Blue Collar Business Podcast
Welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast with Sy Kirby. Dive deep into the world of hands-on entrepreneurship and the gritty side of making things happen. Join us for actionable tips on scaling your blue-collar business, managing teams, and staying ahead in an ever-evolving market. We'll also discuss the latest industry trends and innovations that could impact your bottom line. If you're passionate about the blue-collar world and eager to learn from those who've thrived in it, this podcast is a must-listen. Stay tuned for engaging conversations and real-world advice that can take your blue-collar business to new heights.
Blue Collar Business Podcast
Ep. 53 - Tiered Pricing Secrets Every Blue Collar Boss Must Know
Ever feel like you're working harder than ever but your profits don't show it? You're not alone. In this eye-opening conversation, America's service coach Joe Crisara reveals the exact strategy that took him from $500,000 in debt to completely debt-free in just three years—without working more hours or finding more customers.
The secret? The Pure Motive Service Approach. Joe walks us through how blue collar businesses consistently undervalue their expertise and leave massive profits on the table. Through real-world examples from plumbing to HVAC to excavation, he demonstrates how presenting premium, mid-range, and economy options transforms customer decisions. "If you only give one price, you're usually going to give the cheapest one," Joe explains. "But if you offer premium, mid-range, economy, where you start with the premium price first, then 80% will upgrade."
What makes this approach so powerful is its focus on thoroughly diagnosing problems rather than rushing to solutions. When you clearly identify both technical issues and emotional impacts, customers naturally gravitate toward comprehensive solutions. The results speak for themselves—Joe's first attempt at this method turned a $75 repair into a $1,250 sale.
Beyond pricing psychology, Joe shares candid insights about profit margins (you need at least 65% gross profit), the importance of team training, and why most contractors unknowingly sabotage their own success. His philosophy is refreshingly straightforward: "I don't participate in a bad economy." Instead, he creates his own economic reality through strategic pricing and pure-motive service.
Whether you're struggling with razor-thin margins or simply looking to take your business to the next level, this conversation provides actionable strategies you can implement immediately. Connect with Joe at www.servicemvp.com to learn more about transforming your blue collar business through the science of service and sales.
Click the link above for a free marketing audit with insights to boost your blue collar business!
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Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast, where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue collar business. I'm your host, cy Kirby, and I want to help you in what it took me trial and error and a whole lot of money to learn the information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox. Welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast brought to you and sponsored by podcastvideoscom. I am in one of their solo pod rooms today. Check them out online, guys. I've been with them over a year now, love what they're doing with the show and who we are reaching and the impact they're actually having.
Speaker 1:Today, guys going down the sales route, pretty excited about it. We've been kind of all over the place with finance and federal contracting and equipment and the number one thing I preach about on this show all the time sales is everything. Sales fixes everything. Now, profitable revenue fixes everything but sales in general. Today I am joined by Joe Cresera, who is a founder of servicemvpcom and he is America's service coach. I can tell you that I've had a little bit of time with Mr Joe. Already We've had to reschedule this podcast a couple of times, so I really appreciate your patience again, sir. But a little bit about Joe guys, over 40 years of experience in contracting and sales training. Creator of what I'm very interested in learning about today is the Pure Motive Service Approach Again. Founder of ServiceMVPcom all the way back in 2001 and coaches thousands of contractors via live calls, workshops and, of course, as you guys know, I am very passionate about digital content and pushing into the digital space. So for anymore, mr Joe, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thanks, cy, for having me here. Definitely I appreciate you blocking your time and changing your schedule and finding a way to open up this time for both of us to be able to communicate high value to service contractors and other people out there on the planet who need to do that.
Speaker 1:No, I'm telling you there's not enough resources out there good, pure resources out there for these guys that they're building America and just the way we sit here and view them, man, they need teachers. I needed teachers, I needed help, and that's of course why we're sitting here today on this podcast. I tried help and that's of course why we're sitting here today on this podcast. I tried to create a resource, but bringing folks like yourself to start speaking about sales and man, we've been all over the map, but I am truly excited to get into your background. So tell us a little bit about number one, what ServiceMVP is today, and kind of your backstory, because it sounds like you had a pretty high motivation in the same spot that a lot of us have been in before, where we thought our business was doing great but actually it probably wasn't doing as great and you turned it around and doing great things now, and you turned it around and doing great things.
Speaker 2:Now. Well, you know, it did start out with me priding myself on being the best worker or doing the best quality. I grew up with the kind of my grandfather and my father said if you can't do it right the first time, don't do it at all. So I was always priding myself on doing HVAC, plumbing, electrical and other really anything I did. Even if I fixed my car, I tried to make sure I overbuilt it. I didn't try to just do it minimum. And then, of course, it wasn't about 1985, I started my own business back in the mid-80s and I didn't really have any idea how to. I knew how to do the work inside the business, but then I had an entrepreneurial seizure to start a business and I didn't know how to price myself. I didn't know how to, you know, run the business itself or manage the business. And so really, what I did to start the business, I learned what my competition was charging and I just charged a little bit less than they did. Learned what my competition was charging and I just charged a little bit less than they did. The only motivation I thought that people had to purchase was a lower price. I thought everybody was motivated by a lower price. That's all I knew. And so by doing it that way, I wound up to be in debt. By about 1991, I was about $500,000 in debt. And then one of my clients took pity on me and they said this because $500,000 in debt? And then one of my clients took pity on me and they said this you know cause? 500,000 back in the early nineties would be like probably two and a half 3 million today, right? So um, and I was like like to give you an example. My average service call was about $78. I was charging in my equipment for a furnace was like $1,500. So for me to get $500,000 out of debt, would it be ridiculous? And I was just too weak to collect the money. I didn't know how to charge the money, I didn't, just everything was dysfunctional. Then one of my clients said that there's a science behind all this and he showed me how to the science of pricing first, and then he showed me the science of connecting the science of pricing first, and then he showed me the science of connecting the science of project management. There's a science behind everything here and I didn't realize there was. And once I started learning it, like immediately I started selling equipment on the furnaces and ACs for, like, I was selling it for $1,500. Next thing you know, my average sale is about $12,000 in about next month. I couldn't believe. Just because I changed the way the prices were displayed, the science about the way the prices are displayed, I couldn't believe it. It immediately basically multiplied it by more than 10 times the amount that I was doing.
