Inside the Brain of Home Service Millionaires

If you've ever thought about building a home service empire, a regional chain across.

Your state or your entire country, this.

Is the video for you.

I'm going to show you the playbook.

I used to build a $50 million lawn care business using these three steps. And this video will be chunked into these three operations. Number one, we're going to talk about your business model. You've got to nail it with the.

Exact steps of the business model that you can copy and paste, like repeatable.

Units over, over and over again. That's the first section of the video. Then we're gonna talk about the mindset required to be able to grow quickly. And last but not least, we're gonna.

Talk about what you need to do.

To be able to attract and retain great employees. Because as you begin to scale past.

10, 50, 100 employees, most of your.

Ability to scale comes down to your ability to retain great talent.

So let's get started with these three.

Video sections that make up the masterclass, how you can scale your home service business.

These are the seven stages of success. The first stage is growing your revenue.

Past $500,000 in annual revenue.

Now, if you have a business that has a whole bunch of materials, a bunch of subcontractors, then you are likely not going to have 500,000 revenue. You're likely going to have a lot more, but you're going to have material costs, contractors, and other cost of goods.

That are baked in.

I'm talking about $500,000 of labor revenue, okay, annually. Now, once I pass that, I'm gonna go move on to stage two, which is I'm gonna enter profit mode and raise my prices when I hit capacity. As we talk about inside the book, when I hit capacity is when I raise prices and I have the opportunity to move into profit mode. That's stage two. And then stage three is I'm gonna simplify and focus on recurring revenue. So you're like, well, I don't do. I don't. I only do projects. Okay, that's fine. But I'm trying to get the business to be more stable where it's not as lumpy of revenue. And if I do projects, on every project you sell, you can sell a warranty, you can sell a maintenance package, you can sell ongoing repairs and fixes to the system that you've installed. These are all things that you can bake. Recurring revenue doesn't have to be recurring jobs. It can be recurring revenue. And insurance is the best form of something that is one time, but they sell recurring Revenue every single month you pay on your house. And maybe once every 30 to 50 years that policy is issued and they.

Actually have a claim.

You'd say that's a one time job. No, it's a recurring revenue. They just spread it across all your monthly payments. And so this is recurring revenue. Any business can install recurring revenue.

Inside of my other book, which is the off season I talk about in.

Cure 4 the Ways to be able to create more recurring revenue not just during your off season, but throughout all of your business and why it's so important to enterprise value and handing the business off. Because lumpy revenue is not systematized. What is systematized? It is simplified and standardized. And so recurring revenue is the closest thing to be able to have a system in the business because it predictably creates revenue. And a system is where I take predictable inputs and, and have a predictable outcome. And the inputs are I sell more recurring work. On the other side, I have a very predictable amount of revenue that I make every single month, every single quarter. And I don't have months where I make 100,000 and then months where I make 10,000. I never want to make less than 50% of my best month's revenue any other month of the year. So If I make $100,000 in monthly revenue, I never want a month to be under 50,000 in monthly revenue. That is if that's happening in your business. What we call seasonitis and that's the disease that affects many home service businesses. The number one way to solve it is to use recurring revenue the same way that insurance companies make sure they don't have massive spikes in payments. They just make it recurring. They spread it out over the course of a whole bunch of payments. So you can do this for any home service business. Even if you only install H Vac systems, you can sell recurring revenue like. Oh no, like only like 10 or 15% of people accept. Okay, give them a discount on the install to where you're basically giving away a year's worth of warranty or a year's worth of fixes, maintenance and repairs. But then you know that 80% of people convert in a year, 2, 3 and beyond. And every single time you come back to that customer is another opportunity to sell them another job. Recurring revenue allows me to upsell one time jobs every single time I come.

Back to the property.

