From Convict to CEO - A Journey of Transformation with Weldon Long

Listen, I went through a lot of years of my life in those prison years blaming the judges, the prosecutors, the ex-wife.

And then one day it hit me like, if all those things are the reason my life sucks, then all those things got to change for my life to get better. And that's probably not going to happen.
But if I'm the problem, then I can change that, right? I have control over my thoughts and my behaviors. So that was kind of a watershed kind of turning point for me.
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 Mello.
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 elevate and win.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.
Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys.
Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today I've got someone that's been supposed to have been on this podcast for the last, since I started it.
Weldon Long. He's a guy I've been following for a long time.
He's a sales expert. I'm really into sales.
As you guys know, I'm really into marketing.

I think marketing builds the business.

Sales, you know, grows it really, really fast.

And if I had to argue what's more important, it would be hard.

But I think marketing, making the phone ring off the hook.

But I've seen companies like Tom Howard with two good guys sell for $80 million.

So what do you think?

Sales are very, very important.

You're based in Colorado, the CEO of Weldon Log Organization, founder. You've got a pretty big resume, peak home performance, author of The Upside of Fear and the Power of Consistency, Consistency Selling.
You've got a pretty crazy story. Yeah.
And I'm excited you're doing this. I'll let you kick us off and just tell us a little bit about you've knocked doors.
You've inspired people. You just got done with a keynote at a financial institution, LPL Financial.
Yep. You spent some time in prison.
Yep. Everything.
So why don't you tell us where you've been, where you're at today, and where you're going? Well, first of all, let me say how happy I am to be here. I was telling Ashley, your executive assistant, that of the young bucks coming up, like you're the brand.

You know, you've got the old guys like me, the Drew Camerons, the Joe Calloway.

You know, we're all fading, right?

And you've got this new group of energetic, talented, super dynamic people.

And I've been following you, too, for a bit.

And I'm really pleased to be here.

I'm really proud and inspired by the work that you're doing.

You're a badass, and I think that's really cool.

I want to following you too for a bit. And I'm really pleased to be here.
I'm really proud and inspired by the work that you're doing. You're a badass.
And I think that's really cool. I also want to say this.
I agree with you as much as I'm in the sales. I always say nothing happens until something gets sold.
Nothing gets sold until somebody sets a lead. And that is kind of the priority for me.
My story, you kind of outlined, I was a ninth grade high school dropout, started running the streets, pulled a gun on a guy in 1987, got sentenced to prison the first time for 10 years at 23 years old. And did about four and a half years in Colorado at the state system in Colorado.
After four and a half years, the parole board and their infinite wisdom thought I was rehabilitated and they kicked me out in the street. So I get out, I'm 27 years old, still a ninth grade high school dropout.
No experience, no education. Now I'm a convicted felon, right? Not a real impressive track record.
Made it about 18 months. Went back to prison a second time for a couple of years on gun charges.
Got out again at 30 years old. 30 years old now.
My 20s, I gave up to the penitentiary system. Knucklehead, first class POS type of just garden variety loser.
Nothing good to say about it. and 30 years 30 years old I'm out again and I hook up with some guys in Vegas doing some sketchy telemarketing tell people I should have been suspicious when they hired me because it doesn't say much about their hiring standards at that point I did that for a couple of years till one day we all get indicted on federal money laundering and mail fraud charges went to the federal joint for seven years but it was during during that last seven years that the change happened, right, kind of the moment of clarity, the epiphany.
It was June 10, 1996. I knew exactly when it was.
One of the cops walked into the cell house, called me aside, and told me my dad died. 59 years old.
I was 32. He was 59, very young, which is really young now because now I'm 61.
And he just really seems young. But that was, Tommy, that was kind of my moment of clarity I'm like I am a first-class piece of shit I had a three-year-old son that I had fathered when I was out on parole abandoned him he was left with his drug addicted heroin addicted mother I'm in prison now my dad's dead and so that was kind of my turning point so I made the decision that I was going to out what really successful people do.
One of the things I love about you and following you is how much you're into reading and studying what the masters have done. And you're smart enough just to go out there and do it.
You might improve it even, which is cool. But I started reading a lot of those same books.
The first book I picked up on that day of four or five hours after I heard the news my father died was a little book you've probably read, The Seven Habits of the Highly Effective People, not knowing that Stephen Covey would be a mentor and a friend and endorse my books years later. I was just a loser in a cell.
But I read that book, Tommy, and it's like for the first time I really understood the importance of the right value system, honor, integrity, hard work, fidelity, faith, all those things. And that book set me on the road, man.
There was hundreds of others after that. Seven years later, I started changing my mindset.
With that whole process, I wrote out what I refer to as my prosperity plan, my first one on a sheet of paper, and stuck it to the wall in my cell with toothpaste, right, because we didn't have glue or tape in the penitentiary. And every morning, I would meditate on it and study it, just like Napoleon Hill said, right? Imagine yourself already in possession of these things.
So I started visualizing it. Seven years later, I walked out to a halfway house for wayward convicts like myself with nowhere else to go.
That was in January of 2003. June of 2003, after six months of knocking on doors trying to find a job, it was kind of tough.
At that point, I'm 39 years old, three-time convicted felon, no experience, no education, no shit. You were 37? 39.
39? 39, when I walked out the last time. 39, getting out of federal prison.
Yeah, and you've built all this, and you're about that age now. That's crazy, dude.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
I can't imagine. It blows me away when I see what youngsters like you have done.
Anyway, by the way, the guy that hired me, that gave me the job, you probably know, Drew Cameron. Drew was the guy that was a consultant for the local company that hired me.
I told Drew my story. He goes, dude, I think you're a changed man.
I'm like, damn straight, Drew. And Drew and I, of course, are friends all these years later, do a lot of work together.
Did that for a year, opened my first company, HVAC company, not really know what I was doing. I don't know anything about the mechanical side to this day.
I don't know the first thing about the mechanical side. I'm a sales and marketing guy, much like yourself.
And I drew that company from $0 in 2004 to about $20 million in total revenue in five years and sold that. My first book came out in 2009, so I started traveling and speaking.
By that time, it started doing a ton of work for Carrier and Bryant because we were a Bryant dealer. And they were like, dude, you're selling a ton of stuff.
And so I said, I got this sales system that I put together, which is just my interpretation of all the masters, you know, the Tommy Hopkins and all those people who lives here. We should stop and see him.
And Tommy's a good friend. He's been very, very generous to me.
Did that and started traveling, speaking. And then as you and I were talking about off the record earlier in 2019, I got back in the HVAC side because crazy, stupid money was coming in in private equity.
So I built that company, grew that to 42 million in total revenue in five years. We just sold that and we purchased five others that we're developing around the country and hope to grow those and maybe make some money and turn those at some point.
So it's been kind of a only in America story. And anywhere else I'd have been shot a long time ago, put away for life or whatever.
So I'm very grateful. I'm a very grateful person.
I appreciate every opportunity that we have in this country. I love to see, as I mentioned, with the young guys like you.
And I know you're not a baby and you're a grown-ass man. But I just – it's coming with a new energy.
Your brand has been so much fun to watch, and there's a lot of other guys out there, but you're definitely in kind of a league by yourself. Just watching the youngsters coming up.
You got the old goats like me. We're done, man.
We're going golfing and fishing, and you guys are really, really tearing it up out there. I love what you're doing.
I've been I've been chatting a lot with Kevin Coverford, and he sent me his book. And I talked to Leland quite a bit.
I talked to Ken Haynes quite a bit, Ken Goodrich all the time. I talked to not really an old come-up, but did a lot, Keegan Hodges.
You know, there's really not a lot of people. I went out recently to go see Morris Jenkins.
I went out recently and spent a lot of time with the whole team up in Utah at the Any Hour. Yeah, great guys.
And, you know, I've made HVAC Plumbing Electricals about $190 billion market cap. Garageosso is about a $14.
Wow. So – and it's not going to all of a sudden, like, Grosso is just going to bump up $10 billion.
It's not going to happen. So for what I need to do, I need to continue to expand at Grosso.
But Parker & Sons still does – Parker & Sons is part of Rents Group, and if they do $300 million at 20%, they're kind of equivalent to what I'm at in 40 markets. Wow.
One market. Yeah.
So, this idea of owning your client and going and doing all these other things for them, or do you want to own an industry across the board? I just decided I wanted to get garage doors at the best price of anybody, so I needed to go. I told Ara and Vahe with Service Titan, I'll be more licenses than the whole garage industry combined, which I'm not, but I'm still working on that.
I saw your affirmation in there about being a billionaire. I don't know if it's happened yet, but I'm sure it will if it hasn't.
I think it all starts with mindset. Everything is mindset.
You mentioned the keynote I was doing for that financial services group this morning. It was all about the mindset.
And that's what I realized after my dad died in 96 and I started this journey of reading. I remember I came across a quote from Nietzsche.
Nietzsche said, we attract that which we fear. And to be honest with you, when I first read that, I'm like, well, that's bullshit.
Like, why would I attract things in my life that I fear that I don't want? So I just kind of ignored it. A couple of months later, in the summer of 96, I'm reading through the Bible, just randomly grabbing some scriptures.
I come across a scripture in Job. Father, that which I have feared has come upon me.
I'm like, well, that's, you know, Nietzsche was an atheist, right? And a secular kind of guy. And Job, obviously, a God-fearing guy, thousands of years apart, saying the exact same thing.
I attract that which I fear, that which I have fears come upon me. Then I was reading Man's Search for Meaning and come across a line where Viktor Frankl says that fear may come true.
And so I started thinking like, wait a second, maybe, maybe just maybe all this miserable life I have, I'm attracting to me. So I sat down and wrote a list out of everything I feared the most.
And it was, it was my life. Not being a father, being incarcerated, being broke, being homeless, like everything I wrote down was my life.
Like I have indeed – This was around 39, 40 years old. No, this was 32 when my dad died.
I'm still in prison. I got seven years left to go at this point.
Okay. Yeah, so I'm in prison and I start realizing this.
So then I started reading all the classics, Think and Go Rich, that type of stuff. And I realized I got to change, you know, what's in here.
And so what I realized is like, you know, this, this brain up here, I use a metaphor of a box, right? And in that box, if I have a motorcycle, all the components for a motorcycle, and I pull

