The Home Service Expert Podcast - Building Your Team of A-Players by Focusing on Employee Satisfaction & Retention

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire and the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $150 million-plus home service business with over 500 employees in 16 states. Through HomeServiceMillionaire.com and the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy shares his experience and insights to help fellow entrepreneurs scale their businesses. In this special episode of the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy answers your biggest questions about branding, relationship building, employee retention, financing, leasing...

It doesn't cost a whole lot to do some nice things for people and make them get excited about their new career. Maybe reaching out to their wife and kids with a nice letter would go a long way because who's going to stop that person from quitting? Their wife and kids. Barbara mentioned that people that don't leave a company, they make friends outside of work. They feel kind of loyalty to the community of the business. So when you really look at that and understand that,

you could go out there and play Frisbee or volleyball or a softball tournament or slosh ball. But make it fun and get the families to be introduced to one another. A lot of the guys here go fishing on the weekends. They just love the time they get to spend outside of work, and that keeps them loyal to work. I've created my dream job because it doesn't feel like I'm at work when I'm here. 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. All right, we are live on the Q&A here in August. If you guys have not heard of the podcast somehow and you're on this, just this is the home service expert page right now. Obviously, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. That's the book. You guys are obviously here for the podcast. The HSM course is course.homeservicemillionaire.com. And please join the Facebook group. If you haven't joined, it only takes a second. Go to free Facebook group. It's Home Service Expert group. And right now there's about 5,000 people really trying to add value there.

Ask a question, get a conversation going. There's a lot of different industries. One of the coolest things about meeting other industries, going to visit other shops is a lot of times you could take something. Like I took Lenny Gray, the door-to-door millionaire, and now we've got a whole door knocker team here in Phoenix. So there's a lot of great things to come out of the home service expert group. It's free. If you're part of a garage door company, join garage door freedom, and that's a free group. And then we've got a private group for members. So really trying to change the home service industry, make sure that we're changing lives, get more profit, spend more time with family, but have a plan to do that. One of the things I'm doing here at A1, Jim Leslie is a very smart guy

I work with. He's actually building a complete calculator so technicians could figure out exactly how much they want to make. And then what needs to happen this year, this quarter, this month, this week, and what needs to happen today to get there? Because a goal without a plan is useless and not have exact processes on how you're going to get there, what needs to happen. Without building a budget, I literally, it's a 16th in about five days. If I'm not on pace for my budget, I get pretty creative on what I need to do. I call my manufacturers and I ask them to see if I can get quicker orders in so I could get the installs of revenue I haven't counted because I'm on accrual accounting. So getting a plan together for each of your technicians and every

single person in your company. But here's the secret. What do they want? Don't ask them how they're going to do a million dollars of revenue. Ask them how they're going to make enough money to do the things that they dream of and they want to do in their lives. So Stephanie Kane asked a question. How do you get from one day, one employee not showing up away from getting back on the truck to two solid crews? We have and are continually creating policies and systems, but when you have to go back in the truck all that pauses you know i just we won an award earlier we had six companies come in and they were asking us what is the main thing how do you keep so many employees we've got 60 technicians six zero coming through our next class in sept. We just had to send a guy home yesterday.

The one goal that I would tell you, Stephanie, is don't hire people unless you put them through some checks and balances. Make sure that they show up on time. This guy, he was late twice and went home early one day. We cut him up. If that's what you're going to do in training, it's a two-month training. I talked to another manager, Tim. We just had a hiring event, 85, 87 people. We hired 20 technicians, and we got another like 8 to 10 between dispatchers and CSRs coming on. So what can you do to put them through a stress test? I had a great podcast with a lady named Barbara, and she has a recruiting company. And one of the things she does

is she says, usually she'll bring in three people at a certain amount of time of the year and she'll put them through one hour of training on how to make cold calls, basically to recruit. And then two hours of actually doing it. And one out of three will make it through there. And they said, well, I don't want to be doing this for hours a day. Well, this is the job. So helping them understand what the job is, but there's also another side of it is, how do you make a place where people want to come to work, or they don't mind showing up? They don't hate Sundays because the next day is Monday. How do you create that environment to where people are just, this is cool. They care about me. This is going to help me accomplish my dreams.

Number one is the whole onboarding process. Do you have a plan? Do you give them an itinerary of what they're going to learn, how they're going to learn it? Does your place look impressive? I was walking through a new training center. I got two shaved ice makers. I've got some waffle makers, five of those. We've got popcorn, but it doesn't cost a whole lot to do some nice things for people and make them get excited about their new career. Maybe reaching out to their wife and kids with a nice letter would go a long way because who's going to stop that person from quitting?

Their wife and kids. Barbara mentioned that people that don't leave a company, they make friends outside of work. They feel kind of loyalty to the community of the business. So when you really look at that and understand that, you could go out there and play Frisbee or volleyball or a softball tournament or slosh ball. But make it fun and get the families to be introduced to one or another. A lot of the guys here go fishing on the weekends. They just love the time they get to spend outside of work.

