44 | How Tersh Blissett Built Two Competing HVAC Companies in One Market: Secrets to Success, Innovation, and Leadership in the HVAC Industry

Episode information

Episode Number: 44 

Date: July 23, 2024

Duration: 1:32:04

Host: Justin Deese 

Website: JustinDeese.com 

Contact: Justin@JustinDeese.com 

Guest: Tersh Blissett 

Website: Service Emperor https://www.servicebusinessmastery.com/

Summary

In this episode, Justin Deese converses with Tersh Blissett, an accomplished entrepreneur in the HVAC industry. Tersh shares his journey from joining the Air Force and working in engineering to founding two successful HVAC companies, TriStar HVAC and Service Emperor. He discusses the challenges and strategies of running competing businesses, the importance of remote operations, going paperless, and leveraging automation in business. Additionally, Tersh delves into the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, particularly when working with a spouse.

Takeaways

Entrepreneurial Journey: Tersh’s transition from engineering to HVAC and how he successfully built two competing HVAC businesses in the same market.
Innovative Operations: The benefits of running a remote and paperless business.
Automation: The pivotal role of automation in streamlining operations and increasing efficiency.
Leadership and Family Balance: Insights on maintaining a work-life balance, especially when working alongside a spouse.
Business Growth Strategies: How Tersh navigated through the housing market crash and grew his business.

Chapters

Introduction and Mission Statement – 00:01
Tersh Blissett’s Background and Journey – 01:16
Starting TriStar HVAC – 01:40
Building Service Emperor – 03:04
Innovative Business Strategies – 05:49
Leadership and Management Styles – 11:03
Work-Life Balance and Working with Spouse – 24:12
Challenges and Overcoming Economic Downturns – 26:03
Role of Automation in HVAC Business – 46:02
Future Trends in the Industry – 50:11
Closing Remarks and Outro – 01:23:34

Keywords

Plumbing, HVAC, Air Conditioning, Electrical, Contractor, Freedom Blueprint Podcast, Justin Deese, Kristen Deese, When Your Business Partner is Your Spouse, Tersh Blissett, Service Emperor, TriStar HVAC, Entrepreneur, Automation, Business Growth, Remote Operations, Work-Life Balance, Leadership, Innovation in HVAC, Paperless Business, Business Strategies, Economic, Service Business Mastery

Transcript

Justin Deese (00:01.695)
Welcome to Freedom Blueprint podcast. We got a pretty good guest today, but before we jump in, here's our quick mission statement at Freedom Blueprint. Our goal is to assist business owners in achieving the freedom they dreamed of when they founded their business. We do this by discussing relevant topics, strategies, and even the speed bumps they encounter because we all encounter them, you know? 

So, we're going to empower you to build a blueprint that unlocks the freedom within your business. And listen today is no different. So we've got a pretty heavy hitter hanging out with us today. And I'm excited. Tersh Blissett is hanging out with us and I'm really excited to kind of jump in and learn a little bit more about, about his journey. And you got a lot going on here. So, obviously Tersh is a pretty busy dude. He is a speaker. He's a podcast host.

He hosts service business mastery podcast, which is which is one of the top rated podcast in our space, which is cool. He also owns service Emperor HVAC, TriStar HVAC in Savannah, Georgia and an automation company. So you are straight up a true entrepreneur and I know you're busy. So thanks for coming and hanging out with us for a little bit Tersh.

Tersh Blissett (01:16.832)
Yeah man, Justin, I really appreciate it. I'm honored to be here. And yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment. So I got Tristar going pretty smooth and I was like, you know what, let's do this again. Let's start over and try it in the same market with a different strategy to see if this strategy is gonna work or not. So that's how Server Semper came along.

Justin Deese (01:40.959)
So I know a lot of people that, and I myself have done this, right? I have built and sold and then built again and sold again, but I've never done it with two basically competing businesses in the same market. So that's, that's a different, that's a quest.

Tersh Blissett (01:53.088)
Yeah. Well, so in the back of my mind, I was thinking, hmm, I don't want to have to wait five or 10 years if I have to sign non -compete here. Because the thought process that I wanted to do was I wanted to prove that I could be 100 % remote and 100 % paperless while still serving the affluent neighborhoods in our industry. But I also was like,

everything that I want to do right now because this is like 2016, 2017, everything wasn't in the cloud yet. Zoom really wasn't a big thing. So I was like, I really, I kind of need a safety net to fall back on because when we started TriStar, my wife, Julie, she was a nurse and she was actually a professor at Georgia Southern as well. And so she was our breadwinner. And I was like, I don't want to do that again. Like if, so I was like,

you know, had a conversation with a business partner, Tim, with TriStar. And he's like, yeah, long as they don't compete against each other, like legit compete. I was like, yeah, that's fine. They won't because they serve two different clients. Mm -hmm. Completely different.

Justin Deese (03:04.095)
different avatar.

So I think that's interesting you say that because I think that a lot of times in our space, when it comes to contractors, they feel like everybody competes that's in the same neighborhood. And that's, and I think that's such a good point that you brought up. No, it's not like everybody is not your customer and be real clear on what your, what and who your customer is and what they want. And yeah, it's, you can have five different companies in the same market and serve different customers. I think that is, that's pretty awesome. So.

Tersh Blissett (03:28.16)
Mm -hmm.

Justin Deese (03:35.359)
So was TriStar your first service company?

Tersh Blissett (03:38.656)
Yes, so long story short, I get out of high school and go to college. Well, I'm in college in high school and then I go to the Air Force as a tech P and then get back home and I'm working in a factory doing basically swing shift work with engineering because that's what I went to school for.

But I despised it and I worked with my dad and my dad lifelong welder, boiler maker, union worker. Like the whole time I'm in high school, he's like, you need to get like in the trades. You need to do be an electrician like, or, or he never once mentioned HVAC, but he did his best friend forever for the whole time I was growing up.

was an electrician, a service electrician. And he was like, you should go work with Jeff one summer. And I was like, so we, we all grew up in the same church and being in South Georgia, like that's, that is your community center. Like it's a church. So every summer we would go somewhere. I remember vividly go into, New Orleans and doing a, we went to the bayou and we did like a restore of this church and.

Like we were there for like two weeks like that was our our church trip our youth trip as a kid and Because Jeff my dad's best friend and my dad were best friends They stuck me with Jeff and because he was one like the parent chaperones that went to the on this trip and he we were gonna we did the electrical basically rewired a house with our a church it was a massive church it was a small church and I remember like like it is yesterday. I

how much I hated doing that. I was like, this is hot, I'm pulling wires. Like they're all out there like setting up lunch and eating snacks and stuff. And Jeff's over here, won't even let me sit on the bucket while I'm, you know, wiring these receptacles. Like he's making me squat down and like, I was like, man, yeah, yeah, exactly. I was like, yeah, but there's a bucket right there. I can just flip it over and sit on it. And he was like, no, that's gonna slow you down. I was like, all right, fine, Jeff.

Justin Deese (05:49.343)
You got a good back, you got a good back. Lean over there.

Tersh Blissett (05:58.592)
And I remember that vividly, like even like when I was in like at the factory or at the at the chemical plant. And I was talking, my dad happened to work at the same chemical plant too. It was for International Paper. And he said, you know, you should reconsider like going in and working with Jeff some because Jeff was only doing it part time because he worked at a at another factory as an engineer, an E &I specialist and

I was like dad I still am just I'm having some PTSD not military PTSD but church PTSD from when we went and rewired the house I was like man I just can't imagine that well a friend of mine just happened that he was a HVAC tech now this kid smart dude but I guess probably street smarts more so he dropped out of high school when he was 16 we're like the same age maybe he's a year older than me.

Justin Deese (06:34.111)
He wouldn't even let me sit on the bucket.

Tersh Blissett (06:56.)
But he drops out of high school, didn't go to college. I don't know if he ever got his GED. It's irrelevant, honestly, because he, like every afternoon, he would be at my house. And I'd come home from work from this chemical plant, and he'd come home from work, kitchen service calls, HVAC service calls, and we would work on cars together. And...

That was our passion. That's always been my passion. Like I have a full sleeve of car part tattoos. I have 12 vehicles now currently, but we were working on cars and I'm like, Brandon, how can you afford this stuff? Like you're a high school dropout. Like that's what we all hear about. It's like, like you can't make money unless you go to college. And he was like, you want to see my check? I was like, yeah, I don't know. That's like not southerly of me. Like it's not a Southern gentleman of me. Yeah, that's right.

Justin Deese (07:46.239)
We don't talk about money in the South, sir.

Tersh Blissett (07:50.976)
So I He was like whatever dude, and so he he showed me I was like dude that's the same as I do or more than what I make and I was like and you don't have to go to a factory every day. I was like give me a job and He was like, you know anything about air -conditioning. I was like, I don't know the first thing about air -conditioning I actually I traded him a Supercharger kit to replace the AC unit in my house and I watched him do it then this is like right after we had this conversation I watched him doing the change out and I was like

Justin Deese (08:08.991)
can turn it on.

