Having The Right Tools, Team, and Mindset to Dominate Your Industry

the most important thing that everybody needs to realize is the hiring process. We need to bring the right people on board to our company because we don't want to bring on an onboard terrorist.
I think that's one of the things that's put out there. But they have to believe in us.
They have to want to fight for the company, want to fight for their peers and help the company take it to the next level. A lot of times when we're doing a whole bunch of interviews,

we get to the point where we get kind of frustrated with it.

And then we start accepting people onto our team that we probably shouldn't have accepted onto our

team, but we're like, we need to fill the spot. We have this band sitting in the yard and whatnot.

And those are the worst moments you can have because you're bringing somebody aboard that

maybe doesn't even believe in the company and instantly starts to fight the process.

And then you can't get anywhere with that kind of crap.

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 is Saturday, sitting here at the office with Ben Davis. Ben is an expert at entrepreneurship, leadership management, team building, and plumbing.
He's based in N nampa idaho he owns express plumbing service ben davis is the ceo of express plumbing service in idaho it started as a one-man operation when i started in 2006 and has grown to the biggest plumbing operation in idaho express plumbing regularly collects more than 125 five-star reviews on google a month and is rated one of the top 10 places to work in Idaho. Ben, I've been trying to get you on for a while.
I'm excited you're doing this finally. Yeah, yeah.
It's pretty exciting. I almost feel like I'm going to buy a jump out of a plane, like skydive.
So it's definitely worth it, Joe and Rush. That's for sure.
Well, you know, I've asked you to come on and you finally said you're ready.

You said you got a lot to say to the people out there and we'll make sure it gets to a lot of people. So, you know, first tell us a little bit about just this last 15 years, what life has been like, what some maybe some epiphanies along the way.
Yeah. So I started off in the trade as a commercial service.
So I serviced every restaurant in the Valley, every commercial property management, every residential property management. I didn't have any logos on my van.
I was just like white vans running around this place. So I always go get a box of C suckers.
I'd go deliver it all day long. Even if it said no soliciting, I just went there.
I didn't care. And if I consistently delivered my suckers, eventually I would get a new customer or chocolates or whatever I was running around with at that point in time.
So I ended up with right around a thousand accounts doing four or 500 service calls a month commercial-wise. So we were in restaurants or skyscrapers, or we were doing some pretty big stuff, replacing four-inch water lines for school districts.
We bore them all the way in. We're digging up roads all the time with a hydro excavator, going down 20 feet, replacing taps.
Yeah, it was a different kind of a beast, that's for sure. And I really thought that we just had it all nailed down.
I thought I was the best in the industry. Every day, my guys stayed busy.
It was a different kind of company because you were based off of your skills, not off of communication. So the biggest thing for the guys was like, don't talk to anybody, go in there, complete the service, get out of there as soon as possible and move on.
And that was kind of it. So I kept traveling that way.
And I had a mentor in the industry. He was a really cool guy.
He always just looked at, always made sure I was doing well in life and taught me a lot about plumbing and working on boiler systems. And so I always looked up to him and he was working for a competitor of mine in the valley.
And he's there for like 15 years and he was diabetic. He ended up hurting his foot really bad.
So his blood got septic. He wasn't aware of it.
He was 62 years old at that time. And he got in the hospital and they're going to have to amputate his leg.
And while he was in the hospital, my competitor decided to fire him. So I was like, dang.
So he's in the hospital. He gets fired from his job.
He was the GM there for 15 years. I was just heartbroken.
I couldn't believe that a company would do that to somebody. So I went and found him where he was at in the valley.
And his wife left him at the same time. So he lost his job.
His wife left him, 62 years old.

I kind of found him in like a crack house.

It was really crazy.

I was really nervous going inside that house.

So I got inside the house and I found him in the back room and he was in a wheelchair

and he's like dirty and he had just like food particles all over him.

And like he didn't take a shower for a while.

I was like, well, this ain't going to work.

So I'm going to go ahead and give you a job. I'll pay you $60,000 a year's salary and I'll just pick you up every day.
So I would drive over to the crack house every day, pick him up, roll him out to my truck in his wheelchair, help him get into the cab, put the wheelchair in the back of the vehicle and off to work we went. He always inspired me.
So I knew that he would inspire my team because he just had a way of talking to guys. So I bring him in and he's starting to get better.
I got him health insurance so we can get that prosthetic done. I got the prosthetic done and he's like, man, you should just jump on service diet.
And I'm like, what is service diet, man? At that point in time. What year was this? I'm trying to keep up.
This is uh 2018 oh wow so you started what year were you talking about where you were working and running a bunch of calls and like replacing water lines i'm trying to just yes started the company up with commercial in 2006 so this is we're jumping all the way 8 12 years later now yeah because when did he get laid off when did he get laid off? When did he get laid off

from the other company? It was right in the 2017, 2018 era. Oh, wow.
So this is just the

last five years. Okay.
Yeah. That's when my life changed.
It changed forever. I mean,

I was doing $3 million in commercial service, had probably eight service fans on the road.

A lot of my lead guys that are still with me today were with me all the way through all that. So I got guys that have been here for 12, 11, eight years, all over the place.
So most of my guys have just stuck with me. Yeah, they have.
OGs. They've always just believed in me.
So that was pretty cool. That's a big piece of this company is just what your employees think of you and think of the operation that you're trying to accomplish here.
But yeah, we were just doing commercial. 2.8, maybe right about 3 million, maybe a little bit above.
I'd have to look at the numbers to see. But we thought we were the big fish in the valley.
We had big jetters, hydros, dump trucks, eight service vans. I mean, we were just doing everything for commercial at that time.
No stickers on our vehicles. We started to try to dip into the residential market, but we really didn't know how to.
So it was just confusion on even how to deal with a residential customer at that point in time.

But Ron came into the company and he just started talking about Service Titan.

We were on a software at that point in time, I think it's Smart Service.

And it wasn't too bad, but it was only $1,000 a year.

So it was kind of hard to switch over to a software that was three times as expensive. And I had a lot of fight on it.
Spent a lot more money on service time than $3,000 a year. Yeah.
You get what you pay for. That's what I preach.
Well, you do. You do.
I mean, service time has changed the industry. Even when you first get your dashboard, even though you're trying to modify it for your current company, because that's the most common thing we do when we see Service Titan.
We're like, how do you make it work for me instead of working for it? That's what... It's interesting because Ara came on the podcast a few years ago.
And I'll just say this real quick. And I want to continue with the story about Ron.
I love this story so ara comes on and he says do you realize who we have at service titan as far as companies he goes we have multi-billion dollar companies he goes we go to these guys and figure out the best ways hoping that when your 10 20 30 person company comes in you conform to what these billion dollar companies do rather than say oh, I give $3 for a Google review, $5 for a Yelp review. If the guy gets a yard sign, I give $18.
If the guy gets a video, and then if the truck's clean, and seriously, the biggest mistake I made getting on really anything is taking their best practices. Look, I love technology.
I'm okay at it, but I still got a Droid. I still got a desktop.
I still got a desktop i don't use a mac i use google drive everybody else uses outlook here it's crazy but i have a hard time wanting to learn the same software that but we just switched to intact i don't know six months ago and you know what i've just learned is let me be me but conform to the software but i just wanted to say that because anybody that's listening, you get on Housecall Pro, you get on ServiceTay, you get on, I don't care, job or whatever it is, figure out what it does and conform to it. Don't make it conform to you because you will lose years in the process.
And that's a great point. Thank you for bringing that up, Ben.
Yeah. I mean, they designed it for a reason, right? I mean, you're supposed to check all the boxes on your dashboard.
And if you can do those, that is basically, I mean, how your business is supposed to operate. You know, if you don't got TGLs going on, then you don't even know what that is, then you're missing out on a lot.
so yeah i got ron his leg kept helping him out i switched over to service titan

i modified the software to work for me i shouldn't have there's just not enough I got raw on his leg, kept helping him out. I switched over to Service Titan.

I modified the software to work for me.

I shouldn't have.

There's just not enough education on the beginning end of that.

So you really just make it work the way that you know how.

So you really just screw it all up.

Rolled it out, grew a million that year though.

So I was pretty happy.

Once you're able to track marketing, phone numbers, and where your leads are coming from, you're able to put more dollars behind those. And it gets pretty exciting to see at least that part of the software.
Probably still not paying attention to the rest of it. So I still have a lot of room to grow in 2018.
2019 rolls around and we decided to go to Pantheon. And man, I've never been so excited in my whole life.
I have recordings when we're watching Tom Howard up there. Oh, that was a good one.
And then we got the guy that killed Bin Laden. Yeah, dude.
I mean, what an eye-opener. And we were networking with companies that were 10 million, 15 million.
Me and my daughter ended up in the elevator with one of the speakers, a $10 million company. And I just remember our jaws dropped and we were in awe.
And he's like, you can come visit my shop. And we're like, oh my God, somebody invited us.
And it was just like, I felt like a kid again, because we've been running commercial for so long. And I felt like I was really good at commercial, really good at commercial, but this this was a whole new ballgame and there's just no limits to how successful you can be at it.
So we were psyched after leaving Pantheon, like we are on a mission and we start really diving into it and start modifying our Service Titan to be more like it should, but it's still very confusing on how to enter stuff into service Titan and what to look for and what kind of KPIs we're trying to track and making sure that we're entering stuff the correct way. But we're starting to figure it out slowly but surely.
And starting to get better websites behind us, we are taking photo shoots every three weeks because we know that Google and everything out there just loves content, right? So you got to be just shoving content out there as much as possible. So me and Chloe are always running around photo shoots, whatever we can get, however we can get new content.
And we want it to be our content. We don't want to use anything else except for our content.
Yeah, no, Clipper. Yeah.
No. Here's the secret sauce, but I'll tell you this is there's i'll say two things here number one is you could use a phone a phone works fine because believe it or not when you got something overproduced it looks like shit if it's overproduced i really think that you know the titan when the service time came out that was great but another thing is thing is, listen, you tell your guys today, we're going to wear our shirts.
We're going to tuck them in. We're not going to wear our sunglasses.
We're going to smile. That's it.
I don't care if you got a mustache or a beard or whatever it is, you know, at the end of the day, it's so hard because I'm like, dude, guys, seriously, one of my guys that does some of my website stuff always says, man, why does one guy always have to wear sunglasses? And all the other company pictures, not even ours. I don't care about tattoos either.
But in a way, I wouldn't go out of my way if I had one tattoo here, one tattoo here. It's not a big deal, but there's still old ladies out there or whatever that, you know, they just, certain people make stupid reactions, but I think you're right.
User generated content, pictures all over the internet and that helps for recruiting too. Yeah.
I mean, when you take a photo shoot, we always have the guy do the real thing. I mean, whatever he's doing, he's replacing water heaters.
He's replacing a toilet on a real job and we'll take off three, 4,000 photos and then we'll come back and we'll see which one comes out the best.

