The Site Shed
The Site Shed is a tradie podcast designed to assist and educate trade based business owners around the globe with business related topics and current affairs.
The podcast is targeted to tradespeople and contractors like plumbers, builders, electricians, tilers, roofers, locksmiths, landscape gardeners & horticulturalists, printers, chefs, hairdressers, however it is a small business podcast so it also suits anyone that is in business.
Facilitated by former plumber Matt Jones, this podcast addresses topics related to the trades, such as; apprenticeships, technology, business tools, web, digital, cloud, content creation, SEO, marketing, as well as regular guest appearances from co-host specialists, successful case studies, good and bad experiences and lot's of do's and don't that have been learned through the school of hard knocks.
Matt's unique approach to communicating relevant topics is both refreshing and enjoyable. His experience as a plumber of 12 years, combined with his knowledge of the digital and business space as the owner of Tradie Web Guys, a company that helps tradespeople and contractors grow their online presence, you're sure to transform your earbuds, into a university.
The Site Shed
The FEW Numbers that make ALL the Difference | ft. Ellen Rohr | Ep.436
💰 Are you charging enough in your trade business? If you’re in plumbing, electrical, HVAC, or any other trade, knowing your numbers is the key to success! In this episode, we dive into business finance for trades, pricing for profit, and growing a trade business without the common financial mistakes.
🚀 Special guest Ellen Rohr shares her journey from struggling to thriving, and how understanding key financials transformed her business. Plus, we talk about the Service Titan event in Australia, where top industry experts will share game-changing insights!
#BusinessFinanceForTrades #TradeBusinessSuccess #ServiceTitanAustralia
Watch the video version of this podcast at https://youtu.be/GvJtrOt1Sd4
Discussion Points:
00:00 Episode Highlight
03:38 "Balancing Life and Work Stress"
08:22 Entrepreneurial Journeys in Media & Franchising
12:28 From Zero to Multimillion Success
15:04 Bringing North American Events Overseas
16:50 Simplicity in Ski Instruction Lessons
22:23 Technology Revolutionises Payment Systems
25:16 Share Financial Insights with Team
28:24 Financial Literacy Journey Challenges
32:30 Valuing Essential Trades Work
35:01 Understanding Financial Statements Made Easy
39:08 Optimising Lead Management System
42:39 "Prioritising Efficiency Over Cheapness"
43:20 Streamline Sales Process for Efficiency
46:28 "Improving Sales with Data Insights"
49:53 Simplify Financing Options
Resources:
Let us know what you think! Send us a text.
📢 World of Titans – Sydney, April 3-4 📢
Learn from top trade business experts how to grow, scale, and exit successfully. VIPs get an exclusive HQ tour and a Sydney Harbour cruise.
Register now at https://www.thesiteshed.com!
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hey it's Matt Jones here if you want to check out the video version of this podcast click on the first link in the description your job is to at least know enough to understand sales profits cash the balance sheet and the profit and loss generate them leads we manage the leads with one of our executives so we actually place someone in there to do it cause we know they're not going to and I think for the better part as well like sales today so much is about giving people options and like letting them choose the math isn't complicated for making money and the work is there and the skills are learnable it's really more a matter of do you think you deserve it you think you deserve what a surgeon makes but you go and ride along with them or you'll listen in on the call and you go there was buying signals everywhere you just never stop talking Auntie Ellen welcome back to the Sideshow Podcast hello my friend now for you listeners and viewers that are tuning in um for the more recent episodes you may not be familiar with uh Ellen raw uh Ellen's been on the show a number of times have a guess when the first time you're on the show Ellen do you have it right there I've got it right here I it's not like more than five years ago is it it was may 2,016 how about that yes you were just getting started then I was an early guest I've got a feeling I even interviewed you from a hotel in Toronto I actually I'm 90% sure I did I can't remember very obviously isn't that fun you've grown up look at all the impact you've had right here sorry mine is colored ha ha yeah so and since then you've been on the show a while like 1 two three four five other times uh a couple of times in collaboration with uh Uncle Al Al Levy Uncle Al yup so it's always wonderful having you back on the show and uh absolutely looking forward to this conversation as always so thank you for sharing your wisdom with us once again I love doing this I love having conversations about business and you're one of the smartest guys I know so I always learn something ha ha well I appreciate that I don't know how true it is but um anyway you've had a you've had a few shifts lately and um maybe for the listeners and viewers out there you can give us a bit of a spell as to uh the Ellen roar from the past present and future been now and going the been now and going story well um I grew up in a house where people were not handy my dad wasn't handy I don't come from a trades a background in fact when things went wrong we called people and I just thought a miracle happened I had no idea about any of this cool stuff then I married my husband Hot Rod the plum you might meet Hot Rod he may come to Australia with me um it's kind of like Dolly Parton's husband nobody ever sees Carl Dean Hot Rod is not in my world that often so I'm very excited if he if he joins me so anyway meet a guy named Hot Rod he's a plumber and that's how I get into the trade and what I love about tradespeople is what I love about my husband they're common senseical they know how to get things done in times of crisis they go in while everyone else is running away I love I love hot Rod and I love trades people for all of those reasons so I get married and then that's when I start to learn about things like um keeping good water from bad water and the miracle of plumbing preventing more diseases than doctors will ever cure or electricians who wrangle lightning or HVAC