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

That really happened at the last minute, last time, right? I mean, we had so many people asking about it. 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.
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, it's sort of universal principles, right? So why hold back from all these other industries? Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.
Welcome back to the home service expert. Today, I got a good buddy of mine that I get the pleasure of working with.
His name is Jim Leslie. He resides in Pittsburgh, Illinois.
I'm kidding. Pennsylvania.
Steel City, man. Come on.
There you go. He's basically my right hand when it comes to a lot of the stuff here.
He's really stepped in. His title is the Chief Technology Officer, but he's filling in as the Chief Marketing Officer.
Pretty good at software. He's building a lot of software for us and helping out a lot with Vertical Track.
track really every facet of the business he's kind of stepped in he doesn't drink he works weekends he answers the phone at midnight or 5 a.m so we're perfect together jim you want to give everybody a little bit of your background yeah it's it's kind of a interesting story you know i majored in math found out you couldn't actually get a job in that started a home service business 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 yeah you know i met jim and and he was looking around because he was bored and he got involved with actually home service expert kind of helping coach people and then got to know him more and i just realized he was being underutilized and i was right but i took care of that yeah we, we're at maybe 70% utilization now. We'll see.
Yeah. I still got some more, but we're getting there.
Well, you were able to bring out a couple of people, and I think that's going to help. You're still kind of getting them adjusted, but we just hired a director of marketing.
Trying to think of the title. Is that the the title we chose i think it's vice president vp whatever chase he's gonna be a great guy um so there's a lot of stuff that goes into what we're working on jim's actually he went to nashville with me 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.
Jody writes a little section

in it. And we want to really do something special with this book.
We want it to be,

you know, what I've been hearing lately is the Michael Michalowicz, have you read Profit First?

Are you doing Profit First? And my goal is that this book comes out and it's literally like,

are you guys doing that Tommy Malo recognition? And so it's coming with some software, really appreciating people and really thinking about 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, they're thinking 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 that attitude to how could i help them you know yesterday jim in my meet were you you got the link sent to you for thursday morning meeting yeah i was on it 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.
I need these guys hitting balls. They need to go to the driving range.
The driving range is that amazing training center. And we need to work with them.
They need to log in and out. We've got simulators 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? I'm going to be in the neighborhood anyway. I just love what we do.
And I think the biggest thing that we're really working on is marketing because marketing is recruiting. Marketing is clients.
buying and partnering with companies and then the other part is just the technology aspect of like why don't you talk a little bit about the checklist app that you're you're building right now because i i got everybody excited on the home service expert page do you have anything you could show us or anything just talk about it it a little bit. What does it do? How does it work?

Yeah, you know, I mean, you know, we're on Service Titan. Service Titan has a basic, you know, form-based kind of checklist.
But Tommy had a lot of other ideas how we could bring some interactivity with it, some better tracking, you know, a lot more dynamic stuff to show the customer. So every item, instead of just a static item, we can attach pictures, a video for the technician to review.
As they go through the steps of the checklist, they can record pass, fail, statuses, keep notes, all of that. 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. But in the meantime, we've connected it to our marketing sequences.
So we can know, as soon as the technician starts in the work in the home, we can send a text message to the customer. We can follow up with email sequences based off of the status of different items on the checklist.
So if the technician put that the condition of the motor was bad, then we know that's a potential follow-up. If they don't replace it at that point, we can put them into a marketing sequence based around the issues that we found.
There's a lot more, but that's kind of the basics. Well, plus what it does, it text matches the customer the summary of 151 point tune-up.
And then that gets the customer to say, listen, can you guys take care of this once a year? Service agreements are sold. 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. And this will happen within the next six months.
And then you can get the signatures. You can get the age of equipment.
It's like a checklist on steroids with marketing capabilities, plus the ability to text the clients so they're going so if i send jim a text message of 151 point tune-up 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 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 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 and then the homeowner gets texted a summary you know the the checklist including the technician's video after the uh checklist is complete so so listen we wanted to talk a little bit about vertical track obviously i never knew we were going to have our own event and 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 we want to go on It's like, I had a guy tell me he's tripled his business since the last vertical track. I've had people say, I understand a fundamental difference.
You know, I want you to describe vertical track, but if I had to tell you, we're giving our Rolodex, first of all, of tried and true people, which it's taken me a decade to build. 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.

