The Home Service Expert Podcast - Crafting Your Business War Plan to Achieve 7-Figure Business Success

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Josh Latimer is the Co-Founder of HonorAndFire.com and the CEO of KidWarPlan.com. He and his wife Ashlee are absentee owners of a multi-million dollar SaaS software company and own equity in 7 other successful ventures ranging from local home services, commercial real estate, marketing, and video production. Josh has spoken on over 100 stages and created over 100 millionaires by working directly with small business owners. He is also the host of the Quick Talk Podcast. In this episode, we talked about smart marketing, new business mindsets, selling strategies...  

Unless you're a selfish jerk, you should build a sellable business because it's a hedge of protection for your staff. It'll ultimately provide better service for your customers. It provides more opportunity. You're going to build a better mousetrap if you're building it to sell. Just like when people are going to sell their house, what do we do at our house? We make it the way we want it. Yeah, we make it perfect, right? So if you're building your business through that frame, even if you're not going to sell, you're going to build a better business and your business isn't just about you. Like your breakthrough isn't just for you. Like you not playing bigger and going harder

is very, very selfish. And that might sound harsh. I literally believe that you're selfish by not playing bigger, thinking bigger, building a sellable business because you're making it all about me, me, me, me, me. I think one of the most selfish things I've ever heard a man say is I just want to make enough to take care of my family. I think it's incredibly limited thinking. I think it's extremely selfish and it's embarrassing to me because we're capable of way more than that. Taking care of our family is like a step one on a hundred point checklist of what we're capable of. So yes, you should do 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.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today,

I got a great buddy, really looking forward to this podcast, Josh Latimer, very smart guy. I was talking to my podcast team, but we got to get Josh back on here. Five kids, man of God, great marriage out there to help everybody. Josh is an expert in sales management, technology, leadership development, and marketing. He's got two homes. One's in Ludington, Michigan, kind of where I go quite a bit to go fishing. And the other spot is Dallas, Texas. He's honorandfire.com. He's the co-founder from 2019 to present.

Kidwarplan.com, CEO, founder from 2021 to present. Quick Talk Podcast, 2015 to present. And Automate, Grow, Sell, 2015 to present. Let's see. He and his wife, Ashley, are absentee owners of a multimillion dollar SaaS software company and own equity in seven other successful ventures, raising from local home services, commercial real estate, marketing, and video production. Josh has spoken on over a hundred stages, as well as created over a hundred millionaires by working directly with small business owners. He's also the host of Quick Talk Podcast, where he provides thousands of cleaning businesses, weekly inspiration, and helps small businesses to learn how to grow.

Josh, it's great to have you on, brother. Great to be here, Tommy. Great to see you, man. How are you? I'm great. It's not too early, but it feels early just because of that four-day weekend, you know? Yeah, the Thanksgiving hangover. My face has a Thanksgiving hangover. I fought a rock and the rock won. I tripped in my driveway. I fell into a pile of leaves, except it was a giant rock covered in leaves. And I'm actually lucky I didn't knock my teeth out or something but I it almost knocked me out I was laying there this was less than 48 hours ago so I'm riding the struggle bus in that respect but happy to still be here hey it happens man I uh

it's you were where are you right now I'm in Dallas Texas right now we've been down here for a couple of years. I go back and forth a lot. You know, home is Michigan, Northern Michigan, the middle of nowhere. That's where my, my kids and my family are. And I've been coming back and forth. So we'll probably winter down here in January, February, March, but yeah, just a season of entrepreneurial life.

So we're split between two places. Yeah. What, what brought you out there? I know you were ready for a change. I remember when you moved, but what was the, what was the plan? What, what was like this? We're just going to uproot ourselves with the kids and just go do this thing in Texas. Well, the real answer I'll give you the real answer, which we felt like the Lord told us to come down here, which sounds irrational and silly, like the spaghetti monster told us to move to Texas. But we felt called to come down here. This isn't the first time it happened. We moved to Costa Rica for a couple of years.

Same exact kind of thing. Since we got down here, lots of opportunities opened up. I started another software company. We got a studio, Warplane Studios down here, and have just been putting the pieces together and figuring out what's next. But we're a weird family and we like to do big things with our kids. We want our kids to watch us start and try things, meet new people, travel. If I go speak, I take my children with me. So we have a unique lifestyle like that. So are we crazy? Probably. But do we believe it? Yep, we do. That's why we do this stuff. So that's the real answer. So, yeah. So you've done a lot of stuff. You kind of started in power washing, right?

That was the main business. Yeah, well, window cleaning and pressure cleaning in Michigan. Built a small company there, kind of automated it, sold it to a small private equity. That's when we moved to Costa Rica. At that same time, I started a SendGem, which is a direct mail automation software tool. SendJim almost bankrupted me. I mean, that was one of the hardest things I ever did. It's doing great now, thanks to our CEO, Daniel Dixon, and all my partners that helped really save the day with that company. And then since then, we started a business called Automate Grow Sell, which transformed into conquer the conquer coaching program.

So I started that. I sold the majority stake to Brandon Vaughn and then him and I grew it. And then we sold the whole thing. So I actually sold that business twice. We sold that to house call pro that's doing well in the last couple of years. I just been raising my kids and being at home a lot more until Texas. So then we came to Texas, we're doing this. I started a company called War Plan. And I mean, our mission statement is just to help entrepreneur families. And I love marketing. I like helping people think

different. But really at the end of the day, you know, no amount of business success can compensate for failure in the home. So we do spend a lot of time talking about all that stuff too. And like I was saying before we hit record, like you're just built differently. Your personality type, Tommy, is I call it a fighter jet. Like a fighter jet can't go slow or it'll fall out of the sky, right? Like a crop duster has to go slow. A fighter jet can't go slow. But,

you know, the average small business owner, I read a stat in sba.gov, there's 26 million out of the 32 million small businesses in the United States are two weeks away from overdrafting their business checking account. It's 81%. And so the average family, you know, entrepreneur is just surviving. And so we work with a lot of those really smaller companies, most of them doing less than 5 million in revenue and just helping them get the basics down. There's just something special about the way that with what you've done is so rare and different, especially in this space, I think. But we work with a lot of the little guys, so to speak, the underdogs. Yeah, they are underdogs, but I meet a lot of them. I came to

Conquer. Brandon and you invited me out, I don't know, that was four or five years ago. And I don't know what it is. I meet a lot of people and they've got the right idea. I mean, listen, I'm ADHD, but they bring a whole new meaning. And I think you got to be a little bit crazy to start a business, but everybody says I got into business for freedom, right? I got into business to make my own schedule and to be my own boss. And then it never really turns out that way. I mean, listen, I took chips off the table. I sold half the company and I'm working harder than I've ever done,

but I'm on a mission and I'll hit my goal. And then I sat down yesterday and I did 25 outcomes. And I was very specific on what's gonna happen over the next three years. Exactly the plane I'm buying, exactly who I want to be right next to as the best speaker, where my podcast is going to be, the color boat I want, what I'm going to do with my mom, my sister, my dad,

what I'm going to do with Bree. Like I specifically am building this future on how it's preordained in a lot of ways. And I don't know, you deal with a lot of small businesses. First of all, it's hard because the average ticket's smaller. I mean, I wish I got into roofing when I was 20. I got into garage doors, it worked out well. But what do you think it is?

You just nailed it. You just literally, without realizing it, said, I'll tell you what the problem is, that no one knows what they want. So when you talk to a small business owner and you ask them, what do you want? What they'll do is give you a list of things they don't want. So instead of saying, I want freedom, the typical small business, I've worked with over a thousand people last 10 years. I don't have all the answers. I'm just a

little guy trying to help little guy, but you start to notice stuff. And so as a professional dot connector, one of the biggest things is that these people that are stuck, they only know what they don't want. When you ask them, do you want freedom? They say, I don't want to struggle anymore. If you ask them, what do you want? They say, well, I want to be debt free. And so they have like an inverted kind of vision of their future or something. What's really interesting about you and not just you, but high achievers, they're really, really clear on where they're going. Really clear. And to you, it's normal, but it's very rare in my experience. People really don't spend enough time daydreaming about what God made them for. Like what is their mission, their mandate,

their purpose, their destiny. And I don't mean to be cheesy or Tony Robbins or something. I'm just saying I have a sense of destiny in my life and I could be nuts, but I have it. And it's a driver and you definitely have that too. But the average person is really, I don't know if it's because when they started their business, they were quitting a job rather than running towards a vision of the future. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's just, I can't really say it's their environment and their family because you didn't have anything extraordinary there. But I think that's one of the core foundational differences right there. They don't have a very 4K, 3D, crystal clear picture of what they're running towards in the first place.

