Welcome to the H. Vac financial freedom podcast, a show where we talk about business ownership and financial freedom by sharing stories and advice of experts who can help you get there now your host john victoria. Hello everyone and welcome to the H. Vac financial freedom podcast. We are here with another episode with a very special guest mr joe person and a quick story. Me and joe actually met. It was about a few months ago at the A. C. C. A. The air conditioning contractors of America conference ran into each other and actually have some of the swag that he gave me from back then.
Uh the go time book right here you have what is this? This is the callback preventer. The callback preventer. So ideally you're supposed to technicians right? Hang your keys on that, whether it's on the gas valve or the outdoor disconnect. And guess what if your keys are there, you're not going to leave the call and and leave the customers unit powered down or no ability for it to run with gas. You gotta get your keys. So callback preventer amen of that. So yeah, we're definitely gonna talk more about the book and um everything a little bit later.
But um first just wanna you know, do a quick intro. Um joe for the folks who don't know you just yet. Could you give them a quick background as to who you are and what is it you do? Yeah awesome man. So my name is joe person. I work for a company called go time success group. I handle most of the sales for the company and the sales class. So I teach a residential H. B. A. C. Sales class about eight times a year at our company headquarters in hurst texas.
I'll talk to you about the lab here in just a little while and then I also teach that same class for selling technicians at service nation alliance headquarters just a couple of times a year. And that's always a blessing because those classes are super full, there's you know 2025 people in there and I just love I love giving back to these contractors A little bit about my background, I've worked in the trade since about the end of 2011 I had a buddy that was working down in Tampa, he was a comfort advisor, he was killing it.
Um I was in a position in my life where I had sold a fitness company that I had owned with multiple locations that I started out west in Colorado and I kind of I kinda didn't really know what I wanted to do when I grew up when I when I got out of that out of that company. So here I am in my thirties and I don't know you know kind of where I want to go but I know I want to do something that's gonna be kind of recession proof and really kind of be something smart to do.
So I chose H. V. A. C. Uh went went went to a little trade school and you know, I learned what I needed to learn, didn't spend a whole lot of time in the field actually. Uh my strengths were behind the scenes and and pumping some other guys up. So I very quickly ended up in in leadership and got into coaching and training around 2015 16 and uh kind of the rest is behind me. I kinda, I kinda rocketed through the industry pretty quick. That's amazing. And so that was 2015.
And then what's the gap between how you were there and then you coming to go time? Did you join go time in 2015 or were there other things before you became an official trainer with go time. Yeah. Yeah, good question. So I actually used to work for another coaching company. Uh ser service excellence training, my buddy Todd Lyles runs that and around 2015, actually 2014 I started working with them and uh so the the gaps there really aren't gaps. I was a moderator for service nation alliance in that time as well.
I was also still working actively, I was a general manager, I was a sales manager for a little while. I've been active in the trades, you know, the whole time. I haven't been without a position but to answer the question, go time, that relationship go time is a relatively new company doesn't mean that it's that that we're all knew what we do. It's just a relatively new company kind of started around 2018, so uh kind of right when they got started and uh, you know, we're, we're ready to hit the streets pretty hard.
Uh chris hunter and I had a conversation and I decided that this, this was gonna be my new home. These guys are are amazing people, amazing leaders. They are are kind of close to even even even you, right? We live every day inside of our core values and our core values that go time, our, our humble, our integrity, our magnanimous are transformative educators and our massive action takers and john one thing I can tell you about you as a brother, I have noticed that you are a massive action taker to kind of talk about that story you started to bring up when we met in ST louis at the bar, I was just kind of sitting in there looking around, right?
I don't really know anybody, I didn't really have, I just arrived and you know, I'm kind of looking up on the ceiling and seeing all those lights and all that. And mr massive action taker comes up to me and introduces himself and you know, tells me about his podcast and hey man, you want to be on it. I'm like dang, who's this dude, I appreciate that ability, the rest of my squad, the rest of my team. Uh they all live inside of those core values as well.
So good job there man being a massive action taker. Thank you. I'll say it's, it's something that doesn't come natural to me. Um I am definitely more of an introvert so being there, it was definitely a little bit out of my element, but I'm a big believer that you know, even even if you do feel uncomfortable sometimes you do have to push yourself outside of that to help make a difference. And so um I'm so glad we connected and we can hash out some really cool stuff on the podcast for today.
So I'm excited. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so let's dive into um just more about go time and what you guys do. Um I mean there's so much you guys have the book school, you have the online university coaching and training. There's, there's so much for us to unpack and I'd love to just, you know, maybe we could just start off like with, maybe we could start off with like what are the types of companies you help? Like maybe it could be the size and what are some of the problems that they're facing just to contextualize more about like how you guys or who you serve and they connect that to what you guys do. Awesome.
So go time from a, from a five or even a 10,000 ft view. We're a team, a large team of just a bunch of contractors honestly uh that have been very good at structuring business, running business, uh selling business Uh and and and having repeatable processes, right, kind of even structuring, you know, inside and around that book. So uh from a from a 5000 ft view, I think, you know, we're all pretty passionate about, you know, giving back to the contractor and making it easier. Um I think, you know, one comment I can say is success leaves clues and I say it a lot. Right?
