February 21, 2025 • 48 mins
Discover the untapped potential of the home service industry with Bill Brown, a seasoned expert who recently sold his successful HVAC business after 25 years. Bill joins Corey Berrier on the Successful Life Podcast to reveal his innovative strategies for managing his business remotely from the sunny shores of South Florida. Learn how technology, particularly ServiceTitan software, and the PriceBook Pro feature, became pivotal tools in Bill's arsenal. Get an insider's look into Bill's thriving Facebook group, Service Titan Hacks, and hear how this community has transformed into a crucial resource for contractors navigating software hurdles.
Imagine a world where contractors can effortlessly access reliable reviews to make informed business decisions—Bill and Corey ponder the creation of such a centralized review platform. They delve into the challenges of maintaining its integrity while discussing potential monetization ideas like click-through fees and sponsored listings. The conversation takes a reflective turn as they highlight the importance of reciprocity within the industry, emphasizing that by supporting each other, contractors can achieve greater success and enrich the communities they serve.
The episode also uncovers the personal side of entrepreneurship, exploring how faith, family, and personal growth serve as anchors during life's challenges. Bill shares anecdotes about leveraging technology and community support to overcome adversity, illustrating the power of learning from setbacks. From navigating legal battles to building a strong support network within the Service Titan Hacks group, the discussion underscores the importance of shared experiences in fostering a thriving environment for all. With a focus on mutual learning, the episode champions the strength and growth that come from a connected and supportive community.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast.
I'm your host, Corey Barrier,and I'm here with my man, Bill
Brown.
What's up, brother?
Hey, how's helps contractorsand I want to find out more
(00:27):
about what you're doing withyour review site and I want you
to tell us a little bit aboutthat and the benefits of that
and why you're doing it.
But first, for folks that maynot know who you are, just give
a quick bio of you and all thatgood stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Great, yeah, thanks, man.
Thanks for having me.
So yeah, I've been in the homeservice industry since 2000.
So 25 years now.
It's crazy to think it's beenthat long.
I had my own company from 2012to just a few months ago, when I
sold it.
We did heating and airconditioning and IAQ companies
(01:05):
in Columbus, ohio, but I live inSouth Florida.
I've operated it remotely forthe last four years, and I
believe that I was able to dothat because of utilizing
technology that we're going totalk about today.
So I've done like every smallbusiness owner.
I've done every job in theindustry service, install, sales
(01:26):
, tried to learn how to do callcenter work and all that good
stuff.
In addition, a couple of yearsago, I started a Facebook group,
service Titan Hacks and startedthat because I had some
struggles with Service Titan,some struggles with service
(01:47):
titan, and, as I was able tocome up with some workarounds, I
thought that other contractorsmight benefit from them, and so
that was just a place to have aconversation, and I was.
We're about 8 000 members now,so it's a nice group, very
active.
So that's a real quick 25 yearsfor me yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
so I do have a question about your group, which
I think it's a great group and,you're right, it is super
active.
What would you say?
I don't know if you know thisor not, but what would you say?
The biggest, what is the numberone question people want to
know about in the group?
What do they have the mosttrouble with?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
know about in the group.
What do they have the mosttrouble with?
That's, let's see.
I would say that it's reallyfinding solutions and wondering
or questioning whether or notthose solutions are found within
ServiceTitan or in third-partyadd-ons within ServiceTitan or
(02:44):
in third-party add-ons.
So they'll ask how do I workwith this price book?
Should I get PriceBook Pro orshould I use this other company?
Should I use this AI answeringagent?
So a lot of they're looking fora lot of recommendations on how
to solve problems, and firstthey'd love for ServiceTitan to
(03:08):
be able to solve those.
But if they need a third-partyadd-on, they're looking for
advice on which one to use.
So I get a lot of questions onthat.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So it's interesting that you bring up the price book
thing, because that is one ofthe questions that I've noticed.
That is a common question thatpeople get a bit frustrated with
, and I'm not super familiarwith Pricebook Pro, so is it
Pricebook Pro?
You pull the Excel sheet intoServiceTitan and then it builds
(03:43):
proposals.
Am I understanding that right?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
It's already set up for your business unit and so if
you are an HVAC contractorthey'll have tasks for
capacitors and contactors andcompressor replacements and it's
easier for you to build outyour pricing because they have a
pricing calculator.
(04:07):
You could just put in yourhourly rate, which a lot of
contractors don't know.
They're fully burdened hourlyrate, unfortunately in our
industry it can be north of $400.
But anyhow, it makes the pricebook usable from day one.
Now, is it optimized?
Not really, but it is usableand updating a price book
(04:32):
without that and creating yourown is very difficult.
In ServiceTitan Do they do thatby design to sell PriceBook Pro
?
Maybe, but I'm not aware ofPriceBook Pro.
At least when I used it acouple of years ago Wasn't aware
of it actually being able tobuild out equipment proposals
(04:52):
and easy to use, very fasttemplates.
That process was still verydifficult and very manual to do.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
That makes sense.
So right now the process isevery quarter let's just say for
conversation purposes themanufacturer sends the price
book and the contractor is.
Then, if they have price bookpro, I guess they manually
inject or pull that from theExcel sheet and it does its
thing.
And it does its thing right?
(05:25):
So then, if I'm a technicianand I'm in the field and I need
a price on a capacitor, how do Igo about finding that and how
easy is that to do?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's like an e-commerce system, right?
So you're going to open up youriPad and there'll be categories
, and the categories could be inPricebook Pro.
It would say capacitors andcontactors.
You would tap on the capacitorand then you'd look for the one
that applies in that situation.
So I believe that they didn'thave a specific one for each
(06:01):
microfarad rating for acondenser.
They'd have a 20 to 50microfarad.
You'd pick that, it would haveits price and you'd add it to
your estimate and you're readyto go.
It also had suggestions forupsells.
So if you had, maybe you wereusing like a turbo capacitor, if
your company had those, itwould have those suggestions.
But just keep in mind thatprice book's never 100% ready to
(06:24):
go.
It still has to be tailored toyour company and the services
that you add and the productsthat you keep in your truck,
right?
So it's pretty easy to findtasks on there, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
So one of the things that we've built at AI
Automations Group is a pricebook to where all you one.
You drop the price book inGoogle and basically you drop it
in Google Drive.
We built a machine that willpull that out and, at the touch
(07:02):
of a finger, you just type inwhatever it is you need and it's
going to give you theinformation right there.
Yeah, Super fast and I think itsolves a big problem.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Pricebook is a big problem, big problem.
I was fortunate with my techbackground.
So back up before 2012, thefirst time around with school, I
went to school for computerscience, so I've always been
pretty, pretty knowledgeable onthe tech side.
So working with Service Titan'sprice book wasn't super
difficult for me as far asexporting in Excel and updating
(07:41):
everything I needed and evenmaking the descriptions HTML and
look pretty and all that.
It was easy for me, but forother contractors it's a total.
It's terrible, it's a shit show, right, and I actually at the
end of my company I had AI writeall the descriptions, so I sent
(08:05):
the products through AI and itwrote all of them and it was
really slick.
But there's a lot of room forsomeone to come in and make a
price book easy to use andfaster and easy to update and to
do that within service titan.
Right, because you don't wantto have to use so many external
(08:29):
third-party add-ons to get thejob done right.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I mean, when you refer to third-party add-ons,
you're really referring to athird-party company yeah, right
for the most.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, like a company that just does price books, and
they'll have their own systemthat has the price book and then
it'll update to ServiceTitanFor us.
I didn't like the wayServiceTitan presented their
option sheets.
I didn't like it.
I had my own software that Ibuilt starting in 2014,.
(09:02):
The pricing was all on one pageand it was a.
It was basically a fillable PDFthat had a database behind it,
and so it.
We use price book pro for sixmonths and our average tickets
went down.
Then we went back to the systemthat I had and they went back
(09:23):
to where they were.
So we have a separate proposalfor equipment that looks and
feels different than theproposal for service, and I did.
I was able to link that toService Titan, where it pulled
all the pricing from ServiceTitan and when we sold something
it put all of the.
(09:44):
It put the invoice lineitemized back into service Titan
and then anything unsold.
It would create proposals andit was 100 percent customized to
our, to my company.
There's room for companies todo things similar, but it
probably couldn't be nearly ascustom as mine.
It wouldn't be scalable.
