27 - I Tripled My Revenue. Then My Business Collapsed | Derek Isaac

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Hello, everyone. I am Alan Langer, and that is Derek Isaac, and we are at the Selling in the Dwelling podcast, the go-to podcast for the in-home sales, remodeling world, general contracting world. Anyone that's working on homes, this is the podcast to be listening to. And I'm excited to bring Derek on in a few minutes because Derek has uh we're going to get into the systems and how to make a great company run even better today. But before we get there, just two quick things. Uh the website is sellinginthedwelling.com, as everyone knows, but I bring it up because I want you to click on the Ask Alan button and send me a question. If we read your question on the air in the next episode, you will get a free selling in the dwelling t-shirt. And also don't forget to visit my title sponsor, Paradigm Vendo, for the best in-home selling software you're going to find in the industry. Well, let's get going. Derek Isaac from Rapid Result Creators. Welcome to the show, my friend. How are you? Thanks, Alan.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Doing great. Looking forward to being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah, I'm really glad you're here. And I think I found you online because you you you do post a bit and you uh and then I discovered that you have almost 4,000 followers on YouTube and you have over almost 400 videos on YouTube, which is awesome because I love when creators share information and you're and everything you put up is you're just sharing information. You're not really selling anything. But when you do that, people want to work with you because you're helping them to at the very beginning. So tell us a little bit about you've been in the industry for 20 years. You now have a company called Rapid Results Creators, which when you look on the website, it says systemizing contracting companies so owners can step back and still scale. Tell me what you mean by that and how you got into helping contractors run better businesses.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Yeah, so just to finish off on the you know tagline there from the from the website, I've lived, you know, the different versions of a construction business and career. And what I mean by scaling while still stepping back is I scaled my general contracting company and it fell apart. You know, just you know, pushing sales as hard as you can is not typically the solution to growing a successful business at the end of the day, you know, can feel great, and it's definitely you know super important to have that growth engine. But there needs to be some systems, some processes, some strategy behind the growth to make sure that you haven't just created this monster of a company that is falling apart at the seam. So that that's where we come in. Now, as far as my background goes, I out of high school started on the trades, enjoyed working outside, working with my hands, like the environment. I got on a framing crew so we're framing houses and really enjoyed the work. Got good at it, was managing a crew, figured out I could, you know, do my own business and have freedom and you know, lots of money as every new entrepreneur gets into the dream of entrepreneurship and had a good couple of years as a as a subcontractor, framer, grew a business. It was good, but I I kind of saw it plateau and knew I wanted to continue to grow the business. So I moved into general contracting. We did renovations, some home building, and then eventually a bit of real estate investing with you know some flips and all those good things that contractors find themselves in. Had some great ups, some great downs. We we tripled our revenue in one year, grew the business really well, had a great reputation, did fantastic work, but it was unmanageable. I learned what I didn't know essentially through scaling. And, you know, I did have some coaches and help along the way and always, you know, reading tons of books and things like that. But ended up having to close my business. And long story short, cash shortfalls, didn't manage my finances properly, didn't know how to maybe lead a larger team, and saw the big gap, I guess, between running a smaller business to scaling up and having a team and just the wherewithal to put structure, systems, people in place in a way that makes sense and doesn't create, you know, this trap or this jail for the business owner that we call the contract a trap, where you've you've grown this business, but without you, it it doesn't run. You're you're stuck. Every day you wake up feeling overwhelmed, stressed, overworked, and you're the only reason that this company is existing essentially, and and everyone needs to get on a call with you or send you an email to figure anything out.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Yeah, exactly. It's I say it all the time with especially with the smaller companies. And when I say small, I mean you you can have a 10, 15, 20 million dollar contracting company and you and you the owner is still working 90 hours a week and always on the phone and you know, taking calls at dinner with their family and all that kind of stuff that that you go through. So so you so you actually went through, you know, you had the ups and then you had the downs and you had you had to close your business. And then what did you do to realize, all right, this is how it needs to go. This is how I build systems. What would what was your did you have any aha moments along the way?