Transcript:
What is going on? Everybody. Everybody. Hey, if you’re tuning in just right off the bat, I’m going to do a tech check. So if you can hear me, you can see me. You can smell me. No, I’m just kidding. Just hear me or see me. Just comment below the word live. So live. Just comment live. If you can hear me, see me. I’m just going to check here. Make sure we’re all dialed in in the group. We’re live. Welcome everybody to episode number one of the Service Legend podcast. This is going to be playlist number two, which is going to be our client Spotlight Sessions and today. Folks, I have a real treat for you. I have someone who I call just a friend who I believe, someone who I look up to, I think is an amazing leader in the concrete coding space formally here or kind of professionally here, like a bio would be Manuel Paz. He’s the GM and the founder of Skyline Concrete Coding in in in Virginia. He is the a former painting business owner. He’s been a bank manager before that for like 20 years in the mortgage industry. You have a an MBA in business administration.
That’s correct. Yes.
And which I didn’t realize that. But now, again, like I said earlier, before we talked, Don, makes sense, checks out, you know, and just quite frankly, just a pure entrepreneur man. So welcome. Pleasure to have you here.
Thank you, Ryan. It’s an honor. It’s a pleasure.
Absolutely. Man, thank you so much for being here, for your time and your generosity. So again, so if you guys are live here in the Facebook group or your live on one of our one of our channels comment below like share and comment because I want to push this feed to more concrete coding and painting companies. That’s that’s one of my personal missions is we really want to grow and elevate these these two industries. The concrete coding and painting space, elevate the industries, provide more resources, get more professional, and really just kind of take the businesses or sorry, the industries through a renaissance of professionalism.
So without further.
Ado, Manuel, let’s just jump right into it here for for the listeners. Tell us a little bit about your business, kind of like how long have you been in business? Approximate revenue, number of of of employees, of technicians or cruise salespeople, things like that, the services that you offer and the markets that you serve.
Sure. We’ve been in business for three years and right now we have about 22 people and our staff, which started just myself and and and the one crew. And we grow to have 22 people now we have five crews and of course an office manager marketing. We have a ton of marketing. We have a whole system that works for the business, you know, and we’re about to finish this year with, we’ll say, about almost $5 million in business. We do. We cover state of Virginia, Maryland and the Washington, D.C. area.
That amazing man. Congratulations again. I’m telling you, like, you know, here at Cardinal, we have our three crews and I’m more focused, that service legend, right where I love serving our clients and building better systems and processes on this side and put what you’ve been able to do there is, quite frankly, just amazing, man. Thank you. Talk to me a little bit about that, though. Like, what’s the team broken up like department wise? Like so you have production. Well, Brandon Vaughn, who has the coaching program called Conquer, he coined it’s called Maps, Marketing, Admin, Production and sales. I think it’s really easy to understand in Brandon if you’re listening, comment below or reach out. But marketing and production sales like. Talk to me about the the the number of employees kind of how that breaks down within the departments that.
I’m already I’m all about branding scaling concrete coding. You have to wear this every day. My employees wear their uniforms every single day. Well, it is you know, first of all, we we have an office staff where we have a key personnel, which is an office manager. She does the appointments for the installers. What we have you guys that are doing an amazing job with us, you know, for for the past three years where you guys get us the lead of the people who are interested in our product. And then we have a telemarketing lady who will do the appointments for our salespeople. Then we have seven, seven people, seven, seven sells sales people. We have project manager. We, we have actually two project managers now because we’re getting into the commercial business and we’re getting so busy with both that we need to people in order to, to do the jobs that are coming through, you know. Wow. So everybody’s important. There’s not one person that is not important in our company. Every everybody and I tell everybody and the meetings that we have. Listen, guys. Everyone in here is very valuable for our business. There’s nobody that is more than the other one. Everybody, the installer, the Our Lady who makes the appointments. She’s a great lady. Our office manager, she’s so busy creating these appointments for our for our installers. All right. Who does the numbers and the strategy for us? Guillermo, who’s also just joined us as a project manager. Danielle, our project manager. And also he’s in charge of some callbacks that we do have in the industry, and we have to take care of it. Maintenance or our machines, maintenance or cars. So it’s just a lot of things that comes through with the business. Right.
Absolutely. I like how you really defined. I think that’s what I wanted to kind of chunk down to. He said, you know, you’ve got all these employees. Well, you know as well as I do employees. You have team members and then you have departments. And I really like how you defined the roles. And, you know, can you talk me through a little bit about, like job descriptions, the roles and kind of how you guys set expectations for each? I mean. Right, because you got people that are individually focused on scheduling, on office management work, on project management work, and it’s clearly defined. How do you guys work through like the expectations and kind of defining those roles there.
Well, actually, it’s not really well, it is defined. We know exactly what everybody’s going to do. But we have a lot of people that work a lot of hats. And that’s so important to to to find people that are committed with the company, with a grow with the company. And we have weekly meetings and with our management staff. And then we have every two weeks with our sales staff and with our installers, we’re always asking, what do you need in order to do your job better? So we’re here to help you, you know, and that’s that’s key, because at the end, we are responsible for them. We are responsible for our customers. Right. In order for them to do the the job that they perform, they need to have the equipment. They need to have the safety measures. They need to have everything. So it’s our job to provide that for them. Hmm.
