The State Of The Current Marketplace with Tomas Keenan | EP 92

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Never Stop Building, where we discuss all things business, growth and leveling up to become the most elite version of yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:10

We're here to challenge fear and, shattered out, let's dive in. Welcome back to Never Stop Building everybody. I'm your host, sam Kaufman. As always, super grateful, super excited to be here with you today. I have an awesome guest on today. I got Thomas Keenan here. We've known each other for a couple of years and a couple of different avenues and places and things and Thomas and I have had an opportunity recently to kind of connect on a little deeper of a level and I appreciate that very much. I'm not going to botch talking about who Thomas is. I'm going to let Thomas introduce himself and talk a little bit about who Thomas is. Thomas, welcome to the pod man, and just who are you bro?

Speaker 1: 0:50

Thanks, sam. Yeah, it's funny. We kind of talked about this. You're like hey, I don't want to be that podcast host who reads like the scripted bio and like screws area of the word up and like, dude, I totally get it. Yep, I quit doing that shit I can't even tell you how many episodes ago on my own podcast, because I kept screwing it up and making myself and my guests look like a fool. So I was like you know what, let's just throw that out the window.

Speaker 2: 1:12

Just say what you want about you, bro.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Yeah, I'm going to give the brief version of me because I mean shit. We could probably talk for three hours on on. You know my story and the same thing with yours as well. But I started as a blue collar dude just turning wrenches, twist and wires and installing stereos and cars at the age of like 16 or 17. And did that for a really long time and did it at a really high level. Like was good at what I did. You know, and I love working with my hands and business.

Speaker 1: 1:41

My first company led to my second company and my second company led to oh wow, this thing has real opportunity. It's actually, it has the potential to be a business if I can just figure out how to turn it into a business. And I had no idea and you know, similar to you, I kind of went down the path like, hey, let me go figure all this out myself. As long as I can smash my head into the wall 5000 times in a row and never change a thing because you expect a different result, that's right. And then one day it's like, oh, I could pay someone money and get insight and information from them and that will actually help me grow and further my business and my personal self development. Okay, I'll try that. I mean, I tried everything else. At this point, let's let's may as well get this world. And man, like I'm just so grateful that I did, because it's it sent me down this rabbit hole that still goes deeper and deeper as every day progresses, still to this day, and I'm just forever grateful for the people that I've met along the way. Some of the successes that I've had because of the work that I've decided and opted to put in on me and my companies, and it's just been, it's been a wild ride, and the cool thing about it is you start doing this work and it's a similar story for me. You start doing this work on yourself, you start having success with it and the others that are in your space, because what winds up happening is you establish yourself as an authority within your industry, you niche, and others in that space come knocking.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Hey, I got a question for you. Can I help you? Can you help me with this? What would you do if you, if you, were in this situation? Well, what do I do with this hiring situation? Hey, I've got a guy who's who's just. You know, he's a, he's a cancer to the culture. What do you suggest I do? And we start just selflessly helping others and we answer these questions and it's fulfilling. And all of a sudden, one day someone comes along and says hey, you know, you can get paid money to do that. What?

Speaker 2: 3:31

Really yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:35

And that's, that's literally how I went from you know Tom, the service based business owner, and started transitioning into you know, tom the author, tom the public speaker, tom the business coach, consultant, whatever term you want to use there and, like, I don't know about you, sam, but I absolutely love what I do.

Speaker 2: 3:52

Yep, I do love what I do. I think I would like for you to even elaborate maybe a little bit more on the, the trajectory authority to helping others to being paid for it. But you use the word fulfilling for the helping others part and you know, confirm or deny, bro, but like I have seen a lot of people, I think, try to get into helping others and it doesn't fulfill them because they think it pays a ton of money. Helping people makes you rich and I've seen, like I've seen a lot of crash and burn on those people who help for money versus help for fulfillment, and then money follows, and so I really like that you worded it that way, but I'm just curious your take on that. Have you seen what I've seen?

Speaker 1: 4:33

Totally. I was having this conversation last night with the gentleman and and I've had this conversation with many people, have had this conversations with with Madeline over profit Panda, had this conversations with Mike about to have with you right here, and here's, here's my like 30,000 foot view of the marketplace overall, right, and? And we're talking about? We're talking right now about services that service small businesses, marketing, cpas, accountants, bookkeepers, whatever you want to call them and coaches, right, those are three areas right there. That my firm belief. You need someone in each of those areas to help support your business. However, tread lightly and be very careful, and this is me coming as a coach, telling you this there's a real gap, because there is a massive issue, in my opinion, and that issue is there is absolutely no barrier of entry for someone to come in and say, oh, I'm a bookkeeper, oh, I'm a coach, oh, I'm a lead generation specialist, okay, get in line. Right? So you have all the people who see this as, oh, that's a quick, easy business to get involved and I have to work a couple hours a day and I'm going to make thousands of dollars a month off of these clients and they go in it to chase the money and then they realize that throughout the day, especially if you're good at what you do, you end up getting busy.

Speaker 1: 5:55

You and I know, if there's busy back to back call days are like in their nuts. Yep, right, you got it. You actually have to work. It pulls a lot of energy from your body even though you're not in person. Sometimes you're doing zoom calls all day long. Yep, and oh, you actually do have to work hard for this money. Oh, and occasionally one of your clients is going to come to you with a real problem that's going to send you for a loop. That's like whoa, like I don't envy the shoes that this person's in right now, but I have to be that support system for them. I have to show up and I may not have to have the answers for them, but I have to give them the support that they're expecting from me and at least give them guidance, even though that situation that they're going through right now is beyond F.

Speaker 2: 6:37

Dude. I had a very similar conversation with a coaching client yesterday. We're doing budgeting for 2024. And they were like they're like, dude, this looks simple. Like, this looks simple. And I was like it will be simple If you don't go to an event in February and buy 14 retainer services for no reason. It will be simple If you don't go to some big event in June and buy every fucking stage pitch that you see, because you have to have $5,000 a month in somebody to post once a day for you.

