#383: How To Dig Ditches and Make a Game Out Of It w/ the LEGENDARY Dean Akers
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, ditch, company, talk, marketing companies, day, laborer, big, chucks, pipe, competition, tampa, thinking, fun, meeting, son, walk, tire, cost, job
SPEAKERS
Speaker 2, Law, Eric
Law Smith
0:00
AirPods our dean is a pretty tech savvy guy given the seven years old can I want you to go teach my parents how to use an iPhone?
0:23
I don't think I can ever teach your dad happy that.
Law Smith
0:27
My dad my dad slow playing everybody. He knows how he just likes being doted on by my mom. So he pretends how easy it doesn't know how texts work or not. And we lost to keep in the sense
Eric Readinger
0:43
it's recording but now
0:48
yeah
Law Smith
0:49
the participant is enabled closed captioning
0:55
must be otter. I have that on
Law Smith
0:59
my FaceTime. My kids are like, what are all these things popping up? By the way, if you ever FaceTime they have the thing where like a meme Azhar through what's called the little AI like, mascot him?
1:16
Why? Yeah,
Law Smith
1:17
it's pretty cool.
1:18
Can you hear me now? Yeah,
Law Smith
1:20
I mean, we're hearing before.
2
Speaker 2
1:22
Yeah, I was. I was what happened was I had my headset on. I'm at Hyde Park. It looks like I met one that looks like in the background. of why it is. Like I'm not wanting to feel things you know where they go to
Law Smith
1:35
numbering? Yeah, anybody that's listening on audio. It kind of looks like they're having a dream sequence or deed. Yeah, exactly. Like you came back to tell us some sage sagely advice. Which, which is why we have you on anyway. Yeah.
1:53
Why I gotta love the sage advice.
Law Smith
1:57
That people started calling you a legend yet when they introduce you.
2:02
Yeah. I'm a legend in my own. Mind law.
Law Smith
2:05
But that that
Eric Readinger
2:08
did you know but it happened to be the first one. I
Law Smith
2:11
see. No, it happens a lot. I've noticed this. Like this is my hypervigilance or Asperger's or whatever, but I noticed it on the comedy side and because older comics hate it, but I started hearing it more offstage kind of introductions. This guy's a legend in you know, in sales or whatever. It's supposed to be a compliment, but it becomes an insult to a lot of older people or
2
Speaker 2
2:39
it's, it's definitely not an insult. To me. But what happens when pupils don't even now say that but the general term they use he's an engine say Oh,
Law Smith
2:49
well, that's your that's your nomenclature that you've you've foisted on everybody. Well, yeah,
2:55
so they just they just mimic it back.
Law Smith
3:00
Nice. That's kind of branding. That's very, you know, I say this as a compliment very Trump of you. He could throw an adjective in front of anybody. He was campaigning as in that stuck like crazy, crooked Hillary and then he would just keep telling you he's a very good nickname. He has done it for 30 years where he's just like, I'm a great businessman. And there's a lot of people are like yeah, he's really good at this Grayson is man, I just heard somebody say it and you're looking at that you look at a stretch, baby, you know not so much but from the side. Let's talk about how much you love Biden know what actually,
2
Speaker 2
3:46
actually all kidding aside, I What Biden's done for businesses. Most people don't realize I've always done best in inflationary, disjointed times. So I'm actually I was gonna
Law Smith
4:01
say the last time we talked, you said this, this done
Eric Readinger
4:04
this before this. And I think we did it three times. And I think I said I had deja vu the second time. Wow.
