 Listen to him, I like him a lot. Okay. All right, just kidding. Okay, here we are live. Ah, Al, and so I am Liz Trotter. I'm here with doing smart business moves with Al. Al, is your last name pronounced Levi or Levy? Thank you for asking, because I answer to everything. I grew up in a big family, but it's Levy. It's spelled L-E-V-I, but it's like with a knee at the end. Okay, gotcha, Levy. All right. And I feel like I have seen you somewhere else before, Al. Were you on another, recently on a podcast or something that I might have seen? I am on a ton of podcasts. Tommy Mellows, home servers expert. I've been on, you know, a ton of marketing things. I saw you on Al Levi. Yeah, if you just Google Al Levy, you're gonna get sickeningly surprised at how many places I go. I never sleep. Is that? No. Okay, well. Actually, I have a lot of them on my website. So if you just go to my website, the number seven, powercontractor.com. Go over to the podcast. You'll see. Hold on. Gets the beer. And you'll also. Yeah, so you'll hear me too. Is it all words, the number seven? The number, no, it's the number seven. Okay. Power, E-O-W-E-R, contractor, C-O-N-T, R-A-C-T-O-R.com. Sorry. It's the website is seven, the number seven, powercontractor.com. I was giving you my email address. It's popping up here too. We're gonna have to show that in a second. Okay. All right. So sevenpowercontractor.com. Here we are. And let me grab this and share it. That's my book. All right. Can you see it? Am I already sharing? I see myself. I don't know if everybody, but yeah, it's the seven power contractor. It's actually available in Audible because so many people are in the trucks. That's pretty helpful to have. Yeah. I don't think other people could see it, but I'm gonna first, I'm gonna post right here. So y'all, anybody, if you're on already, go ahead and hit sevenpowercontractor.com. You can go and look at who El is, a little bit about what he does and also look at his book. I'm excited. So normally we have a little bit of chatting, but I was telling you that Tom's a funny one and he's not here today because he's out having a good old time, having fun doing something. You know, I could tell dad jokes, but I'm really not the best at telling jokes. So I'm gonna just pass and I wanna make sure I stay on the blue group. So let me address why would the audience wanna hear from Al? The sevenpowercontractor. Who am I and why would you care? Because if I were you, I would wanna know why I should care. And so I was the third generation in my family's business. We were in Long Island, New York. And if you know where JFK airport just drive towards the water and that's where we were. And so our business was started in 1936 out of my grandfather's gas station. My brothers and I showed up and now it's onto my middle brother who's still there but his son, so fourth generation and what that really takes is systems and the people systems. So that's really what we speak about in the seven power contractors. Their ability to put these foundational blocks under any company. So you're going, well, I'm not a plumbing, heating, cooling problem. That's okay. I've worked with kitchen, cabinetry, garage door, roofing guys. I was telling the story to Liz before we came on and I actually worked with a commercial photographer in the California because her technicians were the photographers of hers and the dispatcher was the person who assigned the school. So it's more alike than it's unlike we always think our business is different and people in the maid service business have already found me out there in the world and checked into it as to, because they also know that you to repeat your business, you really need systems for planning, operations, staffing, sales, sales coaching, marketing and finance. I don't care what work you did. I love it, was that it? Real quick, you did the seven? Seven. All right. You know what? I'm super excited about this for one really, really big, huge reason. People constantly say this, I need to have better systems in my business and then I'll ask them, well, what systems do you need? They're like, I don't know. Like, how do I know what systems I need? So it sounds like you're gonna be answering that question for us today. I will, I will. And that really does kind of lean into this, you know, my company functioned from 1936 to 1996, 60 years without systems. And we made a lot of money, but here's what I can promise you, it was chaotic and incredibly stressful. And so what does that mean? I'll put some context to it. I was making a lot of money as a young man, but I was 50 pounds heavier than you see me today. And I can tell you that I was eating my stress, which is not unusual for owners. We find our addiction, if you will, to cope with what goes on in the stress. So my tagline for the last 20 years when I left my business to do this is always been less stress, more success. Cause I was very successful. I wanted less stress. I wanted my life back. Yeah. My business supposedly was created to serve my life. It was anything but that. My life was serving my business. And that's very common for, I'm sure everyone that's listening here to the same. Very common. For entrepreneurs in general, right? Yeah. Yes. We get on that hamster wheel and just start going, going, going. And we don't really see a way to slow down or get off or do things differently. We're just so busy going. So, yeah. I have a quick answer to how to handle that. So hang on, I'm going to give it to you. One is learn how to master how to clone yourself. Okay. Cause I never could. So you're not going to be able to either. There are no clones coming. That number one. Number two is you could work all day long. I mean, really, do you have to sleep? I mean, that's just for lazy people. You should just stay awake 24 hours a day and just grind yourself to nothingness. By the way, I'm kidding. Yeah. There's a little New York sarcasm, even though I live in Arizona for the last 20 years, you can't do it. There's only two types of companies, Liz, that I've ever worked with in the 20 years out. Either it's, you know, really hard working small business people, they get a great following. People love them. They like the work that they can do cause they can keep their eye on it or the thumb on the pulse of what's going on. But then the company goes and grows and they can't, again, like I said, clone themselves and things become a problem. And they run out of, you know, hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month, and they can't clone themselves. And trust me, I had that conversation with my brother in an office late at night where, you know, he was going, why don't they do this? And I go, if they could do all that, why would they be working here? I said, what you want, which he is a clone and they're not coming. So you get what you get. That's really kind of one of the big stepping stones. The second ones I've worked with are great marketers and they have tons of calls and they've grown their business. But every time the phone rings, Liz, it's like gasoline to a fire because they can't answer the phone's right. They can't dispatch right. They can't get