Unlocking Organizational Success Through Management with Brian Gottlieb

The manager affects how people think.

The manager is the custodian of the company's culture.

If you want to really grow your business, you have to work at the manager level because that's what defines organizational performance.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mellow.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you.

First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview.

So I asked the team to take notes for you.

Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299.

That's 888-526-1299.

And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.

I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states.

Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.

Now let's go back into the interview.

All right, guys, this is going to be an awesome episode.

I got Brian Gottlieb here.

He is just a really good man, and this is like a must-listen to.

He's an expert in sales business.

He spends half his time in Wisconsin, half here in Phoenix, founder of Tundra Home Improvement and the author of Beyond the Hammer.

Brian is an inspirational business leader who founded a home service business in 2009 on plastic folding table with $3,000.

When he sold the business 12 years later, the organization expanded across multiple states and it's grown to be 600 employees,

nearly a billion in lifetime sales.

Brian, I really appreciate you doing this today.

Yeah, hey, thanks for having me.

I appreciate it.

It's fun watching you.

I, you know, we had dinner recently, and I just, I love your stories.

I love the book.

Let's just tell the audience a little bit about you and where you came from, where you're at today, what you're enjoying in life.

Yeah, well, I came up in this industry like a lot of people, right?

When I finally had a business, it wasn't like I really planned to have a big business.

You know, I worked for somebody.

I didn't like it.

I started doing it on my own.

And next thing, you know, I've got people, I've got a business.

And of course, I don't know what I'm doing along the way.

So it's kind of interesting.

But yeah, I grew up selling at the kitchen table.

So I love the idea of that I can go into somebody's home, people that don't know me, and a couple hours later walk out with a check in my hand.

And that's pretty exciting.

And you know, what I love also about the industry in general is that, and as you know very well, it doesn't matter what kind of car people drive.

It doesn't matter what kind of education they had.

It doesn't matter what type of house they live in.

People can truly have the career of their dreams if they show up right, if they have the right attitude and energy and commitment and willingness to learn people can have an amazing career in this industry it's great

yeah you know to tell us a little bit because home improvement is so much different than home service is that home improvement you got to kind of go get it and it's not like this like my pipe just broke i need you here today you got to be really good at sales getting into the home

you got to tell a story there's just a lot to it and i love home improvement so much because

everyone in there is a hunter.

And you got to go to

home shows and have a dialing system.

I'm spoiled.

Everything's inbound.

They're like, I need you out today.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to make leads every single day.

Every single day, at the end of the day, you're out of business and you got to start over the next day and you don't have these repeat customers.

I envy home service businesses that have some sort of a pipeline.

But yeah, look, and I think that the secret to in-home sales is if you think about it, there are really five things that you sell every single day.

It's why our company, why our product, why our installation process, why our price, and why right now?

And you have to do all of those five things really, really well if you want to be successful.

So it's a great industry, though.

It is fun and it's super scalable when you get it right.

You know, what do you think the future holds for home improvement and home service?

With everybody asks me, the Google algorithms are changing.

Now there's all this AI.

There's just a lot of stuff happening.

Where do you see the future?

Look, I think that what if you look for where is the dissatisfaction in the current business today, I have to say that the home improvement industry requires a 90-minute to a two-hour presentation.

That's grueling.

That is grueling.

And if there's a way to shorten cut that a little bit, you know,

do I think that people can buy a whole, spend $15,000 on a bathroom modeling project by buying something online?

I'm not so sure about that.

So I think there's some human

effect to it that helps answer questions, overcome objections, and close.

But look, I think more than anything else, I think marketing is going to change, right?

Where leads come from.

Is Google always going to be the best search engine?

I don't know.

It is today, but

I know Reddit is a search engine for a lot of people.

And

will ChatGPT be the next search engine?

Who knows?

And a lot of things to think about there.

So I want to go back to 2009 here for a minute.

And you are,

you got three grand.

And what's going through your mind?

How did you come up with the concept?

What were some of the growing pains?

Yeah, well, let's just be clear that that three grand had to work because there wasn't a whole lot of more $3,000 buckets behind it to make it work.

And, you know, before I started my business, I was a consultant in the industry after I got done selling and leading a sales team.

And I got a chance to visit companies across the country.

And I saw so many companies, I kept a journal and I kept two columns in my journal.

On one side is, if I ever open up a business, I'm definitely doing this.

And the other side was, if I ever open up a business, I'm never doing this.

You know, I got to see a lot of things that were broken.

And look, in the beginning, when you, when you start a business, you know, it's all about execution.

It's, it's, I got to go out and I got to make a lead.

I got to close a lead.

I got to install a lead every single day.

And that's fine when it's just me.

I think what gets really complicated is when you start to build teams.

And now all of a sudden, the business of success has little to do with how well I execute and everything to do with how well the teams execute.

So, look, in the early days, look, in the early days,

as the business gets more mature, you can take risk, risk that doesn't put you out of business.

In the early days, it's a lot of risk.

You're moving your chips in a lot of times on different ideas, and hopefully, they work.

So, that was, I mean, it was a fun ride,

as I'm sure you know.

Yeah, it is.

I mean, there was, but how many many times were you at like ground zero, ready to go bankrupt or wondering if you're going to hit payroll or that first employee of the first five or when you had to switch from 1099s to W-2s or

what was that like?

What were the initial stages?

Because everybody asked me, what was it like to be a few million dollars?

And that was so long ago.

I'm like, it's hard for me to think back then.

Yeah, I remember sitting.

at a kitchen table for this person that was they wanted a sunroom because we were originally a sunroom company that's what i opened with And I thought to myself, and he went into the other room to talk to somebody for his wife.

And I thought to myself, if this guy buys a sunroom, I'm still in business.

And if he doesn't, I probably have to close the doors.

And it was kind of, it was, you know, it was that critical.

It was that critical.

So, of course, I couldn't leave the house without a sale.

Now, you know, that those disciplines that we have, I think, in the early days, you know, how often do those things get lost?

You know,

I remember when I first started my business, one of the things I saw with other companies is they ran out of marketing dollars.

They didn't have money to generate leads.

So in the early days, when I first started my business, I set up a separate bank account and I took 7% of every single check I got.

It doesn't matter if it was $100 or $1,000.

That went into a separate account.

That was my marketing dollars.

I wanted to make sure I always had marketing money when I started my business.

You know, those kind of disciplines are really important in business when you first start.

Likewise, when you start bringing on those first hires, right?

And when the business is small, you know every single thing about the business.

You can make really great decisions.

Most entrepreneurs are, I mean, they're great decision makers.

As the business grows and as you start having an org chart and people and people and people, we now as leaders start to get further and further away from the customer and actually might not even always be the best decision maker when it comes to certain problems.

