Episode 34: Talking Menu Pricing and Women in the Workplace with Danielle Putnam

Episode #34

Mike O'Neill: Welcome back to the Get Unstuck & On Target Podcast. I'm Mike O'Neill with Bench Builders and we're business coaches who love to help leaders get unstuck and sleep better. In this podcast, we're talking with thought leaders to uncover tips to help you break down the barriers that may be keeping you or your business stuck. Joining me today is Danielle Putnam. Danielle is a speaker, a writer, and for the last 10 years has been the president of The New Flat Rate. Welcome Danielle. 

Danielle Putnam: Hi, Mike, thanks for having me. 

Mike O'Neill: I'm looking forward to this conversation for multiple reasons, but I'm going to jump right in. And that is you've shared with me that you are now doing exactly what you've always wanted to do your whole life. You wanted to be in business, and you knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur. How in your current role are you fulfilling both those goals? 

Danielle Putnam: Great question. You know, I remember being a child thinking I'm going to be a business leader or a business owner I guess, I didn't think leader when I was a child. I thought business owner. I want to be an entrepreneur. And maybe it was just the idea in my mind of, you know, pulling up in a cool car, wearing a suit every day. And if you remember a long time ago, we had everybody had flip phones, flip cell phones, right? Today everybody has smart phones, but when I was young, I couldn't wait to have a flip phone. I knew that I would have made it when I had a flip phone and maybe a briefcase. You know, it was that image. That I had in my mind, and I wanted to be that person, but of course, as a, as a young child, teenager, what do we think so often, Mike, we think, Oh, I'm going to be a multimillionaire by the time I'm 20 don't we. And there's something to be said for experience an time. And it's not even about that. We all have to find and discover our why. But knowing that I wanted to be in business, I always said yes to opportunities in the business world. So anything that I could do to learn more reading, more business books, talking to people, if there was opportunities to sit down with a business leader and pick their brain, you know, I definitely did that for years and years. And so today I love being an entrepreneur, but it was not something that happened overnight. It's over time and it's still over time and that's that, you know, our life, our expertise, which I'm not an expert, but our expertise is developed over time in all of our lives. And so the more gray hair we get, the more wisdom we get. And, you know, I, I look forward to the future, but today, I guess, really your question was, you know, I love that I'm in the business world and I have a team of people that work with me and I'm thankful for them, you know, Thinking of being a business leader when you're young, you don't always realize that it's not yourself that gets there. It's the people that are around you. It's there, it's your community, it's your team. And we really can't do much on our own, but surrounding ourselves with excellent people is such a big deal.

Mike O'Neill: I want to come back to your team here in just a moment, but let's go back to when you're a child and you kind of keyed in on those things that symbolize success. You mentioned a flip phone and you mentioned a briefcase and those have both become almost relics have they not? 

Danielle Putnam: Right? Yeah. 

Mike O'Neill: I did find comfort when you said, the, the gray hair signifies wisdom. So I can, if the lighting's right. I look very, very wise. 

Danielle Putnam: I can't see it, but I believe you, we have to embrace the gray.

Mike O'Neill: My understanding of Danielle though, is you probably had as an example, some great illustrations of owning a business, because my understanding is that, you actually worked in one might say still do in a family business. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? 

Danielle Putnam: Absolutely. My dad was a contractor when I was young. And I like to say that my first job was when I was seven years old. My mom had said to my dad, you know, Hey, if you'll go out and start your own business, the kids and I will help you get started. And so that summer when I was seven, My mother drove us all around town here in Dalton, Georgia in her station wagon, and the air conditioner was broken. And you know how hot it is here in Georgia in the summer, right?

Mike O'Neill: Yes. 

Danielle Putnam: We're over a hundred degrees every day. And so here has kids or sitting in the back of the station wagon with no air going door to door and passing out flyers. I remember walking in and saying, you know, my daddy just started an electrical business and here's a flyer. And he actually, Mike received his first call, first service call, from a company that was here then called rainbow waterbeds and they called him and he did electrical work for them. And then, you know, he was in business. I say that to say, I've always been around small business and it started in the family.

So as a contractor, he then purchased later, you know, an HVAC and a plumbing business. When I was in high school, I was homeschooled and I went to public school my sophomore year. And then I kinda jumped out and homeschooled again for junior and senior years because I wanted to work full-time in that family business. So at this time, you know, my dad was running his contracting company. It really grown. It was the largest in Northwest Georgia at the time. And so I loved working in the business and I wanted to make money because I wanted to buy a car. You know what other teenager, doesn't just, you know, I needed a car. I wasn't trying to be rich. I needed a car. And so as being a homeschooler, I did school at night. But that was a family business. And later I did, you didn't really ask this, but I did move on and I worked for other companies, all over the US I lived in Texas for four years. I lived in Oregon for a year, California for five and a half years working for other organizations, small and very, very large.

