Welcome back to another episode of the Freedom Blueprint podcast. I'm your host Justin Deese, and I want to thank you for coming and checking out the podcast, whether you're new here or you're a regular friend hanging out. It's good to see you. And we're going to change gears and shift things up just a smidge today. and this episode and what I want to talk about is we're going to get a little bit tactical. And I know a lot of times on the show, we tend to stay.

pretty strategic, pretty high level. But today I started thinking about it and I really wanted to create an episode that's a little more tactical where you can definitely get off ⁓ from listening to this and figure out, hey, does any of that stuff apply to me? Is there anything in that that I'm not doing currently that I need to start doing? So I think really this will kind of give you, again, some tactical things to do.

Again, when you're done listening to this, one of my favorite exercises to do is kind of that start, stop and continue. So if you hear anything that we talk about, you can kind of either put it ⁓ mentally or write it down. ⁓ You know, should I start doing it? Should I stop doing it or should I, or should I continue doing it? So here's the topic that we're going to talk about today. It's the six tools that every home service business owner needs to crush it and not be crushed. ⁓

You know, a big challenge that we have as business owners is being proactive takes work. takes effort and it's not always the easiest thing. And it's very simple to be in this reactionary stage and constantly putting out fires and just adapting to what the day throws at us versus owning the day, owning the business. So here's this, we're going to go into these six tools and I'll tell you this, think number six, I think they're all important. That's why they're on the list, but I do think the very last one, number six.

is the one that most business owners overlook. So let's get started on the six tools. The very first one is a professional email. I get a lot of emails from people that are like at bellsouth.net at iCloud.com or if you're super old school at aol.com. ⁓ It really just is a very simple thing to fix to brand your email to where it's at your company name.

honestly it builds trust and makes your business just look more established. looks more credible. some other benefits to this is it keeps communication consistent and professional, right? Not to say that, ⁓ it doesn't look horrible to have an AOL. It definitely shows that you're an OG emailer and old school, but it just gives a better sense. The other thing is a lot of times this can be tied back to your CRM.

system for automation as well, which we'll get into that a little bit later. Also, it really helps your teammates to kind of figure out what are legit internal emails, like what emails do I know are coming from my team? ⁓ And listen, this is super easy to do. This is not crazy technical. You don't need an IT team to do this. You can use Gmail, you can use Microsoft three, I think it's 365.

Both of those platforms are pretty easy to use. Personally, I have a love hate relationship with Google workspace is what I use in all my businesses. It's really, really simple to go into Google and create your own email address. I want to say it's like six or nine or maybe 12. It has gone up a lot over the years, dollars per user, but even if budget is a real concern,

at least get one email address that has got your company name so that when you're communicating with the outside world as well as customers, you just look legit. So there's the first one. The second one is a calendar. calendar is one of the most important things in order to keep your life and sanity in check. I know a lot of people will have personal and work calendars and that's fantastic. That's great.

Me personally, I have them all in one, because whatever life personal, I only have 24 hours in a day. So I can't do certain things during my work time and personal time. So for me personally, I use one and I identify the difference between what both of them looks like. So some advantages, some really quick high level advantages to having a calendar in general is you're going to prevent that getting overbooked. You're going to prevent the...

getting double booked. know, there's a lot of times people have meetings and they miss a meeting because they're like, they're like, I didn't realize I had a meeting. Well, if you had a calendar and you set a reminder, you would have that. ⁓ it gives you a little bit of balance, right? So it's a, a calendar is a really good place to be able to look at it and see, crap. I've got, ⁓ I've got 19 hours of things that are booked today. Obviously that's not going to work. So now you have to mentally go through and figure out what is it that I'm going to tweak and shift.

in order to be able to get through the day. Typically as business owners, I would say, you know, you're going to have to book the newer you are in business or the more involved you are in the day to day, the less time you're going to be able to schedule working on the business. I get that. I realize that, but this can give you an opportunity to just block some of that time off, in order to make sure that you're spending the time on your business. ⁓ here's another advantage.

It gives you an opportunity to plan vacations. Gosh. how many of us forget to take vacations or we look up and we're like, it's been three years. I haven't taken a vacation. I don't have any time. truth is, a calendar and a schedule will help you create the time that you need to, to run your life and your business. one of the things we taught our kids at a very young age is they would always come to us with, Hey, can we do this this weekend? Or, I got this going on that day.