So I think one of the big differences is we have to shift our mindset as we grow to always being the decision maker, to releasing power and teaching other people how to truly make decisions in a business.

And it's a mind shift.

Well, here's what I've learned.

You know, Brian, I want to hear what your thoughts are on this because before I used to kind of reprimand people and say, why didn't you call me?

I've already made that mistake.

Like, I've already, I know the answer.

I know how to treat that client.

And then I realized

all my failure, and I expect them not to fail once, don't fail on a 10,000 or 100,000.

I've had people blow it more than that.

But once you start embracing failure and releasing, but don't make the same mistake twice and make sure you got a system to stop that again.

Everything changed for me.

Because at first, when you're holding it all in, you're like, you idiot.

Like, dude, I got the answer.

And then you start writing down manuals and SOPs and building processes.

What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, well, a couple of things on that.

Yeah.

First of all,

we have to teach people to make decisions.

We have to also teach them it's okay to be wrong.

Just don't be wrong for long.

And, you know, get off of a bad idea.

If you make a bad decision, get off of it.

But I also know that, look, if if we're installing a shower in somebody's home and it's a fifteen thousand dollar shower and we mess something up and let's say it's five hundred dollars to fix it if somebody can't make a decision on fixing that five hundred dollar problem and it has to go all the way up to my desk by the time it gets to my desk they don't want five hundred dollars they want a free house so we have to teach people how to make decisions as close as possible to the customer i also think when you talk about like systems and processes, I think, look, a lot of companies struggle.

We could probably probably travel the country together and ask companies, do you need to do a better job documenting your processes?

And they'd also say, oh, yeah, absolutely we do.

But I think we're starting in the wrong place.

I think it's more important to say, what are our business disciplines?

Like, what are the core disciplines of our business?

Like,

I'll give you an example, Tommy.

One of our disciplines was the lead is sacred.

Okay.

That's a discipline of the business.

Then we can ask ourselves, and we teach that discipline, but then we can ask ourselves, okay, how do we treat a sacred lead?

How does it need to be treated?

What kind of technology?

How quickly do we call it?

Then we can come up with what are the systems and processes need to be around it.

So I think a business would do quite well if they start thinking about what are the various core disciplines inside of their organization.

It also, by the way, creates a stickier training.

When you're teaching people the process, you can teach them the discipline first.

I love that.

I'm still in that.

And by the way, this podcast, I still have the stuff.

None of my stuff is my own.

I just take the, I take the good stuff and then dump the rest.

I, uh, I recently had a gentleman out that I'm trying to get to help me on a business venture that's going to roll under a one.

And he's in home improvement.

And

he, he's probably the number one guy on the planet for water purification.

And he said,

you know, Tommy, I started an HVAC company.

You want to know why?

He goes, because I had four HVAC companies come out to my home for a repair or installation.

I don't remember what it was.

None None of them sat down at my table, looked me in the eyes, and asked me for the business.

Nobody followed up.

Nobody explained why they're different.

Nobody told me a great story, why they worked there.

But the biggest one, in my meeting today, I had a few hundred people and I said, Are you sitting down at the kitchen table playing with their dog saying, listen, my goal is to make you happy?

I want to earn your business.

We're going to figure out a way to do this because here's the deal.

At the end of the day, Brian,

my boss is going to fire me if I don't earn earn your business because I know I need to make you a happy client.

And you joke around and you have fun, but not a lot of companies even do that.

That's right.

And they don't give options.

They don't do that.

And that tells you there's a great opportunity.

When we built our home out here in Arizona, I thought, I'm going to start a landscaping company.

And the name of the company is going to be, I'm going to answer our phone.

That's going to be the name of our company.

If I can just get somebody to answer their phone, I mean, that alone was hard, no less coming to my home, telling me a great story and asking for my business.

Look,

there's such an opportunity to build a business by just focusing on the fundamentals of

what should that customer journey be like?

What should that employee journey be like?

Like, what does excellence look like?

And if you just execute on that, you can have a heck of a business.

You know, here's, go ahead.

I would also share with you that the other thing is when I think about scaling, look, in the early days of my business, we sold some beautiful projects.

I sold this one half a million dollar pool enclosure for a customer.

It was beautiful.

I made no money on it.

I didn't make any money on it, but it was beautiful.

So, you know, in the early days, you know, we were selling a lot of stuff, but we weren't making any money.

And I learned that, look, when you have a chaotic business, right, chaos can produce revenue, but it takes discipline to produce profits.

And that was a big learning experience for me.

I love that.

You know, I was always told 2017, I learned revenue is for vanity, profit is for sanity.

I always say, my best friends now in the trades, we don't talk about revenue anymore.

They call me up and they say, here was my profit this month.

Here's my EBITDA.

We don't even.

Revenue is like you pump out your chest when you walk in a room.

You know, it's like social media BS.

I was bringing in

$50 million, bringing like 6% to the bottom line.

I mean, when you really, my biggest problem, Brian, early on was, and this is still five years ago, ago i got a good cfo and then i got a great cfo yeah and a difference

big difference i needed the report card i needed to understand why why do we have six percent ar we are a cash like we're collecting when we're there when my installers weren't collecting six percent of the numbers when i was at 120 million ended up being a lot of money and as you fixed that the bottom line got better and better and better yeah yeah yeah and and you do you a great cfo is a game changer in a business a totally different skill set than I have.

I'm the worst person to try to onboard a CFO because that's not my thing, but it's also important to give them a really loud voice inside of the company because we had a saying in my business.

My CFO, we were the yin-yang for each other because they brought a totally different perspective, but such an important one too.

So, yeah, really important.

You know, I think that I was obsessed with marketing and driving leads.

But here's what I missed, Brian, and I think you'll appreciate this and I think you'll agree with it, is I realized that marketing is also recruiting.

Marketing is getting the right people to come on the bus.

And when I realized that, 50% of my time went to recruiting talent.

And I figured out,

I figured out an equity incentive program, how to motivate people, pay for performance, tenure is not a thing.

It's really about meritocracy.

It's all about Jim Collins.

I think it good to great, talks about getting the right people on the bus and then figuring out where you're going to go after that.

And that's not the way I did it, man.

I was the bus driver and I'm like, get on and get off.

I didn't really like, that's what happened.

I think most businesses, they're the smartest, they're the smartest one in the room.

And it's almost scary to bring in somebody smart enough.

That's all that I do.

But you must have been a magnet for talent to get to the stuff you did.

How did you, how do you look at that?

Yeah, well, the first thing is when it comes to, you're right recruitment is marketing like anything else and and just as it's marketing from an overall concept and it's also from from a speed to lead thing if you think about somebody that's looking for a job if somebody's looking for a home improvement project they might look at one or two websites maybe three websites and give out their somebody's looking for a job they're going they're going after job application they're they're scrolling down indeed and they're just reading a whole bunch of them how do you stop their their shopping pattern how do you stop them and have them freeze on on your application And what I realized is that, you know, who are we looking for and where are they?

