#131: 3 9-Figure Businesses in One Room? How Tommy Mello, Chris Lee, And Daryl Kelly Grew Their Businesses to Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

Speaker 1 That's sales 101 is how to win friends and influence people and get people to buy into your dream.

Speaker 1 Us entrepreneurs, we really are good at that. We're really good.
Like, I'm an optimist. I don't care if the cup is empty.
I make it half full.

Speaker 1 And like, but people are like, dude, that's not even real. Like, there's no way that's possible.
I'm like, there is.

Speaker 2 Well, it's funny. Like, I had this picture.
It was like four different garages.

Speaker 1 It showed the Google garage, the Facebook garage.

Speaker 2 And we had the Soul Gen garage. And we would always be like, look, this is us.

Speaker 3 Well, here's, here's here's something interesting though when i when i grew up that they just call me to say you know be a man of your word yeah i realized like as a visionary you can't be a man of your word you got to be a man of your vision right because if you're a man of your word like you've got to know how to fulfill on what you're saying all right guys we're doing a double podcast here chris lee and daryl kelly are here we've got the founder podcast Beast the Home Service Expert.

Speaker 2 Ooh, we actually just rebranded.

Speaker 1 What is it now?

Speaker 2 Next level pros, baby.

Speaker 1 Next level pros. Let's go.

Speaker 1 come home come on so i'll just do an intro you guys know i've got the garage door business um things are going really really well i don't care what size you get to there's new challenges like people are like man i'd love to be where tommy's at but it comes through two decades of failure and still the anxiety and stress luckily i could take this i could take it on the chin it doesn't really affect me but I really feel like we're just getting started.

Speaker 1 Like, I know people that are at like 5 million. They're like, that's it.
I hit my cap. I'm done.
I want out. I'm going to make enough money to live the life I want.

Speaker 1 And depending on your age and what you want, but I'm a home service guy through and through. I'm blue collar.
My mom was a realtor. My dad was a mechanic.

Speaker 1 We came from a really, really modest house in Michigan. Not low, low, low income where we were like, didn't have clothes to wear to school, but definitely.
Definitely not doing great.

Speaker 1 And I just love helping people, man. And I'm glad we get to do this podcast.

Speaker 2 Well, that's the cool thing.

Speaker 2 I think we all come from very similar backgrounds right daryl grew up in a double wide with eight kids you know my dad was a school teacher mom was a stay-at-home mom like all of us really came from like basic essentials right we all had shirts on our backs and you know food on the table and and good loving family or whatnot but uh have all built something pretty pretty amazing you know it's interesting what you're talking about so like the whole premise of our new show with is with next level pros is that like no matter where you're at, there's always a next level, right?

Speaker 2 Like you always have the ability to level up. And frankly, like success and happiness come from when you are leveling up, right?

Speaker 2 When you're plateauing or leveling down, like no matter how much money, how much success you've had, like that's stressful.

Speaker 3 Another, another truth you spoke was

Speaker 1 problems, right?

Speaker 3 I remember thinking, I'm not good at business because I can't get rid of these problems. And then I went to Tony Robbins business mastery event.

Speaker 3 And one of the biggest takeaways was you always have a new set of problems as you grow, new set of opportunities, a new set of problems, and those are always changing.

Speaker 3 And once I understood that, it changed everything for me.

Speaker 1 Changed your outlook. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, I just played a video to my entire company, 800 people, and it's called Bring the Fire. We do it once a month.
And the video, I took 13 minutes, made it into three, Giuseppe edited it.

Speaker 1 And it said, everyone wants a great life. You want to fall in love.
You want a great sex life. You want to have your faith.
You want to have the best body.

Speaker 1 You want the red seated part when you walk in the room. But what heart are you willing to accept? What struggle are you willing to accept?

Speaker 1 Because studies show over and over again, none of these things come without their obstacles. Everybody wants the views.
No one wants to take the hike.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And not a lot of people are cut out for this. Everybody says, I'm going to quit my nine to five because I want to be an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 But that comes through the number one word that comes to mind is delayed gratification. People want the possessions.
They want to show off to their friends. They want to keep up with the Joneses.

Speaker 1 One of my best things is you will never save money. If you can't save money at $50,000 a year, good luck at $200,000, $300,000.

Speaker 1 Money really does become, they say money is not the, the love of money is the root of all evil. But the fact is that people secretly love money.
They love the attention. They love the Ferraris.

Speaker 1 They love showing up to their friends. In fact, I'm getting in the best shape of my life.
I love walking in and people being like, what the hell is going on?

Speaker 1 But that's the main thing, though, is I feel incredible. Like, literally, like, I feel like I could take on the world.

Speaker 1 And this thing about faith, fitness, and family, I always had the finance figured out, but I was missing the other three. And I was not only off balance, but I was like.

Speaker 1 really tilted to one side. And now I'm just trying to fix it.
And the more I work on me, literally the more I work on me, the better I am for everybody.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's pretty crazy how like

Speaker 2 everything really you know trickles over to one discipline always trickles over the other right like when you especially when you start getting your fitness in check and your relationships in check right like that helps you be a better

Speaker 2 a better you know influencer on on the side of the business right or in your society or whatever it may be and like that's that's really i mean the culture that we've always been about in creating like when we were creating soul gen it was always like focusing on the whole human approach.

Speaker 2 And if we can actually develop these people more than just their financial aspect, more than just a paycheck, right? Like help them be better spiritually, help them be better physically or whatnot.

Speaker 2 Like they would, the loyal, the trust that was built within our organization was absolutely incredible. So, I mean, I think that's

Speaker 2 probably one of the biggest keys that most business and entrepreneurs miss, right? Like, they're just about solving financial problems rather than the other aspects.

Speaker 1 How did you guys, you know, I'm curious. You guys, you basically said you guys are like soulmates.
I mean, when you guys started in business, tell me a little bit about your relationship. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Who handles what? How did you guys grew together?

Speaker 2 So it's interesting.

Speaker 2 We always refer to, well, I refer to Daryl as my work wife, right?

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 2 I mean, we have to figure out how to work together the same way I have to work with my wife. Just no sex, right?

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 And, you know, it's been interesting. We've, we've known each other for a long time.

Speaker 2 We first met when I was, I think, 13. Daryl was 15.

Speaker 2 His oldest brother married my oldest sister.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So that's where the initial introduction, but we didn't have like this immediate like

Speaker 2 connection of like best friends or anything like that. In fact, we didn't hang out, I think, what, six years later, seven, eight, eight years later?

Speaker 3 Quite a while later. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So you were 21, you were 23.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. So I was 21.
I come home off a two-year mission, right? And

Speaker 2 Daryl was like, hey, dude, come sell with me. And immediately we got this like really good flow as far as like balancing out each other.
Right.

Speaker 3 Like, well, I think initially, for me, what attracted me to Chris was like, I was super ambitious and I would talk about things.

Speaker 3 And then all of a sudden, Chris was talking about things in a bigger way. And I'm like, wait.
I'm going to talk about it even bigger. And it was like this flow of.

Speaker 1 Push each other up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So, I mean, for the last, you know, almost 20 years, we've been doing business together in one aspect or another.
We had two divorces along the way,

Speaker 2 which I think any good relationship has to go through hard times, right?

Speaker 1 Figure out how to. You're in your third marriage.
No, I'm kidding.

Speaker 2 But yeah,

Speaker 2 I mean, we broke up from a business standpoint a couple different times, like didn't talk to each other. I think the longest point was, what, 18 months or two years?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was about two years. And I think, and looking back, it was just a maturity thing.

Speaker 3 We didn't know how to communicate our differences, we didn't know how to like work through it, so we just that's that's what we did.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, it's tough, it's tough having a partner in crime, yeah.

Speaker 2 And I think some of the struggles is like I'm a big voice in the room, you know how it is.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah, me and you

Speaker 1 like pushing each other out when I watch him on stage, I'm like, he starts walking out of the crowd. I'm like, That's my move.

Speaker 2 We got two alphas, just

Speaker 2 and so Daryl has some alpha in in him. It's just not as crazy as me.

Speaker 2 And so I think some of the struggles over the time is like, I've, I steal a lot of the limelight, right? I'm the loud one. I'm the crazy one in the room.

Speaker 2 Even though Daryl, like if I'm out of the room, Daryl is loud and crazy. Just, you know, it's, it's hard to compete with a Tommy or

Speaker 3 I think, I think what's good is, is like working with people like you, it's like you guys are very extreme. And like that, it's like an edge that you get from someone like you guys, right?

Speaker 3 And so for me, like, I feel like I have a lot of ambition, a lot of drive, a lot of vision.

Speaker 3 But I feel like with Chris, it gives me like that edge, that little bit more craziness that you just don't get from anyone else.

Speaker 3 And I think that's what I've been able to benefit from is like keeping Chris in a position where he's always like a little crazy in his thoughts and his ideas.

Speaker 1 Well, the dreams, I'll tell you what, when I'm talking to my team, they're like.

Speaker 1 What's up, dude? Like, you don't dream like anybody. I'm dreaming like, forget the solar system.
Forget our galaxy. I'm dreaming about like every galaxy.
Like they're like, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 Why aren't you happy? We just set a record, record day, record week, record month, record quarter. And I'm like, I am happy.
I really am. And I don't show it right.

Speaker 1 And literally, Luke, my COO, talked to me yesterday. He's like, a lot of people take you.
They don't know you like I know you.

Speaker 1 And you just bug in. And you say, what's going on here? And I say, you're right.
I should say, download me on this. Catch me up.

Speaker 1 And I always take the technician's side because literally I'm a technician at heart, seven years in the field before I owned the company, but I was also the tech.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, my dreams are not that crazy. And I told the guys I was talking to yesterday, I said, for some reason, most of my dreams come true.
It's like I manifest them, I reverse engineer them.

Speaker 1 And it's hard to work with. with people like us.

Speaker 1 It's very, very, very hard because they're like, we rubber people raw in a wrong, you know.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we're very rare. Right.
And it's bad. It could be very, very toxic.

Speaker 1 And it's, it's important that we recognize this because coming from a place of gratitude is hard sometimes because this, this is, uh, I'm always driving forward because I'm like, who cares if we fall?

Speaker 1 Get back up. And everybody's like, it's not time.
We're not ready. I'm like, I don't care.
But here's what I've learned recently. What if I sat with each one of my direct reports?

Speaker 1 and went through and made it their idea and actually got their buy-in. And when we sit in a room together, they say, yeah, we've talked about this.
It's go time.

Speaker 1 Rather than just saying, hey, I got an idea. Let's go.
They're like, you get a lot of ideas.

Speaker 1 So I got to be careful to pull one off and put one in.

Speaker 2 And I think that's, Daryl's been my strategic advantage. I mean, it doesn't appear, you've never had like a right-hand guy, right?

Speaker 1 Like a business.

Speaker 1 Me and Adam were like,

Speaker 1 we called it the TNA show, Tommy and Adam. He had equity.
He did very, very well. He's got tens of millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 It's just, you know, this Cameron Harrell notion of double, double, of like certain people could help you double, double. Right.

Speaker 1 Adam was able to do whatever he wants to do, but it became, he became a gatekeeper. And I'll say I love the guy.
We're still best of friends.

Speaker 2 But he's no longer involved.

Speaker 1 He's no longer involved.

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah.
So for Daryl, Daryl's always kind of been my filter. Right.

