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.

All right, well, welcome back to the Close it now podcast.

Sam Wakefield here.

So stoked about this guest today.

It's, it's actually going to be the first time for all of you listeners, we have a bonafide self proclaimed turd chaser.

We've got our first plumber on this episode.

You may know him from his very catchy slogan, fix pipes, pet dogs.

I'm also a huge fan of his podcast called the Void which we'll talk a little bit about.

He just hit a huge mile marker which I'm excited to celebrate with him.

And otherwise he does so many things.

Also is the founder of an organization called Trade Wins which all of you on YouTube, when this goes up, you actually, I'm rocking the shirt out today, got the Trade Wins shirt on.

If you would like one of these, make sure to hop on his website and order one for yourself as well.

And also he is the founder and owner of Smedley Plumbing, hailing in from Kansas City.

City.

So congratulations, first of all, congratulations.

This we're recording the day after the super bowl.

So this is, I'm super excited to introduce Mitch Smedley.

All of those things that we just talked about.

And of course right behind him is a Kansas City logo right on the wall.

So congrats for the super bowl win and thanks for joining me today, sir.

Yeah, you know we, we put in a lot of hard work on that super bowl and you know, cheering from the couch, I'm sure we definitely impacted the, the team's performance.

No, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

Yeah, it was, it was.

If you hadn't been there, they, I don't know if they'd have pulled it out.

Yeah, exactly.

Now it's made for a fun evening.

We're, we're getting spoiled here in Kansas City.

We've got a team that's doing pretty good for a couple of years now.

So you Know, before, when they win the super bowl, everyone would go to the parade because it's like, you know, it may never happen again.

And then when they win it again, it's like, oh, cool.

Two and one.

And now this third one is like, I don't know if we're going to go to the parade or not.

Yeah.

Wait a minute.

We got something big happening here, right?

Yeah, we.

We were just there last year.

You know.

You know, the coolest thing, everybody that's listening, if you've never been to Kansas City, there's something that I noticed when I was.

I was there several months ago working with a.

An H VAC company called Air Care in Kansas City.

And Mitch and I met up, we grabbed some coffee and chopped it up one afternoon.

And I made this notice as I was going around that of all cities I've ever been in Kansas City, sports, like, the entire city is all about the sports.

Like, all of the porches had, like, peanuts and banners everywhere.

I've never seen a city that was so into their teams.

It was just really cool to be.

Yeah, it's.

Well, and it's kind of wild because Kansas City's gotten to see.

Ever since, like, 2015, Kansas City's been fortunate enough to see their sports teams do really well.

The Royals won the world series in 15.

And, you know, we.

We do good in soccer, we do good in football and all these other things.

So it's kind of a fun little era for Kansas City.

That's good.

Well, we.

That means, of course, we're in the perfect time to be alive.

Yeah.

Is exactly where we're always.

Yeah.

So.

So let's get started.

Give the listeners a little bit of highlight reel.

You know, where did you come from?

And one, how'd you end up being a plumber?

And two, you know, how did you land with, you know, Smedley Plumbing?

You've got trade winds, you've got the void.

How did you end up getting starting all those.

And, you know, why in the world should everybody listen to this episode?

Yeah.

So let's give the backstory on the plumbing thing first.

So 19 years old, I had done a year in college, decided college wasn't for me, didn't really know what I wanted to do.

So I enlisted into the Navy, and I figured I would hang out in the Navy for a couple of years and then let them pay for school.

Well, my third day in basic training, I had a cardiac event occur that left me unresponsive on a sidewalk.

Oh.

And so I wake up in the hospital up there in Great Lakes in Michigan, and they, you know, they're checking some things out, asking about my history, and come to find out it's a heart condition that.

That caused the event.

It's a heart condition I made the Navy aware of before I went into the Navy.

However, they stopped that line of communication at a certain point.

Turns out I was never even supposed to be in the Navy with this heart condition.

And so they send me home.

And now that I'm home, I'm.

It's too late for me to go to another semester of school.

So a buddy of mine says, hey, I got a job at this plumbing company.

You should come work here.

And then whenever the next semester starts, you can go right back.

And so I got a job at the plumbing company, and I've never quit plumbing since.

So it turns out I had a little bit of a knack for it.

I picked it up pretty fast.

And, you know, anytime you can understand something at a rate a little bit quicker than the average person, you tend to fall in love with that.

So that's.

That's kind of how I landed in to be a plumber.

Nice.

So I was in the plumbing industry for 19 years and had worked for several companies over those 19 years.

Shortest tenure was 18 months at one company.

Longest tenure was 10 years at another company.

But finally, after all of those, I decided I need to.

I'm going to start my own company.

And I had strategically placed myself in all of these different positions within these companies so I could gain the experience to start my own.

Sure, I'd been the P on, I'd been the gopher.

I'd been the lead plumber, the superintendent, the department manager.

The last company that I was at, I was charged with creating a plumbing department out of thin air.

They had never done plumbing before.

So I took all of that knowledge, and In August of 2020, we started Smedley Plumbing, and I borrowed $30,000 from myself.

What perfect timing to start a brand new company.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's.

It's kind of funny.

January of 2020 was when I had texted my wife and said, like, we're absolutely doing our own company.

I'm going to come home tonight, start putting the plans together.

It's going to happen.

Well, In January of 2020, nobody really knew what was getting ready to happen.

Over the next few months, you were hearing little snippets about it in the news stories and stuff, but, you know, most of what the news talks about never actually happens.

And so finally, here we are Full blown planning mode.

We're preparing our personal finances, we're preparing our business finances, we're everything.

And then all of a sudden everything starts shutting down.

And I remember my wife asking like, are you sure this is still the right thing to do?

Yes, absolutely.

And so we stayed the course and made it happen.

I love it.

Opened up on August 1st and never looked back.

So I had borrowed $30,000 from myself.

I basically took money out of a home equity line of credit, put it in the business and worked my tail off for those first three months in the business and actually paid myself back all 30 grand in three months.

Right on.

So, yeah, so now the business is like up and running and on its own two legs.

It doesn't owe anybody any money.

And so we kept working and kept working and kept growing.

And by month nine, I hired plumber number two, and month ten, I hired plumber number three.

And so inside of a year, we were already a three truck operation.

And I will add that when you're in business for less than a year, you have no credit.

Banks will not loan you money for anything.

And so when you want to buy vehicles, you have to pay cash for them.

And so we were adding people and this was all cash rolled stuff.

No, no banks, no finances, no nothing.

So we are now 10 employees strong, five trucks.

We have a full time on staff videographer.

Nice.

We do quite a bit on YouTube here.

In the next few weeks, we're going to break 10,000 subscribers on YouTube, which for a lowly little plumbing channel is quite a bit.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

Congratulations.

And so, yeah, we've, you know, going through all of the small business growth surge and, and plateau and surge and plateau and everything.

We surged to three trucks and then we plateaued for a little while and then we surged to five trucks and then we plateaued for a little while.

And so right now we're in the middle of our next little surge.

Yeah.

So it'll be, it'll be kind of nice as that all transpires.

So.