the parts out and put it together, it's a motorcycle. It's not something else.
It's got,

it's the same, it's going to be the same thing it was in the box. Well, to me, the metaphor is our

mind is a box. And every day, neuroscientists say that we pull 30,000 decisions out of their

I'm sorry. It's not something else.
It's going to be the same thing it was in the box. Well, to me, the metaphor is our mind is a box.
And every day, neuroscientists say that we pull 30,000 decisions out of there every day. Imagine that, 30,000.
Subconscious, second nature decisions. But every time we make a decision, we pull out a little piece of our life.
The question then becomes what's in there and where did it come from? And most of it came from when we were kids and other people put it in there. Well, what if I want something different than my dad wanted? What if I want to be a better father, a better husband? What if I want to be wealthy instead of broke like my dad was? Well, as long as I'm making decisions based on what he put in here, I'm screwed.
I got to change the contents of the box. That's what the power of consistency in my second book is all about.
About how do I change the contents of that box? And sometimes when I ignore it, in the Bible it says if you ignore your conscience, it goes away.

And I believe that's true.

You start doing a creative justification.

But you take technicians, especially HVAC, what do you find that their mindset is missing? Yeah.

Well, you walk into any HVAC company and get a group of technicians, comfort advisors, even people in the office, installers,

and ask them what the first word comes to mind when you say the word salesman. And what I've been doing this 20 years, 70% of them have a negative word comes to mind.
Now stop and think about this. We're in a sales-driven organization, a marketing-driven organization.
That's what our business is. And 70% of the people in our companies have a negative impression of sales, high pressure, sleazy, you know, whatever, dishonest.
And we wonder why so many small service companies struggle with the sales because they don't have a sales culture. Because the belief is, the mindset is that sales is sleazy.
It's high pressure. It's whatever.
And so the first thing that we do when we work with an organization, for example, is we change the mindset. It doesn't matter how good a sales system is if you've got 70% of the people that refuse to use it.
So I've got to get there and change the mindset. Because I always talk about Daniel Pink to sell as human.
I talk about if you want to meet your wife, you sold during that process and you continue to sell every day to your children. And the best salesman I know at church is the preacher.
He's collecting 10% of you forever is he's really good. So the first thing I do is hand out a tray, tithing tray, and say, well, everything you guys got.
I'm like, this is when I figured out sales was okay. So talk to me about how you get that.
People are either selling out of their own pocket or they feel bad. Why are we charging these prices? Why would we charge this price to someone, this beautiful mother that's divorced? So I think it goes back to the Great Depression.
Because everybody in this country is two or three generations removed. And kind of the mindset, the scarcity mindset, the anti-business, the anti-sales mindset, in my mind, started then.
If you think back to your high school history class, we had a name for those successful guys. The Robert Barons.
Vanderbilt,bilt, JP Morgan, J. Paul Getty, all those guys, right? They were bad names.
When I was growing up, my dad used to tell me rich people were crooks. Where do you think he learned that? From his father that grew up in the Great Depression.
So I think a big part of it, Tommy, is we first have to identify the problem. So I'll say, what do you think about when I say salesman, they give me some negative word.
How do you think that's going to work given the fact you're in sales? How's that going to work for you? If you think fundamentally that sales is sleazy, high pressure, whatever. And so hopefully getting them to recognize the problem and then talk about where those beliefs came from, right? It's probably something what I call junk in the trunk, some idea we picked up along the way.
When you're 10 years old and your dad says, rich people are crooks, you don't second guess that.

That's gospel.

My grandfather, Tommy, when we would do like a big meal, my mom, my grandmother cooked his big meals.

He'd have to say a blessing.

And after he said amen, he would say, look how good the poe folk is eating tonight.

I think it's rooted in the Great Depression.

And unless your name's a Rockefeller or Vanderbilt or Morgan or J. Paul Getty, you probably were poor.

Your family was probably poor in a Great Depression, just like my family was.

Right.