Yeah. I like how you take that ownership. And your leadership is so. So is so, you know, just. Just inspiring, you know? Okay. We’ll get to some of those things a little bit. Chunk like we’ll chunk down on some of those things here as we go. But let’s just kind of go back to the beginning a little bit. I know you owned a painting business before, right? And I know right when we when you hired service legend. This was I think it was in the middle of COVID. That’s right. I can’t use that word. So let’s say in the middle of of of the thing a couple of years back and.
Oh, the Chinese virus. Yeah.
Hey, I’ll let you say that. No, no, no. So I think you guys were doing maybe 20, 20 grand a month, maybe 15 to 30 K somewhere around there. But like. Right. And you had a painting business before. Obviously, you were in banking and you’ve got amazing business experience. But just like how did you guys get started from that transition point from Och, I got the painting business. We’re thinking about coding higher servers legend. Talk to me about that at that point, kind of like how you guys got started with the painting.
I was doing the painting business and I was we did about 680,000 our first year in the painting business, which is pretty good. Wow. Yeah, that’s incredible. And six, eight. But I did everything through Angie’s List and trying to pick up the phone and make the appointments, you know, fighting for the lead, running around the city. And I did it with just by myself and then hire another salespeople. But and then it got really big because I had a lot of crews and a lot of jobs at the same time. And in the painting business, it’s different than the concrete business because you need more people to work for. Right. And you need more project managers and. So it got to a point where it was very. So I got tired, ran. I got tired. Really? I got tired because you you. Come on. The thing is to finish that. With all due respect, with the painters, I mean, painters are great professionals, you know? But when you have to handle painters that are that are, sometimes they don’t understand that a company like ours. We are business people. We’re not two guys from a truck. And this is the key, right? We’re always going to provide work for them. And this is what I do. I talk to my employees when I hire them. Just remember, you always going to have a job with me. This is not when you complete this job. You don’t have to think what I’m going to do next week. You’re going to have a job with me. This is what I’m offering you, right? Some people didn’t understand that. So instead of taking four days for a job that we’re taking six because they wanted to take advantage of it. Right. And that kind of miserable profits and stuff like that. So. And I just. You cannot be in four places at the same time. Right? So when. An offer came in for the concrete coding business. I started with a great company, Penta. I’m sure you’re.
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And before you get into that. Sorry to cut you off, Manuel, but how many painters did you guys have working for you that. That year? Roughly.
There. It all depends. Every week changed. We had 13 to 15 painters a week. Yeah.
Okay. So it’s nothing new about managing people, projects, customers, etc.. And then. And then so you got Alfred and kind of transition the coding side with with him.
Yeah. Yeah, well, Alpha came just for when we were about, about a year ago with Skyline. So. The concrete code in business. It’s I believe it’s a little simpler than just the painting in business because we only need two guys for a per crew. Right. And I did it. I did the training. I did a lot of garages. Okay. So I know we can do it in one day, right? That’s the whole purpose of our business. You know, that’s how we market and. You sounds very. It’s not easy to do, but it made sense for me to make the switch right and make the investment because you have to make an investment. This is not this this this business is it is an expensive business even to maintain the business. It is expensive. Right. It’s much more expensive than just painting. Right. Because we have to have machinery, we have to have equipment, we have to have an inventory where and and the painting business, you just go to Sherwin-Williams and you purchase the paint right there or on the corner. Right. We cannot do that with with this company. Right. So it is more complex and that.
Sounded more exciting.
So that’s a little easier to manage the people. Yeah. And that’s why it made sense for me to, to make the switch. And we did and we did it in the middle of the pandemic. And it was. The beginning was hard. You know, it was it was you know, we didn’t know what was going to happen. But I remember we had a conversation. I said, Ryan, what’s going on in the rest of the country? What are you guys you said, everybody’s working. I said, Well, let’s keep on doing it.
And I remember that phone call you called me and I said, What? What should I do? Should I stop advertising? And I said. I said you could, you know. Well, this is I’m going to mess this up. But I said, you know, you could, but I can guarantee you all of your competitors are going to are going to stop marketing. And if you double down and go and go forward with the marketing, it’s a lot like, you know, a lot of clients at Service. Legend will say, hey, you know what it’s going to be, you know? Well, this was back when we first started. A lot of clients would ask, should I should I advertise in the winter? You know? Right. Hey, I’m just slowing down. I said, look, double down, double down, because all your competitors are going to slow down, all your competitors are not going to get prepared. And while you are financially responsible, during the year, you doubled down and and you and you win, you know, and whoever can pay more to acquire a customer always wins. And I think that might have been Warren Buffett, what have you. But that’s what I remember kind of that mind frame when we were talking and talked to us a little bit about that.
