Building a Business That Doesn’t Need You: Lessons from Tommy Mello | #Success - Ep. 54

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Speaker 1 This is the Russell Brunson Show.

Speaker 3 What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the show. Today, I'm excited where my friends, who I just met the first time, like a month ago, out at his studios, his offices.

Speaker 3 We did a podcast over there, and then today he's flying past Boise and just dropped his plane really quick to come hang out with us for 30 minutes, 45 minutes. He's heading back out.

Speaker 3 But his name's Tommy Mellow, and he's someone who I'm really excited to interview because you have a different type of business than most of the people in my world.

Speaker 3 But you're doing amazing stuff and growing faster than what I've seen. And it's really exciting.
So excited to have you here, man. How are you feeling so far? I feel great.

Speaker 1 You know, I got this boot on because I had to get some foot stuff done, but it's not too painful. I'm having a good time with it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I want to make up like a much better story. Like, dude, this guy wanted to fight me and he didn't know what was coming.
So I hooked him up.

Speaker 3 That happened to me because I don't remember. I got both my biceps tore out 90 days ago.

Speaker 1 So I got a good story on mine, at least.

Speaker 3 Well, okay, so I want to tell people about your business or have you tell a little bit. So most people in my world are digital marketers who are growing their businesses online.

Speaker 3 And uh, obviously, we have a co-friend, Jeremy Miner, and Jeremy's like, You got to meet Tom, you got to go out there and hang out with him.

Speaker 3 And so, we went out and had a chance to see your facility and all the stuff you're doing.

Speaker 3 And um, and so your business is garage doors, garage doors, which is something if someone came to me like hey want to start a business doing garage doors, I'd be like, Why would you do that?

Speaker 3 That's there's so many easier businesses, and you've built this into like a multi-hundred million dollar year enterprise. So, tell us a little about the business and how the whole thing got started.

Speaker 1 Yeah, 2005, I was uh

Speaker 1 I wasn't doing much, I was bartending, going to school, and I had a roommate. The house, it was $700 rent.
It was a tiny, tiny house. And I was just hustling, man.
Anything I could do to make a buck.

Speaker 1 And my roommate was like, do you know how to paint garage doors? He was working as a manager at a garage door company. I'm like, no, but I could figure out how much you're going to pay me.

Speaker 1 He's like, $100 a door, you could pay two or three a day. So I was like, yeah, I'll learn how to do it.

Speaker 1 So I ended up being able to paint 10 a day because I called everybody in the yellow book and became their primary painter. And so that was a cool little thing on the weekends.

Speaker 1 I'd paint 10 doors Saturday, 10 doors Sunday, knock knock out about $1,700 profit after gas, paint, tape, you know, everything.

Speaker 1 And I meet with these technicians. They give me a little sample to get the color of the old door.
So, you know, Home Depot's got a thing. They laser it and match the color.

Speaker 1 And I'm meeting with these guys and they're like, dude, we're killing it. We're making six figures.
And back then, it was like six figures? You?

Speaker 1 And the dude would be like missing his front tooth or something. And so I was like, listen, I got to start a business.

Speaker 1 So me and my other roommate started a business and I thought like I knew how to do an EIN. And I got, I formed LLC and I'm like, I got this.

Speaker 1 Got an ad on the fourth book of yellow pages, which was crap. Didn't get one phone call.
And then we did Valpak, the little blue mailers.

Speaker 1 And I learned in 2009, there was this product on Craigslist called Clad Genius. And you could work them like you have to have a dial-up modem.
I had two of them.

Speaker 1 And you'd have to buy these verified accounts. And I posted a thousand ads a day on Craigslist.

Speaker 1 And I had five different ads, five different phone numbers, five different people, but they all worked for me or my stepdad or my mom. And I would book about 20 calls a day from this.

Speaker 1 Spam and Craigslist. Yeah, Spam and Craigslist.
And so

Speaker 3 I had a season of my life Spamming Craigslist. Those are good old days.

Speaker 1 Well, listen, I did what that's the foundation of what worked in Valpak and then this thing called Super Coupes. So mailers, a little bit of Craigslist.
This is before Google was really a thing.

Speaker 1 And then 2010, me and my partner, still one of my best friends, decided that I would take on the business and I take all the debt. debt.

Speaker 1 And who do you call when you could trust nobody in life? Like everybody was stealing from me. No one would show up.
My parts were disappearing. Tools were going.

Speaker 1 I called mom and she lived in Michigan and I convinced her to move out to Phoenix. So at this point, we're doing about a million a year.
2014 comes around. I met this awesome dude, friend of a friend.

Speaker 1 He's like, I'll come work for you. I took the buyout from American Airlines.

Speaker 1 And he didn't need a ton of money. He's like, I just want to grow with you.
And so we were doing $6 million at the the time.

Speaker 1 2017, I got on the right CRM, which was service type and started a podcast and met my number one mentor, extracted this information, went and hung out at HVAC companies.

Speaker 1 I started studying HVAC because I said, who has the most private jets?

Speaker 1 It was HVAC. All these guys had private jets.
And I'm like, they've been studying since the 80s. And they started working together in the 80s.

Speaker 1 Garage doors and all these other industries never worked together. They were like, screw you, I'm not going to teach you anything.
So I opened up my doors, learned from a lot of people.

Speaker 1 At the end of 2022, got involved with private equity.

Speaker 1 And the company will do north of 300 million this year, right around 850 employees, which I consider coworkers because literally I've had every job in the company, including cleaning the toilets and mopping the hallways, doing inventory, payroll, which I hate.

Speaker 1 So now I just, I go on and do the stuff I love, sales, marketing, and culture. And it doesn't feel like a job.
And I don't have imposter syndrome. I don't ever get burnout.

Speaker 1 I don't even know what that's like because people are like, man, don't you ever feel I'm like, like, I don't maybe one day, but I'm still having fun. So,

Speaker 1 but it's not about the money anymore, but it used to be about the money because I came from a family that we didn't have a ton of money, which is fine.

Speaker 1 And I'm glad I wouldn't have changed a thing, but uh, you know, I watched my parents' relationship fall apart do mostly because of money, and I vowed that money would never get in the way of my future family, which I'm still working on.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 3 that'd be next year's next podcast episode.

Speaker 1 Yeah, when I'm 45, it's time for kids.

Speaker 3 I'm 42. It's about time.

Speaker 3 Um, Okay, so

Speaker 3 a couple of things. One is

Speaker 3 most, a lot of people have like home service businesses, right?

Speaker 3 And they have one and they kind of run it and they, they, they have a good business, but it's rare to see people like scale like you have.

Speaker 3 And like you said, you got people here in Boise, Idaho doing, doing this, you know, running your, you know, part of your business and stuff.

Speaker 1 So I mean,

Speaker 3 I just want to like understand like moving from like you doing it yourself to like all of a sudden you're in like every city around the country. Like, what does that, that scaling process look like?

