Full transcript9 chapters · 9,447 words
0:00Third generation in the family heating oil and plumbing business
AI Levi: The standard operating procedures is a checklist. In the absence of nothing, a checklist is very important. But if you're going to run your company on just a bunch of SOPs, it's like a bunch of post-it notes on a wall. So if you don't have the right org chart and you don't have the playbook, which is more
AI Levi: commutative for the 80% to go on, SOPs are not the thing.
Tyler Martin: Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue-collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We'll dig into their journeys from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line with lessons and grit that pay off big. Here's your host, the blue collar CFO, Tyler Martin.
Tyler Martin: After decades of helping grow his family's business into a $17 million multi-trade company, Al Levy had achieved significant success, but the business had become so stressful that he described himself as feeling like a hostage to it. That became the turning point. Al started
Tyler Martin: building systems, training programs, career paths, and leadership structure that eventually allowed him to leave the company at 48 without everything depending on him. In this episode, we talk about why he stopped relying on experienced hires and started building technicians from within, how he narrows a company's priorities down to the top five, why he believes playbooks
Tyler Martin: need to go beyond basic SOPs, and what trade owners should understand about leadership, acquisitions, private equity, and ethical sales. There's a lot of wisdom behind this conversation. Let's talk with Al now.
AI Levi: Hey, Al, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How's it going?
Tyler Martin: Great. Thank you so much for inviting me.
AI Levi: Yeah, thank you for being here. I'm really honored to have you. You're one of the goats in the industry. So it's just really cool to have this conversation. One of the tricks to being a goat is hanging around a very long time. It's a good trick.
AI Levi: You're succeeding. Hey, so I'd love to, if there's someone in the audience to know who you are, I'd love to talk about what you do professionally, where you're at in your career now. And I'd love to just know something about you personally, too.
Tyler Martin: Okay.
AI Levi: I'm not going to start with my childhood, but actually the childhood does tangle into it. I was third generation in a family business. We started out in heating oil. And for those who don't know, in the Northeast, that used to be out about heating homes.
AI Levi: And it's basically think like propane. And then when I came along, my brothers and I, we were the third generation. and we then moved it into plumbing, gas heating, air conditioning, electric. And now it's handed off to the fourth generation. My nephew is in the business.
Tyler Martin: That's awesome. What about on a personal note? Do you have anything that you could share?
AI Levi: Yeah, you know, I've been very blessed. This is a long career. I worked at my company like most kids. By the time I was eight, I was cleaning fittings, you know, sweeping up, all the other kinds of things. And when I went to college, my father's idea of a spring break was I would drive a truck instead of go any place.
AI Levi: So I was really immersed in the business. I was there and I left by the age 48. I gave notice when I was 45 that I was leaving in three years. So let that wash over you. Three years of notice for guys who, you know, people just leave your car keys.
AI Levi: Where did they go? We don't know. So I wasn't going to do that. And then I went off to do this consulting business, which I thought I would do for like 10 years. One, to stay married and to, you know, share what I had learned.
AI Levi: And I'm very pleased to tell you that magically I'm in my 24th year. But I have already, you know, made arrangements and did some licensing and things of that nature. So this will continue on. That's where it's going. That's awesome.
Tyler Martin: And take me back kind of through the story. So if I understand it, you retired around 48 years old from the family business. What put you in that position? Because that's a pretty young age to retire from a family business. What put you at the age to be able to do that?
Tyler Martin: And then what were your aspirations at that point when you were doing it?
AI Levi: Yeah, so I really didn't personally what I have to talk about was that I lived in New York City, if the accent doesn't give it away. But I was 50 pounds heavier than what you see today. To say I was eating my stress would be a mild statement.
AI Levi: I was very lucky. I had great industry friends. Ellen Rohr, who's pretty famous in the business. She was one of those friends. And she, along with my other great friend, Dan Hollihan, who's another industry giant, basically pulled me by the side and go, look, you're just going to be a really rich dead guy if you don't pull up.
AI Levi: And so I took the message and started to reform my habits.
4:58Waking up feeling like a hostage to his own company
AI Levi: But the stress of the business was really the source of it. I was eating my stress. And, you know, even though we were successful, we were 70, you know, 70 some odd people and 17 million when 17 million was a very big company in the US.
AI Levi: And so it wasn't a lack of any of that. What it was is just trying to manage the chaos day after day. Also, I didn't add in we were a New York City union shop. So, yeah, employee issues, whatever your employee issues are, I'm sorry, I got you topped.
AI Levi: But it was just all of that was adding up. And then finally, I just, you know, I woke up. There's just a seminal moment. I'll share with you one of the seminal moments. I woke up one morning. We had a very small office.
AI Levi: My dad believed that in the office, if we were not supposed to sit here, we're supposed to go do stuff. So I went out, you know, I was sitting, closed the door. And I tell him, I go, I woke up last night in a cold sweat.
