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Successful Life Podcast
The Successful Life Podcast, hosted by Corey Berrier, is a globally recognized show that ranks in the top 2% of podcasts worldwide. It offers expert insights tailored for contractors, focusing on business strategies, sales skills development, and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.
Successful Life Podcast
Unraveling the Art of Sales and Systemization in Business with Todd Miller
Ever wonder what it takes to manage a family business successfully? Our guest, Todd Miller, a seasoned entrepreneur from the residential roofing sector, offers a deep dive into how he's done it. He introduces us to the world of Isaiah Industries, a company his father started back in 1980 and he's been a part of since 1986. Todd’s story of stepping into his father's shoes after a stroke is inspiring and enlightening, revealing the intricacies of assigning the right roles to the right people for business excellence.
Switching gears, we tackle the challenges that even giants like Tesla face in the solar roof sector, emphasizing the undeniable importance of systemization in business. Todd draws from the philosophy of the E-Myth, reinforcing the need for inspiring stakeholders and maintaining consistency, akin to how McDonald's has sustained its brand despite high employee turnover rates. It's a conversation that broadens our understanding of business dynamics, particularly in the family-run context.
And let's not forget the art of sales. This episode delves into personal connection and the potency of robust information in closing a deal. We analyze why contractors may take the low bid and discuss the teachings of Jeb Blunt, an NLP practitioner, and Bill Gladwell, a scholar of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. From contractor presentation strategies to the essence of people buying from people, we expose the subtleties of the home services industry. So, are you ready to soak up some invaluable business insights from Todd Miller? Tune in!
https://www.audible.com/pd/9-Simple-Steps-to-Sell-More-ht-Audiobook/B0D4SJYD4Q?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow
https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Steps-Sell-More-Stereotypes-ebook/dp/B0BRNSFYG6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OSB7HX6FQMHS&keywords=corey+berrier&qid=1674232549&sprefix=%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreysalescoach/
Welcome to the Successful Life podcast. I'm your host, Corey Barrier, and I'm here with my man, Todd Miller. Hey, Todd, how's it going?
Speaker 2:Corey, it's going great. Thank you for having me on the show. I look forward to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, good to see you. You too. So, todd, tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Our company is a company called Isaiah Industries. We're located in Ohio and we're a manufacturer of what I call specialty metal roofing. Now, most people out there in the audience have actually seen some of our products a zillion times so over the years and the company, by the way, was started by my father back in 1980, and I've been here full time since 86. But over the years we've been national supplier for Pizza Hut and Dairy Queen and IHOP and 7-Eleven and Toys R Us and Dunkin' Donuts. So all those brightly colored roofs that kind of dot the highways probably were manufactured by us or at least involve our products in some fashion. But kind of interesting.
Speaker 2:So when I came into the business full time in 1986, we realized that commercial business was always going to be prone to fads and cycles, and so there were a few guys out there starting to sell residential metal roofing, and I just went out and started learning from those guys and learning how they were doing, what they were doing, what made them successful, and then basically tried to.
Speaker 2:We developed products, we acquired some products in order to support that residential market, and today we are almost entirely residential, most of it's single family re-roofing. Interesting thing on that, though, is that so the roofing market in general? In any given year, about 80% of it is re-roofing, and even in a good new construction year it's only about 20% new. So, like a lot of folks in the roofing industry, we've kind of tended to focus on the re-roofing end of things and we pick up some new construction stuff as well. But really, what we do is we work with contractors out there and spend a lot of time training them, teaching them how to do everything, from generate a lead to do the in-home sales presentations set the appointment first, sell the deal, how to install the deal so we kind of offer a lot of turnkey training in all those areas. But been blessed over the years, worked with and had a chance to learn from a lot of the leaders in the home improvement business and feel very blessed by that, and it's loving what I do.
Speaker 1:So all right, that's fantastic. Let me ask you it's going to go in a slightly different direction. So I didn't realize that your dad started the business.
Speaker 2:He did.
Speaker 1:So I've worked with a lot of family businesses where there's a son, there's a dad, there's a brother, there's an uncle whoever right? But specifically when you're talking about a father and son duo, there can be some head budding there right, absolutely, absolutely. Tell me what your experience was with that.
