Q&A With Tommy - Stop Trading Time for Money: How to Build a Self-Sustaining Business

You got to start thinking bigger.

I was talking, we were talking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg.

Here's why they win.

They think bigger than us.

And I'm not thinking small anymore.

And that takes bold changes.

It takes people that are willing to take very controversial decision-making, extreme risks.

And most of you guys don't even, you would never move.

You're in your comfort zone.

You know, you don't want to change too much. You know, look, I'm going to change everything.
Be comfortable with change. Get an accountability partner.
Get comfortable with discipline. Set yourself up for success.
Find somebody to hold you accountable. 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 ask the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299.
That 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, we are live. Welcome to January's Q&A 2025.
It's going to be a good one today. I got a lot of energy worked out this morning, feeling good.
Started up my diet again, going hard in the paint. I weighed 246.2 this morning, looking to get to below 8% body fat here, going hard in the paint.
And I started thinking a lot about this. Some of you guys, I've been getting a lot of messages, lots of social media messages of how do you work so much and still motivate yourself to do these things, work out and go on vacations with your family and do these things.
And I know this word gets overused and the word is accountability. It's kind of you versus you.
David Goggins talks about this, is it's you versus you. But accountability is when you get an accountability partner.
You can be accountable to yourself, but why not find somebody, you know, if you've got a really good person in your life, they don't allow you to kind of miss, you know, when they say, Hey dude, let's just miss the gym today. Hopefully the other person's like, no, we said we were going to do this.
Let's leave early. No, no, we're not going to leave early.
Hey dude, you might be having a bad day. Take some pre-workout.
Let's, let's get through this. We go to the gym.
We're going to work hard. We're going to work, we're going to work hard.
It's such a big deal. Another big thing is I had my buddy Barry over from Power of Selling Pros and his son came with him.
And his son's 16 and we talked about a lot of things. And he said, what's a few tips if you were 16? I said, number one, go up in a open a Roth IRA.
And I kind of explained to him compound interest. And I said, rich people, very wealthy people, they focus on the principle.
They leave that there and they focus, like a lot of people, when they make money, they can't wait to spend it. Like if I told you I'm gonna give you $100 million, you'd be like, oh my gosh, let's make a list of everything we're gonna buy.
Wealthy people don't do that. They say, what are we going to invest that in?

We're going to spend the compound interest.

So 100 million and 10% is 10 million a year.

I'd say we could spend five of it.

We want that principle to grow.

Therefore, the compound interest grows.

I said, always bring a notebook with you when you're talking to mentors.

Take notes, smile a lot, ask great questions, and always be curious. I said this idea of delayed gratification.
You know, one of the things that I found out, you know, when I was young, when I was his age, is I thought I was making money, but I didn't put an hourly rate on what I was doing. I think a lot of us, we go around and we talk about money, money, money, but he's right now, he's rebuilding trailers.
I'll buy dirt bikes and rebuild them. The problem problem with that is do you measure your time? How much did it take you to find that dirt bike? How long did it take you to clean it up, sell it? When you went online, posted it on a, you know, Craigslist or, or Facebook marketplace, how long did you spend cleaning it? See, if the hourly rate is not, you know, a hundred bucks or more, why are you doing it? Most people don't, they don't figure out their time into the equation.
You know, I've been thinking a lot what life looks like in the future. And one of the goals is to start refining my calendar over and over and over.
Like once a week, go through everything I did. And like, I'm going to take a sheet of paper, old school.
I'm going to say, listen, I'm going to put a check mark everywhere. feel like I could delegate more.
The plan is to only get to three hours of really extreme work a day. Look, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk runs what, four companies as a CEO? He's working out on helping the government here in the United States with Doge or Dodge or whatever it is.
Trust me, he delegates most of his stuff and he hires great. So understanding what money is.
And then I had this revelation this morning that I wanted to share of just, I don't pay myself a ton of money at A1 Grouch for a service. It's enough that the government could sniff test me as a W-2 employee, say this CEO makes about right.
You know, I actually am one of the only people here that don't have a bonus because I didn't care about the bonus. I have so much equity in the company.
It wasn't important for me to negotiate that. What's important to me is I don't care about my W-2.
I care about the company's growth. I mean, that's everything.
How do you build a company that's worth a ton of money? That's all you guys should be thinking about. Not how do I make more money this year? It should be how do I make the company worth more money? Learning how to sell a business is the most important thing you should be thinking about.
And when people tell me they want to get $100 million, it still baffles me at times. If you're in the right industry and you're growing fast enough, I just got off the phone with one of my marketing guys.
I said, look, we got to double the leads by the end of the year. The only thing I care about, hire great people and train them.
Make sure the culture is where I need it to be and increase the lead flow of quality leads. That's it.
That's my job. More leads, more great leads, more great guys and gals running the business, especially technicians and installers.
That are trained, trained, trained, trained, trained. And people know that I appreciate them and it's a great culture.
Those are the three things. That's only three things I want to deal with.
In fact, I'm not going to be involved in anything else. I'm going to make sure I exit myself from this business.
I don't want to be the micromanager. I don't want to be everything's got to run through me.
I don't want to be the guy that's got to look at every decision and say yes or no. In fact, I don't know how to log into payroll.
I don't know how to get certain things out of service tight. I don't know.
I never logged into intact ever. I don't want to know how to do inventory.
I don't want to know how the gas works on the trucks. I don't even want like, look, I know the numbers.
I get these reports. But some of you guys got to let go, man.
And some of you guys have been betrayed. Some of you guys have been used.
Some of you guys can't trust anymore. And you got to have checks and balances.
But if you are the everything for your business, the first thing you need to do is hire an EA. And a good one.
And your life will change forever. But that involves a lot of trust.
You know, other than the business, I got engaged, which I'm very excited about. Me and Bree, she's on cloud nine.
I'm on cloud nine. That happened about two weeks ago in Bora Bora.
You know, it's a big step. I've never been engaged, never been married, no kids.
So it's the next step. But this chapter I'm going in, I'm ready.
Like, you know, I feel like I'm going to be an amazing dad. I feel like I've been put on this earth to be a dad.
Yeah. I want to change people's lives.
I want to continue to be the best home service expert I can. But the next trial, you know, I'm not, no one's ever prepared to be a mother or a father, but I'm getting ready for that.
That's going to be a big chapter of my life. Also, I want to travel more.
And I'm coming to this sense that I don't want to stop working, but I don't want to work all the time. So what really makes me happy, I'll tell you what makes me happy is I've got several cousins that I just love being around.
I just love it. I've got a lot of family that I just love to be around.
I got a lot of friends that I just can't get enough of. So how can I travel the world, play a lot of golf, do a lot of fishing, do some hunting, play some golden tea, do some bowling, watch some fun movies, go on the lake, do some snow sports, hot chocolate on a cold day, enjoy my life, but still do a lot of business to keep me sharp, but not a ton, just a few hours a day, take Mondays off.
So I've got to refine, refine, refine. JD, one of my managers wrote this book, Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes.
So for me, it's literally like you keep doing the same thing. You're going into 2025 doing what you did in 2024.
Oh, it was a great year. Keep going.
Well, refine your work on your calendar the most. Delegate a lot if you can.
I can't explain that enough. Like the delegation and getting the calendar, I'm making a note for Ashley, one of my EAs.

