Getting Smart With Your Marketing to Stay Ahead in A Highly Competitive Market

Speaker 1 More competitors enter offering a little more for a little less until eventually no one can provide any more for any less.

Speaker 1 At this point, a market reaches perfect efficiency, and the business owners participating make just enough at the end of the month to keep going.

Speaker 1 The bottom 10 to 20% of operators get washed out or lose this.

Speaker 1 When you decrease your price,

Speaker 1 you decrease your clients' emotional investment since it didn't cost them much.

Speaker 1 You decrease your clients' perceived value of your service since it can't be that good if it's so cheap or priced the same as everybody else.

Speaker 1 Number three, decrease your clients' results because they do not feel the value of your service and they did not invest and are not invested.

Speaker 1 You attract the worst clients who never satisfied until you give it to them for free.

Speaker 1 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 1 Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mellow.

Speaker 1 Hey guys, what's going on?

Speaker 1 Let me just go through a few things real quick. Obviously, if you have not read the Home Service Millionaire yet, please do.
It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast.

Speaker 1 If you haven't seen the course,

Speaker 1 Home Service Millionaire, it's course.homeservicemillionaire.com.

Speaker 1 And we have a free Facebook group that you should be joining. It's Home Service Expert on Facebook.
It's free. A lot more contributors coming on in the next month.

Speaker 1 Amanda was here earlier with Grasshopper. They're out of

Speaker 1 northern New York. And she's doing great.
She's speaking at a couple of events. She brought a couple of her team members.

Speaker 1 Always love sharing and just shooting the shit with people that are like-minded wanting to win. I think we opened up some, shed some light for her.

Speaker 1 And she said, You know, Tommy, what's the one thing you want me to leave with? And I said, Those four KPIs we talked about.

Speaker 1 Make sure they're accurate, make sure you have data integrity, which are your average ticket, your conversion rate, your booking rate, and your cost per acquisition.

Speaker 1 Because with those four things, I could fix any company. And I said, They got to be perfectly dead on.

Speaker 1 Oh, the new book is coming out in March 4th, which is my birthday, March 4th.

Speaker 1 So make sure you're there to buy the book.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be 40. The book's called Elevate.
It's book.elevateandwin.com. Book, period, elevateandwin.com.

Speaker 1 And let's see a question from Byron here.

Speaker 1 As a small plumbing company in its second year, Where would you put your marketing money for advertising in an extremely saturated market?

Speaker 1 We are struggling getting work from Yelp and Angie other than Google Local Service Ads. Well,

Speaker 1 a lot of people don't understand this, but you could rank a Google My Business page. So

Speaker 1 if you just look up how to rank a Google My Business page, but there's a new term for it, but reviews posting on Google a couple of times a week on your page helps.

Speaker 1 Citation sites, link building from local links. Better Business Bureau, pay for that link.
It's very powerful. Get reviews there.
But here's the real deal.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to go back to 1960 for a minute here, Byron.

Speaker 1 It's all about relationships. It's the gift that keeps giving.
Today I got a text message from Robin, one of my great technicians.

Speaker 1 And he said, hey, man, I blew this guy away. He's absolutely elated.
He's a happy man. He's going to be using us for all his groceries.
And he owns Bird Street Real Estate. And he builds custom homes.

Speaker 1 He said he's using us from now on.

Speaker 1 Imagine if we met two custom builders a day per market. Imagine if we went and invited all the fire,

Speaker 1 we took turns with the firefighters and the police and the mayors and we invited them in. Imagine if we had a course for realtors on what to check for for their garage or whatever you do.

Speaker 1 Imagine if we met up with landscape architects and we had referral bonuses and we had every single employee reach out to their neighbors in HOA about us because we asked for it.

Speaker 1 I think we just depend on good SEO and we got great ratings on Angie and we're doing home advisor and thumbtacks going okay. The good old fashioned go out there and get it, go out there and network.

Speaker 1 There's nothing better than networking. And now there's influencers that people trust.

Speaker 1 And if you can locate those influencers, and there's a, if you look up how to find a local influencer, you find out a lot. It could be TikTok, Instagram.
It could be house, H-O-U-Z-Z.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of opportunities, but I'm going to tell you what. We're headed for a recession, Q2, Q3.
Then we're going to bounce back rather nicely is my guess.

Speaker 1 And an election year, the economy always does okay because everybody wants to get re-elected, Republicans and Democrats.

Speaker 1 So I think 2024 is going to be a nice year, but you need to double down on relationships. That's what I'd like to see you do, Byron.

Speaker 1 Kirst said, Should all companies trademark their name, hostel operation?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And get everything. Here's what you don't know.
Not only trademark, but copyright everything.

Speaker 1 Dan Antonelli and I had a conversation a few months ago about not only trademark, but copyright.

Speaker 1 It's just something like it's a prerequisite. Like just get it done.

Speaker 1 Unless you plan on being a small company for the rest of your life and not selling it and not doing anything with it, not giving it away. You should definitely get that done.

Speaker 1 So the GMB team, it says how to deal with GMB support team. You know, there's people that are verified partners.
They're GMB verified partners. They can get stuff up and running.

Speaker 1 So Vatelli said, How would you deal with a GMB support team? They suspended you before you even opened the page.

Speaker 1 Well, there's people that have relationships that get to Google a lot faster because they've got partners at Google. Because they manage a lot of accounts, they've got better access.

Speaker 1 So people out there everywhere. Google verified partners.

Speaker 1 If I had to tell you, network relationships are paid marketing,

Speaker 1 you could always pay to play.

Speaker 1 Relationships don't cost a ton. They'll do whatever you ask.
They'll leave you five-star reviews.

Speaker 1 They'll become a raving fan a lot easier than paid customers that you paid for. So if I had to ask, relationships are the best form of marketing anybody could ever use.

Speaker 1 You know, a lot of people ask me, why did I go speak at the landscaping summit?

Speaker 1 you know, all these different things I do. And the first thing I say is, listen, if you guys live in one of the 20 states we're in, please use A1 Garage Door service.

Speaker 1 We'll treat you right, we'll take care of you. You can see how our business runs.
And secondly, I know you guys have a lot of local companies across the country.

Speaker 1 There's probably a lot of garage door companies. If any of them want to sell, please let me know.
If any of them want to have a life of prosperity, let me know.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of options, and I'm probably getting three leads a week just for companies. And this is what it's all about.
And listen, I learned a lot at the Landscaping Summit.

Speaker 1 I've learned a lot at all these speaking events I I do.

Speaker 1 So, just like I tell people to go and get out of their comfort zone and visit other shops, I like to go to these other events for other industries.

Speaker 1 A builder for Dallas wants to pay $7.56 for a 16.7 including install and $3.49 for an opener install.

Speaker 1 See, I'm working on some crazy shit with the manufacturers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they only want to pay that amount. So, what I would tell them by telling

Speaker 1 is I'll give you that price.

Speaker 1 Now, you go to the manufacturers, work out a special deal but then you say one condition i'll get you the lowest prices imaginable but i want to know the customer's information and i want you to set up an appointment with me the day they move in and then i'm going to talk about deco hardware i'm going to talk about upgrades for the opener i'm going to talk about add-on installation i have a guy that specializes in it just push it in I talk about the flooring and the storage that you could add on.