And so we had this animosity, and it's been growing for 100 years, and I think we're just seeing the total manifestation of it. People think they can't do it.
They think there's something wrong with it. Rich people are crooks and all that business.
Yeah, they vilify it. So once you're able to get them to – so you've got 70% of them.
You're asking them how they feel. What you said was – What's the first word that comes to mind? You're identifying the problem and you're telling them basically where did the beliefs come from.
You're explaining this to them. You're helping them understand where these negative beliefs have come from.
Right, and what we're hoping to find is having kind of an aha moment, like, oh, yeah, you're right. My dad used to say negative things about wealth and salespeople, and, you know, we've got all these negative beliefs, and you start to see it, and then you say, well, listen, you're in sales.
Are you planning on going back to install or whatever? No, I want to be in sales. Well, then, if you're going to take care of your family, if you're going to raise your children, provide for your family, don't you think it'd be helpful to have a more positive belief system around sales since that's what you do for a living? Tommy, I was in a company one time up in the Northeast.
I think I was in Boston or somewhere up there, way up there. And it was this engineering company.
I forget what they did. It was 15 years ago.
Had about 50 salespeople though. And so I'm up there doing a sales event.
And I asked that question, what comes to mind when I say the word salesman? And there's this lady in the back row and she's furiously writing like for five, 10 seconds. And I'm like, man, what are you writing back there? You seem very animated, pushy, high pressure, lazy, irresponsible, dishonest, all these negative words.
I'm like, dang. I said, what do you do here? She was the vice president of sales.
And her core belief system about the men, the women that worked for her was so negative. How's that going to work? So I think like any problem, you've learned this in business, in your personal life.
You've got to recognize the problem first, right? Yeah, well, that's what they say in a 12-step process is, first of all, maybe, maybe admitting you might be the problem. Right.
Oh, yeah. Listen, I went through a lot of years of my life in those prison years blaming the judges, the prosecutors, the ex-wife, her boyfriend, you know, government witnesses, all this stuff.
And then one day it hit me, like, actually, I read it. I didn't really invent it, but it hit me.
And it's like, if all those things are the reason my life sucks, then all those things got to change for my life to get better.

And that's probably not going to happen.

They're not going to change for me.

That's a good thought process.

Yeah.

But if I'm the problem, then I can change that, right? I have control over my thoughts and my behaviors.

So that was kind of a watershed kind of turning point for me.

But I really think it's about understanding that people understand their limiting beliefs, kind of their junk in their trunk around sales. And a lot of it's tied to income.
Let me tell you the greatest example of a sales process I've ever, ever seen in my life. I learned it from a guy named Joe.
And he had a little company, I shit you not, called Joe the Concrete Guy. I lived up in a little town called Woodland Park, Colorado, which is about 30 miles west of Colorado Springs, 5,000 people, 9,000 feet elevation behind Pikes Peak, beautiful little mountain town.
I lived there for about 10 years. And every day I would leave Woodland Park, you drive down this mountain pass about 20 miles, and there's a little restaurant there called The Hungry Bear.
And probably out of five mornings, at least three mornings, I would see this white Ford pickup in the parking lot that said, Joe the Concrete Guy on it, a phone number. And I used to get a kick out of it.
You were talking about marketing messaging, Dan Antonelli and the great work that he does. It's like, who does the work? Joe.
What do they do? Concrete. It's the simplest marketing message ever.
Joe the Concrete Guy. So about two years after I'm living up there, I realize I need some steps poured at the end of my driveway.
So I get kind of excited. I'm like, I'm going to meet Joe the concrete guy.

So I get his phone number up at his truck one day.

I call him up.

Joe comes up to my house.

There's not a pretentious, pressure, sleazy bone in his body.

He's a good old mountain boy.

Big old bushy head of hair, beard, T-shirt cut off some flip-flops.

He was like the honey badger.

He didn't give a shit, right?

He wasn't trying to impress anybody.

He was not some slick, pretentious sales guy.

I start talking about the steps, and it turns out it's about $1,000 to get the steps done I want done.

Thank you. He wasn't trying to impress anybody.
He was not some slick, pretentious sales guy. I start talking about the steps, and it turns out it's about $1,000 to get the steps done I want done.
I said, that's great. I said, let's do it.
He said, do you mind if I ask you a question? I'll fire away. He says, why is your motorcycle trailer parked in the dirt in the rocks next to your driveway? It was like this dry riverbed where water would run off or snow would run off.
I parked my trailer in there, a little motorcycle trailer for my son when he was young and riding dirt bikes. And I said, well, Joe, as you can plainly see, the driveway is not wide enough for the trailer.
He says, you know, when I'm here pouring your steps, I could widen your driveway. Like that, my budget went from a thousand bucks to 10,000 bucks.
So I asked Joe, after you did the paperwork, I said, Joe, I said, where'd you learn to do that? That technique? It was what technique? I said, you took me from a thousand to 10,000 like that. He said, with all due respect, it's not technique, it's common sense.
I said, I know it's common sense, but it's not common practice. I deal with guys all the time in the service industry.
They don't do it. And then he said the magic words to me.
He said, what does it say on my truck out there? I laughed. I said, it says Joe, the concrete guy on your phone number.
He says, yeah, Joe, the concrete guy. It doesn't say Joe, the plumbing, HVAC, window, roofing, landscaping guy.
All I do is concrete. I'm a specialist.
Yeah. And then he said this, Tommy.
He said, I learned a long time ago if I'm going to feed my family and pay my bills, I have a very simple job. Every time I walk onto a piece of property, I look for every problem that concrete can solve.
And I tell the homeowners. There's your high-pressure sales process, folks.
There's nothing high-pressure about it. But the truth is when guys say sales is high-pressure, they don't want to do it.
They think it's whatever. They just don't want to do the work.
Listen, how many times do you see in the garage door business, in the HVAC business, a guy walks in, fixes the basic problem, and leaves and never even looks around for other problems he can solve? You're back there the next year. Yeah.
You know how many clients call us? Like I said, we run 22,000 jobs a month. That's insane.
And I used to be on the phones a lot. I mean, this has been a decade.
But they used to say, I've had this company out the last three years, 2021, 2022, 2023. Came out in January 2024.
I mean, this is obviously years and years, so it was like 2014. They said, can you just come fix it right? We don't really care what it costs.
We just want to be able to hit the button and it opened. Yeah.
And so many people, they're like, how could you charge for that? It was so funny. I was upstairs with 40 other garage door companies.
This was like my Frank Blau, George Brazil, early days moment. And I said, you guys are more than welcome to come into my business.
And I'm going to show you exactly what I do. And I wrote down HVAC.
I said, $2,500. They sell it for $15.
That's about a 6X. I said, hot water.
He did the same thing. I go through like 10 different industries.
I said, how much do we pay? And this is five years ago. I said, how much do we pay for a garage door and an opener? Like a good one.
Someone says $1,500 combined. I said, let's just take the 7X.
I said, who's here is charging $10,500? Out of, you know, 40 companies I'm looking around. And no hands.
And I said, okay, who's here is, you know, let let's just say 7,500. And one guy goes, how do you sleep at night? And I said, interesting question.
Who here hires guys and does drug test, background checks, could be on every billboard, gives their guys $5,000 worth of brand new tools, trains them for 10 weeks, gives dental, insurance, PTO, allows their guys to make six figures, doesn't hold them down on the projects. Bryce, brand new vans every year.
Once your van's over three years old, it's getting replaced. Who here can afford to give insurance and pay six? How many people here pay their guys six figures? Not one.
Wait a minute. How do you sleep at night knowing you're screwing your employees over? Right.
To give your customer a good deal? Right. What? Yeah.
It's insane. It bothers me.
I had a client recently send a technician out. The guy had two HVAC systems in his house.
Technician goes out, long-term customer, maintenance customer, this homeowner. The guy comes out, service tech comes out, he finds one little problem, and right away starts talking to the homeowner about replacing the system.

Guy says, yeah, I'll talk to a comfort advisor.

Comfort advisor comes out, homeowner decides to keep both systems, not replace them.

So they send the technician back out to do the repair.

The technician starts doing the repair.

He goes, well, I found like four or five more other problems.

The homeowner went through the roof.