So it was, you know, it was a tough time. I was sick with COVID, I remember, and during that uncertain times and then I had one of my sales guys was keep calling me. He said, I need to work, I need to go to appointments. You know, I said, Where are you going to go? All the streets are empty. I mean, there’s nobody outside. And he said, I need to work. So that’s when I talked to you and we said, okay, let’s do it. And then the rest is history, right? History. And we had actually was my best year, one of my best years doing 2020 and 2021. And I love the business. I love what I do. I love the people that I work with and I love the product that I have. That’s the.
Key. Well, now you do. Now you love the product, right? And we could talk more about that here in a little bit. But.
Of course. Of course. Of course not. Listen, you know, every company is different. Everybody every company has the way, you know, a system, the way they work. And I’m an entrepreneur. You know, there are two ways you can you can run the business, right? You can do it yourself. And you can make money with your own crew. And if you’re happy with that, that’s good, you know? Now, if you’re really serious about running the business. Right, and having many crews and trying to expand the way I want to expand, it’s a different story. Right. You can’t have barriers. Right. And there are companies that put barriers that say, no, you can only work in this county and this other county. And that’s it, you know? Right. Hey, I believe in freedom. You know, I love the United States. I love freedom. All right. I’m here and I just want to work where I can, you know? And no barriers for me. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey.
So we’ll talk more in a little bit. I want to ask you more about the product thing and some of the things that you’ve got going on. But who is your guys’s ideal customer and kind of like the target market? Can you talk to, you know, talk about that a little bit, whether it’s a demo, just like if you guys have defined kind of an avatar for yourself, like talk to us a little bit about that.
Okay. Our ideal customer is middle class Americans. People who. Love their houses. They want to make an improvement in their garages. Right. We do have some high end customers. Yes, we do. But I’m going to be honest with you, in this area, there’s a lot of high end customers and there are a lot of really expensive neighborhoods. But for some reason, we do advertise our advertising goes through those markets. Yeah, but the people who are really are interested in our product is middle class, you know, people that are mainly weekly. I mean, those people love to have an improvement in their house. You know, those people love to have an extra room in their house. Those people want to have the space where the kids can play. Right. So I have an anecdote that I was I was talking to this guy who had a I had a contract with this gentleman in McLean, Virginia, which is one of the most expensive areas. And in the Washington, D.C. area, I mean, this guy would did 240 windows with fixed. Right. 240 windows and we did. We fixed 40 doors. Right. I mean, it’s a huge out. Right? Wow. And I was just beginning with with with the product, with Skyline. And I had my brochure and I sat down there, the kitchen table as they listen, it might pitch right. This would be great. You know, you’ll your garage, you’ll have another room in the house. You said, like, I need another room.
I saw footage in that in that.
I love that. And I just laughed and I said, sorry, the wrong pitch for you. But it happens, right? I mean, another room. You’re right. You don’t need to sell that one.
Did you sell that one?
No, I didn’t touch. You know I did it. No, no. But you know.
Well, you closed a lot more, so who cares, right?
So I saw the big job, you know, the windows and stuff. Later, I couldn’t sell the garage floor. But listen, our customer is the everyday American that wants to improve their home.
Keep up with the Joneses. You know what? The same thing for us here at Cardinal. And I think a lot of companies that are transitioning into coatings, whether you’re a painting company, adding coating as a division, whether you’re working for a company and you’re starting your own business as a coating business, starting your own painting business here I think a common misconception is trying to go after I want to go out. You’re a millionaires.
Right?
You get it’s not going to be your your your what do you call it? Your bread. Butter, right. It’s not going be your bread and butter.
Not at all. Not at all. And you know what? Believe it or not, you know, those customers are the ones who are going to hate you more with for a lower price. Yeah. That’s why they have money, you know. Right?
It’s so true, man. It’s so true. So what is your guys is, like, unique selling propositions, you know, like, how do you, like, position yourself in the eyes of the customer? I mean, obviously, you guys have made the right decision and hired service legend. No, I’m just kidding. But like, outside of that, like, how do you guys position yourselves, whether it’s online or offline marketing and kind of like your unique selling propositions?
Well. Our people are well trained. Well, listen, we had people. Call us and tell us that. Listen, we never seen such a customer. We never had such a customer experience like yours. From the beginning. From the connection with service legend. To the initial phone call. To the emails that go out. Presenting our product to the appointments. To the presentation of the the one on one presentation of of our people. And then, of course. And then the follow ups in order to do the installation. Hmm. The. The way our. Our installers behave. And they are they present themselves. Right. So the whole. I can say the whole experience of. Customer service. And I will say one of the most important things, of course, is the final product. Now for us, quality control is key. Right now, our guys have to have quality control before they leave the job site. And they know how to do it. And. Our products are amazing. I’m just so excited about our product.
Can you talk a little bit about the quality control? There’s a lot of concrete coding owner operators, small small businesses that are in the group that are just joining and more will be joining because we think that our group is going to go into the thousands here over the next before the end of the year. I want this group to literally be like 5000, which that’s not going to be attainable. Maybe like maybe like 3000 maintaining business owners in the group, really masterminding together. And for all of them, like I know we’ve got like control forms that we have sign off. Could you talk a little bit about that? Like, is there anything specific, any like any gyms there that you guys could drop there on what you guys do for quality control before leaving the job?
