The Power of the Pivot with Mitch Russo

Foreign. Hey everybody, it's Jim Johnson here, the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro and your host of Contractor Radio. Coming to you from a little bit of a different setup today. I've been out of town, been traveling, just got back from a large event and conference and I've got a really cool guest for you guys today. This guy has been around some of the most influential people, not in just our space, but in the world on the planet and he's helped them develop a lot of what they've done. I was fortunate enough to be on his podcast and I cannot wait to introduce him to you guys. We're going to be talking a little bit today about how to scale your business and what it takes to be an entrepreneur. This guy has extensive experience in that. But before we do, we're going to take just a second for one of our sponsors and come right back for our special guest. I'm not going to give you his name. I thought I was but then I said I pulled it back. So just a couple seconds from one of our sponsors. We'll get those bills paid and I'm excited to bring him to you.

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We've seen a huge return in our investment and I have no doubt that you will too. Alright everybody, here we are. We're back at Contractor Radio, the place where we give you guys education for strategy. We also try to be a little bit entertaining. A lot of tactics that we talk about. We're here to help you grow and expand your business and really get control of your business so you can grow your business and you can find that personal and financial freedom. We're all chasing whenever we start a business. And today we have a guy that is exceptional, exceptional at doing that. He has done this with multiple organizations. He is now doing it on his own with some software that he's doing and I was excited to get him on after being on his show. Mitch Russo, you rock star. Welcome to the show. Good to have you on board. How are things with you?

Fantastic, Jim. It's been a long time, but I'm glad we're back together.

Yeah, absolutely. Like we met through a mutual acquaintance and you mentioned you had a podcast. I was like, hey, yeah, sure, I'll be on your podcast. I got your book called Power Tribes. He's an author too, which is super cool. Power Tribes and the Invisible Organization. He's also been integral in the success of folks like Tony Robbins, Chet Holmes, Kevin Harrington working on programs with those guys. And if you guys don't know who those guys are, you're living in a hermit pit somewhere, maybe in a cave. But I think most of us have heard of at least Tony Robbins. Kevin Harrington was on Shark Tank. And Chet Holmes, literally, like one of the fathers of the coaching and training aspect of things. So author of two books. Why'd you write the books?

Well, the short answer is because when I, when I built the results break through international organization with Tony and Chet, you know, you probably know that Chet had passed away. He died of leukemia. And so we had innovated for five years in creating a completely virtual company that spanned 300 different people in eight countries. And so what we had accomplished had not at the time been accomplished many times before. And so I was encouraged to share what I know. And that was my first foray into being an author was to write the book called the Invisible Organization. And it was a hard write, I gotta tell you. It took a long time to get that book out. And when it was released, I was very happy with, received many five star reviews and people seemed to like it. And I got some calls from clients who wanted me to help them, basically help them transform their physical organization into a virtual one.

Yeah. And so I met you through the whole Power Tribes thing, the certification type programs for coaches and stuff like that. And read your book helped me a lot. We're actually working on some of those things. We actually have an event coming up June 28th and 29th where we're going to bring in a bunch of salespeople. We're going to put them through, for lack of a better term, an intense boot camp with some certification at the end. And there's different rankings, like you score better, you get to actually be top rep. And if you're part of the top 10%, you're a top rep ace. So we've applied some of those practical tactics that I learned from you. But, but you've worked with some of the, like, the highest, like most known people at doing this type of thing. And we're talking with a bunch of contractors here the home services guys, they're like, why are these two guys talking? And how does that help me? Right. And so I think there's a couple of topics that I really want to get into. I want to get into this idea of an invisible organization. I think that's something that's changing with the consumer. I also want to get into this idea of the buying process and how that might apply in the home services world. And then third, and not last for sure, is, what have you noticed with all of these great entrepreneurs that you've worked with? What have you noticed that's similar about them? And then what may have made one of them unique and why they were so similar, so successful? So let's start with the last question first. We can talk about the big three. Tony, Chet, and Kevin. What'd you notice that was similar between those three guys?