Speaker 2:You know. So when I came into the business, dad had a partner and we had bought out his partner's interest in the business and at that time we brought another gentleman into the business who had actually been a good friend of mine in college and he came into the business and actually it worked really well for a lot of years. I'm not going to say that, you know we didn't have our moments, but for a lot of years when my father was healthy unfortunately he had some health problems that took him out of picture, younger than it should have been, but when he was healthy, you know, basically dad was the manufacturing and operations end of things. This other gentleman we brought in was the finance end of things and I was the marketing and sales end of things. And it was just really cool because we all had a lot of respect for each other within our own buckets, we were all opened ideas from each other but ultimately gave each other the autonomy and the responsibility to work in those areas.
Speaker 2:So a lot of times I hear about dynamics of family businesses and crazy stuff going on. A lot of times it's because you got the same people vying for the same areas of the business and you know that can get really messy really quick and you know, fortunately we never had that. I didn't know squat about manufacturing, I didn't know squat about accounting, so I couldn't begin to intervene in those other areas of the business.
Speaker 1:That was the best answer you could have given me, and that's so smart because you're right. It feels like you know the sun's trying to take that spot. Maybe the dad is trying to hang on a little bit longer than he needs to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that can happen too, for sure, but that makes sense. Staying in your own lane, the right people in the right seats, the bus usually runs pretty good. And that goes for any organization, not just a father and son organization. That goes for any organization. And, quite frankly, culturally it makes sense to have the right people in the right seats, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, and you're right, it goes for any type of organization, whether it's a business or a nonprofit or whatever. I think it was Jim Collins who wrote a lot about you know, you got to have the people in the right seats and all that and headed in the same direction on the bus, and no doubt about it. You know, when I look at our business, you know some of the more troubling times we have had over the years and shoot, you know we've been around oh gosh, closing on 45 years I guess. So we've had our ups and downs, no one's going to kid anyone on that. But a lot of times it was because we kind of lost focus.
Speaker 2:Or, you know, maybe you know a good example. I mean when dad he was only 68, when he had a pretty debilitating stroke that really limited his ability to work in the business and that was a major disruption for us because we had to replace that skill set and that knowledge that he had, that being in his generation, he maybe hadn't always passed it a log quite the way he should have, so it left us a little bit vulnerable there for a few years. But, you know, had some good team members that stepped up and stepped in as well also, so I bet that was hard, but it was hard on him it was.
Speaker 1:It had to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a difficult thing and one of the things that you know. I watched that and I said man, I'm going to try to take care of my health and make sure that doesn't happen. I've done a really poor job of taking care of my health, so I don't know. I hope it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:But you know, health is important but it's so easy to put on the back burner. Oh, absolutely, you know, I look everybody gets busy and you know health relationships. A lot of things get put on the back burner in the name of growing a business and sometimes it feels like that's just what's got to happen, but then it kind of snowballs into. It just keeps happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, absolutely right. Yep, you kind of lead yourself into thinking, oh, that's this way it has to be right now. But then I'll catch up with the event choice.
Speaker 1:It's hard because you hear people that talk about you know if they could go back and change their years with their kids, they would. But I'm not so sure about that because you know you wouldn't be where you are if you had to go back and stop doing what you did. Right, I don't know. I don't know. It's a tough one because I'm not to that point of looking back and saying I wish I would have done X, y and Z. But I'm kind of in the middle of doing X, y and Z and who knows what I? You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I hear a quick story on that. So my wife and I just have one child. We have a son. He's 25 years old. So when he was growing up, you know, I was kind of I was having to travel a lot for work, I mean a lot. And one of the things I started doing when he was young I thought at the time this was kind of cool was, you know, I'd go to a different city, I'd buy him a key chain and the key chain would maybe have a picture of something that city was known for. And then all of a sudden it dawned on me. Well, someday all he's going to have to remember is these indications that I wasn't home all the time because I was out buying key chains I guess I don't know and I realized probably was not the best idea. So kind of interesting. He moved out a couple of years ago, after graduating from college. I think the key chains are still at my house, so that's okay, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:So is your son, so is he in the business as well.
