Leveraging Technology for Business Success

Summary

In this conversation, Branden Sewell and Joe Lee discuss the intricacies of running a home service business, focusing on the importance of technology, pricing strategies, customer engagement, and the role of reviews in business growth. They emphasize the need for effective job management software like Jobber to streamline operations and save time. The discussion also highlights the significance of understanding pricing and the value of raising prices to ensure sustainability. Additionally, they explore how building community and maintaining personalized communication with customers can enhance loyalty and lead to repeat business. In this conversation, Branden Sewell and Joe from Taskpro discuss the importance of customer engagement through reviews, the benefits of using OpenPhone for business communications, and the essential tech tools for home service businesses. They emphasize the need for continuous learning and adaptation in the industry, particularly in sales strategies that focus on understanding customer needs and building rapport. The discussion also highlights the necessity of raising prices to cover overhead and the importance of innovation in achieving business growth. In this conversation, Branden Sewell and Joe from Taskpro discuss the importance of understanding customer needs, setting realistic expectations, and the art of selling in the home services industry. They emphasize the significance of educating customers about timelines and processes, building relationships through networking, and the value of coaching and mentorship for business growth. The discussion highlights practical strategies for improving customer interactions and enhancing business success.

Takeaways

The importance of having a tech stack for business efficiency.
Jobber simplifies job management and saves time.
Raising prices can be necessary for business sustainability.
Understanding your numbers is crucial for pricing.
Customer reviews significantly impact business growth.
Effective communication fosters customer loyalty.
Automation in business processes saves time and effort.
Building community with customers enhances relationships.
Using technology can streamline operations and improve service.
Personalized customer engagement can lead to repeat business. Implementing tools like NiceJob can enhance Google visibility.
OpenPhone offers features that help separate personal and business communications.
Transcription features in OpenPhone help keep track of customer interactions.
Using tec

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:01.637)
Hi everybody, my name is Brandon Sewell. I'm the owner of Seal Pro Painting, located in central Florida. I am also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast, and we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. I'm excited about today's guest. I've got Joe Lee with me today, and he is the owner of Task Pro Service Group. Welcome to the show.

If you could share with the listeners just a little bit about yourself and your business, you know where you're at and services that you provide.

Joe - Taskpro (00:38.306)
Hey guys, my name is Joe from Task Pro Service Group and we're in the home service business. We deal with pretty much anywhere from plumbing, minor electrical, small renovations, plumbing, heating service, drain cleaning, stuff like that. And we are located in Canada, in BC, more in lower mainland. People know us in Vancouver, but we're a little bit off of Vancouver in the suburbs.

Branden Sewell (01:07.109)
Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to get on here and chat. Obviously, as I've shared with you just in conversation off of the interview, you know, the whole purpose of this podcast is to help home service business owners learn how to run a business. mean, ultimately, we all get into business and there's a lot of just knowledge gaps and

implementation gaps and a lot of things like we might be really good in one area, but there's going to be another area that we're really weak in. So what I really tried to do on this show is bring information that is going to help, you know, business owners learn in all of those different areas. And I mean, the the amount of things that we have to cover as business owners is it's wide and

You know, we have sales, marketing, production, management, hiring, firing, leadership, and all of those things that we have to learn as business owners and either do ourselves or know how to find the right people to do them. So I'm excited to just tap into what you're passionate about today and tap into what you're doing and what you're doing well.

and hopefully help those who are listening and come with some takeaways from this conversation. as we were talking about before the show started, you are, it seems like you're pretty avid about your, you know, having a tech stack, right? So like, there's a lot of different technology out there that can help us to run our businesses better. And so I just wanted to,

you know, talk to you about some of these softwares that you use to run your business and why they're important. So I think one of the main ones is obviously going to be Jobber. We're both Jobber users. So if you could just from your perspective, share with the listeners why it's important to use a software like Jobber to run your business.

Joe - Taskpro (03:29.279)
Okay, so let's go back to the beginning. It's like when we started our company, I'm sure this hits with like resonates with a lot of business owners is that we think that when we start a company, we're going to gain all this time. But in reality, you're actually working way more. The only difference is that you have control of your time. But

As you grow, you actually start losing that control. So when I first started, I was using Google Calendar, was using QuickBooks and Voicing System, and there's no way for me to add notes to a job. have to physically type everything out. can't, I mean, to a certain degree, you can do that with like QuickBooks, but...

Ultimately, I just have all these different things that are happening with different softwares platforms and I kind of just need something that's all together and integrated and that's where I kind of stumbled upon jobber and It seemed like it's very I did like their The the trial right up whatever and instantly fell in love with how easy it is to use and not too complex Even now I'm hearing with us

job management software is that like...

It takes a while to learn and I don't think I'm particularly tech savvy. So it was easy enough for me to learn and input everything myself. There are some job management softwares where it takes like two weeks to six weeks for someone to coach you on how to navigate their software. It's like, you know, that's too complex, right? So for the beginning stages, if you don't have a job management software, it's definitely, definitely important.

Branden Sewell (05:13.455)
Right.

Joe - Taskpro (05:20.585)
big time saver and the main thing is the automatic invoice follow-ups and estimate follow-ups now I'm cutting out the time to not having to do that and win more jobs

Branden Sewell (05:22.628)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (05:36.377)
Yeah, no, there's, mean, it's so much that a jobber does that gives you your time back as a business owner. And it's usually these like small tasks, but when you take them and you scale them, know, so like if you're growing as a business owner and you scale all those little tasks, it's those, all those little things and little admin things that add up

tons and tons of time and make like you could spend, you know, if like I was like you, if I went back to my process of using Google Calendar and Google spreadsheets and all of those things to manage the business at the size of the business I am now, I would literally just spend all day working on like managing all of that data and you know,

typing things out and moving things and it would be an incredible headache. But because I've had jobber implemented as we scale it, it's seamless. You know, it's just very efficient and all these little tasks like you mentioned like follow up or just communication with the customer. You know data entry all of those things get.

systematize and automated and then it's like you don't have to worry about all that stuff. And so you get a lot of time back to focus on the things that are you know obviously more important they're going to help you scale and grow your company. So I think that it's you know it's so invaluable. I find it frustrating sometimes when I'm talking to business owners who aren't using it and

They are coming up with all of these excuses as to why they can't or whether it's, you know, they can't afford it or whatever. I'm just like, you can't afford not to use this in my opinion. so anyway, it's definitely something I think most people, if they just get started with it, they'll see the value and it'll make sense. Sometimes it's hard.

Joe - Taskpro (07:57.846)
Yeah, I would agree with the cost part. It is a little daunting for most people, would say. But it shouldn't be. That should be built into your operating expense.

Branden Sewell (08:13.402)
Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (08:15.821)
If you know your operating expenses and understand your numbers, you're putting that aside every single check that comes in anyways. So it doesn't, I don't really care for it. You know, it's just part of the business.

Branden Sewell (08:28.057)
Yeah. And I mean, you could raise your prices slightly to cover the cost of it. Like, it's not like you, you know, if you add it up across like X amount of jobs during the month that you do, and if you have any type of history of knowing how many jobs you do per month and how much revenue you do on average and what your average job size is or average ticket is, then you can say like, okay, it

Joe - Taskpro (08:33.259)
absolutely.

