On today's episode of Gathering The Kings. I've heard our logo looks awesome all the time. I freaking hate yellow. I hate gold. Am not a gold guy. I'm a silver guy. At the same time, I get it. It makes sense. It could be purple shield services. Do our clients respond to it? Right. Take the ego out of what you're trying to do.
You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe Gathering fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real of the real on what it takes to build a successful business today.
We dissect good and bad decisions they've made along the way Chaz give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get the Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and Kings like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? Chad Wolf gathering the king's podcast. I got a an incredible animal duo here for you today.
I've got a I've got another a fellow strong piece. Derek Bear, CFO, and cofounder here on the Kings stage. My brother, how are you? I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. I mean, we I do we just realized this right before we hit the record button, and we got a bear and a wolf right here. Some powerful beast right there. I mean, they run the wilderness, don't they?
The do and coming from a, an experienced at this point, El Conner, but you do not want to run up against either one of these, although I have multiple times. My whole family is there. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. When certain areas where my dad and I will go hunting, and we have this joke about there's no wolves in these woods. Except for these, obviously, Gathering to ourselves, but bear. That's a little different. We'll hunt in some grizzly area. Woo. You do not wanna mess with a grizzly.
That's for sure. Right behind me and and the people that are watching video feed on this as Wolfe. And you can see there's a couple of targets back there. There's reasons for that because I'm a avid gun in easiest and very big second amendment to love her. Yeah. But I just hit a three hundred yard double bull's eye a couple of weeks ago. 300 yards for 308. And my goal is a thousand yards. Okay. Work hard play hard. Do you know how it works? A 100%. Yeah. Now see, I'm I love.
I love hunting with The gun, but I'll tell you there's nothing quite like being rather than three hundred yards or a thousand yards, being twenty yards, and all you got is a bow and arrow. It's awesome. And your knees are Kings. Like, that dude just blew his whistle at me. Holy geez. That's a £1000 animal. He didn't even know I'm here. This is incredible. So cool. It's amazing. I love it.
Yes. And I love bow hunting, but I'm trying to anchor a shoe right now, but now bow is there's If you're a true hunter, you gotta understand and appreciate nature and give back and do it the right way. And a scope and a rifle is not the right way. I'm not sure about your food. If you're doing it for pleasure, make sure you make it really enjoyable from start to finish. Yeah. I know you're 100% right.
And not that this needs to be about hunting at all, but right, that in The gun world, it's how accurate Chaz I be from a far away? And on the both side, it's I wanna experience the wilderness without them knowing that I'm here. Exactly. Which is very difficult. So there tell us what kind of business Chaz you have, man. I'm excited to get to it. Yeah. No problem at all. Goldfield Services are a company name.
It's and my partner, Art. Art actually started the company 14 years ago as Arts Electric and then gained HVAC and then hired a couple guys. And turn it into the small little, thank you, little, mom, and pop shop Kings of thing. And then I came in, and we'll talk more about that later. We're heating, cooling, electric, and now offering plumbing as well. So we've grown this year also. Yeah. You've you've hinted at it there a second.
We're definitely gonna get more to it, but you're a systems master. You're a business producer, a mindset guru. We were just talking about about your podcast, actually, and some of the ways that you've been able to help them grow, which I'm sure you'll drop on us here in a little bit. But before we get to some of the nitty gritty, I wanna the question of why, but specifically, at this point, you guys are crushing. Money's not an issue, and you're still after it. Oh, yeah. Why? Can't stop.
I'm never satisfied number 1 at the same time. There's a bigger goal in place here, and my bigger goal is to take down the biggest company in Illinois. It's like Green Giant, what I call them, and that company is listening in right now. If you are, you know, who you are. Because you forgot to came to my house 4 years ago. So I try. And he ain't forgotten because of that and because you did not honor what you said you were gonna do, and you did not deliver on a promise that was made to me.
And your managers didn't say your VPs didn't I went up the ladder as far as I could to make sure that it wasn't The, and it was you, and it's you. And guess what? I'm coming for you. And I'm coming back. That that vengeance is incredible that you can feel the passion. Guy just wanted Chaz, The of his HVAC work worked on. Why didn't you come? All you had to do is come. It was a water heater, dude. I had a water heater blow up in my house when my wife was at home, and she called me Kings.
And I told her to shut the main valve off, which was buying and stuff. I'm a handy guy. I Chaz work on anything. I'm an ex mechanic, so I I'm a mechanical thinker. Sure. At the same time, I've never replaced the water heater because I never had to. And you just be such an overwhelming fear. Okay. I just need to call somebody. I did the whole Google thing. I went through and looked at it. Said this company has 4000 or how how Chaz they be back? And how do you get 4000 reviews and not be bad?
Paid an appointment? And I called to back up just in case couple hours after that appointment. They never showed up. And I called them for 3 days after that because I was leaving on vacation the next day, and I was pissed. And, luckily, I had my backup. I got my water heater fixed and put in and everything, but, man, in the level of disrespect that I got from that big company, especially when I brought up a concern, a legitimate concern because I was ready to buy that.