Speaker 2: 7:10

And I told them, I said I think all of these services are incredibly valuable at the right price point for the right person offering the right service and the right situation. I was like but, dude, over the last 24 months and it happened to me too but like, over the last 24 months I've seen so many people lose their ass because the ROI wasn't there for who they hired to do the thing. Now you've got people like Thomas Keenan, you have people like Madeline, you have people like us, at win rate maybe charge a little bit more, but like, our clients aren't losing their ass on services that are being like, our clients are winning and saying things like oh, that looks really simple. Yeah, budgets are actually kind of simple if you don't go spend all of your money on stupid shit when you show up. So, like the state of the marketplace, I agree with you 100% the finance department, the marketing department and then coaching for high, low, like the way I look at coaching is like you can and I'd love your feedback on this.

Speaker 2: 8:07

But like I think a lot of people want to be and call themselves CEOs when they really need to outsource that to a coach. They need to outsource some C suite level accountability, authority and decision making to a coach, because they're not really a CEO yet, they're really not at that place yet. They want to be, they think they are, they title themselves that. But like I look at those things as like I'm paying. If I hired a CEO, it cost me a couple hundred thousand dollars a year.

Speaker 2: 8:33

So in spent, so instead I spend 30 to 60 K on a coach, actually save a lot of money and I get someone on my board of directors, so like I look at us as board of director members to help these people, does that, does that resonate with you?

Speaker 1: 8:45

Yeah, it totally does. Totally does. I think the and you probably agree with me on this too the whole CEO, ceo titleing that a lot of small business owners give themselves is it's false. I cannot and I'm telling you someone who did it for years, right, like, yeah, I had the title as CEO at my last service based business only 25 employees. Were they really a CEO? Not really, but that's the title we use.

Speaker 1: 9:13

But, you know, someone has to get in there and give the perspective to people, and I think here's what I see in the marketplace, especially getting pitched on social media from all the fucking expert gurus out there. Right, they all tell you oh, you know, you're the visionary, go out and hire for all these positions over here, right, which in some instances is very valid. However, and I don't know, I don't know what your experience is with this I've had some clients in the past and I also have a gentleman who's who still has a very successful nationwide GPS installation company based at a great find Texas. I'm still in contact with this guy, you know, even though we were competitors in years past. Just a solid guy, like a real sharp, sharp guy, Great business owner, has a massive company.

Speaker 1: 10:01

Right, and here's the, here's the opposite that no one talks about, right, and this is okay too. I want the people who are listening to this to realize if you're this person, this is okay, Right, because you know the fall, everyone's playbook, right? This dude has a massive company with over 150 employees. Okay, he is not the CEO of his own company. He still is a damn technician who goes into the field and does the work by choice, I assume, because he likes it.

Speaker 1: 10:30

By choice. That's where his passion lies. That's where his passion lies. He still shows up and he still does it. And he is that guy who is the absolute specialist right. Spent 20-something years as a very high-level mechanic for Chevy and wound up getting all of their certifications and accolades. And I don't know if you know how the car dealer mechanic space works, but as you advance as a really high-end or very knowledgeable mechanic in the automotive space working for dealerships, when you start getting into the upper echelon of stuff, you become the electrical expert, you become the troubleshooting expert who only works on really wonky problems when they come in Like this is what this guy did for a number of years before he transitioned into owning his own business. So to recreate or train someone on the absolute skill set that this dude has, like they've got to go and work in the field for 30 years, yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:25

Yep.

Speaker 1: 11:26

So you got to do what's right for you.

Speaker 2: 11:30

It's funny. I know a flooring retailer the exact same. This guy installs floors five days a week, full-time, owns the business Business, does $8, $9 million a year in flooring retail. Hired general manager, hired ops, hired salesman, hired everybody because all he liked and he did all the other roles, but wanted to shut the whole thing down and realize why don't I just go install floors? I fucking own this thing. Why am I doing any of the stuff that I hate? And I remember telling a group of retailers, like on a group call like this, like man, that dude will be more successful in his business than any one of you. That is pretending to be something that you're not.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:08

Because the internet says you have to be an entrepreneur or you have to be a CEO, or you have to in order to be a business owner. You have to do X, y and Z, bro, you can literally do whatever you want. That's the freedom of owning your business. That's the freedom. But if you have a skill set, all I'm saying is I really value the self-awareness of people like that that dude will be happier make and retain more money over the course of his business lifetime than most CEOs.

Speaker 2: 12:34

And you're right, dude, I made up the title of CEO and so I exited the day-to-day of my company and I remember sitting there and having this epiphany of I was struggling with the identity, right, Because I had my bios all said CEO of, and I entered, what do you do? Oh, business coach and CEO. And you kind of get this identity thing rolling in your head. You become this. And I sat there and I was like I'm kind of bothered and I was like man, I made that shit up. I made that up. I made that up Like the whole the identity was fake. I made the title up, I made the responsibilities up. I had 25 employees at our biggest employee, just like you like 25 or 27. My personal CEO is just a really good general manager Like and I love my business.

Speaker 2: 13:20

Don't get me wrong, and I was the visionary, but you mentioned visionary and go hire. All these things Like how do you feel about, do you believe, whether you are a visionary or an integrator? Do you believe that you should still be dangerous enough in all the departments to at least understand how to manage and read the data and actually run your business?

Speaker 1: 13:42

Yeah, 1,000%. We teach a method on a Bitup Academy. I call it the G3 method. It's funny I had the shirt on yesterday, I should have it on today, but I don't. But the G3 method, it's real simple and it's the formula for scaling companies that I've used time and time again and it works. It works for me, at least that works when I go run the play. It works. The formula was this G1 is get it done.

Speaker 1: 14:12

So you go in there and you do a little bit of it yourself, so you have a good understanding of how to do it, what's required, how things work. G2 is get it documented, which most people overcomplicate the shit out of it and they want to turn it into a oh, we're sending this thing into outer space. No, stop, it's very simple Bullet points, chat, gpt to give you the outline. Record a damn loom video. Use Zoom and record a video like this. There's thousands of ways to document these days and it's not you sitting in front of a computer typing out for hours, 100%. The third one here in G3 is get it delegated. So you have to get it done, you have to get it documented and then you can get it delegated. When we're delegating, we're making the choice. Hey, can this get delegated to someone who's existing on the team, or do we have to go and create a role for this?

