Q&A With Tommy - Refining Training Programs to Recruit and Retain A-Players

Speaker 1 I found that when my desk is clean, their desk is clean. I find out when I show up prepared to meetings, they show up prepared to meetings.

Speaker 1 What we're building is into some scorecards is what you say you're responsible for. You're going to pick your own goals and we're going to approve them and then you're going to sign off.

Speaker 1 Then we're going to put them in a space where everybody sees it and you're accountable to your brothers and sisters of the company.

Speaker 1 And what it's called in Robert Sitting, he talked a lot about it, is commitment. This idea of being committed to what you say you're going to do.

Speaker 1 And I said, hey, guys, I need you to keep your commitments, not to me, not to your brothers and sisters in the company, but to yourself. You created this goal.
You said you were going to do it.

Speaker 1 And then I'm tying those commitments, not just KPIs, back to the company, but back to what it means for you. How much money are you going to make?

Speaker 1 Are you really setting goals for yourself, for your physical, for your faith, for your family, for your future knowledge? And another thing I said at this meeting meeting is:

Speaker 1 I'm going to work on me a lot harder so I can help you.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

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

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

Speaker 3 To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So, I asked the team to take notes for you.
Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299.

Speaker 3 That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.

Speaker 3 I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.

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

Speaker 1 All right. Welcome back to the QA section of the Home Service Expert Podcast.
I'm in San Diego. Brie's birthday was yesterday.
She's 26, and we are going to rock and roll.

Speaker 1 We've got a wedding later tonight. Should be great.
So, lots of things to discuss today. I'm going to start out with just saying

Speaker 1 last week we had an internal meeting of all the marketing companies we work with, including our own marketing team. And the first thing I started with was, what are we responsible for?

Speaker 1 What are you responsible for?

Speaker 1 And we discussed a lot about accountability.

Speaker 1 We were making commitments to one another on what we were responsible for.

Speaker 1 Who's responsible for what we need to make sure we're booking every call we need to make sure we're hiring for capacity planning we needed to make sure that we're using dispatch pro properly we're writing big tickets on every job they're responsible for a lot and i told them like tom howard told me is

Speaker 1 listen if i had to fire my own mom for the best thing for the company I would do that.

Speaker 1 I'd make sure she had a lot of money and lives her best life, but I'm making decisions based on what's good for the company. And if a vendor does not fit in right, they're not good for the company.

Speaker 1 And so we're going to this next level of tracking.

Speaker 1 And we're working on the latest algorithms of Google. And there's a lot of things that we're responsible for as a company, like getting reviews, not just from Google, but from Yelp Next Door, the BBB.

Speaker 1 You know, some of our vendors allow you to get reviews. We need to make sure we're getting reviews on there.
We need to make sure they're everywhere and often with pictures in them.

Speaker 1 You know, the craziest thing I've been hearing lately is everybody's been like telling me like they think they're going to make their next best hiring change in the company.

Speaker 1 And here's my best advice: instead of pointing your two index fingers out at people, start pointing your thumbs at yourself. Literally,

Speaker 1 I think that you got to be accountable to what you're working on. You've got to stay accountable.
And I've never been more passionate about A1 Garage North Service.

Speaker 1 We've got so many meetings coming up to define the future future of the business. And 2025 is going to be a massive year, just breaking every single goal I've thought possible.

Speaker 1 It's never good enough for me. You know, I was talking to a buddy of mine yesterday, and

Speaker 1 actually it was Aaron Gaynor. You guys know who he is.
And he said, when we get 360 reviews, especially owners, it's never good enough. Like you always want more.

Speaker 1 You're always looking for the next best thing. You're always flipping the page.
And that's just who we are. We're hunters.
That's my DNA.

Speaker 1 But one of the things that I'm going into this new year is I got to celebrate the wins way more. So what I told my entire team was, how do I know if the warehouse guy is winning? Right?

Speaker 1 How do I know if someone on the marketing team is winning? I want to be able to call everybody and say, you're killing it. You're doing amazing.
You hit your project deadlines. You're doing amazing.

Speaker 1 And plus, I want you to have the ability. to know if someone's doing great.
It's easy to see if a CSR, a dispatcher, a technician, or an installer is doing great.

Speaker 1 But then another thing is each and every role, including my role as a CEO, including my COO, my CFO, is going to have a manual.

Speaker 1 And the way that I describe this to them about manuals with what I learned from L Levy. And they're like, how do you create a manual for a CEO or a COO or a CFO or a VP of corporate development?

Speaker 1 Well, you got to start, right?

Speaker 1 You got to start creating what your day looks like, what your responsibilities are. How do you know you're winning?

Speaker 1 Because if you can make make a detailed manual,

Speaker 1 eventually we're going to highlight things on your manual and hire you an EA.

Speaker 1 And then we're going to hire another person under you to take a lot of those tasks off the manual and the SOPs and the pictures and the processes.

Speaker 1 So, the way I'm describing it to my team is: if we've got manuals and standard operating procedures and checklists for your role, I can find someone else to come in and help you right away.

Speaker 1 So, now they're like encouraged to create these processes.

Speaker 1 So, going into

Speaker 1 the future of 2025, we're hiring the best consultants, the best vendors, and asking more than we've ever asked for our vendors.

Speaker 1 We're going to say, if it's not an A-plus player, can we get them to an A-plus player in three months? If not, how do we off-board them?

Speaker 1 We're starting to realize we've got to say a lot of great things to people and acknowledge when they're killing it because most of our meetings tend to talk about what we need to work on.

Speaker 1 So we're going to start the meeting with amazing things. I'm going to start texting and calling people a lot more on every team instead of just my technicians and installers and my senior management.

Speaker 1 And if I do it, I know everybody in the company will start doing it. What I found is when I started working out, everybody's working out.

Speaker 1 I had one of my favorite guys in the company, Jad, just text me. He's down 13 pounds.

Speaker 1 Luke, our COO, is down 10% body fat, getting ready for his wedding in January. I found that when my desk is clean, their desk is clean.

Speaker 1 I find out when I show up prepared to meetings, they show up prepared to meetings. What we're building is into some scorecards is what you say you're responsible for.

Speaker 1 You're going to pick your own goals and we're going to approve them and then you're going to sign off.

Speaker 1 Then we're going to put them in a space where everybody sees it and you're accountable to your brothers and sisters of the company.

Speaker 1 And what it's called in Robert Chittenden, he talked a lot about it, is commitment, this idea of being committed to what you say you're going to do.

Speaker 1 And I said, hey, guys, I need you to keep your commitments, not to me, not to your brothers and sisters in the company, but to yourself. You created this goal, you said you were going to do it.

Speaker 1 And then I'm tying those commitments, not just KPIs, back to the company, but back to what it means for you. How much money are you going to make?

Speaker 1 Are you really setting goals for yourself, for your physical, for your faith, for your family, for your future knowledge?

Speaker 1 And another thing I said at this meeting is:

Speaker 1 I'm going to work on me a lot harder so I could help you.

Speaker 1 And Jim Rhoans said that. Let me help me so I can help you.

Speaker 1 And what I'll say as well is that is I said, guys, I'd rather you focus on yourself more than you focus on A1.

Speaker 1 Truly, I'd rather you get educated, go do shop tours, go listen to podcasts. I'll pay for future education.
I'll get you a personal consultant to work with you at the one thing you're responsible for.

Speaker 1 The scary thing about hiring a bunch of consultants is none of them row in the same direction. So you're going to to have one, like Keith Mercurio works with Service Technique.

Speaker 1 He makes sure everybody's running in the same direction. So we got to plan for that.
I'm going to get into Q ⁇ A here because that's why you guys are here.