Law Smith
4:11
This is getting really mad at Ray Java. All right, but it's worth repeating because obviously we don't exactly remember every that is old notes. Will Dean's like a jukebox. You can hit him with his is go to hit. He's got it. Read it. I could wake you up at night. And you talk about three circles of sales and everything. breakage, all that. So we cut you off. So in times where there's kind of what most people are having the fear base news looming recession, inflation going up, I guess at an exponential rate to a lot of people. I don't know we kind of avoid it like you do a little bit. But tell us why that's a good time for you. Well, because
2
Speaker 2
5:00
because what happens is is now when somebody moans about pricing, or all you do is you go yeah, you can say Biden, that's all you have to say. And then they go oh yeah, it's horrible. You know, the Ukrainian war, you can blame anything. And what it allows you to do is adjust pricing today where before when you suggested everybody go Why Why are you just in prices? Why are you going up on your price? Now you just somebody goes, Man, I just saw your price. You went up a bunch and I go, Yeah, my God. Like should
Eric Readinger
5:37
floodgates open the floodgates scape gonna let he's just gonna poke a hole in there. First.
2
Speaker 2
5:42
Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, most companies are more fearful of competition and pricing than is in fact the reality. And I was with a company today again, helping them if you can get them out of their own way, and they back into what they want to make. They generally find that competition is at least of their issue.
Law Smith
6:13
What do you think? They have that perception
2
Speaker 2
6:17
I don't know. Maybe since they were kids or something. Everybody says, Oh, that business. I'll tell you. I'll give you the other side of it. It's like when I was with a group of professionals today, and they're gone. You gotta work hard. I go, you guys have never worked hard. They go they go. Yeah, we work hard. I gotta no hard work is in August. Like when I had my construction company. And you're working in the ditch. 20 feet deep and it's raining and at 95 degrees out and your labor. That's hard work. You sitting in an office at a laptop on the 45th floor of a building. bitching about hard work is in it. And I have the CEO I have one co buddy he goes, I grind. I go you don't kidding me? I would have
Eric Readinger
7:09
loved to have seen that. Yeah. I've seen everybody
Law Smith
7:12
putting their place. As soon as I'm feeling that kind of pity for like, Damn, I've been doing a lot of hours sitting there. I do think of I think a roofers a lot. A little summer in Tampa, Florida. And thank God I'm not over pool construction. I did that meeting
Eric Readinger
7:28
two days Florida in the south.
Law Smith
7:32
But just the roof in the pool especially because you don't get to benefit after it's done. You just move to the next thing. You never get to swim in the pool. The owner of the house talk to the owner the house doesn't go he did a great job taking you to a couple laps or just barbecue for you guys like that. Never
2
Speaker 2
7:49
bring your family bring your family over. Yeah. That's That's hard work. Again, I had a construction company or my tire company. We did commercial tires. When a guy is sitting on the side of interstate on a summer afternoon changing the tires on an 18 Wheeler because they hit a pipe or something blew a tire out. And it's 99 degrees. He's got a truck Jack met the sun beating down on him. He's in a uniform. That's hard work
Eric Readinger
8:18
with cars flying by at 900 miles they are
8:20
exactly
Law Smith
8:22
I do find the guys that are more blue collar based in their in their professional career. Happier than the white collar people I know that's just kind of a weird broad stroke of opinion. But I think stuff there is something to working with your hands all day. That I don't know, good
Eric Readinger
8:43
luck just being in a shitty environment and doing something I want to do. And it smells bad and it's your own version of hell. Everybody should go through that at 1.0. Yeah, no.
