Embracing Financial Transparency to Build Accountability in Your Organization
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Why are we putting it on these credit cards that have 29% interest? Could we refinance? Why are we in so much debt in the first place? Are we charging enough? Your customers are not only charging enough. Because if you've created a lot of debt, you know how you get out of it? You have to make enough in profit

to service the debt, the mistakes of the past and still run your business. So a price increase may help you make up for the sins of the last 20 years. So be it.

Somebody has to pay and it's always the customer. So you're going to go line by line through assets, through liabilities. And then the difference is equity. And is equity represented properly? You talk to your accountant, you have meetings between now and the end of the year, you could have rock and solid balance sheets.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right. Well, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today is a very special day. A lot of you probably don't know this, but I called Ellen Rohr and her sister Gail out to...

A1 probably going on seven or eight years ago now. It's crazy. Time flies, but we need to be working with the seven power contractor, Al Levy. And Al's like the seventh power, you know, the financial power, whatever power that is. He's like, I need Alan to come help you. And Alan came and helped us tremendously to understand what things like gross margin are. So she's going to dive in. She's an expert of scaling finances.

she's based in draper utah brandon industry market lead for service titan that's something that's new she also was the co-founder of zoom drain she's a ziggler legacy certified speaker

And, uh, Alan Rohr business uncomplicated life unleashed. Uh, she's been doing that since 95. She has got a lot of expertise in just the finance and how franchises work. She's authored four books, selling over 60,000 copies. Where did the money go? How much should I charge? Bare bones business plan and the weekend business plan. I've got all the books. I've handed them out. In fact, I,

I don't know if they're still on my shelf because I hand them out so often. I always buy more of them. But I love where did the money go? Because a lot of people talk to me and they're like, yeah, I don't know where the money went. And so, Alan, let's just start out. What's new? What's happening with you? What are you excited about? It's a pleasure to have you on. We love each other. I love you so much. I'm so happy to be here. It's like all day I've been, oh, yes, it's time.

talk to Tommy. All right. So you and I met, I, I, um, once upon a time I married a plumber and, uh, did every dumb thing that a business owner can do in this trade, lost a ton of money, didn't know my asset from my elbow and complained about it, blamed other people. My customers are guys fought with my husband all the time. And then I met Frank Blau and I know, uh, Frank is this, uh, you know, uh,

beacon of hope for so many of us in the industries and OG had an impact on my life and so many others. And really as a result on yours too, because Frank was the one who taught me how this is not going to sound sexy, but it's so is to how to read a balance sheet and a profit loss and make better, faster, more, more profitable decisions based on the data.

changed my life, turned our company around, opened up a career. And since then, I've been standing on the soapbox because the need for financial literacy, my friend, is as great as ever. It's an area of business that most folks just don't like to dive into, but I'm the least likely person to be excited about it. I'm kind of dyslexic. I'm like, you know, easily distracted. I

but I've learned how to make money and it's changed everything for me. So as a result, I've had some pretty cool moments in my career. I was the first employee at Benjamin Franklin, the punctual plumber once upon a time, 20 years ago was when that happened.

and help stand up that company. And I'm so proud of how that's expanded with the authority brands. And then seven years ago, our best friend Al Levy and I and Jim Crennetti started Zoom Drain Franchise.

And we're at, I think we have 60 franchisees, 50 of them open, about 50 plus million in overall franchisee sales. And it's just been such an awesome ride. But you know what happened, Tommy, is a classic founder moment.

I live in Utah. I'm the only remote person at Zoom Drain. The company's just gotten bigger. We needed more heft on the executive team. Jim and I are redundant at this point. He knows everything I know. And so I made a decision and it was a tough one to leave Zoom Drain on the day to day. I've seen so many founders not get out of the way and it was time for me to get out of the way and let the new kids really rock the company to the next phase of its growth.

And love Zoom Drain, love the investors. But on the day to day, I had time. So I called my friends at Service Titan because I, like you, absolutely love Service Titan and the people there. And I imposed myself on them. I said, put me to work. What can I do? It's a big family. It's a big community.

Zoom is a part of it, but this gives me a chance to play with you and so many of the friends I've made along the way. So my big project right now is to stand up a brand ambassador influencer program at Service Titan.

And my vision, our vision is to be to the trades what Red Bull is to extreme sports, to be the place to highlight the cool people in this industry, what they're doing, how they grow businesses, how they turn wrenches from the front lines to the boardroom. I want to give people a voice. And so I'm looking for people. You'll hear more about this as we move. But I'm looking for people with a personality who want to create content that

and have a message to share. And then Service Titan will support you in that activity and those adventures. So Tommy, I have a question for you as we kick off. Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. So, you know, there comes a point as you make money, as you gain confidence in making money, well, like I bet if somebody took all your money away, you could probably make it all back.

That's who I became to make the money and you can never take that away. Exactly, right? So then the money five years ago or 10 years ago, the money might've been the most important thing, but I bet-

that's not the most important thing for you right now. So if you were to have a megaphone and share your message with as large an audience as you can, and you are on the podcast and in all the ways that you interact with your community and with the trades, what is the message you're sharing? What is it that really makes your heart pound these days? What do you want people to know or to explore?

Yeah. So, you know, this has been the latest topic for the last year is you can't help anybody on a on a train. You can't help your kids or anybody around you if you don't put the oxygen mask on yourself first. I think a lot of people, they're they're taking the back seat. They don't take care of themselves. They don't eat healthy. They don't drink enough water. They don't get their sleep. They're drinking alcohol every night.

