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

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? And so you got this old crikey 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? Cool. Let your techs that are in their 20s and their 30s get added to your business profile and let them make content.
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.
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. I don't understand it.
And literally your technician could, after every job could pull his phone out. 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'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. So you're an expert in advertising, marketing, entrepreneurship, CEO of Carol Media.
He's an expert in sales psychology and advertising strategy focused on helping others achieve their business goals. 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. 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 podcasts.
I started my first business my senior year of high school. I started mowing grass and AP Chemistry, Chemistry 1, Chemistry 2.
I was on the fast track to go to college to be a chemical engineer and uh turned down eight football scholarships 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 gonna be broke again i was making about four thousand dollars a month mowing grass my senior year of high school i actually co-opted for myself i. I was the first kid to ever do that in school history.
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. Oh, wow.
And so I grew that to about $3 million in revenue and sold it. Don't think that's awesome because lawn care companies don't make a ton of money.
Yeah, it was single digit. 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 Easy Pro, which is the brand.
I kept it. 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.
And so, yeah, man, I was excited to come on and talk about that. 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, let's do it, man.
We've known each other for a while. So, yeah, it's great to see you.
Yeah. Well, what do you think's going on this next year in marketing? Because there's a pendulum.
I need more people, I need more leads. And this year, I swung to more leads.
Yeah. And Goldman Sachs,

pretty... In marketing, because there's a pendulum.
I need more people. I need more leads.
And this year has swung to more leads.

Yeah.

And Goldman Sachs, pretty darn good.

They've been spot on with me for the last couple of years.

And they think next year is going to be gangbusters.

Gangbusters?

How?

In a good way.

Interest rates are going to come down.

It's going to be really, really good in the market.

S&P 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.
I think people are going to be investing in their homes, their garage doors. Yeah.
I mean, really, Tommy, none of that shit matters if people don't run the business the way they should be. I recently was trying to get some remodeling done in my house and I went through five different companies, called them.
Two of them never showed up to give me an estimate. 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. I think the number one challenge most small businesses have is they don't run their small business like a small business.
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.
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. Oh, it's a job for them.
Yeah. They've never, you know, the e-myth, they've never gone from an employee to an owner.
Yeah. 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.
I'm well beyond that, but I still have a lot of issues. Like I look at A1 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. 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.

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, I don't know if I'm going to be able to sleep tonight.

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. 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.
And I worked hard to get to this point. It doesn't just go from here to here.
It was little notches. 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 fucking person now than when you were at 5 million or a million, right? Like the personal development that you've had to do, I can only imagine, dude.
Or the law of the lid, you know, 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. I play that video almost at every speech I do.
That's cool, man. It's like, let me love me to love you.
You got to put your own oxygen mask on first. Yeah.
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 I come from the exterior cleaning world, like Brandon Vaughn's a big guy.
It's, you know, got a ton of exposure, Josh Latimer. What people don't realize though, is building that business is one thing, 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. 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.
That's the big one. 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 have operations, and then you got to train your people. 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.
And that's why I try to always give the flowers. I know it's like build a big business is cool and it's sexy and everybody wants, you know, 28-inch arms like Tommy Mello and big bank accounts.
But really, at the end of the day, I think 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. Not everybody has to build a $200 million company.
And I'm not saying, if you want to do that, if that's your mission, I truly believe, dude, that's your fucking mission. We were just talking before on camera, like, tell me your next couple of moves with even more zeros behind them which i'm fucking stoked about for you 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 like there's something to be said about that too man well that's what 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.

My goal is 100 million.

And then I'll make a big exit.

I'm like, why?

Why?

He's like, well, you prove this possible.

I'm like, sure.

As long as you're not married and don't have kids,

you can make it.

That's what I told him.

He goes, I have three young kids under five.

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?

Ooh.

And he goes, you're right.