But yeah, we, we started the plumbing company and six months in, not even six months, three months into the plumbing company, when I had paid myself off the money I borrowed from myself, I thought, man, this worked like better than it ever could have.

I should write a book for how to start a home service based business.

Sure.

And so I write this book and it's in my computer.

It's still on my computer today.

I never actually published the book.

I wrote it, I tabled, never went to editing or anything.

Like that I just kind of left it in there.

And then I got to thinking, I'm like, man, the people that would really need to read this book probably aren't yet book readers at this point in their career.

Yeah, business owners read books, but a lot of times service technicians don't yet.

And so I decided, you know, hey, most of the people that would need this information are on job sites with earbuds in a lot of times anyway, so let's turn the book into a podcast.

Love it.

And, and let's just, let's just basically read the book in the podcast and then we'll just let the podcast go wherever it goes.

And so two years ago we started the Void podcast and right now we're about 130 episodes strong.

Most every episode is well over an hour long.

So there's about 150 hours of absolutely free content out there for how to start your own service based business or home service based business.

Sure.

And so we've run, we ran the podcast for a little over a year and we ended up getting a sponsor of the podcast and we saw how our listeners were responding to that sponsor and it let us know that our listeners want more from us than what we were actually giving them.

And so we started Trade Wins Consulting.

And essentially Trade Wins is me and my podcast co host David, we work directly with small trades based businesses to help them get to a really healthy level.

And, and we're very upfront with everybody.

We are not your big business coaches.

We are not your, you know, it, you know, your big business coaches, they're, they're helping the $5 million shops get to 15 million.

Right.

Well, it's our goal to help you get to 5 is, is where we want to get you to.

And then like we, we tell everybody up front, we will not coach or mentor any of our clients that are at or above a level than we have been personally.

Sure.

So I love how that really stays within side integrity too.

Yeah, yeah.

And so for me personally, I've managed as many as 25 people and as much as 8 million a year in revenue.

And so any client comes on anywhere close to that and we're usually going to say thanks, but no thanks.

There's better people for you.

And it's just exactly what you said.

It's an ethics thing.

We don't want to be, you know, I'm not going to go into a 25 million dollar business and act like I can help them.

You know, are there areas where I can help?

I'm sure There are, but it doesn't.

It doesn't make it right for me to go in there and try to sell them my services, you know.

Right.

And so, you know, we have gobs of.

Of 1 and 2 truck operations that are looking for a little bit more, you know, organization and a little bit more structure and a little bit more method to the madness.

Right.

And so, you know, and.

And it's.

It's really, really cool what we're seeing happen.

We've.

We've had people go from.

In less than a year of trade winds, we've had people go from one truck to four trucks.

We've had guys that have been at one truck for three years, and then within a few months of being in trade winds, now they're two trucks and ordering a third.

Right.

We've watched other people that already have four or five trucks all of a sudden get real streamlined and now their profitability doubles.

Yeah.

So it's essentially how much you make, it's how much you keep, Right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

So essentially they're growing without any extra headaches.

You know, they're alleviating headaches to grow.

So it's pretty cool what we're, what we're doing there.

It's a very niche market.

It's not, you know, we aren't your.

Your big.

Your big guys there.

But I.

What's funny is I'm friends with a lot of the big guys.

Yeah.

And I tell them all, like, we're going to pass some of these guys along to you when they're ready.

You know, the goal is not.

We tell everybody in trade winds, the goal is not that you're here for life now.

If you want to hang out for life, that's fine.

Sure.

But we'd love to see you graduate on through and go on to bigger and better coaches, come back and be.

A mentor or something, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

Yep.

I love this.

Oh, that's.

It's so inspiring.

Well, that's one of the biggest missing.

I'm glad you recognize that because one of the biggest missing pieces that I've seen, you know, is that how do I get started from scratch or how I'm just small, but I want to grow.

And you're right.

Especially the price points make it so tough to step into some of those bigger coaching packages and stuff if you're a smaller company.

Yeah.

And there's.

You're the only.

Of all the places, you're literally the only one I know of doing that for that size organization.

So that's part of Why I wanted to have you on today, because I know there's a lot of my listeners that are exactly as you describe that.

They're either technicians and they're in that phase of starting to write their own business plan and go out on their own, or they are in that, you know, one, maybe a couple people phase, and just kind of at that moment of being stuck, and it's like, okay, I've maxed out my bandwidth.

I can't work any harder.

How do I grow?

Right?

So that's perfect.

Perfect timing.

Yeah.

It's as we discovered, like, you know, we just progressed into.

Because, like, when we started our podcast, we didn't plan on trade wins.

Wasn't even a thought.

It was just, hey, we feel that people need this information.

Let's just be good stewards to the industry and let's just deliver this information.

Yeah.

And then we realized people wanted even more.

And so it's like, all right, well, the podcast is free.

And.

And when.

When.

When I brought on a videographer in my plumbing company, I mean, we didn't put our toe in the water like we dove head first.

I spent about $25,000 on videography and audio equipment.

Yeah, Like, I mean, I definitely made an investment into it.

And so the podcast was about as far as we could go at no expense to the listeners, just because, I mean, signet.

Significant amounts of our time every week go into creating the podcast and then physical dollars to pay, you know, the editors and for all the equipment and everything else.

So, yeah, absolutely.

I love it.

And one metric that I saw, I think that I saw posted recently that want to give you kudos on.

Did I see you past the million views, Mark?

Yeah.

So we.

Last year, collectively, across all platforms, I think we had eight and a half million views.

And then just on YouTube alone.

And this is not our podcast.

This is our plumbing channel on YouTube.

Just with the plumbing channel, we crossed a million views.

Nice.

Which, again, it's not like we're doing funny or.

Or, you know, there are some YouTube channels that are, I don't want to say easier to grow because there.

There's more competition in those markets, for sure.

But when you're doing something that's, you know, widely acceptable if it's humorous, you know, a lot of people appreciate humor.

You don't have to be a tradesman or a plumber to appreciate, you know, humor.

So for doing something as narrow and small niche as just plumbing, it's.

It's pretty cool to watch it.

To watch.

Yeah.

That is so Huge congratulations there.

I'm.

Yeah, my YouTube channel is a baby channel, so I'm aspiring.

So thanks for the information there.

But so let's talk a little bit about.

As you're one.

One of the things I want to dive into that I know that you're a bit of an.

Really have become an expert in is what we were just talking about is helping those companies grow.

You're doing it yourself, so it's not like you're just, okay, I did this and here's what we used to do.

And that's why it's so, I think why so many people are growing so quickly that are in.

Within your community.

Because it's real time with how people are buying right now, how homeowners think and just the general mindset of our.

In our society right now.

Yeah.

So let's do.

I would love to do maybe what are the top two or three things that a small company that's wanting to grow?

What are some of those, like the places that they get stuck the most that they might not even know it?

Because that's what I find is usually it's things that they just don't know what they don't know yet.

Yeah.

Number one, first and foremost is a lot of people don't understand how expensive marketing is and how low performance it is.