I just didn't understand it. I understand why 4000 other people think it's a 5 star worthy when they can't even get a simple appointment I'm a seek to understand god. It's my favorite terms. You're gonna hear that a lot for me today. I like to listen to both sides of the story. I'll have to figure out if it's me. If it's story in my head, and if that story true? How do we move past, teach, train, and learn, coach teaching train to push that forward, or is it a process?
Is it process that's broken? And this was clearly a process was broken. So really bad. Yeah. Yeah. You can tell your process guy, and I'm curious to to hear some of it. But tell us how was that conversation then led you to your buddy, Art. You're like, I gotta take him down. Like, how did you get started with this whole thing?
Yeah. It kinda it's funny because I I was retired at the time, and and I really wanted to dig my teeth into something that was different and have been looking for something to find something because I always push myself personally in different areas. If I don't know how to do something, I'm gonna learn and figure out how to make that happen. And at the end of the day, I found ARG's company because he had good amount of Fire reviews. We could tell he was small. The marketing was really light.
It was you could see the progression of change and experience and colors of The trucks and design and the name of the company changed, but it's not so personable Arts Electric or ANC Mechanical. It was fuel services And I'm like, okay. So he's making some good moves here. And I actually applied for a technician just to learn a technician side of Kings, and he sat down with me. He goes, I can't have you. He was technician. I need you as an office manager. And I said, okay.
He goes, we're looking for partnership too. And I said, okay. Hang on a second. I needed to hear. We we talked about partnership. Now we're talking Kings. And I love money. And at the end of the day, I'm not gonna dive into anything without really knowing everything about the business. And it's funny because we spent I told my give me a year at a very discounted rate because that was my commitment to him Chaz, like, hey.
I'll give you a year discounted from what my normal stuff would be because The, I care about it too. A year's worth of my time to really dig in, and I can pull out at any time and be done if it doesn't feel right. And a year later, we fired half the staff 90% of staff. We got down to about two people and the art. And I said, alright. It's rebuild time. The accountant was you know, money. I I caught that between week and, technicians. I walked in.
The first thing the guy says to me, never forget this guy. Walks in and goes, I don't like you. I said, okay. Can you help me understand why you don't like me? You don't owe anything technical. I said, okay. But I know money. And you want more money in your pocket, right, for you and your family, buy new things, cool stuff. Yeah. Well, you don't understand what I do. I said, that's just a learning point for me. Do you understand how money works? He goes, went to divorce, and I lost my house.
And I said, okay. So, I mean, how much money do you have in your bank right now? He goes, well, it's not your business. Second. That's all the answer I need to know. Number 1, number 2, you're really gonna fall in love with The, and we're gonna be best friends. Are you ain't gonna work for me? He ain't working for us. Uh-huh. If you hired a bunch of staff and changed in different things and progression wise, we moved up and do a bigger location and more techs and an hour 25 strong.
And it's been a it's been a journey, and there's a lot involved in it. And, know your listeners are out there are looking for that one thing. Right? So that one thing that makes everything start to flow Right. It's your processes. It's your systems and processes, and it's you. If you don't have the mindset, keep pushing forward, The the time and whether you have partners or not because our and I are always on the same point with that. We push no matter what. We never take a step back.
If it's a step back, we're taking four steps forward. So if that wolf mentality is a bear mentality, like, you just gotta keep driving. If a pack has a problem, that person goes to the back of the pack. You have a new leader. You keep moving forward, and The roles switch all the time. But at the end of the day, you either help each The, get the fuck out. I don't know how to swear. A 100%.
I think that what everything that you just described without you saying it's the difference between the successful or the elite or the 1% and the rest. That's it. That's exactly it. And we can use the bear and wolf predator analogy, and it doesn't have to be that in in human form that were predators because I don't believe by you being successful that you take away from mine. Absolutely. But there has to be a mentality of what you're talking about of, I'm willing to push.
And that's the difference between a predator and a non predator in the animal world is that they're gonna survive. No matter what, if that means they gotta take you out, that's what they're gonna do. And that's what survival is. And, again, I carefully equate those because what we're not talking about is damaging other people.
What we're talking about is actually helping people, not only your client and experience, which you're amazing at, but Then on the inside, like, what you were talking about with that guy. Hey. I know money for tech. Why don't we work together? Because I can get you more money. You can get me more tech. Fantastic. But if we can't see it like that, then guess what? I gotta make moves, and that doesn't include you. Yeah. I mean, your the hidden secret to everything is people.
And and people have a hard time understanding that. Business owners have a hard time understanding that. And I talk about it all the time. If you don't know what you're doing, in a category. It's okay. I don't know everything. I have people that I surrounded myself with that helped me in my weak ones. And it's very hard for me to admit my weak points, but at the same time, I know what they are. They know that they are covering a weak point of what I am.