(10:04):
So something in between wouldbe good for contractors, but I
haven't seen many things outthere like that.
I haven't.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
We built it, it's ready to roll and I'm going to
show it to you later.
I'm not going to show it to younow, obviously, but yeah, I'll
show it to you when we meet uplater.
But it's.
It's really amazing when youfind my partners in the business
are super techie people andthat's what you need to get
these kind of things done.
As you mentioned, you've got abit of a tech or you've got a
(10:37):
tech background.
If it was up to me, there's noway I could do it, because, yeah
, it's just not, I would be, I'dbe like a normal contractor,
like I wouldn't be, I justwouldn't be able could do it
because, yeah, it's just not, Iwould be, I'd be like a normal
contractor, like I wouldn't be,I just wouldn't be able to do it
.
So, yeah, I think that we areall.
I think we're in a time billright now, just like when the
internet first started andhere's the comparison I'll give
(11:00):
you.
And I saw this graph the otherday that basically showed the
companies that said, yeah, notgetting on that Internet, and
the company said we are going toget on that Internet.
And the ones that said we'regetting on the Internet are
still alive, the ones thatdidn't get on the Internet are
not, and we are in the exactsame time right this minute.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
With AI, it'll happen faster with AI, oh, 100% Faster
, yeah.
If you don't utilize it in yourcompany, your costs will be way
higher than your competitorswho are utilizing it and the
output will be way lower.
That's when we're doinganything in business, we're
(11:43):
saying how can I make more moneyand keep more money?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
this is it right, this is it.
It's like a magic eight ball iswhat it is.
Yeah it really is if you knowhow to use it and that's where
you and I have the same kind ofmindset.
We understand how to use thesoftware, the technology, and
it's not that we're any smarterthan anybody else.
(12:10):
We just put in the time tolearn how to do it.
And if people that arelistening to this don't know how
to do it, you're going to haveto hire somebody that does or
figure it out, and right nowyou're not so far behind that
you can't figure it out, but itis probably a full-time job and
it's you and I've had the luxuryof being able to spend hours
(12:33):
and hours figuring this stuffout.
So I want to ask you about thereview site that you're getting.
I think you're either gettingready to launch it or it's
already launched.
What I find super intriguingabout it is I can't go to a
place right now, and I'll use asales coach as an example.
(12:56):
I'm not going to call anybody'sname out, but at the end of the
day, every contractor thatlistens to this podcast has
hired a sales trainer andthey've been unhappy with the
results every single one of them.
Yeah.
So there's no way to know whois the right sales coach, the
(13:18):
good sales coach.
There's no way to find outtruly how that person did what
the performance was after thefact.
Are they happy?
Are they not happy?
The only way to find that outis if I go on one of these your
group or whoever's group, yeahand ask the question, and it's
(13:39):
the same typical people thatchime in and there's not really
a recommendation or a review.
It's just call bill brown,right, bill brown, but there's
really.
No, there's nothing behind that.
Right, you solve that problem.
It sounds just a name.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Right, that's it, and it really what it was is.
I've been burned by everysingle category that's on this
review site.
So, looking at it, I've got acategory for operations.
This would be fleet and GPS, hr, payroll, financing, companies,
procurement.
(14:18):
I have a coaches andconsultants one, so that's the
business and sales coaching,also organizations like best
practice organizations andthings like that.
So you're right in the groupwith all these users, all these
members, these contractors.
They're looking forrecommendations on how to use
(14:40):
the software and alongside thatis recommendations for things
like business coaches, industryorganizations, and that's what
you get is just call this guy.
He's good, and you might nothave ever even used that guy,
you might've just heard he wasgood.
And when I was looking forsoftware, when I was looking for
(15:03):
a field service managementsoftware, I went on a website
called Capterra and Capterra issimilar to this.
It has a list of FSMs on itService Titans on there,
housecall Pro Jobber and there'spretty detailed customer
reviews of those.
So they'll ask five questionslike how was onboarding, how's
(15:25):
customer support, value for themoney, Ease of use, pros, cons
and then description and you canlook at all the users reviews
and make an educated decision.
It's more educated than youcould just asking in a group.
Right and same thing If you'rehiring a home service contractor
(15:45):
, you can go and look at Googlereviews and get a good idea of
how they're as a homeowner, howthey're doing, and so I wanted
to take all that informationthat's floating around on all
these groups on Facebook, put itin one place, and this way,
contractors can go and geteducated on solutions that exist
that they might not have evenknown about, and how other users
(16:10):
of that software or solutionhow they like it.
And for now, I'm going tomanually review the reviews to
ensure their integrity, to makesure that whoever is submitting
the review actually used thatsolution, and eventually, ai
(16:31):
will probably do it right.
But at the very beginning, it'sso important that these reviews
are trustworthy, and I don'tbelieve that you can review a
company unless you've used theirproduct or service.
Right, right, that's what youpay for.
You pay for the ability toreview them.
Now, hopefully, this is a greatsite and it gets traction, but
(16:54):
it'll be up to the contractorsof whether or not they find this
beneficial.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, okay, how I'm curious.
So is the contractor paying tobe on there?
How does that work?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
No, I'm not going to have them pay to be on there at
all.
So it's a free listing.
And that's the question how doyou monetize something like this
?
So I looked at Capterra andtheir business model and G2.
These are the similar typereview sites but for large
enterprise solutions, andthey'll charge like through
(17:30):
click through, where maybe whatthey'll do is charge a user or a
company 20 cents if they gofrom your site to the website,
things like that.
So I'm still looking atmonetization options that are
that still keep the integrity ofthe site, because it's not
going to be free for me to runit and keep it updated and
(17:53):
everything.
And maybe sponsored listings.
So a contractor could say Iwant to be at the top of the
list and it would be sponsored,but that's not going to change
the reviews you get.
Be at the top of the list andit would be sponsored, but
that's not going to change thereviews you get.
You might just have customersfind out that you're shitty a
lot quicker.
Right the site.
(18:13):
If it's a place wherecontractors go and find
solutions and it's beneficial,then the monetization stuff will
come right.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah, but I think it's made me think of
reciprocity, like you're doingsomething good for the industry
and, by and large, my experiencewhen I do something that's
beneficial maybe not evenmutually beneficial at the time,
whether that be help myneighbor with their groceries or
(18:50):
whether that be help somebodyin recovery and that's the best
way I can, actually it's thebest way for me to explain it.
When I help another person inrecovery, by answering the phone
and listening to whatever theyhave going on, two things happen
.
One, I get out of myself andI'm not thinking about whatever
Corey's thinking about, I'mfocused on you.
(19:11):
And then somehow, some way,because of my intention behind
that, there's a payoff at somepoint in my life, and I may not
even know what that payoff is,but I've seen it happen so much
that I don't, and I don't do itfor that reason.
(19:32):
Again, the intention behindit's vitally important here.
If you're doing it just to getthe payoff, then you're negating
the results.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
For sure, and money is not the main driver for me,
for anything I I don't for mepersonally I'm not talking bad
about anybody else there's.
I don't need an infinite amountof money.
That's not what brings me joyin my life.
It's if I have this skill thatcan help other people.
(20:03):
I feel it's my responsibilityto use it to help other people.
There's some people that can dothat and there's some people
that need help.
That's how it is.
And so, at the end of the day,what can I do to make everyone
else's lives around me better,and will that provide some sort
of payback for me?
(20:24):
I don't know.
I don't know.
It does feel good to do it right, but yeah, it's my
responsibility as a Christian todo that.
If I can and that's what I do Ilook for opportunities to make
as many people's lives better asI can, and being a contractor
(20:45):
does that.
So if I can help contractors,those contractors are
responsible for a lot of lives.
They're responsible for theirtechnicians' lives, everyone
that their technician'sresponsible for.
So if I can do something tomake their businesses more
successful make more money, keepmore money then they can do a
good job and provide for theirpeople.
(21:07):
And so just one guy doing onething can spread a lot of
success, and that's that's Ifeel that's my responsibility to
do it.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, and I I totally agree with you One of the
things that because I'm not sureI don't think I've always
probably felt that way.
I probably when I was in myaddiction.
I probably I'm certain that Ididn't think that way.
But now that the recoveryprogram that I'm in for, you
(21:45):
know it's free, right, you don'tpay to to go to these meetings.
You put a dollar in the basketat the end of it if you want to,
but it's a low cost for thelife that it gives me.