Well, those clues are, you know, they're not difficult to get out. You find those clues, you implement them and you become successful yourself. So with all the things that we do, I think, you know, one of the main things we do is we give back and and we're all very passionate about that and I think that's awarded us some opportunities to work with some really awesome contractors. It seems like over the past couple of years, our primary niche and the and the companies that we serve best Have been around five million and less.
And I think the reason for that is because they're the ones that need the help right there right on the brink of explosive growth. They're right on the brink of, you know, of putting processes and things into place. You know, making things repeatable. A lot of the companies that we help don't have this stuff yet. So when we, when we dive in and we dissect and we start to implement some of these strategies for process development, change. Uh it really has a huge impact on their company and they catapult growth and I think that's really kind of where uh we exist now.
Um I don't want to fast forward to two too fast, but I will bring this up just really quick Go. Time is also a certified partner or a certified provider for service type, which means we're certified through that software to work on companies, you know, work on their settings and help them create clarity in the software really what that means. And the reason why I'm bringing it up is because man, we we've had companies that are, you know, 100 plus 200 plus million that, that were, you know, that we're doing work for.
So you know, to say that we only help companies five million and less. Would would would be far fetched, we certainly do more. Uh we we just kind of in the coaching and in the training realm, that's where we, we seem to have the most success. I love it. And and as as you were speaking, it reminded me of if you've ever heard of the E S. B I Matrix by robert Kiyosaki, um it's, if you can imagine like it's a quadrant, the top left is employed, bottom left is self employed, top riders, business owner and then the bottom top writers, business owner, bottom right is investor.
And one of the topics we've talked about with the number of our past guests is that people, well some technicians who started out their business, they originally were just really good in the field, but they never necessarily learned a lot of the business skills in order to be able to build a business that runs without them. And sometimes some people say that, I mean you're just, you don't really have a business until if you can step away and can continue to run and grow without you. And so what it sounds like is that you are helping to make that transition from someone who doesn't necessarily have the business background and abilities, but they have the technical skills.
But how do you shift them from just being the self employed person who might be putting out all these fires all day to someone that is a true business owner and how as a company with enterprise value, which which is so difficult to train. But that's what you guys do in a sense is that even have a class, we even have a class that we teach throughout the year. Uh, you know that that really is based around getting out of the truck and getting into the profits of your business.
And that's, you know, it's important that that we touch on that because like you just kind of highlighted and I'm gonna agree with you a lot of these guys are very good at being technicians, A lot of them are not the very best at being business owners and that's not putting them down. They have the potential, they've just never been shown. So when you guide them and you show them the light, it's like, you know, like I said before explosive growth, you know, because they are massive action takers, you know, and and that's that's why we click, that's why they hire us because they can it feels right, feels good, I love it and it is a, it's also a bit of an identity shift as well and I'm wondering if you could speak to that because it really is your your becoming someone different, you're becoming a true business owner versus the technician could, could you speak to like what is that mental journey look like, how you coach someone through that experience, I guess more of a tactical level because it's it's it's tough, like an old version of yourself is dying and you're becoming someone new, you're being reborn.
So Chris Hunter says this all the time. It's the first chapter in our book and I can highlight that for this experience. Start with the end in mind and I think that would be valuable for anybody that is on a growth journey mentally um because you know, what are we doing it for? And I say that to really kind of to kind of say this uh the most successful contractors that we work with, they have a positive attitude and a positive mindset toward change. A lot of contractors don't have a positive attitude and a positive mindset towards change, not only that they don't want to change, they want to keep things on paper, they want to do things old school, they don't like ipads, they don't like iphones, they don't like the Apple Watch, their old school and you know, it's, it's okay, they might take care of their customer very well, but that's just not our customer and that's, that's okay.
I didn't say that we can't help them still, we absolutely can. But what I'm saying is you have to want it and you have to have the attitude and the mindset of growth has to, has to be there. So in order to get out of the truck right and kind of get into your, the profits of your business, you gotta have your mindset and check. You gotta have the right attitude towards growth and change. Amen to that. And um there's a, there's a great book in case anyone wants to check it out.
It's uh, it's called mindset by carol Dweck. There's um two types of mindsets, there's the fixed mindset vs. The growth mindset and fixed mindset just means that you believe that your, your traits are static and you don't really want to change while being in a growth mindset means that you can acknowledge like where you're currently at, but you're open to changing your open to growing and you're open to developing skills because you aren't, you don't always have to be where you're currently at. And I'd be like the growth mindset is necessary to make that transition from truck to hey, like I am a true business owner, I'm running this, this enterprise, you know, and then to add to that, the enterprise isn't running me.
Yeah, because that's what happens right? I mean I've experienced that myself where um the business owner becomes the bottleneck for everything in the business, everything is routed through them. No one has necessary like complete autonomy. It's always routed through them. And so if the business owner is out or sick or something happens, a lot of stuff stops and that's, that can be a scary place to be, especially if, because a lot of the people I talk to, they're always focused on legacy. Like how do I build something that can go beyond myself?
But if it's so dependent on you make it repeatable, that that that'd be one of the best ways to have something sustainable over time is is repeatable processes that are, that are easy to identify and easy to learn. Yes. And do you guys have a process for building process like what, what does that look like because it's, I think that's like the big money question like how how do I do, how do I turn, what I do into something that's repeatable? Well, we have to, we have to dive in, you know what, what we have the benefit of and the luxury of is working with contractors of all shapes and sizes from all over the country.