I had it to... I can't explain that enough.
Like the delegation and getting the calendar, I'm making a note for Ashley, one of my EAs. Headed to Atlanta tomorrow, we just opened that market.
Going to be opening up other markets this year. And what we're working on is documenting everything.
That's, you know, making sure there's a checklist. And I don't think people have documented.
They don't have enough information when they're just going through just to make sure everything's right. Some new technology we're bringing on.
You know, I feel like, I was talking to a buddy of mine and he was talking to a buddy of his in California and he said, do you know how many thousands of contractors are praying that you pull this off and get two to $3 billion valuation? And I was like, no, I don't really know anybody that's really hoping that that happens other than me and the team of people that have equity in the business. And he's like, no, he's like, if you pull that off, it changes the whole industry for everyone.
And I'm like, yeah, I never really thought about that. He's like, you got to do this, dude.
You got the world on your shoulders. You got to pull it off.
I'm like, well, you know, if you do a SWOT analysis, there's only a few things that can stop us from doing it. You know, if Google completely shut down or changed their algorithm, I mean, we do everything by the book.
We were investing a lot of money in SEO, lots and lots of money, lots in a nonprofit and 5013Cs and getting backlinks from those like investing, you know, putting money into churches, high schools, colleges, lots of stuff this year. In fact, my goal is to donate at least $5 million over the next two years.
And not to mention the time effort, you know, get involved, donate doors, use the company for Wooted Warriors and all those other things, not just money, but time and the whole company. But let's dive into it.
You know, we've got a, you guys go to HS Home Service Expert and keep a lookout. We've got a pretty big webinar coming live.
Me and Jim are going to do it. And I'm going to be talking about a lot of cool things we're working on.
If you guys know, and you guys really follow what I say, and you understand how important marketing and hiring right and training your guys and culture are, and you can live in those seats and really just get rid of all the obstacles and stay focused and go to seminars and have accountability partners and understand how important having discipline is, you're going to be successful this year. I mean, I get hundreds of people reaching out a month saying thank you.
And I really appreciate the feedback, but they're the people that actually do the work. It's very rare I get a thank you for somebody that listens to these, but they don't do the work.
And then there's other people that they'll just kind of bounce into these and listen to the Q&A here and there. And then they'll ask stupid questions like, how do you rank on Google? That's like saying, how do you become a billionaire? How do you rank on Google? Everybody wants these simple answers like, oh, you just do this.
It's not that simple. It takes focus.
How do I hire a good? What what kind of question is how do I hire a good? Like you got to be specific and you got to like watch all my content, like go on Instagram, go on TikTok, go on LinkedIn, like follow me on X, like watch all the content I put out on YouTube and then ask really good questions. But the questions I get are rinse and repeat sometimes.
And it's like the questions don't have any, like they're just, how do I run my business? And I'm like, well, like I can't even fit. One guy asked me to be the CEO of his company for three months.
I'm like, dude, what? Like I'm the CEO of A1. Anyways, you guys got to join.
If you're not in the home service expert group, just join right now. Go onto Facebook and join.
Hopefully you are. There's 15,000 people in there.
We're going to 10x that. If you know anybody, invite them to the HomeServiceExpert Group.
We're really trying to put a lot of effort into that. So let's go ahead and get some questions going.
James said, I know you hired your mom to answer phones. Yes, 2010, I did that.
I just put my mom on the phone for me part-time. How did you set up her pay in the very beginning? What was fair to her and you? How did you transition over time? So, you know, you got to think that was 2010.
So that's 15 years ago. I paid her 50 bucks an hour.
I mean, if I were you, I'd pay her like everybody else. I'd be more of a performance pay.
I'd say, look, I'll give you 12 bucks an hour plus 10 bucks per booked call. Or, you know, call it six bucks per booked call.
She can book three calls an hour. You know, that's 18 bucks.
Like I would still pay performance pay. I didn't know about that in 2010.
Staking the outcome and like, look, I had my stepdad working for me too. So my mom was good.
My mom just was like, how do I help you, honey? I want to get involved. She wasn't looking.
They had enough money that they could live on.

They sold their house for a lot of money in Michigan. They weren't like trying to make a living working for me.

They were just like, let's assist you.

And in the end, it worked out for them.

They got a big chunk of money and they deserve more than that.

I do think they helped me out at a big time of my life.