Speaker 2:He is not. He is a computer engineer and very much loves what he does on that end of things. And at this point at least he's not in the business.
Speaker 1:Now did you want him to kind of follow your footsteps? I mean, I guess every day I kind of want that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, what was your thought? You know, I think you do hear that a lot of parents you know, oh gosh, I'd love my kid to do that. I never really had that feeling. I always just wanted him to be. You know what he was gifted and called to be, and it was always kind of apparent he kind of walked more in his mother's shadow. She had been a computer programmer and very skilled and gifted in the sciences and math and all that type of stuff, and so it was kind of apparent even at a pretty young age that was going to be his direction, rather than being a sales and marketing guy out running around the country schlepping metal roofing the rest of his life.
Speaker 1:So you, so you provide. Now, when you say metal roofing, do you go out? Cause I know that you know we've mentioned a mutual friend in that that I've done some work with in the AI space and automation space, but so so he's got a sheet metal company that and he goes out and it's custom. So is that the same thing that you're talking about here?
Speaker 2:Ours is a little bit different. So actually we call ours roof in a box. So normally, you know, most metal roofing out there is vertical seam it's called standing seam or some variant of that and those panels have to be run or cut or produced specifically for every job because they go from the top of the roof down to the bottom and so every job is different. Our products are very different. So we're doing metal shingle products that are modular panels, no custom panels or anything. We've got about a dozen different product designs that look like cedar, shake or slate or asphalt shingles or tile and it literally roof in a box. They get packed in corrugated boxes and palletized and stretch, wrapped and sent all over to job sites or wherever it may be, and so we kind of take out that necessity, for you know having to bring a machine to the job site or you know running the wrist, a dog gone, and I missed that measurement by three inches and all my panels are too short. Yeah, ours really install very similar to asphalt shingles, but they're actually metal shingles.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I don't know if I've ever seen solar panels on a metal shingle roof, but maybe Are you. Do you do they put solar on metal? I guess they do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's interesting. So kind of the someone who goes out and wants to buy a metal roof is usually thinking about you know, I'd like something that's going to be a good long-term investment, I'd like something that's ultimately going to reduce the operating cost of my home. Someone who buys solar is thinking those exact same things and they want to do something good for the environment. So very similar goals between the metal roof customer and the solar customer. So we do regularly see past customers of ours adding solar later.
Speaker 2:There are some things that if someone tells the contractor right from the beginning you know, I kind of dream of having solar someday there are some things that can be done at that time to make the metal roof installation more solar ready. But yeah, no, there's absolutely a lot of crossover there and one of the things that we're working on right now is an integrated solar solution. So you know you've got your metal shingle roof and then you've got some sort of solar shingle that's directly integrated into it and it's really kind of what Tesla has done with their solar glass roof, but ours would be a little bit different take, but similar to that man. There's other companies working on such things too.
Speaker 1:Sure, okay, yeah, that makes sense. The Tesla roof did not do great when they first started, right?
Speaker 2:They never seemed to hit the numbers that you know. They were promising shareholders and everything. Yeah, I do think it's a good system. I think what surprised them was once they started producing a solar roof. I think they kind of went into it, maybe just indications from things that you know Elon was saying and they were telling shareholders. They went into thinking, well, this is just an extension of our solar business, which was already in existence with SolarCity. But I think what they kind of maybe missed was they were now in the roofing industry and you know that's an entirely different ball wax and I think it's taken them a while to kind of ramp up their systems to be successful in the roofing industry. I mean one of the things you know you put traditional solar panels on the house and you know you got the panels are all the same size, you just got to find the place they're going to fit and you fasten them on. You know you're doing a metal, doing a roof, and every roof is different.
Speaker 2:You know, you have a valley here and a hip there, and now you got a chimney right in the middle the whole thing, and now you got, you know, all these stink pipes coming up through and all this stuff. So that was what I think kind of presented. A challenge for them was realizing OK, we're in the roofing industry and we got to develop things that are about roofing, not just about solar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it makes total sense. Ok, so let's talk about for a second, you know, let's go into more about how you run your company Inside the people that you work with your employees. What is your take on how that whole process works?