And then we'll,

we'll put it up.

4,000 photos.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chloe's pretty addicted to,

we got some really awesome cameras here.

So we'll,

we're pretty crazy on that part.

You know,

yeah,

it's all about that one picture,

right?

I mean,

you look at my content my content is

on point there's no doubt you made a comment earlier when we were talking is just getting the right systems in place and there's a system that i've been working on i'll tell you what unless i own it i feel like some of these systems it's very very hard because one of them I want a camera in two angles when we're installing a garage. And I want it to sync to the cloud.
And then I want to speed it up from two angles. And that stuff is freaking awesome.
And there's also ways to automatically get testimonials RSS fed right through on your website and i've seen websites that literally there's a thousand video testimonials that's user generated content you can't pay for that so i think you're doing the right thing i think content is king and i think there's there's also getting it out there correctly i don't just think getting it on a youtube channel or just tikt I think it needs to go everywhere. On your website, it needs to be available on all social media.
It needs to be available on LinkedIn. And most people don't ever think, man, I need to get a video guy.
I need to get someone to handle this and assign stuff to it. And here's the deal.
You get the wrong person. I'll give you an example.
I got the right person but the other day we're doing our our ceremony for all the guys that graduated i'm up there talking and i'm like guys you got to make it through this first year it's the hardest year blah blah blah and we're going we're going we're going we're going an hour into it and then he decides to take the pictures for the guys we're like this with each other with their graduation for forms and i'm like next time could we record the whole thing yeah like he's just sitting there kind of watching i don't know i'm like it's fine but at the same time he's a great guy does amazing work but you know this is your job you're the video guy all videos all day yeah i mean you never know when you're gonna get something really good that you put it out there. I mean, that's what's attracting customers to buy your product is what kind of content you have.
So do you do a lot of stuff on social? I let Chloe take care of all that. I mean, I'm the overall enforcer of everything.
And I love going with Chloe and working with her on all that. And we work with a lot of companies, really amazing companies out there that help us push it out there too.

But beyond that, we're going from 2019 right after Pantheon to the start of the pandemic.

And I started losing commercial right before the start of the pandemic anyway, because

we were having some internet problems around here and our phones weren't being answered all the time. CenturyLink wire was pretty bad and a couple other things were happening.
So our commercial clients started falling off naturally because they said that we were too busy for them and we weren't answering our phones. So I was getting tired of being beat up by the commercial anyway.
I had some of the more famous restaurants around here. Every year, they would bring me into a meeting and try to talk me down on price and beat me up and tell me that I'm overcharging for certain things.
So I was getting a little bit tired of commercial to begin with. So the pandemic for me was perfect because I just decided to cut commercial off 100% at that point in time.
I just like, you know what? I don't

even know what percentage we're doing commercial right now, but I don't want to do commercial. And I definitely don't want to go into a recession with commercial because I'm a little guy and they'll just leave me hanging.
Because normally my accounts receivable was about a half a million dollars. And I did not want to go into a pandemic with a half a million dollar accounts receivable.
So decided to cut it.

They weren't very happy, but let some of them stick around as COD. But for the most part, we decided to cut it and just go full blown into the residential market, which was epic.
I mean, it worked out really well. We're gaining residential at 125% rate.
We were losing commercial at 80% rate within the first six months. And we just swapped the two out for each other.
But we got lucky too. We shot a perfect commercial.
We put hand wash sinks in the back of all of our vans. And we shot a commercial with a guy washing his hands, going up to the door, and then walking away from the door and doing like a hill click.
And that commercial, that TV commercial that me and Chloe shot, really sparked interest into Express Plumbing as a whole because that was what the pandemic was faced against, right? Being clean, fast, and professional, just as clean as you can get. So we ended up replacing that.
We come out of that and we start to go online. And Service Titan was doing a great job at that time on the Facebook groups, giving a lot of content at that time, bringing in Mike Rohl and John Taffer.
I remember seeing John Taffer and Tom Howard, my boy, Tom Howard. He was always on interviewing companies.
And I feel like Service Titan did a really good job trying

to connect with us that year and trying to help the trades out, probably crossing a couple of lines that they shouldn't have. But they were really reaching out to help the trades out.
So I was on the Facebook groups. And I think Ishmael just offered one time on a comment.
I think Tom was there and Ish offered, hey, if you want, come down to my shop. and I booked a ticket instantly.

Within two weeks, I was at Ishmael's shop. And that was a game changer for me.
I mean, he opened his doors up. He didn't hold anything back.
He spent a whole day just talking to us. He never stopped.
He had so much energy. But we came back from that with...
We were going to take on the world at that point in time. So we're going to apply everything that he taught us and really try to push this trade to the next level.
Because we didn't know any of it. We didn't know nothing about residential.
We didn't know nothing about turnover. You just had no idea on how this residential market works as a whole.
How many different pieces do you really have to have on it? You have turnover technicians, you have selling technicians, you have channel leads. There's just so many layers here.
You have install crews. We just had guys that were doing everything.
So we didn't have the whole market broken up on our side of the fence. So we started to do that.
And then I got Service Titan. Service Titan came down to my shop and then they decided to shoot Service Titan shop tours.
It's pretty cool. That thing launched.
My phones went off the hook. Contractors were calling me.
Yeah, dude. It was ridiculous.
People would call, call, call the CSR and say, I know Ben's in the area. And then I'd get on the phone with them.
They're like, where'd you get your shirts? And I'm like, oh my goodness. You called 40 times to ask me where I got my shirts? You got to be kidding me right now.
But I made a lot of connections over that. I ended up making really good friends with about five different companies.
So I started coaching those companies, which was pretty fun. I ended up growing a couple of them, a million, million and a half dollars.
It was fun coaching other companies and seeing if we could move their needle too, which we ended up doing. But we traveled around.
Me and Chloe visited 10 shops, 10 different shops all the way across. We just started reaching out.
And if anybody said, yeah, come by, see my shop. I didn't care if they're bigger than us or smaller than us.
We were headed their way to see what their operation looked like. I would say that was the best education I got.
That whole entire time was just visiting other shops. It was really an eye-opener.
We had a whole bunch of people come to our shop. We've had 12 different companies and coaches and everybody come to our shop.
We spent, I think, $350,000 last year on either traveling to other people's shops or having people come to our shop, which now I feel like we're unstoppable. I don't think anybody's doing it better than us per se, because we have a six- training program.
We have a training software. We have ride alongs.
We have curbside inspections every day. We do daily huddles every day.
My team is so dialed in right now that I really feel like we're hitting on all the cylinders. That's for sure.
What's a curbside inspection exactly? A curbside evaluation is just like you showing up and shutting your mouth and seeing how the service call goes for the customer. I mean, even when the technician is presenting options, stand on the customer side of the fence, stand right next to the customer and watch how your technician presents options, how he problem solves on his job.

What is the customer getting?

So you got like a supervisor that goes out and basically...

No, I ship everybody out.

So you show up to a customer's house when a technician is pulling up, one of your technicians.

Yeah.

And what is the conversation with the client?

None.

I mean, you got to at least say, you just say, hey, I'm going to come in your house and watch my guy work or what? I let the technician, if the client asks anything, they'll introduce us as a trading supervisor or whatnot. But otherwise, I'm just there.
Usually the customer doesn't come up and ask us anything. We're just letting the technician control the whole call.
And he should be controlling the call. If he follows the process correctly, he's controlling the whole call anyway.
I have nothing to do with the call because he introduces himself. He puts his rug down.
He hands his business card off. He is constantly talking.
He's making connections with that customer, remembering their name, repeating their name back to them. He's just constantly going at it.
So there's no reason for me to have to say anything or for anybody. I ship everybody out of the office.
Chloe will go do curbsides. My whole entire management team will go do curbsides.
I'll even have technicians do curbsides on technicians. I love that.
I love that. So you guys said you get six-week training program.
You said you also have a training software. What sort of software are you using? Trainial.
It's something you build out yourself. Yeah.
But it's really cool. Yeah.
It's awesome. So you got trainial going, you got a six week and I'm guessing that's an apprentice program, right? Yeah.
So I think the most important thing that everybody needs to realize is the hiring process. We need to bring the right people on board to our company because we don't want to bring on an onboard terrorist.
I think that's one of the things that's put out there. But they have to believe in us.
They have to want to fight for the company, want to fight for their peers and help the company take it to the next level. A lot of times when we're doing a whole bunch of interviews, we get to the point where we get kind of frustrated with it.
And then we start accepting people onto our team that we probably shouldn't have accepted onto our team. But we're like, we need to fill the spot.
We have this band sitting in the yard and whatnot. And those are the worst moments you can have because you're bringing somebody aboard that maybe doesn't even believe in the company and instantly starts to fight the process.
And then you, you can't get anywhere with that kind of crap. How do you get in front of that? Well, I love rapid hire.
I mean, that thing has been awesome, man. Cause you know, they already do the interview and you're able to watch the video of the guy before you, you even do anything.
But then after that, you bring them in for a formal interview. You send them out on a ride along with one of your lead guys for a day.
And you try to hone in to make sure that this person is going to fit your culture. Because it's super important that they fit your culture.
I mean, especially if you're a small team, we're just a small team. We're like a little football team.
So we got to bring in players that are going to help us take it to the next level. We can't bring in crap.
We're way too small to bring in bad players that are going to go against the process. But then the six weeks weeds them out too.
So if they get through all that, then they go through six weeks of training. And as they're going through the training, their coach is determining...
Because there's a full-time trainer here at Express, just full-time. That's what he does every day.
He either goes back and trains some of the guys that have been here for a while, or he's training new guys for six weeks. They're just in his classroom.
They're hanging out with him. They have to do hands-on training.
They have to do the trainial. They have to read all of our policies and procedures and operation manuals.
They have to get introduced to everybody within our company. We are embedding them into our culture for that whole entire time.
If there's a channel lead that they're going to be assigned to, they get to meet with that channel lead every morning and role play with him. And he decides if they're going to make it to his team.
So there's a giant process here for six weeks. And when you're going through that process, you're going to either be a turnover tech or you're going to make it to an install crew or you're going to make it to a selling tech.
You could go on the excavation crew too. We will determine within that six weeks and your training will also start to take a curve to more of what you're going to go, the department that you're going to go into.
As we learn who you are, if you're good at communicating, or if you're just mechanically inclined, we're going to determine that. Then once a week, so in that six weeks, every week they go for a ride-along and they have to curbside evaluations on other technicians.
So you got the trainee goes for a ride-along every week and he does curbside evaluations on the people that one day that he'll be working with. So that's great too, because he brings back lots of information and it just works out really, really well.
If you survive that and I launch you, you're going to be an amazing guy. I can guarantee it.
You know, it's interesting. I just got this in the mail yesterday.
It's called Tips and Tricks or Tricks of the Trade to Success. And it says, ta-da, Paul Kelly was right down the street from me.
And there's just this here in the beginning, it's magic. He says, you got to teach the student number one, verify their understanding number two, have the student perform to assess their skill level number three, then and only then move on to the new batch of tricks.
So we look at this stuff.

