The Home Service Expert Podcast - Creating‌ ‌A‌ ‌Winning‌ ‌Brand‌ ‌Strategy‌ ‌to‌ ‌Dominate‌ Your‌ ‌Market‌ ‌And‌ ‌Boost‌ ‌Sales‌

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Ryan Lucia is the founder of Aaron Overhead Doors, Such n Such Media, Garage Door Store, and the Torsion Talk Podcast. A former software executive, Ryan decided he wanted to go blue-collar. He started his own business with a wife and two children at 36 years old. He has since become a mentor, sales leader, marketer, philanthropist, and entrepreneur who has started multiple businesses, including a marketing agency.  In this episode, we talked about leadership, sales management, SEO, B2B, marketing...

I'm a big fan of consultative selling. Here's your situation. Here's your safety inspection, the overall diagnostics of your door and operator. Here's the parts, point at them, show them pictures, whatever. And then here, I've got three options for you. Menu selling is probably the greatest thing they ever invented in sales. Because it takes... It literally makes weak salespeople look great. Psychology says if you actually build these out properly, people will always gravitate towards the middle or the top, depending on if they're an efficiency buyer or if they're a convenience buyer. So if you build it out right, the way that it should be,

people will always gravitate. Most, 75% I think, gravitate towards the middle, and then the rest gravitate towards the top if it's built out right. So doing the menu selling, offering three options, not two options, not one option, not four options, three options. Psychology, psychology, psychology. You can research it all day long. The middle option is always going to be the one people gravitate towards. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Experts. I'm Tommy Mello. And today

I have Ryan Lucia. So Ryan is a fellow garage door guy, also heavily involved in marketing, SEO, B2B, management, leadership. Quick bio, he lives in Beaufort Georgia he's the founder of uh Aaron overhead doors from 2015 to present such and such media the founder from 2019 to present and he's also got a podcast uh torsion talk before getting into the trades to open Aaron overhead doors in Atlanta he was a software executive as an entrepreneur who started multiple businesses including a marketing agency, Ryan decided he wanted to go into the blue collar industry. He started his business with his wife and two children at the age of 36.

He has since become a mentor, sales leader, marketer, and philanthropist. I'm excited to have you on. I went on to your podcast about a year ago. Yeah. you on i went on to your podcast about a year ago yeah and you recently had a huge garage store kind of a virtual an amazing virtual uh what would you call it an event and uh i just door dealer conference door dealer conference it was great a lot of good people showed up well why don't you just tell everybody you know you got in the software you said to go blue collar you do marketing kind of tell us what you've been through the last 10, 15 years

and what you're looking forward to doing here. Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, I always like to tell the story about I dropped out of high school and no college education just because you don't need that. Then I worked my way through the automotive industry, selling cars, finance, running a dealership. That ended up taking so much of my life that I ended up going through a separation and divorce with

my wife at the time. And so I got into the vendor space where I was selling to car dealers. And that led me into a software company called Contact at Once, where they were a startup. And they hired me as the first salesperson. I helped grow that team, the sales team, to 25 people. We sold about six and a half years later for $65 million. A lot of those guys went to a company that got acquired by Carvana, which probably would have been the smart move. But I ended up starting a garage door company. And so the reason I started the garage door company is because way back when I owned a marketing agency and one of my clients was Aaron Overhead Door in California. And he and I became good friends. And so when I was ready to make a move, he suggested

we start an Aaron Overhead Door Atlanta. I flew out to California, trained for four days, four and a half, technically. Came back here, launched the company. And here we are five and a half years later. We got 13 employees. Probably one of the fastest growing, most reputable companies in our area. So let me ask you this. Recently, you said you kind of took a step back. You gave a little bit of reins over to maybe a general manager of sorts.

Yeah. So I honestly got to the point, I'm a builder. I love to build things. I can get them to a certain point and grow them really fast. But once I get to a certain point, that's not really my strength. So I've started a bunch of things and handed them off. And I was trying to hold on to air and overhead doors and kind of do something that was outside of my element. And it really started taking off. I mean, right now, we're going to hit last year's revenue numbers probably by May or June. Wow. Yeah.

That's huge. So you should be 200% up. Does that sound like what the goal is this year? Yeah. If you were to tell somebody that's getting into business, you've had about six years of this industry. I love garage doors. That's my life.

But what would you tell them about starting a home service business? Some things you might've done differently. Doesn't scale like a software company. So if you're coming from software, don't try doesn't scale like a software company. So if you're coming from software, don't try to scale it like a software company. And I would say that from the very early stage, I would say start implementing and investing into employee and employee benefits

and hire employees instead of subcontractors as quick as possible and invest into them because that's your greatest asset. You can buy doors from anywhere, you can get customers from anywhere, as quick as possible and invest into them because that's your greatest asset. Like you can buy doors from anywhere. You can get customers from anywhere. But the most difficult part of the home service industry, in my opinion, is finding great employees.

Yeah, I think that's the secret sauce. I was talking to a guy yesterday and he goes, Tommy, he actually builds pools. He does the digging. And I've known him for a long time. And he's in his 50s. And he goes, I just can't figure out where to get the guys. And I said, I think that's the hardest thing in this business is where do you find great people? And what is your solution to that?

Where have you been able to find great people who show up every day and work hard as if it's their own business? Where do I find them? Yeah. So I use a network of a bunch of different things. So I use an app called Workable. Are you familiar with Work them? Yeah. So I use a network of a bunch of different things. So I use an app called Workable. Are you familiar with Workable?

Yeah. So I love Workable. I actually believe you should spend a decent amount of money recruiting. I think so many people are so interested in spending all their money on advertising to customers, but they don't want to spend any money advertising to potential people who would hire them. So I think that it's important that you invest a little money into that process. So Workable, I'll actually do things on Nextdoor.

I'm a big fan of Nextdoor anyway. Facebook. And then we have a little program where if an employee refers someone and they stay with us for 90 days, they get like a little bonus. So people that way. The referral program is great. I really think that that's like the talent pool. People don't understand how much difference a person that books a lot of phone calls versus not. Or a dispatcher that honestly knows how to make customers feel good about maybe if you're running late or have to cancel to get somebody out there tomorrow. You mentioned possibly, you know, I always mention to people that capacity planning is probably the hardest thing about home service. It's

certain jobs we go to, we might have three overhauls versus maybe selling three new doors and being out of there rather quickly. And so capacity planning is very, very tricky because we've got you in Atlanta. I mean, traffic is crazy. Phoenix is bad too. But what are your thoughts on dispatching? Because this is something we talk about CSRs, we talk about technicians, we talk about door sales, but I never hear people talk about dispatching enough. Yeah, this is definitely something that I'm probably going to be speaking on a lot here in the near future and even doing some training on. But when it comes to like dispatching, for me, I think the number one key component is not to book too many people at like too many appointments and then

prioritizing. So like we've actually put, you know, you guys like a spring change is a priority one, you know, sensorizer priority three, uh, door out of tracks priority one. Sensorizer, priority three. Door-to-track is priority one. So you kind of know. And then you have your priority one appointment windows and priority two appointment windows. And so you try to match them up accordingly. And then all the while, you're trying to do the best you can for your people. So we try to start them out as far away from the house

