The Best CSR, Dispatcher And Tech In The Company Was The Problem | Jim Leslie & Al Levi

Jim Leslie (0:00)

I speak in front of hundreds of contractors a year, and almost invariably in a Q&A or something, right? Somebody says, oh, I can't find good people, nobody wants to work. And I usually clap back with, no, they just don't want to work for you.

You don't pay right, and you got a rusty truck, you don't have, you just don't have an opportunity that the right people want to take advantage of. That's a you problem.

Tommy Mello (0:24)

I had a guy, I just interviewed a technician that's winning, and he goes, you know, your manager hated me when he met me. He said, I don't have what it takes, so I went to another company. They didn't buy my tools, they didn't have training, they had used trucks. He goes, I didn't want to be part of that company, so I studied up on the company, came back. I knew I was going to have to raise my level. All right, guys, welcome back to The Home Service Expert. I am joined by two of my closest friends, Al Levi and Jim Leslie, two guests today who are both incredibly important to me. Al Levi is the 7-Power Contractor. He has been my mentor for about nine years now, and his system has helped contractors across the US, Canada and Australia build businesses that run without them.

Jim Leslie is the president of Home Service Freedom, our mentorship community. He's a former CMO who helped build A1 into what it is today, and he's helping hundreds of contractors do the exact same thing we did here at A1. Both of them are speaking at Freedom 2026 this October at Mandalay Bay, alongside of Robert Herjavec, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Martha McSally, Terry Cruz, and a bunch of other badass panels that we're going to be having. So let's just jump right into it. Al, Jim, you've both been on the show before.

I think what I'm seeing out there is there's a lot of revenue happening. You know, there's a lot of things in the community that we talk about.

I still do a ton of shop tours. I'm out talking to a lot of contractors, big and small. And the revenue doesn't seem to be a problem, but very little profit. It's going back to the old revenue for vanity, profit for sanity. So number one, let's talk about that. Let's talk a little bit about freedom this year. Jim, why don't you go first?

Jim Leslie (2:09)

Yeah, I mean, I've probably been in 50 shops or better this year. And I think everybody's kind of in the same place, you know. Major disruptions in search and marketing, in customer acquisitions, cost cap to kind of go, you know, cost to go through the roof. And everybody's struggling right now. So I'd say marketing costs are like the number one thing. I've been kind of working with people on how to bring that down.

You know, how to find out where the customers have went, right?

Tommy Mello (2:42)

So you know, what's interesting about that, Jim, is a lot of people are talking about being more transparent with pricing, putting the pricing on the website.

Jim Leslie (2:52)

The LLMs have been driving that, right?

They recommend when they can find information on pricing, they're more likely to recommend you, right? And back in the day, Google's algorithm kind of, you know, pushed you a little more if you had some basic pricing data. But the LLMs now are just crazy in the depth of information they want in order to rank you. And, you know, I see companies with, you know, a ton of pricing data out there that you wouldn't have seen two, three years ago.

Tommy Mello (3:22)

Yeah, I agree with that. I agree that you should always have a starter pricing. You should have, like, options instead of ultimatums and be able to say, this is what a spring might start at. This is what a normal mini split might start at. But I wouldn't go too deep because then you let people know too much and then they're surprised by the price.

Jim Leslie (3:41)

Yeah, a lot of people are doing through case studies, right? So they, you know, almost like a blog post, but they publish this customer, the zip code, this is the work that we did, this was their all-in pricing. That's the kind of stuff that the LLMs are picking up.

Tommy Mello (3:57)

Al, what do you think? You know, you've been through this road, you know, now for decades and you've heard that people chase revenue more than profit.

Al Levi (4:06)

Well, one of the advantages of talking to an old person is, I have seen this and this is not new to me. It may be new to you. It's the rhythm of what goes on in this thing. And it's classic, when there's a boom, when I was out selling just like you did years ago, Tommy.