The Home Service Expert Podcast - Developing Accountability In Your Business To Achieve Your Goals with Consistency

Episode Date: January 1, 2021

Randy Stanbury is the author of The Small Business Freedom Formula, and is the founder and CEO of 4 Level Coach. At only 23 years of age, he founded Service Freight Systems in 1995, grew the business until it generated multiple-millions-of-dollars in annual revenue and eventually sold it for a considerable amount. Now, he works with entrepreneurs in finding freedom by leveraging employees' strengths. In this episode, we talked about coaching, leadership, entrepreneurship, strategy...

we now think of our entire business and have for many, many years that we work in quarters. We work in 90-day increments. We want to create a vision every 90 days for the next 90 days. We want to create a forward plan. We want to create some reverse goals to make sure that we're on track with that plan. And we need to take action, big action every single week. And if we're taking that big action every single week, well, we're taking that big action every single week, well, we better be monitoring, tracking, scoreboarding on a weekly basis what that looks like. We better be meeting on Monday mornings or a given day of the week at the same time and day of that week. We need to review our scoreboard. We need to evaluate what's going

on. We need to adjust course and take big action again. And we do that week after week after week until the 90 day hits and we re re look at our vision. And if we can stay consistent with that model, then we will keep our accountability and we'll stay on path to get to where we want to go. Period. End of story. It's got to be done. 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.

I have a guest today that is returning, Randy Stanberry. He's an expert at coaching, leadership, entrepreneurship, and strategy. He's the four-level coach, chief inspirational officer from 2018 to now, service freight systems and warehouse owner and founder, 1995 to 2017. He founded service freight systems in 1995 when he was only 23 years old from his bedroom at his parents' house. Over the years, he grew his business until it generated multiple millions of dollars in annual revenue and eventually sold it for a considerable amount of money. He's the author of the Small Business Freedom

Formula, and he is amazing. Randy, how are you? Hey, man. Thanks, Tommy. I appreciate the introduction. Thanks for having me on again. So let's talk about where we left off of just what's changed, what's going on now with COVID, what's up in your life? The whole COVID thing has had us just kind of shift our business model, which, you know, shift our thinking. You know, the whole world has changed to, you know, Zoom is now kind of a household staple. So it's not unusual to be utilizing that tool. We want to see even more home service providers utilizing that where they can, getting more effective, more efficient. So there's some, you know, some things that happened during COVID that has been, I think, a benefit to start implementing into our worlds. And it certainly changed the way we think about how we do things. So what specifically are you changing?

Well, our business model, you know, we were doing a lot of in-person group sessions where we just don't have to do that. We can do everything via Zoom. We can do it all online. It allows us to just scope a much larger audience. And really just our thinking has changed. And whether we get into, you know, our profit multiplier package that we're now offering and some of the new things that we're doing is all a result of kovat and I personally think it's it's a much better more effective more efficient way for business owners to not have to travel to not spend more time digging into the guts of their business and helping them get there where they want to go is a much more efficient way of doing things online. So I had to look it up real quick. I should have invested. I'm an idiot. Why didn't

I buy? You knew Zoom was going to go straight up. I would have tripled my investment since COVID. And you got to invest in things you know about, right? And I'm like, the writing was all over the wall. didn't i think of that well so do we not think of those things because we're wrapped up in our own worlds probably you know and and when i you know and that only comes to mind because you know i work with a lot of entrepreneurs that they do not see the forest for the trees because they're in the thick of it sure so i often believe that we as entrepreneurs need to have the time to be able to pull back and see the bigger vision and the bigger picture. You're absolutely right.

You got to get out of working in it and work on it, right? And you end up missing opportunities like that because you were too thick and too deep. And so, you know, what's the value of pulling yourself out and pulling yourself off the tools, doing the things that we shouldn't be doing? And I think we all know that we need to be doing those things, but how the hell do we get there? And then how do we then see more of these opportunities that you just brought up with Zoom? I mean, when you try to put a dollar value to that, it's astronomically, there is no dollar value. You know, it's like when you said just now Zoom's become a staple name, I said, man, that's not, you're right. It's kind of like

Kleenex. It's like Kleenex is, it's a nose tissue. I mean, it's Kleenex is just a brand or, you know, Blockbuster was a, it's a killer movie because of blockbuster. So, you know, why do you think entrepreneurs struggle with accountability so much? Well, one thing is because we can, um, you know, I think most of us, and certainly I had this early on in my career as an entrepreneur, I wanted to avoid accountability as much as I could because I was only accountable to me and I could lie to me really easily. So as long as I could lie to myself and get away with that, then I really didn't have to do everything that I said I was going to do, which made my life easier, but it certainly wasn't going to get me where I wanted to go.