And so I think that one of thethings that well, there's two
(22:06):
things that I feel like I canhelp make a difference here in
the industry.
One of them is here doing thispodcast, because it does help
the industry, because I get totalk to people like you that
have been there and done it,which we're going to get into
some of that in a minute,especially one story I want you
to tell for sure, there and doneit, which we're going to get
into some of that in a minute,especially one story I want you
(22:27):
to tell for sure, but being ableto, we talked about the sales
coaches and there's a lot ofpeople out there that they don't
necessarily leave thecontractor better off, and it
really bothers me when thathappens, because contractors are
salt of the earth people.
(22:47):
They're, by and large, goodpeople.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Sometimes to a fault on some things.
As far as operation of abusiness and growing it, they
are really usually very goodpeople.
They start with it because theycome from the technician side
and the thing on the technicianthat they like, that keeps them
going to work, is the ability tosolve the problem and the smile
(23:11):
on the customer's face whenthey're done with that doing it.
That's what did it for me as atechnician, and then you become
a contractor and you carry thatsame thing.
So these guys are really downto earth and want to do a great
job.
Don't ever want to rip anybodyoff or overcharge them or
anything like that and sometimesit leads to them really not.
(23:33):
Sometimes, a lot of times itleads to them being taken
advantage of.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
I totally agree.
Yeah, and I mentioned to youbefore the show is we've
developed an AI that helps thattechnician in the field Because,
look, I've worked withtechnicians for years that they
may not want to sell the productbut they do want to solve the
(24:00):
problem, which means you've gotto sell the job.
And they struggle hard withthat because they're kinesthetic
people.
They just they're really, theirgoal is really just to fix
something, and they're not verycomfortable with the sales
process and I've been there,I've always loved selling but it
(24:20):
so, if so, we've made a processthat'll help, that kind of like
a call by call, immediatelybuilt in with a sales process
and HVAC knowledge and plumbingknowledge and all of the
different trades.
That's going to make thatprocess easier for them and I
believe that it's I trulybelieve it's going to change the
(24:41):
industry.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And it needs to be changed.
This has been something that'sbeen talked about.
If you go back and read theACHR news all the way back into
the 80s.
This has been a challengegetting technicians to sell, and
you're right, they like theresults of the sale because the
more that they sell, the happierthe customer is.
The most pissed off customersthat I've had are the people
(25:06):
that buy the least.
The one-star reviews that wehad are somebody that got a
capacitor for $225 and you'relike shit, I didn't even make
enough money for a one-starreview on that.
And the customers that arehappiest are the ones where I
replaced the capacitor.
The contactor are the oneswhere I replaced the capacitor.
(25:27):
The contactor added a hard startkit, cleaned the whole system
and technicians will actuallyenjoy performing that service.
But you have to be able tocommunicate that in order to be
able to do it.
So that's one.
And then also with the salesprocess.
Sales is when a customer saysno, it's an objection, but it
feels like rejection right, andnobody wants to be rejected, and
(25:55):
the equipment itself doesn'treject you.
You get infinite shots atfixing it.
A customer isn't that forgivingright.
And so we are really asking atechnician to have two very
different skill sets.
That's a lot of pressure.
Oh, one of them, by the way,won't really make you tons of
money and that's not the onethat you got in the industry for
.
So that's where you come in,and AI makes it easier for them
(26:21):
to be more successful, faster,right, and probably be able to
do some things that they neverwould have been able to do A
thousand percent.
I do things I can't do.
Ai does things for me that Ican't do.
So people are ever like Bill,you're smart.
No, I haven't got any smarter,I just use this technology.
(26:41):
That I'm not.
That's it.
I've gotten better at using thetech, that's it.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
That's it, which is the key right it is.
Right, I do want you to share,and I can't even remember.
I can't remember the fullcontext of it, but I'll remind
you and you'll remember.
I have a feeling there was atime when you made some
decisions in your business thatcost you a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Oh, my gosh man, there's so many of them.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
One specific that I'm thinking about is I believe
that you truly believe that youwere doing the right thing on
some hours.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Oh yeah, the first lawsuit in the business.
Yeah, if you're in businesslong enough, you're going to get
a lawsuit.
That's just the way it is.
The bigger you get, the biggerthe target on your back.
That's, that's from my buddy,mike Aguilaro, and it's true.
And so, yeah, I had a ladyworking for me and this was very
early on.
(27:44):
We were not, there was no HRdepartment, nothing like that
and I just told her hey, work,work 40 hours a week, that's it
Right.
And in the summer, if she worksovertime, she did, but just, it
was more like a flex time thing.
But I didn't have a time clockfor her.
The time clock that I used formy guys was an app and she was
(28:08):
in the office.
And so I, in 2014, I hadulcerative colitis and had to go
in for a, an emergency surgeryin which I was out of the
company for two months, and Iremember during that time she
billed me for overtime a littlebit and I was like, man, I can't
afford the overtime.
I said, please try to keep itat 40 hours and after, and she
(28:34):
worked at the company for acouple more years and she quit
the first day of the AC seasonbecause as a contractor.
That's how it goes.
And seven days later I got alawsuit saying you got to pay
$55,000 for unpaid overtime.
And I was fucking pissed right.
What do you mean?
I got to pay this and theamount of money I was like
(28:56):
that's like a over a year'ssalary.
This is bullshit and it didn'tmake sense to me.
But it doesn't matter, becausethe law said that if she worked
just one hour of overtime thatyou have to pay her for that
hour of overtime.
And it doesn't matter Clock in,clock out, doesn't matter.
(29:20):
Emails you said this is the waythat the federal labor laws are
written, doesn't matter.
Emails you said this is the waythat the federal labor laws are
written.
And, by the way, in a in thecourt, if just more than 50
percent of the people believethat she worked in one hour of
overtime in that three years,you would lose the case.
And if they believe that youknew about it and didn't do it,
(29:43):
you'd'd have to pay double.
Fucking lost man I lost.
So whether or not I was, I feltright or wrong, it didn't matter
.
And it cost me three hundredthousand dollars, and for a two
million dollar business that's alot of money.
It was very painful and, at theend of the day, get a good
(30:04):
attorney and make sure thatyou're following the law.
But I'll tell you what theemotional thing behind it after
spending a couple of days incourt and having the opposing
counsel rip me to shreds whenI've always felt like I did the
right thing, ripped me to shredswhen I've always felt like I
(30:26):
did the right thing you had togo back into your business and
you had 25 employees and youcouldn't give them any shit over
it and you have to smile andput on a fake face and, knowing
that there's a percentage ofpeople who are trying to screw
you over in your company, youstill have to push forward.
(30:46):
And so I have a lot of.
I have a lot of empathy forcontractors, because this is,
people are trying to screw themover in their business.
Not the majority of them, butthere's always somebody who's
who's doing some dirty stuff inyour company and, anyway, that
was a big lesson learned.
That was one of the mostexpensive ones that I've learned
(31:07):
.
But this, my story, is notunique, right?
All contractors have had it.
They just don't really talkabout it.
You don't see that on Facebook,do you?
You see the snapshots of thenew cars and the growth and
everything.
But I know I know those guys.
Maybe it wasn't recent.
I know that to get there theytook some fucking punches, man,
(31:31):
some beatings, beatings right,probably larger than you did,
because they're because of theirsize.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Like you said, the bigger you are, the bigger the
target is on your back, yeahright and that's just.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
that's what you signed up for when you became a
business owner.
But you don't know that whenyou're signing up I've had guys
say years after it they'd comein and say my hope is to start
an HVAC company someday.
I said great, I'll tell youeverything you need to know to
do it and if that's what youwant to do someday.
(32:05):
But how would you feel, howwould it be on you and your
family if you were sitting infront in a courtroom for
something you felt that wasn't,that you didn't do anything
wrong and they and opposingcounsel talked about how bad of
(32:25):
a person you were and how shittyof a business owner you are and
how greedy you are, when atthat time you barely have the
money to pay your bills andinvest in the business.
How would that be for you andyour family?
And if you can handle that,start your own business.
If you can't, you probablyshould work just harder on the
(32:45):
job that you have.
Right.
Hard lessons learned, man.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
So how did that affect you outside of the
business?
Because that is a hard lesson.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I hated it for six months.
I hated it.
And at that time, my wife and Idecided we were going to move to
Florida in 2019.
