The Home Service Expert Podcast - Applying Effective Growth Strategies to Keep a Seasonal Business Thriving

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Josh Trees started We Hang Christmas Lights, a Christmas light installation business, in 1997 for residential and commercial clients in Temecula, California. By the third year of his business, he hit a net profit of right around $138,000, and to this day, his business continues to enjoy the benefits of incredibly fast growth.  In this episode, we talked about marketing, business strategy, recruitment, seasonal businesses...

As a leader, you know, as owners of the company, we have to train the managers to recognize the difference between that. And in my opinion, that would be us evaluating things, taking an outside look, jumping in, taking an inside look when we need to, and making a lot of notes. And then sitting down for a few hours with a cup of coffee or a beer, whatever, and going through it, and I've done this plenty of times, I like to find a different environment sometimes when I'm doing this kind of stuff, like at a poolside at a hotel, in a cabana or whatever, just where I'm relaxed, just not even at the office sometimes. And you go through and looking like, okay, what are we doing wrong here? Go through all the steps in that process, and how can we do this better,

and then get them trained on that. 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. My name is Tommy Mello. Today, I have a buddy of mine we actually met at a Christmas light event, actually. It's going on two years, and it was in St. Louis, and he owns a really extraordinary, huge best practices. They sell lights. They've got everything figured out in the Christmas light industry. And, you know,

some of you know that I'm involved a little bit in the Christmas light, but I'm more of a silent partner. So this is going to be great. My partner, Johnny kicks ass and I've got Dustin who whoops butt and these guys are the most amazing guys. And I've been focused a lot more on a1 it's hard to split the focus but I want to tell you a little bit about Josh he's out of California thank God and he's doing business in Texas now the great state of Texas look at my shirt right here hey it is a great state hell yeah Texas got the Texas with the guns as the X yeah hey. Hey, loving Texas, man. Loving it. Like you pointed out today, so much better business climate than California, you know? It's hard to do work in certain states. Illinois, Washington's making it tougher. It's like,

and we'll talk a little bit about that too, because there's tax liability. There's, there's more about the employees. They make it so hard to do business there. But I'll tell you, you've learned to be an expert in entrepreneurship, marketing, business strategy, recruitment, Christmas light installations. And you got a cool business model. You're the founder of We Hang Christmas Lights since 1997 to present. And you started your own Christmas light business. We Hang Christmas lights in 1997,

decorating homes, businesses, and assorted branches of greenery in Temecula, California. And you hit a net profit of 138,000 by year three, which is super, super impressive to get it. People like Christmas lights and it's tough business because it's seasonal. You got to hire fast. Then a lot of people got to figure out what what are they gonna do the rest of the year

and you guys got a really big thing going i mean it's amazing the business that you guys crafted up do you want to just explain to the audience where you came from what you're doing now i know you specialize or did a lot of lead generation and you also specialize in commercial. Just go from soup to nuts and tell us your story. So Tommy, so yeah, I started out actually in the boat rental business when I was 22 and always been a salesman. It's been selling, selling shit my whole life, you know, since selling golf balls when I lived on the golf course, when I was a kid, you know, when I was nine, 10 years old, telemarketing when I was 15, got a job selling Kirby vacuum cleaners going door to door when I was 16, made enough money to sell three Kirbys and had enough money for the

summer for my six flags passes and gas money for my Camaro and everything else I needed. And then as far as my background, didn't like high school too much. I got my GED when I was 16. And I loved the social aspect of school, but I was always a great student until about the eighth grade. Then high school came along. I was like, eh, it's out the window.

I don't like this anymore. And then I actually did a couple years at junior college in California. Started that when I was 17 and got accepted to the University of Oklahoma, drove out there. My business partner, Matt, who you've met before, he actually went out there with me. And then there was like, I think seven of my credits that weren't transferring. So I stayed at my buddy's fraternity house for like three weeks. And I was like, you know what?

If I'm having to pay, I was paying my own tuition. I'm like, this just isn't working out. So go back and long story short, never went to school again, started a jet ski and boat rental business. I guess it was 21 at the time. And it worked for my stepfather's fitness business for a while as well. He had a bunch of fitness stores down in San Diego. So once I started the boat and jet ski rolling business, I started just delivering the jet skis to the beach and out of our warehouse, and then ended up with a couple of locations on San Diego Bay. I'm sure you've been to San Diego plenty of times. So I had a location at the Marriott Coronado Island, had a location at the Konakai Hotel, and had that going for about six years, ended up selling that business. But I guess circling back, the second year I was in that business, I'm like,

okay, well, I got a great summer business. But as you know, Southern California, it's not like being in Florida or something where it's basically summertime year round. So I'm like, I got to get a winter business going. So that's where the Christmas lights came in. And back in those days, I was probably one of just that's where the Christmas lights came in. And back in those days, I was probably one of just a couple people doing Christmas lights in San Diego. First year, didn't know what I was doing. Underbidding jobs, bidding jobs for 150 bucks.

It should have been $500. Bidding jobs for 500 bucks. It should have been $2,000 using other people's lights. Learning everything the hard way by year two, starting to figure it out pretty good, turn a little bit of profit. And then yeah, by years three and four, we had it figured out. And you know, $138,000, that's not killing it. But when you're 25 years old, you know, and I had a business partner as well, my ex-brother-in-law, it's like, that ain't bad for 90 days worth of work. And then I've been in it for 23 years now. And then as you know, I was one of the co-founders of Clippa, what me and Matt did. WeHangChristmasLights.com is my main focus now. And that's my passion is just training other

entrepreneurs, how to get out there, how to make things systematic and how to make money in a short period of time. And most of the people that I do work with are contractors, you know, people where, as you probably know, landscape contractors, a lot of pressure washers. So in those businesses, they obviously get very slow. Like in Michigan where, where you were born and raised in that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Michigan where you're born and raised, like most of the United States, you know, there's a few exceptions, Arizona, Nevada, maybe California, Florida.

But most of the U.S., it gets cold. So a lot of these guys, they can't wash, they can't do landscaping. So this is the perfect business for them to add on. They've already got their sales staff. They've already got their installations crews. So they just segue right into doing Christmas lights and make a pretty good amount of money doing it. You know, some of our top guys like Jeff Kroll in Chicago, he's doing over a million and a half in Christmas lights in a 90 day period. So, you know, you, you've done, and we got a lot of questions. It's, this is awesome. And I love it because you've taken something. The reason why I love Christmas

lights is people are like buying these because they want to their neighbors and their kids and Christmas means something to people. And generally they tip and they're happy. It's not like the plumber shows up and they're like, dude, this pipe. And it's like, they're planning on spending money on this stuff.

And I'm not going to say it's easy because there's a lot of challenges. But talk to me a little bit about commercial versus residential. Commercial by far do you do a lot of commercial business uh i started picking up some big ones we picked up huge residential well i'm not worried about it with with a1 yeah no no i don't i dabble in restaurants okay okay yeah because look i gotta tell, I think it's easier to do residential, but the ticket, you got to be much more specialized to do commercial.

