You Don’t Have a Sales Problem—You Have a Systems Problem w/ Tim Roberts, CEO of Scale It Now

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to Close it now, thepodcast that's revolutionizing the
H Vac and home improvementtrades industries.
Get ready to dive deep intothe world of heating, ventilation
and air conditioning.
We're turning up the heat onindustry standards and cooling down
misconceptions.
And we're not just talkingabout fixing vents and adjusting

(00:21):
thermostats.
It's about the transformativemovement that's reshaping the very
foundation of H Vac and home improvement.
We're the driving force,inspiring top performers who crave
excellence not only in theirprofessional endeavors, but also
in fitness, nutrition,relationships and personal growth,
proving that we can indeedhave it all.

(00:44):
This is Close it now, whereexcellence meets excitement.
Let's get to work now.
Your host, Sam Wakefield.
Welcome back.
Today I am so excited to havethis guest.
He is somebody that I've metthe last year and I'll give you a

(01:07):
super quick history of how Iknow him and then we're of course
going to let him introduce himself.
But today I am excited to havethe founder and CEO, Tim Roberts.
He is founder and CEO of acompany called Scale it now you may
notice some similarities inthe name there.
And he's hiding in the darkover here, so let's give him some

(01:29):
light going on.
And what I love about this guyis he is so authentic.
You will not find a coach ortrainer or anything else that is
authentic and just literallyno bullshit as this guy is.
He came into my life abouteight months ago.
I was originally just lookingfor a bookkeeper and so we got connected

(01:51):
and of course they have abookkeeping company as well.
His wife runs a bookkeeping company.
And he's like, yeah, I can,you know, of course do that.
He's like.
But also what I do is.
And this episode is going toshow you why I immediately brought
him on.
He's been my basically mybusiness coach and implementer integrator

(02:14):
for the last eight months ofForeclose it Now as well as we're
doing some really cool stufftogether now.
So super excited to introduce.
This is Tim Roberts of ScaleIt Now.
Welcome to the show, man.
Well, thank you very much.
Wow, you took my breath awaywith that introduction.
And I gotta tell you, I'm justgoing to.

(02:35):
That's it.
Just listen to whatever Samsays about me.
Yeah, I love it.
I need to interview everybody.
History of, you know, why inthe world are you sitting in the
seat?
Why?
So for everybody that's listening.
I don't always, almost never,when I very first meet somebody,
hire them on the spot forSomething for me, especially for

(02:56):
my company.
That did not happen.
That, that absolutely happenedwith this, with this gentleman.
The second we had our firstconversation, I was like, let's,
let's go.
This is exactly what I need inmy life right now.
So give everybody a superquick highlight reel.
How, you know, a little ofyour history and why in the world
are we on this podcast today?
Yeah, it's a, it's, it's, it'sbeen a bit of a journey, I guess.

(03:22):
Yeah, I've got a little bit ofan eclectic background.
I, I started in sales.
I've got a military backgroundas well.
So I'm, I, I understand what,what grit means, you know, to have
grit when you, when, when youdon't want to take another step.
I know how I understand that.
And I, I, I was successful in sales.

(03:42):
I worked for a very largecompany back in the early 90s, and
I wound up being the numberone rep in the country for writing
new business.
That, that means notpenetrating accounts or, or, or renewing
accounts.
I was writing new business.
And the reason was, is becausethere weren't any accounts, if I

(04:05):
wanted to make any money, Ihad to go out and I had to actually
to write new business.
And it, it was, it wasinteresting because it became a point
of pride, you know, to where,yeah, hey, look, you're renewing
stuff.
That's great.
You didn't start that account.
You know, I used to say stufflike that.
I would just get underpeople's skin, you know, little competition,
head games, people play witheach other in sales.

(04:27):
It's a lot of fun, the banter.
But I became the number onerep in the company, and I had a,
I had an altercation with mysales manager.
I, we did not get along.
We did not.
We had a personality conflictthat, I mean, it was a personality
conflict.
It was like vinegar and water,you know, it just didn't work.

(04:48):
And so one day, I used tocarry my resignation letter around
in my briefcase.
I'm not kidding.
I did, because I, I, I, Ican't remember where I read it or
where I heard it from.
Yeah, I do.
It was Harvey McKay.
When I read Swim with theSharks without getting eaten alive,
he made a comment, he makes acomment in that book about something

(05:10):
about salespeople are neverout of work.
People are always trying tohire great salespeople.
They don't have to worry abouta job.
In fact, a salesperson couldeven conceivably walk around with
his resignation letter in his briefcase.
And I thought that was theGreatest thing, because it's so silly

(05:32):
what you do when you're younger.
If I could talk to myself backthen, I would just go, you know,
you're, you're such an idiot.
But, but I, I, I left thecompany because I realized that not
a single person fromRochester, New York had come into
any one of my accounts.

(05:54):
My, my direct sales managerhad never been in one of my accounts.
So for all intents andpurposes, I was the company.
Right.
And so I thought, if I'mgonna, if I'm doing that and people
think I'm the company, I mayas well start my own.
Sure.
And fortunately for me, partof what I was doing was I was working
in the professional servicesdivision of the company, and it was

(06:15):
really more about management consulting.
And so I, I learned a lotabout best practices.
And then I, I started learninga lot more.
It was geometric, the learning scale.
I literally, I am one of thosepeople that I have a tenant that
says, turn cost centers intorevenue centers as quickly and as

(06:39):
often as you possibly can.
So I'm always trying to thinkof a way to fund a business or to
fund my education withoutspending a dime.
You know, it's sort of likegrowth hacks.
Right?
So what's your growth hack?
What's, what's your personalgrowth hack?
Well, here was mine.
Okay.
I, I, I was, I, I used to takea brown bag, a sack lunch to work

(07:01):
every day.
My wife's a chef, so they werereally good lunches.
And, and so I knew back inthose days, you didn't have email,
you didn't have texting, youdidn't have anything like that.
Everything was phone.
Right.
So from 11:30 in the morninguntil basically 2:00pm or 2:15.
In one half of that timeframe, half of the, half of the prospects

(07:25):
were out to lunch, and theother half of the time frame, the
other half of the prospectswere out to lunch.
So no matter if you made, ifyou made a hundred calls, you reduced
your efficacy by 50% justbecause of the clock.
Sure.
And, and before we came onair, I told you I refused to, to,
to reduce my percentages of a,a desired outcome, of gaining the

(07:48):
desired outcome by any.
And that's an old John Wooden thing.
You know, I think we've talkedabout John Wooden in the past.
I think he's the greatestcoach that ever lived.
And, but the very firstpractice of every UCLA, and this
is when they're winning, like10 national titles in a row, man.
I mean, right.
The very first practice of theyear, all the newbies come in and

(08:09):
he taught them how to puttheir socks on properly and lace
their shoes properly and tiethem properly.
So one day Bill Walton says,hey, Coach, you know why, why is
this the first thing?
He goes, well, I'll tell youwhy, Bill, is because if you're.
If your shoes and your socksaren't put on properly and your,
your shoes aren't tiedproperly and laced properly, you're

(08:31):
going to get a blister.
And if you get a blister, youcan't go 100% in the fourth quarter,
Bill.
So anything that we cancontrol, we're going to control.
Right?
Okay.
You can't control everything.
You can't control outcomes,but you can control what you do.
Right?
So I started thinking aboutthat, and then, so my, my personal

(08:51):
growth hack, because I didn'twant to spend any money to do it,
was.
I would go to Barnes and Nobleor what was the other one that Barnes
and Noble are?
Borders.
Borders, yeah.
Every day I would go therebetween 11:30.
Well, if we're in the 90s, Imean, we've got Walden books and
that kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
I never went to a Walden.
You know why?

(09:12):
Because they didn't have, theydidn't have the coffee.
So I would go in, I would goin from 11:30 to 2.
I'm not kidding.
I actually did this from 11:30to 2 every day I would go in, and
I started in the A's of thebusiness section and I read every
book in the business section.
It took me five years to do it.

