Chris Vance, of SGI, on “Building a Business You Love”

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Now, as you begin to grow in your business, all of a sudden it starts growing up around you. You wind up with employees and overhead and all of these things. It got really attractive for me for a while. I thought, well, if I go after these bigger accounts and some of these more corporate accounts and maybe work with some of these ad agencies that I can get in with, you know, I can maybe add a zero or 2 at the end of my revenue. But What I quickly found after a while of doing that is, you know, it also could add a zero or two to the number of days it took to get paid. And I still had to pay my employees on time. So, the headache really piled up dealing with the egos that can be in that market, in the agency space, in the New York-style agency space. You know, it just, I found myself Miserable. And, and when real things really started to turn around for me and my business was when I stepped back and took a, took a look again at my why of what I was doing and, and what really drove me.

Welcome to the Successful Contractor Podcast, powered by Success Group International. A show for residential contractors about residential contractors. We chronicle business journeys, share insights, and celebrate successes in this wonderful industry. I'm your host, Bob Houchin. Today I'm going to share with you a conversation I had with Success Group International Coach Chris Vance. As you'll hear, Chris has a deep, interesting background that includes being a business owner himself at one time. Thanks to that experience, Chris reached out to me wanting to discuss maybe the most important topic of imaginable, building a business you love. Most everyone listening to this, I have to imagine, either owns or manages a contracting company. So why did you start? Why do you put yourself through the challenges and the struggles? What is your why? Chris and I have a rich conversation about what it takes to truly build a business you enjoy. I think you'll enjoy the conversation and take away another 2. All right, Chris, thank you so much for your time today. I know it is a precious commodity with so many great members to serve. For those listening who've not had the opportunity to meet you yet, could you kind of share with everyone your name and your job at SGI?

Yeah, sure. My name is Chris Vance and I am one of the Airtime Coaches here at SGI. So I get the privilege of working with all of our HVAC members. And I'm also, because of my background, I'm actually the marketing coach as well. So I get to, get to work all across Affinities with the membership on marketing.

That's great. That's great. And obviously you're not a marketing coach without a marketing background, as you said. So could you kind of just give everyone a Reader's Digest version of your background and work experience and how you got to SGI eventually?

Sure, absolutely. I actually started out, I was working for a telecom consulting company that was a small boutique shop and happened to be the one creative-ish person on a small team. And so they're like, hey, you can actually make PowerPoints. And it just kind of blossomed from there over the next number of years, really grew to a $100 million plus company. And I got to do some really cool things from a marketing standpoint. And then in 2009, I left that, that job actually became one of my largest customers for even the next 7 years after that to start my own marketing company where I did digital design. It was kind of the dawn of social media, so I was able to get a lot of traction right out of the gate managing social media for a lot of small businesses.

Okay.

What I really loved about the job that I left to start my own business was I had, I had been with them from the time I was, I was employee number 20, and when I left, we had well over 150 in a matter of 5 years.

Holy cow!

And so, it was really powerful to me to, to be able to see the impact that I could make even from my small little You know, window of the world. And so, I loved working with small businesses because of that. So, I started my own company to work with small businesses to help make an impact there.

That's awesome. That's fantastic. And then, you've been with SGI for how long has it been now?

Expo was my 1-year anniversary. So, just a little bit over a year now.

And we haven't chased you off yet. You're doing a great job.

So far, so good.

So far, so good. So today we're talking about building a business you love. This is a topic that you chose. I'm glad you picked it because, like, why are we all going through long hours and hard work if you don't love what you do? And maybe share with everyone why you chose this particular topic.

You know, having been a business owner myself for 10 years, you know, I mentioned coming out of the gate, my passion was really working with small businesses And being able to actually make an impact on their business. And, you know, as you begin to grow in your business, all of a sudden it starts growing up around you. You wind up with employees and overhead and all of these things. It got really attractive for me for a while. I thought, well, if I go after these bigger accounts and some of these more corporate accounts and maybe work with some of these ad agencies that I can get in with, you know, I can maybe add a zero or 2 at the end of my revenue. But what I quickly found after a while of doing that is, you know, it also could add a zero or 2 to the number of days it took to get paid. And I still had to pay my employees on time. So, the headache really piled up dealing with the egos that can be in that market, in the agency space, in the New York-style agency space. You know, it just, I found myself miserable.

Yeah.

