Growth Starts at Hello: Inside the Systems Behind a 500+ Person Home Service Empire

Most contractors think growth is built in the field. More trucks, more techs, more leads. But Chad Peterman, CEO of Peterman Brothers, has built a 500+ person organization across HVAC, plumbing, and electrical services in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, and he sees it differently. The real growth engine does not start in the truck. It starts at the first ring of the phone.

In this episode, Chad breaks down how a family business turned multi-state operator learned that the call center is not support. It's strategy. It is revenue. It is the first impression that decides everything that comes after it.

Chad takes us back to the early days of Peterman Brothers, before the scale, before the systems, when growth was exciting but also breaking things at the same time. He shares the moment it became clear that people, not production, would define the ceiling of the company, and how early mistakes shaped the way he now thinks about scale, leadership, and structure.

The conversation moves into a powerful shift in perspective around call centers. Chad challenges the idea that answering phones is administrative work and instead positions it as one of the most important revenue drivers in the entire business. From missed opportunities to first impressions, he breaks down where contractors are unknowingly leaving money on the table and why training, systems, and leadership all have to work together for the phone to become a growth engine.

From there, Mandeep and Chad connect the dots between customer experience and revenue. What actually happens in a five-minute phone call that determines thousands of dollars in revenue downstream? Chad unpacks the most common mistakes CSRs make, what a high-performing call actually sounds like, and how empathy and structure can exist in the same conversation without sacrificing conversion.

The discussion expands into retention and upselling, where Chad explains how real growth is often hidden in plain sight. Small shifts in communication, service plans, and trust building during the first interaction can dramatically change long-term customer value. It is not about pushing harder. It is about listening better and executing with intention.

Operations come next, where dispatch becomes the make or break point between a great call and a completed job. Chad breaks down how strategic dispatching works, what most teams get wrong, and why speed without alignment often leads to lost revenue instead of gained efficiency.

A major focus of the episode is people development. Chad shares the philosophy behind building the Top Tech Academy and how structured training, onboarding, and career mapping became the backbone of scaling a 100M+ operation. He explains why most companies do not have a performance problem; they have a development problem.

We also dig into Chad’s philosophy from The Empowerment Project, where he challenges contractors to think differently about growth. Not as something you chase, but something you build through your people and systems every single day.

This episode is a blueprint for contractors who want more than activity. It is for those who want alignment between office, dispatch, and field, and a system where every call, every handoff, and every interaction drives measurable growth.

Special thanks to our sponsors, Broccoli AI and Grow Reviews, for supporting Born For The Trades and helping contractors scale smarter.

If you are a contractor stuck between effort and execution, this episode will show you where the real leverage lives.

Transcript

00;00;11;15 - 00;00;43;17
Speaker 1
Welcome to bond for the Tree, the Home Service podcast, and I'm your host, Mandy Burleigh. News contractors think their growth problems are in the field. More tags, more trucks, more leads where Chad Peterman built a 500 plus person company across three states and says the real growth engine, it starts with the person answering the phone. Today we are breaking down how your call center can go from a call center to a revenue machine.

00;00;43;19 - 00;00;48;03
Speaker 1
Welcome, Chad, to my show. I think this is second time welcome again.

00;00;48;05 - 00;01;09;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. Happy to be here and excited to talk about this subject. I think it's, extremely valuable. And something that, I will admit, I didn't, didn't start out focusing on, when we started building the business and, I think if I would have, I'd be in a lot better place today. But, you know, that's why I love the trades.

00;01;09;10 - 00;01;13;24
Speaker 2
We're always constantly learning and sharing. And trying to get a little bit better.

00;01;13;27 - 00;01;42;22
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, you started, like, you know, from family business to multi-state, like, operation. And, you are leveraging, you know, a lot of stuff out there, like Chad, like, before we get into call centers and systems, I want to rewind a bit. Perryman brothers didn't start as a 500 person operation, so why did you realize this could become something much bigger than just a local service company?

00;01;42;25 - 00;02;03;20
Speaker 2
Yeah, a great question. I mean, I think, you know, we were very fortunate that my dad started a company back in 86. And my brother and I joined the business around, call it 2011, 2013. You know, at the time, my dad did a lot of apartment, new construction, rehab work, different things like that.

00;02;03;22 - 00;02;20;27
Speaker 2
And once, once, my brother and I got kind of our, you know, feet under us and or stood, you know, the business and different things like that. You know, I think it was time to start our own kind of vision, our own dream. My dad had his, and, you know, we wanted to have our own as well.