And then the third thing is the core principles is our training center, our manuals, our

checklist, the things that Al Levy helped us create.

And 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.
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.
There's lots of conferences and, you know, like you said, different people are in the speaking business and what have you. But 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 and i'm like there's like four billion dollars in this room of home service entrepreneurs 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 yeah you know i'd say 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 nothing's held back right nothing's held back right i know i show the crm we you know we go in and like people are just like 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 they all said how do i join garage for freedom talk a little bit about the vendors that we have that we're working with, including Service Titan.
Yeah, I mean, Service Titan, obviously a huge, huge sponsor and 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. The best companies were here.
Everybody's asking questions. And how can we get more involved and help these folks out more so yeah i think you look at just a company like power selling pros bring them i mean his message was amazing the people are amazing i believe in his product we're still using them today one seo is another huge yeah lance, Lance and Bill Ross.
Dan Antonelli spoke. Joe Crisaro was there.
You know, it's just the best of the best. The next one, I'm pulling out all the stops.
Now, Ken Goodrich told me yesterday he's coming. Now, 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. He said, give me all the stuff.
So Brie sang him the information. And he was the most requested speaker.
I mean, he's got an amazing story. 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, this paid for itself times 100. you events, I had no idea.
Victor Rancor's event, he asked me to speak. His is $1.2 million, just hard costs.
I had no idea. You know where they make all their money on these things is the food.
It's like two grand per meal. I had no idea.
I asked me the other day because we were at another event the one in st louis my boy zach right 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 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 coolest spot, 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.
You know, we added the networking ticket option, right? Because that was a feedback at the last event. Like, 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.
They wanted to kind of hang out at the resort or 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? Yeah.
And, you know, you and Bree, 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 crystal 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 i kind of felt like i should be asking you that question all right you know the deal is is the event the thing was is i had joe kristara and ale levy and all these people and i'm shit, I had Darius Livers that taught me how to do financing. I got, hopefully, Alan Rohr comes to the next one who taught me a lot of stuff.
I was a contributor to my book. I mean, you learn how to sell your business.
All these people that I spent years podcasting and just building connections. We had Michael Michalowicz 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.

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 Al Levy.

I would have never met Alan Rohr.

I would have never met Darius Livers.

If I didn't have Service Titan Pantheon to go to, which I was voted the best speaker there, who would have thought anyways, how did the event go from only garage door service to the whole? That really happened at the last minute last time. Right.
I mean, we had so many people asking about it. I mean, we talk a little bit about garage garage doors but it's not like we're looking at gear ratios and motors and stuff i mean the whole event scaling your business literally applies to anybody in the home service space the the training the marketing the recruiting the culture all the stuff that you talk about and teach it's it's sort of universal principles right So why hold back from all these other industries?

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

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

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

I know there's just a ton of time involved in talking with everybody and finding the right fit and bringing something new. We're really working hard this time to get some new faces.
Yeah, we're going to put some new faces on some different curriculum. Howard Parcher spoke at the last one.
He was amazing. We learned a lot about the employee retention credits.
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.
He's part of Graduate 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? 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, 1,506 months, another 1,512 months. 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's your job to retain him well like stay an extra six months for 1500 dollars 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 and by that time let's show me how you're tracking this crap and you know oh you use your PTO.'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 easily who else is putting on an event and i'm not here to tell blow smoke i could give two shits, but I'm in the fight every day.
How many hours do you think we spend on the phone a day? I'll ask my wife, but she'll probably say like five, right? At least two. Am I not calling you all day working on the business? Am I not in the middle of this fight? Oh, yeah.
I mean, 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? Yes, absolutely. So my point is the difference is 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.

It does a lot of things.

You know, I learned just as much.

