Business Owner's BEST ADVICE to be Successful in Roofing.

Mission Control Podcast

In today's episode, Mike is joined by Corey Combes, the founder of SouthShore Roofing & Exteriors in Tampa, Florida. Corey has built up his company from the ground up to become one of the premier roofers in Tampa. He gives some fantastic insights into how he has gotten to this point. Corey is highly knowledgeable, and the conversation includes a wealth of valuable information. Stay tuned to learn his best tips and tricks.

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00:00:00:09 - 00:00:16:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So we're back for another episode of the Mission Control podcast. Kristen, what episode is this? What number? I think this is number eight. We're creeping up on 100 folks. They say a very high percentage of podcast last, like, you know, like one episode, three episodes. But I mean, we are we are vetted. We've withstood the test of time.

00:00:17:01 - 00:00:34:03 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I want to take a minute to to welcome Corey Combs, South Shore Roofing and Exteriors to the show. But I also want to acknowledge that the team over at roof is fantastic. So if you need instant roof measurements and a roof quotes clean and pristine proposals which will give your audience no choice but to buy from you. Hit up the team at roof or down below.

00:00:34:03 - 00:00:50:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns There's going to be a link. Click it. Let them know I sent you. You're going to love that you did. What's up Corey? Nothing man. We love roofer around here. Yeah, there are a team partners and they help bring the show to life. And, they're just a great company, you know, a great company run by great people.

00:00:50:13 - 00:01:10:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I'm sure we're going to have some conversation around centered around roofer today. We will. And we might as well jump right into it. So you've recently done a tour de America, with the team over at Roofer. So why don't you talk to me? What about what those events have looked like? what it's been like for you.

00:01:10:13 - 00:01:33:02 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns The interesting thing about roofer is I think they're coming from their position a different spot than most people are. Because, you know, Richie and Nick and some of the higher ups came from the roofing industry, their family still in roofing. And so their goal isn't just to create tools for roofers, but it's also to help roofers understand how to use those tools.

00:01:33:04 - 00:01:52:05 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And part of that roofer Ray show was really about bringing good information that they can plug into their business right away. So we had things on, you know, how to market your business. We had things on how to present in the home. So people say yes to you and buy from you. And that was what I was doing with them.

00:01:52:07 - 00:02:22:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Then they had a, a guy named Dan that came in and talked about the client experience, and he's from a different industry altogether. So he came from the credit card space, and then he came from the technology space, and he talked a lot about the client experience from a vantage point of overall, how do you make your, your deliverables much better for your clients, or how do you put something in place to make your client experience different and better?

00:02:22:17 - 00:02:37:19 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So that was the framework of it. And I learned I actually learned a lot from Dan. Some stuff that I was able to put in my company. And you and I talked about it the, the where we dropped the ball and what we could have done better on the client experience. So it was it was really good.

00:02:37:21 - 00:02:53:16 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I love that. Yeah. So you're not one of those guys that you've been doing this for 20 years. So you know everything and nobody can teach you anything. it depends on what day you ask. to be fair, it sounds like we're asking on the right day because you seem very receptive to what Dan had to offer.

00:02:53:16 - 00:03:10:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And. And one of those things in your business. That was great. What I find a lot of the times is even one good information is given. It's not the absence of the information, it's the lack of execution and implementation of that information. Yeah, I say that a lot. execution is the secret sauce. It's not the information. Yeah, yeah.

00:03:10:12 - 00:03:28:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So what would you be your advice to all the roofers that are tuning in as far as how to take something from concept to being implemented? It's a good question. I think that, you know, in my experience and what I've done and, you know, what I've helped others do is you first got to figure out what your biggest gap is.

00:03:28:08 - 00:03:58:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns and how can you solve that and how that's going to affect your overall business. Right. And I think one of the big data services that the industry is doing right now is telling everybody that sales cure all, and that's, that's a Band-Aid statement. That's not a, that's not a solution statement. Yeah. I'll add that a lot of the times, not only does it not cure everything, it makes a lot of things worse.

00:03:58:14 - 00:04:21:03 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns It does because it covers up the actual problem. So you think things are fine, but then when those sales stop coming in, or the issue that you had is so great, you can no longer conceal it. Now you have a bunch of sales and you still have this big problem. Yeah. And that's a really good point. I was actually I wasn't even on that line.

00:04:21:03 - 00:04:41:19 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I was thinking more. So like if you have production issues and it's a result of a breakdown of a process, inundating more projects into the pipeline is only going to put more stress in and exacerbate that existing issue. Right, exactly. That's exactly right. And then it makes it more far reaching and results in a shitty customer experience. And it's just counterproductive to what we want to accomplish.

00:04:41:21 - 00:05:04:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns The insidious part of that, though, is on the surface, it makes everything look okay because you hang on to that. Well, we sold X like, you know, here's our gross revenue or whatever. And as we've seen with some of these bigger companies that have recently closed, that gross sales number means nothing. And you talk about it a lot just being a vanity stat.

00:05:04:20 - 00:05:24:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns and this is proof that it's a vanity stat. Your sales, if not followed up with the rest of what it takes to run a good construction company. If that doesn't follow suit, those sales are just a vanity stat period. And it feels good. It makes our ego feel good. I did $20 million in revenue. It's like, oh, this guy's doing 7 million, made twice as much as you.

00:05:24:17 - 00:05:40:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Yeah, well, I realize I didn't answer your question about the implementation. That's okay. We'll get there. We'll get there. but I went through that myself last year in 23. You know, we had a we had a really big year sales wise. We had a it was, you know, from a revenue perspective, you look at it and you're like, wow, this was amazing.

00:05:40:13 - 00:06:07:09 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns By far the hardest year that I've had in business in my 30 year roofing career. We just were not handle we were not able to handle all of the issues. Some were ours, some were not ours. in a way that we could continue to produce the customer experience that we were used to producing. We had a lot we had a lot of problems.

00:06:07:09 - 00:06:35:08 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns We had a lot of problems on the installs because of material availability, our lack of planning, the inability for my team to so I for about half the year last year, I kept talking to them about we're getting right to the goal line and we're not scoring the touchdown. Like for some reason we would get 90% there and then everybody would just stop and then we would leave it there and then we would upset the customers.

00:06:35:12 - 00:06:58:05 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I don't I don't know how we got there, but we did. And so I had to sit back and thank God we had the processes and the documentation and all of those things in place already. So we could diagnose where the issues were and plug the holes really quickly, put the right people in place, get them trained. And now, you know, we're back to knocking it out of the park for our customers.