That's crazy. You said 81% of business owners are two weeks from being bankrupt? Yeah. Or just got enough money in the account? Well, it's two weeks away from overdrafting their corporate checking account. Huh. That's insane. Yeah. It is, but it's the reality. And most of these people aren't really business owners. The 32 million small business owners. The 32 million small business owners, these are self-employed people, freelancers, people like

that too, kind of lumped in there. I mean, the ripple effect of you even publishing content and all the teaching you've done is so huge. I don't know if you ever stop and think about it or not, because you're so future focused, like the fighter jet. But it's gigantic because I think the other second reason people are stuck is they don't think big enough. My biggest false belief when I first got started in business was that a million dollars was like a lot of money. And I genuinely believed that because I didn't know. My frame of reference is very limited. But what will happen is if it feels like Mount Everest to make a million in revenue and you're starting with nothing, you don't know anything, it will take a long time to achieve that because in your brain, it's like hard and it's supposed to take time, right? In reality, the SBA also defines a small

business as anybody with less than 500 employees. So what the little guy, you're not even a speck on the back of an amoeba in real business, unless you have 500 employees is kind of like the starting line for all the big dogs. Right. But the average service company owner or self-employed person, they're like, man, someday I can do a million dollars, you know? So they're not clear on what they want. And they have an extremely limited vision of what's possible in the first place. And those two things make everybody move like turtles. Well, you know, I remember it was probably 18 years ago.

My dad threw off a stat, and it's not a correct stat, but he said, if you get into ValPAC, 3% of the homes you mail to, they'll be your clients. And it's more like a half a percent if you're lucky depending on the competition but i built the whole plan to get to 100 million from day one when i was in my early 20s i mean the math did not work out i had to do a lot of stuff and luckily i started in 2006-7 when it was switching from Yellow Book to Google. And I was right on that train at the perfect time. And also went into somewhat of a depression. And so I started out learning how to like crunch and hard work. And just people were turning back in their house to the bank, right? It was like, hey, I just need to be able to move my kids' furniture out, their beds. Can you just get the door working? So I kind of started from the

worst point, but I do think you're right. People don't dream. They don't daydream about what their life is going to look like and how many people they're going to help and where they want to travel to and where their life looks. And they say, you know, I'd be happy if I got a good pair of shoes on and I could feed my family. But that's not the right way to think when you start a business. If you wanted that, go get a job. Do you recognize – I'm just curious. Do you recognize how rare it is for you to have thought that big, that young?

As a percentage, I mean, because it's not normal. I'm telling you right now it's i wish i was starting to realize that and you know i'll tell you this josh i didn't make great in 2014 i was doing six million so think about that i had a small business i was paying myself pretty good back then i bought a house in 2012 but I really learned a lot from 2014 on. That's when I got Adam. He took care of the back office and I met Al Levy. I rebranded with Dan Antonelli. I just became obsessed with going and studying other businesses and reading. And that was like, that's what took off of If I didn't study HVAC for so many years and go ask a million questions and then implement, you know, a lot of people that come to my seminars or they go watch you speak and they come up and they're like, wow, they get, they get this you know, the firefighter. And I just feel so bad because it's,

it's like, they can't sit still. And like, their CRM is a mess. They don't understand marketing. They don't know what to do next. Thank God Al Levy sat me down. And I knew when I met Al Levy, I was doing 20 million, but it was unorganized and I was the best firefighter you could ever get and i'll tell you where i made my mistakes and i think a lot of people i didn't have a known financial position i didn't know exactly my kpis i didn't have a structure i just met a guy dan martell that that actually i'm coaching with and he's like he's a fast guy, right? He wrote buy back your time. Oh, okay. And he's like, Tommy, he's like, you run your business so great.

He goes, we're going to do this with your personal life. He goes, I've got 10 mountain bikes. They get maintained every month. I just made a manual on it. I did it once. I recorded what I wanted. He goes, I don't buy my own cars. I didn't even buy my vacation house. He goes, I bought it, but I'd never been to it yet. He goes, I didn't even

look at the car that just showed up. I didn't even pick my dog out. My assistant picked the dog out. She sent me and my wife pictures. It was a dog we wanted. We liked how it looked and she handled the training. And he goes, here's what happens. And this is really interesting. He said, when we're kind of broke starting a business, we start out from the bottom up. First, you might find an assistant, then you find maybe someone in payroll. He goes, from now on, every business I buy and every single thing I do, I find a leader that'll take that position. And I thought a lot about Richard Branson because he's got 400 companies and he works about two hours a day.

And it's just a different way of thinking. It's like buy back your time. And I said, well, here's what pisses me off, Dan. I said, I own a lot of property. I own a lot of commercial real estate. I own some apartments. And I said, if they don't call me and they hire a plumber and I got plumber buddies and they over pay 20 grand, it pisses me off. He goes, who cares? You know, we went over what he goes, you're thinking of dollars instead of percentages. How much is your time worth? And we, we did a little, uh, we went through and, and he literally laid it out for me. And I'm like, you're right. At $20,000 is a lot of money to anybody.

I don't care who you are. But in the scheme of things, it's really not to be worried about stuff. You called the wrong plumber. If you got three prices, you got the job done. We got it fixed. And that's really what I, I don't want to let the small things ever bother me again. And that's where I'm moving towards is it sounds like I'm spoiled or something, but trust me, there were, you know, I've went through the ringer. I didn't have a golden spoon. It wasn't easy. And I struggled to make payroll

some weeks. You know, I'd get a blood test for insurance so that I could buy this first building. So I'm not spoiled, but I just got to start thinking differently. I got to grow because if I'm not growing, I'll be stuck. And I think a lot of people, sometimes they feel like they've arrived. Even the guy at Goldman Sachs, he goes, dude, why are you so hungry still? And I'm like, I'm not done. I'm like, we brought on an investor who has all these LPs that are counting on me to do this job and get us to the next level. And I don't think I'll ever be done, but I'm trying to figure out what my life looks like to where I could golf once a week and I could fish once a week and I could travel at least two months out of the year. And I'm not far off, but I don't know.

You're still doing well. I don't have it all figured out, but I'm always getting coached always. Well, how many apples is an apple tree supposed to make? It's an endless amount because hopefully you take care of it. And I don't think Tiger Woods quit when he won the four tournaments that year, you know, when he did that. No, I think everything that God made, he made to grow and expand period. So like sometimes I'll ask parents, they'll say how much on a scale of one to 10, how much health do you want your children to experience during their life? And they'll say 10. And I say, how much joy and happiness and fulfillment? And I give these categories, right? And they say 10, 10, 10.

And then I'll say, how much money do you want them to have? And they'll like curl back and like, well, you know, like six, like I don't want them to make other people uncomfortable. You know, and there's just something, there's, there's a lot of weird programming around money specifically. So we talked about people don't know what they want. They don't dream. Or when they do dream, they dream in a very limited box, right? And then you mentioned that they don't implement. They come to your seminar, they go home, they don't do anything. And to you, that's confusing because you're built different. I don't mean you're built different like it was easy for you and it's hard for them. I just mean you have this clear vision,

right? You're on a mission. But anyway, the reason they don't implement isn't because they don't know what to do. That's very rarely the actual problem. The last time I saw Alex Ramosi in real life, I asked him if he had any workout tips for me, like making small talk. We're eating breakfast in a hotel right next to each other, going to Russell's Mastermind. And I'm like, hey, man, I got a dad bod, father of five. I'm eating a waffle. True story. I'm eating a waffle, pouring syrup on my waffle. He's eating like a vegan omelet thing. And he looks at me and he goes, Josh, do you really need me to tell you? Or do you already know, but you're just not doing it? In my defense, I'm making small talks. That was a pretty

like hardcore answer, but he was right.. Business owners, they don't do it. They don't implement because of fear. They don't believe that they have what it takes. They don't believe that it will work for them. What fascinates me is how you just did it and just kept doing it. Most people aren't like that. I think they could be. I think conversations like this are very helpful, but they don't know what they want.

They think too small. And even if they do know what to do and they do know what they want and they are thinking big, they still won't implement because they're like, well, but Tommy's Tommy. I'm just me. And this is what's happening in their head.

