No don't go in there, Daddy's working.
Jonathan: Did you know, in Australia, poo tickets means toilet paper? That was bad. That was terrible. We should probably just have that cut out but I'm too lazy for that. Onward and upward. We can only go up from here. Poo humor at the beginning of the show - ridiculous. Why? Why am I thinking about poop? You know, Cupcake's dad I think has an obsession with poo. I shouldn’t even be sharing this on the air. I mean, when he's asking us about Huddy, he's always asking us how his poo looked - was it firm? [0:01:01.7] Was it compressed? What color was it? He's like obsessed with knowing your health through your poo, I guess, but the reason I'm thinking about this is because when I first started training with him, when he was showing me how to run apartments, I used to apprentice. I used to work with him. I used to come out and visit him on a job and learn from him so that I could learn the business, because I didn’t know anything about it and he was mentor and my guide and taught me my entire base of information about how to run rentals the right way. He's always big on the number one rule, get the money. I'm doing a terrible Filipino accent there, but get the money, number one rule, and he's right. Do whatever you have to do to get the money, that's why you're a landlord, that's why you're in the rental business. Get the money. He was also really big, and this is where I learned a ton from him, because I was a cocky little F'er when I was young. [0:02:10.4]
When Cupcake first met me, I was still kind of annoying that way. Like I wouldn’t even hang out with myself now. That young guy? No way. However, I was cocky and I was raised that way. My dad raised me that way to be proud, do good work, and be proud and yes, so I was pretty cocky. It's embarrassing to think about right now, and anybody that knows me from back then, I'm not like that anymore. I hope not. But, Jerry was really big on humility and being grateful for what you have and being humble and so obviously my personality clashed with him in the beginning but this is why I say I learned so much from him because I learned that was a virtue that I wanted to possess, wanted to master. [0:03:05.0]
I'm not going to master that. Alright, at least possess it, but being more humble made it easier to get the money because you weren’t being a jerk to your residents. So I used to be a jerk when I first became a landlord. It's terrible. I'm surprised that anybody stuck around, but I definitely learned a lot from Jerry about being humble.
And so when I used to come apprentice, I used to come hang out with him and we would do work and he would show me how he did different things, and then we would go out to lunch and hang out and then that would be it. So it was a fun little bonding experience. One of the things that he had me do was really weird. He picked out this thing and if you don’t know anything about construction or I mean you can tune this totally out, but they have this thing when they're doing infrastructure, you have a parking lot and you have lights and you have buildings and you have plumbing. [0:04:07.6]
You have to have infrastructure under the roads and drains and one of the things you have to have is a lift station, alright. It's this pump station that sends sewage from your main base, like you'll have a big sewage tank on your property. There's a couple of motors that push the water out into the main public sewage lines, so the lines in the road, the main lines to the county, this is dorky construction talk, but there's a reason I'm explaining it to you. Because you've got sewage on your property and you have what they call a lift station that pumps it off your property. So even though it's not glamorous, it's one pretty important piece of what you have on these commercial properties and I didn’t know anything about that and Jerry took it upon himself, I think he started this when I started, I don't know I think this was invented just for me. [0:05:08.0]
So I'm not sure about that because he didn’t have like, didn’t have one of those amp meters before we started doing this, but we would check the lift station, and there's an electrical component to it where you're checking the amperage to see what the motors are pulling to see if they're pulling different amperage than they usually pull and there might be a problem with the motor. So that was part of it, but the other part, the more disgusting part, the poopy part, is the tank. This big tank full of sewage water, you know what I'm talking about. Like if you got near that, you would run away if you smelled it. You'd be like what happened here and I learned, you know, there's turds floating around in there. It's gross. [0:06:01.5]
