Hustle vs. Leadership: The Right Moves that Change Everything for Your Business

Speaker 1 What I don't see people doing is engaging with their team. A lot of times, the blue-collar business has PMS.
It's pale, male, and stale, right?

Speaker 1 And so you got this old crikety white guy that runs the business, and he's like, I don't want to fucking do social media. I ain't got time for that shit.
And I'm not camera-oriented anyway, right?

Speaker 1 Cool. Let your techs that are in their 20s and their 30s get added to your business profile and let them make content.

Speaker 1 Let them make content while they're in the field. You don't need a camera crew.
You don't need a media team. Tommy, this thing right here, bro, is everything they need.

Speaker 1 And every single one of your technicians has got one in their pocket. They're carrying a studio with them on every job site, but they're not using it.
It's crazy. Yeah.
I don't understand it.

Speaker 1 And literally, your technician could, after every job, could pull his phone out.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mellow.

Speaker 3 Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Now, let's go back into the interview.

Speaker 1 So, you, you're an expert in advertising, marketing, entrepreneurship. CEO of Carol Media.

Speaker 1 He's an expert in sales psychology and advertising strategy focused on helping others achieve their business goals.

Speaker 1 As an author, a speaker, and travels the country, motivating and training entrepreneurs and social media strategies and how to make the most. of their advertising budget.
Yeah, man.

Speaker 1 Well, let's talk about it, man. Tell everybody who you are.
Yeah, I mean, before that, I'm a blue-collar guy, just like most of the people that are listening to the podcast.

Speaker 1 I started my first business my senior year of high school. I started mowing grass and ACE, AP chemistry, chemistry one, chemistry two.

Speaker 1 I was on the fast track to go to college to be a chemical engineer and turned down eight football scholarships in my senior year of high school because much like you, my parents didn't have a whole lot, you know, and I knew that with my dad never making more than 20 bucks an hour and my mom raising me and my brother, if I went off to college, I was going to be broke again.

Speaker 1 I was making about $4,000 a month mowing grass my senior year of high school. I actually co-opted for myself.
I was the first kid to ever do that in school history.

Speaker 1 So I was signed on the left side of the book as the student and the right side of the book as the employee to go out and mow grass the second half of each day of my senior year of high school.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. And so I grew that to about 3 million in revenue and sold it.
Don't like think that's awesome because lawn care companies don't make a ton of money. So

Speaker 1 it was, yeah, it wasn't a lot of money, but it was cool. It was my first little exit and, you know, my first business.
And I've just parlayed that. I still own EasyPro, which is the brand I kept it.

Speaker 1 I actually sold the accounts to a national franchise and still own my power washing and window cleaning service business because it's a great business, great margins.

Speaker 1 And so, yeah, man, I was excited to come on and talk about that.

Speaker 1 I'm headed to a farmer's convention to speak all about advertising technology, but I was like, dude, if we can stop in and talk, you know, home service, small business stuff, I love it.

Speaker 1 Man, we've known each other for a while. So, yeah, it's great to see you.
Yeah. Well, what do you think is going on this next year in in marketing? Because there's a pendulum.
I need more people.

Speaker 1 I need more leads. And this year, I swung to more leads.
Yeah. Yeah.
And Goldman Sachs, pretty darn good.

Speaker 1 They've been spot on with me for the last couple of years, and they think next year is going to be gangbusters. Gangbusters.
In a good way. Interest rates are going to come down.

Speaker 1 It's going to be really, really good in the market, SP 500, as well as people are buying. I think houses are going to be selling more rapidly.
I think the economy is going to be turning leads over.

Speaker 1 I I think people are going to be investing in their homes, their garage drawers. Yeah.
I mean, really, Tommy, none of that shit matters if people don't run the business the way they should be.

Speaker 1 I recently was trying to get some remodeling done at my house and I went through five different companies, called them. Two of them never showed up to give me an estimate.

Speaker 1 Two of them showed up to gave me the estimate. I gave them both the green light.
They never gave me a start date. The other guy just left me hanging on the end of a text message.

Speaker 1 I think the number one challenge most small businesses have is they don't run their small business like a small business.

Speaker 1 They run it like a contractor, which is why they have the up and the down, right? They go generate, they don't have a problem generating leads.

Speaker 1 They generate a lot of leads, they sell a lot of leads, and then they have the work and then they write it down. And then it's like a cycle over

Speaker 1 them. Yeah.
It's they've never, you know, the e-myth, they've never gone from an employee to an owner. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And this owner mentality, this, this futuristic thinking is working on the business and they want to do the work still because they say, if I don't do it, it won't get done right.

Speaker 1 I'm well beyond that, but but I still have a lot of issues. Like I look at A1

Speaker 1 and I'm like, this is so many opportunities, so many holes in the business. I know everybody's like, man, it doesn't get easier, but the problems are more fun.

Speaker 1 It's not like, are you going to come to work sober today? We know I had a guy lose a thumb today. Literally broke my heart.
Today? Today. Lost a thumb.
Business ain't easy.

Speaker 1 I don't like he was off in the ambulance. They're probably going to reattach it, but I'm literally walking with Ashley and I'm like, dude, I don't know if I'm going to be able to sleep tonight.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't care about workers comp and that. I'm more worried about this guy.
Like, thumb's a big deal. So, yeah, it's just messed up.
But there's things that go wrong.

Speaker 1 But the point of what I'm saying is a lot of people listen to this podcast and they're like, man, I wish I nobody wants my life. It's a great life.
And I enjoy my life.

Speaker 1 And I worked hard to get to this point. It doesn't just go from here to here.
There's like it, it was little notches.

Speaker 1 And now it's in a really good spot, but it took a lot of work but not i just know this because i've known you for a while not even the business you you took a lot of work too you're a completely different person now than when you were at five billion or a million right like talk like the personal development that you've had to do i can only imagine dude but the law of the lid you know the you can only go as far as your lid goes so i've had to really pour into me you know my goal for my company is that i work harder on me than i do with the company because i'm growing very very fast and i'm the best i've ever been but the worst i'll ever be yeah jim rohn used to say that you got to work on yourself more than Jim Rohn.

Speaker 1 I play that video almost at every speech I do. It's cool, man.
It's like, let me love me to love you. You know, you got to put your own oxygen mask on first.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of people don't realize in the like social media did so much to put exposure on guys like you. And you know, I come from the exterior cleaning world, like Brandon Vaughn's a big guy.

Speaker 1 It's, you know, got a ton of exposure, Josh Ladder. What people don't realize, though, is like

Speaker 1 building that business is one thing,

Speaker 1 but building that person to run that business is different. And I'm going to hurt some feelings, but not everybody's cut out for that, dude.

Speaker 1 Like not everybody can handle the load that you guys put yourself under to build a business with that many employees, with the work, the hours it takes, and quite frankly, the EQ that it takes

Speaker 1 to be able to handle that. And I think that gets glazed over because it's so easy to go into like, well, you got to have systems, you got to have operations, and then you got to train your people.

Speaker 1 And it's like, yes, true, but you also have to be the guy that shows up and doesn't have bad days or is an emotionally stable person. Like nobody talks about that, man.

Speaker 1 And that's, that's why I try to always give the flowers.

Speaker 1 I know it's like, build a big business that's cool and it's sexy and everybody wants, you know, 28 inch arms like Tommy Mellow and big bank accounts. But really, at the end of the day, I think

Speaker 1 we got to, we got to.

Speaker 1 We got to do a better job of giving flowers to the guys that take six figures home that are solo or have a couple helpers and let those guys know that if they're watching this, it's okay to be that guy too.

Speaker 1 Like, not everybody has to build a $200 million company. And I'm not saying, like, if you want to do that, if that's your mission, that's your, I truly believe, dude, that's your fucking mission.

Speaker 1 We were just talking before we went on camera. Like, tell me in your next couple of moves with even more zeros behind them, which I'm fucking stoked about for you.