guys who create weather all of this is like so impressive to me because I don't have any of these skills so that's not why you're listening today to learn any technical tips like how to hold a channel channel locks or something that's not me but what happened with me in Hot Rod was hot rods I I've told the story before so I'll be brief but Hot Rods partner um literally worked himself into a stress induced health crisis and at age 33 he died this is Hot Rod's partner in the plumbing business did you know this did I ever tell the story I tell it a lot because um what it really impressed on me is that you can sacrifice your health and your relationships for the business in fact we make those decisions all the time and when this fellow died it was it was really tragic and the last words he said to me were if I don't do it myself it'll never get done and he died and it got done stuff gets done we're we're not we're it's not that we're not important we are but we are replaceable there's always something the sun will come up tomorrow and I think that you know one of the things I like to ground myself in when we do a podcast is just to lighten up let's learn something let's make things better for today but it's not worth punching out over so anyway this what happens next is I end up quitting my real job at the time I was a restaurant manager had a shiny career going and I said to Hot Rod well I'll tell you what I'll count the money I'm a smart chick you turn wrenches we'll get rich and that did not happen instead we don't have my salary we're going into debt so fast we're fighting all the time and it was pretty awful and I imagine that there are some listeners who can relate to that and I was resentful I'm not getting paid at all and I'm you know uh I don't know what I'm doing I'm you know it's just it was terrible but then I found the first of many mentors I've talked about him before his name is Frank Blau he's almost 100 years old our Frank wow and he's still bossing people around god bless him and uh he wrote a column in a magazine now we listen to podcast but once upon a time there was trade magazines and I read this column it was called how much should a contractor charge and I read the article and in the article he says you need to charge more than it costs and I thought well that's not what I Learned in college you have to charge the going rate or what the market will bear and all this other nonsense so I wrote him a letter and I said please help me my husband and I are hating each other we're not making any money I'm a debt up to my eyeballs and then I spent two pages telling Frank Blau why what he wrote in this article is wrong now this is typical cause here's a rich guy sharing how he made himself successful and there's a broke person telling him he's wrong so that's so that's how I started but then you know I took the medicine as Frank said and I started to learn accounting and finance none of which I have a natural affinity for or you know it's not yeah I I mean if I can do it anybody can do it I Learned how to do accounting read a balance sheet profit loss but the most significant thing I did was we raised our prices and is we're going into this call I said like raising prices is kind of always on my mind because it's like the martini of fixing your financials a martini is the shortest distance between two points Matt from where you are to where you wanna be is a martini and price increase is like a martini for your financials so like that's what happened to us so we raise our prices and we started to make more money and I'm like oh this is better like I thought we're gonna go out of business I didn't think anybody pay those prices now this is going back like this is 40 years ago now yeah 1992 when you were 10 what I'm looking at my neck man I'm not I'm not fooling anybody I'm not fooling anybody with my colored hair I suppose that LED you into the journey where you inevitably adopted your alter ego the the Plumber's Wife right yeah and then books and so let's hear a bit about that Segway yeah because um when I when I got I was like being born again or something like how do I not know this how do we not teach this in sixth grade a balance sheet of profit and laws how to put a little budget together how to come up with a selling price like I was like mystified that I'm finally learning this and then looking around and thinking not that many people know it so it sets me off on this crusade of like really finding other plumbers wives or other partners you know mom pop uh sons brothers you know it's a lot of family businesses and they're usually not very good at keeping track of the money so I could relate I'm not being judgy I was just gonna go find my people and help them so I end up writing for the magazine that I met Frankin I start doing internet radio that's what they called it once upon a time now podcast and speaking and teaching and I just became kind of obsessed with this over the years too I had the opportunity to start Benjamin Franklin the Punctual Plumber which is uh now Authority Brands in uh in the United States and Canada and you know hundreds and hundreds of locations and my most recent forays is I started with Uncle Al I started a franchise company called Zoom Drain Franchise and I think we have 55 locations right now and I'm an owner and founder of that organization and I'm working with Service Titan cause I'm a highly energetic person and I like to do adventures and I absolutely love our software so I become a brand ambassador for Service Titan 2 amazing and so that's a hell of a hell of a journey and an exciting exciting exciting new chapter in the book of Ellen Roar and the best is yet to come like I think I've lived a long time and so it's given me some perspective but more than ever I love the trades more than ever I'm just in awe of what we can do when we marry technology and these hard earned skills that trades people have it's not gonna be outsourced it's not gonna be it's not ever gonna go away you know and right now um service companies are pe darlings there's so much wealth that's being created in this in these industries and that makes me very excited for you know all the the years that we were kind of neglected by investors etc so I'm I'm excited about the days we live in and so we're here today to talk about a few of the numbers that make make a difference when it comes to business but before we do and this