 Hey, good afternoon everybody time Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter our guest today is Matt Rickus, and this is smart business moves Hola y'all Matt, how in the world are you? doing great just got back into town at midnight last night and Today, but it was fun. I love a busy day We haven't had a long time Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing getting caught up here And you got in at midnight last night Matt. You want to tell us about that? Yeah. Yeah, I was at Tombello's event this week. I don't know if anyone's familiar with Tombello. I'm sure a lot of people are He's got a coaching program called home service freedom. I went to the regional event down in Phoenix Just a lot of information it's really interesting to see these other trades Really professionalizing so we talked a lot about and I've been talking to you guys about professionalizing industry for I Feel like a better part of a decade. There's Mark Baker. He talked to him about professionalizing the industry we chat offline quite a bit and Man they're doing it like give us some example I stores well, I mean Well, think about your experience with like the trades 10 years ago, right? When you needed to hire a plumber. What was that like? What was the experience? Like I can tell you right now that I hired Hoffman brothers to do some work from here on my house the other day And I'm signing up for a subscription for them to send me my filters and like, you know, they're just How they're gonna generate more money off of off of every interaction And I was happy to spend a thousand dollars because man, it was a great experience I booked it online. I sent I set pictures of what was broken They came with the right parts because I gave them the exact information in advance So I didn't have to wait to get it fixed and then they were here They're like, well, we're already did a service car and our minimum is X like do you want to do something else? So actually had them fix something else that was like kind of bothering me about the house. So I mean Happily spent a thousand bucks, but that company's a hundred and twenty million dollar plumbing company 10 years ago Chris Hoffman and that company he took it over from his dad and million dollar company, which think about it Parts and materials right the labor side. They were smaller than my company is today on the labor side. They're and they're in this massive They're probably gonna do 200 million this year and that's they're not P. E. That's not private equity. That is a family-owned generational business That is very sophisticated in how that they run their operation and just you know Operational excellence throughout their entire organization They have their own training center where they can turn a tech from someone off the street in a matter of months And they can get a plumbing tech out making money in you know, you used to take years and now they've got that done But anyway at this event, there's a lot of companies like that there's also companies that are doing a million dollars trying to figure it out just like all the rest of us and in you know, the house cleaning industry and a lot of trades that are similar to ours in terms of that are very labor Driven and don't have a lot of Things to sell outside of that. There's there was chimney sweeps there But a lot of those companies they figured out how to be 10 20 million dollar companies That's actually not that uncommon and that I don't know any 10 million dollar house cleaning companies yet You guys know anybody yet? I mean, I know a couple that are getting close family that have family with multiple locations I know a couple Getting there in a relative in a relative sense though There's other verticals in the home service, you know some service verticals that Are scaling more companies doing more revenue than what you see in home services. I mean in residential cleaning Why do you think that is? Yeah You gotta be learning something you're hanging out with people that are doing what you know a lot of house clean companies aspire to do What's what's the secret? There's still some I still think there's the issue of that It's the barriers to entry are still low that people underpriced their service They're not creating enough value to get to get the price that they want you know We talked a little bit about brand I think brand matters investing in your brand if you roll up in a ratty Vehicle that looks like it's falling apart and you know your your tools are you know crumbly and all your communication is lacking And you're not giving them a great experience Why should they pay you a good price right like you know if you can give them an a-plus experience where they booked online Like you had you know On-point communication throughout the whole thing your people show up in a pristine uniform with clean tools all their tools and their Kid are branded. I mean and and they show up when they they were supposed to show up There's no excuses all of that stuff is is your brand, right? That's like who you are and people mistake their brand for their logo and they're bull, right? it's it's they're all kind of interrelated but That's part of it. I think and there's a lot of people that I Mean I've had great employees for mine that have gone out and started cleaning companies, right? And I'm really happy for them but They'll get to like 50 employees and it all falls apart So I think we froze up here like they'll get to 50 employees and they they hire their first people They're not charging enough. They don't have enough systems in place. So they basically built a job for themselves So I think price matters. I think our industry has a long way to go in terms of like where price should be where price could be and and and I think The operational excellence is lacking still I think we Oftentimes think good enough is good enough and The consumers deserve more if they're gonna if you're gonna charge a premium you're gonna need to do it So I think as an industry we all should be pushing each other a little harder to you know to deliver higher levels of service to to Run better operations to deliver on our promises Because one bad apple makes us all look bad, you know, I think You know, and we should be helping each other. I think they all dare what I also saw is they're all helping each other They're very collaborative in terms of like there's plenty of room for everybody. I think sometimes People are scared to share as if there's not enough business and I can tell you Here's my here's my take on St. Louis St. Louis is not a huge market But I believe there's over a hundred thousand a hundred thousand homes That would be qualified to use our services in St. Louis and we only have one percent of that We're we don't have market share. We have one percent. Maybe and I'm maybe I'm being generous Maybe there's two hundred thousand. Maybe we have a half a percent You don't think there's enough business to go around, you know, and we could all be making more money So I think we all need to be lifting each other up sharing And I think that's becoming more normal, right? That's