A lot of people think, oh, I'm going to spend $1,000 on an ad and I'm going to get eight or ten service calls out of that ad.

And you know, I, I have an average ticket of 2 grand.

So if I can get 10 calls, 2 grand, 20 grand for $1,000 ad, and they kind of run on this string of like entrepreneur math, all of these ifs and what ifs and hopeful outcomes.

Right.

Yep.

And unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way.

And so most people greatly undervalue what kind of marketing you can pull off just on your own social media.

Your business social media and your personal social media can pull in amazing amounts of work.

I was able to, I was able to garner enough attention towards our business that I hired two plumbers without ever spending a dime in marketing.

So we were getting.

Wow, that's incredible.

Yeah, we were, we were getting enough service calls for.

To keep three plumbers busy all day, every day just from my own social media activity and our business social media activity.

And I mean, there, there is a stoppage to that.

Like you still want to do all of that, but there.

It doesn't scale appropriately, but it definitely gets you to that consistent, healthier platform.

Like you will end up having to spend some money on marketing.

But a one man shop should never spend a dime on marketing.

They don't need to.

And when I say that, what I mean is like they shouldn't.

There are, there is money that they will spend that gets classified as marketing, but it's not really advertising.

Right.

You know, when you buy shirts with your company logo on it, that's a marketing expense because it's got your logo on it.

That doesn't necessarily mean you're spending money on marketing.

True.

You know, spending money on marketing would be a billboard, a radio ad, a TV commercial, boosting Facebook posts.

All like anytime you are spending money for more people to see your advertisements, that is marketing.

Sure.

That, you know, that would be like advertising, so to speak.

So well, and understanding the difference between, between that marketing and advertising are not the same thing.

Yeah.

It's two different, completely different animals.

Yeah, yeah.

And so like when you're, when you're buying stickers for your van that are going to have your company logo on it, all of that stuff like, yes, that is a marketing expense, but that's not really spending money for advertising.

Like it's just making you look professional.

Yeah.

There's a lot of people that'll say they call us because they see their vans all around town, but they're still having to look us up on the Internet to find our phone number.

Like.

Right.

They may see our vans.

It's kind of top of mind awareness.

It's a brand branding initiative, but it's not really paid advertising.

So those two things, I mean they kind of overlap each other, but marketing is insanely expensive and has a very low return and under, you know, undervaluing the power of your own social media and your business social media, those two things alone are huge.

The third one for a young small business owner, the third one I would say is get invested in your community.

And we have a community initiative.

We do that I can't help but think helped put us on the map.

We dedicate the first business day of every month to finding people in the community with necessary plumbing repairs and no way to afford them.

And we put them on our schedules on that first business day and we take care of the plumbing repairs free of charge.

Wow.

And nobody else in the community does anything like that.

There's no other home service based business that does anything like that.

As I was writing all of those business plans back In January of 2020, you know, I feel that every business has a moral and ethical obligation to give back to their community in the largest capacity that they can.

And with us being home service plumbers, it just makes it really easy.

Like I don't need to go donate my time at the local animal shelter and I don't need to go, you know, help feed the homeless and all of that stuff.

Don't get me wrong, those are great initiatives.

Specialist in something that's needed.

Yeah, exactly.

Like.

Like if you, if you're a mortgage officer or a loan officer, you can't really do your craft for the community.

It's not like you can go give free mortgages to the people need them.

Right.

So, you know, the, the donating, the times at the shelters and in the, you know, all of those kinds of things, that's great for those people to do because it's the only way that they really can give back and other than just writing a check.

Whereas for us, we can just do our craft directly for the community and it.

We have a bigger impact that way.

It's a lot easier to streamline it into our schedules and everything else.

So it just made sense.

And we've done.

See, we've been in business three and a half years, and I think we've done about $60,000 in work at no charge for the community.

I love it.

So it's been.

It's been pretty cool.

So we used to.

I used to post a lot about it, and I don't post as much about it anymore because it kind I.

And I don't know if I'm right in this.

Maybe this is my own conscience playing tricks on me, but it kind of got to the point where I felt like we were bragging about charity and I did not want it to come off that way.

And so I don't post like I used to.

Every month when we would do these, I would find the most impactful story and I would write up a big social media post about it and share it.

And.

And I kind of got away from it for one.

It's like these.

I mean, I'm never like naming who it is or anything, but I'm like, these people probably may or may not want me to write the stories about them, but then also I don't want to come off like I'm that guy that's like doing charity work just to take a photo of it.

Yes, look what I did.

Yeah.

And then try to look the part, you know, and so we, we do, we still do talk about it a lot.

Whenever our schedules are empty on that day, we tell people like, hey, we do this program, we have some more availability for this next first business day of the month.

If you know of anybody, send us an email.

We always ask for their applications, so to speak, to come through email.

Sure.

We advertise the program on social media platforms and local community groups and stuff like that, but we never, ever tell the people, like, you know, tag somebody that would be a benefit or we don't want anybody to have to publicly admit that they need the assistance.

Sure.

Yeah.

It's a kind of a privacy thing.

People, you know, all of the different emotions surrounding that type of charity work and that kind of stuff is, you know, very polarizing.

Yeah, yeah.

And so we just have them send us an email.

Yeah.

And.

And run from there.

And to date, we've never turned anybody down.

We have.

We.

We have had to decline maybe two or three customers while.

While we're in the home.

And a lot of it was just maybe they were told wrong about the program.

They thought it was like a drawing where they were like, drawn for free plumbing work.

Okay.

And.

And so we get in there and realize that they.

They can't afford the repairs.

And they, they were thinking it was more like an extreme home makeover.

Sure.

I won something.

Yeah.

And so, you know, we kind of.

It's always an awkward conversation, but we kind of let them know, like, hey, this isn't really the intent of the program.

And, and they're, they always do the same thing.

They're very apologetic.

They're.

They're super sorry they wasted our time.

And, you know, they basically let us know that they didn't have any malicious intent with standing up like that, which is always good.

That could be one of those, like.

But you can also get involved.

Here's what we're doing.

And you could help us out, Right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Share the word.

Yeah.

So, like, early on, we would talk about that program on social media and we would go to community pages and talk about that program.

And as you know, you're a sales trainer.

People buy from.

From people.

They don't buy from businesses.

They buy from people, and they buy from people that they like and that they know and that they trust.

And so when you hear of a small company in your community that's doing this thing for the community when they don't have to.

Nobody else is doing.

No, nothing requires them to do this.

Well, you automatically like that company and you automatically now know of them because you're remembering this thing that they do, and you automatically trust them.

Because if the company's willing to give up A whole day every month just for the community.

What's not to trust about that company?

Right.

And so that has helped us enter the marketplace really, really fast and really, really strong just because it builds that brand power.

I love this.

So for everybody listening, especially because as I'm traveling around and working with companies, one of the biggest things that they always are asking me is, hey, how do we get in front of more people?

How do we do this?

How do we make an impact in the community?

Marketing?

So expensive.

Everything we just talked about, and this is something that I've actually talked to so many companies about, it's like, you've got to have your winter programs, have people submit for people they know that might need some assistance.