Speaker 1 I program the cars and I sell them on a service agreement. And all of a sudden, your stickers are in there.
They know who you are. And,

Speaker 1 you know, this is probably not the right thing to say, but I'd probably use super low-cycle parts if the guy's going to pay that cheap.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to be out there and say, Do you want these two-year parts after it breaks in two years? You're building yourself future business.

Speaker 1 Cody said, What is the ratio of text to dispatchers to CSR? Everybody's going to have their own. I think what last time I looked were,

Speaker 1 I want to say for every nine techs, there's a dispatcher, and for every,

Speaker 1 I think we're at about 22 calls, averaging four. So it's like five to one for a CSR.
Because here's what you got to say. How many calls could a CSR book? Right?

Speaker 1 Well, how many jobs can a guy run? A guy could run, let's just say, four jobs a day. And you realize the CSR

Speaker 1 is able to book 20. Four calls, 20.
They're managing five. That's how you get your answer.
Does that make sense? Hopefully it does. You got four calls

Speaker 1 run,

Speaker 1 they get 20 opportunities that they book, the CSRs, 20 divided by four equals five. So they could handle five.
That's how you get your ratios.

Speaker 1 So, if I was doing a dispatcher, I'd say, How many technicians and how many jobs can a dispatcher handle?

Speaker 1 And you say they could probably handle 40 jobs a day, they'd run four calls, so it's 10 to one. So, you need 10 technicians to one dispatcher.
That's how you kind of back-end into that ratio.

Speaker 1 At what financial revenue level should I look for a financial controller and what pay level?

Speaker 1 So hopefully you read the book, Double Your Profits in Six Months or Less by Bob Pfeiffer.

Speaker 1 Some of the things he recommends in there is never let anybody else sign your checks. You should be the signer.
Make it hard to order stuff. Otherwise, people just, you'll see packages of Amazon.

Speaker 1 Somebody will need a stapler when there's a stapler in their drawer. I mean, you get a lot of wasted spending.

Speaker 1 I think a controller, a CFO, and usually both of them is the most important position in the company because I know how to make a lot of money. Trust me.
My main KPIs, I've already talked about them.

Speaker 1 But keeping it is another story. I was always able to make a lot of money.
I just couldn't keep it. The controller will help you keep it.
So you need a controller right away.

Speaker 1 Get a really good one because they'll help you renegotiate deals. They'll get you better tax incentives.
They'll allow you to get better credit card points. The list goes on and on.

Speaker 1 Can you afford not to have one is the question?

Speaker 1 Let's see here.

Speaker 1 I went to Vertical track this october and got all of alan roared stuff which chatted for 30 seconds lol my prices are 2x now that i have a budget customers are all saying too expensive and i even think it's expensive too what to do

Speaker 1 well

Speaker 1 you read this book

Speaker 1 called 100 million offers by alex or mosey

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, I've talked about this before, but let's just see what other companies do. Most business owners are not competing on price or value.

Speaker 1 In fact, they are not actually competing on anything at all. Their pricing process typically goes something like this.
Number one, look at the marketplace. Number two, see what everybody else offers.

Speaker 1 Number three, take the average. Number four, go slightly below to remain competitive.
Number five, provide what their competitors offers with a little more.

Speaker 1 Number six, end up at a value proposition more for less.

Speaker 1 And the big secret is those competitors who they are copying copying are dead broke so why on earth do they copy them pricing where the market is means you're pricing for market efficiency over time in an efficient marketplace more competitors enter offering a little more for a little less until eventually no one can provide any more for any less at this point a market reaches perfect efficiency and the business owners participating make just enough at the end of the month to keep going The bottom 10 to 20% of operators get washed out or lose this.

Speaker 1 When you you decrease your price, you decrease your clients' emotional investment since it didn't cost them much.

Speaker 1 You decrease your clients' perceived value of your service since it can't be that good if it's so cheap or priced the same as everybody else.

Speaker 1 Number three, decrease your clients' results because they do not feel value of your service and they did not invest and are not invested.

Speaker 1 You attract the worst clients who never satisfied until you give it to them for free.

Speaker 1 I go on and on. It's an amazing book.
So let's just talk about this for a second. Let's just run through this.
Raise your prices and sell oranges when everybody else is apples to apples.

Speaker 1 Market to the affluent people that want to buy. Create an offer so good you feel stupid to say no.

Speaker 1 And if you're selling the same shit as everybody else, I can't sell you this freaking commodity with another one.

Speaker 1 Unless this one looked a lot brighter and I cut it open and it was beautiful and it gave me three times as much juice. They look the same on the outside, but this is a much better value.
Sell oranges.

Speaker 1 This just happens to be on my desk.

Speaker 1 desk apples to apples i sell oranges no one can compare all my prices no one can look up i've got my own trademarks on all the parts so if you just want to be the same as you were and not deliver a superior experience you cannot confidently say i'll tell you what

Speaker 1 if i didn't change to new vehicles and i didn't have great uniforms and two months worth of training and brand new tools for every technician the state-of-the-art equipment and software brand new iPads with the best in the business.

Speaker 1 100 technicians apply, one gets a job. I couldn't keep my prices where they are.
But the fact is, people are buying peace of mind. You guys should read the book, Blue Ocean.

Speaker 1 And what Blue Ocean says is simple. I got a blender.
Here's how most people sell a blender. Oh, there's my.

Speaker 1 It chops, it slices, it dices. It's easy to wash.
It's got 10 speeds. You're going to love it.
It's dishwasher safe. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 Features and benefits, bullshit. Blue Ocean says, this is unlike any other blender.

Speaker 1 What happens is it crushes the seeds of the fruit and vegetables and it breaks the nutrients out in a way that's going to give you a longer life. It's going to brighten up your skin.

Speaker 1 It's going to give you more energy. It's going to give you more time around those loved ones.

Speaker 1 If you're just selling somebody rollers or something stupid because you think it needs it, you say, here's what's so great about these rollers is it's not only going to save you a lot of money.

Speaker 1 It's going to be nice and quiet, but here's, then you take them down a pain funnel. And I say this: have you ever gone down the freeway with your brakes on? Hopefully not, with your emergency brake.

Speaker 1 Well, that's what these rollers are doing right now. They're shot.

Speaker 1 Sales comes into being able to charge the right price.

Speaker 1 And when you read the book,

Speaker 1 W Business Six Months or Less, the later chapters, and it's on Audible by Bob Pfeiffer, you'll start realizing how to maximize opportunities. You never want to be the price leader.

Speaker 1 If your customers are saying that's too much, it's because you're not very good.

Speaker 1 Prices relative to value. I can keep going on this.
I love this subject, by the way. I think it's a great question.

Speaker 1 What is your feeling on service to high-end clientele? Any future A1s in Connecticut? Yeah, you know, I do want to be in Connecticut.

Speaker 1 Higher clientele, here's what my dad taught me. Three things customers want.
Fast on their timeline. Same day.
Number two, they want it done right, lifetime warranty, best parts, peace of mind.

Speaker 1 Number three, they want it done cheap. Pick two out of the three, and here's what you get.
My customers don't care about price.

Speaker 1 You know, I used to be a price shopper. Now we just want it to last long with a great warranty and just not have to have issues because my time is worth something.
And my clients' time,

Speaker 1 a lot of my clients make 10 grand an hour, literally. Like the Paradise Valley and around the country.
Some of them make 500 bucks an hour.