but I see them doing that really well In the trades, they're not scared to share information share best practices And I think technology is a huge part of it. A lot of them are on service is A big part of it technology is a huge piece of What people are not investing in this industry? Wow so Go ahead Tom. No, I'm just wondering where do you see it going? Do you think that the? Transformation you see in some of these other home service verticals that will it will see it and in our in the house cleaning Industry, I I do. I think we have to be better managers of our businesses though We have to professionalize the management of our businesses Scaled helps so one of the things that is missing and we're all kind of working in our little fractured silos and It's it's really hard to have all the things that you need Like when you're a four million dollar business or I know some of you are a five hundred thousand our business And it's like it's hard to have all the things you need like HR and marketing and all the things right and all that gets All of that gets easier with with scale And you know, I don't even know what scale is like what we have a budget for four point six million this year That's our kind of kind of goal. We've got a run right now four point two and I Don't consider that like anywhere near near the scale to do the things that we need to do But we are professionalizing the management in our company. We've adopted EOS like traction if you've read the book is You know, it's been around forever And I remember there were years ago when people told me to read it and I read it and I was like I didn't get it I was like I do all this I was joking with Tom on another call about budgets. I was like, why should I have a budget? That's like that's like restrictive it like makes me at my skin crawl to tell me what to do You're gonna tell me how to spend my money. I'm gonna do what I want But like but having a budget and having a scorecard. That's that's resource planning. That's telling you How much you have as far as like when you need to hire a tech and when you need to buy a car and Whatever resources you need and Tom's a logistics guy He came out of New York logistics and he probably stole the story before but I mean That's what budgeting is. It's not just like it's not looking at what happened after the fact It's you do need to do that too But it's it's it's good realistic planning to tell you where you're gonna end up and then and then managing all of the Things to get there like what are the KPIs or the levers that I have to you know affect that resource plan that I did Man, these other businesses are so much more sophisticated financially like that's another thing like just I'm not even gonna get into all that like some of those some of it's over my head like you know like word EBIT is thrown around like crazy and you know, but They're squeezing profit out of things that we don't even think about I mean, it's like they're squeezing profit out of how they buy a piece of equipment and where it goes on the balance sheet and Without getting into all that I know like that might not even be a thing people even think about is their balance sheet in this industry It's just like I Could tell you until a year ago. I didn't even care, you know, I Gotta I got a better accountant and he helped me like rethink some of that, but It's it's worth thinking about though I mean we we talk about the evolution and you know the difference between growth and scale and When you're just starting out you got to figure out, you know Where to get a vacuum cleaner and how to clean a house and where to find a house to clean and as you get bigger the priorities the projects change and the things that you have to do to take it to another level change and eventually you need very sophisticated financial people and you know financial, you know statements matter and Who you are has to change though, like I can't be the same person I was five years ago. Like I have like invested a lot in Personal growth and personal like you cannot be the same person You were to lead a company like that and I in the some of you that are better at the culture stuff than I am like some of You guys if you had some of the technical skills I had and I had some of like your soft skills Oh my god, I'd be five times the size So I'm working on that personally to improve my soft skills and like To get better at that stuff. So yeah, you have to be a different leader than you were You know, I used to take this from a military approach I came out of aviation and I was like, we're gonna do things by the manual and like The rules of the rules and you know, of course the rules the rules the process of the processes But like just you know meeting people where they're at is a lot more important and and lifting them up I'm you know, I could have listened to Liz years ago. She told me this You know, but Yeah, you have to change the leader to and always be developing new skills and that's that's important So not just all those hard skills matter, but also being a better leader matters a lot All right, so You mentioned so I know we're gonna talk about creating a culture of leadership Accountability you're gonna talk about your pods a little bit which I'm super excited about also I can't wait for you to show your Your vehicle so awesome But you said that one of the industries that you had seen was chimney sweeps Chimney sweeps during did you say a hundred million ten million? What'd you say? Oh, I don't know I mean, I know that there's a guy Mark Stoner out of Nashville that has probably like a 30 40 million dollar Jimmy sweet come maybe he's not out of Nashville. He's out of Tennessee somewhere Some place with a lot of fireplaces Yeah, yeah I Know I'm like that market cannot be that huge. I mean not everybody has fire. We all have houses We don't have fireplaces. So Yeah, what are they doing there Matt? What what's that? What's the thing? So I think the So mark wrote a book called blue collar gold You know, I'd have to be repurposing a lot of it, but Professional management like getting more out of the sale selling Instead of here's the problem with that industry and typically up until recently was like They didn't have CRM's and databases and every time they had to do a sale like They'd be selling again next year now they have people on service plans and like there's an expectation You're gonna come out twice a year And you know that doesn't seem like a big deal like we think about that because we come out all the time But a lot of industries, you know, you're just waiting for them to call you're waiting for your phone to ring so they've they've taken maybe pages off of what we do and you know getting more high frequency recurring out of these customers and these jobs and And they've taken it. They've taken the approach of selling safety It's not safe to like let the creosote build up in your chimneys The garage door guys are really selling safety because if you look as you know, if you look at a manual Like I was installing a garage door opener and all the manual on just on the manual like setting up the garage