Speaker 2 Like, because as you pointed out, you know, it's, it's very easy for a guy that has our type of personality to just be like, got this great idea. Let's run.
Right. And so I go to Daryl.

Speaker 2 I'm like, dude, got this great idea. And right, he understands that like only like one in 20 we should actually go and implement.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 I think what's also funny is just the

Speaker 3 kind of damage control, right? Chris comes in with a ton of energy and it throws people off.

Speaker 3 And sometimes people can misinterpret things so quickly. Oh, yeah.
And so I feel like a lot of times I'm like, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 Or the other part of it is I'll institute or I'll put in a place a new policy. And because Chris is such a loud voice, voice, everyone thinks Chris is the one behind everything.

Speaker 3 And so he always gets like the blame.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, dude. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but yeah, in our organization, right? If something doesn't go right, it's my fault.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's a great position for me to be in.

Speaker 1 I'm never that doesn't happen with me because I've kind of shielded myself as saying, listen, guys, I'm not going to do the firing.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to put together, I stay, I stay away from things, but I'm like, I always say I live on Mars and I'm looking at the volcanoes, the earthquakes, the hurricanes, and I zoom in, but I zoom back out pretty quick.

Speaker 1 I'm not afraid to top grade. In fact, I had a meeting with my COO three weeks ago, took him to my house

Speaker 1 and I said, listen, man, I'm going to be quite frank. You're the bottleneck in this business right now.
You've got 10 direct reports. I want to whiteboard with you.

Speaker 1 I said, how many people are you micromanaging? I said, then we need to top grade those. And I said, I'm not trying to be, I said, you might be better as a chief revenue officer.
And I wasn't a threat.

Speaker 1 I said, you're in it to win it, right? I said, your best talent is creating revenue. You're the best sales guy on the team.
You understand the best way to communicate these things to the techs.

Speaker 1 And he said,

Speaker 1 dude, he like said, I'm going to go to work and I will have a plan within two weeks. And he shifted all kinds of things.
Yeah. And he did the work.

Speaker 1 And luckily, I have people like that on my team I could be really honest with

Speaker 1 because I can't do that with everybody. They'd be broken.

Speaker 1 And it's it's so hard but i'm like listen man i'm gonna be like i don't have time to worry about your feelings i'm not trying to fire you i'm not you're a part of my team you're not going anywhere and i think people that really know me understand where i'm coming from it's not this place of like i'm better you're better or it's like what can we do together to win

Speaker 1 and you know we're a team we're not a family because guess what I could get fired. The coach, I'm under a PE company.
The coach could get fired if we lose. We lose enough games.

Speaker 1 We lose enough seasons. He's gone.
Yeah. And that's how it works.

Speaker 1 And I don't feel that way. It would be very, very hard to get rid of me.
I work three weeks on my contract to make sure that's almost impossible. Like, I'd have to really do something stupid.
Right.

Speaker 1 I got to

Speaker 1 keep my act together a little bit. Oh, for sure.
For sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah, man. It's,

Speaker 2 you know, the, over the last 20 years, been a pretty crazy experience growing. We've done everything.
I know you've been in the garage door space, what, 14 years? 17. 17.

Speaker 2 So it's kind of been your thing for a very long time, right? Like the one thing saying no to pretty much everything along the way.

Speaker 1 I said yes to too many things, but

Speaker 1 I realized that was, that's an ADHD thing. And I think all of us have that entrepreneurial and we say, man, that guy's flipping houses.
I could do that.

Speaker 1 And then you take away from the one thing paying you the most. Yeah.
Because there's times that you say, We have the power to do anything we put our minds to. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 What if we stayed focused on the one thing? Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, it's interesting. I think there's so many different paths to success, not one person, right?

Speaker 2 Like, I can't line my path to success and say, like, this is the reason why for you or me or whatnot.

Speaker 2 And so, like, you 17 years for us, it was like we said yes to so many different things, so many different industries, so many different ideas for so many years until it was like, all right, let's take everything that we've learned, concentrate it into one, and just go.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's amazing, to your point, right? When you can say no to everything and yes to just one thing and just go deep and wide,

Speaker 2 it's incredible what you can accomplish in a very short period of time.

Speaker 3 Question I have for you, what were some of the paradigm shifts that like transformed you from where you started to who you are today in your business?

Speaker 1 Well, the number one thing is

Speaker 1 it's very rare you meet an entrepreneur that actually learns from their mistakes and doesn't make the same mistake twice. I was able to reflect and be like, that was dumb.

Speaker 1 And so many people, like the biggest thing by far

Speaker 1 is I've kind of put my arms in the air 150 times over again and said, I need help. And I have this ability to go find the best of the best and I pay up.
I don't discount.

Speaker 1 I buy like I want to be bought from. So I've got, right now I've got seven consultants I work with.
And some of them are speaking coaches. I got the trainer.

Speaker 1 You know, I just say, like, I was on this podcast about two weeks ago in Vegas and the guy says, I feel like you're in a time machine.

Speaker 1 And I said, the time machine is going to find people that are better at one thing, like the best of the best. They're known for this one thing.

Speaker 1 And I literally reflect and say, I'm not very good at this. And I don't want to be well-rounded, but I want to be the best at marketing, culture, sales, and very like leadership.

Speaker 1 And I want to hire everything else, but I hire people smarter than me. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 That's the fear is like, what if, what if I hire this guy and he takes my whole team and he starts to, I don't have that gene in me. Like, I'm not worried if I train them.
What if they leave?

Speaker 1 What if they stay? So I think the number one thing that's changed dramatically is I started becoming an avid reader. I started a podcast seven years ago.
I started asking for help.

Speaker 1 Success leads clues. I asked Service Titan, who has the best conversion rate in HVAC.
I fly my ass out there and visit them. I said, who has the best booking rate?

Speaker 1 Flew out to Memphis, Tennessee two months ago, visited them.

Speaker 3 Who are you asking these questions to?

Speaker 1 I'll go to Service Titan because they're my CRM and they've got the data. They'll make an introduction if the person allows us.

Speaker 1 Like they got to say, sure, you could share my data and tell them I'm the best. And then, you know, they take my phone calls usually.

Speaker 1 If I want to find out who's the best at SEO, I'll search roofing repair Phoenix or HVAC Repair Phoenix. And then I'll see who's ranking organically, number one.
I'll do a couple of things, AH refs.

Speaker 1 I'll say, how the hell do they do this? I'll knock on their door. I'll buy them all lunch.
I'll say, can I talk to your VP of marketing?

Speaker 1 And they'll say, yes, because I say, I'm not going to compete with you. I want to help you guys.
We could be referral partners. And I come from a place of what's in it for them.

Speaker 1 And that, that's my superpower. Is like, I have, I'm relentless.
Yeah. I don't care if you say no to me.
I think you're going to say yes eventually.

Speaker 2 I think that's such a key to anybody that's listening to the show right now, like the relentless pursuit of education, improvement, right?

Speaker 2 Like not settling with where you're at and just always looking for that next edge, that next ability to level up. Who knows more than me, right?

Speaker 2 Like I think, I think the thing that I suffered from most in my first business that failed was thinking I knew everything and not going to other people for help, right?

Speaker 2 Like that's, that's where I struggled in my, in my 20s, right? I just thought I knew everything. I was, I was pretty intelligent, high IQ, successful in everything that I had done up until that point.

Speaker 2 And it was like, because of it, when things were hard, I didn't go to anybody else. I just tried dealing with it, right? Instead of like going to a Tommy or a Daryl and be like, dude, help me.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know what to do in this type of situation or how do I get through this? How do I improve? Whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 I think that's probably one of the most key things to anybody that's been successful.

Speaker 3 So, so was your transition into like finding coaches? Was there an experience or was there like a 2017

Speaker 1 second podcast I've done, the home service expert? I meet this guy named Al Levy. He's like, hey, I live in Scottsdale.
You're in Tempe.

Speaker 1 He goes, Would you want to meet for lunch? I said, Absolutely. I sit down with him.
He had to be 65 at the time.

Speaker 1 And he just commanded the whole conversation. But luckily, I brought a notebook and I'm writing everything down.
He's saying he goes, hey, young buck.

Speaker 1 He's like, you're the first guy I've ever met with to actually take notes. He's like, would you mind if I came and looked at your shop? And I said, I'd love for you to.

Speaker 1 And dude, he tore me a new asshole. He goes, let me see your manuals.
He goes, I could have stole your whole warehouse with your own forklift. And there was no cameras, nobody in there.

Speaker 1 The garage was wide open. He goes, there's calendars on every wall.
There's Google Calendar.

Speaker 2 And at this point, you guys are doing how much? 17 million. 17 million, which is a respectable business, but it ain't.

Speaker 1 I wasn't keeping much of it.

Speaker 1 It was revenues for vanity, profits for sanity. And he says, I'll work for you.
I'll work with you, but it's not going to be cheap. I'll consult you.

Speaker 1 He goes, but when I get done with you, this business is going to be very vanilla. There's going to be systems, processes.
There's going to be manuals.

Speaker 1 There's going to be an org chart and a depth chart. I'm going to teach you the eight steps of delegation.
And he goes, you're not going to be, you're the best firefighter I've ever met.

Speaker 1 He goes, the fires are going to be out and you're going to have a process.

Speaker 1 He went out with five of my technicians. He said, every one of your technicians, different sales process, different way of doing springs, different ways of doing rollers.
They drove differently.

Speaker 1 There was everything's different. He goes, one guy's got a long-ass beard.
One guy's got tattoos on his face. Is there policies? And I'm like.

Speaker 1 Well, not really.

Speaker 2 And just get it done.

Speaker 1 And he's like, what's the dress code? What happens if your truck breaks down? What happens if a CSR doesn't show up? Do you have a depth chart that the dispatcher could step in?

Speaker 1 And so we worked for years together. And that's his book, The Seven Power Contractor.

Speaker 1 He's 71 now, and he's the best. If I didn't meet Al Levy and respect him, he walks in one day and I said, hey, have you read this book?

Speaker 1 And he goes, Tommy, just stop right now. He goes, I'm not going to tell you to stop learning.
But until you implement my practices, he goes, I will fire you as a client.

Speaker 1 He goes, you turn your cell phone off when we're in the room together. You focus on what I'm telling you and you implement these things or we're not going to work together.
Love it.

Speaker 1 And I said, you know, all right, Al. I used to start talking.
He'd be like, stop. Let me finish.
And I'm like,

Speaker 1 and we said it.

Speaker 1 We built manual after manual. And when things went wrong, he said, it's not in the manual.
Put it in the manual. And he goes, you're not reading the manual every week.
Go back to that.

Speaker 1 Two years into it, he showed me a picture of my truck. He took a picture, he put it in black and white.
He goes, what pops out to you that you're a garage door company?

Speaker 1 You got Angie's list, Yelp, the BBB. He goes, you got eight things you do, rollers, cables, bearings, crash doors, bottom rubber.
He goes, this is really bad. He goes, your brand sucks.

Speaker 1 He goes, your stickers don't look like your billboards. Literally, your signatures are all different when anybody emails me.
He goes, every single thing, your Valpak looks nothing like your Clipper.

Speaker 1 There's no coordination at all. I said, so what do you want me to do? We're $40 million.

Speaker 1 He goes, I want you to rebrand. He goes, you call Dan Antonelli with Kick Charge.

