Transcript of Unlocking the Secrets of Cold Calling with Peter Roth

People don't really pick up cold calls, and I'm like, No, they don't. We need fractions of percentages to make this work.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Melo. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement comment what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text, note, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526 1-299. That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin. Com/podcast to get your copy. Now, let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Extra. Today, I got Peter Roth in the house. He's an expert of sales and business.

He's based in Denver, CEO and Senior Marketing Director at Scalify. Scalify. It's so hard for me to... It's just Scalify, Scalify. He's a serial entrepreneur and businessman originally from Well, Ukraine, originally. Ukraine, which is.

Well, it used to be part of Russia. What is that? Oh, Ushgorod. You don't want to try to pronounce that. You don't want to try to pronounce that.

He's built and scaled businesses across multiple industries, from the solar industry, Solarwise, to retail my discount, Cigar, to his flagship company, Scalify Call centers, where he helps organizations build high-performing customer service operations. Educated in Syracuse University, the University of Oxford, and the Budapest University of Economic Sciences. Peter combines academic rigor with practical business acumen. With roots in both Eastern Europe and the United States, he brings a unique cross-cultural lens to leadership, growth, and customer service.

Dude, whoever wrote that, can we give them some an award? Because that's an exceptionally well-written intro there. I like that.

Well, I'm excited, man. You've learned how to do a lot of stuff that most companies don't really know about. So let's just start about your story, where you're at today and what you're excited about.

I don't want to make this a pitchy thing because that's not why I'm here. But I'm excited. I was talking to you off camera two seconds ago. I'm excited to show different trades, especially in the home services space, that there's other avenues for marketing, right? Because people get so pigeonholed into their preferred marketing channels. I was just telling you a few seconds ago, you talk to HVAC guys, and they're used to the concept of Angie's List, right? That's just normal stuff for them. But then you talk to roofers and they're like, What the hell is Angie's List?

Or Thumbtack or Yelp.

Yeah, so different industries, even though they're so closely related, it's like they look at each other like they're foreigners. And so that's why I'm here to talk about how this call center stuff has been working out so well for so many different industries and why we're blowing up so much.

Well, let's talk about it. Tell me why you got into the call center industry and where you're at with it.

Because it's the only thing that worked for us. So I got my teeth kicked in in the solar space. So I used to own an HVAC company, sold that, and then transitioned into solar. Whether that was a good decision remains to be seen. But while I was there, I got my teeth kicked in in a good way, in a very positive way. Sometimes you have to do that. You got to go through some suffering in order to... I'm so jealous of you. You have to sometimes go through those tough times. And so Solar taught me a lot of really hard lessons. I had to learn how to feed a team of people, a team of salespeople. And we tried everything. We did all the usual suspects, the Facebook ads, the paid searches, and all that stuff. And I'm not saying anything was broken. I'm not saying those things didn't work, but they just weren't awesome. And the thing that we just stumbled upon by accident, it's not like I was some genius, but by accident was the call center space. We just slowly inched our way into it and realized, Oh, wait a minute, this is the thing that's actually working.

And so I just kept doubling down and doubling down again. And lo and behold, now it's like, Well, guys, this thing works, and now I'm bringing it to other companies, and it's working out for them. So here we are.

Well, let's take a deep dive into that. What What exactly prompted this new walking into it by accident?

Yeah, I'll tell you exactly. I'll make it quick. So we were getting leads as most... I think a lot of companies will relate to this. You got different marketing channels all bringing leads coming in, right? And then here's, I think, where 90 % of all businesses fail is they don't call the leads back.

Call the leads.

The leads come in, and then that's where they go to die, right? I think if anyone's watching this, we're like, Oh, shit. That's probably what he just described to me, right? You get these lead sources, and you're paying all this really good money to this lead gen agency over here and this lead gen company over there and this marketing channel over there. And they're all doing something productive for you. They're bringing you leads. But you're the one who you realize if you take a hard look in the mirror, you're the one who's actually not calling them back. You don't have your team calling them back. You don't have a good system in place to actually follow up with these leads. And then that's where they go to die. And so what we did was, like anybody else, we hired someone, right? We found a VA, a really inexpensive VA, to start calling these leads. And lo and behold, business started improving. What a shocker, right? And so then we were like, Okay, wait a minute. The key to success here is having speed to lead, is having someone on the goddamn phones. So we hired another person.

This person, this amazing lady, she pulled me aside and she's like, Hey, by the way, I have some cold calling experience. I'm not busy throughout the day. I've got a lot of dead time. Do you want me to use that time productively and just do some cold calls for you? And I was like, Does that shit work? And she's like, Yeah. I'm like...

Even with all the new technology on iPhone, this new thing just came out on an iPhone It's a little bit, literally.

That affects a very small percentage of people. And let me address that real quickly, because I know some people ask that question, and it's a valid one. Those aren't our target audience. People who are super caught up on iPhones and super caught up with the latest OS and keeping everything up to date represents a much younger demographic audience.

You're still looking for landlines?

No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying younger generations are not the ideal-They're not the ideal client. No, they're not the... Yeah, in general, they're not the ideal client, especially for cold calling. Cold calling, the ideal client is someone in their 40s, ideally even 50s to their 70s, because that's part of their buying culture. That's part of their shopping behaviors. They're used to having the Kirby salesman come to their door, and they're used to buying vacuum. If you ask an older person, Hey, how do you buy a vacuum? They're like, I wait for the guy to come to my door. Yeah. Right? And you're like, God damn, I guess this is it. You're right. This is it. And like, Well, how do you buy an encyclopedia? Well, someone comes to my door to sell me one. This thing Yeah. And they buy shit off of infomercials at night. Oh, yeah. You and I don't, but they do. So there's the target audience.

