How Great Founders Choose What to Ignore

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One of the sayings that I used to say is, we have to let the fires burn.
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That's the saying I had to say to myself, and it just, everything about it feels wrong.
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How do they stay disciplined to think that you know is the major constraint, but every single day they're being pulled towards the distractions of the hundred paper cuts that are happening in the organization?
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You can't be perfect.
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And your team members can't be perfect.
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And so it's impossible.
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We can't do it all.
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We have to pick our battles.
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I talked to AI a lot earlier this year about frustrations I had with the franchise, frustrations I had with the software, frustrations I had with the media, and the Texas Project was actually one of those things that was like, you need undeniable proof and you need to stop talking and go do it.
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Decision-making is the key.
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the highest leverage activity you can do for the business.
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Where are we spending resources?
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Where are we spending time?
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And taking shots on gold that miss, can cost months of time, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of payroll, equipment, people get inspired, like I'm gonna buy this piece of equipment or I'm gonna add this service.
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And it's like, you took a year and you messed that up.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode, Jonathan Potoschnik.
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I got the right hand.
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I got the right hand.
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Let's go.
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Welcome back.
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Jonathan's been out of town, but we are back in studio for another podcast.
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And today we're going to go deep on a topic around focus.
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And if you've listened to other podcasts, our podcast books,
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other entrepreneurs, you've probably heard people talk about how important it is to focus on the constraint of the business and be laser-like focused on one thing, not be scattered.
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But we want to talk about specifically for our businesses what that is actually meaning right now and what we're working on.
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But more importantly, why we're working on that thing compared to the other 98 fires that are happening inside the business.
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And our hope today is that in your own business, you're not gonna have the same exact things you're working on, but hopefully it gives you a decision-making framework by which you're able to look at all the issues in your business and determine which is the thing that I'm supposed to focus on right now that'll have the biggest impact on the organization for you as the founder.
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So we're gonna do two each.
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I'm gonna start off with Jonathan.
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Go ahead and just tell us what you're working on now and more specifically how you've made, come to the conclusion that this is the thing that you should be focused on as the founder.
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Okay.
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So, sort of top level, I think this rolls right into what you just said.
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If you look at what I'm working on, it's all exclusively marketing for CityTurf.
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And so, that would maybe be the first example.
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In fact, where I'm sitting right now is where I...
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Normally, this desk is standing, but this is where I am all day, every day.
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I don't go to CityTurf.
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I was there actually today.
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I just got back, but that was for a meeting.
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But otherwise, I never go to CityTurf because if I go to CityTurf...
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I will see all the opportunities.
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And I will have all kinds of conversations.
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And so it's best for me, from a focus standpoint, like how do you knock things out to just be here and go.
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And so first and foremost, I won't let myself do anything other than marketing.
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So you're going to hear a bunch of that today.
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That day will eventually come to an end.
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I will move on to something else.
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But for a season, it's only marketing.
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Anytime, just for context, whenever I send you a message, in the background I can always hear the walking treadmill.
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And so I know you're standing right there.
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It's right there.
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I just roll it under my desk and I walk.
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Yep, yep.
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So anyway, so that's like the first frame of how you're being focused.
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So I think that's an important one.
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Maybe the way you would apply that in your business is,
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there are seasons.
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So what season are we in right now?
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Now, what might define the season?
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What defines the season is like, what's the problem?
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I know we've probably both said this, but the frame I love is, and I hear myself thinking this kind of stuff, like, what am I frustrated about?
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What am I kind of whining about to myself in my head?
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What are those things that are frustrating me about the business or something?
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Well, that to me is one of the top level clues as to what...
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I should be working on, which would define the season that I'm in.
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Another top level clue would be what literal season is it that we're in?
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So if we are, we'll use the green industry.
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So if I know that fertilization weed control season is coming soon, that's going to define what initiatives need to happen
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X number of months in advance to be ready to go when the market's ready to go.
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So that's how I... That's like a top-level way I think about it.
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So what is the most important next thing to knock down and do?
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And that's the season you're in.
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So as I looked at my... Mike came up with this topic.
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And as I was looking at my Trello board, of all the things that has my name on it, that means I'm some way involved in it.
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there was a very obvious theme and the theme was copy.
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So I'm gonna kind of talk in my first, I have a really big example for you second.
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My first example, I'm gonna give you two small things, but I'm gonna talk through how I think about stuff.
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And Mike and I will kind of talk through back and forth, but how do I think about what is the priority?
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So looking at my Trello board, it's copy.
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It doesn't have to be, somebody else could do that.
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So I'm gonna kind of talk through why it's copy for me right now.
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Copy,
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just means the words on the page to sell.
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Okay.
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And then the other thing that you'll see if you look at my Trello board where things are bottlenecked behind me, which is a lot, it's vision.
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So stuff where I have the vision for the task.
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Now, I'll also tell you that doesn't have to be bottlenecked on me as well.
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So I think in this conversation...
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My guess is you're going to see Mike is living at a higher level than I'm living.
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If you had known me back in my service autopilot days, I was living at a very high level.
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Now, I'm not.
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And I will talk through this, but I'm going to slowly get back to living at a very high level, meaning where I'm doing very high level things.
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What you'll notice is...
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I'm doing what I think are very important things, but frankly, I can write a check to get every single one of the things I'm doing off my plate.
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And I'll tell you why I'm not doing that as we go.
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Okay.
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So starting at the top, what I think about when I'm trying to decide what should I be working on?
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To me, the top level thing is what to do.
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So what should we be doing in the organization?
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What should we be doing in the department?
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So you may have a little small business and maybe it's you and a couple trucks, but still think about your business as departments.
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So you've got a marketing department.
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It's probably you.
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You've got an HR department.
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Probably you.
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You're kind of everybody right now, but they are still departments.
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And so what to do is defined by...
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what I talked about earlier, but also what departments need the most focus right now.
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And I have concluded in the CityTurf business, if we don't get marketing moving in a serious way, this business is done growing.
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We're growing and we've been growing.
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The team can probably not get our churn much lower.
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So like if they would, they're just, they can do whatever they come up with, and they're just not going to make the company much better from the standpoint of preventing churn.
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They can make it a little better, but it'll have almost no impact on the business.
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And so the only other level we have right now to get this business going is more growth.
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The other problem we have is imagine we have almost 12,000 clients.
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So if you just think about natural churn that happens in a 12,000 client business, we have tons of leads compared to almost everybody listening to this.
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I got way more leads than you have.
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I close way more clients than you have.
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And the reason I say it that way is to be dramatic.
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Like I have lots of leads, but I also have 12,000 clients and some percentage of them are churning and I got to replace them.
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That's the title for your next YouTube video.
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I lost a thousand customers last year.
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That'd be a great title.
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That would be, and it'd be 100% legit too.
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So, you know, but that's a little, we're getting a little outside of the theme of this, but I do want to make the point.
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That is the top level, most important, nothing else matters in the business thing.
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Like there's nothing else that matters because nobody else can do anything to make the business better.
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Nobody can become better at what they do.
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We can't replace anybody in our team and hire somebody new that can fix it.
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when it comes to operations, it just can't be fixed there.
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It can only be fixed on marketing.
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So again, why do I sit at this desk all day and only work on this and not go to CityTurf?
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Because that is the only thing that matters.
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It's a massive undertaking.
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Okay, so first question, I always say to myself, what to do?
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Like that's your job as though.
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Like what is the most important thing to do in the business at this moment in time that will get the business to wherever you need it to go based on whatever problem or opportunity you have, okay?
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Now, the what to do will change.
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Like right now, my what to do is I should be working on marketing.
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But that's the what to do in the business.
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But what should Jonathan do is the marketing.
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Okay.
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what I alluded to earlier, it doesn't really have to be that way though, because I could just go spend 170,000 bucks and solve this problem tomorrow.
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But I've also know, just to give a little context here that, and this is a little bit, again, in the weeds, but I think important to think about as you're building your thing, what am I uniquely suited to do?
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I'm uniquely suited to do marketing.
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What do I most like doing?
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I like doing marketing.
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So a couple of things have converged here where they're what I'm good at,
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I know more than most people.
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I mean, it doesn't, this sounds, I don't mean as bragging, but I've had so much exposure to so many people in the industry have done this for so long that I have chosen not to spend 170,000 a year and do some of this for myself for a period of time.
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And,
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I do want to talk through this because I think it's important as you think about your business.
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The reason I make this decision is because this is what I like.
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This is what I'm good at.
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And right now, I am setting the example for everything that will follow in the future when I do bring in a marketing leader.
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How do we talk to ourselves?
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our clients?
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What's the voice of the business?
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What is the look of the business?
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How do we make offers?
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Where do we not push too hard using certain technologies like texting or outbound sales or voice blasts or hard sell copy that works in the moment?
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Door knocking.
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Door knocking.
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You love it.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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You know, door knocking.
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Like all the things.
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So I'm setting the tone for when I bring in a future leader to run this, that they can sort of follow the template.
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It's kind of like you as a leader create the culture.
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And then that culture needs to get mimicked by your team.
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I think the most important side of a bit, one of the most important sides of the business is the sales and marketing.
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So I feel like I'm setting that.
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I'm building that.
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That's why I've got comfortable in my head that I'm going to let myself do this.
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Now to you, you may say...
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The reason I want to tell you all that context is this is how I've identified important, but also...
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You might hear me say this and leave this conversation with Mike and I and think, oh, well, I should be doing that in my business.
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But maybe not.
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You may not love marketing.
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You may not have been to a bazillion seminars.
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You may not have read the marketing books I've read.
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You may not have the experience doing it I have.
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And I'm not saying I've just got so much to learn.
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But you may not even like it.
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Okay.
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So you shouldn't be doing it.
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You should find somebody to do it.
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So I wanted to be very clear about...
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Don't copy me.
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I'm just giving you how I think about this.
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If we were having a conversation about the single biggest problem in CityTurf being an operational problem, I'm going to hire that solution out.
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Jonathan shouldn't be doing it.
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Jonathan can have input.
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I can give insight.
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I can work as a team.
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But there needs to be somebody else better than me who loves that thing and will think about it every moment doing it.
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So really important context to know who you are, what you like.
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And in my case, this is what I like.
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And this is what I'm good at.
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That's why I'm doing it.
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Don't copy it.
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But that's how I think about it.
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So first, what should we be doing inside the org organization?
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And then what should I be doing?
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That's like my first question.
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And here's maybe one of the single biggest points I want to make that we'll talk about today.
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So the other thing that is my job or your job is what does success look like?
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And what does completion look like?
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So as an example, my job is to say, what should we do?
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Some people will call that the vision.
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Some people will call it the strategy.
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My job is to take all the information and say, this is the most important thing for us to be doing at this moment.
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Now, within that, there are a bazillion projects that have to get executed on.
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So for each of those projects that will achieve the outcome we want, the what we're going to do, I have to decide what are the most important projects, or I can work with the team.
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But what does success look like in this project, or when you're completing this thing?
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And this is where I think almost everything falls apart for most companies.
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And I...
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And so I want to give a little context here and give a couple examples.
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because this is your job as well.
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Now, again, remember what I said a moment ago, if you have higher level people, you may not be doing much of this as a job.
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So if I had a CMO, then the CMO had already built a company of my size and bigger, they could probably come in and say, these are the most important initiatives.
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This is what done looks like, completion looks like, success looks like, they could take this off my plate, but I haven't hired that person yet, okay?
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All right, so here's what I think most of us do and why we're frustrated with our business.
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I sure know it's my situation at times.
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We say we need to do this thing and we tell somebody to do that thing.
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So my example would be something that's been going on for a long time in CityTurf is I would say, I need this on the on the upside of the business, tons of data.
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We could tell you all kinds of things about the business on the RevGen side or the sales and marketing side.
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Data is almost non-existent, so we've been building all the data so that we can make decisions.
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So I can say to my team, hey, I need key data delivered to me on a monthly basis so I know if the marketing is working.
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And I can assure you, I will be disappointed with what I get if that's what I say to them.
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And I think this is what a lot of us do.
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We kind of imagine the problem.
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We understand how to solve the problem, kind of.
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And then we lightly communicate to other people what we bunt, but it's...
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There's no detail.
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There's no context.
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There's no why.
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And what we get back is lousy or it takes forever to get it.
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And so my example here and what I believe and kind of think back to Mike and I have talked about this.
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I put together this calendar and this task list.
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So a big part of defining... And I actually... To go with this, I'm recording.
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It'll be out the same time.
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It's out now when you're watching this video.
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I'm recording a video to walk you through those two things.
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Because Mike mentioned that there was a positive response.
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And so I'm going to show you these in action.
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So go to 5 for 50 and you'll see them.
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But for every task...
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I have to define what the outcome looks like.
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So if I say I need this data, I have to record Loom videos and literally write up exactly what the finished product looks like.
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So let's use data.
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I could just say, Hey, David, he's on my team.
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Give me this monthly report of all our key data.
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But that doesn't tell him what data I actually care about.
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He could produce lots of data that I'm now going to pay him and other people to produce from now on that we'll never actually use.
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He probably doesn't know where the data lives.
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I mean, he might depending on how long he's been in the company, but who knows where all the data is stored?
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It could be in our case, service autopilot.
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It could be another system.
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It could be accounting.
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Who knows where it's stored?
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It could be spreadsheets.
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He doesn't necessarily know what all the data means.
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He doesn't know what reports to pull.
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He doesn't know where to store the data.
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He doesn't know how it's going to be used.
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He needs all that context.
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So I know I'm giving you a lot of information here, but I think this is the crux of why most initiatives fail inside companies where we get frustrated that we're not making progress.
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And why can't this other person perform?
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We didn't give them what we needed to give them.
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And so that is my job.
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That is the leader's job.
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So I have to figure out what we're going to do.
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And then if I'm going to come up with what we're going to do, I literally have to define what done and success looks like.
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That is an incredible amount of work.
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And that is to a large degree, what inspired me to make my master task list that Mike and I have talked about because I needed to give the organization, this is the order of priorities unless someone else...
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you know, together we decide differently.
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And this is what you have to do to get to these outcomes.
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Okay.
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So Luke, I got some questions.
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Good, perfect.
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I feel like I've been talking.
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You're good.
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All right.
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So first question is, I think the bigger the businesses have got, they're, I consider it a target rich environment.
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Whenever, to your point, you walk into CityTurf, you're like, I could fix this and this and this and this.
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How do you, when you have a slightly smaller business where you are there, you are present,
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but yet you know that's not the thing you should be focused on.
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In your case, you're removing yourself physically.
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Like, I will not go there.
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I will stay walking on this treadmill, and I will stay at home.
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But for the person that is around it, how do they stay disciplined to think that you know is the major constraint, but every single day they're being pulled towards the distractions of the hundred paper cuts that are happening in the organization?
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Yeah.
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One of the sayings that I used to say is, we have to let the fires burn.
295
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And that's a saying I had to say to myself, and it's, it's, it just, everything about it feels wrong.
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So you know something's wrong.
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You know that the client's upset.
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And it doesn't mean you ignore the client.
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Or team members.
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Or team members too.
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Or team members are upset.
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And the bigger the, and I know we're talking small, but the bigger the business gets, I promise you, everybody will have a different opinion on what's the priority.
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everybody will have a different opinion on what will work and everybody will have different hindsight on what should have been done.
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I promise there's no getting around it.
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So you're fighting, you will never not fight this where there's lots of opinions.