And your body is a temple when it's producing and it's at its highest peak and you're releasing the dopamine and serotonin. You're genuinely happy. You feel this endorphins and this rush and just you feel you can smile when you get out of the shower and you're like, I'm taking care of me. And you have this impact on everybody and you're making clear decisions. You're thinking clearly like everything's working better.

And I think everybody should have that because if you're not taking care of yourself, so I'm on this big, big, big health kick to become in the best shape, not only for the appearances, but I want to live long. I want to live a fruitful life. I want to affect others. And the other thing is you're in business to make a profit and you don't have to work 24 seven. Like, and everybody, if you look at the book, elevate, build a dream so big that

that you could have everybody in your company accomplishing their dreams left and right. And if you do that, you know, you leave a legacy, you leave a fulfilled life and be on purpose. Buy back your time. So many people think they're alone. They're trying to reinvent the wheel and you don't have to. And so many people, I will say this, Ellen, I've met so many entrepreneurs, thousands and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands,

Some of them don't belong to be in business. Some of them thought I'm just going to go into business because they know how to do the job. And I will tell you, I hate to say this. It took me, I'm a, I'm an overnight success of two decades. You know, you've got two decades. Great. But if you've got a family,

And build a company to sell for Jesus sake. Like do not hold onto your largest asset forever. Flip it a couple of times and go do it a bunch more times and sign a non-compete for five years and grow your wealth. Because when you do have that equity exit, guess what? Hopefully you did an equity incentive program for profit units. And now everybody else's life's changed along with yours.

And so I think a lot of people are greedy. They never want to sell their business. They're not building a business to sell. They don't look at it as their number one asset. That'll just start to give them so many more options. And that would be probably what I start screaming out on the megaphone, those few things.

Yeah. And so like, I love hearing you say it. And because it's so important to you, it's compelling, it's magnetic. And that's what a brand ambassador is all about. A brand ambassador is someone who's also friendly to service titan. You don't have to be a service titan customer. You just can't bash service titan. You have to be friendly to service titan.

And I'm looking for people who are living large lives, who have a grand purpose. And it's different. You know, when I asked Eshmael the question and he said, I want to be famous for being the guy who introduces young people to the trades, 18, 19, 20 year olds. I want to be the guy. I walk into the store and someone says, you're the one trying to get me into the trades.

you know, I can see he's been thinking about it and that's going to resonate with other folks. And it's not going to be the same for you as it is for him or it is for me. And that's what I'm excited to pull together with the common theme of service Titan wants to support the trades, but born in the trades built for the trades. And this is just another way that we can, uh,

develop this reputation in the trades is the place to be so i'm excited about that and of course what i want to shout from the rooftops is always about making money is getting to a known financial position knowing your asset from your elbow it is your money it's your stewardship it's your job it's not something you can hand off if you're going to start a business

One of your responsibilities is you're going to be the financial manager. You know, Al Levy says this, you're going to be the marketing manager, you're going to be the financial manager, but you have to be willing to be a good steward of your money. And you know, Tommy, there's only a few ways to distribute goods and services in this world. Nobody can live by themselves. You couldn't produce enough food or clothing or shelter all on your own to survive.

So we're designed to cooperate with one another. You're a capitalist. We're going to trade with one another, right? There's several ways to distribute goods and services, but only one of them promotes freedom. So one is war. I could bomb your company and take your assets. That's one way that we could move things around. Another is crime. And you know, I'm not above crime. If the only way to get food for my family was the black market, I would participate. So crime,

you know, might be the way. It's not freedom enhancing. It has some dark sides to it, but it's a way. Another way is charity. Now, charity is a wonderful thing, but it does not expand freedom.

What happens with charity is I determined that I'm going to give you something, but it is not an equal play. Does that make sense? It's a good move and you're going to need it. Like when you're little, when you're old, at some point you need to lend a hand or offer or take a hand. And there's points in our lives where we need a hand for sure. But there's an edge to that.

And then there's government. And you and I are not politically aligned necessarily, but we have government. And the best that government could do is to facilitate exchange of goods and services. And it is one way to do it. Can it tip to the dark side? It can. But the best way for us to survive on this planet is to trade with one another.

Honorable, profitable trade where we exchange goods and services. And until there is a good job in a family, a successful small business impacting his family and now others, uh,

a sound economy in a society or in a country, you will never be free. So I believe in honorable, profitable business, which expands peace, prosperity and freedom across the planet. And it starts with knowing your asset from your elbow. And that's what we're going to dig into. So that's the big picture, but that's

That's the why, right? That's what Simon Sinek says. It's like if your why is great enough, you'll figure out the how. And for me, the how has been just doing my darndest over the years to help people embrace financial basics. It's not that hard. There's a little bit of math, plus and minus, a touch of division there.

But overall, talking about the money brings up a lot of vulnerability for people, brings up a lot of anxiety, daddy issues, all sorts of psychological blocks can get in the way of you becoming a good, a responsible steward of your own money and of the money that comes and goes in your business.

You know, like when I was growing up, my dad did not talk about money. It was considered poor form. You know, you would never tell anyone how much money you made. You never would show them your financial reports. Does that resonate with you?

Yeah. Nobody ever taught us about money. I mean, we just didn't, in school, they didn't teach us. No one, we didn't know. I mean, yeah. And a lot of business owners never share. They think if my employees knew what I made, you know, they wouldn't want to work for me. Yeah. You're selfish.

