Unlocking the Blue Collar Economy with Benji Carlson

If they made a stock index, like an ETF on the blue-collar economy, I would sell my house, sell my boat, sell my assets, and I would put it all in on that stock.

That's how bullish I am on this, if we get it right.

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

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

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Now, let's go back into the interview.

All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Extra.

Today, I got a buddy of mine who I always learn a lot from, Benji Carlson.

He's a expert at marketing, sales, and business based in British Columbia, which is Canada.

He's the EVP Executive Vice president of Leanscaper.

And

he's leading the charge to build Leanscaper community into the go-to destination for landscapers who want to learn, collaborate, and innovate.

A former painting contractor, turn sales, and marketing strategist.

Benji has a unique perspective on what it really takes to succeed in the trades.

He sat on both sides of the table.

out in the field as a business owner and now at the forefront of connecting and empowering thousands of contractors.

When he's not working with industry leaders, you can probably find him out sailing, riding his motorcycle motorcycle across new terrain, hunting down the best food spots, or losing himself in underground dance music.

What an intro.

Man, where did you get that?

I'm going to swap out my bio for that one because that was way better than what I've been using.

Yeah, I got a good team, man.

That's what I rely on.

I've hired her for all my weaknesses to continue to top grade.

So that's the deal.

Good.

So what's new with you, man?

Let's just catch up.

It's been a while.

What's new with me?

We've started in the last, this business is

seven or eight months old, maybe nine.

I've been here for approaching six.

So Leanscaper is what's new.

Really, really, really fun time right now.

Team of founding executives plus myself are just working tirelessly

to build the first and only AI platform for the landscaping industry.

I know that's a very like, you know, buzzy term right now these days in the space, but

we're incredibly excited and optimistic and

looking forward to some of the, I would say, paradigm shifting changes that I think

artificial intelligence, wearable technology,

and all this stuff that's coming onto the market is the impact it's going to have, particularly, particularly for the blue-collar economy, is something I'm really excited about.

We've heard from the CEOs of these businesses and government officials and policymakers about

the onslaught of entry-level white-collar workers that are going to be replaced by

large language models and other AI tools.

I think that's scary to a lot of people as it should be.

The one thing that I'm really excited about is the fact that, you know, our techs and our employees and our teams in the landscaping space, our installers and our maintenance crews, you know, this is literally the most AI resilient part of the economy in the world right now.

Congratulations.

It's like the plot twist that no one saw coming.

And I think that,

yeah, getting to be at the absolute forefront of like trades and technology with

Leanscaper is a really cool time when we're excited about what we're building.

Well, let's take a deep dive into that while we're on this subject because

AI, machine learning, automation is really the buzzword.

If you talk about AI on a post, it's going to get a lot of stuff coming and it's scary to a lot of people.

So, how are you guys thinking about it?

The way that we're thinking about it is

a massive enabler and unlocker of growth and prosperity for

small to medium-sized and large businesses in the blue-collar space.

When I say blue-collar space, I mean construction, painting, landscaping, roofing, home services, garage doors, and anyone that you know fundamentally builds or works on buildings.

They usually drive around in trucks.

They're usually highly skilled and often highly underappreciated.

And in some cases, sadly, in my opinion, heavily, heavily undercompensated for the skills and the value that they bring to the economy.

So, the way that we think about this is

these tools, and what we're building is a great example.

We talk about

an operating system for the landscaping industry built on AI.

What is that going to do?

It's going to remove a whole bunch of the bloated overhead layer that clogs up a lot of these businesses.

It's going to allow us to pay our frontline staff more.

It's going to allow us to service our customers better.

I think that there are certain parts of the world and certain jobs that are held by humans right now that are very shaky.

You know, this would not be a great time, for example, to be an entry-level bookkeeper,

x-ray technician,

paralegal, you name it.

This is an amazing time, an amazing time to be a mechanically minded, hands-on, skilled blue-collar young man or woman.

And that's, so that, that's how I'm thinking about it.

And for this part of the world and this part of the economy, I think it's an incredibly exciting time when we're going to enter into a massive boom and have a huge tailwind that I think people are still sleeping on.

Yeah, I, I talk with a lot of buddies that I didn't know 20 years ago when I got in the trades.

This is like divine.

I mean, we are sitting front row at one of the best wealth exchanges to ever be known, you know, baby boomers, 10,000 a day retiring, 12% of them own a business.

And I'll tell you, a lot of them, their kids don't want anything to do with it.

So this is a free-for-all of wealth transfer.

And you're right, it's probably not a great time to want to become a call center agent either.

You sent me four different parts that I want to really dive into.

So number one is

where are we at as an industry?

You know, demand surging, talent supply dwindling,

private equity circling, and they may feel like they're sitting on a gold mine that they can't drill into.

So,

this conversation is something I've been thinking about, and writing about and speaking about a lot lately, Tommy.

And I feel like it's very, I feel like it's really compelling.

The feedback I've been getting in a few talks have been really, really positive.

I think it's striking a nerve with people.

And the whole idea is, let's make trades cool again.

And so, why do we need to do that?

It is maybe like a good good question to start with.

And the reason is you mentioned like we are,

in my opinion, we are the blue collar economy is sitting at a bit of a crossroads right now.

Demand for what we do in terms of the services we provide or the structures that we build or the doors that we replace has literally never been higher.

At the same time, I think finding technicians

has never been harder.

And so that creates this really felt sensation with business owners like they are literally sitting on a gold mine that they can't drill into.

They can see the opportunity in front of them.

They know that if they could get

another truck on the road, another crew stood up and firing on all cylinders, they could grow their business like that.

And yet they can't because there aren't enough, there isn't enough young talent.

There aren't enough the right people applying to the jobs that their business offers.

And this is, you can feel this in the microcosm of your own business, but you can observe this in the data much more broadly across North America.

So right now, estimates put blue-collar job openings at roughly 3 to 4 million open positions across construction, manufacturing, transportation, installation and repair, and a bunch of other similar trades.

Between now and 2032, so that's seven years.

We'll add another 1.7 million new blue-collar jobs in those same industries.

That's all, by the way, being fueled by infrastructure spending, which we can get into, housing demand, which we're way behind on, energy transition, which is a big deal.

This AI infrastructure sort of

AI race, as people are calling it, is a big part of it.

And then a retiring workforce.

And a lot of these positions don't require, as you know, Tommy, don't require four-year degrees.

They will offer competitive pay.

They will be stable.

They will have advancement opportunities.

But

I think that small business owners, blue-collar entrepreneurs have a very, very real challenge to face in front of them, which is they need to fill the roles.

They got to overcome stigma.

They need to modernize their recruitment.

They need to create workplaces that attract younger generations.

And if, so if they do, the case I'm making is that you are sitting on a generational opportunity, like so good that if...

They made a stock index, like an ETF on the blue-collar economy, instead of like the S ⁇ P 500, it was like the SP blue collar, and you could just buy those stocks.