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 OneSEO,

when I'm learning new things from Service Titan,

when they see me adding people

and they prioritize my account,

this makes me win. 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.
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, 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 events out there. I like Victor's event.
I think there's Joe Cressar 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 stuff, but I'm giving you guys, come into my home. You'll see what a $200 million company looks like, or even a $100 million company, whatever.
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. So what are your thoughts that differentiate our event? 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 and it's usually hard to get random people to open up on camera right 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 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 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 i mean where else can you get that right 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, everybody's like, is this really, are they going to really teach us anything? All I know, 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,

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

that the key insights about the last event that stood out to you? Yeah, I mean, like I said, lots of positive feedback. I think it opened a lot of people's eyes, right? Their goals.
Like guys that came in that were doing like 5 million and thought, oh, I could do 7 or 8, you know, walked out saying, I I should be. Well, yeah, these guys, they walked out, they said, listen, I think I can do six million next year.
Then they said, forget that. I'll do 12.
You know, every number they had in their head, they were like double. Yeah.
I mean, 30 million is possible. You know, it was something that I heard, you know, all over the place.
We have a clear path to double in the next 18 months.

I mean, that was a pretty common realization.

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,

my cousin Ryan doubled his prices.

He said in record high profitability,

every call I got was, you were right.

I raised my prices.

I'm doing more for my employees.

I'm recruiting easier.

I'm going to 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 on the service tight and then buy new computers.
We actually were able to get vehicles because Pullman was there. What are some of the partnerships that we've established? Just go through a couple, maybe go through a dozen of them 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 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 one of the things that we're going to be working with is like some of the different marketing features.
We got AMAR, if you're in garage doors, to give 3% back. Consumer Fusion's a brand new partner, right? That's going to be amazing.
Literally, these partners are coming out of the woodwork. And the deal is, Goodleaf is giving a special price.
We got something going on with service finance for financing. got the branding got dialed in with dan you know there's like you add it all up and i think we had 150 vendors we were trying to dial in and the deal is is what i love about all these vendors is i can call them all on their cell phones right here and if they don't come through if one of our people get left short, you better believe that I make it right.
I mean, that's the one thing is if I put my name behind somebody, I will go to war before they get taken advantage of. Yeah, I'm kind of the same way.
I don't like to stick my neck out unless I know somebody's going to perform, right? 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.
Just go to verticaltrack.com to learn more and get a guaranteed seat before the prices go up. Now back to our interview.
So what's the future of Vertical Track? What is it looking like? 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, just more giving back. So what do you see, right? That's probably a better question.
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 Polish to write that down.
I wanted to see if we could get him, 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 carpet cleaning.
I want to get the top five carpet cleaning manufacturers involved. And I want people to get more focused into their niche.
I'm investing in a $15,000 recruiting course course i just paid five grand that you're going to be involved in in a fractional cfo course what i love is i'll probably spend you know i pay a hundred thousand dollars for the 100 million mastermind is if i'm willing to put out two 250 000 a year to learn and pull this and not to mention another probably $20,000 in books and audibles and then the podcast. But I'm trying to pull this in in a useful way that people can digest it and actually make an actionable item and get started today.
The one thing is people say $15,000 for a course Ryan said yesterday. I'm signing up for that shit.
$15,000 people are like, how does he write checks for $15,000? I'm like grand i'm like how do you not 15 000 is a fart in the wind compared to one a player could bring you one and if you learn how to get five from this you just made a couple extra three four hundred grand so i like the people that are always learning they're always progressing you know you told me one time the guy you used to work for was in his mid 80s 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 that was when i first got to know you yeah you're totally he's an engineering guy i'm curious what your thoughts are now yeah i think it's totally different now 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? It's an envelope, man. If you go to your Monday, one of the things we did when Jim came on is we knew we needed to get our projects in one area.
There were people google sheets microsoft sheets you know all kinds of drives there was people using slack 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 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, but what are some of the most important topics that home service owners can expect to learn from vertical track? Yeah.
I mean, recruiting, training, sales, marketing. I mean, we kind of cover the gamut, you know, we got improved classes this year, you know, technicians, CSRs, technicians, CSRs.
There's an option for them to come a full day and attend the rest of the event too. It's just kind of new.
We only did the partial before. 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.
And then you get a higher conversion rate with higher average tickets. And you get really good at bringing and keeping people and retaining people.
All of a sudden, you get freedom. 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.
And I love the thought of that because so many people have been a slave. They literally, they own a job.
And, you know, the people that follow the podcast, you've heard this before from me, but there is another way. And 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.
He said something like, yeah, well, if your dad didn't give you the business and you were born with a goldfish. 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. Yes, he did take me to cedar point when i was a kid and he paid for that and he did put me in a christian school till i was in third grade and was able to afford that for me and he helped me with my first car which was a 1979 dotson 280zx it was a 1500 car so if you call that a golden spoon i guess so and we were never in the garage door industry never we started out from pure scratch 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 it 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? We'll get a ticket first, right? If you go to vertical track.com, right. Tickets are on sale.
Now there's an early discount, but I think coming with an open mind, right. You know know just kind of realizing that there's more out there i think a lot of people you know start you know with one truck they're grinding you know sort of like 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 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 so you know what's crazy is the money starts to come easy but you know what doesn't come easy you know what i love so much is andrew text me yesterday andrew's just a really good guy.
He works with me. Great technician.
And he said, 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. And I'm going to help you get all these acquisitions trained.
and we're going to hit your goals 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 earlier i was getting a bunch of text messages from some of my other guys and you know the difference is is i would do anything for these people wouldn't have right well you know at the end of the day they do a lot for me i remember when me and brie moved in that house the pv is 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 and i'm like you know brie doesn't want anybody going through her underwear drawer i get that you don a bunch of randoms in there. But at the same time, I'm like, these guys and gals bought this house for me.
The house lasted a month. We moved back into the apartment.
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 once a kid would grab my toys.
It was a weird feeling. And now I just can't wait to share everything.
I just, there's something about giving. Why do people win? 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? Just because Tommy has a nice house doesn't mean you can't have't have one, right? Well, that's the whole thing.
Just because I win doesn't mean you need to lose, right? Right, exactly. Why is it called vertical track? I think you need to explain that one.
Well, what's horizontal? Horizontal is pretty much a plane. You're not growing.
growing when you're growing which way should you be headed up vertically and it just so happens we're a garage you're a 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 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 lucky no one beat us i'll tell you what service titans had our back there's so many people that have just been there for us julian skadden has done so much for me i look back and i I just, for some reason, some of these people,

