Real vs. Junk Leads For Contractors | Ed Pain & David Stodolak

Dmitry talks to Ed Pain and David Stodolak about marketing trends, what makes contractors successful, and how to tell the difference between real vs. "junk" leads. 

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Today's guest:
Ed Pain and David Stodolak
Connecting The Dots: https://connectingdotsllc.com
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Dmitry’s coaching program: https://roofing-school.com
Have a question? Text me: 612-558-4881
Connect with Dmitry: https://dmitrylipinskiy.com/
Contractors I recommend: https://directorii.com
Best Deals on Underlayment: https://BemDirect.com
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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Like, would you say, like, don't sell your company without a broker?

SPEAKER_00 0:03

This started for me as a side hustle to him too. It started as a side hustle.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

And before you know, we start making money. What's the biggest marketing scam that contractors fall for? I always say businesses fail for two reasons.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Processor people. Truth be told, a lot of business owners are addicted to personalities, right? No matter who you put there is gonna sick. What's the difference between junk lead and boot lead? They're cheap. They want to get the cheapest lead, but so they rather get volume and they don't know how to work volume.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Everyone loves Aunt Susie, but when you start doing 10, 20, 30 reps a week, Aunt Susie may still work for the company, but she's no longer a bookkeeper.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I found some of the best media buyers, they're not in America. You gotta find these people. They're like needles in a haystack and they're worth every single penny when you find them. What do you want now? 100. 100 million?

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Right, guys, we have guests from Florida. Um, we have 20 inches of snow and very cold day, actually. Sorry about that. But check this out. I uh usually don't fall in love with someone else's last name, but Ed Payne is I I think he has the coolest last name. And wait until you hear the name of his podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

What is it? Payne Points. Spelled just like my last name, P-A-I-N.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Genius, genius. I've been in Payne Cave. I was there this morning and I I I love the name. And uh David Stadilak.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

So you guys business partners? Correct, yeah. We're we have a lead generation company called Connection Horns with a virtual staff at Coffin company called Roofs in the Box as well. And what else?

SPEAKER_02 1:28

I think is that the What are you guys known for? What's your like uh claim to fame?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Probably probably lead generation, performance marketing. It's a little different than um than typical marketing because we're tied to KPIs. It's almost like saying that um like uh we're tied into the to the to the because people use words like cost of acquisition. CAC is fine, but it's really about ad ratio, right? It's like if it cost me$500 to get a thousand dollar roofing lead, it's uh 50% of my ad ratio is on marketing spend. So what we do that's a little bit different in the lead generation spaces, it's a partnership. Like Dave always likes to say, we like to do win-wins. So lead generation, what we do is we're tied with big big box kind of companies and we're tied to the number. Like if I go to you and say, hey, if your average roof job is uh twenty thousand, would you pay me five hundred dollars for a guaranteed sale? So we reverse engineer the numbers to tie into the to the numbers. So our claim to fame really is getting into these big dollar spaces and partner with these uh end clients. So that's kind of what I think.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

I just I just came back from Alex from what's it today's workshop and I've heard the word CAC probably like 200 times. Yeah, like one of the most important yeah, well, important metric, right? But uh uh what other metric is important in your opinion? So CAC is one. What's another one?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Um cost per appointment, how much is the cost to generate? Because obviously it's uh sales is a numbers game, right? So you gotta get in front of more, you gotta get inside the house or cost per sit. You gotta get in front of the house to actually close the deal. So that's very important too. And then that's where you can see the difference between a really good sales org versus a mediocre sales org. I mean, uh, we were a big, our also a big claim of fame was solar. We blew up in solar, we were top five in the nation in solar lead generation. We worked with uh SunPro before they got bought out by for a billion dollars by ADT Home Security, Momentum Solar, all these big names, Sunrun. So the point is that Momentum was very aggressive in terms of when they call, they will call the lead within seven seconds. You didn't pick up the phone, they call you again. They were borderline harassing. That's what you got to do. I mean, you pay for the damn lead, and then they will go to the home. They wanted each um sales rep, outside sales rep to have four sits per day. If they know they had four sits, they should just close one, right? So they have their numbers down. So I think cost per sit, cost per contact, there's there's so many variables when it comes to it, you know. And we know our leads are our listen, we're not saying our leads are the best leads in the world, but they're they're scalable leads, they're good. We know how they're sourced. So when you put them with the right sales organization, you marry them, you're gonna make money. And it's we've it's the recipes there.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

So at the peak of the solar industry, when we have all the big players dominating all the markets, hiring hundreds of sales reps per year. What was CAC, what was customer acquisition cost in that industry at the peak? Because I feel like they were not only they were printing money, so like I've seen numbers how much sales reps are making, how much financial companies are making, that's where my money is made, right? Like you you have eighty thousand dollar job where thirty thousand dollars goes to finance company, eight thousand dollars goes to sales rep, how much does uh that customer cost?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

It's kind of an autonomous by market. So the bigger guys uh it ranges anywhere from what they're willing to pay is up to three thousand dollar a cac. Okay, um if you're an EPC. But it was but the problem like he was saying is that if I give a lead, let's say I give a lead to um Momentum, for lack of a better word, and I give it a lead to Sunrun, I can give the same lead, both coming from Meta, and get two bipolar opposite cacks. And so kind of like what he's saying, there's an earlier matrix to it. There's one thing to what you're willing to pay per acquisition, but the other thing is um why is the same lead going to two direct two of the big buyers bipolar opposite cacks? Right? It's because there's speed to lead, how they lead how they nourish the lead, um, how they follow up with the lead, uh sales.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Why so many contractors hate metal leads? Is it is it because of the fallout? Would you agree that contractors don't like Facebook because the speed to lead sucks?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

This is what I'll say. Um, and I I talked to someone about this yesterday, talked to a mortgage company about this yesterday. There's Facebook lead forms. Lead forms are very, they're they're the worst, they're like, I don't want to say they're trash, but everything's a numbers game. If you get 100 lead form leads, they're gonna cost you eight to fifteen dollars to generate that lead, but it's already pre-populated. Your phone number will not not be updated. I haven't updated my information on Facebook in 10 years. So I don't know if I changed my number. So the phone number is gonna be bad, there's no verification. So that's like a plain vanilla crappy lead. Now, uh that you can generate volume with that, and you can generate a lot of people, but they're not gonna be high intent. It comes down to intent. Now, if you can really get a good media buyer that can target, hyper target, and they can do phone validation, that leads now gonna cost you$60 a lead. The issue is that a lot of home improvement companies are they're they're I hate to say it, they're they're cheap. They're they're they want to get the cheapest lead, but so they'd rather get volume and they don't know how to work volume. They'd rather they don't realize that you pay for a premium lead, you're gonna have better results in the long term. And your and your reps are gonna be worn down, you know. So I think it's meta works, it's just you have to have the right media buyer, and that's the issue. These guys don't under it's a black box lead generation for a lot of uh home improvement companies, right? I mean, and that's I think that's the issue.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

It's also like depends on your back end, like he's saying, if you got meta leads and it's fifteen percent um appointment set rate. So for every hundred leads, I'm gonna get fifteen appointments versus like a Google ad or YouTube or something else where it's like forty percent set rate. It's not that the um the price per lead is higher for Google, but your CAC can actually be cheaper on Meta. But do you have the back end to nurture these leads and do you have the right cadences? Now it's uh I think it's a combination of is it the right type of meta? Because meta can fall off like a ski jump overnight, right? Changing ads, people copying ads, whatnot. But it's also how how do you nourish the leads? What early indicators are your matrix to keep that lead source on or off? And I think I think marketing's tough for small business owners. I I really do. I think they just don't understand how to nurture it.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

How do you get as close to Google intent as possible in social media? Because we all know that Google the reason they dominate is because intent is there. Be put people do Google search, they're looking for something, and now you see the ad or wherever the form, and you know, your close rate is gonna be super high. What kind of Facebook products or meta products can compete with that these days?

SPEAKER_01 8:04

You're talking about similar acquisition or similar set of things.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Like as close as possible to intent to intent. Because, you know, everybody knows, like you you know, call people ten minutes later and it's like I I don't remember doing it. Yeah. Yeah, you you just did. Yeah, 10 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

You gotta be within 10 seconds, seven seconds, actually. Yeah, speedily, yeah. I was gonna say this is when it comes down to any good organization, right? And what what's great about what Ed's gonna be doing with pain points is that most of these podcasts uh are are all rah-rah. I live in we live in Miami now, it's like all money, there's hundred dollar bills, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, right? That's all the flash. But what's the real substance is that no one sees the pain you go through before you get to that point, right? So the point is that we get lost in in the sauce when it comes to trying to get to the point. But the thing is that you gotta have any good organization has to have people in their lanes. You need to have a I think a lot, an owner tries to do a Google ad campaign themselves or a meta ad, they can't do it, or they hire someone they know. You need to get a real seasoned media buyer. There's people that I've been we traveled all over the world. We've been to Dubai numerous times, we've been all over the top, Bangkok. I found some of the best media buyers. They're not in America, they're in Romania, they're in freaking, there's some good guys in South America. You got to find these people. They're like needles in a haystack, and they're worth every single penny when you find those. And you create structured deals. It's all about data.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

It's all about the data.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

It is, and they know they know how to extrapolate, they know how to target the data. They create these, it's all about, to answer your question, it's all about targeting on Facebook. They know how to target properly. They know which age groups, which demos, and they test, they split test. They're they're like, I hate to say it, they're almost like these geeks, and they don't mind calling them because they want to be in front of the computer three hours a day. I mean, I'm like all day, like maybe a small team three all day long, looking at it. It's like a video game. It's almost like stocks, up and down. They'll put$100 this campaign,$100 here. They'll do 30 different campaigns. And now with AI, they'll do 100 campaigns simultaneously, and they'll lose money in 90, 95% of them. But when they find that one to five percent, that's when they press the gas and they start spending 10,000, 100,000 a day. So it's really finding the right media buyer. And I think that's the thing that business, a lot of home improvement companies don't understand. It's like a whole different world, and they think there's a shortcut. There is no shortcut. You gotta you gotta pay up and you gotta test, right? Would you agree?

