Welcome to Close it now, an H Vac sales training podcast with Sam Wakefield.

Here we'll build your reputation in residential H Vac sales to be the expert influencer in your market.

You'll get insight into the top minds in the industry as they share their skills and hacks to help you on your journey.

This podcast isn't just about selling more, it's about understanding your customers needs and building efficiencies behind the scenes so you can sell more but work less while being top of mind when people think H Vac.

Now let's get started with your host of the Close it now podcast.

This is Sam Wakefield.

Well, all right, welcome back to Close It Now.

Sam Wakefield here.

I am so excited about my guest today.

This gentleman has, he has a long, a lot of history, a lot of business history.

You mean I'm old?

Not necessarily old, wise.

Wise, aged.

No, it's experience.

Right.

And so the things that, for everybody listening, we were just talking a little bit ahead of, ahead of recording here and I'm really excited to bring this gentleman to you because of his focus, what he does.

He's also serial entrepreneur.

He runs multiple podcasts, which is really exciting because when you, you know, when you resonate with somebody, it's, it's instant, you can tell.

And this is exciting for me because I love to bring people into this specific space from.

It's kind of outside.

You're not necessarily outside the industry, but you're kind of outside our industry.

I understand what you mean.

I think that's valuable to have different perspectives on the same topic.

Multiple panes through the same window, right?

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.

And so, yeah, for everybody.

Listen, this is Dominic Rubio.

The podcast he mentioned specifically is the profit tool belt.

But we're gonna, we'll go through his whole list and how to contact him here a little bit.

But serial entrepreneur, he's started, grown and sold multiple businesses at this point in his career.

So I'm just excited to have him on.

I think he can bring a massive value to everybody listening today.

So thank you for joining me, Sarah.

I'm excited to have you.

Thanks for having me, Sam.

I'm looking forward to this.

Yeah, good times.

So let's start off.

We always start these guest episodes out with two things.

One, give everybody a quick highlight reel of how you got here and why they should listen to you and earn the right.

And then the second thing is we always love to cover a business and personal philosophy.

Something that really is your driver, you know, what wakes you when you find Something you love to do.

It's not.

They say you never work in a day of your life.

I think that's false.

I think you work harder than you ever have in your life.

But now you do it inspired.

You don't even need an alarm clock.

You wake up before your alarm would even go off because you're funny.

You say that I'm that guy.

I could tell strictly from our resonance.

So.

So tell us a bit, a bit of your philosophy once you give us your highlight reel.

Yeah, well, I'll start to.

Do you want the highlight reel or the philosophy?

Let me start with the philosophy.

And that'll make everything else probably come to life a lot better.

Go for it, man.

I. I firmly believe it's my job to add so much value to the world.

I'm happy with the overspray.

And so that puts a lot of onus on me to throw a ton of value fast and hard.

You know, you have to temper that with listening, because it's not just about talking.

It's about listening and just helping other people.

You know, I imagine today we're going to talk about sales and selling, which is really helping people buy.

And I do that by being really curious and caring.

Now, underneath the surface, I'm here to make sale.

I'm here to build a business.

Right.

Because.

Yeah, as you said, I'm a serial entrepreneur.

Nothing happens till something gets sold.

Right?

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

That's right.

So do you want maybe a little bit about my background?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's hear how.

How'd you get here?

What.

What got you excited about sales to start with and entrepreneurship and.

Yeah, there's no straight lines in my life.

Like, I'm all.

I'm all over the map and.

And, you know, for instance, my.

You know, I did get a chance to go to college, but my degree is in archeology.

I'm a forensic anthropologist.

Wow.

Yeah.

Say mine's mind's in physics.

Yeah, I was gonna say that.

Visit.

You do not sound like a physicist.

Well, I decided I didn't want to get locked into a, you know, classroom or a laboratory my whole life because I'm way too big of a personality for that.

And I would.

Yeah, it would drive me nuts.

So I have a story that would resonate with that you wouldn't believe.

But, yeah, the.

The same thing for me.

I just.

You know, it took me a long time to get through college.

Seven years.

And I'm not.

Yeah, right.

Because I kept starting businesses.

So one of the first companies I, I started, quote, unquote, was a student pa. You know, you're.

I didn't know what I was doing, but I just knew I wanted to be in business.

Just prior to that, when I was in high school, I had a Christmas light installation company.

It was called the Yoho Ho Light Company.

I love it.

I always like to have fun.

Right.

But it just came from knocking on doors.

No idea what I was doing, by the way.

Not a canoe, what I was doing.

I just knocked on people's doors and said, hi, I install Christmas lights.

Do you need Christmas?

And that's how it started.

Yeah.

And I think that first year I probably my.

My profit.

Net profit in my jeans after the entire season of installing Christmas lights was probably 30 bucks.

Yeah, yeah.

I did that years ago with car washing.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah, that one.

See that?

There's, there's nobody that says you can't succeed in this world.

You can make it no matter what you have or don't have.

You just have to have the moxie to get out there and knock on a door and try to help people.

Right?

Yeah.

I'm glad you raised indoors.

Let's put a pin in that because we'll, we'll circle back and you'll hear why here in a little bit.

Oh, okay.

Sure.

Yeah.

So anyways, I started with knocking on doors, but, you know, then I went into painting and time went on and, you know, I just kept training myself and, and really trying to get better.

I realized I sucked at business.

I went into corporate.

Corporate world.

After I failed in my home painting and small, you know, remodels and repairs business.

And then I just kept reinventing myself.

It's actually my.

I used to work for my uncle as a framer, you know, like house framing or, you know, small apartment buildings.

And I left him and I went to painting and renos.

But I sucked at business.

And I just got.

I just got slapped around so bad.

Busy customers loved me.

Couldn't make a dime to save my life.

Sure.

So I went and worked for Sprint, you know, and I, I suddenly became a blue suit, red tie guy.

But that's actually where I learned business coaching.

And from there I launched my own business, which I, you know, I started by selling used junk on ebay.

Are we twins?

Because I did that too.

Did you.

Would you sell?

Oh, man, I hit.

I 100% would go to the garage sales.

I would do garage sales.

Yeah.

Find all of the high value stuff, list them, and then this back when paypal just started.

There's no crazy fees.

Ebay was like this open world, just.

Yeah, destroy.

Yeah, it was good.

It's crazy you did that.

So I did the same thing.

So.

But I specialized.

We did.

Which is not a good idea.

But because it became really hard to find used LED calculators, I bet.

So most people here listening don't even remember what an LED calculator is.

Or ColecoVision head to head football, that brown thing.

Or you know, then I also sold Atari and television and ColecoVision games and systems.

When I sold that company, we had the second largest aftermarket collection of consoles and cartridges in the world.

The only guy that had more than us was some guy with like a limestone cave in Tennessee and he had.

Somehow he had found a warehouse that was full of them.

Anyways, I, I morphed that because we had problems.

Our, our feedback rating was dropping very quickly on ebay and because we couldn't find stuff that we'd sold, we had no inventory system.

Sure.

So.

And it's because nothing was the same shape, size, smell, anything.

It was just a disaster.

Like a walking.

The, the boxes were stacked so high that they were touching at the top.

They're just leaning on each other.

We couldn't find something.

And we were renting my uncle's two car garage, by the way.

It was not, it was not a formal operation.

So anyways, I get fed up and I go to the gas station coffee shop.

This is not highfalutin.

And I sit down with a piece of paper.

And by the way, this repeats itself throughout my life.

And I reinvented the business on paper.

I was just incredibly frustrated and I said, you know, what are we going to do?

How are we going to do it?

What do we need to make?

And I boiled it down.

It was going to be three things.

It was either going to be records, like final LPs, magazines, or books.

And I finally decided on books.