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah, definitely. So throughout my my business that I was running, I was constantly in like mastermind groups and I had started coaching some local entrepreneurs around me. And that's where I realized like how much knowledge I'd gained and how different I would do things if I started over from scratch, and realized how fast I could enable some of these newer entrepreneurs who were in their first, two, second, third year of business, and just the the amount of like learning curve that I could I could um help them with. So I got into coaching more and more, and then I realized that a big deficiency in the construction world, especially for the contractors in the five, 10, you know, million range is systems processes. As you mentioned, growing the business can happen, but the business owner is still, it doesn't really matter if it's 5, 10, 15, 20. They're still working the same amount. If if anything, the stakes are larger now because there's more money running through the business, there's more people involved. And it's it's very easy to get in that that cycle of, oh, I just need to scale up or we need to change this or whatever. Without the systems, the processes, the accountability, the people in place. So I realized that was a deficiency, and that's what our our wrap result creators coaching program is about. We're not you know big on mindset. We're we're big on systems, processes, get the right software in place, get the right process in place. How can we create training to delegate tasks? How can we build that organization chart where the owner's not, you know, stuck in the middle, but they're actually being supported and supporting uh the team around them so they can realize some of that freedom and profitability that uh they got into business for the first place.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah, and I and I'm sure like you meet people who they just don't know what they don't know. They think they're doing a good job, but they don't realize that they could add these two systems in place, and now all of a sudden they just picked up eight hours of the week that was, you know, they they don't need to, you know, do it themselves anymore. So I I think it's it's fascinating and it's it's definitely needed, especially in in this industry. But here's here's something I always wondered. Everyone is always talking about scaling, making more money, getting bigger. You think that's always smart? Or do you ever meet a contractor who you say, you know what, I think you're you're good where you are, you don't really need to scale, or do you ever you ever run into someone that you don't think scaling is smart to do?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yes, definitely. So this is one of those questions. It's a strategy question essentially with the contractor. And there's kind of the trade-offs of, you know, you've got a good business, we can scale you up to whatever, let's say five million. And at that point, you can have a project manager, probably have a salesman, maybe, you know, two, you've got an estimator, you can probably build a team around you, but you're gonna have a larger business. It's gonna take you multiple years and it's gonna stretch yourself and there may be some hard work in the meantime. Or you stay smaller, maybe the one, two million, you get still project manager, whoever, you're probably still putting in 20, 30 hours a week into the business to keep things running. You still have probably conversations with clients and things like that, but it's manageable. We can put the pricing in a way that you're gonna be still highly profitable. You live a good lifestyle, you've got a business, you probably sell it uh later on as long as you can, you know, delegate enough and not work too hard in it. And and some contractors, they're good with that. They don't want to be leading a 20, 30, 40 person team. They want, you know, to have a crew or two, maybe a manager, and run the business that that is easier to manage in in that sense. So there are those those questions, but then you have guys that are like, I want to grow a $20 million business, and that's great. So knowing that ahead of time, we can figure out the strategy and know you know which systems processes, what's the timeline like, and kind of work work backwards essentially what the steps need to be to get the the contractor to where they need to be. So oftentimes with the right sales, lead gen, the marketing machine and branding, the amount of money the contractor is making, they don't necessarily need to double their business. They just need to get more profitable. And I think that's also a bit of a disconnect for a lot of business owners, is realizing, like, again, we'll use a five million example. Going from five to ten million, you can probably say go from five to six, and depending on your margins and your sales and your offering, your branding, and make just as much money at either one of those revenue levels. So revenue does not equate to how much money or how comfortable your lifestyle is at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Right, right, right. So do you deal with when when you said branding and and marketing and all, do you do you help contractors with that, or do you have like, you know, uh partner companies that you send them to to help with their because I I've had quite a few branding and marketing people on the show already. And and it's true, like going back to you don't know what you don't know, a lot of these contractors don't know how to brand, how to market. They hire 15 different people to do to do all these different things and they and they're they're just running around like crazy. Do you help with that, or how do you handle someone who says, I need help with everything?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