2
Speaker 2
8:57
Well, I have a pretty large construction company. And I can tell you that the laborers, My guys are going yeah, they're laborers and I know they've been doing it 20 years. They're professionals. And when I engaged them and started empowering them. These guys that were just a hair over minimum wage. They love to win, and they would be highly productive. It was just insanely good. I think I told you that time when we gamified when I was in high school and I gamified those prisoners in production in that plant went up 20% And the owner of the plant was meat when my dad my dad needed this bad job because he wanted me to learn hard. And you know, and then when I took the job, and I've gamified it with these prisoners that were coming in, they had nothing to work for but gamifying it production went up 20% Because we had fun we didn't get any more money. The management didn't accolade we didn't care we gave a fight amongst each other who could tie their steel the fastest and for their bids the fastest and be done first and we bet a quarter a man so wouldn't big money. You did that in high school. Yeah. My dad my dad wanted to bust my ass when when I was in high school. So he got me a job working at a priest treasurer making those big beams for bridges because his friend owned it. And he wanted me to think art like how hard it was when the first week I was there. First day I was there bus pull that guess where the bus was from? Yeah. County Jail. Yeah, yeah. And so half the work preserved from jail. And so they were you know, I'm a 17 year old or whatever. They're just trying to, you know, treat me and I was the grunt and so I watched him pinching pennies and they would scream and holler and yell at each other. Like, I just kicked your ass, pinching pennies towards a wall. So I finally after a week or so I went. I went to my crew. I said, Hey, guys, you want to have some fun? And they said yeah, I said let's print the other three crews that we can tire steel. pour concrete and get our bed approved first. Quarter me you guys in they go broke. Yeah. And so we ended up doing it. Okay. And so about a month and a half later where every day everybody's competing world screaming Mollard time or steal money later on at the house and Mr. Young, the owner of the company who's my dad's best friend who got me this glorious, stupid ass job, you know, is sitting there with my dad in the backyard and he goes Darn, I don't know what's going on at my plant right now. My production is up over 25% School was but what happened was and what I learned that day, as a young man, when you learn to gamify your business and make it fun. People People are going to work for living they actually know about what they're worth, you know, but if they're having fun, they're gonna outproduce anybody mainly because they're having fun. And these guys had fun we gamified make sense. You also have
Eric Readinger
12:13
that competitiveness in their job.
Law Smith
12:15
We also treat it like a human I'm guessing weird in this scenario
2
Speaker 2
12:20
but I was I was a laborer that this when he when I did with my companies, I didn't my companies where I was CEO yet, but I was a freaking grunt labor 17 year old high school kid, you know with hair down to promise as long as you're as long today. So yeah, exactly. And these, these guys were prisoners. They had no motivation. They got the same pay. When they got on that bus. They didn't get to go out and bar up and around and went back to jail. And when I when I figured out gamifying when they love to win, and it wasn't about the money, we just had fun. And our production went up 25% Not on behalf of the company. But on behalf of us for our own fun.
Law Smith
13:05
We're kind of dancing around. I have been kind of thinking a lot about incentives and penalties, right. And that's kind of the biggest motivator with everything right? How do you do that? How do you get a corporate culture to do that? How do you gamify that, you know, like the corporate culture like we're a family and it's like, what what kind of family
Eric Readinger
13:33
at heart? It got to do what is your KPI? Alright, whoever had the highest one, boom. Well,
Law Smith
13:40
it's very obvious, right? It's like, you know, here are the tools go out and do it right because it's very incentive based, just by nature of the job typically.
2
Speaker 2
13:52
Well, I'll use I'll use my construction company because that's a Larry an example family of almost 400 People that are mostly laborers and operators, you know, they're, they're what I call that that work and work. In America. And what I would do is to three times a month, I would just show up to work on a crew as a laborer. In fact, the funniest thing was and then when I would show up, my best story was I was on a pipe cruise and we're 20 feet deep. And ditch North vifor On 22nd Street, lay and sanitary sewer. And I'm down there for the whole day. And it is hot. It's summer. And it was funny because my guys go, I go, I'm done. And I go, You know what's funny, and they all know me. It's not like Undercover Boss. And I'm a laborer. I'm helping them and they go, you know, it's funny. That city of Tampa guy that doesn't, you know, I'm CEO of the company, and one of my guys looks at me goes, What are you talking about? And I go, he doesn't know I'm the CEO. He goes, Yeah, he do. And I said, What makes you think he knows I'm the CEO, is because there's nobody in a pipe ditch with alligator boots and a go roll accident, somebody besides labor, and they all start laughing. Well, what happened was, is this particular instance I got, as I built trust, I said, What would you guys do to help your your job make it easier, better and faster? gamified they said we need a hydraulic pipe pole. What are your what is one of those did they go in hooks on the pipe? brings it home we can increase production? 20 plus percent? I go why wouldn't we have one? Everybody goes well, they say it costs too much money. I said how much one there's one cause and they go I bet that damn things $1,500 D. Well, my backhoe that was up there on top of the hill that was digging the ditch was a million dollars. The front end loader that was backfill was 300 grand the bulldozers 150 grand the two guys with Foreman shirts were probably at Grammys. I go, Are you kidding me? And they go No. So I come down in the ditch. I get the backhoe to come down and picks me up, bring up the top of the ditch. It's now two or three in the afternoon. I went to my foreman I go. Those guys have told me a hydraulic pipe puller would increase production and these guys will give me an A you know, I never thought about it probably would. I guess somebody better getting their happy answer to Trump right now and go get one. So they weren't gonna what happened was that traveled through the whole organization. Because what did the people in the ditch fit feel? What do you think they felt? There's hurt valuable. Yeah. Now you didn't hurt. And now we just started, the more people felt empowered. The crazier cool stuff. They admit they've been in the business 20 years and seen every stupid mistake on the planet. They knew what to do, but nobody would never comment to me was nobody ever listens to us.