the people trained to go to the homes or businesses and do the stuff the same way each and every time. So imagine I travel to this great country and actually Canada as well. And here's what I can tell you, Liz, most places you will find in my left hand when I was doing one-to-one consulting, a couple of Starbucks. Now, I don't think Starbucks is the best coffee you can get. But here's what I know. Here's what I know. It tastes the same in Appleton, Wisconsin as it does in Long Beach, California as it does in Atlanta, Georgia. True. So we as customers prize consistency. So ask yourself a tough question without documented systems for planning, for operations, for staffing, for sales, sales coaching, from marketing and finance, those seven things, how can you be a replicable business? You're gonna be always hoping that magic walks in the door. What do I call magic? Or I used to call it lightning in a bottle or unicorn, whichever phrase you like, is the magic person who walks through the door that's already trained, has all these skills, and they have a great personality, and they're ready to do whatever you ask. Try doing that over and over again. I will tell you, you're gonna have a very hard time. If your customer, your company is based on people versus systems, that's your challenge. Yeah, agree. You know, you bring up a really good point that is hard for a lot of people too in this, I think in our industry, because a lot of times the person that's starting the business, they start really, really small. And how they start is by hiring one person that either works out or doesn't work out initially. And if they don't work out, fine, they leave. But initially they find that first person that they really like. And they sort of build their business around them and this other person and this friend idea. Now I've got a friend, right? And so, and now they really like this person who's a friend and does everything and really is very supportive because it's a relational relation, right? That's what it is. It's a relationship that they're having. It's not so much building a business as building relationships. And so they bring in a few more people and they're building some more relationships. But at some point in time, systems have to replace the relationships because you can only build relationships until you have so many. And then your friends are like, you never spend any time with me. You want to spend all your friend time with so-and-so. Yeah, no, there's only one of you. And it's, you know, and they also remember the old days when it was just you and me. Remember when we used to do that and they want to go back and talk about the good old days. Yes. The reality is, I will share with this a good friend of mine helped me with this is staffing is like a moving train. There are people that hop on. There are people that will hop off. There are people that you will kick off the train and then there's some that will ride all the way with you to the end because they've earned that. But you'll never know. So you have to always be doing five steps that I talk about for staffing, which is always recruiting, always hiring, always orienting, always training. And here's the one everyone misses, Liz, including myself. Yeah. You think they're on the team, but they're not. Yeah. And that is always retaining. So you're always working those five steps. Give them to me again. I'm gonna write them down. Always recruiting. Recruiting, yep. Always hiring. Always hiring, absolutely. Always orienting. Orienting, awesome. Always training. Training, absolutely. And then the last one is always retaining. Nice. Yeah. So that was not us originally, Liz. Yeah. My brother, who was the guy in the office, fortunately he didn't do any of the outside work, but he was the one that kept the office and actually made sure our bills were paid and money was coming in. So we were lucky with three brothers that worked out really well as manager. We were not a small company. We were about 70 people, about 17 million in sales. So really, he nicknamed our hiring system. So let me tell you in fact, which is in the good old days, we would get lucky sometimes, we would get two weeks notice that somebody's leaving. And that's great. Sometimes we get one week's notice. And that's still okay. And sometimes they would leave the keys to their truck and we would ask ourselves, are they still here? What happened? What happened? Cause this is before the word ghosting. We didn't know what ghosting was, but we were getting ghosted. So at this point, we'd run an ad and we'd be desperate. And anybody who could walk in, my brother Marty had a good New York sarcasm to him. He nicknamed our hiring process and recruiting process as the mirror test, M-I-R-R-O-R. Which meant if you breathe in the mirror, you're hired because we were desperate. We were so reactive. We were never proactive, but finally we banged our heads enough that we changed it. So that's where those five steps of staffing come in. Is if I could get two good people walking through the door and if I'm always recruiting, you mean to tell me you wouldn't find a position for them? Here's what I can tell you, is that like us, there were two knuckleheads that we would be dying to get rid of, but we wouldn't pull the trigger and hold them to our standards because there was nobody behind them. But once we got proactive, which means putting money to work, systems to work for these systems to work in staffing, we began to have this faith that we could get new people in. So we began to hold people to standards, help them move up the ladder with us, up the corporate ladder in the boxes that are represented on the org chart. This really made our staffing train work in a phenomenal direction. So basically you just had a funnel for hiring the same way you had a funnel for sales. And so people kept coming in so you didn't have to hold on to those people. All right, so I've got a question for you here, Al, since we're talking about this right now. Something that we're talking about with somebody just today. Here's the situation. He is a great business owner. He is very committed to his company. It's a strong growing company. He's committed to his systems. He's also a very loyal employer and he's very committed to his people if they do good work for him. He has an employee that is so amazing when she's amazing that he can't hardly stand it. He's like, I just bow down to her. It's so amazing, so much better than him, right? That's his thing. That's good of him to recognize. Most of us have, yeah, that's very rare because most of us as owners think who's best for this job? And it's always our hand goes up and our ego. I'm telling you, he's a good, strong owner, right? That is a good owner. The problem is the other 50% of the time, no. She falls off the rails. Oh, okay, so it's a balancing act, got it. And he struggles because he can't get rid of her because she's so amazing when she's on and when she's off, she's not that bad. She's just not great, not great. You know, the problem with this whole scenario is that even if she was great all the time, God forbid she walks across the street and misses the bus