is kind of a time sensitive comment I suppose which may or may not be relevant by the time you listen to this podcast but if you guys uh do catch this when it comes out uh in April of 2,025 uh we are in January 2,025 right now um there is the first ever um Service Titan event being held out here in Sydney Australia uh we have a absolute cohort of amazing speakers that are coming out for that event uh just wanna touch on that briefly I will say this as well uh guys there will be information available uh through a through a webpage which you can get to from the siteshed.com uh the page isn't actually live yet so I can't give you the direct URL but if you go there it'll be redirected so go go check that out if you're interested yeah I'll let you know I'm I'm the the page should go live any minute so I'm like is it up yet is it up yet it's so we're we're pretty excited about this so the event is called The World of Titans Australia Grow Lead and profit with Service Titan so it'll be sponsored by Service Titan and that's I'm working with Service Titan now and I picked a few of my favorite industry leaders industry experts and thought leaders so you know Tom Howard he's been friend of the show he is the smartest guy I know when it comes to financials to strategic planning growth through acquisition his business is gone from 30 million last year to 130 million in one year through Rockin financial management operations sales marketing and acquisitions and what a story has to tell I love love love Tom and then Keith material will be there Keith Material is the best speaker I know on the planet today and he talks about ethical influence and transformation because your business is a it's a canvas for you to create your best life and an experience with Keith is not to be missed so he'll be part of the lineup Ishmael Valdez do you know him he is such a character I know of him but I've never of him with him however you have introduced me to him and he will be coming on the podcast uh spoiler alert so yeah he he went from zero to 30 million I think in under two years sold this company private equity and then started a manufacturing business and what's cool about Ishmael is he is all about his team his why is all about getting young people into the trades making a company that people want to come work for with and also then recruiting and finding people so that they can understand what great careers we have here Catherine Howard is gonna be speaking Catherine this is her her uh uh intro from prison to profit maker to 130 million in sales now she has had a tough life or she likes to say she got caught when many of us got away with it yeah so she's lived a rough life and has made herself a champion of tradespeople but she has a real understanding of people and her leadership skills and her ability to drive sales at an organization is the best I've ever seen so this is the speaker lineup that's day 2 day 1 is a VIP experience we're gonna go visit our friends Scott and Vicky Irwin at Network Plumbing and do a shop tour look under the hood operation sales marketing financials then Tom Howard and I are going to do an intensive planning and budgeting session we just did one and it was a smash hit and I cannot wait to bring it to Australia and share it with the tradies there and then that evening we're gonna set the stage with the the folks that were inviting um to speak and do uh a Sydney Harbour cruise now that might be something you guys have all done your whole lives but I've never been and I cannot wait to visit your fair country and spend time in Sydney Harbour so it's gonna be really beautiful awesome so that's the the one two punch of the event and yeah we'll get you the information so the idea is to make it a business development and leadership development event and there will be Service Titan is gonna be in the background it's not a presentation of Service Titan so much but just service Titan is a thread that runs through this group that's coming and Service Titan is gonna sponsor the event so if you're 1 2 3 truck company 2 to 3 truck company and plumbing HVAC electrical primarily then this is gonna be a really great event for you awesome solar guys oh yeah sure yeah well anyway we'll definitely put the word on that cause we have that many clients yeah and we're gonna get Matt there I'm trying anyway he's got some conflict but we're gonna get him in the mix ha ha ha I'm trying to take things off the plate so I can get there but I'll definitely be there and we'll see I'm hopefully we can get there for the rest of the rest of the uh the trip um anyhow anyway there'll be more information on that guys as I mentioned if you're interested in the event I really encourage you to do this cause if if any of you had any experience or you've been to any of the events over in North America you'll understand how amazing they actually are and essentially what we're trying to do or what the service Titan uh the power of the certain service Titan vehicle is trying to do is uh bring some of those uh amazing events with a similar magnitude over the the shores over here so if you guys are in Australia or New Zealand then um that's of something interested to you um I can't recommend enough I haven't been do I haven't been to it obviously hasn't happened yet but I can tell you now no this is the first ever yeah and you know um Australians travel and I appreciate that I love to travel and I see Australians everywhere I go and it's no small thing to travel from Australia to someone and so we thought the least we can do is come visit you so that's the that's the hope that it makes it a lot easier for you to uh get in touch with this cool group of industry experts and we're gonna learn from each other yeah great so let's Segway here and jump into um a few of the numbers that make all the difference uh yeah this is your weak spot you've written books on this um this is what as you mentioned before what you'll be uh educating a lot on with Tom in the upcoming event so um yeah I really love to get some insight into this well over the years everything I do has gotten simpler and simpler and simpler do you find that in your life like there's you just cutting stuff out I've small children so they do throw a wrinkle throw a wrinkle into the simplest plans well when it comes to the the financials I think okay so we talked before about I'm a ski instructor I was a ski instructor once upon