It's almost a whole different setup. There's different rules, regulations, insurance policies, coverages, liability, you name it. So I don't like people that do both to start out. I say pick one and then master one and then expand into the other one. Yeah, so with Christmas lights, so to sum it up, commercial is by far a lot better, in my opinion, than residential is. That's all that we do in Southern California.

Actually, I sold that division. I'm not even doing installs anymore at all. I'm just focused on the business opportunities and licensing, but there's really not much of a difference. With Christmas lights, you know, I know it's a lot different in garage doors because my brother-in-law owns a commercial garage store company in San Diego. And there is a big difference there. But, you know, with Christmas lights, a tree is a tree.

Roof line is a roof line. I mean, obviously, it's going to be on a parapet roof line as opposed to like shingles or tiles or whatever. But a lot obviously it's going to be on a parapet roofline as opposed to like shingles or tiles or whatever, but a lot of it's the same. And then a tower tree, those are easy to build. So commercial, the margins tend to be better. Some of the times you're on the job site for any time from a day to as much as like two, three weeks, even a month. In my opinion, the margins, like I said, are a lot better. Commercial's where it's at. That's where everybody should be marketing to. But at the same time, residential is a huge

part of the business. And there's some great residential jobs out there. I mean, we've done residential jobs that were $30,000 jobs. Like you said, you guys hit a monster job. And we just did a $200,000 job. Residential? That's awesome. Over 100 acres. The guy owns the largest dealerships in Arizona. I'm not sure if we landed it,

but I know we quoted it. It's one of those things that is back and forth. I want this, do this, do this. There's some big stuff. Commercial clients also tend to be way less of a pain in the butt than residential clients. They're not on top of you as much.

You just get out there, you get the job done. And the other great thing about commercial versus residential for a lot of these guys, because in a lot of these cities, these guys are out there bidding against these guys that don't have the workers' comp. They don't have the commercial liability policies. They don't have any insurance at all. And when you're bidding on commercial jobs, they require all that stuff, right? So like you were saying, so it levels the playing field a lot more. So you're not dealing with the guys that are

paying the people under the table, or it's a lot more level playing field and you're not going to have near as much competition. When you're dealing with with commercial clients it's not just like a homeowner it's like it's their jobs on the line so it's very important to them that they pick a company that's that is going to be good so i guess what i'm getting at you're not dealing with all the guys that are on craigslist and the you know the two two drunks in a truck that are showing up at the ladder for beer money quote for you know i'll get it done for $150. So, so that's one of the big differences. So your model is, is pretty cool. And it's almost like a franchise model, but not, you don't have to follow that, that regulation. So you're not as strict. Yeah. So you've done a

lot of lead gen. I have seen you guys, you rank pretty much all over the United States for Christmas lights, and that's very, very smart. So you become a lead generator, but you're buying into a licensing deal. Can you kind of explain how it works? And then they got to buy the lights through you. How does that all work? So, okay. So like you said, Tommy, very similar to a franchise, but we don't have as much control. So a lot of times they do buy through the clip of buyers group, but they're not required to, but you know, we've got 12 vendors that preferred vendors in there. I think maybe it's up to 14. Now the prices are great. The service is good.

So there's really, really no reason not to, but if you're with a franchise, like some of the other competitors, they are, we have a couple bigger competitors, really one predominantly Christmas decor. And they're going to have a lot more control. They're going to say, yes, you've got to buy lights from us. You have to do this. You have to do that. They take a percentage of royalties. They take a percentage of your annual sales.

And if you're in a market and they don't feel like you're performing enough up to that market standards, they'll still charge you that royalty based off of where they think that market should be at. And that's pretty standard with most franchises. They're not different from others. But with our licensing program, I always tell people it's the best of both worlds because you've got the marketing in place. It's all very turnkey. You've got the website. You've got the advertising.

You've got the signs. And we buy all that stuff in such quantities where I can sell people signs, say 18 by 24 inch signs for a buck 30 a piece. And they can buy five of them, or they can buy 10, or they can buy however many they want. But it's because I'm getting made 10,000 at a time.

Same thing with door hangers, same thing with postcards, with everything. I like to call it cooperative marketing because we're all sharing the same phone numbers because obviously I'm sure you do this too. We have probably 12 different phone numbers because we have a different phone number for every type of advertising medium that we have. So we can track how well that stuff's being done, which a lot of people think that's hard, which it's easy. It's like, get the different numbers, get the reports on it. Then you'll know, are your signs working good? Is your billboard

working good? How well is the Google local doing? How well is the website doing? So it's all kind of shared. So instead of them going out and having to order 10,000 door hangers to get a price of, let's say 12 cents for a door hanger, they could order 50 or a hundred is like same with the sign. So I think the biggest benefit is really just that cooperative marketing and utilizing the buying power that we have. Aside from the educational aspect of it. I mean, that's, that's huge too. With Clippa, it's like, cause there's a lot of areas where we don't have licenses available. You know, most large cities were pretty much have licensees in now, but I still always tell people, it's like, get the training, man, because this is a business where I always tell people, it's like, it's not like a painting

company or pressure washing or a garage door company or all these others where you can fall flat on your face, wipe yourself off, get up. The season's just too short. You know that. It's like, you start making mistakes. It starts snowballing like crazy. And you're going to be so frustrated, you're throwing in the towel. And the training's so affordable now that it's like, I mean, it's like $1,500. Or I think it's even like $1,300 with the, they usually have some sort of discount going. So it's like, that's the biggest thing. It's like, why reinvent the wheel? You know?

Yeah. I'll tell you, we could have done a lot better if we knew the prices to charge and where to get the stuff. But, you know, we went in, like, I think the problem is, you know, it's Christmas lights. I've hung Christmas lights when I was young. And it's like, it can't be that hard. We're getting the Christmas lights from China. We're getting a great price.

And then it's like, you get problems with the lights. You got quality problems. You don't know how to bid jobs. You're using old people's lights. Look, I think the hardest part, which I want to get into, and I love the fact that we're talking about it, such an extreme niche, is recruiting. Recruiting becomes a tough thing because it's seasonal. But, you know, this year we've got all the same guys coming back.

It's crazy. They like to earn that extra money. And it's a really, really cool thing. So my question is, what have you done to figure out the recruiting game for a seasonal business? Even back, like, I'd say probably 17 years ago when I first wrote the training manuals, it said in there hire and fire daily. And that's what we had to do. And I didn't have, like I was saying, most people that we bring on board now, they've got a sideline business. They've got an existing business. This is just the supplement for the winter months. So they've

already got somewhat of a staff. Yep. I've got a couple of supervisors. I know it's a little bit different with you because you got your A1 guys going year round and they don't transition in the Christmas lights. And I'll be the first to tell these people like, hey, you know what? If you're a fireman that's going to go out and do this and you're just getting started, you don't already have a different business or you're a college student, I'll have them call me up. And it's like, it's going to be tough. I've seen the success rates on the people that are independent, just jump into business versus the people that already have a business. And it's a huge difference, you know, the failure rate compared to the success rate. But like I said, I had the boat rental business and those employees, those beach bumps definitely

didn't transition in jet skis. They weren't getting up on, I mean, into Christmas lights, the boat rental jet ski guys. So I had that challenge. And sometimes it's more difficult these days, like in the last few years with our recruiting than it was back then. I'm like, man, I was 25 years old. I had it figured out then. It was successful running 25 guys to be able to figure it out now.