coming, bad for her, but bad for you because you're a hostage at your own company and you didn't realize it. You're both at risk. And so what happens if you get sick? What happens if she decides to move? Whoever that person that you think is so magical? I actually had a franchise, a drain franchise nationwide. And they would come to our, I'm sorry? What kind of franchise? It was a drain. So when you flush your toilet and the water disappears, well, sometimes when it doesn't, that's when you need us. So it was a drain, and it was also the commercial. And it was coast to coast. And it actually takes all these systems that I had put together for years. And I partnered up with one of my clients, as a matter of fact, who wanted to do this franchise. And along with my, as my wife calls it, my work wife, Ellen Rohr, who's very famous in our industry, financial person, the rest of it. We mastered this thing, but the whole idea of the systems, so they would come to our office and they would see a great CSR, customer service rep, or a great dispatcher, or a great tech, or a great service manager. And they go, oh, if I only had that person, and I go, I have built hundreds of that person all across the country. I find willing people with no skills and have the ability to make them willing people that have great skills at the boxes they hold on the org chart. Hallelujah, hallelujah. That's, so, so let's talk about this then real quick. You always hear from people, Al, is that you gotta hire the right people. And so my thinking there is the right people are the people that are willing and committed, right? They are, and growth oriented. They want to grow, they want to do better. So that's this guy's problem. She has to do it. The reason why he struggles with her is, she's like, you know, I've been dropping the ball, I'm gonna get this fixed, I'm gonna get on it. It's me, it's not you. I, you know how much I love this company. So I need you to just give me a little bit of time to get this fixed. Sorry for laughing, but you know, I've heard the story a thousand times. Of course. And so it's really, it's kind of like, listen, no matter how old we are, we still act like kids. So it's kind of like going to your mom and dad, I know I let you down, but you can count on, I'm gonna pick up the ball and I'm gonna be great and you will be for an hour. You know, until something else happens next. So yeah, that's really the problem here, but it's still a case of really, you need to know the boxes it takes to run your company. And then even if you don't have a person for every box, let's face it, you need to cover those boxes. Counts feeble, counts payable. Actually, if it's maids that go out, that's like what I call technicians, the service manager, dispatcher working together who goes out to does what, who sells the jobs, a big ticket sales person or whatever it is that goes and sells it, who answers the phone. There's all these boxes that you have to have. And the question is- The question is about boxes on the order chart, basically. Okay, got it. Yeah, and then the goal is to have a manual for each of the boxes on the order chart that cover 80% of what goes on in that box because even if I'm willing and I come to you and I wanna take one of those boxes from you or make you go down the depth chart, DEPTH, which means first string, second string, third string so that you don't have to be the first person to pay the bills. You're the third person to pay the bills. I can't even give that box away if I haven't created the systems it takes to hold the box. Yes. So like you said about 80% though, talk to us about- 80%, yeah. Owners, the reason that they've reached this level of owning their own company in general, the reason is because most of us are perfectionists. And again, we're good at what we do. And so are we the best to answer the phone? Probably, are we the best dispatcher? Probably, are we the best base? Probably, let's name it, you know but you can't clone yourself as we said already. So the problem becomes you're gonna make a perfect set of systems that if you printed them which nobody prints it anymore it would be as high as this ceiling and then you'll still put another page in there. And the reality is that no one can possibly know that. So even though you can search it that's not how manuals should work. The thing that manuals should do is it's what do I need to know for what goes on at this company 80% of the time and I'm gonna leave the 20% weird to the side. Cause if the 20% weird that's not covered in the manual comes up, then I go see to whoever I can report to about how to handle this. The problem is Liz, people cannot handle 80% of what goes on in the boxes that they're in. And by the way, you're already in these boxes those of you who are listening which you think while I'm small, tough luck, you already have those boxes. You just didn't know it. Yeah, you're in a lot of them. That's the thing, right? And you're gonna be in them forever until you learn how to hand them off successfully. So it's not only taking a rubber ball throwing it against the wall and watch it come flying back at you. So is that what you're gonna teach us how to hand them off successfully? Yes. So the big thing that I would say is this really speaks to the operating power which is one of those things. So basically that's having the right box or chart that fits your organization. Now I have one for contractors that goes from a million to 200 million in sales. It's the same set of boxes. Maybe they get to add a couple of more boxes but it's the same structure and reporting order. And then, so you think of that as the bingo board and then your job is to cover with each box with a manual that covers that 80% that I'm speaking to. And if you just want to see it even though it's not set up for your company if they go to sevenpowercontractor.com and then hit the products page, you'll see where it says signature operating manual system. Or if you just want a shortcut to that it's sevenpowercontractor.com. Signature, the operation operating manuals or the staff? The operating manuals. That's where the box or chart kicks in. But I don't think I'm sharing my screen. Let me share my screen. So people can see this. Or maybe I am sharing. I'm seeing you. So I'm not seeing what they say. Anyway, I would send the link to them. Yeah, I'm pulling it up right now and I'm just gonna put it in that chat and they can go look at it. That's where they should just go look at it. But really these are the boxes and having worked with a condo builder and I never built a condo. I was never a commercial photographer. It's really the same set of boxes. Now some of those may not apply. If you're people going to do a maid service are not selling stuff to people. So they're not really on the service wing. They're probably more on the install wing which is the big tickets person sold something and now they're coming to fulfill it which is providing the daily, weekly, monthly service that needs to be done. So there's a reporting order that still follows and with these boxes then if you look down the page you'll see that there's video tours of the manuals