Speaker 1 And I called Dan Antonelli. He's like, it's going to be 40 grand.
And I'm like, 40?

Speaker 1 I'm like, I'm already successful.

Speaker 1 And Dan goes, I'm telling you right now, let me just build you a brand. I said, can my face be on the side of the truck? Because it already was.
And there's a whole reason, a story behind that. And

Speaker 1 he's like, these colors suck. The whole schematic sucks.
And Dan built a new brand. We jumped.
We became the most,

Speaker 1 we attracted affluent clients. My guys still tell me the stories when they showed up in that van with the right.
Oh, by the way, all my shirts were different colors.

Speaker 1 They were just golf shirts with a logo. He loved it.
L Levy said it's going to be all black from now on. These don't fade.
L Levy did this. And

Speaker 1 I owe him a lot, man. I owe him a lot.
And dude, everything changed. The conversion rate went up.

Speaker 1 We started becoming a brand. People started higher average tickets.
They knew we were the best.

Speaker 1 They said, I know you guys aren't the cheapest, but you'll be here the same day and you'll cover your warranty. Everything changed.
And

Speaker 1 Al did not know the financial world, so he called Ellen Rohr.

Speaker 1 And they taught us a lot about finance, but I didn't have the right CFO. That was the other game changer.
Getting the right CFO,

Speaker 1 boom, bottom line, bottom line, bottom line, bottom line. Now we're at 25% of the bottom line because of that side.
And by the way, I'm not the best best at balance sheets.

Speaker 1 I got a master's degree in business.

Speaker 3 What were you before? Like, how much of a change was there? What?

Speaker 3 Margin.

Speaker 1 Oh, we lived a long time because I always blamed it. We're growing, we're growing, we're growing.
I'm reinvesting in the company. I literally told everybody, yeah, who cares about the bottom line?

Speaker 1 We're growing. We're putting it back in.
That's what I hear a lot of people say.

Speaker 2 We're putting it back in your company.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're putting it back in. We're putting it back in.
And Elle goes, one day I called Al and I said,

Speaker 1 I got a home equity line to make payroll. I'm writing it.
And he saw me writing checks for my home equity line back to make payroll. What you was this? This is, you know, this is 2018, 2019.
Crazy.

Speaker 1 And I would never trim the fat. I'd say, we're going to need these guys.
And he says, Tommy, he goes, I'm pretty worried. And Adam comes to me and he goes, I'm pretty worried.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it was,

Speaker 1 I didn't realize people were stealing a lot of the parts. I didn't realize that we were totaling trucks left and right.
I didn't realize any of these things.

Speaker 1 There was no, my insurance, I was double paying on leases. Nobody,

Speaker 1 nobody told me.

Speaker 1 And they were keeping the money. I mean, literally, I had guys stealing, doing side jobs left and right.
The business was not, it was just, there was a shadow that I couldn't see.

Speaker 2 You had a great revenue-driving engine, and the backside was just a mass.

Speaker 1 Dirty. A mess.
Dirty. And we fixed it.
We started printing money. Keegan actually came into town and he looks, and I got all my financials of every market.
And he starts highlighting stuff.

Speaker 2 And he looks at me

Speaker 1 and he goes, Tommy, you need to close four markets today.

Speaker 1 And I go, dude, this just past management. Like, I could turn it around.
And he goes, Tommy, look at me. You need to close these markets, do a relocation package.
I'm going to show you how to do it.

Speaker 1 They need to close today. You are bleeding so bad.

Speaker 1 All your profits are you you would be at 19.8% if you close these four markets. I closed them that day.

Speaker 1 I mean, you talk about what could go wrong, Murphy's Law. Like, I've had it hit me on the face a thousand times, but you know, here's the deal.

Speaker 1 I'm glad it all happened because I'll never make those mistakes again, ever. Like the lessons were not only hard, they were almost impossible.
Right.

Speaker 1 But I never wanted to quit. I never said, dude, I don't want to go to work today.
Like, I'm done. I was a fighter.
And I mean,

Speaker 1 a lot of people, you guys know this story. You're three feet from gold.
You're, you're one step away, one decision away, one hire away from just making it through. But some people give up.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Dude, I think, I think you're a great example of, so I think in business, a lot of guys are refused to do this.

Speaker 2 You either got to, one, have incredible partners, or two, you got to hire incredible consultants, right?

Speaker 2 Like, like that is the only way to break through and get to the next level because everybody that's just trying to do it on their own, right?

Speaker 1 Based on their own IQ and everything everything else right they're they're gonna make a lot of mistakes so they're they're gonna have a it's gonna take decades yeah it's gonna take decades you'll get there but you're gonna be like in a nursing home if if you get there right like like if if you're able to survive that long and and continue to you know so let me let me ask you chris obviously i know your story but like what were those what was that paradigm shift what was the transition or how did you level up yeah i mean for for us

Speaker 2 for me it was it was hiring the right people and partnering with the right people right Like having Daryl at my side was huge because he helped keep my ideas sane, right? Like it,

Speaker 2 and I was able to bring all the good stuff, but at the same time, spending a million bucks on my personal education, getting the right coaches and the consultants, going and spending...

Speaker 2 four and a half years working for other people, right? You're going to be talking with Todd later today. Todd is one of my greatest mentors.
The funny thing is,

Speaker 2 I didn't even spend a ton of one-on-one time with Todd, like hardly any. But most of it was being in the room, seeing his strategy, seeing how he interacted with his leadership.
Right.

Speaker 2 And, and there's a few different ways that you can invest in these type of mentors. One, you can go and work for him.
That's what I did with Todd.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 And I also watched from afar, kind of seeing what he was doing when I wasn't working for him.

Speaker 2 So like that was, that was a huge turning point in my career was studying Todd Peterson and the way that this guy does business.

Speaker 1 Like I love Todd. Well, I think

Speaker 3 what you saw in Todd is like, dude, this guy's a visionary, and this is how visionaries operate. And you're like, and so you started to realize, like, I needed to operate.

Speaker 2 Exactly. And it aligned with my personality.
Me and Todd have very similar type personalities. We're both big dreamers and everything else.

Speaker 2 And I saw how he was utilizing his team to be able to go and execute.

Speaker 1 An orchestrator. Orchestrator.
He didn't jump in and do the work, which is so easy to do.

Speaker 2 High leverage of management team and everything else. Right.
Like

Speaker 2 all of us that are super successful, at one point, we have to give up control, right?

Speaker 2 Like, because we love the micromanagement at some point in our career, because we're like, I can do this and I can do everything, right? Like, we,

Speaker 2 and so that was probably one of the biggest turning points in building SoulGen was when I finally decided, you know, I'm going to surround myself with incredible people, give up control.

Speaker 1 And then I find myself saying, I want you guys to go build me a plan, give me three options. I want you to give me the SWOT analysis on each of them.
And maybe I'll put a little curveball in there.

Speaker 1 And I'd like to see this and this. I like plan two, but let's bring plan three, this piece to plan two.
Absolutely. You do the work.
You guys make plenty of money.

Speaker 1 You got an equity incentive program, which is profit units. It doesn't need to be me anymore.
I want to walk in a room. and be like, there's no freaking way I can keep up with Chris and Daryl.

Speaker 1 These guys are just so much better at this one thing that there are people in this company that I'm like, I don't stand a chance.

Speaker 1 So why even like, but, but I got to tell them and I got to, you know what prompting is when you like go to ChatGBT? Yeah, yeah. You got to ask the right questions.

Speaker 1 You got to make sure you're doing the right things. You got to, and they'll help us find the answers.

Speaker 1 And I don't think there's, I just think a lot of people are like, you hire people that just aren't at your level because you're afraid or maybe you can't afford them.

Speaker 1 When I learned about an equity incentive program,

Speaker 2 game changer.

Speaker 1 Dude, I could attract anybody for the roles I want.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's exactly how we built SoulGen, SoulGen, right?

Speaker 2 Like, we, we had guys that had sold businesses for millions of dollars come and work for us for like a minimum salary to be having, have some equity upside, right?

Speaker 3 Dude, you said prompting. I've never, I've actually never thought of that as a concept before.
But, like, if you think of all relationships, like

Speaker 3 the quality of your relationship with people is based off your prompting.

Speaker 2 The questions you ask, you interact. And it's just like Chad GBT.

Speaker 3 If you ask a bad question, you get a bad answer.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's true. It's a skill.
I mean, people are going to school right now, kids.

Speaker 1 The whole classes, the whole education is called prompting.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 that's the newest thing in education. There's a guy, send out cards.
He's out of Utah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 He was the first big speaking I did. He wrote a book called Prompting.

Speaker 1 And it's so true. I got a question for both of you guys, and I want you guys to go back and forth.
Yeah, yeah. Because you guys might take each other's answers.
So I'm going to do it this way.

Speaker 1 So you look at SoulGen. Yep.
And I want you each to go back and forth three each of the biggest pieces. And a lot of it's hiring and, you know, the marketing strategy.
But what was,

Speaker 1 let's start with the successes. And it could be you learned from a mistake, but what were the things that really drove growth, culture, revenue?

Speaker 1 And if you had to do three each and go back and forth.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, it's, I mean, there's, there's a lot of things, but some big ones. One was the strategy of generating leads online, right?

Speaker 2 Like that was something that prior to us doing it, there really wasn't any, there was people only in the SEO game, right?

Speaker 2 Google, pay-per-click type stuff, but nobody was doing the education side of the marketing, which was Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, that type of lead.

Speaker 1 That's where you guys figured it out on the social side of the education. Yes, exactly.
And what would you say was your biggest channel out of YouTube, Facebook, or Insta?

Speaker 2 Facebook was always about 40 to 50% of our business. Like when we were running a $2.2 million budget a month, right? Like

Speaker 1 half of that was going to meta Facebook. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Just Facebook, not including Instagram.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, like that, that was our really cutting edge because we initially we did what we called web to home, where we would generate the lead online, go and sell it in the home.

Speaker 2 And then eventually we scaled it out through a virtual sales floor. Yeah.
And we did that pre-COVID, right?

Speaker 2 And so like the fact, like we had a lot of lucky moments in building Souljan,

Speaker 2 which, you know, it was just us taking enough risk and different things. And one of those was we launched our sales floor, our virtual sales floor, November 2019.
Right.

Speaker 2 And so by the time five months later when COVID hit, we had a 25-man sales floor and we were prepped and ready to be able to just go and scale through where everybody else was like panicking.

Speaker 2 Anybody that was in the door-to-door world or the count over-the-table type sale, they're like, What do we do?

Speaker 1 People won't let us in their homes, right?

Speaker 2 Like, especially in some of the more liberal states.

Speaker 1 Oh, really, really, I mean, Washington, Oregon.

Speaker 2 Like, these are places.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. These are places that literally people are quadruple masking, right? They want 10-foot social distancing.
Like, it was just crazy.

Speaker 1 You can't even go into a coffee shop. Right, right.

Speaker 2 And so, like, those were like having that set up was one one of the biggest things. And then from day one,

Speaker 1 you can't give Daryl everything. You guys got to alternate.
Oh, go, go ahead.

Speaker 3 I would say I think a big piece too is we always were thinking ahead. We always had a vision.
We were always sharing the vision. So anybody who came into our business wasn't there for that

Speaker 3 opportunity. They were always there for what was.

Speaker 1 Something greater.

Speaker 3 And I think that was what built our culture. I think that's what brought in the right partners.
I think that's what also gave us buy-in from employees because there was so much craziness.

