Rebound: Your 3 Step Action Plan for Opening Your Business Back Up Again

John is here. Janet is here. Donna. A lot of new names. Scott Pratt. Scott Pratt, my friend, I hope you are doing great. Jeff O'Leary is here. Good morning, Jeff. All right, awesome. What a great group. A lot of familiar names. Wayne, welcome. Jen from Apex. Tom. Steve Rennekamp, Big Steve. Hey, by the way, Steve, loved the video, loved it. I watched it earlier this morning. I loved it. For those of you— what I'm talking about is Steve Rennekamp, who's the owner of Energy Swing Windows, and they're actually in Pennsylvania, so they've been shut down for 5 weeks. I call him Big Steve because you can't miss him when he's in a room. He's like 7 feet tall. But his whole team recorded little videos, and the whole video was everybody on the team basically saying how much they miss their customers and how much they can't wait to get back to work for their customers. It was really a beautiful video, really well done. And I would imagine that that went out, I think that went out to his whole database and probably with an offer. And I would imagine that Steve, who's a very, very smart marketer, probably gonna write a lot of business out of that. One of the things that we've been talking about a lot is keeping in touch with customers, with past customers, and we're going to touch on that a little bit here. But this presentation, this training, if you will, is really going to be a continuation of the training that we did a few weeks ago where that one, if you haven't seen that one, the SATA one, Stay Active Through April, that would be a good one also to go back and look at. And, um, because that one is filled with a lot of action items, things you could be doing right now. I'm gonna talk a little bit about and kind of recap some of the things that we covered in that in this presentation as well. But in this one, I'm going to present you with a lot of questions to be asking right now. Okay, so for some of you, this is going to be awesome. I think I should say, let me say it this way, for most of you, this is really going to be awesome. For some of you, for a few of you, you may get frustrated that that, hey, I'm presenting you with questions to ask. But if you look, if you focus on those questions and really make sure that when we rebound, which it's starting, it's starting to happen, we're starting to see states open up and And so it's, it's time. It's time to start thinking about it. And, you know, some states are going to take longer than others, but now is the time to be prepared for that rebound. All right, so let's jump into this. This is— look, you can look at this time as an opportunity. I have It hasn't been easy. I will be straight with you. It has not been easy. But nothing great comes to us— nothing great comes out of easy. I've said it before, this is kind of— I think this is a test. And, you know, a lot of us are are being tested. This is a— this is an opportunity for you to look at your company and, and maybe set a new vision. The one that you had going into the year has been disrupted. Now, for some people, they haven't missed a beat. I mean, I have clients that I'm getting reports back from that are in states that are shut down and they're writing a ton of business still. A ton of business. I just got an email from a client yesterday who, when this happened, reached out to us and said, hey, let me cut back on my program a little bit. Let me cut back on my spending a little bit because I'm not sure where this is going to go. Okay. That was like 2 weeks ago or 3 weeks ago. I mean, it seems like it's been 3 months, right? But it's, it's, it's been, I think it's been 5 weeks. I think this is week 5, but this was 2 or 3 weeks ago. He said, hey man, let's, if it's okay, let's kind of scale back a little bit because I just don't I just don't know where we're gonna be. Well, sent me an email yesterday, says, Brian, we're doing great, turn everything, you know, get it right back up to where we were. And so that, that's really good news. I got news this morning from my— I have a client, um, that is one of the— I think they're like number— they're in the top 10, let's say, of home improvement companies in the country. And I got, uh, some information yesterday that they are just They're killing it. Leads are up, sales are up, they're having an amazing April. I got a report yesterday from Bob Quillen. He's in Ohio. Killed it last month. His profit margins are already like 20% plus. If you know, we've talked about Bob before, and he's not the only one, by the way, that I know of in the industry that has margins, net profit margins between 18% and 24%. But his margin last month, I'm not going to tell you the number, but let's just say it was significantly better than 20%. So, and I could keep going, but there are many, many companies out there that are working, selling, and making money, making money. Okay, so Depending on where you are, this is an opportunity to maybe create a new vision for what this year and next year might look like, or even what your company might look like. You might be doing well right now. Numbers might be OK. But what about some— we're going to talk more about this as we go through, so I won't stick to this too much. This is an opportunity to recommit yourself to being the best you can be. That's tough. I've had a— it's been challenging for me the last week. Again, I'm gonna be— I, I don't— I'm not gonna sugarcoat stuff. You guys, anybody that has, uh, listened to the podcast or been on these trainings or read my book, The Seven Secrets, but you know, I'm not gonna blow myself up and, you know, fake this and fake that just to look better than I am. I'm gonna tell you exactly what is going on with me. I am long past that need to impress people, right? Anyway, so this has been a challenge for me. This week, I have gained some weight because I have been stress eating. It is not even so much stress eating as it is I feel claustrophobic. I feel like I am stuck, right? Can't go anywhere. Can't do anything. So, it has weighed on me a little bit. So, after today, I am going to recommit myself and slow down the eating. Work on personal development. Be a better leader. This is also something that I have been looking at, too, is how could I be a better communicator? How could I be a better leader? Ultimately, all of us have a choice. We can come out of this as a victim. Or we can fall off as a victim, right? Ultimately, that's up to us. Now, there are things that we have control over and things that we don't have control over. And again, I'm reviewing some of the things that we've already talked about just because I think it's, it's that critically important. What we don't have control over is the virus. We have no control over it. None, zero. We have no control over when our states open, how they open, what phase we're in, blah, blah. We have no control over that. However, what we do have control over, the thoughts we think and the beliefs we hold true and the actions that we take as a result. And so I would say to everybody to stand guard at the door of your mind. You know, are you going to let in things that you can control? Or are you going to let in things that