Ep 201 - "The Hustler's Playbook for Business Growth"

March 24, 2026

Some guests you book for the tactics. Chris Fresh we booked for the energy, and then he went and delivered both.

Brandon and I first met Chris at a plumbing industry conference last fall, all three of us scrunched into the backseat of a tiny car, with our mutual friend John Gabriel making the introduction. You may know Chris as The Plumber Sales Coach. What you probably don't know is the story underneath: a street hustler running speaker scams out of a van, an encounter with faith in the middle of a sale that changed everything, losing the house and the cars and rebuilding from zero, and a leaking shower valve that turned into a coaching business now transforming plumbing companies across the country. He holds nothing back, including the part where a mentor offered to write a check and make all his debt disappear, and why he said no.

And then the sales content kicks in. Chris took one shop from 13K a week to 55K a week in about three months with the same three trucks, and he walks through exactly how he thinks about pricing, options, and educating Mr. and Mrs. Jones instead of convincing them. If you're in restoration and feeling the shift away from easy TPA work toward competing like a retail contractor, this conversation is timely. Whether you ever touch a pipe or not, this one will sharpen how you sell.

Restoration, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping. If you build it, fix it, or maintain it, this show is for you.

Why You Should Listen:

[9:21] Chris's origin story: bullying, deflection, and the survival instincts that accidentally built a salesman
[13:08] The street hustler years: selling speakers out of a van, and the moment mid-scam that changed his life
[22:54] Take the check or go through it: the kitchen table offer that would have erased his debt, and why he refused
[28:46] Broke is a condition, poor is a state of mind, and why the smartest person in the room is in the wrong room
[42:03] The $1,100 shower valve that started it all
[45:22] From 13K to 55K a week with the same three trucks: pricing, options, and the Costco mindset for the trades
[51:16] Brandon on restoration's retail reckoning: could you compete without the TPA pipeline?

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00.800] - Brandon Reece
Amigo.

[00:00:02.320] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah,

[00:00:05.840] - Brandon Reece
I feel like. I feel like there was a strong chance I just woke you up from. From a day. A day nap there. Are you okay?

[00:00:13.200] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. Okay. All right. That was. Yeah, yeah, that's one of those. All right

[00:00:17.680] - Brandon Reece
Yeah.

[00:00:18.480] - Chris Nordyke
Well, we got a really good one, though. This guy. I mean, I remember when we first

[00:00:22.640] - Brandon Reece
met Chris, it's crazy.

[00:00:26.490] - Chris Nordyke
We met him at the 1-Tom annual conference. You and I were speaking this past fall, and he was one of the speakers. And John, we've been doing a lot of talking about Johnny Gabe. In fact, I just posted on LinkedIn yesterday a podcast I found of him on Clinton's podcast. So John was kind of the connection point. We were at that conference, he made the big introduction, and we're like, oh, I've heard about this guy, you know, and we ended up all scrunched in the backseat of a car. It was great. We talk about it a little bit, the podcast. But yeah, just his. His energy. I think even back then, both of us were like, really blown away by just the energy he brings.

[00:00:56.430] - Brandon Reece
Yeah.

[00:00:56.870] - Chris Nordyke
You know, and we talk about that a little bit. here some of that energy comes from. And so it was fun. It was fun. I always love it when people are willing to go deep into their origin story because it adds so much when you find out what they do now to know where they came from. And we really dive deep into that. It's just. He's got a really awesome, awesome story. He shares all of it. He doesn't really hold anything back and.

[00:01:22.160] - Brandon Reece
No, he doesn't.

[00:01:23.280] - Chris Nordyke
And then the stuff that he has to say about how our technician, I mean, I think he's in the plumbing world. Some of you listening are in the plumbing world. More and more restorers are venturing into the plumbing world. But I think beyond that, even if you never have any intention of getting to plumbing, the stuff he talks about, about selling to Mr. And Mrs. Jones.

[00:01:43.200] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, it's epic.

[00:01:44.120] - Chris Nordyke
It's so applicable to what we do. And I think everybody who listens to this is going to come away with some good ide.

[00:01:50.140] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, 100%. So Chris Fresh, he's known as the plumber, sales coach, contagious personality, great storyteller, fun to listen to and fun to. To get into a conversation with. So sit down, bolt down. It's going to be a good show.

[00:02:05.140] - Chris Nordyke
How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast? I can't tell you that. React how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Headhart and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.

[00:02:15.820] - Brandon Reece
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.

[00:02:25.600] - Chris Nordyke
I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.

[00:02:28.600] - Brandon Reece
No, I. I don't. I didn't, and I. I am not happy with it.

[00:02:32.880] - Chris Fresh
Mr. Chris, sir, it's been a long time coming. The last time I was with you two, I was scrunched in the middle seat of the back of a tiny car.

[00:02:41.080] - Brandon Reece
You know what is actually funny about you saying that? You know how you get, like, the anniversary stuff on your iPhone with photos? That photo came up and we were all kind of doing whatever. We were doing signs in the backseat or whatever. I was just chucking.

[00:02:55.050] - Chris Nordyke
I felt a little weird when you put your hand on my thigh, but then I just ran with it.

[00:02:58.490] - Chris Fresh
And then after a while, he was turning sharp. He turned sharp on a straightaway on the quarter mile track. You ever play that game shotgun with your friends?

[00:03:06.490] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, but I think there's several different versions.

[00:03:08.490] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah.

[00:03:08.810] - Chris Fresh
What are you talking about?

[00:03:09.930] - Brandon Reece
Which one are you talking about?

[00:03:11.450] - Chris Fresh
The one where you get the front seat. You have to say shotgun to get the front seat. I remember John's like, hey, bro, you want to ride with us? And I was like, okay, cool.

[00:03:18.650] - Brandon Reece
Us.

[00:03:18.850] - Chris Fresh
That means there's more than one person I assumed in that type of car. He was talking about three other humans and me. He was not. And we got outside and I realized that moment on planes, trains, and automobiles, when they walk in the room and they see only one bed. I looked around and I was like, yeah, I'm definitely in the middle. Like, I can't imagine a scenario where I'm not going to be in the middle. For those at home here, I look a lot taller on the Internet than I am. I'm five, six. These guys are pushing six foot, whether it's the mustaches or the beard or their height. And I was like, ain't no way they're going to let me have the outside seat. I was like, I'm stuck in the middle.

[00:03:54.430] - Brandon Reece
That whole trip was hilarious. I think I laughed more per mile in that particular trip than I have in a long time. I don't even remember what all we covered, but it was just stinking hilarious.

[00:04:05.190] - Chris Fresh
I remember everything.

[00:04:06.110] - Chris Nordyke
Most of it's not fit for this conversation.

[00:04:08.110] - Chris Fresh
So you guys are squeezing the jokes out of me. I was scrunched. I've never felt more like Tommy boy, fat guy in a Little coat stuck.

[00:04:16.920] - Brandon Reece
Oh, heck, man. That was so funny. That was a good time. Well, all that to say, like, that's what led us to this, is that obviously we met you at last year's 1-Tom om convention, and you were just an absolute riot. Obviously, several team members that were there had nothing but just epic things to say about you, and we had obviously a really great interaction and wanted to follow up eventually with getting you on the show. So thanks for your patience, and finally, we're here. But to get started, we're going to obviously get into the professional side of what you do and how you help teams. Bit of the plumber whisperer, if you will. But before we do that, I think it's just super helpful to find out a little bit more about the backstory and ultimately what got Chris Fresh to this particular point in time. So take us all the way back. What was it like growing up? What were some of those experiences that shaped you into who you are now?

[00:05:08.100] - Chris Fresh
Yeah, West Philadelphia. Born and raised. On the playgrounds where I spent most of my days. The Fresh Prince. Right? Last name is Fresh. Let me just start this out. When I was born, I was born with the last name Fresh. I get this question more than I care, and I get the question. You got a lot of interesting people on the Internet, but that's my actual, real last name, Fresh. I always say it's the only thing my dad ever gave me was that last name. Yeah, I was born in California. Kind of grew up out there Till I was 17. We lived a little bit in the south, Southern California, L.A. area. Then we moved up to Northern California. So I kind of went from this. You're talking thousands and thousands of kids at every school, every situation. And then we go to Northern California, and there's 900 people in that town. So it was a major culture shift in a lot of ways. Not only that, there was a lot of culture in Southern California, and there was a major lack of culture in Northern California, where I was at. So I did that when I was my senior year in high school or right before my senior in high school, my family picks up and moves to Utah, which, oddly enough, the streets were a little more dangerous there than even Southern California.

[00:06:09.150] - Chris Fresh
It's pretty rough in Utah. A lot of people don't know that, but that's a fact. Most people don't. They're like, oh, Utah? And I'm like, yeah, I ended up in jail a lot. And they're like, Utah? And I'm like, yeah, I swear, it's where I Got into most of my trouble. Did a lot of street activities. We'll call them almost like the carnival, but without the carnival. One day a judge told me that that was my future or I should join the military. And so I joined the military, went into the Navy, spent five years, met my wife in the military. She wasn't in the military, but I met her in Mississippi. And then we got married. And kind of the fast track of that story is we have eight kids now, one at a time, all ours. Been married for 27 years, but we got married on a whim. I met her my 21st birthday. Still don't remember that particular event. I didn't even live in this town. Nine months later, the ship comes back. It had been built there. It comes back for a little remake. And I met her again. She remembered me.

[00:07:02.050] - Chris Fresh
I didn't remember her. Three more months goes by. We spend no time together, have no real interaction. Maybe hung out a couple times, went back to Virginia. She got a hold of me. She came out to visit one night. We were married two days later. And so our story is pretty much the 1-Tom hat there's a 0% success rate attached to it. The only reason there's a number there, it's like a decimal and some change for percentages. We created a number in that category. So somehow we made it through that. But, I mean, that's the background in a nutshell. But we can definitely unpack that.

[00:07:33.860] - Brandon Reece
I think one of the first places I go is. I don't know if everybody's picking up on this already, but there's just an energy that literally radiates off of you, and it's even more obvious in person. I mean, it's really contagious. And so I'm just curious as to where did that begin to rear its head? What was kind of the influences that developed some of that personality and the energy. Right. And then I'm very curious because normally the professionals that I've met that have this kind of similar energy and drive, normally they found a few ways to get in trouble with that before they started to orient it at the right targets. And so I'd love to just hear more. Maybe that's what goes back to your street activities. But I'd just love to hear more about that kind of where that backstory and that vibe comes from.

