On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. People look at me and and think I own a pest control business, but what I really have is a talent acquisition and people development We just happen to work in the pest control industry. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe featuring 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 and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and keys like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? Chaz Wolf. I'm your host gathering the king's podcast today. I've got Jim Swayne on the king stage. Jim, good morning. How are you?
Good morning, Chaz. Glad to be here. I'm glad that you're here. You know, we were just, talking about some fun, unique things that you get to do with some, mobile video unit that you've got. Maybe we'll dig into some of that here in a little bit, but I'm excited for this creative conversation. Tell us what kind of business that you got. Well, we have a a pest control and termite business. We have 3 locations in Florida and a franchise in Atlanta. Wow. And we were just purchased Right?
By the 2nd largest franchise platform company in the world, Bell 4. Right? And so our goal is to put up a 100 right, safer home services, franchises in the United States over the next 4 years. Wow. There's gonna be some major growth for for your company over the next 4 years sounds like? Yes. I mean, you're on pretty rapidly. This is I what I call my boutique company.
I was very, very fortunate to be part of the team that built 2 of the largest pest control companies in the nation over the course of the last 30 some years. Wow. It was a wonderful business education. And Sure. I retired in 2012, and did some travel, did some consulting. I got a dog. And she's right here beside me. She comes to work every day to say like the spice. And so I started this in 2014 with just the dog and I, and we sold our very first customer in May of 2014.
And now we have over 12,000 loyal customers, and we love them, and they love us. That's incredible. I think that, obviously, you're gonna some major wisdom over the course of building some national brands. And then, of course, now your boutique company Chaz you as you say, which sounds like not about to be boutique any longer. You're you're gonna flip the switch and and change it to another level, but you've been you've been dealing with bugs for a long time, man.
I have, and I I kind of walked into it accidentally. I had an automotive restoration business restoring mostly English cars, Rolls Royce, Staimler's Bentley, and was probably 10 or 15 years ahead of a ahead of the market, and I went broke, and I needed a job. The only thing I knew about pest control was working used to come spray my baseboards. So I applied for a pest control position. Yeah. And I started with Middleton pest control in Orlando, Florida when we were just had one office.
And I met mister Charles Steinmetz who has become my mentor and business partner. Mister Steinmetz turns eighty three years old on November 7th, and we're gonna celebrate with him. Yeah. So I've been just very, very fortunate to have some of the best teachers and mentors and leaders and I've just tried to take everything I've learned from them, and I'm a voracious reader.
And I understand that, you know, to try to get a business from a 100,000 to 500,000 or 500,000 to a 1,000,000 or from a 1,000,000 to 5,000,000, there's different levels. How we have to operate as business owners and entrepreneurs. That's right. And a lot of people never get there, and a lot of people, I think, are afraid to ask for help. Yep. We're pretty proud entrepreneurs and and business owners. And and sometimes it's hard for us to be humble enough to ask for help.
Yeah. 100%. Well, I I not only agree with you, but I think that that's exactly why platforms like this exist because it's there is no, like, formal education for this. And then even if there was, like, what you just said, of breaking it down into stages or cyclables or or periods of of the the entrepreneurial life, the journey, if you will, the 100, the 500 to 1,000,000 to 5,000,000. Yes. Absolutely. It takes different things.
Inside to gather in the Kings, we kinda break it down a little bit from, you know, There's a cowboy warrior and king stage. Of course, Sage, which maybe maybe maybe we're talking to a sage today, just this this is a wisdom of of decades, but in all seriousness, the you're a 100% right. So I wanna get into some of those tacticals. But before we do that, someone at your stage, someone who's been part of big business, you've been part of small business. It sounds like you've failed.
It sounds like you've made quite a bit of money this point, and you're doing it all over again. Why? What what what makes you tick? Why'd you come back out of retirement? Why are you trying to make this thing go to a hundred locations? What what's what's the purpose here? I really like teaching. I like helping people to succeed in life. I like see people grow. And so I really like the relationship side of things.
Some of it is giving back because, you know, I've had such generous mentors in terms of their their time and their attention. I think they're trusting me And so I like to give that back. I have a servant mentality, and I think I'm in a service business. So I think you have to have a service mentality. Right? So you have to you have to put your people, your customers, external, and your customers internal because I have 2 sets of customers.
I have those customers that are external to my business, and I have those customers who are internal to my business, my team members. And my job is to make sure that they have the opportunity, the tools, the resources, the time to succeed. And that that's a lot of funds. Yeah. Yeah. And you're about to have a another layer of customers with franchisees across the country. Yeah. So I get the help. That's my new role going forward is to help entrepreneurs succeed in a really great industry.
