The Home Service Expert Podcast - From Idea to Implementation: How To Get Things Done Right And Fast

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

David Cogan is the Founder of Eliances (Where Entrepreneurs Align), a vast private community of diverse leaders, including celebrities and billionaires. With corporate experience from IBM and Microsoft, he's also a successful serial entrepreneur in e-commerce, healthcare, and more. David is a Docusign Global Advisory Board Member, an adjunct college professor, and an advisor to Eureka Loft, a mayoral initiative. In this episode, we talked about work-life balance, time management, launching strategies, relationship building…

And it's a challenging thing for some people to find is finding what your passion is. You know, you hear that word, you hear it thrown around a lot, but really what is it that you're passionate about? And, you know, I never knew that I was good at what I'm doing now is, you know, being a speaker and I speak every single week. But I think the thing is, is when we find what we're good at, we end up liking it. I mean, I don't play professional ball, but you know what? If I was good at baseball, suddenly I'd be like, this is the best thing ever. And everybody has a skill.

Everybody can contribute something to someone. Find out what you like and make it a passion, as long as it's legal, ethical. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing sales hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business now your host the home service millionaire Tommy Mello before we get started I wanted to share two important things with you first I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on

the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview.

All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today is going to be awesome. I love podcasts about business. You guys know I get into a lot of things. One of the last podcasts I did was about the dopamine nation, a little bit about self-help. This one's going to be back to the basics business. I got David Kogan with me. He's an expert in investment and startups, leadership development, life coaching, and business consulting. A little bit about David is he's a managing partner and founder at Alliances where entrepreneurs align. He's been doing that since 2013. He's on the global advisory board of DocuSign.

Been doing that for about six years. Celebrity talk show host, hero show founder, Richard Branson, Samuel Adams, president of the UN, money radio and CRC broadcasting company, celebrity on their personality, owner, everything. He's done it all. David Kogan is the owner, like I said, of Alliances, where entrepreneurs align a vast private community of diverse leaders, including celebrities and billionaires. With corporate experience from IBM and Microsoft, he's also a successful serial entrepreneur in e-commerce, healthcare, and more. David is a DocuSign Global Advisory Board member and adjunct college professor with an advisor of Eureka Loft and

Mayoral Initiative. He's recognized as a key figure in Arizona business community, hosting radio shows, participating in the Mayor-CEO Roundtable, and speaking at events like Startup Week. David has been featured extensively in local and national media and facilitated over 600 events for entrepreneurs and investors. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. That sounds really good, Tommy. That is phenomenal.

Yeah. And you just love business. That's what we were talking about. I do. I do. I have a passion. Thank you so much again for inviting me today. I'm honored to be in your presence.

You're the guy with the energy. I got to get some of that energy. You know what? I started walking 2,000 steps a day, eating the right food, not black coffee in the morning. That's it. That's my caffeine. Just getting dialed. And man, I feel like so incredible. And I've always had energy, but I used to be like the monster bread bowl guy. But nothing gets me more excited. Like I'll be at a party and guys will be like, dude, did you see that play last night? How about that fight?

And I'm like, dude, let's talk about business. Like this is boring. I'm like living. I don't want to live through that athlete's dream that you wanted to be when you were in high school. Like I want to do cool shit. Right, right. Exactly. I'm all with you on that.

So let's talk about business. Let's talk about where you came from, what you did in the past, where you're at today, what you look forward to doing cool shit. Right, right. Exactly. I'm all with you on that. So let's talk about business. Talk about where you came from, what you did in the past, where you're at today, what you look forward to doing. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you know, it's interesting. Ever since I can remember, you know, starting at 12 years old, going door to door, selling things just in the neighborhood, trying to figure out how to make some money. There were things that I wanted at that age, and that really taught me a lot. I always dreamed of owning my own business, was fortunate enough to go to school, go to graduate school, worked for some large companies,

IBM, Microsoft, and others, and always had a passion to do businesses. So I started various businesses. And I believe that anybody who wants to do it, if they have the passion, the passion is the key to be able to do it. And the drive. I mean, just like yourself, you've got an incredible amount of energy. What you've accomplished, I mean, I see you everywhere. I mean, everywhere. And having a support system. And the drive to be able to do it.