Speaker 2:An interesting thing like uh. An interesting thing was I was uh, 500,000 in debt by 1991, but roughly uh, by December of 1994, I was debt free. That's how, that's how fast the impact of that information was and uh, and so today we still teach that information. That's uh, it's the it's. The greatest thing that ever happened to me was that struggle, because then I was forced to learn a different way, otherwise I wouldn't be here to talk about it Make sense. So it always goes back to those things. We have those challenges which eventually turn into victories. We just have to keep our mind on the fact that it can be a victory in the future.
Speaker 1:Literally. You are speaking my language. I was born in 1991, sir, and $500,000 back then, that's an astounding amount of money. Yeah, you're right. A couple million now is about what that equated to.
Speaker 2:To give you an example my house costs. House costs 58 000 for a, uh, 2500 square foot house in a in a beautiful suburb of northern chicago. Uh, that same house probably costs, you know, 500 000 now. So you know, you know I'm saying so. Back then it was a house cost. I could. I could buy that same house on my credit card if I could buy 58 000 now you know. But, uh, but I had a 30 year mortgage on 58 000 that's000. That's how much the value of money has changed over the years. It makes sense. So you're right, it was crazy how much that was so debt-free in 1994, from the science that you learned here.
Speaker 1:And you're exactly right, there is a science to it. And talk about education or experience, and you can learn it through education or you can learn it through, straight through, on your own experience, and that's the route I unfortunately decided to choose. But I do believe the value in the lessons, if you gain it through experience rather than education, is something that's never forgotten, rather than education is something that's never forgotten. It's so valuable, locked up in your filing cabinet, up here in your head. But you not only I share a passion with you. You know I'm sitting here learning as well. That's exactly what you did. You're like man. This freaking tool did it for me. Why?
Speaker 2:can't I do it for?
Speaker 1:others.
Speaker 2:That's exactly it. That's exactly what I found no-transcript check for $69,000 just to give him. And he said how'd you come up with the money? And I said, well, I just do. I showed him what I do, I show him the science of pricing and what I do, and he goes oh my gosh, you know, I got like 70 or 80 contractors who are in debt like that, could you help them? And so he my supplier that I paid off started giving me people to get out of debt, and so I started helping other people get out of debt and I didn't even charge for it. I was just like, yeah, let me help you, and so I would just help. And then people start saying I have to give you something. And so then they start paying me something for it and I'm like I guess this is a business of its own.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize it was a business of its own, and so then I'm like kind of all the things aligned by about 2001,. I sold my other business and then I started this consulting very just, performance consulting, I call it. I just tried to help people and then they felt like they needed to pay me, almost like a what do you call that thing, go fund me or whatever it's like I would go out there and help people here. Let me give you 10,000 or whatever kind of a thing, right Cause you just helped me so much and so, and then I started saying I gotta get, I gotta stop getting the donations, I gotta start making it a real business. So probably about 2004, 2003, when I really became serious about doing this. So that's how I became doing this. So, basically, because everybody else saw I did this, they're like you should help other people with it, and that's what happened.
Speaker 1:So that's the journey I have, that is astounding is what that is and I appreciate you a successful businessman on the absolute end of it, not taking your vision of it. I needed to key in on that point. Like you said, during through all the struggles, that's crazy to hear a supplier, a supplier, looked at you you, you made that much of an impact and go, hey, can you help these other guys? And for you to turn around and at that time your competition, you started helping them. You know that's just speaks volumes of number one who you are and what you were. Your life motto is. I can tell you're passionate about it. You want to help these guys like myself. Truly, you teach something called around the pure motive service approach and putting the customer's best interest first and trusting doing the right thing will lead to better results. What does this pure motive really mean in the context of just selling service?
Speaker 2:Well, you can see the motivation. Even in that story, when I was helping other people, I wasn't thinking about the money, I was just trying to alleviate the pain because I knew I went through a lot of pain. It cost me my first marriage, it broke up a lot of relationships and things like that with people I knew because of money, and so it was very painful. And I always say I was just too stupid to quit. I just wasn't wired to quit on things. That's how I am. And everybody advised me to quit, like you should go bankrupt. It'd be easier, just go bankrupt and get a job. That's what people told me, and so I didn't do it. I just kept going until somebody gave me an answer. I was, but I was smart enough to listen to the answer. And what Pure Motive Service is. If you focus on the motivation as to why I am doing things for people like even when the prices are higher, like why is the price higher? If you have a good reason, a pure motive reason, why it's higher, well, the pure motives would be the reason the price is higher because I'm doing a much higher quality and a much more reliable solution that's permanent would be the pure motive. Now, if I can say, what can I do to make this problem go away permanently? I suppose the temporary would just be to fix it. Permanent would be to replace it or renovate it, and then the way in the middle is professional. So permanent, professional and temporary. That's what I look at that way and that's kind of like premium, mid-range and economy, if you will say that right. So the science behind it is premium, mid-range economy, tiered, called tiered pricing, t-i-e-r, like a tier, like a ladder. So the science of tiered pricing is that if you only give one price, you're usually going to give the cheapest one, like I was doing when I was broke. And then if you try good, better, best, roughly 40% of the people will upgrade. If you offer something better or best, and then if you offer premium, mid-range economy, where you start with the premium price first, then 80% will upgrade. If you did that and if you did two premium, two mid-range, two economy, your closing rate would be almost 90% and your average ticket would go up by about five and a half times more than it was before by doing it that way, by just offering more services to the same customer. So today, if you look at all the people I train.
