Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries.

Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.

We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions.

And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats.

It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement.

We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships, and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement.

Let's get to work now.

Your host, Sam Wakefield.

Well, all right.

Welcome back to Close It Now.

Sam Wakefield here.

I am excited to have this guest on today.

We are gonna just chop it up.

I have no idea where this conversation is going.

And as you all know, that's the way we like it on these interviews because we get to pull out some of the best content from the guests as we do that.

And.

And as you know, in sales, you have to be able to just spontaneously pivot at a moment's notice.

That's why one of the best things you can do is go take an improv class at your local theater.

That'll get you able to pivot on the spot.

So today we have a guest.

He is the host of the Kitchen Table podcast.

So go check out that podcast.

Recently, I was a guest on that show, and he has an incredible guest list there as well.

He is also the owner of Baden Consulting and Potomac custom remodeling, or PCR roofing for short.

This is Mr.

Ken, not Kenneth.

Mr.

Ken Baden on the show today.

Yeah, we were just talking.

Thank you, Sam.

We were just joking about all my.

I think my zoom and everything else.

I originally set up for some reason has my, like, full government that I only hear when I'm in trouble from, like, my mom.

So now, Kenneth.

Yeah, I'm like, what?

Why?

How do you even know that?

But exactly.

No, it's all good.

Thanks for having me on, man.

Absolutely.

Well, I'm glad you're here.

So we always like to start this, you know, guest episode with a couple of things.

One, give everybody a quick little highlight reel, 10,000 foot view of a bit of your journey and how you got here.

And along with this, this is the special request.

Uh, weave in some sort of.

What is your basically your life philosophy, business philosophy, personal philosophy, or if it's tied Together, um, you know, what drives you forward and what's really keeps you.

Keeps you motivated.

And you can answer those in whichever order that you.

That you want to answer them in.

There's a lot to unpack right off the bat, but I.

My mind's racing, dude, so I'm.

Okay, let's see if this ADHD was.

Racing right into it.

Yeah, let's get it, Thousand foot.

I'm going to try to do my very best and not go off and into, like a.

A tangent because I love on my show, whenever, you know, somebody mentions, like, when they were born, I'm like, oh, here we go.

Yeah.

So I promise to leave you go.

Back quite that far.

You don't have to go back into the Kenneth phase of life.

No, we'll stay away from that.

I'll stick to the juicy stuff.

Well, you know, I've been in the remodeling industry since I got into this industry right around, I want to say, 08.

And I was selling insurance ironically before that, right after college, my.

My internship in college had kind of fell through.

I was supposed to have this sweet gig with the government, but it was all meant to be because it all ends.

It ended up introducing me to sales and my first gig in.

Technically, my first gig in sales was selling men's suits when I was 16.

And I.

I really enjoyed that.

Oh, nice.

But this was the first, like, getting it to work under, like a.

A sales, you know, as an apprentice.

A sales master, if you will, as an apprentice.

And the master being the agent.

Mr.

Whitaker, he was a.

You know, he was just a quintessential salesman, man.

Like, he had the sports.

He always had a sports car, suv.

His wife always drove a white Mercedes newer.

Just like, he just rotated out these things annually.

And I was like, dude, that's so badass.

You know, I mean, I thought it was stereotypes.

He just checks them off, right?

Oh, dude, he checked everyone off, man.

And he was like, golfing.

But he earned this.

Now, don't get me wrong.

Like, he had set his stuff up to where it was ran, his office was ran, and he was able to golf all the time whenever he wanted.

I was like, this is all I saw was that.

So, like, that's what I wanted, was like, I want to be able to golf every day and have these cool cars and a nice house.

And, you know, his son was a friend of mine, and so he really made the idea appealing.

But, man, I was.

I was a knucklehead.

I was very young.

Even at 24, I was still very young.

I, you know, I joined a fraternity party, done all that.

I just kind of stunted my growth.

And there's a whole.

I'm not going to get into the.

I'm in recovery.

That's an important part of who I am.

But I don't think we have a ton.

A ton of time to dig in.

If you ever want to talk to me about it, I'd be happy to talk to you about it.

It's a big part of who I am.

And we may need to do another episode.

I'm sure almost a year and a half sober at this point as well.

Oh, that's awesome, man.

I love that, man.

And I think that's such a.

I think it's so cool how people are really embracing that these days, you know, and, you know, it's, you know, for me, by the way, is really just car accident painkillers.

And, you know, the story has been told across several different platforms at this point, and I could have been in any one of those shows, unfortunately, and it got really, really bad.

But thank God I'm here.

And in between those periods of being back up, I would find myself back in sales because it was kind of the thing, you know, that I.

I just kind of.

I just fell for, you know, I really.

You know, here's the thing.

I was always a big dreamer.

And the cool thing with sales is it's the closest someone like us gets, at least in my opinion or in my experience, because I'll never be a basketball player, a football player, you know, anything like that.

Right.

But I was a big dreamer, man.

I wanted to be a singer.

I wanted to be a this or that.

This is like the closest we can kind of get to that level of, like, performance in something.

And it's like the top at sales and the competitiveness is there, and, like, you want to be the best in the room.

And even now with like, you know, the influencer status and the podcast and stuff, and.

You know what I mean, things like you and I are doing, like, these are the things I think that's why I'm drawn to that is I'm like, I'm chasing that highest level.

It reached this level of stardom in a way, even if it's within your own vertical.

Yep.

And a lot of it's, you know, some of these guys are full of it.

Right, we know that.

But either way.

Experience or you're what they call.

What is it?

A guru.

Yes.

And there's a lot of those.

There's a whole lot be very careful.

But, but at any rate man, I, I did fall in love with the fact that I could make as much money as my talent would allow.

And that was just something that allowed a dreamer like me to really do my thing, man.

And so every time I would have my periods of being okay, I'd get right back into remodeling sales.

That's just what I took to fast forward a few years.

Solar comes on the scene and it's really popping off.

And I'm selling roofing and windows and exterior services.

So I jump over to solar because that's now the hot thing.

And I see you guys doing all the money and making all the driving the Teslas when it was like, holy crap, you got a Tesla.

You know what I mean?

That was a wild concept.

Yeah, it was one in a few thousand instead of right man.

And Solar City was then, now as Tesla and, and it's just, you know, these guys were killing it back then, dude, killing it.

And I wanted to be killing it and I, I always seem to get in everything like just a second too late, you know, or, or I wanted to like I couldn't make the move and I waited till it was felt safe and then I jumped and made the move and it's like ah, now we're switching to P.

You know, we're going from PPAs to finance or back and forth.

And the solar coaster has been that way since inception and roofing's kind of.

Coaster, that's for sure.

And roofing's following suit now it's.

They're both got so heavily saturated they go, go.

So just, you know, so many people that shouldn't own businesses in my opinion doing this.

And it's just now you have a whole lot of options of very crappy companies and that's a bad place to be if you're a homeowner or someone looking for a job.

But I digress.

So I, you know, I got into the natural progression, man.

Like once I finally got a good head on my shoulders, I got into sales management.

From sales management to vp, from VP to you know, VP of another company, a startup.

Then I kind of was.

The startups were my thing because I could make my impact and man, I got tired here last this last go around of working for folks that just did not stick to their word because I, you know, because this industry is so saturated and because there's so many options and it's such a low barrier for entry, it tends to attract I think a lot of sales guys that don't have any business owning businesses.

Now, look, I'm a sales guy and I own a business, but, like, I had a lot of healthy respect and fear for making sure that I was in the right place, in the right time to be able to take care of other people because of what I had gone through.

It was imperative that I never put my people in a position like that.

You know what I mean?

I know what it feels like to not have your check there on Friday.

And that is you just until you experience.

You're like, wait, what?

I worked the hours, I did the thing like, where's my money?

Yeah, we got paid.

It's supposed to be there, right?

And you know, believe it or not, collected.

There's a lot of people that.

And it's sad that I've seen that a few times now.

And if you've been in this industry or solar for a while, you probably have a story.

And.

And I do too.

So that was kind of, you know, without getting into too many details, I just got over experiencing that, and I said, you know what?

I'm gonna do this on my own.

So I did.

With a partner.

I let fear kind of hold me back a bit.

But, you know, everything kind of worked out the way it was supposed to because that partner and I are no longer together.

Right.

And.

And that was a divorce in itself.

And like, a best friend is no longer a friend.

And, you know, I feel like, man, I got three plus years of my life and built this guy's company up.

He didn't know anything about any of this.

And I had been doing this my whole career.

Well, you know what I gained?

I got a lot of experience.

I learned a lot of what not to do.

Yeah.

I'll never do another partnership without an operating agreement.

I can promise you that.