[00:08:24.120] - Chris Fresh
First of all, my family used to always say I was going to be used car salesman because I was a talker. I talked fast, I talked a lot. But I can remember distinctly because we moved around. We moved up to Northern California my third grade year. I make the joke. I was five, six in kindergarten. So I was the man until third grade. And then they caught up and then they passed me. I was tiny. I was real tiny. And it was cool until about third grade and then fourth grade came around and I got picked on a lot. Actually, I got bullied a lot. It was just a rough time. And my stepdad was real old school. My mom had remarried. This was the fourth guy. They were together the rest of my life, but this was the fourth guy. At the age of five, my dad wasn't around. And so getting bullied and then coming home and being raised by someone from 1929 was more of that. It was just a hard childhood, very demanding. I always joke around. If I could hear wood being cut, I was already in trouble. Meaning I should have somehow magically known to be out there at 6am waiting on my dad.

[00:09:21.090] - Chris Fresh
At 8 years old, got wood. And then in elementary school, this kid, Gary Lane. Gary, if you're listening, dude, I got bigger, bro. I want to see you. I'm joking. But he used to get me real good. Bad. All the stuff, wedgies, slammed into lockers, all that fun stuff. And I just remember that was when I decided I was going to find someone else for him to pick on. Now, you would think that I decided to stand up for myself. Nah, I learned how to deflect is how I approached that. And so what I would do is I'd spent P.E. specifically physical education. P.E. i don't think they teach that anymore in school, but we had that back in our school. I would just watch for some1-Tom o screw up, somebody do something stupid, trip, just anything. And then on the way into the locker room, I would bring that up. I would be like, oh, did y' all see? Whatever? And I got everyone's attention on that person just long enough to get in there, get my stuff and get out. And I couldn't shower, couldn't do nothing. That formed who I was. I did that for a long time.

[00:10:13.380] - Chris Fresh
Then I got into high school. I went to a school of 30 kids in my grade, maybe 25 kids in my grade. We get to high school and there's 1200 kids in my grade because it was this melting pot of all these small towns forming together. We went to Nevada Union High School in Nevada City. And I remember distinctly the first day, I was like, this is my chance. This is my shot to get back to being cool. I was cool in Southern California, but I wasn't cool in Northern California. And I was like, I gotta get that back, because this sucks. I'm not doing four years of this with 1200 kids or, you know, 5000 kids, if you start adding to the other grades, had played sports. So I'm like, yeah, right, okay, fair enough. But I did play. I played a lot of baseball. I was really good at baseball. And then I played some basketball. If I played basketball, I watched the teams play each other from the front row on the bench. And I learned the kids. It's a bunch of small school. I learned these kids. I knew all the cool kids at every school.

[00:11:06.090] - Chris Fresh
I knew who they were. They didn't know me, but I knew them and they didn't know me. So I had a chance because the kids at my school got mixed in 35 kids. Just quick business tip. If you want to protect culture, don't ever have 20% of your staff or more be new, because it can dilute the culture. And I've learned that because when we went from 35 kids to. To a thousand kids, they couldn't affect the culture. All these other kids already had a mind of their own and were doing their own thing. So first period pe, I'm behind Brock Larson. Brock Larson is twins with Tor Larson. They're the coolest kids on the planet. They're the two coolest guys. One's a pitcher, one's a catcher, one's the quarterback, one's the center, one's the forward, one's the guard. Like, they're the coolest kids ever. And they were the best at everything. And I'm sitting behind Brock and I'm like, if I can make him laugh, I'm in. I just gotta make them laugh. And so I took my shot with the teacher, and I made fun of the teacher and everybody laughed and I got in trouble.

[00:11:59.110] - Chris Fresh
But I was cool. Overnight success changed my life as far as my high school days. So that's kind of where I learned it. I think that's where I formed it. It was more of a defense mechanism and a survival instinct than it was this. I'm going to do something, whatever, or become someone. And then fast forward 2003. I told you. Me and my wife been married for 27 years. Well, we separated for about eight months. We were going through financial hardship. Life was hard. I was in the union, wasn't working, and our Ford Taurus broke down on the way to our mom's house. It's a car that's not really worth anything. But the thousand dollar transmission was my Mount Everest. It was just Bigger than I could see past. I told her I wanted to get a divorce. Now, we ended up. Obviously, it worked out. You guys know the rest of the story. But in that little gap, I went to work at a restaurant, waiting tables. I don't want to brag, but it was Fridays. It's not a big deal, everyone. It's kind of a big deal. All right? Anyways, it's the best of the worst.

[00:12:52.710] - Chris Fresh
That's what I told myself every day. So I'm waiting tables, and this guy's like, you know, you'd be good at selling speakers. And I was like, I probably would be good at selling speakers. Then I found out what selling speakers was. It was driving around from gas station to gas station and asking people if they wanted any speakers. And then it was this scam.

[00:13:08.190] - Brandon Reece
Your truck from the back of.

[00:13:10.230] - Chris Fresh
Well, it was a van. We had some professionalism about us. And so, you know, I was a street hustler for three years. There's more to that story. I ended up accepting Christ in the middle of scamming someone. That's a whole nother story I like. Well, I'm a skeptic in some ways. It's like everyone's lying. Everyone's cheating because I was lying and cheating. So I was like, hey, everyone's lying and cheating. I've been doing it for about three or four years. We were doing about 3 million off the street. I had six crews. I had organized crime division here in Indiana pulling me in. If you're listening, statutory limits are up. I think we're good. But they had me in there, and they thought we were stealing them. That's the only reason why I probably didn't go to prison for fraud. And we weren't stealing them. We were buying them from China. And they were just mislabeled. And so we were hustling people with this story of like, hey, we got a couple extra free. They screwed up on the order. I'm going to sell them. My boss will just take them. They're worth a couple grand, but I'd take a paycheck right now.

[00:14:00.420] - Chris Fresh
I'll take anything. And we'd work something out. We'd sell them. Well, this is all going on a year previous to this day. My son pulls the dresser down on his head, splits his head open, goes to the emergency room, thought, we're going to lose him. It's our second kid. We just had our third. But this is our second child. And my wife decides she's going to start going to church. Think about this. For three years I'm scamming people. Two years into scamming people, she starts going to church. I got no interest, zero interest. In fact, the second week I went in there was just to challenge the pastor in front of her to show her he's going to be a hypocrite, he's going to judge us, he's going to kick us out. I would tell him I was high, I would tell him I'm doing Xanax, I'd tell him I'm doing Vicodin. And I wasn't lying. I was doing all those things and I was just living crazy. I had three kids. And so now fast forward to that day. I had a friend of mine who was a manager at Carmax. He said, you should come work here, do something with your life.

[00:14:52.110] - Chris Fresh
And I said, who's going to pay all these bills? We have a pretty lavish lifestyle in that sense. He said, God will provide. And I said, yeah, okay, so I've had enough of this. So I go get a part time job there. May 12, 2006, I take a part time job. They try to talk me into a full time job. Well, I gotta pass a drug test and I can't pass a drug test. There's my new mountain. Well, this one I thought I could climb. So I went down to the local store and got a fake. What they call a wizzinator back then. I don't know what they're called these days, but it's basically a way to make it look like you're going to the bathroom. But it's all synthetic. I'm in the parking lot in this van. It's like 150 degrees out and I'm in slacks and a dress shirt, which is not what I normally wear. And I'm trying to put this thing on and I'm just thinking to myself, this is a very bad look. If anyone looks into the back of this van, I'm done. Nowadays you'd be canceled, right? It'd be over.

[00:15:46.660] - Chris Fresh
And I made a deal with God, a God I didn't even believe in. And I said, hey, you get me through this, I'll do whatever you want. Well, he intended to honor that. So I go through, I do the drug test, I pass it, I get the job, I leave. Now I'm stressed, I'm just done for the day. So I go home. Probably did more drugs to be honest. And then the next morning I wake up and I drive out to the west side of town. Now I sold speakers in Spanish. I knew Enough Spanish to sell speakers. Tuqueres, bocinas, puerto Tucasa, vende, barrato, mije, no save. I still remember a lot of the lines. And I'm in the middle of Spanish. And this is important to the story because all of a sudden I felt this conviction. I felt this feeling I had never felt before. Like I felt guilty and I couldn't make sense of it. I remember I teared up a little bit. I got a little watery in the eyes. It was slightly raining out, so I wasn't sure if it was the rain or if I was really emotional. And the guy says in Spanish, like, what's going on?

[00:16:35.640] - Chris Fresh
I was like, you don't want them in English. You don't want them. It's a scam. And he doesn't know what I'm saying. And now he starts asking me questions. And now I can't even talk to the guy because I don't know enough Spanish to do that. And I just remember shutting the door and he's just pulling more money out, waving it at me like, I want him, I want him. And I drive away. This guy probably still talks about that to this day. So I go drive around for a couple hours. I'm bawling my eyes out. I'm a complete mess. I don't tell no one. And I'm just like, all right, let's just make a car payment. I remember anytime I was in a cell, something like, let's just make a car payment. Because you can make a lot of money selling speakers. I'm not trying to recruit anyone into it right now, if you're listening, by the way. So, yeah, that's not the goal here. It's amazing anyway. No, it's not. So I go to another guy. It's three guys in a parking lot of AutoZone and they're working on their car. Three Hispanic guys.

[00:17:20.020] - Chris Fresh
And I'm into it. These guys are offering me, you know, if you get 150 for a set, usually paying about 60 bucks. Just a nice little get the day rolling. It's like kind of the lowest bottom point sale. They're offering me 300. So it's a good sale. I got a good sale on my hands. And the jefe, the boss, he walks up is like, how much for all of them? Oh, we got a monster on our hands now. And I felt like out of nowhere, I lost complete control of my mind, my body, and I felt like I was just going to pass out. And the ground was just like. Right. It wasn't. Felt like I was sinking. It felt like the ground was rising into me. I can't explain it, but at that same time I felt like I didn't hear anything, but I just felt babies crying, husbands and wives arguing. All the pain I had probably caused of all the guys that I had duped. And they had to go home in front of their wives and look like a fool. Spent Christmas money thinking they could buy these speakers and sell them back on ebay and maybe saved the day for the family.