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah, I mean, meta's hard because it's like like he's saying, you gotta be an expert in it. Like, because we have meta campaigns, like if you only have one, then it if Facebook has shut down your ads, now what? You might uh your your gas is off.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

That's a whole other thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

And then other people plagiarize content that actually works. So then everyone in the industry, whether it works or not, we've had ads that sucked, and then we see our ads mirrored. Yeah, right? And I'm like, whoa, why do like why are everyone's doing the same thing? So you you have to be diversified on meta, and like he's saying, the the the the look-alike audiences, what's working, what's not, who's your target audience, what's the messaging. This there's so much that goes into meta by vertical, and and and it's also autonomous by region. You know, what what we do in Miami won't work in Minnesota, right? Every every we call it tiers, right? There's like five different tiers of quality, but also five different tiers of maybe buyers as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Who who's your target? So Mata have changed so much in the past five years. It used to be where you could I remember we we could target people attending a conference, like, hey, give me everybody who's flying to this town and at export, and literally you would be walking, you know, IRE and seeing my geo fencing, yeah. Yeah, geo fencing, we would find you right like Meta keep removing those things. And I feel like Meta actually have all the data points there, like as far as like being in business of data, they already won. Google already won. But I feel like they given us, even if you're big players, like very they keep changing rules. I don't want to get you in trouble, but would you say what they teach is not always the best practice?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, you you're you're yeah, I mean, I would I would agree. I mean, it's like anything else, right? They teach you things in college, but you're gonna I mean you talked about going to all these trade shows, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:00

You what did you say about two to two two days of conference equals semester in college? Like to me, like you go to busy conference, it's all relevant today's information because every speaker prepared for weeks, he's in the trenches for now, right? Like for me, you know, I get enough for the next three, four months, which is like semester in college, like literally, like you get it's your exam if you actually attend and take notes.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Yeah, so that that's kind of what you what it is with with with Meta or any any platform, whether it's TikTok, whether it's newsbreak, whatever it is, is that they're gonna give you a platform, the basics, and then you gotta figure it out, right? And then you have to go to the conferences, you have to study. The best media buyers I know, they spent at least six figures on going to these events and they network with other geek media buyers and they learn little tricks to the algorithm, little, little like maybe the time of the day to do a do an ad. Or they do craziest. I mean, they used to, they used to do crazy, crazy stuff. Like they might target in America for like a roofing buyer nationwide, but they would do some ads in Mexico, and there's no Mexico buyers, but the Mexican stuff would lower the overall price. Like there's ways to kind of like finesse the system. So that's what it comes down to. You you can't get you can't be ultra successful by just playing by the I hate to say by playing rules. You gotta you gotta like bend the rules a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

The problem I have is they giving you this, hey, do this, and you know if you're gonna do it, it's not gonna work. Yeah because maybe it's like old recommendation or whatever, and it comes from them. I feel like sometimes even people who work there, they're not in your best interest. They'll take your money. I mean, you can spend Google will take your money. I mean, right now there's you know 20 inches of snow on the ground, right? I can go spend million dollars. Actually, Google will not take your money. I'll take it back. Google will limit you, right? Like, you know, like uh, you know, not Google My Business, but what is it? Um LSA. LSA, right? Like, you know, you you can offer Google more money, but there is no demand, they're not gonna take it. Yeah, so you the point is you can't spend million dollars with Google, but with Meta you can.

SPEAKER_03 13:59

Easily.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

They don't care if it's in the Philippines, like little girls watching your roofing videos, they'll charge you. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Well, let me ask you the same question, throw it back at you, right? Because think about even the last six months of Meta. How how how much have you changed your marketing techniques if you if you're in meta?

SPEAKER_02 14:15

You just have to do more, like more split testing, more like exactly what's changing is like the more you throw at it, like it'll the algorithm is actually the best it's ever been. So it'll you those few that perform well, same with as YouTube, right? Like, if you upload 100 videos on YouTube, you will see that certain videos are doing better, like let's say top 20, like 80-20 rule applies to everything, right? So, now how do we make more of these top 20? I'll give you an example with like this YouTube channel. So, we we made a video and we were so proud of it, it was so good. Jake, right here, he's actually filmed it. And the video tank, and the video was this like I'm uh uh I went to university to major in history. I love history, right? So we did a history of roofing, so we actually filmed it like in three different locations. Like, how did they build roofs in Egypt back like 4,000 years ago, like 3,000 years, like super cool took us three days to script, cool bureau. I mean, we studied, we like put all information out, and I thought it's gonna be like you know, Discovery Channel, whatever. Nobody cares. Nobody cares how they built roofs 4,000 years ago. I'll I can fall asleep and watch that video before I go to sleep. Nobody cares. That video has maybe, I don't know, like it got like a thousand views in the first week, which is like tank for us. And then the very next week, or the very next video, have this guy out of uh Houston, Texas, I think, Jay-Z Dominguez, I believe. And I remember because we compare two. So he called me out on Facebook. He's like, I'm charging$285, and I'm profitable, and all the roofing companies are greedy. And I'm like, Do you want to do podcast about it? He's like, sure. So we go on Zoom and it's just a conversation on Zoom. He's presenting to me his price point as how he's making money, and I'm just arguing it's not enough money to be profitable, and he's gonna like I'm like, where's the money for insurance? Where's the money for accidents? Where's the right? So just very, you know, industry conversation. That video gets like 10,000 views in the first like 24 hours, everybody's debating, everybody's commenting. But Igor calls me is like, Domitisha, do you even need us? Like, you can do it by yourself, you can interview people, upload it, and you get all the views, right? So the question to you as a creator, you know, what what's gonna be your next video? Are you gonna debate another person, do another podcast on you know, topic that everybody talks about, or you're gonna try to entertain people with something that you think it's cool.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

And sometimes you think what this is cool, and it's just tanks, so focus groups are big, and Meta is a giant focus group. Exactly. So they they take your ads, they show it to a whole bunch of people, and it's like people like this, they hate this, and that's what it is.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

It reminded me of that one thing. Uh I know you mentor a mutual friend of ours called Rory. And um, I remember he put up this one thing on this, on he was showing a roof video, and it was something about an electrician, how the wiring was done. And it wasn't, it was a basic video. But an electrician came on there and started like shaming him for like not doing the wiring right or connected correctly or some sort of code. And it wasn't even the content wasn't even that great, but what got all the views was people fighting in the background about electrical work. So it's almost like the drama attracted everyone versus the content of the world.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Because it's engagement. And I absolutely hated about social media in general. Like our best videos on like the best performing videos on social media, it was always the one divided audience. We have one where uh up north in Canada, uh homeowner. We we covered the news, and the news were the contractors sued the homeowner over one-star review. The caveat was it was not a homeowner, it was a tenant. So tenant was in a house, and contractors was doing the work and was rude to them or whatever the case is. And tenants like, you don't treat people like that. And they gave them husband and wife, gave them one-star review because contractors are horrible. And contractors' attitude was like, you're just a tenant, I don't owe you anything. I work on the house, like you, right? The the problem is like, think about this. Like, if you stay in a hotel and you have like, I don't know, water breaks, and plumber comes in and he's like curses you, like you know, like rude. And you see the company name, you're probably gonna give them people give one-star reviews for like bad driving on the highway, right? Anything, right? You see professional and you go to that business, and you just like, hey, you don't do that, right? So in this case, contractor is like, I'm big, you're small, here's a hundred thousand dollar lawsuit, right? But next thing is the homeowner somehow it gets to the media, news company airs the story, and now everybody hates the contractor, and contractor is getting hundreds of negative reviews over it, right? Yeah, so we covered the story, and in this in the comments, contractors like, you know, oh, they're just carents, you know, screw this tenant, they have no right to do it, and all the homeowners like, yeah, horrible contractor, right? And now are they fighting? So now because it's a divide, algorithm pushes it to the top. Do I like it? No. I would rather people uh algorithm push positive content, right? Something that's you know, you do like, I don't know, history of roofing, something educational, but it doesn't want to watch it now, send me the link. But it just doesn't pick up by algorithm.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

So the question I have for you is do we create then more what's your approach to ads? Do we create more dividing or controversial ads?

