Decisions Makes Stuff Happen!

Foreign. Hey, everybody, it's Jim Johnson here, your host at Contractor Radio and head coach at Contractor Coach Pro, where we help contractors get control of their business so they can grow their business and achieve that personal and financial freedom they were chasing when they started their business. And I'm really excited about our guest. You know, each time I bring a guest on, I get to talk to him a little bit before we get started. And this guy has followed that roadmap of going out and becoming an entrepreneur and understanding that he needed to get control. And once he was able to get control of his business and lead that business, well, that business grew and it grew really fast. And I can't wait to get to that story. And our guest today, he was brought to us by one of our coaches, Chuck Toky, our sales guru. And he's like, you gotta talk to this guy. You gotta share this guy's story with everybody else. Because it's a story that I think a lot of us get into. I think it's this story of we've got some experience from an installation side of things and we're good at it. And we start to realize we can't do that forever. Whether that's walk on a roof or climb a ladder or swing a hammer. And we start thinking about, hey, this is the thing. I know I'm going to go open a business. What does it take from there to actually make that thing successful when in an industry where 70 to 80% go out of business in the first three years? Well, our guest has a bit of a roadmap he's going to share with us today some pretty cool topics that we're going to talk about. But before we do that, got to keep the lights on. So we'll go ahead and listen to a message from one of our favorite sponsors. Get the referral.

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That was get the referral. And if you are having a problem getting more referrals, turning those referrals into jobs, engaging with those referrals and rewarding the referrer, get the Referral might just be the choice. In the show notes. Down below you'll find a link. You can click that link, get you a contractor coach pro discount and check them out. It's worth doing a demo with them for sure. Now, our guest is coming on today, but before I bring him on, I gotta bring everybody up to date on a little bit of something. If they listen to our podcast on a consistent basis, they may remember. About three months ago, I got tricked into doing 75 hard. And if you don't know what 75 hard is, that is a program or a challenge for 75 days to work out twice a day, 45 minutes each time at least three hours apart from each other. One of them has to be outside regardless of the temperature or or conditions or rain or lightning or tornadoes. You gotta do it. And then you also have to read 10 pages of a nonfiction book. You have to drink a gallon of water. You have to no alcohol. You have to be on a diet that's clean for 75 days. And you gotta take a progress pick each day. Well, Today is day 75 and I did it. All I gotta do is finish today. I got one more workout. I gotta drink my water, read my book. Actually, book reading is done for the day and just proves that if you have enough of a want to on something that you want to get ahead of things, that discipline is there, that mental toughness is there. And that's what I learned from it more than anything else was the mental toughness aspect of doing something I don't really want to do and figuring out how to work that out in my mind so I'm not listening to that little negative voice going, oh, man, you don't have to do this for anybody else. You don't have to get up today. You don't have to do that work. You've made a lot of improvement. Why do you have to finish? All those things are being set every second and you're like, nope, I gotta finish, I gotta get done. And so today's that day. I want to thank Jonathan Ruza, the physical therapist we had on that challenged me to it. I'm gonna call him out a little bit too, because he didn't finish. But 75 hard is complete, and I've decided I'm gonna do something a little bit different from everybody else. I haven't seen anybody do this before. I'm going 100 hard. So 100 days of keeping it up. And then from there, we'll have some other surprises for you in the future. Enough about Me. And that if you want to reach out to me about it, feel free to message me. We want to talk to our guy today, and our guy is John o'. Leary. He is the founder, creator, the all being of o', Leary, but also the all nothing of o' Leary as he described himself. That is a guy that we definitely want to talk to today and see how he went from being an installer to being a fairly successful contractor. John, welcome aboard, man. Glad to have you.

Thanks, Jim. Appreciate you having me on today.

Yeah, and sorry to put the whole 75 hard thing, but there's been a few people, there's like two or three that are keeping up with it, so I figured I'd share with them. Like, if they watch that other podcast, they're kind of maybe wondering, like, whatever happened with that. Well, today's the day, right? Right. It's odd that it's actually on podcast day, so kind of cool to see that come to a finish, kind of. So, John, tell us a little bit of, like, how you kind of got started and how you got to where you are today.

