How to Become the Next GOAT in Home Services – Paul Kelly

00:00Taking Parker & Sons from $7 million to $250 million

Paul Kelly: I built Parker & Sons on one principle, a thousand small things done right beat one big swing every time. If you’re at 3 million, 5 million, or 10 million and feeling stuck, this conversation is for you.

Tyler Martin: Welcome to Profit & 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.

Tyler Martin: Here’s your host, the Blue Collar CFO, Tyler Martin. Today we’re chatting with one of the true goats of the home service industry. Paul Kelly took Parker & Sons from a $7 million business to more than $250 million, all through organic growth in a single market.

Tyler Martin: But what impressed me most wasn’t the size of the company. It was how he thinks about execution. So if you’ve ever come back from a conference full of ideas and you’ve struggled to actually put them into practice, this conversation is going to be for you.

Tyler Martin: Let’s talk with Paul now. Hey, Paul, welcome to The Profit and Grit Show. How’s it going today?

Paul Kelly: Good, good. Thanks for having me on, Tyler.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, thanks for being here. I’m so excited to talk with you. You are definitely one of the legends in this space.

Paul Kelly: Well, there’s a lot of people that have taught me a lot and a lot of goats in this industry that are willing to help just about anybody, including a guy like me.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, it’s true. I mean, the goats out there are just so kind. And so we talked about this in the pre-call, just so willing to share their knowledge of what makes this industry so cool.

01:47Semi-retired, the grandkids, and building Raising Goats

Paul Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it is. It is. Well, you know, just for context, for just to share a little bit about yourself, could you tell me, like, what are you up to these days? I’d love to just start there. And then also maybe a personal tidbit about yourself.

Paul Kelly: Yeah, no, well, I’m a, I’m kind of semi-retired or maybe just tired, one of the two. And I’m still, still working for the Wrench Group, trying to help them here and there. I’m still involved at Parker & Sons a little bit. I’m not involved in the day-to-day.

Paul Kelly: Daryl runs that as well as others. But I pop in there once a week and help them with some stuff and am always available via email or whatever. And then I’m getting more into trying to give back to the industry in a way and spending a lot of time on a training program that I put together with EGIA called Raising Goats.

Paul Kelly: And that’s taking up some time as well. So between that and the grandkids, four of them, and my wife’s retired as well. She’s going through some stuff with some cancer or whatever. So we’ve been busy with that, but things are looking up there.

Paul Kelly: So that’s where I’ve been spending my time. Yeah, I’m sorry to hear that, but good to hear things are looking positive.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, the Raising Goats, you do that. Is that once a year you do that or is that twice a year?

Paul Kelly: Well, it’s twice a year. I won’t do it that long. And so anybody who wants, you can go to RaisingGoats.com. You know, if I can be, and we’ll talk about it today, I’m sure. But if I can be a goat in the industry, I tried to figure out how could others be a goat in a very quick time period, not taking years and years to to learn things.

Paul Kelly: And I tried to I didn’t want to do it unless I could figure out how it was different and how it was better than the things that are already out there. And so I finally convinced myself that I had something, and we’ve had one class back in March.

Paul Kelly: Our next one is November 9th through the 12th, and it has ongoing training as well. But it basically has four pillars, how to be a better thinker, how to be a better implementer, better operator, and better leader. And I’ve got some stuff in there that just no one has seen or taught before that I think people will, it’ll be a wow to anybody who goes to it.

Paul Kelly: You’ll walk out of there a way different person.

04:28Competing now that PE-backed shops are on every billboard

Paul Kelly: So, yeah.

Tyler Martin: One of the things we talked about, even today you mentioned it, was around things being so much more competitive today than maybe 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So what would you say to the typical shop owner that’s doing, let’s say, somewhere between $5 to $15 million a year in this climate of higher competition, private equity?

Tyler Martin: Is there anything, and it probably relates back to your pillars, but is there anything you would say to them like, hey, this is where, these are things you should focus on, or these are the most important things that are going to help you break through and get to the next level?

Paul Kelly: Yeah, no, Tyler, you hit it on the nose. It is a lot more competitive than ever before because of the PE groups that have bought companies and they have to create their own story. And the companies that were never on TV or radio or billboard or those kind of things, all of a sudden they’re everywhere.

Paul Kelly: And even Parker and Sons, as big as we are, 260 million this year, you know, we have to compete against all these other people where it was just us on TV mostly and radio and billboard. And so even Parker and Sons has to change his strategy.

Paul Kelly: And I think for that five and eight, you know, just because we’re 260 million, I can tell you everything that I talk about will relate to the 1 million guy or the 20 to 50 million guy. And basically, it’s one, make sure that you make more out of the business you already get.