Speaker 2:When somebody calls and says I want to just fix my air conditioning unit, I'd say sure, but we're going to go ahead and replace the duct work, the air AC, the furnace, air quality, wi-fi connected thing. We're going to do zoning with ductless mini splits. So we're going to do everything in the premium, the permanent solution, in the premium option, the bottom option, just the air conditioner. You called me for the professional ones heating and air conditioning in the middle, but just don't replace the duct work or whatever, right. So if you look at it like you know any, any business, you, you name a business and I can change it like in seconds, any business at all. You challenge me and you bring a business and I'll tell you exactly what that business can do in about 30 seconds, how it could easily change it. Uh, they're sitting, everybody's sitting right, like if you're an accountant.
Speaker 2:If somebody calls and says I'm going to do the tech, can you do my taxes? Sure, let me take a look at your books. Now you look at the books and you're like you know, we need to get that cleaned up. Let me do your bookkeeping. That's the premium option. So you don't do anything. Let me take care of your accounting, I'll do your taxes, I'll make sure we audit your workman's comp. All that stuff could be done by an accountant. And so if you were doing an accountant, you have the premium option where I do everything. The professional option I do your taxes and I do some books, open your books up. And the bottom option I just do the taxes like they are now and that's it. So if you took any business at all, there's a variation of that type of a thing. You just bring me a business and I'll show you exactly what. The premium, mid-range economy.
Speaker 2:I just had a door company a lot that does locks, locksmith. He's like what can I do on that? It's a lot of locks, a lot. I'm like dude, what's a lot going on top of a door. I said, is the door jam, cracked or is it perfect? Oh, it's cracked. How about the striker plate? How about the hinges? How about the threshold? Is it weatherproofed? Like, how many doors are there? A front door and a back door, right? So why are we doing both? So the premium. So I just met a guy yesterday. I'm like he goes, joe, I just sold 5,000 on a call. I would have made 500 on he goes, I would have had the guy bitching about 500. And now I sold 5,700 cause I did both doors and everything and he's like he did it in one day. It didn't even take anything other than that Right. So literally I believe the stuff I teach can instantly transform a business of any kind. Uh, and I'm just the messenger of something that's true.
Speaker 2:I think we all know that you go to a carwash most people got the stuff in the middle Every now and then you detail the car for like 160 bucks and then sometimes you're like I just want to rinse off.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do $19 for the rinse off type of thing and you never know what people do. But some days they go to their wedding and they want to detail it. Some days I want to take care of myself and get the wax and everything and the car vacuumed out. Every now and then I want to rinse off the salt or whatever. And so you know it's just like people buy things differently every time. So you have to bring all the ways that people purchase so they can choose the one that's right for them. So that's what PureMotive Service is. Puremotive Service is making the effort to to diagnose not just the problem but go further into it to make sure we solve the problem permanently, so they can have a package of solutions where they don't got to do it anymore. We don't got to keep buying it, we just provide it permanently for you in a way. Does that make sense, sir? Oh?
Speaker 1:man, guys, you just heard it here first. I mean, I was sitting here as you were talking. I'm like'm like, wow, that makes a ridiculous amount of sense. Yeah, of course you're calling me for a doorknob. I can give you whether I can replace the whole door, if you want me to, or I can fix. You know, that's it is but the difference?
Speaker 2:the difference is I, most people just say they can do it. They don't write it down and put it in writing. So the difference between an amateur and a professional I learned from dave and my guy who trained me on that, my mentor, my, my one of my customers told me he was joe, you got to start doing this and he showed me and I did it. And I'm like, the very first call I sold, I sold a, a furnace, I sold a uh, I normally would have had a. It was, it was an igniter or a thermal couple on a furnace that wasn't working. I would probably have gotten $75. Instead I did the whole ignition system, the burners, the gas valve and everything.
Speaker 2:The top price was $1,900. The bottom price was $75. The first customer bought $1,250 on the very first call, which was over 10 times the amount on the very first call. Next call, I had a spring coupler on a pump. It would have been like 125 bucks. I sold that for $3,800 for new pumps, new relays and everything like that. So it's just like the story just continues. Everybody I teach is like surprised, like I can't believe this thing works. I can't believe that the same opportunity I went to before, where the guy's bitching about the price, that same guy is buying something for $8,000 now rather than $800 or whatever. That's the weird part.
Speaker 1:It is crazy, but you hit the word earlier purchasing, you're getting into the brain of your customer right and figuring out how they spend their money. How does our brain work when we read this one page? Is it a written taking a picture of estimate, or is this like, just like you said a second ago, amateur versus professional? I mean, early on in my years, heck, I would just shoot you a big old, long text message and go this is kind of where I'm at. Okay, thumbs up or thumbs down. Now it's a five-page proposal with a contract and attached and all and it can get. But you're only sending that one price and I kind of changed my mind a little bit. I mean, at least offer an optional edition. In the commercial world, as you know, sir, a lot of times they'll ask for VE options or optional editions or et cetera, and you can put those on and they do help in some regards.
Speaker 2:You do commercial work. What kind of work do you?
Speaker 1:do. Yes, sir, so we are an excavation and utility contractor, so we basically do civil side work, anything underground essentially. And so on the pipe side of things, I'm like I'm sitting here going, hmm, I can't say. We do it often. We normally do new, install, commercial land development, but there is some maintenance service contracts that I also do on the water systems. And I'm sitting here and there's a problem with my customer because I'm sitting here going, hmm, this customer doesn't have much of a budget to spend because city funds et cetera. And I'm going back and forth and I'm like, well, I could give them a one, two, three option here on once we figure this out. There was a video not too long ago on our YouTube channel. I did that exact thing, but they chose to go with the bottom route. So be it, let's get it done.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll just tell you something. We had several commercial people use this and it's like the city specs, the engineer for the city specifies what they want. That's right. And so here's what we're looking for in this office. We're going to do it's like okay, that's the bottom option, that's what they're looking for in this office. We're going to do it's like okay, that's the bottom option, that's what they're asking for.
