[00:00:07.370] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head, Heart and Boots Podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.830] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:00:17.850] - Chris
I don't know what you think.
[00:00:19.220] - Brandon
It was kind of serious.
[00:00:21.150] - Chris
Should we laugh?
[00:00:26.050] - Brandon
Chris we got a rad guest.
[00:00:27.470] - Chris
Yeah we do
[00:00:28.340] - Brandon
actually doubles, a pair of guests this time.
[00:00:31.120] - Chris
[ comment: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blue-collar-nation/id1472876829 ] Eric Sprague and Larry Wilberton of Blue Collar Nation.
[00:00:35.000] - Brandon
[ comment: https://morningtechmeeting.com/bluecollarradiostation/ ] Yeah, Blue Collar Nation podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blue-collar-nation/id1472876829 And then, of course, the Morning Tech meeting, https://morningtechmeeting.com/bluecollarradiostation/ which is probably where a lot of people have started. Rub elbows, if you will, with this dynamic pair.
[00:00:44.480] - Chris
Yeah, I feel like I really got turned onto it through Ryan Strickland over in North Carolina. I know he's used Morning Tech Meeting really has seen a great benefit from it, and he kind of introduced me to the idea. And then, of course, we met Eric and Larry, I don't know, a few months ago.
[00:00:57.950] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:00:58.540] - Chris
Personally, we've heard about them seeing them around. But I got to tell you, man, I'm really enamored with this Morning Tech Meeting product that they've created.
[00:01:05.960] - Brandon
Yeah, I'm digging it. I'm just digging these guys. I mean, honestly, we have a really fun show together. It was very much the whole sitting in somebody's living room chatting about life and work and employees. These guys are just down to Earth, super approachable.
[00:01:20.290] - Chris
I really like their hearts. They're really candid in the show. I mean, we get into the good, the bad, and the ugly of owning a restoration company, their experiences coming up in the industry and what it's been like to transition into being a service provider in the industry.
[00:01:32.910] - Brandon
I think one of the things I think listeners will pick up on, too, is these guys have a lot of time in the trenches together as business partners and very different guys, very different people, different natural wiring.
[00:01:43.780] - Chris
Different temperament, all that.
[00:01:45.090] - Brandon
Oh, yeah, man. And you see it, but at the same time, it's just really respectful, mutual respect and value placed on those differences. And you're going to see how that has influenced their business, how they interact with their employees. These guys are solid, they're genuine. It's a good chat, and it's a fun show.
[00:02:00.380] - Chris
Yeah, it is.
[00:02:01.100] - Brandon
All right, let's get into it. Hey, guys, we just want to thank you for taking the time to hang out with us. We're really excited to dive into a conversation with you and really looking forward to hearing far more about these two guys rep in the Blue Collar Nation, out in the world and specifically in our industry. So it's going to be fun to kind of get a little bit more behind the scenes with you guys. So thanks again for joining us. We're excited.
[00:02:23.240] - Eric
Thanks for having us.
[00:02:24.160] - Larry
Pleasure to be here, gentlemen.
[00:02:25.630] - Chris
Well, I think one of the things I appreciate about you, too, is you have that experience operating in the field. You guys have done it. You've built it. You've struggled through it. I was telling Eric just before we jumped on that I found this old webinar that you guys must have done early in COVID, like a sales webinar kind of sharing. And you were sharing your backstory with Shamrock and how you two met and also sharing about some of the struggles you had as operators of a restoration and clean business early on. And that was really the Genesis for the work you guys are doing now is having to figure it out, like get through having techs and hiring five techs and then ten and just all the struggles that come with running a restoration company. Brandon and I for a long time have been big believers that in order for people to lead effectively, they have to lead themselves first. And I'm curious if you could just share some of your own individual. Whoever wants to go first can go first. But just what does that mean to you to lead yourself? And what does that look like in your own personal leadership journey prior to Blue Collar Nation?
[00:03:25.430] - Chris
And then now where do you see that now? What are you doing to lead yourself?
[00:03:30.070] - Eric
You're opening up with the nuclear bomb Chris.
[00:03:33.430] - Chris
Dive right into the deep end of the pool. Right.
[00:03:36.550] - Eric
I think I can speak for Larry and I. This has been the biggest challenge and the most work we've ever had to do, to be honest. You talked about what we like to think is quite transparent about all of our struggles. I think too few people are transparent. They like to come off like they've been the expert out of the womb and most of us aren't. And Larry and I certainly weren't. And we went through a lot of trials and tribulations, not even just not having maybe the requisite business experience, but just not being able to lead ourselves at all. I'd like Larry's perspective on that as well.
[00:04:11.500] - Larry
Yeah. No, we're not taught how to lead necessarily in our formal schooling and everything else. And we're always talking about that. Leadership skills aren't something that is addressed in schools, obviously, in the high schools and grammar schools and middle schools, but not as much even in College as well. And you gotta learn these things. What I took out of it that Eric got the leadership skills a lot in sports because he was on a team. So that just happens naturally, which was really cool. We learned that, and we would look for that in the people that we hired. But that's just you just learn it as you go along. You don't know you're learning it. And then Eric went to John Maxwell and got trained that way. And we did a lot of coaching to learn leadership skills, what to do and what not to do. And that helped shape how we conducted ourselves.
[00:04:53.190] - Eric
But to take a step back from that, I mean, they're just skipping to the part where we're fixing it. We went a long time being really dysfunctional. We would lose technicians in sets. Because we get, like three or four in the early days, and then we didn't know how to lead ourselves or them. So we burned through them and say, "Those guys suck," then get new guys, and then we burn through them. And then "oh those guys suck, too". And then eventually you're like, Wait a minute, we're the only common denominator here.
[00:05:20.120] - Larry
I was at an event recently, and I saw one of our guys from years ago. He's with another restoration company bump into them. And I said, Dude, we failed so bad with you and that group of people you're with. It was horrible. He started laughing, and we started joking back and forth. And we had a very calm, cool conversation. It was really neat. I pointed out all these things that we didn't do very well. And he's like, oh, I think I do those things myself because he was in a similar position to his younger kid. And it was a really genuine conversation that I think he benefited more. I just got it off my chest, I felt better.
[00:05:52.990] - Eric
The thing that changed Larry and I, that changed everything. Even though we still weren't good leaders as the years started to go on, a few years, we went and got coaching several different types. But we joined Howard Partridges group, and we had Doctor Robert Rome visit the convention, and he did disc training. And Larry and I are very polar opposite personalities. So a lot of the problems we had is that Larry and I couldn't agree on anything. And if you have a very small company, which we did at the time, they see you arguing, they see you disagreeing. There's no getting around that. And all of a sudden, we're learning disk real time while he's talking. And at the end, Larry and I just sat at the table, exhausted, and looked at eachother and went, Sorry man. Literally, that was the moment it all changed for us, because now we said, oh, now that I know who you are and you know who I am, and we understand the four basic personalities, we can actually get to work about learning how to lead everybody and doing it in a way that is palatable for them. And that's when things started to change.
[00:06:59.330] - Eric
Do you agree with that, Larry?
[00:07:00.530] - Larry
Yeah. It was the self awareness that we learned from Dr. Rohn with the disc lessons. And it was so interesting because we went to Howard Partridge, and we were at Joe Polish conference, and we saw Richard Branson.
[00:07:13.850] - Chris
Oh yes, sir Richard.