The pest control industry, it's it's not sexy. Sometime it's people look down or nose at us, look down their nose at us, It's it's the front line of public health, and we really do important work. We protect people, pets, property, from dangerous pets that damage health, the damaged property, and a quality standard of living. Yeah. I love the way that you said that. And you're a 100% right.
There's so many businesses, pest control included that, you know, aren't the the shiny object in today's entrepreneur's mind. But what an incredible way, pest control, the trades, like, anything that has basically been left in the dirt, pun intended. I mean, there's just such great opportunity there is is how I see it. And so I think that, the work that you're doing there is incredible.
How did you going back to your wife or just a quick second, your purpose, this relationships is pouring out these 2 different types of clients soon to be 3. Giving back all of this language is very king mindset, very beyond yourself. Was it always like that for you? Was there a turning point at some point in the business journey that you've had that that brought you to that more external? Like, let me take care of those around me more than me. I think in my early twenties.
Well, after high school, I spent 4 years into the air force, and the air force was very, very good to make and help me get a different worldview. Sure. And when I got when I joined and when I got out of the air force and worked in the for a defense contractor, and got tired of working in an office and started as an entrepreneur in the car business and then in food and beverage. And it was all about me. It was all about making lunch.
And I went blank a couple times and picked out a letter that was written to me. Right. Well, my grandfather, I called the Genesis letter in 1971, and he talked about serving Right? And he says if you find something that you like to do Chaz serves people, and you can be pretty good at it. It doesn't matter what it is. Right? Just pour everything you have into it. And so kind of in my late twenties, early thirties, I I I reached a different level of maturity Right?
And I found that letter that had been written to me when in my senior year. My grandfather, John R. Dayson, was just an amazing and sounds like it. It really it really came back to me and and said, if you if you do it for the right reasons, Alright. You'll be successful. Yeah. Alright. And the right reasons in serving other people. Yeah. So true. You you're right. It usually takes a pivotal moment, a a letter going broke. Couple times, maybe. Where it it changes us, and and It's okay.
Like, there's that season, the Warrior season, where where it's self centered, it Chaz, like, you have to go through that in order to have the perspective of what's valuable. And so it's not that not that we would trade those moments, just like the failures that we're gonna get into here in a little bit. It's not that we trade those moments. We learn from them. It makes us who we are.
So I I just Chaz old wisdom, even coming from your grandfather, man, such great quality wisdom of of a leading, really, anybody, but entrepreneurs today, I'm sure that that's something that each listener today can can write down and and take away. I wanna go practical here with you. I wanna know, Jim, if not if, what decision that you made specifically early on. Maybe it was early on in the career, or maybe early on in this boutique business, that might be a little more applicable.
A decision that you made that that was quality Chaz you look back, you would do it over and over again. You would purposely share it with listeners here today so that they can go make a similar decision in there. I think starting from scratch, with this business with safer home services, I've always recognized that safety is an important concern for people.
And and just about every aspect of their life, but people don't consider the safety aspect when they're choosing a pest control or termite company. And our industry has to be very careful about how we talk about safety. And so after we sold the the Middleton business or after it was acquired, in 2009. I was part of that transition and integration team, but I knew I had one more in me.
And Chuck and I talked about it all the time, Mister Steinmetz, about, you know, why hasn't someone take the concept that we grew at Sears to make pest control once a year pest control? So we do pest control once and come monthly or every other month or quarterly, we come one time a year. We spend 90 minutes to 2 hours in the average size home. 10 different steps. When we're done, there's no exposed products. Right? There's no airborne particles.
There's no odor, and people won't have bugs for an entire year. When we back it up, We back it up with a 6 word guarantee, satisfaction, guaranteed, or your money back. I learned that from my days with Sears. That's what they had on every door and they met. And various we'd very seldom have to give money back because it causes us to be a performance call. We have to say. Right? And so we looked at buying a company and converting it to once a year.
But every company that we looked at had these legacy issues. And we were actually coming home from a dinner where we had met with the 2 business owners this business that we were thinking about buying. Yeah. And we're traveling to different cities. Chuck called me up, and he said, you know, you've been putting a lot of time and energy. Into this into this new business venture. What's your backup plan? And I said, well, I I wrote out a business plan. Like, about starting one from scratch.