and then bring them back in. So instead of starting in and going out and having to drive home in traffic. So we try to take all that in consideration. But our repair guys, our service professionals, we only give them four to five jobs a day. That's it, max. And we want them to take their time, build a relationship and do a 32-point safety inspection, evaluate every part and component of the door. I like to give them time to build rapport and understand the customer's needs and evaluate the entire door, all the parts

and everything. So if that's happening, you can't do that 10 times a day. And so I want to slow down, do it right, make an impression and build a relationship. I tell people three jobs is more than enough and they go, how do you guys make money with three jobs? And I say, well, a customer wants to talk a little bit about their Harley. If you love Harleys or you like bikes or you like older vehicles or 10 speeds, the garage door is the pastime. It has a lot of cool stuff in it. And I think it's important to really find out you're building a relationship. You know know you get invited to dinner you get invited it's crazy when i was in the garage of how many relationships you build right and those are the gifts that keep giving they're literally going to refer you and my guys tell me all the time

that they build relationships and then they'll go tell their neighbors and then they'll go recruit people for you i mean there's so much more to it than just fixing the garage door. And I don't know what it is. Community involvement too. Like it like feeds into community involvement. And this has driven me crazy. And I know it probably drives you crazy, but there's a lot of people out there that aren't owners that are on these forums, garage door installers of North America and a lot of these.

And, and they always say that companies, you know, if you're charging more than $800 a door or $200 for springs or $400 for an opener, you're a ripoff. And they brag and they really think whoever sells them bearing plates or drums is lying. Whoever sells bottom rubber is cheating. Whoever sells a strut on the bottom panel. And they brag about, I call it MacGyvering a unit. They make it work, but then they're back there. Ryan, I get a lot of calls about people that say, I've had this company out three times and I've done with it. I don't care what it costs, just fix it.

I'm just curious your mentality on it, because there's these bottom feeders in every industry. And I hate to call them that, but that's the facts. And the fact is, I had 15 companies here last week. And I said, guys, you might think I charge a lot, but you're screwing over your people and your family. You think you're taking care of your customers, but you're shitting on your employees. You're shitting on your family. They're lucky if they make 50 grand for you. They don't have any incentives. They drive an old truck. They don't have good software. And you think you're

doing the best thing. You know what? You can't afford yard signs. You can't afford billboards. You can't afford anything. You say that service afford billboards. You can't afford anything. You say that service time is expensive. And I mean, this really gets me going, but what is your take on it? I think there's different mentalities. Number one, you have a poverty mentality, right? And a poverty mentality is always, I need just enough. But they'll watch YouTube videos of people in nice cars and dream of having nice things and talk about, oh, that must be nice.

Because it's so out of reach for those people that they can't even comprehend. However, it's not out of reach if they just make a couple changes. I also had a conversation recently with somebody where I feel like some people love to go home pounding their chest, feeling heroic, like they did something excellent by only changing one of the two springs and charging 30% of what everybody else does. And it makes them feel good when they're sitting at the table eating their steak or whatever that they worked for for that day. And so that's a real case scenario. And I don't think there's anything wrong with it. If that's what they want to do, fine, whatever. I'm not here to convince them to change their ways, just like they're not going to change my ways. I understand it's not probably good for the industry for us to undervalue

ourselves. But the customer that wants them isn't the customer that's hiring me. So I'm going to focus on my customers. They can focus on theirs. And there will probably be a little bit of crossover, but hopefully not much. There was a thing back in the... Shoot, it's been a couple of decades now. It was called the Starbucks effect. And real estate went up. Every coffee house was making coffee plantation. Every other coffee house made way more money. What happened is diners started charging for coffee. It used to be for free back in the eighties and early nineties.

The Starbucks came out and they enriched lives and it took over an industry. Literally the whole coffee industry did way better. Now it's not uncommon to pay eight bucks. I literally, I got this place called Steak 44, right? When you come out here, hopefully November, I'll take you there. It's a beautiful steakhouse. If you do not have a reservation a week in advance, you can't get there. You're going to spend a few hundred bucks, but the experience is worth it. And I want to be the Steak 44 of the garage industry. I want the experience, the relationships, the brand new

trucks, the beautiful wraps, the best parts, the best smiles in the industry. I want the experience, the relationships, the brand new trucks, the beautiful wraps, the best parts, the best smiles in the industry. I think that's what I want our company to be like, not the McDonald's, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, next, please. So it gets me going a little bit because I want that for our industry. And what I asked these people is I said, and this is interesting, Ryan, is an HVAC unit costs about $2,200 for a five-ton unit, depending on which unit, if you're buying a lot of them. They're going to charge $15,000. It's right around a seven times multiple. You look at plumbing, they're charging five to 10 times.

Painting, roofing, we go through these industries. The minimum I found is a five times multiplier. When we look at a urethane door with a nice opener, you're at $1,500, a couple grand. Let's just take a five times multiplier. That 7500 to 10 grand so i asked these 15 companies that came to our shop i said who's charging that they look at each other like uncomfortable like hell no no one would buy that and i said well what about a three times you know are you charging five grand for that no i'm like but can you afford we see the plumber on the billboard. We'd see the HVAC guy. Who's the most expensive HVAC guy in your town? Who's the largest. Isn't

that weird? The largest is the most expensive. They've got the happiest employees and the best retention rates. And I just decided to take the price out of, I want to be the fastest and I want to be the best quality. And it's important to have these conversations because there's a lot of people out there, right? And you know them. You know them very good. You know the guys and they're really hard workers. They deserve more.

Yeah. I don't think they're bad people. I don't believe that at all. They just need to be enlightened. Yeah. And it's not a commodity. And I just, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. When I was selling cars,

people would come in and they just grind you to death. And you'd make a $500 profit on the front end of the deal, walk away with a $100 mini. And that customer was not happy. They'd leave. They wouldn't refer anybody. They don't answer when

you call. But the guy that walks. They don't answer when you call. But the guy that walks in, you give him a great experience. You make three grand on the front. He goes in, make another thousand on the back in the finance department. The guy's ecstatic. That's when I learned that there's people out there that's willing to pay for a great experience and appreciate what you do and who you are. And I think I missed that a little bit. When I started Aaron Overhead Doors, that was my vision. So I tried to be everybody's garage door company. And when you do that, you lose who you are.

You lose your identity. And so I got back to focusing on the customers who I knew would hire us and appreciate what we do, who we are, and how we do it. And that's when I hired Josh, we rebuilt our website, we rebranded a little bit, and focused our attention in the areas that those customers live, eat, and sleep and play. And since then, like I told you, we're now going to double last year's numbers. I'm tracking to hit last year's numbers by May or June. And that's all because I think the new focus and the people that we got in charge.

Yeah. I went to a restaurant on Sunday and my girlfriend ordered a mimosa and I ordered a vodka tonic. And it was $16 for my drink, $17 for hers. We couldn't sit down. We just could sit at the bar because the place had a... You couldn't even get a reservation. It was so busy. Now, we had a question here. Talk about the sale?

Yeah. So it's hard right now. And this is a great question. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. When I first started, I saw the shift. When I first started, the phone calls were, how much is it for this? How much is phone calls were, how much is it for this?