that cover these boxes. Cause that's really the goal. So if you don't wanna be doing a accounts receivable accounts payable forever and be the only one cause if you're on vacation that means people still have to get paid. So yeah, people have no sense of humor about not getting paid. Anyway, I digress. Yeah, so the idea is that you have a manual that allows you to train someone up associated other training that you do with it. Okay. So that they can come and I'll take that box and move you down the depth chart is your goal. Awesome. So you're basically trying to get out of each individual box as quickly and as efficiently and effectively as you can so that you can now move on to the next box and have, right? Your job is to move you as an owner is to spend more time in the top levels working on your business. What is the top line sales you want? What is the gross profit you desire? How are you gonna, how many calls do you need? How many sales opportunities? What do you need? And this is where the numbers are really the most important thing is understanding budgeting which is really kind of what financial power talks about is you gotta charge the right price. And then you have to be really great at marketing and sales for people to pay you. That's really the essence of it. So it's not like one system is more than the other but this is a good illustration of what operating power really is. It starts with the right or charts and that's the box or chart. The depth charges chart is a save as to that and that's where you start putting the names in. Whose first string, second string, third string. So like I would, I was terrible at doing payroll. So mine was like about 25th name that they would take but I didn't know how to do it if I was stuck. Yeah, there are some things in my company that I just don't know how to do at all. And I recognize that I should probably at least have a working idea about how some of these things work. Yes, and I will tell you that on that or chart the two boxes that an owner can never leave. I don't care how big your company ever gets is marketing manager and financial manager. Here's the reason. Financial manager, it is your money. No one, no one's ever gonna care as much as you do. Plus, can I have the wool pulled over your eyes and find out too late, which is the sad story is, well, I'm not good at numbers and I don't really know. So I'm just gonna give it to somebody and that's where the problem comes home. It doesn't mean that you have to be but you do need to know that you're asking the right questions and really what it comes down to based on people handing their numbers up to you, are they right and can you trust them and are they delivered on time? Those are the three things that you want as a financial manager. And a marketing manager is think of a bathtub full of the right amount of calls from the right customer at the right time. That's the three rights of marketing. Okay, well, this is a weird sounding bathtub. What do you got in here? From a plumbing background. So this bathtub full of calls. Okay. Is filled with the right amount of calls from the right customer at the right time, the three rights of marketing. Gotcha, okay. Your job is to overfill that bathtub because if you have way more calls than you can humanly do in a day, guess what? You get to set the price, you get to set who you will and what work for and the type of work you do. Plus it allows you to have the upward momentum to put more people out there working in your case more maids going to more places, more salespeople selling more jobs. That's how this company goes bottom up. All right, so basically you're saying that the two thing, not basically you've said clearly said to two areas you can't get rid of financial and marketing because nobody's gonna manage your finances like you and there's too much risk, right? Yeah, yeah. Of somebody doing something else nefarious. And marketing, you just can't really afford to put that in somebody else's hands because they won't push as hard as you. So what do you do if, you can't see us live? Oh, sorry, German wizards. But you're on live right now. A lot of people watch us later. So it looks like German wizards is live, yay. So what do you do, Al, if you are simply not good at marketing? What do you do? Yeah, so here's the thing about that. I don't want you to sit there and think you're gonna do the new ad campaign or make up the direct mail postcards or you're gonna make the billboards. Your job is to know as a marketing manager, again, how many are the right amount of call right customer? What do I need to keep all these people busy today? And also to build my company as I move forward because I need to know how many calls that I need, how many opportunities do they need to close? How many opportunities do they need to run right? And then how can I put more people so this company goes and grows the right way? And the only two things that I ever am interested in is top line sales and gross profit. Until I have both of those, I'm not really much interested in anything else you wanna share with me. So the marketing though is most times owners would not have grown if there wasn't great demand for what they wanna do. Your job is to, you can have outside vendors and I encourage that, but they will never know your unique selling position, that you're a target audience. All of that is in your head. Yeah. And until you have that documented in the marketing manager position, no one can really do a great marketing campaign for you because they won't have your authentic voice. They don't understand your business like you do. I'm not advocating, you can have outsources for all of that. You can have people inside that do it. People are doing this as well, yeah. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you're not the one doing it, but you are the one that's making sure that it is happening by people that know what they're doing. So that's your job. And it's all about objectives too, which is marketing is thought as this great artwork versus science work. And the reality is there's a size, there is a scientific way. If you keep plugging your numbers back and you're really great at tracking ROI's and you're tracking costs for call to get lead acquisition, you keep plugging this back, you get better and better at knowing that. Now, software today is really good at lead source tracking, where did the call come from? And then making sure you track this stuff, but you do need to make sure that's really what the marketing person's job is the marketing manager. Because you wanna go to a marketing if you're gonna do it in-house or if you go out to vendors, you go, we want you to handle the marketing. Well, what does that mean? I need a thousand calls from this type of customers. There's two or three of them. Here's when I need them by. And this is how I'm judging your performance. Awesome. So basically they have their own set of KPIs that they're following. That's a great way to say it. And that's just how we're tracking your effectiveness is are you meeting the KPIs that we need you to meet? Yeah. And that's a good discussion with them. Yeah, you know, for