I I'm almost finished with Ace, send it to me. And so, when I call it my boutique company, we started safe for home services, new name, new brand mark, new logo, new everything, Yeah. And then we set out to design it to do everything we always wanted to be without any of the baggage that we didn't want So we're primarily a residential pest control company for pest control. I do almost no commercial. I find that residential customers have much more loyalty towards quality.
And if you do what you say you're gonna do when you say you're going to do it, right, they'll buy from you again and again and again and again And that's one of the great things about the pest control business. It's recurring revenue business. So you can build a lot of cash flow, recurring revenue, and Unlike, you know, it's probably not well known, but there's the pest control business is a great wealth generator.
So making that decision just strike out without a single customer and being willing to trade money, right, for time, right, grow it fast. We started TV advertising, right, a very 1st month. Wow. And when we so not a lot of companies start out that way. Yeah. But I I knew along the way, I I was part of the team that built Sears to right in best control from 5 offices to a 130 offices in 10 states.
Wow. And we ended up with when I left in June of 99, we had 325,000 once a year pest control customers in those 10 states. So I knew the concept of once your pest control was embraced by the market, but no one else picked it up. A lot of lot of our competitors They think it's voodoo, or they think it's just a marketing guy. You know? You call it once you're pest control, but you go out as many times as you need there. But it truly is. A scientific, very technically based, right, application.
It's very labor intensive. We're a a typical pest control technician may run 15 to 20 today, our technicians run 5. Yeah. We give them the we give them the time they need to really deliver right, a a comprehensive service. Yeah. Now I guess that one decision, right, you know, at fifty nine years old at that time. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And at that time, I was married, and my wife said, you're crazy. Right? Yeah. Yeah. We do. Because the company that had bought us was paying me very, very Wolfe.
And we had money. And she said, why Wolfe you want me to do this? Let's we're gonna make it work. It's what I'm designed to be. Bank. Wolfe said Jazz. Yeah. Yeah. You're a king. And that's what we call it, man. There's there's this design inside of us, this this ultimate push. And, I just I it's such a beautiful story. There's a there's so many questions I have run into my brain here, but I I picked out a few things.
I wanna, like, regurgitate him back for the listener specifically, but but I also wanna parlay that into a couple of follow-up questions. Not only just you taking the risk, the chance. I think every entrepreneur listening today, they have a business to a degree, so they've to some degree, taken that chance. Okay. Great. We're we're with you. The second piece was Do I have something that I know that is workable?
It it's a degree or or, sorry, not a degree, a a a, a, an industry, or a service, or in this case, it was one time pest control. It wasn't a brand new idea, but it was unique. So it you knew that it worked, But then the third piece is that it was unique and you knew that you could run with it and make it make something of it.
The 4th piece that I heard of you say is, if you believe those things, Your action then was to put money behind the belief, which equated in TV commercials and, you know, all the things that that you did pretty much right away just because you knew that they would work. Would you wanna add anything to kinda like my quick bullet point of synopsis there of what you just shared? Puddling money, but also tie.
Sure. Yeah. My 1st 2 years, I took off 1 Saturday, and I know we're speaking to business owners and entrepreneurs and that it's it's a tireless effort and you and your own business. I mean, I used to wear so many hats at the beginning, 9 or 10 or 15. Right? And you you never know what I would be doing, but I put a lot of time into it. And but I knew if I didn't lead the way, Right?
It's not the kind of business where I could start it and be an absentee owner and have a general manager running it. But I knew I had to develop a team of people. When I started, I had a 10 year plan. You have to have some time frame. Yeah. And said, No. 10 years. Let's let's let's just take it at 10 years. It may be 8 or it may be 11. And we're 8 years into it now. And we just made a transition.
The only thing I've always been is very transparent with my team about how the business will transition. Yeah. Because all businesses transition. Our industry has about 20,000 companies in in the United States, structural pest control business. And many of them are family owned, So many of the transitions are for 1 generation to the next. Right. Or you bought out by a competitor. Sure. The larger company swallows up in touch. Or you're bought by private equity or venture capitals.
And we've had in our industry the last 5 years record M and a activity because The Wolfe Financial World is recognized that this industry is pandemic proof. It's recession proof. You're gonna give up a whole lot of things before you're gonna allow to have rats and mice and bugs and y'all. Yeah. Yeah. And so I I knew that we were gonna transition at some point. And rather than what I had hoped to do is to build a team of people and do, like, a leverage manager buyout.
Because we had offers, right, over the last several years to, hey. We're gonna throw a lot of money at you, Jim Swain. Alright? And we're gonna take your top name. We're gonna rebrand it into our brand and Some of your people will be okay, but some of your people won't. Right. We're probably not gonna do the once your pest control thing. We'll probably convert them to our protocol. Right. And it wouldn't have been good for everybody.