Speaker 2:But you're asking me to put a 2025 rooftop unit into ductwork. That's been here since 1958. So we just do it. We say, hey, here's the prices. The premium option is new rooftop unit, new ductwork, an air quality system with ultraviolet purification to kill the allergies for the people who are in the living, who are in the workspace, and then the bottom option is just the thing you asked me for. And the one in the middle is just the whole thing without the air quality, just the ductwork, so just a part of the ductwork. How about the return? Then the thing, and so you can have a range of things you can do.
Speaker 2:And so, by doing it that way, even the city we had, the city of Kansas City, was like oh yeah, we didn't think about that. You know what, let's go ahead and do the better option. I talked to the board members and they said we need to do if we're going to do this, let's do it right and they appropriated more funding for the project. So it's crazy, though when it's, that's how powerful it is, cy. Even when it seems like insurmountable, like nobody's going to do this, you do it anyway and just see what happens. And then people are like you know what, let's get this project done the right way. Let's just you know, because if you are a place like for a city or a municipality and you're purchasing stuff on behalf of the constituents, you purchase that wrong. Your job's on the line. Does that make sense? Like if the professional says here's the premium way and you chose the cheap way, you're like something goes wrong with that way. They're going to come back for your head to say you did that. So, no matter who it is, even new construction or everything like that, like I had a new construction person. Like when they're like you can't do it for new construction, right, and I'm like no, you can. I said they do. They do it right now in the kitchen, right. When you buy a house. It's not like you're just like here's the kitchen. They go hey, what kind of cabinets do you want? There's premium, mid-range economy cabinets, and what kind of a quartz granite? Or you just want for mica.
Speaker 2:So you start thinking about it why is it that everybody else does it and the only people who don't do it are the hardest-working people like you who do excavation. To dig for a living is a bitch. I mean, that's yeah, it is. It's the bitch to do that job, isn't it funny? The hardest working ones don't do it. It's like the guys who got it easy, like kitchen cabinets, like just screw those in the wall, they're doing it right.
Speaker 2:But us who are grinding it out in crawl spaces and basements and underground, uh, we're not doing it for some reason. And you consider this You're hooking up new, say, municipal underground piping. Well, we could do a Wi-Fi connected shutoff valve inside for the consumer. Let's say they could do that. Or you're doing an excavation job and you're not doing a dual-suite clean-out. You could have somebody do the clean-out like that type of thing, right, and you could backfill it. You could put sod you know out like that type of thing right, and uh, you could backfill it. You could put sod you know. There's different things you could add to excavation.
Speaker 1:You could excavate it, you could backfill it, you could sod it and, uh, resurface the thing, and I think it could definitely be you know all kinds of earthwork side of things because there's so many little scope gaps on the earthwork side of things and if somebody I should say there's so many general speaking, you know there's final grading and then who's backfilling around the boxes or who's backfilling curb or well, the curve, you got it well, there's some, there's some small things there, so I could at least see it from the earthwork side back in the resi game, back in those days.
Speaker 1:Now, like, guys, if you're listening to this, I would definitely take the time and get with Joe, because if you're a Resi contract, residential contractor, um, this is going to change, could change your entire business and I truly hope that, um, you guys connect. My next question, joe is, I, I've is, I've often wondered. When I saw this one coming up, I was like what's the average age of the contractor you work Like? Are you starting to see, you know, early thirties pieces?
Speaker 2:Actually, there is a um, it's a definitely a transformation right now. Uh, there was a time where most of the people I dealt with were over 40 years old, between 40 and 55 or something like that. I would say that was the vast majority, that was like who owned businesses. For quite a while, it seemed like, and now, though, I am seeing a bunch of people who are in their 20s, 24, 21, anywhere from 20. I'd say the average right now would say it'd be about 23 and 28 would be the average entrepreneur right now. I would say it's a much younger crowd. That's good, though, because they're definitely open to a new way. They're not locked into something their grandfather was doing. I see a lot of people who took over their grandfather's business and they just changed it overnight.
Speaker 2:The company I sold to in 2001,. Between the two of us, we were $6 million total, and then, after the first year of using my system, they did about $15 million the first year. They took my customers, they took my customers, I took their customers, we used our stuff and we did like 15. Now, today, that company is like $380 million company Cause the children took it over for the parent from the parent, from the grandparents and stuff like that, and they grew it to one of the one of the biggest companies in the Chicago area is own that owns that company. They're on, they're on the cubs games, they're on the white socks games or bulls. Their name is stamped onto the court the bulls game. You know so, uh, so they've gone big time. You want to call that because they um, they learn how to use this and scale it on top of that, make sense no 100?
Speaker 1:um, I think I probably just this one off the top of my head. You have a very unique, obviously, working system. What do you think give me some pet peeves of the traditional sales advice that you see all over LinkedIn and everywhere else? What's the two things that these younger contractors really need to be looking out for?
Speaker 2:I think sales gets a bad name because I think people think sales is a game of pushing things to people. Does that make sense? But sales is a game of attraction and not promotion. Does that make sense? You're not going to do anything to push people into something better. It's like they need to sell themselves on the problem.
Speaker 2:So one of the counterintuitive problems is that they try to sell solutions but they don't clearly identify the problem. And so there's a thing called the law, the science is called the law of cognitive dissonance, and dissonance means the opposite of harmony. So harmony is when things are going good, dissonance is when things are going bad. But and that tells you about the lesson of my life Things are going bad, and then I learn how to do things. Good. Right so, but the good, the thing is that it's a it's a fact of life that there's going to be good things and bad things that happen.