When that became apparent, then, oh shit, I needed to get an accountability coach. I changed my entire world. And part of why I changed it was because I needed to be accountable. And I knew that was the only way for me to actually have the success that I want. Yeah. You know, it's like we get bombarded and how do you focus on prioritizing? So I use a tool that I am a huge, huge advocate of. I was created a number of months ago, probably, well, really early on in the business, but it was something that I've been doing for many, many years, but I just didn't realize to the degree of the consistency that we were doing this. And we refer to it as the execution loop. So we now think of our entire business and have for many, many years that we work in quarters. We work in 90-day increments. We want to create a vision every 90 days for the next 90 days. We want to create a

forward plan. We want to create some reverse goals to make sure that we're on track with that plan. And we need to take action, big action every single week. And if we're taking that big action every single week, well, we better be monitoring, tracking, scoreboarding on a weekly basis what that looks like. We better be meeting on Monday mornings or a given day of the week at the same time and day of that week. We need to review our scoreboard. We need to evaluate what's going on. We need to adjust course and take big action again. And we do that week after week after week until the 90 day hits and we re-look at our vision. And if we can stay consistent with that model, then we will keep our accountability

and we'll stay on path to get to where we want to go. Period, end of story, it's got to be done. So one of the things I like to do is I call it, start with the end. And where do you want to be? And then I reverse engineer that and mine, the five or seven year plan. Now, I think I can get there quicker, but I had to reverse engineer. I would need to hire what the company looks like, the roles that will be created and had to execute. And I had to break that down

to a year, to a quarter, to a month, to a week, to a day and taking action. What stops? I am a risk taker. I'm a calculated risk taker, but I jump in head first and I start. The best entrepreneurs in the world are risk takers. What stops somebody from accelerating? I think it's not following that style of execution where we are tracking, evaluating, adjusting course on a weekly basis. So yes, I'm exactly the same. I like to think no further than three years out, or at least the entrepreneurs I work with at this point, at this level in their life and their business. So we think three years out, we go to a year, we go to 90 days, we go to the month,

we go to the week, we go to the day. But the exact same thing applies. And I love the whole reverse engineering of it. But I think that it all comes down to that we get off course because we don't stay consistent with looking at this on a weekly basis. So I like to think about business as a sport and every single sport out there

looks and reviews game footage on a professional level. You know, if you look at any professional team, they're going to be reviewing game footage and they're going to be evaluating, they're going to be adjusting and putting a new game plan in place to go after the next game. And we play 52 games a week in our business or a year in our business because every week's a game. So let's review our game footage from last week and let's adjust course and let's go at it again until we get there.

Period. So what is that software called? This is simply our model and our method, no software related. Oh, so you guys, oh yeah, I thought you said there was a software created months ago. It was just, okay. The whole creation of the thought and the process to this, it just makes a lot of sense. Now, should there be software? Yeah, you probably should be. But this is just our model and way of thinking. And we want all entrepreneurs to be following this model. Now, there's no doubt you have meetings every single week. Yeah, no, we got out of a meeting. So I have a meeting every morning. Every morning at 745, I have my, we call it the morning mojo call.

All the technicians dial in. At eight o'clock, I have a 15 minute with every major manager. And we talk about the one thing we're going to get done today. That's the big thing. And then we hold each other accountable to that. Thursday, we have two meetings, an hour long with the entire technician staff on Zoom. And then we have our field supervisor meeting. And it's, it's crazy when the meetings become productive and we have an agenda and we have a closing time. And then Friday we have our financial quick check. We go over

everything. What's in the bank. What's our debt. What's our balance sheets look like. We go over each market specifically. We find out what's good, what's bad. We take things from the great markets. We get rid of the things from the bad markets. I feel like I always say this now. I feel like I'm cheating because we're winning so much. It's not even fair. But the reason you're winning is because you're continuing to look at this and analyze. And then you go after that. We refer to it as vitals. And you're saying, what's that one thing? So what's that vital thing that has to happen today? And if that's going to be a needle mover, then let's hold ourselves accountable to that. Let's make it happen. But you don't wait a week. You're doing it the next morning. Let's get back to, did that happen? Where are we? Review, analyze, adjust.

Yes, you're absolutely right. That's the key to success. You know what? I want to divert or change subjects a little bit because right now I think there's a huge opportunity. There's 20 million people unemployed in the United States, probably a lot of unemployed in Canada too. What's your take on recruiting and building an amazing team? I refer to that as our people pipeline and having a people pipeline and constantly and consistently bringing new people into the fold. now, tomorrow, next week, next month, because our whole ability to grow is our ability to really train and execute the delivery of new people into the field, but doing it in a way that is systematic, right? I know that you have an extraordinary system of training. In fact, you have a whole training team. Yeah, yeah. The training is everything.

You know, I can't believe since I started the podcast, how much my mind has developed and changed about training. It's like, there's no such thing as too much training and it should be done all the time. And you know what I like to do? I like to praise excellent results. The guys come on the morning mojo call. They had a huge success and they talk about the wins. For some reason now, I never really talk about the losses. I let my management team kind of handle the back end, the left side of the outliers. And I focus on the top, tippy tippy top of the extraordinary outliers. And I say, how do we duplicate these? And we train around those. Yep. And it's amazing. Brilliant. Yes. So what do you look for when

you're hiring an employee? I mean, a lot of people, and I think this is the worst thing, if you're like I was, you try to find somebody with the skills, but you kind of have to take the attitude that comes with it. Now I hire somebody with the attitude and teach them the skills. What is your take on that? Yeah, same. A hundred percent the same. All of my teams have been built not based on skill or where they came from. In lots of cases, we can train the skill. You know, you know if somebody has hands and if they can be trained or not, but you can't train attitude and that whole piece is that's an absolute nightmare and it better be there. But do we not have to start with the idea of culture and what do we want to develop into our business anyway? And if we don't know what our culture is supposed to look like, then how do we know what we want to bring on to our team anyway? Right? So it really has a lot to do with culture.