If you're using copilot soon to be homeworks, take a stinking video and attach it to the visit of jobs that can be upsold every single time you show up at the property, you teach your team to do that. You create an incentive program. Recurring revenue allows me to create one time revenue like I make all my profit and one time jobs. Great. Create the recurring revenue to keep your crew busy year round. Never have a month where you lose lose money. Regardless of your overhead, it's covered. Focus on that first. That's number three. Simplify and focus on recurring revenue because there's no way this business is going to be high enterprise value run without you as the owner and not create huge amounts of stress during the off season. If you have months of where you lose money, you never want a month where you lose money. If you solve that problem in home services in a seasonal quote unquote seasonal business, which by the way, it is a feature, not a bug of home services, you're going to have seasonal work. There are going to be times when there are more people calling than others. The goal is how do I figure out how to weed out the schedule to where I push one time jobs off, I push time insensitive jobs, I push them off. And I also pull demand forward when it's slow. I give discounts, I give offers to pull demand forward. When otherwise people start in April, well, great. I'm gonna give them a discount in February and March to pull that demand forward so that I can get more new customers during the actual rush. Simplify and focus on recurring revenue. That's stage number three. Stage number four is you're gonna start growing. This is scale. This happens organically over the course of two to three years if you stay in profit mode. Because remember, every single time I hit capacity, I'm raising prices by a minimum of 15%. And if you do that a few times, that is a few years during your spring rush, you're going to get above 800,000 in revenue. So my one location this year will probably like 1.1, $1.2 million in annual revenue. They're in profit mode. They're not buying more trucks, they're not hiring more people. They're going to stay between six and eight employees with one working GM and that's it. But because they've been in profit mode for several years, they get well above $800,000 and they're still in inside this system. Number five. Now this is the most conservative approach that I'm outlining here. If you want to accelerate and go faster, because this is going to take five plus years to get here. If you want to accelerate and go faster, you can, it's just not going to Be as conservative and you're not going to be as profitable and you're going to have a little more stress because growth sucks cash and cash creates cushion so you don't have stress. So step stage number five, get get a general manager. Hire a general manager that gets you out of daily operations. Out of daily operations means when you leave, sales operations and admin are all taken care of, meaning the work gets sold, the work gets done, and the work gets paid for without you being there. Now the easiest way to make this happen is make sure that your admin is completely systematized. And ideally admin takes phone calls to sell jobs because it makes the sales position much easier to get rid of. If every single job is custom, if every single project requires an estimate that has a whole bunch of experience, it's very difficult to get out of daily operations. And so this is why systems in stage three are so required. And getting on recurring and simplifying the services so that when I hire gm, the level of skill and the compensation I have to pay them is as low as possible. If I'm trying to find a unicorn that has 10 years of excavation experience, has years of horticulture, has years of hardscaping and concrete and fixing fences and doing decks, if I require all of these services, the likelihood of me able to do number five is so low. And this is why people have $1.52 million businesses and they burn out making good money, but they can never hand off. In stage five, they can never hand the business off because nobody has their skill level without getting paid an exorbitant amount of money. And if they had all those skills, they just go start their own business. Stage number six is repeat as copy and paste multiple locations. That is where I believe instead of trying to figure out the next level of business, which is get mid level managers, create regional managers inside of the company, division leaders, multiple assistants in the office, multiple sales and estimators. I just want to copy and paste this model over and over again. They did not have to reinvent the wheel to make Panda express go from 10 locations to 2,500. They just did the same exact thing for 40 years. Same exact thing. Chicken, rice sauce. They didn't reinvent anything, they didn't change anything. Then like we're changing the game, we're moving to AI and we're gonna keep this app. No, it just keep it really simple. And so we get fancy and so many times we build a million dollar, two million dollar business and home services and the next we somehow think that we gotta move on to the next thing. What if you just take what you're done and just copy and paste it over and over again? And now this just becomes a leadership game of finding great general managers and great finding great people. That becomes the obstacle, which is, by the way, not easy. That's why in the book I talk about the whole constraint of the copy and paste method that is stage number six is finding great general managers. In other words, becoming a better leader, hard skill, easier in my opinion than reinventing the business model that you've already built. If you've got through stage five and you have a million dollar business pumping out $200,000 in profits, why would I go try to reinvent the wheel and, and have to create brand new systems for whole new departments when I can just take that model and copy and paste it over and over again? And in doing so I will have to gain the skill of leadership and managing managers. And that can take three to four years. But I believe that is a more scalable thing. Once you figure out that leadership hack, like once you figure out that skill and you gain that and it can take a few years and you will turn through a few general managers and it only takes reps many times to actually solve the obstacle of not having that skill. But once you have it, you should be able to copy and paste this much faster. And only then after stage six, when you have so much distributed cash you can't copy and paste fast enough. That is when I would invest into things outside of the industry, diversifying the stocks, real estate and other businesses. What's crazy is a lot of us jump from number four to number seven and then we wonder like, oh man, stocks like making 8, 9% great. Your business can annihilate that. If you can put $200,000 into a new location and in a matter of three to five years, it's giving $150,000 in distributions. There's no stock market or real estate market that's gonna compete with that. And what's crazy, if you've done it once, the likelihood of doing it again much higher. Also, why in the world, why in the world would I get into another industry like the stock market or real estate where everyone else is competing in that market, you are at best average in that industry. When if you have built a million dollar business that, that has a general manager in place that is able to produce six figures of distributable cash to you as the owner, you are the top 1 to 2% of your industry. Why would you not use that advantage to just copy and paste it? Here's why. Leadership is very, very difficult and we hit up against this leadership problem when we start having to go to number six and it is finding more general managers, finding and attracting great talent, keeping them, compensating them, motivating them, inspiring them. That is a hard skill. It is not easy. But many times we hit up against it and then we just think I've gotta go different industry, I've gotta go add more services, I've gotta go to a new. I've gotta add more something, I've gotta. This real estate thing is so much better. Like ah, eventually you know, it's not McDonald's, they're serving burgers, they're doing real estate.