[00:07:14.880] - Larry
We saw Maxwell Gerber, Darren Hardy. We saw these guys. It was so cool. And all of a sudden, we got this guy, Dr. Rone, like, who's this guy? And all of a sudden, he had the most impact dramatically past what these other guys did just by becoming self aware. And it wasn't just business. It was family, friends, how to conduct ourselves to forgive people constantly because we realize that this is just who they are. They're not trying to do that to me. All of sudden, a the personal was taken out of everything.
[00:07:43.380] - Eric
Larry and I had very separate problems. Our problems were really different.
[00:07:48.280] - Larry
It's because Eric's always wrong because he's the opposite of me and he's a problem.
[00:07:52.280] - Brandon
Sounds so simple.
[00:07:54.130] - Eric
Where we ran into trouble was Larry was really good with the clients and really good with referral sources, and he was not great with our team. I was the opposite. I was really good with our team. I was terrible with the clients and everybody else. So we had to recognize that, okay, Larry needs to not be at the shop very much because he's going to go in a micromanager mode and leave it to me. And I need to build out systems to make sure that customers are happy so that I don't have to actually be the person to go do the service because I'm probably not going to be great at it. And it's not like we fix that overnight, but we at least recognize what our problems work.
[00:08:33.810] - Brandon
The thing that I'm kind of overwhelmed with a little bit as you guys are telling this story is just the maturity that it required for you to look at those experiences even, and go, okay, how do I take this on and apply it? Because I think we're all faced, especially now with access to so much. But it just seems like it's very difficult for the average person to listen to the kind of content that you guys were exposed to and actually go, oh, well, I have a responsibility in this. I need to do something with this information versus being offended or whatever, you know what I mean?
[00:09:05.110] - Eric
Brandon we were in enough pain to listen.
[00:09:07.040] - Larry
Yeah, exactly.
[00:09:08.380] - Eric
If we had been not in as much pain, I don't think we would have listened. We're in acute pain, and we wanted that pain to stop, and we were willing to do anything we could stop.
[00:09:17.360] - Chris
I'm curious about that pain because I certainly understand my own story. How did that spill over into your personal and family life, the struggle that you guys were in?
[00:09:25.780] - Larry
I got divorced.
[00:09:27.030] - Eric
You're blaming the company on that.
[00:09:32.770] - Larry
it was work, i geve 100% Focus on my new shit.
[00:09:34.070] - Eric
That's true.
[00:09:34.710] - Larry
And you're not seeing anything else Blinders even told my ex wife. I said, listen, if I knew disc and I was self aware when we were married, it might have been a different story. And I came to her, like, very seriously. Yeah.
[00:09:46.840] - Eric
For me it was different. I commuted every week from Utah to La to work, and then my family was gone. So I would only be home basically Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. I don't think it affected my personal life as much because I was just all work all week. And then on that plane ride home, I could kind of try to let it go. I mean, it's not like it was perfect, but I think it affected Larry Moore because he was right in town. The shop was a mile from his office. It bled into his personal life much more than mine, but also our personalities. I compartmentalize I think more things than Larry does. I can let things go like that.
[00:10:25.360] - Larry
No he can't. He holds things against me all the time.
[00:10:29.830] - Brandon
You know, some of that is totally natural to the way you guys are wired. We were talking just briefly, Larry, before you jumped on. Chris is more of the, let's say, outgoing, sales directed individual, like, by nature. He's just more capable of stepping into that position that affects just about everything in his life, and we're pretty opposite. And so for me, he and I both talk about this a lot is like our inability to compartmentalize. We're technically, even though we're so different. At the end of the day. We're just not very good at compartmentalizing. We tend to carry it. It's hard for us to separate this work from personal life or if personal life is kind of a crap circus. It's very difficult for me to feel like I'm winning at work and vice versa. You not being able to compartmentalize as much. Give me some examples of that. So if I'm listening to the show, where can I see that showing up on a day to day basis?
[00:11:20.390] - Larry
Yeah, it just bleeds into your life. I mean, I would be taking my kids helping me out at work and have a vacuum and stuff like that before a carpet job, and then they want to hang out afterwards. But I'd be so wound up thinking about the stuff that I have to do and phone calls would coming in and they'd be frustrated, and I'd be at work. The wife when I was married to call me, you got to do this. We got to do that. And there was no borders. There was no differentiation between what was this way and should have been more compartmentalization. That would have made things a lot easier. But there wasn't that's a problem, and it was a problem for me. And then after I learned the disk and I was more aware, I say, okay, this person needs this. This person needs this, and I need to give the best that I could. Being self aware with myself, who's making things much easier. There were some boundaries. Boundaries. That's what I was losing. I was learning to make boundaries. Being self aware, I was able to do it much easier than just flying by the seat of my pants.
[00:12:14.470] - Eric
Can I answer for Larry?
[00:12:16.070] - Larry
Uh Oh, here we go.
[00:12:17.430] - Eric
No, I've said this before.
[00:12:19.300] - Chris
This is so fun. Brandon, I need some popcorn.
[00:12:21.330] - Eric
We're College roommates, by the way. I don't know if you guys knew that.
[00:12:23.820] - Chris
I heard that.
[00:12:24.470] - Brandon
Yeah. So just Last year then you guys met?
[00:12:27.090] - Eric
Yeah. 36th anniversary of last year. I'll give you an example where it would bleed for Larry in a different way. Like, I viewed the business as an entity outside of myself. It's a chess game. I'm moving parts. I'm doing this. I didn't bleed Shamrock green. Like, I didn't think that way. For Larry, there was no delineation between personal and the business. So if something went wrong, it was a personal affront to Larry. So let me give you an example. There was a big target near our shop, and we would go in there to buy stuff with our shirts on, and a lot of our clients would be in there. So it would be very common to see a client at the target. So if a client walked up and said, hey, Larry, your guys came, and I'm going to be honest, it wasn't great. Then it would be like Defcon Five. Him calling me, flipping out, let's fire everybody. The whole company is screwed. And the same thing happened to me. I wouldn't have been happy about it, but I would have said, okay, there's work to do. I got to make a better system. I got to do a little more training.
[00:13:29.940] - Eric
Literally two minutes later, I wouldn't even be thinking about that person again. Do you agree that, Larry? I know you don't because I can see your face on the screen.
[00:13:37.090] - Larry
No no no, I agree with you totally. Because I had a hard time. My identity was built into the business, and after we sold, that was a hurdle that I didn't realize I had to get over. My identity was kind of lost at that point, and it was a bit of a challenge. It didn't hit me after a while, like, oh, that's what it is. Because it was just something wrong ,missing. I don't know how to explain it.
[00:13:56.850] - Eric
Yeah, because I didn't feel that way. Once we sold, I was just move on. I'm out, done. didnt even think about it again.
[00:14:03.130] - Larry
Eric would be at target, and he'd be wearing his shirt and his colors like, I would. And he'd be mad at the checker that's going too slow. And he'd start yelling at her and telling her how to do her job better, and he'd tell me afterwards, and I'm like, hey, wait a minute. Were you wearing a shamrock shirt?
[00:14:23.310] - Eric
Oh, yeah.
[00:14:24.790] - Larry
Oh....Good move.
[00:14:26.950] - Brandon
He's like and my hat and my jacket.
[00:14:30.190] - Eric
I am not proud of those moments. The problem was there's way too many of them. I just feel compelled to fix things, and I'm impatient by nature. I would like to get up there and be like, 14 people in the next line went faster than you. You need to do this, and you need to do that.
[00:14:49.510] - Larry
The target experiences are a little bit different.