How important is the turnover? I mean, I'm obsessed with the turnover. And actually, we call it the torch because we passed the torch.
We wanted to come up with a cool name other than turnover. We learned that from Ken Goodrich.
But we passed the torch to the next guy to close the deal. But it's 85% setup, I think.
Oh, yeah. The cool thing about you're talking about a technician or turnover tech turning over to a lead or a channel lead, right? Yep.
It's just important. So if we try to teach them the whole entire system to get from beginning to end, where they're writing up all six options on their own, it's really hard to find a guy that can even do that.
I mean, it takes almost years and years and years of training to get a guy to do that. But if you could teach them, hey, show up, put down a rug, hand your business card off, make a connection with the customer, remember the customer's name, work on their equipment, try your best to clean up your area, clean up every piece of what you're working on.
You're there to fight for getting that repair done. You're there.
You're on the customer side of the fence here. Then you can turn it over to a senior and a technician or a channel lead that will come and he's going to question you.
He doesn't want everything to be explained to him when he gets there. So he doesn't get the information from the customer.
He's going to get the information from the turnover tech. And the turnover tech is going to be standing there right next to the customer, explaining everything that went down and fighting for that repair for the customer.
It's extremely important. It's probably the most important thing you can ever do.
And it's hard. None of this is easy.
This is the hardest crap that I've ever had to train and coach, mentor, go out there, do curbside evaluations, make sure it's happening. But if you can do that, you change the KPI by so much.
Everybody's always worried about, well, what I'm paying for a lead. Well, who cares what you're paying for a lead? What are you doing with that lead after you get it? That's more important than anything because you could be paying 20 bucks for a lead.
But if you have a crappy process, you're just running through leads all day long. And you're not even providing that customer service that the customer nowadays is demanding out of that service call.
Here's why I care about cost per acquisition. Let's just go through a quick little formula here.
And this is what I tell people is, first of all, I need to get my average ticket. So you get your average ticket.
So those that are listening, write down average ticket. Then you want to get your conversion rate that's face-to-face.
Then you want to get your booking rate. Now, booking rate, if you use Schedule Engine, if you use Yelp, if you use any form fields, if you use Facebook forms, anything, include that on your booking rate.
And then you want to get your cost per acquisition because when you get that and you can adjust those numbers properly, you come up with an equation that you know, if I pour this much money into marketing and you do it right, this is the outcome of my budget. This is the total.
So I agree with you. you some people really they care so i remember this guy in phoenix and i don't know him very well but he used to obsess about getting parts for cheaper he used to save five pennies on a roller a buck on a strut and his whole life i feel like was just it was how do i get cheaper parts better prices and you know i think that that moves the needle when you get to a big enough size but man i look at something and and they go how do you get that much for that and i go well they're not buying the part right what does joker start to say you're not buying the part you're buying the service for your family you're buying the safety you're buying the the experience you're buying the warranty and you know you six options.
And I got to tell you this, I love Joe and I believe in six options, but at the same time, when I'm doing a service call and I've asked you a million questions, and I know Ben, you plan on living in this home, you're going to raise your family here. You obviously, you really value this home.
You understand the investment. And I learned this from actually josh, but on top of that, I add a little bit to it.
But here's what we need to do today. Here's what you should do.
And here's what I would do if you were my mom. Now, based on what you told me, this is what I would do.
Let's go through this real quick. This is the opener I choose based on what you told me.
You wanted it to be quiet. You want it to work from your phone.
I don't like giving people six options on a repair if they told me exactly I'm moving in a year. I do not want that expensive option.
And when you do that, it's almost like the reason why I always offer first when I go to buy a car, then I've flipped over a thousand cars, is I already know what they're asking for it. If they tell me, listen, dude, the least I'm going to take is three grand and I offer them $1,500.
They're like, dude, I just got done telling you. But if I say, listen, CV joints are shot.
Let's go over. Let's talk about this.
Let's talk about this. Let's talk about this.
Let's talk about this. I'm only going to give you $1,500 for it.
I got cash now or see you later. At that point, it's okay to do that.
So tell me a little bit about the six options because I love this conversation because it just seems like you got things so tight. And I love that you're in Boise's the biggest, best market right now.
I think it's blowing up. Yeah, that's for sure.
I think there's like 200 new plumbing companies out on the road right now, but there's definitely a lot of them. Every day I see a new shop, I'm like, whoa.
But they're going to have a big amount of client because it's a lot to get this all put together. As far as the six options, I don't believe in the six options either, but I don't believe in lip service.
And I think I could sell anything, but I don't know if my guys could sell anything. So I need them to do the options so they can expand their mind.
And also, I love to see that KPI. I have to see that KPI on my dashboard.
So if they're out there doing lip service, I don't see the KPI. So I don't even know what they're out there doing.
And if I don't push them as far as I can on options, then they're going to do the bare minimum anyway.

So just because a guy is maybe gifted in talking and he can sell a project for six or seven or 10 grand, doesn't mean that that's the right way to do it because we need to see where his thought process was on that. And when he has to write up his six options, you're going to see his thought process.
And then you're going to be able to make adjustments by coaching him and mentoring him. So he's doing a better job at presenting those options.
So you're not going out there just throwing crap on your options. So overall, we try to get a 4.0 across the board as far as options go.
So some guys might do two, two and a half option or two options on the job or three options on the job. Some guys might be five options on job, but every day in the daily huddle, we're looking for a 4.0 to be what we're the KPI that we're going to go for.
Explain the 4.0 a little bit. Four options just on the average.
Four options on average. And do you have any KPI that you track as far as your percentage of turnovers? Do you expect any amount or no? Yeah, it depends on if it's already a selling tech and he's turning over to install or it's a channel lead.
He's got different KPIs that we're following. As far as a turnover technician, we're looking right around 30% of what he does out there.
We're hoping that it's going towards a channel lead or towards a lead technician. But we're fine-tuning that every day.
I mean, it's still a discussion. That's why we're having a daily huddle because we're trying to get to that sweet spot.
That's the funnest part. See, I don't need no money.
I don't need to be famous. I'm here just purely as an operator.
I love this game so much that I just want to perfect it. That's all I want to do.
I just want to perfect it. I want to perfect it for my team, for just the fun of the game.
I don't think people are doing a very good job, especially in my industry, especially in your industry too. I mean, my industry is like a little bit better than your industry, but the industry that we're all chasing right now is the HVAC industry.
They figured out some of the bigger players out there have really figured this out and we're trying to convert it and see what's going to work best in our industry well let me just say i just got out to what i've been talking to aaron gainer here before he actually showed tom howard that you can make a lot of money in plumbing hvac's got its its challenges. Number one is if you're in a hot climate, everybody and their brother does HVAC.
Number one, number two is it's seasonal. You know, it's interesting because I went out to see Leland Smith.
And by the way, I love Ishmael. I love Tom Howard.
I love these guys. They give back and they care.
Kent Goodrich, Landon Brewer, all these guys are out there to help. There's dozens of them.
Joe Cressara. It keeps going, going, going.

If I had to mention everybody, it would be

I'd be here all day. My favorite is

Tom Howard. That's the guy I bother all

the time. I could text him right now.
He'd respond.

I mean, I don't know how he does it

because I talked to him yesterday.

You mentioned the game.

I got to tell you, I love the game too. I'm

obsessed with the game. Me too.
I'm obsessed with the the reports but the game's changing for me and let me explain there's thousands of garage door companies out there and although if i walked into your shop i'd rip you a new asshole ben and i can't you walk into my shop you look at my desk and you'd rip me a new asshole you say what the your deal, dude? You're not at everything you said you were. And it's easy to criticize when it's not your company.
It's easy to poke holes. Anybody could do that.
I always say I'm the best I've ever been, the worst I'll ever be. But here's the situation.
The new game is I feel that you're light years above everybody, especially in your market. And listen, I got a long way to go.
I got a long, long way to go. But I feel like I'm light years ahead of most people.
Now, listen, when I'm talking to you, believe it or not, I've got 100 notes and I love this stuff. And I'm going to make, I would love it.
I'm not going to make them, but I'd love if it's part of our members here at A1 and our leadership team listen to this because I love your discipline.

But here's the new game. We're light years ahead of other companies.
Why not let them participate and partner with us? Because ultimately, you could change, you said 41 people. What if you had the ability between arbitrage? There's thousands of owners out there that deserve better.
They deserve time with their family and their kids.

Now you can spend every day, all day for the next 10 years, you know, making Express the biggest plumbing company in the world. Or you can start to share and maybe they partner up, maybe they don't.
But ultimately, there's nobody that's going to get better arbitrage probably than a few plumbers in the industry.

So that's what allows you to share.