you cannot control? Are you going to act based on things that you can't control? Or are you going to act based on things that you can control? Okay. We talked last time also about what not to do right now. What not to do. If you can help it, don't panic. Okay, this has been advice that's, you know, for the last 5 weeks we've been talking about this. I think most of us are probably past the panic stage. Definitely don't stop advertising. So here's what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing. Okay, and mind you, I am inside of hundreds of home improvement companies, and I get a lot of reports back from companies all around the industry, people that are clients and people that aren't clients. The people that have stopped advertising are gonna have a very tough time coming out of this. Very tough time, right? I think it is— I heard there was a marketing person in this industry that I don't know who it was. Somebody told me about them, and the advice that they gave their clients was to pull back and stop advertising and save their cash. And I thought, what a flippin' idiot. What a dumbass. How could you give somebody that advice? That is like the worst advice that you could give anybody. You've got to continue advertising. You've got to. Got no choice. You want to be on the other side of this, you've got to continue advertising. All right, so You know, our friends at Socius Marketing, I did an interview with Chris, or we did a webinar together recently, and you can go back and you can, you can listen to that. Search volumes are not quite where they were before. It depends on market, but people still have a need for home improvements. So stopping advertising, not a good thing to do. And do not stop communicating with your customers. I've said this over and over again. We need our customers now more than ever. So if anything, if anything, we want to communicate with them more, not less. Some of the things that we could be taking action on or should be taking action on, obviously, We want to do the whole protection thing. You gotta tell people how you are going to protect them. Virtual visits and meetings. Now, I've gotten so many questions about the whole virtual meeting thing. You want, here's the truth. Close rates are not as good as face-to-face. They're just not. But people are using them, they're selling jobs from them, and they're keeping their businesses going. All right, so this is an important thing. We may— if you haven't made the switch yet, you may have to. You may have to. People are doing drone and satellite inspections, obviously using Zoom meetings like this to present, and using electronic, you know, documents and signature things. Some of the changes that people are making. And again, I'm doing some review over what we did last time before we get into the new material. Add scripting to set people at ease about a stranger coming into their home. Again, precautions that you are taking to keep people safe. Do whatever you have to do to get work installed so you can bring money in. A lot of companies, a lot of companies are using aggressive financing. I mistakenly before said 24-month Same as cash. That program is actually 18 months same as cash, but you've got 6 months, 12 months, 18 months. But 18 months, by the time you get the job installed, 18 months will be 2022. So we've got clients that are advertising no payments, no interest until 2022. Okay, pretty compelling finance offer. All right, um, this is also a very good time to look at your customer experience, um, the cust— your customer service, and it's an opportunity for you to deliver amazing service and create raving fans. Um, it's also a time for you to look at your customer experience and say, what can we do better? How can we use this time to design an experience that creates raving fans, not just satisfied customers? I'm not going to go into it here, but to me, a satisfied customer is a liability. More specifically, having a system that only produces satisfied customers is a liability. Okay, having a system to create raving fans is a recipe for obviously more 5-star reviews, more referrals, more repeat business. That's, you know, the areas that G4, our company, focuses on. But it's also an opportunity to charge premium prices so you hit the right margin, so you'll make more money, and on and on and on. It's about delivering value to the customer. Okay, communicate now more than ever. Keep your staff up to date with what's going on. Keep advertising. We talked about this a minute ago. And continue communicating with your customers and even your prospects. So we have, we have clients that are communicating also with their demo no-sales, and I'm recommending to them that we look at you know, maybe the last— depending on the numbers, the last 3 months, the last 6 months of people that we've gone to visit, we've presented to, but they haven't— for one reason or another, they didn't buy. Go back to them and talk to them. So, um, that's a recap, and you can go back and you can watch that full webinar if, if, uh, if, uh, you're new here and you don't have access to that, just put your information in the chat and we will make sure and get you a link to that. Also, you can listen to, I believe it's episode 90 on the podcast where we took that webinar and basically turned it into a podcast episode. So you can hear all of the action steps for that. So As we start going from survival mode into rebound mode, over the next 30, 60 days, we're going to see, you know, life coming back. And we're going to have to make some adjustments, obviously. Again, there's, there's a lot of information out there. People are, you know, if you're unable, if you still want to do face-to-face sales presentations, which is the best way obviously to do them. Some people are setting up— they're taking like folding tables and chairs out to people's homes and having meetings outside. They're meeting in the garage. So it's, you know, really interesting how this has changed things. And so, you know, the question is, are you ready? Are you ready for the rebound? And so in order to get— and by the way, Valerie, I think you see in the chat box that people that are requesting, if you can please give them those, the links to the webinar replay. So as we switch from, you know, I'm calling it survival mode to rebound mode, I thought the best thing that I could do is present you, um, and I, I did this at our event Accelerate Live, and so for those of you that were there, this will be a refresher for you. For those of you, uh, you know, obviously that were not there, um, this is going to be new for you. But this is a framework that I've been working on for I think I started working on it late last year, and again, I presented it for the first time in February. Sorry, I just got distracted by the chat. So this, this, I call this the Wealthy Contractor Success, Wealth, and Freedom Framework. It's really all about the idea of leverage. And so I'm going to present this to you, and then as we go through this, again, there's going to be lists of questions. I'm going to be asking you or presenting you with some questions to get your mind thinking about the rebound. And so, you know, you could write those