[00:14:51.880] - Eric
That's still a work in progress. my self awareness, I'm aware of it more now, but it doesnt meen I can always....
[00:15:00.290] - Chris
Larry, I can relate to a lot of your mojo. I can. I can think back to when I had some customer debacles, and I would call Brandon, just kind of freaking out, like, how could this happen? And I think this is very common as salespeople people, people that kind of grew up in the business. On the sales side is certainly there's an ego thing. There was definitely an ego thing for me, like an identity attachment to my work. And I think you spend so much of your career cultivating relationships. When something goes haywire, it's destabilizing as a relationship guy, and it's all of a sudden it's the only thing you can think about until that relationship is whole again. Oh, my gosh. So I can totally relate to that.
[00:15:43.930] - Eric
I always understood that too, because you could spend two years trying to get a referral source. I understood it, it's just that every home service business has these problems.
[00:15:53.540] - Chris
You're able to be more pragmatic in the moment.
[00:15:56.060] - Brandon
Well, again, you can hear it. It's that separation of identity, Larry's. Like, no, this is me. It's not a company. This is me where it sounds like you've always been a little bit more clear and, well, this is an entity. I'm responsible for it but....
[00:16:11.190] - Larry
I think, Brandon, that comes from playing sports, because when the game's over, the game is over. We did everything we could in that X amount of time or X amount of innings. And when the game is over, I'm going to go out to have pizza with my friends, and then we're going to give it hell tomorrow. But there's nothing I can do about it today.
[00:16:27.010] - Chris
It's healthy. it's good. I think what I'm admitting is I've had some unhealthy view of it in the past.
[00:16:33.590] - Chris
Sounds like, Larry
[00:16:36.050] - Eric
you and Larry need to start a mastermind to help people overcome that.
[00:16:39.650] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:16:40.580] - Larry
Those skills to create the relationships that we would become so attached to would come with the identity. If you didn't carry that in there, you wouldn't be as trustworthy to be able to create the relationship as tight as you could. And that might not have happened. If I was cold hearted like you when I had to be warm hearted.
[00:17:00.370] - Eric
I think, Larry, if you were to do it again, you would just have to have, like a system of self care to unwind that or something.
[00:17:08.110] - Brandon
Did two industry guys just say system of self care?
[00:17:12.760] - Eric
Self care, yeah.
[00:17:16.790] - Chris
Okay.
[00:17:17.340] - Brandon
Well, now you're going to tell us all about it.
[00:17:20.330] - Eric
Larry has one too.
[00:17:21.490] - Brandon
You said it. I love it.
[00:17:23.040] - Chris
This is the second part of our podcast. Do you guys have any herbal teas or scented candles that you recommend for us?
[00:17:30.890] - Brandon
Actually,
[00:17:32.810] - Eric
now that you said it..
[00:17:33.870] - Brandon
No, seriously, man, you tell me more about this. Lay it on us. What is yours? Well, at least the parts you can tell us.
[00:17:40.220] - Eric
I mean. Well, mine is different now than it was when we had the restoration company to a degree. This was part of the journey of managing oneself. Because I'm a highly strong individual, I have very little patience. I only have two emotions, pure joy and pure anger. There's nothing in between. The problem is, as we know when you have our service business, anger is like 98% of the time, and joy is like 2% when you get that $300,000 loss or whatever.
[00:18:11.130] - Larry
This is why we sent him to John Maxwell.
[00:18:13.150] - Eric
Yeah, exactly right. So I had to learn, and I'm Super competitive and I'm driven and all these things, and that was causing me a lot of health problems. So it was either I learned to create a system for myself, to take care of myself better, or I was going to die young. I mean, Larry's carted me to the emergency room, thinking, I'm not coming back out at a very young age. It's not good. And I don't think that's that uncommon. I just think people don't talk about it. So for me now, I had this thing where I was always like, I'll sleep when I'm dead. We're in the restoration industry. We don't need sleep. That's for weak people or whatever the problem was is that if I continue to do it, I would be dead. Right? So Larry, for a Christmas present, bought me an aura ring. I don't have it on, but it tracks your sleep with an app. Everything measured improves, right? Larry had gotten one for himself because he wasn't a good sleeper either. And as soon as I started sleeping seven or 8 hours a day, because I'm measuring it, all of a sudden I feel better, I'm happier.
[00:19:15.980] - Eric
I'm not angry as much. I feel well rested. I'm not getting sick as often. So for me, everything rises and falls on how much sleep I got to a degree. The other thing is, I'm not a morning person at all. Never have been, even as a kid. Just to get up and go to school was hard on me. So after we sold, I was like, I'm not getting up early and going to work anymore. I have, like, a whole routine where I wake up, I visualize, I meditate. I'm not on my phone immediately checking LinkedIn. Then I get up and I eat breakfast, and then I go train, work out, and then I come back and I start easing myself into my day, which for me now, I'll work to midnight. That's no problem. But I don't want to be working at 08:00 A.m.. I just don't. We did it forever. So those are the big things. And for me, my diet changed, and it's basically working out and meditating and getting sleep. Those are my three big things. If I don't do those, I'm not nice to be around, even to the point where it's like, if I'm getting wound, Larry would call me and be like, Dude, even when we had the restoration company, when we were at Shamrock and I was turning into an A hole, he'd say, Just stop everything.
[00:20:28.030] - Eric
Go grab your bike, take an hour, bike ride, come back. I guarantee you everybody will appreciate that. Sure enough, I'd go for an hour. I had burned off that Angst. And I was all, good again.
[00:20:40.220] - Larry
Mood follows action.
[00:20:42.170] - Brandon
Say that again.
[00:20:43.380] - Larry
Mood follows action. I heard that on a Tim Ferris podcast once.
[00:20:48.160] - Eric
And I'm like, that is great from Rich Roll.
[00:20:50.840] - Larry
He said it again. I heard it the other day and I was like, Mood follows action. Wonderful way of, yeah.
[00:20:56.070] - Eric
The thing was I can only speak for me, but the idea for me to just tell myself I'm going to leave my desk and go for a bike ride because that would be beneficial to everybody. No chance I'm doing that. I would never give myself the permission to do that. Especially early on. It took Larry to say, could you please go ride?
[00:21:15.710] - Larry
It wasn't me ,It was our staff that would send me a text, yeah.
[00:21:18.520] - Eric
yeah the girls in the office.
[00:21:19.910] - Chris
Can you get Eric out of here?
[00:21:21.510] - Eric
But now I think I've evolved enough that I would be like, hey, I'm getting really wound up or I'm not getting anything done because at the end of the day, we don't get paid by our activity. We get a paid by our accomplishment. So I need to do whatever I have to do to make sure that we're going to accomplish.
[00:21:37.130] - Brandon
How do you see that kind of carrying over? You had mentioned this earlier. It's just like this new push, right? Or a lot of people say this new lift, this new business or this new focus on what you guys are doing now. It probably took a little bit different skill set. Right. Than running restoration companies. What are you doing with that? Honestly, I'm not even asking this for our listeners. I'm straight up asking this for me. This is where we are now.
[00:22:00.950] - Larry
What you're saying is you struggle because you're changing hats, you're really good at something, and then you're like, okay, I can be good at something and helping people do something. We got coaches again in this world that are helping us market connect, get business coming in, how to deal with the business coming in because it's a different beast. Coaching. You guys are coaching individuals, which we are too, but we're coaching technicians, which is like something that doesn't happen. We kind of have to establish the market in a way as well. We have like two steps. You just have to be creative. You have to sit and chill a whole lot more. At least that's what's been working for me. And then you got to talk these coaches and just asking ideas and you're getting along. You're asking so many people, plus COVID coming along, and you're really all you can do is communicate like we're doing now. The whole world that deal with the last two years, it's not even going away. And we all have to be creative. The world's pivoting and we're pivoting you guys and us in our careers. The coaching thing, it always comes back to the coaching.