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Or like what I think it just depends. Like I remember like recently on Meta, like we had this one thing, and it and and we're looking at our audience, like in in Southern Arizona, for instance. A lot of our buying buying were women. And I I had like this manly side, and this I think like you're saying, I know what I like. I'm testosterone, rah-rah, rah, let's go, right? And it's uh but we're our our audience was women for the most part. So then we put a silly ad of a raccoon jumping in, uh talking about stealing money and like whatever, but it's a cute little raccoon and gets a bunch of feeds, right? I think a lot of it isn't so much about like the drama, yes, but know your audience, right? Like if you look at if you look on your CRM, who's making the buying decisions, who what what's your target? So this is kind of but it's autonomous, autonomous by market, right? Not every market's the same. You know, when we're we're out in South Dakota, it's a it's a good old boys' club, right? It's it's just a different target no matter what the market is. So I think that's the main thing. Yes, drama sells, but it's also I think the old static imagery, like like you're saying, like uh these old belief systems on what works doesn't work anymore, right? If you're just putting stills or carousels or or like everyone hearing the same thing doesn't work. I think you just have to be creative so you can be drama, which is fine, I guess. But uh we haven't really done that in the in at least not in the roofing space um or in the brick and mortars that I own. But but I've noticed that um, like you said, it's kind of funny. What I like isn't what my audience likes, and I and I am like, okay, I'm outvoted, you know, know your audience.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Let's talk about your business a little bit more and what's happening now. Like uh I want to hear the story how like the first business, or how did you scale, and what industries you are in today, and what happened to solar? And do you think solar will come back? So you went from solar to roofing and like that's that that's it.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

You you just asked me 30 questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did, I did, but it was intentional.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

I want to hear like hey, we were doing this, we pivot, and we scale this. Like I want to hear.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Yeah, that's tough because we we we have we're doing a lot of stuff together on the Legion side, but then he's doing more on the roofing side.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Did you take a dip with the solar companies as well?

SPEAKER_00 22:05

100%, yeah. No, but we were about to get acquired in what was it, 2023. We signed with private equity. We're too, we're in the earnings uh quality of earnings process, multi-eight figures, right? And we have we had competitors that we we were doing much bigger numbers are than them, and they got they got bought out for 40, 60 million dollars. It was just how did that go? Like did they lose money in the next year?

SPEAKER_02 22:26

Oh, those years.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Yeah, those people got crushed. The people that would have bought us out would have been they would have been left holding a bag, right? And not that we knew that, no one knew it. Here's what I learned. I went to college at NYU during the dot-com bubble. I like the stock markets. I watched, I loved all the financial markets. You got to sell when things are hot. When people are popping bottles, you get the hell out. When people are crying, you get in. So we I was at yeah, I was at uh SPI, now it's called RE Plus. It was 40,000 people in Las Vegas in 2022. It was like September. President Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act. And this would that was a everyone's happy. Everyone's popping bottles. We're like, oh, we have 10 more years. Remember that? Thanks. Yeah, the Inflation Reduction Act, it extended the federal tax credits for solar 30% to 2032. So we're like, this is freaking fantastic. We got 10 more years of this crap. I'm not discovering this stuff. This is phenomenal, right? And then literally, I mean, that's if you look at the stock charts, Wall Street's always right. That's kind of that was around the peak. People started selling, and then those stocks never recovered. N phase stock went from 75 cents to 306. They make Indian solar inverters. That was near the top. One of the companies that was our competitor sold to N Phase. They got some sweet deal, a lot of cash up front. They got stock options when the stock was 100, they went to 300. So there were companies that we were doing much better with then that they they sold for a whole lot more money. So the point of what I'm trying to say is that that was a time to get out. Interest rates went up, which made solar not as economically feasible for most of the country. That was one big thing because they were relying on financing.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Did did did did it punch you in the face that he you did not sell? Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, I mean we we we've we've gone through that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

It's it's it's kind of a it's a mixed bag, right? Because uh it's like, do we want to exit because the term that was about to come, no one could have expected, even in our industry. And do did we want to exit and and let this company that bought us get hold with something that was a declining product? And um the answer is no, right? Because we have integrity, right? We don't want to just sell something just to say we exit and then then the company we sold goes to crap in a handbasket. Um but at the same time, it's like what what you don't know, right? You don't know. Like for us, we would have we would like he was talking about, selling on the way up. I think a lot of companies like we're gonna keep growing, we're gonna keep growing, we're gonna keep growing. But what we didn't know, like we were talking about earlier, when when when the buyout process happens, when they do the forensics, it's based on a it's based on a rolling calendar year. We thought it was physical. So on a fiscal year, we were up. But we had our first downturn ever. So that gave us an eight multiplier with an 80% upfront and a one-year earno to a fifty uh six multiplier just by that just by not by waiting those three months.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

And so for us, what I learned.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

That was a deal breaker for you?

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Well, for us, we thought we can rebuild it. Like a lot of what we don't know, once again, is that now's the time, now's the time. Looking back, would you would you sell it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

But I think we would have three months earlier. Yeah, there's brokers we could have hired. We decided to do a lot on our own, and uh that would have helped us collapse time frames and not that would have sped up the process.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

I'm so glad you said it because I've seen it so many times. I actually work with an amazing broker. Yeah and man, when you have someone holding your hand, I've seen a few people, they got a first deal and changed broker. I have one guy, he changed broker and he said like a second broker, cost him like 300k, but get him like almost double amount. I'm talking about millions. Yeah, and I feel like like would you say like don't sell your company without a broker in this space?

SPEAKER_01 25:49

At this time, yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Yeah, now we know, and you live and you learn. I mean, I when this when these buyout offers, what helped us that we made Inc. 5000 magazine, we made it, we we were making it every single year. We did three years in a row. We actually had one year where two companies made it with this. Our data company made 214, our solar company made 187. And that was people were looking to buy us out. At first, I thought this is BS, but then we started entertaining. I started meeting some of these people, and then it came into the fold. I'm like, wow, they really want to buy us out. And then we actually have a picture from three years ago where we got the actual offer for like uh what was 25 or 30 million dollars, and I we looked at each other in the eyes. It's almost like we fell in love. We were about to start crying, man. Like we we got a picture, there's tears in our eyes, like, wow, this is really happening, man. Like, you know, because this started for me as a side hustle in him, too. It started as a side hustle. We're just trying to make more money for our family. I think your wife was pregnant, my wife was pregnant. This is before we knew each other, and before you know it, we started making money, and like who the hell would want to put it in?

SPEAKER_02 26:39

What do you guys mean?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

At a at a trade show. August 2017 at affiliate some feedback.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

From meeting for the first time to partnering in a business, yeah. How much time did you think?

SPEAKER_01 26:50

We we we did uh we we did okay business for like about two years.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

2,000 here, a few thousand there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Yeah, no, no, no, no, not like anything crazy. And then all of a sudden we started doing like five, six figure months, weeks, and and like and like profit some months.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

And then we liked each other. Um and like I said, it wasn't until we get into business, and this is the other thing, pick your partners. But one back up a little bit more on um so we just jailed right away. We had integrity, we had alignment, we're family men, uh, we both had the same hustle, similar past, um, that kind of stuff. But the I think the thing that I don't know now, which is why I like pain points, is like uh people need to know the end in mind. Right? With like I always say, like with Socrates, like says like you can't go into war not knowing what it means to win, right? We can go to Afghanistan, but why are we there? If you don't define what it means to win, you don't you're never gonna win, right? And the same thing in business. I think what he said is like it's true, like most small business owners get into business, like I just want I just don't want to work for the man. I want to make my own path, but they don't think of the end. Nowadays, when I start businesses, I start with the end in mind. What's my number? You gotta know your number. Reverse engineer it. What what's what's the what's the roadmap to get there? It's a different mindset now. When I when I think when small business gets in, it's great, you're like the 1%, you're making okay money, you uh you're you're you're paving your own desk paving your own path, creating your own destiny, but you never know what it meant to win. And I and so when I ask people when I partner with them, where I mentor them, where I teach them, first thing I ever ask them is, what's your number? Right? And now that's reverse engineer that, and how are you gonna get that number? Right? And it's a it is different different reasons. If it's just let's say your number is a million, just for simple math's sake, and you have a roofing company and you're a single and you're you're a sole proprietor, you're a one-man show doing three million in sales, a couple people, Bondo in the back job, you're a top producer, you're doing three million in storm chasing. Well, the problem in that is you have with no back end, no systems, no process, and and you're making three hundred three million to maybe take home eight hundred thousand potentially, right? But the the issue in that is you a company's gonna come in and offer you one and a half EBITDA, maybe there's no there's not not real there's not a real company there. But that same number, if I do a million a year with um a hundred thousand a year profit with systems and processes, and I get an eight multiplier, right? It's it's almost the same work, a lot different mindset. But so now when you start talking about the eight to twelve multiplier, it's a lot you don't have to hit that high number the same way. It's really just the multiplier that you're trying to exit. But but there's two different ways to go about the same number. And if you don't if you don't come in with that number, you have no idea what it means to win. Right. So I think that was our thing too, is that we were successful, you know, making millions a year. You know, uh 0.1% of America is probably doing what we were doing. But we never defined what it meant to win. Now we know what we want. So it's a little different mindset coming into the water.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

What do you want now?