Or that this knucklehead can't even like take a salary. You know, sometimes it's embarrassing that we're not making any money and we don't want our employees to know. So I think, you know, the math getting, you know, really understanding financial basics is not hard. And to the people we we work with, the math.

like my husband, the plumber, the math he knows to size pipe and to consider flow and to get pumps and everything organized in the systems that he, he creates. That's a lot of math. We're just talking about plus minus and a little division. It's not that hard. And it, it really is based on some of the same principles. Like the balance sheet is based on the, the balance sheet equation works like drains and vents. Like,

Like for every drain, there's a vent because you have to displace that air as you move the water. Or for every action, there's a reaction. Or energy is neither lost nor gained. The whole universe is based on this equation. You know, there's two sides of the story. When you get into, I guess, you know, I get into how beautiful it is to be able to track the money.

You know, once upon a time in the 1400s, Luca Pacioli figured out how to keep track of the trade that was happening on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy. People owed each other. And so how are we going to keep track of it? Assets equals liabilities plus equity. Sales minus expenses equals net profit. They dovetail together. This is what he came up with. And it hasn't changed one jot since the 1400s.

So the math, the concepts are not that hard. The psychological stuff might get in your way. So dear listener, we're going to get into the tactics a little bit to help you figure out your asset from your elbow. Shall we, Tommy? I can't wait. Yeah.

All right. Well, first things first, you have to make sure that you're rocking a KFP, which is a known financial position. This is what we did at your shop. This is what we dug into. And that means, here's the definition of it, is that your balance sheet, your profit and loss are accurate. They're right. They're current. They're up to date. And you understand them.

And you use that information to make better, faster, more profitable decisions. And where it gets super cool is when you let your team in on the game. When as you learn this, you also get your team members. And that's really what happened at your shop. It wasn't you I was really working with. It was Adam. It was the accounting team. And together, we just went line by line. Cash. First line on the balance sheet is cash. Cash.

And there's a number. Is that number right? How do you know the number's right? How does that number get populated? Do you know how it gets populated? Is it getting reconciled? Because the bank says we have this much. Is that what we show? It should be the same number. So you're going to audit your financials. This is the path.

to kfp is really pre-auditing your financials now tommy what i've realized over the years is that some really big companies have left a lot of money on the table because they haven't pre-audited their financials and then they go to due diligence and every moment is an opportunity for the buyer of your company to discount your company based on sloppy accounting

Oh, you don't really know what that inventory number is. So we'll just assume it's less. Assume it's less than that. Or, you know, they're going to they're going to they might not even tell you about the ways that they're going to discount if those financials aren't really rocking right. Even as a big, successful company on the table, ready to make millions, you could be letting yourself and your team members down by not being super tidy and then finding some 11th hour surprises.

So my encouragement is that you get to KFP by auditing your own financials line by line, accounts receivable. Is it right? That number should match the number in Service Titan. Should be the same number. If it comes over, otherwise there's probably some adjustments that need to be made. Hey, by the way, if we have time or maybe another time, I am really excited about that touchless

journal entry integration of Service Titan and your accounting program. Just FYI. I don't know if we'll get there. That's kind of black diamond level for right now. But hang on to it for a second. It's going to make things a lot easier for folks. I love, love, love it. Anyway, you're going to go line by line. Is inventory right? How do you get inventory right? You count it. And what happens too, I remember at your shop,

We're looking at inventory and Al Levy was beating you up about inventory. We knew the number could be wrong because the inventory wasn't controlled. So what happens is you go line by line down your balance sheet and your profit and loss is it leads you to have an operational conversation. Well, how do we know inventory's right? I don't know. When did we count it last? Oh, I don't think we've ever counted it. So how do the numbers get there? And then you find out that somebody just made something up.

And now we're living with it for years. So, oh, well, no blame or shame. But now we have a project and that project would be to stand up a solid truck restock program to count inventory once a month to put a cage around it so it doesn't walk away or get lost or broken or whatever. And you have some control over it. You're you're not. And you remember going through all this and that really dovetails with what you were doing without your standard operating procedures. Right.

Well, back then you guys used to always talk about count the loaves, not the slices of bread. But after working with you guys for years, I just got completely out of the inventory game. I mean, other than what's on the truck, just like the best next star companies use Ferguson to handle all their inventory and do the counts because most companies cannot be a home service company, an inventory company like Amazon, as well as a fleet company. So you hire the best...

I would say you hire the best inventory and fleet management companies along with your home service and do what you do best. Because some people, if you're like me, oh, I got a discount. I'll buy 10,000 of them. And you got all this space filled up with old crap and it gets damaged and it gets, you know, openers fall out of warranty. And you're buying because you got a better deal. But that cash...

You know, I used to think, man, being on cash accounting is so cool. I could buy all this inventory and write it off the same year. And then I realized I needed to be on accrual accounting. And accrual is just a smart way you could put in audited financials and get delayed draw term loans. And there's so many things you could do when you don't try to be the best at everything. And inventory, you know, Ferguson, and there's a lot of companies like Ferguson, they'll actually do everything for you.

What you're touching on, and so to dovetail to what we were talking about, as you go through the balance sheet and you talk about each account, you figure out what the number represents. It opens up the conversation to operational excellence at that point.

