When the inimitable Steven Spence joins the conversation, you know you're in for a blend of wisdom and warmth that'll feel like a fireside chat with an old friend. Kicking things off with Keith Overmire's job sales victory thanks to our program, we're proof positive that strategic advice can lead to real-world success. We then coast into tales from the Revolt retreat, sharing how we keep our spirits high and energy matching those of the sprightly entrepreneurs we meet. The episode is peppered with personal nuggets, from the playful to the practical, underscoring the philosophy that work and fun are not mutually exclusive.
Building a team that's more like a family is an art, and this episode paints a picture of how we sculpt a culture of empowerment. We dissect the magic behind our "you decide" philosophy, where employees own their decisions and grow from their experiences. Trust me when I say, the learning curve is real, but so are the breakthroughs! We uncover the growth that sprouts from regular team pow-wows, and how facing challenges head-on can turn potential pitfalls into stepping stones for personal and professional development.
Lastly, it's all about keeping the business ship sailing smoothly through choppy financial seas. Feel the relief with me as I talk about achieving that comfy cushion in the bank, and learn how strategic internal lines of credit and the 'Profit First' approach can keep you from ever hitting the red. Plus, get the scoop on local marketing strategies that make you the talk of the town and the anticipation bubbling over for upcoming episodes with industry mavens like Josie Parks and Mike Claudio. So press play, and let's navigate these waters together!
When the inimitable Steven Spence joins the conversation, you know you're in for a blend of wisdom and warmth that'll feel like a fireside chat with an old friend. Kicking things off with Keith Overmire's job sales victory thanks to our program, we're proof positive that strategic advice can lead to real-world success. We then coast into tales from the Revolt retreat, sharing how we keep our spirits high and energy matching those of the sprightly entrepreneurs we meet. The episode is peppered with personal nuggets, from the playful to the practical, underscoring the philosophy that work and fun are not mutually exclusive.
Building a team that's more like a family is an art, and this episode paints a picture of how we sculpt a culture of empowerment. We dissect the magic behind our "you decide" philosophy, where employees own their decisions and grow from their experiences. Trust me when I say, the learning curve is real, but so are the breakthroughs! We uncover the growth that sprouts from regular team pow-wows, and how facing challenges head-on can turn potential pitfalls into stepping stones for personal and professional development.
Lastly, it's all about keeping the business ship sailing smoothly through choppy financial seas. Feel the relief with me as I talk about achieving that comfy cushion in the bank, and learn how strategic internal lines of credit and the 'Profit First' approach can keep you from ever hitting the red. Plus, get the scoop on local marketing strategies that make you the talk of the town and the anticipation bubbling over for upcoming episodes with industry mavens like Josie Parks and Mike Claudio. So press play, and let's navigate these waters together!
No, no, no and we're live. Welcome back everybody to behind the tool belt, episode 219. Today we have another awesome guest. Stay tuned. We will be back after our short intro from our sponsors. My name is Ty Backer. The name of the podcast is called behind the tool belt. Thank God, this isn't live, or is it? You asshole is going live. We might be here for a while, so buckle down. I have a sneaky suspicion. We are live, are we live. Yeah, live and in studio.
Stephen Spence:Very nervous.
Ty Cobb Backer:Happy Wednesday everybody. Humpe News, february 28th. Mark it on your calendar. Every Wednesday at 12pm Eastern Standard Time. Like love, share, comment, youtube, google, apple, facebook All that good stuff. Today we have another fantastic guest, one of my best friends, one of my favorite people in the whole world. I was just telling him, steven Spence, how grateful I am to have him in my life today along with Vic. I put him in there, right up there with Vic, that I know I could rely on either one of those gentlemen at any given time throughout the course of the day, weekend, holidays, that they would be there for me. So, steven Spence man 100%.
Stephen Spence:I couldn't agree more. Oh yeah, you and the cheers Feel like there should have been like a oh, lovey, lovey sound.
Ty Cobb Backer:There should be like little huggy emojis. I just posted a. I just posted here.
Stephen Spence:I just posted a little huggy emoji. Okay, there you go, keith Overmire. What's up, man? He's one of our customers. Yeah, and you know Keith.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, love him Great to hear I love Keith he's one.
Stephen Spence:He just sent me a Facebook message, like a week ago, that basically said hey, man, we just sold a job. Some customer came in pre-appointment and my wife showed him or her, the customer the prospect project map, it and the dude was loving it. And then I went out to the house and did the appointment and sold it, just like that. He's like thanks for a bad ass program. So I asked Keith if I could post that on my socials. He's like yeah, hell, yeah, of course. So thank you, keith, for that.
Stephen Spence:And then, on top of that, you know how I was just talking to Mike Epiliti, maybe Victor, I don't know, but I was talking to some people in the office. Here. There's these Facebook posts that keep popping up that says you're infringing on copyright, blah, blah, blah. That was you, vic too right, and I took somebody commented in Keith. So Keith, somebody commented that I was infringing the copyright, whatever, and I needed to take it down. So, for whatever reason, I took Keith's picture of his Facebook message down to me from my Facebook page and then, immediately when I took it down, I'm like damn it, I totally like that's a total spam comment. Why did I just do that? So it's on my other socials, keith.
Ty Cobb Backer:That's all good, yeah. Yeah, keith is a good dude. He's a great dude. I met him at a revolt retreat, I think, in Austin, austin, texas, over the winter or summer, summer or months. I believe that was a great, great big shout out to Revolte and Hunter Blue and Diego Dante and the rest of the team over there but met him. He was actually my roommate. Got to know him well, eat lunch, breakfast, dinner with him. You know gory stories, good stuff, laughs, cries, all that good stuff together at that. Because, yeah, because they're not, they're not what everyone, I think thinks they are when you go, when we go to these retreats, it's pretty hardcore. We go to work out like significantly before before we go.
Ty Cobb Backer:Just to kind of stay in in shape to to keep up with everybody. The youngsters, yeah, the youngsters. I didn't want to say that because I'll beat every single one of their asses.
Stephen Spence:But well, if I was there, you wouldn't beat my ass, just so you know.
Ty Cobb Backer:You never know, and I would out, push up Kick your ass in the pillow fight, though, if you're my Dude, I am a very good pillow fighter.
Stephen Spence:Oh yeah, yes, I'm the best. Well, okay, I'll give you that. Yeah, I'll give you that, jan, every night Just to practice.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yep, I do, I keep up on that. Helps you for the remote retreats for my roommate, yeah.
Stephen Spence:Week before you're like hey guys, family, I got a pillow fight every night for at least an hour to get my stamina up so I can hang with all the young guys at the remote retreat 100%.
Ty Cobb Backer:I have to, I have to keep, I gotta hone my skills and my crafts. Man Gotta keep that up. What's?
Stephen Spence:up Diego Dante.
Ty Cobb Backer:Especially in a pool. I am like the. I am the the ninja of water splashing.
Stephen Spence:Oh, I thought you were talking about pillow fighting in a pool. I was wondering where you were going.
Ty Cobb Backer:No, when, when I was thinking of pillow fighting, I'm also like I kick rockets ass pretty good. And Jana, Jana can't stand it when I get in a pool, like something happens to me, like the, the 10 year old version of Ty, comes out and like I'm splashing, jumping, cannonballing and all this crazy, just I love water.
Stephen Spence:You're like Aquaman in the pool, yeah.
Ty Cobb Backer:And Jana and Rocket do not like that. No, they don't like it. When Aquaman yeah, just calm down, yeah Appears. So yeah, I mean good stuff, though Gotta gotta stay agile, gotta keep moving yeah, no, it's true. And gotta have fun, right, like let's have fun. That's one thing that I started to say myself in my prayers in the morning before I come to work is that, you know, let's have fun, let's make this a fun, good day, and I try to. I try to remember that throughout the course of the day. And we talked, I think you and I talked about, I know, glenn or Vic, and Glenn have heard the story where why I changed my signature. Yeah, I talked to you about that, about the energy bus. I read that book, ken. I talked to Ken this morning and Ken just finished the energy bus by John Gordon this morning.