door Up and it was like risk of injury or death. It was like 10 times in like the first page of just setting up the garage door opener and And I was thinking about I was like Is there a more dangerous thing in my house other than my furnaces, right? Like those could you know, you can you know poison yourself if they're not treated well or running well You you've got electrical systems in there. You could electrocute yourself. You can you know, there's a You know, they're they're heavy. You don't have the safety sensors, right? They could hurt a child I mean there was a time where like America didn't care about These things you didn't even have those little safety sensors that we all take for granted Running across the running across the ground People I think more people probably Wouldn't you think more people die falling in the bathtub though then getting hit with a garage door? Probably good marketing it's excellent marketing put the fear of God and everybody stay away from that garage door hire pro And it actually Look, I know a lot about physics and I wouldn't touch that spring think about how much how much Coiled forces in that spring on your garage door I had my spring come off once and I was looking online on how like this is like I was in my 20s I was like put online for the wrench on how to do that like I was like no this is even then I read it I was like, oh, okay that thing goes off and you could die, right? Like I'll leave that I have done that before when you were telling me the story early I was like yeah, I've done that a couple of times and both times was like I could really mess myself up if I wasn't careful Because it takes a really good wrench and if it slips it would hit you in the head I'm an accumulation of scars and injuries from bad decisions and sports and things like that so like I Like I definitely think through those things now I've got this big open shoulder surgery scar from years of mistreating my shoulder I'm like certainly don't need any new scars from messing around with garage door So, you know, I'll pay those people but they've been able to tell a story about like when they come in Like we're gonna use these rollers. They're better than this and they're gonna upsell on This they're gonna have good better best and they if you like try and leave there without doing a thing You've got to sign a waiver that like hey, you know, like like you refuse to do this repair and like, you know We don't want it. We're not taking responsibility. So, you know, like may God have broken your soul Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying and I'm not saying like you have to use tactics like that. So some of their sales tactics They would not work for our industry. Like I've I've had this conversation Robin Murphy and I talked about it like you can't sell like they sell like, you know We have to like always have the most trust and I know that they don't believe that that is In their nature to be it's not trustworthy, but like you could never do a hard sale on this industry I don't think you don't want the electrostatic spray disinfect it Well, here you're gonna have to sign this waiver because if somebody Catches Ebola, we don't want to be responsible. Yeah, so that kind of that kind of sale doesn't work but but think of it like this you get an objection on So the most common objection. What is the most common objection? Probably people throw up when When getting this is probably two that I can think of For house could ask my yeah, I gotta ask my I gotta ask my spouse for the price, right? Yeah, and let's talk about the spouse one right so We've always gone and I'll give you an objection tip on this that we use that's very effective and you can throw this in so Customer says I've got to talk to my my significant Absolutely Definitely talk to them Here's what we can do though for you and it might make it even easier to have that conversation if you really are interested We can get you scheduled you'll get your online booking portal You'll see you'll be able to show them all the details They'll have a log in you'll have a log in and you can show them your schedule price Everything will make more sense and if you want to cancel just reply to that email cancel We don't charge you anything, but you'll have it all set up for you. Does that sound good? And then if they they say no, I'll be like, all right, cool Let's finalize a couple of things and we'll get a get a little bit more information for you Just in case so if they've already said no just in case the next available thing we have is next Thursday Before we go before that sells. I just want to just let you know that probably will sell out I mean, it's a little bit of pressure, but We'll ask twice before We're gonna let them get off the phone I mean, so we're gonna make sure that we ask for that sale Even if they said they're gonna do they want to talk to somebody else. That's fine. You understand So that's that's an example like where that is a little bit of pressure, but it's not If they really just want to get up the phone They're gonna get fun if the if the objection is just they want to think about it more Well, they can think about it more, but they have they have it booked and they can stop spending their time looking for something so You know, we put a little bit of work into coaching our sales and working on those things and not as much as them You know most of them Man, there's an AI tool that they're using They're going in with an iPad with all their pricing and that that iPad is recording their their conversation and then it's giving them AI suggestions on Things like that and like there's data that shows the longer they can stay in that house The like there's a point where it diminishes, right? But the longer there's like a curve where like the longer they can stay in the house So if they're there 30 minutes The close rates 20% if they're there an hour the close rates like 60% they're an hour and 14 minutes is like the sweet spot They're gonna have an 80% close rate on you know, but anyway, just They're looking at everything. They're taking a very very data-driven approach into every Aspect of their business where that they can make Changes for most of us We haven't optimized enough things that we need to do that We just need to focus on clean the house getting paid But I can tell you once you're past that stage and you need to be You know thinking about How can I make more money off the work? I already have right because there's I think we're going into a year Where it's gonna be a little tougher our theme for this year So we have themes for my business our theme for this year's operational excellence like Diving into like being good at every aspect of the business getting better and driving that down To the tax and like having them own that through the organization Which is really what this pods conversation is about but our theme this year's operational excellence and You know, Tom's drilled that idea in my head for many conversations many years that You can't get better unless you're you can't get better unless you're really good at what you