Then I forgot to do the volume calculation, which is also a repeatable theme in my life.

Sure.

Turned out we needed 250,000 books to make the money I needed to make.

Right.

I'd never calculated how much space that.

Would take because now we're dealing with books.

Yep.

Oh my gosh.

Let's hit pause on that super quick because you just said something like really, really powerful that I want everybody to really pick up on is when you're redesigning your business, when you're business planning anywhere in your business, it doesn't have to be pretty.

It can be.

It's like making sausages.

Yeah, exactly.

But I think so many people get in this analysis, paralysis moment of until I have it, until I get to a place where it looks like some imaginary beautiful picture in their mind.

They stop.

They don't take action.

And so can you speak to that a little bit?

Because I really feel like that's super powerful.

It is.

I mean, people overthink it.

And the one thing I don't do is overthink stuff.

I'm not very smart.

I'm just bullheaded.

And I will do it until I get it right.

And get it.

I get it wrong a lot until I get it right.

And I've learned that a piece of paper, a blank piece of paper and a pen is my friend.

I can invent it or reinvent it on paper.

And then, you know, I also have to have the discipline.

And I have a sense that you know this as well.

At some point, you gotta stop.

Stop dreaming and start doing.

But the market will always tell me if I've got a winner or if I've got a failure.

And.

But I've gotta have the cojones to listen when the market has stopped responding.

Right.

So it doesn't matter if I'm trying a sales tactic, a marketing tactic, a hiring tactic, if it's not working.

It's not the world, it's me.

Right.

And so something has to change.

Well, I can change me, no problem.

We do that all the time.

Clearly not perfect.

So I'll go change what I'm doing or how I'm doing it and get a better result.

Oh, I love that.

Reminds me of the Jim Rohn quote.

Don't wish for things to be easier.

I wish you were better.

That's right.

Jim Veron is the best.

I'm so sad he's gone.

Oh, man, that's.

Oh, man.

What we're talking about is so, so perfect.

But especially, I'm sure you know, what's going on in all of the trades right now.

All you hear is call volume is down 30 to 40%, and everybody's still beating their head against the wall trying to do the same thing, hoping that they.

Well, let's just get better.

At closing the deal, the leads we're getting.

Well, there comes a time when, like you just said, we've got to do something a little bit different.

Do it a little different.

Just try something different.

Yeah.

And start on paper.

It just has to start on paper, which goes back to the story.

Just reinvent yourself on paper.

It's free.

It's a Piece of paper, you're only using one half of it anyway, just scribble away.

If it can't work on paper, it's not going to work in real life.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Can you give us an, like an example of that?

Yeah.

So let's say that you want to figure out how to increase your gross profit margins.

I don't know that anybody in business would want to do that.

Or let's make it even easier.

I want to increase the average sales size for every transaction I do.

Right.

So I can either work harder in business or I can work smarter.

You know, we all hear that guys like you and I say that as a throwaway line.

Sure.

But if you want to work smarter, instead of doing, you know, 100 more jobs a year, take the amount of jobs you're doing and just sell more per job.

Right.

So do that on paper.

And the easy thing I can say is let's say that you've got an average.

What's an average job size in, in this industry?

Call it $12,000.

Okay, so that's just a normal residential job, right?

Right.

Yeah, Basic residential.

That's not even something flashy.

That's, that's a pretty good industry average, though.

Yeah.

And does that include.

Well, let me, let me stop acting smart and ask the question which comes back to sales skills.

What is something that you or your industry offer that everybody should be taking advantage of, should be buying from you, but they're not?

That's a good question.

We could start with probably the easiest low hanging fruit would be surge protection.

I love it.

Surge protection.

How much is a surge protecting system?

Less than a thousand dollars for most.

In most cases, less than a thousand dollars.

Why would I need maybe pushing to 1500?

Depends on whole house.

Yeah, let's, let's use a grand just as an example.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now why do I need a surge protector?

The benefit is so you're not spending a lot of money later on to fix something that was a preventable breakdown.

Yeah.

So you didn't zap your whole house right?

Now there's other people out there listening there who are raising their fist in the air going, no, I want to do EV chargers.

Okay.

What?

Doesn't matter what your, what your thing is.

You just told me you're passionate, like you care about surge protectors at $1,000.

So now we can take our average dollar sale of $12,000 and easily increase it to $13,000.

That means for every 12 deals you do, you just did an extra deal.

That's what that means.

And the only way to do that is just to add a little bit to your scripting or your offer or being curious and caring by talking to the homeowner and saying, hey, have you thought about what would happen if this system ever zapped?

Right.

Have you ever had a zap before?

I notice you've got a great stereo there.

I notice you've got a fish tank you really care about.

I notice you've got a lot of expensive computers.

What are we doing about surge protection?

What do you mean?

Well, you do need to have a surge protector on here, right?

Do we?

I mean, you don't have to have one, but you're going to have to replace all the fish in that tank if you don't.

Right.

You're going to have to replace that stereo.

You're going to have to.

Whatever it is.

Right.

You want me to just look into it and see how much that would cost you?

We're doing the work anyway.

And now we've got a $12,000 average sale up to $13,000.

Right.

So that's an idea of doing it.

Just do it on paper.

Yeah, right.

The other thing I would do on paper, and this is where I'm very mean to my.

My inside voice is not a polite man.

My inside voice screams horrible obscenities at me.

So take that power and write down every objection that somebody would have.

Every single objection.

Once you write it down.

Once I write it down, I own it, and I can come up with all the answers I want.

Now, I've practiced it at least once when you say that thing to me, why would I buy it from you?

I've never heard of you guys.

Besides, your company colors are horrible, and I can't believe you wear that T shirt.

Just answer it like, well, I understand you hate the color.

That's why we chose that color, so it would really stand out.

We're proud of what we do, and we want to be seen in the neighborhood.

Done.

Right.

Right.

I'm going to stop for a second, Sam.

Oh, I love it.

No, this is.

This is incredible.

And clearly we think very similar about every bit of this, and it's so powerful to.

That's the missing piece.

That is really just.

I am such.

I don't know if you've ever heard of something called the Colby score, but it classifies people.

And for everybody's listening, go to cold K, O, L, B E and take the test.

It's cheap.

It's like 50 bucks.

It's not like another personality test.

It really rates on how people respond to situations.

So personally, I score off the charts on Quick Start.

My Quick Start energy is off the chart and then my execution chart or score and like follow through and finish up and all that is really, really, really low in implementation.

So that's why my biggest, one of the things I say all the time is success happens at the speed of implementation.

And everybody thinks I'm telling them, but it's more about I'm telling myself, reminding yourself, because I will, I will jump to, I'll do a coaching call.

And in fact, today's coaching call.

He was my business coach.

He was laughing at me because he can hear me.

He'll mention something and he can hear me literally on Google in the background.

He's like, stop, stop, stop.

You're already clicking and we haven't even finished the topic yet.

He's like, this is okay.

It's how we do.

And so, and I agree with you, getting the, the basics kind of lined out ahead of time and it just saves so much.

You wouldn't, People don't end up with, you know, being able to handle all the objections that come up until they pay thousands of dollars for training.

But if we did this, this would really help a lot to get started.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's just about self improvement and you know, we haven't been taught the power of self improvement.

I'm not going to get into the school system now, but you know, we just haven't been taught the power of it.

But some people have listened and some people take advantage.

And those are the people who listen to your podcast and mine just chosen to take a different path.

Absolutely.

Self improvement and even equally strong is taking radical responsibility as well.

Like you were saying earlier, if something's wrong with it, it's my fault.

Instead of, well, it's the market, it's the government, it's the, whatever, it doesn't matter.

It's my fault.

Let's start here.

Yeah, I love it.

Good stuff, dude.

Well, cool.