Because everything you do finds its way to the profit and loss and the balance sheet that the financials represent operations. And to fix operations, those KPIs, those clues are going to be on the balance sheet. And you just make a choice. What you were just talking about with your inventory system, and I remember you went all

the way around the track on that inventory because you put an inventory system in place that was making my hair gray. And then this is why I color my hair, Tommy. And then...

abandon it. It's not worth it. Juice ain't worth the squeeze. We'll never do it as good as Ferguson will do it. What I like about you is you make a decision, you try it out and it doesn't work. You make another decision and you move on. You're the least dramatic guy I know. Just like no drama. Let's just go on to the next thing. So good. So anyway, one of your choices is that you're going to have someone else manage your inventory. Okay, great. Now that, that,

line has supported an even better, or at least for now, operational decision. We put the manuals in place and we go down the line. Then we look at our credit cards. Why are we putting it on these credit cards that have 29% interest? Could we refinance? Why are we in so much debt in the first place? Are we charging enough? Your customer not only has to-

No HR is enough. Because if you've created a lot of debt, you know how you get out of it? You have to make enough in profit to service the debt, the mistakes of the past, and still run your business. So a price increase may help you make up for the sins of the last 20 years. So be it.

Somebody has to pay and it's always the customer. So you're going to go line by line through assets, through liabilities. And then the difference is equity. And is equity represented properly? You talk to your accountant, you have meetings between now and the end of the year. You could have rock and solid balance sheet. Go over the profit loss. What's sales? Well, sales comes over from service Titan. Completed revenue equals sales. Well, they should match.

So completed revenue and service titans should match sales in QuickBooks or in Intact. And if it doesn't match, why doesn't it match? So then you go on this little like snipe hunt

To find out, well, where's it different? Was there a mistake? Did we miss something? Is there something stuck in export? Because all of this should flow. It should be right. And if it isn't right, we have to adjust it to right. And then we have to find the operational out points that are causing it to be wrong.

And it'll break your heart, some of the stuff. I mean, you find it and you just look at how much money I've wasted. How did I not know that was happening? You start with sales and then you go to cost of goods sold, labor, materials, and subs. Is labor right? Do we have the right guys in the right departments? Now,

I want to finish this conversation about known financial position, but go through every line on your balance sheet and profit and loss and get them rocking right. And here's what else you're going to find out. You might not have it organized very nicely. It might not make any sense the way you have it organized. Once upon a time, your mother, the bookkeeper put together a chart of accounts and you've been living with it for 35 years.

And it's not serving you, but it's the way it's always been. And that kind of change management can maybe make your heart pound. The owner is used to looking at it that way. And it wouldn't, it just can't imagine looking at a different construct. But you know what? Currently, Tommy, that's what's obsessing me is the simple construction of the profit and loss so that you and your team can

can see what's happening in operations. There's such a disconnect between operations and the profit and loss. We have to do all this adding up and pointing and arrows. What if we looked at our org chart and reflected that org chart on the profit and loss, kept it really simple. I'm not one to count slices of bread. I am one to count loaves of bread. Let the red flag pop up

And then you go talk to people. You go ask your service manager, why is our labor as a percentage of sales so high? Well, you know, we had an ice storm. Everybody got here. We had them clean the shop. None of the trucks were on. Well, that's like getting sacked. So we got sacked this month. We got to make up for that. That's okay. I mean, you're going to get sacked. It's where champions are born, recovering from this stuff. So now you just have to figure it out. But if your team knows that

these few KPIs, they can play the game for real. So should I pause here for a minute? No, I think this is like, unfortunately, you know, I got a master's degree and we took apart annual reports. After my master's degree, that was 2012. I still had to work with you. I still didn't understand it. And to be completely transparent, I know how to look at a balance sheet and income statement, and I understand the P&L.

But I understand also that I want to be able to understand it, but it's not my job to compile it. And you worked with Barry at the time. Then a guy named Ross came on. And the shining bright light for me was when Adrian came on. And he understood this. Probably one of the best CFOs on the planet. And I mean that because when he was able to direct me at the right things, I could actually make change. I just didn't know what to look at.

Listen,

This year, we put together the best leadership panel that I've ever seen at any home service industry event. Combined, their annual revenue is over a billion dollars.

I'm talking about Aaron Gaynor, the owner of Eco Plumbers, a great friend of mine who's doing like $70 million a year. Paul Reed, the owner of the Northwest Roofing, $30 million business. Paul Kelly, the president of Parker & Sons, doing $280 million a year. Ken Goodrich, the chairman of Gettle Air Conditioning and Plumbing, a great friend of mine, doing several hundreds of millions. And Leland Smith, the founder of Service Champions, a

$500 million business. If you want to stop struggling for leads, struggling to find great people and working crazy hours every week, it's time to make a decision. Get your tickets for the Freedom Event at freedomevent.com. That's freedomevent.com. Early Bird ends on August 5th. Now let's get back to today's podcast episode. As the founder...

You know, a lot of this is confusing. We're trying to pay attention to payroll. We're keeping an eye on the bank. We're making sure the fleet, we got a new truck coming in. We got a new guy to train. We're working on performance pay. We've got to set up our CRM. I don't think anybody should spend their life trying to figure out financials. You bring on the right person. You got to understand them. You got to know your numbers. But unless you're a came from a CFO or a

this background, you got to hire the right person and understand what it means to you to the operational excellence of the business. And so it's very, very important. But if you try to fix a balance sheet yourself and figure out the P&L as a founder of a blue collar industry, you're going to drive yourself nuts, but you've got to be able to understand it. I think that's your point.