do to start Don't try and do 10 things at once. Don't go into new markets Like I thought this year was gonna be about we're gonna open a new market in Nashville No, we're not doing that this year We're gonna make sure we're really really really good at what we do first before we even think about that So if anybody's in Nashville, we're not going there next year Yeah, we're yeah, we're there's plenty of room for everybody, but we're not doing that this year We're gonna focus on being really really good at what we're doing and you know Operational excellence is the story of the year, you know, Liz your The the event that you're doing with the foundations The foundations event, yeah, the big one the one in not the big one they're both big they're both awesome, but I Can't think of the the the graduate level That's scale. Thank you. Thank you I saw Scott Wozniak one of your your presenters that's gonna be there I saw him speak about three weeks ago and he talks about how He he learned a lot of what he he teaches at Chick-fil-A. He worked at Chick-fil-A was one of the key people in building their culture and Says, you know, the whole presentation on building raving fans out of your customers It says at the end of the day, it's operational excellence, you know He talks about all the things that go into, you know, having quality food It starts with the food has to be awesome and just all of the quality checks they have one It's like a 16-point checklist on a chicken sandwich You got to make sure the pickles are on their right. You can't have the pickles on top of each other They say the pickles are supposed to be dating not mating You know It's a 16-point checklist on a chicken sandwich and He does work for McDonald's too. They've hired him and McDonald's I mean, they've got all the resources in the world, but they haven't been able to get the operational excellence thing You know, there's there's a website McBroken.com that tracks the that tracks the soft-serve ice cream machines and about any point in time about 15% of all the soft-serve ice cream machines at McDonald's are broken. Yes or Claim to be broken so they don't have to make you ice cream. Yeah, I don't have to clean them whatever and it's just kind of a Comparison of what's the difference between you can do the marketing and the branding and all of it's necessary But it's it's not the full story at the end of the day to pull it all together and take it to another level You have to have excellent operations and he uses the term operational excellence Well, you know last year at scale We had five different presenters the same as this year, but there were two themes that all fought None of these people knew each other. They didn't coordinate, right? but they all had two themes and One was operational excellence You are not going to scale your business if you don't have operational excellence You might grow and then you're gonna crash and then you could grow again You're gonna crash, but you cannot scale your business if you don't have operational excellence That was first and the second one was you have to have a team You have to have a good team and if you have a good team, it's not happening. I don't care The minute you're you lose that one key person that's so important in your office. You're everything's crumbling So it's it's not about a person. It's not you no matter how amazing you are You're not enough. You have to have a great team those two themes every single Presenter I'm expecting the same thing this year at least those two things. Yeah, that's awesome Well, that might be a good side we bring up the bring up the picture of the dolphins and talk about us. Yeah so Kind of like what we're talking about with with what you're describing is what we're trying to do with this So why do we have a picture of a dolphin up here first first off? They're pretty cool My kindergarten teacher loved orphans, but they're smart the fun Yeah, she like she was like a big fan of dolphins and so whenever I was a kid I always liked the offense to you like how you know you're introduced to that cool animal when you're a kid You're like, oh, this is really fun and she talked about them all the time how they were smart You know that they're they're really fun animals. They're social they're great communicators and they get things done as a team They live in small groups called pods and we're introducing this idea of pods of better life made so they're The pod is basically the team within the team. It's the company within the company So dolphins are social animals, but they're they're also really fierce as well So in business, we always like want to be sharks, right? We want to go out and hunt and kill and things like that But that doesn't work for our industry. We got to be collaborative sharks are actually scared of dolphins You're not an individual dolphin, but the pods they won't they won't mess with if there's a group of dolphins around three or more Shark won't mess with them, right? So the idea is like the team is stronger than the fiercest apex predator so as a group in our in our company we can create these little strong groups and It's a good analogy for the kind of people we want in our company, too, right? We want people that are That are collaborative, right? We don't want sharks. We want they're both, you know sharks and dolphins They're both gray. They both have elongated bodies. They swim in the water But that's about as close as we really want to each other in terms of like how we'd want to be, you know, near those people, right? So sharks are solitary. They don't work well with others. They're not team players and they'll eat you If you're if you're not careful. In fact, I was at a I was actually and the sharks are amazing animals, too For their own reasons if anybody's a big shark fan, I don't want to offend you But the I was at a with with Paul de Gelder from shark week up in Detroit last week You know Detroit invited me up there To come here and speak I'm gonna do some some work on the board for you Next year so I had invited up to hear him speak and the guy Got his arm and his leg bitten off by a shark, but he still has amazing respect, you know for them So they're great creatures on their own, but I wouldn't want to work with one I certainly wouldn't want to you know end up swimming with them, but if you ever see the documentary shark NATO, you Part of what we're doing with this I'm gonna probably switch my share over to a map in made central here So give me a second here to change over Part of what we're doing is we want to create I'll go to this screen here and then once we're on once I'm on that screen What we're trying to do is is create Pods that are geographically located near where people live and where they work already. So if you Let's see. Where am I here? They're so pretty mad. Oh Thanks, I think so pretty Wrong here we go. So if you look at like the area we cover Right, we're covering these big areas and made central makes this really kind of a unique thing we can do So we already have zones that are defined and made central made central allows you to create like satellite