Speaker 2:And if we don't emphasize the problem as a professional, you're not going to have people buy the solution, because they don't see why it's too risky to buy the solution If it doesn't have a problem with solving. Why would I? Who cares? Why should I get the whole thing done? Because if I said this, if I said, like, your duck work is from 1958, that's not enough of a problem. But if I said your duck work was from 1958 and see the gray dust inside of it, that's fiberglass. Your family's breathing how do you feel about your daughter breathing that fiberglass? Oh, geez, like, how can we solve that problem? Well, we got to replace the ductwork too. All right, let's do that too. Like, it didn't take long.
Speaker 2:But all I got to do is emphasize the problem and also the personal impact of the problem, the emotional elements of it. So there's a logical element the duck work, the ditch you're digging the utility line, whatever it is and there's an emotional element of it too. Right, what's it like when we don't have power? What's it like when we don't have water? What's it like when you'll have no hot water? That's the emotional part of it.
Speaker 2:So you have to be good at presenting the problem from a technical standpoint and it has to be factual. It can't be something you're making up. And it has to be the emotional element which you have witnessed by listening to your customer and witnessing their own emotional impact, that they say I'm frustrated, this is stressful, I'm worried about this thing. Right, I don't got time to take off work thing. Right, I don't got time to take off work. Those are things that you can emphasize when you're telling people the problems and the personal impact. And then if you tell people the solution and the personal impact that's going to happen, that's going to be good, then then people do a magic thing Cy they sell themselves. You don't have to sell anybody. So I don't really believe in selling people or pushing people on the things. I believe in telling people the problem and telling them the emotional impact they're suffering, just kind of witnessing that and then showing you the solution and the emotional impact you're going to have from that too.
Speaker 2:And then at the end there's a question. I've trademarked. It's copyrighted. It's the actual book I've written. It's the bestseller on Amazon. It's copyrighted. It's the actual book I've written. It's the bestseller on Amazon. Sold 128,000 copies on Amazon, 430 pages, nine-hour, audible, right. The title of the book is called what Should we Do?
Speaker 2:So here's the prices. What should we do? That's a lot of money. I know it's a high investment. So what should we do? I got it. Can you email it to me? I can do better than email. Let's get rid of the top option. All right, let's get rid of it, all right. So take a look at the rest of them. What should we do? So you see the words. What should we do? You know you're not pushing it, you're not taking it, you're not running away from it, you're not running toward it, you're letting it come to you, you're letting opportunity come your way Make sense. So the things that we always thought, like you're good at your job.
Speaker 2:It does matter to tell people the factual problem, but you also have to be in tune with the emotional problem that they're going through as well. And that's the hardest thing to teach contractors. Honestly, because we're not very emotional contractors, honestly, because we're not very emotional, we've been taught to bury our emotions and not accentuate it or try to amplify the emotion. We don't want to cause any drama. Basically that's the problem with us. But unfortunately you have to create some drama about the problem, not creating it. You're just observing the drama that the problem is causing, communicating that back to your client and then having the client sell themself and ask you for a solution. And there you go, you've got the solution in writing and you show people the solution. That's it.
Speaker 1:That's 100%. It makes sense. So you're just really hey, you've got a problem. Here's a couple of solutions for your a problem. But while I was looking for a problem, I found these other problems that may directly affect these solutions. So here's I mean yes, no, absolutely, if you think you're stressed out.
Speaker 2:It's like this, cy, if I said it could be anything like your garage door doesn't work right. It could be like you know, cy, right now you're right, the garage door opener is fried and that is bad. But here's the worst thing the torsion spring is cracked on top. You know what that is. That makes the garage door go up and down easier. Remember how stressed you said your wife, linda, was when she couldn't get out of the garage. That really bothers me, cy. What do you think about that? And see, there's two elements of it the opener, the spring and, si, there's no weatherproofing anymore. The door strip fell off and I see rodents are entering into the see, the rat droppings or the mice droppings in your garage. How come you guys don't have the weather strip fixed on that thing? See, that's the problem again. And did you see that the cables are? They're frayed and they're starting to come undone. Sigh, how come you haven't taken care of that yet? Oh, joe, I mean, what's linda gonna think when she sees that problem? Uh, she's.
Speaker 2:How can we fix everything? Well, here's the solution I have. I wrote down the premium mid-range economy solution. The premium one includes a door, new rails, new opener, we do a slat walls to organize your garage better. We do floor coating on the garage floor, everything. The premium option is only going to be $297 a month for 10 years for 8.9% interest. So what should we do do? What should we do? Right back again? Right, the bottom option we'll just fix the opener and that's it for 500 bucks or whatever. So the bottom option is that every business is sitting on top of this gold mine and they've got much better solutions, but they're afraid to offer it because they think they're going to upset customers. And the reason they think that is because they're not good at explaining the problem. That's the number one thing people are not good at Make sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they're not transparent about it, especially us blue collar guys in the first three years. You're like I was just at lunch earlier today with a gentleman that he's like, well, how am I supposed to let them know I'm going to make some money? And I'm like, hey, dude, you're not doing this for freaking fun, it's called work, Going out there to work, make money, the owner of my guy. So spin around In our heads and I fell victim of it too Early on we just want to give them that price and cut us some fingers, right. But God forbid if we took a labor quote, a material quote, and then, hey, some mobilization here and a little indirect line and this is what you guys are actually paying for in your $5,000 and build that transparency with your customer along with hey, I'm a professional, I can also find these other problems while I was on site. Here's a fix, you know that's crazy.
Speaker 2:You know science like this. When that, when that gentleman was worried about what are people going to think when I tell him I'm going to have to make money on this job? He's worried about himself. That's not pure motive. Pure motive is I don't care about myself. I'm here to help you. I know it won't be popular. So one of the pure motives is called honesty. Even when it's not popular, I'm not here to win a popularity contest. I'm here to make sure the job gets done right, and that's going to be a higher investment in the quality and reliability and the safety and health of your family and the service, the customer service, to anticipate what you need in the future, not just today, but also in the future. That's pure motive. Service those are defined. If every company had the pure motive service pledge or poster inside their company, that would be your talking points, that's the service provider's talking points.