We're in the journey, right?

So you've got your, your business, you redefined it for books, ran out of space.

Where are we at now?

Yeah, so I'll just, I'll jump ahead because otherwise it's going to take too long.

So I started selling used books online and then we started selling over the counter medications, right?

Really simple things like skin whitening cream and just all sorts of things that people would want to buy.

But we just ended up bumping into mail order medications, so prescription.

So I became a pharmacy.

Wow.

And so the company is called.

And was called canadapharmacy.com.

Okay.

I think it's still going.

It's been.

I sold it and now it's probably been sold a couple times.

But there's just different politics in Canada than the United States.

So if there's a bottle of aspirin that you would pay $80 for in Canada, it's 30.

Sure.

It just is.

It's.

And it's.

It goes back to politics and who cares?

Buy it for 30.

It's the same medication.

So anyways, I built that business up to 120 million in sales.

I had a call center of 120 people.

I had 40 pharmacists and pharmacy techs working for me.

Massive call center, massive sort of warehouse operation.

And yeah, things were trucking along.

Great.

Love it.

And then the exit, which is in any kind of industry like this, that's if somebody's like, oh, I'll never sell, it's still in the back of their mind.

Right?

Yeah.

So I got past that.

I'll never sell.

And I think the reason for that is because I'm confident in my ability to reinvent myself.

And it came from.

Because I have a background in sales like you, Sam, I know I can reinvent myself.

And I, you know, I sold that business.

And then I went and I became business partners with a gentleman named Brian Tracy who if anybody here cares about sales or personal improvement, business improvement.

Brian is.

You've read what he's written 80 books.

Oh, absolutely.

I'm.

I'm in the mid audio book right now.

I'm re listening to no excuses.

Oh, good.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean I think most people know him by Eat that Frog, which is probably one of his most popular books on time management.

Procrastination.

Anytime I start anyone in training though, the book the always in the top, top five, top three.

My recommendation list where I start everyone is the psychology of Selling.

Yeah, every time.

Good.

Yeah.

Psychology of Selling, the psychology of achievement.

All of those books.

And, and I have to say this about Brian.

He's the same offstage as he is on stage.

Stage.

That's incredible.

Now he's spicier off stage.

Like he rip me a new one.

Not sew the skin back on like he teared.

You know, he used to tear me apart.

But to his credit because he knows, you know, he's just not going to suffer fools or my bad decisions.

And so I learned a lot working with him.

A ton.

Great guy.

And you know the reason I say that Is because I've also met a lot of other public figures who are not the same.

You, maybe you just smiled.

Maybe you've seen them too.

They're not the same.

They've got a Persona on stage, but they're not that same guy.

Yeah, it would absolutely.

I would rather.

There's some that I've met that are incredible and that I love and they're the same person.

There's some that I met that I would rather get a root canal than have to spend five minutes with them.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

It's.

I think in, in many cases, you and I have flown too close to the sun.

You know, we've.

Right.

We've met the authors or we've met the speakers and you're like, oh, my God, I met.

Sometimes you should not meet your heroes.

Right.

However, with Brian, I would say 100%, if you ever get a chance to have a coffee with him, sit down.

Just an incredible guy.

I would love that.

He's been my.

Been definitely mentor for a long time.

In fact, super quick pop out and a shout out to Brian and Nate over at the Waste no Day podcast.

Everybody listening.

If you haven't checked out that podcast for one, listen to their podcast because it's great.

But also, more importantly, they just had an episode with Brian Tracy.

So everyone go listen to the Brian Tracy episode.

Wouldn't waste no day because it is incredible the value that he brought to.

Is bringing to the industry.

Yeah.

Love it.

And he continues to add value.

And I wish podcasts have been around when Jim Rohn was around.

I really just.

I wish I'd had a chance to have a coffee with him.

Such an incredible guy.

But let's not dwell on the past.

Yeah, he's left.

He's left a solid legacy for sure.

So, yeah, so you've got your mail order business, the pharmacy and pharmaceuticals, and so you sell that at 120 million.

That's a really nice exit, I'm sure.

Yeah.

And then what you you got?

Well, then I looked for another business to buy, and I'm not sure if you've ever done that, but it's hard to find a decent business to buy.

Very hard to do.

And so I ended up, just through chance and luck, I ended up running across Brian Tracy with somebody else.

We bought the rights to his global coaching organization.

He had a business coaching company, and because I already knew business coaching, I bought that company from him.

So I had the global rights.

And so, you know, we started selling more franchises and growing some really successful Wonderful people in that, in that franchise organization.

Lots of them in the United States, lots in Canada, lots in Brazil, believe it or not.

Tons of Brazil.

Yeah.

And I don't speak any Portuguese.

Well, that's not true.

I speak enough to order food, but not enough to send it back if they get the order wrong.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, you just have to deal.

Just.

Okay, I'll eat that.

Oh, sorry.

I just want to order this next time.

That's my bad.

I don't know what that is.

Yeah.

Oh, that's great.

So, man, I love this and so talk to us a little bit through that journey because one of the big things that, you know, with what I do with working with companies across the country and in Canada is, you know, the goal is always to grow, right?

To grow to scale.

So what in your, I mean, that's massive growth that you, you know, with the coaching organization.

Talk to us a little bit about some of the, Some tips for growing and scaling and things to look for and things to avoid.

Yeah, okay.

It's, it's amazing.

You'd think that's an easy question, so I'll give you the easiest answer.

Keep it simple.

Really.

Just focus on a few things and just do them really well.

One of the problems, and I'm a business owner too, right?

So I've got a team of maybe eight or nine people now.

We're gonna, we're gonna grow.

I've had teams bigger, obviously.

I had the 160 employee business and I had, you know, the, the, the global franchise, which was 237, plus about 10 staffs.

I just call it 240 people.

This one's, you know, not that big, but we're gonna grow.

Keep it simple.

Just focus on the thing that needs to be focused on.

And one of the things that happens is there's a lot of noise in our lives as a, as a business owner.

Lots of things pulling us off are the most important thing.

And being able to ignore that or shut it out or say no is incredibly important.

I can't grow this business unless I can say no.

I've got to say no nicely, but I'm going to say no.

You know, one of the, one of the things you might hear this as well, when you're dealing with leaders of businesses, they'll say, you know, I want to take care of my team.

I really believe in my team.

So I have an open door policy, but I can't get anything done.

So a simple, you want to know, a simple, dead simple system for that I have an open door, Paul.

What's that?

Close the door.

Close the door.

Well, kind of.

So I have.

I have an open door policy as well.

I have an absolutely open door.

Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 till 2.

Sure.

That's my open door.

Love it.

Don't.

I can't talk to you outside of that.

And the reason I can't talk to you is not because I don't want to.

It's not because you're not important.

It's because I'm hunting the next gazelle.

We're going to eat as a team.

I'm doing the next joint venture.

I'm figuring out the software system.

I'm in charge, payroll.

Don't you guys want to get paid?

Like, I got to go make sure that gets done.

So.

But in order to do that, I've got to go squirrel away and do my stuff.

And then we can talk Tuesdays or Thursdays from 10 till 2, no problem.

But that's the open door.

And so that kind of discipline that I have to impose on myself and then with my team, that's an example of that simplicity.

Oh, I love it.

And that's one that's protecting the value of your own time as the leader.

But it's also, it's.

I love that concept because it trains all of your people to value their own time as well.

I hope so.

And.

And to also become efficient.

In what?

In their communication, which is also not just in communicating with you as the leader, but also, you know, that's a skill that you would hope they develop to communicate with the customer, with each other, all those things.

Right.

Let's stop the wasted communication and be efficient in it.

Yeah.

You know, the.

The amount of time that's wasted on meetings, it just kills people.

So you should never have a meeting without an agenda.