SPEAKER_01 29:45

100.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

100 million?

unknown 29:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

So it's there too. It's not, it's not it's I I was at an event in Austin the other day, and this guy said he said something, he said only 0.04% of business, four-tenths of one percent, make it to the eight figures in revenue. And I I I was so I was shocked. I thought it'd be, I mean, I didn't think expect it to be like ten percent, I thought maybe it'd be two to three percent. Because I I think in our circle, so many people are hitting those numbers, right? And we're talking about revenue, we're not talking about profit, profit is a whole different story, but uh, I feel like we're like in this circle where it's like it's we talked about this before. Like you, you're you you you you elevate, right, with your group. So now it's like, how do you elevate to get to the when we know people that are doing nine figures too, right? And there's other business owners that have done it in in our industry. So how how do we get there? What do we have to do to get there? And then also, you we leaned out a lot. We were heavy as hell. Like we that year, you don't mind if I talk to numbers, right? We did like 4.2 million in net profit. We probably pissed away at least half a million, if not a million. We will go to these events, bring 10 people with us, hotel rooms for everybody, throw these crazy parties,$5,000 dinner for four people. Like, stupid stuff, man. You know, like not looking back, it's stupid. But like we could have we could have done half spent half of that money, had the same results. So now we're a lot leaner, we're meaner, we're a lot smarter. Yeah, leaner and meaner, you know, and I think that that helped us a lot. And now you have AI. Come with experience? Comes with experience. We wouldn't have we didn't know. We're like, yeah, you know, we gotta do a dog and pony show, hire this guy, spend 150. Noticing everyone that we hired over like a hundred thousand dollars, they all useless. All sucked. I should not forget.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

I think the other thing that uh that's different too is that we we always uh one of the things I always ask uh companies I mentor, and and I love this exercise, someone did it to me and it was a kick in the teeth. And I'm saying, okay, if I want to create, let's just say I do 10 million a year in roofing, and then and and and they said if you were gonna hire me as a consultant, or I was gonna hire you as a consultant, how would you set up the org chart? And what's kind of funny is that what most small business do is they manipulate the org chart to fit the skill sets they have, right? They're not hiring to fit the skill set in which they're looking for. And so what happens is that your companies evolve and change, so does the people that fit those seats. They don't have the right people. And I think for us, there's two things that we had to learn the hard way. Uh-huh. Is one, uh, is it the right person for the right seat? And then secondly, uh, is do we have the right process? I always say businesses fail for two reasons. Our process are people. And you can't even blame the people if you don't have the right processes in play. No matter who you put there is going to sink. But the same but but adversely, uh, if you have the process and this person is not making it, and I think what happens, we pay people a certain amount, which happened to us, so we think they need to be in the C suite or at least the VP level.

unknown 32:24

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

And they're on pay based on pay. But they're but they're like two degrees past their pay grade, right? It's like it's like, but we're paying them, so we we keep them in this role because we're ex we're is we're just wasting money on them. Uh-huh. And instead of putting the right person in there and moving them on to something different. Some of it's on loyalty, some of it's whatever, but we had to learn that uh as you scale and grow, so does their business model. Right. It's not the same. What you started off I always say when Aunt Susie is your bookkeeper, when you're doing one roof a week, and everyone loves Aunt Susie. You know what I mean? But when you start doing 10, 20, 30 roofs a week, Aunt Susie's not even an admin. You know, Aunt Susie may still work for the company, but she's no longer a bookkeeper. Right. So it's just those things of as you grow and evolve, so does your process, your mindset, and your team, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

100%. To your point about numbers, I think only 7% of the businesses in America uh ever make it to one million. 7%. And then if you look at like, and that's what I tell roofers all the time, because when I meet arrogant roofer who is in that hustle culture, I work so hard, I deserve this, I deserve that, and right and just brag about their hard work, but you know you're not working hard. I mean, if you do like, let's say two million dollars, I mean, if you look at the numbers, the only reason you're successful is because you live in the freaking greatest country on earth with the greatest buying power. Go to freaking Colombia and and try to sell people$20,000 roof. Go to Russia, go to Ukraine, go to like half of the world, right? Yeah. The only reason you're successful, you have a high-ticket item and you have people like when I started in this business, I would be driving home, you have like seven, eight checks in your pocket. I was like, why people are trusting me? Like seven, ten, twenty thousand, right? Freaking, you know, you know, 30-year-old Russian who barely speaks English, did nice presentation, and people like, yeah, like here's the check. Yeah. I mean, try go go with your hustle and hard work, you know, another country, try to make it, right? Yeah, so we have it easy. And then guess what? Sometimes they'll steal the check or don't do the job, and they're not gonna even get sued because people don't want to go through the court system and they're like, well, we count our losses and stuff, right? So Yu Gi will get away with murder in this industry. But 7%, 7% make$1 million. And roofing is probably 50-60% of people make one million dollars. I mean, we have smaller players, but you know, one million dollars a year is 100 jobs at$10,000. I mean, it's two jobs a week. Yeah. I mean, it's hard not to meet that bare minimum.

unknown 34:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Yeah. It's hard. It's almost like you have to not be trying.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Yeah, but but if if you if you go like try to open a restaurant and do a million dollars of selling sandwiches.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Oh, you're not in restaurants and coffee. I mean, what is it? You're in the you're you don't even make profit for three years. Oh, yeah. You know, you're you're in negative, negative hours.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

I was at Patrick B. David conference and uh one of the best conferences I've ever attended. So for three days we're learning and stuff, and I have a guy, so we pretty much they give you this task, like business case studies, and you turn around and group of five, six business owners, you talk. So I turn around, and there's a guy behind me, been in uh in Orlando, Florida, 36 years in restaurant business. He's like, What are you guys doing? Like 36 years, and he's like, uh, how do you like? He's like, I hate it, I would never do it again. The worst business ever possible. And we're like, Wax, so for two days, this guy just rented a cup bad. And it's like, here's this thing happened. That I'm like, why don't you get out if it's so bad? It's like I have like 20 employees and I barely making any money, and you always think it's it's gonna change, it never changes. I mean, restaurant is the hardest business in China. They have this saying, like, if you wish, um, if you wish, uh like if you hate someone like your enemy, wish them to have a restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

So my uncle was in concept restaurants, he actually did fairly well. Um, he would never let me do it. He'd he just he said, No, uh, I wanted I loved him, I wanted him to mentor me. I thought he was the best business owner ever. He said, Eddie, uh, there's no way I'm gonna let you follow me in my footsteps. And I'm grateful for that.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

So for our audience, in one sentence, what do you do for the contractors?

SPEAKER_01 36:38

I think we create win-wins. You know, it's uh we we have business solutions that meet two or you have to do it.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

He speaks like a politician. He said something and he did not say anything. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 36:49

You said one sentence.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

What do you actually do for the contractors? We create win-wins. I teach that's what Biden would say.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

Basically, what everything that I've used, uh l let me put it this in two different companies. On on roast in a box, for instance, everything that I've used to scale, I offered the same solutions to my competition. And that's and that's pr there's no secret sauce. That's process, leads, lead nurturing, AI.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

So it's not just the lead, but everything around closures.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Roast in a box, man. It's like, what do you what what have I how did I open up eleven states in one year? Never been on a damn roof in my life. Right? It's systems, process, and scale. The recipe is the recipe. And and what's funny about this space for me is that it's so so billions, if not a trillion dollar industry. Nobody does it the same. And I'm like, why? Right? But for me, that's that's what I believe, at least in the roast in no box out what we do. In connection holdings, I think what we do is we um create I I think it's lead generation, it's performance marketing. We're tied to the KPI. That's what we do in that. On this so there's multiple companies, so it's hard to say which one.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

What's the difference between junk lead and good lead?

SPEAKER_00 37:58

I think a junk lead is like the one, it's all about the intent. How what is their intent? This is it's almost like you're trying to pick up, if you're a single picking up someone at a bar. I mean, I don't even know if these young kids do that anymore. I don't think they go to bars, but back in the day, if you go up, if I'm trying to pick up a uh uh a date or whatever, I go up ten girls, try to get their phone number, maybe one or two, you know, depending on how I look that day, how I smell, how how my composure, right? Um but if they're coming to me, that's you're 80% there, right? So it's about the intent. What's the intent? If I'm going cold to somebody, that's a whole different intent. If they're coming to me, that's gonna be a much higher. It depends on the intent of the lead. So with like Facebook lead forms, lead forms are very low intent. Someone's just clicking a button and it might be a very misleading ad. So it's very it comes down to the intent of the lead. Is the lead high intent? A paper call lead. Someone sees your ad and they they call. There's more urgency there. You're gonna pay more for a paper call lead than a lead form because a person's calling you. A lead form might cause you, like I said before, eight to fifteen dollars, depending on the state. A paper call lead, an inbound call is gonna cost you a hundred dollars, right? But it's gonna call it's gonna take maybe uh fifty to a hundred of those lead forms to turn into a sale, whereas it might take three to four of the paper calls to turn a sale. So you're looking at three hundred, four hundred costs acquisition with paper call versus five hundred to eight hundred, and it's more laborious. You have to make all these calls whether rather than taking a warm call. So it comes out to the intent of the lead, and then Google's gonna always have the highest intent, right? Because people are they're they're searching. So Google, YouTube, they're gonna have high intent. Facebook's probably gonna be somewhere more like mid-intent, right? Then you have TikTok's doing well for a lot of home improvement. Bathroom companies are using TikTok. Uh, some of them are using very successful certain media buyers. There's Newsbreak, which has an older 45 plus uh female audience, and you know, females are the ones that make the decisions at the end of the day, right? They want to do something at the house and like they create urgency on the husband, they get it done. So there's no on the platforms, there's no in the audience, but this is stuff that I traveled 300 times in the last two, three years, and I go to these shows, I go to these conferences, and I learn, I hear these things, I work with these people, but you gotta work with the people that can help you get there. So to answer your question, that's connection holdings on our side. We help roofing home improvement solar companies grow exponentially with our lead generation process.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

