The Home Service Expert Podcast - Creating a Winning Company Culture That Attracts and Retains Top Talent

Episode Date: December 18, 2021

Dominic Rubino  is a successful entrepreneur, business coach and podcaster and owns three companies: Profit Toolbelt, Bizstratplan.com and Cabinetmakers Profits System. Dominic helps owners and contractors who want more time, money and strategy. He has built, grown and sold a number of businesses over the last 20 years. Dominic is also an active public speaker and the author of the book Construction Millionaire Secrets. In this episode, we talked about entrepreneurship, customer avatars, branding vs. direct response, hiring, sales...

I need to know how to act in your company. If I come on as an employee, you're the leader and you're going to set the expectations and the reflection of the company is of you. There's a saying from Turkey, fish stinks from the head down. I don't know if you've ever heard that before. No, no. Right. Vern Harnish says it in his book, Scaling Up, as goes the leader, so goes the team.

So if you're bitter, sour, angry, if you fly into fits of rage in the office, guess what? People in your company are going to do that as well. If you're positive, motivated, taking coaching, listening to audiobooks, if you're working on self-improvement, guess what the people in your company will do? They will do that same thing. My company is a reflection of me. If I'm a mess, it's a mess. If I have systems, my company has systems.

So Tommy, you're leading by example. You're showing me how I need to be to be in the organization. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello, as you guys well know, and I've got a buddy of mine here, Dominic Rubino, visiting us from Canada. He's an expert in entrepreneurship, leadership, startups, business strategy, and contracting. A little

bit about him. Dominic is a successful entrepreneur, business coach, and contracting. A little bit about him. Dominic is a successful entrepreneur, business coach, and podcaster. With his three companies, Profit Toolbelt, BizStratPlan.com, and Cabinetmakers Profit System, Dominic helps owners and contractors who want more. More time, more money, more team, more strategy. He has built, grown, and sold a number of businesses over the last 20 years. Dominic is also an active speaker and the author of the book, Construction Millionaire Secrets. Very excited to have you on today, Dominic. Tommy, great to talk to you as well. You were on my show and you blew me away. You set the bar pretty high. Hey, listen, this is what it's all about. Our listeners are anything from cabinets to garages to window washing. I love it because it's everything. It's

everything contracting. And I'd love to start out by just getting to know you a little bit more with the audience and just telling them everything about you, your book, your past, who you like to work with, who your clientele is, and what the future looks like. Well, you bring a smile to my face because I started as a home service guy. Don't drink your coffee now. You're going to spit it out. My first company was called the Yo-Ho-Ho Light Co. And I installed Christmas lights on people's houses. I'm in the Pacific Northwest, Tommy. I had a staple gun and an aluminum ladder. And so in the rain, I would staple lights to houses on cedar shingles. I'm still alive. Yeah.

I can't believe it. You know what I would do is I would walk up to a house first to just get the Christmas light business that was knocking on doors. But after that, I became a house painter, quote unquote. But as I walked up to a house, I figured out what they needed. If they needed with their windows done, I would do their windows. If they needed to reseal their driveway, I was suddenly a driveway resealing guy. Wow. I don't do that anymore, though. Yeah, that's how I started. Sounds fun. Yeah. So you got into the business. How old were you when you started with Christmas Light Business? Yeah, the Christmas Light Business was between grade 11 and 12.

You know, the Christmas of grade 11, the Christmas of grade 12. After exams and before, you know, things heated up, I just knocked on doors until I got Christmas Light gigs. That first year, Tommy, I made $37. $37? $37. But I made money. I'm just wired to be a business owner. I just love it. I spent time in corporate, of course. Thankful because I learned a lot of skills there, but I'm really meant to be an entrepreneur. So you're part of EO as well.

Tell me a little bit about that. EO is a group. You think it's a business group, but it's not. It's where business people go to talk about everything going on in their lives and how we can make the most of our lives going around us. You know, it's taught me systems. It's taught me process. It's given me wonderful connections with great people all around the world. First EO event I went to, I was in university. And the very first event I stood next to a guy named Brian Scudamore. You might know Brian. Yeah, I know Brian. Yeah. Yeah. Brian from 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Really good guy. Really. And brilliant guy too.

Brilliant guy. So yeah, I've been an EO for a long time. So this is a personal question because I don't know, but I'm part of a couple of things. And I was thinking about looking into EO and YPO. What's the difference between EO or YPO? Yeah, they're slightly different groups. So being an EO, Entrepreneur's Organization, does not mean you automatically qualify for YPO? Yeah, they're slightly different groups. So being an EO, Entrepreneur's Organization, does not mean you automatically qualify for YPO. YPO stands for Young Presidents Organization.

And just for a brief history, EO used to be called YEO, Young Entrepreneurs Organization. And it was started by Vern Harnish. Vern Harnish, you're going to recognize that name from Mastering the Rockefeller Habits or his book, Scaling Up. So I've been using that stuff from Vern forarnish, you're going to recognize that name from Mastering the Rockefeller Habits or his book, Scaling Up. So I've been using that stuff from Vern for years, and I've been part of EO. And then Gino Wickman is also, you guys know Gino Wickman from the book Traction. Traction and then- Get a Grip. Yeah.

Gino was a member of EO as well, and he sort of polished up the one-page strategic plan system. So they're both versions of the same thing. But all of that stuff people don't know comes from that same group. It's interesting because he's also a member. I was just at this thing called the 100 million mastermind. And the gal was saying that Gino actually was in, I don't know if it's Joe Polish's group, but there's somebody with 100K group and they're in that as well. Yeah. There's a backstory to Gino Wickman. That's pretty good. For a while, I was a real estate agent and I took training.

