Episode #1 – Bringing the Best You with Idan Shpizear

 

Idan Shpizear began 911 Restoration with nothing but a Volvo and a carpet cleaner that barely fit in the backseat. Recently, he’s launched a community focused on helping people to Get Out of the Truck! On today’s show, he sits down with Christine McKay to talk about how knowing his numbers helped him ‘Get out of the Truck‘ and successfully negotiate with his first franchisees and build a business with more than 100 locations.  Today, Idan’s franchise model thrives with his company’s famous orange trucks parked outside homes all across America. Idan also shares a bit about his books, Get Out of the Truck: Build the Business You Always Dreamed About and Get Out of the Truck: How to Transform Your Mindset and Become a Self-Made Success Story. Tune in to this episode to hear more about how to scale your business.  

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Knowing Your Numbers & Bringing The Best You with Idan Shpizear

Idan, it’s great to see you. We had such a great conversation before. Welcome to In The Venn Zone, where we work with entrepreneurs and we try to show entrepreneurs new ways of negotiating in their business, helping them be successful at a different level. Bringing negotiation to them when they often don’t have the ability to go out and do negotiation training and all that, especially if they’re competing with bigger companies and stuff. I am excited to have you here.

Let me tell you a little bit about Idan. Idan began 911 Restoration with nothing but a Volvo and a carpet cleaner that barely fit in the backseat. His company’s famous orange trucks are parked outside of homes all across America and Canada. Shpizear is now a thought leader in restoration and business, with a nationwide company, which ranks amongst the top franchises in the entire United States. That is an amazing accomplishment. I’m excited to learn more about that. Never forgetting his own humble beginnings, he eagerly shares his hard-earned understanding of what it takes to make the move from tradesperson to successful entrepreneur. As a mentor, author and sought-after speaker, Shpizear has transformed countless small struggling businesses into thriving enterprises with his unique perspective and drive. Idan, I’m glad to have you here.

I’m happy to be here. Thank you.

Tell us a little bit more about that story with the Volvo and all that. How did you get here? You are in the Los Angeles area. 

I’m originally from Israel. I finished my service in the Israeli Army and I have no interest in going into college. I heard the story in Israel that in America, money grows on the trees. You go to Los Angeles, we watch all these videos and all this American dream. We saved a little bit of money. We came here with about $1,500. Through people that we met, we got hired to start doing carpet cleaning. We did that for about a year, then we learned about the restoration industry. What we learned about the restoration industry is, first of all, it’s a great industry. We are actually there helping people, but the customer experience that I experienced and saw working with other companies wasn’t where I believe it should be.

Going through the carpet cleaning into the restoration, we’re thinking how can we go into that industry, but then emphasize the emotional stress that the homeowner goes through. This is how we came up with Fresh Start. Fresh Start is more of an attitude, more of a culture of who we want to be as a company for other people within the organization and our clients, and of course, our franchisees. The way we grew fast as a restoration company is we learn about online lead generation in 2003, 2004. When we started, we were one of the only restoration company that advertises online here in the LA area.

You guys were early to that game.

It started because I was sitting at dinner and I heard somebody talking about Google. He shared a story with his friends, “I put an ad on Google. I started generating calls,” and I’m like, “Google, calls, ads. I need to go back home now and research how this thing works.”

There's a difference between growing your business and scaling your business. Click To Tweet

You told me, you went home that night and you did your first Google Ad. That was your initiative in getting that going.

We hear something and we were like, “We have to try this.” My passion was always around strategy and marketing. I didn’t want to grow organically in a sense of just customer experience and customer service. I knew it’s very important, but I want to be able to grow a lot faster. We figure out how to generate a lead through Google and other means. When Katrina happened in 2005, 2006, I went out there at that time with a lot of trucks, a lot of equipment. I went out there with devastation, but I had a chance to interact with a lot of business owners.