Oh, yeah, it's gotta be on paper.

And.

But I learned a lot, man.

And I learned a lot of patience and.

And I didn't lose that experience.

So fortunately, when I was able to do this company, Potomac Customer Modeling, and prior to that, actually, Baden Consulting was the first company I started in between those two.

I.

I apologize.

It was basically, I wasn't sold on the idea of going out and really doing this for myself, because it's a lot of risk, man.

It's a.

A lot of work.

I wanted to just build these verticals and someone else's company, like maybe you.

Sam, owned a roofing company.

I'm like, hey, look, I can help get your guys to where they need to be.

That was my gig.

And the sales methodology and the systems, and a lot of contractors, even in Southern Maryland, that just don't know about selling at all, right?

They're just like, well, just.

Just bid on it.

Bid on everything, you know, And I wanted to fix that problem.

I can show them the stuff that's broken and tell them we can fix it, and surely they get a buy from us, right?

Or, you know, well, you know, that person wants a.

A screen door, and we're gonna go run that.

I'm like, well, why would you run that?

Well, you sell them a roof or sell them some side.

I'm like, you can't be kid.

You got to be kidding.

What do you mean?

Like, they're.

They want a screen door, you know, like, I'm selling the whole house.

I'm like, okay, you need way more help than I can provide.

But anyways, man, I.

I found myself, you know, just garnering experience and experience and experience all the way up until the point where, even after my partnership, dude, I was uniquely prepared to do this.

And now that's.

Kind of have the business now.

Potomac Customer Modeling is, you know, an escort, but I am the only owner, but I have an excellent leadership team that I actually have equity tied in with them and that they've earned.

And I couldn't be happier about where we are.

And as far as the consulting company goes, you know, it affords me the opportunity to where.

Take on folks as I choose to get to work with who I choose to, you know, focus on what I really want to, which currently is, you know, if you're in a roofing company or a solar company, I'd like to help you insert one or the other or kind of get you over that hump, because that's really what I'm.

I'm most experienced in currently.

So it's.

I'm best able to help you in those regards.

Otherwise, you know, we'll have to talk in the future.

I just really am blessed, man.

I got a daughter on the way.

Oh, congratulations.

And as somebody who has been homeless, hopeless, broken, and I can, you know, we'll have to have another episode, brother, because my story goes real dark.

You know, I didn't think I was coming back.

You know, I.

And I was okay with that to, you know, now.

And I say this, and I'm going to say this and shut up.

I just was cleaning my daughter's nursery out.

You know, she's expected in September, and I was moving the bed out to get her crib in and do all the stuff that my Wife is, who's obviously pregnant, was asking me to do.

And I found this bag that I hadn't seen.

And, you know, it's been eight years this August.

Eight years of sobriety.

And I'm like, holy crap.

I used to live out of that bag.

Wow.

Live.

Literally, like, I slept outside or I went from basement to basement or couch to couch, wherever I was at, you know, rehab to rehab, jail for a while, man.

I.

I did all of it.

You know, I was homeless a couple times.

That bag was with me throughout those.

That whole time.

And I went in, digging around, found, like, you know, some.

Some bars of soap, some toothbrushes, and I found these shorts with cigarette holes in them because, you know, we would get so tore up, we just kind of burn our clothing.

Yeah.

And it made me just so appreciative, man of.

We get so caught up.

I do in the day to day.

And, you know, I'm like, I was teasing earlier about blood pressure.

I'm currently like getting my blood pressure checked and stuff.

I just turned 40 and like, go figure, somebody who's so high strung that can sometimes impact your.

Your blood pressure negatively.

And so I got to work on that.

And.

And I want to now because I actually want to be here because I have a daughter on the way.

And I just found myself so overwhelmingly grateful for where I'm at now.

But, man, I really got to keep that 24 7, because, like, nothing's changed about that today.

It's just me remembering where I came from.

Yeah.

As frequently as I can.

You know what I mean?

What a beautiful story, man.

I love this so much.

There's so many things that we could unpack out of that.

And in fact, I'd like to for a couple minutes before we.

Before we get into some other stuff.

I know we're going to talk about some business and some sales and some of that type of thing as well.

But, you know, one of the things we talk about the most on this show is mindset and how to shift, especially how to shift our mindset when we're in maybe a negative place to positive and.

And vice versa and how to get out of those slumps and those places.

So I'd love to hear, you know, when you were in that place, what was the big.

What was your big catalyst?

What was that turning point that, you know, because, you know, if you were okay with that, with being at that place, surely something had to change where you shifted and said, you know what?

I'm not okay with this.

And then how.

So talk about that turning point and then what are some of the steps you did to climb out of it?

What?

You know, because clearly now you've got, you know, great mindset.

You're, you know, you're focused on positivity, focused on growth.

But I mean obviously it wasn't always there.

So give us a bit of, a bit of mindset here.

Yeah.

So, you know, I can answer that honestly and say that, you know, I remember December, excuse me, August 23, 2017, you know, sleeping outside the last time I was, before I walked to the hospital and asked for some help.

I was out of options before that I was resound to and I don't want to get into details but I was okay with not being here and that didn't end up happening.

And so I found myself sleeping outside and like, man, you know, I just, I had given, I lost my phone that night.

I just didn't have any options.

I had to go, you know, walk to the hospital and ask for help.

And it just from there was kind of like a series of like I don't have any other option other than, you know, you know, make an attempt at just getting out of here.

And I don't mean to make light of that, this is just my experience, but I didn't, for whatever reason, I can't tell you why.

There must have been some sort of like just modicum of hope maybe, I.

Don'T know, had to just accept the help that was coming your way in the form.

Yeah, I think that was.

That's one thing I say a lot is that I think what really shifted was that I always had like, I gotta figure this out, gotta figure that out, gotta figure this out.

Like I was so thoroughly beaten finally.

I was so hard headed and so like, okay, well I know I can do this, but I can't do this.

It was always like what I knew and I had just found myself finally at the place of dude, I just don't know.

I don't know, I don't know.

I give up.

You tell me what to do and I'll do it.

But I'm just tired of trying to figure this out.

And that was a.

It was, you know, for a guy like me or I would imagine us, you know, we like to be the answer person or you know, the leader or whatever.

I just found it.

I felt it was a week for me for whatever reason and, and it couldn't be further from the truth.

It was when I gave up and just threw my hands up like, dude, I don't know Yeah, I don't know.

I've tried to figure this out.

I don't know what's going on with me.

I don't know why I can't stop.

I don't know why I can't stop letting everyone down or hurting everybody I care about.

I don't want to do that, I promise you, but I can't stop.

And I don't know what to do.

And it was when I fully conceded to that.

In fact, that's literally step one in the 12 steps.

It's fully conceding to our innermost self that we are blank, you know, alcoholic, addict, whatever.

And that.

I guess I did that.

And that.

That started me on at least the path of like, okay, you're gonna go here.

I didn't want to go there, but I was out of options, man, and I was willing to accept the help.

And then I became not only willing to accept the help, but eager to, you know, seek out more help.

Like, okay, there's funding for this, there's funding for that.

Like, I wasn't just, oh, there's nowhere for you to go.

So I don't know what's going to happen.

Okay, well, I need an answer.

So what are the options?

Well, there's funding.

Okay, how do we get the funding?

Okay, well, I'll show you how we get the funding, and then, you know, you can get an extension.

Okay, how do we get that extension?

So I would say that the second part of that is taking action.

So I was willing to accept the help, but then when I accepted the help and they gave me, like, okay, well, hey, you could have a fully funded first three months and.

And some food stamps, being humble enough to accept it and taking action.

And I did both of those things.

And, you know, I got into a halfway house and.

And, you know, I just.

My mindset was everything.

That's the difference between me being here and not right now.

That's it.

It's all my.

And you know where it started, the root word.

Gratitude.

Yeah, gratitude.

Gratitude is the difference I've seen between guys coming in there and feeling like they're owed something or.

This place is a hole.

Excuse my language.

Place is crap.

You know, this place is a hole.

This place is small.

I'm sharing room with three other men.

Like, brother, I didn't have a room anywhere.

I'm just glad I don't have to figure out where to sleep tonight.

Yeah, I'm cool.

You know what I mean?

Like, so, like, I'm good with that.

I'm pretty stoked I just got my food.

My food stamps just hit.

I'm gonna walk across the street food line and grab some food, dude.

I'm.

This is cool.

I don't have to figure out who to hurt or steal or.

Or.

Or, you know, manipulate.

I'm pretty freaking grateful.

And I mean that attitude of gratitude as cheesy it is that gratitude has propelled me above all else, above anything else in life, that gratitude, and I see it in other people now.

And it's just like, the more gratitude you have, the more likely you are to get things to continue to be grateful for, period.