a time so were you and I remember when I started ski instructing um this really cool guy who'd been on the ski school for a long long time he was skiing with me and he said you're a rookie and your lessons are gonna be pretty good cause you don't know that much and you're gonna focus on the few things that really matter then you're gonna complicate things you're gonna start talking about centrifical forces and angulation and all this stuff because you're interested in it but it will mean nothing to your students and it won't help you ski any better and then you'll realize at some point that most of that's a waste of time and what you really need to do is move your center of gravity down the hill and a lot of those things fall into place and that has been exactly my experience as a skier I'm skiing better than ever now as old as I am and with the financials that financial peace that really became my area of expertise is figuring out you know where the money is how I got there how to make more of it and it started with those conversations with Frank Blau and he taught me how to read a balance sheet and a profit loss figure out your asset from your elbow get the books current accurate and start using that data to make better faster more profitable decisions there are three main KPIs match and there's other subsets but keep an eye on these three main KPIs and things are gonna work out for you so the number one is sales sales have to happen you know if there's two people left on the planet if I'm one of them I'm gonna sell that guy something that's how we're gonna make it through so you've got to be able to sell somebody something now you might not make a great sale you might underprice it but you've got to get started by getting enough half that your company so right from the get go decriminalize sales figure out what it takes to be a good and ethical and communicative salesperson work on your communication skills go to the seminars listen to the podcast practice the words practice with each other but figure out how to sell something because if they're not enough sales at a company it's just anemic you'll never get to the other two KPIs that are so important cause the second one is profit so Frank taught me you gotta charge more than it cost for stuff so whatever your sales are have to be bigger than your expenses so even if you've got one job that you priced really well and you put a good selling price in there if it's only one job it's not enough heft so sales have to get up there and what I found this isn't true for everyone and there's Australian and US dollars to consider here but somewhere around 40 50 maybe 60 thousand dollars a month you're gonna be able to break even maybe you can do it for less but you see what I mean you need some heft there on the top line it's gonna be different uh for for different people but not much so once you get enough a heft in sales then the next focus is profit so can you make good on the promises you made when you made that sale and still end up with some dollars left over mathematically sales minus expenses equals profit that's what we're looking for now if you don't get the profit you're gonna be at a loss sales minus expense is a negative number and if you operated a loss for too long mathematically you run out of money and you're going into debt there's no other option here so the third KPI is cash so sales minus expenses equals profit sales and profit and then cash those are the 3 big KPIs and Matt a company goes out of business when they run out of cash and those the difference between profit and cash so a profit is technically sales minus expenses equals but that profit and that profit will connect with the balance sheet there is a connection between the balance sheet and the profit and loss there's a moment we've done this in our previous um podcast we dug into this so we might wanna remind folks but in the if you make a profit there is a connection to the balance sheet in the equity section that's profit in Quickbooks it's called net income I don't know why why don't they just call it profit it's profit but they call it net income it's like an elbow or 90 just to confuse us so there's net income and that same net income numbers on the balance sheet and because the balance sheet is an equation assets equals liability specificity if you create a profit assets have to go up by an equal amount in other words you have more assets but one of your assets is cash another asset is accounts receivable so one way profit doesn't equal cash is that they haven't paid you for it yet does that make sense I feel like I took the long way around to get there but that can be a difference so we have the profit but it's not in our bank account yet because Mrs Fernwiki hasn't paid us and I think that's one of the evolutions that I've seen and no doubt you have especially in the space of technology like when I went and did my plumbing apprenticeship you know 20+ years ago um it was very much a case of go do the job pull out the carbon copy notebook write the invoice give one copy to the customer give one copy to the lady in the office and then she chases it up for months to maybe get paid whereas I think technology uh today is sort of eliminated that to a large degree and increase that cash margin cause you can go to a job you can do the job you can get paid right there and then there's job done one of my success tips is to quit working for people who don't pay you right quit working for people who don't pay you because we give customers to this day way too much leeway we go back and do another job for him and they haven't paid us for the last one right so take the money now I think you said um earlier that in this equation of selling services lawn care or you know solar electrical HVAC plumbing we do drain cleaning so often the contractor is the one with the short straw the customer gets the service you're going to their house you got this expensive truck and the text and the insurance and all of this and then of course they should pay us right now and technology does make it easier to do but I still to this day no contractors who from a lack of self esteem a lack of awareness of how important it is to get the cash today let the customer off the hook and then the longer that sits on your books as an accounts receivable the less likely it is that you're gonna get the money so see this is how simple this is you know charge