Yeah, the QVC.

Yeah, exactly. So people just have to realize that was never your target audience to begin with. There's other ways to market to them. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be marketing to them. I'm just saying you need to be marketing to them in a different fashion, PPC and all that stuff. Paid search, organic, CEO, all that jazz. That works.

So you got the lead ags. By the way, home improvement is way different than home service. See, home improvement is when I'm going to improve my house. It's not a demand call. It's not my stuff's broken. A hot water heater is leaking, my garbage disposal went out. The roof is actually leaking. Roofs could be some type of improvement, but windows are straight up improvement. Garage rooms could fit into both, but I like on the repair side more. But what I found about these guys, and I know a lot of them, they're doing $2 billion a year. They've worked with a few lead ad companies, and they partner with them, where they've actually made them a partner. They go out and just generate the leads, and then they fulfill them all. But if anything's broken, like the speed to lead, speed to form leads, if anything's broken, it doesn't work. But these guys, they go out and hunt. That's why I've been studying home improvement so much, is they don't have anybody calling saying, I have to replace my windows. So they got to go build the demand for themselves. And so my question, I guess, is, where's the best place to start?

Start with what?

Start going out and waiting the work rather than waiting them to call you. So you said cold call.

Yeah. Well, I mean, isn't that exactly why we're talking right now? Doesn't cold call, doesn't that just make sense? Because now we're waiting, now we're going out to get them as opposed to waiting for them to come to us. And that is. And the beauty of it is we can target We can be thoughtful and mindful about who we're targeting and what industry we're targeting for, which is exactly what we do. If you come to me as a roofer or as an HVAC company, we're not just going to blast every single home in America. We're going to be very thoughtful and methodical as to who it is that we're calling so that it aligns with the type of ideal target client that you're going for. That's part of the magic.

Give me an example of a roofing call or a HVAC call. So you call me up and I'm 55 years old.

Hvac is my favorite, by the way. Roofing and HVAC, those two are my favorites. But HVAC maybe takes the cake by just a slim margin, because here's the huge advantage that HVAC gets over roofing, over really everyone else, because everyone else we're booking a sales call, and it's obviously a sales call. Hey, Mr. Homeowner, someone's I'm going to try to sell you some shit. And they know that, and there's no delusion about it. They know it. Hvac is different. Hvac, we're usually doing a tune-up call. Hey, it's getting hot. It's about to hit 100 degrees here in Phoenix. You sure you don't want someone to come and look at you? We're already in your neighborhood. We got three technicians out there tomorrow. They're doing some of your neighbor's homes while we're out there. We're doing free AC tunes for half the price. Can I get you penciled in for tomorrow the day after? It's half-priced, 39 bucks. And they're like, Sure. So it's a super, super simple pitch. But the beauty of it is it's a service call. It's not a sales call. So now you get the benefit of two benefits. The homeowner doesn't think they're being pitched anything.

Number two, the company is now actually recouping some of their costs, but they're actually getting paid to show up there.

And how much is Where's this person calling from, by the way? From you. Are they calling from Ukraine or somewhere Middle East? No. Not Middle East.

No, they're Latin America, but with a strong focus on Mexico. The vast majority of our agents live in Mexico because they They speak phenomenal English, little to almost no accent whatsoever. There's a strong community there of people that work in the call center space, so we've got no shortage of people who already have experience in HVAC and roofing and those better basic trades.

How do they get paid? How do you get paid?

How do we get paid or how do they get paid? Well, I guess, well, you go to you to run it all.

So how do you charge clients?

So we build out the call centers for them. We're not like a BPO. We're not a call center for hire or for rent type of a thing. That's not great. Those type of companies get a little bit of a bad rap, and for pretty good reason. It's a little bit of a flawed model. What we do is we actually build out the call center for your company so you actually own the call center free and clear. No strings attached, no crazy hooks, no nothing. You actually own the call center. And if you want us to manage it for you, we gladly will. We're extremely affordable. We'll actually manage the entire operation for you. But you don't even have to do that. If you got people on your team that already know how to do it, well, then Hallelujah, you can do it yourself. But if you'd like us to do it for you, we're happy to do it, and we're really affordable. So we build out the entire operation. It's all remote. You don't have to go rent some office space in Mexico. It's all remote, and everyone checks, clocks in at 11: 00 AM, and they clock out at 07: 00 PM.

Those are the magic hours. And then my team manages the entire operation for you. And then you just sit back and watch the appointments start rolling in. That sounds salesy and cheap, but it's true.

And how much technician training? We train a lot on this. We got a $29 tune up. You go in there and you educate the clients. I mean, the fact is that usually on a garage where there's a lot of failure points, HVAC unit, hot water heater, if it's 12 years old, it's a problem waiting to happen.

My wife, we needed to get our garage door fixed last week, and I was out of town. I was doing another podcast, and she called a company. I was like, Did you call Tommy's company? She's like, Who's Tommy? Yeah. Damn it.

It's a funny story, Phil. No, they break all the time. I've obviously... I use this podcast to get educated. I mean, And hopefully, other people listen and they like it. I mean, obviously, I started in 2017. I just got everybody on here, and I got a lot of great ideas, and I found the people that actually knew how to do this stuff. I wouldn't say every podcast for me is super educational. Some of it's just storytelling and learning about people. Sure. But what do you find... What's the sales process for the best companies, best in class?