So we we do assist with it. Our focus is always on the assets of the company, if you will, the processes and the documentation behind it. We do a marketing check, it's about a 60-point marketing check, branding marketing that we do with every new client because we want to make sure at least the bases are covered. We're not a marketing agency, we're not gonna run your social media, we're not gonna set up your ads for you, we're not gonna change your logo. But we will tell you, hey, your logo looks like it's from the 80s, or uh it's hard to looks like everyone else's logo. So we'll point you in the right direction, and you don't necessarily always need a marketing agency or spend a ton of money, but there's a lot of low-hanging fruit often, like having proper call to actions on your website or having a contact form that you know has the right information that's linked with your CRM system. We, you know, we use Go High Level uh CRM and we provide that software to our clients because we know a lot of them are missing a good CRM system. So there's there's things that we help and assist with, and we help set up that system. So as much of it can be automated and documented, and they can then hand that off to like an internal office manager or marketing assistant. And for those companies where it makes sense, we similar to yourself, I'm sure, have a handful of good marketing companies, branding agencies that that we would suggest essentially, depending on fit, that would help them with if they just want to like, you know, hand it off to someone else, you know, make the phone ring, run my ads for me, check my analytics, all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

I'll I'll tell you a quick funny story. I I I got a call a couple years ago from a contractor up in Massachusetts. I'm in Rhode Island, and uh I actually met them at a home show. They called me later, and they were they were husband and wife, probably in their mid 40s, and they had a $10 million a year company. They had five sales reps, uh great reputation, great branding. So we sat down and he wanted to talk about sales coaching. And I asked him, at some point, I said, What CRM do you use? And he said, What's that? Well, like what is a CRM? And I said, Well, you where do you put all your you've been in? They were they've been in business for uh, I don't know, 15 years or so. They had 15,000 clients, something crazy, like a big number. I said, Where do you put your customers? Oh, they're in an Excel spreadsheet on Mary's computer. So they're all 15,000 were in one Excel spreadsheet, not on the cloud, on the computer's hard drive. Wow. And they're a $10 million year company. It's like, wow. And I wonder how many like that are out there. You could probably answer that question. You you you see it all the time. Are you are you running into companies that kind of are stuck with that type of archaic systems?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, 100%. It it is uh always you know surprising, depending on the the age of the company. Often the longer they've been in business, the more of those you know, antiquated kind of systems are there that they they work, they've always worked. It's the way that they do it and function till now. But they because they've got a hundred, you know, 101 things to do in any given hour of the day, getting a you know, CRM system is not top of the list. Um so so yeah, it it definitely does come up. And that's where talking with someone or having someone who knows what's happening can save so much time, make things so much easier. That's one of the reasons we use our the CRM that we do, is because we can have all of our automations built into it. There's there's a lot of great tech nowadays. You know, everyone's on this this AI bandwagon and it's you know it's not going anywhere, but but uh up it essentially with with more and more of it. But there are lots of tech solutions nowadays that can make running a business a lot easier. And they just need to be be implemented essentially.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Right. And it's funny because because when she said that or he said that, I got scared for them. I'm like, you know what? Let's stop right now. Let's give you a let's start a Google Drive for you right now and let's move that into the Google Drive, please, because I'm afraid you're gonna lose it as we're sitting here. It's just like it was it was it was crazy.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

So anyway, the value of a contact just like that is is millions, I'm sure, like to have all those those contacts and past clients.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Oh, and and they had multiple products and and they never cross-promoted, like they did a roof on a house, but never let them know they do windows and doors and siding. So anyway, yeah, it was a whole thing. But anyway, I'm curious now. So let's say I'm a contractor and I come to you. Um I'm assuming most contractors contact you because they want to scale. Would that be the number one reason they want to get bigger or or they want to stay the same, but they need help with systems? Is it a combination of the two?

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yes, combination. Typically it they they want systems, they want some processes. Whether that is just to have a more manageable, profitable business, or whether that's to scale up depends on on the contractor. Um, but they they see that the I call it the foundation of the business needs to have the systems, the processes, the operation side of thing. The people component is and team building leadership, very essential to a growing business. But I for me, the first step is we we need to get a process and system in place to enable and support the people to help grow the business.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Okay, so I come to you. I'm um big Al's roofing, and I wanna I do five million a year, and I'm like, Derek, I want to get to $10 million a year. What are the now you're gonna do a discovery on me, you're gonna obviously vet me as a client. What are the top three or what are the first three questions you're asking me before you even consider working with me?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