How much is it for that? How much is it for this? I right now probably have 2000 reviews online. Depending on where you go, I got 800 something on Google for 4.9. I'm on Yelp with 50 something five star. I'm everywhere. So when those numbers started getting to 60, 80, people stopped calling asking how much. I mean, it still happens. But people are like, the conversation was, I need to get somebody out here to fix my garage door. You know what I'm saying? That was the shift because they'd done the research. They saw the reviews.

They saw the feedback. And I think that does help a lot. So a reputation management platform will help you boost those and help you get those reviews quicker. It's a race. Honestly, if you have two people with reviews in the same range, they're going to probably call the one that has the most. So I say getting reviews is something that you should invest into just like trying to hire or market your company. I've noticed that we went to a service call. One of my top guys in the company.

Service call, nine garage doors, all really, really high-end, heavy doors. $40 tune-up. We ended up doing complete overhauls with operator reinforcement brackets and the best openers. And it was a lot, a lot, a lot of money. We sent out a team to go help him do it. And the

trainees that were here. And I can tell you this, it was a property manager that got it all done. And he said, I don't give a crap. If there's a problem, this guy's got a Ferrari, a Lambo, a Porsche, a Volvo, everything, the best. He goes, just make them work. They cannot break my client. When he takes this stuff out, he's a billionaire. When he takes this stuff out, we don't care. We don't care. We just need it to work. And the difference is, is you're right. When I see these cheap customers, it's always the guys that spend $300 that, that believe the one star, the people that spend a lot of money. And I always say this too, is I just got a truck. It's a lease to own through the fleet, but it's, it's a Titan. It's the fleet but it's it's a titan it's

brand new it's got all the bells and whistles and uh you're not 13 off the sticker price because we buy a lot of frontiers and i'll tell you there's something different about driving it's a new vehicle it's just there's a sense of pride a little bit like when people buy a new vehicle versus a fixer transmission or their engine same thing with a garage door like people drive by and they go did you redo your landscaping? Have you painted the house? The house looks great. And you're like, no, I just did the garage door.

And the buyer's remorse, there's no such thing. That's why the Tom Wadsworth of the industries and everything say, you can charge whatever you want for a garage door. At the CLC, the club I mentioned, this Louisiana guy charged 60 grand for three five-layer canyon ridges. And everybody knew it. Nobody said one thing about the 60 grand, but if you charge $400 for a set of Springs, it's crazy to me.

And I just, I just feel like I get great reviews. The more people spend, the more they're just like, who cares? I spent good money, but these guys, I never had a problem with the garage door. It's been here. I'm like this, Hey, call me when you move into your next house or if your daughter happens to hit the garage door because that's the only way I'm coming back out here. But you did say, I want to move a little bit, pivot this to marketing because there's deal of the day sites like Groupon and Living Social.

There's HomeAdvisor. I can tell you a story about them that drives me crazy. Okay, go ahead. I'm interested. Yeah. So when I first started, it was like, let's blast it everywhere. I wanted to get everywhere. So I worked on getting links

like directories, backlinks everywhere, all that. And I saw Groupon as an opportunity. So I ended up signing up for Groupon because I was like, look, I need as much business as I can get. Time is not my friend. Money is. So we'll run. And so anyway, long story short, I need as much business as I can get. I got time is not my friend. Money is, so we'll run.

And so anyway, long story short, I had signed up for Groupon to run a deal. You know what them suckers did? They bought AdWords for my company name and put in the headline, great deals for Aaron Overhead Doors. They were snatching the customers who were looking for me and stealing my traffic, sending them through there. I was wondering why I was getting this huge boost of people.

I was doing all kinds of advertising and I was running people to Groupon. So I ended up fighting them over it. They were like, well, you signed an agreement and set it in the print. And so I went back and read it. And anyway, I got them to take it down. But that's not cool to me. If you hire somebody to do Legion for you for something, and even

at a loss leader, you don't steal their customers. I don't know. I thought that was lame. No, I agree. That's what PPC is. Everybody bids on my words. I mean, it's every single marketing agency that's buying leads for someone else as well as my competitors. I just remember like today I was doing an orientation, 20 new guys are here. And I said, I want you guys to realize one thing that I've had four levels of marketing and the fourth level means high conversion rate, really good ticket average and happy reviews. And what I noticed was, is that's when I go billboards, TV, radio,

and a lot of people think those don't work anymore. And what I noticed was all of a sudden, I started getting the three, four, $5 million houses that my band started to be everywhere in those good neighborhoods. And the caliber of clients went through the roof, but you got to be prepared to send the guys out there that are a hundred percent confident that aren't afraid to sell an $8,000 wood overlay door that are afraid to sell. You got to have the right team because if you're spending your time in those neighborhoods, it's a different type of buyer and you can't have a coupon mentality. Go ahead.

I got to comment on that. Yeah. I actually, like I started thinking we're one of the only businesses that would sit... You don't send a plumber out to pick out a high-end designer faucet. The guy's going to pull up, his butt crack's hanging out, and you got some 30-something-year-old mom. She's like, hey, I'm looking for a sink that'll work right there in my kitchen and it's a $2 million house. So I'm like, dude, what are we

doing? Why are we sending these technicians who sell like they shop? They're all cheap-minded. They're penny pinchers. They're savers. They wear their shoes until there's holes in them. Why are we sending these guys out to $1dollar houses, to $500,000 houses to sell 5,000, 10,000, $15,000 doors? So I found Linda, who has a design background, interior design. I hired her. I told her, listen, here's the closing ratio I need. Here's how much revenue I want you to drive.

And I want my average door sale to be above this. Now, we used to average around $2,000000, 2,300 per month, give or take. It would change some months, but if you take all the highs and lows out, the average would probably be around 2,300. When she started, we jumped that up to, I think the first six months she's been with us, I think we're averaging like 4,400 per door sale. See, I love that. And she goes in and takes a completely different approach.

She looks at the house. This is what will look good on your home. Have you thought about this? And the customers are literally like, Oh my God, yes. And think about the mentality. She's competing against guys pulling up with motors and track hanging out of their truck and the cables hanging down and grease all over them.

And she pulls up in a big van that says mobile design showroom with beautiful doors on it. And she's got a sample for every manufacturer and every type of door in there. And she's pulling them out, going through color samples. And it's more of a design experience than it is like a door sale. Oh, it's nine day. And then another thing that no one really thinks about is that we've got a pretty cool calculator.

You just put in the different options, but we call it something like Ryan, the bulls family special to keep them safe or whatever the curb appeal, keep up with it, make the Joneses jealous, but we'll put funny things in there. And we'll be based on everything you said i can do this for 129 a month same as cash for the next two years and it switches to this but i got this text the other day i had a self-generated lead with an opportunity to beat this other company of a price of 2800

i walked out this morning with 4500 and a raving fan. If we're going to commoditize this industry, that's fine. People can play that game, but I don't like to play that game. And we're doing a mobile showroom too. I just ordered a 14-foot box truck that we're going to have an experience when the customer goes in it. And it's a driving billboard. But the marketing changes. And really what I'm trying to say is you got to get the right people. And we go back to this is to be able to afford the marketing. You got to have good conversion rates. You got to have a decent average ticket, great reviews.