(09:33):
Sure.
Okay.
But by the end of the secondquarter of the first year, I, I knew
that I wasn't assimilatingknowledge fast enough.
Because, remember, in thosedays, you know, CFOs didn't talk
tech and CTOs didn't talk to CFOs.
Okay.

(09:53):
No one spoke the same languagein the company.
Right.
Okay.
Because it was all so new.
I mean, you still have IBMmainframes laying around, and I was
dealing with those all thetime, you know, so it was, it was
a really, really interestingtime when.
Back when Steve Jobs and, andBill Gates and Andy Grove were the

(10:14):
pirates of Silicon Valley.
And they were proud to bepirates, baby.
I mean, they really, really were.
Were.
Old Bill, he's.
He's doing everything he canto rehabilitate his reputation now
with, with all the great workhe's doing with the Gates Foundation.
But come on, Bill, you and Iboth know you're a pirate at heart.
Come on, you know, it's true.

(10:35):
So I Was there, Bill?
But in any case.
So, yeah, so I read.
I took a speed reading courseafter the second year or the second.
This is the second year,second quarter.
And that's when the learningrate went up geometrically.
Because I, I.
My mem.
My memory, not so muchanymore, but it used to be.

(10:55):
I almost had a photographic memory.
Like I can still remember tothis day.
To this day.
The first time I laid eyes onmy wife.
I know what she was wearingfrom her head to her toes.
And I know the song that wason the radio.
Absolutely.
It was our wedding song, in fact.

(11:15):
So, So I.
I retained a lot of knowledgeand I read 700.
What?
I read over 800 books.
I read over.
No, no, I read 790 some oddbooks then.
And to date I've probably readmaybe, maybe over a thousand.

(11:37):
Sure.
Because what you find out isthey start to repeat themselves.
You know what I mean?
But anyway, so I just tookthat learning and I began to speak
to cfo because it became veryclear to me that when situations
are bad in the economyparticularly, everything becomes
a financial decision.
You've got four basicresponses that any customer is going

(11:59):
to have, especially if it's B2B.
Okay.
The first one is, are they ina growth mode?
Well, if they're in a growthmode, your chances of making a sale
are pretty high.
Okay.
If they're in an even keelmode, meaning they could take it
or leave it, hey, look, we'redoing great here.
You know, basically theirstatus quo.
Your chances aren't so high.

(12:21):
If they're basicallyoverconfident and they're like, I
don't need anything.
You've got.
I'm the king of this market,you know, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, if they're, if they'renot bagging on him, but I just love
it when he just starts talkingabout something.
It's.
Everything is great.
It's going to be the greatest thing.
You'Ve ever seen, going to be used.
When the president does that,I just crack up.

(12:44):
Because that's anoverconfident company.
Right.
Your chances of making a salein an overconfident company are zero.
It's zero.
Okay.
But your, Your chances ofmaking a sale in a trouble company.
Company that's in trouble.
Oh, yeah, that.
That's when it's the highest.

(13:04):
Because they're looking forany way at all anyway that they can
actually solve the problem.
Right.
The ship, if you will.
Right.
So I looked for troubled companies.
People ask me, how do youprospect newspaper?
It was the business sectionThere was a calamity every.

(13:25):
So it wasn't too hard.
And I would just, I would find out.
I would, I would get their,get their stock information if they
were public, if they weren't public.
I, I used to, used to be, Iused to have, be very, very good
friends with the entirepersonal assistant pool.
They used to call it asecretary, secretary pool back in
those days.

(13:45):
And let me tell you something.
Here's.
Here's a tenant.
Here's something for all youpeople who sell B2B out there, okay?
Executives, no matter howdynamic or effective come and go,
great secretaries andadministrators remain forever.
In fact, they're the ones whotrain the new executives.
One of my favorite things tosay to one of the administrators,

(14:09):
or particularly the head, the,the number one secretary in the company,
I can't remember what theyused to call that idol, but I would
say, how many executives haveyou trained in your career?
And she would start laughing.
She would just start laughing.
She goes, that's a really good question.
She goes, seven.

(14:29):
First time I asked it, I'll forget.
She goes, seven.
Her name was Vicki.
She was awesome.
But let me tell you something.
If you, if you can understandwho, who those, those leaders, those
administrative leaders are inan account.
And I'm not talking aboutsomebody who's a VP of admin or anything.
I'm talking about the peoplewho actually run the day, who actually
do the grunt work legwork, whomove who, who send this email or

(14:53):
send this or send that or dothis or do that.
That's not the executive.
That's the person on theirteam, right?
But if you can, if you can getinto somebody's good graces, that's
going to become your internalcoach in the account and every other
account you want, because theyall talk to each other.
You really think that BillGates, assistant, did not speak to

(15:14):
Steve Jobs, assistant?
Oh, I'm sure they did.
You're crazy.
Yeah, you're crazy if youdon't think they did, okay?
And they do.
In all the Fortune 500companies, they all know one another.
And I think there's, there'san organization called I Can't Remember
Something.
Something.

(15:34):
I'll find out what it is.
I can't remember what it is,but it's for, like, the Fortune 100,
Fortune 200, all the CEOassistance there, okay?
They're part of that.
And these people can opendoors like you wouldn't believe it.
You know why?
Because they control thecalendars, they control their lives.
You want to get on there?

(15:54):
You want to get on their calendar.
That's who you need to impress.
Ooh, what hope.
Everybody that does commercialin this, in this community is listening.
These are golden nuggets here,that's for sure.
Well, you know, it's a littlebit different these days because,
you know, they don't takephone calls.
They're a little harder to get to.
You know, internal.

(16:16):
Everything is sort of hiddenbecause nobody wants to, nobody wants
to actually to take a call.
But, but it's really, reallyinteresting because, you know, I,
I remember.
Who was it?
Very powerful, veryinfluential executives.
I'm just gonna, I mean, I, I,I, I, I want to say it was, I want

(16:40):
to say it was Warren Buffettwho said it way back, long time ago,
and it really changedeverything for me because he said,
there is not a CEO alive whowill not take your call if you have
a legitimate way to help themincrease their top line or improve
their bottom line.

(17:00):
If it's real.
Oh, they want to talk to you.
The problem is they can'tremember the last Warren Buffett
said, I can't remember thelast time anybody actually tried
to get to me.
Wow.
They think he doesn't want tohear anything.
And it's the, the truth is, ishe does.
He wants to hear everythingthat matters.
He's, he's probably a supreme essentialist.

(17:22):
I've never met the man, but Iwould say that if anybody practiced
business essentialism, it'sprobably Warren Buffett better than
anybody.
Sure.
All you have to do is read hisbook to understand that.
Right.
Or Ben Graham's book, for that matter.
The Intelligent Investor.
It's, it's gold.
You want to do investing.
That's, that's gold stuffright there.
Oh, nice.
I love it.

(17:42):
But in any case, in technicalanalysis, if you can find it, that's
another.
That's Ben Graham's.
He's two books.
When they interviewed WarrenBuffett, when he became famous, I
remember it very, very clearlybecause it was a big article on him.
Everybody started talkingabout Berkshire Hathaway, and this
is when it wasn't even what itis now, which is, I think they just
got a trillion.

(18:02):
Didn't they just get atrillion dollar valuation?
I think they passed that.
Yeah, I think they did.
And that was the one thing hewanted to do.
In fact, I tell a lot of myclients, I go, look, here's the thing.
You know, you can put allthese systems in place, you can solve
sales problems, everything,but it's not going to solve your
problems, okay?
That's never going to change,because every time you solve a problem,
you're.
You're introducing a radicalvariable into the system, and that

(18:28):
initiates chains all by itself.
So now you're going to have adifferent problem.
Right?
So I tell people, look, me,Sam Wakefield, and every other person
that's listening to thisthing, we all have the same problem.
Problem Warren Buffett has,believe it or not.
We really, really do.
Okay.
See, Warren Buffett was tryingto scale his company to a trillion

(18:49):
dollars.
I don't know what you'retrying to scale yours to, but I'm
trying to scale mine, too.
It's the same problem.
You know what the difference is?
Warren Buffett has a better problem.
More zeros attached to his problem.
Right?
He's got a better problem.
So you don't try.
You don't.
You don't pray for yourproblems to go away.
You just pray for better ones.