I love this so much.

This is something that.

That we talk about often on the show.

In fact, I did a whole section on this at, at the event last week at Relentless up in Boston.

And there's a.

I don't know if you've ever heard of a guy named Dr.

Joe Dispenza, but he § yeah, so I heard it.

It was just a little real the other day.

He's talking about if we spend 15 minutes of gratitude.

They've done the actual.

All the testing on a body and they have all these studies.

It literally increase.

I'm getting tingles thinking about it.

It literally increases your body's immune system strictly by spending 15 minutes focused on gratitude every day.

It's wild.

What the incredible things that happen to.

To us when we, you know, when we focus on that.

Yeah, yeah, Joe, I read.

I'm listening to Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself right now.

So I love.

I love good stuff, man.

Well, cool.

Well, let's.

I want to turn the corner a little bit.

I'd love to, because I know you are beast in sales.

You've led some sales teams.

You've done a ton of stuff.

And I think gratitude actually is a perfect segue into talking about sales because all of the top performers I know constantly focus on a state of gratitude.

In fact, I have several people that I do every single morning.

We're sending each other our gratitudes for the day and have these gratitude accountability partners, basically.

So I see this belt that is on your desk behind you there.

That's the heavyweight belt, man.

Yeah, let's.

Let's.

Let's talk sales accolades.

You know, this is.

We give this out once a month to the top rep, you know, in the company.

And since we started the second office, it's kind of found its home here, but we just talked about, like, maybe switching it across offices or.

But this is such a big part of our.

Our history.

There's a little money behind it too.

But you know, every guy gets a picture with the bell.

They do a whole theme song entrance like, you know, whether they want to play like John Cena music or whatever.

But I got a lot of fun with that.

Yeah, whatever, man.

And.

And here are our gold and platinum club members.

At least in this office.

There's a few others that just don't fit on this desk but meaning they've either done 200 or 300,000gross in a month, you know, and just making sure.

And this is just.

Those guys were just insurance restoration roofers.

And you know, I remember seeing.

And a couple channels like oh, I did 200000 this month.

Like, you know, this is on the east coast.

We don't have storms.

You know what I mean?

Like there are guys that are doing, you know, multi million and I've had those gentlemen.

But like these guys work their butts off, man.

Sure.

Not taking anything from anyone.

But like if you're in a store market, you have work that just your cup runneth over.

These boys have fought every freaking day for every little thing they get.

So no doubt we make sure that they're recognized for it.

Oh yeah, I love that.

So talk to us a little bit about.

There's a lot of people that listen that are in the place right now of.

In fact I get reached out to all the time.

They're wanting to grow a sales team, they're wanting to recruit or they're in, you know, just asking a lot of questions about better ways to manage a team and lead the team.

Give us some insight there.

Kind of walk us through that.

What is it like when you're first starting to build that team and then what are some best practices as it's growing and how to keep the culture going and just that type of topic.

Well, when you're first building it, you know, that's when your fingerprints are going to be on it the most.

You know what I mean?

So like I focus.

I try to focus on.

I'm all about, you know, if I have a group or a couple guys, you know, I want to pour into these guys.

But I'm also always keeping my eye on like who's the next person that I can kind of delegate to, you know what I mean?

And so.

And sometimes that doesn't turn out to be correct.

But I'm always looking for it.

And so, you know, that way I can spend that extra time but.

But maybe, you know, I can start to.

To really focus in on.

Okay, let me add a responsibility or two to this person and just see how they handle it while I'm working with these others.

If I was building up a team raw, organically, right now with no, you know, not a lot of capital, a lot of the times I did this back in the day, you know, for the first few companies, that it was as grassroots, sure as it could possibly be.

You know, it wasn't until now, and we had, like, real capital behind this.

And that's an entirely different beast because you can kind of take the time to build it up and.

And, you know, you don't have that luxury when you're just getting going and you've got no real capital behind you and you've got to continue to.

Oh, oh, by the way, we've got to sell while we're, you know, creating this team.

So I'm.

When I did my first few of these, I was taking, you know, canvassers with me, dropping them off to canvas, you know, maybe taking our sales rep that was in training with me to the close and having them watch me go back, pick up the canvassers.

I mean, essentially, whatever it takes, but, you know, without getting too in the weeds, because you may or may not have some capital, you may or may not have to do a grassroots.

One thing that's going to be a consistent or a constant is your.

You dictate the culture.

You know what I mean?

So, like, what things you want to set as standards, you have to set as a standard, like, right away, you know, so early on, if I expect them to be on time or do things like, you know, the whole, like, idea of, like, do as I say, not as I do is not gonna.

It's not gonna work early on.

You know what I mean?

They.

Yeah, you need to set that leading time.

Yeah.

By leading by example and doing all of those things and getting them to buy in and buy in.

So much so that ideally you get really blessed and you find yourself in a situation, you know, like me now, where I have a couple guys here that have been with me across three companies and get all upset when someone takes off or doesn't show full effort or whatever.

And I'm like, yes.

You know, I.

That's a little mini me, man.

And I'm taking ownership of this.

Yes.

And they care just as much if.

Or close as I do, you know, and it's like, man, that's.

That's beautiful because, you know, early on they're huffing and puffing, and then, you know, a few years later and they're like, man, what does this guy think he is?

He's not pulling his weight, you know, because it's, that's what you can hope for is that, you know, you build a culture where now these guys feel like it's part, you know, this is, they're part of that and they care about it just as much, you know, and, and, but I would say to keep.

Be very cognizant of the standards and practices that you set, even on an unconscious level.

Like if you wanted them to be on time and, and meetings to start and end on time and be organized and be clean cut and be sharp, I mean, you need to lead by example.

Sure.

So when you're say you're back in that grassroots because that's where a lot of teams are, especially in some of the other trades, you know, they're, they're.

Right now especially.

We're about to get in for a lot of trades into the busier seasons.

And I've been hearing a lot, man, this is going to be a long, it's going to be, it's be a long, hot year.

We need more people.

We need more sales people, we need more technicians, we need more people doing the work.

So when you're starting that, where, where do you, where are you recruiting from?

What are you looking for?

We have a few different recruiting mechanisms.

You know, we've used a few, you know, there's a few acronyms out there, but they're all basically indeed.

And I don't want to hear ziprecruiter and good people are already employed.

We don't need the people that don't have a job.

Right.

We've paid to learn, you know, from different, different folks.

And we've kind of created a hodgepodge or an amalgamation of different things we've learned from different recruiters or whatever.

And we have our own.

But we, we run indeed ads where our VAs just kind of make sure that they're constantly on top of them.

And we'll do two group calls a week and then those group calls become individual calls.

But we also have a recruiter currently that I'm trying out to kind of get a more direct.

Like if I need a canvasser or a PM or a very specific production or very, very specific hire, he can focus on that while we're focused on getting salespeople and only sands people for, you know, this group, the bigger, like canvassing or salespeople and the indeed portion, you know, the recruiter that I have as a, as a backup option can focus on, like we need A production manager or a qa, we could do it too.

But he can really zoom in on that and say, cool, I got you two things set up tomorrow because we're focused on hiring salespeople and canvassers and then finally we have handshake I think is a, you know, a connecting.

With colleges.

We do things with different colleges.

Whether it's, you know, tables or booths or career fair days or tool connections, you know, we're looking for younger, not, doesn't have to be, but like, you know, malleable recent college grads, service based serviced industries.

Definitely ex athletes.

Give me that all day, every day.

The competitor.

You know, we've even tried like for canvassing, like recently political canvassers.

That was a, a terrible ratio.

Like I don't think we had a single one that ever that didn't work out.

So I wouldn't recommend that.

You don't know until you try though.

Yeah, right.

We were like, well, they've done canvas and just not one, not one worked out.

So.

But service based industries, you know, tend to work out really well.

You know, the young guys and gals that aren't used to making a ton of money and you can show them a path to making some really good money.

And they're, they're young and they haven't been probably beat down by, I don't know, man, some of these other folks in the industry that just maybe haven't treated them right.

And so they're still very excited and, and hopefully you take advantage of that and you show them how they can make some really good money.

Because to them, 75 might be awesome, man.

You know what I mean?

So, and that's canvassing or but for sales, you know, that's, that's for where I'd start with canvassing.

But for us with canvassing, our intention is then to kind of farm team that thing into.

All right now let's keep our eyes on who are our best closers in canvassing.

Right?

Because canvassing is a universal language.

I mean canvassing is.

You're showing me how you overcome adversity.

You're showing me how you deal with rejection on a daily basis.

And the best, statistically speaking, the best closers in canvassing are the best closures in closing period.

No doubt, no doubt.