instance, just as a sideway notice, a lot of guys will run TV campaigns or radio campaigns and you have to have a three frequency, which just means that your ideal audience would hear you three times or see you three times in a week. So people will run this campaign and they spend a lot of money and they go, it's not working, it's not working. Well, yeah, because it's two months. In two months, I haven't got enough penetration. It's eight months to a year before you even know if it's working or not. Now a good marketing company would tell you that but you have to ask the right questions and you have to have objective benchmarks, KPIs or then it's just a lot of money going out to, I mean, you can waste tons of money on pay per click. Now I think pay per click is great. I think, you know, Google reviews is important. I think LSAs are important. There's just only about a billion ways to go to market, right? Right. There's no way, I could, you can't even push your shopping cart in your supermarket where you don't see my something in front of you, right? Yeah. We're bombarded. So how do you break our heads open that we finally see you and know you're the choice if I'm looking for a maid service? I see there's some question on the screen here. It's right here. We just landed in 80,000 square feet. It's not a question, it's just a comment. Oh, well, congratulations, Ben. Yeah. Yay, good job. I'm always looking for new clients every day. I'm looking for new clients every day. Proactive marketing and sales. Congratulations to you. Absolutely, right? More and more and more customers all the time. Turn them into a rating fan. Get pictures, videos, testimonials, and deploy them anywhere and everywhere you can. Work out a referral marketing deal. There's a lot of ways to play that. So you, it sounds like you actually enjoy marketing. I love marketing. So here's the story, because we stepped into it, Liz. Yeah. I was great at marketing and sales. And the problem was my team was great at blowing up every opportunity I had. So that's why I had a pullback. That's why I had to become great at, you know, planning and ore charts and manuals and the associated training centers where I could make them do the work right in front of me here rather than in customers' homes and businesses. Because that's a very bad place to be. We used to call that OTJD because we didn't want to say it out loud. What that is short for is on-the-job training. So that means I'm coming to your home today to learn how to do my job and you're paying me. Thank you. Yeah, that's good. I like that. Pay me more. Pay me more. Pay me more. It should be done in-house. And when you can, when you can, then you make that great-looking training center, your sales and marketing focus, because it separates you from all of your competition. It's why you're worth more money. It's why your system better. It's why you're the Starbucks anywhere you go or better. All right, okay. So definitely I know that there are a lot of people that are in for that idea. Tom has had, he has a 10,000 square foot building and he has had an in-house training. He has like a bedroom and a- Oh, that's great. Perfect. And he's got a set of stairs in there and different kinds of blinds and different flooring and he's got all the things in there. And- That's exactly what I'm speaking to. That's exactly what I'm speaking to. And believe it or not, we do the same thing with plumbing, heating, cooling, electric, all the trades. We do the same thing. We don't just put stuff in there. We make it look like a house and stimulate running calls. So they know their responsibilities from the time they get to the door to the time they leave. And in our case, our guys are telling them what we're doing. They're great communicators. Their sales system is all built into that training. So the three things is sales, operation, technical. Now sales is really great communication. And if you're just going there to do this, the maid service, you still have to talk to the customer. If they're home. If they're home and if they're not home, then you've got to send them photos or something. Well- Tags. Got to send them photos or text or something to know that their house is clean. And this is the way we left it when we get done. All right. So sales, what's, so you said sales, office and tech. Yeah. So for the technicians, sales, operation, technical. So operational is they're clean and neat. Their vehicles are clean and neat. They get to the door and they protect everything in the home. So that stays clean and neat. And then whatever they need to do to close the call with the office, the right way is what I call operational. Technical is there's a method for cleaning the mirror, right? Where it doesn't look all stained afterwards and streaking. Yeah. That's the technical because we don't want to get a call tomorrow that my bedroom mirror looks worse than when you arrive. Yeah. No, we don't want to get that call. No. I'd love to tell you, I've never gotten that call but I don't like it when I do get it. Just say. So you thought I didn't know this stuff. You were there. I'm there. I've been there. It's frankly more alike than disaligned. Yeah. Of course. And service businesses, there are some hurdles you're going to have to get over and we all deal with. There isn't such a thing as 100% satisfaction with that. I mean, they might be satisfied but they're not going to be 100% thrilled. You might be able to get them there. Not a reason to start there. And that's really built into the communication system. So what we always talked about, diagnose the customer before you diagnose the job. Oh, nice. I like that. Because ultimately, yes, they're going to measure what they measure or they're going to see what they're going to see but you need to keep them in the loop. So even if they're not there, like I work in a great play in Vale and these castles on the hill is one of their 10 houses they own. So they're not there but we need to make them be there. So we set it up where we let them know we need a number we can reach because when we look over the job and then we have to bring them in either FaceTime or Zoom so they know what it is that we're doing and what we're recommending. Because when you're doing sale where you're not there, that's a problem. When you do the work and they're not there, that's a problem. Because ultimately today, the stakes have changed from what I was doing this. Used to be the rule of thumb was if you like what I did, you'll tell 10 friends. Or many friends, yeah. And if you hate what I do, they'll tell 100 people. Well, now today I just go on internet and I tell seven people about how much I hate your guts after you finished doing the work. So the stakes are high. So in many cases with customers that I've worked with over a period of time we get to 100% customer satisfaction or your money back. Now that sounds pretty radical. So I will share more. First of all, they're really great at tracking their callback ratio which means they went on so many jobs and somebody came back for legitimate callbacks. The merit was best stuff. Or I broke the vase or whatever that is, right? So that