[00:22:59.420] - Larry
Somebody that knows what they're doing, you want to replicate what they're doing.
[00:23:02.690] - Eric
We kind of hypocritical for us to not have a coach if we're coaching. That doesn't make any sense. I'm telling people they need a coach, but we don't have a coach.
[00:23:11.210] - Brandon
Yeah, but you're too good for one.
[00:23:13.430] - Eric
Nobody's too good.
[00:23:14.730] - Chris
Yeah, no one's too good.
[00:23:15.800] - Brandon
What are you guys doing starting next week, by the way? I just wanted to set up a coaching invitation. So, Larry, one of the things you said was you just kind of chill for a minute. Are you saying they're, like, spending more time in thought, like proactively thinking through what you guys are doing, where you're headed, what you want with your business? Is that what you're talking about?
[00:23:36.140] - Larry
Well, I think because we did the restoration for so long, you became good at doing it. You just followed a lot of patterns that you created and the ones that you were successfully kept with. And it wasn't as difficult because we did it for years. So now we're starting out again as if we were in the beginning again. And I was trying to remember, what did we do then? We didn't know what to do. We found a coach. We found your Polish at that point. Now I'm just reaching out to the coaches and listening to them sitting and chilling. Usually I'm used to action because I'm the marketing guy, making things happen and making calls. But now I'm like, okay, if I'm going to make a call, I got to know what to say, because people don't always want to hear about coaching their technicians right now. They're like, well, what do you mean? Well No you need to have technicians. You want to keep the ones that you've got and you want to make them happy and you want to get new ones. You need to create an amazing culture at the same time. And people are like oh really?
[00:24:24.300] - Larry
They're not as receptive as if they have a water damage. They're going to call you. They're going to want you to come in. They need their carpet is clean. They're going to want you to come in. It's very simple connection. This is a new connection that we've got to explain to people how important it is. And as soon as you get with somebody, they get it. Oh, yeah, I need to invest in my guys because if my guys are good, I'm going to be good. And I'm like, yeah. And once that light bulb goes on, all of a sudden, like most of our clients, all of our clients, because we have minimal turnover, which is amazing. Their lives get better.
[00:24:55.270] - Eric
I think the big thing for us, too was..... Like any service company, you build a local service company, right? You become involved with the community. You're going to Chambers, you're shaking hands and kissing babies and keeping your trucks clean. And it's very hands on. And then all of a sudden, you start digital business. For lack of a better term, none of our skill sets apply. And not only that, most service businesses are a good part of your time, and energy is reactive. But in this kind of business, it's almost all Proactive. Like, what is the next move? It's like a chess game. We've had to really learn just how to operate. It's completely different.
[00:25:34.380] - Chris
Let's actually stay in that thread, but go back. So when you first started working with Joe Polish and you guys started going to, like, the grant Cardone stuff, and you really seeking out new input and wisdom because you're in a not desirable spot. You guys are both struggling in different ways. What did it look like as you guys started to turn the corner? And what were some of the focus points? As you started to come out of that early phase of struggle, things started to click. What were those things that you changed in your behavior set or within the business that really started to make a difference?
[00:26:06.840] - Eric
We recognize that the majority of our problems came from the field. So they're field technician driven, and very few of them were technical. They were human problems. It's not that they didn't know how to cut drywalls, not that they didn't know how to set de hues and place air movers or anything. Like, that guy drove across my lawn. They left a mess. They didn't tell me they were going to lunch, and then they never came back. All that stuff, right? So we recognized that they didn't even know how to do these things. We were teaching them all technical stuff, and they were good at that, and they were comfortable there, and they liked that. But that's not what the customer judged us on. Customer judges, on communication, how nice they were, how good they smelled, how clean they were being on time. We started tracking, like, where are all the sticky points for us? What are the problems? And it just kept coming back the same thing over and over. I kind of looked at a couple of our Mitigation managers and cleaning managers. I'm like, Look, I need you guys to pick up some of the slack for me.
[00:27:12.570] - Eric
I need to go on full training mode. I went to get John Maxwell certified. That wasn't easy either. So I came back all excited. I'm going to fix everybody. It's going to be great. And I started doing the lessons, like, straight out of the book.
[00:27:24.780] - Larry
Oh, my God, it was horrible. We were doing goal settings, big goal setting with the guys.
[00:27:32.670] - Brandon
What are your dreams?
[00:27:34.670] - Larry
And then our manager, MIT manager came in with. He goes, can you guys just stop this? This is just crap. We want nothing to do with this. And we're like, Whoa, you need goals. You don't need goals. No, not every day. Stop. He was so serious.
[00:27:51.480] - Eric
You're freaking all the guys out.
[00:27:53.770] - Larry
And this was a guy that he did not come to us very often and say something against us. No, it was kind of a quiet company but he was like, dead on. And we're like, oh, this is what we're hanging our heart on. What are you talking about?
[00:28:06.430] - Eric
Yeah. So Larry and I had decided that this was the turning point for us. This is how we're going to build the culture and get everybody trained. I was crestfallen. I just literally went home that night and I think just sat in my chair, probably cried or something. And as I sat there, I remember this vividly. I was like, Wait a minute, I'm a technician at heart. I'm the guy that was doing all the same stuff. They were on the site. So all I have to do is take the Maxwell stuff and similar things. I need to break it into really small pieces and then give them a lesson in their language and their vernacular every day. But making the point that I want to get through the book stuff. And I know you guys did a battle rhythm podcast, and Larry and I, that's basically one of the things we implemented is just having a rhythm to the day that we started having a managers meeting every day. So while the managers meeting was going on, all the people in the office were getting all the stuff ready to hand out for production, and all the guys were getting their trucks lined out for line up.
[00:29:10.270] - Eric
And then we started having this morning meeting. Ten to 15 minutes. Once a week we'd go maybe 30 to 45, like Monday. We'd go longer just to get everybody excited with a longer lesson. And that's when everything changed. Culture changed. Turnover went way down. All this stuff happened. And I'm not going to say it was easy, but it was simple. It was just invest in them. Train them on the things that you're not going to get in an IICRC class. And we started killing it. They loved it because what are we saying? You're important. We're going to invest in you every single day. And teamwork like you guys talk about, you can't put a dollar. This is the problem. This is the problem Larry and I do have in our business. People always want a dollar amount on everything. What's my return? It's like, I don't know what your return is going to be. I know for us what ours was. And meeting in person is so much more powerful than whatever you spent on that meeting. You'll connect that it was a system.
[00:30:08.580] - Larry
The thing is, in the business, you have to have systems. And this became a system where every morning we had a meeting and the meeting was a system. We go over the daily jobs for the day, the production jobs, and then we go over a lesson. If the lesson was the core values of the business or lesson was what to do and what not to do in the house, or if it was a disc lesson, whatever it was, everybody knew they were going to get it. And they knew that it would last a certain amount of time and they'd be ready to go out in the field. But it became a point where everybody was kind of looking forward to the meeting in the morning. They knew what it was. And the technicians want consistency. The technicians are essays in general. They don't want anything thrown to them. It's kind of sideways. They don't want anything weird. They like things the way they are.