Speaker 1 But I think we got to give some flowers to the dad that starts a blue-collar home service business that makes six figures in the bank at the end of the year, but never misses a ball game, never misses a dance recital, and like, and takes two vacations to Disney World a year.

Speaker 1 Like, there's something to be said about that too, man. Well, that's what I ask.
I'm like, I was talking to a young guy the other day. He's like 27.
And he goes, I'm going to do what you did.

Speaker 1 I'm just, my goal is 100 million. And then I'll make a big exit.
I'm like, why? Why? Why? He's like, well, you prove this possible.

Speaker 1 I'm like, sure, as long as you're not married and don't have kids, you can make it. So I told him, he goes, I have three young kids under five.

Speaker 1 I go, why would you ever want to do that to your family so they could get to know you in 15 years when they're moving out?

Speaker 1 And he goes, you're right. No, he, I've talked, I've talked to him for for about an hour.
He goes, you're absolutely right. Like, dude, it makes a lot of sense.
I'm like, let's just see what you want.

Speaker 1 Start with the end in mind. You want this vacation house on the lake.
You want a beautiful house. You want to help out your parents.
You want to be able to go to Europe twice a year.

Speaker 1 You don't. That doesn't take 100 million.
No, no, no, it doesn't.

Speaker 1 And plus, when you learn how to sell a business, it's like, it's the greatest thing on earth because now you're learning like this financial IQ that very few people know and understand.

Speaker 1 That's what Ken Goodrich did. He called me.
He's like, what you're going to learn?

Speaker 1 You're a badass dude he's like you know so much about home service and now i'm getting into home improvement see home improvement is way different than home service they go out and they get the leads home service they come to me i'm spoiled our phone rings off the hook yeah we run 20 000 jobs a month when we get good at home improvement by creating demand where it didn't exist like anderson renewal and roofing companies and wind you know windows doors up front doors.

Speaker 1 I love the idea of a non-demand, although demand gets the bigger multiples. So if I got a demand-driven business that can make it through a recession, I'm still going to fix my garage if I'm trapped.

Speaker 1 I'm still going to get my AC fixed, no matter what. If I have

Speaker 1 sleep,

Speaker 1 if a pipe bursts, but when you learn home improvement, it's not as sexy. Bath remodelers and stuff.
There's so much freaking money in it. The margins are fat, too.
And they're bigger tickets. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's 20, 30 grand easy.

Speaker 1 So that's what we're doing. That's how we're going to morph into doing a lot more on the home.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 When I was, when I was calling those contracting companies, one of them I called, I don't give them a shout out on your podcast, but I called them and they were like a bathroom remodeling.

Speaker 1 I was like, hey, I want to add a bathroom. They're like, you don't have one in place already? I'm like, nope.
They're like, well, we, we can't help you. Like, they're so niched down.

Speaker 1 They're like, if the pipes aren't already coming out of the wall, we're not doing it. And I was like, interesting.
Like, they know who their customer is.

Speaker 1 And most importantly, who their customer isn't. So that was that's smart.
Yeah. I was going to tell you, my plan is, and I was just telling Blake this.

Speaker 1 When I walk into a room with my C-suite, I hope they punk me. I hope they're way smarter than me.
I hope I just can't even keep up and I'm the dumbest guy.

Speaker 1 Because if that's the case, then I could truly take a vacation and know I'm in better hands. Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's like the, I say the majority of the people in this company are far better than me in their niche, whether that's CFO or operations or warehouse or the fleet, but they don't know how to dream like I do.

Speaker 1 And that's my one asset is my vision. Yeah.
Absolutely. So that's it.
And I got to live the vision and I got to make sure they're following the vision, but there's a vision for them within my vision.

Speaker 1 And just like I always say in the book, Elevate, my dreams have to be big enough so all their dreams fit in inside of them. Vision's got to be big enough.
So their visions fit in.

Speaker 1 That was one of my favorite quotes from the book. That's having that.
That and the other one's the profit for the top lines for vanity and profits for sanity.

Speaker 1 That one's cool too. So what do you see going on with marketing? What do you see most people put in their budgets? What do you think? By the way, let me just make one caveat.
I think marketing.

Speaker 1 should include recruiting and you should have a big budget for great people.

Speaker 1 I think that it it should be 50% of your brain should be, how am I going to top grade? And what consultants am I going to get? How am I going to train better? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's not just, how do I get this A-plus talent? Because then you don't need as many leads. Then you get more five-star reviews.
Then your customers turn into raving fans and you grow organically.

Speaker 1 So I'll give you one that a lot of my customers don't do. They're really, really bad at is if the best, in my opinion, Tommy, the best marketing plan is to do really good stuff in your community.

Speaker 1 use that as your marketing, and on the end of it, say, oh, by the way, if you want to come work for a badass company that helps out your local community, we're here, right?

Speaker 1 So then you do all of that in one. You're letting people know who you are and what you do.
You're putting it in a light that is impossible to be looked at in a bad way.

Speaker 1 And then you're throwing that recruiting piece on the end. Now, do I have any clients that do that? No.

Speaker 1 A lot of times what we're doing is working with business owners that are under $5 million in revenue. They don't have outside help and like they don't have a full-time person inside their operation.

Speaker 1 What we've done is I build an AI platform to automate social media. And so we're working with insurance agents, real estate agents, home service businesses to help them automate this.

Speaker 1 One of the features on Alley, which is our platform that's going to come out early next year, is actually what I call the cold call of social media.

Speaker 1 So right now, everybody can run ads, they can post content, right? They can get engagement.

Speaker 1 What they don't do is they don't play the offensive game, which is going out to your local businesses in your market and leaving a comment, showing that love, right?

Speaker 1 So what we're working on is Allie's AI feature, being able to go out, say you're a garage door business, right, in Sacramento, you would take your business page and you would go follow the local bakery, the local tire shop, the local real estate agent, all the other people that are in your area.

Speaker 1 And then Allie would switch into your profile and she would watch those profiles, those other profiles that you're following.

Speaker 1 And when they make a post that's like, hey, I just listed this house or new bakeries, you know, the bakery says we got oatmeal cookies on special this week.

Speaker 1 Allie then takes your profile and leaves a comment underneath that post. It's the hand-to-hand combat side.
So that's going to be a game changer because nobody's doing that.

Speaker 1 That's going to come probably early part of next year. But your original question was like, where do you see? What are you seeing with social media? What do you see with advertising?

Speaker 1 I still think Facebook and Instagram is prime for B2C brands. If you're B2C, that's where it's at.
If you're B2B, I think LinkedIn is the place, but your CPM, which is a term.

Speaker 1 Very few small business owners know, but they should know, cost per thousand impressions. That's how you measure how many sets of eyeballs you get in front of for your money.

Speaker 1 The CPMs on LinkedIn are a lot more expensive than facebook and instagram but meta i still think reigns supreme man uh when it comes to building a brand now obviously google if you want high intent traffic people they're like my garage doors broke what do i do like they're going to go there and find it to me what i think good advertising good strategy around advertising meaning pay to play is if you can be in front of your audience over and over and over and over again what they do is when that garage door breaks instead of them going to google and typing in garage door repair near me they type in a one garage door.

Speaker 1 You got it, dude. Absolutely.
And that's what TV radio builds. I'm not teaching you anything.
You got a $200 million company, bro.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll tell you, there's this gal named Mary Tracy.

Speaker 1 She follows me pretty religiously. Okay.
And it's impossible not to know her because she leaves a comment on everything that I do. And I really like her a lot.
Shout out, Mary.

Speaker 1 She's always trying to help me and introduce me to people. So this idea of commenting is a really good approach.
I mean, we're in the midst right now getting VAs, VAs just to do outreach. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, listen to people building, you just moved. I mean, there's a million ways to do this.
Yeah. And go on to where they're, they check their social media.