And that keeps them loyal to work. I've created my dream job because it doesn't feel like I'm at work when I'm here. Let's see here. We've got Crypto King. I sell A-Tech here in Arizona as a service tech and sell 1.5 to 2 million in sales. Having personal goals and a great mindset is key. Lincoln Nation, I'm wanting to review our original SBA loans and COVID help aids from 2020 to 2021. Do you or have you used SBA? Is there a secret sauce to do our SBA financing better? I have used SBA and they're a company that specialize in getting you through SBA loans and they can basically wrap it up in a silver ball. There's a lot of opportunities depending on who you're hiring. If you're hiring vets and different things of that nature, it's a lot easier. Going back a little bit to what Stephanie said is write down what you would want to work for. What would you want to have if you would

go back? What were the problems with the last... I worked at Cheesecake Factory. I used to work at Melting, P.F. Chang's. I actually sold a woman's shoes at Dillard's. I've had a few careers in the hospitality industry. And I had to really figure out what I'd want my boss to be like. And I had to start to become him. But more importantly, do you care? Because it's hard, I think, for an owner to work 24-7, seven days a week. And if someone's not doing something perfectly, you kind of get mad and you go back to the mentality that I need to do it if it's going to get done right. And you got to understand there's learning opportunities and that's how you build a manual. And that's how you have coaching one-on-one. One-on-one coaching is so very important. It's more important than group

therapy. If somebody's got a problem, they're not usually going to tell you unless they trust you. So how do you build that trust from the get-go? I think it's super important. Crypto King said people are lazy these days and want to make $150,000 to $250,000 yearly with no hard work. It's interesting that you mentioned that because if your systems and your processes are so thought out in a way that makes it easy for them to succeed, they don't really have to work hard to make $200,000 for me. They just have to be good. They need to love themselves first. One of the things I look for in an interview is, do they have self-respect for themselves? Do they make eye contact? Do they have the right tone? Can they tell a good story? Do they smile a lot?

Do they seem like people I'd want to hang out with? And I think that's so very important if they could find something in common with you in the interview and creating an atmosphere where that can happen is important. Tommy, do you use EOS systems or do you have your own system set up? I'm a big fan of EOS. We don't use EOS. We've got our own internal systems we use. We've got a lot of meetings. Near the meetings I used to be on, it used to be I was on every meeting and I felt like I had to be part of everything. Now, the company has kind of taken its life of its own. And my goal is to help people accomplish their dreams. It's to change lives. It's to let them live their best

life ever. Buy homes, get great credit scores, be involved in the Dave Ramsey program, learn to be on a budget, a personal budget. When we talk about these things, people are like, no one's ever talked to us about this. They didn't learn this in high school. Some of them took college and they didn't really learn these things. So discussing these things, people are just shocked. And the word gets around and they want to come work here because they understand that we do care. We want them to win. I don't get mad when someone makes a lot of money because we set up the paper performance in a way that they can make lots and lots of money, but the company's making money as well, or we can't be here for our clients and hire great people. So very, very important for that aspect. What's the top tech average yearly doing garage stores? I mean, I've got guys that'll do over

300. I've got a lot of guys that'll do over 200, but you need to be very good at follow-up. You need to be great at getting reviews. We've got a scorecard and it's not easy to make that money. I wouldn't say it's simple, but there's a true path to get there. You can't come on your first year and do that unless you're really, really great and you get promoted quickly. You might say, how could you ever pay that? Well, I think the key is understanding that the average garage door company tech does about 300 to 400,000. We have a lot of guys that will do over a million. So think about that.

A lot of guys will do over a million dollars. It's unheard of. And when you have a lot of people that can do over a million dollars, it makes a huge difference in what you can pay them and the things you can do for your for your people let's see dennis low piccolo hi tommy i own grizzly soft wash a pressure washing and soft wash service provider in the metro atlanta area based on where my company is that i have two questions number one back in the day when you had one truck and needing to add another, how did you finance going from one truck to two truck? And given today's economic outlook, how do you suggest funding a second truck? I go through enterprise, at least to own my truck. So after four to five

years, depending on the plan, I own them. And then I use accelerated depreciation. Laws have changed a little bit, but we have good accountants that figure out a way. If you own a building, you can do a cost segregation study, but understanding buying new is the best way to do it because there's a certain mindset that when a guy starts in a new truck, one of the questions we seem to get a lot of the time from Jody's team who helps us recruit, Jody Underhill, is they said, you wouldn't believe how many applicants ask if we have new trucks in the fleet. I remember the day that my cousin in Detroit, Michigan, he was driving on the freeway and the hood flew up. It was a really old truck and it ruins the morale when you don't have great running trucks. And what I

realized with a great rap that Dan Antonelli provided on a new truck, the buyer persona changes. They don't mind spending more money because they know it's fixed, right? They know if you keep your truck like that and the guy appreciates working for you, that you're a good company to buy from. If your truck's broken down, it just says, hey, I'm going to ask you for a deal. People will still buy from you, but they're not going to spend

the same amount of money with you. So I would say I would lease to own and there's a lot of tax advantages and then you own it. And then usually what you'll do is you'll turn it back in. Let's say you buy a to own, and there's a lot of tax advantages, and then you own it. And then usually what you'll do is you'll turn it back in. Let's say you buy a $50,000 truck. After five years, it's worth 25. Now, they usually sell it for you. You have the opportunity of selling it to a private party that just wastes time. They won't give you quite as much for it, but they'll take it as is and just dump it. Let's say they'll give you 20 grand credit.