[00:30:50.060] - Chris
Steady.
[00:30:50.720] - Larry
Yeah, steady. Exactly. So when they know a meeting is coming in the morning, they were good, happy to come to work. It was steady. Every once in a while. We didn't have a meeting. We get a big loss. We'd come in at 07:00 in the morning and it was like everybody's running out and the day's rhythm would be all jacked up. And that was a problem. It took us a while to realize the value of this system of having these meetings and the consistency and the rhythm.
[00:31:14.790] - Eric
What I started doing on that big loss is I get my truck and drive over there and say, Everybody, we're going to take 510 minutes and go get on the tailgate. We're going to do it. We'll do something. It might not be their normal lesson, but we're still having a lesson today, even though it's me just reading out of a book or something, whatever. And the thing was, I think that was the most powerful, though. I think you guys know this and the listeners know this. A lot of the people that come to us as entry level technician types didn't like school, probably didn't excel at school. A lot of them come from single parent homes, broken homes, no parental guidance, not great neighborhoods. Nobody's invested in them a lot of times. And that was certainly our case. And to all of a sudden having someone invest in you every single day, you're not leaving for that dollar an hour more. You're not. You're just not going to we have guys say, Look, I can go to XYZ Restoration and make $2 an hour more, but I'm not going because I know they don't care about me.
[00:32:14.700] - Eric
And the other thing is think about this. Like how many of us you're sending two guys in a van or four guys in a couple of vans to a million dollar house where the husband is a lawyer and the wife is a doctor, and I've got four 22 year olds that come from not the greatest background showing up. How am I supposed to serve that client if I'm not training those four young, usually men, on how to interact with that client, how to answer questions, how to hold their own when there's objections, how to behave in a home. You can't do it. You can't expect them just by osmosis to just pick that up. It has to be trained. Yeah.
[00:32:52.660] - Brandon
There's like this huge gap between expectations and reality. The sad part is, I have to admit that I was often in that camp probably more times than not. I was in we were as well.
[00:33:03.200] - Larry
Everybody is.
[00:33:04.020] - Brandon
Yeah. You're like, oh, well, it's common sense. It's all the things right. We have 15 reasons why all these people should have all these skill sets. You had mentioned this early, Eric. I think the first time we actually talked to you and you made the comment, we built this for the tax. And I remember that honestly kind of stopping me in my tracks because it was the first time I was hearing something. We say this a lot. I love our industry, but it feels like we knock on it all the time. But it had been a long time. And it's rare that I hear somebody say that what they were doing was specifically for the technician. And I remember it being so refreshing. I'm kind of sad that that's rare. But what was that turning point? What did you see? What did you hear? Where all of a sudden it's like, man, I've got to do this and I've got to do this for them, not just for the benefit of the company or did that ever happen?
[00:33:49.110] - Eric
I don't know if it happened, but look, I had a lot of entry level jobs when I was coming up in the various amount of trades where I got yelled at, screamed at, wrenches thrown at me, you name it, right? Lots of guys have the same story. And I just always remember thinking to myself, and I had that with coaches growing up as well, and I never responded well to that. I would have done much better if somebody had just been nice to me and trained me and I was perpetuating what I had learned. To be honest, I thought that's how you led. I didn't know. That's all I knew. Shut up and go figure it out. I was the guy who would tell my manager when we got a new guy, all right, the first thing I want you to do is take him to that crawl space, sewage loss, throw him in PPE and shove him under that crawl space, and let's see if he survives till 05:00. Like, let's haze the shit out of this guy.
[00:34:39.720] - Brandon
If so, he's a keeper.
[00:34:41.930] - Eric
He's a keeper as opposed to training him. I always say him because most of our employees anywhere male, but it doesn't matter what gender. Get them in there for a month to start to like it first, then throw them in the crawl space, get a little buy in. But nobody had ever done that for me. So when I flipped the switch in my own head to start really investing in the team, then I think my natural inclination is I am a technician at heart, and I just feel like you said, Brandon, that not enough. People care about that. And if more people did, a lot of owners would be a heck of a lot happier every night when they go home. So they're kicking the dog. People don't understand. I have coaching, consulting people that I've worked with over the last three years since we sold, and I just shake my head because they're just like, these people are ruining my life. And I'm just sitting there thinking, if you just invested in them, it would be the complete opposite of that. It's all on you, dude. It's so much on you.
[00:35:39.690] - Eric
So our mission is to start with a technician to train that technician to go feel like they're comfortable when they ring that doorbell. I've got this. Too many people go to the door not really knowing what to do other than technically, and they're scared to go ring the doorbell, especially in higher end neighborhoods. They don't feel well equipped. So if I, myself and Larry can get the technician feeling confident, the client wins. And then by virtue of that, the company and the owner win, everybody wins. But nobody wants to train the tech. It's just like nobody wants to train the CSR. These are the two most critical things in your business. I mean, look at any service business. You got a normal restoration company, 20 people, at least twelve or 14 of them are technicians.
[00:36:30.110] - Brandon
You got to go back. You just said something, and I was trying to jot down the note. I'm like, Sizzle real. What did you say when the technician's confident the customer is happy and the business is happy, what did you say when it works uphill at that point.
[00:36:44.080] - Eric
When the technician is confident that they know what they're doing, when they go ring the doorbell and they know how to please a client, then of course, the customer is much happier because they're getting what they really wanted and the only thing that they know how to judge us on. And then by virtue of that, the company and the owner are much happier because the whole thing is flowing better.
[00:37:06.290] - Chris
All right. Let's take a minute to recognize and thank our MIT Resto Mastery sponsor, Accelerate restoration software. And I'm fully aware, by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software, that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there.
[00:37:23.250]
Right?
[00:37:23.490] - Chris
Because we probably all fall into one of two camps when it comes to software. We've either cobbled together kind of a version of free website tools and spreadsheets just to make our business work, or we're in the camp where we've adopted one of these existing restoration platforms, one that has all the bells and whistles and supposedly does it all, but we can't get our team to consistently adopt it and input information to it.
[00:37:51.130] - Brandon
Yeah. And that's really where Accelerate has honed their focus. They've created a system that's simple, right? It's intuitive, and it focuses on the most mission critical information, I. E. Guys, your team will actually use it.
[00:38:06.100] - Chris
Let's talk about sales, right? After years of leading sales and marketing teams, the biggest trick is getting them to consistently update notes about their interactions with referral, partners and clients. And the essential piece there is there's got to be a mobile app experience. And in our experience, the solutions that were previously out there were just too cumbersome and tricky to use.
[00:38:29.550] - Brandon
Yeah. Imagine, guys, how your business would change if your entire team was actually consistently using the system. Do yourself a favor. Go check these guys [email protected] MRM. And check out the special offers they're providing to MRM. Listeners.
[00:38:49.370] - Chris
All right, let's talk about actionable Insights owners. Gms, you can't be your business expert on all things estimated you might have been three years ago when you're writing sheets in the field, but the industry is always changing and so are the tools. If you're the smartest person in the room when it comes to exact minute Matterport, how does that scale you're the bottleneck? I know I'm preaching to the choir, but this is where actual Insights comes in. They're a technical partner that can equip your team with the latest bleeding edge information and best practices and then update them with webinars and training resources when the game inevitably changes again. For this reason, we recommend actual Insights to all of our clients.