And when real things really started to turn around for me and my business was when I stepped back and took a look again at my why of what I was doing and what really drove me. And, you know, you can only spend so much money in your life, but what can you really do that's going to make an impact? And so, I started really getting intentional about the the kind of clients that I was going after, refocusing back in on the small business and going there. And it really transformed me of how I approached my business, how I brought along the clients that I brought on, and the impact that I was able to make inside of my business.

Right. That's interesting. I think that's, you know, that's something a lot of our members that we see struggle with that they, you know, we— they'll start becoming successful, start making money, and then they want to chase top-line dollars, chase top-line dollars. And before they know it, they've got more headaches and they were way better off staying at maybe $1 million or $2 million being super profitable than trying to get to $10 million and squeaking out a profit margin. But anyway, just as a side—

Exactly.

To throw that out there. But we do know in working with many of our members who don't even have that issue just yet, they're trying to just make some money at first.

Exactly.

And let's maybe talk about that. You can't really enjoy what you're doing if you're not making money, right? I mean, you can con yourself into thinking you love what you do, but if you've got all that stress, like you mentioned, it just wears on you. So what are some essential ways that you, that we at SGI coach up our members on how to ensure they're immediately successful? So once they join us, how do we get them back on the path they need to be on?

You know, it really starts right out of the gate, Bob. The, you know, the executive perspective is one of the most powerful experiences. I love that we get to do that every month. And it's one of my favorite things. And I always mention this at the beginning of the week. And I get the same look every time because you look at all of these people that come in and everybody's kind of sitting back, the body language, they're kind of close to the vest going, okay, what have I gotten myself into?

Right.

But then just throughout the course of the week, the evolution of relationships that develop, the exposure to the entire business model and what it can, the impact it can actually have on their business. you begin to see this evolution from close to the vest to, you know, to literal tears during the graduation. It's powerful. And so one of the immediate things that we're able to offer is a mindset of just believing that they can, that if they go all in in their why, if they go all in in their business, that this can actually become something that's not an albatross, but something that's actually, they can impact the lives of others. lives of their own, you know, their own lives, their children's lives, their employees' lives. It can really be something bigger than themselves.

Mm-hmm.

And in that context, we give, you know, they begin to see the tools that we have of, here's the numbers, here's how to look at your numbers to see the true health of your business. And they're going to— your numbers aren't going to lie. They're going to give you a red flag when you need it to know where to drill in deep. And then we just come alongside to say, here's how you go in deep there. And so I think that, you know, just kind of coming out of that EP experience with those 4 or 5 quick starts that are going to be immediately revenue impacting really gets the members off on the right foot.

Right. You know, and so, yeah, you hit the nail on the head in many different ways. But the one thing that always amazes me We work with skilled tradespeople who, you know, took many years to get to where they are and grasp their trade, and they're good people that work hard and they take care of customers and they have the skill set, and they price themselves in a fashion that they're guaranteed to lose money, and they don't know it, and they don't know it till they get here.

Yeah.

Maybe just kind of share with people what are some of the things that we talk about tactically, or you talk about tactically, with with members they can immediately do to increase the revenue. And it's not that crazy, but I'd be interested to see what your thoughts are. What are some things you talk with new members about how to get the revenue up?

Yeah. You know, one of the quick wins right out of the bat is something as simple as a service fee and charging it every time.

Right.

Because a lot of them have come in And they may even have a service fee in place, but the, but the first sign of pushback from the customer, they'll waive it or they'll roll it into, into the repair. And, and it really is just, you know, with the right tools and the right understanding of the value that they're bringing to the table, it gives them the courage and the ability to just say, you know, that's actually just the price of doing business with us, and this is the value that you get in exchange for that.

Yeah. Eliminates price shoppers. So, all of a sudden, you're not running around a bunch of homes and people are just saying, no, I'll just get another bid. People have $69 invested in you, all of a sudden, they're likely to go ahead and move forward.

Exactly.

And also, we get mostly members that listen to this, but we do get non-members that listen as well. We have Straightforward Pricing, which is just an amazing tool. It makes First of all, our members get— they finally maybe get the, you know, they're getting paid what they should be on the jobs that they've been running all along. So at the right margins.

Exactly.

And all of a sudden, boom, hey, I'm making more money, you know, and with more money is just less headaches. I think, and maybe you can speak to that, when you talk to new members who come home from EP and maybe they start using straightforward pricing, they start implementing the service fee, they start answering, making sure someone's answering the phone right to capture every opportunity. What do they see? Like, what do you see in there or hear in their voices, you know, a couple months in and they start seeing results? I mean, it just opens their eyes, right?

