Vertical Track: The Event That'll Create 1,000 Recession-Proof Businesses

Speaker 1 That really happened at the last minute last time, right? I mean, we had so many people asking about it.

Speaker 1 I mean, we talk a little bit about garage doors, but it's not like we're looking at gear ratios and motors and stuff.

Speaker 1 I mean, the whole event, scaling your business, literally applies to anybody in the home service space.

Speaker 1 The training, the marketing, the recruiting, the culture, all the stuff that you talk about and teach. It's sort of universal principles, right? So why hold back from all these other industries?

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 Welcome back to the Home Service Expert.

Speaker 3 Today I got a good buddy of mine that I get the pleasure of working with. His name is Jim Leslie.

Speaker 3 He resides in Pittsburgh, Illinois. I'm kidding.
Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 Steel City, man. Come on.

Speaker 3 There you go. He's basically my right hand when it comes to a lot of this stuff here.
He's really stepped in.

Speaker 3 His title is the chief technology officer, but he's filling in as the chief marketing officer.

Speaker 3 Pretty good at software, building a lot of software for us.

Speaker 3 helping on a lot with vertical track. Really, every facet of the business, he's kind of stepped in.
He doesn't drink. He works weekends.

Speaker 3 He answers the phone at midnight or 5 a.m. So we're perfect together.
Jim, do you want to give everybody a little bit of your background?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's kind of an interesting story. You know, I majored in math, found out you couldn't actually get a job in that, started a home service business.

Speaker 1 So I was in kitchen remodeling for about a decade, got an offer to be a CEO for a manufacturing company, did that for about seven years and that's the point where tommy kidnapped me

Speaker 3 yeah you know i met jim and and he was looking around because he was bored and he got involved with actually a home service expert kind of helping coach people and then got to know him more and i just realized he was being underutilized and

Speaker 3 i was right but i took care of that

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're at maybe 70% utilization now. We'll see.
Yeah. I still got some more, but we're getting there.

Speaker 3 Well, you were able to bring on a couple people, and I think that's going to help. You're still kind of getting them adjusted.
But, you know, we just hired a director of marketing.

Speaker 3 Trying to think of the title. Is that the title we chose?

Speaker 1 I think it's vice president.

Speaker 3 VP, whatever, Chase, he's going to be a great guy.

Speaker 3 So there's a lot of stuff that goes into what we're working on. Jim's actually, he went to Nashville with me.

Speaker 3 He helped me kind of get going on my second book, which is all about everyone's needs to win, culture, onboarding, a lot of that Levy type stuff. It's going to be amazing.

Speaker 3 Jody writes a little section in it. And we want to really do something special with this book.

Speaker 3 We want it to be, you know, what I've been hearing lately is the Michael McKellowitz: have you read Prophet First? Are you doing Prophet First?

Speaker 3 And my goal is that this book comes out and it's literally like, Are you guys doing that Tommy Malo recognition?

Speaker 3 And so it's coming with some software, really appreciating people and really thinking about

Speaker 3 what I really think about is, is we hire these people and we say, how are they going to help me? What are they going to do for me? This is their life. They've got kids.
They've got a family.

Speaker 3 They're thinking about their future. They want stuff out of their life.
But we're just like, this is my business. What are they going to do for me? If we change.

Speaker 3 that attitude to how could I help them. You know, yesterday, Jim, in my meeting, were you, you got the link sent to you you for Thursday morning meeting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was on it.

Speaker 3 I said, if I just sent you guys a video of me golfing, you better be good at golfing. You better be able to drive the ball 300 yards.
The fact is, Tiger Woods hits a thousand balls a day.

Speaker 3 I need these guys hitting balls. They need to go to the driving range.
The driving range is that amazing training center. We need to work with them.
They need to log in and out. We've got simulators.

Speaker 3 for financing. We talk about eye contact.
We talk about objection handling. My wife's not here.
I got to talk to her. What time could I come back tonight to talk to her?

Speaker 3 I'm going to be in the neighborhood anyway. I just love what we do.

Speaker 3 And I think the biggest thing that we're really working on is marketing because marketing is recruiting, marketing is clients, marketing is buying and partnering with companies.

Speaker 3 And then the other part is just the technology aspect of like, why don't you talk a little bit about.

Speaker 3 the checklist app that you're building right now, because I got everybody excited on the home service expert page. Do you have anything you could show us or anything? Just talk about it a little bit.

Speaker 3 What does it do? How does it work?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, I mean, you know, we're on Service Titan.

Speaker 1 Service Titan has a basic, you know, form-based kind of checklist, but Tommy had a lot of other ideas how we can bring some interactivity with it, some better tracking, you know, a lot more dynamic stuff to show the customer.

Speaker 1 So every item, instead of just a static item, we can attach pictures, a video for the technician to review.

Speaker 1 As they go through the steps of the checklist, they can record, you know, past, fail, statuses, keep notes, all of that.

Speaker 1 But when they complete it, customer can sign off and it pushes it back to their job in Service Titan. So all that data is kept with the customer.

Speaker 1 But in the meantime, we've connected it to our marketing sequences. So we can know, you know, as soon as the technician starts in the work in the home, we can send a text message to the customer.