Right. So, you know, I I think I'm a I think I'm a good leader. I'm very transparent. I'm fair. And and it's all about communication and really genuinely caring for the people. We're a very, very close knit group. There's there's 25 of us here. And just got some of the best people in the world who have joined my team and stayed with me.
Yeah. I think that your your you're giving us all the the good nuggets, which I think is incredible, but it's it's it's cool to hear that you've been able to do it again. Chaz, for me, that's probably the the biggest impact here is that you you were able to do it in in an arena, same industry, but but in a whole another place over here and then to come do it again in a in a maybe more personalized way, a boutique way, which which is just super relevant to the listener.
And and the vulnerability of whether the listener has plans to actually sell to a private equity company, like maybe you do, That that may not be as clear for them, but I think the message really is there's going to be an exit or a transition, as you call it. Yes. What are you do? What what can that be? What are the options? You're either gonna close it. You're gonna sell it. You're gonna give it to your to your children or or, you know, something.
Like, there there will be a transition to your point. So I think that the takeaway there is what are you doing now or what is the plan and then maybe even a secondary point of how are you communicating that to to your team so that they're on the same page with you to be able to build the plan. We actually do the plan to get to wherever that exit is, you know, for you.
If if a listener right now is hearing this idea of a transition or exit for the first time because know, they just started their company 2, 3 years ago. You know, maybe they're in their thirties or forties. They're not even thinking to sell or to pass on, or they're not they're just they're just trying to make money. What would you say to that person right now who's maybe not legacy minded? What what should they start to think about?
Well, think about designing your company so that you create a culture of trust between you and your team members between your team members and your customers and create a culture of continuity. So that everything looks the same everywhere you go. And that's put in policies and procedures and systems. And it's so easy to do. Right? If you just develop, you know, a plan and and have the discipline to follow that plan.
And look, All the plans that I make, I Chaz have my original business plan around here somewhere. I I because I was sharing with someone yesterday. And I can go through and look at 3 or 4 things that I wrote back in 2014 that we never went down that path because you have to be flexible to adapt, but I would say develop a plan, right, and as closely as you can stick to it.
Yeah. You know, one of the things that happens in the pest control business is when people watch it, they start grabbing they start traveling too far away from where their office is. So they have windshield time. And you don't make any money, and you don't serve anybody with windshield time. So we had the discipline when we opened up to stay in one small geographical area while we skin their knees and our elbows, you know, the normal procedures and policies and plates.
And it's it's tough when you're, you know, looking on Thursday night to make a payroll Friday. Right? And you look at the bank account and say, Wow. I passed out Chaz. I I passed that job. It was 45 minutes away. Yeah. Oh, I've been in this area since 1990. So in the pest control business, So I have a lot of people that were outside that zone when we started. Chaz said, Jim, can you come to our pest control? And I said, we're not there.
And that requires a a certain level of discipline, but having that discipline then allowed us to create that customer base in that zone, then we went to a second zone in a third zone. So we grew organically then geographically. We later on it. So Chaz back to your most important question. If I had to say one thing, I it's make sure that you have a written plan. And I do get the opportunity to mentor by young and old entrepreneurs.
I I have several that are my proteges, and and I really enjoy that. But when they come to me, right, the first thing I say, I wanna see a written business plan. I won't work with you if you don't have. Because if you're not willing to commit it to paper, right, then it's just a glee. Yep. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And a and a business plan different than goals. Right? Like, I think a lot of people are on the gold the goal wagon. Which is great. Like, that's a great place to start.
You you need to write things down that you wanna achieve. And that's part of the business plan, but there's so many more steps in a business plan. Thinking it through, thinking it into a 3 5 year growth strategy and and how what where they were gonna come from and what the sales process is gonna look like and And I love what you said earlier. You can look back at your main plan, and and there's 3 or 4 things that he never even got to because you're right.
We do have to adapt, but but generally speaking, it it's a it's it's a lightning rod of, like, this is where we're going, and we're gonna try to stick to this path. Hey, Chaz Wolfe here. As many of you know, I have been on 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 Chaz, 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 of the Kings, specifically for 7 to 9 figure business owners, So if that's you, if you're ready to level 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 king's dot com, flood a short application, and, it'll come to an application, call with me and I wanna chat with you to see if it might be a good fit. Talk soon. I wanna flip the coin on us here. I want you to go to a bad decision, something that you've done here in this boutique business where it just It was not a good choice at all, and you can save us some time by sharing it. I'm a big fan of cable TV. K. Because you can geotarget cable TV.