But I can tell you the meeting for any agenda.

I can tell you the agenda for any meeting I'm going to have for the next hundred years.

It's not going to change.

Hi, how are you?

What are the numbers?

What's up?

Where are you stuck?

Who's going to do what by when?

Have a great day.

That's the agenda.

Love it.

For every meeting.

And the reason I start with numbers.

And you and I both come from sales and sales management.

When we're dealing with salespeople, you got to get the numbers out of the way because otherwise the BS starts to smell the room up.

I don't want to hear your.

I'll get the stories after.

Just tell me the numbers.

Now?

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

When I'm.

When I'm working with teams or I will, we always do the tracking sheets and that kind of thing.

Yeah.

It's like, listen, I can coach you better in one minute of looking at your number line than 20 minutes of listening to you.

Tell me what you think is wrong.

You know, because somebody that's, you know, had 20 appointments and sold two has a completely different problem than somebody who's had three appointments and sold three.

Yeah.

Right.

It's still a problem.

We need to work on, you know, something totally different.

But I don't want to hear the stories.

We can analyze this in literally 30 seconds.

Yeah.

And that does waste a lot of time.

I want my salespeople to tell me stories.

I want.

When people have a win, if my administrator comes to me and says, dom, I just saved us seven bucks.

I'm like, tell me about it.

Yeah, you might go, oh, seven bucks, who cares?

No, no, no.

It's important to her that she saved us seven bucks.

Tell me the story.

I want to hear it.

But I did want to hear the $7 first.

You know that it reminds me, this is really actually super top of mind today because just today my wife told me something that carries a lot of weight.

Said if anyone thinks something is important enough to create a sentence around it and put it into words and communicate it, even if you don't think it's important, it's important to them.

So was this a self counseling moment or was this.

Yeah, no, it was good.

Well, no.

So, yeah, it may, may or may not have confirmed or denied.

It may have been coming off the tail end of a heated conversation.

However it.

It hit me between the eyes, I was like, man, that's how we need to treat our people as well.

Yeah.

And you know, yes, I'm going to stop there because otherwise we're not going to stay focused on today.

Go off in a million directions.

This is good.

These.

So everybody listen.

These are massive nuggets though, kid.

So real super quick, let's recap.

Give us those five things in your.

The agenda for your meeting.

Real quick again.

That.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

Everybody can make a note here.

Yeah.

So, hi, how are you?

You know, I want to greet everybody.

I'm not going to.

Just barking like a general.

Right.

Hi, how's everybody?

What are your numbers?

Numbers should never be a secret.

So you know what number you're going to report at the meeting.

So does the Susie next to you and so does Sam or you are Sam.

But you know what?

I mean, and then all the other people.

Right, so everybody knows what number they're going to report.

I just want numbers.

I don't want anything other than a number.

If it's not a number, I'm going to put up my hand.

Just.

Sorry, can I just get the number?

Yeah.

Okay.

So, hi, how are you?

Numbers.

Now, round robin.

We're going to go around the room again.

What's up?

So I just want 30 seconds.

What's going on with you, Sam?

What's going on with you, Susie?

What's going on?

What's going on?

Just give me the headlines.

Right.

Then we're going to go around the room again.

Where are you stuck?

Where are you stuck?

Where are you stuck?

Where you stuck?

Okay, do that.

Now this is where the side conversations come up and that's okay.

But now I'm a traffic cop and I'm going to say.

Susie's going to say, I'm still waiting from those numbers for those numbers from Sam, and Sam hasn't given them to me yet.

And Sam, you, you're going to go, well, okay, well, hold on a second.

That's a great point.

Right after this meeting.

Can you guys just break off to the side and deal with it now before you sit down again?

Great.

I've just.

Traffic cop that out.

Right.

So where's.

Where are you stuck?

And then the final thing is who's going to do what by when?

And in a perfect world, it ain't me.

Sure, but that's it.

So who's gonna.

And then goodbye.

How you know.

Right.

High five.

Some sort of team rally cheer or whatever.

Right.

But keeping it that simple, that works for most of not all meetings.

You know, if you have a production meeting, if you're doing installations, you might need a little more technical.

But that works for 80% of the meetings you're gonna have.

Oh, absolutely.

And then figuring out where everybody's stuck and how you can.

How as the leader, you can support them in where they're stuck.

Right.

Or get them unstuck.

Yeah, yeah.

And just do traffic cop right there.

But, but the reason meetings go long is because those side conversations start or there's finger pointing or blame.

We, we don't accept that in this company.

We don't finger point, we don't blame.

Right, right.

Sam didn't get you the number, but Sam might not have the number.

Let's just get the.

I don't care.

Now if it goes on 60 times, we're going to have a conversation.

Sure, of course.

Yeah.

Love it, man.

This is.

This is really powerful.

Everybody, listen.

This is.

This is why Dominic is.

Has his company, his business.

His coaching that he does is for trades.

His podcast is for people in the trades with their businesses.

Because so many of us, myself included, we started doing the work, not knowing about business.

And, you know, my story is 18 years ago as an attic rat pulling duct work through, you know, just the.

I was.

I'm short, so I was the guy in the corner of the attic, the low part.

You know, over time, of course, I've.

I've grown and, you know, my audible goes a mile for miles because of the audio books and business books I've read and listened to.

However, it's ne.

This is why he's coaches companies like ours in this industry to scale and to grow and to be more profitable.

Even if you're not growing, you could be more profitable, right.

If you choose to.

There's.

It's like one or the other a lot of times, right?

What are.

What's the focus?

And, you know, where.

Where do we need to work on.

Yeah, I'm so sorry.

Can I do this?

Can I do what?

Yeah, do whatever, man.

So in the contracting trades, which we're all in, there are eight profit leaks.

And I won't get into them now, but there's eight.

We all have them.

It doesn't matter if you're doing 250 grand or 250 million a year or anything.

I'm just.

The number of zeros at the end of your revenue line does not matter.

There are eight profit leaks.

If you were to take any one profit leak and find a way to increase your profits by $100 a day, and I'll make a bunch of assumptions.

You know, you're only open five days a week, and you're open 50 weeks a year because of Christmas, Thanksgiving, vacation, whatever, just round it, it's 250 days a year.

So 250 days times 100 bucks, it's 25 grand.

Yeah.

And if you're a bigger company than that ad, buy all the zeros you want.

I don't care.

The number still works.

You might go, well, thank you, Dominic.

That is a really interesting number.

I could make $25,000 more.

I'll go, well, cool your jets, because you also missed saving.

How can you improve operations or efficiency or reduce wasted efforts?

You know, some people call it lean manufacturing or continuous inevitable improvement.

But there's ways as well to improve operations.

So you can make another hundred dollars per hour.

Well, that's another 25 grand in your pocket.

So listening to your show or mine, I want you to walk away with $50,000 of ideas every week.

There's no shortage of great ideas.

Your challenge listening is to go put one of those things in place.

Just one implementation, right?

That's it, man.

Just do one.

I love it.

So let's, let's do this.

Turn the corner here.

Before we started this episode, we're kind of talking about the said the steps of the cell.

Right.

The things that must be included in every cell's conversation that make it smooth and easy.

And you know that if something is missing, then we've left an objection door open they can escape through.

So let's go into that a little bit and, you know, kind of dive.

In some I like.

Yeah, those escape hatches are so important.

So, you know, for a second, I'll assume that everybody knows that all decision makers have to be present.

Just assume that you have to have all decision makers present.

Sure.

I like to have people sitting down when they're going to make a big decision.

Although I understand sometimes in the trades we make decisions standing up in an unfinished room.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

You just do.

I'm a huge fan of everybody standing around the kitchen counter, you know, but yeah, we do all kind of stuff.

But you're focused.