Is roofing majority of your portfolio now? It's turning into that way.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Yeah, bathroom too. Bathroom, yeah. Siding's been decent. Yeah. Gutters? Gutters, we we just got assigned Leaf. Uh they just acquired one of our clients, Airy Roofing. Uh, I think that was a four billion dollar deal, so we're getting them going on gutters too, right now. Leaf filter? Yeah, leaf filter.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

I do not like you.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Really? Well, we just started with them, so I don't know what's the other.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

I'll say it on the record. I hate leaf filter with a pack. I hate their sales system.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Okay. I don't I don't know their sales system, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

Well, their sales system is very simple. Like you start here and you drop all the way down. Really? So you'll start at 40 bucks and then you bottom, like at the end, you'll accept 12 and then at that price, you know, which is still super competitive, but sales guy does not even get in any commissions. So I I think it's such a like they get so much hate for it, yeah, but they would not change it. But how do you start at 40? Like it like if you come to my house and say, hey, it's gonna cost you like twelve thousand dollars, and at the end you're ready to take three. Like for me, like there's like oh, so they keep drop selling what you do.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

They just want they want at least.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

Yeah, why did you try at twelve thousand? Why didn't you give me a good price right away? Got it. Yeah. That's what they do. And and uh and set so that's one major complaint because I've run a lot of stories on them. And second one is they target older people, and it's such a like, I mean, I've I I've had caregivers calling me. It's like, hey, to make sure you, you know, my you know, 85-year-old mom just sign up, like, you know, a twelve thousand dollar gattery deal. She has one small house, she trusted them. It's like she does not need 50, it's more than her roof. Yeah. So that's my problem.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Speaking of politics, I'll try not to say names, but I I do as owning a roofing company though, I love going against some of the competition because it's like even our good, better, best um prices, their the bottom price a lot of times is like two, three times our best price. And it's nothing special. Like when you start talking about some of these uh um private equity kind of roofing companies, the numbers start outrageous.

SPEAKER_02 42:14

I'm having a hard time. I don't think I have any uh private equities uh companies on directory.com. Like I used to have like once you sell, like I don't want a part, I don't want a dead partnership because usually it is the highest price, uh a lot of cancellations and a lot of complaints. And for me, it's like I don't know if I can recommend it. Like I'm not hating on private equity, there's a place on the market for them, and some of them are very different than others, but usually it you're turning into pleasing your investors and next roll-up or whatever. So you have to keep raising your prices, which I don't believe in being the cheapest, but there's limits to there's levels to this game.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

When you talk about three, four times, that that's that's that's a ridiculous level.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

Not nothing that's robbery. Yeah. I I would recommend with it. So what should contractors understand about age data versus real-time data analysis? Explain those two markets. Do you want to crack it?

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Yeah, it's funny. I just had a conversation with uh uh a mortgage company yesterday. Uh and they this company likes age data, and I feel like age is like we we love age data. I mean, the when I met Ed, Ed had a company uh connecting the dots. We still have the company, we we merged, and I would buy age data for him, from him for my solar clients. And then I had I I'm more on the live lead side, real-time exclusive lead side. He was aged, but I was we were doing so much business together, like we might as well merge. We'll have a uh we'll have the whole kit in cabo, right? We'll have the real time side and the age side. But we are probably we're top two in the country in age data for for solar home improvement and mortgage at the time. But anyway, I was talking to a mortgage company yesterday. There's not a lot of people working aged leads anymore, but I like aged leads. I think aged leads, if you work them properly, is gonna be your best pound for pound lead. You get the best cost acquisition. If solar, the line in the sand was 2,000 for solar, cost acquisition. Acquisition. We had clients doing$200 to$500 cost acquisition on age leads. And it's because a lead is so it's at a discounted price. You're getting this lead instead of getting a real-time lead for 40-50 bucks, you can get an age lead for 30 cents to$2.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

Where are they coming from?

SPEAKER_01 44:14

So yeah, so basically what we do is we we wait about 30 days out and we we broker leads from some of the biggest uh of affiliates in the space. And um so what we do is we um obviously the first place buyers you want to give them at least a month to work the lead. But like you like you know, like speed the lead, how you nurture the lead, how you follow up on the lead. So the the difference back to the first question, but that's where we get it from. So some of it's internal, a lot, most of it's brokered. People hire us because we got a big buyer network, we have ticket systems, it's automated. But the um but it comes down to CPA or CAC. Um most people in the lead gen space call it CPA, not CAC. But the um but the the point being is like if I have a dollar a lead, let's say for an old roofing lead, and let's say I'm getting a three percent appointment rate, but then now I'm getting sp I'm basically spent three bucks for three leads, right? Versus if I get uh 30% on Google, you you know what I'm saying? I if to get three leads or get three three appointments, I have to buy maybe uh ten leads. So now I get three hundred bucks, a hundred dollars an appointment versus three bucks an appointment. The difference though, you still got you still got addition additional cogs you gotta factor in. Do you have a call center? Do you do you have call proper call cadences? Do you have a call center manager? So it's a lot more work to generate the lead, but your cost of acquisition is always gonna be the cheap, the cheapest. The problem with age, you can't sit there and just ground and pound. It's it'll be like going through bad meta leads. You know, and eventually you just stop following up, right? Because you're like, this is a waste of time, I wait for the next one. Um so aged, you gotta have the right cadences for it, and you have to be a decent size to to to mont to m to make it materialize, right? But so most small business or contractors like the real time intently, but if you have the back end and the process for it, age is just always your cheapest cost of acquisition by far.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

You have to be built for it. And a lot of times what happens, I know a lot of going back to Seoul or Home Improvement, you have if someone just started their company and they're cost conscious, they don't have a lot of money to throw at Facebook or Google, they can start off with age leads, but you need to have hard-nose salespeople, old school salespeople that are able to ground and pound. There's some guys using AI. AI isn't where it needs to be to really be as effective as you want, but some people are using AI to vet the lead and then transfer it to someone on their team. But um age usually works well uh to get off the ground, to get off the ground, get some money, reinvent, and then reinvest that money into your sales floor growing and then into like meta leads or Google leads, as we've done that with. We've been so instrumental in some of these companies growing tremendously. I mean, with the Mark Jones, who sold ADT for about sold some pro for over a billion dollars. I did an interview with him. He thanked us. Like uh we wouldn't have been able to sell if it wasn't for you guys. They bought every lead from us, they bought AIDS leads, they bought Spanish leads, they bought co-registration, they bought transfers, inbound calls. We had eight different lead types in solar, they bought them all as they were growing, you know, because they were trying to hit these numbers. So the point is that they were equipped for it. I went to Louisiana uh 2018 where they had their call center. They had 30 people in there. Fast forward two years later, they had 300 people in there, and they had people in South America, uh Central America calling. They had 500 people they had to feed in the call center. So they weren't they needed age leads, they needed every lead to hit their numbers, right? And they eventually exited. It's funny because I was talking to someone yesterday. They were had they had such a voracious appetite, they were just buying everything under the sun. They were chasing top line. They were chasing top line, you know. So for us, I mean we didn't know what was going on. What happened to them? They exited for$825 million to ADT Home Security. The funny thing is, and I shouldn't say it's funny, uh, ADT wrote it off like a year later because they bought at the top. Actually, when some pro exited, that was probably the that was right around the Biden IRA right a few months before that. That was the top. That was a peak. That was the peak, man, and ADT bought at the top. Their stock went down and they just wrote the thing off.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

Someone made a good dollar and someone probably got fired later for this.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

Exactly. Well, that's business, man, it's risk reward, right? I mean, at the time though, solar looked like it's the best thing in the world. Clean energy, it's all over news. Biden interest rates are so low. Everything was like, and then everything went the other way. But now, you had mentioned it before. What about the future? With the stuff going on in Iran, I I have I have work, I know a lot of Wall Street guys that trade billions of dollars a day. They think nuclear and solar are gonna like you're gonna see more money come back to solar. There's gonna be pressure on the government. The American consumer strapped. They can't afford shit. Doesn't matter where, sorry, they can't afford anything, it doesn't matter where you live, the price of everything's going through the roof. Electric costs are gonna keep going higher. Solar, I think, is gonna make a comeback. We're seeing some growth back in solar again, which is why we never got out of it. Um, and I'm excited for it. So I think we're gonna have some it's gonna come, it's gonna have his day in the sun again.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

Yeah. Uh Tony Robbins says this other thing. I sound like I'm a Tony uh Robbins fanatic, but I'm never I'm really not. But he said he talks about the seasonality of business. Well, this is actually my tattoo, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