00:06:58:07 - 00:07:16:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns But if you don't have that stuff in place, then how are you going to solve the issues first, if you don't know actually what the issues are, how can you solve them and then more importantly, if you don't have the processes and the people in place to solve those issues, how do you how do you plug those gaps?

00:07:16:12 - 00:07:42:08 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns It's a much, much harder undertaking when you don't have those things in place to fix what's broken, because it's going to happen. It just does. Yeah, it's really well thought out. That's a great answer. Thank you. I, I did a consultation with, with a younger company and they were coming to me looking for advice on different things like Google among them, but system process things and CRM things, automation, things like that.

00:07:42:08 - 00:07:56:16 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And I gave them a homework assignment. So what I've been doing. So for anyone that doesn't know, like the process to becoming a sun client is like you pay for a consultation, we sit together for 2 or 3 hours. I talk to you about a bunch of things that have nothing to do with me selling you anything, or even services that we offer.

00:07:56:16 - 00:08:20:20 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Just, you know, I've been doing this for around a decade and I've paid very close attention to, you know, pre-revenue companies, 20 million companies, everything in between. Help them scale and, watch how many eggs sometimes it takes to make an omelet when they're breaking them. And sometimes there's a lot of waste. Right. so what I've been doing now is I do a follow up because we can go through all these great things, and I'm inundating people with a lot of information that's foreign to them they're not familiar with.

00:08:20:20 - 00:08:38:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And what I found is that the majority of the time, they're ecstatic. They leave a review, they couldn't be more happy, and then nothing gets done. So now I've been scheduling like a 30 minute follow up for the following week, like, okay, here's your homework assignments. And, today, Nick, with easy exteriors, out of Delaware, we had a great conversation.

00:08:38:11 - 00:08:55:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns He had some homework. He didn't get all his homework done. I was like, okay, well, what happened? And I think sometimes, like, accountability has to be binary, like, did you do this? Did you not do it? And I think sometimes other times. Right. There's there's situations where you have to take into consideration things that take place, like when the bulls are flying, we're running a business.

00:08:55:10 - 00:09:11:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns It's really fucking hard to be like, okay, we got these 17 things to do by Tuesday. I better have them done. But he did a really good job. Like he focused on like revamping his CRM, writing down, like getting out of his head, his systems and processes and putting them on paper. So like he missed on some of the Google business profile stuff, like it's fine.

00:09:11:10 - 00:09:28:22 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I said, so what I want to do for you is to make sure that there's a pathway to where you're not going to become less busy. Like, that's not going to happen. Like you're continuing to grow. Your company is going to be time is going to be more square. So let's create like a 30 day blueprint where you can say definitively, we've got these nine different things.

00:09:28:22 - 00:09:43:19 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And on this day, this is a one time task. It should take me about an hour come hell or high water. I'm spending this hour doing this like barring a complete emergency. for things that are residual that you have to do, what day, what time makes the most sense for you, and then, like, having a blueprint where you're not negotiating with yourself.

00:09:43:19 - 00:10:01:15 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns The time for that. And, seeing through that, it actually gets complete. And then then you can move on to the next things in the business. And you seem very receptive and grateful for that. It's it's the willingness, right? You you testing is willingness to actually do some work in this company. Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of guys.

00:10:01:17 - 00:10:29:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns From what I've seen, you know, this is where the, the real, The real bifurcation here you have, you have people that want. Yeah. It's the splitting, right. Going in two different directions. And you have people that genuinely, I think everybody at Face value has a genuine desire to make their company better. Yeah. There's a small percentage that are willing to put in the work.

00:10:29:13 - 00:10:52:14 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns That and I think that's where that real bifurcation comes in, is you have people that want the work done for them, and then you have people that are willing to put in the work and the problem with making things plug and play, when you're not sitting down and thinking through these things yourself and writing them down and you, you're not personally connected to the things that actually make your company run.

00:10:52:19 - 00:11:23:04 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns When you're looking for somebody to just come in and and do the work for you. Yeah. And when you have to dissect that stuff and you have to figure out and diagnose where there's problems, it's harder to do because you didn't sit down at the origin and, and work through all those things mentally and write them down. When you do that, you have a better chance of picking out the things that don't work and changing them because you're intimate with those things that make your company run and and that's really where, you know, we're missing.

00:11:23:04 - 00:11:55:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And that's what I've been trying to champion for and why I've gotten involved with roofer and doing some of this contractor coaching, because there's there's this mindset now, for whatever reason, that it's easy to run a construction company. And that is why the failure rate so high. So you have the amateur that is teaching the beginner. And because of that, there's no foundation there.

00:11:55:10 - 00:12:15:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns There's no real foundation for the business. And then that business is going to crumble because it was never built correctly in the first place. Yeah. And and they're not bad people. They're just inexperienced. And that's okay. We all need to learn, right? Yeah. Speaking of like, inexperience and needing to learn, I see this on the marketing pages all the time.

00:12:15:23 - 00:12:39:09 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And I get hit with ads and they're like, hey, I'll run your social media ads for free. You don't have to pay me a dollar till they generate business. It's like, you want me to be your fucking guinea pig. You're 17. The fuck off of my feed. Yeah, yeah. right, right. So. All right, so through the the rise events, you're you're visiting groups of contractors.

00:12:39:09 - 00:13:06:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Geographically, they're in different towns, cities, states, countries even. Right. So what I'm curious to know is what are some of the issues that they're facing that are kind of unique to a certain area or a certain company? Like what are a couple of those? If you could think of any that have that have come up, and then what are some of the things that kind of across the board, regardless of the companies that you're dealing with where they're located, it's this is a real problem.

00:13:06:23 - 00:13:34:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I like where you're going with this because we can talk about this and now we then we can go back to the implementation. so happy accident. I saw the thing that I see the most, is so on a location driven issue, which would be their market. Yeah. And a lot of contractors haven't been taught how to build a sustainable business outside of a storm.

00:13:35:00 - 00:14:01:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And so you have these particular pockets which they're calling a storm. They're calling storm markets where they don't believe that retail can function in those storm markets. And what's interesting is, well, I'll go out and I'll Google and I'll find a retail company. I'll say, well, how are they functioning in this market? How did I function in what was perceived to be a storm market on the retail, on a retail side, and did really, really well.