Branden Sewell (08:54.817)
Speaking of historical trends if I look at my data I could say okay if I raise my prices X percent on each job That would cover the expense of adding job or and it would be such an insignificant amount that it's not really gonna make a difference and the way that I had it put to me when I was wrestling with the Cost you know all these years ago I had another business owner of

that I was friends with, he said, you know, you're looking at the expense of this, but just think of it in like, you're thinking of in this like major way of like this big expense, right? And he's like, think of it in the from the perspective of like, what would I need to do to cover the cost of that? He's like, what so like, think of your business, the services that you offer, what would you need to sell to cover that expense? I was like, well, honestly, like,

we could do like one bedroom and that would cover the cost of paying for that software for that month. So it's like, how hard would it be for me to just get one more job, small job, or even for me to like go out and do it myself as the business owner. It's like, it's not that significant. And so I think like having the ability to break it down and see it

Joe - Taskpro (10:00.456)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (10:21.635)
from that point of view, it helped me anyway. And so if it was like, man, like I just need to go out and hustle and find one bedroom to paint, I could make that happen for sure.

Joe - Taskpro (10:33.857)
Yeah, but I want to go back to that raising your price thing, right? It's not always just about finding another job. I want people to break the stigma of raising your price. People are afraid to raise their price. I get it, right? I was in that shoes a couple years ago.

Branden Sewell (10:37.571)
Yeah, yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (11:00.937)
I can tell you every time I raise my price, not like I'm raising it to an extent where I'm like gouging people. It's just to cover my expense. what you said is like, do I have to do to cover the expense? How much? And then that's where knowing your number really comes into hand is.

Once you know your numbers, you know how much you want to charge to cover your expense, then you know exactly what profit margin you're going to make for the job, right? like having like increasing my price in that way for the last two years, I increased my price like three times and

All three times I have not gotten a feedback from people like, my gosh, you're so expensive. That's what people are afraid of, I guess. As long as you provide good service, good reporting, and provide more value than what the cost is, people won't blink an eye. And I want to break that stigma, right?

Branden Sewell (11:48.933)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (12:02.755)
Yeah, for sure. mean, it's definitely hard. Especially because I think some people, you know, they feel like they're, they are like they're, they're doing like something bad by raising their price. It's like I have this one guy I've talked to and he owns a company here locally. And, you know, I know he has a reputation for being like,

one of the cheaper companies around and then he comes to me and he's like, what do I need to do? How can I grow? Like, what can you help me? And I'm like, you need to raise your prices. Like, that's it. Like you can't, you're not going to be able to afford to hire better help because you're complaining about not being able to find good help. Well, it's like, well, you're, you're not paying a good wage. So you're going to struggle to find better people.

Because those better people are going to be going to companies where they can get better pay. So it's like you need to raise your prices so you can pay people better. You need to raise your prices so that you can offer more value, make your customer experience better, know, implementing software like Jobber, getting better with your communication. You know, all of those things that we know, like I'm trying to explain to him and

there's just this resistance and then and then it's like they double down on that being cheaper thing by going to the market and saying like, hey, you know, we're we're an affordable company. And it's like you might as well just be like, you know, planning your demise as a company in the long run. Because if you don't charge enough, you're not going to be able to stay in business. And so it's

Joe - Taskpro (13:46.248)
Yep.

Branden Sewell (13:55.331)
You know, sometimes it's like you're in a race to the bottom if you're trying to focus on price and, you know, and that's how you're going to get jobs. So, yeah, 100%. I think most companies, you know, would would do well to raise their prices and would really help solve a lot of problems. And to your point, it doesn't have to be like something crazy like where you're

Joe - Taskpro (14:14.401)
Yep, for sure.

Branden Sewell (14:22.437)
you know, like price gouging somebody, it could be three to 5%. You know, like, I'm going to raise all my jobs three to 5 % this year, or over the next six months. And then you reevaluate and you're like, okay, like my profit margins are good. Maybe I need to stay here. And but as long as you're evaluating that, you'll know if you need to raise your price or not. So anyway, yeah, jobber, huge. What's, what would you say is like one of your favorite features of

Joe - Taskpro (14:31.883)
Yeah. Yeah.

Branden Sewell (14:52.705)
of jobber, what do you find yourself using the most, appreciating the most, loving about it?

Joe - Taskpro (15:01.033)
The back in the bank before I was using I appreciate the most on like the automation like the follow-ups the Yeah, and then hey, we're coming in 24 hours. Make sure you're home type thing, But these days what what I appreciate the most is the ability to do like back costing to find out

Branden Sewell (15:09.102)
Okay, automation, yeah.

Branden Sewell (15:14.852)
Yeah, yeah.

Branden Sewell (15:22.52)
Okay, yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (15:24.425)
What's my GP? After the job, material, labor, stuff like that. I find that to be extremely important because then you'll know instantly like okay on this type of job am I making a profit margin or am I losing right? So if you're making like 20 something percent

that's not enough to cover your expense. So why do I have to do differently? So if you don't back cost, then you'll always just think like, I'm making money. But if you don't know your numbers of your operating expense in percentage wise, then you won't be able to cross reference like how much you need to make, right? That goes back to the price raising thing. like knowing your numbers is definitely important.

Branden Sewell (15:49.978)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (15:57.957)
Okay.

Branden Sewell (16:14.297)
Yeah, yeah, that's good. I would say for me, I really love that. And then I also, I really like that Jobber is constantly like growing and changing and adding things. Like I really appreciate the ability to do campaigns now, like email marketing campaigns, because I think staying top of mind with your clients is so important.

Joe - Taskpro (16:36.129)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (16:43.189)
And so like we do a newsletter and we send out like today I did our newsletter for April back mid April, but then like today my my son's birthday is Wednesday. And so I sent out a email. We have twenty five hundred clients inside of Jobber. So today I sent out an email just saying like, hey, to my Seal Pro painting family.

helped me celebrate my son's birthday, put a little blurb in there about like my son and like, you know, kind of like milestones that he's achieving. and like a picture of him, and send that out to everybody and said like, Hey, would love for you guys to help me wish him happy birthday. And so now like, literally my email inbox all day, has been,

You know people responding back to me. Happy birthday. my gosh he's five because some of my customers have known my son since he was a baby and so like this one customer we actually. We had a customer her husband passed away and she was like a preschool. And daycare worker like her whole career and.

Joe - Taskpro (17:51.219)
nice.

Branden Sewell (18:10.199)
So when we found out that her husband had passed away, we were like, hey, can we come over and just hang out with you, spend time with you? And so my son was tiny at the time. Like he had like just learned how to walk or something. And so we took him over there and, you know, let him crawl around and play and she played with him. And so she was actually one of the emails that just came in just this evening. But, you know, it's just,

Joe - Taskpro (18:33.11)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (18:37.241)
I had another customer last week, he reached out and he was like, Hey, I just, got, actually, guess it was two weeks ago when we sent out our newsletter and he's like, Hey, I really appreciate that you do this, like, you know, and stay, stay in touch with your customers. And it really helps to, you know, feel connected to the company that's doing work at my home. And he's like, so I just really appreciate, appreciate that you do that.

more companies should do that. And I was like, thank you. I really appreciate that feedback. I think like having that staying top of mind with your customers is just invaluable because now you're extending the customer lifespan, right? Instead of them just being customer once, you're staying top of mind and next time they need your services, they're gonna be thinking of you. And so I really, really love.

the fact that you can just send out a mass email from Jobber now.

Joe - Taskpro (19:36.64)
Yeah, and I like what you did there, right? And you're making it more human, more personable for your email marketing campaign. I'm sure you have your months where you send out sales or like some like some people just do that all day long, Like once a month, like, hey, 50 % off this, 20 % off this. If you book now, this, right? Like, you know, it gets repetitive.

Branden Sewell (19:49.882)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (19:59.887)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (20:04.141)
So making it more human, sometimes it's giving tips. It's just to stay on top of mind. It's really what will not get you into Sibam. So I like what you did there.