And we get all the, we give.

All the reasons as to why another industry or another service is gonna somehow be the next leg in our entrepreneurial journey when reality we have simply hit up against the obstacle of leadership. And for the person that is doing two, three million dollars, many times it's actually a function of they failed to solve the leadership problem so they stayed in operations until an owner can leave. Operations and sales, operations admin be fully handled without them being showing up for a week or two and things go well. Jobs get sold, jobs get done and jobs get paid for without them being there. Until that time they have not solved the constraint of leadership. And so a lot of people do. They just give up on ever trying to have the business run without them ever having the leadership skills because it's hard, it's very difficult to gain that skill. They give up on it and they just stay in daily operations and run a two to three million dollars business working crazy amounts of hours hoping and praying that their operations manager sticks on board. Hoping and praying that nothing happens them physically because they are working crazy amounts of hours juggling admin operations and sales when people don't show up.

Last weekend we actually had our Augusta Lawn Care annual conference with all, all the owners of Augusta Lawn Care and we launched a brand new thing called Augusta Leads where they actually have a guaranteed hundred recurring customers when they start a new location. It's all part of the program. We actually run their ads for them and make sure they are able to get above break even when they're starting more locations. This allows you to be able to copy and paste and do multiple locations much, much easier. If you're interested in joining us to lawn Care before the spring rush starts, go to Augusta Lawn Care Services.com franchise. Book a call with Lee and his team to see if joining Augusta Lawn Care is the right fit for you. All right, so we've talked about the seven stages. To be able to get a location to where it is copy and paste. And you're able to start building a chain out an empire for your home service business. Now let's talk about the mindset that is required to make that happen. Because you can have the steps like, oh, that's seven step. That's easy. Yeah, I agree. But if you have the wrong mindset, you'll never get past stage one. I was thinking a lot about the difference between those that are ultra successful in this thing called business and monetary success. Because we could have a whole different discussion about success, personally, physically, et cetera, in someone's relationship. But I started peel it back because like many of us, we are trying to be students of those that have been successful and, and we try to replicate the things that they have done that have made them successful. And I started peeling back, really, what is it that makes the ultra successful successful at business? And it reminded me of an interview that Michael Jordan did when an interview asked like, they wanted their kid to be really good at basketball. So what do I do? What's the tactic? What's the thing I'm supposed to do in order to get my kid to be a great basketball player? And the answer that Michael Jordan gave is something that I thought a lot about. And he said, you've got to do whatever you got to do to make sure they love the game. And there's several things that I think are so important about that. Number one, it's very difficult to manufacture love, especially when you are trying to impose on someone else. And so for like a mom or dad that wants their kid to do well at basketball, how do you get them to love the game? It's probably not going to be super rigid structured rules. They're going to allow your kid to fall in love with the game. Now, the rigid structured rules might give conformity and in the short term increase metrics or increase the performance of the child's ability to play basketball. But the actual unlock long term is that they love the game. Because if they love the game, the results will become a byproduct of them applying themselves to it so much that they simply become good at it. And so I think the same thing is true with business. And I could be wrong. It's just that when I look at the people who are the best at business, they just love the game. They just love doing it and they're not necessarily the most skilled, they're not the most articulate, but they simply love the game. And one thing about love is that if it's super structured and, and it's super tactical, it's very difficult to actually manufacture. So, for example, I love my wife, but it would be very weird if everything about our relationship was structured. It's like, you must be at home at this minute, and before I give you a kiss, you must take off your shoes. And then after you take a kiss, you must change your clothes