He said, that's kind of suspicious, don't you think, that when I didn't buy a new system, suddenly there's four or five problems. And called the owner of the company and fired them and said, I don't ever want – they've been a customer for years.
And fired the company. Now, the technician probably thought he was doing a favor, finding one little problem, whatever.
If you don't do your job thoroughly and they find more problems later, they're going to think you're pulling a scam on them if they don't buy a new system. I had in my house, I live in an old house.
It's been redone, but it's still, the bones are old. The mainline sewer is old.
And a few years ago, we started having some backup problems in the basement. I got some bathrooms down there, a bar.
It's kind of my man cave. And it's backing up a little bit.
I call the guy out, he clear it. And I'm like, do you think there might be a problem with the big trees in my front yard? It's a hundred year old neighborhood.
Oh man. He goes, I'll come out every six months.
He goes, we guarantee no clogs for six months. He goes, you're better off paying me $250 every six months than spending tens of thousands on the main line.
Being an adult, right, and I know this business. I'm like, it makes sense to me.
Well, that worked until it didn't, and I was gone for a week. And I got a big house, and I got, at the time, kids there.
And for a week that I'm gone, it backed up. The catastrophe happened.
Every time they flush the toilet, every time they shower upstairs, for a week that I'm gone because they don't go downstairs when I'm not there, backs up out of the shower, in the bedroom, into my bar, into my living room. Massive catastrophe.
This technician thought he was doing me a favor. He was going to save me $25,000.
Well, I ended up having to pay the $25,000 and a ton of other restoration work. This mindset these guys have that they're doing the right thing, they're just fooling themselves.
They're just copping out because they don't want to do the work. They don't have the stones to just sit there and tell people the truth.
They think they're doing them a favor, and they're not doing them a favor. I don't know if they don't mind doing them the work because a lot of them were installers.
They wanted to try this out. And I think it's just they have a hard time with confrontation.
They see they don't have the money to even own a house. Right.
And they're selling out of their own pocket. And they go, well, so I just say the simple phrase of did you want me to Band-Aid fix this, kick it down the road? Yeah.
Or did you ever think about replacing it? Because based on what I see. Yep.
And then I give options.

Yep.

Because if you're not giving options, you're giving ultimatums.

Right.

Anybody that says to me, this is it, you take this quote or leave it.

I'm like, don't we have something else?

Plan B?

William Sonoma Kitchenware Company.

Yep.

A high-end kitchen for people that are really good at the cooking and stuff.

Knives, pots, and pans, all that kind of stuff. A number of years ago, they wanted to put a bread baking oven in their stores.
It was good to be a thing. People want to bake their own bread.
They go out and find this high-value, great-priced, nice bread baking oven. They put it in all those stores.
They can't give them away. They're like, well, maybe our customers want something a little, expect more, because we're William Sonoma and maybe higher-end.
They go out and get a source, another red baking oven, more expensive. They start swapping out the inventory.
Some of those stores accidentally leave both on the shelf. What do you think starts happening to the lower cost one? Start selling like hotcakes, right? It's a concept of compromise choices.
When you give somebody one option, you're giving them an all or nothing option. Yeah.
And then a lot of times they take nothing. When you give them something else, we all go to the middle, right? It's just common sense.
It's just human nature. So you're exactly right.
You're exactly right. It's an ultimatum, as you call it, which is completely accurate.
Buy this or nothing. Well, fine.
I'll take nothing. Yeah, I'll get another estimate.
Compromised choices. I don't need you.
So someone asked me yesterday, there was about 40 garage door companies randomly again, and this is garage door freedom. And they said, what do you do when your technicians, this was the exact question.
They said, what do you do when your technicians feel like they're ripping people off when they sell them stuff? And this is this whole mindset that you've been talking about. And I said, well, the first thing I do is something a buddy of mine years and years and years, probably 10 years ago, Alan Ferguson, gave me this cost break-even analysis.
And this was really old. It had yellow book pagers, everything.
But back then it was $400 an hour to break even. And I said, they need to understand.
A lot of people pride themselves on never showing their technicians or anybody the books. I'm like open book management.
Hey, guys, here you go. Like, here's the deal.
I used to, when I was 13 through 16, I used to make pizzas at Rookie's Clubhouse. And I can tell you, man, the cheese, the massive cans of tomato sauce, we couldn't have spent much more than 40 cents on a pizza.
But back then, we were still charging around 20 bucks. It was custom pizza.
It was a wood-burning oven. And I'm like, wait a minute.
Think about that. That's 50X markup.
They 50X'd it. This place, this sports club should have been out of business.
50X, they marked it up. That's highway robbery.
But the pizza was ready. We delivered it.
It was ready when you wanted. It was still hot when it showed up, and it was delicious, I'm sure.
But why is it that in home service and home improvement, people are like, why would I pay for that much? It's the scarcity mentality that a lot of the owners have. You just mentioned it, financial transparency.
And my company, talk to Krista and my speaking company, other people that work with us and HVAC companies, they know how to read an income statement. They know what cost of goods means.
They know what gross profit means. They know what overhead means.
They know each department gets allocated overhead. So if everything goes perfect in an HVAC company, the average, I mean, not the elite, not the brass ring guys, you know, 20% EBITDA.
The average guy that's doing two or three gets to 10%, let's say, 12% EBITDA. And that means on every dollar of brain damage, every dollar of financial risk, every dollar of service install, every dollar of everything, when it's all said and done, the company, not even the owner, gets to keep a dime of it.
And probably half of that's going to get reinvested into your new trucks. That doesn't seem like absurd profitability.
And I think when people understand it, when they see the books, listen, if we go out and make a few hundred thousand dollars, I'm not ashamed of that either. I'll say, hey, guys, we made some money.
They're going to know when we're doing well and when we're not doing well. And I think there's a scarcity mentality.
A lot of our ownership, like you said, they don't want to share the information. Educate these dudes.
Educate them about cost of goods and overhead and all these different things. And they're going to see like, man, it's all you can do to make 10% of this business.
Yeah. That's just the reality, man.
And Leland was like, hey, listen, if you want to go start your own business, you go, make sure you take that guy. Yeah.
He does all the payroll. But if you want to start your own business, make sure – because your fleet needs to be run perfectly.
And the gas cars, that needs to get paid. Take the mechanic.
And make sure – how do you think the phone's – we need to have the marketing department. Make sure – you know what it is to – when Service Day does some of this, but we've got to have the matching principle and have the automated reconciliation.
So you've got to make sure you know how to reconcile the books. But here's the thing.
You've got to have a call center that books 24-7. And who's going to be doing the recruiting and hiring? And you start thinking about it, and you're like, just because it's the e-myth revisited, born again.
You're a great technician, but you think you deserve more. And listen, it's kind of true.
If you work out of your house, you drive a used truck, you know how to make a few leads happen. Usually it's feast for a while, and then it turns into famine within a year.
Yeah. When I started my first company in 2004, there was this guy in town that was literally, this was back in early 2000s, would do a basic 80s furnace in a 13-serie air conditioner.
Might have been 10-serie back in those days. I can't remember.
But he would do the whole system for like $4,500. And I was just opening my first company and I was starting to crunch the numbers and put some budgets together and all those things you just listed.
I'm like, how the hell can you do it? How do you do that? You know? So I happened to see his truck one day at a Waffle House and I pulled in there and I went and introduced myself. And I said, do you mind if I ask you a few questions? He goes, knock yourself out.
And so I sit down. He gets me a cup of coffee.
Nicest guy. And I said, how do you do systems for $4,500? And he says, well, do you know anything about the business side? I said, well, I'm starting to learn the business side.
I've been a comfort advisor, but I'm opening my own business and trying to do a budget. And I'm finding out what things cost.
And he says, well, how much is the equipment on that system? I said, ah, it's probably $3,000. This was a long time ago, 20 years ago.
This was $3,000 for the furnace, you know, the transition, the air conditioner, whatever. He goes, yeah, about $3,000.
So at $4,500, how much money do I make? I'm like, you mean your gross profit?