Paul Kelly: And that’s increasing your close rate. That’s average tickets. That’s making sure you answer the phone. Make sure your booking rate’s high enough. All the things that other people talk about, I’ve got different spins on all of them that have helped us. And simplicity is the key, I think, to everything.

Paul Kelly: But it is about the four pillars that it is about how do you think through the challenges that you have and how do you become this is the biggest one. How do you become a master at implementing and how do you implement quickly?

Paul Kelly: Because things that take months or years to implement never really get implemented. Things that take hours or days. That’s that’s what I’m all about. And we proved that during COVID that you everybody did. you can implement at a really high level very, very quickly.

Paul Kelly: So I take some of the principles that I learned during that time frame in the Raising Goats program, and I teach people how to implement quickly. And that is the secret to massive success. When you can implement things at a much faster rate and at a higher rate, then you’ve got

Paul Kelly: a machine that your competitors won’t end up competing with. So, yeah.

Tyler Martin: Just to break that down into like a real world application, can you give me an example of something that a shop can implement faster or apply with that methodology of implementing

07:46The sales recovery process that lifted close rate 10-15 points

Tyler Martin: faster?

Paul Kelly: Yeah. I mean, I’ll give you a real life example. We implemented, you know, every lead you get, most of the companies that are listening to this podcast, you’re going to be successful or not successful depending on larger ticket items, right? And so it is, in HVAC, it would be the HVAC install.

Paul Kelly: If that engine isn’t running well, then you’re going to struggle, period. End of story, right? And so I was brought back in to Parker and Sons to help figure out how we can accelerate. We’re doing well, but how do we accelerate that engine?

Paul Kelly: And basically, I came up with, I didn’t come up with it. I learned it probably 30 years ago from a guy named John Murad, a sales recovery process of taking leads that you didn’t close. and closing those leads. And it changed the game for Parker & Sons

Paul Kelly: where now their close rate is 10 to 15 points higher than what it used to run. And that is a huge number for Parker & Sons. And so that sales recovery process, we could have inched along and rolled it out and then had more meetings and meetings after meetings

Paul Kelly: and find out that it’s still not implemented right. But we accelerated that, and we accelerated the process. It used to be somebody called after the cover consultant left. Now they call at the kitchen table when they’re having trouble closing. And I’ve got a technique that you would learn during Raising Goats,

Paul Kelly: or it’s actually on other podcasts that can help you get through that. But it is that process that we implemented very, very quickly, and it ended up being a 10 to 15 pointer. That’s an example of, you know, when you implement things quickly, you have to decide that, you know, it’s not going to take very long and that you want it done, things that are done today or tomorrow, and sometimes not an option.

Paul Kelly: Those are the things that get implemented. And when people see the results of the implementation, then you get this culture of when we say we’re going to do something, we get it done and we get it done quickly. That is a culture that just can’t be beat.

Tyler Martin: Yeah. You know, Paul, one thing I love when you bring this up is on your Raising Goat site, I think it’s an eight minute video. And you talk about how all of us, this is just not our industry, it’s just human nature. We go to these seminars or we go name it, we read a book, whatever, we get off jacked up about something, but we don’t implement. Like we just, we take all these ideas from our conference, go home, look at our notes and we never implement it.

Paul Kelly: Yeah, no. And most people would say, well, just pick one thing and go back and implement it. I believe that you can only implement one thing at a time. Well, but each department that you have can implement one thing. All of a sudden, now you’ve got five or six things going on.

Paul Kelly: And the things that you implement can be implemented in hours or days, not weeks or months or years. And then all of a sudden, you get that implemented, and then you can go on to something else. And so one of the things that springboarded Parker and Sons in the growing 20, 30, one year, 40 million in a year in 2022 is we just got crazy good at implementing.

Paul Kelly: So, yeah, you can go to all the seminars you want. You can have mentors. You’re going to have coaches. You can listen to podcasts. You can do a hundred things. And most people just love learning. They don’t love implementing. But in the end, you’re going to be successful or not by how good of an implementer you are.

Paul Kelly: I believe that thoroughly. And that’s the kind of stuff that I love sharing and teaching on how to be a better implementer. So, yeah.

12:12Simplicity and speed as the only two implementation rules

Tyler Martin: And how do you, Paul? I mean, I’m like, I hear everything you’re saying and I get fired up by it. But how do you take the typical shop owner and help them become an implementer? How do you make it so they can do it quick even?

Tyler Martin: Is there some methodology there or something?

Paul Kelly: Yeah, it is. It’s not about some eight-step process that some trainer wants to teach you. It’s about a one-step process. It’s about simplifying everything that you do, everything you think about. But if you want something to get implemented, you need to sift it down into this one thing that if I just did this one thing, I get it mostly right or it’s going to make a huge difference.