We have to make sure we have good cultural fits. If that cultural fit works, then let's get them trained properly. My experience and what I'm seeing for the most part in the industry and in the field is they don't have time to train. These guys are firing people into, when I say firing, I don't mean literally firing somebody for not doing the work, although that's eventually what will end up happening. But we just put people into the field far too quickly. They're not trained properly and we're pissed off because they're not doing the job properly. So we don't look in the mirror and say, well, what did we do to get them there? You know, what did we do to make them the best they could be for what we want in the field? And if you don't have a way of doing business, so if you don't have a unique process that is supposed to follow, then anything that they do will do. Well, there's no SOP, standard operating procedures. And

you made a great analogy. Watch the videotape. You know what else they do in sports? I played a lot of sports and I did more practicing than I played the game. Right. The game time was way less than the practice, right? And you became real good at the game. And that's what happens is you become really, really good at the game. And here's what's nice. I remember in, shoot, this was in middle school, Mr. Dallinar from Flynn Middle School, Michigan.

He taught us. We took tests in gym on how to play basketball, how to play football, what a center, left tackle, left guard. We learned all this stuff and we learned how to play the game. And the one thing we don't get taught in business is very rarely does the hiring squad and the training center and the people say, here is the game and here's how you win right and here's your key performance indicators like the scoreboard like you said yes and when you hire on a new role the biggest thing i've learned and this is going to be this is earth shattering because my general manager my coo the same guy adam he always wanted to have people doing hey they don't have they've got a lot of downtime

they could do this i'm a rifle this is your. I don't want you doing anything else because then you don't take accountability. I love a targeted goal and just five major KPIs, and this is all you do. You're a specialist. And I think so many of us, we say, well, they should be able to take on several different tasks. And some of us need to, when we're a small business. We might wear five hats. We're heading in that direction. And like Michael Gerber says in the e-myth, if you want to become that business, you want to become that someday, you need to start thinking and acting like it now. That's correct. So even though we may be doing those things in our business today, we need to be working towards and thinking about how do we, you know, put the right piece in place to get out.

And I think that's the biggest challenge. Yeah. And, you know, I'm just thinking here about recruiting and I can tell you what I've done is I've emphasized the ability to make my employees recruiters. And I said, each one of you should be able to find two people a month with just $18,000 in your pocket a year because I get $1,500 per person. So your goal is every time you see an Amazon package delivered, every time you see a bus way to a restaurant, every time you're getting a haircut, be looking for the smile and the great people that just, they're going out of their way. They seem delightful. Every time you see this store clerk or the checkout gal at the Walgreens, whatever that might look like,

always be recruiting. Forget always be closing, always be recruiting and make a lot of money in the process and let's build this baby together. You know what I mean? That's brilliant, man. I love that, Tommy. It's great. That's the whole people pipeline for us. We go after business and we have sales pipelines, but we don't think about people pipeline. We don't think about the other side of the fence where we need a great teams to be taking care of our sales pipeline. So let's build that. Do it that way. Brilliant. The people are the sales pipeline. That's what I've learned this last year. That's what I've learned during COVID. The people are the sales. They are the referrals, the friends, neighbors, and family. They're the ones getting these deals. Yesterday,

my guy called me up. He says, Tommy, I've got the best news. Are you sitting down? I said, I'm sitting in my car and driving. And he said, listen, brother, I just talked to the HOA president of a huge association. She needs 150 doors installed. And guess what? She manages over 5,000 houses in the best part of Scottsdale. And she said, she loves us so much. She did her research. She's using us on all of them. And we're going to start with the 150 doors this month. I said, dude, you are a genius. You are the man. So this morning, we talked about how he built a relationship with the HOA president. And what I'm learning now is have a plan. I told all my guys this morning, I said, every time we're with a customer, we should ask them if they know the HOA president and get that information and go take care of their door

and service it for free. Find the paint codes on the garage doors and say, listen, let's talk at our next HOA meeting. And listen, I've known this for a long time, but I've never implemented it. And I implement a lot of things and that you got to prioritize, but this thing is a bombshell. You know what I mean?

So that being a bombshell, that becomes our scoreboard item or becomes one of them. Do we have the HOA president or not? Oh, I love that. I'm taking notes. Right. That into the scoreboard, baby. If you want things to change, if you want to implement change, if you want improvement, it has to be tracked and measured. And that's what we start looking at. So we add that to our board. And do we have every HOA president or not? And every time we get a new client, do we have it or not?

But the deal is, I could call any HOA president, but when I've got someone in that HOA that had a super pleasant experience, it's a game changer. And you got to reward it and incentivize. You know, I don't use a stick very often. I'm a carrot type guy. I love the carrot.

And the bad guys kind of fall off because everything I do tends use a stick very often. I'm a carrot type guy. I love the carrot. And the bad guys kind of fall off because everything I do is tends to be performance based. And the reason I do that is because it's a culture of winning. And I was on a podcast yesterday, we were talking a lot about, I love to hire athletes because they're so competitive. If they're number two, they hate it. And there's other people that just don't want to be last. And they go, well, but at least I'm not last. And I'm like, I don't like that attitude. Like, if I suck at something, Adam used to whoop my butt in ping pong.

So I went and saw a ping pong coach because I hated losing. And I knew I couldn't get there on my own to beat him. So I had to go to someone that was the best. What's your take on hiring winners? Before we jump there, though, what you just said is you went and got yourself, you know, one of the best ping pong coaches. Well, it's the same thing we're doing in business. Every professional athlete's got one. You know, I got my first business coach after my first couple of years in business, about 25. And that was the whole accountability piece.