Speaker 2: 15:00

I love that. Let me ask you for each one of those. Let's start with get it done. Where do you see the biggest challenge for business owners in the get it done box.

Speaker 1: 15:11

Oh, I'm not good at that.

Speaker 2: 15:12

OK, so that's the big objection. Well, I'm not good at it, ok.

Speaker 1: 15:15

So then how do?

Speaker 2: 15:16

you. So what's your objection? Overcomer for the business owner listening that says, oh well, I'm not good at that. So how do you push them over that edge?

Speaker 1: 15:24

Well, it's a couple of things. When you started installing cabinets, were you good at it?

Speaker 2: 15:28

No, I was actually constantly looking for other jobs. I was so bad at it.

Speaker 1: 15:32

Dude, me too. So after me almost setting two or three different cars on fire, as a remote start installer, I wasn't good at it either. But after 20 years of doing it, all of a sudden, wendy, you wake up and like, wow, I'm pretty good at what I do. Yeah, right, so the same methodology goes into it. So you can tell yourself the bullshit excuse. You can keep telling yourself oh, I'm not good at finances, oh, I'm not good at marketing. That is the same exact thing. And you get this too as me coming to you and saying, bro, I'm fat today. Well, you use that and it's. You're programming the subconscious. I don't care if you're talking about you being fat, you being an alcoholic or you being. Oh, I'm not good with finances, I'm not good with landing pages, I'm not good with marketing, I'm not good with Google, my Business. Like dude, keep pushing the excuses out all day long and watch what happens.

Speaker 2: 16:19

What a great analogy Could you imagine, and I've never even thought from that perspective. Could you imagine if somebody was like I'm not good at eating right, I'm never going to lose any weight, it's not even worth trying. I'm not good at being sober, so I'll just drink myself to death Like I've been sober 10 years Now? I'm thinking like could you imagine if I looked at the people trying to save my life and I was like dude, I'm not good at not being on heroin, I'm not good at that. I'm not ever going to do that.

Speaker 1: 16:44

I'll be dead.

Speaker 2: 16:45

Yeah, I'll be fucking dead. That's great, that was good, ok, so I'm not good at it. And then the solution being shut the fuck up and go to work Pretty much. That's pretty much All right, cool, I love that. All right, so now.

Speaker 1: 16:58

Here's the reason why, though?

Speaker 1: 16:59

Here's why I say that you have to get it, and when you get it done, I'm not asking you to become the expert, right?

Speaker 1: 17:05

I'm not asking you to put 10,000 hours into it and become the guru, right?

Speaker 1: 17:10

You have to go in there and get enough experience to realize what's required to get it done, and this also helps when it comes time for you to delegate it or hire or outsource to a third party, all right. So if you have a decent understanding of what good bookkeeping looks like, when you go out and you hire the third party, the fractional CFO, the bookkeeper, the CPA, whatever, now, when they give you the breakdowns and the reports and they send you, hey, here's your weekly P&L which, by the way, they should be Like what does a good one look like? How do you know that they did the right thing, right? And if you have a decent understanding, if you've educated yourself a little bit in the financial sector now you can go into that with a little bit more knowledge, and you could also know if someone's screwing you over, if they're actually doing the right thing, and this applies to marketing, this applies to lead generation, this applies to sales follow up, whatever, whatever it is that you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 18:01

Dude 100%. You know it's funny, my experience with finance dude. I hired multiple bookkeepers Some we know usually went very bad, and then I hired another, like I went through three or four, and the fourth one. I hired a finance company, right, the fractional CFO, whatever. Bro. These people robbed me Like billed me multiple times a month, auto draw out of the account for work that we didn't need done. I didn't.

Speaker 2: 18:26

I just kept trying to outsource the entire department, not just the data, the decisions, because I was so scared of it I didn't know it. By the time I fired them. I took online college courses and accounting. I was like I'm done. I signed up and I hate school. I barely graduated high school. I signed up for a bunch of accounting 101 courses and I locked myself in my office for six weeks and I painstakingly sat through these courses, took the notes, took the exams, took the things and I fully understood, stood how to read financial documents, and then I trained my wife how to do it, to do it in-house. I never had to.

Speaker 2: 19:01

Now I'm not saying don't outsource it, I'm just saying for me, nothing in my finance department changed until I learned how to run a finance department enough to know how to manage it, just like you said, jesse. It's funny you say so, jesse. I think it's Jesse Itzler, the jet company guy. You know who I'm talking about. He has a piece of content he talks about if you put 100 hours into something, you're better than 97% of the people who do the thing. So that and his whole thing is like that's 18 minutes a day, right. But so if you think about 100 hours, if you took two and a half weeks work weeks of your life and dedicated it to your finance department, you'd be better than 97% of people in finance If you took 100 hours and put it into marketing. And I think it's funny, that's nothing, 100 hours Like to your point of just get good enough 100 hours.

Speaker 1: 19:55

So yeah, to anybody listening like who's here scrolling 18 minutes a day on this thing, on Facebook, tiktok and all the other things? 18 minutes is nothing.

Speaker 2: 20:04

You could do 18 minutes a day learning about marketing, learning about finance, learning about, and you would become dangerous and that's kind of all. And I don't know if you have a different experience, but for me I got to the point of dangerous and then I was like now I can out, now I know and I talk, and then you become more dangerous. When you oversee a department intelligently, with some info over two to three years, you become more dangerous, more dangerous, more dangerous, yeah because now you're right in general.

Speaker 2: 20:35

Yeah, exactly All right. So, GT, you've got get it documented. So I'm curious what's the big objection? And get it documented. So you got a person. I'm sure you have clients who do get it done, because they do everything, because that's all they do is everything. So what's the big objection? Would get it documented.

Speaker 1: 20:51

Well, the big objection would get it documented is I'm too busy getting everything else done, therefore I don't have time to get it documented. Yeah, been there. If you don't take the time at some point, you're never going to get out of that rat race.

Speaker 2: 21:04

So tactically speaking, how long and this is me curious because I think we probably have very similar perspectives on this Like we do a lot of things here, the guy doing or the gal doing too. I'm too busy to get it how long do you think it should actually take to document just like a typical SOP for a?