AI Levi: I feel like I'm a hostage here. You know, any day they can do what they want or not want to do, and I'm sick of it. I said, how do you guys feel? And they go, we are too. And then they said, so what are you going to do about it? I said, I don't know, but I'll figure it out. And that was
AI Levi: the beginning of the journey to create operating manuals or charts, and then the training to create our own pipeline of techs instead of hiring, quote unquote, veteran techs and hoping that they were willing and we also had skills. We had already learned from so many missteps that when we
AI Levi: would pirate away or steal somebody else's quote unquote great tech, my brother Richie and I, who worked in the field late at night as well, would just sit in the office at 2 a.m. and go, really, Tyler? Tyler's the best guy they had? He broke our whole pay scale telling us what he will
AI Levi: and won't do. And he's mediocre. So we finally just, I happen to be lucky enough to read a book called Employer of Choice. And what it basically said was, if you can offer a career, not a job, that's really the path. And that became our mantra. We no longer offer jobs, we offer careers. And
AI Levi: that meant we had to do everything to take a willing apprentice with no skills, all the way up the org chart to a willing tech with great skills. And we mastered that. Had to take an apprentice to junior tech, junior tech to senior tech. And as the company grew and we needed to be
AI Levi: able to manage people, senior tech rising up to field supervisor. And that's really how we were able to do it. We got to the point we had one main hub shop and three satellites on Long Island. And it wasn't because of distance driving time, obviously, pretty crazy, but we were able to do
AI Levi: that. And really, the joy for me was when I taught these kids, they're all not retired, but they all rose to the top levels of the company. And there's no better testimony than that.
Tyler Martin: That's cool. So when you left at 48, are you leaving a situation that was really just basically
AI Levi: running itself? Yes, I wasn't running around from a house on fire. We had, at that point, finally gotten everything under control, which actually extended my career. And it really was good. I spent the last three years making sure that I brought some new people in to replace me,
AI Levi: tested all the systems and I had been doing all of the recruiting hiring orienting training retaining and I needed to make sure that was going to continue and my as I left so I took the guys that I had trained who had all gone through that in particular two particular guys and I had them
AI Levi: observe what I do and then I would sit in class and watch them do it and then so I knew it was a
Tyler Martin: good handoff and the answer is it's still moving yeah 24 years later that's really that's that's a great story. So, hey, I'd be curious, what is your opinion since you've had such an illustrious career in this space? I was talking to an investment banker last week and I get conversations
Tyler Martin: like this a lot, but it's fresh to my memory. And as we're chatting, he says, you know, I just closed a deal. It's a $4 million plumbing shop. They had about 25% EBITDA and they sold for 10X. They sold for a $4 million company, sold for $10 million. Now I'm sure there's some strings
Tyler Martin: attached and it wasn't all cash. But when you hear that, like, what do you think? Because you've seen
AI Levi: so much in this time frame. Yeah. So one of the nice features of growing old is that you've seen this movie before. It was private equity back in the 90s. And, you know, really the first people in really made the money. It was cash. And then it became more stock and then didn't end very well.
AI Levi: Do I know that that's going to repeat again? I don't. But really in private equity, and there's a lot of good ones. So take this with a very broad brush, is that I've advised a lot of my companies, because the companies that I worked with who had been failing or slow to grow,
AI Levi: we put in systems that allowed them not only to grow fast, but to grow very well and repeatable. So it wasn't the owner they were buying per se. It was the company and the systems. So they went off for big money. All my advice to them was very simple. It said, if you want PE money,
AI Levi: I totally get it.
10:00Building a career path instead of just offering jobs
AI Levi: But be aware you have no control. You may think you have control, but you really don't. They control the purse strings and the counting and all the other things. So make sure you get your money first. And if you get the second bite of the apple, which is what they'll entice you with, so be it.
AI Levi: The other thing is to attach to is they're going to make employee decisions that you may not like. They're going to handle your customers differently than you. And you have to be willing and ready to accept that. My family was always in acquisition, so I was on the other side of this, if you will.
AI Levi: Our business was in New York City, but we were near a seaside area, and they condemned it. And so there were eight miles of pristine beach that were sat empty for decades, and our clients fled. And to my great luck, my dad and my uncle realized they had to go acquire companies to where they were moving, or there would be no business.
AI Levi: We never would have been a business by the time. And ultimately, we learned it's actually a great way to grow. Now, when they did it, it was chaotic because they were just adding more gasoline to a fire. But once we had systems and training and a way to bring them on board and do that, we could acquire companies from all different things.
AI Levi: And that's actually how we were able to step into plumbing, gas, heating, air conditioning, and electrical in a way that was sane and scalable.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. So you now evolved you have a system a book The Seven Power Contractor It awesome By the way I read it If you for the folks out in the audience if you were to diagnose a company in 15 minutes like what are you in that 15 minutes
Tyler Martin: what would you look for? How would you diagnose in that 15 minutes of things that you would look for to go, Hey, this is a struggling contractor verse, you know, you guys got a good foundation.