How do we meet them where they are?

The person I'm not looking for, I'm not looking for somebody that has this really fancy resume that's all polished up.

And boy, does it shine?

Because they're probably, I'm looking for the person that, you know, what is a great person.

They do great work, but they had a bad day at work.

They have some jerk for a manager.

Maybe they've had several bad days at work.

They're not appreciated.

And they're coming home and they almost feel guilty looking to see what other options are out there.

And I want to meet them there.

And I want to have hook ads like, you know, not appreciated where you are today.

You know, you do great work and nobody values you, not being paid what you're worth.

I want to create hook ads that speak directly to that person and not create barriers for application like I need a resume if you want to apply.

It's a lead.

I want to get on the phone with them.

I want somebody on our team to get on the phone with them.

Let's talk to them.

Let's understand them.

And let's get them in.

the house and interview them and hire them if they're a good fit.

And then how important,

this is where I I feel like it goes wrong.

Number one, days to hire, because there's always, some people are a 30 days out, 15 days out.

That's a good KPI.

And the other one is,

you know, I always say we celebrate when somebody leaves, meaning that they retire.

We're bringing them a cake.

We're having a party.

But we just say, when they come in, we're like, we appreciate you guys.

Here's your manual.

You're going to ride with this guy for a month or whatever.

What do you do during orientation to make, like, get their family involved, get their buy?

I think that first week is so, they're going to decide decide if they're going to be a lifer or not.

It's crucial.

Now, in the early days, I used to take people out to dinner.

My wife and I, we would take people out to dinner and try to explain to them why, why it's such a great career for them and wanted their buy-in.

But, you know, you mentioned it in your book that when people leave, you celebrate them.

Well, why don't you celebrate them when they join your organization?

I agree.

Like, day one is all about culture.

Oh, it's by the way, it's tempting.

The temptation is you need somebody in the field.

So you hire somebody and you put them in the field.

And you miss such a golden opportunity to weave them into the culture of your organization, to take them around, have them meet up everybody else, to introduce them, let them feel the energy of your company.

But I also think you're right, that first, getting the family involved, that first week, I really think it's the first 90 days that are crucial.

That, you know, how do we constantly have...

touch in, touch them and make sure that

they're seen and they're appreciated and valued.

And also, if there's a coaching opportunity, that they hear that too.

But look, I think all of that's important.

And, you know, when you,

once people are all in, they are really all in.

And that's the real opportunity because you're going to build a business by building people.

This business, the lid of our business is they're directly connected to the lid of the team.

The business can't grow past the capabilities of the people.

So

how do we constantly thinking about that and growing the capabilities of those on our team?

I agree.

I got to tell you, I think about

a lot of the people I know know so busy recruiting, yet the back door is open and they're letting the same amount of people out the back that have been.

So sometimes it's the opposite where you're pouring into these people and saying, this guy's never going to leave.

And

it's a hard balance when the business reaches a certain size because you only got 24 hours in a day.

And you're right.

You got to build a systemic flow.

And everybody's begging now for leadership.

I see a lot of high-level execs going that you're not hitting the finish line.

Perfection is the enemy of progress.

What do you do to get them the leadership skills?

Is there a program that you went through, John Maxwell?

Or

how do you teach leadership?

And it should come from the top down, but also I think

you need a lot of

mentors as well.

Yeah.

Well, you know, and as I write about in my book, you know, it's interesting because I've made the mistake of, and

I'm sure you have too, who hasn't, putting somebody in a leadership role that shouldn't be in that leadership role and then having to try to unwind it later on look I've put people in roles as a manager because they have the most experience regardless of their passion uh to to develop other people right so when i so i we built our own leadership program, our old management program, and it's the 10 practices of top performing managers, and it's a step-by-step guide.

Look, we have a 10-step selling system.

We have a, there's a five-step system to setting a lead.

There's a seven-step installation process, but we had nothing for our managers.

So they didn't even have, they didn't even know what should a good manager do because often they've never been in that role anyway.

So look, the, the manager is not only the custodian of the company's culture, but what they really do is they drive performance by by affecting how people on their team think.

Because how people think inside of the business affects how they feel and how they act.

All of those things determine whether they're going to to show up on time, whether their team is going to show up on time, whether they're going to do good work, whether they're going to look for other jobs, whether they're going to do quality work and be productive.

That's what defines organizational performance.

The manager affects how people think.

The manager is the custodian of the company's culture.

If we work, if you want to really grow your business, you have to work at the manager level because that, because, because you can't be everywhere as a leader.

I think you got to, I came up with, I don't know if I made this up.

I'm sure someone else had read it somewhere, but you got to delegate to elevate.

And, you know, one of my, we were with this guy, Cameron Harold, and he said, you got to stop skipping managers, going two levels down and working with them.

You could ask as many questions as you want, but you need to respect their leader and their direct report.

And I was sticking my nose and stuff.

What are you doing?

Can you work on this?

And then I was, I was robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it was really disrespectful.

Yeah.

Well, if we're putting somebody in that role, we have to give them the freedom and the ability to pass or fail, right?

We have to support them so they don't fail.

But we also have to, again, if we want to encourage decision-making, we have to give them the ability to make those tough decisions.

And it's hard because we're dealing with people, right?

And when you're dealing with people, everything gets complicated because everybody's different.

You know, one of the things I learned in leadership in general and in sales, it's the same thing is, look, when growing a business and when trying to grow people, there's a massive difference between being right and being influential.

Look, I could be right all day long.

I could be right about something we need to do.

I could be right about somebody's behavior that needs to change.

I could be right when I go into somebody's home and their windows are falling out of their house and they need new windows.

By no means does it mean they're going to buy windows or by no means does it mean that person is going to change behavior.

I have to be influential.

And again, we have to teach our managers to be influential too.

If I rob them of that by doing it for them, you know, it's that we're also then creating a situation where they're always going to come to me and then I'll never get anything done.

Yeah, you know, here's the thing.

Like,

you know what I look for in a leader?

And I think a leader is way different than a manager.

A leader, they speak with passion.

They're willing to break glass.

They're willing, like a leader, a coach of a team, a true leader, their job is to win.

And I've met with a lot of the top coaches in the world.

And sometimes.

There's casualties along the way.

And what do you do when someone's super loyal to you, but they no longer fit i mean literally you've tried to develop them they're great people they lie cheater still

but at the role they're currently in and people don't like to get demoted so how do you handle that and how do you believe do you do you move on they're not this is a such a tough subject for a lot of people

yeah well you know the culture of the business is shaped by the lowest level of acceptable behavior right that that's what shapes the culture and if we tolerate underperformance inside of our our organization, we're going to attract more underperformance because we're now setting the new standard, right?