What I saw is many people are good at the trade that they are in. They understand how the blowers work, how to cut the dry walls, how to set up the dehumidifiers but nobody talks about, “How do I scale the business? Where do I generate more leads?” I’ve been in the country for years. My company is doing about $3 million-plus. I’m meeting with people that have been in the industry for 10, 15 years, and then doing about $400,000 or $500,000. I thought, “I will develop a system and I can help these guys,” because these are great guys. They care about their clients. “I can help them get to where they want to get.” That’s what triggered the idea of a franchise and start marketing all around the US.

It also triggered the book, Get Out of the Truck: Build the Business You Always Dreamed About. After Idan and I talked, I went and bought his book right away. I’ve got all these little earmarks in it, though he doesn’t know that my future son-in-law is going to get a copy of this book. Your message is so important. In Venn Negotiation, we’re passionate about helping small businesses negotiate more effectively and more profitably. What I want to talk about is that decision that you made to move from being your own business, doing your own thing, $3 million, you’re down in Katrina, you’re seeing what you see there in terms of the tradespeople not growing a business, not scaling their business. In your book, you actually make a comment about, “There’s a difference between growing your business and scaling your business.” I thought that was fascinating. Tell me about how you made that decision to move from being your own entity to creating a franchise model.

I didn’t think so much about a franchise. I thought more, “What is our strength as a company and what am I passionate about?” I got it from growing on the farm and working with my dad and seeing a lot of people working hard, and they’re not getting to where they want to get. It’s deep in me. When I’m out in Katrina and I’m seeing all these great guys that are not scaling it and I’m thinking, “My strength is more of the vision marketing strategy. How can I use my strength with the relationship that I develop with other people in the industry? How can we create a win-win situation?” It’s not that I only can help them. When I interact with other people that have been in the restoration industry for many years, there’s so much that I can learn from them about the trade itself, how to set up the truck, what equipment to buy, how to dry the house faster. This wasn’t my strength. My passion was strategy, marketing, growth and scaling the business. I said, “How can we have the win-win approach here? I’m going to help them with their weakness and now they’re going to help me build a great organization by bringing together both sides. The trade itself and the ability to scale the business.”

You talk in the book about the process and the systemization. I have an amazing technology person who helps me automate all things. She will love to hear me talk about this. She will feel like a proud mom. The ability to systemize things so that it’s repeatable, the knowledge is transferrable, it makes it so much easier. From a franchise perspective, that gives you something that’s sellable and marketable. I don’t have to know exactly how to set up the truck and I have somebody tell me what equipment to buy. I have taken the guesswork out of that for the franchisee.

For a business owner, and we talked about it in our first call, is understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and believe. The first negotiation that we do is with ourselves, not with other people. If we believe in ourselves and our vision, and we can be honest with ourselves to say, “This is my strength. I am not going to waste another twenty years of my life trying to work on my weaknesses. I’m going to start building a team around me.” By being very clear on my strength, my passion, my vision, then you start partnering up. It is the same thing that we partner up with franchisees. In the system that we have now, I have a lot of great people around me. I have people that their strength is the system. I have people that their strengths are marketing and coaching. It’s thinking, “I have a long-term thinking, I believe in myself, I believe in my vision. I believe in the people that I have around me.” The core in everything that we approach is that a win-win situation.

Let’s talk a little bit about that because when I speak on stage, I tell people, “The hardest negotiation is a negotiation that happens between our ears.” Idan is one of the few people who have actually commented on that. When he and I first talked, we talked for quite a bit about that. At the point at which you made the decision to become a franchise, and you were getting ready to engage with your first prospective franchisee, what was the negotiation like in your head? I asked that question in part because one of the great things that you talk about in your book, Get Out of the Truck, is you talk about the importance of knowing your numbers. You have a whole chapter on understanding the numbers and planning forward and all of those things. Talk a little bit about how that negotiation happened in your head before you even engaged with the prospective franchisee.

 

Knowing the numbers was a huge part of starting and expanding into a franchise. We knew what we’re able to do in a sense of generating leads and helping somebody be successful. We knew if I’m taking an area with X amount of people and I’ll generate X amount of leads, and I keep the conversion at a certain number, I know that person is going to be successful. Are they sending the numbers? Are they sending the profit of the business? Are they sending revenues or are they sending sales? In my first negotiation, I don’t have a franchise yet, I don’t have a brand name. It’s just me with my team and my success here in LA.