They're all different size companies, they all have different strengths and weaknesses. They all have different wants and desires inside their companies. So we can tailor whatever their needs are, right? So usually what would happen in an engagement for like a coaching style arrangement is we would usually go out on site first and we would witness the customer experience. We would witness how the phone rings, what's being said on the call. We would witness a lot of the things that are happening on day to day that would allow us to kind of look through our 10,000 ft view of the company and say, okay, here's the things they're doing, right, Here's the things are not doing right?
Then we kind of highlight those things to the owner or to the person that, you know, that we're there with and for, and we say here, here's some of the things that we noticed and, you know, out of these things, you know, what do you think? You know, you want to work on? Well, they tell us what they want to work on and then it's our job to design, you know, a customized or tailored training platform or outline for that customer over, you know, a length of time.
So I can't really say that there's like a template because there's not, right, there's never there isn't a template in, in that level of success in business. We just have to dive in and see the dudes that don't and then, you know, kind of help them start to create that vision that mindset for growth kind of paint the picture for them to see how, you know, here's some best practices, some industry best practices and here's what it looks like. Um and usually most contractors that hire us, right, they're excited to see growth and change they are.
So they're they're just like, yeah, let's do it. They can't wait to get started. So, you know, that kind of allows us to develop kind of a blueprint for what they're gonna see, you know, over over the coming months. Gotcha. That's that's that's so valuable just like you guys coming in because we're, most of us are like fish and water, like we don't realize what we're surrounded with and all the things that are happening and so by you guys coming in with your unbiased eyes and understanding the best practices, you're able to craft a blueprint like you said of something that well actually work for them that's based off of data based off experience and it takes the business owner, you know, it gives them something that they didn't otherwise have in the past.
And so that's that's really amazing. Usually the types of companies that hire us, they've never had something like this, right? They've never they the business has been running them since they started it. You know, they're at a point now where they're starting to engage and they're online and they're seeing other things and they're like, man, how are all these other companies so largely successful? Well because they're they're doing things that you're not doing right, They have repeatable processes, they have employee handbooks, they have orb charts, they have these types of things, they divide responsibilities, they conquer the day, the day doesn't conquer them.
So, and like you said, a success leaves clues, so why try to reinvent the wheel right? There's there's been so many successful contracting companies, you've already got that blueprint at least a framework for it, Why have to why reinvent the wheel again? Um speed up your success by doing this. So I'd love to dive into the book. So I have it right here. Um This thing is thick, this is like a textbook, it was show everybody who's on the video version of it. I got one right here too on my desk, tell me, tell me more about it.
Like what, what can someone expect to get out of this book? How does someone get it. Um because there's a there's a lot in here, it's on our website go time success group dot com, it's on amazon, right? But basically it's insights and strategies to help in home service companies. So it's not just, you know, H B A C, not just electrical or not just plumbing. Any, any contractor that that's engaging with in home services can get a lot out of the 20 chapters that are in the book.
I'll mention just a few of the chapters so the listeners can, can potentially take some interest. But at the backside of the book, transform transformational leadership, uh, success principles, uh, selling your business. That's a big one these days, right? These company owners are selling their businesses all over the place. Success planning, sales, marketing, financial management, KPI s key performance indicators. And we go through KPI s. I believe it's on page 11 17, but we go through KPI s from, from the aspect of, here's what the industry expects, right?
For plumbers for elect for electrical contractors for H. B. A. C for for csrs there metrics in there that would help you help an in home service company become more successful with their day. Um, we talk about recruiting, we talk about co worker development. We have, you know what it what it means to have a vision of mission core values and developing your company's why. Uh, so the books interactive. Right? It even challenges you at times to have, there's little exercises in the book, right? Where you have to do things.
So, uh, it's really a good book. It's awesome and yeah, thanks for touching on it. Yeah, it's amazing. Um, did you flip the 1 17 was I right? You were right. It's the um, let me show everybody who's on the videos, but business performance metrics target. Uh, and you break down a number of the different metrics. So, um, let's say percentages for a check, service and maintenance. You got labor cogs, cost of goods sold parts and supplies, average ticket close calls. This is amazing. Yeah. This is man, this is the data marketing, the sample budget for marketing leadership, time spent, right, comfort advisors, H. V A. C technicians.
Um HPC maintenance technicians. You know, kind of what are, what are some of the standard benchmarks across the industry for what expectations are. Sometimes we, we might have a great service technician that ends up becoming a great manager that doesn't have access to these kinds of things right. Without the ability to go online and look at things. Maybe they're not that kind of individual. They can see all this this guidance right here from, from this book and start to understand how to hold their teams accountable, wow, this is this is incredible.
Oh my gosh, to start my own HBs. Hey, chris Hunter have done it many times. These guys, hey, they wrote the book on it. Oh man. So this, this is the book and I think this is incredibly valuable. But I believe you also have the school, which I imagine will be more interactive than the book. I mean the books really valuable, but sometimes people just need someone to talk to to be able to walk through the concepts, ask questions. So can you tell us more about the school?