they give without wanting to receive.

And they don't expect anything.

That like, Darius flew out here on a whim

the minute I asked him.

And just Jody came out here.

And these people,

they show up when you need them.

When 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 well on the wrestling match but we did the vip session and julian is just such a great gracious amazing man isn't he yeah amazing amazing speaker great just the world-class people that we have here that are willing to give their time, energy. 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. 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. 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 and i love people that have been where everyone else has been and been able to accomplish and work through it like aaron gainer yeah 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 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 and we got to hear that story right travis the story at the last one.
That was great, too.

Travis Renge?

Yeah.

We had Aura, the CEO of Service Tide, show up at the last one.

Tom Howard, you can't make this shit up.

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

Yeah, I mean, what are they, like a $9 billion company? company and he just like hey i'm gonna i'm gonna fly out to support tommy's event i mean amazing right he was so cool man 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 and i 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. 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.
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?

I mean, so if you pull into the airport or out of the airport, it's about a 10 to 15 minute drive.

You've got golf.

The cool thing is Wild Horse Pass.

What is Wild Horse Pass?

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

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 Bill Moore was really cool.

The Bill Moore was really high class.

This one is just fun.

It's a great place that you could go.

Maybe you don't want to go to a certain speaker.

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.
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.
I really want to be sure that people know how to recruit right now. Cody just hit me up earlier and said he needs more trucks because he's getting so many people.
I'm telling you what, these guys are coming out there. His new guys are his best guys.
He loves his old guys, but the new guys are crushing it with a new mindset. They're not having to unlearn bad habits.
Mindset's what it comes down to at every level. I think Cody said they're on track through 7, 7.5 million this year, hopefully 15% plus.
That's awesome. Throw a million bucks in the bank.
Yeah, I mean, Cody made a lot of changes in a short amount of time, right? I mean, the rebranding, the service site, and all the systems. I mean, it was a lot to fight off.
Where were we when he met us? Were we in Vegas? We went to an event, and I called his dad, and I said, you get cody out of the field and boom he's out of the field so he's able to double down on the systems now he can focus on dispatching focused on training you know he's still i'm sure he's still it's just to get out on the field but now he could actually be on facebook all day without any interruptions so uh i 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,