Speaker 1 It's better to, I like mail still, especially handwritten mail. I like social media because you're hitting them like, I'm usually on Facebook.
I've never checked an Instagram.

Speaker 1 I haven't been on LinkedIn in years. I've got a team that does Instagram and LinkedIn.
Yeah. I'm going to get rid of my Facebook because unfortunately I say yes too much.

Speaker 1 Somebody's like, can I just borrow 20 minutes? Well, that 20 minutes is borrowing from my mom's time. It's borrowing from me's time.
It's borrowing from something I could be doing on day one.

Speaker 1 So, you know, I bought back a lot of my time and I fill it in to help people. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I should be helping that same 20 minutes I spent, I could have probably answered a thousand people out of the same question. So I need to do it on this forum.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Make more time for like the broadcast out when we're answering tough questions. Literally, when people message me now and they're like, hey, DJ, like, I'm thinking about starting a business.

Speaker 1 Like, what's the first thing I should do? I'm like, hey, dude, that's a great question. You want to come on the podcast and talk about it?

Speaker 1 Because it's like, I want to answer it one time and then help help thousands of people, not like have to picture the same question over and over and over and over again.

Speaker 1 By the way, shout out Dan Martell. We're in SAS Academy.
And dude, I read that book earlier this year when it dropped. I was on my way back from my honeymoon.
Thankfully, my wife's very supportive.

Speaker 1 So she's like, sure, we can listen to a business audio book on the way back from our honeymoon. And I was like, holy shit.
So full-time EA, I haven't looked at email. I took it off my phone.

Speaker 1 Like, don't touch my calendar. Like, when I asked it, hey, Tommy, I'll be in town.
Can we do the podcast? And you're like, yeah, reach out to my assistant.

Speaker 1 I took that screenshot, sent it to my assistant. Boom.

Speaker 1 And it's like, people do a lot of screenshots yeah dude people don't realize the power of being able to hire people to do things and like dan says like people are better at it and like they can find purpose in that work so tell me about um domination over mediocrity yeah man so i think that you don't really hear the word dominate anymore i think it's almost too offensive for the world that we live in.

Speaker 1 And, you know, no matter which side you're on, whether you're the blue team or the red team, I think, I think we've lost our way a little bit in this country from personal responsibility and achievement.

Speaker 1 And I think that I've got water bottles that say, dominate, nothing else matters. Cause that's, I'm just like an all-out guy, man.

Speaker 1 I feel like if you're going to do something, my dad taught us that, like, you shouldn't do it half-ass. Aspire to be number one.
Yeah. What's the point? I don't do second place.
I don't get excited.

Speaker 1 My dad taught us that too. Like, dude, what do you mean? Yeah.
He didn't win. I think that's why you and I get along so well.

Speaker 1 I feel like our parents are very much similar. Like, it's, I hate losing, man.
I hate losing at anything.

Speaker 1 And, and I, it doesn't mean I want my competitors to fail because I think we can all drive each other up. We all get to win.

Speaker 1 Help me with that. Cause I still am like, I don't know.
I'm like, if I'm if like we can be friends, like, cool, I'll give you a good idea.

Speaker 1 But as soon as you want to get in my space, I'm like, I want to fucking kill you and put you out of business. Well, let me give you a good example.
It's been so many years. This was

Speaker 1 eight years ago. I met with the biggest competitor in town, who, by the way, two, three years ago, I bought him.
But six years ago, eight years ago, whatever, we we met up, and we're at Top Golf.

Speaker 1 And by the way, there's 500 Raja companies in Phoenix. So this isn't like collusion.
But he's like, look, me and you are in the Valpak. There's another competitor.
Why don't we both raise our prices?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, where do you want to start? And he's like, let's raise our cost of openers. I'll raise it 100.
You raise it 100. I'm like, done.
Next month it comes out. You'll see I raise it.

Speaker 1 I trust you.

Speaker 1 He raised his, I raised mine. I said, let's go back to Top Golf.
Let's raise everything another 100.

Speaker 1 and we did we didn't skip a beat we just raised our price and by the way yes there was other companies still charging less than us like we were really really known and yes there was hundreds of other guys but we were the ones doing most of the marketing he was the king of yellow but back in the day he was against yellow blue words and so that's what we did and he goes dude i'll i'll always make mine more expensive than you just so you know he goes i'm always going to add a trip charge we'll be almost the same price but i'm adding a trip charge i said great it's better for me and that's how long it's taken to change Like, we just did another price increase.

Speaker 1 We're sitting in the room next door and we're going over next year's budgets. What's the easiest way to exceed budget? What do you think the easiest way would be? The easiest thing.
Is it more leads?

Speaker 1 Is it better techs? Is it better performance, higher conversion rate, higher booking rate? Raise your prices. Raise your prices.

Speaker 1 Simply raise your, but there's always that point of like diminishing returns where it's like, you can't raise certain things. Like Tom Howard and I talk a lot.

Speaker 1 He was raising his price once, 1% every month. And he goes, there's just certain things that Home Depot sells that I couldn't.

Speaker 1 Like at some point, my disposal were like three grand for a garbage disposal. It costs like, you know, they cost 200 bucks.
Right.

Speaker 1 So like there's certain things that are more skilled that you could charge more for. And I think a lot of people, if you're going to raise your prices, raise your value.
Show up the same day.

Speaker 1 Have nice trucks. I think a lot of people miss that.
They still pay the least. You pay more, you coach more, you buy flowers for your people more, you cook for them more.

Speaker 1 When you raise your prices, now you got to give more to your people. That's the thing people miss.
Like everybody's like, oh, I want to leave here, raise my price.

Speaker 1 I'm like, don't raise your price unless you raise the way you treat everybody. Yeah.
Especially your clients and your internal clients. It's not just putting more in the owner's pocket.

Speaker 1 No, a lot of people think, hey, that'll be great. I'm like, no, now you need to have a better recruiting, better training, more one-on-ones, like actually build out your...

Speaker 1 dev chart and build out your org chart in a new way. And now you got more money to bring more specialists in.
And then more money will come in, yeah, and you got to put it back into the business.

Speaker 1 A lot of people, the minute you start making money, they start extracting,

Speaker 1 you know, they call it a draw, and they take a lot of owner draws, yeah, and then they don't see it on the PL because it hits the balance sheet, and they're like, Hey, look, we're so profitable.

Speaker 1 And then the tax man shows up with his bill, and they go, Where am I supposed to find all that money from?

Speaker 1 Well, you went out and bought a second house, and I'm okay with a second house if you make it an Airbnb and use it a couple times a month or a year.

Speaker 1 I'm okay with one nice thing. If you're going to take the kids out on the boat, great.
But you got two Harleys that never get, you got two snowmobiles. You guys are keeping up with the Joneses.

Speaker 1 Like a little delayed gratification, a little bit for five years. Let the business compound a little bit.
It's your number one asset and build the sell. Build a business to sell.

Speaker 1 We were talking about that before we came on. You also had to be careful.

Speaker 1 I had a guy, I'm a local member of the Pindana S Club in Louisville, and he's owns a big dry cleaning outfit like one in the region. He's CentOS is the only one that's bigger than him.

Speaker 1 And he had two King Air airplanes. He had a boat in Michigan, a boat in the Keys.
And he told me, He said, DJ, what you own owns you.

Speaker 1 And I was like, Whoa.

Speaker 1 And he said, Eventually, it gets to a point where you literally are just like paying to keep up with all this shit and you're using it a couple times a year and it does nothing but own you.

Speaker 1 And so I think you have to be careful with more money, more problems,

Speaker 1 especially when you don't come from much, dude.