Paul Kelly: And so that’s the first thing is complication. You know, complexity never leads to implementation. Simplicity does. The more simple a concept is, the easier it is to implement, the more scalable it is, the more effect that it’ll have on your company. And so that’s the first step, simplicity.

Paul Kelly: And then the second step is speed. Speed at which you do something. And because it’s simple and I give different techniques for gaining speed, but if you can implement things very, very quickly within a week, normally that thing that you wanted them to do is implemented and it’s implemented well, that will change the culture of your business of, hey, when we set out to do something, we get it done and we get it done quickly.

Paul Kelly: And so I think simplicity and speed are the two main things. There’s, there’s, you know, two or three others, but those are the things that help somebody implement at a much higher level.

Tyler Martin: So in terms of, because what I think of when I hear like implement change, keep it simple, that sounds the keep it simple. So it makes a lot of sense to me, but the change, a lot of times it’s like, you’re kind of wagging the tail.

Tyler Martin: Like you’ve got a bunch of employees. Now, if you make a change, you’ve got to be able to communicate that to them. You got to get everybody on board.

14:23Telling the team this isn’t optional, then never letting go

Tyler Martin: How do we simplify that though? So people can make that change. Like I’ll give you a good example. Someone came to me not too long ago. They’re still doing their estimates pretty much by a paper process where like 10 different people are touching the invoice.

Tyler Martin: One person’s going to a website, looking up pricing. Another person’s verifying the pricing. You know, it’s just this big, long process that’s just, and they’ve got a 50 deep of estimates that aren’t even getting written. It’s taken them a month to do them.

Tyler Martin: And so how do you implement that change quickly? Because people are involved and people don’t like change. And what am I missing here? I’m sure I’m missing something big.

Paul Kelly: Well, you have to simplify the process in that particular example. You’re going to have the cover consultant give the proposal at the door. You have to have the software that can support that. But I think the expectation is what is usually missing, is you have this idea.

Paul Kelly: You want to roll it out. You heard it at a seminar or whatever. And you know it’s a good idea if only implemented well. And you roll it out. And everybody, you’ve been training everybody all along that when you say something, you can learn to ignore it because you don’t follow up.

Paul Kelly: You don’t. There’ll be something else next week that he wants to roll out and something else the week after. And you have to change that mindset of we’re not about how many things we can roll out. We’re about rolling out this one thing and we’re going to get it done.

Paul Kelly: And I’m not letting go of it. And the expectation is everybody has to get on board. Now, I say it in a kind of a weird way. There are some things that you want to walk people through. And there are some people, some things that you just have to stand up in front of everyone and say, hey, this isn’t an option.

Paul Kelly: We have to compete. We have to do this. And here’s why. I always like letting them know why we’re doing it. Here’s how it’s good for you. Here’s how it’s good for the customer. Here’s how it’s good for the company. In that order, because it needs to be good for them first.

Paul Kelly: and then the customer and then the company last. But all three of those have to be part of why are we doing it? Why is it good for everyone? And then the expectation is set that, you know, everyone has to do this. Now, I always tell people, like, you don’t have to do it.

Paul Kelly: I’m not going to make you do it. You just can’t work here if you don’t. And I don’t do that with everything. You can’t do that with everything. But the important things, yeah, it’s not an option. It’s who we are. It’s who I want to be.

Paul Kelly: And then you get everyone’s commitment. You shake their hand and say, hey, are you going to do it? And then you hold them accountable. And then that meeting doesn’t do it. That meeting is just the reason that you now have a reason to follow up and to hold them accountable and to nag them and to whatever.

Paul Kelly: And eventually they’ll learn, oh, when Paul says he’s going to get something done, he never lets it go. And that’s a powerful culture as opposed to what most cultures are, the opposite of that. So that’s how you get the mindset and the things rolling that you need to be a way better implementer.

Tyler Martin: implementer. It’s funny. You talked about kind of the classic entrepreneur that brings up a new idea and then a week later, they’ve got a new idea and employees quickly know that. And they just like, okay, he’ll get over this in a week. I’m going to forget about it. But you just kind of painted

Tyler Martin: this picture for me that you go from this guy that someone knows is just going to forget about his idea next week to kind of a pit bull where the minute you get, and no offense to pit bulls, But the minute you get an idea, you know, you’re an entrepreneur with your idea, people are thinking, oh, man, once this guy brings something up, he’s got his teeth in it and he’s going to execute on it.

Tyler Martin: And you’ve changed the whole dynamic of how your staff looks at you at that point.