Tersh Blissett (08:21.472)
bro, I can do that. Like that's a piece of cake. He's like, yeah, this isn't the most difficult part of it. This is the part that I don't enjoy. He's like, I like the service work because that uses, you know, that requires some thought process. And I was like, I like a challenge. Like, let me give me a job. Well, long story short, he got me a job and it was instantly. I enjoyed it. The dopamine drip of solving the problem, the problem solver saving the day for a homeowner. Like just had that hero complex almost, but.

it Two weeks after I'm in a van like I do the onboarding I do it a ride -along and I'm progressing very fast because I Can read the wiring schematic and literally went to school for engineering and they're like this is a York and it's got all black wires How did you trace out the short? I was like I followed the wiring schematic like how else would you do it? You know, like

Well, that's not how we normally do it. And like this is another trainer of mine. He's like, how did you even know how to read a wiring schematic? Because I didn't tell everybody there that I went to school at Georgia Tech or anything like that. Cause I was like almost embarrassed that, Hey, I'm not using my degree for anything. I'm going to be a lowly trades person. And it's, it's hilarious to think back on now at this point in my life, but it, it,

Justin Deese (09:30.207)
Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (09:42.72)
One thing led to the other two weeks after I'm in the truck and like just kicking butt and taking names like and Brandon leaves he's like I'm putting in my notice. I was like, great You got me into the industry and now you're leaving well long story short I end up becoming the service manager two years after starting in the industry and then worked my way around to GM install manager and that business we took

once I became the service manager, I think it was yeah, in 05. No, I started in 07 when I became a service manager. And which was a great time to become a service manager of a company with the recession hitting and the housing market crashing and everything else. Thankfully, we were in service work and no new construction at all. But we took that company from 1 million revenue annually to 8 million in the next four years. So through the recession.

We we shot up pretty good. And so then I kind of I used to call myself a wartime leader, which is apparently bad to say. I learned that from a guest on the podcast. He was like, I would challenge you not to do that, because what that's telling people is that you had childhood trauma and you're looking for a next exit strategy. I was like, great. Thanks. You know, and exactly. And I was like, OK, well, won't say that anymore. But.

Justin Deese (11:03.391)
You're like, most people don't know that until you said it.

Tersh Blissett (11:08.736)
It is, it is true. So like as soon as things were running smooth at the company that I was managing, I really got bored and I was like, cantankerous and like just not happy in life. And that's about the time whenever I decided to go out and start my own business. And I had just happened to meet a guy who was the largest flooring and painting contractor in the city. And, he did a lot of flips on, not flips, but turns whenever people move out of rental properties.

But he didn't have an HVAC or plumbing or electrical department. So we teamed up together and that's when we created TriStar in 2014 and We were growing hand over fist and just It was one of those things where like I was in the in the van a lot But then I got out of it and we once I got out of the van. That's when we started to grow but

We also had him in the office as well. And he's, I'd probably say, I don't even know. I think he's like 25 or 30 years older than I am. And I need to check on him. That means he's always dirt right now. I'm thinking about my age. I'm just kidding, Tim. So he was a mentor of mine, but he was the guy that said no. Like when I was at the other company working and managing,

I didn't get told no very often and also it wasn't my money whenever I was managing and then once I started the business now all of a sudden it is my money and Tim and I were gonna bootstrap it and so he's the one that told me no a lot and I was like bro Tim you're killing me man like you're thinking everything old -school way and so like he would say all right I'm gonna tell you no until you can prove me to wrong I wouldn't say wrong but until you can convince me to say yes.

Justin Deese (12:37.919)
Right.

Tersh Blissett (13:05.888)
I was like, man, that's like an uphill battle every single day. Like I was getting irritated, but I was looking back. I truly appreciate everything that Tim did. when he, when he said that, because, whenever we had the conversation of, Hey, Tim, there are things that I really, really, really think will work. but you will never do it. It's not your cup of tea. One of those things is being a hundred percent remote and the other thing being a hundred percent paperless. And I.

Tim had a, our conference table became his office and he would have work orders strung from, and this is a 18 chair, big chair conference table. Like it's a big conference table. He had, he would have papers strung and strode from one end to the other with file folders and everything else. I was like, man, you could do everything that you're doing right now on your phone, literally. And he was like, nah, you're not going to get me to do that. Like it's not going to happen. And I was like, at that point I'm coming like,

If I want to go paperless, it will not be with Tim. And I can appreciate everything about what Tim's doing because that company is a very, very consistent four and a half million dollars a year. Like with, I would say consistently between 15 and 18 % net. And Tim doesn't want to get any bigger. He actually doesn't even want to be that big. And he just wants it to just...

Cadillac right along now his son is is the the GM of that company I have not stepped foot inside that business inside the office since 2019 and Yeah, they just called me when they have an issue the systems are in place the processes are in place that that's kind of where that wartime leader mentality came from was as soon as tri -star started running smooth, then I was like All right. Now, let's throw a wrench in this thing like

We've automated as much as I can. Let's let's start service Emperor and in it in between the starting of service Emperor and try start running efficiently is whenever I started the podcast and that kind of fueled my ego and fire at the same time of like Alright, I really stood I should do something like service Emperor. I didn't know it was gonna be service Emperor at the time, but I Was like yeah, I should do this automation thing. I should do this

Tersh Blissett (15:34.176)
remote working and and 2018 officially was when service Emperor Started or was came to fruition the podcast started in 2016 late 2016 early 2017 And so it didn't take long for my ego to be like, all right. Yep confirmation bias

Justin Deese (15:35.583)
What year was that?

Tersh Blissett (16:02.848)
Let's go ahead and start this thing. And, and so I did that. I got Tim's blessings on it. and we had that conversation that, Hey, I didn't go into detail about the clientele, the avatar of, of TriStar versus service emperor, but I will say, and it's complete. I talk about it all the time on the podcast too. So TriStar is a, very high volume, low margin.

Company so the guys will run 10 12 service calls a day and average service ticket is like 249 because they not succeed is is 250 and so like so you bump it right up to it as much as possible But they're gonna run a gun like guys are wearing blue jeans and t -shirts White vans with maybe a decal on the side of it just to get into some of the the neighborhoods that have to have a decal

But service emperor is the exact opposite. You know, the guys were khaki pants, a black polo with an orange undershirt. all the vans are fully wrapped and you know that you have a probably I'd say $20 ,000 investment for tri stars band, including inventory probably. yeah. Cause everything's used like by used vans from auctions. Like that's the hustle man. Like it's a whole different thought process. you don't get new vans because you just, it's.

Justin Deese (17:19.423)
Gosh.

Justin Deese (17:25.631)
Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (17:31.776)
It's not in the budget for it. And then you get service emperor where like the guys I love them to death. But if they get a van, if their van is like three years old and it's like 60 ,000 miles, all right, Terris, we got to do something about this. All right, fine. Yeah. But the thing about it is like you keep it clean, you keep it representing like, all right, I'm gonna do it. And especially if you're profitable, you're profitable. Yeah.

Justin Deese (17:47.231)
This is cramping my style, Tersha. I gotta have a new... I need some new whips on this thing, man.

Tersh Blissett (18:00.992)
It's not like you're people don't hold me hostage by any means but for but we have a very much of a culture of Reward based and it's not I wouldn't say dangling a carrot because I because sometimes I'm like, man, I just hate to Like it's your job. Like why do I have to you know? Why have to pay you more or why have to tell you good job? Like you got a paycheck Right. That's your that's your thank you

But at the same time, there's certain people who have personality that like they need to have that confirmation. They have the words of affirmation. And so learning that as a leader, that was a challenge for me as a leader because that's not my personality at all. Don't give me accolades. It makes me feel awkward and I'll shut down. So, yeah, that was a long way of saying to where we're at now, service emperor and.

And tri star are both in the same market, not competing against each other, but.

Justin Deese (19:02.783)
I think that's, I think that's such a cool story. And it's a great example of there's so much technology, right? And you look at our lab, our industry over the last 10 or 15 years, and I can remember. So our, our stories have a very similar backstory, very similar, and I still own a company in Atlanta that I've owned for 20 something years now. And it's turning burn, high volume, low margin. I couldn't tell you the last time I've even had a whole lot to do with it.

Tersh Blissett (19:30.368)
Yeah.

Justin Deese (19:31.583)
I have a partner that runs it. He's amazing. If he needs me, he'll call otherwise. Cool. Checks in the mail. Like all that good stuff, but I can remember in 2000, probably 13, four, it's somewhere in that range. Just wanting to do something like pictures because I can remember when we first started, cause we did a lot of retail, a lot of lows, a lot of home Depot and I can remember they would come off the fax machine. So Monday morning we would load that thing with paper and it would just like run out like, and we're like, this is great. We.

Tersh Blissett (19:38.08)
Mm -hmm.

Tersh Blissett (19:52.415)
Gotcha.

Tersh Blissett (20:01.28)
Yeah.

Justin Deese (20:01.471)
all this money everywhere and like, no, it's not money yet. But just finding a software that had pictures, like there was no service Titan then there was none of these kinds of softwares were around or existed.