You know, there's a great book called Predictably Irrational. And basically the super long story short is humans are absolutely irrational. Even logical people are irrational. And basically the super long story short is humans are absolutely irrational. Even logical people are irrational. Most of what we do is driven by subconscious programming and emotion and all this stuff. And it's a valuable conversation. I mean, why do you think you can do this? I mean, you're doing it. You're like 80% of the way there, right? But this whole time, even before there was evidence, you've been doing it with no proof that it was going to work.

But you got up every day and did it. I mean, that's what makes me curious. Well, I just believe, like, literally, like, if you would have seen last night, I did 30 pages of notes between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. And it's like, it's not just taking over the garage industry. It's complete domination. And it's like, I wrote down every single channel I could think of. YouTube, Instagram, Yelp, Nextdoor, Thumbtack. I mean, I went through dozens and dozens, BBB, and I figured out how to dominate all of them.

And I'm like, I called Cortec, who's the PE company, and I talked to Mike for an hour yesterday. And I'm like, why can't we get to 500 million of EBITDA? And he goes, well, we're not going to be your partner that long. And I'm like, we don't need to be at that, that long. Everybody's going to win. Everybody could win. And he's explaining to me like the fundamentals that I already know. He's like, well, you got to buy these companies with leverage and debt. And I'm like, I know all this, but it was a really interesting conversation because even they don't believe like I believe. It's almost like for me, it's already been,

it's already done. Like it's already, in my mind, it's already complete. All I need to do is like continue to drive a few things. And I know what I need to do and it's prioritizing them and getting them done. And for me, it's getting the next people on the bus. And you can only go as far as your talent's going to take you. And that's one thing that I think a lot of people, they make a lot of mistakes, Josh, is they're like, they got this B squad. The CSRs show up, and they're like a cousin, and they book 52% of the calls. Their uncle is helping them out on Google.

They found the cheapest fricking wrap they could get because they think it looks good because people mentioned their trucks. They've never done anything with their list. They never sent out an email, a text message. They don't like sales. They say sales is bad. And I go, we don't sell things people don't need. That's the worst line I've ever

heard in my life. I don't sell things that people don't need. All I buy, Josh, every single thing I bought is shit I don't need. Period. Like, think about it. I don't need a brand new. I mean, I got a Droid. This is a S23 Ultra. I mean, I got five Christmas trees. Well, I only needed one. Well, I guess I bought stuff I don't need. So people buy things they want, not what they need. So you got to give them options. And I just, business owners, they go, they're like this guy on the home service expert page was like a great guy and I'm not trying to discount his thought but he goes why don't garage door companies give up front pricing over the phone and I'm like first of all Josh I'll give you a vicinity of the price of what it's going to be but I'm not going to diagnose your whole door before I get out and look at it

and give you some options. And he's like, I just feel like it's disingenuous to not give people a price over the phone. And I'm like, does the mechanic diagnose your car over the phone? Like, this is a trade. We're specialists. We train our guys for two months to step into a garage. And I'm like, if that's the case, Josh, and this guy, I said,

why don't you just post all the prices on your website, and then the next guy could be a little bit cheaper, and you guys will fight to see who could last the longest, because both of you guys will be out of business in a year. Well, people don't. Because it's commodity. You're just giving prices over the phone. You're making it all about the price, right?

Like if that's all you're doing is talking about price. Hey. Well, the value itself, like what is value? That's the question. Like how is value created, constructed? How is it perceived, received, consumed? There's this awesome guy. I don't know if you ever followed Rory Sutherland.

He's the chairman of Ogilvy. It's one of the largest advertising companies in the world. R-O-R-Y Sutherland. Guy's a genius. But he tells a story about Red Bull and how irrational their success story is. I mean, Red Bull actually as a company was one of the biggest bites into Coca-Cola's revenue really in like modern history. No one's really in the last 30, 40, 50 years, Red Bull took a dent, but they did it in a way that was totally counterintuitive. And this has to go with value, right? People don't understand how it works, how it works. First of all, every dollar in every person's pocket is a result of somebody selling somebody something,

all of the dollars, not some of the dollars, all of the dollars, all the dollars the government has, right? Tax collection. Sales is the circulation system of the world and everything falls apart with that. So not only is sales not bad, it's your moral obligation to sell or else you're selfish. So that's that. But then Roy Sutherland talks about Red Bull is, the reason it's irrational, if you're going to pitch a board, imagine you're a marketing guy or a product development guy, and you're going to pitch a boardroom full of fat white old guys on this product that will compete with Coca-Cola. The logical solution would be to have something that tastes better that comes in a bigger bottle

and has a lower price, right? Like you're not going to get fired for suggesting something that's rational like that. The problem is it would never work, right? Red Bull, it tastes bad. It tastes medicinal, which is on purpose, by the way. It comes in a tiny can that costs a lot of money, right? Which is why it worked. You know, there's so much weird stuff. Like, did you know that red pain pills have a higher efficacy rate than any other colored pain pills, even though the color has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the pain pill? Right? Did you know that wine poured from a heavy bottle tastes better? Is that the people think it tastes better?

It actually does taste better because the way that people drink it changes based on how heavy the bottle is because we think it's more value. So we slow down and savor it differently. And so a service business is the same way. Like I think it's extremely selfish and naive to not walk people through a choreographed sales process for lots of reasons. Number one, that's part of what's awesome about buying stuff. Myron, do you ever follow Myron Golden, Tommy?

No. I got to follow you guys. Myron's a friend of mine. He's been blown up on YouTube. He was born in a segregated hospital in Florida, really poor. He's a black guy. He's in his sixties, wicked smart dude, but he teaches business from a biblical perspective. And he always talks about how it's your moral obligation to sell stuff. And this breaks people's brain, right? Because they think that selling is taking, but it's not true. There's two sides of the ledger. There's always two sides of the ledger.

There's what you give and what you get. I guess my point is, is that everything is marketing. Marketing is everything. Everything is choreographed, nuanced communication. All of dating, all of sex, all of marriage. Parenting is marketing. Everything that these people are doing now and failing, it still is marketing. Like you putting your prices on your website so you don't have to talk to people and walk them through a choreographed process,

that's just poor choreography. You're allowed to do it, but you're only hurting yourself. Or a lot of people struggle with selling more expensive stuff. One of the things I teach people to do is to create a high ticket decoy offer. You know, it's very simple. If the most expensive thing you sell is a thousand dollars, we need to invent a $4,000 thing and work it into the process. Even if it's just so we can scratch it off until they tell the customer they don't need that right now and walk it back to your core offer. Like this choreography, this dance, it's part of what makes sales awesome. You know, if you go to a five-star steakhouse, everything about it's different. The silverware is heavier.

The linens are thicker. The ambiance, the smell, the speech of the server is upgraded compared to a regular restaurant. They have a dedicated water person, right? The water guy. He walks around with the towel on his arm. He just does that, right? And it disconnects your brain from rationality and you'll pay $110 for just the steak. I mean, you know you're at a nice restaurant when it says the steak and it has a number. It doesn't come with french fries and broccoli and your triple sides. No, but it's still worth it because we decide it's worth it or not. Your customer gets to decide if your choreography was worth it or not. But most people don't even give themselves a chance. You know, I always talk about steakhouses and, you know, TikTok, Instagram.

I get a lot, you know, obviously there's haters out there that just don't understand. The kids that say, I would never buy that. First of all, they don't own a house. They never had an investment they wanted to pour equity into. Secondly, they bought Jordans. They have a brand new iPhone. They're wearing Travis Matthews shirts. And I'm looking at this going, you just buy different stuff. It's interesting. I had a marketing company come in that the guy that invented just do it for Nike and they saved KFC and they also saved old spice. And it's so interesting how much opportunities there are. Like I'm working on an affiliate

marketing campaign. There's three buckets by the way, and I got the number one person in affiliate marketing in the world. And she said, I had it all wrong, first of all. The three buckets are, there's like powerhouse affiliates that could drive thousands of leads. The second one is influencers on social media. And then the third bucket is your customers and your employees. And there are three different bubbles. And if you do it right, which I'm going to do, it's going to account for 40% of all my leads by the end of next year. And it's a process and it's a lot of work and it's not instant gratification. It's going to take work. We're going to fall down a few times. We're going to get back up. I'm already prepared for what it's going to look like. And I just, I think about this and

everybody's like, I want to learn affiliate marketing. And I'm like, well, you got to be patient. It's like SEO. It doesn't happen overnight. I've been working on SEO since 2012, building links, making sure I'm getting reviews, making sure my load speeds, right? The H1 tags, the metadata, the schema data, things that people really don't understand is I had to engulf myself with marketing. And is I had to engulf myself with marketing. And then I had to learn my numbers in accounting. And those are the two things. And then I needed to build a team. If owners just did those three things, they study marketing, they build their team up and they know their numbers, they'd be far more successful.