[00:18:11.810] - Chris Fresh
And I destroyed that. I didn't want that anymore. I remember calling the pastor, the associate pastor. He was a friend of mine, had golfed with him a few times. And I told him, hey, let me tell you what just happened. And he's like, man, you just encountered Christ. So I prayed the sinner's prayer, but honestly, don't put a lot of power in that. I put power in the fact that I encountered Christ on my own, by myself, and he was real, changed everything. In fact, I took the full time job at CarMax. I drove straight to Carmax, met that manager. It was kind of weird. There's some symbology. When I walked in the building, it's a massive building. I walked down this one random row, he stops me, comes around the corner. You know, it'd be like almost impossible to find him in the building kind of thing. He's first guy I see, stops me. We pray right there. I don't know if the associate pastor called him because they were friends, but he was ready for me when I walked in that door. And he said, yeah, we still have a full time spot.

[00:19:01.570] - Chris Fresh
We did it in front of my cubicle. We didn't even know that would be my cubicle, but that's where we did it. It was just kind of symbolic in a lot of ways. And you know the story turns out great. Sheriff came, took our house, they took all our cars, we lost it all. So that was the journey. And then I guess from there, if you were to continue on the story. I worked at CarMax, had a lot of success there, just still wasn't enough money. And then went off and worked collections for a little while. Then I worked Angie's List, was number one on Angie's List in the nation. Had a good run there. But then they fired me as the number one sales rep because I went to this new department and that department failed and they fired everyone. And I realized there's no loyalty to these big companies. At least I wasn't wired to be good employee anyways. And I was like, you know, I'm done. I need to go back to my entrepreneurial spirits. And I started a house cleaning company. I put it on Angie's list, which was funny cuz a year later I won an award from them, a super service award.

[00:19:52.310] - Chris Fresh
And so now I'm at this banquet and the VP of sales is sitting there and I went to him back when they were going to let me go, and I was like, mike, you're not gonna let me go, are you? He's like, dude, I'll look into it. He never looked into it. I got let go. So now I'm sitting there and we're going around introducing ourselves. He's like, your name sounds familiar. I was like, yeah, I was the guy with eight kids that you guys fired three weeks before Christmas. He was like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. And so I was like, yeah. I was like, hey, it worked out for me. He just ended up feeling bad for the rest of the night. But if anyone's listening to this and going, whatever your thoughts are on this, here's what I would say to you. We've had a lot of success, obviously, in the last eight years, especially on the Internet, and we'll get into some of that and what we do. But life isn't about what happens to you. It's how you react. And I always tell my kids that you'll never get in trouble with me because of what you did.

[00:20:33.600] - Chris Fresh
You're going to get in trouble with me because of how you respond to what you did. Because we all make mistakes. Like we all make bad decisions. Any1-Tom hat's telling you they had a plan to work is absolutely lying. They're lying. Mike Tyson says it, everyone's got a plan till they get punched in the mouth. I've taken a few punches and I think we all have. And I don't value victim mentality. I don't value woe is me. I don't value how great I am. I don't value how horrible I am. I just value people who are constantly in a mindset to win. And when you have that mindset, the circumstances don't matter. It's what are you going to do after them? Because you can't win if you focus on the failures. You can't win if you focus on the limitations of the world. But man, when you break free of that and you realize there's no rules, there's no boundaries, you can do whatever you want. You can be whoever you want to be at any moment. And yeah, you might have to Take, in this case, 20 steps backwards. It is worth it if anyone out there is unhappy or feeling unsettled about where they're at.

[00:21:33.040] - Chris Fresh
You don't have to be. You're choosing to be. And I'm giving you a pass right now to go do something with that,

[00:21:38.480] - Brandon Reece
if you're cool with it. I want to hang in that for a moment. What makes you say that? That comment specifically is you don't have to be trapped by that. What was happening? What were you experiencing in that transitional state that made you convicted at that level?

[00:21:55.560] - Chris Fresh
That's such a good question. The best thing I could tell you. I'm going to give you kind of a little side lesson here that I think applies. It's funny to me how nobody has time for anything until you get sick. Life is just crazy. The schedule's full. I got to do this, and I got to do that. Then you get sick, and everything stops, and your world doesn't fall apart. Everyone gets sick. Everyone has a death in the family. Everyone's life at some point. In plumbing, we see it all the time. Every customer we deal with, their life got altered by their plumbing. And there's way bigger issues in life than plumbing failures or even restoration failures. So with that kind of a premise, I would say, I think we get trapped in all of the fears of the unknown. What if I do this? I think you need to change that thinking to, what if I don't do this? And it's just that subtle shift that takes you down. A new thought wave. So what was going on for me was when everyone was saying, like, you should go work at Carmax, or you should go do something different with your life or become a believer.

[00:22:54.320] - Chris Fresh
I just remember saying, yeah, that's easy for you to say, but in my reality. And then I would fill that in with all of these fears. How will I pay my bills? How will I support my family? And when I became a believer, I remember to this day, the pastor introduced me to this guy. I'm a really good friend. I'll be with this guy next week at a leadership conference for a week. And he said, he's a multi, multi, multi. He sits down with me at my kitchen table, one of the most humble men I've ever met in my life. And he says, chris, he looks at all my bills. This is like a week into Christianity, and we're all like, oh, the money stopped. And by the way, I was cash every day to wait two weeks for your first check. And your first check isn't even going to look like anything that catches up with you real fast, the stress, the burden, the pressure of the bills, the thousands of phone calls to the mortgage company telling them all your personal information because you can't make a payment. By the way, if you can't make your mortgage payment, I just know from history, you have to give up all your personal information every day because they need something.

[00:23:49.780] - Chris Fresh
They need to know why they're not getting paid. And he sits down and he says, chris, we have two choices. I can write a check and we can make this all go away. And he meant it. He was ready to write a check just to clear my debts. That's the kind of human he was and the capabilities he had. He said, or you can go through it. And I gotta tell you, it was so tempting to take the money. Like I think most people would take the money. But then I had this 1-Tom hought, I'm probably supposed to be learning something right now. And I remember looking at him and saying, I want to learn. I want to go through it. I want to learn. There was quite a few times over the next 12 months where I thought maybe I should just take the check. But we never did. We never took the money. We lost everything instead and built it all back. You know, there's something self fulfilling about earning it. That's what I want for people. I want them to go through it so they can earn it, because then it's theirs.

[00:24:41.850] - Chris Fresh
And when it's theirs, it can't be taken. You can't be talked out of it. No one can take it from you. And there's a sense of fulfillment. You know, it's funny, is in the plumbing industry, we get new. These new guys and these apprentices come in, and then we throw them in a truck and they get yelled at for basically six months, and they're just told how dumb they are. And what we do on day one is for the first half of the day, we get them on payroll. We get them their logins, get their uniforms, just all the admin. The second half of the day is we teach them something. I make them rebuild a toilet 20 times or install the toilet 10 times, whatever they can do in four hours, probably just a couple of times, and they go home fulfilled. They're not a plumber. They're not ready to go in a truck. But they learned something. The amount of loyalty and attachment that comes from that both ways is fulfilling. I think that's a small lesson in life, is that we hold ourselves back because of these fears. They're not even real Like, I thought I was going to lose everything, and guess what?

[00:25:33.690] - Chris Fresh
I did. And so what if I don't go to that birthday party? They're not going to like me. Okay, so what if your relationships and your obligations are built on that thin of a margin that is so transactional that you can't take a break from it? That's not worth protecting, man.

[00:25:49.260] - Brandon Reece
I think the lesson there, that conviction of doing the hard thing because you're confident, I guess, for lack of a better way to describe it, that that's gonna have meaningful impact on your life. Like, there's a difference between knowing that and experiencing that. What I see often is somebody can be told that, and they buy it. Like, okay, yeah, I can get along with that theory. But then when push comes to shove, when the moment comes for them to act on and live that out to where it becomes a lived experience, often people struggle to take that first step, to put them in a place where then it's an experiential thing and not just a knowledge base. And it's funny, because this has been a similar space for the last probably two or three months that I've been in personally, because I think that if you're honest with yourself, there's these layers that you're gonna come back to, these zones where you're being asked potentially to invest at the level, work at the level, pay the price at a level that you haven't done before. And you have to kind of re. Go through that phase of asking yourself those hard questions like, do I want the pass?

[00:27:00.960] - Brandon Reece
Do I want to live this out? Do I want this to become a lived experience for me and shape me and help me gain a skill set or a commitment or a discipline that I haven't had the opportunity to earn or had to learn and deploy up till now. Where I'm going with that is I feel like every time I'm faced with one of those new layers of demand, it doesn't get easier for me to say, yes, that's my experience. Like, I have to sit in that if it wasn't for good relationships. Chris has been an awesome sounding board for me in those moments. My wife has been an awesome sounding board in those moments where I need sometimes some help to make that commitment and dig in and go to that next layer of development. Do you find that true in your experience, or was it kind of a one and done like you lived it and now you go into every situation with that level of conviction?

[00:27:53.400] - Chris Fresh
The answer is no every time. Meaning every time I have to Live with the fears of the unknown. It's the same process every time. And the more I elevate, the more I get around people who are elevated above me. And then the challenge is even bigger or the decisions even bigger. I get personally coached by Russell Brunson. Russell Brunson has an inner circle with clickfunnels. I'm in the inner circle, and I remember the first time hearing the price. It's always more than you think. The commitment's always more than you think. And then, even then, that's to get in. Now you're flying all over the place, going to these meetings, making time in your schedule is probably my biggest resource that I don't have to give up. You know, beyond the money. And it's just like, you know, if it was an easy decision, everyone would make it. We've heard this before, but it's true. If it was an easy decision, everyone would make it. But here's two things I live by. I think at the core that give me that confidence to say yes, because it's not. The confidence in saying yes is it's going to work.

[00:28:46.560] - Chris Fresh
The confidence in saying yes is knowing it's the right thing to do because it looks like the wrong thing to do or the scary thing to do sometimes. So let me unpack that. The main thing was, I remember clear as day, my best friend's dad. Now, I don't know if you guys have heard of Robert Kiyosaki. Rich dad, poor dad. He wrote that book. I think he ended up being kind of a fraud with that. The story, it wasn't real, but the lesson is real. And I had that. I had the rich dad and the poor dad in my life. My best friend's dad was the rich dad. My stepdad was the poor dad. And I don't mean, like, physically, but the lesson that I remember my best friend's dad taught me was broke is a condition. Poor as a state of mind. Everyone will be broke at some point, but that's a condition. It's being poor that keeps you there. Then you couple that with this other thing that I learned, which was from the Internet. But it was this guy that drives around and he kind of approaches wealthy people, and he's like, what do you do for a living?