No, I've talked to him

Thank you. He goes, I have three young kids under five.
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? And he goes, you're right. No, I've talked to him for about an hour.
He goes, you're absolutely right. Like, dude, that makes a lot of sense.
I'm like, let's just see what you want. 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.
You don't. It doesn't take a hundred million.
No, no, no, it doesn't. 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.
That's what Ken Goodrich did. He called me.
He's like, what you're going to learn? 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 windows, doors, front doors, 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.
I'm still going to get my AC fixed no matter what. If my roof is leaking, if a pipe bursts.
But when you learn home improvement, it's not as sexy. Bath remodelers and and stuff there's so much freaking money and it's the margins are fat too and they're bigger tickets yeah i mean it's 20 30 grand yeah like so that's what we're doing that's how we're gonna morph into doing a lot more on the home yeah 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 i was okay i add a bathroom.
They're like, you don't have one in place already. I'm like, Nope.
They're like, we can't help you. Like they're so niched down.
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. And most importantly, who their customer isn't.
So that was smart. Yeah.
I was going to tell you my plan is, and I was just telling Blake this. 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 because if that's the case, then I can truly take a vacation and know that I'm in better hands.
I'd 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. And that's my one asset is my vision.
Yeah. 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. And just like I always say in the book Elevate, my dreams have to be big enough so all their dreams fit in.
Vision's got to be big enough so their vision's fit in. 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.
That one's cool too. So what do you see going on with marketing? What do you see most people putting their budgets? What do you think? By the way, let me just make one caveat.
I think marketing should include recruiting and you should have a big budget for great people. I think that 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? 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.
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.
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? 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.
And then you're throwing that recruiting piece on the end. Now, do I have any clients that do that? No.
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 they don't have a full-time person inside their operation.
What we've done is I built 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.
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. So right now, everybody can run ads, they can post content, right? They can get engagement.
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? 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. And then Allie would switch into your profile and she would watch those profiles, those other profiles that you're following.
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. 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.
That's going to come probably early part of next year. But your original question was like, where do you see? What do you see with social media? What do you see with advertising? 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 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. The CPMs on LinkedIn are a lot more expensive than Facebook and Instagram, but meta, I still think reigns supreme, man, when it comes to building a brand.
Now, obviously, Google, if you want high intent traffic, people, they're like, my garage door's broke. Fuck, 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 A1 garage door. You got it, dude.
Absolutely. And that's what the TV, radio, go.
I'm not teaching you anything. You've got $200 million comedy, bro.
Well, I'll tell you, there's this gal named Mary Tracy. 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.
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. 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. It's better.
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. I haven't been on LinkedIn in years.
I've got a team that does Instagram or LinkedIn. Yeah.
I'm going to get rid of my Facebook because, I say yes too much. 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 a day one.
So I bought back a lot of my time and I fill it in to help people. But I should be helping that same 20 minutes I spent.
I could have probably answered a thousand people who have the same question. So I need to do it on this forum.
Make more time for the broadcast out when we're answering tough questions. Literally, when people message me now and they're like, hey, DJ, I'm thinking about starting a business.
What's the first thing I should do? I'm like, hey, dude, that's a great question. You want to come on a podcast and talk about it? Because it's like, I want to answer it one time and then help thousands of people not have to answer the same question over and over and over and over again.
By the way, shout out to Dan Mart in sass 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 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 like don't touch my calendar like when i asked hey tell me i'll be in town can we do the podcast thing you're like yeah reach out to my assistant i took that screenshot sent it to my assistant. Don't touch my calendar.
When I asked, hey, Tommy, I'll be in town. Can we do the podcast thing? You're like, yeah, reach out to my assistant.
I took that screenshot, sent it to my assistant. Boom.
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, people are better at it and they can find purpose in that work.
Tell me about 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.
And no matter which side you're on, whether the blue team or the red team, I think we've lost our way a little bit in this country from personal responsibility and achievement. And I think that I've got water bottles that say dominate, nothing else matters.
Because I'm just like an all-out guy, man. 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.
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.
I feel like our parents are very much similar. I hate losing, man.
I hate losing at anything. 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. Help me with that because I still am like, I don't know.
I'm like, we can be friends. Cool.
I'll give you a great example. 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 oh let me give you a good example it's been so many years this was uh eight years ago i met with the biggest competitor in town who by the way two three years ago i bought him but uh six years ago eight years ago whatever we met up and we're at top golf and by the way there's 500 garage door companies in phoenix so this isn't like collusion but he's like look me and.
And by the way, there's 500 garage door companies in Phoenix.