Speaker 3 I look at how hard it is for people in my world to scale from like one employee to 10 employees.

Speaker 3 And you're going from, you know, you to whatever, 800 people across the entire country running different locations, areas. Like, how did you scale that way?

Speaker 1 Well, first I used to say, let me look at your systems and processes and study your KPIs. Now I literally in the last few years, I say, let me look at your technology.

Speaker 1 Let me make sure your numbers are accurate. I look at the way most business owners don't get out of their own way.
They don't know how to delegate. They're control freaks.

Speaker 1 They say, if I won't do it, it won't be done right. And I don't know, maybe four years ago, I realized I'm going to all these events.
I'm going podcasting all the time. I'm reading all these books.

Speaker 1 It was always okay when I made a mistake. Yeah, I'd be mad at myself, but I'm like, hey, chalk it up for a learning experience.
Then I said, wait a minute, maybe everyone else wants that too.

Speaker 1 Maybe they want a stake in the outcome. So I started an equity incentive program, made a lot of people owners, 25 people.

Speaker 1 Certain people got. a million, certain people got 14 million when we did our first deal.
So lots of millionaires came out of it, but I wanted them to start thinking like an owner.

Speaker 1 And I didn't get mad when they make a mistake. I got mad when they make the same mistake twice, but the people I work around are smarter than me in a lot of,

Speaker 1 like I'm a dreamer. I'm a visionary.
I will do the work, but I hate like, it's hard for me to hit the finish line because I'm doing so many things.

Speaker 1 But I'm an idea guy and I try to create a path to get there. And I've got great people now, project managers, people that know how to integrate and implement quickly.

Speaker 1 And you got to have a lot of trust. And trust is something that's built over time.
It's a chemistry. And people can make mistakes.
And actually, I'm like, awesome. Somebody will call me up.

Speaker 1 They're like, dude, we didn't pay rent for three months in whatever market.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, did you create a system around it? They're like, this will never happen again. I'm like, good.
I'm like, somebody will be like, dude, you're not going to believe this.

Speaker 1 We've been paying this for so long and it's a big error. And like, we lost 200 grand doing it.
I'm like, so we found 200 grand going forward? Good. You know, I'm like, Jocko, good.

Speaker 1 Like, you found, you found something broken. So that's, that's all we do is look at stuff.
And we're scaling so quick. You got to expect some mistakes.
And I'm not a perfectionist.

Speaker 1 I think perfection is the enemy of progress. But the training, you came to our training center and you spoke to the trainees, the people that were graduating, is we make it, we're passionate.

Speaker 1 We make it fun. We think about what's in it for them.
We've got a dream manager that focuses on their goals winning.

Speaker 3 I'm going to explain that actually so people understand because that was the that was something I was not expecting. So we did the podcast in your studio and then I was about to take off here.

Speaker 3 Hey, come check out our studio or our space. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I walk in and so I'm going to tell you what i saw and i want you to explain because i don't know everything but i walked in and there was like four or five like garage setups like someone's garage here and here here and then there was like i don't know 50 dudes sitting in a room and some guy was preaching at him and you grabbed me and had a chance to talk i was like i don't know what you can talk to these people about um

Speaker 3 but my understanding is these are your employees who who were moved out for a while anyway walk me through just the whole set because it was really fascinating i think what you're doing is applicable to anybody because most people in my world they have sales teams but they are not doing what you're doing the way you're training people and getting them on board and culture, and it was so fascinating.

Speaker 3 I only understand probably 10% of what you're actually doing. So, I love to kind of walk through what that whole training center looks like and the people and everything.

Speaker 1 Well, you're familiar with who, not how. Yep.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you: if I asked you, Russell, how are you going to 20x or 100x next year?

Speaker 1 And you really thought about it, you closed your eyes and you prayed and you figured it out, you go, I would have to become the number one recruiter and interviewer.

Speaker 1 I need to get the right people because I can only do so much. Yes, system scale, funnels scale.
So you're in a different industry, but it still would take the right people. It's the who, not how.

Speaker 1 And so we figured out our avatar and we started focusing on great personalities, smile, very good with clients. Some people call it sales.

Speaker 1 I call it just being a great human, eye contact, tonality, a good firm handshake, asking for the business, saying, I genuinely care. I want to be your browser guy for life.
I will take care of you.

Speaker 1 I'm here to ask you for your business. And by the way, I'm going to ask you if you're happy when I finish because I want you to to tell your friends, your neighbors, and your family.

Speaker 1 So understanding who the person is, getting them, and then orientation, orient them is everything. We throw out a red carpet.
We do a champagne. It's an apple juice toast.

Speaker 1 This is for the client for the business. For the people that come in to train, they all come to Phoenix for a month.
Okay.

Speaker 3 So these are actually employees though.

Speaker 1 They're employees that are technicians, installers, or maintenance sticks. So we bought an apartment complex.
They stay there. We give them their tools.
We give them brand new vehicles.

Speaker 3 And they just leave their family for a month?

Speaker 1 They leave their family for a month. And this is the, that's a really good good thought because

Speaker 1 you got to tell the wife, like, you got to send her flowers. You got to do nice things.
You got to buy in with the family. You got to make them understand what dad's working on.

Speaker 1 And it's before it used to be like, people think they had a hall pass when they came to Phoenix and just go to the bar. Now it's very like, you got to learn a ton.

Speaker 1 And, you know, when I played football, we did two a days. We practiced 10 times to play one game.
10 practices a week to play one game.

Speaker 1 And a lot of businesses, you say, look, you're going to train for two weeks and you're in the game forever. Training isn't what we do.
It's who we are.

Speaker 1 I think when people close their eyes, they say, who's Tommy Moe? They'd be like, that guy's a trainer for life. He trains and he trains and he trains and he trains and it never is over.

Speaker 1 So everybody comes in. We train them on technical, operational, and sales.
And we help people understand sales is a good thing. Sales is not evil.
It's not, you're not taking advantage of people.

Speaker 1 First question I ask in orientation is, who sells things people don't need?

Speaker 1 And everybody goes, no, no, no, I don't, never. And I'm like, that's all, look, that's all I do.
I just bought a new cell phone. The old one will work great.
Bought a Rolex. Didn't need one.

Speaker 1 I wanted one. The cell phone has an app on it to open and close my garage door.
I don't need that to get into my garage. I think it's convenient.
I bought brand new garage drawers.

Speaker 1 They're the most expensive garage drawers you could buy. Literally, I paid a ton of money.
I thought I was getting them for free. I got screwed for my manufacturing.

Speaker 3 Good deal. I mean, garage doors are all in trouble.
Yeah, no.

Speaker 1 So I wanted them. So we focused on that.
And that we really try to just, the biggest thing I say is: listen, the hardest part about all this training is believing that you're worth it.