Is there senior citizens or their disabilities?

Get a hold of your Lions Club, your Rotary Club, your chamber of commerce, they can all administer getting the word out to people that, and recommend people that might need these types of.

Types of programs.

So for heating and air, it could be going out and doing service work.

For senior citizens, it could be all kinds of things to get into the community, which I love this so much.

Yeah.

It's super powerful.

Yeah.

And what's funny is, like, I was just doing a webinar last week for like, how to use social media to grow your business.

And you know, as a business page, social media wants you to pay for more people to see your business page.

Right.

That social media algorithms will throttle the performance of business pages because that's how they make money, is they make money by selling advertisements from businesses buying advertisements.

Right.

So you, Sam, could make a post on your personal page and it could get shared 150 times and a ton of people would see it.

If you made that exact same post on your business page, social media wouldn't allow for it to get shared 150 times.

Right.

They would just throttle it down and limit the performance because.

And then they would start giving you little notifications like, hey, this post is doing well.

You should boost it and make it do better.

It'll see this many more people with this equals this many dollars.

Exactly.

And so their social media is basically giving you the answer.

It's just not in plain black and white.

Right.

For this many more dollars, you can get this post to this many people.

So they're establishing right there for $30, like for a thousand people to see this post, it's worth $30.

Right.

Well, okay, so what's the objective?

I want a thousand people to see my company.

And if that's, if that happens, it's worth $30.

Cool.

Well, now I'm going to go over to my personal page.

I'm going to do the exact same post.

I'm going to tag my company in it and now it's going to get shared 150 times or whatever.

And now all of that same number of people saw my post and I didn't have to pay to boost it.

And it was purely organic.

That's 100.

You're preaching to the choir here, man.

This is what I've done for so long and it's such a powerful attack.

Everyone listening.

I hope you're making notes here because Mitch is dropping some massive nuggets for this.

And the interesting thing too is I've worked with enough social media marketers and that kind of thing.

They're like, don't ever boost a post.

They're like, they all say you're just throwing your money away.

If you're going to put money towards Facebook or Instagram or something like that, do it through a different means.

Except for.

But don't boost it.

You can get much better return.

Any other way.

Yeah, other than boosting it.

So yeah, yeah, we, you know, we always find good creative ways to try to get things shared and things, you know, spread across platforms.

But you know, when, when we do, on our business page, when we do make posts about our community work, they'll get shared 20, 30, 40 times.

Yeah.

And, and you know, the impressions are way, way up there and it's because we've created a share worthy post and unfortunately a lot of home service or, or any service, you know, trades based professionals, they think that they, what they do is a lot more, a lot more exciting to the general public than it actually is.

Yeah, it's like, like a lot of your listeners are H vac people.

Well, their, their thought process is I need to write something up about the importance of, of changing your air filter every month in your furnace.

Right.

Well, I can guarantee you that not one of your followers opened up social media with the hopes of seeing your write up on air filter maintenance.

However, you can achieve the same thing by showing a picture of the nastiest air filter you changed out this week.

Right.

And I mean, all it's got to say is, you know, change your filters, people.

Yeah, here's the winner for the week.

Here's the winner.

Right?

And what it is, is they don't want to be preached at, they don't want to be sold stuff.

They want to be entertained.

And so find a way to take what you're already doing every day and entertain your audience.

Don't preach at them and don't pitch your product to them.

You know, Amazon is a great proof of this concept that people hate to be sold stuff, but they love to buy stuff to buy.

Right.

And the reason, like, if somebody went, if Amazon had an upfront salesperson that was like, you know, instead of their hot deals of the week or their trending things that they're always kind of flashing up in front of you anyway, imagine if you opened up Amazon and there was like a wall, like a, a digital wall of a person.

It was like, hey, these socks, right now they're selling a ton.

They're super comfortable, they're reversible, you know, whatever the case may be, you'd immediately be like, no, because they're.

It's a sales pitch.

Right.

But so how does Amazon get around that?

When you open up Amazon, they've got 15 ads of socks and they're all cute and they've all got five stars.

But now you're not being sold something.

You're given the opportunity to buy something.

The difference is you have a choice in the matter.

Yeah.

So, you know, Amazon's a great, A great example for if you give people options and let them pick on their own, they'll spend more money than if you start cramming down their throat what you think they should buy.

Exactly, Exactly.

I love this so much.

This is great.

And it reminds me of a conversation that we had when we sat together.

You were kind of talking through a bit of your sales process.

So some of what I train is to always, yes, we're going to do an incredible discovery.

We're going to ask people what their concerns are and prioritize according to, you know, what's important to them, et cetera, et cetera.

Then we're offering options for those solutions.

We're not just saying, here's your one thing.

Right.

But when we were sitting together, the way that you guys do it at Smedly is a bit different.

It actually is a bit more of the Amazon model, I think, than even what I.

What I normally train.

I would love for you to kind of break that down a little bit for everybody.

Listen.

So for all you listeners, this is a masterclass.

Take notes, because Mitch is probably one of the very best people I've ever heard in this process.

So take notes here and also see it through the lens of how can I apply this to my trade?

Because there's a lot of different trades listening.

So with that lens in place, take it away, Mitch.

Go over what we were talking about with just the way that you guys present options and the sales and that side of it.

Yeah, so I'll kind of do the back half and then I'll bring you up to the front half of it.

So the back half is like once we're in the home and when we're in the home, we're going to, you know, obviously discover really well, we're going to learn as much as we can about the problem.

And we're really looking to solve the cause of the problem, not necessarily the direct problem.

And so we do that by combining our years of experience plus the way the customer is answering questions to come up with three really good, a minimum of at least three really good options for the customer.

And the base option, the bottom option is going to be the bare minimum that we are okay with repairing that option or that, that problem today.

Right.

And let me, let me just give you some parameters.

So like if we show up to a toilet that's not working very well, our bare minimum might be a rebuild of that toilet, right?

Sure.

The next option up is, is going to be either a full blown rebuild of that toilet or a new toilet.

It depends on how much work the bare minimum is.

If the toilet only needs a flapper, then our bare minimum might just be a flapper and our middle option is going to be a full blown rebuild.

Right.

If the toilet needs a full blown rebuild as a minimum, well then that becomes our minimum option.

And then our middle option is going to be a new toilet.

And so the middle option is always kind of up for discussion.

But then the top option is kind of like that dream big scenario where we, we put together like let's say the middle option is a new toilet.

Well, the top options, all new toilets in the home.

Right.

If they, if all they needed was a flapper, then the middle option is going to be a full blown rebuild and the top option is going to be a new toilet.

Right.

And so anyway, we're, we're trying to hit them on all three aspects again.

It's kind of this Amazon approach.

Do you want just the part to fix your thing?

Do you want a whole new thing or do you want all new things?

Right.

And you know, Amazon's not pushing you one way or the other.

They're not, you know, every once in a while they suggest by saying, you know, just so you know, people that have bought this also buy this.

Right.

Type of thing, social proof type of a statement.

Yeah, yeah, they aren't really, they aren't really saying you really need to do this top option, and you're going to hate yourself if you do the bottom option.