Branden Sewell (20:16.677)
Yeah, yeah, I had a, I had a business coach that I actually learned that from. And so we used to do the same thing. We used to just like send out, we did newsletters, but we would just, it was like every month we were just sending a new offer. It was like a new sales thing. And I mean, we, like you said, we still do emails that are related to like a promotion, a seasonal promotion or some type of special offer. But we like,

to send out newsletters that have nothing to do with sales. It's just inviting our customers to be a part of our story. And so, you know, it was my wife and I's anniversary on the 16th of this month. So when I sent out that newsletter, that was like the main focus of it was like, hey, you know, it's our ninth wedding anniversary. We'd love to just, you know,

Celebrate this with our customers. Thank you so much for being a part of our journey. You've, you know, literally been a part of like our success as a couple and in our marriage and making sure like bills are pay and food is on the table and all of those things. So, you know, yeah, I think that that's really important to have that aspect and it helps you to build community.

within your customer base. And I think that's really important and it's powerful rather than just always trying to sell something. So yeah, I think that's a really invaluable feature that Jobber has. Before we used to use MailChimp. So we had to like, I like trying to do as much as possible within one platform. So.

Joe - Taskpro (22:08.385)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (22:09.005)
Now that I don't have to go outside and use MailChimp, I can just do our email marketing right from jobber. It's huge. So another software that you and I both use, and I'd love to just get your quick feedback on this, is NiceJob. So if you can talk a little bit about your experience with that, why you use it, and how you have it implemented into your business would be great.

Joe - Taskpro (22:34.701)
Okay so, nice job. Why did I use it? Before when I first started my company for the first three, two, two and a half years, three years, I didn't really care about the reviews even though I know how important it is. And then there's that one year where everything just stopped. Where we were like just that slow which is kind of weird and it was slow for like two months and I was like...

Okay, I gotta do something different here. Like this cannot happen again for the following year. And then looking at like my numbers, it's like, my gosh, we didn't grow from last year to this year. And that's where I'm kind of like, what can I do differently? Because if I keep doing the same thing, I'm not gonna get a different result.

Branden Sewell (23:06.106)
Right.

Joe - Taskpro (23:27.181)
Sign up for business coaching. Got nice job from like a referral. I went from like maybe nine reviews to now 111 reviews. But nice job is pretty nice in a way where it can go back and try to recapture some of reviews. So within like the first month, I think I got like 33 reviews.

Branden Sewell (23:29.093)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (23:55.833)
Nice, yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (23:56.854)
They just set everything up and the product team is amazing too because she actually went into my website and inserted all this like social proof for like five stars stuff like that and also now it's automated where after a job is invoiced through jobber it triggers like a action where it will

get the customer to leave a review and it'll do that for about three times where you can set the rules however you like. And then if they leave a positive review, they'll ask for a referral, which is kind of cool.

You can actually, like I know some people are gonna be like, what if this customer is like terrible.

I don't want them to leave a review The way I have my setup is like I give myself like a one I think it's a one-day grace or whatever So after the invoice is sent out and I know the customer is like a pain That would likely leave a nasty review and it's not because like we did shoddy work It just you know, everybody has those like unreasonable customers is I'll go in and I'll just disable this follow-up feature right, I mean if they

Branden Sewell (24:48.729)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (25:13.327)
Mm-hmm.

Joe - Taskpro (25:15.459)
really hate us that much, can still go on Google to leave a review, but I just don't want to say like, hey, leave us a review, hey, leave us a review. So, you know, that's kind of cool how you're able to like adjust what meets your need. And yeah, I think it's invaluable because again, like I'm trying to save time, not trying to ask everyone for reviews.

Branden Sewell (25:21.925)
Right, yeah

Branden Sewell (25:36.869)
Yeah. And you know, I would say like, so we implemented it and went kind of say some similar situation to you. I was using another platform before and I had it for three years and in that three years we had only gotten 10 reviews and then I started using nice job and it like my I started getting reviews constantly. So I mean for us we do a lot of bigger jobs. So like our average job we're probably there for like

five to seven days. So it's not like we do a ton of jobs within a year, but already in just a little over a year, we went from 10 reviews to now we have 122. And then I was going to show this. So for anyone who's, you know, watching this on YouTube, you'll be able to see this, but this is up. Let's see if I can get the camera to focus on this. So in

It's kind of there we go. So you'll see up in my office. I've got what our goal this year is is to hit 200 reviews and then how many we've gotten each month. And then I also have each team member and you can go a nice job and you know, like run a report and see how many reviews are attributed to which employee. And so basically what I'll do is give a bonus, you know, to.

my guys based on the reviews that they get. And that's just a board that's set up in our shop and has some key performance indicators for production on there. And so that's one of the things is tracking like, so our goal is to hit 200 five star reviews on Google by the end of this year. And that'll actually put us into the top spot for our local area. So right now there's a company that's been around for like,

20 plus years and they have like 156 or something. So my goal is to have more than them. But even to think about that, like here's this company who's been in business for 20 plus years and they only have 156 reviews. We've been in business for eight years. We didn't even really start focusing on building our Google location in this area until 2020.

Branden Sewell (28:02.391)
and we already have 122 reviews and I 100 % attribute that success to Nice Job, like without a doubt. Because of everything that you talked about Joe is like, it's a seamless automation. Job gets done, gets invoice, it just happens in the background and those reviews just flood in. So yeah, yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (28:26.411)
I have a question for you. The jobber reviews, they have their own little review thing. I know you were saying you want everything to be in one platform. What made you choose NiceJob instead of using the jobber one?

Branden Sewell (28:32.324)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (28:35.833)
Yeah. Nice job.

Yeah, so to my knowledge, Jobber does not have the ability to do the same amount of follow-up, like the same follow-up sequence that Nice Job has. And the other thing that kept me from doing it was I felt like the review thing is a little bit more nuanced in the sense that there's a lot of independent research that Nice Job has done to

establish what those like the cadence of those requests should be and the cadence of that follow up and exactly what those metrics are and all the data surrounding it for it to be successful. And so I'm like, I just feel like it would be silly for me to go from nice job where I'm having all of this success.

And jump over to jobber and there's not the same amount of. Intention into the research and intention into. Making sure that it's successful and optimal. So the reason why I actually started using nice job was because I was in. I was actually attending jobber summit and nice job was.

one of the, think they were like a sponsor of Jobber Summit. And with that, they were also like a panel or a breakout session that you could join for Jobber Summit. And so I joined that and I was like asking the Jobber representatives or not Jobber, the Nice Jobber representatives, like all of these questions and.

Branden Sewell (30:35.833)
And that's when they started to share with me about their research. And so they convinced me then to join Nice Job. And everything that they said is like spot on. If we run a report, we know that the majority of our customers don't actually leave us a review until we've asked them for the fourth time. And so for just for people who are listening to this as well, who maybe they're like, I'm not going to spend that money on, you know, you know,

nice job. You know, I'm a, can just send my customers a request like by text, you know, I have it saved as a note in my phone and I'll just text it and email it to them. Well, the problem is, like, it's not sending it, it's the follow up sequence, right? So like, are you going to send it to them four times? You know, so that they actually leave the review, because that's what nice job is.

Joe - Taskpro (31:22.423)
they won't do it.

Branden Sewell (31:35.109)
proven needs to happen for them to leave the review. So

Joe - Taskpro (31:39.638)
Yeah, and I get that too, you know, like when I first started I had like a little QR code printed on the back of the business card and like I was like telling all the guys like hey before you leave like tell them to leave your review and And I was doing that too and they're like, yeah, we'll do it later I Swear I'll do it They don't do it and it it got into a point where I'm like

Branden Sewell (31:59.566)
Right.

Yeah, and then they don't. No.

Joe - Taskpro (32:07.213)
I'll take like $10 off your bill right now if you do it. It's like, okay, I'll do it later It's like no you won't only if you do it right now takes the headbumps off your bill Yeah, so I was like, you know, it's like it was like so frustrating I was like, you know, this is kind of dumb and then I I I signed up with nice job and

Branden Sewell (32:14.949)
You're right.