Stephen Spence:So you, I, so everybody. Ty forgets everything and I text him way more than he texts me. You can say this publicly, yeah, but you're at that, it's okay. You know you're not on me, so you know you're bad at it, but but here's the thing. I just finished.
Stephen Spence:I listened to the energy bus on like two workouts. It's only like a two and a half hour read or listen on audible, and you're the one that told me about it. So I bought it right away, cause when Ty speaks I listen and I loved that book. Man, I really liked that book a lot.
Stephen Spence:In fact, I told Pat, one of our new employees. He's been with us for three months now. Great, hard worker, super awesome. Shout out to Pat. I said you got to get the energy bus man. So I think Pat's going to listen to it and I'd like to. I'd like to have the rest of my team just listen to it, because as we're growing, which we are right now we're going to have more employees and I just want to want that energy. I want people to ride our bus, yeah. So if anybody hasn't read or listened to the energy bus, it's a super easy like sixth grade read. Yeah, it takes two and a half hours to listen If you want. If you're more of a listener, like I am, or driving in the car, it is a. If you're a leader of a team, you know. If you're a part of a team, it's definitely the book you chose.
Ty Cobb Backer:Well, and that's the thing. The biggest thing that I got from it is is our job right as CEO's chief energy officers is to create other CEOs within the organization? Are there? Are there chief energy officers? Correct? That's? That's probably the biggest message I got out of it and I, because of it being such a short, easy read, I I read it and listened to it between both four times. I probably listened to it Actually, I probably listened to it three times and and read it like twice, because I was getting more and more out of it?
Stephen Spence:I want to. So I listened to it and usually I I don't like to read I'm going to be very honest with you but I like, I like listening and then having the hard copy or paperback so I can take notes in it, I mark it up and stuff like that. And you just reminded me I, while I was working out I I took a few notes, but I want to read it again and listen to it again. But one one thing I took from it that I really liked was it said, whether you have it or you don't have it, people notice. Whether you have the energy or don't have it, people always notice, people buy and see energy. So you got to have, have and bring that culture to your, to your company to your team.
Ty Cobb Backer:It's big, it's big, it is. Yeah, this is a pretty good topic. I think the hardest the challenge that I face today is is that with our footprint, it's becoming more difficult for me to I feel that to have that impact of that energy. So I'm trying to become more creative in the ways that that I may be able to, to try to do a better job of that, because I don't ever want to lose that. I don't want to be a corporation where, where people become numbers and we're a factory where people are backstabbing each other to try to advance through the ranks and stuff like that. Like I never want to lose that.
Ty Cobb Backer:You know family owned and operated organization. You know I want to create that culture that people want to be a part of. We want to create that organization that other organizations want to be like. That's our biggest, that's, that's probably one of our biggest core values. It doesn't really necessarily spell that out, but if you read our core values like that, that, in a nutshell, is what all of our core values, our company vision statement is, is what I just said.
Stephen Spence:You. I learned a lot from you. Obviously I'm going to probably say that 20 more times on this podcast, but I've learned that about you and I've tried to bring that energy and that positive, that family even though none of us are related to each other and doesn't really matter, we're still family, right, like you're, my brother Vicks my brother. So I've learned a lot about that from you and I just ride really hard to bring that fun into our team and our team we do have fun. We meet once a week online and we always have certain questions. That brings out some, some personal stuff and it's it's funny, man, it's good stuff and you got people you know, ken and and people in Delaware that are bringing that same culture.
Ty Cobb Backer:Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. And I'm I'm my own worst critic. Like, oh, I'm not doing a good enough job to you know, the spread that energy. You know, we, I don't have that reach. I got to go down there and I got to travel more. I got to spend a month there, like that's where my head is right now, like we're already trying to figure out how can I spend a month down in South Carolina. Yeah, I told you, I might visit you during that month?
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, so you know. And then how can I spend more time at the beach this summer? God damn it, I'm gonna have to spend more time at the beach, but you know. But yeah, we're trying to figure that out. You know, schedule it and that's why that's one of the reasons why we did that's.
Ty Cobb Backer:Traveling this year with behind the tool belt was is to work and focus on, you know, our vehicle that has taken us all these other places is to be more intentional when I'm home and I even said this to Lauren and, of course, my family. But, lauren, because there, when we were traveling last winter, we would come home for like I don't know, like two, three days, sometimes maybe a full seven day week, I wasn't present, even though I was here, but but I wasn't present Like I was preparing for the next travel event trip. What do we want to change on the podcast? What lights, what TVs, what monitors? We want to bigger, better. You know, we want to have an impact on our industry in a quick, short amount of time as possible.
Ty Cobb Backer:When we're at these events for two, sometimes three days, we're trying to bring the heat right, like we want. We want to post a good show. We want good, good viewership, we want to have an impact, we want what we're saying, you know, and we're thinking and it's not as easy as what everybody thought it was because in that madness we're trying to find rest so we can function and participate at the highest level possible, you know. But when you're talking to I don't know how many interviews we did and it's kind of unfair to us that that we only limited ourselves to 219 episodes, because we all know we never counted any of those episodes, that that we hosted or posted at any of these events. And I'm not saying that to kind of tug on Vixigo or mine is what I really meant to say, but I'm saying that because of the work.
Stephen Spence:Did the traveling set you up to be able to kind of focus and stay home and open up some other opportunities?
Ty Cobb Backer:for you. I love that you asked that question because it really had a lot of the dreams and aspirations that we had to take to take behind a tool belt on tour took a minute to come to fruition, and what one of those things was was obviously personal brand. Yeah, so not just professional brand, but but a personal brand. Hey, who's Ty Cobb? Right, Ty TC backer, you know, and get behind the tool belt. So it was a professional behind the tool belt and a personal brand.
Ty Cobb Backer:So now what is happening is is the events that we did attend this year were ones that we were asked to come back and speak at right this year, Right? So that was one reason to why we didn't go to as many. But if they asked us and said, hey, we want you to participate, whether it's a breakout, it's a panel, whatever we were like, well, we can't say no, because then everything the sweat, blood and tears, energy resources that we did the year previous would go to waste. And we got to hit it when, when the iron's hot Correct. You know what I mean. So that's that's why, you know, Eric go reached out, asked me to I saw that on Facebook.
Ty Cobb Backer:On on March 5th, I get to speak with his team, the team culture Yep, the team culture thing. Diego reached out to me to talk on, you know, the roof con tour, that on the road tour that he's got going right now, and that that in itself is an honor, a privilege that you know, my wildest dreams, really, honestly, didn't really imagine that what we were doing last year would come and put us in a position that we're in today. I mean, it really didn't, and not just that, but the impact that it's had on the culture. You know our team watching us out there grinding, and we've been able to take a couple of people from our team. So, and one of the reasons why we did that was to try to get everybody to participate and help those that could come with us Like, like Glenn Ippy, John, I think Ken came with us down to roof con.
Ty Cobb Backer:We took 26 of us, Not even counting myself full down down the roof con, because the educational part of it, plus the you know free labor to help us set up and things like that. Plus then they could see two behind the scenes because how we that works for us. Like there, when we started doing this, you know I would get with Howie and he's our master carpenter here and he'd be like well, have fun on your vacation, and when that would just get on there with our skins.
Stephen Spence:It's not a vacation.