The fourth thing that you said is dream bigger. They got to dream bigger because a million dollars is not a lot of money. I'm sorry. I mean, a hundred million in my eyes is not where I want to be. I mean, we built a plan yesterday. I built a plan that I should be able to take $3 billion in 2027, $3 billion for myself. And I'll be, let's see, 44. And it's not about the, how many lives could I change? How many people could I affect is where I, where I go with that. Because literally I have enough money now that I couldn't like money is not the motivator anymore, but it is a KPI. And it lets you know, like I said, I mean, an apple tree is supposed to produce as many apples as possible. That's the answer to that question.

If you say how many apples, have you ever heard the quote, you can count the amount of seeds in an apple, but you can't count the amount of apples in a seed? Like humans are like seeds. I mean, literally we come from a seed, if you know what I mean, but we're supposed to grow and expand. God made the fish to swim and they swim. And this is another Myronism, but he makes the birds to fly and they fly and we're supposed to grow and expand and produce. I don't think everyone's destined to be a billionaire, but you are clearly built to be an entrepreneur. And so it's your moral obligation to do as much of it as you can, which is what you're doing. I mean, most people that have a problem with that, it's rooted in envy and jealousy because they want the fruit without getting their grapes crushed. They want the wine without getting the grapes crushed.

They want the result without paying the price. You know, like all the things you're saying are totally logical. Know your numbers, hire a good team, get A players instead of B players, get double down on marketing. None of that really moves a needle for people though, because I don't think we have an information problem in the first place. We have a behavior problem. Think about education. Like when you were coming up even in 2006, 2007, there wasn't a global network of nine and 10 figure CEOs teaching you everything they knew on the internet. This information was hidden. It's out there now.

There's like 22 year olds with a hundred million dollar businesses now, and they're just doing three hour long interviews. So it's not an information problem. It's a behavior problem. It's a belief problem. That's what it is. It's a limited thinking. Some people just aren't hungry. You know, I always say the one thing you can't coach another person to have is hunger. You can't help, but be hungry. You hungry. And that's good. But a lot of people just aren't. They're just not. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix that. Well, it's like you said, I think you got to start fixing yourself first. I mean, literally, like you look in the mirror and you say, I'm going to become a better dad, a better husband, a better son, a better daughter. I know I need to get into shape, but listen, anybody that wants

to get into shape, eat a high protein diet, stay away from alcohol, cigarettes, take some vitamins and drink a lot of water, get your sleep. I mean, we all know like there's all these bad diets, all this crazy stuff. We know what we need to do. Like we got to work out, we got to exercise, we got to burn more calories than we intake and your body will look good over three, four months. I mean, why is it, why is it that everybody just, they lie to themselves? Like they, they literally look at themselves and they say, I know what I need to do today. And then they go start their day and then they don't do what they need to do. I admit, I have my issues too. It's weird because we are habits. And depending on, I don't think you can just change a habit.

You kind of need to replace a habit because, you know, if you watch a lot of TV, you've got to do something else in that time. But I think people pick really poor habits. I looked at a picture like 1970 in a beach, and I don't know where it was, but it was all skinny people. Maybe it was because of a beach. Maybe it was an outlier. But it just seems like, you know, you don't feel healthy.

You don't take care of yourself. You don't look people in the eye when you walk in a room. You don't own the room. You don't think your self-worth is enough. You'll never show up as a great leader. I mean, these are hard things to talk about for a lot of people. I don't mind because I know people want to hear it. It's the truth.

And it's like they're just kind of happy. Ten years goes by and they haven't changed anything. And they're just kind of living. They're just kind of there. But they don't have any ambition. And I know we're beating this up a little bit, but I just I'm trying to figure out. I mean, you work with a lot of companies and most companies, I will say power washing. I looked heavy, heavy, heavy into it.

And we were talking about Wesley before we started the podcast and he's, he's one of the best power washers out there. And I looked at his team, he's got like 40 people, but I think he's doing probably four or 5 million. And I'm like, man, like that goes back. Cause I'm really like, I hang out with the service saying people all the time. Like I just followed where the private jets were. Like literally I said, who has the most private jets? And I saw HVAC and that's what I went and studied. Yeah. I don't know what, you know, Wesley comes out once a year and he sits down with every manager on my team and takes a ton of notes back. Yeah. Wesley's also, when I met Wesley, he was a college student. He bought one of my courses and he was in college, you know,

doing the course instead of paying attention to the college class type of thing. And he got started and he did really well. He was a college football player, actually, doing six figures when he was still in college. But the thing is, he knows what he wants. Like Wesley knew he wanted to hit a certain revenue number before he was 30 years old and he meant it. So he would think him big. He was clear on what he wanted.

The things we talked about in the beginning, Wesley's had that. He's a man on a mission, right? And to him, that's the starting point. Then he can step into Tommy Mello's footprints. I think he's going to do really big things. But why are people not hungry? I think a lot of them are just comfortable. I don't know what your opinion is on the 2024 recession

that seems to be waiting to happen, but that's really good. If that happens, it's going to help a lot of people get hungry and get motivated. A lot of the time, really the last, I don't know, maybe six years or maybe longer, a lot of these companies, Tommy, they make a great living. They might make six figures as an owner. They're not trying that hard. just from organic demand on Google or just the housing boom. There's just so much growth happening. And so they can kind of not work that hard and be okay. It's like the golden handcuffs. It's like they're trapped by it being easy. And maybe part of what helped you too is going in right before the great recession or something. I don't know. But I also think it's a huge, there's an opportunity, maybe, maybe part of what helped you too, is going in right before the great recession or something. I don't know,

but I also think it's a huge, there's an opportunity Josh is it's going to flush out a lot of companies. And a lot of people are like, man, aren't you worried? You got all these employees, you got all this inventory, you got all these trucks. Like what are the economy like tanks? I'm like, I'm planning on it. Yeah. I'm like, but I'm super lean. You can, I have everybody I work with putting an acquisitions tab on their website, mailing out acquisition letters to all their local small competition. And they're not even

real acquisitions at this level, but you know, their asset sales. So you can buy phone numbers, domain names, you know, customer lists for nothing, right? A lot of these people are just going to disappear next year. And I think it's a great opportunity. I think it's a good opportunity to get militant on your own expenses. What expenses are not mission critical? Tighten up the belt. It's the economy's way of the body has atrophy when it eats its own dead cells. It's kind of like what a contraction will do in the economy. So I think, I remember, I actually tell another story about you sometimes when I get interviewed or I'm speaking.

And I called you during COVID or we talked on the phone and I'm going to do my Tommy Mello voice now, okay? So you were like, I was like, dude, everything's shutting down. What do you think about this? And this is what you said. You said, oh my God, Josh, I've never been more excited than I am right now. It's absolutely

phenomenal. I'm buying everything. I'm buying everything. And you were talking about Christmas lights at that time and you were buying as much inventory as you could. And you were doing the exact opposite of what everybody else was doing, which is why, you know, that worked out great. But I distinctly remember that because it was so contrarian compared to the average little guy or whatever. People have an acronym I coined as FOPO, which is for fear, overwhelm, procrastination, and overthinking. And most people just live in their head, just paralyzed.

And then there's people like you out there just running through walls and doing all kinds of crazy stuff. On the one hand you should be thankful like god help me steward this like life that you've placed in my hand like because to whom much is given much is required right so you're gonna you're gonna have big boy level results how are you gonna be the billionaire that absolutely walks with integrity for real how do you you not like, how do you manage that? It's a heavy weight. You know, William Shakespeare said heavy is the head that wears the crown. So on the one hand be like humbled before that. But on the other hand, that's just what you're built to do, man. But for the little,

it's like inevitable. I mean, for me, I don't feel this fear or pressure. I don't, I don't know what that feels like. I mean, there are times where I feel pressure, but I don't have the mindset of pressure and fear. You know, there's an Incubus song I talked about at the last event I had, the Freedom event, of sometimes you let the will of uncertainty take the will and steer. You know that song. I don't know that song and uh it's specifically i used to wait well it's called drive okay it's called drive by incubus and i just feel like sometimes people they just let the feel the fear drive everything and you know you said man well the billionaire comes a lot of challenges

maybe maybe with 200 billion but i don't feel with a few billion, this pressure. And here's another thing is I'll always be able to look over my shoulder. I'll always be able to know I stood with integrity and took care of people. And I think a business should be built to sell. John Rorlo wrote the book, Built to Sell. Build a company you could sell so you could take care of your employees. It's not the end of your life. Don't identify your business with who you are as a person. And understand that that's the liquidation event that's going to set you free. And then money will give you an opportunity to go in new places you never thought possible. Your whole mindset will change.