Paul Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, it’s funny because during the Raising Goats training, we actually go through what I think is one of the most powerful things that you can implement. And I tell everyone in the class, you are not leaving this class without knowing this. And we actually just practice it and practice it in the class.

Paul Kelly: Oh, wow. Within one hour, within one hour. And I break it down. I do it like line dancing. You don’t learn a line dance all at once or, you know, you learn it in small steps. and by the end of that hour everyone knows it and it was funny because we were having dinner that

Paul Kelly: same night and one of the the students in the class wanted to give the toast and I said yeah for sure give the toast and he rattled off what we went over in class and it was it was my proudest moment because I knew that everyone in that class knew how important that was, and they all adopted

Paul Kelly: it. And by the end of that hour, they all knew it. And it will, and it has. I’ve already talked to many of them. We have a call next week with all of them, but it’s changed their business dramatically. And it’s a powerful way to make HVAC systems affordable. And it’s not your typical

Paul Kelly: financing speech that everyone gives. It’s a way to make something expensive and affordable. And I believe affordability and urgency are the two things that you need for people to buy a system, And especially ahead of the event, the event, their air goes out.

Paul Kelly: Yeah, okay, maybe they’re going to buy a system. But how do you get them to buy before the event, during a tune-up? Or maybe it’s a Costco or Home Depot lead. Or it’s, you know, how do you get them to buy when their system’s working perfectly now?

Paul Kelly: It’s just older. And I’ve got something that they’ll learn that it just, it’s a wow. And they’ll learn it in the class. They will never forget it.

Tyler Martin: What do you see when, I know you haven’t done a lot of these, I think you’ve done one of the, it’s your first cohort, I’ll call it, that has gone through. Did you see any like trend among that group of where their weaknesses were at or what you normally see maybe with a small business in terms of what’s causing them not to be able to execute?

Tyler Martin: I imagine you’re going to say it falls under the four pillars, but is there anything specific you see as like a shortcoming of what these small business owners often have that prevent them from scaling to the next level?

Paul Kelly: Well, I mean, I want to go back to the implementation. It is the implementation that most contractors are just terrible at. And, you know, I can imagine why they’re terrible at it. I struggle myself. I have to force myself. But most owners are very involved in the business and they’re involved in the day to day and they get sucked in and have to talk to a lot of people and they’re trying to solve so many problems.

Paul Kelly: And the thing they learned in the seminar just falls way down the list when they get back. And, hey, that’s human nature. That’s normal. That’s like that. There’s nothing in some sense. There’s nothing wrong with that. You do have to handle things that happen in your business.

Paul Kelly: But it is that simplicity and holding yourself accountable. Looking in the mirror and knowing that you’re the problem, not the tech that won’t implement something. You’re not holding them accountable to doing it. It’s your problem. So everything, if you start off with the idea that everything is your fault and you really look at yourself and get the hardest thing for people to do is get outside themselves, look back in and see themselves, how they really are or how other people see them.

Paul Kelly: And if you can do that, which we talk about a lot in the class, then you start to realize what your strengths and weaknesses are. And sometimes it’s getting help on the weakness part. and sometimes it’s magnifying the strengths that you have. But yeah, it’s the implementation side of things.

Paul Kelly: I think the business takes over when they get back and everything that they might have learned is just a bunch of notes on a piece of paper. I’ll ask people, how was that seminar? How was that conference? Oh, it was so great. Look at all the notes I took.

Paul Kelly: But I don’t care how many notes you took. I just care about whether it’s going to make a difference. And 99% of the time, it doesn’t. And so I set out to solve that.

Tyler Martin: When you looked at the group as a whole, when they articulated what their challenges were, like I’m sure some said, hey, I want to grow revenue. Some said, I want to have better profits. Some said, I need more technicians. Was there any common theme in that group that kind of surprised you in terms of what they thought their problem is, whereas maybe you don’t feel that probably is their problem with something else?

Tyler Martin: Was there any theme where you noticed that?

Paul Kelly: Yeah. I mean, the theme that I – I mean, most people in the class wanted to grow revenue. They wanted to get large. They wanted to have more market share. and not be the class is not about how to be a $250 million company.

Paul Kelly: It’s if you’re at 1 million, it’s it’s how to be a 2 million.

24:52It’s not the land, it’s the man, and owning your own ceiling

Paul Kelly: If you’re 2 million, how to be 3 million, not even 5 or 10 or 20. It’s about how to get that next million. It’s you’ve heard the phrase death by a thousand paper cuts. Yeah. Well, most people’s success, certainly mine, has been success by a thousand little things that we did.