And I'm one of those guys that no debt goes unpaid. So there's more.
I tried to do as much as I could for my mom and Bill. We picked up a trip for them and my uncle to go this cruise.
And they went for Bora Bora. And well, they're not going to make taxes for the next 10 years.
I'm covering that. But it's still not enough.
It's not even close to enough. So for what they've done, they sacrificed a lot.
All their friends, all the family we have, they just picked up and moved to help me run the business. So I don't have the best advice.
It worked out well for me, but you hear like nightmares about family working for you. Animosities, we helped grow this thing that, you know, my family, they were great.
They didn't make me feel bad for making money. They didn't get mad at me that I was always at work.
They understood what it was like to build a business. And they're my biggest fan.
So I'm probably not the best because working with mom and dad, working with your sister, your brother, it's hard. And you got to document everything.
I just, Al Levy always taught me, you got to be able to have Thanksgiving dinner and not talk about work together and make sure that it's productive and that it's healthy and that the relationship is still strong. If not, you got to separate very quickly.
Gabe said, what's your SOP for abandoned calls and service tightens? So very interesting you say this, Gabe. I had Ryan and Taylor from Chirp out here last week.
We did 700 something thousand dollars

from abandoned calls from Chirp.

And interestingly enough,

there's what's called Bitly.

It's a short code.

It's a way to kind of like tiny URL.

One third of the messages weren't getting through

because the Sprint and Verizon AT&T were blocking it

because it looked like spam.

So we fixed that.

So we're expecting over a million dollars

from Chirp this month.

Thank you. Sprinted Verizon, AT&T, we're blocking it because it looked like spam.
So we fixed that. So we're expecting over a million dollars from Chirp this month.

That's one campaign from abandoned calls.

So very easy thing to set up, very easy thing to do for an extra million dollars a month

for a company my size, which it might be $20,000, $30,000 for you.

I don't know what size company you are, but it's set and forget it. It's literally that easy.
And we've got four or five other campaigns should have been live already. See, like I just get things done very, very quickly.
My team, sometimes I feel like they just, they wanted to go. Perfection is the enemy of just getting started.
Like everybody wants to do things perfect. I'm like, let me just make a video.
So'll just play something for you on an abandoned. Because remember, we have different brands.
We have Don's and Garage Door Doctor and different things like that. So here's just a quick video of like, this one might not be perfect, but...
Hey, there's Tommy Mello, owner and Garage Door Doctor. Listen, we were at your house recently to give you a garage door estimate and i wanted to let you know i'm here to do whatever it takes to earn your business we've got a lot of different options for you uh give me an opportunity text me back on this number i'm gonna get my right hand guy on it i look forward to hearing from you it's just these messages that goes out when we don't close the door get them on the phone text them back.
That's all chirp. It's pretty simple stuff.
And then you AB test that, run a different message. And then if they're shopping, you say, look, before you buy a door, I want you to go with the best possible company to satisfy your needs.
Here's 10 things you need to know about before you buy a garage door. Because some people say we got to get three prices.
You know, that's just the way we do business. You should have the guy putting in there in the checklist, then that fires the campaign on Shirk.
I mean, this stuff is so easy, but nobody does it. Like I say it till I'm blue in the face, get pictures in your reviews.
Make sure there's a way to get every single job with a review. It's just very few, like you get the idea, it gets written down and then it goes somewhere to die.
Does that sound familiar? Like, yeah, but there's so many things. What should I, like, what do I do right away? Well, I would focus on the things that take zero effort for me, except a few videos and a little bit of copywriting, which is true.
I mean, when you hire Al Levy, it's a lot of work. I mean, I'm looking at his book.
Like you got to put the manuals together. You got to read them out loud.

That stuff takes your time, effort, and energy.

And it'll have the most incredible impact of the business.

But when I give you guys things very simply to do,

and you wonder why things don't change,

why things don't get better, it's crazy to me.

But I would like our CSRs to call back every missed call.

Yeah, see, I just implement chirp on that one, Gabe.

Ronnie said, you mentioned developing relationships

with HOAs.

Can you explain that?

Are they marketing your business or referrals

and what do they get out of it?

Well, an HOA, think about it.

An HOA is usually the people that are like the president

and the controller, you know, everybody within an HOA.

They just want to uphold their property value.

They want to make sure there's no cars parked in the street. There's no overgrown landscaping.
The roofs aren't leaking. The landscaping looks good.
Some of them pay for Christmas lights. There's certain things.
They want everything to kind of stay looking good. And that means someone can't have a completely different garage door than everybody else.
So it's just crazy like the outlier. It means there's color codes.

So if they find a vendor like me and I could go talk to them about safety, neighborhood watch,

you know, you can take a hanger and actually manual release the garage door and break in.

HOAs are very careful about safety, safety in the community. They want to make sure there's nobody breaking in.
So we talk a lot about safety, making sure your garage doors work and make sure

if there's a fire or any type of natural disaster you could get out or emergency, how the manual

release works. So we go in teaching them

Thank you. in.
So we talk a lot about safety, making sure your garage is working, make sure if there's a fire or any type of natural disaster you could get out or emergency, how the manual release works. So we go in teaching them safety, teaching them Amazon could deliver into the garage, and that way there's no people stealing off your porch.
We talk about that stuff. Then we say also, you know, we have, we can install an opener that's super quiet that you can actually get in through MyQ.
And we talk about, we get the color codes for the garage doors. So we find out what's acceptable.
What would you guys allow? The HOA votes on all the doors they allow. So then we want a client and then they send out mailers every month.
And they say, this is our vendor of choice. You could call them up and they'll give you every single thing we voted on.
Because otherwise, you got to wait for HOA approval.

Sometimes that takes 90 days.

When I get to say these have already been approved and advertised to the clients,

that your HOA picked us as the preferred vendor for the entire HOA.

There's preferred pricing.

We got the color codes and we got the different examples of what you're allowed to carry.

Especially if there's a storm.

We had a bad windstorm. There was like every other door at this time.
This was 2012. And I just door knocked and said, hey, we can fix this door for you.
And it's HOA approved. So there's a lot of advantages of working with HOAs because you're trusted and true.
I've worked with apartment complexes. Now, listen, we're growing so big that I don't focus as much because they're smaller tickets.
HOAs are still decent size. But when I was hustling, man, I was stopping off at every apartment.
I give them, I talk about, because most apartments don't have a side exit door. They just have the one that goes in the house.
So there's this thing you could drill into the door and it's a key that you can pull the manual release. And I install those on every door.
I was just hustling, man. I figured out a way to earn everybody's business.
And that's what you got to do early in business. A lot of people are like, what do I got to do to get leads? Get your ass up and go get the business.
I'm going to a B&I meeting on Thursday in Atlanta. Tommy Mello, you know, is going to a B&I meeting.
How many of you guys have said, oh, we outgrew B&I? It's crazy to me.