Well, you know, successful people are able to implement and are able to focus. So everybody has ideas. You know, every single individual, every man, woman, and child has had an idea. So you might say that ideas are a dime a dozen. In fact, how many times have you either yourself or been with somebody who said, you see that thing on TV? I thought of that 10 years ago, and I knew I should have done something about it. Well, somebody did, and it wasn't you. So the bottom line is that they implemented and you didn't. But here's the cool part. They probably didn't get it right the first time. So that's why I think focus is so valuable, and it's a common trait among all of the superstars that I've worked with. So what does focus mean? It really means understanding what the end goal is and working towards that, even if you stumble along the way. Now, the typical analogy is the plane that's flying from coast to coast. They say that plane is off course 89 or 96% of the time it's flying because it's constantly making course corrections. Well, entrepreneurs who don't make course corrections will crash. There's just no doubt about it. However, those who do will get to the final destination knowing that course corrections are just part of the game. And we call that, in the entrepreneurial world, we call that pivoting. So if you head down one path and it's not working, some people, you know, people who are not focused, who are really not able to double down and get really to work, will quit. And those people have failed. And they only failed because they quit. The ones who pivot don't fail because they didn't quit, and they Keep searching for the solution to find their way to where they want to go. That's the common factor among all of them.

So what, what, what made them unique?

Well, everybody has their own style. You know, everybody has something that they feel passionate about and that they zero in on for the way that they like to do business. So clearly for Tony, it was really all about how you saw yourself. So Tony was a guy who was looking at you to see if you believe in yourself enough to invest in you or to help you on your journey. And if you didn't, and if you didn't, said in fact that something about you will not allow you to be successful. Now, at the same time, you know, he works with people on that problem as well. But if he wants to partner with you, he's probably going to pass because he's looking for that trait. Chet, on the other hand, is like me, he's very much a systems oriented guy. And so he looks at your company and he's going to see to have you figured out how to systemize your success process. And if you haven't, well, he might offer to help you, but at the same time he wouldn't partner with you until you did. That's the big thing. And then when you take a guy like Kevin Harrington. Now, Kevin and I have been friends for a long time. We were in business together briefly for about six months. And the thing that Kevin looks at is potential. So what is the potential of this and how can I use this to grow something 10 or 100x that's Kevin's mentality. And that's. And yet they all have the same focus, they all have the same ability to pivot, but each one of them has a different way of looking at the situation that's pretty awesome.

Like not only that you are able to work with those folks, but they're able to recognize. And I think that's a common theme with really successful people, is this ability to focus. In all honesty, it's a thing I struggle with. Like you said, ideas are a dime a dozen, man. I got ideas, I got all kinds of ideas. I wish I could do them all because I think they're all going to be great. And you know, there's a lot of that part in me that I have to be very mindful of self awareness on my own part that, hey, that's great, you got all these ideas. What's the one you're going to chase? And so this idea of helping contractors get better at what they do in an effort to see there's a step for contractors. 70 to 80% of contractors go out of business the first three years. And I'm just sick and tired of watching it. So I'm totally focused on eliminating that stat. I want to see it go away, really, truthfully, I want to see it be less than 10%. You can't help everybody, but I want to help the vast majority. So we're uber focused on that. But even that, and I kind of wonder about this with those guys in what way? Right? So you have, you can coach them one on one, you can group coach them. You can do sales events and marketing events and all these other things you can get, you can start to spread out too wide. Did you see any of that with those guys at all? Like getting too wide or not narrow enough in their focus?

Well, I think it's tempting always to start to either brand extend or diversify. And usually it's not clearly thought through. There is no planning in place. And, you know, and that, by the way, if, you know, if you're having trouble with that, you know, you get a coach. I mean, that's, that's the whole point of this. A coach is going to ask you the questions that you don't know to ask yourself. And, and from my perspective, you know, I mean, I, I followed an American philosopher when I started my software company many years ago. And he's a name that you all know. He's a very, very famous person. And his philosophy has really made me successful all throughout my life. And I'll tell you who it is and what he said. And, and it's only, it's only four words. But this philosophy has, has withstood the test of time. And, and you'll see what I mean when I explain it. So his name is Famous. Four words are we do chicken. Right. Colonel Sanders. Now, Jim, I know you've heard of Colonel Sanders, right?

Yeah.

Okay. Now, did you know that when he said we do chicken, right, what he's really saying is we don't do hot dogs, we don't do hamburgers, we don't do pizza, we do chicken. Right? So what's he really saying? He's really saying, I focus on chicken and I focus on making the best chicken I could possibly make. Well, imagine we had Colonel Sanders coaching us in our business. Yes, we probably get better lunch quality than we have today normally. But what he would say is, why are you doing that? Why don't you go back to making your chicken? That's what you do, right? Why are you doing that? Why Are you branching out? Why are you spending time and focus on something other than your core gift, your core business?

We run into that all the time. You have a contractor, he's really good at something, and then he wants to say, hey, I want to go do this thing. And then you have to ask yourself, is this thing anything like that thing you're already doing now? If it's very similar, very similar process, very, very similar everything, it makes some sense, right?