And at that time, my wife and Idecided we were going to move
to Florida in 2019.
And in the case, the court casewas the first week of 2020.
And 2020 turned out to be apretty shitty year you don't
remember.
And so we were.
(33:19):
Everything was going really wellin 2019.
We were growing like crazy, andso I've had a few times in my
life where I felt like God hasspoke with me directly, not in
prayer, but just out of the blue, and one of them was in 2019
where he said you have to moveto Florida now, don't wait till
you're retired.
Nothing else, no other context.
(33:40):
It wasn't like, oh, you'regoing to be so happy and so
successful.
It just that was theinstructions, and so the three
times I've been spoken todirectly, I follow it.
And so we went down there or weset everything up.
We lost that case.
They put a lien on our homethat was for sale, so we
(34:02):
couldn't sell it.
We had already put money downon a new house I had already
rebranded and added a secondlocation in Florida that I had
signed a lease on, and so allthat delayed moving down to
Florida for eight months, and sonot only did I have to pay the
(34:23):
300 that year, I probably lost150 or 200 more on just moving
(34:49):
all day during work and comehome and my wife and I were just
like mad stressed man all thefucking time.
It was brutal.
We did end up getting down hereand we didn't end up lost a lot
of money.
It's only money, right, that'show it is.
You guys can't take it with you, bro, like you made it through
the relationship made it through.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
The relationship made it through Because that's a
real hard thing to try to pushthrough.
That could end a relationshipin a heartbeat, I would imagine.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, we've always stayed together through those
tough times, whether or not weliked them.
We didn't take it out on eachother and that's been great Been
great.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So, and would you say , that's because you have God is
in the center of both of yourlives, is that?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, for richer or for poorer sickness and health,
and we like to joke for pooreror even poorer Right Sickness or
in hospital really sick.
So I don't know.
Sometimes I look and I ask God,what's the fucking purpose of
this man like?
Why do I have to take thislevel of beating?
I did sign up for it, but whatthe fuck right?
(35:57):
And it's I don't.
I still don't 100 know.
Maybe it's just a story tobenefit other people, I don't
know.
But the thing is this world isnot fair.
It's difficult and you know it.
You have addictions, you havechallenges, you have other
people that come into your lifethat can make it really bad,
(36:18):
that you can't control, and whatdo you really have at the end
of the day is faith and knowingthat at the end of this you'll
be able to go to heaven and allof this will be gone, all the
pressures of this life, any sortof the addictions that you've
had, any of the sickness.
Money won't matter.
(36:39):
And so we have a very shorttime, and so we have a very
short time.
So a lot of it is just movepast the bad things that happen
to you, even if you'reresponsible for them or
partially responsible, and sticktogether with your family, go
to church and put trust in himthat he'll take care of you.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
I'm still alive, right, still breathing, and my
family's still together, and sowhen you go through tough things
, you start to you, look towardsthe basics, the core things
that are really important, right, and I still got those, I think
(37:22):
, from personally, when, when Igo through tough times which the
last three weeks, arguably,have been fairly tough, yeah,
and but I think I believe andI've seen this happen in my own
life I go through these thingsand there is an absolute reason
(37:42):
I'm going through them, and partof that is that I need to grow
in some area of my life, whetherit be personally or to what's
been in front of me, at leastprofessionally, for the last
year and a half that I justhaven't.
(38:03):
I don't know if it, I don'tknow exactly why it didn't move
forward, it just wasn't the time.
And both of them contributed tothe AI stuff that I'm getting
ready to launch and that we'vesigned some partners on, and
(38:24):
it's really.
I don't think it would haveturned out this way if either of
those things didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Right, and so when you're going through those times
, that's what you have to.
It's very difficult to be awareof that and think of that, that
this isn't a punishment, it's apurpose, right.
And people do say everything'shappens for a reason.
Nobody wants to hear thatbullshit when you're going
through it, right, it's justbackwards reflecting on it.
(38:55):
But, yeah, every decisionyou've made and everything
that's happened to you is howyou are where you are today
right now.
Every decision I've made,everything I've done, is what's
led me to talking to you today,and you don't know what you
missed by making those decisionsand you don't know how you're
(39:16):
benefiting by making them.
So you have to look and don'tlook.
I don't look too far in thefuture.
I look at how do I make adifference right now.
Maybe because of being reallysick years ago, I don't believe
that there's just this infinitefuture on earth.
I thought, man, I could die at45 years old, so I got to make
(39:36):
this count now, which makes me alittle bit more risky right
Than normal right.
But yeah, man, it's something.
So, yeah, you've seen it, badthings can lead to good things.
Your addiction overcoming thatis what other people who come
into that program to get helpare hoping to do and you're
(39:56):
proving that it's possible to doit.
It's a hard way to to do thatright.
That's a serious lesson learnedto get to the point where you
can help other people, but ifyou didn't do that, those people
would have zero help in thefuture.
Nothing right.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
So yeah, yeah, I, yeah, you know it's and it's.
You know, as you and youalluded to this earlier there's.
You know, sometimes the paybackis just that feeling that
you've done something forsomebody else and that it's a
good thing and if it's that'snot enough, yeah, I don't know
man, you should probably breakit's a good thing.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
And if it's that's not enough, yeah, I don't know
man you should probably break itdown a little bit more If you
feel like the payback is to havea lot of money and again, I'm
not talking about anything else,but I've, I've had a lot at
times and it's not a, it's notas big of a difference as I
would have hoped.
Right, the things that stillmatter, no matter what, right,
(41:01):
yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
You still have the sameproblems, regardless if you have
an extra zero or two on yourbank account.
You're still you, I'm still me,I'm still going to take me
wherever I go.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, right, you do have that control.
Yeah, yeah right, you do havethat control.
Yeah, or two into the future,or a month or two into the
(41:34):
future and make decisions on.
Am I running this ship into aniceberg?
And then how do I react to thethings that happen?
Because, man, there's just youcan't control them.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, no, you can't.
You can't control anythingoutside of really you and your
reactions.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
That's tough to do sometimes too.
Absolutely Just that.
Just controlling what's in hereis difficult enough.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, absolutely it is.
Yeah In responses.
And especially in a time whenyou're stressed or when things
are going sideways, it's evenharder.
But I think those times are thetest.
I don't know if I should saytest, I don't know that God
tests us, but I can tell youthis my relationship today with
(42:21):
God is probably the strongestit's been because of those
things and I think I neededthose things to get my attention
and I'm in the recovery programdeeper than I've ever been
because I needed that supportand I'm really grateful that I
(42:44):
have that.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
When you dig in and really get to talk to somebody,
get to know them.
How many people have gotthrough this life unscathed?
Nobody, fucking, nobody, right.
And it usually usually a lot ofit comes down to health, right?
If you don't have your health,you don't have shit.
So it's either you havinghealth problems or somebody you
(43:07):
love and care about.
There is nobody, nobody isgetting picked on right.
Everybody has some deep,serious shit that has either
happened to them or it will.
That's just how it is.
That's the earth that we liveon, and it's well documented in
the Bible.
God says it many times this isa tough place, it's a place of
(43:30):
sin and this is the result of itand, whether or not you feel
you're deserving of it, this iswhat's happening, right?
Yeah, it's tough.
It's a tough thing, man, buthere we are, smiling, talking to
each other, learning some shit,doing our best.
What else are you going to do?
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Doing my best and helping other people by having
these conversations, and helpingother people by having these
conversations.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Some people like I said, can help others and some
people need the help and thatcan be the same person in
different times in their life.
Right, and when you're in theright place, you can help others
.
And when you're not, hopefullyyou meet the right person to
help you.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I know we're getting close on time, bill, where if
somebody wants to check out thisreview site, obviously tell
them where they can go to STHacks and all that stuff and of
course I'll put it in the shownotes.
Sure.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
The link for it is realuserreviews, so it's got a
reviews instead of a com, whichis cool.
So real user dot reviews.
Then the Facebook group's aprivate group.
It's just Service Titan Hacksand I have linked to that from
here, from the Facebook group tothe real user reviews page.
So there's a lot of reallygreat stuff in Service Titan
(44:53):
Hacks that you can learn ifyou're in the home service space
, not just not just how to useservice titan.
That's how I came aboutcreating the group.
There's a lot of good stuff hrrelated, employee related,
things like that.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
so great place for contractors to try to educate
themselves and and dodge somebullets also a great place to
share your experiences withwhatever you struggle with in
the business or and how youovercame those.