We're looking for that and that's our, our farm system.

But if I needed like, you know, one of my consulting clients right now, he's like, hey, that's great.

I'm all about it, you know, because we want to build that culture, we want to build those reps both in canvassing and in closing or whatever we've got going on.

You know, we want our fingerprints on it, our training, our sales methodology, our culture, our core values.

If you go, Brian, bring in what I call the emergency band aid.

Right.

Is the guy or gal that has the experience from the other companies and maybe you lure them over by offering them more and temporarily.

But you just have to know if you're going to do that, it's got to be strategy because it's a band aid.

It's a band aid for a reason.

Like you learn them over because they make more.

And, and it's just, I think if you do it like I used to be vehemently against it, but I've done it with a strategy like, look, I don't have time to do this right now.

At least this guy or gal will get me off of this and I can focus on this and get my team built up.

Yeah, we know they're going to write business and bring revenue while we're creating, while we're planting the seeds and creating the farm.

100 and that's cool, man.

And if they stay for a couple months and you know, it's just as long as your expectation is not like, well, they're going to be here forever and I got no, they're probably going to do what they just did and leave, go over here for more money.

But hey, if they fill the role that you expected, it's just, you know, be smart and be strategic.

And so that's what I recommended was, you know what, let's find a guy or gal for you that has experience that'll get you and you know, it's a father son combo that'll get you guys out of this and you can focus on building your, your teams up.

Yeah, yeah, they can work on the business, not in it.

Exactly.

So it's really hard to do if you're trying to do everything.

It's almost impossible.

Train the new guys, sell the deals, do the day to day.

It's just not.

At some point it doesn't work.

Well, let's do this.

I'm so.

I love that you've brought up canvassing and talked about it several times now because I am all about door knocking, all about canvassing.

Me too, brother.

Let's beat that drum until cows come home 100%.

The interesting thing that I find, and this is why I want to camp out here because every other home service, bar none, you know, solar roofing, construction windows, you Name it believes in canvassing.

I mean the solar company I was with for three years, in eight years we, they've put up $1.2 billion in sales almost exclusively from canvassing.

So companies that are your, you know, quote unquote, the skilled trades, so H vac, plumbing, electrical, you will almost never see canvas seam.

And it blows my mind because they don't understand the type of growth that's available.

So I'd love to camp out on this for a second and give us a little bit more perspective on why canvassing is effective and how it works a little bit because, so setting some context here, the reason that I think a lot of it was the digital heroin, as my friend Jonathan Bannister says, you could just buy leads.

So dump more money and buy leads and we'll just go and close them so that it's almost like they have it backwards to grow their company.

They think I have to have more leads to feed my closers.

So I can't hire more salespeople until we have more leads because they don't have any requirement for an amount of self generated business.

Of course, you know, that's the opposite of if you want to grow a business, you get more people to sell stuff.

So talk to us a little bit about that paradox and how that works with, you know, say you're starting a company from scratch and you want to grow it quickly, but you want to do it the organic way and farm this team and turn it into that.

What does that look like?

Is that upside down or is that, you know, how are you thinking about that lead versus, you know, the cells and canvassing type of, of model?

Because I know this is a common conversation.

You probably.

Yeah, 100.

It's a chicken or the egg thing.

It's all the time.

I mean, yeah, I'm experiencing it in some ways, you know, now and definitely with my, my other, my other consulting client.

But I wanted to touch on one thing that you asked me.

The first question you asked me which was like, you know, can you break down canvassing and kind of like why, you know, what it's all about and why you think it works when you originally were saying that it, you know, these electricians and these folks that just don't get it and kind of explain sort of like why we are so attracted to it?

And the reason, in short is sure, you can pay for leads, but you have to understand that you dig, dig a little deeper.

Okay, well how many other people are getting these leads?

God knows, who knows?

I mean, heck, Angie's, list just had that whole thing that got overturned, but where that was going to flip the whole industry upside down to where the homeowner then had to pick you.

But look, we already know they're selling it, whoever they are.

The middleman to like 5, 6, 7 that you know of other homeowners or roofers or whatever, right?

Electricians.

So you know that undoubtedly the most likely objection when you go to picture or so offer your services, you're like, okay, cool, well, I got the other person coming because by nature, the source you, you, you clicked on, you know, that's, that's the deal, right?

And you pay X and the return might be Y.

And you know, it's not horrible, but I've watched a lot of guys go broke paying for leads.

There's not an element.

There's just a huge lack and element of control.

I would say if you're in a nutshell, if you're going to spend money on leads like that, they should be the side dish, not the main course.

You need a main course and the main course needs to either be canvassing call center or maybe both.

But it's a residual source of leads that you can lean into yourself and you can give the scripts and train the people and cultivate the atmosphere.

And if the lead sucks, you're not paying for it because you can go right to Joey or Sally and say, yo, what happened here?

This does not meet our qualifier.

Why would.

You know what I mean?

Like, that is the most powerful.

Now you have your own internal supplier of leads and sure, turn these other buckets on over here, right?

And, and that's fine, but like mix those in with your own source and those though.

And, and the reason really is exclusivity and margin and control.

So what I mean by that is, okay, comparative to those types of leads, your Angie's leads, your porch, those like that are going to be, you know, you're going to have a lot of compact competition for which is going to drive down the overall margin.

Right.

Because it's going to be a race to the bottom.

Sure.

Yeah.

Everybody hates of PPCs and LSAs and all the different.

So your big baller companies that charge a premium, not likely to be on there because they know we don't stand a chance if we're not unless we're first in.

So who's going to be on there?

Right?

Like the guys that are fighting for the middle ground or race to the bottom.

So by nature of the type of lead source, it's going to have a Larger.

A smaller margin versus knocking that door and saying, hey, did you know that your windows are bad?

And here's why.

I've noticed some seal failure.

Yeah, the house is built in the 80s, wasn't it?

These people probably never thought about doing any of these things.

And maybe they did, maybe they didn't.

But you're training your people who are out there looking for these things to look for X, Y and Z.

Seal failure, fogging on the windows, an age of a house, a size of a house.

These are my parameters.

Right?

And then you're teaching them to go knock and educate a client briefly enough to where that client has questions.

Questions are a great turning point for.

That's a great reason why the expert should come out and answer that question for you, sir.

Right.

Now you've got them at least, oh, wow, there's something wrong with my home.

Sure, it's a free estimate.

I'll take a listen.

Right.

But that exclusivity drives an increase in margin.

So now you have a much more exclusive lead where you're not likely to have 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 other bids, which is going to drive up your margin.

Right?

Means you make more money, you have a much better opportunity, a much lower closing percentage, because again, there's not seven or eight other companies.

If you know that someone else is coming behind you, you better train your rep to get on that phone and make sure that that dang thing is canceled.

Because they'll still show up, right?

And they'll try to take the deal.

And it's just, that's, that's next level stuff.

But in short, that's why exclusivity.

And, and, and of course, if there's a problem with the lead, I can go right to the source and not call Angie's List for two hours and say, hey, you sent me five bogus leads.

And they're fighting back and forth and trying to like, get credit for it, whereas we can go right to the source and say, Joey, what were you thinking?

Why did you set this?

You know what I mean?

It's just those are three big ones right there as to why you might be interested.

The, the, the other one that comes to mind for me, and this is one that I've always liked, especially when I'm starting to introduce this to companies that just never really have considered canvassing, is you get to pick your market.

Are you tired of getting the leads all over the area, driving forever, and then you show up in.

You know, I, when I was years ago, when I was especially a Few of the solar leads when I was trying to buy them, instead of doing this, you know, one time I showed up and it was just a junkyard.

There was no house there.

It's like, how did this even get on my list?

You know?

And so it's like when we're buying liens, you never know what you're showing up to.

And then we.

So you get to pick the exact house, the exact age of the house, the exact condition of the house.

You can isolate your, you know, the homeowner's demographic as far as level of income and every single thing as we know to the exactly who we're knocking the door for.

And so the.

The likelihood of being the optimal buyer once we understand who our best fit client is, then we just talk to them instead of trying to shotgun everybody.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, that's an excellent point, man.

Is also market.

That's a huge point that I.

That's how you hire territory reps.

I mean, the whole thing's built around it, right?

Like, okay, well, we want to go here.

Okay, cool.

I gotta hire a closer out there.

And there we go.

Now we're there.

You know what I mean?

Of course you train them up and everything.

But now I have one here.

I have one here.

I have one here and here.

Hiring territory reps, we have a canvassing team.

We can easily have a call center follow up in those areas and pick to follow up in those areas.

And you can do some really cool stuff with coordinated call and even ground yard sign campaign, some guerrilla marketing.

But give me that all day long, man.

Oh, I love it.