Branden Sewell (32:28.271)
Yeah, and I mean, and so for those who might be listening to this and they are trying to like make that decision, I think there's a lot of, you know, reasons that Joe and I just shared for why you should implement something like NiceJob. So if you haven't, like it's a no brainer, you're missing out on a lot of opportunity to dominate on Google by implementing it. So.

I would say definitely don't do a disservice to yourself and your business by not signing up. So the other thing I wanted to talk about was you mentioned open phone. So I have been using Google Voice since I started my business. Now that has become a challenge because a few years ago I started having trouble where my admin

Joe - Taskpro (33:00.269)
Yeah, review is important.

Branden Sewell (33:24.889)
was on Google Voice and so was I. And then I guess something changed with Google to where now, like if I try to add another forwarded number to my Google Voice, it messes up everything. I don't even know what happens. Like I'm not super techy in that way, but anyway, it just completely messes up the phone system. So.

I'm just curious if you can share a little bit about OpenPhone, how it works and some of the features and kind of asking that selfishly because I might be interested in using their services.

Joe - Taskpro (34:01.799)
Okay, so open phone is great when you're separating your personal number to a company number. I was using my personal phone number and the first thing my coach told me to do to gain back time is, get rid of that! Get another number! And I was like, okay, well, what should I use? And he's like, get a VOIP thing. check out open phone.

Branden Sewell (34:21.753)
Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (34:31.757)
I checked it out and it seemed pretty cool. The features for it, it's pretty sweet actually. When it works right, I'm not gonna say it's perfect.

Branden Sewell (34:44.729)
What are some of the issues that you would have with it?

Joe - Taskpro (34:47.693)
Some of the issues I have with it is sometimes it's little glitchy. A little glitchy and when you're on the road and you don't have perfect cell service coverage, it becomes very choppy or there's this weird delay. Sometimes it could get annoying to a point where I'm just telling my customer, hey, know what, give me one second, I'll call you back on another line. It seems like this line is not working properly.

Branden Sewell (35:04.984)
Okay.

Joe - Taskpro (35:14.923)
So I find myself having to do that not all the time, but sometimes. But what I really do value about OpenPhone is it transcribes everything. So it transcribes and records everything. like the transcription is done through AI. So they'll try to pull like key information like, okay, for example,

Branden Sewell (35:29.773)
nice.

Joe - Taskpro (35:43.458)
you'll have like a summary of the call and then it'll be like next step you have to do the customer has to do this, Joe has to do this, the project manager have to do this and that helps keeping things organized. So all I do is I copy and paste that thing and then send it back in an email to my clients. So, hey, just a reminder, this is what we talked about. So I'm waiting for you, right?

Branden Sewell (36:06.885)
Mm-hmm.

Joe - Taskpro (36:09.357)
Not like the other way around sometimes like they'll be like, I thought I was waiting for you And I'm like no I was waiting for you, but doing it this way with like a transcription it really helps Yeah

Branden Sewell (36:19.353)
Yeah, that's cool. Can you set up multiple phone numbers or is it just like you get assigned like one number? And I'm just curious too, is there, like I use call rail for call tracking for like marketing campaigns. I'm just curious if OpenPhone has a feature like that or if it's just strictly a phone number that's assigned.

Joe - Taskpro (36:41.227)
Well, it's strictly phone number, but you can have multiple users, so I can manage all my guys'

Even like but once I assign them, I don't really see it until there's a problem and I kind of assign myself back to Listen over to the calls and you know, this helps with Arguments from customers saying like yeah, you're tech said this but did this I can go back and say hey No, he didn't is you not me not my guys but for for my main office line like there's three people have access to it so I can set it up in a way

Branden Sewell (37:11.833)
Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (37:20.911)
Where it will ring? For 60 seconds 30 seconds a minute and a half whatever I wanted to be Before it rings me as a user so like it'll ring like my office staffs first And then if they're busy doing like outbound calls, or they're trying to talk to somebody And they can't pick up and it will go to me Another feature like is You can set like after hour times

Branden Sewell (37:32.226)
Okay

Joe - Taskpro (37:51.234)
You can even have full menus. We don't usually like using full menus, if you're, like we're not big enough to use full menus, I think. But it has the ability to.

Branden Sewell (38:01.732)
Right.

Branden Sewell (38:05.423)
So you could have like, you know, to reach sales, you know, press one if you're production. Yeah. So that's, that's something else that I'm interested in. That's a, so it sounds like it has a lot of the features that I'm looking for. My biggest concern is making sure that it, that if, it doesn't offer call tracking that I can still like integrate it with call rail and still use my call tracking numbers. So I can't.

Joe - Taskpro (38:09.984)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (38:34.605)
see why it would be a problem, but you know.

Joe - Taskpro (38:37.461)
Yeah, I'm not sure. I haven't dabbled into the analytics side of things. But, you know, I was told if you want to do call tracking, just create another number.

Branden Sewell (38:50.531)
Yeah, well that's how CallRail works is like you create multiple different numbers for all your different marketing campaigns and so then if a number gets called you can track what calls came from what source.

Joe - Taskpro (39:05.311)
Well, yeah, I'm looking at the analytics now. Yeah, you can do that It'll show You'll show like Monday Tuesday Wednesday. When is the most busiest time? if the total cause are going up in percentage or going down and then

Branden Sewell (39:22.191)
Does it show what number they're calling mode or like what number and like.

Joe - Taskpro (39:26.603)
Yeah, total calls. Let's see which data this is.

Yeah, there's it shows like Between March and March 1st and March 28. There's a total amount of call outgoing call it shows the same stat Yeah, it shows a lot of different stats really

Branden Sewell (39:53.989)
Nice.

Yeah, so that's good information. So for me, that might be enough for me to look into that.

Joe - Taskpro (40:02.727)
Yeah, but but if you're on a road a lot like I said, it's not perfect, but if you're sitting in the office, yeah

Branden Sewell (40:09.121)
I'm not I mean I'm I'm mostly there at my home office or at our shop. So the only person. Yeah yeah yeah. It might be a good option for me. Awesome so yeah so is there anything else I want to get to. We'll eventually talk about live switch and company cam but I think I'm going to leave that for right now but is there anything besides those two things that.

Joe - Taskpro (40:15.275)
Yeah, so if you have reliable internet, you're fine.

Branden Sewell (40:38.917)
you use that you would recommend home service business owners looking into or using.

Joe - Taskpro (40:46.828)
tech wise

Joe - Taskpro (40:52.503)
Tech-wise, I think company camp is really important.

I literally had a customer that was like trying to dispute a bill and I was like, how? I have photos of everything and they're like, really? Like my tenant said they didn't let you in. I was like, I don't know what your tenants are saying, but we have timestamp, GPS stamp, tech done by who and it's linked to my job or which my techs clock in and clock out, which is GPS tracked. I can't fudge these numbers.

Branden Sewell (41:27.78)
Yeah, yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (41:28.683)
And he's like, okay, well, thank you so much for your professionalism. And went back to the tenant, right? So having like a clear system, I think it's super important. I don't know how I did so much work without it before. So yeah, some sort of like a photo capturing software and company has been good for me.

Branden Sewell (41:33.637)
You're right.

Branden Sewell (41:52.719)
Yeah, yeah, it's, I think that there's businesses out there where, you know, if you wanna grow and you wanna scale, you have to be open to using different software and implementing it into your business. It's just, it's necessary to be able to handle the growth and do it efficiently and make the most of your time.

And then I think there's going to be some people who listen to this and they're going to be like, I'm, don't want to do all of that. I'm not going to, I'm not going to use that stuff. It's like, well, okay. Like then just know that's your limitation and don't, don't expect to grow is, what I'm kind of getting at or

Joe - Taskpro (42:30.455)
He's gonna, yeah, he's gonna eat up more of your time.

