March 7, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode of the Successful Life podcast, host Corey Berrier welcomes Todd Liles, founder of Service Excellence. Todd shares his remarkable journey, from his teenage years working in the trades, to becoming an influential figure in business consulting, coaching, and counseling for tradespeople. He delves into the distinctions between coaching, consulting, and counseling, and their unique impacts on businesses. Todd also recounts his early career challenges and successes, emphasizing the importance of building customer relationships and proactive mentoring in business growth. From personal anecdotes to professional advice, this episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to excel in the trades and business landscape.
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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 Todd Liles.
What's?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
up brother.
Hey Corey, how's it going, man?
Thanks for having me on theshow, yeah man Looking forward
to it.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
So, todd, tell me.
For the folks that may not knowwho you are, which I'm sure
that's few and far between justgive us a quick background on
you and what you're doing and inthe trades and all that good
stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
background on you and what you're doing and in the
trades and all that good stuff.
I'll give you the fast rundown.
I started working in the tradeswhen I was 14, and I did that
to get out of cutting wood inthe piney woods of Mississippi.
So I've been doing.
I've been in the trades and inabout since I was 14, started
doing air conditioning with myname on an actual business card
somewhere around the age of 21,outside of college.
(00:44):
Early days was a trainer, backwhen clockwork home services was
PSI, sgi, the franchises.
After about a year and a half Ibecame the director of training
, which was awesome, and then Imoved out to Austin, texas, and
I think I was maybe 28.
I was a 15% partner in an airconditioning and plumbing
business and served up mythree-year non-compete and then
(01:07):
I started Service Excellence.
So that's what I do today.
I'm 46 years old.
This business is basically thesame age as my 14-year-old
daughter and I love it.
Man, this is what I'm supposedto do is do business consulting,
coaching, counseling, trainingfor the tradespeople.
So there you go, man.
That's my quick rundown.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I love it.
That's great.
I love that you threw the wordcounseling in there, because,
boy, doesn't that ring true.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, well, I'll hit you with three things that we do
, and these are things that Ihave learned.
I felt them before.
I was able to codify them inwords, and then by listening to
other business coaches.
And when this coach says, I'm acoach, this is what I do.
And this coach says, well, I'ma consultant, this is what I do.
(01:53):
And then this coach says, well,I'm a counselor, this is what I
do.
And I'm over here thinking tomyself, well, I'm a trainer, I
don't.
Where are the division lines?
And then one day it cametogether.
I was listening to this guythat's a coach of really
high-end professionals and andhe said that he is a coach, he's
not a consultant.
And I said what does that meanto you?
(02:14):
He said, well, a coach issomeone who actually already
works with a high-level producerthat is already capable, but
they may get stuck in their ownheadspace.
And he goes I'm a coach, Idon't work with anyone that
hasn't got their life figuredout yet.
I work with people that arealready successful, helping them
reach their highest level ofcontribution.
And I'm like I love that, thankyou.
(02:36):
Thank you for that.
I get that.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
That's why people like TigerWoods have coaches, michael
Jordan has coaches.
They're already great, but theyjust are always trying to get
better.
All right, so then, what aboutthe world of consulting?
That means different things todifferent people, but to me,
(02:56):
this is my definition of aconsultant.
A consultant is someone who isteaching you something that
either A you didn't know, orthey're giving you, or helping
you enhance a skill that youdidn't have or needs great
improvement.
You don't have it mastered yet.
So when we say consulting, forus, that can mean business
consulting, which you cansubstitute training in for that
word.
Okay, it could be leadership,it could be sales, it could be
(03:20):
CSR.
And then, when you go intocounseling, there is a decent
amount of conversations thatmyself and my coaches and you've
got to keep in mind we're ateam of 14 here at Service
Excellence that they have tohave with people to where
they're not in the right mindspace, whether or not someone
(03:40):
quit on them or what have youPerhaps, maybe an employee died,
which has happened Now, granted, we totally understand the
limitations of our counselingskill set, but there are some
things that we can counselpeople through, many things.
And then there are some thingswhere we got to recognize like,
okay, this is outside of ourboundary, we need to get you in
(04:03):
touch with the rightprofessional.
But what we understand is that,as the role of counselor, we're
meant to restore.
So we're going to take thesethree codifications Counselors
bring someone into a restorationpoint so that they can take the
next step.
Consulting takes someone andgives them tools and resources,
information that they didn'thave or wasn't executing well.
(04:24):
And coaching takes someone whois already performing at a good
or high level and helps themelevate it even further.
So we are all three andunderstand that, as we are all
three and there's 14 of us herewe are not all equal in skill
set.
Some of our coaches are goingto be able to coach 20 plus
million dollar operations andsome are not ready for that.
(04:46):
They're ready for the three tofive, and that's okay, because
as we are growing our companies,we're also growing our coaches,
and we're never putting a coachin a place they shouldn't be.
So we have to take into mindboth sides of the skill sets.
All right, there you go,brother.
That's how we see things hereat Service Excellence.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That makes sense.
So I think lots of times andyou're right, I think that,
again, I never really heard thecounseling portion of it, but it
does completely make sense.
I do think the lines getblurred sometimes between the
coach and the consulting, and Ithink, for me, I look at
consulting very similar to you,but I'm introducing something
(05:26):
that they're not aware of, likethe AI stuff that you know you
and I have talked about.
Like a lot of guys are notaware of that, so you would
consult them on how to use it,so on and so forth, but that
wouldn't be a long-term coachingconversation, because here's
the thing, here's how you do it.
Coaching, in my, my opinion,would be more of it's a weekly
(05:48):
thing, like you're working toget towards a goal and get
better, which I think isbasically what to a degree.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Well, and so.
So that's a that's afascinating thing as well,
because if you start attachingit to time frames and timelines,
well, if you start attaching itto timeframes and timelines,
well, if you start in thecounseling role, the interesting
thing about counseling role isthat, for us, we shouldn't be in
the long-term counselingbusiness.
(06:15):
We need to be in the short-termcounseling business.
Yes, you had a rough week, butlet's right the ship of the mind
, let's get back on track, let'sgo to work, and I think that's
a really good way for ourcoaches and I'm using our
coaches to describe the positionat our company, even though I
just qualified three categories.
(06:35):
Right, but in the world ofcounseling, if someone is having
to have constant and consistentcounseling, then either it is
an emotional state that we arenot capable of handling, or they
have a life crisis thatbusiness coaching isn't going to
get them out of.
So we have to be mindful ofthat.
(06:57):
So we don't want to be inrelationships to where we are
acting like your weeklycounselor.
If it's happening a coupletimes a year, that's just normal
life.
Of course, when you're blue anddepressed, talk to us, pick up
the phone, give us a call.
We'll be your buddy, we'll pumpyou up, but that's not what it
is.
Now, when we go into the worldof consulting and I think we are
(07:17):
actually really greatconsultants and I think one of
the sort of defining thingsabout what makes us a great
consultant is that you can lookat what we do for people and
it's not necessarily like anaffinity group, like A.
We do charge more money than anX-Star or an Airtime does, or
Praxis.
And, by the way, I'm pro bestpractice groups.
(07:38):
It's interesting to me how someof the groups and some of the
people that are in the groupslook at us like oh, you're a
competitor, aren't you?
No, actually we're doing manydifferent things.
I'm very pro best practicegroups.
That's not what we are.
We are a consulting firm, whichoften means we will consult
(07:59):
somebody through their currentscenario and in a couple of
years we've done our job.
It isn't necessarily a foreverrelationship, although we do
have clients that have been withus a long time, and that's in
part because they have movedinto more of a coaching role
where they value us, they wantus in their life, they do like
(08:19):
that.
We are continually pushing themand making them better.
Now, that's an internal problemthat we have that we graduate
ourselves out, because if a guycomes in and he's doing $3
million, corey, and he's likeall I ever wanted to do was five
, and we get them to five in ayear or two, well that's a great
way to get fired and that'sokay.
I'm okay with getting fired ifthey've accomplished their goal
(08:41):
and they're making a milliondollars and they're in a small
community and they're done withus.
Well, that's a sad day.
We hate to see it happen, butit happens.
Ideally, what would occur isthat we find companies that have
mindsets of wanting to be 20,30, 40, 50 million, and I never
thought this way.
This is a new way for methinking, because I come from a
really small town of 50,000people and I sometimes had these
(09:03):
really small thoughts of wow,wouldn't it be amazing to have a
$5 million business that'sputting out $800 to a million
dollars in profit?
What more do you need?
And a lot of our clients havethose small thoughts and there's
nothing wrong with that at all.
We can help you do that.
But at the same token, it'd bereally cool to get someone doing
a million that wants to do 20million, and because that
journey is going to take alonger, and then we have a
(09:24):
client a lot longer by the timethey get to 20, we can move into
that coaching role.
Are you already pretty good?
Let's keep slapping the ball onthis thing.
Anyway, there you go.
That's full transparency.
By the way, that's without.
That's showing theunderstandings of our pros and
cons as a business and not beingashamed to say them, which I
think a lot of businesses wouldbe ashamed to admit where
(09:48):
they're at.
But there's no shame in it tome, because it's the difference
in having a doctor that you seewhen you're sick versus having a
wellness doctor.
I only see my family doctoronce a year and almost never in
between because I don't get sick.
I see my wellness doctor everysix months.
Their same goals are the samebut the approach to service is
(10:13):
different, because my wellnessdoctor needs to see my blood
every six months to see what'sgoing on, to up or down my
vitamins, right?
My family doctor annualphysical, and if I'm not sick
any time in between he doesn'tneed to see me.
My family doctor annualphysical, and if I'm not sick
anytime in between he doesn'tneed to see me.
So there's just differentconnections in business, and now
you have a little bit moreunderstanding as to what we do
as a company.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
So what happens when a company comes to you in a
reactive state of mind?
Reactive in what way?
So reactive in that?
I'll give you a quick exampleCOVID's over.
We saw these massive numbersduring COVID, and now we've just
(10:55):
dropped down from 22 milliondown to 16 million, and they
don't know what to do there.
So that's what I mean byreactive.
Maybe that's something theycould have prevented if they
would have gone to the wellnessdoctor every six months, opposed
to coming to the doctor onceevery four years well, let's
(11:18):
unpack the covid one first andthen we'll go back and look at
some other things.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
And the reason why I want to do that is COVID was
probably once in a generationalsort of event and when it
happened I think everybodythought it was going to be an
overall negative thing.
I think everybody thought thatCOVID was going to be the thing
that was going to destroybusinesses.
And granted, it did destroy alot of food industry business,
(11:44):
but in the world of heating andair conditioning it didn't take
very long until they were termed.