So it's also goes two ways,like we've been talking about.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Isn't that the hope, right?
That if you're going to make amistake, that's going to cost
you a hundred grand?
And I remember every.
I remember when mistakes at thevery beginning of the business
oops, that was a thousanddollars, then 10,000, then a
hundred thousand.
If you're going to make that,try not to make it again for
yourself, but if you could sharethat and have other people not
(45:50):
make it, man, that's prettyawesome.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Right, yeah, I agree.
Yeah, a hundred percent, bill.
I appreciate.
I appreciate you, my friend.
I really enjoyed theconversation and we'll talk to
you soon yeah, buddy, talk toyou.
Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast.
I'm your host, Corey Barrier,and I'm here with my man, Bill
Brown.
What's up, brother?
Hey, how's helps contractorsand I want to find out more
(00:27):
about what you're doing withyour review site and I want you
to tell us a little bit aboutthat and the benefits of that
and why you're doing it.
But first, for folks that maynot know who you are, just give
a quick bio of you and all thatgood stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Great, yeah, thanks, man.
Thanks for having me.
So yeah, I've been in the homeservice industry since 2000.
So 25 years now.
It's crazy to think it's beenthat long.
I had my own company from 2012to just a few months ago, when I
sold it.
We did heating and airconditioning and IAQ companies
(01:05):
in Columbus, ohio, but I live inSouth Florida.
I've operated it remotely forthe last four years, and I
believe that I was able to dothat because of utilizing
technology that we're going totalk about today.
So I've done like every smallbusiness owner.
I've done every job in theindustry service, install, sales
(01:26):
, tried to learn how to do callcenter work and all that good
stuff.
In addition, a couple of yearsago, I started a Facebook group,
service Titan Hacks and startedthat because I had some
struggles with Service Titan,some struggles with service
(01:47):
titan, and, as I was able tocome up with some workarounds, I
thought that other contractorsmight benefit from them, and so
that was just a place to have aconversation, and I was.
We're about 8 000 members now,so it's a nice group, very
active.
So that's a real quick 25 yearsfor me yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
so I do have a question about your group, which
I think it's a great group and,you're right, it is super
active.
What would you say?
I don't know if you know thisor not, but what would you say?
The biggest, what is the numberone question people want to
know about in the group?
What do they have the mosttrouble with?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
know about in the group.
What do they have the mosttrouble with?
That's, let's see.
I would say that it's reallyfinding solutions and wondering
or questioning whether or notthose solutions are found within
ServiceTitan or in third-partyadd-ons within ServiceTitan or
(02:44):
in third-party add-ons.
So they'll ask how do I workwith this price book?
Should I get PriceBook Pro orshould I use this other company?
Should I use this AI answeringagent?
So a lot of they're looking fora lot of recommendations on how
to solve problems, and firstthey'd love for ServiceTitan to
(03:08):
be able to solve those.
But if they need a third-partyadd-on, they're looking for
advice on which one to use.
So I get a lot of questions onthat.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So it's interesting that you bring up the price book
thing, because that is one ofthe questions that I've noticed.
That is a common question thatpeople get a bit frustrated with
, and I'm not super familiarwith Pricebook Pro, so is it
Pricebook Pro?
You pull the Excel sheet intoServiceTitan and then it builds
(03:43):
proposals.
Am I understanding that right?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
It's already set up for your business unit and so if
you are an HVAC contractorthey'll have tasks for
capacitors and contactors andcompressor replacements and it's
easier for you to build outyour pricing because they have a
pricing calculator.
(04:07):
You could just put in yourhourly rate, which a lot of
contractors don't know.
They're fully burdened hourlyrate, unfortunately in our
industry it can be north of $400.
But anyhow, it makes the pricebook usable from day one.
Now, is it optimized?
Not really, but it is usableand updating a price book
(04:32):
without that and creating yourown is very difficult.
In ServiceTitan Do they do thatby design to sell PriceBook Pro
?
Maybe, but I'm not aware ofPriceBook Pro.
At least when I used it acouple of years ago Wasn't aware
of it actually being able tobuild out equipment proposals
(04:52):
and easy to use, very fasttemplates.
That process was still verydifficult and very manual to do.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
That makes sense.
So right now the process isevery quarter let's just say for
conversation purposes themanufacturer sends the price
book and the contractor is.
Then, if they have price bookpro, I guess they manually
inject or pull that from theExcel sheet and it does its
thing.
And it does its thing right?
(05:25):
So then, if I'm a technicianand I'm in the field and I need
a price on a capacitor, how do Igo about finding that and how
easy is that to do?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It's like an e-commerce system, right?
So you're going to open up youriPad and there'll be categories
, and the categories could be inPricebook Pro.
It would say capacitors andcontactors.
You would tap on the capacitorand then you'd look for the one
that applies in that situation.
So I believe that they didn'thave a specific one for each
(06:01):
microfarad rating for acondenser.
They'd have a 20 to 50microfarad.
You'd pick that, it would haveits price and you'd add it to
your estimate and you're readyto go.
It also had suggestions forupsells.
So if you had, maybe you wereusing like a turbo capacitor, if
your company had those, itwould have those suggestions.
But just keep in mind thatprice book's never 100% ready to
(06:24):
go.
It still has to be tailored toyour company and the services
that you add and the productsthat you keep in your truck,
right?
So it's pretty easy to findtasks on there, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
So one of the things that we've built at AI
Automations Group is a pricebook to where all you one.
You drop the price book inGoogle and basically you drop it
in Google Drive.
We built a machine that willpull that out and, at the touch
(07:02):
of a finger, you just type inwhatever it is you need and it's
going to give you theinformation right there.
Yeah, Super fast and I think itsolves a big problem.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Pricebook is a big problem, big problem.
I was fortunate with my techbackground.
So back up before 2012, thefirst time around with school, I
went to school for computerscience, so I've always been
pretty, pretty knowledgeable onthe tech side.
So working with Service Titan'sprice book wasn't super
difficult for me as far asexporting in Excel and updating
(07:41):
everything I needed and evenmaking the descriptions HTML and
look pretty and all that.
It was easy for me, but forother contractors it's a total.
It's terrible, it's a shit show, right, and I actually at the
end of my company I had AI writeall the descriptions, so I sent
(08:05):
the products through AI and itwrote all of them and it was
really slick.
But there's a lot of room forsomeone to come in and make a
price book easy to use andfaster and easy to update and to
do that within service titan.
Right, because you don't wantto have to use so many external
(08:29):
third-party add-ons to get thejob done right.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I mean, when you refer to third-party add-ons,
you're really referring to athird-party company yeah, right
for the most.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, like a company that just does price books, and
they'll have their own systemthat has the price book and then
it'll update to ServiceTitanFor us.
I didn't like the wayServiceTitan presented their
option sheets.
I didn't like it.
I had my own software that Ibuilt starting in 2014,.
(09:02):
The pricing was all on one pageand it was a.
It was basically a fillable PDFthat had a database behind it,
and so it.
We use price book pro for sixmonths and our average tickets
went down.
Then we went back to the systemthat I had and they went back
(09:23):
to where they were.
So we have a separate proposalfor equipment that looks and
feels different than theproposal for service, and I did.
I was able to link that toService Titan, where it pulled
all the pricing from ServiceTitan and when we sold something
it put all of the.
(09:44):
It put the invoice lineitemized back into service Titan
and then anything unsold.
It would create proposals andit was 100 percent customized to
our, to my company.
There's room for companies todo things similar, but it
probably couldn't be nearly ascustom as mine.
It wouldn't be scalable.
(10:04):
So something in between wouldbe good for contractors, but I
haven't seen many things outthere like that.
I haven't.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
We built it, it's ready to roll and I'm going to
show it to you later.
I'm not going to show it to younow, obviously, but yeah, I'll
show it to you when we meet uplater.
But it's.
It's really amazing when youfind my partners in the business
are super techie people andthat's what you need to get
these kind of things done.
As you mentioned, you've got abit of a tech or you've got a
(10:37):
tech background.
If it was up to me, there's noway I could do it, because, yeah
, it's just not, I would be, I'dbe like a normal contractor,
like I wouldn't be, I justwouldn't be able could do it
because, yeah, it's just not, Iwould be, I'd be like a normal
contractor, like I wouldn't be,I just wouldn't be able to do it
.