So this isn't like collusion. But he's like, look, me and you are in the Valpac.
There's

another competitor. Why don't we both raise our prices? 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 that comes out, you'll see I raised it.
I trust you. He raised his,

I raised mine. I said, let's go back to Top Call.
Let's raise everything another $100. 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. 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 the king of yellow book.
And so that's what we did. And he goes, dude, 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.
This is great. It's better for me.
And that's how long it's taken to change. We just did another price increase.
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 that more leads, is it better tax, is it better performance, higher conversion rate, higher booking rate? Raise your prices.
Raise your prices. 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. 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 like at some point in my disposal were like three grand for a garbage disposal. It costs like, you know, they cost 200 bucks.
Right. 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.
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. 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'm going to leave here, raise my price.
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.
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 depth 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 a lot of people the minute you start making money they start extracting you know they they call it a draw they take a lot of owner draws yeah and they don't they don't see it on the pnl because that hits the balance sheet and they're like hey look hey, look, we're so profitable.
And then the tax man shows up with his bill and they go, where am I supposed to find all that money from? 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. I'm okay with one nice thing.
If you're going to take the kids out on the boat, great. You got two Harleys that never get.
You got two snowmobiles. You guys are keeping up with the Joneses.
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 cell. Build a business to sell.
We were talking about that before we came on. You also have to be careful.
I had a guy. I'm a local member of the Pendenas Club in Louisville.
And he owns a big dry cleaning outfit outfit. Like in the region, he's sent us his only one that's bigger than him.
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. And I was like, Whoa.
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 of year and it does nothing but own you and so i think you have to be careful more money more problems especially when you don't come from much dude if you've never had the harley in the boat and the airplane and stuff like yeah you're gonna want that but there's something to be said about delayed gratification well the problem is 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.
Cause I'm building a really big house now 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.

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.

They're 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. 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.
Let's do some nice things. I'm sending my mom, my stepdad, and my uncle to Italy.
That was an expensive ass trip. But I'm like, sweet.
Let me go make some more money so we keep doing stuff. What's one of the coolest things you've ever done for one of your team members? Well, 25 millionaires came out of the deal.
I've got a lot of big plans on your first turn. And, you know, I do a lot of little things.
Like one guy wanted to do the water drive. 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, one of those small coolers.
It's like, it's not a real cooler. It's like you buy it for a few bucks.
It's like a throwaway. Styrofoam? Styrofoam, yeah.
So he took care of her and he's like, so we decided we, I don't know how much, tons, like literally the weight was tons of water. We're adding a garage to their center.
We got them so much food, so much water. And today, we were gambling for charity and golf.
And me and Chase and my marketing team went out and won $7,500. They're going to donate to the Justice Center.
We do a lot of stuff, man. I went to the Masters on a Tuesday.
I didn't get the best tickets, but my lawyers bought them for me. So the Masters, I got two shirts and I'm giving them to the top two guys, the golf and the company.
I'm just always thinking of little things. Yeah, man.
But there will be a time where I'm doing like... I started this thing called Tommy Cares.org.
Dot org? Yeah, I think it's .org. 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.

Thank you. my top guys.
My top guys make great money. It was always somebody in need.
A single mom that needs tires. It was always something.
I did a lot of the little things. 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. He kind of nixed it.
I'm trying to come up with a way to do it. Can they do a GoFundMe that I sponsor? I'm just trying to figure out for tax.
Dirty capitalists are bad, Tommy. You guys that are turning these PE deals and making all this money, man.

You just go out on your yachts and smoke your cigars and drink your scotch, right?

You don't help anybody.

No, no. Isn't it crazy the perspective that gets put on people that achieve sometimes, man?

It's bad.

Well, it's like, look, here's the deal.

When the rich get really, really wealthy, they become philanthropists. Yeah.
And it doesn't have to go through bureaucracy where 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. And by the way, I didn't play 800 some odd people and it'll be 2000 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, but if there's no economic gain, I can move to Singapore.
I can move to Brazil. I can move anywhere.
I can do something else where they don't, like who would want to work harder and pay less if there's another option. My brother and I were just talking on the airplane here.
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? 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.
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.
Yeah. But you look at it and I'm like, the government wastes a lot.
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.
And what they'd buy band-aids for like six bucks, they'll pay 50 for. Yeah.
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.

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.