I forget what the term is, butbasically critical services I
forgot what the language is thatyou use?
And people were home.
The government was encouragingbusinesses to keep their people.
Don't lay them off.
They rolled out a lot ofreasons to do that with the pay
protection plan, so money wasflowing.
(12:07):
By the way, I'm stillabsolutely convinced and I'm
only going to make thisstatement quickly.
I'm convinced that thehyperinflation that we realized
today actually started in thatlast period of Trump's time in
office, when he kicked out a lotof these initial benefits and
people were at home andcompanies got greedy and like,
oh, they're spending money,let's charge more.
(12:27):
And I think that snowballhasn't stopped yet.
So, by the way, I'm not blamingTrump or anyone else, or Biden.
I'm not making a politicalstatement.
I'm making a statement ofeconomics.
I think that's what kicked offhyperinflation, but we benefited
from that right.
So now here's the reason I saidI want to address that and why
it's different.
(12:47):
It's because when you have aperiod of time where people are
home and people know this,they've heard this conversation
before but when all this work isbeing done, you are sucking out
a certain amount of businessout of the market and what
people didn't account for and itblows me away it's like why
would you not account for?
This is what that's going tomean in the following years,
(13:11):
because if you were meant tohave grown by 4% or 5% each year
, and one year you grew by 30%.
And you did that because youbought a business awesome.
If you did that because you didsome amazing marketing approach
that gained you market shareover your competition awesome.
You might be able to keepcounting on growth.
But if it happened because godhanded it to you on a silver
(13:35):
platter and there wasn't morenew business that was made, you
just got a over fraction of thebusiness, then a good consultant
like us would say you shouldn'texpect that next year.
And, by the way, I did that forone of our clients and it
(13:55):
wasn't related to COVID.
It was related to a massivestorm event and they had this
huge explosion.
And I'm like guys, this is a100-year storm.
You're building your budgetnext year as though you have
another 100-year storm.
Call up the distributors, askhow much roofing material has
gone out Austin-wide, comparethat to previous years and you
(14:20):
will have an estimation of thetidal wave that's coming back
out and therefore you need to godown in your boat.
Well, they don't want to hearthat and sometimes, in the role
of consulting.
If you're being a goodconsultant, you actually tell
people what they don't want tohear.
Our job is to tell them in away that they recognize the
wisdom and that we don't getfired.
(14:40):
Corey, I'll tell you half ofthe people that we lose fire us
because they don't like soundwisdom, like no, I don't want to
hear that.
It's like I know you want me tobe a yes man and just tell you
what you want to hear and thenall we're doing is delaying your
unhappy nature.
Or do you want to hear what youneed to hear and make a
(15:02):
business plan to adjust?
So COVID is different.
Covid's not normal.
Covid was an opportunity thatwe didn't know was going to be
such a great opportunity.
So that would be the firstthing I would say related to
your question.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Makes sense.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, well, it's just pure economics.
You sucked a lot of theopportunity out.
What was the second part of thequestion?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Well, I don't know, but let me re.
So what I was really referringto, I think, Todd, is when you
get somebody, there's two typesof people.
You got a proactive guy thatsays, hey, I want to make sure I
, yeah, not reactive guy thatsays, hey, yeah, not reactive.
But the reactive guy, I imagine, is going to be much more of a
challenge, time-wise,resource-wise, for you all,
(15:52):
because he's in reactive modeand so therefore, it's I think,
yeah, it's bound to take up moreof your.
It's like getting a cheapcustomer.
That's a great way I can put itright.
It's like getting the cheapestguy that's bound to take up more
of your.
It's like getting a cheapcustomer.
That's a great way I can put itright.
It's like getting the cheapestguy that's going to buy your
system.
He's always going to be thebiggest pain in your ass.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Well, I can address that.
It obviously is not uncommonthat we have people call us
that's reactive, becausesomething's happened in their
business where they feel alittle pain and they're looking
for either a solution or afinger right on a point of
finger at something.
It's human nature.
I totally get it when a, when a, when a potential client calls
(16:34):
in and they're in reactive mode.
I want to know a few things.
What's, what's prompted thephone call today?
What are you?
What are you hoping to achieve?
A few things what's promptedthe phone call today?
What are you hoping to achieve?
What will make thisconversation a great
conversation where, if you walkaway with these two or three
things, you're going to say thiswas worth having time on the
phone with Todd or one of thecoaches.
And when they begin to tell methings like well, we've been
(16:56):
flat for the last two or threeyears, we haven't really grown,
we're doing all right, but wehaven't really grown, and I'll
ask questions like well, whatthings have you tried in the
past?
Who have you listened to?
How did those relationships go?
I actually don't want to findanswers where people are beating
up other people, because what Ihave found is that companies
(17:22):
that are going to be successfulmay have dips in the road,
because we all do but the onesthat are constantly pointing the
finger and it's always someoneelse's fault they're going to do
that with us too.
I don't want them.
I don't want a finger pointer.
I don't want to blame her.
I don't want someone who hasn'tgotten to the place to accept
the reality that we are here tohelp them, but it's their
company.
So to the reactive guy, whenthey say something like hey, I
(17:44):
know I need to train, I just Idon't want to.
I don't want to touch it.
These technicians are a mess,and why don't you just do it and
I'm going to leave the room?
No, I don't want to be.
I don't want to be connectedwith you.
Why do we want your headache?
Because you don't want to getinvolved?
We want to train yourtechnicians, we want to do a
great job with them.
We want to train your coaches,your CSRs, your salespeople.
(18:05):
But if what you're telling meis that they don't want it, you
don't want it, you just want usto make them want it, nah,
that's not going to work.
I would rather work with youfor three or four months and get
your head fixed before I evertouch your people.
So that's one of the other sortof warning signs.
When you say reactive, I'mactually thinking about
(18:26):
something slightly different.
It's like I'm okay withreactive if the reactive is for
the right reason.
Business is down.
But I believe it can be better.
I just need help.
I'm looking for someone to help.
That's okay.
Reactive to me, business isdown.
I don't want to do any of thework anymore.
I'm worn out.
Can you help me?
(18:48):
Will you be in the meeting orhave a manager in the meeting?
Will you reinforce what weteach?
Will you take what we do on aMonday or Tuesday and practice
it with your people a coupledays a week, realizing that's
part of the gig?
Okay, sure, we'll help.
No business is down.
(19:09):
If I don't get this thingrighted tomorrow, I'm going to
close the doors, which willtypically lead me to a few other
conversations, which isresource conversation, and for
me, resources are threeessential things.
Tell me about leadership, tellme about the time that you have
in front of you as a runway, andtell me about the resources
(19:31):
that you have in terms ofcapital.
What do you have?
What can you get?
Capital is actually the leastworrisome of all of those things
and really honestly so is timethe most critical is leadership
If we've got fairly decentleadership in place, or if we
(19:51):
need to enhance the leadership.
If you've got great leadershipin place, that gives you more
runway of time.
It also gives you more runwayof money, because they're making
smart decisions with money.
But if you've got reallyterrible leadership in place,
it's going to take a lot moretime.
So you better have deepresources.
So I want to evaluate theirthree resources and if they come
(20:12):
to me completely resource poor,then the question becomes what
can we do with what they have toget the biggest bang?
And if I walk away going well,we can't, then we don't want
them as a client again.
So one of the things that we do,corey, that I'm not sure that
other companies do, is that weactually, before we tell someone
they can join us, we will do anestimation of ROI, and part of
(20:36):
the estimation of ROI is we basewhat we know.
Our averages are what we'recapable of getting in an
environment in about six months,and we know quickly the dials
that we can turn and pay forourself and then some.
Again, here's a problem withthat, though.
We're so good at that and I'vealmost thinking this is a trap
(20:57):
of our own business that I gotto figure out how to resolve.
We're so good at fixing averagetickets and boosting revenue on
service calls that you have.
That can be like a quick fix.
It can almost be like anaddiction drug to where it's
like oh, you gave me that crack.
And then those first three, sixmonths, what's the next piece
of crack?
There is no more crack.
Now comes the hard work.
(21:17):
We righted the shit.
We stopped you from bleeding.
The gains that you're going tomake now are going to be
substantially slower over thenext two or three years, are
going to be built aroundleadership.
I don't want to do that.
Well, I don't want to work withthose type of people either,
but it really is a weird thingwhen you're mission driven,
where you're like I know thatthis person is not hearing what
(21:42):
I'm saying.
We tell them all these things.
I know they're not hearing me.
I know they want that quick hitand in six months they're going
to be right back into the otherproblems because they're going
to have spent the money thatthey've made.
Sounds like I'm really talkingtrash about business owners, and
I'm not.
I'm telling you what I havecome to realize after let's see,
(22:05):
I got into this 30, 21, I'm 40.
So, after, wow, 25 years 25years in this professional
industry what I have come torealize about the way that
business owners that arereactive, that chase shiny
objects, that don't button downand do the base things which, by
(22:28):
the way, this is one of thereasons why I don't know who
Alex Hermosi got his influencesand mentorships from, but I love
that young man.
He's in his 30s.
He's far more successful thanprobably almost anyone listening
to this show and if you listento the stuff he says, he just
spits the truth.
(22:50):
Don't expect things.
One of the things that he hadsaid recently was like if you
want to be successful, you needto commit to doing something for
a long time and not chase shinyobjects.
If only half the people thatever called us would take that
piece of advice.
Buckle down and do thisconsistently for the next three
(23:10):
years, before you ever hop onsocial media and listen to the
next screaming head shootingmoney into the air with a money
gun, wearing gold chains andwhite sneakers, telling you how
easy it is.
Yeah, yeah, check, check thereceipts all those people to see
how easy it really was.
Check ask someone who knowssomething.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
See what's up yeah, man, that's great, that's great.
So I want to segue for a secondand ask you about and I want to
my timeline may be off, but youcan correct it because you're
going to know what I'm talkingabout here you, when you I think
it's when you joined the hvaccompany the 15 percent right?
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I believe that's when it was I was here in austin
with will hawkins air and drainrescue.
Okay so what?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
how old were?
Speaker 2 (24:01):
you then.
I think I was 28.
I think I was there from 28 tolike 31 so maybe this was the
previous job whenever.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Maybe it was when you joined your for.
Maybe it was when you startedselling hvac and I was 21 for
service, first in west monroe,louisiana so I want you to tell
me the story about how manyleads they gave you walking in
and that whole process, if youwould.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, no, that was Mike Bellissimo.
And Mike found me because Iworked for a brief stint of time
at an environmental testingcompany.