He goes, well, what do you call what you want? How much do I make?

I said, well, you got $1,500 gross profit there if you're not paying any sales commission,

any labor, because all you mentioned was the equipment, not to mention bird and these other

issues.

He goes, I don't have to deal with that.

I work out of my house.

He goes, I make $1,500 in two days.

He goes, I make doctor surgeon money.

And I'm like, how can you ever reason with that guy? That's what he believes, that he was making $1,500. That's the stupidity that we're dealing with with our competition.
What I tell our guys is that, hey, because they'll come back, hey, man, that guy was $3,000 less than ours. I'm like, oh, did he show you the letter from the IRS where he's two years behind on his taxes? Did he show you the letter from his mortgage company where he's fixing to go into foreclosure? Did you see the part where his wife had to go back to work because he couldn't support the family? Did they have all that in the kitchen table or just his cheap price? They don't see the whole picture, man.
Are the ROC or are they booked out? Listen, this has happened to me a few times where the client will go, listen, I've got a garage door guy, but I called you out because he slammed. He can't get out of here for a week.
So did you want – what happens when it breaks? He comes out here, band-aids it. That's what they do is they band-aid these things.
And I've decided a long time ago, you want us to be trustworthy, premium products on your timeline, same day service, usually within an hour. I don't want to be the most affordable, but I want to be the highest quality.
I want to be the best value. I want to be the best investment for you and your phone and the safety of your family.
So if you're looking for a deal, you know, I will listen at the end of the day, it's a licensed company and it's apples to apples, which we don't really sell apples. We sell oranges.
And it's a service. I will – I'll talk to them because I'm not going to leave with a zero if I've already showed up.
Right. But I know how to build the ticket because once I get you to make a buying decision, I always tell the guys when I do my orientation.
I do an orientation every month with a new guy. My job is just to get you to want to use me.
Once you're using me, that's just the beginning of our relationship. The best time to sell somebody something is right after they bought something.
Once you're going to make that psychological and it clicks, I'm doing this. We all have the experience.
You go to the car dealership, very stressful. When you make the decision, it's like, you're all in.
You're buying everything. Then they send you to finance.
Yeah, the finance guys are the best. Right.
And my goal is when you make this buying decision is, listen, I need, and I tell this to all my technicians, I just need you to make sure the customer understands that you're going to give them a fair shake. Yeah.
That's all they want. Yeah.
And first of all, they need to love you. Secondly, they need to know you love the company.
Right. Because they're buying from the company.
And the third thing is, which is hard for everybody, is they need to feel loved.

Right.

They need to feel listened to, respected.

That is so good. They need to be smiling.

And I'm like, very few times do we hit all three of those.

Yeah.

And we're laughing at their jokes.

And if they love Bernie Sanders, I'll say, yeah, tell me about Bernie.

I don't, you may have had him on your podcast before, Cialdini.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

He's a good buddy of mine.

Yeah, he's here in town, right?

Yeah, he's right here.

Yeah.

So I was watching a video of his years ago. And he goes, yeah, everybody knows people buy from people they like.
He said, what you may not have thought about is people also buy from people who like them. Yep.
And so what I teach is I teach our people to ask the advice about something from your homeowner. Ask their advice.
Who do you ask advice from? Your friends. Somebody you like and you trust.
So you send a very strong message. We spend so much time getting people to like us, and that's important.
Like you say, that's the number one thing. So give me an example.
Like, who do you use for your landscaping? This is freaking phenomenal. I mean, is that like an example? For advice, like you're asking.
No, no, no. If they got an RV.
Hey, Mr. Homeowner, I see that RV out there.
I've been thinking for years about getting in the RV life. Like, how do you go about doing that? What's that like? Just find something I'm interested in.
Yeah, and I'm in their garage. All your passions and pastimes are unique.
Hey, yeah. I see the golf clubs.
I've been thinking for years. I should learn how to play golf.
Like, where do you? Ask them anything. Dude, I'm an old guy.
You come to my house and you ask me about my cars or my RV, and we're going to talk for an hour, and I'm going to tell you about them.

Right?

And it's like, listen, it's almost like what's that old saying I think Zig Ziglar used to say,

the sweetest sound you'll ever hear is the sound of your own name.

Yeah.

Right?

Getting people, making them feel like a freaking rock star,

letting them know you like them by asking their opinion on stuff, ask their advice. It's important that they like you, but they got to know that you like them.
And you touched on it just a minute ago. The number one need we have as humans is to be heard, to be understood.
And we don't get much of that. Think back when you were a kid and you're trying to explain to a teacher or your mom and dad, like, no, no, no, that's not what happened.
I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it.
I I know what happened and how frustrating was that as a kid when people wouldn't listen to you yeah dude I remember when I was in fourth grade I was 10 years old fourth grade and they had a baking a cake contest I can't remember what it was for some fundraiser and all the kids had to go bake a cake well as it turned out that our neighbor was a professional cake made wedding cakes, birthday cakes. And so I went over there with my mom and I said, hey, I got to bake a cake.
Can I use some of your molds? And she gave me this Mickey Mouse mold. I made the entire cake from that point.
I just used her mold and she told me how to do it. I baked the cake.
I used the little thing to put the eyes on. Beautiful freaking cake.
We go to the contest. My mom and dad are with me.
We're the auditorium, the gymnasium of the school. And they disqualify my cake because they said there's no way a 10-year-old made that cake.
And, dude, I was like, no, no, no, I promise you. We don't want to hear it, young man.
This is very dishonest. And I'm like, no, no, I made the cake.
I didn't want to hear it. Dude, I wanted to freaking strangle somebody.
It's so frustrating when people won't listen to you. Yeah.
If you just listen to people, make them feel heard. Yeah.
They will fall in love with you. The other thing is laughter, right? Now you got to be careful with this because you can put in your foot real, you know, foot in your mouth real quick.
But I read this article. I forget even where, but you know, when you laugh, we have the dopamine you were talking about earlier gets released and it feels good.
That research has shown that the person laughing attributes that good feeling to the person that made them laugh. This is why Marilyn Monroe said, if you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.
Well, it's true for men too. It sounds sexist, but it's true for all of us.
If you can make me laugh, because I attribute all that endorphin, all that feeling, to the guy that made me laugh. Just in a minute ago, you were telling me, I forget what you said.
You had me laughing really good. And I'm thinking to myself, this fucking Tommy Mello is really cool.
Because you made me laugh. And I got this endorphins, I feel good.
Dude, it's just, it's relationship. It's what you said.
The most important thing is a homeowner likes the guy, the technician, or the gal.

You know?

Yeah.

I love this stuff.

I could do this – I'm going to rapid fire a bunch of questions.

Five books that you recommend for people searching for a radical mindset transformation.

Well, I always go back to kind of old faithful, the first to seven habits.