So the game for me has been changing dramatically, knowing the power of this crazy thing called arbitrage and crazy thing called, well, they're private equity companies, right? For the most part. And right now with this new day of COVID and inflation and everybody's world was considered essential, right? So all I know is that one day you're going to wake up and you're going to go, damn, dude, I'm good at this.
And you already feel that way. I can tell.
I need to go out. You've already done it.
It's 350 grand last year. Okay.
350 grand you spent. But at some point you point you go listen some people don't know what a call tracking number is some people never heard of a kpi they go what's a keepy some people don't know what a crm stands for okay somebody i literally go are you doing ppc or you got your lsa ads on and how does your gmb rank they go what the? I don't even know what that stuff is.
I said, how do you get customers? They go Craigslist. These people need help.
So all I'm saying is I think what happens with a lot of business owners over time is the game starts to change. And I don't think you're ready for that yet because you're having too much fun right now.
And it's amazing. I'll join a big team.
I will. There's no doubt that me and Chloe will both join a big team.
I mean, Chloe's a big part of this. She's got six years of college behind her.
Like if you talk to her right now, oh my goodness, she'd blow your mind. She blows my mind every day.
She's very, very intelligent. Yeah, she's super fun.
But yeah, it is. I mean, go to even some of the local shops or shops across the way and it's like, okay, well, let me sit here for two days and kind of see what I can see that you're doing wrong.
And I'm like, you got 300 leads coming through on a month-to-month basis. You have a 28% close rate because you don't answer your phone.
I mean, it's just so bad. You're a million-dollar shop, but you could be a $4 million shop if you just change a couple things here.
You have enough leads to be a $4 million shop. But these old-school guys, they won't change their mind.
I mean, it's so hard to get these guys. I mean, even some of the companies that me and Chloe were coaching this last year, some of them did a really, really, really good job changing.
Like, okay, go out and buy two vans. Okay, you need to do this X, Y, and Z.
Start doing your daily huddles. These are the numbers that you need to start tracking.
Here's a call script. You need to start following it.
And then we would audit them because we wouldn't coach a company unless we could log into their service Titan. Then we had audit them and then coach them through again.
Some people, even if you gave them the gold nuggets, they just wouldn't apply. And it was kind of frustrating because I'd sit down with them every two weeks and I'm like, God, guys, you have to do this.
I'm not even getting paid for this. I'm just doing this out of the kindness of my heart.
So you have to apply and you just couldn't get them to do it. But the ones that did do it, I took a company from a million to 2.2 million in one year.
I was like, this is so freaking cool because everything I said you did, you just applied and you just ran with it. And you got the call script going and you got the 80% booking rate with your CSRs, which was like at one point in time, 40%.
And you're running a better system where you're not letting Bob that's been there longer than you run your company anymore. There's just some cool operators out there.
There's a guy, Aaron, right now with quality plumbing. And man, I love him.
He's a great operator. You tell him to do something, he jumps on it immediately.
And he gets immediate results out of it. Sometimes he beats himself up a little too much.
But for the most part, it's really fun to watch him operate. But you're talking about these mom and pops have been in business for 15 years and they've been doing it and they have a nice house and they drive nice vehicles and they're a boss of nine people.
And to get them to buy another van or to change up a process is extremely, extremely hard. They have no right to own a business anymore.
And guys like me and you, unfortunately, are going to either make them conform or crush them. I've got a big heart.
I've lent it out and I care about them. But listen, your cheap prices will no longer work.
And you know what? Here's one thing. I had Jody on yesterday and we talked about, this is crazy in the hiring.
I've never seen this before. I'm like, listen, you show up to the interview, you got 10 points.
You got your name right. There's another 10 points.
It's crazy. But I'll tell you what, we get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of applicants a day because I'm in 30 markets, 19 states.
I just looked at this. I got this up and going in and on homeservicemillionaire.com, the book.
There's a KPI calculator under resources. And when you put your KPIs in, and I don't do anything with this, literally.
If you change your KPIs up, like your booking rate or your average ticket or your conversion rate. And here's the key one, the booking rate.
I was with the Wizard of Ads. I talked about this yesterday.
He said, I've never seen a call center do it right. Not one.
I was on the phone with Lauren from Search Kings and he said, do you know how much LSA ads matter? Google watches you. If you got an IVR, you're screwed.
And I've got an IVR. So he said, IVR press one, press two for this because we're a big company.
We get thousands of calls a day. He said, figure out a way to get rid of the IVR.
Make sure you mention A1 Brasdor service because it transposes it and it tells Google and your LSAFs could be tripled. You know, I am obsessed with this stuff.
I love hearing your story. I love taking notes.
I want to ask you something. I said, how many employees you up to these days? And said tommy who cares i said i'm less than i was a year ago is what you said but i've doubled i've doubled my revenue so i'm less than i was i'm less than 45 i'm 41 or whatever and i doubled my revenue so here's the question i love this you said i have four people in bookkeeping four people in bookkeeping for around a $5 million company or whatever, 2 million.
And then they said, I need one more person. And I want to know what the hell is going on in there, first of all, but how many people want to add employees rather than getting efficient, using the right software, automation, and actually working, getting stuff done.
Getting stuff done in a day. All the time.
It's crazy. They want to be a boss of somebody else.
They just add, add, and add, and add. And even when you hear somebody talking, they're like, I want to get up to 100 employees.
And it's like, well, do you even know what that means? Because it doesn't even matter about how many employees you have. It's a matter of how well you're using it.
And yeah, they wanted another person to help them enter the debits and credits on a day-to-day basis for a $5 million company. And there was already four of them.
I was just like, there's no way. So even nowadays, I automated 90% of it.
I have one person doing the whole job that five were about ready to do. And it was ridiculous.
So I realized that employees don't have anything to do with it. It's your process.
And see, so many of us can get so good at just winging it. I talked to $1 million, $3 million, $5 million, even $10 million companies all the time.
And I started digging into them. And I'm like, Damn, you are good at winging this.
You're like, Today, do a meeting. Tomorrow we do this.
And you're winging the whole thing. You have a process, but it's literally in your freaking brain and you're winging the whole thing.
I don't like that. I want to know.
I want to go up to my manager and I'll say, let me see your playbook for the next three months. Let me see your playbook.
He'll bring it out. We'll look at it.
I'm like, okay, this is when you're having your meetings. This is when you're doing your role play.
These are the curbsides that you have scheduled. I will go through his whole entire playbook.
And I'm like, that's a good playbook. Now just play this one out.
And if it works, we won't make any adjustments, but if it doesn't work, we'll make a couple adjustments and see how far we can get. What I've noticed when you say this stuff is I used to be a firefighter and I think you used to be a firefighter.
We can make anything work. Listen, I'd go show up there and I'd make it happen, man.
Look, you need to, people used to call me up. My boy, Dean Marsh, been here 13 years.
And I say, Dean, I remember 10 years ago, I said, watch what happens when you call me. And we use this to this day.
Dean called me up and he'd go, hey, Tommy, I got a customer right now. We're at $623.
Now, mind you, this is 10 years ago. And I'm like, okay, am I on speakerphone, Dean? And he'd go, yes.
I'm like, what are we looking at here? And he said, well, I'm with Ms. Smith and we're doing two Springs rollers and she needs a whatever whatever gear and sprocket on her opener i'd say miss smith how are you today and i always smile always smiling when i'm talking and i say do you know that you're in the presence of greatness dean march is my best technician by far not only is my best technician but he's the best dad the best husband and one of the best guys i know i gotta tell you i absolutely love dean he's amazing and the fact that you got so lucky to get him in your garage you made it you made it just go play the lottery today and i'd make him laugh and i'd say so dean tell me exactly what's going on with your 31 point inspection and he'd tell me you know we didn't get to the bottom rubber yet.
She also needs an operator reinforcement bracket. I didn't even go over that.
We're at 623. I said, listen, Ms.
Smith, my man Dean out there would never lie to you. Do you want your garage door bandaid fixed with an economical fix or do you want it fixed for good? And she goes, Tommy, I don't want to deal with this again, but I don't want to spend $623.
I said, well, the good news is I could fix it right. The bad news is it's not going to be $623 because we need to do an operator bracket and a bottom rubber.
But because he's already out there, we're going to cover the labor. The bottom rubber is $125.
The operator brackets, $75. So we're at about $825.
I'll tell you what, you do this right now because he's already there and he's got the parts on the truck. I'll do it for 750 right now.
And I'm out of your hair for the next 10 years. What do you say? And now we'd turn that into a service agreement.
But the thing was, is she didn't want to spend 623. There's a psychology behind talking to a person in charge and then also saying how great they are and agreeing with the diagnosis.
And when you got two people and then you say, listen, you're all set, you're done. It's the acronyms that we use.
There's certain things that we do, an adjective I meant, to describe something. So when you say this toilet's runny, that's not a very, very good thing.
You say, listen, I don't know toilets and I don't know plumbing very well, but I say things like this. This is not safe.
It's very dangerous. This is what needs to get done.
These parts are shot. They're no good.
I look you in the eyes. I've got a certain shoulders back.
I say it a certain way. And I practice this.

And I practice over and over again.

And the thing is, a lot of guys say, well, they don't look you in the eye.

They say, you know, I'd recommend it.

You know, you can probably get away with it for a while.

But who knows what will happen?

I don't know.

I'm not.

And I'm like, that's the worst thing you could do.

But what do you teach your guys as far as eye contact, body language, get to know the customer, do the right thing? How does that look to you? Well, you have to have the right guys. I mean, it goes all the way back to the hiring, right? You have to have guys that want to be taught.
They want to be a part of something bigger. They want to role play in front of other guys that are not rolling their eyes and being a sticker and everybody, You got to have the right guys.
You have to treat those guys correctly too. I see on these Facebook groups all the time, it's like, oh, my guy doesn't know how to write up invoices.
So I wrote up his invoice for him. And then I went out there and I embarrassed him in front of the rest of his team.
And I read something like that. I'm like, oh man, never do that.
You're crazy as hell. Yeah, sure.
Maybe the other guy supported you in that, or maybe you felt like a big man embarrassing another guy in front of another guy. But what you really ended up with is all the rest of those guys are thinking, man, he could do that to me.
And you'll never build an army if you have guys that think the leader will throw them under a bus at any point in time.

Lastly, if you have any of your guys go through any problems in their life, you need to be engaged with you guys at all times.

So if you have any guys that have any problems in their life, you're there to help them deal with that.

I'll give guys money all the time.

Or I had a guy that broke his leg when he was at home.

And I paid him full paychecks for nine months while he was at home getting his leg healed. The reason why I did that is because I like him a lot.
He's a really, really good guy. He's been with the company for a long period of time.
He's a stand-up guy. But another thing is all the rest of the guys know what I did.
They know what I do. They know that I'm going to take care of them through anything.
They know that I have their back. So if they run into a situation in life and they need a helping hand, then Ben will be there and do whatever it takes to get them out.
I love that part. I got guys that give me hugs all the time.
I don't know how many shops have so many hugs going on. And I don't know if that's just a weird thing.
But dude, my guys are awesome. Just amazing.
So once you get guys that believe in you, and they know that you have everybody's back, that you'll never talk bad about them behind their back, you won't say anything behind their back that you won't say

directly to their face. They can trust you.
You're not going to treat any of them bad in front of each other to try to prove a point. Once you get those guys rolling on your team, then they love it.
I show up in the morning and I'll see six guys out there by themselves, just role-playing. And that to me is exciting because I'm not even having to ask them to do that.
They pulled one of the strong links out of the group and said, hey, will you role-play with me in the morning? And then another one heard it and said, I'll be there too. And then all of a sudden, they got their own six o'clock in the morning parties going on out there trying to perfect the process.
If you don't have that, then all you have is you're forcing it all the time. You're like, hey guys, get together.
Everybody needs to do role-playing today. And you can see that guys are slouching in their chairs.
They're not wanting to do it. They're not engaged.
They're rolling their eyes. And it's impossible.
It's impossible to perfect this process if you have guys like that on your team. So it's really who you hire and how you take care of them, man.
At the end of the day, I've lost $50,000 in having guys stop smoking. I'll pay a guy $5,000 cash, straight up cash, if he stops smoking for three months.
And I've been successful with that 10 times. So I'm pretty proud of that.
Yeah. You guys do a lot of cool things, man.
I'll tell you what, what I've realized right now, I'll tell you a few things. Number one, you're exactly like me when it comes to my guys, my guys, my guys, I'm on every mojo call.
I'm on every morning call. I'm on every Thursday morning meeting, but you know what I've failed at miserably? My CSRs, my dispatchers, my warehouse guys.
We've got lots of people. And my main goal this year is to start communicating better with the whole company.
Start to have more company-wide meetings because it's easy to talk to your earners out there that are out there. And you know what? I was a technician for a long, long time.
So it's so easy for me to relate. Yes, I answered calls, but there's nobody that's worth more or less.
If that person's not booking calls and I've got agents that could do 40 calls a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. It's really hard to say the dispatcher is more important than the tech and the tech is more important than the advertise.
They're all cumulatively.