Speaker 1 It's believing that you deserve more. You're here.
It takes one out of 100 people to get this job. So you're one out of 100 to even be here today.

Speaker 1 You've got a chance to change your family's tree forever. Everything will change if you do this correctly.
You got to be bought in. You got to be passionate.
You got to go for no.

Speaker 1 And if you get the right people, not only will they change their generational wealth wealth and break the curse of the, a lot of people, they weren't taught how to get ahead.

Speaker 1 They weren't taught how to personal finance. They weren't taught how to believe in themselves.
Someone told them they were no good.

Speaker 1 So I got to build them up and say, listen, you deserve everything that's coming. And I tell them, listen,

Speaker 1 if you don't look up to the people in your circle, it's a cage. And you got to change who you hang around.

Speaker 1 So nobody's really, there's a lot of great people doing stuff for the blue collar, but I love to like help them figure out their personal lives, their goals, their dreams, their vacations, if they want to buy a house, reverse engineer how their life's going to look.

Speaker 1 And so training for me is a lot more than just creating a good garage drug. I just messaged, I think, 20 people this Saturday with Ashley, my EA over there.
She's amazing. And

Speaker 1 we've got a scorecard for every single technician. And I messaged them.
I said, hey, dude, I'm praying for you. Let's go over your scorecard.

Speaker 1 I don't care if you get better for me. I mean, you got a job here.
If you find a will, I'll find a way. You got to ask me for help.

Speaker 1 But you're losing out on $40,000 a year just by doing this one thing. All you got to do is ask.

Speaker 1 I'm like, so you got to figure out this weekend if it's worth your time to get more training because I'm not going to make you.

Speaker 1 Because if you're not invested in the outcome, then we're never going to get there. But to me, this isn't a garage for a company.
I could apply this stuff to anything.

Speaker 1 But I just love the people.

Speaker 3 I was thinking about like a lot of guys in our world run sales teams, right? Phone sales. And same thing.
They train them for a week, give them calls, and then that's kind of it.

Speaker 3 I was like, man, imagine if they did what you did, where you brought their team in for a month of like hardcore training and practice. And then when that month is done, they go back home.

Speaker 1 They still get a lot more training. Yeah,

Speaker 3 they log in each week or each month. How does that, how does that work?

Speaker 1 So right now we train for, we do role playing one day a week, and they're on a morning mojo call 15 minutes, five days a week.

Speaker 1 By the end of the year, it'll be five days, an hour of training each morning. And then a lot of guys come back to Phoenix for a three-day refresher.

Speaker 1 Then we've got 10, we call it the MAT team, the market acceleration technical trainers. They'll fly out to markets and work with people.

Speaker 1 Then I got three other trainers that fly around that aren't part of the MAT team. You know, we've probably got more trainers than any company I know of.

Speaker 1 And then I hire consultants all the time to come in just because I can tell them till I'm blue in the face. But when they hear it from a third party that's been successful,

Speaker 1 it can't always be me. You know, it's just like your dad can tell you something, but your favorite uncle tells you and you're like, oh, he's a genius.
I listen to that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So fascinating.

Speaker 1 And then in your um in the office you had like you had like these fake look like sets that were set up right yeah different types of garage doors but the real deal is like the harley i think if you're fast you got to love harleys if you're a technician to talk about harleys i don't want you to pretend but be like have you ever been to sturgees

Speaker 1 well tell me about it you know you got to find passion you got to be a good human being so I think the best people that work for us are genuinely curious about other people.

Speaker 1 Like I met this guy in his garage, and this was a long time ago, Russell.

Speaker 1 But he was like, yeah, he had a bernie sanders shirt on and i'm like tell me about bernie what do you love about him like and i was just like super curious because everything i've learned has come through people that are smart that have opinions that make me think wow that makes sense so when you're with a client if you look at it like a learning experience i say there's three things that need to happen they need to love you they need to trust you So you need to smile.

Speaker 1 You need to be courteous. When they offer water, take the water, pet the dog, know the dog's name.
Number two, they got to love the company. You got to tell a great story of why you work here.

Speaker 1 And number three, the client needs to feel loved. So how do you do that? You say, really? You got to be kidding me.
Tell me more. And you got to be serious.
So it can't be an act.

Speaker 1 Like, I tell people, like, if you can't genuinely do this, just

Speaker 1 I say become an installer.

Speaker 3 Yeah, if you can't do it, install her. Otherwise, you're here.
And so it's going to be very quiet.

Speaker 3 So when you guys have it, so those are sets where when they're doing the training, they're coming up and they're...

Speaker 3 You're role-playing in the different garage.

Speaker 1 That's a different role play.

Speaker 1 And it's not necessarily objection handling.

Speaker 1 Like the first thing I just do is like, look, start why they called you out there for and they called out for a keypad you start the keypad then we say russell while i'm here if i notice anything that doesn't look safe do you want me to let you know and if the garage door you open it on manual and it's slamming the springs aren't doing their job if a cable's frayed if a roller's popping out like there's a gear and sprocket on the motor if that's wor out there's all kinds of like it looks like black powder on top it means it's failing so we do show and tell and you know the best people like it's a little bit um intimidating because somebody's like hey i'm I'm not sure if I want to do that.

Speaker 1 Well, may I ask you why? You know, what's holding you back from doing this? And really going down to the root of the problem. And it's our job.

Speaker 1 I don't care how old you are, what color your skin is, what your sexual preferences are. I don't care anything.
We're offering the same thing to everybody.

Speaker 1 You cannot go in a home and say they got bad landscaping. They look cheap and not offer that, not offer them.
Like, I don't care if they're super wealthy, they got 10 garage stores.

Speaker 1 It should look the same. Because if you're making every situation different based on the client, you'll never have a pattern for success.
You'll never have stability and consistency.

Speaker 1 And I love sales, but you know, Grant Cardona was on his podcast. He goes, what's more important? Marketing or sales? And I was like, marketing.

Speaker 1 But they both are like, it's yin and yang. You can't have one without the other.

Speaker 3 And the best are the ones who know marketing and sales together and weave it all. weave it all into one build a good funnel.
So cool.

Speaker 3 So with your local, so I'm just thinking about the Boise guys here.

Speaker 3 So when you set up like the company here in boise do you have one person managing it or is it yeah we have a manager so we have a manager we have uh

Speaker 1 a warehouse kind of like a assistant uh managers jobs are tough man because they got a lot of paperwork they got to look at their driving they got to look at their zeros they got to make sure inventory is correct i mean there's like this massive amount of things that need to be done And the management usually asks me, how do you manage your time?

Speaker 1 Like, how do you get more done? And I will say Ashley helps out a lot. She prioritizes things, but you got 168 hours in a week.

Speaker 1 Most people don't understand that you spend 50 weeks working, 50 sleeping, 10 working out. You still got 60 hours left.
So I think the opportunity,

Speaker 1 have you ever met somebody that's like working all the time? And you're like, what'd you get done this week, dude?