Speaker 1 you know, we can follow up with email sequences based off of the status of different items on the checklist.

Speaker 1 So if the technician put that the condition of the motor was bad, then we know, you know, that's a potential follow-up.

Speaker 1 If they don't replace it at that point, we can put them into a marketing sequence based around, you know, the issues that we found. There's a lot more, but that's kind of the basics.
So.

Speaker 3 Well, plus what it does, it text messages the customer the summary of 151-point tune-up.

Speaker 3 And then that gets the customer to say, listen, can you guys take care of this once your service agreements are sold?

Speaker 3 The other thing is we can include animations of pictures of failed parts and show the client their part and say, this is what's going to end up happening. This is the sequence.

Speaker 3 And this will happen within the next six months. And then you can get the signatures.
You can get the age of equipment.

Speaker 3 It's like a checklist on steroids with marketing capabilities, plus the ability to text message the clients. So they're going.

Speaker 3 So if I send Jim a text message of 151 point tunnel when it finishes, And I go, hey, listen, the major things I noticed are the top 10. Those were tagged.
And then the other 141.

Speaker 3 There's a video kind of explaining everything I did. Do you want to take care of that? Or do you want me to take care of that each year?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the latest feature we just started adding. So the technician can record a video, you know, and kind of walk the homeowner through what's going on.

Speaker 1 And then the homeowner gets texted a summary, you know, the checklist, including the technician's video after the checklist is complete. So.

Speaker 3 So, listen, we wanted to talk a little bit about vertical track. Obviously,

Speaker 3 I never knew we were going to have our own

Speaker 3 event.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 when I saw what happened after the first one, it was like, this is no fluff. This is real shit that you could apply to your business.
This is not something that is like, oh, we want to sell tickets.

Speaker 3 We want to go on stage. It's like, I had a guy tell me he's tripled his business since the last vertical track.

Speaker 3 I've had people say, I understand a fundamental difference. You know,

Speaker 3 I want you to describe vertical track, but if I had to tell you, we're giving our Rolodex, first of all, tried and true people, which it's taken me a decade to build.

Speaker 3 On top of that, we're giving actionable items to get started today rather than theoretical bullshit that you could kind of get started in a year from now based on crap.

Speaker 3 And then the third thing is the core principles is our training center, our manuals, our checklists, the things that Olivier helped us create.

Speaker 3 The biggest takeaway usually is get started today, but tell the listeners about vertical track and what's it all about and what your thoughts are on it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it's kind of simply stated, I think it's the only event where you can come and meet real people that have scaled home service businesses.

Speaker 1 There's lots of conferences and, you know, like you said, different people are in the speaking business and what have you.

Speaker 1 But the first night at the dinner, I'm looking around and just adding up, you know, sort of the total sales of all the companies that were there.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, there's like $4 billion in this room of home service entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1 And I just don't know where else you can get that with people that really started in the trenches with one truck and built to hundreds of trucks right

Speaker 3 yeah you know i'd say

Speaker 3 one of the things i love the most about our event is when we open our doors we show our training center we help train their csrs we got a dispatch training coming up which is

Speaker 3 nothing held back right nothing's held back right i know like so the crm we you know we go in and like people are just like

Speaker 3 i don't need this like hold back like good go like let's improve an industry the crazy thing about the last one is we had all these plumbers and roofers and gutter companies and

Speaker 3 they all said how do i join garage door freedom talk a little bit about the vendors that we have that we're working with including service tight

Speaker 1 yeah i mean service tighten obviously a huge huge sponsor an integral part of the A1 business, obviously, but we had a ton of vendors, every vendor kind of walking away saying this event was amazing.

Speaker 1 The best companies were here. Everybody's asking questions.
And how can we get more involved and help these folks out more?

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think you look at just a company like Power Stunning Pros, Brigham. I mean,

Speaker 3 his message was amazing. The people are amazing.
I believe in his product. We're still using them today.

Speaker 1 One SEO is another huge.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Lance and Bill Rossby.

Speaker 3 Dan Antonelli spoke. Joe Crisara was there.
You know, it's just the best of the best. The next one, I'm pulling out all the stops.
Now, Ken Gooderich told me yesterday he's coming. Now,

Speaker 3 I believe it when I see it, but he said, hey, man, I really want to come to your event. I'll be there for you.

Speaker 3 He said, give me all the stuff. So Brie sent him the information.
And he was the most requested speaker. I mean, he's got an amazing story.

Speaker 3 But not only that, but I'm trying to get some, we're going to have some just all-star people. And I just want people to walk away and say,

Speaker 3 this paid for itself times 100.

Speaker 3 You know, these events, I had no idea. Victor Raycor's event, he asked me to speak.
His is $1.2 million, just hard costs. I had no idea.

Speaker 3 You know where they make all their money on these things is the food. It's like $60,000 per meal.

Speaker 3 Like, I had no idea. So I asked me the other day because we were at another event, the one in St.
Louis, my boy Zach. Right.

Speaker 3 They passed out these boxes of food. And I said, how much would that cost if we just did the boxes? 50 bucks a box.