more than it cost create a profit take it in cash like let that be the pattern of your business and communicate that to your team here's another here's another thing I've Learned over the years um when I was first figuring out my asset for my elbow and I'm putting a budget together and I'm coming up with a selling price if these are our costs and this is how many billable hours we have we got to charge more I'm raising my prices sphincter tightening moment right as yours and you're talking like it's scary and I'm sharing this information with our service tax it's hot rod and we have three guys and I'm like this is what we have to charge and I showed him this information it's called Open Book Management when you do this I didn't know there was a name for it then I read a book called The Great Game of business by Jack Stack I love Jack Stack to this day so much I just saw him about a month ago and it was a total love fest he's changed my life for the better and other great mentor but overall what he said is that if you share this this newfound knowledge you know what a balance she does what a profit loss is what they tell you how they work how double entry accounting works give your team the basic information as you go um they will fix your company for you they'll it builds trust to tell them the truth and when they figure out we got it more in sales cause we got to cover these expenses including nicer trucks better uniforms good tools you know benefits for you nice place to work a cleaning service all of these things are things your customers gonna pay and as if you engage if you engage your team here gotta have sales we gotta create a profit we have take it in cash because otherwise we can't do these things to make life easy for you and to make our service great for our customers that part of it connecting the dots with your team I tell you in 40 years I don't have a bad story to tell as far as sharing information financial information with your teammates it's been all good and that can be scary that can be scary and I think it's like hanging on to that information and keeping it close to heart is is something that most business owners start off being pretty comfortable and used to but like in the interest of scale would you see you know and we do a lot we do a fair bit with this with businesses that we're working with when we try to take them through growth stages and we're like you people need to understand what the goalpost look like and they need to understand you know where where you're at and where you need to be and you can't hide that information for you can only hide it for so long otherwise they never know if you're on track right so it it it does become relevant at some point hundred percent and then it gameifies it it's like you're just you're just making a game of this and wouldn't it be nice if they if this is the goal and you exceed goal couldn't we share some of the extra this is where you get bonuses from like if you bring them into this game not only were you will your team help you fix the business just for the joy of being part of something that matters of being relevant of having significance in the organization like they'll help and when you do it makes sense then these all kind of build on one another that if you're making more money maybe then you can put bonuses in place but if you don't know the score what can happen is you're giving bonuses and you're not making any money then you're resentful about I'm giving you a bonus but I made less than just like the the financials are such a significant piece I was on a podcast and they said what are the two business skills that if you let rip if you let go of all the others what would the two that you would need to build it back up again being able to sell and keeping score and then you got to get the you got to get marketing and operations and you have to do all that other stuff but sales and scorekeeping because sales will drive profits will get you to cash and then you can live to play another day and it isn't much more complicated than that yeah I think and truthfully like going through the trades myself that was like the area that I had until I started getting in I mean I always want to bury my head in the sand basically cause I was completely just I didn't know anything about it and it sent me back a very long time truthfully because it was just something that I had no idea about and then the other side of that equation was when you went to find to get help in that area I had a string of horrible experiences with financial management teams accountants book heaps and that kind of stuff which again not that I necessarily blame anyone but myself but at the end of the day you don't know what you don't know and here comes a point for all you guys out there you know what you do need to start learning these things yourself in order to get understanding of it and it's on you to do that like no one's gonna come knocking at your door there's a um an ex like Green Beret or something former Green Beret wrote a book called No One's Coming to Save You it comes to the money it is your responsibility so if you really don't want to keep track of the money this idea that um I'll do what I love and the money will follow I have not found to be true I have not found that to be true in my life um but when I'm willing to be a good steward that's the best expression I can think of it's my money it's my stewardship it's gotten a lot easier to make money and to keep track of it but no one really can do it for you and I wish I am I'm dazzled by the amount of negligence and um bad accounting and accountants and financial people are out there I mean yeah you might have to kiss a few frogs to figure it out but you have to be part of it like you can't you couldn't have so much money that you hire this all out and not put yourself at risk cause you you've heard these stories of someone didn't know and then the financial diet like these athletes who make all this money and then they're broke your your job is to at least know enough to understand sales profits cash the balance sheet and the profit and loss and it's a it's a a bit of a journey but the math that you do day to day as a tradesperson is much more complicated than this math the words are weird that's why I wrote my books where did the money go is a skinny book with pictures that teaches you what a balance sheet and a profit losses how much