Yeah, it is my point. And I'm glad you made it. I'm not asking you to become great bookkeepers or accountants. I'm asking you to ask, is it right? How do I know it's right? What do you do to verify that it's right? And that's a project. But it's like cleaning the back of the truck.

Once you've got everything in the right spot in the truck, you never have to clean the truck again. You just have to put things in the right places. And accounting is exactly like that. So at first it seems like a lot, but it's not an endless project. It's a chip away at a project. Maybe take you six months if you move slow, but you and a good accountant and a good bookkeeper. And if they're not saying yes, ma'am, or giving you answers that make sense to you, then you're going to have to upgrade. It's just the way it goes.

But you get it tidy and then you look at the overall construct. And here, I hope this comes across verbally. I mean, we could do a whiteboard or something at some point. But let me just try this on for size. And dear listener, you can comment below to see if you're tracking.

So over on the balance sheet has to be what it has to be. There's rules about how it's constructed and you just have to put the truth, what you have for assets, liabilities and equity. And each company is going to be slightly different, but there will be patterns there. Now, the profit and loss, there are some rules and there are some sections that are standard in accounting, but there's some flexibility within those sections.

And so there's different tools in service Titan or whatever your CRM is. And in your accounting program, let's just say it's QuickBooks to make it easy in QuickBooks for you could use classes that to create departments are called classes in QuickBooks and intact. They're called departments.

So you can slice the information in different ways. Some people use classes for locations. Some people use them for their technicians. But there's so many ways to use this design

that most people don't have financials that they could compare with someone else. So this is what I mean, you can get creative. So you might have gone in there because you didn't know better as the owner once upon a time, and you did your best to set up some departments or some tags, or some items in QuickBooks, or over in Service Titan, we've got business units and categories, and these things feed over. If it's not set up thoughtfully, you're going to end up with a mess.

Does that make sense? And this sounds frustrating. I don't want to do it. I'm not an accountant. Somebody's got to do it. And I tell you, a high functioning bookkeeper like my sister, Gail, is what you're looking for. She's not an accountant. She's not a CFO, but she understood the meat and potatoes of how to fix or change or edit the chart of accounts to what we wanted. Right. So somebody on your team who's

Pretty good at numbers, likes to do things really, has a tidy car, has a high C in their disc map. This person could figure it out, could become your center of excellence at service titan and could help you straighten up your QuickBooks. So basically what I would do as an owner of every company, I haven't changed my mind on this and lately I've just gotten more and more convinced that this is a good direction.

that we're going to use one account for sales and we're going to use business units for our classes. Let's say, at most businesses, Tommy, there are small jobs and big jobs. There's service and install.

Am I right? So and there's going to be the trade. So we're going to have sales, one line for sales. But then we can start slicing the sales to be. So we got sales, service and maintenance. That's what we do at each business class. OK, you could. I put maintenance together with service because I already know maintenance is a loser unless I put it with service.

I can get additional information about maintenance by tasks. How many did I sell? But overall, if I were to strictly look at the sales and the corresponding cost of goods sold for the maintenance, one, there'd probably be some

I was going to swear voodoo in there because of the way the tasks are and the way they overlap in the field. So maintenance all by itself doesn't exist all that often. You see where I'm going? So I end up just lumping it together because functionally.

the maintenance guys should be turning it into a sale of some sort anyway, generally. It depends on your business, but I just mush the two together and I get additional details about maintenance over in my CRM. How many did I sell? What price? What's the recurring income? Those are interesting things, but they're not my main KPIs. So let's just go really simple too, just service and install. So for HVAC,

I would want to see the sales for HVAC service and the sales for HVAC install. That's nice and that's easy to do. You can use business units. Most people figure that out. But then when we get to the cost of goods sold section,

labor, material, subs. Those three, they're the biggie. I don't pollute my cost of goods sold section with a lot of other stuff because those are the things, oh, I get so excited when I talk about it. Those are the things that the people in the field are making decisions about every day. Sales, labor, materials, and subs. They're driving those decisions.

So what if we constructed a profit and loss where I could see the sales for HVAC service, HVAC install, and then the cost of goods sold, labor HVAC service, HVAC install, materials for HVAC service, HVAC install. So that's the pattern. Small job, big job per trade. Then you can slice it once more. You could slice those, that pattern,

to commercial and residential. And you could slice that pattern to location and you can get as big as you want to get with that pattern. And you could run any trade company on that pattern. And now wherever your managers are in the world, they're looking at the same basic patterns. They know the sales and cost of goods sold per department.

Small job, big job, per trade, then small job, big job, then commercial and residential, and then location. And as you start to do this, it's harder than you think at first because it's going to be messy. What I see over and over again is that I've got sales separated out maybe way too many times. There's like eight categories for sales. And then there's a cost of goods sold section that does not line up.

apples to apples, department by department. So it goes back to, I want to know if I have a plumbing service department, what are the sales and then cost of goods sold, labor materials and subs for that department. And then the plumbing service manager, that's his scorecard. That's his game, right? And he measures that against budget.

Because we know if we're consistent, if we do this really tidily, we can start to see the patterns of what a good profit, sorry, what a good labor as a percentage of sales would be. Now, let's go and let's go to this in order. Like that's not the first thing you do. You'll discover it. You go to a known financial position. You see where you are.

and you may not like it. You know, you get it cleaned up, you start cleaning up operations, and then you go to that chart of accounts. It's not really telling me that much. It's not telling me how the plumbing service manager is performing. So what if I straighten that up? And now we're going to redo the chart of accounts for the income statement.