Tersh Blissett (20:12.764)
No back when s Was it? Yes, see yes see turn to Desco or Desco turn to ESC and then it turned to field edge and I immediately I was like, cloud -based and I can get pictures. Yes Let's sign up and then I didn't learn until after the fact that the images were super compressed and Like you couldn't couldn't pull them up or anything like people if you if it wasn't a perfect image when it was uploaded You're never gonna see that image

Justin Deese (20:21.503)
Yes. Yep.

Justin Deese (20:27.743)
Mm -hmm.

Tersh Blissett (20:42.464)
And I was like, gosh, like I thought we had the fix all for this exact situation.

Justin Deese (20:47.935)
But in that short period of time, something as simple as pictures has gone from, it was almost impossible to do it, or you were having a digital, I mean, I knew guys that were doing digital cameras and upload and we tried that and I'm like, I don't have the patience or the expansion or the, I don't have the time for that. But, and now you look at how, as you get into automation and as you get into all these other things, but what I think is cool about the story that you were talking about is you can be successful both ways.

Tersh Blissett (20:56.768)
Yup. Mm -hmm.

Tersh Blissett (21:01.248)
Yeah.

Justin Deese (21:15.807)
Right. You, you could be that old school. I mean, listen, there is very, very successful contractors that used to use pagers. There is very, very successful contractors. They were doing it before pagers. They were using pay phones and they would run around with quarters in their things and have, have CB radios, no GPS. Can you imagine if we had that now? I can remember, I can remember the, the map books, like guys open the map book.

Tersh Blissett (21:22.784)
yeah.

Tersh Blissett (21:27.04)
Mm -hmm.

Tersh Blissett (21:30.496)
has CB radios.

Yup.

Tersh Blissett (21:39.584)
Yeah. yeah, man. I, it was like, I'd get in a van and the guy would have like this really thick MacBook. I'm like, where'd you get that from? Like then all of a sudden I'm jealous of his MacBook.

Justin Deese (21:49.823)
And then you're like, wait, there's a GPS Garmin, you know, then the Garmin came out and say, anyways, I think it's, I think it's a cool story, but, but all of that happened in less than like 15 or 20 years. And then, you know, something I do want to talk to you a little bit about is the, is the automation side of it. But, but now we've gone from, from that to now automation and book and calls and.

Tersh Blissett (21:53.6)
Yup. Yup.

Tersh Blissett (22:01.344)
It did.

Tersh Blissett (22:15.52)
Yeah, you have AI assistance AI agents who can answer the phone call and book it into service Titan or Sarah or field edge or whatever CRM you're using which is just mind -blowing. I mean if you want to talk to a human agent they can connect you if you don't care they'll do it if you just want to text you can text the AI agent as well and they'll input the information into the system like it's

It blows my mind. So automation, I didn't know it, but I turned into an automation junkie back when I was a service manager in 2007 or eight. I figured out, so one of the first things that happened right just after I became a service manager, I would say, was when we had the GPS that looked like the Palm Pilot and it was sitting in the vans.

Justin Deese (23:10.271)
Mm -hmm.

Tersh Blissett (23:13.344)
But the thing about it was that the their travel, the trip charges and everything like the trip, we need to track like how long it was taken between calls, like call travel time and stuff like that. And all that stuff was inside of that program. But I needed to get it on an Excel spreadsheet every single day. And by 10 o 'clock, I had to turn it into Fred, who's the business owner.

And I had to have the travel between calls, the revenue generated, the, the amount of parts that were used, basically gross profit completely figured out every, for every single service call. I had to have it all done by 10 AM and turn and on his desk. It's by 10 AM. And the only way that happened was if I started at seven 30 did not converse with the guys when they showed up. Cause you know how I mean,

Justin Deese (24:12.639)
Morning time.

Tersh Blissett (24:12.832)
My shops aren't this way anymore. But back then, like everybody came to the shop, got coffee, stood around the dispatcher's table, the desk and just chit chatted. And then finally would leave out of there about eight, eight 30, just kind of mosey on out of there. well, I couldn't converse with them if I had to, for me to get it done by 10 AM. And it was a stressful time. And I think Fred was challenging me because the guy that was before me, Brian, the service manager, he didn't do the first one of those like.

ever like Fred told him to do that and he was like No, not gonna happen. It's cuz Brian's very old school too. And I love Brian to death. Like I love that guy still today He's he's one of the smartest guys. I know he has a memory of forever but he's like no, I'm not doing that and so Me I just wanted to please because I did not deserve to be a service manager heck I was barely a service technician and So I was like, you know what? Let me figure out this automation thing. I

So I started researching a lot back then there wasn't really even the internet was not crazy like there were there were forums like chat forums and stuff like that. So I started looking up Excel forums and then I figured out some automation forums for integrating this GPS into Excel. And so then I figured out how to at midnight every night.

automatically integrate or upload all the information from the GPS into that Excel spreadsheet, built the formulas in Excel. So they automatically calculated it from hours to time or time to hours and then automated the whole rest of the spreadsheet. So literally all I had to do was put the customer's name in and hand it over to Fred. And so it was like a 10 minute process.

Justin Deese (26:03.615)
So if you think that you don't use your engineering degree, you are so wrong.

Tersh Blissett (26:08.16)
Right Yeah, I know that now looking back I definitely did not back then I was just embarrassed guy that had student debt and was like everybody in the trades was telling me like You don't need to go to college. You need to go college and then here I am like I'm going to college and I'm gonna prove y 'all wrong well, then I get proven wrong and then all of a sudden it's like

Let's eat some humble pie over here, but I'm not going to talk about it as much as possible. Now, obviously I talk about it all the time on podcast now because I can laugh about it, but it's still one of those things where it's like, it's an experience. Yes. Would I do it again? No, absolutely not. Have I told my kids not to go to college? Absolutely not. Like one of them wants to be a lawyer, a tax. Yeah.

Justin Deese (27:00.575)
Right.

Got to go to school for that. There's certain things you must go to college to do. An attorney, a doctor, a nerd. I mean, there's certain things.

Tersh Blissett (27:06.88)
Exactly.

And one wants to be a doctor, one wants to be a nurse like mom. So I'm like, cool. And then I have another one that's like, hey dad, I just want to do what you're doing. I was like, no, not acceptable. You cannot do what I'm doing just because it's what I do. Now, if you get in the field, because I make all the kids ride along in the summers, so if you're in the field and you pick it up and you love it, 100 % I'll support. I'll.

Show you how to be a service technician. I'll show you how to be an installer I'll show you how to be a business owner like any of that stuff as long as you like are actively asking me questions But if you don't have the passion for it I will not allow you to just be here just because it's convenient for you because there are times in my life where I did Heck I went to like engineering school because it was convenient like and it's funny to say that like it's it's funny to say like

math was just easy, but it legit, my brain works in a way that like I see triangles and I see squares. I have a crazy spatial awareness. Like I can look in the back of the, like my kids aren't here, my whole family, they went to Carol Wins and Great Wolf Lodge for the weekend. Yeah. And I said hard pass on that one. Not hanging out with a bunch of loud kids. So.

Justin Deese (28:33.983)
in a very confined space, by the way.

Tersh Blissett (28:35.936)
very confined space and and my mom was like yes i will go 100 % and i was like yes tag you're it you go and i'll stay here but i don't remember what else where the heck was i going with that one

Justin Deese (28:54.687)
You're talking about school. You're talking about making sure your kids want to, that they have a passion for it before they just do it because it's convenient and easy.

Tersh Blissett (29:02.4)
Yeah, and I know what it is. Boop. My brain. Obviously that's what I was talking about, my brain. So they're packing up in the back of my wife's SUV. There's, she's has all this luggage laying out behind the SUV and she's like, this ain't gonna fit. And I just look in there and my brain literally does the geometry. Yeah, Tetris sit right up. And she's like, like, I knew you'd make it work, but I don't know how you did it. And it's.

Justin Deese (29:21.247)
Tetris that thing.

Justin Deese (29:29.311)
But now she's going to have to load it back up when she's done.

Tersh Blissett (29:32.192)
Well, good news is that she's dropping one kid off and half of the back of that thing was full of snacks that they were taking on the trip. So they got one less luggage and a lot less snacks, I'm sure by now. but yeah, that's, that's just how my brain has always worked. And so whenever I talk to people, yeah, you know, go into school for engineering was simple. That, that was the, the, the comfortable route, the uncomfortable route would have been from day one.

join the trades and do these things that are unknown to the family because nobody in my family, well, my grandfather owned a landscape company, but he was the only one that told me not to be an entrepreneur. He was like, yeah, don't do it. Just get a job that has insurance and stable, you know, 401k, whatever. And everybody else is like, I don't know what to tell you. Like.

Justin Deese (30:26.335)
Well, there's a difference between owning a job and owning a business. And I think a lot of times people who tell you don't do it are guys that own jobs versus, you know, actually owning the business and owning it.

Tersh Blissett (30:30.24)
Yes, and he...