down, the ones that are going to pertain to you, and after we're done here, take those and really think about how, how you're going to use that information information and use those questions to improve your business. All right. Now, the, the framework that we've developed here is all about you. And, and I'm speaking to the owners now. Okay, so for those of you that are on here that are not owners, This is something you may want to— this will give you a better understanding of the owner of the company, but also it'll give you a better understanding of kind of what drives them and some ways that you could be helpful, not only to them but to the organization as a whole, the business as a whole. So all businesses are started by people, right? Human beings. And so, for example, this business, G4 Marketing Group and The Wealthy Contractor, was started by me and my business partner Addie, who also happens to be my wife. That business was started by us because we are serial entrepreneurs and we live that, uh, the, the life of the entrepreneur where it's basically We went into business because we wanted certain levels of freedom. Now, business, when you get into business, um, has a tendency, if you allow it, to not give you the freedom that you were after, but sometimes make you a slave. To your business. So instead of you being the master of the business and the master working, or the business working for you to deliver to you all of the things that would constitute your best life, what it does is it takes away and it makes you its, its slave. Um, now when you see this image here, the stick figure, if you will, with the heart. What the heart represents— so the stick figure obviously is you, and what the heart represents is your desires, okay? You, um, what you are after in your life. Now, from my own experience and from my experience with hundreds of entrepreneurs throughout my life, um, business is really focused around freedom, but three kind of bigger than the others: time, you know, control over time, and how, you know, getting to use it how we want to use it. Money— making as much money as we can earn, no limits. And impact. And impact is what is, what is the, what, what is the legacy we're leaving behind? What is the impact that we're making in the world? So for example, For example, sorry about that. Um, I have a client, great client, Bill McGraw, Quality Home Products of Texas. And, um, by the way, you can find all of this information at our website. But what he's doing is unreal. He sent me an email yesterday. I have— thank you. Um, he sent me an email yesterday or the day before of the impact that they are having in their community. So he does this really cool, uh, thing with, uh, food banks. He basically goes out, either raises money directly from his prospects and customers, and then he matches those funds in the business. Or what they'll do is they'll go out and they'll collect food when they're running leads or when they're doing service calls, because they're in hundreds of homes every week. And they collect an enormous amount of food and an incredible amount of money. I think that just during this time, if I remember correctly, they've raised over $250,000 for their local food banks in Houston. Unbelievable. But for him, He has the freedom of time now. He has money. He's a wealthy man. But now it's really all about what's the impact that I can make in the world. Okay. And so those seem to be the top 3. All right. Now, one of the things that I learned a long time ago, and it's a different mindset than a lot of people have, is what is the real purpose of the business? The real purpose of the business is to fund your ideal lifestyle and give you the freedoms you need to live your best life. So for example, if you want to be— if you want to make an impact in your community like Bill, well, you got to make money in order to do that, right? You've got to be able— your business has to make money. It can't make an impact in the lives of other people if it can't make an impact in your life and in your family's life, right? And so it's important to look at the business and say, hey, the business is my vehicle, the vehicle for getting me all of the things that I want in life. And so When you look at your business, it exists to fund your ideal lifestyle, gives you the freedom you need to live your best life. The question here is, are you clear about the outcomes you desire? Now, those of you that have the Seven Secrets, uh, book, The Seven Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor, you'll find some of these questions in Chapter 1. This is all about clarity and focus on what it is that you want. And this you'll find in Chapter 1. And so the, the more clarity we have on what we want and what we need in order to live our ideal lifestyle, now we can start to build the business around that. So some of the questions here is how much money specifically do you need to make so you can live your ideal lifestyle? Now look, Right now things have been interrupted for most of us. And so the number that you had in mind maybe for, for the year may have gotten interrupted. Maybe, maybe not. But the reality is, from my experience, most people don't have a number. They don't know. They just think, let me just keep growing, growing, growing, growing my business. $5 million, $10 million, and then once I get there, I'll finally have everything I want. No, no. Decide what it is that you want now and then build the business around that. So for example, I mean, if you— it amazes me how many people I talk to and I ask them, well, how much money do you want to make? And it's interesting, um, the numbers are generally between $250,000 and about $350,000. It's kind of weird, right? I had one person tell me a million. One person. Okay, and so these people, you know, most of these people that I was talking to, they thought, well, I got to build a $5 million business before I can make that kind of money. They already had like a $2 or $3 million business, and I said no. To do $250,000 in home improvement, you don't need a $5 million business. In fact, if you have a $5 million business and you're only making $250,000, you're doing it wrong. Right? So when you understand and get clear about what it is that you want, now you can, now you can be more focused. So these are just some questions for you to think about. How much total wealth do you want by the end of the year? In 3 years? 