Yeah, it's really fun to kind of hear the sometimes even shock and awe that it actually does work when they get it back to the field. I remember one member coming out of EP, and I got on a call once he got his books in. And one of his techs was just giving him pushback on it and pushback on it. And I talked directly with him and his tech and got the tech to agree to just go with it.

Right.

Just go all in and give it a shot.

Yeah.

And after, after a week, 2 weeks, this tech saw his ticket averages just skyrocket. And he came back in and the member told me, he's like, Chris, he came in and he said, man, this is a magic book you've given us.

Man, I think we need to change the name of it to Magic Book. I like it.

I know, right?

That's right.

Leave it to the marketing guy, right?

That's right. That's right. That's great. And I'll tell you what, I hear that story all the time. I mean, I get the benefit of— I have the easiest job at SGI. I get to talk to successful members, and I love when they all tell the same, really, it's a very similar story that they take that book out, doesn't matter which rate. And some people will tinker with it and customize it. Other people just roll with what we give them. And they cringe when they show the price and people are like, yeah, that sounds reasonable. And then they can't believe it. And all of a sudden, they just walk out of that house feeling 10 feet tall. I think it's just a lot of self-belief, like, that helps build her confidence up at that point. And when you start making some more money and you start, you know, seeing something like that work. So, you know, with more money, that's not obviously the only reason why, you know, you'd be in love with your business, right? There's a lot of other neat things that we can do, or people listening to this that are business owners can do to build a business that you love. What are some other things we talk about at SGI, you talk about? with members on how they can create a business they love?

Well, part of creating a business you love, you're spending so much of your life. I mean, especially if your family's not working with you in the business, you're committing a huge portion of your life to people that are outside of your family. So, you want to make the impact there. You want a return on that investment as well, a time return on that investment. So, you want to work with happy people.

Yeah.

You want to invest in your team and that is one of the ways to build a, you know, a business that you love going to is have a business full of people who love coming to work with you.

Right.

And so, we talk about that at EP. It's like one common factor that you see in successful people is they have this understanding that If you invest in your team and give them the tools and empower them, then they're going to take— your team is going to take care of the customer like the customer has never been taken care of. And so when your customer gets that 5-star customer service experience that they weren't expecting, you're going to get rewarded with revenue at the end of the day.

Right.

And so I always talk about, you know, when I'm talking about image and EP is, you know, to, to really sell the vision to your team of this is something that we're building that's bigger than ourselves. We're not just a commodity home service company. We're actually bringing value to what most people is their largest investment and helping them be a good steward of it. And, and you're positioning your people to be the experts in their field, and you start to get that buy-in from a tech that may have just getting beat down at his last job.

Yeah.

You know, you start to see the value rise up, like the perception of their own, like see the techs perceiving their own value when maybe they hadn't seen that before. I mean, when you as a business owner can begin to unlock in that for someone else to see that value in themselves, I mean, that is, that's gold right there.

Yeah, for sure. You're right. Unfortunately, in our industry, a lot of these, these people, these technicians are, you know, they've brought up, been brought up in a way where they're just, you know, treated in a way that they're just another tool in a business and they're not experts in a craft, which is what they are. And if, yeah, if you just explain that, As an owner, as a manager, the value they bring and how they make and improve people's lives. I mean, you know, you're in people's homes. It's their— that's their whole world right there. And you take care of their safety and their family's safety. It's super powerful. To get that message across so tactically, like people might be listening, and especially those not in the SGI family, they'll go, well, how do you have happy employees? You can say that, but how often do you say it? What, you know, so— Maybe share with people at SGI, how frequently do we tell our clients to meet with their team and how valuable is training? I mean, and, you know, what does that look like? Maybe just kind of give people an overview. If you were talking to someone that's had no familiarity with SGI, but was in the trades, what kind of, you know, what kind of training, what kind of communication we tell our members to do?

Oh, constant training. Training is invaluable. You want to be in front of your techs. As much as possible. You have, you know, your daily morning huddles are essential to just, you know, one, you know, what happened yesterday? What were the quick wins? What were some things we need to improve on? What's on the calendar for today? You know, what's on the schedule for today? What's happening? Are we booked up tomorrow? What do we need to make any adjustments to make sure we're ready for tomorrow? And also, you know, I I think it was Jimmy Dale in one of the videos that I've seen him talking about the power of huddles is like just that morning, being around, seeing your guys every morning and being able to get that face check.