00;02;20;27 - 00;02;50;21
Speaker 2
And I think for me and my brother. Yeah, we were fortunate enough to be surrounded by a lot of, a lot of great mentors, a lot of great people that, you know, kind of came before us that, kind of paved the way and shows you what was possible. Right. And I think I was taught from a very young age that, you know, we we all get to set the bar on our potential, and, I think what what really makes that extremely rewarding and HomeServices is the amount of people that you can impact.

00;02;50;23 - 00;03;05;01
Speaker 2
And that's not not customers. Not just customers. It's, it's the people that work on your team. And so, you know, today we have an outstanding team here, which, you know, I'm proud to, get to work with every single day.

00;03;05;03 - 00;03;13;06
Speaker 1
Love it, love it. What did younger Chad think success looked like? What it says, what it actually became.

00;03;13;08 - 00;03;36;02
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, I would I would tell you that, you know, when I first started out, it wasn't probably this, like, hey, create opportunity for your people. Social mobility, all of that kind of goes in a line. And if you take care of your people, you know, the revenue will take care of itself. I don't know if I started out with that philosophy, mainly because I was probably just didn't know.

00;03;36;04 - 00;03;56;20
Speaker 2
But I think it's once you get into it and you realize the impact that, you can have on your people, all of a sudden you kind of understand that that. Well, this is a whole lot more gratifying. And, oh, wait, I'm getting better results, as well. So I think that's the main difference. In kind of understanding, you know, what this business is truly about?

00;03;56;22 - 00;04;20;18
Speaker 1
Love it, love it. Yeah. Thanks for sharing. And I think you said something that stuck with me, that the call center is one of the most important growth drivers in a home service business. I think most owners hear that, and think it's just answering phones. So shift that perspective for us. What does a bad call center look like versus high performing one?

00;04;20;18 - 00;04;22;01
Speaker 1
Chad.

00;04;22;03 - 00;04;56;11
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, I think with anything in this industry, it's, you know, a that what separates a good and a bad is the data KPIs and accountability. Right. That her within that department. And then I think it's, you know, are we measuring those things. Do we know what good looks like? And then, you know, I think, you know, for me, the biggest thing was, I think a lot of these businesses in the contracting space, services, you know, a lot of them were started by former technicians.

00;04;56;13 - 00;05;16;29
Speaker 2
Yeah. Which is great. You know, I was not one of them, but, you know, my dad was and, you know, the call center and booking rates and abandoned rates and cancellation, like, that wasn't a thing. It was. Yeah. Just booked a call. We'll go fix it. And so we focused so much of our time out in the field.

00;05;16;29 - 00;05;27;29
Speaker 2
But, yeah, I think the one thing that we often overlook is the fact that, if we can't book a call or if all our calls cancel, there isn't a whole lot of fixing to be done.

00;05;28;01 - 00;05;33;29
Speaker 1
Right? Right. So, like, we're all contractors leaving the most money on the table.

00;05;34;01 - 00;05;53;27
Speaker 2
So I think the most money is being left on the table in not understanding, first and foremost what your booking rate is. You know, and then I think probably even before that is where are my leads coming from, you know, were a lot of people are like, I need more leads. Let's go spend it on marketing. And it's like, great, where are you?

00;05;53;27 - 00;06;15;08
Speaker 2
Where where are you getting your leads? How much do they cost? How are you converting one lead source versus another? What? Your average ticket. Look like on one lead source versus another. Right. And then once you understand that, well, then you can allocate dollars strategically. And then it is getting with your call center to understand what, what do we what is what does success look like.

00;06;15;08 - 00;06;37;22
Speaker 2
What's our booking rates. Or do we have cancellations? You know, a lot of the times what I've figured out is that, you know, when we when we do understand what a booking rate is, in our business, a lot of times we look just to the CSR to solve that problem, right. Well, they're not doing like, let's be honest, someone called your business for help.

00;06;37;24 - 00;06;58;19
Speaker 2
Like outside of the CSR, you know, like telling them to, you know, that they shouldn't use you like it should be booked. But I think we also have to look at that a step further and to understand why aren't those booking? Are they not booking. Because you can't get to anybody today and you're booking three days out because you don't have enough capacity.

00;06;58;21 - 00;07;19;06
Speaker 2
That's not really that's not really the CSRs fault. That's more of an operations fault that we've got to get corrected so that they can book those calls and we can get to customers. And so it's all so intertwined. We do an exercise at our company where we look at market by market, service line by service line. We look at booking rate, cancellation rate.