But it really goes back to I think that overall hiring people these days is harder than it was you know 15 20 years ago and I'm not just trying to be like the old guy saying oh he's got him these dang millennials blah blah but I will say it it is I feel like it is a little bit harder a little more difficult but it just comes down to where you don't have the time i think it's almost like like tryouts and i would recommend if for these guys that are medium to large size it's almost worth it to have a five-day period where the biggest thing is getting your your uh crew leaders right and once you have those guys then you got to get the crew members but if you have good crew leaders, right? And then once you have those guys, then you got to get the crew members.

But if you have good crew leaders, in my opinion, the rest of the part's pretty easy because that's the toughest part is finding the good crew leaders. And I'll sit those guys down and say, hey, here's the biggest thing. Your job depends on the performance of these guys. It's not your job to hire people. It's not your job to recruit people. You don't run the ads on Craigslist. You don't do the preliminary interviews, but they do work for you, you know, for that first day or for the first couple of days. So it is on you to let us know if they're not cutting it. And like I said, it's in the manuals. It's in every clip class that we do hire and fire daily because for the first couple of weeks, that's what you got to do. You got to filter through a lot of people. And if the crew

leader feels like they're not doing a good job or, because I've had guys that will lie and say they're not afraid of heights at all. And then, you know, you get them up on a ladder and that's another good thing to do is always when you're doing the interviews, have them go up the side of the building, put them on a 24-foot ladder the guys that get halfway and their legs start shaking they're not cut out for it they're ground squirrel we don't need that so i mean i'm sure you've gone through it with the garage door business you'll get people that say hey they say one thing that they perform great in an interview and then you get them out actually in the field and they're doing a terrible job they're always going to the bathroom they're doing a terrible job. They're always going to the bathroom. They're always talking to other people.

Or they just can't. They're not handy at all. So we tell these guys, if you feel like they're not good within the first half day, call us, let us know. We'll have replacements tomorrow. And then if you feel like you want to give them one more day as a chance, go ahead and do that. But keep in mind, they're a reflection of you. And if you're not out there performing with your team, then your job is going to be on the line.

But it's difficult. I always say that I think for every three to four people we hire, we're lucky to have 50% that stay on board. We really are. But that's why we're thinking about shifting over to a model of almost having like tryouts where we spend a week, spend the money, hire just a bunch of people, take them through the stuff, do some practice jobs, friends, families. Since we do all commercial, finding some of our commercial clients where we can go out and do the training, do like early installs, give them a discount, and then have a good crew right out of the gate. Yeah, it's tricky i do i've got a pretty aggressive program where you got to make it through a bunch

of stuff we don't even make it easy to apply i mean you learn about the job then you got to do a spark hire interview then you got to do a personality test then you've got to do a background drug test then you got to do a cognitive test then you got to do a background in a drug test. Then you got to do a cognitive test. Then you got to do a ride along. That's even before you could get the freaking interview. Then you got to do another interview. But I'll tell you what, when you get 500 applicants a day, if you can filter that down to 10 good guys and then get it down from there. So, and then you got to make it after you apprentice, you got to come to Phoenix and we're sending guys home a guy a week minimum. And this is after they made it through the whole apprenticeship. And I tell my trainers, this is an accomplishment.

You made it through to the best company you've ever worked for. I'm like, you, you've earned the way here. And I go, congratulations. Well, it's not like you say, I used to say, just find people. And I'm like, your job becomes so much easier when you're a fire preventer than a firefighter. Oh dude. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head on that and it's like, and then once you get those good guys, you take care of them. Most of our guys, they're all temporary. They're just for the season. So it's different than what you have going.

But when we had a marketing company, you had the science printing company, you know, we had a good company culture. We take our great employees out, have barbecues, you know, barbecue at the shop every week, which I know you do that kind of stuff. Take care of those people. You know, it's not all about the bottom line. And like you were saying, for me, it's always been setting everything up very systematically and having protocols for everything. And I guess this goes more into overall running the business, but I'll tell you when I was making the most money I ever made in my life was when I had a company called BMG marketing promotions and that was a science

spinning company. And we did the, you know, the guys are out there flipping the arrows. Yeah. For home builders was what we were directed at. And I was, how old are you? Wow. 37. Okay. So I was 33 at that time and we had 600 temporary employees and then about 28 full-time employees. And it was just insane. And Matt and I worked our butt off for about a year and a month coming up with all these protocols, coming up with all these systems. And then our day for a few years, it was great because I've seen some of your podcast or obviously some of your videos and stuff that you've done. So we're on the same page

with this kind of stuff. Our day pretty much consisted of meetings. You know, we meet at the gym at like five 30 in the morning, go to the office at eight o'clock staff meeting with the sales staff, then, you know, maybe 9.30 with the operations team, then make some phone calls or whatever, go to a two hour lunch, come back for like an hour and have meetings and then go home and spend time. Like that's when my kids were little, like two, three, four years old. So like you were saying, I saw you saying something it's like it's about getting to that point where you get these systems going to where you're not a slave you're not working because it makes me cringe when i see people bragging about 100 hour work weeks

oh they're the hardest workers and and no dude that's that's not living to me brother i like being home spending time with my family and going out on the boat and being around my kids. Now that they're teenagers, you know what? I might switch to 100-hour work weeks. But when they're little, or I'd just rather be out on the golf course or doing something like that. But it's nice to build something up through the systems. And that's how I've always been very systematic through the licensing program and showing people how to do that. Because then you're not a slave to your job and you're able to get in there.

And I think that's kind of, is that a lot of what you're doing is like meeting staff and management? I've got a team and I'll tell you this, Josh. I could easily not come in here ever again and make a lot of money. We could do $10 million profit a year. And that's where you want to be. Not that you're going to do that because you want to grow it more and more. Well, I'm like this point, look, I'm the gas. I find bottlenecks and I push and I try to be as innovative as possible. I look at a problem and I say, and it's not a problem, but there's always somewhere to spend your time.

And you got to figure out the big thing with small business owners is they're like, they get all these ideas and they know that they got to write a manual. They know they need to write a better ad for recruiting. They know they need to hire a good CFO. They know all these things and they listen to the podcast and they go, but where do I start? And they throw it all up in the air and the manuals end up like crap. They don't use them.