So, yeah, I think that we areall.
I think we're in a time billright now, just like when the
internet first started andhere's the comparison I'll give
(11:00):
you.
And I saw this graph the otherday that basically showed the
companies that said, yeah, notgetting on that Internet, and
the company said we are going toget on that Internet.
And the ones that said we'regetting on the Internet are
still alive, the ones thatdidn't get on the Internet are
not, and we are in the exactsame time right this minute.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
With AI, it'll happen faster with AI, oh, 100% Faster
, yeah.
If you don't utilize it in yourcompany, your costs will be way
higher than your competitorswho are utilizing it and the
output will be way lower.
That's when we're doinganything in business, we're
(11:43):
saying how can I make more moneyand keep more money?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
this is it right, this is it.
It's like a magic eight ball iswhat it is.
Yeah it really is if you knowhow to use it and that's where
you and I have the same kind ofmindset.
We understand how to use thesoftware, the technology, and
it's not that we're any smarterthan anybody else.
(12:10):
We just put in the time tolearn how to do it.
And if people that arelistening to this don't know how
to do it, you're going to haveto hire somebody that does or
figure it out, and right nowyou're not so far behind that
you can't figure it out, but itis probably a full-time job and
it's you and I've had the luxuryof being able to spend hours
(12:33):
and hours figuring this stuffout.
So I want to ask you about thereview site that you're getting.
I think you're either gettingready to launch it or it's
already launched.
What I find super intriguingabout it is I can't go to a
place right now, and I'll use asales coach as an example.
(12:56):
I'm not going to call anybody'sname out, but at the end of the
day, every contractor thatlistens to this podcast has
hired a sales trainer andthey've been unhappy with the
results every single one of them.
Yeah.
So there's no way to know whois the right sales coach, the
(13:18):
good sales coach.
There's no way to find outtruly how that person did what
the performance was after thefact.
Are they happy?
Are they not happy?
The only way to find that outis if I go on one of these your
group or whoever's group, yeahand ask the question, and it's
(13:39):
the same typical people thatchime in and there's not really
a recommendation or a review.
It's just call bill brown,right, bill brown, but there's
really.
No, there's nothing behind that.
Right, you solve that problem.
It sounds just a name.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Right, that's it, and it really what it was is.
I've been burned by everysingle category that's on this
review site.
So, looking at it, I've got acategory for operations.
This would be fleet and GPS, hr, payroll, financing, companies,
procurement.
(14:18):
I have a coaches andconsultants one, so that's the
business and sales coaching,also organizations like best
practice organizations andthings like that.
So you're right in the groupwith all these users, all these
members, these contractors.
They're looking forrecommendations on how to use
(14:40):
the software and alongside thatis recommendations for things
like business coaches, industryorganizations, and that's what
you get is just call this guy.
He's good, and you might nothave ever even used that guy,
you might've just heard he wasgood.
And when I was looking forsoftware, when I was looking for
(15:03):
a field service managementsoftware, I went on a website
called Capterra and Capterra issimilar to this.
It has a list of FSMs on itService Titans on there,
housecall Pro Jobber and there'spretty detailed customer
reviews of those.
So they'll ask five questionslike how was onboarding, how's
(15:25):
customer support, value for themoney, Ease of use, pros, cons
and then description and you canlook at all the users reviews
and make an educated decision.
It's more educated than youcould just asking in a group.
Right and same thing If you'rehiring a home service contractor
(15:45):
, you can go and look at Googlereviews and get a good idea of
how they're as a homeowner, howthey're doing, and so I wanted
to take all that informationthat's floating around on all
these groups on Facebook, put itin one place, and this way,
contractors can go and geteducated on solutions that exist
that they might not have evenknown about, and how other users
(16:10):
of that software or solutionhow they like it.
And for now, I'm going tomanually review the reviews to
ensure their integrity, to makesure that whoever is submitting
the review actually used thatsolution, and eventually, ai
(16:31):
will probably do it right.
But at the very beginning, it'sso important that these reviews
are trustworthy, and I don'tbelieve that you can review a
company unless you've used theirproduct or service.
Right, right, that's what youpay for.
You pay for the ability toreview them.
Now, hopefully, this is a greatsite and it gets traction, but
(16:54):
it'll be up to the contractorsof whether or not they find this
beneficial.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, okay, how I'm curious.
So is the contractor paying tobe on there?
How does that work?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
No, I'm not going to have them pay to be on there at
all.
So it's a free listing.
And that's the question how doyou monetize something like this
?
So I looked at Capterra andtheir business model and G2.
These are the similar typereview sites but for large
enterprise solutions, andthey'll charge like through
(17:30):
click through, where maybe whatthey'll do is charge a user or a
company 20 cents if they gofrom your site to the website,
things like that.
So I'm still looking atmonetization options that are
that still keep the integrity ofthe site, because it's not
going to be free for me to runit and keep it updated and
(17:53):
everything.
And maybe sponsored listings.
So a contractor could say Iwant to be at the top of the
list and it would be sponsored,but that's not going to change
the reviews you get.
Be at the top of the list andit would be sponsored, but
that's not going to change thereviews you get.
You might just have customersfind out that you're shitty a
lot quicker.
Right the site.
(18:13):
If it's a place wherecontractors go and find
solutions and it's beneficial,then the monetization stuff will
come right.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah, but I think it's made me think of
reciprocity, like you're doingsomething good for the industry
and, by and large, my experiencewhen I do something that's
beneficial maybe not evenmutually beneficial at the time,
whether that be help myneighbor with their groceries or
(18:50):
whether that be help somebodyin recovery and that's the best
way I can, actually it's thebest way for me to explain it.
When I help another person inrecovery, by answering the phone
and listening to whatever theyhave going on, two things happen
.
One, I get out of myself andI'm not thinking about whatever
Corey's thinking about, I'mfocused on you.
(19:11):
And then somehow, some way,because of my intention behind
that, there's a payoff at somepoint in my life, and I may not
even know what that payoff is,but I've seen it happen so much
that I don't, and I don't do itfor that reason.
(19:32):
Again, the intention behindit's vitally important here.
If you're doing it just to getthe payoff, then you're negating
the results.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
For sure, and money is not the main driver for me,
for anything I I don't for mepersonally I'm not talking bad
about anybody else there's.
I don't need an infinite amountof money.
That's not what brings me joyin my life.
It's if I have this skill thatcan help other people.
(20:03):
I feel it's my responsibilityto use it to help other people.
There's some people that can dothat and there's some people
that need help.
That's how it is.
And so, at the end of the day,what can I do to make everyone
else's lives around me better,and will that provide some sort
of payback for me?
(20:24):
I don't know.
I don't know.
It does feel good to do it right, but yeah, it's my
responsibility as a Christian todo that.
If I can and that's what I do Ilook for opportunities to make
as many people's lives better asI can, and being a contractor
(20:45):
does that.
So if I can help contractors,those contractors are
responsible for a lot of lives.
They're responsible for theirtechnicians' lives, everyone
that their technician'sresponsible for.
So if I can do something tomake their businesses more
successful make more money, keepmore money then they can do a
good job and provide for theirpeople.
(21:07):
And so just one guy doing onething can spread a lot of
success, and that's that's Ifeel that's my responsibility to
do it.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, and I I totally agree with you One of the
things that because I'm not sureI don't think I've always
probably felt that way.
I probably when I was in myaddiction.
I probably I'm certain that Ididn't think that way.
But now that the recoveryprogram that I'm in for, you
(21:45):
know it's free, right, you don'tpay to to go to these meetings.
You put a dollar in the basketat the end of it if you want to,
but it's a low cost for thelife that it gives me.
And so I think that one of thethings that well, there's two
(22:06):
things that I feel like I canhelp make a difference here in
the industry.
One of them is here doing thispodcast, because it does help
the industry, because I get totalk to people like you that
have been there and done it,which we're going to get into
some of that in a minute,especially one story I want you
to tell for sure, there and doneit, which we're going to get
into some of that in a minute,especially one story I want you
(22:27):
to tell for sure, but being ableto, we talked about the sales
coaches and there's a lot ofpeople out there that they don't
necessarily leave thecontractor better off, and it
really bothers me when thathappens, because contractors are
salt of the earth people.
(22:47):
They're, by and large, goodpeople.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Sometimes to a fault on some things.