Speaker 1 Dude, work hits you. Man, you know, just putting out fires.
No, no, no, but what'd you get done?

Speaker 1 You know, a lot of stuff, if you really think of it. No, but what? Give me one.
They're like, we're just managing the flow and putting out fires all the time.

Speaker 1 Well, if there were systems in place, the proper delegation,

Speaker 1 standard operated procedures, checklists, every time there's a problem, it should be kind of,

Speaker 1 should be, you take a deep dive and study that problem and say, what in the system allowed this to happen? Because.

Speaker 1 Insanity is keep doing the same thing and just putting out fires all the time.

Speaker 1 There always is going to be problems, but how good are you at creating systems to overcome those problems, problems, especially if it's a problem that comes up every day?

Speaker 1 I mean, I'll tell you the hardest part was we'd always missed measure doors until we made it mandatory that you had to measure the door and take pictures.

Speaker 1 And there's still some mistakes, but that simple little thing saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. And,

Speaker 1 you know, I will say that Boise, it takes a couple of strong people that believe in everybody else in a market. And this market has some great people.
So it's just a great market.

Speaker 3 So the the manager, are they hiring the people? And then after they get hired, they get shipped out to you guys to go train for a month.

Speaker 1 Is that the market? The manager is involved in the hiring, but we've got our own recruiters.

Speaker 1 We've got this girl, Sophie. She's a badass.
She's amazing.

Speaker 1 She's a recruiter. She's got three people under her.
And then several people are involved in the interview.

Speaker 1 And then our job is to never let that person make it into a customer's home if they don't got what it takes. So it's kind of like

Speaker 1 SEAL Team Six. We're going to kick you out if you don't, if we don't think.
Like we send guys home every month. Like, you just don't got it.
You're not.

Speaker 3 I can't imagine all your competitors

Speaker 3 must seem so bad compared to what you guys are doing. You know what I mean? Like, no one's doing what you're doing.
I can't imagine at the level you guys are doing it.

Speaker 1 Well, the hard part is we got 60 guys coming in in August, 60 guys in September, brand new. So there's not even including the CSRs, dispatchers, warehouse guys that we need to hire for that.

Speaker 1 Imagine.

Speaker 1 So I was on this thing called the American Dream, and I was like, who were you guys out filming before me? And they're like, Kentucky Fried KFC. And I was like, so what's so special about KFC?

Speaker 1 They're like, they open a new store every 17 hours. And in my mind, I went home and I'm like, 17 hours, new store, new location, 17, 17, 17.

Speaker 1 And I started writing down what would need to happen for me to scale like that of the system. Like, they got to pick the location.
They got to redo the whole place. They got to do the marketing.

Speaker 1 Every 17, they got to hire all the staff. Like, it's a big enterprise.
But I had to think like that. I had to think bigger.
I had to dream bigger.

Speaker 1 Most people, the problem I see is they dream so small. They're like, I want want to do $10 million one day.
And they never write it down. They never have a plan.
They don't reverse the year.

Speaker 1 What would have to happen today? So for us to be a billion-dollar company, and at the time I wrote this down, it was six or seven years ago, I said, what would need to happen to be a billion?

Speaker 1 I would need 2,000 technicians doing 500,000. Well, how do I scale that up like a hockey stick?

Speaker 1 And I kind of put in the pieces. And here's the biggest difference is all my managers came in, my C-suite and VPs.

Speaker 1 And they said, dude, what are you smoking? You're nuts. And then I showed them how it would work, what we would need, how it would happen.
And they said, dude, you're serious, aren't you?

Speaker 1 I go, yeah, we're going to do this. They walked out believers.

Speaker 1 And because I had them running in the same direction, believing that I wasn't crazy, and they saw a way to get there, they all knew we were going to run towards that number.

Speaker 1 We were going to get there.

Speaker 1 I just think a lot of people,

Speaker 1 don't live my dreams. People are like, man, if I had what you have, I'm like, you want what I have? Live in a small apartment for a decade.
Drive a a used truck with 350,000 miles on it.

Speaker 1 Work nights, weekends, and holidays. You know,

Speaker 1 I wouldn't say I was ready for kids because I didn't meet the perfect somebody, but there's no way I could have had kids in a great relationship.

Speaker 1 It's like you said, when you show up at your house, you sit in the garage, you're like, time to go back to dad and husband.

Speaker 3 Like, done with work. Leaving the work identity behind.

Speaker 1 And I never had to do that. I never had to take off my work hat.
It's on all the time. So I'm going to, you know, I got two puppies, but they don't know if I'm in work mode or not.

Speaker 3 they're fine they'll love you no matter what yeah okay next question is the marketing behind it so you get uh like say boise idaho like are you guys doing external marketing what does that look like what's the what's that process or is it just are people knocking door like what's that that part you know we do have some door knockers not boise right now uh But ultimately, it's a combination of TV, radio billboards.

Speaker 1 That's for the brand recognition. And then we've got driving billboards, which are the massive vans that are wrapped in.

Speaker 3 You're a huge head on the side of them. Yeah,

Speaker 3 when I left your office, I took pictures of me next to your van. I said to my team, they're like, are we wrapping all of our cards into your head?

Speaker 1 I'm like, yes, we need to.

Speaker 3 It's amazing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, I did that because it's timeless.

Speaker 1 And then we do, so we do that. Then we, we've got the online, which is Google, Bing.

Speaker 1 We love search engines. And now we're getting really into AI, ChatGBT.

Speaker 3 So you guys, do you guys run that corporate or is each individual city?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 nobody does marketing except like. Right now I'm acting as the CMO.
There's about eight people on the team, and then we've got about 10 agencies, give or take. And so we find specialists.

Speaker 1 We don't find a jack of all trades. I don't want somebody that does all our media buys.
They do our pay-per-click. They do our LSA local services.
They do our Google My Business

Speaker 1 optimization. Then you've got SEO conventional, which is backlinks, content, H1 tags, metadata, schema data.
And then you have Bing's pretty similar. Then you have things like...
Angie's list.

Speaker 1 And I could go on and on about the lead aggregators. And then you've got

Speaker 1 online directories.

Speaker 1 And there's so many things online, but you got to get, you know, me and Aaron were talking about just going back to the conventional, like TV, radio billboards, tell stories, have people fall in love with who you are as a brand, people that want to do business with you because they like, know, and trust you.

Speaker 1 And you could do that through TV, radio billboards. I don't want people searching GarageDaughter Repair Boise.
I want them searching A1 Garage Draw service.

Speaker 1 And so online, it's very important that you show up with great reviews. Because everybody's going to check you out.
That's another thing with employees, too. They might love you.

Speaker 1 They might hear great things, but they're still going to go to Indeed and Glass store and see what people are saying about you. So, that's another thing.
If somebody's listening and they say, Look,

Speaker 1 why am I not getting great people? Look at your indeed and glass store. Look what the people that have worked for you are saying.