I would sell my house, sell my boat, sell my assets, and I would put it all in on that stock.

That's how bullish I am on this.

If we get it right, if we get it wrong, and unfortunately, some people will, we're going to watch this, this, this once-in-a-lifetime wealth creation opportunity pass us by.

And that's just not a situation I want your listeners or this space who deserves better, quite frankly, to be in.

So

that's maybe a good setup now what you had mentioned is is

you know how did we get here so i'm just going to segue straight into this part two this is a really really and by the way i can ramble so just stop me at any point if what i'm saying you know kind of catches your attention how did we get here this is important

we are dealing with a talent shortage let's just call it what it is Something clicked for me one time a few years ago on my podcast when someone explained this to me very simply.

They said, Benji,

a talent market, the talent market functions like any other market, right?

There are supply forces, there are demand forces, and those two forces interact.

They settle at an equilibrium, which dictates the price.

And when you think about it that way, things become a lot simpler to understand.

And so the first simple truth to get across, guys, is like supply is down.

You mentioned it.

Silver tsunami.

10,000 baby boomers retiring every day.

There's a five to two ratio for every five boomers leaving the the workplace, only two Gen Z are entering it.

In 1990, this is crazy, 2.1 million Americans were 65 or above.

In 2024, last year, 4.1 Americans were 65 or above.

So that's nearly 20% of the entire population

is retirement age.

We've eroded our shop classes in our public education system.

We completely defunded our woodworking classes, our metal shop classes, classes, our automotive classes.

These places where youngsters would go and nurture some of their God-given talent in the trades were basically just yanked out from the system.

And this is a really well-documented thing right now.

There's articles from Forbes, from Wall Street Journal.

There's a lot of great literature on that.

Similar to that.

is the college first narrative, right?

So this is this idea that I was peddled, Tommy, as a young person by my parents.

You need to go to school.

You need to go to university.

You go get a liberal arts degree.

It's going to give you this great base of knowledge.

You're going to meet people and it's going to set up your career for success long term.

This was not the case.

You're talking to someone that dropped out of university three times.

Three times.

I went once, decided it wasn't for me, left.

I went back because I was told I needed it.

Again, started a business, started making money, left again.

And then I even went back a third time to try again.

And I just, I couldn't stick.

I remember the day I left.

It was a supply chain management 101 course.

I was learning nothing.

And I was like, what am I doing sitting here?

I could could be selling a $10,000 paint job in the time I've been in this class, and I've learned nothing.

So

that's been a big sort of how when we're trying to understand how we got here, those are big parts of the story.

Another thing I'll mention is some economic shocks.

Like people forget the 2008 housing crash

created basically a 70% reduction in new construction starts the following few years.

And so, what happened is there was

1.5 million people that left the construction sector between 2008 and about 2010.

Okay, that's a lot of jobs.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, we rebuild to about the point where we were in 2008, 2020, COVID hits.

We lose another 238,000 people.

And yes, we were deemed essential.

And yes, we got back to work relatively quickly.

But if you're trying to understand the talent shortage,

these big hits to the overall workforce can't be ignored.

And then the last thing I'll just mention here, and I'll pause, is

I think another thing that we're up against is this allure of remote work.

And so some of the most like

some of the most annoying people in the world call themselves digital nomads and they work from home.

And it's this very, very, and by the way, I've worked remote for 10 years.

So I don't really have much of a moral high ground to speak from, but there is this really pernicious attitude, I think, that you know, all job, like working from home is a human right.

It isn't at all.

And if you look, if you talk to serious companies, they might offer some hybrid parts of their roles, but most big businesses do have a large portion of the team that are at least in the office for some of the week or some of the month.

Where am I going with this?

The amount of work from home jobs that were created through COVID and then popularized through social media, I think is another thing that we're up against as an industry.

We're kind of fighting.

That's, if we're offering our place of work versus another place of work, and you've got one person, quote unquote, working with air quotes around it from a beach versus somebody working on a job site sweating.

That's another branding exercise that we're up against.

And so I know I'm on a bit of a tear here.

Here's the takeaway: we didn't get here overnight.

We're not going to fix this by accident.

This shortage is incredibly real.

Demand is exploding.

The next decade belongs to people who rise up and meet it.

And if you're wondering where all the good workers went, which I think a lot of people do, those five things I just mentioned, silver tsunami, no more shop classes, college-first narrative, some economic shops, and then this allure of remote work.

That's a much more nuanced explanation of the question than just young people suck.

which I find is sort of, you hear this adage thrown around at conferences.

People complain about it.

They're understandably frustrated by it, but that's a very reductive and simplistic understanding.

And I'm trying to give a more nuanced and fuller understanding of this issue that we're up against.

So anyway, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

That's my rant.

What are your thoughts on it, Tommy?

Well, no, I think that I've got 68 guys starting September 1st that have never worked in the industry.

I think these guys that aren't going to change their mindset are going to get ran over.

I think the big guys are going to get bigger because they adapt quicker.

Not the blockbusters, not the Kodaks.

You know,

unfortunately, these dinosaur thinkers don't stand a chance.

They might as well sell as quick as possible, get their EBITDA in the next year as high as they possibly could and sell to somebody that's willing to embrace the new times.

And if you're going to win, you got to win on technology, but you got to win on recruiting and training.

I talk about this to my COO all the time.

How do we double down on training?

How do we use AI and simulations to train?

And I'm investing.

I just hired a growth hacker.

I'm going to hire another one.

And I'm sending him to every single event out there on AI.

I just hired an ungodly amount of money for a team to come in and teach us how to get more efficient using AI.

And I'm investing lots and lots of money to get better and get more efficient.

And right now we're at 26% EBITDA.

And I see a path to get to 30% really soon.

And I know we could get to 40.

And then what's going to happen is

eventually they're going to come back down a little bit because

there's only so much on pricing because we get super efficient.

And here's what's funny, Benji.

I know all my buddies doing real estate.

Real estate's bad right now.

Interest rates are up.

They're getting into home service and home improvement.

All my buddies that are doing SaaS are like, wait a minute, if we could use our SaaS brains and get into home service.

So it's going to get competitive.

And I'm sorry, you're three-man.

If you've had a business that hasn't grown dramatically in the last few years, you better change quickly because you're going to get ran the F over is my opinion.

And recruiting's not hard at all.

I've got more applicants than I can even handle.

I mean, I'm saying no,

but most people are like, man, those kids don't want to listen.

Well, they're not like the baby boomers that just work to work.

They got to be involved.

They got to see advancement, like you said.

They've got to have an opportunity to be involved in the decision-making.

They've got to have, unfortunately, I don't know what this means, but work-life balance because I love my work, so I have balance.

But if you could get them to fall in love with it and see the good in it, it changes everything.

So I think you're right on everything you said.

I just don't feel it.

And I'm not bragging.

I'm just embracing the change.

And like when the internet came out, we got out of the yellow book.

I remember those days, hence the name A1.