10 years? If you had total control over your time, what would you do different than you're doing today? How much time away from your business do you want to pursue your life's interest? So one of my mentors is a guy named Dan Sullivan. It's a strategic coach, and strategic coach, when you go into their program, he introduces you to the idea of his time system. And his time system is focused around 3 types of days: free days, focus days, and buffer days. Free days are just that. They're a 24-hour period where you do, you do no business whatsoever. No email, no phone call, no nothing, right? It's all about enjoying your life, rest, rejuvenation, whatever it is that you enjoy. The second is focus. Those are money days. And then there's buffer, which are prep days. Which days do you think you cross off the calendar first? Free days, right? So you want to be thinking about how much time you want to pursue outside of the business. It's interesting, I did a podcast that'll be released in the next few days with a guy named Tom Reber, who's a coach to contractors. And he said, it's funny, we have so much the same philosophies. And he gave the example of people being clear about what it is they want. And he said, look, if somebody tells me They want to make whatever the number is, $250,000 a year. They want to work 4 days a week and they want to take 6 weeks of vacation. Great, I can show them how to do that. But most people aren't that clear, and so it's hard to get where you're going if you don't have clarity. Okay, so that's the first piece of this, is to really get clear. Now is a great time to get very clear and very focused on where we're going. Now, some of you are looking at me like, Brian, we're half an hour into this and where are my steps for my rebound? Well, guess what? I'm sorry to tell you, business is secondary. What you have up here is first. Getting very clear on direction, on what it is that you want for you, for your life, that's gonna help you build the structures and the business that you want, and we're going to talk about that. But this is so important. It's almost like I could, you know, I talk about, you know, I'm a marketer, so we talk marketing all the time. You know, it's like I could give you the best ads ever, I can give you direct mail pieces that kill, but if you don't have all of the other pieces in place behind it, what good is it going to do you, right? If you have a mindset that's stuck at $100,000 of income. Unless you do something with that, how am I going to help you get— you know, I could give you all the best stuff, I can give you the best-selling system in the world, it's not going to help you if your head is stuck at a certain level, right? All right, so to get these freedoms to get these freedoms, your business has to be organized around 3 fundamentals. One is people, the other is process, and the third is profit. So you see how this is kind of— we're growing out here, okay? In the center is you. What you want is time, money, and impact, those freedoms. In order for you to get those, you need people, process, and profit. Okay, these are what I call multipliers. These are the things that give you leverage inside of your business, and these are the 3 key areas that you want to be looking at right now so that your rebound is huge, so it's bigger and better and more successful than, than you were before. Ultimately, look, we all want to come out of this smarter, stronger, and wealthier than when we went into it. All right, this has given us, as somebody said, a slap in the face and a kick in the balls, right? Not just a slap in the face, kick in the balls, right? And so, but as we start to come out and as we start to push towards our rebound, these are the areas where we're going to find leverage. And these are the areas that are going to really help you, really help you rebound in, in your business. So leverage equals speed, right? And so the first place we're going to start is we're going to start with people. Now, people is about having the right people in the right seats working towards the same vision, working towards the same vision. And so a lot of businesses, a lot of companies out there don't really have a vision. It's every day it's about more, more, more, more, more, but that's not really a vision. And so where this kind of starts is asking yourself, well, who are we? And this is that whole culture conversation. And quite frankly, I didn't get the whole culture thing. You know, people say, what is that thing, culture eats strategy for breakfast? You know, sayings like that. I didn't understand all of that crap. Like, I'm telling you, up until late last year, I didn't really get, well, what are people talking about, this whole culture thing, right? Really, ultimately, what it's all about is Who are we as a company? What are our values, right? And by, by understanding that and by also understanding, well, where are we going? What do we help— what do we hope to accomplish here? Okay, so yes, as the owner, I want time, money, and impact, right? And so I want to organize my business around that idea so I can have the time, money, and impact. Now, for some people, they want to be able to give their people the same thing— time, money, and impact, right? Or other things, whatever the other things may be. But you got to understand, just like we were talking about before, where are we going? And you've got to be clear about that, and you've got to be able to communicate that to your people so that they can decide Well, am I on board with this vision or am I not on board with this vision? Because if they're on board with the decision, then they're gonna crawl over glass, they're gonna run through fire to do what it takes to get to that vision. It's also, especially now, you know, we've got an opportunity now to really look at our organization and ask ourselves, You know, do we have A players? Do we have A players? And really all you want are A players. There may be the opportunity, and we'll talk about that in a second, but there may be the opportunity now to get rid of some B and C players and replace them with some A players. Okay, are we accountable for our results? Meaning, is, is every person in the organization accountable for their portion of the business, whatever it has, whether it's marketing, sales, production, service, customer experience, finance, HR? Are they accountable for results? Are they clear about what those results are? Right, now before we get to the— sorry, before we get to the rebound question, um, if you look over here, so, uh, we've got back to the framework here. So we got people, the right people in the right seats working towards the same vision. Those people have to have alignment with the vision and they have to be committed to that vision. If they're not aligned with that vision then you have to ask yourself, you know, am I being clear? And if you are being clear and they still don't get it and they're not committed to it, they're not an A player, which is the next box here. They're not an A player. And so now the question has to be, you know, do we keep people that are not A players? And then what are we doing to attract A-players. And then the final piece here, accountability. A-players have zero issue with being accountable. None. Zero. Because they know how they fit within the grand vision of the business, right? And so people, your people portion here of the business, gotta have alignment and commitment, A-players, and people that are accountable. Now, your rebound question here is, do you have the right people in the right seats right now in your organization? Okay, the follow-up to that is, if they aren't the right people in the right seats, is there an opportunity to shuffle the seats, or are you going to have to go and recruit some new A-players? Okay, the next piece: process. Process, okay, create reliable, consistent, and predictable results. This is what a process does. It delivers to you reliable, consistent, predictable results. Okay, process is so