Yeah.

'Cause you can see, you know, one, you're getting to know them. And another is you're able to see the body language, you're able to see, You're able to see something that may be going on with them before it becomes a performance issue.

Mm-hmm.

And so you can see them as a person and talk to them as a person of what's really going on to coach them up, to know how to enter in. So empowering those morning huddles and the regular weekly trainings on both soft skills And technical skills so that when they go into the homes that they're going into, they have the confidence of knowing they're the experts in the room.

Mm-hmm.

That they can— that when they present an option to a customer, they're giving the customer the power to choose something that they know is going to help them be a good steward of one of the most costly systems of their largest investment.

Right, right. No, that's good stuff. And you're right. I mean, you know, at SGI, people who've listened to this podcast before, they know I talk to a lot of members about culture and that's a big overhanging theme for a reason. Successful companies have this thing called, this great thing called culture. And I think it's established in a couple of ways. One, I think it's important businesses establish what your core values are, what's important to you, and it's relatable to your team. But the other thing is, Just the great companies, the companies that have that great culture where you walk in and you feel it, it's warm and fuzzy, are the ones that get together all the time. Like you said, they have the morning huddles, they have the trainings available, or they're mandatory, at least once a week, sometimes 2, 3 times a week. And they get together, they have social, the company pre-plans social outings together where they invite the spouse and everyone wants to come. It's not mandatory fun. That's something I've always—

Right.

I've heard tossed around, oh, we gotta go a mandatory fund where no one— when you're around each other that much, and if you hire right, I mean, that's a huge thing, right, is getting the right people on the bus. Everyone generally will be like-minded and enjoy being together. And when everyone's happy, gosh, they just do a great job.

Support for this podcast comes from GreenSky. The GreenSky loan program is a leader in home improvement financing, trusted by thousands of contractors in the U.S. We provide consumer financing options to help you close more sales and grow your business. For more information, go to greenskycredit.com/sponsor/sgi.

Welcome back to the show. In the first half of my conversation with SGI Coach Chris Vance, we talked about his background and we talked about how you can't really love any business that doesn't really support you and your family. In addition, anyone who loves their business typically has a team who loves it too. Next, Chris and I will talk about a few other ways you can build a business that you absolutely love. So let's jump back into that conversation. When you have a business that makes money and can invest into people, and by training them and getting them the resources and tools they need to be successful, that means typically there's another benefit. Another thing that makes a business that you love is happy customers, right, Chris? So maybe Speak to those people that listen to this, uh, again, maybe outside of the SGI family because they hear us talk about it all the time. But, um, people, I think, in our industry get hung up on cost and what things cost. And then if that— oh man, I hear you guys talking about this, but you're just selling stuff, right? You're pushing people. That's not really at all what we talk about. I mean, in fact, most of our customers, or our members I should say, don't— aren't really hard pushy salespeople. It's all about giving options and communicating with homeowners. Exactly. So I'll shut up now and let you talk because I'll just give it all away. Maybe talk about what we preach at SGI about how to build happy customers. What does that mean?

Yeah. And actually, you know, it starts with knowing, of coming to that realization of like not every person is going to be your customer because you're going to have the people that are looking for the cheap Charlies and the Chucks in the truck. They're probably not your customer. You're going after the customer that understands the value that you bring, that understands the value of the training that you're putting in, of the background check. If I'm inviting somebody in my home, somebody that I'm bringing in, somebody that's background checked and drug tested, that sees the value in that.

Yes.

And so, in your marketing and in your communication, you're communicating at a level that is not just constantly price, price, price, price, price. So you're going to attract a price-driven customer. You're talking value, value, value. I mean, you still— price comes out. It's a part of what we do.

Sure.

But you understand the value behind what you're presenting. And so when, you know, the way that our members equip their techs in the field is When you're going into a house, you're building value and you're going in the most trained person and well-equipped person that they're going to see. Even if they are price shopping, they're going to get a comfort level of knowing they've had an expert come in, evaluate the health of their system, and present them with, these are the options that we have. This is what you need to do today. This is probably why you called me. This is what you should do, but this is what you could do, and you're presenting options that empower the customer to make an informed choice for the longevity of their systems.