We taught them how to use a calendar. we gave them a Gmail calendar, let them use it. And we basically said, if there's anything you want to do, put it on the calendar, invite us, and then we will either accept or not accept. And if we don't accept it, then that means that we're not able to do that. It was a really good habit and a tool that we started with the kids when they were very young. They still do a pretty good job of it today. But again, you only have 24 hours in the day. So if you're not using a calendar, then

you don't have a plan for the day. So every day is, is kind of on you. ⁓ and really you're being owned by the day, your team and your life versus being proactive. ⁓ one of the things I think that every business owner should be striving for is to make sure that you're being proactive in your life and your business.

Number three on our list is a to do list.

And when I say to-do list, really what I mean is a to-do list or a task management tool. And there's a million different types that you can use. but some advantages to, really having one of one or the other is it will help you get organized with what you've got going on.

a couple of advantages to using either a to-do list or a task management tool is it's really gonna help you prioritize things you have going on, So if you have a follow-up that's, you know, it keeps moving on your board from day to day to day, then is that really a priority or are you procrastinating on it? The other thing is it's gonna let you check off wins. I know for me, I love the checking of the box. I know a lot of you are like this as well.

But when I have a list, there's just something great about checking it off and feeling good about doing it.

Another benefit is this going to reduce the chances of you forgetting followups or forgetting to do something. Again, a to-do list, a task management and a calendar are different things. I will tell you Google has a a ⁓ to-do list tied into it as well. Personally, I don't use it. ⁓ For me, I use an app called Todoist. I've used it for several years now. It is a free app. They do have a paid version and there's all kinds of fanciness and

whatever you can do with it, but I just use the free. It's really nice because it's an app on my phone. And if I have something to do, boom, I just pop it in there and I can put a date and time when I want it done. And now I'm not having to rely on my memory, which my memory is not great. ⁓ I use these tools because otherwise I would forget everything I was supposed to do throughout the day. So I do use that app and I just get to go in and I check off things. again, the mornings, there are certain things that I do every single morning.

And they are listed on my to-do list. ⁓ my reading for 30 minutes a day, my, my, ⁓ workout running really it's walking for 30 minutes is on there and you know, drinking my AG one every morning, like those three tasks are on there every morning. And part of what I really like about that is I get to go in and check them off each morning. So I'm starting the day out with a win. So from a mindset purpose, I get to start my day out with, with a win.

And I, and I typically do this before I even open up, open up my email. Cause then I open up my email and I'm, you know, back to centered and grounded again on all of the things I've got to do. But, mentally I'm ready for the day and I know what it is that I've got to get done. Now, as far as the task management tool, personally, I use Trello. I know there's a lot of amazing ones out there. ⁓ Asana, monday.com. I'm sure there's others I've never used any those. I've used Trello for a lot of years. I know it. I understand it. It works for what I do.

Again, by no means am I, I don't have an affiliate link to any of these. So I'm not, I'm not making any money on any of stuff I'm talking about. This is just for me, ⁓ in my world, these are the tools that I use. Trello is really good because it gives me a workflow progress. So a lot of times if there's a system that I'm working on or a, even a podcast that I want to create, I can go in and create these different steps and tools and I can follow it throughout the process. And at any point, if I jump back into my Trello and I'm looking at it, I can see.

where I am in the progress and what needs to be done to get that thing to the finish line. Now, I'm also going to say this, every bit of this stuff can be done with pen and paper. So it's not like you've got to spend thousands of dollars. You don't have to learn a new task. As a matter of fact, for a lot of years, I use spiral notebooks. I would go when school was starting for the kids. I would buy the spiral notebooks. I don't know, back in the day, you could get them for like 10 or 15 cents a piece. That's been.

A lot of years ago, they're probably way more expensive now, but I would buy like, would just buy stacks of them. And then each month I would write on the front of the notebook, what the month was. And every day I would have my, actually on the front, on the top of it, I would write STD, which stands for shit to do. And then I would put the date and then every day I would go through and I would write it down and I would check it off and whatever I didn't get done that day, I would move to the next day and I would check it off. And that, that was really a simple way for me to stay organized on a day to day basis.

eventually I got kind of burned out with the paper and the notebooks and I would find myself, you know, in the car or doing something where I didn't have my notebook and I would forget. So that's when I switched over to technology and I could jump on my to-do list and add it and, ⁓ all that stuff's good. So, ⁓ that's number three to-do list or task management. You gotta have things to remind you of what you got going on. If you, if you got to follow up Ms. Jones tomorrow, ⁓ make sure that you're.

following up with Ms. Jones and use a to-do or task list.