What we tolerate, we attract more of.

So we have to do something about it.

Right.

And I think there are really the two boxes that are the toughest to coach are the high performer, low culture fit, the person that can do anything, but boy, do they blow up your meetings?

And boy, you don't even want to talk to your customer or the high culture fit, low performer.

You know, you love these people.

You absolutely love them, but if they're like in a sales role, they can't even close a car door, you know, no less a home improvement project.

So, you know, coaching those two boxes, and the same is true for managers.

We simply can't tolerate it.

And it's difficult.

These are difficult conversations to have, but ultimately, the team deserves the best possible leaders inside of the organization.

And likewise, it's true throughout the entire organization that

it's often easy to just ignore problems in your business, but it's it's deadly to do so because it'll destroy your company.

You know, I got a buddy of mine who built this little best practices amongst eight of his colleagues, and they'd top $100 million HVAC plumbing companies, and they'd go down shop tours, and they'd write down what they like.

And it was a really,

the majority was not what you like, but it was all the problems they see because sometimes when we're in this bubble, we can't see what's going on within our own business.

I've walked in businesses and they're like, this is amazing, isn't it?

The windows haven't been cleaned.

There's no lighting.

We don't even have a coffee machine.

And there's spider webs and they think it's the Taj Mahal because they were working out of their house before.

And it's crazy because I walk around here and I'm like, I'm really proud, but I'm like, I'm ready to go to the next level.

I'm very proud of this building and what we've done.

And I just want more.

I think sometimes when you're in that bubble, and how did you,

how were you able to read between the lines and see the things that no one else would see?

Because you were part, you were in it.

Yeah, you're right.

Well, and it is true.

It's it's very easy for entrepreneurs and business leaders to get in a bubble and we then the only decisions we make we only have our frame of reference is very narrow look i remember a bunch of our my friends and i we had this group it was called the big 12.

we actually came and visited your facility many years ago it was so cool i loved it it was such a training organization man it just it just was super exciting and and you know it's so healthy but you know our big 12 you know we would we would learn from each other we'd all visit each other's locations we you know i think sharing like masterminds masterminds with your peers and going to conferences.

I know you guys put on a great conference.

You know, these things are so important for people to get out of their bubble and to see to see what's really possible.

You know, even by the way, I remember with our installation team that we're asking our installers, these really, you know, tough blue-collar people to provide this white glove, you know, amazing experience for our customers.

But then we had to ask ourselves, do they know what that means?

Do they even know what that looks like?

Do people even know?

Do they know what fantastic service looks like?

Look, how many people have been to the Ritz-Carlton with the thin wine stem glasses and the beautiful tablecloths?

If they don't know what fantastic service actually looks like, how can we ask them to replicate it?

And the same is true for a business leader.

If they don't know what's truly possible out there,

they don't have any model to chase.

And that's why I think it's really important that we can't take things for granted throughout the whole organization.

You're scaring me.

I'm taking way too many notes, which means this is an amazing podcast, which I knew it would be.

By the way, you know, our buddy Sean McGraw introduced us.

We knew each other, but what was really cool is he said, Tommy, I don't really know of anybody who's been more of an influence in home service.

But if there was in home improvement by far, it's Brian Gottlieb.

And he's such a good mentor.

He's always got an open

policy where he'll always give advice to anybody.

And what you're telling me is so much more than tactical or systems.

And it starts with the people.

And that's what's so difficult is the people.

And you've got such a good heart for your people.

And you want to see everybody win.

And I think a lot of times I've seen deals fall apart.

I've seen employees get a handshake deal.

And when the deal comes through, they're like, this is for me and my family.

I'm going to,

and it's,

I just don't understand why people,

they're so they like, I took all the chances, I took all the risk, I get everything.

If they just understood if someone else had a stake in the outcome, you'd scale so much faster.

The families would be behind you, that you'd have other owners in the business.

And some people just aren't fans of that, but every private equity company I know, every public traded company, stock options and profit units.

But these smaller companies that we were never told,

why is it that people are so afraid to

get and I know it's hard to take it away once you give it but if you if you structure it right it's very simple it's it's vested it's not profit sharing

yeah and and and highly powerful how do you create you know if if we want look if you if you tommy if you were to ask me what is the single most important discipline in business right single most important discipline above all i believe it's the ability to hit to not only forecast properly but then hit those forecasted targets with a high level of certainty and the reason that's important is because it gives the business owner the ability to invest in the business i I'm not going to invest in a business if I don't have a high level of confidence in hitting targets.

The only way I'm going to hit targets with consistency is if the people in the business buy into them and they're part of it and they're treating their own little business unit like its own business inside of the organization.

profit sharing and

equity opportunities for these individual business owners inside of your organization.

We want the better they can run their business, the better the whole business becomes.

And I think

sometimes leaders have limit, a limited mindset instead of a limitless mindset.

And I think that's a big difference because the better the team is, the better the business becomes.

And

look,

you want people to treat the business like it's their own.

And there are some great ways to craft comp structures to deliver that too.

Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying today's episode.

Can you believe it?

We're just two months away from our Freedom 2025 event.

And I have to tell you something I'm pumped about.

This year we're hosting a special leaders of the industry panel, and we've got some great panelists coming in.

Paul Kelly, president at Parker and Sons, Ken Goodrich, chairman of Ghetto Air Conditioning and Plumbing, and Leland Smith, founder of Service Champions.

If you want to learn how to attract million-dollar producers and keep them while you build a culture of winners, then you've got to get in the room with these guys.

Plus, you'll learn from people like Kevin O'Leary, Donald Trump Jr., and over 1,000 other contractors from every trade you can think of.

To get your ticket, go to freedomevent.com now.

That's freedomevent.com.

All right, back to the episode.

I want to dive into a subject that's been on everybody's mind, and that's private equity.

And you hear the horror stories, and I've been a part of this now for a few years, and I got to say it's the best thing that ever happened because I went out and I found great partners.

But I feel like certain private equity companies, they try to squeeze a dime out of a dollar.

You know what I mean?

And they like to cut things and they like to cut their way.

And it works for the short six months or a year.

But what is your take on private equity?

What makes a good partner?

What makes a bad one?

Because everybody's like, they hate them and they think they're out here to ruin.

Investors are going to come to anything that makes money.

I'm sorry.

Whether it's a hedge fund, an investor, or PE.

And everybody's like, oh, why are they screwing up the industry?

And I'm like,

there's millionaires being made every minute because of private equity.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, so I, of the three businesses that I sold, I sold two of them to two different private equity groups and one to my executive leadership team.

And look, I think, and look, I think I got very fortunate with aligning with the right private equity groups.

On the same hand, I think that what private equity,

this is a very simple business, okay?

Home improvements is a very, very simple business.

And it's very easy to make a simple business complicated.