Look, I don't pretend that I have full open access to their processes, right? So I don't think I can answer that question with total confidence. What I can tell you is who the clients are that succeed the best with call centers because I know them, because they're the ones always calling me to add more agents. Hey, Peter, let's add two more agents.

Let's add three more agents. What's a lot of agents to you? What's one company? What's a larger company? How many agents?

15, 20 agents. That's a pretty respectable size call center for a respectable size company.

What tune-ups does each agent book a day?

If we're talking HVAC, the average numbers are In the space of HVAC, which is different than roofing, which is different than solar, but in the space of HVAC, each agent should be booking roughly three tune-up calls per day. So it's a pretty big number.

And what does that cost for you to manage that one agent?

I'll just tell you right now, it all boils down to what is your cost per appointment, per booked appointment? In the space of HVAC, I think it comes to right about 60 bucks. So for 60 bucks, you're getting in the door with a booked appointment ready ready to go, ready to pay.

So you're paying $180 that day for that one agent?

Yeah, that would have equivalent have cost you about $180 in total fees between the labor, between the management fees, between the software cost itself, which is real minimal. And then you need phone numbers to call, data, phone numbers to call. So they got to consume some phone numbers. Those are the four main... That's it. Those are the four expenses of running a call center.

And so $180 a day, you're basically paying-That's for one agent, though.

Keep in mind, we don't do anything with less than three agents.

So you're almost at 600 bucks a day.

Yeah. So you're spending a few grand a week. And you're in the door. Yeah, you're in a lot. You're in the door. You're in nine doors for that day.

Which is hopefully about three technicians keeping three guys busy.

Yeah, maybe even more. Okay. Maybe even more.

What do you think the mindset shift is between inbound and outbound? Because I think Over the years, I became lazy. I mean, we get 25,000 book calls a month.

Yeah, I get it. No, you're in a different-But why not have 50,000? No, I understand. Let me address your question because I think you asked two very different questions. Question number one, the difference between First of all, a lot of people don't know the difference between inbound and outbound, so I think that's an important thing to address real quickly. Inbound is not our thing. I mean, we'll do it, but that's not our thing. Our thing is outbound telemarketing. Our thing is you hire us to build you a call center so that we can get your sales guys in home to sell your stuff, whatever that is. That's what we do, outbound. Inbound is CSR work. Inbound is customer service relationship management type stuff. It's people come calling in to handle whatever, customer service type stuff, or maybe book an appointment, hopefully. But it's inbound. That's not our thing. We can do it. That's the easier thing. Inbound is the easy thing because you don't really need specialized people for that. Anyone with a smile and a pleasant voice can handle that. They don't really need all that specialized training. The outbound guys, these are the tough These are the ones that are actually making sales, booking appointments, doing the hard work to get you in the home.

They're the setters. Setters are the... What's the term for it? They're the unspoken, the underappreciated winners. These are the guys doing all the heavy lifting.

It's crazy. I've been talking about our database, and our database is 2 million clients. I mean, it would probably take 25 agents, 2 years to call those people back.

Yeah, you're in a different scenario time. You may not be the ideal client for this, right? You've got so much, such a large database.

But that's building out... See, you interrupt the inbound when you start trying to do both. So it's like you take your eye off the ball. For the listeners out there, this is a big mistake when you start having one call center manager manage too many things. They start to drift off on the inbound, focus on outbound, and then they're focused on inbound again.

Actually, and I just take back what I just said because I said, You may not be the right... That's bullshit. That's so Why not? And you said it yourself. You're like, But what you said, I have 20,000, but why not have 50,000? Yeah, no. That's exactly the point. It's like, Well, why not keep growing? I get it. You're in an amazing place in life, obviously, but like...

No, I'm in the fetal stages.

Why not keep growing? Why not be in all 50 states? There's only one way to do that, and you need more outbound.

What about SMS?

What about it? I don't want to say it's a dying channel. I want to say it's now become saturated, and it's now become very policed by the telecoms. They're all policing it. Fcc. Fcc. They're policing the shit out of it now. So the carriers are all doing some amazing stuff. Yeah, they won't make it through a lot. No, most of it's not.

What about AI agencies days? That's the hottest thing. Yeah, that's a really good question, and it's a really common question that I get.

Let me answer it the best I can. Number one, this is important to say. Number one, you cannot use AI for cold outreach. That's 100 100% illegal. Fcc banned that a while ago. Cannot do it. And it's a good thing that you cannot do it. And I'll explain why. Number one, it's too easy to do. It's just a bot. It's just a piece of software. So it's not like you need real humans. So you can literally, at the push of a button, some teenagers in Pakistan can click a button and literally blow up our entire phone lines in the entire United States with a shit ton of spam calls trying to sell us cheap Viagra offers. It would disable the phone systems. Your cell phone would be... Flames would be coming out of it if we have so much shit coming through. And more importantly, you would completely stop picking up your phone because you know that every single phone call is just spam nonsense. So because there's no resistance, there's no friction, it's just click a button and a million calls can start being placed all at once. So they banned that, and for good reason, because it would just incapacitate our phone lines.