And so the experiences in and out of family business, you know, of course they're different. But fast forward to today, my company, The New Flat Rate, I do have family members, my dad, and I are business partners at our company now. But I also have a lot of non-family members and we treat them as much as we can like family, you know, because we do want to keep that family environment, which means you're looking out for each other. You know, everybody on the team wants to be on the team and everybody's moving towards the same goal together, really trying to grow and build a company together. And we started in 2011 in a garage with an idea, and I will never forget, one of my first hires. She came into this garage and I said, I promise we're a real company. I promise. And I was eight months pregnant at the time. And I was about to go on maternity leave. So I needed to hire an operations manager to take care of some of the operations I was doing while I was going on my first maternity leave. In my head thinking, Oh, it'll be easy. You just go have a baby. And you know, you can check in with the office on the phone.

And I didn't know, but I, I was really excited that Jessica believed me. Here we are in this garage and she believed in the vision of, Oh, they really are a company they're are going somewhere and I can get started on the, on the ground level and help build. And she's still here with me today and, she's very much a part of the family.

And has I love that.

Mike O'Neill: You already, in our short time together have illustrated some things that I think punctuates, why I wanted you to be a podcast guest. One, you recognize that you grew up in a hometown. You grew up in a family business, but you gain perspective when you left town, you've spent time in Texas. You spent time in Oregon, you spent time in, in California and you brought those collective experiences back. But you also talk the word family several times. Our listeners, include business owners. As well as business leaders, as a business owner, help me understand the kind of the overall the nature of your business. I introduced it. The name of your company is The New Flat Rate. And I understand here's the textbook answer. I'm going to have you elaborate on that. This is taken straight from your website. The New Flat Rate is a flat rate menu pricing system that does the selling for your clients by giving their customers choices. And when you give choices, customers buy more. So elaborate a little bit. This menu pricing system. Let's start. What in the world is that? 

Danielle Putnam: What the heck is menu pricing? Well as a contractor. My dad experienced feast and famine very often. And that's where, the vision was birthed out of is how do we find consistency in the contracting world, in business and Mike, this can correlate in any business, right? If you don't have a model with recurring revenue and you're always seeking more sales. Or maybe you're depending on a sales team to go out and find more business, you might have ebbs and flows. You might have seasons, you know, especially like last year, there were so many businesses with COVID-19 that had such a hard time, but in the contracting world, weather is very much a factor, especially with heating and air conditioning. And so in the spring and the fall businesses really slow, the phones aren't ringing, but in the summer and the winter is booming. And because we experienced that firsthand. We wanted to discover a way to keep some consistency. And not put the pressure on the front lines, employees on the technicians that were going in the home saying, Hey, Joe, you have to increase that average service ticket, sell more, sell, more, sell more.

You know, the industry always tried to pressure that front technician when their DNA was just to fix things, you know, you have on your team, all different kinds of people, right. And identifying their personalities and what they like to do. Really is going to help your business be more successful if you've got the right people in the right seats. Right? So a technician is not in the sales seat, but at the industry tried to put them in the sales seat. So what our company is fast forward is it's a process development company where we created a tool. We're now a software company. It's an app that does the pricing for the technician in the field with a menu of options. So the customer chooses the level of service that they want. And it's kind of like automatic add on sales. They move themselves up 80% of the time Mike customers move up from the bottom because they like to buy in the middle. And that's just how society is, especially here in America. People like to buy in the middle.

They don't want the cheapest. They don't want the most expensive, but 80% want to buy right in the middle where they're really comfortable. So that's what our system does. It is. It just does the selling for the technician. Removes the tech from that sales equation. And then it increases the profitability of the contracting businesses.

Mike O'Neill: I'll speak now from a homeowner standpoint, it seems to me that when I make that call and the technician shows up. Is that I'm thinking, Oh goodness gracious. They're going to charge me on a, not per hour basis. Maybe per every 15. Minute space. It's almost like a lawyer. And there's almost, I tend to kind of tense up. How long is this gonna take? How much is this going to cost? And what I'm hearing you describe is that for the home owner, it's designed to kinda give them a peace of mind. And that is it's my estimate. This is the technician talking. This is what is needed. And you have some choices as to what we do, and you're presenting them using this very sophisticated app and it gives the homeowner a sense of more control. Am I understanding that correctly? 