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And that comes back to your job in the leadership's job, whether you're two people, you and one person out in the field who's saying, this is an issue, or it's a thousand people, this will always be a challenge.
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And that's
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somebody, the person that's willing to take on the responsibility, it's their job to make the very best call they can with the information they have about what will move the needle most in the business, whether it be grow the business or fix, improve and fix the business and reduce churn and increase client satisfaction.
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So,
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the knowing what to do is actually really hard.
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Because that's why I've read books.
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That's why I've gone to conferences.
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That's why I've been in business groups.
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That's why I've done all the things because I didn't know.
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I still don't always know.
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And you're going to get it wrong.
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And so you're often taking your best guess.
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But you're also trying to talk to other people and see what... You get the advice of others ahead of you.
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And then once you make a decision and you need to just make the decision I've learned and stick with it and see it through until new information presents itself that says, no, no, we're going down the wrong road.
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This is not actually even important.
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But once you decide this is the thing, you're still going to be bombarded with other frustrations and disappointments and...
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problems.
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And you deal with...
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If it's a client, I'm going to deal with it in the kindest possible way and make it right with the client.
325
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But I may not fix the root problem.
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And that's where I say, let the fire burn.
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Because there's something else more important.
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Because if you jump to that thing, you will literally never move the company forward.
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You will just jump from day to day
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And I think an operational process person tends to have a harder time with this than more of a sales-driven, visionary person.
331
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I've just observed that the sales... And you should know who you are.
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The salesperson, visionary person, for many of them, it's almost like Groundhog Day in a sense.
333
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What I mean by that is...
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You're really frustrated.
335
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You're upset.
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You go to bed tomorrow, it's a new day.
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It's like total reset.
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It's all been clear.
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It's like your brain did a reset overnight.
340
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Like, oh, that wasn't as bad as it felt yesterday.
341
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And you can, you know, whereas sometimes a process person will really struggle jumping
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of combining two things, but they'll really struggle letting these problems live out there.
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And so you kind of need to know who you are and say, again, I like the statement, let the fire burn.
344
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Don't be crazy about it.
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It's not an excuse to not go all in and build.
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But that's one of the most important things.
347
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I don't think I fully went deep enough or fully answered the question, but that's really important to understand.
348
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You can't be perfect.
349
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And your team members can't be perfect.
350
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And so it's impossible.
351
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We can't do it all.
352
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We have to pick our battles.
353
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And that's the inspiration of this whole conversation here.
354
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How do you pick those battles?
355
00:21:14.355 --> 00:21:17.237
And then what are examples of the battles that we've picked?
356
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Yeah, I would say like as the businesses grow, you can almost expect this to become a harder problem to solve because there's more stakeholders.
357
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So you have more customers, you have more managers, you have departments, you might have branches, you might have locations, and it's all vying, and each of them have their problems,
358
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And they have to kind of vie for resources.
359
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They have to vie for your time.
360
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And to one person, a calamity or a very urgent issue means nothing to someone else.
361
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So you fixing it doesn't help this person, but to this person, it's very important.
362
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And this has become really apparent for me, when the owners of Augusta, for certain climates, I need to solve snow.
363
00:21:52.511 --> 00:21:53.192
OK, I need to solve.
364
00:21:53.672 --> 00:21:54.673
fertilization weed control.
365
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And like, I might spend six months focusing on one thing and it feels like this person feels somewhat abandoned because I'm not pouring energy in towards something that is useful to them.
366
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And it's very, that's the challenging part, is like, which is the most highest priority?
367
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How's it gonna affect everybody, all stakeholders, whether it be customers, whether it be departments, whether it be management.
368
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And so that was my first question.
369
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I think it was well answered.
370
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Second question.
371
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One thing that I've always... Can I say one more thing?
372
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Go ahead.
373
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This is where you talk about data a lot.
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We talk about data.
375
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This is where data can really also help you.
376
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So just to kind of pile on what you said, because it can give you confidence.
377
00:22:31.801 --> 00:22:36.265
So much of what we do if we don't have data is, I feel like... You probably use those words.
378
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I feel like, I think.
379
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And the example I would use is if I was put on the phone at CityTurf in customer service, I would have a totally different frame on what the biggest problem in the business is.
380
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Because I might have people complaining about who knows what.
381
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But if I get like five of these really, really angry complaint calls every two weeks, to me, I remember those.
382
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I don't remember all the good ones.
383
00:23:00.093 --> 00:23:01.974
So it feels like the worst stuff.
384
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So that's what I'm going to voice to the leadership.
385
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But then if leadership has some data, they're like,
386
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I mean, these clients only spend $82 a year with us.
387
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It's like, are we really going to optimize the business for them and fix this thing for them?
388
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That's where data can tell you what the real priority is.
389
00:23:18.258 --> 00:23:22.401
But so I just wanted to give one more plug for why data matters.
390
00:23:22.841 --> 00:23:24.862
So sorry, go on to what you're saying.
391
00:23:24.942 --> 00:23:26.202
I wanted to build or kind of like...
392
00:23:27.303 --> 00:23:31.207
double click on one thing you said as success versus completion.
393
00:23:31.547 --> 00:23:32.448
That's how I wrote it down here.
394
00:23:32.928 --> 00:23:33.189
Okay.
395
00:23:33.669 --> 00:23:40.315
The reason I want to double click on it because I can argue to POVs on this and that is when is good good enough.
396
00:23:41.356 --> 00:23:43.698
And for example, I have an initiative.
397
00:23:43.718 --> 00:23:44.659
There's something I'm working on.
398
00:23:45.540 --> 00:23:50.244
Do I spend a month getting it to 98% and be like, Hey, it is good enough.
399
00:23:51.561 --> 00:23:58.104
and realizing that I can get way more accomplished in the business by moving on to the next thing and being okay with 98%.
400
00:23:59.085 --> 00:24:00.085
Now, take that aside.
401
00:24:00.305 --> 00:24:09.890
I've also heard, I'm kind of taking like devil's advocate perspective, where you say it's all in the details of that last 1% that makes it extraordinary.
402
00:24:10.550 --> 00:24:15.392
Similarly to the Olympian that is first place, there's this third place, similar amounts of effort.
403
00:24:15.913 --> 00:24:18.734
One person, we know their name, the other person, we don't even know who they are.
404
00:24:19.214 --> 00:24:20.095
So when is it?
405
00:24:21.035 --> 00:24:43.473
the channel or just even speak to the decision-making framework of and hey my marketing is good enough and now i'm moving on to the next thing and i can do that at a faster rate if i'm okay with a lower degree of air or i should say lower degree of perfection when is speed versus getting the details all the way that final one or two percent really worth it is there any sort of thing you can say to that
406
00:24:44.348 --> 00:24:46.591
I can, but I don't know if I can give you a rule.
407
00:24:46.951 --> 00:24:48.493
I can give you my general belief.
408
00:24:48.513 --> 00:24:50.335
And my general belief is good is good enough.
409
00:24:50.655 --> 00:24:51.897
And speed is what matters.
410
00:24:52.357 --> 00:24:53.879
And you can always come back for V2.
411
00:24:55.172 --> 00:25:01.015
Now I will tell you, if you were a service autopilot client, sometimes we didn't make it back to B2.
412
00:25:01.115 --> 00:25:02.115
I didn't even catch it.
413
00:25:02.195 --> 00:25:04.436
I didn't even catch it.
414
00:25:05.857 --> 00:25:07.078
John and I have joked about that.
415
00:25:07.098 --> 00:25:10.639
It's like, because this is like, that's the thing going through my mind where you're talking.
416
00:25:10.659 --> 00:25:16.802
It's like, yeah, good was good enough oftentimes, but sometimes, dang it, those guys had just got a little further.
417
00:25:17.062 --> 00:25:17.482
Yeah.
418
00:25:17.803 --> 00:25:18.243
But I think...
419
00:25:18.883 --> 00:25:41.742
on the whole for most of us it's the good is good enough because that perfection just doesn't generally return dividends that make it worth it and also i'll be frank i mean it sounds i don't this isn't the olympics and the bar of competition isn't olympic level right like most of our problems are could you just actually write the email and send it yeah
420
00:25:42.182 --> 00:25:46.847
Could you just actually return the call for the... Get the estimate turned around?
421
00:25:46.967 --> 00:25:48.429
Most of it's just that.
422
00:25:49.009 --> 00:25:51.171
So half of this game is just showing up.
423
00:25:51.292 --> 00:25:53.033
And most people just don't even show up.
424
00:25:53.534 --> 00:25:55.876
So I would think about it more in layers.
425
00:25:57.138 --> 00:25:59.340
The first layer is good is good enough.
426
00:25:59.700 --> 00:26:00.061
Just like...
427
00:26:01.298 --> 00:26:02.179
make it pretty good.
428
00:26:02.199 --> 00:26:05.481
I just don't know how to give you the bar for what that means to give you a rule.
429
00:26:05.981 --> 00:26:13.926
And then you come back around and you say, okay, well, it's a constant reassessment of what's working, what's not working, what are the initiatives.
430
00:26:14.366 --> 00:26:17.068
And then you come back around, make a second pass at the thing.
431
00:26:17.769 --> 00:26:20.230
That's more how I tend to think about approaching things.
432
00:26:20.250 --> 00:26:22.552
When I think about the massive...
433
00:26:23.910 --> 00:26:28.873
It's just a lot to think about everything that has to get done at CityTurf on the sales and marketing side.
434
00:26:28.993 --> 00:26:33.336
It's a massive initiative that I even underestimated coming into this.
435
00:26:34.416 --> 00:26:37.538
And I'm very much in the good is good enough right now.
436
00:26:37.598 --> 00:26:44.122
I'm trying to do pretty good, but I will find out what's working and then I will come back and spend time on what's working.
437
00:26:44.922 --> 00:26:50.405
And there may be some things that are not working where I'm like, I just convinced if we spent more time on it, this could perform.
438
00:26:50.765 --> 00:26:51.706
So I'll make that bet.
439
00:26:51.726 --> 00:26:55.408
And other things that just I thought they were great ideas and they're not performing, I'll cut them.
440
00:26:55.948 --> 00:26:58.510
I think that's the fastest way to proceed through this.
441
00:26:59.042 --> 00:26:59.282
Yeah.
442
00:26:59.742 --> 00:27:11.848
I think one of the things I've found for myself and others is sometimes putting something down that is important when it is at 90, 95% and realizing it, I get more bang for my buck, i.e.
443
00:27:11.868 --> 00:27:19.072
my time when I move on to the next constraint versus trying to push it all the way to 99 on, like that's the perfectionist.
444
00:27:19.092 --> 00:27:22.914
And I think in some people it's holds them back from growing because they'd never move on the next thing.
445
00:27:23.374 --> 00:27:25.375
But even for us, like when we were working the first,
446
00:27:25.795 --> 00:27:30.396
five months of this year, we were all focused on traffic around AEO and SEO, like tons of time on it.
447
00:27:30.656 --> 00:27:34.658
And I had to like put that down as much as I want to keep squeezing on it.
448
00:27:35.478 --> 00:27:38.759
And the thing is, too, you get reinforced for the improvements.
449
00:27:38.859 --> 00:27:40.119
It's like, oh my word, it's working.
450
00:27:40.479 --> 00:27:42.260
But then you have to set it down.
451
00:27:42.360 --> 00:27:43.880
Like it's no longer the main constraint.
452
00:27:44.100 --> 00:27:45.421
We have to focus on conversion now.
453
00:27:45.801 --> 00:27:46.861
And we have to focus on the copy.
454
00:27:46.921 --> 00:27:52.182
And like we have to let it go and maybe it will become the biggest constraint down the road, but it's no longer the biggest constraint.
455
00:27:52.543 --> 00:27:53.403
And I have to let that
456
00:27:54.063 --> 00:27:58.192
fire burn and then let 98 95% be good enough.
457
00:27:58.874 --> 00:27:59.715
And, um, go ahead.
458
00:27:59.836 --> 00:28:02.542
Do you have any wet, you know, I, I don't know how to,
459
00:28:03.906 --> 00:28:07.148
put a rule to this is when good is good enough and we need to move on.
460
00:28:07.168 --> 00:28:12.092
Do you have any framework for that or a way that you would advise people or is it just a gut feeling?
461
00:28:12.412 --> 00:28:17.897
I've always just used six week sprints as a way to kind of look at and see what is the biggest constraint.
462
00:28:18.577 --> 00:28:21.059
And that's the part that's the hardest, like identifying what is.
463
00:28:21.479 --> 00:28:26.323
But then every six weeks, when I look at what I've currently done, is it still the biggest constraint?
464
00:28:26.483 --> 00:28:28.404
If not, that is a good sign that I need to put it down.
465
00:28:29.426 --> 00:28:34.970
And traditionally, when I plan my six weeks, friends, I try to make sure that I can complete a task in the six weeks.
466
00:28:35.030 --> 00:28:38.792
But it's a good forcing function to say you can only get so far in six weeks.
467
00:28:39.452 --> 00:28:46.737
And then you kind of have to like there's a very few projects where I'm like, OK, I need to do another sprint on this because it's still the biggest constraint.
468
00:28:46.757 --> 00:28:47.598
It's not good enough yet.
469
00:28:48.458 --> 00:28:50.540
But that's been a helpful thing for me to reassess.
470
00:28:50.700 --> 00:29:07.231
Is this still the biggest constraint or have I just got so close to the problem that it becomes this, to your point, you get on the phone and now this becomes a big problem and I'm in there fixing and making solutions when it's like, let's step back and is this still or have you got it 90% of the way there and we should step back and reassess.
471
00:29:07.691 --> 00:29:09.813
So this six week thing has helped me a lot.
472
00:29:10.213 --> 00:29:11.434
I think that's a fantastic...
473
00:29:11.454 --> 00:29:12.715
I wish that's the answer I had given.
474
00:29:12.735 --> 00:29:13.936
I think that's a great answer.
475
00:29:14.256 --> 00:29:17.558
I don't do that now because I'm out of the service autopilot world.
476
00:29:17.578 --> 00:29:19.800
But service autopilot ran as sprints.
477
00:29:20.220 --> 00:29:22.662
Not just in development, but throughout the organization.
478
00:29:22.682 --> 00:29:23.803
That's how marketing ran too.
479
00:29:24.523 --> 00:29:29.867
And so that is a perfect way to frame it, whether they're two weeks or six weeks or whatever the case is.
480
00:29:30.367 --> 00:29:32.809
And then just not everybody does it this way.
481
00:29:32.869 --> 00:29:36.872
But oftentimes with a sprint, at the end, there's what's called a demo.
482
00:29:36.912 --> 00:29:37.973
You demo the work.
483
00:29:38.333 --> 00:30:03.440
to what are called stakeholders in the business or stakeholder would have been jonathan had this vision he defined the project and so he'd be a stakeholder and so it would get demoed and then that's when the stakeholders can say good is good enough this is good the sprint way is a great way to box it so that it forces a moment in time when you say have we gone far enough so perfect cool all right do you want me to move on to the one uh i'm working on right now
484
00:30:04.660 --> 00:30:05.280
Yeah, let's do that.
485
00:30:05.780 --> 00:30:06.000
All right.
486
00:30:06.120 --> 00:30:10.782
So we actually just finished a sprint, like, because it's now, we're recording this, what, September 3rd?
487
00:30:10.802 --> 00:30:11.842
So I just finished a sprint.
488
00:30:12.183 --> 00:30:13.323
And then that one, that was a big one.