And I embraced it.

So I feel bad for a lot of people listening because they're like, he's right.

And I don't like listening to this podcast, but I listen to this one.

Whatever that might be, I don't really care because you don't have to like me.

I'm just speaking the truth.

What are your thoughts?

So

first of all, you know, Tommy, one of the things that I've really admired about you knowing you for the past six or or seven years, is the heavy-duty investment that you have placed into your employer brand, your training facilities, your overall talent acquisition infrastructure is something that you have spent millions of dollars on and a lot of brainpower on

over the last decade.

And it shows.

And you're riding, you're enjoying

the benefits of that investment.

I want to actually take this a step further because you mentioned something and say, guys, it's going to get competitive.

So, I just explained the supply side of the equation.

I want to talk as well about the demand side of the equation.

When you talk about what it's going to get competitive, if you guys think you're busy right now in whatever business you run, listening to Tommy's podcast, if you're doing garage doors, great.

If you're doing a home service of some sort, like junk removal or property maintenance, great.

If you're building homes, if you're installing roofs, it doesn't matter.

The wave of demand forces on the way over the next 10 years is insane.

And I'm going to paint you a bit of a picture.

So

this AI race that you hear the tech leaders in Silicon Valley talking about,

this is no joke.

This is not just some kind of like cool buzz line that the journalists are posting about to get clicks.

This is what's happening.

The investment, both in terms of capital and policy that are going into AI, predominantly data centers, and then our energy infrastructure to power those data centers is insane.

I'm going to give you a few stats.

Right now, data centers currently use about 4.4% of the electricity in the United States of America.

By 2028, that's three years from now.

They expect it will use those will use 12%.

So as a percentage of our total consumption, data centers are going to triple in three years.

We're projecting a 25% increase in energy demand by 2030, a 78% increase by 2050.

So that's what we need.

Now, the hyperscalers, Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and the rest, Meta, are going to spend $350 billion on data centers this year.

The federal government is unlocking funds, deploying federal sites.

They're cutting bureaucratic delays.

They are unlocking this thing and they're saying, guys, let's let's effing go on this.

By the way, as if anyone's listening to this and they want to go deep on this, go look up a YouTube video called Stargate Mega Factory.

And it's a 20-minute kind of like walkthrough of this build they're doing in Abilene, Texas.

It's a $500 billion build.

There's seven more projects at that scale or bigger on schedule over the next five years.

And there's going to be more coming.

So, we, we, as a country, I'm Canadian, but we as a, let's say, we as a continent are building right now heavily.

In addition to that, we have a housing crisis that is backlogged beyond belief.

The top 100 builders in the United States of America would have to double for a decade, double their output for a decade just to catch up.

That wouldn't even catch up with the current demand moving forward.

It's just to catch up with we are right now.

We have a massive spike in remodels and home services.

$500 billion a year is spent in people fixing their homes, right?

And that's going to go up as well because nobody can afford to build a new one.

And then this is where the whole thing gets kind of gets flipped on its head, Tommy.

This is why I get like really energetic and excited about this.

So those are all things that are increasing demand for blue-collar businesses.

Where this gets nutty is there's going to be massive entry-level displacement on the horizon.

So I said this earlier, the Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodi, this guy is the leader, they make Claude.

He says that 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years are going to be redundant, potentially pushing unemployment to 20%.

There's an ex-Google exec named Mo Godet.

He's done a bunch of rounds of podcasts.

He's pretty recognizable at this point.

He predicts widespread disruption across the technology and knowledge industry by 2027.

And so here's the plot twist that no one saw coming.

It's like, guys, guess who's hiring?

AI, economics, policy, and demographics all converging at one time to make two things, two things true at once.

There's increasing demand for your services, which were already high.

And now, miracle of all miracles, we are increasing the talent supply for your teams, which has been the single biggest obstacle for the last 20 years.

So you get more demand, which is already good, and you get a whole bunch of people who are looking for jobs, and you desperately need to hire people.

So I'm like, when I say I'm putting it all on the SP blue collar, that to me is, that to me is the plot twist no one saw coming.

And I think it's an incredible, incredible, incredible time to be a blue collar worker, blue collar leader, blue-collar entrepreneur.

The story, but, but, and there's a big butt here, we do need to evolve as an industry.

We do need to get better.

There are kind of, you know, six things that I think are absolutely situation-critical for leaders to be on top of.

But I'm skipping ahead here.

Are you seeing, you mentioned a sec ago, Tommy, like 68 new people to your, to training that had never been in the industry.

Do you think that that is connected in any way to this sort of trend that I'm observing and talking about?

Well, I would say this.

I'm going to go backwards a little bit and just say

that,

number one, I'm not seeing a lot of people that phones are ringing off the hook, not like COVID.

I think demand went higher through COVID and they kind of got ahead in HVAC roofing a lot of these industries.

I'm seeing solar displacement because the energy credits are going away.

I'm seeing a lot of things change and having to kind of rebuild

their door-to-door strategy.

And I'm looking at this going, I don't talk to a lot of people.

They used to say, How are you finding great people?

And there was years, a couple of years that they were like, Man, if you could fog a mirror, I'd hire you.

Now they're saying, What are you guys doing for leads?

And,

you know, we're running right now an average of 24 to 25,000 fulfilled jobs a month.

that's converted leads i'm generating about 34 to 35 000 leads and not everyone get converted and booked and dispatched or canceled you know so i i've just i i know what you're saying the future looks bright i think a lot of people i want to dive into marketing but what i could tell you is most of those people in there i'm going to read something uh to you real quick that paypal the PayPal CEO figured out.

And it's so important for home service.

And I've mentioned this once.

And I'm just going to tell you guys

that in my opinion, if you're not looking at this, you're going to get buried because this is why out of those 68 people, the vast majority of them said, Tommy, we're here because of you.

We see you all over the internet.

We listen.

We've heard your podcast.

We see you on Instagram.

And I'm still in the fetal stages of creating my personal brand, which is built on A1.

Breaking news.

PayPal is hiring a head of CEO for content.

This is what you need to know.

The job pays over $200,000 a year.

The mission is simple.

Make the CEO, Alex Chris, visible and consistent with his postings.

This is not about getting likes.

It's about building trust.

with investors, inspiring employees, and keeping PayPal top of mind against competitors like Apple and Google.

PayPal is proving that in 2025, the personal brand of the leader is as important as the brand of the company itself.

Here's the takeaway.

Visibility is no longer a nice to have for leaders.

It is part of the business strategy.

If your audience cannot see you, they will forget you exist.

If they can see you enough with the right message, you shape how they think before you even speak to them.

The difference between a CEO who shows up online and who does not can be millions in talent attraction, customer trust, and deal flow.

PayPal is not putting money behind the idea.

PayPal is putting money behind the idea.

The question is, when will other leaders follow?

And I'm telling you, and I'm not only doing it with myself, I'm doing it with my leadership team.