They try to put an ad in Craigslist and then it doesn't work. And then they hire a CFO that promises in the world for six figures. And yeah, yeah. And it's everything I've done, but you got to get started. What I've learned how to do is delegate, inspect what I expect. People always ask me,

how do you come up with your pay structures? And I'm like, there's one thing that needs two things. Really? You need to motivate them to do what you want and demotivate them to stay if they suck. So if they're not doing good, they should not be able to make more than minimum wage. I mean, not a CFO, obviously, but I'm talking about a basic worker. They've got to be disincentivized to stay at your company if they're not working hard. And I think most compensation programs,

I'd say 95% of them fail to do the goal. And a lot of people put stuff in charge of people that they can't control. I can give you a lot of examples, but if I put my dispatchers in charge of the average ticket, it's really tough. They could send guys in a certain way and hopefully they get it, but really that's not something under their influence. So making sure you pick a pay structure. If I told my CFO, I'm not going to pay you unless we make 30% this year, he'd go, well, there's nothing I can do except to try to guide you to hire, fire, enhance things, but that's out of his control. It's interesting, the different businesses, but I'm so happy we did the Christmas light business because it kind of has shown me there's nothing simple. Everybody thinks you look at a business, you're like, dude, that's so easy. Why didn't I think of that? And it's like,

no, no, no. Those people were innovative. They're smart. They're organized. They've learned how to build processes, standard operating procedures, checklists. And that's what's so cool about it and what i wanted to ask you and this is going to be three phases what are three things you wish you knew before you got into christmas lights that you could look back on and say not that you did when you were in the business we're going to ask that too but three things was it preparation was it you should have gone and done a at least a walk through for a day was it not thinking about at that time tell me it was like the residential side of christmas lights was almost non-existent commercial there were some big outfits out there that go way back

you know way back in the day i mean there's been commercial companies that have been around since the early 1900s, but residential, it was all brand new. So there was one training option and it was a full franchise. And I was just like, at that time, probably didn't really have the money to invest in a franchise anyways, because the boat rental business was doing fine, but that was still only my first year in the business. So I wasn't like knocking down a ton of money to go spend, you know, 25 grand on a franchise. So the biggest things like, like if I look back and if I could have done anything differently or changed a few things, it was like, obviously being organized was super, super important and going into the season. And if there was the, like some means of training available, I would have done that. But at that time I wasn't experienced enough to know to do

that. Right. It's like, I was still young entrepreneur. And honestly, I probably wouldn't have, if there was training available for even a couple of grand, I'd be like, Oh no, I'm going to figure it out on my own. Now, after, you know, after being in business for a few years, I absolutely would say even, you know, probably five years into it, like if I was going to go start a garage door business, or I was going to go start a landscaping company, I would absolutely pay to go get trained, you know, and just to, to get the shortcuts and get the systems and get the right approach to it. What about the, cause this is the big one, you know, getting set up for the business. I tell people, look, I have an idea of what your business looks like. And the best way to do that is to go visit a very successful one. That's non-threatening that they know you're not going to Cleveland,

right? So, right. Exactly. So go visit a different market, completely different. Yeah. And then have a plan, have an orange shirt, understand they'll answer all your questions. When you go out there and tell them, listen, give me your checklist. I go out there tell them listen give me your checklist i'll pay for it even give me give me where you buy your stuff how do you really learn what parts are going to last for 10 seasons all these things but the big thing that i want to ask is now that you're in the business i'll tell you what for me it was picking the right crm as a huge one getting a second person that gave a crap, finding like an amazing operations guy, hiring on my weaknesses was a really big one. Like getting an assistant

that could keep me organized, make sure I'm on time for this podcast, make sure I got my notes, make sure the files for everything. So those are a few of me when I started that I didn't have. What are some of the things that you would say if you had to speak to all the small business entrepreneurs out there? One of them is we look at all the shiny lights and we just get distracted and we take our eye off the ball and boom, and we drop it. So what are three things that you would say? So if I had the resources, absolutely. Back when I first started started the crm that i have was my my spiral notebook and my pen right just all right same for me 2006 yep yeah but absolutely this pretty much the same kind of stuff i mean hiring a couple people instead of doing everything on your own

delegating some stuff so that you can focus more on your business instead of in your being in your business because as we both know you're going to grow it a lot more when you're not out in the field you're not doing the things you know doing all the day-to-day stuff out in the field and working on the business so i would say having also somebody that was more focused on the accounting aspect of everything and making sure that we're making money along the way because i think there were some times in the first couple years that we might have thought we were making money and we really weren't. We were just taking money out.

We didn't have a corporation flying by the seat of our pants. And probably also, I would have sought more advice from entrepreneurs that I knew. My stepdad has been in the fitness industry for a company called Hoist Fitness Systems. He's been around for over 35 years. So maybe surrounding myself with more of that just to get advice. Because now you've got a lot of sales coaches and all that kind of stuff. And I'm not necessarily saying I would have done that. And I do think that's valuable.

But ask more advice, listen a little bit more and extracted that information instead of talking so much because throughout my twenties, that's all I could talk about was business. That was it. Family dinners, everything. My parents would get so sick of it. Josh, can you ever talk about anything besides business? And then after a while, and now it's like, I don't want to talk about business when I'm at family events or things like that.

But there was a time, man, that's literally... And have you ever been through that? You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my buddy. You just love so much and that's all you can talk about. I enjoy business, man. It's my passion.

I tell people, when you like what you do, you got an ultimate advantage. I think business itself is fun for me because it's like, I'm learning about next level stuff. Now the people I've talked to lawyers all the time, I'm talking to private equity groups. I'm talking about people that raise capital and I'm learning the highest level of business is arbitrage. It's turning a dollar into $4 and I can do it legally. You mean I could invest a dollar to buy this company and the day I buy it, it's worth four. How's that legal? Well, the reason why is because we're going to put systems in place. We're going to make sure there's an expected result that comes out of that business. We're going to retrain. We're going to have top level meetings, meetings that matter is what we call them. We're going to have, we'll have checklists

for everything. And all of a sudden we're going to be able to rely on an expected outcome, which is a percentage of profit. And the multiplier goes through the roof when you can do that. And people still don't understand. They don't understand it. And I'm hoping this podcast. A lot of people don't get it. So the third thing I would do, because I've sold three businesses, one of them was a Christmas light division, the San Diego one. One of them was the marketing company that I was talking about. And then the other one was my boat rental business. But the biggest thing also that I would have changed is number one, I would have kept everything on the books. I would have. Yeah. I've always get that. I got two sets of books. I'm like, yeah. Why are you keeping, you know, I understand the first

couple of years you want to keep some cash and uncle Sam or whatever. It's, it's, it's difficult the first couple of years, but I tell people you're building an asset right here. Like we're talking about right now, if you're not building an asset, essentially you are just at a job. So you've got to keep the books correctly. You've got to be able to keep things straight. And the other thing you got to do too, is don't be afraid. Like, I don't know what your feeling is on this, but I'm not the guy that says buy everything cash, own everything cash, you know, and don't get loans because you know what? You need loans. You need to build credit. You need to establish credit. So get those credits. Dave Ramsey says that, but be very, very careful because me and you know, you got to be careful, but you need it sometimes to grow. Sometimes you need those

credit lines, but you're right. It's called leverage. It's called leverage. But I'll tell you this, Dave Ramsey, the reason why he's talking to 99% of Americans that don't take out a freaking credit card, because here's what happens with credit card and financing. When you see the money come out of your bank account, it's different than saying, ooh, I got a credit card.