Ty Cobb Backer:It's hard Like we're not going on vacation, like he couldn't fathom what it was we were doing. But I think the impact that it has had on the company, the entire umbrella we have multiple companies within TC Banker, sisters, affiliates, father, brother, sister, aunts, uncle companies that are under this umbrella here and it has impacted. And especially since we started to go on tour, like the sales team's landing jobs because of our YouTube channel you know, horizon Lawns we have a landscaping business as well is picking up leads from that because here we are transparent, right. So we kind of own the authority, like we're the authority in our space, like obviously we know what we're doing. We talk about this stuff every week. You know here's the owner every week doing this, I mean, and it's so much deeper than that.
Stephen Spence:Well, I relate to everything that you're saying. I'm definitely. Obviously we're on a much smaller scale with my company, project MAPIT, but I've been actually traveling a lot this season so I've been speaking and presenting for certainty at their events. They're renting out NFL stadiums throughout the US. So, you know, in March I'm in Denver at Mile High Stadium, then we go to Atlanta Mercedes-Benz and we go to the Indianapolis Colts Stadium. The presentations have been great and it's been really good for my team. Same thing that you just said. You know, when we go out in Denver we're bringing all our entire team. Our entire team in the States is four people, but we're going there and then we're going to spend an extra day there and do some team building. They have learned a lot just being there talking to a lot of people. It's opened up a ton of opportunities for Project MAPIT, with me presenting in front of all the certainty people and contracting folks, because a lot of the certainty people didn't 100% know who we were. They knew we were partnered with them. But what is Project MAPIT? And then they see me presenting. They're like oh dude, like ABC Supply, we're going to be at ABC Supply College of Knowledge in Connecticut. Can you come up and just hang out with us and learn, you know, learn a little bit about what we're doing at these shows. So I went up there and hung out with certainty in their booth. It's just been really good. The opportunity has been big.
Stephen Spence:I went to IRE just to go. You know, I had my wife God bless her planned a trip months ago from a Saturday to Tuesday and ABC. I got to meet Kathy Hendricks. For anybody that knows Kathy Hendricks, I mean shout out to her, she's one of the most amazing people I've ever had the pleasure of talking to. I got to talk with her for about an hour and a half when I met her face to face at IRE. But she emailed me and said hey, steve, I'd like to meet you Face to face. Are you going to be at IRE? And I was like no, I'm not going to IRE. I didn't have a booth there.
Stephen Spence:But then I started looking at my counter and, sure enough, our trip with my wife, my spousal trip ended on a Tuesday, which is when IRE started. So she left and I stayed there and I got to have very meaningful meetings with certainty to Hover, leap, rufa, kathy Hendricks, you name it. We had some really good meetings that are going to open up great opportunities. So for me I'm kind of in that travel phase now, hoping that you know, my team grows in next year maybe I don't have to travel as much, because it does. It weighs on your family, I mean. You guys sit at the table, you know. I mean I get, I get almost kind of depressed at times when I'm back to back to back where I'm missing my family.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, for sure, we felt that fatigue. Yeah Well, you know it's. You know, and pouring into those people and staying, you know, at the highest level that you can be to perform because you got to bring that energy every day that you're on the expo floor or whatever it is.
Ty Cobb Backer:But when you were talking, I was done, done some notes here, and it's like if you wouldn't have done all of that traveling, you wouldn't have been able to network with those people and make those relationships, develop those, galvanize some of those relationships, create new relationships and get yourself out there.
Ty Cobb Backer:So you were putting in the work and it goes into like one of those things Like if you can just like, no matter what it is you're doing, it could be a diet, it could be working out, it could be work, it could be whatever If you could just dedicate six months, six months.
Ty Cobb Backer:And that's if you look over my career and if you've known me long enough, you'll see I push, push, push, push, push, push for six month increments out of a 12 month calendar to get us Set yourself up, yep, to get us then and I'm not saying that I coached for the next six months, but it sets you up. But it sets you up because now things start unfolding and you got to make sure that it stays on the rails, so on and so forth. But if you can dedicate and set goals in a timely manner and set a date to that goal, like by this time, we need to have this up and running and operational and launch it to the team or whatever the case might be. I want to be down 20 pounds. I want to be down, but what is that date? I want to have my muscles to be a certain size or whatever that is.
Stephen Spence:What do you want your muscles to be sized at?
Ty Cobb Backer:I don't know. I know they measure it, so I don't know what's like.
Stephen Spence:Is it 12 inches is like a goal that I don't know, but whatever that goal is my team has I mean, I love my team Right Again, we like to say we're lean and mean small and strong. Any software company, you want to stay as lean as you can and grow in scales as big as you can with as few people. And I will say and we've talked about this on other podcasts in order for me to lose a person like Ashley, who's my customer success manager manager, or a pearl who's my sales manager, I want to pay them well, because if I lose them it's going to cost me two people to replace them. So these trips that you're talking about that I'm talking about has really helped our entire team grow. Pat's a better everything because he's new and learning the whole thing. Perla is continuing to be better. She's already a rock star.
Stephen Spence:I've said that since day one that she started working and Ashley is just killing it. Now we're all raising our game and I think that's because of these trips. I think people realize like damn, project Map, it's about to blow up in 2024. We need to get our shit together and make sure that we're ready to scale and we are. And I mean shout out to my team, shout out to the DC Backer team, for sure.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, no doubt man, it's all about the team it is.
Ty Cobb Backer:It really is and that's the one. I heard somebody say something and this is just kind of how I interpreted it and I probably won't say it right but it's like you can't necessarily buy back time your time. What you can do is delegate things to other people to gain more time. Yeah, you know what I mean, and I think the sooner and the quicker that us managers, ceos, cfos, entrepreneurs, whatever the sooner we can figure that out and trust, learn how to trust, learn how to train correctly up front or delegate whatever the case might be, or hire smart people that are good at stuff, even though they may not know exactly what it is that you want them to do. But if you can figure that out early on in your career, you're going to grow and be more peaceful and feel more fulfilled and happier longer sooner in your career.
Ty Cobb Backer:Because I think a lot of us knuckleheads for many years and I held on to it for about the probably the first nine years of my career was like I need to do everything, get out of the way. Yeah, Get out of the way. And everybody outside that door was waiting for me to tell them what to do. And it wasn't a bad culture, it was just, it was what the culture was.
Stephen Spence:That's what it was.
Ty Cobb Backer:And they were bought in. They bought in enough to wait outside that door every morning and wait for me to tell them what to do on a daily basis, right, but now, but now, shit, they're telling me what to do. Correct, like literally some days it's like they're coming in here just telling me what it is and they also know not to bring just the problems. Bring a solution. Bring the solutions as well. Or what have you done to correct the situation? And there's going to be mistakes made. I make mistakes, yeah, and they're going to make mistakes, but through that they gain experience and knowledge.
Stephen Spence:Through those mistakes we are literally going through that right now, because we're hopefully going to be in a position where we're going to have to hire three or four people in the next two, three months or more. And so Perla, she can do her thing. Ashley, she can do her thing, but she has the toughest job, ashley, being in charge of customer success, because you got to deal with customer salespeople. They just sell and then they pass it on to the customer success person. In my world, in the software world, customer success person, they have to worry about our onboarding specialists. We have a great team in Argentina that helps build maps and stuff like that. She has to communicate with them. She has to communicate to the sales rep. We call them account executives.
Stephen Spence:So, like Ashley and Pat would have to talk to me about a customer that I sold, then they have to talk to the customer. They got moving parts all over the place. I'm learning what you're telling me right now. I'm going through that right now. I've not done a great job training like Ashley and Pat. So, now that we're realizing that we have our weekly meetings Smarter people, right Right, perla, at the beginning of 2024, she's like Steve, we had a team meeting. She's like we need to have a scheduled meeting every Friday or whatever. So our team gets together and we talk about what's going well, what needs to be fixed. We start doing that. Our company's already better, right. We're talking about we're building out some knowledge bases and some training manuals for future employees that we're going to hire, and our team is the one that's really coming up with everything.