You're too good to go to a B&I meeting

or a chamber of commerce.

Crazy.

Matt said, I own a junk removal business.

We do clean outs, junk removal,

and light demolition based in Philadelphia.

Any tips for growth in a competitive landscape

on a tight budget?

I mean, listen, look, where can you market? It's marketing, right? I mean, look, end of the day, junk removal. I would study everything I could by like waste management and how they grew, but tight budgets, you know, you got to go out and meet the people.
It's simply like little things, dude. Like, you know what I noticed is the guys that flip houses have the biggest mouse.
They're the best networkers on the planet. You go give them a deal.
I say, listen, if you keep getting me clients, they've got a whole network of people. Everyone calls them because they're like, you're the one that specializes in houses.
Who do I use for this? Who do I use for this? Like think outside of the box. Where does my clients, the gift that keeps giving, where do they need me? I go build relationships with these people.
You know, there's this thing called construction monitor. It tells you everybody that's pulled a permit for anything in most counties.
And if they pulled a permit to remodel the house, there's going to be some junk removal. Like think outside of the box, find tools like this, ask more people.
If you gave me a day just to work on things, I can give you so much you wouldn't even know where to start, but you got to test different things and see that was easy. That works well.
Let's continue to do that. Let's put more resources over here.
You know, I try a lot of things. A lot of them don't work, but some of them do.
If one out of 10 work well, and I can test a thousand things, I just got a hundred things that work well in a year. And that's the difference is a lot of people are like, oh man, I wish we had leads today.
Looks like we're not going to work much. I'm like, dude, I got to go out and meet some realtors

and some brokers and some insurance agents

and some people that deal with escrow accounts.

And like, I never sat at home waiting for leads.

Even when the phone was slow,

I'd go talk to the Yellow Pages.

I'd talk to ValPak.

I'd go study other people's ValPak

because I could look at last month and say,

is my offer the best?

You said, what are your thoughts on junk removal, clean out, light demolition industry? Any insights or ideas on performing roll-ups? I mean, listen, I think you could roll up any industry. I think it's yesterday Trump got in.
I think it's going to be, I text my guy from Goldman Sachs. You know how much money's on the sidelines, according to them? Eight trillion dollars sitting in.
Part of that's because interest rates are up. If just a part of that gets deployed, plus you got the repaid, you know, this money comes back in from other countries for free.
I'm not saying Trump's the, you know, perfect for everything. I'm not saying that at all.
What I am saying, I think it's going to be good to stimulate the economy. And I'm saying now it's going to be like, you better start growing and get an idea on how to scale your business.
A lot of people just want a lifestyle business that never made sense to me. Most people that have a lifestyle business are coaches.
And they like to brag about their small business that barely makes any money while they're trying to make money in coaching. Maybe it's an ego thing, but they brag.
I know hundreds of people that they have this lifestyle business, but then they're like, I want to be a coach. I want to be on stage.
By the way, everybody and their brothers are asking me how to start a podcast. And I'm like, you start a podcast to meet your clients.
Now I started a podcast to learn more about home service. Completely, probably not the right thing to do.
Now, I got an education in home service because I was able to get the right people on, but I started eight years ago. So, you know, everybody thinks, man, I want to do what Tommy does.
There's no money in podcasting. There's no money in events.
There's really not a lot of money in coaching. And plus, you know, but you can help a lot of people out.
There's future opportunities. I do events because I love them.
And I'm friends with all the vendors. And I went big at A1.
Every single thing I negotiate for these events and everything I do, I'm like, just give A1 a better price. Help A1 grow more.
Give us what's going on next month on the, what are you guys developing to make us better? You should see everything I negotiate to just help A1. Everything I do with the back of my mind going, how does A1 win? How does my family at A1 win? Like every stage I get on, I talk about A1.
People reach out to me, 10 people a day. Hey, I used A1 because I saw you.
You're a great company. You guys lived up to the expectations.
When you do this stuff, I'm still focused on the main thing, A1. I run a small pool service and construction business with my father.
All of our service technicians are 1099, drive their own trucks, and our accounting is very poor. Wondering in what order should I focus on fixing these issues? Yeah.
Well, the first thing is you need someone that understands accounting and finance. You need to understand when you start switching from a 1089 to a W-2, it's going to cost you way more money, but you get so much more control.
I would focus on making sure your books are closed out by the fifth, not the 10th, and make sure you get onto accrual accounting and make sure your shit is accurate as can be. You got to have a known financial position every day and every week.
Understand how much is in the account, what's going out. Are you guys making money? Are you priced right? I get the really good, my books dialed in, like next level dialed in.
And I didn't know what that even meant till four or five years ago. Like I had good books.
Now I have excellent, audited, great books. They're like down to the decimal.
When you have that, you have ultimate control, especially if you're paying attention. Get your books right and then figure out how much this person is gonna help you figure out what it's gonna cost to transition.
And what's going to have to happen to increase some KPIs. You're going to have to have either a higher conversion rate, a higher opportunity, job average, bookie rate, something to give you the money to make that okay.
But I've never – look, in roofing, sometimes painting, and sometimes other industries, sometimes construction, you get away with having 1099s. But you lose all control.
People are like, oh yeah, but there's a fine line. Very rarely do people live up, like you could get sued for the last 10 years.
You could owe money back. All the taxes you haven't been paying, the payroll taxes, I've seen people literally get a $5 million they're going to pay on.
Now, the government won't shut you down, but they'll say you got to make payments. They'll keep you in business just enough to make enough money that you still want to run the business, but not enough money.
And guess way, you get sued for payroll taxes, you can't go bankrupt. You can't get rid of that.
There's no way to get out of that. Mason said, our rankings on Google Maps as well as SEO has been game-changing for us over the past couple of years.
We live in a small or semi-large metro. We rank incredible on one side and non-existent on the other side.
Would you recommend creating a new GBP for the other side? I know sometimes messing with this is risky as anything to get your listings shut down. We currently have over 400 reviews and rank great.
Well, listen, I think opening up another showroom on the other side of town

and actually have people working out of there.