So no AI is allowed to make a cold outreach call. However, AI is allowed to make a call once you have proof of opt-in. Proof of opt-in meaning they already booked an appointment or did That's something to engage with you in a meaningful way. That's considered proof of opt-in. Now AI can reach out to them. So here's what I always tell business owners, if they're considering AI, which they should. I'm very much pro-AI, and we partner with a different company to piggyback with them for AI, and here's exactly where we do it. So there's generally four sales channels or four sales paths for most home services companies. This doesn't necessarily apply to all of I'll explain them. So path number one is the top of the funnel, which is booking the appointment, the cold call, booking the appointment. As I just said, for that, you cannot use AI. That has to be done by a human for obvious reasons now. Number two, this is the one that's optional for some companies, is a discovery call. Certain industries will call them the homeowner first and say, Hey, just want to learn more about you and the problems that you're facing.

Let's flush out those problems. So a discovery call. Like I said, that doesn't apply to all industries. Number Number three would be the closing call or the pitch. Obviously, you probably wouldn't use AI for that. I mean, I guess you could, depending on how easy your pitch is. And then number four is the biggest bucket of all. That's everything else. That's no shows, cancelations. I want to think about it. I'm not interested. People who just didn't call you ghosting. That's the biggest bucket of all. That is the perfect bucket to utilize AI for. So I'm a huge fan of AI for that last bucket because it's the biggest one of all. Most people don't say yes, right? Most people say no to your thing. So there's a lot more nos and there are yeses, and especially once you had in no shows and cancelations, and I want to think about it, that bucket is huge, and AI is the perfect tool and the perfect method to reach out to them because that's an easy thing. It's just calling them and saying, Hey, let's get you back on the calendar so that a real human can close the deal.

That is 100 % brilliant idea to do with AI. So we do that all the time with our call center clients.

I love it. When you're ciphering through data, do you ever look at... I just realized that a lot of these finance companies have the ability to tell you who's pre-qualified. What data do you look for? I mean, you look at regression testing. You could go credit card score, you could go home over this age. You could go income level. You could go who's pre-qualified. What is the data that's best used? I know it depends on the industry and whatnot.

It depends on the So for example, let's say we're looking at roofing, for example. Got a lot of roofing clients. Roofing is thankfully pretty simple, a lot more straightforward. It doesn't have to get nearly as complicated as some of those filters that you're talking about. The main things that we're looking for typically, and again, it depends, are we talking about retail roofing or insurance-based storm replacements? But let's say we're talking about retail. So retail, the standard roofing client, the standard roofing company is going to want homes that are 10, 12, 13 years and above. They want homes with older roofs. Calls, people that are outside of their warranty, people that maybe don't have homeowners insurance to cover it for them, maybe have accumulated some damage. So typically, if we're looking around 13 years and older, we want the homeowner aged, typically be in the mid-40s to the mid in the '70s for the same reason, like I mentioned earlier in the beginning of this, we don't want people that are too young. They're not the ideal. They don't pick up cold calls, and they certainly don't book appointments off of cold calls. It's just not in their buyer psychology, but it is for older generations.

So that's why we're trying to target certain age groups. Then we're looking for particular home sizes because we want to filter out the bottom 20% of income. For obvious reason, that can be problematic. We also want to filter out the top 20% of income. A lot of people don't realize they're actually just as problematic, if not even worse. Trying to get a hold of ultra wealthy is a very difficult thing to do. Number one, they just don't answer their phone.

They got a house manager.

Well, even if they don't, they either just don't pick up an unrecognized phone number. And even if they do, it's just not in their psychology to book a cold call off of it.

How many people do answer on average once you said-Very little.

It's a good question. Very little. I always talk about people like, People don't really pick up cold calls. And I'm like, No, they don't. And they're like, So how does this work? Because I don't need amazing results to make this work. So do you got a dialer? We need fractions of percentages for this thing to be profitable for my clients.

Fractions of percentage. Are you allowed to use a dialer? Of course.

Yeah, of course. That's all we do.

So the dialer is always connecting you.

It's called a predictive Predictive dialer. So if anyone wants to do this on your own, the thing you should look for right away is what's called a predictive dialer. A predictive dialer is just a fancy term for a multi-line dialer. It's a dialer that will call more than one line at once. You definitely need that. You want something that can call at least 10 or above. That would be a respectable predictive dialer. Look, to build your own call center, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that you 100% need my help. A lot of people can do this on their own. As with anything else, of course, it's-That's like a door-knocking, too.

You can build it on your own.

There's going to be a lot of pitfalls along the way. There's going to be a lot of challenges, and they're going to be expensive challenges. So of course, I'm happy to walk you through the four steps to building out your own call center if you want it done right, well, you know who to call, but I can tell people, Look, here's the four components. You need agents. Please hire people that actually know what they're doing. Don't just hire some VA. Don't just hire your neighbor's teenage kid. Hire people that already have experience in the specific industry that you're in, whether roofing, HVAC, or whatever, garage door repair, whatever it is that you do. So hire agents with existing experience. Number two, you need good software. I just told you, find a predictive dialer. If you need one, I'll send you the link to the dialer that we use all the time. It's no problem. I'm not going to charge you anything for that. You need a good script. A lot of people overestimate the importance of a script thinking that it's got to be some magical shit. You don't have to say magical shit. You just have to have a reasonably good offer.

A reasonably good offer is zero % financing or even just financing to begin with. As long as you can finance the thing that you sell, that's actually good enough to convert and get the numbers that you need to make money is just have financing. If you have special financing like zero % or pay nothing now or in 90 days, whatever. If you got special terms, that's even better. That just makes it more attractive, but you don't need it, okay? And then the last thing is you need data. You need a good source of data. That I I wouldn't know where to send people because we're our own data source. I don't have a brand name that I could send you to. You can just come to me because we sell data to other call centers as well. But data is phone numbers to call. You need good quality lists of phone numbers to call, and it's got to be good quality because if you get a cheap list, there's going to be so much inaccurate information on it that your agents are going to spend way too much time just listening to wrong names and wrong numbers and disconnected numbers.