important in any business. This is how we do it here. So in a home improvement business, you have to have processes for effectively and profitably generating leads. And so you want to be looking at right now, you want to be looking at, well, how are we going to be generating leads during our rebound? Converting leads to sales. Do we have a step selling system? Do we have a step selling system? If you're not in the replacement space and, and you are, you know, if you're in plumbing and HVAC, you guys have a step selling system too. If you don't, you should. If you're in general remodeling doing additions and kitchens and bathrooms and all of that, you may not have like a 7-step or 10-step system, but you need to have a structured process because in the end, it's about delivering consistency. It's about reliability. It's about having predictable results because when your results are predictable, now you can plan. Now you can scale. When your results aren't predictable, it's very tough. The business is very haphazard. Okay, there needs to be a process for how you install jobs, how you get paid, and how do you develop customers for life. Listen, now more than ever, now more than ever, every single customer that comes in, every single customer that comes in You got to create a raving fan. You've got to convert them to a customer for life. They need to do— they need to provide 5-star reviews, ideally on Google or Facebook, right? Because what is that going to do for you? Well, that is going to expand your reach in your community, right? It's going to show people that you are a company that can be trusted. A company that does what they say they're gonna do, the right company, right, the best value for the dollar, even though you're more expensive than everybody else. That's that message that's going to be radiated out. That's that word-of-mouth component. That's looking good online. They're going to provide referrals. Look, every single job, you need to have a job-from-job strategy. Here going forward. If you didn't have one before, you should put one together now. Job from job strategy. Each job needs to turn into another one, whether that's through a referral, through neighborhood marketing, through repeat business. Every job needs to turn into another job. You need processes for that. You need systems for that. How do you have— how do you develop processes and systems? You do it through creating standard operating procedures. You do it through scripting, and you do it through checklists. So now is the time to go and look at you— all of your systems, all of your systems and processes. Okay, so process is all about being replicable. Okay, repeatable over and over and over and over again. When a system is repeatable, you could teach it, you can train it, you can role-play it, right? The best companies, the best companies not only in this space, but in— let's just talk about home improvement. The best companies I know in home improvement, let's take the selling system as an example. Do you think that they just say, here's a lead, go run the lead? Good luck. No, no, they go to a training, they learn the selling system. Again, whatever it is. My buddy John Angles has a 10-step system, okay? Some of— most, most of you, I think, probably have some derivative of a 10-step system, okay? It doesn't matter, 7, 10, 8, 11, doesn't matter. Step 1, here's how it's done. Practice, role play, and continuous training and continuous improvement. By the way, when you have that, um, when it's repeatable, it's measurable. I can measure it. For every issued lead I send out, I bring back $3,000, let's say. Okay, so questions to ask yourself in your business is the process that you have for, again, whatever it is— making a lead, converting the lead to a sale, um, getting the job installed, getting paid, creating the customer for life— is this something that can be taught? And if not, and if not, how am I going to make How am I now going to make sure that we create a process that I can teach to people? Because by the way, if you haven't noticed already, people and process go hand in hand. They go hand in hand. Can we replicate this process over and over and over again? Can we measure the effectiveness, the efficacy of this process? Can we rely on this process to deliver predictable results? And then can we continuously tweak and improve the results of the process? Just for owners, your job is to be looking at the results that are coming out of your processes and determining whether or not those results are the right results. And if they're not, now you got to go back and you got to look at those processes, and you got to say, hey, we got to get together and we got to see if we can improve these results. So you got to look at the system. Here's your rebound question, okay? Have you reviewed your processes and have you made improvements as needed? Process is one of those things. People— again, these are the things that are going to get— the 3 things that are going to give you freedom: people, process, and profit. People, process, and profit. Okay, and so, um, only when you have— only when you have reliable, consistent, predictable results can you scale your business, right? Now let me give you an example here. So let's look at the home improvement, the 7 home improvement profit multipliers. Okay, I'm going to go through them quickly. Number 1 is if— and this is for growing your business, growing the profitability of your business— you increase the number of inquiries. Okay, this is raw leads. I don't even really call them leads yet, but raw inquiries that come into your business. Those inquiries need to be converted into an appointment. There's a number there, right? X number convert into an appointment. Of those appointments, X number actually demo. Of those that actually demo, a certain number convert into a sale. Of those ones that sell, we have an average job value. And then of the ones that don't sell, some percentage of them we can get back through remarketing efforts, commonly called rehash. My friend Tim Mush calls it increasing asset recovery, which is a great word. Asset. What is a lead in your business? It's an asset. And then finally is how do we now take those customers and multiply those customers through referrals and through repeat business? So if we were to look at this, you know, generating leads and converting leads into sales you know, here's all the things that you want to be looking at. You know, how many actual inquiries came in? How many actual of those appointments or those inquiries converted into appointments? How many of those appointments were actually issued to a salesperson? How many of those actually demoed? How many of those— by the way, all of the most successful people in this business, they know every single one of these numbers, and they design their businesses around these numbers. Okay, net sale to lead issued, critical, important number to know. But it— all of this is the result. I'm showing you the results of having a process. Okay, getting paid, developing customers for life. What's your current referral percentage? What's your current repeat percentage? What can we do to improve those results? Customer feedback and online reviews. We're