Yeah, I feel like I bring it up in like every other podcast, but I've been a homeowner for a long time. I'm assuming you have, Chris, for a while. There is nothing that frustrates me more than when I have a company out And and I don't have this issue very much anymore because I mostly am fortunate enough to have SGI members in my market. But everyone for a few trades I don't. But there's nothing more frustrating than to have someone out to do some work, and then like let's say I have some electrical work done, and then like a week or two later something else breaks, or I didn't really you know or it's not working. And and knowing what I know now, it's like boy, I really wish you know giving an inspection. And we we do in all four trades for people listening it. We have inspections for our members, their technicians to walk people through, just educate everyone on what's going on in their home. I mean, I just want to know, right? I think we all just want to know what's going on, right? And then the options, like you said, you just lay it out there. I mean, if someone wants to nitpick, that's fine, but at least they know what's going on with their home. And to me, that's reassuring.

Yeah, absolutely it is. And that's something that goes back even to what we were talking about with training your techs because you're You know, think about the mindset that becomes a technician. You're somebody that wants to go in and fix something.

Yes.

And so, and, and so, and the natural inclination of your tech is to just go in. They know they're there to fix the problem that they were called about. They just want to go in and fix that problem, get out there quick, get out of there quick, get to the next call, and And they fixed what was called about, so they feel like the hero. But when you're— when you train in the training, you equip them with the mindset of going, you know what, I can help you look like a bigger hero because you're in there to fix what you're there to fix. But you're going to be able to see from a standpoint that, oh my gosh, yes, we've got to fix this, but this is what's going on.

Right.

Because then, you know, just like you were saying, Bob, is like 2 weeks later, the thing, if I would have just brought it up, I could have fixed it that day. Now, now, now me as a homeowner, I've got to take another half day off of work to sit around and wait for a technician to show up. And why didn't you just fix it when you were there?

Right.

So, so it's really just retraining the technicians and it's just educating your customers to help them make the right choices.

Right. You know, in our industry especially, like, to me, it's just a no-brainer. I mean, I want to know if my water heater is about ready to crap out. I don't want to find out when I'm taking a shower at 6 in the morning, you know? Or like, you know, I know, you know, you work with a lot of HVAC members. There are, you know, especially when they first start with us, they've got technicians that go, oh man, we can get another 3 months out of this system. Okay, that's great. And then it stops working when it's 105 out. Right.

Yeah.

And I have elderly parents that, you know, what do you do? So, if you just give people options, let them make the decision for themselves. It's not selling, it's just showing them, okay, this is what's wrong. Here are the ways you can solve it. You make the decision. You don't have to sell a thing, honestly.

Yeah.

But people at least appreciate knowing what's going on in their home because I'm not technical. I know you're not. Unless you didn't tell me, I don't think you have a master's license in anything.

Right. It's, it's what you see is what you get here.

Exactly right. So we just, you know, what we do know is I don't want to be inconvenienced, and I certainly don't want to be stuck in a position where I got to rush or try and find someone at the last second. So off my soapbox, I, I'm very passionate about educating, uh, customers because, uh, not only does it lead to more money, but man, it just makes their life easier and better.

So exactly.

So all right, so we, you know, we're making, you know, to have a business you love you know, you're actually making money in it, which, novel concept, crazy. You have happy customers, you have happy employees. There's another way a lot of our members, another thing that they do that I think really helps, makes their employees feel happier, and they feel, our members feel better about themselves because they're doing something, and that's helping out their community. I mean, that's something I, we have a ton of SGI members that are super active in their communities.

Yeah.

Maybe just kind of share with with people? What are some things that they can, they could do, you know, non-members listening? What are some things that they can do to help their community to maybe, you know, motivate their team to work with them? Again, I don't want to give away too much, but what would you coach people up to do?

Yeah, absolutely. And, and what you do as a business owner, it goes back to one of the things I said at the beginning is there's only so much money you can make. And, and, and And we have to do a job in it, and we want to do something. We want to, we want to build something that is larger than ourselves. We want to have an impact that expands beyond just, you know, it's great to impact our own family, it's great to impact our own employees, but we want to impact the communities that we live in. And so, you know, like you were talking about earlier, Bob, as far as knowing your core values as a company, what, what, who the who you are as a business and also the why you're doing what you're doing. Find the organizations that are out there that line up with the core values of who you are because they're out there in that community. And being able to come alongside them, whether it's financial support, you've got employees that love to get out and And work and have fun. You know, there's things like Habitat for Humanity. I know we've got a lot of members that, you know, really love, and we love veterans and veterans organizations and things that take care of that. I know SGI right now is, and a lot of our membership is working with some great organizations. You know, here in the States, we've got, you know, Folds of Honor and—

Homes for Heroes is our Canadian one.