You know, every business has its challenges. And I kind of look at this as that, you know, issues, everybody's going to have issues with it. Everybody's going to have the ups and the downs. It's what do you do. Not everybody's going to like you. That's the nature of it. But you look at it and you go, okay, how can I learn from perhaps those that don't and not try to convince them, but look at what do people like? What's the positive part about it?

Especially, Tommy, you know, there's so much damn negative going on everywhere, everywhere. Not everybody's going to like you. Somebody's going to complain about you. I got to believe, Tommy, there's somebody out there who's like, you know what? I see too much of them everywhere. A lot of haters. Yeah. Lots and lots of haters.

So it's like, how do you not dwell on that and stay positive? Because I believe, you know, and it's not just saying, you know, you hear about it, you know, mine's so powerful. How do you stay positive? You've got to figure it out. I'll give you some good advice of what someone said to me because, you know, even when you're in a position, and some of you may be listening now, and maybe you're in a job and you're like, oh, you know, I got to go to work each and every single day. Someone gave me good advice and they said, find one thing that you like about what you're doing because there's got to be something, one thing. Focus on that to get going. And if you don't like what you're doing, continue to focus

on that, but figure out what else you want to be able to do. And, um, you know, that worked for me. I started one of my first, first businesses. Um, I was working for, I'm not going to say the name of the company, but a top five consulting company. And I was working there full time during the day. I would come home, Tommy, I would shower at six o'clock at night, change clothes, go to what I had as a closet for an office and start building my next company. And fortunately, that grew and was able to then leave that company and so on. But, you know, so anybody who says that they don't have time, there's time. There's always time. There's always time. You know, I sit down with a lot of people and I've been running a lot of events

and I've been at a lot, too much. In fact, next year, I'm limiting myself to five events. And I'm really learning the ability to say no. Because I do a lot of stuff for friends and family and neighbors and blah, blah, blah. And I sit at these events and I say, who plans on selling in the next five years? There's a few hands.

Who plans on selling in the next 10 years? A few hands. Out of big, big, you know, an auditorium full of people and business owners. And since I've had a taste of selling, I'll never get involved with a business that doesn't plan on five years, preferably three years or less. And people say, well, listen, I want to build something big. Well, why can't you do it in three years? Well, what would you need to say yes to three years? Everybody has a reason why, well, I got to get the momentum and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah blah and I'm like listen I understand

all your excuses because I've heard them all for the last decade of why you're going to fail and why things aren't going to work right but your wife or your husband and your kids and your parents don't want to be around a person that's not even present at all you have no money like this is your life savings in this business and you're not living your best life and you're not doing the stuff you want and you're not that that that line not present as an entrepreneur it's like yeah i could be at a baseball game but i'm not really there i could be at a party but i'm not really there you know what i mean what is it with us serial entrepreneurs that it's like man if we could just slow down because one day you wake up and there's a decade and another decade and you go, what do I have to show?

Well, I built some business. I made a lot of money. But I don't really have a lot of cool stories and amazing events and these great friendships. Yeah, I completely agree with that 100%. And I would say is, did you talk to my wife? Because that's, you know, and it's a challenge. It's definitely a challenge. Yeah, and it's a challenge. It's definitely a challenge. Um, yeah, it's, it's definitely a challenge. Uh, you know, let me tell you something. This

is kind of interesting too. When we talk about skill sets and stuff, I'm an introvert by nature and, uh, I sold my last company. I built one of the largest, uh, home care companies in the Northwest part of the Valley and I sold it. And at the contract signing afterwards, I walked out crying. What am I going to do? I think the problem is that some of us, we identify our work as our meaning of life, and it's not that. But I was crying. Okay, what am I going to do? I didn't have enough Google money to never work again, but it certainly could have taken a break. Well, little did I know that I started contacting some other people, just people that I didn't know. You know, you know people in your circle, certainly in the garage industry.