Speaker 1 All the people that quit or got fired are going to say bad things. Why not get the good people that are the lifers to say something great about you? And

Speaker 1 a long time ago, I read this book by Darren Hardy, Compound Effect, and he said,

Speaker 1 I wanted to meet the perfect woman. He goes, so I wrote down 100 things that I wanted.
Like, I really wanted to identify this chick, like know her when I seen her.

Speaker 1 So I really went to work and I read this list out loud. I started thinking about it.
And I go, I can never get a woman like this. I can never.

Speaker 1 They wouldn't even date me. I'm not worthy of a woman like this.
So he wrote down 100 things he would need to become to be worthy of a woman like that.

Speaker 1 And then he, you know, I read that part and I said,

Speaker 1 what would I have to become for people that would want to work with me to get like the perfect people that would be like easy, fun,

Speaker 1 easy, lucrative, fun, and just like really, really cool people? And I was none of them, like a good collaborator, give great advice, recognition.

Speaker 1 You know, I wrote down all these things and I needed to work on me. And once the right people came on, it's just Jim Collins, the right people came on the bus, everything got easier.

Speaker 1 But, you know, I'm very experimental with my marketing. I'll try everything,

Speaker 1 but I'll try it in a small, I'll try it in Vegas. I'll try it in Boise.
I'll try it in Lansing. I'll try it in one market.
And if I, if I strike gold, then I'll scale it to every market.

Speaker 1 So I used to be like, I'm going to just try everything in every market. Now I'm very disciplined on how we try to do things.
I mean, we're still doing a ton of mailers. We do so much stuff.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've read every Dan Kennedy Rook Nobi S about direct marketing. And it's changed my mind on the way I looked at a lot of things is I study these books.
I think leaders are readers.

Speaker 1 And if somebody took a lifetime to write a book, you should read it and implement it.

Speaker 1 But marketing is,

Speaker 1 we've got these, you know, an amazing staff that once we turn them on, I mean, even influencer marketing, everything I've learned from your stuff and the stuff online, it still works in home service.

Speaker 1 My buddy Josh Snow, a good buddy of mine, lives down the street. We had a business together.

Speaker 1 He was telling me about how to change the algorithm for ChatGPT and how he uses crowdfunding to hire and basically influence the algorithms.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, dude, this is like, it's way beyond me, but I'm going to go ask for help and I'm going to learn.

Speaker 1 And if I got to throw somebody a bunch of money to learn, like $100,000 for a potential $10 million payoff each year, I'll take that any day of the week. So I've learned to pay to play too.

Speaker 1 Like, even though he's a buddy, I replaced his garage doors. I'm like, this is on the house.
I'm like, you owe me at least a couple meetings for this.

Speaker 3 He wants the new, nice ones like you got. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Paradise Valley. It's a great area.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anytime you come, you got to stay with me.

Speaker 3 Yeah, for sure. So

Speaker 3 now I want to understand, because you have two podcasts, right? I want to understand how the podcasts fit into the strategy of A1, or is it completely separate?

Speaker 1 Or how does that part of

Speaker 3 the game fit into it?

Speaker 1 You know, 2017 podcasts weren't really as big as they are today. And I felt like

Speaker 1 I think my number one quality is that I'm very curious. I'm genuinely curious.
I definitely want to seek out answers. I definitely love learning and hearing different perspectives.

Speaker 1 So I learned really quickly that if I started a podcast and

Speaker 1 people were interested in my questions of where I was going through.

Speaker 1 So whether it was marketing, HR, understanding leases, like your vehicle leases, how you could depreciate 100% of them and how it made sense to lease versus own.

Speaker 1 And, you know, working on different things like getting Milwaukee tools on and learning how to get a better tool program or better inventory systems or building culture and all these different things.

Speaker 1 Lots of marketing. I learned that I could get anybody on the podcast, and normally I'd have to pay 10 grand for this consulting session.

Speaker 1 They were glad to come on for free, and then they follow up for me with me. And what I learned very quickly is I wanted to hire one out of 40 podcasts.
That's kind of where I'm at, one out of 40.

Speaker 1 Like I'm working with Dan Martell. He told me, by the way, I'm fired because he's not going to do any more coaching one-on-one.
He said, he pulled out his watch. He's got a $500,000 watch, right?

Speaker 1 What the hell is the name of the watch? It's not a Patti Philippe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Richard Mill.

Speaker 1 And he goes, Tommy, let me show you something. This is a $500,000 watch.
He goes, you know why I bought a $500,000 watch, not a $200,000, not a million-dollar watch?

Speaker 1 He goes, because $500,000 is how much I need to make an hour to be a billionaire. He goes, so you're not going to pay me $500,000.

Speaker 1 He goes, so therefore, we got a few more sessions. And then, by the way, I'll take your phone calls.
I'll come to Idaho. I'll come to your PV house.
We'll go to hang out.

Speaker 1 But I've learned that my time, I'm in a phase of my life, he said, that I'm saying no a hundred more times than I'm saying yes not nine or ten times more but a hundred more times and he goes it's the best thing that's ever happened to me it's something that I'm trying to build too is that skill to say no without

Speaker 1 like so many people said yes to me so I kind of want to pay it forward so I'm cropping that part out of the video and me and Ashley are going to send that point of the video to say look it's not necessarily but I'm robbing time for my mom and dad I'm robbing time for my sister my niece and my nephews I'm robbing time for my company so unless it's absolutely like a must do, like I say hell yes, then it's a no.

Speaker 1 And Dan's taught me a lot about just the way I look at software. He says, for every dollar you spend, you got to figure out the enterprise value.
And you should be at a one to 10 ratio.

Speaker 1 And that's just a different way of looking at things. So lately, over the last few years, I've hired a ton of consultants that I've met on the podcast.
Dan came on my podcast.

Speaker 1 So I've used that as really a learning experience, something for my curiosity.

Speaker 3 The core part is to get free consulting,

Speaker 3 not as like a lead-gen strategy for movie.

Speaker 1 No. No, it was not.

Speaker 1 And most people on their podcast, if I wanted to talk to builders and designers and talk about how much the garage door and bring it back to that, it could have been worth a ton of leads.

Speaker 1 But I've never had a problem getting leads. I mean, this month, this past month, June, 34,200 leads.

Speaker 1 We ran over 25,000. Some of these are form fills, which, by the way, in home service, those aren't good.

Speaker 1 Nobody fills out a form and says, my garage is busted i can't get out it's more like an inquiry i like the ones that go dude i am screwed i need you here now yeah those are the best calls yeah

Speaker 3 it's interesting when i got started in this business i was in college and um i had similar i i was like watching all these people launching courses i couldn't afford to buy the courses and this is before podcast was a thing and so um i started like this teleseminar series where i would just interview people and literally i was like all the people i couldn't afford their courses i'd email like hey can i have you on my teleseminar and they're like oh sure and i have one-on-one time for an hour with them like this is insane that I'm asking my direct questions.