Tersh Blissett (30:38.336)
And that was grandpa. I mean, I, I can, surprisingly, now my grandfather passed away, in December of either December of 2020 or January of 2021. It was right around Christmas. I remember. But, I mean, I think up until 2018, he was still going and doing random landscape jobs because he was like,

Have a job like I have to go out here and do this and not like he's also a people pleaser, too I think that's where part of where I got it from and so he'd have one of his Shiner buddies say hey, I need this Mulch put out here. He was like, I gotta take care of boy, you know, how yes, that's just guys so but Like you said he's the only but he was the only one in my family at that time who?

was an entrepreneur so I couldn't ask anybody any questions especially someone who was a successful entrepreneur and he wasn't unsuccessful we never went without and lord knows every single summer me and my three cousin guy cousins worked for him every summer and what we did learn was that we don't want to do landscaping because we we would re -sod golf courses every single summer and be out there in the sun and bending over and dropping sod and

We we learned it. Yeah, that's humidity like you you would come out of your shirt probably an hour into doing it and then just be sweating and sunburnt the rest of the summer and so I knew that that's not what I wanted to do and and that was the perception that I had of being a business owner and I mean looking back I don't I don't regret anything that I did at all. They're all experiences and they're also

Justin Deese (32:05.567)
South Georgia Heat.

Tersh Blissett (32:33.568)
It's like Thomas Edison said, you know, I didn't fail 10 ,000 times. I just learned 10 ,000 ways not to create a light bulb. And so, but when you're in the moment and you're actively going through a failure or a struggle or something is hard, hard to look at it. Like Thomas Edison did looking back. Sure. I can say this. I can say the same exact thing, but during the, in the moment, like there were times when

heck with tri star and with service emperor when we started up the company and and We were like man, we don't have money like we don't have enough money for this like we were strapped and we bootstrapped both companies so we didn't take out any loans or anything to get the company started and There were times where like so my wife julie her family, on her on her, Her mom's side her stepdad side

They're very affluent and there are times where we were like, man, maybe we could get a loan from, from grandpa. Now, when I say affluent, like, fluent, like he, he has a house on hold non at like Jack Nicholson's golf course in Ohio. His house is like the, the second most expensive house to sell in Ohio. like a fluent.

They owned an airplane company and sold it whenever like 30 years ago. And she asked him for a loan one time and he was like, no. Tell me what you need it for. She was like, we just need to influx some cash. He was like, well, what's your profits or what's your P &L? Well, the P &L is not very good. He was like, no, not gonna happen. He could have easily just like said, here's $10 ,000.

Just on a whim no problem at all. But instead he was like now straighten out your P &Ls bring them back to me and then we'll talk and now this guy's he's in his 90s now and It just the greatest old man in the world like grandpa Ryan is like Just a genuinely great dude But the fact that he said no I was like, my god, like this is like crushing our soul like I

Tersh Blissett (34:58.976)
Because and knowing that he's like given other family members money and we've watched those family members not need the money and then just like piss it away. And then for him to say, no, I was like, what's the lesson here? I mean, at the time I wasn't, I was pissed at the time. I mean, not really pissed. I was just like, all right, well that's, that's one way of not getting money. how do we get money otherwise? But then when he, he was, he, he didn't just say no though. He said, no, get the PNLs corrected and come back to me.

Justin Deese (35:11.679)
You know now. Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (35:28.736)
And I almost felt like, all right, if I fix the PNLs, then he'll give me the money. This is what I felt like anyways. I fixed the PNL. That's exactly what happened. And that's what he showed me. And he was like, all right, it's fixed. Like, now you know what the issue is, solve it. And then you'll have $10 ,000 instantly. And then you won't have to pay me back. He was like, not that any other family member pays me back. But I was like, yeah, Touche, grandpa. But still, you know, I would. But he's like, I know you would. But instead of having to do that.

Justin Deese (35:33.567)
And then when you fix the P &L, you're like, well, dang, I don't need the money. Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (35:57.952)
Now you know the problems and it's fixed. I was like, bro, but in the moment though, when you're hungry, you're hungry and you're fishing and that guy's got fish in his basket and you're like, my stomach's growling. He's like, yeah, but just cast your line right over there and pull back. You're like, yeah, but my stomach's growling. And it's like, you got a basket full of fish over there. Come on, man. And then all of a sudden you lure out a fish and it's like.

Justin Deese (36:01.055)
I mean, teach a man to fish, right? Like, he can get a hand at you, fish, and he taught you how to fish.

Tersh Blissett (36:26.528)
Wow, now I have a big old basket of fish myself. And so...

Justin Deese (36:29.343)
That's a better gift, but yeah, again, at the time it normally doesn't, which most lessons, let's be honest, most lessons, if they're not expensive and not painful, they don't stick anyways.

Tersh Blissett (36:33.792)
Hang on.

Tersh Blissett (36:40.608)
Exactly like they're not not long -term. I actually had a a business coach a while back. I mean this has been years ago, but I say years ago probably like 2019 or 2020 and he one of the things that he said was I Could give you my services for free. No problem. Like it wouldn't hurt me a Lick because I mean this guy probably had

a quarter of a million dollars a monthly recurring revenue like literally Want for want for nothing he said but if you don't write that check you won't take my advice serious and I was like

Justin Deese (37:20.895)
They say those who pay pay attention. So there, there's, again, there's pain to it. You got to write that check like, Hmm, maybe I should, maybe I should pay attention to what the expert that I'm paying is telling me to do.

Tersh Blissett (37:24.)
And it's true.

Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (37:35.572)
-huh. Yeah, that guy ended up making me a, you know, millions of dollars and it just because I, I mean, some guerrilla marketing and the thing about it is, is sure. There's probably a thing here and there that he taught me or told me about that I had never heard before. But other than that, everything else that he had mentioned, everything that he mentioned is in one of the books that's sitting right behind me that I've read.

But I didn't implement them at that time. I didn't do yard signs. I didn't do like a wild service. I didn't do giftology like, and then all of a sudden, like I'm, I'm paying this guy to teach me, like I need to implement at least implement it. So I can say, I tried it, even if it's like, I'm going to do this just so I can show you it doesn't work. And then it turns around and works. And you're like, damn it. I guess I can't say anything about this.

And then and and so then the guy's like look man. I haven't cashed any of your checks. I was like, I know I watch my checking account Yeah, and you're gonna screw me if you do that no, I'm just kidding but he was like I wasn't gonna cash the checks because he could see my PNLs too If I didn't think that that you could afford it truly but you didn't know that until now and

Justin Deese (38:39.583)
You're like, I know I'm looking at, I'm waiting on all of them to cash it one time.

Tersh Blissett (39:01.056)
I told him, you know, we had the agreement. I say, you have to cash the checks. You can't do this for free. Like we are now friends, but at this point, like I signed the contract, you're going to, you're going to cash the checks. And he did. And, but the thing about it is, is when I wrote the checks, it was probably 50, maybe 60 % of my checking account. When he cashed the checks, didn't even notice it.

But it's the thing about it is is like he he took the patience like he's just one of the like there's good people out there that truly want you to succeed But but he was right if if he had given me those services for free It would have been just like me and a buddy talking and then I would be an asshole which I Tend to be sometimes and I'll ask the same questions over and over again and never implement. So And that wasn't the case with him, so I mean it's I don't know

He's proved me wrong, but in a good way.

Justin Deese (40:03.679)
Well, and I think that it's easy to get into the day to day and forget. I think about it a lot of times with kids, right? Like you guys have got quite a few kids and they're all at that age where, you know, you tell them something and you know, you know, been there, done that, you know, the outcome and you tell them and they, they're like, no, I know. Like, you don't know anything. Like that's the whole point. You don't know anything. And then you're like, crap. You know what?

Tersh Blissett (40:25.152)
Nah.

Tersh Blissett (40:29.152)
I

Justin Deese (40:34.079)
I, as a matter of fact, my daughter, my daughter the other day, so my daughter is 16, about to be 17. So, she knows everything and we were talking about something and she said to me, I don't even remember what it was about. She said, dad, I don't, I don't understand why you didn't tell me that was going to happen because you wouldn't have listened to me. Like that's why, like, yeah, at some point I get exhausted of talking at you and I'm like,

Tersh Blissett (40:54.656)
Yeah, we have a track record here like.

Yeah.

Justin Deese (41:01.183)
If I'm going to give you advice, I'm going to stop what I'm doing to tell you the right way to do it. If you're never going to listen to me, I don't have that need of, well, I told you so, like I'm not that guy. So I just don't say anything. So, but it, but it was nice for her to say, and I said, listen, do you give me permit? I love coaching. My kids, it's so much fun. I'm like, okay. Do you give me permission in the future? when I give you advice to say, do you remember that time when yeah. Okay.

Tersh Blissett (41:11.199)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tersh Blissett (41:29.98)
Yeah, totally. So I had a sit down with my two older boys at four and my youngest is our daughter. I'll be 100 % honest with you. If she had been our first child, she'd be an only child. She is the reason I'm bald, 100%. I love that kid to death. Like I would just, I would burn the world down for her. But golly, if she was our first kid, last kid, she was just that.