You know every single competitor out there. You probably, you know, know who the owner is, you know, what they do and all that. It becomes a small circle. Yep. So I ended up getting a couple people together, trying to figure out what to do, people that I didn't know. Little did I know that that actually became the company. And so to just do a little bit of promo, if that's okay with you, of what it is, is what developed out of that is called Eliance's.

Many of you in Arizona have heard of that. It alliances many of you in arizona have heard of that it's an entrepreneur community and it's a community that consists of billionaires millionaires founders startups and people living in their car starting a company and we are the only place every single week we have a round table. Every week it's full and every week it changes of who's there. Nobody does that. This is the last thing in the world that I thought I would ever do because I'm the one conducting it, not by myself. It certainly takes an entire community to be able to do. And we have everyone from the who's who to the not who come together and end up building business resources or friendships. And how is this a proven model? Because I'm going on our 11th year every week. And not only that, for those of you that are

listening, it's also hybrid. It's online and in person at the same time. We're basically doing two events at the same time that's interactive. So it's crazy. So what does that mean, Tommy? It brings back to the beginning. The problem is, and I do have a fault, I'm not present because I'm continually thinking about alliances and those that are part of the community and what resources can the community provide for them and for their family to be able to exceed. I love it. Well, I'm going to have to come to one of these meetings.

Absolutely. You're invited. I, you know, I will say this. I think there's, there's a certain breed of person that's built for business. A lot of people, you know, most businesses fail. And I think it's over 90% of businesses will never reach a million dollars. 90% of those that reach a million will never hit 10 million. And I think there's some people that they're just not comfortable taking risk. They're very risk adverse. And I don't like to talk people into starting a business that just aren't cut out because they waste a lot of time. And most of them start out as very, very smart people.

They make a good living. But they never take that e-myth and work on the business. They never take that approach. And they want to be a jack of all trades. And then, boom, time goes by. And I'm like, man, you can make $300,000 a year. You can get equity into a business. You can be an entrepreneur.

But focus on what you're great at. Because, you know, an overnight success is 10 years. I mean, and a lot of the people, we've got the shiny light. We're like, oh, my God, he's flipping houses. Oh, I want to invest in his bar. It seems like he's killing it. Oh, let's buy that second house. And all of a sudden, you divest out of the one asset you're trying to grow. And I see this all the time that people say, we deserve it. We've worked hard our whole lives. Hey, honey, we should just do this. We should buy that heart that we talked about.

And then they literally divest out of the one thing, the fruits of their labor. It's like watering an apple tree and taking all the stuff off of it when it's this big. Imagine if you water it and it grew into thousands of apples. What's your take on that? I think it's right. Building a whole orchard, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it is. And it's, I do see that.

I do see that amongst people who are doing and starting businesses. From the outside, though, those that haven't, I mean, it looks like an easy thing. It looks, you know, okay, I'll just go ahead and start businesses. From the outside though, those that haven't, I mean, it looks like an easy thing. It looks, you know, okay, I'll just go ahead and start it until you actually start doing it. I think the thing that I've seen though with a lot of people is there's a lot of talk in regards to, well, I'd like to do this. I'd like to do this. Start. There's some point to start. Well, I don't have enough money. Well, continue to do what you're doing because you're working eight to 10 hours. There's 24 hours in a day. You're going to have to make sacrifices.

At least I have. I continue to do. You will make sacrifice regardless of this balanced life, not if you're a business owner. There's no such thing. You're off balance on purpose. Yeah, absolutely. You know, here's an interesting thing.

So, you know, like you, Tommy, I interview a number of people. I've interviewed some of the most famous people in the world. And my son asked me, he says, God, Dad, you know, who would you, you know, if you were to trade places, who would it be? And I had to think about it for a second because I have, you know, we have some members like the co-founder of Pricelines, part of alliances, co-founder of Oculus, who sold his business for $3 billion. Am I bragging? No, because let me tell you the answer that I gave to him after thinking about it.