Paul Kelly: It wasn’t any one thing. And so it was getting better at something every day, even if it was just marginally. And I think the common theme in the room was that people in the room came into the room thinking that there were outside forces acting upon them.

Paul Kelly: And that’s why they were doing what they were doing. You know, it was competition. It was the industry. It was COVID back when. It was inflation. It was, you know, political. It was this. It was that. It was a hundred other things, but their name never got on that list.

Paul Kelly: And that is the only name in my mind that’s on the list. It’s not the land. It’s the man is a phrase we had at Roto-Rooter. And they did that to rhyme man or woman. But it’s not a hundred other things. It’s you, my friend.

Paul Kelly: And I think everybody had a realization in the class that, hey, if my company is going to grab a lot of market share, do a lot better, it starts with me and it starts with holding yourself accountable. And I think that was a common theme.

Tyler Martin: It’s almost like an extreme ownership angle is what you guys take is like, hey, it stops with me. It’s not all these external factors. It’s me that I’ve got to, if I look in the mirror and realize it’s me, that’s what I can change.

Tyler Martin: I can’t change all these external factors. Is that kind of what?

Paul Kelly: Yeah, no, that’s exactly what you summarized it well, Tyler. No, that’s what it is about. It’s about how do you become a better leader, thinker, operator, implementer? When you become better at those four pillars, everyone else will start to feed off of that and they’ll start to become better.

Paul Kelly: and you’ll start to hold them accountable to being better. But when you can’t hold yourself accountable, then it’s really hard to hold others accountable. So yeah, I think it starts with you.

Tyler Martin: We just touched on it a little bit. I want to talk about this. So you wrote a great book. It’s called Tricks of the Trade to Success. And in that book, your concept of ta-da is a big part of the book. And really, you define that as extraordinary results

Tyler Martin: are just a lot of ordinary things done consistently better than everyone else. And you kind of just alluded to that. So I want to talk to it a little bit. I think sometimes we think like change has to be huge. And your whole thesis, one of your theses is around small little incremental things

Tyler Martin: can make a big difference. Could you talk about that, how you applied that in your own business?

Paul Kelly: Yeah, no, look, everybody thinks that if you have a $260 million operation, that you have your shit together and you know what you’re doing and it must run like a fine-tuned machine. Not even close. Sometimes Daryl and I would meet and we’d laugh at how everything that we looked at

Paul Kelly: was broke to one extent or another. Or that anything we looked at could be done better, right? Sometimes significantly better. And yet, when we looked at our P&L and we saw the growth that we were having and the bottom line that we were having, we just would look at each other in amazement and laugh and just say, hey, you know, we’re doing something right.

Paul Kelly: But it was about, one, breaking things down in the small increments, figuring out what the most important thing to do to improve it is, and then setting out to get that improvement done quickly and then on to the next one. And it, yeah, it was never about, you know, it was, you know, when we talk, and I’m one, look, you won’t hear this from many trainers in the industry.

29:28Coaching actions instead of average ticket and KPIs

Paul Kelly: I’m not about KPIs and end results. It doesn’t mean I don’t look at KPIs. That’s not what I said. It doesn’t mean I don’t like end results. It doesn’t mean I don’t like growing a business, both top line and bottom line. And those are important.

Paul Kelly: And that’s not what I like to talk about. When I meet with a bunch of technicians, I’m not talking about their average ticket and you need to get it up and you’re too low. I’m talking about actions. I’m talking about activity that leads to something.

Paul Kelly: Whether it leads to a higher average ticket or it doesn’t lead to a higher average ticket, I don’t care. That doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is that you’re thorough, that you present options, that you wow the customer in a way they’ve never been wowed before.

Paul Kelly: If you can do those three things and you walk away with a low average ticket, I’m perfectly happy with you. Because that customer will always ask for you and they’ll always use Parker & Sons. and one day they’ll replace their system, but it’s just not now.

Paul Kelly: It’s not about the end result. It’s about the activity or the actions that lead to the end result. And that’s what we focused on. And those things, the activity, the actions, it’s not about how many points you score in a basketball game. It’s about blocking out and less turnovers and actions, right?

Paul Kelly: And so that’s what we concentrated on. And you can always get a little bit better at those things. And that’s what we talk about, how to get better at your wow, how to get better at presenting options and how to how to be more thorough than anybody in the industry.

Paul Kelly: If you’re more thorough, you’re going to find more stuff. If you find more stuff, you got more stuff to talk about. If you have more stuff to talk about, there’s more of a reason to replace that system, even though it’s working fine. It just happens to be older.

Paul Kelly: And then when you make it affordable and you get crazy good at that, then all of a sudden it becomes way easier. Those are the things that we talked about.