00;07;19;08 - 00;07;39;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, average ticket conversion and cost per lead. And that's going to tell marketing how many dollars they need to spend. Right. Based on our internal KPIs, how many dollars they need to spend in order to hit the budget. And you're going to look at that percentage and you're going to go in some markets you may find that, oh my God, we'd have to.

00;07;39;11 - 00;07;57;20
Speaker 2
We're spending 7 to 10% because someone told us to. Yeah. But in all actuality, based on our internal KPIs, we need to be spending like 50%. Well that that mass it and go to mass. So we've got to improve our internal KPIs in order to spend at a reasonable level.

00;07;57;23 - 00;08;15;22
Speaker 1
Love that, love that. Yeah, this is what I do. Like, you know, every day creating like, you know, digital marketing strategies. And I think this is what we did with equal numbers to there in gainer we create. We have like our own tool. Knowing your numbers is everything. You know if if by contractors they have like you know set of mind.

00;08;15;22 - 00;08;35;15
Speaker 1
They want to just spend like 7 to 10% or 2000 or 5000. Yeah. We are not getting there. So you have to look at how many jobs you need annually, how many jobs you need, like, you know, monthly to hit your goal. Whatever your goal is, I think you should be spending 8 to 12% on that. But it depends.

00;08;35;15 - 00;08;53;06
Speaker 1
Like you said, the business, they have to spend like 50% on it. So knowing your numbers, looking at the systems, and I think going back to the question that I asked, it seems I think is this more training systems or leadership, issue. Like what? What do you think.

00;08;53;09 - 00;09;10;11
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's a little bit of both, you know, like, to your point being a digital marketer, like, I'm sure you've never been yelled at by a client who said that you didn't get any leads, only to find out that you got him plenty of leads. He just couldn't book them and or everyone was canceling.

00;09;10;11 - 00;09;28;10
Speaker 2
And so he ran. He ran ten jobs. But you actually brought him 30. Yeah. And it's like you've got to understand these dynamics, within it. But yeah, I mean, there's a training component, right? Your CSR has to be good on the phone. There's got to be empathy shown. There's got to be, you know, asking the customer's name.

00;09;28;10 - 00;09;52;18
Speaker 2
There's got to be all of. But to me those are like the basics, right. Like we can do that to a certain level. Can we always get better? 100%. Right. But I think it's all the things after that call comes as to what is preventing that CSR from booking that call. Sometimes it's like tools like, hey, can rain, you can wave a diagnostic to get a if if that is the push back, we're going to try to overcome, overcome, overcome.

00;09;52;18 - 00;10;10;14
Speaker 2
But we may have to wave a diagnostic. That's fine. We'll take that call. We already paid. Who knows how much for the lead. I think the other part is educating your CSR team on what a lead cost. Right? We did this a couple of years ago where we were like, and it's not their fault. We just didn't educate them.

00;10;10;14 - 00;10;33;06
Speaker 2
That's our fault. Is they didn't know the difference between a lead that came in off of, you know, call an organic, you know, organic website traffic versus pay, a pay per click a paid lead. We already paid for it. Like come hell or high water, we better run the lead because at the end of the day, we already it's already money out the door.

00;10;33;06 - 00;10;53;17
Speaker 2
So hell, let's let's, you know, let's give it a shot. All right. So I think there's just a lot of dynamics within that that you need to know. And then the biggest one is capacity. I've heard forever in a day. You know, it's like your operations team says, well, I can't even keep the the I can't even keep the two plumbers I have busy.

00;10;53;19 - 00;11;13;01
Speaker 2
So why would I hire another one? What they don't see is all the calls that didn't get booked. They only see the calls that hit the service. Titan dispatch board and they're like, well, there's only eight calls on there. It's like, yeah, well, yeah, there were only eight calls, but we got 15. We couldn't book the other, we couldn't book the other seven because we have no capacity.

00;11;13;04 - 00;11;29;07
Speaker 2
So it's the biggest thing I think is as your company gets bigger, these decisions gets siloed. And they become they get in silos, and then all of a sudden no one's communicating and everyone's just blaming everybody else for the problem that they have, when in fact they may be creating the problem themselves.

00;11;29;11 - 00;11;49;21
Speaker 1
Right. Like understanding your numbers and capacity. I think this is what like, you know, we also looked at it, making sure you understand when you are getting bigger, you have to look at the resources capacity in advance if you have to add more or if you have to, like, you know, let people go. So that capacity thing plays a big role.