AI Levi: Yeah. So usually when I was doing one-to-one consulting, which I did for so many years, almost 20 something years, I would have them send me all their systems based on what they had. And then when I would look it over and I would call them up and I'd go, well, I see you have
AI Levi: manuals. So why are we doing this? They go, well, nobody reads them. Nobody buys into it. Nobody, nothing. And so I said, okay. So the point of it is, do you have systems, no systems, are they broken systems? That's really what I need to know first and foremost.
AI Levi: The second thing is I am not your financial guy. I understand financials. It's not my thing. And I see your CFO on your shirt. That is not me. Fortunately for me, Marty, my brother, was the financial guy. So that Richie could be the outside guy, and I was the bridge between the two of them.
AI Levi: So for me, all I really ever wanted to know is gross sales and gross profit. If I don't see both of them, I don't even look any further because we're off track. And I need to be able to know because I can kill anybody's net profit. All I have to do is pay you more salary, buy a new car,
AI Levi: or new trucks, we can do a million ways to kill it. If it's not on those two top lines, that's really in my 15 minutes, I've kind of already got a very good reference point.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Okay. And when you're thinking of the seven power methodology, it's really to get the owner out of the business, right? Instead of being deeply integrated. How do you do that? Like, I mean, that always sounds good and everybody wants to do it, but there's always a lot of
Tyler Martin: barriers to getting there. It feels like there's a lot of barriers.
AI Levi: There is. Actually, Tyler, it's gotten easier to get the guy out of the business in their mind because they follow like, you know, the guys I've worked with, Tommy Mello and the other ones, you know, and also the book that had the most influence on me, and there are multiple,
AI Levi: multiple books, but Michael Gerber's E-Myth, which by the way, is the book that Ellen had me read 30 years ago. Ellen and Dan both said, you got to read this book. And what it taught me is why my business didn't work and what I needed to do to make it work. But it didn't give me the how,
AI Levi: but I'm really good at how. And my brothers, my older brothers and my dad entrusted me to put the
13:58What he'd tell owners chasing a 10x private equity payout
AI Levi: how to work to their credit. And so that was all about building the right org chart and then having manuals that are playbooks to cover all the positions. So it's objective, covering the 80% of what goes on, and then meetings that were productive, not just meetings to talk and eat
AI Levi: a donut. And these were the steps that we started to put in, learning how to plan, creating a master project list, how to get it down to a top 30 and finally to a top five, using the right strainers, which is fix his biggest problem or challenge or greatest chance to grow and
AI Levi: be profitable. So we arrive on the top five because really from the smallest of the biggest companies I've ever worked with. Top five is the most important thing that you can do. And you've got to be really good at it. And even though you may have a ton of money
AI Levi: and a ton of people, if you try to get 30 projects all done at the same time, you will get them all done, not bought in, not done right, any of the other stuff. The idea is to do the five sequentially and then move the 30 up
AI Levi: and then keep this train moving. That's really where we get out of the gatehouse, if you will, and get able to out to room.
Tyler Martin: You're kind of knocking out those top five and then, I guess, do five take over.
AI Levi: Yes, exactly.
Tyler Martin: You're making progress.
AI Levi: Yeah, okay.
Tyler Martin: That makes a lot of sense. And do you see any common theme when we're, let's say we're talking business somewhere between three to 15 million revenue somewhere in there. Is there any common theme of what those top five oftentimes look like?
AI Levi: Yeah, usually they want me to name their top five. And I go, no, because then it's going to be me enforcing you to do my top five. I said, I'm going to guide you to arrive to your top five. If it's something I think that's really awful or I hate, I will tell you.
AI Levi: But you're going to pick the five because I'm going to hold you accountable to the five you picked. And then we're going to get in this habit of continually moving it along. One of the things that I still stress in this world of digital is they have to make a visual whiteboard, at least three by five.
AI Levi: And it's really three columns. What are we working on the top five? Why are we working on the top five? Which of those items? and then a status. And it's not how to make the projects come alive. It's only out there where every employee can see it because now the employees are holding you, the owners and managers,
AI Levi: accountable. Is it the same old thing where you're just onto the next hot item and it'll be gone in a week? Because most companies, including our own for years, we're trained to stand still because tomorrow will be a different agenda. And that's what happens to you every time you go to a meeting,
AI Levi: every time you listen to a podcast, every time you go on Facebook. And so they're totally whiplashed. Whereas this top five really gets you focused to being able to work on the right things at the right time in the right way. Those are the three rights of planning.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I get so fired up when I hear you talk like this. I had Paul Kelly on my show not too long ago. He's great. He's amazing, right? And he's got the whole Raising Goats thing going on. But he basically said this very similar to what you just said.
Tyler Martin: But I love how your extra addition to it is you put something on the wall that you're staring at so we don't get that shiny object syndrome and we're off to something new. I know when I used to have my company, I would have these shiny object ideas.