And they're compensated appropriately for that weak point. But at the same time, if you do not focus on people, you will not have a company. It will not move forward. It will not push because you can't do everything yourself. It's impossible. Try to manage twenty five people, and I'll I'll use a really simple analogy. Now once you pick up the phone and call 25 of your friends, out of the blue that you have not talked to in the past week. Tell me how 8 hours feels on The day.
Not gonna happen because you spend 10 minutes on the phone going, hey. How's it going? What's up? How's your day? How's your weekend? How's your family? Great. Okay. Cool. Well, I'm calling you I'm just supposed to make these calls. You're 25 minutes into a phone call. 25 minutes times 25 people. Dude, your 8 hours is gone. You have done nothing but make phone calls, and you haven't made an impact.
And maybe you engage people, your associate engagement level might go up one pick, but there's other associate engagement. Make you as productive as you can be at the level that you should be at. It's really what you should be thinking at.
So every day The we wake up, are you putting yourself forward enough to really make sure that you're paying attention to what you're Kings every day to better your company, better your clients, better your team and better your family because all of that really means the most when it comes to business. It's a sympathy. It's a big orchestra all the The. And if it's a got The untuned band player, somebody's gonna pay attention to that. Somebody's gonna get distracted.
Somebody's gonna stop playing The side of stuff. And next thing you know, you just sound crap. That's all it is. Yeah. Yeah. You're hitting on all cylinders. And and if the listener is smart today, they are playing this on not 1a half speed. They're slowing this sucker down and taking some notes. I wanna know just real quick before we move on to more some more tactical decision stuff. Sure. Where did this come from for you?
You did you just wake up one day and think I'm a business master and it just came to you? Did you read some books? Did you have a dad that's a multi billionaire? Like, what how'd this happen? There's a small little pill. There's a movie about it with Bradley Cooper in it. Place. Yeah. Let me just exactly. Let's go. I just talked about that. You found more? Oh, yeah. I know it's I I have hidden statures everywhere. No. I came up in a mediocre me, I should say. We didn't live a poor.
We have paycheck to paycheck. We had a newer car in the driveway. I had a new bike every year for Christmas. I wouldn't put us in the poor category. I would not put us in the in the lucrative or rich or Chaz spend money freely on there. And my story is interesting because my mom is our spender in her family. She loves to spend money. She's really terrible at spending it. Sorry, mom. I'm gonna throw it down to the bus right now.
My dad is more conservative and more money saver but he's the complete opposite and he doesn't spend money at all. And he actually worked his way out in a company all the way to a CEO position, and he was a CEO of a major industrial piping company called Hanport, and he was incredible in what he did. He was really my inspiration for the business side of things because I always focus on what it was. He's my go to still to this day.
I call him when I was stuck when I ran out of every option when I've gone through all of the training that I could possibly think of in my own head, I really do process and break things down. So I'll call him in my conversations with Pam Refoney because I'm like, alright. Here's what I got. Here's what I've done. Here's what I've done as a backup. I redirected. I moved. I shifted, and I'm stuck. And nothing's Kings, and I can't get this freaking number to move.
When I throw anything and I could throw a $100,000. I still won't move. I don't know why it won't Wolfe, and he'll break it down for me. And my dad never gave me the answer. Ever. Still to this day, he won't. He forces me. And he knows that's how my brain works. He forces me to figure it out, and he almost leaves me off the eye and just says, Hey, there's a tree branch there. I know you're hanging off the the ledge. There's another one there. You gotta find out where it is.
You might have to move a couple rocks to find that tree branch to pull yourself up, but you're gonna pull yourself up on The care. It's not my your life, not my life. My dad is very well off now, but I've never accepted money from him. I never needed to because he's taught me The to create my own wealth. And not just wealth of money, but wealth of knowledge. And that's to me, it's there's no value to wealth of knowledge because you can make anything with that. Yeah. Yeah. It's so true.
Chaz an incredible blessing that you have that you've had that sounding board. And I think Kings, you maybe you can speak to this a little bit as Wolfe, but whether it's the dad in the story or whether smom or, you know, an uncle, quote, unquote, rich dad, ends dad, who whoever. Yeah. Another business owner, and we do it, obviously, Gathering Kings. It's like, you gotta have people around you that are big thinkers and that you could have just some bounce off.
It didn't have to be every little, you know, what I in the edible range of the world called pineapple problems. That's not what you bring to dad. It's not what you bring to the board. But you do bring the things that that you've really tried to process and being able to have that place where you can do that really does allow you to enable you to go to the next level. Yeah. It's it's interesting. I have many mentors in my life. My Gathering just one of them.
I have my first retail boss that I ever met. I name's Brian. He's a great guy and taught me all about fashion taught me how to talk to people. I had a another guy, Adam, who is a regional director and a vice president of a company that taught me a lot about The higher level management styles and multi level management because it Chaz a big retail career. It's like burchton retail as a district manager.
I oversaw 20 one stores in Chicago, I won't name The company because it was absolutely a horrid company, and I wouldn't know, wanna work for them or talk about them again in my life. But I also learned The bad way not to micromanage and how to work at 18 hour a day and still function some way, shape, or form, which was horrendous to.