You're not like one's not wandering off.

I'm just gonna go walk the dog while you guys talk.

Nope.

Yeah, nope.

That's not gonna happen.

And I have a problem.

It's not their problem.

I just didn't show them how we're going to have this meeting.

Right.

So let's assume all those things are in place.

There's.

There's four components.

There's four things people need to know before they can buy from me.

And then there's two additional things.

These are like bonus rounds.

If I find these out, I will definitely be able to help these people.

And that's code word for sell them.

Sure.

Or help them buy.

I really don't want to sell anything to some.

To me, selling you something is doing something to you.

Yeah.

Helping you buy is really helping you.

I just, I really want to help people.

Right.

And I. I never have to be the cheapest provider in the world.

Don't even care if, if I was to go work for a company and they said we're the low cost provider, I would respond with, I'm out of here.

I don't want to be the low cost provider.

Right.

At all.

I want to be the value.

Thank you, my cousin.

This is ridiculous.

But that's because there's.

There's nowhere to go.

Low cost, somebody could be cheaper.

But nobody can add value the way I can add value.

Right.

Right.

Or my company.

So anyways, the four components are this budget.

And please, everybody write this down or pull over your car or rewind this.

They're really easy to remember.

I need to understand really well.

And the other person, the buyer needs to understand.

For me, these four things.

Budget, need, timing and trust.

Sometimes I say relationship, but it's trust, B N T T. Budget, need, timing and trust.

And then there's two technical things.

These are the other two bonus rounds.

There's two technical things that really matter to the other person or the couple or the decision makers that I have to find out that most people will never ask.

But when I find those things out, that's my deal.

So that's it.

The beauty of knowing these things is I now know which questions to ask and I can preload my objection handling and my closes.

So I know you see a smiley face here.

Some guys sounds like a goofball.

Had a couple businesses doing other things.

I'm.

That's all what you see on the outside, but inside my mind we are playing chess and I know where we're going.

It just seems like a very casual and nice chat.

Right.

But we're going to go this path here and we're going to get that accomplished in this order.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Did I say too much?

No, no.

My w by.

Yeah.

So many times.

Especially with any kind of trades.

Well, and this is any.

It's just sales in general is the urgency conversation.

You know, when you're in an industry that's driven a lot of times by seasons and that kind of thing, the urgency conversation ebbs and flows.

But in any industry, urgency conversation is crucial because.

So you know that personally I've always trained that, you know, a sales decision is a car.

Logic is the steering wheel.

That's what points the wheels in the right direction.

That's like, should we do it this way?

Should we do it with you?

Make sure we're doing it right.

But that is not going to make the sale.

That's like, okay, great.

That'll get us all the way to.

Yep, perfect.

We've got to think about it.

The emotion is the gas pedal to take action and take action now.

And why I want to do it right away so I don't have to live like this anymore and life can look like this.

Yeah.

And so that's so important to have all.

Yeah.

Why is so critical but that, that why comes down to all things, you know.

So for instance, take budget.

I'm not going to be some robot and say, what is your budget for doing this service on your house?

No, in fact, that's the opposite of what we need to do.

That literally is counterproductive.

That is counterproductive.

Actually, you know, you, you raise a good point.

Out of those six different types of questions, four plus two, some questions I ask can answer two or three of them in one shot, right?

Sure.

So, hey, choose a trade service that you want to focus on right now.

Well, let's stick with H Vac since this is kind of the bulk of the listenership.

And do you want to say hot water tanks or water softeners or.

No, let's go with a.

Let's, let's do.

We're right.

We're recording right here in January 3rd.

So this is going to release dead center of winter.

So let's go with furnaces.

Furnace.

Okay, so I'm in your house.

I'm assuming all decision makers are present and that you've been somewhat qualified.

High level qualification.

I'm.

You're.

I'm also assuming that I sent you a text or some sort of message that says, hey, I'm probably going to be a couple minutes early.

I just might be barely on time.

I hope that's okay.

So they know I'm coming, right?

Even better if my picture's attached.

Hey, when you see this guy standing at the door smiling, it's me, please tell me if I have salad in my teeth.

All that stuff.

Right?

Absolutely.

Everybody listen.

Even better if you send them a link to a quick little welcome video of like, hey, I'm on the way.

I'm excited to see you here shortly.

Take a minute and you know.

Yeah.

Any.

Anything particular where I need to park and that kind of thing.

Yeah, right.

All of those things.

You know, we'll come back to this in a second, but asking people about their cats and dogs.

I know this sounds irrelevant.

I'll tell you it is relevant.

Absolutely.

Even if you don't care, ask.

So anyways, we're now in, in the person's home and we're selling furnace heater.

Right.

So the budget question.

I don't have to ask you the budget question.

How much do you expect to pay for a furnace?

That question is an over the top lob.

You know, you did that in ping pong.

They're going to smash it right back at you.

Have any of your friends had a furnace done lately?

Oh yeah, our neighbors Next door, they got hosed.

Oh, what happened there?

Yeah, they had to pay this much and just pick.

What.

What would an average furnace be in in Austin?

10 grand.

Okay, so they got hosed.

They had to pay like $11,000.

Wow.

Eleven grand.

Is that.

What does that mean?

Like, they got hosed?

They should have gotten something bigger.

Oh, okay.

I can't assume what they're going to say, right?

We have no idea.

Yeah, we have no idea.

I have to be very curious and I have to care.

So now I know that one of their neighbors got a furnace.

So they're actually a little bit educated.

Right.

Well, who did that furnace job for them?

Ah, Smith's.

Oh, how come you guys didn't call?

Smith?

Yeah.

Do you know that guy drove over their flower?

No, I didn't know that.

Yeah, yeah, he did.

And he let the cat out.

The cat?

No.

Do you guys have a cat?

Yeah.

Ooh.

Okay, remind me, how are we going to take care of the cat when we do this install for you?

Right.

You see what I just did there?

You assume the cell.

You were.

You're meant.

Actually much better way to say this is you're already mentally putting their mind into installation day and how they're going to handle the important things in their life while that's going on.

Yeah, painting forward.

I'm sorry, Sam, I cut you off.

Say that again.

No, it's the painting the picture forward.

Yeah.

Right.

So very assumptive sales.

I like to do lots of soft closes.

Probably around the range of two or three a minute.

Same.

Right.

So you just constantly.

They're not going to know they're coming.

Just constantly.

Oh, remind me, what are we going to do with your cat?

Let me make a note here.

Do you guys have a pen?

You guys write this down.

Let's talk about the cat after.

Okay, sorry.

Back to what we were talking about.

The furnace guy drove over the flowers.

Oh.

Where do you want me to park?

Yeah, what's the best place our.

Our crew can park during the install?

And by the way, that goes to trust.

Right.

Remember I said budget, need timing, trust, and the two technical things?

So we've just now hit budget timing.

No, we didn't hit timing.

Sorry.

Budget and trust.

So why now?

Why didn't you call Smith?

Oh, he drove over their flowers.

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

Okay, so I.

At least I care.

So we're starting to put all these things together right now.

I'm going to ask timing.

A timing question is really important.

And you kind of alluded to this before.

But time can be our biggest ally in helping somebody buy because there's a burning need.

Why, why do you guys need a furnace now?

I mean, it's.

We're kind of in a warm snap right now.

It's not cold.

And then they're going to say something that you've got to listen to really carefully because that's going to be important.

Right.

My daughter keeps getting sick.

We haven't figured it out.

We don't know if it's allergies, we don't know if it's food.

It's driving us crazy.

The poor little girl.

Oh, this is more than a furnace conversation right now.

It just opened up a whole world of lots of other things.

Right.

Lots of how bad is what they are?

Right.

How bad is it?

Oh my goodness.

Poor kid.