Speaker 2:Yeah, good question. And so there's a book out there and you've probably heard of it, maybe you've read it called the E-Myth. And the E-Myth was written by a guy quite a number of years ago by name of Michael Gerber, and Michael Gerber still alive, still does consulting, has a consulting company out in North Bay Area, california. But you know what his whole theory of the E-Myth was. Oftentimes someone will start a business. You know, okay, I've apprenticed, I've learned to be a good plumber, so I'm going to now I've got some bucks and I've got a nicer truck, I'm going to start a plumbing business. But in reality they were still a plumber, they were still a hands-on technician. They were not a business owner.
Speaker 2:And what the E-Myth teaches companies is how to build systems in your business so that business is not just all dependent upon you doing everything. And that's what would oftentimes happen to that technician who started a business. Now, suddenly he had the responsibility of a business plus doing everything in it, always putting out fires, and really couldn't develop that systemization. So his business ran on systems. Great example of this. So McDonald's not the best food in the world, but one thing I can tell you about McDonald's if I mentioned a McDonald's French fry or a McDonald's quarter pounder, you can automatically taste it. You know exactly what that's going to taste like, no matter what McDonald's you go to in the entire country or even beyond.
Speaker 2:And yet McDonald's has the highest turnover rate of employees of any business in the country. The number and I won't even hazard the guess right now, I heard it once it was absolutely staggering. I mean, I think it was literally their average employee is only there about two and a half months. And so how do you do that? How do you develop that kind of consistency and that kind of recognition when you're constantly dealing with turnovers? And you do it through systemization and teaching people those systems and holding them accountable to those systems.
Speaker 2:So that's what the emith is all about, is how do you do that in your business? That's what Michael Gerber and his consulting company do. So I hit a point a number of years ago where I was really frustrated in business and just always felt like you know, there were a couple of us Dad, myself and this other guy who's still here, my best friend but anyway, we were always just putting up fires and we never had the time to try to grow the company or scale the company as they say these days when the heck that word came from, I don't know.
Speaker 2:But anyway, we never had that time because we were always so tied up in the business. So I turned to the emith, his consulting group, and became a client. And you know what he does is he teaches companies how to build those systems into their business. You know how to document action plans, how to document job responsibilities, all that type of stuff. And you know, over the years I've done some, you know, training and working with other companies, contractors in particular. In fact Michael even wrote a book called the emith for contractors because he realized that contractors needed this so badly.
Speaker 2:Now I will say, you know, over the years, we are not as systematized now as I wish we were. We are blessed. We have a very loyal workforce, our average tenure across the companies pushing out toward 20 years. So we just have a very trained group of folks. But if I ever wanted through a period where we were having, you know, a lot of growth or a lot of new folks, we would definitely have to step up the systemization again.
Speaker 2:But just a great book for any contractor and then to hold yourself accountable, to make sure you actually do those stuff in your business rather than just read about and say, oh, that's nice, anyway, good stuff. So, yeah, I mean that's still. My philosophy, though, in the business is, you know, you got to build systems into it, you got to get people well trained and you got to keep people inspired. I think that's another thing that some business owners kind of miss out on, especially when we get so busy doing it. We kind of miss out on keeping our stakeholders inspired. We got to make sure that you know everyone who is involved with the business, whether it's team members, employees, customers, suppliers. You know if you're in a nonprofit, you got to have your volunteer base, all you know inspired, and you just do that through a lot of communication and a lot of congratulations and kudos and recognition of the great stuff folks are doing and, you know, constantly building that up.
Speaker 1:So a great answer. So how do you inspire when you're going through a rough time? Because that's hard, right, it's hard to be that guy when things ultimately feel like they could be going sideways. And maybe you haven't experienced that, but I'm sure there's been a time that, Absolutely Like your dad, when your dad had his accident that had to be hard to be that leader that you know, that positive influence, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a challenge. So so a number of years ago, a thing called open book management became very popular in businesses, you know, where you opened up all your books to your team members and let them see what was going on. And I had a good friend who did that with his business, and you know he's telling oh I'm so excited, this is great. People are responding. Well, you know, I saw him about a year and a half later and the economy had taken a turn south and I saw how's the open book thing going and I mean I seriously wanted to know I wasn't trying to be cynical or anything and he said not so good. He said it was great when the business was performing, but as soon as the business wasn't performing and people were seeing that, rather than be inspired to help the business, they started jumping ship and I lost a lot of key people and people are down. You know the business failed a couple years later. It didn't make it through it. Now, would it have been different had he not done open book management? I don't know, it may have been so. So it's a great question though.