Tyler Martin: And in fairness here, Paul, if you’re doing all the fundamentals really well, I imagine your thinking is the end result will take care of itself. Is that a fair statement?

Paul Kelly: That is a fair statement. Yeah. That’s why you don’t care. If for whatever reason the average ticket’s low, you know over time it’s not going to be that way if we’re doing all the fundamentals at a really high level. Yeah. Okay. Got it.

Tyler Martin: No, that’s exactly right. And then it’s, you know, you can talk to somebody until you’re blue in the face and say, you know, wow the customer, right? But if you don’t show them, tell them, give examples, highlight techs who are wowing the customer, if they don’t have a method for wowing, then that just, you know, they figure they’re already wowing.

Tyler Martin: But how do you get that customer when you walk away, they look at their spouse or their kids or they tell their neighbor like, wow, I’ve never had an experience like we just have with Parker and Sons. Let me tell you about it.

Tyler Martin: Those, you know, the referral across the fence doesn’t happen like it used to. It happens on the Internet and it’s watered down and neighbors pull into the garage. The garage goes down. They don’t talk to each other.

33:14Waived diagnostic fees, shoe covers, and other wows

Tyler Martin: You have to really wow them for them to want to talk to somebody about what they just experienced. And so it’s breaking it down and letting everyone know how important that is.

Paul Kelly: What do you consider? What are some wow things that a technician can do?

Tyler Martin: Yeah. Well, one, some of them you need to take credit for. You’re used to them, but the customer isn’t. And I’ll give you an example. there is like a lot of companies, they waive the diagnostic fee or the trip charge or service charge or whatever they call it. They waive that when they do a repair. Now they build it back into

Tyler Martin: their pricing and they still get it, whatever it’s. But the customer doesn’t a lot of times know it. And so you want to be able to let the customer know, hey, we have a $89 diagnostic fee. I’m going to go ahead and waive that for you. We’ll get this repair done. That’ll save you $89. Like,

Tyler Martin: that’s a wow. Hey, I just saved $89, right? Being thorough, taking the customer with you on some of what you do can be a wow. Doing something for free on every call is a wow. Sometimes it has to do with what you’re working on. Sometimes it might not.

Tyler Martin: when you got the ladder out and you just ask is are there any light balls higher up that needs changed or can i change out those batteries in the smoke detector while i got my ladder out that’s a wow i mean there there’s a whole list of wows that we have and um in creating that it isn’t

Tyler Martin: this one wow, it’s a series of wows. Even the smallest wow of, you know, our technicians put on shoe covers or floor savers or whatever you want to call them. And, you know, a lot of customers will tell you, oh, no, you don’t need to put those on.

Tyler Martin: And our people are trained, no, it’s company policy. And if I didn’t do it, you know, I would feel like I was cheating our company and I just won’t do that. If it’s okay, I’m going to go ahead and put them on. Well, if you won’t cheat your company when they’re not with you and they’re not looking, I guess I can trust you, right?

Tyler Martin: That’s a wow. You add up all these little wows and all of a sudden you’ve got this. That’s just a handful of examples. But yeah.

Paul Kelly: Yeah. When I Andy Hobica was on my podcast long time ago of Hobica is the name of the AC company and shop in Arizona. Oh, I know. Well, I know. I know the Hobica brothers are good, good people. They’re amazing. They’re so cool.

Paul Kelly: But he talked about how, you know, taking the garbage in for taking the garbage cans back in if he sees them. Or I remember he said he had one customer that had a little bit of a broken glass door, not the glass, but the door didn’t slide.

Paul Kelly: And he just readjusted a little bit. He was talking about all these different like wow experiences that just make it even parking your vehicle sometimes, like where you park it, he talked about. And so I guess when you’re doing all these things, when you guys were doing your training, did you actually have like a list of all these wow things to give the technicians ideas of how they can make the experience different for the client?

Tyler Martin: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s part of the Parker experience. And there’s a lot of wows that people come up with on their own. And then we want to share those at meetings and add that to our list. So yeah, there was a standard list of wows and a whole bunch of other wows that I would have never, you know, never even thought of that. Oh my gosh, that is so good.

Tyler Martin: So, yeah, yeah, that’s it’s part of the experience that in the end people talk about. And if you want to compete with the Parker and Sons of the world or you want to just compete at a higher level against your competitors and start grabbing market share, start with that wow experience.

Tyler Martin: In the Raising Goats class, I ask everyone, you know, the percentage of wow experiences. Is it 90% of the calls you run are a wow experience? Or is it five or 10, something in between? The number one answer I got from the 32 contractors that were in the room was it was somewhere between 10 and 15%.