I promise you,

Scout'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.
Like, if 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 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 what else? Yeah, I mean, that was the thing, like the mood or the spirit in the air, like everybody was family there, right? 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? This is how we do that. The speakers are great, great the training sessions all that but the networking and the the exchange of information amongst people that that was amazing 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 that's like 20 of them the next one so love to have you if you're interested let me know 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 this is it jim um is there any other things you want to discuss here while we got a little bit of a crowd 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 you're interested in coming now's the time to get on board so let me ask you a question here as we close down is 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 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 so every day it's like how can i process information faster you store it, catalog it, take action on it, prioritize, right? Because you're having me do the book.
We're doing a course for the book. You're building software for it.
This is our first book after the last book. We've got another book after that.
We've got vertical track. We've got acquisitions, partnerships, four different softwares.
I mean, 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 there's not a lot of people i know that could even usually people walk in my office they think i'm talking lap at least you could interpret what i'm doing and make it actionable things. And, you know, I appreciate your work ethic and more importantly, your brain, you know, your daughter just won valedictorian, killing it.
And that good, very smart gene must have ran, well, I think from mom and dad. She put in a lot of hard work.
I won't take that away for, you know, dad was up at 2 a.m. working on stuff and she was sitting at the kitchen table working too so she put in a lot of hard work.
I won't take that away from her. Dad was up at 2 a.m.
working on stuff, and she was sitting at the kitchen table working too.

She put in the hours. She earned it.

But she screwed up in middle school, you said.

Well, she was on a streak of never had missed a day of school.

I forget what grade it was. She was totally sick, couldn't go.
She missed one day.

I was like, should have kept that record going, not missing a day and valedictorian. That can't be perfect.
I'll forgive her. 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.
That was funny. Then they lost her 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 there's some cool things about it but arizona sometimes but i think you'll end up getting a place won't you yeah 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 oh geez that's a good question yeah i read read a lot but i'm usually studying a lot of technical stuff and i don't know so the home service millionaire you know what book i bought everybody for this trip coming up to flagstaff it's called the new one minute manager it's pretty cool quick read so i bought 19 copies for the managers and we're gonna go through this and what i'm gonna do is sit down in a circle a kumbaya we're gonna be brossey marshmallows and i'm gonna take turns reading and every time we finish reading a certain page i'm going to say hey mike what did you get out of that hey jim what'd you take from that hey brandon what'd you take from that and we're going to make sure to comprehend this whole book and it's going to change our managers lives 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 Star Trek, places where no one has ever gone. I say that a lot every day.
People ask me, how are we expected to do this or whatever? And I'm like, we're kind of charting 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 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 what's my answer if someone says i don't think i can get that done what do you need to get it done what do you need 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 who can we hire as a consultant why i do not accept no as an answer now i know i push and i know i don't get annoyed at but the deal is it's perseverance, it's putting pressure, deadlines, passion, excitement, having the carrots.
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.
But I think it's going to be a game changer we're going to

have that for ground sharp freedom hey vince i appreciate the compliment and cody as always we appreciate you and jody appreciate you watching this jim why don't you close this out one last tidbit maybe one piece of action obviously go get your liberate specials but i'll let you close this So, oh, man, you put me on the spot.

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 been great and i think we're going places you know i'd say this more than anything i want you to get your life. 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.
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.
They get to leave and have the stress-free time of knowing that systems are running the business. That's what I look forward to.
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.
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.
Just because someone wins doesn't mean there can't be other winners. Winners share.
Winners give back. Winners pay it forward.
Jim Leslie, it's been a pleasure. That's you on the flip side.
In about the next 10 minutes. I'll just get my phone out now.
Sounds good, buddy. Thank you guys for watching.
Hopefully we see you at Vertical Track. Thank you.
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. 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.
You need to go there, check it out, and sign up today. Now the great news 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.
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. 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

so go to verticaltrack.com and get your tickets now