Anybody who I got to know well enough, I would not change places with. It's as simple as that. Would I want to be their life for maybe a day? Yes. Would I want to change places? No. I got to know them too well to know of things that, well, I wouldn't, you know, want to change places with. You know, my wife's grandma said it best, and I think this was good advice too, is if everybody put their troubles outside of their door and saw everybody else's bag full of troubles, they'd grab their own bag and run back in. That's really wise. I like that. So I think about that.

You know, Ken Goodrich, he called me the owner of Gettle, founder of Gettle. And he said, I'd give everything to switch places with you. And you know why he said that? Because I'm 23 years younger than him. It had nothing to do with the money, the looks. I'm not that good looking, but I'm just saying, you know, and here's the facts. Tell me you wouldn't trade place. You know, you don't want to give up your family, what you built and that, but I will say that there's one thing I don't care. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, they have the same amount of time in the day as us. They get a lot done.

They've become expert delegators and great people. But they would all give it back. Maybe not today, but when health goes a little sideways and they wake up one day and they're not moving as good. They give it all away to get the time back. And I think you'd agree with that because Steve Jobs, he said, either take your food as your form of medicine or take a medicine as your food. And, man, that guy had it all. He loved it. He was just brilliant and he was creative. And all of a sudden the clock ran out way too soon for a guy like that. So I think what Ken's purpose of the saying that was,

take advantage, breathe it in, enjoy it. He walked into my old training center and he goes, man, tell me how you feel. He goes, I miss that feeling of the beginning and that drive and that smile. He goes, because sometimes it gets worn out. Sometimes it gets stale. Sometimes you don't get the feeling again. Or you crave the next biggest feeling. And that's a good thing and it's a bad thing. We like to win.

We're hunters and we do this. But it really meant a lot to me to say, you know, you wake up one day, you get 18 years with your kids. Then the cumulative time, the rest of their lives, you might get a year. And that hits home. And I don't have kids yet. Wow. Wow. Well, no, that's – you know what?

You're right. I'm very close to my family, very close to my children. I've got two beautiful kids and I've, you know, and I've incorporated them into what I'm doing. I have the ability to be able to do it. But at the same time, Tommy, how do you balance the things when you have to make, you have to do things you don't want to be able to do by working perhaps sometimes long hours? Emergencies happen, you know? I think owning any business is typically it's a 24-hour-a-day job. I mean, I was in the healthcare where literally we answered the phone 24 hours a day, 24 hours a day. One of the first roles I filled was someone to take that role of the phone. But there were times

that I had to take it over. In fact, I remember getting one call. It was, I think, at Christmas Eve. And the person called me. I'm the one that was on the line. I answered the phone live. The first thing she says is, oh, my gosh, you answered the phone live. I said, yes, I did. She said, and she was a competitor. She said, I went down this list.

You're the last one that I called. I have a client that I can't help. And they need help. And it's Christmas Eve. We're providing home care, health care to them. She said, can you go ahead and take the case? I said, yeah, we'll get it filled. Yeah.

Business never sleeps. I went on a panel. I watched this panel of the who's who of home service. And these are the legends. These are the guys that were found to fill in their footsteps. And Jimmy Hiller goes up. And everybody's talking about talking about regrets regrets wish i had more time with family he goes you know i missed a lot of stuff for my kids i really did i was there most of the time and i'll just say this is what he said he said i was an alcoholic we lived in a small apartment

he goes i couldn't provide for my family he goes, I could have been around all the time, but we would have been eating breadcrumbs. He goes, now, not only do all my kids have homes, do not all my grandchildren have a scholarship, do not all of them have homes, but we created generational wealth. And I have no regrets because, listen, it took sacrifice. It's just how much sacrifice are you willing to take? Because, listen, some of us, we've made enough to provide for our children and grandchildren. I think there's a happy dance to figuring this out. And I just, I tell people all the time, I'm like, what do you want to do for the next 20 years? Why do you want to do this business? Because they feel like it's their DNA. And I'm like, if you don't get a test and you

look at it like an asset that you're building, you know, A1's my baby. 17 years. And I'll keep taking chunks out. And guess how much the richest man, or one of the richest men, it goes back and forth from Elon and Jeff Bezos. How much do you think Jeff Bezos owns of Amazon? 30%.