And I just feel like it's every home service industry. I'm not just talking garage doors. Oh, a hundred percent. And there's nothing wrong with it. I walk into shops and I don't know why I've seen HVAC and plumbing in particular do this, obviously, because of service tighten. And what I've seen is they laugh and they go, wait a minute, you pay a thousand for a grocery, you sell it for three. They're like, why not sell it for 15,000? And I'm like, well, I don't think we can do 15,000, but they're like, why? Change the industry. What's wrong with that? Why be able to out market everybody?

So I had a guy in my office about two months ago and he goes, Tommy, my guys run seven, eight jobs a day. My ticket average is $300. And I said, well, let's just use an easy number.

10%. You could afford $30 a lead. If I'm doing six center, I could afford 60. How could you ever beat me? Well, my guys aren't sales guys. They're,

I don't pay them to be, I don't like that sales crap. I'm like, you know what? I like a permanent fix. It's going to last. I'm like, what do you call it? Tell me your thoughts. I go back. If I got to pay you twice and

I got to take off work, just come here and be here when you come back and you should have done this the first time. Nah, bro. I'm out. Like I understand if it was a mistake, I'm cool with that. But if you were just low balling me and you talked about the steakhouse earlier.

Yeah. Right. So we, you can go to the grocery store and buy a steak for what? Eight, 10, 15 bucks, depending on what you get.

15 bucks. Right. You can go to Longhorn and spend, what, $25? Yeah. Maybe $30 on their best steak. Or you can go to, what was the restaurant? Steak 44. Steak 44.

They sell about 80 bucks a steak. Okay. So same steak, for the most part, it's a steak, right? We can all agree it's a steak. But they may cook it different and the environment's different. They've branded themselves different. And it's the same. It's a steak.

It's freaking cow, dude. You just chopped it up and cooked it and presented it at $80 versus people who say, I can buy a spring online for $10. Well, fine. Do that. But you're not going to get the online for $10. Well, fine, do that, right? But you're not going to get the experience for $10. What you're going to get is all day trying to figure out how these cables

tied to the bottom of the door and you got to get it fixed. So you can do that or you can pay me to do it and do a great job of it. But either way, you're getting a steak. So if you want to be cheap about it, sure, go cook your own steak.

And some people love that. And there's no knock on that, dude. I enjoy cooking my own steak. So if you want to be cheap about it, sure, go cook your own steak. And some people love that. And there's no knock on that, dude. I enjoy cooking my own steak. But I'll also enjoy going to Bare Bones here in Buford, where I'm going to sit down and I'm going to enjoy a nice, well-cooked steak. It's going to be perfect. I don't have to sweat in the sun to make it. I can just sit down and relax and enjoy my family and my friends and talk and goof off and have a great server who's going to tell me I look great and all this stuff. I mean, that's the experience that I want. And I don't get that by going to the grocery store or really even going to Longhorn. I tell people, look, my labor is free. You're paying for my service.

The fact is, it's not me. It's not Tommy Mello running the job. I've got a dispatcher. I've got a CSR. I've got a warehouse. I've got an accountant. I've got a marketing team. I've got a CRM.

I've got a truck I've got to pay for. I've got the gas. I've got the insurance. I've got the AC bill. It goes on and on. If you really think, do you know how much it costs? It costs under a dollar to make a pizza, but they sell it for 20. And people go, well, sure, if you wanted to do it, but go out there and buy all the tools. Number one, buy all the tools, buy all the stuff. But regardless, I'll tell you, you know, I love the, you're a

marketing guy. And I feel like one of the biggest mistakes is, you know, Dan Antonelli, um, kick charge. I don't know if you know him, but he specializes in vehicle wraps. And I think when I talk to people, the first thing I think they should do is get a good website, get a good brand, make sure their logo makes sense, make sure their name makes sense, and get a Google My Business page. Because time isn't on your side when it comes to Google to build trust. What are your thoughts as far as some tips you're just starting out? People are like, do I do branding? Do I do this? Where do I put my money? A lot of people are like, I just don't know how to get as many leads. And my sad news for them is they shouldn't get leads

because they can't monetize a ticket like they should. But what are your thoughts as far as starting out? It totally depends on the situation. If you got a bunch of cash sitting around and you can put that in the business, maybe you start out branding. But in the beginning, I knew I couldn't afford to brand myself. Whatever dollar you spend, you need to know you're going to get X amount of dollars back. So HomeAdvisor was great for me. I know a lot of people knock on HomeAdvisor, but I did. I literally built my business on HomeAdvisor. I sold repairs and doors on there. I still remember this one guy down in Duluth. He had four companies coming after me. And he called me up and he said, Ryan, you were $600 higher than the next highest company. And it was two 8x7s and two motors.

And he didn't even know what he wanted when I got there, I told him about insulated doors and he was like, nobody else wanted to offer me insulated doors. I had to bring it up, blah, blah, blah. So they were all selling Pandora's to start out with. But then they started quoting three layer,

uh, steel back because that's what I quoted. And I said, okay, I understand. And I was like, uh, you know,

let me know what you decide. And he was like, well, you're not going to discount it. And I was like, no, sir. And he was like, I figured you'd say that. He's like, let's do it. I was like,

what? And he was like, yeah, let's do it. And I was like, all right. So we ended up doing that job. I was $600 higher. And this isn't a 10 grand job. I mean, you're talking at the time that was I don't know, $3,500, $4,000, maybe $4,200, $4,300 job. And I was pretty low back then, I thought. I was coming into the market and trying to figure out where I needed to be. So I believe if you're just getting started and you want customers, I think buying leads is a good option because it's very measurable and you can see quickly if you're wasting money or making money. I think AdWords can be a little bit tricky if you don't know what you're doing. Hiring an agency can be very expensive. But at the same time, if you know who to hire and you're not wasting money, finding an agency, I think that's a win. But branding in the

early days, if you don't have tens of thousands of dollars to put into it or even $100,000, I think you build up to that. That's something that you start doing once you get rolling. And I think you do it a little bit consistently as you go, but I don't think you really start pushing a bunch of money into branding until a little bit later. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's what I had to do. I just, if I could have gone back and said, get a really professional logo, make sure you, your stickers and your mailers and your website, there's cohesiveness. And I just feel like, man, there was a time when I had an orange, pink, blue, yellow shirt. I mean, it was like all over the place. And that's all I knew. I didn't know anything better at the time. I got some questions here. I'll read a couple out.

What's a great KPI and CRM for first business owners on a budget? So for CRM, I love for early stage. I'm a big fan of Jobber and Housecall Pro. If you can't afford or you're too small for Service Titan, those two are great. KPIs, I mean, I think you have to be very basic in the very beginning. You're looking at like how much money is going out, how much money is coming in

and what's your biggest profit jobs. And then you start focusing on the biggest profit jobs as much as possible. I mean, I don't really know what else, what other KPIs at that stage. You're a startup. So that's the only thing that matters at that point. You know, one of the advice that I give people is don't go start a business unless you plan on

giving a lot of sweat equity, lots of hours, unless you got a good amount of money saved or an SBA loan. I think a hundred grand is a good, good number to get started with because trust me, I didn't. And it cost me 10 years of hard work and grind, but also don't take a huge loan out. If you don't know at all what you're going to do and get a consultant involved. I just... Eight grand is what I put in. But like, well, you'll be proud of me.