[00:39:29.600] - Brandon
Yeah, three of the kind of big things that stuck out to me when being introduced to AI and their team. First off is this consistently updated training. I mean, at the end of the day, these guys are the experts. They're out front all the time. They're constantly learning new trade secrets and ensuring that your team's got access to those things. A 3700 plus page database of exact amount templates. I don't know what else to say here other than don't reinvent the wheel. It's already available. Download it, copy it, use it.
[00:39:59.070]
Bam.
[00:39:59.940] - Brandon
Database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple of points, and those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world. So go check them out at Value Gitinsights.org.
[00:40:22.230] - Chris
You really gave a zinger there. And what you said is, we don't invest in the technicians. You also mentioned the CSR, so the CSR can mean different things, right? From business to business. For us in the business we've operated, they are the receptionists. They're the first on phone. Well, we had that realization, I don't know, a couple of years into us working together, we were getting ready to hire a new receptionist, and we were looking at kind of that entry level price range. And we were interviewing a lot of receptions that were somewhat timid and kind of quiet and shy. And I said, I think in a lot of ways this receptionist needs to be one of our most sophisticated admin roles because they're the one that's going to be getting a job and almost selling the job in the first initial conversation, they're the very first experience that somebody has, whether it's an adjuster, an insurance agent or whoever's calling that line. It's the very first experience with our Brandon. And of course, likewise, the same exact thing is true of technicians. In fact, in some cases, the technician is the only part of our brand.
[00:41:24.660] - Chris
That customer, that person is going to experience totally. This isn't funny, right? How we sabotage our own best efforts because we're prioritizing the wrong things sometimes, right?
[00:41:33.520] - Eric
What? Think about this. And Larry and I were super guilty of this as well. So the owner is going to go get all kinds of training, like five trainings a year or something. I haven't been in the field in seven years, but I'm going to go get my master water restore or whatever, and there's technicians sitting there that are out there every day that don't know what they're doing. So it's just flipping the switch and going, well, it's math. Where are the potential most problems or the best fixes? Same thing, right. Just reverse mentality. Where can I make the biggest outcome? Because look, this is how Larry and I started looking at it. And this changed everything for our company. It's all of our competitors have business development reps. All of our competitors have dehumidifiers and fans and vans and whatever. So what's the only thing different? How well we can service the client, how few problems we can have so that people want to use us? Because we all know this in our industry and it goes for any industry in home services. If Larry goes for three years to the same insurance agent and they have somebody they like, it's only a matter of time before that guy screws up royally.
[00:42:46.930] - Eric
And who's there? Larry with his pineapple. So now the only thing I have to compete is to make sure that we go as long as humanly possible without screwing up up. So we can keep that referral source a long time.
[00:43:01.000] - Chris
Which is all predicated on the quality and experience and confidence of your technicians.
[00:43:05.890] - Eric
100%. Yeah.
[00:43:06.980] - Larry
Even if you back out even further, the liability of a service company sending people in your vehicles into people's homes and you don't train them 100% on how to do everything. When you're out there, you never see the owner. And if something goes wrong, anything that goes wrong from the second they punch the clock, when they come in to the second they come out and they're unsupervised, it was retail. You can see your people right there. If it was a school, you got people right there. We send people into the field unsupervised. So why aren't we training these people that are unsupervised dramatically? We're so liable. The liability is huge from that aspect as well. Think about this.
[00:43:47.930] - Eric
Gerry and I, we were not the best technicians at all. We were okay, but we weren't like the best. We had people that were way better technically than we ever dreamed of being.
[00:43:57.950] - Brandon
Because we never realized that.
[00:44:01.050] - Eric
Yeah, that might take it a little while, but the thing was that we had very few, if ever, problems with clients. Right. Why is that? Because Larry and I were a little more worldly. We've been to College, we had other careers before we started in restoration. We could talk to people, we could communicate with them, and we knew enough to build containment and put down property protection and not walk across the lawn 50 times and all these things. And it took us a long time to realize, because we would be like, Why do these guys keep getting callbacks? It was people stuff. And nobody had ever taught them as they would learn. They were like sponges. It wasn't like they were fighting us. They were just like, oh, I didn't even know that walking across the lawn made them angry.
[00:44:43.560] - Brandon
So you didn't really feel much pushback when you guys were like, okay, we're going to reshape the training. It's not John Maxwell's Smart goal setting, but it's dialed more into this everyday application. They were in?
[00:44:54.280] - Eric
No, not immediately. Okay, well, you have to get the person with the most influence within the ranks to buy in. So for us, that was one of our Mitigation managers. He was the guy everybody looked up to him. He was a young guy, but he was super driven. And he didn't buy into the beginning either. He used to sit there with arms crossed, just like, You've got to be kidding me. Can I just go, please? Can I just go get work done? And then after a little while, and I think now that I've been doing it longer, it could be quicker. But all of a sudden, I think it's not just him, but all of them. They're starting to see what I'm talking about in the lesson in the field. And go, Eric talked about that yesterday, and this lady is doing that to me right now. So you got to keep dripping on them. And all of a sudden they start seeing it. But some people buy in quickly, some people take a little while, and some people are going to cross their arms for a long time, and some people are never going to make it.
[00:45:50.270] - Eric
And what happened for us was as more and more percentage of the team bought in, and we always say technicians. But all of our admin team were in these meetings. It was everybody's in these meetings. They're pushing out the people who don't buy in. They're coming to us saying, you got to get rid of Timmy and Susie because they're not one of us anymore. They're not part of where we're going.
[00:46:10.980] - Brandon
Do you feel like you had to lay out that vision for the team? Was there like an explainer, if you will, a program launch? I mean, what the initiation looks like?
[00:46:21.250] - Eric
I would love to tell you how to do that?
[00:46:23.320] - Larry
No. Well, no, actually, it came out of we had this trouble with property managers and technicians saying the wrong things to the tenants, and they would say things to the tenants that the property managers would be getting me about this. Your property managers should be doing this. And I'm like, listen, dude, we got to tell them this. And we can't just tell them once. We got to tell them once every two months. We got to go over it again because new guys come in and guys forget and they've got to learn the same lessons over and over, just like the rest of us, but in their world. Okay, you guys don't park in front of the driveway. Where are your booties? Oh, yeah, no problem. I got it. But if you don't tell them again in a month or two, they're going to slack off and it's going to be a problem. So I said, Eric, we have to hit on these lessons on a specific schedule so that we don't have the same problems. Because I was getting so angry. This property manager called me, and these were the relationships that I created. I was so angry.
[00:47:14.100] - Larry
Tell these guys to shut up. Be quiet. Don't talk to the tenants. That was part of it. You had to have a system with it, too.
[00:47:21.970] - Eric
By the way, I never told the guys to shut up. I was not the best. That's not a lesson.
[00:47:29.970] - Chris
It is a good segue, though. I wish we met and found you guys even sooner. We would have absolutely benefited when we were operating the field with a program like you guys offer. I mean, you can tell like Brandon and I are bought in. We get it. Thank you for the audience that isn't familiar with morning tech meeting, can you give us just an idea of what some of the topics are that you guys cover and just what that looks like on a day by day basis?