Stephen Spence:It's not me, so I love it it is. It's allowing me to trust that Ashley and Pat are doing their thing. I don't have to worry about Perla's doing her thing. I can see Perla's doing her thing because sales are like my phone. My phone pops up another sale. You know I'm like hell. Yeah, so I can do things like this. I can travel to Buffalo and meet my friend, mike Stearns to do some, to do some video stuff up there, and all that stuff is me working. It looks like I mean this is fun. Don't get me wrong. I freaking love coming here and seeing my brothers and my family here, but but it's also helping grow the company and I can do that stuff and do the. My network is my net worth. Yeah, I beat you to it. I didn't let you say it this time, I got it before you. But that's exactly what we're doing in the company is kind of coming together. It's pretty fun. Yeah, I love it and I love I love to watch it.
Ty Cobb Backer:It is it's cool to me Watch it and and vice versa.
Ty Cobb Backer:We had our business meeting every other Tuesday and man, I barely, I barely say anything, yeah, in the meeting and listening to them how they figure things out and things that they're building, and and that's why we hold it anymore, and a lot of that had to go back to where, you know, when we would come back from traveling. Last year it was really just like a meeting to catch me back up on. Yeah, you know what I mean, but it it goes back way further than that, but that's that's kind of where I started to to use that and and that last year was a perfect example of you know that. That we had built a wonderful team at. The team that is building themselves right now, at this point in time, was a true testament on on. You know this would go on without me and it did.
Stephen Spence:So so, in this segment that we just had over the last, however many minutes, the energy bus is a really good book and an easy read to talk about, team and, and it really covers a lot of the stuff you and I just talked about for 20 minutes and me going through it right now. If I could give any advice to any new contracting company or company or general or software company, it's if you're the, if you're the CEO or you're the guy that's running that company, let your people fail, train them up very well and keep it fun, right, like. But you have to train them like it. For like I remember one time I was real jerk to Ashley, so public apology to Ashley.
Stephen Spence:I was on the phone. I'm like you know why did? Why did this happen with this customer or whatever? I don't, I don't remember what. It was kind of insignificant, but the significant part was I'm like frustrated with her or Pat or Perla, whoever some one of my employees. I get frustrated and I started thinking like it's my fault, like I didn't train them. I like I'm expecting them to know how to handle a situation that I did not train them on how to handle it. And I think we're all figuring out. I just I love it. I love this conversation yeah.
Ty Cobb Backer:Now it's a good one too, and you need to behave poorly or say poor things at times too, because then through that pain is growth. Right, you've identified it right away. You, publicly, you know what was apologetic to her, but that's the thing you better practice patience and tolerance, right. And the worst thing that you can possibly do, too, that you can, you know, publicly humiliate somebody or or delegate a task to them and take it back because they weren't doing it the way that you thought it should be done, yeah, right, because now you're taking the power away and the two most powerful words in your company, in your organization, that, that that a leader can use, okay, and this is a game changer. Okay, you ready for this?
Stephen Spence:I'm going to write down, I'm going to write this down as two most powerful words.
Ty Cobb Backer:I'm sorry it's going to create. Well, you suck your. Your actions should speak louder than your words. Is you decide? Okay, you decide, empowers them to make decisions and and gives them ownership in that decision making Right. And at that point in time they go. They're like, oh, okay, well, I go, I get to decide. But then don't be an Indian giver. And once they decide, you don't like it. Yeah, because sometimes most of the time they see around the corners because they're on the front line. Yeah, right, that we can't see around. So just because I'm sitting at my desk all day for 12 hours a day, right, and they're on the front lines, and I say you decide, and I go out there like, no, that's done. Yeah, like right now.
Ty Cobb Backer:For the past two days, our team's been up in Harrisburg setting up the home show. I haven't gone in there yet and when I do show up there, it could be tomorrow, it could be Saturday, it could be Sunday. I'm not going to be like why is this? Why is that? Because I don't know what the circumstances were during setup. Yeah, I have no idea. Yeah, I have no idea what the situation was. What I need to go up there is be that CEO, yeah, that chief energy officer. I need to bring the heat.
Ty Cobb Backer:There are times that I need to be 100% and there's other times that I got to know I got to know this about myself where it's okay for me to be at 70%. Yeah, you know what I mean. And if I dip below that, I got to make sure that I got to figure out what's going on with me, because whenever there's an issue, when something's wrong, there's something wrong with me. Okay, not necessarily because they did this wrong or they did that wrong. It's something that I'm insecure about, something that I'm fearful about Agreed, something that I didn't do, something that I should have done.
Ty Cobb Backer:It always comes back. And when you were talking earlier, whenever we're pointing the finger, there's three pointing back. Yeah, we're going to coin that phrase because there's not an episode that hasn't happened in about the past eight weeks that we haven't brought that up because it's so huge. That goes for parenting, that goes for a child on the field. They need to know that because their buddy missed the goal. Well, how many goals have you missed? Or how many passes did I not make? Or whatever the case might be. So, anytime, your point in the finger.
Ty Cobb Backer:Just know this, that there's three pointing back at us because, whether it's poor, poor training, poor, casting the vision, poor, articulating the message correctly, poor, whatever goes back to us, and this is the deal when you're in a leadership position, we take the blame for everything and we take credit for nothing. Nothing, none of this is about us at this point in time. None of it is, and this isn't why we should be getting out of bed. The reason why we should be getting out of bed and when our feet go on the floor is because of the people under this roof, not because how am I, me, me, me, me, me, me. It's we, we, we, we.
Ty Cobb Backer:Why I'm getting out of bed? Yes, obviously in a rocket Jacob Quinn, joel Mackenzie, rocket the whole family. Yes, that is my why to my core. But outside of that, we're in a position right now where it's like we're okay. So we're way beyond that selfish right? You know why we're doing this thing. We're at a different level and when you can step outside and see further than this thing, great things start to happen.
Stephen Spence:And all this is why you're speaking at all these events, like everything you're saying is very. I hope that people that are listening are listening to what you're saying, because I know I am. I'm taking some notes right here.
Ty Cobb Backer:No doubt. And this listen, I did not get this overnight, I got this by having people waiting outside the door waiting for me, and I go out there like what are you waiting for? Yeah, what, what you've learned, you've learned. Just do something Right. You know I don't care, you know, figure it out. Yeah, you know what I mean. And sometimes I still have to say, figure it out.
Stephen Spence:Yeah, be a problem solver. I mean in this, in this world. I mean, people do need to be problem solvers and sometimes, if you're not a problem solver and you're always asking someone for the answers, you you got to look at yourself.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, for sure, for sure, because we're we're in the business of creating leaders, right, that's, that's our job today. Correct, we need to always continuously looking for your replacement. Yep, always be looking for your replacement, because right now, I guarantee you're wearing 15 hats, right, that are probably three to four full time, 40 hour a week jobs, and a lot of times we're like, oh man, I can't afford it. You can't afford not to find somebody to do these mundane data entry.
Ty Cobb Backer:Dude, I was up and I was up responding back to email, whatever crap that we think. No one can do an email better than me. Dude, I forgot how to type without spell check.
Stephen Spence:I mean two nights ago I was up at. Two mornings ago I was up at 345 and worked pretty much all day. Last night I started, or yesterday I started around six and was up till 1230 last night working on fricking. I wanted to cuss their spreadsheets. But yeah, man, I mean you got to work hard, you got to grind hard. I've talked to people sometimes and they're just, you know their their answer is just don't. You can tell they just don't want to put the work in. Yeah Well, don't surround yourself around people like that. The energy bus man yeah, they, they talk about that.