(19:11):
I love this.
Well, so you said somethingjust now actually, is a great way
to turn the corner.
We were talking about your.
Your clients you work with and.
And those type of things.
Tell us what you do now,because that is obviously how we
met.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
But then as an extension ofthat, you know who we're working
with.
Okay.
So I started years ago as acost containment guy, which is why

(19:34):
I went after troubled companies.
And when I got burned out, I did.
I retrenched over a hundredcompanies in 18 years.
And it was a lot, A lot.
I learned a lot, but it was a lot.
You learn all the bestpractices, and you learn all of the
worst practices at the same time.

(19:57):
It's really funny because Ifocus on trade businesses now because
trade businesses to scale, Ijust reversed that process.
Okay.
And I.
I have been developing.
And you know this.
I.
I've been developing a systemfor a long time now in terms of organizing
it and getting it right.
And really funny, because I.

(20:21):
I think it's right now.
I.
You just heard my firstpodcast, which just dropped, and
I'm really glad that you likedit and you said it was cool and all
that, because I was reallygoing after that.
Not cool.
But I wanted it just to.
No fluff.
No.
And quick, quick post for plugfor everybody.

(20:42):
The podcast is called Scale it Now.
And the episode.
First episode did dropyesterday, which is really cool.
You can find it.
I know on Podbean, that'swhere I listen to it.
So look for Scale It Now.
And the first episode is ateaser into.
I'm sure A series of coursecontent that Tim's going to be coming
out with pretty soon.

(21:03):
So make sure you go find scaleit now and listen to it.
Yeah, I'm really anal.
I'm being over prepared.
Yeah.
I think I told you yesterdayhow many outlines I already have
done.
He's got a year planned.
And I was like, okay, you'rejust showing off.
It's just, but I, I, I justwant to be able to, I, well that's

(21:24):
the whole thing, right?
That's what I do now.
I put systems in place andhelp companies scale because you
won't, you've heard me saythis, you won't rise to the level
of your aspirations.
You will fall to the level ofyour systems.
Okay.
And so be, I, I focus on thetrade businesses because I love trade
people.
Okay.
There are, most of them areawesome guys and gals that are out

(21:47):
there just working their tailoff helping.
Just, it sounds so corny but,but helping.
You know, Americans, you know,just, just people take care of their
houses, take care of theirhomes, you know what I mean?
Which is for the most part thebiggest investment they'll ever make.

(22:07):
You know, and it's wherethey're going to raise their kids.
It means a lot.
So, so, but trades people, youknow, they can build anything.
They can put on the, put upthe best walls, most beautiful masonry,
the whole bit.
But most of them don't knowhow to build a business.
Right.
Okay.
And they've had no formalbusiness training.

(22:29):
And what I wanted to do wascreate a system that would be duplicatable.
Very, very simple to implementand very, very simple to follow so
that they could actually scaleand could provide them a framework
to scale as high as theywanted to scale it to.

(22:50):
Because most people, whenthey're in the trade business, I
mean most of your companies,they're smaller, you know what I
mean?
They're not even regional companies.
They're pretty much eithercounty companies or they're city
companies.
They cover a city or a givenspan of territory.
Usually it's within a two hour drive.

(23:10):
Sure.
They don't want the, you know,you don't want your service people
out longer than that or yourinstall crew is out longer than that.
So it, it, most of them aresmaller, but the system will.
Small business, most peopledon't realize this, but small business,
when you're talking aboutvaluations, that's anything 500 million
and under.

(23:31):
Right?
Okay.
So for perspective foreverybody, we hear all this social
media stuff and something wewant to circle back to in A second.
You keep mentioned scaling orwant to give a definition on there,
but everybody that islistening and all of the big dogs
in the trades industries,these companies that hit 100 million,

(23:52):
that hit, you know, there'sonly maybe what, two, three organizations
in the entire country thatwould qualify as a big business because
500 million is a year annualis that magic number.
So everyone is small business.
So I don't.
So everybody listening for perspective.
I don't care how much, howmany Lambos that the.

(24:15):
The guys on social media have.
They sold their business hit100 million and they sold it.
It's a small business.
It's not this enormous crazy thing.
It's perspective.
We just haven't seen that typeof growth in the trades yet or before.
It doesn't mean it's notpossible and it doesn't mean it's
not going to be happening withcompanies that implement this type
of methodology.

(24:37):
So just quick clarificationthere, but I want to circle back
to something here real quick.
You've mentioned scale severaltimes and of course the name of the
company is Scale it Now.
Thank you, by the way.
Yeah, absolutely.
For most people.
For those of you who don'tknow, and that's pretty much everybody
listening because you don'tknow me.

(24:57):
When I started to really getto a point where I could start putting
out an MVP or a minimum viableproduct, Okay.
I was asking Sam, what do you think?
Because Sam's out there.
I mean, you guys know who he is.
And so I was like, sam, whatdo you think is a good name for this?
And so we're kicking somenames around.
I can't remember the dumbstuff we came up.
But finally one day I justwent, you know, hey, Sam, would you

(25:21):
mind if I called it scaling?
He's like, well, no, not at all.
He goes, I'm flattered.
And I go, no, it's great.
It's exactly what I'm tryingto say.
But I did find the domain.
Love it.
Love it.
And you're welcome.
Of course, I function fromthis abundance mentality.

(25:43):
There's so much to go aroundthat it's great.
A, it's cool.
And especially with what we'redoing together now, it just makes
total sense anyway.
But when we're talking aboutscaling, what most contractors, they
don't truly understand thedifference between growing and scaling.

(26:03):
And because everyone thinks,oh, I hit this, you know, I put a
dollar in and I get, you know,$1.50 out or whatever the transfer
is.
And so they're like, okay,well, I Just need more trucks on
the road.
And so if I have, you know, ifI have five trucks on the road and
I make five, I'm just usingsome wild round numbers, everybody.
If I have five trucks on theroad, I'm making $5 million a year.

(26:23):
If I put one truck on theroad, I'll make 6 million and one
more truck I'll make 7 million.
And just quantity of, theycall scale like that.
But give us a real definitionof the difference between scale and
growth because I think thiswill be a good foundation for everybody
listening to help understandthe rest of what you know, what you
really go over and what youtalk about.

(26:44):
Sure, sure.
That's the.
Thank you.
You kind of hit the nail onthe head with the first part because
scaling comes down to yourasset intensity.
Okay, now here we're going toget into some business speak and
I'm sorry for that.
Unless you, I'm going to callit what it is, okay?
No apologies.
There are no holds barred onthe show.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.

(27:04):
So you have assets in thecompany, right?
That's all your cash, that'sall of your, all of the, all of your
tools, your trucks, yourdesks, everything is an asset, including
your receivables.
Those are assets as well.
Right now you also haveliabilities and all of that.
But for now we're going tofocus on, we're going to focus on
assets.

(27:25):
So the question is, is whenyou look at your assets, you and
you say, okay, what Sam wastalking about, okay, I've got two
trucks on the road and I'mdoing a million dollars.
If I put another truck on theroad, I'm going to do a million and
a half dollars.
Well, if you're scaling,there's a, there's an economic term
called returns to scale.

(27:47):
And you may not be.
Just because you could put athird truck on the road does not
mean that is going to haveprovide you the same profitability.
It might cost you more to runthe third truck or three trucks altogether
from a profit standpoint orfrom the cash bleed than it would
normally.
Okay, so let's say that itcost you.