But people, I asked everybody in the audience, who wants to sell in the next 10 years? 40% of the hands went up. And it doesn't make sense to me. They say, well, we want to do what you did. We want to grow to like hundreds of millions of dollars. And I said, why? Well, you showed it was possible. Well, what are you going to do with that? What's the goal? Who are you going to help? What's your life going to look like? Well, it's going to be great. A lot of people, they think about what they're going to buy. But millionaires and billionaires, specifically billionaires, they don't think about, if I make this much money, here's what I'll spend it on.

I think of everything I invest in as, can I get my money back out and will it appreciate? Like, I bought these rocks. They were like $55,000. Amethyst. And I bought them from Uruguay. My cousin is in Kalamazoo. He's in the rock business. So he sourced them for me.

And he said, these rocks, they're in my garage right now. They're getting set up. They're worth 100 garage right now. They're getting set up. They're worth a hundred grand a pop. So people are like, why would this guy waste $55,000? Well, it makes me happy. I like the rocks. And if I need to sell them, I'll get out from underneath them. Even the DeLorean I bought as an investment, even though it's a cool car and it's fun and it's back to the future, the flex capacitor. But it's just a different way of thinking. People want to make money so they can spend it. And I'm like, how do I hold on to it?

And how do I help a lot more people? And in the next event, we're going to probably build 200 millionaires. And then the IPO, we're going to build thousands of millionaires. And every investment I've made this year, Josh, every single investment has got a five-year plan or less in businesses that I've partaken in. And there's no less than 500 million that I want to see from each investment. That's the minimum threshold I want to get the companies to, 500 million. I mean, a couple of them might go over 300 million, depending on the founder owner, where they're at. But people are like, how could you get so many businesses to 500 million? And it's just math. We need more leads, more conversion, more booking rate, and more acquisitions of clients. It's a pretty simple principle. It is if you're looking at it logically. But the problem is, is that people are very emotional and

irrational. And you're not wrong. But like we said a few minutes ago, I think the reason people are stuck is all psychological reasons. It's self-sabotage reasons. It's childhood things, false beliefs. It's what it is. People either aren't hungry enough in general, meaning they're not willing to suffer for the bigger result or suffer more units of pain for it, or they just don't believe that they can do it, man. They just don't. I don't think most people can do what you're doing. They just can't. I mean, you have a certain level of, maybe we call it, I don't want to just call it pain tolerance because it's not like you're just suffering the whole way, but you just work hard. You take five hours worth of notes on a Sunday night because that's who you are. Most people just can't handle that. And I don't think they're bad

for not handling it. They're just different. I just think the whole thing is so fascinating. I think entrepreneurship in general is a gift. I think it's our opportunity to serve the world. And I literally mean that. I think it's a huge advantage for my kids to be exposed to at a young age. I think it's awesome. And most people are going to have smaller companies than Tommy does. But I think the whole category is still amazing. But maybe because you're so others-focused, which you've been like that ever since I've known you, however long it's been, five or six years. We talk occasionally. You've always talked about your staff, your employees,

the people you're helping, the people you're acquiring and rolling up and doing the second bite and all the things that you do. You're always talking about that every single time. If it's not that, you're talking about numbers and marketing. Numbers, marketing, and how you're going to make other people rich every single time I talk to you. The average little guy is just thinking about how to survive and how to pay their mortgage and buy groceries and not go bankrupt. You'll appreciate this story. And I shared it a couple of times, but I got a call from a guy and he goes,

hey, I'm not an angel. I'm not, you know, I'm a man of God. But he goes, I'm just supposed to get ahold of you about something. And I said, okay, he goes, I promise I'm not crazy. He goes, but I had this image that was vivid that popped into my brain. And I was just meant to call you. You were on your knees crying. And you made a deal with Jesus. And he said, I just am supposed to tell you, remember the deal you made and honor him. Because everywhere you're at today is because of that. Because of that day and what happened.

It was when my dad had COVID and he was, his oxygen dropped to like 60%. And my sister called the hospital and called and they said, get there because you got to say goodbye. And I just, I was pounding on the steering wheel and he's, he moved into my house in Scottsdale. We went golfing on a Saturday and he's doing great. We played bags and we played darts and he came

over. We had Thanksgiving obviously on Thursday. So, and my dad and I were driving to Sedona after that. And all we talked about was the Bible. And one of the things you've always kind of called me and just said, hey, listen, there's more to this life. There's something bigger going on. Just be open to what's happening. And just keep your ears open and your eyes open because you're meant to do more than just home service or talking on home service business stages or podcasts. So I think more than ever, there's some stuff going on, and I'm trying to be susceptible. I'm not as – you're in a great spot, and I'm just trying to be open to it and see where it takes me

because I'm not afraid to be open to it and see where it takes me because I'm not afraid to talk about God. Obviously, I'm not here to tell everybody to repent and pay for their sins or something because I don't want to make this all about religion. But I think it's important to discuss it because I do believe in Jesus. And, you know, we've got to go to church. I don't got to go to church, but it makes me feel better. And we got this great church, if you're ever out in Phoenix, it's called Impact Church, Travis Hearn. And I think there's going to be a lot of good stuff coming.

And I know that I'm here to do more than just tell people about KPIs and marketing. Dude, Tommy, I met you, you were doing 30 million in revenue. So whenever year that was, that's when I first talked to you. You're clearly anointed to do all kinds. I think you're just getting started, right? I mean, you're still young. It's impossible that you're smarter now than you'll be in 10 years. It's impossible. Your hunger isn't going to go away. So it's going to be fun to watch what God does. The world's crazy and there's a plan for your life and everybody listening to this, a very specific one. The Bible says that before the foundations of the world, he created good works for you. What that means is that the stuff he wanted you to do, he made before he made you.

Like the stuff we're supposed to do is so important that it was put in place before we were put in place. So it matters a lot to God what we do with our talents, you know, and the grow and expand thing. How many apples will an apple tree make? You're an apple tree person listening to this, like make apples and maybe making apples for you is feeding orphans. Go feed a freaking ton of orphans, like scale that, like whatever it is. I mean, 10 out of 10 people die. Every watch has a watchmaker. I know that everybody was made on purpose for a purpose and I'm going to just die trying to do

living my life according to that. Jesus is real, whether there's a religious podcast or not. And I'm not religious at all. Sometimes I say shit. Sometimes I get mad. I'm just a person, But it's really true. And business is about way more than business. The ripple effect is insane.

There's probably some guy in Iowa that binged 100 of your podcasts, changed his whole life. And you will never even meet that person. And the good you're putting in the world by just publishing and putting it out on top of everything else you're doing, it's just abnormal and insane. Very, very good for the world. So I'm happy to know you. I'm just going to eat my popcorn down here in Texas and watch you go get your 3 billion and buy your, I'm going to go visit. I'm going to come visit you. I'm going to come to Dallas and I want to, I want to come to, uh, Ludington too. You know, Josh, I got a question that, uh, a lot of my buddies have been having kids the last seven, eight years and recently.