should I charge is just a simple process of adding up your cost of doing business sweetening them up a little bit so you make more and then you know coming up with a little selling price based on those costs simple stuff it's not hard um I think the the issue is that it comes down to what you think you're worth so this is this is something I've been sharing that really hit me the other day there was a young man who came to work with us at Zoom Drain it's like his first day and I'm like hey welcome aboard congratulations and he said you know it's nice guy and I said did you tell your mom that you're working at Zoom Drain and he said yeah I said was she excited that you're gonna be a drain cleaner and he said no I said okay well here's some things to tell your mom that 70% of the world has inadequate sanitation 30% of the world poops on the ground and dies as a result of diseases born of that septic situation you'll be preventing more diseases than doctors will ever cure you're gonna learn a skill here and we're gonna pay you to learn that skill and you can take that skill anywhere in the world they'll never be outsourced you'll always have a job and you can make really great money tell your mom that and this is the kind of stuff that we have to tell our team members pest control that's not a glamorous job but thank god for the pest control guys and gals and the lightning wranglers those who keep electricity you know the internet running or lights on HVAC roofing these are honorable essential trades now to me it's obvious but a lot of times someone who was born to a family of tradespeople or learn the trade somewhere along the line someone told them that they're not gonna wear a tie and work in the Financial District they're gonna wear a patch and it's not gonna be as good as and those are some of the things that I think are the core behind cause the math isn't complicated for making money and the work is there and the skills are learnable it's really more a matter of do you think you deserve it you think you deserve what a surgeon makes or lawyer makes or financial professional and why not and those conversations I think you have to have every day Catherine Howard who's gonna be um at the world of Titans Australia event every day she meets with her team and there's team members in Armenia and in California and wherever she is or several locations across the West Coast she has a huddle every day with the whole team where she tells them how much she loves them she shouts out good behavior great stats wins from the day before a recovery every single day she is loving on her team and reminding them of why they're so important what they do matters and that's that's the relentless work that I think is required to help move the needle once you know the numbers that's good but they get the whole team to buy in requires get them in on the game and loving on them is there ill in in in your experience anyway that you'd recommend people to go and skill up on these on the numbers side of things um I know like in the past and I'm a huge advocate of it like the profit first business model um like that was a huge game changer for us um what are some of the resources that you typically steer people towards so they can get their head around the numbers well I give away the book where did the money go on my website so if you go to ellenroy com and um uh just you know type in that website and then it'll ask you for your name and email address and you can download the book and some people say why don't you have it on audio I get it I listen to a lot of audio books but it's a it's a PDF you can print it up you can read online but there's reports part of the skill set is that you have to look at financial reports and you know they didn't call it this when I was a kid but I'm sure I'm dyslexic I mean I have a hard time with columns and numbers and rows and I don't go from left to right or top to bottom when I'm assessing information so sometimes I'll use a ruler printed up use a ruler or my finger makes sense of those but that book is good and the reason I wrote it is I would have given my right arm for that book somebody just explain what a balance sheet is what's a profit loss how are they connected what do they tell you how do you use them and then what you'll find is that yours are probably messy or you've never done them or you have to end with no shame on this no shame or blame anyone who's smart at this was once not smart at this and so then you do need someone who will go line by line through your financials and you might have to you know like I said kiss a few frogs or get a few resources going so find a business owner with whom you don't compete and this is where going to an event is good so you're someone on the other side of Australia you meet a friend at the convention and you say hey how about if we sit down and we work through some of this together you show me what I've Learned and I'll show you what I've Learned you've Learned you know you share and then maybe someone has a good bookkeeper and you get that person so you're gonna have to travel this path you need a bookkeeper to help you you need a good accountant and you've got to pay attention once a week at least look at those numbers see what's changed see what's better and over the course of a year it could go faster I screwed around I was didn't wanna do it I fussed about it I wanted somebody else to do it and I finally said okay I'll do it and it took me a year you could move faster and figure out your asset from your elbow get those books cleaned up get it rock and right um I will be talking about the 5 steps to become a first rate financial manager at the world of Titans events and we're gonna be doing a workshop with Tom um on putting a budget together so do you go to things like that podcasts are great too I did um I've done a bunch with you so definitely go through the this stuff doesn't change this stuff is ever green our very first podcast mean other than like Yellow Pages versus digital marketing I think that's changed but accounting hasn't changed since the 1400s so that's easy and then podcast have taught me a lot I did a good podcast with Tommy Mellow um on it came out in August and it was about a one page financial report could you get your information on one page sales profits cash there isn't one report and Quickbooks that does that but you could make a little mash up dashboard that