Well, I came from a carpentry background. My dad was a carpenter out of Korean War. He was a builder for a lot of years. And then as the building business went down, he went into remodeling. And I was about 10 years old. Things weren't good, so my mom had to go back to work, so I got to go to the job site. And, you know, I. I learned the trade through throughout, you know, my younger years into. Into high school. In the day of my graduation, high school, I registered my business, you know, and started installing. Did a lot of new construction, vinyl siding, did, uh, did some remodeling. Always kept my hand in the remodeling. So that's kind of how I got the start with it all.

So straight from high school, you started a business. Like, did you get any advice on that? Did you have something that helped you walk through, like, and what'd you create? Did you create an llc? Did you create a sole proprietorship? What'd you do?

Sole proprietorship. And back in the day, you went down to the county, you filled out the form, and you were in business. You had your tax ID number, you mailed it in and you got it back, and you started paying taxes like an adult, you know, so. So, yeah, it was. It was not a lot of advice back then. It was just that I didn't want to work as an employee for anybody, you know, or even for my own father. I wanted to be A subcontractor for him. So I had to have my own stuff.

So you knew that at a pretty early age. I wouldn't say that's the route for most people. Most people would go, I'm going to graduate college. I'm going to go one of two ways. I'm going to go secondary education, or what do you call it? Higher education, and. Or I'm going to go into the, you know, the workforce. But you said, hey, I'm going to start a business. Was that because of everything you had learned before? Like, you felt like you could do that or what drove that?

It kind of the easier path, because school wasn't for me. Barely made it, you know, to graduation. In high school, work release. I was making more money my senior year than the principal of the school was making, you know, and I was installing, so. So I knew there was money as an installer, and it really wasn't a. I don't know if I had much of a choice because I would have never qualified to go to a college as far as grades go and stuff like that. But I had the use of my hands. I could use my hands, and I was good at it.

So what were you installing? Roofing, siding. What were you doing?

I was in the transition of aluminum siding to vinyl siding in the late 70s into the 80s. High school graduation. 84. So I saw that transition of aluminum into vinyl, and then we were roofing. We were doing roofing back then, too.

So 2. Those are physically demanding jobs, roofing, especially. But siding, man, you're up on ladders, you got the plank in between jacks and all the other stuff that you got to set up. And I would call them both pretty physically demanding. So you did that for how long? How long were you doing?

35. Yeah, 35 years.

Now. Were you constantly installing or were you ever in, like, a foreman position? Or did you have more than one crew? Like, how'd that look in the.

In the heyday of the new construction in the 90s, I had like, three crews, but I was always on one of the crews. As an installer, I was the fastest guy. You don't take your best guy and make him a. Make him a manager, you know, so. So, yeah, I. I pretty much six, seven days a week. That's what I knew because we were brought up that if you had work, you did work. You didn't, you know, if there was work to do, you went and did it.

So, yeah, I was brought up that way, too. It's still in my blood. Like, if there's work to be done, and just go and get it done.

Right.

Whether you. Whether it's what you want to do or not is not really all that important.

Right.

And that's a different generation. I really think that's a generational thing. And maybe we can talk about that a little bit later in this. Like, are you seeing the same things I'm seeing along those lines? But let's go ahead and go down the road. So how long did you. Were you an installer? Subcontractor.

So I installed from 1984 till 2017. I took three years off. I had a couple heart surgeries. And 2008, I came back at it November 2008. So just a little bit of a hiatus. I worked for a builder as a efficiency manager. So by still in the trade and 2000 2017, I was. My body was about done. I was. I was cooked knees back, you know, there wasn't much left.

And so you decided to do something about it. What'd you do?

Well, there was a crossroads and. And I had. I had joked with a friend of mine, owns a car dealership. I said, hey, I come sell cars for you. You know, I'd probably be pretty good at it. And. And. And then I. I went to a seminar, GAF seminar. And it was this guy there, Chris Mooney. He knows. I use. Say his name. He's a corporate trainer for gaf. And he's like, telling us about the value of. Of how valuable we are as master elite and certified, you know, certified contractors, whether it be, you know, any brand. But he was talking about gaf, obviously. And, you know, he. He got me to go home and raise my prices a hundred dollars a square that week. And. And then take money. I never took money. People give me a handshake and a bag of money, you know, so. So we left his seminar. I raised my prices $100 a square, and I sold three jobs that Saturday. And I started using subcruise more. I had used them in the past, and then I was. So what I was doing then is I was running the jobs. So I was selling the jobs, running the jobs, collecting the money, you know, dump trailers, permits, doing all that stuff. But I wasn't physically installing.