And I think this is an important thing because the people that I'm trying to attract live on Instagram and TikTok and X.

And if they're going to see me, they got to see a future for themselves within this dream.

And I always said, build a dream so big that everybody else's dream could come true.

And that's our motto.

We're writing a book about the culture and about how to succeed here.

And it's going to get published everywhere.

And the more tools I could get eyeballs, and we're going after this whole Reddit strategy.

And all I would say is, yes, I see exactly what you're talking about.

There's disruption that's coming in, but at least I'm putting the bait out there.

And I don't like to call it bait, but when you go fishing, you put on a worm.

You got to have something out there for them to find you.

So I'm curious your thoughts on that.

Well, I think that your

comment about the personal brand piece is

incredibly important.

If you...

you know, if you're paying attention and you're watching

the

sort of small business thoughtosphere on LinkedIn or youtube or or facebook or instagram or whatever your platform of choice is you you are seeing leaders of fairly big-time businesses really invest in their content strategy and i like

i i think some people mix this up sometimes and they kind of roll their eyes because someone is doing a podcast or they're they're they're investing in a youtube growth strategy

don't don't get this twisted guys sophisticated business leaders don't do anything without roi there's no way that hormozy is investing that much time and money and energy into building that kind of audience because he likes to stroke his ego he's doing it because it is a massive massive lift to his entire brand is all of his portfolio companies and i think people are getting wise to that whole notion and so um

You know, what does that look like for a for a smaller, you know, owner operator or

trades business owner?

It's, it's, it's getting over your your camera shyness.

It's making the posts, even though they're not perfect.

It's building up a bit of

process and systems around posting.

Too many business owners are kind of hiding behind a logo, hiding behind a website.

And I just don't think that that's how the world functions anymore.

People want to work with people.

People right now, when we talk about the talent shortage, you know, one of the things that I think

blue-collar businesses actually have going for them as a positive is the fact that they are IRL in real life, they are in real life businesses.

So, you have to go to the shop, you have to go to the building, you have to be in the truck with your crewmate.

I think that

there's been a real loss of love and connection in the last 20 years, and people are looking for that, they're craving for that.

And your personal brand allows people to do that through

the medium called the internet.

They get to know Tommy Mellow a little bit before they go to their first orientation.

They get to sense what he's about and the business that he's creating.

They get to hear his voice and hear his ideas and make a judgment for themselves.

This is someone that I want to work with.

This is someone that I want to buy from.

And it works on both of those funnels, both your customer-facing brand and your talent brand.

But

I think that

the time to invest in personal brand building is now.

If it would have been better five years ago, but it's not too late to start at all.

And so I think that you're bang on with that.

And so

I'm not saying, by the way, you need to hire an expensive content team and build a studio in your shop.

You can start small and dip your toe in with something that's kind of cheaper and invest over time.

But yeah, I don't think that people are buying or wanting to work for nameless,

faceless corporations for much longer.

I want to really come to a conclusion on this idea of the six main things

that

everybody needs to know about if you're an industry leader, not only to make the trades cool again, but to seize the generational opportunity.

So

let me give you this.

I'll just rattle the six off and you tell me which ones you want to dig deeper into.

So one is we need to get good at attracting and keeping young talent, right?

People under the age of 26, 27.

Two, we need to invest in brand,

something you've done a really good job of.

Three, we need to be tech progressive is what I call it.

Four, you're going to love this, heavy-duty investment in performance-based pay.

I literally don't think that anyone 15 years from now is going to be paid by the hour anymore because the tracking will be so good that we don't have to.

Five, I would say you lead with personal development and mindset, become a become a growth-focused culture.

And six, you need to own your craft and elevate the standard.

You need to be proud of the work you do.

You need to sell the vision of a meaningful career and growth opportunities in the trades to your people instead of just being downtrodden and calling yourself, I'm just a landscaper.

I'm just a plumber.

I hate that language.

So those are the six things that I think are key and we can dig into any one of them.

Yeah, I love all of them.

And I think you hit it spot on.

I couldn't think of anything outside of these.

Personal development,

you know, it's interesting.

Ken Goodrich

owns Ghetto, or he still is a big investor in Ghetto.

He sat in my office with all my C-suite.

This is years ago.

And my COO, Luke, reminds me of this story.

And he said,

let me tell you something about Tommy Mello.

He said, the guy calls me up on a Sunday at 10 p.m.

I see him at every event.

He's done 20 shop tours at my place.

He comes over to my house and writes a notebook.

I ask him what books he's reading.

He tells me five.

And he goes, the reason I'm telling you guys this is

he's going to outgrow you.

And my best advice for you, Tommy, is he goes, you need to fire these guys.

The minute you feel like their ceiling's not matching yours, they need to leave the company because they're going to hold you back.

And he called me later that day and said, was that a little bit over the top?

And I said, kind of, but the guys needed to hear it.

And all of a sudden, what I noticed is they said, Can I go on that shop tour with you?

Hey, can you start leaving books on my desk again?

What podcast do I need to listen to?

And I'd say the senior team here has really adopted this mindset of I need to continue to grow, or our lid is not going to be as big or as wide as the jar as it needs to be.

And this personal development needs to happen all the way into every level of the company.

And it's a lot easier with the, you know, the C-suite or the VP, and I hate titles, but to build that mindset from, we all work for the technicians and installers and to get that buy-in.

And I always say, you're the best you've ever, I'm the best I've ever been, but the worst I'll ever be because tomorrow I'm going to be a little bit better.

So when it comes to personal development and that culture shift, I just would want to know, how do you really get to that point where everybody's like, I'm going to, I want to take this course.

I want to be involved in this.

What's the best way to build that?

You need to, as a leader,

give your people access to growth that they won't get elsewhere.

And so I think one thing that you've done better than anyone I've seen in the industry is embody that.

Now,

why is that important?

Like, let's just be real here.

What kind of growth mindset, what kind of abundance style content, personal development, courses, books, conferences, thought leadership,

you name it, does the average person applying to be a technician for your business for the first time have?

On average, there might be some exceptions, but they're not getting it from their dad or their mom.

It's not coming from their family unit.

Our educators certainly aren't doing it.

We can debate whose responsibility this is.

It doesn't matter.

It has fallen on the plate of small business owners.

And so whether you want to accept this or not, you have inherited the responsibility of being a growth engine for people.

And people want it.

And guys, they're looking for it.

And they're not finding it.

And that's why 68 of them are starting

for Tommy next week.

And

not that many are starting for other businesses next week.

It's because they want this.

And so I think it's a pretty simple three-step process.

It's walk the walk.

You need to model the kind of behavior and the kind of mindset that you want to see around the building.

I don't believe that a good leader needs to be the smartest in the room ever.

I don't.

I think that they need to be the thirstiest for knowledge and the most curious and the most desperate to learn all the time because that creates basically shockwaves through the building that everyone else sees and picks up on.

The second thing I think you need to do is create access.

So

it's a book club.

It is courses that you make available.