(28:07):
Just for math purposes, let'ssay that it cost you after everything,
it cost you 85 cents on everydollar and you're dropping 15 points
to the bottom.
You're a double digit company,which is fantastic.
And it cost you 85 cents onevery dollar that you made.
Right?
So but if you scale, you putthat third truck on the road, what

(28:29):
if that costs you $87 or $88or $89.
It doesn't seem like a lot,that extra 4%, but remember, you
just went to an 11% companydropping to the bottom.
Okay?
So it does have a massive effect.
Now if you scale again, thatsame number hits and there's a geometric.
There's a geometricmathematical issue that starts to

(28:52):
occur.
In order to return to yourscale, which it was your original
profitability point, you mustcharge more or find a way to cut
costs.
And that when people startcutting costs, that's when they start
making gigantic mistakes.
Gigantic mistakes.
First thing that normally getscut is the comp plan.

(29:14):
Worst thing you can do.
Worst thing you can do.
Because if I'm your top salesrep, remember my resignation letter?
You cut my comp plan.
You mess with my comp plan.
You're about to see that resignation.
Guess what?
All those calls that I've beengetting every week, now I'm taking
them.
Now I'm interviewing.
Now I'm interviewing.

(29:35):
And by the way, for all of yousalespeople that are out there, you
should always be interviewing.
Take a call, take an interview.
Doesn't matter.
You're not being disloyal.
How do you know you are beingpaid what you're worth?
The only way to know that isif somebody offers you more.
Think about it like a.
Like, for instance, thinkabout it like Josh Allen from the

(29:59):
Buffalo Bills.
For those of you who followfootball, I'm a football guy, so
I'm going to talk footballhere for a minute.
Josh Allen just signed thebiggest contract in history.
It's over $300 million forfive years.
250 million of that is guaranteed.
That's never happened before.
So Josh Allen found out whathe was worth.

(30:20):
Or maybe he didn't, becausethe Buffalo Bills did not want him
to even entertain offers.
So they made him the highestpaid quarterback of all time, or
at least with the biggest guarantee.
And that's true withsalespeople, too, because when you
start thinking about theengine, the people who score for
the company, that's yoursalespeople, right?

(30:41):
So you should be interviewingto keep your interviewing skills
sharp.
Number one, to find out whatyou're worth, number two.
And you could pick up someintel on those companies as well.
Because if they're changingcomp plans and they're messing with
their people, you can make acouple of calls yourself and start
recruiting people into your company.
Right, to help it grow.
So there's that tactic as well.

(31:02):
So I didn't mean to digressfrom that.
No, it's great info and Good insight.
I mean, I wish I had done thatyears ago.
I was guilty of never.
I only listened to what theowner of our company said about the
other companies instead oftalking to the other, answering the
calls from the other companiesto recruit me.
And had I done that, I wouldhave known a lot different in our

(31:24):
market versus just keepinghead down and staying close.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, so I'm gonna, okay, I'llboil this down.
I'll distill this down intowhose job, who does what.
Okay?
If you're a salesperson outthere right now or you're a business
owner, okay, and you are, youare trying to, you're, you're, let

(31:46):
me ask you this.
What is the job of your salespeople?
What is their number one job?
What do you think most peopleare thinking right now?
To close business.
Correct.
That is not their job.
You see, you see that?
That's the problem, okay?
Because when you're, you thinkit's to close business, you're making
it about you.

(32:06):
Okay?
Here's the job of the salesperson.
And you need to drive thishome with your people, okay?
Is the job of a salesperson,especially a great one, is to max
their comp plan.
If you design the comp planright, which Sam can help you do,
okay?
If you design the comp planright, you're going to scale anyway.

(32:30):
You want to write this guy orthis gal the biggest checks you possibly
can because you designed thecomp plan so that you benefit.
It fuels the growth of the business.
That's the number one job of asales rep.
So make it easy for them andmake it aligned with your goals.
Okay?

(32:51):
The second thing, and this isthe other side of that coin or the,
I should say the other edge ofthat sword because it's double edged
sword.
What's the job normally of anowner who thinks that the number
one job of their sales crew isto close business?
They think their job is to payas little for that as they possibly
can, right?

(33:13):
So that causes such animosity too.
And that's why people bouncefrom company to company.
I mean, I've been guilty ofthat and I was a victim of that in
my past.
At the same time, you bet.
And you can't, you look, youcan't build a championship team in
any sport by cannibalizingyour people, okay?
And you can't win.

(33:34):
You cannot build especially asales team, especially a sales team
and cannibalize them.
So everything has to bealigned together.
And if it's not, and that's bythe way, that's what scale it now
is about.
And I know that's what you do,too, Sam.
That's why we.
That's why we're so aligned inour thinking, is because it's about

(33:55):
getting everything alignedtogether so that everybody's growing
the.
The boat in the same direction.
But in terms of finishing offwhat you asked me about scaling,
because we digress quite a bit here.
Look, if it's costing you 85cents to scale to.
To run your business now fortwo trucks, 85 cents on every dollar
you make, then if you scaleand it's costing you $0.03 more and

(34:17):
it's cost you $0.88, you'renot scaling, okay?
You're going in reverse.
You're going at inverseeconomies of scale, and eventually
it's going to hose you andyou're going to contract.
Scaling is when you havesystems in place that allow you to
scale at $0.80 on the dollarwith the new truck.

(34:38):
So costs go down while revenuecost go down.
They don't remain the samebecause if they remain the same,
it's growth, not scaling.
Right now, there comes a pointonce again, where you have a return
to scale.
Let's say you have 20 truckson the road.
And at this point, there is noway that you can drive this down
any further because there'sjust no further returns to scale.

(35:01):
So what do you have to do ifyou want to grow?
Well, it's not the same model anymore.
Who are you going to buy?
You want to buy the guy who'sgot two trucks, who's looking to
get involved, who wants abigger company?
And this is where you starttalking about how you're going to
provide equity to partnersthat come in and assist you in getting
the big dream done.

(35:22):
Right?
Okay?
Now for a lot of people,that's like, I don't want to share
my.
I'm not giving up anything inmy company, okay?
So I always like to use this analogy.
Mark Zuckerberg.
Everybody knows old mark overthere, Mr.
Z.
He is the largest singlestakeholder or stock owner in Facebook.
How much of Facebook doeseverybody think Mark Zuckerberg owns?

(35:47):
And there's probably a few ofyou who listen to business news and
you know this answer, okay?
But many of you don't.
Most of the time, I get, oh,half at least, you know.
No.
Mark Zuckerberg.
Mark Zuckerberg owns 11% of Facebook.
That's it.
Warren Buffett does not ownall of Berkshire Hathaway.

(36:07):
In fact, most people don'trealize he had a Very, very astute
partner the whole time.
As good as Buffett was, theonly difference between Buffett and
Charlie Munger was CharlieMunger was not afraid to take a gamble
on a flyer once in a while.
Yeah.
Charlie liked to throw alittle bit of money down on the craft

(36:29):
stable.
Okay.
He liked to spin that roulettewheel once in a while.
Buffett won't do that.
He won't step outside of his discipline.
Yeah.
The rule is lose money.
And Munger is just as rich as Buffett.
Okay.
And he owned just as muchBerkshire Hathaway as Buffett.

(36:49):
They were partners that wentall the way back to Columbia University,
way back in the old days.
And everyone that was part ofthat case study that Ben Graham did.
You heard me mention BenGraham before.
Everyone that was a part ofthat became a billionaire.
Wow.
Okay.
So, yeah, it was very, very effective.
And that's why he called hisbook the Intelligent Investor.

(37:10):
Buffett said, everything thatI do is writing that book.
All you gotta do is read the book.
Sounds like it's going on theClose it now book club list.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
No, no, it's.
It's a fantastic book.
If, if you're thinking of.
And it's simple, it's really,really easy to understand.
It's not complex at all.
That's the great thing about Buffety.

(37:31):
You know, it's like the famousline when he said, well, you know,
why do people, you know, howdo you make.
How do you make theinvestments you.
You make?
He goes, well, it's pretty simple.
He goes, I don't think peoplemess around when they put a Snickers
bar in their mouth.
I think they're telling methey want a Snickers bar.
If I, Even if I can buySnickers or, or I can't remember

(37:54):
the name of the company.
Mars.
I think I can't remember the.
The name of the.
The parent company.
Like, if I could buy Snickersfor X and it's worth X, I'm buying
Snickers because people, onceagain, don't mess around when they
put a candy bar in their mouth.
So this is the expansionthrough acquisition concept that
we're talking about.
So once you.