Actually, I didn't put eight grand. I was making 200 grand in software before I started this company. So I took virtually a $30,000 pay the first year. So you take eight grand, add 170. Then the next year, add up all the time and money that I put in and the value that I am. And then you deduct that. I mean, I'm a half a million dollars in at least. Yeah. Yeah. And you got 13 employees. I mean, things are good. The biggest thing is I tell people, and this is the most important thing is you got to pay yourself. I think you should pay 80 a hundred, 120, 150. I think I pay myself around

175, but I got a lot of French benefits, but overall, you know, for the size company, I should probably pay myself more. But the main thing is the business still needs to make a profit or you don't have anything you can sell. So if I was to buy your business, Ryan, and this isn't real, this is just, if you were a small company and you said, hey, I make 200 grand a year. I said, how much does the company make? And you said, well, that is the company. I'd say, well, it's going to cost me

about 90 grand to replace you. So really the company's making 110. So let's just say that's the multiplier we're going to give you. As people have a hard time understanding that when you went into business, you didn't go into business for a job. So if you're taking the 200 grand and saying, that's your job, you got to

change your mentality. You got to change that image in your head. So what do you tell people? Because I'm not telling people they're doing anything wrong. I just think they never knew that they're supposed to make a couple hundred grand and the business is still supposed to make a good profit. Yeah. Mike Michalowicz at the Virtual Door Dealer Conference had a really good question. He asked our audience, if you're a business owner, how much would it cost to replace you right now? So if you're a business owner and you had to hire somebody with equal or greater knowledge that could do everything that you do for your business, how much would it cost? I remember the numbers that we got. I'm very

curious if they're going to line up with what we got during the virtual door dealer conference. But that's an interesting question to ask business owners. Nine times out of 10, he then asked, how many of you guys are making that much? And most were not. So are you valuing your time properly? And if you're not, then you need to figure out what you're worth and try to work your way into making that money. But not the expense of the company's success. If you're smothering your company because you like to buy four-wheelers and jet skis and everything else, boats and whatever, then it defeats the purpose. When I first got in, I was like, I don't need nice trucks. I don't need this. I don't need that. I now buy all brand new stuff

because I'm pulling up into two, three, four, $5 million houses on the regular. And I think it does matter. So I want my guys to be clean cut, nicely shaven, you know, well-spoken. And so a presentation I think is important. And so we invest in those things. Yeah, absolutely. Plus there's a lot of, you know, Trump has some laws that make sense of accelerating depreciation. There's just some certain things when you,

when you really get into the next level of business, there's this thing, taxes, you want to do everything legally, but I learned about the Augusta law of taxes and you can rent your house out to your company for two weeks. I learned about cost segregation studies and R and D and accelerated depreciation. And what I learned was, is we can keep more of the money and they do that. So you can grow your business, which I'm doing. So it's not like I feel bad about it. Michael McKellar, it says revenue minus profit equal expenses. It's not your simple equation. And I had him on my podcast years ago. And I'll tell you the reason why that he believes that is he believes we're going to use whatever we have left. He always talks about toothpaste. And he says, we always, when we run out of toothpaste,

we're using the last little bit. Well, we kind of do that with money too. I got guys that are eating filet mignon on their first day of their paycheck and they're drinking Campbell's soup on the last day because we use what's available. So I think he makes a great, most people should not use credit cards.

I disagree with Dave Ramsey to a certain extent because I use over a million dollars a month and we pay it off and I don't pay for any plane tickets or hotels or anything. I mean, I love my credit card rewards money. I'm just going to be honest with you.

You got a good thing going, man. I'm going to tell you. I'm banking it. I actually, I take all the money that I get from my 2% cash back, which we play our suppliers with, and. I'll tell you. I'm banking it. I actually take all the money that I get from my 2% cash back, which we play our suppliers with, and I stick it in Bitcoin and all the others. Today was a good day for us.

It was a good day. I got some questions we'll ask here in a little bit, but how do you change that connotation? The sales. Sales is a four-letter word in most home service. And they go, yeah, I don't like that stuff. You guys are too salesy. And I'm like, we teach NLP. We teach how to eye contact, body language. And I told my guys today, I did a three-hour orientation. I said, this stuff, if you're single, you're going to meet beautiful ladies. You're going to use it.

I said, you're going to become a better father. Most of it's guys as a technician. I said, you're going to become a better husband. You're going to meet people. You're going to become a better father. You know, most of its guys as a technician, I said, you're going to become a better husband. You're going to meet people. You're going to meet strangers, become better friends with people. As I said, the stuff we're going to teach you, it's not, we're always selling it. One of my favorite books is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And it's actively listening. It's the things that matter.

And the sales word is so bad. People think used car salesman. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I was a used car salesman, so I don't know how I should take that. Now, I'll answer that this way. Back in 1999, I had just gotten a job selling cars and I was struggling. I was so concerned about what people were thinking about me when I was talking to them, that it literally kept me from being successful. And so one of the salesmen gave me a cassette tape. What cassette tape? Tommy, this was before you were born. The cassette tape was Grant Cardone's 85 Closes.

And if you haven't heard Grant Cardone's 85 Cl closes, and I don't even know if you can find it anymore. I think I looked and I couldn't find it. It was one of the most amazing. I listened to it literally every day going home and coming back. People loved me, but I couldn't close because I was always worried that it was going to be confrontational. And I'd built such a good relationship with these people that it was uncomfortable to ask for the money. Well, the 85 closes taught me so much. And it even taught me that asking people to come off of money is confrontational and it always will be. So get over that. And then later, I don't know if you've been on Clubhouse, but I didn't even know this was

a thing. But Clubhouse, there's been a lot of conversation about imposter syndrome. And I didn't even know that existed, but I started researching it. And I do believe that that's a thing. And just knowing that that was a thing, it helped me break out of some of the qualities that that may have. I don't know that I had imposter syndrome, but I definitely didn't do things

that would benefit me because everybody else was doing them. Or I didn't say things because I felt like it was predictable. And so I got out of that. I was just like, you know what? Screw it. This is who I am. This is what I'm just going to do it. So that's helped me out a little bit. But as far as being sales, I think that everyone's got their niche. Sales has changed a lot. I'm a big fan of consultative selling. Here's your situation. Here's your safety inspection,

the overall diagnostics of your door and operator. Here's the parts, point at them, show them pictures, whatever. And then here, I've got three options for you. Menu selling is probably the greatest thing they ever invented in sales because it literally makes weak sales people look great. Psychology says if you actually build these out properly, people will always gravitate towards the middle or the top, depending on if they're an efficiency buyer or if they're a convenience buyer. So if you build it out right,

the way that it should be, people will always gravitate. Most, 75% I think, gravitate towards the middle and then the rest gravitate towards the top if it's built out right so doing the menu selling offering three options not two options not one option not four options three options psychology psychology psychology you can research it all day long the middle options are always going to be the one people gravitate towards you know i told my, and this is my own theory, this morning on my orientation,

I said, guys, you've heard a good, better, best. Delete that from your head. I said, I want you to always, always, always start out with the best. Now, the best for a realtor might be different than the best for someone else. Based on the most expensive. And that's option one, not option one.

