Al Levi

Marketing to Pick Up Dollars, Not Dimes

By Al Levi / October 15, 2019 / 0 Comments

If you’ve been in the service contracting business for any length of time you know what it’s like when business slows down and money gets tight. And if you’re like most service contractors, marketing spend is usually the first thing to go!

My dad, Irving, called that “stepping over dollars to pick up dimes.”

Why? Because without marketing your phones are going to go dead and/or stay dead.

It might seem counter-intuitive but those slow times are actually the best times to be doing testimonial-based marketing, which I’ve seen work well not just for my own service contracting business but also for dozens of other contracting businesses ranging from plumbing, heating, cooling, electrical, roofing, garage door service—to name just a few.

To make sure the marketing of your contracting business hits the mark you’ll want to focus your time, energy and your money on three main drivers such as:

How to Gain Control of Your Business | The Service Hub Podcast

By Al Levi / October 15, 2019 / Comments Off

Are you ready to gain control of your business?

On Episode 10 of The Service Hub podcast, Al Levi shares with hosts Parker Williams and Trevor Hanson powerful ways to gain back control in your business through more efficient planning and goal setting, the creation of roles and manuals, as well as a handful of other tips on how to gain control and grow your business when you feel like you are at capacity.

Listen to Episode 10 on Apple Podcasts here.

Listen to Episode 10 on Spotify here.

The 7-Power Contractor (Part 2) | The Sharpest Tool Podcast

By Al Levi / October 15, 2019 / Comments Off

How can you run your business with Less Stress and More Success? The 7-Powers are key to achieving this.

On Part 2 of The Sharpest Tool podcast, Al Levi and host Josh Smith dive deeper into the 7-Powers that will help any contracting business achieve success… with less stress.

Listen to Part 2 here.

Actions Speak Louder than Words – Fix Your Own First

By Al Levi / October 8, 2019 / 0 Comments

“Do as I Say, Not as I Do” is a common refrain from a frustrated boss.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could say this and all your employees would do just this? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

If what you’re saying doesn’t match what you are doing, you’re busted.

The reason is all eyes are upon you all the time, and as the owner, you can’t hide. I understand that no one is perfect when it comes to everything they do as a leader, but the fact is your actions speak louder than your words.

Think of it this way: imagine your dad or mom are telling you as a young teenager that you have to quit smoking because it is dangerous to your health. The problem is they’re telling you this as the ashes are dropping off the cigarette dangling from their mouths.

You see it for what it is.

The 7-Power Contractor (Part 1) | The Sharpest Tool Podcast

By Al Levi / September 25, 2019 / Comments Off

How can you run your business with Less Stress and More Success? The 7-Powers are key to achieving this.

On Part 1 of The Sharpest Tool podcast, Al Levi and host Josh Smith discuss The 7-Power Contractor method that will help any contracting business achieve success… with less stress.

Listen to the episode here!

A Better Way to Say Goodbye to Low Performers

By Al Levi / September 17, 2019 / 0 Comments

Years ago, when I first entered the family business as the last brother in to what was then a 3rd generation service contracting business—now a 4th generation plumbing, heating, cooling and now electrical contracting business—my dad said to me, “You can no longer hire anyone until you prove you can fire someone the right way. Face it. You like hiring people. And who doesn’t? But you need to do both.”

Well, I didn’t like that message much, but I knew he was right. As an empathetic person I am able to put myself in another person’s shoes and see things from their perspective. And I could only imagine how bad it felt to get fired!

Our service contracting company was and still is a NYC Union Shop. When it came to employee relations that was both good and bad news. The good: there was formal process for disciplining and terminating employment. The bad: we were not consistently following the steps. (In our defense, they were not all that clear!)

The first few times I fired a bad employee they were genuinely surprised. Naturally, they wanted to unload their frustrations but I just wanted to get it over with so usually I cut them off. It went so badly a few times I’m lucky I didn’t get shot!

Something had to change. We had to figure out a “right” way to say goodbye to a bad employee. The answer was to create our own formal process, which we called “The Steps of Discipline.”

What to Do When Family is Fighting at Work

By Al Levi / September 3, 2019 / 0 Comments

The first thing to remember is that all companies act like families whether or not the people working together are related.

Someone is playing the role of Dad, Mom, Big Brother, and probably the Big Sister.

And very commonly in the home service business and contracting world, our businesses tend to be multi-generational, so it could be quite literally a family business acting this way.

Here’s the thing… what do you do when people are not getting along? In other words, how do you clear the air, and how do you keep it from escalating or spreading like wildfire throughout the company?

Here are 10 great tips from my own business career working with my dad and two older brothers and from helping clients who are and are not related with these very real issues that can destroy the company if not addressed quickly and in the right way:

How to Build a Business that Runs without You | The Site Shed Podcast

By Al Levi / August 28, 2019 / Comments Off

Ready for a business that can run without you? All businesses, no matter how big or small, need to create systems if they want to grow.

In The Site Shed’s podcast episode TSS210 named “How to Build a Business that Runs without You,” Al Levi joins host Matt Jones to discuss why operating manuals and organizational charts are fundamental to creating a business that runs without you.

You can check out the episode here!

Who Goes to Training and Seminars? Probably Just You…

By Al Levi / August 6, 2019 / 0 Comments

In the beginning of my work career, just my brother, Richie, and I attended advanced training at my company. After all, we were never going to leave the company, unlike the possibility that one of our employees might get this costly training and then leave us.

Did I say we were smart or thinking ahead at this point in our lives?… No!

What happened is when Richie and I went to Fireye® controls training in the Boston area, as an example, we were the only ones who would then be capable of handling the big commercial boilers when the client would call. Lucky us!

Nope, not really.

That’s because we had commercial and industrial accounts that operated 24/7/365, and despite our having four rotating crews of 4 Techs on until 2 AM, they would get to a job like this and have to call… you guessed it… Al or Richie.

Well, we hated that. Especially when they called us in the middle of the night or over the weekend. They were on a paid shift, mind you, and not On-Call. But they were stuck, and we blamed them for not knowing what to do.

Remember, it was our decision to not send them to the same training we had gone to.

Well, Richie and I may not have been forward thinking about this policy, but we were not dumb, and we quickly woke up to the reality that only by sending our Techs to the same training and seminars we attended could they ever be as effective as they needed to be.

No Such Thing as Accidental Company Culture

By Al Levi / July 2, 2019 / 0 Comments

One of the greatest lessons I got came along very early in my consulting career. I was very fortunate to work with the great Steve Lowry of Lowry Services in Pennsylvania.

Steve shared with me one day as we were pretty far along in our scope of work that other companies he competed with could copy everything he does from his truck design, his marketing, and a whole lot more, but they could never copy his company’s culture.

He was not bragging.

Steve told me one day as we were wrapping up work on one of the staffing programs, “Al, the better I treat my employees, the better they treat my customers and the more successful I have become. When they make customers incredibly happy and feel like they are treated well, they are all in with doing business with my company for life.”Company culture has to be cultivated in every transaction and interaction. It’s either getting better or its getting worse. There is no standing still. It takes work and that work is always ongoing.

What can you do to make company culture better at your company?

Here are just five ways to get you started on a better path based upon the great company cultures I’ve seen and helped make better.