Speaker 1 But I like to catch you guys up on what we're thinking about within the company. And people think I'm crazy.
I talked to an amazing guy, Kevin Comforford, earlier,

Speaker 1 very successful part of the Rentch group. And I go, you know, I'm very honest.
I tell people everything that we're doing. He goes, it doesn't matter.
You know as well as I do, nobody's going to do it.

Speaker 1 And I said, no, I really think some of the people that pay attention and they read between the lines are actually going to do the work. He goes, Tommy,

Speaker 1 it's 1% of 1% of 1% that listen and actually apply the knowledge. I have people reaching out every day.
They're reaching out for board. They want me to be on their board.

Speaker 1 They want me to be involved in their PE company. They want me to invest in their software, their company.
I want to tell you guys one other thing that's pretty interesting before we get started.

Speaker 1 You think money is the solution for everything?

Speaker 1 I had 12 million in our account. I was invested in a lot of property.
I had a big Roth IRA and other investments, but when anyone did a transaction, a lot of money came in.

Speaker 1 And I didn't even know what to do. Luckily, I had really good people around me, Golden Sachs, Dan Miller told me how to set up the trust.
I had Jim Wesley.

Speaker 1 I had all these people that I could confide in.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, I had to learn what to do with it. And it's different from making money to keeping it.
And I jumped from one mountain to this massive mountain.

Speaker 1 And I had to learn what it was like to be on the top of that mountain. And now that I learned it, I'm headed to the next mountain.

Speaker 1 And I'll make this statement that the circle I'm in and the circles that I've been in. Unfortunately, I'm at the top of most of the circles now.

Speaker 1 So I got my buddy Sean McGraw coming to work with me.

Speaker 1 And he's introducing me to all these companies doing two, three, four billion dollars.

Speaker 1 And what I figured out is I'm going to be the bottom guy in that circle because we're not doing that much revenue yet or that much profit.

Speaker 1 And so they're going to teach me how to hike to the top of that circle, that mountain. And then guess what? I know who I am.
Let's face it. I'm going to find the next mountain.

Speaker 1 But instead of taking a week to hike that mountain, I'm going to do it in hours because they're going to give me the cheat codes, the right trails to hike up. But be very careful what you wish for.

Speaker 1 Money is not the answer.

Speaker 1 I know it's easy for me to say, but you think all this work that you do and the money comes and everything changes for the best, there's a reason there's a phrase, more money, more problems.

Speaker 1 Now you got people reaching out. You don't know who's real.

Speaker 1 I don't really have that problem because I've had a lot of friends before the money came. But I know that it's very difficult.

Speaker 1 And then people want to be these influencers now, these Instagram, Facebook. They want to be recognized.
They want to be famous. I was with Jeremy Miner the other night and he said, dude,

Speaker 1 he's not like super famous, right? But he's known for his sales ability.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 when you get to that point, you need to have non-disclosure agreements when people come to your house. You need to be careful that no one knows where you live.

Speaker 1 You've got to be careful that when you're with somebody alone, that they don't make up and get you canceled. So

Speaker 1 I be careful what you wish for, is my point here. I just, you know, you think you know what you want, and then when you get it, you're like, this is not what I expected.

Speaker 1 I'm, by the way, I'm super happy. I'm super happy.
If somebody recognizes me, they say, dude, you helped out the business a lot.

Speaker 1 I got a better relationship with my wife and my kids, or I'm doing more for my technicians than I've ever thought, or my CSRs are able to make more money.

Speaker 1 I enjoy what I do, but I decided I don't want to be Tom Cruise or Tom Higgs.

Speaker 1 It's just too much. And people listen to this podcast and they say, you know, they know me very well.
They might have listened to 300 episodes. They listened to 300 hours of Tommy Mellow.

Speaker 1 So when I see them, I give them a big hug. They know who my dogs are.
They know everything about Brie. They know every player on the business.
And

Speaker 1 it's a good thing. Like, I really, like, I understand that this is like, I'm trying to make impact here.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to start with some questions here. I'm working on a a couple books.
I'm working on an internal A1 book. I'll explain that later.

Speaker 1 I think I'm going to write a quick book. It's going to be gold of what I would do if I wanted to grow a business or buy a business and scale it quickly.
All the things I would do right away.

Speaker 1 I used to say I'd look at the KPIs and the org chart first. Now I look at the software first.
Because without the right software, the KPIs are not trusted.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to have a cheat guy to build a big business. A lot of people are stuck at a million, want to get to 5 million.
A lot of people at 20 million are wondering how to get to 50.

Speaker 1 A lot of people at 100 are looking to get to a billion. Well, we're well on our way.
I mean, we just, what's so cool with 20,000 customers a month, soon to be 30, is I shipped a couple of things.

Speaker 1 I'm already at a billion. And in my mind, it's already been done.

Speaker 1 So the next book I'm going to write, and this is going to be my masterpiece of life, is called Pay Them What They're Worth. That's what I'm going to be working on is

Speaker 1 if you pay people performance pay, you got to be very careful. If you do an equity incentive program, you got to be very careful.
If you do the wrong things,

Speaker 1 it could destroy your company. I had a buddy of mine, you guys know Gino Wickman, he wrote the book all about EOS and built a massive, massive business strategy for millions of companies.

Speaker 1 My buddy said he got destroyed by EOS. Literally, it broke them.
So I don't want to break companies. I want you to go into these things understanding that you got to do it right.

Speaker 1 So my first question is from Brianna.

Speaker 1 what software do you use to consolidate and view all of your reports and data from all of your software and systems so i'm going to talk a little bit about some of the major things that we use

Speaker 1 so how do you you know there's all these different things right you've got your fleet management you've got your gas cards you've got the monday board you've got ukg which your payroll software or paylocity or whatever it might be you've got intact or quickbooks you've got service tight and or house call pro

Speaker 1 we realized this was a problem at the beginning of last year so we use something called power bi there's another thing called domo there's uh grow.com those are three softwares where they pull in all the information into one dashboard that i can view and actually

Speaker 1 all the data by the way means nothing if you don't act on it So when you look at your data, and this is what happened with General Electric, because a lot of my team at the Tommy Mellow Ventures came from GE.

Speaker 1 They get all these fancy reports, but they didn't do anything with them. It was like more reports, more reports, more reports.

Speaker 1 You've got to have a report that you glance at and build action steps of what to do about the big holes with the data. So we're pulling in things from

Speaker 1 UKG.

Speaker 1 all about trying to learn about what's the turnover rate, when are the anniversaries of birthdays, what's the health care? There's all these KPIs that come out of that. Intact,

Speaker 1 I've never logged in. My CFO does all of that.
And my,

Speaker 1 you know, Lee Ann, which is financial planning and analysis, I got three people now with that. And they're dissecting the numbers, but I'm getting a feed from that.

Speaker 1 And then service time, there's a lot of feeds. So

Speaker 1 I say a data aggregator is a big one. So Simon says, hey, Tommy, I watched a few of your shop tours and looks like you use apprenticeship stages.

Speaker 1 You please walk through your training framework stages and what assessments and outcome trainees need to compete and move through the process to graduation.

Speaker 1 If you have any resources or people to look into, that would be great. So we're rebuilding the way we bring people in.
A lot more personality profiles. We're checking every reference.

Speaker 1 We're really looking for unicorns now. That's what we're going to be doing is all unicorns.
So we're rebuilding all the technology and the process in which we get people and the different places.

Speaker 1 We're building this ultimate attribution. So first is get the right people.
A lot of times they're not at Indeed Glassdoor as a recruiter.