[00:29:39.260] - Chris Fresh
Well, before he did that, those are all set up, by the way. But before he did that, he used to randomly go around and people and ask them what their net worth was. It was a trigger question that got a lot of reaction. It's inappropriate. We all know that well, this one lady walks up to his window and I believed her. She looked wealthy. She said, you know, the number 1-Tom hing you have to know about wealth is to have relationships. And she unpacks that a little bit. But I'm like, that's so true. Then you think about the five people year round is the average you, what you are, and all those things that we hear all the people say all the time. And it's like, man, if broke is a condition and poor is a state of mind and I get around poor minded people, then I'm always going to be in this situation. But if I can elevate the people. I just did a podcast the other day or something on one of the shows, I saw the clip my team made. But I was talking about this idea that you got to get out of this cycle, so to speak.

[00:30:28.820] - Chris Fresh
So I said, hey, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. You need to be the dumbest person. That's how you get smarter. And I've lived by that. So do I think I belong in the room? I absolutely don't think I belong in the room. I still to this day don't know why people follow my channel, listen to me. I don't know why you guys would interview me. I appreciate all the kind things you said, but my stepdad was really good at what he does, which was convincing me that I didn't have any value. And I believe that Gary Lane helped cement that. And there's these people in my life that had made me who I am. Not in a good way. Before I beat up on my stepdad too much, he provided. That's something my real dad never, you know, he provided. So I'm forever thankful. But there are realities to that and it shaped me. So to answer your question, yeah. And you know, when I go on stage, I'm nervous. When I get on these podcasts, I'm nervous. When I travel to a shop for the first time, I'm living in a fishbowl.

[00:31:19.840] - Chris Fresh
Everyone's looking to prove me wrong nonstop. I'm always on trial. And at this point, I'm good with it. You know, I almost eat it for breakfast kind of thing. But it took a long time to get here. And now I'm entering this new phase where I go in a room with like Russell Brunson or those people and I'm again, I deal with the inferior complex, the imposter syndrome, and all the things that we all deal with. And here's what I'LL tell everyone you're wrong. It's a facade. The whole thing is a facade. You're not as great as you are and you're not as worse as you think you are. You're just who you are. And if you could live in that and be authentic in that, then people are going to be attracted to that. And if you can't, you try to be something you're not, people are going to be unattracted to that. And it's just really that simple. It really is.

[00:32:00.760] - Brandon Reece
I just really appreciate you going to that space because the reality of it is the group that listens to us, it kind of covers the gambit. So we certainly have owners in the audience, but we also have just everyday leaders in the ranks. And we also have just a ton of people just going out and trying to do the do and make their way in these companies and these entities that they belong to. And I just have a tough time believing that that kind of experience and people sharing that kind of experience doesn't have value for the rest of us. Cause I know I reap from it. Because we're going to turn the corner here in a moment and start getting into some of your accolades and what you're currently doing and what that's mean in terms of you and your brand. And people are going to hear very quickly that you are not among the normal. What you've experienced and been able to do as a team is pretty unbelievable. And I think it's important for our audience to hear guys like you and women that are in similar places where they're just normal people, they've just unlocked some experience levels that some of us are still working through and working towards.

[00:33:02.720] - Brandon Reece
But it's absolutely feasible and achievable. And I know for me personally, Chris, like, just to hear a guy that's been as successful as you have on so many fronts to say, yeah, it's still a challenge every time I need to hear that. I'm long time married too. I have some successes on that front, 29 years on that front. Certainly have career and professional wins and successes. But man, I'd be a liar if I didn't say I have days where just that imposter, that questioning just gets the best of you. So I just appreciate you going there

[00:33:31.900] - Chris Fresh
just to speak into that. We both spoke on the same stage. You guys consult companies. John Gabriel, the client we've shared or maybe we've both interacted with, he talks so highly of you guys and he just absolutely loves you guys. He's a big reason why I'm on the podcast. I don't go on a lot of other people's stuff. I don't have a lot of people on my stuff. I'm a little bit still skeptical of the Internet and who's out there. And people go, oh, this guy's just a scammer. And I'm like, you know what? I don't even blame you for that because that's what the Internet's filled with. I got called an office boy the other day. Literally, I'm sitting in the front of a plane, just coming from a speaking event, two shops, and I'm getting called an office boy. So I just replied with, no, I'm a podcast boy, because what are you going to do? You're going to fight this guy on the Internet? It's not his fault. You don't know. And I don't even blame him for it. But we're all just out here trying to do our thing and life is tough.

[00:34:19.080] - Chris Fresh
I mean, life sucks. It can suck real bad sometimes, and other times it can be real exciting and really fulfilling. And I think that's all part of the design. And we just gotta be willing to push through those moments to get to the other one. The other ones don't exist without the first ones.

[00:34:33.780] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, that's so true. Without the context, if there is no dark, you don't know the light. It's pretty powerful. All right, man, I appreciate you hanging in that pocket with us. Let's turn the corner. So obviously the entrepreneurial instincts kick back in, pick us up, post the car experience. Yeah. Where did you go next? What led you to where we're at right now and unpack some of that for us?

[00:34:58.570] - Chris Fresh
So just right after carmax, I went to Interstate Battery. Made it there three months. Then I went to cnac, which was the collections agency for another company. That was a buy here, pay here, high risk car lot thing. I wasn't a part of that company. I was a part of the company that wrote the loans. Made it there 10 months. Then I went to the wealthy individual that knew me. I'm going to leave the name of that company off because I don't want to expose him. He's a great guy. He wants to stay kind of private. But I went to work for his company. I did make it there for two years. I probably should have been fired after three months. I'm just not a good employee. That's when I went to Angeles. I made it Angeles for a year. That's commission only job they'll put up with your shenanigans for a while. And then I went and started the most profitable thing I could think of. Apartment cleaning. It's not very profitable.

[00:35:46.370] - Chris Nordyke
I was doing the math in my head.

[00:35:48.450] - Chris Fresh
There is. Let me do it for you, Chris. There is none. You owe people. Yeah. I mean, I went through all my savings three months into that thing. I finally got my first check three months in. I remember I was like, all right. I grabbed this buddy of mine that was a manager at Marsh, and I was like, we're going to start a cleaning business together. There's a little bit more backstory of that, but I'm going to start a cleaning business together. We go in, and he's like, how are we going to get businesses? And we're going to go around. We're going to give this awesome flyer away to these apartments. They're going to hire us, and then we're going to clean their apartments. We're going to be rich within six months. And I remember the first time someone's like, all right, you know what? We'll consider you bring your i9 in and your. I don't remember what the other thing was. I was like, cool. We get outside, and Matt's like, man, I'm so glad I'm partnering with you. I don't even know what that is. I was like, me neither. We need to look it up.

[00:36:32.970] - Chris Fresh
I said, we'll be back in a couple hours with it. Then you go look it up. So we look it up. We find out what it is, you know, like, oh, okay, that makes sense. Oh, it's Insurance and our i9. So we turn that in. They never even hire us. So then I go to another place, and I'm like, look, I started changing my pitch to, like, you got an apartment we can clean for free just so we can show you what we can do. And then I remember no one was giving us anything. Finally, I go back. It was like two months of just cold calling. So I go back for those listening, man, nothing happens overnight. Also, don't print a bunch of your flyers the first time, because you're probably going to reprint them. I printed out, like, 50 of these things, and the first person, like, you spelled this wrong. Then we got to go back. You know, we're unlimited funds here. Kinko's the only person making money off my business. And I get into this one, I go back to revisit, and I'm like, hey, did your cleaners not show up anything?

[00:37:21.650] - Chris Fresh
Finally, I go back to this 1-Tom hey go, isn't the hood? And they go, our cleaners didn't show up today. I'm like, where are your guys? So me and Matt clean this apartment. All I remember, if we get the contract, we get $85 for these one bedroom apartments. And I think it's like 95 and 115 for two bedroom, three bedroom. I remember finishing. It was cold. In Indiana, I'm mid-30s at this time, maybe low-30s. And I feel like I'm 80. Every joint in my finger. I never knew how hard cleaning was. Like, every little thing hurt. And we're sitting at McDonald's and I'm just like doing the math. Like, that took us six hours each. That's 12 hours. I'm like, I hope we don't get the contract. This is terrible. So we ended up getting hired. You know, you might be excited. I can't tell you how many times I rethought my whole life at 11pm at night in the hood, cleaning an apartment late at night. So we're doing this thing and we're just losing money faster than we can breathe. And I hired a guy, had to pay him. That's where my savings went.

[00:38:16.820] - Chris Fresh
We weren't getting any money. It took him three months to start paying us. We did this for nine months, 12 months. Remember the company that asked for the i9? They hired us. So now we're rocking. We got two apartment complexes, we're double, we're booming. What's up, Grant? 10 times, we're 20 times, 20 times the money being lost a minute. Like, I remember trying to recruit my buddy. He was like 6, 2. He cleans the ceiling fan, no ladder. I'm like, bro, you were made for this. Like, anyways, unfortunately, this is all true. Someone's like, you should do move in, move out, cleans. It's like the same thing, but it's home. So I put my ad on Craigslist. That's dating this a little bit. This is like 2011. And I get this realtor that hits me up. I clean it by myself. In five hours, I make $275. And I took a stain out of the carpet. I use Blue Dawn. Hey, if you ever want to know, just Blue dawn in water, baby. It works like magic. Not too much Blue dawn, though. I got the little spot out and he gave me an extra 25 bucks.

[00:39:15.190] - Chris Fresh
And I was like, dude, I actually am going to be rich now. Then I went and told my partner. I was like, I found it. Like, eureka. Like we found the gold, right? And so we started doing residential cleaning. We did that for three years. Got a hundred to 150 homes that we were cleaning on a weekly, bi weekly basis. It was about as big as we were going to get it. And I still hated my life. And so I was like, what am I doing? I'm not passionate about this. I don't love this. So I sold it. I sold it back to him and the employees at a discounted rate. I got out from underneath it. It's not some glamor story. I didn't drive a Lamborghini afterwards. I couldn't even rent a Lamborghini afterwards. Then I was like, man, what am I going to do? I didn't even thought about that. I just wanted out. I was so focused on getting out, I didn't even know what I was going to do. Had a little bit of money, was at church. I'm a believer at this point, obviously I'm about eight years, nine years in them, I believe.