This is back in the nineties. Yeah. Early nineties. I took my how to sell houses course from a guy named Floyd Wickman, Gino's dad. Small world, man. It is a small world. You've been trained in some sales training. Who was it that you were telling me that you kind of-

Brian Tracy. Yeah, that's right. I've been partners with Brian Tracy for about 13 years. You know, it's funny because you said yo ho ho. There's a guy named Dave yo ho. Oh, no way. I don't know. Okay. Yeah. He's the door to door guru guy. So you wrote the book. Tell me a little bit about construction millionaire secrets. You know, I wrote that book out of frustration. I was having the same conversations with business owners again and again. Dom, what do I do in this situation? Dom, what do I do in that situation? And over the years I've learned, I've actually learned to ask questions and keep my mouth shut to what I've learned. And so I spent a lot of time when I'm talking to people, asking them questions and then writing down the answers, right? And I'm meeting them in

construction trailers or on phone calls or on site as it were. And consistencies keep coming up. Like have a set of rules for how your business should operate. Know your numbers, those kinds of things. So I started scribbling down 20 rules and then I built a book around it. And it's called Construction Millionaire Secrets. It's the 20 rules you need to know to run a construction or contracting business. Now, we were talking about the 80-20 rule and we applied it again and it's what, 96-4. And we were saying that you shouldn't be talking 4% of the time.

The majority of that time should be asking questions, interestingly enough. So you've helped a lot of businesses, obviously, over the years. How many businesses have you helped? Oh my, you know what? Can you believe I've never been asked that question? So let's do this. It's got to be in the thousands. So I've been a business coach for 21 years.

I trained business coaches. I run 15 or 20 clients at a time. I've had some clients for nine years, some clients for two years. But I've been doing this for 21 years. It's got to be a couple thousand directly. And then through the speaking and the podcast. Podcast has thousands of listeners. So it's hard for me to calculate.

You know, when you see all these business owners, there's a lot of commonalities. I think the hardest part is getting your first employee. And then there's different challenges. You know, we're going to crack a hundred million, hopefully here next year for sure, but maybe this year. And it's got its own set, but they're fun challenges. They're not stressful like it was when I was in the truck. What's the difference between being in the truck? What are the challenges of a truck guy versus you today? What do those look like? Well, for me, the hardest part is learning how to trust other people and building processes.

It's really easy to take inventory when you're the only one doing it. You don't have the same set of problems. It's really easy to do your books because I trust the books. I trust everything because it was me. And then you need to give up a lot of control. You need to learn how to delegate. You need to learn time management. You need to learn how to be a better leader, how to build a culture.

Different things completely than when you're out there performing the work. You know, the e-myth talks about it all the time. But a lot of us, we think we're really good at business because we know how to do the work. But we have no idea. I'll tell you three things I've learned this last couple of weeks is a lot about hiring the right people. So three things. Hiring the right, smartest people that know how to make decisions and get the best ones. Number two, the standard operating procedures, checklists, things of that nature. And number three, this is the one that's out there is networking. It's literally going in. I went

to a $500 million company last week and I learned so many things. And I'm always trying to hang out at $500 million plus companies because that's where I'm going. You're like the 5% of the people you hang out with. What's that saying? Five. You add up the five closest people divided by five. You're the average. You're the average of those five people.

What are you seeing out there with business owners? I mean, there's a lot of great ones, but what do they come to you with? The business owners that come to me are working really, really incredibly hard and they don't have the systems and processes you talked about before. And they don't necessarily have the, they don't know where to start. They know that they have to do something and they've probably tried a couple of things. And as we do, you know, you try something on Monday, it sort of falls off on Wednesday and a couple of weeks later, you decide to maybe try something else.

But that gets frustrating. And so people come to me when they've got questions about time, time management, operating time. They come to me about team. So people, hiring, managing, building a culture, believe it or not, building a culture is a huge thing. Actually, I know when you were on my show, we talked a lot about how you build the culture there.

It's really, really important. It's the glue that holds everything together. So you got time, you got team, money. People want to know about money. I show them simple, simple, simple systems, man. Simple systems. Two specific reports that you need to be a CEO of a company. One of them is called the end of job report.

And the other one is called the dashboard. And the end of job report is exactly how it sounds. What did we estimate this was going to cost? And what was our actual costs, including all overheads and things like that, change orders, et cetera, time, team, money, and then how to grow or exit the business. And then you have to know about sales and marketing. That's what I bring to the table. You know, it's interesting. I had a guy named John Warlow. Yeah. I just listened to his audio book. He's an EO member. Really? Dude, we're everywhere. We're like a license in an elementary school.

You don't know it. We're everywhere. You know, it's so hard because I see these people that go to Tony Robbins and they go to this, they go to this, they go to this, they go to this. And I'm like, man, just the thing I just joined is six events a year. And I'm going, I love networking. I mean, I absolutely love it, but I'm going, man, how the hell would I even be able to work on the business? If I just. Just give it up, hold it'm going, man, how the hell would I even be able to work on the business if I just...

Just give it a holding up? One finger. You got one finger up. Just one, man. Just work on one thing. If you're in a networking group that you enjoy, stick with it until you no longer enjoy it. Until it's not giving you what you need. And then it's time to find a new... Remember that we just talked about five. You and I are the average of the five people we hang out with. Once you've gotten the most value you can out of that, but you're hungry for more,

then swap out that block of time and level that up. Add a zero to that block of time in your calendar. And that's the challenge that you and I need to have all the time. How do we add zeros to our life, to our relationships, to our business? We pay $100,000 a year to go to these events. The guy got up there and he goes, guys, I'm not bragging to you guys at all, but I'm a billionaire because I'm a multi-billionaire. And he goes, the way I did it is I kept my head down and I became ultra efficient. I take a private jet and here's why.