00:14:01:02 - 00:14:34:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And so the issue they're facing is nobody has taught them how to do that. So I think that's location specific. What I've seen overall is a global issue for roofing for contractors. But roofing contractor specifically is this idea that there's a separation between restoration and retail and how those should function from a customer standpoint. What I mean by that is people think that, or.

00:14:34:14 - 00:15:04:14 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I get the impression that from speaking with a lot of these restoration contractors, that they think they don't have to do certain things because it's not appropriate for their business model from a customer service or a customer experience standpoint, such as. Well, one of the things that I was working with, roofer on is helping, roofers, no matter if their restoration or their retail, it doesn't matter is how they can do an in-home demo to help their client understand the process better.

00:15:04:16 - 00:15:23:17 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And it's interesting to me when I talk to them and I ask, well, do you do any type of in-home demo? And they're like, no, we don't. We're, you know, we Dornoch and we're restoration contractors. And what I'm trying to get people to understand is that the only difference should be how the customer pays for the project. That's it.

00:15:23:19 - 00:15:51:08 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns That's the only difference. The way that you acquire the customer might be different, and the way that they pay might be different, but those should be the only two. You need to find commonalities with really successful companies and how they treat and how they manage their customer experience. So a good example would be even if you're a door knocker, you're acquiring that customer differently than somebody that's using Google, you know, to to have them inbound lead.

00:15:51:10 - 00:16:16:07 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns But once you get to the door, the way that you educate and the way that you care for the customer should be the same. Now, the information might be a little bit different. I'm not going to tell people what the claims process looks like because they're not filing an insurance claim. But if you create a nice presentation for the homeowner so they know exactly what the process is, who you are, and what next steps are, that's really what you should be doing.

00:16:16:07 - 00:16:36:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So you can build loyalty and trust with that particular customer. And I truly believe that's one of the reasons why now these guys are getting pro shop and, you know, they'll go out and they'll file a claim. And then they're all upset because now the homeowner wants an estimate. Well, you haven't done your job to build any trust or loyalty.

00:16:36:08 - 00:16:52:03 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So now they're out shopping you because they don't trust you. And they don't they don't they don't have any loyalty to you as a contractor because you have not given them a reason to be loyal to you. Yeah, they it's like 50 guys with a white t shirt in a bar with the same build. You look the same as everybody else.

00:16:52:08 - 00:17:30:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Yeah. You're all wearing the same Cologne. You're all wearing the same white t shirt. Right? You know, it's not in a sun t shirt. It's just the. It's just a white cotton t shirt. Maybe a white cotton t shirt. Yeah, yeah. so. So that's a tri blend. 100% cotton. Thank you. Okay. when you have a when you have a, a perspective like that, that's going to change the way that it's going to permeate all the areas of your business when you have a perspective of you just Dornoch and you file an insurance claims, and it's a volume game that's going to permeate all through your business.

00:17:30:08 - 00:17:54:07 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And so what I'm trying to help people understand is, is the more time that you spend on your customer experience, and part of that is your who answers the phone, your sales process, whatever your sales process looks like, how you inform them, how you educate them, and then ultimately why they decide to use their contractor. those things are going to help you build a better, more sustainable business.

00:17:54:07 - 00:18:13:04 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns You'll get more referrals. You'll retain your clients better. You know, the whole deal. And so that's what I think. From what I've seen, this last roofer rise is really what I want to focus on is helping people understand there shouldn't be any differences other than how you acquire your customer and how they pay for their job. That makes a lot of sense.

00:18:13:06 - 00:18:33:08 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I personally think it's more than education, though. I don't think it's a the nobody's really taught them, and that's the sole reason I would say that a lot of the times through my experience, it's willingness. So willingness to be open minded, 100% people are telling you, right. There's like, you know, someone will reach out to me in the past and say, you know, we want more leads.

00:18:33:10 - 00:18:55:16 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns For me, that's a fucking red flag, Christian. Make sure I'm waving a red flag there. because it's like, okay, we're focused on immediate, like, not anything sustainable, like whatever. And then the conversation goes like when it's in a store market. or why wouldn't I just hire more door knockers? It's like, we'll do that. Why are you calling me good?

00:18:55:16 - 00:19:21:09 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I don't need to convince you that Google works like Google works. If if I've got to sit here and and put together a presentation on why Google is a viable option for you, like, we probably shouldn't be talking. Yeah. and even there's been some instances where we've done really well, generate a ton of leads in the issue becomes, to your point, they're not so it should be the same, right?

00:19:21:14 - 00:19:41:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Besides how it's being paid and how the customer is being acquired. Okay. but a lot of the times it's not. And there's a big difference between I'm gonna send this guy out to sign somebody to a free roof, God forbid eating a deductible or a $1,000 deductible, even if it's like a percentage based deductible or whatever it is.

00:19:41:00 - 00:20:05:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns A few thousand dollars, versus, hey, how me $35,000? And a lot of the times hugely different. Well, there's not a there's not a willingness to understand the difference from what I've seen a lot of times. And because of that, they put their number one salesperson, you know, doorknocker, in a position where they're going to sell retail, like, or we're going to go out and sell this job now, and you got to educate them.

00:20:05:21 - 00:20:32:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And especially if it's a retail situation, it's like, okay, how are you gonna get that $35,000 check? You're not just submitting it to the insurance company, but like, this roof's fucked. Like you actually have to engage with that person. Like you said, build that trust, build that loyalty, build a confidence where you're not just one of the 50 guys in a white shirt that all look the same, smell the same, act the same, like what's going to be memorable about your company, where that customer, if you leave there without signing, is I mean, like, I can't wait to fucking work with them.

00:20:32:23 - 00:20:57:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns it's pretty funny because, you know, like my presentation, one of the first things I said is, I say to them, I was like, look, I'm gonna hurt some feelings, guys, okay? The product you sell doesn't matter at all. At all. if you heavily focus on what products you push, you have literally just leveled the playing field to everybody else that sells that same product.

00:20:57:12 - 00:21:18:15 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So let's say for an example, your your your guy, you know, you use gaff or you use Owens Corning, which a lot of people like to use Owens Corning. So if your big pitch is going in there and talking about, hey, we're in Owens Corning, you know, whatever platinum, great. What happens when you're sitting at the kitchen and you hang your hat on that as your differentiator?

00:21:18:17 - 00:21:38:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns What happens when you're at the kitchen table with two other master or platinum OS's? what's the homeowner going to think? All the same, everybody's the same. so what's the price? What's your price? What's your price? Right. Because you've got that guy. That's right. You're you're all like platinum. Why am I going to pay a little bit more with you versus this other guy?