And, you know, I got a lot of buddies that have done really well. And they're kind of in this conundrum of how much do they give their kids. And I'm just curious, and this is for the listeners and for me, you know, they're like, well, they'll fly first class with us till they turn six and they could go back to the main cabin. And listen, this is all perspective. This is your opinion. But when you do really well financially, but you don't want your kids like, I know what it's like to not have a lot. I didn't, we wouldn't have food stamps. The church helped us out a lot when I was a kid for Christmas and Thanksgiving with the turkey and stuff like that. But my mom worked three jobs. So I know what

it feels like to not have anything. And I think that's where the hunger was built. And I think sometimes you hear these trust fund babies, right? That's what they call them. What are your thoughts on the right way to do that? Because this is really what you're doing now is helping people understand these things. Such an awesome question. My wife and I've been married 21 years, started in a trailer park. I was a pizza delivery driver when I got married. I had cars repossessed. I filed bankruptcy to get out of that trailer in my early 20s. It was humiliating. It's just such a psychological, very crappy thing. So with all that being said, when I think about this question, I think the answer to it is doing what's called the Rockefeller model, which I'm still learning and studying myself. I actually had a meeting with Russell

Brunson's dad. People don't know his dad is a really high-level tax strategist and estate planner guy. But what you do is you essentially treat your family's money like a bank and your kids are board members, right? And so they can get access to capital, but there's rules and it's done as debt. So they're paying back the bank, right? And then the family's voting on if this is a good venture or bad venture. So if Billy wants to go blow a hundred grand on cocaine and strippers, he's not going to get another loan type of thing. Or maybe he can get a $10,000 loan and rebuild the trust. But the idea is that they manage the asset as partners, which I think is really interesting. Because I do think it's dangerous for kids to have too much. Like Mike, I love my kids,

but we make them buy their own stuff. They have to buy their own car. They have their own money. They started their own businesses. My oldest started a candy machine business when he was eight. He exited it for 1200 bucks when he was eight. And which was like a billion dollars to an eight year old, you know. But when he started that candy machine business, I had him walk into 25 businesses at seven years old and ask for the manager and read a script he memorized. And he got rejected 25 times to place five candy machines. So things like that are helpful and important. I think just speaking life into your kids, you know, speaking like the Bible says that there's life and death in the power of the tongue, which is totally true.

I mean, one offhanded comment to your daughter could change the trajectory of her life for 35, 40, 50, 60, 70 years. How many 52-year-old women right now still talk about that mean thing their dad said, right? So fathers have a lot of power with the words that they say. So speaking life, letting your kids know that it's not about them. Like my kids all know that my wife is more important than they are. For example, right? When, if they talk back to Ashley, I say, don't talk to my wife that way. I don't say, don't talk to your mother that way. It's my wife. Like, who are you? I can make more of you. So I don't, I can, I can recreate you, you know? So I think those types of things, teaching them how to make money. You know,

I also had an idea. I mean, kids are all still young, but the idea of they'll get access to a certain amount of capital as they accumulate it. Like they need to accumulate a minimum number of something to get access to the rest somehow, you know, like if they can't go get a million dollars in cash accumulated, why would you give them a bunch more like they need to be able to have the skills to go do it so um well do you say here's the question i was on grant cardone's podcast about a month six weeks ago and he said would you go to would you go back to college like do you think college is a real thing and i said said, you know, I got a master's degree. I don't think it changed the trajectory of where I was going. I sat at a great table that these kids knew a lot

about SEO and I learned a lot from them, but I learned more about how to network. And I literally what I'm going to teach my kids and I don't have any yet, but I'm just going to teach them to believe in themselves. Eye contact's important. Put your head up. Like when you walk in, I hated when my dad said, if I knew at your age what I know now and what he was talking about now hindsight, it's just he didn't care if he got a rejection. And I get rejected all the time and I don't care. I really don't care when somebody says no. Because I'm going to ask a thousand more times. And it, that doesn't, I don't fear. I go for no, it's a great book. Go for no. And I just don't care.

I just don't. And if my kids could have that thing, like I went to every teacher and said, I need to get an A in your class in college. I need to get an A in your class. I'm willing to work as hard as I have to with the TA, which is the teacher's assistant. I brought in an apple, which is just a respectable thing to do, which nobody does anymore. And I said, my name's Tommy Mello. And I said, there's my name on the roster. And I go talk to them. And I said, if I'm falling below, I need you to make sure to pull me aside and tell me what I need to do to earn an A in this class. And I can't tell you, Josh, how many people said I was on the border of a B and an A. And if that killed the final presentation

or the last paper that they would bump me to an A. Just because I asked. It wasn't this high IQ, it was EQ. And that's all I want. I think IQ is something where you could learn a lot if you learn the right habits and you learn how to study correctly. But even studying, I studied the day before the test. I retained the information I needed. I'd read the answers before the questions. My roommate spent six years to get into the GMAT. I took it one day. I actually had a DUI and I studied a little book in tent city. It's called, I was in there for three days, walking around, reading this book about how to beat the GMAT. And I went to the test after it and I got right in. Of course. I'm not bragging about it i'm just saying just kids it is important i remember so

many little things that impacted who i was and really the foundation i'll give you a pre-warning though right now your kids are going to be a lot different than you think and what's really crazy is that each kid is totally different you'd think there'd be some consistency if you take a josh you take an ashley kid comes out right you'd think if you do that, there's going to be no, they're totally different, independent, sovereign human beings. It's a weird thing. So the Bible says, raise your children in the way they should go and they will not depart from it. But people actually misunderstand that verse. It's a really practical parenting tip. What it really means if you do a word study on it is raise your children according to their bend. What I see a lot of fathers and mothers do is they try to recreate their children

in their image. And what happens is it can create a lot of resentment and kids will freak out and overcorrect and do something out. Like, I guess what I'm saying is we don't know if Tommy Mello Jr. or Sally Mello is going to be anything like you in terms of the way you are with those types of things right and that's what makes it really challenging to be a parent because it's like they might be into weird things you know and if you think you pray now you'll pray a lot more and you have kids trying to figure it out here is a little thing that i think everybody needs to hear is if i'm going to be a successful parent, I'm not going to try to reinvent the wheel.

I'm going to find kids that are five, seven, 10, that I like the way that they they're respectful. They look me in the eye. You can see a kid that has good parents. I mean, Oh yeah. Especially today. The bar is low, bro. It is low. I mean, the bar is low in home service. Think about it. You're lucky if you even answer your phone. A lot of people don't answer their phone. They're like, wow, we don't work Saturdays or Sundays. We don't answer the phone. How dare somebody call me after five? There's a low bar everywhere we look. I'll tell you what, great times create weak people, period.

And you want to know how to rank number one on Angie's list? Find the number one guy on Angie's list with the most reviews. Might be an HVAC or roofing or solar. Call him up and go spend a day with him. You want to know how to become a better parent? Find kids that you really respect and talk to those parents. Form a little group like you do and just ask a lot of questions. And you're not going to get it all perfect, but I just feel like success leaves clues everywhere. Nobody wants to ask. I'm not going to try to go about this on myself and just read a couple of books. I'm going to go ask people, what did you do when they, you know, I'm the first person to ask. And I don't think

there's a dumb question. And I'm not going to raise kids exactly how anybody else is in particular but i'm sure there's some things that i could learn along the way from a guy like you and so i'm gonna ask the smartest thing i ever did is one-on-ones with my kids every week and i miss weeks all the time and i always have but over 10 years ago i started doing ma Maverick Monday, Tucker Tuesday, Sawyer Sunday, Judah May Thursday and Finley Friday because I have too many kids. I'm going to run out of days of the week. But that one thing by itself is like rocket fuel to your child. I think it's actually completely wrong that your kid needs huge quantities of time with

you all the time. They need intentional, focused, quality, you know, of time with you all the time. They need intentional, focused, quality, meaningful time with you, where you're laying on the floor and you're all in on the Lego thing. If you're playing Legos, you go all in, right? You are the guy in character with the voice and you are in the world. And if it's for 42 minutes, it's for 42 minutes. But they have that stability to look forward to, I think is huge. And I think another big thing that's been helpful, like making kids do things on their own. Our know, our kids are six years old. We'd have them go buy milk at the grocery store by themselves. Now we would stalk and walk behind them and like, they didn't know we were there though. Right. And so they walk up to the counter and they're like

putting the milk up like this, like with a $10 bill. Right. Little, little things like that. And like, not just remembering that the purpose of childhood is to prepare for adulthood. Like the purpose of being a kid isn't to stay a kid. It's training for adulthood. When you were 12 years old, 150 years ago, you had a rifle and you were the man of the house when dad had to go to town for two weeks. And like, you took care of business, you know, like kids are kids too long now. The word teenager is actually a modern construct anyway. It's only about a hundred years old or so. Like that wasn't even a thing. You know, back in the day, people got married when they were 14 or 15, which they, I'm not saying that we should do that. But my point is

that kids are capable more than you think. And they can have existential conversations when they're little. You're three-year-old. You can say, why do you exist? Ask them that. They don't know, but they get some thinking different, right? Yeah. And quality one-on-ones. Did I ever show you the – I don't have one here at my desk, but we made this little journal, and we did it as a family project.