Danielle Putnam: You are correct. You know, the homeowner's eyes go directly to price. When they see a menu page, there's five price points and automatically they take a look at the top option and they're like, Oh, that's expensive. And then they look at the bottom and they have a sigh of relief. Oh, okay, great. There's something that I can afford. It's just like when we go to Home Depot and Lowe's, and we're looking for a new drill, I recently actually bought my husband a circular saw for his birthday and you know, I, I go there and I'm looking at, but I knew I wanted a really good one. And so I actually looked at the cheapest. I looked at the most expensive and I set my budget in my mind and I bought one based on my budget. That was not the cheapest. I went up because we perceive, you know, money and value more expensive must be a little bit better of a circular saw. Right. He kept it. He didn't return it. So maybe it was a good one. 

Mike O'Neill: Sounds like that was a, a great birthday gift for him. So let me ask what you just described this, this pricing. It seems as if it could apply in a variety of industries, in what industry did you first introduce this into?

Danielle Putnam: Thanks for asking. We started with heating and air conditioning, and then by osmosis and demand, we quickly added plumbing. Plumbers were calling saying, Hey, we have to have this. And then electrical. And just last week we launched a chimney menu pricing system in our app. And it's funny to hear people say what chimney, there's so many things when it comes to a chimney. I don't know if you have one in your home, but whether it's the brick on the outside that needs upgraded or the liner on the inside, but all the different things, we have developed a way to provide options for the homeowner. And again, take the selling out of the equation for the technician or the contractor. And then, right now I'm in beta with an indoor air quality menu pricing system. Indoor air quality is a very hot topic all over the place right now, especially because of COVID. But even before that, you know, if there's anybody in a home that is, struggles with asthma or any respiratory issues, any kind of illnesses you might, I hear people say, I think my house is making me sick and that's an indoor air quality issue, but not all contractors know how to get into that. And so we've developed a very robust training system. And pricing system. It's in beta and it's going to launch live June 1st. And then from there, we're actually working on, all sorts of different things. Generators, home performance, solar, pest control. We have a pest control module. That'll be coming out soon.

So ultimately Mike is home services, so we're helping in home services, but if there's anybody on here listening today, that's not in the home service industry. Could they use menu pricing? Absolutely. Could they do a good, better, best? Yes. So depending, no matter what you sell, you know, everybody's in sales in one way or another, right. Even if it's consulting and coaching services, but not giving a one price, you know, kind of a take it or leave it. And then your prospect backs into the corner of, and that's not what I was thinking. But offering multiple prices we have found and proven all over the US and Canada, that your closing rates going to go up and your average dollar, your average service dollar, your average sales dollar is going to go up. Just by offering choices. 

Mike O'Neill: This business model strikes me as is brilliant in its simplicity, but I also understand how much sophistication goes in to making it appear so simple. You mentioned home services and can I assume that the majority of the time, the decision maker for these types of services is a female?

Danielle Putnam: It is.

Mike O'Neill: Okay. And I'm making this assumption. Is that majority of the time that the person who's presenting these options is a male.

Danielle Putnam: Majority your right. 

Mike O'Neill: And therefore I'm going to ask what might be the obvious question. It seems as if certain industries tend to, be either female or male dominated. And now we're talking about what is traditionally kind of a male dominated industry. And as a business owner, As an entrepreneur, I like to kind of get your thoughts on this and that is willing to step away just from your industries that you serve and just talk in more general terms. And that is why is there a need in your opinion, for more women in these male dominated industries? 

Danielle Putnam: You know, when it comes to diversity and inclusion studies have proven profitability goes up when you add diversity to your team, because you have different ways of thinking. You know, men and women think differently, different cultures think differently. They have different ideas. So as we build our teams with all different kinds of people, men and women, our profitability goes up. I believe it's by 30%. The last number that I saw, we're being recorded as I'm about to say, don't quit me on that, but do quote me on that. I know profitability goes up just by adding and, you know, historically Mike well, long ago women were at home taking care of the household, weren't they? And then men off men went off to war and women had to join the workforce, more than they had in the past. And I I think it was easy for them to join the workforce role so that they didn't have to have a lot of technical training in, you know, for example, they can come in with organization answering the phones and, but over time, it's not like that anymore. Now the majority are two income households where you have, you know, the husband and wife, both working in the home and women, you know, are going to college and getting educated just as much as men, if not more right now. So is there room for them in the trades? Is there room in all of the different verticals that they could be in? Absolutely. I don't think that the world does a great job inviting women in sometimes saying, Hey, check out this career path. We want you here to, you know, like male dominated industries. They just need to let the women know, Hey, we've got a place for you. We're ready for you. We'd like to invite you over to check out this career path opportunity too.