Fourth on our list is a CRM. A CRM is simply a customer relationship management tool. So that looks like for a lot of us in the industry, ⁓ Service Titan is a big one, Housecall Pro, I know Jobber's a big one. There's a lot of different CRMs out there. ⁓ But as you grow your business and really...

when you start your business, you have to have this. know there's a lot of people as you get started, right? Things are tight. You don't really have any money to spend or invest on things. There is a lot of these CRMs that are very, very, very inexpensive, but you've got it. You've got to have one. Otherwise keeping up with jobs, tracking jobs, knowing what followups are happening. It's going to be nearly impossible to keep up with, So a CRM is going to help you track every lead, every job. It's going to help you follow up.

So nothing slips through the cracks, right? And if it slips through the cracks, there's money just slipped through the crack. ⁓ Again, a CRM is only as good as the information that you put in the CRM. So it's not going to do it for you, but they are going to give you tools in order to be able to organize everything. And really it's going to help you grow your revenue. mean, repeat business is going to help you because now you're going to have a database that you can reach out to when you're slower, when you're ⁓ approaching customers about upselling opportunities.

you're gonna know in the past what you've talked to them about and what they've been interested and not interested in. It's just, there's so many tools. ⁓ As you get into some of the higher end ones, there's some great automation, text and emails. There's dashboards. There's all kinds of great stuff. But at the end of the day, if you're not using any CRM, you've got to use something in order to track the customers.

Really and truly, if you're using a CRM and you're using it correctly, whatever CRM it is, if you're using it correctly, it should be increasing your efficiency, ⁓ not only for you, but your CSRs. Now, if you don't have CSRs, it will help you get efficient to where eventually you should be able to get a CSR, right? If you're one person in a truck, very quickly, your goal is gonna be able to have somebody managing the phones in the administrative part of the process, typically.

If you're the type of person to send a truck and you're like, my goal is to get out of the truck and I'm going to run the office. Great. Now it's going to give you a tool in order to run your business. And now your technicians will have the things that they need in the field in order to make sure that they maximize every single call that they go on.

So I can't, I can't stress it enough. CRMs are so, so, so important, ⁓ to manage your business on a daily, weekly month of basis. Now I want to say this now I've been in the industry for, I don't know, 20 plus years now. And I can remember when we first got started in the business, obviously we didn't have any money and we were trying to figure out what all this looks like. And we used an appointment book from a hair salon and it was a pretty good size book.

But it had every day and it had all the jobs written down. And really at that point we were doing, I don't know, five, six jobs a day. So it wasn't that difficult to keep track of them, but it wasn't very, it didn't take very long before we started to go find another, system that we used. ⁓ and, and once we did, man, we saw a huge difference in our business immediately. Once we got it implemented, implementing a CRM can be a little bit of a challenge, but if done correctly, I promise you it is going to be.

well worth its investment and you should get a huge ROI for what you're spending no matter what the software is and that includes Service Titan which I know has a huge price tag and that's what scares a lot of people away from it. Again, personally I've used Service Titan for I don't know 10 plus years. I think it's an amazing software but I also don't think it's the right software for every business. So again there's a host of them out there that you can try but whatever it is, do something.

Number five on our list is a cloud based storage. So many contractors don't have information in one place. I've seen contractors and by seen contractors, I mean, I have done this in the past where I have like taken a weekend and I've done nothing but sit in a room and write systems and policies and procedures. And I was so excited about, about them that I just couldn't wait. And then Monday came and I got busy.

And then I got busy Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and three weeks later, when I went to go back to find out and start to dig into this a little bit more, I wasn't sure where it was or I had it saved to my laptop and my laptop died. By the way, that happened to me. Well, more than one time. It should have never happened to me, but it happened to me more than one time. Um, that was really honestly before the cloud storage was as easy and cheap as it is now. Uh, but yeah, with Google and Dropbox and if you're a Microsoft person, one box.

There's no reason not to keep all that information in a cloud-based spot so that you can get to it. And then when you're ready to share it with your team, it also gives you a place in order to go out and be able to share it with your team.

Man, can tell you organ being able to take all this information and organize it and be able to have it in a, in a very clean way to do it and folders, man, it's going to make working on these projects much, much easier as you're growing your business. Cause you know, the truth is, is if you're growing your business, you can't stop what you're doing to start building, you know, SOPs and start building training. You know, a lot of times you have a little bit here and a little bit there as far as times go. And really.

