I've done it enough where I'm uh, talking millions of dollars on certain clients that like property management companies that own like 40 buildings and then suddenly they have to do something in all 40 of those buildings. And you know, you've done some service calls with Them and done a good job and never raised your prices when you could have and all that. So they like you. All of a sudden you have a lot of work.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So you want to try to go with people that you're doing them a favor when you do them a job. Like you know, like if you're a. Ah, simple one is a general contractor needs a plumber, they need a roofer, they need a framer, they need an electrician. And so if you've done a really good job for them, you're doing them a favor by doing the next job for them. They don't have to go looking for somebody else. They can trust you. They can do the same with property management companies. Like if you do a good job, um, with their tenants and do good work, then they have a problem. A tenant calls, my lights aren't working. Well, guess what, they can call my company because they trust me. And how much did I spend to get that job? Nothing. Like all we had to do is schedule it right. But it takes, it takes some effort to get to that point. But it's a good way to go find. Oh yeah, there's one down dirty way. It's in the book too. A cheap way is home warranty companies. Like oh yeah, this is a really. For anyone out there that's just starting out and really wants some work and just is willing to work hard and put up with some crap. Probably you, what you do is you go to home warranty companies. I forgot what they're all called now, but you can look it up in Google and just they have to service all of their clients. Their clients are people that bought a house last year and they got a year worth of free, uh, whatever warranty on all the different house. And so if something goes wrong, they want the cheapest electrician or plumber possible, but they also want the job done well. And then you got to find the ones that are willing to pay you quickly because some of these home warranty companies are not, um, got to go pay your dues. But suddenly if you're doing a good job and you got a big enough company, you might have a couple of those a day.

Speaker A: Nice, nice. And realtors.

Speaker B: And you're not going to pay, so you're not going to advertise. Except you called them and asked them if they need an electrician or a plumber or whatever. So right, you paid with sweat equity. You've just paid by a telephone and then sent them and paid your dues time wise. But then it could be five years that you're getting calls.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah, should have somebody making referral partner calls a couple of days a week even if you're already busy with a nice follow up system. We do it internally here now too also, uh, and large part thanks to you. Oh really? Uh, yeah, yeah. I mean I should have been doing that for a long time but I was pretty content with my little handful of customers and that's, you know, I've been around the block a few times. I was, I was happy. But uh, we've retooled a little bit and uh, yeah, so we, we did the same. So yeah, it's a lot of calls, a lot of follow up. But as soon as you land a client like you said, you know that, that branches out one to many, you know a lot many jobs can come your way to the one client for sure. For sure.

Speaker B: In fact it's one. When you're promoting to people like that, find the biggest ones. Find the ones that have a uh, property management company that has two buildings. Okay. If they have 200 buildings, that's even better, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, even better. They have a non stop flow of issues coming their way. Yes.

Speaker B: Yeah. But of course the best clients you're ever going to get are the hardest to get because they're good for a reason and they're already doing a really nice job with whoever like let's say whoever plumber they're using is also not wanting to stop being their plumber. So you.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. You're, you're, you're in the queue waiting for a mishap. Right.

Speaker B: A mishap. Like the plumber overbids a job times or he doesn't show up or he's, or else they just get big enough and they need another second person. You know, whatever. You gotta wait for someone. There's a misfortune happening somewhere along the line to somebody that's not you if you just keep pressing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And once you get a really good one, you, you just gotta understand that there's other people wanting to be in your position. So treat em well.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, and having that landing page is, is ideal and I would go one step further. And now there's lots of video testimonial um, software out there also just like your review getting Google or Yelp reviews. Um, so now you can feed your database into that. So and if you have video testimonials on that, you know, we're given the property manager landing page example, then you know your conversion rate of People who hit that page will be, uh, will be much greater.

Speaker B: Yeah, Wish I do, by the way, have a, uh, whole video of property managers that talk about how great we are. But I sent a guy out there with a camera to do it and it took a long time.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: Like now look at what we're talking. We're talking on electronically. Just get on Zoom or something and just go talk to your clients and record it. Yeah.

Speaker A: Oh, you don't even need it anymore. There's literally, it'll send them an email or text, they click on it and they'll, they'll record it right into their phone. They'll, they can rerecord if they weren't happy. You can ask them questions, like several questions along the way. You don't want to get carried away. Two or three questions. You know, what was it like working with us? What was the quality of our products or something? How, how friendly was the tech or whatever, whatever you want to ask. And all that's on video, boom, they hit go. And then most of those will have a embed code that you can just put it right on that landing page. Absolutely beautiful.

Speaker B: Yeah. Life is good. And AI is going to completely transform everything. Next three years.

Speaker A: Yeah, that too, that too. Whole nother topic for sure.

Speaker B: But at least, at least if you're in the trades, it's going to be quite a while before, you know, some kind of robot comes out to the house and does the work for you. You know, like an Android isn't going to be fixing your roof in the near future, but white collar people, wow. It's going to be big difference very soon.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, you know, I heard, uh, of course AI is definitely going to replace jobs out there. Um, but I don't remember where I heard this now, but there's a phrase out there. AI is not going to replace your job. Somebody who knows how to use AI is going to replace your job. And that's the more likely case, not for a tech, but for white collar out there. If you don't know how to use it, uh, what are you waiting for? First of all, it's, it's amazing. Um, and, and b, you gotta, you gotta know how to use it to be more efficient on your job. Uh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker B: But it's coming. It's big, big deal. AI.