I do want to give the listener something because I think this is something they can do with their social media that would really help them out. 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. 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.
I was like, put 1,000 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.
It's pale, male, and stale, right? And so you got this old crikey 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? Cool. Let your techs that are in their 20s and their 30s get added to your business profile and let them make content.
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.
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. I don't understand it.
And literally your technician could, after every job, could pull the phone out. Mr.
Customer, did you enjoy me working with you today? Dude, Billy, you were the best, man. Cool.
Hey, it would mean so much to me if I could grab a quick video and just talk about your experience, right? 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 is 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? 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, post it to your Facebook. Boom.
And now, dude, with a guy like your force, Tommy, it is insane. 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.
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%, you're missing out on the 99.5% that can 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 go on Upwork or Fiverr. 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.
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.
She lives on your website and she can identify anonymous website visitors. 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.
There's a lot of people that you guys have. Sure.
You got the service, the demand, right? But you also got people that's probably like, 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? 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. The email addresses are 99.9% deliverable.
It's tied back to the credit bureau. They're allowed to email them.
Yeah. It's based on your mobile device.
And then you just put it in your terms of service. 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. So that's pretty cool too.
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.
Like, cause shit like this wasn't available 20 years ago. You had to use the yellow pages, which is why you're probably probably called A1 Garage Door, right? You want to be top, top, top.

That was my biggest mistake

is being A1 Garage

Doors. What would have you called it?

Anything that's different.

I could have called it Mello's Garage Doors.

Anything but A1.

Anything that's common or quality or

you know what I mean? Or AAA or whatever.

Anything that I could have got an irrevocable trademark

and no one would have had it. 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.
But A1 is just a common name. Yeah.
I thought I was a genius when I did it. Yeah.
My phone number in high school was 3279, which spelled out easy. So that's where I came up with easy pro and it's make life easy.
Call a pro. I like it.
So yeah. 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.
I'm 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, there's not that much of a difference. A1Garage.com.
I don't know. I would have had a like 301 redirect.
I would have do all this stuff. So it just wasn't the value for that.
But it would have been cool at A1Garage.com. I still might talk to the guy.
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 left.

Yeah, let's do it, man.

Because you're tapped into PE.

When I went through our accelerator,

all the guys that I talked to and told me

it was in 2021, they're like,

well, this would have been the year to do it.

You're a little late to the dance.

Especially on software.

Yeah, I know, dude. It was like 23 times multiple top line.
You're lucky. You know the rule of 40? No, I don't know that one.
The rule of 40 is your growth of EBITDA. 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%. So you had an 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. The other one is you got to break through the $10 million mark.
Yeah. Break through.
And then I'm going to look at your churn. I'm going to look at how often are you losing clients.
Yeah. It's one of the big things that ServiceTank looks at is the churn.
Yeah. And then I'm looking at, are all your clients from one source? Yeah.
Because if they're only from, like, let's just say you got everything from ServiceTank. You didn't have a lot of clients on Housecall Pro or Sarah or ServiceFusion or Jobber.
Yeah. That kind of limits you because ServiceTank could change something.
Yeah. So check this out.
We don't have any customers that are more than 1% of our gross revenue. Good.
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%.
Well, you should kind of like that model. I think you got to do one of your contracts eventually.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
And I've had some mentors tell me that. And then with our AI piece, putting that in there.
AI is supposed to deliver 25, 30. You hear some people talking about 40.
It's kind of like the dot-com era. I think it's going to keep going, though.
I mean, next year they say AI is what's going to cause the market to go over 65, 7,000. Yeah, because they had the internet bubble of 2000, but everybody forgets they didn't turn the internet off in 2001.
There was a bubble, but then the internet kept going. 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. 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 it's, that's cool. I didn't know that 40% rule.
So thank you for sharing that with me. Rule 40 in software.
Rule 40. 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.
Then my team sent me this quote from Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank.
Here's what Kevin said. You need leaders who can pivot because the world changes so quickly.
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. Just look at all the PE money pouring into some home services and other industries.
So my question for you is, are you ready to pivot, adapt, and win this year? If you are, come to this year's Freedom Event. Kevin's hitting the stage to share some real stories behind his success.
You will be in the same room with people like Mr. Wonderful and myself, plus other home service owners and other industry leaders worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
They're going to be talking about exactly what's working right now to dominate your market. To learn more about the event and grab an early bird offer, check out freedomevent.com.
It's freedomevent.com. Now back to the episode.
Taking 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 relationships, 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. 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. So they'll help you with your leadership team.
As the company grows,

unfortunately the leaders don't grow as fast. So you got to pull in talent.
Yeah. So your org chart,