before we then have dinner. And then once we have dinner at exactly 6:33pm we will then like that. Rigidity in the short term might have the conformity of creating more space or more time or having more quality time together. But in the long term, you lose the love. And the love is the thing that actually keeps the couple together. Because there are plenty of people that make rules, but they fall out of love. And so falling out of love is the ultimate sin, in my opinion. If you are trying to apply yourself to something in the long term, whether it be a relationship, whether it be the gym, whether it be business, whether it be making money, if you fall in love with the game, you will keep doing it over and over and over again. And it's not a function of conformity, is a function of desire. And this was apparent to me a couple years ago when I started, like, realizing, okay, I am starting to need to find a life partner and a wife. And when I met Brianna on our second date, Brian is my wife, if you didn't know, I told her, I said, there's something. I want to be very upfront with you. And she didn't know when we originally met about the businesses and everything I did online, nothing. Like, literally on our third date, it was like, what's this Augusta thing? And copilot? So she didn't under. She didn't know those things and didn't come into meeting me knowing about the businesses. But on our second date, I said, look, I need to be upfront and honest about something. And that is if this is gonna go anywhere, I wanna be very clear that, like, I love business. And it's not that I love the result of business, which is maybe making money or having a big office or employing a lot of people, but, like, I love business. And I said, I would rather die than to lose that. And it wasn't being hyperbolic. I wasn't trying to be dramatic. I was being honest. After realizing after years that, like, that was going to be a requirement for me just to survive in life, and that if I did not have that, it would make me unsatisfied. But more importantly, I would resent whoever took it away from me. I truly believe that that is what separates the people that I look up to From a business perspective. They love the game. And if you look at their browser history, if you look up their YouTube videos, if you were to look at what they're looking at on their apps, it is just business. It is. They want to learn and understand the game of business. And they will beat the person that has the 5am routine in the morning, the person that's looking for the next biohack, the person that's looking for the next productivity, you know, hot thing. Jumping from dropshipping to cryptocurrency to flipping real estate to Amazon fulfillment, like from thing to thing to thing. They just love the game of business and they don't mind applying themselves their entire life to it. The same way that loving a partner and just applying yourself and being committed to them for your entire life usually nets out in a pretty positive relationship. I would also say that if you understand that and you believe that it's actually very difficult to manufacture. It's very difficult to be like, oh, yes, I agree with that. Now I will go try to fall in love. Love of the game. I would just say go look at your browser history, go look at the YouTube videos you're watching, and maybe start there, because that's probably the thing you love most, the thing that you're spending your time. The thing. Look at your bank balance, look at your credit card statement. Where are you spending your money? Because those are votes every single moment, every single hour of every single day.

As to what you do actually love.

Because you spread your. You spend your discretionary effort on it. The time you spend on the toilet, the time that you spend on the couch while there's ads playing, while you're brushing your teeth, whatever you're spending your time on there is probably the thing that you love. If you fall in love with the game, whatever that game for you is, I think you'll be in the top 1 or 2%. And if you fell out of love with the game the same way that you can fall out of love in a partnership or in a relationship, there are ways to be able to reinspire that. Looking at your calendar like, okay, out.

Of the hundred things I do in the day, what are the two or.

Three things I actually do love? Let's do more of that and delegate these other things. Like I don't have the money. No. If you spent all of your time on the 10 or 15% of your day that really lit you up, that.

You loved, you'd probably do more of it.

And so people that look at other individuals and say, how do they work so long, how do they work so early, how do they work on the weekends, how do they come with ideas in the middle of the night?

It's the fact that they love the game.

They love it.

And so the more time you can put towards the things that you love.