Speaker 3 I mean, when we were in the garage and we had, what, 50

Speaker 1 employees?

Speaker 3 53 employees.

Speaker 3 You had to buy in to what we were doing because it was just smashed in there. And obviously we were building a building at the time.
And so people understood what was going on.

Speaker 3 But chasing that dream was always everyone was bought into that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And if they weren't, they didn't last long.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I mean, culture was extremely on purpose by design upfront from day one, right?

Speaker 2 The way that we were creating trust, the way we were creating transparency, the vision, the core values, all the things, right, from day one.

Speaker 2 And many of the things that I learned from Todd Peterson, right? And being a part of like everybody in.

Speaker 2 the Vivint industry, this home security automation that everyone always called it the orange Kool-Aid, right?

Speaker 2 If you're drinking the orange Kool-Aid, it's because Todd was the master orchestrator of culture. And so we went and took his blueprint and just we applied it and just thought big and crazy.

Speaker 2 And, you know, the cool thing was the first couple of years when we were operating out of my garage, like

Speaker 2 the vision was so crazy. And people walk into a garage.
People think

Speaker 2 people, people are just like, dude, this is nuts. Like, why would I believe you? Like, we're sitting in a garage.

Speaker 1 It's that's a hard sell.

Speaker 2 That's a hard sell. But that, that actually made it even better, right? It's because it was so extreme, right?

Speaker 2 People either had to like jump on board completely with the vision or be like, there was no in-between. It wasn't like, oh, I got a comfy office space to be able to operate in.

Speaker 2 If I'm committing to coming and sweating in 85 degrees

Speaker 2 in a garage, it's the only reason is because I believe in what this idiot keeps preaching every single day.

Speaker 1 You're like, you've heard of Steve Jobs, right? Heard of Steve Jobs of Solar. Well, started in a garage.

Speaker 2 Well, it's funny. Like, I had this picture.
It was like four different garages.

Speaker 1 It showed the Google garage, the Facebook garage.

Speaker 2 And we had the Soul Gen garage. And we would always be like, look, this is us.

Speaker 1 Like, we're, this is what we're building.

Speaker 2 This is how. And so like people would get buy into it and just get excited about it, even though like from all outside perspective, there's no reason they should have bought in.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the ability. Listen,

Speaker 1 that's sales 101 is how to win friends and influence people. Get people to buy into your dream.
Or us entrepreneurs, we really are good at that. We're really good.

Speaker 3 Like, like i'm an optimist i don't care if the cup is empty i make it half full right and like but people are like dude that's not even real like there's no way that's possible you're not going to another galaxy so here's here's something interesting though when i when i grew up that it was common to say you know be a man of your word yeah but i realized like as a visionary you can't be a man of your word you got to be a man of your vision right because if you're a man of your word like you've got to know how to how to fulfill on what you're saying and as a visionary you don't You're just like, we're going into this darkness.

Speaker 3 And at the end of it, I'll tell you what's there.

Speaker 2 You do have to have an idea, right? You have to have a roadmap of like, this is how it's going to be possible, but you don't have every single detail. Correct.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, I work with Dan Martel, buy back your time.

Speaker 1 And he goes, one thing I've realized about you is your word is your bond. You shake somebody's hand, but what if I told you what I want you to practice?

Speaker 1 is not breaking your word, but undoing your word.

Speaker 1 If you told the neighbors five years ago you were going to mow their lawn every week, he goes, find him a replacement, pay them some of the money back and get out of that.

Speaker 1 He goes, sometimes what I feel like, Tommy, is that

Speaker 1 your idea of yourself is like, my word is my bond. If I shake your hand, it's paved in gold.

Speaker 1 But what made sense for Tommy two years ago, you need to renegotiate these things and do it fast and not feel like you're letting people down. He goes,

Speaker 1 I just did it last week. He goes, I promised this guy I would speak at his event.
He goes, dude, the event's 300 people. I got to travel.
He's like, I had to renegotiate it. I got a great sub.

Speaker 1 He's like, I told him straight up. And guys, if you ever want to come visit, I'll make it up to you.
You come out to Kelowna. Usually I charge a lot for this.

Speaker 1 But he goes, practice that, become good at that because that's going to be your biggest weakness. It's not that you're a liar.

Speaker 1 It's not that you're not morally correct, but you need to work on that because that's a great statement that you said. It's like, you're right.
Sometimes we need to pivot.

Speaker 1 And I'm not trying to let people down. That's the worst feeling in the world, like you're letting somebody down.

Speaker 1 But at the end of the day, like Al always told me, Al Levi, he's like, you just got to be able to still have,

Speaker 1 especially with family, like you still got to be able to have Thanksgiving together. And like

Speaker 1 people are not like, if you've got a good reasoning behind it, they're not like in tears. You say, listen, this is why.

Speaker 1 And there are hard conversations. There's a great book called Fierce Conversations.
And it's hard to have these conversations. And I don't like to have them with everybody.

Speaker 1 The close five is five people. I feel bad for my mom, my sister, my dad because they've had the fierce, I've been fierce with them.
So, what is another reason that you think?

Speaker 2 So, let me actually jump in and add to this. Giuseppe.

Speaker 2 Giuseppe, we need a little water.

Speaker 1 Water, sir,

Speaker 1 to me.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 no, you're good. So,

Speaker 2 I think one of the big turning points is when we got really clear on KPIs and the reporting, right? Like, that is,

Speaker 2 one, I think fundamental to any business, but two, it was so

Speaker 2 like, so we went in in 20, in 2020, or 2019, we did 32 million. 2020, we did 34 million.
It wasn't great growth.

Speaker 2 But what during that year, we set foundation from a management perspective, like the management team that we put in place, the reporting, the KPIs, right?

Speaker 2 Like we set this foundation in 2020 that was absolutely phenomenal. And in

Speaker 2 between 2020 and 2021, we went from 34 to 89 million, right? We tripled our revenue. And much of that, and then the next year from 89 to 233 million.

Speaker 2 And much of that is because we were reporting real time.

Speaker 2 Like to this day, like I still have some equity in that business. I get a text message every time a deal is generated on there.
And it's like this full report.

Speaker 2 Like, this is how the lead was generated.

Speaker 2 This is where we're pacing. And so we created this way of competition and recognition and accountability, right? That just drove the business to go and level up continuously.

Speaker 2 And so then we would set these goals or these projections. And every single hour we'd be able to measure, like, are we on pace, off pace, right? Like, and

Speaker 2 that's where I think things really became. crazy, right? It was just with this level of accountability.

Speaker 3 And I think part of that foundation was we always protected the margin.

Speaker 3 Because I don't know how many businesses

Speaker 3 they start growing and they realize they'd have no money.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So they're not scalable.
Especially in solar. I see that all the time.

Speaker 2 Their model isn't scalable, right? Like they build it for today, not for tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 And so I think being able to scale with margin allowed us to continue to grow. You know, we had 300% growth year over year, two years in a row.
If we didn't have the margins we had, there'd be no way.

Speaker 1 And, you know, solar is a tough business, man. Keep going.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, I was just going going to say, and it was really important for us to make sure our employees understood that because they'd be up competing with people that were charging a lot less.

Speaker 1 Give it away. Half

Speaker 2 half the price, right? We would be priced at 60 grand and the competitor would be at 30 for the same system.

Speaker 2 And to be able to help these guys see why that was... that was necessary, right?

Speaker 2 Like why allowing us to be able to not cut corners, focus on the customer experience, be in business long-term, have a healthy profit margin that's going to be able to go and scale growth, right?

Speaker 2 Like, and so those are levels of like our culture and transparency where just people knew what our margins were and everything else, and they were fine because they were bought into the long term in the vision.

Speaker 1 I've got this open book policy. Everybody knows exactly what we do day, week, month, down to the lowest level.
I don't mean low level, but just I'd say

Speaker 1 you know, the front line. Right.
And people are like, why would you share that? People are going to know how much money you make. I'm like, yeah, we make great money.
I'm like, this is a business.

Speaker 1 My clients want us to make great money. They want us to be around in 10 years.
My vendors want us to make great money. And we take care of our clients.

Speaker 1 We take care of our vendors and we take care of their people. You know,

Speaker 1 there's, we give equity down to the installer technician level. Love it.
And I, I said this. I'm like, guys, I want you to be millionaires.
I want you to be bought in, but what's in it for me?

Speaker 1 I want you to think what's in it for, when you're a leader, you should say, what's in it for me from the coworker standpoint, the people that work work for you yep and this this idea is if they're winning so when we sit down i want to know chris what are your goals what are your dreams what do you want out of life like you want to buy a house you want to take your kids on this big trip each year you reverse engineer those goals and i'll say chris

Speaker 1 if we just increase your conversion rate and you worked with this guy for one week sounds like a step back but you would hit your goal you'd buy your house in 2025 instead of 2027.

Speaker 1 Like, doesn't that, don't you want that? And sometimes you look at their face and they're like, that's not really my dream. Like, literally, that's what my wife wants to do.

Speaker 1 And you say, you really got to peel the onion back and figure out what their dreams are. Set up a performance improvement plan.
How can you get them to buy in?

Speaker 1 If they don't buy in, you know, I always say, listen, I'm going to give you the opportunity to go work for my competitor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I love it. I love it.
So what you're, you're bringing up like some solid points that we definitely implement in our culture. Like one,

Speaker 2 there is no loyalty in business, only trust, right? Like a lot of business owners fail on the side of they try building this loyalty. And what, what is loyalty?

Speaker 2 It's, it's like, you just work hard for me because you're part of the family. It's not where trust is like you're going to bring value and I'm going to make sure that you receive value, right?

Speaker 2 Like I'm going to provide opportunity, a roadmap.

Speaker 2 You're going to have long-term buy-in, right? And the second that that's violated, I expect you to go work for the competitor versus a loyalty type of relationship.

Speaker 2 It's more of like a slave and a master, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's like, you just do this because I said so.

Speaker 1 I hate those guys.

Speaker 2 Not because there's benefit, not because there's anything else, right? Just do it because I cut your paycheck, right?

Speaker 1 And that is the worst management ever.

Speaker 2 And the thing I always tell people, I said, look, if you're building this loyalty type of relationship, you have a slave and a master. And what happens when a slave wants to leave?

Speaker 2 They leave in the middle of the night. You're not going to get the opportunity to retain these type of people because they're just going to leave your culture versus a trust culture.

Speaker 2 Trust culture, the guy's going to come and say, hey, look, I've got this opportunity that's being presented to me down the street,

Speaker 2 but I know you've always had my best interest. What do you think?

Speaker 2 Should I take it? Should I like, and that's the type of culture we always tried to foster where, and because of it, we never lost our top players because they knew.

Speaker 2 that if there was a better opportunity for someone else, we expected them to go and take it, right? And we encouraged them to go and take it.

Speaker 2 And so our job as business owners was always leveling up and making sure that we can provide enough opportunity that is going to give these guys roadmaps to be with us long term.

Speaker 3 So I appreciate your view on your employees, but I guarantee it didn't start that way.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So like, how did, how did that transition happen or how did you? COVID.

Speaker 1 COVID was a big one. When

Speaker 1 I didn't know that we heard about this coronavirus and everybody's like, corona, like, you know, we didn't know. And then people started dying.
It's all over the news.

Speaker 1 And it was a really hard day because we started having clients in.