So what I'm usually most interested in is, I mean, we want to get a picture of the business. So what systems are you using? What is your personnel look like? So we need to have a financial discussion as far as what are the finances at, then personnel company the system, so we get that clear picture. Then we need to know where you want to go. So do you know where you're at? Where do you want to go? You know, we want to go from five to 10 million. Great. How many hours do you work in the business? Well, I'm working 50 hours a week. Okay, so if you go to 10 million, can you work 100 hours a week? Well, no. So we need to get, you know, before we we really, you know, push the gas pedal here, we need to get system process in place. You know, what's taking up the most of your time? Is it you know estimating? Is it talking to clients? Is it just general admin stuff, day to day? So we go through that full discovery call and then we'll lay out the priorities that are are key to us. So we want to know the overall plan, where you're at, where you want to go, what are the steps? Those steps is is 100% what is what's priority and what's focus. So is it we get you out of the estimating? Is it we we hire a salesperson or another salesperson to get you off of the phones, you know, whatever it may be. So we need to lay out the plan and then we we follow the plan. It's gonna, you know, change as as we go along. Um, but providing really clear operating procedures throughout the business and adding in the the tech piece of what can we automate, what can we streamline, what can we make more efficient. And once we build out those structures, that's what we do. Then you can go to 10, you can most likely go to 20. We've built robust concrete systems in your business that you can just repeat and and grow the business. And then from there, it kind of transitions out of the systems into the leadership of the company and and the personnel.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Is this a situation where it's like lead a horse to water kind of thing? Like you're building the systems, but they still have to run the systems properly, right? So I'm I'm assuming you have to train on the systems, and then is it at some point you kick them out of the nest and say, okay, here you go, here's your six systems that we built for you. Yeah. Go run it, or do you like how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Yes. So you've pinpointed a very key transition from building a system to implementing a system. And this is where a lot of contractors get stuck. They've, you know, I've tried this new software, I've tried, I've built, we've got a folder full of SOPs that nobody cares about and nobody reads. So there's a big distinction between building the system, which is usually pretty quick. Like we've got business in a box, if you will. We've got all the SOPs, checklists, spreadsheets, whatever, you know, you could possibly need to document and run a general contracting business. But putting it into practice and training the people, that's where things go awry and where the slowdown happens. And that's where our coaching comes in. Like we give the resources, we provide all the everything you need. The coaching is specifically for implementation and helping you stay on track. Now we've got different service offerings. So we go do everything from here's all the resources, and then we coach you through it and you you build it out and implement it, to we will build it out, we'll train your people, we're done for you 100% hands-on, you know, in the business as your you know, go-to integrator, if you will. So it'll depend on the size of the business and and how much help the business owner is looking for.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

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SPEAKER_00 23:18

Yeah, the marketplace is getting inundated with new software. It's it's easier than ever to create software, and there's just more options than there ever has been. And I will get this often from clients, especially newer clients, because we have our preferred tech stack and and we like to keep things as simple as possible. But there's always the shiny object syndrome of like this new AI thing that does this and just takes care of it from you. And a lot of that on the outside looks great. It's you know, you got to realize like that's their shiny box marketing on the front page. And I'm sure it will do that. But the implementation is the component where it's gonna make or break of like is this actually how it works? How long is this gonna take our team to implement? And your team also gets software fatigue of like, oh, here's the new flavor of the month of new software that we got to learn or implement or what have you. Uh so there's lots of good stuff out there, but but yeah, keeping it simple is important. For us, the big ones, as you mentioned, like we like to use Google Drive, uh, some sort of cloud sharing file management system. There's other ones that you could be using. A good jobs, job software, project management software uh that manages all the projects, a good CRM. Some people call those the same thing, but uh there's a clear distinction for me between project management type software and a marketing sales CRM. And besides that, you've got your accounting, QuickBooks, and then that's really all you need to run a very you know larger and and and profitable construction business. And there may be some one-offs that you that you purchase because it does some specific thing, you know, good that you you enjoy, but more or less, you know, four or five pieces of software is about all you need.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