Used condoms, all kinds of stuff. You know like people just put everything down their drain, but that's what I'm saying - I think this was invented for me. I had to check the amperage because I came from electrical background, so I got to do that part, and then I had to drain the lift station with, hit the motors, bump them, make them run, make sure they were both running and drain the lift station and hose it all off to get the fat or grease -- the grease, get the grease off the wall. Grease is turds, people. It is nasty. And I did it. I did what I was supposed to do. I cleaned the lift station, drained it, checked the amperage. I didn’t really, I wondered about that job for a long time and I don’t think I really got it until a couple of years later. It was one of these like old Zen master lessons. [0:07:05.0]
It was placed in the back of my head and I didn’t really get it, but the full lift station, if a lift station was full, that meant there was a lot of people living there and a lot of people working and going out and earning money and coming home and eating and paying money to live here. So it's a sick, sick, twisted appreciation that this nasty tank I had to clean was also a sign of the health of the complex. Isn't that weird? Because if there wasn’t much water being used and there wasn’t much sewage, then there weren’t a lot of people living there, so there weren’t a lot of rents. So I think in some weird, old Zen master way, he had a plan that way to kind of give me the poop appreciation. The poop appreciation. That's what it comes down to, is really being humble about what you do, and staying close to your roots, I guess. [0:08:07.8]
But yeah, I mean the idea of knowing the people that are giving you money or giving you business or being clients and customers, you got to show them you care. You got to treat them right. I mean I see so many people and here's the thing that I see too much. I see it mostly with myself. So I'm not scolding you at all. I'm actually reminding myself. Is like that obsession of "You need to scale. You need to get bigger. You need to do 14 clients a month. You need to do 28 clients. You need to a million dollars a month. Balls to the wall." I get it. [0:09:03.4]
It sounds awesome but it also sounds like a lot of work. It doesn’t fit with the lifestyle I want to live and so you don’t want to be pushing, always getting new clients, always having to work harder for a sale, always having to drum up business. I mean, you got to learn to treat clients well. You got to learn how to treat them, and if you do that, then you don’t have to worry so much about that cold traffic and the scaling up and that grind, your faceoff mentality, hustle, hustle, hustle. If you treat your clients well, you show them that you care, and I think we talked about that a couple of episodes ago when I stepped on some of this too, but yeah. You know, treating clients right, showing them that you care is really going to be a key to having a business with some longevity and still being able to live a life. [0:10:05.7]
I don’t want to call it a lifestyle business, but you want a business to support your lifestyle, don't you? Not the other way around. If you're supporting your business, then all you got is a job. And so that lesson that Jerry taught me over there about the lift station being full, meaning we have more people living there and paying there being a gift? It's a weird way to show it but it's hard to forget it. And if you're always chasing after new, you're going to miss what's there, like clients that stay forever, lifelong clients. When you show them you care, when you treat them right, you don’t have to worry so much about this scaling or grinding or whatever it is that people want you to believe out there. [0:10:59.7]
Alright, so listen, got to pay the bills. So here is a quick advertisement for your ears that I think you're going to find useful. How would you like to spend more time with your family and less time on your business? Before anyone chooses to do business with you, they need to know one important thing, can I trust you. The only problem is, building trust can take forever, and I know you don’t have that kind of time, but what if there was a way to build trust in minutes instead of years? You'd want that, wouldn't you? Good news, buckaroo. That’s exactly what you'll get inside my digital Daddy's Toolkit. It's got my top three speed-influenced tools to make you a trusted expert in any market, quickly. Go to Daddysworking.com/ddt to grab your copy today.