When I brought somebody, it wasn’t about how much he’s going to pay me as a franchisee. It wasn’t about how much he’s going to pay me for the equipment. It was all about proving the concept again and again. I knew that if I have the right guy with the right mindset and I can work with them, and coaching and collaborate with them, I didn’t care about the franchise fee or how much he’s going to pay for the equipment. My first three franchisees, I shipped them the equipment and I told them, “Don’t worry about paying me. Pay me in the next twelve months.” The franchise fee was not even an issue for me because I knew that as long as I can prove the concept and work my numbers because this is what I’ve been doing in LA now years before. As long as I knew the numbers and I believed in my vision, it wasn’t about negotiating, “Are you going to going to pay me $15,000 or $12,000?” It wasn’t important. This is where you stay super focused on your vision.

That’s fascinating because a lot of people are making that transition from doing their own thing to having a franchise. They’re focusing on the franchise fees and the royalties that they’re going to get off on the backend of it. I have a staffing model that I’ve used. It’s my own little staffing model. I call it AFT, Attitude, Fit and Teachability. If somebody has a great attitude, a great mindset, if somebody is a fit like culturally, we have common values and the things that are important to us are common with each other and they’re teachable. The rest of it then is going to come.

One of the things for you as a criterion of the negotiation was that you had somebody who was a prospective franchisee, and we’ll call it AFT for now, who fit in that category, who hit all those marks and you had such confidence in the numbers because you’ve proven your numbers over time. You knew that if you had those right people, then your ability to get the numbers is going to come. It was almost an automatic, it was a foregone conclusion. That gave you the ability to be strong in your position as you’re negotiating with them and able to push the franchise fee out over time and then pay it over time. The value of the deal wasn’t in the franchise fee for you I assume. Tell us more about that. 

It’s still that now. When you have a long-term approach, it’s not about, “How much am I going to make now?” The number has to work. It’s not a nonprofit. You have employees, you need to make a profit, everything needs to work. When you stay focused on what’s important in the business, everything becomes so much easier. For me, it’s not about, “Do I sold a franchise for 15 or 10?” and it’s the same thing now. We’re not playing with the franchise fees, we’re not playing with royalties. We’re not negotiating on the things that we know that make people successful over a long period of time. For example, our franchisees have to do types of marketing or buying a certain type of equipment or hire a certain type of people or even office. I know these key areas of the business will be a huge part of our franchisee’s success. This is a much bigger focus for us as a company than anything else. I know that this is what’s going to make him successful over a long period of time.

When you were negotiating with your first few franchisees, did they give you pushback on any of those things? Were there things that they disagreed with you on? 

There was a lot of worry at the beginning of their side. I try to minimize their costs, getting into the business as much as I can. To remove that part of the worry. I help them as much as I can because I believe in my system and I know that the number is going to work out. I know that the people that I work with are the people that will be great for our organization. The Fresh Start, the attitude, everything was there.

When we do round two, we’ll be interviewing somebody who is a franchisee, not one of Idan’s franchisees, but we will be interviewing a trades franchisee so that we get that perspective. It’s like, “I’m coming into a new franchise. What does that look like? What do I care about?” I’m assuming because I haven’t interviewed that person yet, that one of the big concerns for them is cashflow and their ability to recover their investment and have a short ROI, Return on Investment, on that. I know the numbers piece is important to you. In your experience for people in the trades, is that a concept that they need to be more aware of, that they need to think more about as they’re getting into a franchise or growing their business overall?

The first negotiation that we do is with ourselves, not with other people. Click To Tweet

Absolutely. One of the systems that we develop internally, we call it the scorecard coaching. We create a scorecard for every franchisee that shows the amount of leads you received, conversion, the average per job, total sales. Also, we track the source of leads, how many leads that it generates from national accounts, from online lead generation and for local business development. We keep putting the numbers in front of them. We have a conversation because this is how you get out of the truck. When you start looking at your business and you understand the numbers, the processes and the system, you make better decisions. Our goal as a company is I don’t want to see my franchisees stuck in the truck for another ten years. My goal for them is to live a successful life financially and find their fulfillment in the business.