Speaker 1 If you've never had the Harley and the boat and the airplane and stuff, like, yeah, you're going to want that, but there's something to be said about delayed gratification. Well, well the problem is

Speaker 1 no one ever taught us how to keep money and a lot of people want to make money to spend it yeah so luckily i got a really good tax guy i got really good lawyers i got really good financial management and there's this book called die with nothing

Speaker 1 because i'm building a really big house now in paradise valley

Speaker 1 for my house and people are like why are you building such a big house i'm like because that's my special time that's where i live That's where I'm going to have my family.

Speaker 1 That's where people come in and visit. And we can do anything.
That's my fun time. That's like buying fun.
I'm like, I'm buying experiences. I'm buying time.
We don't have to leave.

Speaker 1 There's a bowling alley. There's a shooting range.
There's everything I want. And I'm like, you work hard for these special moments.
And now I'm going to have a lot more special moments. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I had to learn. And plus, the more money I spend, the harder I work.
It's crazy how that works. It's like motivating, right? It is.
I'm like, let's go spend more money.

Speaker 1 And then you let's do some nice things. I'm sending, you know, my mom, my stepdad, and my uncle to Italy.
That was an expensive ass trip, but I'm like, sweet.

Speaker 1 Let me go make some more money so we can keep doing stuff.

Speaker 1 What's one of the coolest things you've ever done for one of your team members?

Speaker 1 Well, 25 millionaires came out of the deal. I've got a lot of time on your first out.
On your first turn. And, you know, I do a lot of little things.
Like, one guy wanted to do the water drive.

Speaker 1 He's like, dude, I've walked up to a homeless guy. A woman, she was missing prosthetic leg.
He helped her get on the bus, bought her water, bought her Gatorade.

Speaker 1 One of those small coolers it's like uh it's not a real cooler it's a uh it's like do you buy it for a few bucks it's like a throwaway with the styrofoam styrofoam yeah so he he like took care of her and he's like so we decided we

Speaker 1 i don't know how much tons like literally like the weight was tons of what we're adding a garage to their center we got them so much food so much water and today we were gambling for charity on golf and uh me and chase and my marketing team went out one 7 500 They're going to donate to the Justice Center.

Speaker 1 We do a lot of stuff, man. Like, I went to the Masters on a Tuesday.
I didn't get the best tickets, but my lawyers bought them for me.

Speaker 1 So the Masters, I got two shirts and I'm giving them to the top two guys that golf in the company. Like, I'm just always thinking of little things.
Yeah, man.

Speaker 1 But there will be a time where I'm doing like, I started this thing called TommyCares.org.org. Yeah, I think it's.org.

Speaker 1 And I was giving 20 people a month, just anything under $1,000, help them pay their rent help them buy something for the kids and then my cfo had a shit fit because they're supposed to pay taxes on that and by the way i never use it to give my top guys my top guys make great money it was always somebody in need yeah like a single mom that needs tires it was always something i did a lot of the little things and i was just like look i'm going to do 20 grand i think it was 22 500 a month is what i wanted to spend and uh he kind of nixed it so i'm trying to come up with a way to do it like i was like can they do like a gofund me that i like sponsor I'm just trying to figure out for taxes.

Speaker 1 But dirty capitalists are bad, Tommy. You know, like you guys that are turning these PE deals and making all this money, man.

Speaker 1 Like you just go out on your yachts and smoke your cigars and drink your scotch, right? Like you don't help anybody. No, no.

Speaker 1 Isn't it crazy the perspective that gets put on people that achieve sometimes, man? It's bad. Well, it's, it's like, look, here's the deal.

Speaker 1 When the rich get really, really wealthy, they become philanthropists. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't have to go through bureaucracy, right? The governor and the mayor, they're all getting rich. So we donate 80 cents out of every dollar.
Yeah, we go right to the source.

Speaker 1 And by the way, I employ 800 some odd people, and it'll be 2,000 here very soon. They're all kicking into the system.
The day you start taxing me enough where there's no benefit, I love what I do.

Speaker 1 But if there's no economic gain, I can move to Singapore. I can move to Brazil.
I can move anywhere. I could do something else where they don't like what who would want to work harder

Speaker 1 and pay less if there's another option. That's my brother and I were just talking on the airplane here.

Speaker 1 We were talking like, hey, if we did this much, we'd get this multiple, you know, SAS gets this, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, what's the taxes on that exit?

Speaker 1 And it's like, we figure it's like, ugh. And he's like, yeah.
And the government says, hey, thank you for all your hard work and labor. I appreciate that.
You know, capital gains.

Speaker 1 It's like, well, capital gains is decent, but now they want to do, you know, bump it up to around 30%. And that's okay.
I mean, it's better than ordinary income.

Speaker 1 But you look at it and I'm like, the government wastes a lot.

Speaker 1 Like, it's not true capitalism a lot of the times because they'll have like the military will have contracts where they can only buy from one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And what they'd buy band-aids for like six bucks, they'll pay 50 for. Yeah.

Speaker 1 People get that confused a lot, like consumerism versus capitalism, because capitalism is using the least amount of input for the maximum output, which means that like you buy a pair of jeans that you can wear for 10 years versus consumerism is upgrading your iPhone every 12 months.

Speaker 1 That's different. And so I think a lot of people get that skewed sometimes.
But I do want to tell, we got off on a tangent there.

Speaker 1 I do want to give the listeners something because I think this is something they can do with their social media that would really help them out.

Speaker 1 I ran my first Facebook ad in 2013 for my power washing company, and I was like out power washing a condo, still in the field. And I like did a selfie video.
I was like, yo, check this out.

Speaker 1 It's green, sprayed it, did another clip. I'm like, ta-da, it's clean.
Click the button below if you want it. I was like, boom, I was like, print money, dude.

Speaker 1 I was like, put a thousand in, 6,000 comes out. It was awesome.
What I don't see people doing is engaging with their team. A lot of times, the blue collar business has PMS.

Speaker 1 It's pale, male, and stale, right? And so you got this old crikety white guy that runs the business and he's like, I don't want to fucking do social media. I ain't got time for that shit.

Speaker 1 And I'm not camera-oriented anyway, right? Cool. Let your techs that are in their 20s and their 30s get added to your business profile and let them make content.

Speaker 1 Let them make content while they're in the field. You don't need a camera crew.
You don't need a media team. Tommy, this thing right here, bro, is everything they need.

Speaker 1 And every single one of your technicians has got one in their pocket. They're carrying a studio with them on every job site, but they're not using it.
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 I don't understand it. And literally, your technician could, after every job, could pull his phone out.
Mr. Customer, did you enjoy me working with you today? Dude, Billy, you are the best, man.
Cool.

Speaker 1 Hey, it would mean so much to me if I could grab a quick video and just talk about your experience, right?

Speaker 1 Because what happens is the business owner is like, hey, let me send the media team out to go get a testimonial that's super time intensive and when the media crew shows up the homeowner's like nah i'm good i won't be in front of all that but the technician could literally pull it out take a selfie video and go tommy did you enjoy your service talk hey it's billy here with a1 garage doors i'm with monica i serviced her today monica do you mind just telling the people real quick what your experience was like monica's like oh my gosh they're great billy's awesome highly recommend them cool dude's like thanks so much boop posted to your facebook boom and now dude dude, with a guy like your force, Tommy, is insane.

Speaker 1 Dude, you guys could be pumping out videos that nobody could keep up with. And I just, I don't see anybody doing it.
And what happens is fear locks them down.

Speaker 1 Well, what if my technician says something he's not supposed to? What if the customer says something they're not supposed to? It's like roll the dice because if you worry about that 0.5%,

Speaker 1 you're missing out on the 99.5% that could make it work. They could have their wife just screen it and say, this is a great video.
It's not hard. I mean, you can go on Upwork or Fiverr.

Speaker 1 You don't even even have to edit. No, I'm saying, you don't even have to edit them.
You don't have to do anything. Just let them publish it.
Let it go. It's there.