And you say that only. Yeah. You can always come down. one, not option one. And then you say that only. Yeah. You can always come down to an option three. So you can always come down. So I say, look at based on what you told me, Ryan, this is what I'm going to tell you that,

that what we should do. And I hate the word recommend. So again, I got rid of that word. And I say, do not say recommend recommends like, ah, based on what you're telling me,

this is absolutely what I would do. This is what I would do if you were my mother. And it's the real deal. So I said, the day I told guys to offer the best and you could always come down. I remember I got three phone calls from some of my bottom sales guys and they go, dude, we sold out of our best model openers. And I'm like, you guys never sold one of those. They're like, yeah, but we just asked. All we had to do was ask. Yeah. And, you know, I always tell the story of a buddy of mine. Whenever we went out, whether it was a bar or restaurant, he just always was able to get the ladies. And he was very, very good.

And one day I decided to be a spy. And I was like watching him from a distance. And I was with some of my other buddies. And I watched him and he creeped up on these gals and, and he was making them laugh. And the next thing you know, he walked away and kind of waved and goes on to the next ones. And it was the third girl that he actually clicked with, but he didn't care.

He said, when they said, no, thanks, leave creepo. He said, your loss. And he just moved on.

The nose didn't bother him. And when you learn to accept the word, no, is a good thing because five knows before you get to a yes. Well, what makes, let me ask you this, Mr. Ryan, what makes you say that? If you get a no, I can isolate the objection and I can overcome it. And you know, the thing is, is Ryan, I want to earn your business. What can I do today to earn your business?

Because I'll tell you this. I know you're going to tell your friends, your neighbors, and your family all about us. And I know when you get done with the experience you're going to have with our company, you're going to be a raving fan. So what can I do today to earn your business? And follow-up is crucial. And it's so much fun for me. And I want to be invited to the Easter dinners. I want to go to the Christmas party. I'm going to ask a lot of questions. I'm probably not going to go to that stuff, but I want to become your friend. And I think that that's what people need to really focus on. And people like your charm.

So when you do that, you're doing it in a charming way. You're having fun. You're goofing off about it, but you're serious, right? And you're telling people... One thing that I always did in garages is I told people, I really want your business. There are certain people that I meet that I click with, and I've clicked with you, and I want to do this. And the fact that they know that you want to do it and you tell them,

it makes it so difficult to say no at that point. No one else is telling them that. No. Number one. Number two. I remember I answered the phone and this is when we pre-COVID and they go, Tommy, the CSR goes, I wish you were in here earlier. I lost the call. And I go, why? They're like in Wichita.

One of the customers said they didn't want to pay the emergency fee of $100. And I said, well, where's Charles right now? And they said, 15 minutes away. I said, is he done with the job? He said, he's finishing up. So I called the lady back and I said, hi there, Ms. Jones. How are you today? She said, I'm good.

My ask is calling. I said, yeah, this is Tommy. I'm here over at A1 Garage Door Service. I i just wanted to see you had called a few minutes ago and unfortunately we weren't able to get out there without that fee well i got technician he's about 15 minutes away i can get him out there i'm just gonna wave that fee for you and she goes oh tommy that sounds really really nice but i've already booked with someone else and i said and i'm looking at the whole like there's eight people staring at me and I go, and I'm like, okay, got to go, got to do something. So I was like, you know, if you don't mind me asking Ms. Jones, what's the name of the company that's coming out?

And she says the name. And I said, okay, wow. Really good, really reputable company. If you don't want me asking how much are they charging you? And she's like, well, they they're charging a $50 fee. And I said, okay, understandable. I said, what if I told you, obviously we're not gonna get out there and we're gonna get the job started and I'm not gonna charge you anything. Like, doesn't it make sense to save money? And she goes, you know, Tommy, I just,

I feel so bad, I can't cancel now. And I said, don't worry, Ms. Jones, I'll call them and I'll cancel for you. And she starts cracking up. And she goes, you know what, Tommy, let me call you right back. And she, so I'm sitting there at the phone and everyone's like up. She goes, you know what, Tommy, let me call you right back. I'm sitting there at the phone and it was like,

it was like the Dallas Trebek music. She called back and she goes, hey, is Tommy there? I go, this is Tommy. She goes, I was able to cancel. Can you still send Charles out? I felt like I hit the lottery. I was like, I ran through the thing, high-fived everybody, but

it's a tonal... You cared that much and you made that a thing, that raises the level so that now all of your CSRs are competing for that adrenaline, that excitement, and then the willingness to fight for the business.

And nobody's doing that, dude. I can tell you most of the people around here are probably in their truck like garage doors you know like that's how they're answering their phone and and they're writing it down on a piece of paper and they may follow up with you and they may not and they may show up or they may not but nonetheless like that's part of the deal so if you're taking it to that level, then nobody else is doing that. And it's fun.

And you got to gamify it. And I'll tell you what, Google now, with Google Guarantee, they're looking at how fast you're answering the phone. They're looking if you're booking the phone call. They're looking at how long you take to get out there. But here's one thing that people don't know, is they're actually listening for empathy in your voice. Their artificial intelligence tell these things. So one of our performance we

pay for performance is how much empathy did you have oh my gosh you guys are trapped in your garage oh no we're gonna get right out there for you yeah i mean literally i put on this voice and people like who are you talking do you got like a little puppy on the other line but i have fun with it and i think it's important because google has all these kpis that they were reporting to. And people are like, what if Google got in? I was with Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, a couple of weeks ago. And he's like, what if I told you Google is going to get into the home service game and provide? He said, you just got to not be relying on one source.

A lot like Amazon and they would crash. Well, you know, the deal is, is what I think they're going to do is partner up with a very successful big. That's what Amazon, Amazon shit the bed three times. And the problem is, is they don't understand. It's not Uber. I always tell people, what do, what if Amazon gets it? What if Facebook, what if Google? And I say, they don't have any idea. Look, I love software. I'm not worried about them at all. Like, and the deal is, is you can't Uberize our industry because the thing is, Thumbtack called me up years ago. Then they go, dude, we made a big, big mistake. We need you to

come out here and talk to our people. But I didn't end up going out there. They wanted to pay me to come speak to them. But they said, we got in the business for the small guy. We got in there to give him a chance. And I said, what'd you find out? And they go, well, the small guy is inconsistent. One day he wants 10 leads. The next month he wants to take off and go to leave town for the summer. And they said, there's no consistency. And I said, there's a reason they're called the small guy. Because they got small guy mentality.

They say, I'll go make my money. And then I'm taking the four days off. They don't want to work. Like when I worked, I took every midnight call and I ran out there myself. I said, this is going to be me. I'm going to put the sweat equity in. And I don't think a lot of people want to do that.

