His Mental Breakdown SHATTERED Their $3M Business

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I turned down an offer from Hermosey.
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Out of curiosity, what do he offer you?
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You can't pay money for this.
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Today we're in Texas visiting Landon and Haley from Aurora Lights.
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This is where the fire happened.
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I'm feng shang.
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Probably about two hours of sleep.
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Y'all do checks in cash or no?
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Never.
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That's why you have $200,000 in receivables.
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Their permanent lighting business made $3 million in revenue last year.
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If I sold the business right now, I could retire.
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Q2's not profitable.
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Q2 mergers us.
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I'm overwhelmed.
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There's so many things to fix.
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There's so many hats to wear.
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$2,000 customer acquisition cost.
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We make no money on that.
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But due to a mental health crisis, Landon had to step away from the business for five months.
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Haley and I are going to therapy and it's bringing up a lot of difficult things that we need to work through.
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I know it's light, stare down, suicide.
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I think there's about six months there that it hardly worked, if worked at all.
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It revealed cracks in the company's leadership.
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We're probably short about half a million in profits.
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That's a big hairy problem.
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What happens if this all comes crashing down and I can't provide for my family?
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Yeah, sometimes it's difficult because when I'm talking to an owner, I actually feel like there's personal issues that are causing the business issues.
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I think part of the reason this hasn't worked out is because you have been closed off to it.
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This is the Business Turnaround Show.
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My name is Mike Andes.
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I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care and Homework Software.
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I travel the country fixing struggling businesses.
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That is your margin.
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So if you can get rid of that, you're able to double your profits.
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That's a big hairy problem, but on the other side of big hairy problems,
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We got good things.
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Our goal is to give Landon and Haley a strategy to turn around the company in the next six weeks.
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I mean, this could be groundbreaking.
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We can stick the landing, then this becomes, this becomes everything.
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There's nothing else like this.
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Yes, I'm in the trenches.
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Yes, it sucks.
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But man, sometimes those trenches are beautiful.
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Yeah, the implementation of this is gonna be nuts.
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Oh, it's gonna be nuts.
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All right, we have touched down in Houston, and tomorrow morning we are going and visiting Landon and his wife that have built Aurora Lights.
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Hey guys, Landon, co-ordor of Aurora Lights, and we are here out in front of our manufacturing facility.
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They build and manufacture the lights here in Houston.
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They're very proud of that.
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We manufacture everything ourselves here, and so that's been our competitive advantage that Texas made, built in Texas, made for Texans.
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So we're gonna help them tomorrow.
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This sounds like there's been a fire at their shop recently.
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It's a little bit of chaos.
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Currently we're not able to go inside and take photos of it.
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There was a fire.
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Fan in the bathroom malfunctioned.
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No one was present.
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Thankfully no one got hurt but it did destroy a lot of this place.
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Yeah, this is where the fire happened.
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If you wanna look at this side too.
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So this was covered in ash right here.
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Oh, and it was all flooded.
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Everything here was flooded.
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But things had flown up and over and then fell down and burnt everything up over here.
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I did actually have a coaching call with Landon and his wife about a month ago and already told them a lot of things to do around pricing and several elements of what they're doing right now.
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So what we got out of that call is we were going to, you know, a recommendation of our previous marketing director was, Hey, look, CAC's super high.
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What we can do about that is differentiate ourselves from the competition.
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So we were planning on starting a second company and then mingle the two services so that we can offer things that no one else does and lower.
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the cac there uh talked to mike he said don't do that you're setting at 15 of all your leads fix that and you'll triple your business easily don't start another company to solve the problem that was huge for me i was like so grateful for mike when he's like yeah focus on what all the things that are happening right now in your company and then you can scale that i'm like yes and now i don't have to do that
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startup of the other company so i was grateful for it i was feeling really relieved after the call actually so yeah they do permanent lighting so this allows you to not just do christmas lights but also easter fourth of july halloween game day all of that sort of thing so there they are let's go let's land in i think it's stacy is that her name hayley hayley is her name
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So Texas manufactured, family owned.
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Let's go.
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Cool, I love it.
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So there's no electricity.
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Based on our manufacturing facility, we keep it super organized.
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Everything's labeled, everything's color coordinated.
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So everything will have its own color that tells you what room it's in.
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And then it's labeled as well.
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And then it's pretty clear, you know what tool goes where.
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This is our conference room.
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We have the big rural lights on the wall.
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We have glass everywhere.
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for our whiteboards so you can write up the table right on the walls and then we have our door hangers oh they're covered in ash your website was awesome is it thank you my wife built that we've never built a website before and she just hopped on and within uh
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What?
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It was three days.
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Three days after hours.
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She coded that and built it and put that together.
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Although I can't really read this.
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Change your home's look with a tap.
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It'd be nice if I could see that text a little bit better.
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So they have their pricing on here.
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You can calculate your cost.
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They charge between $20 and $26 per linear foot for lighting installations.
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I don't know if you can see this on the screen, but this is a duplicate of the same line.
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That's kind of interesting.
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Okay, so we get what they do.
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Oh, that's cool.
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You can put how many linear feet and it just kind of racks up the price.
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I wanna have a buy now button.
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Please don't take me to a quote.
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Oh man, I wanna buy it right now.
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I don't know what to define my role.
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I do the accounting, the admin work.
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She still wears a million hats.
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I do the automations for the company, the CRM stuff.
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We built our website.
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We did CRM.
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We were getting quotes for websites, like 50 grand, 10 grand for a website.
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It'll take six months, eight months to do.
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And she stayed up after hours, after taking care of kids every night for three days, and she built our website.
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Okay, so when I look at the profit and loss statement, they made just over $3 million in revenue in 2025.
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He's saying 3.5 million, but that's just because they might've realized and earned more of that revenue the year before.
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That's fine.
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So our business is seasonal.
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Q4 makes us all our money.
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We did not make the profits last busy season that we should have because I was off.
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And that's going to roll through the rest of the company because we're probably short about half a million in profits from that.
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And, you know, half a million profits is a lot of money.
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There's a lot you can do with that.
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He's running out of 13% profit margin right now.
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And so for some people, like they see $400,000 in net income, like,
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That's amazing.
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13% if you are trying to grow and invest in business can feel like nothing because you are making orders of two or $300,000 worth of lights and materials and they have a big manufacturing facility and like you might have no available cash and cash flow might be actually really tight.
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Yeah, we just have a hundred grand of raw materials and then we have our machines, which are everything for us.
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So we gotta fix that.
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This whole place was flooded.
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So drywall is gonna have to be taken out.
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So in order to, these baseboards, the water was,
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up to here on the baseboards, you can see that line right there.
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So that's where the water was.
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And so that means if there's mold on the carpet, there's probably mold on it.
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We have to figure out what's behind the wall and what damage was done there.
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So that has to be ripped out.
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Ceiling would obviously need to be ripped out.
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AC unit needs to be, so the fire happened right underneath the AC unit, so that thing's cooked.
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And then like, so it knocked out our power, obviously, and then it knocked out the water line that ran there.
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So with all that,
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damage there, we need to start cutting wire.
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So I don't want to cut all that and then the landlord say, like, hey, I didn't okay that expense.
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If it's going to be my responsibility, then I'll do it my way and I'm not going to pay anything that you did.
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You might have no available cash and cash flow might be actually really tight at a 13% margin business.
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So we'll be interested to see what his goals are tomorrow.
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But I feel like,
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A lot of this is going to come down to leadership and whether or not he can actually attract a team of managers that want to work with him.
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We're both in leadership.
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So we have a sales manager and then an operations manager.
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We had an office manager, install manager, but we recently, our install manager is not with us anymore.
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And that office manager was pretty much already doing like ops.
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He wasn't doing his role and she was covering for him, so we just promoted her and switched things around.
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Right when he left, culture had taken a huge hit, but that's because he had started a separate company, he was planning on leaving already.
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Yeah, so...
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So that took a hit and that's where we lost.
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the half a million in profit.
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We were losing good installers as well.
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And it was because they had issues, which everyone's does, they have concerns.
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And it was being brought to him and then it wasn't being really brought to us and we had no idea.
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And we lost some really good guys.
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And we just didn't know until the end when they're already like frustrated, you know, and everything that it's like,
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Yes, we lost some good guys there with him.
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I'm never a huge fan when an owner is talking with their managers so much.
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It's always their fault.
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He said three times, it was like, oh, those managers.
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I don't like that mentality because you're the leader.
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And so if you consistently have bad management, it's actually your fault.
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And so I happen to believe this is going to go in the direction of this being a leadership problem.
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And he's allowing maybe his past or things he's trying to figure out in therapy to affect him showing up to the business.
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We needed to take some mental hiatus from the end of last year.
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And then that led for people in our company to, you know, things got loose.
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Things got started falling through cracks.
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And we're paying the price for that.
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So both of y'all took a break at kind of the same time?
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I've never taken a break.
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No.
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I've just been here.
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She's picked up for me.
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Yeah, he kind of took a little bit.
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We have two kids, and so.
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But yeah, he took a little bit of a break.
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I mean, he still worked.
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He still worked a little bit, but not as heavily as though.
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I think there was about six months there that I hardly worked, if worked at all.
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Now I understand there's things you go through, and for the past five months he's been absent from the business, but I have a feeling the P&L and the balance sheet look very different now than they did back then because he had to step away.
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The bottleneck, so we have several bottlenecks.
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I think there's three general categories, I'd say, for our bottlenecks.
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Leadership is what's gonna keep us from scaling.
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Right now, things have to be, you know, we have to jump in, make sure everyone's accountable.
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We're not constantly going, checking back in with the leadership team.
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We've seen that they'll make their own judgment calls and it's from a very narrow focus.
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Hey, we want this done, or I want this done because it's easier on me, but I completely screw up the next guy down the line.
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What I have found when people have a whole bunch of list of constraints or things that they think are hurting the business, usually the actual problem, the thing you're looking for is like, what's the one thing?
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Because if they can change one or two things in the next six weeks, they can probably knock out 90% of this list.
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if they just fix the big domino.
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So when I have a list of a whole page of different things that needs to be changed, I'm immediately thinking, what's the one or two things that if we just put all of our time and attention would actually get across the finish line and see the biggest impact and probably solve most of these other problems.
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I happen to believe that this size of business, doing over $3 million in revenue, relatively profitable.
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This is a constraint of the leader.
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And fortunately, Landon has been vulnerable enough to say it in his application video.
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So my hope is that we can pull that out, deal with the problems, and create some infrastructure to make sure that that doesn't keep the business from growing.
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We are headed to the shop space for today's turnaround.
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And it turns out they recently had a fire at the office.
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So everything is a mess.
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Nothing really, no one's really working.
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So we're going to go just meet them at their house and do the coaching there.
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Wow.
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What's going on, Mike?
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What's up, dude?
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New house?
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Got a homework shirt on you today.
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How you doing?
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Shout out to homeworks.
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Good to see you, man.
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That's for us.
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Fire stopped happening.
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Yeah, right.
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Dude, what happened with that?
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Uh, fire.
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Just like, what, like, how did it start, do you know?