They did a lot of commercialservices and we tested some of
the environmental aspects of theindustrial paper mill in West
Monroe, louisiana.
And I won't give you all of thedetails about what caught
(24:53):
Mike's attention, but, needlessto say, I caught his attention
and he said man, you could sellair conditioning.
And what he told me is I have amillion-dollar business, I've
got this million-dollar business, I've had it for 18 years and I
really need someone to come inand grow it and take care of our
clients.
To me, I'm thinking, that meansI'm going to take care of the
current million dollar clientsand also grow beyond that.
(25:17):
And we were talking like, hey,what's the position?
And the position wasessentially sales.
He called it a marketinganalyst.
He likes titles, big title guyand I was going to get somewhere
between 10% to 6% commissionand I was going to be in charge
of commissions because I wasgoing to get the price of every
job and I'm going, that's cool.
(25:38):
So on day one I walk in thereand I'm like Mike, I'm ready to
take care of the customers.
Let.
So on day one I walk in thereand I'm like, mike, I'm ready to
take care of the customers, letme get the customer list.
And he reached underneath thecounter and he dropped the
yellow pages, boom on thedesktop.
And he goes they're right there.
And I was like, yeah, okay,yeah, that's the new prospects.
What about the current list?
And he goes those are mycustomers.
(25:59):
I spent 18 years building thosecustomers.
Those are my customers.
Those, what I mean.
That's not what I signed up for, right?
I'm not saying all these things.
This is what I'm thinking.
What I said was okay, well, isthere a marketing budget?
He reached into his pocket andhe had a.
(26:21):
I want to think it was like $32and 46 cents.
I remember it wasn't much.
It was enough to get like acheap pair of shoes.
He threw it onto the table andit's like there, go buy some
shoes, knock on some doors.
So I was like, oh, yeah, right,right, true story, true story.
And I did, I did, I startedhustling and it wasn't a very
(26:45):
fast return.
It wasn't like next week I hadsold this massive air
conditioning system.
I started calling people that Iknew from the environmental
world, and Benny Bean was one ofmy first contacts at Bastrop
City.
He was running the US filterdivision, which basically it's
their sewage control.
They were subbing it out to USfilters and he gave me an
(27:07):
opportunity and he introduced meto the public works director.
The public works directorintroduced me to the mayor and
over a long period of nurturingI ended up having the entire
city of Bastrop, the entireparish of Morehouse, and it was
almost a million-dollar clientamongst all the contacts.
But it took a long time and inaddition to that, because I
(27:29):
almost got fired at least Ithought I almost got fired he
took me to breakfast and Ithought he was going to fire me
because I'm like, oh, this is it, this is the conversation, I'm
going to get fired.
But he actually gave me one ofmy greatest learning lessons
that day because he said Todd,what do you think I should do
with you?
I said well, mike, I guess youshould fire me.
I'm not really selling much ofanything.
And he just looked over at meand he said Todd, all you got to
(27:51):
do is take care of the customer.
If you take care of thecustomer, the money will follow.
And I listened to that and hegoes how do you think you can
take care of the customer?
I said, mike, honestly, rightnow I don't know enough about
what I'm doing to really have agreat conversation.
I can't spot things.
I'll tell you what, though, andwe had industrial commercial
(28:14):
services guys.
These are the best airconditioning technicians in the
world.
They're working on centrifugalI can't even say it, big
commercial grade heating and airconditioning systems,
centrifugal.
We're working on rack systemsinside of, like Walmarts and
these things.
So I said, I'll tell you what.
I'll volunteer my nights andI'll volunteer my weekends.
Let me just work for free, letme learn what I'm doing, and
(28:37):
I'll invest in my own educationas I go along.
This was early, by the way.
This was probably, I said, sixmonths.
It was probably like threemonths.
It didn't take me long to getto that point, and I was dude.
I was dragging water hoses, Iwas running for pipe wrenches, I
(29:00):
was doing absolutely everythingon this planet, but I wasn't
just doing grunt work, I waslearning and I was digging and I
was finding out how to dothings, and, man, I earned those
guys respect, and I got prettydamn skilled.
I ended up teaching myself,over the period of that time,
their AutoCAD.
I drew controls for anenvironmental system contract
that we won.
No one showed me how to do thatshit.
I just dug in and figured itout and it was cool man.
It started working.
I started doing several millionof dollars additional in sales.
(29:22):
I still priced out every job.
I still job costed everything,and so I learned cost of sales,
which was basically how much didmy equipment cost, how much did
my subs cost, how much did theinstall cost?
And Mike gave me the right toprice everything up to 10% and I
think, when this is part of myold Mississippi poor way of
(29:44):
thinking, what would have itbeen?
An extra 5% to the total cost?
Nothing, but I didn't thinkthat way.
So I think that by the time Iwas doing like a $3 million in
sales.
I think my average commissionwas somewhere between $6 million
and $4 million and I wassubmitting my own commissions.
By the way, I was job costingevery single one and I would do
them all out and say here's mycommission.
(30:05):
They were making more money.
I was making plenty.
That's a lot of money in theearly 2000s at 20-something
years of age, so I was doingjust fine, but yeah, so I've
always loved heating and airconditioning, plumbing,
electrical roofing.
I've always loved sales.
It's been a passion of mine andI've just turned it into a
lifelong career.
So always been good to me, man.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Well, I wanted you to share that story because there
are certainly younger peoplethat listen to this show and I
understand what you mean byopening a phone book, because,
my God, I've had to do that.
I've had to do it way earlyprobably same time frame as
you're talking about becausethat's just how you had to sell
back in the day.
You didn't have the Internet,you didn't have Google Lead, you
(30:50):
didn't have any of that stuff.
You had to open the phone bookand just dial I didn't even use
the phone book that much.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
You, I'll tell you exactly what I did because I was
listening to tom hopkins andzig ziglar.
I had those guys like on repeat.
I pried the door open in myvery small circle of influence.
I had a really small circle ofinfluence and I went to that
small circle and I expanded thatsmall circle of influence and I
went to that small circle and Iexpanded that small circle and
I expanded that small circle andthat worked really well for me.
Now I knocked on plenty ofdoors but I never placed phone
(31:19):
calls.
I can remember doing this withrack room shoes, like walking
into a rack room shoes and itwas hot, and I walk up to the
counter and I'm wearing myservice first shirt and we were
working on a building next doorand you always up to the counter
and I'm wearing my servicefirst shirt and we were working
on a building next door and youalways got to give a people,
someone, a reason for beingthere.
So I'd walk into these storeswhere we'd go do services, right
(31:41):
, and I'd go hey, we're fixingthe air conditioning next door
and I thought I'd walk in hereto check out some shoes.
But it's hot in here andthey'll go oh God, it's hot.
And literally once I gave thema reason.
I'm next door working on theair conditioning system.
I thought I'd come in here andcheck out some shoes and I'll go
, you know, if it's hot, if it'snot, it doesn't matter.
(32:03):
Always find the reason.
I say, hey, give me the name ofthe person that's responsible
at corporate for the airconditioning systems here.
And they would.
These managers of the storeswould go back and they would
come back with the business cardand usually there had been
notes written on it.
It was stained, it had beenbent over.
You could tell by the use ofthat business card how often
(32:25):
they've had to place those phonecalls.
And they would put it in myhand and I'd go oh, this is
great.
Well, I'll tell you what I'mgoing to.
Let them know that we came by.
Here's my card.
Do me a favor, give them a calltoday.
Let them know I'm going to becalling on Wednesday.
I had a schedule to where Iprospected three days a week and
I wrote proposals two days aweek.
(32:46):
So this is a little town.
This is Westboro, louisiana,guys.
You can look it up.
But it was not long until I hadalmost all of the business in
that little city and then itstarted growing.
It got to the point that I metthe guy on the golf course, ben
Shields.
If I had my phone here, I couldcall him a Jackson Shields,
(33:07):
pardon me.
Ben is his direct employee, ben, and I would play golf and I'm
like hey man, I really want,really want, to get all the air
conditioning and the racksystems at Walmart.
He goes, I'll introduce you toJackson.
So I get on the phone withJackson and Jackson's like yeah,
ben's been talking about hownice a guy you are and all that.
He goes, we could give you ashot.
But there's one big problemhere and I'm like what's that?
(33:27):
He goes, this whole rack systemis all Carlisle system and
there ain't no way that carrieris going to sign off on this
unless your boys are trained bythem, and that's hard to get
them to do it.
I said so.
What you're saying, jackson, isthat if Carlisle will train our
guys, we could get the contract.
He goes, absolutely.
I said all right, do you got myback on this?
(33:49):
He goes, I got your back onthis, but you're not going to
get them.
This is what I did.
I got the phone number fromJackson to the guy in Syracuse,
new York, straight to his deskRole play with me.
This is going to be a veryshort role play.
You just be him.
His name's Bob.
Okay, ring, hello, it's Bob.
Hey, bob, this is Todd withService First down in West
(34:11):
Monroe, louisiana.
I'm calling because JacksonShields, jackson Regional
Manager, over Walmart fromFlorida all the way to Texas.
He and I were talking they wantto give us the contracts, but
he said that we need to get youto come out here and train our
guys in West Monroe.
So I just wanted you to getyour calendar out and see when
you could fly down.
Well, todd, I don't know thatthat I'm gonna be able to do
(34:36):
that.
Cory, that's not what he said.
He got his calendar out andgave me two dates.
Amazing, it was not hard.
We think shit's hard.
It wasn't hard.
I just need you to tell me whenyou're.
When you get your calendar out,he goes.
Hang on, flip, flip.
He gave me two dates.
I booked him, said great, I'llhave my guys here, I'll organize
it.
We got a training room at theInternational Paper Mill.
I said this is where you'regoing to be.
He flew out.
(34:56):
He trained us.
We got the deal.
We started doing the Walmartrack systems from Arkansas to
Texas, to Mississippi, louisianaand the outer tips of Florida.
This company is still growinglike gangbusters.
So just sales, man, just sales.
I called up Jackson, saidJackson.
He said yes, here's the date.
(35:18):
Listen, I told him you gave usthe business.
I didn't tell him it wascontingent.
If he calls you, just tell himwe're all good, no problem,
that's what happened.
So do I feel like I was beingunethical?
No, because he said he'd giveus the work if we could get
trained.
Right, all right, cool, well,let me see if I can get this guy
to.
(35:38):
I don't want to call up the guyand be like well, I know you're
really busy and just skip allthat.
Jackson said he wants to giveus the contract, but we got to
be trained by you.
That's 100% the truth.
Open up your calendar.
Can you tell me what the datesare?
Done?
