187. Relentlessly Refine Your Business | Trent Stone

I mean, I'm always open-minded to hearing about that lead source or, you know, listening a little closer about the sales process. And it's not that they're radical changes, you know, talking about the sales process maybe in particular. It's not that they're radical changes, but there's a lot of smart people in this industry. I mean, a lot of really smart people in this industry. Yeah. And so I, I just try to listen and, and gather things from these folks as I, as I come in contact with them and interact with them or hear them on podcasts or see them at events or talk to them or whatever. And just, you know, I'm always looking to try to polish and refine and, and make our system work a little bit.

This is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast brought to you by G4 Marketing. Interviews with today's top top home improvement entrepreneurs about marketing, sales, money, mindset, and lifestyle.

Now here's your host, Brian Kaskavalciyan.

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. I'm really excited today. I've got with me Trent Stone from LJ Stone in Indiana. I don't know exactly where in Indiana, somewhere in the middle, right?

Yeah, we're, we're kind of northeast of Indianapolis, about an hour northeast of Indianapolis, out in the, out in the boonies.

Out in the boonies a little bit. So Trent runs a great business out there. And so we're going to chat today about his, about his journey and what he's learned along the way. I know, you know, you being a client and, you know, you and I have not had enough conversations over the years, but we have had enough for me to know you're a very good operator, profitable. You've been doing this a long time. You've got your systems and processes and people in place. And so you probably don't, you know, recognize that as much as I, you know, somebody from the outside might. But let's dig in here. So give everybody your background. Give everybody the the 2-minute backstory on you and LJ Stone?

Well, LJ Stone is named after my father, Larry J. Stone, and he actually started in the remodeling industry back in the mid to late '60s. Wow. You know, back— if you've ever watched the movie The Tin Man, he was a tin man and selling aluminum siding and storm windows and roofing all around Muncie, essentially. And, uh, he formed LJ Stone Company in '67 and, uh, you know, just kind of built it really with a lot of, a lot of, a lot of sweat and a lot of shoe leather out on the streets. And, uh, you know, eventually grew it to the point that we were covering— we still cover— oh, good 2/3 of Indiana, I would say, somewhere in that, in that realm. And, um, so, you know, his background was always in sales and marketing. He, he's, he's not an installer. He doesn't really know anything about installation. But, uh, and that's kind of how I came into the business. And my, my, uh, I had some siblings that worked, some brothers that worked in the business with me also. And, and I, I can, I can still remember as a young kid, probably 10, 12 years old, maybe he would take us out to job sites, to a neighborhood where a job was going on, where siding was getting put on a house, and he would basically drop us off and we would pass out door knockers and hang them on, you know, hang them on the neighbor's doors around there trying to drum up business. And so, you know, I just, I just kind of worked in the business evenings and summertime, starting about 15, 16 years old, and, and You know, kind of had a wide range of experiences, made windows for our sunroom product and, you know, chased permits for garages and just different products that we did. And eventually, after graduating college, I kind of ended up back here through a series of circumstances, ended up back here. And that's really where I kind of started getting into the sales end of the business and the marketing end of the business. I didn't I didn't really think I had much aptitude for sales, but it just sort of through a series of circumstances that happened and, and that, and that's really on a professional level, kind of where I started getting into the business from a, from a sales perspective and, and became pretty, pretty good at it and got a great appreciation for methodology and systems and processes and following a method in the house. And, you know, just a closing sequence that you would go through and did that for, for many, many years, 8, 8, 10 years, run, you know, 2, 3 leads a day for 8 or 10 years. And, and at a certain point, my dad wanted to kind of start backing away from the business and not being so involved on a day-to-day business. And, uh, you know, he had a, he had a kind of a perfect storm situation with me being in there and, and a couple my brothers, two of my brothers being involved. So he started backing away from the business and I started taking on more, you know, more management, more, more back-end type stuff. And, and, uh, that's probably been 20, 23 years ago now.

Wow.