offices And we can assign employees to individual satellite offices We're actually going to use these vans as mobile offices where where there's going to be meetings Once a week and every day of the week in certain in a certain part of town There'll be one of our vans having to meet up but at any given time those vans will be stocked with vacuums equipment tools to fix things and We're elevating our trainers to a new position called field supervisor where they're given a chance to To lead and run a small team within the company getting management experience for up to 12 employees running a weekly meeting giving them the meat, you know elevating them and elevating their ability to lead others and You know titles matter right so trainer they put that on a resume. They put that on LinkedIn That doesn't mean a lot to somebody outside of your company unless they really know your company well And they know that you run a really excellent company I have a I have a friend that told me like whenever he sees people that have our Resumes that he likes to hire them for his car wash. I'm like, let's stop doing that It's like they he's like they make great. He's like they make great supervisors. So, you know, I'll keep I'll keep finding them So, you know, but that's that's a compliment, right? It means you're you've got a good training program you're elevating people so this kind of formalizes it so You know, we switched to solos during the pandemic to kind of again create some efficiency in the way we schedule Well, this is about efficiency too, right? So if they're having a meeting Here or let's say, I don't even see where I'm putting but if let's say that they're way out here We won't have a meeting up here instead of our office is Way down here doesn't look like a lot on a little map right here But this is 25 miles from here to there Maybe, you know, so we can have a pod meeting out this way for the folks that live out here Or even do it here and kind of bring some more folks here there But they don't have to drive across certain parts of town that have a lot of traffic We anticipate having a West pod Meeting so we're actually rolling this out next week the first week that will actually We were gonna roll it out this week Had we've had a series of snow days in St. Louis so pushed it back Where our all-company meeting is next Wednesday We'll roll out the we'll roll out the vans roll the concept their first pod meetings will be the week after next so You know, we believe that it actually will pay for the vans in terms of reduced inefficiencies of them driving back to the office and resupplying and you know We're not saying that it you know fully pays for it, but the vans are also a brand experience for your brand in real life, right? Like It's more eyeballs on your more eyeballs on your brand And I'm not even saying ours are a plus. I think we did a good job I think, you know, there's companies out there that do amazing work on that. We we think it's good But there's a you know, there's a future where this evolves and we try and get better with each iteration So this is our first pass at it and I think it's it's gonna do a few things again It's gonna improve culture. We're gonna push that down to these weekly pod meetings where these technicians all have to Go over their their weekly square card with their team And if they fell below a certain score, they just have to just ask the team for help and you know Hey, you know, I fell below on this like, you know, it's an accountability kind of group for them within the company It gives us a better way to decimate information that we do a lot with slack Now I'm sure a lot of you that are on solos do the same But right now when our team members come in for supplies, they just kind of sneak into the warehouse sneak out We don't actually have like a dispatcher back there like where they can you know regulate stuff like that So some days will be like, where did all the laundry go? Like somebody took like 10 bundles Control, you know be able to control some of that better as well like that's you know, that's a whole another issue, right? But they won't need to take that much because they shouldn't be taking a month's worth They should be taking a week's worth, right? So a lot of little issues and things like that So open it up from here like that's a high level. There's a lot more to it But I have some questions Matt. So how many people do you envision being as part of a pod? 10 is kind of like the the sweet spot where I think you start really Like much bigger than that you start to lose some familiarity with people and these manager These these field supervisors are gonna have to be the ones doing a lot more of their reviews So, you know Connie from my office does about 45 50 reviews right now. So You know, that's one a week that she's like at least you know, sometimes they stack up and You know, so they're gonna be doing those and you know tends a really good number But we might stretch it to 15 until we break like if a pod's gonna grow So let me see if I have I Don't think I have Shoot I thought I opened it up here Maybe it's right here Let me just search for it The what I'm looking for is the accountability chart that has it So accountability chart is kind of like your org chart, right? So we We built this into our upcoming org chart and here it is so We believe ten so the long answer your question Ten is kind of a good number, but we will stretch it out to 12 So we we're gonna start with four, but we could probably Go to five pretty quickly, but I don't have five I don't have five trainers or five field supervisors at the time. So You know, we're gonna deal with what we have Cool We answered another one of my questions was where they're gonna be doing reviews Do you have kind of an overview of the job description? It sounds like they'll be handing out supplies. I do I don't think I have that prepared. I think I have like the project kind of what they're what they're gonna be trained on You know, we're gonna have all of them are gonna do the phc cleaning Is that braces I get it confused in my mind See is the online course Okay, so they all Education or the ISSA residential certification online, okay, so they all have that now They're gonna all need to do when you help right Matt Yes, I know sorry They all do that one now, but then they all are gonna do the the more technical one So I've got two of the four that have that have gone through the P. I can never get them all HCT that's that's why we shouldn't have all these acronyms. They think like We're gonna teach them how to run a meeting so initially Amanda who's our field supervisor our field manager heard not her title got moved a manager from field supervisor with us She's gonna basically go around and help run these until they're all up to up to speed on it We're gonna give them some more training on how to communicate effectively. They'll they'll get some that get some training on conflict resolution We've got to get them all a credit card So we want them to be problem solvers in the field So if one of their team members in their pod has a problem They