I needed to get my coach to have some accountability that knew more than I knew so that I could start learning some things and put some new actions into place or I was just gonna end up being in the same spot five and 10 years from now. So if we wanna win, yeah, we need to step up our game and take some new actions.

I love that. I love the idea of just saying, you know what? When's the last time you played a game? What was the last sport? Like ask these questions during an interview and just laugh at them and say, did you win? And find out. And here's the thing about me is I'm like, if somebody says, what's a bad quality about

you? And, you know, in an interview and I say, you know, I'm kind of a sore loser. I don't like to lose and I beat myself up when I lose. And I tend to try to get really good at that. I think that's the best answer you could ever give in an interview. Brilliant answer. I hope anybody listened and got that one. Yeah, this is so fun. I love doing this stuff. So talk to me about the community because recently I just started doing a lot more with charities. And one thing I got to emphasize about charity is don't give the charity unless you're giving back to your people first.

There's no person that works for you, whether it's a single mother with bad tires on her car that you should be able to get the tires for her or feeding, making sure everyone's got a place to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And everybody's got an Easter basket and Christmas presents for their kids. Don't go external until you focus on internal. I hate the people that just use it for publicity and they do that crap. It's great when you give and the news picks it up and you could get great work out of it. And getting involved, you know, one of the things I told my project manager that I just hired,

I said, listen, I want to get the police officers. We're going to have a day where it's all blue. And we're going to have a police officer appreciation day. I want to do it with the firefighters. I want to do fun things. I want them to come in here and have fun. And that stuff goes a long way. So what does it mean to be involved in the community

and just be more charitable and give? I think that whole notion of don't do it until you're ready for it is the whole piece of building some success before you start trying to leverage that for gain. So let's do the right things in the beginning. But as far as community and giving back, I think has to be part of the whole, whether it's a three-year, a five-year, seven-year, one-year, that's part of our vision. If it's not part of our vision,

then what we're doing is it has less meaning, right? So if we're going to have more meaning in what we do, then let's help along the way. And if you're going to make some shitload of money that people, you know, often have negative feelings about you making too much money, you know, the most successful people in the world provide the largest amount of charitable donation. So to be able to get to the level that we can get to, to be able to give back that money is why we do what we do. And it becomes the most meaningful thing that we have. So I'm all about it. I do it regularly. But I certainly didn't do it when I had nothing. You can't get when you have nothing.

Because I wanted some publicity. You know, here's something that's interesting. I talked to my buddy Josh Campbell the other day. And we were just, I was on my whiteboard and I was having a blast. And he said, you know, it's really cool how you could advertise without advertising that you give to charity is when you're on social media, you say, we're so happy we got involved with Habitat for Humanity and we're able to help with this. And we think you should do it too. And here's how to give and donate. So you're saying you're publicizing it in an indirect way.

Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. You're not boasting about what you did. You're trying to just help it grow. Exactly. And that's the genius way. There's so many gold nuggets when we talk, and I love this. And that's just something that you don't understand what it's like when you start giving, because I call it a boomerang, because it comes back to you tenfold. And it's just amazing. Listen to this. Someone that's listening, you go out there, you look at the cars in your parking lot, or if it's COVID, I understand that. But when they return and you find someone with bad tires and you go to discount tire and you get a gift card and you surprise them and you say,

I want you to be able to get to work safely. And I know money's tight. Here's the thing. That person will become your top recruiter and their company will be like, oh my gosh. And instead of saying we hire great people and we've got a great community here at our business and it's a great leadership. Now they're going, no, no, no. This is exactly what happened. The owner went out and he gave me a gift card to buy new tires. And instead of saying we're drug testing a background check and open nights and weekends, you'll be way, way, way more specific. And that's the game changers. You say 567 of our last jobs started on time. Two of them didn't, they were resolved in 24 hours. We had two warranty calls in the last six months in which they were resolved in 24 hours. We had two warranty calls in the last six months in which they were resolved in 24 hours. I mean, those are specifics.

So it just changes. The only reason you know that is because you got a fucking scoreboard. Yeah, you're right. What I love about how you're building and developing the business is rewarding within for bringing new opportunities, bringing new clients within. The whole rewarding of is very much a giving back, contributing to your team, but it

also allows your team to want to be out there, want to be driving it. And like you say, they're doing the recruiting. You don't even have to tell them to do it or ask them to do it. They're going to do it naturally because they love where they're working. And now you don't have to find anybody, you're attracting them. So why are we out there trying to bang our head against the wall, trying to find good people? How many times have I heard in the last couple of years of doing this, saying that we can't find any good people. Well, it's like, that's so much bullshit. That's not true at all.

The reason you can't find them is because one, you're not set up in your business to be attracting them and then wanting to be with you. So it feels like you can't find them. But when you have a business like you're set up with, Tommy, do you really have to find them? They're probably flocking. Well, they flock to

me, but the one thing I don't look for in mine is the unemployment line. I steal them away from other companies. I go out there and I find workers because they're working. I have ads everywhere. I have ads on every single job site because there's people that move here. There's all kinds of opportunities. There's people getting back into work that might've been out because of COVID, whatever that looks like. But you're attracting them though. You're absolutely right. They're magnets.