Right, Exactly.

And.

And we avoid that because we wouldn't ever offer an option that we aren't fully comfortable standing behind.

And so we put together those three options.

We let the customers know what all three options are, and then we let them pick whatever option they want.

And whatever option they pick, we will immediately say, that's a great choice.

Sure.

In other words, we're reaffirming to them that you do make good.

You, customer make good decisions.

Yeah.

And so we reaffirm that to them.

And.

And there is no.

There is no moment of, like, are you sure you don't want to go with the better option?

Like, we never ever say anything like that.

We just go with it.

And you'd be surprised.

A lot of times they pick the middle or the upper, upper options on their own.

There's also a lot of times where we get to work on the bottom option, and then the customer comes back to us and they're like, hold on.

Is it too late for me to level up a little bit?

Yeah.

The more I'm thinking about it, I think I do want to go with that better option.

Sure.

Just do it on their own.

Right.

And the key there is we never pressured them anywhere.

So that does quite a few things because, for one, it allows us to look really good to them.

We weren't a slimy scheme, slimy salesman.

We were.

Right.

A service provider.

Yeah.

Here's something broken.

Here's several ways to fix it.

What do you want to do?

Yes.

Yeah.

And then we always.

We always.

You know, it's kind of often the customers will say, like, what would you do if it's your house?

We train all of our guys to say the exact same thing.

It's unfair for me to answer that.

I'm a master plumber.

I know how to fix this.

Yeah.

I also have access to cheaper parts than you do.

So I'm going to fix this different than you would because for me, it's not that big of a deal if it breaks in the future, or depending on how busy I am, I might fix it the best I can because I never want to fix this again.

Right.

It's.

It's different.

Whereas, like, you as the customer, don't know how to fix it, and you definitely don't want this to break two months from now.

So, you know, you have to factor that in.

And it.

So offering the three options is kind of like, you Know, treating everybody like you'd treat your mom right.

Oh, like, hey, mom, here's.

Here's three options.

What do you want to do?

Cool.

Let's do it.

Doesn't matter what option.

Mom's picks you're going to be happy for.

Oh, I love this.

So let's camp out this.

Camp out on this for a second, because I think what you just went through, because that's one of the.

Of course, one of the questions we all get in trades is, well, what would you do, Mitch?

What would you do, Sam, if this was your house?

How would you handle it?

I think that's probably one of the very best answers I've ever heard for that question.

Because it's not the answer that's like, well, I would always do the best because I know how it works.

Because so many people are trained just to say that if you don't just select the best, then you don't believe in what you sell.

Well, yes, but we know that's not always the right situation.

That's the solution that the company that.

What's the biggest bottom line?

Says how to answer.

Yeah.

So could you take a second and go back just exactly like you did?

Go back through that again, because I really want to highlight this.

It's one of the biggest questions that we get.

And honestly, I'll tell you, I'm learning from you today.

So thank you for going over that.

And everybody pay close attention because this one is crucial.

So, yeah, if you're wanting me to kind of go back over that again.

Yeah.

So here, I'll.

In fact, let's role play it.

I'll be the homeowner.

Yeah.

You've presented me some options, and I'm just like, man, you know, Mitch, it all looks good.

You know, the company looks great.

I don't know which one to pick, man.

I know we've got some issues, but you know what you're showing me?

They all look like possible options.

What would you do?

Yeah, that gets really hard for me to answer, to be honest with you.

Just because I'm a master plumber, I know how to make all these repairs.

My truck is in the driveway 24 7, so the parts are right there.

It's less of an inconvenience for me to make these repairs than it is for you.

You have to call the company, have to schedule a visit.

You have to come home from work, and you know all of this stuff.

So I'm definitely going to answer that different than you would, and it's probably not.

I know why you're asking that you're looking for a little advice from me, but that's probably not advice I can realistically give you because in some instances I might cheap out and do the bare minimum of repairs because I'm at.

There's no risk, like, if it breaks again in two weeks, I can just fix it again.

In other instances, depending on how busy I am, I might go all the way and go way extreme because I never want to have to fix this again.

Maybe I'm.

I don't have the time available.

And so that gets really difficult for me to say, like, what would I do if it's my home?

Because, you know, it's just a difference of, of opinion.

It's kind of like a doctor.

You ask a doctor, like, what would you do?

Well, the doctor has access to all the, all the meds, all the prescriptions, all the staff, all the.

Everything.

They're going to do things a little bit different than a paying customer would.

So, yeah, I love it.

So a couple things that just happened there, everybody listening.

One is Mitch told it as a.

A this is me story.

So they didn't feel like super pressured into, hey, here's what you should do.

But also what I love the most about this answer is you painted two different future scenarios and painted it in a very short but very clear picture of if I do the.

And you're just telling them, if I do the cheapest option, I know I'm probably going to have to fix it here again in two or three weeks.

But that's no problem for me because I know how to do it.

But what's that really telling them they're going to have problems.

Yeah.

It's not going to last as long and they're going to have these problems again.

Or if you're like, yeah, if I don't.

But then you're telling them too.

If I don't want to ever have to deal with this again because I know I'm busy fixing other people's problems, I'm going to do the best option because it's taken care of and it's peace of mind.

Yeah.

And what they're.

So what they're really hearing is, wow, if the man himself, that's the option he would go with.

If he doesn't want to have to deal with it again, that's what they start to hear because just the understood part of the conversation that you didn't even have to say.

So it's such a beautiful answer.

Yeah.

And you'll find customers that are on all levels.

And that's part of the reason we do the options is we want to meet the customer where they're at.

Right.

And we do, we do those options for every repair they have.

So let's say the kids bathroom toilet is acting up and the master bathroom toilet is acting up.

We've had customers choose the band aid repair on the kids toilet because screw them, kids.

And then they choose the toilet replacement in the master because I want one of those tall elongated toilets.

Yeah.

You know, and same repair, same house.

But based off of where it's at, they value one repair higher than another.

Sure.

And so we're meeting them on their level, we're meeting them on their terms.

And that works really, really well.

The so when we started our company, I was nine, nine months in when we hired plumber number two.

And in nine months I got 200 five star reviews by myself right now.

So reviews slow down.

Obviously anything the owner does in a company, he's going to do at a higher level than anybody else in his company.

He just.

Right.

You know, owners have a higher level of passion, a higher level of commitment, a higher level of desire.

And it's nothing against employees of the company.

Like that's the job of the owner to have the most passion, the most commitment, the most, you know, everything.

Yeah.

Your name's on it.

You have to.

Yeah, yeah.

Your whole.

Yeah.

Your livelihood depends on it.

Right.

And so that, that process works to get five star reviews because you made it very comfortable for the customer to buy.

They never felt awkward, they never felt pressured.

And we have so many five star reviews that talk about they gave us three options to buy with no pressure to pick the most expensive option.

And in half of the people that left those reviews pick the most expensive option on their own.

But we didn't pressure them to do it.

Sure.

And so that, that philosophy works really, really well.

Now we're up over 800 Google reviews.

So, you know, we're doing, we're doing really well in that area.