So I can drop cable TV into any zip code I want to. And so I avoided doing broadcast TV and radio because I didn't wanna advertise to people that we didn't to people that we didn't serve their areas yet. Sure. And I'm a big fan of radio. I I do wanna put a plug in for the wizard Academy in Austin, Texas. It's an nontraditional business school, started by Roy Williams, and Roy is one of my mentors. Boyd has sold more radio advertising than any other human being on the earth.
He likes to say he has spent a 1,000,000,000 of his client's money learning what not to do and what to do. And so having been around Roy for 10 or 15 years, I knew the power of the radio. And Chaz we were coming into 2019, I knew we had an election cycle coming up. TV was going to be competitive and costly. I decided that we would launch a radio in addition. So I I took money out of my TV budget and put it into a radio campaign and it was cute, but we went about 6 or 7 months into it.
It didn't move the needle at all. And so he had put all that time and effort and energy into, you know, creating the content hiring the talent, producing the spots, running the spots, waiting for the leads to come in, and they just never came in. Yeah. And Yeah. On top of that, I took money out of the TV Which was working. Budget that was working so well. So it was a double edged sword. Oh, man. And and maybe, you know, maybe I didn't if I had I I'd committed a $100,000 to it.
And I got 1 x. Maybe if I committed $300,000, I would've got 4 extra or 5 x. Right. But it's hard to go back I and in in in the armed chair quarter back Chaz. Right. It probably set us back at least a half a $1,000,000, maybe more. Yeah. Do you run radio now, or was that the that was the nail in the coffin for radio for you? That was the nail in the coffin for radio. Right? Yeah. Yeah. For the time being, though. Yeah. Well, I mean, you have, yeah, things changing in the market. Right?
And, podcasts like this, the millions of people that listen to podcast potentially as opposed to radio. Who knows? I don't I don't know the stats on that, but what I was gonna ask you there is The I I had this question actually could pop up the other day in a in a discussion I was having with some business owners, and we were talking about marketing.
And, obviously, you know, one of the one of the foundational rules of marketing is that if something's working, even though maybe there might be other sources that could also work, you never stop doing the thing that's even if it's not even if it's making you money a little bit, you just don't mess with it. And so based on Chaz, and and then parlaying into your conversation here Chaz you took money away from something that was working, it was like, oh, no. Why did I do that?
But there's there's all these opportunities out there to market. Right? And so how do you split your budget of the things that I know that work and I keep it there And then I also have the opportunity to test or play with new opportunities, and I'm kinda just exchanging them out constantly every month, every quarter, every year. Is there, like, a percentage in the budget that you mess with? Is there a mindset that you have sort of splitting it up?
Yes. In fact, your question is very simply because today, I'm working on my 2023 marketing plan. There you go. And we we've we've not yet made an investment in OTT. Right, street services and such. And we will we will expand our budget in 2023 to include that. And but it's not we're not taking it away. We've we've gotten so much traction from our cable TV because we sponsor the news and the weather. And and in our area, our cable provider has a default.
When you turn on your TV, hit defaults to one Chaz. Which is news and weather. And and so it's it's very, very popular, and we've become a become a fixture on there. And Chaz such, Our our advertising has been increasingly effective at a lower cost. Right. So that savings about I was spending about 11% of our revenue 3 years ago on advertising, it was down at 7, right, this year. In fact, it's a little bit under 7. And I can add OTT next year. Yeah. Oh, so really important point.
Most people out there who pitch advertising Right? They make all these vague promises about what they can deliver, but they won't they won't work on a performance basis. Right. Right? And when I first launched SAFR, I looked for a digital media company that would work on a pay for performance. And I couldn't find it. And so I said, well, you know, with the internet, I The small businesses can be just as competitive as with the big businesses.
So we've gone all of our own digital marketing, all of our own website creation, all, or PPC or SEO over social media. We've always done that in habits. And we've built quite a good team. Right? And So we have a lot of control over it, and it's very, very cost effect. But we can measure, right, every lead that comes through the door. Every inquiry comes through the door. We know where it's coming from, right, instantly. And so we can then track right, how each lead source is performing by niche.
And that's a very important metric to know. It is. It is. Another follow-up question. This is such a great topic. It just kinda gets skimmed over a lot of times, especially with a new business owner who's wearing those 10, 15 hats. And so at the beginning, if you If you didn't find an agency to do it for you and you're saying you built a team to do it in house, how how does the listener today without maybe the resources, right, you starting out? It's not like you had, a bunch of clients yet.