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It was the bathroom fan.
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No.
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Yeah.
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The tenants next to us, they were like, hey, there's water coming in our building from your side.
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And we didn't have anyone there.
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And we were like, oh, wow.
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And so our operations manager went over there and,
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the sprinkler system was going and then she noticed there was a fire and thankfully the fire was out.
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00:12:47.585 --> 00:12:52.668
And we were calling like the building landlord and he's like, we don't have a sprinkler system.
227
00:12:53.270 --> 00:12:54.651
And so we're trying to turn off the water.
228
00:12:54.691 --> 00:12:55.411
Clearly they've won.
229
00:12:55.471 --> 00:12:56.432
Our place is flooded.
230
00:12:56.452 --> 00:12:56.592
Yeah.
231
00:12:56.752 --> 00:12:59.013
We're trying to turn off the water and stuff.
232
00:12:59.033 --> 00:13:03.156
And anyway, the fire melted the pipes and that's what put out the fire.
233
00:13:03.716 --> 00:13:04.937
And so it could have been way worse.
234
00:13:04.957 --> 00:13:05.997
It wasn't a sprinkler system.
235
00:13:06.137 --> 00:13:11.501
Landlord refuses to pay for any of a, even though the contract says it's his fault or his responsibility.
236
00:13:11.581 --> 00:13:15.523
We've had instances before where the sewage backed up and it flooded this whole place.
237
00:13:15.583 --> 00:13:19.465
And then I went ahead and cleaned it because I'm not going to let my guys work in black water.
238
00:13:19.945 --> 00:13:20.886
That's pretty awful.
239
00:13:23.713 --> 00:13:26.716
But yeah, at that point it was their responsibility as well.
240
00:13:27.077 --> 00:13:29.960
And we just covered it because I wasn't, I wanted it done quickly.
241
00:13:30.300 --> 00:13:31.922
Wasn't gonna nickel and dime this.
242
00:13:32.302 --> 00:13:34.845
It's gonna be his problem eventually if he moved out, right?
243
00:13:35.245 --> 00:13:36.527
He said the worst possible for all of it.
244
00:13:38.263 --> 00:13:45.089
The contract says that if there's fire damage he's responsible whether it was our fault or his.
245
00:13:45.189 --> 00:13:46.950
Yeah, it does say whether it was our fault or not.
246
00:13:47.131 --> 00:13:52.916
And then that will be arranged like separately but yeah so we just need to get an attorney.
247
00:13:52.936 --> 00:13:55.418
At least it didn't happen in like October, November.
248
00:13:55.538 --> 00:13:56.198
Yeah, that's true.
249
00:13:56.258 --> 00:13:57.679
Yeah, we just kind of rolled with it.
250
00:13:58.259 --> 00:13:59.840
We're still producing, we're still installing.
251
00:14:00.300 --> 00:14:01.241
It does slow things down.
252
00:14:01.261 --> 00:14:04.863
We're not gonna be able to hit high capacities for busy season by any means.
253
00:14:05.103 --> 00:14:08.284
Yeah, right now it feels like it's, you know, it rains, it pours, it feels like it's just boring.
254
00:14:08.444 --> 00:14:10.325
Like all the things are hitting at once.
255
00:14:10.765 --> 00:14:12.026
We're running some bottlenecks here.
256
00:14:12.126 --> 00:14:15.728
So we've hit our, we keep running against the same issues.
257
00:14:16.930 --> 00:14:18.571
So it's hard to get past this point.
258
00:14:18.751 --> 00:14:23.254
Yeah, we scaled pretty fast, and then right now I feel like we're just kinda stuck.
259
00:14:23.354 --> 00:14:31.979
So, but we also had some things that blew up like at the end of last year, and we're kinda paying for that now.
260
00:14:32.159 --> 00:14:36.082
I feel like we would've had a better off season now if those things didn't happen.
261
00:14:36.322 --> 00:14:38.483
So how'd you get originally started doing the lights?
262
00:14:39.464 --> 00:14:41.105
Like what was the original impetus?
263
00:14:41.505 --> 00:14:43.145
Yeah, so we're both in finance.
264
00:14:43.365 --> 00:14:44.746
So Haley's an accountant.
265
00:14:44.986 --> 00:14:47.086
She does tax work.
266
00:14:47.246 --> 00:14:51.387
And then I did financial services, so financial advising type of thing.
267
00:14:51.527 --> 00:14:52.188
I was pretty miserable.
268
00:14:52.208 --> 00:14:52.968
I was really depressed.
269
00:14:53.108 --> 00:14:59.249
And then one of my clients called me and was like, Hey, you know, doubt you want to look at this, but we're my friends.
270
00:14:59.329 --> 00:15:03.290
He really needs someone to help run the Houston department for this company, and they do lights.
271
00:15:03.830 --> 00:15:04.890
So I did that for a while.
272
00:15:06.051 --> 00:15:09.011
I ended up being really, really good at sales from that process.
273
00:15:09.192 --> 00:15:10.112
We were pretty successful there.
274
00:15:11.512 --> 00:15:14.195
ended up quitting her job and she supported me in that role.
275
00:15:14.835 --> 00:15:17.558
I was, you know, I quickly became the top sales rep in the company there.
276
00:15:18.118 --> 00:15:22.302
As far as I'm aware, I hold the top sales records in the nation for this industry.
277
00:15:22.462 --> 00:15:23.323
We had made an agreement.
278
00:15:23.363 --> 00:15:28.327
I'd be compensated about a million bucks and they negged on that deal.
279
00:15:28.527 --> 00:15:32.711
We did a handshake deal on a million dollars and they said at the end of it, hey, thanks for flying.
280
00:15:32.771 --> 00:15:36.915
Thanks for traveling around, starting up these locations, helping us build, but we're not going to pay you.
281
00:15:37.075 --> 00:15:38.917
And that was all exterior lights as well?
282
00:15:38.997 --> 00:15:40.018
This is exactly what we do now.
283
00:15:40.158 --> 00:15:40.799
Oh, okay, okay, cool.
284
00:15:40.999 --> 00:15:43.541
And then, yeah, so that they didn't pay me, so I left.
285
00:15:43.561 --> 00:15:45.944
So we ended up actually just figuring out how to manufacture ourselves.
286
00:15:45.964 --> 00:15:46.104
Yeah.
287
00:15:46.124 --> 00:15:47.485
We made it work.
288
00:15:47.785 --> 00:15:50.608
Literally in our garage, like from our garage.
289
00:15:50.748 --> 00:15:55.613
We say that and our competitors are like, no, they didn't start this in their garage.
290
00:15:55.653 --> 00:15:56.053
We did.
291
00:15:56.173 --> 00:15:59.096
But yeah, so we, our first calendar year we did over two.
292
00:16:00.257 --> 00:16:05.419
And then these numbers, there's some inaccuracy there.
293
00:16:06.260 --> 00:16:10.001
We do have currently somewhere around 200,000 accounts receivable.
294
00:16:10.041 --> 00:16:12.943
So there's things that we still need to be paid out on.
295
00:16:13.143 --> 00:16:14.003
So it should be higher.
296
00:16:14.023 --> 00:16:16.484
Yeah, collections is a big deal, right?
297
00:16:16.524 --> 00:16:17.865
Yes, there's some tracking that...
298
00:16:18.905 --> 00:16:20.085
is missing from this.
299
00:16:20.105 --> 00:16:24.606
So it should be higher, but this is a pretty good picture just to scale everything up, I think.
300
00:16:24.786 --> 00:16:27.147
I think there are three areas where we can grow.
301
00:16:27.447 --> 00:16:29.347
So I'm curious what he thinks is our number one is.
302
00:16:29.827 --> 00:16:33.508
I personally think profitability wise, our number one bottleneck is going to be busy season.
303
00:16:33.688 --> 00:16:35.128
Capacity and stall in busy season.
304
00:16:35.448 --> 00:16:41.330
Our cat drops the floor, our capacity, and if we can increase our capacity, there's a ton of money we've made there.
305
00:16:41.510 --> 00:16:43.090
So that's our off season issue.
306
00:16:43.590 --> 00:16:44.910
Our goal is to scale.
307
00:16:45.310 --> 00:16:48.351
And so I think it's where Mike's uniquely positioned to help us.
308
00:16:48.831 --> 00:16:52.912
But how do we create systems and structures that are scalable and we can grow nationwide?
309
00:16:53.093 --> 00:16:55.113
Because I'd love to have over 200 locations.
310
00:16:55.593 --> 00:16:56.074
Yeah.
311
00:16:56.114 --> 00:16:57.394
He has big visions for us.
312
00:16:57.454 --> 00:16:58.955
As you can tell, he's a visionary.
313
00:16:59.015 --> 00:17:00.375
I'm the integrator.
314
00:17:01.055 --> 00:17:01.776
Yeah, Haley.
315
00:17:02.236 --> 00:17:03.436
Superpowers in doing things.
316
00:17:03.456 --> 00:17:04.317
He has great...
317
00:17:05.637 --> 00:17:07.759
great visions, great dreams for this company.
318
00:17:07.799 --> 00:17:13.623
It's like, I mean, I'm just like, okay, I just need direction and then I know I can do it.
319
00:17:13.643 --> 00:17:16.185
But no one can do operations like Haley.
320
00:17:16.325 --> 00:17:19.788
My thought though is like, can we in Q4 when the leads are so cheap?
321
00:17:19.808 --> 00:17:25.012
Because if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong, it's like $100 customer opportunity cost during fourth quarter, right?
322
00:17:25.612 --> 00:17:26.192
Less, but yeah.
323
00:17:26.553 --> 00:17:29.475
And then like way more this time of year.
324
00:17:29.695 --> 00:17:31.316
Yeah, like up to two grand.
325
00:17:31.436 --> 00:17:32.417
Two grand, yeah.
326
00:17:32.457 --> 00:17:33.078
So like,
327
00:17:34.198 --> 00:17:45.848
Do you think we can, if you offer someone, hey we'll install your lights in four months, yes they're not going to like that, but if you offer them $1500 discount or $1000 discount, will they take it?
328
00:17:45.968 --> 00:17:52.613
There's a lot of players coming in the market, everyone's trying to build capacity for Q4, and no one feels it.
329
00:17:52.913 --> 00:17:54.734
Everyone is drowning in leads.
330
00:17:55.735 --> 00:18:00.939
So can we just, instead of turning people away, can we book them six months from now?
331
00:18:01.239 --> 00:18:02.620
I don't think that they'll book six months.
332
00:18:02.680 --> 00:18:04.281
I think we can get four months out.
333
00:18:04.321 --> 00:18:05.602
That's my personal belief.
334
00:18:06.202 --> 00:18:09.204
Feel free to break that, but that's where my gut's telling me.
335
00:18:09.224 --> 00:18:11.286
Something that I'm just remembering in November of 25...
336
00:18:13.447 --> 00:18:17.271
we were booking out and promising, hey, you get this discount and you get spring install.
337
00:18:17.831 --> 00:18:20.974
But then we had no more work for our installers.
338
00:18:21.175 --> 00:18:25.399
For the average ticket, is it like five, six grand to install lights?