And since then, he has, he has, he has completely retired out of the business for probably 15 years, I would guess, and, uh, doesn't have any more ownership in it or anything like that. He, he still comes in. He has a— we have a little closet that we've set up for him where he can come in and do his paperwork and keep track of his own personal affairs. But we've kind of—

nice—

kind of moved him down a little bit.

Yeah, give him somewhere to go every day, something to do, right?

He goes to Florida in the wintertime, and then when he comes out, comes back, is the office that he was in, it's been moved down 2 or 3, 2 or 3 spots. And yeah, he says, yeah, he'll know, he'll know when he's not allowed to come in when he's just stuffed out in the driveway.

Yeah, cool. So just, um, uh, let's— to give everybody, um, some context, you, you sell bath systems.

Yep. So our, our— we have over the years, we've sold a lot of different— primarily exterior remodeling. You know, we've dabbled in a lot of different things over the years. But over the last 20 years, I would say we have really focused on just kind of 3 buckets, um, the, the one-day bath situation, replacement windows and replacement doors, and then outdoor living type products like patio covers and pergolas and sunrooms and things of that sort. And, and as time has gone on, our our business has really exploded in the bath area and to where that now makes up probably 75% of the work that we do. Yeah, the other, the other stuff, the sunrooms and the windows and doors, we primarily just market that to our, to our previous customer base nowadays. We don't really actively take that to market anymore, but we do with the, with the bath products. We're out there, you know, really working to generate leads out of that.

Yeah. Um, how about how many jobs did you complete? Just say last year.

Ballpark 600.

About 600 jobs. Okay. How many salespeople?

Currently we have 9 salespeople. 9.

Okay, cool. So it's interesting that you, you, when you were talking about your dad, and you would talk about yourself, You talked about sales and marketing. You went straight to sales and marketing. And interesting, as you very well know, many of the most successful people in this field come from sales and marketing. And understand that this really is a sales and marketing business. Yes, there's people, there's process, there's finance and all of that. But really at its core, this is a sales and marketing business. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think there's a lot of people out there that either don't completely get what that means, number one. And number two, I think as we're seeing now this year, leads are going to get a little bit tighter. They're going to get more expensive and they're going to get a little harder to get. And some of these companies that don't understand marketing, that don't have these, the people in place or the systems in place, they, they're gonna have a tough time. And so can you talk a little bit about the sales and marketing and kind of, you know, how do you guys do it there? How did you develop that yourself? Uh, when did you realize— I know I'm throwing a lot at you, but Any of those would be good.

We can peck away at that.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, from a sales perspective, well, and a marketing perspective, and really, really in a lot of aspects of our business. My dad was very fortunate. He came in contact with a guy named Dave Yoho back in the early '70s, and Dave is still around.

And so I saw Dave last week.

Yeah, he's 95. He's a dynamo. Came in, came in contact with Dave when, you know, when my dad was a young man and just really made a great impression on him and just, just was, you know, bought into the, to the System Reigns Supreme philosophy from the get-go. And, you know, his, his energies, and his, his strong suit was always sales. And so he naturally kind of gravitated to that end of it, although, you know, we implemented it through all aspects of our business. But on the sales end of it, you know, we, we've always had a real process-driven, uh, I don't want to say script, but a process-driven, uh, system that we followed when we went into the house, you know, through a series of steps. It was, you you know, the 6 steps or 10 steps, whatever you want to call it, but a step group sales process. And we've always followed that in one variation or another. And over the years, I mean, it's evolved like everything. It's not, you know, the language isn't the same. It's, you know, the things have been a little more modernized. And we, and I still occasionally, you know, even though we've been doing it a long time, I'll still connect with other sales training organizations just to kind of refresh what we do and put another set of eyeballs on it and kind of, you know, bring it, try to, try to keep it current and, and polish it. You know, we're never done trying to polish that and make it, make it smoother and easier. And on the marketing side, uh, you know, we, it was kind of a very similar process. We were, we were always for many, many years a real heavily outbound-focused type of a remodeling company. And our call center was really the heart of our marketing efforts. And I mean, we just beat the living crap out of those phones calling people.