Tyler Martin: And my staff got so trained that I would lose, like next week, I'd have a new idea. And so they knew that. And one time they even told me, they're like, dude, we know you're not going to follow through. So yeah, we'll listen to whatever you say and we'll put a smile on our face.
Tyler Martin: We've learned how to manage you basically is what they were telling me.
AI Levi: You know, that's great. It's kind of funny. I remember, you know, again, one of the advantages of my union shop is that they weren't afraid to tell me stuff to my face that I really didn't want to hear. But I actually absolutely needed to hear.
AI Levi: So we worked 24-7, 365. That wasn't a slogan. We had a 7 to 4, 8 to 5, 10 to 7, 2 to 11 p.m. And in the dead of winter, 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. were shifts, not on-call, shifts. People were in trouble. So I built a module in the office where they could go in, take the alarm off, sit down, eat, catch their breath and use the restroom and rest of it.
AI Levi: And all I had to do was punch in their code. And they weren't doing it. So I went to the one guy I knew who would tell me to my face. He goes, we're not going to do it because we figure you're tracking us in terms of time.
AI Levi: And that was the last thing on my mind.
Tyler Martin: Wow.
AI Levi: I don't care. I want you to be here and comfortable and closer to where you need to do so you don't drive all the way home and drive all the way back. He goes, thank you for telling me. So I brought them all in and I go, it's come to my attention.
AI Levi: You guys aren't here. And that's partly on me because I didn't communicate why I built this and why it's being done.
18:50Diagnosing a company in 15 minutes with gross sales and profit
AI Levi: So I'm going to do that now and ask for your forgiveness. And after that, they were off and running.
Tyler Martin: Wow. What a good way to deal with it, though, because you went straight to them and had the direct conversation to alleviate any misunderstanding. I think that sometimes as leaders, we're not always great doing that, where we just deal with it head on because there's friction and stuff.
Tyler Martin: So I got to say kudos in handling that.
AI Levi: That came from really learning sales. I was terrible at sales originally. Of course, my dad made me do door-to-door sales to get over that.
Tyler Martin: Oh, wow. That must have been tough.
AI Levi: It's so tough. When I first came out of school, I was like looking at my shoes, you know, not making eye contact. I mean, everything you could do wrong. But it's amazing how fast you can learn when doors are being slammed in your face.
AI Levi: So I did get better. I went to a lot of sales training, got really good. And what I learned is you either raise the objection that's already in their head or you will be run over by it. And so I don't like to be run over by it.
AI Levi: I'll give you a great story. So we talked a little bit about this already. I'm going to leave. Everybody in the company knows three years, what my time was raised. And I had my install manager. I already had him moving up into another higher position and another couple of guys shifting
AI Levi: around. And the install manager comes to me and goes, I feel terrible about this. Two months before I'm ready to go. Said, I got a job with a rep and I'm going to be going. And then, so he left. And I just thought to myself, if I was them and not me, what would I be thinking?
AI Levi: Oh, Al's leaving. He's leaving. Maybe I should leave too. So I hauled them all in and I go, you know what? He's going off to pursue his career and I'm leaving. You guys all know that. And if I were you, here's what I would be thinking.
AI Levi: Maybe I should leave too. And I totally get that. But what you're not thinking about is great. Al's gone. This guy's gone. It's free. I'm going all the way up that career like he promised. I never lost anyone after that.
Tyler Martin: Yeah.
AI Levi: So they basically they saw a path. You help them see the path.
Tyler Martin: I help them not.
AI Levi: Yeah.
Tyler Martin: And Ellen has a great story, which is when we worked together was give them a great game to play or they'll find their own and you're not going to like it.
AI Levi: I like that.
Tyler Martin: By the way, Ellen was just on my show recently, as you know, for the folks in the audience and hers would have published just before this one. So please check it out. So in terms of the seven powers, and I'm just going to list them out.
AI Levi: planning and leadership is one operating financial staffing selling marketing sales and coaching so those are the seven powers how did you land on coaching the sales coaching to me i see the value in it but it seems unique for me to be one of the powers like where does that fit in and is there any
Tyler Martin: hierarchy of most important it really depends on the what's always first with when i was doing one to one is planning power because if we don't have a plan and it's not documented and we don't have the master project that becomes the top 30, top five, and know how to do the things we're going
Tyler Martin: to do in the next three to five years and have them queued up, and then do what I preach, which is the three rights, working on the right thing in the right way in the right order, nothing much is going to go right. After that, usually operating power came in, which was the order charts and the
Tyler Martin: manuals and getting all the system and documentation or playbooks. And one thing I do want to clear, because it always gets mixed up in the age of AI is they're not SOPs, standard operating procedures. Standard operating procedures is a checklist. In the absence of nothing, a checklist is very important.