I can make these low payments. And everybody falls for that. So you gotta be really careful. And if I could talk to everybody that's in high school middle school i would say the first hour i would talk about credit and keeping your credit and what credit does and how hard it is to recover your credit and what it could do for your future and you can buy an asset early an appreciating asset like a home you know those are things that they don't teach you but you you know, some people, I got to tell you, it's a fact. They literally get a credit card or they get a loan and they

start buying whatever the hell they want. And don't get me wrong. What I'm saying is, cause I had the cash in my pocket, but I would pay it off every month because I hated having debt. So, you know, you have the credit card to get the miles. I remember, I remember one time taking a trip, staying at a million dollar penthouse in Hawaii, using all American express miles and points. So racking those cards up, but absolutely paying them off. You don't want to get in a situation where you're feeling too comfortable because then it can crumble fast. So there's two sides of that coin, but that, you know, but also, like I said, being legit, keeping the expenses out there, building a business and actually treating it like a business. And then, as you know, like you said, the multiplier is going to be able to sell it. And that's what you're working for.

That's the end goal. Well, you know what? You made a great comment and I want to go into two things here. If you could invest a dollar today to get, let's just say your multiplier six times, a dollar today. So to having the sacrifice of taking the dollar out today, cash, knowing you're going to get a six times multiple in three years, you want to put all that money back in. If that makes sense to people, number one, Number two is there's a credit card, commercial credit card company. It's not your FICO score. They go off of Dunn's and Bradstreet. Right. They look at is what is your employee count? Are you making your payments on time? And that's where

the banks go to figure out if you're a loanable company. And nobody really looks at this stuff like a small business guy that's two years in the business doesn't think about this stuff but by paying your bills on time and by doing the right things and being loanable so if you keep the money and you don't put it out there you're not loanable but you're making more money for today but if you put the money back in you're creating an opportunity to leverage yourself to buy new trucks to get certain write-offs see the fact that i'm loanable and when trump became you know president what i realized was one thing i could do accelerated depreciation because i'm buying so many trucks every year i could really minimize my taxable liability and a lot of people that i had to get that spelt out and i don't think that makes a lot of sense

for seasonality necessarily well no but we've sat down with our CPA and says, you guys need to go buy some stuff. Go buy some trucks. Go do this. Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember being at the car dealership plenty of times on New Year's Eve, you know, like a couple days before that. And that's what you're talking about,

like being able to take advantage of that write-off early on, right, with the accelerated depreciation. So it's super cool. And I got to tell you, I got another question here. I've seen so many business owners and they really liked what they did when they started, but then they realized I didn't sign up for this because they're such a great technician, but they're like, I'm supposed to be a cheerleader. So it's to know about leadership, build culture. I'm supposed to be able to read a balance sheet or an income statement. Now you're telling me I need to talk to the bank. The other day I had a guy smoking on a property and they got kicked off and I got a one star on Yelp. You don't plan on the problems and they want to walk away.

So my question is, what's your advice to an entrepreneur who's struggling and just with their mindset to get them back on track where do they get started i think like they're saying people that are like just frustrated and it is frustrating we have the people listening right now are going you guys talk about all this stuff because you've done it but i always say the hardest part is getting started you got to get in the pool you got to get your your toe out of it and just said something earlier, like I like to put out the fires before they happen. Right. Right.

Well, yeah, it's called preventative. Yeah. Being preventative. So it's all about being proactive. So I think these guys, these entrepreneurs these days that they have so many resources at their

fingertips with all the, like the podcasts that you do, the books out there, but even more important than the books are, I think it's more like stuff like this because you probably don't like these podcasts where you get a couple diehard entrepreneurs like ourselves on here that have been at it for a long time because i'm not gonna lie man probably the first 10 years i was ready to throw in the towel several times because i'm a great salesperson i'm not patting myself on the back i know i can't i'm I'm not bragging. You know that, but I know how to sell, right? So I can probably-

You got yourself out of a ticket earlier? Yeah, you got to sell, okay? But I've been in a similar situation. So when you know how to sell, you know how to sell. And I also think that a lot of people, you know, salespeople can be trained, but a lot of us are just born that way. You know, my parents were both salespeople. So there was times where I was just like, man, I'm, I'm done. I'm just going to go get a job with the company, make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year and that'll be it. But then now I'm so glad I never did that because now I control my destiny. I could never picture somebody telling me when I can go on a break or when I could, you know, do this or whatever.

And if I had a job, it'd have to be a pretty independent position, but there's nothing wrong with that structure for employees. But yeah, it is a struggle. And I think that just getting the resources and taking the time to attend training classes, and I'm not talking about the Christmas light related, I'm just talking about in general

or taking advantage of free resources, looking at this kind of stuff. I mean, for these guys that are spending a hundred hours out there or 80, or they're talking about that, watch more stuff like this. And then you won't be having to do that. You'll be more focused on working on your business instead of in your business. Cause unfortunately a lot of people do throw in the towel, but I've got, I take a lot of pride in the fact that I've got some of these guys that are on the, the we hang christmaslights.com team that there are affiliates that they called me up and they're like, Josh, you know, I'm a pressure washer and I work at FedEx. And, you know, so pressure washing is my second deal. I work at FedEx full time. I'm working my butt off.

I want to transition to a hundred percent of this. Do you think I can make enough money hanging Christmas lights? That was like this guy, uh, Hayden Simone is I'm sure you've met Hayden, haven't you? Yeah. Big, tall, the gentle giant six foot seven guy, Kyle or Hearns, another guy that there was an aircraft mechanic. And I told those guys, I'm like, man, if you follow these protocols, you do what I'm telling you, you're going to make money. And they damn sure did. And both of them are like in year three and they're both killing it. I talked to Hayden yesterday and they're killing it. So when you're that frustrated, don't throw in the towel, but just seek advice from others and

reach out for people that are willing to help. And sometimes you might have to spend a little money on that because you know what, everybody's time is valuable. You know, we all got to make a living and we all got to make money. So, you know, I'm not saying go out and pay some ridiculous amount for consulting. I've had a lot of people that have had business coaching. Have you ever had that? Yeah, I've spent well into six figures with coaches. And I still have coaches.

And I'm always going to have coaches. And because here's the thing is, I know I've got to pay somebody to be able to get the advice. Cause if you give it to me for free, number one, I won't value it as much. Right. And number two, I can tell you what, if you do the hourly of what I made and you know, I hate to say this right now, but it comes out last month of a really good amount of money. I'm not even going to give the number, but it's a lot per hour. Right. And I don't mind giving a phone call and giving free advice because that's the last.