The second – you know, habits one, two, and three about personal development. Three, four, five, and six are more external leadership.
But for personal development, that one. Think and Grow Rich, of course.
Yeah. Classic.
Napoleon. Napoleon Hill.
Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. Yeah.
Holocaust. That changed my life because that was the first time I realized that maybe all my screw-ups weren't for waste, right? There was going to be something good come from it.
I'm a big fan of some of the old school guys. Emerson, Thoreau, James Allen is probably my favorite.
I have a James Allen anthology that sits on my desk. It's about a thousand pages long.
It's a series of, I don't know, hundreds of little essays that he wrote. And dudes, you can pick that book up, like the Bible, by the way.
And I'm not like a religious nut or anything, but there's historical reality in the Bible. There's a lot of good advice in Proverbs and Psalms.
I mean, you can say whatever you want, but there's historical accuracy. I can open James Allen, and Krista will tell you over here.
I will open it, and I'll read one line, and I can do an hour-long training on it because it just blows me away. Like, what did he say? One of my favorites, Tommy.
What kills me about these guys is kind of the joke in literature about these guys. And having written three books, and I know you've written some books, and I read a lot about other people.
That's how I learned how to write a book. I read books about how to write a book because I didn't know how.
And so the old guys like Thoreau and Emerson, they use too many prepositions and you write a paragraph and go through and take every prepositional phrase out and now you'll have some clarity in there. And so they get criticized because in the old days they would use all these prepositional phrases.
It's fascinating to me though, dude. And James Allen wrote six words one time.
He's most famous for as a man thinketh, right? But he wrote another essay on the power of focus. And listen to this, six words, dispersion is weakness, concentration is power.
Dude, I read that several times a week, those six words, and I just look at them.

I got 103 IQ.

You seem like a pretty bright guy.

I don't know if you've ever had it tested.

I've had mine tested three times because I couldn't believe how stupid it was.

103.

My success is a product of hard work, of course, but focused, dude.

I'm a bulldog getting focused.

It's going to get finished.

I won't give up.

And you know how hard it is to write a book.

The last 10% or 20% is the really, really hard part, right?

Because you get the basic stuff.

I think after the first one, it's easy.

It gets easier.

It gets easier.

The first one is like it'll never be done because, oh, my gosh, what happened?

I got to make sure.

It's like you feel like you're going to miss out.

Yeah.

FOMO.

Right.

Exactly.

But that's the thing, man.

So those, James Allen, Thoreau, Emerson, I love that stuff. Emerson, we become what we think about all day long.
Classic, obviously. And I love the Tony Robbins stuff.
Dude, it's so funny. Tony Robbins endorsed my first book, and I've never met him.
I've been to his events, but I've never actually met him. But we met through social media, and he endorsed my book through social media.
When Twitter first came on, this was like 2008, 2009. Yeah.
went to follow Tony Robbins, and he had like five followers. And so I followed him, he followed me back.
And if you go to his site today, he follows like 50 people. I happen to be one of them because when he first started, he followed me.
Of course, he got millions of followers. Huge fan.
So when I was in federal prison in the mid to late 90s, which, by the way, we were there last week. We went to the federal prison last week.
I go in on a pretty regular basis and talk to guys. He had the personal power program.
I don't know if you remember that. It was a 30-day program he had on cassette.
And the prison library had that program, and you could go in and sign in and get a little cassette player and a set of headphones. Yeah.
And you're supposed to listen to one lesson every day for 30 days. And at the conclusion of each lesson, he says, now do something today that's taking decisive action towards what we talked about, whatever it was.
And I would do it. That freaking program, dude, as simple as it was, it changed everything for me.
It just absolutely changed everything for me. So I'm a huge fan of Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey.
I mean, Tom Hopkins, who lives here. The, the art of the deal.
I thought I already moved to California, but he's amazing.

Last time I talked to his wife, they were in Prescott for the holidays.

So maybe he's got a house in California to do.

I used to listen to Tom Hopkins' cassette tapes because my mom was her realtor.

Oh, my gosh, dude.

I've done a ton of events with him.

So about – this was probably 15 years ago.

I have a promoter who happened to live in Denver, came to one of my events,

and he was a promoter for Tom Hopkins. Yeah.
And he comes to me and goes, would you like to speak with Tom Hopkins? I'm like, dude, are you kidding me? I love that guy. I spent almost five years traveling with Tom.
We would do four events a year. This promoter would go into a town, and he would go hustle up three or four or 500 people to come see Tom Hopkins.
And Tom would allow me to open for him. And I would do my mindset stuff in the morning.
Then Tom would come in and do his legendary stuff. And he used to do a boot camp every year here.
The last two years he did it, he brought me in to keynote. Like that dude was so generous to me.
Stephen Covey was the same way. Stephen Covey's son, Stephen M.
R. Covey, who wrote The Speed of Trust, wrote the foreword to my last book, Consistency Selling.
Dude, when I read the foreword to it, I cried. He talks about how he learned about me through his dad, his dad telling him the story about me.
I mean, you know the craziest thing, Tommy? The most successful guys are the most generous. People like Tony Robbins.
Tony Robbins endorsed my first book. What could I possibly do for him? Right.
Nothing. Stephen Covey, nothing.
Tom Hopkins, nothing. Mark Victor Hansen, nothing.
I know Mark Victor Hansen really well. Yeah.
These guys all endorsed my books and gave me this praise. There's nothing I could do for them.
It is funny because, and I learned this in the penitentiary system, like the guys that are yoked like you, right, you go into weight pile with those guys, they're encouraging you. Come on, man, you can do it, dude.
Don't hurt yourself. Those guys encourage, the guy who's not doing it, the guy sitting on the sidelines.
Talking shit. Oh, look, a tough guy over there going to get buff on the weight pile.
Same thing with, I used to run a lot. When I was in a penitentiary, I used to run 30 miles week.
And the guys who never run oh look at Mr. Running Shot the other runners out there come on man you can do this.
It's amazing the people who are the most successful the most generous with their praise. And the guy who's on the sidelines who's not in the game is the one that's going to criticize.
And if you look at social media a perfect example I got this nasty I meant to show it to Krista I got this nasty gram from this lady last night because I've been following you for years. And I came in through Patrick Shaw's organization.
He was a friend of mine. And I just thought you were like, and all you care about is money now.
That's all you care about. And I'm like, well, that's interesting because I was in a federal penitentiary last week working with guys for nothing.
I never charged for that stuff. But it's amazing how critical and obnoxious people will be.
But it's always the people who aren't doing it. I guarantee the guys that criticize you are the guys who can't do what you do or won't do what you do.
They probably do. I literally read it for fun because all of my haters are undercover fans.
Yeah, they are. Well, they're watching your stuff.
They're watching your stuff. Look, at the end of the day, I'm like, you know, I used to get under my skin.
I'm like, you don't even know me.

You don't know what I do. You don't know why.
You don't know how big of a heart I have. But now I'm like, why would I want to prove this to you? And if you don't have haters, it probably means you're not making it.
I read this. That's true.
I just had this guy come shoot this, like, 40-minute video with me, and I was reading. It was such great comments, so many great comments, like 160 amazing, except for one.
is said, the minute this guy says he puts everything on his schedule

and he makes his office hard to get to, because I'm the CEO of the company. My office is the hardest to get to.
Sure, it should be. That's what Ali V taught me.
Make sure you've got important work to do. You've got people counting on you.
And I'm like, this person doesn't even understand at all even what a business is.

You know what?

I have nothing to prove, but it's interesting because it used to bother me.

We got 10 minutes, and I really want to hear just your methodology.

You're known for your sales process.

Could you break that down for me?

Yeah.

I don't know if that's long enough.

Yeah.

No, I can sum it up in a few minutes.

Really, it's simple.

And as I always say, it's easy. It's just easier not to.
There's nothing fantastic about what I do. When I was first started selling, I'm living in a halfway house and I get a job selling air conditioners.
And it changed my life. This industry completely changed my life.
My very first month in this business, Tommy, and this was in 2003, I sold $149,000 with one week of training.

I made $14,000 in commissions.