And I believe you also have an online university as well. Yeah, let's touch on the school. First man, I'm excited about our school. So we have a location, a large training facility in hurst texas. So our, our students fly into Dallas fort Worth and they come to class, we have a residential building tech class. It's 11 days. We have a residential H B A C installed class. Uh notice we're we're kind of covering fundamentals, right? The install classes, a six day class. I teach the full throttle sales class.
So we have a sales class that's only five days. Uh you know, we cover our processes and ideally how to run a call a lot about mindset, you know, a lot of, a lot of awesome stuff in there. We even have some disc profile stuff on the last day. Um, but the class or the class is the lab. If you look at like the pictures on our website on Good Times website, you'll see. We have like nine functioning working systems, we have inverter technology, we have mini splits, we have heat pumps, we have straight cool, we have gas furnaces, you know, they're all ducted.
Uh some of the duct runs are, you know, are, you know, there's there there's bugs wired into stuff and there's, you know, they're the pressure on some of the duck runs might be off and you know, and that's the beauty of having the students coming to class. We can we can show them what it like, what it looks like in real life to, to face these challenges in the customer's home and then teach them how to benefit the customer or that customer experience by being able to solve problems better.
So this is live all in person. Um they're getting their hands on experience. Um that's, and you said it was about six days or some of the trainings for someone. Yeah, so the build a tech class um is 11 days, it's a big one but we can take a green technician, somebody that has very little industry knowledge. They, I would say they probably benefit themselves by having some, you should probably know what a capacitor is, right, what a, what a relay is. You should probably know your way around the system, maybe just by doing right along for a couple of weeks with, you know, with a master technician at your company or something like that.
But usually the students that we get are pretty green and to build a tech class, Hence the word, build a tech. So we do some soft skills, some communication training in there as well. Not just all community. Uh not just all mechanical but we cover a lot mechanical, high voltage, low voltage refrigeration, charge airflow duct design. Uh we cover a ton so they get a huge takeaway. They also get how to communicate with the customer a little bit different a little bit better. So typically we take a technician that's green and we turn them into a pretty awesome maintenance slash light diagnostic technician inside of 11 days.
So yeah, I know man, pretty awesome. We're excited about that because we literally, you know, like we said, we love to give back uh that's developing the technicians, the owners, you know, the leaders of the industry of tomorrow. Um you know, virtually, you know, 10, 12 times a year. So you know what an opportunity to change lives, residential installed class. Another fantastic one. That one's actually six days monday through saturday. But what what what guys see most of the time, Not just guys, girls too, but what our students see most of the time is faster processes, faster getting getting the installed done right.
Uh The guy that runs that class, his background is substantial in mechanical aspects of the company um of sorry, of the industry and Darryl Otto's his name. He's just fantastic. Super smart guy. But what students see and what they report back to us typically is, hey used to take our team, you know, a solid day, two guys a solid data, you know, to to do a change out with some light duck modifications. Now they're doing, you know, two, sometimes even three change outs in the same day, so just just gonna help them speed up through adding processes and simplifying a lot of things and you know, put things down on paper as to how to do it, how to handle it, what to do first, avoid confusion, that type of stuff.
So it's a very good class and and how does, how does all this differ from the online version? Uh or is it, is the online classes like something similar where someone's doing it in the comfort of their home is like prerecorded video, is it is it also like livestream? Like what, how do those two differ from each other? Well, so the element of hands on is not there inside of the university. However, I'll throw a little twist in there. We have a relationship with interplay through are the back side of our, our contractor university and the university provides actually a lot of VR modules, so I say hands off in in that regard, but truly it's kind of not right because you're kind of working with these VR hands and a lot of modules and you know, you're replacing thermostat, so you're charging or you're doing cool stuff and we have a vac?
We have plumbing, we have electrical, but we all we don't just have the modules for interplay all the go time, coaches, including myself are are dedicated and committed committed to adding content to that university all the time. So we, we actually have a lot of video content on there that we contribute as coaches and trainers as well. So it's not just the interplay style platform with VR, there's a lot of video content in there as well on soft skills, on repair versus replace. Just all these really cool things that are, are very good for technicians to know, wow, I didn't even realize that y'all could do virtual reality type train, that's next level, that next level stuff.
It's pretty exciting and uh, you know, we'll see a lot of companies utilize it for, you know, larger groups of technicians. It's really cool because you can assign modules and then as a leader or a manager in your business, you can actually assign modules and then look at kind of like a report card, like there's like reports right behind the scenes. So you know, the guy that says, yeah man, I logged in on friday and, and, and I took that module, you can say actually haven't logged in since Wednesday at eight a.m.
So it's got a nice little tattletale side of it too, which is awesome because it allows leaders, managers, owners to hold their technicians accountable for, for some of these modules to complete. And it's just a great uh, you know, operation for, we even see companies use it for hiring events. We've seen the Oculus glasses and, you know, at a job fair where people are stepping up to the plate that don't have any industry experience and they're, they're trying to rewire a thermostat right? Or you know, based on, on learning some very basic stuff, it's just a very cool experience.
Who would have thought 20 years ago we'd have all amen. Okay. So we talked about the book, we talked about the school, we talked about the online university in VR. Um, okay, how about the coaching and training? Cause it sounds like everything you mentioned prior is more for the technicians, is the coaching training more for the business owner now and setting up their business. Can you dive a little bit more into that? Yeah, no problem. So I got some, some, some pretty pretty stud uh, characters in our lineup.