Now, listen, you want it to be more than 30

miles away. You want to make sure you're getting

a lot of reviews for it. You want to make sure

the BBB, you've got to be BBB

accredited for every location. That's a trust signal

for Google. Get the citation sites

done, get reviews with, I told you guys

about Penn Parent with Callen.

Have Callen running his little algorithm in the background? Yes. If I'm non-existent on the other side of town, it's because they don't have a location there.
And there's obviously SEO and LSA ads that you can run PPC. But you know, when I was small, I'd run Angie's List ads, I'd run Deal of the Day ads, you know, Living Social, like, you know, all these things matter.
Like when you're small, you got to do it all. And a lot of people, they don't remember the grassroots.
They don't remember putting yard signs. You got to door knock.
You got to go socialize with people. It's hard.
If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Why can't I just get more business? Because you're lazy.
You're not social. You don't know how to ask questions.
You don't know how to genuinely look people in the eyes and say, I want to take care of you. I want all your business.
And a lot of people sell on price. They don't sell on quality.
That's another big mistake. So yeah, absolutely.
I would get another location and I'd make it a real location that you're paying rent at, that you've got signs up, that you're actually running people out of there to make it completely Google compliant white hat. Hey there, I hope you're really enjoying today's episode.
I wanted to share something with you that's been on my mind lately. People always say, Tommy, you're so lucky to have mentors like Al Levy and Ken Goodrich.
But come on, you think it was luck? Not a chance. Before they ever shared their secrets with me and before I knew them on a first name basis, I had zero connections.
So how did I go from nobody knowing my name to learning from the best in the business? I put in the work, I found the real players, the guys who built, scaled, and sold their businesses for a massive payday, and I gave before I asked. A handwritten note, a thoughtful gift, a quick video thanking them.
But guess what? You don't have to grind for years to build a network like I did. You just got to get into the right room.

That's exactly what Freedom 2025 is for.

You'll be surrounded by people

that are 10 million to $500 million home service legends.

The real deal.

Sign up now and get the early bird bonus bundle

worth more than $5,000.

It includes some of my best resources

to help you face every single challenge of business.

Go to freedomevent.com.

Again, that's freedomevent.com. All right, let's get back to today's episode.
Jose said, what are your two biggest pieces of advice for myself and my cousin who started a home service company at the age of 23? Well, I started when I was 23. Don't be afraid of mistakes.
Just don't make big mistakes. Start small.
You know, when you're smaller and you don't have a lot of money, the mistakes don't cost as much. Still, they can put you out of business.
But just don't keep doing the same things if it's not working. Don't be afraid of change.
I say always put it back into the business, but make sure you're breaking up a little piece. When you're 23 years old and you can save just $7,000 a year, you're going to be a millionaire no matter what.
Start a Roth IRA, put the money away. Do not use that money.
You might say seven grand is not going to change your business a year, but it'll change your life when you turn 50. 25 years at 10% is two, 7,000 a year is a 2 million bucks.
So do yourself a favor. I guess you'd be 58, but give yourself some money.
Another thing is don't be afraid to ask for help. Go in as humbly as possible.
Be curious all the time. And just don't get comfortable always doing the work.
Get comfortable finding the people to do the work. And it might not be perfect every time.
It might not have been what you've done. But then ask yourself, did I give clear direction? Did I explain how this needs to be done? Is it detailed that a fifth grader could understand it? Because if you didn't give the right instruction and you didn't get them to show you how to do it in front of you, and then it doesn't get done correctly, you need to look yourself in the mirror and say, I didn't give the right instruction.
I think people miss this fact all the time. They go, people always make mistakes.
That's why I got to do it myself. Well, you didn't provide the instruction.
It's like, if you got a little kid and you're teaching them how to play baseball and he runs to second base instead of first base, is it his fault or did he know to run to first base? So they got to be taught the rules of the game and how to win and how to keep score. got to understand is there two strikes and then the third strike you're out and is there two outs third out the switch like how do you play the game and how do you ensure it's getting played correctly that's your job you're the coach can't wait for the shop tour next month me either i love the shop tours it's tommymellow.com forward slash shop if you guys ever want to do a shop tour Love doing.
Me either. I love the shop tours.
It's TommyMello.com forward slash shop. If you guys ever want to do a shop tour, love doing them.
Want to get really serious about delivering more value. Hi, Tommy.
You look good. Proud of you, brother.
Question. We have a networking meeting with different business owners once a month and we share ideas, mostly plumbing owners.
We have some that do HVAC. What is your advice for us? Any ideas? Shout out from Houston, Santana Bros Plumbing.
You know, here's the deal, Miguel. I've got a few buddies that really got together with an HVAC and plumbing and they found big companies that they worked with and they share, like they had a rule.
If you're not PE backed and you're big enough and you're never going to be competition we'll share the financials and we'll do a shop tour once a quarter and they went to other shops and they'd critique each shop and they built this little alliance and the problem with these groups is there's a lot of people that don't tell the truth there's a lot of people that just come there to extract knowledge and you can tell who they are are. They're the guys always writing stuff down, listening, never contributing, never talking about what's working for them.
You know, I've got a group. And our group, you know, whether it's Aaron Gaynor, Chad Peterman, or whoever, we're always giving each other great advice.
We're telling each other what we found. We're trying to like, hey, I got something new to share with you guys.
And, you know, I feel like if you get the group of givers, everybody wins. But when it's just local competition, you're gonna find that you're not getting much out of that.
I mean, if I were you guys, I'd rather do a Zoom call with competitors from other markets that aren't gonna infringe upon your territory. They'd get a lot more honesty.
That's what I would be doing. I'd also have other companies, like other industries, I'd probably have roofers and flooring, other big ticket items come in and talk about what's working.
From Instagram, Storm Spence, what's your thoughts on college and what's the best degree to study for someone that wants a business? I think professors have tenure. They don't know what it's like to make it in the real world for the most part.
I don't think I've ever looked for a degree. I think if you look at home service and home