And then that's where the financial quick check came from once upon a time. And you can, you can auto populate this, but really I likes me a dashboard report. So going back to when I, you know, hot rod and I were first figuring this stuff out 40 years ago, a dashboard report was really all the attention. My husband, the owner, the plumber had,

People like dashboard reports. Big companies use dashboard reports. There's too much data. So give me a one pager. And on that one pager, what if we saw the sales and cost of goods sold per trade, big job, little job on one page.

compared to budget for the month, compared to year to date, compared to the year to date budget. Maybe if you're interested compared to last year, still all fits on one page. And then we just lump sum all of the overhead expenses together just on the one pager. We've got the full blown financials. You can always dig deeper. You can ask questions. Why is this so high? Because we're looking at dollars and percentages. But we look at those few KPIs that we know make a big difference on the on the profit loss and the balance sheet on one page.

And then if something spikes, you know, I even have guys who coat it. So if it's red, it's bad. If it's green, it's good to make it really easy. So you're on the beach and you look at the FQC. Why is this red? And you talk to the plumbing service manager because that's the red number. Isn't this delicious? It's easy. I mean, it's easy to wear it.

I understand exactly. And I'm just obsessed with the financials as I am with the KPIs at a service type because- Yes. You want to talk about those? What are the ones you like? I'm sorry, I cut you off, but I know we want to get there too on this call. No, there's only four that I... These four, I could solve any business problem in the world. I could fix any company on the planet. It's...

It's simple. It's your booking rate. It's your conversion rate. It's your average ticket. It's your cost per lead. That formula is how I buy companies. That's how we build our budget. I thought this was too easy. And then we joined this big PE company and I told them how we were going to form the budget. They said, this is the best budget we've ever seen. It was not a whole lot. How many calls do we need divided by the booking rate, divided by the conversion rate, divided by the average ticket times the cost per lead is our marketing budget.

Right there, boom. So you have those big rocks. Okay, keep going. As you fix those numbers, you realize you can take your marketing spend from 23% down to 15%, down to 8% as low as, you know, I try not to get below 8%, then I'll put it more into branding. But, you know, some companies that I've partnered with are at 3% marketing because they've been around so long. I love buying companies that have a low marketing expense because I know I can turn on the machine and triple it very quickly.

But regardless, I'm a big KPI guy. Okay, so those KPI's...

So you put your budget together based on those numbers. Now, there are other numbers to the budget and your bookkeeping, your accountant, your CFO can fill in the gaps. You put the big rocks in, right? And then you fill it in. And so as we're looking at those, our labor as a percentage of sales, that's another KPI I look at. So I'm going to talk about a few KPIs that I look at on the balance sheet and the profit loss. Basically,

The survivability of a company from startup to forever is,

There are three main KPIs and their sales, profits and cash. Like those are the essential ones. If you're just starting a business, just make sales, get some money up in the bank, just make as many sales as you can make mistakes if you have to, but just crank up sales. I've seen this happen with startup companies and with big companies like yours. When people really focus on that sales line, it allows you then to,

to go back and stand up some operations and clean up the manuals. Like you got a minute and you got some money once you get sales cranked up. So sales and then profit. So sales minus expenses equals a profit. And then you have to take that profit in cash and use that cash. It has to be profitable enough

to use that cash to pay down any startup debt you had or pay down any mistakes that you made. If your debt starts to creep up too much, you're going to use your cash to pay down your debt and you won't have any cash left. And Tommy, pop quiz, do companies go out of business? What causes a company to die? What's the death knell for a company? What's the KPI that will finally like go upside down so hard that they can't get back up?

Well, when their debt's higher than their profit.

When they run out of cash, they're just servicing that debt and they don't have any cash left over. There will come a point where it just is too big to recoup it. Maybe you'll get an angel investor, maybe there'll be some... I've seen people move mountains and figure it out and it's a beautiful thing, but it will require that you go back and figure out how to get really, really, really profitable, take it in cash and tighten the belt until you find daylight again.

But sales, profit and cash are the biggies. Now, I like to look at the cost of goods sold, but I have to be sure that the cost of goods sold numbers are right. So I'm very dingy about what I put in the cost of goods sold. In labor, I put all their labor. I don't hide labor down in overhead. I don't split it up into 85 categories for labor. Service tech, all their labor goes into one bucket. Correct.

Direct labor, the direct labor, but their vacation goes in there. There's I put it all in there.

It's style. It's not necessarily wrong if you don't do it this way, but the reason I do it is because it's easier. It's just easier. It's going to be less mistakes. And on the payroll report, I have all that detail. Why is my labor so high? I don't know. Let's look at the payroll report. Oh, everybody took vacation and we paid for it the same month in the middle of the summer. That's not good. Like you've got supporting information elsewhere. I'm looking for the

profit and loss to be really lean and mean and give me those red flags so I can go dig in, look at subsidiary reports, as well as talk to people who were there. What happened?

So labor, materials, subs, and you don't need anything else in your cost of goods sold section. Now, some of this I can just hear you, dear listeners, thinking, well, that's not what mine is. There's other ways to do it. It's style. But the reason I do it, and this supersedes everything I've said before, the reason I do it is because I want that dashboard report to be driving the behaviors of the managers of those departments.