I love it so well, so let's turn the corner into the chicken and egg conversation.

Yes.

Because that is.

That's always the struggle is like, so.

And talk to this a bit because you can outpace pretty quickly production if you're not careful.

And this is really where the biggest concern comes in and why people that don't do canvassing, I think, are scared to do it the second they understand that I could put two people on the street and outsell your entire company right now by weeks if they actually knew what they were doing.

So talk to that interaction a little bit and how to gauge for that and to.

To plan for it.

Yeah, I get it.

Because, you know, the worry is, well, if I go and hire some canvassers and those canvassers come in and learn and those canvassers are successful and I don't already have some closers trained up well, then they're.

We're just going to burn leads, those canvassers are going to get angry and quit.

Or I hire closers and they don't have leads yet, or I hire them both at the same time.

And what if one takes longer to get going?

Again, it's always a chicken or the egg thing.

Like, for me, I think it's harder to.

It's harder to find and get your.

I can train closers pretty easily for whatever reason.

I don't know why.

For me it's just been easier to like, find and.

But get my guys and gals out there in the field, get them used to it.

There's a high attrition rate, a real high turnover rate for the folks that are just now starting in the doors that have never done it.

If they have experience, they know what they're getting into.

But like, you kind of need to cultivate that a lot, a lot more.

And that's going to take a little bit more getting going.

But to that point, if you start on the door, you can get a lot more creative with that.

And I think that's where you're going is like, you know, the, the client in Minnesota, they've.

Their folks are willing to do like, hey, we'll knock and sell.

And I have guys in, in my team right now in insurance restoration that knock for themselves.

We also support them, but we pay them very well for it and have learned retail closing mechanisms.

And you know, Andy just last week knocked one Thursday.

We're set it up for an appointment Friday and sold it Friday right then and there.

Just like a retail.

So like you can get more creative with, with boots on the ground.

And, and I'd start, I just always start boots on the ground.

Now you could hire a couple closers and just, you know, turn on one of those lead sources for a very minimal modest budget and feed them with that while you're getting your, your canvassers going.

You know, that's another option.

It just because you might be in a different situation, you might have already some closers and you're like, what do I do with them if I'm trying to get these, these canvassers going?

Like, okay, well what other lead sources do you have?

Sure, sure.

Kind of lean in on those for right now.

But you know, you're really going to want to get those, those being the canvassers going.

And if you don't have either of the two, I'd focus on your doors and your, your, your field marketing first because you're going to want to get those guys to be animals and you can teach, like, I can run.

So if I have three or four guys and I could run, and it was just me from the very beginning, again, that's what I do.

You're going to knock, I'll close.

You know, you three knock, I'll close.

I can go grab another guy or two to help close pretty quick.

But it.

I say pretty quick.

It takes me about a week or two to teach them.

But still, I mean, like, I've always had me.

So that's a hard.

You know what I mean?

At the end of the day, I can always run it myself, at least close it.

But to get guys to get out there, get in the field, get their butt kicks on the door, and then get good enough to where, like, okay, maybe I train you, but you've already learned the door now.

And.

And while you're kind of transitioning, like, look, you're gonna have to knock for yourself a little bit.

There's a lot more options in the field than there are with closers that are just like, I'm not knocking.

I'm not doing anything.

However, there's plenty of guy times where I've been responsible for, hey, look, when you run this lead, knock the four people around the house, dude, like, you don't.

You do that every time.

Yeah, and that was just standard operating procedure for me at some of the places I've been.

So that's other things that you can implement too, that I just don't think are being utilized enough.

You know, kind of the blend of the two.

Like, yeah, you will feed you, but you need to knock to all the, you know, around the.

The four points of all the ones we send you.

And you, you know, we'll.

We'll send you what we can, but you need to be able to knock for yourself because that's where you started.

It's just, you know, you can get a lot more convenient by adding elements of the 2, 100.

And that's what I always train.

It's like every appointment you run, sales appointment, every single install that goes in, you're knocking around that house.

Introduce yourself, all the things.

So let's.

So.

So say we've got a handful of closers already, already ready to go.

But we've been feeding them for, you know, say, with digital and with our other means.

And we introduce, you know, say we bring on a handful of, you know, a few canvassers that have some experience.

Now the concern is, okay, this is working really well.

What if we outsell the production team to actually, you know, produce and do the work itself.

So that's.

That's more.

That's a lot of times the.

The conversation that I have with the, you know, guys in H vac especially, but with plumbing and electrical also, but especially with H Vac because they're like, man, we can, you know, we can't get out a week, two weeks necessarily because of, you know, if somebody's air conditioning's out, it's hot.

So we got to get there in a reasonable amount of time.

So talk about that back and forth, because I know even roofing and others, it's like, you know, it can't go months out if it's sold.

And then what happens?

Somebody else comes in and says, hey, we can do this tomorrow.

Why are you with them?

I love that question.

And yes, you're right.

And we have.

I think that that speaks to your forecasting abilities and scale and your model, you know, and having the time and effort and energy to sit down and kind of, you know, even recently, we had to do this where me and some of the other leaders just spent the last couple Saturdays in the beginning of the year.

And we just devoted to revamping our model and making sure that we didn't miss any pieces in terms of comp packages or did anybody.

Is there anything we didn't think about as we scaled out that we're going to, oh, crap, we got to hire a manager for such and such, and he's going to command such and such salary and such and such bonus.

And now what do we take it from?

Because we want to hit a net net of this, and we run, you know, that's a nice net net, you know what I mean?

And that risks taking us below that.

Because we've got to hit our goals.

In order to achieve that, we've got to stay below our overhead percentage of, you know, this and.

And our marketing percentage of this.

So I'd say knowing all of those things, first and foremost, forecasting.

But it doesn't have to be rocket science, man.

It can be like, okay, how much can one team handle and how much can, you know, if.

If my sales folks can produce an extraordinary amount, you know, I'd rather be in a position.

Put it to you this way.

And Kurt Lennington told me this, and I did the both, by the way.

And I paid a very big price for doing this.

So I, I did the.

I did the.

The adverse last year.

I had always had the success in the sales room.

I'm like, dude, we'll get the volume.

We always do.

We've always 2, 3, 4x and we're starting our new office this year.

Well, man, that just proved to be way harder, way more expensive, way more everything.

It's in business always that way.

And, and we got our butts kicked for a while because we had brought in extra production and top flight production management and assistant management and like really went all in on production without the volume being there to justify it.

To make sure that just when we did and look, we ended up having to like cut a lot of folks and it was a hard lesson to learn, man.

And, and I won't make that again.

And what Kurt told me, Lennington, who's had a lot of success in this industry and in fact he's really one of the OGs in terms of the private equity game with roofing currently, he said, I'd rather be in the position of having all the sales and have to like, you know, try to scramble to find some extra, you know, teams and, and installers and production folks than not.

You know what I mean?

And like I'm like, dude, I totally.

Problem to have than the opposite, right.

Than having all these production folks sitting around not with nothing to do, just overloading payroll and you have no sales.

That is a very scary problem.

And so, or you know, maybe you have the same amount of sales as you had last year, but now you're, you know, you anticipated 3x and so you, you still are making less money than you did last year because you have more overhead.

So you know, I'd speak to.

I get it.

I understand that thought process because I did it and I can tell you I paid a price for it.

And so now what we're doing, even right now, we're.

You do best you can hope for, man, at least in my experience is we're keeping a very firm pulse on that expansion, right?

Week by week, month by month.

Like, you know, it can only catch you off so, so much off guard.

Like, okay, we can, we can go out 30 days and then we double up, then we triple up, went to that alarm bell to where it's like, hey dude, we're at capacity knowing that.

Okay, cool, well then now we need to say, okay, we need another crew, right?

And, and how quickly can we.

Let's get some interviews.

Let's get those guys in, let's get their paperwork done, let's have our bee crew and start feeding the bee crew some jobs so we're not completely foreign with them and we're just trying them out.

We're in a jam, right?

And you know, that's how it's worked, man.

You start feeding the second crew more and more as much as you can, trying to keep Crew 1 busy as.

As best you can full time, always, so they're happy.

And then you start working in the second as much as you can.

And eventually now you have the similar relationship you have with the first crew as you do with the second, and you work in the third.

Right.

And you start getting to know someone else because, you know, there's nothing better than having that subcontracting crew that knows how you want things done.

Exactly.

They know the expectation.

They treat it as if it's them.

There's nothing more scary than when you're first trying out a sub.

You're like, damn it, I hope.

Or an installer that's just starting and you got a bunch of new installers.

You're like, these dudes better uphold our quality and our standard of work.

And so, you know, sounds like the.

Theme here is just become a better manager and trainer in your own organization.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, pretty much be checking in with them.