Speaker 2:Why do you guys charge so much? Because we're a higher quality, reliability. We're not just doing the job, we're doing it in a more of a commercial way of doing it. We're doing not just the furnace, the AC, we're doing the duct work and everything else too. That's why it's more money. So what should we do? Because it got a 12-year service agreement. The service, 12-year service, 12-year warranty, the filters and stuff. We're going to include that for 12 years too. And we made it affordable service of affordability. That's why we did the financing, so it could be a 12-year payment, not pay us up front. We're going to give you the job and give you the money. That's service. The service of doing a loan takes more time than it does just to accept cash or check. So everything that takes more time is a service.
Speaker 2:And so this guy who you're talking about, who's trying to figure out the price, that's a service too. He doesn't realize just him thinking about the price is a service he's already providing. He's already stressing out about this price. You see how it's already affecting your life and you haven't even got paid for it yet. So don't you think it's worth? You know, just doing pure mode of service and saying I don't care about myself, I don't care what the customer is going to yell about, I'm going to get yelled at. If he's going to bitch about 150 bucks, let him bitch about 15,000 instead. It's like if you're going to bitch, bitch about something good, I'll give you something to bitch about, right, and so that's the way I look at it. If you're gonna bitch about the 1500, let me give you 15 000 to bitch about, then you can. Then you think the 1500 looks cheap, honestly that's right.
Speaker 1:That's right. Uh, back to back to the age thing. So you're, you're working with, obviously, guys in their 20s. I started when I was 23. Had no idea what I was doing. Are you big on CRM in?
Speaker 2:the sales. Honestly, I do believe in keeping contact to retain your clients. If CRM you mean by a way to contact your clients and make sure we are retaining our clients, I think the first sale we need to make is by retaining the people who already do business with us. So I do agree with that.
Speaker 1:Yes, Love that.
Speaker 2:The relationship we create with our customer, the hardest thing it is to do is sell something new. If somebody already knows that I have pure mode of service, they buy everything from me. They keep buying too. They refer me to their family and their friends because they know they can trust me, make sense, and they know I'm not in it for the money although the money is more, because I get the job done right. Because how many times have you done it, cy, like, hey, you got to go to this guy. He's a little bit more money, but it's going to be done right. Yep, I think every great business has that kind of review, which is these guys are the best, but bring your wallet because they're more money. You know that's just what it is.
Speaker 1:The other thing to that is where I think a lot of the customers really haven't figured out. They don't weigh time like we do in the entrepreneur space right, like time is everything to us. Money is a tool to buy time. And so you're sitting here trying for, hey look, this job can be done in six weeks, three weeks, whatever, and it will be done at this price that I'm giving you. Yes, it's not the cheapest price in town, but the cheapest price in town is going to tell you three weeks and it's going to take eight and he's going to hit you with three change orders along the way and you're going to be more than what I was to begin with. But it's that. It's that that view of purchasing, just like you were talking about earlier, and it's. It's pretty crazy, but where I was going with that.
Speaker 1:On the CRM situation, yeah, we've got it. We got to retrain, retract and make sure we retain old customers and grab new customers, but make sure we're staying in contact with them. But what I have figured out and we were not as high transactions as, say, an HVAC company or a company that does service calls all day long. So we were in the five to 20 invoices a month type situation. So we're in the five to 20 invoices a month type situation. But say, for that guy that has a ton of transactions happening plumbers, hvacs, those guys, electricians what are the numbers that they should be looking at and tracking, say weekly or monthly? It doesn't have to be a detailed list, but maybe your top two that we really pay attention to as our business progresses.
Speaker 2:Well, I would say that you know, looking at the very big picture, gross profit never lies, that you know net profit can be manipulated by you taking on stuff for yourself personally and putting it in your overhead and now your net profit sucks. But it's really called EBIT day, which is all the stuff you take personally from your business and the overhead. And then you say my net profit's low so I don't got to pay taxes. I mean, that's just the way business works, right. But gross profit does not lie. It's here's how much the labor costs, here's the material cost, here's how much I sold it for. So the gross profit in a healthy business is about 65% minimum. There's no business that can operate for less than that honestly and then have money for the future, because there's two kinds of profit we need to have. 65% is important because we've got to pay that overhead. We have to have additional money left over for today's operation and then we also have to have money for the future to build the buildings, to handle chaos, to get new technology. There's things that are going to be needed in the future. So the profit literally has to be double what people think it should be. There's really no business that is out there that should really operate for less than 30% net profit, because you're going to need the additional money to operate today and also operate into the future. Because, as your company does well, you're going to need to buy new buildings, you're going to need to buy new trucks, you need to replace the copy machine, you need to get a new office furniture and things like that. So things wear out, service chaos and people crash their truck or trash the motor on your truck or whatever Things just happen. You have to have money to handle the emergencies and also the future things that are proactive. That's where profit is. And then you have to have money for today too. You have to have today's money, so it's worth the investment.
Speaker 2:So people just think profit is a simple thing. It's not simple. I say gross profit is the number one. Number two I would say to get us there what's the break-even for the business? How much do you need to make every month to break-even? And then now you know what we charge more than that to make profit. So now you say here's my break-even we should have made this much more to make that 30. We need to make 30% more than break even to make 30% net profit.
Speaker 2:Now you know the problem. You've identified the problem. The problem is we need to make this much, but we're only making this much. It's not enough. We can't get more leads. We have to say how can I sell more on a lead I have? So the number one problem is what's the average sale? If your average sale can't really sustain your overhead and your profit you need to increase, it's not, it's too hard to get new calls to come in. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:Like if I said, hey, find more people to excavate for. It's like, what are you going to do? Go door to door? Hey, what can I dig up your front yard? It's like do that. But the calls you do have, you need to be able to do better service. That's going to be a higher quality, reliability, safety, health and service that people will purchase into the future for peace of mind.