Um, you guys can, can go to our website, click on meet the team, you can look at some of the, the, I call them thoroughbred racehorses that we have in the stable. We got some pretty awesome guys on the team that do a lot of coaching that have kind of been there and done it. They've grown business and you know, they've seen explosive growth. They know about change management. They know a lot about what it takes to, you know, design, developed market, do everything for a company to, in some cases, even get it ready to sell to private equity.
So, um, the coaching realm is not just for owners and managers though uh even myself, I have several companies that I coach and that I train uh even on a weekly basis that are just a room full of technicians, a room full of plumbers, a room full of electrical, you know, electrician's electrical contractors. So um you know, we do a lot of communication, a lot of kind of how to present yourself, I'm not gonna say it's all kind of just soft skills but a lot of even self reflection as well.
And then um there are a lot of who teaches the the install class. Uh he's very good at taking some of the mechanical attributes of our industry and taking it to the online, so live online in front of a room full of h Vac or or plumbing technicians. Uh Darryl's interacting with them from a mechanical realm and you know, teaching them whether it be, you know, airflow or a true cost calculator or Troussier calculation or you know, talking about split systems and and and you know what it means up in the, up in the attic to have dampers and you know, just everything.
This guy is just so talented and so smart instead of having like communication style segments on like kind of sales and how to present yourself to the customer, he teaches the mechanical aspects like a boss, like a boss that's awesome. So yeah, so so so kind of to give you the overview right on the coaching and training side. Uh companies can, can, can link up with us and have us do a lot of coaching and training for them? Sometimes business owners say to us, hey man, I'm at this, this, this, this point my business where I'm growing and I just got out of the truck and I, you know, I just stepped into the backside of this business and I'm really making things work the downside.
I don't have time to train my technicians, but I know how valuable it is. So we come in and you know, we do have time because this is what we do and uh, you know, we, we get to do what we're really good at and these companies get to get to see some, some pretty excellent growth and change. That's so cool. That's so cool. And I really like, uh, we'll definitely dig into a little bit later. But I'm curious on that, that self reflection, like how, how you coach people through that because it's, it's so important like understanding like how to improve yourself and digging in, especially the identity shifts.
You know, sometimes there's beliefs that we have about ourselves that yeah, there were words. Yeah, yeah, let's, yeah, let's think about this the most important sale in your life as a technician or anybody producing any type of an experience for a customer, the most important sale is that you have to buy yourself first and what does that look like? You know, what does it mean to buy you first? Right? Do you have confidence, you know, do you, do you treat the customer like there there's confidence and swag in the way that you operate and run the call?
What are things about yourself, you know, how are you? You know when I say self reflection, I mean what are you doing right now to benefit yourself, your family, your company, you know, there there are all kinds of things we can do, quit smoking, start eating healthy, go to the gym. You know, if I want to get in a car and drive 100 and 50 miles an hour because that's, that's what's important to me then fine do that. But what are you doing to present yourself to people in the aspect of there's enough confidence here in the way that I walk for you to understand that I by myself.
So you should buy me right, you should buy my company, you should buy my process, you should buy my pricing, you should buy everything that I'm offering because I have that level of swag and confidence in the way that I approach a situation and offer and experience. It's all about the way that the experience is offer. So without, without getting too deep into the psychological aspects of the sales approach. I just kind of wanted to give you an example of kind of what I meant by self reflection, right?
So we have a lot of coaching and training outlines that talk about that and outline that type of stuff. Right? That, that challenge these technicians to, hey, what are some important areas of your life? You think you'd like to focus on? What are they, write them down and maybe if you wrote down three, let's, let's take the top one and let's associate a time frame and a date of when this goal is supposed to be accomplished in your life. And then even better we're gonna hold you accountable to it.
If you say you want to quit smoking in 90 days, you know how easy it is for me to take my phone and say remind me every monday to remind john or asked john if he, if he had any cigarettes yet or over the weekend or whatever, if quitting smoking is a thing. Right? So every monday I send you a text. Hey man, how's it going? Are you? Oh, it's getting better. Right, I'm, I'm now, I used to smoke two packs a day. Now I'm down to one pack.
Alright, cool. What's the plan moving forward? I'm gonna go down to 10. Oh sweet. There you go. Sometimes just that level of accountability, it helps. And inside of these companies that also starts to develop this kind of, this infrastructure of everybody's got each other's facts. So the whole company starts to thrive because if I'm holding you accountable for personal goals by asking very basic questions and not making you feel backed in a corner, you start to feel like, hey, this thing's got my back. So yeah, so not only do we do that, but I don't say that, you know, I'm gonna be the one to hold you accountable.
I tell you to write down three things, pick the most important one, Subscribe an action plan to, to making yourself better and turn it into your boss and then your boss is gonna hold you accountable, right? But that's what coaching and training does. It gives you guys the, the, the ideas to be able to put things together like this and really start to give back to your people, uh, that starts to really develop an environment and a culture of training and support and that's where we thrive.
That's, that's so beautiful and it's, it's a skill like that a lot of people aren't taught and it's not something necessarily that we learn in school and and the ability to properly set goals and then of course correct as we go through time and also having that accountability portion. I think it's not only benefit too, you know, let's say the technicians, but also it's like you said, it's a benefit to the entire culture of the company because the owner said, hey, my team is so important that I want to invest this training in them and it's not just with the technical skills that they're improving on, it's, it's really their life and that's, that's a different type of, I got your back, but that's the whole thing, right?