improvement, that's what everybody's saying going into now. They used to say you get a coding degree

in Python or Ruby on Rails or figure out different type of coding. Now they're like, oh, AI is going

to replace that. And then you go for graphic design, oh, AI is going to replace that.
I think

if I were to go back, I would spend as much time learning sales. And they have sales degrees.
Marketing. Sales and marketing is where I'd want to live.
And I take some finance classes. Learning how to build relationships.
I'd be reading all the time. But Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people.
I don't think I'd go to a formal institution. I got a master's degree in business.
The coolest thing about that was I met some really cool people. There was a couple of cool instructors.
I learned some basic stuff, but I can't look back at anything I was learning and like, man, I really applied that to my life. Advanced calculus, organic chemistry, economy, economics, accounting, advanced accounting.
Yeah, I used to take apart annual reports, figure out if we want to invest in it. Like there were classes where they give us like these fake, we can invest in companies, fake money.
There wasn't anything brain shit that kept my mind busy. I learned how to study and get ready for tests and learn knowledge, but I didn't apply much of it to business.
So I would go through more like go to seminars and like invest in mentors and figure out ways to like generate leads and create a culture. I just don't think there's a whole lot like there is some things that college is useful for.
I hate to say this because I went to my master's degree and I'm doing pretty good. But hindsight, Tommy Mello, 18.
No, I would take classes, but I wouldn't go for the degree. I wouldn't, you know, a lot of people say get a degree because people look at that just to say you can finish something.
I don't know how important that is this day and age learning from a bunch of people that never made it in the real world with tenure losers, actually that teach,, that teach, you know, equity and diversity and all that shit. They brainwash you.
And I know a lot of instructors have tried to brainwash me. I just didn't buy into it.
Patrick said, hey, Tommy, man, commercial HVAC did 200K last year looking into marketing. Would like to grow, add a truck, and mostly find residential marketing.
Patrick, here's the deal with marketing, dude. What are we doing to grow a new market? Well, you got to get a lot of reviews.
You got to offer tune-ups, go in, meet people, get pictures with them. You got to be willing to lose a little bit of money.
I mean, if you want to take market share, you got to put 15%, 20% of the marketing. In fact, in our new markets, we're willing to put 35%.
So if we want to make $5 million, we got to put 1.75 million into marketing. At 35%, you're not going to be profitable.
But no one's ever heard of you. So if you want to go from $200,000 to $225,000 next year to $250,000, yes, I understand you got to make a living, but there's another way to do it other than money.
It's out there getting your ass out there, doing free tune-ups, talking to your neighbors, getting the HOAs, meeting realtors, doing whatever it takes. You got to start out.
Unfortunately, you can't start out as the highest price. You got to get good at sales.
I always talk about price rate, but when you're nothing and nobody knows who you are and you're sub a million dollars, it doesn't work. You got to go out there and meet the people.
And it's constant, dude. I'd work 40 hours in the business and 40 hours on the business.
I'd be working 80 hour weeks because I used to do that. And people are like, dude, I can't do that.
I got a family. Well, then why'd you start a business? If you got no money and you got no time, good luck.
The the business will not grow we are currently number one organically on google for lawn care would you still do google sponsor gls so i can appear multiple times yes i would absolutely do it in fact if you do organic you show up in the maps you show up on lsa and you show up on pbc you show up four times and then you might even show up on the top of Yelp. You're going to get picked.
People are going to be like, this must be a sign. There's been studies.
You can look them up that the more times you're in the top first page, the more likelihood it goes up exponentially every time. What percentage of revenue should go to labor related costs? I think anywhere with 28 to 32%, depending on your company and how you guys track that.
But it's different for every business. Like drains don't cost anything in parts.
It's much more labor intensive. So that's going to be a higher labor cost because there's no really cost of materials, cost of goods.
Can you share more about how you safeguard A1 being misclassified as a franchise and

why you stayed away from that business model?

I like the franchise model, but you lose control.

You're no longer in the garage door business when you start a franchise.

Everybody's looking for a turnkey business.

In fact, I've talked to some of the largest franchises in the country.

Neighborly, my buddy Mike is the CEO now.

He used to be a CEO at Valpac.

We talked the other day on the phone for about an hour. You know, a lot of franchises, you try to get these businesses to a million or 2 million.
You lose control. You start having to deal with, it's the 80-20 rule.
20% of the companies are going to grow. The other 80%, they never conform.
Like you can't fire them because they bought into a franchise. There's all kinds of politics that go into franchising.
Could it be great? Absolutely phenomenal. There's so many good franchises out there.
But it's a struggle. Everybody thinks, man, I'm going to do a franchise.
I got a good business concept. But they don't think about really what it takes.
Not only do you got to sell the franchises, but you got to be able to get them leads. You got to be able to train their people.
You got to be able to get them ranked on Google. You got to be able to get the call center dialed in, get them to submit their

financials on time. Got to make sure they're not out of town too much and taking too many vacations.

Most people that want to buy a franchise are looking for a turnkey lifestyle business.

And there's no such thing. I'm sorry.
Every once in a while you hear about a company,

just everything went right. They made a bunch of money.
It's just few and far between. They're not

common. So I love the franchise model.
One of the interesting things are there's the same amount of franchises 20 years ago as there are today, meaning that there's a lot that fail. The vast majority of franchises fail because somebody goes, oh, I'm just going to franchise my business.
It's not very profitable. My website doesn't rank.
I don't have a national call center. I've only approved it in one market.

I barely got market share,

but everyone's going to want to buy this business.

And nobody wants it.

Oh, we're going to come up with our own CRM

so we can even make more money.