Then you'll buy the next truck. Let's say it's 60 grand in the future in five years. Then you'll pay 40. But you've used a life. Now, a lot of people drive these trucks to 300,000. We drive them to about 120. Right now is a different time because you can't get trucks that were driving them a little bit harder. So Dennis, that's the first answer. Number two, given that cash is always king and the new current economic climate, is this a time to borrow money to expand my business, new services, capital expenditures, marketing? And if so, what areas would you invest the money? This is an important topic because I see us going into an unstable economy. And this is when everybody, especially the old timers that

have been doing this a long time, they letting off the gas they start letting people go they stop advertising i think marketing is the most important thing to spend your money making sure you've got good pay structures and the people are not going to be just leaving every few months because if you're losing employees all the time you got a bigger issue but making sure you can get the leads you need. Nothing will make somebody quit faster. We actually, we come up with a minimum pay for certain markets that if we can't provide the leads while we're growing in that market, greenfield, then we'll provide minimums. And that's important. So understanding that.

I say the best time to grow is when the economy does not look really great because everybody's growing in a great economy. Those who can grow in a decent economy tend to do very, very well because the other guys are taking their foot off the gas. And I'd put my money, I don't necessarily think new services are the answer unless you've completely taken market share.

There's a great book by Gary Keller, The One Thing. Focus on that one thing you do great, that you've got the processes. Unfortunately, as an entrepreneur, we get all these ideas. We say we're going to break out into all these things. A1 is in 19 states and damn near 30 markets. And as much as I'd love to say we figured it out, we've got a great headstart on a lot of people, but we still got a lot of work to do. But there are opportunities for us to go into other industries now that complement garage doors. So it's a great opportunity for us.

But I would say, don't do that right now unless you're really, really big and you own the market share. And I would invest my money in the right brand first. And then I'd give an incentive to make sure my online presence is great. And that includes a lot of reviews on Google My Business, the reviews that run through local service ads. We did a whole analysis in certain markets, every single market. We needed a lot of Yelps in one market. We needed a bad Angie's List removed in one market where we were able to get some Angie's List that showed up on the Google search. So understanding what you need to do, like I about earlier is such a big priority what needs to happen in my company today that's going to make me look great online so brand online reputation and the big thing is going out there and meeting the people

networking is probably your best source and those relationships will never go away so building relationships all the time is very, very important. Let's see here. What type of pay do you feel the guys are liking more nowadays? Hourly commission, base plus commission, or something better? It just depends on the role of the person. But anytime you get them on a performance pay, there's no technicians that I have that don't make more than any hourly tech in any other industry. Whether you're giving $45 to the plumber, if you can't make more than

that working with me, then we've got issues. We kind of came up with the systems, the exact phrases, the exact things. There's a great book called How to Master the Art of Selling by Tom Hopkins. It's about sales. It's a green book. He used to be a real estate agent trainer. And he said, don't make this your own. Repeat after me and say it in a convincing way. And I think they need to learn your way before they can build it into their own at all. Oh, let's see here. Matt Sanford, you asked three new vehicles for my home service business. I'd say leasing to own is really great. It just depends.

You want the titles in your name and you want to be able to take the depreciation. Service type is the best. Frankie said, what is your opinion of an FPF, profit first professional for accounting and fractional CFO? Have you used any PFP? I like profit-first for a smaller company. I think profit-first is amazing if you get the right person.

You got to set up a lot of accounts and you got to follow it to the T. So I agree with that. And I love the fractional CFO because a fractional CFO probably makes $500,000 a year. And if you're using them five hours, that's one eighth. So one eighth of $500,000 gets you to a comfortable range that you'll be able to pay for someone

to put the systems in place of a half million dollars. But they could do it quickly because they've done this so many times. So you can pay a $100,000 person that has no idea how to create that level of what that sophistication is of a $500,000 badass. And I've gotten to see the difference between good, better, best in this role. And the right CFO could be the difference of... Someone asked me earlier, why do you think a CFO was so important to really a lot of what you've done? And when a CFO brings a lot to the table, they tell you what markets to grow and why your cost of goods are off, what you could decrease on. If you're not keeping track, you could be paying a utility bill from a building you used to be at. Because as an entrepreneur, you're so busy

growing the business, you don't have time to monitor every little expenditure. So getting on billpay.com, setting up the systems. Once the system has a great foundation, you don't need a ton of help because the reports tell you what's going on. So a solid foundation is everything. Cody said, got to find hard workers whose pay has been cap, discount, tire, Vaseline, oil change, and hostess at a restaurant or waiter. So yeah, discount tire, Vaseline oil changes, a hostess, a restaurant. You know, I talk to servers all the time and the best servers are making a hundred grand,

but they don't like their lifestyle. I mean, think about it. They go to work later and they stay late. They give up their weekends. So a lot of times it's just a discussion on one of the things you go to, you take them down a pain funnel. What do you hate about your job right now?

And if your answer to them is, well, you're going to work long hours for me. You're going to come second to my customers. And we got used trucks and we never do anything fun. They're not going to want to switch. So how do you create an environment that makes people want to come work for you? Ryan Davis said, any tips for leading your leadership team? You know, we just invested in a leadership training course. It got highly recommended. Brian, Brian Davenport, I'm sorry. He's the one that found it and used it in the past. And our guys were blown away. They went through their disc assessment. They found out where they struggle,

where they need to focus on to be able to communicate better and be better, more trusted. I don't like the word manager. I like the word coach. So how do they become a better coach? And the best way to become a great coach is to say what's in it for me when you're that person that you're coaching. And if you can find out what drives them, I got a buddy of mine who's pretty big in garage store sales. He's in the manufacturing at Service Spring Corp. And they know everything about every single person. The last time they met, every conversation they've had, what their kids' names are, the people they're going to, what they're basically a SWOT analysis, what they love

about their company, what they hate about it. And so keeping a spreadsheet or a better system, I mean, you could use HubSpot or Salesforce, or there's a lot of them, just relationship managers that you could get to kind of keep track of that. I'd also love to hear more about your performance pay structure. So you've got an apprentice tech, a junior tech, tech, senior tech, and you can become a lead tech. Now we got this new program where you can become a traveling tech. And they all make different commissions, but they also get a score. And the score goes against the mean. And I don't want to confuse you here, but it's important to know the mean of your company and remove outliers.