Well. It starts with the training. Yeah. With our guys, you know. Yeah, it starts with their training. With the training, you know, when quality control, we do it two ways. We do it once and when we finish the job we have the lead installer do the walkthrough before he takes the pictures. He makes sure that that everything is is done right. The area is clean. All right. And then we also do now a quality control where we go afterwards, a day after, and we do a walk through with the client.
Oh, really? Wow.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so you doing that? Yes. Yes. So that is something very important for us. All right. And in that way, you know, we try to minimise our callbacks. That’s key. Listen, as a painter and doing concrete coding, these guys are looking at the floor with the flakes, the same colour. So sometimes, you know, it’s not their fault of, you know, they will leave something out. Right. And of course, but the customer will see you next day. Right? So we need to go in and do a touch up and we can do that, right? But we try to minimise that. And of course, our motto with our people is we always come back again. We repeat, we’re not two guys in a truck, you know, we’re a company, we’re full insurer and we’re all the licences. We do everything, so we’re ready to go, you know.
Yeah. So you set that standard and it sounds like you really. The lead technicians at Skyline take a lot of ownership in the project. And actually so we did so here at Cardinal. Here’s our here’s our brochures and part of our core values. For those that are live, you can see one of our core values is extreme ownership. And I like what you said here, because really what that is to me is your lead technicians. Well, number one, you and your leadership team are taking extreme ownership of putting pouring into the technicians for training all that. Is that where it starts? Right there.
Right. I mean, Danielle, who is my project manager. He. Is become an expert doing concrete coding. All right. And he does some some amazing work, but he also trains real well to to to this people. I mean, to the new guys and and. We make sure that before they go out on their own as a crew. They have to do at least 7 to 8 garages.
Before they touch a customer’s product.
That’s right. Yes, yes, yes.
It’s amazing, man. One thing I want to highlight, too, is ever since I met you, whenever I give you a complaint, what have you, you always defer to one of your team members. You’re like, Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This person is amazing. So I want to highlight that, that that’s that’s really cool because.
You know, without them, I mean, this there’s no way we can do this by ourselves, you know? And I just cannot take the whole credit myself. There’s no way. You know, first the Lord, right. And then the rest. Right. But my team members definitely are key players and. And what the company does for sure. Yeah.
That’s amazing, man. And then what type of marketing do you guys do? Like, what’s your guys is marketing mix? I mean, obviously, what service legend you are in our mastery program and then even then some. And so obviously you can talk about the Mastery program and kind of what you get as as deliverables there. But what do you do outside of service, offline marketing, TV, radio, billboards? Just kind of give me that marketing mix that you guys get into.
Well. You ought to be honest. Just you.
Just us. Jess. Service legend.
Jess. Wow. Okay, so you guys do an amazing job. Yes. I mean, we thought about doing doing some radio or TV in the future to complement that. But right now, the way you guys have a structure, your marketing, the campaigns that you guys run for us are amazing. So now you’re not just.
Saying that, right, for the like for the viewers, like, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no. All right. This is just start because I mean, listen, I run my business and actually, that’s why you’re my friend. You know, I hope we never we never come apart. But I trust the way you do business because you’re an honest person. Before I got involved with Service Legend and especially with you, Ryan. I went through a couple of people and I lost a lot of money. A lot of money. So it took me about $15,000 to get to you. Wow. And I lost that money. All right. The least we’re not right. We’re not done correctly. You guys have the down to earth. I mean, everything is what you do is exactly the way you’re supposed to. And I’m grateful for that. I mean. I think we’ve done a great partnership.
Yeah, absolutely. Man, it’s been amazing to work with you. And I know our our leadership team service legend, our account management team, even our fulfillment team, they love working with Skyline. And now do you guys do any online marketing like wrap trailers?
Well, we do. We do. We have our trailers wrap. We do a lot of door hangers. We have stringers and we try to market whenever we’re installing a a job, we try to market, you know, around the neighborhood with our door hangers. We had some luck with that. But there’s nothing like the ads that we do with you, right?
Yeah. So it sounds like you kind of really spend a lot of the marketing budget with service legit online SEO. Google my business. Well, now it’s Google Business Profile. You’ve got Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram, things like that. And then you got vehicles, door hangers, things like that, which is which is awesome. How do the door hangers do for you guys? You guys get calls from those?
Yeah, we had we had we had some calls from the neighbors.
And good branding out there, kind of.
Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, also, you know, you have to have your shirts. I mean, the guys have to be in uniform. And my my my salespeople also, they are well trained that they are with the business class all the time. And they keep talking to people wherever they go. They talk about a skyline. Right. And they’re making great money. Good money. And and I always tell them, you know, I just love these guys because they they eat breakfast thinking skyline. You know, they love lunch thinking skyline dinner. They go to sleep thinking of the skyline because they’re making good money, you know? And now that we’re getting into the commercial side, the projects are amazing, you know?
Yeah, yeah. That’s awesome, man. Before I got into the residential space, you know, because I was a sales and marketing manager for a a concrete coating company in Arizona. I was at in California as a painting company as well. And before I got into that space, I was actually a commercial estimator. And I used to bid big, you know, 500,000 square feet of Amazon concrete.