It's just going to burn up labor hours. Those are the four main components that you need to build your own call center tomorrow. Now, obviously, there's a lot of stuff that I left off in between. I can't tell you to run a call center inside of five minutes. So obviously, if you need more help, well, now you know who to call. But there's the basic components.

Is what you do simply outbound only, or is it the lead ex, too?

Like I told you, yes, outbound is our focus. That's our specialty because that's the thing that makes you money. I mean, inbound makes you money, too. I'm not going to say inbound. It doesn't make you money. But outbound brings money that you otherwise wouldn't have had. It's found money. It's money that you wouldn't have otherwise made.

How do you handle turnover? I mean, you get these badass agents that are trained. Do you do performance pay with them?

That's a good question. We used to. We stopped. We stopped doing performance pay because we used to be an entirely Pay for Performance model because we thought in our dumb brains, we thought, Oh, we're entrepreneurs. We love Pay for Performance. You've always been probably raised on Pay for... Probably your whole life has been Pay for Performance. I know my whole life has been Pay for performance. I've never had a salary. Last salary I had, I was 23 years old, and I got fired from that job. So everything since then has been 100% pay for performance. So I thought in my brain that everyone's wired like me and like you. Came to find out, no. We're entrepreneurs. We're wired very differently. You and I are wired for risk, and we have a high degree of comfort for risk because we know that when we take that risk, on the other side comes reward. And we're far more interested on the reward side and willing to take that risk to get there. The fact of the matter is, most people aren't wired like that. Most people are wired for safety and security and predictability. Most people just want their clock in, clock out standard payroll hours, and they want the predictability and the safety of that, including call center agents.

And I learned that the hard way. We spent years paying them pay for performance and suffering with the ups and downs that came along with it because it created so much uncertainty and anxiety and fear.

Why not just give them what you give them now? Plus, because I guarantee you, if you looked at all the agents, there's a few agents that have tripled the booking rate of others.

What we do now is a hybrid model. So I think exactly what you're saying. We do a hybrid model now where we pay them their hourly, what they expect to make. And agents in Mexico are generally looking to make about seven bucks an hour, it seems to be, depending on your industry, but it's right around seven bucks an hour. So we pay them their seven bucks an hour. We don't even really negotiate them. Terrible idea. Just give them what they're asking for as long as it's reasonable, and then offer them a little bit of a bonus on top of that. We generally will pay them, and this is good if you're building your own call center, take this advice. Pay them their seven or eight bucks an hour if it's in Mexico. By the way, it's cheaper if you go to some different countries in Latin America, the price goes down. You can probably get it down to about five an hour if you're in Central America or even South America. So pay them their hourly. Don't negotiate. Don't try low-balling them. Bad idea. They're just always going to have one foot out the door looking for a better paying job.

So don't mess around with that. You find someone you like, you treat them well. Keep them loyal. Number two, pay them a bonus per sit. So if Because there's no shows, right? No shows are a big part of outbound telemarketing. There's always going to be no shows because there was zero intent to begin with. With that comes no shows. To reduce no shows, you need hyper well-trained agents. Hyper well-trained agents come at the cost of methodical training and paying them well. They need to be incentivized properly. So we pay them generally 20 bucks per sit. That can change on your industry, right? If you've got a slimmer margin, by all feel free to adjust that number. But typically, we have found that for most industries, 20 bucks per sit is actually pretty reasonable. That gets you a really nice sweet spot.

You know what restaurants learned how to do? And it completely changed everything for them is, if for any reason you need to cancel, they actually ask them, Can you agree? And they ask them to agree that they'll... So they vocally say, Yes, I'll call you. And this is a Robert Chetigny influence thing, where they figured out, if you ask the client, Will you call us if you need to cancel for any reason? And you get the yes, that little phrase at the end. It's no big deal. Would you just do us a favor? Because literally, they have room for other reservations that way. Is that part of your script?

Yeah. We do a slightly different variation on it. We literally finish off with that, but we actually proceed it with a little bit of I'm Jewish, so we got to throw in a little Jewish guilt in there. So I channel my mother when I do this part. So it says, right before we say goodbye, we always say, Hey, now, by the way, our on the blank experts, our HVAC experts, roofing experts, our experts are all taking time away from their families to come down to your home tomorrow at 2: 00. So I just want to make sure that you can be there for that time so that they don't waste an important trip where they otherwise could have been with their families. Yeah, now that's genius. Yeah, and that's now the, oh, shit, that would stink if I left this guy hanging.

So what do you hate about solar? What do you love about it?

Oh, God. You had to take me down that path, did you? Solar, actually, I do love Solar. I think solar, in a nutshell, is a fantastic concept. There's nothing wrong with solar itself. Solar has just been butchered with no regulation, no licensing, no nothing. People were just going apeshit bananas with it. You can't be surprised. Of course, that would happen. We're getting 21-year-old guys who were just coming out of high school, actually, even teenagers coming to high school, door-knocking their way and closing seven, eight, $10,000 deals, sometimes more than that, straight out of high school. So yeah, that'll ruin your brain real fast. It'll turn you to mush. So they start making some pretty unethical decisions. Unfortunately, solar is a really easy thing It's a really easy industry to scam people.

It's like merchant services.