Yeah, right.

Is it day?

Is it nighttime?

Is it all of those things all year round?

Is it?

Yeah, yeah.

What I like to hear is.

And you'll hear this in the voice, my mother in law is moving in.

Oh, when is she arriving?

Right next Tuesday.

Oh, when does this have to be done by?

Monday.

Oh, well, you need financing or how are we going to do this?

Right.

Like how can I help?

Because we got to get this.

So.

But how somebody says what they say will tell me a lot.

But you see, we've just had a normal conversation.

How many of budget, need, timing and trust did we already cover off?

Yeah, most of them.

Most of them.

And I can do a lot better as we're going.

You know, just shooting it around here.

Right?

For sure.

Yeah.

I love this.

Something you mentioned earlier is as well.

And I've heard this for years, you know, when I'm training people and they're riding with me versus riding with other.

Especially back when I was the sales manager and trainer at the company here in Austin, you know, I would have new people ride with me and then I would always put them also with a couple of other top people.

And they always came back to me and said, why does it sound like when I'm riding with them it's a sales conversation and when I ride with you, it's just a normal conversation.

Just knock.

And I was like, because it is.

Stop using that creepy salesman voice and actually care about.

We're a service industry for a reason.

Let's serve.

Yeah, well, and, and you know, that's one of the challenges that we have as business owners is we're trying to hire technicians.

Like people that grew up saying, I'm really good with tools.

I wouldn't mind working with tools.

I want the entire Milwaukee set.

I don't care what it costs, right?

Oh, yeah.

And then we're like, hey, you got to sell.

And they're like, oh, what?

Yeah, yeah.

No, no.

I think sales guys are cheesy, slimy.

They're criminals, they're robbers.

My mom's second ex husband was a sales guy, and he was not a good guy.

I don't want to be a sales.

All of those things come into it.

So don't sell.

We don't sell.

You can.

I would be happy to say we don't sell at this company, but we're very curious and we care about helping people.

I can show you how to care.

And we care with really nice furnaces, but we don't care.

We never offer somebody a furnace they don't need right now.

We got to offer them the right one.

Right.

And they need to do it or they're going to freeze or get too hot or whatever, you know, whatever.

Whatever it is.

Oh, yeah.

But that's all we do here.

We're just really trying to help people.

So align yourself to what your market needs and what's going to make your text feel comfortable.

Because they did not grow up saying, I want to listen to sales podcasts.

So I understand the four ingredients to any sale plus all the objection handling techniques.

No, it's not going to work, man.

Yeah, there's only a handful of us that are actually wired like that, let me tell you.

So I think I told you my background was I sold telecom.

So when I left being in trades, I went and worked for Sprint and I was the blue suit, red tie guy.

And we went into boardrooms of banks and we're selling telecommunications, we're selling fiber optic cables, all that stuff.

Right.

We didn't talk like that.

We didn't talk like.

Well, I want to tell you about this special offer we have on T1 cables right now.

We're back hauling it from the railway track right into your building with.

Right.

You sound like an infomercial.

No.

Yeah, but people think you have to.

You don't talk like that at all.

And you don't talk like 30 Rock.

You'd like you don't.

You just be a normal guy from that neighborhood.

How can I help you?

What's wrong?

You know, is it stressful buying a furnace?

Okay, let me see how I can help you.

Let's answer your questions before I start talking.

What's the biggest thing you guys are worried about with a furnace?

Yeah, like turn it around.

Yeah.

Or bring.

Bring those up.

A lot of times, you know, it's the black swan group.

They call it the accusation audit.

Right.

And it's like just call it out ahead of time.

So, yeah, most people normally, these are the anxieties they have with this kind of a purchase.

But I'm here to help and show you why it didn't have to be so hard.

And list them.

It's okay.

Yeah, list it.

Put it on paper.

But.

But again, it comes back to.

I think you and I are saying, I'm going to say it in my words, but I can hear it from you as well.

I just have to be curious and I have to care.

Yeah.

About the people.

I'm not trying to sell something to you.

I want to help.

I want to help you with a solution.

And if their daughter really has an allergy they haven't figured out, they're not sleeping at night either.

And if I can be the solution, you know, proud I would be to put in that furnace and help them.

Absolutely.

So everybody listening to this is one of the things in this very specific conversation.

When we're in discovery, which is this phase, discovery is the sales process.

Everybody listening outside of that.

The rest is just taking measurements and taking an order.

Discovery is the sales portion of the entire appointment.

Now, does everything matter and is all important?

Yes, of course.

But this is where the rubber hits the road.

And when we hear those kind of things, man, what I love to.

And I'm sure you probably do something similar, I'd love to hear your kind of take on this is we'll ask the drive down the road to the point that you know literally what, two, one to three people out of 10 or more, if you're doing this properly, you're going to hit actual tears.

You're going to hit a pain point that's so deep, they are so concerned about solving it.

And we're not offering solutions yet.

We're literally just listening and listening and listening, asking clarifying questions.

And then when you've hit the wall of that emotional wall, when we know one more question would be too far, we hit that wall.

And that's where we.

And for most people, they think it's way before it actually is.

So that's one of the things to do, is train to go ask more questions than you are.

But the second.

Here's.

And for everybody, listen, write this down.

The question asked then is, man, Dominic, if we could help with that, if we could improve on that for your daughter, would that help you?

How can I Say no and they'll say yes.

Okay, great.

So I just want to make sure what's important to you.

I'm just going to make a note for myself to make sure I investigate and address this.

Improve air quality for daughter's allergies.

Right, right.

Okay, great.

And then move on.

But we're not offered solutions yet.

That's later.

Don't get things mixed up.

Yeah.

So you asked what my thoughts would be on that.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

You kind of knew I was going to agree.

But the part that I really agree on is repeating back what they said to me as verbatim as I can.

Yes.

And then if I can't.

If I can't repeat back exactly what you said, I'll say, and my notes are messy, but you said something along the lines of, my daughter has allergies.

It's.

She doesn't have a runny nose, but her eyes are always watering.

Did I get that right?

Yes.

Okay, so now imagine they say, we got to think about it.

We got to do finance.

We can't figure this out.

We're busy.

Something.

Now the next company comes in, they're like, yeah, you know what you need here?

The C74.

That'll do it.

No problem.

I think we could put it in here.

You guys are going to need to get out.

I need access to the basement.

And here's a form you can fill out.

Yep.

Okay.

They're gonna.

We gotta think about it.

The guy.

Yeah, yeah, no problem.

I'm here all.

You know, I've been here for 65 years.

I'll do it.

Just let me know.

He leaves and they're gonna go, we gotta call Dom.

Yeah, right.

He listened.

He listened.

And.

And you know what?

If they didn't.

If they did go with that guy because he was thousand dollars cheaper.

That's fine.

That's fine.

That's totally fine.

But I still know, I take.

I only have great customers.

Like really the customers.

Clients.

I have best people in the world.

I would love it if they were my neighbors, Every single one of them.

Why is that?

Why is that?

It's because I go out there and I think I put out that kind of mojo and they give that mojo back.

I love it.

Well, we attract who we are.

This is.

I mean, it totally goes back to, you know, that whole personal growth.

Where we started in the conversation is if we're constantly working on improving ourself and being better, you know, and if that really is true, that we attract who we are.

Yeah.

We're going to get some, you know, some oddballs and outliers, but for the most part, you know, we.

We become the thermostat in the room, not the, we become the therm.

The thermostat, not the thermometer.

We will set the temperature and that's just because of the person we are.

That's nice.

Yeah, so that's nice.

That's my hopeful, my idea about that.

It might be awful, but.

No, I know it's not because we just see it over and over.

You know, when we're working with company, you know, people and companies, it's wild what happens when the cult.