Stephen Spence:All right, so we're going to change segments here, if that's okay. I got got something for you here, ty. So I've been on a bunch again. I'm the. For those that don't know, I'm the sloppy seconds that Ty Ty uses when he doesn't have a person for his podcast. It's, it's horseshit. I mean you did. You actually did ask me to come to this one. Usually it's Ty calling me and saying hey man, someone canceled. Can you drive up here and hop on this podcast?
Ty Cobb Backer:I think once or twice.
Stephen Spence:But just to change things up a little bit. First of all, I love that conversation, this. That might have been one of our better conversations, but I have some rapid fire questions and we're going to call this segment get to know Ty, oh boy. So I have three different themes and for and see how Ty Ty Ty's butthole just got real tight because he knows it takes him like more than five seconds to process a question and to answer, which is why this segment is going to be phenomenal.
Stephen Spence:All right, so I have it on three themes. One is just fun rapid fire questions. You'll have about 10 seconds to answer, okay. A second theme is funny, but more like it is funny construction fun questions that are stupid questions. Thank you, chat Gpt, by the way. And then the final theme is professional, where you can actually have more than 10 seconds to answer, and you may have already touched some of this stuff. So the first seven, eight, nine, whatever questions it is here I have them on my phone you have 10 seconds to answer each one. Are you ready? Sure, okay, here we go. Who's counting? We'll see. Okay, vick's going to count. If you could swap lives with any fictional character for a week, who would it be Mickey Mouse? Would you rather fight one horse sized duck or 100 duck sized horses?
Ty Cobb Backer:The first. The first one 100 size, 100 foot tall, duck yeah.
Stephen Spence:A big ass duck. Yeah, what's your comfort food?
Ty Cobb Backer:My comfort food, I'd say pizza, yeah.
Stephen Spence:Well, that's a piece of this.
Ty Cobb Backer:I like what I call garbage pizza. I like black olives, I like green peppers, onion sausage, pepperoni, the whole shebang. Second favorite is not Hawaiian, necessarily, but I like pineapple onions and pepperoni, not ham. Okay, just the word olives makes me want to gag. Love it.
Stephen Spence:What's your favorite emoji?
Ty Cobb Backer:Emoji is the. I wish they had the middle finger one. They do have the middle finger, I mean on regular, but that's probably the middle finger ones, probably, or the hustle muscle one, the hustle muscle.
Stephen Spence:Yeah, what's the last thing that made you laugh out loud? The?
Ty Cobb Backer:last thing that made me laugh out loud man, that's amazing and I can't remember, but I know it wasn't that long ago. I was just in the office but I don't remember what would would set me off.
Stephen Spence:If your life had a soundtrack, what would the theme song be?
Ty Cobb Backer:oh man, I can't think of the name of the song. Sing it. It's oh, ted Nugent's triangle.
Stephen Spence:Okay, I thought about that one. Mine is till I collapse, eminem. Yeah, I just work my ass off. That was always when I when I used to run a lot Mm-hmm, that was always my like last push song Till I collapse. Yep, all right. So now some rapid-fire Questions that wasn't rapid fire, that was all rapid fire.
Stephen Spence:This is a different theme. This theme is okay. Just stupid questions in the construction world. This is too much like work. No, this is awesome. This is why I like doing it to you. Okay, if your favorite movie character needed a new roof, which movie character would it be, and why? Sylvester?
Ty Cobb Backer:Stallone Because he's leaving California to move to Florida.
Stephen Spence:And that's a good, quick answer. You're doing much better than I thought you were. What's one of the funniest things you've witnessed or overheard in this company?
Ty Cobb Backer:TC backer one of the funniest things that I've ever witnessed or or saw in this company. On the funniest things, there was this one time Colin and I think Tate, I think it was Colin they were dancing on on the roof doing a roof repair during COVID, like I needed that. And then then the final, final photo was like him standing like when nobody else was working. I like that in the state of Pennsylvania, but we were like I needed it that day. What?
Stephen Spence:am I one of my funny Thoughts when it comes to TC backers? When I came in there was a, the sign the big, life-size thing of Glenn yes in his speedo, or whatever was kind of a hard question because there's a lot. I know.
Ty Cobb Backer:That's why I said one of grab a sari.
Stephen Spence:That goes on if you want to name another one or two, you can. I'll give you well that that would have a good life-size thing of Glenn and then Denny.
Ty Cobb Backer:Okay, so we were doing the podcast and Denny is dr Schengel. We were running this promotion to do a roof checkup. We weren't calling it to know the checkup, so we created an emoji or whatever, a character Called dr Schengel. Well, denny went out and bought all this stuff and if you know Denny, he's getting ready to retire soon and he's kind of like that that that Jen Xer slash baby boomer age. Okay, so like he, it's tough to crack get a smile out of him. Well, here he come rolling and dressed up like dr Schengel during a live video one time. So that was probably good, yeah, one of the best. And then Glenn did show up going back to the beyond tool belt. Glenn did show up in his mankini at behind the tool belt studio one day to like walk the whole way across the parking lot From one shop to the other shop and his mankini. So Glenn, glenn, glenn always has a good, or somebody picking on Glenn is always a good laugh.
Stephen Spence:Oh, I love Glenn shout out the Glenn man. Yeah, for sure do the man. Glenn, if roofs? If this is more serious, I mean it can be funny if roofs could talk. What would what? What do you think they would say about TC backer? Damn, you're hot. I like that All right. Now for more serious questions.
Ty Cobb Backer:I'm making me nervous. Good, this is my mom's are sweaty mom's.
Stephen Spence:I'm trying to, I'm trying to let you become comfortable In uncomfortable situations.
Ty Cobb Backer:I love it. Payback it is a backs are ill, thank you.
Stephen Spence:What is and you've already answered some of this stuff, but you can hit on any of these. It's only, it's only 20 questions. I'm just kidding. What? What's the one business decision you made that had the biggest impact on your company's growth? That's a tough one.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, that is because there's, I would say, the time when, when I let go, I started to let go and Delegate and finds really smart people.
Stephen Spence:When I was with Kathy Hendricks, at the end of the conversation and I'm sure maybe Kathy will watch this, maybe I'll send her a link, but so Kathy Hendricks is one of the you know, the founders are her parents yeah, father. So I was sitting at breakfast with her in IRE and I asked her at the very end. I said I'm gonna put you on the spot. I think she thought, based on her, look, I think she was thinking I was gonna say so where's this partnership going? Because we don't have a partnership. They see, we have a relationship with them and I love, I love everything about ABC, the culture and everything.
Stephen Spence:But I Said if you could give me advice for a company that's starting to grow Exponentially, what would it be for the culture and stuff like that? She goes culture is not you, you can't make culture. She and and she answered it she answered it totally different than what I thought she was going to. She said you have to have a bottom line, you have to have a Target. You know key performance indicators how much money is this company gonna make? In my scenario, how many subscriptions are we to sell in 2024? And that bottom line is what everybody in your company should know and you should talk about every week and every week Problem-solve. You know ways to meet those marks and if you're ahead of those marks, how can you even get twice ahead of those marks, two times ahead of those marks, and and by doing that and making it fun Doing the energy bus will keep coming back to that. You know, bringing in some of those concepts, culture just becomes.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
Stephen Spence:Yeah.
Ty Cobb Backer:And there's different types and forms of culture too, and if that, yeah, that's her approach, that that's good too, but we, I mean, I wouldn't want to make it money focused, yeah, or driven.
Stephen Spence:You know I'm saying yeah, I don't know if I don't necessarily Not sure if it was 100% money driven, but just you need to have a bottom line.