So that's how I see most people get started. They kind of walk this path of either they're an installer or they're a great salesperson, one of the two. And they go, hey, I have this opportunity that I can actually do this as a business, not do the physical labor of it. Or actually be the owner of it. And so they step out and they start kind of running it more like a business, but not necessarily a business just yet because they're still heavily involved. They're the key player. They are the, they're the sales manager, they're the production manager, they're the finance manager, they're the operation. They're all of it. Right. They got all these hats on there. Did you feel like that as you were like moving from subcontractor to full contractor?

It was, it was an interesting transition because the guys that were sub and I had worked with, you know, I literally climbed off the roof one day and told the main guy, I'm not coming back tomorrow. You know, I gotta, I gotta do something different. I hurt too much. So my transition was, I've been told, kind of like a survivalist. As an installer, you know, you're, you're, as an installer owner, you always have to get that next job. So you can eat as an ins, as a salesperson, entrepreneur. You're, oh, I gotta sell more, I gotta sell more, you know, and the money will come. So, so that transition, I, you know, never easy, but I had the vat. I was selling the value. I already had my price up. So I wasn't the guy that was going in, trying to get these jobs at the low ball number just to work.

Right, by raising the hundred dollars that created that margin for you. Right. Like, right, I'm gonna get something out of this if I go sell it. So that went on for how long?

That just not very long because right after that I went to New Orleans and there was this guy, Chuck Toki, I think, you know, he, he was doing a, he was doing a seminar, 90 minute seminar at Ire at the Roofing expo. And my wife, we wanted to, to go to the same seminars, but she wanted to see a guy in the other room who we have a lot of respect for. And I didn't know Chuck, but I wanted to, I just wanted, I like the, the description of his seminar. So when a seminar was over, my wife comes to the, to the, you know, looking all over for me, because usually seminars over, I'm out the door. First guy out the door, where's the coffee, where's the donuts? You know, and so I'm still sitting in a room. I'm the last guy in the room. She comes in, she's, everything all right? I said, yeah, we got to hire this guy. So he offered a one hour free consultation. And, and about a week after the show. I called them up. We. I talked to him, and. And he's. You know, he says, you got to get a salesperson. You got to get the sales part of it off of your plate so you can concentrate on the install and the other side. So we made arrangements. I paid him. He came out, and it was funny because I never used an iPad presentation. I didn't even own an iPad. He came out, he was training my first sales guy, and. And he goes, well, you need iPads, you know, he said, you need some iPads or whatever. And I'm like, oh, okay. So that. That afternoon, we literally went and bought two iPads and all the stuff we needed. And when he was showing me the first presentation, I was like, nobody's gonna buy this crap. Who's gonna believe this stuff? But I promised my wife that. That if. If I hired this guy, I would do everything that he told me to do. Because it was. You know, Chuck knows what he's doing, and he's a good guy, and he's worth what he asks for his services, no doubt. But it was a lot of money to me. I was an installer. I had to drive nails to make that money. So it seemed like it was a lot of money to me. But the value of what he. What he gave me was. Was priceless, you know, so. So I got this iPad, and I go out to my first appointment. I didn't know who the people were, and I'm showing them the presentation, and it's like the first time they saw Star Wars. And I'm like, jesus, they like this stuff, you know? So here we are today with five salespeople, a custom engage presentation. And my guys are highly skilled and trained on it, you know, because it works.

That is so awesome. Like, to hear that story, because I'm going to guess as an installer, you weren't like, Mr. Technology and Things like that.

Not at all, you know, so. So the funny thing was, we get these iPads, and he's showing us how you write your contracts on them. And I'm here for three hours trying to figure out how to get the pen to work. And all you got to do is plug it in, and it asks you if you want to pair the pen. But I charged it from the wall, so I didn't know. And so he's at the hotel, and I'm calling him. I'm like. I'm like, hey, can you tell me how to get this pen to work? Because we wanted to practice before the next day, so. So, yeah, the technology and stuff, you know, I'd use the computer and a cell phone but nothing like, you know, I, I just told somebody today I was in the pilot program for Eagle View and, and e360 Hover. I was one of the first 40 users of hovering when it came out e360. So I've seen this evolution of stuff, you know, what was a CRM? He asked me if we had a CRM. I literally hired job progress that night.