not going to talk about equity value today, but let me give you an example of how powerful this is when you understand this, how powerful this can be. So let's just assume that you've got 100 inquiries that come into your business. Of those, you convert 70% or 70 of them into appointments. Of those, let's say you demo or actually get in front of 80% of those people, you sell 30%, giving you 17 sales at an average sale of $10,000, that gives you $180,000 in sales. Well, now that we know that, now that we know that, now we can look at this and say, okay, well, where might we make improvements? Okay, so Let's just say we have the same number of leads. We don't get any more inquiries or raw leads into the business. And let's say we just get a little bit better at setting those appointments. So instead of setting 70, we set 75. Let's say our demo rate goes up just a little bit. Instead of 80%, now we get in front of 85%. Okay, you'll see the number from the left to the right changes. Let's leave the sell rate the same, the same. So now we've sold more jobs, but now let's look at the average sale and say, well, what can we do to add some more value and get another $1,000 or 10% for every job? Which is, by the way, one of the things that you're really going to have to— and we're going to talk about that in a second with profit. So one of the things you're really going to have to think about in the coming months is you're gonna have to think about a price increase because more than likely you're gonna have to raise your prices. More than likely. Okay. Um, but the difference in that is for just making a couple of little tweaks, $348,000. If this was— let's just say it was an average month for you, you know, it's almost $30,000 a month. Makes a big difference, right? And this would be, by the way, that additional $348,000 would be at a greater gross margin, which means that your profit margin would be higher. Right? So that's why process is so important. Okay, now what's the final piece of this? Profit. Okay, again, do you see how every— all of these pieces are intertwined? Okay, everything needs— relies on the other. Your people, assuming you have the right people, okay, let's say you have all 8 players but you don't have a good process to put them into. How is that going to impact your time, your money, and your ability to have an impact in the world? It's going to have a very negative impact. But let's say now you've got 8 players and they're running a killer system. Okay, now they're running a killer system step by step. Here's how we do it. Here's, here's how we do it. Here's a checklist to make sure we got it done right. Okay, now you aren't running around with the— like a chicken with his head cut off. You are able to actually, like, manage and organize and grow this business. Which then brings us to the final piece of this, which is profit. Okay, so you, you heard me say this before, so I'm going to go through it quick, but let's be very clear about profitability. Without enough of it, you won't make enough money to effectively market your services. Now look, right now lead costs are coming down, okay? It may stay that way for the next few months, but also there are probably less leads in the market. So you're gonna have to be able— you're still gonna have to be able to spend because look, there are some very well-capitalized companies out there that are buying up tons of advertising, okay? And, and so you're gonna have to compete against them. And when it comes to marketing, the person that can spend the most money lead and still make the right amount of profit typically wins. Okay, so profit also is going to help you have enough money to hire great people. Without enough profit, you can't give your family the rewards they deserve. And look, if you can't— if you can't give your family a great life, how are you going to give your employees a great life? How are you going to help your community be better if you can't help your own family? Right? So this whole, this argument about, you know, this is like you have, you get rich, you take care of your family, and then now go and you can help others. It's kind of like, you know, when, when We go on airplanes and when we go back on airplanes and you know how they say always put the mask on yourself first. Well, why? Because if you put the mask on somebody else first, you could die and then what good will it do, right? So put your mask on first so that you have strength, right, you have stability, then you can go help the other person. This is exactly the same idea and then you're not going to have the solid foundation you need the next 10 years. Look, companies, my clients that had their profit right, they're riding this out, they're fine because they had cash in the bank, they could do it. Okay, profit is the fuel of a business. To have a high performance business, you need high performance fuel, and profit is not something you add on at the end. This is what too many people in this business get to the end of the quarter or end of the year, and then they look at their numbers to see if they made any money. No, you can't add it at the end. You have to plan for it in the beginning, and it requires you making a decision that we are going to be profitable. And once you make the decision, then you have to commit to that. Now you've heard me say this before if you've been here before. Your minimum acceptable pre-tax profit should be 10% after all expenses, including you. Ideally, you want to be at 15% to 20%. Okay, now in order for you to come up with your profit model, you have to be— you have to understand the numbers that go into it. So you have to understand material costs, you have to understand your labor costs fully loaded. A lot of people don't look at all of the related costs when it comes to labor, and then they get hammered on their bottom line. You got to look then what the material cost and labor cost is going to give you your gross margin or your gross profit, which by the way should be, should be at 55 to 60%. You got to look at your marketing costs, again, fully loaded. Sales expense, what, what does it actually cost you to go out and sell a job? Your overhead, and then ultimately you have to know, well, what is the net profit that I am looking to earn? So when talking about profit, again, 10% is your minimum, 15 to 20% is your ideal. You want to look at your profit model and say, is this sustainable? Is this sustainable? Sustainable means, does it work in the long term? Does it work even if we have a bad month or a bad couple months? Okay. Do you have financial discipline? Okay, so do you have in your business, do you have a defined profit model that you're working towards? If not, now is the time to create it. Does your profit model deliver a minimum net profit of 10%? Are you vigilant about protecting your margins and cash flow? What this means is if something changes in your business, an expense changes in your business, who pays for that? Do you pay for it or does your customer pay for it? Okay, customer pays for everything, and there's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Okay, this is where the, the, the best business owner, the most successful business owners, are