You know, EOS is a great tool.

Inspect what you expect, right?

Yes.

100 EOS is a great tool.

You know, making sure you do, you know, toolbox checks.

Tools, toolbox checks, tool box checks, where you pop in and just, you know, have your.

Hey, here's our.

Here is our standard on a piece of paper.

It's a checklist, a standard that.

This is how we expect drip edge to be.

Here's how we expect our caulking to be.

Right?

Like, and I'm signing off on it every single time as a QA rep.

And if it comes back that the customer is not happy, I'm gonna look and see if the QA rep signed off on it.

We have a quality assurance rep on each job.

Like, you know, there are.

There are standard operating procedures and people and roles and things you can put in place to.

For quality assurance for sure.

But ultimately it's also making sure that you're just forecasting appropriately.

Okay, well, you're right.

What if.

What if we do 10 million?

What are we going to do?

How many, how many crews do we need to have?

If we scale this out, if we hit this number, then we need.

You should have a key performance indicator that tells you when it's time to hire another crew and then another crew and then another crew.

So at least being prepared.

And sometimes that math doesn't always work, man.

Or it looks great on paper and then it's like, damn, what we Thought was our threshold just isn't our threshold.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

It's a living, breathing organism.

You have to adjust along the way.

But you could do your best to try and get out.

If you don't do that, you will definitely be in a jam.

So if you at least are constantly trying, working, living in that, breathing in that, checking up on your stuff, being a better manager, staying on top of the numbers, you'll be all right.

Because the rest of it's business ownership, brother.

You know what I mean?

It's what we have to navigate.

If it was easy, everybody would do it.

Yeah, no joke.

There's something you mentioned here.

This is fun.

This is really getting into a.

Be a fun conversation.

I'm loving this.

So you mentioned something because this is so for everybody, listen, this is scaling your business crash course 101 here.

So one of the things that is always a back and forth, almost controversial topic is having your people, your production in house versus using subcontractors.

And you can pitch that either direction depending on what your position is.

So when is it, you know, talk to us a little bit about that.

You know, obviously we've got to try people before we bring them in.

It's hard a lot of times to employ them and then find out they're awful.

And so that whole journey, it's like, when do we know when it's time to add?

And clearly we have our production KPIs.

Okay, we're starting to max this.

We need to start bringing.

Thinking about bringing on more.

But when is the right time to.

And.

And using subs?

I know roofing and that type of vertical is slightly different than H Vac or something.

But at the same time it's not because there's plenty of companies, I know that that's all they use is exclusively subcontracted production teams and installation teams.

So when is a good time or how do you know if somebody is a right fit for your organization?

And you know, do you exclusively run with subs?

Is it good to have a mix?

Would you.

Is the goal to constantly be bringing them in house over time?

If they're open to that.

And then that's the journey to find good crews and already have them trained is use them as subs first until they have hit your standard and then you can bring them in house.

And this is a whole conversation here.

Yeah.

Curious to hear your perspective on it.

And so again, this is fun for me too because it's a lot, a lot to unpack.

And to your point.

So Roofing, you know, full disclosure.

If you're.

If you're in roofing.

Anyone that tells you that, oh, yeah, these guys work for me.

There's probably such a small maybe 1% of the 1%.

I mean, even the biggest companies that I know that they said for a multitude of reasons, one, you know, we only work on roofing.

You know, I don't know, maybe 10 months out of the year through the winter, you know, to have these guys on your insurance and your retainer and all these things, it just be like, for what.

You know what I mean?

And.

And drive up.

It's just from a.

Just a cost and risk.

As a business owner, you know, these are two big, big variables for you to consider.

Profit, cost and risk.

And both of which not.

There's not a box that to be checked where it's like, well, now you might be able to get more aggressive at a huge size and bringing them on board.

Sure.

I just feel like our industry is so, like, I'm very transparent.

Like, first of all, like, even with our.

Our manuf and so on, they give us all, you know, our accolades and install.

What's the word I'm looking for?

You know, they.

I'm a diamond or I'm a platinum installer for oc.

Right.

Well, it's not the installers that get that.

It's us, the gc.

And then we, by them, by proxy, they trust us to be professional enough to use, you know, the proper GC or subcontractors.

And then I'm, you know, our credentials pass over.

Sure.

So the quality is there.

And.

Right.

And now, to be fair, because we are a platinum, we do hold a very strict standard and have a QA on site.

And that QA is making sure that, you know, the jobs are being installed that the way that they're supposed to be installed.

And we've got, you know, we work with subs very intimately, and our subs man, are right there on that threshold of, like, my wife's an attorney.

You know, we don't play games when it comes to, like, you know, classifications.

But they want to be involved.

Like, the owner of that company is.

Is basically, you know, he wants to be a team.

He wants to be a partnership.

He wants to sit in on our L10s.

He wants.

He's here for a lot of the meetings and stuff because he wants to know, like, how can we get better?

How can we be better at that?

Yeah.

Treat them so well.

They want to work for you first.

Exactly.

And.

And, you know, and it's almost like with him.

Now if we had to say you have to do X, Y or Z, things could get, you know, weird.

But, but, but we don't have to do that because fortunately these guys are professional and, and they basically like, it's like, it's very much at this point the only difference is the classification in terms of taxes.

That's it.

Like he, he treats this the same way.

He show up the same way.

Now we have an operating agreement that we have for, for, for contractors and it states like, you'll come out this time, you'll do this, you'll operate by this standard.

Now again, we can only.

But it's an agreement, you know, between two businesses.

Like hey, is an independent contract agreement.

If you want to come in, excuse me, and do business with, with Potomac, you're going to sign this and you're going to agree to, you know, this price point or you're also going to agree to these ethics.

And like this is what we do.

And you know, again, not crossing any lines in terms of classifications but you know, we had a sub.

Subs say I can't sign this and say, all right, cool man.

It's pretty, it's pretty straightforward.

It just says you'll stand by your work and things like that.

But you know, there are elements there too that we can hold.

Now if I was in H vac, I probably sub first like a 90 day, just like, just again, risk, cost.

But frankly, the sooner I could, you know, I feel really good about somebody that they meet our standards and I'd probably give them a quarter or 90 day probationary period as long as I could afford to.

And it was cost effective because I'm always going to have a pulse on cost effective.

Like that's just of course, right.

Like profit is the thing that drives everything else.

Right.

Of course I'm going to be looking at that.

Then I would definitely be looking to convert if it were like, you know, service work for H Vac because I'm not totally unfamiliar.

I worked for the sheet metal union for a bit.

I was.

My brother's a local 26 rep.

I mean I've been on site with the 602 boys.

That's the sheet metal or the H vac union here.

Sure.

You know, if it were residential or commercial, but commercial work, you know, if you start to become so big, you're a gc, you're subbing everything out anyhow.

Right.

And so.

Yeah, yeah, but it's just a whole different world that I'm not, you know, Other than doing some work in it.

I would just say it depends on, you know, if I'm residential H vac, I'm knocking doors, you know, I'm looking to bring those guys and gals in as soon as I can.

But from a risk element, you know, there's nothing wrong with like the probationary period.

Bringing them in makes it easier if it doesn't work out.

You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, hey, we tried, here's the year onboarding.

There's no, you know, know my attorneys don't have any issues with that.

In fact, you know, anytime we're kind of unsure of what to do, they're like, look, why don't you just bring them on as a, you know, 10 or nine, like for like a 30 or 90 day offer.

Like, hey, here's what we're gonna do and if it works out, then we'll.

Bring you one, try them before you buy them type of a model.

Yeah, and you could certainly do that too.

But for me, when I would do that would be when I knew that the standard and before I risked.

I want to bring them in.

And as a business owner, my job is to constantly provide opportunities to my people.

Less I risk losing them, like that's just the way it goes.

So I'd want to bring them in before I realize it too late.

Like, oh dang, this guy's or gal's really great and they decide either to stay a sub or go off somewhere else.

Right.

So there's that fine line of like waiting too long.

So you know, create your mile markers and performance things that you're looking for and you know, perhaps making an earn it based model.

Like, hey, when you achieve these things here, this many installs, this many things, this many 10 star, 5 star installs, you get this bonus and we're bringing you in or whatever.

But I'd be looking to do it before it was not an option or it became an issue.

So ultimately, if I could afford IT&H vac and service, I'd probably be or I work with a group that I know works the way I want to work and it'd probably be like one company and that's it.

You know what I mean?

And they're right there with me on everything.

I love this.

Yeah.

And for another, for everybody listening to what we did here in Austin years ago is in the off season we would have, you know, we would max out at eight or 10 crews.

Typically in the busy season and off season, what happened is the helpers would end up, you Know we would.