Speaker 2:I mean, when you are going through a down cycle, how do you keep people inspired. You know I don't think it comes down to. You got to look for the good stuff people are doing and you got to recognize it. You know you can't sugarcoat the fact that we got a challenge ahead of us. We're capable of this challenge. We can pull together and we can make it happen. We can make it through whatever this is. But it's still the old saying how do you eat an elephant Little bites by the time. So you're still doing the same thing of recognizing the good performance of your team members and giving them kudos of that and just doing what you got to do, rebuilding one step at a time. But you got to constantly paint that vision that better days are ahead. That's not always going to be like this.
Speaker 1:Well, I think, setting expectations with the employees let's just take your guide, for example and having that open book policy, if you set expectations and you build those relationships and you build the trust in those relationships, maybe that time wouldn't have been so rough and maybe people would have pulled together. I don't know, I don't even know the guy you're talking about. Right, right, it seems like the way you just explained it. If you do have those relationships, I'm hoping that they would pull for you during those times, because you've been there in the past in the good, but who knows? I mean, it's hard to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and of course sometimes too when your business is going through tough times. Every business is going through tough times, so you can kind of relate to that a little bit with everybody too. But one of the things I always have is you got to have a little change in people's pockets. You got to have them knowing that, hey, you've been there for them in the past and that's going to help them want to be there for you in the future if you need them, when you need them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. So how do you go about? Do you have that kind of that open book? Because it does help. I'll say this I know that it does help when you've got, for example, I run into contractors all the time that don't have that policy, and so the technicians see these $25,000 systems go out and they think the owner is taking home 24 and a half of that. And the truth of the matter is, if they really knew what the owner was taking home, they'd probably be a little bit more forgiving as far as how they get paid and so on and so forth. But money, it's not always about the money. So here's the real question how do you? Because a lot of people think money is how you inspire people. That is important, don't get me wrong, but it's not the only way, because I think that a lot of people these days are they would rather work for somebody they can trust and that they can believe in than they would take another dollar or two an hour.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I don't think there's any doubt that people well, so we went through a little period there coming out of COVID where I don't remember what they called it. They came up with fancy names for everything, but everyone was kind of jump in ship for an extra dollar or extra $2. And that was hard on a lot of businesses that really had a loyal workforce. And now of a sudden they did have team members being tempted away over fairly small amounts, but yet the team member felt like, well, everyone else is doing it. So I guess that's what I need to be doing also, and you get this, what they call it FOMO, this fear of missing out. If I don't do it, this might be my only opportunity. We do not. So back to your question. We do not practice open book management as it used to be known.
Speaker 2:Now, that said, what I've kind of learned is you got a few key people in your company that are knowledgeable and trusted and respected.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you can give those folks some information and trust that okay, when they carry this information out around the water cooler or the coffee pot, it's going to be carried out accurately, and so sometimes you can be a little selective and float some trial balloons out there, whatever, if you will to a few folks to help them understand a little bit about the financial dynamics of the company.
Speaker 2:Because you're actually right, and I know that in our company and I have to think probably in every company, you know you've got this deal of the last few years since COVID. You know everything is 30%, 35%, 40% more than it used to be, and so people naturally assume, well, someone's making that money. But in reality I think most companies will tell you my margin is actually shrunk, in that I mean I had to pass through what I could based upon the increases in our raw material costs and our labor costs, and the reality is our margin shrunk. And so you know, sometimes you go to a few trusted people in your company, you let them know that and you let them kind of carry the message. Well, you know, don't get these guys a hard time. There may be more to the story that you don't understand here, have you?