And I don't mind texting guys and Facebooking people back. And I like to give back because that's where I'm at in my life. But ultimately, the people that I'm asking questions for, they never need to work or give advice. And I would appreciate it if they give me to focus. There's a difference between focus time and just responding to an email. And if they're going to give me focused effort and they're here when they get paid, they like to teach and they love to teach. And now I'm a student of theirs. And then

they like to brag about it. So there's a difference between just, Hey, listen, if you got a question, look, you call me, text me, Facebook me, whatever, LinkedIn me. I'm happy to help people. But if you really were going to come in, I'm taking every time away from my family and my family's my business with 270 something employees with three people they're taking care of. I've got 1200 people relying on me. If I'm going to take time away, it better be valuable. And for me, it's like, I like to have people underneath that I could show something to, to increase their time and their family as well. But I want to go back to something because there's three things I wanted to

just get your take on. And I'm going to say all three of them real quick. Number one is people, they replace activity for productivity and they do all kinds of stuff, but nothing's productive. Number one. Number two is I've done this.

I missed the first part of that. You cut out on me. What were you saying? Versus productivity? Activity versus productivity. Got it. Looking busy versus actually getting stuff done. Well, no.

They are getting stuff done, but it's miniscule. It's past. Okay. It's tactical, not strategical. So there's something there that I want to talk about. And then I've always had to take a couple steps back sometimes to take 10 steps forward. And then number three, there's a good book.

It's called Three Feet from Gold. And it's literally this guy bought this mine where they found a lot of gold. And so he's like, I'm going to be a billionaire. And so they start digging. They dig, they dig, they dig. And he goes, you know what? It was a bad investment. They've already got all the gold from this. And another guy bought it for nothing, a penny on the dollar. And they dug for three more feet. I guess what they found? A fortune. So a lot of people out there, you're three feet from gold. You're

listening to the podcast. Next year, 2021, is gonna be the most profitable year you've ever had. You're gonna be able to do what you intended to do when you got into the business. So don't give up. Sometimes take two steps back to take 10 steps forward and don't replace busy every day with productivity. Activity does not replace productivity.

So give me a little bit of insight on those things. That's all about is as a leader, you know, as taking an inside look when we need to, and making a lot of notes, and then sitting down for a few hours with a cup of coffee or a beer, whatever, and going through it. And I've done this plenty of times. I like to find a different environment sometimes when I'm doing this kind of stuff, like at a poolside at a hotel, in a cabana or whatever, just where I'm relaxed, just not even at the office sometimes. And you go through and looking like, okay, what are we doing wrong here? Go through all the steps in that process and how can we do this better? And then get them trained on that and then reducing the amount of time. Because you can certainly, when you take the time to

evaluate things, sometimes you're just going so fast and furious, you forget that you need to take a step back and say, okay, let's evaluate things. Because in that marketing company, things were going so fast and furious. We left so much money on the table and burned so much money because things were just happening so quickly. So sometimes I think you just have to, like with a company like yours, you're probably growing super fast and you've had growth spurts like crazy. And sometimes you got to pull back a little bit. You got to be like, you know, this growth could kill

me. Number one, it could be just because of the cashflow. Like you're, you're growing so fast. And like with your business, with, with our company, we had to give terms, we had to give net 30, which meant you're lucky if you get paid in 60 and mostly you don't get paid in 90 days. Yeah. It's called bad debt that you got it right now so we could have literally grown ourselves out of business but but no i just think that sometimes you got to take a step back you got to evaluate things and if you feel like you know the process isn't isn't the best way take a look at it and establish protocols there's so many i've got stacks of you know and files on my computer that protocol for this protocol for shipping this

out protocol for everything, man, protocol for when you, here's the protocol for when you go, you know, change out the coffee and the coffee machine. I mean, not that. I've got instructions next to one of my arcade games on how to get to the 1100 games you have. I'm like all about the standard operating procedures. You know, you've had so much experience with marketing. So I love the idea. First of all, we're both talking systems.

We're talking leverage could be great. I don't think you start out with leverage. I think you start out with sweat equity. Cause when you start out leveraging, you tend to make bad decisions. You buy stupid stuff thinking you needed it. And you actually don't. So I think getting your feet wet for three years. Yeah yeah i don't want to be real clear on that like like i said you

pay those credit cards off every month you don't look at it like i'm gonna extend it out and pay the 23 fee or whatever yeah it's it's yeah absolutely i mean i've accumulated over 25 million points i've got 3 900 call tracking numbers now so you said you have 10 i have 3 900 so and it's all my crm and it's unlimited call tracking numbers now. So you said you have 10, I have 3,900. So, and it's all on my CRM and it's unlimited call tracking numbers. They shouldn't have gave me unlimited because now I got one. Every new employee gets two numbers.

They got one for the recruitment and one that goes to their sale. I mean, a one that goes to the office and it's all a call tracking number that they get credit for. So ultimately here, here's a great question. We'll get out of the last year, but this is important because you're such a good marketer. I'm not going to

choose Christmas lights. I'm going to choose a year round business. You've got a brand new idea. You saved up money. You got a plan. You know, the vision, the dream became a vision when you got to breathe the same air as the best chimney. You went to Philadelphia where the best chimney company was. You know what you have to do. You ask the right questions. You're prepared. You're prepared. You're prepared.

Now, you've got 10 grand. What are you going to do with your marketing dollars? You got 10 grand to spend on marketing. You're getting ready to launch. Do you build a website? Do you have any idea for a service-related business? Yep. Okay.

Man, I would spend a lot on signs a service related business? Yep. Okay, man, I would spend a lot on signs. I probably buy 500 signs just because those, the signs freaking kill it. As long as you can use it in those areas, right? Cause in most areas you can. Oh,

I love this. So I'm learning here. So you can start out with the signs. I'm guerrilla marketing guy, you know, I would say you start a Google, my business page and build the website too because the website takes a year and a half to start getting found if you don't do it

right for sure you would have I mean yeah that's been two grand on a website two grand on a website get GMB going for sure get my business page show you can review and show the hours. Okay. Because you got to start going on that. I don't know how much I would necessarily invest in SEO right out of the gate. Would you invest in a wrap truck or a logo truck? Are those any things you'd say right off the bat? Absolutely. Because I think branding is huge. I think that a professional appearance is huge. Even back in the day when I was working out of a storage unit, I still had a nice polo shirt that had the name on it. I had nice brochures. I rolled up looking like, no, I didn't have a wrap then, and wraps weren't as popular then, but I rolled up looking like very professional. We had a big warehouse. We had all this, had nice business cards.

Make it till you make it. That's right. So I would invest in those essentials. Like I said, doing the signs. And I would probably also do a lot of networking with other service people in different industries that were in that area and get involved in some of that. And then I try to think what else I would do with the $10,000. Okay, what about this? How much on pay-per-click? Pay-per-click?