shows you those fruit few numbers that really matter yeah awesome hey um I could add on to those few numbers a little bit Tommy Mellow taught me this once you figure out sales profits and cash that means you need to have your balance sheet and your profit loss rock and right and it's a bit of a journey so you're gonna go to the seminars podcast talk to people get a good account and keep going it's like if you were learning to ski or play golf you watch videos you go skiing with good golfers or skiing with good golfers you go golfing with good golfers haha ski with good skiers you um take a lesson you take a group lesson you take a private lesson you don't like that coach you get another coach like if you wanted to get good that's what you do and this is the same thing only not so complicated it's not so hard it won't take you as long there's a couple other numbers that Tommy um likes to track to and he's right these are secondary numbers but this is how this is the next level of information what drives sales profits in cash are leads coming into your company so now this we're gonna talk about in your in your world here so are we getting leads and are we closing those leads how many times have you worked with a company where you're giving them leads and they're not closing them and they're blaming you for not giving them enough well truthfully until the last 12 months where we've even taken that off their plate too that was the case and that was the constraint companies that's why you did it probably that's why we did it cause we're like generating these leads you're not servicing them we know so now we have a system where we deploy the technology of the business we generate them leads we manage the leads with one of our executives so we actually place someone in there to do it cause we know they're not going to and truthfully as you would know that I mean perhaps not so much in the reactive space but certainly in the project world the qualification period is very time consuming to four leads and it can take you know weeks months years even if it's big projects and so the time best spent for both our clients we know and even um and the time best spent for them is out on site actually doing the site visits not triaging leads and qualifying so we just do all of that now that's been a game changer cause you can oh well what a great way to respond to that because that is it isn't a lead problem it is a closing problem so you just took that on I love that about you 100% so good game changer love that okay so the number of leads in and then do we close those leads can we qualify and close those leads are they gonna be on the on the schedule and then the two other statistics that I would look at are the couple more statistics when it comes to the service tech are they getting a sale your clothes rate in service should be so high they don't wanna shop around they don't wanna call eight guys they don't wanna get 10 bills they want you to be the guy yeah just like please be the guy please show up clean sober on time dressed right use a checklist I don't wanna call all these other people so your clothes rate should be high 80% or better 90% or better with service and maybe 50 60% for um remodeling or jobs that they might you know wanna think about a little bit more but overall they really don't wanna keep shopping they want you to be the one so we wanna check their clothes rate and their average ticket and their average ticket will show us are they offering the nice stuff um the other day I told you I was gonna tell a carpet cleaner I called a carpet cleaner they did a great job I tell you this is how I like to I have a carpet cleaner and a window washer now I don't know the name of their companies but they text me and say hey it's time to get your carpets cleaned and I'm like okay and they come over same with the window cleaners how nice I didn't I didn't sign a VIP club I didn't I don't know where I don't even know how I met him they just show up and they tell me I'm a VIP and it feels great but they just text me and come how good is that like don't make it hard so the carpet cleaner shows up and it's this nice young man and I said okay I'm busy I want you to sell me everything do you have like spot and deodorizer I have dogs do you have um like the good stuff I want the good stuff on all my carpets and he says to me well you might not need the spot cleaner well I think I do but okay all right and then as it turned out he'd spot treated some stuff but like why not just go like anything to you see you got the green light and then he said um well if we did this and this part we could count it as one room instead of two rooms I didn't care I was busy I didn't want to have any more conversation I just wanted it all done and it reminds me that like we have to be careful that my primary concern was not how cheap can I get this job done it's like I gotta go get on a podcast with Matt Jones no it didn't happen that way but you know I had to go and I just wanted it done and he was wasting my time with these little decisions that I thought I'd already made this is making sense so like he's he didn't want to sell me in something I didn't either want which was great but that wasn't the most important thing to me because he doesn't really have good communication skills and they missed that when they sent them out on the job and here's a supporting observation that we've made in like similar not the same but similar in relation to again sales process the old model which is so ingrained in like habitually the way that we expect services to be delivered in the sense of uh come out to the job measure up give me a quote or don't give me a quote measure up go back to your office send a quote through the next couple of days and then let it sit in our inbox and then maybe follow it up but most likely don't like that yeah just is so conducive to time wasting across everybody's uh every every stakeholder in that process and so like now with like as part what we really try and do with our clients is we just remove some of those friction points cause we realise like if people are coming out they're already if if it's a project again so so they're coming out you gotta do a solar inspection or whatever it might be or bathroom kitchen inspection whatever it might be right like people are already giving you like allocating time within their calendar out of their busy day perhaps taking