As far as operation of abusiness and growing it, they
are really usually very goodpeople.
They start with it because theycome from the technician side
and the thing on the technicianthat they like, that keeps them
going to work, is the ability tosolve the problem and the smile
(23:11):
on the customer's face whenthey're done with that doing it.
That's what did it for me as atechnician, and then you become
a contractor and you carry thatsame thing.
So these guys are really downto earth and want to do a great
job.
Don't ever want to rip anybodyoff or overcharge them or
anything like that and sometimesit leads to them really not.
(23:33):
Sometimes, a lot of times itleads to them being taken
advantage of.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
I totally agree.
Yeah, and I mentioned to youbefore the show is we've
developed an AI that helps thattechnician in the field Because,
look, I've worked withtechnicians for years that they
may not want to sell the productbut they do want to solve the
(24:00):
problem, which means you've gotto sell the job.
And they struggle hard withthat because they're kinesthetic
people.
They just they're really, theirgoal is really just to fix
something, and they're not verycomfortable with the sales
process and I've been there,I've always loved selling but it
(24:20):
so, if so, we've made a processthat'll help, that kind of like
a call by call, immediatelybuilt in with a sales process
and HVAC knowledge and plumbingknowledge and all of the
different trades.
That's going to make thatprocess easier for them and I
believe that it's I trulybelieve it's going to change the
(24:41):
industry.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And it needs to be changed.
This has been something that'sbeen talked about.
If you go back and read theACHR news all the way back into
the 80s.
This has been a challengegetting technicians to sell, and
you're right, they like theresults of the sale because the
more that they sell, the happierthe customer is.
The most pissed off customersthat I've had are the people
(25:06):
that buy the least.
The one-star reviews that wehad are somebody that got a
capacitor for $225 and you'relike shit, I didn't even make
enough money for a one-starreview on that.
And the customers that arehappiest are the ones where I
replaced the capacitor.
The contactor are the oneswhere I replaced the capacitor.
(25:27):
The contactor added a hard startkit, cleaned the whole system
and technicians will actuallyenjoy performing that service.
But you have to be able tocommunicate that in order to be
able to do it.
So that's one.
And then also with the salesprocess.
Sales is when a customer saysno, it's an objection, but it
feels like rejection right, andnobody wants to be rejected, and
(25:55):
the equipment itself doesn'treject you.
You get infinite shots atfixing it.
A customer isn't that forgivingright.
And so we are really asking atechnician to have two very
different skill sets.
That's a lot of pressure.
Oh, one of them, by the way,won't really make you tons of
money and that's not the onethat you got in the industry for
.
So that's where you come in,and AI makes it easier for them
(26:21):
to be more successful, faster,right, and probably be able to
do some things that they neverwould have been able to do A
thousand percent.
I do things I can't do.
Ai does things for me that Ican't do.
So people are ever like Bill,you're smart.
No, I haven't got any smarter,I just use this technology.
(26:41):
That I'm not.
That's it.
I've gotten better at using thetech, that's it.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
That's it, which is the key right it is.
Right, I do want you to share,and I can't even remember.
I can't remember the fullcontext of it, but I'll remind
you and you'll remember.
I have a feeling there was atime when you made some
decisions in your business thatcost you a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Oh, my gosh man, there's so many of them.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
One specific that I'm thinking about is I believe
that you truly believe that youwere doing the right thing on
some hours.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Oh yeah, the first lawsuit in the business.
Yeah, if you're in businesslong enough, you're going to get
a lawsuit.
That's just the way it is.
The bigger you get, the biggerthe target on your back.
That's, that's from my buddy,mike Aguilaro, and it's true.
And so, yeah, I had a ladyworking for me and this was very
early on.
(27:44):
We were not, there was no HRdepartment, nothing like that
and I just told her hey, work,work 40 hours a week, that's it
Right.
And in the summer, if she worksovertime, she did, but just, it
was more like a flex time thing.
But I didn't have a time clockfor her.
The time clock that I used formy guys was an app and she was
(28:08):
in the office.
And so I, in 2014, I hadulcerative colitis and had to go
in for a, an emergency surgeryin which I was out of the
company for two months, and Iremember during that time she
billed me for overtime a littlebit and I was like, man, I can't
afford the overtime.
I said, please try to keep itat 40 hours and after, and she
(28:34):
worked at the company for acouple more years and she quit
the first day of the AC seasonbecause as a contractor.
That's how it goes.
And seven days later I got alawsuit saying you got to pay
$55,000 for unpaid overtime.
And I was fucking pissed right.
What do you mean?
I got to pay this and theamount of money I was like
(28:56):
that's like a over a year'ssalary.
This is bullshit and it didn'tmake sense to me.
But it doesn't matter, becausethe law said that if she worked
just one hour of overtime thatyou have to pay her for that
hour of overtime.
And it doesn't matter Clock in,clock out, doesn't matter.
(29:20):
Emails you said this is the waythat the federal labor laws are
written, doesn't matter.
Emails you said this is the waythat the federal labor laws are
written.
And, by the way, in a in thecourt, if just more than 50
percent of the people believethat she worked in one hour of
overtime in that three years,you would lose the case.
And if they believe that youknew about it and didn't do it,
(29:43):
you'd'd have to pay double.
Fucking lost man I lost.
So whether or not I was, I feltright or wrong, it didn't matter
.
And it cost me three hundredthousand dollars, and for a two
million dollar business that's alot of money.
It was very painful and, at theend of the day, get a good
(30:04):
attorney and make sure thatyou're following the law.
But I'll tell you what theemotional thing behind it after
spending a couple of days incourt and having the opposing
counsel rip me to shreds whenI've always felt like I did the
right thing, ripped me to shredswhen I've always felt like I
(30:26):
did the right thing you had togo back into your business and
you had 25 employees and youcouldn't give them any shit over
it and you have to smile andput on a fake face and, knowing
that there's a percentage ofpeople who are trying to screw
you over in your company, youstill have to push forward.
(30:46):
And so I have a lot of.
I have a lot of empathy forcontractors, because this is,
people are trying to screw themover in their business.
Not the majority of them, butthere's always somebody who's
who's doing some dirty stuff inyour company and, anyway, that
was a big lesson learned.
That was one of the mostexpensive ones that I've learned
(31:07):
.
But this, my story, is notunique, right?
All contractors have had it.
They just don't really talkabout it.
You don't see that on Facebook,do you?
You see the snapshots of thenew cars and the growth and
everything.
But I know I know those guys.
Maybe it wasn't recent.
I know that to get there theytook some fucking punches, man,
(31:31):
some beatings, beatings right,probably larger than you did,
because they're because of theirsize.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Like you said, the bigger you are, the bigger the
target is on your back, yeahright and that's just.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
that's what you signed up for when you became a
business owner.
But you don't know that whenyou're signing up I've had guys
say years after it they'd comein and say my hope is to start
an HVAC company someday.
I said great, I'll tell youeverything you need to know to
do it and if that's what youwant to do someday.
(32:05):
But how would you feel, howwould it be on you and your
family if you were sitting infront in a courtroom for
something you felt that wasn't,that you didn't do anything
wrong and they and opposingcounsel talked about how bad of
(32:25):
a person you were and how shittyof a business owner you are and
how greedy you are, when atthat time you barely have the
money to pay your bills andinvest in the business.
How would that be for you andyour family?
And if you can handle that,start your own business.
If you can't, you probablyshould work just harder on the
(32:45):
job that you have.
Right.
Hard lessons learned, man.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
So how did that affect you outside of the
business?
Because that is a hard lesson.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I hated it for six months.
I hated it.
And at that time, my wife and Idecided we were going to move to
Florida in 2019.
And at that time, my wife and Idecided we were going to move
to Florida in 2019.
And in the case, the court casewas the first week of 2020.
And 2020 turned out to be apretty shitty year you don't
remember.
And so we were.
(33:19):
Everything was going really wellin 2019.
We were growing like crazy, andso I've had a few times in my
life where I felt like God hasspoke with me directly, not in
prayer, but just out of the blue, and one of them was in 2019
where he said you have to moveto Florida now, don't wait till
you're retired.
Nothing else, no other context.
(33:40):
It wasn't like, oh, you'regoing to be so happy and so
successful.
It just that was theinstructions, and so the three
times I've been spoken todirectly, I follow it.
And so we went down there or weset everything up.
We lost that case.