Because that way I'm not making up the numbers. It's literally, I've got other people in this company that are doing, just the middle ground is doing better than you. So they don't feel like I'm just making up numbers. We could show them mathematically where they should be at based on every other person. So we try to come up with things that'll move the needle. It was reviews and it still is reviews. There's some things that we've taken out of their yard signs.

We used to have in there. We got a lot of yard signs, but we didn't feel like that was making a big enough difference in the business. So we decided to remove it. We decided to put financing. How often are you using financing? The goal here isn't to finance every job. It's to get them comfortable with financing, logging in every day to Green Sky or there's Good Leap and there's a couple other ones we use.

So ultimately, what kind of things can I put on my scorecard that'll measure the behavior of what I'm trying to get? So that's really the CSR pay grade. What we decided to do, we used to have this mentality in the old days, which was only a few years ago before COVID, of let's pay minimum wage to a CSR or their bonus structure, which is always over 20 bucks usually. But what I found is people just focused on that minimum wage. So I think we moved it to $17 as the minimum or this. And the caliber of people coming in just changed dramatically. It's much better caliber people because they have that stability.

Oh, man. Jordan Peterson said people need to make a certain amount of money to pay their bills. After that, it's not as important about how much money they make. There's this book that I recommend you guys reading. It's called Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace. And it really lets people know what else you could do for them outside of money. A lot of times taking somebody out to eat or saying great job or writing a nice little note or just a little phone call every now and then checking in. And I find it harder to do these things as I get bigger. So I asked Jim to build me an app

that basically anybody could submit an employee that they want me to recognize. And we've created something pretty cool on our Monday board where I said, Hey, I want you to build an app. And every time someone recognizes somebody, I want to know about it, what they did. So I'll just hit a button here, hold down the button. I'll read what they did. And I'll say, Hey, Karen, Michelle wanted to just make sure she let me know how amazing you've been doing in the call center. And just, it's fascinating to see how far you've come and how hard you're working and people like you make it possible for a company to grow. And then I may even able to give them a gift card through the app.

So I think recognition is so important. And I think that we, we take for granted the more you recognize, the more you see, the more you think it doesn't take as much money. I went to a place. I'm not going to mention the company, but this was a decade ago and he was paying a little less than a decade ago he's paying the people minimum wage and he was packing them in like sardines and there

was a waiting list to come work there because he treated him he took him out to eat all the time you look at what ishmael does ishmael feeds his people all the time he's always congratulating people he's having great gifts he's calling people he gives out raptors to certain guys if they kick ass that he gets free from service titan because he wins uh contests but yeah that's some thoughts cody said motivate them and show them a path of how to be successful see i don't need to make up this stuff. You just look at our top guys and they'll tell you how much they make. And they'll talk to people and they say, you're not doing this right. Let's retrain. Let's role play. Come do a ride along with me. What's so nice about what we built here is a technician doesn't fear their job because

another one's doing good. They all want each other to do well. They all want each other to own houses. They all want people to succeed here. There's not this animosity. It's like, if he does good, I do bad. Why can't we both do good? And that's how the mentality is here. They love role-playing. It's crazy how it works. Eco Grizzly, what is your recommendation to start building relationships in the commercial industry? So read the book, Dream 100. And I think there's a website that you get the book for cheaper and it comes with all these extras. And realize the gift that keeps giving. Go after 100 customers that'll spend a million dollars a year with you. And they don't mind paying because you're out there on time

and you're putting in a quality product with a quality technician with a quality truck with quality tools because you got to understand a commercial whatever the business is when a bay goes down or an hvac unit goes down or whatever it might be their whole business doesn't run so they need speed and you got to give me a reason why you're better. And in the ultimate sales machine, Chet Holmes talks about how he continues to send things like a tape measure. Are you measuring the results of the other company? Give us a shot. Or the Rubik's cube. And I bought a couple of hundred small Rubik's cubes. And I used to write, you know, I'm still puzzled why we haven't chatted yet. And these were little gag gifts, but you could put something nice. Think about this. If somebody is going to spend a million dollars with you and you have a 10% marketing budget

and it's a gift that keeps giving, you don't need to keep spending it to acquire them because you've got a relationship. You can spend $100,000 to pick up that client if they come on. And sometimes you just got to go in as a lost leader and earn their business to show them how you're different. Say, give me a shot. Give me a challenge. Give me something that the other guys don't do or you don't love the way they do it or however they do it. So there's nothing better than breaking bread with people, taking them out to lunch. And here's the deal. How to win friends

and influence people. Ask them about themselves. Ask them, hey, what do you do for fun ask them about people buy it from people not companies so but if you could get them talking and get them talking about what they love about the other company what they don't like and just say give me a shot it doesn't need to be a big shot I just I'm here to earn your business and prove to you that we're the best and if I need to show up there myself I'll do it that's the kind of thing that I'm looking for. Shane Levinson said, at what point do you determine spending on the top funnel advertising? Billboards, radio, TV, YouTube, et cetera.