Speaker 1 We didn't, I didn't know if it was going to kill off half the population. I just knew no matter what, this company was going to survive.

Speaker 1 And this guy, Tyler, walks into my office and he goes, Hey, man, you don't look so good. He's like, Everything's going to be okay.
He's like, You know, my wife makes really good money.

Speaker 1 She makes more than I do. He goes,

Speaker 1 I don't expect anything in return. You don't have to pay me back, but why don't you come? I pay in half.

Speaker 1 Wow. This is a technician.
And I just kind of looked down. I said, We don't need to do that.
I said, We're still still fine. And the next,

Speaker 1 there was a line and one of the gals walks in in the call center and says, hey, why don't you take all my PTO?

Speaker 1 I don't need it. Just if anybody's sick.
And people just started coming into my office and just not complaining, just offering me this.

Speaker 1 And I really reflected and I said, I got to, I love these people, but I got to become a better leader. I need to work on me.
Because if they're willing to do that for us,

Speaker 1 I need to do way more. I need to have a dream so big that everybody else's dream could fit inside and we could accomplish that.

Speaker 1 And, you know, there's this book called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. And he wrote down 100 things he wanted in the perfect wife.

Speaker 1 He literally wrote down, you know, the greatest mother and every single feature. And he reads this list and he's going through it and he goes,

Speaker 1 I could never pull a chick like this. So he wrote down 100 things he would need to become to be worthy of such a great partner.
Love it.

Speaker 1 And so I needed needed to write down 30 things that I would need.

Speaker 1 I didn't do 100, but I wrote down a great communicator, like very, like, I wrote down all these things that I needed to become to be worthy of such great people on my team.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I always thought I tried, but that was a rude awakening of like, whoa, dude. Like, these people are actually not only bought in, but they got your back no matter what.

Speaker 1 Like, they're going to go to war with you. And it's a great feeling, man.
And I'll tell you, like, we made it through that.

Speaker 1 We got the PPP money, went straight into marketing, and that just exploded us. And, you know, we've all got these stories of like the business was doing good, but it went to like excellent.

Speaker 1 And now I feel like we're making history and I'm just not done yet.

Speaker 2 I'm like, well, and the crazy thing is the amount of time that that happened, we're only talking three, four years.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's not that long. Like, and I think that's important for any listener that's trying to build their business or whatnot, scale it up.

Speaker 2 It's like, if you just apply these correct principles and do it repeatedly, repeatedly, it doesn't take long. Right.

Speaker 2 And there's a lot of us, Tommy included, that have struggled for years to get to that point.

Speaker 2 But once it clicked, once it worked, you know, I mean, the level of scale, the compound effect becomes real.

Speaker 1 It's true. And I'll tell you guys,

Speaker 1 this is a little hint for the listeners is,

Speaker 1 and I'll go back to L Levy, and I've had a lot of consultants. There's a lot of great people I've had in my life.

Speaker 1 Al said, what I'm going to show you how to do is no longer be a slave to your workers. He goes, I don't want you to recruit anybody because you pay more anymore.

Speaker 1 You don't need to find people with bad habits. He goes, We're going to show you how to make homegrown badasses.

Speaker 1 And he goes, You're going to find great personalities and you're going to teach them the skills.

Speaker 1 Before, I would just say, I'm just going to pay you more. I'll pay you a higher percentage, higher hourly, whatever it was.
Those people are willing to go for the next $10 more. Yes.

Speaker 1 And so we built homegrown, loyal, badasses that make a lot of money. And all I did was listen and I said it, you, I said, Chris, you don't believe in

Speaker 1 these rollers, do you? You think there's some better out there? And he goes, yeah, the double Z-bearing, lifetime self-lubricating. I go, where do we buy them from? Let's bring them in.

Speaker 1 This guy started selling rollers on every single job because he believed. So then I created this policy.
If you find a better product that I can get at mass scale, we'll bring that product in.

Speaker 1 And we have options. We don't give out ultimatums.
We give choices. And when they actually had a say, when you listen to, I'm sure Henry Ford listened to the assembly line to make it way better.

Speaker 1 When you start listening and saying, instead of saying, no, no, no, we're working on it. We're behind a desk.
You guys are in the field. We know better.
No, we don't. No, we don't.

Speaker 1 Listen to the people fighting, the boots on the ground. They're the guys sweating at 140 degrees.
They're the guys going out zero degrees in Minnesota. So sometimes my management hates it.

Speaker 1 And I don't like to call management my coaches. My coaches hate it because they're like, why do you always listen to them? And And I'm like, they're not complaining.

Speaker 1 They're coming up with solutions if we just listen.

Speaker 2 You know, you brought up an incredible principle that

Speaker 2 we talk about. Don't don't price yourself to impress others.
Right. And that goes for what you pay and what you charge, right? Because

Speaker 2 it's the exact equivalent.

Speaker 2 What you charge, if you're trying to be the cheapest, all you're doing is trying to buy them by discounting, right? To get the next customer.

Speaker 2 and they will go for the next person that's that much cheaper.

Speaker 1 You made it about price.

Speaker 2 You made it about price. And the same thing goes for employees, right?

Speaker 2 Like, as you said, like, when you make it all about compensation from a financial, they'll go for the next 10 bucks or whatever else.

Speaker 2 And it's like, that is, that is one thing that so many people get wrong.

Speaker 2 Pricing their product correctly and paying their people correctly and realizing that you compensate way more than just monetarily. You can compensate them in culture and opportunity.

Speaker 1 So much.

Speaker 2 Like so much value.

Speaker 1 Money is irrelevant. There's been study after study after about $74,000.
It's not irrelevant, but it's not as big.

Speaker 1 If you could meet your financial needs, a basic car, put clothes on your kids' backs, eat good.

Speaker 1 There's so many more important things, especially in this new generation, is they want to be part of something. They want to be involved.
They want to get trained. They want to know what's going on.

Speaker 1 It's not like the baby boomers that were just like, I'll go to work. I'll go to the job.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 One of the things you brought up, and I think this was also contributed to our success, was

Speaker 3 the homegrown salespeople and technicians. And technicians.
And I think, Chris, you should talk about this because we decided like we didn't want industry people in our business.

Speaker 3 We wanted to create them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, that was that was probably one of the biggest moves from a strategic standpoint that we did. Well, one,

Speaker 2 that we owned our own business. We were never going to fulfill for anybody else, right?

Speaker 2 Like if you wanted to come, like there were sales organizations all the time coming and saying, hey, will you just do our installs? And like that was a big, like all the time.

Speaker 2 And we got approached six, seven times a week by sales organizations. That was a big no.
The other one, as Daryl's talking about, is like, we do not hire industry people.

Speaker 2 We don't because industry people are trained up incorrectly, right? There's a lot of terrible business owners, a lot of bad cultures, like everything else. And these people become entitled.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 2 Like they're coming in and saying, well, I did this, this, and this at this organization. So you owe me this based on my resume.
Like, screw you. I don't owe you jack.
Right. Like, and so for me.

Speaker 1 Meritocracy versus tenure versus what you've done in the past. You need to prove yourself every day, just like I do, just like every person here.

Speaker 2 And so the cool thing is, is we never, not one of our salespeople had any experience selling solar. Zero.
Right. And so we trained them.
Like some of them had other experience, right? They sold cars.

Speaker 2 They sold this or that or the other. But it was like, man, if you were trained up in the door-to-door entitled industry, you know, Utah-based group, like we didn't want any, any part of you.

Speaker 2 And so then we were taking these just raw, hungry kids that had great personalities that were making 14 bucks an hour doing something. Oh, were they? I mean, most of them in their low 20s.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 But you just got to understand, though, Tri-Cities is a small town. Right.
So it's like, there's no sales force. There's not a big sales force out there to pull from.
We had to create. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We created these people. Like literally, we're taking people from the local coffee shop that are like playing barista while they're going to college.

Speaker 1 Did you find a honeyhole? Did you like, I know like some people say enterprise discount tire? Like, was there like this, man, if we get, it could have been a server from a certain type of restaurant.

Speaker 1 It could have been a

Speaker 2 for us, it was all about like personality assessment, disk assessment, right? Like if we could go find high D, high I's, right?

Speaker 2 Like the dominant personality, as Tony Robbins says, he doesn't, he doesn't hire any salespeople without a D type of personality.

Speaker 2 That dominant personality was always a winner for us.

Speaker 2 And so we'd bring these guys in and regardless of what their background is, it didn't matter if they had a D personality, we could shape them into a salesperson.

Speaker 2 And we would put them through incredible boot camps, right? Like there's guys that...

Speaker 2 So to this day that now work for other organizations because we're no longer part of things that are like, man, that boot camp was the foundation to all of my success.

Speaker 2 Like we'd put them through a two-week, just rigorous training, stuff that we had learned knocking door to door for many years and become masters of the sale.

Speaker 1 Hey, influence. Robert Shaddini.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I got a question. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I had a guy call me yesterday and he was asking me about service titan. Very, very successful roofer.

Speaker 1 And he said,

Speaker 1 he said, I think, Tommy, next year, I think by the end of the year, I would do a deal.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he said, I'm not going to do PE because I've heard the horror stories. I think I'm going to do strategic.
And I go, you only hear horror stories, but you don't hear all the great stories.

Speaker 1 There's a partnership fit. I got lucky.
And by the way, my PE company, not everything they've done worked perfectly, you know, but as the founder, you got to take some of the heat. You got to buy it.

Speaker 1 You got to realize these are financial engineers. If they could do what you could do, they go do it.
They don't make as much money as we make as founders or in the business.

Speaker 1 So I take a lot of heat for myself to say, I'm going to listen to them.

Speaker 1 They make a lot of valid points. But what is your take? I know there's some things you wish worked out differently, probably both of you.

Speaker 1 And I know, I don't know how much you're at liberty to talk about.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 what is your take on just selling your business, rolling equity, and what would you have done differently? And how would you have acted different? What are some of the things you would have changed?

Speaker 2 Absolutely. So I think every entrepreneur should have got an experience at least once, right? Like going through the experience is a fantastic thing, right? Going.

Speaker 1 I lost a little bit of hair.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, fantastic is an interesting way to

Speaker 2 term it. You know, it's, it's tough, right? It's, it's grueling, you know, very long, intensive.

Speaker 1 You know, it's worse than a prostate exam.

Speaker 2 Yes, yes. I mean, rubber glove to the extreme.
And but to have gone through it, you learned so much and you can bring so much to any other entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 Like this is how what you could do what you expect this is how i would have done it differently right right like we would have got the way we would have pegged our deal would have been at like the trailing 12 at the time of close you know we would have uh got a lot more money we would have got a lot more money out of out of the deal um you know but If I would do it again, I'm not sure I would go the PE route just because I've already checked that box.

Speaker 2 I think I've shifted

Speaker 2 into the more of like hold phase, right? Just long-term,

Speaker 2 nice-sized chunk of equity in different businesses that I'm a board member of and can influence, but don't have these,

Speaker 2 you know, P.E., you know, you've been, you've been very lucky. Like, and we thought we were lucky, you know, at first, but became increasingly difficult to work with and everything else.

Speaker 2 But, but, yeah, you know, had, if I had to do it over again, we would have negotiated a little bit better of a deal. I think, I think we could have gotten more money.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, looking back, like you have rolled more or less, and did you go through a formal process where you sat down with a bunch of different yeah, yeah, we went through a formal formal process.