can go to the store, you know, let's say a coffee maker's broke out in the feet like you know So they broke something they can go run the target and take care of it, right? They'll have that They'll be defined a slightly different uniform they'll have a pink polo instead of the pink t-shirts Let's see what else you mentioned. There's a weekly meeting. Yep Is that done in person or do they do it electronically? So We're gonna create an address Forward each pod is gonna have a satellite office. We're gonna pretty much use Walmart Walmart parking lots off of major highways basically so like Walmart tends to actually be very conveniently located in St. Louis right off of like right off the highway you can pull right off There's there's either a Walmart or a Sam's Club We're gonna kind of use their parking lots for these and a lot of them have fast food restaurants on the lot there So like a Culver's or something like that where we can buy everyone a coffee so the the location is gonna be one of these places where it's gonna be set and it'll be set in the Software inside of made central with a satellite office that'll be kind of set But if we need to move the satellite office because they tell us hey I can't imagine they're gonna have a problem with us coming in and buying coffee for all of our employees You know once a week, so I think they'll be happy with it And we're not gonna just do it at a fast food restaurant That's not sitting on one of these lots that doesn't have a lot of extra parking So we're trying to be thoughtful of the kind of places. We would do it so do you actually go inside of the Coffee place and everybody says yeah, it's cold. We'll try and go inside if it's a nice day We'll stand around the vans and unload and just do it Maybe maybe the pod 10 is a pod 5 like where there's any other in five minutes to get their stuff, but Yeah, the idea would be to go inside of like Chick-fil-A or Culver's or wherever and get a coffee have a quick little pow wow 10 people is you know, that's not overwhelming to that business they can They can handle that and we might buy a breakfast once in a while too I mean it's meant to be kind of just a good chance to connect and Push down some culture So it you know in person at these locations all over town. So, you know back to the map like You know So red pod will be somewhere in here, but not at our office because our office We just don't have the parking to do it like we can't have I can't bring 10 extra people in in the morning At our park at our office the city pod will you know try and do something here So it doesn't look like it's a lot further, but for those that live in the city not having to brave the traffic in and out And we have you know close to 300 customers in the city So, you know a good a good size of our pod will be right here So somewhere right around here. There's a there's a target off of 44 in Hampton. We'll do something there Up this way towards Alavette. There's a good amount of business It's along this quarter right here off of 170. So they're gonna be based off of like easy easy access points to Like you kind of look at the map and you look at like where all this density is it builds up along like, oh, there's a highway here Interesting right like oh, there's this there's this artery right here. There's a lot of traffic along this artery right here a Lot of your business does build up along those arteries a lot of housing is developed around along those things so it it'll be where the geography is convenient for the team members and You can map that and made central I don't have it on this map because it has customer data kind of too prevalent to share publicly But you can kind of do heat maps and look at where your employees lived compared to where customers are and will We'll be basically finishing that this week and picking out the location For these these pods and assigning everybody in the next week So And will they um, so it sounds like they're gonna have one meeting a week What will the pod supervisors do the other goals? So great question. So they're gonna have the vans fully stocked they will They will have to probably so they'll be they'll be meetings four days a week Wednesdays They won't have a pod meeting because that's gonna be all of them will come to the office For their for their kind of all-together meeting With all the pod leaders Yeah, so Monday Tuesday Wednesday what Monday Tuesday and then Thursday Friday at least initially is when they'll when these will all be and so their vans will be stocked though, so if people need things and And you know, they're only going to be scheduled to about 80% capacity so that they can go help people at the new Other day stop in and push other team members through and again that builds culture when somebody's behind and they they know that They're gonna have that that's the other thing is the inmate central You can just run a filter on the schedule and find all the people in that pod and see who's close by to help a lot easier You know when team members fall behind we we rely on that a little bit like so we We schedule Two houses a day and some people want to do three that we you know There's days where somebody calls in and then you're you know, how do you find figure out how to do that last house? So the pod leader will have some extra capacity on their schedule or it'll get put on someone else's schedule and they'll go help But if somebody needs something that extra 20% of flex time that we're kind of building into their schedule You know if they need to run to the store or help somebody with a supply they don't have to drive all the way back to the office and maybe We do a lot with Uber right now to get like when somebody forgets something we don't want driving back to the office Quick tip. It's like 15 bucks. It's a lot cheaper than somebody Driving there and back to your office when you're paying a $19 an hour. So Everybody get an Uber account for your business. It's super cheap to move supplies around the Uber drivers are like They're not huge fans of it. They don't want to do it. They don't have to pick up They don't have to pick up the job if they don't want it. So Yeah, they don't they don't necessarily love it. I Was I'll tell you a funny story about this. I was in Phoenix again for that event I was cold in like, you know, you're at a thing And I didn't bring my sweater. I left it at my aunt's house who lives in Phoenix I went and watched the the chiefs game at her house. They're they're from Kansas City originally and I left my sweater there And I I told her hey I'm gonna send it over to go pick my sweater up and cold at this event because I was gonna go out to dinner with Later anyway, she laughs. She's like, she's like, all right fine Lady picks it up and she's like and we're far out like, you know Phoenix at all Like my aunt lives like on the city limits of Scottsdale at 52nd and and Shay like those are two big intersections there so Well, we're on Shay Boulevard, but we're at like a hundred and thirty of It is like 30 minutes away and you know and the lady gets there. She's like, what did I bring out