And a lot of it's that process that leads up into it.

So now let's take a step back.

So that was kind of the back end of the process.

Yeah.

Now let's talk about the setup because this is not just, oh, you just walk into a house and give them three options.

Right.

So we, our sales process actually starts when a customer calls in.

And We've trained our CSRs to use the words of the customer in the call notes.

So if a customer calls in and they were like, I need to have a plumber out.

My toilet's not working right.

And they'll say, oh, okay.

You know, and they'll start building the service call in our CRM and they'll say, so what's going on with the toilet?

And the customer will say something like, I don't know, the thingamabob in the back of the toilet's making a squealy noise.

Okay, cool.

Sounds like your toilet might need a rebuild.

But we'll get out there and we'll take a look at it.

You know, lots of different variables in a toilet.

Who knows what it's going to need?

Well, the notes that get created for that call is the thingamabob in the toilet is making a squealy noise.

And so our CSRs are trained to use the customer's words word for word in our notes.

Awesome.

Well then.

And this is where I don't like the application of AI.

AI is doing some cool things in the industry.

However, people don't buy from artificial intelligence.

They buy from people.

Correct.

And so the number one hurdle we have, as in home professionals, is gaining that know like and trust factor.

Right.

And so they already know us because they called us.

They may or may not like us, and they may or may not trust us.

Right.

But they also don't yet know our service plumber.

They know the company, but they don't know the service plumber.

And so a lot of companies have their systems set to where whenever the technician hits traveling, it automatically sends a text message to the customer with like a little bio of the technician that's.

Getting the little picture.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so it'll have a picture and a little bio and they think that's building a relationship with the customer.

It's not.

You know, if anything, those bios read like a bad Tinder ad because the, the picture is like years old, 20 or 30 pounds lighter.

The picture was clean shaven and now you got a beard or the picture was with a beard and now you're clean shaven.

And.

And then that, like, whatever words you put in there, there's no combination of words that gives the customer warm feel, good feelings and trust.

It just, you know, hey, this is, you know, Cletus from Smedley's Plumbing heading your way.

Like, it's just.

There's just likes long walks on the beach and riding horses in the.

Yeah.

Fall in the sunset.

Yeah.

Like, it's like a mad Libs thing.

Insert three topics that you.

Three hobbies, you know, kids names, and it's weird Right.

So what we do instead is instead of having all that automation, whenever our plumber is getting ready to head to a house, our plumber picks up his work phone and he physically calls the customer.

And he's going to say, hey, this is Mitch with Smedley Plumbing.

I've got you up next on my list of calls to see today.

I'm going to be there.

And we pad the time by five minutes.

Sure.

So if GPS says we'll be there in 20, we tell the customer 25 gives us room for traffic or whatever else.

And then we're going to recite what the customer said when they booked the call.

And so we tell them, you know, I understand you got a squealy noise coming from the thingamabob in the back of your toilet.

And the customer's gonna laugh and they're gonna chuckle because they know they were using wrong terminology.

But this subliminally does two very, very important things.

One of the number one fears customers have when they're booking a call is that nobody's listening to them.

And so they feel like they had to tell their whole life story to the girl that booked the call.

They're going to have to tell their whole life story again to you again, over and over.

And they.

They're always going to say the same thing.

They're going to sigh and be like, did that person on the phone not listen to anything I said?

And so the moment we use their words right back to them, all of those fears go away.

They know we listened, and they know we took very good, detailed notes.

But it also establishes a layer of trust between what was the customer and the company and now the customer and the man that's going to be standing in their home in a few minutes.

And it lets the customer know this guy's a real human.

He's got a sense of humor.

He knows what's going on.

This is cool.

And it allows him to hear the voice.

We can't see anybody yet, but we can at least hear the voice.

So, um, you know, then when we get there, we park with our truck in view of the front door.

I don't like everyone that talks about, like, don't park in the driveway, park in the street, because your truck could leak oil.

Like, I go farther than that and I'm like, don't drive hoopties.

Yeah.

How about take care of your vehicles.

Yeah.

Don't have a truck that could leak oil.

Done.

And if it ever leaks oil anywhere, get it fixed right away.

Yeah, kidding.

But so we park you know, in the driveway, in the street, doesn't matter.

We just want the customer to be able to see the truck out the windows on the way to answering the door.

So that way they know who they're getting ready to answer the door for.

And then we start that whole process of discovery and everything else.

But at that moment, they already have a small relationship with our plumber.

They already know he's real.

They already know he has a slight sense of humor.

And so now they're just putting a face to the personality that they've already gotten to know.

And so that whole thing eliminates the butt sniffing phase that usually happens in the entryway.

Right.

It's like, hey, I'm your plumber.

You're the customer.

I'm supposed to fix your problems.

You're supposed to trust me.

I'm gonna be on your list today.

That we've got.

Yeah, yeah.

And.

And then, and then they're doing the whole awkward, like, find something around the house to create similarities.

Oh, I see.

You have kids, I have kids.

We should be friends.

Like, you should now trust me because we have something in common.

Exactly.

You have a dog, I have a dog.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we, you know, we bypass a lot of that stuff just by being real and talking to customers the way people really talk to people.

Oh, my gosh, that's so funny that you mentioned that.

And I'm sure we haven't covered this before, but one of my taglines is literally stop being weird and start selling.

Yeah.

Because so many people that, one, they start to use that creepy salesman voice.

It's like, you don't use that voice.

We all know what we're talking about.

And then two, it's just like what you said.

It's like, you play golf, I play golf.

You got a truck, I got a truck.

And yeah, it's like, let's be professionals and show up like a doctor into, you know, think of the best doctor we've got.

They show up and they don't be like, hey, I played golf last week.

Did you play golf?

No, though.

Here's the plan.

Today we're going to do this.

We're going to do this.

Then we're going to do this.

And then at the end, we're going to go over it all and we'll come up with a plan that fits you best.

Yeah.

And that's.

And that's the professional how to build report real fast part.

Yeah.

Well, and your, your customers are judging you on a lot of facets.

Right.

But they're not judging you based off your hobbies.

No.

So I've never once gone to a cardiologist.

You know, speaking of the heart surgery from years ago.

Right.

Never once gone to a cardiologist and been like, depending on what courses you play and depending on your handicap, I may or may not choose you as my cardiologist.

Right now I'm waiting for the cardiologist to, you know, I'm going to.

I'm going to be discriminatory against the cardiologist based off of their credentials and based off of their track record of solving my issue.

Right, exactly.

And so, yeah, I don't care where they play golf or what kind of car they drive or anything else.

And.

And I've always.

For years before I even came up with our sales process, I've always guarded people against finding objects in the home and creating similarities because it makes it look like you're casing the joint.

Right.

It makes it look like you're going to show back up in the middle of the night and steal whatever it is you're talking about.

So, yeah, like, oh, I see you like fancy jewelry.

No.

Wow, look at all this memorabilia on the wall.

I bet that's worth a lot of money.

Yeah.

Who signed that?

You know.

And that's what I always tell people.

Like, stop with the silly form stuff.