They don't know. Even the guys who are really good at sales, they don't know if they're shooting themselves in the foot with those sales because of what happens with the cost of goods sold. Because they're controlling those decisions to make the sale at whatever. We'll throw all of our guys on it. We'll stay there for three days to get it done and we'll high five that it was a big win. But we might have just lost our shirts on that job.

or in that month because of those decisions. So your guys will play, your team will play with you if you let them in in the game. Jack Stack, great game of business, changed my life. And it was all about share real, relevant financial information with your team. And they usually know what's wrong and how to fix it. And the score will tell them if it worked.

Right now, you've gamified it. Now we've got a really wonderful game for your team to play. Just take it further down the profit and loss. When it comes to operating expenses, let your office team in on the game. How come our insurance is so high? Could we buy insurance better? Could you be on a project for that? Could we do better with uniforms or for

you know, fuel cards or maintenance programs, like all of those are operational. And with better systems, you could manage those costs. When you're first starting up, I'm kind of cavalier about cost, just charge more, raise your prices, don't worry about it. When you're as big as you are, Tommy, what would like a half of a percentage point be in terms of total

profit increase. Like if you could save those expenses. Crazy. So exciting, right? You save 5% somewhere, it's a whole game changer. You're making fortunes off of a find like that. So having that one pager, getting your team in on the game with a simple construct to your financials, I'm obsessed with this. I want to talk to you more about it.

This is a teaser. This is a teaser, dear listener. Put your comments below. Let's explore this. I'm kind of obsessed because, you know, I talked about this. Oh, go ahead. Well, you were going to lead into in the beginning before we got on the podcast about gross margin, gross profit. I think gross profit is such an important thing because it's everybody talks about profit and EBITDA.

But gross profit is something where if I'm the owner and I want to go spend money on growth at Greenfield Strategy or investing in the company in more training, it still doesn't affect gross profit. So it's the one indicator I love because I can pay the general manager and some of the market managers on gross profit.

100%. Now let's define the terms to gross profit is sales minus expenses expressed as a dollar gross margin. Sorry, sales minus cost of goods sold expenses expressed as a dollar that's gross profit. And then sales minus cost of goods sold expenses expressed as a percentage is gross margin. One's dollars, one's margin. People say percentages are most important. They're both important, both important. That's why they're both there.

So you want to look at your gross profit and your gross margin. Here's what also I think is worth exploring.

gross margin, you go to events, you go to the convention, people talk about my gross margin. People aren't defining these terms the same way if their cost of goods sold section is different. If you've got vehicles up in cost of goods sold, if you've got manager salaries up there, it's not wrong, it's just different. So having like a pattern

for your own empire could be really powerful because you're buying different companies, different types of trades. If we had some consistent patterns, then we could move managers around. We would have more of a apples to apples conversation when we're talking about gross profit and gross margin.

So I'm excited about that too. So it just seems like, you know, I've done a lot of work in small companies to stand up. And now as I look at big companies, I see this pattern is going to take us very, very far. And I'm happy to explore it with you. Like I love...

I'd love to break it apart, like to see what other folks are doing. It's not like it's gospel. It's just an idea that could take a company much bigger with less headache and more interaction with the people who are making the decisions about what you look at. So when the owner's looking at the balance sheet and the profit loss and the profit loss and he or she gets it,

Does her team get it? Are they seeing the same thing when they go and talk to them about it? Because otherwise that owner's always translating for the team in some sort of directive. You know, here's something that I think's a good call out. Ron Smith, Frank Blau, Jim Abrams, Jack Tester, they all had kind of this one thing in common. When you joined them and you worked under them, you're going to report it the same way so we could use each other to find out

who's doing better how is that possibly exactly exactamundo it just makes so much sense in fact once upon a time this is going back like 30 years tommy jack tester put me in charge of creating the first uh they call it something it's really just the um

the blueprint top 10 companies that next are their performance and then what their percentages are. And you can use it as like a blueprint. That was the first time I would, everybody wants that now. And there's a lot of it that's being done, but unless you're all on the same chart of accounts, are you using, you agree to have some numbers in a certain pattern. You just can't make sense of it. And when we did it once upon a time at, um,

at Contractors 2000, I think at the time we had like 100, it was Contractors 2000 before it was Nexstar, that's how old I am. It was like we had 100 companies and no two were alike. So the larger the sample set for companies,

the more caveats you have to put on the report, you know, that remember, not everyone's reporting the same way and you dilute the power of that information. So, and that, and this doesn't have to be, you know, you have to be careful when you're sharing financials and, and, and there's legal is going to get involved with all this stuff too. But if you're sitting down with your buddies,

And he's a contractor and you want to talk apples to apples and see, you know, wow, how did you get your marketing down to 8%? What are you doing? It would be nice to know that you're actually talking about the same numbers or how's your labor as a percentage of sales? How's it 22%? Mine's 65%. You know, what am I doing different? Well, let's at least determine that you're adding it up the same way.

because that may not be true. So that's the question behind the question really, is just to make sure what you're looking at.

Gap accounting opens up a lot of doors. Do you put your shirts under marketing? Do you put your vehicle wraps under marketing? Do you put your locations, the secondary locations, the rent under marketing? Because we might have several different showrooms that we consider marketing showrooms and our main location is not under the marketing.

And so, without being clear on where those numbers are going, I might be at 12%, but if they shifted these dollars to marketing and theirs, they jumped from seven to 12% as well. And just knowing, are we comparing apples to apples? Most people can never do that. So you're talking to somebody and you're like, how is that possible? But you gotta get behind the scenes to understand who's compiling that information and how and what are they including in those different sections.