There's a great book called Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

At certain times, we get siloed and we care about our own division, our own market, our own chapter.

And listen, we do lunches and breakfasts and they're included.

But, of course, employee of the month and they're always in that.

But I don't think I do a great enough job to tell everybody and send them the love that I do the techs.

Because I'll talk to the techs.

Trust me, today I'll have five conversations.

Today I'll talk to five guys.

Thank you. I don't think I do a great enough job to tell everybody and send them the love that I do the text because I'll talk to the text.
Trust me, today I'll have five conversations. Today I'll talk to five guys.
I'm not talking to CSRs on the weekend. I love my CSRs.
Oh my goodness. And I love my dispatcher too.
I got two of them, two amazing girls that, gosh, they make such good judgment calls all day long. They know the process.
They know what we're looking for. And they're able to call it out really quickly because guys will just get off beat.
Maybe they're having a bad day or maybe yesterday they left a job and it just didn't go well. And you never know how long a guy will be down for.
I can see guys go down for a whole month before. So the sooner you can identify that a guy is just not feeling good or he's having a bad day and you can talk to him and get that adjustment made, then he's going to be doing a lot better for his family.
So dispatch is super important. Chloe does all of the training for the dispatch girls.
She's always just rooting them on. She's high-fiving them.
She's like, I don't know how she does that. Positive reinforcement.
Every day she has a daily huddle with them too. I don't know if you guys have daily huddles with your CSRs and dispatch.
You know, here's the deal. Listen, this is my next challenge for you.
You and Chloe are going to have to get a cloning machine because you're not going to be able to hug everybody. Let's just say you move to, let's see, you're in Boise.
You go to Spokane. You say, listen, we've grown enough here to go to Spokane.
I wish I could give the love that I love to give here to my Phoenix guys that I basically grew up with. But some of these guys I just met, and four of them hit me up.
They just graduated. We went bowling on Wednesday.
And it was funny because I went and got the pin because it was stuck. You know, a pin flew out.
So I walked down the middle because I know the gals at the bowling alley. And I walked it back and she goes, listen, she goes, whoever wins this game, the girl that runs the bowling alley could keep the pin.
So I had to win that game. I'm going to get a powder coat with an A1 logo on it and have all the guys sign it that was in that cool but it's hard and i'm jealous of you is the reason because you say i get to give all the hugs and i gotta tell you i probably don't give enough hugs i'll tell you i probably rub some of the people the wrong way but you're like a big teddy bear but i love your story i love this stuff and actually i don't know if you got a hard cut off but i i like to keep going a little bit.
Yeah, we're good. Yeah.
Okay. So what's one typical mistake that you see the smaller businesses? You mentioned a lot of stuff and I agree with you.
Answer the damn phones and act like you want the customers to do business with you is number one. And then you mentioned that none of them really have a system in place.
And I think the biggest one you said is, hell, I had to go to Pantheon. I had to go look at other shops.
I had to invite people to my shop. Those are three great ones.
What's another one that you think is really, really important? Well, for small companies to try to get to... They got to get out of their way, man.
They won't do something because they're scared of offending everybody else. They might have technicians that have been there five or six years, and they won't hold their team accountable because they're scared of losing their team.
So they have a mountain to climb because it's not about being scared to lose your team because you start up an operation manual and you keep everybody accountable to it. It's about perfecting the whole entire process so we can all gain off of it, so we can all benefit off of it, so we can have the best health insurance in the valley and 401k in the valley and have the nicest vans in the valley and have the nicest place to work in the valley so we can really wrap ourselves around our people so nobody else can take them.
Because when we build the best people, we don't want anybody else to take them. And we want them, if they leave us, to be like, dang, man, that sucked.
I should have never left Express because that was my family and they made me feel like family. But these smaller companies, they're so scared of changing.
They're so scared of hiring another person or hiring another CSR. I don't know if they're afraid of hiring.
I think they're afraid that they're not going to come in and be lightning in a bottle. The thing is they don't know how to train.
They don't know how to give them the tools or the manual or just give them the successful things, the materials they need to succeed. You know, Victor, I don't know if you were at Victor's event, but Victor that, uh, he wears this service champions.
Anyway, Victor told me, he said, man, I was at one of the biggest companies. And then I got offered 10% more commission to switch companies.
And he goes, man, it was BS. Victor Rancor.
He goes, they could have gave me 20% more. He goes, there was not the camaraderie.
There was no systems. And when you get used to systems, when you get used to getting recognized, when you get used to the guys that you sit around and make fun of and say, I beat you this week, whatever it is, it's funny fun.
When you get used to that, I can't imagine going to a smaller company and being on a, someone tries to do a mojo call. There's three guys and no one talks.
Yeah, exactly. Like you're not going to want to go anywhere else because this is just a big family here.
Plus, we're all pushing each other. I want to see guys do better.
Absolute airflow. I knew that.
Here's something that I've asked on a couple of these podcasts is the coaching effect. There's a correlation between high-performing teams and managers who create healthy discomfort for those on their team.
Healthy discomfort. Now listen, my dad, he gave me healthy discomfort.
My mom gave me healthy discomfort. They did.
They made me go to school. They made me do certain things.
They made me do homework. My dad never said, hey, I'll have a job in that game, even though you lost.
He said, next time we'll get them. And listen, I don't hate dads that say good job as long as you tried.
But my dad never celebrated losing. And I don't like celebrating losing.
Hey, guys, we gave it our best shot, but we're going to have to give the building back to the bank. No, it doesn't work for me.
So what do you feel about those uncomfortable? Do you like to push people out of their comfort zone? Give them a bigger reason for trying. What is your thoughts on that? I do.
I do not hold anything back. The second that something bothers me or the second that I see something that's off, I'm going to go address it immediately.
I only want A players on my team. I only want guys or girls that want to take it to the next level.
Like, how far can we go? Every day, every single day, the thing that repeats in my head is what can I do to make them better? I'm not here for the money. I'm here to be an operator.
I'm here to see how far we can take this. So if you're not going to do that on my team, you're not going to be on my team.
There's no doubt about it. But I have pushed guys too far.
I've seen guys crumble. But when I wasn't creating a clear enough vision for them, when they didn't see what I was seeing, I didn't have them repeat it back to me.
We weren't on the same page. And that's the only time I've ever lost guys.
So as long as I'm on the same page as them, as long as I can throw a meeting and then have them repeat that back to me, and that we know that we're heading in the exact same direction, then I know that I can have the most success. Because when it's confusing for everybody, it's going to fall apart.
And guys, they're going to go to what they know.

They're going to be like, well, what do I get paid for doing that? Versus having a clear vision,

a path to success. But I won't back down from anybody.
I mean, I always feel like I'm a big

guy. But every time I stand next to somebody, I realize I'm really a tiny guy.
My whole five