Speaker A: Sure, yeah, it's here, it's here. You got a lot of web traffic. You should have a web chat down there. You know, uh, AI controlled and booking jobs, answering questions, you know, all that good Stuff. And you're paying for traffic, especially if you're paying. So the word to the wise out there, you're not, uh, to you, Kim. But if you're paying and guys are out there paying, you know, five, six figures a month for web traffic, Google Ads, uh, and elsewhere. So if you're paying for that traffic to hit your website, your website better be highly efficient at converting those people into jobs, not phone calls into booked jobs. So you should have a calendar on your site, whatever is required, AI, Web, chat, all that convert those people into jobs.

Speaker B: Yes, definitely. Like we're, we're in the process of taking our price book that we have and handing it over. Eventually it'll be AI. The AI is going to talk to every customer and say, oh, this, what is this? What about that? What about this? Well then your price will be this.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Midnight at midnight when we're all sleeping.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: And then schedule the job.

Speaker A: Exactly. There's quite a few, uh, so, you know, we've got a good experience with it. So there's a lot of calls that come in at uh, ah, starting around 6am until you're open time and then your close time till about 10pm depending on the service. I'm talking home services now, plumbers, H vac, roofers, whatever. You know, so, and man, you, you know, so many guys are like, I answer the phone until 10pm it's like, why? And no, you don't, man, you go to, you go to dinner, you're, you know, working with the kids, whatever. You're not manning your phone 24 7. Uh, the biggest fiction I see out there. Ah, and so most contractors say, I want more leads. And then you ask them, well, how are you converting your web traffic? What do you do for after hours calls? What do you do for missed calls? And, and they have no answers for those things. And so fill those gaps. Those are all the leads. You know, you want more leads, those leads are coming in, but you are missing them. So capture them first, the ones you got coming in.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Or you spend money to create more. All right, I'm off my, uh, yeah,

Speaker B: I guess my final thing for contractors is starting off, just starting out. Like, forget all the AI stuff.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, just answer your phone.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Just answer your phone. Answer your phone. If you're busy, don't not answer your phone. Answer your phone anyway, like you're busy and you're going to hire somebody, you better have a lot more work for that person to stay employed with. You answer your phone, answer on every time yeah, do that.

Speaker A: Find a good job, especially a smaller guy who needs it more. Uh, I would. I would argue, um, because once you're. You get the office you got, you. You like your perfect example. You have a complete office answering your phone. What do you guys do after hours? Kim?

Speaker B: Oh, well, um, you know, we have very little. Like, we. We have, you know, voicemail and emergency calls for some of our best clients.

Speaker A: I gotcha.

Speaker B: In all honesty, we're. We've been so busy that we can't handle the load of more work, so why spend extra time at. Ah, it's just not. Doesn't pay to do that, you know?

Speaker A: Gotcha. You got all the business you can handle right now. But if you were a new guy, you're 1, 2, 3.

Speaker B: Uh, then I would. You gotta have. I wouldn't do voicemail. I. I'd do either. And not even a live person anymore. You know, I do some kind of AI Answering.

Speaker A: Yeah, one or the other AI Answering. Uh, voice or. Or an answering service in your niche. You know, if it. If it's, uh, an electrical service answering service or roofing service answering.

Speaker B: And a good one. I mean, there's good ones.

Speaker A: I mean.

Speaker B: Really.

Speaker A: Good point. Good point. Touche. All right, my friend, Any closing, uh, comments?

Speaker B: No, Mark, it's been an interesting series, I guess that's, uh, like, oh, and finally, guys, invest your money. Like, if you. If you can't take 10% of what you're bringing in and put it aside for your future, you're not earning enough money yet.

Speaker A: Yeah, good point. Uh, make your salary and a profit. You know, there's that profit first out there. But make sure, you know, you're taking, uh, what you deem as a good salary and your company is making a profit. Like, you're saying you're taking one third of the profit. Make sure both things are happening. Otherwise, um, we would be better working for somebody.

Speaker B: Yeah. Like, I'm. I am. I'm kind of set financially. I don't have to worry about money anymore. Only because I invested in m. Some of my profit. Like m. Even a surgeon makes who knows how much money. $500,000 a year. Yeah. And he has a yacht or he has a boat and he's got a house and a mansion. And, um, a four, you know, uh, means nothing when he's 75 years old.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: All of that, he spent all those parties, all the, you know, all that's left is what the concrete things that he invested in.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: And you need to invest or you're going to end up every week pretty much the way you were the week before that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Shame on our education system actually, you know, uh, not teaching from grade school up what to do with your money. So, yeah, we all spend a lot of time learning how to earn the money and not so much time, uh, trying to, what to, you know, how to invest it, how to, how to make it grow.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: So, yeah, so, yeah, it invests m.

Speaker B: You make a profit on working hard as a contractor, you become wealthy by investing some of that profit.

Speaker A: There you go. Good. Wise words. Kim, always a pleasure, my friend.

Speaker B: Yeah. Mark, thank you very much for interviewing me.

Speaker A: Appreciate it. Thanks for doing the series, man. And uh, hopefully a lot of people. I've been seeing a lot of views actually, uh, or, uh, podcast listeners. We don't get so much YouTube traffic, but, uh, good, uh, podcast listening. So. And I see your series picking up steam. So glad, uh, to see it. And hopefully.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I, I don't even pay attention to it because it's not a money thing for me. But I'm seeing Amazon tells me that people that buy my books.

Speaker A: Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, let's suppose for that. So folks, there'll be a link in the description. No matter where you are in the podcast or on, uh, YouTube, go get a, uh, copy of the book and digest it yourself. Uh, Kim, again, a million thanks. Thanks to all the listeners out there. Appreciate your time, know it's valuable and uh, hopefully you got some good golden nuggets out of there. Thanks for listening to the Battle Plan Marketing podcast to power up your home service business. For show notes, visit Battle Plan Marketing Podcast. If you enjoyed our show, please share it on social. Until next time.