It's conferences that you send people to.

If you have a, look.

Great example.

You have a marketing coordinator, marketing leader in your business, and they come to you and they say, Benji, look, there is a, this conference in San Diego in May that I really want to go to.

It's been on my mind for three years.

All these great speakers that I follow go to it.

All these great thought leaders that I want to learn from there.

There are these workshops that I want to attend.

You know, I, as a leader, I'm going, okay, listen, you know, whoever, Tom, Tony, the, the, the marketing coordinator, put together a list of the three things that you want to learn and tell me tactically how you're going to make sure that you capture that learning while you're there.

And you know what I'm doing?

I'm putting them on a flight and I'm paying for them to go to that conference and learn.

And look, if your P ⁇ L is such, if your budget is such that you're just too, too small of a business to make that kind of investment, use the free resources until you can.

But I think creating access is an absolute no-brainer.

And then I would just, the last thing I would say is celebrate this stuff publicly and link it to opportunity.

You know, what do you guys do?

That's a good question back to you.

Like,

how do you guys sort of

link growth, growth-mindedness, and not just listening to podcasts, actually implementing the lessons they're learning to actually get better in the role that they have.

That to me is the cornerstone of a career ladder.

That is the thing that I am ascending people into bigger and bigger leadership roles as a result of.

So I think that it's, I think that it's huge.

I think that we do a bad job of it.

And

My view on this is this is a very easy solve.

You just need to be the kind of leader that does that in the first place and then make it available for your team and watch them as they gobble it up.

And you mentioned something there that people, if you were to ask me,

what's your number one

Tommy Mellow's character trait?

And I would say, I'm genuinely curious.

That's why it is so good with clients.

I wanted to learn about them.

I want to ask questions.

The private equity company probably gets annoyed by me because I invite them to my house and I ask them a billion questions.

They're like, hey, do you want to go to bed?

Are you going to bed anytime soon?

I was like, like, I have just one more question.

And I just want to learn and I'm curious.

I really am.

I podcast because I love this stuff.

This is not, this is just as much for me as the audience, if not more.

And I love the idea of a book club.

And, you know, I have my niece and nephews doing a book club.

And we started with Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

And I gave them, I think, 500 bucks.

If they could pass my quiz, they got 350 each because I was creating them pretty hard.

And I've done book clubs.

I just, I want to take a course on book clubs.

This is how crazy I am because if I'm going to start a book club, I'm going to take a course on how to make it productive.

And I'm going to make sure that there's involvement and I'm going to make sure they have a takeaway.

You know, we talk about our dream manager a lot because half of my goal.

And what I must do is get people thirsty.

And I got to know about their dreams.

And I need to reverse engineer it for what they want because what they want isn't what I want.

Some of it's they want more time, they want more PTO, some of it they want to buy their first house, some of it they want to go on a dream vacation.

Some of it is they want to bring another child into this world.

And if I could use that to motivate them to want more, it could be want more health, it could be wanting to be closer with God.

But if I don't know these things, if I don't have a path to retrieving these things from them, then I could try to motivate them with money, but I found out that that doesn't work past a certain amount of money.

Does that make sense?

Completely.

Completely.

I, I, you know, what's the stats on it?

After $70,000 or $80,000 a year on average,

the marginal returns

on income and their correlation with happiness just completely flatline.

So at a certain point, and it's sooner than you think, people want personal development, spiritual growth, skill development way more than they want a few extra bucks an hour.

And it's my job to come in with a smile.

What I've learned is all my feelings and my emotions.

If I come in angry, I I say it's okay for everybody.

If I'm not cleaning stuff off the

front parking lot, then I say it's okay to litter out here.

And I really do care.

I walked around my building today.

I walked in.

I got a meeting with my CFO.

I'm like, we're going to repaint this thing.

It doesn't really, it doesn't make me proud anymore.

So these little things.

I want to jump into this idea of you said specifically young talent, 27 and younger.

Yeah.

Why is it 27 and younger?

And what obviously you get great insurance premiums.

Everyone's healthy.

But what are some of the other reasons?

Why did you pick 27?

That's not a hard and fast line.

That's sort of around the bottom edge of the millennial cohort generation.

So the reason I'm sort of saying the

mid and young 20s and younger is because

That is the future of this very physically demanding industry.

It doesn't matter what trade you're doing.

They're all hard and they're all physically demanding.

And the

part of the reason that the construction industry is suffering from a talent shortage more than other industries, they're all struggling with it, but trades in particular is because people age out of trades because their bodies can't keep up with it earlier than a white-collar worker, let's say.

And so there's a value that we should place on younger workers just because of the runway they have, the strength and resilience and toughness and energy they bring.

But more so, I just see them very much as the future leaders of these businesses.

The other thing that I think is

harder to quantify is

you said something at the beginning of this conversation, Tommy, about the dinosaurs or so you termed it something like the sort of

old mindset business owners.

So I want to be really careful in my languaging here because this is not like an eight, I'm not making an ageist comment and you need to hire young people and you can't hire old people.

I will get in trouble legally for saying that.

And that's not what I mean.

I more so I'm saying build a brand that attracts, we need to get young in our mindset.

Yes, it is helpful to bring up our next generation of leaders, but we also need to build a company that is youthful in its mindset.

It places a certain value on connection, which is something that younger people love.

It places a certain value on upward trajectory.

There's a career ladder.

There's a clear path laid out in front of them.

There's no dead end jobs in this business because we can't afford to have them, right?

And then there's a heavy emphasis on compensation.

We want to find a way to get our people making more.

Young people.

are inflation babies.

They've grown up in a generation where everything costs a million times more for them than it did for their parents.

They're frustrated by that.

Understandably so and the smart ones are finding ways to overcome it instead of just couching themselves in exclusive in excuses so i think that um

those are a few things that smart leaders are keying in on the other thing is just this heavy investment in social media so i i believe fundamentally that instagram is not a marketing device it's not for your customers it is for the employees that you haven't hired yet you build your instagram grid your strategy your boosted posts the stories that you make the the reels that you make, everything, everything, everything features the team that you have.

You are highlighting promotions.

You are highlighting new hires.

You are highlighting certifications that have been done.

People coming through, they're onboarding.

You know, I love to scroll the A1 socials because it's always talking about, hey, great training session with these people.

Look at these new techs entering their truck for the first time.

They're out servicing customers within a few days, a few weeks.

Like that is what people are looking for.

And by the way, if you do the second, you get the first.

Meaning, if you invest your Instagram as a recruitment tool, you're going to get the customers anyway, because they're going to look and they're going to say, look at this amazing company, look at these amazing people.

They care about their employees.

I want to hire a one to do my garage door, even though I haven't even seen anything about their production process or the materials they use or any of that stuff.

So

I'm big on attract young talent.

I'm big on young mindset.

27 is kind of an artificial, I sort of, you know, just putting a, I just put a number on that.

And those, those are a few ways that I think we do that well.

But I'm curious what's working for you.