That one that baby and that toddler now. She's wonderful, but she's she's 10 and You know going on 21 can't tell her anything and lord knows not so the boys never had friends like Like want to come over never did like the FaceTime thing and now it's like every time I walk around Adeline. I'm like Are you on FaceTime? like before I first before I say anything before I like

walk into your room, like I gotta make sure I'm fully dressed, like everything's gotta be like, it's just him and she'll be on FaceTime with her girlfriends and that literally wake up in the morning and they're on FaceTime with each other doing makeup and hair and I'm like, the boy, yeah, and the boys are nothing like that at all, at all, like nothing like that. My middle son, he doesn't even want.

Justin Deese (42:43.103)
getting ready for the morning together.

Tersh Blissett (42:56.48)
to text people like he doesn't want to text girls. He doesn't want to text his friends is they had a soccer group chat and the soccer team would like send messages and stuff and like send selfies of the in the game and videos and stuff and he's like man, y 'all such we got better things to do than this is nonsense. But one of the things I told my two boys the older boys they are they are 13 and 14 and 15 now and I set them down about about a year ago.

Not even not even that really about eight months ago, and I sat him down and said hey look guys I'm gonna shoot you straight like you're getting to that point in in your life where I'm gonna say something and you're going to Probably say yes, sir out of respect and then in the back of your mind you're gonna think I'm not doing that that man's crazy like hang a clue about what he's talking about right now, right? And I know you're gonna do that

Justin Deese (43:49.503)
He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Tersh Blissett (43:55.904)
Because I did that to my dad and they're like you did that to a pops I was like, yeah I did and like they know I respect I respect my dad to death like They couldn't imagine me saying anything like that. I was like so the fact that you you see me respect my father the way that I do and Knowing that I've thought the same things that you're thinking I want you to understand that that it's perfectly normal. Like I get it 100 % I'm gonna let you fail

Moving forward, I will let you fail. I will not let you, I will not let you get hurt. But if you don't fail, you can't learn. When I tell you something, it's, I am coming, I'm not coming from an authority figure anymore, unless I come to you and tell you, hey, as your father, you are not to do this. But if I tell you, hey, you shouldn't do that, that is me giving you man to man advice.

Justin Deese (44:53.663)
There's your heads up. Yep.

Tersh Blissett (44:56.608)
If you do it, then you have to deal with the consequences. And they're like, what are you talking about, dad? I was like, perfect example. You go to bed. You don't have to go to bed at nine o 'clock anymore. Like your siblings, they go to bed at eight thirty. I'm at nine o 'clock. I'm going to say, all right, guys, it's time for bed. If you go to bed, you go to bed. If you don't go to bed, you don't go to bed. But you will be up at six a

And there's no questions about it. You will not fight with your siblings as your father. I'm telling you you will not be grumpy. You will not lash out at anyone else. That is your consequence. If you stay up till one o 'clock in the morning and you feel like complete garbage the next day, that's your consequence. And they're like, okay. So they kind of like push the boundaries on it some and I let them even stay up. And then the next morning I was like, remember our conversation, son. And he's like,

I am really not happy with myself. Yeah. I mean, that's something that my parents never did to me because I was a latchkey kid. Like we were all, it was really. And so I heard someone talk about that a couple of years back and I decided to implement it and it's been good. It can backfire, which I think I'm happy that it has.

Justin Deese (46:06.751)
Yeah, it's a different time though too, so yeah.

Tersh Blissett (46:26.496)
When they are still under my roof and I can help them come back from like a poor decision that was made like one of them drove a side -by -side clear across the county like not the county but a county away drove it and then She feels like yeah, probably so the rule is is like like you can't leave our compound Which is like a thousand acres like so we have 250 but there's a thousand around it

Justin Deese (46:42.303)
to the other side of your property.

Tersh Blissett (46:54.112)
Like you can't leave that area without at least telling dad like we live in a farming community. So side -by -sides are on the road everywhere. Everybody knows to watch out for side -by -sides or Rangers and whatever, but it's still what happens if it breaks down and I I mean for baton said this exact thing. All right guys, you absolutely can't leave the compound the area without telling me because I need to be prepared mentally to go pick you up with the truck and trailer.

If you break down, my man dips out, doesn't go to like right at our County line, which is 10 miles on a road. He goes to the County line of the other County over. And then the break, the, the belt breaks on the Ranger and he's got a girl on the side by side.

Justin Deese (47:41.279)
Getting into a little bit too much mud is what he was doing.

Tersh Blissett (47:44.992)
riding down a dirt road and just so happens he rode down one of my best friends dirt roads that's where it broke that's where it snaps so like he goes to Bryce and he's like hey don't tell dad don't say anything dad he's like you you know who you're talking to right I'm a cop and I'm your dad's best friend so I'm gonna call your dad right now and so he

Instead my oldest ivy he he calls me and and he's like hey dad, we broke down. Can you come get me? I was like Well, he messaged me. I'm sorry on my phone Well, I was in the middle of a podcast interview and I had another one right after that too So I literally was back to back to back It was gonna be like two hours before I could go get him and he had a girl that he had snuck And picked up and was on like and I was like, bro This is one of those times where it's like you made a really bad decision. Like I gave you

I gave you your like my advice like what I told you you should and shouldn't do. You blatantly just ignored it. Now you have to deal with the consequences. Now you have to call her dad. You have to tell her dad what went down, what happened. And I'm going to tell you right now, don't lie to him because he's going to see it. He's going to own the whole thing. And

Justin Deese (49:02.303)
Just own it.

Tersh Blissett (49:07.776)
And so eventually I went and got it. I wouldn't pick the Ranger up Thankfully, he was close enough to Bryce's house that he could they could chill there at Bryce's house until the day I came and got Her and took her and like he he manned up to the situation and made him a better guy but He regretted it. He felt like crap like and I'm changing out the belt on the Ranger and the drive belt and he's like I'm really sorry. I didn't really like wasn't thinking through but

I'd much rather that happen now than when he's like 25 and he's has a DUI or something like that, you know, it's like, all right, I know I'm not supposed to do that, but I'm going to do it anyways because it feels good.

Justin Deese (49:48.639)
Well, and I think so leader, right. Leadership is leadership. And I, and I think that whether you're leading a family, leading a business, like it's, it's leadership is leadership. And I think a lot of times what's easy to kind of get clouded on is that leaders job is not to micromanage is to it. It is to manage the result. And that, and that's cause I do the same thing with my kid. I remember sitting down with Zach saying, go to school, don't go to school.

Tersh Blissett (50:11.136)
Yes. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Deese (50:17.919)
I'm not your micromanager. I don't care, but I can tell you this life is a whole lot more difficult if you're stupid and you have no drive and you don't do the things you say you're going to do. Now at 18, you're still leaving, whether that's whether that you got somewhere to go or not, which is fine. He's in the Marines down there. So he's good. but no, I think, I think a lot of times leaders, as leaders, we forget that that that's it. Like that's the key is just.

Tersh Blissett (50:30.624)
You ain't staying in my basement son, okay. Yeah, so he's good. Yeah

Justin Deese (50:47.743)
just manage the result, don't micro -manage the process. And I think kids are just such a perfect example. And yes, as you do that, they're gonna take advantage of their kids. But you're right, let them do it now, while it's little kid mistakes, not keep such a hold over them when they get out in the big bad world, they make big people mistakes that could last a very, very long time.

Tersh Blissett (51:03.328)
Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (51:10.368)
Their whole life like like one one thing that like, you know growing up in the Bible Belt in South Georgia going to Baptist Church my whole life like You didn't drink alcohol like that's just one of them things you didn't do it And so like I knowing all of the kids in my youth group Get to 20 like even not even 21. I make it that it's a legal age of drinking there. They're drinking

Justin Deese (51:13.567)
my gosh.

Tersh Blissett (51:40.448)
Because they the whole life have been told no, no, no, no, no can't do it. No, and I'm not I'm not advocating for underage drinking or anything like that, but to have such a hold on us as kids, like it was a natural curiosity to say, hey, what's going on here? And then like several of those individuals either wrecked vehicles were drinking and driving or got into some issues.

with alcohol because it was so taboo growing up. And it's not like, please don't misinterpret this as I give my kids alcohol because I don't. But it's one of those things where it's like, all right, let's have some small kid issues and show them that your decisions matter. And.

we can work through it at that point. And let's not wait until this is a federal offense before we start trying to teach our kids how to do right and wrong.

Justin Deese (52:44.671)
Yeah, that's good. And, you know, I think that, parenting today is such a different, again, leadership in general, but parenting today is so different because the technology is different and the access to things are different. And, you know, and there, there has to be the, and it doesn't have to be, it could be social media. Like I know parents are like, my kids are not on social media and I'm thinking your kids are on social media. You just don't know it. And if you don't know it.

Tersh Blissett (53:06.56)
Yeah, yes.

They are on social media and maybe they're on a burner phone that you don't even know about.

Justin Deese (53:13.951)
That means you're not paying attention to what's going on there. And they still don't have the cognitive ability to realize that when they put a picture up there, whether it's Snapchat or not, it's forever. So be wise, be smart, give anyway. So.