Yeah. And it's all based on evidence of what you're providing your team. And that's known. If you think that's not known in the marketplace, that's craziness. Well, you know what I just decided i'm gonna do i'm gonna walk out into my parking lot after this yeah i'm gonna drink some of my that idea literally just hit you when we're chatting no no i do stuff like this all the time i always but that's just something that i was thinking

about yeah one of the things we did the other day is we bought a dunk tank. We went on offer up, we found a used one. I would have bought a new one, but it would happen to just be there. So we call it dunk the trainer. Cause I've got, you know, right now our goal is to get to 70 guys a month, recruiting 70 new technicians, which means that my goal is to have 500 applicants per day. So across how many states? Right now we're in 13. I'll be in probably 17 by the end of the year, probably 30 by the end of next year. So this includes all states that you're in? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they start out as an apprentice and then they come into Phoenix after they've proven they're on time, they're cordial. There's just a lot of things I look for in that apprenticeship. Even the first ride-along, I'm looking at 10 things. I'm looking at, are they chewing gum? Are they smoking cigarettes? Are they on their phone the whole time? Are they asking good questions? Do they show up? Are they punctual? Were they groomed? Did they smell right? Did they talk to the trainer? Did they respect? Did they have empathy? When we walk them back to their car, how did their car look? Is it a mess? Is there McDonald's in there? All these things, before they even get hired, I'm looking for. Then I put them through the predictive index. Then I put them through three interviews. Then I put them through

the drug test and back. I mean, it's hard to get a job here. And just the fact that you made it through training means you're like a Navy SEAL. You've graduated from A1. You're a specialist now. You're the best in the business. There's nothing else like you now. You're absolutely serious about being there. You would not have spent that time or that effort. Oh yeah. Yeah. And listen, it's a given now. We send people home from training. I can tell you, I've sent a dozen people home in the last two months from training. They can't make it through that. I say this guys, I don't mind if you go out and have a fun time. I like to go out and have some beers, but we need to be in it to win it. We need you to be a hundred percent here. Hell, I'll even go barbecue and have a beer with you. I had two guys in my,

my place two days ago and I don't mind at all. I love them to come by. And it's so cool that I could hang out with my staff and just, I talked to them about so many stories of success throughout the years. And it's just fun. And a lot of them are funny. And then I hear stories that they tell me about their lives. And it's just, you can't beat that stuff. There's nothing else in the world that's more satisfying than getting to know who you work with and just laughing and having a good time, you know? You you know how inspiring is that for them to be part of this team and feel like they know they're making a difference here where it means something to be part of because you know where you're going i mean you just nailed it and

i didn't hear exact your exact numbers but it was 13 states you're going to be in what did you say 30 by the end of what? Next year. Next year. Into next year. I mean, that's certainly. You know what's beautiful is I'm working on licensing. I found out my distribution centers. I've got a plan to go into that market. I'm basically stacking the deck and it's unlike anything anybody's ever seen.

And you know what's really cool about my employees? They each have a call tracking number. If they want to enter into the program, it's free. But I give them a call tracking number. They hand out their cards and guess what? They get 10% of whatever that job was if we get anybody's work that calls that number. And it's all tracks to a CRM. It's all seamless and they get paid all the time.

It's a brilliant model. I mean, it's exactly how you should develop and build a business in the exact steps. You've done it perfectly. You're rolling smoothly. There's really no stopping at this point. There's nothing that would stop you at this point. But I'd like to bring you back for your audience, assuming your audience are trying to get to the level that you're at and they're struggling, you know, with all the issues along the way. So could I reel you back for a little bit and put me back in the first few years of going through some struggle? How were you able to pull yourself off? What did you do in the beginning that was the biggest game changer to get the fucking ball rolling towards this type of success?

Well, the big thing was, is I had to realize my weaknesses and I had to hire around my weaknesses and I had to find people that were better than me. A lot of people have too big of an ego and I look for someone that could run circles around me and everybody around me, I'm good at a few things, but I find the best of the best. I aim to find a 10 out of 10. That's my goal. So first, that's where you got to get started is hire better and realize your

weaknesses. I hate accounting and finance. I've learned it because it's a necessity of my business and I've actually learned to love it. You know, I love it for my business, but if you had me go through an annual report for a public traded company, I don't like that. It's not fun for me. You know, back then you would have, you would have not even know how to do it likely. But would you say that whole thing I would sum up is being able to let go? Yeah, you know what? That's the thing is, you got to understand that you don't have to do everything. And trust me, here's the biggest thing that people got to understand out there is it's not going to be as good as you do it and you got to say this i'd rather have 25 b players than a bunch of a and d players because i don't want that different effect but i know

that people aren't going to care as much as me about my business i like them too and a lot of them plus went tears have poured into this business from every angle so a lot of them care and they love the business and they care about me deeply. But what people don't understand is they don't care exactly like you do. You gotta train them to do the 10 out of 10 and inspect what you expect.

So people can't tolerate a B or a C when they know they could do an A and that's the biggest roadblock, I think, for small business. Yeah, but you wanna turn that B into an A. Oh, always. I develop Bs. But the one thing is, too, is they develop.

You know how many people start with me and people say, these guys aren't going to be good. And I go, watch. My system will make them A+. It's impossible not to. Because now we've got a virtual person on every single call. So now we have someone helping. Provided they have the right attitude and character to begin with.