Ty Cobb Backer:Whatever that bottom line is, Well, that's the thing you never want to take your eye off the ball when it comes to your net profit. I mean, that's definitely something that should be at the forefront of any, any entrepreneurs.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah or or CFO, or financial controller, or even the guy that's bidding the jobs like that should always be at the forefront of everybody's mind. But and I do like that answer because we we've been around long enough to know and I think we've been getting our day trung of when how long we've been in business, because I pulled some records up, I think I'm about a year off, longer than deadness, longer. So I don't like, really like, to tell people that too much because I'm still figuring this thing out. Yeah, on, on a daily basis. Man, I just totally lost my train of thought with that. What are we talking about?
Stephen Spence:Where we're going with that I was we were talking about.
Ty Cobb Backer:Oh, so we've gone through the recession right, and I think early on in my career it was more about the revenue, revenue, revenue, revenue, the top, the very top, not the gray area, but below the gross and not they even really talk about this too much. But I think early on I was more concerned about revenue and and didn't know a whole lot about net. Yeah, and then recession hit, made it through that 2008 hit, but really when it started to get a little sketchy was 9 and 10, whether people remember that or not, and that's something that that I don't ever remember. And luckily, being in that position of you know start up roofing company been doing roofing With, with another company prior to that, so but also in a managerial position, you know we were more so like focused on, you know, getting customers and getting client clients and you know, beefing up the revenue so we could pay our bills. But you know that was just like a A till. It was just you know what I mean. At that time I wasn't really looking at like what was sticking, what was staying. I didn't have that.
Ty Cobb Backer:You know, pay yourself first mentality, okay, and that sounds kind of selfish and greedy, but but I've read enough books. I've been around numbers, big numbers, right, like there should be a certain amount of money each week, because we get deposits each week that go into an account that just stay there right off the top, whether that's 500 bucks, whether that's five grand Every week that should go in there, because you shouldn't be. You know, a business is like a household, right? Either you're living from paycheck to paycheck or you're not. Yeah, right, you're trying to throw something back in savings each week off your paycheck. Well, your business should, should, ultimately be operating at the same level.
Ty Cobb Backer:As you know whether reserves yeah, reserves, you should always have you should have liquid Right, and if you're that set, that mindset of pay the bills, you know first Mentality, you're never gonna have anything left over. So if you don't take it right off the top and put it in there and again, I know this sounds like a selfish thing we've never gone without paying anybody and I can look you straight in the eye. We've always, always, always, always, always, always have paid our bills. By the grace of God, the skin on my teeth and hair on my nutsack, somehow We've been able to make sure payroll has always. You don't see, I'm sorry, you can keep going, but deep you have hair on your nuts.
Stephen Spence:You don't manscape Back in the day. I need to buy you, ray, there's something and you're an old dude because people usually shave stuff. Be Keeney bear, it's funny, you should mention that.
Ty Cobb Backer:I was just talking about having that reserve.
Stephen Spence:Yeah, so we have a really smart partner of ours, ryan, shout out to Ryan, my guy, and I call him the smart guy, the company. But we want to have a reserve. And For me, like I've told this story before, for, but in 30 seconds or less, for those that don't know, I was a special education teacher for 20 years and a guy hired me I was the first hire project map in 30 days, you know, two months. Whatever it was in, it was very quick that he was basically like you're on your own and I had to learn this construction Industry.
Stephen Spence:Yeah, after being a teacher for 20 years, long story short, I went from, like you know, close to almost close to six figures as a teacher at that part of my career down to, like, my first year, I made $37,000. You know, my second year, I made $50,000. So it so it was interesting. I can, I can honestly look at you and you and your face right now and say that we actually have A good amount of reserves in the bank and it's so refreshing. In fact, I just I just texted all my partners this morning and said hey, we, we have X amount of dollars in the bank.
Stephen Spence:We need to get a little more, but it's the first time that I don't have to worry about like that. There were three years where I was like, okay, I need to sell like two more, two more subscriptions in order just to pay the bills.
Ty Cobb Backer:Well, there, that's so, kim and I and Kim's been here 10, probably coming up on 11 years now. Well, we did early on because we only grew as fast as the cash would allow us. Yeah, that's a double-edged short. That's us right now still. Yeah, which which is great, especially early on. Only good as fast as the cash it and this is something else for per startup company.
Ty Cobb Backer:I feel like don't go and get a business plan and go to the bank and hey, we need a hundred thousand dollars. I don't necessarily believe in that. Okay, I believe, work your ass off. And if that's for the first three, five, shit 10 years in my case, six for me right now, right, because overnight success doesn't happen until the first decade, just saying before, okay, five first, five years into it.
Ty Cobb Backer:I don't think we saw a profit until until then. Yeah, you know what I mean, where we could actually start doing what I'm talking about right now. But what we did, was is in our prudent reserve. We were able to do a lot of things that we could do Now, but what we did, was is in our prudent reserve. We didn't have lines of credits. We created kind of our own line of credit.
Ty Cobb Backer:So, to elaborate more on what I was saying, like, make sure you get paid first. I'm not saying myself yeah, you make sure the business, right, should have something put off to the side each week when deposits are coming in, where cash flow business Kim does deposits twice, at least twice a week, and but anyhow, what we do, and it was in the same bank account, but in quick books you can break things out and we had a cash accounting, quick books where we would move money over. It was the same bank account. Yeah, we would move money over. And and what it is is if we and we didn't run below that, that was our prudent reserve. If it was, it was 5k. We never went below 5k, right, if we owed two people 10,000 bucks each, we would send them. We'd make phone call hey, look, we don't have it and you got to get. Call us to this. Sometimes you got to juggle things, right, yeah, but you got to have the communication open. Yeah, you have to have that line of communication open to that right person, the person that matters, not your sales rep, not anybody, cuz you don't even want them to know. Yeah, these kinds of things, you get a whole of their accounting. People Like look, I know I owe you 10 this week. I can give you five this week. By Friday next week I'll give you another five. Worked every time. Okay, so we never dip blow that because, god forbid, you made an error in your checking. Yeah, okay, and and something about. So if you don't have that prudent reserve in there and you need that buffer, you can't live paycheck to paycheck. A household can't in. A business Definitely cannot live paycheck to paycheck.
Ty Cobb Backer:Now, since then, we've created other bank accounts. We have different business. We have the rocket group, we got horizon, we got TCP rentals, we got back or exterior, we got TC back, or construction, and the list goes on probably. So we have all of these. Some of them are just LLCs that we have. Rocket group bought this building that we're in, so we have that account. So rocket group now TC backer construction leases the building from the rocket group and you get more creative Things, you get good account and you get good people surrounding, smarter people than you that help you create s corpse, llcs, incorporations, shell companies. You know things for, for whatever reason you're, but shelters in place so it has more layers to not to get to me. Yeah, you know what I mean. And or tax breaks and things like that, like leasing this building from rocket group. I mean why wouldn't we want to do that? Yeah, you know what I mean. So now Rocket Group makes XYZ lease each month. It's a tax write-off for leasing the building for TC Backer. You know what I mean.
Ty Cobb Backer:So I don't know what you mean, because I'm horrible with money, you're spending the money pre-taxed Correct, I would much rather spend the money pre-taxed Pre-taxed, and we can talk about all kinds of stuff and I can actually give you some good books to read that will really wrap your head around it.
Stephen Spence:Some of the things you're talking about just remind me of a book I read called Profit First. Have you read that book?
Ty Cobb Backer:I can't remember who it was, but Profit First was like no matter what money you bring in, you need to put some of it for profit, maybe several years ago, but anyhow, it's just something you should do, even if it's $5 a week, if it's personal checking, just whatever that is, something should go back each week. I've done it, probably, and that's where you buy your toys with. You work hard to put money back. That's how you buy certain things. Don't use a credit card and finance cameras. Don't use and believe me, I'm saying this because I've done it and then probably still paying on some credit cards that I've used for whatever those assets that you've earned.