(38:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Penetrating your market.
Yeah, sure.
And.
And for everybody, that is,like, at this place, considering
possibly buying another company.
Yes.
You get a lot of.
And totally disagree with meif I'm wrong here, but you get a
lot of, you know, you get coolstuff, you get great people, you

(38:35):
get, you know, sometimes abuilding sometimes collapse.
You know those assets andproperties and stuff.
But the most important thingthat you're buying is the database.
You're buying the client list.
And that is crucial becausethat's how we're actually able to
scale, because now we can dothe same marketing to more people

(38:58):
at a lower cost.
Right?
That, that, that's absolutely correct.
It's sort of like when you're,you're networking, you're the job.
When you're like, you havethose BNI groups and things like
that, and those are wonderful,by the way, to pick up business,
they work very well.
But when you're networking,you're trying to get into the circle
of influence or circle ofconcern of everyone in that, in that

(39:21):
building.
The average person knows, Ithink it's 250 people.
Yeah, the average person knowsroughly 250 people.
And you want 250 of all 250 ofthose people to be thinking of you
next time they need yourservices, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
That's the whole point ofdoing that.
And when you purchase acompany that has two trucks, let's

(39:43):
say they have two trucks and,you know, 5,000, 10,000 clients,
because maybe their system isin H Vac or something like that,
my numbers are probably off.
But you're buying the goodwillof the company.
Goodwill is the value of the brand.
That's intangible.

(40:04):
It's basically the knownentity of the company.
Like, for instance, inplumbing, Roto Rooter.
Everyone knows that name.
Everyone.
Okay.
And it's there.
I think they're franchises.
I'm not sure.
But, but you know, you canfranchise a Roto Rooter.
You can franchise all of thoseplaces because you're buying that

(40:26):
brand.
And when people see that, theysee the brand and they're like, yep,
let's do it.
So, you know, becoming or, orgrowing your brand by putting it
on those other trucks andtapping into that database is a way
to scale without necessarilyspending as much money to garner.

(40:47):
I love this.
So let's turn the corner alittle bit because there's.
We talk about so many things,obviously in my coaching sessions,
but there's some cool thingsthat you've developed recently that
everybody listens to.
The first podcast, we'll hearyou talk about them, but there's
some methods to get to thescaling that I think everybody needs

(41:08):
to understand in this kind offirst, first, first look podcast
we're doing, because I knowthat we're going to do some more
and dive in deeper on some of this.
But talk about some of the,Some of the mops and things.
Give us a quick overview ofthe scale it now system.
I'd love for you to talk alittle bit about the speed square

(41:29):
speed scale and like how thathas moved into your ideology about
how you develop the mops andsome of the different, the, the ways
and means that we're.
Yeah, sure.
And I'm glad you said thespeed square because the system,
I, I settled on the name speedscale and I wanted it to be simple

(41:50):
and I wanted it to workbasically like a, a speed square
because you can do anythingwith a speed square.
I love speed squares, I really do.
I've got like four of them andthey, they can work no matter what
you do.
You use the pivot point on aspeed square and you can have any
angle you want.
Okay.

(42:11):
It'll, it'll rotate.
So for me, speed scale coversevery angle of your business.
And so I thought, oh well, youknow what, I'll just call it speed
scale because originally Icalled it like the fast scale framework
or something and I justthought that was a mouthful.
So speed scale system seemedto work a little bit better.
Keep it simple and.
Yeah, and so it's really simple.

(42:33):
Your, your business, anybusiness that's in small business.
Okay.
Unless you're in the upperechelon of small business like what
we talked about before, youreally only have three business units.
You have, you have your sales,you have conx and you have, and conx
is in the trades.
Okay?
So we're talking about thebusiness units in the trades.
All right, I'll get to conx ina moment.

(42:54):
But in terms of sales, you'vegot your books.
I'm not going to say finance,I'm not going to say accounting because
you don't have that.
You might have a cpa, right,but that not, that's.
By no means are they keepingyour books.
By no means are they keepingyour books.
In fact, most contractors thatI come across, their books are a
mess.
They don't even, they don'tknow what, what, what they're spending

(43:17):
or they, they can't tell me.
They're the profitability by job.
They don't know how to, theydon't know how to bring it out.
In fact, none of these bigsoftware companies that are out there,
I'm not going to name thembecause they might come after me,
but most of them don't have ameans by which you can do that, which

(43:40):
is criminal in my mind.
You've got to know theprofitability of every job or at
least you need to know youneed to have your margins and your
ratios and your thresholds and place.
Why?
Because this may not be a jobyou want, right?
And if you don't know what your.
What your thresholds are, right?
And threshold, what is that?
That, that's just the point ofno return.

(44:02):
Like if you need 30% on yourjob, then taking 29 on the job, no,
you know, that comes.
You're paying them to do thework for them.
That's right.
You're losing money right now.
Are you actually making money?
Yes.
But you're not making yourthreshold margin, right?
So your ideal revenue.
You're not making money.
There's a big.

(44:23):
And keep in mind your idealmargin is not your threshold margin,
okay?
So you gotta.
You gotta make sure youunderstand there's a difference between
the two, okay?
And think of it like if you'regonna do a job and it's gonna cost
$100 to do the job for you,what's the minimum amount that is
acceptable?

(44:44):
And please do not think in dollars.
Think in percentages.
Is it $110?
Is it $115?
Is it $120?
When does this becomepalatable for you as a business person?
Right?
Because at $110, well, youmade 10% on the job, right?

(45:05):
At 115, you made 15 points.
At 120, it's 20 points.
So what is the threshold?
If you're telling me I'm notgoing to do it for 115, then will
you do it for 117?
Will you do it for 119?
Will you do it for 120?
Yeah, I'll do it for 120.
Well, guess what yourthreshold is.

(45:25):
It's 20 points.
You need to understand that.
And that's just a simple wayof doing it, okay?
Where you're.
You're going to.
You know what that threshold is.
And at that point, you've gotto say no.
It's an easy way to say no.
And keep in mind the hardestthing for every entrepreneur to do,
particularly in phase one,which is year one of their build,

(45:46):
which, by the way, your buildis your business.
You don't just build houses orbuild H VAC systems, but you build
a business.
So year one of your build isput together by four frames.
Those are quarters.
Each one of those frames has studs.
Thirteen of them.
That's 13 weeks.
Every day.

(46:06):
You have to drive nails.
The nails are the dailyactivities, the essentials that move
the needle.
If you don't do them, yourframe will not hold up.
Exactly.
So then you end up withcompanies that are 5, 6, 7, 8, 10
years old, and essentiallythey're still year one building the
frame of their company andnever got it completed to start.

(46:27):
That's right.
Because.
Because you're.
Here's the thing.
You won't rise.
Look, if you want to build a10, the way that I describe it is
you want to build a 10, a 10story steel tower.
Okay.
Of a business.
You want to grow this thing to50 million.
Great.
Okay, groundbreak.
Here's where we're breaking ground.
The first frame, the first 90 days.

(46:49):
Frame 90, okay?
We're going to throw up aframe here.
We're going to put up 13 studs.
We're going to have all ofyour nails.
You better drive some nails, baby.
Okay?
The minimums, right?
Because if you're not drivingthe nails, it's never going to stand
up.
You can't hit your beams.
You can't.
If you can't your studs holdup your beams, okay?
Notice how we're going withconstruction here.

(47:10):
Each beam is a month.
What does the month do?
The month bear this quarter,the frame.
Frame 90 bears the weight ofthe next part of the build.
So if you didn't drive enoughnails, you're never going to make
it.
It's not going to stand up.
God forbid you have badweather, the wind blows, you got

(47:32):
a little rain.
We have a little bit coolerSummer, like 20, 24 was.
Yeah.
Your frame, your frame on yourbusiness is going to fall down.
You are on mud.
You're not pounding nails,you're pounding mud.
Can't do it, right?
So that's what it is really about.