You have to go through this process because if you keep ignoring numbers and he doesn’t understand conversion and what’s going on, they’re making a decision that is wrong. One example is if they don’t know how many leads they even got for a month and their sales are very low, they automatically will blame the marketing side of it. Not thinking about the process of, “Who answered the phone? Who is the salesperson that went out there? What is the conversion? What’s the average per job?” Maybe it’s not even a sales problem, maybe it’s a collection problem.

In our business, sometimes the collection can be 30 to 90 days. Sometimes you can have a great month, you close 4 or 5, 10 big jobs. You spend a lot of money on getting the laborers and getting the job done but you collected a very low amount this month. If you’re not looking at the data, you can assume, “This is a bad month. I’m not doing good. I’m working so hard. I’m getting home. My wife wants to go on vacation, I cannot afford it. Everything is terrible.” It’s not that everything is terrible, it’s just that you stopped paying attention to the collection because you were too busy out in the field. If you don’t know the numbers and you don’t look at your business and system, the decision that you’re going to make can kill the business now, because you’re going to come back to us and say, “I want to stop the marketing now.” It’s not a marketing issue. It’s a collection issue.

It’s interesting because one of the things that I talk about when I’m teaching negotiation to people is that your ability, your knowledge, or lack thereof of your numbers will drive your success in your negotiation. We have to understand what we want in every negotiation down to, as my grandmother always said, “The gnat’s ass level details,” the teeniest tiny details. We need to not only understand what we want down to a detail level, but we need to understand why we want it. That gives us the ability to say, “This is important to me and this is why it’s important to me.”

The reason why it’s important to have as much information as possible and as much detail on that list as possible, and I find this in my future son-in-law who is a union electrician out in Massachusetts, Tim. He’s amazing. I also grew up on a farm in North Central Montana. I was surrounded by people who worked in the trades industry and as well as Cowboys, ranchers and farmers. I saw some of the same things that you talk about. One of the things is that when we don’t take a look at that longer list, we then giving away things in a negotiation that are important things in exchange for things that are unimportant to us. You want to do the opposite. What’s not important to you may actually be important to your counterpart. In your negotiation with your franchisees, have you had seen some of that where something that is important to you is at the end of the day, not terribly important to your franchisees, which has been an easy point of negotiation for you?

Yes. For example, their level of marketing that they need to do in the area, so they will try to negotiate me, holding them accountable, to do local marketing or do certain things for online lead generation. I know from doing it for many years and working with 100-plus franchisees, this is a key for their success in the business. They will negotiate with me on that. Data will not give away because I know it’s a huge part of their success. The other area of the business, for example, if there are other fees or things that are not that important, I’ll be happy to give them that.

What I do is I’m using the things that I’m happy to be more lenient. Sometimes it’s there so I can use it. There are certain things that I don’t want to give. From their approach, they’re thinking about in one way, they’re buying into the franchise because they believe in the franchise, they believe in the brand and they want to be successful as the other many franchisees that they talk to. They’re focusing more on, “How much I need to pay now?” more than, “How can I be successful in the next ten years?”

That’s something you and I talked quite a bit about on our first call, which was one of the things that I was excited to have Idan on the show for because you have a very much of a long-term perspective. As I said, we’re still finding the counterpart for this negotiation. I don’t know yet who it’s going to be. One of the things that we talked about is that sometimes you encounter people who are very short-term negotiators. They negotiate specifically for what’s here, what’s now, and it’s all about them winning at the moment. My impression having talked to you now for a while on our first call is that we had such great call back then. One of my impressions of you is that if you encountered somebody who had that mentality, that might be somebody that you just walked away from in a negotiation.