So I have a certain KPIs I like to hit. I got to know that we can convert a big sell. I need to know that I have people in that market that can kill it. But what I found was, and Ghetto found out the same thing with the Wizard of Ads, Roy Williams, is they figured out that what happens to your Google spend on pay-per-click, especially in all the searches, is it goes way down. And you just got to start bidding on your own keywords. And why would this matter? Well, now you're getting branded search terms. People are clicking on the branded search terms for you. So they'll wait two extra days because they want you.

They've heard of you. They trust you. So what that does is it starts to get way more branded search terms. And when people search for Kleenex, you realize Kleenex is a brand. People say, pass me the Kleenex. Do you know how well they've done a branding? I mean, you think about certain things and they've done so well, you don't even know the name of it. It's just tissue paper.

It's not Kleenex. So that's what branding does. It starts to just, they go to the internet and they start typing in your name, especially when you've got great reviews to back it up. So I'd say you got to get hit to a certain conversion rate and average ticket. And then what you're trying to do is take more market share. But you're starting to get more branded searches because your conversion rate, your average ticket will go through the roof. And your cost per acquisition will not go down immediately. But you're basically taking it away from Google and putting it into the TV, radio billboards. And what that's going to do is drive a lot more people to search your brand.

And not to mention, if you have a lot of trucks out there, you're able to get yard signs. You're able to show up on some earned media, which is PR. We don't talk a lot about earned media, but I'm a big, big fan. One of the reasons our website ranks so well is I've been in a lot of Huffington Post articles and news segments and different things that we're able to get on because we spend money to find stories that we could be part of. One day, this little old lady got ripped off on a garage door and the guy took off and my PR gal saw it. And she's like, would you be willing to donate a door? I'm like, tell me the story. And it's this little old lady in Glendale. And it was just really bothered me because the lady reminded me of my grandma. So we just, we gave her a door and the by-product was the news came back out there and said, Hey, the angel came out here

and A1 Grocers wanted to pick up where they left out. I really felt sentimental to the situation, but it did, it was earned PR, but there's a lot of stuff we do here at A1 that doesn't get picked up. So the whole idea of just getting picked up by news should not be the reason you try to do PR. We just won best places to work. I just won 40 under 40 entrepreneurs. We just won a ACE Awards for the best, fastest growing company, private company. So those things all are links to our website. The guys just came in here, six people to interview us. And they said, you need to volunteer for the community award and we'll make sure you win because no one else is doing what you guys are

doing in our community. And, you know, we repaint the YMCA. We feed the hungry children. We shop with a cop. We plant trees. And this happens every month. And once you start doing it, you can't imagine not doing it. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this conversation. I just want to take a five-second break to let you know that the tickets for my next Vertical Track event are now on sale. Just go to verticaltrack.com to learn more and get a guaranteed seat before the prices go up. Now back to our interview. Are you offering tiered financing for payment options? Yeah, we've got a bunch of different financing we offer.

So financing is amazing because you pull the money out of it. And if you can build such enough value that it just makes sense. I never want to have to worry about getting out of my garage again. And I want a company, plus it makes the house look so good. Plus it's energy efficient. Plus the technology built into the new openers. And they're just going to take care of it forever for a small fee. Financing and service agreements are changing the game of garage doors. Those of you in garage door freedom and that have been to vertical track understand

that our industry is changing because of that. Having the right options, one of the best ways to sell financing, and yes, we use tiered options. Darius Livers taught me three types of financing, low interest, no interest, and low payments. Those are the three personas. And if you could get to the point where you understand their persona and you give them the option, always assume financing, always give them the monthly payments first, and then service titan and other CRMs give you the ability to toggle. But a lot of times they say, I can't afford that. Then they say, shoot, we could afford that. Why would you want to bandaid it? Why not just get the door of your

dreams, get it done. It pays 100% return on investment and paid off when you feel like it. You're getting a tax check back. You got a raise coming up at work, whatever it might be. Jim Owens. Hey, Tommy, do you have set checks and balances for hiring QuickBooks bookkeeper? We've gone through several and have bad experiences. Ellen Rohr, Megan Lykes, they really were able to help point out a certain thing. There's fractional CFOs. I don't have a guide, but what I do know is I do have a lady I use. Her name is Blair Miller and her cell phone number and just text her. If you want to know how to recruit the baddest ass higher level people, Jody is the best at getting CSRs, dispatchers, technicians. When it comes to really getting amazing, amazing people,

like if you needed a COO, a CFO, a really high-end bookkeeper, Blair Mailer, her number is 248-515-3520. I've used her for the last seven hires that I needed amazing people. And she just doesn't go find you somebody. She asks you the questions of what you're looking for. She understands how to get the best. And not having a great bookkeeper is a mistake. So I think it's important to reach out to the right person for that. So hopefully you take advantage of that, Jim. You might have to play this back to get that. Sign-on bonus, we'll get attention to new employees in the door.

Yeah, we'll do sign-on bonuses sometimes, but I don't know if that's necessarily going after the right things that I want. If I absolutely need people, it does move the needle. But think about this. Employees don't hang out on the unemployment line on Indeed and ZipRecruiter and CareerBuilder and Monster and LinkedIn and Craigslist. Great employees already have jobs. Now, here's what I want you to think about. Who would be the most convincing person to find a really great technician that already has a job? Maybe they're not a technician now, but the wives, Dollar Shave Club, Dollar Beard Club, Sears, everybody figured out, advertised to the women and they'll get their man to come in on it. And I think we always

advertise thinking the social media is great. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn is pretty good. YouTube channel coming out with interesting. It's amazing how many people have followed the podcast and me and that said, I want to go work for that company because they see it's real. Do you know how many people at our graduation classes? Oh, by the way, in our graduation, we tell them to get all their friends and neighbors and family on there to see them graduating. It's a great way to recruit.