[00:47:52.570] - Eric
So it's like Gerry and I talked about systems. It's a system. So every week is the same. It's like your battle rhythm podcast. I'll tell you what we did in our company and then I'll tell you, it's slightly tweaked for our product. So in the company, we used to do mission statement Monday, so we would go over our mission statement and what it meant every Monday so that everybody was very clear. We're just hammering mission. And for us, it was Shamrock. It was an acronym service, Honesty, Accuracy Management, Revenue Opportunity, Cleanliness and Knowledge. We made it easy. So that okay. Today we're going to talk about the S, the service component. So that was Monday. Tuesday in Home Behavior. Wednesday Disc Training. Thursday in Home Sales. Add on Sales. But you see, the sales lessons are almost identical for service because we're not teaching tips and tricks in closing, it's more process driven on how to get that person to like you, trust you, and then allowing that person to want to buy from you. But service is really the same thing. Friday we go over all the lessons from the week, and then you take a five question quiz.
[00:49:01.540] - Eric
So the only difference now, in morningtechmeeting.com, we do personal development on Monday, and then in home behavior, disk sales, recap, and quiz.
[00:49:12.520] - Chris
What's an example of that? Personal development content.
[00:49:14.950] - Eric
It's everything. There's a lot of Maxwell stuff, and then I tweak it for the technicians. I'll give you an example of one that I just did recently. We have a six location plumbing company that uses our stuff every day. And the owner actually called me and thanked me for this one lesson. Like, out of the blue, I talked about frequency that we all have a frequency that when we walk into a room, people can feel that frequency, whether it's a high frequency and you're happy and you're excited to be there and you're engaged or that frequency is super low and you're bringing the whole room down and upset. So I do lessons like that. We do a lot of stuff on planning your day through a 24 hours cycle. So when does tomorrow start? The second you clock out today, because the decisions that you make this evening are going to affect tomorrow. So are you going to go home and drink a twelve pack and play Halo to three in the morning and then get 2 hours sleep and then roll in in dirty clothes and no shower, no food, no water Marlboro Reds and monsters.
[00:50:12.580] - Brandon
Or are you just explained? Almost, yeah.
[00:50:17.050] - Eric
You act like you're alone. How do you think I know this?
[00:50:22.170] - Larry
Actually, a lot of the lessons, I mean, they're all lessons that we see all the time, but it's more the why. Eric will explain why you don't stay up all night and what happens to your day. And then he explains a story of himself or one of our guys. So you get the why and you get an example and you get what to do, and that connects. That's where the tech whispering connects, because you don't stop and tell you guys why, okay, don't do this. Don't talk to the tenant. Don't do this. Don't say anything about the property manager. And then you'd walk away. And that's what I would do. But Eric would say, okay, listen, this is why you can't talk to the tenant, because the tenant gets mad at the property manager and then cause problems with Larry. And you can't say that to the tenant, even if it's a good property manager, bad property manager. This is how we need to have a business relationship. And he'd stop and express that to them. And also they're like, bingo. And then it would work. So when you're dealing with somebody, explain why something is important.
[00:51:18.160] - Larry
It resonates and it connects. And then also like, oh, and there's buy in. Once you get buy in. It's winning.
[00:51:24.750] - Eric
I try to do that because I know when I was a young employee, I didn't like to be talked down to and ordered around like, Brandon, I know you were in the military. That would not have been a good fit for me because I hate authority. Right. But if somebody tells me why we're doing something, I'm usually on board. As long as I know the why, I'm good. So in these lessons, in the videos, they're purposely kind of low quality. We're not using super fancy cameras. I'm certainly not using fancy language. They're five minutes long. I really am one of them. I'm really speaking in a lot of ways to my younger self. I'm trying to give the lesson that I wish somebody had given to me that I could have benefited from. I hope that carries through.
[00:52:08.660] - Brandon
I don't know if you guys had a chance or not to listen to the episode that Clint Paul version, just talking about that mentor management. Did you guys have a chance to.
[00:52:16.980] - Eric
I haven't looked at that one yet.
[00:52:18.300] - Brandon
Dude, I'm telling you everything that you guys are saying. These are real life, tactical, tangible ways that we can live out what Clint talks a lot about. And that's just developing a relationship with people where they know that you care. And part of the way that you guys are doing that is that you're living out respect. You're saying, okay, this is a person. They have perspective and real life experiences. They're smart enough to understand a why. It's like once you present the why to them, they're like, I can get on board with that.
[00:52:49.480] - Chris
Yeah. He was saying that every employee we have, they want to hear that they have potential and they have value right now. They have value right now, and they have this potential. And he also said another comment, this just feeds into everything that you guys are talking about. He was differentiating mentorship from leadership. And he said this. He said, in order for a mentor to have a mentee, they have to have the mentees permission. They have to be given permission to that person's heart, which feels really sort of Foo Foo and lovey dovey for our industry. But it feels also very true. Right. You can't lead somebody who hasn't given you permission. And I feel like what you guys are doing is showing that value and potential and creating kind of a foundation for a leader to actually be able to mentor versus the management, the command and control thing that most of us do.
[00:53:40.790] - Larry
Yeah. It's a system to create that relationship because many of us, we didn't know what to do when we were younger. How am I supposed to be a mentor? But then we create this forum of these meetings.
[00:53:53.010] - Brandon
Oh, okay.
[00:53:53.770] - Larry
I can latch onto this and this. And there's connection time every morning for five minutes, five to ten minutes. You find tiny ways to connect. You can develop those mentoring skills because it works both ways. Once the young owner or the business owner or young, old whoever, oh, maybe I need to do this. I shouldn't throw a wrench. I should try and talk to my guys. Like, this is what's going on. And you're like, oh, okay, that works.
[00:54:16.910] - Eric
The other thing is we all know this. You almost can't lead and manage at the same time, because the manager, I'm going to tell you where to go, and you go a leader is saying, hey, let's go together, right? So they're almost competing mindsets in a way. And I'm not trying to make this pitch for our product, but it lets me kind of lead them that way. The owner, if it's a smaller company or the manager, could just go about their business and manage where I'm saying, hey, guys, this is why we should be doing these things. Come with me and let's go on this journey about becoming the greatest technician that ever walked the face of the Earth. Super tech. Don't be a tech. Be a super tech. That's our mission.
[00:54:56.380] - Brandon
Or it's almost like you're the uncle.
[00:54:57.960] - Chris
You're the uncle that's speaking to the boy. They can't quite hear the lesson from his father, but the uncle can come in and they're just more receptive because it's the uncle and it's not dad who's always telling me what to do.
[00:55:09.770] - Eric
Totally. We get phone calls about that. We get owners calling us, or they see us at a trade show, and they're like, you guys. They listen to every word Eric says. I've been telling them the same stuff for years, and they've never listened to me before. Now all of a sudden, they're telling me what a great idea it is.
[00:55:26.130] - Brandon
And you're like, and you're welcome.
[00:55:27.680] - Eric
I take that as the Xactimate compliment. When they're upset about it, I say, look, the only difference is they don't know my bad habits, right? They haven't seen me. It's easier to take it from an outside source because they don't work with me every day.
[00:55:41.180] - Chris
Yeah, there's no baggage. Yeah.
[00:55:43.290] - Larry
No, I don't listen to them at all because we're together all the time.
[00:55:46.470] - Brandon
You got all the baggage.
[00:55:47.940] - Eric
That's well proven.
[00:55:49.710] - Chris
Well, guys, this is shaped up to be an incredible show. I want to make sure that people know what is the latest iteration of Blue Collar Nation. I hear you guys have some refresh that you've done some new things on the horizon. Do you want to kind of give us the lowdown on how people can engage with you?