Yeah. Tyler's Maddie showing up to a job and can't keep listening. You know, there was some great stuff. Somebody asked about home warranties. And I just personally, I made money with home warranties. But you got to ask yourself, right now I have more jobs than I can handle. And I'm hiring a lot of people. But in Phoenix, I think I'm going to I'm hiring a lot of people, but in Phoenix,

I think I'm going to get out of a lot of the coupons because we've got more business that we don't need to give discounts in other areas. I'll still be in anything like I need work. So I think it really depends. I got a question for you because one of the biggest challenges, and I own a marketing company, I own a door company. I talked to dealers all over the country.

It's not very hard to get new door business. I don't think. It's very simple. Repair leads, different game, super competitive. What do you credit the volume of repair calls that you get? Where do you get most of your repair calls from? I mean, I put a lot of time and money into google organic and today i was driving we went to pick up the dog and bring him back over here as a shop dog now and i saw four of my trucks and i just think it's the branding now that really it's like hey a1 a1 and you got to be top when you're top of mind you got to be top of google so people are literally typing my name in or if they're not whether it's the gmb whether it's the GMB, whether it's the LSA ad, whether it's the organic, they recognize the brand.

And that helps me with the click-through rate. And so there's so many different ways I get work, but realistically, I'll tell you the biggest secret I have, Ryan, is the employees know how to get work. They know how to get a few jobs, three to five to 10 jobs a week. And the employees are incentivized because I've got tracking numbers and I use Schedule Engine to track the employees and they get paid. They don't have to run the call. If a CSR books a job through their portal, they get paid on it and they make good money. Some of them can make $500, $800 a week. So I said, let's do the networking. Let's go out, let's meet people. Let's have everybody sharing on social media. And so I believe that the employees I'm turning into internal marketers, they're like my little marketing team that go out there. If each

of them get five jobs, I got 350 employees. Let's say 150 do it. They each get five. That's 750 leads a week. Yeah. You know, there's a lot that goes into leadership and culture. And I used to think that was all mumbo jumbo. I used to like dude i got a gal smoking a pack of cigarettes a day rather than answering phones i got another guy having an affair with one of our cs i mean back of the day i was pulling my hair out going this is not good and it was hard and i'd always say what's wrong with these people why don't they just listen why don't they work as hard as me and i didn't know what culture meant and and what I found out was if they were going to do everything I wanted them to, they would be my boss. I was a bad leader. I didn't take the time to show them what their

job was and how to win and what a KPI meant and how they win the game. And not always to be so condescending. I always say, find somebody doing something right. We always find somebody, oh my God, you're doing it wrong. What if you actually found somebody doing stuff right? So what is your take on culture and leadership? Yeah. So my take is as a leader, it's our responsibility to constantly be evaluating, like genuinely being self-aware of not only yourself, but your company and the level of happiness of your employees, as well as investing into yourself on what you can do to improve. I flew out to Zappos and spent a full day there with their team. And they walked me around. We asked a billion questions. And some of the stuff they did was so out of the box. But it's part of what made the experience working questions? And I'm like, Yeah. I was like, What KPIs

do you guys measure? And she's like, Well, we measure time on phone, but probably not like what you think. She's like, We actually reward our people for being on the phone for longer. And I'm like, Well, that's unusual. That's the opposite of most companies. Most companies want to reward their people for getting the

appointment booked quicker. And they were like, Yeah, we actually have it. I think they said an average call time of like, it was even between 8 and 12 minutes. And she said that if somebody wants to talk about what we try to do is we want to be like a consultant. What type of shoes do you like? How uncomfortable do you want them to be? And, oh, well, let me send you these options. And do you like these? And if you don, well, let me send you these options. And do you like these?

And if you don't, then let me send you a few more. It's more like you're trying to take the offline experience and make it online. And so she said the only time that really bit them in the butt is when you had a retired person call and they just want to talk. And they literally would talk with these people until they were ready to get off the phone.

But she said, that's how we engage with our shoppers. And we offer free returns. Those two things... I think every business should have an offer. And they should have something like their core. What are you? Are you a customer service company? And I literally told her, I was like,

wow, this is a pretty impressive operation for a shoe company. And she literally stopped. She turned around. She looked at me. She goes, we are not a shoe company. And I was like, Oh my god, I'm sorry. And I was looking around. And she goes, We're a customer service company that happens to sell clothes and shoes. And when I started Aaron Overhead Doors, that's our motto. I stole it. We're a customer service company in the garage door business. And I truly believe that. And so when my guys come to me and

they say, Hey, Ryan, I got this situation with this customer. What should I do? And I'm like, what would a customer service company do? Oh, yeah. Okay. I got it. But we're thinking about it like a garage door company. And so I try to change the mindset of my guys to make sure that they're thinking customer service and not garage door. What would another garage door company do? I don't know. I don't care. I'm thinking, what would Chick-fil-A do? What would Nordstrom do? What would Zappos do?

Customer service. What would they do? It's funny because people ask me what I do. And I say, I own a recruiting company that happens to be technology and sales. And they say, well... I say, the first thing they usually tell me was, you know anybody awesome looking for a career? Because I'm indefinitely in the customer service.

But I said, yeah, like if I was at B&I, I'm like, listen, my name is Tommy Malo. I'm in a company called A1 Garage or Service. But we're always, always, always looking for amazing people. that wants a performance-driven opportunity for a career with a great culture, with great people who love to just grow, that want to go up a ladder and be right at the top one day. We're still getting it on the ground floor. And I'll talk about the environment and really about people coming to work here. And because for me, if I got one minute, the best thing I could do is try to get a couple of of players on board. I care less about those two grozder jobs. People understand A1 Grozder Service, we do grozders,

but they go, holy crap. If that's how much he cares about the people, we should use him for our grozders anyway, but let's go find him a great employee. Yeah. I tell people all the time, and I've told customers this, we are not a customer first company. We are an employee first company. But the way that benefits our customers is we treat our employees so well that they want to treat you well. And they know the expectations. So we're an employee-first company. I think I may even stole that from Zappos too. I really don't have anything original. I don't think any of us do. So what is... Let me ask you this, the final few here. Do you know they pay their people to quit after 90 days?

I've heard that. Yeah. They give them a one-month salary or something like that. And they say, if you quit today, here's your check. And they have calculated exactly how much it costs to hire someone and how much a bad employee costs them over the years. So what they did was they said, they point blank told me, if they take that money, that's the best money spent. Because we know they were not here for the reasons we want them to be.

And it's going to save us tens of thousands of dollars down the road. Oh, it's a fortune. I always, you've probably heard me say that I do this with CSR 60 or 90%. And then 20 calls a day at a $500 ticket range for 300 days out of the year, the CSR with 90% makes you a million dollars more. A million, $1 million. When you talked about company culture and leadership and all that, I mean, I think a lot of times we get so wrapped up in the fact that we're door companies and it's not exciting. And it is exciting. It's as exciting as you want it to be, right? Like you've made it exciting. I try to make it exciting.

And I think we look at blue collar work and we act like it's not exciting. Look at, um, what's his name? The door father, whatever. He's on Tik TOK and Instagram and he makes garage doors. Look so sexy and cool and funny.