(47:52):
And then what you have to dois to keep things simple.
And I cover this in the first podcast.
Look, you know, you.
You don't have to havecomplicated systems, okay?
It's really, really easy toput this together.
Look, basically just.
Just take five things, okay?
You could have a one page.

(48:14):
Like, for instance, you got three.
Three business units.
You've got sales, you've gotconnects, you've got books.
So what's the process?
It's really simple, okay?
And this is, again, I say thisin the.
In the podcast.
This is oversimplified, okay?
And I know that.
I know there's more steps, okay?
But here's basically this fortime purposes, all right?

(48:36):
How do you sell the.
The furnace?
A furnace A.
You spec it, you.
You measure, you pitch it, right?
How do you.
How do you get.
Get money in you invoice.
You chase the invoice and youclose it.
Okay.
You close it out.
Right.
You log it.

(48:56):
Right.
And if you're doing Conex,what do you do?
Conex gets jobs done, salesgets jobs in books, gets jobs paid
and money straight.
Okay, so how.
How do you get it done?
Okay.
We.
We do XYZ to get.
To get this done or that done.
Right.
And these are all your nailsthat you have to drive.

(49:17):
Like, for instance, let's turnit into sales because it's a little
easier putting these metricstogether for sales without getting.
Sounding like we're gettinginto the weeds.
But let's say that you want to.
I don't know, let's say youraverage ticket on your.
On Your offering is $5,000.
Okay.
And you want to grow by amillion dollars.
Right.

(49:37):
Well, it seems to me that youneed to sell 200 new units.
Right?
Sure.
That's one way to get there.
Okay.
How many.
What's.
What's your.
And this is where we get intomarket zoning, just like we get into
community zoning.
Okay.
How do you zone your market?
Right.
We talked about this a little earlier.

(49:58):
Good, fast and cheap.
Right.
Who do you want to be?
Right.
And there's no wrong answer.
Everybody.
It's just.
I was just saying.
And there's no wrong answer.
It's deciding who you want tobe in your market and then saying
no to the other things or, youknow, really pursuing the things
that we decide for and build your.

(50:19):
Build your structure around that.
And this is.
I love this conversationbecause it explains for all of the
business owners out there,this perfectly explains why, say
your company hit the 5 milliondollar mark and you can't seem to
grow past it, or it hit, youknow, you named the mark 8 million,
10 million, 12 million,wherever you're at.

(50:40):
And it's like it was.
It all made sense up untilthis point, but now it seems like
there's this plateau that youcan't seem to get past.
Well, what is happening isexactly like Tim was saying.
You didn't have the rightstuds and beams in place to support
any structure higher than that.
Yes, it'll hold it up to the 5million mark or the 10 million mark,

(51:03):
but it's not going to supportanything else until you go back and
restructure underneath it,build the systems to be able to grow
beyond where you're currentlyseeing your plateau.
And so what I love so muchabout Tim, and what I love so much
about you, Tim, is the waythat you've put all this together
in a way that's so easy to Understand?

(51:24):
And this is why we align so well.
You know, I'm all aboutbreaking, Keeping sales simple and
breaking it down to just theeasiest way to do it.
And we don't need to be, youknow, have all this flamboyant speech
and all this kind of thing.
Just be normal and be real.
You know, be real people, stopbeing weird and start selling.
And you've done the same thingwith all of the, the internal structures

(51:44):
that we, that we talk about.
Well, thank you.
Yeah.
And that's, that's the foundation.
Okay.
So that's when you're pouringconcrete, you haven't even put up
studs.
Yeah.
But you sometimes, sometimesif you, if you're trying to frame
up and you find out that, youknow, you might be on a bad spot
or you might not have theright things, the right foundation
might not be in place.

(52:04):
You might have to fix that.
So as you, as you're trying toscale, you, you can do two things
at once.
One does not serve the other.
And we talked about this alittle bit because let's say, for
instance, your focus is on sales.
Well, that's okay.
But let's say, for instance,your Conex, your Conex unit can only
process.
Just for math purposes.

(52:26):
Let's say that they can onlyprocess or get fulfilled 10 jobs
a month.
And now tell everybody whatConnect stands for real quick.
Okay?
Yeah.
So they're on the same pagewith you.
Yeah, sure.
Construction, execution.
Okay?
Construction, execution, operations.
Right.
And it comes from.
Conex comes from a term thatI, I actually coined.

(52:51):
It's called Constructix.
Because there is nowhere, noplace you can actually learn.
There's no school that teachesit how to do project management,
costing, estimating, and, and books.
Okay.

(53:11):
And, and keep track of your costing.
There's no place where you canlearn all of that.
Right.
All of the different elementsof moving a project through, through
your, your value chain,through your fulfillment channel.
There, there's.
There's no real school forthis that, that has the overlapping
discipline that comes with allof the nuances of something, someone
in the trades.

(53:32):
So I call it Constructix,which is the overlapping disciplines.
And construction, execution, operations.
Execution is what Conex is.
So Conex is.
Is that so?
In any other company would be.
You could call it admin in another.
In another company.
Or you could call it operations.

(53:55):
Sure.
In another company.
But operations and admin arenot the same thing anyway.
It's not.
And this, this so perfectlysums up that exact role within the
trades, within home services,because it is exactly that.
And so so I'd love for.
We're, oh my gosh, we couldtalk about this forever.
We're kind of running out of time.
We got to land this plane onthis, this particular podcast.

(54:19):
So everybody that's listening,first of all, if you're on YouTube,
make sure to like and subscribe.
But first of all, if you wantto hear more from Tim, because we're
just, trust me, we're justbarely scratching the surface, message
us and let us know.
Yes, I'm a fountain of useless information.
I'd love for you real quickbefore we wrap, if you don't mind,

(54:42):
I'd love for you to share someof the metrics of growth that you
helped with the last companythat you worked with.
Oh, gosh.
That way people get a feel forwhat this can, the potential of what
it can do within their organization.
Because, you know, all in theindustry for everybody, you know,
we hear, oh, we grew 40%, 50%,these types of numbers and we celebrate

(55:04):
it.
Well, that's so surface levelbased on what is actually possible.
So Tim, take a quick minuteand share about some of the growth
that you saw in the lastcompany you worked with.
And for everybody, this isexactly why Tim and I are, you know,
we're doing some thingstogether because if you, I can come

(55:26):
in and do sales, but if yourcompany can't support the sales that
we now have, we can out.
You can absolutely outsellyourself and shut down because of
that.
That's why I found somebody tobe able to come in and fix the other
sides of the company.
So officially, this is thefirst announcement.
Close it now is basicallyyour, the, the learning systems.

(55:46):
We have the systems in placeto be able to not only close more
business, but to scale thecompany as well.
So give, give some insightinto what that last, you know, your
last numbers were like.
Sure, happy to do it.
I'm not going to say the nameof the company.
Sure.
But it is, it was a roofingcompany and I started with them in

(56:12):
Oct.
And before anybody'slistening, let's that turn you off.
This works for every company.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nothing to do with roofing orso many people in H Vac think, well,
that's not like ours.
We've got more complicatedmoving parts.
No, no, no, no, no.
Look, I, I, I've, I've workedwith H Vac companies, I've worked

(56:38):
with landscaping, hardscaping companies.
This one happens to be aroofing company, but I've also, I
also have a commercial realestate company and they're they're
doing the same thing.
Sure, sure.
So, but in, in the, theroofing company that I'm talking
about, I started with them in,I want to say, September of 23.