I take different peoples it's funny because it's not just higher level people, and that's what's so different for me Chaz I I teach my managers and our team Stop putting a title to it. Yeah. Lovely. Just because I have this title, CFO or CEO or owner or whatever I listen to my dispatcher. I listen to our customers. I listen to our bookkeepers, our HVAC guys, our technicians, just as much as I would anybody else because let me tell you something. They might not know it.
You inspire me every day to do what I do and inspire me to come up with new ideas. If I don't have conversations with you, my own brain my own ego, I like to say, is gonna take over, and I'm gonna think that I'm better than everyone. And I'm not a regular dude I drive a regular car. I don't I live in a regular house. I don't have this extravagant jet that pulls up and drops me off in a red carpet and stuff like that, man.
Like, At the end of the day, it Chaz be a billionaire and still not have that way. I might drive a nice car at that point. What would the car be? I'm not car guy at all, but what would the car be? For me, it's a carrera or it's a I'm a huge Porsche band. So it would be a a carrera 3 18 spider. So There you go. It's my dream power. They have driven a car at GT before, which is my favorite. The spider is just the better version of a newer updated one. Let's go. I'm a huge Tesla fan.
When the model 3 comes out with The plaid, I'll be buying that. I have The model 3 dual motor performance right now, and I freaking love the car. It's so fast. I'm a huge fan. So That's awesome. Yeah. I'm not at all. So No worries. I really drive a regular car. I got an F One Fifty. Okay. That's alright. F The Fifty loop. Yeah. They're up there too, man. They're still nice, good, comfortable ride, so it's all good.
Well, I'm 65. That's about as about as small as gonna get for me unless I force myself into a Corvette or a Lamborghini or something. I don't know. I'm 63. So I feel you, dude, and I, it's all. So I hate small cars, but I love small cars. So I'm The same. That's awesome. I love it. Okay. So the energy here around team building, communication, mindset, like, you're dropping just so much. Let's parlay that into decision making. Hey. Hey. Charles Wolf here.
As many of you know, I have been on an absolute mission to help entrepreneurs from all across the country in many different industries level up their game and grow their business and intentionally connect with other entrepreneurs. We do that obviously through the podcast, but we also have a peer to peer mastermind group specifically for 7 to 9 figure business owners.
We are bringing some of the best and most successful entrepreneurs and minds together in a regular and a super intentional way to not only grow our network, but to be able to leverage. And at a certain point in business, success becomes about leverage, leveraging time, leveraging resources, leveraging key relationships. This is exactly what we're doing inside of The peer to peer mastermind group called Gathering The Kings, specifically for 7 to 9 figure business owners.
So if that's you, if you're ready to up your 7 to 9 figure business even to the next level and get around other big hitters just like you. I want you to go to gathering the Kings dot com, flood a short application, And, it'll come to an application, call with me, and I wanna chat with you, see if it might be a good fit. Talk soon. K? I wanna know, especially early on, like, right now, you're 25, you know, text in. You've got 3 different servicing area, like, just this wide span.
I wanna go back to year 1, 2. Preferably before a million in sales if you can go to that place. And I want you to think of a good decision that you made that you can share with listeners. Yeah. Good decision that I made. Gonna go back to people on that dude. I hired the right person to be able to manage a process that was needed to be managed. I'm gonna say our bookkeeper, our audience, bad guys, she's my right hand woman. She deals with everything.
We spend a immense amount of time The work together, trying to get through and punish through. I knew from earlier on when I interviewed her and that she is the person that I need around me at all times. She's the organized one. She's the one that will remind you and stay on top of you and knows your personality, knows me, because me, I'm a go go, but sometimes I'm gonna pull those reins back. And my wife does it at home, so I have a work partner with Chaz. Call our work Wolfe.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. And Chaz those two people have to interchange together all the time because to have success, you have to pay attention to what you're Kings, the process of what things go. So early on decision making is where do you spend money? Because that's the most crucial part of everything. I'm gonna tell everyone, and they're gonna get scared, but I don't care. Gathering, that's the decision.
If you do not market your business, you do not brand your business and brand the hell on every minute you talk about it, everything you do is on it. Everything goes back. And this is where it falls into what we dig process wise. So it's called omnichannel Gathering. So every single thing that I market has a button or a click to be able to literally book an appointment with us digitally. Email, text, or phone call.
So right away, the building blocks of how we started the company with Chaz, is that I need to be able to communicate to clients on every single platform that they possibly can communicate to. Yeah. 100%. Such a big topic What would you say? I'm just in the marketing space. Obviously, if someone's gonna grow to 7 figures, they've gotta figure out how to acquire new customer stuff. It just is what it is. Like, you can't The numbers just simply don't add up if you don't.
What would be, like, your go to, like, right away? Like, the number one thing is a $500,000 guy listening Kings right now, and he's Marketing wise, what's the one thing that you tell him to go do right now? Oh, so so for me, Facebook, and I'll talk a little bit about a little story. So I hated Facebook when I first started, and I thought was gonna be the ultimate change to business because I'm like, man, this can be easy. It's free marketing.