Speaker 1 The other cool thing, too, we were talking about Allie, our AI platform. She has a feature already that allows them, and I'd love to give this to you for free, man.

Speaker 1 She lives on your website and she can identify anonymous website visitors.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you guys are using a partner that does anything like that yet, but so you guys probably spent a ton of money on advertising, driving a ton of traffic.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of people that you guys have. Sure, you got the service, the demand, right?

Speaker 1 But you also got people that's probably like, man, man, I wonder what an all-glass garage door does cost, right? So they're just out searching around. And then also for the recruiting piece, right?

Speaker 1 If you guys are driving traffic to try to recruit, boom, you can actually see the people. We can identify them by name, their home address, and their email address.

Speaker 1 The email addresses are 99.9% deliverable. It's tied back to the credit bureau.
They're allowed to email them. Yes, based on your mobile device, and then you just put it in your terms of service.

Speaker 1 It's a cookie. It's no different than saying, hey, if you were here, we have a Facebook tracking pixel.
And that Facebook tracking pixel is going to show you an ad when you go back to Facebook.

Speaker 1 So that's pretty cool, too. That's, I think that's going to be a big play for us in the future.
But just the technology, man, that's changing for small businesses. It's nuts.

Speaker 1 Like, because like this wasn't available 20 years ago, you had to use the yellow pages, which is why you're probably called A1 Garage Door, right? It's like you want to be top, top, top.

Speaker 1 So, that was, it was my biggest mistake is being A1 Garage Doors. What would have you called it? Anything that's different that no one, I could have called it Mellow's Garage Doors.

Speaker 1 Anything but A1, anything that's common or quality, or you know what I mean, or triple A or whatever. Anything that I could have got an irrevocable trademark, and no one would have had it.

Speaker 1 Like that would have been, and I would have probably rather done hindsight. Like I just bought A1 home services just because I want to go into other industries down the road.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But A1 is just a common name. Yeah.
I thought I was a genius when I did it. Yeah.
That's, I, my phone number in high school was 3279, which spelled out easy.

Speaker 1 So that's where I came up with Easy Pro, and it's make life easy, call a pro. I like it.
So yeah, that was

Speaker 1 my original number was 898-3667, which is door. See, it's beautiful, man.
It's beautiful. I almost bought garage.com recently.
What would that cost? A little over a mil.

Speaker 1 Surprised that wasn't like a done deal for you. Yeah, but I mean, I have a1garage.com and it's got the domain authority.
So I was like,

Speaker 1 there's not that much of a difference. A1garage.com.
I don't know. I would have had to like 301 redirect there to do all the stuff.
So it just wasn't the value for that.

Speaker 1 But it would have been cool, crash that time. I still might talk to the guy,

Speaker 1 he sold it, but I know the guy that bought it. Let me ask you if you don't mind, because I know we only got a little bit of time, yeah, let's do it, man.
What are you?

Speaker 1 Because I mean, you're tapped into P, you know, and like when I went through our accelerator, all the guys that I talked to and told me that it was in 2021, they're like, Well, this would have been the year to do it.

Speaker 1 Like, you're a little late to the dance, especially on software. Yeah, I know, dude.
It was like 23 times multiple top line. Like, you're lucky.
You know, the rule of 40.

Speaker 1 No, I don't know that one. The rule of 40 is your growth of EBITDA.

Speaker 1 So they look at your growth of EBITDA plus your growth that year. So if you're at 15% EBITDA and you grew your MRR ARR over 25%.

Speaker 1 MRR is EBITDA percentage. Monthly recurring revenue, annual recurring revenue.
Yeah. So if you had both those up and it's over 40, you're at a higher multiple.

Speaker 1 The other one is you got to break through the $10 million mark. Yeah.
Breakthrough. And then I'm going to look at your churn.
I'm going to look at how often are you losing clients? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's one of the big things that Service Time looks at is this churn. And then I'm looking at, are all your clients from one source? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because if they're only from, like, let's just say you got everything from ServiceTime, you didn't have a lot of clients on House Call Pro or Sarah or Service Fusion or Jobber. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That kind of limits you because ServiceTime could change something. Yeah.
So, so check this out. We don't have any customers that are more than 1% of our gross revenue.
Good.

Speaker 1 Low customer concentration, where our churn rate is less than 6% uncontracted. Everything's on a month-to-month basis.
So anybody can leave us at any time. We're still below 6%.

Speaker 1 I don't like that model. I think you got to do one-year contracts eventually.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
And I've had some mentors tell me that.

Speaker 1 And then with our AI piece, you know, putting that in there, like AI is supposed to deliver 25, 30. You hear some people talking about 40.
It's kind of like the dot-com era.

Speaker 1 I think it's going to keep going though. Yeah.
I mean, next year they say AI is what's going to cause the market to go over 65, 7,000. Yeah, because like

Speaker 1 they had the internet bubble of 2000, but like everybody forgets, like they didn't turn the internet off in 2001. Like there was a bubble, but then the internet kept going.

Speaker 1 Like, sure, there may be an AI bubble eventually. I don't think so because I think it came along after the market already cooled down from COVID.

Speaker 1 I don't know if we can say that word now or not, but I think it cooled down enough to that it's just going to rally into that. But yeah, man, it's that's cool.
I didn't know that 40% rule.

Speaker 1 So thank you for sharing that with the rule of 40 in software. Rule of 40.

Speaker 3 Hey there, I hope you're loving today's episode. I want to share something with you real quick.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to win and what it means to keep winning in 2025.

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Speaker 3 No matter what your business plan is, things are never going to happen exactly how you expect. I love that because here's what I know.
There's going to be some massive changes in 2025.

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Speaker 3 If you are, come to this year's Freedom Event. Kevin's hitting the stage to share some real stories behind his success.
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Speaker 3 It's freedomevent.com. Now back to the episode.

Speaker 1 Take in a partner on like at what point and for what reason. You know, when you're building a company, the main reason you want a partner is not for the capital.
It's for the

Speaker 1 resources, the resources. It's who you know, not what you know.
So you bring on somebody that's got a proven track record that's done it.

Speaker 1 that literally like anything they invest in they're an incubator they got the relationships they understand how to bring in really what it is about is it's about who you bring on.

Speaker 1 So they'll help you with your leadership team. And as the company grows, unfortunately, the leaders don't grow as fast.
So you got to pull in talent. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So your org chart, they're going to help with, and then who they know and how to afford develop the code if you're doing software. So they got to be, it's strategic.

Speaker 1 I would never get a partner on that wasn't able to grow the business exponentially faster. And so.

Speaker 1 you know, finding the right partner. Remember when you bring on a partner, unless you're doing a big deal, like if you're selling 70%, 80%, probably the highest bidder, but they're going to bid a lot.

Speaker 1 They probably have a plan.

Speaker 1 And I would spend as much time with the people that they've had success with and get the good, bad, and ugly and fly out and actually see those people and spend time with them and say, are these people like me?

Speaker 1 Because you got to understand, is this PE group going to be successful with us? They'll all tell you the right story. They'll tell you the right things.
You're going to stay in control.

Speaker 1 You're going to do this. But there's nightmare stories too.
Yeah. You got to be very careful, man.
Yeah. I mean, Dan talks about that, like when he sold one of his companies, right?

Speaker 1 He like left like millions on the table and he was like out. He was like, I'm done.
He like left before one of his exits was like, you know, whatever his contract was afterwards.

Speaker 1 And you hear horror stories like that all the time.

Speaker 1 And that's, I'm trying to figure out, like, do you sell a big piece early or like, do I go find somebody 10%, get them in bed to get us like to our next iteration to hold it back?

Speaker 1 That's why I haven't taken on any money yet is because I'm like, we're profitable. I'm making money.
Out of that, that accelerator that we went through, I'm actually the only company that's left.