Speaker 1 But when something breaks and they miss a whole day, those are my clients. They don't need to find the best store.

Speaker 1 They want to find somebody that's going to show up now, do a quality job, and make them different offers. Because if you're not giving different offers and options, you're giving ultimatums.

Speaker 1 So anybody that talks about price, come up with them and never call it the cheapest. Call it the most economical.
Hey, we've got another option for you.

Speaker 1 And as Joker started, I would say, what should we do?

Speaker 1 Is door-to-door still effective? My area, it seems no soliciting is almost on all houses. What's a good alternative to door-to-door?

Speaker 1 So I've seen air conditioning guys. I've seen window washing guys.
It depends on the industry, but you just knock on the neighbor's door. You say, listen, we're going to be climbing ladders next door.

Speaker 1 The HVAC guys have the crane. You just knock on a few houses across the street and you say, listen, what's your name? Yeah, I'm at Rebecca's house next door.
She's just wonderful.

Speaker 1 I just want to let you know we're going to be making some noise. If I make any noise at all, here's my card.
This is my cell phone. You call me up personally.

Speaker 1 And then you simply say, listen, if you like, we're doing a free checkup on everything, why we're here. It's a great opportunity.
We're not here to sell anything.

Speaker 1 Obviously, we're working on Rebecca's house. You overwhelm them and make them into a raving fan.
And that's the best way to solicit. It's just around the three or four or five neighbors.

Speaker 1 And depending on the industry you're in, it works great. And it doesn't really feel like soliciting because you're there just saying, listen, if I make too much noise.

Speaker 1 So, what are other things other than door-to-door? Door-to-door is the hardest. I talked about relationships.
I was just in Tampa visiting Amanda Tress, the best micro-influencer in the world.

Speaker 1 And they do well over 200 million all through network marketing. And I'm building the same thing for home service.
And

Speaker 1 all I would say is

Speaker 1 when we build this this out with our software,

Speaker 1 it's going to be like going fishing with a shotgun, you know, shooting fish in a barrel. It's not fair what I'm building right now.

Speaker 1 And it starts with networking and saying what's in it for them and to get people to use their relationships, but always deliver exceptional quality.

Speaker 1 Because if I get a deal from the neighbor and I do a lousy job, they're not going to be very happy with that neighbor.

Speaker 1 So if you're not a great, great, great company with great, great, great employees with great vehicles, great training, great tools, great products.

Speaker 1 Then don't be into network marketing because you're going to get a lot of people that hate you and you're going to ask for a lot of refunds. Let's see, Richard Diglio.

Speaker 1 Digilio.

Speaker 1 This is my 30th year in the electrical trade and I consider myself one of the best electricians in my area.

Speaker 1 I feel like my trade is night and day when compared to plumbing or HVAC regarding both job and ticket size and annual revenue.

Speaker 1 Do you think an independent electrical residential service business could grow to 20 million plus size?

Speaker 1 I have always felt it would need to be addition to HVAC and plumbing to have a large commercial electrical portion to achieve this size.

Speaker 1 But if I was an electrician, first thing I'd do, and I've got a whole theory on this.

Speaker 1 I'll let it out of the bag because not a lot of people are going to figure this out. But, you know, Tesla and every electrical car is going to need electrical wiring, right?

Speaker 1 There's a lot of government stimuluses out there and tax credits and all kinds of good stuff from the government to do it.

Speaker 1 Now, the problem is storing energy is expensive, but what if you had a landscape company that they left their batteries there and you gave them their batteries and they did everything eco-friendly?

Speaker 1 There's so many opportunities. I could build the whole brain of the house in the garage.
and then have an access point through my queue, which is the lip master. I think there's so many opportunities.

Speaker 1 You look at solar, you look at batteries, you look at electric driving. You look at my buddy called in Pittsburgh.
His electricity went out for two days. He lost all of his food.

Speaker 1 He couldn't find a company in all of Pennsylvania. He tried to find 10 companies to give a generator.
So I would love to see what you're going after. And just understand one thing.

Speaker 1 Once again, you're not an electrician to everybody. You need to find out who's your customer.
And go after the top end, but be the best in the industry. Give the best warranty.
Give the best parts.

Speaker 1 I don't know how to help people that choose I'm going to be cheap. I can only help people fast, reliable, good warranty.
If you choose cheap, I just, look, I got a great mechanic in Milwaukee.

Speaker 1 He's six months out because he does a quality work,

Speaker 1 but he's cheap, but he's six months out. So you can pick two out of the three any way you go.
So if you're affordable.

Speaker 1 And you're quick, you're putting cheap parts and you don't have great technicians and they're used vehicles. They're breaking out all the time.
They're not reliable parts.

Speaker 1 And they don't do a good job. They don't have the training.
They don't have the background checks. Like you can, two out of the three any day.

Speaker 1 You can make a lot of money. I believe you can hit your goal into just electricians.
You see, nobody said I could ever hit this goal in garage drawers. They said you're on crack, bro.

Speaker 1 And the problem was, is HVAC, they still say HVAC is the best industry. Well, GarageDrawers is soon going to pass HVAC

Speaker 1 because we're adding flooring and storage. And it's all in the garage.
But whatever you believe, it will come true.

Speaker 1 So if you think you got to add HVAC plumbing in your head, you'll be able to get over that mountain. And maybe that's what you need to do.

Speaker 1 But if I were in the electric business, it would be 100 million.

Speaker 1 John Dean, systems. How do you manage them? I have procedures for how to perform at a prospects estimate meeting.
One for this, one for that. I followed LEV with manuals.

Speaker 1 Do you store all your systems and procedures in the manuals or do you store them in folders and share it on the cloud? Ours is on the cloud.

Speaker 1 If your sales manager knows there is a way to do XYZ but cannot remember, where does he turn to? Or do I tell the person who manages the process to store all this info?

Speaker 1 So I'm reading this book. It hasn't come out yet.
It's called Come Up for Air, and it'll be coming out here in a month or two.

Speaker 1 Getting everybody on the same systems and choosing those systems like Monday.com, Slack to communicate, project management picking the technologies and training them on them and making things as easy as possible i think as you start getting bigger and some people are using microsoft 365 or 360 and some people are using the gmail suite

Speaker 1 i think if i were you we use a drive for everything you could search for the word and it'll find it And then the deal is,

Speaker 1 I'll give you an example of how we use the manuals.

Speaker 1 October, everybody's asking for PTO. So, the way our manuals work is everybody's got to initial each page of the manual and say they understand everything.

Speaker 1 The tattoo policy, when you're supposed to call the customer, the eight-step process, the sales side, the financing side, how to keep your trucks. They initial, they sign, they put the date.

Speaker 1 And then we bring it back up when we have a lot of issues, whether it's gas cards or tattoos, or the hats are all, you know, the front of them are white from sweat.

Speaker 1 We go over the procedure of how to request a new hat we go over the procedure of how to get pto because everybody wants pto on thanksgiving and christmas so we read the manual al levy recommends once a week we don't do it that much but it's a good practice to do that but i'd use the drive

Speaker 1 and i'd make sure you know adam adam cronenberg was the best at this what he always said was

Speaker 1 there's a spot for that i think you know where to find it Then on the back, there's a content like a

Speaker 1 glossary on the back. You just look it up by the letter and then you just keep it a living, breathing document and keep adding to it.

Speaker 1 And if your guys get questions all the time and it's not in the manual, you got to add it to the manual.