Tersh Blissett (53:24.448)
there yep yep

Tersh Blissett (53:32.704)
I feel like there's an age where a generation, and it wasn't a full hard generation swap, it wasn't a millennial versus Gen X type thing, I think it was mid Gen Y when the mindset of images on the internet completely changed where they're like, no, we're not putting anything up at all because then,

We're safe and then like it that only lasted like half of a generation and then that went back to like the other extreme where like we're good we figured out like be real and Snapchat and these things are just disappearing That's a nope. Not the case. Not not the case my oldest son. So my oldest son we figured out this the hard way with my oldest son because The they're 13 months apart my two older boys. I

Justin Deese (54:20.607)
No. OK.

Tersh Blissett (54:32.352)
but they are a hundred years apart in their soul. Like Ivy is, is like a teen right now. Aaron is like 150 year old man. Like he is, he's the one that's like, don't text me. And so it's like even in the same household, being a leader in the same household is just like being a leader for HVAC company because we have one personality comes in to the office or, you know, virtually on my zoom office.

And then another personality checks in and they're completely different ones bubbly ones just not gonna have it today and it's like, all right. Yeah, I can relate to that. That's that's Ivy. That's Aaron. Let's go. but yeah, we had to, we had to get an app called bark, which monitors everything on every device that they'd have. And then, and then he thought he was going to be slick and get him a little burner phone from his friends.

Justin Deese (55:25.407)
Yep.

Tersh Blissett (55:33.024)
so that he could do Snapchat, because Snapchat was an off limits thing in our house. And he didn't realize that I also monitor the IP address for the whole house. And so if a new device gets attached to our Wi -Fi, it automatically notifies me. And so he's like, I was like, bro, adult consequences here. Like, I was like, you realize, you see, like, you brag to all your friends about how tech savvy I am.

Justin Deese (55:51.519)
Got this thing on lockdown, dude.

Tersh Blissett (56:02.08)
And then you think you're going to out tech savvy me. I was like, all right guy. he definitely will heck in six months. He might. Cause every time I put up a roadblock, he's like, okay, let me figure this out. Let me figure.

Justin Deese (56:06.175)
a few years he might.

Justin Deese (56:14.815)
Yep, I got it. Now I'm in the problems of this.

Tersh Blissett (56:19.04)
I can't I can't blame him either because like that was me if I was his age right now my gosh, I'd probably be in jail. Like there was so much stuff that I did that thank God It's not on social media. I just have to remind myself that sometimes whenever I'm like getting irritated with them for things they're doing

Justin Deese (56:37.823)
Very true. Very true. Yeah. And so I was reading a statistic the other day that said, so millennials and it said 50 % of millennials are now homeowners. So you think about how quick that, that shifted, right. And with that comes different buying habits and buying patterns, which means we're only communicate. Yeah. That, which means now 10 or 15%.

Tersh Blissett (56:50.24)
Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (56:55.84)
Mm -hmm.

Tersh Blissett (57:02.56)
communication styles.

Justin Deese (57:06.975)
or 10 or 15 years down the road, which, you know, the older we get, the faster that seems to happen. Now it's going to be that next generation, which means there's a whole different buying habit and communication style and all those things. Are they, I mean, not at these rates, I would hope that they would be smart enough to come up to.

Tersh Blissett (57:13.696)
Alright.

Tersh Blissett (57:17.92)
Yeah.

Are they going to buy houses though? Because like, what? Yeah, sure. But like my, I have some cousins, they're basically nephews of mine, because that's how we do things in the South. We have massive families. and they, they don't drive like they're 18, 19 years old. Don't even have their license. I'm like, you realize like we live in the country. You don't have the, the.

You don't have the ability to take. Nah, like if we got Uber Eats last year. man, like that was a big deal on a regular basis. We spend money on Uber Eats to just deliver Mexican food. It's seven minutes to the Mexican restaurant, but we can pay Uber Eats now. So we're going to do that. like that's a big deal here. like we were in the country and so.

Justin Deese (57:49.951)
public transportation in Uber is probably not quite as...

Justin Deese (57:56.559)
you

Tersh Blissett (58:16.48)
for them, they're like, yeah, but I'm just not interested. There's too much risk involved and stuff like that. And so I'm like, are you going to buy a house? I'm like, why? I can't move if I need to move quickly.

I don't know what you're talking. I got bought my first house when I was 18 years old and like I can't imagine not being a homeowner. especially in where we live, like a rural, like it's not like New York city, like where it's crazy to own. So to go back to your point, like, are we going to have to shift our business model to better serve property managers? Because,

Blackrock owns the entire neighborhood, you know, is that what's gonna happen or like I mean the whole Communication like communication mindset as you said before we talked about a second ago People don't like to Talk on the phones anymore. They want a text message or they want to schedule online Like do you have an online booking widget 100 % same like I don't want to book a restaurant reservation by

Justin Deese (59:19.999)
That's me. Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (59:27.296)
Calling in I just don't want to deal with the background noise I don't want to be put on hold like I just want to click on your website click, you know reserve a reservation and then send me a notification the day before so I don't forget about the reservation because I'll be Or yeah or knowing that give him give me the confidence to know That you remember the reservation. So I'm not worried about that. It's not one more thing that's on my mind and I can just it's just a

Justin Deese (59:41.279)
or that you didn't forget. Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (59:56.384)
peace of mind thing and at ease. And I don't have to worry about as a business owner, we have so much stuff rolling through our minds, but not even as business owners, as parents, as adults, like we're bombarded with things all day long. And if you have to remember that, remember every little thing, it's like at night, you do a brain dump because otherwise if you're trying to remember that, that's just unhealthy.

Justin Deese (01:00:21.439)
So let me ask you this, because you are, I'm gonna call it a techie, if that's the right term or not, I don't know, but we're gonna go with techie. So what is a piece of advice that you would give, like what is one or two things, and you may have already said it,

Tersh Blissett (01:00:30.24)
Yeah, we'll call it that.

Justin Deese (01:00:42.271)
that you would tell everybody listening, like what technology do they need to implement that is super easy, low hanging fruit, and can make the fastest impact on their business.

Tersh Blissett (01:00:53.568)
chat GPT, 100%. Like I don't use Google anymore, literally. I stopped using Google. I have it as my web browser, Google Chrome. But for the most part, I don't use it hardly at all, which is terrifying. That should be terrifying to every business owner that's listening to this because chat GPT doesn't search Google.

So if you're only worried about ranking number one in Google and you are completely ignoring Bing, be prepared. I had chat GPT natively, like I didn't give it any special instructions. I said search the internet for five of my competitors in every county that we service and created an Excel spreadsheet with all of their one -star reviews.

and then create a script, a short video script for how we solve the problem for every one of those. And it came back, the results it came back with, I said, I don't recognize any of these companies really. Like they're not, like I, I, I'm going to have to Google these companies because I literally don't know who they are. And I went to,

being, well, first I went to Google and they were there, but they were way down the list. Then I went to Bing and they were immediately on Bing. They were number one and number two and number three and number four. Like they were the top five on Bing and literally had never heard of them before. But, and I asked without saying go to Google specifically, I asked probably 10 different ways and I, I can,

pretty confidently say that I'm very good at creating a prompt to get me the answers or the results that I want. And the fact that I asked it five different ways to do it and it still came back with the same results. Like as more and more people start using ChatGPT to do their search.

Tersh Blissett (01:03:18.272)
If you're only on Google, you're going to get burned. I mean, obviously people still use Google. Like Google is not going away. They are the big alpha dog in the house, but more and more and more and more people are using Bing. So just be aware of that. Make sure that you actually have a listing on Bing. I, you know what? After that, I haven't even gone to Bing to make sure my listing was right or anything. Like I, I need to do that, but.

Justin Deese (01:03:37.087)
Yeah, and it's still pretty inexpensive.

Tersh Blissett (01:03:46.784)
Chat GPT is something that you need to have because literally, I mean, just imagine a quick, like Julie, my wife sent me a picture. I knew exactly what this insect was, but she's from Southern Ohio, Southeast Ohio. She'd never seen a mayfly before. And she was like, there was like this bug is insect that I haven't seen before. And it was on the, on my windshield.

this afternoon this evening when I came back from Pops and grandma's what is it? And I was like, that's a Mayfly. She's like a Mayfly. What's a Mayfly? And I was like, you know what? And I took the image that she gave me and I just put the image straight into the chat. GPT app. Didn't do anything else. Put the image in there. And it said, that's a Mayfly. They live two days or a day and blah, blah, blah. And it gave like all this detail about the Mayfly and

I just copied and pasted and gave it gave her that response because I knew she was going to ask follow up questions because like that's my wife. She asked like, well, what do they do? Like, why did it? I don't know. So here, here. Yeah. And so heck, I didn't read half of it, but I gave it to her and she was like, wow, you knew all that. I was like, yeah, I a hundred percent just typed it out for you. And I gave all those details too, because you know, me, I am detail or, and she was like,

Justin Deese (01:04:54.047)
You know now.

Justin Deese (01:05:03.711)
Yep, just came up with it.

Justin Deese (01:05:10.687)
the detail guy.