[00:40:03.330] - Chris Fresh
I think it was like 20, 13, 14, and I'm in the church and this guy comes in and asked me what I'm gonna do. I said, I don't know. Well, when they all found out I wasn't working like all these other business owners, I was in an affluent area in church. And this is still the original church we went to back when we sold speakers. We weren't wealthy, but they all were. And so all these entrepreneurs, all these, they watched this. They watched me go from nonbeliever to believer to carmax to losing. They watched the whole thing. And then they watched me build this business, you know, in the most saturated market, cleaning. And they watched me do that. And they said, hey, you can help me with my business.

[00:40:36.860] - Chris Nordyke
Are you a business that's under 5 million in sales and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit. But now you've got to build a sales team or maybe you just hired your first sales rep, but you don't really know how to manage them. Like, how do you manage lead train? Develop a sales rep. Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market. They'll have weekly one on ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan. And they'll also have a monthly owner's meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and Review the progress of that sales rep, their plan to actual results, what kind of performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that 1-Tom o one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well.

[00:41:30.560] - Chris Nordyke
How great would that be to have a bolt on sales manager for your one sales rep and it's only 2,500 bucks a month. If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop. Our floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over 250 million in revenue, supported by, advised by an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you. So take action, don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment and let's unlock the next chapter of your success story.

[00:42:03.970] - Chris Fresh
So I would go around and spot consult just a little bit here, a little bit there. And one day a guy asked me to help me with his plumbing company and I said, nah, that's the 1-Tom hing I don't do. That was for Friday. Saturday, my shower valve leak. I swear this story just sounds made up as I'm telling it, but Saturday, my shower valve leaks onto my hardwood floor. I was a carpenter. I had a journeyman card in the carpentry. I kind of left that part out of my story. I was framing finish work and scaffolding. That was before and after the military for a minute before I learned the speaker game. And in fact, when my transmission went out in that Taurus, I was laid off from the union. That's, that's what was going on. That's why I was waiting tables. So they're all watching me. And then the guy asked me about the, the. Yeah, the shower valve leaks. So my wife reaches out to some1-Tom hat I had helped with another project. They were friends. He finds out he sends a plumber to my house on a Saturday for free just to help me out.

[00:42:53.310] - Chris Fresh
And the guy comes in wearing like part of his last job, very unconfident, very awkward experience. He replaces my shower valve going through the front. And he basically is like. I was like, you know, what kind of a favor am I getting here? Like, looks expensive. So I was like, how much would this be? And he goes, $1,100. And I was like, what? He's like, on a weekday? I was like, for what? And I didn't say that but that's what I was thinking. And I remember asking him like, and you get 1100? Because I was like, how? No way. And he's like, ye. I was like, who sells it? He's like, I do. And I was like, no way. In my mind, like, no. I mean, I wasn't telling this guy to his face, like, you would never be able to sell anything. But I'm just thinking this like. And then it hit me. You telling me someone can wake up on a Saturday and within an hour they got this guy in front of him, they got to make an $1,100 decision. N. There's got to be a better way. This can't be the way.

[00:43:41.650] - Chris Fresh
This can't be how this goes. People are stressed out and they're getting no information. They've got. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know what I'm saying? There's a lot of guys out there that don't have self respect and they don't carry themselves a certain way. They don't carry themselves as professionals. And they come in and then the customer is dealing with that less than seller experience. I had sold speakers on the street. I had sold cars, I had sold ads. I had sold just all kinds of stuff. Growing up, right before we moved to Northern California, I was selling myself on marbles. I owed these Vietnamese kids like 500 marbles right before my birthday 1-Tom ime because I was gambling marbles and then talking them into giving me their own marbles to gamble again with. Maybe I could win it back. I sucked at marbles. I shouldn't have been doing it. So that's just what. And I found this thing that actually matters. I was like, wait a minute.

[00:44:26.800] - Brandon Reece
Need is.

[00:44:27.360] - Chris Fresh
I mean, sir, think about this for a second. This is a little. Some people. I lose people here because I. Maybe I think about it too deeply, but I know the number one cause of disease is inflammation. I know that the number one stressor that causes inflammation is money. And I know the number one reason for divorce is money. And so I'm like, if people are coming into their home being less than professional, less than educational, and the homeowner's left with this two thousand dollar decision, does the finger pointing start? Because when I was selling speakers, I know the finger pointing was happening when money got. And I felt that conviction back when I accepted Christ. So I'm sitting there in this moment in my sweat, tiny home, sweating in this bathroom with this guy who's looks like, what is the dude's name on Popeye? The. The Bad guy. Bruno or Bruno or. Yeah, he was in my bathroom. And I was like, yeah, man. And I mean, it was just terrible. And I was getting it for free. And I was like, man, that someone's got to fix this. So I texted the owner and said, I think I can help.

[00:45:22.270] - Chris Fresh
I ran a couple of calls on Monday out of my Honda Civic and jeans and in a polo. And I just wanted to get a feel for what it was like to be a plumber. And then went through a. What's that?

[00:45:32.430] - Brandon Reece
Sell it on that following Monday.

[00:45:34.910] - Chris Fresh
Following Monday, the very. That was Saturday. I was in a house Monday morning, double vanity, sink clogged in the second story. Sold twenty two hundred dollars worth of stuff. But we found out that eleven hundred of it, this contractor stuff, because I was. I knew carpentry. So I was like, yeah, we could do your subfloor. We could. Because it was moldy. It needed to be done. I don't. You know, I didn't know. And so the plumber goes out. There's like, yeah, we can't do half this stuff. So then ended up being 1100 sale. It was funny because I was coming back to talk to them about my experience, the owners, to see if I could help them. They sent me on a second call, like, you want to learn more? I was like, sure. And as the 1800 course, they're like, let's make some money today. So 1800 water here. Well, I came back and I said, look, customer experience sucks. You got to redeem this. You're not giving people options. You're not giving people choices. We're not educating. So then we go on this journey. Well, I go, boom. I start sell six calls a day.

[00:46:25.630] - Chris Fresh
I start running calls and six to eight calls a day. And I'm just selling. The guys are behind me doing them. And we. We discovered a lot of problems with that. The guys didn't trust me. I wasn't a plumber, so then I had to get in the field, but I had done carpentry and scaffolding. So I was like, well, I can do this. I just. I just need to know a couple things. And I was in Indiana, where licenses are. You could work up underneath the owner's license. So I just put myself in. In good situations where I wasn't going to hurt anyone or. Or do something CR. Crazy. I wasn't laying out brand new drain systems day one, but I was installing water heaters. I was installing different little things and just kind of getting my. I remember the first thing I installed with this Was just kind of when I first realized I needed to do something, I ran a battery out to a guy for a battery backup system. That's all I installed was the battery. And I remember looking at him like, does this make me an electrician too? Anyways, that was a little fun joke.

[00:47:11.650] - Chris Fresh
So, yeah, so that was how it all went down. You know, I took the next three years fixing that company, getting it sellable. By fixing it, all I really did was get positions and help them get positions in place so they could sell it, increase the revenue by quite a bit. They went from about 13,000 a week to 55,000 a week within about two months, three months, and the rest was history. Two or three. They sold that company and I left you.

[00:47:33.490] - Brandon Reece
I mean, you glossed over that pretty quick. So in two or three months, you went from a thousand and something bucks a week to 55 grand plus 13.

[00:47:42.170] - Chris Fresh
They were. There were three trucks at 13K. And by the time that three months was up, they were still at three trucks, 55K a week.

[00:47:49.010] - Brandon Reece
Wow.

[00:47:49.730] - Chris Nordyke
And was that simply by. By you optimizing their conversion rate? I mean, just them landing more of the jobs in front of them?

[00:47:57.010] - Chris Fresh
More of the jobs and more work on the job. 1-Tom hing is, if you look at Costco, you know, they're a billion dollar company and industry, right? When you think about wholesale box stores, this idea of moving volume, you turn around, you look at Wawa or Speedway or any of these other big marathon, these nationwide, or these bigger convenience stores, that's a billion dollar industry. They have a very different pricing strategy. And what I realized was, you know, if you take an iPhone, for example, I don't know if this podcast will be video or not, but I'll put it up on the screen. It is video.

[00:48:26.790] - Brandon Reece
Yeah.

[00:48:27.430] - Chris Fresh
Oh, no, they can see me.

[00:48:28.550] - Brandon Reece
Oh, yeah.

[00:48:28.950] - Chris Nordyke
Oh, they can see me.

[00:48:29.550] - Chris Fresh
I'm kidding. I'm just. I'm just kidding.

[00:48:31.430] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, that'd be great.

[00:48:32.550] - Chris Fresh
Okay. For those listening. That's not true. So, yeah. So you see this iPhone? Well, the manufacturer markets it, Apple markets it, then the service provider markets IT, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint. And then their retailers market Best Buy, Walmart, whoever they are. You got three people shoving this thing down your throat. No one's doing that in plumbing. And then on top of that, these customers are shopping for plumbing once every year, once every two years, sometimes once every three years. That's the problem. And so it's like they're not professional shoppers, so they don't realize that they can buy in volume. And save money. And plumbing companies don't sell in volume, so they don't offer that. Well, I realized right away, if you go to a call and you do the minimum and let's say you do an hour's worth of work, that's two to three hours of your day. You got to drive there, you got to diagnose, you got to spend time, you got to clean up, you got to collect, you got to get back in your truck. And if I can just go to one call a day, I can plum for seven hours.

[00:49:24.000] - Chris Fresh
But if I go to four calls a day, I can only plum for four hours because I all that drive time, southwest came out and said, hey, look, we don't make money unless we're in the air. We don't make money when we taxi. We don't make money when we load planes. We don't make money when we load bags. We don't make money when we sell tickets, because things can change. Fights can get canceled. People can back out. But once that plane's in the air, wheels up, they're making money. Well, same thing in plumbing. You don't make money when you drive to the call. You don't make money when you get them to call in. You don't make money when you load up the water heater. You get money when you install it, when you plumb. So you want most of your time plumbing. Well, then you got all these coaches on the Internet saying, burden rate, burden rate, hourly, hourly. And the problem I have there is bad business decisions can create a higher burden rate that makes your hourly so high that you can't convert a lot of work. And so it's this cycle that they're in.