See, the easy way to do this for weak people is to say,

I've got a business that's okay,

but maybe I can sell it for $50,000 a piece

and take 8% and everybody else can do the hard work. That's why people go into consulting.
Hey, I've got a lot of stuff I've learned. Business is hard.
I'm not gonna run a business anymore. I'm just gonna go consult and talk on stage and become an influencer.
And I'm gonna start a podcast and that sounds fun. And I'm just gonna show people how to do it even though I'm not very good at it.
And I'm going to become a teacher and I'm going to be a franchisor and everyone's going to buy my shit. I'll tell you how I really feel later, but there are some really good franchises.
If I was to do a franchise, one out of 500 would actually be picked to be allowed in my franchise. You'd have to have so many credentials, pass so many tests.
You'd have to commit. You'd have to like, I'd have certain things to be able to rip you out of the franchise

so quickly if you screw up our name.

Like, I don't look at the franchise like, oh, I want to sell as many as possible.

No, protect the franchise.

Make sure there are people that are winning.

Every single buyer is a soldier out to make a lot of money, but they're going to work

their butts off.

They got to have like McDonald's makes you make sure you got $2 million in the bank before you can start a McDonald's franchise. You got to be well-funded.
See, most franchisors are willing to take people's last $50,000 and wonder why they don't make it. Because they're greedy.
Yeah. And these franchise salespeople that like sell franchises, they're very good at what they do.
They'll just say, give me the pooper scooper franchise. I'll sell the hell out of it.
They'll sell, but they don't care what happens after they got their money. Do you have someone on your team who is in charge of upselling to current customers? I don't really understand that question.
To our database, our technicians, we don't really upsell. I don't like the word upsell.
We offer them different options. The client can pick one they like.
Like Joe Corsara says, what should we do? It's that simple. It's like we're not putting things on their throat.
Yeah, we've got product specialists that are good at closing the deal, finding out what the customer needs based on how they're going to live at the home and what's important to them. But I would call someone specific in the company that's responsible for upsells.
How would you structure performance pay for mobile detailing? Average ticket, 280. Jobs per month, 42.
Well, what do I care about? What are the things that really matter to me? In this case, mobile detailing is all about routing, right? I don't want to drive an hour to this job to clean the car, an hour to this car, an hour to this car. So it's kind of like pull service.
You want to be able to get as many clients as possible. So what I would do with mobile detailing is I'd have my guys put out signs and I'd have them knock on a couple neighbor's house, especially in affluent neighborhoods and pay them a lot of freaking money to close.
Say, listen, we get this client on, we sell them a 10 pack of mobile cleanings. I'm going to give you half the money.
I'd make sure that every single person doing the cleaning becomes, they're posting on their social media, they're putting out yard signs, they're talking to their friends about it. You know, their girlfriend is posting about it.
They're out there hustling for you, getting more clients. Because it's all about keeping close.
It's all about dispatching. So you want to be in the vicinity of the next jobs.
Next thing I do is just, I'd have a checklist to mark off and have the customer walk through it. And if they didn't want to walk through it, I'd send the whole checklist with pictures to them.
I actually have an app that we've created. It's a checklist app if you want to know more about it.
But I said every little detail, make sure the client's happy and we exceeded their expectations. I'd also pay them a little bit for reviews, a video testimonial, or a review on Google.

A review on Nextdoor is a big one.

Nextdoor is in the community.

The BBB is a big one.

The Yelp is a big one.

So you might say, well, they can only get one review.

How do I keep paying them?

Every time, hey, you have me a review on Google.

Can you do one on Yelp for me?

And every three times they clean it, ask for a different review or a video testimonial.

Get their wife in it.

Thank you. Every time, hey, you have me review on Google.
Can you do one on Yelp for me? And every three times they clean it,

ask for a different review or a video testimonial.

Get their wife in it.

See if there's another car you could do.

Hey, listen, we have the two nice cars and we've got our son's car.

Listen, can we do your son's car?

Figure out if there's still profit.

You're at the same job.

Figure out how to get to that other car.

Like I said, the neighbors,

I would look at a few things that your people can control

and pay them on that as long as you could track it well.

It's important that you got very good attribution that you can track it and it's going to help you grow the business. It's going to make you more money.
Therefore they get to make more money, but I don't have the perfect, like I would have to sit down and whiteboard it for a minute, but those are just some ideas. What are the best frameworks to get to a million starting out? I do landscaping.
You know, it's all reverse engineering. Like how much do you make a billable hour? How much time do you put in? How many clients would you need? What's your gross profit? What's your bottom line net? Okay.
So what you're starting to figure out is I would need this many leads, this much on repeat business. I lose this much.
It's just a math equation. It would take one hour to put together a pivot table with somebody even remotely smart that looks at your financials.
You could just go on Upwork by somebody that builds pivot tables and say, look, in a financing that understands P&Ls and say, I want you to show me how many leads, how many clients I need to close at what dollar amount based on my financials and what I need to get to. And then say, okay, how much do I need to spend on marketing? How many can I close? How long does it take to get to a million? It's just, it's an accounting exercise.
And there's mathematical certainty with it if you're priced right. Now, what you got to be careful is in landscaping, you don't want a lot of churn.
It means you got to put out, you got to get the right clientele. Churn will kill you.
So just make sure you're not losing clients. Because a lot of times when you get to try to get to a million or 5 million or 10 million, you're so focused on marketing, you're not keeping your current clients.
And that'll kill you. If you got a client going out the back door, every time you got a new one coming in the front door, your churn is way too high and that'll destroy a company.

So make sure you're focused on keeping your customers excited and happy with the service you're already doing.

How would you structure a membership program

for a mobile auto repair business

focused on brake repair customers?

Given that brake repairs have a high margin,

an AOV, but low frequency.

Additionally, how can I effectively capture the LTV of customers from such a low frequency service? If using a membership model, what resources would you recommend to learn about developing a compelling membership program? So look up this guy. His name's Aaron Stokes.
And I could probably think about this and work through it, but this guy's the master of how to get brake jobs and how to do automotive repairs. He's already got, he's the largest mastermind in the country of anything.
And he already's got all this stuff figured out. Aaron Stokes is a great guy.
Spoken as a vet. He's just a genius.
I think you'll really dig him. Really love the guy.
So look him up and he'll probably have a better answer.

Greg Mitchell said, would you view my website

and give me your honest feedback?

Yeah, leave it in here.