Uh, he's the, uh, Holly, Matt Fopal, you know, garage doors look so sexy and cool and funny. He's called what? He's the... Matt Fopal. You know Matt Fopal, don't you? I don't know. He does garage doors for like Asa Abloy, but he's the godfather of garage doors, right? And he's literally got branches

like the old school, like the Italian mafia. He's got branches all over the country of guys and they'll submit photos to him and videos of cool jobs and he'll post it on his Instagram. I mean, look, I tried to recruit him just for that.

He's a heck of a door guy but just for that alone because people follow him. They love the brand that he's built. It's thinking outside of the box. I got an interview tomorrow with a, literally his whole job is content manager. And we're going to create 20, 1500 word articles per week. Internally, we're going to build funny things. We're going to have the garage door where it's a tick tock of showing it being made and then install with the sunset coming up.

And those are the kinds of things like, look, if you're not on Instagram, TikTok, you know, I can keep going, going, going, going Facebook. There's a million places there's house, there's Pinterest. You gotta be everywhere. You gotta take the content and spin it a million ways. And what happens is your organic rankings, you get found everywhere. And you know, I don't know what I would do if I told myself, and this sounds really bad, and I'm not trying to put anybody down here, but if I had to start over today, I'd rather just go work somewhere. I mean, seriously, because it's so much crap before I was, believe it or not, I got on the yellow pages of Valpak.

And Google was just starting to come around. And I was like, okay. And I got the tail end of the yellow book. And I learned a lot about Google. So if you want to, someone wants to get ahold of you. Someone asked, how do I learn more about the garage door industry? Someone wants to reach out to you personally. Maybe come visit you.

Maybe just bend your ear, use your marketing company, whatever it might be. How do they do that? Yeah. So I'm pretty easy to reach. You can find me on Facebook. I'm really on Facebook more than anything. I plan on branching out and be a little bit more social in other areas, but I only got so much capacity. So you can hit me on Facebook, Messenger.

You can send me a friend request. I'm pretty open to all of that. You can check out such and such media. You can check out Aaron Overhead Doors. And we are starting a coaching site here soon as well. And Torsion Talk podcast, we broadcast every week. And yeah, I mean, I just like to have fun and learn and teach and share information. And I'm an open book so i'm not

holding back anything and it is door guy mafia thank you for uh this facebook user so i don't know who shared that i always say if you got three books and they can be any books but is there three and don't do the bible don't do the e-myth no i wouldn't do those anyway. All right. What are your three thoughts? The Bible is legit, but that's... It is legit. All right. So I would say Home Service Millionaire by this guy named Tommy Mello is legit. Oh, yeah. Thanks.

Definitely Profit First was a game changer for me. Extreme ownership. And I'm going to say a tie is the energy bus because I'm such a like super positive person. And I also would say that the tie with that is mastering the Rockefeller habits. Dude, Vern Harnish.

Vern Harnish. Dude, I'm just going to say that book, like we implemented some of those strategies, like the 15 minute huddle. And that's been huge for us. Like we found so many issues. And not only that, We implemented some of those strategies, like the 15-minute huddle. And that's been huge for us. We've found so many issues.

And not only that, we've been able to celebrate the wins. Like you talked about earlier, everybody finds the problems, but nobody finds the good things. So we have a 15-minute huddle. We look over yesterday. We go dogs. So we look at yesterday's jobs. We talk about any issues that popped up. This prevents anything from falling through the cracks. Then we look at today's jobs.

We celebrate our wins. We talk about our revenue. Where are we at with sales? And it's freaking great, dude. It's brought us all together, put us on the same page. And that's been a huge, huge... My mojo. That's what I do. I got three morning meetings. I got my supervisor, my morning mojo that I do with I got three morning meetings. I got my supervisor, my morning mojo that I do with my managers about the one big thing we're going to do, but we talk about results. I got this book. It's called, Oh, the Rockefellers do it. I don't have that other one. But, uh, last thing I do, Ryan is I'm going to give you the floor talked about a lot of stuff here. I mean, there's business is not very complicated, especially if you learn about relationships. I really feel like having a is not very complicated, especially if you learn about relationships.

I really feel like having a relationship with your employees, having relationships with clients, being able to network. I mean, I could walk into Pizza Hut and probably have five customers. And I'm going to smile and just say, let me come out, take a peek. The bottom rubber, you know, those nasty bugs, those critters. Let me get this changed out for you. Let me make this door safe. This is not hard. those nasty bugs, those critters. Let me get this changed out for you. Let me make this door safe.

This is not hard. And so I'm curious, anything you want open floor, maybe something we left out, but just go ahead and share something with the audience, maybe something to go do today, but I'll give you the floor. I think the number one biggest impact you could have on your business is to do the 15 minute daily huddle and literally cut it off at 15 minutes. I don't care if you're in the middle of a sentence. 15 minutes, cut it off, go. And then every month, if you can, depending on how many employees you have, you may be able to divide this up amongst your management team one-on-ones. But you do the one-on-ones during breakfast or lunch. Take them out, away from the office.

Sit down, have a meal, chat about everything, but don't make it about work. Yes, you can touch on that, but you only need 10 minutes for that. Hey, where can we improve? Am I doing... You have all the tools you need to succeed. All that. That way, you don't even need to do annual reviews. You do little mini reviews every single month and you treat them to a breakfast, a nice one, not some cheapo breakfast. I take them to whatever, Fresh Look or whatever it is. It's a $40 breakfast and we're having a good time. We're talking about family, whatever. And then at the end, I ask them, where can we improve? What tools do you need to be more

successful? What are areas that you see that we need to change? And then I explain to them from my point of view, which may or may not be the best point, here's what I see in areas that you need to improve and things that you could do better. That works so well. And it's like, I don't know, that's been probably my favorite thing. I've been doing it ever since I was in tech. I think it's really good. I took a lot from that. I'm too frugal to the point it's bad. And it's not that I don't want to spend money on our employees. It's my biggest fault. I spare no dollar for my people. I got to tell you, I think we do more. I love the fact that what we do, I had a guy move up from an apprentice all the way through to an area manager. Now I had my first guy move all the way throughout the whole company and it's just, it's amazing, but breakfast and lunch

and dinner, I think we're going to implement that. But Ryan, you are the man. I really think everybody got a lot out of this. There's been anywhere from 35 to 40 people on here. So your insights, really, really smart guy. You know a lot about a lot. You've been quite the experience. You got the marketing, you got the software, and now you've got the blue collar industry background. So if anybody needs to learn, he's got a lot of stuff,

tricks up his bag. And I may be combining the two soon. Good, good. I got a lot to talk about. I'm going to get you out here in November. You put on a good show. I want people just, I want to close. I just want people to learn how to value a business for succession planning.

A lot of people don't understand how to build a company that's worth selling one day. Cause your company should always be for sale. Even if you're not selling it, it shouldn't be. Now I'm going to fire these people that suck. Now I'm going to promote the people. You should always live your life that if you're going to sell your company in a couple of weeks. Yeah. But appreciate you a couple of weeks. Yeah. But appreciate you a lot.

Yeah, bro. Thanks for having me on. Pleasure. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to

ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on and do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review, make it four or five sentences, tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program.

So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it, to be completely frank with you guys. But I think it will enrich your lives even further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.