Speaker 1 Cole said, question regarding your manuals. Do you have in your manuals for technicians or installers? Breakdown, tasks, et cetera, of how to do the job they are doing.

Speaker 1 How to service the garage or spring motor? How to install a new track and door. Yes, we built a whole manual for that, Cole.
Soup to nuts.

Speaker 1 how to install rollers how to install track how to do a motor genie versus lift master how to do a gear and sprocket uh the safest most efficient way we built the manual i think that's like 80 pages we built an install manual too

Speaker 1 peter said we grew fast and

Speaker 1 now always feel like we're stuck in a tornado how do we slow down to implement policies or how do you prioritize them this is peter with ron sewer at minnesota and new member well you got to know when to slow down because if you keep growing, it's like, I've been where you're at, Ron.

Speaker 1 And you need to identify the biggest issues that are going to set you free. You grow really, really fast, you catch back up, you grow again.

Speaker 1 And when Al talked to me the first time, Al Levy, he said, you're going to hate this time because it's going to be so easy. It's going to be so vanilla.
There's not going to be a lot of challenges.

Speaker 1 It's going to just seem like days are flying by because everything's going so smooth. And man, he hit the nail on the head because we built the business around systems, not people.

Speaker 1 You see, the systems pick the people. That's what a lot of people don't understand.
I don't build a box around the people. I build the box and put the person in to fit that mold.

Speaker 1 And yes, we do personality profiling, but building a great order chart, having a special way the office is organized, having the exact same trucks, the exact same parts, the exact same inventory systems.

Speaker 1 I can't tell you. It's going to help you.
It's going to seem vanilla. You just need to get a few things dialed in perfectly.
You don't need to be good at everything.

Speaker 1 You just need to get some core things really, really good and your life will get easier. What I would do is build a log of where I'm spending my time, where all the fires are coming from.

Speaker 1 And look at your day and say, it seems like we're having a lot of issues. I'm putting four hours into this a day.
Solve that one first.

Speaker 1 What I did on my org chart is I circled the thing I hated the most. And I'm like, this is so annoying.
HR, payroll, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I hired someone good in that position.

Speaker 1 And I will tell you, HR is hard to hire. We went through a few roles on that.
Vincent said, best desktop phones and best headset for CSRs to use.

Speaker 1 We are using Ring Central. We are looking into another phone system.
Vince, let me get back to you on that because we're currently, we use Dialpad, but there is issues with Dialpad.

Speaker 1 I'm building a massive call center in Mexico. It's going to be amazing because they're going to respond in Spanish, English.
They came to the United States for their master's degree.

Speaker 1 In a perfect world, I want to help people answer calls because I haven't found a good call center yet. And we're going to start using AI.
So it's going to be amazing.

Speaker 1 But Vince, do me a favor, send me a text message. I'll get you the answer of what we're looking at.

Speaker 1 If I only had three books to read, what would they be?

Speaker 1 100 million offers.

Speaker 1 How to win trends that influence people.

Speaker 1 The E-Myth, and I'm going to give a fourth one, the ultimate sales machine by Chet Holmes.

Speaker 1 Josh, tell your techs to spend more time with the client, build relationships, got to find a way to add value, advertise for better clients. You know, Cody was just saying that.
Here's the deal.

Speaker 1 I like my guys to spend 45 minutes with the clients, 45 minutes before they even start talking about the garage. You know, if a doctor walked in and said, open your mouth, here's your prescription.

Speaker 1 You probably, they can never charge what they do. They sit down there and they say, so.
What's your anxiety level? How's your diet? Are you drinking? Are you smoking? How are the kids?

Speaker 1 How's the old lady? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the doctor gives you a prescription.
You say, okay, doc, thank you. Appreciate it.
You got a relation with your doctor.

Speaker 1 Same thing that should happen for home service.

Speaker 1 Are you planning on starting A1 home services and go into HVAC business? Or are you willing to partner with a home service company with a decent-sized database?

Speaker 1 Cross-sell Rogers and HVAC if you haven't already. You know, I'm putting some big, big, big things together.
I think the whole home service industry is going to be changed here in about two years.

Speaker 1 And I got it all right here. And that's what all these notes are about.
There's over 100 pages that I wrote last night.

Speaker 1 So I'm literally putting all this information into Google Docs. And then I'm going to find out who I need to meet with.
I want a plan A, plan B, plan C.

Speaker 1 And then I'm going to do test markets. And really, it's about these relationships and how I can make them intertwine.
But The fact is I know everything about home service. I understand technology.

Speaker 1 I've used Amazon home services.

Speaker 1 I know my vendors well i know the builders i know the people building technology i understand service titani i know house called pro i know sarah i'm in a very unique position and one thing you know you guys know we're working with core tech right now and doug talked to me for a while and as a normal entrepreneur i have a lot of ideas and he goes

Speaker 1 well here's our goal we've kind of got a massive goal he goes

Speaker 1 how does everything you do each day and there's a lot of things you can't put value on like tell somebody happy birthday or great job, your best day ever, or congrats on working here in five years.

Speaker 1 But how does everything you do work towards this big goal?

Speaker 1 And what does this big goal mean to you and your family? What do you hope to do? You're going to become a philanthropist. You're going to take a lot of your family to Italy.

Speaker 1 But just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. Now, what I'm telling you, the reason I'm saying that is I probably, I'm interested in partnering with anybody and everybody.

Speaker 1 I'm going to do other home services, but HX is not on the list right now. Too many good friends in the industry.

Speaker 1 Have you ever thought about expanding into Mexico? Well, we get all of our trucks from Mexico and Utili Master and Dodge.

Speaker 1 I would say it's not crossed my mind, but if you could talk me into why I would go into Mexico, I would definitely think about it.

Speaker 1 This conversation that Tommy's giving right now proves that

Speaker 1 we shouldn't charge more, but proves that most of us don't believe we should charge more and that we don't value our worth. Yes, I agree.

Speaker 1 How many sales reps do you need to keep two trucks running full steam?

Speaker 1 Depending on the industry, I would run no more than three to four jobs a day. So, two trucks, I would need.

Speaker 1 I don't understand the question. So, maybe ask the question again.
I mean,

Speaker 1 my guys are my sales. So my technicians sell and they do the work.

Speaker 1 So maybe,

Speaker 1 maybe rephrase that.

Speaker 1 Thanks for the great advice. Got a window cleaning business in Southern Connecticut focusing on servicing a high-end residential clientele.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm probably going to get into Christmas Slice down the road, and I want you guys to think about something.

Speaker 1 What could I do? to make the whole community talk about me.

Speaker 1 What if we had a website that we had volunteer carolers and the the Callers would stop by any house we did Christmas if we wanted to?

Speaker 1 What if we had Santa Claus pay a visit and we did photos of the family with Santa Claus and then we Facebooked, we literally tagged them on Facebook and we sent them a frame picture in front of their house because it costs like eight bucks online with shipping.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's a million things that

Speaker 1 we give them a free timer that's installed permanently. And we say, we're going to give you this.
You got to pay for it up front,

Speaker 1 but you get to keep it.

Speaker 1 i'm always thinking how do i differentiate myself and offer something completely off the wall that no one else is people get christmas slates because they want to feel good they usually have kids they want to feel or they're having a holiday party what if you were able to set up a holiday party with a bartender like figure out what they want get the bartenders lined up you make a piece of the bartenders You make a special price with a bakery for the cakes, whatever you want to do.