Well, my first launch pad in business was actually when I when I went there because it asked me, Are you a business owner or a business operator? And it changed my mindset. There's four things I took away, and those are the four things I talk about. The rest of it I can kind of discard. But the um but he talks about the seasonality of business, right? Talks about toddler, infant, toddler, teenage, mature. And when you when you start a business, think of it like an infant, man. You're running into things, you gotta put wall wall socket things so you don't get electrocuted, you gotta make sure you're eating, your food's chopped up and whatever, right? And then you're toddler, you finally get you would start walking around, but it's almost more scary. And then you're a teenager, and teenagers where things are fun. You're gonna make some weird decisions, you're gonna do whatever, but the seasonality of business, I I don't I like I love the teenage. I love this growth launch pad, I love this passion and this the change in the industry. And then you get mature, right? Like um insurance is a mature market, right? Um now it could it could be the seasonality of the business type, like roofing is a mature business, but it's a teenage type of atmosphere when you first start. And um so most of the companies that I love and and we're in and whatever is is around the teenage. I think what business what you have to be able to do as a business owner is recognize it when it's becoming mature or when it's becoming stabilized or when there's a downturn. Right. I think you said it earlier. You think you think like, hey, I'm gonna keep on to this thing and it's gonna change, or you you're holding on to this glory days of how you have this one month of great profit, which was may have been a fluke, thinking that's gonna come back and it never does. I think I think what we have to do as business owners a lot of time is navigate those down those downturns, right? Recognize the trends and not be so proud when we when when when do we get out of the way or when do we start consolidating, or when do we cut back, or when do we let go of people. But I feel like in most business, and that's what I love about this space in general, marketing is mature now, but roofing still feels like a teenage kind of business because it's never really been matured yet.

SPEAKER_02 50:54

Let's switch um to different directions. Um another topic I have for you I want to discuss is call centers. Well, not call centers, remote work. So you have a lot of people who uh a lot of companies building virtual teams, offshore support. What works and what does not? Like the whole you know, um virtual assistant versus hiring someone in office, having someone in the Philippines, Mexico. I know you guys have teams as well. So, like, when is a good idea? Like, you know, I do one million dollar a year. Is it good to hire someone, or should I hire someone in office first and then start?

SPEAKER_01 51:36

You want my personal opinion?

SPEAKER_02 51:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

I'm really big in this right now. And uh, this is my hardest part with small business owners. Uh we have a staffing company, and most business owners come to me saying we want a virtual assistant. And they don't need a virtual assistant. They may be doing usually the the business owner on a small business is the best salesperson. It just happens that way, right? They have the most drive, the most hunger, it's it's back against the wall. But I then I pose another question to these business owners. I'm like, okay, you want an assistant, but do you have systems? Do you have processes? And they usually don't. They're the salesperson, they're the project manager, they're setting it up the appointment, they're working with insurance or sending out invoices, or their wife is. And then um so what happens then is if you if I hire an assistant to let's say do my emails, sends out voice invoices, do some of the minutiae, uh, the mundane work that I don't want to do, as soon as I hire the next person, let's say I get to three million, and now I need a project manager, and now I need to train someone on an Xactimate, now I gotta train. But what they really need is an operations manager that's gonna train what the business owner isn't good at. So the first hire for me in these, in these, when I the best growth matrix I had, besides the sales side of it and the project manager, I need an ops manager to create, not an ops manager, but like I'm almost like a VP as a VP of ops or a COO. Um in roofing it's not that complicated, but it's it's what this person now trains my Xactimate specialist, it creates automation, it creates replication, creates systems for my bookkeeper and my CFO so they can get reporting quickly. This person automates everything, and now every time I onboard someone new, um, they're training that entire workflow. Right? But since people don't think the end in mind, they're thinking I just have this hot mess going on right now, how do I take some stuff off my plate? And that's most small business. But it's not the right question because now the small now the business owner is technically training every position because he's trying to he or she is trying to hire everyone as they grow, which isn't the right mentality, the end in mind. Right. So for me, um my best hires is this mid-level, high-level operations person that understands SOPs and everything I just mentioned to take that back-end stress off of the best salesperson on the org. Um so that's usually my when you're smaller, that's when I say to start, but you have to be around one, two million a year to even think about that because and most business owners think of it as an expense. So they're trying to hire this cheap person. The other thing that I I feel I need is there's there's three different kinds of uh uh virtual staff. There's like copy, paste, repeat, like circle, round, round, round ball into a round slot, and the and and that's that's what they do, the mundane. Order takers are easy. For me, it's that tier two, tier three kind of person that's usually better for me. But I also like near shore versus overseas. I mean, I we have Philippine call centers, we have uh I'm uh there's a place for all this stuff. But I like wet I like uh near shore because they're more westernized. You know, because most of these other countries you got the 1% and then 99% catering to them. Right? In small business, it's not like that. It's texting, it's calling, it's as it's uh purchasing insurance, it's it's uh it's a lot more you you need people to think and be nimble and be able to pivot. That's a small business. It's not the mundane. It's it's multiple tasks, at least when you're smaller. So until you get big enough where you have an org flow, probably about the five to ten million range, and you know you're hiring for very specific roles on the org chart, I think that's what most small business owners need, but they just don't know it yet.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

Anything to add?

SPEAKER_00 55:17

Yeah, I it's uh I think that at the end of the day, what we learned. I mean, we were we were everything we worked touched uh for like a good two to three years. We had like the golden touch. We started, we we got into insurance with a company called Senior Direct Marketing. That was our DBA, home improvement, home direct marketing. We're connecting the dots. We started a call center in South Carolina, and then we eventually had people in in Columbia as well, bow to everything was making money for us. Uh, but that's that's when you gotta, I think business owners get sugar highs. And the truth be told, a lot of business owners have addicted personalities, right? And that that's one of the reasons for their success was also a reason for the downfall, too, in the sense that you think you're freaking invisible, right? And I think that uh that happened definitely with me. We were just making so much money, top line money, and the profits were good. We'd had times where we'd have like a two someone who was a quarter million dollars and we didn't even notice it, and then we have to fight them. Like it's there's all this stuff like we're we're like printing so much money that we would leak money and not realize it, but that's when you got to slow the hell down, and you have to have people watching these things. And I I think I grew up, you know, I'm 46 and I always remember like these big companies. I think I want to I remember there's a picture we have 60 people on our team, and I'm like, oh, we're successful. We are way too heavy. We didn't need 60 people, we probably needed 20, 25. So that's where virtual staffing comes into play, where you know you can get nothing, no, there's no disrespect to anyone. You know, this is the greatest nation in the world, but it be I I do feel like there's sometimes you get hungry people overseas. I mean, you have the my mother's immigrant, she came from Venezuela, right? My dad came from Polish background, and I learned my work ethic from my mom. I'm never gonna lose that work ethic. She was making six dollars an hour, and guys, someone went to one of the best business schools in the world because she busted her ass and I saw that work ethic. But the point I'm trying to say is that you can get virtual staffing. So if you can pay someone 60, 80 grand in America, right, and roll the dice, you know, most of the time it's not gonna work. Or you can get somebody for a fraction of that cost overseas, 10,000, 15,000, and they're gonna earn laps around that person. They're gonna be our our our uh for roofs in the box. I think we're at like 80% stick rate where I think in a our stick rate in America is probably 20%, right? Not just maybe we didn't, maybe the hiring process was all messed up, but at the end of the day, this helps you collapse time frames. You save money. If you're gonna make a mistake, I'd rather make a$15,000 mistake than a$60,000 mistake. You know what I'm saying? So it really comes down to looking, being lean, and and extracting as much productivity as you can from each employee, right? And I think that we were so hot for a while that everything we that we touched worked. Um, some of it could have been luck too, because solar was so hot, right? Um we were great salespeople. We had great people that believed in us, but we we were too heavy at the time. So I think that with virtual staffing, you can take risks more calculated risks. You don't have to risk so much money. You have to hire someone for a hundred thousand dollars. We have a an MBA uh that runs roofs in a box. She she's from uh she's from the Ukraine and she lives in Colombia, right? She's from Czech. For Czechs.

SPEAKER_01 57:57

Yeah, but she's our COO for uh all of our roofing company. She's amazing. All 11 states, she runs the entire operations for me.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

Someone like her, she she gets six X in America, but she she has to be in Colombia or whatever reason. But we there's there's talented people there, right? And they they they have their own version of the American dream in their country and they want to help you grow, and and they're proud to help you grow. Yeah, right. So I think that's that's my two cents on that.

SPEAKER_02 58:17

Well, we have definitely an entitlement problem in the United States, and I absolutely hate it because I see it all the time. I actually replaced uh two years ago a hundred thousand dollar employee with a twenty-five thousand dollar employee overseas. The problem was not the employee. Like I I mean, I'll give you two hundred thousand. The the value has to be even like, but the problem we see here is people come in, it's like, hey, here's what I did there. Like, I don't care what you did before, I don't care how much money you make. What are you gonna do to me? When it's me, me, me, what do you have? Like, what do you have to offer? You know, I want a benefit, I want a truck, I want a this, I want to do this. Like, okay, I get it. Now, what are you gonna bring to me? Yeah, here's what I need. I need 20 signups per month. Can you do it? Right, and then they they go and like come back. Oh, nobody wants to sign up. Well, figure it out. I gave you the problem to solve, yeah, and you're not fixing it, but you still want 100k. And then guess what? I gave that problem to another employee in another country for quarter of the pay, boom, 15 signups. So this guy who get or whatever, gets 100k, cannot fix the problem, and has all ideas in the world, but this gal, you know, she can't. Nothing to do with the country. Everything to do with uh exactly. That's that's really what it comes down to.