00;11;49;21 - 00;12;09;29
Speaker 1
And and this is what I as a customer experience is like is equal to revenue. Right. Let's connect the dots. How does the way a call is handled actually translates into more revenue? Because I think that's where a lot of owners miss it. What percentage of revenue is won or lost on that first call? Jack.

00;12;10;01 - 00;12;29;24
Speaker 2
Oh yeah. I mean, I think it's it's it's extremely critical. I mean, you got to think about it like I always think about like when you go to a, when you go to a restaurant and you have a great waiter or waitress. Yeah. Like they're essentially the call center, right? They're taking the order. They're selling you on the things.

00;12;29;24 - 00;12;47;03
Speaker 2
Well, when you have a really great waiter or waitress that's making sure your water's not empty, you know, telling you about the specials knows the menu really well. All of these things, like, all of a sudden, if your steak is undercooked. Yeah. It's not that big of a deal, right. Because you're like, oh, well, you know, like they're really trying like they didn't cook it.

00;12;47;05 - 00;13;08;02
Speaker 2
It'll be fine. They'll take care of it. Whereas if you have a really bad one, that experience can go downhill really quickly. And it's the same like if I talk to someone on the phone and I'm trying to buy a service and they're super friendly and empathetic towards my situation and want to get things taken care of and reassure me that the technician coming out, oh, you're going to love these guys.

00;13;08;02 - 00;13;33;15
Speaker 2
They're so awesome. Like they're going to take great care of you and all of these things. Like you set the stage for that technician to be successful. And I think that goes for the whole process leading up to that. Technician knocking on that door, like, is it, you know, not even the call center, but dispatch, you know, once dispatch knows what techs going out there, are they having the conversation with the customer going, oh my gosh, you've got John.

00;13;33;15 - 00;13;55;06
Speaker 2
John is been with us for so long, he knows there is more. He's forgot about plumbing than most people know. Like he's going to take such great care of you. Like as a customer, you feel like this was the best decision I made. Whatever John says, I going to probably do. And so there's just all these little touch points that I think, you know.

00;13;55;08 - 00;14;10;19
Speaker 2
Yeah. Can you convert a call that was set up poorly and it was a bet. Yes. You can, because at the end of the day, they need to get something done. But what are you chances are how do you increase your chances. Is it is it 2%. Is it 3%. Because those start to add up over time.

00;14;10;22 - 00;14;22;11
Speaker 1
I love that, love that. And I think you mentioned like, you know, empathy, empathy plays a big role. And one of our core values is empathy too. How do you train for empathy and effectiveness?

00;14;22;14 - 00;14;40;17
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, I think it is. It's one is with any training it's consistency. Right. It's very easy for you know, we think that everybody should just be super empathetic and be perfect on the phone. Well, at the end of the day, you know, our personal lives get in the way. So maybe he's having a bad day or something's going on at home or whatever it is.

00;14;40;18 - 00;14;55;22
Speaker 2
Okay. Yeah. So keeping that consistent training of like, oh, yeah, I know I got this thing, but I got to do this is this is my job. I got to do this thing. And then also there's crappy customers that are going to make you have a bad day that are just rude and, you know, not friendly and all of this stuff.

00;14;55;22 - 00;15;16;26
Speaker 2
And I think that consistency is key in the empathy. I think there's also a lot of great tools out there, that people can use nowadays with AI, that can basically listen to the call and give them a score. So like, yeah, a couple of years ago it would have been like empathy, like my call center manager or supervisors got to listen to a bunch of calls.

00;15;16;28 - 00;15;39;09
Speaker 2
Yeah. And they listened to like two. And one of them happened to the not a great one. And so we're then scoring them. It's like, well they took 300 calls this month. Like the just because they had one bad one doesn't mean they're doing a bad job. So we use we use AI tools to basically give the CSR a basically it's not an empathy rating, but like, did you follow the process?

00;15;39;09 - 00;15;52;03
Speaker 2
Did you do these things that we know are building blocks of creating empathy with the customer? And then they have the piece of data to look at. It's like, oh, I was 80 yesterday. I'm gonna be 82 today. So I'm going to, you know, improve that.

00;15;52;06 - 00;15;58;13
Speaker 1
Love that love that. Is that something like, you guys build in-house AI product or are you using any other in the market?

00;15;58;16 - 00;16;15;08
Speaker 2
Yeah. So we're using a vocal coach. I was on a, on a call earlier with Tyson today. But, we're just kind of getting kicked off with it. So kind of a little bit early, but I think all, all indications point to it's going to be a really good thing for us for sure. Yeah.