Tyler Martin: But if you're going to run your company on just a bunch of SOPs, it's like a bunch of Post-it notes on a wall. So if you don't have the right org chart and you don't have the playbook, which is more communicative for the 80% to go on, SOPs are not the thing.
Tyler Martin: And so that really is where companies really start taking momentum. So what becomes next is really do they want to have this pipeline of their own techs And that becomes staffing about how to take the manuals create the right hands on training center have a training curriculum which is the bridge between the two and become better trainers themselves like we did because we wanted to supply 80 of the training so we could control the
AI Levi: experience from start to finish and the product that would come out. So if they do, then great. If not, then they can certainly move on to sales power, which is if they don't have a sales system. I had a five-step sales system which I used with my system engineers which is a
AI Levi: fancy name for big ticket sales people and when I finished it because I was training other guys to take my place I created this systematic way of I was doing a million in sales as a part-time job in the 90s I hope you hear that yeah but I realized I can't there are no more hours a day
AI Levi: days a week so I decided that I'm going to train three guys on a system once I systematize it And ultimately, within short order, I got three guys selling a million each. And the scale just goes on from there. When I got done, I go, hey, you know what?
AI Levi: The sales system really fits service techs because I did both jobs. It wasn't like I hadn't sat in both seats. So it's a five-step approach. And basically, I don't care if you have a sales system that's three steps, five steps, seven steps, ten steps.
AI Levi: If you have a sales system that's really much more than 10 steps, let me help you out because I did a million ride-alongs. They're not going to be able to replicate it. Your system is overly complicated. Yeah. Now, it might have five chapters, but there's a way to be able to work through that.
AI Levi: And then it really comes home in that real-world training center where they have to sell stuff before they can do stuff. And sell is a word. I just want to be clear. I believe in ethical sales, which is what I nicknamed my thing here.
AI Levi: I never sold anybody anything that was not in their best interest or something that they really wanted or needed. And that is how I trained everybody. But I'm going to recommend anything and everything if I've asked good questions and I get a positive
AI Levi: response as something that they're interested in.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. What do you think about some of these tools that where you bring along your phone or some
24:55Getting to the top five priorities instead of chasing 30
Tyler Martin: device where you're recording and they're, you know, AI type coach attendance? would you have any opinions on that? I know exactly what you're thinking.
AI Levi: I think it's a nice tool, but I don't think it's the same as doing a ride-along with somebody. And you're thinking to yourself probably, well, if I do a ride-along, they'll be on their best behavior. Here's what I can assure you. They will not. And if you ride along constantly,
AI Levi: they will show you exactly who they are. Absolutely. Because that's my experience forever, both at my shop and the write-alongs I did at other shops. All the write-alongs that Ellen has done has confirmed the same thing. The other thing about the recordings, it's good to have that, you know,
AI Levi: about time span, things of that nature, as long as it's legal, which is number one. But if, and this is any book that you've ever read, 70% of communication is nonverbal. So you can't divide everything from a recording. You're not seeing their reaction, the eye roll, the hands across the chest.
AI Levi: You're missing all of that. So it's a good tool to use. It should not be your only tool is what I'm trying to very strongly suggest. They should be trained on sales in your home, not at the customer's home. And that's, again, about building the right training center, doing the right training there.
AI Levi: And then you go out in the field to catch them doing something good. That's the reason for ride-alongs. and mystery shopping is to catch them doing something good. And if they're not, find out what they're not doing good and get it addressed before your company goes over the cliff.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. There's this, you talked about ethical sales and there are a lot of companies nowadays, I don't know about a lot, I should say that, but there are companies nowadays that they're really trying to get just straight to the install. Like they're going to go out there
Tyler Martin: and there's a high probability they're trying to get the customer into an install. What's your thoughts around that? And what, I mean, I get it from one hand, like the company's trying to maximize their revenue and they've got their overhead and all this other stuff.
Tyler Martin: But I also like Brody Pinnell's, for example, the world where they go out and they lead with maintenance. They do memberships and they're just there when you need an install and they built the relationship to be there. So what are your thoughts around that?
AI Levi: And just where I absolutely firmly believe on it. You know, the more I know and the more that I can be able to come in and serve you, the better that it is. There's no question about that. But, you know, it's just a case of I know for a fact that I could sell anything and everything and reach the best of it.
AI Levi: Now, one of the companies I worked at, unfortunately, this was very early in my career. Yeah. They were a great next door shop, great, great organization, huge. And I was looking at when they would manually put the shorts up. All of these guys were good at sales, but one guy was way above everybody else.
AI Levi: So I just brought the owners and managers in and go, this guy may be all of that, but you better get in the truck and find out what's really going on before something goes over and you get caught up in a thing or whatever operation.
AI Levi: Also, by the way, your guys are also very suspicious. So get out and find out what's going on. So sure enough, they find out how he's obtaining these sales. And they do the right thing, which is fire. Here's the one that kicks it.