I was living in a halfway house. $14,000.
And this was 20 years ago. Changed my life.
Everything I have I owe to the HVAC industry. Even the other stuff I do for the FedExes of the world and the Comcast and that kind of stuff, none of that stuff happens if the HVAC thing didn't happen.
Those books never happen. None of that stuff happens.
So I'm in a bookstore in 2004 and just started selling. And I see a copy on the magazine rack of American Scientific Mind.
And a guy that apparently you know well, Gialdini, had written an article for that magazine about the persuasion principles, the seven principles. Persuasion, persuasion, yeah, seven principles.
I love that.

I love him so much.

He's 79.

And I use it in everything still to this day.

In fact, I give Childene a lot of credit.

Brian Burton has a podcast.

Yeah, Waste No Day.

Yeah, I think they just had him.

And he said, man, we told him that you're a big fan of his and blah, blah, blah.

But I'm reading this thing.

Now, I'm just in the sales, in HVAC sales, and I'm like, holy cow, this is, I can see how this could work in sales, right? The consistency principle, public declarations dictate future actions. I had been running leads for a couple of months, and I realized really quick that the same three objections, I want to think about it, I need a cheaper price, I got three bids coming, right? Like, what if I could get people to make statements that were in contravention to that? And so I figured out through some storytelling and some sales, some questions, that within 30 or 45 minutes of the conversation, I get my homeowner to acknowledge that price is not the most important factor, three bids will not protect them, and that they can let me know tonight whether I'm a good fit, and those are perfectly acceptable answer.
I get the homeowners to make those three public declarations to me because the consistency principle, it can work against you. When we're going out on a sales call, the homeowners are having a conversation.
What's the last thing they tell each other before I get there? We're not buying tonight. We're getting three bids.
We're getting a good price, right? Yeah. So if I don't counter that, then those public declarations will drive their future actions at the end.
Even if they fall in love with me, Tommy, and they think it's a great deal. Oh, I told my wife I wasn't buying tonight.
But if I can get them to make those public declarations to each other as I work through my process, all of a sudden now I feel like, you know, because when a guy says, yeah, price isn't the most important, I say, ma'am, do you agree? Yeah, I agree. Fifteen minutes ago before I got there, they said they were getting a cheap price.
Now they're telling me price isn't the most important. They're telling me they're getting three bids.
I go through a series of stories and questions. So if you had to choose between me that would do that kind of service for my customers and three guys that would tell you anything to get their hands on your money, which of those would you prefer? Oh, I'd prefer your company.
I heard that podcast. You talked about some type of authority, the authority of.
Yeah. It's kind of the social.
Well, social proof, but I'm talking about what's the authority. You mentioned like, hey, this was written about.
Yeah, yeah. So on the price thing, I use, there's several things I use.
I attack price about three times in the presentation. The first one is with Consumer Reports Department of Energy.
Consumer Reports Department of Energy. That say very clearly that the single most important thing is the quality of the contractor and the proper load calculation.
Right? Yes. That's it.
Listen, I guarantee you, I could go on the internet right now. And do the same thing for Garage Doors.
And we do it. I did it for FedEx.
I went and found that when you're choosing your shipping partner in a small business, price is not the most

important factor. You can find it for anything.
And so

I'm going to sell garage doors. Mr.
and Mrs. Homeowner, this

article from Angie's List or whatever.

The IDA, International Doors Association.

Do you agree with this at the price? Well, yeah.

It's got to work properly. By the way, I bought

a garage door from one of your family members. Had a company

in Colorado Springs. I think it was your uncle, your cousin or something?

Yeah, Ryan. Yeah.
He came, he said,

the whole thing. And then turned me on to the guy that did my floors, the whole thing.
I spent a 20 grand. The floors, the whole thing.
They were great. I just bought him out about two years ago.
I heard he sold his company. I said, I wonder if Tommy, he's a family member.
I figured, my point is, is that you have to be proactive. Listen, and I love the Tom Hopkins, the Brian Tracy's of the world.
Don't get me wrong. Everything I know, I learned from those guys reading their books their books.
They teach us to get to the end, build a relationship, get to the end, and then overcome areas of concern, objections, whatever you want to call them. I try to get them to say yes a bunch of times.
But to me, when are people at their highest level of defensiveness? At the beginning or the end, when you're talking about money? They're on DEF CON 1 at the end. Try convincing somebody price is not the most important factor at the end.
Good luck. They know what you're doing.
If I ask them an hour before, oh, do you agree with this, the price is not the most important? Yeah, because it's conversational then. But all that stuff goes in.
And then I used the three most powerful words in sales. Earlier you said, Mr.
Homeowner, will you trust me with this recommendation? Oh, you're just, you're a little too expensive. Earlier you mentioned that you agree with Consumer Reports and Department of Energy that price wasn't the most important factor.
I mean, you feel like that's changed? Well, no, nothing's changed. It's just a lot of money.
What should we do? Yeah, what should we do, right? Jokers are. I'll just say, well, great, with your permission, start the paperwork.
So they don't care what I say, but they care very much what they said an hour ago. Yeah, they got to say consistent.
Right. It's a consistency principle.
So that's the... There are a few other concepts.
What did you say the three most

important words were? Earlier you said.

Earlier you said.

Earlier you said was the... Okay.
Right.

Earlier you said the price wasn't the most important factor. Has that

changed? Earlier you said the three bids

wouldn't protect you. You preferred my company

over you. And you don't think they come off...

Oh, you've got to be careful. You've got to be careful.

You can't be like, yo, bitch, earlier you said

price didn't matter. You've got to be...
I call it the Columbo. You can't be like, yo, bitch, earlier you said price didn't matter.

You've got to be, I call it the Columbo.

You're probably too young to remember Columbo. I know Columbo.

Yeah, yeah, the Barry Burdick she wrote at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you've got to be like, you know, Mr. Homeowner, correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, he used to do that a lot.

Yeah, you've got to – because if you shove it in their face,

people don't like being held accountable, right?