And there is a room for that.

If you're in the house and you legitimately are authentically into something that they're into, then talk about your similarities.

Y.

Of course.

Be a real person.

Yeah.

Be genuine.

Don't make it all about that.

Yeah.

If somebody's got hockey memor.

Like, I don't know the first thing about hockey.

Self admitted.

I like, I don't know what icing is.

Right, sure.

But all I know is if somebody touches the puck at the wrong time, that's icing.

I don't know.

Trouble.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And.

And so, like, I'm not going to.

Somebody could have hockey memorabilia in their house.

And like, believe it or not, I'm not going to brag about the memorabilia and act like I know anything about hockey.

I'm probably going to go the other way and be like, oh, hockey stuff.

Cool, cool.

I don't even know what icing is.

Yeah.

Like, I would.

I would just be authentic and transparent and be like, you know, I just don't know anything about this sport.

So you see people all the time.

You see, like, an avid Ford lover, and then here he is.

Oh, you got a Chevy Silverado.

Those things are so sweet.

Like, you're literally lying.

Stop lying to people.

Yeah, yeah.

We had a technician one time, years ago, I ended up letting him go because he would do the same thing.

He'd go into a house, and whatever was in that house, he's like, oh, you've got five kids.

I do, too.

He has zero.

Oh, well.

Especially when it comes to that question, well, what would you do if it was your house?

He's always said, oh, you know, I've got this, the very best one in my house.

No, he didn't.

He lived in a freaking rv.

Right?

It's like, come on, man, stop this.

So we let him go because he just couldn't quit.

Stop lying.

Yeah.

That's where all of that comes into, is being authentic and being real, though.

Yeah.

Well, and.

And I, you know, I shop.

Like, I expect our customers to shop with us.

And so whenever I go out to eat, most of the time, I will not pick what I'm eating most of the time.

I'll lean on the server and I'll give her some boundaries and I'll say, you know, sometimes I'll give her three options and say, I'll either take the steak or I'll take the chicken, or I'll take, you know, whatever.

And.

And then I'll tell her flat out, like, don't even tell me what you're getting.

Just surprise me.

Yeah.

And they'll be like, are you sure?

And I'm like, yeah, you're the expert.

You work here.

You know what this kitchen makes?

Makes that.

Yeah, yeah.

And I've even had that conversation, like, based off of who's working the kitchen tonight.

You know, if one of these is a good or a bad option tonight.

So I'm going to put my faith in you and put my trust in you, and for the most part, they do a really good job.

Right.

It's always.

It's always cool whenever I tell them that, and they're like, oh, I know exactly what you're getting.

Like.

Like they've been waiting for somebody to do that.

Right.

And that means they're really passionate.

Like, they're.

They truly think that whatever they're going to bring out is the best they have to offer.

Right.

But you can always tell when it's going the other way, because they'll come around and they'll look at the menu with you and they'll finger down the menu and their fingers going over all the pricing.

Yeah.

And so they're looking at picking whatever is the most expensive because they want to run the bill up.

And.

And I know that's a risk of being that way in restaurants.

Whenever I tell the servers, you know, surprise me, but it's really cool.

And I'm.

I'm a big advocate of shopping the way that you want customers to shop with you.

And I do it with other small businesses here in town, you know, well.

We attract what we are, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And so there's a.

There's a girl in town that we buy all of our work uniforms from and all of our advertising memorabilia and all of that stuff.

And whenever I tell her I need something, I never ask her, is that the best price you can do?

I never say, I'm going to shop around and see if I can find that cheaper.

I know her, I like her, I trust her.

She gives me a price, and I just go with it.

Yeah.

And it's because I'm trying to be the customer that I want for my own company.

And we've put a lot of time, effort, and energy into our pricing.

We know it's as competitive as we can be while still leaving us room for profitability.

And I don't like it when customers give us pushback on pricing.

So I don't give anybody else pushback on pricing.

I love this.

So let's take this idea and this concept and circle back to when we were going through the options here a minute ago, when we were role playing.

And so the other scenario would be instead of.

Well, I don't know, tell me what you would do.

The other scenario is like, man, these look great.

We got to think about it.

How does.

How do you handle that in.

Say more in the.

In home scenario?

So usually we're going to ask them why they have to think about it, and then when would be a good time to check back in with them?

We have.

Staying with the, like, zero pressure, whole philosophy.

Yeah.

And.

And so a lot of times.

A lot of times salesmen are too afraid to ask their customers questions.

True.

And so when we ask them why they would need to think about something, a lot of salesmen are afraid to have that conversation.

They feel like it's being too pressuring or whatever else.

You'd be surprised.

A lot of customers are like, I don't know.

I just was told you always get three bids.

It's like, okay, you know why?

I mean, I'm just curious.

I'm not.

Yeah.

I'm not questioning you necessarily.

Just asking a question.

Right.

Well, you know, you.

You throw out the high bids, you throw out the low bids, and then you pick the Best from what's left in the middle.

Right.

Okay.

Well, you know, that was a really cool philosophy back before the days of, like, Google reviews, when you had a hard time trusting companies.

But nowadays there's so many devices out there for you to gain trust in a company that you don't necessarily need three bids anymore.

And I'm not, I'm not frowning against it.

If you want to get three bids, that's fine.

Yeah.

But, you know, just, I might suggest if these other companies that you're going to get bids from or maybe you've already gotten bids from, check out their Google ratings and just see, because that's a, you know, hundreds or thousands of people, you can, you can very quickly get a good snapshot of is this company going to take care of me?

Right.

And, and then, you know, sometimes that works or it doesn't work, but it at least allows them to let us know that or at least allows us to let them know that.

You know, we just want you to make sure you're going to be taken care of.

That's the big thing.

Right.

But then we just ask them, you know, when is an appropriate time to follow up?

When are your other estimates coming in?

So we can check in with you after you've received them all.

Sure.

And all of that.

And we'll usually try to leave them with a, you know, here's, here's our contact number or my direct line or whatever.

As you're getting other estimates.

If somebody says something that catches you off guard or confuses you, feel free to call me and I'll try to explain.

I'll try to understand and then explain what they, what they're meaning or what they're getting at.

Sure.

And so you can at least come off like you're a, you're a resource to them, whether you're buying from them or not.

Right.

Or whether they're buying from you or not.

So there's a line I heard quite a few years ago.

It's like, listen, at the end of the day, you know, one, just this first setup for it is asking how important is making an educated decision.

They'll say it's super important.

Great.

So at the end of the day, if you go with us, you go with somebody else or you don't do anything.

My goal is to make sure that you understand what's going on and what's going to take to fix it.

No matter who you choose, it really takes that pressure off.

And so it's very, very similar.

It sounds like that's what you guys do and then they don't feel like you're there to force them into anything.

But also see, then they're a lot more open to the information that you do have for them as well.

Because.

Oh yeah, I already agreed that, hey, being educated in this issue is important.

So I'm going to listen closer.

Yeah, yeah.

And it also like if they tell me, if they tell me what other companies they're having bid it, I always find good things to say about those other companies.

Right.