Speaker 1 (35:57):
he flew out and trained our guys and when
somebody's busy, like this guy,he appreciates that you didn't
waste his time with a bunch ofhim hauling and 100 no different
than you would or I wouldsomebody calls.
Just get to the point.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, I sometimes forget.
The young me didn't know enough, and that was good, I knew the
objective.
The 46-year-old me sometimesknows too much, and the same
thing happens to technicians.
They wonder sometimes why ayoung kid can go to our class
and be out selling them in aweek.
(36:32):
Uh, because they just theydon't, they just do what they're
told yeah, so it with insandler.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
They call this I can't remember what they call it
but they tell a story about aguy that was working in, let's
call it, a lowe's hardware andhe was selling uh, I can't even
remember what it was.
He was selling something prettysimple and this guy was
knocking it out of the park.
Knocking it out of the park,and then they sent him to
training and he said man, I'mreally going to be able to knock
(37:01):
it out of the park now he getsback to the store and now he's
got all this product knowledgeand what does he do?
He starts product benefit anddumping all over the customer
sales go straight down, which isexactly what you're talking
about yeah, he.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Just he talked about too much stuff.
Man, listen, one of the firsttimes I did ride-alongs for
electrical, it was a.
It wasn't a mr sparky, it wassomething similar.
That was like mr electric orsomething.
It was all in the SGI family,though, and I was there doing a
multi-day training system,teaching them their approach,
(37:37):
and at the end of all this, wewere going to do ride-alongs and
I was going to watch and theywere going to critique how
things went.
Well, the guy got to the frontdoor and he knocked on the door
and in a moment of panic, he gotbehind me.
He like stepped behind me, hepushed me forward and he said
you do it.
And then the door opened.
He was terrified.
(37:59):
So he was here, he knocked, hestepped back, he got behind me,
he pushed me, he said you do it,and I just went.
Right.
I just went.
Now, I know nothing aboutelectrical, but I knew well I
shouldn't say I knew nothingabout electrical.
I've grown up around the tradesmy whole life.
I knew enough to do what wecall press play, and I set the
tone, and when it was time tofigure out what was going on,
(38:20):
normally you would invite thehomeowner to go with you.
I did not.
I gave them materials to lookat and when we were shown where
the area was and we go in thereI said okay.
I said now here's the gig.
You threw me in the middle ofthis.
This is totally fine, but youstill have to do the diagnostic.
You do all the diagnostic, fromtop to bottom.
(38:41):
And he did like half thediagnostic and he's ready to do
options.
I said we're not done yet.
He's like what do you mean?
We're not done yet?
I said we got to get in theattic and we got to go in the
crawl space and then we got tolook at the panel.
He's like we got to do all that.
I'm like all of that, that'swhat we say by a whole house
inspection.
Now, I'm not an electrician,but I know we've not done that
yet.
Let's keep going.
(39:01):
So we did the whole inspectionand then I had him unpack
everything and, man, theyprobably thought that was the
most thorough inspection oftheir life because of how long
it took.
I was just getting educated.
What does this mean?
What does that do?
How does it work?
(39:24):
That's too much.
Give me a little bit less.
Okay, all right, good, good,now will you help me out If I
say something that's wrong, stopme.
We don't want to tell themanything wrong.
I'm okay with being embarrassed, I ain't got to know everything
.
In fact, when we go back inthere, I'm going to introduce
you as the expert and that I'mteaching you the communication
side, but you've got a lot moreyears of experience than I do.
Okay, all right, great.
And we ended up selling thepanel job and a bunch of work
(39:47):
and we got in the car.
He's like I'm amazed, man, how'dyou do that?
And I'm like what do you mean?
How do I do that?
I've been telling you for twodays how to do it.
It's not hard.
It's like it's not hard andit's ethical, because did we
find one problem in that house?
That wasn't a major issue.
He's like no, no, they need totake care of everything.
I'm like did I have any likemagic words?
(40:09):
He's like no, you didn't sayanything that sounded hard or
smart.
You just told him what wasgoing on.
I'm like, yeah, but I told himyou were gonna stop here at this
outlet and leave that's rightall I asked you to do was do a
real full inspection.
And through the inspectionbecause when we got to the panel
, I'm like, hey, whip out yourtest gear what do you see here?
The panel was overheating.
(40:30):
He didn't know it was over, hewould never have known, right,
right.
But then he felt all like thispanel, why is the panel
overheating?
We started looking like, ohcrap, we find this thing and
that thing, and this thing andthat thing.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Let's give them some options so it's funny you say
that when I was working I wasthe sales manager at a local
company here and when I firststarted I wanted to know what
the competition was doing.
So I called out six companiesto my house.
I have an older system, so itwasn't like it was a far cry
(41:01):
from a reasonable reason to callthem out.
And out of the six guys andthank God, the sixth one worked
for me he didn't know he wascoming out to my house until he
walked through the front door,but I made him go through the
whole thing, but he's the onlyone that went in my crawl space.
And this is what he said.
(41:22):
He said I'm just curious, didanybody mention your the ducks?
And I said, well, yeah, acouple of them.
He said let me show you apicture here.
I said okay.
He said you see all thesecobwebs?
He said that's the cobwebs thatI had to clear out to go under
your house.
He said so whatever they toldyou was not correct, because
(41:45):
nobody's been under your house,because there wouldn't be
cobwebs there if they would.
And it was like, if you thinkabout that, like no question and
I'm not saying this becausehe's my guy, but like out of six
guys.
There's no question who I'mbuying from, even if they're
more expensive, because now he'sdiscredited all the other five
completely yeah, yeah, andthat's the ideal scenario and
(42:09):
that's the type of client thatwe want.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
I will tell you, I had an almost identical
experience, except this time itwas raccoons in the attic, and
literally to the point that whenI went up in the attic they had
this really tiny little openingright there in the middle of
their living room a small housein Austin and I poked my head in
and there was a raccoon staringat me and I'm going, and I just
(42:32):
brought my phone up and I'vegot a picture of this raccoon
with its eyes glowing, and thenit takes off and I showed them
all those things and they stilldidn't care that no one had
caught that.
All they cared about was thelowest price To which I go.
Sometimes they're not yourcustomer, they're not your
customer, they're not yourclient.
(42:53):
That was one of those momentswhere it's like, oh well, these
people.
Okay, that's all right, we'regoing to move on, we're going to
go to the next one.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
But that's just the game.
It's just the game.
You're not going to get 100% ofthe customers, for whatever
reason, but you still have toput forth a hundred percent of
the effort when you go to thathouse, because that's the only
way that you know that you havea chance, because most guys are
not going to put in a hundredpercent effort.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
That's right, there's no question of that.
You got to give it your best.
I don't even want to say yougot to give it a hundred percent
effort.
And now you're going to be likewait well, wait a minute what?
And I'm going to tell you whatI mean by that.
Effort is a byproduct of therelationship that you have with
the client, and this is going tobe something that many people
(43:44):
haven't heard, but they knowit's true and they have felt it,
and I'm going to give you anexample of this.
I started working with my goodfriend, alan O'Neill at Abacus
in their very early days and inthe beginning.
These guys are still giving ittheir best, their best in terms
of best inspection, et cetera.
They've always done a reallygreat job of that.
But the effort that they had toput out in the early stages was
(44:10):
substantially harder than theeffort that they had to start
putting out like two or threeyears later.
And I witnessed it firsthand,where I would go with
technicians that were not asskilled as some of the ones in
that first year, and thosetechnicians would produce, on
average, the like or betterresult.
And I can tell you whathappened was not that the
(44:34):
homeowner became tougher.
It was that the homeownerbecame easier because the brand
of Abacus continued to grow infame and popularity and
reputation, that many peoplewere pre-sold before the
technician even walked throughthe door.
And what I was dealing with inthat first year that I had
mentioned to you was, literallywe were just getting started.
(44:57):
We were less than a year inbusiness and in that first year
of business the effort was wayoutsized and outpaced compared
to the effort by the year three.
And that's one of the thingsthat we go.
We should never not give it ourbest diagnostic, best
communication, best, et cetera.
But what I will tell anycompany that is willing to
(45:19):
listen and really pay attentionis that when you focus on your
relationship, building out yourbrand, it actually does get
easier.
It gets easier to get calls, itgets easier to close calls.
Momentum builds momentum.
When your momentum's high, allthings are good.
Momentum can make you look likeyou're better and smarter than
(45:40):
you are.
So, circling all the way backto when you said, what about
when someone is reactiveOftentimes and COVID, if we just
go full back circle on this,oftentimes what's really going
on is they've lost theirmomentum and they want it back.
But momentum isn't somethingthat comes back quickly without
(46:04):
large exertions of resources.
Momentum is like a rocketaccelerating.
The bigger the rocket, the morefuel it takes to burn to get it
going again.
You can still get thatacceleration if you burn the
fuel slowly, and in often casesburning the fuel slowly, just
like when you're going somewherein your car, is actually more
efficient.
(46:24):
In the long run You'll get tothe same speed.
You'll get there and thenyou'll have more resources to
keep going.
But again I go back toresources.
If you've got fuel at the wazoo, let's burn, baby burn, but
let's do it with the righttechniques.
If you've got limited fuel,let's burn it appropriately.
So I hope you don't mind meinserting that thought, but
(46:49):
effort is scaled upon momentum.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yeah, it makes sense.
And I do agree with you that,no matter how much effort you
put in, you have to build arelationship.
Even if you're a newer company,it's even more important to
build that relationship with thecustomer, and lots of times
that just means you've got tospend just a little bit more
time with them.
You've got to listen to whatthey're saying.
You, you got to spend just alittle bit more time with them.
You got to listen to whatthey're saying.
(47:14):
You got to pay attention.
You really got to hear whatthey're not saying.
Also, because they're not goingto come out and say exactly
what they want from you.
Right, homeowners will beataround the bush.
This is not abnormal.
People just don't come out andsay this is exactly what I want
you to do.
So, well, I'm looking for this,I'm looking for that.
(47:34):
But you got to find out whatthe real reason why you're there
is.
And the real reason is probablybecause maybe the guy's wife is
up his ass because it's hot inthe bedroom.
But you got to figure outthat's the reason why you're
there, right?
And if you don't figure outthat pain point, it's hard to
(47:54):
move the needle sometimes.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Yeah Well, that's a fact.
It's the awareness of theproblem, the spoken and the
unspoken one.
That's right, 100%.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Well, Todd, I know we're getting close on time.
My friend, this has been agreat conversation.
If somebody, whoever'slistening to this, would like to
get a hold of you and inquireabout your services, where would
they go about doing that?
Speaker 2 (48:18):
It's easy to find us.
You can Google my name, toddLyles L-I-L-E-S.