Speaker 3 So really, they make the money from the rent, the rental of the space, and then they make a lot of the, obviously the hotel space. This one's at Wild Horse Pass.

Speaker 3 Coolest spot. This year, I want it to be more of a networking, bring your family.
There's a lot of cool water stuff to do. And it's a perfect time of year.
It's October in Phoenix.

Speaker 1 You know, we added the networking ticket option, right? Because that was a feedback at the last event.

Speaker 1 Like a a lot of people wanted to bring, you know, a significant other or something where they didn't necessarily want to go to the conferences.

Speaker 1 They wanted to kind of hang out at the resort or, you know, golf or whatever. But then to be able to, you know, have dinner and stuff in the evening.
So that's a new option this year, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah. And, you know, you and Bree.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'll tell you what, you guys have done a fantastic job. And the whole team, really, I mean, Megan's amazing.
There's been a lot of people involved, Crystal.

Speaker 3 So this is weird talking to myself in the third person, but why did Tommy decide to organize this event? And where did the idea come from?

Speaker 1 I kind of felt like I should be asking you that question, right?

Speaker 3 You know, the deal is the event. The thing was, is I had Joe Cristara and Al Levy and all these people.
And I'm like, shit, I had Darius Livers that taught me how to do financing.

Speaker 3 I got, hopefully, Alan Rohr comes to the next one who taught me a lot of stuff and was a contributor to my book. I mean, you learn how to sell your business.

Speaker 3 All these people that I spent years podcasting and just building connections. We had

Speaker 3 Michael McKellowitz at the last one. I mean, it's just such a blast to get the people that were my role models that taught me everything.

Speaker 3 I'll tell you what, if there's a mistake I've made it, and if I didn't have mentors and people to go visit their shops and books to read and podcasts to be on, I would have never met Levi.

Speaker 3 You know, I would have never met Alan Rohr. I would have never met Darius Leibers.

Speaker 3 I would have, if I didn't have service-tighten Pantheon to go to, which I was voted the best speaker there, who would have thought? Anyways,

Speaker 3 so how did the event go from only garage door service to the whole separate truck?

Speaker 1 That really happened at the last minute last time, right? I mean, we had so many people asking about it.

Speaker 1 I mean, we talk a little bit about garage doors, but it's not like we're looking at gear ratios and motors and stuff.

Speaker 1 I mean, the whole event, scaling your business, literally applies to anybody in the home service space, the training, the marketing, the recruiting, the culture, all the stuff that you talk about and teach.

Speaker 1 It's sort of universal principles, right? So why hold back from all these other industries?

Speaker 3 How does the team and your part of the team and Bree, how do you decide who the best key speakers for the event are going to be?

Speaker 1 I mean, a lot of that goes to Bree, right? I mean, she does so much work in organizing.

Speaker 1 But I think it's just figuring out who are the best people we can bring to the audience.

Speaker 1 I know there's just a ton of time involved in talking with everybody and finding the right fit and bringing something new.

Speaker 1 And we're really working hard this time to get some new faces right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we're going to put some new faces on some different curriculum. Howard Partridge spoke of the last one.
He was amazing. We learned a lot about the employee retention credits.

Speaker 3 These events need to be able to apply to people's businesses. You know, I was talking to a guy earlier and he's an amazing guy and he came to the last event.

Speaker 3 He's part of Garage Road Freedom and he can't find employees. And I gave him Jody's number and I said, why don't you do a hiring event?

Speaker 3 I said, I promise you this, I will put 10 good candidates in front of you. But one of the things he told me, and I disagree, he gave the $3,000 bonus $1,500 in six months, another $1,500 in 12 months.

Speaker 3 I was on a podcast yesterday with Ryan. His name's Ryan England.
And he goes, why not just give them the bonus up front? You hired them. It's your job to retain them.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 stay an extra six months for 1500 like if i was like jim i'm gonna pay you a 10 grand in two years 24 months it's not even real at that point right like something that might happen right

Speaker 3 and by that time let's show me how you're tracking this crap and you know oh you used your pto it's like they try to weasel out of that so tell me this you know there's all these events starting to pop up you know one thing i'll tell you this With our acquisitions, can you agree that we'll do over 200 million this year?

Speaker 1 Easily.

Speaker 3 Who else is putting on an event? And I'm not here to blow smoke. I can give two shits, but I'm in the fight every day.
How many hours do you think we spend on the phone a day?

Speaker 1 I'll ask my wife, but she'll probably say like five, right?

Speaker 3 At least two. Am I not calling you all day working on the business? Am I not in the middle of this fight?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 am I coming in tomorrow and Sunday? You're flying in on Sunday, but are we not working all week? Do we work on weekends? Do we work sometimes? Was I on the phone with you last night at 1230 your time?

Speaker 1 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 3 So, my point is, the difference is

Speaker 3 I don't give two shits if anybody joins our freedom group. Like, at the end of the day, this is not something I think we're stronger together.
Of course, it's amazing. I think it's cool.

Speaker 3 It does a lot of things. You know, I learned just as much.

Speaker 3 You know, when I get a Howard Partridge in a room and I take 10 pages of notes, when I got Al Levy giving me new ideas, when I got Lance from One SEO, when I'm learning new things from Service Titan, when they see me adding people and they prioritize my account, this makes me win.