I have a house cleaner. I have a personal assistant. I have an executive assistant. I don't do my laundry. I don't cook. I don't do anything except make critical decisions. And I hire people. And it was just amazing to hear how little he's involved with operations because he hired right. Let me lean in on that one. I had a business coach in Florida, wonderful woman, really smart. And she's like, Dom, I'm maxed. I can't bring on any more clients because the commute time is killing me. And so I was coaching her because she was one of my franchisees in the company I owned with Brian Tracy. And so the idea came on the table. Why don't you hire a driver? And it was internal. I couldn't possibly hire a driver. Who am I to think I could hire a driver? But then we did the math. If she could do

a coaching call, if she could make a prospecting call while she was being driven, the driver starts to make a lot of sense. You know, he talked about there's non-negotiable minutes and he talked a lot about family. What was interesting about all these billionaires that were there is they brought up Jesus a lot. They brought up not dying alone. They brought up money is not everything because literally sometimes it's lonely at the top. Actually, who do you go hang out with? Just because you could take a Wednesday off, what are you going to do? Go fishing alone? I have some guys I go fishing with now on a Wednesday if I want to, but it was really hard to find that crew. You know, this guy I talked to yesterday, he goes, well, what are the things you want, Tommy? What's the ultimate goal? I said, it's pretty simple. It's a blanket statement,

but I want to do whatever the hell I want to do with who I want to do it whenever. So whenever, with ever I want, whoever I want to do it with, but I want to do whatever the hell I want to do with who I want to do it whenever. So whenever, whatever I want, whoever I want to do it with, whenever I want, and anything's on the table. So if I want to take, and I always say this, if I want to go to Alaska with three of my best friends tonight, flying out there and I don't feel it, it's not my responsibility to pay for everything. But if I have the ability to do it, I don't care about the money. I'm never like, oh, you owe me. I care more about the experience. You know what I mean? Yeah. I live for experiences. I don't need stuff. I don't need a nicer car or flashier shoes. I need to go use those shoes to do something. So tell me some of the lessons that they don't teach you in school about the early days in

business. A lot of the listeners, they say, man, I'll tell you hiring employees. A lot of listeners right now, they're just having supply chain issues. I mean, a guy called me today. He wants to sell his business to me. I looked at his dashboard. He's booking 26% of the jobs because he doesn't have labor, barely getting parts. You know, it's tough out there right now. It's a great market. It's definitely still a seller's market, which is a great thing.

But it's human capital and parts are hard to get. I mean, it's tough out there. Yeah. Parts are hard to get. Can you repeat the question so I can focus in on it for you? Yeah. So what lessons have you learned in the early days of your businesses that they don't teach you in school?

So what they teach you in school, and remember, I didn't have an MBA. I don't have a business degree. We live in a democracy. You don't work in one. Like at some point, I'm going to make a decision and you're going to be offended. You may not like my decision. We might come up with a list of priorities and something's got to come first and something's got to come second.

I'm not slighting you. Something has to come first. And so because your idea came second doesn't mean you didn't have a good idea, but something else had to happen first. And so if you want to ask me what the lesson that I still remember when I had my first painting company, it always comes down to this. There was this really cute girl who was one of my painters. And man, I wanted to ask her out so bad.

And I'm like, I don't think that's right. I'm the owner of this painting company. And listen, who the heck am I? I was owning a student painting company, man. But I came to the site on a Monday and I found out they'd all had a party that weekend and I didn't get invited. Oh, no. Yeah. And you know what? I thought, of course, I'm the boss. I'm not anything else. I'm the boss

and you're the workers. I get it. I got it. And that's how it goes. So I'm friendly with the people on my staff, but I understand we're not friends. We're here to work. I love to have fun and I really love taking care of my people. But I also understand there's an economic relationship here. I'm paying their mortgage. And if they don't enjoy getting their mortgage paid with me, they're going to move on. If I don't enjoy them working with me, they're going to move on. A lot of people don't get that. A lot of people say they hate working with millennials. What's your take on that? I don't find that an issue at all. Yeah. You know what? There's always some generation to point to. We made them. They're

not that bad as long as the expectations are clear. you know, and I can joke with them. I, my son came in and did a couple of recordings from my podcast. I have a segment where we do jokes to open up the show. And at the end of the segment, I was like, you don't want to be the vice president now because he helped me for 10 minutes on a podcast, you know, joke with them, but you know what? They're there to learn. And there's always been a generation that somebody looks back at and says, we're in real trouble and we're not. They're fantastic. We have to be better leaders and we have to understand how our people can be motivated and move forward.

And sometimes I'm going to make unpopular decisions, but I'm going to make them. So I got a joke for you. How many beans come in the perfect bowl of bean soup? I don't know. How many? 239. Because if you added one more bean, it'd be too far. OK, that goes along with my dentist joke, because I love corny jokes.

What's the best time to go to the dentist when it's two thirty? Two thirty. Yeah. I'll tell you what, I have dad jokes all through my podcast. And then I just went and saw Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Yeah. In Jungle Cruise movie. It's full of dad jokes and corny, bad puns. It's just loaded. There's always a two.

Yeah, it's like Mark Wahlberg or whatever will go and they'll start telling each other jokes. You know, I don't remember a lot of those jokes, but I do know a lot of jokes. I probably know several hundreds of jokes. I just got off the phone with a guy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I also, yesterday, had a call with a guy in Texas. The guy in Louisiana sells into Texas. I got that backwards, but there's a difference. I don't know if you know the difference between a zoo in Louisiana and a zoo in Texas. What? Well, they both have great displays of animals, exotic animals, really cool displays, but the zoos in Louisiana, just underneath the name, they have recipes. Nice. Oh, okay. Here's one more. Cause you know, I'm Canadian. I can tell

you the best Canadian joke you've ever heard. Do you know how to spell Canada? C-A-N-A-D-A. There you go. You just pronounced it so badly. We think you're Australian. It's a good thing. We know a lot of the same jokes. So here's a good question for you. You know, a lot of times I had a buddy of mine come in here from Parker and Sons, Josh Kelly. They're going to do about 200 million this year. Largest HVAC company in the world in one location. And he said, who is your client? And I said, it's a dual income, 120,000, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We've identified quite a bit, but I don't think I still got it perfect. I want that answer just to be at the tip of my tongue. I know that 65% of my clients are male. We've literally ran everything through. The woman makes the buying decision. Ah, thank you, client. So we have to think about the decision maker versus the influencer. And those are equally important in

the sales process, especially in home service, because we need to identify who's going to cut the check, but who has the influence. You know, I was on a podcast two days ago, and he said, I read this fascinating book called Selling to Women or something like that. It was all the women listening right now are rolling their eyes. Well, no, it's called Selling to Women or something like that. But I found it online and it was sold out. So I told the guy and he goes, I'll send you 10 copies because I worked with the gal. So I got 10 copies coming. But it's very, very interesting.