Speaker 1 I say this thing has so much legs and you deliver such a great experience that they're like, the money's not an object. You just got to market to the affluent.

Speaker 1 And there's money to be made in the non-affluent. There's money to be made.
I mean, you can make a fortune in Section 8 housing, not doing Christmas flights.

Speaker 1 What do you do to get your technicians to have that above and beyond mentality, to go 100% every job that they walk into and not settle for anything else? Well,

Speaker 1 First thing you do is you find out, do they dream? Do they want more for their lives? Do they have

Speaker 1 And then you remind them constantly of their goals and what they're trying for.

Speaker 1 But sometimes you got to pill the onion back because sometimes you'll realize that the goals aren't quite what they say they are. Maybe the goals aren't what their parents wanted for them.

Speaker 1 But it's the hiring thing, first of all. You want to hire competitive guys that are hungry, that want more for their lives.

Speaker 1 And number two, I've seen coaches take D players on a football squad and make them into starting lineup best players on the team.

Speaker 1 So it really is leadership and constant reminders and continuous development and investing in your people that's important.

Speaker 1 What length of shift do you expect from CSRs on duty? Example, eight, 10, 12 hour shifts.

Speaker 1 So we use Grow.com and we built out, Jim Leslie built out the most effective call center software you could ever imagine.

Speaker 1 There are times that no one really wants to work, so we pay more for those hours. I don't want my CSRs working more than eight hours.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's no chance in a perfect world, they'll run less than eight. It would be six to eight tops.
And what you'll find is fatigue, and it's up to you to recognize the trends.

Speaker 1 That's why we've got a business intelligence tool to recognize the trends. But you should know some people will fizzle out at six hours.
Some people might fizzle out at five.

Speaker 1 Look, if you want to work five hours a day, seven days a week, I'm fine with it. If you want to be half-time five hours, four days a week, great.
I need those hours filled.

Speaker 1 But, you know, if you're part-time, I'm going to tell you what hours I need you. But this is what's nice about me: I've got a call center East Coast, Mountain Time, Central Time, Pacific time.

Speaker 1 So I had to kind of fill in the gaps throughout the United States for hours.

Speaker 1 Mason asked, what process did you recommend implementing to make passive income?

Speaker 1 Well, in the home service space, it's called service agreements

Speaker 1 and it's called turning lemons into lemonade. You know, there's certain financing that you could reopen the ticket.
So I know you qualified for 20 grand, you spent seven grand.

Speaker 1 I could call you up two months later and say, hey, my manufacturers gave me a deal on the racking and flooring. I got to special, I could reopen that ticket.

Speaker 1 It's going to cost 14 bucks more per month. It's making something out of nothing.
Everywhere somebody sees something,

Speaker 1 I mean, you don't even know what I dreamt up last night, like with firehouses and just the things that I'm thinking of.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you what, right now the bank's paying around 4.5%

Speaker 1 to me in my Goldman account.

Speaker 1 That's passive income. If you got it, the best thing to do is learn how to save money.
Go do a little bit less, a little bit less out the dinner. Don't get the cigarettes.
Eat healthy and shuff good.

Speaker 1 The more money you put away now, the more compound interest. That's the best thing I could tell you for passive income.
Sean said,

Speaker 1 who was your first coach? And what were the skills that they taught you?

Speaker 1 Mr. Dahlinar

Speaker 1 came from the military. He gave us demerits.

Speaker 1 So if we screwed off at all, we'd get five demerits. We'd have to go run early in the morning before school.
I led our gym class. He was also my coach and

Speaker 1 I exercise.

Speaker 1 And as goopy as I could be, he said, I need you to be serious and I'm going to let you lead this group up. Now, what I realized when he entrusted me with power, that I couldn't abuse it.

Speaker 1 I needed to be a role model. He taught me that, well, number one, he didn't like to lose.

Speaker 1 He taught me that practice makes perfect. And we practice our butts off.
We played a lot. We ran drills.
We ran drills after drills after drills. He'd make us watch games.
I mean, literally.

Speaker 1 He's an awesome guy. I mean, he passed away, but

Speaker 1 taught me about perseverance, discipline, consistency.

Speaker 1 And football players don't carry umbrellas. That was a big mistake.
My mom gave me an umbrella. He broke it on the bus.
I was like, she gave it to me.

Speaker 1 I don't care about it, but don't carry an umbrella if you're a football player because we don't carry umbrellas.

Speaker 1 Marlon said, do you have plans to open up your business for franchising? You know, there's an opportunity for licensing down the road, and I'll get into that later.

Speaker 1 We're doing a lot with storm chasing and I got a few things up my sleeve. I just need to get a little bit further.
Unfortunately, I move quicker than most of the staff.

Speaker 1 So I got all kinds of legal and attorneys and development of stuff. So I do have stuff coming, Marlon.

Speaker 1 Can you talk a little bit more about buying together with your competitors? I'm in a completely different industry, but I love this concept. How do you buy together? Well, you create a buyer's group.

Speaker 1 If there's a best practices, if there's an event, you talk to the five biggest companies and you say, let's buy together. And here's how you do a better buy:

Speaker 1 you've got to tell the vendor how much you guarantee you're going to buy that year. You always have a second vendor, so you play them against each other, and you meet in the middle.

Speaker 1 But the biggest thing I would say is, what does your vendor need? They want a certain product mix, sell a better product mix, teach you guys how to sell it, let them make a little bit of money too.

Speaker 1 You need to build a group of people with a similar mindset, whatever you're selling, and say, we're going to get some co-op. We're going to get a rebate.

Speaker 1 Now, a rebate's a great deal for a buyer's group because it only gets money after you make the sale.

Speaker 1 As a buyer's group, you're saying to have those vendors come in and teach you how to sell better things. And for that, they're going to give you better rates.

Speaker 1 You're going to sell more profitable items for them. But that's kind of a quick way of doing it.
But if you ever want to talk, just hit me up, you know, email me and we'll jump on a conversation.

Speaker 1 We could even do like a 15-minute discussion on it, share it.

Speaker 1 You would kill the garage or game in the area we service. All house three to four garage doors.
I know. I love it.

Speaker 1 Del Gilio. Sorry.

Speaker 1 What up, Tommy? What is something a contractor can do to get calls when search demand is low?

Speaker 1 I had a phone call today from the largest inspector group in the country. The inspectors are going to start offering my storage solutions and I'm going to pay them for it.

Speaker 1 They're going to turn it over to us to sell it. So I'm a big fan of referral partners, other trades, and also influencers.
I just try to see around

Speaker 1 corners that no one else does.

Speaker 1 There's a great book called The CEO who sees around corners, and he talks about how you build affiliates and other people outside of the box because it's really the gift that keeps giving.

Speaker 1 And if somebody tells their clients about you, they automatically feel trust. You just got to make sure you take care of those clients.
So once again, referral partners is the way to go.

Speaker 1 Top three books I'm reading in 2023. I have so many.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, this was recommended. I read this on the plane the other day.

Speaker 1 How to live on 24 hours a day. You know, no matter how rich you are, you can't buy an hour.
You can't buy a minute. So

Speaker 1 this is a great book. I don't know if it's brand new, but 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson.

Speaker 1 Oh, this was recommended. I haven't read it yet.
MA ⁇ A Lessons That Rise Above the Ashes, Dills from Hell.