7%. And he'll most likely be a trillionaire. So people act like, oh, I can never sell. I can never sell. I don't know what to do. He owns a little sliver, under 10 percent. And this is what people – no one really talks about this stuff. And when you take – live your life as you're growing.

Smell the roses. Enjoy it. Take a trip that you wouldn't take. And live it. My grandma used to collect all these pennies saying copper will be worth more than what they're going to and then eventually the penny was not made with

copper. But I was like, man, I never want to live. You see, especially that day, that era, they would die millionaires but they would still never live. And I don't think that's fair. I want to go first class. I want to do the things that I was never able to do, that my don't think that's fair. I want to go first class. I want to do the things that I was never able to do,

that my parents were never able to do. I want to bring my nieces and nephews and potentially kids. And I want to say, dude, we're going to do the penthouse. And we're going to go, we're bringing Tim McGraw to us. Like, we don't work this hard to not live it. What are your thoughts on that? I agree. I agree. I agree.

I think that just the challenges is just not only in regards to the spending part, though, is, and Tommy, I'm not an expert on this, but it's on my mind 24 hours a day. I'm coming with you to the penthouse when you do it, right? But the thing is, is I'm there. But it is 24. I mean, it's just, it's something like that. I don't know if it's a, it's a, if it's a point of part of, uh, being alive, being a meaning, being able to, you know, feel that I'm producing something I've incorporated. I do try to do as much as I can with my family, with my kids, my kids come, you know, they've, they've come to various alliances events. So does my wife, my wife now helps, helps out, uh, a little bit here and there, but it's, it's,

and I don't know what is perhaps the thing is, is to be able to stay focused into the moment. There have been times where I've seen things and I've been fortunate to, I've gone and seen my son and daughter play, you know, their various sports and stuff. Unfortunately with technology, right, we can be connected to see what's going, you know, to get a pulse of what's going on. So I've been there, I've been there for them. But I think what is, and Tommy, you tell us, tell us the audience, tell your listeners, then what is the secret to fully be present and know exactly what's going on and not have to think about work, A1 garage, this person, you know what,

something happened. They need me over there. They need an emergency. They got things at night. Who am I going to call? My mom's answering the phone, right? Well, it starts out in early stages. Al Levy walked into my office, 2018, seven-power contractor, and he said, you are the best firefighter I've ever met. He goes, you know it all. He goes, you can fix bad reviews quickly. You know how to get ahold of vendors and make shit happen that no one else does. He goes, I've never seen anything like it. He goes, you get the award for the best firefighter. He goes, Tommy, if you work with me, he goes, there's good and bad to working with me. He goes, the good news is you're going to stop being a firefighter.

Everything's going to have a system and it's going to be vanilla. The bad news is you're not going to be a firefighter anymore. Things are going to be vanilla and you're going to get bored. You're not going to feel as needed. And so what I've learned to do is my CFO, I can't even come close to him. He is the goat of CFOs. My COO, I feel like he's the goat. And so what I've done is I've really tried to deem myself useless except for my vision. And I've tried to create a culture of just really checking in when things aren't going right and calling somebody and saying, what's going on, man? Is everything okay? And then praising when things do go good. Because if I could be the

dumbest guy in the room, then I won. And then when I had a manual, standard operating procedure, I have 57 manuals. I've got standard operating procedure. I have checklists. I have a data integrity team. I have, we've got an org chart, but now we've got standard operating procedures. I have checklist. I have a data integrity team. I have We've got a an org chart, but now we got a death chart So people are cross trained if someone can't come in our CSRS could be our dispatchers beautiful and those things listen It's a garage your business might not sound complex but if you saw the complexity of this business in 40 markets of getting trucks when trucks break down just our Checklist for our trucks to make sure the technology,

and we're not just, I counted technologies the other day, just started writing stuff down, 23 different technologies we use, systems. And people, I'm a technology company that does garage doors, and now I've got AI dispatch, and now I've got Power BI that I put in different information to pull different, now I have 7,000 call tracking numbers. So I think the trick of, to go back to where I was going is,

I think the real answer is, is I could leave my company for a month and not have any type of communication or checking in or looking at anything. And I know it'll be just as good, if not better. I think what I'm really good at is acceleration, of putting on the gas, of building a vision. And as long as that's what I'm doing, and I'm having fun, then that's what I continue to do.