And, and then the women can go and get the training to do it. We've found that female technicians are very successful. I have homeowners or I'm sorry, contractors calling me very often asking how can I find and hire more women? You know, my female techs are so good and the, you know, the homeowners love them and they do such a great job in a thorough and they're organized and they're consistent. You know, women bring great skills to the table, but not everybody wants to be out in the field. Women also bring great organization into the office and great leadership. I'm I'm actually reading through, do you remember this book from a long time ago? The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership by. Maxwell.

Right. And so I'm reading it again, doing a women's mastermind study right now. And it just reminded me how important it is for all of us to remember leadership. I think it's easy to forget. We get busy in our day to day and whether male or female, but women in particular, you're in the workplace, you're out there and you want to be noticed more and you say, you know, why aren't there more women out here? But we it's our, it's our job to really continue to step up our leadership to step up our knowledge. If we want to build our careers, you know, we have to do the work to get in there. And historically I think men have been out there working longer. You know, I have three children and so going through just pregnancy time, maternity leave time, I've taken more leave from the office than maybe a man has because I chose to have a family too, which is awesome. And I love that. And because of that, though, I have to work extra hard at that work-life balance and catching up and staying relevant and not falling behind because I have taken time off kind of a long-winded question and the answer.

Mike O'Neill: Well, but it's somewhat of a complicated question because you've kind of helped build a business case, those organizations that embrace diversity and inclusion. And right now we're talking about increasing women, in male dominated industries. But those who do that show a marked increase in the bottom line, that 30% number is consistent with the kind of number I'm seeing and therefore you're building a business case for doing so. But in practical terms, if we've got listeners who are listening to this, they're  business owners, they're business leaders, and they say, you know what, I'm convenced. I need to improve that. What might be some practical suggestions you would have.

Danielle Putnam: Great question, starting with clarifying in your head, you know, clarify what's the role that I want to fill next. Would a woman be a great fit? And then writing the ad in a way that would pick up more women and, you know, letting them know there's flexible, family time, letting them know the different kinds of security benefits, what the work is going to be like. And then, yeah, interviewing a lot of women. I mean, you know, when you're looking at all your resumes, I think it comes with a choice, you know, even in my business, when I have an opportunity to hire somebody new and to build a, my team. Well, you know, we have to be careful with this because we can't discriminate, but I do think what a man or a woman be best in this role. And so thinking that through ahead of time and then finding that perfect person, you know, sometimes men are better in roles and sometimes women are better in roles depending on what it is. But again, I gotta be careful saying that because somebody might disagree. 

Mike O'Neill: Well, they may disagree, but what I've asked for some practical suggestions and what one of the things you said is it kind of starts at the very beginning. And that is how do you make known that you have an opportunity? And if you just look at a, a job description that is in the form of a ad, there are subtle things that slip into those things, that signal sometimes in unintentional ways, things that you may or may not want signaled. So you're saying it literally starts with getting comfortable in your head, on what the role entails. And then when you begin looking to convey the absolute core requirements for the position and try to make in this case, them a more gender neutral. I know you're also active in a leadership role, with a number of industry associations that are grappling with this very thing. This whole, this is what we're talking about right now could very well be a series of podcasts. But in terms of, what you're finding sounds as if you're acknowledging that it's an issue that has been prevalent for quite some time, but you're also acknowledging that it can be changed, but it's going to require intentionality. It's going to require an a more open-mindedness. And that the business case is clear. Those organizations that do so find benefits. Yes. Bottom line. But there are other benefits. Namely, you have differing viewpoints coming to and contributing to better decisions. You know, Danielle, the theme of our podcast is get unstuck and on target, can you reflect on an example or two where either you or a client got stuck and what did you have to do to get unstuck?

Danielle Putnam: Great questions. Mike, what I have found in my journey and as a business leader today, I get stuck often, mentally in my mind. And it's, it's, you know, Maxwell calls it our leadership lid. We have to raise our leadership lid. So I've found that, okay. You know, whether it's regards to revenue or team growth or product development in, in our minds, we take the company as far as we can. And then we kind of get stuck. Because we might have, the imposter syndrome, you know, ah, you know, how am I here? Am I even supposed to be here? I'm not good enough to lead this. Or maybe it's that we don't have the knowledge to move to the next step. Regardless, whatever that mental block is in growing your business, it might be that things are difficult at home and you're having a hard time, you know, with work-life balance or you're just exhausted. You know, I was sharing with you Mike earlier that I have an 11 month old baby who's teething and he never sleeps. And so, you know, I feel like we're always exhausted at home. But what I have found is the importance of community. And so in those moments where you get mentally blocked, I don't know what to do with my business. And you'll hear people say leadership is lonely, but it doesn't need to be. I think it's our responsibility to look at our community and get out of our head. We have to get out of our head and surround ourselves with other people that will speak encouragement into us and, you know, just to discuss, Hey, I'm dealing with this.