[00:50:08.380] - Chris Fresh
And that's what we did. We just broke that cycle and said, look, look, there should be an option for the bare minimum if you want to come into my convenience store, and I got to keep 10,000 drinks cold so you can find the one you want. Yeah, it's be four bucks because you can park on the high. Look, you could park in the store almost. But if you go to the grocery store, you got to walk 100ft. You got to buy 12 of them, and they're not cold. I'll give you a deal because I'm getting a deal when I buy it. But if you go to Costco, you got to rent a u haul truck like, a mile down the road, and then you got to go in there with your flatbed cart, and you got to buy a cow. You know, they don't even sell Milk. And so it's like, well, yeah, but you're getting a better bang per ounce. You spend more money up front, but you get a better bang for your buck. And I just brought that into the trades and say, what if we did that here? What if, you know, that first option was the bare minimum what they called out for.

[00:50:55.050] - Chris Fresh
I don't think everyone should have to buy a TV when they go looking for batteries for the remote. But I also don't think we should hide the TV from them. Yeah, Best Buy lets you have all those choices and so we just bring those into the home. My big shtick was we're not going to go in there and convince people. We're just going to diagnose. If they have the information I have, they'll know they need it too. And then I'll just volume discount it based on, based on time savings.

[00:51:16.500] - Brandon Reece
I want you to hang there. So one of the things that Chris and I have been kind of wrestling with, I think a little bit, is this idea that with the changes that are happening inside the restoration space, of course we have listeners that may extend outside of that, but there's just this growing demand on entities to become better at being retail contractors. So we kind of have gotten a little bit fat and happy in our industry, the restoration space, because a lot of entities, let's say, for instance, has built their business on TPA types of relationships. There's a lot of inbound business that has happened in the past. And often when you're going out to an insurance type loss where the proceeds are being provided by a different entity, you also had just have had less decision friction often in that initial interaction with the client. Now I'm not saying it's a give me, but it's just felt less, less of a barrier of entry. And as things have began to kind of shift over the last year and a half, maybe two years, you're starting to see a difference there. And so there's this higher level of demand on operators to equip their team and their people and their processes to be better and more competitive in an environment more similar to like what retail contractors face.

[00:52:33.250] - Brandon Reece
And so kind of the point of where I'm going with this is this is pretty time. The timing is interesting because we're also kind of promoting right now and communic with other teams, like we need to be auditing our practices, our internal systems and processes and ask ourselves if we had to, could we compete against a retail contractor providing the same service that we are? And if the answer is not a clear yes, then we got some work to do. And so I think you talking about this right now, I think this is very interesting timing for a lot of our audience. So help me understand what you're talking about. Give me two or three, like real concrete examples of what you implemented to do what you were talking about. And what were some of the friction points? Like, did you have to convey some kind of certain messaging? Did you have to get, you know, remove decision friction from owners or from internal stakeholders? Like just kind of talk me through two or three of those.

[00:53:26.900] - Chris Fresh
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, it's funny. It's mindset is. That's where. Honestly, that's where my value probably is earned is changing mindsets. The house aren't. You know, everyone gets lost in the house, but they don't matter. In fact, I remember that the why before the how was a tape I listened to when I was a kid. My best friend's dad, the rich dad, he wasn't wealthy, but he was rich in the way he thought he. I actually sat across the table from Robert Kiyosaki at an event because this guy was speaking at the event. Robert Kiyosaki was speaking in the event. My best friend was backstage. So I was backstage kind of one of those deals. But I was 17 and had no interest in what this guy had to say. So I wasn't very smart there. But just being around that kind of. It shapes the way you. You look at all this stuff. So I got invited to this speaking event not that long ago for restoration industry, and I did a speech on what. What if insurance didn't exist? What if it didn't exist? What if it was just dealing with the homeowners all the time?

[00:54:27.350] - Chris Fresh
And what if you actually had to communicate value and all these things? So a lot of my thinking comes from kind of that concept, right? So it's like, okay, what if it wasn't always. Does it have to always, like, I always challenge the status quo. Why. Why do we have to do it that way? There's a story about. Can't think of Firestone. And they were about to go out of business. They had a bunch of rubber and they had to cure this rubber. The story goes like this. They had to cure the rubber for 90 days. And so they were sitting on a bunch of rubber that hadn't been cured, and they were sitting on a lot of bills that had to be paid. And so they were. They were. They were going to go wander, and one of the guys Said, why do we have to wait 90 days? Well, I think they ended up turning these tires around in three days. It worked. And so come, come to find out the reason why you had to wait 90 days is because that's how we've always done it. And then I wondered, I was like, well, was it 90 seconds and someone was just trying to take a longer break.

[00:55:20.350] - Chris Fresh
So then they turned into 90 minutes, someone else turned it into 90, you know what I'm saying? Just like 90 hours and then it's like 90 days and pretty soon we're about to be 90 years. Like it's got to cure forever. Tired, you know, And I was. Rubber prices are just going up because no one. And it's just crazy me. That's what I saw in the plumbing industry is like, well, we've always done it this way. So. So a couple of those things are, is we don't discount. Well, sure, if you're just going to buy one Red Bull, I'm not going to discount either. But if you buy two. But what if you buy 24? And the other thing is, is Costco discounting? No, like that's their full price, 36 bucks for 12 Red 24 Red Bulls. If I go to the 711 and buy them 24 days in a row, it's going to be 120 bucks. I saved money, but no one discounted anything. And so it's just changing the mindset of how we look at all this stuff is powerful. So back to what you're asking. I read this book called Unreasonable Hospitality.

[00:56:15.160] - Chris Fresh
I think this is so important for your listeners doing restoration because it's what I battled with plumbing when I came into the plumbing industry. I came in with this new way of thinking. Even today, even today I could point to probably 20 or 30 companies that we've just in the last four years, 10 times, 20 times, triple time, whatever you want to call it, all grown. They've exploded. They got their lives back. That's the biggest thing we help owners do is just not, yeah, you're making money, but let's get your, let's do it without you. And it was hard. Still hard. The mindset shifts are still hard. It's why I don't do one on one coaching anymore. It's like, okay, I've done enough of that now I've got a team of coaches that are success stories that are helping change those mindsets because it's like hitting your head against the wall sometimes. And that's what you're going to be up against in this industry with any industry making a shift. So unreasonable hospitality. These guys get this. They're. They're a restaurant. I think it's 11 Madison west or something like that is the name of the restaurant.

[00:57:08.490] - Chris Fresh
But it's in New York. They ended up becoming number one. Well, before they became number one, they got invited to the top 50 event. And the way I guess this event goes is it's like a three hour event. And they start the event out by naming number 50 the Loser. But you're still the top 50 of the world. But in that group, you're the loser. Right? You're the. You're number 50. So these guys go and, like, the first thing that happens is their names get put up. Number 50. And they're just deflated for the whole night. Like, I'm like, come on, guys, you're top 50. But that's not how they saw everyone wants to be number one. And they were racking their brains like, we have the best food, we have the best plates, we have the best napkins, we have the best forks, we have the best. And I'm. I'm kind of changing what they said a little bit. But they were doing all the main things right. I bet a lot of restoration companies are doing the things right. They're documenting the best, they're sending the information. They have the best relationships. They're putting the air scrubbers in the right spot.

[00:57:59.430] - Chris Fresh
They're putting the blowers in the right spot. They demo the right way, they treat for mold the right way. Is that illegal to say?

[00:58:05.470] - Brandon Reece
Well played.

[00:58:06.030] - Chris Fresh
We're good. We're good on a podcast. So they're doing everything right. And that's how this restaurant was. But what they realized was number 49 through 1 were innovating. They were changing the industry, they were changing the mold. They weren't doing it the way everyone else did it because everyone else did it that way. Sure, they did some things, but it changed the way they think. And that one really struck me. So then these guys go on to tell the story of 1-Tom hing they changed. I think this is so perfect. There's three reasons why people will change their buying habits. Number one is values. Not value, but values. We don't got to look much further than 2020. People started changing their buying habits because of things people stood for or all of the politics and all of the things nowadays, you know, if. If you believe in 1-Tom hing, you believe in everything. It's just so crazy how people follow people. I don't follow any of it. So when you look at that, you go, wow, values really affect the way people think and make decisions. In fact, I would argue wars are created over values.

[00:59:01.390] - Chris Fresh
Number two is an experience. So think about it like this. You're walking down the beach, you got 20 bucks in your pocket. You have no intentions to spend that 20 bucks. You're with your loved one, your spouse, your wife, your whatever. And you get down to the end of the pier and there's this dude sitting there painting the sunset. He says, you want me to paint you in the sunset? It's 20 bucks. Well, guess what? There's a good chance I'm dropping 20 bucks. Like, how do you. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. FOMO kicks in and you spend the 20 bucks and the last one's a deal. And we don't have to look any further than Black Friday, right? A deal will change buying habits. So these guys, they're a fine dining restaurant. They're not going to value stack their menu. You know, the wagyu is not going to. The fifth ounce of wagyu is going to be just as expensive as the first ounce. We've all been there, that off the menu stuff. But maybe we haven't all been there. As I say, as I said that out loud, maybe we haven't all been there.

[00:59:50.060] - Chris Fresh
So you go to find dining restaurant, they have the menu you can see, and then they have the menu you can't see. And that menu you can't see is a little bit more expensive than the men you can't see. And there's no deals over there. And so even think about a fine dining restaurant, there's no sides that come with the meal. Typically they're giving away free bread. You're not probably at a fine dining restaurant. And so you, you look at these guys as, how can we, how can we do this? So they go, okay. They started to notice a trend that their customers were only staying for a couple hours. And a fine dining restaurant, you typically stay a little longer and you spend a little bit more money. And those margins are really good on that back end stuff because you're not ordering another steak, you order another drink or dessert, and those increase the ticket average at a much higher margin. So they said, we got to keep our people here longer. So they figured out what was going on. People parking sucks in New York and they were limited on how many, how many hours they could buy in the meter or their spot before they go to this restaurant.

[01:00:40.420] - Chris Fresh
So what they decided to do is they would go to the table the waiter would say, hey, welcome in special occasion, all the normal stuff. And then. And after that, they would go through the series of how they got there, and they would say, did you guys take the train or the bus? You know, how'd you guys get it? Oh, you drove. Oh, nice. What kind of car you drive? Oh, those are cool. Which one did you get? Oh, what color? And very intrigued by their vehicle. Find out where the vehicle. Well, where'd you find parking? Oh, over at the garage. Oh, no, you're on the street. How did you find a spot there? Well, I got lucky. Blah, blah, blah. And then they get all the details. And once they know where that car's at and what car it is, they go tell a runner. And that runner goes out and puts eyes on that car. Once that runner has eyes on that quarter car, they put coins in the meter. They come back and verify. At this point, you can imagine we're 15 minutes into the. To the experience, 30 minutes into the experience.