489
00:30:13.343 --> 00:30:15.724
It was like the MCP and calendar release at Homework.
490
00:30:15.744 --> 00:30:17.404
So that's been like all I've been thinking about.
491
00:30:17.444 --> 00:30:22.046
So it's actually, this is very top of mind, what we're currently talking about, because I just made my next sprint.
492
00:30:22.586 --> 00:30:24.787
So I'm currently working on the Texas trip.
493
00:30:25.267 --> 00:30:28.028
And so I know we talked a lot about that.
494
00:30:28.488 --> 00:30:33.810
And so what went into sort of my decision as to why this would be the thing I'd work on?
495
00:30:34.870 --> 00:30:41.976
is first off, it's kind of time sensitive in that in 10 years, I'm probably not going to move across the country for six months, nor will Brianna want to.
496
00:30:42.376 --> 00:30:50.142
So it was somewhat just the fact that we have the flexibility, we don't have the kids in school, things like that, that potentially down the road could happen.
497
00:30:50.983 --> 00:30:54.346
And I will probably not want to do that in 10 or 15 years from now.
498
00:30:54.466 --> 00:30:55.688
And so it's like there's this window of time.
499
00:30:55.708 --> 00:30:56.729
We both want to do it.
500
00:30:57.229 --> 00:31:06.257
And so I think sometimes when it comes to decision making or prioritizations, also like what season of life in my end and do I have the bandwidth for it now versus the future?
501
00:31:07.138 --> 00:31:11.481
And so that's one big, more on the personal side, why we chose it.
502
00:31:11.881 --> 00:31:15.843
But the other thing that I do when I do my six week sprint is I will now use AI.
503
00:31:15.863 --> 00:31:17.784
But before a year ago, I didn't.
504
00:31:18.144 --> 00:31:23.267
And that was I would just take all my list and I use Trello to keeping track of like all the things I want to get done.
505
00:31:23.487 --> 00:31:32.713
And I would now I just dump that into AI and say, hey, what are these things that actually have a lot of crossover and would impact 10 of these other to do's and just looking for like the biggest domino?
506
00:31:33.833 --> 00:31:36.935
And when it comes to what do I do next, what do I focus on?
507
00:31:36.955 --> 00:31:42.899
A lot of times if you just, if you focus on the biggest domino, the other 10 things you're thinking about would get solved.
508
00:31:43.459 --> 00:31:48.803
And so for the Texas trip, it's one of those things where like it touches every single part of the businesses.
509
00:31:49.483 --> 00:31:53.406
So for Augusta, it's really trying to help them multi-unit owners.
510
00:31:54.006 --> 00:32:15.219
and helping them with the leadership and the general managers and training them and hiring them and having a process to hand the location off to a general manager and being able to demonstrate that to them document exactly what we did with location one location two how it handed off how the regional manager got ramped up what the compensation plan was and just demonstrate it all so for Augusta it's very much around the multi-unit owners uh and giving them the support
511
00:32:15.939 --> 00:32:36.237
and really just testing being able to see all very fast traditionally when someone comes to augusta they are coming with 100 to 150 000 it's kind of like our average amount that someone's spending to get started and i'm going to go into the market and probably spend three to five hundred thousand dollars very quickly um and i have a video coming out with what the budget is so it's already spent three hundred thousand and so
512
00:32:37.178 --> 00:32:39.800
getting to a million within six months, 12 months max.
513
00:32:40.120 --> 00:32:40.961
What does that look like?
514
00:32:41.701 --> 00:32:42.422
What breaks?
515
00:32:42.902 --> 00:32:50.628
Where are the areas that there's friction in the system when you just, like mathematically, you have to get 20, 30 customers joining a day.
516
00:32:50.888 --> 00:32:53.229
So where does that break down when you're trying to scale that quickly?
517
00:32:54.682 --> 00:33:00.347
So on Augusta's perspective, we're looking at like even at command center, how do we have what we call dedicated agents?
518
00:33:00.827 --> 00:33:08.573
So instead of a phone call coming in and one of 87 people answering it, can we have it where for multi-unit owners,
519
00:33:09.554 --> 00:33:15.259
a call comes in and there's a group of two or three dedicated agents to be able to ensure that there's less back and forth.
520
00:33:15.519 --> 00:33:23.066
That's one of the challenges with command center is if you have 87 people answering the phone, a customer calls in five times throughout the day because there's a problem and they get five different people.
521
00:33:23.386 --> 00:33:25.548
There can be some dropped balls along there.
522
00:33:26.028 --> 00:33:29.732
And so how can we refine some of that pain for the multi-owners?
523
00:33:30.372 --> 00:33:34.598
And then just testing a lot of things for Augusta that we've talked about for a long time, but I never demonstrated.
524
00:33:34.898 --> 00:33:39.804
And a lot of it is because I talk to other owners, I talk to business owners all day long, but what's working, what's not working?
525
00:33:40.085 --> 00:33:45.352
And so a lot of times I can, with a lot of confidence, say something is working, but sometimes it's just way better if I go demonstrate it.
526
00:33:45.772 --> 00:33:46.733
And I just like,
527
00:33:47.334 --> 00:33:59.924
when I did this before in 2023 and just got one off the ground for 30 days, just the first 20, 30,000 in monthly revenue, I still to this day see people referring to that as why they are taking actions in their business.
528
00:34:00.764 --> 00:34:07.850
And then I realized they have now doubled, tripled, or quadrupled the size of their business since then, and no longer are those the actions that's required for them to get to the next level.
529
00:34:08.150 --> 00:34:13.154
And it's actually holding them back, but they're still using that as evidence as to why they should be working on their next constraint.
530
00:34:13.714 --> 00:34:20.642
but it's the wrong constraint or they're taking the wrong action when now they should be hiring this out, they should be delegating this, they should be finding a manager.
531
00:34:21.202 --> 00:34:27.129
And I just feel like demonstrating it is sometimes the fastest and easiest way to show.
532
00:34:27.149 --> 00:34:29.932
I think even when it comes to the media side with AI,
533
00:34:30.933 --> 00:34:58.245
information is just becoming so easily accessible that just me demonstrating it also puts me in a place of like i don't this is not theoretical i'm not looking up on ai how to run it longer but it's like i would just show you me show you me show you me doing this in the real world and so that's from like the media side has been um just proof like what is undeniable proof and to be able to show it and be able to have it all connected and just see it in action similarly to homeworks it's like
534
00:34:59.165 --> 00:35:05.249
When it comes to the Texas project, it's like, let me just show growing the size of business and then let people make the decision.
535
00:35:06.030 --> 00:35:12.454
And one of the big things that we're doing this offseason is adding treatments and applications and packages a lot into the homework software.
536
00:35:12.814 --> 00:35:16.697
And so one of the biggest things that we're doing there is fertilization weed control.
537
00:35:16.957 --> 00:35:19.999
And so I want to be kind of dogfooding the software myself.
538
00:35:20.419 --> 00:35:20.700
And like...
539
00:35:21.440 --> 00:35:25.044
I feel like one of our unique advantages with the software is like, I'm still out there doing this.
540
00:35:25.805 --> 00:35:29.129
And I want to show that like, this is affecting my business and we're tweaking it.
541
00:35:29.149 --> 00:35:31.352
And I'm like on the engineers, like this is a pain in the neck.
542
00:35:31.632 --> 00:35:32.393
Can we solve this?
543
00:35:32.914 --> 00:35:34.976
And then we, we solve it for the, for the members.
544
00:35:35.156 --> 00:35:35.497
And so,
545
00:35:36.739 --> 00:35:42.324
One of the decision-making frameworks for the Texas trip was it touches every single aspect, the media, the franchise, and the software.
546
00:35:42.784 --> 00:35:46.127
And so it was one of those things that there was a bunch of different things I wanted to get accomplished.
547
00:35:46.508 --> 00:35:51.432
But in this six-month period, we can kind of accomplish like 30 different things that was on my Trello board.
548
00:35:51.812 --> 00:35:54.535
And so that's why I decided to do the Texas trip.
549
00:35:55.619 --> 00:36:01.563
I'd also add to it, I would assume it's also because you're uniquely positioned.
550
00:36:01.623 --> 00:36:04.264
You are the only person that can do this.
551
00:36:04.505 --> 00:36:20.334
There are things like that inside an organization where no matter how big it is, you're the only person that can do this because you're the face of your media side and you're the marketing side from a face standpoint.
552
00:36:20.354 --> 00:36:22.896
So as you said, it all fits together.
553
00:36:23.831 --> 00:36:30.274
Yeah, and so I think for anyone that's looking at something in your business, maybe you don't have the size of business where Jonathan's like, hey, I'm just focusing on marketing.
554
00:36:30.294 --> 00:36:33.496
Because to what Jonathan said, you have to do HR, you also do hiring, you have to do training.
555
00:36:33.896 --> 00:36:41.900
And so sometimes you gotta step back, don't ask yourself, okay, hiring, retention of my employees, my comp plan, is this all solved with one thing?
556
00:36:42.420 --> 00:36:45.804
Is this just me changing my job ad and my compensation model?
557
00:36:46.165 --> 00:36:48.387
And if I do that, then it kind of solves my retention problem.
558
00:36:48.568 --> 00:36:49.589
I get better applicants.
559
00:36:49.889 --> 00:36:56.838
And so it's looking for the biggest domino is almost always the thing that I'm trying to think about, especially when there's just so many things to focus on.
560
00:36:57.615 --> 00:36:59.616
You gave the example of using a Trello board.
561
00:36:59.656 --> 00:37:05.917
Are you exporting your Trello board to JSON and importing it into like chat GPT or something?
562
00:37:06.017 --> 00:37:08.118
Or what would be the process?
563
00:37:08.578 --> 00:37:11.039
Maybe somebody has an Excel spreadsheet of their to-dos.
564
00:37:11.539 --> 00:37:20.061
What's the process someone would follow to try to come up with one thing or a few things to focus on based on everything on their list?
565
00:37:20.595 --> 00:37:25.878
Yeah, so I have an hour every six weeks where I do the planning for the next six week sprint.
566
00:37:26.279 --> 00:37:32.122
All I do right now is that before I go to AI, I try to just like, okay, I have my ear to the ground in all these different areas.
567
00:37:32.603 --> 00:37:34.804
What do I think is the actual constraint?
568
00:37:35.364 --> 00:37:36.985
And then I will battle test that with AI.
569
00:37:37.546 --> 00:37:39.227
And so I'll be like, here's what I think is the problem.
570
00:37:39.387 --> 00:37:43.650
Here's a screenshot of the other 100 agenda items I've thought about the past 90 days.
571
00:37:43.670 --> 00:37:45.791
What am I missing here?
572
00:37:48.052 --> 00:37:55.319
And this is what AI is really good at, is like, hey, I understand you think that's the biggest problem, but if you solve this, it'll vicariously fix that problem.
573
00:37:55.900 --> 00:38:04.828
And that's where I think AI, like battle testing, what I'm supposed to be focused on, have been super useful, but you have to give it the data of what are all the things you're seeing as problems in the business.
574
00:38:05.549 --> 00:38:08.191
in order for it to be able to group them together too.
575
00:38:08.611 --> 00:38:18.079
And so it has really helped me realize that I actually only have about eight things or 10 things I need to do, even though I have 100 task list items, but they're just grouped in certain areas.
576
00:38:18.139 --> 00:38:21.001
And then it's very good at saying, fix this one thing.
577
00:38:21.942 --> 00:38:23.243
It will have a cascading effect.
578
00:38:23.643 --> 00:38:31.390
I talked to AI a lot earlier this year about frustrations I had with the franchise, frustrations I had with the software, frustrations I had with the media.
579
00:38:31.911 --> 00:38:37.536
And the Texas project was actually one of those things that was like, you need undeniable proof and you need to stop talking and go do it.
580
00:38:37.556 --> 00:38:39.518
I'm like, okay, all right, that sounds like a good plan.
581
00:38:40.319 --> 00:38:46.865
And here's a 40 thing, it was like 30 something, 30 something things that is going to be knocked off this list if you did this project.
582
00:38:47.245 --> 00:38:48.907
And so that's where it kind of originated from.
583
00:38:49.590 --> 00:38:59.034
And the undeniable proof was that showing future franchisees or existing franchisees how fast they could spin up their first location or a second location?
584
00:38:59.054 --> 00:39:02.116
Is that what you mean by a deniable proof?
585
00:39:02.136 --> 00:39:04.076
Like just show them how to do it and that it can be done?
586
00:39:04.377 --> 00:39:05.137
What did you mean by that?
587
00:39:05.237 --> 00:39:17.640
I think all three areas of business, like the franchise side, yes, it shows that they're a more sophisticated investor that's not gonna be working in the business, can come in with a sufficient amount of capital, scale very quickly, have a general manager from day one, and do multiple locations.
588
00:39:18.240 --> 00:39:25.322
For the software side, it's like, hey, this software is capable of a larger business that scales quickly, and we're not gonna break down on you.
589
00:39:25.762 --> 00:39:30.343
The third, the media is just simply, when I get in front of the camera, does someone trust me?
590
00:39:30.883 --> 00:39:34.744
If I just sit in front of this microphone here all day long, no one cares.
591
00:39:35.344 --> 00:39:37.245
And so I have to get out there and I have to do it.
592
00:39:37.886 --> 00:39:50.534
And triangulating timing of like, how do I prioritize that was why the Texas project, we have 10 hours as like my box that I can't spend more than that per week working on the business because I still have to do all the other things.
593
00:39:50.934 --> 00:39:51.514
So, right.
594
00:39:52.035 --> 00:39:52.535
Makes sense.
595
00:39:52.955 --> 00:39:54.797
You talk about sprints.
596
00:39:54.997 --> 00:39:57.918
Are you doing your own sprint?
597
00:39:58.519 --> 00:39:59.880
Meaning it's just you or what?
598
00:40:00.772 --> 00:40:02.474
and you're doing your own planning for you?
599
00:40:02.614 --> 00:40:06.459
Or are you doing a sprint with other people and they're involved in that meeting?
600
00:40:06.499 --> 00:40:10.644
Or is it more your framework and your process to define what you're working on?
601
00:40:11.222 --> 00:40:16.027
Yeah, so for me, because it was interesting, as you mentioned your Trello board as something that was shared, I don't share my Trello board.
602
00:40:16.528 --> 00:40:21.954
But only things on my board I have already identified as uniquely capable as only me doing it.
603
00:40:22.615 --> 00:40:27.260
And so if it's more of a shared initiative, that's where it'd be more of a collaborative environment.
604
00:40:27.300 --> 00:40:31.685
I'd be putting it on someone else's agenda, and then they would be checking in with me likely.
605
00:40:32.426 --> 00:40:38.451
But if it, I only put stuff on the Trello board now, that is like, this is something that only I can be the driver on.
606
00:40:38.871 --> 00:40:42.454
Otherwise this is more like, Hey, put this on your list, put this on your to do.
607
00:40:42.935 --> 00:40:56.626
And maybe a one-on-one we're going to discuss whether or not that's your highest priority, but I've stopped doing shared stuff on the Trello board because it got really messy and it gets too long because now instead of a hundred tasks, I am to have 300 because I'm thinking about all the different departments of the business.
608
00:40:57.427 --> 00:40:57.607
Yeah.
609
00:40:58.228 --> 00:40:58.468
Okay.
610
00:40:59.144 --> 00:41:01.086
All right, what's your second thing you're working on and why?