All I have to do is just throw a bunch of a little bit of money, $50 here, $50 there to be get content, and it failed failed miserably to the point where I said Facebook's not for us. It's not gonna work out. It's not gonna be good. I'm gonna come back and swing back to The. And I'll talk about why Facebook is so powerful for us now and what we've done to change that and how we did it and how we didn't even pay any money for it, which is the best part about it as well.
And it's exactly what you're doing here on the Kings podcast. Is Chaz working in marketing? With other small businesses. So in my opinion, I would partner with your local chambers. So your chambers have networking groups to be able to Kings local businesses together. Networking's free. Me and you Kings in a room, it'll cost anybody with time, and that time is in value when it comes down to being able to gain your business further, get your name out there. It's a sense of branding. That's free.
I keep saying free, guys. The is a free marketing tool. The chamber costs nothing to join depending on the area that you're in with. 90% of them are less than $300 a year. And all they're designed to do is link people together. That's it.
And as you link people together, you start to grow and you start bill that people use you and they see that you're good, you're gonna see a change in that right away, and it's an immediate change because you're going out and finding business Chaz what you're going. Yep. I love it. I love how you use the power of social media to just enhance the networking because It's not necessarily social media from an ads perspective, although I know you run ads.
Sure. It's not necessarily from a organic content posting perspective, although I'm sure you do that, I'm sure we've both gotten plenty of customers from both paid and organic content. What you just said as far as the relationship building. Because someone will give you a chance. And when you get the chance and then you deliver, then you get more chances. Excellent. And then it compounds quickly at that point.
As long as when you're given The chance, you don't do what the big company did to my boy 4 years ago. Don't don't do it wrong because that's your chance. And the hardest part about that is Chaz what I've noticed in our growth The when I have to keep telling myself every day is I want to keep the small feeling of knowing every person Kings clients and being okay, that's where it becomes hard. And I get where the big guys are. Big company out here is a 100 and I think it's a $180,000,000 company.
The spend a $1,000,000 a month in in marketing alone. There's some serious cost stuff that goes in there, but you can't even know why. But when you're on a big company like that, it's really difficult to know everyone as an owner or as an operator. And when you're doing that kind of stuff, I can't be that person. I don't want to be that person. I want some people's names and do that kind of stuff.
And if that's all Kings gotta do all day long is walk around and say hello to people and talk to them for 10 minutes, that's fine by me. You know what I mean? I can spend time doing other stuff as Wolfe, but at the same time, when you have these big companies, and you lose that personalization in the tech world and your managers who really know that. And when you have multi level managers, you lose that even more.
Because what you say goes to the next person, they have their own agenda, their own ambitions to be better or to get a promotion. And they change that. And it becomes a game of telephone, and you lose it, and I see it every day with different things. And you have to catch it And you got a meeting about it, and you gotta fix it immediately because it's, like, assessable. It will just overflow and be terrible. You know what I mean? So, yeah, that's yeah. Look, that's it's so good.
The hyper awareness let me say it like Chaz, that you have not only just two processes, but to people is obviously part of your key success. I want the listener to pay attention to that. It's not always just necessarily hiring a team. I think at step 1, like, you gotta be willing to give things away. But when you have the team or eventually The even key roles in The team, it's really it's you paying attention to people, to their needs.
And I think that, again, it just goes back to your love or experience or client experience, It's the same thing with the people that work for you, and I can tell that you feel that same way, not only just from an excellence perspective of making sure that they have what they need, but also that they're providing an environment for those that are around them so that the business can be excellent and succeed. Yep. Exactly. Okay. Switched The coin.
Talk to me about a bad decision made early on that you can look back. Tell us a funny story. $67,000 I lost. That's what I'm gonna throw out there, and it's a hurt it's a hurt number. It's a hard number. Yeah. It's a tall pill. It's a pre marketing. $67,000. I spent pre marketing in a 6 month stint, so $10,000 a month printed out. We mailed to over, I think it was 5000 clients a month. Extremely hyper targeted.
And what I mean by that is we had avatars for credit scores, how many kids there were. We knew what area means they have an income made average income, our avatar was so dialed in. And I had a CEO of a play marketing company set up a follow me and tell me, I promise you this is gonna work. And I said, okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna commit to 6 months to you at $67,000, and I'm gonna let you do your thing, your expertise. And I let him go. And I spent $67,000, and I got $35100 return. It's okay.
And I stopped by marketing for over a year and a half because I was that butt hurt about it because it was a lot of money, and I can't recoup it. You wake up in the morning, and I've told myself for the past year and a half, like, that stop telling yourself that's you're just being selfish. You're hurt. You hired the wrong company. You can pay attention to the signs and and know how to do it better. So guess what?
We're pre marketing again, and it Kings me inside, and we're having much better return on The. I'm not investing as much money into it because again, I'm scared to do that at the same time. I failed miserably, and it freaking hurt bad, and it didn't feel good. And at the end of the day, We were able to learn something. And what we learned is that I don't sign contracts with marketing companies at all. Because at the end of the day, you can't guarantee anything in marketing.