Speaker 1:ever had one of those key people that you did trust, that you did. You know the had information that otherwise you wouldn't want anybody else to know that did make a bad decision. You don't have to tell me their name, obviously I'm not looking for that, but I just wonder because you know I'm a very trusting person. If somebody tells me they're gonna do something, I just believe you're gonna do it, because if I tell you I'm gonna do something, I go do it, but not everybody's like that. So have you ever had anybody just completely break your trust in that way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really I can imagine the pain of that and certainly I've heard stories of that. I can't recall myself personally having gone through that. Fortunately, yeah, I don't recall going through it. But yeah, that's got to be tough. If that happens, it has to affect you emotionally and you know the end result is now there's disinformation out there that you got to change, so that's tough too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. That's good news that you've never had that happen.
Speaker 2:I mean, I didn't anticipate that because I'll probably think of something at dinner tonight, but right off hand, nothing's coming to mind. Court.
Speaker 1:Well, it must not have been big enough for you to remember which is great.
Speaker 1:You know so, especially in this. You know, in our industry, and not not, obviously not from a manufacturer's standpoint. But you know, I'll tell you a story that we went in a guy's house I was training a company last week and we walked into the house and the guy said man, he said a roofer just tried to rip me off. He tried to charge me $16,000 for a roof. And I went, got another quote and it was 7000. Man, that's a hard pill to swallow when you've got up, when you're trying to sell this guy. You know an HVAC unit and so you know we hear that a lot of that in the solar industry.
Speaker 1:And I think and this is not knocking roofers or solar people, maybe solar people, I don't know but it feels like these. It feels like there's so much opportunity. Why would you not just do it the right way, like, why would you take them? And here's why I have a theory on that with solar is that these guys, a lot of these guys no regulation. So I think they get these, you know a million or two million or whatever in the bank and they see that money and they're like, well, I could just take this and run. It's more money than I've ever seen in my life. And that's what happens. We hear this a lot. I hear this a lot.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things that makes me think a little bit about. You know, and this is the whole process of selling, and you know, justifying value, delivering value, all that type of stuff. And you know, I think all of us are going to agree that you know, usually taking that low bid the most dangerous thing you can do. You know, it's kind of interesting. I had a homeowner asking me the other day. She said you know, contractors tell me it's going to take them six weeks to get out here and she said is that bad thing? And I said well, I don't think that's a bad thing. I said if the guy told you he could be there this afternoon, that's probably a bad thing. But well, though, that six weeks is a bad thing. But oh gosh, corey, I kind of forgot my train of thought there?
Speaker 1:Isn't that embarrassing? No, not at all. I do it all the time.
Speaker 2:I did think of it again. Can we continue? Go for it? Yeah, okay. So another author I enjoy. You've probably followed to his guy by name of Jeb Blunt. It's spelled B-L-O-U-N-T, so it looks like Blunt, but he pronounced this at Blunt, and I've had Jeb speak at a couple of events we've had over the years. Super nice guy, very smart. One of his first books was called People Buy you, and you know it was really about that. People buy from a person more so than they buy a thing. And a quick story for me on that.
Speaker 2:I remember my wife and I were much younger we were probably late 20s and we were on a car lot looking at a beautiful Jeep Grand Cherokee I had been admiring for quite a while and it was an expensive car. It was an expensive car to now, but it was an expensive car. And you know the salesman comes out and immediately is trying to qualify me, trying to talk me into a cheaper vehicle, all this type of stuff, without really getting to know me, and you know. And so I quickly decided I can't work with this guy. So you know we ended up leaving after a while, and his name was Scoop too. That probably didn't work in his favor either, but anyway. So we went to another Jeep dealer about 45 s away and said hey, the car I want is on that lot down there. We're going to buy it. You got to help me get it. And he said well, actually we can't really deal with those people either, but I got another dealer with the same vehicle and I'll get it from him for you.
Speaker 2:And so you know it really was, we buy from people, and so one of the things that I have taught for a number of years and I learned this from a friend of mine by the name of Bill Gladwell, who's a student of NLP, neuro Linguistic Programming and what Bill teaches is you know, a lot of times a contractor goes into a house and his first pitch really is more on his company how great we are, here's why you should do business with us all that type of stuff and you know, then he'll probably lead into some form of needs analysis and a presentation. Well, what Bill taught me and what I've taught people ever since is you want to close with your company. You don't want to open with your company. So you leave the information about your company, the information about your installers, and I encourage photos and names and families, anything you can do to make everyone very personal and you know parts of the community.