But you know, people have said to me, I thought this was some type of pyramid scheme. There's no way this could be real. Like, I thought it was too good to be true, but it's real. Like, you guys are the real deal. You're not a bunch of liars. You actually care. I can tell you a lot of people say they care about their employees. You show up there.

There's donuts out from three weeks ago. They don't care enough about themselves to keep it clean and organized. And it's one of my pet peeves here is we're creating a checklist and a process for everything to make sure that everything's blowed out and in the parking lot, staying clean. And it doesn't always end up being employees. I'm a big fan. We've got a full-time cleaning lady, Elizabeth, and she does amazing. And it's important to have the right people to do full-time things. But just when I used to bus tables, I used to get these green tickets. It was a free meal because they would catch you doing something when nobody was watching. They had camera systems, but I was constantly getting free meals because I just hated walking

around a place that didn't care about the clients or the employees. So Cheesecake Factory, I'd go clean the bathrooms and the mirrors and make sure everything was clean. I'd clean the banisters. There's a lot of things that I took on my own to do. And I think that's helped to shape up what we are today. Customer reviews, closing percentage, ticket average, all should be a factor in pay. Number one, if you're looking at closing percentages, you got to look at average discount rate because there's a lot of guys that close a higher percentage, but they're discounting the crap out of it. And so you really got to get control over that. The follow-up,

we build rapport, educate, and follow up ref and follow up. We're building a new system right now. We just got off the phone earlier. I'm building the most comprehensive, sophisticated system in HubSpot anybody's ever seen in home service. And it will literally message clients till they follow up a call. Hi there, Mr. Jones. This is Michael with A1 Garage Doors. I work closely with Tommy Melo, the owner at A1 Garage Door Service. I saw you spoke with Blank about our new door. I have the go-ahead to do everything in my power to earn your business. Can we chat for about 15 minutes, pick a time that works for you? Think about how powerful that is. Now you text

them. They're booking a time that fits their schedule, not your schedule. And there's got to be a lot of availability. And the goal should be, I've seen the best of the best companies have a whole rehash team and no one's done it the right way, I don't think. No one's done it. I don't want to give away anybody else's secrets that have been out to their business but they're able to discount it but forget discounting we're getting into storage flooring we could give a better insulation value we could do different things to say listen i could upgrade you to this this and this and an upgrade costs you way less than giving a discount so closing ratios definitely on phone calls if you're not at 90 or more you're never going to be able to be at the top end of our

phone call pay for performance why don't you have more subscribers i need more subscribers i've not tried hard to do as much as i can do on this. One of the things we're working on hardcore going into Q4 is really getting this out there. Look, I don't charge for this stuff. Like you said, when people really realize what vertical track is and they realize what we've built and that we're sharing it, I think it'll come naturally. It takes people like you guys to share this stuff. And if you feel like you're learning something, I'd appreciate it, but it's not a requirement. But you've ever heard ask for the referral right now. I'm asking if we could build a larger community. I want to change lives. I want to bring people into this world and be able to give them

the life they deserve, meaning you could provide for your children. I want to make sure you're able to go on that 10-year anniversary you've always dreamed of. You send me a text message and say, I was able to do something with my wife I've never done. I'm my son's soccer coach now. That is more payment than money could ever do because right now money is not what I need. I'm here to help change lives. Seven Habits of Highly Successful People talks about what are people going to say when you're 12 feet under. And that's more legacy stuff. And that's really where your mind starts shifting when the money gets out of the way. Trust me, money's important when you're trying to pay bills. Money's important when you're looking for a roof over your head for your kids.

But when God or Jesus or whoever your God is, and when you get enough, the mentality starts to change of how much freedom can you give other people? What can you do for other people? How can you help other people? And that it starts with the community, and more importantly, your own community, which is hopefully the people you work with. And I think that's where it needs to start. And unfortunately, for a lot of people, it doesn't start there.

I was told years ago that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Customers will tell you what they want if you just listen to them. Absolutely. Diagnose the person before the problem. If you think that I tell everybody they need an A1 package, you're crazy. Because I don't believe they do. And there's a lot of people that do. If they use their door 20 times a day, they've got a nice house they're going to stay in for a long time and they've got an insulated garage a1 package is

exactly what they want if they're selling the house in two years it might not be the nicest opportunity for them or the best opportunity but we're going to discuss the options see joe chrysler taught me about options he said the goal of your options should be that they pick one of them that they're choosing your company so i have an option for everybody and he's got a lot of studies to back that up what i'll say about that is if somebody tells you that they're a teacher and it's very important that they make it to school for their kids you take their last name, Mr. Miller's important teacher, you actually name that option. And we have not done a great job of that, but I think it's very powerful stuff. Joe's an amazing sales coach. One of the cool things is I've spent millions of dollars on

coaching books, training seminars, and I take the highlights and I share them. It doesn't mean you don't need a guy like Joe or Al Levy by any means. I mean, you definitely need those guys if you want to get ahead. They asked me earlier here who I looked up to. And of course, there's Simon Sinek and a lot of these great authors and a lot of these great inspirations. But you look at a guy like Al Levy or Joe or Jonathan Wissman, the people that have took the time to work one-on-one with me and come teach our people, people love getting taught by authorities. So to hire those people to reinforce and re-ingrain these ideas, it actually is an investment, not a cost if you really think about it.