If I trust the person that was doing it, I'd probably spend a couple grand on pay-per-click. Okay, now how much would you spend on networking events like BNI? Would you even bother with that or yes or no if you found that to be effective? You know, like BNI event, I'll be honest with you never been to one so i'll ask you that how

effective do you think those are it's different i think with a big ticket item maybe like hvac or if you're a lawyer you got to look at the lifetime value of the customer then it pays off if i'm going to control your money for the rest of my life as a financial advisor, boom. If I'm a chiropractor, you're going to see you every other week. If I'm a dentist, as a garage door guy, I find it a little bit tough because it's a one-time wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. You can still do well. And I think it's a great place to get to know people. It's to get you out of your comfort zone. You got to stand up. You got to give a 20-second pitch on what you do. You learn how to network. And when you get effective at networking, it's hard to put a price on that. So I would say yes to smaller businesses. No, if you're out there killing it today, but word of mouth, the podcast for me is probably the

best investment. And I didn't put any money. It was a lot of time, effort, and energy. And now it's like, it's the gift that keeps giving because I've got guys every day that say, dude, you didn't let us down. We use your company. We didn't let you know, but you guys came through. And I talked about that this morning at my 7am. I was like, you know how proud I am to see this email from one of the people that listens to the podcast. They wanted to just see what we do. If we practice what we preach. And they said, you didn't disappoint. It was a world-class experience. I'm a customer for life. And I listened to your stuff. And I'm like, guys, you represent me. You represent our company, our mission and vision and our core values. And this makes me smile from ear to ear. And thank you guys for doing this for me. And they

know, they know how important it is that we deliver great service. And every, we dropped the ball. I'm not going to lie. You dropped the ball. I dropped the ball. I had 67,000 customers last year. It happens. It's going to happen. But how, how do you customer service? You can make most people happy. You know, we know that there's that occasional person that you just can't freaking make them happy. Right. But, but most people you can, you can smooth it over. Hey, I'm sorry this happened. We're just people too. It shouldn't happen. I acknowledge that, that we made a mistake on this. What can we do to make you happy? And most of the time they're reasonable with it, right? You got to put a little something out there, but I would say customer service is the

easiest thing. But back to the rest of the other 10,000 with that budget, I'd probably spend a little bit of money on HomeAdvisor too. HomeAdvisor works. I just don't like to build a business around another lead gen company i do tell people if you do home advisor you freaking get that app on your phone and the second it vibrates with the app you respond and you're on the phone it's a race and it works and it used to be called um service magic when i got involved and the problem with that is they didn't create a brand it just was a straight lead gen company so now home advisor home advisor it's on all the commercials oh yeah it owns angie's list and i remember back in the service magic days and i've been a home advisor to their corporate offices twice in uh golden colorado yeah gold and this

coo wrote a chapter in my book right is. Now, is that the current COO? Yeah, I believe so. Because they've had a lot of turnover. He's been there for 20 years. He's been there since the inception. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've never seen that. So anyway, yeah.

Their company culture is cool. They have like the keg Fridays, and they have the pinball machines, and the beanbags, and those rooms. But you're right. You've got to work it. And I just recently hired some guys that I went on to HomeAdvisor to find. Because here's the other big thing, Tommy. People don't answer their damn phone.

And that's what I always tell these guys. Every event that I'm ever at, answer your freaking phone. That's the number one thing I see. Josh, I can tell you this. The one thing, if I go consult the company, I'm looking at about five KPIs. I'm looking at cost per acquisition, your booking rate, your conversion rate, your average ticket,

and then I want to know your margin rate, and I got to tell you this. We make a lot of freaking revenue. I used to brag, Josh. I used to be like, dude, $25 million this year. What you got? And I'd be like, boom, $30 million. And then I was like, I didn't make crap as a percentage of revenue.

And now I'm like this, bottom line, bottom line, bottom line, bottom line. And, you know, so many people like to talk about top line. And I'm just like, dude, guys, understand one thing. You're in business to make money. It's unbelievable. It's all about bottom line. And I'm the kind of guy, too, if you don't answer the phone, you're going to probably lose my business because I'm a little ADD,

and I like to get on the next one. And when I want something done, I want it done. I want to talk to somebody. You're moving on to the next one. I don't even care if you got a sticker. I don't care if you saw it on a sign. You think you want that business? Look, I'm going on to the next one for sure.

I need it, especially demand work. And I'm not going to be the one answering the phone, but to get a great answering service, if nothing else. Answering services are so much better these days. We use a company, I can't remember what it's called. It might be Jill's office or something. But, you know, it's not like they're dealing with people over in India now. It's like these people learn a little bit about your business.

They're good on the phone. Because I'm a firm believer that if people call in, they. It's like these people learn a little bit about your business. They're good on the phone because I'm a firm believer that those people call and they'll just keep going. That's what I do. And then I ended up going to HomeAdvisor. You're right. The first two guys that called me, those are the guys that came out, ended up hiring one more for handyman stuff, doing stuff around here. But I've already paid the guy like $1,500 just doing basic stuff. So HomeAdvisor, I will say, and know, as well as I do, some people hate home advisor and some people love it, but you're 100% right. It's a race. And if you're going to do home advisor, you take advantage of it.

You get that app and you call them right away. You know, as soon as that call comes in, be one of those first three, that's going to get out there and give them an estimate. So, yeah. And you teach that. I don't know if people ever heard of this, but when you have, as what's called a rolling weighted average round Robin,

and when you've got a bad-ass working for you and they're so good at booking calls, you want to put Tom Brady in the Superbowl. Trust me. You don't want them sitting on the bench and I don't care who it is we could talk about ray finkel now that's the wrong but uh but anyway we'll kind of ask you some of the closing questions but i want to tell people listen if you've got a uh business that make up if you want to make a ton of money and it's real i mean it's not hard to make a half a million dollars a season after the third or fourth year. You got to get ahold of Josh, man. This guy knows what he's talking about. They speak at events, they hold your hand, they teach you how to buy,

they teach you how to hire, they run the leads. It is a business in a box and it's not a big obligation and they're willing to help out whichever way they can. Yeah, that's not a huge investment. Like you said, I'm going to make sure my licensees are profitable. And like I said, it's all about that bottom line. And for the first couple of years, everybody needs some handholding. So how do people get ahold of you, Josh? What is the best way to reach out? They go to the website, www.wehangchristmas lights.com or uh just give me a call 951-541-4482 or shoot me an email to josh at we hang christmas lights.com and then we'll give me three books that um not the e-myth i always say not the e-myth because it's such an important book but everybody that listens to the

podcast if you haven't read that book go on on Audible right now and get it, listen to it because you're missing out. And I'm sorry, but that's the founding principle of everything when we say work on it versus in it. But give me three books that have meant something to you or three, three things. It doesn't even need to be, it could be a podcast you really like, but is there three things that you've really learned a lot from? You know, I would say the last book I read was your book and it was a great book. I'm a little ADD, man. I'm one of these guys. It's always like, it's hard for me. You know, I'd have to get more into the audio books. So I'm not a huge... You're doing great if you don't enjoy reading, but I do say readers are leaders and I will tell

you this. No, reading is knowledge. Absolutely. I just got to get to that point where I'm like, you know, kind of getting that spot where I'm relaxing and reading and extracting that knowledge. Because just like, here's what I'll say about your book. A lot of the stuff, yeah, I absolutely already knew. It was on the same page, 100%. But it's kind of like somebody that attends our training class, some of these guys that