00;16;15;10 - 00;16;38;11
Speaker 1
I've heard great things about. Okay. Yeah. Broccoli is out there as well. Right. Broccoli is one of our, like, you know, podcast sponsors. Yeah. And they're crushing it. But both are both are great. I would highly recommend. Thanks for sharing that in the book. Hey, real quick, if you're in the home service phase and you care about getting more calls, more jobs, and actually growing this year, don't skip this.

00;16;38;11 - 00;17;02;24
Speaker 1
First up, broccoli. This one's a game changer. While you're out on a job asleep or just missed a call, Broccoli's AI voice agents are answering your phones 24/7 cooking jobs, following up on estimates, and even dispatching text in real time. No more misleads. No more will call you back. It plugs right into tools like service. Tie them and you can even match the AI voice to your brand.

00;17;02;24 - 00;17;32;24
Speaker 1
It's basically a full time receptionist team without the overhead. Check them out@broccoli.com. Next, grow nearby. This is where things separate because getting leads is one thing, but becoming the company everyone remembers, that's a different level. Grow nearby helps home service businesses dominate their local market with high end content, paid ads and real strategy behind it. Not random posting, not guesswork a system built to consistently bring in qualified leads while building a brand that actually stands out.

00;17;32;27 - 00;17;54;07
Speaker 1
If you're tired of blending in and ready to become the go to name in your area, go to grow nearby.com and take a look. And of course grow reviews because you can be the best. But if nobody sees it, it doesn't matter. Grow reviews helps you collect real video testimonials from happy customers, the kind that instantly build trust and close deals before you even show up.

00;17;54;07 - 00;18;17;09
Speaker 1
They make it ridiculously easy to capture and showcase those real customer moments that sell for you. If you want more trust, more credibility, and more book jobs, head to grow. Reviews.com. All right, now let's get back into it. I think most people think of the call center as booking the job, right. But you talk a lot about retention and upselling happening right there.

00;18;17;10 - 00;18;20;11
Speaker 1
Break break that down for us Jack.

00;18;20;13 - 00;18;41;02
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I think the for me the best place to kind of pitch your, membership service agreement, whatever you guys call it, you know, is in the call center. I mean, and I think there's, you know, there's something to be said for if your CSRs are one, they should be stiffed on that. Yeah. For sure.

00;18;41;02 - 00;18;58;02
Speaker 2
So ours get ours is a monthly plan. It's 18 bucks a month. And they get the first month if they sell a membership. To me, when I think about it, like if I, if I can build enough trust and rapport with that customer who's never maybe used us before or maybe he's used us but never signed up on the membership.

00;18;58;04 - 00;19;23;17
Speaker 2
If I can articulate all the benefits of that, and they make a small commitment to me there. Yeah, well, what's the likelihood that they're going to buy the repair they just signed up on the they're they're your customer now. And so we do a lot of training, a lot of like, measuring on how many memberships is our CSR team selling versus the opportunities that they get.

00;19;23;24 - 00;19;31;13
Speaker 2
Obviously, you can't sell a membership to someone who already has one. But of all the customers who call in, who don't have one. Yeah. How many memberships are reselling there.

00;19;31;19 - 00;19;41;17
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's that's a good one. And I have a follow up question on that. Like yeah. How do you how do you build loyalty from a five minute phone call.

00;19;41;19 - 00;20;01;26
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I think it's just one I think it's a it's simple things. It's the tone. Are you hitting on the things that they find important? You know, like, are they, do they seem a little bit frantic about the issue that is happening currently? What they do? Well, then I would assume that one of the benefits that you should stress is priority service.

00;20;02;03 - 00;20;24;20
Speaker 2
Right? So dispatch fee, the fact that we offer for in our instance, we offer all free trades. So hey, I'm sure you, you know, I know you're calling in about a plumbing problem and, you know, the weather's turning. So you know, have you had that have you had that Hvac system checked? You know, we also offer electrical if you want to make any upgrades, like all of these great things that you get with it.

00;20;24;22 - 00;20;33;05
Speaker 2
I think that, yeah, finding the benefit that you feel like fits that customer need right there on the phone, I think is critical.

00;20;33;08 - 00;20;47;14
Speaker 1
Love that. Love that. I think that's how, like, you know, you build loyalty and especially with the like, you know, new customers, love, love that. Any real examples where small changes created big revenue jumps?