What's your thoughts about dealing with employees who have animosity on who's getting paid more than a coworker? Having issues with guys that get paid less in a lower role. Believe they should do lesser work because the other guy gets paid more. Well, number one thing when you give out promotions is if I find out somebody gave, that you're going to get written up and you might get fired. If you're starting to talk about your pay, but if it's performance pay, see, nobody gets this. Like, you know why people get promoted here because of their scorecard and their actions and who they are. And you applaud them when it happens here. Now, if you are,

you have an environment that the question, what I have here is, did you create the environment that people have animosity? Because I do not want pay grades getting out. But at the end of the day, if someone's willing to travel away from their family and they're the best of the best, then they earn that right. And no one should have animosity. And that's a conversation out of one-on-one. But one of the questions would be, how do you know what they get paid? Because loose lips sink ships. Andrew Cumpston, home inspector here.

What is the one thing you wish every home inspector knew about garage doors while they are inspecting? If I had to give you some simple things, it would just be a simple checklist. Look for frayed cables. You weigh the door. And if it falls on itself, obviously the springs aren't doing their job. The frequencies that make sure someone's not selling a house with their frequency not working. So all the transmitters work.

But it's fairly simple. The bottom panel, if it starts to sag, you got some issues coming. But for the most part, I don't expect builders to help us sell work. I just want to make sure the home's safe and that everything's working well when it goes. There's metal rollers that start going like this. If that starts to happen, there's accidents happening. Wart panels on wood doors are a big deal. But I don't have just one thing.

There's quite a few things that I would say, a checklist. And I can give you my 151-point checklist. Tune up, but you don't want that. You probably need about five things that I mentioned. One of the things that the chain sagging, too, the gear and sprocket, there's black dust on the top panel in the middle. You know the gear and sprocket is going out. So be sure to look at that.

I don't want to invest a bunch of money in a new door. Just make sure it's safe. I don't care about what it looks like. I've literally had to do that before, before my mentality changed too. Now I believe it's better to replace it. So that's my mentality towards that. Andrew Cumpson already said too, he also said, Hey Tommy, what are your thoughts on starting an HVAC service in Washington state? Just moved here about two months ago. I grew up helping my dad start a plumbing company, which was small at the time, now approximately 15 million, and just got burned

out working out in the field. So ever since then, I got married six years ago. I did my own thing, construction and a little real estate stuff. Never did HVAC, but love the concept of scalability. I was wondering if I could skip the step of learning HVAC in the field and hire someone and I can do the marketing and sales. I love marketing and finding why people hire service professionals and their motives. What are your thoughts? You know, I'm glad I know garage doors, but I'll never know another service. I will be in other home services. I can guarantee you that. And I'm not going to go out there and become a master of the trade because

that's like the E-myth. You don't even need to be a great dentist to own 20 dental offices. In fact, do you think the guy that owns the 20 dental offices knows how to do dentistry? He's just a better businessman. When I interned for a dentist before I was going to go take the DAT and go to dental school, he told me, don't become a dentist. Get into business, understand business, understand marketing and sales. So I think you can skip a step, but the trick is you've got to find a great partner and you've got to have something in it for them. And it's tough to give out equity in the beginning when you don't really know what you're getting yourself into. So what I would do is have a vesting period of three years, and I'd have milestones and bonuses

and say, listen, I want you as a partner, but I'm going to be the investor in this company. Washington State's got its issues. We do a little bit of work there. Very pro-employee, not so pro-employer. So just look out at the laws and make sure you understand what you're getting yourself into. There's some crap that goes on in certain states that lawyers love to do a class action lawsuit for stupid stuff. There's some really good lawyers out there that do some stuff that should be done when an employer is not giving people breaks. I agree with that. But there's so much frivolous lawsuits because litigators, once you win a dollar, they don't even charge the client. They take on clients saying, I think we could win and we're going to make the company pay for both lawyers. So it's be very careful with payroll breaks, HR stuff is what I would tell you.

That was most of the questions here. i know a lot of different subjects here people always ask me what would you do if you had to start a business over and i go i go back to the same thing first i get it branded correctly i make sure that i fund it correctly first of all you see here's another misconception you you got to realize you're going to put the sweat equity into the business if you don't have any money. And a lot of people buy a job and they're so busy doing all the work, they don't create the business. So they got this expensive ass job. They've got these go-to customers that barely pay you enough to make a living and you're making a good living. But now you work 24 seven, you work weekends, you work holidays. When you go

out of town, you come back to a shit show. And what I would tell you about that is I'd really start thinking a lot about why you're doing this. Is it to own a business that gives you freedom? If so, make sure you're well-funded when you go into it. Not millions of dollars. Just a couple hundred thousand will get you a lot. And knowledge is invaluable. Reading all the time, going and visiting successful shops, creating an atmosphere. What's so cool about A1 right now is there's so many people that care,

they give a shit. And you can see that everywhere. I walk out of this office and I see new people all the time and I'm just like, everyone's smiling. But people walk in, they just, these six people from the biggest insurance company, the biggest bank in Arizona, the biggest, you name it, the real estate CBRE. They said, how are you like this? How are you so happy? What are you giving them in the water here? Everybody we meet, everything we do, it's different here. And I said, it's really, they believe, they believe in the cause. They believe that their life is changing. They love what they do. And I try to create the best opportunity for them to create a dream job.