[01:01:25.610] - Chris Fresh
So maybe they got their drinks, maybe they got their appetizers. Maybe we're in the middle of bringing their advertisers out. Server goes back by the table and says, hey, just want to let you guys know, we found your car on blah, blah, blah, the gray whatever. We put coins in the meter. Take your time. Your meter's on us for the rest of the night. Well, they saw their tables spend more time. Their tips got bigger. They would buy the second and third round of drinks. They would buy the dessert. And it's like, they don't call it this, but I call it quarters for dollars. Like, exchange a few quarters for some dollars, but make those quarters count. Like, you can't just give them 50 cents and make an impact, but you could put two quarters in a meter and make an impact. Let me give you a practical example of something I was doing early on that was changing the game. I remember specifically I went to this house and they had a water heater leak, and it was around 2pm I don't know what time it was, but it was around 2. I remember that.

[01:02:14.700] - Chris Fresh
And I. I just, more importantly, remember I have just enough time to get this water heater in. And what. What ended up happening was as I was talking to them, they had people. I can't remember if they had family in town, but they had people coming over for dinner at six that night. That sticks out to me for some reason. But at 6 that night, they were gonna have dinner. And so I was like, okay, well, they were interested in the tankless softener. But there's no way I'm gonna get this tankless softener installed called tonight. So I'm like, ah, dinner's in the way of the meter's in the way of another round the meters in the way of dessert. And I was like, and I didn't read this book back then. This is just how I thought. I just read that book probably about six months ago. But anyways, I was, I was standing there and I was like, how can we, you know, I always tell when you start finding problems in the home, you got to create solutions. And then when you get objections, you have to figure out what those are. You have to create and give customers a path to, to the.

[01:03:05.650] - Chris Fresh
Yes. You have to give them, don't talk them into it, don't drag them down it, but give them a path, give them a way to get there. So what I said was, look, what if you guys went out to eat? And then I would, we kind of planned on having dinner here. I said, well, hold on, what if I paid for you guys to go out to eat? Do the tank. If you want to do the tank, I'll go get it right now. We'll get it installed for you. But if you really want the tankless, because this is your chance. Because once you do the tank, you're, this is your tank for 10 years until, you know, you make the new decision. What if I bought you dinner? I said, I'll tell you what we'll do. How many of you going out to eat? They said, four. I said, what if we give you 400 for dinner? So I'm not just giving them like Chili's.

[01:03:39.020] - Brandon Reece
Yeah.

[01:03:39.660] - Chris Fresh
And then I said, in fact, why don't we do this? I'm going to give you a hotel room for 250 bucks credit. This is 2000. I don't know, 14, 13, 14 hotel rooms are 80 bucks, 70 bucks, 100 bucks. So this is a fine dining restaurant in a five star hotel type attitude or four star hotel. And they were like, and the home I was in, I pretty safe to bet that they hadn't been in one of at least one of those situations. It wasn't a nice home. And they wanted to make payments on the, on the, on the tankless and the softener. So I said, look, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give you guys 400 for dinner, 250. You guys keep the receipt, we'll credit it right off the bill. And then we went a little bit further, like, ooh, that actually might work. And then I said, I'll tell you what, let me make this really easy on you. I'm just gonna give you the credit. I don't need to see the receipt. You do what you want with the money. They took that. Then they, they financed it. Before, when I was telling them about the tankless, they were like, can't.

[01:04:32.950] - Chris Fresh
We want to, but we can't. We got people coming. Like, they, it. It sounded like a bunch of excuses, but it was just hurdles. It was the transmission that I had in my life that I couldn't see past. They couldn't see past this dinner. And once I removed that, they could see past it. Here was the crazier part. This is. Blew my mind because this is where I'm like, I don't remember if the people are visiting or not. But I said, they took the deal. We signed the paperwork, we're gonna come back the next day. I'm leaving. And I said to the husband, so where are you guys going to dinner? He's like, honestly, we're probably just gonna go to my in laws. And I was like, they had the solution the whole time, but I had to help them think different. Yeah, it's not a closing tactic. It's just listening to the problem and finding a solution. And if it's a real objection and it's a real problem and you can give them a real solution, they're gonna do it. If it's not a real objection, you flush that out with your solution. And that's another conversation.

[01:05:23.130] - Chris Fresh
Yeah. Because some people will. Will hide behind things.

[01:05:26.090] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. So, okay, so I just want to pause you for a moment in that example, and maybe this is more obvious than it. Than it sounds, but what was the mental math? Kind of, kind of give me an example of how you were.

[01:05:38.770] - Chris Fresh
Gary Lane. Right, Gary Lane. I did it. I was trained. I had to find the solution before I got in that locker room for about a year straight. Like maybe two years. I mean, that, that, that pred me. The mental mind mindset is observe actively listen. Now, I was doing that for a different reason in pe. I knew. I knew the mountain that was coming. I knew that. In this particular case, I just listened. One of the things that people. I don't have boundaries. I think you guys know that. I'll ask you some of the most personal things. Like, and then, where was your mom when all that happened? You're just, they're just like, I just met you two minutes ago. What's going on right now? And I'm like, I don't know you said something, man. Maybe I'm just extremely inquisitive. I'm really curious. I call myself an empathetic crime scene detective. I'm empathetic, but I'm curious as heck. I am so curious. I think you should seek to understand. It's a biblical principle. You should always seek to understand. Am I guilty of not seeking to understand? Absolutely. Do I get emotional sometimes? Absolutely.

[01:06:38.470] - Chris Fresh
Do I react before thinking? Absolutely. But if you're asking me what my mental mindset was that day, I was seeking to understand why would there be a human on earth that wants to do something, but then they can't see a path to it unless they don't really want it? Because I live under that guise of like, hey, just step through the wall, bust through the wall, go through the wall. My mindset always is. My mindset is always that I'm not smart enough to realize I'm failing. So I just keep failing until eventually I'm successful. And so I'm just not smart enough to realize that they didn't want the tankless. And so I'm like, I believed them. They, they regard dinner and I'm like, I could give them 250 off this tankless right now, but if I give them 250 off this tankless, it's probably not going to move the needle. But if I solve their problem with that 250 bucks or 400 bucks, in that case, at 250 for the room, 400 for the dinner. And it was just, to me, it was just that simple. I'll tell you another one. So many people are lost in, you know, getting full retail.

[01:07:31.920] - Chris Fresh
Well, I got to get full retail for a shut off. That's 300 bucks, 250, 350, 400, whatever. I got to get full retail for that if that's all I'm doing. But if I'm doing three toilets, I can swap three shutoffs out, no problem. Them. And it's going to be hard to sell a $2,400 deal on three toilets. When the customer only called me out there because their toilet, 1-Tom oilet runs. I mean that's, that's something you got to deal with there. But if I can give them $750 of free shut offs that only cost me probably 5 minutes and 10 bucks, that's $30 and 15 minutes that I can turn into 750 bucks of value or a thousand bucks of value. Now the customer is getting $1,000 of real value, but it's not costing me a thousand dollars I call that value stacking. Value adds. Find value adds in your business model things that you would normally need to charge for if that's all you're doing, but don't cost you anything if you're out there for a day and find ways to stack that in. And I, you know, I was telling the restoration company, I was like.

[01:08:26.680] - Chris Fresh
Or the. The audience at that. That event, and I was just like, think about it like this. You guys go out on these bathrooms flooded, and you. And you're basically a hostage negotiator. By the time you're done, they're just back to normal. Normal. Like, it's 30 grand. It's a claim, but they're just back to normal. Similar with drain calls.

[01:08:42.720] - Brandon Reece
Right?

[01:08:42.800] - Chris Fresh
You're just a hostage, But I'm like, what would, what would happen if you, if you were inquisitive? Like, did you like the bathroom? I bet you loved it. In fact, I would even change it to I'm sorry that your bathroom got destroyed. You probably loved it and you hate this. And they're probably gonna be like, what? No, I didn't. No, I didn't. I went in love with my bathroom. I bet you most of your customers don't even like the bathroom that got flooded. And then they're going to go through all this to get back to the thing they didn't even like, like. And so I'm just like, well, wait a minute. Isn't this like a free 30, 000 bucks to go into their new bathroom remodel or whatever. Whatever the number is, of course it is. So I started explaining that to him, like, well, what didn't you like about it? I didn't like the flooring. Well, maybe we can go back with different flooring. You might have to come out of pocket a little bit, but maybe we can go back with different flooring. Or what if we could do a different cabinet set?

[01:09:22.290] - Chris Fresh
What if we could do a different. What didn't you like? What didn't you like? What didn't you like? What didn't you like? And then it's just like, well, let me, let me solve that for you. Let me, Let me show you a pathway to that. That. So now all of a sudden we get. It's. It's. It's 40, it's 50 grand because we're doing a lot more, right? And then it's like, well, I can't waive the deductible, but I don't have to charge. I can discount down the new stuff by a couple grand. And you just got to get creative and you start thinking about, well then I thought, well, if they go from, you know, cash flow, they go from, maybe they pay the deductible up front, which, Anyone listening? I don't know why you don't automatically collect the deductible up front. It doesn't seem that hard to me just to set that expectation and collect it. But anyways, collect that deductible or you could sell sixty five thousand dollar remodel instead of a thirty thousand dollars and you gotta wait sixty days for your money. You could, you could offer payments, financing is 0%.

[01:10:13.780] - Chris Fresh
Then they can get their money and keep it, make payments, or they can pay off the loan or whatever they want to do. But you get your money now. If you're getting your money now and you're turning into that, couldn't you send them to Disney World for a week? Couldn't you just get real creative here? Couldn't you give them a vacation while you're, you disrupt their house for two months? Couldn't you make this a memory? And then what are they doing when they're at Disney World? And that's an extreme example, but what are they doing when they're at the local museum? They're thinking about you and the memories, they just. So now they're telling people, now you got stories in the marketplace, now you got Mark. And it's like we just got to think different. We got to stop thinking about how it's always been and go, what, how can I separate myself? You know the word service is my jam, right? Always be serving. That's our, that's our thing. But hospitality is where it's at now.

[01:10:57.120] - Brandon Reece
Yeah.