AI Levi: They went on to have six months of sales records once this guy got canned. Oh, wow. Because up to that point, they believed the owner only cared about money and sales. There was really nothing ethic about it. Right. And doing it the right way.
AI Levi: So the point about it is, if I ask good questions, you know, there's two parts to sales, which is diagnosing the customer first. before you diagnose the problem. And you have to trust that it will lead to the right place. And so when I go in, my biggest tools are the questions I ask. And who has to talk in any sale?
AI Levi: The customer has to talk, because when they talk, they're buying. When you talk, you're trying to sell. But I know the questions to ask. And based on my observations and things that I've been noticing, I never ask anybody, would you like a humidifier? And the answer should
AI Levi: be a no. First of all, they don't know what a humidifier is and wouldn't know why. But if I go, hey, does anybody wake up with itchy eyes and dry throat? Now I've earned the right to ask them, you know, if they say yes, I go, I have a solution for that. Are there any rooms that are too hot or
AI Levi: too cold? And when I get the yes, I'm going to say, great, I have a couple of suggestions that we can do about how to address that. And I put the decision, I think of when I did my sales training, I impressed upon them. Think of yourself. This company has a great restaurant
AI Levi: and the best deal that you've ever had with the best waiter or waitress that you've ever had. They help guide you to some good decisions. They don't pick what you eat. So that's really what we do. That's our job to have a great experience for them.
AI Levi: But we have to do it in a way that they feel good about this experience. And the testimony is, would they give you a testimonial? Because again, the words that you say are semi-interesting. What they really want to hear is somebody that looks like me who's bragging on you.
AI Levi: And that was Dan Hollihan, who was not only a great heating guy, but he also was probably the best, to me, marketing guy that nobody knew about. No one. And he told me one day, he goes, Hal, you know, whatever you say about yourself is semi-interesting, but I want to know.
AI Levi: So I said, what do you want, Dan? He goes, I want testimonials. And you cannot have enough testimonials. And here's the specific type of testimonials you have to get. And when you think you have enough, you don't. And so all marketing, I mean, every marketing, social media, direct mail postcards,
AI Levi: we for a while fell out of faith. And I said, do you think direct mail postcards don't work? Take a look at how many political cards are being sent to you every minute by every day. So yes, they never went out, but you don't do it right.
AI Levi: That's why you think direct mail doesn't work. Your Facebook doesn't have any traction because it's not designed right. And the real big word is, you know, what's the headline that gets me to read on? What are you trying to talk about? And then who says so besides you?
AI Levi: That's the essence of good marketing.
Tyler Martin: Got it. Okay, I want to go back to leadership. So a lot of times what I'll see is that small shop, 3 million plus, 3 to 5 million. they're having challenges or they're not sure when to start building that leadership team or people that can even fill that role, have that path that you talked about.
Tyler Martin: From your experience, like how do you do that? Like how do you go from this small company to start building a small leadership team to getting to the point where you can actually get the owner out of the business? Because that's usually one of the barriers I see.
Tyler Martin: What are your thoughts around that?
AI Levi: Yeah, so I was very lucky. I became kind of the graduate class for next door people. And when I would come in, they would pay me a lot of money. And within a very short time, they would be asking, so what should my managers do?
AI Levi: What should my managers do? And then I'd pull them aside, close the door and go, right now, nothing. And then you can imagine how unhappy they were with that answer. I said, the reason is you think this company is going to get fixed top down.
AI Levi: And my method is bottom up. So they're busy trying to get all these people to do stuff when we haven't defined anything. So by getting the org chart set up with the right reportability into who is what, very flat, very tight. And then it's not the guys at the top. It's the people at the bottom knowing how to fill their jobs and how to move up and how to keep going on these boxes. That's the real thing.
AI Levi: So that's the only way a manager can be effective today, tomorrow, no matter how much you expand. And yes, I do have manager manuals. But believe it or not, they're the smallest manual because their first, second, and third job is to train everyone beneath them to own their box, get ready for the next box.
AI Levi: And then they can do the other things that go into it instead of trying to get somebody outside your company. I can tell you, because my guys, again, told me the truth. They hated when I would go outside the company and bring somebody in because it told them all what we're not good enough.
AI Levi: Where was our chance at it? And so I'm not a giant fan of just running for this. I know that there's times you have to plug the gap. And I actually had a great conversation with a guy who kind of came up the ranks with me.
AI Levi: He's a Vietnam vet and great tech. And I said to him, I said, I want you to become our system engineer. Again, big ticket salesperson. and he goes, you're not going to use me because I'm just going to fill the box, and then I'm going to go back, and you're going to go, hey, hang on a second, Tommy.