Speaker 3 I win so many ancillary ways by doing this. But here's the deal.
I'm still in the fight. And guess what? I love business more than anybody.
I'm not giving up on my day-to-day.

Speaker 3 I don't care about being on a freaking stage. My podcast lets me learn more than I could ever learn anywhere else, more than reading a book.

Speaker 3 Because now I'm asking self-directed questions towards my business. So I just look, and I got to tell you this.
There's a lot of great great events out there. I like Victor's event.

Speaker 3 I think there's Joker Star puts on an amazing event. Like, look, there's the huge event that, you know, Brandon Vaughn, you got Danny Kerr.
I'm not dissing anybody's, their stuff, but

Speaker 3 I'm giving you guys, come into my home. You'll see what a $200 million company looks like, or even $100 million company, whatever.

Speaker 3 And take some notes if you want, because this is all I've done is go to businesses that are bigger than me and told them everything I do.

Speaker 3 So what are your thoughts thoughts that we're in shade our event?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, you know, we were collecting some testimonials at the end of the last event and just kind of asking people, hey, what do you think about vertical track?

Speaker 1 And it's usually hard to get random people to open up on camera, right?

Speaker 1 But I mean, I think we collected like 50 people and I'm sitting there trying to pick, you know, five or six to put on the website, right? And but everybody had the same thing.

Speaker 1 I've never seen a place where you could come and literally, you know, talk to the guys going 20, 30, 60, 100 million dollars where they're literally giving you the exact playbook and just walking you through the good things of the bad, the mistakes that were made, the way they fixed them, what worked, what didn't work.

Speaker 1 I mean, where else can you get that, right?

Speaker 3 Did you see what people were saying about Angela's training or Elisa's? So we sent technicians there and we sent CSRs there. And of course,

Speaker 3 everybody's like, is this really, are they going to really teach us anything? All I know,

Speaker 3 Angela sends me an email twice a week about someone just saying oh my god our booking rate is through the roof and what's hard each time is making it better and i love the first vertical track i thought it was killer i hear a lot you know one of the things cody johnson talks a lot about the first one but this last one was like

Speaker 3 it was just so much fun and i can't wait for wild horse pass but What do you think? What were some of the things

Speaker 3 that the key insights about the last event that stood out to you?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, like I said, lots of positive, positive feedback. I think it opened a lot of people's eyes, right? Their goals.

Speaker 1 Like guys that came in that were doing like 5 million and thought, oh, I could do seven or eight, you know, walked out saying, I should be,

Speaker 3 Cody.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, these guys that walked out, they said, listen, I think I could do 6 million next year. Then they said, forget that, I'll do 12.

Speaker 3 You know, every number they had in their head, they were like, double.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, 30 million is possible, you know, was something that I heard, you know, all over the place. We have a clear path to double in the next 18 months.

Speaker 1 I mean, that was a pretty common realization.

Speaker 3 So, you know, Lance called me up and said we raised our price for the first time in 12 years. And there was one attorney that said,

Speaker 3 my cousin Ryan doubled his prices. He's setting record high profitability.
Every call I got was

Speaker 3 You were right. I raised my prices.
I'm doing more for my employees. I'm recruiting easier.
I've got happier people. We're able to do the things like get onto Service Titan and buy new computers.

Speaker 3 We actually were able to get vehicles because Polman was there. What are some of the partnerships that we've established? Just go through a couple of, maybe go through a dozen of them.

Speaker 1 Dozen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, One SEO has been great. Service Titan, of course, you know, power selling pros.
I'm trying to think of all of them.

Speaker 3 We got a way to get shirts. We got a way to get tools.
We've got ways for, there's literally the cameras in your vehicles.

Speaker 3 One of the things that we're going to be working with is like some of the different marketing features. We got AMR, if you're in garage doors, to give 3% back.

Speaker 1 Consumer Fusion's a brand new partner, right?

Speaker 3 That's going to be amazing. Literally, these partners, they're coming out of the woodwork.
And the deal is Goodleap is giving a special price.

Speaker 3 We got something going on with Service Finance for financing. We got the branding dialed in with Dan.
You know, there's like you add it all up.

Speaker 3 And I think we had 150 vendors we were trying to dial in. And

Speaker 3 the deal is, is what I love about all these vendors is I could call them all on their cell phones right here. And if they don't come through, if one of our people get left short,

Speaker 3 you better believe that I make it right. I mean, that's the one thing is if I'm putting my name behind somebody.
I will go to war before they get taken advantage of.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm kind of the same way. I don't like like to stick my neck out unless I know somebody's going to perform, right?

Speaker 4 Hey, I hope you're enjoying this conversation. I just want to take a five-second break to let you know that the tickets for my next Vertical Track event are now on sale.

Speaker 4 Just go to verticaltrack.com to learn more and get a guaranteed seat before the prices go up. Now back to our interview.

Speaker 3 So what's the future of Vertical Track? What is it looking like?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, I think it's another Tommy goal, right? I mean, every time bigger, better, more people, more training, more knowledge, more insights, more vendors, you know, just more giving back.