Speaker 3 I can't afford the... And I think a lot of people understand the power in that and how

Speaker 3 having some version of a show or something gives you access to people that you don't normally have access to.

Speaker 1 That's a secret sauce. I remember Adam, my general manager, one of my great, great friends,

Speaker 1 he looked at me after the first three podcasts. He listened to all three of them and he goes, he looks at me.
We go to dinner. He goes, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 He's like, do you know how long it took us to figure this out? And you just yelled to the rooftops to everybody that listened to the podcast or secrets?

Speaker 1 And I go, well, we're going to find out real stupid, real quickly, how stupid I am, or it might be a pretty good idea. Because I could tell you right now, Russell, how to get a six-pack.

Speaker 1 I mean, you are a wrestler. You know what you got to do.
You got to go on a caloric deficit. You got to watch.
Six-packs are made in the kitchen.

Speaker 1 It's not complicated, but nobody does it. So what I've learned is you can tell everybody, look, I'll show you exactly what I do.
One of my mentors, my best mentors, said, give them everything.

Speaker 1 It'll just, what'll happen is when they learn about branding and direct response marketing and this and this, and we go on and on. He goes, you're going to sink them to the bottom of the ocean.

Speaker 1 He goes, whether you like it or not, they're not ready. They don't know.

Speaker 1 So they don't understand the steps and the priority levels and what to get started with. So they try to do it all and nothing works.
And the entrepreneur is always the one in the way.

Speaker 1 Believe it or not, I've had to learn to step back, let them fail. Like I said in the beginning, I got to stay out of the way.

Speaker 1 Like there are times I inject myself, but I used to do, you know, Cameron Harold? Yeah. He's a coach of ours.

Speaker 1 And he goes, Tommy, how often he asked Luke, my CEO, how often is Tommy interacting with like your direct reports? He goes, Luke goes like this, shakes his head. He goes, all the time.

Speaker 1 And he goes, you're not, Tommy, you're not telling them like to run your projects and stuff. And I go,

Speaker 1 no.

Speaker 1 He's like, you are? He's like, that's forbidden. He goes, you're only allowed to ask questions.
You're not allowed to give anything what to do. He goes, that's an insult to your management team.

Speaker 1 If you're skipping down these skip meetings. And so when he told me that, I was like, done.
And like, you hire these mentors, you listen to them. They've been tried and true.

Speaker 1 Like they've had a lot of success. So it's like when they tell me something, I listen and I incorporate it.
And I don't, a lot of people like to argue and say, well, you don't understand.

Speaker 1 You don't know. You don't know my industry.
You don't,

Speaker 1 the economics.

Speaker 1 Trump's got all this stuff going on with tariffs. Like there's always a reason why you suck.
When you could just say, listen, I need to get better. That's when everything will start to change.

Speaker 1 Most people are like pointing, pointing, pointing.

Speaker 1 If I could hire better people, and if I didn't have these cheap customers, and interest rates would go down, they need to point these two fingers and say, Maybe it's me.

Speaker 3 It's so fascinating because that's true in like all like in business, but it's the same thing in marriage. I found with my kids, like every time I try to fix my wife or my kids, it never works.

Speaker 3 And then, usually, I look back at myself, I'm like, Okay, how can I change myself? And then my marriage becomes better, my kids become better.

Speaker 3 Business, like it's so fascinating how we never want to, like,

Speaker 3 yeah, we never want to take the extreme ownership back on ourselves, but we do it's the only thing that can actually fix only thing any situation

Speaker 1 Communicate and tell people how you feel I think that it's important and it's very difficult for me to do is to say Russell when you talk to me like this

Speaker 1 Sometimes I feel like you're talking down to me and it makes me very hard to want to work with a guy like you like a better approach to a guy like me would be to talk this way And I think our relationship would be a lot better.

Speaker 1 And those are hard conversations, but they're worth having.

Speaker 1 As long as I'm like, Russell, you're an egomaniac, dude you've you you can't be this way to anybody because then then you're gonna be like fight or flight and be like well what about you so if you say stuff how how I feel this is how I feel when you say things like this and I'm not a pro at this is something I've been working very hard on and I'm very hard about showing my emotions and giving feedback but that's not something I could just say well I can't do it because I'm not good at it it's something I need to start doing more often and putting myself in those uncomfortable situations is I feel this way when you react this way but I can't come down at you too, because then I know it turns into this, like, well, what about this?

Speaker 1 But hey, Russell, don't take any offense to this. I'm just going to be really open with you a little bit about my feelings.
And I think you're a great leader.

Speaker 1 I love the way what you're doing with the company. I bought into your vision.
And, but just here's a few things that would I would probably react better if you said it this way.

Speaker 1 And in emails, you're very short. It's sometimes condescending.
If you could just give me a one-up, I need to get that positive feedback too.

Speaker 1 Like, imagine everyone's life would be better just for that little conversation. yeah

Speaker 3 yeah i um

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 3 i had a flashback one of my friends he's great dad and he said that he'd ask his son all the time he's like no judgment here's like they tell me whatever you want but he's like you know what do you uh what was this he had three questions like what would i do good today what do you wish i would do better or something but it was like he was trying to get his son to tell him like if you would do this i would feel better and he would ask his son like once a week or once a month or something and he's like what happened is like incrementally over time i would make little tweaks and these little tweaks and little tweaks i see him and he's like, one of the best fathers I've ever seen.

Speaker 3 Like, I envy him. I'm like, man, I wish I could do that.
But most of us are afraid to ask, ask for the feedback. And then also

Speaker 3 the people we're asking are scared to give it to us because like they're afraid that we're going to come back and you know fight.

Speaker 3 And his whole thing is like, he's like, I will never fight back. I just want to know, honestly, like, what could I do better as your father? What could I do better as your boss?

Speaker 3 And just let them do it. And like, okay, I'm going to do my best as opposed to what we want to do, which is like, you know, all of our ego and like all those kind of things.

Speaker 1 So it's just fascinating how it's tough, dude.

Speaker 3 Personal development. Business is like the greatest personal development lesson in the world.
Like, it forces you to look back at yourself, internalize, and reflect.

Speaker 1 And I didn't know how to do that. I was so busy running forward, looking five years down the road, I would never reflect.
I'm like, I don't have time to reflect.

Speaker 1 When I started going on long walks with no music, no nothing, no cell phone, just really like thinking about what happened today, what went well, what could I have done better at?

Speaker 1 A lot of stuff started to pop into my mind of, man, people must think. I'm super competitive like you.
And like, I run over some people, especially competitors. And

Speaker 1 Excuse my French.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, I invite competitors to our shop and I want to see them win because it makes the market better. It makes the industry better.
But this idea of learning how to reflect

Speaker 1 and being vulnerable. And like we do 360 reviews and I'm like, I cringe.
I'm like, I don't even want to read what they have to say is like, because I'm not good at remembering names.