It's amazing. It's amazing the value that technology. Funny story about Eagle View. I saw the original press release on that and I immediately bought a plane ticket that day and flew to Seattle and walked in their door that same day. So I saw it first thing in the morning. I was on a plane by noon, I was in Seattle by afternoon. I beat it in the door before 5 o' clock and I said, hey, I got this cool piece of software that's really neat. I want what you do in that. Come in here and make that much easier. And they agreed. And that was kind of springboard of me working in the, in the technology aspect of things. It's cool that you saw like, you've seen that growth. It's amazing like how technology has changed in the last really 10 years or so. Like 2009 was kind of when things started to pick up a little bit. So it's 13 years now. Wow, 13 years. Crazy. I remember going into people's offices about a CRM and saying hey, yeah, everything's going to be on the cloud. No it ain't. What cloud? And who's got access to my stuff? And they went on certain. Right, right. But now everything like everything we do is on.

Yeah, right.

So before we hopped on we were talking about a couple of things and you, you were talking about how you wore a lot of hats. It was really in those first couple years you kind of gave me the number like give those numbers again like the growth pat for O' Leary Roofing.

So 2017, my last year installing was around 600000 as an installer. 2018 we'll call it my first growth year was, was, was around 800,000. Then we went to 1.7 in 1920 we did 3.2, 21, we did 5.8 million.

Those are, those are almost double ups all the way through.

Right. But the, the key to it is, is very important Jim, that people understand a 10 million dollar business really doesn't mean a lot. It's that net, it's that net profit that means something. So my 5 million dollar business at 20 net is the same business as the 10 million million dollar business with half the net with 10% net. So, so the thing is, is you don't have to have a 10 million dollar business to make money and you do half the work.

Yeah, we have a little almost tagline for that. It's not about what you generate, it's about what you make. Right. So I'd rather make more money doing jobs is really the idea behind the whole process. And you know, we get so many companies, you know, they come to us and they're like, hey, we want to talk to you about coaching. We're like, hey, what's the dream? What are you trying to accomplish? I want to be, you know, a $10 million company or I want to be a 30 or I want to be 50 or 100. I'm like, well how much do you plan on making out of that? That's, that's the key to all this. What's the actual goal? What are we trying to accomplish from a financial standpoint? Because I've seen plenty of 10 million, 20 million, $30 million companies that don't make anything right. So we've got, that's the bigger thing that you need to consider. And so how did you figure that out? I went like that part of like, hey, I want to be profitable.

Along the way that was, that's funny because we, we met a guy that has a program and, and he teaches all of the aspects of, you know, making profit with a profit model. How many salesmen, your closing rate, your, you know, nsli to make sure that you're not wasting your leads, the, you know, your overhead, your cost of goods sold and putting that all together so that you know how much you're going to make at the end of the year starting January 1st. Now, right now I know how much I'm going to make this year. December 31st. As long as we follow the program. We met our first quarter numbers and, but I know where I'm going to be at at the end of the year where we're, we're slated for seven and a half.

That's predictable because of the number of people that you've plugged into knowing what you're going to be charging.

Okay, Average ticket price, closing rate, how many leads we're going to run. And amazingly enough, we, we cut our salesman back from three appointments a day to two because it was, it was rough for them. They knew it was rough, we knew it was rough. But so we ran about, I'm going to guess. This is a guess. 30% less leads than we had projected. The closing rate went up with less leads.

Yeah, you feel like. You feel like you need to get them closed, right?

They're happier. No, they're happier. They're happy running to a day, you know.

So how important is that happiness of your salespeople?

It's very important because they are the key to the. To the success. We, when we're training them, you know, their success is the company's success. There's no two ways about it. If you don't have a good sales system in place, it doesn't matter who.

You are or how good you are.

You have to have a sales system in place. You have to be able to duplicate it every time you hire somebody, and it has to be the same throughout. And that's where an advantage of working with a guy like Chuck, that he trains everybody exactly the same on the same presentation, the same way, with the same words. They do get into having their own little, you know, their own little way of coming across, but we make sure that they stick to the bones of it, you know?