Speaker 1: 21:27

It's really not that long, and it depends upon how you're doing it as well, or where it is that you're working. So I'll give you some examples. I work with a lot of software in my company, right, I'm sure you do as well. And then, granted, you have the whole blue collar side of the and like the field work, right, which I'll talk about in a second. But you also have the office side of the house. Yeah, the office out of the house is super simple in my opinion.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Right, and I mentioned it before use loomcom, you know, you use use fireflies or otter. Ai is some kind of you know screen record that's gonna basically take a video like this and turn it into a screen, a transcription with bullet points and whatnot. You can then copy that transcription, send it over to a tool like chat GBT and say, hey, turn this into an SOP. This is the kind of company we are, this is the clients we serve, and it has to be readable and let's call it a fifth grade level. Okay, cool, that that's your input to be a real quick.

Speaker 2: 22:20

I just want everybody listening. Thomas literally just saved you four and a half years of your life, so like rewind 40 seconds and listen to that three more times. Thomas literally just saved you half a decade. Now continue.

Speaker 1: 22:30

Sorry, You're very, very true, sir. All right, so that's like the office out of the house, right? And whether you're using software, one of the most common things I find is like we use a lot of high level in my business, right, the whole company pretty much runs on there, and when I bring someone new into the company, I have to get them skilled up in some of the things that we do on a recurring basis. Okay, cool, here's the videos. Go do it and it's just a screen record of me going in one time and show, hey, this is how I want this done. Boom, now it's stored in the library and we have an onboarding process. So when you, when you hire someone new onto the team hey, here's a bunch of videos that you can go through we're gonna talk about culture of the company. We're talking about what we expect from you. We're talking about, hey, this is a. You know, the main software we're gonna use is what we use for landing pages. Take it to the website, depending upon what the person's role is in the company, right, if it's someone who's working in the on the financial side of things and doing billing for you, okay, hey, we run the QuickBooks over here, we do all the billing and QuickBooks. This is how we create an estimate. This is how we create an invoice for for a client. This is how we receive a payment. Right? So you have to go in and have these videos in place to train these folks.

Speaker 1: 23:35

The flip side of it is okay. What do we do for the blue collar side of the house? What do we do for the field? Right, and I ran into this problem with my. My GPS install company is like here's something that I understand about the, the automotive space okay, and you, as a guy who's worked with your hands for a long time, you'll get this. Not only am I asked to install a different product almost daily, I Don't know what kind of vehicle I'm working on until I show up at your job site. So not only does a product vary daily, but so does the vehicle, and way that I install widget X into a 2020 Toyota Camry is Five times more difficult when I install it into a 2020 Mercedes S-Class. Same product, but way different labor, way different install. Yep, we're not even working in the same area of the vehicle, depending upon what vehicle it is, right. So what? What happens with this level of complexity at this point. All right. Well, how do we?

Speaker 1: 24:38

There's thousands of vehicles out there that we're touching on On a yearly basis, like different makes, the models. Yeah, there's definitely ones that are recurring. We see a lot of the same, especially in the commercial space. We see a lot of the same box trucks. We see a lot of the same. You know internationals, he knows freight liners. We see a lot of Board transit, small ones and big ones. We see a lot of RAM Pro Masters. Okay, cool.

Speaker 1: 25:02

So we make this list of the most common vehicles that we see in the field, because these are the ones that all the big fleets are purchasing right now. All right, well, out of these, which is the most important, what do we do the most of? What do we see the most? Okay, cool, it's these three.

Speaker 1: 25:17

All right, well, hire a videographer and get your ass into the field and have that person film you do in the work. Yep, have them edit the videos. Yes, it's gonna cost you money, of course. It is just the way things work, right. But imagine, over a three month or a six month time, how many training videos you can compile.

Speaker 1: 25:35

So now, when your technician, who's out in the road 300 miles from home calls you up, it says hey boss, I'm working on a 2024 freight liner M2. I've never seen one of these before. Is anyone on the team done one? Yeah, we just uploaded the video. Here it is. And now your guy who's 300 miles away can go into your. Some people call it an intranet in big companies, call it that. You know. Go into your, your database of stored vehicles, right, and now this guy can watch a video, or at least look at pictures or write up from from something that someone else on the team did, how much time you save in there. And the cool thing about that is, after a while you don't have to be the person that they're calling asking hey, do you do? We have any info on this. They can start calling your team lead. They can start being more. We'll call it Reliable, we can call it being what's the word I'm looking for here reliable, dependent a little bit more on the team.

Speaker 2: 26:29

I'm a little bit more autonomous, maybe I Can't think of the words.

Speaker 1: 26:34

Anyway, they're gonna go there and look for themselves.

Speaker 2: 26:36

That's part, that was the word. Yeah, that works.

Speaker 2: 26:39

Yeah, yeah, I one of the one of the best like I had somebody once tell me. Because when I started documenting standard operating procedures and I know that a lot of people struggle with this, but we owe it for some reason when you haven't done this before, the only six things you think about are the six anomalies you've dealt with. You know well, how am I gonna document this? You got 900 things you could document that happen the same way every day. But you think about the six, eight, twelve that are like well, there's no way, because it's the kitchen's different every single time, or the lawn is different shaped every single time, or every roof Is a little different, or okay. So, like I hear you, instead of hyper focusing on the six custom things you do a year, focus on the 80% that is actually standard.

Speaker 2: 27:22

And somebody told me hey, man, standard operating procedures are just the standard operating procedure. That doesn't mean there's not custom and anomaly instances in your business. Like, the standard operating procedure is the standard way we do business. But not every day is stand. Not every day is gonna be standard. Not every situation is gonna be standard, not it. Do you have an SOP for, like, if prospects are screaming at you on the phone?

Speaker 1: 27:43

No, probably not. That's not a.

Speaker 2: 27:45

That's not the standard of operation for us. Do you have an SOP when you have that $450,000 Mercedes? Probably not. They come out with a new one every year. How would you even begin to have so like? That is a custom. So like my, my flip, my only flip, add to that is like, if you have custom services, charge for them because it's hard to have SOPs for those. So charge out, charge a custom pricing structure for a custom service, knowing you can't standardize certain things.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Do you agree with that? Yeah, I do. I do agree with that tremendously. That's not always Allowable, though, and I'll give you. I'll give you an instance, and this is one of the reasons I got out of the GPS tracking space, by the way okay, good story.