Like when you look at a lot of coaching and training companies that are out there, they're like, they're cookie cutter, they have a process, they say this is the way you do it, and if you don't do it this way then you know, you're not going to get the result you're looking for. And and we just think that that's garbage were principle driven and what principle driven with with go time means is that you should be able to take the principles that we teach you and add them to what you already do good or maybe, you know, put them in the place of some other areas and you should see success.
Matter of fact we guarantee it because we know what works, we know what's successful. I love it, principle driven. Um it reminds me of the book seven habits of highly effective people. Um and it's just Kobie Stephen Covey's good stuff, it's never about, it's never about like, let's say this particular result, but it's about living up to these principles and the beautiful part about principles are that they're universal and so I love that you guys have distilled that down. That is amazing, I appreciate that, man. Okay, so um I guess the last thing with the, with good time, we want to hop into was a service titan and we were talking about this prior to the call and I'm excited for you to talk about it because I don't think a lot of people are doing this and the value add, it's it's incredible.
So hop in like what tell us about what you're doing, service titan, how are you helping contractors will give you the why? And the how? Alright, so around february of 2020 um service titan had connected with several companies throughout the nation that offer uh training and consulting to trade companies only and they said hey we have this this wonderful opportunity, we're thinking about launching a new pilot program called the certified service titan providers program. And through this program you'll be able to get certified through our software and you'll be able to help customers in need our customers in need fix their accounts, fix their problem, log into their settings and fix things.
So we were we were excited. We were like heck yeah man let's do it. So uh myself uh Dylan uh fix my operations manager and Adrian Neff, who I can say is the first certified coach uh in the nation and that she's on our team, she's absolutely awesome. But we said Yes to it and we started this training. So we were meeting several times a week with some kind of online stuff with some service Titan employees teaching us and everybody knows what happened in March of 2020, The whole entire nation shut down with COVID-19.
So that program actually shut down for a short time. It wasn't until around September or October of the same year 2020 that we? Re engaged and Adrian went full steam ahead and got certified. It's about honestly 60, hours worth of work. Um, there's about 50 modules, maybe 47 or so modules that we have to go through and half of them are teach backs. And when I say teach backs, it means that you're on a screen like this, you're sharing your screen and service titan presents you with a problem and says, how do we fix this?
So you have to show them ideally how to fix it. Well then that module gets set, that recording gets sent to a very awesome individual Danielle combs who runs that, that portion, She runs the certified service type of providers program, but she grades everything right. So once you're certified, um, well you're on the squad. So right now go times got four certified coaches and um, yeah, the first two in the nation are certified under our belt undergo times belt, which is a pretty cool thing to just say, it doesn't really hold anyway because I guess if you're certified, you're certified, but hey man to say that your number one is, is really awesome and we got the first Canadian coach.
So I've got to coach up in Canada as well. His name is Jeremy Wick in Hauser, this guy is an absolute superstar with the accounting side of things. He actually writes blog posts now for service titan uh in on the accounting side he's got a degree in accounting and this guy is just an absolute superstar with the back end settings and you know, getting things worked out with with numbers not looking right? So let me, let me try to uh bring a couple of things to light number one.
We're contractors, we've used this software in the field, many of my coaches that are on the team that are certified service type providers, their business owners. You know, Adrian, she's absolutely a beast in the software. Well that's not just because she's good at the software, right? She actually is a, a second generation uh, H. V A C contractor in the, in the Dallas Fort worth area. So she utilizes features like payroll like commission splits, like estimate templates, like all these things. Right? That, that some companies might struggle with.
Adrian does this stuff on a daily basis for her company. Right? So it's very easy for her to implement this type of stuff into other companies. Um, Adrian's actually out right now on maternity leave, but she'll be back in in the next coming weeks. I don't know exactly when, but man, she, she's awesome. So I kind of said that so I could say this were as coaches and trainers in the, in the software. We're not just good at the software, we're good at the business side too and we're contractors, so we speak the same language, you know, recently I went to Pantheon and I volunteered some of my time to work the certified providers booth and I worked the torch the torch network lounge uh and I had a good time with a lot of the service titan employees, but at one point I was standing at the, at the certified providers booth with Danielle and Danielle had said something that I told her, I said I'm gonna I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna use it because it just makes sense.
So a customer service titan customer had come up to the booth and said, hey what is this? Right, so Danielle explained what it was, right, It's it's a group of third party contractors that can really help you kind of dial in your settings and then it up and is there an expense to it? Yes, there is. Right. She said, well why would I use them if I can just use service type? And here's, here's what Daniel said and it made perfect sense because at times service titan employees speak geek and when you hire a third party company that does this, that is contractors that has time in the trades, they speak technician basically.
So you're, it's, it adds this element of clarity to a business owner because we're not just saying, you know uh here's a link to an academy video, check it out or we're not just saying yes, click here, click there and this is what this is how you fix that problem. We're able to back up and explain the why. Right? We're able to back up and explain it from the customer experience, which is super important. Right? So we we were able to help a lot of contractors with their their service tightened settings and add clarity.