 

Absolutely because I know it’s not going to work long-term. I know that person with a short-term mentality and not saying that he believed in the system, but somewhere is very stuck in his own way, it’s going to give a hard time to my support team. It’s going to drive everybody crazy. For him, it’s going to be all about, “What am I getting now?” It’s all about relationships and success over time. I’m happy to walk away. It’s the right thing to do. It’s not like I’m selling a car that is going to be a one-time transaction, you’ve got the car, good luck, enjoy the car. We need to be successful together over a long period of time. I don’t want to work with people who are hard to work with. They don’t understand the value of a relationship. They don’t have a long-term mentality of vision of where they want to be. It’s only about, “How much I’m paying you today and how much am I going to get tomorrow?” Then I’m happy to walk away.

You actually said something that was amazing. A lot of small businesses don’t pay enough attention to this, “People get focused on the revenue that I’m going to get today or the costs that I’m going to spend today.” They get focused on the number. I talk a lot about how price, whether you’re buying or whether you’re selling, should be an output of the negotiation, not an input into the negotiation. You referenced how working with somebody who’s difficult, if you had a difficult franchisee who was in my vernacular, I have people take a negotiation quiz and they can access that at, VennNegotiation.com. You can learn your default negotiation style.

The thing that’s interesting about it is that the champion style is somebody who’s a champion for him or herself. Negotiation is about a battlefield and they go into it armed and armored. It’s like they’re going to win at all costs. What Idan is describing is an example where if you are that style, it can cost you opportunities because of the additional costs that it would have incurred for his team, whether it’s more time for his team to spend with that particular individual. If you have a number of those champion styles, you might end up having a higher turnover on your team. To the audience, your negotiation style absolutely influences your counterpart’s ability and willingness to do business with you. It’s something to keep in mind because it is hindering you, even if you don’t necessarily think it is.

I used to hear other business owners that teach and share their knowledge many years ago when I started. Sometimes the thought is, “They’re doing good now. This is why they don’t have to negotiate and they have this win-win mentality and long-term thinking.” This is not the case. When the core of the negotiation is only, “How much money I’m going to make today,” even if you’re at the beginning of your journey and you’re starting now, it’s going to be so good for you to change your mindset and not chase money. Chase strong, good relationship that will work overtime. I’m sure some people that are going to read this will say, “He’s there already, so he’s letting himself choose and pick and all that.” No, as soon as you get that mindset, you’re going to do a lot better much faster.

I tell people, “Stop doing business with bullies.” Don’t waste your time. I was on a podcast and the guy who was interviewing me, and I’m literally mimicking his body, he’s like, “How could you talk about negotiation? It’s so combative.” He curled up and got into the super protective position. He clearly has dealt with a lot of bullies and I’m like, “Stop doing that.” There are a lot of nice people in the world to do business with. You don’t need to do business with the bullies. There are only about 10% of negotiators who fall into that category. Ninety percent of the rest of us are actually pretty okay. Based on the negotiation that you did when you were doing your first franchisee, tell me about a time when you had a negotiation that didn’t go well with a prospective franchisee?

It’s only when we get a very strong pushback from that side that they want to change everything. In one way, they’re saying, “We want to buy into the system. We believe in what you guys do, but I’m going to come in and I’m going to do it my way.” An example of that that ended up not working well for us is when we had the sense that he’s saying things that he doesn’t mean it, he’s saying beautiful things but then he negotiated the small, tiny thing of the agreement. Whenever we didn’t go with our guts as well, we said, “He’s saying the right things maybe we’re going to be able to change it over time. Let’s maybe give it a try,” and you ended up going nowhere. Don’t negotiate with bullets. When people come in and they’re trying to push and do it their way and you believe in your system, it’s so much better to walk away. When you know that you can work with somebody, when you know that this person has the right attitude, the right person to work with, then you can build on top of it. When you hit the wall, walk away.