[01:10:57.400] - Chris Fresh
And this I, and I heard it the first time and I was like, I don't like your premise, mostly because you're taking it another level. And I wish I had a first. But also it's just true. We got to think different. We just, we have to get, stop. Don't trip over, over dollars trying to pick up dimes. Stop being greedy.

[01:11:15.280] - Brandon Reece
No, I think you, it's, it's so perfect. This is one of these things that Chris has for a long time been kind of beating a drum about in terms of like, kind of the story of how I met Chris. Chris Nordike was, he negotiated, when I was trying to hire him, he negotiated to go to the Ritz Carlton event where he would kind of see and learn like what Ritz has d1-Tom o create the hospitality environment that they have become such a successful organization. And he ended up Bringing that back, negotiated him participating in that and brought it back to our company. And it was, it ended up, we like, we kind of had of tell tongue in cheek joke about it now, but it ended up being a very much an influence and a differentiator on the culture that we built in that first entity that we were a part of. And ultimately what ended up becoming part of our customer experience. And it's been kind of this ongoing dialog. But you know what's interesting is, is that after all these years of talking about that stuff, you know, trying to, to share those examples from the main stage, share them with clients, all the things, there's still just this value of not too different from the earlier conversation.

[01:12:21.310] - Brandon Reece
There's layers and level everything. It's like you do some version of implementation and then it's almost like you go to another level where the same theory is still important, but maybe the cost threshold or the decision factors are a little bit more weighty. So then you get kind of slowed down in your decision friction again. But there's just this reality, like this is important for all of us to take into consideration right now. How curious are we being? And then based on what we're learning, how experimental are our companies willing to be to test some of these theories out to reduce decision friction and just end up kind of getting your dollars, but maybe through slightly different channels or different paths because we're being more creative. I just think the timing of this, of this conversation is super relevant. And I think that the examples that you gave are broad enough that we could say, okay, well how could we apply something like this in a different scenario? Right? But they're also not so vague or general that you can't legitimately put yourself in that, in that position and try to see how you could make a decision or think outside of the box.

[01:13:25.750] - Brandon Reece
This is really important for us to consider. Yeah, it's just very valid, dude. Very valid.

[01:13:32.070] - Chris Fresh
Well, I think if I'm listening right now to this and was just wondering what's kind of the 1, 2, 3 steps that you would take for this? I would say this. Be bold, take risks. You know, be bold, be willing to take risks. Second thing is be aware when you're taking those risks, meaning don't be afraid to fail. But while you're in that, be aware. And the last one is adjust immediately. You know, this, this whole, let me think it all through. It's like there is no perfect plan. And the longer you think about it, the more likely you're going to hear all the reasons why you shouldn't. But again, going back to that first piece of advice I gave, change that from what if I don't? You know, some1-Tom old me recently I was kind of helping my son through a relationship thing. You know how that goes. Right. And, you know, it's your whole world when you're 16 and 18. And I just said, you know, in business, they say, would you fight to keep them? And if you wouldn't fight to keep them, you should probably let them go. And I think it's.

[01:14:30.590] - Chris Fresh
That's true. Is, can you live without her or, you know, can you live without him? Depending on what, what your situation is. And it's like, if you can't live without her, him, you should be together, and if you can, you shouldn't. And so I would just change that in business and in entrepreneurship to what if I don't do this? Not what if I do this? What if I don't do this? I think a lot of us either get hopeless. Well, false. Hopelessly excited about all that can happen if we do it, and then we get discouraged by all that can happen if we do it. But I'm curious to know what would happen if you didn't do it. And I'm not talking about, well, I wouldn't have a yacht. I wouldn't. What? No, that's. What about the people you're impacting?

[01:15:08.710] - Brandon Reece
Yeah.

[01:15:09.270] - Chris Fresh
Because my kids always say, do I go to college or not? And I'm like, I, I can't answer that for you. What you have to do is figure out what impact you want to make in the world and then work it backwards. And if college is a part of that, college is a part of that. If it's not, it's not. And I think that's what we have to figure out. What's the impact I want to make in the world and what's the cost associated to that? And I'm Will, am I willing to pay that? And I hope that if the, the impact you want to make is great enough that you would be bold enough to take on the risk associated to that. And if you do that and you stay aware and you can adjust and you don't, you don't feel stupid because you're going to make a thousand mistakes. Every time you make a mistake, it's. It's a mile marker to say you're on the wrong path. It's not the result. You don't fail till you quit. And only you get to decide that now. You'll have some failures along the way. But you don't ultimately fail till you quit, and you just keep going.

[01:15:59.210] - Chris Fresh
And I'm the epitome of that, man. I. You know, we. It just. I can't even rack my mind around this. But just looking at a stat the other day, we get 1.4 million views every 28 days on Facebook. My kids always laugh because they're like, 50,000 people viewed your stuff today. And I'm like, I didn't even make anything today. And it's just crazy how that. How that goes. But, dude, I remember going live for the first time on Facebook. There was four people watching. My wife, my son, one of my co workers, like, and me. You know, it's just. And there's a lot of reasons to quit. I didn't like anything. I was saying my very first live was going to be 15 minutes of pure gold. It's gonna be the best 15 minutes on the Internet. I was gonna say all the awesome things. People were gonna think I was amazing. They were gonna cheer me everywhere. It was three minutes long. Two minutes of it was me repeating, I'm going live. I'm live. This is live. It's like, so you can't get better until you have reps. Yeah. And you guys. You know, your first podcast probably sucked.

[01:17:01.050] - Brandon Reece
Yeah.

[01:17:01.410] - Chris Fresh
And it's just. That's just how it goes. I think there's honesty right there, and if everyone can just accept that, like, okay, here's the impact I want to make. Here's where I'm starting. There's going to be a lot of mistakes. There's going to be a lot of failures. Those are going to make me better. And if I have enough failures, if I make enough mistakes, I'll get good. And I think every1-Tom akes that from a different perspective of, like, I got to get good. But Jim Rohn says you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. And we change that into progress over perfection. Perfection is a false reality. We're. We're broken. We're an imperfect person in an imperfect world. This idea of perfection is just a false reality. It's just a facade. It's not real. And we just got to accept that. And so it's. It's progress. If you can get comfortable with just being better than you were yesterday, you're already winning. You're already ahead of most people.

[01:17:49.920] - Brandon Reece
Man, I love it.

[01:17:50.480] - Chris Nordyke
It's a good closing line.

[01:17:51.520] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. I think you just wrapped with a pretty sweet bow. Okay, so I don't know how you've Done it. But we've actually not allowed you to mention anything remotely near a business name, brand or title. And of course we, we want you to do that. Where do people connect with you and your content to hear more about this kind of posture and mindset that you're teaching and relating to people and having an effect on their business? Where do we send folks? Man.

[01:18:18.160] - Chris Fresh
Man. Yeah. Can I say why we haven't heard? Is that okay?

[01:18:21.920] - Brandon Reece
Sure. Absolutely, dude. Yeah.

[01:18:23.760] - Chris Fresh
It's a part of our value set is we want to just impact people without, without any, any expectation on return. And so we've, we. Even if you watch our show and our podcast, we have a live show on Facebook. We have a podcast, we have all the things. Obviously we have videos on the Internet, people are watching. But our whole thing is we just want to help enough people get where they want to get. John C. Maxwell. Right. And then we'll get where we want to get. We've actually been really bad at the marketing side of things like call and. But you know, whatever the name of, of our page is the Plumbing Sales Coach. So if you look, if you just type in the Plumbing Sales Coach in Google, you're going to find us on multiple platforms, multiple ways. We're on. We have a podcast called the Fresh Approach. But again, it can be found under the Plumbing Sales Coach. It's on Spotify, it's on all the, whatever, all the platforms. I wish my social media team was here right now. They would give you guys a better answer. But we're on Facebook, Instagram and Tick Tock.

[01:19:16.490] - Chris Fresh
We are on YouTube, but just barely. Like we just started on there. I'm on LinkedIn, but barely. But really Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. I mean Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. And then of course the podcasts, Apple and Spotify and all those. We do a show every Monday and Thursday night at 8pm Eastern Live. So it's a live show. There's two shows going on. Me and then the comments. The comments are wild. About 3 or 400 comments on each show. If you're on Facebook, if you're on. On YouTube, it's going to be more like 20 or 30. Not as big of an audience over there. Yeah, I think I answered that. The Plumbing Sales coach. And we coach plumbing companies and then we speak. We have speaking events with restoration folks usually because they're trying to learn how to attract a plumber or maybe they bring plumbers in so they can do a value add or something like that.

[01:20:05.430] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. And you've been supporting the 1-Tom om group pretty heavily as well. Right? You're pretty connected now with that group and a lot of their franchisees.

[01:20:13.350] - Chris Fresh
Yeah, that's actually where we met. Right. We were both at the 1-Tom ime event. That's right. Okay. So, yeah, yeah, obviously I, you know, I think I closed out their event last. The end of last year. I believe I'll be at the next one and then I work with the corporate office. We coach some of their. Their companies. Yeah. Yeah. 1 Tom is definitely big in our program. Yeah.

[01:20:33.010] - Chris Nordyke
Cool, man.

[01:20:33.730] - Brandon Reece
Dude, awesome show. I mean, super transparent. Really appreciate it. Full of gold nuggets. Obviously. It'd be really fun to get you back and maybe open up the conversation into some other uncharted territory, but man, we just really appreciate you, Chris. Appreciate you spending time with us and sharing your experience and knowledge with our audience. I still like you. I'm trying not to, man, but. But I.

[01:20:56.390] - Chris Fresh
You.

[01:20:56.710] - Brandon Reece
You haven't burnt the. The bridge yet, so we'll. We'll keep trying.

[01:21:00.550] - Chris Fresh
Well, I appreciate that and thanks for letting me come on. It's. It's an actual honor and privilege to be able to get opportunities like this to speak to audiences. And thanks for letting me. I know that's the biggest thing with you guys. Giving up space on your podcast is. Is making sure that. That you protect, heck, the brain, the mindset of your listeners. So I do appreciate that and the trust that you give me to speak.

[01:21:20.380] - Brandon Reece
Awesome, man. Thanks a lot, brother. Appreciate you.

[01:21:23.420] - Chris Fresh
Thank you.

[01:21:26.540] - Brandon Reece
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Boots.

[01:21:31.020] - Chris Nordyke
And if you're enjoying the show but you love this episode, please hit follow Formerly known as subscribe, write us a review or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever ever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.