It's very hard to

keep it simple.

So it's very easy to complicate a business.

And I think when private equity jumps into it, they start overanalyzing.

They have a very short-term mindset that if we're not hitting targets this month, we got to cut our marketing budget.

We have to start laying people off.

We have to make all these changes.

Or they have these org charts that are dotted lines and solid lines going all the way across the organization.

It makes for a lot of complexity inside of the business.

I also think that they don't necessarily understand that ultimately

99.9%

of all of your people, Tommy, and all of my people are interacting with the customer in one fashion or another.

It's either over the telephone or face-to-face.

And because of that, culture matters, mindset matters, how people think matters is very different.

It's not like manufacturing.

So, so I think when private equity understands that piece of it, that people matter, but also listening to them, these, these, I've got a friend of mine that was part of a private equity group and really, really brilliant business person and several friends of mine.

And, you know, it's like his voice didn't even matter.

It's It's like this guy has been through more storms in business than you could imagine and has managed to get to the other side.

You would think he might have some pretty good ideas on how to fix things when they're broken.

But

I think they turn a deaf ear to it.

And I think that's kind of a shame.

You know what I love that you said in the beginning of that is complexity.

You start getting 160 pages of data.

The org charts become more complicated.

Pick up the phone, book the call, earn the business, get a good review, and keep a raving fan.

I mean, and keep your employees happy like

the data starts to almost cripple the business and you gotta uncomplicate it

you know when you grow it's like well the the numbers are telling us this we can't take a risk like I'm not a gut.

I used to be more of a gut guy, but now I'm like, look, the data is telling us this.

We're going to go try it.

And if it doesn't work, who cares?

If it works, we'll scale it.

And I'm a risk taker.

If private equity could do what we do, they'd be out there doing it.

I know how much they make.

And I know how much they travel.

And they live on an airplane.

And, you know, comparison is the

thief of all joy.

So I'm glad they don't compare because I'm just a garage drawer guy, done pretty good.

But I'm like,

I just think about

some of these private equity companies, they try to bring in these Ivy Leaguers that are super smart, but they don't have any emotional intelligence.

They come in with their watches and they're loafers and they try to have intelligent conversations and talk over people.

And they don't know what it's like in this industry.

They might be great at hotels and

conglomerating things, but what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah,

I a million percent agree.

I a million percent agree.

I think that, look, if I ran my business, I know if you ran your business 30 days at a time and you let the month performer, the month PL decide whether or not you have a good business, we'd both be out of business by now.

We would have fired everybody.

So, you know, you're going to have tough times and you got to just know that it's part of business and you got to get through it.

And sometimes you're going to try stuff and it's not going to work and that's okay.

But i think part of trying stuff if you never try anything you know what kind of business do you have you're going to be you're going to be disrupted very quickly so i think look and and and if you haven't ever sat at a kitchen table and you haven't ever spoken to mr and mrs jones at their kitchen table and tried to sell them something you know you probably or or connect or been out on a job site and seeing talking to the people that are swinging a hammer when it's 100 degrees outside and having a conversation with them.

Unless if you're really connected to the culture, look, there's a saying that the shepherd should smell like the sheep, right?

The best shepherd will smell like the sheep.

And what happens with, I think, some private equity groups is the shepherd smells nothing like the sheep.

So they're trying to make decisions around an industry that they truly don't understand.

And I think that's where the problems really come from.

I like being super close.

knowing that I was a technician.

I've done the phones.

I've done the, you know, it's been a long time since I've done payroll or inventory, but I like that I understand a little bit about what it feels like.

And it's hard to get, it's hard to, for me, I remember the phone ringing at the movie theater.

I was bowling her on a date.

And because I was the guy that did the work, I was like, I'm sorry, I got to take you home.

I got to go run this call.

So I learned to create animosity towards the phones ringing, but I always did it, whether it was midnight, I just hated it because, man, I'd hear that phone and I knew it was a job and I'd pick it up and I'd go run it and I'd make money.

But at certain times,

it literally took my freedom.

And so I just like that I know I've been in every position in this company.

And I try to tell some of our leadership team, just remember what it's like to work in 140 degrees or 20 below in Minnesota.

Because it's easy to make decisions behind a desk.

We get a little bit harder making decisions behind a desk, not thinking, where are they coming from?

Right.

And look,

how important is that for you, not only just to build credibility with the entire team as a leader of the organization, but even to just to have that come across when you're recruiting people or or

being grateful for others, because you know how hard they work or when they're struggling or they have problems at home and they're trying to not bring it to work.

We've all been there.

And how much does that make you a

credible leader for your team?

I mean, it's significant.

I love this podcast, man.

I absolutely, I just decided I'm going to let I want a lot of my,

a lot of people I know, people in the company listen to this.

Well, you know, everyone's talking about marketing.

I think if I had to give you one buzzword, it's marketing.

And they're like, obviously, I always tell them it's not your marketing.

You're not doing the right sales, your conversion rate, your opportunity, job average, you're not creating raving fans.

Your call center sucks, but we do need leads.

So,

what, what, you know, what's still working today, if you had to give me your top three sources, and maybe not the common stuff like Google or email marketing, what, what are some, I know you had some pretty crazy things you do with BR or PR with like wounded warrior type stuff, but what are some very different things that you've seen work and exponentially propel the company on the lead gen side?

Look, for me, for me, as long as I have a pair of knuckles, I can stay in business because I always knock a door, make a lead, and stay in business.

So look, I'm a big fan of face-to-face marketing.

It's being timeless.

I want to set up, I want to have our people set up wherever there are people.

You know, one of the things we did, there was this music festival that we would sponsor, And this was for our bath business.

It's like, why is there a bath company and a music festival?

So instead of in our, in these bath displays, instead of putting like shampoo and towels in the bath displays, we would fill them with microphones and speakers.

And we would have people come on by and sing in our shower.

And once we got a certain amount of people singing in our shower, we would send a kid to music school for a year.

It was really cool.

So the whole community was involved in this singing in the shower thing.

And

the media would cover it.

Look,

I think you have to constantly figure out how can you connect with the the community that you're in and how can you come at them in a very unique way?

And if possible, how can you make them a co-producer in the success of your business?

Because if you can do all those sort of things, you're really going to win.

But from a classic marketing standpoint, marketing sources, especially aggregators, they come and go like they

like the seasons.

Sometimes they're hot, sometimes they're not.

Fundamentally, look,

do I ever think that TikTok will outperform Facebook?

Probably not, right?

Facebook is a great lead generator, right?

And so is long-form television and two-minute spots and all that kind of stuff if bought right.

I think a lot of the things, it's the fundamental stuff.

And what really is the challenge, I think, for most companies, it's the execution of it, you know, or it's being so scattered that they're putting...

pennies in a variety of sources instead of saying,

I got to really penetrate this source and go deep at it, but make sure that I have the infrastructure that when I get a lead, it's not sitting in my email box, not being called for two days.