611
00:41:01.286 --> 00:41:07.092
All right, so my second one, and I'm going to go through some details on this one as well, is everything pest control.
612
00:41:07.712 --> 00:41:08.713
Okay, so why?
613
00:41:08.853 --> 00:41:09.854
So service specific.
614
00:41:10.715 --> 00:41:11.796
Yep, service specific.
615
00:41:11.976 --> 00:41:14.258
How do we grow the pest control side of the business?
616
00:41:14.939 --> 00:41:15.419
Now why?
617
00:41:15.439 --> 00:41:15.519
Why?
618
00:41:16.312 --> 00:41:21.335
Because the number one most important service to us in our business is fertilization.
619
00:41:21.355 --> 00:41:21.915
We control.
620
00:41:22.556 --> 00:41:24.857
But 93% of our clients buy that service already.
621
00:41:25.077 --> 00:41:28.959
So in other words, 7% of our clients don't buy that service.
622
00:41:29.920 --> 00:41:32.261
It's probably not that we haven't tried to sell it to them.
623
00:41:32.341 --> 00:41:44.969
So a massive marketing effort to try to capture that last 7% is probably not as valuable to the business as what I'd call more greenfield opportunity where...
624
00:41:46.214 --> 00:41:51.698
a massive number of our clients, thousands of clients don't buy pest control.
625
00:41:51.958 --> 00:41:58.363
But that could also be said that thousands of clients don't buy our tree and shrub healthcare service with our arborists.
626
00:41:58.744 --> 00:42:00.905
Thousands of people don't buy our irrigation service.
627
00:42:00.925 --> 00:42:08.111
So our most deeply penetrated service inside our client base is fertilization weed control.
628
00:42:09.051 --> 00:42:11.513
So that tells me that's probably not what I should work on first.
629
00:42:12.014 --> 00:42:12.954
I will someday.
630
00:42:14.030 --> 00:42:21.312
But then within all the other services we sell, I'm thinking about what is the most profitable to the business?
631
00:42:22.172 --> 00:42:25.933
What creates the profitable as it generates higher margin?
632
00:42:26.013 --> 00:42:32.695
I'm thinking about what makes this business more valuable as control is a very valuable service from a wealth creation standpoint.
633
00:42:33.355 --> 00:42:36.277
I'm thinking about what uniquely positions us.
634
00:42:36.557 --> 00:42:42.000
It's very rare to find a full in-home pest control service in our market and it does these other things.
635
00:42:42.100 --> 00:42:43.640
Is it good or bad that we do them all?
636
00:42:43.700 --> 00:42:47.843
I don't know, but it very uniquely positions us where we can tell a very unique story.
637
00:42:48.063 --> 00:42:50.264
There are not many companies like us that are arborists,
638
00:42:51.581 --> 00:42:55.662
structural pest control, licensed fertilization, weed control, and irrigators.
639
00:42:55.702 --> 00:43:01.884
That's a fairly unique combination, mainly first because of pests, second because of arborists.
640
00:43:02.045 --> 00:43:06.626
And so it allows us to tell a story that's somewhat unique in the marketplace.
641
00:43:06.906 --> 00:43:09.407
That's another interesting reason why I say pest control.
642
00:43:09.987 --> 00:43:17.249
Another consideration is what service do we see in the data is probably the stickiest and which is the easiest to sell.
643
00:43:18.010 --> 00:43:18.310
So
644
00:43:19.807 --> 00:43:27.829
I don't know if this data is true, but I can see that pest control is easier to sell than ArborCare and to some degree irrigation.
645
00:43:28.809 --> 00:43:34.511
I can also see though that ArborCare is bought by all our most valuable clients.
646
00:43:35.851 --> 00:43:42.673
And so I run through all these little scenarios trying to say, okay, what would be the most important service?
647
00:43:42.693 --> 00:43:44.073
And I arrived at pest control.
648
00:43:44.113 --> 00:43:46.574
That's really, that's the behind the scenes of what happened.
649
00:43:47.074 --> 00:43:47.674
And so...
650
00:43:48.727 --> 00:43:56.289
Now, as I've gotten back involved in the business, which has been for a while now, I've been cleaning up a lot of things, doing a lot of the basics.
651
00:43:56.329 --> 00:43:58.710
I've been dabbling a little here, dabbling a little there.
652
00:43:59.490 --> 00:44:03.372
It did a number of things for me that won't apply to most people watching.
653
00:44:03.572 --> 00:44:07.113
I was out of the business at a detail level for a very long time.
654
00:44:07.673 --> 00:44:15.835
It took a while for me to just get back into the business and truly understand what's going on, truly understand the best way to converse with our clients and sell.
655
00:44:15.855 --> 00:44:18.836
There's just a lot I had to learn because I was removed for a while.
656
00:44:19.656 --> 00:44:21.317
And so I had to go through that period of time.
657
00:44:21.357 --> 00:44:23.017
And so I've dabbled in a bunch of stuff.
658
00:44:23.157 --> 00:44:30.659
But now, as I think about focus and priority, I'm like, okay, what is the most important service to sell?
659
00:44:30.919 --> 00:44:33.440
And what is the most important way to sell a service?
660
00:44:34.800 --> 00:44:36.501
And I've concluded it's pest control.
661
00:44:37.511 --> 00:44:40.032
And I'm going to go deep with just pest control.
662
00:44:40.792 --> 00:44:45.894
And then once I do this, I will move to the next service, which will probably be tree and shrub healthcare.
663
00:44:46.774 --> 00:44:48.494
And then I will probably move to irrigation.
664
00:44:48.874 --> 00:44:51.315
And I'll just move through the services in this fashion.
665
00:44:51.615 --> 00:44:53.656
And it's just focusing mostly on sales and marketing.
666
00:44:54.748 --> 00:44:55.729
All sales and marketing.
667
00:44:55.769 --> 00:44:59.131
Now, I did make a list that I kind of... Because I thought this might...
668
00:44:59.151 --> 00:44:59.711
There's a lot...
669
00:44:59.971 --> 00:45:01.292
I'm going to rattle off some stuff.
670
00:45:01.312 --> 00:45:06.155
And I thought this would be important for people to hear.
671
00:45:06.275 --> 00:45:12.018
Because when somebody hears me say, Jonathan's working on pest control.
672
00:45:12.398 --> 00:45:15.280
And if in two months, you hear I'm still working on pest control...
673
00:45:16.227 --> 00:45:28.373
This will explain why, but it will also demonstrate why most of our initiatives and our companies don't go anywhere because we don't go very deep.
674
00:45:28.433 --> 00:45:29.994
Okay, so I'll give you an example.
675
00:45:30.014 --> 00:45:34.296
When I say that I'm working on pest control, I have to first figure out...
676
00:45:35.157 --> 00:45:36.818
I'm going to kind of walk through a list here.
677
00:45:37.218 --> 00:45:49.724
And here's what I hope you take from this is whenever you're saying you want to fix something in your company, it has to really be broken down into... Back to my earlier point, you got to define the problem and then we got to define the outcome.
678
00:45:49.744 --> 00:45:52.846
We got to talk through how you get there and what success looks like.
679
00:45:53.790 --> 00:45:57.392
A lot of us, like my data project example, would be like, hey, I need this data.
680
00:45:57.793 --> 00:45:58.593
Do this project.
681
00:45:58.933 --> 00:46:01.695
Here is a paragraph worth of words about what I want.
682
00:46:01.975 --> 00:46:03.637
And it tells a person nothing.
683
00:46:03.717 --> 00:46:08.640
And it doesn't even... You can't even plan with that type of an example.
684
00:46:08.820 --> 00:46:12.963
You can't actually break things down and plan and do them inside the organization.
685
00:46:13.243 --> 00:46:16.425
So when I say pest control, let's just kind of walk through what this means.
686
00:46:17.085 --> 00:46:19.507
This means I have to construct the offers.
687
00:46:19.527 --> 00:46:19.647
Okay.
688
00:46:21.297 --> 00:46:23.018
This is way harder than it appears.
689
00:46:23.098 --> 00:46:32.081
So as an example, I'm going to go into a little detail, but I just want to use it again to help you think through this because if you break things down, you're more likely to get them.
690
00:46:33.022 --> 00:46:34.643
You're more likely to achieve them.
691
00:46:34.663 --> 00:46:35.583
So an offer.
692
00:46:36.023 --> 00:46:37.644
So I could go look at Google Ads.
693
00:46:38.244 --> 00:46:40.185
I could go look at other people's websites.
694
00:46:40.265 --> 00:46:42.466
I could look at direct mail that comes in my mailbox.
695
00:46:42.506 --> 00:46:43.526
I could look at door hangers.
696
00:46:43.866 --> 00:46:47.548
I can talk to the bazillion guys who knock on my doors and try to sell me pest control.
697
00:46:48.208 --> 00:46:49.529
And there is...
698
00:46:50.639 --> 00:46:57.461
When I'm constructing an offer, I have to construct an offer that positions me in some way against the competition.
699
00:46:57.701 --> 00:47:00.242
So as an example, what are they selling?
700
00:47:00.582 --> 00:47:01.883
What's their initial offer?
701
00:47:02.163 --> 00:47:03.463
What's their pricing model?
702
00:47:03.723 --> 00:47:05.004
What is the pricing?
703
00:47:05.724 --> 00:47:06.944
What is the deadline?
704
00:47:07.225 --> 00:47:08.085
What do you get?
705
00:47:08.485 --> 00:47:09.565
What's the risk reversal?
706
00:47:09.585 --> 00:47:14.727
There's all this stuff that goes into the packaging up and making an offer to somebody online.
707
00:47:14.867 --> 00:47:16.513
And so it sounds like no big deal.
708
00:47:16.533 --> 00:47:20.708
It's like, okay, well, I saw an ad online, $49 for your first pest control service.
709
00:47:21.456 --> 00:47:24.297
And that's, I guess, a fine starting point, but that's not how you win.
710
00:47:25.118 --> 00:47:33.821
And so I have to spend a lot of time thinking through and getting with the team to understand what kind of offer can I even make?
711
00:47:33.981 --> 00:47:36.122
Like, for example, can I offer something for free?
712
00:47:36.362 --> 00:47:37.363
Can I give this thing away?
713
00:47:37.383 --> 00:47:40.104
Can I say that on the first visit, we do these 12 things?
714
00:47:40.264 --> 00:47:43.405
Or, oh, no, operationally, that's way too complicated.
715
00:47:43.445 --> 00:47:45.206
We can only promise these three things.
716
00:47:45.646 --> 00:47:47.207
Because... And so that...
717
00:47:48.027 --> 00:47:50.510
That is where most projects break down.
718
00:47:50.670 --> 00:48:01.741
We say, I'm going to work on this thing, but we immediately bump into all these blockers of all these other sub projects that have to get done or all these other things have to be coordinated with other people.
719
00:48:01.761 --> 00:48:03.943
In my case, I have to coordinate everything with operations.
720
00:48:04.523 --> 00:48:08.948
I have to coordinate with how is the field team going to deliver my promises.
721
00:48:08.968 --> 00:48:09.228
Yeah.
722
00:48:09.527 --> 00:48:13.230
How is the office going to answer the questions on the phone?
723
00:48:13.731 --> 00:48:18.415
How's the office going to know what offers we're making so we don't sound dumb when somebody calls in?
724
00:48:18.635 --> 00:48:22.439
There is so much implementation that has to happen.
725
00:48:22.799 --> 00:48:25.882
So I have to literally think through all of this and then run it by them.
726
00:48:25.922 --> 00:48:30.927
And then a little bit of negotiation has to happen because I may want to change a bit of the procedure in the field.
727
00:48:31.507 --> 00:48:45.129
So I might make as an example an offer that promises that when you sign up for a pest control service, this is the 12 things we're going to do on the very first visit to keep every pest out of your home or try to keep every pest out of your home.
728
00:48:46.480 --> 00:48:49.981
Like we don't even want them in your home, but if they ever get in your home, we'll come in and take care of it.
729
00:48:50.581 --> 00:48:52.422
Okay, so what are the 12 steps?
730
00:48:52.622 --> 00:48:55.763
So then when the tech shows up, is he talking about the 12 steps?
731
00:48:56.243 --> 00:48:57.724
Did he do an audit of their home?
732
00:48:57.744 --> 00:49:00.445
Does he provide proof after the fact the 12 steps were done?
733
00:49:00.825 --> 00:49:03.586
Does he record a video to show what was like what happens?
734
00:49:04.226 --> 00:49:07.527
And that's where this stuff gets really complicated to do it right.
735
00:49:08.247 --> 00:49:10.410
And so I've got to build the offers.
736
00:49:10.670 --> 00:49:14.854
I've got to build the positioning, which you might call the unique USP.
737
00:49:15.455 --> 00:49:18.559
I've got to think through the pricing and the billing strategy.
738
00:49:18.939 --> 00:49:20.501
I've got to think through the deadlines.
739
00:49:20.941 --> 00:49:22.583
I've got to find all the benefits.
740
00:49:22.603 --> 00:49:23.604
How do you find the benefits?
741
00:49:23.624 --> 00:49:25.226
I mine all of my reviews with AI.
742
00:49:25.246 --> 00:49:27.328
I've got to think through the pricing and the billing strategy.
743
00:49:28.337 --> 00:49:31.159
to find out what clients are saying about us, what they like about us.
744
00:49:31.719 --> 00:49:34.481
I find everything that people are complaining about with other companies.
745
00:49:34.941 --> 00:49:40.625
I find out from call recordings what people are calling and asking about when they ask about this service.
746
00:49:41.165 --> 00:49:44.387
I find out what they're talking to our techs about in the field regarding the service.
747
00:49:44.948 --> 00:49:47.069
All that data gets captured into spreadsheets.
748
00:49:47.890 --> 00:49:51.132
And all of that ultimately informs the positioning of our offer.
749
00:49:51.292 --> 00:49:52.312
What do people actually care about?
750
00:49:52.352 --> 00:49:54.534
We might think they care about...
751
00:49:55.744 --> 00:50:00.848
getting there in 12 hours, but that may not actually be the single most important thing.
752
00:50:00.988 --> 00:50:01.909
So how do you figure that out?
753
00:50:02.089 --> 00:50:05.252
Because that leads to the offer, the positioning, all of it.
754
00:50:05.572 --> 00:50:06.913
It can inform the pricing.
755
00:50:07.093 --> 00:50:17.661
It might be that I think we need to be pricing at, I'll make up a number, $125 a quarter, but the client wants a higher level of service in our market, which will support $175 a quarter.
756
00:50:17.741 --> 00:50:18.802
All that's got to be figured out.
757
00:50:18.822 --> 00:50:20.464
So that's what I'm talking about when I talk about past.
758
00:50:21.124 --> 00:50:23.485
I got to figure out the guarantee specific to pest.
759
00:50:23.525 --> 00:50:24.965
I got to think about risk reversal.
760
00:50:25.445 --> 00:50:26.626
I've got to figure out...
761
00:50:26.966 --> 00:50:32.708
I got to find my reviews that talk specifically about city turf and pest control so I can use those in my marketing.
762
00:50:33.428 --> 00:50:40.771
If I can find reviews that are about city turf in Plano, Texas, I want those reviews going to Plano, Texas leads.
763
00:50:41.331 --> 00:50:43.052
I mean, this is the level that you could go to.
764
00:50:43.072 --> 00:50:45.452
Now, this is where we could go back to the earlier conversation.