vigilant about protecting it. So if marketing costs go up by 20%, well, guess what? The price has to go up to reflect that increase in price. If labor cost or material costs— here's a good one— people complain about Well, we're— our suppliers are raising our prices. Well, okay, they have to do that to protect their margin. Well, guess what? What, are you just going to take that on and let it hit your bottom line, or are you going to do the right thing and be vigilant and pass that cost along to your customer? It's the only way to do it. Are you disciplined with your finances? Now, disciplined with your finances means You're looking at your numbers every single month. You know exactly where your numbers need to be. You understand those numbers, okay? And you are making adjustments as needed. Is your profit model sustainable? Again, does your business carry debt or require debt to operate? Now, right now that might change a little bit, and fortunately we, we have not yet dipped into our credit line, and I hope it remains that way. We built this business with zero— with no debt. We built this business through cash flow, and most of my, my, my most successful clients did it the same way. They did not do it through debt. Now, there are some cases where debt is good. Like right now, there's going to be an opportunity for some people to go out and buy companies, to go and acquire companies that just could not make it. But they have assets. They have a customer database, they may have a building, they may have trucks, they may have employees, and they just had the wrong profit model so they couldn't survive. Well, guess what? That's gonna be an opportunity for some of you to go in there and buy. And money's cheap right now. So as long as the debt service is taken care of by the cash flow, there may be a good argument there for taking on some debt. Okay, but, but, but when it comes to the normal course of everyday business, if you have to take on debt to grow, more than likely your profit model is broken. Okay, so rebound question here is, have you reviewed your pricing model? Because your pricing model is where all of this stems from, by the way. That's the dirty little secret. Pricing model is where all of this talk about profit stems from. And unfortunately, unfortunately, there are way too many people in this business that price wrong. They just price wrong, and they accept lower margins, and they accept lower profits because they're scared. Comes from a place of fear. Well, that's a whole nother conversation. That's a conversation about delivering value to your customer. The more value you deliver, the more people are willing to pay, right? So the last piece— there is one more piece here, and this is maybe the most important piece of all, and that's The fourth P, which is personal. This is, again, this is what we talked about at the beginning. It's about being, having clarity and focus at the beginning. Somebody just put in the chat that they raised the prices 5% 2 days ago, um, and on roofing and on doors. Great, beautiful. Okay, um, clarity and focus, self-management. You know, again, what we can control versus what we can't control. And then we've got to work hard as entrepreneurs to protect our confidence. Okay, some things to, to ask yourself is, who are you being? Are you being an owner, or are you being a salesperson or an installer in your business? Are you a fireman in your business? You can't grow a business being a fireman, by the way. You can't really grow a business by being a salesperson. Either. That's a full-time job in and of itself. You need a process for that. You can't really grow a business being an installer. If you're out installing roofs, windows, siding, bathroom, whatever it is, how are you— that's a full-time job. How are you going to grow your business? How are you going to create processes? How are you going to develop people? Okay, so you got to ask yourself, what are you doing every day? Are you being reactive or are you being proactive? Now is the time to be proactive as much as possible, now more than ever. Okay, are you in the business? Are you working on in the business activities or on the business activities? And does what you are doing give you leverage? Is that activity a multiplier? These are some things you got to ask yourself. Okay. I'll get to Q&A in just a minute. All right, so back to this slide, which was there at the beginning. By the way, if you don't have a copy of the 7 Secrets book, we have copies. We still have copies. I bought a whole bunch of copies, and I'm happy to send you one for free. Just pay shipping and handling. All right, so if you want a copy, you don't have a copy, go to thewealthycontractor.com. Com. Okay, so now's an opportunity for you to create a new vision for your company, recommit to, to yourself, to being the best you can be, work on personal development, work on leadership. And remember, throughout all this, you have a choice. You can either be a victor or you can be a victim. Okay, um, one of the things that I do want to do is I would like to offer everybody— so, yes, the book is also available on Kindle. Thank you, Max. You can, you can go to Amazon also and get the book. You just have to pay full price for it over there, and I make like 8 cents, so it's awesome. Go, go have at it. I just want you to have a copy of the book. Book. So as a lot of you know, G4 Marketing Group, we're really all about relationship marketing. And as I've said before, your customers, you need them now more than ever. If you're interested in learning more, we'd love to talk with you. If this is something you've thought about, let us know. I'm going to launch a poll here. And if you can just respond to that poll, I'm going to leave it up for a minute or two. One of the things that we're doing this month is we are doing a special offer. So if you meet with us, you like what you see and what you hear— by the way, when you meet with, with one of our, our, our people, with Pete or with Dustin, They're going to walk you through step by step exactly how to do this whole thing. Okay, I'm going to show you exactly how to do it. We're going to give you an exact price of if you want us to do it. But ultimately, at the end, if you wanted to, you could just take all the information we give you and you can just go do it yourself. I mean, we're happy to share the information with you. We're not for, for everybody. But I'd love to give and share with you all of the information. So go ahead, um, go in the poll. Um, I got a couple more, more things for you here at the end, and then we've got, um— I'm sorry, I am— oh, Jeff Hager, dude, this presentation should be given to so many of small businesses that are out there. The biggest issue I am sure of You were talking to the choir. Oh, the ones that did not attend are the ones that needed to hear this. Awesome. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. There's another guy who's out there in Ohio working, not, not letting this, this stop. I'm sure business is maybe not exactly what it was, but it's probably, probably still doing probably still doing great. He's still communicating with his customers, sent out thousands of newsletters to his customers that we just sent out, I think a week ago or, or 2 weeks ago. Um, so, um, on this poll, we're only at 30%. Come on, people, you could say no, it's okay. Just answer the, the, the, the thing. Trent Hicks: I've heard Brian 5 times, 2 in person, cool, and 3 online, and learned something new every single time. Thank you, Trent. I'm— that makes me happy. All right, so any other— any questions we have? I'm going to leave this up for a little bit more, just waiting on you guys to Complete the poll. Okay, more and more of you have— are answering the poll. Overload of useful information. Can all those customers are responding to those emails and saying thanks for the positive ongoing— oh, that's awesome. So one of the things that we're doing for our clients, Jeff being one of them, is that we are— we suspended all of our regular communication streams to our clients. And here's, here's, you know, just a tip for all of you is we've suspended all of our regular communication streams to our, to our, uh, to the customers, and we've replaced them with COVID-related stuff. So like what to do with the kids while you're stuck at home, some sanitizing information. What we want to do is we want to keep our clients relevant with their customers. And, um, Jeff said, and those customers are responding to the emails saying thanks for the positive ongoing communication. See, those are the people that we're going to need to rely on to grow our business. Um, I love— I'm sorry, but the chat sometimes is just great. Patrick, my buddy from Pond Roofing, I said no to the poll, but you know I love you. I'm getting positive feedback on those emails too. Well, you, you should say no. You're already a client of ours and a damn great one as, as well. All right, I'm gonna shut this poll down. Thank you all for responding to the poll. I'm going to close that out. By the way, also, if you, if you do want to take advantage of a strategy session and you want this whole, the whole framework graphic, just let Pete know when you meet with him. And I'll make sure and get the full graphic out to you. I didn't go over all every little piece of this, but I'm happy to do that. I'm happy to get this out to everybody. All right, so questions? Anybody got questions? I can hang out for— I know we went a little bit over. I hope this was valuable. For you guys. We are, you know, we, you know, when you look at that time, money, and impact, those 3 big things, one of the, for me, so, you know, time has always been critically important for me. Money, of course, is, is huge on my list. Chris Eland's here. Man, Chris, it's been a while. Hope all is good. I can't get you the full presentation, Chris, but I'm happy to get you the replay. Gwen, I don't know. That would be great if— actually, I'm going to ask Valerie about that. Sorry, I'm answering questions in the chat. Um, so, you know, impact is, is some of what I get to do here through The Wealthy Contract. I'm very fortunate that in my business, um, I have— I'm surrounded by really great people. Um, we have good margins, and I— it allows me the freedom to be able to pursue the ability to give back to the industry, to share some of the things that I've learned, to share some of the things that really, that really impacted me both negatively, so hopefully other people don't make the same mistakes, and also positively. You know, I've been at this for 30 years on my own. And so, um, I learned a couple things about being in business, and, um, and, um, and I want to share those things with the hope that it helps some of you again not make some of the same mistakes and maybe shortcut your way to success. Um, and that's really where my— where the impact piece comes out for me. Um, 45 years for us. Oh, Trent Hicks, I know who you are. Trent Hicks, where were you 40 years ago to help not make all the— these mistakes? Dude, I was making them. Well, 30 years ago, I was making them. Yeah, we've all made a bunch. And if we can share some of them, to me, if we can share, you know, I always say in the podcast, success leaves clues, right? Success leaves clues. So look for the clues. Look for, you know, who are the people that have done things right and what behavior, what actions did they take, and how do we model those actions? How do we not do the things that, that people said, or that those mistakes that we made, how can we share those mistakes with others so that they don't make those same mistakes. Look, I'm all about, um, um, abundance. Like, there's more than enough for all of us. So by my sharing with you what we do for our clients, um, what some of our other clients are doing, even with them, it's like they know that there's more than enough leads for all of us. There's more than enough sales. There's more than enough money. There's more than enough customers. There's more than enough opportunity for all of us to thrive. And so the more we can help each other, the more I think we elevate the, the industry as a whole. And so, you know, thanks for letting me go off on that little tangent, but, um, that's really, you know, kind of what this is, what this is all about. So, um, I've answered a couple of the questions just directly one-on-one with people. Um, if you, if you need help with anything, if you want to be introduced to anybody, reach out to me. I'm happy to help in any way that I, that I can. Cool. All right. So if that is it, we will make sure we'll clean this up, get out the replay for everybody if you want to go through it again. The questions are important. It's time now to really start to think about what are the things that we can do, we should be doing right now for our business, but also what are the things that we need to put into place in order for us to have a big rebound. All right? And that's the goal for all of us is to have a big rebound. If you've taken a hit in income, we have, but I'm, I'm looking at a really big rebound and a big recovery. Right? And I, and I hope the same for you. So I hope this has been of value to you. I'm here if you need anything. Those of you that said that you were interested in learning more about G4, Pete or Dustin will reach out to you today or tomorrow and we'll provide you with any information that you need. We'll show you exactly how we do it. Again, you know, we'll show you exactly what we do, how we do it. And you could decide from there. Do you want to do— do you want to do it yourself? Or do you want to have somebody else do it for you? And if we could do that, that would be awesome. If not, that's fine too. Totally no obligation. All right. You're welcome. I'm getting some thank yous. Definitely owe you lunch. Yeah. Where are we going? It is lunchtime, actually. So I'm actually going to head out. I'm going to wear my— I'm told now there's signs in the, in the doors that when you walk into a place that you have to wear your mask. I keep my mask in my pocket so I could wear it if I need to. All right, everybody. Oh, you're welcome, everybody. You're welcome. Anything I can do to help, reach out to me. I'm here and I am anxious to help. All right. No more questions. All right, y'all. Have a great day. Have a great rest of the month. Hope you have a huge rebound. Again, let me know how I can help. I'm out.