Speaker 1 So what do you see, right? That's probably a better question.

Speaker 3 Well, what I want to start doing is I want to start really getting into maybe 10 core competencies. We got to reach out to Joe Paulish to write that down.
I wanted to see if we could get him.

Speaker 3 But 10 core competencies. And I wanted to start.
Yes, this is an event for everybody, but I also want to work as. Let's just say we got carbon cleaning.

Speaker 3 I want to get the top five carbon cleaning manufacturers involved. And I want want people to get more focus into their niche.
You know, I'm investing in a $15,000 recruiting course.

Speaker 3 I just paid five grand that you're going to be involved in in a fractional CFO course.

Speaker 3 What I love is I'll probably spend, you know, I pay $100,000 for the $100 million mastermind. Is if I'm willing to put out two, $250,000 a year to learn.

Speaker 3 and pull this and not to mention another probably 20,000 in books and audibles and then the pod.

Speaker 3 But I'm trying to pull this in in a useful way that people can digest it and actually make an actionable item to get started today. So, the one thing is people say 15 grand for a course.

Speaker 3 Ryan said yesterday, I'm signing up for that shit. 15 grand.
People are like, How does he write checks for 15 grand? I'm like, How do you not?

Speaker 3 $15,000 is a fart in the wind compared to one A player could bring you.

Speaker 3 One.

Speaker 3 And if you learn how to get fired from this, you just made a couple of extra three, $400,000. So I like the people that are always learning.
They're always always progressing.

Speaker 3 You know, you told me one time the guy you used to work for was in his mid-80s,

Speaker 3 and you said he was slowing down, you know, maybe the last decade. But you said, Hey, I'd imagine he was a lot like you are today.

Speaker 3 That was when I first got to know you.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you're totally he's an engineering guy. I'm curious what your thoughts are now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's totally different now, right? I mean, you had a lot of ideas, but you never really wanted to push the envelope in the way that we're pushing the envelope here, right?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 3 it's an envelope, man. If you go to your Monday, you know, one of the things we did when Jim came on

Speaker 3 is we knew we needed to get our projects in one area. There were people using Google Sheets, Microsoft Sheets, you know, all kinds of drives.
There was people using Slack.

Speaker 3 people using Teams, people, and it shit was base camp here and Trello boards here. And we said, all right, let's put this all into Monday.

Speaker 3 And Jim did some research and said Monday is way more robust than you guys would ever know. And you built some fantastic things out.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 what are some of the most important topics that home service owners can expect to learn from vertical track?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, recruiting, training, sales, marketing. I mean, we kind of cover the gamut.

Speaker 1 You know, we got improved classes this year, you know, technicians, CSRs, you know, and there's, there's an option for them to come a full day and attend the rest of the event too, right?

Speaker 1 Which is kind of, kind of new.

Speaker 3 We only did the partial before.

Speaker 3 You know, you get your booking rate up, you get better at marketing, you get a really nice brand, you start to do things that last a long time, like SEO and make your GMB rank.

Speaker 3 And then you get a higher conversion rate with higher average tickets.

Speaker 3 And you get really good at bringing and keeping people and retaining people. All of a sudden, you get freedom.

Speaker 3 And what I call it is to do what you want to do when you want to do it with whoever the hell you want to do it with.

Speaker 3 And I love the thought of that because so many people have been a slave. They literally

Speaker 3 own a job. And you know, the people that follow the podcast, you've heard this before from me, but there is another way.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 you know what I love the most, Jim, is the other day, I don't know if you saw this, but the guy on Facebook, still a good buddy of mine,

Speaker 3 he said something like,

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, if your dad didn't give you the business, you were born with a gold.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, I love my dad, man. He's the coolest dude in the world.
But we went grocery shopping for my dad last night. I was able to help him get into a house.

Speaker 3 Yes, he did take me to Cedar Point when I was a kid and he paid for that.

Speaker 3 And he did put me in a Christian school till I was in third grade and was able to afford that for me.

Speaker 3 And he helped me with my first car, which was a 1979 Dotson 280ZX.

Speaker 3 It was a $1,500 car. So if you call that a golden spoon, I guess so.
And we were never in the garage drawer industry. Never.
We started out from pure scratch.

Speaker 3 A1 happened to fall first in the phone book. So I don't know where these people make this stuff up from, but there's nothing that's been handed to us.
There's nothing that's come easy.

Speaker 3 It's a culmination of mistakes, but waking up and not doing the same thing over and over again. how should those interested in attending prepare for the next event well get a ticket first right

Speaker 1 if you go to verticaltrack.com right tickets are on sale now there's an early discount but i i think coming with an open mind right you know just kind of realizing that there's more out there i i think a lot of people you know start you know with one truck they're grinding you know sort of like

Speaker 1 you were in the early days, but they get stuck in a rut where they think that's as far as they can take it. And just realizing there's something else out there.
And the answers are all here.

Speaker 1 You know, if you get in the right mindset, you listen to Tommy, you raise your prices, you have more money to invest. It's kind of like a cycle, right?