Well, there's a reason we brought Chuck onto the team and why we're doing this top rep thing. Obviously, a lot of skill, a lot of experience. We, when we met, we're like, whoa, you're a lot like me, and I'm a lot like you. We have a little bit of a different vibe to us, but very similar in our approaches. We kind of added a couple of things that he hadn't seen. He brought a couple of things we hadn't seen. We built this amazing sales training system. It's been very awesome. And watching him deliver, that is like watching somebody do artwork. Right.

Well, he's selling the snow to the Eskimos, you know.

Yeah. And he's great at it. And what's been really cool to watch with Chuck over the last. I don't know, we've been working together for, wow, nine months or so going on a year maybe.

Right.

And watching him start to click to that person on the other side of the table, we're serving them, we're helping them make a solution. And understanding the responsibility of what we have is if I don't get them to be my customer, somebody else out there is going to. And are they as good as we are? Because if they're not, we do a disservice. Do you agree with that?

I do. And the thing is, is the hardcore one call close, in my opinion, and I don't know if you consider me an expert, I think it's going away. I think that hardcore, you know, the salesman doesn't leave until they kick him out of the house or he gets a yes. I think that that's going away a little bit. And we try for it, but if it doesn't happen, we're okay. Yeah, we'll rehash, follow up. We'll do what we have to.

Well, there's this cool thing out there, it's called Facebook. And there's this other thing out there called Google. And if you're the guy that pins people up against the wall until they tell you to leave, your reviews are not going to go too well. And so there's, I think there's this almost nice balance going now where we actually have to go out there and be a problem solver. We actually have to go out there and give a great presentation. We actually have to deliver on that like, hey, this is what we're selling. And our thing is better than anybody else's. And when we go to deliver it, we actually do, which is unheard of. There's lots of great guys out there closing on Pie in the Sky. This thing's gonna be amazing. And it's not so amazing, right? And before this ability to really review and measure people that way, they didn't really care. Now you have to, it's not an option anymore. The bar got raised is the best way for me to put it. Would you agree with that?

Yep. 2010, I said to somebody that was helping me out with my stuff, I said, listen, I want to, I got to be on the first page of Google because that's, that's the thing, you know, and, and she helped us and we got going and now we have a, a full blown web company helping us that does our website and stuff. But they tell me it's not ordinary, but we have 325 star Google reviews. We are a five star company. But when people call that first thing, when we say, you know, who can we thank for you calling today? They, they always say, we saw the reviews.

I want to, I want to take a pause right there because I knew we were going to get to this. Somehow or another, we were going to get to this because this is a little bit of a story that Chuck told me and you said something that really stuck out to me. I want, I want everybody to like hear it. But I got to play a commercial first. Real quick. We'll come right back. You cool with that?

I'm cool.

All right, awesome. Let me Let me get that in because we can't, can't forget about our sponsors. We love them, they're great and they do a great job for us. So we'll get them going here.

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Engage with your client Automates. A few things for you to make that experience a little bit better for the client. So guys, if you're listening and you're wanting to get reviews like John has here, five star reviews. Signpost might be a good choice for you. John. I, if I heard you correctly, I went, I want to like drive this home. You said you were a five star contractor on Google. Is that accurate?

Yeah, we actually, you know, we, we actually got a four star once and, and we, we deserved it, Jim. We did something and we deserved it and we should have got a one star, you know, and we felt bad. There was nothing we could do. But the customer was okay with us. He wasn't mad at us. We made good on everything. He had a good roof. And then about two, three months later, a big windstorm came in a, and a tree fell through one of his skylights that we had put in. And he asked us to come back and, and, and fix that skylight in the middle of this storm. And I did. And I asked him, I'm like, you know, hey, you know that four star you left me? Did we deliver five star service today for you? So we earned it. I earned a five star.

You know, so most people aren't really all that upset about a four star. We did pretty good at least. We at least kind of like if it gets below that, we have concerns. But yeah, what stuck out like. And it was like somebody hit my toe with a hammer.