Speaker 2 Um, I would have probably rolled a little bit less knowing what I know about the private equity group, right?

Speaker 2 And you know, uh, so that, so that's that's interesting. Um,

Speaker 3 I think to echo uh, some of the sentiment, like one of the things you got to realize is like you do lose control when you have a partner partner like a PE.

Speaker 3 I mean, they come in with a completely different set of motives. And so, like, the idea that things are going to operate, continue how they are, I mean, they will until they need to change things.

Speaker 1 They will. I'll tell you guys a little, the hard truth is until the performance goes down.

Speaker 1 Like, I think most PE groups are like, they got a five to seven year stent. And they're like, if it's not broken, don't fix it.
But I'll tell you this.

Speaker 1 I know a lot of guys, you get, you know, 10 million, 20 million, 50 million dollars.

Speaker 1 The guys that get those checks, they're not, they're building a house, they're driving a Lambo, they're taking their, they've done the work, they need to, their families need to enjoy it, so they're not all there.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so I think that if you go to a meeting, especially in the first year, and you're not prepared, and you don't have the answers, and you're late, and you're not, and there's like, you see some performance gaps, they're like,

Speaker 1 that's a double-edged sword for PE is like, we're going to give this person all this money. Are they as motivated still? So I think there's their side too.
For sure.

Speaker 1 And I'm not saying, like, look, I've realized I just flipped the page and I said, go back to work. And people are like, you're the same dude.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I know, because quite frankly, I don't, I won't say I'm an imposter, but it's not that I'm not worth the money. But it's like, I never wanted it to change me.

Speaker 1 I know people that have changed and are like, ooh, the flet mignon. And I'm like, dude.

Speaker 1 And I order flet mignon, but the point is, and i always ordered it but the point is like i'll never let money change me and i've seen money change people and i've seen it destroy people i've seen people afraid to hang out with certain people because now they these friends come back into your life this family comes back into your life because they know you hit it yeah and it literally ruins people they don't know how to deal with it and i'm like you know i like mr uh mr wonderful says if you come to me about an investment or any money I give you a one-time gift.

Speaker 1 It's not a lot of money. And I make you sign paperwork saying you're never allowed allowed to come to me again.
Yes. Ever.

Speaker 2 I love his tip.

Speaker 1 And the deal is, is like, dude, I don't feel any anxiety or stress from family. They're welcome to come to my house.
They see it's a marvelous house. It's a beautiful house.
I bought my house.

Speaker 1 I live in a small apartment. Actually, the technicians stay there.
Mine's a thousand square feet, three bedroom, tiny kitchen. Every one of my buddies, very, very successful.

Speaker 1 They came and stayed there. They're like, what the hell? I'm like, dude, it's close to work.
I own houses.

Speaker 1 And the thing was, I bought a big house because there's one thing you can't buy, and that's experiences.

Speaker 1 This allowed me to have my dad's 70th birthday, you know, Bree's niece's third birthday, my mom's 70th birthday.

Speaker 1 This allowed me to be around my closest people, play Big Buck Hunter and Golden T when I want and do fun stuff and have pool parties. So I looked at it as I'm buying a way to spend time.

Speaker 1 And you can't buy time, but you can make the most out of it.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. You can leverage time, though.
You can buy people's, buy people's time.

Speaker 1 You can buy a lot of time. You know, I realized from buying back your time over with Dan Martel, he goes,

Speaker 1 he goes, Tommy, let's just go over what you got in Goldman Sachs. And I told him, and he goes, what do you think your worth is right now with the 50% you rolled?

Speaker 1 And we kind of analyzed what I make per hour. And he goes, how much time do you spend driving? And we went through, did this kind of a map of the time.

Speaker 1 And he goes, do you do your landscaping? I'm like, no, I don't. I did that for too long.
And I'm allergic to grass. And we go through everything I do.
And he goes, how much do you like cooking?

Speaker 1 Does Bri love to cook? Is that like her thing? And I'm like, not really. So he's like, it's not that you deserve it or not.
It's not that you're not humble.

Speaker 1 But he's like, I just, you bought back 15 hours. And you're thinking in dollars instead of percentages.
He's like, I've done the math on your interest. He's like, you don't touch anything.

Speaker 1 He's like, you're buying time. And he's like, tell me about your EA.

Speaker 1 And he's like, is she capable of sitting in on meetings and preparing the hour-long meeting to get you back 45 minutes to make it a 15-minute meeting? And he's like, show me your priorities.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do next year? Like the great big things with your family? And like, and he repositioned and prompted it differently. He repositioned the way I look through my lens.

Speaker 1 And all of a sudden, I look through his lens. And I said, this is the right thing to do.
Because before I was like, this is douchey, dude, driver.

Speaker 1 And like, he's got this trainer, right? This guy's jacked, like, really jacked.

Speaker 1 And he tells his trainer, he goes, why don't you take your shirt off and post on like social media and like show yourself working out. It's inspiring.
And he goes, dude, that's so stupid.

Speaker 1 He's like, I hate those guys. And he's like, well, who's that picture right there? He goes, you know who that is.
It's Arnold Schwarzenegger. And he goes, what picture is that?

Speaker 1 He goes, one of the years he won Mr. Olympia.
He goes, why do you have that picture? He goes, dude, it's motivating as hell. Look at him.
He goes, you don't think that you'd motivate other people?

Speaker 1 And now the guy posts online and he actually helps people improve their life. It was just seeing through this different lens.

Speaker 1 And that's what Dan's helped me to do because I had this exact lens perfect for the business. I didn't have it at home.
I didn't know. I said, I don't, chef?

Speaker 1 Like, that's, I don't need a chef. Then I found myself ordering Uber Eats every night, not eating healthy.
Now it's hard not to eat healthy because

Speaker 1 if I don't like something, I'm like, make something different, you know? And it sounds, it does sound a little douchey, but it's not. It really isn't.
It's just a way.

Speaker 1 And by the way, I invited a lot of people over, and it's not like selfish, I don't think.

Speaker 1 I'm being more for my people.

Speaker 2 Dude, I think you're one of the most generous, loving, non-douche people

Speaker 2 where you could be douchey, right? Like you're in a position where you could clearly be douchey, right? Like you ride off into the sunset with the money and be like, screw you, team.

Speaker 2 Thanks for the, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's been a fun life. I found a great leader.
I'll see you guys later. And a lot of times this happens.
Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, man. I think, you know, transitioning in business, like everybody has different experiences.
There's so many different PE groups, strategics or whatnot.

Speaker 2 And to each his own, I think the hardest thing, I don't know if you experienced this, is just like allowing somebody else into the baby that you've created. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, I think that that was probably the hardest thing for me and that I did not realize would affect me as emotionally as it did. Right.

Speaker 2 Like this is the baby that literally was birthed out of my garage. Right.
Like this is the thing that I have built strategically on purpose, by design.

Speaker 2 And now there's other people coming in calling shots that I don't agree with. Right.
And that's, that's probably the, the most difficult thing about letting go.

Speaker 1 Well, here, here's the thing.

Speaker 1 These guys don't know how to market like I market. Marketing is probably the fundamental thing that I've done very well.
Yeah. And

Speaker 1 I told them from the get-go, we were very clear. I'm in control of marketing.
I will make the phone ring off off the hook. And by the way, marketing is recruiting as well.
So you let me handle this.

Speaker 1 You guys can put your financial engineers, your FPA team, tell me where we're losing money, tell me about accounts receivable, tell me all the analysis you guys do. I'm good with that.

Speaker 1 There's certain things. And I, quite frankly, I go to war.
I go to war with some of these guys. And they say, if you feel that strongly and you're that passionate about it, we know it's going to work.

Speaker 1 And you know what? They always remind me. They go, we didn't bet on A1.
We didn't, we don't care about A1. They do care.
They said, we bet on you. They remind me all the time.

Speaker 1 This is your baby. We bet on

Speaker 1 the best of the best. But what does that do to me? It puts all the onus on me.
It makes every decision I think about that harder. It says, is this going to grow the company and the profit?

Speaker 1 Is this going to take care of the people? I asked Ara, the founder of Service Titan, this is a really interesting question. I said, you've got a lot of investors, dude.

Speaker 1 You also have the trades that you're loyal to. You got a fiduciary responsibility right here.
You got a moral and ethical obligation over here. How do you do that?

Speaker 1 And he said, well, take, for example, you, Tommy. He goes, we didn't allow anything HVAC plumbing or electrical in.
He goes, I had investors back then.

Speaker 1 He goes, I spent 100 grand sending the success managers out there because I bought into you.

Speaker 1 And of course, the investors are going, why are you spending 100 grand on a garage store company? But you told me you were going to take over the industry.

Speaker 1 And you did everything you said you were going to do. You've brought in 500 companies to Service Titan.

Speaker 1 You got another guy like Ishmael horrible, not using the software right, bashing us all over the internet.

Speaker 1 We spent six figures on him to get him fixed. We got another 500 accounts from him.
So I go and I fix things and I take chances and I make them a good return.

Speaker 1 I'm not always right, but I do the right thing for the contractor and it's the right thing to do. And I was like, dude, I didn't even prepare you for that question.

Speaker 1 It was the best answer I could have imagined. And so after I left there, at Service Titan, I started thinking a lot about my one-star reviews because now I used to say, let's get 17 more.

Speaker 1 Of course, you're going to get better reviews. Now I'm like, what can we do to make that a learning opportunity, turn that person to a raving fan?

Speaker 1 Because ours, every story he said, all my haters that got on a service titan and complained became raving fans when we fixed it. We were committed to excellence.
Those were the hardest people.

Speaker 1 Those were the high Ds. Those were the assholes that weren't going to buy in.
And, you know, the fact is I'm on a podcast right now. I was on a podcast earlier today.
That is like my counselor.

Speaker 1 That's my therapist. Because I get to ask questions and I get to, I got a lot of stuff like I loved trailing talent, trailing 12 at the time of close.

Speaker 1 That's a good one because you lose a few months sometimes. Yes.
Well, dude, it was crazy.

Speaker 2 I mean, we were told we were going to be able to close in 30 to 40 days and it took 120 days.

Speaker 1 And that additional 90 could have been an extra million bucks. No, EBITDA.

Speaker 2 Bro, not even like it was an extra 10 million of EBITDA and trailing 12.

Speaker 1 That's freaking nuts. So on a multiple basis, guys,

Speaker 1 you know what's interesting is I got a buddy of mine. I won't go into detail, but he calls him COVID babies.

Speaker 1 I've been doing this 17 years, but we really started to really take off.

Speaker 1 But I'll tell you this: as I'm sitting there with Aro, who's got 12,000 companies, he goes, You're one of the only unicorns right now in this. This is a recession.
He goes, We're in a recession.

Speaker 2 Thank goodness for a half percent cut yesterday, baby.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 let's go.

Speaker 1 But the fact is,

Speaker 1 people are like, like, who do you want to win the election? I'm like, of course I have a side I'm taking, but I'm like, I don't care. I'm going to win either way.
I'm like,

Speaker 1 I don't care because if it turns into a buyer's market or a seller's market, I'm winning.

Speaker 1 If it turns into a buyer's market, I'm going to buy real estate cheap. I'm going to buy companies for cheap.

Speaker 1 And if it turns into a seller's market, I'm going to have more clients than I know what to do with. Either way,

Speaker 1 I'm not going to let Ukraine or Israel or anything else. Only what I can't control.
I can't control the traffic.