765
00:50:45.792 --> 00:50:46.993
What is good enough?
766
00:50:48.033 --> 00:50:53.421
But I'm now to the phase of going deep with some of this stuff.
767
00:50:54.147 --> 00:50:55.948
And I will only go so far with it.
768
00:50:55.969 --> 00:50:57.269
But these are the things I'm thinking about.
769
00:50:57.289 --> 00:50:58.711
This is what makes marketing work.
770
00:50:59.091 --> 00:51:01.453
And then all of that, as I said, has to get coordinated.
771
00:51:02.033 --> 00:51:03.534
And so that's just the packaging.
772
00:51:04.055 --> 00:51:07.037
And then you've got to think about how does this impact SEO?
773
00:51:08.118 --> 00:51:08.938
Write your SEO.
774
00:51:08.958 --> 00:51:11.600
How do you write copy for conversion on your website?
775
00:51:11.981 --> 00:51:14.562
What does this... How does this change your articles on your website?
776
00:51:14.582 --> 00:51:15.763
What articles need to be created?
777
00:51:16.024 --> 00:51:20.047
What FAQs need to go on the sales pages, the service pages on the articles?
778
00:51:20.727 --> 00:51:23.209
You got LSA, you got Facebook, you got email.
779
00:51:23.549 --> 00:51:24.790
I mean, we could keep going.
780
00:51:24.910 --> 00:51:27.472
Door hangers, my techs hand out something.
781
00:51:27.492 --> 00:51:28.573
So we get a one-time.
782
00:51:28.893 --> 00:51:33.496
We do a one-time for fire ants or we do a one-time for roaches.
783
00:51:33.836 --> 00:51:34.397
Well, how do we...
784
00:51:35.615 --> 00:51:37.817
convert them into ongoing package.
785
00:51:37.837 --> 00:51:39.018
So what are they being handed?
786
00:51:39.518 --> 00:51:42.060
What is their welcome package, their first experience?
787
00:51:43.401 --> 00:51:47.624
What is left on the doors in the neighborhoods we serve that expands the client?
788
00:51:47.924 --> 00:51:49.366
Then how do we track all the data?
789
00:51:50.086 --> 00:51:51.327
What are all the landing pages?
790
00:51:51.387 --> 00:51:55.751
So anyway, I'll stop rattling stuff off, but think about what you just heard.
791
00:51:56.611 --> 00:52:01.415
And oftentimes, when somebody says to themselves, man, I really need to improve my pest control marketing...
792
00:52:02.509 --> 00:52:06.313
Did you go and did we think through all of that stuff?
793
00:52:06.654 --> 00:52:12.360
Or did that sort of just mean I'm going to do an email blast and I'm going to have ChatGBT write me a good email.
794
00:52:12.601 --> 00:52:13.602
We're going to blast it out.
795
00:52:13.622 --> 00:52:14.803
We're never going to look at the results.
796
00:52:14.823 --> 00:52:18.768
Then we're going to move on to now whatever the next service is we're going to sell.
797
00:52:18.848 --> 00:52:21.070
So to me, this is focus.
798
00:52:21.991 --> 00:52:25.616
And I told you how I prioritize this service above every other service.
799
00:52:25.977 --> 00:52:29.421
And once I made that decision, then this is what focus looks like.
800
00:52:29.822 --> 00:52:32.966
And I won't have all of these things done perfectly.
801
00:52:33.507 --> 00:52:36.531
For example, I will do one postcard.
802
00:52:37.312 --> 00:52:40.414
around pest control just to get something out there and test it.
803
00:52:40.434 --> 00:52:42.696
But I'm not going to go deep with postcards right now.
804
00:52:43.036 --> 00:52:44.838
I'm not going to do a big door hanger campaign.
805
00:52:44.878 --> 00:52:48.741
I'll do one door hanger just to kind of test some stuff out.
806
00:52:48.781 --> 00:52:52.504
But it'll be an offshoot of landing page copy we've already thought through.
807
00:52:52.524 --> 00:52:55.206
So it'll be a quick thing to produce.
808
00:52:55.226 --> 00:52:56.386
The other thing I would tell you
809
00:52:57.800 --> 00:53:04.685
is when I talk about all this, it's not me doing all of this stuff, but I have chosen to take lead on this.
810
00:53:05.106 --> 00:53:06.066
I want to own this.
811
00:53:06.247 --> 00:53:07.067
I want to...
812
00:53:09.458 --> 00:53:12.101
design the language, the copy, the collateral.
813
00:53:12.121 --> 00:53:19.069
Much of it's actually been done as I've defined the brand voice and the look and all this other stuff already.
814
00:53:19.309 --> 00:53:22.012
So it will all inform this, but I will own this.
815
00:53:22.373 --> 00:53:24.435
But what will happen is I will write copy.
816
00:53:24.715 --> 00:53:26.277
I will have some other people write copy.
817
00:53:26.637 --> 00:53:29.761
I will then do a lots of back and forth with them on their copy.
818
00:53:30.632 --> 00:53:34.319
I will, and I already have worked through the offers.
819
00:53:34.499 --> 00:53:35.701
I'm kind of owning offers.
820
00:53:35.741 --> 00:53:38.005
I think it's very, very important.
821
00:53:38.566 --> 00:53:40.529
And so there's parts of this I'll own.
822
00:53:41.491 --> 00:53:43.234
Somebody else will project manage all this.
823
00:53:44.623 --> 00:53:47.844
But I will have copywriters involved, even though I'll do a lot of the copy.
824
00:53:47.984 --> 00:53:49.325
I will have designers involved.
825
00:53:49.425 --> 00:53:51.126
I will have somebody involved for data.
826
00:53:51.446 --> 00:53:54.347
And then there will be a handoff to operations for implementation.
827
00:53:54.707 --> 00:54:00.249
So it's not that I'm doing all of this work, but I'm sort of running all this work because it's my vision.
828
00:54:00.709 --> 00:54:01.730
Yeah, one thing I'll say too is...
829
00:54:03.432 --> 00:54:14.079
When I believe when, when mid-level managers see the owner take the lead on a project, it also signals to them what is the most important thing in the business.
830
00:54:14.099 --> 00:54:24.845
And they might reorganize their own list of priorities based upon, oh, if they think that pest control is the most important thing and they're literally spending their time and they're going to go really deep on this.
831
00:54:24.865 --> 00:54:25.305
Okay.
832
00:54:25.325 --> 00:54:27.447
I'm going to readjust my focus.
833
00:54:27.487 --> 00:54:29.348
So sometimes the focus of the founder.
834
00:54:29.748 --> 00:54:53.673
or the owner is actually a guiding function for everyone else in the organization to know what is the north star or currently in this sprint or this time or this period what should we be focusing on so they can also stack rank their own priorities on their own calendar yeah you set the example yeah okay what do you got well i think what's interesting is about what you were saying is it's almost not a juxtaposition or opposite but it is
835
00:54:55.174 --> 00:55:02.659
it feels counter to what almost in the one way we just talked about, which is like, you wanna go 95, 98% and good is good enough.
836
00:55:02.999 --> 00:55:09.143
But on the other side, it's like, it needs to be like, how good is it actually good?
837
00:55:09.763 --> 00:55:14.346
And I think this is where it is very, this is the hard part is like, when is good enough?
838
00:55:14.727 --> 00:55:16.468
But then when am I so shallow?
839
00:55:16.528 --> 00:55:18.409
I think I'm doing a good job because I got my website done.
840
00:55:18.429 --> 00:55:20.550
And it's like, no, you haven't done a good offer.
841
00:55:20.570 --> 00:55:21.411
You haven't thought about SEO.
842
00:55:21.431 --> 00:55:23.292
You haven't done copy or conversions or FAQs.
843
00:55:24.613 --> 00:55:25.953
This is where there's a balance.
844
00:55:26.073 --> 00:55:28.054
And that I think is the hardest part for so many people.
845
00:55:28.714 --> 00:55:29.154
It really is.
846
00:55:29.194 --> 00:55:38.177
And the way that maybe I would try to answer that and the way I will think through this, because some of these things are going to get pushed and I can already tell you what's going to break what I'm talking about.
847
00:55:38.697 --> 00:55:47.680
If I were to do all these things and fully implement them and we find them and we had success, most all these initiatives will get paused because we haven't solved recruiting for pest control.
848
00:55:48.344 --> 00:55:49.566
I mean, it'll be the immediate...
849
00:55:49.586 --> 00:55:50.608
It's the first thing that's going to break.
850
00:55:51.610 --> 00:55:55.859
And so it's like, great, you did all this work, but now let's cut the ad budget.
851
00:55:56.420 --> 00:55:58.524
And so, I mean, I already know what's going to happen.
852
00:55:58.784 --> 00:56:00.067
So I just...
853
00:56:01.027 --> 00:56:11.169
There will be sprints where some of this gets done and implemented and there will be pause and you kind of clean things up and maybe, oh, maybe the new priority is we got to fix the recruiting thing.
854
00:56:11.609 --> 00:56:15.250
Then we'll come back and we'll actually do Facebook ads or we'll come back and we'll do something else.
855
00:56:15.270 --> 00:56:16.690
That's what's really going to happen.
856
00:56:16.970 --> 00:56:25.872
But I did think it was really important to show how much more is generally involved in a project that's going to happen.
857
00:56:26.178 --> 00:56:27.459
to actually get success.
858
00:56:27.479 --> 00:56:33.645
So the way I would say help you, I think the way I would articulate, how do you know how far to go with everything I just rattled off?
859
00:56:34.526 --> 00:56:36.408
Well, some of it to me has to be done.
860
00:56:37.228 --> 00:56:43.815
The idea that I'm going to spend all this money on Google ads, but I'm not going to figure out my offers.
861
00:56:43.955 --> 00:56:46.077
I'm running ads right now, but I have a
862
00:56:47.932 --> 00:56:49.774
I think we spend like $5,000 a month.
863
00:56:50.115 --> 00:56:51.576
And that's not even year round.
864
00:56:51.636 --> 00:56:53.558
I'm spending almost no money still on marketing.
865
00:56:53.778 --> 00:56:55.140
I'm spending more money on people.
866
00:56:55.180 --> 00:56:57.001
But on an ad budget, I'm not spending much.
867
00:56:57.302 --> 00:56:58.523
I was spending some on LSA.
868
00:56:59.144 --> 00:57:05.169
Well, I haven't spent the time to really go deep and focus on ad copy and offers.
869
00:57:05.790 --> 00:57:07.731
So I'm not willing to spend a lot of money there.
870
00:57:08.151 --> 00:57:11.592
So some of this I feel is like just flat out no brainer.
871
00:57:11.772 --> 00:57:16.053
If you're going to spend a lot of money, then you got to get the offer right.
872
00:57:16.093 --> 00:57:18.994
You've got to get the... And you got to stay on that thing and you've got to test it.
873
00:57:19.014 --> 00:57:22.134
You got to try different things and maybe try different landing pages.
874
00:57:22.234 --> 00:57:23.655
I don't... Whatever the scenario, but...
875
00:57:24.355 --> 00:57:32.599
So I say that to make the point that I gave a giant list, but some of these things, I've got to do certain things first.
876
00:57:32.939 --> 00:57:36.921
Positioning, offer, figure out deadlines, coordinate it with the team.
877
00:57:37.301 --> 00:57:42.664
Then I can move to Facebook or Google Ads or LSA or whatever.
878
00:57:42.684 --> 00:57:45.605
But then I got to kind of stay on that individual thing for a while.
879
00:57:46.025 --> 00:57:47.066
Now, how do I measure it?
880
00:57:47.833 --> 00:57:51.338
Well, I think it's a combination of the sprint concept.
881
00:57:51.699 --> 00:57:54.543
And then it's a combination of, let's just use one thing.
882
00:57:55.144 --> 00:57:56.206
We create email.
883
00:57:56.246 --> 00:58:03.437
All right, so we're going to start doing, we're going to eat the lowest hanging fruit, sell the existing base of clients more effectively.
884
00:58:04.202 --> 00:58:06.144
And so that is the easiest thing.
885
00:58:06.424 --> 00:58:08.126
Again, I still got to get copy, my USP.
886
00:58:08.146 --> 00:58:09.247
I got to get all that stuff done.
887
00:58:09.607 --> 00:58:12.730
Then I can start marketing via email to my clients.
888
00:58:12.770 --> 00:58:13.431
That's step one.
889
00:58:13.571 --> 00:58:13.751
Okay.
890
00:58:14.131 --> 00:58:29.065
Step two would be I have sent two emails to my clients and a certain group of my clients who are my best buyers now get another form, a phone call, another form of media, a phone call, a postcard.
891
00:58:29.726 --> 00:58:31.729
a knock on their door, something.
892
00:58:31.830 --> 00:58:33.773
There's like another thing that happens.
893
00:58:33.833 --> 00:58:35.456
We're gonna go deeper trying to get in front of them.
894
00:58:35.676 --> 00:58:36.938
They might've been ignoring my emails.
895
00:58:36.958 --> 00:58:38.541
They might've got busy and intended to come back.
896
00:58:38.761 --> 00:58:41.305
So I've got to hit them in a different way, multiple different ways.
897
00:58:41.586 --> 00:58:43.128
I'm not gonna do all 12,000 clients.
898
00:58:43.953 --> 00:58:47.697
Well, a lot of clients buy pest control, but whatever that number is, I'm not going to hit them all.
899
00:58:47.717 --> 00:58:49.639
I'm going to hit the best clients.
900
00:58:49.659 --> 00:58:52.502
I think I have 900 clients that are considered tier one clients.
901
00:58:52.822 --> 00:58:54.443
I'm going to hit those 900 clients.
902
00:58:54.984 --> 00:59:07.737
If I can't sell people that are spending $6,000 a month or a year with me, this pest control service is probably not going to sell a lot of people are spending $600 a year with me pest control.
903
00:59:08.057 --> 00:59:12.301
So I'm going to start with that tier, hit them in lots of different ways, see if I can make that work.
904
00:59:12.321 --> 00:59:14.303
And if I can't, I'm going to take it to my tier two clients.
905
00:59:14.963 --> 00:59:20.088
And so I did give a big list, but I am going to still approach this in a somewhat focused fashion.
906
00:59:20.388 --> 00:59:22.310
Now compare that to what most of us do.
907
00:59:22.370 --> 00:59:30.116
Oh, and I'm also going to have data to know how many people are buying, how many people are opening the emails, which subject line worked best, things like that.
908
00:59:30.838 --> 00:59:31.058
Okay.
909
00:59:31.398 --> 00:59:38.620
And so most of us just send the email and then we move on to the next fire and nothing moved forward.
910
00:59:38.640 --> 00:59:41.020
Like it didn't materially change the business.
911
00:59:41.060 --> 00:59:45.601
So the way I think you measure this is it's the sprint concept that you talked about.
912
00:59:45.941 --> 00:59:51.103
And then it's the data to look back at the end of sprint and say, okay, we got out to email blast.
913
00:59:51.203 --> 00:59:51.723
What worked?
914
00:59:51.743 --> 00:59:52.423
What didn't work?
915
00:59:53.387 --> 01:00:01.557
Did we create a process here where every year email can go out at a set time and it can be automated?
916
01:00:03.139 --> 01:00:04.761
Or did it bring in enough revenue?
917
01:00:04.781 --> 01:00:05.762
Did it accomplish the goals?
918
01:00:05.823 --> 01:00:06.043
No.