I mean, have you found something that was really clicking for this younger group of technicians that's coming into your system?

Well, what I can tell you is the more I'm branded, the more trucks, the more billboards, the more TV, the more radio, the more social media, not necessarily the more Valpak, not necessarily the more more PPC, but those things that I mentioned, the branding, people are like, I see you everywhere.

I needed to look you up.

I see your trucks.

And in the smaller markets like Charlotte, we have a real, it's a lot harder.

So there's this idea of when you become to a certain size, you know, Paul Kelly

has done a great job in Phoenix with his HVAC Plum Electrical, Parker and Sons.

And he decided to become a $350 million company here and offer more services.

And yesterday, I'm thinking about this going, man, I thought, why not own the industry?

And I agree with the methodology we chose, but man, his recruiting becomes so easy.

He's got trucks doing HVAC, plumbing, electrical.

He's got all these other services he's added.

And so I see you, there's job certainty.

I see you guys everywhere.

And so I will tell you, I even wrote down a radio.

Like I'm doing a lot of radio ads and I tell a lot of stories.

I think I'm going to switch 30 or 40% of them to recruiting because, like you said, we only hire this type of caliber.

We come and we fix it right.

We're mentioning like some things that appeal to clients too.

And it's just all I'm trying to do is leave a memory in their head.

And all I'm trying to do, Benji, is,

you know,

you know, Benji, I'm going to pretend I'm your wife.

Listen, you work so hard and I know you would never quit.

Your job.

You're just a hard worker, dude.

I see a path.

Have you ever heard of A1 Garage for Door Service?

I've heard what these guys make.

They seem really happy.

They talk about work-life balance.

They're very big on the family.

I think you should go apply.

And I don't care if it's their uncle, their grandma.

I don't care if it's them, but that's what I want everybody saying that.

And a lot of people come in here and say, I thought it was a Ponzi scheme.

It sounded too good because there's no way a company could do.

And I'm like, by the way, we're a work in progress.

People really do feel that way.

There's a lot of people that don't feel that way.

And it depends on how much you're winning in this company because performance pays a real thing.

And I got guys on the bottom of the top.

I mean, I got guys, I got guys, Benji,

in the sales force making way more money than me.

As the CEO of this company, now it's obviously W-2 money that gets high tax, but I don't mind it.

And that's what's crazy.

And people, I know people in the HVAC industry making a million dollars a year.

Now they're selling 10, 15, 20 million, which you might think my buddy Phil sold 22 million in the last year.

22 million himself, himself running calls.

22 million.

And he runs only service agreement calls.

And so, you know, that's a unicorn, but it's crazy because he could easily make an ungodly amount of money.

So I'll just say that you're absolutely right.

I think the brand, and a lot of these, you said brand, performance pay, performance pay.

You said you got to focus on brand.

Those couple of things, personal development, a lot of those things are all recruiting.

What are your what?

Like, I would love to hear your philosophy on performance pay.

Like, I like, I know that to do the challenging thing about this business, about performance pay is everyone loves the concept and they really struggle with the implementation.

It usually comes down to issues of tracking and visibility.

Hey, I would compensate my people based on performance if only if, if only I had better data on their actual performance.

But so much gets lost between the field and the office, and I can't really see.

And so, therefore, I just default to a salary or I default to an hourly wage.

Now, you've done, and I know we've spoken about this offline, you've invested a lot in the actual modeling and the pivot tables, and it's a big project to get it done for a scaled-out business like yours.

And

it is, by the way, there is no boilerplate.

You can't ask Chad GPT

this question and get something good.

It's got to be built for your business.

What is your

advice for people that want to

kind of just like ease their way into it?

Do you kind of like start small, start with a basic bonus or a simple commission structure?

What's the for someone who's like nowhere on this, but believes in the idea's merit, how do they slowly work their way into a more performance pay model?

Well, number one, I hate the word commission.

I love the word performance.

So it's very important that it's just not a sales only, screw the customer mentality and get a bunch of warranty calls and one-star reviews.

So first and foremost, you got to be good at whiteboarding and find out what's important, what's going to move the needle.

If customer satisfaction creating raving fans is, it's the customer experience, the net promoter score, stuff like that.

So that's first and foremost.

Number two is this got to be simple.

You can't go to your wife and say, hey, pull out your TI-83 calculator.

I'm going to explain how I get paid.

You know, carry the five and we get 10 bucks for this and we get this range of scale.

We get demoted.

It's like, no.

So, so that one's too complicated.

And then number three, you cannot make a mistake because you'll lose the trust of the entire workforce.

So whoever's handling payrolls got to have some type of algorithmic way.

Hopefully you're on a good CRM service timehouse called Pro, whatever, jobber.

But there's a way to make it very easy to calculate the pay that it's, it's, it's an equation, a formula.

It's not.

You're not hand doing it because that's when human error comes in.

And the last thing I'll say is you want to be able to say when somebody makes a lot more money with performance pay, that the company made more money and you could prove that with math.

And then you want to go to the number one person that everybody adores in the company, like the mascot, the guy that everybody talks to and listens to and they carry a lot of weight.

And you got to tell them, we're going to make this work for you.

And here's the deal.

I'm going to make you sign this contract.

or this agreement, I should say, that just says, I'm going to play around with this.

I'm going to pay you whichever is more, but just so I'm going to be playing around with it for the next three months.

And when I figure it out, sometimes it'll be less, sometimes it'll be more, but when I'm looking at the results for the company, this allows me to do this for everybody, buy or new or buy new trucks, get the clients you want to serve.

So everybody's going to win from this.

So once you're a believer, I'm going to print out one of those big, big checks and I'm going to have you go up there and say, hey, I've been working on this with Tommy for three months.

We got to figure it out.

Here's what my check would have been.

Here's what my check is today.

And you guys should, you guys, and then you got to give a guarantee, whichever is more for the first, you you know, call it 30 days or 60 or 90 days.

And then everybody's going to be on this new model.

And if you can hit just those things, and then the other thing is don't change it every three months.

If you're going to change it, and we change ours every six months, I would say on average, but just, and sometimes we say, by the way, you guys are getting a raise.

We're raising the prices.

We change something where the guys actually pay the same cost we do, which made it simpler.

And the next thing I'm building is a calculator to say if you added a part, how much that would affect, like you're going to be able to see everything you do, a job per job, and see if you just offered a bottom rubber, which keeps all the nasty bugs out, all the weather.

We just had a haboob windstorm here in Phoenix.

If you do this, first of all, it's better for the client.

Secondly, here's what it means to you and your family as a yearly compensation.

And I like to tell them yearly, this could be $27,000.

This could be $12,000.

I don't like to say what it means per job or per week.

I like to say per year because then they're they're talking that is a down payment on a new vehicle.

It's a down payment on a house just by offering this.

So I talk a little bit more macro.

So those are just some key fundamental things that I think people should think about.

Yeah, it's really cool.