And that’s where I got to see this morning was we’re going to do a. Solar panel manufacturer.
No way.
30,000 square feet. Yeah, I just came back from there this morning. It’s going to be the biggest job we ever done.
How big is that one? 53,000 square feet.
Yeah. Yeah.
It’s that one. What are you going to bid that one for?
Actually, it’s going to be paid for almost 200,000. Yeah. Yeah.
Us dollars?
I think.
So. Or Canadian. That’s a little inside joke there, but. And, like, what do you guys think drives the most? You know, is it is it the phone calls from, like, the organic SEO, things like that, Google ads, Facebook ads, like like what seems to be the best for you guys there?
Facebook ads.
Facebook ads? Yeah.
Same here. Yeah.
As long as you. There’s a lot of. Talk about Facebook ads and the industry and, you know, Instagram, tik tok, you name it. And usually what we’ve found with the Facebook leads or just kind of like those types of opportunities is you’ve got to have that lead conversion dialed in. You’ve got to have the follow up dialed in, you’ve got to have the pipeline in the automations. I mean, there’s a lot of variables that go into it, right? But but once.
You get out in, you have to have that that person that represents the company with the first phone call key. You know, that’s key how that person represents Skyline or any company. And then, you know, from that initial phone call, I think just the magic starts, you know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah.
And everything just falls in place, right? Yeah. Yeah.
That’s awesome, man. So what. What marketing efforts have you stopped using in the past due to lack of performance? I mean, obviously, you mentioned to marketing companies, we won’t mention those those people at all. But like in terms of platforms, like, is there anything that.
You’ve done that the magazines, the.
Home shows or the home magazines?
The home magazines, yeah. Yeah. Dating work. I did a home show with the home show here in Virginia two years ago. You got to you really got to know how to work the home show. We had a great stand. We got quite a few leads, but. I wasn’t really prepared because you have to be prepared. You just cannot be by yourself. You have to have a couple of people there because you’ve got to take you know, there’s a lot of people that come through at the same time and you’ve got to take the things and try to get the appointment. Everybody’s asking for price and price and price and price and price, you know, so they.
Have their kids with them and they’re like, come on.
Right, right, right. And so we got quite a few. We got some jobs. We got some jobs out of that. But no, I don’t think it would work for me anymore. No.
So you think the worst one was the home? The home magazine? Probably one of the worst, yeah.
Yeah. Loan guarantees for me was the worst.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah
Do you guys have any special initiatives to attract online reviews? Just switching gears here to kind of to reviews for me, I feel like getting five star reviews mainly you’ve got to get them on your Google business profile. Formerly Google my business, that’s going to give you drive the most kind of ranking opportunities, but obviously you want to syndicate those reviews. Do you guys have anything special that you guys do to get five star reviews or just.
Well, you know. We had a platform with you where we had we could send an email for a review. But now our guys are trained that they know. I mean. I can say if we because we always do a good job, but when we have that connection with the customer, yeah, we go for the review for sure.
In person there.
Is the lead technician there. In person. In person.
Yeah. It’s the best in person, right.
Of course. Yeah. Yeah, it’s just right there, you know when you have that connection, you know? Yeah. Do you guys.
Go through training, like my mentor or one of my mentors, Tommy Malone? You know, he’s right here 5 minutes from me. And one thing he always talks about is just being intentional with those reviews. But he always, you know, they have a like a full training program there and they literally teach their people tonality, eye contact, how to smell good, how to feel good, you know, all these different things. And do you guys do anything like that?
Well, yeah. I mean, we know that there’s there’s not a second chance. For the first impression, right? Yeah, that’s it. I mean, the way you present yourself, right? Is that correct? So we always tell our guys that they have to. Just. Our appearance is very important, right? And the way we present ourselves, we have to know product knowledge is key. You have to have product, product knowledge. We are the experts. When we come into the house, we are the experts. Right. So we have to have that attitude. We know about this business, right? We have to have the right tools or samples or a measurement and just be prepared. Right. And if there’s something. They all know this. If there’s something they cannot answer. They can pick up the phone and call me any time. All right. And if they can find me, they can find Alfred. All right. And we’re prepared in order to. To negotiate or talk about different. A different product or something like that. What we can.
Do. Yeah, that’s awesome. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys are using social media in the business. Do you guys do anything specific at all? Like with social media is getting active, like with the organic side content production? Are you guys thinking about any of that right now?
Well, we’re doing the Google ACO, right? Yeah. And we do Google ads and. Yeah. We take so many pictures for our jobs that we try to feed our Facebook with with it. New pictures, right. That’s so important. You have to have great pictures and you have to teach your your your installers to take good pictures. Okay. Most of these guys, they don’t know how to do it, but.
So they don’t get to Skyline in there and their photographers.
They’re not. They’re not. But but you get to see our pictures now. They are photographers. You got to see our pictures because we tell them exactly where. For more of what you angle, they got to take a picture and they do it. And we receive pictures. Every day after they’re finished their job, they’ll send us a before and after picture. Yeah.