Tyler Martin: That’s way too low of a wow. I need that wow at least half the time. And so if you can double or triple your wow factor, you might just double or triple your business without having to spend any more money. And wouldn’t that be, in the end, that’s what you need to figure out these days, is how do I get low-cost leads or how do I get no-cost leads?

Tyler Martin: And that’s part of it.

Paul Kelly: How do you, from a technician standpoint, I mean, obviously talking about it in your meetings is part of it, but is it just a cultural thing that you get them to actually execute on trying to give wow moments? Because I believe, did you do spiff for wow?

Paul Kelly: That wasn’t really part of your compensation, was it? If people were doing wow things, were they getting spiff for that?

Tyler Martin: No, they weren’t. We didn’t spiff wow. We just recognize the wows in emails and at meetings, and we might recognize somebody with a little gift or whatever at a meeting if they had a huge wow. You know, we had last year was Parkinson’s 50th anniversary that it’s been in business, and we celebrated that with 50 acts of kindness.

Tyler Martin: And some of those things were planned kindness events. And some of it was somebody, you know, stopping on the roadside to help somebody in need. And so acts of kindness or acts of wow can come from anybody at any time, anywhere. And recognize it.

Tyler Martin: Recognize it. Call it out. Celebrate it. and get that culture of, hey, we’re the company that wows you. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good stuff.

Paul Kelly: Hey, last thing I want to, a couple of things here, Paul, I want to wrap up on is just in terms of like ceilings, because a lot of times shops will come to me and they’re at a ceiling. It might be 3 million,

Paul Kelly: might be 5 million, might be 10 million. What do you think like when you’ve seen, we’ve kind of covered this a little bit in terms of the pillars,

40:15The fish tank principle and what really caps a shop

Paul Kelly: but is it a capabilities thing? Do you think a shop owner gets to a certain level and that’s really as big as they can be because of their own way they run? I mean, is it possible to get them to change their behavior to get to the next level?

Paul Kelly: I mean, even when you look at your own way you’ve developed as a leader, how did you push yourself to get past these thresholds?

Tyler Martin: Yeah. Most of the ceilings that, one, a ceiling can be a physical thing. Yeah. It can be the building that you operate out of and the yard that you operate out of is too small. And you’re going to have trouble growing beyond it.

Tyler Martin: Now, there are ways that we figured out. I mean, if we do $260 million out of a fairly small geographic area and buildings compared to, If you took our revenue per square foot of building, I’m going to guess we would be the highest in the nation as far as revenue per square foot.

Tyler Martin: So we’ve figured out some things. But your building can be physically. But most of the ceiling is your own ceiling, your own capabilities. There’s something in Tricks of the Trade to Success, my book, which is everyone’s favorite chapter, is the fish tank principle.

Tyler Martin: And a fish grows to the size of the tank it’s in and how many other fish are in with it. And people are the same way. People grow to the size of their capabilities and how many problems and other things they’re trying to accomplish at the same time.

Tyler Martin: And until you get rid of some of those problems or until you get a bigger fish tank, your own capabilities, then you’re stuck at this 10 million mark. So, yeah, expand your capabilities first and expand the capabilities of those. One of the things about raising goats that I love is we teach the 32 people that are in there how to raise their own goats.

Tyler Martin: I want this to be a movement, not a class. And they can start creating their own goats within their own organization or maybe it’s a friend of theirs or whatever. Sure. And so expand your own tank of skill sets and the way you think and the way you implement.

Tyler Martin: Start expanding who you are, and then all of a sudden you’ll break through that barrier that you’ve been stuck at.

Paul Kelly: Yeah, good stuff. Okay, so just as we wrap up here, I want to talk about raising goats. I believe you have another cohort coming up here soon. How do people get into that? Is it by invite? Can they register on their own? Do you vet them? What does that look like?

Tyler Martin: We do vet them. There’s a little bit of a survey, but most people can get in it. I’m not, I mean, I want to help people. And sometimes it’s somebody that’s stuck at 2 million and somebody, sometimes it’s getting past that 20 million or 50 million.

Tyler Martin: We’ll have people anywhere from 2 million in the class to, you know, 100 million. And the problems are all the same. But, yeah, they can go to RaisingGoats.com, just RaisingGoats.com on EGIA’s site. And it’s November 9th through the 12th. It’s not cheap. It’s $14,000 for what you get because you also get EGIA membership.

Tyler Martin: You get a ticket to their EPIC event. You get access to all of their training, whatever. You obviously get the class in Scottsdale, Arizona, and you get my mentorship. You get Mark Madison’s Tommy Mello, Chris Yano, Drew Cameron, Brigham. You know, my son’s a part of it.