And define— yes, can you please define outbound a little bit more just for people that may not understand that, what you mean by that?

Outbound is, you know, make marketing. You're generating the lead. Internally through, through making calls to people or canvassing or at events, someplace you're coming in contact with the customer, either face to face or in a telephone situation. And in our case, we did a lot of shows and events. So we came in contact with them that way, but we also built a really large database out of those shows and we would just work them repetitively in the, in the call center. And, you know, it was just a really— it was and is a predictive, predictable way to generate leads on a nice consistent basis. Now, we had some challenges in the early 2000s, late '90s when the do not call laws kind of became all the rage. And we actually had the distinction of being one of the first companies that got fined by the Attorney General in the state of Indiana because of our, our telemarketing. And we thought we were in compliance, but we were— come to find out we weren't. Yeah, that was, that was an interesting situation. I'm actually— I was actually in a, in a, in a customer's house on an appointment with a new sales rep. And I, and I see the little crawler come across the TV because this guy had his TV on. I see this little crawler come across the screen.

With your name?

Yes, that LJ Stone. And I, I thought, what is that?

No way.

It sounds down. So I didn't know what it was. And anyway, we ended up selling this project, selling this window project to this guy. And I get back to my office and, and I've got a couple of calls from people, you know, wanting to kind of delve into this whole situation. And it was, it wasn't a big deal. And, you know, we didn't have a big issue out of it. But yeah, looking back on it, kind of laugh about it, but at the time it was kind of a little bit—

that must have been a little scary. Yeah. And you're like, oh, so what I love is you didn't, you didn't skip a beat. You saw it on the TV in the prospect's house, but damn it, you're going to write that order.

Yeah, we just kept right on trucking.

And just, uh, and that's the beauty of a selling system too, isn't it? It's, well, wait a minute, I'm on step 4. Forget what it says over there. I got to go now to step 5.

You got to finish the company story, man. Hold on a minute.

Yeah.

So, and that's just kind of what we've done from a marketing perspective. You know, again, the Do Not Call laws kind of changed a lot of the call center dynamic. I mean, it's still, it still is a very viable source of leads. Matter of fact, we're working, you know, with one of the folks you connect with, Megan Beatty, and we've worked with her a couple of times over the years and We're kind of doing a little refresh in our call center on some things that we're doing, but we've had to expand a lot of the marketing that we do. It's, you know, internet and some TV and, you know, pay-per-click and some lead aggregators, a lot of different things now that we do to sort of drive leads into that call center.

Yeah. So it's interesting, you know, one of the things on this podcast that I always tell people is when you listen to the successful people in this industry, success leaves clues and you got to listen to what are, what are they all saying? The same. And so just so far, in, you know, just a few minutes, we've talked about having a step selling system, um, we've talked about make marketing, we've talked about diversity in the lead, um, in your lead sources. So you've got to make marketing, you've got inbound coming in, but you're, but you're doing a lot of different things. You're not relying on just one thing to bring you leads in.

Right. That's exactly right. You know, I heard a guest of yours, Charlie Gindell, one time bring it up, trying to, trying to bring on a new lead source every year. Yeah, we don't succeed at that every year, but we're always thinking, looking what can be another lead source because you definitely don't want to get, you don't want to get tied down where too many of your leads come from one particular source.

Yeah, yeah. And, and it's something I see, I see with people a lot, and it scares the hell out of me. You know, it's the, the most dangerous number in business is one, one source of leads, one salesperson, one key person in the office, one key install, whatever. It's the most dangerous number in business. And the people that are more diversified, you know, look, you, you lose, you lost a, a source of leads potentially on the do not call list, but if you've got 5 other things or 10 other things that are still bringing you leads. You lose one, you're okay. You know, it's a little, you know, it's a bump in the road, but you'll move on. You have other things going on. Um, yeah, you don't ever want to be held hostage. Good, that's a great point. Um, you also— so here's the other thing that I, I noticed you say too, is that you were— you use the word refresh. You, um, Oh God, you said something else too. But basically, you're always looking to polish up. You're always looking at, well, we're doing it like this. This is the result we're getting. But now let me look over here. Let me hire Megan and see, okay, can we do a little bit better? But you know, you don't see a lot of that in, unfortunately, you don't see enough of it. Of course, with you guys, that's every day. But can you talk a little bit about the importance of that? And, you know, because you could just rest on your, you know, hey, look, this is our system. This is how we've been doing for 20 years. You know, we sell a lot of stuff. We make money. I don't need to keep looking at every little detail of the business. Can you talk a little bit about that?