You can't guarantee business. You can't guarantee a win. What you can do is try. And if you continue to try, some are gonna work, some are gonna work. And you'd have to be accepting of that failure. Learn on it. Track it, find out why it failed, talk to your clients, talk to your team, talk to your wives, your I I take input about my marketing strategies, from the freaking mailman. I don't care. You know how many times The mailman pans out The?
The mailman actually knows a lot about marketing people don't realize because you see these people's homes all the time. And when you see homes all the time, you're able to learn about the customers around you and whatnot, which is So it's knowledge not only of who you're marketing to, but who's doing the marketing. Yes. And probably even deeper than that, what I heard you say, because I've had the same experience.
I've spent I don't even know how many dollars, 1000, tens of 1000 that I've spent and have no no understanding of what the return was if any at all. So I feel you on that, but neither one of us here we both are. Just 5 minutes ago, you're like, bro, you gotta go market. And I would have told a person listening to me on a show that Hey. Look. Customer acquisition. If you don't if you don't figure out how to repeatedly get a new customer, you'd have no business, my friend.
And so what would you say from an angle of, okay, there's persistence. You gotta figure it out. Some work. Some don't. Is there a rule that you're making this decision by now? Is it a 90 day trial? Is it a Let's test it out. What are we I'm looking for certain results. What are you thinking? So a different marketing has different ways that you need to pay attention to. So SEO, it takes about a year before your SEO really takes off. So your website, and all that kind of stuff.
Facebook should be an immediate response, and Facebook should see increase in that. You should see increase in traffic to your website and all that kind of stuff as well. Marketing is gonna be probably 6 months before you start saying, hey. This is probably not the best idea in the world. When it comes to direct marketing, you said you're trucks. I'm gonna say The. I'm gonna say this hard. Keep it simple folks.
Nobody cares about colors and the designs and all the other I saw a restoration company there. They had water, smoke, fire, mold, Wolfe bunch of other stuff, this crazy design with their logo, like, embedded inside of it. And if I look at it as a piece of artwork, yeah, it looks great. But if I look at it as client, I go, I don't I can't focus on your phone number. So now I've lost myself in your truck. I'm trying to figure out what the heck you do.
It's a cool design, but now I can't call you in Chaz 3 seconds of that truck passing in The highway and I go, hey. That was a full truck. I wonder what company that was. I'm not gonna remember you. Simple logo. Easy words, easy phone numbers, those are things that stick and go from it from a standpoint of being able to make it easy. The whole point is to connect you to a client simply. So everything's different. If you have people calling you about your truck saying, hey. I love your logo.
I keep your logo for a customer to tell you over the phone. You're not gonna hear that very often. Nobody calls people and says, hey. Your loan was really cool. I've heard how your loan looks awesome all the time. I freaking hate y'all. I hate gold. I'm not a gold guy. I'm a silver guy. At the same time, I get it. It makes sense. It could be purple shield services. Do our clients respond to it? Right. Take the ego out of what you're trying to do.
The Arts Electric, the Binies, or David's HVAC, stop personalizing it, you're putting a restriction on yourself because if you have an electrician that comes to you and says, hey, guys. I wanna join your company. That's gonna be Dave's HVAC and electrical. And what you're gonna do, HVAC electrical plumbing, roofing, siding gutters, doors, bathroom remodels, like, what a that sounds terrible. Like, make it generic enough to be remembered, but not generic enough not to be remembered.
That's my tidbit there. I love it. I love it. I'm gonna transition here to the speed round, come at you in a little different angle. K. I'm super curious to hear your answer on this one. I want you to dwindle the entire business down. Till one trackable metric. Oh, so. The one thing. Average tower ticket. K. And why that for you? I understand, but Why is that your average ticket says everything?
They can tell you about your business because your every dollar ticket can tell you if you have 3000 clients, they have it at an average ticket price of $11,000 person, you're looking at x amount of dollars. Right? If you drop that number, to 10,500 with the same 3000 clients, you're losing money. Profit or something else is losing money. It's the easiest thing to be able to track in your business because all you have to do is look at every transaction and divide it out.
And whenever that number comes out, look at it again in 6 months and go, are you positive or are you negative? That's a good starting point to be able to find out what it is, but every shower is always first thing I looked at, I ran a veterinarian's hospital. Oh, okay. Okay. Wow. So, yeah, now we'll quick story with this, and I'll give you exactly why every dollar ticket works the best. When I first started The the hospital, we had 2 doctors there.
We ended with 5 doctors and 15 technicians and increased from it was, like, 1,200,000 a year, and we increased to 5,800,000. I think that's what we ended before I've I broke off because The are core values that match mine anymore. The one thing I changed in the hospital was the experience. And what I mean by that is every single client that walked in the door got offered 3 Kings. Anaglands, pedicure, ear cleanings, and your hair removal. Every single client.