Joe - Taskpro (42:37.997)
You know what I was using? I was like, I was using like my camera roll and then when someone's like, when was this done? I'm like looking through like my camera rolls like map and I'm like zooming in and trying to find out where it is between like my wife and my dog's photos

Branden Sewell (42:54.383)
Alright.

Joe - Taskpro (42:55.429)
I'm like, okay, well we visited this place, but there's other photos, you know with company cam is great in a sense that The customer could ask me like okay on for example, February 24th, like you did this like what did it look like I? Can it's integrated with jobber so I can look at the job? Job number look at exactly what we did cross reference it to company cam and send him an email and invoicing also

instead of attaching every single photo from your camera roll to your, upload it to your Google Drive or whatever, then putting in email with PDF with Jobber, you flip it to an invoice and then it auto-populates the photos that you take in that day from that job and you just go, doot doot doot doot doot doot. Send, done, right?

Branden Sewell (43:48.089)
Nice. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's good. We're kind of like in a situation right now where we're trying, we signed up for Live Switch. We're using that and we're hoping that it's going to kind of work like company cam. But as you and I discussed, huh?

Joe - Taskpro (44:12.725)
It won't. It's different. It's different. I discussed that with the guy from Live Switch 2. There's key differences of note taking and stuff like that.

Branden Sewell (44:24.449)
Yeah, well, mean, you can do that on the live switch. Like you can take notes on the on the images and and it records the video in real time. And, you know, you can you can do that stuff in live switch, but it sounds like it's not as user friendly right now. And

Joe - Taskpro (44:47.435)
This goes back, sorry, this kind of goes back to what you said about nice job versus jobber. To me, CompanyCam is more research developed and stuff. Live switch is great. I definitely see the value in it, but it's definitely not the same as what CompanyCam are doing.

Branden Sewell (44:55.546)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (45:16.515)
Yeah, but I mean, I don't think that there's a huge like a huge gap there. If if live switch would just change or implement some some things, they could make it very similar, but having the virtual aspect to it as well, like those virtual calls. So. I think that it's just a matter of lives which taking the feedback and then you know implementing and changing.

some of the features and how it integrates with Jobber because ultimately if they could just change a couple things and make the integration better, I think Live Switch would have the upper hand, but right now I don't think they do. Just because Company Cam integrates better with Jobber, some of the features are a little bit more user-friendly currently with the integration. And so

I think if LiveSwitch can hear that feedback and make it a little bit more user friendly and make the integration better, then I think they could potentially have the upper hand. But I had the same feedback for them that you had, which was like, when I sign up for this, don't want to have to like create a whole other system in process for using LiveSwitch. Like if a customer submits a request through Jobber,

Joe - Taskpro (46:39.18)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (46:42.871)
And they want to use the virtual experience. I want them to be go right to my job or form. Submit their virtual walkthrough or whatever that they want to write there and then that gets submitted to job or an is stored within their customer profile and job or and then I can access it there or like if my guys need to you know pull up the pictures that we took in live switch they automatically populate into their.

file in jobber like I'm not sending my guys to another link to go to another software another platform and see all of that it just all needs to be uploaded automatically into jobber and be like a seamless user experience for for not just our customers but for us on the back end of things and I think if they can do that it'll be great but right now it's like

Joe - Taskpro (47:33.847)
Yeah.

Yeah, but I feel like there's still ways away to get to. Yeah, it's like how long would it really take, know?

Branden Sewell (47:41.834)
Yeah, well, you never know, I mean...

Yeah, I think it's just a matter of getting like their their back end, you know, their their software guys, you know, to to work on those features. And I know that's a lot because I don't even know a ton about code, but I know that it's not simple. It's not like simple solutions.

Joe - Taskpro (48:02.957)
No, but what I like about them is they're very, very responsive and they do take feedback. When you email them or whatever, there's a rule apparently. And I was like...

Branden Sewell (48:08.665)
Yeah, yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (48:18.221)
what rule? it's like, they have to respond within 24 hours or most likely, no, two hours, sorry. I was like, no way. And someone did respond to me right away. And I was like, this is crazy. It's cool. I like it. And they, and they, they take ownership of the problem, right? So I liked that about them. So I'm sticking around until see what they can do.

Branden Sewell (48:26.905)
Yeah. No, it's yeah, for sure.

Branden Sewell (48:35.313)
Yeah. I know they have a tab too that shows like a lot of the features that are coming. So you at least know that they're working on stuff and working on making it better. But it's been great for me already. I mean, we've already used it to bid jobs virtually. And I love it. mean, I'm forward thinking in my approach. I'm never going to say

Joe - Taskpro (48:42.379)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (49:03.939)
like, this idea isn't going to work or make all the reasons why it's not. I want to try it. And so I've had so many people tell me like, you can't do painting estimates virtually. And I'm like, why not? You know, what's the, I had to do it all through COVID. Like it was either implement that during COVID or lose out on a ton of opportunity. So.

Joe - Taskpro (49:19.071)
Ha ha.

Branden Sewell (49:29.189)
we were having people call in and they're like, oh, I guess I'm gonna have to cancel my appointment. I'm like, nope, we'll do it virtually. And then as new leads were coming in, they're like, hey, we're interested in getting an estimate. We understand if it's gonna be a couple months, but we'd like to get on your schedule. I'm like, no, I'll do it today. Here's a Zoom link. And so we are still selling work during COVID when other companies were probably not.

Joe - Taskpro (49:48.891)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (49:59.345)
I think you've got to innovate and it sometimes I think it means getting a little uncomfortable, but you know, it's a I'd rather be on the side of, you know, innovating and doing those things rather than being behind. And so I think.

Joe - Taskpro (50:16.767)
Yeah, for me, it's kind of like, you know, I don't, I would always try something that would help me. And right now what I need the most is time. So if there's something that could save me time, I'm all in, like I'm willing to try it. And you know, for anybody that's listening out there, you know, if you don't try things.

Branden Sewell (50:23.482)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (50:30.745)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (50:38.465)
you'll always be the same. But if you want to stay the same, that's great too. But if you want to grow and not trying something new, like keeping up with the technologies is just such a bad idea. You have to try.

Branden Sewell (50:40.175)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (50:52.227)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think that's something that holds a lot of people back who are like one on the truck or on the ladder. They're like wanting to get off or they're wanting to like figure out how to grow and scale and move their business forward. It's like, you've got to implement these things and you have to be willing to get uncomfortable and you got to learn. You know, that's why I say, you know, that our mission is to help home service business owners learn.

Because ultimately that's what you have to do. If you're going to own a business and you're going to grow and scale it to where it doesn't require you is you have to constantly be learning and you know getting uncomfortable and pushing yourself to you know know how maybe you don't consider yourself to be like a tech savvy person but if you're going to. Run a good business that can.

Run without you you need to learn the technology side of it and if you're just like no I'm not going to do that I'm old school it's like well okay well don't expect to grow and scale your business efficiently so. But anyway I want to like try to bring us to a close here soon but I want to jump in really quick as we kind of bring this to a close is sales obviously like.

You have to know how to sell if you're going to work towards getting off the ladder or off the truck, off the tools. Because part of knowing how to sell is keeping a team busy. And if you can't sell jobs and keep a team busy, well then you're not going to be able to grow and get to that point where you can get off the truck.

You know, it's like kind of like what we talked about earlier is you have to raise your prices. You can't charge the same amount. You know, if you're doing business yourself, like you're only thinking about yourself getting a paycheck and covering your overhead. But if you're thinking about, you know, covering a team, covering, you know, these different softwares that we're talking about and your overhead that's going to be required.