Speaker 2:Like, remember I said the thing with the uh garage floor company. Remember that, yep, uh company does garage floors. They said what can I do? It's just a garage floor. I said, well, I said who takes the stuff out of the garage? We just tell the customer they got to do that. And I said, well, I got to. Here's a novel concept Go get a trailer and you take all the stuff out of the garage, clean it off and put it in the trailer and then park the trailer in the front of the street with your brand name on it. And now it's worth $1,500 more for that floor, right?
Speaker 2:I said why aren't you doing that? And they go huh, you think people will go for it? I said, dude, if you ask me to clean my garage out, I've been trying to do that for like three years. I haven't done it yet. You know what I'm saying. So people are sitting right on top of the opportunity and they're usually telling the client that you got to get this thing prepped or whatever. You got to get this thing. So the second you're telling the client to do something that should be in the premium option. That's it, right. There Make sense, sir.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think you're right on the money and it's simple, key things like that. Well, industry standard says well, screw industry standard, because if you're trying, if you're a new age face, you're a new age contractor. I don't care what service industry you're in here. If you're in the blue collar working space, why do you spend $1.50 on a two liter but you spend $3 on a Gatorade that fits in your hand? It's called convenient, guys, and if you make it convenient for them, if you make it inconvenient, it's going to equal 50% of the time you might end up still with it because it's industry standard and they went somewhere else and they got the same level of service. But if you're proposing that's an incredible idea, hey, go buy a box trailer for five grand, charge 1500 bucks, a freaking floor and you paid for it in a month, or you know. Or storing the time you're there, that is, that is so cool.
Speaker 1:Well, I've got one more question for you, but before that, your book's on Amazon. We can find you on Service MVP. How can guys get in touch with you? I follow you on LinkedIn. He's worth the follow on LinkedIn. He puts out some good information out there. But tell us a little bit. If we wanted to get in contact with you, some of the audience, how would we do that?
Speaker 2:You can just go to servicemvpcom we have a chat a little bot down there, if you want to and just say can I talk to Uncle Joe or whatever, I'll be happy to talk to you. Or if you want to talk to one of our other reps, they'd be happy to talk to you too. We have a big team at Service MVP and we graduate between five and 700 employees a month on that platform. We have about eight coaches around the whole country that work on different time zones and we have classes of anywhere from 50 to 75 people that we do every single day of the week and we really help. We grind it out, just like you guys, you know, except for we grind out the training element of it and we have a bunch of content and things in there.
Speaker 2:So everything I have is I've been very fortunate enough to uh, take a video of it or audio or a book of it, and that's pretty much that makes sense. So that's uh, that's been my. That's been. One of the things we were very good at is creating content, as you probably saw it on linkedin or whatever I, I did for sure.
Speaker 1:But I I to hit that point home most service-based industries don't understand how freaking expensive training is. When you're paying for it out of your dollars. Because you train this guy under your training method, you think he's gonna be ready to start making decent amount of profit or really starting to really knock down some jobs. Say, six months, maybe a year, maybe two years right, that's your training progression. So now how do you cut that in half?
Speaker 1:If you can cut that, that in half to get him start producing quicker is obviously the name of the game here. It's the most expensive and let me tell you, entrepreneurs, we're not usually the best dadgum trainers and teachers either. So if somebody like Uncle Joe, I really like that, to be honest with you. But if you got Uncle Joe or somebody teaching a class on the specific thing you're looking for information on, take the hour, put your team. I am a huge advocate it stresses me out having the entire company in there for a staff meeting for an hour and a half, sometimes going over some processes and procedures and making sure they fully understand. But it has to happen, guys, and you've got to take the time and get them trained up.
Speaker 2:Let me help you there, cy. You know what's even more expensive than training people. What not training them? And then you're making a payroll of untrained people who have no idea what to do. And then you're like you're you're kicking yourself in your own ass because I should have trained these people. But now my payroll is like 30,000 a week, I'm paying or whatever, and now I've got these people who keep screwing things up and now you become the arsonist fireman. You start your own fire because you never did training.
Speaker 2:A good fireman prevents the fire by training the community how to stop fires. So a fireman who puts out fires is somebody who's a bad fireman. He should have trained the community and the school in the industrial area. How do you prevent fires? How can you? How can your employees? This parking lot can't have trash all over the place. We have to prevent the fire. So that's the thing that training does. There's an arsonist fireman and there's a preventative fireman. If you want to be a arsonist who starts your own fires, then don't do any training and you'll be the person blaming yourself for not doing it.
Speaker 1:Man, it's so true, I've lived it. I've literally lived. It wasn't quite 30k, but it was in 20k range. And you know, I've had, I had people that were with me two and three years, four years. At that point I was only a seven or eight year business and I'm like well, these guys know how I am, how we handle things, and well, we keep running into new contracts and new things keep arising and nobody's jotting them down. How did we handle this? How did it work out?
Speaker 2:Look back so but so anytime you say, he should know that already or he should have common sense.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:That's where training, that's where. That's where you should have done training instead.
Speaker 1:And I, I, what I tell my guys all the time is that I'll never get mad at them for what they don't know. That's my job. I'm supposed to know, I'm supposed to train. Not saying the CEO needs to be training everybody. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that I need to ensure that I have some type of training and onboarding from the day you start and ensure that there's some type of progression that you're going through and actively working on your job, duty and your job now.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with that. I think leader has to go first, for sure.