And answering phones might not be a dream job for some, but compared to their last job answering phones, they freaking love it here. They know they're making money. They know they're excited to answer the phone. They're excited to make a friend and when you're like when you talk on the phone if we're going to talk about just a job that might not seem like a dream job if you're nice on the phone you're always making friends you're always laughing you enjoy it you're helping somebody in a desperate need and some people really enjoy helping others and those are the people we're looking for and we're attracting them how do you get people to come adopt your mentality well i do a four-hour orientation everybody here is kind of,

you should see, we've got a Facebook page. Cody's on it. You know, he's kind of part of the family here because he supports us so much. And Cody could tell you what people say in these Facebook. I mean, it's constantly about helping one another and growing the relationships and just getting involved in the community and wishing happy birthdays and acknowledging people. And it starts with you. It starts with you doing it. And if you're very messy and you hate people and you're always grumpy, that's what everybody's going to be like. So I really think it comes down to the founder and the leader, the main person that started. And if they can't get their act together, you know, I hate to bring this guy's name up. He's a legend. And, you know, L.E.V. and Alan Rohr talk about Jim Crenitty, that he really didn't really appreciate the staff. And his

whole mentality changed. You can't be around this guy without smiling, with Zoom drains. He's so excited, so passionate, so willing to give back to the people that he was able to change. Like they've got a waiting list of people that want to work for them. And it's amazing. You know, I talked to Ellen, she's killing it. There's not a lot of franchises and that's what it's all about. Should we be branding everywhere we sell stickers and such? Yes, absolutely. Brand like crazy. A1 Home Services does have a nice ring to it, except we're not the only company with A1. You know, it's weird that I get on these podcasts now

and it all comes back to how you treat people. And are you exciting to be around? And do you get excited? Are you this person that's reprimanding everybody? And I decided a long time ago, I was a good cop. I can't be a bad cop. I'm not good at firing people. I'm not very good at confrontation. I'm really good at confrontation if you're really close to me, but I can't confront somebody that I'm not dealing with. One of the things that my mentality has told me here is I need to have more

good confrontations with people than bad. So if they did something wrong, I'm not going to have a bad confrontation with them. I'll let somebody else that had more experiences with that person, because I never want to be the person you think of when you go, let's just say A1 didn't work out for you. I never want you to go, man, that owner is a real asshole. I want you to say, you know, Tommy really cared. He always seemed to have a smile on his face and seemed to be, he's on his phone a lot. He's busy all the time.

He's traveling around the country. But I really feel like he gave a shit. And, you know, I have some managers that I didn't agree with, but I think A1 is a great place for a lot of people. So think about how other people would view your business. And think about are they going to go on these different places indeed and glass door and destroy you i hope nobody would want to because i've always always always been a pro advocate of the employee i've always sided with them on paying extra and not making a frivolous case of the extra hundred dollars for this if it's not defined and the employee's got a point i'm taking their side

every time. And I think a lot of owners, they say they make a lot of mistakes. They're not clear on their direction of what they want. And then somebody figures out a loophole or something. The people I work with don't figure out loopholes, but they, I'll give you an example. One of my managers has a friend and they decided to discount something more because they knew them. And let's say there was two technicians out there and they're busting their hump and they've already discounted it because should that really count against their

commission because the manager knew them and decided to discount another 500 no i just literally and i didn't want to get into it with my payroll and these i just venmoed them the money myself and i think that that's important because that's the relationships i have and i realize that might not be what you do but you you got to have processes. And if somebody makes a case, if somebody is always trying to do that, I'm going to be like, come on, man. But there's certain circumstances that I'm just like, why think about this? You make somebody feel like shit, just one job, one opportunity, one deal. It might screw up their next job that they might have killed it. You got to pick your fights and pick your your arguments forrest do you recommend exit interviews when

letting go of staff we started to do exit interviews but that's an hr call i've never done an exit interview and we also have this other thing that we do with, what are we calling it? Barbara. If you listen to Barbara's podcast, she's the best person I've ever met in HR. And she's like, they're called stay meetings and you should have every three months with the staff. So that's a big one. Listen guys, here's the deal. Figure out ways to always be working on the business. Figure out KPIs, figure out what you can do to separate yourself from the deal. Figure out ways to always be working on the business. Figure out KPIs. Figure out what you can do to separate yourself from the pack. More importantly, just think about ways that people would want to work for you. I mean, there's companies out there that people hate. They work

there. They feel like a prisoner. And I'm just wondering, we're starting to do these polls in our company and they're anonymous. and it's called a 360 review. And I recommend you guys start doing those because I got things I need to work on, but really figure out where you need to work on and where other managers need to work on. And sometimes getting a 360 interview is like going to a doctor, but you need to hear it. So listen, guys, I appreciate your time today. You guys are amazing. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Appreciate you guys. Ask a lot of questions. I'm here for you. You guys have a fantastic day. Hey, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. Before you go, I wanted to invite you

to my next vertical track event. We've opened it up to all home service companies, just like our last event. And people across all industries have been messaging me all the time saying this last event brought them as much as a 10 times return on their investment you need to go there check it out sign up today now the great news is is that we're doing it again in October and we wanted to be the best event of the year in the home service space if you're ready to build systems to scale and get out of the truck once and for all get your tickets right now at vertical track calm we're about to go through some tough times in the economy and I want to give you some tools and some tips to get through it and start making more money than you ever realized.

So go to verticaltrack.com and get your tickets now.