And I told my kids, I said, you can invent something in your brain, sell it on the Internet to strangers, and make a profit. And it took 18 kids, I said, you can invent something in your brain, sell it on the internet to strangers and make a profit. And I walked and took 18 months to get this thing made. And we sold over a million dollars worth of this book. It's like a project. My kids helped design it and they shipped every single one of them out. And it's this 90 day journal. It teaches them a different word each day, like respect, teaches them the difference between money and currency, teaches them all the stuff they don't learn in school in a fun way and just bringing them into your world, man. Like bring them in, let them participate. Oh, thank you. Well, it looks like this. It looks

like it came out of Lord of the Rings, right? This was our family project. This isn't like our core business, but this is all handmade paper right these are all handmade and uh it's crazy that we sold a million bucks of these things but what do you think that did for our kids confidence my 16th one that made the ad that we ran on facebook ran a million views worth of ads to his ad that he made up he edited it he recorded it right they're shipping it putting the stuff in the box they're inspecting each book because there's errors in them because they're handmade. There'll be a page upside down sometimes. All those types of things. I love it, man. Do you mind if we go through a speed round real quick? I want to ask you just speed round questions. What should you be thinking about

going into 2024 as a small home service business? How to make your customers worth more money and how to plug the holes in your bucket, like hands down. Like you mentioned briefly, people don't market to their own customers hard enough. It's so bad, it's literal free money. But we also need to make the customers worth more. We need either a high ticket offer or some sort of back end offer. We need more choreography. We got to double down on the marketing. We have to understand that marketing is everything and everything is marketing. Meaning, how do we choreograph exactly?

Like, where's the nuance? How do we price anchor people? How are we extracting maximum value from the customers we already have? And then I guess the second tip would be put an acquisitions tab on your website, start mailing all your competitors that you're growing and expanding. And if they're ever thinking to get out of the business that you'd love to buy them a cup of coffee and talk to them, that'll freak them out even more. I would add to that, pay attention to your call center because most people are not getting back to form fills fast and most people are not answering the phone on the first ring. Most people don't understand how local service ads work on Google and they're hurting themselves. What's the one thing that you've seen as a paradigm shift in mindset that really helps people

take control of their business and really their lives? If you had to put it into one thing that you've witnessed. Yeah. There are a lot of people dumber than you that already have what you want. People that are ahead of you in most categories turn out to be painfully average or disappointingly normal. I think we put people on pedestals. They're just people. They have one or two, three core things they do different that makes all the difference. And it's not your genetics and you don't have to be a genius Harvard MBA to succeed at a high level. Usually it comes down to four things. It's confidence, consistency, clarity, and community. The people you're around,

the confidence you have, I like Alex Ramosi's definition of confidence the best. It's having a stack of irrefutable proof that you are who you say you are. If you just work on those four things, you can have anything you want. And the people that are successful, a lot of little businesses, Tommy, they think that those people are smarter than them. No, they're not, but they are more confident. They're way more consistent. They're absolutely crystal clear on what they want. They're surrounded by big dog fighter jets going to big places. That's the difference. Do you feel like people should build a business that they can sell? And I know it's not a one size fits all answer, but when you're thinking about it, you've taken a lot of things and sold them. So I think you're kind of the same mindset as I am. Should people think about building a

business with clarity that's worth a lot of money? And if so, what's the timeframe? Unless you're a selfish jerk, you should build a sellable business. Because it's a hedge of protection for your staff. It'll ultimately provide better service for your customers. It provides more opportunity. You're going to build a better mousetrap if you're building it to sell. Just like when people are going to sell their house, what do we do at our house? We make it the way

we want it. Yeah, we make it perfect, right? So if you're building your business through that frame, even if you're not going to sell, you're going to build a better business and your business isn't just about you. Like your breakthrough isn't just for you. Like you not playing bigger and going harder is very, very selfish. And that might sound harsh. I literally believe that you're selfish by not playing bigger, thinking bigger, building a sellable business because you're making it all about me, me, me, me, me. I think one of the most selfish things I've ever heard a man say is I just want to make enough to take care of my family. I think it's incredibly limited thinking. I think it's extremely selfish and it's embarrassing to me because we're capable of way

more than that. You know, taking care of our family is like a step one on a hundred point checklist of what we're capable of. So yes, you should do that. One other question. We'll wrap things up here. I got like a closed down questions too, but everybody asks me several questions, but the one most common is, man, I need a great number two. And I'll just kind of give you what my answer is. As I say, do you have a job description of what you consider success? What does their day look like? What type of person is this? What will they be responsible for? And a lot of people are like, they're just, they're going to be my general

manager. They're going to help me with everything. And they really don people are like, they're just, they're going to be my general manager. They're going to help me with everything. And they really don't even know what the person's going to do. They're just like, I just need somebody great, but yet they're not great. And until they change, this person would never work for you. But when it comes to finding a great number to someone that's like, like I found in 2014 and I had my mom and stepdad as well in 2010, that they were unbelievably amazing. But regardless of that, I trust trust is a big deal.

I think when you're finding somebody, but what do you tell somebody that says, I need to find great people. I need this great number two. I need somebody in there to watch my back when I'm not there. You're way better to answer that question than me, just because of the size of the companies that I've built. But I still have an opinion.

I just don't know if it's worth anything. My opinion is, is number one, you have to, you don't want yes men. You want someone that can iron sharpens iron, can tell you that they disagree with you, right? If the two opinions are the same, one of them is unnecessary. And the other big thing is you want to, I don't know if I should say delegate instead of abdicate, but what happens is when people get business partners, at least from small companies I talk to, what they really want, they don't want a number two. What they want is someone to save their day. And I know that's not how you're framing the

question with where your head's at, but the little guys out there doing less than 3 million, they're just so overwhelmed. They want someone to like take all the stress off their plate. And that's why it never works because they're abdicating responsibility. The word abdication is a fancy word for essentially a king taking off his crown and just like putting it on someone else's head

so they have to run the city now. Like they have to fix the sewage backup problem and the angry angry citizens and all this stuff and that just doesn't work i mean if you're a fighter jet personality like you and you need a number two to do specific things yeah it's going to work for a little business most of them i don't know i think i think they get partnerships for the wrong reason and partnerships are easy to get into and hard to get out of. It's like marriage. Especially, I will say that if I'm looking for somebody great, there's an equity incentive pool that we're able to hire from. And this year we're doing, if we hit our stretch goal going into 2024, it's double bonus, which means if they make a hundred grand, they can get 200 grand more based off of gross profit and revenue growth. And people are like, man,

and I must have 30 people on this pay structure. And they're like, well, wouldn't that be an extra $2 million? But it's a one-time fee. So it's an ad back. And if we hit this stretch goal, the enterprise value is so much that it's one of the keys to get people to do more than they would normally do. And then on top of that, the equity piece. So destination and i don't believe in the destination i mean there's a couple more and then i'm going to do a lot more stuff but there is a a cash event yeah where they're going to change their family tree and i don't think people i've never heard anybody say tommy i want to hire somebody i need to become a better listener i want to hire somebody i need

to become a better leader i need to hire somebody I need to figure out how they're going to win. I need to figure out how to change their life and change their family's life and make sure they're set up for life. I've never had anybody ask me that. Because it's rare, man. I mean, this whole question is talking to people at a level up here, right? The 32 million small business owners we were talking about in the beginning, this is so far beyond what they're thinking about. What they want is they want a life preserver because they're disorganized. They don't even work that hard. They don't know their numbers. They don't market or sell hard enough. And they want a quote unquote general manager to save the day for them. And it almost never works that way.