Alright. So I guess what I'm turning this into, now that I'm looking at my notes here, is really referability. [0:12:04.8] Referability, like people are obsessed with scale, scale, scale and cold traffic, but referability, in my accurate opinion, and not so humble, accurate and not so humble opinion, referability is the key to building a business that you enjoy because you're not having to work so hard on closing sales. If you've got referrals coming you, you know how much easier they are, and this is one of the things I'm reminding myself here, because every time I forget this, I go through a little spurt where I just forget it and I'm obsessed with new traffic and I don’t treat my clients right and I feel bad about it. So I don’t do that anymore. I make it part of the structure that we have in place here that clients are treated right and they're being listened to. [0:13:01.0]
So here's one of the things and I've talked about this before and I'll talk about it again because it is important and it is what's on my mind and it is the difference between a good business and a great business and clients liking you versus being raving fans, is notice them. Learn. Anticipate. Innovate. You have to know where people are going. You have to notice them, where they're at. Know where they want to go and be able to provide them a bridge to get there and we, I think it might have been the last episode maybe, I think it's probably only guys listen to this show. It's Daddy's Working. But has your wife ever gave you the "Honey, do I look fat in this?" [0:14:00.5] Whoa. Trap. Trap. Trap. Warning. Danger, Will Robinson. That is a trap. "Do I look fat?" No. Don’t fall into that. Me, personally, I don't know, I shouldn’t be giving away my secrets on here. Cupcake might hear it. I don't do that, so, I don't have that problem. Cupcake looks awesome all the time. That's how you handle it. But look, you got to notice. Like, she came home the other day and she had her roots dyed. I couldn’t tell. I didn't notice that she had a gray hair or two, but she's like, "So, how do I look?" "You look beautiful, baby. What did they do? Did they add some curls to it?" Yeah, notice. Right. Just notice. Notice something that makes you baby feel good, right. Notice something about your clients. [0:15:00.0]
Notice what they're looking for. Notice what they need. Notice where they're going and this is one of the things that I love to do here at the podcast factory is talking to our clients, finding out what they see in their future, and helping them build a bridge to that. And I think we talked about how we do that too.
Anyways, when we started, all people wanted was "help me start a podcast." Just get the sound effects and the graphics and put it up in the iTunes and get it up there. That's what people needed, and that's what we gave them, and we gave them that consistently and they liked us and they stuck around with us and then we could just stop there. But no, what we did was we talked to them, found out where they were going and one of the things that we learned was, yeah, now I have a podcast, but what do I do with it? How do I use it? [0:16:00.0]
How do I get value out of this asset you helped me create? And that's when we realized, okay, so creating the podcast, challenged solved. That's easy. Easy button, but now the question is how do I get the podcast to more people and how do I use it – be an asset, make more sales. How do I use it in my business? And that's when we figured out, okay so people need marketing. They need to know how to market. They created something wonderful and now they have to know how to get it out there in a consistent fashion. Get it out there to as many people as possible. Get it out there so that more people have a chance to listen to it. So that's what we did, and that's what you got to do. Notice what your clients want. Notice what your clients need. Notice what would make their life better and find a way to give it to them within your realm, within what you do. Help them move forward towards that goal. [0:17:01.2]
So that's the second one.
I can't believe this started with poop appreciation. But look, know your clients. Notice your clients and note them. Note them. I wrote these notes days ago. What was I thinking? Note them? So, here's the thing. People need to feel appreciated or else they'll forget about you. They need to know you care, at least a little bit, and you need to show them and so one of the things that we do here pretty consistently, one of the things you can add to your marketing mix if you want more referrals, if you want more repeat business, if you want clients to buy more from you, tell them you like them. [0:17:59.9]
Tell them you care about them. Send them a note. Send them a gift. We talked about the Four Love Languages. If you've haven’t picked it up yet, you got to go pick it up. But, this works in so many different ways. This works with your team as well. This is not just with your clients. Same thing. Know where your bread is buttered, right. It's like, your team takes care of you, so you want your team to perform better. You want your team to be happier and more in synch with where you're going. Hey, know them, notice them, note them. Know them. Notice them. Find out where they're going and note them. Show them you appreciate them. Show them that you understand them. Like this is, I don't know, this is really a reminder for me with my referral plans. I got to make sure that I have better systems. That's why I planned this episode. But also, for you listening. If you're out there. You want to scale and you believe in all the hype. Look, you scale especially in a service business, you're just going to create more work for yourselves. [0:19:04.1]
So think about that. Think about that. Maybe just raise the prices. Double your prices and get half the clients; that sounds more fun.
Alright. Next time, we're going to talk about money guilt. Feeling ashamed to be making those Benjamins. It's a thing. It's a thing. I'll show you on the next one. But for now, subscribe to this show. Rate us. Review us. Who's "us?" It's me. No really "us" because there's a team that does this. It's not just me. It's me, Cupcake. We have got writers. We have got our audio engineers who make the sound happen and the music happen. This is a team effort. So subscribe, if you just love hearing my voice. Rate and review us if you like the work that we are putting out as a team at The Podcast Factory. Thank you for tuning in and I will be back in your ear buds next time.
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