You can Google serviceexcellence.
I feel very confident thatthose two words are going to
bring us up.
Okay, perfect.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Well, my friend, this has been a great conversation.
I appreciate you.
Hey, my pleasure, thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
You got it.
Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast.
I'm your host, Corey Barrier,and I'm here with Todd Liles.
What's?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
up brother.
Hey Corey, how's it going, man?
Thanks for having me on theshow, yeah man Looking forward
to it.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
So, todd, tell me.
For the folks that may not knowwho you are, which I'm sure
that's few and far between justgive us a quick background on
you and what you're doing and inthe trades and all that good
stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
background on you and what you're doing and in the
trades and all that good stuff.
I'll give you the fast rundown.
I started working in the tradeswhen I was 14, and I did that
to get out of cutting wood inthe piney woods of Mississippi.
So I've been doing.
I've been in the trades and inabout since I was 14, started
doing air conditioning with myname on an actual business card
somewhere around the age of 21,outside of college.
(00:44):
Early days was a trainer, backwhen clockwork home services was
PSI, sgi, the franchises.
After about a year and a half Ibecame the director of training
, which was awesome, and then Imoved out to Austin, texas, and
I think I was maybe 28.
I was a 15% partner in an airconditioning and plumbing
business and served up mythree-year non-compete and then
(01:07):
I started Service Excellence.
So that's what I do today.
I'm 46 years old.
This business is basically thesame age as my 14-year-old
daughter and I love it.
Man, this is what I'm supposedto do is do business consulting,
coaching, counseling, trainingfor the tradespeople.
So there you go, man.
That's my quick rundown.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I love it.
That's great.
I love that you threw the wordcounseling in there, because,
boy, doesn't that ring true.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, well, I'll hit you with three things that we do
, and these are things that Ihave learned.
I felt them before.
I was able to codify them inwords, and then by listening to
other business coaches.
And when this coach says, I'm acoach, this is what I do.
And this coach says, well, I'ma consultant, this is what I do.
(01:53):
And then this coach says, well,I'm a counselor, this is what I
do.
And I'm over here thinking tomyself, well, I'm a trainer, I
don't.
Where are the division lines?
And then one day it cametogether.
I was listening to this guythat's a coach of really
high-end professionals and andhe said that he is a coach, he's
not a consultant.
And I said what does that meanto you?
(02:14):
He said, well, a coach issomeone who actually already
works with a high-level producerthat is already capable, but
they may get stuck in their ownheadspace.
And he goes I'm a coach, Idon't work with anyone that
hasn't got their life figuredout yet.
I work with people that arealready successful, helping them
reach their highest level ofcontribution.
And I'm like I love that, thankyou.
(02:36):
Thank you for that.
I get that.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
That's why people like TigerWoods have coaches, michael
Jordan has coaches.
They're already great, but theyjust are always trying to get
better.
All right, so then, what aboutthe world of consulting?
That means different things todifferent people, but to me,
(02:56):
this is my definition of aconsultant.
A consultant is someone who isteaching you something that
either A you didn't know, orthey're giving you, or helping
you enhance a skill that youdidn't have or needs great
improvement.
You don't have it mastered yet.
So when we say consulting, forus, that can mean business
consulting, which you cansubstitute training in for that
word.
Okay, it could be leadership,it could be sales, it could be
(03:20):
CSR.
And then, when you go intocounseling, there is a decent
amount of conversations thatmyself and my coaches and you've
got to keep in mind we're ateam of 14 here at Service
Excellence that they have tohave with people to where
they're not in the right mindspace, whether or not someone
(03:40):
quit on them or what have youPerhaps, maybe an employee died,
which has happened Now, granted, we totally understand the
limitations of our counselingskill set, but there are some
things that we can counselpeople through, many things.
And then there are some thingswhere we got to recognize like,
okay, this is outside of ourboundary, we need to get you in
(04:03):
touch with the rightprofessional.
But what we understand is that,as the role of counselor, we're
meant to restore.
So we're going to take thesethree codifications Counselors
bring someone into a restorationpoint so that they can take the
next step.
Consulting takes someone andgives them tools and resources,
information that they didn'thave or wasn't executing well.
(04:24):
And coaching takes someone whois already performing at a good
or high level and helps themelevate it even further.
So we are all three andunderstand that, as we are all
three and there's 14 of us herewe are not all equal in skill
set.
Some of our coaches are goingto be able to coach 20 plus
million dollar operations andsome are not ready for that.
(04:46):
They're ready for the three tofive, and that's okay, because
as we are growing our companies,we're also growing our coaches,
and we're never putting a coachin a place they shouldn't be.
So we have to take into mindboth sides of the skill sets.
All right, there you go,brother.
That's how we see things hereat Service Excellence.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That makes sense.
So I think lots of times andyou're right, I think that,
again, I never really heard thecounseling portion of it, but it
does completely make sense.
I do think the lines getblurred sometimes between the
coach and the consulting, and Ithink, for me, I look at
consulting very similar to you,but I'm introducing something
(05:26):
that they're not aware of, likethe AI stuff that you know you
and I have talked about.
Like a lot of guys are notaware of that, so you would
consult them on how to use it,so on and so forth, but that
wouldn't be a long-term coachingconversation, because here's
the thing, here's how you do it.
Coaching, in my, my opinion,would be more of it's a weekly
(05:48):
thing, like you're working toget towards a goal and get
better, which I think isbasically what to a degree.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Well, and so.
So that's a that's afascinating thing as well,
because if you start attachingit to time frames and timelines,
well, if you start attaching itto timeframes and timelines,
well, if you start in thecounseling role, the interesting
thing about counseling role isthat, for us, we shouldn't be in
the long-term counselingbusiness.
(06:15):
We need to be in the short-termcounseling business.
Yes, you had a rough week, butlet's right the ship of the mind
, let's get back on track, let'sgo to work, and I think that's
a really good way for ourcoaches and I'm using our
coaches to describe the positionat our company, even though I
just qualified three categories.
(06:35):
Right, but in the world ofcounseling, if someone is having
to have constant and consistentcounseling, then either it is
an emotional state that we arenot capable of handling, or they
have a life crisis thatbusiness coaching isn't going to
get them out of.
So we have to be mindful ofthat.
(06:57):
So we don't want to be inrelationships to where we are
acting like your weeklycounselor.
If it's happening a coupletimes a year, that's just normal
life.
Of course, when you're blue anddepressed, talk to us, pick up
the phone, give us a call.
We'll be your buddy, we'll pumpyou up, but that's not what it
is.
Now, when we go into the worldof consulting and I think we are
(07:17):
actually really greatconsultants and I think one of
the sort of defining thingsabout what makes us a great
consultant is that you can lookat what we do for people and
it's not necessarily like anaffinity group, like A.
We do charge more money than anX-Star or an Airtime does, or
Praxis.
And, by the way, I'm pro bestpractice groups.
(07:38):
It's interesting to me how someof the groups and some of the
people that are in the groupslook at us like oh, you're a
competitor, aren't you?
No, actually we're doing manydifferent things.
I'm very pro best practicegroups.
That's not what we are.
We are a consulting firm, whichoften means we will consult
(07:59):
somebody through their currentscenario and in a couple of
years we've done our job.
It isn't necessarily a foreverrelationship, although we do
have clients that have been withus a long time, and that's in
part because they have movedinto more of a coaching role
where they value us, they wantus in their life, they do like
(08:19):
that.
We are continually pushing themand making them better.
Now, that's an internal problemthat we have that we graduate
ourselves out, because if a guycomes in and he's doing $3
million, corey, and he's likeall I ever wanted to do was five
, and we get them to five in ayear or two, well that's a great
way to get fired and that'sokay.
I'm okay with getting fired ifthey've accomplished their goal
(08:41):
and they're making a milliondollars and they're in a small
community and they're done withus.
Well, that's a sad day.
We hate to see it happen, butit happens.
Ideally, what would occur isthat we find companies that have
mindsets of wanting to be 20,30, 40, 50 million, and I never
thought this way.
This is a new way for methinking, because I come from a
really small town of 50,000people and I sometimes had these
(09:03):
really small thoughts of wow,wouldn't it be amazing to have a
$5 million business that'sputting out $800 to a million
dollars in profit?
What more do you need?
And a lot of our clients havethose small thoughts and there's
nothing wrong with that at all.
We can help you do that.
But at the same token, it'd bereally cool to get someone doing
a million that wants to do 20million, and because that
journey is going to take alonger, and then we have a
(09:24):
client a lot longer by the timethey get to 20, we can move into
that coaching role.
Are you already pretty good?
Let's keep slapping the ball onthis thing.
Anyway, there you go.
That's full transparency.
By the way, that's without.
That's showing theunderstandings of our pros and
cons as a business and not beingashamed to say them, which I
think a lot of businesses wouldbe ashamed to admit where
(09:48):
they're at.
But there's no shame in it tome, because it's the difference
in having a doctor that you seewhen you're sick versus having a
wellness doctor.
I only see my family doctoronce a year and almost never in
between because I don't get sick.
I see my wellness doctor everysix months.
Their same goals are the samebut the approach to service is
(10:13):
different, because my wellnessdoctor needs to see my blood
every six months to see what'sgoing on, to up or down my
vitamins, right?
My family doctor annualphysical, and if I'm not sick
any time in between he doesn'tneed to see me.
My family doctor annualphysical, and if I'm not sick
anytime in between he doesn'tneed to see me.
So there's just differentconnections in business, and now
you have a little bit moreunderstanding as to what we do
as a company.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
So what happens when a company comes to you in a
reactive state of mind?
Reactive in what way?
So reactive in that?
I'll give you a quick exampleCOVID's over.
We saw these massive numbersduring COVID, and now we've just
(10:55):
dropped down from 22 milliondown to 16 million, and they
don't know what to do there.
So that's what I mean byreactive.
Maybe that's something theycould have prevented if they
would have gone to the wellnessdoctor every six months, opposed
to coming to the doctor onceevery four years well, let's
(11:18):
unpack the covid one first andthen we'll go back and look at
some other things.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
And the reason why I want to do that is COVID was
probably once in a generationalsort of event and when it
happened I think everybodythought it was going to be an
overall negative thing.
I think everybody thought thatCOVID was going to be the thing
that was going to destroybusinesses.
And granted, it did destroy alot of food industry business,
(11:44):
but in the world of heating andair conditioning it didn't take
very long until they were termed.
I forget what the term is, butbasically critical services I
forgot what the language is thatyou use?
And people were home.
The government was encouragingbusinesses to keep their people.
Don't lay them off.