counts as a callback. So it's a ratio we're looking for. And once that becomes known that can actually be put into your budget to account for these things. So proactively you know what you need to have in your budget. Of course, if you have the boxes and the org charts and the manuals and then the training center and you get them trained up, the likelihood you're gonna need goes down and down and down. And the better you sell it right, the better things go right. So we do what we call go quiet before you go loud. And go quiet means is we offer 100% custom, they go to the door and the texts are told it. We offer 100% customer satisfaction or your money back. And they say that if they're having a price objection to see if it overcomes, cause it does. And then when it works really well they start putting it on their website. They start putting it out in every marketing thing because they know there's nobody else offering us. Right. Yeah, I have always really liked that. We had a 200, we have a 200% guarantee, satisfaction guarantee. If you're not happy, we will donate 100%. We'll give you your money back and we'll donate the same amount to the charity of your choice. I love that. I think that I've just been story topped. That's the good one. Yeah, it's a good one. It's a great thing. Now, you don't wanna be using that too often. So when would you use it too often? They're not trained in your home. I mean, your house, training center. They don't have systems and procedures that they're tested on. Person who's selling it is not selling it right. So there's a lot of these things you wanna fix. This is just a catch-all, if you will. And we don't wanna be doing it too often but it is a big sales and marketing advantage. Definitely. And you definitely have to have systems back to our thing to be able to manage everything including people that are not thrilled. So not everyone's gonna be thrilled right off the bat but we gotta get them to that place. We just don't want them to be miserable. Yes. And ultimately what I taught in the sales system is as I appreciate the opportunity to come to your home today, provide a cross quote in the service. I just want you to know the way I work is that my design is to make you a raving fan of ours because I'm gonna be looking for a great review and then I'm gonna wanna take a picture in testimonial because it's good for me. So that's the level that I'm gonna be working at. Nice. And if at the end of this, when I'm done I'm gonna bring you in to look at it because I don't want you just to be okay. I want you to be thrilled. Yeah, I love that. You said that. We taught the sales people to say that. We taught the text to say that. Yeah. That's awesome. I love that. I need to teach everybody how to say that. Yeah, and you do wanna practice. That's another thing you practice in your home at your shop. When you do this, take it back. So there's a question I see. Yeah. What do you guys think about virtual assistant? I'm thinking about hiring one for our office to help with phone calls and office duties. Yeah, so I don't know the size of the company. So I have to be careful here, there's a rule of thumb. If you have systems and since they're outsources or virtual assistants you can't make the systems as big as somebody who you see every day face to face and you're doing this work and there's a much better handoff. So if you're using someone outside, now in this business, Seven Power Contractor, which I've been doing for 20 years, I am the employee. I came from a company of 70. I'm it. So of course I've been using outsources all around the country, but they know there are systems because I do as I preach for each of them so that they know their KPIs. They know what they need to hit. They know when they need to deliver. And when they go to do something, I go, if we're ever going to do this in the 80% category, I want to see a short written thing at the end of what we do. So somebody buys my program. Sorry? Give me an example, if you want. So somebody buys my program, the online program and they're having a problem logging in. I have a document that I can go right in and go lost to password. Here's how you reset it and send it right to me. But I'm not the only one because I talk about the depth three other people that are trained. So one of us is going to fix this problem and fix it the same way. And hopefully you're not called in until it's failed three times with three other people. Right? Yeah, you got to be faster and more responsive. People are less and less tolerant these days. Oh my gosh, so true, so true. But we're all like this. Years ago before, you know, pages of phones and the rest of it, when I was in New York, we were the one of the only, you know, New York never sleeps. Well, now it's pretty much, I don't care where you go. There's a gas station convenience store that's open 24 hours a day. I can go to FedEx and get a package across the country. Anytime at night, I feel like waking up. The stakes are much higher. And we as consumers, when we stop being owners, we expect the same thing. So that's the new level of the game. It's true, we do. And we complain about it with other people but we are exactly the same way. We are exactly the same. There's a little thing that you may never have heard of. There's a thing called Amazon. So you can wake up anytime you want. I'm not that far from a giant center here. And it's like, I ordered some batteries and it's here like in an hour. I mean, I didn't need the batteries that bad, but thank you. Wow, okay. So my daughter also lives by, you bring that up. So good of a point. She also lives by an Amazon distribution center. So she is used to getting her stuff max two days, maximum. You've never gotten anything in more than two days. Well, she comes and stays here for a week a year and at least one week a year. And last time she was here, she was like, oh, mama, there's this amazing game. I definitely want to show you. I was like, okay, awesome, bring it with you. She's like, no, I just ordered one. I'm there. She didn't want to keep that. I was like, you won't get it. We won't get it before you're here. She's like, what are you talking about? Oh, I'll get it. Don't worry. I know how to order stuff. I'm like, so yeah, she came day one. I'm like, you better order that game. I got it the day she left. What is wrong with this city of it? It's little. Yes. Like all things they prioritize what they prioritize and not all things are the same. She's a little different. No, absolutely not. Okay. So I really want to dig in to the seven powers. I want to show you that. So I've got them written down, POSSCMF, but I'd love you to like give us just whatever you can. I don't want to give you a high level thing. So planning power is to all of you listening, do you need another idea or do you need another idea implemented? And you know it's the second one, right? Of course. But we can't go to Google. We can't be in a Facebook group, that industry Facebook group. We can't go to a lecture or seminar, you know, online program where another great idea comes along. Yeah. So where do they go? Cause everything can't be the number one priority. You