Thank you. to success.
But I won't back down from anybody. I mean, I always feel like I'm a big guy.
But every time I stand next to somebody, I realize I'm really a tiny guy. My whole 5'7", I'm like the smallest guy in my company.
I have giants that surround me all day long. And I love it.
I mean, one of my favorite guys... Well, there's two really cool guys that I have that just have stories.
And you can just see where could just see where they came from. Like I got a green beret that works for me that, I mean, I idolize, you know, his best friend standing on a landmine and blew up right in front of him.
And then it got him too. So he's got some, definitely some battle wounds on him.
And this was one of his first civilian jobs, but man, that guy inspires me every single day. And it really makes you just realize that there's something bigger out there.
There's something to run for and let's go for it. So anybody that wants to hold us back on my team, they just won't be on my team very long because I am not happy where we're at.
I might be financially secure in life. I have more vehicles than I can keep running.
So there's dead batteries in my garage all the time. There's like nine vehicles in my garage.
So I know what it is like to buy assets and overspend, but that never filled the void. The true void was like, what can we do for everybody around us? What can we do to make these people better and improve their life too? So get rid of all those vehicles.
Let's just focus on how can we improve our training? How can we improve our communication? How can I take a guy from $40,000 to $150,000 a year? How can I change somebody's life? And that's what drives me every freaking day. You know, it's interesting.
I want you to read the book, Dream Manager. I just had a gal go through the Dream Manager program.
And actually, Vanessa went through it, Jody's wife with Rabinier. But I want to tell you something here.
If I were you, I'd start tracking some different KPIs. Now, listen, I do a good job of tracking booking rate conversion and all that bullshit.
But there's two other things I want you to start thinking about. This is for real.
And I think you're going to change everything you think about from this day forward if you do this. Number one, the customer journey KPIs.
How long did it take to answer the phone? One ring. What message could they book online very easily through scheduling when they got your advertising? So take it from the beginning to the end.
Have some secret shoppers and understand how long did it take during the supply chain crisis? Did we communicate properly with the customer? When they call back in, did they get a copy of their invoice if they wanted one? Everything that matters to the customer, I've learned this through Janie Smith, the competitive advantage. But here's something else.
And I'll tell you this. It's easier said than done.
We get 10,000 jobs a month. It's something that this is what I aspire to be.
And it's easy to say if I was smaller, I would do it. But it's something that I know Brian's working on and I know it's very important to us.
And I know Angela is aware of it. There's another thing here that my dream manager, she's working on right now.
So Kelly's just getting back from Florida, I think today, but how many people became homeowners that worked at the company this year? How many people got to go on their dream vacation? How many people had a child come into this world? How many people fixed their credit? I love the idea of getting in shape and became healthier and quit smoking. What would attract you if I said, Ben, come work for me.
I got a 90% booking rate. Or if I said, Hey, Ben, 18 people bought houses this year.
We have 27 people that went from a credit score of less than 600 to over 700. We have this many people that brought kids into this world that know they're going to have a good life and be comfortable to get new clothes before their first day of school when they're in kindergarten.
Those know, those things matter. And nobody really tracks that stuff.
And let me just tell you, everybody's going, yeah, I need more stuff to track. Thanks, Tommy.
But I think it's important. The world has changed.
Okay. Right now we've got to start doing things differently.
If we want to get the right people, people have choices. There's more people that need to hire than there are people that want to go work.
So, and by the way, I'll just tell you this. Jody's got some astounding facts about great people don't want to wait.
I think what you're going to find is you get better and better with Rabbitire Pro and all that is they're going to get your onboarding time below 10 days when most people take 30. Yeah.
If I went back into the field and I just wanted to be a tech, I'm going to give them one day, the same day to respond. And I'm going to, I know I'm a hot commodity.
I know I'm a good guy. I know I make eye contact.
I know I excite customers. I know I relate.
You show me what you're worth as a company. You got to sell me.
Yep. And yeah, I didn't get back to this guy.
These hiring managers, I got to tell you, what's your take on this stuff? Because I got to tell you, it opened up my eyes. We actually have turned around all of our recruiters internally.
It's all new now because our guys were not doing what I thought they were supposed to be doing. The second I see a top performing guy or girl in the industry, I mean, I'm on them.
I love it. Yeah.
You don't get a whole lot of top performing people. You don't get Deion Sanders of the industry.
He doesn't come to your door very often. And when he does, you need to recognize that and you need to open up the doors, show them everything that you're doing.
We don't hide anything at Express. So all my guys know our numbers, our budget, our forecasted budget, our capacity planning, everything is out and open.
And then my CPA comes in every three months for anybody that's struggling personally with their finances. So we'll throw classes for them to help them become wealthy themselves.
Because what are you doing with your money? I know that you're getting these $4,000 or $5,000 or $6,000 paychecks, but you're always broke. So what is happening out there? So let me help you change that around and become successful.
Because if we can take care of that piece, we take care of where they are successful, they're wealthy, they can take care of their family, they can have that new truck if they want, then they're going to operate better for us at the end of the day. But if they're just money hungry, and they don't know how to manage their money, and they get a paycheck, and they blow the whole thing, and they're always just running from people, that's not a guy that you're really going to want.
So you got to take care of that foundation. But you got to just really get good at identifying the people that you hire.
Do you have a test? And I know that this is one thing that we're all still winging it, I feel like, because there's like three guys that sit in an interview when we do interview somebody and then we ship them out in a truck with one of our lead technicians. And then we have some discussions to see if this guy is going to be good for our team.
But I was seeing like some of the bigger companies have, you know, 50 or 100 question tests. Okay, so here's the deal.
There's personality profiling tests, but but there's a certain test i want you to remember this guy's name and remember this book jonathan wisman the sales boss now what he did and he's working with me he's here in town he's not very affordable because he's that damn good he's gonna be a keynote at garage door freedom their next event but i'll tell you what he wrote the book the sales boss and picture this the worst mercedes dealership in the world literally they average two vehicles per salesman per month he worked with them through this personality test it's 80 correlation the predictive index is somewhere between 19 and 20 percent so you got one in five chances of getting it right. He's got, you got four out of five chances of getting it right.
So what he does is analyzes the great people in your company that already are a fit, that are used to doing, it's a tough job. It's not a nine to five.
You got to deal with a lot of things, but there's a lot of freedoms that come with it. So he identifies the sales aptitude.
This is what it's aimed for.

And I'll get you the name of the test.

All my guys have taken it.

And we're really, we're going through this process right now.

But it's the ultimate advantage to do these tests, to do the ride along, to have a program.

Like, here's the way I describe it.

You mentioned the Green Beret.

We are in the Navy when you enter my program.

First, we're going to go through a bootcamp.

Just make sure you could show up and be sober and smile.

Yeah, right.

the You mentioned the Green Beret. We are in the Navy when you enter my program.
First, we're going to go through a boot camp. Just make sure you can show up and be sober and smile.
Yeah, right. The basics.
And, you know, driving record, background check, drug test. You're in the Navy.
Yeah. Number two, we're going to send you to Phoenix to become a Navy SEAL.
Number three, if you're badass, we're going to bring you into SEAL Team 6. And that's when you can make some real money but here's the thing i want to question for you i just can't get enough of this this is one of the coolest podcasts i'm literally eating this stuff up i got so many notes i can't wait i can't thank you enough for coming on what would deon sanders want if he was going into home service i'll tell you all my guys say is there a path for me to get out of the field one day.
Yeah. Do you want to know how you get Deion Sanders? We'll go on your whiteboard today and say,

what? all my guys say, is there a path for me to get out of the field one day? Yeah. Do you want to know how you get Deion Sanders? Go on your whiteboard today and say, what would a top technician, you know how many times I've seen Ishmael pick up guys from other companies because of certain things, because of stupid shit that a policy or something that I don't like guys breaking policies, but certain things you got to look at with some scrutiny over time.
And I'll ask you this. How do you pull Deion Sanders? How do you make your place, which you already are, through love, attention, consideration? But what else? You know, you can do PTO.
You could do 401ks. You could do some fun outings.
But how much are you willing to put into your guys? You know, are you going to have Joe Cressara come out? Are you going to get great speakers all the time? Are you going to help them go through books and buy them books? Are you going to help them with their personal lives? This is a big one. Their ladder to success to one day get out of the field.
That's my question. How do you attract Deion Sanders? You do all of that and you support the living shit out of them.
Recognition, man. Deion Sanders wants recognition.
I think that was one of the biggest things when I even started my own company. There was nobody to give me recognition anymore.
There was nobody telling me I was doing a good job. And I felt that when I first started my company.
I felt like that void instantly hit me where, oh, why am I doing this? But being recognized in front of your team is super, super valuable. Letting them know what they're doing for you and how much you appreciate it is super valuable.
And then just supporting them, but give them a clear path. Nobody is giving anybody a clear path.
And that's where it gets really foggy. And you might lose a guy like that if you don't have a clear path to success.
So you want to show them the different levels and how he's going to achieve those levels and what the final results are going to be for that individual because he is Deion Sanders. And they're all Deion Sanders if they're coached, right? They are, but there's some really bad dudes out there.
There's some alcoholics. There's some angry guys.
There's, you know, the guys in the meeting, but there's no such thing as a bad person that comes into this world i guarantee you you could take every baby but when they were kids and when they're babies you wouldn't tell the difference it's when they came into this world and like you said you got your your lead manager you got ron right you got ron out of a drug house in a wheelchair with crumbs on them yeah most people i tell people i can't be like like starbucks i'm not captain save a hoe i can't i can't save this person from themselves and you said something too earlier you said it's up to me to continue to lead them and guide them and better them but really i'll tell you you had to better yourself before you could better anybody else. I'll tell you this five years ago, imagine yourself in the position you're in now, just take your five-year-old self, five years older.
I promise you, you'd fail. I was an idiot.
I was an idiot. And so you had to grow personally.
You had to get on and go to Pantheon. And I'll tell you this, I probably shouldn't say this, but we've got a dozen people going to Pantheon.
The reason why is because I think it's so essential. It opened up our group size.
And listen, there are times that I'm a horrible, horrible leader. Listen, I'm doing podcasts instead of, I'm trying to get better myself because I know without bettering my best, there's no way I'll ever, ever, ever be able to live up to their expectations.
And Ken Goodrich during one of our meetings said, guys, if you don't continue to grow and try to stay at the pace of what Tommy's trying to do by reading and go into some of these events, then it's going to be really hard as a management team to stay. My recommendation might be to terminate you over time.
And he goes, was I a little harsh? And I said, I don't know. Maybe they needed to hear it.
Well, the greatest thing about you is the best way to learn is to teach and to put yourself out there constantly. And you're constantly reaching.
You're constantly reaching. You're constantly putting people on the spot.
So you can tell that you're an awesome operator. You're trying to grab that next level.
You are always trying to grab that next level, which you're helping guys like me grab the next level because I watch you. And I'm like, dang, Tommy's throwing down some today.
This is good stuff. The same with anybody else, Ishmael Valdez or anybody that's putting themselves out there because it's not easy to put yourself out there.
It's not easy to put yourself in the spotlight. Cristiano, nobody.
I mean, maybe they're trying for something else, but it's

yeah, you're being judged by everybody.

Listen, here's the deal. You talk

to my team, they tell you I'm good at a couple of things.

I'm bad at a lot of stuff. You talk to Ishmael's

team, they tell you Ishmael's the king of

this, this, and this. He depends on

other people. And

I kind of live on this bubble. Let's pretend it's Mars.

And I'm always looking at Earth.

And I'm looking for volcanoes, earthquakes, forest fires. And then I inject myself.
I don't really want to do the day-to-day. I just want to bring attention and say, we need to deal with this volcano.
And so I do that. And sometimes I'll tell you this, that there's been people that try to avoid.
They don't want me to know that we're losing money in a department like Door 48. Or they don't want me to know that we potentially had 70% callbacks in that area.
Or maybe the call center is falling short because we've had a lot of COVID cases and we're hiring in December, whatever it might be. I never like, Oh my God, we got to replace this person.
What are we going to do? I say, what do we got to do? And I'll tell you this. I had a guy come on not that long ago and he goes, you know, the worst thing you can say to a guy like me and you, Ben, is no.
Not when I'll give you, what would it take? Do you need more resources? Do you need more money? If I gave you 20 people towards that problem in a million-dollar budget, do you think you could get it done? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, so what do you need? What do you need to get it done? And it's our job to change the way we think. It starts depending on systems, start to depend on KPIs, start to make the system give us in the finance team.
You know what I need? I know I've identified what I need. I told Dan what I need.
I need the financials to tell a story with three things that need to happen in the next month. And I promise you, you give me the marching orders to get to my bottom line, to what I want to be at, to be successful.
I will make it happen, but we all need direction in this company, just like everybody else does. And the financial side of it is the part that gives the most.
Yeah. You know, I want to read to you one thing in this book here too.
What do team members need from a team meeting? And there's five things here. Number one that I need to do a better job at is bring in more speakers to the monthly meetings, meaning that bring high-level speakers.
A guy like you, I'd love to bring you in just on a Zoom call. We need more exposure to success stories and ideas sharing within the team.
We need to share more best practices. We need more collaboration amongst the peers.
We need better training and more time for training. It sounds like we're both trying to get these things accomplished, but with your team meetings, what do you find that motivates them the most? I'm going to go back to recognition.
I mean, recognizing when somebody had, you know, talking about somebody's success story out there in the field, something they had to overcome and recognizing it. And then maybe even role-playing it or making sure that we apply it.
I mean, there's no way that I'm perfect at all this. I have tons of flaws, but I am constantly, constantly trying to improve myself so I can do it.
Next week, I got to go to a two and a half day map executive workshop. Completely not looking forward to it because I don't like being put on the spot.
I don't like being dissected, but it's good for me. It's good for me to find out what my flaws that I have so I can constantly improve myself because I'm the leader.
I'm the one in charge here. So the better I operate and the better I communicate with everybody around me, the better they're going to do too.
But yeah, trying to get the whole team engaged into a meeting. Don't have a quiet meeting where nobody else talks or you can't hear a good story or you can't get somebody engaged.
So many meetings go dead silent and it's just technicians watching

somebody talk the whole time

and then the meeting's over and nobody

got anything out of it. But the second that

you can get them all to engage,

it's a different kind of meeting. They're

cheering for somebody or

they're up role-playing or

you've got to get engaged. Or do

this. Hey, guys!