Speaker 1 So what's in my control? And people say, you know, you got to understand Christmas is coming up. And it was a hot, the summer didn't hit right for HVAC.

Speaker 1 Everyone's got a reason. And they say, you don't understand my industry.
You don't know my market. It's not like that here.
These people are offering it for cheap.

Speaker 1 I'm like, and you're competing on price? You can compete on three things. Be the cheapest.
Be the best warranty with the best parts and time. Same day.

Speaker 1 We're going to be out there when you need us most.

Speaker 1 And so many people pick.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be price. I'm going to be, and Alex Ramozzi, you know him well.
You know him better than I do. He talks about this.
He's like, most of the people that are competing on price are broke.

Speaker 1 They're making barely a living. And literally, you're copying the company that's been doing this for 30 years that doesn't have a business.
They can sell their phone number, not their business.

Speaker 1 And these businesses come try to sell to me. And I'm like, I look at their financials and I go, well, you pay yourself $180,000 to replace you is going to be $100,000.

Speaker 1 So you found 80 grand and your business makes 100 grand on top of that. 180, I could only give you a million dollars for this business.
They're like, are you crazy? I got 40,000 customers.

Speaker 1 They don't believe it. They don't understand.
And I'm like, no one wants to pay you for your goodwill and your bullshit.

Speaker 2 Like, look, we need, we need hard EBITDA, baby. We do.

Speaker 1 We need some cash.

Speaker 1 I take out, the way PE works is we take out loans. Right.
That makes the numbers way better. Yep.
And it's got to be able to pass what's called a quality of earnings.

Speaker 1 And you get some addbacks in there, and some of those are questionable. You could add back your daughter's pay.
You can add back the car you're driving. Some of them, though, are like ridiculous.

Speaker 1 And then you say, you know, there's all these questions. Are you going to roll equity? How's this going to work? But other than that, there's really no questions.
It's like black and white.

Speaker 1 And everybody wants to live in this color area. Well, you know, and here's the worst thing.
They say, imagine what you're going to do with this. You got a higher price.

Speaker 1 You've got a higher conversion rate. And I'm like, so you want me to pay you for what I'm going to do with it? It's like, you want me to pay you.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to buy your house that's in horrible shape and I got to fix it up. I got to repaint it, redo the roof.
Do you want me to pay you for what the ARV is going to be?

Speaker 2 That's the crazy thing in real estate all the time. If you go buy an apartment complex, guys try selling on a pro forma of what it could be.

Speaker 2 Like, if you raise the rents and you change all these things, it's worth this much. We're like, well, why don't you do it? You

Speaker 1 and they really think they're like, but this is, you got to understand, understand, this is their life. This is their largest asset.
And other people go like this.

Speaker 1 They go, I'm not going to spend $30,000 on a brand on getting my brand right. You're betting the farm on this.
You don't get the brand right.

Speaker 1 You know, if I said, you're going to sell in six months, what would you do? They say, well, I definitely cut these two guys and I top grade this and I do this. Why don't you do that?

Speaker 1 Like, you know what you need to do with Uncle Joe that's been milking for the last five years. Why don't you start thinking I'm going to be selling in three months, even if you're not?

Speaker 1 do the right things take the hard choices you'll meet this big dude tatted up like drives a harley he's afraid to fire he's a manly man but he won't do make the hard decisions right what if you manned up or womaned up and made these hard hard decisions today and realized i need to get this and this and there's nothing going to stop me no excuses

Speaker 1 Even with getting in shape, I got a guy. You don't know what happened to my shoulder.
I can't lift. Dude, you don't even walk.
I watched you drink a 12-pack last night.

Speaker 1 You are making excuses thinking in a 12-step process I've never been through one, what's the first, what's the first thing you do? Admit that you've got a problem.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 1 And most people are going, oh, this, this, you don't understand this.

Speaker 3 One of the things, so firing is hard. I remember when we first had to fire people, like, I hated it because I felt like I was doing it.

Speaker 1 I'm not good at it to this day.

Speaker 3 Well, I feel like I was doing something wrong to these people. I was putting them in a bad situation.
And then the paradigm shift was like, I'm not firing them for me.

Speaker 3 I'm firing them them for everyone else who's there working for me. Right.
And so that helped a little bit. That helped a lot, actually.

Speaker 2 But then on top of that is like, there is a right fit for every single person on this earth somewhere, right? They have a value that they can bring to society.

Speaker 2 And if they're not bringing it to us, by not getting rid of them, you are costing them their real opportunity and like gift in life, right?

Speaker 2 Like if they are an artist stuck doing an accounting job for you, right? Like you are screwing them by not setting them free if you got some big big

Speaker 3 one of the one of the traps though and and we had to learn this um

Speaker 3 when we had to to cut some people was if you're overpaying someone they're the hardest people to cut because you're basically putting them in a bad situation because they'll never be able to replace the pay because you overpaid them the people that you're paying them what they're worth you should never worry about laying them off or firing them because they'll go get a job for the same or more.

Speaker 1 That's a great, here's the deal. This is where everybody gets confused.
A lot of my coaches, a lot of different people, they go, do you realize how much this guy's making?

Speaker 1 And they go, he should be running more jobs than two a day. And I go, he spent 10 years to master the craft to be the best.
Tom Brady doesn't have to play every scrimmage.

Speaker 1 He just needs to play in the Super Bowl. And I said, he's earned the right to make 400 grand.
You know why?

Speaker 1 Because he's earned the right. And guess what? He makes more than me without equity, but he makes more than me.
Any sales job,

Speaker 1 it's called performance pay. And when you're the best and you're very good at it, you don't put a limit.
You know how many owners I meet that they're like, my guy makes more than me.

Speaker 1 I'm like, did you really reverse engineer and pull out a pivot table and say, if your guy's making 500 grand, that means I'm making a million. Right.

Speaker 1 And if you make, I tell my guys all the time, I hope you make $10 million next year. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But owners are like, well, he's not working as hard. He's not doing this.
You built the pay structure. What do you mean?

Speaker 2 And it's crazy the people that want to go in and and change those pay structures because these guys are making too much when they're actually performing and producing the

Speaker 1 management.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 So I'm like, then you, here's the keys. You could go have that job.
You could have any, you want to be in a staller. They're making a lot of money.
You go take that job.

Speaker 1 Oh, but you don't get to be in an air-conditioned office. Oh, you got to pick up a night shift.
Oh, you got to work weekends.

Speaker 1 Oh, you have to pick up on Christmas because that guy picked up on Christmas. And guess what?

Speaker 1 That guy wasn't going to make pinnacle, but he worked one month straight because he wanted it that bad and earned equity i think we miss how hard these guys don't have it easy and when you're the best of the best why would you get

Speaker 1 anyone in my management right

Speaker 1 they could have that job they could say listen dude i'm gonna i'm gonna go into this and it's not a demotion i that's the hardest part about a sales guy is they're like i want to get into management and it's sometimes they can be great you're gonna make less money you're gonna make less money but there's an opportunity to have ownership and it's gonna take a few steps back but you could probably take 10 steps forward yeah but it's like so you're devaluing devaluing what I'm worth.

Speaker 1 No, it's a whole different role. And it's more about leadership and communication and these different things.
And it's very, very hard because they feel trapped. They'll never get out of the garage.

Speaker 1 And that's that's why we created the product specialist that could work from home to help close over the phone.

Speaker 1 So that's, there's, there's now there's a different branch that you could go different ways. And that's what people love about they get to work themselves out of the garage as they get older.

Speaker 1 And it's understandable.

Speaker 1 Last thing, guys, let's let's get this going here um

Speaker 2 i'm gonna ask you guys each a question to close us out but um if someone wants to get a hold of you chris how do they do that follow me on uh instagram is probably the best at chrisleeq quarterback where are you at are you mainly on facebook instagram what's the best spot

Speaker 1 well tommymello.com has all my social i'm more

Speaker 1 i'm an old man i'm more on facebook and you know somewhat linkedin but but uh it's fun it's funny us like 40 year olds the the guys in the 40s, right?

Speaker 2 Like, we're still on Facebook, yeah. We made that transition from not on Snapchat from MySpace, we went from MySpace to Facebook, so it's like hard for us to make another transition, right?

Speaker 1 You know, it's pretty funny.

Speaker 1 My family, what about you, Daryl?

Speaker 3 Uh, Instagram, Daryl C.

Speaker 1 Kelly, you find me there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I always give Daryl a hard time. I'm like, bro, get on social.

Speaker 1 Well, by the way, Daryl is D-A-R-Y-L-L. One L 1 L.
So we screwed this up. D-A-R-Y-L.

Speaker 3 D-A-R-Y-L.

Speaker 1 And then it's C.

Speaker 1 Kelly. Kelly.
K-E-L-L. So follow these guys, reach out to these guys.

Speaker 1 Any books that like out of like, you know, the greats, there's a million books, but is there one book that maybe no one's heard of that you guys are like?

Speaker 2 I mean, one that

Speaker 2 many people have heard of, but I always go back to is Atomic Habits by James Cole.

Speaker 2 I mean, dude, every time I read that book, It gets my mind right and I'm reminded of, right, like habit chains and everything else I'm like ah I got to get back and I always sharpen right back up dude it's I throw that thing in audible for one year and I'm or for one hour and I'm dialed I'm ready I'm ready to take on the world and just be the most disciplined human being in the world so let me let me read you something while you're thinking of that

Speaker 1 Daryl

Speaker 1 so I'm your constant companion

Speaker 1 I am your greatest helper or your heaviest burden. I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.
I'm completely at your command.

Speaker 1 Half of the things you might as well turn over to me, and I'll do them quickly and correctly. I'm easily managed, but you must be firm with me.

Speaker 1 Show me exactly how you want something done, and after a few lessons, I'll do it automatically. I'm the servant of great people and the Alice of all the failures as well.

Speaker 1 Those who are great, I have made great. Those who are failures, I have made failures.
I'm not a machine, though. I work with the precision of a machine plus the intelligence of a person.

Speaker 1 You may run me for profit or run me for ruin. It makes no difference to me.
Train me, take me, Be firm with me. And I will place the world at your feet.
Be easy with me and I will destroy you.

Speaker 1 Who am I? I am Habit. I get goosebumps.
That's so good.

Speaker 2 Where's that from?

Speaker 1 It's just a poem. It's called I Am Habit.
And I read this to all my graduates every month. I love it.
And like, dude.

Speaker 2 Send it to me.

Speaker 1 I change. I will.
And I changed everything by just learning. Like, dude, habits are everything.
Oh, yeah. And it's so important.
Like, I flossed twice a day. I got a time for it.

Speaker 1 I still throw things out of wax so time doesn't fly by. And I kind of get out of rhythm, but

Speaker 1 I could go right back in, which is rare because you know what happens when you get off your rhythm. Yeah.
You got to have this skill to get right back in it. And you got to be disciplined.

Speaker 1 Because if you're walking three miles a day and you stop for a month or you get sick and you can't jump back in, it's so easy to listen to that bad voice and say, well,

Speaker 1 I love that book. What about yours?

Speaker 3 Since you say that. So my recommendation is: I'm going to just throw something out there that probably the business community doesn't Jesus.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 It could be.

Speaker 3 But Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza.