339
00:18:25.519 --> 00:18:27.380
It's like 45, five.
340
00:18:27.901 --> 00:18:36.669
And so basically if we have to market during spring or summer and spend $1,500 or $2,000 customer acquisition cost, we make no money on that.
341
00:18:36.929 --> 00:18:37.130
Yeah.
342
00:18:38.011 --> 00:18:47.924
And so what I would love to be able to test, at least, is an offer when the rush is crazy and they can't get anyone to come show up.
343
00:18:48.204 --> 00:18:52.630
It's like, well, if we can't get it done this year, we might as well get a huge discount and have it done next summer.
344
00:18:53.751 --> 00:19:01.334
And I think that if you have unlimited demand and you can sell leads for three years, you have enough for that, we just create an offer.
345
00:19:01.354 --> 00:19:02.375
It's like, hey, do you want spring?
346
00:19:02.735 --> 00:19:03.795
Okay, great, here's a discount.
347
00:19:04.075 --> 00:19:05.016
Do you want next summer?
348
00:19:05.296 --> 00:19:06.236
Here's a bigger discount.
349
00:19:06.516 --> 00:19:09.418
Because for their mind, they're like, hey, I'm not gonna get Christmas this year.
350
00:19:09.678 --> 00:19:13.299
It's booked out, everyone's smashed, no one's gonna be able to get this in time.
351
00:19:13.759 --> 00:19:21.302
Great, I know I want next Christmas, I'm willing to wait till June, July, or August, and if you're gonna give me $1,000 off, which could potentially be 20 or 30% discount,
352
00:19:23.305 --> 00:19:23.605
Awesome.
353
00:19:24.605 --> 00:19:32.488
Because I would rather spend every marketing dollar when I'm knowing it leads for nothing, assuming I've greased the offer to be able to book them out in the summer.
354
00:19:32.588 --> 00:19:37.950
Yeah, I'm all game for doubling down on that and pushing to fill the rest of the year.
355
00:19:37.970 --> 00:19:40.911
I see there's no loss there.
356
00:19:41.991 --> 00:19:45.773
How to execute that, stick the landing, I think there's...
357
00:19:48.766 --> 00:19:51.288
I wonder how well we're going to be able to execute.
358
00:19:51.428 --> 00:19:52.489
Great dreams.
359
00:19:52.549 --> 00:19:56.112
And then when it comes down to it, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
360
00:19:56.152 --> 00:19:56.472
Totally.
361
00:19:56.632 --> 00:20:00.495
And I think right now, the punch in the face is we get all these leads and we basically turn them away.
362
00:20:01.316 --> 00:20:06.199
I would love it to where we go into the season and we already have the funnel that's like, hey, we're booked out.
363
00:20:06.239 --> 00:20:06.940
Installers are done.
364
00:20:07.460 --> 00:20:07.660
All right.
365
00:20:08.101 --> 00:20:09.102
Ads are now redirecting.
366
00:20:09.742 --> 00:20:11.483
and we have that flow ready to go.
367
00:20:11.723 --> 00:20:14.605
It's a low moment.
368
00:20:14.845 --> 00:20:21.189
I think the bigger moments that are low isn't that, hey, everything's on fire because we've recently had a literal fire.
369
00:20:21.249 --> 00:20:23.511
Those, I think we handle pretty well.
370
00:20:23.551 --> 00:20:26.713
It's outside of our control, one foot in front of the other.
371
00:20:26.733 --> 00:20:29.275
I think the low parts are, here's the big hairy problem.
372
00:20:30.191 --> 00:20:33.374
I don't know how to solve it, and I feel really alone in that process.
373
00:20:33.695 --> 00:20:42.384
And the direction, not having a clear direction, or feeling I even have support to get to the next stage, that's a pretty low moment as well.
374
00:20:42.964 --> 00:20:49.131
The other thing that, so what I see that shifting is our capacity from installation.
375
00:20:49.171 --> 00:20:50.712
We're pushing off the capacity for installation.
376
00:20:52.107 --> 00:20:55.728
Now we're gonna run into a capacity for ability to sell that many jobs.
377
00:20:55.768 --> 00:21:00.190
You know, I need to sell like 1200 jobs in a month.
378
00:21:01.590 --> 00:21:02.771
If I wanna book the rest of the year.
379
00:21:02.951 --> 00:21:06.372
And then so yeah, Q4, I have a month or so to sell 1200 jobs.
380
00:21:06.392 --> 00:21:06.512
Right.
381
00:21:09.453 --> 00:21:11.495
I don't have enough sales reps to fill that capacity.
382
00:21:11.656 --> 00:21:14.879
If we have so much demand, we're already constrained on installers.
383
00:21:15.920 --> 00:21:25.371
The next constraint becomes, okay, well, if we gas marketing and we have this other flow from an ad perspective, now we have this problem we can't get enough salespeople there.
384
00:21:25.972 --> 00:21:27.133
That becomes the next bottleneck.
385
00:21:27.233 --> 00:21:29.155
I understand we can only install so much.
386
00:21:29.195 --> 00:21:29.835
That's a constraint.
387
00:21:29.915 --> 00:21:31.416
We can only sell so much in person.
388
00:21:31.476 --> 00:21:32.177
That's a constraint.
389
00:21:32.517 --> 00:21:47.309
But if we can say, hey, when leads are literally 5% of what they're going to be otherwise, we should probably spend as much money as possible during that time, which means our close rate on the phone, even if it went to 10%, is still going to be maybe $200 customer acquisition costs versus $2,000.
390
00:21:51.562 --> 00:21:53.723
And so I'm okay with a 10 or 15% close rate.
391
00:21:54.063 --> 00:22:01.105
And if you're able to gas this much money and push more of this towards that time and just remove the constraint of salespeople, because now you don't have to sell in person.
392
00:22:01.725 --> 00:22:05.506
And then we remove the constraint of installers because we're booking out to next year.
393
00:22:06.486 --> 00:22:09.287
That should allow us to move that demand forward.
394
00:22:09.627 --> 00:22:12.608
I think you can figure out a system because we sell almost all of ours over the phone.
395
00:22:12.628 --> 00:22:13.648
We don't do any in person.
396
00:22:13.948 --> 00:22:15.549
It is a lower price product.
397
00:22:15.589 --> 00:22:16.809
Ours is like a thousand to $1,200.
398
00:22:16.849 --> 00:22:19.370
Yours is 4,000 and we're doing the Christmas light thing.
399
00:22:20.190 --> 00:22:22.051
So it is a higher end product.
400
00:22:22.492 --> 00:22:28.395
I also think though that if you train someone on the phone correctly, they are able to say, oh wow, that's way more.
401
00:22:28.415 --> 00:22:29.476
It's like, well here's why.
402
00:22:29.496 --> 00:22:34.458
And then also have that down sell in their pocket now for that more price sensitive customer.
403
00:22:34.939 --> 00:22:36.800
I'm not going after the price sensitive customer though.
404
00:22:36.960 --> 00:22:38.881
That's why I'm okay with like a 10 or 15% close rate.
405
00:22:38.901 --> 00:22:42.263
And that's what we see even with Christmas lights on the phone, it's 10 to 15%.
406
00:22:42.543 --> 00:22:47.486
But if I can get leads for $9, which we get on Facebook ads during that quarter,
407
00:22:48.850 --> 00:22:49.571
gas the thing.
408
00:22:49.751 --> 00:22:58.258
The solution that I'm talking about with Landon about this off season is actually one of five ways to solve the off season in any home service business.
409
00:22:58.618 --> 00:22:59.999
It is the Achilles heel.
410
00:23:00.299 --> 00:23:06.525
And what makes home service businesses usually a pretty pathetic business is that we lose money for three, four months out of the year.
411
00:23:07.205 --> 00:23:18.252
If you want to solve this for your business and figure out the other four ways to solve the off-season in your business and your specific industry, go to mikeandys.com slash workshop or go down in the description.
412
00:23:18.292 --> 00:23:18.852
There's a link.
413
00:23:19.092 --> 00:23:20.093
It's completely free.
414
00:23:20.373 --> 00:23:23.835
And it's a workshop that will guide you through how to solve the off-season in your business.
415
00:23:24.015 --> 00:23:27.097
I started out in sales as a career I've done for the last decade and a half.
416
00:23:27.537 --> 00:23:33.701
One thing that I found is that it's actually not so crazy that someone will dedicate their entire lives to mastering one subject.
417
00:23:34.061 --> 00:23:37.823
It's not even crazy that they'll write it down and sell it in a book for really cheap.
418
00:23:37.883 --> 00:23:43.885
What is crazy is that you'll have these people that are experts, they dedicate their entire lives to conquering one problem.
419
00:23:44.545 --> 00:23:48.907
They write it down, they sell it super cheap, and what's crazy is no one reads it.
420
00:23:49.467 --> 00:24:01.953
So today, having Mike come out for the Turnaround Show was around channeling and acquiring those skillsets that
421
00:24:03.028 --> 00:24:06.051
someone spent a lifetime developing, world-class people.
422
00:24:06.271 --> 00:24:09.013
I can gain knowledge and perspective from all around me.
423
00:24:09.133 --> 00:24:11.956
Take this one who's done this before, that's pretty appealing to me.
424
00:24:12.116 --> 00:24:17.541
Yeah, my only concern with that is that the footage, like what if the footage is off and we quoted them this amount.
425
00:24:17.661 --> 00:24:19.442
Just use Google Maps, is that what you used before?
426
00:24:20.263 --> 00:24:22.245
Like it's gotta be super close.
427
00:24:22.305 --> 00:24:25.668
The peaks is where it's really hard when measuring one.
428
00:24:25.688 --> 00:24:27.670
The competitors do Google Maps and that's how they do it.
429
00:24:28.310 --> 00:24:32.440
There's times that I'm showing up and these guys are 70 feet under.
430
00:24:32.982 --> 00:24:34.626
There's times that they're significantly off.
431
00:24:34.666 --> 00:24:35.428
But have you measured?
432
00:24:35.468 --> 00:24:36.951
Have you used Google Maps to measure?
433
00:24:37.252 --> 00:24:37.553
I have.
434
00:24:38.456 --> 00:24:41.239
We should just do that where I measure it on Google Maps, you go measure it.
435
00:24:41.319 --> 00:24:43.501
You should not go measure yourself.
436
00:24:43.861 --> 00:24:45.102
No, measure it on Google Maps.
437
00:24:45.202 --> 00:24:47.264
I just don't think that's a good use of your time.
438
00:24:47.284 --> 00:24:54.731
So I think first things first is to even go this route, we have to create a whole system around selling over the phone.
439
00:24:54.771 --> 00:24:57.273
And I understand it'll seem way less close rate.
440
00:24:57.353 --> 00:24:57.773
It will be.
441
00:24:58.194 --> 00:25:01.677
Guaranteed, you will close less over the phone than in person.
442
00:25:01.757 --> 00:25:07.441
But I think all the ingenuity that you all have put towards manufacturing and your ability on sales can come together.
443
00:25:07.501 --> 00:25:09.943
How do we make it a killer over the phone strategy?