919
01:00:06.083 --> 01:00:08.326
Okay, we're feeding another sprint.
920
01:00:08.366 --> 01:00:09.908
That's one way you could look at this.
921
01:00:10.643 --> 01:00:17.085
Yeah, one thing I think too, as a business grows larger, is there's two things you lean into there that become more and more important.
922
01:00:17.225 --> 01:00:28.428
And that is sequencing, in which order of events do things occur, as well as knowing that the bigger the business, usually the less things you can get done, because it takes longer to turn the ship.
923
01:00:29.188 --> 01:00:33.769
And the swing that you take at a specific direction you're going costs more.
924
01:00:34.249 --> 01:00:36.910
So in a business where there's two employees, and you want to change
925
01:00:38.405 --> 01:00:41.246
an email, that's an hour long task realistically.
926
01:00:41.746 --> 01:00:43.486
Or you wanna market a service.
927
01:00:43.506 --> 01:00:45.327
Like this is probably a weekend project.
928
01:00:45.887 --> 01:00:52.248
Whereas what you're talking about, this is a three, six month long project around one service inside of a very large organization.
929
01:00:52.688 --> 01:00:56.549
With a lot of people you gotta talk to, the person answering the phone, the person that's out in the technician.
930
01:00:56.749 --> 01:01:00.110
But if that's you and one other person, you could potentially move much faster.
931
01:01:00.150 --> 01:01:00.890
Knock it out, yeah.
932
01:01:01.090 --> 01:01:04.351
And so I think I wanna kind of not counterbalance, but
933
01:01:05.151 --> 01:01:11.337
say to the person that has a smaller business, don't say, I need to spend six months changing my email sequence for pest control.
934
01:01:11.717 --> 01:01:17.383
When you have 200 clients, one technician, you answer the phone, do the email, do everything yourself.
935
01:01:17.863 --> 01:01:20.746
And I think the thing that I've had to learn the hard way is
936
01:01:22.652 --> 01:01:28.137
the amount of energy it takes to get an initiative across the line, you better make sure that's the right initiative.
937
01:01:28.557 --> 01:01:38.986
And this is where the planning process and what we're talking about now is so important because as a founder, as you grow, really the decision making is the highest leverage activity you can make, you can do for the business.
938
01:01:39.446 --> 01:01:40.727
Where are we spending resources?
939
01:01:41.007 --> 01:01:42.108
Where are we spending time?
940
01:01:42.489 --> 01:01:46.092
And taking shots on gold that miss can cost
941
01:01:46.872 --> 01:01:53.535
months of time, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of payroll, equipment, like people get inspired, like, I'm going to buy this piece of equipment or I'm going to add this service.
942
01:01:53.555 --> 01:01:56.436
And it's like, you took a year and you messed that up.
943
01:01:56.556 --> 01:01:58.716
And like all that, all that is waste.
944
01:01:59.217 --> 01:02:06.299
And so I think the bigger the business, even the more strategic you have to come to, where are we actually shooting on goal?
945
01:02:06.779 --> 01:02:07.980
Is this the right initiative?
946
01:02:08.420 --> 01:02:14.022
And being willing to, whether it be AI or a coach or getting other people in the organization to push back on like,
947
01:02:16.563 --> 01:02:25.652
And I think the thing that I look up to in a lot of founders is when they they choose the non obvious constraint that everyone else doesn't think is the constraint.
948
01:02:25.672 --> 01:02:26.332
And then they're right.
949
01:02:26.693 --> 01:02:36.642
Those are the people that you just think, I don't know how you did it, because there was there was like innovation, in my opinion, is almost like the person that's able to see a problem that no one else really can see yet.
950
01:02:36.662 --> 01:02:37.242
And they solve it.
951
01:02:38.203 --> 01:02:39.744
And it's like 1000 songs in your pocket.
952
01:02:39.764 --> 01:02:41.746
We didn't know we needed that until the iPod came along.
953
01:02:42.386 --> 01:02:44.748
And that's why we look at Steve Jobs like, oh my, it was amazing.
954
01:02:44.768 --> 01:02:48.050
We didn't know we needed 1000 songs that we could put in our pocket.
955
01:02:48.670 --> 01:02:54.054
And so I think that has been on my mind as the business has grown is like, are these the right shots on goal?
956
01:02:54.114 --> 01:02:57.376
Cause it takes so much energy, so much time, so many people, so many meetings.
957
01:02:57.596 --> 01:03:03.020
And if I'm gonna make this the most important thing, I better be sure that this is going to move the needle the most, so.
958
01:03:03.972 --> 01:03:08.558
And since we're counterbalancing, I think, let me add another one because that's an important reminder.
959
01:03:09.279 --> 01:03:11.102
I rattled off a list of all these things.
960
01:03:11.543 --> 01:03:14.186
And the reality of this is like, you just need...
961
01:03:14.447 --> 01:03:16.730
I have a different organization than most people listening.
962
01:03:16.750 --> 01:03:17.290
We're bigger.
963
01:03:17.331 --> 01:03:18.893
I've been doing it maybe longer than you.
964
01:03:20.595 --> 01:03:23.257
there's a dedicated me and we got money.
965
01:03:24.197 --> 01:03:25.978
So I could do things that others can't do.
966
01:03:26.018 --> 01:03:27.398
And so they can hear my list.
967
01:03:27.438 --> 01:03:30.100
And I'm setting us up for the next doubling of the business.
968
01:03:30.140 --> 01:03:33.161
I mean, that's what I'm trying to do here.
969
01:03:33.201 --> 01:03:35.662
So I got to do a lot to do that.
970
01:03:35.922 --> 01:03:36.883
But for most people...
971
01:03:37.503 --> 01:04:02.357
like you don't need a postcard you you don't need half this stuff all frankly all you gotta do is knock on the door and you can tomorrow have a hundred thousand more and work that's a 95 just just just knock on the door yeah yeah i mean so you hear me talking you're like oh my gosh i gotta do this this and this i'm like ah no man i just pick up the phone call through the client base i go knock on some doors i'd send a few emails i would just i'd be incredibly i just
972
01:04:02.957 --> 01:04:05.018
I would approach it as a personal conversation.
973
01:04:05.038 --> 01:04:09.521
I'm just calling to check in and make sure you're thrilled, Ms. Smith, and you'll probably sell some more work.
974
01:04:09.681 --> 01:04:14.123
I just wanted to walk the property with you and make sure you are absolutely thrilled with our work.
975
01:04:14.163 --> 01:04:17.765
If there's anything we can improve on, I'd just love 10 minutes to walk the property with you.
976
01:04:17.906 --> 01:04:19.526
You'll find nine things that need to get done.
977
01:04:19.887 --> 01:04:25.970
That's really all most people need to get the next $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 that pays for the next truck, the next equipment.
978
01:04:25.990 --> 01:04:27.031
You don't have to do all my stuff.
979
01:04:27.611 --> 01:04:30.232
So don't get, please don't get caught up in the weeds of what I'm doing.
980
01:04:30.593 --> 01:04:32.714
One day you'll get to do all these things.
981
01:04:32.894 --> 01:04:33.854
You just don't need to do them yet.
982
01:04:33.914 --> 01:04:38.457
But I did want to, I did want to make some broader points and I hope they came through.
983
01:04:38.477 --> 01:04:40.438
And that's why I gave you this level of detail.
984
01:04:40.558 --> 01:04:50.623
Yeah, it's funny because I was, I was talking to an owner, they use homeworks and he gave me this 140 page prompt of how he's using the MCP to like run a lot of the admin tasks.
985
01:04:51.323 --> 01:04:53.866
And in there, one line, I just quickly scanned it.
986
01:04:54.006 --> 01:04:57.489
I dropped my AI and said, hey, can you give me how many phone calls they're missing?
987
01:04:58.070 --> 01:05:05.857
And I'm like, look, this 150 page product is great for managing email and your text messages and nothing falling through the cracks and doing your dispatch.
988
01:05:06.538 --> 01:05:10.242
But if we just answered the phone, we'd probably have a better result.
989
01:05:10.622 --> 01:05:17.009
And so I think that's for the probably 10 or 20% of people that hear something like Jonathan Lewis saying and then go overboard.
990
01:05:17.089 --> 01:05:18.330
It's got to be that level.
991
01:05:18.390 --> 01:05:23.836
It's like, are we doing the basics and can in a weekend we get to 95% drop it and move on to the next thing?
992
01:05:24.906 --> 01:05:25.126
Yeah.
993
01:05:25.686 --> 01:05:25.806
Yeah.
994
01:05:25.826 --> 01:05:29.208
This is where we can talk both sides of the argument, what's good and good enough.
995
01:05:29.248 --> 01:05:40.672
We talk both sides of a lot of arguments, but it's really important when you're listening to somebody to know what are they solving for in their life compared to what you're solving for.
996
01:05:40.852 --> 01:05:42.933
I'm solving for something much bigger right now.
997
01:05:42.953 --> 01:05:44.014
That's the stage we're in.
998
01:05:44.674 --> 01:05:48.376
And you don't need to feel bad that you're not doing all these things because you shouldn't be doing that.
999
01:05:48.436 --> 01:05:50.076
I wasn't doing them way back.
1000
01:05:50.216 --> 01:05:50.656
No way.
1001
01:05:51.057 --> 01:05:51.417
No way.
1002
01:05:52.362 --> 01:06:00.646
All right, so the other thing I'm working on right now is kind of what we just talked about, and that is getting something good enough, putting it down, and having to come back to it.
1003
01:06:01.046 --> 01:06:04.768
So I'm in the coming back to it phase, and that's command center.
1004
01:06:05.249 --> 01:06:07.470
And so the opposite of sales and marketing.
1005
01:06:08.858 --> 01:06:09.178
Sorry, go ahead.
1006
01:06:09.198 --> 01:06:13.842
And can you, I think most people that listen, you probably know, but would you define command center?
1007
01:06:13.942 --> 01:06:20.127
Yeah, so answering all the phones, emails, text messages, payroll, everything on the back end for the owners of Augusta.
1008
01:06:20.688 --> 01:06:29.435
And so the reason I put it down was I was strongly encouraged from my coaches to drop it for a second in terms of my attention.
1009
01:06:29.455 --> 01:06:29.595
Yeah.
1010
01:06:29.795 --> 01:06:30.815
Not to say it's not important.
1011
01:06:30.835 --> 01:06:35.277
Again, for all the people listening that think it's the most important, I had to let the fire burn.
1012
01:06:35.797 --> 01:06:46.101
The reason they convinced me of this is they forced me to go contact other franchisors that were doing this similar contact center and see if I was comparable.
1013
01:06:46.221 --> 01:06:47.021
It wasn't even close.
1014
01:06:47.061 --> 01:06:54.484
We were already way above their threshold and they were like, this is not the most important thing, although you are going to hear that it is every single day.
1015
01:06:55.444 --> 01:06:56.565
you have to drop this.
1016
01:06:57.125 --> 01:07:03.387
And it wasn't that it was important, it wasn't that there wasn't improvements we made, there were people in the organization, but my attention had to be directed someplace else.
1017
01:07:03.988 --> 01:07:08.529
And so- Diminishing returns for you to personally be involved, let other people run that, you go.
1018
01:07:08.549 --> 01:07:12.191
Yeah, and I was comparing good enough to like, good enough is like,
1019
01:07:12.851 --> 01:07:15.332
Someone sitting next to me answering my phone and being my office person.
1020
01:07:15.572 --> 01:07:17.912
And they're like, no, no, no, you're comparing the wrong thing.
1021
01:07:18.232 --> 01:07:20.573
Good enough needs to be, you need to go compare yourself to a franchise.
1022
01:07:20.993 --> 01:07:21.893
And because that's what you are.
1023
01:07:21.913 --> 01:07:22.833
And I was like, oh, sack.
1024
01:07:23.013 --> 01:07:27.014
It's like, that was a hard realization for me because I had to let it go for about six or 12 months.
1025
01:07:27.414 --> 01:07:33.316
And they let the management team really do the refinements, get their feet established underneath them, make mild improvements.
1026
01:07:33.336 --> 01:07:37.097
But like my Death Star kind of attention had to be off of it.
1027
01:07:37.157 --> 01:07:39.057
And so the past few months, it's been moving back.
1028
01:07:42.638 --> 01:07:47.459
how do we redo the leadership in the organization as it's grown, the command center?
1029
01:07:47.839 --> 01:07:51.280
When there was 20 agents in one room, you kind of hear all the phone calls.
1030
01:07:52.080 --> 01:07:53.740
You kind of hear the problems that are happening.
1031
01:07:53.760 --> 01:07:56.001
You know that there's a problem happening over in New York.
1032
01:07:56.261 --> 01:07:58.541
You know that there's snow coming in on the East Coast.
1033
01:07:58.782 --> 01:08:00.082
You generally know what's happening.
1034
01:08:00.442 --> 01:08:06.283
When you now have 87 people across the entire country, like we have across the whole country, we have about 50 here locally.
1035
01:08:07.863 --> 01:08:09.984
It gets, it's just very different.
1036
01:08:10.364 --> 01:08:18.790
when now you have silos of departments like payroll, P4P, bookkeeping, there's silos and departments for every single function of what we do.
1037
01:08:18.871 --> 01:08:25.556
And so one of the things we had to like, okay, it's time like even just several months ago, there's really one leader.
1038
01:08:26.476 --> 01:08:27.817
And it's like, how do we break this up?
1039
01:08:27.857 --> 01:08:33.562
How do we make that person focus much more on the strategy and the team and let things like
1040
01:08:34.871 --> 01:08:37.513
How many hours is everyone working and where's our peaks?
1041
01:08:37.913 --> 01:08:42.837
That's the hardest part about contact center is one hour you have 300 calls and the next hour you have 40.
1042
01:08:43.238 --> 01:08:46.340
How do you efficiently staff for that?
1043
01:08:47.001 --> 01:08:49.883
And so that's a whole person needs to just be doing that.
1044
01:08:49.903 --> 01:08:50.623
That's the office manager.
1045
01:08:50.643 --> 01:08:59.791
And then you have a head of systems now that is like, okay, this person needs to be in the weeds because there's no way one leader can lead 87 people, but also know the functions of every single department.
1046
01:09:00.331 --> 01:09:07.694
And so from a leadership perspective changing it, and then I've been in like this long, almost three months search for consultants and coaches for them.
1047
01:09:08.554 --> 01:09:14.177
And the same way I go out and get coaches, I have people training me, I'm always trying to improve.
1048
01:09:14.657 --> 01:09:19.119
I'm like, okay, either A, we go out and hire someone very expensive that has built us before.
1049
01:09:19.439 --> 01:09:20.739
And I think that's probably the faster route.
1050
01:09:20.979 --> 01:09:26.602
And I was weighing in balances and the leadership was very much like, hey, if you need to hire someone else above us, like that's fine.
1051
01:09:27.983 --> 01:09:32.765
And I went with the approach of like, I would rather take the cultural what we have and just give them the skills.
1052
01:09:33.346 --> 01:09:43.170
And so I've been, I went through about 80, I know it's at least 60, so probably 60 to 70, I will say confidently different consulting agencies and people that I thought could help them.
1053
01:09:43.910 --> 01:09:45.411
And finally we've landed on one.
1054
01:09:45.991 --> 01:09:47.552
And so in the next- You talked to 60 or 70?
1055
01:09:48.152 --> 01:09:54.897
Yeah, just because most time you can find so what I did is I went on LinkedIn, you can pretty much find any consultant on LinkedIn.