So I think all of those things really matter when it comes to marketing.

But tell your story.

Don't market like all your competitors where it's half off installation and buy one, get one free and all that nonsense because you just start to sound like everybody else.

I call it what you were talking about earlier.

I call it spray and pray.

You're kind of shooting everything out and seeing that hopefully a call comes in.

And, you know, Ken Goodrich taught me, don't be transactional in your marketing message.

Tell Tell stories, have them learn who you guys are.

And just, you know, he talks about his dog.

And one of the, and one of his radio ads, I just heard, he's like, Sadie is dog.

He goes, you know, Sadie is, he explains who he is, the dog.

And he goes, Sadie, man, when someone comes to that front door, that dog knows if they're good or bad.

He's like, Sadie's going to jump on you.

It's a something hound.

And he goes, So I've learned very quickly that I got to bring Sadie on every interview because if Sadie loves you, you're going to do great with my clients.

But it hits because we all have dogs.

A lot of people have dogs they love.

And they're like, our dogs is the same.

If my dog doesn't trust you, I don't trust you.

So

those stories, those stories that just allow you to say, you know, I kind of like this guy.

Like, we feel the same way.

This is, these are my people.

They buy from people they like and trust.

And it doesn't mean they're going to buy today.

It means you're top of mind when they do need you.

Yeah.

That's right.

It's about making having conversations instead of just constantly trying to pitch somebody.

You used an interesting word that I want to kind of back up to here where you talk about transactional, right?

So, you know, tracks relational, right?

We want relational people, right?

Don't let your marketing be transactional, but you can't let your organization be transactional either.

And I think that's a big blind spot for a lot of companies that, you know, we want, we want to create relationships.

We're customer-centric, all these sorts of things.

But then you step into their meetings in these company meetings, and the conversations are around, and rightfully so I understand they're around like what marketing costs demo rate labor cost material cost all these transactional items but but Tommy when do we talk about the happy customer when does that person get talked about inside of our business how often how often are the leaders bring the story today of the happy customer because if we want if we really are a customer-centric business we can't just talk about the percentages and the upset customer we've we've got to talk about the great things we do in our organization and the difference we make in people's homes.

It's really important.

No, it's so good.

You know, and as a as a business leader, you tend to look at conversion rate and want to figure out how do I get higher conversion rate and how do I do this?

How do I do this?

And now that I only think in systems,

and, you know, one thing I can't do, though, is have somebody, I always say, listen, the hardest part is getting.

me to help you love yourself

and to think you deserve more.

But

I used to like to hire people good with their hands.

Now I hire people that are good with people.

They know how to smile and tell a great story and make great eye contact.

When they shake your hand, they mean it.

You can feel it.

And their energy and their passion and their purpose.

And when I realized that, everything starting, started and still starting to change because,

you know, garage doors are not super complicated.

They're dangerous and you don't want to try them on your own.

But you give me a couple of months with a person.

I could teach them the basics.

But you can't, you know how long it takes somebody to teach them to be kind and say, yes, sir, thank you so much.

I really appreciate this opportunity.

What's your dog's name?

Let me, you care if I pet him?

And, like,

these little things and offering coffee on the way and knowing what they do for a living, knowing their kids' names, understand like how often you use the door.

And I know there's certain people that say, Your job is not to do all that stuff, but what if you genuinely care?

I think the people you talked about the most premium hotels in these different places.

I think they hire people that say, Brian, how's your day going?

And you feel, they're not saying, hey, Brian, how's your day?

They're like, you know, how?

How's your day?

And they genuinely care.

They're not walking by and say, hey, how are you?

And it's the people that they bring.

Right.

With authenticity.

And, you know, again,

what makes the greatest manager?

What makes the greatest leader?

What makes the greatest salesperson?

What makes the greatest technician?

To me, it's about love.

It's about love.

It's about love for developing others, love for people, love for the numbers of the business, love for the process, love for the, for, love for the industry.

And, you know, if we look at athletes, right?

Show me one top performing athlete that doesn't love what they do.

You won't find them.

They start with love.

They love the sport that they play in, and that makes them top.

It gives them the fuel for everything else.

And I think the same is true with people.

I think people have to love what they do.

If they don't love what they do, you know what?

They're They're probably not going to do it very long or not very well.

So now, as an owner of a business, as a leader of the business,

how do we get people to fall in love with the process, to fall in love with the business, to fall in love with the customer and all those sorts of things?

And, you know, or the mission and the vision of the business to truly love, to have true purpose for what they do.

This is more than just a paycheck.

It's something that is meaningful to them and that thing that makes them realize realize that you know we're not just a company to make a decent profit we make a decent profit decently and we can when you can fuel that that's and get a team of people around you that think like that you got a heck of a business and good luck competing with that type of company

let's do this real quick so

you know everybody always asks me when you're in an interview how do you know

and you know you could do you could check their past jobs i like to ask this question when i brian when i call your last boss later today,

what's he or she?

I actually know where you work.

I got their contact.

What are they going to tell me?

Not that if I were to call, I say, when, and you got to do that.

You got to call.

Because then they're like, well, you know, they'll probably tell you that, you know, then it comes out.

But what do you, you know, I always think happy birthday with the interviewers too.

So, you know, Brian fought with me.

Happy birthday to you.

And they're like, what are we doing?

And then they start laughing and they're like, or they're like, I ain't doing that.

And that's kind of just a litness test.

But in an interview, and I'm not the best interviewer, I'm just curious, what are some of the things that you do differently to really tell?

And sometimes you could have them try out, but I'm just curious, how do you know if it's the right fit?

Yeah, yeah, a couple of things.

We look at the idea of hiring to Ether, E-T-H-E-R, right?

And Ether stands for ethical, trainable, hungry, energetic, and reliable.

Those are the five characteristics we want from people.

How do we test for trainable, right?

So

our sales model is very scripted.

And if somebody's not willing to learn the script, they're probably not going to make it in the sales world.

They're certainly not going to make it in our organization.

So instead of trying to find out two weeks from now after training, if they're memorizing a script, what we would do is we would send them a two-sentence script before the interview that they had to come in and they had to recite this two-sentence script on the interview.

Now, we didn't care if they messed it up.

We didn't look for perfection, but were they willing to memorize a two-sentence script?

Because if they weren't willing to memorize a two-sentence script, there's no way they're going to try to memorize the entire sales model.

So we just kind of didn't even look at them.

The other thing we would, what we like to do is I think it's important to try to give people

the permission to show their true self, okay?

To show their true self.

And it's an interesting interview question by framing it this way.

Well, you know, Tommy, look, we've all had those crazy customers.

You know, we've all had those really insane customers that drove us crazy.