[00:56:04.450] - Eric
Well, we're right in the middle of a full rebrand, Larry and I realized as part of the thing that our name has a ton of friction with it. Owners generally don't like mornings because they're stressful. They have, at best, an iffy relationship with their technicians in the world. Meeting sends them into orbit. So our name alone drives people crazy. So Larry and I would say, hey, we're with morning tech meeting, and you could see a wall go up immediately. You just said the Mword twice. So we rebranding. Do you know Derek and Katie at Spot On Solutions?
[00:56:40.250] - Brandon
Yeah, a long time ago.
[00:56:42.740] - Eric
Yeah. They're a restoration marketing company, but they're helping us with our full rebrand. We've known Derek for 15 years.
[00:56:50.230] - Larry
He's one of our first mentors. We went to mature.
[00:56:52.150] - Eric
Yeah, he was a mentor to us.
[00:56:53.710] - Brandon
Right.
[00:56:54.160] - Eric
So we're rebranding by the time this comes out, we should be done or very close. We renamed our company Super Tech University. And we've got a new logo with a guy almost with a diploma, hat, with a wrench, almost like a superhero. And we have new stuff coming out where we're going to start training a couple of things. Another need that we're seeing is going from technician to field supervisor or project manager. That's a really tough thing. So we're going to start having packages where they can get help for that person who they want to move into, maybe an entry level management role in the field, because as we know, that's a big jump, especially when it comes to soft skills. So we're going to do a bunch of stuff like that, and then we've got a bunch of other cool stuff coming out. So Super Tech University should be live. What, Larry, about 1 February.
[00:57:47.440] - Larry
Yeah. We'll do our best to make it that time. It's a lot of work, but we're making it happen.
[00:57:50.960] - Eric
Larry is going to make it happen.
[00:57:52.480] - Brandon
It's all on you, Larry.
[00:57:53.820] - Chris
Your flagship product, though, is the Super Tech University. Videos. Yes.
[00:57:59.360] - Larry
Lessons, videos, morning meetings. Yeah.
[00:58:01.570] - Eric
So it's supertechu, the letter U, supertechu.com.
[00:58:05.740] - Chris
And so that's where listeners can go if they want to check out this service for their team. Yes, that's live right now. Okay, awesome.
[00:58:13.490] - Brandon
What if they just want to talk to you first? They're not ready to jump in and make some kind of digital commitment. How do they get a hold of you guys to connect with you?
[00:58:21.460] - Eric
They always talk to Larry first.
[00:58:23.040] - Larry
They talk to me. Phone number on the website. Usually people just want to email Larry. Atmorningtechmeeting.com would be [email protected]. I got to get that all set up. And then we have an 800 number always eludes me because we don't use it as much as we should. I'm bringing it up right now. It's 80371 9412.
[00:58:46.260] - Brandon
We'll add a bunch of stuff to our show notes, too.
[00:58:48.460] - Eric
And then they can always if they want to feel like they get to know us a little better, they can always check out our podcast Bluecollarnation.com. And I also want to make sure we've talked all about restoration, because you guys are mainly a restoration podcast as well. And I know you're pivoting from that, but ours is for anybody that has people go to ring a doorbell, heating and air conditioning, plumbing, electrical, landscaping, pest control, made service. We even have auto body shops using our stuff. Love it makes sense.
[00:59:18.140] - Chris
That makes sense.
[00:59:19.210] - Brandon
I just have to tell you guys, I'm bummed that we didn't meet you before. I'm really excited we have an opportunity to cross paths. I'm really looking forward to doing more with you guys and being a proponent of what you guys are building, because I'm really moved by the fact that this is a game changer for the technician at the technician level. This is a really profound way to look at our workforce and see them in a different set of lenses that business owners in general have really struggled with. And honestly, it's been one of these things that we perpetuate it in groups. It's like you get business owners together and it can very quickly turn into this sewing circle or whatever. We're just sitting around bitching and complaining about our people, and it becomes really difficult for us to not dehumanize them.
[01:00:03.970]
Right.
[01:00:04.320] - Brandon
They just become this thing that's a giant pain in the ass, and they're just constantly getting in the way. I'm not designed that way naturally, but I do that. I have also fallen into that position more times than I want to admit, and it's not really in my heart, like, that's not how I feel about people by nature. So I just really respect what you guys are doing. And I hope that people that are listening today are getting a sense of the value that a tool like this can bring to their business. Because here's the reality. A lot of business owners, business leaders have great intentions, but they're just trying to spin all the plates at the same time.
[01:00:38.950] - Chris
And at the end of the day.
[01:00:40.000] - Brandon
It'S overwhelming and it's hard to do all things well. And if this is something that you could adopt and bring into your system and have two guys that are doing it and doing it well, and that can become a resource for the benefit of everyone. It just seems silly not to do it. Don't let your ego get in the way that you don't have to be the answer. Let a program like this be used and get the benefit from it. Let your team develop from it. Let it be a resource that expands your capacity as a business leader. I don't know. I don't know why I feel led to say that, but I can just see a lot of people going, well, I'm the owner. I should be able to handle that too. And don't be stupid.
[01:01:15.700] - Eric
Just because you're the owner doesn't mean that this is even within your skill set.
[01:01:19.730] - Brandon
Right?
[01:01:20.630] - Eric
And it usually isn't. Usually they're much better at strategy and numbers and production and technical stuff. But most people that anybody that's read the Emet knows that Michael Gerber breaks it into three pieces. Entrepreneur, manager, and technician types. And most of the people that do what we do start as technician types. Myself included.
[01:01:40.810] - Brandon
Yeah, I couldn't agree more for anybody.
[01:01:43.120] - Eric
Just going to Howard partridges conference February 8 through ten in Houston where they and I are going to be there. I think we're probably going to be speaking we'll be at flow Expo, which is a plumbing show for PHDC in Los Angeles March 12. I'm speaking with RR on their panel at Nexus March 29 and then we have a booth of the experience in April as well.
[01:02:06.670] - Chris
Just got a busy first couple of quarters of the year here.
[01:02:09.250] - Larry
Nice to run into you guys there as well.
[01:02:11.230] - Brandon
You guys come and hang out in your booth?
[01:02:13.030] - Eric
Yeah. Are you going to any of the shows to visit or walk them?
[01:02:18.250] - Chris
We are negotiating that at the moment. It's all been a crash course for us kind of getting into the circuit.
[01:02:23.390] - Eric
I get it.
[01:02:24.220] - Brandon
We really want to just come do some live stuff. We just think it would be a blast to come meet up with you guys, meet up with Michelle and some of the other crew and just kind of get caught up in what's going on around us and bring people some kind of live perspective on the happenings. That'd be fun.
[01:02:39.120] - Larry
Yeah, if you're there, we'll do a podcast. Ed cross was there the last time he was bouncing around. I know you guys had Ed on the show. He was quite entertaining.
[01:02:46.790] - Eric
Yeah, well, you know Jarrett style and John Isaacson. Yeah, all of us will be at Nexus because Jarrett's got a podcast booth there so if you guys can find your way down to Vegas, we'll all be there.
[01:03:00.010] - Brandon
Man, that would be super fun.
[01:03:01.750] - Eric
Yeah, that was super fun. Jared's got kind of a travel set up so we can all sit down and talk and stuff. It's pretty cool.
[01:03:08.550] - Chris
Okay. Well, till next time.
[01:03:12.210] - Brandon
Yeah, I hope we can. Thanks so much for spending time with us. All right, everybody. Heath, thanks for joining us for another episode Of Head, Heart and boot.
[01:03:21.930] - Chris
And if you're joined the show but you love this episode, please hit follow only known as subscribe subscribe. Write us to review or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn. Share it via text whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening. Bye.