to you? I was like a sweater it's cold. She's like rolled her eyes. Oh my god. I thought it was something important I was like it was important to me You know for for 20 bucks, I was able to get my sweater instead of being cold all day so Get yourself an Uber account for your business and you can centralize all of that and Ship things to people but even still like that the pod leader can decide if they want to do that Or if they want to just drop something off for somebody I mean a broken vacuum when you cover as much geography as we do Can really throw things off. So we'll have four vehicles stocked all around town at any given time You know fully stocked with everything that we would use to clean You know cleaning solution to refill people's bottles at really everything that we would need so so will your pods A pod leaders drive back at the end of the day and drop off laundry broken vacuums Restock for the next day. How will that we're still working out? How often they definitely need to do like the day that they have their pod 10 meeting They would need to come back at the end of that day and restock because they have all the towels and all their supplies Yeah, but I'm gonna let him take that meeting that meeting is where all the supplies are replenished Yep, and so instead of coming back to the office like they'll be You know, they'll be days and so that like let's say you miss your meeting in you know in South County that day Well, you can't come back to you can't go to the office. We just do not have the parking for a Bunch of people to show up at the office in the morning. So then you you have to look on The system and see where the next pod and we're gonna announce it every day in Slack So, okay, I'm gonna go to the city the city is holding a pod I've got to drive five more five more miles out of my way But I'm gonna do that one because I don't want to wait until my meeting the next week You've got to go to at least one pop meeting a week Ideally yours so you can build a relationship with your pod, but if you miss yours, there's there's one Every day of the week but Wednesday and we're gonna figure out Wednesdays to do the do the pod leaders ever stopped by a house where you've got a Cleaning professional cleaning it like do an inspection while they're there So That's not that's not the fine yet We currently have that field manager position for that but the goal is is that they would be able to do inspections and She wouldn't have to do Do all of those. Yep. Yeah, they could swap Supplies there as well Yep, and you know, that's there's a lot to this. We don't know yet, but we believe We did like a we did like a spreadsheet on and we figured that we figured that it would save about About 38 minutes of Non-productive time a week that we're paying for and we are commissioned so you could you could argue? Oh, well, you don't really pay for that But you do because that's lost opportunity for them to either clean or that it dilutes what their pay looks like, right? So we figured if they would just if this meeting just is like, you know, 15 minutes with like the meeting plus like a resupply You know, a lot of them come back more than once it's about, you know, 38 minutes that we figured per employee You know about Let's say it's about six or seven hundred dollars a week that it that it saves us in labor But if it increases morale because their average hourly increases, I don't know if I can quantify that right like like how do I quantify? How many impressions do these get so there's It's gonna cost more than you know, the vans are about 850, you know plus insurance So it's it's not gonna be a revenue neutral thing But there is some cost savings in terms of you know, reduce drive time reduce inefficiencies in the system increased efficiency for each employee we already scheduled very efficiently, but We scheduled a 96% efficiency, but what really happens is we average about 86 And that's because of them driving back to the office and lost lost efficiency, right? If that can go up if that can go up 5% their wages go up 5% I didn't you know 5% on 2250 an hour average another buck, right? So their their average hourly looks better. They feel better about the job even though they didn't make any money on the front check It Hopefully it does all those things for us and it does it for them too. It makes their life better and that they're not driving back and forth to the office They're more connected to their team and to the to the culture of the company a lot of a lot of things You don't know yet Are they do you see the pod leaders being involved with like the interview hiring process or the training? No, they are the train they are the trainers So they they do they do train and that's why they probably will go back to the office a lot of like our trainers Do you go back to the office every day anyway because they're picking up a trainee on their days? So on the days where they don't have trainees they could You know start from home But most of the time the trainees come to the office for now that may change with the pods where they just meet the trainer at a set location instead and you know, I don't know like We'll have to ask the trainees if they feel comfortable leaving their car at like, you know, Sam's football You know what I'm saying like sure it would be we don't know those things yet Like we're still gonna figure those out as of now. I guess I forgot that the trainers do really start from the office most days Because they're picking up a trainee at the office the trainees for the first two weeks start at the office Do they have a computer where they could go in and make schedule adjustments team assignments? one of our one of our peers on Made Central has their They don't have CSR's so one of one of my good friends on Made Central has pushed this down to the idea that these folks take support calls from customers and That's even a little for like That's a little wild to me, but yeah, that that's a possibility to some degree that This becomes like your your support team too, and yeah, like they're gonna handle, you know For this other company, we're not doing we're not committed to the shit But they're handling all the quality issues. They're addressing it they're setting tasks in Made Central for follow-up and But yes, all of our all of our trainers right now do have an iPad With you know kind of a preset, you know menu of things on there like our training manuals and and Other things and all though their responsibilities could could expand I Think so I mean the idea this all comes from the idea of traction, right? So We I'll stop my share so I can kind of look at you guys we talked but we implemented traction about a year and a half ago at better life and For those of you that that are familiar or not familiar EOS You know Whitman wrote a book about it. It's just a management process of of how you can run a Business and it works really it's like it's a recipe, right? Like, you know Those of you that like to you know paint your own masterpiece may not love it But I'm gonna I'm kind of a follow the recipe kind of person. I like I like