Speaker 1 I want to be able to get in front of hundreds of A players a day and pick the cream of the crop.

Speaker 1 And I'm willing to pay people a lot more than they've ever been. I'm willing to give them a lot to come on board.

Speaker 1 because I got to shift them to come to us, but it's going to be paid throughout the first year. So get the right people on first.

Speaker 1 Next thing is they do ride-alongs and they do training within their own market for a month. And they're trying to learn.

Speaker 1 We're trying to learn about them. Do they show up on time? Are they sober? Are they scrolling on their phone the whole time? Do they smoke? Is their car messy? All these things.

Speaker 1 The first month is more of a trial, but they're learning the basics of garage tours.

Speaker 1 When they fly to Phoenix, they got to do this comprehensive test to find out how much they've learned. They get a bonus if they test well.
So they usually come in prepared.

Speaker 1 And then we're looking for them to learn three things that L taught us. Technical, operational, and sales.

Speaker 1 And I hate the word sales because it's just really making the right offers to the right customers at the right time.

Speaker 1 We're teaching them gross clothes rate, how to sell financing, how to park in the right spots.

Speaker 1 And they take two more tests and they do like a practical, which is they're working and doing a whole sales process with our trainers. We're even even bringing on new trainers.

Speaker 1 We're hiring a bunch of a lot more trainers right now. So, and then at the graduation, we've got a really nice graduation where we stamp it.
I sign it. We frame it.
It's a big deal.

Speaker 1 We got their families watching from social media into the group. We do a champagne.
It's like apple juice, but we do a toast at the end. I do a ceremonial speech.

Speaker 1 And then they still need another couple months of polishing. Just because they graduated doesn't mean, hey, they're out on their own forever.

Speaker 1 This is where they're going to find out where their weaknesses and strengths are. Jesse said, How do you know your revenue potential in a market?

Speaker 1 Example: We are in a rural market of a county with 70,000 population. How can you calculate the revenue potential without having to add markets? So, Tom Howard actually figured this out with Tyson.

Speaker 1 And what I could do is if you email into

Speaker 1 homeservicepert.com forward slash questions. I could send the video out to Tom Howard made, but literally, we're in 43 markets, so we can pretty much tell based on Google search terms.

Speaker 1 There's Google Trends, there's SEO, Moz, there's all these tools to be able to see what are people searching.

Speaker 1 And just from the search data, you can get a pretty good idea of what the jobs are going to be based on the competition in the market.

Speaker 1 But we're in places that are 100,000 all the way at like Sarah Vista, Arizona, all the Kingman, Arizona, Lake Havasu, Arizona, Prescott Valley, all the way up to millions and millions and millions like Phoenix.

Speaker 1 So because we've got all these examples, we pretty much know.

Speaker 1 But the revenue potential, what I would say is how good are you at converting tickets with your opportunity job average in comparison to the norm? That matters.

Speaker 1 Cody said, I'm a historic Masonry restoration artist offering two services with an average ticket of 10,500, an hourly rate of 381, and a 29.5 conversion rate.

Speaker 1 I work solo with support from virtual and personal assistants plus outsourced tasks to buy back my time. I charge $300 for consultations targeting high-end clients with pre-1930 historic homes.

Speaker 1 My KPIs show $300 consultations convert better than free estimates, but based on the time spent, the fee should be $950.

Speaker 1 Set two years ago before reading Alan Aurora's books. Am I losing opportunities with the $300 fee or should I stick with this approach?

Speaker 1 You know, here's the thing. I think people make a big mistake by charging a lot of upfront fees.
I would weed them out a little bit more, Cody,

Speaker 1 in the process in which they come through, not by the price, but by finding out if they're very serious. So I would fill out a questionnaire to make sure they're very serious buyers.

Speaker 1 And just to say something like, if I...

Speaker 1 You know, most of the estimates I give end up costing around this.

Speaker 1 I would build a weed out funnel because you want to start out knowing people are getting a good shake. You want them to commit.
We got to get that conversion rate up.

Speaker 1 How do you get that conversion rate up? 29.5%.

Speaker 1 You got to get a better filter. So figure out a better filter.
And I wouldn't use price

Speaker 1 to do that. Hey, we're going to charge you $1,000 just to sit down with you.
If you're ready, if you're slammed, and I mean you are really, really, really busy and behind.

Speaker 1 then raise your price to a thousand bucks. But if you need more work, I keep it lower, but I put a better filter in there.

Speaker 1 And then here's what I would also do: what's going on with the rest of that 70? You think they're not getting the work done somewhere? Maybe some of them aren't.

Speaker 1 But I'd have another person you could work with and sell those leads for an extra grand or two.

Speaker 1 Say, listen, I've got another alternative. This guy does great work.
This gal does great work. This company does great work.
I'd almost sell it for them

Speaker 1 and take more, like 70% of your leads are going to someone else. Why not monetize them? Travis said, I've been at one of your events.

Speaker 1 I had some good takeaways, but what happens when you need a hands-on coach, a mentor, and been robbed by the training groups that get you nowhere and want to teach your text shady sales tech

Speaker 1 sales tactics?

Speaker 1 Who can you go to for a mentor? Here's a little thing, Travis, that I need to tell you.

Speaker 1 Is every piece of free advice I've given away has been useless because very few people do the work.

Speaker 1 I have a buddy that used to do a lot of events. He said, I used to give away free tickets.
50% of the people didn't show up.

Speaker 1 There was no value.

Speaker 1 He said, I started charging $3,000 a ticket,

Speaker 1 and maybe I get one person not to show up, and I'd refund them.

Speaker 1 I think for some reason, it's not the consultant, but it's the person getting consulted that needs to pay a lot of money for it to actually resonate and sink in. We retired our whole lives.

Speaker 1 If it's valuable, if we paid more, like the experience, you experience it more. I'm a big fan of Dan Martel that says, buy like you want to be bought from.

Speaker 1 I'm hiring right now so many amazing consultants for different pieces of the business and different things that I have going on.

Speaker 1 And I'm recruiting, I'm getting consultants, I'm getting into the right groups. You know,

Speaker 1 I don't have a perfect answer for you, but I'll tell you this.

Speaker 1 If you find the right consultant, and there are a lot out there, most of the time it's not the consultant's problem. It's the consultee's problem.
They don't do the work.

Speaker 1 They're looking for a miracle. They literally want you to come do the work.
Like, thank God L Levy came to my shop. and sat down with us.
He did the write-alongs. He notated everything.

Speaker 1 He helped us write the manuals. You're not going to find, I got really, I will say, very fortunate.
God blessed me with a guy like El Levy.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm sure if you paid enough money, you could probably pull him out of retirement, but most people don't have the money that he would need.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'd imagine if you gave him half a million dollars, which I've always looked at, I'm probably going to pull Al out of retirement one of these days for other things I'm working on.

Speaker 1 But you're never going to get him full-time like I did. So, you know, if you're looking for somebody to pay 10 grand a month to, you're never going to find anybody.

Speaker 1 The right companies that'll come do the work for you, they're not cheap. And unfortunately, but they're good.
So I just, I'll leave it at that, Travis.

Speaker 1 Tristan said, what's the conversation and service setting presentation like for attempting to flip a customer to a repair to a new garage or install?

Speaker 1 What's the conversation like is

Speaker 1 here's what you need to do. Here's what you should do.
And if you were my mom, this door is old. It's dented.
The parts are worn out. The bottom rubber is wore out.