Tyler Martin: I mean, we’ve got so many goats. I had to say no to so many goats who wanted to be a part of this. and I was as excited about that as I was anything else because once I told them what I was doing

Tyler Martin: and how I was doing it they got excited about it and wanted to be a part of it and so you get access to those goats as well you can’t pay if somebody’s thinking who’s listening to this podcast I don’t know if I can afford that I’m not going to give you the typical answer you can’t

Tyler Martin: afford not to be there or anything like that. Look, if you can’t afford it, don’t come. If you can’t take that kind of time out of your schedule, don’t come. I’m okay with that. I want people there who want to be goats in this industry, who want to learn from the very, very best.

Tyler Martin: I can tell you a way to pay for it. Like anything else, the customer has to pay for it. You could increase your repair cost, five bucks or 10 bucks a repair, or you can increase your installs by $100. It’s not going to break the bank. It’s going to pay

Tyler Martin: for the class. I guarantee you one thing. It’ll change your life. It’ll change who you are. It’ll change people at your work will thank you because you will seem like a different person to them. And you’ll learn stuff that you haven’t learned in

Tyler Martin: other venues. So, you know, go out on the site. Sign up. And I look forward to seeing, you know, those that want to be a goat in this industry and learn from the best of the best goats. I’m going to enjoy seeing you there and seeing your transformation throughout the process.

Tyler Martin: Because it’s not just that class. There’s ongoing monthly training as well. And it’s all included in the price.

Paul Kelly: Yeah. I think it’s cool you’re doing it. And the team you’ve put together is a pretty top-notch team. I mean, hard to argue with some of the names in that or a lot of the names in that group.

Tyler Martin: Yeah. Well, you could be on that list, too, because you’re a goat in your own right. And you’re not just about growing revenue. You’re about making money, too, aren’t you?

Paul Kelly: For sure. I appreciate that. Okay. So just I want to recap here. Tricks of the Trade to Success is your book. Great book. I really highly recommend it. I love ta-da, ta-da concept. I think we always want to hit home runs, and we forget that it’s the increments that get us to actually win the game.

Paul Kelly: And so I think it’s just a great concept. Tricks of the trade.com also is a website, so people want to go there and check it out. And then Raising Goats, as you mentioned, .com is the next cohort.

Tyler Martin: When is the next cohort? Yeah, it’s November 9th through the 12th in Scottsdale, Arizona. on November is not a bad place to be for you and your loved one in November. So November 9th through the 12th, it starts on the afternoon of the 9th. It ends about noon or one o’clock

Tyler Martin: on the 12th. So it’s really three full days. There’s dinners, there’s special guests, there’s special events we do and some different things we do. It’ll be fun and you’ll learn a lot, Not only will you learn a lot, but you’ll walk away better at those four pillars.

Tyler Martin: So that’s my goal. And we accomplished it the last time. And this next one, it’ll be a powerful, it’ll be a great investment that you make in yourself.

Paul Kelly: Love it. Okay. Hey, thanks, Paul. I hope in the near future, maybe I could have you again next year and talk about your next phase of your life as you continue to share your wisdom. Can’t thank you enough for being on the

Tyler Martin: show. Yeah, no, thank you, Tyler. I appreciate it. I really liked Paul’s message that success isn’t about finding the next big thing. It’s about getting really good at executing the fundamentals over and over again. Now, that’s a lot less exciting than chasing the newest idea. I know that.

Tyler Martin: But it’s also how companies grow from 3 million to 10 million or from 10 million to 50. I also liked his ta-da concept. Big businesses aren’t built from one brilliant decision. They’re built from hundreds, if not thousands, of small improvements made consistently over time.

Tyler Martin: That’s true whether you’re talking about leadership, customer experience, training technicians, or growing profits. That’s exactly why I spend so much time helping owners understand their numbers. When you know where you’re making money, where you’re losing it, and what’s really driving cash flow, it’s a lot easier to decide what deserves your attention next.

Tyler Martin: Hey, if you’d like to get a better handle on your numbers, head on over to ProfitAndGrit.com. I’ve got this free cash flow scorecard that’s pretty cool. It assesses your situation. Or just feel free to book a complimentary intro meeting. I’d love to chat with you.

Tyler Martin: As always, thank you for listening, and I will catch you on the next episode.

Related Episodes

• The Revenue Levers Most Owners Ignore – Justin Judd
• The Shift That Took This HVAC Company From $5M to $11M – Darren Yarbrough
• 8 Steps To Book More, Charge More, Lose Less – Brigham Dickinson
• Why Most HVAC Sales Calls Fail Before They Start – Drew Cameron

Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: home services accounting help from a fractional CFO for HVAC contractors. For where your business sits right now, read the $3M to $15M scaling breakdown.