structure and I like being able to like You know look at what's been done and what works and I don't need to put my own skin I don't need to feel like I was the architect of that. So But if you do it may not it may be stifling, but it allows you to really It allows you to elevate the people you already have a leadership by giving them, you know Numbers that they own right there's things that they're reporting on each week that they're responsible for and You know you start with your leadership team and then you bring it down to your field service team And then you bring it down to your techs We want we want traction to be all the way down to the technicians by the end of this quarter that they own their numbers Every single week the numbers they're responsible for are their quality score Their efficiency and their productivity and they can speak to why they have those numbers and how they can improve them I love the idea of them having three numbers, too Now I've always been a huge advocate of them having at least one But boy, I love the idea of them having three and that they're watching all of those numbers. That's Gold Matt you were talking about with your pod 10s Do you have an agenda that you're planning on following for that time frame? Yeah, I Shoot I've probably had it somewhere, but Really short amount of time especially if you're gonna get a coffee and Right the rough agenda is well if you're gonna get coffee You got to get there a little bit before the meeting starts, right? So you want to pay if you want to paid coffee on the company you got to get the That's kind of the way our that's kind of where quarterly meetings work like we have breakfast and Like the meeting starts at 745 you got it if you want to get your plate full You're either wait until the end Or you got to get there by seven between 715 and 740 fill your plate But you're not gonna get up in the middle of the meeting So if you get if you roll into 741 or whatever just sit down and wait you'll grab some food on the way out It'll be a little colder, but you know the same kind of thing here is we're gonna try and make sure these start on time That they're efficient and that they're not a time suck of How do you control that you take all the serving spoons away? We just get started and you know, it's like, you know Twice no, you know, you do some of the The speaker techniques where it's like clap once if you hear me clap twice if you hear me pretty hard to talk if you're clapping Right, you get them all settled in it's like alright everybody settle in grab food at the end We're gonna get started and just you roll on you let them eat They've already got a plate Taking the serving spoons is probably genius. That seems so easy much faster We moved out So next week, we'll have to give that a try I don't know if anybody on my team is watching but Connie if you're watching today pull the spoons at you know 75 or 741 and we're gonna we're gonna start right on time there's no there's For us, there's no perfect with this just getting it started is where we where we are with this and then we'll refine it over time the biggest thing is You know art we had a goal of sub 100% turnover last year and we fell short of that We you know, and we think the culture and driving that down is you know is a big part of it I think we ended up about 130 percent We actually are up to about a hundred fifty percent because we had a little bit of attrition at the beginning of the year We we really believe That we have a great opportunity for people we pay well we offer full benefits But we are missing we're missing just a little magic piece and you know, we don't know what it is We don't know this is all of it, but You know trying to do it all the slack. There's something missing there There's you know that face-to-face interaction that can end of the company But it's not there. So yeah Can you believe how fast of hour guys? Well, I know we're kind of pushing up on the top of the hour We gotta Yeah, we got a couple of things we should probably share Anybody have any questions for Matt throw them out there real quick before we Get going You want to go to the events page there Tom? Okay, yeah So what all we got going on here lives so it's two events maybe check out foundations on the left Just register. Yeah, I just hit register and this is foundations. It's March six six weeks Yeah, I know I know it's almost here If you haven't heard a foundation, oh that was when we did smart business moves Tom with Ola. Oh, okay, cool Let's say what and I I was a foundation graduate and You know, I think we were probably like 1.6 million at the time and now here we are like with a budget of 4.6 million. It's kind of like this stage Couldn't have done it without it, right? Actually, I do really think it was pretty foundational in terms of my financial education because I was a grow grow grow and fix it all with growth kind of person and then I'm not going to say I'm as sophisticated as Tom the finances now, but I certainly have a much deeper understanding of my finances because of because of that experience so If you're on the fence, you know, I'm not gonna say it's gonna help you grow like that, but The knowledge is there it's what you do with it. It's like going to the gym, right? I have a gym membership to lifetime and I swim once a week there It's a $60 swim because I only go once a week You know, if you're gonna talk about swimming you might as well go to foundations. There's a huge beach there. You're in a gorgeous mansion Yeah, a heated pool hot tub a lot of people take advantage of that Tom that's something that we don't talk a lot about is how gorgeous it is at the mansion and how many people the first one that comes to mind, of course is Sarah Do we have pictures? I mean, we've got pictures of people working, but it is you're hanging out at a beachfront property for an entire week Going down. I think we do have I saw I saw Sarah Mitchell and Ben Ferris at the event in Tommy Mellows event last week and they've been lifetime friend I mean those those two with Trisha Lake are about as close as anyone You will make some really close friendships there, too That's a good point like the social aspect of this being forced into such close proximity with people for a week It can be a little much, but it's also It's like college like some really close friendships with proximity. It's true That's right like Sarah Trisha then they are fast lifelong friends because of foundations I think they're about as close as any friends I have from college where you spent like Months and months to get like, you know, yeah, and they travel together and they have vacation together and It's a real strong bonding experience. Well, Tom, I'll talk about the rest later because we're We are out of time. Yeah, but I have to bounce guys. I got to take my daughter to piano. So I'll Thank you. This was awesome Yeah, really have to do this again because we've still got a few things that We wanted to talk about we didn't get to but yeah, thank you. There's a lot of things going on. Appreciate it guys Thank you guys. Have a good week. We'll see you