Eric Readinger
16:52
That was their current role. It's often when I go back to
Law Smith
16:59
my game in high school.
17:01
I bet not for the same reason.
Law Smith
17:06
All guys school so you take that in there? Yeah, I'd work out you're off. You're about to say that. What is that? That means? Is that more come off again. Well, I you know, he made less his printer thought you don't know. He's a spry seven year old but, you know, it's very a AARP. And by the way for those on video watching. Thank you for dressing up for the podcast. I mean, we're tickled pink.
2
Speaker 2
17:34
Oh, you mean me? Yeah. What is my uniform every day? I wear a white shirt. You know that jeans and a black sport. Coat and then you want to see some really watch this. Look at these. Anybody wants a video on
Law Smith
17:48
his penis guys.
2
Speaker 2
17:49
Look at that. Oh, wow. You have
Eric Readinger
17:53
other boys all five your
Law Smith
17:54
son's headshots. On your low top Converse. I think those are
18:00
my chops. Yeah.
Law Smith
18:04
What I want to bear what place did Panama City did you get that done?
2
Speaker 2
18:09
No. You know what I've got my son Jordan for me. I've got 25 pairs of custom shots.
Law Smith
18:16
That's fun. Is that because that's how that those are the shoes y'all played in when you play basketball.
2
Speaker 2
18:22
Now what happened was obviously what happened was is my wife at the laundromat. She came home and we give the the extra clothes people leave in the laundry for two weeks. We give them the metropolit they're clean. We give them and what happened was she was dumping them out and sorting. And there were a pair of red chucks and I went there and those I had those in high schools I put the chunks on and I was downtown at my office and I'm sitting there at with my red chalk tone. And these two smokin hot 20 cent mural up chicks walked by and go those are hot. I went home and just start wearing chucks Jackson
Eric Readinger
18:59
Diane the shoes now. I decided
Law Smith
19:03
I was going the way of my wife told me they look good. They tells you no you're not wearing those or that looks good. That definitely took a turn.
2
Speaker 2
19:15
Yeah, but But even today, I've had today I've been at breakfast and stuff this morning. I've had people walk by me go oh my god those chucks are insane. Is that your family? I know those are my son's like those are the coolest shoes I've ever seen. So they create a conversation starter and I have 25 pairs I wear different pair every day. You know and they just great conversation starters.
Law Smith
19:40
It kind of looks like you're a big Kpop fan. If you didn't know their sons it looks like a boy band on the side. It's not because your kids are all good looking then so it's all you know. It kind of looks like I really miss in sync. This is my statement.
2
Speaker 2
19:55
I guarantee and when we all five go out or the six sevens go out somewhere. It's pretty crazy. Really.
Eric Readinger
20:03
Please elaborate.