They rolled out a lot ofreasons to do that with the pay
protection plan, so money wasflowing.
(12:07):
By the way, I'm stillabsolutely convinced and I'm
only going to make thisstatement quickly.
I'm convinced that thehyperinflation that we realized
today actually started in thatlast period of Trump's time in
office, when he kicked out a lotof these initial benefits and
people were at home andcompanies got greedy and like,
oh, they're spending money,let's charge more.
(12:27):
And I think that snowballhasn't stopped yet.
So, by the way, I'm not blamingTrump or anyone else, or Biden.
I'm not making a politicalstatement.
I'm making a statement ofeconomics.
I think that's what kicked offhyperinflation, but we benefited
from that right.
So now here's the reason I saidI want to address that and why
it's different.
(12:47):
It's because when you have aperiod of time where people are
home and people know this,they've heard this conversation
before but when all this work isbeing done, you are sucking out
a certain amount of businessout of the market and what
people didn't account for and itblows me away it's like why
would you not account for?
This is what that's going tomean in the following years,
(13:11):
because if you were meant tohave grown by 4% or 5% each year
, and one year you grew by 30%.
And you did that because youbought a business awesome.
If you did that because you didsome amazing marketing approach
that gained you market shareover your competition awesome.
You might be able to keepcounting on growth.
But if it happened because godhanded it to you on a silver
(13:35):
platter and there wasn't morenew business that was made, you
just got a over fraction of thebusiness, then a good consultant
like us would say you shouldn'texpect that next year.
And, by the way, I did that forone of our clients and it
(13:55):
wasn't related to COVID.
It was related to a massivestorm event and they had this
huge explosion.
And I'm like guys, this is a100-year storm.
You're building your budgetnext year as though you have
another 100-year storm.
Call up the distributors, askhow much roofing material has
gone out Austin-wide, comparethat to previous years and you
(14:20):
will have an estimation of thetidal wave that's coming back
out and therefore you need to godown in your boat.
Well, they don't want to hearthat and sometimes, in the role
of consulting.
If you're being a goodconsultant, you actually tell
people what they don't want tohear.
Our job is to tell them in away that they recognize the
wisdom and that we don't getfired.
(14:40):
Corey, I'll tell you half ofthe people that we lose fire us
because they don't like soundwisdom, like no, I don't want to
hear that.
It's like I know you want me tobe a yes man and just tell you
what you want to hear and thenall we're doing is delaying your
unhappy nature.
Or do you want to hear what youneed to hear and make a
(15:02):
business plan to adjust?
So COVID is different.
Covid's not normal.
Covid was an opportunity thatwe didn't know was going to be
such a great opportunity.
So that would be the firstthing I would say related to
your question.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Makes sense.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, well, it's just pure economics.
You sucked a lot of theopportunity out.
What was the second part of thequestion?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Well, I don't know, but let me re.
So what I was really referringto, I think, Todd, is when you
get somebody, there's two typesof people.
You got a proactive guy thatsays, hey, I want to make sure I
, yeah, not reactive guy thatsays, hey, yeah, not reactive.
But the reactive guy, I imagine, is going to be much more of a
challenge, time-wise,resource-wise, for you all,
(15:52):
because he's in reactive modeand so therefore, it's I think,
yeah, it's bound to take up moreof your.
It's like getting a cheapcustomer.
That's a great way I can put itright.
It's like getting the cheapestguy that's bound to take up more
of your.
It's like getting a cheapcustomer.
That's a great way I can put itright.
It's like getting the cheapestguy that's going to buy your
system.
He's always going to be thebiggest pain in your ass.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Well, I can address that.
It obviously is not uncommonthat we have people call us
that's reactive, becausesomething's happened in their
business where they feel alittle pain and they're looking
for either a solution or afinger right on a point of
finger at something.
It's human nature.
I totally get it when a, when a, when a potential client calls
(16:34):
in and they're in reactive mode.
I want to know a few things.
What's, what's prompted thephone call today?
What are you?
What are you hoping to achieve?
A few things what's promptedthe phone call today?
What are you hoping to achieve?
What will make thisconversation a great
conversation where, if you walkaway with these two or three
things, you're going to say thiswas worth having time on the
phone with Todd or one of thecoaches.
And when they begin to tell methings like well, we've been
(16:56):
flat for the last two or threeyears, we haven't really grown,
we're doing all right, but wehaven't really grown, and I'll
ask questions like well, whatthings have you tried in the
past?
Who have you listened to?
How did those relationships go?
I actually don't want to findanswers where people are beating
up other people, because what Ihave found is that companies
(17:22):
that are going to be successfulmay have dips in the road,
because we all do but the onesthat are constantly pointing the
finger and it's always someoneelse's fault they're going to do
that with us too.
I don't want them.
I don't want a finger pointer.
I don't want to blame her.
I don't want someone who hasn'tgotten to the place to accept
the reality that we are here tohelp them, but it's their
company.
So to the reactive guy, whenthey say something like hey, I
(17:44):
know I need to train, I just Idon't want to.
I don't want to touch it.
These technicians are a mess,and why don't you just do it and
I'm going to leave the room?
No, I don't want to be.
I don't want to be connectedwith you.
Why do we want your headache?
Because you don't want to getinvolved?
We want to train yourtechnicians, we want to do a
great job with them.
We want to train your coaches,your CSRs, your salespeople.
(18:05):
But if what you're telling meis that they don't want it, you
don't want it, you just want usto make them want it, nah,
that's not going to work.
I would rather work with youfor three or four months and get
your head fixed before I evertouch your people.
So that's one of the other sortof warning signs.
When you say reactive, I'mactually thinking about
(18:26):
something slightly different.
It's like I'm okay withreactive if the reactive is for
the right reason.
Business is down.
But I believe it can be better.
I just need help.
I'm looking for someone to help.
That's okay.
Reactive to me, business isdown.
I don't want to do any of thework anymore.
I'm worn out.
Can you help me?
(18:48):
Will you be in the meeting orhave a manager in the meeting?
Will you reinforce what weteach?
Will you take what we do on aMonday or Tuesday and practice
it with your people a coupledays a week, realizing that's
part of the gig?
Okay, sure, we'll help.
No business is down.
(19:09):
If I don't get this thingrighted tomorrow, I'm going to
close the doors, which willtypically lead me to a few other
conversations, which isresource conversation, and for
me, resources are threeessential things.
Tell me about leadership, tellme about the time that you have
in front of you as a runway, andtell me about the resources
(19:31):
that you have in terms ofcapital.
What do you have?
What can you get?
Capital is actually the leastworrisome of all of those things
and really honestly so is timethe most critical is leadership
If we've got fairly decentleadership in place, or if we
(19:51):
need to enhance the leadership.
If you've got great leadershipin place, that gives you more
runway of time.
It also gives you more runwayof money, because they're making
smart decisions with money.
But if you've got reallyterrible leadership in place,
it's going to take a lot moretime.
So you better have deepresources.
So I want to evaluate theirthree resources and if they come
(20:12):
to me completely resource poor,then the question becomes what
can we do with what they have toget the biggest bang?
And if I walk away going well,we can't, then we don't want
them as a client again.
So one of the things that we do,corey, that I'm not sure that
other companies do, is that weactually, before we tell someone
they can join us, we will do anestimation of ROI, and part of
(20:36):
the estimation of ROI is we basewhat we know.
Our averages are what we'recapable of getting in an
environment in about six months,and we know quickly the dials
that we can turn and pay forourself and then some.
Again, here's a problem withthat, though.
We're so good at that and I'vealmost thinking this is a trap
(20:57):
of our own business that I gotto figure out how to resolve.
We're so good at fixing averagetickets and boosting revenue on
service calls that you have.
That can be like a quick fix.
It can almost be like anaddiction drug to where it's
like oh, you gave me that crack.
And then those first three, sixmonths, what's the next piece
of crack?
There is no more crack.
Now comes the hard work.
(21:17):
We righted the shit.
We stopped you from bleeding.
The gains that you're going tomake now are going to be
substantially slower over thenext two or three years, are
going to be built aroundleadership.
I don't want to do that.
Well, I don't want to work withthose type of people either,
but it really is a weird thingwhen you're mission driven,
where you're like I know thatthis person is not hearing what
(21:42):
I'm saying.
We tell them all these things.
I know they're not hearing me.
I know they want that quick hitand in six months they're going
to be right back into the otherproblems because they're going
to have spent the money thatthey've made.
Sounds like I'm really talkingtrash about business owners, and
I'm not.
I'm telling you what I havecome to realize after let's see,
(22:05):
I got into this 30, 21, I'm 40.
So, after, wow, 25 years 25years in this professional
industry what I have come torealize about the way that
business owners that arereactive, that chase shiny
objects, that don't button downand do the base things which, by
(22:28):
the way, this is one of thereasons why I don't know who
Alex Hermosi got his influencesand mentorships from, but I love
that young man.
He's in his 30s.
He's far more successful thanprobably almost anyone listening
to this show and if you listento the stuff he says, he just
spits the truth.
(22:50):
Don't expect things.
One of the things that he hadsaid recently was like if you
want to be successful, you needto commit to doing something for
a long time and not chase shinyobjects.
If only half the people thatever called us would take that
piece of advice.
Buckle down and do thisconsistently for the next three
(23:10):
years, before you ever hop onsocial media and listen to the
next screaming head shootingmoney into the air with a money
gun, wearing gold chains andwhite sneakers, telling you how
easy it is.
Yeah, yeah, check, check thereceipts all those people to see
how easy it really was.
Check ask someone who knowssomething.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
See what's up yeah, man, that's great, that's great.
So I want to segue for a secondand ask you about and I want to
my timeline may be off, but youcan correct it because you're
going to know what I'm talkingabout here you, when you I think
it's when you joined the hvaccompany the 15 percent right?
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I believe that's when it was I was here in austin
with will hawkins air and drainrescue.
Okay so what?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
how old were?
Speaker 2 (24:01):
you then.
I think I was 28.
I think I was there from 28 tolike 31 so maybe this was the
previous job whenever.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Maybe it was when you joined your for.
Maybe it was when you startedselling hvac and I was 21 for
service, first in west monroe,louisiana so I want you to tell
me the story about how manyleads they gave you walking in
and that whole process, if youwould.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, no, that was Mike Bellissimo.
And Mike found me because Iworked for a brief stint of time
at an environmental testingcompany.
They did a lot of commercialservices and we tested some of
the environmental aspects of theindustrial paper mill in West
Monroe, louisiana.
And I won't give you all of thedetails about what caught
(24:53):
Mike's attention, but, needlessto say, I caught his attention
and he said man, you could sellair conditioning.