Ty Cobb Backer:That's where you should be spending that in that margin or not margin. But that column Is after time, and if you can't afford it, guess what? You don't get it. You got to figure out how to do a lot with little and we did that for so long. People thought we were a lot larger than we were in our local area because of the amount of impressions and the brand awareness and the things that we did, but we only had the time. It was probably just me and my truck running around all over York County just running appointments, doing repairs, ordering materials, dropping materials.
Stephen Spence:You were doing it all.
Ty Cobb Backer:I was doing it all and they thought we were bigger than we were because I was out there. I was out there doing it, making it all happen. I couldn't afford three people, at least I thought at that time. You know what I mean. But then it became like every time I put my tool pouch on a phone ring, I couldn't get anything done. It was like, ok, I need a hire a helper. That way, when I'm walking over here behind the building or underneath the shade tree when it's 100 degrees out with my tool pouch on sweat, my ass off on the cell phone and sweat dripping into the earpiece there, at least he's still working on the job and use that metaphorically. I know you're not banging shingles, but think about that for a second. Like, my time is better spent probably working on other things, finding jobs that that guy can still eat and have a job to go to after we finish this job.
Stephen Spence:Well, now you bring up a good point where it's where I just had a conversation with one of our employees about putting people in the right positions based on their strengths. Right, like I have strengths, my strengths are I'm a people person. Good conversation, I'm good with people, I make connections well, I genuinely care about people, so that helps the business in that respect, and I don't do anything. Everything I do is authentic. Right, like the first time I met you two, it was like I fell in love with you guys. Within the first five minutes, I was like these are my people. These guys are just like me.
Stephen Spence:Pat is finding his way and I can see this guy. Right now I have him as a CS customer success. He's going to go to sales but, like, as we grow, I could see him into a bigger position based on his strengths. You know, perla, she has found her strength that she kills it in the sales. So, yeah, finding people that help offset your weaknesses to run a company Huge yeah it is, and that was probably one of the most difficult things.
Ty Cobb Backer:When I went on a mission and when we really went on that mission was just over nine years ago Now we had people and people were in place and we're doing things. But I think that's when I really started to work on myself and do a lot of self reflection of, like, what do I need to work on personally to make things better externally? Yeah, you know what I mean. And then I started to just attract the better quality of people because of my due to, just because of my behavior, and now I treated them.
Stephen Spence:So let me ask you this, because I talked to a lot of contractors, so maybe this, maybe you can give some insight into this A lot of contractors when I talked in there like yeah, I want to grow but it's just so hard to find good salespeople, it's so hard to find good help. Is it hard to find good help? Or are there? I mean, whether it's let's, let's talk sales because that's what brings in a lot of money, right, like your salespeople doing a good job with a good high close rate that brings business to TC back or whatever company. Are there really that many bad people out there in the contracting space that can't sell? Or do people that want to grow but feel like they can't find good work? Is there a certain place to go to find good salespeople?
Stephen Spence:Like, for me, I was a teacher. I'm actually a real. I found myself to be a really good salesperson because as a teacher you're basically selling curriculum to kids, like you want kids to buy into what you're teaching them, and I was good at that. So I found myself pretty good at it as a software sales guy. One of the top producing salespeople that I know shout out is Stefan Vasquez up at O'Leary Roofing, northern PA, and he was. He was a manager of restaurant, like he worked with people. So what kind of insight can you give? Is it really like that there is a lack of number of people out there that just can't sell, or is it that owners that are saying that they just need to find go into certain places and look at these places and then maybe they have to do a better job training them?
Ty Cobb Backer:That's a good question. There's many different. Not answers necessarily, but there are levels.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah. So I think, especially early on for us contractors trying to find salespeople Right. So you got to find a blend Right. You got to have experienced people, but there's a downfall to that too, there's pitfall down to that and you got to have, like this, blend of experience and not so experience. But what you need is a training put in place.
Ty Cobb Backer:Okay, chances are, with those that are experienced, they're not going to follow the process. They're going to probably be your biggest problem, at least from my experience. Not all the time Makes sense, not all the time. If they've come from a different company and they've been doing it for several years, it's really hard to break those bad habits and comply to the SOP that we have in place here. But if you have a super duper training platform and believe me, this is a living organism you'll never get it right. What worked six days ago will not work today, so it's continuously evolving. So don't think it, once you get to a certain spot, that it won't need to pivot or to elevate or change or whatever. But I can tell you this without having it in place, you can't figure out the only two problems that there is People or process issue.
Ty Cobb Backer:Is it a person problem going back into training? Are they neglecting things? Are they procrastinating? Are they just incompetent or is it a process issue? Does it need to do? We need to tweak this again? Do we need to add up? You know, one more follow up call. You need to set up an automation that gives them a reminder to follow up, whatever the case might be in.
Ty Cobb Backer:The bigger you get, the harder this gets. But that's why I say you need a blend, because you do need some experienced people out there. Knock and doors, closing deals, right, but meanwhile, over here in the incubator, you're cooking up some killers, preferably not from the industry, but from the hospitality industry, those that did bartending, those that did paper routes, those that did you know they can be in door to door sales, but not necessarily come from the roofing. They can be a waiter, a waitress, a bartender. Those people that are just people, people, and are willing to learn and find their pathway to six figure success are. Those are the ones that you're looking for to join your team and the way that we don't really care what you know like, what industry you've come from. It's about the individual that we want to come into our organization.
Stephen Spence:People are buying the person, not necessarily the company.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, we don't care if you have you know, if you're familiar with a CRM. We don't care if you know what drip edge is. We're going to show you all these things. We're going to teach you product knowledge. We're going to teach you how to overcome objections. We're going to teach you how to hand out fires. We're going to teach you all of these things, as long as you're willing to learn and you're going to know in the first 30 days hire slow, fire quick, and that's the thing. Just pass them on, give them a two week notice. You don't have to be a dick like yep, day 31, you're out. No, here's two week notice.
Ty Cobb Backer:Right, if you're in a situation where you might have to just like cut all ties for whatever the circumstance is, but if they're just not picking it up. But then I think it all goes back to your training. And this is a thing people don't have the time. They think they don't have the time, so they're trying to find that ace in the hole. Guy, that's a million dollar closer. Good luck with that If they don't already have a job, right that where someplace their pay structure is different or they've been able to manipulate the owner of that company a lot longer and it's like then, whatever the case or circumstances might be, you got to find that even flow. But I think you really got to have a process put in place and, especially when it comes to training to do it, the TC backer way to do the project. I have it.
Stephen Spence:That's what we're trying to build out right now, and it's difficult.
Ty Cobb Backer:It's grinding, it's rolling not grinding, but it's a grueling process. It's such a heavy lift and what sucks, when you think you're finished, you're just starting all over again.
Stephen Spence:Yeah, I'm just telling you We've evolved. We've evolved a lot of these sessions and everything like 15 times over the last three months. I mean it's getting better and better. Yeah, Like you said. So I agree with everything you said, Stefan, straight up. I asked him. I said why are you so good at what you do? He's like Steve, I don't really even know the product. They install GF. I don't even know the product very well. I'm just really good around people and they like me. Yeah, so I know enough about GF roofing to know what I can tell them, but they just love me, Right.
Ty Cobb Backer:And if you've got a killer company supporting them, yes, they are buying from them. But if you've only been in business for six months or they have no idea who you are and this goes into another topic like why branding and brand awareness is so important you watch more important than marketing you can market the shit out of you, but if they don't know who you are because you didn't brand and you haven't set up that presentation like it's an impression, this impression like the home shows. Home shows are huge for us.
Stephen Spence:So when you're talking about branding, if I'm a new company six months in, what branding should they be looking at doing before they start dumping a ton of money into Google Ads and stuff? What are the top branding things that you should be doing?