just drive yourself and your staff crazy. So what we learned to do is we created a hopper, which means at the top or think of a funnel, top of the funnel, every great idea goes there at the top of the funnel. Every great idea you either have to make your company better, whatever way that you define it, that's where it goes first. So that's what I call the master project list. And then it boils down with two giant think of strainers in your hand. The first strainer is it either solves the biggest problem or challenge, or the second one is it helps you grow and be more profitable. So here's an example. Okay. You have 10 maids going to 10 different locations an hour apart, do they arrive at the job, know what to say and then go to the work and we'll work in a systematic way that they don't miss anything. And if the answer is no, well, guess what you have to do. Yes. So we have to create the system. We have to create the training that goes with that because that will fix our biggest problem or challenge. Now growth and profitability is if we got more of the right customers from the right, you know, the right amount of customers, the right calls at the right time. Yeah. Then we could get more profit, grow bigger, you know, raise our prices, do the things we want to do because we can be more selective. So that's what gets you down to your top 30. That's midway down the strain. No one, I don't care how big you are. I don't care how much money you have. You cannot work on 30 things at a time effectively. You will just drive everyone crazy. Right. So what do you need to do? Use the same filters again, filter strainer that gets you down to the biggest problem or challenge or the greatest chance to grow and be profitable and you get down to your top five. Five. Wait, three from one, two from another? That's the project, top 30, down to your top five. And that's where we end. Okay. The top five is what are the five projects and habits? Not everything's a project. So for instance, do you have steps of corrective action? Like that woman that you were described, the person you were describing was good and bad. They are a candidate for formal steps of corrective action. That is a habit that has to come in. Delegating, how do you delegate? You're passing down the hallway and go, hey, take care of making those, make sure those flyers go out. That's not going to be affected. Well, I need you to straighten up the warehouse outside so all the cleaning supplies are right. Have you been disappointed at that? Bet you have, of course I was. So I had to learn how to formally do the steps of delegation and there's a set of steps that have to go. So that's what I call habits. And the other thing is, maybe you have to change the vehicles that they're in. So because they can't carry what they need for 80% of the homes they get to 80% of the time or they're not set up to be, I can drunk, I can be in car 99 and I can move to car 100 if there's a problem in 99 because they're set up exactly the same car or truck whatever they're using. So standardizing your business, which is systems is what makes that much more doable and allows you to go and grow. So those are the, that's the typical thing. Now here's the trick. You don't get to just stick it in your computer and we'll say it's a good idea. Right. No, with my clients who paid me a lot of money, by the way, I made them take a big giant whiteboard even these days, not in the computer. Yeah. Everybody goes every day, there's a whiteboard that says, what are the five things, five? Yeah. There's a column that says why we're doing it. And the big one that ruins them for accountability is the status. Cause if you never see anything changing, they know same as normal. So that's why it's put up there. But that's not how you do the work. It's to hold you the owner accountable to your own staff that here's what we're working on. Here's why we're working on it. Here's where we are in getting this out into the world. Now when you get the five moving then you're able to go back to the 30 and find out what earned its way to the five. And you need to commit every week. I don't care how crazy it is. I don't care if you're traveling. I don't care anything. But you have a block of time where you do nothing but work on the top five, which is working on your business. Okay. All right. So top five and you got to have the time blocking. Yep. All right. So this is very similar to the stuff that we teach. Very, very similar. We don't- And sure it is, but that was not how we did things. We just did all the things right. So this is really designed to work on the right thing at the right time, the right way. Those are the three rights of planning. Nice. All right. So we got three different rights. We got three rights of marketing, three rights- There's a theme here. Yes, three. I understand that. All right. So the first P is the planning power. Correct. Do we have time to go over another one? I don't know if how much time we got left. You got 10 minutes. Okay. Well, we're going to be quick. Operating power is that org chart and then the manuals to cover, which we already talked about it, having a repeatable systems for each of those boxes, which are manuals that are living documents. They're not just a bulleted job description, which what you guys have, which is pretty close to worthless, better than nothing, but they're really about worthless. So you run in your company system at it. You are the funny one, Al. Thank you. I mean, staffing is really your ability to take willing people with no skills to willing, great, whatever they are on that org chart and then providing a career path so that they can move up. Do they become a field supervisor? Do they run a crew? What do they do so that they have a career with us? Because that's what makes the difference in retaining. And so the next thing is a sales process. So whoever goes and sells these jobs, it can't be just because of quote unquote, Al's a great sales person. Well, what happens again if Al gets hit by a bus? There has to be a sales system where they have the square footage. They have the certain amount of how many beds there are, how many, you know, how's it think there's, what type of floor surfaces they're creating and have those in templates that they can tweak one of these, two of these, five of these and the pricing comes out to the right place and they figured in your profit, they figured in their own commission and they figured in what I call a bonus or a spiff for the maids who are coming now to do the job right. So they turned it over to the team that's coming. So they know what they're gonna be running into with pictures or videos. And then they do an expert job and prove their pictures and videos that the job was done right. All right, so what I just heard you say is you're sending people out and they're taking picture, they're getting pictures of all of the work that they're going to do. And then when they're done, they're also gathering pictures of all of the work that they do. Yeah, so that's your here. So if they're not the person who sells the job, the maids don't go to the job and sell it, correct? Right. So the person