And what he told me is I have amillion-dollar business, I've
got this million-dollar business, I've had it for 18 years and I
really need someone to come inand grow it and take care of our
clients.
To me, I'm thinking, that meansI'm going to take care of the
current million dollar clientsand also grow beyond that.
(25:17):
And we were talking like, hey,what's the position?
And the position wasessentially sales.
He called it a marketinganalyst.
He likes titles, big title guyand I was going to get somewhere
between 10% to 6% commissionand I was going to be in charge
of commissions because I wasgoing to get the price of every
job and I'm going, that's cool.
(25:38):
So on day one I walk in thereand I'm like Mike, I'm ready to
take care of the customers.
Let.
So on day one I walk in thereand I'm like, mike, I'm ready to
take care of the customers, letme get the customer list.
And he reached underneath thecounter and he dropped the
yellow pages, boom on thedesktop.
And he goes they're right there.
And I was like, yeah, okay,yeah, that's the new prospects.
What about the current list?
And he goes those are mycustomers.
(25:59):
I spent 18 years building thosecustomers.
Those are my customers.
Those, what I mean.
That's not what I signed up for, right?
I'm not saying all these things.
This is what I'm thinking.
What I said was okay, well, isthere a marketing budget?
He reached into his pocket andhe had a.
(26:21):
I want to think it was like $32and 46 cents.
I remember it wasn't much.
It was enough to get like acheap pair of shoes.
He threw it onto the table andit's like there, go buy some
shoes, knock on some doors.
So I was like, oh, yeah, right,right, true story, true story.
And I did, I did, I startedhustling and it wasn't a very
(26:45):
fast return.
It wasn't like next week I hadsold this massive air
conditioning system.
I started calling people that Iknew from the environmental
world, and Benny Bean was one ofmy first contacts at Bastrop
City.
He was running the US filterdivision, which basically it's
their sewage control.
They were subbing it out to USfilters and he gave me an
(27:07):
opportunity and he introduced meto the public works director.
The public works directorintroduced me to the mayor and
over a long period of nurturingI ended up having the entire
city of Bastrop, the entireparish of Morehouse, and it was
almost a million-dollar clientamongst all the contacts.
But it took a long time and inaddition to that, because I
(27:29):
almost got fired at least Ithought I almost got fired he
took me to breakfast and Ithought he was going to fire me
because I'm like, oh, this is it, this is the conversation, I'm
going to get fired.
But he actually gave me one ofmy greatest learning lessons
that day because he said Todd,what do you think I should do
with you?
I said well, mike, I guess youshould fire me.
I'm not really selling much ofanything.
And he just looked over at meand he said Todd, all you got to
(27:51):
do is take care of the customer.
If you take care of thecustomer, the money will follow.
And I listened to that and hegoes how do you think you can
take care of the customer?
I said, mike, honestly, rightnow I don't know enough about
what I'm doing to really have agreat conversation.
I can't spot things.
I'll tell you what, though, andwe had industrial commercial
(28:14):
services guys.
These are the best airconditioning technicians in the
world.
They're working on centrifugalI can't even say it, big
commercial grade heating and airconditioning systems,
centrifugal.
We're working on rack systemsinside of, like Walmarts and
these things.
So I said, I'll tell you what.
I'll volunteer my nights andI'll volunteer my weekends.
Let me just work for free, letme learn what I'm doing, and
(28:37):
I'll invest in my own educationas I go along.
This was early, by the way.
This was probably, I said, sixmonths.
It was probably like threemonths.
It didn't take me long to getto that point, and I was dude.
I was dragging water hoses, Iwas running for pipe wrenches, I
(29:00):
was doing absolutely everythingon this planet, but I wasn't
just doing grunt work, I waslearning and I was digging and I
was finding out how to dothings, and, man, I earned those
guys respect, and I got prettydamn skilled.
I ended up teaching myself,over the period of that time,
their AutoCAD.
I drew controls for anenvironmental system contract
that we won.
No one showed me how to do thatshit.
I just dug in and figured itout and it was cool man.
It started working.
I started doing several millionof dollars additional in sales.
(29:22):
I still priced out every job.
I still job costed everything,and so I learned cost of sales,
which was basically how much didmy equipment cost, how much did
my subs cost, how much did theinstall cost?
And Mike gave me the right toprice everything up to 10% and I
think, when this is part of myold Mississippi poor way of
(29:44):
thinking, what would have itbeen?
An extra 5% to the total cost?
Nothing, but I didn't thinkthat way.
So I think that by the time Iwas doing like a $3 million in
sales.
I think my average commissionwas somewhere between $6 million
and $4 million and I wassubmitting my own commissions.
By the way, I was job costingevery single one and I would do
them all out and say here's mycommission.
(30:05):
They were making more money.
I was making plenty.
That's a lot of money in theearly 2000s at 20-something
years of age, so I was doingjust fine, but yeah, so I've
always loved heating and airconditioning, plumbing,
electrical roofing.
I've always loved sales.
It's been a passion of mine andI've just turned it into a
lifelong career.
So always been good to me, man.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Well, I wanted you to share that story because there
are certainly younger peoplethat listen to this show and I
understand what you mean byopening a phone book, because,
my God, I've had to do that.
I've had to do it way earlyprobably same time frame as
you're talking about becausethat's just how you had to sell
back in the day.
You didn't have the Internet,you didn't have Google Lead, you
(30:50):
didn't have any of that stuff.
You had to open the phone bookand just dial I didn't even use
the phone book that much.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
You, I'll tell you exactly what I did because I was
listening to tom hopkins andzig ziglar.
I had those guys like on repeat.
I pried the door open in myvery small circle of influence.
I had a really small circle ofinfluence and I went to that
small circle and I expanded thatsmall circle of influence and I
went to that small circle and Iexpanded that small circle and
I expanded that small circle andthat worked really well for me.
Now I knocked on plenty ofdoors but I never placed phone
(31:19):
calls.
I can remember doing this withrack room shoes, like walking
into a rack room shoes and itwas hot, and I walk up to the
counter and I'm wearing myservice first shirt and we were
working on a building next doorand you always up to the counter
and I'm wearing my servicefirst shirt and we were working
on a building next door and youalways got to give a people,
someone, a reason for beingthere.
So I'd walk into these storeswhere we'd go do services, right
(31:41):
, and I'd go hey, we're fixingthe air conditioning next door
and I thought I'd walk in hereto check out some shoes.
But it's hot in here andthey'll go oh God, it's hot.
And literally once I gave thema reason.
I'm next door working on theair conditioning system.
I thought I'd come in here andcheck out some shoes and I'll go
, you know, if it's hot, if it'snot, it doesn't matter.
(32:03):
Always find the reason.
I say, hey, give me the name ofthe person that's responsible
at corporate for the airconditioning systems here.
And they would.
These managers of the storeswould go back and they would
come back with the business cardand usually there had been
notes written on it.
It was stained, it had beenbent over.
You could tell by the use ofthat business card how often
(32:25):
they've had to place those phonecalls.
And they would put it in myhand and I'd go oh, this is
great.
Well, I'll tell you what I'mgoing to.
Let them know that we came by.
Here's my card.
Do me a favor, give them a calltoday.
Let them know I'm going to becalling on Wednesday.
I had a schedule to where Iprospected three days a week and
I wrote proposals two days aweek.
(32:46):
So this is a little town.
This is Westboro, louisiana,guys.
You can look it up.
But it was not long until I hadalmost all of the business in
that little city and then itstarted growing.
It got to the point that I metthe guy on the golf course, ben
Shields.
If I had my phone here, I couldcall him a Jackson Shields,
(33:07):
pardon me.
Ben is his direct employee, ben, and I would play golf and I'm
like hey man, I really want,really want, to get all the air
conditioning and the racksystems at Walmart.
He goes, I'll introduce you toJackson.
So I get on the phone withJackson and Jackson's like yeah,
ben's been talking about hownice a guy you are and all that.
He goes, we could give you ashot.
But there's one big problemhere and I'm like what's that?
(33:27):
He goes, this whole rack systemis all Carlisle system and
there ain't no way that carrieris going to sign off on this
unless your boys are trained bythem, and that's hard to get
them to do it.
I said so.
What you're saying, jackson, isthat if Carlisle will train our
guys, we could get the contract.
He goes, absolutely.
I said all right, do you got myback on this?
(33:49):
He goes, I got your back onthis, but you're not going to
get them.
This is what I did.
I got the phone number fromJackson to the guy in Syracuse,
new York, straight to his deskRole play with me.
This is going to be a veryshort role play.
You just be him.
His name's Bob.
Okay, ring, hello, it's Bob.
Hey, bob, this is Todd withService First down in West
(34:11):
Monroe, louisiana.
I'm calling because JacksonShields, jackson Regional
Manager, over Walmart fromFlorida all the way to Texas.
He and I were talking they wantto give us the contracts, but
he said that we need to get youto come out here and train our
guys in West Monroe.
So I just wanted you to getyour calendar out and see when
you could fly down.
Well, todd, I don't know thatthat I'm gonna be able to do
(34:36):
that.
Cory, that's not what he said.
He got his calendar out andgave me two dates.
Amazing, it was not hard.
We think shit's hard.
It wasn't hard.
I just need you to tell me whenyou're.
When you get your calendar out,he goes.
Hang on, flip, flip.
He gave me two dates.
I booked him, said great, I'llhave my guys here, I'll organize
it.
We got a training room at theInternational Paper Mill.
I said this is where you'regoing to be.
He flew out.
(34:56):
He trained us.
We got the deal.
We started doing the Walmartrack systems from Arkansas to
Texas, to Mississippi, louisianaand the outer tips of Florida.
This company is still growinglike gangbusters.
So just sales, man, just sales.
I called up Jackson, saidJackson.
He said yes, here's the date.
(35:18):
Listen, I told him you gave usthe business.
I didn't tell him it wascontingent.
If he calls you, just tell himwe're all good, no problem,
that's what happened.
So do I feel like I was beingunethical?
No, because he said he'd giveus the work if we could get
trained.
Right, all right, cool, well,let me see if I can get this guy
to.
(35:38):
I don't want to call up the guyand be like well, I know you're
really busy and just skip allthat.
Jackson said he wants to giveus the contract, but we got to
be trained by you.
That's 100% the truth.
Open up your calendar.
Can you tell me what the datesare?
Done?
Speaker 1 (35:57):
he flew out and trained our guys and when
somebody's busy, like this guy,he appreciates that you didn't
waste his time with a bunch ofhim hauling and 100 no different
than you would or I wouldsomebody calls.
Just get to the point.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, I sometimes forget.
The young me didn't know enough, and that was good, I knew the
objective.