Speaker 3 So, you know, what's crazy is

Speaker 3 the money starts to come easy, but you know, it doesn't come easy. You know what I love so much? Is

Speaker 3 Andrew text me yesterday?

Speaker 3 Andrew's just a really good guy. He works with me, great technician.
And

Speaker 3 he said,

Speaker 3 hey, boss, I just want to let you know how much I love and respect everything we do, everything you built. And I'm going to make us an army.
And we're going to hit your goals.

Speaker 3 And I'm going to help you get all these acquisitions trained. And we're going to make all this money and change the industry forever.
And I said, love you, buddy. I appreciate that.

Speaker 3 Earlier, I was getting a bunch of text messages from some of my other guys. And,

Speaker 3 you know, the difference is, I would do anything for these people.

Speaker 1 Would and have, right?

Speaker 3 Well, you know, at the end of the day, they do a lot for me. I remember when me and Bri moved in that house, the PV,

Speaker 3 I must have had a dozen managers come up to me and say, nobody could ever see you own this house. Nobody in the employees.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, you know, Bri doesn't want anybody going through her underwear drawer. I get that.
You don't want a bunch of randoms in there.

Speaker 3 But at the same time, I'm like, these guys and gals bought this house me. The house lasted a month.
We moved back into the apartment.

Speaker 3 But ultimately, I want to do nice things and get nice things to share them. I remember when I was a kid, I used to get this tingly feeling when the kid would grab my toys.
It was a weird feeling.

Speaker 3 And now I just can't wait to share everything. I just, there's something about giving.
Why do people win?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think too, you know, when you have, you know, employees that are winners with the, you know, coworkers that have the right mindset, It's not a zero-sum game, right?

Speaker 1 Just because Tommy has a nice house doesn't mean you can't have one, right? So.

Speaker 3 Well, that's the whole thing. Just because I win doesn't mean you need to lose, right?

Speaker 1 Right. Exactly.

Speaker 3 Why is it called vertical track?

Speaker 1 I think you need to explain that one.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 what's horizontal? Horizontal is pretty much a plane.

Speaker 1 You're not growing.

Speaker 3 When you're growing, which way should you be headed?

Speaker 3 vertically and it just so happens we're a garage drawer company and there's such a thing called the vertical track so it happened to make sense what was really cool about it is you got the website verticaltrack.com

Speaker 1 and i think it's a cool name for an event like six months after the first event i grabbed it i'm like we don't own that oh man yeah

Speaker 3 lucky no one beat us I'll tell you what, service signs had our back. There's so many people that have just been there for us.
Julian Scadden Scadden has done so much for me.

Speaker 3 I look back and I just, for some reason, some of these people,

Speaker 3 they give without wanting to receive and they don't expect anything. Like, Darius flew out here on a whim the minute I asked him.
And just Jody came out here.

Speaker 3 And these people, they show up when you need them. And those are what real friends are all about.
And I think they put on a hell of a show. You know, we did the VIP last,

Speaker 3 well, in the wrestling match. We did the VIP session.
And Julian is just such a great, gracious, amazing man, isn't he?

Speaker 1 Yeah, amazing, amazing speaker. Great.

Speaker 3 Just the world-class people that we have here that are willing to give their time, energy.

Speaker 3 You know, for the most part, we're not. spending a lot of money for the speakers.
They're doing this because they're my friends.

Speaker 3 You know, sometimes, you know, you got some keynotes that you're throwing some money at because they're a busy schedule. That's how they make their living.

Speaker 3 But I love getting people that are deep in the trenches, that have built something, that have really good, they've been at the highs and they've been at the lows.

Speaker 3 And I love people that have been where everyone else has been and been able to accomplish and work through it, like Aaron Gaynor.

Speaker 3 You know, they worked his way through. He held his little kid up and he said, listen.
He said, this is not going to be our life. They were living on his mom's couch,

Speaker 3 two years old, little boy. And he said, this isn't going to be our life.
Your dad's going to make it. We're going to make it through this.
And they persevered and they kicked ass.

Speaker 3 And we got to hear that story.

Speaker 1 Travis, the story at the last one. Yeah, that was great, too.

Speaker 3 Travis Ringy. Yeah.

Speaker 3 We had Aura, the CEO of Service Titan, show up at the last one. Tom Howard, you can't.
make this shit up.

Speaker 3 The one thing I've never seen is, I don't think I've ever seen Ara speak speak at anything other than his event.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, what are they like a $9 billion company? And he just like, hey,

Speaker 1 I'm going to fly out to support Tommy's event. I mean, amazing, right?

Speaker 3 He was so cool, man.

Speaker 3 It was like people were walking up to him. I don't know who got a meeting with him the next day, but it was like a guy with like four technicians.

Speaker 3 And Ara took the time to have a meeting an hour out of his day with a guy that has four technicians. You find people that actually give a shit.
They're not there to make money.

Speaker 3 They're there because they're real people. And those are the type of people that I want to do business with.
I will do anything for my vendors and they'll do anything for me.

Speaker 3 And it's just something really special. You know, I think it's super cool what we're doing.
What else do you want to talk about as far as vertical track?

Speaker 3 I mean, so if you pull into the airport or out of the airport, it's about a 10 to 15 minutes drive. You've got golf.
The cool thing is Wild Horse Pass. What is Wild Horse Pass?