You know, we got to give them people permission to reveal who they truly are in the most challenging situations.

Because when we can do that, we kind of know what we're looking at here.

Yeah, you know, another thing that Dave Ramsey does, and I love this stuff.

I'm eating this up, is Dave Ramsey says, listen, it's, it's, and what you used to do with your wife is when you take them out to dinner,

He said, I like to see how they interact with the waiter.

So I'll have the waiter screw up their order, but I also like to see how they treat their significant other.

Do they open the door?

Because if there's adversity at home and you can just see it, the look on their face, the way they treat each other, if there's all this animosity at home,

it's harder to just turn a blind eye to that when you come into work.

And so it's a great litness test.

And I don't think we

sometimes I used to say, man, there was a while where if you could fog a mirror, you were hired because I needed people so bad.

And the more time we take and we train, we're not a company that trains.

Yeah.

Training is the company.

And we don't stop.

It's not something we do.

It's something we are.

And it's forever.

It's forever going.

It's forever.

I've got a friend of mine that what he does, and it's really brilliant.

I wish I could call it my own.

When he's doing an interview for somebody, he doesn't enter the interview room right away.

Like he comes in, sees how these people talk to the person that greets them.

And then they sit in this

center area and they're waiting for their interview to happen.

And somebody comes into that room, sweeping the floor, sweeping the floor, cleaning up.

And they watch to see: does this person talk to that person?

Do they say, Hi, how you doing?

What's your name?

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Just those general conversations.

They treat that person as well as they would anybody else, or do they, or do they think less of them?

And I think that's kind of cool because, right, how do people,

what is their true authentic self, and how can you find that out quickly, right?

What do you think about appearances?

Like,

do you have your pants pulled up?

Do you,

you know, simple little things.

Your hair is somewhat groomed.

I mean, if you have a beard, it's put together.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, is your shirt tucked in?

I mean, do you

look, and I've got guys that don't do that are completely amazing, but I think it's a harder thing to overcome if you're tatted up from face down.

But, you know, I'm just curious your thought on looking at somebody and judging them a little bit.

Is there certain characteristics you look for based on that?

I think

it's role specific.

So if somebody is coming in to

be a door knocker, you know, and it's that tends to have a,

if you got a pulse, come on, you're hired kind of.

But look, if somebody's coming in for a sales position, right, and they don't have a notepad with them or something where they're asking questions and making notes, that's probably not the salesperson we want to hire because if they're not,

even if they're saying, boy, this, this guy, Brian, is really a big jerk i can't wait to get out of this but i don't care what they're writing down but if they're not making some notes along the way they're probably not that that's that's a big strike against them because if we want them to listen and ask questions so i think those sort of things matter a lot you know and how we show up in general does matter i mean whether we like it or not it matters i you know i tell people I tell all my sales reps, bring in a notebook and write things down.

I'm like, do you know how many people I've met met that are, number one, my elders, number two, became mentors?

And they're like, you're the only one that I've sat with in the last year that brought a notebook and actually wrote stuff down.

And they see me writing and they're like, what are you writing?

And I show them and they're like, wow.

And I'm like, I'm not writing this.

I'm actually getting ready to implement it.

And when I implement it, I'm going to call you.

And then I'd implement it and I'd give them all the credit.

And whenever I'm on a stage or a podcast, I give them the credit.

And they go,

I'm going to go ahead and put everything I got into you, kid.

And this is years and years.

So I think that's absolutely hit the nail on the head.

I want to go into the five pillars of leadership because I think this is amazing.

And when I go through these things,

I mean, I'm just so impressed by you.

I mean, the more time I spend with you, the more I'm like a love.

But let's just walk through the five, communication and vision, or I'll let you go through them.

Yeah, well, the first pillar is the idea that belief is transferable.

And look, the book, the book is called Beyond the Hammer.

And I even just got a shirt on it.

You know how many podcasts I've done?

I'm like, why don't I have a freaking shirt that says Beyond the Hammer?

I'm supposed to be a marketing guy.

I don't have my own logo on my shirt.

So I just got it.

You're the first one that I'm wearing it for.

So thank you.

Anyway, look, if you want to build a business, you have to grow people.

And if you want to grow people, you have to get people to believe they can accomplish it.

And that's why the very first pillar of the book is the idea that belief is transferable.

When you believe in somebody and you communicate that properly, they start to believe in themselves.

They're doing things they've never done before.

We're all doing stuff we've never done before.

So that's why that was the first pillar.

It's a really crucial one to set the stage for a limitless mindset so that people can truly grow.

So, and

it's really powerful when you practice it and you tell people why you believe in them.

And

there's all kinds of ways to practice it too.

When I go into a subway, when I go into a subway sandwich place, you know, I can say, they make my sandwich and I can say, you.

And it's like I never existed in their life because everybody says that.

But if I stop just for a moment and I say, Oh my gosh, thank you so much for making my sandwich.

You are an absolute artist at what you do.

I am totally going to enjoy every bite of this thing.

You are fantastic.

And they're like glowing smiles.

Oh my gosh, thank you.

You know, adding substance to why we appreciate people or why we believe in them goes a really, really long way in life.

And it's powerful indeed.

So, anyway, so good.

And then, um, alignment,

yeah.

So, look, if we want an aligned team, if you want your team to be aligned, you say, what do you align them around?

And to me, you know, you're the culture, the second pillar is the idea that leaders shape culture through purpose and direction.

Purpose and direction being what is your mission?

Why do you guys exist?

What are you trying to be?

What do you aspire to become three, four, five years from now as an organization?

And more importantly, what behaviors do you need from the team in order to reach your aspirational goal?

How do I want you to show up?

How do people have to behave around here?

Keeping a positive attitude, having a learning mindset, you know, being great communicators.

All of these things are so important because now when you're also having coaching sessions with people, look, we can talk all day long about the numbers of the business and the KPIs and the conversions, but how are their individual behaviors aligning to the team vision statement?

Because that's what's going to really, really accelerate growth.

And then the,

yeah.

And then the third pillar is

what happens is as our leadership and circle of influence grows, so does our echo.

And people will determine what type of day they're going to have based on the type of day that the leader is having.

If the leader is stressed out, people are going to be stressed out.

I promise you.

The whole team is going to be stressed out.

And so pillar number three is the idea that leaders are aware of the echo of their voice.

And I'm sorry.

I understand that, you know, it's all about, you know, being transparent and all that kind of stuff.

Look, my belief as a leader, you don't get to have a bad day.

Leaders don't get to have bad days.

Look, if you're having a bad day, I mean, you can have a bad day.

Just don't dump on your team.

Call me, call Tommy, dump on us.

You can dump on us all day long.

But in front of your team, you don't get to have a bad day because people are going to...

you're going to make everybody else have a bad day.