The 46-year-old me sometimesknows too much, and the same
thing happens to technicians.
They wonder sometimes why ayoung kid can go to our class
and be out selling them in aweek.
(36:32):
Uh, because they just theydon't, they just do what they're
told yeah, so it with insandler.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
They call this I can't remember what they call it
but they tell a story about aguy that was working in, let's
call it, a lowe's hardware andhe was selling uh, I can't even
remember what it was.
He was selling something prettysimple and this guy was
knocking it out of the park.
Knocking it out of the park,and then they sent him to
training and he said man, I'mreally going to be able to knock
(37:01):
it out of the park now he getsback to the store and now he's
got all this product knowledgeand what does he do?
He starts product benefit anddumping all over the customer
sales go straight down, which isexactly what you're talking
about yeah, he.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Just he talked about too much stuff.
Man, listen, one of the firsttimes I did ride-alongs for
electrical, it was a.
It wasn't a mr sparky, it wassomething similar.
That was like mr electric orsomething.
It was all in the SGI family,though, and I was there doing a
multi-day training system,teaching them their approach,
(37:37):
and at the end of all this, wewere going to do ride-alongs and
I was going to watch and theywere going to critique how
things went.
Well, the guy got to the frontdoor and he knocked on the door
and in a moment of panic, he gotbehind me.
He like stepped behind me, hepushed me forward and he said
you do it.
And then the door opened.
He was terrified.
(37:59):
So he was here, he knocked, hestepped back, he got behind me,
he pushed me, he said you do it,and I just went.
Right.
I just went.
Now, I know nothing aboutelectrical, but I knew well I
shouldn't say I knew nothingabout electrical.
I've grown up around the tradesmy whole life.
I knew enough to do what wecall press play, and I set the
tone, and when it was time tofigure out what was going on,
(38:20):
normally you would invite thehomeowner to go with you.
I did not.
I gave them materials to lookat and when we were shown where
the area was and we go in thereI said okay.
I said now here's the gig.
You threw me in the middle ofthis.
This is totally fine, but youstill have to do the diagnostic.
You do all the diagnostic, fromtop to bottom.
(38:41):
And he did like half thediagnostic and he's ready to do
options.
I said we're not done yet.
He's like what do you mean?
We're not done yet?
I said we got to get in theattic and we got to go in the
crawl space and then we got tolook at the panel.
He's like we got to do all that.
I'm like all of that, that'swhat we say by a whole house
inspection.
Now, I'm not an electrician,but I know we've not done that
yet.
Let's keep going.
(39:01):
So we did the whole inspectionand then I had him unpack
everything and, man, theyprobably thought that was the
most thorough inspection oftheir life because of how long
it took.
I was just getting educated.
What does this mean?
What does that do?
How does it work?
(39:24):
That's too much.
Give me a little bit less.
Okay, all right, good, good,now will you help me out If I
say something that's wrong, stopme.
We don't want to tell themanything wrong.
I'm okay with being embarrassed, I ain't got to know everything
.
In fact, when we go back inthere, I'm going to introduce
you as the expert and that I'mteaching you the communication
side, but you've got a lot moreyears of experience than I do.
Okay, all right, great.
And we ended up selling thepanel job and a bunch of work
(39:47):
and we got in the car.
He's like I'm amazed, man, how'dyou do that?
And I'm like what do you mean?
How do I do that?
I've been telling you for twodays how to do it.
It's not hard.
It's like it's not hard andit's ethical, because did we
find one problem in that house?
That wasn't a major issue.
He's like no, no, they need totake care of everything.
I'm like did I have any likemagic words?
(40:09):
He's like no, you didn't sayanything that sounded hard or
smart.
You just told him what wasgoing on.
I'm like, yeah, but I told himyou were gonna stop here at this
outlet and leave that's rightall I asked you to do was do a
real full inspection.
And through the inspectionbecause when we got to the panel
, I'm like, hey, whip out yourtest gear what do you see here?
The panel was overheating.
(40:30):
He didn't know it was over, hewould never have known, right,
right.
But then he felt all like thispanel, why is the panel
overheating?
We started looking like, ohcrap, we find this thing and
that thing, and this thing andthat thing.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Let's give them some options so it's funny you say
that when I was working I wasthe sales manager at a local
company here and when I firststarted I wanted to know what
the competition was doing.
So I called out six companiesto my house.
I have an older system, so itwasn't like it was a far cry
(41:01):
from a reasonable reason to callthem out.
And out of the six guys andthank God, the sixth one worked
for me he didn't know he wascoming out to my house until he
walked through the front door,but I made him go through the
whole thing, but he's the onlyone that went in my crawl space.
And this is what he said.
(41:22):
He said I'm just curious, didanybody mention your the ducks?
And I said, well, yeah, acouple of them.
He said let me show you apicture here.
I said okay.
He said you see all thesecobwebs?
He said that's the cobwebs thatI had to clear out to go under
your house.
He said so whatever they toldyou was not correct, because
(41:45):
nobody's been under your house,because there wouldn't be
cobwebs there if they would.
And it was like, if you thinkabout that, like no question and
I'm not saying this becausehe's my guy, but like out of six
guys.
There's no question who I'mbuying from, even if they're
more expensive, because now he'sdiscredited all the other five
completely yeah, yeah, andthat's the ideal scenario and
(42:09):
that's the type of client thatwe want.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
I will tell you, I had an almost identical
experience, except this time itwas raccoons in the attic, and
literally to the point that whenI went up in the attic they had
this really tiny little openingright there in the middle of
their living room a small housein Austin and I poked my head in
and there was a raccoon staringat me and I'm going, and I just
(42:32):
brought my phone up and I'vegot a picture of this raccoon
with its eyes glowing, and thenit takes off and I showed them
all those things and they stilldidn't care that no one had
caught that.
All they cared about was thelowest price To which I go.
Sometimes they're not yourcustomer, they're not your
customer, they're not yourclient.
(42:53):
That was one of those momentswhere it's like, oh well, these
people.
Okay, that's all right, we'regoing to move on, we're going to
go to the next one.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
But that's just the game.
It's just the game.
You're not going to get 100% ofthe customers, for whatever
reason, but you still have toput forth a hundred percent of
the effort when you go to thathouse, because that's the only
way that you know that you havea chance, because most guys are
not going to put in a hundredpercent effort.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
That's right, there's no question of that.
You got to give it your best.
I don't even want to say yougot to give it a hundred percent
effort.
And now you're going to be likewait well, wait a minute what?
And I'm going to tell you whatI mean by that.
Effort is a byproduct of therelationship that you have with
the client, and this is going tobe something that many people
(43:44):
haven't heard, but they knowit's true and they have felt it,
and I'm going to give you anexample of this.
I started working with my goodfriend, alan O'Neill at Abacus
in their very early days and inthe beginning.
These guys are still giving ittheir best, their best in terms
of best inspection, et cetera.
They've always done a reallygreat job of that.
But the effort that they had toput out in the early stages was
(44:10):
substantially harder than theeffort that they had to start
putting out like two or threeyears later.
And I witnessed it firsthand,where I would go with
technicians that were not asskilled as some of the ones in
that first year, and thosetechnicians would produce, on
average, the like or betterresult.
And I can tell you whathappened was not that the
(44:34):
homeowner became tougher.
It was that the homeownerbecame easier because the brand
of Abacus continued to grow infame and popularity and
reputation, that many peoplewere pre-sold before the
technician even walked throughthe door.
And what I was dealing with inthat first year that I had
mentioned to you was, literallywe were just getting started.
(44:57):
We were less than a year inbusiness and in that first year
of business the effort was wayoutsized and outpaced compared
to the effort by the year three.
And that's one of the thingsthat we go.
We should never not give it ourbest diagnostic, best
communication, best, et cetera.
But what I will tell anycompany that is willing to
(45:19):
listen and really pay attentionis that when you focus on your
relationship, building out yourbrand, it actually does get
easier.
It gets easier to get calls, itgets easier to close calls.
Momentum builds momentum.
When your momentum's high, allthings are good.
Momentum can make you look likeyou're better and smarter than
(45:40):
you are.
So, circling all the way backto when you said, what about
when someone is reactiveOftentimes and COVID, if we just
go full back circle on this,oftentimes what's really going
on is they've lost theirmomentum and they want it back.
But momentum isn't somethingthat comes back quickly without
(46:04):
large exertions of resources.
Momentum is like a rocketaccelerating.
The bigger the rocket, the morefuel it takes to burn to get it
going again.
You can still get thatacceleration if you burn the
fuel slowly, and in often casesburning the fuel slowly, just
like when you're going somewherein your car, is actually more
efficient.
(46:24):
In the long run You'll get tothe same speed.
You'll get there and thenyou'll have more resources to
keep going.
But again I go back toresources.
If you've got fuel at the wazoo, let's burn, baby burn, but
let's do it with the righttechniques.
If you've got limited fuel,let's burn it appropriately.
So I hope you don't mind meinserting that thought, but
(46:49):
effort is scaled upon momentum.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yeah, it makes sense.
And I do agree with you that,no matter how much effort you
put in, you have to build arelationship.
Even if you're a newer company,it's even more important to
build that relationship with thecustomer, and lots of times
that just means you've got tospend just a little bit more
time with them.
You've got to listen to whatthey're saying.
You, you got to spend just alittle bit more time with them.
You got to listen to whatthey're saying.
(47:14):
You got to pay attention.
You really got to hear whatthey're not saying.
Also, because they're not goingto come out and say exactly
what they want from you.
Right, homeowners will beataround the bush.
This is not abnormal.
People just don't come out andsay this is exactly what I want
you to do.
So, well, I'm looking for this,I'm looking for that.
(47:34):
But you got to find out whatthe real reason why you're there
is.
And the real reason is probablybecause maybe the guy's wife is
up his ass because it's hot inthe bedroom.
But you got to figure outthat's the reason why you're
there, right?
And if you don't figure outthat pain point, it's hard to
(47:54):
move the needle sometimes.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Yeah Well, that's a fact.
It's the awareness of theproblem, the spoken and the
unspoken one.
That's right, 100%.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Well, Todd, I know we're getting close on time.
My friend, this has been agreat conversation.
If somebody, whoever'slistening to this, would like to
get a hold of you and inquireabout your services, where would
they go about doing that?
Speaker 2 (48:18):
It's easy to find us.
You can Google my name, toddLyles L-I-L-E-S.
You can Google serviceexcellence.
I feel very confident thatthose two words are going to
bring us up.
Okay, perfect.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Well, my friend, this has been a great conversation.
I appreciate you.
Hey, my pleasure, thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
You got it.
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