Speaker 1: 28:33

You start dealing with big business and they start giving you a couple hundred thousand dollars a year worth of business. Right, you sign a contract with these folks and Usually you sign a standardized contract with them and they want to pay you anywhere from we'll call it 55 bucks to 105 bucks to do an install Cool, well, what happens when you show up and the guy's got a Ferrari f430. He wants a tracking device in. I'm not touching that thing for 55 bucks. So that's where a lot of the contention comes in with these big GPS companies is like they don't care what kind of vehicle you're working on. They expect you to do it for the agreed upon price and occasionally they'll give you a couple of bucks extra. But you know you have these custom one off jobs and they also look at it like we, we just haven't a lot to us is like all right, cool, you have your standardized pricing that we agree upon. We pay you this on the basics and I said the basics. I'm talking like you get a new vehicle in your fleet and you need one install done, or repair, or removal or a swap from one vehicle to the next.

Speaker 1: 29:36

They stick to their pricing structure. Let's say you blow your company up and you've got 300 vehicles and you say, hey, I want to get a whole new tracking system put in. You know, you make a deal with the Verizon's or the AT&T's. They sell you the product, they sell you the software, and now it's time to schedule with the install. Or me and Verizon calls me up and says, hey, we got a 300 unit fleet install for you, but we need a quote. What the fuck can you quote? For you know what the pricing is. Well, they need a quote because they want to discount.

Speaker 2: 30:07

Yeah, yep.

Speaker 1: 30:09

So it's like oh okay, so you want me to go outside of my normal standard operating procedures here and do a one off custom project that's a lot larger than we typically do, so it's going to require me doing things differently. It's going to require me billing differently, it's going to require me making custom forms for this one off project. And instead of actually paying us more money for the double and triple amount of work that we have to go, do you want me to send you a quote for less money?

Speaker 2: 30:37

I love that you said that, because we used to have contracts with big building companies for installation and it was the exact same thing, bro. It was like, hey, we got a hundred homes for you next year. What rate can we get them at? I'm like, but that means I have to hire more people and have more vans and have more. What do you mean? What actually need more? Yes, but I chased that rab. I don't know if you had a similar experience to it, but I chased that big contract Carat and it became miserable, like miserable, and that's why, for me personally, that's why I actually made the switch to full retail, only direct to consumer business model, because I was like I'm done, these people just eat you alive.

Speaker 2: 31:15

Yeah, and then you tell them, then you think they respect you and you're like, hey, man, I need to build this much, but we've been doing business for nine years, I'm sure this is fine. And they're like, oh no, we're just going to use the guy that we've been vetting for six months, you're good. You're like, wait, we've been vetting somebody this whole time, like, oh yeah, we've had three people on the back burner for the minute. We knew you were going to raise your prices. You were always a number, always. No, I agree with you and that's scenario. But I will say you do have the pro there of you do have consistent volume work, right. So there is that. If that works for your model, I think that they a lot of corporations are soulless monsters and I don't do that anymore. Yeah, I'm very done, very done.

Speaker 1: 31:55

I had a the last couple of months of my time at top class. Verizon started playing with us big time and they were our number one carrier. Like they gave us the most amount of money a year and it was December of 2019,. We flew out to San Diego, went to a conference for another tracking provider and was there with a bunch of different people in my industry who who were installers like me and like I had a pretty good name in the industry. I put together a meetup with all these dudes out there. We went to a nice restaurant, had some drinks and food and there's 2025 of us sitting around this big ass table talking business. And a lot of these guys had been in the industry a very long time and had deep insight from connections inside a lot of the big corporations. And these guys were all doing work for Verizon, just like we were. And they're like, hey, there's some stuff coming down the pike that's not going to be good. And Verizon had just purchased two very large, independently owned GPS providers. And now they have rebranded this thing as Verizon connect. Okay, cool, so Verizon connect?

Speaker 1: 33:04

By the way, just to be clear here for the people who are listening, they're a software company, flat out. They're a software company. Okay, it's one of the legs, one of the arms of Verizon and they're. They're a software company Like, yes, we install a hardware solution that they sell their client, but at the end of the day, gps tracking and telematics is a software solution that help make your business more efficient. So this software company I'm specifying that they're a software company, if you haven't picked up on it yet this software company rolls out a new software to make their business more efficient and they botched it so badly that it locked up all of their accounts payable to their vendors for almost seven or eight months.

Speaker 1: 33:48

They still expected us, even though we weren't getting paid a dollar, to show up and do the installs and support their clients and do the work. And it got to a point where they were putting myself and my business partner at the time and my employees in a really bad spot and I had the ability to go and stand up at my soapbox. I still have a Facebook group called GPS tracking installers. To this day is over 2000 members in that group and I went.

Speaker 1: 34:14

I went there and started going live in that group and literally sharing everything how much money they owed us, who we spoke to, how long they were taking, and it just it didn't sit right with me, like at that point I was just done dealing with the big corporate machines, right, and, similar to you, I was done chasing that, that carrot. Oh, these are big projects, big nationwide rollouts, like cool, I don't care bro, I don't care anymore. And what wound up happening was they started taking note of me and I started getting some not so nice emails and basically, at the end of the day, they said cool, we're going to pay you. It's going to take, take some time, but we're no longer working with you. And I said no problem.

Speaker 2: 34:57

It's fine by me.

Speaker 1: 34:58

We're going to pay you anyway we really need you to go away.

Speaker 2: 35:02

Please go away.

Speaker 1: 35:04

So I did go away and months later they did pay and I exited that business, officially exited in November 1st 2020. That was the date we signed the Ladox and whatnot, and a couple months later, my ex-business partner reaches out to me and he goes hey, because I'm trying to get back in with Verizon. Is there any way that you can go onto social media and remove some of the posts and the live videos that you had put up once ago, because they won't let me do a thing unless you do that? Absolutely not, absolutely not. Nope, good for you, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 35:38

I stood my ground on that one.