Speaker 1 It's probably like, like, and I know the one thing they say is like, you got to remember people's names.

Speaker 1 Like Bill Clinton, whether you like it or hate it, that dude could remember, you know, Jim Quick.

Speaker 1 Jim remembers everything. He'll remember your name.
He'll remember the conversation. Like he's got these mental things that he does.
And he's like, I'd rather

Speaker 1 read

Speaker 1 than eat or work out. He's like, I need to feed my brain.
Everybody's feeding their body. Everybody's into this kick, you know, cold plunge, sauna.
They're eating all right.

Speaker 1 And we're into this kick now, this fad. And he's like, what if everybody worked on their brain? And so something I need to get better at.

Speaker 1 And like, we're working on name tags because I'm like, it's the most embarrassing thing that I met this person seven times. And it makes it seem like I don't care.
But the fact is, I just,

Speaker 1 I've never learned that skill that's something I need to do because people love to hear their name. Like, wow, I'm not just a number.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I heard Dan Kennedy told me this story.
It's fascinating. He was on the old.

Speaker 3 success tours back in the day. They filled big stadiums.
They travel. And each success tour, they'd have like a local celebrity and they bring in like Colin Powell or George Bush, whatever, right?

Speaker 3 And the thing that Kennedy told me, he's like, he's like once every six months, he'd be on the same tour where George Bush Sr. was on or whatever.
And he's like, it was fascinating.

Speaker 3 He's like, because I would see him, then I see him six months later or, you know, 18 months later, the thing, and he'd come up to me. He's like, oh, Mr.
Kennedy, how are your horses?

Speaker 3 And he was like, how did he know? Like, how do you remember my name? Number one. And I also remember the horses.
And then he ended up asking around. He found out that

Speaker 3 George Bush, like when he would, when he would meet somebody afterwards, he would tell the assistant, okay, his name is Dan Kennedy. He has horses.
And so she had these note cards.

Speaker 3 And then when he was going to an event, she would pull the note cards. Here's the six people you're going to meet backstage.
And he'd

Speaker 3 re-review them. And they show up like, oh, Mr.
Kennedy, how's your horses? And he's like, the president of the United States knew, remember that I had horses. Like, how special?

Speaker 1 Have a little face.

Speaker 1 Those are like cheat codes. Yeah, isn't it? And if you learn them.
And me and Ashley work on systems all the time, like just those little things.

Speaker 1 Like we don't have that dialed in perfectly because literally I'm the hardest guy to work for on the planet. I don't know how she does it.
I got to thank like a few people every week.

Speaker 1 Like, thank you for putting up with my craft

Speaker 1 because I'm so difficult. Like, I'm like, she's like, hey,

Speaker 1 you want to go over emails? I'm like, fine. But we got a good ruler.

Speaker 3 The answer to that is always no, but let's do it anyway.

Speaker 1 There's certain things where we have to do. It's just, but she makes it so easy.
It's, it's, she's like, she'll just read them and be like, how do you want me to answer this?

Speaker 1 And we got this tool where we'll send out like. birthday videos, anniversary, work anniversary, and marriage anniversaries.

Speaker 1 And certain times, like this past week, I found the top five guys and I just said how proud I am of you guys. Like, I love you guys.
Thank you so much. You're a role model for everybody here.

Speaker 1 Without you, this company wouldn't run because just as much as calling people, I don't call them up. I don't call them out.
I call them up and I tell them, I'm here to help.

Speaker 1 But I think it's important that you give positive feedback just as much, if not twice as much as you give kind of.

Speaker 1 not negative feedback, but just encouragement of you could be better.

Speaker 1 It's hard, man. Running a business.
See, I'm kind of envious of of you because you've got the ability to scale.

Speaker 1 Human beings are probably the hardest. They're the anomaly in the mix is everybody's different.
Everybody has different feelings. Everybody likes to be rewarded differently.

Speaker 1 Some people like to get a trophy and talk in front of the room. Other people will quit if you do that.
They'll be like, you embarrass the crap out of me.

Speaker 1 So it's understanding those things over time and just trying to be that person. And then I can't do it all.

Speaker 1 So then you got to build leaders underneath that do the same and care the same and build the same culture. And the hard truth is, true leaders,

Speaker 1 if you've got a goal, sometimes it means losing great people. Sometimes it means as a company scales, this person doesn't fit a seat on the bus anymore.
And, but you love them.

Speaker 1 They helped you so much.

Speaker 1 But is it best for the business? Should we take a risk for everybody because I'm loyal?

Speaker 1 Or if you're not willing to learn and grow with the company, it's the law of the lid is if I'm not growing, the company kind of stops growing.

Speaker 1 And if my senior people aren't growing, the company ceases to grow. And a lot of times, Cameron Harrell wrote a book, Double Double.

Speaker 1 Usually your operator could only double the company twice unless they're growing exponentially, like the visionary founder.

Speaker 1 It's a crazy concept, but if you're not growing people, your company's not going to grow. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's fascinating.

Speaker 1 And then bringing people from the outside. Some people only promote from within.
And that's a mistake as well. I mean, Jack Welch said 10% of the company is going to go every year.
I need new blood.

Speaker 1 Some people brag about every employee with a lot of tenure. That's a mistake.
There needs to be new thoughts coming into the business all the time.

Speaker 1 And hire the best. That's one thing, too, is like, we're looking for a new CMO and like, we're willing to pay top, top, top of the market, top, top, top.

Speaker 1 And I don't need anybody today, next month, even this year. I'm going to wait for the right candidate because putting the wrong person in place.
Could take the company back two years. Yeah.
So

Speaker 3 the right one would exponentially speed up the market.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh. The right person.

Speaker 3 will be able to do it. I'll submit my application.
That'd be fun.

Speaker 1 Yes, you should. It's the part-time thing.

Speaker 3 I always say it'd be fun someday when I retire to like actually get a job as a CMO somewhere and like work from the outside.

Speaker 1 Well, I love what you're doing. Like you obsess over the customer journey.
You obsess and you make little tweaks every day.

Speaker 1 And you said, I want to get to the point where I could spend a million dollars a month on a campaign.

Speaker 1 And as long as I'm a little bit in the black, then it's, then it's a home run because I will tweak, tweak, tweak and change, change, change. And once I I get it, and Gary Vee said the same thing.

Speaker 1 He's like, it may take me a thousand tries. But once I get it, nobody stands a chance.
But nobody A-B tests like that. Nobody's willing to change just a thumbnail.
I mean, Mr.

Speaker 1 B spends $40,000 designing a thumbnail. That's how important it is.
And yet, you should see some of my thumbnails.