AI Levi: I said, you've earned this. I'm going to get you successful at it because it's slowing me down, and it hurts the company. Now, if you fail at it after all of that work, you're going to return back to a tech, and then you'll get a second swing at it down the road
AI Levi: because I reserve the right to go outside the company if I cannot fill it internally But my first second and third desire is to help the people that are here have the careers I promised you He ended up never losing that box He was great at it
Tyler Martin: Yeah. What would you, when it comes to tax and just training, what would you suggest, if you were to start a shop again, at what point would you introduce your own training academy as opposed to hiring experienced people? Like what would you be trying to progress into creating your
Tyler Martin: own training program? If you're first starting a shop and it's really just you, or maybe you and your buddy decided that, oh, let's have the fun of owning our own company, you know, things of that
AI Levi: nature. You are going to need to hire, you know, a couple of experienced people, but I would recommend that you hire experienced people that understand that, you know, by the time you become 40 or 50 years old, I want you to be moving into a supervisory role. It doesn't mean you don't go
AI Levi: out in the field. It does mean it. But I don't want you working in the ditch forever. That's not good for you, and it's not good for this company. But you're going to earn it. And the way you earn it is by filling the box yourself. So when guys down the road who are not here today, 10 years go,
AI Levi: hey, Tyler, you don't really know what it's like because you haven't been in the field. And I go, really? Yeah, hop in my truck. Let's see how we do today. You have to have that, you know, that great. And I did that all the time, all the time. So it's really, that would be the way that I would
AI Levi: say for them. So I owned with Ellen Zoom Drain franchise and my great customer, Jim Grenady in Philadelphia. And we went nationwide. And then, you know, basically we did the same thing there, took all of these young apprentices, all rows up through the company to where they could
AI Levi: go and do these things. So one of the companies is a very small husband and wife, and he wants to know what can I do? I go, well, you're already the model tech because I need model techs. You need to take one young willing apprentice or a junior tech, if you will, and get them really good
AI Levi: so that they can get their own truck. And now the both of you have two new apprentices. And then you train up again to the point where you finally can hire three apprentices or five apprentices. I used to do three to five, never less than three, really no more than five, because that's how I could
36:30Why playbooks beat a binder of SOPs nobody reads
AI Levi: manage. Here's the funny thing. Zoom started training at the end when I left 20 guys at a time. Wow. Tommy trains probably a hundred guys at a time. I'm sure. Yeah. And it's really just so exciting to me. I think my voice explains just amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing stuff.
AI Levi: And the quality is still at that same level because they're being trained by people who are great trainers that know the culture and impose that, that people in there that they can get paired up with that bleed company culture and understand and lead the right way. That's how you
Tyler Martin: grow your way up. I know this is a long answer. This is my approach. It's a great answer. Do you know in like the example of the 20 and the 100, of what percentage of those, the 20, for example, do they actually make it? Do they go and go, hey, I'm going to hire 20 and I, or your example,
Tyler Martin: of three to five, I'm going to hire three and only one's going to make it? Or what statistically do
AI Levi: you expect? Let me address it for the small guys. So if I hired five guys, I hope to graduate three. And back in those days, if I could get you in a truck, you could make a quarter of a million dollars. So if I hired five, three guys, $750,000 I added to the company. So if I went to school
AI Levi: with three, I hope to graduate two, that would be 500,000. It wasn't even so much the money. is that we just had so many calls, more than we could ever humanly do in a day. So it was driving the bus in a great way.
AI Levi: And then I could put as many people in. You know, my father loved what I did. And he basically said, well, why can't we just put him in a room for two weeks and train him up nonstop? I go, dad, I would if I could.
AI Levi: But that's not how we learn. This class is four to five months. They've already got to do this work in the field to make sure I'm taking the right guy or gal in this case today, where they're going to come in and have a high chance of success
AI Levi: so that when they graduate, they can go out with a set of tasks that they can do and master. And then I'll bring them back in and retrain them to the next level. So, yeah, it's got to be done over that period. I'm a strong believer that this was, I hope it will be ended out,
AI Levi: but basically what I was, the trainer thought it was, the mind can only understand or conceive what the butt can withstand. So you putting me in the chair all day long, day after day, is not going to be effective. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: You work with Tommy Mello, right? You were very instrumental in his growth. I think he's even attributed that to you. When you look at him, having worked with him, is there a trait or is there something about him that stands out for you?
Tyler Martin: Is he so unique in all his success, something stands out about him special?
39:12The five step ethical sales system behind a million in sales
Tyler Martin: Or he's just followed the process and the systems and that's what's worked for him?
AI Levi: Yeah, I would say the thing about Tommy, extremely bright, a really great reader. And he doesn't have to always be right. I tell the story all the time. It kind of goes back to Tommy's extraordinarily bright. But my first year back, my brothers wanted to know what did I learn from the road of being away.
AI Levi: And I said, I met people that are way smarter than the three of us as clients. I said, but they meet, they talk, they decide, they talk, they do, whatever. The three of us get in a room, fight it out. We come up with one decision.
AI Levi: We go out and make it happen. And that is the difference right then and there. So Tommy, once he understands, it's going to get done. It's going to get done. And he's not stopping. And I did have to ruin him on a lot of things.