So we're almost talking about two different things. I mean, the original question is a really high level question, which you should answer. If I'm talking to the little guy, it's like, get your shit together, stop making excuses and forget about hiring a general manager until you stabilize the mess that's in your hand first, you know, then maybe talk about it. But these little companies throw away equity like it's crazy because it's not worth anything. And so they dole it out like cotton candy to all their buddies. Oh, he's a firefighter. He's a great guy. He came to my cookout. I'm going to give him equity. He can be, he's the answer. It's like, no, that's a really bad idea. Nine out of 10 times. Yeah. We set up an EIP program with

the lawyers that I paid 350,000 for. And the part of my group, I got it to where it's $30,000, but it's got to be very thoughtful. And that's where someone at like a CFO level or a high-level CPA could kind of break out. The way that equity should work is it's vested and it could be on several goals. It could be on a timeframe and it could be on certain benchmarks. And where the company sits today, never give out real equity. It should be a form of phantom equity that vests over time, that the person has a stake in what they've created,

not what you've created before them. And it's hard to explain in just a few sentences, but Josh, can you real quick take, I know what SendJim is, It's a way to hit, walk through every one of your businesses real quick. So everyone listening kind of understands them. SendJim.io is a postcard mailing thing, but it does some unique things. So when I originally designed it, what had happened was my little cleaning business, my first marketing lever was sending a postcard with a picture of

the person's house on the front of the card with a real price on it. And we were getting a four and a half percent booking rate on these cards. This is over 10 years ago, but they're a pain in the butt to make. So I would go to these targeted neighborhoods, take a picture of a house, put a price, mail it to people. It was like a foot in the door price, very little information on the car, but generated massive phone calls. And it was like eight or 10 times more effective than a normal postcard. So I built the software for my own cleaning business originally, and then it became its own thing. So today people don't use it for that. It does a lot of automation. So for example, if you do a service at a house, it can automatically market to all the neighbors of that house. You can send post like brownies and caramels and gummy bears to people. You can send birthday cards with Amazon gift cards. It's like a send out

cards except it's less expensive. It's way faster and it's built for small business and it's not a multi-level marketing. It also has radius bomb, which is a Google map where you can just target just the lakefront homes or just one home or just the homes with trees if you're a gutter cleaner or something. So it does a lot of really cool stuff with direct mail. My current company is called Warplan. So I got warplan.com. This is new. It's a software and education company.

It's all about marketing. It's all about how to create a lever. You know, the magical box where you put a dollar in the top and $8 comes out the bottom. And what we do is we help businesses understand how to make their customers more valuable through better choreography, through better art. You know, business growth is art and science. It's what it is. And the art part of it, it's not just design or what color you use in your ad. It's how do you say it? When do you say it? How often do you say it? What's the timing and the targeting, the urgency, the scarcity? How do you construct offers instead of just having services? It's not window cleaning, yes or no. It's option A, B, or C and how to

construct those things, how to choreograph your phone calls better, how to raise your prices and make people thank you for it. So we're teaching people that there's a software component. I'm excited to show you it because it's absolutely insane and no one's really seen it yet. That's coming out soon. When is that out? We're going to be in beta on December 10th with our first less than 100 businesses. But it's actually Warplan is essentially a coaching platform where people form these battle groups.

Okay. And they're in these cohorts with each other and they're uping their marketing and measuring their levers as a group, as a small group. And it's gamified, it's fun. Basically, a lot of the CRMs, Service Titan's like the mythical, magical, super CRM. But the people I deal with, they don't use Service Titan, right? Because it's like two grand a month or something, I think, for service type. But the CRMs, they don't measure all the actual important stuff. For example, customer acquisition costs, that's not even enough information. Most people don't measure even that. But even if you knew your customer acquisition costs, how do you know what your maximum customer acquisition cost should even be? And what if your average ticket is half, but it has the same

average ticket, or I'm sorry, same customer acquisition costs in two different channels, but you have a $500 average ticket here and a $1,200 average ticket here. What's your cost per lead? What's your closure? There's other things, right? So it'll track all those things. It's really built for someone doing less than 5 million and it's fun. And it's a way they can make money. They can track and they build these levers and it's going to be awesome. That's what I've been working on in Texas. You know, you remind me of something. We'll add this here shortly. I'm having a great time though. Dan Martell made this comment to me. He said, Tommy, I just wish people would buy like they want to be bought from. He goes, I get people all the time. They tell me, you know, I don't want to spend money on coaching. I can't afford it.

But then they wonder why they go to that house and the homeowner says, we can't afford you. We can't afford that right now. And everybody's like, what do you do around the holidays when people don't have money? Cause they're shopping. And then I'm like, guys, I don't have those problems. I just, you know, he gave me a crazy price to coach me one-on-one. And I said, okay, do it. I'll wire you the money tomorrow. The reason I thought of that is because people are like, I can't afford service type. So why don't you do the cheapest you could do on everything you do? Buy shitty trucks, get the worst wraps you could get, get the worst art. Cause most people I see under 5 million have the worst art I've ever seen on their truck. You can't even see what they do.

They picked out a crappy domain. They named it their last name. You know, Latimer washer, watchers are us. Who the hell's going to remember Latimer washers are us? Like the mindset is where people are missing. They can't afford service type. They can't afford Google. They can't afford new trucks. They can't afford to buy their people a lunch or a breakfast a couple of days a week. They can't afford Google. They can't afford new trucks. They can't afford to buy their people a lunch or a breakfast a couple of days a week. They just can't afford it. And that's where they live. That's where their mindset is. That's where the fear comes is we can't afford that right now. Okay. Well, you're going to need to pretend that you're a better company than you are today and start investing into the company because service Titan is not a

cost. It's an investment. And I wish people understood the difference between costs and investments. But I always tell people that are on service Titan, you got a Ferrari, but you're stuck in first gear. You don't even know what it's capable of doing. And we built a bunch of stuff on top of it because they got a really good API. It's totally true. Everything you said is true. It's just cracking me up. Josh, what's a book you've read recently that you think would change some people's lives? Oh, man. So, Poor Charlie's Almanac, have you heard of it?

No. I only just started it, but I know it's going to be legendary because it's already a legendary book but it's it's from charlie munger and it's an old book it's out of print it's hard to find it i paid like 100 bucks for a hardcover of it but uh it's basically charlie munger's life wisdom in a really and it's got all these business case studies different strategic partnerships different marketing things that happen and and just general business advice. And the guy's pretty damn smart.

And I always recommended the book. And it's good so far. But it's young. Another good book is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ayerly. It basically just reminds you that everything everybody does is irrational. Like the person that says they don't want to charge people that much or sell people stuff they don't need. They just have a total fundamental misunderstanding of how humans work.

Like I remember a guy one time, he was a professional golfer. He was in one of my clients and we washed his house and he was trying to beat me up in the price. It was like a $500 job. He's like, Hey, can you do it for 300?

I'll give you cash. You know, he's one of those guys. Yep. And this guy has a hundred thousand dollar boat in his driveway, a million dollar house. He's on the golf course. He's a professional golfer. He just didn't care about washing his house. Right. But that same person will spend five grand on a single golf club the next day. Right. And so it's, it's because we're all irrational. Like we're all premium buyers in certain circumstance where economy buyers in other circumstances, there's nothing wrong with it. The kid that buys the air Jordans, who doesn't own a home, doesn't want to buy a garage door.

He buys the air Jordans for the same psychological reason that the dad buys the garage door because it's status. Like, so that book will help reframe your brain on the truth of the matter. And that's really good. If someone wants to get ahold of you, Josh, what's the best way to do it? Probably a handwritten letter. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. I mean, I have dozens of followers on YouTube now.

That's been fun. YouTube, you can YouTube my name. I'm going to be putting more time into that this year. There's a lot of good stuff on there. That's good. Or you can go to warplan.com and there's a contact form on there. Cool. And last thing I'll do, Josh, is let you, we talked about a lot of stuff.

I actually really enjoy this. This is the way, I didn't want to do this. I actually did not want to be here this morning. And I feel so good. I just typically don't get started after a four-day weekend on Monday with a podcast. But, you know, there's 90 people right now on here. So hopefully a lot of people are enjoying this. I'll let you kind of whatever you want to talk about, maybe something that the listeners should listen to.

Whatever you want to talk about to close this out. Sure, man. First of all, don't fall face first into a pile of leaves that has giant rocks in it because you will lose. But I just want to remind everybody that you were made on purpose for a purpose. You're capable of more than you think you are. And that's just the reality of the situation. I think the world's crazy and it's broken.

It's also beautiful and amazing. There's more opportunity now than ever before. There's no excuse for being poor in America. There's no excuse for being stuck. Right. And you know, I want to congratulate you for following Tommy. Tommy's just an inspirational guy. He can't not talk big, which is one of the reasons I love you, man. And I also know that your heart for the people around you is really true because that's who you I love you, man. And I also know that your heart for the people around you is really true because that's who you are when we talk privately. And I think the reason people like this show is because you're the same on the camera, off the camera, privately, publicly.

And I respect and honor you for that too. And thanks for having me on. Thanks, Josh. Well, tell Ashley I said hi. I love Ashley, man. Every time I think about her, I smile. And you got great kids, great family. I definitely want to spend more time with you.

We talk about this, but I'll be in Dallas probably in January, and I'll make sure to hit you up. And I really appreciate your time today. This was great. Awesome. Thank you. We'll see you soon. All right, brother.

Take it easy, man. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.