Speaker 1:100 and that's literally a lot of this podcast and and the people I've been meeting have been sharpening my iron and I. It's just making me better every single day for my people and I've been going through kind of a personal transition there. But blue collar performance marketing's passion is to bring attention to the honest work done in blue collar industries through effective, results-driven marketing tactics. They specialize in comprehensive digital marketing services, from paid advertising on Google and Facebook to website development and content strategy. I started working with Ike and the team earlier this year and they've had a huge impact on our specific marketing campaign and trajectory of our overall company. Their expertise in digital ad management, website development, social media and overall marketing strategy has been an absolute game changer for our sales and marketing at PsyCon. If you're looking to work with a marketing team who does what they say, does it well and is always looking for ways to help your company grow, book a discovery call with Ike by going to bcperformancemarketingcom backslash bcbpodcast or click the link in the show notes. Slash description below.
Speaker 1:Thanks guys, man, I really appreciate you, mr Joe, and I have Uncle Joe. I've got one more thing that I ask everybody. You are episode number 51 here on the bluecollarbusinesspodcastcom. What's the takeaway for that blue collar worker since you're an HVAC guy, true and true that guy that's in the attic right now or crawling along the crawl space and he's going? This guy? What is the takeaway for that guy who's just mentally, emotionally and physically just stuck?
Speaker 2:I would say the universe rewards people who take action. When I was stuck, you know, I mean let's put it this way I didn't get $500,000 in debt like instantly. It went from 1985 to 1991 to get $500,000 in debt. So I could see every year or every month that I wasn't really making money. And then I did have a couple big events that happened that really devastated my debt. You know, I was probably right along with 125 to 150 and I could just kind of cash flow would keep the whole thing going, even though it wasn't and my accountant would fool me like you made some profit. I'm like, how much did I make? You made 3%. That's pretty good. I'm like, is that good really? So I didn't know what was good. So I'm talking 30%. Now I was making 3% by then. So basically I willingly gaslighted myself, thinking that it would turn around or something like that pretty soon.
Speaker 2:And that's the thing that it doesn't work. So you have to have the honesty part of it with being taking a hard look. It's hard because a lot of husband and wives and people who own businesses are partners. It's hard because you talk about the money. It can sound like a personal insult. If you know, let's say you have the wife writing the books and the husband, like you, is out there doing the work and she says, honey, we don't have enough money. And you get almost ticked off at her because you're like, what are you talking about? I'm out here working my ass off and she's like we still don't got enough money to cover the payroll. And so it creates this thing where we don't want to talk about money. So we avoid the money and we just keep going on doing the same rock, the dysfunction.
Speaker 2:Dysfunction loves routine and you wind up doing routine, dysfunctional things. So you do have to do something different, and that's what I'm here for. I'm here to my good. My superpower is looking at a company and within 10 seconds I can tell if they're making money or not, just because I can see the way they answer the phone, the way they respond, the way they talk about, the way they talk about the economy.
Speaker 2:Because people who are successful, they make their own economy, they make their own good, they don't worry about the economy. They make their own good economy, economy, they make their own good, they don't worry about the economy. They make their own good economy. When you have a way of doing the science of pricing and connecting with your client, making a friend with your client and then pricing the job properly. Then you are going to create your own economy and I always have a saying I don't participate in a bad economy, I'm just sorry I won't do that. Make sense? Yeah, no, this is how it is. You want to do it? Go ahead and do it without me. I'm not going to participate in that. I'm going to just work on my own economy.
Speaker 1:That's right. No, it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:I would say if you're stuck, the universe rewards people to take action. Take action to learn something, even if it's not me. Read a book. You know you should be reading on Amazon. Uh, amazon, audible books on business or leadership or things like that. My advice to get unstuck take a drive. Where do you live? Cy, arkansas. Yeah, so I would say I'm going to take a drive to Tennessee just to do a self-improvement trip. I'm going to drive up to Memphis or drive up to Nashville just to listen to audiobooks. When I'm going to drive up to Memphis or drive up to Nashville just to listen to audio books, when I'm driving Like, do that? You know what I'm saying there. Do something where you're learning, putting something else in your head Beside what? Wondering if the Razorbacks are going to win this year.
Speaker 1:Screw that.
Speaker 2:Get out there, get out there, get out there, get out there and learn something. You know what I'm saying. Or, and I would say, uh, you know, when you listen to an audio book of like me or somebody else, like seven habits or Steve or any of the Dale, carnegie or Jack, people like that, you listen to those audio books, you're going to be transformed by the time you get to the destination. I'll tell you what. You're going to drive somewhere in a small local trip, somewhere, like you know, you're going to go to Jackson Mississippi or something like that You're going to go to, uh, you drive over there and then drive back and have two audio books you listen to and you're going to be like transformed.
Speaker 2:Your destination won't just be back home. You'll be home with a new energy and a new enthusiasm and new information in your brain to give you some inspiration to take action, because the universe rewards people who take action, people who sit still and wait for things to change. That's not going to work. The only thing that works is doing something different than what's not working. Make sense.
Speaker 1:Nothing changes if nothing changes. Sir. No truer saying ever.
Speaker 2:Si, you have a wisdom about you. I can see that already. Thanks for uh, thanks for sharing, thanks for being so. Uh, you're like a brother from another mother, you know. I think, uh, it's too bad you don't drink anymore, but it's okay, we can still we just have an ice about to have an iced tea instead, or something like that anytime, no, anytime.
Speaker 1:I really truly appreciate you jumping on the show. Sorry about the the rescheduling, but this episode is going to help. So many guys out there already know it. Manifesting it right now. Mvpcom, click the chat bot. Say you want to talk with uncle joe. Tell him si sent you from the blue collar business podcast, please, so that way he can know that we sent him a few guys over and everything's hunky-dory there. But, mr joe, I really appreciate your time and until next time, sir, I hope to have you on again. Be safe, be kind and be humble, guys. Thanks a lot, so I appreciate you have a good one. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like, share it with the fellers. Check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar business. Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Till next time, guys.