They would.

And they knew that this was the model off season.

We slow down.

So we would shrink down to four or five crews where the form.

All the foremen on the crews would team up and that would be the crew and the helpers would go off and they had no problem.

They liked it.

They would go work at a pizza place or do whatever else they wanted to do the rest of the year.

And the second we kicked back up again, all the foremen would call their helpers and now they're back into the same teams.

Depending on your market, everybody, and depending on how your organization runs, you can have some flexibility here.

It's not an all or nothing.

It can be back and forth or have those sub crews that on demand when, you know, when we.

When you've sold more than what your staff can handle, have the ones that you work with periodically that come in and pick up the slack for you.

So that's.

There's some hybrid models in there too.

That can be pretty effective sometimes.

Yeah.

In fact, to your point, like, if you get.

If you get so overwhelmed, like you were saying, and it's like, well, you know, you should have a good relationship with the sub then, because, you know, for us, as I said, like, when I say sub, like, no one knows outside of internal people.

Like, they just know Potomac.

Right.

But like, I'm just very candid because that's silly, man.

Like, you, you'd probably eye roll me if I told you anything else, if you knew the industry here.

But like, to your point, with H Vac, it's different.

So.

But okay, we get overwhelmed with work.

Well, you should probably have a good relationship with a sub that you can maybe, hey, man, can you come in, help us out?

Like, and that'd be a good way to kind of bridge that gap too.

So there's even branding kind of shortcut.

So just the perception is the right.

You know, just have your own wrapped trailer that they come up and drag your trailer to the job site.

It's wrapped with your company logo.

So the homeowners aren't like, oh, it's just a magnetic sign on the side of their truck.

Yeah.

So there's lots of ways to.

I did that for a while.

Branding.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I did the magnetic sign for a while.

But no, we.

Yes.

But to your point, like a trailer or something, like a real truck truck.

Hey, you can come to.

You can take our trucks or whatever.

But a lot of these guys have no problem doing that as long as you pay on time.

You Know what I mean?

Pay on time and pay pay a little bit better than everybody else and you'll get the best and get to keep them.

Yep.

100, man.

Love this, man.

This is so good.

So I can't believe we're already close to time here.

Wow.

We've been chopping it up.

So one thing that this, this podcast is known for, and I definitely want to give you the opportunity to give everybody talk about what you do, especially with Baden Consulting, how you help, all their contact information.

But before you do, one thing we're known for is giving everybody something as actionable right away, like drop a nugget for people that maybe they've been thinking about expanding.

The canvassing idea is becoming a hot topic, especially the way digital is going right now and the cost of new client acquisition is through the freaking roof.

So companies that are winning are basically imagining, if the Internet didn't exist, how would I go to business?

And so drop a couple nuggets on people.

What can they do to get started along that process if they just really want to, but just don't know how.

To start if the Internet didn't exist.

Yeah, that or to get to step into.

Yeah.

So maybe one idea there's.

And then one idea around companies that want to step into getting some canvassers, what that might look like.

Okay, well, I would just a very easy nugget to digest would be some of the basics that I was given when I was, you know, really, really new.

And it's the, the three touch rule.

So you want them to see you at least three times before your.

Before your phone rings or they make a decision to choose you.

So what we used to do is we would say, okay, well, we're going to put our yard signs out.

We want to go in this territory.

We decided because it's appropriately aged homes, the appropriately sized homes.

And that's where we want to be.

And we want to send out our.

Our, our direct mailers would be one option.

Very cheap and inexpensive.

You can even do them yourself.

You can get a list from your local UPS and literally do it for pennies on the dollar and send out a little bit, you know, a hand sign, I might type something up, send it out, hand sign like, hey, we'll be in your area next week.

Right.

Or two weeks from now.

Or I'd put out some yard signs as well.

Pay somebody to put yard signs out or do it myself on the weekends in that same area.

So now they're seeing the yard signs in that area.

Right.

At all the major traffic intersections, there are major entrances and exodus to the exits to the neighborhoods.

Then I'm sending in my mailers, even hand mailers or not.

Right.

The next week.

And then I'm sending in my canvas team.

And now it's like, hey, I don't know if you guys, you know, saw our yard signs or if you've, you know, heard anything about us.

We're a pcr.

And they're like, oh yeah, you're the freaking people that have been bugging the hell out of it.

And maybe they don't even remember where, but on an unconscious level at least.

And I, I don't even remember where or how long it's been since I first heard that.

But if they've seen it at least three times in recent memory, that, oh yeah, they're more likely to say yes.

Right.

Is really what that breaks down to.

And it might be pseudoscience, it might be bs, but it's worked well for me.

And it's a good intro into like marketing 101 field marketing 101.

And just if you continue to serve that like, and be strategic with, I think you'll have a lot more success than just arbitrarily bebopping around with canvassers.

Sure.

So one quick follow up there because this is what a lot of people that have never really spend any time in this world understand is how long should you stay in one area?

You know, so just knock it a couple times and move on.

Or, you know, where do you hit that saturation point when it's, you know, it's time to.

Yeah, if we're.

That's a great question.

It's actually a very good question because you're right.

If you don't know, you don't know.

We do not.

We're.

We would not come back.

So we, let's say we cover a whole neighborhood.

We're not coming back tomorrow unless we haven't covered it.

It.

If we've covered that neighborhood, we'll see you in no sooner than usually a month, you know what I mean?

Sometimes a couple months.

Like, you know, way back in the day, man, we'd have this little map of Maryland back in our, our office and our canvassers would just rotate like clockwise, right.

And they would just.

Zip code, zip code, zip code, zip code,.

And it usually took them a couple months before they got back.

And they're going to be back, but they would not ever be back any sooner than a month, you know, because you come right back and it's like now Joey instead of Tyler hits the same door.

But it's like they were just there two days ago.

Like, I just told your guy to F off.

You know what I mean?

It's like, let's give it some time to slow down.

We.

We should have got some.

Now let's come back and get the ones we didn't get.

Yeah, I think a month minimum is.

Other than, of course, the ones that are like, hey, come back in two days and.

Right.

Yeah, of course they tell you to come back or real follow up.

But if you've burned through that neighborhood, you've exhausted the leads, you can get the follow ups and everything else that's great.

But like outside of that, like, you know.

Yeah, a month, I would say probably cycle around.

Okay.

Okay.

Gotcha.

At the soonest.

Yeah.

So when we're.

So when we're doing this and when we're tracking and so.

Well, one quick thing because what you said just there, what is the real number?

And we're getting close to the end here.

No, no, I'm sorry.

It's just very hot under these lights.

Everybody doesn't.

If you're on YouTube, you can see what's going.

He's got like, you know, infrared lights blasting heat on him in his.

Yeah, I've got a couple big other lights on the top.

Yeah.

So I'm like.

But if you're on YouTube, make sure you like and subscribe.

Yes, thank you.

And also like and subscribe.

I know you've got a channel as well, so go.

Oh, sure, yeah, the Ken Baden channel.

Yeah, please.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, go like and subscribe that channel.

Channel as well.

But last question about this.

And then, then I want you to talk about what you guys do with your.

With Vaden Consulting and all of that.

The guy that says, oh, get, get the f off my lawn.

How often does that really happen?

Because people are so scared to start canvassing because of that.

But I'm like, man, maybe one in a hundred.

What do you, what do you see?

And what's your experience with that?

It's funny because I've got RO for good measure and good experience, who has been my digital media guy who's sitting across from me and he's been learning canvassing.

So when he heard you say that, he started laughing.

And I'm like, you know, I can only tell you my, my past experience.

And I would say, you know, does it happen a ton?

No.

And he's laughing because it probably happened recently.

But look, it's not.

You only remember that one more than you do the nice ones.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But like, when you really think about like, well, how many other people did you talk to today?

And if you were, you know what I mean?

It's just that one stands out because it sucked, you know, and if you really were, to be fair with the number.

Yeah.

It's not, it's not that many.

And the reality is is there's a lot of power in handling that with like just grace and like, hey man, have a blessed day.

Have a great day.

I don't know, I think that that's a great exercise and really shows an excellent closer.

The guy a gal that gets.

Yeah.

Killing him with kindness.

If you can handle that man, you're going to be an absolute assassin inside the house.

But it doesn't happen a whole an often often.

And things will happen.

You will likely get bit by a dog if you're in canvassing long enough or get chased off.

Look, you know, there's a horror story.

For everyone knocking in Texas.

I mean we've had guns pulled on us.

I was just getting ready to say I wasn't sure if I wanted to scare people away from it, but I don't know anybody that's ever had anything like happen.

Right.

Like, but I have had, you know, we've had that too.

You know what I mean?

And it's like, but you know what else?