That's amazing. You just yeah, you just listed just four things, and you said that can help you, you know, that'll those four things will help you run a very successful contracting business. I gotta tell you, this I literally signed up for something today. Is what's today? Tuesday. I signed up for something last Thursday online. I saw it. Wow, this is great. Monday, I totally forgot what it was. Not only did I sign up for it, I forgot what it did. And then I started thinking, you know, some of these business owners they buy all kinds of stuff all the time. So I don't know how anybody keeps track of it. So it is pretty frustrating.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

My little uh quick tip of advice is get the monthly plan if you're signing up for a new software. Don't I will have dates so that if you forget about it or you're looking at your credit card statement, like what are all these extra charges? You can, you know, go and cancel it anytime.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Yeah, like what is this? And you got to go look it up because it's a credit card statement. So it never really has the full name of the company. It has like an abbreviation or something. So all right. So what are you seeing out there now in the contracting world? What are you seeing that contractors two-part question, need the most help with, or what are you seeing that contractors have been doing better over time, like getting good at?

SPEAKER_00 26:18

I think the technology software piece is definitely getting better. More contractors are using and up to date with you know current software and realizing like the tech component can save a lot of time. As you know, as we've mentioned here, there's you know, it can be overwhelming or what have you, but I feel like that's definitely turned a corner. It used to be contracting was always lagging uh on the tech side by years, if not decades, compared to you know, some other more forward-looking businesses. So I I think a lot of contractors are realizing that they need good software in their companies and the technology piece. The thing that I think is the struggle, uh, and this is I think is as old as time for contractors, is just the time management and the overwhelm wearing all the hats of the business. And like myself, I think a lot of contractors, one of the reasons is we've typically come up without any prior business schooling, education, knowledge necessarily. So we're used to working with our hands on the tools, very, you know, salt of the earth type. And some of the without realizing the certain structures or way that business is done, understanding financials, there, there's just a lot of kind of missing components that um they don't realize, and and they end up running around super stressed and overwhelmed and hard to to focus. So that's a pretty common issue and concern. And and one thing that where we work very closely with contractors to to help them like define and build out systemized way of like their business and and slowly shaving off, you know, 70 down to 60, down to 50, you know, getting them back to even just a regular 40 hour work week so they have time with their family, and you know, they're not waking up every day in a panic of like knowing that they only got you know 24 hours, but whatever, 48 hours of work to fit in.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Right. And and never take a vacation and all of that, all of that stuff that comes with it.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

So so that's yeah, that's always uh an issue and a concern, and there's any number of of reasons behind that.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

So all right, so I'm gonna I'm gonna play a little uh uh game with you. Let's say I'm running an event, I'm running an event and I'm inviting a hundred contractors to the event, and I want you to come and give and give the keynote, and I want the keynote to be something that's gonna help contractors in their business. That's all I'm gonna say to you. I'm like, okay, Derek, you're gonna do a 45-minute keynote, and I want it to be an actionable keynote. That that being your task or the or the keynote to speak to, what would what are the three things that just popped in your head that you that you know you have to tell these contractors during this keynote?