And delegate everything else that is required to start the business, the sooner you can get there. And it's not right away. And there are years of grinding and doing the things that you absolutely despise doing because it's simply required to be able to get the business off the ground. There is a season for that. But as you pass that stage, 500,000, a million, $2 million in annual revenue, the next mountain is what do I love, what turns me on, because that I will be able to deploy 200 to 300% more discretionary effort towards discretionary effort is effort that is not required, but I voluntarily give it out of my own goodwill. So time in the shower, time that I'm sitting there looking out the window, what am I thinking about? That's discretionary effort. And many times when you love something, it pools the discretionary effort towards that thing.

All right, so in this masterclass, we've.

Already talked about the seven stages to be able to scale your model across the country. Then we talked about the mindset required to make sure it happens. But the major component of all of this is finding the right people. Not finding them, not hiring them, but actually retaining them. And so one of the biggest tools that we've used for retention is anonymous peer reviews. The ability to be able to give feedback to other people inside the company and to where all the negative criticisms are not coming from you as the manager.

So this is actually a question that.

Was submitted from a million dollar operator in the lawn care landscape industry. But if you use this, you can take it from a million to 10 million by finding the right people and then using peer reviews, make their talent more refined and be able to improve their skill set.

Hey, Mike and team, Hope you guys are doing well. This is Zach Buyer, Westfield, Indiana. Name of my business is Byer Lawn and Landscape. We're going to do just under $1.1 million this year in 2025 and have eight full time field guys, one part time field guy and an office administrator. So called 10 employees. My question for Mike is in regards to end of the year employee reviews, I know you've talked about it before. You know how you do basically anonymously reviews amongst employees to one another, but also feedback towards me and my leadership and feedback towards the company in general. I would just love maybe in depth answer of how exactly you go about that. Again, I know you've talked about it before, but just don't know exactly how you like to go about it. You know, how do you keep the anonymous, how do you talk about it, you know, with the guys, you know, we have a Christmas party coming up. How exactly do we bring all that stuff up? So any help and any feedback in terms of the employer views would be awesome.

Yeah. First off, when it comes to employer views and peer reviews, I think it's one of the most underrated tools. Once you get above, above five employees, when you're below five employees, you can't really do anonymous reviews because everyone knows who's talking about who. It's very hard to figure it out. But once you get 10, 15 employees, Zach doing now 10 employees, you can absolutely do anonymous reviews. How we did this, we started off very manual, which was paper and it was, they got a sheet of paper, had everyone's name and said what they're good at and what they can improve at and they just fill it all in. We then had those submitted back to us. No one had to put their name at the top, so we didn't know.

Who the feedback was coming from, but.