So our average ticket went from 60 bucks all the way up to 230 by offering those 4 things. That's right. Typically to every single client or add on sales. And all it takes is two seconds. Hey. Fuffies in for his appointment. Do you want us to take care of pedicure and nail plate or hair cleanings or hair removal? Here's the price. It's a standard price across the board. And all The profit. And guess what? That's how you built a culture. Yeah. You're so right.
Obviously, depending upon the person's history, The person listening right now. Like, I'm listening to this from a lens, not necessarily of experience, because that's not customer experience is not necessarily my experience, although I value it, and I'm, like, pressing hard into it in the businesses that I have now. I have a sales background. And so everything you're saying makes perfect sense. It's just different language that we use on the quote, unquote sales side. It's Got it.
The average ticket, or in this case, it's a better experience. I can I even with edible arrangements, the franchises that I started with, the person that comes to me, and then my my who would never spend $200 on a fruit basket, gets nervous and sells the $35 no chocolate? It's barely big enough for a person or 2. You know, to the grandma who wanted to celebrate with her grandson after the championship soccer game, and I could have sold a soccer ball container three times The size.
It's got her grandson's number in pineapple numbers on top of balloon The says congratulations, and she walks away spending $200 and happy about it. That's the key. I make people spend money and be happy about it. Make them feel good. You deliver actually what they want. Thank you. You listen to them. It's called a active listening. Stop thinking you're better than your clients. They're communicating to you. When they call you and say, hey. I don't like the price.
They're actually not telling you that they don't like the money that they're spending. They don't appreciate the value that you're bringing to the table because it's not worth it to them. We did we'd started duct Kings 5 years ago, and we are the most expensive company by triple on every other platform across the board. Every other company we've ever talked to heard from and everything says we are triple the cost of a duct cleaning.
We spend 10 minutes on the phone explaining our duct cleaning process in detail, and we sell it every time. Every time. I don't know another way to do duct cleaning other than the right way, which is slow and steady. And let me tell you something. Everyone out here does them fast and horrible, and then we get the phone call because our system goes down or something breaks internally, just get it done the right way. We never bash companies. We never say names.
We never care about that kind of stuff. We just explain the value of what we do and why So when a customer calls you and says, hey. I don't like the price. They're not talking about money. They're talking about you. They're talking about you're not worth it. Yeah. K? And that client might not be your client. Right? So that might not be your avatar. They might not understand the value. Sure. Look at the dollar figure of it, but at the same time, those customers, that's not every customer.
That's probably about 2% of the clients that physically can't afford you. Right. He's fine. Everyone else can't afford you. You're just not Chaz. Not too. Yeah. Yeah. And The that can hit hard, especially to an entrepreneur who's trying to grow, and they're overwhelmed by so many Gathering already, and then they get rejection, really, is what you're describing Kings they're choosing their money over the value that you're supposedly bringing.
Yeah. And I think that's it for customer experience, guys. I think we take it. I think we take it. We should take it personally. It what but what that does is it drives us to go, okay. How much what else can I do? What's how can I stack the offer? How can I bring more value? How can I make it a no brainer? And so slowing down to make them understand or help them understand the process, adding something to it, a service, a I had a guy. Oh, shoot. What trade was he in? Totally forget now.
It was a out outdoor construction, almost like a exterior remodel or something like that. Some I'm remembering, but anything that he would do outside, he would the little Kings, like, like, he would need a fan or a new light. It wouldn't it's not included in what he does. He would just do it. He does it. It's not one thing. He does it regularly. And he was always looking for those little Kings, the 100, the $200 things that he could do inside of this exterior remodel that wasn't on the list.
It's like he specifically sought out, like, 5, 6 things that he could find and do. Yep. So that then the customer would be like, wow, wait. You did that. So, anyway, I just think that that's exactly what you're talking about. You're talking about The the the front end and or even on the back end without even them knowing it, which then is gonna breed referrals and and the whole thing afterwards. Absolutely. Value. Okay. I've got a we're circling up here. We've had this is such good.
We'd probably go for another hour a half, at least, with the way that we're Kings, but I wanna ask you, a book recommendation that you would give to the listener, 6 figures, they're trying to grow. What would you say? Yeah. So there's a couple of them left by me sitting behind me right now because I'm working my way through that. I'm not a huge book guy. I'm a podcast guy just because I like to listen to people's voice. That's how I process information.
If I read it, it's just not how my brain works. I'd love to hear it, feel it, do it, in in involve it. And then the next question, the bigger thing, I'm not gonna put a book out there because you gotta read all of them. Put a podcast out there. That's fine. Yeah. Podcast is good. Our our dream home experts is awesome just for DIY stuff. Obviously, dream home experts dotcom. I cast it hard too because I don't even search out certain individuals. I listen to everybody. Take information.
I don't like to stick to one person because all I'm doing is copying somebody to this regimen of what they do. Sure. What I like to do is listen to all of them and then put it together myself. Because at the end of the day, everyone has good information, and I never don't take it from there. Definite by meeting is actually because I'm teaching somebody inside of my company. How to not micromanage and how to not kill. Like, you have a meeting. Yeah. They have an agenda.