Speaker 1 The other three are out of business already. And that was in 2021.
So it's like, and they had, I mean, one of the dudes, they had raised like two and a half million bucks.

Speaker 1 I'm just like, how do you burn through that much cash? You know, it's like

Speaker 1 the problem too is you got to be very careful. The guys that know how to like get these seed rounds.
Yeah. They're just, when it's other people's money, it's just not treated the same way.

Speaker 1 They burn, they burn the burn rates really high. I almost feel like I've got like too much integrity to like do, like it's like some of these founders that I've talked to, like,

Speaker 1 like one of the dudes that was in our accelerator, that business crashed and burned. He's out.
He raised another seed round, crashed and burned. He's on his third fucking venture, dude, since 21.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, one, how the hell does this guy keep raising money from people, right? It's like having an STD and still getting partners.

Speaker 1 And then the other one is like, how in the hell does he like have the balls to still think like, oh yeah, but my next business ideal will be the billion dollar unicorn?

Speaker 1 That's what I, I just, I don't understand it, man. I don't know.
Maybe it's a. Well, not everything does well.

Speaker 1 I mean, when you look at even Goldman Sachs and some of Morgan Stanley, some of the best investments of the world, you look at these deal flow, especially with software, you only need one out of 20 to go well.

Speaker 1 And you get 100x on it.

Speaker 1 So capital ventures, that kind of money, they know they're not going to hit everyone. My portfolio, the stuff I've invested in, I've got a pretty damn good track record.
90% are growing.

Speaker 1 I made some mistakes. I still think I'll get more than my money back.
Some of the things were out of my wheelhouse, like restaurants, but I invested in a really good club bar.

Speaker 1 That one will probably 4X. Do you do anything with Ish? I put a little bit of money in Nuve.
Okay. I really like Ish a lot.
Yeah. And he's a sharp guy.
I met him in Dallas, Jamie Waits, AC Hero.

Speaker 1 He had like a house party years ago. And it was him and several other guys.
But I remember him talking about he back then, dude, he was talking about the

Speaker 1 Google, like. the Google LSAs and like it was brand new on the scene.
And his big thing was like, they're recording us.

Speaker 1 So they got all this data to like know what people are asking for and stuff so they can train their algorithms better it's pretty crazy yeah he's a short guy sharp guy man look i think he's gonna make new video something he texts me pretty much every day yeah and he's just giving me updates and i always give him ideas i'm like you got to figure out how to get the equipment free of the house

Speaker 1 and then just they pay too for the monitoring so he listens to me a lot and you know ishmael's got a very uh

Speaker 1 strong personality not a lot of people he doesn't take a lot of advice from people he's a bull he's a bull and he'll do well i mean he's got the taste of money.

Speaker 1 Another guy, though, and a lot of my buddies that have made a lot of money, they go out and they just buy a lot of stuff. You know, stuff being for liabilities.
It's not assets.

Speaker 1 Well, the three Fs, they wrote it down. Anything that flies or floats is

Speaker 1 the third one. Where you get the STDs.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And it's true, man.

Speaker 1 Look, you can spend a lot of money on boats and planes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I see, I don't see a lot of people buy when you buy real estate, you typically do well. Yeah.
I've got 73 units in Louisville that I syndicated with some guys out of Chicago.

Speaker 1 And I did that when I was in my mid-20s. Probably one of the best things I ever did, man.
Got in early. We owe less than, I made a post on Instagram about it the other day.

Speaker 1 We owe less than a million bucks on it. Portfolio is worth over three and a half million dollars.
We return all the capital back to the partners. Like it's beautiful, dude.

Speaker 1 It's, it's, unless you just really don't know what you're doing and like just buy something at the top of the market, it's almost impossible to not make money with real estate.

Speaker 1 Like it goes up, you know? It does. It goes up.
Real estate's great. I mean, I'm having a hell of a streak in the SP 500.
And I think it's going to stay alive next year.

Speaker 1 Like it's up since I put all the money in at the end of 2022, beginning of 2023, it's up like 45%. Isn't that a beautiful thing?

Speaker 1 It's crazy because I keep buying businesses and investing in businesses. And I don't really, I'm not active in those businesses.
There's a team I have, the TMV team. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But, you know, I always like a couple million dollars will go out or $3 million or $5 million and my account comes right back up. Yeah.
I'm like, how is this? This is crazy. I love it.
Yeah, man.

Speaker 1 So, but we're having a lot of fun, man. I'll tell you, A1, I just believe is going to be, there's just, I have a clear path and a clear vision of what comes next.

Speaker 1 And I'm still trying to figure out what my life's going to look like because I like to golf. I like to fish, but I still like to work.
So there's a happy medium.

Speaker 1 And I haven't figured it all out yet, but next year is going to be super hard work. Very little vacations, like

Speaker 1 very little stages. I'm going to speak.
I'm not writing any books. I'm just going to be focused.
Seasons, dude. Seasons.
It says, stay focused and run. Ruthlessly prioritize.

Speaker 1 That's what this other one says. Ruthlessly prioritize.
Yeah. Ooh.
And then I got my goal here of where I want to get a one-two. And then I got a goal.

Speaker 1 I'm setting up what the next five years look like after the next turn, which very few people, I'm building the org chart of what it will need to look like for the scale I want.

Speaker 1 And I'm the only one working on this. There's nobody else.
Because you're the only one that sees it, though. Yeah.
Well, that's the problem, too.

Speaker 1 And if I tell other people, they won't get to the next goal. I don't think it's a problem, Tommy.
I think it's a gift, bro.

Speaker 1 Well, there's a lot of work that goes into the fostering of the relationships, like the people I'm flying out and the massive funds I'm hanging out with, and the people I'm around.

Speaker 1 Like I said, home improvement. I'm hanging out with a lot of billion-dollar home improvement companies, over a billion of revenue.
And there's some of them at two to three billion.

Speaker 1 So what I had to do, and I've been saying this a lot, is I hike to the top of this mountain.

Speaker 1 mountain i enjoy the hike i look around i see the next mountain i go back down to the base camp these guys have been to the top of that one they know how to get there quickly so i'm hanging out with these people and the next mile is big what's the next mountain 10 billion 20 billion and i don't dislike it it doesn't feel like work that's why i'm very fortunate too it's like if this is work i mean we we sit down at a lot of meetings but they're not hard meetings yeah and uh you know there's a lot of people on a pressure cooker because my timelines are pretty aggressive i think that's the hard part for people to like, what happens when you don't hit those timelines?

Speaker 1 How do you handle that? Well, we always have a budget we'll hit. We've never missed a budget, but the Tommy goals are way bigger.
Right. So, the Tommy goals.
The Tommy goals.

Speaker 1 There's like your BHAG, then you got Tommy way above.

Speaker 1 So, my goals are so crazy. I let myself down.
They don't let me down. We hit our budget.
We have a realistic budget that the bank and the private equity can say, you guys are consistent.

Speaker 1 You always hit your budget. You beat your budget.

Speaker 1 But it's like now I'm just refining processes i'm like let's do this let's study this how can we scale this and it's always reverse engineering how big can we get and so this next goal is pretty easy 110 million of ebida the next goal after that is how do we get you know between 500 and a billion which is a pretty big spread but i got to get a little i don't want to plan five years from now i'm just planning the next year but the vision do you even think i don't even think it's realistic to plan five years from now anymore it's not but you still got got to know what would the company look like that's doing a billion dollars of event?

Speaker 1 What would we be selling?

Speaker 1 That's a revenue goal. That's not a five-year goal, right?

Speaker 1 Well, I know it's not going to happen in two years, but there's got to be greater acquisitions, greater greenfield growth, greater organic growth and going into multi-trades.

Speaker 1 All those things need to happen at my goal. Yeah.
I just know that when we were engineering Allie, so she's trained on like 50 hours worth of sales and 50 hours worth of service calls.