Wake up!

Today we're going to be going over something. Hey,

everybody pull out their phone. This is what I did on my

I love you. You got to get engaged.
Or do this. Hey, guys, wake up.
Yeah, right. Listen, guys, today we're going to be going over something.
Hey, everybody pull out their phone. This is what I did on my last call.
Pull out your phone. Show me the top guy that you call when you need a problem.
Everybody, let me see. Oh, Danny.
Okay, Bill. Whatever it is.
Okay, do me a favor today. Everybody raise your hand.
Promise me you're going to call somebody in the company and tell them how your day is going and ask them how their day is going and ask them if they got any advice. Say, I promise.

And I bet everybody put their hand up. And the thing is, is I try to fire the guys up.
I try to

get them in the mood. I say, guys, and I was joking this last time.
I said, listen, there's a lot of

guys in this room right now. A lot of guys on the zoom call that I know could beat me probably these

days in sales. I'm a little rusty.
You know know you guys have crafted this thing down to the fine line but i'll tell you what i would whoop your ass in turnovers i know for a fact that i whoop your ass and i said i might have to come out of retirement and they're like high-fiving and they're all excited that's what pumps pumps me up, though. That's the kind of thing to get me going.
And I got to tell you, I'm passionate. I have this fire.
And I'm realizing right now, just talking to you, that sometimes it's so easy because obviously there's some ADD here involved. But the main thing that I need to do is start to get my, where does my time need to be spent?

And I'm a good time manager because of Bree on a calendar,

but some of the things on that calendar,

sometimes I got this new guy that said,

man, you guys have a lot of meetings,

but you don't, there's maybe too many meetings.

And here's the deal.

I'm going to be focused so much.

I've got so much out of this.

I want to know, what does it look like

for the next five to 10 years for expressing you?

Is there a big plan? Is it just have fun every day and continue to grow? I don't know. I know that my wife saw a psychic like five years ago and the psychic said a whole bunch of stuff about me.
And she said I was going to start traveling around a lot and this was going to happen and I was going to buy a whole bunch of properties. And when she told me that five years ago, I was like, there's no way.
I hate traveling. I freaking hate planes.
I hate airports. And then all of a sudden, I'm on an airplane every week.
I'm literally traveling. I only hit Idaho three times in February.
Only three times. So I got my management team, my boys that have been with me for a long time, Skylar Johns and Brad Jordan, man, those two guys, Keith Carson, man, they're amazing.
And they can pump up the guys, they can keep the meetings going. They know the vision, so they're going to keep it going out there.
And we're going to constantly build the rest of the team and keep them all engaged and keep our communication up as much as possible. But supposedly, I have a lot of good karma and shit's going to still continue to work out.
So I don't know. I don't know whose team I'm going to join.
Where am I going to go? I don't know. I know I'm going to join a team.
I know me and Chloe are probably going to join a team of some sort. I don't know whose team that's going to be.
And I don't know how far we're going to take that company to the next level, but I know we're going to be a part of a bigger picture. You know, I want you to take some time today and this weekend to reflect.
And I love the idea of you helping, but I really, I would say this, really self-reflect a little bit and say, have I reached the peak of plumbing? Because I'd love to see you, man. I'd love to see Express Franchise out.
I'd love to see it because here's the next level. I'm sitting with Julian Scadden right here in this office, okay? The CEO of Nextstar, Jack Tester's predecessor.
I wish I could be Nextstar. And he goes to me, Tommy, and he's so poised, so so relaxed he goes just this little smirk because I believe you'll do it he goes but my question is how are you going to grow your leadership he goes how are you possibly going to find this many leaders for as fast as you want to grow because I see it in you Ben and your full time job coming up, you and Chloe's job is to elevate everybody around you.

Yep.

A hundred percent.

Let me, let me do this.

Let me, let me go through.

If somebody wants to reach out to you, Ben,

and I know you put that video,

I think you put it back up,

but it's a killer video, man.

I got to do the shop tours too.

And I got to tell you, it was so much fun.

What does somebody do if they want to get ahold of you? You know, they can probably message me on Facebook. I don't accept friend requests.
I have 190 friends on there. I think you're definitely one of them.
All my friends are pretty top players. I never wanted to saturate my Facebook with a whole bunch of people.
I just don't know. I just want to keep my team tight.
But you can message me on

Facebook or you can send me an email, ben.expressplumbing at gmail.com. And let me know what you want.
I mean, we help people out all the time. We don't mind it because we can find those little things that need help.
I do find myself when I am helping too many people, I don't have enough time for myself or my own company or my own team. So I try to avoid.
And I found myself coming up short too, where I had so many people reaching out to me that it was like a week before I could respond to certain people for certain things because there's just only so much time in a day. And I want to make sure that the majority of my time is focused on my team, the people directly around me and connecting with guys like you.
I mean, I consider you a really good friend and I want to have a relationship with you for a long, long, long time because I feel like we're both operators. We're both playing the same game.
And it's nice to have guys like you in my corner. It's just, it's awesome.
Tom

Howard is always going to be in my corner as long as he answers my phone calls. You know, Tom,

everybody that you talk about is the people I call regularly. And I'll tell you this, Ben,

a lot of the people, you know what they need? They need to understand, I think what Nextdoor

does. And here's what I'm starting to realize is number one, there's one rule that Julian has.
I will never do work with somebody still in the truck because they can't work on their business. Yeah.
So rule number one. Really good rule.
First rule of Fight Club, you can't be in your own business. Number two, you know what they need? They need the resources.
They need to understand what call cap is if they don't have service time so they can do call monitoring. They don't know where to start.
And a lot of them, they need to know who Dan Antonelli is for branding. These things that we've known now pretty easily because we're in a circle, it's amazing how many people are not.
And that's what I want to do with Grouse Door Freedom is give this to people and get a thousand companies to where, I'll show you what your cost of goods needs to be. I'll show you how much you should be spending in marketing.
I'll show you how to evaluate if it's good marketing.

I'll show you what your conversion rate should be.

Understanding the financials.

But here's the biggest problem, Ben,

is you can't pay me a thousand bucks a month

and expect me to do it for you.

I'm not a $12,000 person.

I'd consider myself back in the field

a half a million dollar employee

because I know what I can do in sales.

That's what I'd want to make.

So here's the thing.