Law Smith
20:05
Well I mean, previous episodes if anybody wants to go back, you did tell us how to pull people in pull women into you picking them up at a bar, but kind of not paying attention to them buying a drink and just kind of moving your body language that yeah, we're the walk by that's what it's called. Yeah. Which I think is a good metaphor for kind of branding and marketing for a lot of companies Nice. Well, you want to bring people into your, your business, what are you about and stuff but the power of no kind of thing. If you kind of go into what your business so for whatever reason, it will attract people I find that out. I did have a text for me. You know, we haven't had our breakfast in a while at Tahitian and we're all the ballers in Tampa but the last thing I was talking to you about was texting with you is you know, you said you're trying to stamp out the worst disease in the US right now. And it's self talk. Was that what it was? Well, I said monkey doubts because I nailed that that says
Eric Readinger
21:13
oh you don't even study for these podcasts.
Law Smith
21:19
And so what you know what, what I'm interested in what was bringing that on? You're already experiencing a lot more self talk out of people lately.
2
Speaker 2
21:29
Well, my experience at law you know, pretty much all my career. But it seems like right now there's a lot of there's a lot of noise. And you know, it's like the economy and all this other stuff. If we take care of what's within our own purview, generally most of this outside stuff that affect you, especially in the United States. I mean, you know, we'll let we'll let all the social media platforms and everything. I think I told you the story about my son, talking about the cigarettes of this generation, and that the average person is on social media two and a half hours a day. It's I think it was somewhere around I think it's 40 workweeks a year when you do the math on it. It's like stupid numbers. And yeah, so self talk, self talk. I run into people all the time, and they convince themselves and stuff that's just not true. And I'll ask them, I'll go. What made you think that like the competition, oh, it's competitive. I go What makes you think that Oh, I just No, no. What makes you think that and I've gone and Secret Shop their competitors. I did that to a company one time they told me it was their prices were way you know, they were had to be competitive. I went and secret shopped all their competitors. They were 15 to 20% cheaper than their competitors and they didn't even know it. Right,
Law Smith
22:55
you can you can create these. You can create these kind of anxiety goblins that because you never took that the kind of analytical step to go. Well, what is my competition instead of just going I know what this Goblin is in the closet under the bed it comes out at night. You know, like you can kind of create these these weird obstacles with if you can't, this is good self talk. Maybe I'll say like, sometimes I'll just say out loud by myself. Like, is that really a thing? Yeah, I haven't even looked at it. I should know. Look at it. You know, that kind of thing? Is that Is that what you're kind of experienced? We used to call it the fear of the unknown on this show a lot.
2
Speaker 2
23:40
I would say there's a couple of things. One is is is people talking about being overwhelmed and stuff. There's the one fact that I had a meeting today on it. There's only one thing that universally APR, which is what
Law Smith
23:53
everybody has the same time.
2
Speaker 2
23:56
Right? Same point for the day. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. So when people tell me all this noise, I actually and you know this law, I have a timer on my phone for 10 minutes. If you do 10 minutes a day at 60 hours a year, two minutes a day. I've written two books, I can tell you all the stuff I've got licenses and all kinds of different things. And I do it 10 minutes a day when the timer rings and it's 10 minutes is up. I quit working on and what happens is everybody can find 10 minutes a day and when you eliminate yourself talk and you put your goals together and determine who you want to be you just you just know you have the same 24 So quit making excuses. Right right.
Eric Readinger
24:42
Do you ever have a self talk team? I mean, I
2
Speaker 2
24:46
you know my age now my biggest self talk is you know, what can I do? You know, I try to help somebody every day for no pay that's on my mission. So my self talk, I I'm sure I do, but I don't really have it that I know of because I'm always self talking, what my possibilities are. So when I get up in the morning you know I know all the Circle K ladies in two counties because I get my minute mice polar
Law Smith
25:18
diabetes, you get a big ol or whatever circle every day,
2
Speaker 2
25:22
every day. Yeah. So what happens is, you know, I do all this stuff, and I just, it's fun. My passion now is helping people be the best versions of themselves. And whether I used to do that as employees in my company. And I would say that most of the people that were ever that I ever worked with today, the younger people are mega successful business owners that have hypergrowth their own companies having worked with me, and still reach out to me and all the time and texts and tell me man, we just hit 100 million or whatever. Thank you. I still follow the principles. So yeah, that's my satisfaction was
Eric Readinger
26:05
more like negative self talk. We should differentiate. Yeah, their self talk.