Tersh Blissett (01:05:13.44)
No, you're not you're gonna give me the bare minimum and then I want the fish out the rest of it So where'd you get this from and I was like, I'm she's like you did chat Didn't you she we had the same access the same chat. So she like pulls it up and she was like, yeah I see where she got here You

Justin Deese (01:05:26.207)
Yeah.

And Chad GDP is what 20 bucks if you get, even if you get a paid in, if you don't, then I think do they still do a free?

Tersh Blissett (01:05:34.16)
Yeah, they do a free and you actually have access to custom gpt's on the free account now That's the new thing this week So you can even use all of the custom gpt bots that i've been building out. I've built out tons of them like literally Because we all know service technicians. They do an amazing job at writing job summaries, on invoices so and i'm being facetious when I say that the

I created a chat GP a custom GPT that they put their information like what they would normally write, which you know, it's gonna be bare minimum. You put it in there and it automatically rewords what they say. It removes any industry jargon and brights it so that it's understandable, easily digestible with someone with an eighth grade comprehension. And you can put that information, transcribe that information back into the invoice.

on the job summary. So then it's a pretty much perfectly well written, well written job summary, invoice summary. I didn't tell you all this, whenever earlier whenever I was talking about the reasons that I started the podcast and stuff like that. One of them was because I was cheap and I was tired of buying books on tape and I was driving three hours a day. And there was no other podcast in the industry at that time.

Justin Deese (01:06:39.199)
Got it.

Tersh Blissett (01:07:01.856)
that was talking about business for HVAC. The other is I have dyslexia and a speech impediment. And so I literally forced myself to do this. I did this and joined all of the boards for different chamber of commerce and stuff like that. So I was networking, which was guerrilla marketing, but also forced me to stand up in front of crowds of people and talk. And then the podcast did the same thing. So I've

Slowly been able to get rid of my southern twang a little bit also helped with the speech impediment But I will tell you this there's another piece of tech AI tech that I use I don't use it a whole lot, but I've started to use it more just because it's fun I'm sure that'll wear off soon, but it's it's called 11 labs and I uploaded three hours of my voice and it's in the cloud and

but it only takes 30 seconds of your voice to copy it. So if you're listening to this, make sure your family has a safe word because if you have a 30 second long video on Facebook that I can scrape, I can take that sound, that audio and mimic your voice. So like grandma calls the kids and tells them that she's coming to pick them up from school to come get in this vehicle that they've never seen before.

Justin Deese (01:08:09.471)
Tersh Blissett (01:08:29.184)
You need a your family needs a safe word for that situation because grandma needs to give a safe word before coming if you're any question If you're not looking at grandma in her face like ask for the safe word

Justin Deese (01:08:41.215)
That's a really, really good piece of advice and something that, you know, as the future unfolds, whatever that looks like, that is going to be a very real concern. I mean, safety can definitely be a concern when it comes to automation and yeah, you're right. I mean, there's a lot of softwares now that you can upload your voice and...

Tersh Blissett (01:08:52.224)
Mm -hmm.

Tersh Blissett (01:08:59.424)
Yep. So with 11 labs, I created, I uploaded my voice and created some commercials, just test commercials. I say it's funny because I created an AI assistant who will scrape the internet. All I have to do is put in like, I did my buddies, Travis's air conditioning company in Charlotte. And I said, I just put in Travis Crawford heating in there and plumbing and it scraped the internet got.

of information, all these awards and accolades and everything else, it created a three minute script, commercial script that was then sent into 11 Labs. And then my voice read the commercial and it even added some of my speech impediment into that because it caught those in the recordings that were in the three hours of podcast episodes. And so even though there was no, there were no and us.

The wording the script of the thing it still added Just the hint of just the hint of a filler word like you like you edited the whole thing But you missed that one little thing it added that to there and I was like, wow, that's crazy because those little innuendos are the ones that make that sound even more authentic and the fact that it added that in there like This is like this is next level stuff here, but

Justin Deese (01:10:04.351)
filler words. Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (01:10:27.744)
It's I mean if anybody wants to you play around with that that program they give you so many credits for free and You could put it in all different set like there's one that that I use is his is a New York. It's New York Nick and hit he has a I think it's like a Long Island accent or something like that and

But it's it's I mean, it's cool. It sounds very much like someone from that region anybody that I've heard from that region anyways But yeah, I mean I have a list of 751 AI tools that I'm more than happy to give give you and you can share with your audience the That list it took me about an hour to create maybe an hour to create and most of that hour was editing the colors of the Excel spreadsheet

Justin Deese (01:11:14.847)
Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (01:11:26.912)
and so because like there's so many tools and I have a drop down like on my menu bar at the top of my screen I have a folder that's called ai tools and it's just like you I could drop it down and just scroll and scroll and scroll and those are the ones that I actually have accounts for so and there's so many more every single day that come out, like

Justin Deese (01:11:46.815)
I know Google this week at the time of recording just came out and made some big announcements about their new AI that they're rolling out and about what they're wanting to do. And one of the examples they talked about was comparing invoices. I thought that was very, I don't know if you saw that, but they were comparing invoices. They're like took a roofing invoice and scanned it and compared it. And I mean, I think that, you know, as much as we all want to fight the commodity part of our industry,

Tersh Blissett (01:12:02.24)
No, I didn't see that.

Justin Deese (01:12:14.463)
There is part of that. That's going to be in the future. Doesn't mean you still can't separate. Like there's still, I got to, I got a home project I'm dealing with right now that, it I'm dealing with a stereotypical old school contractor. so there's still going to be areas of, you know, differentiating yourself, but commodity is and pricing and low price shopping. That that's going to be a thing. But, and I think that social media and.

Tersh Blissett (01:12:18.176)
Sure. Nope.

Justin Deese (01:12:44.287)
being out in front of the community and making sure that you're using the tools that, that Tersha's talking about and the AI and staying on top of that stuff is, is going to be important. I know for me, I have found myself probably more times in the last probably five months that if I go to Google something, I literally will ask myself why. And I'll go to chat.

And I ask it, cause it's almost like if I'm Googling it, now I'm scraping my own information where I'm going to chat. GDP it's doing it and give you got to be careful and you got to make sure you fact check what you got going on. But, that that's not going away. That's going to get heavier and it's proof because now Google's like, Whoa, wait a minute. And they're saying that you can probably fact check me on this one, but I want to say Google said that 10 or 15%, they're planning on there being a reduction this year.

Tersh Blissett (01:13:09.344)
huh.

Tersh Blissett (01:13:14.048)
Exactly.

Tersh Blissett (01:13:18.912)
Sure.

Tersh Blissett (01:13:27.104)
Yep.

Justin Deese (01:13:37.695)
by the end of the year of search volume.

Tersh Blissett (01:13:40.416)
a hundred percent. I agree with that. I don't know the exact number, but I would not be surprised. I'm one of those percentages because well, one of the things that Google has done and it's the tech side of me commends Google for doing it. And I like kudos to you. I love it. The nerd side of me is just eating it up. But the small business owner side of me is super pissed about it.

and that is the fact that Google has introduced this AI version of search where they scrape the internet and they give you the data and you never click on anybody's website where you do a Google search. And then at the top of the screen, it's just got, all right, here's the results, almost like it's a chat GPT results reading out. And then at the very bottom of that little section, if you click the button to says that says read more,

It'll say this a majority of this information was scraped from this site, this site and this site. Maybe so you're, it could have scrapped a scraped half of one of your blog post, but because it scraped three quarters of these three other blog posts, you might not even be listed in the bottom of that screen right there. So they're not even going to end there. They're going to show you sure they're going to show my blog post, but it's going to be now at, if I have this rank number one, it's halfway down the screen. So.

if I was ranked number three or four, it might not even be on the first page. And because they're putting their content at the top there, there's, and, so now there's scraping our websites with our blog posts and our content that we've created to give the results to the consumer. Because ultimately I understand that. So the tech side of me loves it because it's like, great. Now I don't have to click on these websites to search anymore. I don't have to do like, like you said, Chad GPT does this already for me.

Well, Google, I'm sure Google. Recognize that and it's like, hey, we needed to be doing this or else we're going to lose search. yeah, absolutely. They're going to monetize it and.

Justin Deese (01:15:43.551)
and they're gonna monetize it.

and it's like a hamburger McDonald's, it's not gonna get any cheaper.

Tersh Blissett (01:15:52.256)
Dude, I went to McDonald's the other day, like having four kids. We had a budget thing in February, like January, I had this like epiphany that was like, we eat out too much. Like everybody says they eat out too much, but I was like, I think I'm starting to get anxiety because we eat out too much. Like I think I'm noticing it a lot. We ate out, we had, now this is embarrassing number to say out loud.

