Tom Howard started out in the home service trades when he was 15 years old after asking for a job from the AC and refrigerator repairman that came to his house. He has since bought and sold several companies and he currently owns HVAC and Plumbing shops in Fresno, Sacramento, and Beverly Hills, California as well as a Pest Control company in Fresno, California. The largest company produces over 24 million in annual revenue. His businesses are overseen by local management while he works full time as the VP of Customer Experience at ServiceTitan. Tom has a wife and 4 sons and they live in Las Vegas, Nevada. He holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Brigham Young University but finds that the school of hard knocks in the trades has taught him the most.
Time Stamps:
📌[0:00]Davey Shepard you are like 12 hours late to this conversation....
📌[6:46]Marketing - What is the customer experience?
📌[7:09] How Service Titan helps optimize the customer experience...
📌[8:36]How to stay consistent with a warm & fuzzy customer experience that can be up to 20 "touches" a day per tech...
📌[9:09]How to automate customer experiences?
📌[9:32]You should only build process & procedures for those tasks you can't automate?
📌[12:15]Shifting responsibility from admins & technicians to technology to hep ensure a consistent customer experience every time...
📌[14:11]How are you tracking your marketing? Service Titan will automate the marketing tracking from ad numbers.
📌[14:39]Leveraging technology to ensure your data stays clean...
📌[15:25]Gain better insights into your marketing spend, is it working?
📌[17:56]Service Titan bought Schedule Engine late last year and since then ST is now prioritizing tracking Marketing Dollars in Schedule Engine
📌[18:44]Are you attributing your dollars correctly?
📌[19:46]Client acquisition costs, cost per lead, customer lifetime value
📌[21:17]Fetch-a-Tech Story
📌[24:43]Brent (sales guy) $14 Million in sales last year - he did $1M in sales
📌[25:00]Tom is trying to build companies around building EBITDA fast
📌[27:33]They helped Jerry with his company, Tom did budgeting, process & procedures, Brent did the sales, Dan did the rebrand, Dennis did the systems & operations
📌[32:18]Fetch a Tech started in August and they turned profit in 2 months.... And they went and talked to Colin about a climate control location in Vegas that was losing money. Tom wanted to buy it. He did some guerilla marketing to talk Colin & Trevor into giving him a losing business for free
📌[36:06]How do you choose your service offerings in your area?
📌[37:56]When they say time is money, you're always trading time for money.
📌[38:44]Tom has purchased 15+ companies over the years, and every time he does it he learns some serious lessons.
📌[39:18]If you're not doing well in your main business, you have no business going anywhere else..
📌[41:43]If people want to buy your services online - STOP fighting it...
📌[43:34]Travis Ringe in Phoenix made a pricing tool for Air Conditioners, then focused on upselling. They're shooting for 30% EBITDA this year
📌[48:53]Tom is now in the business of helping Service Champions find businesses that they can turn around...
📌[49:16]Check out Contractor Commerce to add drop shipping to your company https://www.contractorcommerce.com/
📌[49:45]Service Titan Dashboards
📌[51:20]People need to look at the things that they can control...
📌[52:20]The things techs look at daily should be the thing they can control
📌[54:53]Tom is fully transparent with his entire team about all of the metrics - because it's better than the story the employee is telling in their head
📌[57:35]When he started Fetch a Tech they had to lay a bunch of people off and while it was tough, the transparency helped everyone get on the same team.
📌[57:52]Stop stepping over dollars to pick up pennies!
📌[1:01:09]People Homework - Share your financials with your people, start with $100 and pass out your % from the P&L and do a team activity taking the money from people...
📌[1:04:43]Marketing Homework - what marketing avenues are performing for you? How do you know?
📌[1:07:03]Financial Homework: Stop lying to yourself about your finances...
📌[1:07:29]Michelle check out Contractor Commerce
📌[1:09:18] thoward@servicetitan.com
📌[1:07:47]Tom Howard 559-259-1244
Quote of the Day
“You will either step forward into growth, or you will step back into safety.”
⇩ Resources ⇩
✯ Tom Howard: Perception thoward@servicetitan.com
✯Tay Meroni (Marketing) with Pure Pressure Washing
✯Meaghan Likes (Finances) with Bookkeeping Academy Online, Likes Accounting Company & Jeff Likes Clean Windows & Gutters
✯Michelle Myers (Systems) with Pink Callers
✯Martha Woodward (People) with The Pay for Performance Expert, Quality Driven Software & Dusting Divas