00:21:38:21 - 00:22:01:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I'm not. Because you guys, you've literally just leveled the playing field with everybody else. So don't focus on your product. You can't you can't control that. I think the manufacturers have done a really good job at like teaching us that that matters more than it does, but it really doesn't. And the way that I know this is because when Covid hit, I've never sold an ICO roof in my life.

00:22:02:01 - 00:22:29:16 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Okay. Never. You got you going to get shingles. We couldn't get shingles. Yeah. The only thing that we could get was ICO. So there were two things I was concerned with. And I asked my rep, I asked my, this distribution, distribution rep, and then I asked the ICO rep. The two things I was concerned with is if I tell these customers I can get this particular color and product, can we get it?

00:22:29:18 - 00:22:53:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And if I have an issue, do I have the support to take care of the customer immediately so that it doesn't disrupt their life? And I got both guarantees. That's okay. We're going to sell that. We sold thousands and thousands and thousands of squares of ICO. I don't I didn't know anything about the product. Right? I wasn't worried about the product.

00:22:53:00 - 00:23:19:05 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I was worried about my customer and the support that we could give if they had an issue. That was all I'm worried about. And so what that showed me was, largely. And I actually changed our presentation because I used to have a presentation that went through the installation and what products got used where and all that stuff, and I found out that that is completely useless like most homeowners, unless they're an engineer, don't give a shit.

00:23:19:07 - 00:23:40:09 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns They want to know they can trust you with their money. You're going to be there for the long term, and they're not going to have any problems. That's really what they care about. So that's what we need to focus on. So we look at the similarities between restoration and retail. We find out what all those similarities are. And then we look at the differences and we figure out how to modify based on those differences.

00:23:40:09 - 00:24:14:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And what you'll find I think, is there's way more similarities than there are differences. So what are the top three things that you would advise a contractor that's listening to this to really focus on in their presentation that's going to help differentiate them? Well, the biggest thing that I found is and I went to a GAF training like four years ago, and the guy that was running the training asked everybody in the training if they have their mission, their values and their vision written down, right?

00:24:14:11 - 00:24:42:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Like their core values, their mission and the vision for the company. And I and I didn't I didn't have any of those written down. And he said, I challenge you to, to to write those down. And I did, and it took me like two months to get those written down. What that helped me understand really, was what I wanted to be able to convey to our potential customers based on what our values are.

00:24:42:23 - 00:25:16:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And then more importantly than that, I could train my team on what our value, what our real value proposition is to the customer. And once you learn what your real value proposition and I'll, I'll give you an example here in a second so people can understand what I'm talking about. But when you learn, when you really learn what your value is and you write that down and you create a, a guiding document on that, now you can train and teach your team the person that answers that or the people that answer the phone, your sales team, your, you know, your project managers.

00:25:16:18 - 00:25:43:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Everybody understands the value that you're bringing to the table and everybody can row in the same direction. So I think that would be like the number one thing that I would encourage people to do is sit down, write your value, your vision and your, mission. Mission is, and use that as your, your, your guide to write all your processes and to train your team on, like, who you are as a company, your identity.

00:25:43:14 - 00:26:01:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns We'll call that the North Star exercise. Okay. We'll call that the North Star exercise. If you if you don't understand as the owner what your identity actually is, then you cannot convey that to your homeowners. And why are they going to buy in if you don't even know who you are? And this, I mean, this stuff like, oh, we're high quality.

00:26:01:06 - 00:26:32:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns That's what everybody says. Come on. Oh, we give great service. Okay. You know, like when I hear that, I just roll my eyes. It's like, yeah, it's what everybody says. It's like the most generic answer you can. What does that actually mean? yeah. So that's where you start. Okay. Where do you go from there? Then you, you put together something that highlights how you execute that value.

00:26:32:14 - 00:26:53:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And so when I started South Shore, even though I had a lot of time in the industry, most customers want to know how long you've been in business, because time in business equals safety for them, because you have a long track record of, yeah, being a business for sure. I didn't have that. I didn't have any Google reviews.

00:26:53:11 - 00:27:08:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I had zero credibility. So I had to figure out, like, why are people going to buy for me? Why would they go for me? And so my presentation that I used to do at the kitchen table was all about the service that me as the owner was going to give to the homeowner. I was going to be the guy that sold the job.

00:27:08:22 - 00:27:25:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I was going to be the guy that went up on the roof and check to make sure it was done in a in a workman, you know, good workmanship type manner. I was going to be the person that solved any issues during the build. And, and I had videos of this. I was going to be the guy that was diving into the bushes to clean the bushes.

00:27:25:12 - 00:27:44:05 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns If the crews didn't get it 100% clean, I was going to be their guy. That was my value, and that's what I conveyed to the homeowners. And so for me, I had to figure out how I could service my clients and show them that I was going to give them service, that nobody else was going to give them.

00:27:44:07 - 00:28:13:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And that's what my presentation was. Even though I had no Google reviews, I had no credibility. I had no time in business. And how many times do you think I got asked how long I'd been in business? One time. And I lost that job because I had to be truthful with them. but because I had figured out what my value was to the homeowner and why it was important to them and really what they were worried about.

00:28:13:20 - 00:28:37:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I created a presentation that made it so they didn't even question right who we are as a company. I remember those days I did too. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I'm talking about. It like figuring out what your value is and then conveying that to the homeowner. Because we all have different value propositions. We do. Yeah.

00:28:37:21 - 00:28:54:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I think it evolves right. It has to. It's not it's a fluid situation. It's not static. And. It's just like anything with systems and processes like as you grow the company, things are going to function differently and things are going to need to be changed. Things are going to need to be adjusted. Yeah. You know, think of it this way.

00:28:54:10 - 00:29:09:15 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns If you're if you're a five year old child and your mom's going shopping for you versus the 25 year old adult, like, think of the differences in clothes that you worn. Think of the differences in size of those clothes right when you were five and seven and 911, you weren't always wearing the same size pants and shirt, right?

00:29:09:17 - 00:29:27:20 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Things are going to change. It's a lot easier in that context to pay attention and realize the differences that are taking place, like, oh shit, I got taller. My pants are short as fuck, I need better pants. They need to be longer. it's the same thing within your business. As it grows, you add more people. There's. I mean, yeah, well, so.