I mean, I just— I have a philosophy of just trying to learn something. And, you know, I enjoy learning. I like finding out new information. I like, you know, things that I didn't know before. And that kind of just carries over into the business side of it. And so, you know, over the years as I have come in contact with other companies or different spins on the way things are done, I mean, I'm always open-minded to hearing about that lead source or, you know, listening a little closer about the sales process. And it's not that they're radical changes, you know, talking about the sales process maybe in particular. It's not that they're radical changes, but there's a lot of smart people in this industry. I mean, a lot of really smart people in this industry. And so I just try to listen and gather things from these folks as I come in contact with them and interact with them or hear them on podcasts or see them at events or talk to them or whatever. And just, you know, I'm always looking to try to, to polish and refine and, and make our system work a little bit better. You know, maybe the, maybe the language could be updated and be a little smoother. The close doesn't have to be as, as, um, traumatic for the sales rep and the customer. It can be a, it can be a really just nice step-by-step process. I mean, we've always had a, you know, closing, we've always had a step system for that.

Yeah.

But it can get a little traumatic. It can get a little tension in the air. And, you know, over the years we've kind of learned some things and just sort of created our own hybrid system in a sense. But, you know, it's things that, that I didn't really invent any of them. I've just picked them up and learned them from various pieces and just kind of grafted them together over the years and then smoothed out the pot and really just going out and running calls relentlessly, running appointments relentlessly with the sales reps to try it before I would have them do it. I would go do it.

Yeah.

And we would run it and they'd watch and we'd do some and all right, that didn't work quite so well. Let's hear that. We need to polish this just a little bit until we got it, you know, really going pretty, pretty good over the last several years. And it doesn't mean we don't change it and update it, but it, that's just, that, that's just, I have that mindset of just, I like to learn.

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how—

I know this is going to be a silly question for you, but how are you tracking the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts?

So we've got multiple tracking numbers for inbound calls. And, you know, of course, through our website and through various lead generation tools that we use on the internet, those all have their own individual source codes and everything feeds into our CRM system, which we happen to use LeadPerfection. But everything flows into LeadPerfection with an individual, either, either a tracking number, a phone number. So we know where they called from, what, you know, what source they saw that in. Or if it came from an internet source of one sort or another. You know, of course, that's the great thing about the internet is you can dial it down to exactly where it came from. And we'll— and then we'll just associate, make sure those are associated correctly in the, in the system.

Yeah. And then what are you looking for in, in that, in that tracking? And look, the reason, you know why I'm asking you this is because to me, if we're going to put money out for advertising, Don't we want to know what's working and what's not? And don't we want to know, well, if this is producing this result, X result, okay, we know that, but can we get it to do a little bit better? Can we test against, can we test a different offer? Can we test a different headline? And so, you know, when you're, when you're doing this, what, what specifically are, I guess, are you looking for in the, in the tracking, how do you know when something's working and something's not?