1056
01:09:55.357 --> 01:09:57.899
And then you know, you get the premium version, whatever.
1057
01:09:57.919 --> 01:09:58.779
So you can talk to them.
1058
01:09:59.119 --> 01:10:00.300
And then usually have a website.
1059
01:10:00.340 --> 01:10:05.224
So lots of like just calls, lots of time doing that, but then narrow it down about five.
1060
01:10:05.304 --> 01:10:08.065
And recently we've landed on the one I'm going to use.
1061
01:10:08.085 --> 01:10:16.091
I think that's a pretty good example, though, of a little lesson there, because like so many of us might get burned out after talking to three, we just make a decision.
1062
01:10:16.491 --> 01:10:16.671
Yeah.
1063
01:10:17.072 --> 01:10:24.203
And, you know, whereas you're giving example, if you just stuck with it till you found and sucked up the time and just did it till you found the right one.
1064
01:10:24.609 --> 01:10:25.309
Yeah, 100%.
1065
01:10:25.350 --> 01:10:29.392
And I think when you hand off marketing, you'll probably do a very similar activity when it comes to getting a CMO.
1066
01:10:29.712 --> 01:10:31.533
It's like, you're not gonna find the first person.
1067
01:10:31.694 --> 01:10:32.954
You might have to fire one or two.
1068
01:10:33.235 --> 01:10:34.515
You're gonna have to go to tons of interviews.
1069
01:10:34.535 --> 01:10:35.836
You're gonna want to get to know them.
1070
01:10:36.196 --> 01:10:38.458
It's one of the things with the GM even out in Texas.
1071
01:10:38.778 --> 01:10:43.621
Some people, they're like, oh, this general manager, they look good, they have a couple years of experience, let's throw them in the mix.
1072
01:10:43.701 --> 01:10:49.905
It's like, the amount of interviews I did, and then going out and flying just to go talk and have dinner with him and his wife, and the back and forth,
1073
01:10:51.166 --> 01:11:12.987
people underestimate again to your point just how much effort is to actually make good happen yeah i don't know if i told you i used to have a cmo for city turf you told me you told me yeah three to four months of my life i don't want to bring it up oh you didn't want to stab me in the heart but okay anyway we interrupted you no you're fine so like i've been kind of moving my attention on that mostly because
1074
01:11:13.728 --> 01:11:21.312
Although when I call like I hate saying names, but like I called grounds guys, I called these different franchises and like, what's the experience?
1075
01:11:21.752 --> 01:11:24.053
And then I was able to talk to past executives.
1076
01:11:24.273 --> 01:11:26.334
Don't you again, you can find everything on LinkedIn.
1077
01:11:27.295 --> 01:11:30.096
I talked to their franchisees and I said, like, what can they do for you?
1078
01:11:30.176 --> 01:11:31.237
What's your level of service?
1079
01:11:31.597 --> 01:11:36.720
And a year and a half ago, they my coach convinced me like, hey, you need to let this burn for a second and we'll come back to it.
1080
01:11:36.960 --> 01:11:39.541
So I'm in the current coming back to it, hiring at scale.
1081
01:11:39.581 --> 01:11:43.043
How do you hire 50 agents in one month without quality dropping off?
1082
01:11:44.344 --> 01:11:45.987
How do you get them trained up within a month or two?
1083
01:11:46.327 --> 01:11:50.052
Because if it takes longer than two months, I'm losing so much money, I can't recoup that.
1084
01:11:51.654 --> 01:11:55.820
Every minute that they save in terms of efficiency saves the owners because we charge per minute.
1085
01:11:56.140 --> 01:11:58.443
And so it's not like I'm just like willy nilly.
1086
01:12:00.085 --> 01:12:01.687
Every single minute counts to the owners.
1087
01:12:02.268 --> 01:12:05.693
And so we're really trying to infuse AI a lot more.
1088
01:12:06.354 --> 01:12:11.661
And so my focus and attention, building specific things that we can make their workflow easier.
1089
01:12:11.681 --> 01:12:13.564
So for example, do you need four windows up?
1090
01:12:13.965 --> 01:12:14.906
Can we get that down to two?
1091
01:12:16.165 --> 01:12:16.865
How do we do that?
1092
01:12:17.005 --> 01:12:33.811
Like, do I need to vibe code something that can track your time while you're also being able to see internal notes like all these aspects of like, when you're on the call, can it be scrubbing the transcript of the call and presenting information to you that's most relevant for that location for that climate for the time of day.
1093
01:12:34.231 --> 01:12:38.513
These are the type of things that AI can do well, but it takes a lot of time and effort to really make it useful.
1094
01:12:39.293 --> 01:12:43.516
And so my time and attention and focusing, putting that attention on it.
1095
01:12:43.556 --> 01:12:55.042
And it really kind of leans into the notion that like, if we're gonna have larger operators that are doing million dollar plus businesses, that's usually where we see the friction because now the call volume is high enough, the client volume is high enough, where they feel that pain.
1096
01:12:55.102 --> 01:13:05.168
And that's what we've been experiencing the past six to 12 months is like, those are the operators I can see in the MPS scores, net promoter scores, who enjoys command center the most, it's like the smaller guys, because they hate answering the phone.
1097
01:13:05.388 --> 01:13:08.410
They're just thrilled that they can go out and work, but they only get a few calls a day.
1098
01:13:08.910 --> 01:13:19.575
Whereas someone that's doing 2 million, $3 million, like they're getting 15, 20 calls a day and they're feeling the pain of not having an office person next to them and they're feeling the pain of having 87 people answering the phone.
1099
01:13:20.236 --> 01:13:25.198
And so how do we refine that is really been going to be a big focus for me too.
1100
01:13:26.239 --> 01:13:28.840
How did you figure out it was time to put it back on the calendar?
1101
01:13:30.082 --> 01:13:35.683
A few things I looked at, again, I know the team watches this, so I don't want anyone to be offended.
1102
01:13:36.223 --> 01:13:39.664
But it was ultimately looking at the MPS individually by department.
1103
01:13:40.084 --> 01:13:45.645
So we have over 80 MPS for the overall franchise, but under 20 for command center.
1104
01:13:46.165 --> 01:13:50.486
And so it was a matter of, first off, getting that baseline information to know what are we going to start building on?
1105
01:13:50.506 --> 01:13:53.907
Because now I can actually track, are we actually making improvements as we're making all these changes?
1106
01:13:55.627 --> 01:13:57.528
But then also seeing where are the MPS landing?
1107
01:13:57.548 --> 01:14:02.109
Like we have, it's significantly higher for the smaller locations, they love it.
1108
01:14:02.529 --> 01:14:07.611
Whereas the opposite, like we have detractors on the higher end after they cross five, six, 700,000 typically.
1109
01:14:08.091 --> 01:14:18.254
And so seeing that, but also realizing that this is my time to go from the 90 to like the 98% and spending the time on it because it can become a unique differentiator for the franchise.
1110
01:14:18.914 --> 01:14:28.837
And so when I can confidently say you don't need an admin person because command center can handle everything on the back end and then AI can do a lot of the scheduling dispatch inside homeworks.
1111
01:14:29.237 --> 01:14:30.478
That'll be, that's what I'm going for.
1112
01:14:30.498 --> 01:14:37.240
Um, but it's going to take a lot of like 87 agents, you don't change stuff overnight, you can't do like unique offers.
1113
01:14:37.320 --> 01:14:38.380
It's very difficult to do that.
1114
01:14:38.660 --> 01:14:41.181
Even going to Texas, it's just difficult.
1115
01:14:41.201 --> 01:14:42.242
Like that'd be very hard.
1116
01:14:42.582 --> 01:14:42.782
Yeah.
1117
01:14:43.082 --> 01:14:43.242
So.
1118
01:14:43.758 --> 01:14:47.442
You'd have to have, wow, I don't know, some kind of technology to do that.
1119
01:14:47.462 --> 01:14:48.544
That'd be a lot.
1120
01:14:49.044 --> 01:14:50.226
And it's like, what's your air rate?
1121
01:14:50.246 --> 01:14:52.729
Like what is good enough too, is like, what's your air rate?
1122
01:14:52.749 --> 01:14:53.109
Right, right.
1123
01:14:53.309 --> 01:14:54.751
So, cause you're gonna make errors.
1124
01:14:54.791 --> 01:14:58.175
Everyone's humans, especially when they're handling all these different locations and time zones.
1125
01:14:58.195 --> 01:15:00.178
You got people in Australia, like people are gonna mess up.
1126
01:15:00.518 --> 01:15:02.099
But what's the error rate that I'm okay with?
1127
01:15:02.419 --> 01:15:03.160
That's the trouble.
1128
01:15:03.300 --> 01:15:12.026
And if adding an additional offer or custom offer or a subscription instead of a regular per cut, like if you start doing those things, where's my error rate?
1129
01:15:12.126 --> 01:15:16.269
And if that drops too low, that's when we hurt our NPS or like the satisfaction of the owners.
1130
01:15:17.731 --> 01:15:21.253
Did you say your NPS across the franchisees is an 80?
1131
01:15:21.273 --> 01:15:21.433
Yeah.
1132
01:15:22.902 --> 01:15:23.463
It's very good.
1133
01:15:23.643 --> 01:15:23.803
Yeah.
1134
01:15:24.403 --> 01:15:26.205
That's like the stark contrast, right?
1135
01:15:26.225 --> 01:15:41.018
If I remove the detracting of the 19 or 20 from command center, that's like, I guess when you survey customers, when you survey the people your business is built serve, and it's overwhelmingly, this is our pain point, you have to put attention on it.
1136
01:15:41.659 --> 01:15:43.481
And I think the only way to override that
1137
01:15:46.133 --> 01:15:49.095
is realizing that something else is going to bubble up and become a bigger problem.
1138
01:15:49.395 --> 01:15:50.896
And so you have to let it burn for a while.
1139
01:15:51.156 --> 01:15:53.438
And that's what we did because I needed to focus on homework so much.
1140
01:15:54.398 --> 01:15:57.400
But my attention is kind of shifting back towards command center.
1141
01:15:58.101 --> 01:15:58.261
Hmm.
1142
01:15:58.943 --> 01:16:02.064
And are you running this as a six-week sprint?
1143
01:16:03.044 --> 01:16:03.244
No.
1144
01:16:03.264 --> 01:16:04.184
Or how do you think about this one?
1145
01:16:04.204 --> 01:16:06.465
This is more like, I'd say, like a sliding scale of attention.
1146
01:16:06.665 --> 01:16:09.926
Over the past six to 12 months, I've been moving more and more towards it.
1147
01:16:10.286 --> 01:16:14.387
And it's also a way for us to do a lot of testing of some things in Texas.
1148
01:16:14.707 --> 01:16:17.468
So, for example, the designated agent is something that...
1149
01:16:18.248 --> 01:16:27.032
theoretically can't scale across the whole organization because if you take two or three agents, multiply it by, let's just say 500 locations, we're not having like 1,000 agents here.
1150
01:16:28.053 --> 01:16:29.494
It just, it doesn't make any sense.
1151
01:16:30.214 --> 01:16:32.155
However, if I can say, okay,
1152
01:16:33.854 --> 01:16:39.395
my largest operators and the ones that have multiple locations are the ones that don't like us the most, or they have the most struggle or friction.
1153
01:16:40.075 --> 01:16:40.955
How can I serve them?
1154
01:16:41.015 --> 01:16:46.096
Okay, this dedicated agent thing could make sense for them and I can make sense of it financially because they have more than one location.
1155
01:16:46.396 --> 01:16:50.317
I can make sense of the economics of training people, et cetera, but then like, what are the parameters?
1156
01:16:50.337 --> 01:16:53.898
Because if someone has a dedicated agent, now do they do a special offer?
1157
01:16:54.238 --> 01:17:00.239
And then now that agent moves away, they get fired, whatever might happen, now am I setting the owner up for failure?
1158
01:17:00.739 --> 01:17:03.861
And so even the Texas trip is like, okay, we're gonna test it on me.
1159
01:17:03.901 --> 01:17:16.168
We've tested on four locations, and it's gonna be probably a 12 month beta test of like slowly and then like having an application to be able to get into that program because it's gotta be systematized to where the agents are still interchangeable
1160
01:17:17.068 --> 01:17:20.571
and if someone gets fired or moves on, it doesn't collapse the location.
1161
01:17:20.691 --> 01:17:33.122
Because ultimately, the problem we're trying to solve is not making admin the thing that the business collapses on because by their spouse or their best friend or one person in the office has all the knowledge of the company.
1162
01:17:33.682 --> 01:17:40.248
And so we don't want to just reinstitute that by having dedicated agents, because it still needs to be interchangeable parts.
1163
01:17:41.081 --> 01:17:45.365
So you'll do dedicated age, like what I was picturing, but tell me if I'm wrong.
1164
01:17:45.385 --> 01:17:46.286
I'm just curious on this.
1165
01:17:46.506 --> 01:17:51.010
You have 87 agents, but you might sandbox 10 that are dedicated to a group.
1166
01:17:51.210 --> 01:17:51.770
Is that what you're saying?
1167
01:17:51.990 --> 01:17:52.471
Or you did it.
1168
01:17:52.491 --> 01:17:54.012
You dedicated one to a company.
1169
01:17:54.112 --> 01:17:54.753
So it'd be two.
1170
01:17:54.833 --> 01:18:01.238
So there's, there's like a, a, uh, one agent is the main contact for the location and the other ones are backup.
1171
01:18:01.459 --> 01:18:06.002
So that way, if this person is out sick also, so we can have more coverage in the day, uh,
1172
01:18:06.763 --> 01:18:11.945
That being said, if they're both on the phone, that call will still go to the other 85 agents.
1173
01:18:12.625 --> 01:18:14.466
Oh, okay, okay, that's how you do that.
1174
01:18:14.526 --> 01:18:23.189
Yes, like if I can get 90% of contacts to go through one or two people, the jump in efficiency and quality is pretty large.
1175
01:18:23.849 --> 01:18:41.497
And knowing that, yeah, this is your overflow at night, obviously not everyone's going to, those two agents aren't working, but how do we walk the fine line of creating customization and dedication, but also not making it where we just create the same bottleneck that we're trying to prevent them from having their spouse or one person having all the admin responsibilities.
1176
01:18:41.997 --> 01:18:44.819
I just see so many, like one or $2 million businesses, usually it's their spouse.
1177
01:18:45.459 --> 01:18:47.740
And then something happens, they have kids, there's a health issue.
1178
01:18:47.760 --> 01:18:49.621
And all of a sudden that business is like in a world of hurt.
1179
01:18:50.381 --> 01:18:57.028
and we just want to prevent that from happening again inside command center but also will help the larger operators scale multiple locations
1180
01:18:58.729 --> 01:19:01.351
So when are you coming to Texas in September?
1181
01:19:01.372 --> 01:19:01.812
Two weeks.
1182
01:19:02.372 --> 01:19:03.353
Okay, I thought it was coming up.
1183
01:19:03.413 --> 01:19:08.098
Okay, so in two weeks, you'll be dedicating, we'll call it 10 hours a week to that.
1184
01:19:08.418 --> 01:19:09.939
You're thinking about Commend Center.
1185
01:19:10.400 --> 01:19:21.290
What would be one or two other things that you're gonna, like, if you were to say, there's three or four main things in my life to run all these businesses, what would be the two other things?