It is a giant red flag as a customer, Customers are expecting you as the business to badmouth the other companies.

Customers are expecting you to tell me that your circle is more round or your straight line is straighter or whatever.

Right.

That's just what companies do.

And so you can really kind of catch a customer off guard and build a lot of trust with them.

If they tell you the names of the other companies and you're like, oh, those are really good companies.

So you've made some good, you've made some good choices.

Prices in who you're getting bids from.

Right.

And, and customers love that.

Right.

Because what happens if you go the other way?

Oh, watch out for this company.

They're bad.

Well, the customer chose to get an estimate from them.

And so you're literally telling your, your customer that you don't make very good decisions.

Yeah.

You made a bad choice here.

Yeah.

And, and you don't want to do that.

You don't want to tell customers that you've made a bad choice.

So you want to reaffirm them on.

In, in another classic line that I tell my guys to avoid all the time is, and this is so classic, in the home services space, guys will say, I don't know who was in here before, but they really messed everything up.

And it, they do it because they don't know how to build value and they think that by putting down the previous repair person, they're somehow making themselves look more valuable.

But you don't know who was in there before.

You could be literally telling the person who made those repairs that, yeah, oh.

My gosh, I've seen.

Either it's them or it's your own company.

You just.

Somebody didn't document it in the notes or something?

Yeah.

Like, well, it was you guys.

What are you talking about?

Right, right.

Or it was a family member of theirs that they, you know.

Well, my brother in law, he does a little bit of this and he tried to help.

Well, you were just badmouthing your customer's brother in law.

Right?

And.

And I'm not.

You shouldn't celebrate it as great work, but just avoid that line.

Just don't say, I don't know who was in here before, because they really screwed it up.

Like, again, approach it like the doctor.

Doctors never say, I don't know who was in your knee before, but they really screwed it up.

Oh, yeah, that shouldn't have happened like that.

Yeah.

Doctors will say, here's what we got going on with the knee, and here's we want.

Here's what we need to do to fix it.

And you immediately infer if there was a previous doctor in your knee.

You immediately say, well, they must have screwed it up.

But the doctor didn't say that.

That's you saying that.

And it's okay, customer, to think that it's not okay for you to say it.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's letting them come up with the doubt on the competition.

And it's okay to.

It's as is in the moment.

It's like, okay, here's current conditions.

Yeah, There's.

It should be doing this, this, this.

Had this repair been done the way we do it, it would look like this.

Yeah.

And you can stop there.

And they know they can fill in the blank on the rest.

Right.

It's okay.

Current conditions are here.

Here's where we want to get.

Here's what it's going to take to get there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And sometimes you don't even need to say, like, had the repair been done the way we do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can just play dumb and be like, we need to repair this.

And the customer is going to say, I just replaced that last year.

Hell, I'm sorry.

It needs to be replaced.

Right, Right.

It wasn't done to the best that it could been, and it shortened its life, whatever that.

Whatever it is.

Sure.

Yeah.

It could be plumbing, could be anything.

Yeah.

For that matter.

Gosh, I love this.

Well, man, it is.

I feel like we could go on for, like, forever sessions.

When we sat down together, we were good for everybody listening.

We were going to meet for 30 minutes, and I think we ended up sitting for, like, two and a half hours.

Yeah.

Just because there was just so much to cover and we resonated really well.

But before we.

Before we land this plane, I would love for you to tell everybody one, how to find the Void and also how to get connected to Trade winds.

Yeah.

So those two places.

Yeah.

The Void is our podcast, and it streams on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

However, very few people watch podcasts on YouTube.

Right.

And so you could find it on YouTube, but you won't be very impressed with any of the.

The, you know, views and comments and all that because it's very, very.

It's a fraction of our.

Of our listeners.

So you can find it on Spotify and itunes.

We.

You just type in the the Void and it'll be a white box with red letters that says the Void.

The Void.

Yeah.

And you could probably put the Void Mitch Smedley and it'll bring you there faster.

The Trade Winds.

Our website is tradewinsconsulting.com and that is wins like winning in the trades, not wind, like blowing winds.

Right.

And so that's the.

That's the object of Trade Winds is to help people win in the trade.

So we also.

The Void and Trade Winds are both on Facebook.

If you find me on Facebook, just look up Mitch Smedley.

I'll be the one with the blue check.

And then you can just look at my work history and it'll show like mentor at Trade Wins and podcast hosts at the Void.

And you can use that to get to wherever you're needing to go to.

Love it.

One more place to everybody.

Mitch is in the Facebook group in the closet now.

Facebook group.

And so when this podcast goes live, I'll create a post and make a pinned post for how to link to all of these places.

I'll make sure it's in there as well and it'll be in the show notes for this podcast as well.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Well, cool, man.

Well, this has been fun.

I appreciate the role play and man, I've learned something today and so I know everybody else has as well.

And it's just so cool to come to get.

I love what you and I are both doing.

We're really bringing so much of so much inclusion and really up leveling the trades to.

I've always been at that philosophy.

Anything that's been done the Same way for 50 plus years is ripe for revolution.

Right.

For disruption.

And it's time to level up our industries.

Yeah.

We're out there to serve and to help is really.

We're a service company.

We have to remember that it's all about serving.

And it's cool to really work on bringing trust back to the trades, which is.

I know what you're all about.

Yeah.

So thanks for being on the show today.

Congratulations to the Chiefs for the victory last night.

Yeah.

Yeah, man.

Great.

In a couple days.

100.

Yeah.

I'm sure we'll see some for everybody.

If you want to see some real life, social media action from from Kansas City.

Make sure you go follow Mitch on Facebook and find find all the pages, follow all the things and leave him a five star review on the Void.

I know that is something that I love when you leave me a five star review on Closing now.

But go listen to the Void.

Go leave a review.

It is one of the very best trades podcasts out there.

I would stack it right in there with Waste no Day and some of the others.

So thank you for running that show.

It's incredible.

I've been a listener for a bit since we met before and I love every single episode.

And yeah, any final words for everybody?

Words of wisdom or dad jokes, whatever you got.

I just say fix pipes and pet dogs.

Love it.

Awesome man.

Well thanks for being here and for everybody else listening, one super quick announcement.

Make sure you get your ticket for the March 21st and 22nd Close It now sales event that's happening in Austin, Texas.

It's going to be two days of sales masterclass.

We're going to go over the sales process, start to finish in home for H Vac.

It's something you don't want to miss this and everyone who gets their ticket and registers before the end of February gets some extra bonuses, some coaching bonuses and some extra things that will help you to implement immediately to even grow your numbers even faster.

So make sure you get your ticket before that.

You can email me samoseitnow.net pop me a text 512-364-8559 or find the Facebook group Close It Now.

And that has the link for the for everything in there as well.

So thanks for joining us man.

We're going to end this the way we always do on this show.

Everyone listening.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast now so you're first to hear new episodes jam packed with actionable tools and tips to make you the top H Vac professional in your market.

If you have friends and colleagues who would like this show, share it with them and send them to our Facebook community for more in depth discussion about the challenges we all face and how to overcome them on the Close it now podcast.