It was, it was, we lost sleep over it and it was our fault. An installer had taken a skylight out and what looked like a pile of snow on the side of the driveway, there was actually a stone wall and he threw the skylight down in it and it exploded in the guy's yard. So there's these little tiny pieces of glass we Vacuumed his whole yard with shop facts. But we still couldn't, you know, we messed up. We messed up and it'll never happen again.

But I don't think people, I don't think people get five star. They're like 4.8, 4.7, 4.9. Yeah. 4.6, 4.4. Like for me, if I'm looking at. It's one of the first things I do if I'm looking to get something done. I go look at the reviews like and I look at all of them. I look at the five stars and I look at the one stars to see, you know, what's going on there. But I have a lot more experience than most people in that because it's what we teach, what we do about having a great business. Nobody would be able to find a one star review about you. Right.

Not, not for. Not for. We actually worked for. We do have a couple people were disappointed because we wouldn't take their job and they were mad because they didn't get in o' Leary group, you know.

That I can live with.

And, and we understand that that's, that's just the way it is. But when your house is full of mold and you want us to put two fans in and walk away. No, we're not doing it because what are you going to do? Say the fans caused the mold later and then we're up for a big lawsuit.

Yeah.

So that was one of the ones we had. There's another one from way back but. And we're not perfect, Jim. We make mistakes. We got some red tickets sitting on the desk down there.

But it sounds like you set the expectations correctly. Something does go wrong, we're going to be on top of it. Is that fair to guess?

We do. Yeah, we do stay on top of it.

Yeah. How bad does it bother you if you get a four or three or a two or one?

So I'm in the mastermind meeting and I announced everybody that we feel held hostage to it. And the group all picked up their phone at the same time and said we're going to fix that right now. In other words, they were going to go give us some two and three star reviews. They talked us off the ledge. If I get an unfounded five star review, we'll answer to it. If I get, you know, if it's a two star some, I will answer to it. If it's unfounded on the reviews, if I get a founded one star review, there's going to be hell to pay because our, the customer experience that we provide to everybody in the processes that we've written down and taken, you know, a couple years to make sure that we're, we're giving these people these processes to follow. If they don't follow it, we're gonna, that's when you're gonna get the, the negative. And our crews are the best. If I could find better guys, I would replace them. I pay them, I pay them well. The expectation is if they make a mistake, I'll cancel their install the next day and I'll have five guys go back for a 15 minute repair and they lose the day. They know that because, because we want it, we want it done right.

You know, well, you know how important that is for the next job and for the word of mouth and especially like it's super important. You said earlier the reason a lot of people went with you is because of the reviews. First off, I just thought that was cool. Like I, I don't think anybody gets that wired up over it. I'm one of those people, man. If I get a one star, I'm like, what is going. And, and it has happened to us too.

You can't sleep at night. I mean you're, you're like, what could I have done? And you know, so this guy or that guy could have done this better. They could have done that better, you know, and then it comes all the way down to a crew labor or something really ridiculous, you know, and, and you know that it was completely unavoidable. And you know, and it's like my.

It'S my key metric. It really is. My number one key metric is those reviews. That's somebody saying, hey, we did them right. And whenever we, if we get one that's below a five, I'm like, where did we drop the ball?

Exactly.

And they're going to get a call from me personally now. The only time we haven't gotten a five star review has been a one star, much like you. And that's because it was somebody working for one of our clients, right. That we found something nefarious going on. Right. We got fired over it and then they went and blew us up with a one star review. Just answer it with you answer it smartly and things go pretty well. It's funny, they just kind of disappear after a time because the person doesn't want to look like a dumb, dumb.

I have a competitor just put a billboard 100 yards from my parking lot on a major highway and he has 2.7 re 5, you know, star reviews on Google and I. And I said, I wish they all would put billboards up right next to our building. And that's because when you go in the house, what. What's the first thing that we have in our tool belt? You know, it's his reviews. Who do you want to hire? You know, 2.7 or a 5.

Yeah. If you're competing against somebody, it's not all that hard to say, hey, here's ours. It's right here on Engage. Click that and.

Yeah, yeah.

See what it is. Now, who else are you considering? Let's take a look at those.

Yeah.