It's really easy because it's such an elusive thing. No one knows how it's priced. It's very difficult to explain the pricing in solar. It's not like a garage door repair. It's like, I get it, 150 bucks, right? It's easy. Solar is really complicated and really convoluted. So it's very easy to disguise a scam inside of all that convoluted, inside of those convoluted numbers. And that's what was happening. And so now it's going through a major, major shakedown. There's nothing illegal about it. There's nothing unethical about it. It's just not the right thing to do. And it was going to result in an implosion eventually. And now here we are.

And then the other thing about it is most of the finance companies want to charge 20 % minimum off the top.

Minimum got some of them. Some of them got up to almost 40 It was absolutely disgusting what they were doing.

And a lot of them don't like to work on anything door to door now. I mean, literally, whether it's water quality, you know what I mean? It's getting a bad rap. So HVAC, what didn't you When you're talking about HVAC that you're like, I need to switch to solar?

Oh, I loved HVAC. It's just I was with a partner. He was a technician. He was the wrench turner guy, and I was the white collar dude, and he had health issues. He literally suffered three different heart attacks in the course of a couple of months. And so we ended up having to sell our company, and I would love to have stayed in it. We were doing incredibly well. It was a brilliant industry. I always tell people, if there are debate, people come to me and ask, Hey, should I go to this or this? I'm like, Yes, HVAC. If you can understand the technical side of it, 100% HVAC. But there's a lot to know. It's a complex industry.

So tell me a little bit about the cigar business.

Man, I've just been doing it for... That's my first business ever. I was 24 years old when I got in the cigar business, so I still have a wholesale It's a cigar company. I don't have to manage it anymore day to day, thankfully. So I don't have to pay too much attention to it, but I got into the cigar business. It's my first business I got into when I was 24 years old. I had just gotten married. I had no money to... No, you know what I had? I had 5,000 $1,000 that I got as a bar mitzvah check. Yeah. I swear to God, when I was 13 years old, I had 5,000 bucks still put aside somewhere. And I told my wife, I was like, Hey, let's take that 5,000 bucks and let's take the money that we get from This wedding, if we give us any money, this is my first wife, let's take that money and let's put it towards this business. And she's like, I think you're insane, but I'll trust you. And lo and behold, man, that thing blew up. And we opened it up in November of 2001, and did This business just took off.

It was stupid. It was like a kiosk in a mall. It was a cigar kiosk in a mall, and it took off. It did insane money. Insane money. I was like, pinching myself like, How the hell is this possible? I was 24 years old. I didn't know shit.

That's like a lifestyle business. What What's the difference between home service and that type of... What do you have to be good at to do that?

The cigar business. What do you have to be good at? You have to love the... It's a passion thing. It's pure, like you said, it's a lifestyle. It's a passion thing. You have to be really passionate for it. I couldn't do it again. If you asked me if I wanted to get back into it, no, I would not get back into it. I owned a cigar bar for 15 years, a really upscale, super nice cigar bar for 15 years. The day it shut down, I was the happiest man on Earth. I was so burned out of that I was so glad to be out of it. So I would never get back into it ever again.

That's interesting. Every influencer, mega influencer, seems like they're going into their own liquor, like their own vodka, their own tequila.

Yeah, which is hilarious because now you've seen that in this country, this is the lowest consumption of alcohol. No one's drinking. No one's drinking. I went out last night with my accountant. He lives here in Phoenix. We went out and had a cigar. I hadn't had a cigar in six months. I I had three drinks. I woke up this morning feeling like I had partied until 5: 00 AM, and I was like, I had three drinks last night. What is wrong with me?

You know it's crazy because a lot of the bars are struggling right now, too. I don't know why do you think that is? Is it because marijuana is legal?

Ozempic.

Is it Ozempic? Yeah.

I swear to God, man, the diet drugs are curbing everyone's... I can tell you because I'm on it. I'm happy to admit it. I'm on it. I lost 40 something pounds on it, so I have no problem admitting it. It's done amazing stuff, but it's completely crushed my craving for alcohol. That is interesting. No craving for alcohol whatsoever.

Yeah, there's peptides that do the same thing as Ozempic. Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Interesting. Wow. I talked to all my buddies that own bars, and they're like, Yeah, it's hard to sell bottle service. It used to be super easy. And that really just started in the last, I guess since... Well, Ozempic has been out for a long time, but the last year or so.

And then it's also just a thing with Gen Z, Gen Y, I'm guessing. Those generations are just like, They're He's just not drinking. My stepson, he's 17, and he just doesn't like alcohol. He's tried it a handful of times. We let him, we don't make a big deal out of it. He's like, I just don't like it. It's just gross. I'm like, I remember when I thought it was gross, too, when I was a kid, but I still drank it. No, he's like, And none of his friends really drink very much. One does, but the rest don't.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah.

I got a bunch of closing questions, but what have I not asked you that I should ask you?

Well, I think in terms of results, money and results, what is a call center going to do for my company in terms of my true cost per acquisition? I think that's the... If there is a mic drop moment or that would be it, what is the actual cost for me to get a roofing deal or an HVAC deal or something like that? I think that's really the ultimate proof of the pudding for people. And so what's so cool about call centers is because it's so affordable to them going and because the numbers are so stacked in your favor. For roofing, we're seeing the average roofing client across all my clients right now. My average, their average cost per acquisition or CAC or customer acquisition, whatever acronym you guys prefer out there with your crazy acronyms. Their average CPA for a roofing deal is like $400 or just under.

That's a lot of training. That's bananas. That goes into how well you do at the kitchen table.

Yes. But also getting the appointments to sit in the first place, for sure, absolutely. But getting them to the kitchen table, that's...