You had a bunch of experience, but right away, you're doing TV. Sounds like almost right away, you were hiring probably pretty quality people to come in and do the SEO and in a website and and digital marketing ads? Like, what does the person listening need to do to be able to make those moves if they were what to wanna do what you did? If you're if you're well capitalized, it's much easier to do if you're undercapitalized. You have to become creative.
Yeah. So for instance, I hired my first digital marketing person, and I could not afford to pay him what he was worth. But I came up with an incentive based compensation plan, right, where if he performed, right, he would make more. So kinda being creative in your compensation. I was also very flexible with his hours. I I made sure that I provided him with the the tools, the the technology that that he requested. And so we built what we fectionately called the millennium falcon.
That's our that's our giant. The PC that we use for our our our digital marketing. Yeah. And our server failed, but being willing to do that and and also having a discipline to say no to these companies that just they wanna charge you a fee and gonna get you a 1000 clicks, or they're gonna get you a 100,000 impressions. If if it doesn't turn into the phone ringing with people making an inquiry that you can turn into an appointment Chaz you can turn into a customer.
That doesn't mean anything at all. Yeah. Yeah. Does that answer it for Oh, it does. It does. And and we could probably have this conversation for another hour or 2. If we're being honest, I mean, there there's just so many little offshoots to this, but, I mean, the the the person who's trying to build a 7 figure business, marketing, untooled generation, unto getting someone in their sales pipeline, is by far, like, if you don't have those 2 things, you you can't you can't go to 7 figures.
So I felt like it was worthy to to pick your brain a little bit longer on that. And so the, I guess, the the send off kinda notion on that is You are willing to take some risks, bring on some people. It sounds like you're you're saying maybe, if if you're well capitalized, maybe you got a little bit of money. If you don't, you gotta get creative with comp plans.
And or, you know, other ways to bring on quality people, I guess, or you just do it yourself, which then go now we're back to the stuck. I'm wearing 15 hats and, you know, a lot of time, a lot of effort. And and there's a season for that. I think we both agreed to that, but you wanna try to get out of that as quick as possible. So I think you've given us some some great off ramps to be able to do that specifically with marketing. Did you wanna add anything specifically to this topic?
There are agencies out there that will work on performance. Right? And so there's an I don't know whether it's fair to mention 1. Sure. Yeah, please. Roy Williams Williams advertising in Austin, Texas. Wizard of ads partners. So Roy has 50 some partners all around the globe. And if they take you on Right? They only get a percentage of your increase. So if they can't help you increase your business, right, you don't pay them anything. Yeah. And that's kinda how we work as entrepreneurs.
You know, if I don't produce today, right, I I don't get paid. Right. And everybody who's on this podcast probably understands this. If you produce a service or even if you produce a product, if you stop making product, Right? People are gonna stop stop paying you. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's performance based. That's right. Our performance. Yeah. I love that. What kind of keeping this lane of good decision making? You've given us both good and bad. What process do you have now?
Especially as a seasoned veteran, this the sage and business, having the conglomerate experience, as well as this boutique experience, is there a certain process that you'd go through when making decisions today? Yeah. I I still use a Ben Franklin. Alright. You know, for and against. I I ask advice. So I ask advice up. I ask advice now. I, you know, I listen. You know, god gave me 2 ears of one mouth, and I can't talk.
But, you know, one of the most important lessons I've ever learned as a salesperson was one of my first sales jobs when I just went out with my sales manager and talk talk talk talk talk and the customer gave me, like, 3 or 5 buy signals, and I never heard. And as we drove away, my my sales manager, Don Tolleson, Jim, you're gonna be good one day if you'll just learn one thing. God gave you 2 years and one left.
So we really need to pay attention to what our customers are saying and what our team members are saying. So A lot of times when making a decision, I'm gonna I'm gonna ask them, how would you fix this? How would you accomplish this? How would you go about it? What would be our first step? How do we Right? How do we do this? Alright? Because I don't have all the ideas.
And that's why, you know, I I tell people all the time You know, people look at me and and think I own a pest control business, but what I really have is a talent acquisition and people development company. We just to work in the pest control industry. And I knew to and I knew to build this thing.
I would need to have a team I am really good people around, and I'm just blessed Chaz, you know, we we have a team of happy people Now unhappy people don't last long around here, and it's not me that determines that. It's the team. And every now and then, one gets by, you know, the interview process because we spend way too much of our time, right, and our life and this thing we call our business or our occupation to go without having some joy involved. I I tell people all the time jazz.