Speaker 1 I bought this for a bunch of people. I haven't gone through it yet, but it just goes to show you not every deal is easy to get through.
I just bought this book. It just came in the mail, Project 369.

Speaker 1 And it's got all these quotes in there and just really cool book. It's got a lot of meditation, brainwave stuff.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm not really into this stuff, but I'm trying to like become a little bit more spiritual. You know, just have some time to really get with one-on-one with my brain.

Speaker 1 Failure is not an option for me.

Speaker 1 When I get faced with temporary defeat, I learn from it and carry on with my days. I learn from every life experience that I have, whether it is negative or positive.

Speaker 1 I know of the light because I have experienced the dark. I know the dark because I experienced the light.
I am strong and in control of my emotions. I am free from stress and worry.

Speaker 1 So, you know, I'm getting into that stuff. So, that's like 369 days, I believe.

Speaker 1 You go through that.

Speaker 1 Hey, Tommy, you have a client that has five properties. How would you structure their maintenance plan?

Speaker 1 Depends on the service. If it's garage doors, I charge them the same, but I only charge for,

Speaker 1 I charge the same per property instead of garage door, which seems counterintuitive. But I know I'm building a fence around that customer.
When they replace one door, they'll replace all of them.

Speaker 1 So I would just charge the normal fee.

Speaker 1 What I would do

Speaker 1 is possibly fix something on their house or give them something for free. But I'd say,

Speaker 1 I'd record them saying they're a property manager and all the reasons why they bought this service agreement and how much time and grief it saved their clients and how much better their clients love them and appreciate them.

Speaker 1 And then I'd say, would you be able to send this out on my behalf if I go ahead and give you a special rate for all these? And here's what else I'll do.

Speaker 1 Anybody that signs up directly through you will work out a deal.

Speaker 1 And you know what you could do is say, listen, I'm sure you don't want money. Here's what I'll do.
You give me 20 clients, 50 clients, whatever your number is. I'll come replace your garage drawer.

Speaker 1 I'll come put an opener in or I'll come put up filtering system on your air conditioning or whatever it might be. But find out a way for everybody to win.

Speaker 1 In the sprinkler business, we currently have two techs and one CSR who is also the scheduling. Our CSR is struggling to handle all of the incoming leads.
Should we be focusing on automation for leads?

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, I do have an online scheduler for sure and give people that option. But first of all, you shouldn't just book a lead.

Speaker 1 If it's crap and the customer doesn't know what they're looking for and they got stuff that you don't even offer. So I think it's so important to who's ever booking the phone calls.

Speaker 1 What you could do, though, is do you think there's anybody that are really optimizing? I think this batch will be replaced before CSR.

Speaker 1 Because when you use Uber, do you think there's someone planning out the routes? This technology is already available. And when you're able to use AI,

Speaker 1 it'll create an algorithm. It'll understand the customer, their credit card score, the age of the home.
It'll actually do regression testing. It'll know what technician to send there.
This is not far.

Speaker 1 from the future. This is like the next few years.

Speaker 1 We're going to see a huge, huge pivot. What I'm envisioning is all of you guys will have jobs.
You'll just have to get certified. You'll still make great money.

Speaker 1 But eventually, there's just going to be perks because the money's not going to be of the same value. I don't want to go too deep into this, but if there's machines that know everything and

Speaker 1 eventually they'll build.

Speaker 1 So my idea is to build a garage drawer that's super easy. Like you would take a spring, put it off, automatic wind it.

Speaker 1 How are you using AI? I mean, I'm not using it a lot now.

Speaker 1 I'm using it to write poems, just testing out different things, but it's going to use it to develop different software, other things like that.

Speaker 1 Hey, Tommy, from Ireland, what was the most single important moment or decision in your business?

Speaker 1 Leadership, hiring, getting aces in the hole, finding people to take me to the next level, finding people who have been where I want to go. Period.

Speaker 1 Definitely wish I wouldn't have missed this. However, I appreciate all the time and guidance you have given me, Tommy Mellow.

Speaker 1 Let's see. Rob Keller said,

Speaker 1 I'm from Toronto originally and have been in the home improvement in California until the late 90s, moved to Baja, California, Mexico, and got into building residential homes.

Speaker 1 And I see that there are very few companies and have

Speaker 1 even approached them to expand. And they are fine with being a small business that does no marketing to speak so far.
Someone like yourself to to dominate the market. Yeah, let's do it.
Hit me up.

Speaker 1 We'll set up a call. I appreciate that, Rob.

Speaker 1 Best books to read. If you want to get better at sales, read Sandler Training, read Influence, read,

Speaker 1 oh man, there's another book, Maximum Influence. Joe Crisaro's got a book.
Just look up Joe Cresaro's book, too. There's about four books.
There's The Sales Boss is a great book.

Speaker 1 There's five books you got to read.

Speaker 1 Love the freewheeling thinking. This is Seeds of Greatness, beautiful to see after a plentiful harvest.
Thank you. Lots of thinking going on here.

Speaker 1 When you started your company, were you always wanting to scale it where you are now? And also, what year did you realize that you can make it to the next level?

Speaker 1 You know, I always knew I was going to be very, very successful. I knew I was going to kill it.

Speaker 1 I always knew. that I was going to do something big no matter where God put me.

Speaker 1 But I'd say

Speaker 1 right around COVID and that PPP money hit. And every time I looked, because I reinvested that money into the company, obviously, and I'd see like another million, another million, another million.

Speaker 1 And that happened by putting good financial controls in place and understanding how to keep more money. I'd say that's when I knew in 2015,

Speaker 1 I went to Hawaii. And it said market price.
And I didn't know what market price even meant.

Speaker 1 But I remember ordering it and it was delicious. And I paid for the whole bill and didn't even look at the total amount.
I just slid my card in there for everybody.

Speaker 1 And at that point, it was like a rite of passage. It was like, I don't have to make sure there's enough.
And look, I could have afforded this stuff, but I didn't worry about it. I didn't feel bad for

Speaker 1 doing something good for myself. And I think that's the first time I actually felt like I'd made it as a person.

Speaker 1 Was just going to bring up inspections. They're a conduit to a ton of home services.
I run an inspection company in Phoenix.

Speaker 1 Want to initiate those partnerships, but unsure if I build out a straight referral system or learn to onboard home service in the spirit of providing a service company. Dylan, talk to me, man.

Speaker 1 I got some good stuff for you.

Speaker 1 IEB, my buddy Mark runs it. You know, pests,

Speaker 1 inspectors sell 45% of the homes they inspect for pest control. There's a lot of opportunities there.
I'll help you find the partnerships. I'll help you beta test it.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm doing a lot of stuff. Phoenix is where I test everything.
So we need to talk, just hit me up.

Speaker 1 We're starting to focus on building a referral networking partnership program. Where would you point me to to learn about the best way to implement anything on MLM, multi-level marketing?

Speaker 1 What I want to tell you: I went to Arizona Painting Company

Speaker 1 and I taught everybody how to get me an opportunity to look at the garager before they paint it. And we trained them a couple of times, great company.
And what I realized, I got zero leads.

Speaker 1 And so what I realized is what I need them to do is send an FAQ out to their customers after they sell them. And it's automated.
No one needs to even think about it.