Having a good cloud-based storage is going to give you the opportunity to be able to stop and pick up and go fast so that you're not constantly, every time you stop and you got to work on it, you're spending 75 % of the time looking for the document. Where did I put the document? What did I name the document? So again, having it in a cloud-based storage is going to help eliminate a lot of that.

And now here we go. Number six. I'm curious if anybody has guessed what the number six item is on the list, but here's what it is. You've got to start using an AI platform. I know for some of you guys, you have been using it now and you've embraced it and good for you. Make sure it's, it's a constantly evolving tool.

but you've got to use an AI platform. There is, there are so many of them out there. There, you know, Google's got one chat. GTP is a big one. There's Magi that's out there. There's, there's a lot of really good platforms that are out there. Here's the thing. AI is, is a tool in your toolbox. Do not use it as an end product. I know for me, what I like about AI and how I use AI.

is I use it to kind of gather my data. So when I have crazy ideas, I will, can literally brain dump into my chat, GTP, and then I can have it organize it. If there's something I want to analyze, if there's P and L statements that I want to go through, I mean, all of that stuff, you can analyze it. There's so much good stuff that you can do with it from, from any level of your business. The other thing is when it comes to creating job ads or emails or social media posts, again, it's a great tool.

in order to help you ⁓ not write a final product. Again, I can't stress that enough. Don't take what chat GTP says and copy and paste it and send it out into the world. But man, it sure does give you a pretty good outline and platform of what to use. ⁓ There is a ton of automation that is now that you can do now between a lot of the software is out there and follow ups you can use with chat GTP. There's just so many things, but here's the deal.

Not only is it just a tool in your toolbox, don't use it for the end result. You have to train your AI just like you would have to train an assistant because that's really what it is. So, um, you're going to have to go in there and figure out like, Hey, here's what my, if you're using it for your business, you're going to want to say, here's what my business looks like. Um, here's my website. If you have a mission, vision, value statements, like if you have your foundational things uploaded into there.

Here's what our perfect avatar and our customer looks like. Put it in there. The more information you give the database and the AI, the cleaner the result of what they're going to give you, whether it's a job ad, whether it's an email, whether it's a social media post, it doesn't really matter. But the more information you give it, is going to be easier to... The more information you give it, the better result you're going to get from the information that you get out of it.

AI is such an amazing tool. personally, I've probably been using, I want to say a little over two years now. ⁓ like most people, when I first started, I was, I was frustrated with it because I would ask it a question and it would give me a response back and it would, it would not be a great response. And then one of the things I figured out and by figured out, mean, I was doing research and studying and understanding, ⁓ you know, AI in general was it's easy to use it like a search engine.

An AI is not a search engine. It's not, it's not what it is. You have to look at it as an assistant. So when you're talking to it or giving it a prompt, ⁓ you have to think about being almost like a prompt engineer. It's a, it's a, you know, you got to think about it like being a prompt engineer. So for instance, if you're going in and you're wanting to write a social media post, you can't go in there and go, Hey, can you write me a social media post? You want to get pretty specific. Like, Hey, I want to write a social media post that's going to go out on a Friday.

And I know the weather is going to be 107 outside. Um, I want to highlight our HVAC free inspection. And I want to make sure that it is targeted towards my core audience of homeowners between this age that live in this general area. Right? So the more information now it's going to give you something that is, is a much better prompt than write me a social media post. I mean, you have to give it, uh, the, the high level part of what you want it to do. So.

So there you go. There is the six tools that every home service business owner needs to be using in their business. ⁓ Really to crush it versus it crushing you. Now, if there is a platform that you are using that I didn't name that you feel like is really important and is worth mentioning,

if you're checking this out on YouTube, go down to the below and go ahead and add a comment of what is another tool that you use to really that use on a daily basis to help you drive your business forward. And if you're checking this out on one of the podcast platforms is always a five-star view is such a greatly appreciated thing. ⁓ it's a little bit complicated in Apple, but I promise, ⁓ my, my gratitude towards you will be worth the few minutes that will take you to do it.

I hope this is helpful. hope these tools are something that you, ⁓ if you're not using, you start using. again, our mission here at the podcast is really to just help business owners drive your business forward, remove some of the chaos and help you own the business versus it owning you. So until we catch up again, I'm your host Justin Deese and thank you for coming and checking out the podcast. Thanks.