And what kind of experience do you want? So what's. What was cool about this is you were an installer, right. You're working on the job, swinging a hammer, doing that. Then you kind of grew into what I would call a full fledged contractor, but you're still doing a lot of the work as far as like sales. And when we first get in, it's like, I'm sales manager, I'm production manager. I am, you know, a manager of all things, and it ends up owning us. Did you ever feel like that? Like the business kind of, you were at a point where you were working a bunch of hours just to do all that, or did you get a hold of it before that got hold of you?

Has consumed us. My wife as well, she was in a natural organic food business and a few years back says, oh, I'll help you with your business. You know, now she's looking to hire an office manager so that she can, you know, get some more time out of the office. But it does consume you. And it's. It's been, it's been a long road, but I'm starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. And it's not actually the train coming the other way now.

Right. You, like Chuck said, you need to get a sales guy. So I got a sales guy. I got that kind of off of me. And so what, what did that look like over time? You got sales off of you first because. And my assumption, you tell me if I'm wrong, sounds like you were pretty good at sales yourself, but you're better at the installation side.

Well, I had to get out of production as well. So I sales, the sales was first, and then production manager was second. And introducing him to the crews that I had worked with for years, that was a challenge. But now we're, you know, now it's working really well. So then with. To get out, I was a sales manager up until this past year, and we brought A sales coordinator from our office and. And promoted her to sales manager. And here's another perfect example of Chuck trained her as a sales manager.

Totally different skill set.

So he could. So that she could do the job properly and not compete with the guys, you know. So she manages the five salespeople. So I'm out. I'm not even allowed to go to the sales meetings anymore.

How's that? How does that grab you?

Well, it's okay because I've been trying to find ways to, you know, cut my hours back to, you know, 40 hours a week, you know.

Yeah. Work a real job. Right.

And so I. This just recently, we're about two months in, I hired an operations manager and integrator, and he took over my office, and I literally packed my stuff up in a cardboard box and brought it home. So I have a home office and I go. I work at the conference table and I go down when I'm needed, you know, if there's a meeting or. And, you know, something like that.

So it's. It's this whole idea of, you know, we first started business, there's a lot of sacrifice. We're working in it, and we start to get a lot of pain. Identifying what pain to get rid of first, I think that's always the challenge. And we work with our contractors through a lot of that. There's a lot of fear, too. Right. Hey, I'm going to go put this sales guy out there. Is he going to do what I do and is he going to do it as well? I'm going to put the sales manager in place. Are they going to be as good? Like, how did you get through any of those fears or did you have any.

Well, you know, nobody could ever sell a roof for me. Ask Chuck. I told him there was. Nobody's ever going to be able to sell a roof for me. And. And I learned how to train these guys. All five of my guys did not come from the industry.

How important do you think that is?

I. I don't think it matters. I think it's worse sometimes because they'll come with bad habits. So, you know, it's. Having the right. Got the right people in the right seats is really important. And I. I've hired guys to train them for sales. In about two weeks in, it told them that this is. This isn't for you. You have to go. But you have to be able to make those decisions. You got to make the decisions and be okay with them and stick with them, and you can't. If you take A lot of time to analyze things. It's okay to analyze things, but if you take a lot of time to analyze things, you're burning daylight. You gotta, you gotta make the decisions of who to be in what seats, and if it's not working out, do everything you can to coach them to it. But if they're not coachable, you have to move on.

Yeah, let's talk about those decisions, because that's something we talked about before we hopped on. Like, you're not scared to make a decision.

No. And I, and, and I've been told by my wife especially that I'll make a decision, and if it goes bad, I just make another decision to fix it. You know, it's, it's faster to do that than it is to sit there and, and second guess yourself and analyze that and. You talked about fear a minute ago. My fear of failure is so high that I, it's, it's really, it's debilitating sometimes. That's why I make decisions. Because if I'm not, if I'm just sitting there, nothing's going to happen.

Right.

If you start making those decisions, stuff starts happening, and even if it goes a little bit crooked or something, you can make another decision to get it on a straight line. But you're. If you don't make a decision to start moving forward, you're just, you're. You're gonna sit there stagnant.

I wrote that down as the title of this podcast, how to Make Stuff Start Happening. And this idea of making decisions, it tends to be something that a lot of people really struggle with. Some of us are a bit more natural at it, and we're like, hey, I'm gonna run with this and see how it goes. Right? And usually that decision is one step closer to where you want to be. It may not be perfect, but then the next decision is a little better. I found that if I'm indecisive, I get a bit of a lack of trust in my people too. And even if I make a bad decision, like, hey, we're gonna do this, and that thing doesn't go well, as long as I own it, they're good with it, right? Always it's when I try to make excuses or I try to play it off on somebody else or any of that, kind of like, hey, now I really lost trust. Do you agree with that?