00;20;47;16 - 00;21;10;25
Speaker 2
So I think the biggest one for us is educating your CSR on how much a lead cost. Because like our CSR team, when we, when we, when we brought that information to them, there were like, that literally this was their response. Oh, well, we didn't really know that. We just thought the phone rang. We thought, hey, you got this great brand.

00;21;10;27 - 00;21;27;29
Speaker 2
Everybody knows who you are. They just call and it's like, no, no, no. We actually spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? Make that phone ring. And they're like, oh, shoot, I wish I would have known. Like, how much does that lead cost? Like, well, that one could cost us, you know, 150 bucks a lead. They're like, oh my God, are you kidding me?

00;21;28;04 - 00;21;52;04
Speaker 2
You know that? That's what it costs out there. They're like and then all of a sudden, you know, it wasn't that they wanted to do a bad job. It just they weren't armed with the right information to make a good decision to like, oh, 150 if I see that that lead pops up on service. Right. And it says PPC, I know that we've already paid for this and I'm going to work extra hard to get this book or to provide value and so on and so forth.

00;21;52;11 - 00;22;03;08
Speaker 2
To me, that was the biggest one that for for me, when we're making changes to that all the time, I would say I probably spend more time on that piece of the business than probably any other piece.

00;22;03;11 - 00;22;20;02
Speaker 1
Yeah, great, great great shit. I think, that's what I think a lot of like, you know, home industry owners, they look at that, I think, I hope those who are listening, it's, going to be really, really helpful if you apply, the next segment is like, you know, building the team, top tech academy and culture. I want to talk about.

00;22;20;02 - 00;22;33;09
Speaker 1
Yeah, you didn't just scale a business. You built a pipeline with the top tech academy. That tells me you saw a people, problem early. So why was that so important to solve?

00;22;33;12 - 00;22;55;24
Speaker 2
Yeah. For sure. So, you know, we started our our academy back in 2020, October of 2020 was our first class. And, you know, we did it out of necessity. First, you know, during Covid, the phone wouldn't stop ringing. And we couldn't find enough qualified techs, to, you know, serve the demand. And so we said, well, what's if we can't find them?

00;22;55;24 - 00;23;19;18
Speaker 2
We got to build them. And so we started building them. I would tell you that it's that it's evolved. You know, I kind of I, with, the help of our team, kind of built the first kind of iteration of it, and then we brought in other resources, people that had a background in education and so on and so forth to make the program better.

00;23;19;21 - 00;23;42;07
Speaker 2
Happy to report. We graduated eight students this past Friday. And, they're on their first calls today, so, excited for them to get out there. But I think even more it is, you know, we look around in this industry so often and you hear the complaint of our enough qualified people out there, and, you know, the trades are dying like they're all of this stuff.

00;23;42;07 - 00;24;05;01
Speaker 2
And it's like, well, yeah, great problem identified, right? Yes. Agree. However, what is the solution? How are we going to do this? Because the last time I checked, there aren't a ton of like trade schools out there where people can go and get these skills right. And so it's like, well, they're dying, but we have no resources for these people to get into the trades.

00;24;05;03 - 00;24;26;16
Speaker 2
You know, typically to fill, we usually start out with about 10 to 12 students. We probably our hope is not to graduate them all, because we're going to miss on recruiting. Yeah. So what we will see is to fill a class of 12 will get probably over 500 resumes.

00;24;26;19 - 00;24;28;14
Speaker 1
500 resumes. Yeah.

00;24;28;16 - 00;24;55;23
Speaker 2
Which tells me that there is definitely interest out there. There are definitely people who want to get into the trades. It's just we've got to work together to provide the resources so that they can acquire the knowledge to get into the trade. I right? Yeah, we can't teach experience, but we can teach them the basics and then have a program to where they can get they can get into a trade and start to, you know, do the things that they need to do.

00;24;55;25 - 00;25;14;26
Speaker 1
Awesome, awesome. I think, it's not easy to like, you know, build that 500 plus, like, you know, employees. And I'm pretty sure you heavily invested in training. And that's where I think a lot of, home service companies, they struggle, they don't have time. That's what they say. And they don't have time to, like, you know, train.

00;25;14;28 - 00;25;19;12
Speaker 1
What's the cost of not investing in training?

00;25;19;14 - 00;25;47;12
Speaker 2
So, Yeah, I mean, it's it's massive. I mean, I look at, like, where we've come since we've really heavily invested in training. And I think the most obvious place to look is your average ticket and conversion rate. Are they getting better out there now? We just talked all about training internally. Yeah that's important too. But you know, obviously you're going to train your technicians whether it be technically, whether it be from a customer service perspective.