2
Speaker 2
26:11
Well, yeah, most people's errors are the biggest thing is misconception self talk, maybe not even never. It's like the old guy saying it's competitive. And then when I do the math, the three circles that you guys remember, and I go well you lose this much sales you don't even know about. So how can you tell me it's competitive when 90% of the sales you're not getting nobody even knows you exist?
Law Smith
26:34
Shut up. Right? You don't even know the market share or the TAM or you know any of that and like you basic competition research would, you know, a Google search,
Eric Readinger
26:48
look up stuff online, all of that ad for the right thing.
2
Speaker 2
26:52
And you and you would think you would think that this will be very fundamental, but I can't even tell you how many marketing companies I worked with. Were they the owners of the companies will say the marketing company will say what's your budget, and they'll go walk it's been taking random morning. Okay, we'll mark it for 10 grand, then they don't have the measurements for leads or whatever. So when I go in and start dissecting, I asked the marketing company, what's their cost of customer acquisition? They have well, I don't know, what's your cost per lead? I don't know what's their traffic costs? I don't know. So then I sit down with the owner and I said what's your cost per lead? I don't know what your cost back. They don't know. When we dissect that. That's where we have like ideal women's we spent $25,000 per month per location, like a debit we spent on 50 grand a month, people would go How can you spend that? Because I said we know exactly what our lead cost is our conversion cost and what our customer acquisition cost is, and it wasn't even 10% So we all we did, that's why we grew the company.
Law Smith
27:53
Yeah. I mean, specifically in this get I was literally researching last night for a friend. I'm trying to help out about this. And I go like here's your I pulled industry numbers. I go here's what cost per lead cost per acquisition. Here's your average revenue of a new patient. Here's your lifetime value on the on an average basis. And then I don't even know your capacity rate. Let's put it at what you call breakage. Right? And then what and then this is everything without referrals for your lifetime value. Which is a big part of their industry, and send it over to them. And I had to I had to write out a similar thing. budgets aren't dynamic or budgets are dynamic. Right? And eventually, the goal would be to get you to get a model set up to be able to flip that on and off. You know, if you've right, you can ramp it up or if you're at max, and there's a waiting list that's too long. We can we can tamp it down but
Eric Readinger
28:57
sometimes you can spend too much and get no return. It's a nice meeting middle. Yeah, yeah. But
2
Speaker 2
29:02
if you're if you're doing that, if you're spending and not seeing a result, you've got a whole big nother issue.
Law Smith
29:10
Yeah, and so maybe 10 years ago, I wouldn't feel competent to go hey, let's start I want I want to use you as a trial. I'm trying to make it as a use this as a case study eventually, but like, I'll go we'll I'll I'll do the minimum with this rate. But here's what I want to return. I want to have kind of a testimonial for new one that crush it for you on this. And by the way, I keep thinking about this. I finally kind of just revived my old agency. I keep thinking about you when I was talking to go on a while back here. Do you want to jail B? And so, you know, it's kind of split in time, like should I go full time somewhere? Or should I you know, that I was kind of doing half in half out and now it's kind of it's really come to fruition? I should have listened to you earlier. That's kind of really what I was getting to everything he told me it's like, Uh huh. And then it will take me like a couple of speed bumps or hiccups and I'll go I should just just listen from the get go.
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Outline
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What’s the deal with “Sage Advice”?
0:00
Biden’s always done best in inflationary times.
3:20
Working with your hands is hard work.
7:12
How do you get a corporate culture that’s fun and competitive?
11:14
What is a hydraulic pipe? -.
15:18
The power of self-talk and how to use it.
19:03
The fear of the unknown and the anxiety goblins.
22:55
Why you need to know your competition’s cost per lead.
26:34
Don’t get hung up on tactics. Find out who your customer is.
30:54