And yeah, and where, where it's just these amazing organizations that are making an impact at the grassroots and on the feet on the street level. And so finding those opportunities that, that match with your core values to, to just invest and multiply the impact of, of what you're able to do in your community.

Yeah, for sure. I know some of our members that have worked with— because we've had a relationship with Folds of Honor for, for some time and some members that have really taken to that charitable effort, which for those listening that may not know, it supports veterans who— or not veterans, but soldiers who passed in the field or were injured, supports their families by paying for the educational opportunities for their children and spouses. And so what a lot of our members will do is they'll donate, you know, $5 from a service ticket or some Some will get more aggressive and say, like Brown Boys Roofing, which we've had on— I can't remember if we've already had that episode run or will be soon here in a minute. But they did, I think, a certain percentage of their revenue for a month up to like $20,000. Their team got so excited by it.

Yeah.

And it helped their technicians and salespeople stay so locked in that they ended up having a record month. Ended up, you know, Will's like, to heck with it, we're going to donate $30,000 because everyone— because it just all of a sudden they're not just working for a paycheck or to make the company more money, they're working for, you know, people that could really use the help. And I mean, and boom, all of a sudden, you know, you're helping a great organization and the culture impact is just— you can't even put it into words how that affects as a team, how that affects your team. So it's just, you know, you don't ever— you hate to ever do something like that to benefit yourself, but it is certainly a nice Aftereffect for sure.

Absolutely. And, you know, I know a lot of our members as well, you know, the, the, with cancer awareness, breast cancer awareness, they'll get the, the pink floor savers and go in and they'll, you know, they're in that way, they're not only including their, their team members, they're also including their customers and the customers get to buy in that as well. So it just generates this goodwill across of like, hey, we can all do this together. We can all make this impact together.

That's awesome. Good stuff. Well, Chris, thank you so much for so much of your time. This was really, it's fun to talk about positive stuff and how to build a business you love. Just kind of wrapping up, probably the toughest question I'll throw at you, of course, is at the end. What, you know, why do you enjoy doing what you do at SGI? What, you know, what motivates you? Why, you know, why do you enjoy it?

You know, it really goes back to You know, why I started my own business back in 2009 was the thought of being able to impact small businesses in a real way. And coming into SGI and seeing the impact, I mean, walking into Expo as my first week, I was— Talk about a humbling experience of, oh my goodness, I I have stepped into something amazing here. And it's just continued to prove itself out. The commitment at all levels of the different— the quality of people that I get to work with, from the coaching team, from the support people, everybody throughout SGI is so focused on the success of the members.

Yeah.

That it really is behind the curtain. It's the same as what you see in front of the curtain. It is that just across-the-board desire to see our members succeed and have businesses that they love owning. And that really lights me up. That really keeps me going.

Yep. It's a fun business. It's much better than selling— you know, I came from the ad agency world many years ago selling alcohol, which everyone thinks was fun. But this is— when you get to be in a business that affects lives and you directly see it, it's pretty cool. So yeah, wonderful. Well, Chris, thank you so much for all your insight and your time, and I really enjoyed this. And we'll have to have you on again sometime soon.

Absolutely. Thanks so much, Bob.

That's Chris Vance of Success Group International. Thanks for listening to the show. If you feel like you have a great story worth sharing that would also help other contractors, email me at bhouchin@yoursgi.com. Also, if you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a rating. And remember, friends give fives. You've been listening to the Successful Contractor Podcast powered by Success Group International.

Support for this podcast comes from Ream. Brothers Richard and Donald Ream founded Ream Manufacturing Company in Emeryville, California in 1925. The company has produced a number of cutting-edge products in its 89 years of operation. Today, Rheem is North America's only manufacturer of HVAC, water heating, pool and spa heating, and commercial refrigeration solutions. For more information, go to rheem.com. The Successful Contractor Podcast is a part of the Success Group International family. SGI is the largest member-owned best practices organization for independent residential services contractors. SGI provides its members a competitive edge through proven proprietary management tools and expertise, marketing programs, training, and group buying power, along with a highly active and eager-to-help membership. For more information about Success Group International, visit www.yoursgi.com. The Successful Contractor Podcast. Is a production of the Aquila Investment Group, LLC. All rights reserved, 2020.