Speaker 1 It's like a casino and a resort. It is a casino.

Speaker 3 So there's gambling if you want to gamble. They've got some live music.
There's so many cool things to do around there. And it's so cool.
Like the Billmore was really cool.

Speaker 3 The Billmore was really high class. This one is just fun.
It's a great place that you could go. Maybe you wouldn't want to go to a certain speaker.

Speaker 3 I think you're crazy if you don't, but you can just go have fun, go swim with the kids and your wife or husband. I'm telling you what, this one's going to be blow the socks off.

Speaker 3 I don't know how we're going to keep doing it better, but we're going to have some breakout sessions. I want to really make sure people understand their financials.

Speaker 3 I really want to be sure that people know how to recruit right now. Cody just hit me up earlier, said he needs more trucks because he's getting so many people.

Speaker 3 And I'm telling you what, these guys are coming out there. His new guys are his best guys.
I mean, he loves his old guys, but the new guys are crushing it with a new mindset.

Speaker 3 They're not having to unlearn bad habits.

Speaker 1 Mindset's what it comes down to at every level, right?

Speaker 3 I think cody said they're on track through seven seven and a half million this year hopefully 15 plus that's awesome throw a million bucks in the bank

Speaker 1 yeah i mean cody made a lot of changes in a short amount of time right i mean the rebranding service tighten all the systems i mean

Speaker 3 well when he came

Speaker 3 where were we when he met us were we in vegas we went to an event and he I called his dad and I said, you got to get Cody out of the field. And boom, he's out of the field.

Speaker 3 So he's able to double down on the systems now. Can focus on dispatching, focus on training.

Speaker 3 You know, he's still, I'm sure he still itches to get out on the field, but now he could actually be on Facebook all day without any interruptions.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 I just, I'm really excited, guys. You know, I think this is an event.
If you don't like it, I'll give you your money back. I promise you that.
If you know me, if you say it was a waste of your time.

Speaker 3 I promise you, Scott's honor, you tell me you didn't get much from it. It just wasn't for you.
I will gladly write you a check or refund your money on the card you paid. I will do that.

Speaker 3 Like, if it's just not your cup of tea, if you didn't get much out of it, I don't care about ticket sales. I want to get as many people here as possible.
And I want as many friends as possible.

Speaker 3 And I want to start changing industries. And I know there's so many relationships and so many things going to change lives that'll come out of this.
Jim, what else?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that was a thing, like the mood or the spirit in the air, like everybody was family there, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, I just sat down and talked to random people from all over the country and everybody was just positive and sharing information and how can we grow and how do you do this?

Speaker 1 This is how we do that. The speakers are great, the training sessions, all that, but the networking and the exchange of information amongst people, that was amazing.

Speaker 3 So, you know, we had a team from Canada come out. There was about eight of them.
He said he's bringing his whole team, the next like 20 of them, the next one. So

Speaker 3 love to have you. If you're interested, let me know.

Speaker 3 If you're struggling, if you feel like you could do better, if you want better systems, if you want to meet some people that have been where you've been,

Speaker 3 this is it.

Speaker 3 Jim,

Speaker 3 is there any other things you want to discuss here while we got a little bit of a crowd?

Speaker 1 Well, just plug for the website, verticaltrack.com. Ticket sales are open now.
There's an early discount until August 15th. So don't miss that.

Speaker 1 If you're interested in coming, now's the time to get on board. So

Speaker 4 let me ask you a question here as we close down.

Speaker 3 I give you so many freaking things. I can't even keep track.
I know you got the Monday board, but how the hell do you keep track of all my ideas?

Speaker 1 It's a challenge and it's a process of constant reinvention, right? Like I had one system when I started and then gradually like, okay, Tommy overwhelmed that system, need a new system.

Speaker 1 So every day it's like, how can I process information faster, you know, store it, catalog it, take action on it, you know, prioritize, right?

Speaker 3 Because you're having me to the book. We're doing a course for the book.
You're building software for it.

Speaker 3 This is our first book after the last book. We got another book after that.
We've got a vertical track. We've got acquisitions, partnerships.
four different softwares. I mean,

Speaker 3 one of the projects to keep a full-time person busy and you're working on over 100. So pretty remarkable.
I've said this to you before, but I appreciate everything you do.

Speaker 3 There's not a lot of people I know that could even, usually people walk in my office and they think I'm talking Latin.

Speaker 3 At least you could interpret what I'm doing and make it actionable things.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I appreciate your work ethic and more importantly, your brain. You know, your daughter just won balled Torian, killing it.

Speaker 3 And that good, very smart Gene Musteran, well, I think from mom and dad.

Speaker 1 She put in a lot of hard work. I won't take that away from her.
You know, dad was up at 2 a.m. working on stuff, and she was sitting at the kitchen table working too.

Speaker 1 So she put in the hours she earned it, right?

Speaker 3 But she screwed up in middle school, you said.

Speaker 1 Well, she was on a streak of like never had missed a day of school. And then I think, I forget what grade it was.
She was like totally sick, couldn't go. She missed one day.