You gotta go through these processes. Is it impactful? Those kind of things. So The books that I read are The I get stuck on something so hard that I don't know what I'm doing on, but I'll be into okay. I'll explain death by me. I mean, as a book. Okay. Cool. We'll try and see what happens, and it made sense. Podcast do that. Just type in motivational, inspirational speeches. Those are my favorite things to listen It doesn't matter who it is. I listen to Jordan. I listen to The, Gord Ramsey.
I there's so many different people that inspire me in different ways. I hate plugging it because I just don't do it. Who I follow more than anybody is Steve Jobs, what Steve Jobs was around. His explanation of how businesses brand and the simplicity of how a product should work should be life in general. Life should be filled with simplicity Chaz should not be complicated and hard. This isn't rocket science.
You don't think that these big companies came out here and said, hey, I hired this guy for $10,000,000, and he made me a $150,000,000. And there's companies that did that. The hired a big consultant The came in was real complicated and stuff. I guarantee you I guarantee The consultant that went in there came up with a simple process to unify the company to make them push forward in the right direction.
Yep. Simplify your processes, hire the people that you are inefficient in, and then literally push as hard as you guys. So good. It's so good. It's so simple. We're gonna have to quote you on that for sure. Alright. Last question, Mister Bear from Mister Wolfe. She way. If you lost it all, what would you do? Start over. Start over. Steve Jobs lost everything. He lost everything completely. He lost the company. He built the invented. They came up with that he hired. They did everything else.
I'd start over. I have lost everything. 10. My cell phone turned off when I first moved to Chicago. I had 0 negative balance in my account. I I had it pulled up to a place that I couldn't even afford. You get there. You need to wake up, look at yourself in The mirror and say you can do this. Because you Chaz. You have it in you. You just gotta find the motivation to push you. And it's funny because we've all been through there.
There's so many stories out there, and I love KFC didn't get famous until the guy was like 70. And Martha Stewart failed miserably. Her whole wife and then became famous and was able to showcase exactly who she is. And now she's hanging out with Snoop Dogg, which is just cool. I mean, Elon Musk, and he comes from a high background, but that dude started nothing every company starts in a garage. Every company starts with The individual with a passion. Find your passion. Push your passion.
Develop your passion. Seed, water, flour, curls into a flower. How Chaz you not understand that you wake up in the The? And say, hey. I hear it all the time. I hear the wolves and bears and the Kings the the The, it's a lions Chaz I'm a lion. Okay? You need to show up and beat up Hyundai. K? You're lying? Okay. So what do you got? What are you relying about? Maybe that person, and I don't ever judge people because that person can be just starting their line venture.
That person I really wanna push and develop. But if I have a guy that says that their success or entrepreneur. And when I talk about business with The, and they are just riding a cocktail, somebody else, they're just hanging out for the parties and that kind of stuff. That's not Kings. It's not a lion. You don't have a mindset. You have to wake up every day before everyone else. I come to my office in an hour before everyone else. So I can have an hour of literal quiet from the Wolfe.
And that's when I do my most productive work to be able to prepare myself for my team that walks in the door that has whatever going on. So every morning The an hour before I do, and I wanna I have to check myself to listen to motivational spaces in the morning to make myself feel good. So you need to find The way find yourself passionate because small business will kick in. It'll kick you. That'll kick you hard. You know, it'll continue to kick you. Yep. It won't let me push through.
You gotta push right up in that way. It's it's relentless. That's for sure. Sure. So How can the listener find you, Derek? Multiple ways at dreammomaxfirst.com is our podcast on the plugin real quick. Awesome bunch of guys. I'm talking real business stuff. We have small businesses that come in. You can do it remotely too. If you'd like, Goldshields The is obviously, being the main thing in our in my life, is, www.goldshield2day.com, and the saying is get things done today.
We don't wait till tomorrow or next week or anything like that. You can find me on Instagram, Gold Jones Services too. We have a TikTok, and then we just started in and growing up in there as well. I'm a lot of things. I'm super nerdy with me and that kind of stuff. Instagram, Facebook, obviously, Gold Show Services. You can find us and get a hold of us. You can reach at 847-376-8094 info at gold shield today.com is our email address. So that's info@goldshield The dotcom.
You can always shoot me an email. Those emails do come to me. And so just give me a 20 hour turn around if it's not about actual business because then I go after hours and jump in there and take care of the personal stuff that needs in there as well. I get it. I get it. You have been sensational, really, is the word. And so highly recommend for the listener to check out the podcast. You guys were doing it big over there.
We're The small potatoes in comparison, but in all seriousness, we appreciate just the value of someone like you Kings mindset Chaz you have already stated. It's a it's another level for people to be able to aspire to. So you've done your work here today. Good sir, from one predator to another. Stunning up. All seriousness, blessing and success and all that you're doing, your your family. Thank you so much for being here. Hey. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself Kings it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 The very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1000 Kings specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and community here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified, other very successful business owners. I want you to go to Gathering.
I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.