1186
01:19:21.510 --> 01:19:24.473
Like right now what I'm working on, or just like a very broad stroke?
1187
01:19:26.075 --> 01:19:27.156
Yeah, I think broad stroke.
1188
01:19:27.176 --> 01:19:29.237
I'm just kind of curious.
1189
01:19:29.277 --> 01:19:32.800
I know that one of your priorities is going to be the show.
1190
01:19:32.820 --> 01:19:34.561
I mean, starting in a couple weeks.
1191
01:19:35.321 --> 01:19:37.363
And then the second one we know is command center.
1192
01:19:37.383 --> 01:19:38.423
You just talked about that.
1193
01:19:38.864 --> 01:19:39.824
That's always on your mind.
1194
01:19:39.844 --> 01:19:40.585
You're kind of working on it.
1195
01:19:40.605 --> 01:19:40.745
Yeah.
1196
01:19:40.765 --> 01:19:47.249
So like broad strokes, what are the two other next biggest things that are going to occupy most of your time or maybe make up another sprint?
1197
01:19:47.589 --> 01:19:48.110
The software.
1198
01:19:48.130 --> 01:19:48.450
Yeah.
1199
01:19:48.770 --> 01:19:52.995
Yeah, like I think we'll probably double the amount of members we get here pretty soon.
1200
01:19:54.176 --> 01:19:59.742
And so just with the MCP and API thing and the dispatch board coming out, so that's still a big focus.
1201
01:19:59.762 --> 01:20:02.025
Like I didn't mention it today, but like the dispatch board is huge.
1202
01:20:02.045 --> 01:20:05.128
Like that's the most visited page on the entire website.
1203
01:20:05.568 --> 01:20:08.171
And so we've been building up to it and kind of like...
1204
01:20:08.892 --> 01:20:19.621
speaking to what we just talked about, like sequencing, we had to start like four or five months ago building like what no one has seen so that the infrastructure in the backend could support what we're trying to build with the dispatch board.
1205
01:20:20.042 --> 01:20:32.433
And so I think HomeWorks is at a really crucible point of like changing very fundamental pieces of scheduling and dispatch board, while at the same time having this like, kind of like power of an MCP and API access now.
1206
01:20:32.893 --> 01:20:35.676
And so we're seeing very large companies joining
1207
01:20:36.196 --> 01:20:37.577
And it's something we haven't had before.
1208
01:20:37.597 --> 01:20:41.159
We used to tell people like, hey, if you're over a few million, like just wait.
1209
01:20:41.499 --> 01:20:44.040
And we're just seeing so many people like, hey, I can build around this.
1210
01:20:44.101 --> 01:20:47.002
I can – I have this – my own Vibe code tool I like to tie in.
1211
01:20:47.022 --> 01:20:48.623
I like to do my payments over here.
1212
01:20:48.683 --> 01:20:50.464
I have this other service I want to tie in.
1213
01:20:50.484 --> 01:20:53.146
And so it's just very interesting.
1214
01:20:53.246 --> 01:20:56.087
Like literally in the past three weeks, it's just completely different.
1215
01:20:56.608 --> 01:20:56.828
So –
1216
01:20:57.701 --> 01:21:04.427
Are you, my own interest, are you keeping the old dispatching or are you completely replacing it?
1217
01:21:04.867 --> 01:21:07.349
Are you doing both for a moment?
1218
01:21:07.529 --> 01:21:09.371
Are we doing V2?
1219
01:21:09.391 --> 01:21:13.234
Yeah, temporarily or how are you approaching this?
1220
01:21:13.274 --> 01:21:15.916
Everybody can come in one day and they have a whole new dispatching system.
1221
01:21:16.156 --> 01:21:17.037
How do you do it?
1222
01:21:17.738 --> 01:21:19.219
I don't think there's any right answer on this.
1223
01:21:19.579 --> 01:21:20.320
No, no, there's not.
1224
01:21:20.480 --> 01:21:22.221
There is a long meeting we had about this this morning.
1225
01:21:22.241 --> 01:21:22.502
So...
1226
01:21:23.182 --> 01:21:26.003
We did calendar and I wanted to see what happened.
1227
01:21:26.424 --> 01:21:30.405
So in calendar, we knew that there was less people that were using it.
1228
01:21:30.545 --> 01:21:37.589
And it was a smaller operator that uses the calendar, like drag and drop versus the dispatch board where there's hundreds and thousands of visits and there's a lot more happening.
1229
01:21:38.529 --> 01:21:45.752
So what we did with the calendar is we did make it where if you go to the calendar, it changed the new, but then there was a button that said you could swap back.
1230
01:21:47.676 --> 01:21:52.139
And what we found is mobile is where people got frustrated the most.
1231
01:21:52.919 --> 01:21:53.119
Okay.
1232
01:21:53.359 --> 01:21:55.401
Because we didn't allow the escape hatch.
1233
01:21:55.641 --> 01:21:57.902
Like there was no hatch to switch back on mobile.
1234
01:21:58.302 --> 01:22:00.424
And so that's where we got a lot of pushback.
1235
01:22:00.444 --> 01:22:03.906
And the field team might contain a lot of people that are even less...
1236
01:22:05.453 --> 01:22:06.454
in love with technology.
1237
01:22:06.554 --> 01:22:09.337
So the technicians, they have a separate mobile app.
1238
01:22:09.377 --> 01:22:10.358
That's not being touched.
1239
01:22:10.538 --> 01:22:11.960
Oh, okay, I see what you're talking about.
1240
01:22:12.100 --> 01:22:13.261
This is the CRM side of things.
1241
01:22:13.301 --> 01:22:20.088
So, but still there's like the smaller operators out in the field on their mobile device doing calendar or dispatch related activities.
1242
01:22:20.628 --> 01:22:24.472
So first off we learned you gotta have an escape hatch even on mobile.
1243
01:22:24.912 --> 01:22:29.157
Well, we're considering, and again, I don't know where this is gonna land, so don't hold me to this on anyone.
1244
01:22:29.837 --> 01:22:42.042
is allowing where we go from beta to where there's a button that says if you want to try out this new thing, switch it and then swapping it to where it defaults to the new thing and allows the escape patch.
1245
01:22:43.303 --> 01:22:45.003
So kind of more of a phased approach.
1246
01:22:47.503 --> 01:22:51.546
I honestly think someone would have to be crazy to think that the old one is any better than the new one.
1247
01:22:51.987 --> 01:22:54.809
But every time I'm sure you've said, you've said that same thing.
1248
01:22:54.889 --> 01:22:57.311
And then all of a sudden you drop people into the, they just hate your guts.
1249
01:22:57.871 --> 01:22:59.713
And it's not even that it's better or worse.
1250
01:22:59.733 --> 01:23:01.614
It's like, they don't want to learn a new thing or change.
1251
01:23:01.634 --> 01:23:02.154
That's what it is.
1252
01:23:02.234 --> 01:23:03.195
That's usually what it is.
1253
01:23:03.275 --> 01:23:03.495
Right.
1254
01:23:03.515 --> 01:23:03.696
Yeah.
1255
01:23:03.836 --> 01:23:04.616
And so we're biggest.
1256
01:23:05.117 --> 01:23:05.317
Good.
1257
01:23:06.895 --> 01:23:08.496
I might have said this to you before.
1258
01:23:08.697 --> 01:23:13.480
Our big joke at Service Autopilot was on the sales call, they tell us how much they despise the current system.
1259
01:23:13.500 --> 01:23:14.021
They hate them.
1260
01:23:14.241 --> 01:23:14.962
They're terrible.
1261
01:23:15.182 --> 01:23:15.782
They're dumb.
1262
01:23:15.862 --> 01:23:16.663
Everything's wrong with them.
1263
01:23:16.863 --> 01:23:17.744
They sign up for us.
1264
01:23:18.144 --> 01:23:20.346
And they're like, Hey, can you make it more like that old system you used to use?
1265
01:23:20.366 --> 01:23:20.706
Yeah, exactly.
1266
01:23:20.726 --> 01:23:22.488
Because nobody wants to...
1267
01:23:22.568 --> 01:23:23.148
Wait a second.
1268
01:23:23.268 --> 01:23:27.692
Because they don't want to change... Miss Smith or Mary in the office doesn't want to change your process.
1269
01:23:27.792 --> 01:23:29.574
It's like, yeah, jobber is so simple and just back and forth.
1270
01:23:29.814 --> 01:23:34.960
But also that's why you moved, is because you have more than 100 clients now and you'd like to see a little more power.
1271
01:23:35.261 --> 01:23:35.821
So, yeah.
1272
01:23:35.841 --> 01:23:37.543
But yeah, we're kind of thinking phase.
1273
01:23:37.583 --> 01:23:44.331
So beta and then allowing it to where you can opt into it and then switching it to where it's the standard and you can switch back.
1274
01:23:45.312 --> 01:23:45.432
Yeah.
1275
01:23:45.452 --> 01:23:46.494
Do you have any opinions on that?
1276
01:23:46.654 --> 01:23:47.274
I'm happy to hear.
1277
01:23:48.368 --> 01:23:54.309
There's no way in 100 billion years I would change the dispatch board tomorrow and not let them have... Oh, yeah.
1278
01:23:54.369 --> 01:23:55.029
I know.
1279
01:23:55.790 --> 01:23:56.050
100%.
1280
01:23:56.070 --> 01:24:04.271
I mean, as we've talked about, I just, to my core, believe people buy for scheduling and billing and they stay for scheduling and billing.
1281
01:24:04.391 --> 01:24:07.272
Everything else around it slightly matters compared to that.
1282
01:24:07.912 --> 01:24:14.554
And if you get that wrong, whether it be it's never good enough or you mess it up, that's how you blow up the business.
1283
01:24:14.614 --> 01:24:15.214
And so...
1284
01:24:16.754 --> 01:24:21.697
But I will say, no, I was gone from what we were doing at SA, which we were calling V3.
1285
01:24:23.158 --> 01:24:23.738
Never happened.
1286
01:24:23.758 --> 01:24:24.578
We were long gone.
1287
01:24:24.758 --> 01:24:26.399
I was gone from the business.
1288
01:24:26.699 --> 01:24:29.721
And a lot of that got killed while I was even still there.
1289
01:24:30.601 --> 01:24:32.723
So our vision never got realized.
1290
01:24:33.203 --> 01:24:44.149
But I would say that what I did learn going through that, again, I wasn't there for the whole time, is I would eventually deprecate the old way and not let people switch forever.
1291
01:24:44.189 --> 01:24:45.890
Because that's just a whole different mess.
1292
01:24:46.210 --> 01:24:46.370
Yeah.
1293
01:24:46.610 --> 01:24:48.151
And we have different code.
1294
01:24:48.351 --> 01:24:49.832
Like PHP is the old one.
1295
01:24:49.852 --> 01:24:50.752
Oh, that's right.
1296
01:24:50.772 --> 01:24:51.412
You changed code bases.
1297
01:24:51.432 --> 01:24:52.513
React and JS is the new one.
1298
01:24:52.533 --> 01:24:53.913
So it's a totally different code.
1299
01:24:54.534 --> 01:24:54.814
Yeah.
1300
01:24:54.994 --> 01:25:05.238
So my opinion on it would be to do what you're doing, let them make the move, but put a deadline on the move.
1301
01:25:05.258 --> 01:25:09.140
Because the other thing is if you don't put a deadline on it, there's a lot of people who never move.
1302
01:25:09.821 --> 01:25:10.861
They won't even look at it.
1303
01:25:11.953 --> 01:25:17.058
Or they'll look at it, but they'll never – so you've got to make a move because otherwise you're in a bad spot forever.
1304
01:25:17.239 --> 01:25:18.420
Yeah.
1305
01:25:18.440 --> 01:25:20.222
I appreciate your push even several months ago.
1306
01:25:20.242 --> 01:25:27.129
Like it reaffirmed back to what we talked about today kind of the focus of like the dispatch board, the calendar is the most important thing.
1307
01:25:27.149 --> 01:25:30.272
And I think that – I've told the team this the other day.
1308
01:25:30.312 --> 01:25:34.397
Like it's the first time I can stand up and be very confident about homeworks that it's like –
1309
01:25:35.511 --> 01:25:42.214
a really good scheduling platform once the dispatch board is done and it's all been refactored and like, I think it's like the dispatch board is great.
1310
01:25:42.494 --> 01:25:49.937
And I, I haven't been able to say that for a long time, like parts and elements of the, of the system that I knew, cause like, you know, all the, all the skeletons, right?
1311
01:25:49.957 --> 01:25:50.957
You know, all the problems.
1312
01:25:51.277 --> 01:25:58.921
And so sometimes I was like, I've been very shy in terms of sales because it's been like, I know these problems that I know they exist, but like, I'm literally looking forward to the dispatch board coming out.
1313
01:25:59.321 --> 01:26:02.202
Um, so that's, that would be another thing on the back burner that's still happening.
1314
01:26:03.399 --> 01:26:05.140
The video you sent me looked good.
1315
01:26:05.401 --> 01:26:06.842
I like the design.
1316
01:26:06.862 --> 01:26:08.062
I appreciate it.
1317
01:26:08.082 --> 01:26:14.387
Well, maybe once I'll let you go wild with the MCP API access, see what you can build.
1318
01:26:14.547 --> 01:26:18.030
You can build the scheduling thing that you always want to just put the prompt in, see what happens.
1319
01:26:19.163 --> 01:26:24.267
And it will, and are you saying that somebody could use a slightly different interface even with your system?
1320
01:26:24.767 --> 01:26:24.987
Yeah.
1321
01:26:25.047 --> 01:26:25.868
Is that what you mean by that?
1322
01:26:25.948 --> 01:26:27.109
Several people have already built one.
1323
01:26:27.129 --> 01:26:31.472
So they'll build their own scheduling interface and just use you as like what they call the headless backend?
1324
01:26:31.792 --> 01:26:31.952
Yep.
1325
01:26:31.992 --> 01:26:33.333
Some people already built like their own app.
1326
01:26:33.813 --> 01:26:37.876
I, I, I don't hate like, so the team app, some people like it, some people don't have service app.
1327
01:26:37.916 --> 01:26:39.417
We used it, kind of didn't, whatever.
1328
01:26:39.777 --> 01:26:41.158
Some people like certain elements of it.
1329
01:26:41.419 --> 01:26:44.401
They have built their own skin and they've just tapped into the API.
1330
01:26:44.441 --> 01:26:44.601
Yeah.
1331
01:26:45.955 --> 01:26:46.356
That's cool.
1332
01:26:46.737 --> 01:26:47.678
That's so smart.
1333
01:26:47.858 --> 01:26:48.860
We'll find out what happens.
1334
01:26:49.200 --> 01:26:54.068
That's what we were starting to work on at SA over seven years ago now.
1335
01:26:54.688 --> 01:26:55.770
Eight years ago and it all got killed.
1336
01:26:55.990 --> 01:26:56.711
Prioritization.
1337
01:26:56.731 --> 01:27:00.357
I mean, you're just wrong prioritization.
1338
01:27:00.377 --> 01:27:03.101
You're really smart to be doing that.
1339
01:27:03.241 --> 01:27:04.283
Well, I appreciate your mentorship.
1340
01:27:04.603 --> 01:27:04.864
All right.
1341
01:27:05.004 --> 01:27:06.025
Thank you, everyone, for watching.
1342
01:27:06.146 --> 01:27:06.867
We'll see you next week.
1343
01:27:07.488 --> 01:27:08.008
See you guys later.