Speaker 1 The five things you need to know before we paint your home. And one of those is, is your garager old, dented? non-insulated or issues get a free quote from a1

Speaker 1 and take an extra 10% off because you're our client. Then I pay them for every job on top of it.
Those are retail great clients. They're painting their house.

Speaker 1 So referral marketing, you got to build systems into place to make it. If a technician needs to learn how to, hey,

Speaker 1 I think we've got a partner for this. Oh, I got to get our plumbers.
No, the electrician. We'll look at your drains.
Just automate it all. Make it system oriented.

Speaker 1 Awesome. Thanks for the recommendations.
Going to start my own business. Been stuck between solar and one-day bathroom models.
Which do you think is a better industry?

Speaker 1 I'm telling you what, if you get me into solar, let me tell you my vision of solar, but more thinking. This is a different podcast.

Speaker 1 And I'm just going to tell you guys: this is what I'm going to build. I'm going to freaking do this shit.

Speaker 1 What if I bought the sunniest spots of every single state, built all the solar you could handle, built all the electric vehicles,

Speaker 1 had a charging station near the airport for anybody that wants to rent the vehicles, an air conditioning spot. Man, I got this shit online.

Speaker 1 I think the answer is solar because right now the government's giving 28% tax credits.

Speaker 1 And if you get creative on those tax credits, a guy like me would invest in that solar build because I need tax credits.

Speaker 1 There's so many freaking things going through my mind, but definitely solar. I don't like bathroom remodels

Speaker 1 because you got customers that just want it to be perfect. No one's going out there solar going, well,

Speaker 1 i don't really like the solar panel right there you know what you're getting

Speaker 1 it's easy bathrooms people

Speaker 1 too much to think about

Speaker 1 first of all thank you tommy i love doing sales and love building kpis and processes we are starting now which we are starting now we're a three million dollar company landscape company Would you hire a salesman or a controller at this point?

Speaker 1 Well, as an owner of a business, usually you are the salesperson. So I would get a controller.

Speaker 1 If you're not good and you hate managing money and you hate seeing where things are going and looking at credit card bills and figuring out ways to pay quicker and, you know, negotiating with vendors, get the controller.

Speaker 1 Now, if you absolutely love those things and hate sales, then hire the salesman. But first thing I would do is start loving your life again when you come into work.

Speaker 1 So whatever you hate the most, hire that position next.

Speaker 1 What was your worst employee story? I mean, look, I was just thinking about this.

Speaker 1 So those of you on service tight, and I'm just building a quick thing that talks to service tight and allows your guys to get tips.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 my dad's

Speaker 1 son-in-law, stepson, whatever.

Speaker 1 He worked for me for a brief stent.

Speaker 1 That had to be a little over 10 years ago. And he'd come back every day.
I'd be like, dude, I just made another $100 tip. I just got $200 of tips.

Speaker 1 And his ticket averages were like less than a fifth of anybody else's, like like a fifth, 20% or less.

Speaker 1 What I realized is he just had no faith in the pricing. He looked at what they cost online.
He didn't see the value of the service. I fired him.

Speaker 1 And there's a lot of crazy stories, but this is what might have got my head thinking last night as I'm taking all these notes: is do you allow your guys to get tips?

Speaker 1 Because if you're like me, who's hungry, I'm going to say, listen, I'm going to hook you up.

Speaker 1 I'm going to see if I give you some discounts.

Speaker 1 It's very hard to monitor tips. So it's something I'm still

Speaker 1 like, you can't give a discount on a food or a restaurant, but there's a lot of things you could do in home service.

Speaker 1 So I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on that because I love the idea of guys getting tips, but also I can see where things can get a little shady.

Speaker 1 That's what I was leaning towards. Thanks, Tommy.
You are the man. Priceless advice for free.
Absolutely. I love doing this stuff.
We should switch gears and talk about the why. Why a billionaire?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 you know, I just had a very good outcome, and I'm not going to go into details, but you know, it's really cool because I get to watch

Speaker 1 money's a tool, okay?

Speaker 1 I think I can make a very big difference.

Speaker 1 I really believe

Speaker 1 that I could change mankind. I believe I could have a big, big, big part in it.

Speaker 1 I believe a lot bigger than people. And I think that's where a lot of the success comes from, is the ability to dream bigger.

Speaker 1 So when I dream that I could help more people make a bigger difference, clean stuff up.

Speaker 1 You know, I had this idea for the Christmas light business.

Speaker 1 What if we went and picked up kids in a bus and we did all the Christmas lights in a neighborhood and all the kids gave all their old toys to other kids and they became a mentor. to those kids.

Speaker 1 I'm not just about giving money. That's not true philanthropy.
It's about making a a difference. What if you got them to help them with their math or algebra or reading?

Speaker 1 And what if the parents bought into this?

Speaker 1 And what if you could adopt a kid, but not truly adopt them, like help them out with school supplies and clothes and just maybe help them get the right nutrition and have those cognitive things fire between the ages one and five or when you're born to five?

Speaker 1 I think this is home service is a way to help me do a lot better.

Speaker 1 What if the garage door is the entryway into into where your fridge and your freezer are, and Amazon comes every day to deliver fresh produce, and anything you don't use that's still in its container, approved, unsealed, before it expires, goes back and it feeds all the hungry?

Speaker 1 And what if on there's a sensor

Speaker 1 and you get a scoring system for free food that goes into most of the stuff goes into the recycling bin and some of it goes into the garbage, and it all tells you which one's which.

Speaker 1 And what if Amazon picked up and made sure that everything was accurate before before they took it all? Think about how much cleaner the world would be. I got this epiphany last night.

Speaker 1 It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 There's so much more in this world that I want. There's so much more things to do.
And my brain is firing on like a thousand cylinders.

Speaker 1 And I just, I can tell you guys, like, it doesn't stop. There's so much I want to do.
And, you know, it's amazing what I think I get done in a year.

Speaker 1 And sometimes it's important to remember five years, five-year play.

Speaker 1 And I'm just telling you guys, I feel like like this is the first day. This is the first, this is the beginning.
I got a lot of work to do here at A1 over the next five years.

Speaker 1 I got a lot of lives to change. The people that have believed in me and stood by me, I think you got to look in your own backyard before you start saving mankind.

Speaker 1 So people that stood behind me and have been there for me and that I made promises to, they come first because I'm a man of my word.

Speaker 1 I can put in unlimited hours and it never felt like work for me, but I feel

Speaker 1 everyone criticizes me for it. Have you dealt with the work-life balance? Well, no, I don't really care.
Listen, they hate because they ain't.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? I'll criticize somebody for watching TV all effing night. I'll criticize people for not walking their dog at night.
I can criticize people for everything.

Speaker 1 Haters.

Speaker 1 And if there's no haters out there, then you're not big enough.

Speaker 1 Look, the more people around saying you should have done this, you should do this. Live your own damn life.

Speaker 1 Because I don't care care what you do make the best of it but i don't need you looking at my life because i'm trying to be the best version of myself and i never let anybody else distract me from the path i'm on because i could give a damn i might take somebody pretty seriously if they were elon musk and he gave me advice i'd say okay

Speaker 1 thank you i have to mark zuckerberg walk up to me i'd say okay you made some mistakes You know, I listened to the memoir and some of the things that Steve Jobs said.