00:29:27:20 - 00:29:52:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So our presentation has changed from, you know, me, it essentially telling them that, you know, I'm their guy and, you know, this is what they can count on. And, you know, all this stuff too. Now, we try to discredit the one man shows because now we have a team in place and we talk about what goes wrong and what can go wrong and how those are handled, typically with other companies and how they're handled with us and who we have in a place and all that.

00:29:52:10 - 00:30:07:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So they have to change. Our value is different now. I'm no longer going to be the guy that's going to go clean your bushes because I have a flair, you know? I love that, right? You know, and I'm not above that. I mean, I would if I'm on site and we need to clean up the site, I'm 100% to do it.

00:30:07:20 - 00:30:30:02 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns but it's just not how we're set up anymore. So now our values changed. We have a team in place. and I'll give you a good, a good story. We, we tell this story, and we were just talking about this in our sales meeting. we had a couple last year. We had a couple, bundles of shingle slide off the roof and hit the outside air conditioner unit, smoked it, just knocked it right off.

00:30:30:02 - 00:30:48:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns This thing broke. I mean, just done, right. Two hours later, we had temporary AC hooked up in their house in the middle of summer. Hottest. You know, it's Florida. You know, it's hot, hotter. Shit. two hours later, we had temporary AC set up in their house so they didn't have to go without AC. And then, two days later, we had a brand new unit installed.

00:30:49:01 - 00:31:13:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Lower cost, lower quality. Contractors cannot do that. They do not have the ability and the resources to do that. And so when we talk about the price disparities and why there's price disparities and how those affect the homeowner, that's one of the stories we talk about. Yeah, it would be very intentional about talking about that 100% of my prospects like, you know, and we plan every play to be a touchdown, but sometimes we throw an interception.

00:31:13:00 - 00:31:31:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Here's an example, right. Yeah. It's not important. You throw in a substance how you respond. Yeah. This is what we did. Yeah. So do you want to take the chance of hiring a one man show that, you know, charge to $3,000 less on this roof that doesn't have the money to buy you a new outside unit that broke, and now, you know, now you hate the cost.

00:31:31:21 - 00:31:57:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns That contractor, even though he might be a good guy, he cannot help you because he doesn't have the resources. So what is your peace of mind worth? And that's really kind of how we work on our price, our price disparity. And one of the things that we've added and that we're working on adding is helping explain and get the customer to understand why there are price disparities.

00:31:58:04 - 00:32:14:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So they are a little bit more educated on why we might be more money than the other. And it's all about helping them, price condition and figure out what's important to them, because some people don't find value in that and they just want the lowest price. They're just not our customer. Yeah.

00:32:15:01 - 00:32:24:15 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns When did you realize it's okay for not every customer to be your customer? When I didn't need the money so badly.

00:32:24:17 - 00:32:53:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns It's a fair and honest answer. Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of people struggle with that. It's a hard one. It's a really hard one. It's hard to walk away. We just did it. I mean, one of my sales guys just, sent me a message the other day, and he said, how would you handle this? And I said, by telling that customer, thank you very much, but we're going to choose not to help them because she wanted to change a bunch of stuff in our contract, not doing it.

00:32:53:02 - 00:33:18:19 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Once they start trying to change the way that we conduct our business, it I've learned over the years it's a huge red flag and it's just not a fit for us. Yeah. The other thing is, I've learned I've sold a lot of those jobs and had to deal with the fallout. And so at some point you get that good balance between experience and not needing the money, and then you can turn down customers.

00:33:18:22 - 00:33:40:22 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So that might be the right answer. Yeah. It's tough right? You start a business. You're so concerned about making it, especially in construction. I want to make it past that first three years for the first week, first year, first three years. I feel like it's a lot easier after that point. Whether you're doing 1,000,000 in 3 years or you're doing 10 million, it's a lot easier.

00:33:41:03 - 00:33:58:20 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Okay, as time passes, you build confidence that the bottom's not going to fall, that something catastrophic is not going to happen, and you're gonna have to figure out how to provide you for your family. But it's, I don't know. It's it's something I try to be very in tune with because. Yes, hard man. People will take your piece, sir.

00:33:58:20 - 00:34:20:09 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns They will rob you blind of it. and then blame you and blame me. Yeah, like that's the motherfucker of it. All right. Yeah. That's, Yeah. So that's my piece of advice. Try to get there, you know, quicker than Corey did. Not every customer is your customer, and that's okay. There's somebody that'll help them. It doesn't have to be you.

00:34:20:11 - 00:34:42:15 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns the tricky part is figuring out what, you know, how to not disqualify people because you don't want to deal with them versus are they not your customer? Because those are two those are two different. Yeah. They're not the same. They're not the same. Those are two different things. Yeah. It's funny because sometimes like I would get a message, I'm like, nope.

00:34:42:17 - 00:34:56:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And then I would sit there and think about it before, like I was like, yeah, let me talk to him. It's like, you know, you might be being a jerk. You know, you may be just like a little bit entitled right now. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's an intuitive thought. And maybe they're not coming from a place that you think that they're coming from.

00:34:56:11 - 00:35:13:15 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns You should give them an opportunity to explain and not be so quick to dismiss. And that's where the experience comes in. I'm just trying to learn to become like a well-adjusted adult and evolve as the days go on. So. You got any tips for that?

00:35:13:17 - 00:35:38:08 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns No. Okay. Anyone else in the audience does come on the show. We want to talk to you. Yeah, man. We need some, Eckhart Tolle type, you know, see? So, let's let's get into the implementation side of it. So that's, there's some, some, some practical examples that I think people can wrap their mind around. Like what we're talking about.

00:35:38:13 - 00:36:10:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Okay. So in the beginning of the interview, you asked me, you know, what are some things? Or why do you think people have a hard time implementing and adopting things? You know? And my answer to that is, I think there's two reasons. One, there are inherently lazy people that just want the shortcut. They've been raised in an instant gratification, you know, society where, I mean, I even suffer from it sometimes.

00:36:10:12 - 00:36:25:03 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Like if I look down at my phone and it takes like two seconds to load a web page, I'm like a piece of shit, you know what I mean? Like what you should have in the sun website, folks. I mean, we're talking about Google, right? So and this is from a guy that duped me into getting an iPhone.

00:36:25:03 - 00:36:45:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns By the way, guys, I hate that long ed at so there's those people that are lazy. They don't want to do the work. and then there's the other thing that's called analysis paralysis, which you're like trying to figure out how to do it so well that it stops you from doing anything because you just can't figure out how to do it.