Speaker 2: 35:41

No, no, I don't do. I don't blame you. All right, Let me. Let me ask. So we're talking about like the state of the marketplace as we see it from like the outsource perspective and like the development space. And I will say this dude, I actually think that our space has never been more valuable than it is right now to business owners. At the exact same time, I think business owners have never been more fucked over by people in our space than they have over the last two years, and so it's a really crappy like, it's a really crappy middle ground to be in for the space. My, I'm curious your thoughts, not on our marketplace. What do you think 2024 looks like for the small business world, for the home service, the trade, the blue collar, the just a small business entrepreneur in general? What does consumer behavior look like next year? What should people be looking out for? What do you foresee?

Speaker 1: 36:35

Yep, people aren't going to like what I'm about to say. I think that it's going to get harder before it gets easier. That's my take on it. 2023 was a big, pivot year for a lot of people, myself included, and when I say pivot year, I'm talking not just business. I'm talking on the personal side of the house too. I have so many people in my circle, in my space, who went and dealt with massive personal issues and problems in 2023, myself included and I've been very open and transparent with you about that. So you couple that with the state of the economy, and I don't even know if the economy is so jacked up.

Speaker 1: 37:14

I think the media is going in there and putting a lot of twist on it, but they're being effective with what they're doing and it's definitely changed some of the spending. It's definitely put a damper on. I've seen some of the clients that have come into my space who, hey, we're in for the term of the contract once the contract is done Like, hey, I got to go because things are popping off. I had some conversations with Mike about that, too, a few weeks ago, and I've definitely seen a drop this year in what some clients are willing to invest into themselves and their own companies, and I think that has a lot to do with what you previously just mentioned, which was there were so many marketing companies and shitty bookkeeping CPA firms and shitty coaches who shouldn't have been doing a damn thing and attempting to help people who literally went into the marketplace over the last three or four years, probably since COVID, right or right before COVID and they just started taking all of the money out of the marketplace. And this is a common problem that I've seen time and time again. It drives me fucking crazy. It's one of the reasons that I do what I do.

Speaker 1: 38:25

It's step it up right, and I find that a lot of the training, the consulting, the business coaching space is so heavily focused on the sales and marketing side of the house, which do, don't get me wrong, you need those two pieces in order for any company to survive. But they focus and I see a lot of small business owners focus so heavily on the sales and marketing. They sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. They collect all your money and then, when it comes to fulfilling what they agree to fulfill on, they shit the bed Right. We see this all the time in the marketing space. We see this in the coaching space. We see this with the custom CRM guys who will come in and build everything out. I need 30 or $40,000 from you. We're going to make this amazing fucking thing.

Speaker 1: 39:15

And then where they go, yeah, where is the thing Right? Or the thing only does one out of 10 things that you said it was going to do and it took you three times longer than you said it was going to take to go build it. Oh, that's because you took everyone's money and we're working on multiple projects at the same time. You had no project management in place and poof, you blew it all Right and there was so much of that BS going on for so many years that I think a lot of people right now are like yo, hold up, right, a, I spent a ton of money over there, I got burned a couple times and I'll raise my hand there like I'm part of that crowd, like I, I've hired out and outsource some things To some vendors. It was like, yeah, I wish I could get that money back same we were talking about one.

Speaker 2: 39:59

We were hanging out a couple months ago and you looked at me and Mike and were like, well, I should get for paying full up front. Really, yeah, you're right, it's true. So you, you said you use the word Investment when you said people are more hesitant to make the investments in themselves and their businesses, and I think part of that is because I Think a lot of people were sold the investment and there was no ROI for three straight years.

Speaker 2: 40:24

And so now it's like and so I don't know about you and step it up. But I know, from my perspective with coaching and like I'm not even, I'm not even like trying to convince people right now, I Understand from an empathy standpoint. I'm more empathetic with people about like hey, I get it, dude, I get it. I've had clients this year Come to me and show me their finances and show me what they're doing and show hey, man, here's my EIDL payment, here's this Bolt loan I'm paying, here's this other thing. I mean, what do you think I should do financially? And I had one client back in March. I was like you should fire me, like I'm telling you right now, first and foremost, brother, like what you're spending on coaching, and I was. I said Don't take this the wrong way but for what you're spending and the action you're actually taking on this, I think this needs to go, because if you don't start eliminating now, but like, how many coaches will do that?

Speaker 2: 41:13

Dude, that's integrity right, because I was like dude, this, if you aren't Taking the action needed and your bills are way too high, brother, like I can't even sit here and justify this call. This is insane. Like you've got to look at putting a notice on this and this was like pre-contract term and I was like dude, you got to do something like. But there, this is why and the reason I highlight the you're not taking the action is because the ROI it's not. It's two things. Coaching is not a catch-all for you to not do any fucking work and so, like, hiring a coach doesn't fix the reality of you're not doing the work. You're not holding yourself accountable if I tell you to post on social media every day and you don't do it. And then you know ROI has to be a two-way street and that's why I have no issue telling a client hey, like the ROI from this can't come if you don't do the work.

Speaker 2: 42:02

I can only be as good of a coach as you're willing to show up and do something that I mean. You Start to detract from my value as a coach, which means I become a massive liability on your profit and loss statement instead of an investment into your company and I don't want to be a liability on anybody's company. Oh, yep, I'd rather have three clients that say nothing but holy shit, working with you has changed my life. Then have 30 With 27 of them gone.

Speaker 2: 42:28

Why am I paying for? Like I never want to be the coach. I Never want to be the coach where people are sitting around on a podcast Talking about what we're talking about and thinking about me because you and I are thinking about some people and we're not gonna say but you and I are thinking about some people, yep, I never wanted, I will never be that person with two two people that I like, us People, admire us, respect us, pay us. I never want to be the guy that someone's thinking about when they're on the podcast gone. Hey man, gurus are coming for you. I'd rather like that's just me.

Speaker 1: 43:04

It's part of my mission statement as well, like, we're in business to help other people succeed in business. Yes, so if I, if I, can't help you succeed, I will gladly remove myself from your company in your life. It's that simple. Yep, that's simple, right? You mentioned something here I want to, I want to dive into, because it's something I've seen time and time again and you probably have as well Oftentimes. And this, this you'll see this in the personal side of the house. You see it in the business side of the house too, and I'm guilty of shit of this over the years. Right, just, full transparency. You're like, wow, I need help, I need a software solution. I need, you know, a podcast Expert. Tell me, launch the podcast. I need you know, I need to go hire that coach.