(57:02):
September of 23.
The company grew 100% in 24.
And they did it by the end ofthe third quarter.
Everything after that wasgravy because we went the first 12
months, which was phase one.
Wow.
Okay.
So the second year, which was2024, which everything was pretty

(57:22):
well rolling because keep inmind your first year, there's a lot
of lifting that happens duringframe 90.
Keep in mind each frame, right.
A quarter.
Frame 90, frame 180, frame270, frame 360.
Okay.
I'm giving you five days off here.
Be grateful.
Just kidding.
But so, and then in the secondyear, we were at our, our annual

(57:47):
kickoff.
This year in January, we're atour annual kickoff.
We closed out 20 and ABCRoofing was there.
ABC Roofing Supply, I thinkthey're the biggest supplier in the
country.
Pretty sure.
And when they heard, well,they knew that something was up because

(58:07):
the orders just came through.
There was no tomorrow.
I mean, they, they saw amassive increase and in fact gave
massive pricing concessions.
This is another thing thatthis type of thing will allow you
to do, if you're listening, isonce you become, once you hit 5 million,
once you hit 10 million andyou're out there for H vac system,
I'm going to, I'm going totalk a little term that I just learned,

(58:29):
tm.
Okay.
You can, you can negotiatewith your team to get better pricing
concessions for yourself.
And it's not always pricing.
What are they going to do for you?
Better terms.
I know that one of my clients,they have got all of their social
media, website and digitalstuff was all developed by their

(58:50):
supplier.
Wow.
They paid for it.
Okay.
So there's all kinds of thingsthat you can get in addition to that,
you can negotiate for as, aspart of your agreement if you're
willing to stay with somebody.
Because let's face it, whoeveryour supplier is, your territory
manager, your, the, the repinvolved, look, their income is tied

(59:11):
to you and your success.
So you, you've got to leverage that.
And, but the point is, is thatwhen they heard the, the actual percentage
of growth, they couldn'tbelieve it.
And before I announced it, Ihad the person stand up and I said,
hey, question.
What?
Out of all of the companiesthat you've heard that out of all

(59:34):
the companies that have grownin ABC Supply that you've heard of
just keep in mind, he's local.
You know, he knows about someof the national stuff.
I said, what is the largestamount of growth that occurred?
And he goes, oh, I think itwas like, 23%.
I said, okay, great.
Right.
No problem.
I said, this company has grown266% in 2024.

(01:00:00):
That's how much growth there was.
And it was done, by the way,by the third quarter, okay?
Because you always have atrailing number if you're running
from January to January,because all of your stuff doesn't
land.
It accrues, but it doesn'tland, okay?
So your P.
L.
Won't reflect it.
So you've got to understandhow to derive those numbers.

(01:00:21):
They're not projections.
They've accrued.
So this is why you've got tohave systems in place that tell you
what juice is coming in.
Okay.
What juice is coming in, and what's.
How is it bleeding out?
You need to know those numbers.
But anyway, the point is, itwas 266%.
And they.
The.
The.
The.
The reason why this happenedis because they went all in on this.

(01:00:46):
They went all in.
They did every single thingthey were supposed to do.
And literally, as they weredriving nails and hitting their KEYSTONES
in each frame, 90, I got totell you, they.
We were crashing through thembecause all of the.
All of the oars were rowing inthe same direction.
And this is not.

(01:01:07):
When we.
When we started there.
This is not a big support team.
One of the things that we dois we.
We train our clients how touse VAs and we've gotta.
We've gotta pass a level, okay?
And they are trained.
These people know the trade business.
They know how it works.
So they're gonna walk rightin, and they're gonna be able to
literally take a lot off ofyour desk immediately.

(01:01:30):
That's the one thing, because.
And it's.
And the labor is so inexpensive.
I'm not gonna get into thatright now because I.
I feel like a union boss wouldcome and kill me.
But.
But literally, this is how youscale and you return to scale.
Because everything that can bedone virtually should be sure.
Because it just.
Simply by.
By natural order, it costs less.

(01:01:53):
All right.
So in any case, yeah, it was266% super happy about it.
The.
The worst thing that couldhappen to someone in the trade business,
I think is probably happeningto those guys right now, and that
is that.
I think that there is somelarge living that's occurring, and

(01:02:15):
that's the worst thing you can do.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's the worst thing you can do.
Worst thing.
And I think that that is thedeath nail of pretty much every entrepreneur
who ever swung a hammer.
Absolutely.
All of a sudden, start buyingthat life.

(01:02:36):
Just go buy those bigger toys.
My grandfather had a lot offunny aphorisms and quotes, and one
thing that he told me once washe said, hey, listen, I'm not one
of these fancy guys.
I'm going to tell you this.
If your outflow exceeds yourincome, your upkeep will be your
downfall.
Ooh, that's.

(01:02:56):
That's really good.
Okay.
That was.
Yeah, my grandfather said thathis name was Joe.
He's called him Papa Joe.
And he was from Texas, and hehad that Southern twang.
I remember one time I wentthrough a Mexican drive through one
time, great Mexican food, andhe said, you know, quesadilla, right?
You know how to say quesadilla?
My grandfather went, yeah,could I have one of those quesadillas?

(01:03:17):
And I went, what is that?
I just started laughing.
He goes, what's so funny?
That's what that says.
Love it.
He was.
He was a great guy.
Salt of the earth.
Just an awesome, awesome guy.
But, yeah, he had a lot ofthose sayings that were really funny.
You see, like, you know, flip flops.
You just say, no, those are go aheads.

(01:03:38):
You know why those are go aheads?
Because you can't back up in those.
Oh, I love that.
Because that's.
That's such like.
That's my daily wear istypically, if I'm not professional,
if that's what I'm wearing.
He was a funny guy.
So.
So the point is, is that the.
The speed scale systemactually delivers results.
And it is that it's simple.

(01:04:00):
And here's the worst part of that.
Okay, here's the worst part of simple.
The moment.
You know, it's really funnybecause in math and in science, they
call.
When you simplify an equation,they call it an elegant solution.
Have you ever heard that?
Yes.
In math, that's an elegantsolution that you crafted.
Wonderful.
Blah, blah, blah, Right?

(01:04:21):
Okay.
The simplification to do that elegant.
That elegant solution tookyears to proof.
Okay?
A lot of mental power andsleepless nights went into that.
So here's what I'm going toprepare you for.
When you see how simple thisis, all right?

(01:04:44):
You are going to learn very quickly.
This is going to be thehardest lift you are ever going to
do.
If you were an Olympic lifter,this is your world record, baby.
Getting it off the ground.
I'm not kidding.
Because can confirm.
All boils down to thefundamentals of Nails.
Look, if you're.
You can be the most gracefulwide receiver who can jump the highest,

(01:05:07):
run the fastest, andeverything else, but if you can't
catch the ball, you can't playfootball, all right?
Or if you're a defensiveplayer, you could be the fastest
and the most athletic, but ifyou can't stick your head in there
and make a tackle, then you suck.
I can't use you.
I don't care how fast you are.
All right?
This isn't tag football.
This is tackle.

(01:05:27):
All right?
Nails is no different.
Okay.
You know, I like to talk aboutDevonte Adams, because when you watch
devonte Adams run routes, He'sa wide receiver, by the way, now
playing for the Rams, one ofthe greatest wide receivers has ever
played the game.
And when you watch devonteAdam Adams run routes, you see absolute.
The culmination of absolutededication of years and years and

(01:05:51):
years.
And I tell my grandson, who.
Who.
Who's.
Whose great ambition is to bea great wide receiver, I tell him,
hey, look, how many times youthink Devonte Adams ran that post
route?
I'm talking about when no onewas looking, when it was 30 degrees
outside and there wasn't acheering crowd and he didn't want

(01:06:13):
to do it.
Okay, he didn't want to do it,but he went out and he did it anyway
because his standard was greatness.
Now, I'm not saying that youhave to do that, but let's talk about
driving nails.
Let's talk about all youroofers out there that might be listening
to this.
No one likes door knocking.
Door knocking sucks.
All right, here's the thing.

(01:06:35):
Guys with no grit, they.
They always try to.
To wing it.
They try to get out of it.
They try to tell you there'sno storm.
There's no this.
There was a storm last year.
I could tell you that.
And they had 12 months to putin a claim, didn't they?
Right?
So there's.
There's all kinds of thingsthat come into play on that where
if you're.
If you're working smart as asalesperson or as a sales director,

(01:06:58):
there's no excuses.
There are no excuses.
And so nobody likes to drivethe nails on the daily basis.
No one likes to do the fundamentals.
But people with grit, they doit anyway because they know the frame
won't stand up if they don'tdrive the nails.
And those are the people whoare going to help you build your
business.
Right?