Well, I mean, our, our default that we're looking for is the cost of the lead source versus the net sales that are coming in. And, you know, that'll vary based on the, on the source. And if the cost is right, then we're, you know, we're, we're looking at how many leads is it generating, how much effort is it taking to to get through the, you know, the aggregator leads or something like that. But, but by and large, our first, our first thing that we're looking at is the cost. And then we're paying attention to demo rates and close rates and, and, uh, you know, what, what— there might not be anything wrong with the source. It might be a situation that maybe the salespeople don't know how to handle the lead. So the cost may be high. It doesn't mean we're going to just pull the plug because the cost is high. If the cost is high, but we're getting a lot of inbound leads or a lot of leads out of it, we're setting a fair number of them, we're issuing them at a pretty good percent, we're getting a lot of demos out of it, but we're not getting many net sales. Well, that, that's a most likely a sales malfunction. So that's, you know, that's something maybe we need to bring the sales guys in and kind of polish up, work on how are we handling this type of lead? What kind of objections are you running into that's preventing you from getting to the close? Because in theory, If we're getting into the demo, we should be getting a close coming out at a certain percentage of the time. And if we're not, then obviously that drives the cost of the lead up. But that may not— again, it may not be a lead problem, it may be a sales problem.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's funny, the last, um, I would say the last 3 weeks or so, me and Addie have both had to deal with a number of contractors. We have a rental house that came up, the tenants moved out. And so we have to have some work done there. And then in our house, there were some things that needed to get done. And it's just, it's shocking to me. It's shocking to me that you reach out to these companies. And it's like, you know, for those that are, that are listening and you wonder, you know, if you're ever wondering why maybe you're not making as much money as you should be making, or you're working too hard, or it's— you gotta look at your entire process the way that Trent just said that he's looking at his process. I mean, I just did, just on Saturday, okay, I'll start with the Saturday. On Saturday, I called, finally called, I needed a contractor to come and do something. I called a company. Okay, I got the answering service. Like, okay, great. Got the answering service. But they were all right. You know, they took all my information. This was Saturday. We're recording this on Wednesday. When do you think they called me back?

Not even yet.

They haven't called me yet. You're right. They were— you're right. And I got them out of a magazine that I know they're paying for. And so they're going back to the thing and they're looking at their numbers at the end of the month and they say, well, this doesn't work, we're not getting any phone calls from them. Uh, really? I did it again today, okay, at 1. I have the exact time. I did it today at 1:57. I needed a plumber, so I went online, I did Coral Gables plumber. The very first Google services one that came up, I just clicked on that one. Okay, clicked on that one, and I filled out the form, and I gave them my cell number, and I said, this is my preferred method. I got a text message back of what I wrote. I haven't heard from the company. It's 4:01. I still haven't heard. They're plumbers. I mean, I should have had a truck at my house by now. It's, and it's shocking to me how there are people out there, they paid for that click and it's not cheap. And I, it's, and then they'll say, well, the, you know, advertising doesn't work, marketing doesn't work. And then, okay, so now let's go to the sales side of it. So on the sales side of it, oh my God. These people are like, first of all, they're trying to qualify you over the phone. You know, they're having conversations with you on the phone. It's like, no, you don't have a conversation. Just set an appointment. Sell me on the value of having somebody come to my house. So these guys come out to the house. Addie's looking at doing a generator, which is like looking at a bath system or looking at a roof or look at— it's the same deal. You know, it's a replacement deal. It's, it's in the same ballpark of money. It's got to be sold. It's got to be sold face to face. She called 2 companies and one is worse than the other. That one guy got mad at her because of his company is the one that set the lead. She told the person, hey, I got somebody else coming at 10:30, which you never want to hear, but okay, I want to have enough time. To where, okay, let them come out, or let me get in there before them. And I— it's just shocking to me. And neither one of them is going to follow up. Neither one of these people— one guy showed up, the other one didn't even show up. The second one that didn't show up got mad at the way the lead was set, and he was the owner, by the way. So anyway, so it's, it's, it's, you know, when we have these conversations and we talk about the processes that we go through and the training and the scripting and the role-playing and all of that. It's, you know, I hope that people listening to this are thinking, well, wait a minute, there's a lot more to this than just taking the call, sending someone out, and then emailing them an estimate or just giving them a price and saying, well, let me know when you want to do the work. It's like this stuff has to be sold.

Yeah. I mean, you know, the marketing money that you, you know, that, that the marketing money that you've spent, those clicks or whatever you're doing, you know, that, that's your money at risk.

Yeah.