We know who it was directed at. And then what we did is we just combine all of the feedback of what they are good at and what they could improve at for each person. And then after our end of year party, or it wasn't your party, it was like kind of like a 15, 20 minute thing about business. And then it was more or less like, let's just have dinner, et cetera, chill out, have fun. Sometimes a kind of going off site is nice. So we would do that at the end. Don't do it before. At the end we would give them their sheet. You don't do it before because people get in their head about negative feedback. So at the end you, you say hey, in an envelope, everyone's got their name on it. We don't know who submitted the feedback, but inside of that is all the peer feedback from everyone inside this room about you. I always frame it as a really positive thing because there's no way like no one's family is doing this, none of their friends Friends are gonna tell them, like, where they can improve at and give them criticisms that are in a constructive manner. Usually it's gonna be, like, emotion, and they're mad and like, so this is, like, the one very unique opportunity for a human being to get constructive criticism that makes them better. And so I always framed it as a really positive thing. And then usually a couple weeks prior to that, I would read my pros and cons or, like, my good at and what I can prove at from the year prior in front of the team. So they kind of just got disarmed and that people would laugh about it. They would. They would kind of chuckle. I would say some, you know, funny jokes about myself just to get everyone relaxed about giving peer feedback. Because a lot of people, it doesn't come naturally. It feels like they feel like they might get judged for it. They feel like if I say something that's a little bit too harsh or. Or if I say something that I really want to say, but I, you know, they might get their feelings hurt. I try to disarm them by saying, hey, use me like all the bullets, put them here. And so I believe that by doing that, you disarm everyone. Okay. It's okay to give harsh feedback. It's okay to be able to say what we're actually thinking. And Mike literally stood up in front of us and told all of his what was said on his last year. And then hopefully at the end of that, I can say, hey, based upon this feedback, I was able to make one or two changes in the business or in my personal life or in my leadership style or whatever based upon this feedback. And so then they also realize, again, you're trying to reinforce them for giving good, constructive feedback. They're starting to realize that you actually take action on the criticism that were given to you. And without saying it, what you're really saying is, I expect you all that when you get criticisms that. That are going to hit hard in your stomach, you will also make changes based upon that feedback from the team. And I will tell them that when a couple weeks prior, I'll be like, hey, that one hurt. Like, that was a gut punch, man. That hurt. It took me a couple of days. And there's been times when it comes to peer reviews that the feedback that I got took me a couple of days to really process, get over the emotion of being mad. And then I think about it and like, okay, what changes could I make? And like, okay, that makes actual sense. And so I try to give them all of that Upfront information two weeks in advance when they're getting the peer reviews prior to them actually filling them out. Then like Zach was mentioning at the off site, I'm going to at the end give them each an envelope with theirs inside it. I'm gonna say all the same stuff again. I'm gonna repeat how valuable it is, how lucky we are that we get to have this and that. I expect you all to have a punch in the gut when you get some of this feedback. And we're doing it at the end of this party. Cause I didn't wanna ruin it for you. I didn't wanna ruin dinner. So you gotta be like light, keep it light. Cuz when they get the feedback, it's gonna be hard. It's hard to hear. Um, and so you're, you're kind of like softening that blow. And everyone also was able to give you a lot of feedback. Now keep in mind, and as I also say this, when they're getting their envelopes, as humans we will look to all the negative things first. And we will miss the fact that almost every single person I've ever done in peer review for had a positive section that was larger than the negative section or like things are good at, was larger than the things that they needed improvement at. But immediately. And I'm the same way, like, I'm like, okay, great, who cares about stuff I'm good at? What do people say about my bad stuff? And so I prep them with that prior to them getting their own feedback because it is hard. And they many times will glance over things that people really love them for. Some of the feedback that I've got from employees about the peer review process is they never knew that what they were doing people loved. And so they like, they would get five, six, seven people saying this exact same thing, like, wow, I didn't even think about that. And yet so many people noticed and really appreciate that I do something extra in the business or I show up early or make sure the coffee's on for everyone in the morning or wipe out everyone's truck at the end of the day. Like little stuff like that comes in the pure views. They also start to realize that there are things they're doing that they don't have any idea is annoying people, causing them to get frustrated, et cetera. And so there's one time where one of the team members said, hey, look, my negative, my negative feedback was basically that I am always joking around people, but I cross the line and I am mocking them or teasing them too Much. And after a long day, it gets to them. And he's like, three or four people said the same thing. I never knew that.

I was just trying to be joking.

I was trying to be fun. And so he's like, okay, I'll dial that back. Now what? This is the next. This is the 2.0 version. I learned after a few years is have one on one meetings within 48 hours of them getting the feedback. And then you.

It's so easy.

The one on one just becomes, let's review your, your feedback together. And you always start with the positives. You go over there in the one on ones. It's like, let's go for the negative first. And I gotta try to. This is a one on one. No, like really reinforce and back up what the team appreciates about that team member and go over all the things that are positive and then add your own ad lib to it. Like, reinforce them. Oh, they said the same thing. Let's go. Pound it. Like, give it high five. Like keep the energy high because you need that social credibility that when you go to the negative side and there are things that are gonna be tough to talk about, that they're like open and receiving. So then you're gonna go through the negative feedback. And what's really nice about peer reviews once you get above 10 employees is employees will say almost everything you want to say to your team, but you can't. For example, when we were working in doubles in the cruise, there are some people who would not shower or they'd come to work and they just reeked. I can't say that, but the team certainly can. An anonymous peer review and when five.

People say, you need a shower more.

Often and you stink at work, people start to listen to their team members and it means a lot to them. Like, it's very infrequent in life. You get this kind of feedback. And so it can mean a lot. It can also really crush them and they can get a little agitated, they can be a little frustrated by the fact that people see them a certain way and they don't mean it to be that way, or that everyone is saying they should work harder and they feel like they're working hard. And so you use the one on one as a way to validate their positives, validate the things they do need to work on, and then give them a roadmap to improve on them. Because that's a lot of times the gap that the team member doesn't know how to fill in is like Okay, I got this feedback.