444
00:25:10.003 --> 00:25:12.465
Because I know you can measure and to be accurate.
445
00:25:12.645 --> 00:25:13.046
I know that.
446
00:25:13.646 --> 00:25:20.551
I also think your guys' permanent lighting thing would kick our pants because you can show other stuff besides green, yellow, and white.
447
00:25:20.812 --> 00:25:21.012
Right?
448
00:25:21.072 --> 00:25:21.692
Christmas colors.
449
00:25:21.752 --> 00:25:25.175
You can show the other stuff and send it to them live on the phone.
450
00:25:25.315 --> 00:25:34.901
Look, even though a lot of our leads come from online and from the website, and it's so important, that's why we have home service web design, still a lot of people want to give you a call.
451
00:25:35.161 --> 00:25:43.967
And the reason is because they just want to talk to a human, they want to ask a few questions, and gain confidence on that call enough to give credit card information.
452
00:25:44.773 --> 00:25:54.335
On a web form, most people will do that, but there are still going to be a big chunk of people that want to call your office, want to talk to a real human being before they give payment information.
453
00:25:54.616 --> 00:26:11.760
And if I can do that and provide that service, and yes, have a little more overhead, having someone answering the phone, having a web form that might cost me some money, or using AI, these things cost me money, but a whole lot less than having an estimator or a salesperson driving around the Houston area, which is huge, you might get five or six estimates per day.
454
00:26:12.580 --> 00:26:18.505
when those same five or six estimates could be done one hour with someone over the phone from the comfort of their living room.
455
00:26:18.585 --> 00:26:22.628
So like the way that you frame this on the phone is really important because they don't get to see your face.
456
00:26:22.748 --> 00:26:24.210
They don't get to have that personal connection.
457
00:26:24.390 --> 00:26:25.611
I'm intimidated by the virtual cells.
458
00:26:26.321 --> 00:26:28.602
Yeah, I've been trying to talk him into it.
459
00:26:28.642 --> 00:26:30.423
And he's like, every time I'm like...
460
00:26:30.723 --> 00:26:32.144
I don't do it.
461
00:26:32.264 --> 00:26:32.824
What part of it?
462
00:26:33.624 --> 00:26:35.245
Just that it can close?
463
00:26:35.445 --> 00:26:36.365
I've just never closed that way.
464
00:26:36.565 --> 00:26:38.886
I closed 70% this way and I closed zero that way.
465
00:26:39.467 --> 00:26:47.970
Our process last year, the end of last year, was lead came in, too many leads were coming in, were like, okay, let's do a virtual sell.
466
00:26:48.391 --> 00:26:49.751
So the office would book that.
467
00:26:49.971 --> 00:26:55.694
Our sales manager, they'd put it on his calendar and then our sales manager would call them back.
468
00:26:56.955 --> 00:27:21.293
80% of people won't even like it yeah it was never worked but then our sales manager was getting help from our install manager because our install manager can just look at the house and kind of estimate it so there were so many people in it yeah and things were getting lost that's where that's where the drop is off so we way back i used to dissimilar it's okay if they want an estimate tell them i'll call them back and i'd call them back i never could tell anyone i'd call them
469
00:27:21.353 --> 00:27:29.038
But as soon as I got to where when they called, they're on the phone and they do value their time and they're like, hey, if you can just give me a price right now, I'm locked and loaded.
470
00:27:29.659 --> 00:27:37.624
Like that big drop off going from like, hey, let's book you an appointment, which is a phone call versus let me just take care of this now is like huge.
471
00:27:38.687 --> 00:27:39.007
Huge.
472
00:27:39.308 --> 00:27:43.491
What I'm hearing you say is that transition lets out all the momentum.
473
00:27:43.751 --> 00:27:45.032
Well, yeah, 100%.
474
00:27:45.492 --> 00:27:49.975
What you have here gets digested down to what does someone on the phone need to know.
475
00:27:50.256 --> 00:27:51.877
And in three days, they go through the course.
476
00:27:51.997 --> 00:27:52.778
They're trained up.
477
00:27:52.978 --> 00:27:54.099
This is exactly how you do it.
478
00:27:54.739 --> 00:27:57.001
They could literally get a commission on square footage.
479
00:27:57.201 --> 00:27:59.483
Based on the square foot that they sell to the customer, they get a commission.
480
00:27:59.763 --> 00:27:59.943
Yeah.
481
00:28:00.443 --> 00:28:07.167
A very low base, you can do minimum wage, you can train them exactly how you do it here, but when the customer calls, they can solve the problem.
482
00:28:07.207 --> 00:28:09.248
They can get them on the schedule and everything.
483
00:28:09.508 --> 00:28:14.571
They have the ability to get them the 15% discount per spring, 25% off next summer if they save price.
484
00:28:14.871 --> 00:28:18.133
They have the ability to be able to give the cost comparison per day.
485
00:28:18.713 --> 00:28:21.014
they have all this baked in as tools in their tool belt.
486
00:28:21.034 --> 00:28:24.435
The ability to send them a text message with the picture of their house.
487
00:28:24.455 --> 00:28:32.778
Like you give them all those tools and there's not an 80% drop off, which is always what we see when you say, hey, let me book an appointment and I have an estimator call them.
488
00:28:32.878 --> 00:28:37.040
In general, for almost every home service business, fixing the off season is the unlock.
489
00:28:37.640 --> 00:28:42.322
If you ever have a month where you dive by more than 50% in revenue compared to your best month,
490
00:28:43.002 --> 00:28:43.563
We have a problem.
491
00:28:43.863 --> 00:28:51.770
And they were dropping like 75, 80% plus per month in revenue going from their best months, November, December, down to June, July, August.
492
00:28:52.698 --> 00:28:59.263
And so that was going from like $500,000 in monthly revenue all the way down to under $100,000 in June, July, and August.
493
00:28:59.283 --> 00:29:00.244
And that's where they're losing money.
494
00:29:00.584 --> 00:29:04.407
And so if that's happening in a home service business, that is the only thing to focus on.
495
00:29:05.228 --> 00:29:07.070
I don't care about lead attribution.
496
00:29:07.410 --> 00:29:10.232
I don't care about hiring and getting coaching.
497
00:29:10.312 --> 00:29:13.875
I don't care about hiring someone that has a bunch of experiences, phone calls.
498
00:29:14.055 --> 00:29:14.476
It doesn't matter.
499
00:29:14.656 --> 00:29:18.659
Fix the off season and get leads from when you're busy to the time when you're not busy.
500
00:29:18.659 --> 00:29:22.200
Yeah, what I'm hearing is that we have off-season, we have in-person appointments being ran.
501
00:29:22.440 --> 00:29:24.780
Busy season, we have this one team that pops up.
502
00:29:24.820 --> 00:29:26.221
What does that person do for the rest of the year?
503
00:29:26.421 --> 00:29:28.181
Right now, I would see this as a gate.
504
00:29:28.261 --> 00:29:32.722
So it's like when our estimates are booked and we can't, we swap it.
505
00:29:32.822 --> 00:29:36.123
It's like, hey, now ads are no longer flowing to this like we book an appointment.
506
00:29:36.483 --> 00:29:39.564
It is call us or go to our landing page.
507
00:29:39.864 --> 00:29:45.745
And then the second thing I would say is I think eventually you will get so good at that you will not even want to have the in-person.
508
00:29:45.965 --> 00:29:46.906
During busy season.
509
00:29:47.166 --> 00:29:47.486
Anytime.
510
00:29:47.906 --> 00:29:48.326
Anytime.
511
00:29:49.646 --> 00:29:55.949
That's where the real juice to this is, because if you can figure this part out, like this is the hard, big, hairy problem, this is what scales.
512
00:29:56.529 --> 00:30:02.131
Because now this person can sit anywhere and sell, and this becomes very much of a model that can go in a different city, it can move.
513
00:30:02.272 --> 00:30:10.555
The thing is, 15% right now of your revenue is going to salespeople, and it's going to drive them driving around, and all this other stuff.
514
00:30:11.155 --> 00:30:15.377
That is your margin, so if you can get rid of that, you're able to double your profits.
515
00:30:15.977 --> 00:30:19.822
and make it a much more, a model that can scale so much better.
516
00:30:19.882 --> 00:30:24.528
And if you put half of their money into your marketing, you'd make up for the fact that yes, it's a lower close rate.
517
00:30:24.748 --> 00:30:25.089
It is.
518
00:30:25.349 --> 00:30:34.220
But if there are people struggling to close at say 25%, you're at 40% because you're an all-star, but they're at 20 or 25% and they've got experience and they're paid well, like,
519
00:30:34.881 --> 00:30:43.823
Scaling that is a lot harder than how do we get someone who makes 14 bucks an hour and has incentive on the phone to answer these questions and give these offers, which are tools.
520
00:30:43.883 --> 00:30:45.304
And now you've given like the downsell thing.
521
00:30:45.324 --> 00:30:47.124
So if it's really priced, it's their concern.
522
00:30:47.784 --> 00:30:48.644
Now they have something to give them.
523
00:30:48.945 --> 00:30:52.325
I also think you're so good at creating sales processes.
524
00:30:52.666 --> 00:30:55.006
You just have to hone it in now for phones.
525
00:30:56.166 --> 00:30:58.007
I think that's all that's really required.
526
00:30:59.035 --> 00:31:06.337
And if you, the lower level of skill that you can get someone to actually be efficient and do the job, the more scalable this is.
527
00:31:06.597 --> 00:31:11.458
Really big motivation for me is we pay above average, we pay above market rates.
528
00:31:11.678 --> 00:31:17.519
When I was coming up in the company, when I was coming up in other companies, honestly, I've never had anyone training on how to sell.
529
00:31:17.699 --> 00:31:20.380
I've never had anyone coach me through how to be a better leader.
530
00:31:20.400 --> 00:31:21.460
I don't want that to be different.
531
00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:24.021
Real pay, real potential,
532
00:31:25.950 --> 00:31:26.790
With someone who cares.
533
00:31:27.110 --> 00:31:33.352
If I'm relying on all-star salespeople or training them to the level that you're at, we're going to be constrained by that.
534
00:31:33.452 --> 00:31:33.892
That makes sense.
535
00:31:33.952 --> 00:31:40.334
Versus if you can take a phone agent and it takes us about a week for us to get them to where they can answer the phone and sell a job over the phone.
536
00:31:41.014 --> 00:31:44.095
Yeah, I've trained three people ever to get a 50% closer to this industry.
537
00:31:44.755 --> 00:31:46.596
And I've trained a lot.
538
00:31:46.836 --> 00:31:50.137
There's been a lot more that have come through my doors that have never gotten close to that.
539
00:31:50.597 --> 00:31:52.279
That's a big hairy problem.
540
00:31:52.299 --> 00:31:55.541
That's a big hairy problem, but on the other side of big hairy problems, we got good things.
541
00:31:55.841 --> 00:31:56.022
Yeah.
542
00:31:56.182 --> 00:31:57.403
And that is a scalable model.
543
00:31:57.483 --> 00:32:08.992
It is something that I actually believe all of your sales ability, your ops and admin side, if those things come together, you are able to sell on a landing page and over the phone.
544
00:32:09.172 --> 00:32:12.615
Holy shoot, that's a huge, huge skill set to get access to.
545
00:32:12.655 --> 00:32:15.557
We have someone who has hundreds of home service locations.
546
00:32:15.717 --> 00:32:17.038
Wow, that's a huge skill.
547
00:32:17.198 --> 00:32:24.487
Those have been big breakthroughs for me, is finding the right people that can help adjust our company.
548
00:32:24.728 --> 00:32:31.716
It's very difficult when I'm not a therapist and I don't claim to be a therapist, but when they're getting information from someone that is not business-minded,
549
00:32:32.637 --> 00:32:36.420
And it's like pulling them away from the business to rehash things that went on in the past.
550
00:32:36.901 --> 00:32:39.182
I don't necessarily agree with that.
551
00:32:40.524 --> 00:32:41.765
However, I don't have full context.
552
00:32:42.225 --> 00:32:43.186
So I'm very careful.
553
00:32:43.246 --> 00:32:45.187
I don't want to push too hard or get nosy with someone.
554
00:32:45.788 --> 00:32:50.111
But also, that is very important information to help from a business perspective.
555
00:32:50.391 --> 00:32:52.013
Because it affects directly how you lead.
556
00:32:53.521 --> 00:33:00.026
And so as leaders, a lot of times, the way we show up in our personal life gets directly reflected in the business.
557
00:33:00.726 --> 00:33:09.913
And yes, they're different, but that's why sometimes I've got to ask these questions and dig a little deeper to understand the personal side because it's making them show up as a poor leader.
558
00:33:09.933 --> 00:33:13.456
The last thing I wanted to really go over is, how do we prevent that from happening again?
559
00:33:13.476 --> 00:33:16.058
You have to step away from the business.
560
00:33:16.278 --> 00:33:16.978
Was it stress?
561
00:33:17.018 --> 00:33:18.099
Was it a one-time thing?
562
00:33:18.479 --> 00:33:22.242
What can we do in the business to make sure five months from the business, it doesn't happen?
563
00:33:22.322 --> 00:33:23.063
Because it can...
564
00:33:23.563 --> 00:33:29.347
It can, if you have a wrong general manager or person in place, put everything to waste.
565
00:33:29.487 --> 00:33:29.667
Yeah.
566
00:33:29.687 --> 00:33:30.147
That long.
567
00:33:30.768 --> 00:33:31.008
Yeah.
568
00:33:31.028 --> 00:33:42.134
I mean, we're not expecting me to keep taking hiatuses, but I mean, unfortunately right now, Haley and I are going through therapy and it's bringing up a lot of difficult things that we need to work through.
569
00:33:42.415 --> 00:33:44.636
So that's not planned.
570
00:33:45.516 --> 00:33:47.778
I don't know how you want to work around that, but that's...
571
00:33:49.477 --> 00:33:50.078
fires happen.
572
00:33:50.418 --> 00:33:51.559
Yeah.
573
00:33:51.639 --> 00:33:57.224
And has that yielded some benefit for you, though, like just from a stability, like leadership perspective?
574
00:33:57.965 --> 00:33:59.987
I think we're getting the fruits of this now.
575
00:34:00.567 --> 00:34:01.048
Yeah.
576
00:34:02.449 --> 00:34:04.150
But it's taking its time.
577
00:34:04.491 --> 00:34:09.095
And to your point of how we keep this from happening again, I just don't know.
578
00:34:10.316 --> 00:34:14.219
Keep doing the maintenance and I don't expect this to ever happen again.
579
00:34:15.490 --> 00:34:18.653
I certainly don't put myself in a place where this would all happen again.
580
00:34:18.733 --> 00:34:19.294
That's the goal.
581
00:34:19.534 --> 00:34:21.676
I know what it's like to stare down suicide.
582
00:34:21.816 --> 00:34:31.505
I know what it's like to stare down self-harm and to have life feel unbearable that no life seems better.
583
00:34:32.205 --> 00:34:33.387
There are little moments.
584
00:34:35.043 --> 00:34:40.285
And for me, it's been recently my journey has been about connecting with myself.
585
00:34:40.865 --> 00:34:42.366
All emotions are data.
586
00:34:42.826 --> 00:34:45.547
When you're feeling overwhelmed and stressed, those are just data points.
587
00:34:46.307 --> 00:34:51.409
And I think we need to pause and give space for our emotions and for ourselves to exist.
588
00:34:52.629 --> 00:34:56.370
Push, push, push, grind, grind, grind is the mantra I've lived by.
589
00:34:57.311 --> 00:35:00.832
You know, I've always envisioned myself as gasoline on the fire.
590
00:35:01.650 --> 00:35:05.100
I don't know where this thing's gonna go, but man, it's gonna go there, it's gonna go fast, it's gonna go big.
591
00:35:05.762 --> 00:35:08.049
I don't think I've been authentic to that, my true self.
592
00:35:09.024 --> 00:35:12.946
that, hey, look, I'm overwhelmed and it's okay to take a moment to say, this is scary.
593
00:35:13.586 --> 00:35:23.389
And so from there, you can take your emotions and sit down and have an honest conversation around this fear, this anxiety, this overwhelmed levels that you're having.
594
00:35:23.429 --> 00:35:25.650
Like, what message is that trying to speak to me?
595
00:35:26.030 --> 00:35:28.051
Okay, fear of losing everything.
596
00:35:28.071 --> 00:35:28.691
That makes sense.
597
00:35:29.072 --> 00:35:29.832
That's valid.
598
00:35:30.512 --> 00:35:32.413
From that place, you then get to make mistakes.
599
00:35:33.718 --> 00:35:34.639
reasonable decisions.
600
00:35:34.779 --> 00:35:36.381
You gotta say, hey, how likely is that?
601
00:35:36.821 --> 00:35:38.844
What support do I need to not feel this way?
602
00:35:39.004 --> 00:35:40.385
I don't need to listen to any of those things.
603
00:35:40.606 --> 00:35:41.887
All I need is the next step forward.
604
00:35:42.127 --> 00:35:51.597
I think too, like even with making a sales virtual, for example, having the more level revenue throughout the year, it makes the business more defensible in the event that something does happen.
605
00:35:51.717 --> 00:35:52.899
Yeah, if we have a crappy Q4.
606
00:35:52.919 --> 00:35:53.059
Yeah.
607
00:35:54.220 --> 00:35:57.061
Shoot, how many crappy Q4s can we survive?
608
00:35:57.201 --> 00:35:57.441
Right.
609
00:35:58.761 --> 00:36:01.042
I've had my family a lot with mental health stuff.
610
00:36:01.482 --> 00:36:03.043
And I don't know if that's exactly what you're going through.
611
00:36:03.063 --> 00:36:04.003
Yeah, something like that.
612
00:36:04.163 --> 00:36:06.544
But where it just wipes you out for six, eight months.
613
00:36:07.164 --> 00:36:09.985
And it every single time just wipes the family clean of money.
614
00:36:10.545 --> 00:36:11.645
Businesses are gone.
615
00:36:11.985 --> 00:36:14.006
Real estate, houses, everything.
616
00:36:14.246 --> 00:36:17.187
We have to get that first because otherwise all of this just is...
617
00:36:18.367 --> 00:36:23.749
So I would say this all takes a backseat to you as the leader being able to be good.
618
00:36:24.109 --> 00:36:27.230
That has to be foundational to then build the business on top of.
619
00:36:27.570 --> 00:36:32.432
And so whatever anyone is saying to you, you have the skills and you have the abilities.
620
00:36:32.992 --> 00:36:37.593
And I think the confidence that I want to see in you is what allows this business to grow.
621
00:36:39.114 --> 00:36:45.956
You do not need to hire some $300,000, $400,000 person to come in and run this business or tell you how to do marketing or tell you how to do sales scripts.
622
00:36:46.036 --> 00:36:46.596
You know how to do it.
623
00:36:49.966 --> 00:36:54.807
And so I would just like encourage you strongly to like lean into your skill.
624
00:36:54.827 --> 00:36:57.067
Like you have so much more experience than you give yourself credit for.
625
00:36:57.487 --> 00:37:00.188
And like, I want you to believe in yourself fully.
626
00:37:01.388 --> 00:37:01.648
Thanks.
627
00:37:02.528 --> 00:37:07.229
And sometimes like the apprehension to like, okay, well I need to go find a trainer.
628
00:37:07.289 --> 00:37:09.189
I need to go find a company who's gonna develop this.
629
00:37:09.529 --> 00:37:12.250
It's just simply a lack of confidence in yourself.
630
00:37:13.350 --> 00:37:16.511
And there's no reason whatsoever for that to be the case for you.
631
00:37:17.511 --> 00:37:18.491
You have all the evidence
632
00:37:19.407 --> 00:37:20.248
that speaks otherwise.
633
00:37:20.608 --> 00:37:25.693
And I would also say every time that you have taken the path of I need to get someone else in here, it hasn't worked.
634
00:37:25.713 --> 00:37:32.559
I mean, I don't think any of it's worked.
635
00:37:33.825 --> 00:37:36.586
Hermozzi honestly wasn't, I don't feel like it was all that impactful.
636
00:37:36.766 --> 00:37:39.086
Alex Hermozzi's marketing director left to come work here.
637
00:37:39.346 --> 00:37:40.087
Uh, yeah, we let him go.
638
00:37:41.007 --> 00:37:43.047
It was recent, it was like last month, I think.
639
00:37:43.187 --> 00:37:44.128
That was a big mistake.
640
00:37:44.328 --> 00:37:49.889
We overspent probably 60 grand a month, which is no small amount.
641
00:37:50.009 --> 00:37:51.009
He was a W2 with us.
642
00:37:51.309 --> 00:37:52.049
He was full-time.
643
00:37:52.069 --> 00:37:54.790
The agreement was he's 40 to 70 hours a week.
644
00:37:54.830 --> 00:37:56.291
He's like, I'm a workaholic, I'll do it.
645
00:37:56.371 --> 00:37:57.751
And he gave us his, his, uh,
646
00:37:58.351 --> 00:38:01.552
his 90 day and he had created his planks.
647
00:38:01.832 --> 00:38:02.972
We just gave the department to him.
648
00:38:02.992 --> 00:38:06.093
We dumped it and said, hey, you clearly are talented, we'll give it to you.
649
00:38:06.693 --> 00:38:10.274
And he's working all these other jobs and all these other companies.
650
00:38:10.294 --> 00:38:12.035
He spent very little time in our company.
651
00:38:12.375 --> 00:38:13.855
And so like, okay, we didn't realize that.
652
00:38:13.955 --> 00:38:17.176
That wasn't, that's straight up pulling this, that wasn't happening.
653
00:38:17.657 --> 00:38:20.837
We ended up finding that he was like, okay, this isn't working.
654
00:38:20.857 --> 00:38:23.438
So we switched over to, back to the person we had before him.
655
00:38:23.598 --> 00:38:24.338
Which is Kyle.
656
00:38:24.579 --> 00:38:25.979
Kyle, Kyle.
657
00:38:26.459 --> 00:38:27.720
And he's working out wonderfully.
658
00:38:28.020 --> 00:38:28.980
Colin Jacob.
659
00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:33.782
But yeah, they found all these holes that were like, hey, you're not doing the basic stuff.
660
00:38:34.443 --> 00:38:37.564
But I think you are undervaluing your skills.
661
00:38:38.184 --> 00:38:46.468
And I don't know if this is a long-term thing and it's from stuff in the past, but you do not see your skills as valuable and as valuable as they should be, in my opinion.
662
00:38:46.508 --> 00:38:54.211
Your confidence is way too low and you are trying to make up for it by taking a resource you have, which is money, and saying, I will go buy the skill.
663
00:38:54.692 --> 00:38:55.312
But you haven't.
664
00:38:56.499 --> 00:39:05.315
And so when someone else comes to the organization and tells the people that you're leading how to do something and then they leave, they're looking at you and like, okay, so why?
665
00:39:05.636 --> 00:39:07.098
And you're like, well, because they said so.
666
00:39:07.439 --> 00:39:08.681
Because they know what they're talking about.
667
00:39:09.520 --> 00:39:12.481
But they want you to be able to say no because the data tells us here's why.
668
00:39:12.922 --> 00:39:14.122
This is exactly why we're doing this.
669
00:39:14.322 --> 00:39:15.943
And here's why it's worked a thousand times.
670
00:39:16.363 --> 00:39:18.424
And here's why I was able to sell 50, 60, 70%.
671
00:39:18.664 --> 00:39:22.726
And I know what I'm talking about when you say, this is what you say on the phone when someone says that objection.
672
00:39:22.846 --> 00:39:29.249
So when we were giving them prices all virtually, so are we just doing, you know, house A, house B, house, you know.
673
00:39:29.269 --> 00:39:31.050
You could do small, medium and large if you wanted to.
674
00:39:31.210 --> 00:39:31.490
Okay.
675
00:39:31.510 --> 00:39:32.650
You could make it like the easiest.
676
00:39:32.670 --> 00:39:33.251
That seems scary.
677
00:39:33.371 --> 00:39:33.931
Yeah, it's scary.
678
00:39:34.231 --> 00:39:37.653
The easiest level of this is call us because then you just have to make OTP.
679
00:39:38.753 --> 00:39:40.314
And so, sorry, over the phone.
680
00:39:40.734 --> 00:39:46.076
So you could have it where one of your ads are going to calling right away.
681
00:39:46.717 --> 00:39:51.259
Another one I would do the VSL, educate them, do the whole comparison of price, etc.
682
00:39:51.299 --> 00:39:52.619
And then call us.
683
00:39:53.399 --> 00:39:54.180
You could do it that way.
684
00:39:54.800 --> 00:39:57.902
I would really both call us one as an optional VSL.
685
00:39:57.922 --> 00:39:58.163
Yes.
686
00:39:58.243 --> 00:39:58.583
Gotcha.
687
00:39:58.803 --> 00:40:03.807
And then the secondary 2.0 version of this is, can I get to actually I sell on the page?
688
00:40:04.087 --> 00:40:07.610
Everyone knows that when they choose a house like that, you're not looking at their house.
689
00:40:08.250 --> 00:40:09.251
They're inputting everything.
690
00:40:09.591 --> 00:40:12.513
And so when we change prices, we don't have any kickback to it.
691
00:40:12.713 --> 00:40:14.935
It's like, hey, you said you were a medium.
692
00:40:15.155 --> 00:40:15.715
That's great.
693
00:40:15.796 --> 00:40:16.676
That includes up to 150 feet.
694
00:40:17.877 --> 00:40:19.918
You're actually $165, so here's your actual price.
695
00:40:20.098 --> 00:40:23.920
We don't get any pushback because they know they selected the medium.
696
00:40:24.320 --> 00:40:28.862
And so is your preference to not do the VSL and just go straight to the phone?
697
00:40:29.282 --> 00:40:30.023
Yeah, that's my preference.
698
00:40:30.043 --> 00:40:30.903
That's your preference?
699
00:40:31.163 --> 00:40:32.644
Because you can then handle the objections.
700
00:40:32.704 --> 00:40:37.186
And then long term, you want to switch to online shopping.
701
00:40:37.206 --> 00:40:38.046
I want you to split test.
702
00:40:38.146 --> 00:40:40.648
I want you to say, what happens when we pick up the phone and we sell them?
703
00:40:41.816 --> 00:40:46.578
And what happens when on that webpage they put their information in, select small, medium, and large.
704
00:40:46.778 --> 00:40:48.879
That's how we sell lights right now, small, medium, and large.
705
00:40:49.099 --> 00:40:54.341
We have ranges for all three, and they pre-select, accept the estimate, and then we confirm the bid.
706
00:40:54.361 --> 00:40:55.662
How do you confirm the bid?
707
00:40:55.682 --> 00:40:56.942
How do you confirm the bid?
708
00:40:57.463 --> 00:40:59.523
So we say, hey, you select medium.
709
00:40:59.603 --> 00:41:00.304
That's fantastic.
710
00:41:00.324 --> 00:41:02.725
That includes this range of linear feet.
711
00:41:03.025 --> 00:41:03.805
You're within that range.
712
00:41:03.845 --> 00:41:04.505
That will be your price.
713
00:41:04.525 --> 00:41:05.406
Let's get you on the schedule.
714
00:41:06.042 --> 00:41:09.265
Do you charge them when they put it all in initially?
715
00:41:09.285 --> 00:41:10.165
We just store their card.
716
00:41:10.386 --> 00:41:11.226
We just store their card.
717
00:41:11.406 --> 00:41:11.507
Yeah.
718
00:41:11.527 --> 00:41:14.949
That way it's easier for them to put a card on file, especially if they come from an ad.
719
00:41:15.270 --> 00:41:16.110
There's less trust there.
720
00:41:16.371 --> 00:41:18.412
Do y'all do checks in cash or no?
721
00:41:18.432 --> 00:41:18.653
Never.
722
00:41:19.273 --> 00:41:19.553
Yeah.
723
00:41:19.814 --> 00:41:20.854
That's our issue.
724
00:41:20.914 --> 00:41:22.636
That's why you have $200,000 in receivables?
725
00:41:22.656 --> 00:41:23.016
Yeah.
726
00:41:23.176 --> 00:41:23.637
It's fine.
727
00:41:25.057 --> 00:41:26.058
We're thinking about cutting that.
728
00:41:26.258 --> 00:41:26.778
Yeah, cut that.
729
00:41:27.198 --> 00:41:30.239
Yeah, really, we got to get a magnifying on every part of our business, dude.
730
00:41:30.279 --> 00:41:31.760
There's like, there's holes.
731
00:41:31.960 --> 00:41:33.721
I don't, every business has holes.
732
00:41:33.821 --> 00:41:34.621
Every business has problems.
733
00:41:34.641 --> 00:41:35.881
Mine has plenty of problems.
734
00:41:36.182 --> 00:41:37.962
Hundreds of problems I could tell you about right now.
735
00:41:38.723 --> 00:41:42.504
But there are usually just one or two things that if you'd solve, a lot of those other things would go away.
736
00:41:42.664 --> 00:41:50.007
And for you right now, that is figuring out to where as you double, triple, and 10X this business, you don't five, 10X the amount of sales reps you have.
737
00:41:50.787 --> 00:41:56.614
And secondly, we fill Q1 and Q2 with leads that are really cheap during six to eight weeks of the year.
738
00:41:56.634 --> 00:41:57.975
And right now we're saying no to.
739
00:41:58.496 --> 00:42:06.865
Yeah, like how you were raised has a huge impact on how you handle money, how you treat your employees, how you handle customers, how you think about growth of the business, investing in the business.
740
00:42:07.326 --> 00:42:07.886
And that's fine.
741
00:42:08.727 --> 00:42:12.509
I have my childhood, we all have our childhood where things were bent in a certain direction.
742
00:42:13.129 --> 00:42:15.591
That is no excuse as to why we can't change.
743
00:42:16.311 --> 00:42:18.472
And so we all started from someplace.
744
00:42:18.512 --> 00:42:26.276
Some are higher, some are lower, but financially, skillset, predispositions for success, et cetera, but where you end up is completely in your control.
745
00:42:26.716 --> 00:42:35.941
And so I believe that he has the skillset to be able to grow this business without having to depend on tens of, he keeps spending money on these areas of coaching
746
00:42:36.741 --> 00:42:39.063
and it's causing him to have this shiny object syndrome.
747
00:42:39.543 --> 00:42:50.532
So when he went and hired someone that was way overqualified for his size business to run the department and then have had to fire him, it was simply a function of him not feeling like he was capable of doing it himself.
748
00:42:50.813 --> 00:42:51.233
I love it.
749
00:42:51.994 --> 00:42:58.859
If I wanna buy shoes, I'm like going online, I'm gonna buy shoes or if I wait, I'm like, oh, that's actually too expensive.
750
00:42:58.899 --> 00:42:59.740
Maybe I shouldn't buy the shoes.
751
00:42:59.780 --> 00:43:00.761
We should go in person.
752
00:43:03.519 --> 00:43:06.505
I'm going to go out and say you buy stuff on Amazon and you go to the mall.
753
00:43:08.185 --> 00:43:08.405
No.
754
00:43:08.505 --> 00:43:09.105
I don't shop.
755
00:43:09.145 --> 00:43:10.766
You don't shop.
756
00:43:11.446 --> 00:43:15.428
One of my issues that I've learned is I have a huge fear around money.
757
00:43:15.888 --> 00:43:17.129
I'm terrified not to have money.
758
00:43:17.789 --> 00:43:19.110
And so I hate spending money.
759
00:43:19.410 --> 00:43:26.012
We have a part of our relationship is I refuse for us to buy french fries because the margin on french fries are 90% sodas and french fries.
760
00:43:26.032 --> 00:43:27.313
So I refuse to buy them.
761
00:43:27.473 --> 00:43:28.313
Here's what's interesting though.
762
00:43:28.834 --> 00:43:29.694
She spends money.
763
00:43:30.074 --> 00:43:30.234
Yeah.
764
00:43:30.434 --> 00:43:31.214
She likes virtual.
765
00:43:31.515 --> 00:43:34.056
You don't spend money and you like your person.
766
00:43:34.796 --> 00:43:35.056
Okay.
767
00:43:35.076 --> 00:43:36.957
What type of customer do I want to sell to?
768
00:43:38.497 --> 00:43:42.400
The person who doesn't want to spend money or the person that wants to spend money.
769
00:43:42.580 --> 00:43:45.402
I think it goes back to the fact that like how he feels.
770
00:43:45.662 --> 00:43:51.166
Like a lot of times when you go on through trauma, you always default back to how you feel in terms of like the logic that's in front of you.
771
00:43:51.507 --> 00:43:58.692
The logic is the people he is selling to are like his wife who likes to buy things online and buy over the phone and solve the problem as fast as possible.
772
00:43:59.172 --> 00:44:03.716
He is selling to the version of him that has been hurt, which is lack of trust.
773
00:44:03.856 --> 00:44:04.776
I need to see somebody.
774
00:44:05.697 --> 00:44:11.221
And it is, I'm predisposed to not buy things online or not buy things at all.
775
00:44:11.942 --> 00:44:13.603
He is selling to someone who is not like him.
776
00:44:14.043 --> 00:44:19.767
He is selling to people who have discretionary income, multiple houses, enough money to spend $4,000 on lights on their house for crying out loud.
777
00:44:20.167 --> 00:44:20.528
And yet...
778
00:44:21.815 --> 00:44:24.137
He's concerned about how he would want to buy.
779
00:44:24.857 --> 00:44:26.038
He's not the target customer.
780
00:44:26.158 --> 00:44:33.984
This is the biggest thing for home service business owners that have been raised in a place of scarcity or not with a lot of wealth is that we are not selling to a version of ourself.
781
00:44:34.424 --> 00:44:38.747
So we take it through the lens of like what we think is affordable, what we think is a good price.
782
00:44:38.987 --> 00:44:40.969
When in reality, you are not the target audience.
783
00:44:41.129 --> 00:44:46.593
You're selling it to someone who has less time on earth remaining likely and way more money than you.
784
00:44:46.993 --> 00:44:51.036
and they're gonna see their time, and they're going to see the value of your service very differently.
785
00:44:51.056 --> 00:44:52.537
Yeah, we've been there, we've been broke.
786
00:44:52.577 --> 00:44:56.099
Haley's had, honestly, a harder life than I have.
787
00:44:56.780 --> 00:45:04.125
And she's trying to provide the opportunities, like I am, so people don't have to be in those situations, so.
788
00:45:04.537 --> 00:45:05.858
Yeah, it's nice to be able to do that.
789
00:45:06.219 --> 00:45:12.785
And I feel like if you do good to your employees, I mean, like, customer satisfaction, that's our top priority, right?
790
00:45:12.825 --> 00:45:17.350
And so it's like, if we're doing good to them, they're the ones that are customer facing, right?
791
00:45:17.750 --> 00:45:20.413
So it's like, you know, we want them happy to be here.
792
00:45:20.653 --> 00:45:24.757
And we want the customers to feel like, okay, they like their job, they're happy.
793
00:45:24.777 --> 00:45:25.538
So here's the deal.
794
00:45:26.399 --> 00:45:27.680
Haley's responsible for this.
795
00:45:29.410 --> 00:45:31.331
because she's gonna sell to herself.
796
00:45:31.771 --> 00:45:32.851
Yeah.
797
00:45:32.931 --> 00:45:38.633
You are the entrepreneur in figuring out vision, and even like the sales, you already figured out how to sell it.
798
00:45:39.154 --> 00:45:41.054
But she knows how to sell it to herself.
799
00:45:41.915 --> 00:45:45.236
You have a hard time selling it over the phone because you would never buy it over the phone.
800
00:45:45.636 --> 00:45:49.998
You wouldn't even buy lights because you don't buy stinking fries and Coke due to the 90% margins.
801
00:45:51.394 --> 00:45:52.756
I've come such a long way.
802
00:45:52.856 --> 00:45:54.157
We're in a house that we bought.
803
00:45:54.878 --> 00:45:56.159
Which freaks you out.
804
00:45:56.299 --> 00:45:57.200
Which freaks you out.
805
00:45:57.240 --> 00:45:58.061
I've worked on it.
806
00:45:58.341 --> 00:45:58.962
I'm better.
807
00:45:59.303 --> 00:46:00.724
But not completely better.
808
00:46:00.744 --> 00:46:02.065
Better being improvement made.
809
00:46:02.085 --> 00:46:02.226
Yeah.
810
00:46:02.246 --> 00:46:03.527
Not journey complete.
811
00:46:03.727 --> 00:46:05.149
But yeah.
812
00:46:05.369 --> 00:46:06.891
It's a. I hate money.
813
00:46:07.211 --> 00:46:07.812
I hate spending money.
814
00:46:07.952 --> 00:46:08.773
The car I drive did.
815
00:46:08.893 --> 00:46:09.413
Four grand.
816
00:46:09.473 --> 00:46:09.914
Cash.
817
00:46:10.134 --> 00:46:11.095
We have no debt in the company.
818
00:46:11.415 --> 00:46:11.936
No debt anywhere.
819
00:46:11.956 --> 00:46:12.777
It's the best.
820
00:46:12.917 --> 00:46:17.139
Well, you notice on the 4L, liquidity is the first one that you usually want to turn around the world all over.
821
00:46:17.159 --> 00:46:19.920
Because we have mounting debt, we have no cash.
822
00:46:20.200 --> 00:46:21.400
You guys have plenty of cash in the bank.
823
00:46:22.360 --> 00:46:26.742
Yeah, I turned down an offer from Hermosey to join our company.
824
00:46:27.642 --> 00:46:29.503
I don't need so much money.
825
00:46:30.223 --> 00:46:32.184
I want to scale this thing, scale it fast.
826
00:46:32.244 --> 00:46:34.765
And I just didn't feel like we aligned on how that was going to work.
827
00:46:34.905 --> 00:46:37.426
I will voice that this was a peaceful process.
828
00:46:38.290 --> 00:46:48.057
I did feel invaded and didn't feel like it was something that was being probed so that I could set my boundaries of what my vulnerability levels were.
829
00:46:48.417 --> 00:46:49.138
And that was okay.
830
00:46:49.358 --> 00:46:51.379
Everyone's been super polite, super nice.
831
00:46:51.920 --> 00:46:56.383
Anything that we said, hey, we'd rather not show has been respected.
832
00:46:56.403 --> 00:46:57.764
This is probably where we'll stop.
833
00:46:57.884 --> 00:47:00.826
I don't want to show manufacturing equipment because we did...
834
00:47:01.935 --> 00:47:02.716
custom make all that.
835
00:47:03.036 --> 00:47:04.897
And it's our, it's our huge edge for the company.
836
00:47:05.337 --> 00:47:07.439
But yeah, this is essentially the, the setup.
837
00:47:07.699 --> 00:47:14.063
There are values to having experts come into the organization and break it down in a simple way.
838
00:47:14.384 --> 00:47:15.584
That was my experience today.
839
00:47:16.045 --> 00:47:21.889
Very kind, generous people that weren't pushy, that had no agenda and that were here to help and serve.
840
00:47:22.489 --> 00:47:23.450
That's been my experience.
841
00:47:23.630 --> 00:47:30.492
Yeah, sometimes it's difficult because when I'm talking to an owner, I actually feel like there's personal issues that are causing the business issues.
842
00:47:30.912 --> 00:47:33.753
But I also don't want to probe or like make them feel uncomfortable.
843
00:47:33.873 --> 00:47:34.713
But let's be honest.
844
00:47:35.214 --> 00:47:38.955
I have spent tens and tens of thousands of dollars getting...
845
00:47:39.795 --> 00:47:44.537
into small groups with key players, and this was better than all of us.
846
00:47:45.077 --> 00:47:47.378
So I have done the Alex Hermosi.
847
00:47:47.838 --> 00:47:49.579
I have gone to Grant Cardone.
848
00:47:49.659 --> 00:47:53.281
I have gone to experts in different fields.
849
00:47:53.581 --> 00:48:01.764
This was something that was free, that was invasive, and I got a lot of direct, applicable knowledge out of it.
850
00:48:01.784 --> 00:48:03.105
So that's been my experience.
851
00:48:04.525 --> 00:48:07.387
If that sounds like something you want, then I would encourage you to do it.
852
00:48:07.707 --> 00:48:12.230
I've had to take a look inside and be really honest with myself.
853
00:48:12.810 --> 00:48:17.714
And now I'm recognizing that, wow, I thought I was a very confident person my whole life.
854
00:48:18.654 --> 00:48:21.476
And really, I'm actually a very insecure person.
855
00:48:22.457 --> 00:48:25.138
You know, I need the business to show how successful I am.
856
00:48:25.238 --> 00:48:29.561
I need the family to be okay to show how good of a parent I am.
857
00:48:29.982 --> 00:48:30.462
I need...
858
00:48:31.875 --> 00:48:34.257
all the things that reflect who I am.
859
00:48:34.317 --> 00:48:36.218
And all that is, is an insecurity.
860
00:48:36.398 --> 00:48:38.019
Okay, let's recap, because I know you gotta go.
861
00:48:38.659 --> 00:48:42.822
Video sales letter and a virtual process to be able to sell, and over the phone sales, so one and two.
862
00:48:43.042 --> 00:48:45.844
Basically, virtual sales, I'm calling like a landing page.
863
00:48:46.084 --> 00:48:52.008
OTP or over the phone sales, Haley's gonna do that, because I genuinely believe she will just sell to herself.
864
00:48:52.468 --> 00:48:55.430
She's the type of person that you are probably selling to a lot of already.
865
00:48:56.050 --> 00:49:01.411
And so like whatever she says in terms of like the framing of like, I don't know if we should say it like that.
866
00:49:01.471 --> 00:49:05.772
Like we should send them the photo here because that's going to hook them in before here.
867
00:49:05.872 --> 00:49:10.713
For example, I would really bounce it off of each other and AI to come up with like the perfect solution.
868
00:49:10.833 --> 00:49:12.474
Creating that together would be super useful.
869
00:49:13.154 --> 00:49:20.875
And then having the offer for, hey, if they say it's too expensive, we're immediately, hey, 15% less if you book in spring, 25% less if you book in summer.
870
00:49:21.236 --> 00:49:22.656
We now brought our price basically
871
00:49:23.576 --> 00:49:26.277
comparable to what they're getting a Christmas lights install for.
872
00:49:27.357 --> 00:49:31.998
But we're willing to do it because I don't want to spend money in marketing and spend $2,000 customer acquisition costs.
873
00:49:32.279 --> 00:49:35.399
Last thing is, whatever you're doing right now, keep doing it.
874
00:49:35.900 --> 00:49:40.601
But this is actually the kicker, which is you as a leader just getting confidence.
875
00:49:41.377 --> 00:49:48.581
And I think some of the decisions we've made in the past that are quote detrimental, we have a great business, so that's why I say detrimental to the business is because of your lack of confidence.
876
00:49:49.001 --> 00:49:55.684
And so whatever you're doing now to gain that confidence back and realize that you are capable of running this business, keep doing it.
877
00:49:56.344 --> 00:50:00.486
Because you have the skills, the only thing you'll have to learn is the soft skills of managing people.
878
00:50:00.706 --> 00:50:01.807
Yeah, Mike talked about today.
879
00:50:02.247 --> 00:50:04.969
Look, maybe you should be a little bit more confident in what your skillsets are.
880
00:50:05.089 --> 00:50:06.990
I've been in the lighting industry for seven years.
881
00:50:07.390 --> 00:50:09.791
I hold some probably world records in this industry.
882
00:50:10.847 --> 00:50:11.727
Maybe that means more.
883
00:50:12.447 --> 00:50:16.389
Maybe you don't need to have someone else come in and validate that.
884
00:50:16.809 --> 00:50:30.233
So now we're in a situation where my business isn't growing to the speed that I would like it to and the bottleneck has become an insecurity of mine wanting someone else to validate that you are good at sales and this is how you are correct and this is the right sales process to take.
885
00:50:30.433 --> 00:50:33.234
And so we're seeing now that insecurities are affecting the business.
886
00:50:33.454 --> 00:50:36.054
Out of curiosity, we can get this out.
887
00:50:36.294 --> 00:50:37.835
Out of curiosity, what do you offer you?
888
00:50:39.018 --> 00:50:40.660
So he didn't make an official offer on it.
889
00:50:40.680 --> 00:50:45.465
So he wanted, he said, okay, we're looking at 50, 70% of the business.
890
00:50:45.605 --> 00:50:45.885
Oh, wow.
891
00:50:46.046 --> 00:50:47.207
It was the long majority by then.
892
00:50:47.787 --> 00:50:52.232
And I was like, from there, I was like, okay, well, why would you need like so much?
893
00:50:52.252 --> 00:50:53.313
What are you trying to do?
894
00:50:53.333 --> 00:50:54.654
He's like, we want it our way.
895
00:50:54.674 --> 00:50:56.777
I'm like, okay, can you kind of explain what that looks like?
896
00:50:56.817 --> 00:50:57.097
He's like.
897
00:50:57.706 --> 00:50:58.066
Really?
898
00:50:58.547 --> 00:51:03.391
If you would have done this, I can guarantee you he'd be selling stuff virtually over the phone.
899
00:51:03.412 --> 00:51:03.912
Oh, definitely.
900
00:51:03.992 --> 00:51:04.613
And scaling it.
901
00:51:04.753 --> 00:51:12.520
Because then once you can crack this code, you can get customers for cheap in the fourth quarter, and then figure out how to get them to install later in the year.
902
00:51:13.001 --> 00:51:16.884
That's when you're able to go get installers on 1099s, and you scale across the country.
903
00:51:17.205 --> 00:51:18.466
My heart's in growth.
904
00:51:18.506 --> 00:51:19.707
That mission statement's where I'm at.
905
00:51:20.167 --> 00:51:21.589
I want to see my people grow.
906
00:51:21.889 --> 00:51:22.350
I want to grow.
907
00:51:24.571 --> 00:51:33.480
Honestly, if I sold the business right now, you know, had one more good season in me and sold the business, I could retire.
908
00:51:33.840 --> 00:51:35.302
That's within grasp right now for me.
909
00:51:36.303 --> 00:51:38.265
And I have no interest in that.
910
00:51:38.485 --> 00:51:39.086
What would I do?
911
00:51:39.386 --> 00:51:40.167
What would life look like?
912
00:51:40.848 --> 00:51:41.989
For me, I want to push.
913
00:51:42.729 --> 00:51:43.910
How far can I take this?
914
00:51:44.590 --> 00:51:45.771
What can I accomplish here?
915
00:51:46.031 --> 00:51:47.251
It's not going to happen overnight.
916
00:51:47.632 --> 00:51:48.632
Yeah, the problems happen.
917
00:51:48.652 --> 00:51:49.593
The axle breaks.
918
00:51:49.653 --> 00:51:56.936
The, you know, we have this last birthday is when all this therapeutic trauma came about.
919
00:51:57.377 --> 00:52:00.818
We have these big low moments that everything feels like it's falling apart.
920
00:52:01.158 --> 00:52:03.200
If I'm being honest, man, I just love the journey.
921
00:52:04.400 --> 00:52:06.001
I want to see what the next step is.
922
00:52:06.341 --> 00:52:09.783
The views that I get from the position I'm in are incredible.
923
00:52:11.838 --> 00:52:16.963
The opportunities I get, the experiences I have, like you can't pay money for this.
924
00:52:16.983 --> 00:52:19.766
There's no, there's nothing else like this.
925
00:52:20.367 --> 00:52:21.328
Yes, I'm in the trenches.
926
00:52:21.388 --> 00:52:22.089
Yes, it sucks.
927
00:52:23.442 --> 00:52:26.024
man, sometimes those trenches are beautiful.
928
00:52:26.044 --> 00:52:27.745
Yeah, the implementation of those is gonna be nuts.
929
00:52:27.985 --> 00:52:28.545
Oh, it's gonna be nuts.
930
00:52:28.825 --> 00:52:33.088
But like, you just, if you do it 100 times over the phone sales, you'll start refining it.
931
00:52:33.188 --> 00:52:34.409
Which ones worked, which ones didn't?
932
00:52:34.609 --> 00:52:37.731
You could literally take the transcript, do you record your call right now?
933
00:52:37.871 --> 00:52:38.852
All the office stuff.
934
00:52:38.952 --> 00:52:45.556
Great, you take the transcripts of the ones that sell, and you take the transcripts of the ones that don't, feed that into AI and tell me which is the difference between these two calls.
935
00:52:45.856 --> 00:52:51.360
And then you just, you keep refining your script based upon what's working, and then the other ones, these don't work.
936
00:52:51.680 --> 00:52:56.144
I mean, this could be groundbreaking if we could do virtual cells.
937
00:52:56.364 --> 00:52:57.946
I mean, this would be insane.
938
00:52:58.666 --> 00:53:07.594
If we can, yeah, if you can grease Q4, if we can execute, if we can stick the landing, that's a huge ordeal.
939
00:53:07.694 --> 00:53:11.658
If we can stick the landing, then this becomes everything.
940
00:53:14.140 --> 00:53:16.362
That's been really nice, spending time with the family.
941
00:53:16.922 --> 00:53:17.303
And then...
942
00:53:17.982 --> 00:53:20.564
We were trying to get a few of the business things together.
943
00:53:20.624 --> 00:53:24.888
It took a long time to get the manufacturing facility back up and running.
944
00:53:25.088 --> 00:53:27.690
It was a legal battle and all sorts of headaches.
945
00:53:27.990 --> 00:53:29.031
It was a nightmare.
946
00:53:29.211 --> 00:53:32.213
We had our attorney look at our lease.
947
00:53:32.253 --> 00:53:37.097
It's like, our lease says that even if it was our fault, it's his responsibility to repair it.
948
00:53:37.137 --> 00:53:41.080
So I guess what it says in the lease, just back and forth and back and forth.
949
00:53:41.200 --> 00:53:45.824
And I was like, dude, if you can prove that it's my fault in any way, shape or form, I'll pay for it.
950
00:53:45.944 --> 00:53:46.705
But you got to prove it.
951
00:53:47.555 --> 00:53:49.456
And eventually he gave up.
952
00:53:49.496 --> 00:53:50.977
And he's like, okay, it was my fault.
953
00:53:51.237 --> 00:53:52.198
Like, yeah, it was.
954
00:53:52.378 --> 00:53:53.979
And he cut corners fixing it.
955
00:53:54.199 --> 00:53:55.940
And so it's not put together properly.
956
00:53:55.960 --> 00:53:57.561
There's mold all over the walls.
957
00:53:57.721 --> 00:53:58.482
He painted over it.
958
00:53:58.542 --> 00:53:59.923
He wiped it down and painted over it.
959
00:53:59.943 --> 00:54:01.884
I was like, that's not how you deal with mold.
960
00:54:02.084 --> 00:54:03.325
I can't have my guy stay there.
961
00:54:03.845 --> 00:54:05.426
getting out and going to a new location.
962
00:54:05.506 --> 00:54:13.750
So Mike talked to us about creating a new pipeline, basically to go instead of all in-person sales appointments, but doing virtual.
963
00:54:13.770 --> 00:54:20.934
We could do a VSL that then drops into, you know, call this number for instant quote, or we could just put, you know, call this number for instant quote.
964
00:54:20.954 --> 00:54:21.934
So there's two different ads.
965
00:54:22.294 --> 00:54:24.155
We have both of those created already.
966
00:54:24.676 --> 00:54:29.198
We haven't launched them because this is the peak, or I guess the bottom of our slow season, we should call it.
967
00:54:29.218 --> 00:54:32.980
But we do have those ads created and we're just testing out
968
00:54:33.360 --> 00:54:37.085
measuring and SOPs regarding virtual sales.
969
00:54:37.125 --> 00:54:39.127
And so we have our sales manager testing those out.
970
00:54:39.167 --> 00:54:40.829
That's where we are in that process.
971
00:54:40.869 --> 00:54:42.091
We do have the ads created.
972
00:54:42.411 --> 00:54:44.714
We do have the copy written.
973
00:54:44.794 --> 00:54:50.661
We have the general SOP created, but we want to stress test that before we implement.
974
00:54:50.862 --> 00:54:51.723
If you buy now,
975
00:54:52.733 --> 00:54:56.775
and get installed in June per se, we'll give you 25, 35% off.
976
00:54:56.875 --> 00:55:04.278
So that's the offer on the virtual cells for if they don't close then and there.
977
00:55:04.538 --> 00:55:05.738
Like, hey, you wanna get installed now?
978
00:55:05.979 --> 00:55:06.959
Great, here's your price.
979
00:55:07.419 --> 00:55:08.340
Oh, that doesn't work for you?
980
00:55:08.880 --> 00:55:13.322
Then we have this next offer, which is 15% off if you want first quarter.
981
00:55:13.562 --> 00:55:19.044
But if you wait till second quarter, we're gonna give you 35% off or something crazy because we're already spending
982
00:55:19.204 --> 00:55:22.288
Luricous amounts of money to close deals during that period.
983
00:55:22.989 --> 00:55:29.357
So instead of spending on during June, we're going to spend that in form of a discount when leads are the cheapest they possibly can be.
984
00:55:29.618 --> 00:55:33.383
Yeah, still, you know, I think there's a lot to work on there.
985
00:55:33.763 --> 00:55:36.607
I've, you know, realized that I'm a fairly insecure person.
986
00:55:36.827 --> 00:55:39.029
and I always want to produce and do more.
987
00:55:39.389 --> 00:55:41.070
That way, maybe people might value me more.
988
00:55:41.271 --> 00:55:43.072
I've struggled a lot with depression.
989
00:55:43.112 --> 00:55:49.897
So I am, since y'all have come and visited, I've gotten on depression medicine, which I see as being helpful.
990
00:55:50.318 --> 00:55:52.800
And then, yeah, just taking that journey a little bit at a time.
991
00:55:53.420 --> 00:56:01.186
It's been something that I've seen improvement on and I'm still yet to arrive at the completion of that journey, which I don't think there is one.
992
00:56:01.386 --> 00:56:02.227
I think it's just day by day.
993
00:56:02.427 --> 00:56:04.568
Finding support is really critical.
994
00:56:04.728 --> 00:56:14.833
I mean, it's easy to feel very alone when you run the company and you have to manage ops, you have to be, you have to protect yourself, you can't be completely vulnerable with everyone.
995
00:56:15.233 --> 00:56:18.175
So getting a support group, super, super helpful.
996
00:56:18.915 --> 00:56:30.741
Finding, you know, having people that you can surrender and talk to about all those other components of your life, being seen there and those are the people that can give you true advice because they know the other pieces of the puzzle.