You know, you're putting money out on the street to generate a return in the form of some leads. And if you don't jump right on that, handle that in the proper manner, everything you said, that's the, that's the great thing about this business is there's so many competitors, so many people in the industry that are like that.

Yeah.

If you just make half of an effort, you're head and shoulders above them. Yeah. You know, and the same, same thing from a sales perspective. You know, if you show up and do, you know, half a demo.

Yeah.

You're gonna be well ahead of your competition because most people are just, I don't know if it's, I don't, I don't wanna say lazy, but just, you know, they just take the path of least resistance oftentimes.

You know, and I was thinking about, um, so I had another contractor. So this guy started off great. So we had, we had, um, landscape lighting put throughout the house. The first guy that did it sucked. I had to have it all redone. It's taken me like 2 years to find somebody, just somebody that'll even come out. Okay, so this dude finally comes out, tells a great story, young guy. Energetic. And I'm like, okay, great. I was the easiest sale ever. I mean, all I was looking for was you're gonna show up, you sound like you know what you're talking about. All right, let's do it. Okay. So this guy comes out, does the job. It's like $15,000, I think. So it's not a cheap, you know, it's not a small amount of money. And this dude comes out. And immediately on the first go-round, there's an issue. So I call him back. He wants his money. I'm like, I pay him right away. And then I'm like, okay. He says, oh yeah, we're going to be out there. They don't come. And then I got to call them. And then they kind of, they come out. The second time I added more stuff. So it's been a week. The, some of the lights are out. He did this other thing that required— so anyway, my point is, I'll spare you the whole long story, but it's like, I think two things as I was thinking about this whole thing, and I've got my, you know, my marketing event coming up, LeadCon. So I'm all thinking just marketing, marketing, marketing. And I thought two things. One is they're super sloppy. You know, there's a lot of sloppiness. But the other thing is, and I want to ask you about this because I know how you feel about it, is I don't think, I don't think that they, they look at it from the customer's point of view. I think that they're so wrapped up with what's going on with them and their crews and their payroll, the collecting money, selling the next job, getting the next lead, that they are not thinking about the customer. And I know you, you have a great reputation, you take care of your customer. And so can you talk a little bit about that? It's, is how do you view the customer and what are some of the things that you do to make sure your customers are taken care of?

Well, I mean, a customer is obviously the customer is like the most important asset that you have. You know, the lifetime value of those guys is, is incredible. You know, we, we, I've told you, we, we've done a lot of different kinds of projects over the years. And, you know, every year a good percentage of our business is repeat business, referral business that we, that we get from these folks. And, and, uh, you know, I mean, it's just, it's just critical in, in, uh, keeping your business going the way that you want to.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, I don't know, as we do anything magic in terms of how we handle the customers. You know, I, I would say it really starts at the top, the attitude that, that, that the ownership has, the leadership has, of how valuable the customer is and how you're going to treat them and how you're going to take care of them. Because, because yes, I know what you're talking about. I've ran into those kind of folks before that, you know, they're, they're not that concerned about the customer. They're just another job, just another deal, and And obviously, you know, we're not holding hands with every homeowner, but, but we, we try to put ourselves in their seat. So if they've got an issue, there's some kind of a problem, we don't look at it as, you know, what's the problem with this customer? Why are they being such a jerk? Why are they such a pain in the neck? First thing we try to do is look at it from our perspective of what, what, where have we maybe dropped the ball? Did we not communicate correctly? Did we not Did we not touch base with them when we were supposed to? Did we not follow up and do something that we promised them we were going to do? It's that we look inward first. Where may we have dropped the ball? And then if we did, we own it. We don't try to escape it. We don't try to argue with them about it or anything. We just own it. And, you know, I think a lot of that is Maybe it doesn't seem like it makes sense at this point, but a lot of that is about just getting the right money when you're selling the job, getting the right margin. And you can afford to have these people around that maybe have a more customer-oriented attitude than the salesperson does. Salespeople aren't real good about following up. So, you know, we've tried to create systems and, and we use some technology and we've got some folks in some, some positions that, Their role is to shepherd the job and touch base with the customers, communicate with them on the phone or communicate with them through, through Hatch or some other technology that we use. And so they just don't think you forgot about them. I mean, that's, that's the thing where that really sets them off is if they feel like they're just in a black hole. So, but again, we, you know, we just, we try to look at it, you know, that, that's always been my perspective. Well, if this customer's mad, I'm not, I'm not immediately thinking, well, you know, holy cow, dealing with the public, it's another one of these jerks. It's not. And I mean, there are some.