00;25;47;19 - 00;26;19;22
Speaker 2
I think the biggest thing and this is a this is a tip for, for any company out there because I'm sure there's people listening that are going, yeah, well we do training every Wednesday. Yeah, we're good. And guess what? That is far and away probably more than the majority of companies are doing out there. However, what I have learned is that there is a difference between between training where I am sending the service manager up in front of the room to rattle off a bunch of this, that and the other.

00;26;19;24 - 00;26;46;15
Speaker 2
There's a major difference between training and actually learning and development. Learning and development takes professional educators who know how to deliver information, to know how to get retention, to know how to make sure that you can demonstrate this. Right. And so what I would tell the majority of and it's not right for everybody, but what I would tell you is that the trades could benefit from a lot of it.

00;26;46;22 - 00;27;21;05
Speaker 2
People that are professional educators, because doing training for training sake is going to get you a little bit. But when you start doing actual learning and development and your people are really buying into the information and understand the concepts and know how to implement it, all of a sudden that that becomes a giant leap. When you know, when you know that your, the content you are providing and the manner in which you are providing it is, is at the level that education should be, consumed by adults.

00;27;21;08 - 00;27;49;25
Speaker 1
Love that, love that. When you become like, you know, intentional with the education and coaching and training, that's where the game changer is when people start buying into your company. Love that. My next segment is The Playbook. You wrote the Empowerment Project, right? And and the whole idea is grow your people, grow your business. What's the part of that philosophy that most owners struggle to actually execute?

00;27;49;27 - 00;28;18;05
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that most owners struggle. You know, I talk to businesses, business owners all the time. And I would say that the one thing that they lack, and they may not like, say this about themselves, they lack trust. And I think a lot of that is bred out of, being the technician, being the guy who could fix it all is no one can fix it as good as I can.

00;28;18;08 - 00;28;35;26
Speaker 2
And how can I trust this guy who's only been doing it for two years when I've been doing it for 20? How can I trust him to go out there and take care of the problem? And I always tell people I had a distinct advantage, and my advantage was I was not a technician. I don't know how to fix anything.

00;28;35;28 - 00;29;16;24
Speaker 2
And so I, I naturally had to trust all of these people to do the skill because I couldn't do it. And I knew that I had to build something in a culture in which they felt empowered, because without them, I don't we don't have a business here. Right. Because I don't know how to do that stuff. And so for me, what I always tell owners, I think this is another, another key piece of where I benefited from kind of that handoff from first generation to second, is that my dad, for some odd reason, trusted a guy in his late 20s, to like, you know, call the shots and make mistakes and do

00;29;16;24 - 00;29;36;05
Speaker 2
all the things. And I think those two things go hand in hand is, you know, as a business owner, if you want to scale, you can't do everything. There's only so many hours in a day. And so how are you going to create a culture where people feel empowered? You know, obviously there's accountability and there's, you know, checks and balances and all of this stuff.

00;29;36;05 - 00;29;56;08
Speaker 2
But you've got to empower people to go make decisions, to go make mistakes, to, you know, do things that are going to drive the business forwards. Because if you're the only one rowing the boat, you can't put a whole bunch of people in your boat 100%. The only way to look, the only way to build a big boat, is to have a lot of people.

00;29;56;08 - 00;29;57;08
Speaker 2
Roanoke.

00;29;57;10 - 00;30;22;22
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. I think, giving that ownership and, giving them the authority to execute, trusting them. I think that's what, like, you know, drives like, you know, more accountability. And that's how, you know, you see leaders in your company, right? So it works great. My last segment that I'm very, very excited to talk about, like, can't stop the growth.

00;30;22;25 - 00;30;38;13
Speaker 1
You host a podcast, called You Can Stop the Growth. And that phrase alone feels like a mindset more than just the title. So breakdown, for me. Like what? That what does you can stop the growth actually mean?

00;30;38;16 - 00;31;04;26
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. So the, the, story, behind it is, early on when we were growing pretty fast. My dad was cautious, and rightfully so. He was right. There's a number of times we've gone too fast and broke things, for sure. But, you know, we were sitting down, and, he, my brother and and I and, you know, I said, hey, boys, we got to be careful.

00;31;04;26 - 00;31;23;04
Speaker 2
You guys are going really fast, and there's a lot of. We're adding people and all of this stuff. And my response was, well, dad, it's you can't stop the growth if you continually invest in your people because they're going to want to grow, they're going to want to get better. And the company is, you know, by results going to grow.