Oh man, it's so good when you have someone that's just bubbly. They're huge on social media. We buy pizza for everybody and they're posting it. The other day we bought food for everybody. Actually, I'm going to do that next Thursday too. And we had a food truck out here and I said, Hey guys, if you wouldn't mind, just do me a favor. Just if you could go on Facebook live and tell people you're having fun if you are. And so all of a sudden, bang, bang, boom, they tagged me and they're coming in like a dozen of them. And I'm like, all of a sudden we got 20 applicants that day from friends, their friends. And they said, dude, if this person is going to come, they're going to be your ace in the hole. So now it's just crazy how that works. So what we did in the trucking business for years and years and years was we would buy lunch on Friday afternoon, provided by 4 p.m. on Thursday, we hit a milestone. And everyone knew

what that milestone was. Every time we hit it, we buy lunch, they decide where the hell they want to get it. But that went on literally for years. So it just became a thing. And the truth of the matter is, they would do everything in their power to get the ball across the line to make sure they got their lunch if we were short on Thursday. But again, it's because we knew our numbers. It's because we knew what those milestones, those targets were. So if you have no targets, then we're only out there just doing our thing without any real direction as to what this means. You know what? I play a lot of golf, not as much as I'd like to, but I know where my game... You see, I know exactly how many greens and regulation I hit. I know how many fairways I hit, and I know my short game is where I can

make the biggest bang to get lower. If I start making more putts and my chips within 100 yards get better. So those are the things I need to focus on that's going to emphasize my game the fastest. It'll bring me down from an 84 to a 76 over the next month if I really had the time, which I can make time to go golfing, but I also like to do other things too. So that's not my top priority, but it's a good analogy. Yes. Yeah, no. And if that was your focus and you did that and you really focused on it, evaluated and adjusted course every week and you took new action,

you would get there. Yeah, because I hate to lose. And I'm challenging myself. And golf's one of those games that if you keep track of your score and you're trying to better your best, I love that analogy. I always say this. Better your best. I don't care if you're the top guy. If you're the top guy, you better beat what you did last week.

You're chasing yourself down. That's the same. Why we bring the whole sports analogy in is because I think we can all relate to that competitiveness and competing against ourselves, wanting to win, making sure that we're evaluating and adjusting course to win. What is it going to take to get there? There's a whole drive that comes in that competitive factor. But to me, you know, business is the best sport I've ever played. And that's been doing this for 25 years. So much fun, isn't it? You know, I was just out in my warehouse and my buddy, my trainer, my buddy, my trainer,

my employee, I don't know what to call. He comes up and he says, Tommy, he says, we really should probably get new swamp coolers. We keep fixing these ones. And I said, all right. I called my buddy George up. I said, I want the most expensive swamp coolers you have. I want them self-cleaning. These guys need to stay cool when they're out there training. And he goes, is this another Tommy Mello? Because I think you got the wrong number because the Tommy Mello I know is a cheap ass. I said, no, no, no, no, no. Not anymore, buddy. I want the best of the best. I want the Rolex of swamp coolers. I've just changed. Now I'm not looking for a deal. I'm looking for the best value.

Isn't that crazy how we change over the years? Sure, man. But now we're thinking, you know, and as entrepreneurs, nothing is a cost. Everything is about value and return on investment. So if it's an investment, it's an investment. Your people are return on investment. So if- It's an investment. It's an investment. Your people are our biggest investment. So when we do not invest in them, what the fuck are we doing in our business? Like seriously, we're out there and then we bitch and complain because there's no good people

or we can't find it or good people are just going to leave anyway. Well, they're going to leave because we haven't set things up to have them stay. There's no reason for them to stay. But you set everything up for them to stay. They'd be foolish to go anywhere else. Well, no matter how good it might be, we could always do better. And I challenge myself to do a better job. And let me just tell you, it's not all roses. There's issues that arise like yesterday. I'm tough. I got on the phone with all my managers. We have a meeting

where we all talk about what we got done in the week on Zoom. We got a lot of meetings here. And I said, guys, I just want to explain something to you. I came down really hard on a couple of you today. And one of them was crying. And I said, here's the deal. We're only as strong as our weakest link. And I'm very, very sorry. But if I stop getting upset about certain things, and I dealt with it very well, I think I looked them in the eye and I didn't yell, but there was some huge issues. And I just said, listen, the day that I stopped caring, the day that I don't bring things up, you better be worried because you're probably not going to be here very long. The day that I start ignoring you. And that's just my personality.

I mean, if you looked at my personality, my profile of my disc and my predictive index, I don't like confrontation. When it comes to it, it comes all out. And I know myself, but I said, guys, listen, we are running. We are sprinting right now. There's nothing else. I don't know any company that plans on, we're going to do roughly over 50 million, just a little bit. Next year, my goal is to do between 150 and 160. And people say, you shouldn't grow more than 10% a year.

And I say, then don't talk to me because you're not going to be in the room that I hang out in. Well, and the truth is, most businesses can't sustain that. But if you put the systems in place to allow that to happen, then you have a much better chance of getting there and not having the wheels fall off along the way. And you're right. And here's what happens when you start growing. From what I've seen is the culture, there starts to be a lot

of naysayers and sometimes it gets too corporate. And I don't like the bad word corporate. You know why people say it's turning corporate? It's because it's systematized. They liked it when they could come in a little bit late. They liked it when they could drink their coffee for an hour. They liked it when you weren't keeping score as much because it's a lazier environment. So the word corporate for me means structure. There's way more structure. You guys are getting corporate. I don't think it should be a bad word. Yeah. The whole nonchalantness flexibility, it kind of goes out the window a little. It does. And I don't know why people hate corporations. It's like, you know how many jobs they provide? You know, an LLC is a limited