Speaker 2:You close with that. You don't open with it, because that is your most powerful stuff. That's what people are going to buy, is they're going to buy the people in your company? They can get that product from anybody else, but they can't get your people from anybody but you, and so that's what you. That's your most powerful stuff that you want to close with, and I think a lot of contractors get that backwards 100% they do.
Speaker 1:I'm actually an NLP practitioner.
Speaker 2:Are you really?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I in fact. It doesn't matter who it was, but I just had a company redo their presentation because the first thing they talked about was always been in business for you know, 40 years. The next slide was about the salesman in his family and I'm like God bless, like y'all are killing me here, like you haven't done anything to earn that business yet Nothing, and I said, you know they don't really care about you until they know that you care about them, and that's just the truth and they may not even care then.
Speaker 1:But depending on who you're dealing with, people don't. People want to know what you can do for them, whether that's the system or a new roof or whether that's whatever. They want to know how much it is. They want to know what you can do for them, but they want to feel special, and telling them about your family as the salesperson or the company doesn't make anybody feel warm and fuzzy.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, not at that point. You know doing it before you close, and just you know you do it so that you show that, hey, I'm not going to run away, I'm, as part of this community, as you are, and that gives them that warm and fuzzy, that, ok, these are the guys I want to do business with.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, it's just so funny. You brought up NLP, so a lot of people would a lot of people repel from that because they think it's some kind of slick. But it's not. It's just great questions Asking great questions.
Speaker 2:You know, human science.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. So I thought there was one more thing I had for you. I'm trying to remember what it was. I thought about it when you blanked out and now I'm lanking out. Yeah, I don't remember what it was now, but so you have a podcast, right.
Speaker 2:I do, yeah, and you're going to be on it. We got a recording date set with you here in a few weeks, so it's construction-disruptioncom. Construction disruption is the name of the show and we've been at it a couple of years and what we really try to do. So really, the reason we started the podcast was, you know, we looked at our industry and we didn't see a lot of new, younger folks coming into the industry and that kind of troubled us. So we wanted to really capture, hey, what are the? Where's our industry going, what are the new things coming up? And, as we say, we're kind of uncovering the future of design, building and remodeling.
Speaker 2:And so we had we've had guests that talk about tech, talk about products, talk about systems, services, things like offsite construction and really trying to pull in younger folks to our industry and say, hey, here are the opportunities for you out there, here, here are the areas that are going to be growing in coming years. And but I got to tell you it's like anything that we do or any sort of ministry or service you do, the benefit has been to me. I have learned so much from our guests. It's just been a great time and, you know, I hope that someone takes time to listen. They learned too, but I just can't believe how much I've learned about the industry through it.
Speaker 1:That's a fascinating point. Just like you know, here I get I've been learning from you for the last 45 minutes about things that I just didn't necessarily, some things I just didn't know. You know, I just you know, and so it is a one-on-one educate selfishly, it's a one-on-one education for me.
Speaker 1:And you know, I think, but a lot of people learn from. I think this is the new platform. I think podcasting is. I mean, that's how I learn about. If I'm look, if I'm going to go shop somebody, if I'm going to shop a customer, I'm going to listen to their podcasts because they'll tell me everything that they're not doing right.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's amazing yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's a great marketing tool. So, Todd, I really appreciate you coming on. This has been such a great conversation.
Speaker 2:It's been great fun. Thank you, corey and I I look forward to learning a lot more from you here in a couple of weeks when we get together again on construction disruption.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Where can people find you, Todd? Where would you like for them to find you, you know?
Speaker 2:I'm on LinkedIn, Todd Miller Metal Roofing, You'll find me. I also have a website at asktodmillercom where I try to provide a lot of education and support for contractors and property owners, and people can easily email me at Todd at asktodmillercom. And, of course, our business is isaiainustries isaiainustriescom and they can see lots of pretty pictures of metal roofs there.
Speaker 1:Perfect. I appreciate you, my friend.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you. Thank you, it's been a great time. Thank you, ford.