00:36:45:12 - 00:37:11:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And so you do nothing. I think that's the minor. And then there's another type of personality sprinkled in there that will just try it. and they don't feel like it's good. So they never actually send it.

00:37:11:02 - 00:37:30:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns The. The best thing that I think as a business owners, we can learn is you're just going to have to try some stuff, man, and it's just not going to work. And then you're just going to have to adapt and you're going to have to try other stuff, and you just have to be okay with it. Like, that is the attitude you need.

00:37:30:02 - 00:37:56:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Obviously it has to be thought out has you have to think about how it's going to affect everything else and all of that stuff 100%, but sometimes you just got to do it. Yeah, you just got to do it. And so, we, we were talking with roofing contractors and like how to create an in-home demo. And I went through told people how to create an in-home demo.

00:37:56:06 - 00:38:15:02 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns What the framework, what the structure, how the information should go. And after I got that done doing that, telling them how to do it, what do you think the number one question I got was, how do you do it? How do you do it? And can I have your presentation?

00:38:15:04 - 00:38:33:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns It's not the information, right. You know, it's the application of the information. I don't I don't know that you can teach and train that and that's why I like what you said about the, you know, the the exteriors company you working with. You tested his willingness to do some of the work, and you saw that he was willing to do some of the work.

00:38:33:12 - 00:38:43:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So you're going to go down that path with them? Yeah. It.

00:38:44:00 - 00:39:01:13 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns If you're not willing as a business owner. I mean, I know you. I've known you for years. You've known me since I started south. Sure. I've known you since you started ascend. One of the things that served both of us really, really well is we're not super. We're pretty risk averse. I mean, we're not, you know, we're not super risk averse.

00:39:01:13 - 00:39:19:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So, like, we'll just try shit, you know, we'll just do things. We'll take a leap and we'll figure it out. We also have the confidence that we'll get it figured out. We'll figure it out. Right? Yeah. so having the confidence that you'll figure it out is a huge one. And then just saying, you know what? I'm just going to do it.

00:39:19:12 - 00:39:44:22 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And this one might not work. Or we might have to iterate on it and figure it out to where it's like firing on all cylinders. But the willingness to just do it is the intangible that you have to have for implementation. 100%. If you have that willingness. Now, we can teach you how to do it. And so that's what I found to be the biggest barrier to implementation is they just don't want to do the work.

00:39:44:22 - 00:40:01:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns They want somebody else to give them the easy or softer way. And it doesn't exist. And they'll pay a king's ransom for it. They will, and then be mad when it doesn't work out the way that they thought, because there's really no way to do that, because I don't know your business like you know, your business. Sometimes we got to look in the mirror.

00:40:01:22 - 00:40:19:07 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Guys and gals go look in the mirror. Yeah, we get that a lot. And like, in our agency, we're not so much for our customers, but for like, prospects. I reach out, like, listen, I just want to. I know you guys are good. I just want to pay you. And I don't want to deal with this. It's like, well, that's not going to work for us.

00:40:19:09 - 00:40:37:16 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Think about a situation. And this has happened with you over the years where I call you and like thing things look super slow on my side based on the KPIs, because we're operating off of data, because we're not taking the calls, we're not booking the appointments, we're not running the leads. Like, oh, things look slow and you're like, good things have been great.

00:40:37:16 - 00:40:56:04 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Our sales guys have never close at higher percentage. Like we're getting a ton of replacements. We don't know that unless we have a conversation. So what we know is that based on our KPIs and what standards we try to uphold for our clients, as far as like target cost per lead, cost per acquire job, we're going to start making fucking changes because it looks like this campaign is underperforming.

00:40:56:04 - 00:41:12:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns But when I talk to you and you're like, no, it's absolutely killing it. Like, don't change anything, that would be misguided. And that's only as a result of us having communication and you being in tune with what's happening in your business as being in tune, what is happening on the marketing advertising side and bringing those two pieces together?

00:41:12:15 - 00:41:32:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns It's like the fucking Power Rangers. Christian, cue the Megazord. I think that's what it's called. when all the Power Rangers get together and they combine it and they get this big fucking machine that's like unstoppable. Transformers, I think does a similar thing. You know, it's like you bring these two things together and it's like, okay, now we can create like, actionable insights based off data and actually move things in the right direction.

00:41:32:02 - 00:41:48:16 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Conversely, we could be thinking that things are going extremely well, like your cost per lead is down 40%, which means you're getting jobs cheaper. And then I call you and I come to to brag about it. I'm like, Troy, how great is everything? I get fucking sucks. I got 17 calls for face. That is more. If I get one more, it's going to be a fucking problem.

00:41:48:16 - 00:42:10:20 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Like I'm like, oh, God damn. Here. I thought we did a good thing, right? But again, it's having that communication. So, you know, communicate with people. Well, we also have to talk about how that came about right so early on of us working together. You you said, look, I need you to track x, y and Z, right? I mean, I track the normal stuff like, okay, what's my you know, what's my close rate, how many leads I get all that.

00:42:10:20 - 00:42:25:19 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And you said, well, you need to look at this. You need to look at this. You need to look at this. Okay. And when I would come to you and I'd say, hey, Mike, shit doesn't look great. And you're like, okay, well, where is your tracking? I'm like, well, see, you're like, don't come to me with this bullshit, right?

00:42:25:21 - 00:42:46:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Until you until you, because the first year I just didn't have the capacity to track that stuff. I didn't know it was me doing everything when I finally realized. Oh, also, when when we signed. Remember we signed up for Google. Guaranteed. I was getting, like, 30 leads a day. That was wild. Yeah. but. And that's when we really started tracking things.

00:42:46:20 - 00:43:03:01 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns But if I didn't have what we actually needed to track, like, what we were getting, what type of leads, how they were, how were they, how they were dispositions, what did they close out? You know, all of that stuff that we actually needed to make real decisions for our company and not just how we feel about shit.

00:43:03:03 - 00:43:21:16 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Yeah. Then you and I wouldn't have been able to have a real productive conversation on what we need to change. And that's the thing. That's the stuff that I'm talking about. You said to me, in order for me to serve you better, I need this from you. And a lot of times as business owners, really? Well, how dare you need to just do this?

00:43:21:20 - 00:43:41:05 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Yeah, I'm paying you, sir. Yeah, I'm paying you. What do you. What do you mean you can't tell me what I'm closing at? I've no idea. I know those leads. Hit your inbox. What happened? What happened to them is on you. Yeah, and I need you to tell me what happened and how it happened. And I don't want to just hear all these leads suck.