liability company. And it was funny because my buddy Josh from Parker and Sons, he's like, dude, you're an idiot. It's a limited liability corporation. And I looked it up. I was like, it's a company, but it is technically we file as an S corporation. You know, I think, you know, we like the corporations like Google that we don't mind working there because it's fun. What you're creating sounds like, you know, you're doing everything in your power to, yes, become a monster. But at the same time, you're creating this corporation that's also based on a culture of fun, where getting dunk tanks for the trainer, you know, dunking the trainer is fun. Like those things, when you pull all of that shit out, then yeah, you have a corporation that's no longer fun and it sucks. You know, we've got ping pong, we've got three massage

chairs, we've got the big buck hunter, we've got the golden tee, we've got the, I just got three segues for in the office. We're a big goofballs here. I'm getting this real nice espresso coffee machine. We've got a hot dog machine. We've got a popcorn machine. I have fun. I'm like, this is my toy house. That's not traditional corporate. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not, this is a fun house. People come in here and they're like, dude, can I bring my kids next time? But you know, this is what we do. Me and you get on the phone and it's just, this is a conversation and it's so much fun. You know what I wanted to talk about? And there's so much more, but I'm gonna kind of zoom down here because there's so much here.

I told you what I love. What did I tell you I love when we started the call? This light went on in the last six months. You're gonna have to remind me. Arbitrage. I love arbitrage. Oh yeah, the arbitrage. Yes, yes, yes.

So talk to me a little bit about the Profit Multiplier. Talk to me how that works. So the Profit Multiplier is really for us is a new program that we have set up. We're providing it for free. In fact, if anyone out there wants to go to contractorsbusinessgroup.com to join our Facebook group, we're going to be walking through, it's a 14-day process to create this profit multiplier. We refer to it as also a shock and wow sales package. Now, the point is that we want to create a differentiator that for anyone that's out there, not necessarily doing service work, but where you're bidding on work, you're bidding on projects, that you create this email sales package that consists of a number

of different kind of one-offs, such as a list of your core values, a list of your differentiators. Are you familiar with Joe Polish, Dean Jackson? I know Joe Polish. He's an amazing, I used to go to all of it. He taught this nice little clinic right up the street by the bowling alley. Sounds like a small town. I'm in Phoenix. Yeah, you're not far from him. He's in Tempe, right? And so Joe has this amazing, what he did for carpet cleaners was the consumer's guide, right? And so we help guys create all of this amazing content that they can literally do. We can do it in 14 days and you end up with this package of just amazing content that will blow minds of your customer before you show up to even do a

quote. So we send this before you meet them. So you already create this package of no like and trust, right? So what we want to do is have them no like and trust you, shock and wow them before you even show up to look at a job. And then what happens is the job ultimately becomes yours because they're not going to go anywhere else after you have shock and wowed them because nobody else is doing this. And then really it just comes down to the number and the price and the price is no longer the issue as much as how you deliver that. And then we help you deliver that. So we create this whole shock and wow package. It's made up of about 15 different items. If you're interested in that, it's like, we'll literally

help you for free. Do this package. 14 days later, you'll have it. Join our Facebook group. What is it called? I can't find it. That's contractorsbusinessgroup.com. Oh, it's.com. I thought you said it's a Facebook group. Yeah, contractorsbusinessgroup.com, and where you can request to join the group. You know, as long as you fit the mold, whether you're a tradesperson, a renovator, a custom home builder, we welcome you in,

and we'll help you build this back. Hey, you better let me in this thing. I'm working on some Facebook group, too, called the Home Service Expert. And here's the deal. It's free and you got to join and I'm going to get you on there. Hopefully you can make the time in the next month.

We'll do some Q&A and we'll have some fun because my goal is to bring to life all these different networks, whether it's pest control, landscaping, electricians. I want everybody under one roof and to share. You take one thing. I'm working with this guy and I'm going to let the cat out of the bag a little bit. I'm going to do something door to door that's never been done before in the garage industry. It's not fair. This is what I said. It's like cheating because this guy's the number one guy in pest control. We're working on some stuff and it's just, it's nuts. And then guess what? I'm working with the number one guy in the world that

at, um, SEO and the number one guy in the world at Facebook. This is not fair. You know, Adam was talking to me the other day. He goes, dude, most people make a fortune doing one good thing, whether that's Google or Facebook or whatever their marketing is. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Let's find the best at everything and let me use my network to get them. And it works. People take my phone calls. I read this book the other day and it's called the Private Equity Playbook. I called all my contacts to get ahold of them. I couldn't. So I reached out to him on LinkedIn. He called me back. We talked for an hour and a half yesterday.'s coming on the podcast this is nuts i love him man yeah and you're in the right circles were you part of genius network with joe you know what

you know i've got a call set up with him i think i'm gonna join that again it's like 20 grand or 25 grand i think dean yes yeah so it's part of it now i got his book on my shelf. It's been for a long time. Dean's working a lot with Tony Robbins right now. You know, Gary Vee, Tony Robbins, these are the guys I want to come on. Not necessarily the podcast, but the Facebook group, because here's what I'm going to do. I'm making a separate group that's going to cost a little bit of money per month.

Okay? It's like an extension of the free one. But I'm taking, this is what's genius. I think I'm taking all the money that I'm getting and I'm paying guys like Joe Polish and you know, there's not money coming in yet, so I'll pay you something. But ultimately I know these guys, their time's valuable, your time's valuable. Yeah. But at the same time, you know, like, I don't think it's a stretch to think we can't get Tony Robbins on there because he's recreated his entire business model. And there's no doubt he'd want to get on and share that.