Speaker 1 And the large language model that we build her on, when it was like, cool, we have to have it in this certain thing. I had to to go like hire this like computer science guy out of like Tunisia.

Speaker 1 And the two months it took him to like get all this stuff together, by the time I took it back, the large language model is like, hey, you can just give us transcripts.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I spent thousands of dollars and two months worth of work. And I come back and the technology is caught up to like not even needing that anymore.

Speaker 1 That's why I think it's like impossible to even plan five years out, dude, because it's like, Elon, you might be able to buy Elon robots, bro, in five years, and they'll fucking put the garage doors in.

Speaker 1 Like, you know what I mean? See, I don't think robotics will be.

Speaker 1 I think the trades have another decade. I think there's other things out there, but that's why I was pouring that cocktail, man, at that party.
I don't know. It was pretty wild.
Well, we'll see.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, end of the day, we're the first ones to adopt technology. And everyone knows here we're changing rapidly.

Speaker 1 And they don't get comfortable here because they know I'm looking at software on top of software, on top of software. The main thing is it's got to all talk.

Speaker 1 That's we built our DNA project data and analysis all on Power BI. A lot of AI is sophisticated, but these data fields don't make a difference in the company unless you make decisions based on data.

Speaker 1 And so you have to use it. You got to use it.
There has to be change, right? A lot of people want to, hey, can I see this aspiring? Well, what are you going to do with this?

Speaker 1 That's like reading that fucking book and then putting it down and going to do back and doing exactly what you was doing before. Yeah.
You got to be able to look at data.

Speaker 1 And what is the, this is what we're actually going through this big thing Q4.

Speaker 1 What does this data mean? And what key initiatives are we going to take from the data? Strategic planning. Strategic planning and like budget.
And I enjoyed this, man.

Speaker 1 it's a different level of business i'm just like i i've kind of you think after the first turn i would have already had everything i want but i want one more big turn but what's important to me is i'm adding all the i don't know if people saw you on camera you grabbed his nuts when he did i want one more big turn yeah grabbing nuts had to grab these nuts i uh one more big turn and there'll be another there'll be a plenty of other ones but for me it's I'm trying to design the life that I want that I can help the most amount of people.

Speaker 1 So I've got a whole list of people like, I need to help him. I need to help her.
I need to do this with this person. A lot of them are people that work here.

Speaker 1 But it's like you start going really, really fast and you wake up and you're like, you're still hungry. I mean, a lot of people are like, man, if I had that, I'd be good.

Speaker 1 And it's like, yeah, the goalpo fall, it seems to always move. Almost moves.
Yeah. That's crazy.
Yeah, man. What else you got? That's it, dude.
That's it, man.

Speaker 1 I just want to come kick it with you for a minute. No, it's cool, man.
I'm glad you made it.

Speaker 1 We were going to go to

Speaker 1 dinner tonight. Yeah.
Talking a lot about AI call center. That's there's a fella in town that I'm talking to, and it's that's legit, man.
We get about 10 different softwares a week that we look at.

Speaker 1 I got a whole technology team, and this one I think will make a big, big difference in the outcome of where we go.

Speaker 1 The delays, everything that I've seen, like because of the commercials and the ads, they don't match up with the actual technology.

Speaker 1 A couple I've looked at, it's like the delay time is too much for it to process the input, calculate, and then give the output for real-time phone calls. That's been my thing.

Speaker 1 The phone calls aren't there yet. Yeah.
But the text, like I, like, a text man, like, that's Allie is trained like ours now. I mean, you could text her, and it's like, I'm going to start using Allie.

Speaker 1 You got to set me up. I'll set you up, too.
We'd love to, love to get that. Yeah, I want to get my team on that.
Try it out and give us some feedback on it. Who knows, man?

Speaker 1 Maybe you'll be my PE partner in a couple years. Maybe.

Speaker 1 No, man. And if I can help any of your listeners, like I said, I've been there in the trenches where they've been at.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it's like I said, I still think we need to give our flowers to the people that are grinding that are, that don't want to be $100 million businesses.

Speaker 1 Like a Tommy Mellow is a unicorn, bro. You're a one-of-a-kind being, you know what I mean? And I think a lot of people see it like, I want that.
And I think you still have to go back and like, why?

Speaker 1 Like, what's the purpose? Like, you helped that kid out with, you know what I mean? It's, it's very hard.

Speaker 1 I'm going to tell you guys that are listening, the ability of me to handle stress and anxiety and pressure. I wouldn't want this for anybody, but I'm very good at it.

Speaker 1 And I've got a calling to do this stuff. Yeah, it's a gift and

Speaker 1 you think you hired all these great people

Speaker 1 they only take you so far then you got to start rebuilding the whole team there's peaks and valleys and every time

Speaker 1 after you hit a peak you're going down into a valley again and repositioning the whole company and you got to do that over and over and over and it kind of consumes you how many times do you think you've had to do that oh a dozen times i mean literally and it's hard it's hard because you got to make really hard decisions and you got to fire people.

Speaker 1 You got to top grade and you got to reposition people on the bus. And that like, that's been one of the hardest things for me, man.
It's like to see somebody that's been with me for a couple of years.

Speaker 1 The company grows and the company's growing faster than they can grow. And I have to say, hey, you can't play this position.
You can't be my shortstop anymore. You're AAA level.

Speaker 1 You didn't earn for a string. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's tough, man.

Speaker 1 And sometimes you got to kick them off the team and you got to do what's right for the company, unfortunately, because there's 800 other people people that are feeding three people, that's 3,200 people that you're taking care of.

Speaker 1 So you got to make those hard decisions. I've had to refocus my lens into a different lens to be able to make those hard decisions.
Yeah. And it's, it's very hard to do.

Speaker 1 And there's people making even bigger, harder decisions. But I'm not money-oriented.

Speaker 1 Most of like Blackstone and Apollo and the KKR, they're just saying, how do I get my shareholders the richest? They're not asking the questions of how do I help out the most people.

Speaker 1 And there's a happy medium because you got to stay profitable.

Speaker 1 I literally told my brother this on the plane right out here: one of my worries about raising PE money, like we give the last two weeks because we're a tech company, it's different than home stuff, but like we give the last two weeks of the year is paid vacation time because that's Christmas, man.

Speaker 1 Like, go be with your family, like, that's where I want them to be at. And I know that, like, we get the wrong PE partner, that's the first thing they're cutting.

Speaker 1 They're like, what do you mean you're off for two weeks? You gotta have

Speaker 1 a contract. You gotta write a contract and everything.
You know, everything going in. We spent three weeks just on my contract, my personal.
No, kidding.

Speaker 1 You got to get the right people when you do. Like,

Speaker 1 I'm going to call you when we get to that stage. I wouldn't do a PE deal until I get past 5 million.
Yeah. Okay.
Of ARR. Yeah.
I wouldn't even consider it. And I would probably do a

Speaker 1 more than 10%,

Speaker 1 not more than 30%. I'd probably do 30%.

Speaker 1 It's a meaningful amount of money that they'll be behind you, but they're not going to, but they're still going to have rights to sell you unless you're raising a different type of money.

Speaker 1 If it's private equity, they're not going to say, sure, I'll give you this money. You can sell whenever you want.
When do we get our investment back? Our LPs are waiting.

Speaker 1 Typically, after the fifth year, they start selling their companies in each fund.

Speaker 1 They'll raise a fund, they'll buy 10 to 12 deals, and then they need that money back pointing back to the LPs, the limited partners. Yeah.
So you can't just say, sure.

Speaker 1 Now, there's other investment strategies you could use that raise capital, but I still, if I'm putting 10% in, and let's just say I threw a million dollars in, when do I get the money back?

Speaker 1 And what's the profit sharing look like?

Speaker 1 There's all these questions. No, nobody wants to blindly invest in something they can't get an ROI on.
There's a million investments out there. It's real estate.