who sold the job is the one that needs to, once it's sold gets the pictures so that they can turn it over to this team so they know what they're encountering. And when they get done, they just send us pictures that said they did and with the great software and CRMs today, they just posted in there. So we have proof that we did what, this is what it was when I arrived. This is what it was when I left. So most of the sales in our industry are currently not done in person. They're done either online or by phone. Do you have- You can absolutely do it that way. As long as you are not just sending a bid because how would they know what you wrote down? That compromises your sales and the price you can change, charge. So if you set up a Zoom call with them to go through, I prepared the proposal. I'm gonna run through the lines about what it is we do and what makes, how do we end up with a job that's gonna make you a raving fan? Okay. All right. So set up a Zoom, something like that. Basically what you're talking about is just making sure that we're on, our expectations are set for both sides, right? Exactly right. You've got mine, you've got yours and we kind of know where we're, what we're doing here. It's really about what we can do and we try to do the minimum about what we can't do. Okay. Say that again. Try to do the minimum. So it's really that call is very much about what we do and how is it different? And then for the few things that we don't do, if that's what they're looking for, we need to address those things as well. I gotcha. I gotcha. I thought I heard you say we try not to do it very much. Not what it says. Well, I need to hear more about that. Yeah, no. I did learn, you know, most people have a very, we may not get through all of our things here, but most people have, oh, I know what I can say here is, if you go to my website and you download the jumpstart guide, they will have the full out definition from my book about these seven powers. So instead of me blasting through it, they can get that. So if you go there and you see where it says jumpstart guide? No, not yet. Where would I find it on the main page? Seven power contractor on the main page where I'm holding up a book. You'll see there's a red, so get the guide. Let me go back there. I'm not on that page right now. It's a cute picture of you, Al, by the way. Thanks. I'm looking at, not the one with your, oh, here it is. Get our free jumpstart guide. Yes. And all of this really explained in a much better way. And the book, it's an easy read, by the way. It's about two to four hours. I wrote it with my editor and I said, we as business owners, especially in the contracting business, don't have a lot of time. So there's no fluff in here. I have way more information than this. Trust me. All right. Way more. I've written about 500 articles. So I just sent mine in. Okay. I just told them. I'm excited. I don't know if you can blast it out, but that send them there because that's my gift to you guys today because you're gonna need that. I don't care how you do it, but that's really the, it's the same foundation for these very small companies I talked about and these giant companies, believe it or not the same. Think of it as seven building blocks or the foundation for your great home, which is your company today and where you want to go. Yeah. I love that. And who doesn't want that? I mean, we're all trying to figure on putting it in here right now, y'all. There it is for you. You can all get the jumpstart guide. All right. So I do think that this business, our industry especially, because we are so fractured in our industry, you know, there just isn't a lot of legislation and not a lot of licensing, et cetera. That is unfortunate. It's good and bad. One is that it's bad because anybody with a car can all of a sudden be a maid service. Yeah. So you're a bar of entry, but that just challenges you. I had the same thing. I had in our industry, there were people would have a white truck and work all day for a hundred bucks. And, you know, it's... Yeah. That's always going to be, and if you can't explain to people in a way long before they call you in your website and your marketing about how you are, you know, the top of how you are different in the market. My whole life was, our business was considered a commodity. My job was to make us a niche. Make you an image? A niche. Oh, a niche. Okay. Yeah. So we weren't just in this basket of commodity. If you're all going to be a commodity, then it's strictly a price game and that's not a game you want to play. No, I don't want to play that game at all. All right. Well, you know what? We have three minutes. Do you have a last little thing of what we should tell people? I mean, obviously go to the website. Obviously. Yeah, go to the website. There's a lot of really good information. Yes, it's mine, but it's born out of what I learned along the way because I've got a lot of bumps and bruises from falling in a lot of holes that I'm betting you've already fallen into but you will soon fall into. Yes. And that's natural, but when you climb out of a hole, you have to make it your mission, not to fall back in the same hole. And I have watched so many people over the years fall back into the same hole. So there's a lot of good information there. Do download the Jumpstart Guide. If you want, by the way, I offer it to anybody in the industry, they can chat me where it says contact Al on the bottom right side of my page. If you just say that you heard this podcast and you wanna do a free 30 minute call, just send it off to me. I'll send you an email with the link about how to set that up. I'm happy to spend 30 minutes talking to you. It's my industry give back. Frankly, it was designed because I know if it hadn't been for a lot of great mentors coming into my life, I would be an old man in a basement, turning a wrench and that's not a good thought. Now, you know, then this isn't really hard. It's hard. It's a hard industry. It's a hard job. It's hard to go it alone. So I'm putting this on here. Connect with Al, three, 30 minutes. Yep. All I need to do is just, you know, when they send it to me, have their email address and I will send them the steps to do that. I'm happy to do that. That's awesome. Thank you so much, Al. My pleasure. Perfect info. All right, what keeps happening to me is every time I go over there to get information, I keep getting sucked in by something like, oh, I want to see that. Oh, I want to read that. Yeah, there's a lot of great information on my blogs. Now some of that, you'll say, oh, it does imply me, but trust me, there's enough subjects there that it's pretty close to the things that you encounter as an owner. Businesses, business, and especially service businesses, right? Yes, service business, exactly. Yeah, service businesses. Well, again, thank you so much, Al. It is three o'clock. I'm gonna let you off the hook here. And everybody, please go take advantage of these resources. Don't let yourself suffer. It looks to me like, you don't have to. All right, Al. Don't have to. Thanks again. Talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye-bye. Appreciate it.