I love this whole idea of creating a more gamified system that people live within, people work within.

The more dopamine loops you can create, the more reward circuitry

you can lean into in your comp, the better.

People play better when you keep keep score and one of the ways that we keep score is with comp and i think that you know public scoreboards really showing them what what behaviors drive certain rewards um is something they i am so deep in this i am so i know you're right i mean this is like i am so right today a badge system a badge of like you've earned this i just was writing an email earlier which is very rare you can't catch people behind a keyboard very often these days but i was saying i i emailed three people and i said I want to hear every single thing we're doing per month to motivate the right behavior and get them excited.

These little competitions.

And sometimes what I've learned, Benji, if I'm doing a weight loss challenge, two weeks or a month instead of four months, there's got to be these little wins.

And because people will do a competition, be like, I'm already out.

I'm already out.

I can't catch up.

You know what I mean?

So these little, little things.

And here's the deal: what I've learned, Benji, is I'll be raffling off a grill and a DeWalt freaking piece, you know, drill.

And people will go way above and beyond to win the freaking drill.

But they also made an extra three grand that month.

And then the drill contest will be over and it'll go back to the normal.

And I'm like, wait a minute, didn't the three grand move the needle for you?

I mean, it's 60, 36 grand a year.

And

me and my area managers talk about this all the time.

It's the human behavior.

I think

one of the most important things, if I asked you, you know, Dan Martel asked me this.

He said, if you wanted the 20x your business next year what would have to happen he goes close your eyes think hard and i said well i'd have to become the best recruiter in the world and i have to become the best interviewer in the world and i'd have to quadruple down on marketing right i'd have to make everybody a recruiter of clients because if every single person could recruit 15 clients a week it'd be an endless amount there would be no limit to the growth so i started thinking about we talked about how how we become a big recruiter like getting yourself out there social media but on interviewing and knowing,

let's just chat real quick about identifying talent.

It's a moving target right now,

in the sense that a lot of the traits and qualities that we traditionally look for in people are some are becoming obsolete and less relevant because of what AI is offering, and some are becoming an order of magnitude more important.

I think that the fundamentals are still the same.

You need values alignment, and the way you find values alignment is by talking about your values for people with people

and asking them first

parts of their life when those values showed up.

And usually, they happen in the down part of the roller coaster.

They show up in challenges.

So, values alignment is still a thing.

Work ethic is still absolutely a thing.

Communication, teamwork, collaboration are all absolutely still a thing.

There's a wrinkle to this story that I think AI is changing right now, which is, I think, there's an extra special

value

that I am placing on two things: one is creativity and visionary thinking, and two is curiosity, deep and profound profound curiosity.

Why are those really important things right now?

Because in the age of AI,

the only thing that you need to know is what you don't know.

Let that sink in.

The only thing that you need to know is what you don't know.

So there's self-awareness and curiosity.

Look, we're building a big freaking company here at Leanscaper.

I'm at my threshold.

I am absolutely doing

like I am at my upper limit of ability, skill, talent, and along for the ride, enjoying every minute of it.

But I got to be honest, I'm absolutely challenged.

I know the 10 to 15 things that I need to know a lot more about.

I need to be a much more sophisticated marketer when it comes to demand, gen, and all things paid.

I need to really level up my game in terms of search.

I know a lot about content.

I know a lot about thought leadership.

I can speak from stage.

I can sell to anyone.

I can team build.

Those are strengths, but I know my weaknesses.

And so I have a running list of those things and I spend time with AI educating myself based on those weaknesses.

So I'm using that example to say for people on your team, I would look for all the stuff you already look for, and I would continue to do behavioral interviews.

I would ask probing questions.

I would look for examples.

Don't ask them theoreticals or hypothetics.

You ask for experience and examples.

All that stuff remains true, but I'm looking, I'm also over-indexing my team building on people who have a self-awareness, they know what they don't know, and a deep curiosity about that.

Because people with those two things are going to be able to up-level themselves at a pace that is just, you can't even imagine how fast you can learn when you learn how to prompt and you learn what questions to ask and you learn voice to text and voice to voice.

The rate at which you can get information that actually helps you is blinding.

And I think that that's something that I'm going to be placing a huge amount of

weight on in my interviews moving forward.

I love that.

I've got a coach that teaches me a lot more on what to look for.

And a resume doesn't speak a lot about a lot of things, but it tells you about when people are switching jobs, why are they switching jobs?

Why did they choose to switch jobs?

If you got recruited, let's just say you're recruiting a CFO or a head of sales.

You got recruited.

You're on a call with me getting recruited because we went to a recruiter.

Why do you leave?

And understanding these reasons, and did you have a conversation with your direct report?

By the way,

we do not interview as well as we should at this company.

And we've got great recruiters now that do a much better job.

That's something that if you could, do you understand a top performer for me will do an extra million and a half of revenue than a than a poor performer right and the delta is really big like it's a big it's not a little bit better it's a lot better it's it's incredible and we've got you know 450 technicians so obviously the mean has changed dramatically and what i've learned benji is i focus more on the top than i do on the bottom because i'm trying to raise the ceiling and show that it's possible and study those and and it's so much fun is if you focused on the top to see how far you could take them it pulls everybody else up.

It's just

a statement.

I got a quick question for you.

Can you go a few more minutes?

Yeah, let's do it.

You've interviewed some incredible guests.

Chris Voss, good buddy.

Dan Martell, I love the guy.

Matt Riesinger,

me, half joking.

What's the common thread you've noticed among world-class operators?

Like, what are some of the things that you've noticed when you jump on a podcast or you learn to read a book from these type of people.

Okay.

So I think there's a few things I want to pick away at.

One is the best of the best understand

that they are playing a game.

And so they learn the rules of the game and they play the game at the highest level.

That might not seem like a profound point until you realize so many people sort of play at playing the game.

It's like if you want to be the best soccer player, there's a certain set of skills that you need to learn to be the best soccer player.

Dan Martel wants to be the biggest speaker, the biggest personal brand in the world.

I think he wants, you know, just judging by the kind of content he makes and what he's trying to do, he wants some, maybe he wants to be the next Tony Robbins.

I don't know.

Something like that.

He understands the game he's playing and he's playing it at the highest level.

And I think this, you know, there's this

thing that people do in their career where they sort of they they half ass it or they they they they don't

look at it from from an analytical perspective enough.

You, the reason that you've done really well with your CSRs is because you studied CSRs and you realize there's a framework to be the best in the world, and so you just install that.

So, there's like this level of like, what's the game?

What are the rules of the game?

How do I reverse engineer steps to be the best at the game?

And if I do those steps, I win the game.

So, there's this very, very like utilitarian, cold analytical approach that I think the best of the best have.

The second thing that I would say is there's

a real like family orientation and community orientation that I see with high performers.

There's the occasional lone wolf person who's done really well too, but for the most part, these are moms and dads, super involved community members.

They're involved with their church.

They're the busiest people that I know, and yet they still have time for the people that matter to them.