I think about that old cliche, come see the softer side of Sears. And when they did that, how well that campaign did. But a lot of times we just draw up this net and we say anybody with a garage door could be my client. What are the shortcomings and how do you identify your perfect client, your avatar? Can I share a story with you? I learned from Brian Scudamore. Now Brian owns 1-800-GUTJUNK, 1-800-WOW-1-DAY-PAINT, You Move Me, and Shack Shine. And out of those four companies I just listed, I think he sold one, like sold the entire brand off. But when you go to the huddle, you can make an appointment and go to Brian Scudamore's huddle on, I think the third Wednesday of every month or something. As long as

you're in town, you can make an appointment and go see it. But here's what they do to answer your question is let's use 1-800-GOT-JUNK. They will say our avatar is Gary and Jane. They have a picture of Gary and Jane from GOT-JUNK, Gary, Jane. They got a picture of Gary and Jane. They have a picture of Gary and Jane from Got Junk, Gary, Jane. They got a picture of Gary and Jane. They know what they look like, how they dress. That picture's in the office, man. And they've got the same one for Wow One Day Paint. I don't know what the names are there, Wendy and Peter, whatever, right? Blah, blah, blah. But I have to understand my client better because I have to understand my client's problems and articulate them better than they can themselves. When I do that, they'll know that I have the answer.

And so if I go in like a doctor and I'm there to do a prescription, I want to ask a bunch of questions before I make my diagnosis. I'm going to get the sale. Have passionate, genuine interest, but I have to understand who is Gary and who's Jane. It's easier said than done. So let's just say this. I'm a window washing company. I'm in Atlanta. I get about 500 new customers. I don't know, 500 a quarter. I don't know what's realistic, but how do you start to do that when you don't really know where to start? So if you don't know where to start, start a Facebook group and friend them on Facebook

because Facebook allows you to create a lookalike audience. So you'll have demographic and psychographic profiles of those people. We've got a department in my company that does that kind of marketing. You can then start to sort in all of your people and it'll bring out, it'll say your people look like this. They act like this. They have this income. They live in a certain area. That's the first thing. The second thing is take your customer list and go back two years if you can. Get a contractor to do this. You don't have to do it yourself. Find somebody on Upwork.

Give them your customer list. Scrub out anything you don't want except the addresses. And have them plot on that map all the addresses of your work, your installs, your remodels, et cetera. You'll start to see clusters. Now, that's a heat map. That heat map is going to tell me information. Have to understand our ideal client. I just did this with one of my clients and we split his city into four zones.

Zone one was within a half hour drive of the shop. And then zones two, three, and four just expand out from that. There's a couple of rules on that. If you're going through a bridge, a toll booth, a tough place to park in town, etc., then that's a zone change. The difference between zone one and zone two was 37% gross profit in zone one, 24 in zone two. So I don't care if Gary and Jane are in zone two.

My zone one customer is a better customer. 37% GP. It's funny because Service Titan, you're familiar with Service Titan, the CRM? For sure. Yeah. They've got a beautiful heat map they built into the homepage. So if you look for the year, it shows by zip code and it gets darker and darker green, the more money you're making.

Yeah. It's a heat map. And it's pretty amazing because you start seeing patterns. So for me, I could start seeing when the builder installed, a big builder was out there and installed, you know, 10,000 doors and the springs are starting to pop. They just get greener. I love data. I really, really do. But I see these $750 million companies, and they're taking into consideration with Domo or Power BI. They're pulling in humidity and stuff like that, which is great for predictive analysis or regression testing.

I think what you're talking about is regression testing. We did this with Belpak, the data scientist. His name is Benji, really smart guy, helped us analyze our avatar. But it all comes down to me. And I think this is an interesting thought, but my top guys, they'll do better in any single market, any single zip code, any single state, pretty much any country, at least if they're English speaking, but they'll also get five-star reviews and they'll also go out there and recruit for me. They'll also talk to customers when they're at a restaurant. So I started focusing a lot less, and I don't mean this in a bad way.

No, I think I know where you're going. Yeah, I think I know where you're going. That's pretty cool. I love my clients. I love my clients. Without my clients, they're the lifeblood of our business. But the employees are so more important because they go out there and they get clients. They'll get reviews. They're the image of the company. And they do the recruiting for me. And the top people, I'll send my top guy. I remember this story. They're the image of the company and they do the recruiting for me. And the top people, I'll send my top guy. I remember this story. I sent my, one of my guys in town from Milwaukee, he calls me up and he goes, Hey dude, I want to send my guys all back out there for retraining. There's like eight of them. And I'm like, let me do one better. Yeah. Let me see if I can call Robin is his name. And I'll say, fly him out to Milwaukee.

He says, sure boss. Well, Mike says, he starts laughing. He goes, well, he's not going to do that good out here. It's Milwaukee. It's not Phoenix. And I go, are you serious? I go, what's the record you've done in a week there from one guy? He goes 8,900 in one week. And I said, okay, well, here's the thing. He's going to come demolish that. I don't care where I put them. And he goes, well, he goes, just so you know, I'm not giving him any preferential treatment. And I go, I don't care where you put him, what zip code you put him in. Just have him run a normal day with the guys. Normal everything. I'm not doing any special marketing.

I'm not going to say any special dispatching, nothing. He left that week with 23,000. Oh, my God. He crushed the goal. He tripled what they did their best. Almost tripled. And it's just interesting because it's a different outlook. I'll put my guys anywhere. I'll put my top 10 guys anywhere. They'll do really, really great, not just at the average ticketed conversion rate, but customer satisfaction

and a yard sign. And it means a lot to put a smile on my customer's face, more than the money, because I want that repeat business. Okay. So what I'm hearing from you is you might have an angle on this that's unique to yourself. Maybe your perfect avatar is the sales rep. As long as the customer's got a garage door, we can serve them. But your sales rep is more important for you getting to that garage door. So maybe that's the avatar you need to be chasing. You know, what's interesting is my Michigan market manager called me yesterday. He's actually my cousin, Dan. And he goes, you know, Tommy, he goes,

the top three guys this month are less than 90 days old. He goes, the training that you guys have done in Phoenix, it's relentless. It's crazy. It's remarkable. These guys come back. They've got a routine. They've got a system. They've got a plan. They're all smiles. They're excited. They're invigorated. And I said, I love that. I love the fact that we can take a brand new guy, put him 30 days in an apprenticeship, 30 days in Phoenix for his training and go out there and be in the top three. I look at that as the training continues to get better. And we're still in the infancy stages. I got 170 techs. I'm going to get to the point where I'm hiring 50 techs a month by the end of this year. And to know that they're coming out like this is amazing.