SPEAKER_00 29:14

For me, the financials of the business and just realizing the business model, where again, usually just kind of jumping into business and it's like this is the industry standard, this is what we do, without knowing what the financials mean. Are your accounts structured properly? Which accounts should you have? What's the difference between cost of goods sold and your overhead or expenses? Actually, knowing your numbers, knowing what your overhead margins are, what your gross margins are, and how that translates into your estimating markupslash margin, what the difference is. So, really demystifying how does it how should the company be running financially? What does my statements mean? How do I take that real information I have about the company and make better estimating decisions and know before I start the project, before I sell the project, if I'm gonna make money on the project and how much money am I gonna make? And what's that gonna mean in my bank account when I'm actually said and done with the project? So I find there's often not a good clarity around that whole company financials to estimating, um, which causes problems. So that would be a big one. And we are a proponent of like profit first, so full profit first money management is an easy way for contractors to make sure that they're at least allocating and being intentional with how the financials of the company are running. So that'd be the first thing. The the other ones depend a little bit on the size of the business. We're always big on marketing and sales, like we want to front load the company with good qualified leads because that's often can cause issues with the rest of the company. And that's where the that's the growth engine of the company. So if a contractor is stressed, like I don't know when my next lead is coming, pipeline's getting thin, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to pay my people, or we're gonna have enough work. I need, you know, they start underselling jobs, and there's this whole like teeter-totter ups and downs and and inconsistency with the business when they don't have a good marketing and sales engine in place. So uh that would be another place to focus. We work with a lot of general contractors, so we have this whole like pre-construction process of like estimating where do you do free estimates, how do you turn that into pre-construction agreement. And so the kind of the sales process and pipeline um and then the marketing to facilitate that, I think is incredibly important for any business, especially if you're scaling, because there's often uh an issue that can come up where you want to scale, you're you're pushing sales, marketing, whatever. All of a sudden you you have this big increase in projects, you hire a bunch of people, now you're busy, you're not, you neglect the marketing and sales, things start to pan out, or seasons change, or economy changes, and now you know, inevitably, or you've got to go through the hard conversations of like, do I lay people off? Do we undersell jobs? Do we just stretch out jobs and then you're losing money? Uh so demand has to be high, and then you know, make sure your production is staying lockstep with demand, that your your production is actually lower than demand so that you can, you know, you're not worried or fussed if you can't sell a job or two or you know, things change. So that'd be second one. Third one would be the whole systems, the delegating process. How do you find the ideal employee? How do you hire the right person, hire people, train them, make sure that you've got um systems in place that they're gonna stay long term, that they're that you know, you have performance reviews and and they feel like they've got a future with the business. Uh, so the the whole hiring and employee management, I think, um, system, so that you can delegate effectively and move towards that, you know, dream situation where you're kind of a high-level CEO, you're checking more on your reports and with with your you know, um senior managers and running the business that way than being involved in in the day-to-day operations.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Yeah. Well, that's three. I mean, obviously, those are those are three amazing ones. And your middle one reminded me, I've I have a very good friend who owns an electrical, commercial electrical contracting company. And I would say at least once a week, I see him, we meet for coffee, whatever. He's like, Oh, I'm good for another two months. He's like, Whew, all right, I got three months in the, you know, coming up. Like, he's just always like, Okay, I've got two months. And it's like, but then there's time, oh crap, I gotta get another job because I'm only good for another three weeks. And and I'm like, dude, man, that's the stress that you must be under. He goes, Yeah, it's it's not easy. So that's where he's always living. Is like, okay, I got three months in coming up. So that's gotta be hard for for for a lot of contractors.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

That's yeah, a huge stress factor there. And that's yeah, with that whole like scaling before strategy thing, that's where you can find yourself is like you just you're always on on the red line of of pushing the business so hard that you know you the ideal situation, it depends if you're you know what kind of contractor you are, but if as long as you've got a couple of months or even, you know, if you're like a home builder, you could have six months, twelve months booked up, and like you're in a good real mental spot at that point where you can not stress about the business. You know you've got sales locked in and you're you just need much better headspace to be managing your business from there.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

And you mentioned the profit first book with Mike McAllowitz. A big, big fan of that. And uh for folks who don't know it, check it out. The premise is pay yourself first. You know, most contractors pay themselves last because they're like, oh, what's left over? I got 16 cents in the bank, and that's for me. No, it's the wrong way to think. You have to pay yourself first, and then you follow his system. And that's that's kind of sounded like that's what you teach in your in your systems as well.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Yeah, it it's a fantastic way to manage your finances. You said like what you said, you you pay yourself first, you're allocating how you think the business should run. So if you want 10% profit or 5% profit, you're setting that aside. And you know, if you want your operating margins to be 70% of the business, then you know you're setting that aside. And then you can very easily see your bank accounts like, oh, I've got no money in this bank account. Well, your you know, your allocations are out and you've got to make adjustments, uh, which is you know normal, I guess, especially during the first phases. But you don't have to read your financial statements to realize something is is not working in your business, essentially. And exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