And when they have clarity in the software, the software becomes an asset instead of what we hear, sometimes they feel it's a liability. And I'll give you this as an example. Sometimes when we engage with somebody in the very beginning, they say, look joe I'm frustrated, I'm piste off, right? I've been paying X amount of money per month for the last, you know, 12 months or whatever. And I just feel like we're at a place where we're at a breaking point. So so to take somebody from a breaking point and and offer them total clarity and create smiles, it impacts them.
But let's take it a step further, it impacts their teams. Because if they don't have a fundamental understanding of the software and the way it's supposed to be, you know, run inside of their business. Well they're technicians and their office staff don't either. So what that adds is a lot of mud to the water and what they start saying is I'm not gonna pull that report because it's never accurate. It's not right. Well yeah it is right if it was set up properly right. The whole the whole phrase there is garbage in garbage out so if it's not set up properly of course some of your your metrics are gonna be off.
There are a lot of things that that sometimes are completely missed during the setup of it. So we feel confident that we're able to help a lot of contractors get that that level of clarity, that level of understanding which kind of creates this sense of calm in their business. They start to see the software for what it is, it's an asset and it's designed to make you money not cost you money. Yeah there's a cost to it but to offer the best customer experience in the world you gotta pay for it and that's what service titan is.
It's the best customer experience possible. Well it also adds to metrics and matrix and ai for running your business reporting, all these types of things once they're dialed in and they're set up like we're saying earlier, dude, you got this 10,000 ft view, you can start operating the company sometimes from the privacy of your own home and that's where the magic starts to happen. People start to see it then as a tremendous asset and they start to see that. Oh wow, okay. I understand now why it costs what it does or why I'm spending money on a monthly basis.
It's no problem. It's gotta, and that's the shift a lot of times that we have to to allow a customer to see, stop looking at it as, you know, some level of detriment to your, to your business as just this cost, right? It's not, it's a race car. You just have to learn how to drive the race car, right? So in order to take first place on race day, you gotta learn how to drive it. Most of the contractors that we engage with, they don't even know how to start it.
Uh, if they can start it, they can barely get it out of first gear. So by the time they're done with us, we, we turn them into the Mario Andretti's of service state, we turn them into full blown racecar drivers. That's amazing. And, and so true on, on, on, on all your points, just, you know, if you don't know how to use it, you don't know what data to put in or where to look. You could have the most powerful tool in the universe. But if you know what I use it, it's, it's basically worthless.
And that's the shift that we see, right? The customers go from feeling that it's worthless to feeling that it's an absolute benefit to their company and everybody that works there because that's really what it does. It's designed to allow you to automate things and spend less time inside all these things where we're crunching numbers, doing all this stuff, we don't have to do all that when we have uh you know, the most elite in home service software out there firing on all cylinders, wow. And and also it's like you guys will save people time because yes, someone could try to learn this, but the amount of time and I mean we're also running a business, right?
You know, you're running a business and you're going to try to learn this software. I mean prioritizing where's my time best spent? We can even help there awesome. Well I loved all these years of service diving, I loved all the shares with, with good time. Um I want having the mindset next, but is there anything you wanted to talk about before we wrap up just talking about good time. Um No man, I just appreciate you having me on, I appreciate you. You allow me the opportunity to talk about, not just my company, but I almost feel like it's a way of life, you know, all, all of us that that work underneath the roof at go time, we're all over the country were Connecticut, we're all the way out to California, we're in texas, we're in florida were everywhere, but all of us, we really live out the core values of our of our brand and it's attractive, it starts to create this kind of this vibe this pulse and uh when I'm when I'm around my fellow go timers, I feel great.
I feel great because I know they care just as much about the end result as I do. They care just as much about the contractor as, and the, and that experience as I do and that's just a great feeling. So thank you for allowing me to come on and share some thoughts with you. Yeah, with good time. And yeah, let's, let's, let's talk briefly about the mindset as we, as we wrap up the podcast. Um, one of the questions that I'm curious about is I notice in certain people, right?
There's people who are, are like good at a certain level, right? And it's amazing, but then there's people and they're very few. But there's these people that just seem to break through and they seem to be like a rocket ship and um, and it's just insane like what they do. I imagine you've run into contractors just like that. And I'm curious if you could just, like, if you could share your thoughts on what makes these people different like it because it's, it's, it's, it's, it's rare, but when you see it, like, you know it, so I'm just curious like what are some of those traits or what are some of those differentiating factors between someone who's like right here and someone is like a, like a rocket ship. Yeah.
So what I can start on here with mindset is the word attitude because attitude is what drives our mindset. So even in my sales class, I have an exercise in the very beginning of my sales class where we try to explore what types of limiting style beliefs that you have in your life that you've carried with you. Maybe even from your childhood that equal maybe a recipe for some levels of disaster in your life could be personal life could be business, right? But we talk about them, we write them down and then guess what?
We take them outside, We burn them. We literally burn them off, right? Because nobody needs that level of negativity in in their lives. It literally makes you feel like you're trying to walk in quicksand or that you're stuck in mud. And you know, the difference is fundamentally that that I recognize in people is if they want to receive levels of change and they want to see tremendous growth in their company. We always say, oh yeah, their mindsets gotta be right. And and and and and people always kind of take that with a grain of salt.