It's fantastic. You have a working model. Now, like you said, just grind down on those systems and make sure that your systems are brutally efficient. The company I was at in California, they have a dispatcher that calls the technician and the customer on the phone and says, I just want to make sure you're happy with Tommy, Mr. Jones. I want to make sure that he had his booties on when he walked in the house. He talked to you about our promotions going on. He mentioned that we do garage door flooring now. He went ahead, he took the case off the open. He did a 29 safety inspection. I want to make sure you understand your warranty. I want to make sure that he tell you, by the way, that the owner is going to be able to take him out to lunch if he gets another review. So if you would go ahead and do that. So you hit all the bases and it creates accountability. The systems are so many checks

and balances that I learned. And I was very, very just blown away. And my buddy Josh yesterday said, I always get three options. Here's what you have to do. Here's what you should do. And here's what I would do if you were my mom. And he goes, it works every time. And it's, oh my gosh, isn't that awesome? Yeah. Here's what you have to do. Here's what you should do. Here's what I would do if you were my mom. And he goes, it works every time. And it's, oh my gosh, isn't that awesome? Yeah. Here's what you have to do. Here's what you should do. And here's what I'd ask you to do if you were my mom.

Yeah. That's awesome. Have you secret shopped your competition? Yeah. We secret shop them every quarter as far as their pricing, but I haven't called anybody out because I think that's kind of disingenuous. No, no, no, no, no. I don't want you to call anybody out, but it's good to observe.

My parents just went and priced an AC unit for their house. And the two quotes that they got were so far apart in quality. The one company wrote loose leaf on a piece of paper, and the other company had like a properly laid out sheet that had their brand at the top. And it was easy to explain options A, B, and C, and that you could take A and C or B and C, or you can do none of the above. It was really nicely laid out, even though it was handwritten. But how can those two companies call themselves competitors when the company that laid everything out so well is so easy to choose?

The other company is just a bunch of clowns. You could never choose them. Some people, though, they learn the hard way like I did. I used to go for the cheapest answer. Now I go, you get what you pay for it. You can be the fastest. You- You pay for it. You get what you pay for and you can be the fastest. You can be the best quality. You can be the cheapest, but you can't be all three. You know, my mechanic in Milwaukee is amazing, but he's six months out.

So the problem is he's got to raise his prices. And because he's the cheapest and the best, you can't get to anything. He's just so backed up. So busy. Maybe a good problem to have, but I'd rather triple the price and be a couple of weeks out and work half as hard. One of my favorite subjects in the world, and I'm excited to talk to you about it, is marketing. I used to park on the corners and call it marketing. But marketing is so much fun and there's so many different things that work. The company I talked to, I'm probably going to buy in Atlanta. He said,

I've not even had to turn on pay-per-click. I'm not in any mailers. We can't even keep up with the volume. And I said, that's amazing because there's a lot of things we could do still. But I'm just curious, if you go and do a home service business, what would be your marketing strategy? And I don't need it perfectly laid out, but what would some of the things you'd have to do? So I'd have to break down my strategy. First, I have to figure out who my ideal client is and then what we're really good at. So those things have to be done first. What are we good at? What do I really like doing? Or what's my crew set up to do? Or what kind of tooling do I have? Then I have to think about my ideal client. And once I've done that, I then have to think about traditional, like the

old-fashioned marketing methods, because those ones work like a hot damn. And then what am I going to do online? Because it's just the newfangled stuff doesn't work all the time. And then I have to test and measure between both of them. Every dollar has to earn its place. And so if I'm going to spend a buck on direct mail, I'm going to spend a buck on online marketing. And I want to test and measure the response rates, the spend that the client does. Am I getting the right kind of customers who understand what we're doing and who are happy with the job? There's a lot of testing and measuring. I can get down to this actual tactic level if you like too. Well, maybe just a couple.

What's your take? I love Google, but I love Google even more when I branded myself with TV, radio, billboards, and trucks because now my conversion rate, my click-through rate, everything's better.

It's a multi-pronged approach. Yeah. Which is hard to track. It's conventional marketing that still works because it's branding. And they're branded search terms, which are way better when they actually search A1 Garage or a service. So what's your take on kind of conventional TV, radio, billboard stuff? So I'm not a big fan of branding.

I'm a fan of direct response. I want a lead. If I spend a dollar, I want a lead. I want to know where that lead came from. Now, we're at different places in the business. You've got a certain size and a certain ability to buy media where you can do that. If I'm a smaller guy, if I'm starting out, if I've got one or two guys, maybe one or two trucks, I think I have to focus on direct response.

We got a phone call. We got a deal. Because I don't want a brand in the south part of town, which is where I serve, if I'm getting most of my work in the north part of town. It's a delicate dance, and each of them has to play a part. I'm trying to answer the question, but I can't answer it. Testing and measuring will give you the answer. There's a great book by Dan Kennedy called No BS About Direct Marketing.

And he says you can do both branding and get direct response. It's not easy. And then you've got to earn media like PR. I agree with you. So if I want to do branding and direct response, I want not easy. And then you've got to earn media like PR. I agree with you. So if I want to do branding and direct response, I want to go back to that heat map. If my favorite neighborhood is called, just call it Rivertown. That might be a bad part of the world for some people who are listening, but just say that the best part of my city is called Rivertown. I need to go and own that part of town. Bus benches, signs, lawn signs, door hangers, flyers, park my truck in that

neighborhood, eat lunch in that neighborhood. Okay, that's all branding. I can do that hyper branding, but I need to do it in a good neighborhood, not a crappy one. And so then I can add on all the other traditional marketing methods. The other day, I was talking to my trainer about a month ago. And I said, man, this dude is everywhere. His name's Rafi. He's a lawyer. And I mean, every bus, every bus stop, every billboard. I mean, I turn on the radio. I switched the station. It's him. And I'm talking to him about him.