Branden Sewell (53:15.749)
You have to increase your prices and in that case it might be that you're doubling your prices, you know in the beginning for it to make sense for you to like be able to hire somebody and cover the overhead but Yeah, so if you could just jump in share what your perspective is on sales and maybe some of your best practices for selling that you would recommend to those who are wanting to learn it more and

you know, get better at it.

Joe - Taskpro (53:48.364)
Yeah, so for me, like,

Like I've done sales. I've done all my sales in person sales and office sales after my plumbing journey. Cause I didn't think I wanted to be a plumber, right? And then, and then when I got into sales, I was like, what did I do sales? Cause when I got into plumbing, I didn't really want to, I didn't really want to be an office worker. So I was, I was trapped in the office and, but during those years, like I, I trained like people to do sales too.

Branden Sewell (54:15.033)
Mm-hmm.

Joe - Taskpro (54:21.839)
but now putting in practice like what I find the most important part about sales as a home service business is you have to be able to ask questions and know when to stop talking

Branden Sewell (54:37.497)
Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (54:37.549)
So for example when someone calls a painting company, hey I want to paint the house, I want to paint the interior of my house. Some people might say well perfect we got this great offer if you do this room da da da da da, we'll do it at this price or like what kind of paint do you want, what color?

My approach to that is like, you know, I would ask, why is it that you're painting the house? Right? Are you painting it to sell or are you painting it so you don't like the color? I'm tapping more into like the personal side of things instead of trying to focus on the features and benefits. And this established trust and that, you know,

Branden Sewell (55:10.073)
Yeah, that's good.

Branden Sewell (55:24.367)
Yeah, that's good.

Joe - Taskpro (55:28.821)
Yeah, you like say as you will it might be tactic, but I actually do care in a way because that's just how I sell right? So when someone's asking about like for a plumbing example, I want to repipe my house and Some people would just go straight into how many bathrooms you have how many this how many that? My question is well, why do you want to do it now? Did something happen did you have a flood?

Branden Sewell (55:49.071)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (55:53.615)
Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (55:58.208)
I try to bring up pain point for the customer for them to say it so they know that there is a need because when people are calling, people automatically think that they're shopping for a cost but there's an actual need. But what is the need? And as a salesperson, you want to understand the need so you can bridge the gap of what the customer needs and what you have to offer.

So if you don't know the need, all you're doing is presenting your service. I'm the best. I can offer you prices that are better than others or I'll give you discounts. I wouldn't want to be sold to like that. People hate being sold to, but people, like you want to frame it in a way that people sell themselves.

Branden Sewell (56:43.747)
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I think building rapport on that initial call is so important. And I think there's another aspect to it as well. that's not everybody is your customer, right? So I think that was a hard lesson for me to learn as a business owner. And it's still challenging at times, but understanding the fact that

you know, sometimes I might take on a customer who is not my ideal customer. And then when my ideal customer comes along, I'm too busy to take on my ideal customer. Right. So now I've just like done myself a disservice. And then while I'm like limping, cause I'm getting just like, you know, beat up by this non-ideal customer. and then that ideal one comes along. I'm like, I'm sorry. I can't take care of you right now. I'm

Joe - Taskpro (57:37.665)
Yep.

Branden Sewell (57:39.353)
hurting from getting beat up by this person who is not the best customer for me. And so my approach to that first phone call is I'm asking a lot of those questions, but I'm also like, I'm asking like, hey, what is the project? What are you looking to have done? Figuring that out, asking about the home, where is it located? Is this going to be an IOP?

Joe - Taskpro (57:42.465)
Yep.

Branden Sewell (58:08.267)
in our ideal service area, what's your timeframe for getting this job done? Are we gonna be able to meet your expectation for when you want this done? Or am I gonna waste my time, drive all the way out to your home, give you an estimate for you to tell me, hey, I need this done this week. And it's like, I'm booked into June. What do you, no, there's absolutely no way. And so it's also like, it's saving yourself time and the emotional energy.

Joe - Taskpro (58:27.317)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (58:37.655)
You know, so I'm trying to figure out, okay, are we we going to be able to meet their time frame? You know, and find out what their preferences are for that job. So I think that if you just answer the phone and you're like, okay, yeah, when can we come out? And that's it. And you just like get their information and show up. You're you're doing a disservice to yourself.

Joe - Taskpro (59:00.769)
Yeah. No. You don't want to do that.

Branden Sewell (59:06.373)
And to them, because you're wasting their time too, you know.

Joe - Taskpro (59:09.921)
Yeah, for sure. You have to ask the proper questions exactly what you said. Life switch is a perfect thing to not having to drive out to those jobs. But you have to be able to ask the proper question again. Like what you said earlier, it's like, do I have the capacity to actually even do the job within the expected time frame? And if you can, they're not the right customer for you, right? And there's no point in you wasting your time.

Branden Sewell (59:35.695)
Yeah, and in some, like we had a customer a couple weeks ago, we actually ended up landing the job, but the customer was like, hey, I need an interior quote, we're moving into our house in a week and a half, and we want it painted before we move in. And they were like, we're hoping that you could get to it. I'm like, great, how'd you find us? well, I found you on Google, you were like the top rated company, so you were the first person I called.

I was like, well, that's great. So, I mean, you can see we have a great reputation. And I said, you know, I just want to be honest and upfront with you that we are a reputable company. And I said, there's no way, I'm sorry, there's no way that I can meet your timeframe. And I said, I really would love to earn your business and get this job done for you. But I just simply cannot get that done. I said, you know, we're a reputable company. We have three crews and we're booking into June.

And I told her, said, but hey, was like, let me, if you don't mind, I just gave her like a quick rundown of, I said, I'll be honest with you. said, I would be surprised if you could find somebody that could do it in that type of a timeframe. And I said, and if you can, I would just be leery because they might tell you that they can get to it in that timeframe. But the reality is, is that they might just be selling the job and then.

you know, subcontracting it, just finding somebody to get it done. And I said, I used to work for a company like that. And I said, what I'd rather you do is go with, you know, reputable company like ours that you can trust. We repaint homes. So we paint homes that are lived in like 90 % of the houses that we paint. People are living in them. They have their furniture there already. Like that's nothing new for us to do. said, so what I'd rather you do is, you know, go ahead, get moved in. Don't

have the stress of getting your house painted. I said, and then once you're moved in, we'll come in and we'll get everything painted for you. And you'll have the, you know, you'll be able to know that you're using a reputable company that you can trust and we'll do a great job and take care of your home. And she was like, okay, yeah, that that sounds great. I really appreciate you sharing that because I would I didn't know that that's what could happen. And she kind of just she thanked me for explaining how the industry could work and

Branden Sewell (01:01:57.349)
you know what could happen by being in a rush to get it done and And so we went out we did the job the next day and she used us so we've got her on our schedule for June and But it's like, know, you've got to ask those questions, but then I'd also say like don't just It's not that you want to instantly say like, okay, you're not a good fit. Like I didn't give up

You know, as soon as she said, hey, I need this done in a week and a half. I wasn't like, sorry, we can't help you buy. was like, hey, like, I'd love to help you. Like, and maybe this is how we could still help you and then help, like, settle her mind. Because it happens so many times. So many people call us and are like, I want it painted before I moved in. And I actually had a company call me or not a company, a customer call me last week.

And she's like, hey, we need a quote to paint the outside of our home. You guys quoted the inside, but we hired somebody else. And I said, oh, I was like, you hired the other, I was like, why aren't you using them for the exterior now? And she said, well, we wish we would have went with you guys, but they could get to it sooner. So we use them. And I was like, there you go. I tried to tell you, you know, just because somebody can get to it.

Joe - Taskpro (01:03:20.044)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:03:21.219)
You know, your within your two week time frame doesn't mean it's going to be the best option. So, hey.