And what shocks me is when you talk to other business leaders, they say, Oh yeah, I'm dealing with that too. Are you serious right now? I'm not alone. Other people deal with this too. I have a business coach I work with and I love when I say, you know, Hey, you know, Dominick, I'm having a hard time with, you know, X, Y, or Z. And he'll just look at me and say, do you know, business is hard. It is. And that's why not everybody wants to do it, but I love that I get to do it. And you probably do too. You know, I love that I get to do business and we get to get unstuck, but we have to keep that entrepreneurial motivation to find a way in a solution.

And to me, I'd just like to answer with the word community, looking around you and getting some positive influences speaking back into your life again. 

Mike O'Neill: Well, you already mentioned, a mastermind group that you're part of that's community. You've mentioned, or I mentioned that you're in a leadership role with some industry associations that are really designed to try to improve representation of women within the industry. Is Maxwell's terms leadership lid. Is that the right term?

Danielle Putnam: It is. 

Mike O'Neill: But what you said is that the stuff more often than not is something that we put on ourselves. The stuck is a limiting factor that we for whatever reason, have convinced ourselves.

Danielle Putnam: A limiting belief. 

Mike O'Neill: And so if I'm understanding correctly, you're encouraging us as leaders to be in community with other leaders because in doing so, when the guard is dropped, there is a recognition. Being in business is hard. Anytime the typically now, but if you're a business owner, the expression, the buck stops here, you're under constant pressure. It is hard.  And so, I appreciate you sharing that, you know, Danielle's would kind of reflect on our time together. What might be some thoughts or takeaways you want to make sure our listeners have?

Danielle Putnam: Hm. You know it's so fun to be an entrepreneur. I believe that we're so fortunate to be, but kind of what we ended on there. Just getting out of our own heads. And being honest, you know, be honest with where you're at with other leaders in your world. Because we like to help people as business leaders. Right. And how often is it that if somebody tells you a problem, you can't help, but to try to fix it for them, because maybe you have a suggestion. Somebody called me on Friday and said, Hey, I heard you were looking to hire. You need to call X, Y, Z person. And I loved that. I was like, thank you. You know, leaders want to help other leaders and people. So. Being honest, with those around you, for where you're at to help you grow, I think is so important. I'd like to leave people with that. 

Mike O'Neill: I think it's excellent. And I think by extension, not only being honest with others, but be honest with yourself, and you know, you've just kind of punctuated as fulfilling as being business owner is it is hard work. You're speaking from the perspective of, a multi-generational business pursuit. And, it is hard work, but you've made having a conversation with you. Easy. I appreciate, the time that we spent together, Danielle, if folks want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to connect with you.

Danielle Putnam: Well, please do reach out. Of course, I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, a little bit on Instagram. But of course, email me danielle@menupricing.com. Feel free to give me a call. Our phone number is on the website, thenewflatrate.com and I love conversations. I have all sorts of tools depending, no matter what industry you're in, I'd love to help if I can. And even just the connection. It's always great to continue to build up our, our connections. So reach out anytime. I love to talk business and leadership and, being an entrepreneur and I love talking, just work-life balance too. Cause it's real. 

Mike O'Neill: That work-life balance keeps coming up. And so it, it is real without a question. Danielle, I want to thank you. For the time that you spent with us, the contact information you just mentioned will be included in the show notes. So her LinkedIn profile, the website and the like all that will be included in the show notes. So be looking for that, when we upload this episode, Danielle, thank you.

Danielle Putnam: Thank you for having me, Mike, I've enjoyed the time. 

Mike O'Neill: I'll also want to thank our listeners for joining us for this episode of Get Unstuck & On Target. We upload the latest episode every Thursday. So if you haven't already please subscribe. But life really is too short to let business problems keep you up at night. Our coaches love helping leaders solve the tough problems they're holding you back from the success that you deserve. So if you've been listening to my discussion with Danielle and you're realizing that something's keeping you or your business stuck, let's talk, go to our website, bench-builders.com, or just go to your browser and type unstuck.show to schedule a quick call.

So I want to thank you for joining us, and I hope you have picked up on some tips that help you Get Unstuck & On Target. Until next time.