time off work so they can do that like you you have like this responsibility obligation and truth truthfully this opportunity to streamline that entire process by just getting it done while you're there for some that old mindset is so just done and dusted and people just don't have the time and the energy for it and the conversions that we see we just be able to help our clients improve their process so that they're out there they're doing it they give them the quote they accept the quote they take a payment they schedule the job and then the job's locked in people don't have time to go shopping like they just wanna fuck you say just get it done just give me the price give me the opportunity to schedule it in so I know when it's gonna happen so I can plan it done and conversions just go through the roof from this simple concept like it doesn't have to be complicated doesn't have to be in your right here like you said now we gotta bring the truck back we gotta do schedule it again so much like let's make it easy to buy from us um another another uh I've got I just got a fun I want to tell you the Weed Wacker story do we have time for that can I tell you this again like it it's just getting simpler and simpler when I go on ride along I mean we have a service time we have this new feature called Sales Pro and it listens to the call in the field so you know how you can listen to the calltaker and you can use AI to understand inflection and where the call might have gone south and we do this at you know with the software but now with Sales Pro on the service technician's tablet is the ability to record the call the audio in the home and you might say Mrs Fernwicky for your safety and for quality assurance I'm gonna record the call with my tablet so I have your blessing to do that your permission to do that I'd say yes sure that sounds like a safe thing to do let's do it and um the AI can tell us they got Titan Intelligence can tell us at what point the conversation got cooler you know there's a lot of data with all these customers and there's some machine learning etcetera and you can learn what's happening um on the call and then use that to help coach your team it's really cool in addition to that what if you got in the truck road shotgun and watched him now you can't do that with every call that's why the sales pro is so terrific occasionally though so just make a friend with your service technicians go out and watch them interact with customers cause they may come back and say oh they were just shopping for price but you go and ride along with them or you'll listen in on the call and you go this what there was buying signals everywhere you just never stop talking like you you start to see what the the real issues should be and the sales process I keep thinking it's the guys who don't talk a lot in fact there's evidence that the more you don't talk and you're listening and you're quiet the higher your conversions are so the other day I went to like a local farm and garden store and I was gonna go get a weed wacker this was in the fall I was gonna get a weed wacker it's in September and I walk into like Bob's Lawn and garden and there's one weed wacker is that what you call him in Australia or trimmer yeah um I can't wiggle yeah I don't you mean you've called people to do this whipper snippers whipper snippers so I want a whipper snipper okay so I point to the one whipper snipper that's up there and I say how much is that one and he says it's $450 and usually I don't haggle but I got to thinking that's more than I thought it would be but again why would I know how much a whipper snipper is I don't shop for them I have no idea what they are but I thought that's a lot huh so I said to him end of season you only have one left I'll give you 400 for that whipper snipper and he says no now I know sale so I shut up I don't know if he knew what he was doing or not but he didn't say anything and the two of us are just in dead silence for like five minutes and then I say okay I'll take it
I paid him 4:50 and you know what I felt very good about that purchase because the guy
it's 4:50 this is how much you know there was no apology there was no he could have maybe sold me on some features and benefits he didn't but he didn't move off his price and I thought if he had said yes to 400 I probably would have thought
would you have taken 3:50 yeah you know but as it stood like I felt good about him I felt good about me I got me a whipper snipper and off I went so he did not complicate he just said no now there are other ways that might not always work but it was a good reminder that you know what sometimes no this is the price Mrs Fernwiki would you like me to get started is an appropriate response mm hmm yeah and I think for the better part as well like the sales today so much is about giving people options and make letting them choose yeah that's what the whole flat rate model is so so good because you're not forcing anyone you just providing options and let them choose the one that best suits oh here's here's another good tip anymore um financing uh especially if you're selling higher ticket items make it so easy you know have those options available be able to get them approved on the job boy that makes a big difference just makes it easier for customers to say yes yep take all the credit cards don't say we're not gonna take American Express cause they it doesn't matter take them all get financing lined up have a tier 1 tier 2 so that if they they have options and they can say yes today to your point let's get it off their list and let's get let's get making it better yeah I love it Ellen thank you so much for your time today I know you've got to jump in an Uber shortly um I do I love you I'm so excited we're gonna see each other in person absolutely and um yeah for you guys out there there will be more information coming in relation to the upcoming event uh world of Titans Australia first ever uh in Sydney uh so head across the siteshed.com and there'll be information on that yep yep 3rd and 4th of Australia of April first week Thursday Friday and we're gonna be putting on a great event and I'm so excited yet that hopefully you'll be there I'll catch you that week for sure and thank you for turning folks on to this event and for having me on your show I love you so it's always a pleasure Ellen and we'll look forward to chatting you again shortly thank you