Speaker 1 I was like, should have kept that record going, not missing a day and valedictorian. So it can't be perfect.
I'll forgive her.

Speaker 3 So Jim was over, I don't know, a few weeks ago, and he gets a phone call or a message about she lost her phone.

Speaker 3 That was funny. And then they lost their electricity that night.
Crazy stuff. You know, Jim will end up living in Phoenix one of these days.
I don't know if you guys ever been to Pittsburgh.

Speaker 3 There's some cool things about it, but

Speaker 3 Arizona's too hot sometimes, but I think you'll end up getting a place, won't you?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 3 Jim, is there any books that stood out to you in the last couple of years that you're a big reader? Is there any books that really are just moved you in a big way?

Speaker 1 Oh, geez, that's a good question. Yeah, I read

Speaker 1 a lot, but I'm usually studying a lot of technical stuff. And

Speaker 3 I don't know. So, the Home Service Millionaire, you know, what book I bought everybody

Speaker 3 for this trip coming up to Flagstaff? It's called The New One Minute Manager. It's It's pretty cool, quick read.
So I've got 19 copies for the managers, and we're going to go through this.

Speaker 3 And what I'm going to do is sit down in a circle, a kumbaya. We're going to be roasting marshmallows, and I'm going to take turns reading.

Speaker 3 And every time we finish reading a certain page, I'm going to say, hey, Mike, what'd you get out of that? Hey, Jim, what'd you take from that? Hey, Brandon, what'd you take from that?

Speaker 3 And we're going to make sure to comprehend this whole book. And it's going to change our managers' lives.

Speaker 3 we're doubling down on training i think it's just important to really i love what we're doing because we're building our own it's like uh

Speaker 1 star trek places where no one has ever gone i say that a lot every day people ask me you know how are we expected to do this or whatever and i'm like you know we're kind of charting you know new territory doing things that nobody in this industry for sure has ever done a lot of things that nobody in any industry has done.

Speaker 1 So you obviously make mistakes along the way. You learn, you know, as you go, but it's kind of that spirit of adventure that I like, right? It's never a boring day for sure.
So,

Speaker 1 what's my answer if someone says, I don't think I can get that done? What do you need to get it done?

Speaker 3 What do you need?

Speaker 3 Just give me the list. Do you need more money? Do you need to hire more people? Do you need more resources? Do you need more software? Like, look, who could we 1099 to get in here to help?

Speaker 3 Who can we hire as a consultant? Why I do not accept no as an answer.

Speaker 3 Now, I know I push and I know I know get annoyed at times, but the deal is it's perseverance, it's putting pressure, headlines, passion, excitement, having the carrots.

Speaker 3 Oh, by the way, we're testing a new thing called carrots. I wouldn't suggest anybody getting on it just yet until we master it and give the mellow approval.

Speaker 3 But I think it's going to be a game changer. We're going to have that for Garage Drop Freedom.
Hey, Vince, I appreciate the compliment. And Cody, as always, we appreciate you and Jody.

Speaker 3 Appreciate you watching this. Jim, why don't you close us out? One last tidbit, maybe one piece of action.
Obviously, go get your Libra specials, but I'll let you close us out.

Speaker 1 Oh, man, you put me on the spot.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know. I got to say, I appreciate being here.
A lot of fun. I mean, everybody I've met.
all the garage door companies, home service companies. I mean, it's been great.

Speaker 1 And I think we're going places.

Speaker 3 You know, I'd say this, more than anything, I want you to get your life back. What makes me more excited is when I see a mom or dad that get to be a soccer coach, to go on field trips again.

Speaker 3 They get to be there for dinner with their kids. They get to take their wife or husband on a 10-year anniversary that they never thought possible.

Speaker 3 They get to leave and have the stress-free time of knowing the systems are running the business. That's what I look forward to.

Speaker 3 I look forward to home ownership, great credit scores, time with family, new human beings coming into this world. And if we could have an opportunity to help people do that, then I'm all for it.

Speaker 3 And I'm here to say we're going to help you do it. If you want, there's a lot of people that are going to do whatever they want and can to help you succeed.

Speaker 3 Just because someone wins doesn't mean there can't be other winners. Winners share, winners give back, winners pay it forward.

Speaker 3 Jim Leslie, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1 Got you on the flip side.

Speaker 1 I'll just get my phone out now.

Speaker 3 Sounds good, buddy. Thank you guys for watching.
Hopefully we see you a vertical track.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 4 Hey, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. Before you go, I wanted to invite you to my next vertical track event.
We've opened it up to all home service companies, just like our last event.

Speaker 4 And people across all industries have been messaging me. all the time saying this last event brought them as much as a 10 times return on their investment.

Speaker 4 You need to go there, check it out, and sign up today. Now, the great news is, is that we're doing it again in October, and we want it to be the best event of the year in the home service space.

Speaker 4 If you're ready to build systems to scale and get out of the truck once and for all, get your tickets right now at verticaltrack.com.

Speaker 4 We're about to go through some tough times in the economy, and I want to give you some tools and some tips to get through it and start making more money than you ever realized.

Speaker 4 So, go to verticaltrack.com and get your tickets now.