Speaker 1: 43:50

And and for me, it it usually happened in the software realm of things and for those people who are listening, software does not come out of the box ready to roll and work flawlessly within your company. It does not fucking exist like you have to put work in. And here's where it jacked me up multiple times, right? So, a couple years ago. Like, go back 2014, ish, 2015, ish, I get involved with infusion stuff which is now company called keep, which is a marketing software, right, not easy to use, really advanced like, not user friendly whatsoever. And I pay for this software, I pay for training on this thing, and the moment that I I Wacked the credit card, this feeling of relief and relaxation came over my body, like all my problems just went away. Wow, yeah, you know, you dumb shit, you just paid for it and not really, because you pay by credit card, you still got to pay the bill 30 days from now.

Speaker 2: 44:49

That's another podcast episode. We'll do that. Yes, it is.

Speaker 1: 44:51

Yeah, yes, it is. So you, all of a sudden, you swipe the card. You bought something right. You have the euphoric experience of buying and Now you think, oh, I don't have to do anything like my problems to solve because the software is there, it's gonna fix everything. No, you now have to go in and do the work. We find the same thing in the coaching space. It's people all excited. Oh, right ago, you know, they sign the contract, they, they pay you the first monthly or they pay you up and full for the whole deal. And then they sit back for a couple days Like, ah, business is gonna be great in 2024 because I just spent all that money on that awesome coach. Yeah, cool, that's part of the equation, but you still have to show up and do damn work every day, sir, or ma'am.

Speaker 2: 45:35

Dude, I could not agree with you more, because I'm guilty of it too. I've done it a million times swipe, oh, this is it. This is the salute, and so it's funny. I actually have a coin to turn for this and I call it the solution high, and I was just telling somebody the day they were going in.

Speaker 2: 45:52

They were going into interview some people and I said I was like, do not fall victim to solution high. This is the slow season. You are cash flow tight, you want a high, you want to start this process, but we really want to start the payroll process on this in January, go right ahead of our busy season, giving us 60 days to train. I was like, do not walk into that office and get solution high, bro, it's a rush. You start making decisions. It's you're like, yeah, that that's. And then your team's like, hey, man, can, I, could we spend three grand on this thing? It would make my yeah, fucking eight.

Speaker 2: 46:25

Yet because you get into this, I'm this power and In this mode of like, you start making Decisions and that makes you feel better, completely negating the work required. Post decision, all you're doing when you swipe the card for for keep is Hopefully committing to nine months of building out your software. But like, but like. We missed that when you, when you hire two people in one clip on a solution high day, you're not thinking about negative train. They both need to be trained, they both need to be onboarded, trained, paid.

Speaker 2: 46:58

One might not make it say, might have to fire some. Are you thinking about everything 90 days from now? Usually not, and so that's why I like the solution high. We go in and all of a sudden we get into this decision-making mode and we feel good and we, and then Six weeks go by and we're playing in the software. We don't understand it and it makes no sense and my leads aren't working because I haven't actually API connected anything to anything else and nothing makes sense. And now I'm like I'm sending a rude email to the account rep. You told me it could do this and that you can't do those. You, you haven't set up your training call, which is usually 90 minutes, at least on the first, what you haven't set up, and now you're just stressed out and then and then most people.

Speaker 2: 47:38

I go through people's P&L's all I'm like what is that? Like, oh, you haven't paying for that for 15 months. We brought it on to do that. I'm like you, that you that's 11,000 dollars You've spent this year and you're not even using it. That could have gone home, that's a vacation for you and your wife right there, and then like the light bulb. So yeah, I Good point.

Speaker 1: 47:58

Sorry, I think I like stories. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna tell you whether you want me to or not, by the way. Perfect. So you and I met. I was working for a pretty big organization Okay, not mentioned in names here. Yep, there was somebody who was there who wound up working and leaving shortly after I left and she went and said hey, we need this really fancy software to help fix all of our data issues. Went to the owner of the company and convinced him that this was the right thing that we needed.

Speaker 1: 48:30

When I'm signing a three-year contract on this software, the software is called domo, dio, mo. Like dude, I'm a nerd when it comes to software. I like pushing buttons, making things happen. I like automations. Like I can go back in there and nerd out and play for a while. I opened up domo a couple of times and I looked at it and said, oh, this is not for me. Like it's advanced shit, like you got to be a coder and like, just you gotta be a full-blown developer nerd in order to really use this stuff.

Speaker 1: 49:03

It comes with a price tag of $30,000 a year, oh my god. So signed a contract? This woman signed a contract, paid the first year upfront, because you got to pay it in full About two months after that quits and the next year comes round, I'm still there and we got a massive whack on the IMAX and I was tasked with hey, go take a look and see what the hell this is, because no one here knows anything about it. So that's when you know, got involved and went diving deep and figuring out what was what and wound up not being able to get out of that contract and wound up having to pay it all because their legal was so tight.

Speaker 1: 49:51

Wow yeah so we're talking $100,000 on a software that someone signed for. Put a couple of hours worth of work into it, quit and then no one ever touched it again after that.

Speaker 2: 50:03

Let me ask you, let me ask you a question coming from that experience and the amount of experience you have and I know, I know for a fact you are all about that back end like automation. I'm a listener and I am actively looking at softwares right now. What's my checklist, man? What is it? What do I need to do before I make a decision? Like, give me some outline here.

Speaker 1: 50:28

What are you trying to do? We gotta start there.

Speaker 2: 50:30

So what's desired outcome of software? It's question number one. What the hell are you trying to do?

Speaker 1: 50:36

Yeah, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to? What is this software gonna help you with? Is it gonna save you time? Is it gonna make you more efficient? Is it gonna store data in a centralized location? Is this all in one solution, or is this the main hub software within your software stack? Or is this just another bolt-on that's gonna make things better?