SPEAKER_01 59:29

And but even like what you you you both said the same thing in your own way. It's like for 25k, if you need um if you need 10 signups hypothetically, and even if she does two and a half or three, it's still well yeah, it's still better than the 100k because the the the cost of acquisition is what you have in mind. I need this performance. Well, the values what's the value business gets.

SPEAKER_02 59:49

Yeah, absolutely. So uh if someone launched a roofing company to more, how would you build their lead generation system like from scratch? Like I don't like it's just brand new company. What do you do? First, second, third.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

Are you uh talking about like uh people with capital to start up or like most people like chucking a truck going to school? I have ten thousand dollars to my name. Ten thousand? Get a job? No, I'm cheesing. Um answer. Uh uh, I've done this, so I mean it's just uh uh it w what I would do initially for lead generation, it's speed to lead, right? It's lead nurturing. Nowadays you're a little bit luckier because you can hire a company to do it, right? Like uh like we have an AI tech stack that does the lead nurturing. It it calls, it it sets in, it has booking appointments, it does whatever. Now AI with AGI, it's even better. You can have a brain that does the entire process for you now, right? It's not even talking about like the singular uh functionality that AI had like a year ago or even three, six months ago. AGI is here now. But so what I would do is hire a company that has that has the resources, and for pennies on the dollar, you have your entire back end, you got a seven-second lead response, it does the follow-up, it SMSs, it calls, it books the appointment. And then for me, that's what I would do if I was a big company or small, because it eliminates uh the human error, but like most importantly, speed delete. If you're gonna buy a$50 Google lead, hypothetically, or$50 um cost for form or a$10 click or a$5 click. If you're a a small business owner and somebody fills out a form submittal, you can't be on a roof giving a quote. You have to be able to respond to it. So if you're on a limited budget, either hire have an assistant or um at least have the process to nurture the lead. I would I would do AI.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:36

Yeah, I think a combination of AI, age leads, you want to you gotta operate within your budget, right? For$10,000, you're not gonna get a lot of Facebook leads. It's not gonna be enough of a sample size, right? You honestly probably need$30,000,$50,000. So for$10,000, I get a portion of age leads, maybe$2,000 worth of age leads. You'd have someone work those leads, could get like two or three agents that can do that, and then turn that$2,000 to$4,000, right? And then keep increasing, go from$2,000 to$3,000,$5,000. And eventually, once you have enough money, then you could diversify and add meta leads, add Google leads, right? Hire it really comes down to the manager, the sales, the sales manager. I think that's going back to call centers. Um, any good call center I've seen, they have a rock star manager, someone with charisma, someone that's throwing chairs that's full of piss and vinegar that can motivate people, right? That's the key. And I think that that's that's kind of like a dying art right now. It's hard to find leaders. So if you can have you have a leader that can really motivate, whether maybe you're the leader as a business uh owner, and you have to be stationed near the call center because they're they're your sales engine, right? So I think that you gotta operate on your budget, uh, get get some and age leads are hard to come, but get a good source to the age leads. I mean, we have age leads and us as a plug, but it's it we we know our leads work when they're when they work properly. But at the end of the day, you need to have a good trusted age data source, get a cheap cost of acquisition, and just keep growing that. And then I've seen this happen from student loan consolidation to solar to roofing to info products, like it it's this is the formula that works. And uh success leaves clues, and this this works when applied properly.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:03

And here's the two, here's the other thing too. This is hard because it also depends on the model. Like for me, I like retail better. It's much more predictable than waiting on God. Of course. Right? And um and it's also the it's also the um um you're talking about like w when my DSO. My DSO is 10 days, right? From the time I sell to the time I collect money, from the time the roof's installed. For for insurance, it's 67 to 70 days, some dates even longer, depending on like who the main carriers are or if there's a big uh big disaster. So you're talking a cash flow issue now, I'm waiting 70 days to get paid versus retail where I'm getting um maximum 10 days. Actually, right now I'm averaging about eight days now. We brought our DSO down by two because our speed delete, our close, our acquisition, now all of a sudden I got cash flow and I can reinvest. So when you're talking about$10,000, it's hard. And I know you you were giving me just a random dart of the board. But the but the idea of it is if I don't if I have something like that, I would buy probably buy retail for cash flow, or you're the best sales guy to start. So, but you gotta have if you're just door knocking and that's how your initial growth is gonna be, but right away you need to talk to someone like you, really, with experience. And this is what I love about your your your experience is like you're not talking about what you think, you've done it. So you need to talk to somebody that knows the industry because everyone has ideas or philosophies, but who has done it successfully? And that's a problem with sales reps. You get these kids out of college trying to tell a business owner how to run a business, they've never done anything, right? Or politicians making um making laws that don't they never own a business, right? It's talk to somebody that understands and and you trust because they have really nothing to gain. Right? When when you mentor people, uh you do it because you just love mentoring people, right? There's one and you were talking about how you even grew grew, right? You grew organically by hey, this is for free and for fun. There's there's no motive, right? So it's so when you got someone like that in your corner, uh, utilize it because they don't gain anything from you.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:59

Do you think that contractors who rely solely on referrals are falling behind? Because so many contractors these days like they don't do anything, it's word of mouth, word of mouth, word of mouth. The problem is they're still slow, they still have time or months, or their season of slow is way longer than contractors who actually advertise. Do you think they're falling behind and they're gonna struggle, or there's always room for contractors who just do so-called good work?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:29

I think this day and age, if you do good work, you're ahead. You you you said two things earlier. You live in America, and if you just do halfway decent work, you're gonna you're gonna accidentally fall into business.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:39

Answer your phone call and be on time. Those are the 90%, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

That's it. Right. I think it just depends on your goal, right? If if you're just chucking a truck and you just and you're remember what it meant to win. You just don't don't want to work for the man, you want to make a hundred, two hundred thousand a year, you wanna just live in like a comfortable life, if that's your motive, then there's nothing wrong with that. Right. The problem is if it does get tight or it does get harder or there is a squeeze, you know, y y you you only have one model. And so like what we've learned in business is you have to diversify. The reason I have eighteen companies is because I need to diversify, right? I can't put all my eggs in one basket. Something's not working, uh what do I do next? Like we're talking about Solar Coaster, right? If we're all we're we're in the performance marketing, but we're but but but we're but we're in home services now. We expanded. We didn't expand, we'd be crippled. We were just you'd have different guests today. Yeah. Um but the point though is that yeah, I think I think for most business owners, especially people like us, we we diversify, we're thinking big picture. I it just depends on the motive, but I don't think they're falling behind, but I do think if there's downturns, they don't have a plan B.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:47

And I think they're capped too. They can only you can we're talking about how do you go from only seven percent of companies make it to a million dollars, 0.04% make it to eight eight figures. And I don't know what the figure is for nine or ten, but you're you're gonna be capped, right? And I think that a lot of the real entrepreneurs, they don't they want to grow. They don't want to go backwards, right? They want to they want to grow. And you gotta if you're just doing referrals, one that's one source of marketing. You need to have eight different sources. Look at that some some pro. Some pro was doing one, they got to it started in a garage in 2009, one person, the president, right? Then they had 2,000 people working for them. They went out selling for uh a billion dollars and they were doing a billion in revenue a year. They had they had every they had referrals, they had eight different lead types, they were at the they did every marketing channel, radio, TV, they did everything because they wanted to grow and grow and grow. And so I'm not saying you have to do everything, but they it was one step at a time. It took me years to get them to buy Spanish leads, and then when they bought like because they weren't ready for it at the time, you know, then they were finally ready for it. So the point is that yeah, referrals would get get you like age leads. I was saying you need something to get you off the ground and then reinvest that money into Facebook or this or that. And first you're probably gonna lose money, you're probably gonna throw away 25, 50,000 or whatever though. But if you figure it out and you don't give up, you hire the right people, then you'll turn the corner. Just they talk about the dip. You gotta get through that dip to get back up, right? So that's the point. You need to diversify. If you diversify, you have someone in their lane managing those marketing channels, margin, manage your call center, manage your A, my managing your social media, that's how you get to the next level. So it's a matter of where do you want to go. If you're comfortable with that model, yeah, like you said, all good goodness to you. But I think most entrepreneurs aren't gonna be comfortable with the model, they're gonna want to keep growing, and you need to hire the right people, and you need to explore those different channels. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:28

All right. I have last six questions. We'll answer questions, um questions from the audience, and uh we'll call it a day. This one rapid fire, but you can take time if you want to expand a little bit. What's the biggest marketing scam that contractors fall for?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:48