And he goes, yeah, that's my client. I go, dude, you got to give me lunch with this guy. So boom, Wednesday, I had lunch with Rafi. His name is Rafi. What did he say? And I said, dude, I'm just on. They said 15 minute wait. And he was running a little late. They walk. He walks in and they go, hello, Mr. Rafi,

right this way. And I'm like, I mean, he's my age. He's 38. The dude was just really, really, really polite. And he goes, Tommy, what I do, for instance, I took over Tucson with $120,000 spend a month, but I'm shutting down competitors. And he goes, the way that a lawyer firm is valued is by the amount of new clients they get per month. And I said, well, let me ask you, what's the most important thing about what you're doing? And he goes, well, there's a buzz going on. It's like, it's a whirlwind because people talk about me because they're like, they see us, they hear us everywhere. And it just becomes part of their subconscious. But he goes, the trick was I was at about 38% conversion rate. We fixed our systems. We're at 71% now. 71%. That's crazy. And he goes, the only way you can afford to do what

we do is to be above 70%. I took that. And I said, we got some work to do. We're going to work on some standard operating procedures. We're not super far off that. And I will say supply chain is definitely a challenge right now. It's a big challenge. Yeah. You know, 700,000 in Phoenix, just TV, radio billboards. It's crazy to me, but I'm guessing, you know, I got about 70 techs in Phoenix. I'm guessing I could have, I haven't reactivated my list yet with 200,000 people either.

I haven't done a great job of that. And you know what I mean by reactivating my customer list? Going back to the existing base. Yeah. I mean, I think I can keep 150 guys here busy in Phoenix. That's crazy to me. I'm garage doors. And because that's what happens shutting down your competitors too. If you start to do that, you know, you can do it if you want to do it. I mean, you might want to leave a couple of competitors out there just to keep the market a little bit even, but go buy them. You know, I've got guys in other industries that are buying competitors now for the labor. So hard to find good labor, skilled labor. So guys are buying other shops and other crews to buy the labor. You know, it's interesting. My buddy, Jody Underhill, his wife calls me up

and I wanted to pull out. His wife calls me up and she says, Tommy, we figured out, we broke the code. We figured it out. What do you mean? She goes, listen, you know, we're hiring for CDLs, truck drivers. And she goes, no one could get them. We figured out a way to get them by the dozens. And we do the background check, the DMV checks, everything. And I said, well, what are you doing there? We're using software that's auto texting.

We're using Facebook. We're using Instagram. We're using Instagram. We're using TikTok. I got them a flight for the next week. And I said, I need to know because my class is certainly 10 to 15. They're supposed to be 50. And she said, okay, so now they're working with me. They're literally, I'm getting 500 applicants a day and it's all automated. They're killing it. And she told me if I know anybody, I don't know if you ever need anybody, they're calling it rapidhire.info because they sent me to it. I'm like, I'll get you guys clients because I'm a believer, rapidhire.info. But I just thought it was so cool. And I'm like,

guys, I'll get you. There's nobody that I know that doesn't need people. And they go, well, indeed, in Monster and ZipRecruiter work okay if you're looking for a job. But where are the people? Where are your people at all day? They're on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. I mean, if you're in your 20s or 30s, I mean, I'm out there doing a lot of business stuff. I'm on TikTok all the time listening to influencers and listening to Tony Robbins or Dan Pina and just funny stuff. I'm not on Snapchat, really, but I'm sure your kid is probably on all of them.

And if you want to hire those people, you have to be where they are. The traditional methods that you and I understand as older business owners aren't going to work on somebody who's 19 or 20 and entering the workforce and wants the kind of job that we're going to be able to provide.

So I agree with them going after them, you know, doing TikTok videos and using AdWords, like Google AdWords or Facebook or advertising, whatever it might be on these channels, super effective because that's where they are. They're going to see that there. They're not even going to think to go look in the newspaper. And the deal is this guy comes to me yesterday. It's 6.50 AM. It's my second meeting. And I'm sitting in the marketing room with him. And he goes, hey, I think it's so cool that I can even talk to you.

He goes, I used to work for Bank of America. He's like, I never obviously met anybody that was at the top. And I go, dude, I'm just a normal guy. And he's like, I want to tell you, I want to be here if it wasn't for Justin, your technician. He goes, he talks so highly of you. I knew I wanted to work for this company. It's taken a year for you guys to get me into here because you guys just hired for what I do. And I said, well, I think that's amazing. I'm really excited that our employees are out there recruiting and telling people

stuff like that. And Justin walks by and he runs out and gives them a big hug. And these guys are buddies. But he was just one of his customers. And they bonded. I had a guy come out and I get a lot of people out here that just want to come out for a day and spend a day, talk to my different managers. He goes, look, just to be at your meeting, I could have left. He goes, the leadership, they're all focused. You could drop a pin in the room when you're talking. And I said, I get pretty pumped up, but the secret is passion.

That's the one word I like to talk about is they see me that I care. And they go, man, the owner is here. The last time I worked, that was a 10th of the size and the owner never was there. And I'm like, dude, the day I'm not here is the day I stopped caring the day that probably sell. And that's not going to happen. So what was it? Do you remember what it was like when you started though?

Cause let's talk, I don't know who your listeners are specifically, but are there guys out there that are trying to grow, but they're encountering the problem that got the problem. The problem is I can't get people. I can't keep people, I can't get the right people, I can't get the right jobs. Who did you have to be to cross this threshold to be who we see now? Because it looks easy from the outside, but I know you've had to work incredibly smart and hard to get here. Where was your tipping point? Where was your change? Culmination of a lot of reading a lot of coaches but i remember one day saying i remember one of my managers it was a really small business it

might have been a csr they said when are you going to stop running jobs like when are you tommy mellow going to get out of the truck and i said when somebody can beat me and i remember hiring this guy matt and um he went on his first day. He had already experience from another company and he freaking tore it up. And I go, dude, are you kidding me? So we called each other the next day after each job. And then I went out and rode with him and I taught him some stuff. He taught me some stuff.