Speaker 1 You realize this is an uninsulated door. Did you know the garage door is 193.9 return on investment you know most of the clients we go out to

Speaker 1 they've had another company out there the last three years and it's five six hundred every time they miss a day of work have you ever thought about just resetting the clock because i can make this door and work perfectly but you know you can only put lipstick on a pig so much do you want to continue to kick the can or should we reset the clock and put something that's going to last a long time that's going to be insulated that's going to lower your electric bill, it's going to have all the technology, it's going to be quiet, it's going to be safe, it's going to have a high ROI, it's going to look beautiful, 40% of your Curba pill, the smile of your home.

Speaker 1 These things are what customers want. They ask us, they say, what would you do? And this is another thing.
I have to have my people believe that it's the right thing.

Speaker 1 So we're getting ready to say, hey, listen, you go buy your mama door. We'll do what it costs: $600, $700, $800, $900.

Speaker 1 Use the green sky financing. Use the, you know, we use a lot of the different financing.
We really mostly use Goodlep. But I wanted to walk through the process, number one, of using Goodleap.

Speaker 1 Number two, I think their parents deserve it. I want them to get a lot of selfies, show the customer that that's what they do.
We'll make it very cheap for them to pay it off.

Speaker 1 In fact, after a year with good performance, we'll just pay that loan off. I want them to go through the process.
I want them to start to install it. I want to take a video with their mom.

Speaker 1 I want them to use that at every call.

Speaker 1 So I think there's a lot to be said about going through the process yourself and having my cue on your phone and showing clients. This is what I did for my own mother.
This is her right here.

Speaker 1 Here's a little testimonial I got done for mom, and I love my mom.

Speaker 1 It's not shady, it's a good thing to do. You should take care of mom.
In fact, if my mom's watching right now, mom, we're getting ready to replace your door.

Speaker 1 Make sure you follow up with Brie with the door you like. Let's get it past the HOA.

Speaker 1 And by the way, that's going to be a new commercial for us: me going to replace mom's door that's only three and a half years old no problems with it carlos you mentioned handyman often struggle because they don't specialize i agree with this point you also highlighted that customer retention is critical to a successful business my questions number one i'm considering creating a service membership package that offers benefits like seasonal inspections and quarterly maintenance services do you have any experiences with similar programs in your business yes we offer a service agreement And I call it our protection plan.

Speaker 1 I mean, here's the deal, Carlos. Why would you buy it today? It's got to be such a great offer that it just makes sense.
Like, what do I get today? Do I get some type of gift card?

Speaker 1 Do I get a discount? I'm learning from Robert Chardini that it should be a gift card. So, first of all, how do I convert to get the service agreement? Second thing is, why do I keep it?

Speaker 1 The emotion lets me buy it. What is the logic backing it up for me to keep it?

Speaker 1 Could you provide more details on how you structured the pricing and marketing for these packages? What has been the customer feedback and retention rate since implementing these services?

Speaker 1 So, my best advice, Carlos, is don't do service agreements until if you're not booking 92%,

Speaker 1 if you don't have a high-ass average ticket, if you don't have a brilliant high conversion rate, if you're not have attribution perfectly figured out and your prices aren't at the top of the market, everyone tries to do a service agreement.

Speaker 1 Tom Hauer will tell you out of every client on service 10, he's only been able to find two that has monetized them correctly. Everybody talks about it, but very few people could figure it out.

Speaker 1 So I wouldn't, it's kind of like, ooh, I need a dream manager program. Ooh, I need that cool trainual program.
Ooh, I need to do all this stuff.

Speaker 1 I think the main thing you need to do is have a good work chart manual standard operating procedures. Figure out your price book.
Use your CRM like it's meant to be used.

Speaker 1 Hopefully service type.

Speaker 1 I think get the... everything else dialed in.
Make sure you've got new trucks. Make sure you understand how depreciation works.
Make sure you go through Dan Antonelli for kick charge.

Speaker 1 Get the brand right. Get the SEO started.
Get reviews coming in every day. Service agreements should be the very last thing.
And I know A1's been selling them. I think we've got 70,000 members now.

Speaker 1 It's a massive, massive amount of money coming in each week, each month, I should say. We charge $12.95 or $13.95, $12,000 or $13.95 a month.
And we got work to do. And it's not an easy task.

Speaker 1 I think it could be a great one if done properly, but I wouldn't focus on on it until everything else is done right.

Speaker 1 All right, now I got a lot of questions here. Let's see what we got.

Speaker 1 Does your performance pay for installers vary from service sales tax? Of course it does.

Speaker 1 Technicians got a scorecard that are based on average ticket, believe it or not, and that goes into conversion rate. We do look at memberships.
We look at... Did you use financing?

Speaker 1 Because financing tickets are higher. We look at callback ratio and your average review.
We pay a lot of attention to the scorecard and then they get a percentage of the total minus the parts.

Speaker 1 That's also how they move up in the company. There's three levels they can move up.

Speaker 1 And then if they want to turn into a traveling tech with Matt team or Onlaver's team or they want to move to a product specialist, they have to have the right scorecard.

Speaker 1 Then we look at turnover rate, obviously. We call that gross close.

Speaker 1 For installers, we do sole hours. So we look at a job and we give them kind of a benefit of the doubt.
This takes two hours. We'll give them an extra hour.

Speaker 1 And then there's an opportunity to still sell if you're an installer and they get a higher.

Speaker 1 See, the technician already sold everything. So if the installer goes behind them and sells more, we pay quite a bit more on that.

Speaker 1 We're trying to incentivize Deco hardware, search protectors, little things, adding a strut, an oversized bottom rubber. anything we can get the installers, but they just don't like to sell.

Speaker 1 Only like two of them out of like the 50 I got sell.

Speaker 1 So it's it's built like a mechanic with sold hours. And if you ever look at like Kelly Blue Book on how like you could go through, there's like 10 different things that you go through the page.

Speaker 1 And it says this transmission takes seven and a half hours. The mechanic is paid seven and a half hours, even if it takes nine or if it takes six.
So great mechanics can make a lot more money.

Speaker 1 Sir, I'm going from one location doing 3 million to three locations next year. What's your best advice?

Speaker 1 Well, Angel, I could tell you, I wouldn't go from one to three. I'd go from one to two.
Make sure you're getting a lot of reviews. Reputation is everything.

Speaker 1 Make sure you get advanced verification done. Make sure the reviews are everything when you go into a new market.
You've got to go into these markets.

Speaker 1 Let's just say you wanted to do 10 million. I would be putting $3 million into branding and marketing my first year.
30%.

Speaker 1 Knowing I'm not going to make money my first year, but you got to get the brand. You got to get the reviews.
You got to get the jobs. You got to get the vehicles, the rolling billboards.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of people, they go in and it's going to take you 10 years to to build a market unless you put the money into marketing and branding. So there's a little bit of advice.

Speaker 1 I've established ambitious goals for the company this year, but I find myself questioning

Speaker 1 their realism when we fall short. My managers often say that nothing is enough for me, but I just see the potential of the company and I'm very ambitious.

Speaker 1 This is why we call it, we've got three goals for the company, and then we've got the Tommy goal.

Speaker 1 See, if you were doing every role in the company, Vitelli, if it were you working every position, yes, it would be possible, but nobody else has owner next to their name.

Speaker 1 I think one of the biggest issues I see is that your kind of goals and your dreams assume that everything goes right. And what I've learned how to do over the last few years

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 set a budget that somebody could hit. You know, this year we're about 35%

Speaker 1 EBITDA growth. Not where I wanted to be.
In fact, I think it's a failure. But we're beating budget.

Speaker 1 When your team helps you build a budget, you know, they say it's safe to grow at 10 to 15% a year. I would not plan on growing much more than 30 to 40% a year.

Speaker 1 Now, don't forget that your budget is how you pay your yearly bonus structures.