Yeah, I. Once in a while I'll hit about. I'll hit a doozy, you know, and, and rate in a level 10 meeting, whatever I have to. I'LL own up to it, you know, but. But they know usually by the time I own up to it, it's already going in the right direction because I don't. I don't take a lot of time to think about this stuff. And, you know, and my experience in the business, I don't. I don't know everything there is to know about the numbers and the p. L. And the balance sheet. I'm learning that stuff now. But as far as the rest of it goes, making sure the business is moving forward to take care of everybody. You know, when I was an installer, I had to feed me and my family and maybe two laborers. Now I got 12 people down there, and, and the crews. So does that.

How do you carry that responsibility?

I don't worry about it a lot because I know who we are, I know how successful we are. And. And everybody in my company knows that they're not to worry until I worry. And. And I will tell them. And I've never had to tell them, you know, if the phone doesn't ring for a week when it's cold, I'm walking around like it's, you know, 70 degrees and sunny, and they're like, oh, my God, the phone's not ringing. Nobody's calling, and we don't have any leads. And I know the phone's gonna ring because my experience is as soon as it warms up, it'll ring.

The process works.

Exactly. Exactly. I'm like, get the scrabble board out. Let's go to conference room.

Well, John, I can't wait to meet you one of these days.

You are. I will be in Denver with one of my sales guys. We are coming out to explore the top rep program. I know, I know. It's a great program. And when I saw there was an owner's side, there might be something for me. And continuing to learn, that's one of the things that any owner has to do, is don't ever be that smartest guy in the room.

You know, I try to be the dumbest. I try to be the dumbest guy.

Yeah.

That's there to gain the most wisdom if I can. Surround yourself with great people like that.

Two of us are flying to Denver and one of the worst markets den to fly, you know, and, and, and. And all that. And if I get one sentence in two days, I'll be a happy guy when I leave.

Well, it sounds like you're pretty intuitive on the technology side of things. Like you. You kept your ear to the ground and you're willing to actually like, hey, okay, that seems pretty good. I'm going to try that out. There's some artificial intelligence stuff out there right now on the sales side of things I think is going to trip your trigger. I can't wait for you to see it. It's I, it. I'm not the right person. But when you go through that owner's deal, you'll see like we're working through those, with those leaders and how to get the most out of your people, how to get the most performance without crushing them. That's the, there's a balance there. And so I think you'll enjoy that aspect of it. How do you know when it's off the rails some, you know, you're too long and all of a sudden there's a little. What are you looking at? What are your key things you're looking at?

You know, it. This might not sound like I'm telling the truth, but off the rails to us is when we finish a job on Monday and the green sky doesn't get run till Thursday.

Okay, so somebody didn't follow the process.

Right. But that's, that's what off the rails is. We don't, we haven't seen like a major. We, we stay on top of it. We, we have good people and if we're having trouble with a sub or we're, you know, or you know, one of the employees is having trouble, we find out what the trouble is and we, we help them. And if, and if it's just them, they, you know, our, our production coordinator. This is the third person we've had there because we haven't been able. I can do that job. I can do all that job. And we split the job from a pre install to a post install production coordinator to just help them out and ease the pain. But we're, we, you know that that position is, you know, really important before and after the job and following the process and getting the right person, the right people there and you can't be afraid to let them go if they're not. Even though you know you're going to have to either do the job or train somebody to do the job, you're still going to be better off in the end.

So this idea of things not being off the rail and you're going. They don't really get off the rail like we're on top of it.

Major.

That, that is a, what that is to me is it's a mirror image of the leader, whoever like the main person is. It's a mirror image of them. And so my assumption is, prior to even owning this business, you were pretty proactive about things. You planned things out pretty well. You were designing processes and. And this is the way we do things and educating people on that pretty well. Would that be a fair assessment?

It is. And that's why I fit the visionary on the EOS so well, because I work on the big relationships I'm looking at, you know, I'm buying. I'm buying accessories three, four months in advance.