And then I was like, man, you're that good. In fact, I'm going to be a man of what I preach. I'm going to get a guy to train underneath you. And then I started really figuring out where does he stand? How does he do the rebuttals, the yes, the shaking the head, all the little things that I kept adding to it and building manuals. And finally, I mean, I had a really good workforce out there that I didn't have to run jobs, but there'd be times that like, I always, for two or three years, 2014, 2015, I always had a truck parked in my house in case at midnight, a call would come in. Yeah. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing. So people would call me up and I say, that's in your manual on page 12. And you got to make them accountable. You pushed,

you didn't give them the answer. You pushed them back to the system. You got to go back to the system. And here's the deal. I tell everybody this. I love athletes because they realize one thing. They practice five times more than they played the game. They have practice, practice, practice, scrimmage, scrimmage, scrimmage, practice, practice. And for me, that's role play, role play, teaching, teaching, teaching. And then I get to go play. Yeah.

And I don't think we do this enough in the home service business. And the more we do role play here, that's why my cousin Dan in Detroit said, these top three guys are the new three guys because it's continuing to get better. I said, Dan, we're just getting started. I mean, one out of 10, I feel like we're a four. But you know what? My competitor, he came into my office. We're really good buddies.

We go to Topgolf and he goes, listen, if you got any people in your program not making it, send them my way. I hired one of your dropouts. One of my top guys, I go, look, he's willing to take your cast offs. I mean, I'm not being cocky. It's just my top guys are like yesterday. A guy called me. He goes, Tommy, I am so jacked up. He's like, dude, I love this fricking job. And he's all energy. And I go, what do you mean? He's like, dude, I was ready to quit in March because I was really down and out. He goes, I just did 23 grand a day. He goes, my confidence level is the highest it's ever been. I'm like, dude, you're killing it. I love your optimism. It

oozes out for everybody. I got to tell you a story because you're talking about role play and putting people through the paces and practicing. There's a company called Spence Diamonds. I don't know if you've heard of them. I think they're up here. Spence Diamonds sells wedding rings, engagement rings, right? They sell you on cut color and clarity and all that stuff. But their unique market position is you can come in and take any ring and touch it. You don't have to talk to a rep. Just grab it from the display. And the key there is they're all brass rings with glass diamonds.

But it makes it easy. It's a super easy shopping experience to buy your engagement ring. They do lots of advertising as well. But what's driving that in the background is that if your shift starts at nine o'clock and Tommy, let's say you and I are the opening guys that day, we have to get to work at eight from exactly eight to eight 30. I pitch you, you go to the other side of the counter and I pitch you on the script, cut color, clarity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's how much it's going to cost us what you need. And we do all the role-playing, the rebuttals, the objection handling, the closes. At exactly 8.30, we switch

roles. And now you go to the other side of the counter and you pitch me. At nine o'clock, we stop all role-plays. We go unlock the door and the people come in. Everybody there practices that every day. If you're working, you're doing role play. I love that. That is so important. And they sold their multiples way beyond. They exceeded 30% of the market, which is huge for an independent jewelry store.

Massive. So you're ready for my jewelry joke, the diamond joke. No. Yeah, of course. I was ready for it when we started. Surprised. This lady walks into the diamond store and she's looking at a diamond and she leans over to get a good look at it. And a fart comes out. She looks around and she said, no one was around. The store

clerk walks out and he says, ma'am, can I help you with something? And she goes, sure. She's like, I was wondering how much does something like this ring cost right here? He goes, well, if you farted looking at it, you're going to shit yourself when I give you the price. It just happens to be a diamond joke. That's good. You got a joke for everything. Listen, that kind of energy is infectious because I need to know how to act in your company. If I come on as an employee, you're the leader and you're going to set the expectations and the reflection of the company is of you.

There's a saying from Turkey, fish stinks from the head down. I don't know if you've ever heard that before. No, no. Right. Vern Harnish says it in his book, Scaling Up, as goes the leader, so goes the team. So if you're bitter, sour, angry, if you fly into fits of rage in the office, guess what? The people in your company are going to do that as well. If you're positive, motivated, taking coaching, listening to audiobook books, if you're working on self-improvement,

guess what the people in your company will do? They will do that same thing. My company is a reflection of me. If I'm a mess, it's a mess. If I have systems, my company has systems. So Tommy, you're leading by example. You're showing me how I need to be to be in the organization. There's a good book called The Five Languages Workplace. And you take a test and it helps you identify because if I get you on stage and you're absolutely terrified, you might not like that, but there's certain people that just love it. There's only 35, 50 people in the room, but there's a lot of people on Zoom. And I get them up there and I'm like, man, I've been doing this so long. I don't even flinch. It's like, I don't even care. It's a muscle. And I always tell

people, here's the muscle I want you to use is the ability to get rejected. Get no's. Learn how to get no's. Learn how to get rejected. Good. When you build that muscle and you learn how to take a no, then you'll ask everybody. I ask every single time I'm at a store, do you guys got any discounts? You guys, can you take anything off my bill? I ask for upgrades at every hotel. I don't care. No, fine. But at least I asked a lot of people say yes. Yeah. You know, what's interesting about that? I'm thinking back to my first trades business. So not the Christmas light one, but I was part of something called AAA student painters. It's one of those student painting franchises you buy in university and college. And so I'm doing okay, but my manager

decides to come out and this is a guy who'd run his own territories. And now he's the manager. He comes with me and we go to this house and I have this part of town where it's old houses, beautiful old houses. The guy I'm talking to is an architect. The wife, she was like on the selection committee that said, if you were going to get out as a parolee, these are like high-end lawyers and architect type people. And I'm in there and I do the tour and I go through the script and everything. And at the end of it, I'm like, hey, should we get started in your house? And they're like, we want to think about it. I'm like, well, that's okay. You've got all the information, blah, blah, blah. I go to walk out the door and this is one of those old houses with a big veranda.