Joe - Taskpro (01:03:25.761)
Yeah, but you know, I like that. Sometimes you just need to educate the customer and tell them how the industry is. And also, sometimes what their expectations are is just simply unachievable. We do small rentals for houses and they're like, hey, we this done in two weeks. I was like, well, first of all, you have to get approval from your building. We have to get permits. You have to select material. This is not happening in two weeks.

Branden Sewell (01:03:53.955)
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's like.

Joe - Taskpro (01:03:55.648)
Right? Right? So... And then they go back to what you're saying, like I was like, if you can't find anybody that can tell you, you can do this in two weeks, they're lying to you. Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:04:06.937)
Yeah, and if they can, you should be concerned. Like, are they doing things right? Like, we've had people tell us, they're like, yeah, I got a quote from a company to paint the exterior of my house and they said they were gonna finish it in a day. And I'm like, how are they gonna finish the exterior of your house in a day? I was like, it has to be pressure washed. Like, you need the outside of the house to dry before you can just start slapping paint on it.

And then there's certain prep things that you have to do that take time. There's time that has to be between coats like so there's a wait time between re coating and like you can't just rush through a job in a day or two like you know, so

Joe - Taskpro (01:04:53.197)
Yeah, it's kind of funny. This is a kind of side story, but there's a trade show around where we live. And then there's this booth. I went to the trade show to see, like, get connections with contractors, right? And then I see this booth that says, one day bathroom renovation. And I'm like, how? And then my wife's like, hey, don't you do that? How did they do it one day? I was like, I don't care. They're not doing it one day. I don't know. Like, there's no way.

Branden Sewell (01:05:01.519)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (01:05:11.173)
Eh-heh.

Branden Sewell (01:05:21.433)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (01:05:23.076)
But then I got calls from like a couple of customers of mine that were like, hey, we want to do a bathroom meadow. I was like, oh, why do you want to do it now? Like we talked about a couple of years ago. He's like, oh, because we went to the trade show and saw this one hour guy, we just don't trust him.

Branden Sewell (01:05:37.571)
Yeah, right. Yeah, there's a company around here. I don't know a ton about them, but they're called Wow One Day Painters and they're like a franchise or whatever. And I just think to myself, like, that's a pretty big promise in the painting industry to say, like, you're going to finish a job in the in one day. And and there I get I talked to somebody who owned a franchise of of that company. And the way that

Joe - Taskpro (01:05:53.506)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:06:05.945)
They explained it to me as like they just use bigger teams so that they can get more done, but it still doesn't get around the fact that there's certain processes where you simply can't do them in a day. So anyway, it's just, that's an interesting thing. yeah, so I think selling is like such a, it's an art, you like you.

Joe - Taskpro (01:06:20.277)
No. Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:06:33.389)
And I'm caught. think you have to constantly be learning to like I'm still learning how to to get better at sales and and how to refine our approach to selling. But the whole for me it's like selling is an experience in my opinion. And we try to sell ourselves and not just like

going out there and saying like, hey, here's our price, and then presenting a quote, but we're selling ourselves from the first phone call, that first interaction. We're selling ourselves when somebody looks at our website, when somebody looks at our Google business page, we're selling when we're providing a text message saying like, hey,

this is so and so and I'm on my way to provide you with your free estimate. You know, so when we're sending those automatic messages and follow ups, like we're selling with that communication because that's telling a story to that customer about who we are. It's like, okay, we're a company that's professional. We answer our phones, we communicate, we're establishing trust. You know, we're showing up when we say we do. We're presenting ourselves professionally and all of that is communicating.

something to the customer. And so it's this, it's the sales process, not just, you know, showing up and providing a bid. It's everything that you're doing that is creating that experience for the customer. And then, you know, like, like you said, I, it's funny, I was talking to my sales rep and he's like, Hey, I was just wondering if we could do some training and you should, you could like, you know, go over some things and teach me more.

And I said, honestly, I'm a little leery to do that. I said, because I don't want you to learn so much that your head gets big and you feel like you just have to talk constantly about and like share all of this amazing knowledge that you have. And then you never ask questions and shut up, which is kind of like what you said. It's like you have to learn how to ask the questions and then be quiet. It's not, it's not a platform for you to

Joe - Taskpro (01:08:47.533)
Yup.

Joe - Taskpro (01:08:53.931)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:08:58.541)
you know, perform and talk about how wonderful you are and how much you know, and all of your expertise. I mean, there's a time for that to like share and educate, but you need to listen and ask questions. And then that's going to create the the space for you to, you know, mirror what those customers have told you, and then mirror it back to them. And then say, Hey, this is what I heard you say.

you want to this, this, this, and this, and here's our quote, and we're going to do all these things that you asked for, and then you're presenting. yeah, so it's just that whole experience.

Joe - Taskpro (01:09:40.235)
Yeah, for sure.

Branden Sewell (01:09:42.877)
I think to like, something that I've been teaching my sales rep is we always do. And I would recommend anybody who's, you know, doing sales yourself or has sales reps doing sales to do thank you cards, whether they're handwritten or something like that. So we do thank you cards. After estimates. We also do we, I tell my sales guy, I'm like the best

type of follow-up you can do is a schedule follow-up because you're not going to be interrupting the customer when they're not expecting you. You can schedule that follow-up call so that they're expecting that call and then the goal is that you follow through because then that's establishing trust again. Like I said, I was going to call you and I called you and I'm not interrupting you. I'm just doing what you asked me to and what I said I would do, if that makes sense.

So anyway, anything else you want to add to that?

Joe - Taskpro (01:10:47.181)
I guess in the spirit of...

company and stuff like that for other people like a good tip would be try to put yourself in places where you can get more leads and as a instead of just one right like home associations networking groups for property management companies realtors instead of doing door-to-door knocking

It's very it's much more productive if you can just get in front of those people that you know has a Rolodex or a portfolio of properties because where we live and I share with Cory who you know, is that you know, you get in front of a property manager They have 10 to 15 buildings each of the buildings are at least 100 units plus

Branden Sewell (01:11:46.287)
Mm-hmm.

Joe - Taskpro (01:11:47.082)
So you get good with one of them. You pretty much have like 100 plus units individual homes like apartments wise for your service. So that was like a big turning point for me also because I tried like the Google marketing, like local service ads, stuff like that. just wasn't yielding as much of an ROI as I was hoping. And I hired like really good marketing agencies. So.

Branden Sewell (01:11:56.239)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:12:15.493)
Mm-hmm.

Joe - Taskpro (01:12:16.781)
beginning of this year I pretty much doubled down on networking and that has it's huge and I don't think anyone talks about that a lot

Branden Sewell (01:12:22.062)
Yeah, that's huge.

Branden Sewell (01:12:28.751)
Well, I think people think it's like this old school, like archaic thing. what I can say is I went from a bit, like my business almost failed in 2022, and the thing that saved me was building, was networking and building relationships. And now that's like one of my number one focuses. I'm in a BNI, and then my sales guy is in a BNI.

Joe - Taskpro (01:12:34.625)
Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (01:12:55.255)
Yep.

Branden Sewell (01:12:58.815)
On both ends are our county. So I go to a BNI in the south end of our county. He goes to a BNI in the north end of our county. And then I also have him in an additional meeting in Wednesdays. It's a separate networking group called BBA. It's Brevard Business Alliance. And he goes to that on Wednesday mornings. And then I'm in another business related networking group on Wednesday mornings with another group of business owners.

And, you know, so building relationships is huge and, you know, connecting and building those meaningful referral partners and that's been a game changer for my business.

Joe - Taskpro (01:13:43.559)
I agree. The same here. I'm in BNI as well.