Ty Cobb Backer:Truck, wrap yard signs home, shows things that get you out there. Instead of waiting for the phone to ring, you go out there, and whatever that requires and encompasses direct mail. Direct mail won't work by itself. You need to be canvassing those neighborhoods, right? That's the new SEO today is canvassing. Hands down, get the thumb out of the butt and get out of your truck, get out of your office and print out flyers. Go to fricking staples and create a flyer and get out there and put at least three strategic yard signs out there. And it's called success by proximity. If you're not out there, nothing's going to happen, but if you're out there, you're going to run into one person and then the statistic is per 100 flyer equals one phone call. So if you have a team of individuals that are out there handing 100 flyers out a day which isn't hard to do to get a target parking lot and put 100 flyers on it under windshield wipers, that's quick, fast, you're getting at least a call Yep, yep.
Ty Cobb Backer:And if you got five people doing that, that's 500 a day. You do it five days a week, that's 2,500 flyers. That's a touch point, that's branding, that's brand awareness, even though it might fly off the thing and they crumble it up and throw it away. You just made an impression. The name of the game is is he who gets the most touch points first wins. Do not even give them the opportunity to search Rufor near me. You want them searching TC backer construction. That's how you get 10,000 views or people to click on your website a day. That's how you do it, not because of Rufor near me.
Stephen Spence:Get out of your truck. I have a shirt that says that Get out of your truck. Do you know a company that?
Ty Cobb Backer:does canvassing, we do, we do Lead Scout. We've got one of our proud sponsors Live, eat and Breathe by Lead Scout here.
Stephen Spence:I just actually just I just had a conversation with Chris yesterday. Yeah, he called me, it was awesome. He called me and I'm like dude, what's up? And I haven't talked to him in a while. So we had a really good conversation for about a half hour. I just, I love that guy.
Ty Cobb Backer:Yeah, and it works.
Stephen Spence:It does.
Ty Cobb Backer:Right now. So now we don't have to talk about it, but it works. It does work.
Stephen Spence:It totally works. You're right. You're right, that's the new SEO, especially now is it's the new SEO.
Ty Cobb Backer:I'm not saying Google isn't powerful, it is Okay.
Stephen Spence:But you have to have a. It's the directory.
Ty Cobb Backer:It's the directory.
Ty Cobb Backer:Okay For them to search Google Rufor, near me, yep, or for your name Correct Searching your name. Don't give anyone else the opportunity. Right, you need to get out there and give those seven to 11 touch points and you can easily do that in a neighborhood within three days, yep, within three days of cans. One day of canvassing in a neighborhood park, the truck, three yard signs and flyers. Go back another day, do it again. Door hangers, whatever. Yep Set up a drip campaign, three postcards, one hand written note. So that that's three. Door hangers for the three yard signs is three more, that's seven, right there. And then, next thing you know, they saw a yard sign is straight over, that's eight. They saw a billboard that's nine. Next thing you know, you got 11 because they saw the truck at the gas station the next morning. Next thing you know, your Facebook ads are showing up. You know how that should work.
Stephen Spence:Oh, I do it just-. All the person has to say is get the flyer off their car and be like oh, TC, back on the phone. Here's the next thing you know.
Ty Cobb Backer:But this is where IT comes into play, too Geo target Facebook ads in those same neighborhoods. Yeah, you know what I mean. You don't even have to spend the money on Google to do that. You can do it for a dollar a day. A dollar a day, 10 bucks a week, $7 a week, whatever.
Stephen Spence:You should be getting paid for this podcast. People should be sending you checks for all the knowledge you're dropping.
Ty Cobb Backer:That's how you do it. That's how it's done. You can't sit around and wait for that vendor. Why isn't? My SEO is working, dude, that takes three years. We've had the same website for 17 years and that's where I come in to say like like the overnight success happens in the first decade.
Ty Cobb Backer:10 years, yeah, 10 years. One day, boom success, bam happens. Well, it's because we've had the same website. We've rebranded three times since then because I so believed in the brand awareness. Yeah, yeah, man, that's what it's all about. That's why it's red, black, that's why everything that we do, whether it's horizon, whether it's behind a tool belt, whether it's TC back or whether it's the rocket group, it's all the same color.
Ty Cobb Backer:And you keep it simple. Don't make it confusing. Yeah, Don't have one sign. Have this one truck, have that. Make it clear of what it is that you do. What do we do? What is it that we do, who we are, what we do in a phone number, how do you contact them? That's it. You don't need all this other bullshit Billboards. We don't even put phone numbers on anymore. We just want them to see it. Boom, that's it. So they Google it, they Google it, google us. Yep, not roofing near me. Yeah, that's how powerful brand is. Joe Hughes talks about it. Joe Hughes, the master of the five mile. Famous he is. He really is. He is. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. What else? You got anything else? Or are we at our one hour?
Stephen Spence:I mean, I just bought my tablet, so I'm excited about that. But yeah, we're at the hour Are we? What time is it?
Ty Cobb Backer:111. Okay, so we've been on for a good bit. So, anyhow, if you haven't already liked, loved, subscribed to our YouTube channel, spotify, google, apple, please do that and give us a review. If you want to Apple and review our podcast, let us know how we're doing. If there's any questions concerns topics, anything that anyone wants to hear, please put them in the comments. We would love to talk about it. We would love to hear from you guys, steven.
Stephen Spence:Can I say something about reviews? Could you just brought it up? And this is in my presentation yes, so if you're a contracting company and you're asking for reviews, just ask. I always ask this and people usually know the answer.
Stephen Spence:The best time to get a review is as soon as jobs done. You don't want to go home and then email, request review or text 24 hours later. So when you ask for a review, it's kind of illegal to say, hey, put my name in it, but you can say something to the homeowner when you're at the house before you leave hey, if you could leave us a review, that would be awesome. If there are any employees in our company that really stood out to you and you don't mind putting their name in that review, that would really go a long way. Having a person's name in the review actually really helps with SEO, because Google looks at us as a very authentic review.
Stephen Spence:We've actually been doing it at our company. When we do a strategy session for new customers, we ask them at the end, do you mind leaving us a review? And we follow up immediately with a link to it or software. So we are at the house. But if you look at our reviews now, like all the reviews, have people's names in it, so that's just a little sidebar there for reviews.
Stephen Spence:Now whose name does it have in it? Try to have an employee's name.
Ty Cobb Backer:Oh OK.
Stephen Spence:So the salesperson says, hey, can you leave us a review If you don't mind putting a name, whether it's my name or someone else's name at the office. That really stood out to you during this process, this journey with TC Backer. That would go a long way. It actually helps with our SEO, which would be great.
Ty Cobb Backer:I love that. I love that way way too. A little nugget, yeah, with a golden goose, golden goose egg, yeah, man, that was good. Yeah, that was good. Well, thank you for coming on. You know I love it, I love it, I love you, I love Vic, I love, I love beyond a whole lot. I love what we're doing here and thank you for being a huge part of this and a part of our success of doing this and being our number one fan.
Stephen Spence:I like the journey that we're both on and following each other's journey. It's been pretty fun.
Ty Cobb Backer:It is, it is, it is good. It's fun to help motivate and level each other up and call each other out to you on some shit at times.
Ty Cobb Backer:So thank you for being my biggest fan and supporter and level, or what do you want to say? Push, or pushing me to become a better person, likewise. So thank you, thank you and thank everyone for watching. We will see you next week for episode 220. We will have Josie Parks, the new owner, founder of Win the Storm, so that should be pretty sick, looking forward to that. And then the week after that we will have Mike Claudio. We will be at Win the Storm on more there actually the day before, so we're going to have to set up a makeshift studio. I don't know if he's going to be in Dallas or not, or if we're going to zoom him in, but either case, man, it's going to be a killer, freaking episode. So see you guys, have a great day and enjoy your lunch.