(01:07:18):
And if I ever come back or ifyou ever call me, then I'll tell
you how you can make thosepeople stay with you forever.
100.
It sounds like the next episode.
Oh, yeah.
So, but in any case, yeah,you've got to do the nails.
No one likes to do it.
And that's.
That's where the simplicitycomes in.
This is it.
Day in and day out, this iswhat we're going to do.

(01:07:39):
Basically, we're going to haveegg whites and oatmeal for breakfast
every day for the next year.
How long can you tough it outbefore you break?
Right?
All right, it's that simple.
But if you want to get to thenext level, this has to be done,
because this is going to laythe foundation.
It's going to lay the entireground floor, all the load bearing

(01:08:01):
this entire structure thatyou're trying to build, which is
called your business.
Simple.
You got to do it.
This is beautiful.
So for everybody listening, Iknow that you're probably going to
want to listen to this one afew times because there were some
major nuggets that Tim was.
Tim was laying on everybody.
If you want.

(01:08:22):
Have no idea what.
If you want to hear more, forall intents and purposes, it looks
like Tim is going to be one ofthe speakers at the relentless the
Ultimate Sales Transformationbootcamp in Boston, May 6th, 7th
and 8th.
So this is episode one of thespeaker series that I have started

(01:08:46):
on the podcast.
So for everybody that islistening, get your ticket.
Because this was just the tipof the iceberg of what he's going
to be covering there andtalking, going a lot more in depth
about some of these processesand some of the things it takes to
scale, not just grow to scale,because such a major difference there.

(01:09:06):
Yeah.
And I'm one of those peoplethat don't believe that any book
was too short or anypresentation was too short.
So my presentation is going tobe on shortcuts in business, shortcuts
to scaling.
And it's basically three words.
There aren't any.
I love it.
That's my entire presentation.
Thank you very much.

(01:09:28):
Well, cool.
So before we go real quick,let everybody know how they can get
in touch with you.
And if they want to learnmore, if they want to have you out
to have you evaluate theirbusiness, do a discovery and see
where in the world are we andwhat can we do to grow.
Yeah, sure, Absolutely.
They can reach me at Tim,scale it now, or they can reach me

(01:09:50):
at 512-222-4066.
That's the best way to reach me.
That's my direct line.
Well, not my direct line, butTerrence will pick that up or Jade
will pick that up.
Those are my vas and they're awesome.
So, yeah, call me there.
Happy to have a conversation.
And those will be in the shownotes as well.

(01:10:12):
So make sure that you checkout the show notes.
So timcalet now.
And then the phone number hejust listed, it's in my speed dial,
so I don't know.
That's my direct line.
Yeah, for sure.
So love it, everybody.
So, yeah, Tim will be speakingat the relentless, the close it now

(01:10:33):
boot camp.
What they're doing that whatthey are doing, we are doing.
It's three days in Boston, May6th, 7th, 8th.
It's going to be total fire.
Transform your business,transform your mindset.
And I'm honored to have to besharing the stage with Tim up there
because he is such anincredible human being as well as

(01:10:53):
his knowledge about businessis unmatched.
So that is what we're doing.
And if you want to, you canalways reach me directly as well.
Samoseitnow.net or go to, ofcourse the website closeitnow.net,
join the Facebook group.
And we talk about a lot aboutthis kind of thing in there.
2025 is next level for closeit now.

(01:11:15):
And this is one of the bigthings we're doing is expanding into,
you know, we decided after thelast couple years, I decided that
not we.
I decided that I was tired ofseeing doing sales training for organizations.
And then, you know, not, yes,we get lasting results with sales,
but the, you know, theorganizations, the companies that
I was working with, theydidn't know what to do with it.

(01:11:39):
You know, they had, we didgreat sales and then either they
couldn't fulfill it, they weredropping the ball on the installs,
they were dropping the ball inthe office, they were dropping the
ball with accounting, allthese different things.
And then they coming back tome and we're like, oh my gosh, we
need, we need this, we needthis, we need this.
We need more help.
We need more leads.
We need more of this.
And that is exactly why I putthis together to be able to help

(01:12:02):
everyone in the differentelements that you needed.
So that's what we're doing now.
So when we do one one portionof the company, you know, what we
like to say is we're notconsultants, we're not coaches, we're
not trainers anymore.
We're resultants.
If you work with us, you willget results.
If you do what we say, if youdon't do what we say, we're going

(01:12:23):
to fire you as a customerbecause you're not implementing right.
Everybody knows successhappens at the speed of implementation.
So thanks for being on the, onthe show today, Tim.
No worry, no worries.
I'm glad you're using that term.
Absolutely.
That's awesome.
We are resultants.
I agree.
I got that from Tim.

(01:12:43):
We talked about that monthsago in coaching, and I adopted it
immediately because it trulydefines what we do.
We're not here just to teachyou something new and say, okay,
fly little birds, I hope youdo great with it.
No, we're here to just one,yes, teach you something new, but
more importantly, help you andhold your hand along the way to make

(01:13:04):
sure it sticks and make sureit actually drives the needle in
your sales numbers, in yourorganization so you see results and
lasting change.
So that's where the results.
That's absolutely true.
Because the metrics, if you'redriving nails and you've got your
measurements of performanceand your measurements of progress,

(01:13:25):
then those are your mops.
And you asked me about thatearlier, but that's, that, that's
what, that's what's going toallow you to delegate and not have
to worry about.
About it.
You don't have to fix everysingle move.
You don't have to, you don'thave to, you don't have to babysit
it.
Yeah.
That's why I call it mobs.
Yeah.
So the biggest liberatingthing is that business owners, the

(01:13:45):
second you can say, you know,I don't have to be involved in every
step of this because now Ihave both systems and people that
I can trust and know thatthey're going to get the results
we're looking for.
And then I just check in onthe results along the way.
And it's really.
Yeah, I have to, I have toagree with that because in, in the,
I, I can tell you this, Idealt with a lot of CEOs and a lot

(01:14:07):
of CFOs in the past, hundredsof them.
And I can tell you that to aperson when, especially the ones
who founded companies, okay,they would tell, they, they, I said,
what was the thing thatchanged everything?
And in one way or another,they would say this the moment that

(01:14:30):
I got the hell out of the wayand I let my people do their job.
Absolutely.
Okay.
You can't be a control freak.
You've got, you've got tobuild the systems, take care of everything.
That's why you call them mops,the metrics or mops, because they
clean it up.
Okay.
When it's a mess, you cleanyour mess with a mop, right?

(01:14:52):
Somebody's spilling, you gotsome things that are happening.
Okay, Mop that up.
Let's go.
Okay, so good.
So that's where that comes from.
So, so, so good.
Anyway, thanks again.
We'll continue this conversation.
Yeah, I know, Sam.
It's so bad because you and Icould do this all day, right?

(01:15:12):
Oh, my gosh, for all of you.
If you could be a fly on thewall to our conversations, there's
no telling what you'd takeaway, but it would be good because
we're always growing anddeveloping things.
So.
All right, everybody, we'regonna sign off here.
Don't just work to becomesomeone worth buying from.
Work to be in an organization.

(01:15:33):
And so this is for all youbusiness owners.
Work to create your businessinto someone into a business that
people want to work for andpeople want to buy from.
And for everybody else, whenyou're the solo out there, when everybody,
the sales, the technicians,every single person, you go be someone
worth buying from.

(01:15:55):
You've been listening to theClose it now podcast.
Our passion is to dive headfirst into the transformative movement
that's reshaping the veryfoundation of H Vac and home improvement.
And at the same time, coveringfitness, nutrition, nutrition relationships,
and personal growth, provingthat we can indeed have it all.

(01:16:16):
We hope you've enjoyed the show.
If you did, make sure to,like, rate and review.
We'll be back soon, but in themeantime, find the website@closeitnow.net
find us on Instagram at thereal.
Close it now.
And on Facebook at Close it now.
See you next time.
Time.

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