And is that really the type of culture, the type of day you want to have in your business, the type of desired outcome?

So that's the, it's important.

So good.

Keep going.

Sure.

Pillar four, leaders, as you know, model their business as a training organization.

Tommy, as long as I've been in this business, there's been a labor shortage.

Guess what?

Next year, there's going to be a labor shortage.

Do you want to be a victim of circumstance or do you want to be able to build people?

And if you want to be a training organization, then what does it mean to do that?

And the fifth pillar, we were chatting about it just a moment ago earlier, is that managers need a checklist.

They need to understand what it means to lead a team.

What are the 10 practices of top performing managers and how can they measure themselves to it?

So it's a great book.

By the way, I have to share a story with you real quickly about the book, Beyond the Hammer.

Yes, it's available on Amazon.

The audio book, if you've never listened to it, is crazy good.

Okay, because what I did is the first half of the book, as you know, is a business parable, right?

And then the second half is about strategy.

I love James Patterson books and all these really cool audiobooks.

And the most famous narrator of all time is this guy named Eduardo Ballarini.

He used to be an actor on the Sopranos, and he's really a cool narrator.

I had him read the parable section, and he just like killed it, bringing all these characters to life.

So if you like a good audio book, I promise you,

it's a really fun listen.

Anyway.

Oh, it's so good.

You know.

We talked about a lot of stuff, and I got to tell you, I always say, if I don't follow any of my notes, it was a good podcast.

And I've got more notes on this.

And I've got so many more questions, but there's probably a lot of things I didn't ask you.

So like if you were going to do a keynote, maybe there's some things you'd include that I didn't ask you.

And I got, we got enough time that if you want to cover a couple more subjects, but I want to make sure this is just so good.

And I'm sure people are dying for more.

So

what's some other things that I should have asked?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that,

look,

building a business is a fantastic time.

It's a great ride, right?

And we have to understand that not just for ourselves, but also for the people on our team, you know, what we practice, we become excellent at, right?

I can't play golf to save my life because I never practice it.

But if I practice it all the time, I'd probably be pretty good at it.

You know, if we practice being negative, we can find a way to be negative in the most positive situations.

We probably know people like that, people that are just like addicted to negativity, right?

But on the same hand, if we practice being grateful, right?

If we practice gratitude and optimism, we can be grateful and optimistic, even in the most challenging situations.

Because I promise that in our darkest moment, there's still something to be grateful for.

And if we can focus on that and focus on the solution, I think we're all better off because of it.

And I think the second thing is that, you know, when you go all in on developing people, and I mean like all in on it, and just really believe that people are limitless and

we have an opportunity to really change somebody's life.

You know,

I think you'll realize, like I realize, that the two most important days of your life are the day that you're born and the day you finally figure out why.

I love that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's so good.

I want you to tell one more story real quick because everybody's asking me, how do I greenfield?

And I think you figured out some powerful ways to go into a new market that no one's ever heard of you.

And,

you know, there's all kinds of stuff to do for direct response and deals and coupons, but how do you make a splash in the community?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, okay.

So I've done it wrong and I've done it right, right?

The first place I opened up was a disaster, but I learned a lot from it.

And that was many, many, many years ago.

Look, I like when I first, if I'm opening up a new market, first of all, is it the right market?

Can I put up some,

can I put up some ads for for talent before I even move into the market to see who's applying?

Can I get anybody decent even applying to the business so that I know it's a new market?

But once I go through all those steps and deciding that it is a market we want to

open up in,

the most important thing to replicate, I believe, is culture, right?

Because without the right culture, they're not going to follow the right systems and processes.

So now, how do I get

the community to know who we are?

I always believe that it's a good idea to start with a press release.

You should always do a press release when opening up a market that, hey, it's whatever, Tundra Land Home Improvements or a Jacuzzi Bathroom Model

is moving to Arizona, plans on adding 83 new jobs over the next 18 months.

And then it becomes talking about, yeah, well, I believe Arizona is a great market because we...

believe in the people there.

It's a great community.

And you tell your story in a press release.

And the media, if it has to do with hiring, adding people to your business, the media will cover that as a press release.

It also does some great things when it's on their site for backlinking and such.

But then the next thing I like to do is I like to do a free project for somebody.

And look, I'm a big fan of doing free projects for veterans and communities

because it tells the story of who we are as a company.

And so if I decide to do a free project for somebody,

once again, the media will come out, they'll cover it, they'll interview the person you're doing a project with, they'll interview you.

I've just gotten all this free press

from the media, the trusted source of media.

And now recruitment, selling, all these things become a whole lot easier.

I think those are the two keys if you want to open up a new market.

You can really make a splash

with a lot of free media too.

So without a lot of money being spent.

All right.

I got a few quick speed round questions to close us out.

Number one, I'm ready.

You know, we know the e-myth and we know Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie.

We know the Bible is important.

We've got a lot of great books, but what's a book that's out of the ordinary that's really impacted you?

How the Mighty Fall.

So if you like Good to Great and you like Built to Last by Mr.

Collins,

Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall is fantastic because it tells you the five things to watch out for in decline.

I think it's a great book.

You know, and one of them is about hubris, and that's always a problem.

I love that.

And if somebody wants to to get a hold of you, Brian, what's the best way to do so?

Yeah, my website, briangottlieb.com, pop on by to say hi.

You know, that's a good way to do it.

I'm on Facebook, too.

You can catch me there, too.

And usually catch me.

I usually do a couple of keynotes a month.

So I'm all around the place.

I'm all over the place.

Fantastic.

And

the last thing I ask is we talked about a lot of things.

I just, I'll give you an opportunity to close us out.

And by the way, I can't thank you enough for taking the time.

This has exceeded my expectations, even though I know it was going to be great.

Yeah, I know, Tommy, first of all, I appreciate you.

I appreciate you.

I appreciate the, you know, you are so plugged in to

this industry

in a massive way.

And I know that you're, that you come from a good place where you really want to help these businesses survive, you know, and thrive, more than survive, thrive.

And I love that.

I love that.

And if I could be any part of that, you know, this is why I'm happy to do it.

But look, I think ultimately that

I'd leave everybody with the concept that, you know, it's really easy for imposter syndrome to beat us up in life, right?

Like we, we, we don't, we don't know, we're doing things we've never done before.

When I ran a $30 million company, I never ran a $30 million company before, you know, and the same thing when it was $150 million.

I think the most important thing people should do is keep watching podcasts like this, go to conferences, join mastermind groups, but at the end of the day, learn and then execute.

Go back and execute because that's ultimately what's going to allow you to win.

So, you know, I wish everybody always the best.

It's such a great industry.

So I appreciate your time, my friend.

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

Hey there.

Thanks for tuning into the podcast today.

Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states.

The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization.

It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

So if you want to learn the secrets to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700-plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.