Speaker 1 You know, if you set a budget that you can't hit, you know, one of the things my CFO told me is, You know, Tommy, my main goal is being the CFO of this company is to make sure we hit budget.

Speaker 1 And it's a reasonable budget. It shows really, really strong strength.
We're beating every other company in home service.

Speaker 1 He goes, but if we continue each and every year to hit budget, typically when we go into our next deal, somebody will pay us out for the entire year of the budgeted number because we've never missed budget.

Speaker 1 So you want to set something you can hit that challenges people,

Speaker 1 but also they know they can hit. Everything doesn't need to go perfect.
And like I said, me and all my buddies, we tend to push, push, push.

Speaker 1 And it's never going to be good enough. And you're just going to have to deal with that.
And by the way, it will never change.

Speaker 1 You know, you would think, let's just say the company next year does 90 million of EBITDA. It's probably worth, you know, billion and a half dollars.
Half of the company's mine.

Speaker 1 You would think 750 million, that's pretty good. It's a lot of money.
I don't know. It feels like monopoly money, but.

Speaker 1 It's not even close to what I feel like we could be doing.

Speaker 1 So I had a great conversation a couple of days ago with my buddy Brian K.

Speaker 1 And he said, I want you to sit down. And this is what he does with people because so many people are focused on revenue instead of profit.
So many people.

Speaker 1 If you're not focused on profit and you're not at 15, 20%,

Speaker 1 you know, don't even talk about revenue. Downsize the company a little bit and focus on profit.
But how much money would it take for you?

Speaker 1 to live in a beautiful house, have the cars you want, live a good life, help out your family. Work towards those goals because it goes by a quick man.

Speaker 1 And you'll have another decade go by and you're still chasing a dream that you don't know why you dreamt it. You're like, because I could, because I should.

Speaker 1 And that's okay, I guess. But I always say, do you have kids or do you have a wife?

Speaker 1 Because Dan Martell tells a story of he shows up 12th date night in a row that he was late for dinner three hours and his uh

Speaker 1 his fiancé at the time the wedding ring was sitting on the table and they had a note that this is the last, this was the last straw. I love you,

Speaker 1 but we're not going to get married.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he calls her up and says, I'm doing this for us.

Speaker 1 And she said, no, Dan, you're doing this for you. This was never our dream.
This was your dream.

Speaker 1 So when you set big ass goals and they're crazy, You better make sure they're for you both and your family and your kids are running in the same direction.

Speaker 1 And you better make sure this isn't a 10-year project and you walk away after 10 years with nothing to show for it.

Speaker 1 So I would start working backwards from what's going to make your life a lot of impact. And that includes family and faith and fitness as well.
Popsicle air, remember the name.

Speaker 1 Let's go, Zach.

Speaker 1 How did you learn working through people? What skills did you have to develop? And what make you go with Dan Martel rather than Patrick Pet David?

Speaker 1 Well, I met Dan Martel. I mean, look, I'll probably work with Pat Pet David.
I'll probably work with all the guys.

Speaker 1 I mean, at the end of the day, the funny thing is I make more money than all of them combined, but they've got each things to be learned from. And I love these guys.
They're very smart.

Speaker 1 And I got something to learn from them. I'm genuinely curious from everybody I meet.
I find mentors and I extract. Like Dan told me, he goes, I work with a mentor for a year.
I extract everything.

Speaker 1 I implement it and I go on to the next one. And now I'm at the point I could have three or four.
So I'm just,

Speaker 1 I'm pulling it all in. And what's nice about this podcast is you guys are getting all of it.
You guys are getting, like you pay attention and you implement and you read between the lines.

Speaker 1 You're getting a million dollars poured into you every year. I think the major thing I learned to do is find people that bought into my vision.
And if they buy into my vision

Speaker 1 and they get some type of equity incentive program. And they're willing to run hard.
I ask everybody to give me one Saturday out of the month. I'll take off a Tuesday.

Speaker 1 They need to understand how I work, which is relentless. That's the best way to say it.
If they're bought into this, we'll do well together. If they're not, I know about that right away.

Speaker 1 Then you got to delegate. And they use LED's eight steps of delegation.
We're starting to make a lot more commitments to one another, and I got to start from the top.

Speaker 1 And deadlines and proper communication and documentation and signatures on things no one's going to do the job as good as you

Speaker 1 so just understand

Speaker 1 that we want to talk very seriously about business and moving forward but people need to know they're doing good they need that of boys see i don't need that that's why i'm at the top you know i guess jesus is uh Jesus Quartet gives me a few add-a-boys, but I don't need it.

Speaker 1 I never needed it. The hardest person I have to deal with is myself in the mirror.

Speaker 1 And knowing that I'm giving 110% to the right things, what I'm trying to do is focus on where my time's going right now, because often it gets misguided.

Speaker 1 My mom asked me last week how she gets an appointment on my calendar.

Speaker 1 And sometimes I take time for people that are actually on this podcast, and I'm robbing from my mom.

Speaker 1 I want to help everybody out,

Speaker 1 but I don't want to rob from Bree.

Speaker 1 A1 needs me. I've got partners that need me,

Speaker 1 family that needs me, dogs that need me.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to be harder to get a hold of because I want to use this forum to answer questions. And I want people to respect that.
And a lot of people have ideas they want to run by me.

Speaker 1 But we had 235,000 downloads last month. If 10% of the people

Speaker 1 wanted to

Speaker 1 run ideas by me, that'd be 23,500 I'd have to listen to a month. If each of those took five minutes,

Speaker 1 you know, whatever, that would be over 100,000 minutes per month I'd be listening for the 10-minute idea.

Speaker 1 So the reason I'm saying this is getting very focused with your time and understanding, can I delegate this or do I need to do it? And I'm starting to delegate a lot more. Let's see.

Speaker 1 What can you recommend recommend on how to interview and hire the right attorneys to assist in building an EIP structure? Or is there a different professional service provider you would recommend?

Speaker 1 You know, Tate, just email me. I've got a good lawyer for this.
You get the wrong one. You're playing with fire.

Speaker 1 Equity is not something you fool around with and get the cheapest lawyer. My lawyers have done this a lot.
They're conservative lawyers. They're not cheap.

Speaker 1 It costs me a lot of money because they built a cookie cutter because I sent so many people to them. By the way, lawyers can't give you a kickback.
It's illegal.

Speaker 1 So don't think I'm fattening my pocket by giving you their name. It's lawyers, it's a fiduciary responsibility.

Speaker 1 They're not allowed to give anything, but I would at least talk to them and find, you know, here's who I would ask. I would ask them, like, look, here's what the business is today.

Speaker 1 They might tell you it's not the right time to do an equity incentive program. So just email me, you know, go to homeservicexpert.com forward slash questions.

Speaker 1 Met Dan Martell last week. I suggested the future collab project that could be Tommy Martello Ventures or Dan Martello Productions.

Speaker 1 That's great. I love it.

Speaker 1 If you ever listen to Dan, by the way, he's very good. He's got this photographic memory where he reads books and he knows how to apply them quickly.

Speaker 1 Dan is a combination, just like I am, of a lot of good mentors and books. But the difference is Dan applies it very well.
Dan and I want different things. Dan wants lifestyle businesses.

Speaker 1 I want to create companies to sell because here's what happens when you sell a company. A lot of people get generational wealth and break the curse.

Speaker 1 He wants to help them make money along the road and just continue to build this lifestyle business. But, you know,

Speaker 1 he's doing what he wants. I'm doing what I want.
Gerald said our conversion rate is around 75% currently.