You're gonna have a bad day or 2. Right? But if you find yourself having a string of bad days or a couple bad weeks, and you really don't find joy in coming here, please come talk to me, and I'll earnestly and honestly help you find something where you can be happy. Because I know a lot of people. Because I don't want any unhappy people, really. You know, back in the corporate days, I didn't we did a lot of mergers and acquisitions. And I did a lot of integrations. And my my car Alright.
And going in was do no harm. Alright. 2nd cardinal rule was find all the unhappy people. Sit down with them. Find out if you can make them happy. And if you can't, let them go be unhappy somewhere else. Yep. Yeah. I I think of the history that I have in building sales teams And if someone's unhappy or they're not performing in a in a sales metric, they're then they're not happy. You know?
And so it's like, man, why would I wanna have not not so much from a selfish perspective of I don't wanna be around this person? Yes. Chaz that's absolutely true, nor my team. But for them, why would I want them to come and do something every single day that's making them unhappy? That's Chaz that's selfish. And so I love your perspective there.
Obviously, you're just such a servant and a giver helping them realize, here are the ways that that we'd love to make you happy here in this environment. And if And if we can't, that's okay. I love your love your next step of helping them find something else. I think that that's genuine. It doesn't have to be a boot out the door. It can be, hey. This is just not a good fit. I know a lot of people. Let me let me see if I can help you. Okay. Let's go to speed round here.
I got a question for you around tracking. If you could only track one metric, Jim, what would it be? How many people did we ask to buy something from us today. That is a very, very unique and specific metric. Why that one? Because a 100% of the people you don't have to buy won't. And and every sales organization that I've ever had to repair Right? It was about almost always not asking enough people to buy from you every day.
Yeah. And so do you see that, like, twofold of getting in front of new people every day and then making sure that you're asking? So it's kinda like It's not just getting in front of new people. It's not just making sure that you're say asking it to the people you're already getting in front of, but it's twofold. Yes. You know, getting in front of new people and existing customers because we we can we can sell a lot of different things to our customers. We have a lot of services that we provide.
So our technicians are our sales people. You know, unlike most pest control companies, we've combined those two positions. So the same person coming out to your home, does the inspection, does the assessment makes the recommendations? That's the same person who will be delivering on those promises, and customers really like that.
But our our our technicians, we call them sales technicians, They have an opportunity at every customer meeting, right, to upsell, cross sell, sell more, or get a referrals. Right? And he said, We we measure, right, bona fide proposals every day. We know we only measure our sales numbers, but we know how many leads we have today. But more importantly is how many bonafide proposals? How many services did we really sit down and and suggested the customer that they would benefit?
Yeah. And the more proposals, right, the more sales. That's right. Now if I only have 1, that would be the 1. Yeah. It it's a it's a controller for the pipeline. You gotta you gotta know what your pipeline looks like and for you Chaz that's a great indicator. I love that mindset. What type of book would you recommend? Jimmy said you're an avid reader. What would be a book that you'd recommend for a six figure business owner trying to grow their business? If it was in the service industry.
I'd recommend service America by Carl O. K. Service America. What's your takeaway from that book? Moments of truth. So client tells the story of Jan Carlson who turned around Scandinavian Airlines. This is some 20, 25 years ago from one of the worst performing airlines. To the finest business airline in the Wolfe. And he did it in in just a couple years, and he went out to every further south poached to the biggest terminal and met with all his people, and he explained what a moment of truth is.
Says the moment of truth, Right? Is any opportunity an existing customer or potential customer can form an impression of our company? And we literally have thousands of those each day. And it's how we manage those moments of truth. I mean, one of our company values Chaz our company image. We we're we're nuts about our company image. We're nuts about our vehicles. We're nuts about our uniforms. We we want to present a great corporate service image, right, because that's a moment of truth.
A moment of truth is you send the customer an invoice, right, is their name spelled correctly? Right? Is it easy to understand? So, literally, you know, what what Jan Carlson his concept was is how we have 1000 of moments of truth each and every day, and it's how we Chaz team members, each and every one of us, manage those moments of truth. Chaz determines our success. Yeah. I love the way that you're saying you you manage those those moments.
Excuse me, because what I found in in whether it's a service business or really even in my retail businesses, it's Chaz customer journey that that we're discussing Chaz we're wherever they are in the journey, you know, prior to purchasing or even after those little moments, those little touch points, are what's building their frame about the company, the individual, the mission of the company, how we're helping, if we're helping, whether they feel well taken care of.