We spent $8 ,000 the month of February on food. Can you imagine that number? Like I looked through our rest, our receipts and our, cause we, we have a different credit card that we use for every thing that we do. and we have an Apple credit card for going out to eat and food in general, just food and going out to eat. And it was $8 ,000. And that's the thing that triggered me. I was like,

$8 ,000 like did we buy something else on the Apple car because that's supposed to be fast food only or or food eating out general All right. No, no, we didn't we didn't buy a motorcycle or something like we didn't buy another dirt bike and I looked through the whole other seats and there were times where we literally went to McDonald's four times in one day on the way to school

After she dropped the kids off at school. She stopped back by there and got some coffee and and and McMuffins or something that I don't eat and I don't eat lunch and she went and got lunch that day and then As soon as the kids got home, they were hungry and so she went back over there because she had to go take one of them to soccer practice that was right beside McDonald's and so I was like so the That was the month of January. We got the bill in February. So the and it was beginning of February and I was like, alright kids

No fast food or no going out to eat the entire month of February and March. Let's see if we can do it and we did it and spent like $900 at Sam's. I mean I got that receipt back and I was like 900 bucks But we spent $900 each month at Sam's versus going out to eat and spend eight grand And granted we there were a couple of times we went to some fancy restaurants and probably spent $300 for a meal or $400 maybe one time but

Tersh Blissett (01:18:15.616)
Still, that's a lot of damn money to spend on food and to cut that back. And I don't know where the hell this story is coming from. We were talking about something, but yeah, that watching those receipts and, and cutting back on food faster. yeah. You said McDonald's burgers cost more. Yeah. So one meal at McDonald's was like 40 bucks and that was just for Julie and I. And it was like, she got two, two coffees or two of the.

large expressos with five shots of espresso in them and a big max like $9 now. And it's just, everything is more expensive. I got my Google AdWords, my LSA back actually yesterday. And a couple of months ago we were averaging about 30 to $40 for every lead that we got from LSA. Now it's getting up there like,

75 bucks 80 bucks for a lead and I was like man Their whole claim to fame was LSA was gonna be way cheaper than pay -per -click but it's it's not the case so I think that Using automation so transition a little bit over into the automation side of world things The shortcomings that we have with our

Justin Deese (01:19:34.271)
Yeah, you're good.

Tersh Blissett (01:19:41.088)
like throw it against the wall and see what sticks type marketing plans is there are bots out there that you can build or you can use other people's bots and analyze your marketing marketing spin your return on investment for marketing your analytics you can literally put it into a analytics GPT you can build your own analytics GPT very simply and

put your information in and it will give you details. Like you could put your years. I would first off preface this with don't do this. Okay. Unless you know what you're doing, but you can put your, you can literally upload a year, two years, three years worth of PNLs like every month's PNLs. And it literally can tell you the trends that you're doing, where your shortcomings are, where you're winning.

the things that you need to fix. And I say don't do that because there are certain scenarios that that information is being used to learn with and is available to the public.

Justin Deese (01:20:52.447)
I was going to say, yeah, that's, chatGTP is an open source.

Tersh Blissett (01:20:57.44)
Yeah, and now there are closed loop sections. There's also private servers that use LLMs. So there are marketing agencies out there that use your data to and throw it into something to analyze. If your marketing agency does that, just make sure that they are using something that's private that has the firewalls is either on a private server.

Or it's on a platform that, like there's a paid plan. There's a paid version of, chat GPT that is, for, teams and, and enterprise level. And they, those, that information is not used to learn with. So, it's not on the public web necessarily, but they haven't come out and said that they'll never.

Justin Deese (01:21:52.415)
Right.

Tersh Blissett (01:21:53.184)
Upload it to the public web. So like there's a chance that someday it could

Justin Deese (01:21:57.087)
We started using something called Magi.

Tersh Blissett (01:22:00.256)
Yeah, Magi it so Magi is great because it doesn't store any data and It deletes everything in 30 days so but that's the downside for me because I Like I said earlier, I'm an asshole. So I will ask chat GPT something and then six weeks later. I'm like, yeah, let's revisit that conversation that we had chat and now it can

Justin Deese (01:22:02.495)
Yeah.

Tersh Blissett (01:22:26.496)
Remember the conversation and it can find it in much in my chat threads used to I have to scroll for days To the bottom of that chat thread and click on the one that I thought was the right one But yeah with Magi I can't do that because after 30 days it's gone so

Justin Deese (01:22:43.327)
Yeah. Organizing chat, GTP for me has been a little bit of a challenge just because it doesn't have a really nice, or at least, what is it? Right. Well, sort of, but.

Tersh Blissett (01:22:52.)
search feature. It doesn't have a search feature. Well, it's you know it on the desktop version it had the search feature for about a week or two weeks and then they took it back. Now if you have it on your phone there's the search functionality is there and it works great. So sometimes if I if it's something that's rather old I'll go to my phone app I'll search it and then I'll hit like enter at the bottom of it.

Justin Deese (01:23:17.951)
It shows up at the top.

Tersh Blissett (01:23:19.584)
just shoot it to the top and then I can go over to my desktop and do that like yeah stupid workarounds first world problems.

Justin Deese (01:23:25.247)
Well, cool, Tersh. Man, I appreciate you coming and hanging out. Any last piece of advice for business owners out there before we call it?

Tersh Blissett (01:23:34.912)
Well, when it comes to when it comes to coaching and that type of thing, you know, we talked a lot about family and talked about my kids. And I want everybody to know out there that my kids are great. Like they they aren't they aren't the jerks that I make them out to be. They are really smart and wonderful kids. And I hold them to a very high standard because of that. But I also let them have fun. They ride dirt bikes. My dad's building a dirt bike track form right now out in the backyard. The.

When it comes to coaching though, like reach out to Justin and I, cause we had a wonderful conversation and, and we, we met at ACCA in Orlando this year. And, that, that was a great talk that you had working with your spouse. Ooh, yeah, that hit some nerves. and Julie and I have done that. We didn't even talk about that today. I mean, Julie and I have, she's a business partner in three of our, in three of the four, five businesses that I own.

and so it's Okay, one piece of advice that I will share about couples and working together is For us we have a life coach. We have life coach couple and one of the rules that they gave us And it's been a game -changer The moment you we are business owners together We also work remote together and so like we get up together shower dress Get ready for the day

We walk down the hallway together and sit in our office together. Like literally. I don't know how we do it because 10 years ago we would have murdered each other just because of being around each part of his life coach. One of the things that they gave us, the advice that they gave us is your life is like a rubber band. The more you say yes, sure. You can, you can let that thing expand like a balloon and just cram one more thing in there. So Aaron, the 150 year old soul.

child of mine until about six months ago, he played semi pro soccer at 14 years old. And like we traveled the country for this kid to play soccer. And it's hilarious because of his personality. You ask him, do you want to keep doing it? He's like, man, you realize the level you're playing soccer and you're like, man. So we, we turned it off. We cut it out.

Tersh Blissett (01:26:02.368)
And part of that was because john john and joe were like look your your rubber band is stretching and it keeps stretching and it keeps stretching Sure You can stick one more tournament in there You're you're on the road It's just what's one more weekends tournament? What's one more travel ball like what's one more thing? Just because it fits does not mean you need to put it in there because what happens whenever you take that stuff out?

All of a sudden your rubber band is all stretched out your relationship. That's the rubber band is your relationship. And now you, you, you don't have that. The filler that you were doing your back, your, your kids' baseball, you're going to the river every single week or like, and you have to just be around each other. Like, how do you have a relationship? You don't because your relationship's just super stretched out and what, what's one way like it either snaps the rubber band snaps.

Or you apply heat to the rubber band to make it contract. What's that heat? That's them tough conversations. Like that's the heart to heart conversations that me as a dude don't want to have. so one of the things is that that really pushed our boundaries was we never turned work off ever. So we came up with this rule that work never crosses the threshold of our bedroom, the door. So the moment you walk into our bedroom,

If you're a couple that has a business together, try it out. See if it works for you. If you're laying in bed and you're like, yeah, I forgot. I have this like schedule that are this appointment tomorrow. I need to talk to you about this job. Like, all right, well let's get up and go to the living room or go to the kitchen or go to the office. We're not going to talk about it in bed. You're laying there and your mind just goes, just goes crazy. And now I can just see her. She'll just pick up her phone and I'm like,

She's not scrolling because she's not swiping up. She's typing and I'm like you're either Mad typing somebody like somebody's gonna piss you off or your brain dumping Yeah, or your brain dumping and so she's doing brain dumps for the next morning and then I mentally I'm prepared for All right tomorrow morning. I'm going here a whole bunch of stuff but the thing about it is it's like it was just one of those things where it's like, all right, you have to create those boundaries and I

Justin Deese (01:28:07.967)
super concentrated.

Justin Deese (01:28:19.871)
happened.

Tersh Blissett (01:28:29.76)
I really enjoyed your book too, by the way. And so if anybody has anything about relationships, don't come to me. Like if you want to talk automation, you can come to me. I'll talk to automation all day long. If you come to me about relationships stuff and coaching and stuff, like I'm just gonna give you the bad advice. So don't do that. Go to Justin.

Justin Deese (01:28:32.479)
Thank you.

Justin Deese (01:28:52.255)
Awesome, man. Terish, I appreciate it. Thanks for coming and hanging out. And yeah, what? Listen, I'd love to get you back on to talk a little bit more because you've got some automation stuff that you're launching out. I'd love to get you back on and kind of dive deep into that a little bit. But thanks, man. Appreciate it.

Tersh Blissett (01:28:57.344)
My pleasure.