Thank you. it's about who you bring on.
So they'll help you with your leadership team. As the company grows, unfortunately the leaders don't grow as fast.
So you got to pull in talent. Yeah.
So your org chart, they're going to help with, and then who they know and how to forward develop the code if you're doing software. So they got to be, it's strategic.
I would never get a partner on that wasn't able to grow the business exponentially faster. And so, you know, finding the right partner, remember when you bring out a partner, unless you're doing a big deal, you're selling 70%, 80%, probably the highest bidder, but they're going to bid a lot.
They probably have a plan. 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, spend time with them and say, are these people like 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 you're going to do this but there's nightmare stories too yeah you gotta be very careful man yeah i mean dan talks about that like when he sold one of his companies right 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 his ex exes, whatever his contract was afterwards.
And you hear horror stories like that all the time. I'm trying to figure out, do you sell a big piece early? Or do I go find somebody 10%, get them in bed to get us to our next iteration to hold it back? That's why I haven't taken on any money yet.
It's because I'm like, we're profitable. I'm making money.
Out of that accelerator that we went through, I'm actually the only company that's left. 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.
I'm just like, how do you burn through that much cash? You know, it's like, that's the problem too, is you got to be very careful. The guys that know how to like get these seed rounds.
Yeah. There's just, when it's other people's money, it's just not treated the same way.
They same way they burn they burn the burn rates really i almost feel like i've got like too much integrity to like like it's not like some of these founders that i've talked to like it's 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 he's on his third fucking venture dude since 21 and like, one, how the hell does this guy keep raising money from people?

It's like having an STD and still getting partners. And then the other one is like, how in the hell does he have the balls to still think like, oh, yeah, but my next business side deal will be the billion dollar unicorn? That's what I just I don't understand it, man.
I don't know. Maybe it's not everything does well.
I mean, when you look at even Goldman Sachs and some of Morgan Stanley, some of the best investments in the world, you look at these deals flow, especially with software, you only need one out of 20 to go well. Right.
And you get 100x on it. Yeah.
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'm kind of pretty damn good track record.
90% are growing. 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.
That one will probably 4X. You doing anything with Ish? I put a little bit of money in Nuve.
I really like Ish a lot. yeah and uh he's sharp guy i met him in dallas jamie waits ac hero he had like a house party years ago and uh it was him and several other guys but i remember him talking about he back then dude he was talking about the google like the google lsas and like it was brand new on the scene.
And his big thing was like, they're recording us. 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. He's a sharp guy, man.
Look, I think he's going to make new me into 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 in the house.
And then just they pay, too, for the monitoring.

He listens to me a lot.

And, you know, Ishmael's got a very strong personality.

Not a lot of people.

He doesn't take a lot of advice from me.

He's a bull.

He's a bull.

And he'll do well.

I mean, he's got the taste of money.

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 liabilities, not assets.
Well, the three F's, they wrote it down. Anything that flies or floats or the third one.
Where you get the STDs. Yes.
And it's true, man. Look, you can spend a lot of money on boats and planes.
Yeah. I see.
I don't see a lot of people, but 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. 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 a... I made a post on Instagram about it the other day.
We owe less than a million bucks on it. Portfolio is worth over three and a half million dollars.
We returned all the capital back to the partners. It's beautiful, dude.
Unless you just really don't know what you're doing and just buy something at the top of the market, it's almost impossible to not make money with real estate. It goes up.
It does. It goes up.
Real estate's great. I mean, I'm having a hell of a streak in the S&P 500.
And I think it's going to stay alive

next year. It's up...
Since I

put all the money in the end of 2022,

beginning of 2023, it's up

like 45%. Isn't that a beautiful

thing? 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. But

I always like a couple million

dollars to go out or $3 million or $5 million

and my account comes right back up.

Yeah. I'm like,

this is crazy. I love

it. Yeah, man.
So

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.

And I'm still trying to figure out what my life's going to look like because Cause I like to golf. I like to fish, but I still like to work.
So there's a happy medium and I haven't figured it all out yet, but next year is going to be super hard work. Very little vacations, a lot, 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. That's what this other one

says. Ruthlessly prioritize.

Yeah. Ooh.

And then I got my goal here where I want

to get A1 to. And then I got a goal.
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. And I'm the only one working on this.
There's nobody else. Because you're the only one sees it though.
Yeah. Well, that's the problem too.
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. 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, 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.
So what I had to do, and I've been saying this a lot, is I hike to the top of this 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 mountain 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 sit down at a lot of meetings, but they're not hard meetings.
And 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.
So like, what happens when you don't hit those timelines? 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. The Tommy goals.
The Tommy goals. There's like your BHAG, then you got Tommy way above.
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. You always hit your budget.
You beat your budget. 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 EBITDA. The next goal after that is how do we get between 500 and a billion, which is a pretty big spread.
But I got to get a lot. 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 to know what would the company look like that's doing a billion dollars a year? What would we be selling? But that's a revenue goal. That's not a five-year goal, right? 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.