Speaker 1 I don't charge a service fee because we're trying to get as many calls as we can, but my guys are converting pretty good

Speaker 1 so i always ask the conversion rate service versus sales and you got to separate those two if you're over 60 65 percent and uh product sales raise your prices uh and services should be over 90 someone calls you with something broken you got to get the job started and fix it you shouldn't be shooting you know for this guy on service tickets.

Speaker 1 You should be starting the reason they call you out and then giving them options afterwards.

Speaker 1 Tommy, how do you stop your employees from leaving you and opening garage door companies and being your competitor? How much competition did you already create?

Speaker 1 How much competition, you know, there's a few companies. Here's what I realized about a lot of my technicians.
They're very good at what they do. They don't know how to form an EIN number or an LLC.

Speaker 1 You know how hard it is in marketing right now with what Google's doing? You know what I told everybody in yesterday morning's meeting for Thursday, Bring the Fire, all 800 employees?

Speaker 1 I said, hey, we got another great guy that came back to us after two months. I said, If you don't believe in yourself and me and this company,

Speaker 1 give us your two-week notice, please. Please give us your two-week notice.
Leave on good terms. Go leave for two months, and we'll see you in two months.

Speaker 1 I said, I'll even write you a letter of recommendation. I said, Because when you find out what it's like, that feast your family, have a great week and a zero week.

Speaker 1 Everybody thinks, oh oh man, they have no idea

Speaker 1 how many smart people are on the A1 team working and running in the same direction. You've got HR, you've got taxes, you've got CRM setups.
And people are like, look, I don't need all that.

Speaker 1 I could have a small business. I could have five employees.

Speaker 1 Well, you better pay them good.

Speaker 1 Have we created some competition? Very little compared to like precision and garage, you know, GDS.

Speaker 1 We pay more we give them equity we take them on pinnacle trips we have meetings daily we show them if they're doing great or not we give them paid training you know we give them a new truck we buy their tools we cook for them

Speaker 1 how do you keep them well i want you to write down for me igor

Speaker 1 write down 100 reasons why somebody would work for you

Speaker 1 And ask yourself this. Why would I work for me?

Speaker 1 Are you a great communicator? Do you tell them you love them? Do they have opportunity to move up or out of the truck? Do you give them new trucks? Do they get paid training?

Speaker 1 Do you ever recognize them with a gift card to their favorite restaurant? Do you ever call their wife and tell them how great they're doing? And

Speaker 1 you're so proud of their family. I don't do all these things, but

Speaker 1 Lord knows I'm trying and I'm actually getting better.

Speaker 1 And I will be doing them all come January.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Carlito said, you're the best, Tommy.
I really appreciate that.

Speaker 1 How much vans should I have on the road before I pull out of the field and become a full-time manager?

Speaker 1 You know, Al Levy would probably tell you five, and you become a field supervisor, and you still got a van, but you're just checking in. I'll tell you this.

Speaker 1 Michael Gerber said, work on the business, not in the business. What I did is I always had a vehicle that I left at the house for three years.
Whenever we were having a bad day,

Speaker 1 Adam would call me and say, hey, dude, we needed some major sales to come in. I'd say, line me up.

Speaker 1 I'd go run three jobs, murder them, get a referral, get the reviews, find out the HOA president, go talk to the neighbors.

Speaker 1 I was like the secret weapon you'd put in when you needed like some serious, serious conversion revenue.

Speaker 1 So that's probably what I would do if I were you.

Speaker 1 So Justin Tarn said, talk about how pin parallel works. It's funny because I just had a company in town doing a shop tour,

Speaker 1 and we were sitting down in the conference room. They got about 30 minutes of my time, and they said, Dude, Pin Parrot, literally,

Speaker 1 we had the wrong locations. So sometimes your locations are wrong.
So Calen's pretty smart. He'll tell you where to put the locations.
You got to claim your location page is right.

Speaker 1 You got to get the right citation sites.

Speaker 1 There's certain things to set up the GMB correctly that Pin Parrot kind of does for you. And then it hooks up to your CRM.

Speaker 1 So when pictures are getting put into your CRM, the software posts the pictures. It tells Google you were there.

Speaker 1 And it expands the search query when people are searching for HVAC or roofing repair or garage repair.

Speaker 1 And what happens is you go from a few calls a day on your free Google listing to 10, 20, 30, 40 calls. And then he helps you to find other locations, set up more showrooms and training centers.
So,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 it's kind of the unfair advantage. Pin parrot is the unfair advantage.

Speaker 1 Jimmy said, thank you, Tommy. I appreciate everything you do.
It's exciting watching your mindset shift to how much time we have in life to enjoy our family.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm an overnight success, Jimmy, of two decades. Remember that.

Speaker 1 When opening a new location, do you promote from within or do you hire green?

Speaker 1 I'm willing to pay somebody. a crazy amount of money to move to a new location.

Speaker 1 If I know a guy's killing it, I can breed technicians in Phoenix.

Speaker 1 I need to get them to move to another location. That's like, I have to have that.
So you want your top guys moving to a new location that believe in the mission and the vision of the company.

Speaker 1 Vincent Johnston, my main man, invaluable coaching. Yep.
Looking good, man. Thanks.
I got to shave. I didn't shave yet today.
We're in San Diego here.

Speaker 1 It's kind of hard to see, but it's beautiful out there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like, dude, I'm getting, dude, I'm about to get chiseled. I'm putting on 10 more pounds of muscle by the end of the year than I'm going to get cut.
And it feels good. I'll tell you this.

Speaker 1 I feel like I got a lot of energy.

Speaker 1 Super awesome presentation at Mile High. Need to get together soon.
Let's go, David. I have two years with my HVAC company.
Hardest thing for me is finding clients.

Speaker 1 For that, I think I need marketing, but I don't have enough to pay for marketing. Any idea how you can get out of this loop? Yeah, well, here's the deal.
I mean,

Speaker 1 that's the hardest part about getting the business up.

Speaker 1 You've got to network more.

Speaker 1 I guess it's Juan Carlos.

Speaker 1 When I didn't have a lot of money, dude, I'm knocking on the door bringing donuts to realtors. I'm showing up to BNI.
I'm at the Chamber of Commerce meetings. I'm always meeting somebody.

Speaker 1 I could build a business in your market in six months where I am busier than hell with zero marketing. It's through relationships.

Speaker 1 I see people just like, it's almost like you're sitting here by the phone waiting, praying, ring, ring, go do something.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be, this is tough love, Juan Carlos. Get your ass up and freaking go get what you deserve.
No one's going to give it to you. You want a six-pack?

Speaker 1 You better work out and eat right.

Speaker 1 Tough love, brother. Go out there and get it.
Thanks, Lisa. What a reasonable goal for new.
What is a reasonable goal for new locations in the first year compared to established like half?

Speaker 1 a reasonable goal so

Speaker 1 depending on the industry you're in pick a goal three million or five million and spend a fourth of that as at a bare minimum in marketing but you got to do the marketing right do you know how hard it is to greenfield that's why private equity loves the companies that can greenfield

Speaker 1 the people that i know that greenfield they've got machines You can't even imagine. They got outbound dialers, people knocking on doors, they're buying information and email blasting.

Speaker 1 Like they create a machine. If you fill out an applicant, an application for getting like a leaf fitter, you're getting a call every five minutes for the first three hours.

Speaker 1 The next day, you're getting a call, an email, and a text. They got a four-month campaign.
They're going to come knock on your door.

Speaker 1 And you guys are saying, I called them back once and they didn't answer.

Speaker 1 Look. You've got to have a machine and the machine needs to be robust and automated.
And this is something that Chirp could help with.