I think just the uh cost per lead web forms because you can I think uh that one right there is is so all over the place results and it could break a company. You talk about$10,000 prepaying for$3,000 in leads for a guy that only has$10,000 in the pocket and and then they don't and then the it's trash coming in. How do you know what to buy? Where do you know where to put your allocate your budget? Where do you get these five by night companies? It may be good, they may be under the radar. But if you're a newer company, do you want to waste money with a proven system or some or some or some kid and some startup that has no idea what's going on? I think for me that's what I've seen a lot. And the difference with my companies is we have budgets to test and waste money. But if you don't have it, man, you gotta you really gotta be mindful where your dollar goes as a small business.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:34

Most overrated marketing channel right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:37

Tough question meta.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:39

Meta is overrated?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:42

I mean you gotta start there, but you gotta you can't just rely on meta. It's too saturated. Everyone, everyone's swimming in the same pool. You gotta explore and do other marketing channels. Check out TikTok, Google, and Newsbreak, Rumble, there's there's all sorts and Snapchat. 20 million homeowners are on Snapchat. I'm on a panel tomorrow with Snapchat. I mean, there's you gotta test other sources out. There's you can't, if you're doing everything everyone else is doing, you're gonna get the same results. You gotta try different things. Everyone's on meta.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:10

Underrated way contractors can get leads. Underrated? Yeah, underrated.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:20

You know what's kind of crazy is um, and I'm not just saying this like to blow smoke, it's just I I I always stayed away from like Angie's list kind of models and whatever, like the platform that you have and those kind of referral type of platforms, those aggregate type of platforms, it's actually my cheapest cost of acquisition going to those type of platforms. And I because for me I'm keeping thinking Google, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:40

When you if you're talking about CAC, it's actually if they have homeowners, like the trust level there is very high. Angie's list used to be so good because people just trust. Yeah, people trust someone else, they trust recommendations. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:53

Yeah. So I think I think for me, uh it's opened my eyes recently because I have I I have more like the scale model, like how do I grow national companies? Not I'm not thinking regional players. And so it's weird coming from uh going from that mindset from our lead gen company to uh I guess small business, even though I'm large and roofing, I'm not like uh, but I'm have to I have to consolidate my effort to a local channel. So I think that that's my biggest eye opener this year.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:18

Okay. How do you feel about door knocking? Is it uh death, dying, is it still alive, is it trending future of door knocking? Where are you with the door knocking?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:29

I love it for me personally. I think it's the cheapest cost of acquisition if you can find the right hunters. And the I I think the problem is is that in in areas that it's saturated, it's like they can pitch you. You know what I mean? Like if if we door knock in Denver, for instance, uh you knock on the door for a roof, everyone the the the the homeowner will sell you on a roof, right? Because they've been pitched so many times. You know, uh I like these, I like these tier two, tier three marketplaces for door knocking because they're like un unsaturated. I mean that they're not it's not as watered down. But I love door knocking, I think it's the cheapest cost of acquisition. It's just hard to scale it, it's hard to find it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:02

Yeah, I was gonna say too before I said age leads is the cheapest cost of acquisition, that's telephonically or digitally. But door knocking, yeah, all day long. Momentum sold or Sun Pro success leads clues. Follow what these companies did. And that's it was a door knock, and they never gave up on door knocking, they kept that going while they had, and then now you have the door knocking division, this division, like it's a separate division. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:21

It's not, it's not the yeah. You know where I'm getting success lately is door knocking for retail. Um that's that's been a shocking for me because I I and it's a different market. Who are you talking about? My my roofing companies.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:34

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:35

Door knocking for retail. I never I always did the storm market, and then like I have certain areas that haven't been hit. So it's just finding maintenance plans, different things that have actually worked for my companies, which is shocking. I never I always thought storm chasing, storm chasing. But retail is actually where we're getting our biggest lift right now, even off season.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:52

Uh huh. I believe that a hundred percent. Uh last question the best business book or resource that you would recommend? Oh my god. That's a great question.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:02

I don't know. You you go after that.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:03

Mine's traction.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:04

Traction? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:05

EOS. EOS. That's uh all my companies run on it. I had to pick a lane, but it's just it's a simplified process. It it uh everyone's talking the same language, everyone's rowing the same direction. It's uh it's what I teach, it's what I mentor other companies on. So for me, that's my best.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:19

You know what? This would this I don't know if it's using business book motivation. The magic of thinking big, that changed me a lot. I mean, I think a lot of times we're we're limited in our belief systems, we can only hit this level or that level, and that book had a big impact on me. You know, now I feel like I might be past. I should probably listen to it again because I feel like it always but not but I I listened to that, I'm like, why am I thinking this way? I mean, we went to 20 rounds in 2019. Well, I mean, that's before we merged. I think I was doing 1.2 million in revenue.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:43

That's where he got his tattoo?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:44

Yeah, that's where he got the tattoo. It was in Vegas, so you know how they were full of it. What's still talking about one point 1.2 million in revenue. And then I was like, you know what? There's a company that's doing 15 million a year in solar in in leads, and then someone's like, why can't you be bigger than them? Like, yeah, you know what? I could be bigger than them. And then they went out of business a year later. We wanted to be bigger than them. We more than 10 X, like 15X to business, right? So it's that belief system, and that's one thing I got out of that was like, I'm thinking too small here. I gotta think bigger. So as business owners, we gotta, I think we all gotta think bigger. What's yours?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:14

It's gotta be uh I I don't have any like for me, everything is the moment I I don't recommend books, I don't actually read a lot of books. Uh I only read and find something. Like if I have a problem today, like I'm gonna go and find who has the answer for me. It's like I don't believe in just oh you have to read like a book a week. Like I've done it before, I've read tons of books, but today, this day and time, if I don't have a problem, I can relate, like for example, if I so let's say, I don't know, let's say I have a turnover in my company, like everybody's leaving. I'm like, I would actually Google, search, read a book on how to be a better leader so your employees don't leave how to be a better boss, right? So for me, if but if if my employees love me today and the last employee quit two years ago, I'm like, I'm a decent boss, like I'm not gonna. I mean, I still can listen to people on leadership and stuff, but it's not my problem today. But it was a day in my life where I thought I'm a bad leader and I studied. I read like five books on leadership, I you know, I wrote whatever. Right today, um, like I'm scaling Facebook, I'm scaling my organization. I went to Harmozzi last week because I feel like he has answers to the problems I'm trying to solve today. Right. Because I'm actually adding a lot of A players, and I have to build culture for those A players, like executive team. I'm like, who has it? Who've done it? I'm like, Harmozzi did. Yeah, so I went to him, spent two days, fix that problem. Like recruiting A players, and I don't know, like for me, that's that's the problem today. So that's if I if I'm uh if I'm trying to lose weight, I'll study it like how to lose weight if I'm trying to compete. Yeah, so it's it's problem and who has the answer for me. Yeah, yeah. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:02

I love that. Especially in a nowadays and age, is you have to just too much energy.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:06

Like you can't just read, like uh, you know, open a book just for opening a book. Yep, it has to be talking to me like today. If I have a marriage problem, I'll go talk about like read a book on marriage or get a concert or listen to podcasts on that topic. Right. If I have a problem with my son, I literally will study how to raise a boy. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:26

But I like I like what you said though, because you're going to the source, right? Who's successful at it? Exactly. I'm not gonna go to my friend that's been divorced five times asking them about marital problems, right? It's uh you want to go somebody that has a long-lasting marriage, healthy marriage, something that's sexy to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:39

100%. Lastly, uh we talked about ten thousand dollars. If you have a ten thousand dollars, uh who where would you spend it? Like if you started a business, like you didn't you wouldn't give someone 3K for questionable leads, but where would you spend it on?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:56

$10,000? I I think I would do just like I said, once I have a model, I would because I'm gonna be the best sales guy in every any organization besides this guy. He's a better sales guy than me. It's hard to say. I said it on public records. No, but uh um but for me, I need somebody to catch to make my job easier. So for my first one, my first hire, my first it wouldn't be all 10,000, maybe it's sixty thousand a year, but it'll be half of that. So I have two months worth of whatever is I'd hire someone to make my job easy. Because I think the hardest thing for me is that if I uh most I think for me, the reason I do so much as a business owner is trust. I don't trust people are gonna do it the same way I would. Right? Once you trust your team and you know you said it, the right people, and you can kind of back off and let them do if I have somebody in operations catching my stuff, I I'll I can run. And I I think as a business owner, um I was saying this at the last podcast, someone like him, like you don't want to stop uh um an entrepreneur or a visionary running a million miles an hour. Don't stop them from running. That's their superpower. Run. The problem is do you have somebody catching your stuff on the back end? So for me, if I was gonna if I had 10,000 in my name, knowing what I'm capable of in sales, I'd hire someone to back me up.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:08

All right, we're gonna wrap it up. Thank you guys so much, and uh have a safe flight home. Uh how's the weather? Like your flight was delayed last night because of the There's nationwide issues.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:20

I know people were canceled in California. I don't know what was going on. You should say the airport for Laurita was delayed, cancel, all this stuff going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:26

You know, it was shut down for four hours.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:28

Well, so that that just caused everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:30

I think today's better. I know people are making it to Miami right now. I got some alerts earlier. Yeah. So hopefully today's got he's going to Denver. I'm going to I'm going to Miami.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:37

Well, thank you so much for flying in. This was awesome. And yours next.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:41

Appreciate it. Thank you.