Yeah. And so even if you just take that away from our podcast today, I mean, there's more to be unpacked as far as what is a good way to do it. There's style points. There's different ways to do it. But ask the question, what do you have in there? What do you count as marketing? Where do you put your leases? Marketing is definitely a place where it gets very creative.

And no, I'm not going to say it because that's too complicated. But then like when you look at what you're putting in labor, do you have labor in eight different buckets? Because you might say, well, my direct billable labor in the field is only 18%. But if I go and add up all those other places where the guy's labor is, it comes up to 43%.

But we would have missed it. That's why I end up collapsing some of these things. That's why, you know, like with maintenance and service, I put it together. Not everybody does. But the metrics that I want for maintenance aren't really...

to the gross profit gross margin level for maintenance. It's to me, it's just like there's going to be so much voodoo in that number. But I do want to know how many maintenance agreements I have and how they're buying them. I could do a special dashboard report on a special project, have someone on my team create that for me and make some decisions. Or if you're selling your company, that might be part of your overall package. I get this much money on this a year.

I don't know exactly the theory behind it, but in Service Titan, we needed it to be a separate business unit. I don't know if that's for dispatching or how we... You could have it be a separate business unit and it'll still funnel to the same class. And yeah, so you can... And I think that's also like for those of you on Service Titan, Service Titan business units are really flexible and powerful. But if you don't think them out...

then you're just going to end up with buckets with information in it. So, you know, the business units in Service Titan feed to classes in QuickBooks and classes in QuickBooks are associated with the chart of accounts. So to be thoughtful about it, the good news is you can edit it.

So if yours is a hot mess, you could impose some order on it. A really good time to do that is like at the beginning of the new year because the profit loss is going to start over. Now, oh, I won't be able to compare last year to this year. Yeah, well, your mom created your chart of accounts in 1980. It's time to upgrade. Like it's not the worst problem to have, you know.

Yeah, there's, if I talk to companies, the number one thing is they don't have the right person in the finance department. And the right person is making deals with vendors. They're keeping track of cash. They're keeping track of gas. They're renegotiating insurance. They're working on your EMOD score. They're looking in the future. They're helping you with performance pay. They're literally renegotiating. Like, like,

That was the missing piece. Me and Adam worked so well together. I'm marketing, he's operations. We were missing the financial piece. And when you add in that third layer, it's like, holy crap, you can go from 12% to 17%. We're doing 25% right now at the bottom line. Bam.

And I see his clear path to get to 33. Clear path to get to what? 33? 33, yeah. Oh, aren't you adorable? That's why we love each other. I love you. I'm so excited. Thank you for providing me a soapbox and a megaphone today. Well, if anything, I think people need to go read your books. You really dumbed it down. I mean, you made it so it's a small book. Where did the money go? How much should I charge? I love that book because...

So many people, your price book is actually determines on how much money you're going to make. And people don't understand your price book should be built upon your profit. And that's how you charge for jobs. A lot of people charge what everybody else charges. No two people should have the exact same pricing because they don't have the same expenses. So like I copying someone else's sand. I'm doing what the marketplace tells me. Yeah. That works for commodities. That's why it's called a commodity.

- Yeah, even commodities, even commodities can be differentiated. Suppose we were selling corn, but my corn can be here today.

Or it's organic. Like there's way, even commodities, you can differentiate and charge more. We're going to be nicer to you on the phone. We'll deliver the corn to your silo. Like there's always a way to add value and charge more money. And that, I mean, that's really who your audience is, Tommy. That's why you can get the 33%. That's why people are willing to pay. But we never, we would have thought garage doors were commodities once upon a time. It's true. It's true. The differentiating ourselves using, um,

As you well know, you know, Al Levy and Ken Gooders told me what kick charge brand even means. And I was 30 million before I got kick charged. And man, what a difference. These little things go a long way. But Ellen, I've got to run. But I want to do this. Yes. I want to break all this stuff down. It sounds like people are looking at this going, man, that's a lot to kind of it's not. It's so simple.

When you think about it, you do need an ally. I just feel like, Alan, hopefully most of us know how to balance a checkbook. We just look at here's what I paid out. Here's how much I made. And if you simple it out, if I made this much and I spent this much, what's the leftover? Is it negative or positive? Otherwise, I'm in debt.

If it's positive. And I always tell people, if you're not saving money at $40,000 a year, you're never going to save money at a hundred. You think the answer is more money, but you just don't know how you don't know how to save. And the same thing exists in business. And if you're like me, you're like, man, I'm just going to buy a forklift and I'm going to buy this. Then I'm going to buy this. Then I'm going to buy this because there's money in the account. And yeah, you think that one needs to spend, but it's not, it's, it's not to spend.

And I wish I could have talked to myself 20 years ago and said, Tommy, just because there's money there does not mean you need to spend it.

But I think too, let's leave our dear listener with this too. The point of power is now. It doesn't matter. There's so many people who get stuck and I can't believe I've been doing this for 20 years this way. So what? Now, forward. That's why I rarely even look back to last year. It's always forward. Let's see where we're going. And it's not as hard as that. Today, it may weigh on you. You're going to need an ally. You're going to need a good bookkeeper. You're going to need to be selective about it.

a CFO or an accountant, but this is absolutely doable. So love to you. Thanks for the platform. And I will talk to you soon. Thanks for setting me up. You already are. Bye. See ya.

Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper...

to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.