AI Levi: And one day I just told him, I said, I could clear out this $2 million worth of dead inventory with your own forklift and you wouldn't know. You have one guy, his only job is to try to make up for all the things that you mess up,
AI Levi: which is strictly bad defense. Why do we play offense where you don't mess up every call you run? So, you know, it was, and he took it, he took it. And from there, he just kept on building one by one. What's next, what's next?
AI Levi: And for him, that master project, top 30, top five thing was really great because he knew himself. Shiny object, next thing. And he had a good team. It was a very tight team. It was the general manager. Adam was great, great service manager.
AI Levi: And Brian and a great install manager. Luke came along. You know, a very tight team. Part of the problem is, is this politically correct about we should involve everybody? Well, then nobody gets to talk and nobody should be in this room. So you have to do the hard thing.
AI Levi: It's, you know, a very tight group is really driving. We can't have 10 different people on the steering wheel.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. So many things I've got out of this podcast. Unfortunately, this isn't normally my full 45 minutes because we had some technical problems. So I am fortunately going to have to wrap up. I do want to make sure I talk about your website, though.
Tyler Martin: So you've got a website, 7powercontractor.com.
AI Levi: Number seven.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, number seven. Sorry.
AI Levi: Yeah, number sevenpowercontractor.com, which stands for the seven items that I brought up earlier.
Tyler Martin: You also have an awesome book, which I mentioned, which is on the 7 Power Contractor system. If people wanted to reach out to you or just chat with you, their website's the best spot to go. Is that correct?
AI Levi: The best thing to do is to go to the number 7 Power Contractor. I have a ton of free stuff there. There's a toolkit. There's blogs. I've been writing blogs forever. Magazine. There's a ton of stuff there. It's very searchable. So there's these things that you can do.
AI Levi: If you're interested in the products, go to the products page. You see the book. you see this signature operating manual system which is the first program and then there's the second program which is the signature staffing system you can't do the second program until you
Tyler Martin: do the first but that's really there's plenty there for you to do yeah i no longer do the calls and the rest of the stuff but there are people that are handling that so yeah is is anything as it relates to sops you know we used to have the binder and to your point a lot of people wouldn't
Tyler Martin: even look at it just sit there and they'd call the bible and nobody would open it up do you think with the evolution of all the automation and everything. What are you suggesting nowadays? Do you still have a binder? Do you have it all in a Google drive? Do you use software? What do you do?
AI Levi: Nobody prints it up anymore. Nobody should be printing it up. It's very hard to keep it up and work off new manuals. If you're working with a tablet, not a phone, working with a tablet, which most of you should be, if not all, then they get it delivered to that. And it's just a
AI Levi: view only. And when they leave, we just lock them out. They come to their meetings. We go through it. they have to go through that manual over and over and over again. It'd be like saying, I'm going to read the Bible once and I'll be done.
AI Levi: It's really just a ridiculous thought. Again, it's not SOPs. It's the playbook. That's what they're really learning. I don't believe in getting up in the attic and then talking into your phone and go, there's a train thing and what am I supposed to do here?
AI Levi: It's broken.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that's not the time to do it. Got it. Okay, good feedback. Al, thank you so much for your time today. You are truly one of my inspirations. When I first got in this industry several years back, five years plus year back, I read your book.
Tyler Martin: I thought it was one of the first books I read. You were on my list. I referred a client to, you don't know it, but they checked out your website and used your system for their own business. So I just can't thank you enough.
Tyler Martin: Appreciate it, really do.
AI Levi: I always love to talk to people. Guys, I've been in your chair. I know how uncomfortable it is. It doesn't have to be.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, love it. Okay, Al, have a good one. Thanks for your time. Hal's experience shows that a successful trades business can still become overwhelming when the owner is carrying too much of the operation personally. The real breakthrough came when the company stopped relying on individual effort and started
Tyler Martin: building a structure that could support the business without constant owner involvement. Clear roles, practical playbooks, internal training, leadership development, and a focus list of priorities gave the team a better way to operate and gave Al the freedom to step away. His top five approach is especially useful. There will always be another idea, another problem,
Tyler Martin: or another opportunity competing for your attention. But if everything is a priority, nothing gets finished. The goal is to identify the few things that matter the most, work through them in the right order and follow through consistently. That same discipline applies to the financial side of the business. Understanding your margin, cash flow, and capacity gives you a
Tyler Martin: clearer picture of where the company stands and what it can realistically support as you grow. That is exactly the kind of work we help trades owners with at Profit and Grit CFOs. Check out our website at ProfitAndGrit.com to learn more, or feel free to book a free intro call at CFO
Tyler Martin: IntroCall.com. Hey, last but not least, I sincerely appreciate you listening,
45:27Bottom up leadership and letting techs earn their own box
Tyler Martin: and I'll catch you on the next episode.
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For where your business sits on cash and margin right now, read the $3M to $15M scaling breakdown.