Speaker 3 So this is,

Speaker 3 yeah, so Joe Dispenza, he teaches meditation. And

Speaker 3 when I first got involved in his work, it was kind of woo-woo type stuff.

Speaker 3 He helps break it down so you can understand it. But

Speaker 3 one of the powerful things is understanding how your body thinks and how your mind thinks.

Speaker 3 And what that means is like there's times where we react, we create an emotion emotion to a situation, and it's just purely a memorized reaction that our body gives us.

Speaker 3 A good example would be like you could come home

Speaker 3 and your wife says something and your reaction is like triggered. Triggered for whatever reason.
Right.

Speaker 3 And you know what meditation is is it's removing, it's removing that programming in your body so that you can actually think and use your mind to actually be cognizant of your decisions, especially in your emotions.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 3 It's really fascinating. It's a very different way to look at what's going on in the world.

Speaker 1 I think I need, like, I'm very nervous to unpack some of these memories that I know are deep down inside.

Speaker 1 And this lady, she pulls out these Kleenexes and they're filled with this trash bag, like this big, you know, just like an office trash and a see-through.

Speaker 1 And she goes, when we meditate, when we actually get the help, when we take these things, she takes out each napkin, she folds it up, puts it there. And she goes, this next one, she folds it up.

Speaker 1 And she takes all these out and she puts them back in and says there's more there's more stuff going to be here but we free we're free now we've accepted the past and that's a tough one for me because i know there's stuff i don't know like i don't know what's in there yeah but it's like

Speaker 1 you know the the book um um geno wickman oh yeah uh shine

Speaker 1 his newest one shine is he's he had he sold his company he's on the top eos he's on the top of his game he's a great guy we actually flew him out and met directly with our management team.

Speaker 1 He's a genius. And I love the guy.
And he said, dude, by all accounts, I'm the biggest success, a worldwide training for business. I've

Speaker 1 multiple, you know, hundreds of millions. And he goes, I sat there,

Speaker 1 sold, he owns 12.5% of EOS now. And he goes, I was literally depressed, like literally like.

Speaker 1 Very depressed.

Speaker 1 And he goes, I didn't know what to do. I had all this money.
I created something something amazing. And so he writes about this in Shine.
And it's true, man.

Speaker 1 Like people sell, it's almost like you sold a piece of your heart when you sell your business sometimes. And that's one thing that I'll never go through.

Speaker 1 I love my business, but I understand what it's doing. And I understand that it is a business.
It's not a human being.

Speaker 1 And it helps a lot of people. And I'll never leave it in a bad spot from good to great and built to last by Jim Collins Built to Last.
It's like, I want to leave this company and thrive without me.

Speaker 1 Because that's how good of a leader I want to to become is that it did better when I was gone. Because there's no ego.
I love it. And that's a different thought.

Speaker 1 But I'm going to have you guys give us, we talked about, and this is the best part is I didn't ask any questions on this.

Speaker 2 That's good. It was a good discussion.

Speaker 1 So we talked about a lot of things in the podcast, talked a little bit about PE, a lot about just growing a business, talked about some of my favorite books. Talked about hiring.

Speaker 1 Probably left some good things out. Probably something that's heavy on the heart, something that the listeners need to hear.
So, one big thing to close us out, Daryl.

Speaker 3 So, I'm looking at myself 10 years ago, 20 years ago, what I would talk, what I would tell myself. Oh, I like that.

Speaker 3 And I think the one thing that I'm learning today that I wish I would have understood better then is like we experience this world in our body,

Speaker 3 and our body is impacted by food and exercise. Um, also, you know, many other things, but just like don't wait to to take care of your health.
Like, make your health part of who you are.

Speaker 3 I was in the camp where I just, I was skinny, even be considered skinny fat. Like, I just didn't, I just didn't, I wouldn't eat really much food.
I, I, uh,

Speaker 3 didn't work out a lot. And so then this year, you know, I feel like I've gone through this big transformation.
from a lot of different aspects from business, spiritually, financially.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 3 the physical physical aspect just wasn't a priority. So, you know, I've gained 25 pounds this year,

Speaker 3 and I've been eating a lot better. I've been very diligent in what I eat, what I don't eat.
And it just seems foolish that we don't take that seriously.

Speaker 3 And I know you've recently, you just mentioned you've been focusing on that as well.

Speaker 1 10%.

Speaker 1 I want to know Saturday.

Speaker 2 Dude, 10%? Jeez.

Speaker 1 Dang, Gina.

Speaker 2 I mean, what was it?

Speaker 1 A year and a half ago you were 26.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 1 Less than a year ago.

Speaker 2 That's incredible. That's incredible.
By the way, he's got a great doctor that

Speaker 2 I did a call with.

Speaker 1 We need to do a group call. Constable Jay.
Yeah. Dude,

Speaker 1 part of it, like the four-hour work week, it's like, are your supplements right? Is your sleep right? Is your water right? Is your food right? But it's not that complicated. It's like anything else.

Speaker 1 You said once you learned your KPIs, it's pretty simple. You know, your KPIs are your body, your sleep, your algorithm.
And all of a sudden, man, it's really not that hard.

Speaker 3 It's these little decisions

Speaker 1 of just, you know what? I don't want cake. You know what? I'm going to order a chicken.
And by the way, order stuff that you enjoy eating because there's something healthy you enjoy.

Speaker 1 It's just so easy. Food is poison.
Did you ever see who's in charge of the United States, Canada, or England? Like the health general? Oh, yeah. They are fat, disgusting lards.

Speaker 2 I mean, we have a training as

Speaker 1 that the health person.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 You went for it. I'm sorry, but man,

Speaker 1 dude, that's a health issue. Yeah, I agree.
Not by you, brother.

Speaker 1 Dude, by the way, I'll just tell you that that's very, very powerful. Like, I got a phone call that my cousin, very smart gal, says,

Speaker 1 you know, what's wrong with you? You know, you don't look healthy. You don't love yourself.
She made me go take off my shirt in the mirror. And I was embarrassed.

Speaker 1 It's something I looked in the mirror every day, but I didn't see myself. I had every reason.
And then she said, why don't you love yourself? And man, that was a smack in the face.

Speaker 3 I think the challenge, too, is we're like taught, like, don't be vain, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But I think that's taken out of context. I think enjoy, being able to be in love with your image is important.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 2 I also think it's just like being

Speaker 2 out of whack any one direction.

Speaker 2 Like the guy that only cares about his physical appearance and that's it, like spends six hours in the gym, has a terrible family life, can't pay for, barely pay his gym membership or whatever else, right?

Speaker 2 I think there's that, right?

Speaker 2 But and so what we have been taught on the opposite side is like, that's bad. So don't just.

Speaker 3 And I think on the other side, too, I think you'll manage stress better, right? We go through a lot of stressful things as business owners. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 And I mean, stress is just an emotion your body's producing.

Speaker 1 It's chemical, right?

Speaker 3 And your body can go through quite a bit, but you have so much opportunity to control that in a better way. And I think it starts with diet and exercise and being consistent on those two things.

Speaker 3 Because I know if I wake up and I work out, I'm going to eat right. My mind's going to be right.
Like so many other things start to.

Speaker 1 It's the old habit stack, right?

Speaker 2 Like

Speaker 2 you start with one thing, it domino affects into everything else.

Speaker 1 Stress is the inability of action. It's not acting, it's not making decisions, it's not moving forward, it's not having the difficult conversations.

Speaker 1 I think most of the stress and anxiety is dealt with is you're letting things bottle up instead of just getting it out. Rip the band-aid, rip the band-aid, rip the band-aid.

Speaker 2 And I think when you're taking action in the gym and being disciplined at the dinner table, it's much easier to address these hard things that cause stress, right?

Speaker 1 Like go and have the hard conversation. You do that more because you're used to doing hard things.
And I do believe, like, like, you know,

Speaker 1 making decisions decisions quickly and just living with them quickly. Like, so many people live in this procrastination mode.
Oh, yeah. And they just don't know.
They're like, it's not the right time.

Speaker 1 But what if we fail? And they're so worried. And it's like, who cares? We fail.
We make a hundred thousand decision doesn't work. That's why my PE company, I love them.

Speaker 1 They're like, you prove it out in that market. Then you can scale it to five.
Then you go do it. They're totally fine.
They're finally getting the action. That's awesome.
Love it. What is your

Speaker 2 thought a lot about just like the why, right? Like everybody knows about like, yeah, you got to have a why that motivates you and everything else.

Speaker 2 But I think more important than that, you need to have a why that's unique, right? Like most of us try to create whys that are somebody else's why.

Speaker 2 I need the house, the car, this. Like we define success based off of other people's parameters rather than our own.

Speaker 2 And I think really getting detailed, like for me, what's changed my life is when I put detail to the reason why I want a certain dollar amount. Like, what am I going to do with those dollars?

Speaker 2 Like, what does that actually mean for me if I have a billion dollars in the bank account? Not just to say I have a billion dollars, but like, what am I doing with that billion dollars?

Speaker 2 Like, what, what type of charity events am I running? What am I doing in my community? How am I involved in my family's life and everything else because of these type of things? And doing the things.

Speaker 2 for me, not for it to impress anybody else. Right.
And, you know, for some people, living in a cottage, you know, that's grid somewhere in Kansas may be it.

Speaker 2 And other people, it's going to be a $10 million condo in New York or whatever it may be. And

Speaker 2 like getting to know yourself and what actually

Speaker 2 brings you joy and happiness and everything else. Sorry, that's my diabetes going off over here.

Speaker 2 So like just getting to that and like really understanding yourself and being driven that way rather than just be like, oh, Daryl has this. I should probably want that or Tommy's done this.

Speaker 2 And I think it's really easy, especially as a listener to the show. They see three guys that have accomplished a lot of really cool things to be like, oh, I need to go do that or I want to go do that.

Speaker 2 It's like, maybe.

Speaker 2 Like, is that the thing that drives you, that pushes you, that motivates you, that's going to give you true fulfillment in life? And if it is, then

Speaker 2 get a exact detailed plan and go and make it happen.

Speaker 1 I love that. I meet a lot of people that are like, I want to do what you did in my industry I go why

Speaker 1 they're like because you proved it's possible I'm like

Speaker 1 what would you possibly do with a hundred million dollars

Speaker 1 and they're like I don't know and I'm like well what is it like to be at your daughter's play and not be there and they're like but I am there I'm like no you're not you're thinking about work the whole time you think this you never have a plan on selling, which means you're going to spend the next two decades of Mr.

Speaker 1 Children's life. We say we're all there at work, but very few people have the ability to be where their feet are.
And I just, I think you both make valid points. There's 168 hours in a week.

Speaker 1 Time's not your problem. You work for 50, you sleep for 50, you work out for 10, you still got 60 hours left.
So get your time. And what you say is really

Speaker 1 put down a list of priorities you want your life to look like. Manifest what it looks like for me at 41 and say, this is.

Speaker 1 some things that it's not happiness, but this is what, really what I want to do. Because trust me, the material things, they're they're cool at first.
Yeah, they're fleeting.

Speaker 1 I see a lot of people get on drugs, commit suicide, their lives fall apart. Money will ruin people quicker than it'll help them.
So just be very careful what you guys want.

Speaker 1 You guys made great valid points. I'm glad you're here.
It was a pleasure being you, Daryl. A lot of fun, man.
As always, appreciate you both. All right.
Thank you guys. Thanks, Tommy.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening, guys.