You said it earlier. The only shot is if you're accountable to yourself.
We don't like accountability from anybody else. So if they don't like it, when you tell them you have to be very subtle, that's a big part of the training.
You have to be savvy enough and subtle enough that I can remind you, it feels like earlier we mentioned this. I mean, did I misunderstand that? Did it change? You got to be careful.
You got to be careful. You're treading on thin ice there.
And if you're belligerent and too direct about it, you get your ass thrown out of the house. And you probably, I think you mentioned this, but you still like an old school write stuff down.
Look, I love Service Titan. I know you're a partner with theirs.
And we view Service Titan. I hate all of the electronic digital stuff for presenting options.
I spend two hours building a relationship with you. Connection, relationship, right? Single most important thing.
And then we get down to the end. I got Tommy.
I got Tommy's wife. And I said, well, great.
Let me put some options together. Now I got to go to Service Titan, and I'm in there for seven or eight or ten minutes.
Tommy's cooking dinner. Wife's helping kids with homework.
And I go, okay, I got your options. Hey, man, could you just email it? Right? Try herding those cats again.
Right? So what I do is after my trial close, I go straight 8 1⁄2 by 14-inch laminated price cards. Old school.
Old school. How big? 8 1⁄2 by 14.
Right? It's like a Denny's menu. And I got seven systems on there.
And I go straight from my trial close. I reach in my bag.
I pull out my three-ton options. Seven options.
Yeah. Well, and that's important, too.
That's another Cialdini thing. I know that we use six.
Yeah, six is good. But it's really important.
And what freaks me out is guys are afraid. People say, no, if you look at the concession principle, as described by Cialdini, right, that if I ask you for five bucks, there's about a 15% or 20% chance you'll give it to me on average.
Yeah, but then they say, if you don't give me five, will you give me two? Yeah, you become twice. You can always come down.
You become three times more likely to say yes. So I want you to say no to $25,000.
It's like ASU when they bought the chocolate from the Bullseye. So I want you to say no to this.
I want you to say no, because the research, Cialdini tells me, and I believe him, I trust him, that you become way more likely to say yes to $17,000 after you said no to some higher options. So I want them to say no a couple of times.
That's why you've got to have the six options or seven options. So, yeah, it's a little old school.
I mean, it's Airtime 500, like old school stuff. But I'm telling you, man, there's a time for high tech.
There's a time for high touch. I had Chris Voss.
Yeah, we had a few minutes here. I had Chris Voss in here, and I said, listen, let's go talk to the guys next door real quick.
And he said, okay. And I said, listen, a lot of these guys are single.
Probably going to go to the bar, shoot some pool tonight. What would you say to a girl to get her to say no, but get her to get excited? And he goes, it's very easy.
Have you given up on meeting the man of your dreams yet? And, you know, no. You know, is there any reason you don't want me to look at your garage or make sure it's safe? Right.
So he's like, unlike the old Tom Hopkins, how many times have we been screwed when we say yes? You want to make more money, right? Right. You want to make sure that everything's safe in your life and everything's very fantastic.
Because we've been fooled before. You're doing the takeaway.
I love it. I tell people all the time, put your hand up like this and start pushing somebody else's hand.
Don't tell them to push back. Just start pushing.
What do they do? Start pushing back to human nature. So I like what you're doing.
You're doing the takeaway. You're flipping the script.
Yeah, you automatically. One of the things I was just with Ciaudini about, I don't know, a month ago, and he goes, try this.
Some people are watching this. Most people are.
Put your hand up for me. Put it up higher.
Put it up like you mean it. Okay.
A little bit – so why is it we have to tell people to try? Why is it – everyone does this in the audience. He says, so we we got to push people a little bit to go to that next level, to push all the way.
Dude, if you could ever work it out where I could meet Cialdini. Like, I've met a lot of big people, dude.
That guy to me is, it's like Leland Smith. I call Leland Godfather.
That to me, Cialdini is that guy. So I just, I literally had a literally had a marketing meetup and I said, hey, Robert, I call him Bob.
I said, Bob, was there any way? And Bobat's his wife. I said, can you make it to this event? He goes, yeah.
And Bobat usually works out of speaking fees and she's like, we're not going to charge you, Tommy, but would you donate some money to Joe Polish's? Joe Polish introduced us. And I'm like, yeah, I'll give $10,000 to Joe Polish's.
He's really into helping addiction. And he came out and put it on a three-hour clinic.
And I'm telling you, the shit I'm about to incorporate. And I got his best student that he trained on the Child Eating Institute, Chris Phelps Coaching.
And I don't even know where to start because there's so many things that we want to implement of each and everything. Some of it's recruiting.
A lot of it's sales. A lot of it's marketing.
Those are the three things that really, none of it's going to be on the finance side or anything. Yeah.
But no, I definitely, I'm interested in talking to you and working with you on a bunch of stuff because- I'd love to do it, man. I do these podcasts and selfishly,

I probably hire one out of 40 people. And the storytelling that you did, I wrote down

storytelling because you're such a good storyteller. That's what it's all about.

Storytelling is how do you teach people how to storytell? That'll be my last question.

Yeah. And then I got to ask people how to get ahold of you.

The fancy word is transderivational search, right? Which really means your mind's eye. Transderivational search is a fancy word for that.
If I tell you a quick story, you will search for the images. You don't search for the words.
So if I said, Tommy, man, this bride, she was the most beautiful bride I've ever seen. And that day she stepped out of the porch of the church, a little white church, and she walked down the steps and she put her foot in the grass.
It was like the greenest, most beautiful lush grass. And she looked out at the lake and there was her new husband.
And she walked across the yard to meet him and gave him a gentle kiss. You saw the bride or you saw the church or you saw the lake.
You saw something. You got to make people search for images.
We get in, well, this is variable speed. You know, nobody gives a shit about variable speed.
What I tell people is you got to use a very simple phrase, what that means to you. It forces me, the salesperson, to translate the feature into the benefit.
Mr. and Mrs.
Homeowner, this is a variable speed motor. What that means to you is that it mixes the air very gently in the house.
You ever been in a situation where you take a really hot bath and then the water starts to cool off and you turn the water back on? What's the first thing you do? Oh, I start swirling it around my hand. Yeah, that's what a variable speed motor does.
We have to use stories. You've heard it a million times.
You've probably said it a million times. Facts tell, stories tell.
Stories tell, right? Maya Angelou, people won't remember what you told them, but they'll always remember the way you make them feel. Stories make people, it elicits emotion.
That's why I've been successful in my speaking, because I just tell stories. And I came off the stage today, and people say, you had me in tears.
I tell some stories about my kid, you know, everybody can relate to. Yeah.
That's a comedian. That's the one thing I find that they do is every single person in the audience can relate to them.
Yeah. Yeah.
I love it. So, Weldon, if somebody wants to reach out, once again, go over your few books that you've written.
So my first book was The Upside of Fear, which was the memoir. The whole story, the crime drama, the prison drama, the courtroom drama, all that stuff.
I self-published that book and it turned out in 2010, I think, or 2009. Writer's Digest, Best Book of the Year.
New York Book Festival, Best Autobiography of the Year. I'm like, dang, I guess I can write.
I wrote every word of that book myself. I could go into a long story about how I failed my first grammar test in prison, but I learned how to write.
You can teach yourself to do anything. Second book, The Power of Consistency.
That's about the mindset. That's a lot of what I learned from Cialdini, how I applied that into the mindset part.
That book hit No. 5 on New York Times, No.
2 on Wall Street Journal, because that was kind of like my big, that was my big heyday, right? And third book is

Consistency Selling, where I take all the consistency principles that I've learned and used

and develop them into the sales process that I use.

So the sales process and the third one, Consistency Selling.

Yeah. And they're available in audio.
I read them myself. I go in the studio,

read them myself. People seem to like that.
They're available, of course, on Amazon, all that kind of usual stuff. Yeah, I've got them all.
They're all in my house. I just haven't gotten through them yet.
It's like I've got too many books in the backlog. That one's skipping ahead.
You're a well-read guy. If someone reaches out to you, Weldon, what's the best way to do that? Best way is social media at Weldon Long on everything.
Our website is WeldonLong.com. You can reach me or Krista at the info at.
We both get copies of those emails that come in. Yeah, we're easy to find, you know.
Cool. We're not hiding from the internet.
I love it, man. Anytime you're in Phoenix, I'm down to do a round two, round three.
This is very valuable stuff, and it's an honor to have you here. I know I'm not your dad or family, but I'm really proud of you, man.
Thank you. You're a solid dude.
You're doing a lot of great stuff for the industry and you're raising the bar, man, on the guys that what I did 20 years ago, the stuff you're doing today is like next level. And I really admire what you're doing.
Well, listen, there's no finish line for me. It's all about, and you say this, and I mean it, though.
It's about really falling in love with the process. Falling in love the journey, the destination.
Everybody goes, man, what would I do if I had a couple hundred million if I sold for that much in my bank account? I'm like, you'd buy a lot of stuff, and you'd have a lot of problems. And trust me, you need a house manager, you would need a bunch of shit.
And it's a good thing. I love my life.
Don't get me wrong, but most people aren't ready for it yet. Yeah, I got a bunch of cars.
Cars have been my thing. And it's like, man, it's a lot of work just keeping them clean.
And they got to go to the dealership. I'm like, every week I'm going somewhere new.
And it's like, I didn't think about this part. I just wanted some cool cars.
But it all comes with strings attached, man, all of it. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Tommy. 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.