Yes.

For example, I believe that at Kentucky Fried Chicken, they chicken sandwiches, you don't just have, like, he started out with original recipe. He did that very, very well. Perfect. Like, it's to me, best fast food chicken on the planet. Always will be. But then he went, hey, got this extra crispy thing and we can also do this chicken sandwich. It was all that core around that chicken. Same process, same delivery, same mechanism. And so I watch contractors and are they getting outside of what it is that they're actually great at? Right. And are they taking on too much of. And I usually will be pretty much down to, like, do three things. And those three things have to be the exact same process.

Yeah.

You might be roofing siding and gutters. Those are very simple. Go in, you meet a homeowner, take measurements, do orders, deliver. Right. And it gets done. They sign off and they pay you. But if you throw windows into the mix, that's a whole different animal. You got much, many more steps, a lot more ordering, a lot more risk involved. It's just a different thing. And some can pull it off, some not so hot. But, boy, if you just said, man, I do roofing better than anybody on the planet, you would probably do pretty well. And if you notice, the biggest companies that do that kind of stuff are usually very focused on those one, that one thing. So one of the things I've noticed in our industry is that technology has introduced itself a little bit. And I have this strong belief that, that the average homeowner out there nowadays would rather me not be in their home than me be in their home trying to sell them whatever it is that we're selling. And that doesn't mean that door to door is dead or marketing is dead or any of that kind of stuff, or even in home sales is dead. But I think the homeowner wants to follow a bit of a different process than what we're currently doing nowadays. And would you agree with any of that assessment? Like, I would rather, like, go to Amazon than have you come in my house and try and sell me something.

I. I would. Would you mind if I rolled back a minute? I wanted to make a comment about something you said before. So let's say you are a contractor and you do gutters and roofing. And. And you said one other thing, siding. And then they. They said, what about our windows? And then you have this bright idea, well, sure, I can install windows, and that's where you fall down. But imagine this. Imagine if you built a relationship with a window guy. Imagine if you built a relationship with a decking guy. Imagine if you built a relationship with a floor and carpet guy. And then every time one of those folks asked you about, do you do windows? You say, you know what? We have the best window guy in the business associated with our company, and I could send them over to give you a quote. And of course, what you're earning is an affiliate commission on the work that they did. So now you have no overhead, pure cash, pure profits. And you don't have to even learn or worry about the allocation of your personnel and equipment to do something you really don't know how to do. I just wanted to make that point.

Oh, that's a great point. We actually coach that. One of the things is in. In home services industry, you have this belief in canvassing, door knocking, going door to door, Right? And. But when you go door to door for the two or three things that you do, your hit rate is pretty low. Right. But if you went to door to door and instead of saying, hey, we do roofing, signing and gutters, let me look at your roof setting and gutters. And you said, hey, we are home exterior experts, and we'll do a full house inspection. And you do this inspection, and maybe it's not the roof, siding and gutters that there's a problem with, but their windows have a problem. You now have this very valuable thing called a lead, and that lead can be purchased by other people. And so we've had contractors that we've coached in building those type of programs. They are awesome.

They're great.

They get great reputation from the people they align themselves with. And like you said, it's just straight up cash.

Yeah, exactly.

They made better use of their time while they were out there in the field.

Well, you know, I had a client once, he was a carpet cleaning company, and he had a bunch of trucks. And his biggest problem was that somebody would call him and spend all this.

Money to get a lead.

Someone would call him and he would go out there and clean his car, clean their carpets, and, you know, and then at that point, he basically went on to continue servicing his clients. But he would rarely call them back and say, hey, we cleaned your carpet six months ago. Do you want to get your carpets cleaned again? The other thing that he really, you know, didn't notice was the fact that most people were just simply looking for the best price. So if they hired Bob on one day and Jane on another day to clean their carpets, as far as the customer is concerned, clean carpets are the commodity price factor. But what would happen, and this is what we coach them to do. What would happen if you were able to sell the gold plan, where you don't even have to ask. We just come in and clean your carpets every 90 days, every 120 days. And you get a big discount because we're. We're. We don't have to repeat the process of having to find someone new to sell to, which is expensive. Well, we went from a small company of about, I think it was 12 trucks to over 50 trucks in 18 months. But here's the other part that was cool about this. We also built the referral network. I was just sharing for all the other services that people need in your homes. And now the company's profits exploded. So it's really important to stay focused on what you do and get others who are focused on what they do with to work with you and make money from that, as you say, selling that lead or that referral. Yeah.