You know, we've had people make life changing money and opportunities doing this.

And so like, you know, if it was easy, everybody would do it.

Yeah.

No joke.

That's why we get paid what we do.

Because of nobody.

Not that many people are willing to step outside their comfort zone there.

Well, man, this has been such a good conversation.

Talk to us about what, how you help companies and, and how people can get a hold of you.

Yeah.

Thank you, Sam.

Yeah, I, I think that's probably the most relevant right now is you know, if, and even then, you know, we, we help by inserting very specific, I'd say verticals into businesses.

If you own a solar company, a roofing company, and right now what's really going on is the insurance restoration roofing industry is hitting it a crossroads, you know, like these, it's been so heavily saturated and just, it was just so many knuckleheads for lack of a, a way of describing it that just don't know how to sell anything.

And so like the, the gold rush is over and now the smoke's clearing and they're like, well, what do we do?

It's Getting way harder.

Well, yeah, there's a freaking roofer every three feet that can say, well we can get this bought through your, you know, ready to break upa law.

Because you're not supposed to say any of that, but that's a whole nother conversation.

We're here to teach you and teach these roofing companies the sales methodologies and the sales systems and really just turnkey it.

Like hey, listen, if you've got now, it's not cheap.

And that's because, you know, my team and my myself, we have to pick who it is that we're going to work with and it's only one or two companies that we can handle a quarter.

But it's a turnkey service, man.

It's coming in with the scripts, with the SOPs, the systems and then of course the teachings to make sure you're completely set up to literally turnkey insert that retail vertical or insurance restoration or solo solar vertical into your business.

And I, I really enjoy doing that the most right now.

I take a couple coaching clients on that's more of just of a I like hold me, holds me accountable and passion thing for me.

I'm sure you, you can relate.

You know, if I'm telling somebody else, you need to be doing these things and I need to be doing those things even more.

And so maybe a couple coaching clients, but mainly the consulting is that.

And that's what we're looking for.

Got it.

So here's a question along those lines.

Say there's a company that maybe they're in a market and they're rock solid with what their existing vertical is.

If it's any of the other verticals and they want to add something like solar or roofing or both, you know, can you work, is that something you do?

Work with those companies and then show them how to do a bolt on and.

Yeah, yeah, that's precisely as well.

I may have said it in a confusing way, but that's really precisely what we're looking to do is, is add that other arm.

So if you're a solar company and you want to learn how to do roofing, we can teach you how to do roofing.

Now whether it's insurance or retail, that was our, one of our first clients.

If you're a retail roofing company, want to know how to do use insurance.

But if you're a, you know, it does parallel nicely with the door to door theme.

That's why solar and insurance restoration like and even retail, there are door to door elements.

So that's why I.

I traditionally kind of bounce around the three, but.

Absolutely.

If you're in a business owner and remodeling or business owner of any you want to do a bolt owner, add that in like we can certainly help you do that.

It's just that 90 day like turnkey promise.

We know we can meet when you have say an already existing a solar company or a retail roofing company or a roofing company, does that make sense?

So we can still help you.

It's just we know for a fact through experience that with 90 days we can get those other guys going, get.

Them up and running.

Yeah, exactly.

So for.

So because I know there's a lot of, you know, other companies, H Vac or garage doors or whatever that you know, they, they're running nice and solid and they're wanting to open up some other divisions or.

And so for example, there's a H Vac company I know of that they also do windows and remodeling.

And so it would make sense to.

Okay, well it's, it's just one more step further into something else.

So that's just part of the curiosity of that question because I know there's a lot of guys that they've got roots in other, other places like this, just don't quite know how to attach it here, there without doing a completely separate entity, et cetera.

And so those.

Part of the origin of that question, huh?

Yeah, yeah, I see that.

I mean I've seen so many different iterations, man.

Was there another question behind that?

No, no, that's it.

That's just the end of the day.

Business is business and we're adding to.

I could see my brain just spinning lots of ways.

Yeah, yeah.

So is mine.

Now that you're saying that I'm like.

This type of thing.

Thing we could 100.

That's what I was actually thinking is, is there's probably something that.

Because I know you do a whole lot.

Well, you actually basically you teach something similar for H Vac, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And we're covering of course lots of home services and that type of thing.

Well, you're a door to door G just like me, man.

So honestly, I think there's probably, you know, I do have to be very selective.

Not because I'm pompous or anything like that.

I just, I have my own business that is the breadwinner and the, and the baby.

And the golden rule is just hey, as long as that doesn't get negatively impacted.

Unfortunately, I have enough folks and I'm Delegating.

And I'm able to do those things to where that hasn't been the case.

But, you know, we just want to make sure that we've been so blessed to get Potomac to a certain spot that, you know, we can probably.

Our threshold's probably 2 a quarter as far as businesses, but.

But we're just blessed, man.

And I really love.

I love doing it, so that's cool.

Well, how do people get a hold of you, man?

Give us all your different channels and avenues.

The.

The.

Ken Baden is the Facebook, right?

Ken Baden on Facebook.

Ken Baden on Facebook.

And we've changed our Instagram so many times.

So if you look up Ken Baden, you'll find me.

But it's official.

Ken Baden.

We have the Ken Baden on Instagram, Ken Baden on Facebook, ken Baden on YouTube.

So if you Google me, the Ken.

Ken is mostly what you'll find.

Not Kenneth, contrary to what we talked about this morning.

Ken Baden on YouTube.

The kitchentable podcast.net is the podcast website.

Check us out on the Kitchen Table Podcast and.

But most of what you'll be looking for and of course, Potomac customermodeling.com but for me and, And Baden Consulting.

Baden Consulting has a website.

You're more than welcome to look.

But if, honestly, if you find me on social media idea, let's just have a conversation.

There's a link on our social or, excuse me, our.

Our podcast website that says consulting and clicking on that.

But you can just hit me in my inbox or my DMs and we can see if we can have a conversation.

If we might be a good fit or if you just want to holler and just chat, man, I'd be happy to do that, too.

Love it.

And for everybody listening, I'll make sure to get these links in the show notes.

So if you're in Drive Time University, like I know most of you probably are right now, absolutely.

Go into the show notes.

Every single one of these links will be there.

And.

And totally listen to this.

Listen to the Kitchen Table podcast.

Great show.

And be on the lookout because I know for a fact that there's a good chance Ken's going to be on.

We'll be sharing a stage together at some events coming up, and so we definitely have some.

There's.

I feel some synergy here.

There's some cool stuff.

Yeah, me too, man.

I.

I agree.

Me too.

Not enough people push those doors.

No, not at all.

And so if, I mean, who knows, maybe we can have a.

All hands on deck.

All home service trades Freaking door boot camp and just crush it, Knock it out of the park like that.

Who knows?

That would be so awesome.

So I love it, man.

It love planning this kind of stuff and then executing.

So if that.

So with that being said, everyone who's listened this far into the show, if that is something that you would like to hear or see from us, drop Ken a message.

Drop me a message.

Of course you can get me, Sam, closeitnow.net, go to closeitnow.net and pop me a message in the form there.

Or of course, join my Facebook group @CloseItNow.

It's all the same everywhere.

Or Instagram is the real Closeit now.

And shoot me a message, say, hey, I want to do doors and let me know, have this event.

Let's.

I'll be there.

And we get enough commitment.

I'm sure this is something we can absolutely make happen.

100%.

100%.

Yeah.

We fill a room of people.

We'll show you exactly how to build this out and make it effective for your company.

Well, man, thanks for being on the show.

This is cool.

Yeah, I love it, brother.

Thanks for having me, man.

Yeah.

This is how it comes together, man.

Look at this.

I really appreciate you having me, but I had a blast, dude.

This is 100%.

We got to do it again.

Oh, absolutely.

There's a whole list of topics we could cover.

Good stuff.

So everybody that's listening, thanks for sticking with us.

If you got value from this show, as always, go to Apple Podcasts.

Leave a five star review, hit the Googles.

Leave me a five star review on Google.

The more stars that you leave and the more reviews you leave, the better guests that I can get on the show.

I don't know if you knew this.

When I'm reaching out to get superstars onto the show, what their gatekeepers look for is how many reviews are on that podcast before they say yes or no.

So make sure to leave a review and then we can get better and hire higher class people on the show.

Just like Mr.

Ken Baden.

And so glad you're here today.

And for everybody out there, you know how we end this.

Go be someone worth buying from.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast.

Our passion is to dive headfirst into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement and at the same time, covering fitness, nutrition, relationships, and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all.

We hope you've enjoyed the show.

If you did, make sure to, like, rate and review.

We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find the website and close it now.

Find us on Instagram at thereal.

Close it now.

And on Facebook at close it now.

See you next time.