Speaker 1 It looks like I'm like, just woke up and like cross-eyed and like my hair is messed up. And I'm like, is this a joke?

Speaker 1 Where are my thumbnails like this? And then my lighting always sucks. I'm like, man, it looks like I got like terminal illness.

Speaker 1 So like,

Speaker 1 we need to work better on that. Like, this place is like perfect.
But like, I'm like, man, I got so much work to do. If I was going to build,

Speaker 1 and everything we do is in a wave funnels, but it's not to your level. And it's not predictable.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, when you work with private equity, they want a predictable model of how many leads you could get. And I'm like, well, organically, here's something I just heard that's kind of,

Speaker 1 it's, it's a breakthrough. It's a different way of thinking.

Speaker 1 When you're doing paid search, every engineer on on the planet for google meta any of these companies um you name it they want you to win they want you to keep paying you're in there you're you're paying them they want you to succeed when you're working on organic and working whether it's meta whether it's google whether it's anything non-paid every engineer on the planet's working against you so you're swimming upstream and they're trying to figure out a way to get you into the paid like if you're doing they won't let you go viral anymore like pooperree the guys in utah like i did a podcast with them that won't happen again or uh dollar shave club like i've studied i've been on these guys podcasts i've hired them as consultants virality won't happen as easy unless it's like a dog pooping in your backyard which means nothing for business yeah so if it has to do with your business they're going to stop it so it's an interesting thought that if you want to learn how to really win you've got to start mastering paid because you've got it something you can control you can control and you can get an expected outcome so a lot of our stuff is organic It's word of mouth.

Speaker 1 A lot of this, and it's really hard to predict that model, but it works, but it's getting harder. Chat GBT, Gemini, Grok, like all these, there's a hundred more.

Speaker 1 And I look at them and I'm like, they're pulling in the BBB. We haven't done much on the BBB, but now I'm getting back to, we got to get reviews on the BBB.
I feel like it's like 1989. Yeah.

Speaker 3 In fact, that's still relevant. It's crazy.
Yeah. Well, dude, I appreciate you stopping my voice and coming out.
And I love being around you and your energy just gets me more fired up.

Speaker 3 So many cool things from this, like, you know, building out systems, building out teams, the way you treat your people. I think the biggest nugget for me that hopefully everyone listening

Speaker 3 like didn't miss is like you reverse engineering the outcome you want, right?

Speaker 3 I think that's what most people miss is they get into business or life or whatever they're doing and they're just kind of like trying to get better.

Speaker 3 But but what you did was, okay, the goal is a billion dollars.

Speaker 3 what's that look like how to reverse engineer and then from there now you have a path and a plan to run towards where most people don't ever spend the time to actually reverse engineer and i think that was hopefully nobody missed that because that's the piece that's like, even in my mind, like there was a time when we were building clickfronts, we had everything reverse engineered.

Speaker 3 Now in my head, I'm like, I was thinking, I'm like, man, I don't have those defined for myself, let alone my team.

Speaker 3 So that was very big for me to just kind of rethink through and get, yeah, get some clarity on. So I appreciate, appreciate that.
I appreciate you being here, man.

Speaker 1 I'll just say one more thing about reverse engineering. It's not only about your business.
It's about your children, your relationships, the fun you have, the trips you go on.

Speaker 1 It's about your faith. And I know you're a big man of faith.
I think it's, it's, um

Speaker 1 it's not just it, we get so wrapped up in this world of how much money are we gonna make, but every relationship, uh, your body, how you treat yourself, you got to reverse engineer your goals.

Speaker 1 Like, how many push-ups? We were doing push-ups in the parking lot.

Speaker 1 Um, we wonder because you're not there, but those just, it's just, I don't want people to think it's not just your business, it's your relationship with your wife that you talked about.

Speaker 1 It's a relationship with your kids, it's a relationship with your parents, it's the

Speaker 1 fun you have in life. So, if you guys just wrote down more things and said, like, I'm going to die.
Let's say I'm 82. What are people going to say about me? What happened?

Speaker 1 Dan Martel made me do this for two different sessions. He said, what happened when you were 42? Like, what were the great things? When you went to,

Speaker 1 we went to Hungary. What did you do in Hungary? What were the great things? What kind of plane did you fly out? Like, you got to really manifest it, everything.

Speaker 1 Don't just manifest your business, manifest everything in life. And all of a sudden, it starts coming true.
And you're like, wow, I'm so lucky, but you're not lucky. You manifested it.

Speaker 1 You had a plan you you implemented quickly so you know i appreciate being here brother this is a blast you got a great place here and i'm still gonna like i told everybody on my team like we're gonna go through your class we're gonna learn and some people don't see the connection that's all i see is like you don't understand like everything we do is a funnel even in garage doors and if we can master it and a b test it we're gonna win so thank you so cool for people who don't know you where's the best place for them to follow is the podcast instagram like where's where do you want to go So, tommymello.com has all of my places to follow me.

Speaker 1 And then we've got a big event, it's called thefreedomevent.com. Should be about 1,500 to 2,000 people there.

Speaker 1 If you want to learn about home service, which AI is not going to get in the way, yeah, anytime soon, uh, it's probably the hottest industry right now. It's a great event.
And

Speaker 1 look, if you want to reach out, I'm unfortunately mostly on Facebook. That's where I answer most of my Facebook or LinkedIn.
I'm, I was born in 1983, so You're still on Facebook?

Speaker 3 And if you need a garage door, A1 Garage Door.

Speaker 1 A1garage.com, baby.

Speaker 3 What about the other podcast? What's that one about?

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Mellow Millionaire. That's the one you were on.
It's really high-profile people that have been successful. So it's the way I did it in home service.
It's got really successful people.

Speaker 1 But now I want to know, like,

Speaker 1 you're teaching your son how to wrestle. You're obsessed with being a great dad.
So there's so much more to learn for me.

Speaker 1 And so the Mellow Millionaire, we had Jocko on with just great people that are amazing. Jeremy Minor, top sales guy in the world.

Speaker 1 Like you get these people on and you start to extract more knowledge than just about home service.

Speaker 1 So the Mellow Millionaire is about people that have done well financially, but more importantly, well with their family, well with their relationships.

Speaker 1 They're living a dream like you. And when you can get those people on and extract that, you start to live the dream as well.
So it's been really fun. That's how we met.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's how you build relationships. So I encourage everybody, the Mellow Millionaire, to start your own podcast.
Get great people like Russell on if he's got the time. He's a busy man.

Speaker 3 But you should go listen to my episode, though, because Tommy's a great interviewer. You asked questions, we're super unique.
We ended up going for like, I think almost like two hours, didn't we?

Speaker 1 It was so good. I got so many notes from that podcast.
But yeah, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 If you did nothing else, go listen to that and go subscribe and go plug in that podcast. Thank you.
Appreciate it, man. Thanks for coming and hanging out.
Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 And I will see you guys all in the next episode.