I was doing some consulting work with a client and they were like, “These guys are really difficult in the negotiation. They were jackasses.” I’m like, “Why did you do business with them?” If they’re pains in the neck when you’re negotiating, they’re going to be worse once you have a deal with them because then they think that you’re captive. Literally, just walk away. At Harvard Business School, they call that knowing your BATNA. What I love about this conversation is that you’ve proven that BATNA isn’t just about money. It can be about intangible things.

One of the big things that you look at in your negotiation is that individual, “What’s that individual like? How easy is that person going to be to work with? Is that person going to fit into our ecosystem? Is that person willing to learn and grow with us?” That’s something that many people don’t think about. When I look for guests for the show, we have a lot of people who say, “I don’t negotiate because all they’re thinking about is dollars.” You negotiate all the time. It’s not just dollars as an output. I didn’t know if you had anything that you wanted to give away to our audience or anything? Can you tell the audience how to get in touch with you? That would be great.

Change your mindset and don’t chase money. Chase strong, good relationship that will work over time. Click To Tweet

I’m mostly active on LinkedIn, Idan Shpizear. I’m trying to keep up. I’m writing about 2 or 3 articles a month that is being posted in many places. I started that process of sharing more information with my franchisees, helping them going through the business process and all that. At one point I said, “Why don’t I just share it?” A lot of it has been posted on LinkedIn. The book, Get Out of the Truck, is out. I’m working on other books, Get Out of the Truck Now, mainly on the mindset with my experience. The one thing that every person needs to work on is his own mindset. I also have the same long-term approach to mindset.

A lot of people are trying to change everything in one month and then going through the cycle of trying and failing. Instead of trying to change everything in 30 days, you should do small changes over a long period of time. This is where we see people win big time. It is the compounding effect. If I introduced a new habit, new thoughts, a new way of doing something, I give an example of simple things. If you put your right shoes first every day, start the day by putting your left shoes on. The key is showing your mind that, “I can make changes.” You make tiny changes and then you make bigger changes.

It all starts one step at a time. 

I heard that sentence many years ago and I’m like, “It’s the first time that I heard it now,” which is, “We overestimate what we can do in one year. We underestimate what we can do in 5 to 10 years.”

I was at a Tony Robbins event. He actually said almost exactly that in those same words, that we often overestimate what we can do in a year, but rarely come close to estimating what we are capable of overtime.

I write these books and I share more because unfortunately, I see it every day. I see people give up too fast. I see people setting up goals that are way too crazy. When they don’t get to their goals, they’re very disappointed, they’re giving themselves a hard time, they think that they’re a failure. When I look at it, it’s like, “You’re killing it, you’re just not working the number right.” Be proud, keep building, keep improving, and in five years from now, you’re going to be much further than where you thought you’re going to be. It kills me to see, and unfortunately I see it.

I used to sell marketing. I used to work with many business owners over the past years. At one point, I developed a technology platform. I worked with close to 30,000 salespeople. I see the same thing all the time is we’re overstretching ourselves. I believe in pushing yourself, getting out of your comfort zone, building yourself and relationships over a long period of time. I see people stuck in this cycle. I see somebody that is 55, 60 years old, still driving the truck, still having a hard time, still can barely close the month, but on the other hand is providing great customer service and cares about his client.

We hit a certain point in life where we get discouraged from trying new things and putting ourselves out there. This for me, 2020 has been huge because I essentially launched a public speaking business and also starting this show. I’ve got an audiobook coming out and another book coming out, and that’s all in a few months. I was talking to somebody and I was like, “If I look at what I did a year ago, I dipped my toe in the water. Now, I’m speaking on eight stages. It’s incremental.” One of my mentors says, “Change happens in an instant, but preparation for change happens all the time.” I love that because when the change happens, it’s just that. I wake up and it’s like, “How did they get eight?” It’s amazing. 

Change is happening to mindset. At one point you say, “I believe that I can do it.” You can start to solidly see it, and then everything else follows.