Why is that?

Because

they realize it's a flywheel.

The more that you give, the more that you get back.

The more people's cups you fill, the more overflowing your cup is.

And so, yes, it's part of the human condition, and you need that.

And we do that to make our brain chemistry happy, but there's also a performance component.

component to it as well, which is like, look, it's great to have an awesome family because my family makes me a better business person.

It's great to be in good health because that good health makes me a better business person,

business, a better business person.

I've learned that um

and then the the last thing that i would say is just leaders are readers and i i think i you don't literally need to read paper books maybe it's kindle maybe it's podcast maybe it's an audio book i don't care but um

a constant

and voracious obsession with learning one of the the the one of the things that i think I've watched learners

dead-end themselves unintentionally.

One of the ways it happens is when you get complacent.

I once worked with someone who told me, and they weren't joking,

yeah, I

you know, I try to read, but I just find that halfway through the book, I find that I kind of know it all already.

And so I don't really read.

This person is really, really stunted themselves in terms of their growth.

And what success they had early on has largely vanished.

And that's a mindset piece.

And so there's an attitude, there's an arrogance, there's a complacency that comes with a little bit of success.

And it would blow your mind how little that number is.

Make a few million bucks, great, good for you.

You've got enough for a nice life.

You're not going to be a world taker.

You're not going to be, you're not Genghis Khan.

You've made a nice little lifestyle business and you're comfortable.

Rock on.

Nothing wrong with that.

That's awesome.

But that's not enough to justify giving up on the endeavor and the pursuit of excellence through learning.

And my belief is that whatever it is that you're trying to learn, somebody's already mastered it.

Just go order the book and read it.

You don't, there's almost nothing, almost nothing, except for like the cutting edge of AI, putting rockets on Mars,

really, really hardcore biotechnology.

In the part of the economy that we live in, Tommy, there is nothing that hasn't been figured out yet.

And so I love people who have the humility to know, listen, I don't need to overcook this.

We We don't need to do a whiteboarding session and put our heads together to come up with a solution.

I need to find someone who's already found it and just learn from them.

And it's just such a faster way to build businesses.

I hate whiteboarding sessions or brainstorming sessions where nobody at the table has an idea how to fix it.

That's the worst way.

It's the worst way to solution things.

So just, I'm always very like, my mindset is go find the expert and learn from them.

And I think that takes a certain level of humility.

So I'd kind of tack, I tie that into something I'm observed too.

Just there's, there's humility and curiosity, and it never leaves them.

Once they make 5 million bucks, 10 million bucks, 100 million bucks, doesn't matter.

That's just part of their DNA and it continues with them until death.

And I think it's a really beautiful trait to have, and people find that attractive to be around.

You know, I want to just make a quick comment and then we can start some wrap-up stuff here, but I hear a lot of consultants, and what I've learned is to extract the big things very quickly.

So

I get, and I've always respected a really great consultant that has a rhyme and rhythm and strategy.

And I've got a couple more coming on and a couple ending.

And I'm going to tell them, I put a million dollars a year into personal consulting outside of A1, what we pay for all these different coaches and things.

And I'm going to tell them that this is a one year and I need to learn as much as possible.

And it's very rare why I would keep going.

I mean, my goal is to extract and learn and connect and network.

And basically, sometimes it's not exactly what they know.

It's who they know.

Sometimes it's introductions.

Sometimes, and that's what I've learned is you're not always getting a consultant necessarily.

Like if you were to work with me one-on-one, which I don't offer, I would say I know exactly the right person that you could talk to for that.

And I've got a great person for this.

So anyways, Benji, I always enjoy our time.

What's one book

that you've read recently that's just been profound?

I'm looking at my bookshelf right now.

If we're going to go business, if we're going to go business books,

I've got two.

Principles by Ray Dalio is a must-read.

It's long, but it's something you can come back to every couple years and get new stuff from.

And there's another one that I read recently that I love and have given to a bunch of people called Upstream, How to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath.

And it's about, as a business person, training your mind to go upstream with your problem solving instead of downstream with your Band-Aid applying, which is ultimately the cycle a lot of us get stuck on.

And it really was paradigm shifting for me.

And it's really helped my

systems thinking brain develop.

So those would be two.

Principles by Dalio and upstream by Dan Heath are two winners.

Benji, what's the best way to reach out to you,

learn more about Leanscaper, or just connect with you on a deeper level.

I'm a good follow on on LinkedIn, Benji Carlson, B-E-N-J-I, C-A-R-L-S-O-N.

For anyone listening that's in the landscaping space, I'd invite you guys to check out Leanscaper.ai, just L-E-A-N-S-C-A-P-E-R dot AI.

We have built and are continuing to build what is out right now is our free minimum viable product that is already incredibly impressive.

Think of if ChatGBT was trained on all of the most specific landscaping data in the world, and you can get very precise and accurate questions to the most

granular questions you have about landscaping.

That's what it is right now.

And what it will become in the future is pretty exciting.

Wearable technology, agentic workflows, really cool stuff we're up to.

So I'd check that out now and give us a follow.

We're going to be building some really cool stuff, and we're incredibly excited about empowering this industry in a way that it deserves to be empowered for the next decade plus.

So Benji Carlson on LinkedIn and Leanscaper.i, if you want to check out our stuff.

And we talked about a lot of stuff, man.

I was really impressed with those six things.

Just the whole conversation.

I've got, every time I talk to you, I got more notes.

And some of it's just reminding things and some of it's just really cool observations.

I just love the way your brain works, man.

It's like creativity, curiosity, and recruiting that's changing and reward and dopamine release.

I just got so many great things that I know some of this stuff, but it's like, okay,

this is just so thoughtful.

And the way you answer questions are just, it's incredible.

I mean, your IQ is probably through the roof, Einstein level, but we talked about a lot of great things.

I'm going to have you close us out with whatever you want to finish for the audience to hear.

What I want to tell people right now is if you are in a truck, in a shop, in an office, you're growing a blue-collar business, whatever trade or craft you've chosen, I would ask you to be really proud of what you do and the path you've chosen and

take what you're doing very seriously.

There is a gold mine sitting underneath your feet that I want you to drill into and you will if you keep listening to the Tommies and you keep following the best practices and you keep investing in this thing.

There's a reason private equity is all about this industry right now.

And it's because it is the most technology and AI resilient part of the of the global economy,

our trades and construction.

And so be excited about the future.

Be nervous, be skeptical, stay up to speed.

This is a really good time to pay careful attention because I'm telling you, if you can be on the right side of the line,

the wealth creation you're going to make for you, your techs, your

is generational.

And so take the journey that you're on seriously and be incredibly proud of the path that you've chosen.

I love it.

Benji, as always, I appreciate you doing this, brother.

We need to do this more often.

Thanks, Tommy.

Anytime.

My pleasure.

All right.

Great work, buddy.

Hey there.

Thanks for tuning into the podcast today.

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

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

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

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

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

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