Speaker 1 with but chirp's not all of it you got to have a lot more than just chirp i mean chirp does the heavy lifting but you still need to have a machine

Speaker 1 i've been in business for three years i have a ton of commercial accounts that have that feed me and take care of my two guys i spent a ton of a ton on marketing companies to get a my residential side going i've used scorpion

Speaker 1 yeah and other large companies they hit me up every week like no uh as well as small companies that say they're specialized in plumbing all seem seem to struggle with getting things going.

Speaker 1 I have given

Speaker 1 eight months each time. They seem to tell me the same thing we need to up the budget to get more.
But when I get started, they period, period, period.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll tell you this. Look, I put

Speaker 1 hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars just in SEO.

Speaker 1 When you compete against me, how do you win? Well,

Speaker 1 how do you eat an elephant bite at a time? I mean, listen, what can you do better than the large companies? Relationships, BI meetings, asking questions. You can get more reviews.

Speaker 1 What I would do is go off for free, like free snakes, plumbing snakes. I go door to door.
I say, listen, I'm in your town. I'm a small company.

Speaker 1 You can get the big companies that'll charge you 10 times more. Let me snake your stuff.
Let me put a sticker on your hot water heater when you need me.

Speaker 1 Let me give you guys, if you guys, if your flanges are going, let's not wait for your toilet to leak. All I ask

Speaker 1 is we let me know if you think I did a great job. If you're slow,

Speaker 1 you go out there and do the work and get the ton of reviews. You could win at these things.

Speaker 1 But I'll say this, but I know no one's going to do the work. I hate to say it, but

Speaker 1 you want leads. And the problem is, if you're not charging enough, you'll never have the marketing dollars.
I mean, some people say I want a $2,000 marketing budget.

Speaker 1 I spend a million a month just on pay-per-click. That's not even including anything else.
How do you compete? It's hard. You got to play in a different game.

Speaker 1 Pull them into your arena where they can't compete, the David and Goliath. So think about everything you could do that the big guys can't do, but you can't compete on ad dollars.

Speaker 1 You just can't because your tickets aren't high enough. You don't have enough training.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you might be able to have two guys, but you can't have 40 guys in the market that could compete against my guys. How could you? I've got managers on on top of managers.
I call them coaches.

Speaker 1 We've got trainers in the field. We've got ride-alongs.
They're coming back to the warehouse. They got daily meetings.

Speaker 1 I can pay them way more. They got better insurance.
They got new trucks and tools. I started like you, but I had to work my freaking tail off seven days a week, nights, weekends, and holidays.

Speaker 1 A lot of people say I went into business to have freedom.

Speaker 1 Five years of sweat equity minimum, and then you got to reinvest everything in for the next 10 years for an ROI

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 do what I I do.

Speaker 1 What's the name of the company again? I'm not sure what company. I named a lot of them.

Speaker 1 Just post in the comments the question. Diverse and measurable lead gen, strong conversion rates and gross profit per project.
Sawyer, but turnkey systems effectively implemented.

Speaker 1 What other key factors should I place to maximize the multiplier on equity transfer?

Speaker 1 I mean, I think you named it. You got to have the highest booking rate, the best follow-up systems in the league.
And I would make sure you got a recruiting system.

Speaker 1 You can recruit A-plus players quickly. And then how long before they turn into an A-player? And how much are you turning over? The HR side of it is important.

Speaker 1 The next thing I talk about is what's your ability to get vehicles and iPads and tools when you need them? Like, how quick can you do it? Then I look at what's your reputation.

Speaker 1 How much are you focusing on reputation? Got to focus on reputation. By the way, I want to test something out.
I got 19 likes here.

Speaker 1 Can everybody where they're watching hit the love button and show some love? I just want to see if we can make this jump up 100 real quick. It's at 19 and that's 19 is weak sauce.

Speaker 1 19 is Steve Eiserman's number. There we go, 27.
It's moving. It's moving.
Let's go. 35.
There we go. More jumps.
More jumps. In Georgia, we are at the same point.

Speaker 1 Used a few companies and not much results. About to start Pimpaired to see what happens.
So Pimpaire is going to help people. Like, look, guys,

Speaker 1 what if I told you the yellow pages still works? What if I told you Angie's list works? Yelp works. What if I told you my paper performance works? There's a science to each of them a little bit.

Speaker 1 It's not like a one-size-fits-all approach. Even Facebook ads work really, really well.

Speaker 1 In fact, we're starting these out, and I think we're going to be able to generate more money from Facebook than we do from Google.

Speaker 1 But what I can tell you is, sometimes it takes six months to figure it out. And it's not this spray and pray approach.
I did TV, I did radio, I tried this for six months.

Speaker 1 I was talking to a billionaire from Anderson's Renewal, owns a bunch of areas. What he told me was,

Speaker 1 dude, when I do mailers, I got to hit these clients up 10 times to get them to buy. You know, he's got a big average ticket, you know, an average ticket of 38 grand.

Speaker 1 But everybody thinks, man, I ran an ad for two months and it didn't work.

Speaker 1 See, it's almost like you're running, you're running towards the end zone.

Speaker 1 right at the five-yard line you spike it right before all the leads turn on so you got to figure out what you can afford and stay consistent with it and on that audience.

Speaker 1 Thank you, Tommy. We all love the knowledge that you share.
I would like to know how to replicate this in the automotive repair services. Brandon Dawson, yeah, good.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 there's a guy I should tell you about, Miguel.

Speaker 1 If you want to know how to do it in the auto services, I just spoke in Nashville,

Speaker 1 Aaron Stokes.

Speaker 1 Man,

Speaker 1 Stokes, look him up. I can get you an intro to him.
The dude is one of the smartest guys I've ever met. He's a business genius.
He understands exactly how to

Speaker 1 the automotive. By the way, my dad owned a mechanic shop, a transmission shop.
I know a lot about automotive. And here's the problem with automotive, man, is like, dude, I brought Brie's car in.

Speaker 1 They wanted 30 grand. I got my DeLorean fix.
That was 30 grand. Like, I don't mind spending the money, but do things above and aboard.

Speaker 1 Detail the car, like make it smell good, like restore the leather, like add some type of value when you do stuff. Make them remember you forever.

Speaker 1 Man, I'm stuck in a situation where I can't get enough work to get a full-time crew, purchase more equipment.

Speaker 1 Josh, Lenara called me the other day with Service Titan. He told me I'm one of the few companies that he sees in the entire system that's up.

Speaker 1 He said, since Service Titan has started, and Service Titan has the best, biggest, largest companies, 12,000.

Speaker 1 He said, this is the first first year tommy that i've ever seen a massive decline in all the companies except for 18

Speaker 1 so this is kind of like being in the housing crisis this is where it's going to shake out all the people that really

Speaker 1 they're not willing to do the work you've got to go after the relationships i'll say this till i'm blue in the face you got to go meet the people you got to be doing outreach on facebook posting in the city pages asking for business networking if you're not a networker and you're not comfortable in front of an audience introducing yourself and you're not willing to work on your days off,

Speaker 1 you're not going to build a business, not in this economy. Two years ago, you could fart in the wind and it would spray money at you.

Speaker 1 Literally, I see you could fart in a jar and sell it. And that's what Brie does for her birthday.
I'm kidding. She's sitting right there.
But it's not easy to make money.

Speaker 1 Listen, it's not easy in this economy to make a lot of money. I will help.
I've got a lot of ways to do it, but the first one is get your ass out there and meet the people.

Speaker 1 When is it time to hire a CFO?

Speaker 1 Well, you need a really good bookkeeper, and I would hire a fractional CFO.