All those things need to happen,

Michael.

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

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 go like hire this

like computer science guy

out of like Tunisia

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 was like, hey, you can just give us transcripts.
I'm like, I go, I hire this computer science guy out of Tunisia. And the two months it took him to get all this stuff together.

By the time I took it back, the large language model was like,

hey, you can just give us transcripts.

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 not even needing that anymore.

That's why I think it's 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. See, I don't think robotics will be...
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.
I mean, look, end of the day, we're the first ones to adopt technology. And everyone knows here we're changing rapidly.
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.
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 can make decisions based on data.
You got to use it. There has to be change, right?

A lot of people want to say, hey, can I see this?

What are you going to do with this? That's like reading that fucking book

and then putting it down and going back and doing exactly what you

was doing before you read the book. Yeah, you got to be able to look at

data and what is the, this

is what we're actually going through this big thing Q4.

So what does this data mean

and what key initiatives

are we going to take from the data?

Strategic planning. Strategic planning and budget.
I enjoyed this, man.

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I,

I, I, I, I, I, I, nuts i had to grab these nuts. I, uh, one people saw you on camera.
He grabbed his nuts when he did. I want one more big turn.
Yeah, I grabbed the nuts. I 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.

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, 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. And it's like, yeah.
The goalpost, it seems to always move. Post moves.
Yeah. That's crazy.
Yeah, man. What else you got? That's it, dude.
That's it, man. I just want to come kick it with you.
No, it's cool, man. I'm glad you made it.
It's been fun. We were going to go to dinner tonight.
Yeah. Talking a lot about AI Call Center.
There's a fellow in town that I'm talking to. And this stuff's legit, man.
We get about 10 different softwares a week that we look at. Wow.
And we got a whole technology team. And this one, I think, will make a big, big difference in the outcome of where we go.
The delays, everything that I've seen, like because of the commercials and the ads, they don't match up with the actual technology. 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. The phone calls aren't there yet.
Yeah. But the text, like a text, like that's Allie is trained like ours now.
I mean, you can text her and it's like i'm gonna start using ali you gotta set me up i'll set you up dude we'd love to love to yeah i want to get my team on that try it out and give us some feedback on it who knows man maybe you'll be my p partner maybe no man and if i can help any of your listeners uh like i said i've i've been there in the trenches where they've been 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 hundred million dollar businesses like a Tommy Mello 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? Like, what's the perfect like you help that kid out with you know what i mean it's it's very hard i'm gonna 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 and i've got a calling to do this stuff yeah it's a gift and you think you hired all these great people they only take so far. Then you got to start rebuilding the whole team.
There's peaks and valleys. And every time after you had 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. You got to top grade.
And you got to reposition people on the bus. And 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. 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 triple A level.
I didn't earn for a string. Yeah.
And that's tough, man. 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 that are feeding three people. That's 3,200 people that you're taking care of.
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.
And it's very hard to do. And there's people making even bigger, harder decisions.
But I'm not money-oriented. Most of 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? And there's a happy medium because you got to stay profitable.
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 homeschooling. But like we give the last two weeks of the year is paid vacation time because that's Christmas, man.
Like go be with your family. Like that's where I want them to be i know that like we get the wrong pe partner that's the first thing they're cutting they're like what do you mean you're off for two weeks you gotta write 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 you gotta get the right people when you do like i'm gonna call you man i'm gonna call you when we get to that stage i wouldn't do a pe deal until i get past five million yeah of arr yeah i wouldn't even consider it and i would probably do a more than 10 percent not more than 30 i'd probably do 30 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.
If it's private equity, they're not going to say, sure, I'll give you this money. You can sell whatever you want.
When do we get our investment back? Our LPs are waiting. Typically after the fifth year, they start selling their companies in each fund.
They'll raise a fund, they'll buy 10 to 12 deals, and then they need that money back, pulling back to the LPs and limited partners. So you can't just say, sure.
Now, there's other investment strategies you could use that raise capital, but I still, if I'm putting 10% in, let's just say I threw a million dollars in, when do I get the money back? And what's the profit sharing look like? There's all these questions. 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.

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 went way up.

Yeah.

And people pay the debt down.