We are not out the door. And he turns to me and he says, are you an MF visitor? Like he's yelling at me on the front step. Are you a visitor? Are you a professional MF visitor? He says, your job, if you want to keep this territory, it's to go get kicked out of three houses this week. You got to close so hard, you get kicked out of the house. And dude, I got kicked out of three houses that week. I got police called on me once. I had a guy escort me out the door and another person just yelled so loud. I just left. But I was happy on that third one.

I can close anybody now. I just keep closing, keep closing, keep closing. But I had to go through that pain. He made me get kicked out of three houses that week. That was the price it took for me to keep my territory. His name is Marcus New, if anybody knows him. And Marcus, if you're listening, I hated you at the time. And I thank you now. I think that's really interesting. There's a good book. I actually hung out with the author. It's called Relentless. Reminds me of Glenn Gary

Ross, where he goes copies for closers. He goes, Mitch, Mitch and whatever they sent me. Mitch and Murray. Mitch and Murray. Mitch and Murray. Mitch and Murray sent me here. And all the leads, the leads are no good. The leads suck. You suck. I love that. Oh, man, that was a good steak knives. Yeah. Mitch and Murray. Mitch and Murray. Mitch and Murray sent me here from downtown. What's the secret that's helped you achieve the work life balance? Because that's the thing we all struggle with in business. Yeah, man, I still struggle with it because I'm restarting now. I've sold two companies. And so I had that balance. Prior to this, I had a pharmacy, a mail-order pharmacy. When we had $120 million in sales, I sold that company. What haven't you done? Are you kidding

me? Is there anything you haven't done? Yeah. I haven't built this company yet. And then I started the franchise with Brian Tracy. We got to 237 franchisees and I sold that. And both times, I wish I'd taken a little bit more time to chill out. And now I'm in startup mode again, but I love what I do, man. I've got two podcasts. I coach some great companies. I did the same thing. I went back and asked my customers what they want. They want more financial help, like more help managing their numbers because they don't have somebody to do it. And they want more help with marketing.

So I just added that to my practice and we're going gangbusters. So balance, I stopped work at five. This interview is three minutes from five right now. And once we're done, I'm going to take my son to football practice. I'm going to get you out of here. Don't worry.

There's a good book by Dan Thurman called Off Balance on Purpose. Okay. And there's no such thing for me as balance because it's hard for me to be close with God, close with my family, working out every day, reading all the time, being great at business, being the best son. I kind of got to decide on a quarterly, monthly, yearly basis, what I'm going after. And I'll tell you what, I got about 18 more months of just hardcore in this building every day. There's no balance without imbalance. The definition of balance is moving between imbalance and balance. And so you can't just not do everything all the time. I mean, you can, but you'll get those results. It has to go back and forth. There has to be give and take. So

build the systems in your company. I'm telling this to the listeners. Build the systems, the SOPs in your company that will allow you to step back. Do your end of job report. See the profitability on a per job basis. Keep a clean dashboard. Make the decisions based on facts, not on your gut. Get balance. I love it.

I love it. I love it. I love it. If someone wants to reach out to you, obviously, Construction Millionaire Secrets, they got to buy the book. What's the best way to reach out to you, Dominic? You know what? If you can't find me on the internet, you're not looking. Unfortunately, that's the way things are today. So my name is Dominic Rubino. Hit me on LinkedIn. Go to my website, which is Profit Toolbelt. Listen to the podcast, which is Profit Toolbelt. If you happen to be in the cabinetry finishing business, or you do commercial

millwork, come to the Cabinet Maker Profit System Podcast. And if all that else fails, just shoot me a text. 604-837-8361. Boom. Give me three books that really stand out to you, maybe change your life. Okay. Definitely The E-Myth Revisited. I'll tell you, it's the most painful book I ever read. And the reason it was painful is because I would read two pages. Tommy, you got to watch this. I would read two pages and do this. Because that book described me as a business owner to a T. No systems, no process, no consistency, inconsistent customer service experience. It was horrible.

So read the E-Myth Revisited. The next one, you want to turn around your business. Read Brian Tracy's book. It's called The Weight of Wealth. It's basically a recipe book of systems. I used to joke with my coaches that as long as you were flying over an English speaking country, you could kick me out with a parachute in any city anywhere. And I could start a coaching practice and kick ass. That book is that good. But it's overlooked because it's kind of a recipe book for SOPs and systems. And then the third book would

have to be either your choice of traction or scaling up. And both of those are methods for putting a strategic plan in place in your business so you can get the insanity gone. Stop the insanity. Put systems in place. Build a team of people you trust. Delegation, meetings, calmness. Just get clarity and get calm and get focused.

Is it the rules of wealth? The way to wealth. It's called the way to wealth part one and part two. Okay. So last thing I do here, I know you got to get going is maybe we didn't talk about something. Maybe there's really something on your mind. Maybe it's just a go take action, but I'll give you a few minutes to close this out here. I've announced that this is the year of more because this whole COVID thing has changed.

Everybody's had to make a lot of exceptions from the way they were going. I'm not here to talk politically about it. I don't care. But this is the year for more. If you want more time with your family, go book more time with your family. If you want more profits, go find more profits. If you want to do more work with your kids in sports, go do that. It's your choice. It's my choice to have more. I can also accept less. But when I accept more, when I give more, when I share more, when I learn more, when I am more, I can have more of an impact in the world. And that's what I need to do. Leave this world a better place. Go impact somebody positively. Talk to somebody else in your family that's got a business. They're looking up to you and they want to see what you're doing. So maybe one day they can do it.

Maybe it's your kids. Maybe it's your neighbor. I don't know. But be more of whoever you are and pass that forward. Brilliant. Brilliant. I love it. Go out there and get more, guys.

Dominic, really appreciate you coming on here today. Tommy, thanks for having me, man. I loved it. All right, brother. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it 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'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 uh 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.