00;31;23;07 - 00;31;28;16
Speaker 2
And so that's where the phrase came from. That was all the way back in like probably 2016, 2017.

00;31;28;17 - 00;31;32;03
Speaker 1
Oh, wow. That was in 2016. Wow. Yeah.

00;31;32;05 - 00;32;02;29
Speaker 2
And we started the podcast back in 2018, I believe. And you know, the podcast has obviously turned into so much more, whether it be training, other companies and advising and putting on events and doing stuff like that, which is, you know, extremely gratifying work. The fact that I learned from so many people and continued to learn from so many people, to be able to pass that knowledge along, I think, is, you know, my hope is, is that it makes the industry stronger.

00;32;03;02 - 00;32;16;18
Speaker 2
I always talk about elevating the trades. How are we all going to elevate the trades? So that, you know, we can continue to provide a high level of service and continue to provide opportunity for all those wanting to be a part of it.

00;32;16;21 - 00;32;37;00
Speaker 1
Love it. Love it. Like, you know, how that like, you know that, phrase, like, you know, turn into a podcast and like, you know, community. I was part of that, like, you know, session that Danny invited. It's amazing. Like, you know, a lot of people are joining that the group can stop the growth and can't wait to see, like, you know, a lot of people joining and learning from that platform.

00;32;37;02 - 00;33;04;19
Speaker 1
Will definitely like, you know, push, and like you said, like elevating the trades, like, you know, there is like, you know, one idea going on to help, like, you know, the home service industry, I'm thinking to maybe connect with you later so that we can collaborate if we can add, like, you know, one section, like, you know, by, Chad Peterman, like, or you can stop the growth like some section there, if like, you know, trades people can get some benefit from there, I think.

00;33;04;19 - 00;33;08;11
Speaker 1
I think we should collaborate. I'll be in touch with you on that, too.

00;33;08;14 - 00;33;25;01
Speaker 2
Absolutely. Yeah. There's a that's, one of my favorite things to do is, to have someone like yourself, you know, educate our community on something that is not my, you know, not my background. It's like, okay, let's bring it. Let's bring in the experts here. To, to help in, in all sorts of different.

00;33;25;01 - 00;33;30;05
Speaker 2
We know our stuff. We kind of stay in our lane, but there's a whole lot of other pieces to this puzzle.

00;33;30;07 - 00;33;54;26
Speaker 1
Right? Right. Absolutely. Like, so do the listeners. Thank you again. Like, you know, for joining us today. It's a special episode with Chad. And, if growth is, in, rentable, then the real question is whether you are growing on purpose or by accident. We'll definitely link everything in the description. So, Chad, do we have like, any, any link can't stop the growth.

00;33;54;26 - 00;34;00;11
Speaker 1
Maybe we can put in the description if anyone wants to join that, platform.

00;34;00;14 - 00;34;22;19
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. So, you can go to can't stop the growth.com, there. And you'll find all our resources, access to. We have a Facebook group now, and then if you want to, if you want to inquire about any of the training that we offer, you can set up a call right there, with someone on our team and they can get you all the information that you need.

00;34;22;21 - 00;34;40;14
Speaker 2
Best way to think about it is we are essentially training what we do every day, right? And so, it hopefully it is a, there are no shortcuts, but hopefully, it prevents you maybe from going down the wrong road or, you know, taking an idea and accelerating, your progress is the hope.

00;34;40;17 - 00;35;01;05
Speaker 1
Love it. Love it. Like, you know, Chad, you have, like, you know, build that 500 plus, like, you know, people company, and you're providing value training. You believe in education. That's a good platform. And I am like, super excited to be part of it. I had one session and what a great like, you know, community. And the host, Danny Sam just love it.

00;35;01;07 - 00;35;21;02
Speaker 1
And I can't wait to see that community growing. And I want to thank like, you know, our sponsors broccoli and grow reviews. Thank you for all the love and support and same it goes to all the listeners, those who are like watching, listening and supporting us. For the last three years, it's been, I think more than three years.

00;35;21;04 - 00;35;35;11
Speaker 1
Thank you again, Chad, for coming to my show. And, we'll definitely stay in touch to elevate the industry. And thank you for sharing all your knowledge, on everything. It was powerhouse. Love it. Thank you again.

00;35;35;13 - 00;35;38;10
Speaker 2
Absolutely. Thank you. Pleasure's all mine. Happy to help.