It's half the battle. It's half the battle. If not more.

If not more, yeah.

Interesting.

So I think that's where to me, like I said, that's the mic drop moment. It's like, okay, Peter, it sounds cool. I love what you're saying, but what is it actually going to cost me to get a blah, blah, blah deal? And like I said, for roofing, man, we're seeing it coming in at just under $400. Look, to put it in perspective, the average roof in the United States right now, their average CPA right now is anywhere from on the low end, a thousand bucks to more like $1,500, if they're being honest with themselves. A Google lead, just a paid search lead, not a booked appointment, just a lead. On average for a roofer, over 200 bucks.

It doesn't surprise me. Just the lead.

That we still got to turn it into an appointment. Then you got to turn that appointment into a sit, and then you got to turn that sit into a sale. There's a lot of possibility to degrade and ruin that.

So you think financing is the key? Just make it zero down, zero for a year, whatever. That's the key.

If you don't even have financing, what are you even doing with your life?

That's part of the pitch on the phone is you're scripting.

If it's not always... Well, yeah, and roof. And roof, but not HVAC.

You're trying to just get a tune up.

Yeah, we're just trying to get a tune up. But in everything else, almost everything else we pitch, yes, it's like, Hey, no money out of pocket. Hey, nothing down. Hey, It's all about just ease of use. Don't have to come out of pocket. This is easy.

If you had to credit one decision or turning point to your career that changed everything, what would it be?

Just not giving up, honestly. That sounds really corny. That may sound a little bit cheesy, but there were so many times when I wanted to throw in the towel because I had made some shitty decision or something wasn't going my way, and there was a lot of them. One of them was as recently as two and a half years ago, took a really bad gamble, a really bad risk in business that totally blew up in my face, almost cost me everything. Almost cost me my marriage, my house, my financial career, literally, almost everything. I was on the verge of about to lose everything. That was two and a half years ago. This year will be the best financial year of my entire life. So that was the 180-degrees turn. And it's because I didn't throw in the towel, it's because I didn't quit. It sounds corny, but it's true.

No, it is. With Scalify, do you think that this is still 5-10 years out? Where do you see it? Because this is the golden era. The next five years, baby boomers retiring, 10,000 a day, 12% of the money of business. Do you see this business around in 5-10 years, or where do you see the future going?

If I haven't sold it in six or seven years, which is a possibility, just depending on where it's at, I may not. I haven't decided. But if I don't sell the business in 5-10 years, it will be at $100 million a year. It'll be $100 million a year business within six or seven years.

And you don't think that technology, the world is going to change dramatically?

No, because like I said, the good news is we're always protected. In the same way that technicians in the home services space are protected from AI because you can't have a technician fix your garage door, you can't have a technician change- The AI, yeah. I'm sorry, AI. You can't have AI do those things. Those jobs It's always going to be safe. Same thing here because FTC will never allow AI to take over because it'll ruin everything. You may as well just shut down cold calling for life at that point. So this industry will always be protected, which is great news for a small business or even any size business owner, because now they know that cold calling will always be a potential avenue for them for lead generation.

I love it. Give me your number one book of all time, other than Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, The Bible, E-Mith. I mean, those are some big ones.

Two different books. One would be Built to Sell.

Oh, yeah. Built to Sell. Jonathan.

Built to Sell is a really great book because even if you never go to sell your business, which is fine. It's not saying that you have to. You need to learn to run your business so that it's not 100 % reliant on you. And there's a lot of other books that are similar in that vein. But Built to Sell, I thought, was just incredibly well written. And then this may It may sound a little cheesy, but $100 million offers from Alex Hormozy. $100 million offers. I've listened to that. I didn't read it. I listened to it. I listened to that book three times now because every time I listen to it, I'll get one new nugget out of it. And that one new nugget can change my... I've taken two or three nuggets out of that book that have completely changed my business overnight. So that book, I keep relistening to it. Every few months, I'll go back and I'll relisten to it again. I'm like, Oh, see, I missed something. And I'll go and I'll implement it.

Alex says his The number one guy that he follows is Robert Cittini. And if you read the book Influence or Getting the Yes, you'll learn a lot. I've worked really closely with Robert Cittini. He's 81 years old now, but his teachings on influence are the basics of Alex Ramosi's teachings. Definitely get the Robert Cittini in every one of his books. How do people reach out to you if they want to reach out?

Oh, that's easy. You can just go to my website. It's scalifyco. Com. So Scalify is spelled S-C-A-L-I-F-Y-C-O. Com. Scalifyco. Com.

I love it. And finally, just close the South, whatever's on your mind. Just give us a final thought.

I am just thankful to be here. I'm thankful. This has been a crazy whirlwind over the past two, three weeks. I've been all over this country. I was with Lance Bachman two weeks ago. I was with Bradley two weeks before that. Right after this, I'm heading out to a Tana Chidester studio, literally in an hour and a half. I'm over there. Two days after that, I'm with Chad Peterson here in Phoenix on his podcast. So I'm just incredibly thankful that the turn of events and the way life unfolds in front of you. And I'm here for it, and I'm blessed, and I'm thankful, and I couldn't just be a happier person right now. So I'm just happy. I'm all smiles, man. I'm all smiling.