It's the culture shift.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, I do hope that the people listening have invested some.

Whatever.

I don't mean they have to buy anything from you or me or anybody else, but invest it in their people because that's really engine that drives the thing.

So, you know, bring some level of sales, training or support to them so that they can, you know, it's.

It's fine for us as owners to listen to it.

It does no good inside my head.

Yeah, well, I guess it does, but it doesn't.

It needs to be magnified and shared.

Right, Right.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's like investing in your people and then everybody as an individual.

Also, don't refuse to invest in yourself because maybe the owner, the boss, is not.

They didn't want to buy the training for me.

Are you kidding me?

You're expecting someone else to invest in your own personal growth?

You know, if you spend, you know, for example, a couple thousand bucks a month on a training program for six months, but the lifetime value for that is millions of dollars and you're not willing to spend ten grand across where you're going to cash flow it monthly easily with the additional sales you're going to make anyway.

It's like, okay, yeah, I can't even.

Add up how much I've spent invested in my own training.

And I'm not done.

I have a coach.

I'm a business coach.

Oh, yeah, I have a coach.

Same, same.

Yeah, I'm.

I, When I tell people the number that I normally train and they ask me how much I've spent across and I'm like 15 years.

I'm like, I don't know, 150,000, 200,000 more.

But it doesn't, you know, I know that the numbers are going to be a little bit bonkers here, but when I was running the mail order pharmacy, we weren't at 120 million at that point.

Maybe we were in the 60s or 70s, and I was talking to my business coach, and there had been a market shift, and we were down on a certain line item.

And so he's like, you know, what's going on this week?

What are the things you're working on?

I'm like, well, we're really down in this category.

We need to move in here.

And he made that one suggestion.

He's like, well, have you looked at it like this?

Well, that one suggestion was a $12 million lift, so you can't do the math on that.

How come I hadn't seen it?

It's not like I'm a dumb.

I mean, I'm not that smart, but I didn't see that.

Sure.

And he's just sort of on the other end of the phone.

He's like, what about this?

I'm like, yeah, what about that?

Yeah, it's the outside perspective.

Right.

Crazy.

Oh, I love this.

So let's do this.

So tell us.

Give everybody the kind of rundown of the different podcasts that you run.

Sure.

And how they can get connected to them, and then also how they can reach out to you and get connected with you and with what you do.

Yeah, for sure.

I love to feature everybody.

So many.

There's not enough of us.

I am all about, let's help everybody.

There's no competition here.

We could literally clone ourselves times 10, and there's still not enough of us to help the people that need help.

So for sure.

I gotta tell you, I agree with you in so many ways.

So I've got two different podcasts, as you mentioned.

I'll tell you about the first one first, because it's probably going to be a little outside of the circle for most of the people here, but maybe not, Maybe not.

So the first one I want to tell you about is called Cabinet Maker Profit System.

And so my audience on that show is cabinet makers, architectural mill workers, people that do closets and fine furniture.

Crazy underserved market of really nice people who are running a manufacturing facility.

So it's a little.

If there's some.

There's some nuances there about running one manufacturing facility, which is the same as if somebody's running a sheet metal shop.

You know, it's that same kind of thing.

Right.

Mm.

And that.

That podcast is great.

And it's just got a funny name, Cabinet Maker Profit System.

Like, if you can't figure out who I am there, then, well, it's easy to find.

You know, it's funny that you mentioned that, but proof that it's so underserved.

I've gotten emails from people that sell California closets.

I've gotten emails from cabinet people in the past that have listened to my podcast just because the philosophy is the same.

Right.

And isn't that interesting you say that it's the philosophy.

It's the people who understand.

I don't just have to talk to people who have a shop on the north side of the road that's run by two cousins that's in Albuquerque in order to get any value.

No, this is a business conversation.

You should be able and have a little fun like you and I clearly have fun.

But hopefully people are taking a lot of value away.

Right.

So that's one show, and then the other one is profit tool belt.

I do this by hats.

Oh, nice.

Profit tool belt.

Profit tool belt and profit like money, not like, you know, church profit tool belt.

So.

But both of them, though, are about the business of the contracting business, which is really my specialty.

I'm in the business of business.

And so what I say to my listeners, and if anybody, there might be some people already on your show who listen to mine, is that I want you to move from being a contractor who has a couple of crews to being a business person who just happens to be contractor.

Speak the same language, man.

Right.

It's just got to be that, like, it's that mental shift.

I just happen to be running a contracting business, but I'm a businessman, businesswoman, business person.

That's.

That's who I appeal to, and that's who listens to my show.

I love it.

And that growth.

So for everybody, listen I 100.

That's so.

I mean, good to great, right?

Jim Collins, Classic Work on your business, not in it, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Gerber, E. Myth.

Every bit of this, right?

It's like your job as the owner and the leader is to work on the machine to make it run smoother.

That means helping your people overcome those challenges.

Like in the meeting.

Right.

Where are you stuck?

How can I help you get unstuck?

The machine's job, which is your business happens to sell heating and air, or it happens to do cabinets, or it happens to do garage doors or plumbing, whatever it is.

But your job as the owner leader is helping the.

Everyone in your machine runs smoother and the machine runs smoother look for those growth opportunities.

That kind of stuff.

Yeah.

That's why you see growth in the.

In the strangest.

Like Tommy Mello.

Oh, yeah.

Like, I've.

I've interviewed Tommy.

Have you had him on your show?

Not yet.

I've gone through the process.

A guy that's helping my.

My virtual group, Corey Barrier, is actually a successful life podcast.

If you haven't been on history, I'll get you connected as well.

Yeah.

Thank you.

But, yeah, great, great podcast.

But, yeah, he's.

He's been on there.

We're kind of passing Tommy around for our shows.

I love it.

But.

And.

And he's a great interview.

And the power and the energy he comes up.

And there's some other people that are like that as well.

But if you go back and look at even 1-800-got- junk, which is now called O2E Brands, right.

Because it's 1-800-got junk.

Wow.

One day paint you.

I think you move me has been split off and shack shine.

Okay.

Okay.

Why is he running the world?

He hauls junk, but it's what he.

It's how he synthesizes business and creates success through culture and through systems that allows people to grow.

He hauls junk?

Yeah.

Does he.

Does he really haul junk or does he actually change people's lives?

Because he actually changes people's lives.

He makes it cool.

I think that's why we're seeing such a move right now in all of the trades for these PE groups, private equity groups, and consolidation.

Not because so many owners were ready to sell, but because so many owners were ready to partner with somebody to be able to implement a system.

Because we were just.

That's always been the thing for eternity in the trades is one guy maybe grow to a point.

But nobody had the systems.

Only the companies that grew are the ones that actually built systems and culture.

And so for these groups, they're able to have a success, a verifiably successful system to be able to overlay on a company.

Here's your.

Here's your menu.

Follow this menu.

Just do this.

Step one, step two, step three.

This is Hamburger U for heating and air, for plumbing, or for garage doors or whatever it is.

Yeah.

And the really good systems still allow a lot of flexibility within it.

It's like a set of guidelines instead of rules and.

Yeah, more like best practices.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, I love it.

So cool.

So how.

So our community.

How can people.

One, how can people connect to you?

Obviously, everybody listen to the podcast Profit Tool Belt as the probably the one most people are.

That's probably the one that you listen to.

Let's be honest.

And I'll tell you, I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm gonna, because I'm really excited about our conversation today.

And it's sneak peek for everybody.

I may be a guest on that show sometime pretty soon.

I think you will.

So.

But.

So they can connect to you there.

But also, how do they connect and what services do you offer that they can really dive into?

Yeah.

Well, when is this episode going to go live?

This will be January 5th.

Oh, good.

Okay.

Two days from now.

Two days from now.

Perfect.