You can't join one of these groups. You can't get with Ben, those of you listening, and expect him to do it for you.
He'll give you the resources. He'll guide you along.
But the deal is, even if you were to pay Ben two grand a month, $24,000, that doesn't even get you a shitty CSR. Okay? So don't expect anything that Ben would do for you to just change your company.
He'll give you the path of success, but he can't do it for you. And here's the deal.
They all think, man, I'm paying this guy 12 grand a month. I'm paying the service.
Service tech can't do it for you. I'll give him the service tech, you know, 20 some odd grand, 30 grand, whatever it is.
They will not do it for me either. A month.
The small mind mentality is I'll get this consultant and they're going to change my life and they're going to do everything for me. Bullshit.
They're supposed to help you and they're going to give you homework. And if you don't do it, shame on you, my friends.
Well, the school of hard knocks, right? Just start freaking doing it. Start doing your daily huddle.
Start talking about your numbers. Start questioning certain things.
Start adding scripts into your business. Start taking freaking photos.
It's so frustrating to sit down with these guys and be like, yeah, sure, we can add a couple things to you, but you may or may not do them, and you definitely won't do them consistently. You're not going to build that brand consistently.
But you just got to start doing stuff. Every action gets a reaction.
And if you're just going to sit in your chair all day long, or you're going to go jump in that van and go do something that you're used to doing, like, I'm going to go dig a hole. Dude, don't go dig a hole today.
There's so much more shit you need to be focused on right now. Like Al Levy, I love that guy.
I get to have dinner with him on the 9th, I believe, right after Rhino X. I'm going to go hang out with Al Levy.
Dude, I was at that guy's. He was speaking at the WET show in 2019 or 2018.
And man, he just blew my mind for about an hour on what he knows and how he's... You know, as much as tricks, man, he's very, very smart.
And the deal is, is every time if you don't get the fundamentals right, you got to go back to the basics. I mean, just thinking about the field supervisor program, you guys do your curbside inspections.
That's his field supervisor program. And, you know, the book I'm going to be working on is going to definitely be a play a big role in it of how he's got without him coming into our lives several years ago you know i was doing probably 18 20 million but it was you said you get the 5 to 10 million chaos i did it at 20 and it was a shit show yeah he walked in and he tripped over a cord he said i can steal your whole warehouse i can steal with your own forklift because no one's out there.
And then he said, why is there calendars all over the walls? He said, haven't you guys heard of Google Calendar? He goes, this place just looks like chaos. And I got to agree.
I mean, literally, I am kind of chaos. People got to pull me in.
But at least I've identified just talking to you. I think I've got a pretty good plan here of a couple of things that I need to do.
But it's amazing. I got to tell you this.
It's not me. I will say this.
I give the team so much freedom. And honestly, Luke surprised me doing some stuff in Google Analytics, stuff with some of the charts he's building, and Elise and Travis and the whole team over there with the trainers, build this new training center.
And sometimes you just kind of let people do their thing and give them some freedom and then to say you're getting a great result the new technicians coming out i gotta tell you my top five guys out of the top 20 five of them are new brand new and i'd say the top 15 well it's crazy i love it yeah it's so cool to launch a guy and watch him crush a in front of you. I mean, it's just.
That's the goal. A million dollars for tech.
What are three books that you absolutely, they're must reads for you? I've read like 20 books in the last six months and I probably can't tell you one of them. I hate books.
I hate reading. I grew up in foster care homes and I never even graduated high school.
What I will tell a person to do, yeah, read a book. Was it John Maxwell? Yeah, Maxwell.
Maxwell's amazing. I love all of his stuff, every ounce of it.
I love the e-myth, obviously. But stop that.
I mean, get off your butt and go visit a shop or make a freaking phone call. Successful people give me their phone numbers all the time.
Now, I don't bother them if I already know the answers. And since I'm starting to know more and more answers, but start reaching out.
See if you can go visit somebody in your area or in your space. and that was the biggest eye openers for me is running around to the 10 shops.
I even started running around to the local shops. I didn't care.
They all thought I was trying to steal their stuff. But I'm like, do you guys need help? I mean, let me take a look here.
Let's see what we can do to make you better. Because the second that you stop consuming 300 service calls a month, but you're only doing a million dollars, is the second that we're all going to do better in this valley.
Because you're not just eating jobs and doing a terrible job taking care of customers. But get off your butt.
Go to Pantheon. Go to RhinoX.
Go somewhere and do something that's uncomfortable. My friend Joe Cacera has a True Grit coming up with a, what are those called, Chloe? The rooms.
Breakout sessions? Yeah, basically. But it's going to be somewhere that you're going to feel very uncomfortable.
You're not going to want to be there, but that's when you should go. That's when you should go do something is when you feel super uncomfortable and it takes you out of your comfort zone and makes you educate or learn or anything.
You're never going to get better. There's been four shops that have visited my shops, little shops that visit my shops.
I love it. We spend a whole week with them.
We hold nothing back. We show them every single thing that we have to offer because I just want them to get as much out of it as possible.
I'm not going to hold anything back because I want to see these little shops be successful and change their ways. And they flew all the way to my shop and they spent a whole week with me.
So I don't know, read a book. Yeah.
Listen to podcasts, stay on the groups all day long and waste your time. You'll never learn anything.
You're just always watching somebody else do something and you're never applying yourself or get out there and start fricking putting some action behind it. So that's my opinion.
We had 60 companies come out to GarageDrop Freedom and I got to tell you this. I decided to hold nothing back.
I decided Al was there. Joe Kassar was there.
Tom Howard was there. I asked 19 people to speak and they all said yes.
I really wanted 10. But the fact is, I got another one coming up in May.
And I got to tell you, this was no bullshit. You know, Dan Antonelli called me on the 14th of the next month and said, we set a record for the company because of the garage door show you had.
He said, what you pure fire he goes all these other companies a lot of times what they do is they have these big shows but it's not feeding i'm here to do one thing teach garage door companies how to dominate and the deal is is in a perfect world either i'm the dumbest guy in the world for teaching everybody exactly what i'm doing or maybe just, just maybe, there's a law of reciprocity, and maybe it'll come back full circle, and maybe I can make them all millionaires. Because I told somebody, you know how many people have argued with me? At least a dozen.
I said, I'm going to fix all these companies and make them badass, and hopefully they want to partner with me and become multi-multi-millionaires. And they said, you're an idiot.
Why don't you not fix them, buy them first, and then fix them? And I said, listen, each and every one of these owners are going to become multi-millionaires. They're going to be the best family, man.
They're going to get to go on the dream vacations. They put in 20, 30 years into this business.
They deserve more. And here's the deal.
What happens when somebody wins with you? They become evangelists evangelists they preach the gospel they tell everybody and all of a sudden we partnered with the company here in phoenix he calls me up the other day he goes what can i do other than help you run my business to keep things aligned and i said well go find other businesses called me up two weeks later he said i got five nice literally so i just believe you give back the people. I would love to sometimes tell a story because my stories, I've got some great stories, but what I'll try to do is say, listen, I'm going to try to pack in here.
You give me two hours. I will tell you everything I know.
When I go there, I say this, don't do this, do this. I've had the wrong branding.
I've done the wrong marketing. I've done the wrong training.
I'm on my fifth CRM. I've done everything the wrong way.
I didn't have manuals. Al Levy.
Why would I want anybody else to make these mistakes? And here's the deal. This is what Al told me a long time ago.
There's enough water in the ocean for everybody. So listen, just because I'm successful doesn't mean you have to fail.
And I think there's a misconception about why people don't want to come to garage door freedom a lot of times they say oh well what's time you're gonna give us blah blah blah blah i'm giving you everything i'm taking you into my crm i'm showing you my training i'm holding nothing back look there's a conflict of interest because garage door freedom is really it's under me, but so is A1 garage door service. So it's like Nextstar being a big HVAC company.
And I understand that, but ultimately people tell me the other day, I had a guy who I won't even go into who he was, but I said, nobody believes we could do what we say we're going to do. And he goes, Tommy, because if you would have told me a hundred million dollar garage door company, I would have laughed in your face.
He goes, you've defied the odds a million times over again. He said, don't ever, don't ever let that, that head trash get in your head.
He goes, you're going to do stuff that no one's ever dreamed of. And I got to tell you this.
I don't get a lot of praise either. I got people that bump me here and there, but sometimes we need it too.
Sometimes we need people to keep us on track. And Ben, I'll tell you, here's where I do it for you is your story.
I haven't had a podcast. I talked to Jody for a long time yesterday, but I don't do more than an hour because it's too much.
But this is what I needed for my heart, my soul. This is what I needed for me.
This podcast was one of the first podcasts that I've had that was a hundred percent for me. So thank you very much.
Thanks buddy. Thanks.
I appreciate that. Yeah.
Well, you're awesome and keep doing what you do because you inspire me every day. And that's, that's a benefit for me.
And I don't know if I could be here right now, if it wasn't for everybody that invested time, I actually, I know for a fact, I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for everybody that invested time. Actually, I know for a fact I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for everybody that invested time into me so I could grow as a person.
I've learned just so much in this industry in the last 24 months. And I'm just glad that I get to be here.
I'm just super happy I get to play the game and continue to try to perfect it. But yeah, I get the same thing.
Even the shop that came down two weeks ago for a whole week, they thought I was going to try to buy them or something. They thought I had alternative motives on what me and Chloe were going to do for them, but it was free and it was just here to help them grow to the next level.
I could give... I mean, their success, if they go from...
I think they're 1.6 million. If they go from 1.6 million to 2.5, like their projection is this year, that's a win for me, man.
I'm excited for them. Well, I'll tell you, this guy, James, garage door company, I've had about five people reach out in the last month that have literally gone from under a million to over 7 million in garage doors.
And they said, this is what does it for me. This is what gets me teary eyed.
I'm not going to get teary eyed right now. I'm going to hold strong.
When I meet their kids and when you see their home and when you see what they've done for their parents and when you see what they've done for their employees. Now, listen, my goal for these people.
Yes. I'd love to partner with them because there's no way they can make more money because I got the arbitrage.
The fact is this, you're helping 40 people plus all the businesses. You're probably helping 500 plus all the kids and everything, probably a thousand.
I want to help millions. And so there's justification here because I do want to buy a lot of companies, but I had precision garage door at my event.
I had overhead door. I can't buy franchises.
We're stronger together. Yeah.
And my ulterior motive is, listen, you don't want to get bought that don't sell. We're going to be stronger together.
I don't care. I don't want your business.
I want you to want something better and to realize one thing. The garage doors aren't forever, okay? When cars start driving themselves by next year in San Francisco, Uber is going to have a little helicopter thing, literally for real.
Here's the deal. They're building houses without garage doors.
Liftmaster, Amazon's going to own the marketplace. All I'm saying is if you're smart at all, take some money off the table because that's what I'm doing in the next few years.
I asked you what you were going to do. I'm going to take some money off the table because I know compound interest is on my side.
And I'd be an idiot not to say that. And the deal is, is listen, I'm not a one pony show guy.
I go, I'll go do a million other things. I love the garage industry.
I want to take everybody with me and make a lot of millionaires within the company and also make hundreds of millionaires within the industry.

But if you think that exponential growth is not happening in this world and you don't

think things are going to change, if you think people are going to pick up the call and call

a plumber in five years, like today, you're freaking out of your mind.

So here's the deal.

I just know things are changing.

And I know this.

I want to be established and set up for what's about to happen because it's happening exponentially. I hate to scare people, but if they think, oh, man, in 10 years, I'll just do what A1 does, it's not going to be the same.
We won't be the same company. We're going to be partnering with Amazon, and we're going to be using Google.
We're not going to answer phones. Call centers are going away.
Dispatchers will go away. I'm sorry.

The service site is building it.

Look at scheduling.

And it's just getting started.

So I want to know something optimistic to end the sun.

And I want you to talk to us.

I want you to finish this out.

I get excited because I realize that things are changing so fast and so dramatically that

I don't want anybody to be holding the bag is all I'm saying.

And if I didn't think that, then I wouldn't be doing it myself. But Ben, you're a breath of fresh air.
You're passionate. You're a great owner.
You care. You've got a lot of great friends that watch your back.
And that's important. You've got a legacy to preserve and to continue to grow.
What can you leave us with that's going to make somebody that's listening right now, some of the listeners, go out there and get it. Go out there and push that next level and become a little bit more Ben Davis-like.
If it makes you feel uncomfortable and you don't want to do it, then you should probably fucking do it. Get yourself out there.
This interview, right before I even got on here, it was like I was about ready to jump out of a plane. I mean, my heart was racing.
My drone was pumping. It was probably something I didn't really want to do, but I did it because I know I'll benefit off of it.
And if you want to be a top tier operator, you're going to want to do stuff like this because otherwise you're just going to be left behind. And if you're not staying up there, texting Tom Howard or reaching out to these amazing people and going to these amazing events and supporting people and taking what you learn and applying it.
So just do what makes you feel uncomfortable as far as business goes. If it's hard, then it's worth it.
Well, you've been a pleasure to be with, and thank you for taking

half your Saturday to spend with us. We appreciate

it. Yeah, no problem, man.
That's what I do.

All right, man. Well, listen,

I'd like to come to Idaho and visit

your shop here. At least

I'm going to enjoy the winter

of Arizona, and then I'll come

visit.

Yeah, listen, if any of you guys want to reach out to

Ben, he gave you his email. He's available on Facebook, and can't thank you enough, brother.
Appreciate you. Thanks, Tommy.
Thanks. See you guys later.
Thanks, guys. See you, bud.
Hey, guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me.
And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff.
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You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just we're telling everybody our secrets, basically.
And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program.
So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club.
It's cheap. It's a monthly payment.
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