It’s amazing. So you guys take a big initiative there, which is amazing. What type of follow up do you guys have in place for? Like for marketing know, like for existing whether it’s prospects if they don’t close, you guys have processes for unsold instruments or.
Yes, yes, we have a platform that we use. And if in ten days, if our 15 days, I think our our guys don’t make the sale, they’ll come back to us and we’ll mark it again. All of that, right.
Like a rehab type of rehab?
Exactly. It’s a rehash. Yeah. That is an automated rehash that we have and it’s runs really.
Really nice. How do you. So talk to me a little bit about that because I’m telling you, I hear so often this not being done. And when I look at a one garage, when I look at all these companies of my mentors, my coaches up there, I’m like, man, the they’re doing these things right. Eight and nine figure companies, they get reviews, referrals and repeat business as many as out of as many customers as possible. And it sounds like that’s something that you that you focus on, too.
Yeah. Well, you know, we get we get we get some referrals, but we definitely do a follow up and whatever we have probably more than 4000 names know 4000 people that we didn’t close right in the past years because we have so many appointments. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t buy it three months from now or six months from now. Right. So we definitely have campaigns that run with the text and messages and just we hit them every now and then and people come back and say, hey, we’re ready to go now, you know? I love that, man. I love that.
Because the follow up is not just in following up with cold leads or unsold, but it’s following up with your client base.
For of course, I mean, that’s the value of the company, basically, is that client base. You know, that’s that’s the way I see it.
Yeah. Love that, man. Now, do you guys do anything special on on like this is a very specific question, but like on production day, so like tomorrow morning before you guys go do jobs, is there anything special that that you guys do on production day that that directly impacts raving fans like is there anything just special that you guys do strategically that’s like, hey, here’s what we’re going to do? And this like, this core thing is the reason why we’re going to achieve a raving fan. Like, do you guys talk about that at all? Like, like in the beginning of the day?
Well, you know, I always try to have incentives for my guys. You know, we have some some games in our warehouse. Right? Really. Okay. Yeah. So. So. And whoever wins is $100 for you. 200 bucks, you know, something like that, right? That’s for our salespeople or and for installers. So we get it motivated, right? It’s not just all about work. You know, we have a lot of we celebrate every birthday. That’s something we do. We celebrate. We just when we bring a cake, we sing the birthday for everybody because everybody is important. And we we make them feel important because they are important for our company. All right. And for us, that is just you know, this is a family, right? That’s the way we run the business. This is a family, right?
Yeah. So you create raving employees, which those raving employees help create raving fans. It sounds like.
That’s your methodology. Yes, yes. Yeah.
Love that, man. So I’m going to transition here a little bit into some operations here. So like, how do you guys hire, interview and train? Like, is there like do you guys have all this documented hiring templates, interview questions, tech training, skills training? Talk me through kind of that because it’s like it seems like, you know, in order to get from, let’s say, 3 million a year to five or 5 million to 8, 8 to 10, kind of there’s these like it’s all about scaling team and processes. Talk to me a little bit about your guys’s thing there.
Well, what we do is with the installers, I leave that to my project manager sometimes. If there’s a doubt, I’ll have the final interview, but I’ll. What does the cells people and of course any other internal work within the office. All interview. So those, those positions are really, really separated, you know, because whoever is going to work with installers in a daily basis is the project manager. So he needs to interview them. He needs to know exactly everything about their experience. Right. And and I do that with the salespeople. So that’s how we we divide our our functions, our different job. We call this rolls. Right. Exactly. So because listen, I mean. If we wear many hats. As I told you, I used to wear many hats. I used to hire. Used to do for. I used to sell. I used to do accounting. I used to do marketing. You know, telemarketing. Everything all right? And then this thing starts growing. And what are you going to do? You just cannot do everything right. You have to start delegating in. And and when you do that, you delegate and you believe in people, things. You just start flowing. You know, I’ve been blessed to have a really good team. You know, I have a lady who who started with me. Her name is Cy. She’s awesome. She’s just she owns it, you know, whatever she does, she owns it, and she takes it really, really serious. I think everybody in the company does. But everybody here in the company is just a key player, you know?
Yeah, yeah. I love that, man. So it sounds like you’ve really intentionally delegated tasks. And do you guys have a lot of this documented?
Oh, yeah.
Things like that. Talk to me about that documentation process. Kind of like, well, well, why is that important to you guys?
Because. First of all, we know we have a systems. You know, if you don’t have systems, you don’t you don’t have nothing. The system is so important, but those systems have to be also written. So we have to have a job description for everybody. Right. We’re still creating, believe me, because there are so many people now, we’re still create them. Right.
But then probably every month. That’s right.
You know, we have to catch up. We have to catch up. It is very important because you cannot just say by word. You’ve got to do this and this and that. And this has to be in this place and this place and this place, don’t forget, or he will tell the other one and it will be changed. And if you tell the other one, it will be changed. Right. So it’s got to be written down. Right. And that’s the way it is.
And what do you guys use, Manuel? What do you guys use for? Like you guys use a training software. Like, you guys document this, like just in, like, Google, Google Docs or how do you guys document like this stuff?