Speaker 2: 50:56

Okay, that's just well, just that's the question, then. That's the question. And then do you now let me ask you this, and this might be a little high level for a lot of people, but do you always try to calculate ROI on the investment for the software, or is it sometimes Cause? For me, often, it's less about like when do I make it back, and more about like, I got to a place where, in order for me to consider a software investment, it had to have how? What's the estimated time on the build out, how many team members have to be involved? Cause I stopped doing that shit all by myself a long time ago.

Speaker 1: 51:36

Mark.

Speaker 2: 51:37

And how much time is it actually going to save the team on the backend? Because if it's not gonna save time, if I'm actually further complicating the procedures in my company, is this actually worth? Is there actually any investment return at that point? And so for me it was always so. Let's say I'm like switching CRMs on my all right. I need, like my sales team directly involved. It's June. Is right now the time to take my sales team to build out a brand new sales software in the middle of the busiest season for my particular business model? I don't think so.

Speaker 1: 52:12

No, definitely not, Definitely not. The first question I would ask there is hey, do you have your shit documented? Cause you're gonna need it documented to properly import it or build it out into the new platform anyway, yep. So if you think that your existing sales and followup process can be improved upon, go improve upon it before you make the transfer of the switch.

Speaker 2: 52:33

What a great piece of advice. Yeah, what a great great piece of advice. Also, and I'm curious, I've also found that these SaaS companies they will do a lot of the work for you, if you so like. One of the biggest qualifying questions I now have on the front end is how much are you guys helping with? Cause here's what we're gonna need to do I need to import 14,000 contacts. I need to import 150 products and services. I need to import all this product. What do you guys offer on this back end here? Cause I don't. I'm not doing all this by myself.

Speaker 2: 53:08

Yeah, and then like that response usually for me cause, like, there are some people who are like oh, we don't do anything, we don't we, you know, like, and here's a mistake I made on one of the softwares we're using now. This is the other really important question Can I export my data out of your software? Because I'm in a software now and luckily it is doing what we needed to do. It won't eventually, and they do not offer a product and service export.

Speaker 1: 53:37

It's not they don't.

Speaker 2: 53:38

It's on purpose. They don't want you to export. They're that's so like. A huge qualifying question is like let's think five, are you gonna be in the software forever? Probably not. Can you export? That's a huge question I didn't have it?

Speaker 1: 53:50

That's a huge question.

Speaker 1: 53:51

So one of the other ones that I always ask that's a really big deal to me is because I know what I need the software to do today, but I don't know what I'm gonna potentially need this thing to do three, six, 12 months from now. Right, so, all right, cool, see the features, see the bells and whistles you have here. The key question for me is do you have an open API? Yep, well, I am not nerdy enough to go in there and write API code to have software A. Talk to software B.

Speaker 1: 54:20

However, if they have an open API, that means that most likely there is a third party connection tool that automatically connects to them already, like a Zapier, a Pabli or makecom or one of those out there. Right, there's various ones. But, more importantly, if there is a full blown API, open API, I can go and hire a developer to come in here and make this software work with this other software we're using, and seamlessly and flawlessly, and that allows you to grow and scale with the software and not have to find a replacement three years from now.

Speaker 2: 54:54

That was. We just gave people so many years of software mistakes. So quickly, yeah, so quickly, wow, cool, hey, we're at the end of this, unfortunately, because I'm going to be honest with you. I could probably just keep chatting with you for another two hours, which all that means is you'll just have to come back on and we'll have to have another conversation in six or eight weeks, and we'll just have to get a regular thing. Do you want to leave audience with anything? How to find you a little bit about step it up.

Speaker 1: 55:26

Yeah, step it up man, Like, flat out, we're competitors in what we do, right? I'm aware, yeah, and I'm totally cool with it, like I love you, I love Mike. You know you guys are my homies, for sure, and I love getting together with you guys too, because it's always good just collectively coming together with like-minded people, yeah. But you know, we have something similar to what you guys got going on at WinRate Step it Up Academy. We're a small business coaching and consulting organization. We do in-person masterminds quarterly meetups, right, in fact, I have one starting tomorrow and Friday here in Dallas, which is cool Got about 20 people coming in from all across the country to meet up, similar to what you guys just did at the last one too, and like there's so much similarities between two of us. Our focus is year-end review and 2024 planning for our clients in these next two days, and we're going to talk on the personal side of it as well as the business side of it too, right, and I think that's one of the things that makes us different, and I mean, like WinRate and Step it Up, yep, you may agree with me on this too, and I'll finish it on this, and then I'll tell people where to find me, because I don't want to take up too much of your time.

Speaker 1: 56:31

People come to us, especially alpha males, and they say man, my business is fucked up, I need some help. Cool, and we help them. What they don't realize is, yes, not only are we going to help you with your business, but we're also going to dive heavily into the personal side of the house too, whether you want to or not. And the reason being is this this is how I explain to people cool, you come into us, we're going to help you dial in the systems in the process. We'll help you dial in the back end of your company. We'll help you get better in these areas. Okay, I'm going to elevate your business to here. Right now you're here. If I don't elevate you to the same level as your business, when I walk away, I'm no longer your coach, your consultant, whatever you want to call me. How are you going to be able to operate that business if you're not up to level with that business?

Speaker 2: 57:18

I completely agree.

Speaker 1: 57:20

Yeah, so you're going to come in here, we're going to do some work on your company, we're going to get you some quick wins, so we build the momentum, and then we're going to come in right behind you and we're going to start pushing you down in that personal development aisle as well, and people often don't know what to do with it, and when they start doing the work which you and I both have right it changes everything in their lives.

Speaker 2: 57:41

Yeah, so I have nothing to add to that.

Speaker 1: 57:47

I'll add it with this Connect with me at connectwiththomascom, and my name is actually Tomas. There's no H in it, so connectwiththomastomascom. It's a landing page like a link through style page. You can find all of my website, social media connections, my podcast, all that stuff is there.

Speaker 2: 58:05

Perfect dude. Thank you so much for coming on. We need to talk again soon.

Speaker 1: 58:12

Say one I'm yours, We'll do.

Speaker 2: 58:15

Hey guys, if this brought you value, which I absolutely know for a fact, it did. Share it, rate it, review, subscribe. The most important thing you can do, though, is just send it to somebody who needs to hear it. I'll talk to you guys next time.