I talk to people all the time about when you’re negotiating, you need to understand your why, and you need to believe in what you’re asking for. I use my husband for example, I’ll pick on him a bit. He was in a job that had been at one point his dream job, and then it quit being his dream job. He had taken a huge pay cut to go to it because he’d been unemployed for a while. He was feeling the pressure that he put on himself to get a job. He took a $60,000 a year pay cut to take this position, but it was with the company of his dreams. He justified it in that. Many years later, he’s still not making the same amount of money he was making before he took that job. He’s like, “There’s no way somebody is going to give me a salary increase that puts me at the number that I want to be at, above where I was when I took this other job.” I said, “Not with that attitude, they’re not. You have to believe it.” He ended up getting a job and he got a 25% salary increase out of the starting gate in COVID. It was because he had a change in his mindset. He had that negotiation that he was having between his ears changed. When we’re negotiating, and I don’t care if you’re buying a car, I tell a story about buying two cars for the price of one plus $5,000. Whether it’s buying that or it’s a job, buying a franchise, whatever it is, that mindset is huge in terms of your ability to get what it is that you think you want. 

 

The things that you talk about in your book that I liked, and you cover it, it’s almost a negotiation playbook to a certain extent. You talked about the importance of mindset, knowing why you’re serving your customers. We didn’t talk about this, but you also talked about knowing why your customers are buying from you. What problems are you solving for your customer? If you don’t understand the value that you’re bringing to your customer, they’re going to be able to take you wherever they want to go, because you don’t have that firm understanding of, “This is what I do for you. I’m bringing value. If you don’t want to pay me for it, that’s on you. This is the value I bring and what it’s worth.” If you are a tradesperson or not a tradesperson, this is a wonderful, quick read, Get Out of the Truck: Build the Business You Always Dreamed About. By the way, I also want to talk about that 18% of the profits from this book go to support Be The Fresh Start Foundation. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

This is how the culture will lead into the foundation. Our culture, our mantra is we want to be the fresh start in other people’s life, our team, our franchisees and our client. My goal and what we’re striving for is not only just to create great customer service, but we want to have a unique customer experience where we uplift our clients. What I’m after in life, of course, I want to have financial success, but I want also to find fulfillment. The fulfillment is coming with impacting our team, our franchisees, but also giving back. I’m a huge believer in supporting kids with meals, education or anything. Kids are still at the age that we can have a bigger impact on their life. When we get to a certain age, it’s so much hard to change an adult, but it’s easier to show kids that people care, people want to help, people want to provide more.

The Be The Fresh Start Foundation is a foundation that we created as a team. What we do is every year, we, as a headquarter, donate money into it, and then every time that we have a convention, we raise money from all the franchisees into the Be The Fresh Start Foundation. We support the YBA Kids Foundation here in LA. There are a few other foundations that we support around the world. I want to have a good mix between the United States and the rest of the world. Almost 95% of it goes to foundations that support kids. Besides that, part of our mantra is what we celebrate. We want our franchisees to do good in their communities. The Be The Fresh Start is a big part of us giving back and building part of this culture. If you want to have a foundation to give back, don’t wait for the day that you have a lot of money. Start small. If you can give $0.10 when you have $1, you’re going to be able to give $100,000 when you have $1 million, but you need to start somewhere to build it up.

This is our own foundation and we support other foundations for now. Personally, I go and I speak in different schools in front of kids and showing them that there is more. I always share it, “I wish that somebody shared with me a lot of things when I was a kid.” I don’t wait to the age of 23, 24, 32 to start finding out about this mindset and growth and still learning. If I knew about it when I was younger, I’ll be able to have a much bigger impact and much faster. My goal is to be there for other kids as much as we can and make it part of who we are as a company.

Keep in mind, everybody, if you buy this book, Get Out of the Truck, 18% of the profits go to the foundation. Idan, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you. I am so honored to have met you. It was a random thing that I connected with you on LinkedIn. What a great conversation, great company, you are an inspiration. I love how you think about negotiation. I wish you all the best. I can’t wait for your next book. I look forward to staying in touch with you.

Thank you very much.

Important Links:

• 911 Restoration
• Get Out of the Truck: Build the Business You Always Dreamed About
• Get Out Of The Truck
• Idan Shpizear – LinkedIn

About Idan Shpizear