That's the beautiful thing about real estate.

It's beautiful.

People want to rent.

A lot of people like to rent.

What's a new book you've read that you love?

Exponential Organizations. Exponential Organizations.
That was a good one. I really enjoy and always tell people the ultimate Jim Rohn library on Audible.
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.
Yeah, the ultimate Jim Rohn library.

And then if your listeners haven't read this one,

Outwitting the Devil by Colin Hill,

I think that one's better than Thinking Grow Rich.

So yeah, man, there's some nuggets.

And then, you know, shameless plug,

phenomenalphonecalls.com, you know, is my free book. 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. So I picked up the phone and started calling people after I realized going door to door.
You got a book with you? I do not have one with me. You're going to send me a sent copy.
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.
CoachCarroll.com, two R's, two L's. I think I'll go on there.
All my socials and everything is on the bottom of it. CoachCarroll.
Yeah, CoachCarroll.com. CoachCarroll.com.
Is there one final thought to close us out with that the listeners can take? And it's my mantra, baby. Hustle, it's worth it.
Hustle, that's worth it. Hustle, it's worth it.
Hustle, it's worth it. Yeah, I mean, it applies to you.
It applies to any successful guy I've ever met. 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, ew, don't do that.
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 hundred million bucks. It's great stick to sell a dream or to sell a book or to sell a course or to sell an idea.
But hustle, dude. It gets dirty.
It takes time. takes time and you got to pay your dues, man.
Take your lickings. 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. Write a book, do a pocket and I still do the stuff I love.
I talk on stage and that's feeding me knowledge, energy relationships, but I had to really get focused, but it's not, here's the thing. It's like climbing a ladder.
Cause 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, well, the saying wasn't stick in the hustle. It's worth it.
It's hustle. It's worth it because most people, their biggest problem is their, their biggest problem.
And so like you have, you have to hustle foremost you got to like get your lazy ass off the couch and like go do something with your fucking life right exactly show up run the job on a weekend when i when somebody gives you the green light to do the show up and do the fucking work like it's crazy the fundamental building blocks of business like work ethic discipline it's crazy 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 you don't go from standing on the ground to rung number seven like i 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 but i just have never found someone that's amassed any level of success that's like i'm just this esoteric leader because I've read all these books and I can pontificate all this like warm and fuzzy shit. That is a ladder.
You can skip a couple of steps if you're lucky. With good mentors and coaches, which I tell everybody you need a coach.
Like always like, 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. Watch that podcast.
And, but you like, you have to find a coach some way, form or fashion. Like you don't have to go alone.
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. But the more you pay, the bigger that quantum leap is, right? And you got to pay.
You got to pay. So I work with Dan Antonelli.
He built our brand. Yep yep i work with dan martell on one of his five he works one-on-one with joe polish i'm in his 100k group joe cristara came out here and paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars howard partridge worked with him he comes out here i'll leave you my best mentor i've ever had seven power contractors yep i mean uh sales boss jonathan wissman hired him he worked with me for years.
So, and I didn't know, this is crazy. I didn't even look at these books, but I've paid them all a lot of money.
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? 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 i received the lessons the best when it was like my last time 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 you don't show up to the calls yeah i'll give you this when my team says these they call these coachisms they're like these little sound bites I say they come through me, not from me. 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.
It costs what it costs, man. Just fucking pay the ticket.
Well, that's what Dan Martel said. He said that when I started to buy, like I want to be bought from, everything changed.
Everything changed. No more negotiations.
Here's the money. You're worth it.
I'm worth it. You pay.
Now, all of a sudden, people come to you with whatever it might be you sell. Sure.
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.
No, man. DJ, I really appreciate you

showing up today, man. Thanks for having me, man.
I appreciate

it. 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.

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. If they got an iPhone or a Droid, just find the most spontaneous, fun person and just give them some training.
It doesn't take a whole lot, but just start having them try. With that, people will go, well, I told my guys to do it.
They don't do it. Cool.
Pin $100 bill to the top of the board and say, hey, whoever's post gets the most engagement this week gets the hundo. Then watch what happens.
You can't give more responsibility with no more reward. A lot of bosses are like, we'll mess that up.
Monetize it. Gamify it.
Awesome. You did great.
A lot of great takeaways, brother. Thank you.
Dude 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 yeah man i had a late night early morning i get it bro i get it 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 help more people out appreciate you guys watching and guys. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today.
Before I let you go, I wanna 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.