00:43:41:07 - 00:44:02:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns How do you. So. And I know this is something that you and I have had conversations about. And, you know, your salespeople get you riled up, you come to me, then I get riled up, and then we do like a reconciliation and specific around the instant quote. So roofer has this great tool. It's called the incident quote. It's a it's an estimate I forget instant estimator or whatever.

00:44:02:08 - 00:44:17:03 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And it works really well. It works really well. Patent pending that. That's good. It works really well for a couple reasons. One, it differentiates you, right? And even people that have it, you can have 50 people with it in your market. They're not fucking marketing it. They're not using it. Right. They don't see a thing with Google. Guaranteed.

00:44:17:03 - 00:44:32:05 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns If you got Google guarantee and you're just doing it for lead, you're doing it wrong. Use it on your door hangers, put it on your crap, talk about it. It should be part of your sales presentation. People fucking trust Google. So if you can tell people that, hey, you should trust us because Google gave us a background check, they endorse our work to a certain degree.

00:44:32:05 - 00:44:50:20 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Like that is super powerful. It's a big deal. but when things are slow or sales reps are in a slump. This happened to me last week. It's actually a friend of mine that works for a client and he's like, man, those Instant Roof quotes are shit. Those leads are garbage. I was like, okay, I had this conversation before.

00:44:50:20 - 00:45:19:22 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns No. I was like, okay. I said, so pull up, leap for me and show me how many times you called the last five. I don't document them and leap. Why not? Why not? Well, because I don't. It's a waste of time. If not, I was like. So I was like, let me ask you this. You think it's a waste of time for you to document what's happening with the leads that you're getting, that you're gonna be held accountable for as far as, like your production or lack thereof, so that the owner of your company can put you in the best position to consistently get the best leads possible based on what's working or not working.

00:45:20:00 - 00:45:32:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I never really thought of it like that. I see where you're coming from. I was like, yes, I'm glad you see where I'm coming from. But a lot of the times, like the instinct, it's going to be designed to do a couple things, give someone a seamless experience as far as figuring out what that roof is going to cost them.

00:45:32:10 - 00:45:50:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And because even if they're in the planning stage, it's fine. Like they want to know tailoring to the society of immediate gratification, because you might not get the click of two other people are advertising it. and people want shit quick, and that's fine. getting the tire kickers out of the way, like filter aspect is huge. It's the best thing about it, in my opinion.

00:45:50:06 - 00:46:10:14 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns The fact that, let's say your average appointment with commute time sit down with the customer is like 2.5 hours for your sales rep between them planning it and measuring it and everything that they're doing. If you have them run ten leads a month of people that were never going to buy once they saw the price, you just put 22.5 hours of their time back in their pocket where they could spend that actually working on customers, they're going to fucking buy from you.

00:46:10:14 - 00:46:30:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Yeah. So we get like that all the time. Like the abandonment from the time that the lead submits to the time that it doesn't set an appointment, say, I got all these people. It's like it's always going to be that way. Always. Salespeople become become much more, much louder about it when they're having trouble selling. Right. Because then they could point to a boss man.

00:46:31:01 - 00:46:51:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Yeah. The all these leads are coming in and they're not they're not fucking responding. It's like, yeah, but that's always been the case. Let's talk about the fact that the leads that you are setting appointments on, you're closing 15% lower. Right. Like let's talk about that. Let's talk about why the fact that I audit the accounts that you're getting or the clients that you're getting, and on average, it says you have zero documented outreaches, zero follow ups, like what's happening?

00:46:51:18 - 00:47:14:12 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I know that you're calling people, why the fuck aren't you documenting it? So that I can make decisions to put you in the best position, to have the most amount of leads, the highest quality leads based on what's actually happening and not you getting in a fucking mood about a slump that you're having, literally just had this conversation with my production team about the sales team on Monday, and this is a conversation where we continually have.

00:47:14:12 - 00:47:36:20 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Right. but you're tapping into something that nobody wants to talk about. And this is the the personal accountability side. You know, it's really easy to go and blame us. And digital when we're having a down month, when we're not getting a ton of, a ton of leads in. And so my perspective has always been, what's the solution here?

00:47:36:20 - 00:47:54:03 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns How do we fix this? And it can't be about put putting blame doesn't do anything like all it does is creates animosity between, you know, let's say you and I. Right? If I come to you and I say, Mike, like, our leads suck, we're not getting them or whatever. And you're like, okay, I'm gonna go and research on my own and see what's going on.

00:47:54:03 - 00:48:14:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Steve, search volumes down, see if, you know, click through all of the things that we can monitor. I'm going to see if those are down, if there's any substantial change. And we'll figure it out on our end. What I need for you to do is I need to look at what types of lead you're getting, what the disposition is, how you're closing them, and, you know, who's being assigned these so we can take a look and see if they're, you know, if there's an issue.

00:48:14:11 - 00:48:33:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And I under your end if you both or. Yeah, or both or both and if and if we don't look at it like that and we don't, both take accountability for our side and try to figure out the solution, because at the end of the day, you want to do the best job for your clients. At the end of the day, I want to bring in as many leads as I possibly can.

00:48:33:02 - 00:48:49:06 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns It does not benefit me to blame you and it doesn't benefit you to blame me. We need to figure out how to solve the issue, and the only way to do that is we both take accountability for our side. Yeah, keep your side of the street clean is so funny because I made a piece of content a while back, like toxic accountability.

00:48:49:06 - 00:49:14:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Like. And that's not me trying to skirt accountability. What I mean by that is we've been put in situations where everyone loves a hate marketing company, is thinking things aren't working and etc. and like, you know, sometimes are better than others. There's ebbs and flows, there's lulls like that. Stuff happens regardless of who you're working with. But there's, there's a there's a tipping point where it goes from like, holding each other accountable to being a divisive us versus them situation.

00:49:14:18 - 00:49:27:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I'm not sure we feel that shit. Sure. Of course. And it's like, I like, I don't want to work under these conditions. If you're not happy here, you know, go somewhere. you know, and that's not to be disrespect, but I don't want my team in that position where they feel like they've got a gun to their head.

00:49:27:00 - 00:49:42:04 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns They're being interrogated. Like, let's have a conversation about let's talk about things that we can do to help you. We have no problem adding value. We have no problem. Like, I'll sit down with anybody for 30 minutes an hour. Like if they reach out, like I tell people, we'll give you as much time as you'll give us. And most people don't show up for meetings.