Just say if you'll take it, we'll send it out.

We'll look at the website.

There's a lot of things that I look for.

How fast does it load?

Is the phone number easily clickable?

Does it have a schedule engine link

to be able to schedule online?

Is there good information that I want to learn about? Is everything there? Is it organized? Is there testimonials? I'll look at it. Have you done Colby testing before? And if yes, what were your scores? My team's done Colby testing.
I haven't done them. We're looking into some tests, but that's one that I don't think is one we're going to be focused on.
Tommy, with $7,000 in my window cleaning business, one employee in an unwrapped truck, 75% of the leads from organic Facebook posts, what's your first move to scale? Would you prioritize ads, branding, et cetera? Yeah. So me personally, I focus on Google.
I build a really fast website that's mobile friendly. I'd make sure I'm getting more leads.
And then the first thing I do after I get a really good amount coming in each month and I'm getting reviews with pictures in them with great reviews, my Google's ranking, my business page and the hours of operation. Once that's done, you know, I might hire a guy named Lenny Gray to do some door-to-door stuff as well.
But I want to be a brand that people are like, man, this brand looks legit. This isn't just a guy that went to Home Depot and picked up a bucket.
These guys are good. They're safe.
When you're explaining what you do to build value, and I'm just going through all this stuff through the book Influence with a a coach is like, don't just say we're a garage door technician.

We're a certified technician.

What does a certification mean?

It's like, otherwise you're just chucking a truck coming out there to scrub my

windows. Like show me the tools you're using.

Show me the, the,

why should I hire you and why should I pay you more than just getting a

handyman to do it? Those are important questions. So yeah, the brand is important and getting more leads and focusing on Google.
What book would you recommend for the leadership team to read? You know, one of the books I first started out with was Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I think that's a great book to start out with.
Anything from Patrick Liciane, The Ideal Team Player is a great book. Beating Suck by Cameron Herold is a great book.
The One Minute Manager is a great book. Those are great books to start out with to read as a team.
I mean, look, I can look around here. There's just, I've got so many freaking books, it's hard to pick which is the most important, but those are some good ones.
My office has a lot more and my house even has more than the office. Guys, do me a favor because I got my team out here saying to finish up.
Giuseppe, I'd love to get all the questions where I ended. So I finished with Instagram with Jake.
So the next one was Keith Massal. We just got to submit those questions into homeserviceexpert.com forward slash questions,

plural.

I want to end with just this idea of this accountability again.

Enjoying discipline.

You know, a lot of you guys don't have energy.

You don't have the burn you used to have.

And it might not be anything that's wrong.

It might not be you.

What it is is your body's not working.

You're not metabolizing correctly.

I got to tell you guys, if you don't call Dr. J, find a doctor that specializes in naturopaths.
Figure out what's wrong with you. Figure out why you go home and you're just depleted of energy.
Why you don't wake up and you're energetic. Why you don't want to go for that long walk.
Maybe you're in the wrong surroundings. Maybe because it's 20 degrees below, you need to get up and move your family.
You need to be bold. And this is not your life anymore.
I'm just telling you guys, dude, you got to start thinking bigger. I was talking, we were talking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg.
Here's why they win. They think bigger than us.
And I'm not thinking small anymore. And that takes bold changes.
It takes people that are willing to take very controversial decision-making, extreme risks. And most of you guys don't even, you would never move.
You're in your comfort zone. You know, you don't want to change too much.
You know, look, I'm going to change everything. Be comfortable with change.
Get an accountability partner. Get comfortable with discipline.
Set yourself up for success. Find somebody to hold you accountable.
Another thing, listen, we've got a huge webinar. Go on Home Service Expert.
It's going to be amazing. Last thing is, oh, here it is.
It's the free webinar. Double Your Growth in 2025, three critical moves.
It's me and Jim Leslie. I'm going to put the link in here.
We've already got 1,000 people coming to this. This isn't just a sales pitch, guys.
Like, dude, A1 did north of 63 million of EBITDA. This company is going to be worth $2.5 billion.
I don't care about your money. In fact, I'm setting this thing up so I can invest in lots and lots of businesses.
I want to get to know you guys. Truthfully, it's probably a little bit vain of me or just conceited or maybe I'm just selfish, but I want to find businesses I like that are easy, lucrative, and fun to work with.
I want to make a lot of investments. Down the line, I'm going to be investing in hundreds of businesses.
And I'm going to be taking my whole team. And I've got 30 people on the team, the family office.
This is the way I do it. I find out businesses that, look, you get to a million dollars of EBITDA at HVAC and still get 10 million if you do it right with my connections.
It's not hard. I had a guy in last night that's doing it right now.
He's got a million of EBITDA, 10 and a half million he's getting. It's crazy.
So that's what I want to do. I mean, look, I want everybody to make out.
I want your whole team to make out too. Freedom event is going to blow your freaking minds.
I got Mr. Wonderful.
I got a couple of names I can't even say yet, but they're already signed up. It's going to be September 3rd through the 5th.
It's going to be in Las Vegas. It's going to be in Mandalay Bay.
I promise you there's not another event that even comes close to this. Not even close, not even in the same hemisphere.
You better be ripped up too. If I see you, you better be getting ready to get in shape because that's what we're going to talk about is getting in your best shape, getting close to your family, getting closer to God if you're religious, making sure you're trying to become the best self.
You don't need to be magic overnight. It takes time to do these things.
You gotta stay consistent. You gotta say no to certain things.
But the results, you're just so happy. You just look at life differently.
And if you're not feeling it right now, if you're not excited, if you don't feel great about this year, there's something wrong with you. You need to go to counseling.
You need to see a psychologist. You got to get your shit together, dude.
Because if you don't feel amazing and pumped ever listening to this, something's going on. And maybe you got to get checked out.
But listen, guys, I hope you have a great month. Finish out strong.
Hopefully it's a record. We got the Trump pump going on after yesterday.
So hopefully the economy starts sparking off. I hope you guys are doing excellent.
I hope you continue to push yourself to the next level. I'm Tommy Mello.
This is a home service expert. I'm signing out, guys.
Thank you. 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.