Speaker 1 I take that very seriously, but I don't get criticized by little pieces of around me you know another thing if you don't look at your bubble your inner circle if you don't get motivated you live in a cage and those are not people you want around you

Speaker 1 is it worth the risk of having a large business everyone says the more employees you have the higher risk you have of something going bad well yeah

Speaker 1 i mean listen high risk high reward

Speaker 1 I mean, a lot of people like to live in their comfort zone. It goes back to your meaning of what do you want? Do you want a great business that's giving you half a million a year?

Speaker 1 You know, you got to start with your OKR outcome and key result you're looking for, and then reverse engineer it. I mean, it's pretty simple.

Speaker 1 And I don't think everybody knows exactly what they want, but you need to get around. You need to go fishing.
You need to go horseback riding. You need to mow your own lawn and see if you enjoy it.

Speaker 1 You should go to amusement parks. You should travel to Europe.
You should figure out: do you love going on a motorcycle or speed racing a boat or golfing all day?

Speaker 1 Or if you enjoy the office and changing people's life, if you enjoy getting mentally stimulated and figuring out answers to problems, you know, that's what really gets me excited.

Speaker 1 So it could be anything, but I really enjoy it when I've got a stake in the outcome.

Speaker 1 And it's, I feel like I'm in the stock market, but I have so much more control than other people because it's my own stock.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 you know, that was a long answer. Thank you, Jamie.

Speaker 1 I think it's for having a large business, but you know, I'm crazy. Listen, I'm a lot lucky.
I've been very lucky. I've been introduced to the right people.
I got Jesus watching me.

Speaker 1 He's building a whole new path every day. He's telling me, and listen, I don't make my stuff religious.
This is me talking as a person.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to pray with everybody here, but I'm just telling you, I believe I'm on the right line, the right path.

Speaker 1 And I think I'm paving the way that's never been paved before. I think there's definitely divine intervention, whoever your God is.
I believe that there's truly something out there.

Speaker 1 And it for me is Jesus that's guiding me along and making sure that there's a path to success.

Speaker 1 Now, success is all different for other people, but it's not money for me. I mean, listen, I didn't live in my apartment for four years.
I had millions and millions and millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 I lived in a 900-square-foot apartment. I still drive a Nissan Titan.

Speaker 1 The money, people think it's the ability to be able to help a lot more people. Money does do a lot of things.
Trust me. don't have it.

Speaker 1 Go to Africa and drink dirty water, and then you'll see what money can do. Or have somebody going through cancer that can't afford chemo or doesn't have any health insurance.

Speaker 1 You'll understand real quick what money can do. Money can be a real pain in the ass when you don't have any.
But for the most part, I'm comfortable, but I still got a lot of work to do.

Speaker 1 And money is the byproduct of a great running business.

Speaker 1 Hey, Tommy, where would you recommend I find a business mentor? I'm a 21-year-old HVAC contractor with four years in the business and 330K in revenue.

Speaker 1 I already listened to all the podcasts and books well first thing you got to do is go out there's a lot of people that want to help ken goodrich will allow you to tour his shop you can come here when you come

Speaker 1 i think next star is a great network i think what you need to do is ask you know i told brie just ask brie we're driving earlier me and bree and she goes you're so right she goes i just asked for a discount on the rooms we booked She goes, they gave it to me.

Speaker 1 I go, if you want to go on a date, you got to ask the girl out. You just got to get comfortable asking people.
Tell them how much you love them. You're digging their content and you just want a shot.

Speaker 1 And you'd be surprised what people do for you. It's called paying it forward.
And everybody who's successful wants to do it.

Speaker 1 Ah, David, I appreciate that. How do you deal with managers who don't function well

Speaker 1 or all together? Here's what I would do, Matt. Read the five dysfunctions of a team.
You'll find out what silo means.

Speaker 1 And you find out, listen,

Speaker 1 make sure every manager has

Speaker 1 the same goal of the outcome of the entire company. Because what happens is we get siloed.
We care more about our department than the company.

Speaker 1 So you do a book club and you read it together or you listen to it, then you ask questions. You read it first, and then you remember, ooh, that's a good question.

Speaker 1 Ooh, let's talk about this with our business. Ooh, right there.
And just listen to it together. You make an hour, two hours, three hours a week.
And you do something fun.

Speaker 1 And maybe they don't appreciate it, but maybe you could apply it to different parts of their life too.

Speaker 1 But all of a sudden, sudden, readers are leaders, and you guys talk about how you're going to win together because you got to have difficult conversations, man.

Speaker 1 And if you read the book, it'll help bring those conversations out. So that's what I would do.

Speaker 1 One thing I've learned from Tommy over the past few years of working at A1, there is no limitations.

Speaker 1 I love that, Mark.

Speaker 1 You know, it's fun. It's fun because

Speaker 1 we're right on the brink. Even Mark, you should know of this.
I mean, look.

Speaker 1 I just feel like everybody's worried about the economy. They live in this fear mindset, this victim.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, there will be no choice in two years but to be part of A1 if you're in the garage door niche. And I know that sounds cocky,

Speaker 1 but I'm going to be working with the top manufacturers in the world.

Speaker 1 If you guys see

Speaker 1 this plan, it's stupid. And it's foolproof.
I just need great people.

Speaker 1 And I need to be able to negotiate like an MFer.

Speaker 1 And I got to find out who the partners are going to be.

Speaker 1 And I can't have them sitting down as a bureaucracy waiting a year to get stuff done. Either shit or you get off the pot.
Let's go. You got to make a decision.
You need to run.

Speaker 1 You need to stay determined. And you need to get it done.

Speaker 1 So many people, oh, yeah, we're going to start. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, let's have another meeting in six weeks. What the F?

Speaker 1 I hate it as you get bigger. It's like turning the Titanic versus a little fishing boat.
But, anyways, I appreciate you guys. It's a great podcast.
I love the questions. Be very, very sure

Speaker 1 to ask questions at home service expert.com forward slash questions.

Speaker 1 You can pre-order the book at book.elevating wind.com.

Speaker 1 And if you want to see the key takeaways,

Speaker 1 go to homeservice expert.com forward slash bonus. Appreciate you guys.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to descramble. I mean, last night I couldn't write fast enough.
This is crazy. I started writing on everything I could get my hands on.
It's like a computer took over.

Speaker 1 And I felt like I was decoding like

Speaker 1 the world's problems. I mean, it went from owning a bar to understanding golf to understanding solar to hybrid cars.
And it just started to like form a path.

Speaker 1 that goes into like ending world hunger and community. I don't know how it all came, but it was definitely something crazy.
And I'm telling you, it all works.

Speaker 1 And it all starts at the garage, believe it or not. But I appreciate you guys listening.
Ask me any questions you guys want. We'll do this once a month.
Maybe I'll start doing it twice a month.

Speaker 1 Appreciate you guys. Make it a great Monday.
Start loving Mondays again. You guys have a blast all the time.
Appreciate it. Have a fantastic week and end the month.
Very strong. See you guys.

Speaker 1 Hey, guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me.
And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast.

Speaker 1 Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe.

Speaker 1 You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on.
And do me a quick favor, leave a quick review.

Speaker 1 It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences.
Tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick: we started a membership.

Speaker 1 It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion-dollar company.

Speaker 1 And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets, basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program.
So check it out.

Speaker 1 It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap.
It's a monthly payment.

Speaker 1 I'm not making any money on it, to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your lives and further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast.
I really appreciate it.