It's great. And one thing I'll give you advice is personal brand is going to become so much more important in the next year, and it continues to be Bradley. All he did was jump on the podcast. In his office, he's like, Everyone here is an actor. We just put out content. And over time, that grows your influence. And the question is, do you have good influence to give? I look at this, I'm way smarter than any of these guys, but at the end of the day, I'm like, Wait a minute, what do I teach? And then I'm like, We're going to do 300 million. And a lot of people talk about that, their revenue. When they could throw a quarter of that into profit and put that in the bank, those are the people that really I look up to as guys that are bragging about the profitability and the EBITDA. And that's a big missing piece when I go on a podcast, you always hear people bragging about revenue. In fact, I used to do it.

So I have a question for you. Should I start a podcast? What would you say in your shoes on the other end of the table for someone where I'm at right now? Because I'll just tell you the challenges, which I'm sure you probably already know the answer. I don't expect it to take off anytime soon. That's really hard to get it to take off. Is it worth it just to be sitting across the table with people that you admire, people you want to do business with, people that you maybe otherwise wouldn't have had access to? Is it worth it for that? Is it worth it just for the networking aspect of it?

There you go. Well, I think all the above. I think a podcast, it's an older tool. I mean, I started mine almost 10 years ago. I would say a podcast is where you get started. I say writing a book is next, next level, but you don't just write a book. It's how you launch the book.

If you look at buy back your time.

Well, Hormozy killed it, but Dan Martell, as it came out of nowhere in the last months because of his book launch. The idea being when you write a book, can you get on 250 podcasts? I think if you do it, you got to create something like a group, even if it's a free group or even if you're charging 500 bucks a month. But the goal should be that you build a media team. You get the guy taking the videos, writing the content, helping you come up with great content, and the little fee you charge makes it self-propelling, so it continues to grow. Because influence is one of the most important things that I think there's going to be. In fact, I think my personal brand is more important than A1 garage or a service. I think it's way more important to attract the talent I want. I don't think people follow a company. I think they follow a person.

But let me ask you this question. If you were to ever want to sell your company, I don't know what your plan is, but if you were to ever want to sell your company, no investor, private equity, strategic or otherwise, no investor really wants to get into bed with a company that is all based on personal brand for obvious reason, because when you go away, so does everything else. How do you answer to that?

Well, no matter what, look, A1 and Tommy Melo build each other up. I've sold half the company. We're partners with PE, but the difference is, is they're going to want to tie me up. They're going to want to say, How much are you going to roll? Or they ruin the multiple. And the biggest thing is this is my biggest ROI. But the fact is, I learned I could grow away faster with PE with a blank checkbook, and they're great partners. But you build both up. The question is, would you go work for a company based on every leader, or do you go get behind the founder? And the fact is, people want to know. Every PE company wants to keep the founder on. They learned that lesson. In the last two years, that's founder base gets more money. You don't lose sight of the founder's vision. You know the biggest problem is they give these founders a ton of money, and then they go on to travel and do their things. Depending on the age of the person and how much more they got in the You know how much more they got in the tank to go.

But I think personal brand, like Dan Martell just came out with a hot sauce. But the influence is like why a company sells to you, too. So I think the major thing is when you build your influence behind a company, You make sure that the investors understand. If you think about it, they need you, too. Who wouldn't want to roll a lot of equity into their business? Why wouldn't you? What's a better ROI? If you could 3X the business in the next four years, why wouldn't you want to roll a lot?

I get it.

What do people say? You take some chips off the table, but why would anybody... Like Paul Kelly here, Parker & Sons, he's on his fifth turn.

Wow.

Every turn has been more than the last.

Yeah, of course.

I just don't understand the concept. You grow your personal brand, it attracts people. I think you need to do both.

So you're saying the personal brand actually helps with having more exit opportunities within the same?

Yeah, I think so. I also think that a lot of people, 48 people that are That in my training out of 52, followed me before they cared about A1.

Oh, I believe that. No, that part I totally understand. For me, it was just always trying to weigh out, can you sell a company when you're so closely attached to your name.

Gary Vee. Gary Vee sells companies. Kevin O'Leary now is invested in, I was just with them, I think, 44 companies. All these people know is you could build multiple brands, but the question is, A1 probably is going to get into and storage and front doors and windows and other things like that. I could use the personal brand to help grow the business. If I'm an investor or an LP, I'm going, that's the people we need to get involved with because they got an upper hand on everybody. There's two sides to think of it, but I think, look, I meet... You're here today, I met you. We're going to follow up on this stuff. I met Robert Chedidi, Dan Martell was in here, Jeremy Minor's in here. You get access to people, you see who's real, and you start to build a network. I don't need a lot of friends. I just need the right friends. You know what I mean? People that I can stand behind, and this is a great vehicle to get there. For some reason, once you make... Gary Vannerchuk alone just put out content about his wine a long, long time ago.

Now he charges anywhere from 500,000 to a willing to show up. Yeah. And by the way, I don't think it's all about the money. I was with Damon John. Okay, Damon John out of Shark Tank. He's like, I never get sick of being famous because people come to me that want to build the American dream, which is a business. So they want to change their family, generational wealth. So he's like, I don't get mad if somebody comes up to me at a restaurant and says, I'm trying to change my life. They don't ask me to sing my tune or what was my favorite movie, Top Gun or Maverick or whatever. He's like, They like me because they know how to turn around businesses. So anyways, Peter, I could talk to you all day, brother. This is great. I know you got a busy schedule. I appreciate you being here. Thank you. I appreciate. We're going to follow up.

Thanks, brother. Thank you.

Hey, leave a review. If you haven't left us a review, do me a favor. Leave a review. Share this with someone you care about. Thanks, guys. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage to our service. So if Service. If you want to learn the secret to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin. Com/podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.