Okay, cool.

What am I supposed to do with this? Okay. How can we lean into some of more of your strengths? People really appreciate these things about you. How can we lean more into that? Okay, these things I think you can work on. What can we do to make that happen? Can I support you in any way to make sure I can help you? Like, you're like, everyone's saying I'm slow on the jobs, but I'm working as hard as I can. Okay, what could I do as your manager to make sure that you have the training required?

What can I do to support you.

Working quicker on the jobs?

It sounds like people are frustrated by it.

I love you as part of this team. They've said so many good things about you. Let's try to work on these things. Let's create a plan together. And so now your one on one actually becomes a coaching session of you figuring out how to solve the problems that everyone else has identified inside of the team. And what most managers will do is they'll do exactly that same thing, but.

Without the peer review.

And they'll just give all the negative feedback from manager to team member.

And it comes across very different when your manager is telling you the five.

Things you need to improve at versus getting feedback from all of your team. Which by the way says the exact same thing. Like as a manager, as an owner, everything you're thinking about a team member will come out in those peer reviews. Almost can guarantee it. I used to actually give feedback in the peer reviews, but I stopped doing it because people would always try to decipher which one's Mike. And a lot of times I would put a lot of time into it. So like I'd be longer. So I would, okay, I, I will remove my feedback. And I did it because almost every single time what I wanted to say would come out in the other peer reviews.

If you have 10 or more people.

It will come out the fact that they're slow, they get to work late or like a minute right before time is late. And that annoys the crew. I don't need to beg them about being late. Their crew will do it for me. That's why having like P4P open book management profit sharing is so important. Cause they start to think in this way of like, no, we do what's right for the business. We all make more money here. And on P4P, on profit sharing, the books are open. We can see how much your damage case cost the business. So they will do the work of ragging on them about low quality work, not talking to customers, not doing walkthroughs, driving erratically, all the things that you want to say, but if you did, it would come across as like you're nagging on them. That is what comes out in a peer review. And then you are now the coach, you are the third party and trying to work on a roadmap and a plan for them to improve. This is better for the team member because their compliance to improvement is much better. It is better for the team that they are working with because they can actually get the things that are rubbing them the wrong way solved and people actually improve. And then it's better for you.

Cause everything you want to say is.

Said in a way that is not going to be taken as you're the bad guy. So it's a big win.

Win.

That's how we do online or peer reviews. We start off with the very manual version, which is the paper, and we just cut it and then we spend time organizing.

You can do this in SurveyMonkey, etc.

The more anonymous you can get it, the more honest the feedback. There's only been a couple times where I have had feedback in an anonymous, like purely anonymous route where I actually said I need to know who said this. And most of the time it was around things that like if someone was felt endangered or they were feeling threatened or I'm like, hey, I need to know who wrote this and I need to know now. And so that's happened a couple times. But I need to do that. Cause like there's an actual systemic problem and if someone's feeling a certain way, I need to know about it or if there's been feedback about me where I like I needed more clarity. Cause I saw their point. Usually I was mad, I would get mad. Then a couple days go by and you're like, okay, I get where they're coming from. But I think I'm just missing clarity. And I would again ask the team like, hey, no one's obligated. I just want more clarity on some of the feedback that was given to me. And this is what it is.

If you want to come forward and.

And give me more information, fine. If you don't, that's totally fine too. But I think I can improve better if I had some more clarity around these couple points. And so those are the couple times that I have actually stepped into an anonymous peer review where we don't ask for their names and actually requested for that person to step forward. Not in public, like hey, talk to me after work today. Make sure you drop by my desk and let's talk about these things. So that has happened a couple times. And in both cases, we were able to resolve the issue, and that person felt very validated. But. But you can only do this in a culture of trust and where people actually know that you're not going to rat them out. You know, you're not going to pit people against each other. You know, you're not going to take Bob's handwriting and then know that Tim and then tell Susie that he said about that about her. Like, if you start doing that, you create so much drama so fast. And that's why most people avoid peer reviews, because it creates drama. It can diffuse so much drama and create way more alignment and a much more positive culture if done correctly. And that's how we did it.