Yeah.

But most of the time, a vast majority of the time, it's an issue on our end. And, and it's a chance for us to kind of fix and self-correct and hopefully not make that same mistake again.

Yeah. So, I'm looking at the clock here and I kind of, I want to ask you about, you know, so you've, you've owned the business yourself now for for how many years?

Golly, I've been buying. Yeah, yeah, I did probably that, started buying the stock end of it probably 15 or so years ago. We kind of did it in some chunks over the years. But yeah, we closed that out 3 or 4 years ago. But I have been running the show for at least 20 years.

So, okay, so you've been running the show for 20 years. So what is your, what is your job in the organization at this point?

You know, over the last couple of years, I have really started trying to focus more on replacing myself and, you know, trying to develop my leadership team to a higher level. You know, again, I interact and kind of come across some of these companies that have these just really fine-tuned, well-running machines, and they've got these leadership teams in place. And, you know, I've been very fortunate to have brought some people on board and had a lot of folks been here even since when my dad was, was here. I mean, we've got folks that have been here for years. Wow. So I've been fortunate in that respect, and I've attracted some good people and kind of kept them to where they know the culture. Uh, but, you know, at the end of the day, I kind of realized, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm making too many— they're coming to me with the issue. When we'd have our, like, our daily staff meetings, they would, you know, they'd bring their issues to the, to the staff meeting, and, you know, I'm, I'm the one with the answer. You know, they're kind of looking at Dad, you know, looking at me, hey Dad, how do we answer this? What do we do here?

Yeah.

So over the last several months, I've I've really been much more conscious of, of not being so quick to the answer and putting them in a position where they're, they're, they're reporting to each other as a team of peers of here's what's going on, here's what's going on with me, here's what's going on in this area, and then what is the correct thing that we need to do here, what's the next step that we need to do, and trying not to just jump in and say, all right, we'll do this or do that. Or, you know, it's been a challenge for me. I'll be honest with you, it's a little bit of a challenge. But that's, that's my role right now. I'm trying to replace myself from that perspective.

Yeah. Well, one of the things I say all the time is as entrepreneurs, one of our unique skill sets is the ability to solve problems. We're great at solving problems. But I like what you're saying about how let them start to solve their problems instead of coming— because the easy answer is always come to us because we're always going to have a solution. We're always going to have a solution. So how, how tough has that been for you?

It was— I have to remind myself about it. You know, I've really been diligently practicing that, that process for probably the last 6, 7 months. And, uh, I have to remind myself occasionally, especially, especially if the heat really gets going and there's some kind of a, of a fire that needs to be put out, um, you know, I, I really have to kind of step back and let them solve it because, because otherwise, you know, if I just say I want them to, to develop as a leadership team, if I just say I want them to handle those things, but yet I'm jumping right in and handling it, it they never, they're never going to do it. And it's been, it's, it's, it's been tough, but it has been working very effectively.

Yeah.

And so now, you know, when I, when I leave and I'm gone for like, here, the end of this week, I'm gonna be gone for a week, I'm gonna go fishing for a week.

Nice.

You know, total confidence, they're going to run it, and they're going to deal with it. And at the end, I'll come back the next week, and we'll do a little debrief of what went right, maybe what didn't go so right. And What do we, what do we need to work on?

Yeah. What, what do you think if you, if you could give your, your self advice back, you know, say 7, 10 years ago, is there, is there something you would have done different? Knowing what you know now, is there something you would have done different? Back then or given yourself a different piece of advice?