Joe's good friends with Tony. So is a number of other guys that I know really well. So the whole point is, yeah, let's leverage our networks and then help your audience, help mine to get better at what we all do. I'm all about this stuff, man. The people that are listening to this podcast, I probably get three or four text messages, a few through Messenger, a few through, I get about four or five emails a day. And I love the people listening and actually going out there and doing it.

They're actually making an impact. And this is fun. And, you know, any town I go to, I could leverage relationships. Let me give you an example. Where are you at again? Toronto. So I'm going to be in Toronto probably in about two years. And I'm going to call you up and I'm going to say, how many people do you have in Toronto? Do any of them have an extra suite that I could park my business and pay you guys for? And Google loves that. And it's a real business and I have real people there and I have real showrooms and everything. And I can have multiple, I mean, this is what it's all about.

The seven degrees of separation mean if I call seven people, they know seven people, they know seven people and it connects the whole world. And when you could tap into that network, it's so powerful. It's just genius. And you know what? The small business freedom formula, you've got the seven steps of scaling. Can you just jump off the quick seven steps? Yeah, quick seven steps. One, building a foundation. We need to build a foundation, an entrepreneurial foundation. So lots of guys are out there as technicians, but they don't have the entrepreneurial foundation.

So that's number one. Execution. So we talked about that execution loop earlier. We have to get extremely good at being able to execute at everything that we do. That includes literally every piece of our business. We need to be a master at executing. Then we just look at clients. And clients is really getting your niche, marketing, sales, onboarding, client experience, developing that whole client experience from top to bottom. Then we look at our teams. We have to develop teams that are able to really look after our clients properly, grow those clients and grow our businesses. But the next piece is systems. So if we don't have systems built around our teams that develop our clients,

then we're really going to be screwed without these systems. So we have to have systems. So it's foundation, execution, clients, teams, systems, and then it comes down to money. If we're not managing our money and our cash flow or financial health, looking at profit sharing and giving back and growth funding and wealth teams and all of the money side of things, then again, we're just spinning our wheels without looking at how do we do something with this cash

eventually. And then the whole last piece is about exit. So how do we exit ourself from the business? Not necessarily always about selling, but being able to exit ourselves from parts and pieces of the business to be able to focus more on the right things in our business or remove ourselves altogether. The last 10 years of my trucking business, I didn't spend one day in it all while it was in growth mode. So the reason I was able to write that book is based on my experience of doing that in that business that created me ultimate freedom. But there's a whole exit piece, you know, putting a CEO in place and leadership and team development and initiating a whole transition is a very extensive strategy that has to be put in place to be able to pull it off. So the book just gives you those seven steps of how to get there.

I love it. You can find the book on Amazon. It's on Kindle. It's on paperback. It's only 11 bucks. Go there and buy it. Is there any other spots to get it? Nope. Go there. It'll be there. And again, I think the biggest piece that I would love your audience to do is jump in and join our Facebook group, contractorsbusinessgroup.com. There's so much great content. I want to jump on yours as well, Tommy. And quite honestly, after doing a couple of these, I foresee and just I envision whether this happens or not, but I envision I'll throw it out there that you and I just record a whole bunch of these episodes and we create our own little series of these because there's just too much that we can talk about and we seem to really rip with each other well

yeah yeah that's just great i mean i love finding somebody that's compatible that's just pulling this stuff out of each other which brings me to the three books give me three books you think are game changers. Obviously, The Home Service Millionaire, but... Yeah, yeah, The Home Service Millionaire, for sure. Maybe the Bible, but... I go back to the E-Myth, and there's a series of the E-Myths right now, right? So the E-Myth is, if you're working with us, you have to read the E-Myth, you have to read The Compound Effect.

I got those both. I've got 20 copies by Darren Hardy. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's an absolute must. And I'll throw the third one out just because it's sitting on my desk in front of me is The Power of Habit. It's a great book, but anything to do with habit and readjusting habits. Our whole business is built on the habits that we're currently doing. So if we just keep doing the same thing, we'll get the same old shitty results. If we change our habits, we'll get better results. The only way to do that is through what I referred to earlier as that execution loop. That's a habit changer. You know, this podcast is probably my best habit. It's the facts that the stuff, the energy I get, the passion that

flows from it. It's just so much fun. Why don't you just tell us one last gold nugget? Why don't you close us out with some go-to, some actionable items? I would say just to, in keeping with what we talked about earlier, is in your business, if you are not having some form of consistent meeting, whether it's daily or weekly in most businesses, when you're at Tommy's size, yeah, daily becomes important. Most businesses, especially small ones, weekly is great. But if you don't have a weekly accountability with your team on some form of scoreboard that you're looking at reviewing last week's, you know, game footage, we'll call it, then nothing's going to change. You're going to continue to do the same old shit and get the same old results. So that alone, even if you don't know exactly what to do next,

just by that simple habit of starting that process, the right things to do next will start coming into place, period. I love this. Well, listen, it's always fun. I think I'm coming on yours when? I think it's August the 4th we'll be doing our recording. So we're going to kick some butt. Let's talk about how we're going to work together. Randy, I really appreciate you coming on.

Cheers, Tommy. Thanks, man. I appreciate you having me. All right, buddy. 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 doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership.

It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're telling everybody our secrets, basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your lives even further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.