No, we have all the paperwork that we do. Our contracts are our agreements with employer. You know, we have a system that we do it in-house. It’s just we don’t have we don’t use any special software for that right now. But we definitely have many softwares that we use sometimes that are too many. But we need to, you know, the inventory grows so much and we need an inventory system and we need this and that for that. We have all four I call them. I call them like, have you seen the James Bond movies?
What’s that?
Have you seen the James Bond movies?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Q Yeah.
He’s my cube. He’s really smart and he does all these things for me with the softwares and that’s cool. Yeah, yeah. He’s, he’s, he’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Well, I like, I like what you’ve documented here because it’s really like there’s a lot of companies that we work with over at Service Legend, but also that I just see in the industry that struggle with this concept of owner operator. You know, either they get on, they get a sales person that’s doing well or they get a good production team. And you got to decide as the owner, do I go into operations? Do I go into sales marketing? Kind of like usually you’re good at one or the other and you bring on a partner or you need to bring on a team member that can help, help you kind of dial those things in. And so it sounds like Alfred really spearheaded a lot of this for you. Is that that’s not accurate or or somebody else?
Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, Alfred and Sy and Daniel and Guillermo and.
That’s your leadership team that really helped you to develop these things?
Yeah.
Do you feel like. What you’ve done from a hiring, onboarding and training and a documentation, the systems perspective. Do you think that like would would would equal at least 50% of the reason why you’ve been able to scale the at least.
4%, right? Of course. Yes, yes. I’ll say yes. They deserve a lot of the credit. Yeah, I have the big ideas. I’m the guy who is always motivating them. And, you know, sometimes my wife thinks I’m crazy. You know, I’m sure they think that I’m crazy because every day I come in and say, we can do this and we can do this and we can. And they’ll go, Oh, my God, I’m like an engineer, you know? But but that’s the way I am, you know? And I’m really motivated and have these creative ideas all the time.
Were you talking about your wife or my wife?
They’re we’re we’re similar, I think, you know, and but, you know, I keep creating things and I just I just think that everything’s possible. Whatever you think, you whatever you see in your mind you can accomplish. Okay? If you really believe that you can do it, you understand. You have to believe that’s the key. Yeah, right. And it’s not just the believe by more by mouth. You have to feel it. If you don’t feel it, nothing’s going to come around. All right, that’s the key.
Yeah, it’s so true. So many people need to really hear that. And so hopefully, if you’re listening that that really, really landed well on your ears. So I’ve got a couple more questions here. But but before we get into our final 3 to 4 questions here, I want to talk to you about and give you an opportunity to talk about what you’re doing over there in the product space and just some of the exciting things that you guys have going on over there. I think it’s just I mean, just to make sure.
Look, we we have a company, it’s called Potomac Industrial Coatings, and we’re producing our arm, our own chemicals. Okay? We’ve been doing this for a while already. We actually we use this product and that’s why I can say it’s the best product out there. And soon you’re going to have a sample. I’m going to send it to you. This is an amazing product, very resilient. So whoever wants to work with us, we’re going to start marketing Potomac Industrial Coatings is how.
You pronounce that.
It’s the name of the company Potomac. Just like the River. Potomac River. Potomac Industrial Coating. And our products. Amazing.
You guys, what do you guys manufacture? What are you guys going to distribute? You talk to us a little bit about kind of kind of those things.
Sure. The product is Polish sporting, so it’s 100% Polish party floor. Right? We do. The base code is Polish party, which is also part area, but it’s Polish party. It’s tinted with grey or the the ten. And we can have also different colors if you want. And then it’s a product that is is really easy to manage. It means that you could. You could have it stride within. To put the top coat. Probably in an hour and a half. Yeah. All right. And you can walk on it after 3 hours, actually. Wow. In some ways, even faster. But we prefer to wait 6 hours.
Especially here in Phoenix summers.
Right, right, right, right, right. And once it dries. An amazing product, man. I mean, I’ve done some samples with very heavy items. Just throw it on the air. Boom, that’s in chip, that’s in pill. Doesn’t do anything. It’s an amazing product and it’s working real well. So we were really excited about this company. We’re going to launch it nationwide. Actually, we have already some customers in Canada and in South America. Oh, really? I’m willing to purchase this product. Yes. Wow. Okay. And so we’re going to take it to the next level. You know, I’m really excited about it. And I know we talked about this before, Ryan, and you’re going to be I’m going to send you a sample. And, of course, anybody in the group who wants to have a sample or information about our product. Yeah, we definitely can give you. And the price is just excellent. Very competitive delivery time just like that. Orders will go out next day after you put the order. The order will come out just just like that. And that’s one of the issues we had before with the other people that we were working is and that’s why we decided to do this, because, you know, the orders sometimes will say, no, no, no, no, listen, it’s going to take two weeks, two weeks of customers line up, you know, and finally we said, enough is enough. We’re going to do it. And we have great chemists, great people working for us. Well, we have the product next. They that’s the way it’s going to be.
That is incredible, man. And if anybody’s interested in in those in those services, in that product, etc., like how do they get ahold of of you to talk about that as like Facebook is our website. Yeah.