Speaker 1 Fractional CFOs you could get for far less, but they could give you, you know, a half a million-dollar system to plug and play. So you need to get your numbers dialed in,

Speaker 1 dialed in.

Speaker 1 I got a good guy. I'm probably going to pull into the HSF group to help everybody.
Love meeting you at Pantheon. Thank you, Amanda.
I appreciate it. Pin parrot.
It's not pin parent.

Speaker 1 P-I-N

Speaker 1 parrot p-a-r-r-ot-t.com power selling pros is definitely worth it if you have two csrs because a shitty csr is booking at 50 60 they'll get you to 90

Speaker 1 that's a 30 to 40 percent uplift hell yeah it's worth it they they charge you based on per csr so absolutely

Speaker 1 sign up listen If you sign up for Power Selling Pros and you're not making way more money, call me. I'll get them to get you a refund.
I know Brigham really, really well. I know those guys well.

Speaker 1 Sign up for them. Have them work for you for 90 days.
If you're not saving your, you know, a buttload of money and booking more calls, then call me up and I'll see what I can do.

Speaker 1 Mobile fleet maintenance for home service companies, advice from a one-man show in the field, still looking to grow and get out of the field to focus on sales.

Speaker 1 What are some big picture items that I should focus on? I have a hard time managing B2B sales cycles with these companies when still out in the field.

Speaker 1 Harrison, the first thing I would do is hire somebody like the top guy you could find in the world and let them be your protege.

Speaker 1 Hire your wife or your girlfriend or his girlfriend to come film everything. Start making videos and cataloging everything, transcribing those and building your manuals.

Speaker 1 You need to get a trusted person that you could groom exactly the right way, how to talk to clients. You need to duplicate yourself first.
Focus on that and record it all, the camcorder method.

Speaker 1 Start to log all these things. Make sure you got somebody tied in that's not going anywhere.
You could depend on. That first tire is going to be very, very important.

Speaker 1 Spend the next year training them. Make sure you give them the tools that they could train other people.
Then you get into the office and you build the business. That other person wants the jobs with.

Speaker 1 Now they got a protege. So now the next year they're training a protege.
Now you got a couple.

Speaker 1 The sad part is when you don't treat them right, you teach them all the stuff and they leave or they get hurt or something happens, but most of the time they stay buying a small two-man show business in a service area that we are not currently in what is the best way to go to market with that company after it has been purchased so the best thing is to take the existing customer list email text write a handwritten letter to every customer next thing is to call every single client and get on a you know offer a very affordable tune-up The next thing you want to do is go through their Google My Business, call every one and two and three star review.

Speaker 1 You can track it back to the database and tell them it's under new ownership. We're embarrassed about what happened.

Speaker 1 We're going to do whatever it takes to change your mind about our company because the owner is just really, he's on top of this and he wants to see what we can do to earn a five-star instead of this one or two or three star.

Speaker 1 That's a good beginning. Then you got to get regular reviews coming in.
You got to retrain the technicians. You got to get them smiling more, making more eye contact, getting the right tools.

Speaker 1 Rewrap the trucks. Highly recommend like Lance Bachman does, like I do.
You buy all Dance and alley brands you don't have a shitty brand so you re

Speaker 1 did the brand you got the gmb you got rid of all the negative reviews you retrained the guys now you're going to start other marketing and hire a couple more guys and you've remonetized the list

Speaker 1 i believe you have said that if your marketing is not done effectively it should not only solve your lead problems but your recruiting problems as well.

Speaker 1 Can you provide a couple specific examples of what is including your marketing content that are creative, the design for that purpose?

Speaker 1 Well, Well, listen, I just, this last few months, I've been getting testimonials from all my guys, my top guys. I've been getting their wives involved.
You got to create a funnel to get great people.

Speaker 1 Go onto your website. One of the things we're redoing is, how can you apply here? It's massive.

Speaker 1 On your ads, are you putting, we're hiring and have a QR code and say, if you know anybody looking for a great job, we're hiring. Just a little thing on all your marketing.

Speaker 1 Are you getting reviews on Indeed and Glassdoor? Because that's where your future employees, which I consider coworkers, go to find you.

Speaker 1 You know, these things are important, and I don't think people take it very seriously. You've got to figure out how to build a funnel and make sure there's a high conversion rate.

Speaker 1 Just like your marketing dollars, you need attribution. You need to find out how quick it is to respond to an application.
Same things happen for employee leads.

Speaker 1 You guys look at it the same way as marketing leads.

Speaker 1 Listen, guys.

Speaker 1 I got Brie sitting here. We got a wedding later.
I got to get going. You know, the first thing they wanted to do was cancel this.
And I'm like, we don't cancel the QA's.

Speaker 1 It's an amazing group of people. And it wasn't mean canceling for long term, just, hey, we're on kind of a trip, kind of a vacation.
But it's a Friday, it's a work day. So here we are.

Speaker 1 I hope you guys get value. I want you to understand one thing.

Speaker 1 When you go to the doctor, and I go to the doctor, and Bill goes to the doctor, and Gina goes to the doctor, and Rebecca goes to the doctor.

Speaker 1 Most likely, the doctor is giving a different prescription, depending on how you're feeling, you know, your age, how much you're working out, what your diet's like.

Speaker 1 Each and every one of you needs a little bit of a different prescription.

Speaker 1 Some of the things I say holistically, you need reviews, you need to get an orchard, you need manuals, you need to get on the right CRM.

Speaker 1 I recommend new trucks with the right branding, but I don't have a one-size-fits-all.

Speaker 1 The last thing I want to do is give you advice that might hurt your reputation, or like I was talking about my buddy that did EOS, ruin your business. I like to tell you that this is all generic.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you you this. I was talking to Jim Leslie earlier.

Speaker 1 Jim Leslie, if you go to homeservicefreedom.com and just fill out a form there and talk to Jim. Jim's really good.
He's worked with me at A1. He was my CMO.

Speaker 1 He just gives you these little things to turn and he doesn't charge to just have a conversation.

Speaker 1 I think we should do a webinar. I think we should do a webinar each month of how these things are applied and where to start at the right time.
But HSF, we're doing a lot of cool stuff, man.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be hiring fractional CFOs, getting you guys focused on profit, making sure you've got a plan to get reviews, building API hunks, getting the things like PinPair and the other 80 vendors we have that we get you guys rebates.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you guys understand, but just the program, you get my newsletter, you get the rebates on all the vendors we use. Another thing I wanted to say is, I don't take a paycheck from HSF.

Speaker 1 I hope you guys understand I get paid zero. I hire more people to help your business.

Speaker 1 And the facts are down the road, most likely, the people that do the program and are successful, that do all the right stuff and show up to the meetings, I'm going to invest in.

Speaker 1 I mean, for me, it's a way to find out who's real or not. A lot of people, they talk, the talk, they got all the ideas in the world.

Speaker 1 Not a person on here out of the hundred on here right now don't have great ideas and thoughts. Very few of you do the work.
Very few of you show up. Very few of you implement.

Speaker 1 So when I find somebody that's an expert implementer, I I want to do business with them. So, I hope you guys have a great day.
I hope you have a great weekend.

Speaker 1 I hope you guys, I know there's a lot of issues. This is a tough economy.
We're going through an election. Interest rates are dropping.
I think next year is going to be a great year.

Speaker 1 So, appreciate you guys. If you guys have any more questions, I didn't get to all of them and I apologize.
Just go to homeservicexpert.com forward slash questions and leave them there.

Speaker 1 And I'll get to them on the next round. You guys have a fantastic day.
Appreciate you.

Speaker 3 Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

Speaker 3 I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization.

Speaker 3 It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

Speaker 3 So if you want to learn the secrets to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700-plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

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