are veterans in the industry that have been in it for, say, you know, we've had guys in there for 10 years. They might only extract a few things, like three or four things out of it, but it's very important. It was worth that time, that effort to attend or reading that book because like I have my highlighter and it's like you're extracting certain things out of it. But aside from the books, I would say some of the biggest things that have made a difference for me really have been just getting out there and going to trade shows, networking events. Well, specifically trade shows, because there's always networking

there. Like that's where I met you in St. Louis. You know, we were sitting down and having a couple beers at the, uh, maybe you guys did a couple shots too i think and i might have been there along with that too we had a blast it's so much fun yeah at the italian place i was telling nick he's like oh he's like i remember tommy and then other than that i think just questions that i have asked people like people that are that surround myself well they always say surround yourself with people that are smarter than you or whatever but the dumbest guy in the room yep yeah but just just doing a lot more listening you know back in the day i used to do a lot more talking and then i've kind of learned how to do a lot more listening and ask a question actually get the response before jumping in and you know talking to so many people like one of our one of our preferred vendors actually lighting his brother-in-law's the ceo of target and you know the dude's obviously multi-multi-millionaire if

not a billionaire makes 37 million a year so i'm always asking questions about that guy's like yeah he's just a whole different breed man he's like and i've talked to other people that know ceos companies like that where they're in that you, salary range of 30 to 50 million a year. And they're just a whole different breed though. They sleep like four hours a night. They're working all the time. I mean, those guys probably are working 100 hours a week, but they're flying on their leader jets

and flying it out to the soccer tournaments. But I just think the bottom line is just ask, you know, trying to gain as much knowledge as you can through talking to people. You know, I've always been a face-to-face salesperson. I've always enjoyed talking to people. I'm definitely not an introvert at all. So I think that that's been some of the biggest things. And I just really encourage people to get out there and spend the money to attend some of these trade shows, whatever industry

they're in. And you make these connections, just like I connected with you and you've made so many connections. And I know that you've been a keynote speaker at a lot of different events. And, you know, it's awesome. I feel privileged to be here talking to you. And it's been a great conversation. Yeah, no, I really appreciate you coming on. I will say when you talk to people and you're asking questions is one of the things I think I've developed, which is a skill, is really learning about what questions they're enthusiastic about and want to give really good information. If I

said, hey, man, tell me the last time you went to Bed Bath & Beyond with your wife about what you liked, you'd be like, well, that's kind of cool. I mean, maybe you loved it, but I mean, it's knowing if they're excited too, is getting them to talk about their passion. And that's why I love the podcast is look, you talk to me about dog breeds and I was like, well, there's Yorkies, there's Pitbull. I'm not excited about it, but I'll talk about it. The last thing we do, Josh, on this is there's so much we discussed here.

I just think the main thing is, is we give them, the audience, one solid takeaway. One thing, it could be get started today. It could be words of wisdom. It could be one mistake you made that don't go down that road, but I'll let you kind of just, it could be a few minutes, but I'm going to give you some time to give them a final thought, a thought of encouragement, a piece of gold. Well, and then one last thing before that, where I'll say what I really enjoyed about this podcast is a lot of times when I'm doing live stuff or doing zoom, it's all just about one thing. It's about, you know, we hang Christmas, ice.com selling that marketing that what I, what I enjoyed about this is us just talking about business in general,

being entrepreneurs and the path there and the things that we've done. So I really enjoyed that. But, you know, if I'm gonna leave these guys with anything, I think that basically in business in general, it's not an easy thing to do. To be an entrepreneur, you'll get shit sometimes from your friends, your family. Oh, you're out there doing this. I was lucky I had a supportive wife pretty much all along, but I've talked to a lot of guys that they'll, people almost like to see them fail and they get that feeling to where, you know, it's like, Oh, he's out here doing this. We're going to see if he ever makes it kind of a thing. You know what I mean? And like, they're not getting that support and they're not getting that from the family. So

you got to push, you know, it's not easy slope. slope. I met one of the, when I was in the boat rental business, I met one of the founders of Home Depot. Super cool guy down there on his 120 foot sailboat. It was called Tabasco. And down there, just cool. Was fortunate enough to talk to him for like 15 minutes, just when he's standing on my boat rental dock. And he was like, I told him, it's funny. I said, what are the three things you could tell me?

He's like, you know, one of them was just like you you just you gotta be relentless you can't give up and then he also said never get married which i don't believe in that because i think that he's all don't never get married i said why i showed him my my ring on my finger and he's like i'm like i already did he's like well he's all i did too he's all you could take care of that so don't worry about that but i've heard i've heard, I've heard that. I've heard that from men and women, but, uh, you know, you got to know going into it that it's not going to be easy, but at the end of the day, it's going to be the most rewarding thing that you can ever do. Because after you get through five, six, seven years, those first few years, man,

they're the hardest, you know, those are the learning years. And that's why it's so important that, you know, maybe it's not the right time unless you can get into something, you know, for people that maybe are just sitting on the fence that watch this podcast or think about getting into business. It's not a bad idea to whatever you're doing, get some sort of education on it, get somebody to help you with it because a lot of inexpensive options these days. So maybe don't quit your job until you can save up that 3,500 or five grand or whatever to get that knowledge. Because in my opinion, Tommy, people that get some training, get around there, they can take advantage of that. They're going to have such a likelihood of being more successful. But for the guys that haven't done that or can't do it,

it's like my advice would just to keep pushing, you know, and just take advantage of the resources that are out there and read books, like you said. I know you're right. I mean, there's absolutely a lot of knowledge from other people. There's a lot that everybody can learn from other people, without a doubt. And I like what you said.

You know, I'm a big fan of stacking the deck. And I stack the deck in my favor by learning about it. And I'm hiring for a new position. And it's basically after COVID here, we're doing a lot more things virtually, hence the Zoom call. And I bought this book. I just happened to be going through Amazon. And it's a quick start guide to leveraging video technology and virtual communication channels.

Selling to engage remote buyers and close deals by Jeb Lowe. And I'm like, you know, I haven't gotten through this book yet. It's a big, big book. I'm going to read it probably on the plane tomorrow. I've got a lot of things I'm going to do tomorrow when I'm on a plane. Where are you heading tomorrow? Michigan. It's my wedding.

I'm in his wedding. We're going to Grand Rap when i'm on a plane tomorrow uh michigan i'm it's my okay i'm in his wedding we're going to uh grand rapids for the wedding and i'm excited for him you know what sucks though is a lot of people can't go because they're all afraid of this this thing going around but yeah no we won't get into that i i don't know we don't need to get political you can see how I feel about it. But Josh, you've got a great business. Like I said, I encourage people to learn more about it. You guys give back a lot. You've got Matt, amazing guy, slash Will Ferrell.

Right. But you guys are killing it, brother. So thank you very much. I think the audience definitely took a lot from this. Thank you, man. It was a great conversation. Like I said, it's a little bit different than I've normally done. And it was a pleasure to talk about, you know, the different aspects of everything. So.

Well, cool. I hope the audience got a lot and we are good. Hey, guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart 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 and if you get a chance please please please subscribe you're going to find out all the new podcasts you're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast

and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences. Tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And 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. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your life season further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.