You can call me on my number. You know, I don’t know if I can say my number now.
Hey, hey, it’s your number, not mine. So.
So it’s 7039404414. You can call me anytime is 7039404414. I will send you information on the product. We have also a manager that that runs that part of the company that he will be contacting you or me and we’ll send you the specs of the product. And it’s just an amazing product. And I just. I was so excited about that.
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so amazing, man. Congratulations on that. And I know, I know. Anything you touch me is going to turn to Gold Man.
So congrats on that. Thank you.
Transitioning here a little bit into some fun questions, but what is the best advice you’ve ever received?
Follow your instincts.
Follow your instincts?
Yes.
Who told you that?
My mother.
Love that. Follow your instincts. How? How has that worked out for you?
You know, sometimes not the best way, but most of the time I just listen. I’m somebody that still believes in people. I believe a lot. I think they’re great people out there in the world sometimes do things crazy. I just. I just believe in people and, you know. I’m very passionate what I do and when I can feel that passion in somebody, Hey, let’s do business, you know? Yeah, yeah. I love that. Your passion. I like your passion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I appreciate it, man. Now, this is a tricky one. So what is the worst advice you’ve ever received?
The worst advice I received. This is easy.
Oh, okay. That’s the advice.
Or this is easy. This is his. There’s nothing easy. You got to work all the time, right? There’s nothing easy. You. Nothing just comes around. Just like that. You got to work everything. Yeah.
Hey. Well, if it ever gets easy, just go ahead and just let me know and I’ll. And I’ll come do that. Whatever you’re doing.
You know, listen, it gets better. Look, it gets better. Maybe not easy, but it gets better. Yeah. Yeah. And we as a business owner, you know, of course, our goal is to have profit. And actually my goal also is to provide employment and living for a lot of people. Right. That’s that’s what I have. And but at the same time, you know, right now. Yes. I’m very busy. Probably. I don’t have all the time in the world to be with my family, but I know that it will pay off at the end of the year or next year we will have more time. Yeah. And because they are priority and but they understand that this is something that we decided as a family that we’re going to do this and there’s no return, you know, we just want to make it.
Yeah, an amazing segue actually into like, what do you think is the greatest insight that you can share with our audience that has helped you find success in your concrete coding business? Like what is the greatest insight you could give to maybe there’s a guy out there that’s doing We’ll do 400 grand this year and is is just overwhelmed or could be a guy that’s doing 1.2 but is going negative. What is a great insight that you can share with our audience that has helped you find success in concrete coding or just in general in life?
Well. You know, sometimes when when you’re overwhelmed, you have to stop. And really analyze what we what you’re doing. You know, don’t ever leave that for tomorrow because it will get worse. And in surround with good. You have to surround yourself with good people, but you have to stop and analyze what you’re doing. There was a point here in our during our journey here that we had to stop, you know, because we needed to get our numbers. To the right. We need to know exactly what is the cost for each job. Yeah. Down to the battle. And that took a couple of weeks because there’s so many products. Right. And we optimize that. Right. So everything is automated now. We can see it on a. Real time. Yeah. After we sell the job, how much we’re making in the job, you know, and, and that’s very important because you have to know your numbers, you know.
So it sounds like because that that’s my last question. So it sounds like don’t procrastinate on the things that you need to do. Don’t leave until tomorrow and know your numbers.
So key. You have to know your numbers. You have to you have to know your numbers. You have to know your numbers on a daily basis. Right. And. You also need to know the numbers of where you want to be. Okay. And that’s what you call the reverse engineer that we talked about one day, right? Yeah. So whatever, if you want to make let’s say 400,000 is a net profit, you need to know exactly how many jobs do they need to do. What is the average job site? You need to know that you know, you need to know how many salespeople you need to do 400,000. Yeah. Net. You need to know what percentage, right? You need to know how much you’re going to spend in marketing. And a daily. Monthly and a yearly base. Hmm. So if you do that. Amazing math. You know exactly where you’re going. Yeah. And that’s what we’ve been doing.
Yeah, I love that, man. Well, man, it’s been an absolute honor and. And just a privilege to pull some of these nuggets out of you, man. Just kind of have a quick conversation. We’ve been talking for about an hour, so I’ll let you get I know it’s the evening time there on the East Coast, and I’m sure you want to go spend time with your family and things like that. But seriously, thank you so much for all the nuggets, for your time, your energy, your business, and God bless you, your business and your family, man.
Thank you. God bless you, Ryan. And thank you for the opportunity. And I hope this conversation, it helped some people that are starting out or they want to improve their business. Whatever you want to do, you can do it. You just have to commit to it and do it, right? Yeah.
Well, hey, guys, if you guys want to hear more content like this, get in to the Facebook group. It’s Service Legends, Facebook group, short for home service legend. And we’re just going to be talking to all about content, all about marketing, admin, production, sales, culture, leadership, you name it. This is the first episode of the Service Legends podcast, and it’s the first episode in the playlist Client Spotlight Session. So if you guys want to see more of this, join the Facebook group and we’ll see you guys in there. Take care.
Thank you. Thank you, guys.
*Transcript May Have Misspelling, etc