I actually bumped a couple to put yours in because I've got some other plans for some launches and stuff with the other episodes.

Nice.

Well, I appreciate that.

Yeah.

Well, since it's the beginning of the year, I have a masterclass I'm running called make 2024 your best year ever.

Okay.

It's an hour, so it's.

It's really consumable.

You take lots of notes.

You do need to be somewhere quiet and confidential because it's business owner language during that.

That master class.

But if people want to join that, just get on the list and then we'll.

We'll send you the invite for the day and the time.

Okay.

Just text me.

Pretty simple.

Send me a text.

It's 315-903-7853.

And just say, best year ever.

Just as our, I don't know, like, secret wink.

Then I know.

Then I know.

They do.

They want to go on that.

That.

I love it.

And make sure when you text, text Dominic to mention you heard him on the closing podcast.

Yeah, yeah.

No, please say.

And say that again.

What should they say?

Just that you heard him on the Close it now podcast.

Perfect.

Yeah, do that.

That.

And you know, that's just an easy, friendly way.

Just text me and I'll.

Yeah.

Make sure.

When is that session going to be held?

You know what we are holding?

We're actually holding one today, so nobody's going to make it to that, but we should have one.

We're going to run another one here in January.

I don't know the date yet.

I don't know the date.

So what we do is we just have everybody on a waitlist.

Then we send out an email.

If you can make it, you can make it.

If you can't, you can't.

But that's okay.

You know, we'll just, we'll continue to.

To offer it and I love it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So thank you.

Oh, by the way, I'm.

I have a book coming out as well.

It's called Construction Millionaire Secrets.

Ooh, Love it.

I just added two chapters to it, so it previously had 20 secrets.

Now it's got 22.

Okay.

And that one's gonna bonus to you, right?

Like you're talking about.

Yeah, the bonus, too.

Yeah.

Well, you know what?

I realized that we needed a lot more on time management and a lot more on profitable estimating than I had in the first version.

And that was feedback from the audience.

So we added those chapters in.

So if somebody wants that, text me, you know.

Perfect.

I love it.

I. I will text you as well because I'd love to have one of those when it comes out.

Thank you.

Oh, man, this is great.

So, yeah, everybody listen, I hope you've gotten some value.

I know I've gotten value, which means I know that the listeners have as well.

Thank you.

So thanks for being on today, man.

It's kind of time to land this plane and gosh, any.

I guess any parting words before.

I've got a couple of announcements to cover in some housekeeping, but yeah, leave us with something that's.

So what this podcast is known for also is an actionable item that people can implement immediately out of every show.

So what is something that.

It could be a mindset thing, it could be an actual, you know, tactical thing.

What's something that you can, you know, give everybody right now that they can just run with right away?

I want to say something really wise, but let's go back to the topic that we had here.

Budget, need, timing and trust.

Draw that as a quadrant on your page BNTR and underneath that, write the number 2.

That now becomes your pre call plan.

Before you walk in or before one of your technicians walks into somebody's home, just remind them that we need to ask a couple questions about budget, need, timing and trust and then find out the two technical things.

And sometimes the technical thing is, are you going to let my cat out or what kind of solvent do you use?

Because I'm allergic to the smell.

Whatever it is, it's their thing.

Just find out.

Very simple.

Maybe the other thing is, please remember your technicians did not grow up wanting to be salespeople.

So stop trying to force be a salesperson down their throat.

It's just not their natural happy place.

So maybe work with you, Sam, to figure out.

Call Sam back.

Find out from Sam.

How do you position that?

So a technician feels like this is the greatest job in the world and they don't force me to sell.

I just help people.

Love it.

I love it.

That's so powerful too, especially for all of you listening that there's a big move right now for the call by call management system model.

So Especially if you're the person on the other end of the phone and those technicians are out in the field.

This is such an easy way to have a nice like have it right in front of you and make sure you get those questions answered when you, when they reach out for that to make that close.

So that's a, you know can be handy.

I can imagine my mind's like 10 different ways like you could use this but that's the one that's very top of mind right now in the industry with the.

The move towards the call by call model.

So I like it.

Well cool man.

Well, thanks for hanging out today.

This has definitely been a great conversation.

I am excited to definitely to listen to the Prophet tool belt and a couple housekeeping things for everyone listening.

One of the biggest announcements is right now I am going January 25, 2627 in Salt Lake City is door to door con 7 and I am a speaker.

Along with the keynotes this year are Lance Armstrong, Sean White, multi gold Olympic gold medalist, Chris Voss who wrote Never Split the Difference, founder of the Black Swan Group and of course Sam Taggart who is the founder of Door to Door Experts and myself.

And for all of you listening in the H Vac world Victor Rancour is going to be speaking there as well.

But so this is why I made a point earlier.

You started indoors because it's so interesting with everything that's going on everybody's in this bloodbath over digital marketing and how can and call volume is down 30, 40% and to continue to do the same thing is and expect different results is what Albertans I'd say it's insanity.

Insanity.

Right.

And so that's why doors right now is becoming such a big thing.

And so I basically leading the face of doors for H Vac right now.

And so that's where we're at is I've got companies all across the country that are dipping their toe in it.

They're trying it.

You know, one, two people go out and you know the numbers prove true.

Everybody listening every hour.

And you don't have to have a crazy script.

Yes.

In my course I have a whole module on door scripting.

But you don't even need that.

You can just go out and start talking to people like normal.

And I guarantee you no matter your skill level, every hour you're going to set one to three appointments for your technicians to come in and do evaluations and then discovery happens.

They get really good at asking questions and then problems get solved.

So doors are it's I'm all about innovating and turning industry on its head.

So this is industry disruption right now, which I'm really excited about.

So leading the charge on that.

I'm speaking door to door.

Con 7 everyone listening, it's January 25, 26, 27.

Get yourself there with your team, go to h vacdoors.net and use the code SAMW20SAMW20 and that's a 20% discount on your tickets.

So to use that.

And also in March I am hosting it is going to be the 21st and 22nd.

I am hosting an in person sales masterclass in Austin or in Round Rock, Texas, just north of Austin, that is.

I'm going to be deep diving and taking you through the close it now sell system which is every time I roll in the field I'm having companies we're averaging right around 70% in house close rate.

So it is CR.

It's, it's really, really fun.

What's happening.

It's everything we talked about today is basically you.

You might as well have listened to my cell system and we've never met.

It just proves that the system works if you're doing it in completely different parts of the country.

Yeah, 100%.

You know, we've got your, you know, up in Canada and I'm down here in Texas and obviously we travel all over and help people everywhere.

But the point is the philosophy proven philosophies are proven philosophies and it's incredible what happens.

So everyone listening, reach out to me directly.

1.

Join the Facebook group.

Go to the Close it Now Facebook group.

I'd love for you to join as well so we can stay connected that way.

Or email me sam closeitnow.net or pop me a text 512-364-8559 and let me know that you want more info about the sales master class that's going to be happening in March in Austin, Texas.

And I promise if you come, I am going to cater.

In one day we're going to have the best tacos you've ever eaten and the next day you're going to have the best barbecue you've ever eaten.

So no one caters like I cater for my events, but that's it.

That's all we got for today.

Last, very last thing everyone, if you've ever gotten value from this podcast, I would love for you to leave me a five star review wherever you listen.

It is so important.

Your business lives and dies and reviews.

So does mine.

So thank you for listening.

I'm grateful for every single one of you.

2024 is about to be off the charts.

Incredible and I can't wait to help and serve every single one of you more.

Dominic, thanks for being here today man.

Thank you.

We'll have you on my show soon.

Absolutely man.

We'll coordinate that.

And awesome.

Until next time everyone go save the world one heat stroke at a time.

Go save the world one frostbite at a time.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.

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