Probably don't, um, don't hesitate to try to take on some new— you know, for me, it's always thinking about the leads, and something that kind of held us back for a few years was, was a hesitancy to kind of dive in, into some media type advertising, some television advertising and things like that. We kind of always, it just was beat into my head that TV is a loser and you cannot make leads with that. I'm just using that as an example, but you know, so we stayed away from that kind of stuff because again, our stable datum had always been a call center, outbound calling. And so I wish I had made, turned that corner maybe a little quicker than I did. And got into some other, you know, more inbound-ish type leads, you know, some of the, some of the internet type stuff that's going on, some of the, you know, some media things, some, some paid performance programs that we're involved in now that I wish I'd got involved in, you know, earlier. But, uh, that's, I mean, that's probably the main thing.

Yeah. Is there, so as now you are kind of working on delegating more off to your team, less of them coming to you looking for answers. So what do you want to do? What's, what's kind of your ideal in your, in your business for the next, I don't know, 2, 3 years?

Really just continue to refine the process and maximize our, our return for the money that we're putting out, maximize the profit, maximize the return that we've got so that I can afford to put people in these positions to where they share in that. You know, I'm not, I'm not saying, you know, like from a, from a communist point of view that we're going to just share all the money, right? You know, to draw good people and to have them with you, they've got to be rewarded. They've got to share in the wins. As well as the losses. And so, you know, uh, I've got, you know, I've got a pretty good team assembled at this point. They're doing, they're doing a really, a really good job on keeping things rolling and, and doing things the way that we want to do. And so really it's just continuing to refine that, continuing to polish that.

Nice.

Give me more time to go fishing.

And, uh, that's the answer. That's the answer I was actually looking for. I didn't want to press you on it, but that was the answer I was looking for. So more fishing. Well, good. Well, Trent, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story with us. Great story. You're a great operator. You've been a G4 client for years and years and years, and I know you take good care of your customers and your people, and I wish you nothing but continued success. Um, to everybody listening, so I say it all the time, and this is another one of those episodes where if you go back and you listen and you just have a little notepad with you and you listen to some of the things that Trent talked about, and I talked about them, you know, earlier about step selling and, you know, diversity of leads and people and processes and It's a lot of the same stuff that you're going to hear from all of the most successful people I know in this industry. And I, I almost do this on purpose where I know that they're all going to say the same things. And I want you to hear the listener. I want you to hear these same things over and over and over again, because again, success leaves clues and they're there. They're out there. They're, they're right there for you to take. And I hope that, I hope that as you're listening to this and you're getting that information, that hopefully you're able to take that and apply it to your business and it will, you know, improve your, your business because ultimately that's what this is all about. So Trent, again, thank you so much. I appreciate you. And to everybody listening, until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group and this is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Let me ask you, did it help you look at your business in a different way? Did it spark an idea or ideas that you hadn't thought of before? Do you have a list of action items that you can take and implement into your business or your life today? I really hope so. If it did, I'd like to ask you a favor. Would you leave a 5-star review of the podcast? By doing so, you'll help other contractors find the podcast more easily so that we can help them achieve more success, wealth, and freedom. And before you go, make sure you subscribe to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast so you get access to the latest episodes as soon as they're available. We're always striving to provide you with great content, so you don't want to miss what's coming up. In fact, if you haven't already, make sure you go to thewealthycontractor.com and get your free copy of my latest book, The 7 Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor. Just pay shipping and handling and I'll take care of the cost of the book. And finally, a big thanks to G4 Marketing for sponsoring The Wealthy Contractor Podcast. For over 12 years now, G4 Marketing has been the secret back office relationship marketing team for hundreds of home improvement and home service businesses just like yours. You get the customer, and our proven system turns that customer into 5-star reviews and profitable repeat and referral business. If your home improvement or home services company completes at least 10 jobs per month, they have a solution that will work for you. To find out more, sign up for your free, no-obligation, 10-minute discovery call at www.g4marketing.com/discovery. Strategy. That's gfourmarketing.com/strategy. Set your discovery call up today and they'll help you set your business up for long-term profits and success. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan.