0:00: Welcome to the Blue Collar Nation podcast, the podcast dedicated to making the lives of home service professionals better. 
 0:08: Now join Eric and Larry to talk about all things home service. 
 0:15: Well, hello everybody. 
 0:16: This is Larry with the Blue Collar Nation podcast. 
 0:20: And I'm here with the Admiral of agenda, Mr. 
 0:22: Eric Sprague. 
 0:24: Eric, how in the world are you doing today? 
 0:27: The admiral of agenda. 
 0:31: Normally would be taken well by most people, but you being kind of not liking people telling you what to do, I'm assuming that's a negative. 
 0:40: Sometimes there can be breaks in the timeline for certain reasons, like Josh could just pop in and say something and it would be OK. 
 0:46: You'd be like, no wait, he's not supposed to talk yet. 
 0:49: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. 
 0:53: That's very true. 
 0:55: Yeah, exactly. 
 0:56: Josh, sorry, we have to bring you in. 
 0:57: I think it's your 3rd time, you know the drill. 
 1:00: I do. 
 1:01: I, I'm just observing and, and enjoying the moment because I love talking to you guys. 
 1:04: So yeah, there you go. 
 1:06: Yeah, we, we do our best to have a good time, but we do have a sponsor of the podcast, which we will roll right now. 
 1:16: Did you know 85% of financial success comes from soft skills abilities and only 15% from our technical abilities? 
 1:25: Supertech U was created by longtime restoration pros, Eric Sprague and Larry Wilburton. 
 1:30: Their daily 3 to 5 minute videos train your entire company on the soft skills they need to make your business thrive. 
 1:37: Plus, your entire team earns IICRC CEC credits, all for about the cost of one tank of gas. 
 1:45: To get more information about Super Tech University and receive a special 6 lesson e-course on in-home sales, go to supertechu.com/podcastoffer. 
 1:58: Again, get your free in-home sales training at supertechU.com/podcastoffer. 
 2:10: And we are good to go. 
 2:13: So. 
 2:14: We were touching on the Admiral of agenda and his, composure during the podcast when Josh broke in so crazy-like, but we wanna do a formal introduction, introduction. 
 2:28: We have Josh Gillow, who's a founder of YES Express and Master Plan Outdoor Living, and we're gonna be talking about his new amazing book. 
 2:40: It's called the Core 10 Sales playbook. 
 2:44: And Eric and I read this since you sent us some copies, which is very nice, and we related and cried and squirmed about everything you're talking about, the problems you made, cause We made them and On a regular basis and maybe some more. 
 3:00: I don't know. 
 3:01: Larry, were you doing, were you doing what I was doing like you're reading the problem that we've, we've done, right, and you're kind of adding up like, well, how many times did I do that? 
 3:10: How much money did I blow on each of those deals, right? 
 3:13: And then all of a sudden it's depressing. 
 3:17: It's just good lord. 
 3:19: Well, you know, actually, it was a bunch of things. 
 3:20: I can think of the people's houses I was in. 
 3:22: I'm like, oh my gosh, I can relate to these things. 
 3:24: But then there was a bunch of things in there. 
 3:26: I'm like, oh, this is good. 
 3:28: I got some great nuggets of things that I can implement. 
 3:31: I took a whole bunch of notes. 
 3:33: And there were notes for the podcast, but they are both another sheet of notes for me to do when I'm selling so I can close more jobs. 
 3:39: So thank you very much. 
 3:41: You'll get a referral check when I start closing those jobs. 
 3:45: I'll be looking for it. 
 3:47: Yeah, checks in the mail, Josh. 
 3:49: Oh, I've heard that before. 
 3:50: Yeah, exactly. 
 3:52: So anyway, it's a pleasure to have you today, Josh. 
 3:57: Thank you. 
 3:57: Welcome. 
 3:58: Thank you for the opportunity. 
 3:58: Welcome back, my friend. 
 4:00: Like I mentioned earlier, I think. 
 4:03: Have you been on 3 times but with 3 different iterations of you basically I mean, yeah, we're constantly growing. 
 4:11: The first time we had you had a partner and then the next time. 
 4:18: You didn't have, you had, yes, you just started Y Express. 
 4:21: Am I correct? 
 4:22: Yeah, so I started YE Express and had a friend that was helping me out with it. 
 4:25: And then he went back to working on his company, and then I was solo for a while and then decided to write a book and now we're back. 
 4:33: Yeah, well, we always love having you, man. 
 4:34: You're always welcome here. 
 4:35: So thanks for coming. 
 4:36: Appreciate that. 
 4:37: Thank you, sir. 
 4:39: All right. 
 4:39: It's an honor to be here, guys. 
 4:40: It's an honor to be here and to, yeah, to, to serve and to share the, the message. 
 4:45: So I'm excited. 
 4:47: Well, let's start off, you know, that Look, I really enjoyed the book, and That it's funny, but the thing that got me the most was the first story of you and your new hire, going out and pitching the, the, the lady of the home, and the husband's not there, and then like, if anybody has ever sold home services. 
 5:13: They had a pit in their stomach because we have all done that. 
 5:17: Josh, do you, do you, can you start off the podcast by telling that story? 
 5:21: Because I think that This what's gonna get everybody going. 
 5:25: Oh yeah, I've done that. 
 5:27: I've done that more than once, yeah, right, and so have I. 
 5:31: That's the last time I would, I would tolerate it anymore. 
 5:33: So anyway, for the listeners, yeah, so I just hired a designer, right? 
 5:38: And I've been doing design for the company. 
 5:39: I've been the owner for at that point. 
 5:43: Oh, little, just about 10 years, right? 
 5:45: And, so I was like, all right, I got this designer with me now. 
 5:48: I'm gonna go show him how we close projects, right? 
 5:50: I mean, like, I got them here, we're gonna go down and, and this is a, this is a layup because this was a referral from a client that was right next door to them, and we had just, they just spent over $200,000 with us. 
 5:59: So I figured, like, this is gonna be easy. 
 6:01: They've already talked about those things. 
 6:03: I didn't pre-qualify. 
 6:04: I'm just like, they're a referral, we don't gotta do any of that. 
 6:06: I don't wanna piss them off or push them away. 
 6:08: So I said, all right, I'm just gonna go down. 
 6:09: So like Joseph, jump in the truck. 
 6:10: He's like, all right. 
 6:11: I said, well, I'm gonna show you how this is done. 
 6:12: So we drive down and we're talking about everything and we get there, we get to the house, and she's already in the backyard when we get there, which I, I've learned is not a great thing. 
 6:22: But anyway. 
 6:23: I saw her in the back. 
 6:24: I'm like, Sweet, take the bait, let's go. 
 6:25: So we went out in the backyard and we sat there for a good hour plus, just talking about everything. 
 6:29: They had a deck in their place, but they wanted to put a pool in and make it more connective and more private and more beautiful and more of a luxury resort style feel. 
 6:38: And so we sat there painting pictures in the air, and basically, we can do this and we can do that, and it'd be this and be that. 
 6:44: Everybody was excited about it. 
 6:45: I said, we, this is a slam dunk. 
 6:47: And what I wasn't paying attention to is the fact that her husband wasn't around. 
 6:50: I was excited to talk to one person. 
 6:52: So I went out, we had that conversation, and at the end I was like, all right, so the next steps for us is to do a, you know, to do a design. 
 6:58: That is a $3000 design deposit for that, for that next step. 
 7:02: are you ready to take that step? 
 7:03: And she says, let me talk to my husband. 
 7:06: I'm like, that's no problem, no problem. 
 7:08: He's definitely on board with all this. 
 7:10: So I'll never forget it, dude. 
 7:11: We all walk around to the front of the house from the back. 
 7:14: She's like, stay out in front of the front door. 
 7:15: I'm gonna go talk to my husband. 
 7:16: I said, OK. 
 7:17: Joseph and I stood there and I'm all cocky. 
 7:19: I'm like, that's how you do it, bro. 
 7:20: It's exactly how you do it. 
 7:21: that makes this story so much worse, right? 
 7:24: And then, so. 
 7:27: Why don't you go here if you can't tell. 
 7:28: Anyway, so as as she goes in the house, we're standing there for a good 5 minutes, and all of a sudden the door opens, and he looks out and he's like, She just told me it's gonna be $3000 for design. 
 7:42: And I said, yep, that's the next step. 
 7:44: He's like, I don't pay for this design and close the door. 
 7:48: And I was like, That's what just happened. 
 7:51: That was, I'm like, what just happened? 
 7:54: It literally just slammed the door in your face. 
 7:56: Yeah, we don't pay for design, shut the door. 
 7:59: I'm like, hm, OK. 
 8:01: And I look at Joseph, he looks at me. 
 8:02: I'm like, I don't know what to say, dude. 
 8:03: I'm like a a a word that's broken in in the middle of a battle, like I just got hit with an arrow. 
 8:07: I'm just like, oh boy. 
 8:09: All right. 
 8:09: So, and the wife popped back out and she's like, sorry about that. 
 8:13: I, I should have talked to him about this, and I'm like, no, you just wasted it. 
 8:16: Keep in mind, it's an hour and a half to get there. 
 8:20: Plus the hour plus we spent together, and then was the ride home. 
 8:24: And I'm sitting in the truck. 
 8:25: I don't think we said a word to each other. 
 8:28: He's like, what just happened? 
 8:29: I'm like, oh my God, I'm licking my wounds. 
 8:30: I'm like, holy crap. 
 8:32: And in that moment, guys, thank God that happened because that moment was defining in my, in my career. 
 8:37: Cause I said, not because it's never happened before, because I said it's the last time it will ever happen that way. 
 8:42: In that moment, I said, I need to do something different. 
 8:45: I need to learn how to better qualify my customers so that never happens again. 
 8:49: Not just to me and my ego, but to our time, because that's the most precious asset is our time, right? 
 8:54: So, I got back and I said, that's it. 
 8:56: And I said, then I went and hired the best sales coach I could find. 
 8:58: He wasn't even in the industry. 
 8:59: I like to work outside of the industry, and I like to kind of bring those ideas back into, into that. 
 9:04: And anyway, I hired him and trained for a while, build a system, started implementing it into my company, saw incredible results, and then. 
 9:10: Started to help others with it, and that's how yes Express was born, was through that systemization of a conversation, pre-qualification, all that stuff, and, and not so you sound like a robot, but so you sound like the best that you can be, because you don't have to think about who you have to be. 
 9:25: You just know that you got to ask this question before this one. 
 9:27: You'd never reverse them because the result won't be good and it can, it's not predictable that way. 
 9:31: So, creating that process is what saved our company, doubled our revenue, and I'm like, Maybe there's something else out there. 
 9:37: So I started reaching other guys. 
 9:38: I'm like, hey, why don't you try this? 
 9:39: And I started training them, and they started seeing incredible results too, and I'm like, we're onto something here. 
 9:43: And that's how the whole thing started. 
 9:45: Yeah. 
 9:46: So, do you think you hadn't, like, and you just didn't recognize it until that day, like you had, you had major cracks in your sales system all along and just kind of like, you would, you would highlight whatever wins you got, not really. 
 10:00: Look at, I could have added 25% more to that ticket, or I lost that job, and I should. 
 10:07: Were you, were you there, or you were just like wrapped up in I'm amazing? 
 10:12: No, no, well, here's, here's what happened. 
 10:14: You mentioned cracks in the sales system. 
 10:17: I had cracks and no sales system, right? 
 10:19: There was, there was no framework, you know, there were so many times I just, I just want it. 
 10:24: I, my father never taught me how to, how to sell. 
 10:26: My grandfather didn't, like, I didn't get that. 
 10:28: I got my EIN number and I got a kick in the butt by the IRS and says, go make money and pay me. 
 10:32: Like, they never, they never sent me how to run a business or how to communicate or how to sell or, or how to listen for that matter. 
 10:38: So, when, when it happened, it was like, all right, well, it sounds like to me, We need to start building some systems. 
 10:44: I see that that's what guys that are really scaling and growing, they're the ones that you can build systems. 
 10:48: And what I found is you can get to about a million dollars in revenue in our world before systems become essential. 
 10:54: Like you're not going to go further than that. 
 10:55: And I, I was winging it for a while under that, and then I learned that that's just not how this is going to work. 
 11:00: And then, that's really what, what shifted it for me was realizing I had none, dude. 
 11:05: I would, I would listen to these fast talking guys you see on like Instagram or Facebook and I'm like, oh this objection, right? 
 11:11: They're like, the objection is, I need to think about it or it costs too much. 
 11:16: And I'm like, I just need a magic bullet. 
 11:18: Come on, Eric, just give me a magic bullet. 
 11:19: When they say that, I say this and the checkbook flies out. 
 11:22: Like that's all I want. 
 11:23: So I would train on those things on my own time. 
 11:25: I'd be like, I'd be ready to go for an objection. 
 11:27: I would say it, nothing would happen. 
 11:28: I'd be like, Are you serious? 
 11:30: I thought I had the magic bullet, and what I didn't realize is I had no process whatsoever. 
 11:35: Once I instituted the process, I didn't even run into those objections anymore because we, we put those, well, because you've answered all the, what's an objection? 
 11:42: Objection is a question that's unanswered, right? 
 11:45: Everybody takes it as like verbal warfare, but often it's not. 
 11:50: It's just we haven't done a good enough job of adding value to the point where they're like, the only question is. 
 11:58: You know, yes, I'm gonna go and when can you start? 
 12:01: Yeah, you know, look, I've lived that, you know, I, of the two of us, I think you probably like, I'm more like that, I'm gonna have a system for a lot of things, right? 
 12:10: And I, I learned the hard way just like you, like going out and getting my butt kicked and Doing sales call after sales call, but like, I really started dialing in and doing it the same way, saying the same things, having the same five stories, and my goal was always to Without, you know, alienating them, giving them as much information and asking as many questions through my sales process where there's nothing left for them to say. 
 12:41: I'm gonna take that off the table, hopefully, and I'm assuming that's how you feel about the whole process as well. 
 12:49: It is so, so many contractors, what they want to do is they want to come in and put on a performance. 
 12:53: That's what I used to do. 
 12:54: And put on a performance. 
 12:55: I had a guy that I had to be the guy that talked the most, that was the smartest in the room because it was the me show, right? 
 13:01: They had, that's what they hired me for. 
 13:02: That was my mindset, that was my thought process where I come out and if I'm not speaking, I'm not adding value. 
 13:08: And if I'm adding value, they're not going to hire me. 
 13:09: What I didn't realize it's the absolute absolute opposite of that. 
 13:12: It's about leading with great questions and letting them talk most of the time, right? 
 13:17: So that's what I learned along the process and eventually when you have a process, you can start getting predictability. 
 13:22: And it's so, so many, when, you know, when we're training teams now, it's kind of like, they're like, oh, I'm afraid I'm gonna sound like a robot or I'm not going to be me. 
 13:30: I'm like, well, being you gives you a 25 to 30% close rate. 
 13:34: Well, if you want to be working on, you know, 3 out of 10, that's great, but you enhanced or you amplified you with a system, you could be doing 50%, 60%, 75+% closing rate. 
 13:47: Exactly like you, but you just understand the framework, like an operating system and how it works. 
 13:51: Once you understand the basic human behavior, next thing you know, it's like, wow, I missed that my whole life. 
 13:56: Look how much I've left on that table. 
 13:57: It's crazy. 
 13:59: You know what I think is really cool. 
 14:00: Go ahead, go ahead, Larry. 
 14:01: I'm sorry. 
 14:02: Is that you were going through having all this pain and this pain, you finally had that worst pain. 
 14:07: You're like, I need to stop and make a system. 
 14:10: You know, put this into a specific process because it's the matter of pain and everybody has these pains. 
 14:15: They don't stop and create a system and say, you know, stop and think because as entrepreneurs, we're just running and running and running and just like you were saying for so long, but that biggest pain just hurts so much. 
 14:26: And now, because everybody can see what's working and what isn't working, and especially if you read the book, you're gonna have all these great directions to go in. 
 14:35: But you have to have enough pain to be like kicked in the butt enough times like you did when you drove out to this house. 
 14:42: I think too, look, there's There's an element of psychology and showmanship to this. 
 14:49: You, you know, Larry and I were running around selling carpet cleaning at 4 times the price of our average competitor, and because we had become very good with a sales system that put on a great show and addressed client concerns, they didn't care what they were being charged. 
 15:08: They wanted that. 
 15:09: They were, they knew it was more money. 
 15:11: They're OK with it, right? 
 15:12: So, Josh, that leads me to a question. 
 15:14: You mentioned nearing the beginning of the book, I don't remember exactly what chapter that, you know, most contractors' mentalities, whatever trade they're in, is like, I have the best equipment, and I have the best van, and I'm I'm the best at turning a wrench and I'm all this and, and the reality is the, the client doesn't value that as much as they think they, that, that's the baseline for the client, right? 
 15:37: That's what they figure everybody in your industry can do. 
 15:40: So what's the separator? 
 15:43: How do, how do we change that mindset because it sounds like you had to change that mindset that was yours. 
 15:48: It certainly was mine and Larry's. 
 15:50: Yeah, I mean, it's something that we, I think a lot of contractors start out that way. 
 15:54: And what shifted it was from, for me was instead of trying to put on that show and trying to convince, here's the word, convince somebody that you're worth the money, we need to demonstrate that. 
 16:07: Huge shift from convincing to demonstrating. 
 16:10: You demonstrate it through a great sales process. 
 16:12: You demonstrate it by asking great questions, you demonstrate it by taking your time, you demonstrate it by doing what you say you're going to do. 
 16:20: Building that trust. 
 16:21: That's how it's done. 
 16:22: You can talk all day long about how trustworthy your, your company is and how great your employees are and how great your trucks are, and a customer is asking one primary question. 
 16:31: That primary question is, OK, what's in it for me? 
 16:36: Why, why would they, they don't care about us. 
 16:38: No, no, what's in it for me? 
 16:40: And they're like, so if I choose, you know, Eric and Larry to do this, they might cost more money, but based on what they've told me so far, it sounds like all my worries are, are taken away and that they're expunged. 
 16:50: So if they've already taken care of the. 
 16:52: You know, once they clean up, they're going to move the furniture back exactly where it was going to be. 
 16:55: If they ding any of the, baseboards, they're going to fix those. 
 16:58: Like I'm just making stuff up now. 
 16:59: They're going through every single thing that they're worried about, right? 
 17:02: And the next thing you know, they're like, well, wait a minute here, there's less uncertainty, there's less risk spending a little bit more money. 
 17:09: Why wouldn't we do that? 
 17:10: But that's demonstrating value, not trying to say we are the best, we'll fix this, we'll do that. 
 17:15: That's good, you can say that, but if they don't feel that it's true with you, or you're just saying it as a sales pitch, you're going to lose them. 
 17:21: They can read body language. 
 17:22: You can say one thing and your body will say something completely different, and if they aren't in alignment, that's where you're going to lose them. 
 17:27: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, Josh, I grew up in Portland, Maine, so I was like 20 minutes from L.L.Bean, and LLBean's thing was always. 
 17:36: We don't care how long you've had the piece of clothing, or the pair of shoes, and how much you've used it. 
 17:41: At any point in its life cycle, you don't think you've got a good value, you can send it in and we'll give you a new one, right? 
 17:47: They never said they were the best, they never said they're the highest quality, they didn't say any of that. 
 17:51: What are they, so if I go buy a shirt or a pair of shoes at LLBan, what am I really buying? 
 17:57: Peace of mind. 
 17:59: They've told me that if anything goes wrong, They'll, they'll just make it right, and I'm willing to pay, I don't know, 3 times the price of a shirt that we, I could get it like in an outlet store or something, right, because they've got my back. 
 18:15: They built their whole business, know that. 
 18:17: And you know that they've built their entire business on that model of the fact that you don't have to worry about it. 
 18:21: Once you spend a little more with us, I mean, you see it with the REI, you see it with a lot of the climbing companies, like something breaks, you bring it back to us, like we'll, we'll make it right. 
 18:29: It's like, yeah, I'll go pay premium for that because I don't want to have to worry. 
 18:32: I don't want risk. 
 18:33: If I go buy it on Amazon, they probably aren't going to take it back after a year if I've used it. 
 18:38: So it's, it's, it's really a matter of that peace of mind, it's knowing that this company is going to stand behind it, but you can say that all day long, it's when you actually demonstrate it. 
 18:47: That makes a difference for the customer. 
 18:49: I think for high-end clients too, which, who's a lot of your, your clients are high-end and ours were too. 
 18:56: Look, you, you mentioned it earlier, they value their time over everything else. 
 19:00: The last thing they want to do is hire a company where they're gonna have to go invest a bunch of time trying to get things right. 
 19:06: That's right. 
 19:07: So if you can, if you can convey that to them, that you take that worry off the table. 
 19:14: They, they view their time as more valuable than their money because they don't have a money scarcity problem. 
 19:20: That's right, Larry, you were about to say something. 
 19:23: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. 
 19:25: I don't know, what we were talking about earlier, it was just, you know, when you go to REI, the value is built in. 
 19:29: You know, you're getting value because you're paying for it. 
 19:31: You know, it's, it's assumed because you expect it coming back, and it's the same thing when we go out on these sales calls. 
 19:38: We're building value as we're asking the questions. 
 19:41: We're building value in who we are in the sales process. 
 19:45: And that's what you were talking about in the book, and I was like, this is great stuff that you're hitting on, so. 
 19:52: Yeah, no, it's wonderful. 
 19:59: Hey, I have a big announcement to make today about our company Super Tech University. 
 20:04: We have started an affiliate program and we've started an affiliate program that may, may be a little different than than affiliate programs that you've heard about or seen in the past and we, I don't even like the word affiliate, right? 
 20:18: I, I like the word partner. 
 20:20: And we really want partners. 
 20:22: We, we're not a transaction-based type of company. 
 20:26: We're a relationship company. 
 20:28: both Larry and I are wired that way. 
 20:31: So we want partners and, and to prove that point, we are doing a 50%. 
 20:36: Revenue split on every sale, right? 
 20:39: So, somebody joins Super Tech University, our affiliate would get half the revenue. 
 20:44: They're sharing it with us, so it's in our best interest to make sure that the product's good, and then that person stays for a long time because they're gonna get 50% every single month, not just for a month or two, you know, we're, we're in it for the long haul together. 
 20:59: So, if you are interested in possibly becoming an affiliate with Super Tech University, please reach out to me via email. 
 21:07: That's Eric ERIC@ supertechU.com. 
 21:14: That's ERIC at S U P E R T E C H, the letter U dot com. 
 21:24: So Josh, the, the name of the book is the core 10 sales playbook. 
 21:29: Yeah, I mean, we might not have time to go through all 10, but can you start walking us through like at least some of the 10 things and what they are and how most of us are doing it incorrectly. 
 21:40: I get, you know, what we can do to be better. 
 21:42: 100%, yeah. 
 21:44: So the core 10 came out of, years of training in the industry, you know, training guys in the industry and seeing these, these fundamental. 
 21:52: sales mistakes being made or not being aware of them having any awareness at all, and I know I didn't either when I first started. 
 21:58: So as I'm training like higher level guys. 
 22:00: They didn't have the foundation and I'm teaching them the foundations to then to set up for the higher levels and I'm like, we need the foundation first. 
 22:05: So that's why I wrote this book. 
 22:07: This is the foundation. 
 22:08: This is the starting point. 
 22:09: That's why it starts off by saying this is your football, right? 
 22:11: This is your, this is your opportunity to say we're going back to the basics because when you can master the basic fundamentals, everything else above it becomes better. 
 22:19: But if you're trying to learn how to drive a Formula One race car and you've never been in an Audi before, like, you know, you've never driven a car on the road before. 
 22:27: It's like you just run into things. 
 22:28: So we have to make sure they have the basic skills first, and then from there, you can mess up a lot of the high-end stuff and still have a good solid foundation. 
 22:35: So the core 10, the 10 principles that, that are undeniable, they've been, they've been true for thousands of years in human communication, and they will be true no matter what AI does and for thousands of years to come, right? 
 22:48: These are the fundamental underpinnings. 
 22:49: Get these right, most things will go better. 
 22:51: The first is talk less and close more. 
 22:54: We have a propensity, like we just, we got done talking about, about thinking that our voice is more important than our clients because they hired us and this is now a show that we have to put on. 
 23:03: And if we don't talk a lot and don't tell them about all the specs and exactly how this works and that works and how this will break that and this part is too big for this, and like whatever it might be, if we don't do that, that we're not showing up to add value. 
 23:15: I think that's really where contractors are trying to show value, but they're doing it through words and they're cutting their opportunities for their clients to open up. 
 23:22: So that's the biggest thing is, is to learn how to talk, and in the book I talk about the 70/30 rule. 
 23:27: So 70% listeners, 70% of the sound during a sales call should be coming from your client's face. 
 23:35: And 30% should be coming from yours. 
 23:38: And the funny part is when I say this, people, yep, that's me, yep, OK, OK. 
 23:42: No, that is not them. 
 23:44: But, but they don't know, they're not aware. 
 23:45: We can't blame them. 
 23:46: I didn't know, dude. 
 23:47: I had no idea how much I was talking until I took my phone out and I put a voice memo record, put it in my pocket, and went into my meetings and then played it on the way home and cringed. 
 23:58: First of all, to hear how I spoke. 
 24:00: How many minimizers and ums and ahs and likes and things I would use that just made me cringe, and until I saw it in myself, I didn't know I needed to adjust that. 
 24:08: And second, how much sound came out of my face. 
 24:11: And I was like, wow. 
 24:13: Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, that was a big one. 
 24:16: I was like, dang, I'm like, oh boy, well, no, you're also like, I'm talking my way right out of this deal. 
 24:21: Yeah, and I'm working hard, cause all that talking requires a lot of thinking and bandwidth. 
 24:27: Imagine if I just had to have maybe 10 questions poised and ready. 
 24:32: And let them do all the talking, and I'm just watching and observing, orienting myself throughout. 
 24:37: I'm like, OK, seems like this. 
 24:38: Let me ask a question about that. 
 24:40: Yeah, and listening too. 
 24:41: Let's ask about this and taking down. 
 24:44: Here's the secret, gentlemen. 
 24:45: It's grabbing their word fragments. 
 24:48: So if, for instance, if we're talking about a project, right, to, to say a prospective client of mine, and she says that she wants a swimming pool, and I say, well, tell me more about that swimming pool. 
 24:58: She's like, yeah, I just want a swimming pool that I can sit out in the sun and bake like a seal. 
 25:03: Right? 
 25:03: That's her exact word fragment that she uses, right? 
 25:06: And I say, OK, no problem. 
 25:08: And then from there on in the design phase in the proposal, I said, Here's your swimming pool. 
 25:11: Here's your swimming pool, here's your swimming pool. 
 25:13: She's like, OK, it's a pool. 
 25:15: It's a pool, and that's what everybody else is going to give her a proposal that says swimming pool on it. 
 25:19: But when your proposal and your design conversation is more like this, hey, Mrs. 
 25:24: Jones, you know, we designed this pool to make sure you could bake out there like a seal in the hot sun, right? 
 25:29: There's your spot right there, right next to that pool. 
 25:31: Did I get it right? 
 25:33: And she's gonna be like, holy crap, that's exactly what I wanted. 
 25:36: You can see me in the plan, like I'm baking like a seal. 
 25:39: Now, everybody else could do that too. 
 25:41: Everybody else's pool, she can bake in the sun like a like a seal. 
 25:44: But you know what? 
 25:45: Yours represents that because you just wired neurally associated those two things together and used her word fragments to describe what she wants. 
 25:53: And if you become a good listener. 
 25:55: You can start grabbing those word fragments all over the place and start building little phrases, and then you can feed them back to the customer. 
 26:01: When you do that, that's not manipulation, that's good listening. 
 26:04: Yeah, really good, listen to their words, capture fragments, and utilize them in your proposals. 
 26:09: We have a whole section of the book that we talk about the so that equation. 
 26:13: So for instance, we could say something like, hey, Mrs. 
 26:16: Jones, we positioned this new swimming pool in exactly this direction, this orientation, so that you can bake out in the sun like a seal. 
 26:27: I'm like, wait a minute here, her language, right? 
 26:30: And all of a sudden she's like, wow, this guy gets me in this pool, I can bake like a seal. 
 26:34: The other ones were identical, it doesn't matter. 
 26:36: The fact you said it ups your level and also allows you to charge premium, which you should be anyway. 
 26:42: So make sure you say bake like a seal and not like look like a seal. 
 26:46: Then that was true. 
 26:47: You gotta get the words thing up. 
 26:48: You gotta be really careful. 
 26:51: This is a very good point, Larry. 
 26:53: So listeners make sure you're, you're very, diligent and getting the right words. 
 26:56: But being an active listener, we call it a sales detective. 
 27:00: You know, if you watch any kind of crime show and you see a detective in there, do you think he's the one talking the most? 
 27:06: No, not usually, right. 
 27:07: He's usually the one that's listening and watching. 
 27:09: And when you talk too much, you give away your power too, right, because you just are like going and going and going and going, and they're just like this guy's talking a ton and has really nothing to say, you know, I think people are more intrigued by if you listen more and speak less, and it's super hard to do that, especially when you're, you're the expert in the room on a subject. 
 27:34: And, and you're right. 
 27:35: In order, in order to control the what we call controlling the frame, this is never about controlling people. 
 27:39: This is about controlling the conversation because leaders do that. 
 27:42: Clients come to you because they're, they're stuck. 
 27:45: They want something that they can't do on their own for the most part or don't want to do on their own, and they need somebody to take them from uncertainty where they are to certainty where they want to go. 
 27:53: And so when it comes to the definition of closing. 
 27:56: You know, in the book we have this idea of closing, that the, the word closing can make some people's, you know, hair on their arms stand up, just like I hate that word. 
 28:04: It's like you're closing a door, you're shutting down a relationship. 
 28:08: I, I offer an option for the listeners to consider as a new version of what that word means, a new definition, and that is closing the gap between where they are and where they want to go. 
 28:19: Closing is the beautiful process you take your client through, through your sales process that gets them from where they are to where they want to go, from uncertainty to certainty. 
 28:27: We call it the gap, so it's get a plan. 
 28:28: What is our plan to get them from uncertainty to certainty, from risk to no risk. 
 28:32: And you're closing, your sales process is the beautiful bridge that gets them there. 
 28:38: That's what we're solving for here, is to get them there. 
 28:40: And the person who can do that most personalized and listens the best is the one who often is the one that wins the project. 
 28:47: Or when's the opportunity. 
 28:49: Now it's not always. 
 28:50: Some people are just price shoppers. 
 28:51: That happens. 
 28:52: And if you find yourself up against them, you got to change your marketing because you're getting the wrong people in the front door. 
 28:57: Well, that leads me to my next point or question is, you, you talked, I mean, really the story that we opened with, with you going to that is you didn't do a great job pre-qualifying the buyer, right? 
 29:10: I didn't do any. 
 29:11: Well, yeah, I know, but, but, but, yeah, OK, I was being kind, bro. 
 29:15: I know. 
 29:16: And, but the thing is, is that I think a lot of us Just blow past the step and look, we all know the feeling. 
 29:27: We just got a phone call and payroll's due and the van payments are due, and I haven't been that busy lately, and I'm just kind of glad somebody called me, but that doesn't mean we still shouldn't pre-qualify, does it? 
 29:41: No, we should pre-qualify every single lead. 
 29:44: And my, my mission, and the reason why I wrote this book, my mission is called Mission 75, you see it in the book, and it's this idea that my goal in my lifetime is to help our industry to get to a 75+% close rate. 
 29:56: And the way we do that, the way we do that is by systemizing how we communicate with people and not in a way that you sound like a robot, but so you can be the very best version of yourself and preserve your time. 
 30:06: You know, when we think about the average close rate in the landscape hardscape outdoor living world, it's about 25 to 30%. 
 30:12: I think that's pretty flexible or similar, I should say, across a lot of contractors. 
 30:17: I don't have all those stats. 
 30:18: I don't have, yeah, I think it depends on the size of ticket. 
 30:20: I think probably like HVAC, bigger ticket stuff that doesn't sound unreasonable. 
 30:27: So I'm sure, so, but you figure if, if you go out to 10 leads a week, let's say, and you're bringing 3 back. 
 30:34: That's on a good day, right? 
 30:36: 3 back a week, then that means 7 of them were wasted time, and when you start calculating. 
 30:42: An hour to drive out there cause you got to stop and get something to eat and do whatever you're gonna do. 
 30:46: Say 1 hour to get out there, then let's just say 1 hour to meet with the client, then it's 1 hour back home, so there's 3 hours of traffic, then you got to put a proposal together. 
 30:54: Maybe that's 30 minutes, maybe it's 1 hour. 
 30:55: Let's just keep it simple and call it an hour. 
 30:57: That's 4 hours times 7. 
 31:01: Yeah, so I mean 4 hours is a half of the day. 
 31:04: Right there, you're at 10% of your week. 
 31:08: So then take that times 7 28 hours. 
 31:14: 28 hours and then contractors say, I don't have any time. 
 31:18: That's what I used to say. 
 31:19: I'm totally blitzed out, man. 
 31:20: I am so overwhelmed and stressed out. 
 31:23: I have no time to do anything. 
 31:24: I have no time to work on the trucks. 
 31:25: I have no time to be with my family. 
 31:26: I have no time to do anything because this job is eating me. 
 31:28: This, this business is killing me. 
 31:30: And it's because we're, this is one of the biggest blind spots in contracting is the time we waste with people who can never say yes to us because we don't spend just a little bit more time in the beginning to qualify them. 
 31:40: If you take another 5, 1015 minutes to qualify them on the phone in the office before you go out, you will have a much, much higher probability of getting a yes when you get out there than a false yes. 
 31:52: I'll get back to you. 
 31:53: That's the system that you're putting together. 
 31:55: You're, you know, you're doing these things. 
 31:57: You're in the system. 
 31:57: You don't have time because you don't have systems to do the things that you're talking about. 
 32:01: Once you create these systems, it's so valuable. 
 32:03: That's why I was loving this because the system is in your book and that's what you're saying. 
 32:09: It's a playbook with your systems to make things happen. 
 32:13: Yeah, well, I appreciate that, Larry. 
 32:15: Another thing that, I'm sorry, go ahead. 
 32:17: No, no, no, go ahead, go ahead. 
 32:18: Well, real quick, Josh, I was gonna say that Larry and I talk about this in our company, we talk about with our team all the time. 
 32:24: You know, when we're running around like a chicken with her head cut off, doing 28 hours of bidding a week. 
 32:30: We're mistaking activity for accomplishment. 
 32:33: We, we feel the endorphin rush of I'm, I'm on the run, I'm doing it, like I have this busy business, and it's like, yeah, but you have an ineffective business. 
 32:43: You're spending 3 quarters of your week. 
 32:46: Wasting your time. 
 32:50: That, that's exactly right. 
 32:51: And that's, that's very prevalent. 
 32:52: It's almost a virus within the, the contracting world because a lot, I used to do this too. 
 32:58: I'm not throwing rocks in a glass house here because I was doing this, man. 
 33:01: It was like I confuse busyness with success. 
 33:04: As long as I was busy out there grinding the pavement, I had like, man, I'm out there, look at me, you know, to my wife, look at me. 
 33:09: I'm, I'm running wide open. 
 33:10: She knew what my clothes number. 
 33:12: she'd be getting my head examined because I just thought if I could get out to the client, if I could just meet with them, I could have a higher probability of closing them. 
 33:19: And that's what I kept thinking, but what I didn't realize was that was doomed from the time I left my office because I had no idea what I was walking into. 
 33:26: I had no idea. 
 33:26: Most don't. 
 33:29: You know, well, obviously read the book, but Give the listeners a little bit of insight like what does proper qualifying look like? 
 33:38: Cause I think this is a key point. 
 33:41: If people took, if people took almost nothing else out of this book. 
 33:46: To me, when I was reading it, I'm like, this is the thing that most people are jacking up. 
 33:51: Yeah, yeah. 
 33:53: So when it comes to pre-qualifying, we, there's, there's, I call them the five pillars in the book, and I kept them pretty flexible as far as they can be adapted into many different industries within contracting, but specifically for ours. 
 34:06: When we're talking about the first step, it's, we need to find out why they're reaching out. 
 34:11: Right. 
 34:11: It, for some it's really simple. 
 34:13: I got a tree that fell on my house, OK, I need a tree off my house. 
 34:15: Pretty simple. 
 34:16: But when it comes to higher tickets, want type sales, like I want a new patio, I want, you know, a new swimming pool, I want new carpets in my house, whatever it might be. 
 34:25: It's not just the physical thing that they're after. 
 34:29: There's an emotional driver behind that, we call it the driving force. 
 34:34: Have you guys heard about one Tom Plumber? 
 34:36: It's pretty fantastic. 
 34:37: If you're looking to get in the commercial water damaged space, you need your own plumbing company. 
 34:43: If you're looking to be less dependent on TPAs and do more water overall, you need your own plumbing company. 
 34:49: One Tom Plumber is a bolt-on. 
 34:51: Franchise to your restoration company. 
 34:54: I know you're interested in creating generational wealth, and if that's the case, what you've got to do is reach out to Rocky at oneTom.com or visit oneTP franchise.com and start making some big money today. 
 35:09: It's a driving force because for instance with the carpets, maybe it's, they're embarrassed by them. 
 35:14: They're like, wow, these things are old, they're nasty, they smell bad, or maybe they're just, it reminds them of their grandmother and they don't want that anymore. 
 35:20: Or they got to a point in their life where they have extra money and they want to make it look the way they want it to look. 
 35:26: So the first question we do, it's called finding the why. 
 35:28: It's, what inspires you to reach out about this project now? 
 35:33: Right, just start the conversation you're like, what, why now? 
 35:36: Why this? 
 35:37: Why now is what we're after, right? 
 35:38: But we don't want to say it in an accusatory tone like that, but it's, you know, I'm just curious, so what inspired you to reach out about this project now? 
 35:45: And shut up. 
 35:47: STFU keep your mouth shut. 
 35:49: Yeah, it's, and just let them talk and they will fill pages. 
 35:54: Of reasons why they're doing it. 
 35:56: So that's the first level is to, and there's many levels to that, but that's the first basic level is find out what inspired them to reach out now. 
 36:03: Next is going to be, and again, depending on the size ticket here, if you're selling $1000 or $500 like, you know, carpet cleaning or, or whatever, a $1000 project, whatever it might be, this might not be that important, but once you get up over $20,000 to $30,000 and you're doing designs as part of your offer, whether it's kitchens or baths or pools or whatever it's going to be, the next thing I want to know is who else is involved in this decision making. 
 36:24: Just like my very, very beginning story, I didn't do that. 
 36:28: I just assumed since she was talking the most that she was the one that was not only the idea person, but also the bank. 
 36:34: And we have this, and you can see it in the book as well, this, this, like dichotomy, this, this idea of the bird dog and the banker. 
 36:40: So you have the bird dog, which is the one who calls you, fills out your contact form, probably your questionnaire too, doesn't have a budget, wants everything, loves everything, and just got done binge watching HDTV for six months straight. 
 36:49: So they just have lots of ideas. 
 36:51: And their budget, like I said, it's whatever it's gonna be, man, it doesn't matter. 
 36:54: So you're like, dang, this is the one I've been waiting for. 
 36:57: And then you do what I did and run out to the to the job and find out that the banker who's in the house, who doesn't come out, says, yeah, honey, I hope you're happy, you just wasted his time, we're not doing this. 
 37:06: Goodbye, slammed the door in your face. 
 37:09: We need to make sure that when we're doing integrated multifaceted projects that we have both decision makers on the discovery call before we go ever out out there and also there for the actual on-site meetings as well. 
 37:21: And we can't say that we require that because nobody wants to be required or mandated to do things, but we can say something like, you know, we, we find we get the very best results when both you and your husband join us here for our, our discovery meeting and also for our discovery call because I want to make sure that they're your both your fingerprints are all over this, this design and this final, You know, solution that we come up with. 
 37:41: I'd hate for you at the end for somebody to walk out there and be like, man, I don't even like this. 
 37:45: I didn't get my pizza oven and I didn't get my this or I didn't get my that. 
 37:48: So, by having both people involved, we can eliminate that. 
 37:51: Does that work for you? 
 37:52: Because so, so often if the goal here is like, no, both you and your husband gotta be on this call, they're like, yeah, kiss my butt. 
 37:58: I'm not doing that. 
 37:59: Right, but having both decision makers gives you a much clearer idea. 
 38:02: So that question would be, is there anyone else involved in making this decision? 
 38:06: Just ask the question. 
 38:07: Maybe there's not. 
 38:08: Maybe he or she takes care of all the stuff and the other one's just non-existent here. 
 38:12: It's OK. 
 38:13: But let's have that discussion early because we know there's a possibility of a landmine later. 
 38:18: Right? 
 38:18: How many times have you guys been through that? 
 38:20: I could write a book on that alone. 
 38:21: How many landmines because they didn't have the other decision maker there, and they didn't get what they wanted, then I got, I gotta show my husband and then I never hear back from them, and I'm just like, well, they, she loved the design. 
 38:31: I don't understand it. 
 38:32: And he's like, I don't even like pink. 
 38:33: Why do we got pink flowers everywhere? 
 38:34: Like, they were never part of that conversation. 
 38:37: So we, we must not take the bait with one and go with the highest probability of success, which is both decision makers. 
 38:44: Yeah. 
 38:45: Well, it's great. 
 38:46: I mean, the people that are listening, our listeners. 
 38:48: You gotta ask these questions, and many people are like, I can't ask these questions. 
 38:51: I can't ask these questions because we started off that in the beginning, but it's good that you're showing why you need to answer these questions because they're blatantly obvious once you take a little bit of thought and you think about it. 
 39:01: So this is great. 
 39:02: Keep on going. 
 39:02: This is good, Josh. 
 39:03: Absolutely, absolutely. 
 39:04: So the next is gonna be about timeline. 
 39:07: What is our expected timeline? 
 39:09: So you may think because they called you today that they're ready to go today. 
 39:13: And some people are. 
 39:14: Some people are last minute, so they're like, I need it done tomorrow. 
 39:17: Other ones will reach out today because they need it done in a couple of months. 
 39:20: And some people reach out today because they want it done sometime in the next year or two. 
 39:24: So if we assume that we know what they want, they called today, they want it today or tomorrow, we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot, left and right because we're going to try to close them right away and perhaps there are planners, and if they're planners, planners tend to spend more money. 
 39:36: If they're planners, then we may even push them away. 
 39:40: So a question would be, is this a right now project, or is this something you're thinking about for next year? 
 39:46: It's a little bit of a going for the no here too. 
 39:49: Like, no, no, no, I need this done like in the next 6 weeks. 
 39:52: All right. 
 39:53: Do you know what that means? 
 39:54: If it's a high immediacy project like this, that means that the price goes up, right? 
 39:59: Because I can, I can get you in. 
 40:00: I'll move people around, but you're going to pay a premium for that, right? 
 40:03: Let's just do it like the dentists do, right? 
 40:04: The dentists, it's funny how dentists, they can, they can't get you in for cleaning for 6 months, but if you've got a cavity, they get you in in a week. 
 40:11: They leave that because that's high value for them. 
 40:12: They make money in the cavities, not so much on the cleaning side, right? 
 40:15: So they always have space for high ticket. 
 40:18: And that's where, you know, if we gotta get a sense of where that is for them. 
 40:21: And if you have a planner that says, I'm, I'm looking at starting the the process now, and then hopefully by next year I can do this, you're gonna put them in front of somebody who wants to be done next week that'll pay premium, or you're gonna let them stretch a little bit in your schedule? 
 40:35: It's true. 
 40:36: Yeah. 
 40:38: So the next part here Is about explaining your process. 
 40:42: This is where a lot of contractors, they either get stuck in it for a long time, they try to glorify themselves, or they eliminate it and don't talk about it at all. 
 40:51: And I think everybody just knows what they do. 
 40:53: So this is about explaining your process. 
 40:55: Now we spend time with our, when our companies come through and we coach with them and guide them, we talk about what we call our our proprietary way or the our signature way so that for instance, if it's, You know, ABC Landscaping company, we would go in and discover exactly how they do their, what their process is from the phone call all the way through. 
 41:13: And there's certain things in there, whether they're common to the industry or not, doesn't matter. 
 41:16: We need to set up a 3 to 4 step process that is frontward facing to the customers. 
 41:20: So when they say, I've got this problem. 
 41:23: ABC Landscaping says you take these 4 steps, you have a solution, so they can see a path, you're giving them a path. 
 41:29: You know, if you guys have old trail apps and you're out there and you're like, I want to go hiking in a mountain and you don't have any route to where you're going, you're like, I don't know if I'm going to do that. 
 41:35: It's, it's dangerous. 
 41:36: But if you say, look, all trails tells me it's going to be 8 miles, it's going to take me about 14 hours to do it because it's straight up, right? 
 41:42: And you're like, OK, I can prepare for that. 
 41:44: Do I want that or do I not want that? 
 41:45: So that's really what this is all about, is preparing them for what's coming next. 
 41:49: We're always trying to, to help them understand what's coming next by setting the right expectations. 
 41:52: So explaining the processes, here's how our process works. 
 41:56: First, we're gonna, we're gonna have another discovery call. 
 41:57: We're going to sit down with you and your husband and go through all the details. 
 42:00: You're gonna send me a couple of pictures, we're gonna decide if we're. 
 42:02: Good fit with each other. 
 42:03: And then the next step for us is actually come out and meet with you guys on site. 
 42:06: Now, I will let you know that we do have a design deposit that's involved with this, and the design deposit is X to Y. 
 42:11: and I want to make sure that it's not a surprise for you when you get out there. 
 42:14: So, it includes A, B, C, D, F, and G, and I'm really truncating this for you guys right now, right? 
 42:19: And it's once that's, once that's done, the next step would be this, next step would be this, next step would be this, and that's how we work. 
 42:27: does that work for you? 
 42:29: Give it to them. 
 42:30: What do they say? 
 42:30: They say, no, no, no, no, I just want somebody to come out and fix this, or plant that or move this. 
 42:35: OK, we're probably not going to be a good fit, and then we give them a graceful exit, which is something we teach as well, how to let people go with integrity that'll actually still keep referring you because you just educated them. 
 42:45: And not be like, nope, sorry, click, shut the phone, or, you know, slam the phone down and they're like, well, that guy was an idiot, like seriously, he just lost an opportunity for referrals. 
 42:53: But if you give him a graceful exit, send them on their way with integrity, they go out and start selling for you. 
 42:57: It's pretty wild. 
 42:58: So that's the explain the process part, and then from there it's always openly discussing budget. 
 43:03: This is a very, very important piece that's tucked toward the end of the call because we got to build rapport, we gotta build trust, we gotta build integrity with this customer before we can start talking this way. 
 43:13: And this is one that most contractors get really squeamish about. 
 43:17: It used to be the thing that why do you think that to talk about? 
 43:20: Why do you think that is? 
 43:21: Because it's a struggle for all of us to get going and we're broke when we start and we start having a scarcity mindset. 
 43:28: Is that why you think we do that? 
 43:30: After training all the people that I have on this subject specifically, most of it is head trash. 
 43:35: Yeah, because at the end of the day, they're just numbers. 
 43:38: Nobody wants to look like a sales, sales carsman or something like that. 
 43:42: They're always worried about how they're going to be perceived. 
 43:45: That's right. 
 43:45: Yeah, it's about that perception, but that's, again, we're back to mindset again. 
 43:50: And oftentimes they're unsure of what it should cost. 
 43:53: They're afraid they're going to get laughed at. 
 43:54: I mean, sales, it takes guts to do what we do, guys, when it comes to sales. 
 43:57: To put yourself out there like that, forcing the opportunity for rejection on you, like you're standing there and they can say no, and then we take it personally, like, no, that, that no is to me that I'm not good enough, not to the opportunity that didn't fit in alignment for what they wanted. 
 44:13: Our mind starts to blend that and if we have a poor money mindset like I grew up with, I grew up with no money, dude, none. 
 44:18: So, getting into the world, I remember in the beginning when my parents started the garden center, my brother and I were about 18 years old, and we had customers coming in and saying, my brother's about 18 months younger than me. 
 44:27: We were, I was about 18 years old. 
 44:29: They would come in the garden center and say, hey, you know, to my father, do your sons, do they go out and work like in people's yards? 
 44:35: And, you know, we grew up making no money at the garden center. 
 44:37: I worked 7 days a week and That my father's like, well, yeah. 
 44:42: I was like, Sweet. 
 44:43: I said, yes, this is great, right? 
 44:45: So I'll never forget it, guys. 
 44:46: The first time when a client came in and looked at us as one of our first customers and said, I'll, I'll pay those guys 1000 bucks a day to come out to my house. 
 44:53: And I'm like, 1000 bucks. 
 44:54: Now remember that included materials, but I only saw 1000 bucks, right? 
 44:58: 1000 bucks a day and I'm sitting here doing the math and I'm like, $7000 a week. 
 45:03: I look at my brother and I'm like, we're gonna be rich. 
 45:05: This is crazy, like, wow, this is nuts. 
 45:09: So I couldn't believe that somebody had $1000 sitting in a savings account, ready to do something in their backyard. 
 45:16: That they would give me to do it because I certainly didn't have that, dude. 
 45:18: We did everything ourselves because we couldn't afford to do it all, you know, have somebody else do it. 
 45:22: So then as we started growing the business, next thing you know, we had clients that were willing to give us $5000 to do projects, and then $10,000 was that, that, that level about blew my mind. 
 45:31: I mean, you're telling me they have $10,000 sitting in a bank account somewhere. 
 45:36: How? 
 45:37: Who are these people? 
 45:38: What do they do? 
 45:38: Because I certainly don't have that. 
 45:40: And then it kept escalating $50 100 dollars, $500 a million dollars, and you're like, what is going on? 
 45:45: Like, but that's because of my money mindset. 
 45:49: Yeah. 
 45:49: What I thought I was worth and what people could spend and what they would spend because I'm like, I would never spend that much on that. 
 45:55: Well, that's problem number one. 
 45:57: You aren't buying it, right? 
 45:59: That's problem number one, if you catch yourself with that. 
 46:02: I think Josh, like I, I know it's not specific to the book, but a lot of people listening, your industry is slightly different, right? 
 46:11: So you have an estimator who's gonna go do a bid on a $200,000 project. 
 46:16: But like a lot of, we have a lot of plumbing and HVAC companies where technicians are the people who are selling, and, you know, they're selling $30,000 HVAC systems and all that. 
 46:28: And And not only are they selling, but they're doing the work. 
 46:33: And look, a lot of people, you know, most people in the trades come from pretty humble beginnings. 
 46:40: How do they get past The scarcity. 
 46:45: Mindset and fear over money. 
 46:48: Like what is the best way? 
 46:50: Like, it's a system, right? 
 46:52: I mean, it's just having them plug the system in. 
 46:55: Well, so much of it is understanding what you're worth and that your personal worth is nothing to do with what you're charging. 
 47:02: When it comes to like if somebody says no to it. 
 47:05: Now, I see guys all the time when they're bidding projects, they say they they run their numbers through their software and it comes out to be $31,814. 
 47:13: They're like I wouldn't spend that much for that. 
 47:15: I would, I, I don't know, maybe 25,000. 
 47:17: I'm afraid, afraid fear. 
 47:19: I'm afraid that if I tell a client that they're going to laugh at me or they're going to say no. 
 47:24: So I need to drop my number because a lower number is better always, right? 
 47:27: And so we go through that whole. 
 47:30: Conversation in our head, are we really worth that? 
 47:32: Like seriously, dude, like wow, I wonder what others are charging. 
 47:35: Is it right? 
 47:35: I'm it supposed to be higher? 
 47:36: Is it supposed to be lower? 
 47:37: So again, we're all back to what we think this value should be and the software told us, right, exactly what it is. 
 47:44: If you've got your budget in there and you've got all your stuff, you know exactly what this thing should cost. 
 47:47: But there's, there's a pushback inside. 
 47:50: So we have to first and foremost, what we have to do is to dial it back and say, why are we feeling this? 
 47:56: Where does this come from? 
 47:58: This is the deeper work. 
 48:00: This isn't some surface thing that I can tell you. 
 48:01: Here's a quick question you can ask and you're just going to eliminate it out of your life because this is deep wired in us, because it's just not about money at the end of the day, because money is just an idea. 
 48:11: Money is just an idea, an exchange of value. 
 48:13: You can exchange chickens for things. 
 48:15: You can exchange rice for things. 
 48:17: Money just happens to be something that everybody will take in exchange for something. 
 48:20: So the question is, why is it so hard to charge what you're worth? 
 48:24: That's a question everyone has to ask for themselves and be honest with themselves. 
 48:39: Hey everyone, Eric here with Blue Collar Nation podcast, and I would just like to take a moment to talk about my favorite magazine for the cleaning and restoration industry, and that is CNR magazine. 
 48:51: I've been a longtime reader of CNR magazine, and now my good friend Michelle Blevins has purchased that magazine and is growing it at an amazing rate. 
 49:01: So, if you're in the cleaning and restoration industry, You will be excited to hear that not only can you get CNR magazine digitally, but you can also get it for free in print form, actual paper where you get to sit on your couch and read it, which, if you're my age, that's appealing. 
 49:20: So, all you have to do is go to CNR magazine.com, and that's CANDR magazine.com, to get your free subscription. 
 49:31: And it's even in print. 
 49:33: So, if you wanna stay on top of what's going on in the cleaning and restoration industry, and here, you know, get to see a lot of cool articles by a lot of very smart people, go to CAMDR magazine. 
 49:49: There's no straight answer to that. 
 49:50: It's more a matter of being careful that you're not wiring what you're charging to what you think you're worth. 
 49:57: The numbers are the numbers. 
 49:59: Yeah. 
 50:00: OK, cool. 
 50:02: All right, what's the next thing we gotta do? 
 50:04: So the, the, the last thing is to talk through the budget, right? 
 50:06: It's to make sure you get that. 
 50:07: And what, here's what often happens. 
 50:09: Contractors love, absolutely love to tell people how much things cost. 
 50:14: They're in a hurry. 
 50:15: They're like, you know what, like the HVA ceases and that, you know what, Mrs. 
 50:18: Jones, everything you're talking about here, put a mini split there, move it over here, we're gonna put the thing there, we're gonna connect there, all that kind of stuff. 
 50:23: It's gonna, it's gonna cost you 30,000. 
 50:27: Right? 
 50:28: I mean a client's like. 
 50:29: OK. 
 50:31: Cause all they hear is the price. 
 50:33: They don't, there's, there's no value add to that conversation, right? 
 50:37: It's exactly right. 
 50:38: And see, right before I gave the price, I did what's called a value stack. 
 50:42: Hey, I'm gonna have this here, this mini split there, I'm gonna move this over here, put that over there. 
 50:45: That's a value stack. 
 50:47: And when you're conscious of the fact that you're doing that, we can adjust that value stack to answer that question in her head, which is, what's in it for me? 
 50:55: When we adjust that and we tune that in and we do it purposefully, now all of a sudden we become invaluable, meaning that you, like, you become priceless because you understand what her fears are and every one of your value stacks that you've already set up, that you've already rehearsed, and you know exactly how it works, and you boom, boom, boom, you know exactly how to do the, the pre-frame, the present, the post frame, and the tie down, how to, you know, present your price, that by the time you get to the number, she's gonna think it's like 100,000. 
 51:22: Right, if you do a proper, if you do a proper value stack and you say something like, and I'm not in the HBC world, so I'm gonna work in my world, right? 
 51:29: So you do a proper value stack, right? 
 51:31: Yeah, value stack would be like, hey, you know what, this, a lot of this value stack comes from you being a good listener upfront because you can utilize those word fragments right now and they are super powerful. 
 51:40: So we'll go back to the, the pool analogy I used earlier, and. 
 51:45: So, Mrs. 
 51:46: Jones, you're looking at the pool area and you're like, OK, well, right now what we're going to do is we're going to put this big patio out to the side here, put the pool right in the middle, right? 
 51:52: Because you said you wanted the pool in the hot sun, right? 
 51:54: Cause you want to bake like a seal in the hot sun. 
 51:56: Remember that? 
 51:56: And then you also mentioned that when your grandkids come over, you want to have lots of space out in the side for them to have lawn space. 
 52:02: And you also mentioned that your toy poodle loves to play on synthetic grass. 
 52:06: So we're going to have this whole area over here all set for synthetic grass for this, for this, for the dogs. 
 52:12: Then you also mentioned to me that, and tell me if I'm wrong, but you also mentioned to me that you wanted to make sure that the party didn't end when it got dark. 
 52:19: So we want to have some lighting in there because it's not just light for looks, it's light for safety, because there's been times you've come home and you've felt like this anxiety coming up to the house because it's really, really dark. 
 52:29: And so we do that. 
 52:29: Plus you also mentioned to me that in the wintertime you get like this seasonal depression, like you kind of get like bummed. 
 52:35: If we put light around the house, when you look out of those beautiful windows, it's going to warm your heart. 
 52:39: It's going to be something that'll get you through the winter. 
 52:42: Now is that a patio, a pool, synthetic turf, and some lighting? 
 52:47: No, it's. 
 52:48: Now by the end of that, by the end of that, I said, well, you know, it's gonna be, and I'm gonna excuse the number, that's gonna be $150,000 to do that. 
 52:55: And she's like, I'm in, like, what do I sign? 
 52:57: Because it sounded as you're moving through that, you're solving those problems, you're listening well, by the time we get to the number. 
 53:03: She's like, wow, that's gonna be expensive, but I don't care. 
 53:06: I don't care what it's gonna cost. 
 53:07: I mean, within reason, of course. 
 53:09: Budget monies is always a consideration whether you got a $20 million house or a $20,000. 
 53:13: It's a consideration. 
 53:15: Sure. 
 53:16: Right, so we have to realize that it's only a consideration as we move through. 
 53:19: But what I want to leave your listeners with is the idea, specifically in budget. 
 53:23: Our main objective as professionals is to know how to get our clients to give us the number and not us give the number. 
 53:31: The genesis of the number, the origin of the number is very important. 
 53:36: Just think about it guys. 
 53:37: If someone comes to your house and they're going to put in, let's just say a basketball court for you, whatever. 
 53:43: I don't know if you guys are in basketball, but a basketball court, and they tell you, hey, you know what, this basketball court is going to cost $100,000 and you're like, OK. 
 53:52: What do I do with that? 
 53:52: Like, it's like a big old slippery ball. 
 53:54: I don't know what to do with this thing versus saying, you know what, Eric, you know, there's a lot of ways we could build this basketball court. 
 54:01: Have you thought much about a budget range you've set aside for a project like this? 
 54:06: And what would you say? 
 54:08: Well, they're always gonna come back low, right? 
 54:10: They're gonna be like, I don't know, 5, 100. 
 54:13: Mhm. 
 54:14: And then my next question, listeners, write this down, get your pen out. 
 54:18: What do you hope that will cover? 
 54:21: Everything. 
 54:23: Could you tell me a little bit more what everything means, Eric? 
 54:25: I wanna make sure I get it right. 
 54:27: well, I want, you know, I wanna play full chord, so I wanna have, you know, both 22 hoops running both directions. 
 54:35: I wanna have a multi-colored, you know, flooring situation with the 3-point line, and the whole thing that, so, yeah, that's what I want. 
 54:46: Right? 
 54:46: So, and this is great because you did exactly what the most will do. 
 54:50: Everything is the typical response to what do you hope that will cover. 
 54:53: Cause if we assume that whatever range you give is gonna be everything, you might be wrong. 
 55:00: I had an I had an example once where I reached out, or a customer reached out to me, I reached back out to them. 
 55:04: I was doing a discovery call process with them. 
 55:06: And in their questionnaire that they sent in before the call, I looked at it and they had a budget of $50,000 to $75,000. 
 55:13: And they wanted the pool, patios, deck, the whole nine yards. 
 55:16: And I'm like, dude, it's like, and what even back in the 1940s you couldn't get that, right? 
 55:21: I'm like, it's OK. 
 55:22: I could, I could right then and there, judge that situation or I can get really curious. 
 55:27: So I decided to get curious. 
 55:28: So I went through the qualification system and when we got to budget, I said, what do you hope that will cover? 
 55:33: And they're like, well, we know it won't cover the pool. 
 55:38: And we're willing to go up to 100, and the pool will be in the future. 
 55:41: All of a sudden a project went from no way in heck to let's get started now. 
 55:44: And if I would have assumed. 
 55:46: That it covered everything because when I asked them, what do you hope that will cover, and they said, doesn't, that's not going to cover the pool. 
 55:51: I know that. 
 55:52: All of a sudden it opened it up, but everything is the most common response you get. 
 55:55: And then you have to be coiled and ready for the next question, which is going to be, well, can you tell me a little bit more about what everything is so I can get that right? 
 56:02: And then you're going to go into giving me. 
 56:03: Showing me your cards, and then I can sit here with my little notepad, taking notes and be like, all right, well, you mentioned that you wanted that basketball court with two basketball hoops on either side. 
 56:11: I'm not a basketball guy, so just, just bear with me here, right? 
 56:14: that 3 point line, the whole deal, like all laid out, you want it to be made out of this material. 
 56:18: Are you guys open to learning what those things typically cost? 
 56:21: The answer is always yes. 
 56:23: And then you get the opportunity to divulge that, but you've already given a number first. 
 56:28: And then we can, then we'll get a decision right then and there whether that customer wants to move forward with that or if that original budget that they gave, that really low budget is all they got, and that's OK, then we give them a graceful exit. 
 56:39: Yeah. 
 56:40: And we're doing, guys, everything we've talked about so far, we haven't left our office yet. 
 56:43: My feet are still up on the ottoman. 
 56:45: I haven't droven anywhere. 
 56:47: I have about 15 minutes into this relationship right now and we already know all this stuff. 
 56:51: And then I can make a decision whether this is worthy of our time to invest to go out and meet with this customer. 
 56:55: They're getting what they want at the consultation, they're getting it ahead of time. 
 56:58: They get it faster this way. 
 56:59: Now what's good is to get a couple of pictures of the site if you can for this call, so that you can be looking at real-time stuff. 
 57:06: You know, that's helpful. 
 57:08: Love it. 
 57:08: Yeah, because we just, oh gosh, I, I look back, Josh, of how many hours of my life I wasted driving around Los Angeles to do bids for people who didn't even deserve to have a bid. 
 57:21: You, you know, like, you know, the Walmart shoppers were Nordstrom pricing, and we didn't ask, and, you know, we show up, How do you feel about people who email a bid? 
 57:37: good question, because this is my, my pet peeve. 
 57:40: OK. 
 57:42: So do you want me to go first, or do I want me to, you want me to listen to your pet peeve first? 
 57:46: Whatever is better for you. 
 57:48: OK, I'm a man that's curious, so I'd love to hear your pet peeve first. 
 57:51: OK. 
 57:52: My pet peeve is if I go and take the time, energy, let's say I haven't. 
 57:58: Most contractors that are listed, like most people aren't qualifying as much as we just talked about, right? 
 58:03: So I'm gonna go to a bid. 
 58:05: I have, I have a client who's like, you say qualifying as much as we've talked about. 
 58:08: We've asked 5 questions, guys. 
 58:10: Yeah, well, yes, keep going. 
 58:12: What I'm saying is we've asked none other than what time can you meet, right? 
 58:16: So we're, we're at the, you got a check. 
 58:18: You got a pulse. 
 58:18: I'm, I'm on my way. 
 58:20: Yeah, but so, so let's, I mean, because this is typical of, of a lot of, especially my coaching clients. 
 58:26: They'll go to a house in a neighborhood that they work in, right? 
 58:30: Right demographic, and They'll go spend an hour with that person, walk through the whole job, build social capital, put on a show, the whole nine yards, right? 
 58:45: And let's say it's, you know, an electrical contractor or an HVAC guy, and they have to, like, to, to actually put the pricing together, it would take them 20 or 30 minutes, OK? 
 58:56: Mhm. 
 58:58: They go, I'm in that, they wanna go home. 
 59:01: It's the end of the day, and they go, Mrs. 
 59:03: Jones, I'll email, mail you over the proposal. 
 59:07: OK? 
 59:08: To me, you might as well have never gone. 
 59:11: Right, because as soon as I leave, I am now a commodity. 
 59:14: I am no longer, you know, this person that they like, because she wanted to know how much it was going to cost. 
 59:21: It's not even that, Larry, unless I'm, unless I'm the lowest price, as soon as I leave, I've given all my power away because now I'm, I'm not the lowest price, and I could have put on an awesome show, but then I email a price that's, let's say 30% higher than everybody else who's giving a bid. 
 59:39: All they're looking at now is 4 sheets of paper and a price. 
 59:43: I could, if I had said, hey, can I go to the van? 
 59:47: I've got a printer out there. 
 59:48: If I could have 20 minutes to work up an estimate for you, would you mind if I ring the doorbell and come back in, and I can present that to you in person so that you, I can answer any questions? 
 59:58: My chance of getting that job is so much higher to me, to me, if I stay on site. 
 1:00:05: Yet, I have contractor after contractor after contractor, and they insist on leaving and emailing the bid, because I feel they either fear rejection face to face, so it's easier to throw a bid, or they just want to go home, and we all know, we all suck at paperwork, so it takes a week to get it back, and now, by that point, I'm just a price and my closing percentage is gonna be super low. 
 1:00:30: That's my rant, Josh. 
 1:00:31: Like that's my pet peeve. 
 1:00:33: It's good. 
 1:00:33: So, so much of this is down to expectations. 
 1:00:36: It's an entire, one of the, the core 10, right? 
 1:00:39: It's setting expectations. 
 1:00:40: The path of profit or loss is paved in expectations. 
 1:00:44: So, if you're not a man or a woman of your word and you say you're going to be there at 3 and you're not there at 3, you already broke trust. 
 1:00:49: If you're there 5 minutes early and you do each time, each time you're always there, you become dependable, that builds trust, right? 
 1:00:55: So when it comes to numbers, it is, the clients are solving for 3 things in the very beginning. 
 1:00:59: You know, can I even afford this? 
 1:01:01: So what's it going to cost me, right? 
 1:01:02: That's a big one. 
 1:01:03: So they're having you out to us to figure that out so they can look at it and figure that out themselves. 
 1:01:07: Next is, who's going to be here at my house? 
 1:01:09: Who's going to build it? 
 1:01:10: Who's going to install it, right? 
 1:01:11: And do I trust this person? 
 1:01:13: And then, what's it gonna look like or how's it gonna function? 
 1:01:16: Right, so those are the things that they're solving for. 
 1:01:18: Is it going to be comfortable? 
 1:01:19: It's gonna make my, my life easier or more difficult? 
 1:01:21: Is, am I gonna be happier in my house or less happy in my house? 
 1:01:25: So, it's the people, it's the thing, and it's the cost. 
 1:01:28: So, if we can solve for all those things on our discovery call first, we get a rough range of budget, they're good with that, say that HVAC system. 
 1:01:36: Yeah, you're probably 300,000 to $35,000 for what we're talking about here, and I haven't seen it yet, but this is what these things typically go. 
 1:01:41: Is that, is that a range you're looking to work in? 
 1:01:44: Yeah, that sounds good. 
 1:01:44: That sounds about right where we wanna be. 
 1:01:46: OK, cool. 
 1:01:46: Let's come out and take a look. 
 1:01:47: You know, assuming they didn't give you a number ahead of time. 
 1:01:50: but as long as you're within a line, good, let's go out and meet with that customer. 
 1:01:53: What if they're, you know, got a $5000 to $10,000 budget when they answer that question. 
 1:01:58: Then why are we even out there? 
 1:01:59: So that's the first of all. 
 1:02:01: So those are the three questions they're answering for. 
 1:02:02: If we can solve those 3 on the phone before we go out, what's the likelihood of that person becoming a, not just a customer, but a raving fan. 
 1:02:11: Way higher, way higher. 
 1:02:13: Exactly. 
 1:02:14: So when it comes to emailing bids, here, here's my recommendation for any student that I work with. 
 1:02:18: It's like, look, when you send a bid, a proposal out into the ether through the internet, it lands on your desk and you never know where that customer is at. 
 1:02:27: You, 99% of what you just got done talking to them about for the last hour is out of their mind within 3 minutes, right? 
 1:02:32: You have less than 6 hours of staying power in their brain and they're onto something else, if they even remember your name after that. 
 1:02:37: So when it comes to emailing a bid, here's my suggestion to everybody out there. 
 1:02:41: There's Zoom, which is the the software we're using right now, and then there's Loom, right? 
 1:02:46: Loom starts with an L. 
 1:02:47: Loom is like this, but you can voice over things. 
 1:02:50: So here's my suggestion, guys, and you can send me 10% of your whatever you make above what you made last year for this, right? 
 1:02:57: You shoot a Loom video. 
 1:02:58: Explaining your proposal. 
 1:02:59: Hey, Mrs. 
 1:03:00: Jones, it was great meeting with you today. 
 1:03:01: You're a little bubble in the corner at the bottom. 
 1:03:03: If you're not that technically savvy or you don't, you don't like the way you look, shut the bubble off. 
 1:03:07: Your voice is more important than anything here. 
 1:03:09: Hey guys, look, I just wanna go over top of this, this proposal with you. 
 1:03:11: I wanna go line by line and see if you have any questions. 
 1:03:13: I just wanna explain what we've done here. 
 1:03:15: Here, we're gonna put in this unit here. 
 1:03:17: We chose this unit because this is the one we looked at when we were together, blah, blah, all the way down through. 
 1:03:20: Remember, you wanted to have easy controls on your iPhone so you can turn your house. 
 1:03:24: Offer on when you're gone on vacation because you travel a lot and you want to make sure the area where the dogs are is cooler than the area the rest of the, like all that kind of stuff, right? 
 1:03:31: All those notes you took, but you voice it and you go through the whole proposal with them, just like you're sitting at the kitchen table with them, but you do it this way, then you send it out to them. 
 1:03:39: And then you set a thing and say, all right, well, you send it over to him the next morning, you say, all right, guys, I sent over the proposal, and not just like, hey, let me know if you have any questions. 
 1:03:49: Like that's just the opposite. 
 1:03:51: Let me know if you have any questions about it. 
 1:03:52: That's the standard follow-up, number one step, right? 
 1:03:55: No value whatsoever. 
 1:03:57: We have to be thinking about follow up, not as pesking people, but as serving them, as loving on them, right? 
 1:04:04: And this is a service that we're doing, not some kind of thing that they're going to be really pissed off about or mad about. 
 1:04:09: If we can get, again, we're back to mindset again. 
 1:04:12: If we can shift that dynamic in our head and see this being a value play and not a pesky play, all of a sudden we'll want to do it again, right? 
 1:04:19: So then we would send out some type of a either an email or a voicemail. 
 1:04:22: You can even, here's another, this is next level, so I teach my my upper guys. 
 1:04:25: I'm like, look, take your phone. 
 1:04:27: Pop it on, a little video and be like, hey, Mrs. 
 1:04:29: Jones, it was so great to meet with you. 
 1:04:31: Last night, I sent over a proposal for you. 
 1:04:33: I, I know you may have some questions, you wanna talk to your husband, but I'm here to help you. 
 1:04:36: I wanna help you win. 
 1:04:38: So, How does that sound to you? 
 1:04:41: Boom, send it out to him. 
 1:04:44: Also they got a video of you in your face talking to them, speaking to them about their project after they got a loom. 
 1:04:49: This all took you about 7 minutes. 
 1:04:52: Right. 
 1:04:53: No, I have no issue with that. 
 1:04:54: I just have an issue with just throwing out a bid and hoping they call me. 
 1:04:59: Yeah, exactly. 
 1:05:00: But it's, it's how much you put into it because the customer will feel your intentions. 
 1:05:04: Most contractors don't really think about that. 
 1:05:06: They don't feel the intention. 
 1:05:07: All they're like, I just did my thing. 
 1:05:08: I said I give them a proposal. 
 1:05:09: I'm a busy guy, man, come on, it's been 7 days since we've met. 
 1:05:12: Oh well, you're gonna get what I give you. 
 1:05:14: And the customer's like, I got money right now. 
 1:05:16: I want this done, and whoever I can trust the most, not necessarily the cheapest, whoever I can trust the most to get this done, and it's within a range of budget that I think is reasonable for what they want, or we have to adjust that through demonstration again of what that reasonableness is, they're going to most likely move forward. 
 1:05:33: Now, again, like I say, every time, there are people that all they focus on is numbers. 
 1:05:37: They're out there. 
 1:05:39: We're not solving for them. 
 1:05:40: Those are the, those are the ones that the guys lowest in the brackets, they service those guys, and next thing you know, they're out of business. 
 1:05:47: Well, and those guys are always the worst clients ever, because, because it's so transactional. 
 1:05:54: There's no emotion to it. 
 1:05:56: It's just money. 
 1:05:58: It is, it's like prostitution, right? 
 1:05:59: Just, yeah, exactly. 
 1:06:00: It's just, it's just, I mean, it's, it's, it's a horrible way to say it, but it's true. 
 1:06:05: It's, it's just like just give me the money and get it over with. 
 1:06:07: Like that's what it is, and it's like, at the end of the day, do you want people to feel that kind of feeling when they're working with your company, or do you want them to actually feel like you care, cause you didn't get in the business because you don't care at all. 
 1:06:18: Maybe they've got burned out over the years, maybe you just got so jaded because of people trying to take advantage of you and talk down to you and cut your price down, and like, I look at it this way, guys, what we do as contractors, as people that service professionals. 
 1:06:31: It is incredible. 
 1:06:32: We get to take our hands and build stuff. 
 1:06:34: We take ideas, we turn words into reality where families live and thrive. 
 1:06:40: That is important work. 
 1:06:42: That is very important work, and we should be able to charge premium for it. 
 1:06:45: I never hear. 
 1:06:48: Of a doctor or a lawyer, and I'm gonna push you guys a little bit here. 
 1:06:51: I never hear of a doctor or a lawyer, having people come in and say, no, you're $10 too high, not doing that. 
 1:06:57: Or I'm gonna go get, maybe they get other opinions. 
 1:06:59: Opinions is fine. 
 1:07:00: That's OK. 
 1:07:01: They want different opinions. 
 1:07:02: But they don't come in there trying to cut their price down. 
 1:07:04: A lawyer says, I'm $500 an hour, that's what you pay. 
 1:07:06: A doctor says it's gonna cost $20,000 use your insurance, pay the rest out of pocket. 
 1:07:10: You don't question those things. 
 1:07:12: But as soon as the contractor comes out, somebody who works every day to to to support their family and provide, they come out, then all of a sudden they can just cut them out at the knees. 
 1:07:21: Like, whoever said that was acceptable? 
 1:07:23: When did we ever start tolerating this? 
 1:07:25: When? 
 1:07:27: And the reason why is because we don't have a piece of paper on our wall that says that we're professionals. 
 1:07:30: Exactly, exactly. 
 1:07:31: So if you need to do that, listeners, go get a piece of paper and say, I'm a professional, put that damn thing in a, in a, in a frame, put it on the wall and act like one. 
 1:07:38: And that's how you're actually gonna get premium. 
 1:07:39: You gotta believe you are worth it. 
 1:07:42: Yeah, I have, I have a, I have a client who's, who, who struggles with this, and, and for a whole bunch of reasons, and those aren't important, but he's he's a master electrician with 30 years of experience. 
 1:07:54: And he was telling me, like, yeah, I'm charging, you know, X amount of dollars, and it wasn't enough. 
 1:08:00: And I was like, OK, you know, so do you have a big like private equity backed company in your town? 
 1:08:06: Oh yeah, how much do they charge? 
 1:08:08: So I think he said like 200 bucks an hour or something like that, right? 
 1:08:10: And, and he's like, 800 bucks an hour. 
 1:08:14: And I'm like, so, OK, so you're telling me that the big PE company, so are they sending out a 30-year experience master electrician? 
 1:08:24: Oh no, they're sending some kid that doesn't know what they're doing. 
 1:08:27: Yeah. 
 1:08:27: So I'm like, so they're charging 4 times more than you and sending like a newbie, yeah, and I'm like, so are you telling, you know, my next question is, what percentage of people are master electricians in the United States? 
 1:08:40: It's 8%. 
 1:08:42: Yeah, that look. 
 1:08:43: And I'm like, 8%. 
 1:08:44: So I'm like, Are you telling every single person, I don't know if you know, but like I'm in the top 8% of my trade, right? 
 1:08:51: Like, like you don't have to say that to brag. 
 1:08:55: You have to say that to give them perspective. 
 1:08:58: And as he started to do that, guess what happened? 
 1:09:02: Higher, higher, higher, and because the 8% number is the piece of paper on the wall in that trade for him, and that gives him gravitas with the client and Now, so we're going back and I love that. 
 1:09:17: I love that, Eric. 
 1:09:18: So, when he's talking about his master electrician, it's not about being like, I'm a master electrician. 
 1:09:24: Look, I got a shirt that says so, like, because the client's thinking, same question. 
 1:09:28: Well, who cares? 
 1:09:29: What's in it for me? 
 1:09:30: I can hire that other kid with pimples on his face that's not a master electrician for, for less money or whatever the situation might be, right? 
 1:09:35: Or I can hire you as a master electrician for more. 
 1:09:38: Why, why should I care? 
 1:09:39: What's in it for me? 
 1:09:40: And that's where we do a value stat. 
 1:09:42: In the paradigm of what value that a master electrician brings to the table, and then the client can automatically see the difference in cost, and most of the time we'll pay it. 
 1:09:51: But we need to be very purposeful in how we stack that value for the customers so they can say, oh, yeah, well, I, I wouldn't want that to happen to me. 
 1:09:59: Like, you know, I don't know the electrician where my, my son is studying to be an electrician right now, so I'll know more about that in the future. 
 1:10:04: But well, you know, with electrical work, the biggest sell is safety. 
 1:10:08: Let's try to not burn your house down, please. 
 1:10:11: Yeah, exactly, right? 
 1:10:12: So, you know, it's like, well, I'm a master electrician, and these are all the things that you have to look out for. 
 1:10:18: The, you know, are, are you worried that your house will burn down? 
 1:10:21: well, I wasn't until you just said that. 
 1:10:23: OK, great. 
 1:10:24: You're like, here's a fire extinguisher. 
 1:10:26: Let's talk about all the. 
 1:10:27: Ways of people, you know, could burn your house down, you know, with, with lack of knowledge. 
 1:10:32: So yeah, no, that's awesome. 
 1:10:34: OK, the, the value, hang on a second. 
 1:10:35: The value stack that you're talking about is so valuable, builds your confidence when you're presenting to the client. 
 1:10:42: Oh, I've got all these things, and especially when you have one of your team members go out and they're being building their own confidence as they're saying it, so. 
 1:10:51: Confidence with selling makes a huge difference, and the guy that Eric's talking about, he didn't have that. 
 1:10:56: And telling him and showing it and being able to present it, his confidence went through the roof with the closing percentage. 
 1:11:03: So I think that's super valuable. 
 1:11:05: Absolutely, yeah, no, I agree. 
 1:11:07: OK, Josh, look, we don't wanna take your whole day. 
 1:11:09: It's Friday, and, you're probably gonna go hike somewhere really cool or something, so we don't wanna let, let you go do that. 
 1:11:15: But, why don't we just do a couple of things if we could do. 
 1:11:20: before you leave, favorite business book, favorite business podcast that isn't yours and isn't ours. 
 1:11:31: let me think. 
 1:11:32: Favorite business podcast. 
 1:11:33: I enjoy, I mean, Simple Numbers does a great, they do a lot of stuff. 
 1:11:39: I don't know if they have a strong podcast, but I know that they have, you know, a great community where they do a lot of great things. 
 1:11:45: I like Story Brand, you know, what they're doing over there is podcast. 
 1:11:49: Yeah, Donald Miller, they're doing great stuff over there. 
 1:11:51: He's interviewing a lot of good guys. 
 1:11:53: I love listening to that. 
 1:11:55: business book, my goodness. 
 1:11:57: If I, if I told you, let me rephrase the question then. 
 1:12:01: Josh, I'm only get, you only get to read one business book your whole life. 
 1:12:04: What do you read? 
 1:12:06: I'm reading It's called The Big Five for Life. 
 1:12:09: It's an obscure book that that was written that I read years ago. 
 1:12:15: And you just have to read it. 
 1:12:16: It's, it's, it's a story. 
 1:12:18: It's what it is. 
 1:12:18: It's more like not a parable, but like a story, you know, it's, it really lays out this idea of, your PFE, which is your purpose for existence, like deciding like why am I here, and then your big five for life, 5 things that you really want to accomplish in your life, and then you share that with everybody, business partners, associates, friends, customers, and in that, others start to connect with those things. 
 1:12:41: I have, you know, a friend that he did this and then he was at a clients with a client meeting and next thing you know, he wanted, he was wanted to become a pilot, like he wanted to fly small planes. 
 1:12:50: And he showed him his car and he flipped it over and he's like, holy crap, you want to fly planes? 
 1:12:54: Within an hour they were sitting inside a million dollar plane and he was showing them how to fly it, right? 
 1:12:58: It's like, you, the thing is you just don't know until you open yourself up for this, and I'm not talking about that as, you know, as, as anything more than just being more purposeful in life. 
 1:13:07: They talk about living a. 
 1:13:10: These museum moments like in life, you think about your whole life being pictures and when you walk through in the very last days, are you going to be proud of the pictures that are on the wall? 
 1:13:17: Are you're going to be like, I, I, I lived a full life, or are you going to be like, I just was chained to a desk or just did the work to pay the bills? 
 1:13:23: Like what does this look like? 
 1:13:24: And it was really transformative. 
 1:13:25: For me and how he built companies in the book and how he empowered people through God's gifts, you know, that they had and just said, all right, well, you're not good here, but I'll move you over here and then they flourish and they start taking over the companies in the most beautiful way and it's just, it really helped guide my heart. 
 1:13:39: I mean that and Emuth, obviously, that was one of the first ones. 
 1:13:42: But yeah, those were, those were pivotal in my life. 
 1:13:44: Yeah, OK, awesome. 
 1:13:45: Well, I hadn't heard of that book, so that's John Delei. 
 1:13:51: Yeah, it was the author. 
 1:13:52: You'll see it on, you'll see it on Amazon. 
 1:13:53: You can buy it, but it's a very obscure book, and I just, it really shifted something for me. 
 1:13:57: That's awesome. 
 1:13:58: OK, let's, while we're talking about books, how does everybody find your book? 
 1:14:02: Where do we, where do they go? 
 1:14:03: Because we want to make sure that they, look, we've had a lot of people on with a lot of different books over the last 7 years. 
 1:14:11: This is one of my favorite books I've, I've read. 
 1:14:14: Like I really, really enjoy this, and, and, and like, look, Larry and I, yeah, we sold our service business, but we still have to sell every single day. 
 1:14:22: Like, I, I know Larry and I are both like looking at that going, OK, what can we implement from this book in our own sales process? 
 1:14:28: Thank you. 
 1:14:29: I really appreciate that, guys. 
 1:14:31: You know, I, I built it to help, and I've been given these gifts, these, these, experiences in life, and I feel like when you're given a gift that you should share it. 
 1:14:39: Right, and that's why I decided to write the book, but if they want, if people that are listening, they want to get a copy of the book and find out what we're talking about, they can go to Amazon. 
 1:14:46: It's the simplest, fastest place, there's paperback there, there's hardcover, there's Kindle, and there's also Audible. 
 1:14:51: So if you're, you know, out there, if you're a contractor, you're like, I don't got time to read or don't like to read, I know I never like to read. 
 1:14:56: I never had the focus or the bandwidth. 
 1:14:58: So I like to listen to things like podcasts and stuff. 
 1:15:00: So, it's audible, it's there. 
 1:15:02: You can download it and get started right away with it. 
 1:15:04: And, yeah. 
 1:15:06: And what about Y Express? 
 1:15:07: Why don't you tell quickly what, what that's all about in case anybody might be interested in that too, because we do have landscapers who listen. 
 1:15:15: We're landscape designers. 
 1:15:16: yes, Express Sales Academy is, is designed to be a place where, at this point, landscapers, hardscapers out there living professionals come in and we create and structure a sales process unique to their company, so they can stand out amongst their competition. 
 1:15:31: They can work less hours, make more money, and have more confidence in what they're doing. 
 1:15:34: And also, here's the big one. 
 1:15:36: Get the owners out of the seat of having to be the only salespeople. 
 1:15:39: We build structure so that others can do it too, and do it as well or better than you can. 
 1:15:44: So if you really want to see an exit strategy at some point in your life and you don't want to be doing the same thing you're doing forever, it's time to empower a team. 
 1:15:50: You build a system for that, and you can step away and go on 2 and 3 week vacations and go climb mountains and not have to worry about it. 
 1:15:55: Your company is more full of money when you get back than when you left. 
 1:15:59: It's because you've created a space for that. 
 1:16:01: So that's you can go to yes.express and see what we've got going on there. 
 1:16:05: I also have a, a podcast as well. 
 1:16:07: It's called Sales Made Simple. 
 1:16:08: It's on anywhere you can get a podcast, so could take a listen there. 
 1:16:11: We've got hundreds of episodes in there, so, yeah, very cool. 
 1:16:14: Real quick, you just touched on something that I would like to finish with. 
 1:16:18: A lot of owners listen to this, and they always think that they're the best at sales. 
 1:16:25: My experience is a lot of us are not the best at sales because we have too much information. 
 1:16:31: We know how much money we need by Friday. 
 1:16:34: We need, we know what the stressors are. 
 1:16:36: We get desperate, where a lot of times an employee doesn't have any of the baggage that the owner has, and they will come in and bid much more high and much more confidently, because they don't have all the other stuff. 
 1:16:50: Do you see that? 
 1:16:51: Are you in agreement with that? 
 1:16:53: I am 100% because they're in it for a slightly different reason. 
 1:16:56: You see, you know, as the owner, you're going to see, all the bills, all the weight, all the stuff to your point that you got to pay. 
 1:17:03: So you're like, well, if they got to drop the price, but I really, like you're doing all the math in your head trying to ninja this thing together, right? 
 1:17:09: And at the other guy that just knows I need to sell it for this margin, does that, you know, there might be a little wiggle room or maybe there isn't, and they just sell it or they don't sell it, like they don't have any of that baggage because they just don't know. 
 1:17:19: And that's what makes them more powerful and more capable because they don't have all the weight of, of running everything else or knowing what the, what that one project might mean to everything else. 
 1:17:28: So they, they go out with a much more pure mentality, and they come back like you sold it for that much, good job, right, right, yeah, that's what I mean. 
 1:17:36: Yeah, exactly. 
 1:17:38: Well, it's the best. 
 1:17:39: All right, well, thank you, man. 
 1:17:40: I appreciate you coming on. 
 1:17:41: Larry, I'll let you. 
 1:17:43: Take off the, the end of the show here. 
 1:17:46: Josh, thanks, man. 
 1:17:46: Appreciate that. 
 1:17:47: Always a pleasure. 
 1:17:48: I appreciate the opportunity. 
 1:17:49: It's a pleasure, my friend. 
 1:17:50: Tons of gold nuggets you left for everybody. 
 1:17:53: It was great. 
 1:17:54: Everybody go out and get the book. 
 1:17:57: You're gonna totally be pleased with it just like Eric and I were, and it's been a pleasure, my friend. 
 1:18:01: We'll see you on the next time we have a podcast. 
 1:18:03: We have some fun, more fun together. 
 1:18:05: All right, thanks, John. 
 1:18:09: Thank you for listening to the Blue Collar Nation podcast. 
 1:18:12: For more information about Eric and Larry and Super Tech University, please visit us at supertechu.com. 
 1:18:21: That is supertech U, the letter U.com.