Speaker 1 Throw a million dollars into real estate. You don't need to kill it.
Get your money back in eight years. It's all paid off.
Yeah. And the value won't weigh up.
Yeah. And people pay the debt down.

Speaker 1 That's the beautiful thing about real estate. It's beautiful.
And people want to rent. A lot of people like to rent.
What's a new book you've read that you love?

Speaker 1 Exponential organizations.

Speaker 1 Exponential organizations. That was a good one.
I really enjoy and always tell people the ultimate Jim Rohn library on Audible.

Speaker 1 It's like a $91 Audible book, but if you have the subscription, it's only one credit. It's like the biggest arbitrage there is on Audible.
Ultimate Jim Collins? Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the ultimate Jim Rohn library. And then if your listeners haven't read this one, Outwitting the Devil by Paul Ann Hill,

Speaker 1 I think that one's better than Think and Grow Rich. So yeah, man, there's some nuggets.
And then, you know, shameless plug, phenomenalphonecalls.com, you know, it's my free book.

Speaker 1 So they can go grab that one. It's how to close big money deals over the phone.
That's how I started out, man. I had no money to advertise.

Speaker 1 So I picked up the phone and started calling people after I realized going door to door. Do you have a book with you? I do not have one with me.
You gotta send me a send copy.

Speaker 1 I'll buy one too. I don't know.
I'll send it to you. And then if anybody wants to check out, I've got tons of free trainings, dude, tons of stuff.
Coach Carroll.com, two R's, two L's.

Speaker 1 I'm thinking going there. All my socials and everything's on the bottom of it.
But Coach Carroll. Yeah, coachcarol.com.
CoachCarroll.com.

Speaker 1 Is there one final thought to close us out with that the listeners can take? And uh, yeah, it's my mantra, baby. Hustle, it's worth it.

Speaker 1 Hustle, that's worth it. Hustle, it's worth it.
Hustle, it's worth it. Yeah, it's, I mean, it applies to you, applies to any successful guy I've ever met.

Speaker 1 They've had to hustle at some point, and now we're getting into this culture where it's like, oh, the hustle and the grind. It's like, ooh, don't do that.

Speaker 1 It's like, listen, you're never going to find somebody that did the Timothy Ferris four-hour workway and made their way to their 100 million bucks.

Speaker 1 It's, it's, it's great stick to like sell a dream or to sell a book or to sell a course or to sell an idea.

Speaker 1 But hustle, dude, it's like, it gets dirty. It takes time and you got to pay your dues, man.
Take your lickings.

Speaker 1 I did say this and it's not, it's kind of controversial for your saying, but the hustler had to die for the leader to be bored for me. Yeah.
Because I was doing too much of everything. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Write a book, do a pocket, and I still do the stuff I love. I talk on stages.
And that's feeding me. knowledge, energy, relationships, but I had to really get focused.
But it's not, here's the thing.

Speaker 1 It's like climbing a ladder.

Speaker 1 because I've had other people challenge me with that too, because they're like, well, if you're stuck in the hustle, I was like, the saying wasn't stick in the hustle, it's worth it.

Speaker 1 It's hustle, it's worth it. Because most people, their biggest problem is their, their biggest problem.

Speaker 1 And so, like, you have to, you have to hustle first and foremost. You got to get your lazy ass off the couch and like go do something with your fucking

Speaker 1 phone, right? Exactly. Show up.
Run the job on a weekend. When I, when somebody gives you the green light to do the S, show up and do the fucking work.
Like, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 The fundamental building blocks of business. Like, or ethic, discipline.
It's

Speaker 1 man. So, like, yes, you do have to kill the hustler to become the leader.
I do actually like that, but that's rung number seven on the ladder.

Speaker 1 You don't go from standing on the ground to run number seven. Like,

Speaker 1 at least I have not found anybody. If you're out there in the world, like, cool, come holler at your boy.
Like, I'd love to meet you. Maybe we can write a book together.

Speaker 1 But I just have never found someone that's amassed any level of success.

Speaker 1 That's like, I'm just this esoteric leader because I've read all these books and I can pontificate all this this like warm and fuzzy shit that is a lot of business.

Speaker 1 You can skip a couple steps if you're lucky. With good mentors and coaches, which I tell everybody, you need a coach.
Like, always.

Speaker 1 And if you can't afford a one-on-one coach, like I saw you were recently up there with Dan Martell, which was cool. I watched that podcast.

Speaker 1 And, but you, like, you have to find a coach some way, form, or fashion. Like, you don't have to go alone.

Speaker 1 And so you either need to watch them on YouTube if you can't afford anything or buy their book or buy their course or buy their one-on-one.

Speaker 1 But the more you pay, the bigger that quantum leap is, right? You got to pay.

Speaker 1 So I work with Dan Antonelli. He built our brand.
I work with Dan Martel, one of his five. He works one-on-one with Joe Paulish.
I'm in his 100K group.

Speaker 1 Joe Cristara came out here and paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 1 Howard Partridge worked with him. He comes out here.
Al Levy, my best mentor I've ever had. Seven power contractors.
Seven powers contractors. Yep.
I mean, sales box. Jonathan Wistman hired him.

Speaker 1 He worked with me for years. So, and I didn't know.
This is crazy. I didn't even look at these books, books, but I've paid them all a lot of money.

Speaker 1 Every single, it just happens to be the books on the wall that I didn't even think about, but they've all been paid. People say, what happens if you can't pay?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I came up with the money because I needed it that bad. When I didn't have the money, is when it meant the most, is when I received it the best.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I received the lessons the best when it was like my last time. It hurts.
It hurts way more if you're like, yeah, I got 100 grand. Here, here's 100 grand.
You don't do the work. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You don't show up to the calls. Yeah.
I'll give you this one. My team says these, they call these coachisms.
They're like these little sound bites. Like, I say they come through me, not from me.

Speaker 1 But when you're talking about paying these coaches, a lot of people, their biggest problem is they need to stop negotiating the price of their success.

Speaker 1 It costs what it costs, man. Just fucking pay the ticket.
Well, that's what Dan Martell said. He said, when I started to buy, like I want to be bought from, everything changed.
Everything changed.

Speaker 1 No more negotiations. Here's the money.
You're worth it. I'm I'm worth it.
You pay. Now all of a sudden, people come to you with whatever it might be.
You sell. Sure.

Speaker 1 When you're always negotiating with everybody, you're surprised when they negotiate back to you. That's what you're putting on.
That's your aura. That's your demeanor.
It's crazy. No, man.

Speaker 1 DJ, I really appreciate you showing up today.

Speaker 1 Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Hope the listeners got something out of it. Hey, I love these.
Just have a normal conversation. Hopefully, the listeners, listen, a couple of big takeaways.

Speaker 1 You know, private equity is not for everybody. Business is not for everybody.
Build something you can sell. Get your guys out there posting on social media regularly.

Speaker 1 If they got an iPhone or a Droid, just find the most spontaneous, fun person and just give them some trade. Like, it doesn't take a whole lot, but just start having them try.

Speaker 1 And with that, people will go, well, I told my guys to do it. They don't do it.
Cool.

Speaker 1 Pin a $100 bill to the top of the board and say, hey, whoever's posting gets the most engagement this week gets the hundo. Then watch what happens.

Speaker 1 You can't give more responsibility with no more reward like a lot of bosses like we'll mess that up so it's true

Speaker 1 yeah monetize it gamify it yeah yeah so awesome

Speaker 1 no you did great no there was a lot of great takeaways brother thank you for dude i'm like i'm on e i went golfing today for the first time in a long time and it's still that sun just bangs damn it night of late night early morning i get it bro i know thank you for coming in absolutely hey guys smash this the like button if you're not subscribed to his podcast get subscribed to help him find more people and and help more people out.

Speaker 1 Appreciate you guys watching and listening. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.