All of those things are being framed in their mind by those moments. And so I just appreciate that perspective. And and a great book recommendation will put it in the show notes. What do you think about intentionally networking or master mining with other entrepreneurs? I love to do it. Right? In fact, I'm I'm doing networking event tonight. Okay. And it's an kinda unique organization because it's called the Sussony Foundation, and it believes in people Planet and profits.
So it's an environmental organization that believes that responsible business owners, right, should make profit. I right? So they can sustain their company that we won in 2017 sustainable business award through this organization. And and a lot of the a lot of people see profit as a bad thing, but profit is a good thing and a necessary thing, a fair profit. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I I kinda have 3 other roles for business, you know, that before we decide to do anything, Right?
It needs to fit these 3 criteria. Number 1, does it serve the customer? If it doesn't serve the customer, we have no no no reason to do it. Number 2, can we make a fair profit doing it? Because we shouldn't be doing anything that we're not making a fair profit. And number 3, and sometimes this is the hardest one. Can we make it fun? Alright.
And sometimes you have to be very, very creative to make it fun So tonight's event is a networking event, and it'll be a fun event, but I I I network with a lot of people. I'll be going to a a large mastermind group in in January. So and would like to participate with it with the gathering of kings. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. I mean, the the value there that you've described, even in the own pro own process that you have. Of of for the customer, for profit, you know, which is the business.
And then for fun, I I I mean, Chaz right there could change that one piece could change someone's genuine outlook on how they see their business. It's so simple, but so profound. And and and that's what they got, the listener from networking or Master Mining today by listening to you here on the podcast. So I just Just so appreciate that perspective again. I've got one last question here for you, Jim. Okay. If you could whisper, in the younger Jim's ear. What would you tell him?
Wow. That's a great question. I've never been asked that before. Start sooner. K. Expound. I wasted some years. Alright? Being about myself and not about others. Yeah. Start sooner. Start sooner in business. Start sooner in relationships. Start sooner. Yeah. And be true to yourself, Jared. Don't don't don't concern yourself with other people. Thanks about you. It's good. It's good.
Jim, you've been, you've been sensational, inspirational, knowledgeable, Thank you for for everything that you've given to us this past to 45 minutes or so. But how can the listener find you? Couple different ways. I wanna I wanna give you a chance to promote here, but there's obviously people who wanna just maybe reach out and then pick your brain. There's gonna be people who maybe are interested in growing a new business for themselves with your Chaz.
Maybe there's other ways that they wanna connect with you, but how can they find you? Saferhowservices.com is our main website. And saferhomesingularservicesplural.com. My email is very, very simple. Jim@saferhomeservices.com. And, please reach out to me by email. We have wonderful opportunities, and we're building a tremendous team. We spent all day yesterday with about 10 or 12 of us building a support team, getting ready to support these new entrepreneurs coming on board.
So and, I said, I I'm a busy guy, but if you send me an email, I will respond Yeah. Well, coming from a guy who who owns multiple franchises and and has built out that that type of business, even for a guy who's listening who already has a business, I don't wanna distract them by encouraging them to look into your opportunity.
But for me, having multiple franchise businesses was was a great move, especially early on, it allowed me to be able to fast forward a lot of things, even in my own growth and knowledge and business. And so I would highly recommend for the listener if if you've thought about either changing your business or location or changing or or adding. I mean, I would reach out to Jim. It seems like a, like, a phenomenal opportunity. Yeah. Go ahead.
I want I do wanna make one more plug because my my new company, Bell4, b e l f o r, franchise group, we have over 5000 franchises We have on the 12th brand, Safer Home Services is our 12th brand, but we have 11. Right? Fantastic brands. All across the I think we're in 33 countries. So we have lots of opportunity, Bell 4 franchise group. So if you're not interested in pest control, but we have 1800 water damage. We have hoods. We have ducks. We have a lot of restoration and, business services.
Right? We have the largest hood cleaning, right, and pizza oven cleaning business in the world. Wow. And so we have franchises all over the world. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. There's lots of opportunity out there. Sometimes people just need a little bit of a a nudge on which way to go that's, that can be helpful and maybe even on a So, Jim, thank you again for being here.
Blessings on your businesses, your your franchise development, blessings on your you, all the things you have got going on, and we appreciate you being here. Alright. Thanks, James. It's been fun. 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 doing it all on your own, carrying the way 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 other 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 communities, and 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 the kings dot com. 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.