They're like, oh yeah, my mindset? Yeah, cool. But really it's not mindset, it's attitude because your attitude drives your mindset. So you know, what are you doing to check your attitude at the door on a daily basis? And then here's what's most important about attitude, it's not just about yours, it's about your customers, it's about the people who you engage with on a daily basis? It's about your technicians, It's about your comfort advisers, your csrs who whoever is around you right? If you want them to have a positive mindset toward any type of growth or change which is what we do every day right in life, we grow, we change.
But if you want them to have that and adopt that positive mindset, it starts with their mental attitude. So what are a lot of things that we can do to make sure that their attitude is that that is upward, that is positive. That is upbeat. Well I can give you an example just one example of how we can uh can correct the attitude of a technician? I say this sometimes and I even teach this in in my class. But I say this sometimes even in my trainings when you dispatch a call and it says let's say it's an estimate because I'm a sales trainer. Right?
So we're dispatching an H. V. A. C. Sales estimate. And when we dispatch the estimate, it says estimate to replace due Tuesday at 2 30. That's all we got right. Oh cool. I'm a sales guy. I'm I'm gonna run the call. Thank you. I appreciate it company. But what if we we had this type of a setup estimate to replace yellow pages lead uh customer is interested in financing. Both decision makers will be present, willing to move forward as soon as possible due Tuesday at 2 30. How was my attitude toward that call?
Mm I see a lot of this stems from the setup and the way that we allow our technicians to arrive to arrive at these at these homes or these businesses or these engagements. If we give them the opportunity to succeed, they succeed. If we hinder them from the opportunity to succeed. A lot of times, we find ourselves asking why, how did that call go? Well, why didn't this go this way? Why didn't we do this? Why didn't we do that? That could be seen as a level of micromanaging.
Some technicians don't like that. Hey man, get your finger off my back. Right. So I say, give people give technicians, men, women, whatever, give them the ability to succeed by setting their attitude up for success. That first call didn't give me a lot of options. Didn't didn't add a lot of clarity. Didn't allow me to paint a picture of success for myself. If I'm going to expect success from the tech, I need to give them what they need to be successful up front that way they can run run with it and they can have that better experience because I set them up for success.
I didn't set them up for failure sometimes in, in dispatching in the things that we do write every day in, in these businesses. We don't put a lot of emphasis on those little tiny things and those little tiny things make the largest difference in your company. It's, it's, it's whether or not you're getting the yes or the no at the end of the service call period, right? And there's all kinds of things that we can dive into. But I just wanted to give you an example of how we can correct the attitude of a technician by something as simple as just dispatching a call.
I love that. And it's just setting them up for success. I mean there's all those additional details that you mentioned, it just, it just helps them to contextualize and really, you know, go there ready to succeed versus we're walking here blind, you know, just just sell it and hey, let's write, let's hope, let's throw the pasta at the wall and hope it sticks. I don't know when they have the other scenario, they start to paint the picture of success and matter of fact they even say when they're reading the notes.
Oh yeah, Oh yeah, I got this one. Oh well they're interested in financing. Oh yeah, I got this one and that's what we want. We want them to go out there and have that forward thinking nature, we are the best company. It is the right solution. It is the right price, right? We did, we are fair, we are flexible. We did everything right. We do everything right Then. Sometimes we're surprised at why we get a note. Well dude, if the attitudes not right, which means the mindsets not right.
You can't expect stars and stripes when you're walking in with this low, right? Uh, how you doing today? And that's how some tech, some technicians are right. If we, if we set them up for success, like you said, like I said, if we set them up for success, we can expect better things to happen, bigger things to happen. So that's my take on mindset and attitude, right? There are so many other ways so that we can take this conversation. But hopefully that example made sense for your listeners and that's really where it starts.
Start mindset is born inside of your attitude and then one additional adds to that is, um, company culture might just be the sum of all the, all the company, all the company's attitudes in a sense, right? Because just thinking about it, it's like, yes, someone can have a certain attitude, but it's really the collective that forms the norms and the standards within that company. Um, so yeah, it's the only thing I want to add just adding that. You're right man. You're, you're absolutely right. You hit it spot on.
Amen to that. So I think we're coming up on the hour. So I think we're going to close up here pretty soon. Um, if someone wants to get into contact with you, joe. Like how would they reach out? Um, is email social media. Like what's the best way to connect with you? Yeah, So number one Go Time success group dot com. That's our website, a ton of information on, on the website. Number two to email us, it's super teen at go time success group dot com. We are a large team.
We all have each other's backs. So when you email us, you email a team. So it's the super team at go time success group dot com. Again, the book, it's on amazon, it's on our website. It's awesome. It's a must read. It's a must have Yes, thank you for showing it off, appreciate that. It's a wealth of knowledge. Go Time is a wealth of knowledge. I'm privileged to work around some of the sharpest minds in the industry and uh yeah, if anybody wants to get in touch, please please do let us know. Awesome.
Thank you joe. I appreciate you for being on a lot of great takeaways on mindset, on on all the things that good time can do really excited. Hope, hope some of you guys reach out because this could be, this could be what you need to take your business to the next level. So thanks so much. Everyone. Take care and we'll catch you on the next podcast. Thank you for joining us for the H Vac. Financial freedom podcast. Follow us on stream yard Apple podcast, Spotify, amazon music and check out our main website www dot h vac Financial freedom dot com.
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