00:49:42:04 - 00:50:04:08 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And those are usually the same people that I hop on a Facebook group and start roasting smart ass businesses. Yeah, yeah, yeah, these people rob you blind. It's like, I don't know, like I've had 24 hours of meetings allocated for you in the last 12 months and, you have shown none. Yeah, right. And that's like, that's I don't want to say dead payroll, but like, it's certainly somebody sitting there for at least 15 minutes waiting for you.

00:50:04:10 - 00:50:24:19 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns let's just like, you know, communicate you know that that reminds. So we, we just signed this for exterior remodel. It's like we're going to be doing like all of the hardy artists and siding and, you know, new metal roof and new windows. I mean, you know, building out an outdoor patio. I mean, there's it's a huge it's a big job.

00:50:24:21 - 00:50:47:13 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns and so the we met over there last Tuesday and, the woman running the job, you know, we talked with her. We kind of laid out how everything was going to go, the process, what was going to have where are we going to put dumps? I mean, the whole deal. Right? And then two days later, she she text the salesman, I need you to do the detached.

00:50:47:18 - 00:51:06:20 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I need you to start on the detached garage now. So this woman is not the homeowner. She's actually an intermediary. She's a designer. She's the one that's running the project because the homeowners, travel a lot. And she said, I need you to do the detached garage now. I need somebody there tomorrow to start tearing it off and all.

00:51:06:20 - 00:51:28:01 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns This is a huge job. We've given you guys all these deposits. So my sales guy calls me freaking out, like, hey, we have to start this job tomorrow. We have to do this now. Sad. Hold on, hold on. Okay, let's call her. Come back and said, Tracy, do you trust us as your contractor? Well, yes. Okay. So here's what we're going to do.

00:51:28:03 - 00:51:54:00 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I understand where you're coming from. You have your buyers that wrote $90,000 in checks. You've given us $90,000. We've ordered the windows, we've ordered all this other stuff. We've given you a construction schedule. We told you we're going to start in two and a half weeks, and that's when we're going to start. And here's why. I cannot be putting some of my guys here, pulling them off, putting dumpsters, pulling them off.

00:51:54:00 - 00:52:14:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns We're not doing that. It's a small portion of the project. I get that you want some progress shown to your clients, but you're actually going to harm the process overall. And you need to let us do the job like we laid out and agreed to. Okay. She said, okay, that comes from experience and you knowing what you need to do for your client.

00:52:14:12 - 00:52:33:11 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So they're successful. Yeah. Look, she could have said, no, I don't I don't accept that. Like I'm going to go find another cut for her freaked out or whatever. And we would have had to have a different conversation. But you've got to be comfortable in who you are as a company, your processes and, and be able to talk to people and explain to them why you're doing things the way that they are.

00:52:33:12 - 00:52:50:15 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns They might not like it, but I would much rather have that conversation on the front end and have a smooth, successful project for the next two months. Rather than try to do this. And now we're we're knocked out of our processes. And, you know, my guys are wondering why they just went and did this and that. It just it's going to be a mess.

00:52:50:21 - 00:53:05:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It absolutely. And, you know, shout out to Brock with McClellan's contract and roofing. You know, he was I was out I took my daughter to a theme park for a birthday last August. He had some changes. He wanted me to the campaign. So, you know, I'm running point guard. I'm on with him.

00:53:05:18 - 00:53:23:20 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns A message in my team. We're doing this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this I fucked up. I didn't put one of the work orders in place that didn't set off one of the triggers that it was supposed to, and something didn't get fulfilled. Right? It's why you always call Charlie and and months later and months later, we're meeting and we figure it out, and I'm like, I.

00:53:23:22 - 00:53:41:22 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns I'm like, I fucked up here. That's my bad. But I'm like, also, this is a very good learning experience for me. And I want to appreciate I want to tell you, I appreciate you for bringing this to my to my knowledge, because that's why you don't fucking get away from the process. Right? Like all I'm trying to do is do the best I can for my customer, right?

00:53:41:22 - 00:54:01:09 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Roadhouse pay with good intentions. Great fucking dumpster fire. Yeah. No, it wasn't. Don't get me wrong. Brock's thriving. Everything was fine. But I felt bad because that's something that I told him I was going to do for him, and I didn't get it done. And it was for no reason other than I stepped out of what my typical process would be because I was at the theme park with my daughter.

00:54:01:09 - 00:54:26:01 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns But I wanted to provide a remarkable experience. That shit has to have limitations to some degree, because you put you put a lot of things at risk. It does. And, you know, that's the that's the maturity, I guess, is that you, you you learn those things, you understand those things. And then next time you, you know, are in that situation with your customer, you can say, listen, I want to do this for you, I really do.

00:54:26:03 - 00:54:49:18 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Here's what we're going to do to make sure I don't drop the ball. And this is going to be better for both of us. It might delay whatever the changes a day or two. And that's and I get it. You're in a hurry. I understand, but what we're both more concerned is, is the result. Right. And when you can talk to your customers like that again, they might not like it at the time, but when things go well, they'll respect it.

00:54:49:19 - 00:55:12:10 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And if you don't have the maturity to to have those hard conversations with your clients, that's where it opens you up to. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and then you have a bunch of problems, and now you've just created not only problems for you, but your team, your client. And it just it never goes well.

00:55:12:10 - 00:55:42:14 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns So yeah, I love that example of, you know, being able to have those hard conversations. And let's circle this back to implementation. If you don't have those processes and those systems laid out in your company, those standards, if you will, which I find funny little side note, you know, people are bashing systems and processes now because they're they've decided that, like it is an important part.

00:55:42:20 - 00:56:05:14 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Let's just look at them as standards. We can just look at them as standards. If you do not have those standards in place in your company, how can you adhere to something that that's not in place and that's where you continually have issues. You don't learn those lessons, but if you put those standards in place and the team is trained on those standards, you're going to be less likely to fall victim to it yourself.

00:56:05:16 - 00:56:29:21 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns Yeah, and so am I. I'm not going to create a problem for my team just because I want to make my customer happy. Yeah, I love this. This is great. We should do this again sometime. We should. One thing everyone for tuning in, y'all. The real MVP is shout out again to roofer. You guys helped make this happen and we going to be more grateful for it.

00:56:29:21 - 00:56:36:23 CoreyCombes & MikeStearns And, you know share this shit with somebody to help follow us. Do something, do something. Just do something. We go do something.