Branden Sewell (01:13:46.413)
Yeah, yeah, I'll be I'll be recording this as a one to one so

Joe - Taskpro (01:13:49.676)
Haha, would be great. But you know, for people who are listening, like BNI is just such a great platform, at least for me. Yeah, you're put in front of business owners that are, you you are who you surround yourself with, right? Like there's no better way of like propping yourself up when surrounded by all business owners are the main goal is to refer you business. That's literally what BNI is. So you're trying to become friends with them. So you establish

Branden Sewell (01:13:57.099)
It really is,

Branden Sewell (01:14:15.715)
Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (01:14:19.619)
trust for them to send you referrals. So that was huge for me and I had a record one

for like the beginning of the year because I think part like because of that, I had the highest selling month, January, February. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. I never do these numbers. It was like insane number. I was like, wow, that's amazing. And then, you you build lifelong friends and we just went to Mexico to like build houses for like the less fortunate. And that was fun too. Like.

Branden Sewell (01:14:40.986)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:14:54.083)
Yeah, that's awesome. So you did that with Corey.

Joe - Taskpro (01:14:56.267)
Yeah, I did that with Corey. That was amazing. Yeah, but yeah, you're in Florida. I'm in Canada. I'm sure like your listeners can find a B &I somewhere. Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:14:57.989)
That's awesome.

Branden Sewell (01:15:05.169)
there's BNI's everywhere. mean, honestly, like if I could join more BNI's, will. So, yeah, like at one site, what?

Joe - Taskpro (01:15:12.421)
man, you know what I'm gonna try to do? Because B &I is everywhere. I'm gonna schedule my vacation in a way that I set up a B &I in person or whatever. So like, if I'm gonna go Hawaii, I'm just gonna sign it up to like Hawaii. You know, I'm learning from other business owners. It's like an expense,

Branden Sewell (01:15:26.468)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:15:33.987)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, we just had a guy from Brazil in our BNI last Friday. So he was like, yeah, I'm here on vacation. And I decided I was going to stop in this BNI. So and we've had guy like we've had someone from Israel stop in. You know, there's been people from different countries that they're like visiting the US and they come to our BNI meeting. So I mean, yeah, that's that's huge. I mean, you can

Joe - Taskpro (01:15:41.537)
Mm.

Branden Sewell (01:16:03.361)
that our BNI is actually about to set up a cruise where it's BNI's from all over Florida going on a BNI cruise together. And so it'll literally just be like three days of networking with business owners all over Florida. So

Joe - Taskpro (01:16:18.807)
We need to step out our game up in here in Canada.

Branden Sewell (01:16:21.603)
Yeah, right. It's a but yeah, I mean, I think that you get what you put out it too. So like, if you go into it, and you have a very like, negative attitude about BNI, like, you're not going to get much out of it. But if you go in, and you go in with the mindset of like, really investing your time and really trying to build relationships and, and, you know, being committed to it for at least some extents.

extended amount of time, then it'll pay off. And that was actually one of the big selling points for me in joining BNI is like I went and then you know, they have like the the people who like follow up with visitors, you know, and like tell them about BNI and how to join and like the three people who I was talking to, like one had been in there for like 13 years. Another had been in there for like almost 20.

I was like, you've been in this BNI like almost as long as I've been alive. so that was a big selling point to me because I was like, okay, if you've been doing this that long, there's obviously something that's working for you. Right? Because if it wasn't working, you probably wouldn't do it. So anyway, yeah, I'm a huge advocate for doing BNI and just any type of networking.

Joe - Taskpro (01:17:23.341)
Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (01:17:34.071)
Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (01:17:41.134)
Yeah, same here. Same here. It was no-brainer for me when I first joined. I don't think I ran into one BNI person that would disagree. It does seem a little culty, but it's in a very good way for your business. Yeah, it's great.

Branden Sewell (01:17:46.49)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:17:53.317)
Yeah, no, it's great. It's great. And I think too, like the other point of this is like, once you free up your time as a business owner, you can really double down on those kind of efforts, right? So like, that's what I spend my time trying to build community, build relationships and build referral partners. And, you know, so we're, that's what we're trying to double down on. So.

Joe - Taskpro (01:18:12.887)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe - Taskpro (01:18:18.347)
Yeah, for example, for the BNI, like right before our podcast here, I actually just came back from a restaurant with a BNI member and he's in film, I'm in handyman, plumbing, whatever, right? So we got to talking and he's actually the council president of his property. So he's just like, you know what? Let me put you in touch with the property manager. And now boom, I opened up the door for like 100 plus units. Yeah, invaluable.

Branden Sewell (01:18:25.301)
Okay. Right.

Branden Sewell (01:18:31.45)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:18:44.099)
Yeah, that's awesome. Yep, those connections are, they definitely are invaluable. Well, I'm gonna bring this to a close. Thank you for being so generous with your time and the information that you shared. And I think that a lot of people will get a lot of valuable information out of this. I usually just open up the floor at the end for you to share any, maybe a last thought with the listeners to close it out.

Joe - Taskpro (01:18:55.543)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (01:19:14.041)
you kind of just let you share. Maybe there's something that you were wanting to talk about that you didn't have a chance to. Just whatever you would like to share with them.

Joe - Taskpro (01:19:23.455)
Okay, so what I like to share is don't be afraid to try new software, try new things. And this is for me in the beginning, like I'm a great trades person. I learned how to do sales, but I have no idea how to run a trades business. So don't be afraid to seek out help for coaching group.

Although they may seem expensive, but in the long run, can't say enough. Like everything that could has happened from my business. I was lost. I was shooting the dark with no direction. But now I have a purpose and direction and I joined a trade coaching group for a year and a half. And my wife thought it was a scam in the beginning because it's online.

Branden Sewell (01:20:11.919)
Mm-hmm.

Joe - Taskpro (01:20:12.863)
Looking back on it now, we bought a place, the company has grown, the revenue has jumped up like over the double. Like this is all within a year and a half, we bought more trucks, we're looking at warehousing, which is insane to think about now reflecting back with my wife like almost every other month. It's like, wow, everything stemmed from that one decision of seeking out help from people who knows how to run this, right?

Branden Sewell (01:20:26.319)
Yeah, that's good.

Joe - Taskpro (01:20:41.337)
We didn't go to business school, so, right? We gotta learn how to run a business and there's no better way of just learning it from people who are actually helping other trades owners.

Branden Sewell (01:20:43.173)
Right.

Branden Sewell (01:20:52.249)
Yeah, that's really good. you know, just to kind of close this out and to echo what you're saying is I've been a part of multiple coaching programs. So I'm a huge advocate for coaching. And I think that it's 100 % necessary as a business owner. And I think my perspective on it is you should always have a mentor or coach. It doesn't matter what level you get to. So

Even if you know because if you talk to really successful people even someone who has like let's say a multi-million dollar company I guarantee you they still have a coach or a mentor that's on another level that is further than they are because they want to get to that next level and so I think for any business owner who has any aspiration of of growing and continuing to get better you always need to have a coach and sometimes.

in certain seasons you might have a coach for something and your needs change and you switch up who your coach or your mentor is. That's what happened to me. But I would say you always need to be looking to have a coach or a mentor in some way. And so anyway, I'll close it out by saying thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Off the Ladder Podcast. And if you are watching this on YouTube, please like this video, comment on it, share your feedback.

Joe - Taskpro (01:22:02.411)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (01:22:16.673)
Share it with somebody else and subscribe to the channel so that you can get other Episodes as they come out and other short form content that we're putting out constantly and then if you are listening on any major podcast platform Whether that's Apple Spotify or anything else, please rate and review the show so that we can get in front of more people And if you need any resources a lot of things that Joe and I talked about today

I've got some links in the show notes. So if you need jobber, nice job, call rail, anything like that, I do get credit if you sign up through me. But all of those are in the show notes below to help you out and help you grow your home service business. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode and we'll see you next time on the next episode of the Off the Ladder Podcast.