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SPEAKER_00 37:47

Yeah, fantastic question, Louise. For me, yeah, I kind of need to know your goals for the business to know if like if you're planning on scaling or growing or expanding or what have you. What I mentioned earlier about demand and production, of where you want high demand and you want to make sure your production stays below demand. So you always have an abundance of jobs and leads, is very applicable here. So having more leads than you can handle is a good place to be. Of course, you want to have make sure your client experience or you know your lead experience is good and they're not just being ignored. Either you can adjust your qualifying questions or the your your branding or qualifying so that maybe your salesperson is getting the top 80% and the bottom 20%. I again, I don't know your services, but I would go more like how can we service the the best of the leads and the ones that maybe aren't a good fit or just kind of checking pricing? Maybe they can be facilitated with a quicker call call or have some sort of qualification process in there essentially so that you're not so your salesperson spending less time with the ones who aren't gonna be, you know, great clients for whatever reason and spending more time with the ones that are more likely to lead to you know good cleaning contracts or services or what have you. So I would look to optimize that system to make your salesperson more efficient. Now, if your goal is like we want to double this business in the next year or two, and I know that on that, on that road, I'm gonna need another salesperson, then I would probably still look at how can we make this salesperson more effective. And I would start searching for the next salesperson. And the reason I say that is you don't want to hire out of the place of necessity. So this gives you that roadmap that, hey, in the next six months, I want to hire another salesperson. And that gives you a time frame of like, I'm gonna find the right person. It may not take that long, it might take one or two months or three months, but plan for it and that then you're not in the that position where it's like, I need someone to handle all these leads, I need to hire someone right away, and inevitably you you kind of rush the process. So that that would be my advice for A, you know, taking care of the leads you have, that's a good thing. And then B, if you want to hire another salesperson, if that isn't the plans for the future, you have that time frame to let your current salesperson know, like, hey, you're gonna be really busy for the next three to six months until we can find the right person to help us with these leads. And that also gives you time to realize like, we maybe have leads for one and a half salespeople right now. So in the next three to six months, do we need to invest, you know, maybe extra 50% into marketing or explore some new, you know, lead generation methods or what have you, so that we can increase our lead gen to then afford to bring in uh another salesperson. So those are the kind of questions and and the process that I would be thinking through.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

And that that that's great stuff. And the thing I I would add, I'm not I'm not a um, you know, a systems expert like you, but I do know how salespeople think. And what I would encourage Louise to do, this is how I would answer her question, or at least piggyback on what you said, Derek, is when you're hiring that second person, if your leads are fluctuating, if you don't have 20 leads a week consistently, you have 20 one week and five the next, and that's just the way the marketing works or whatever, make sure you hire a salesperson who's a go-getter, a salesperson that doesn't that it's not sitting around waiting for the leads to come in. That when that person gets five leads in the week, okay, now you want that person to go out and self-generate another five. You want that person to go visit the job that they sold and see if the people are doing a good job cleaning the construction site. Get referrals. That's the mentality. So when you're hiring that second salesperson, don't just hire someone who says they can sell. You want someone who wants to run it almost like their own business. And when they have that kind of mindset, now you'll have a salesperson who, when it is a slow week, doesn't sweat it, like, you know what? I'm gonna go and get my own, I'm gonna get my own business. So that's how I would I would uh add to to the answer for Luis. Fantastic. Good stuff. All right. Well, we are wrapping up uh as we flew through this, Derek. So uh I'm a contractor, I need help. How do I get in touch with you? And and where do I go?

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Definitely. So uh go to our website or Google, put in rapidresultcreators.com, and you can find our website from there. You can book a strategy call. Love to jump on a call with you. We can talk through your business, your goals, your challenges, all you know, all of the above, and um and let you know about our services and programs, see if it's a fit to help you with uh your business. We've got lots of resources on there. We're on all the major social media channels, and yeah, we do a lot of uh good content out there for contractors to grow and systemize their business.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Absolutely. You your YouTube channel is is tremendous. Again, it almost has 400 videos on it, so definitely check that out. And you can find Derek on LinkedIn as well, where I found him, and it's D-E-R-E-K, and Isaac is I-S-A-A-C. So, Derek Isaac, look him up on LinkedIn, go to rapidresultcreators.com, and you can also find that on YouTube for really great stuff for free. He's just giving away a lot of information, but give him a call if you need help. So, Derek, I want to thank you for being here. This has been awesome and helping uh the audience get better with their systems. And I want to thank you, the audience, for listening today on this episode of Selling in the Dwelling. Remember, visit my title sponsor, paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling, for the best software you're gonna find in the industry to sell to homeowners and also visit the website which is sellinginthedwelling.com. That's it for us, folks. Derek, thank you again, and thank you, everyone. We'll see you next time.