A lot of contractors don't really look at their business as like an affiliate program type business or a recurring service type business. For example, if you sell roof or siding or windows for that matter, I mean, it's years before you do anything like that again for that person. But could they be a part of a roof maintenance program? And once a year, you come out and make sure everything's tidy so the roof lasts longer. Could they be a part of an exterior maintenance? There's all kinds of ways to create that dynamic where you have this recurring business that's highly profitable, Margins are really high, and you keep them in your, I think, as you like to call it, tribe. It would be in my community. Right. Like, I keep them in my community. I want them. I want them in my world. That is. That's awesome stuff. That was really good. I didn't think that we were gonna go there, but that was. That was pretty great. So let's talk about this invisible organization thought process of things.

Sure.

I see contractors kind of dabbling at it right now. The pandemic really brought it up. We kind of knew the technology was out there and that Kind of thing. But pandemic hits, and you want to talk about changing the dynamic of what you do as a contractor, going inside of somebody's house, sitting down at their kitchen table, going over a bunch of options with them, that wasn't really an option anymore. But the other thing you noticed is that home repair and maintenance, additions, renovations, that kind of stuff picked up because people are now home and they realized, man, I need a nicer, cleaner space because I'm going to be home when I all the time, and I need to rearrange some of my space. And so there was a dichotomy there that people wanted it, but only a very few contractors took advantage of it. They were able to pivot, like you said, really quickly and start to use and leverage technology, whether it was a zoom meeting to go over options, PDF deliveries, CRM softwares, some photography apps. Like, one of the great apps out there in our world is called Company Cam. And I can go to your house. You don't have to have any kind of interaction with me at all. I can send you a link and I can send you all the pictures I'm taking as I'm looking at your house, and you can literally sit on your couch and just watch them come in. And so there was this cool aspect of technology that you could bring into the equation. And so now you can see contractors starting to go, wow, that was. That was actually pretty cool. I didn't have to go to that person's house and they sent me money, which is neat. All I had to do was go install it. So. But things have opened back up now, and I see people, a vast majority, reverting back to, hey, go to the house, the whole deal. But I do see a small group going, hey, you know what? I could sell a roof kind of anywhere, or I could put siding on anywhere, as long as I create those relationships with the right people. Kind of like you were talking about with the affiliate affiliate programs. I build those relationship, the right people in the right places. All it then becomes for me is this marketing and sales machine, which is what a lot of them are really good at. But translating it to the online world, right? Like sitting at somebody's table has a whole different feel than being on video like I am with you. You could literally go, this guy interviewing me is a complete idiot and I'm done with him. Click a button and you're done. Right? But if I'm sitting with you and we're sitting together, very rarely would you get up and walk away. Right?

Right.

What Is it that would make that transition actually work? What do you think people are really looking for?

Well, the part that the only time I frankly really want to meet you is when I'm about to give you money, right? I mean, to have you do like a walkthrough and all that, that's fine, I understand, but I don't, you know, tolerating that. Right. Because, you know, you're in my house and you know, or you're, you know, I'm showing you something and the kids are screaming or, or whatever. The point I'm making though is that when you start dealing with, with physical live situations, the goal would be to minimize the one to one direct contact time, but substitute it with technology. So let's have a zoom meeting and let's discuss what it is that you're looking for.

First.

Let's say I'm just going to use as an example, say you're a roofer. And let's say you are, you're in North Carolina, but your client is in Ohio. And because you attracted them using national advertising. So now what I do is I call my nationwide service organization and say, can you please go over and put a drone up on Mr. McGillicuddy's house so I could see the roof and videotape that and send it over to me. And they say, yes sir, we'll have it done for you in the next 24 hours. They go off and hire some kid with a drone who goes up and photographs the whole roof for you. Or they have a network of people with drones who do this professionally. And now you go back on zoom with that person, say, well, look, we've had a chance to examine your roof and you know, this is kind of what we're seeing here. And you're a good candidate for a roof replacement. And this is, this is partially, you know, this is what we could do. This is what you could do, or this, or you could like do a quick patch to fix the leaky part. But given the age of your roof and the condition of the, of the asphalt, it's, it's going to leak again soon. So if you like, we can work it out so you can get a brand new roof in the next 45 days. And if they say yes at that point, so. Okay, good, so what we're going to do is, and by the way, you don't even need the live meeting if you just followed my, my little script here. What we're going to do is we're going to be setting up with our, with our local affiliates so that they're going to come in and they're going to do the work. We guarantee it. So your, your contact will always be me. So all I need you to do at this point is ask any questions you might have. And if we agree at the end of the call that it's something you want to do, I'll give you a click to.