They put a lien on our homethat was for sale, so we
(34:02):
couldn't sell it.
We had already put money downon a new house I had already
rebranded and added a secondlocation in Florida that I had
signed a lease on, and so allthat delayed moving down to
Florida for eight months, and sonot only did I have to pay the
(34:23):
300 that year, I probably lost150 or 200 more on just moving
(34:49):
all day during work and comehome and my wife and I were just
like mad stressed man all thefucking time.
It was brutal.
We did end up getting down hereand we didn't end up lost a lot
of money.
It's only money, right, that'show it is.
You guys can't take it with you, bro, like you made it through
the relationship made it through.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
The relationship made it through Because that's a
real hard thing to try to pushthrough.
That could end a relationshipin a heartbeat, I would imagine.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yeah, we've always stayed together through those
tough times, whether or not weliked them.
We didn't take it out on eachother and that's been great Been
great.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So, and would you say , that's because you have God is
in the center of both of yourlives, is that?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, for richer or for poorer sickness and health,
and we like to joke for pooreror even poorer Right Sickness or
in hospital really sick.
So I don't know.
Sometimes I look and I ask God,what's the fucking purpose of
this man like?
Why do I have to take thislevel of beating?
I did sign up for it, but whatthe fuck right?
(35:57):
And it's I don't.
I still don't 100 know.
Maybe it's just a story tobenefit other people, I don't
know.
But the thing is this world isnot fair.
It's difficult and you know it.
You have addictions, you havechallenges, you have other
people that come into your lifethat can make it really bad,
(36:18):
that you can't control, and whatdo you really have at the end
of the day is faith and knowingthat at the end of this you'll
be able to go to heaven and allof this will be gone, all the
pressures of this life, any sortof the addictions that you've
had, any of the sickness.
Money won't matter.
(36:39):
And so we have a very shorttime, and so we have a very
short time.
So a lot of it is just movepast the bad things that happen
to you, even if you'reresponsible for them or
partially responsible, and sticktogether with your family, go
to church and put trust in himthat he'll take care of you.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
I'm still alive, right, still breathing, and my
family's still together, and sowhen you go through tough things
, you start to you, look towardsthe basics, the core things
that are really important, right, and I still got those, I think
(37:22):
, from personally, when, when Igo through tough times which the
last three weeks, arguably,have been fairly tough, yeah,
and but I think I believe andI've seen this happen in my own
life I go through these thingsand there is an absolute reason
(37:42):
I'm going through them, and partof that is that I need to grow
in some area of my life, whetherit be personally or to what's
been in front of me, at leastprofessionally, for the last
year and a half that I justhaven't.
(38:03):
I don't know if it, I don'tknow exactly why it didn't move
forward, it just wasn't the time.
And both of them contributed tothe AI stuff that I'm getting
ready to launch and that we'vesigned some partners on, and
(38:24):
it's really.
I don't think it would haveturned out this way if either of
those things didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Right, and so when you're going through those times
, that's what you have to.
It's very difficult to be awareof that and think of that, that
this isn't a punishment, it's apurpose, right.
And people do say everything'shappens for a reason.
Nobody wants to hear thatbullshit when you're going
through it, right, it's justbackwards reflecting on it.
(38:55):
But, yeah, every decisionyou've made and everything
that's happened to you is howyou are where you are today
right now.
Every decision I've made,everything I've done, is what's
led me to talking to you today,and you don't know what you
missed by making those decisionsand you don't know how you're
(39:16):
benefiting by making them.
So you have to look and don'tlook.
I don't look too far in thefuture.
I look at how do I make adifference right now.
Maybe because of being reallysick years ago, I don't believe
that there's just this infinitefuture on earth.
I thought, man, I could die at45 years old, so I got to make
(39:36):
this count now, which makes me alittle bit more risky right
Than normal right.
But yeah, man, it's something.
So, yeah, you've seen it, badthings can lead to good things.
Your addiction overcoming thatis what other people who come
into that program to get helpare hoping to do and you're
(39:56):
proving that it's possible to doit.
It's a hard way to to do thatright.
That's a serious lesson learnedto get to the point where you
can help other people, but ifyou didn't do that, those people
would have zero help in thefuture.
Nothing right.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
So yeah, yeah, I, yeah, you know it's and it's.
You know, as you and youalluded to this earlier there's.
You know, sometimes the paybackis just that feeling that
you've done something forsomebody else and that it's a
good thing and if it's that'snot enough, yeah, I don't know
man, you should probably breakit's a good thing.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
And if it's that's not enough, yeah, I don't know
man you should probably break itdown a little bit more If you
feel like the payback is to havea lot of money and again, I'm
not talking about anything else,but I've, I've had a lot at
times and it's not a, it's notas big of a difference as I
would have hoped.
Right, the things that stillmatter, no matter what, right,
(41:01):
yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
You still have the sameproblems, regardless if you have
an extra zero or two on yourbank account.
You're still you, I'm still me,I'm still going to take me
wherever I go.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah, right, you do have that control.
Yeah, yeah right, you do havethat control.
Yeah, or two into the future,or a month or two into the
(41:34):
future and make decisions on.
Am I running this ship into aniceberg?
And then how do I react to thethings that happen?
Because, man, there's just youcan't control them.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, no, you can't.
You can't control anythingoutside of really you and your
reactions.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
That's tough to do sometimes too.
Absolutely Just that.
Just controlling what's in hereis difficult enough.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, absolutely it is.
Yeah In responses.
And especially in a time whenyou're stressed or when things
are going sideways, it's evenharder.
But I think those times are thetest.
I don't know if I should saytest, I don't know that God
tests us, but I can tell youthis my relationship today with
(42:21):
God is probably the strongestit's been because of those
things and I think I neededthose things to get my attention
and I'm in the recovery programdeeper than I've ever been
because I needed that supportand I'm really grateful that I
(42:44):
have that.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
When you dig in and really get to talk to somebody,
get to know them.
How many people have gotthrough this life unscathed?
Nobody, fucking, nobody, right.
And it usually usually a lot ofit comes down to health, right?
If you don't have your health,you don't have shit.
So it's either you havinghealth problems or somebody you
(43:07):
love and care about.
There is nobody, nobody isgetting picked on right.
Everybody has some deep,serious shit that has either
happened to them or it will.
That's just how it is.
That's the earth that we liveon, and it's well documented in
the Bible.
God says it many times this isa tough place, it's a place of
(43:30):
sin and this is the result of itand, whether or not you feel
you're deserving of it, this iswhat's happening, right?
Yeah, it's tough.
It's a tough thing, man, buthere we are, smiling, talking to
each other, learning some shit,doing our best.
What else are you going to do?
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Doing my best and helping other people by having
these conversations, and helpingother people by having these
conversations.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Some people like I said, can help others and some
people need the help and thatcan be the same person in
different times in their life.
Right, and when you're in theright place, you can help others
.
And when you're not, hopefullyyou meet the right person to
help you.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I know we're getting close on time, bill, where if
somebody wants to check out thisreview site, obviously tell
them where they can go to STHacks and all that stuff and of
course I'll put it in the shownotes.
Sure.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
The link for it is realuserreviews, so it's got a
reviews instead of a com, whichis cool.
So real user dot reviews.
Then the Facebook group's aprivate group.
It's just Service Titan Hacksand I have linked to that from
here, from the Facebook group tothe real user reviews page.
So there's a lot of reallygreat stuff in Service Titan
(44:53):
Hacks that you can learn ifyou're in the home service space
, not just not just how to useservice titan.
That's how I came aboutcreating the group.
There's a lot of good stuff hrrelated, employee related,
things like that.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
so great place for contractors to try to educate
themselves and and dodge somebullets also a great place to
share your experiences withwhatever you struggle with in
the business or and how youovercame those.
So it's also goes two ways,like we've been talking about.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Isn't that the hope, right?
That if you're going to make amistake, that's going to cost
you a hundred grand?
And I remember every.
I remember when mistakes at thevery beginning of the business
oops, that was a thousanddollars, then 10,000, then a
hundred thousand.
If you're going to make that,try not to make it again for
yourself, but if you could sharethat and have other people not
(45:50):
make it, man, that's prettyawesome.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Right, yeah, I agree.
Yeah, a hundred percent, bill.
I appreciate.
I appreciate you, my friend.
I really enjoyed theconversation and we'll talk to
you soon yeah, buddy, talk toyou.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!