You know what I've got comfortable with? Things going wrong. Because I know I could have fixed it. I know if you would have called me, I could have got it done right. Right. But when did they go wrong? My question for you is,

is that going to happen again? We lost 100 grand here. Just tell me we learned. And when I let people start, when I let them start failing and I realize they learned from their mistakes, metaphoric bruises and scars on them that never happened. Sure. The company became so much stronger because it didn't rely on me. Right. So I don't think it's perfect.

And I don't think you could just, some people just, they're dreamers and they're just, like me, I'll be at a restaurant and I'll see something come in. This happened the other day where it said the receipt had three different prices and it said circle one. And it had, or put your own in for the tip. And I've been working on a tipping app for my installers. But I don't want to do 5, 10, or 20%. I want to do 1, 2, or 3%. So it's like $10,, 10, or 20%. I want to do 1, 2, or 3%. So it's like 10 bucks, 20 bucks, or 30 bucks. Because now if I got an installer that's getting tipped on 15

jobs a week, and they're getting 20 bucks, it's not a lot of money, but it's 300 extra dollars. And I don't feel like that's like, hey, he did a great job. He picked up that for himself. He showed me how everything worked. I don't want my techs to get tips because then they might focus on the tip more than the sale, but the installers are just worried about. Does that make sense? It absolutely does. Yeah, absolutely. So I didn't have the perfect answer for you. I'm curious, you deal with so many founders. I do. A tremendous amount. And what do you think their biggest problem is going into?

I think they're a little clouded and they know how to be the employee and they don't have a plan. Everybody says write down a business plan, get your KPIs, make sure you've got good credit, make sure you have enough money to save, make sure you have an org chart, make sure blah, blah, blah. And they're like, dude, what do I do first? Right. Well, the first thing is, is will the idea of what you have actually work? Will it be something of that? And here's the way that I looked at it. And a lot of people spend a lot of time in regards to trying to lay everything out. They'll spend a lot of money in regards to perhaps hiring other consultants to help in that. Here's the thing if you know you've got something. If you've got one

sale, great. If you've got one sale, great. If you've got two sales, great. If you have three sales and none of those three are from anybody, they're not from a friend that's willing to help you out, they're not from a relative, but on your third sale too, you've got somebody non-related to you, found you, maybe you started a search, whatever, you know, a website, whatever it may be, then I think you've got something. Because now if you've got three, just build upon that. Why did those three find it? Because at the beginning, there seems to be, and I've been involved with a lot of meetings from people who are looking to start businesses and they want to lay out everything perfect. By the time you're done laying out

something, the market's already changed. There's new technology. I mean, look how quick AI has been taking over and further being enhanced. I think that that how quick, right, AI has been taking over and, you know, further being enhanced. I think that that's a lot of it is just get out and do. It's just do. Yeah, but to add to that, what I'll tell you is I meet business owners. They get in a big room and they brag. They pump their chest and they talk about how much revenue. They're not making a profit.

They're paying themselves $100,000 total. They're in debt. They work seven days a week, holidays, weekends, you name it, special occasions. And I'm like, and I have people brag to me. I didn't get branded correctly. I don't even have a wrap truck and I'm booked out to September. Raise your prices. You're not making a profit.

Alex Ramosi says, here's how most of us start a business. We go into a marketplace. We offer a little bit more for a little bit less, and that's how we get our pricing, even though the people you're following are about to go bankrupt. And all I would say is if you can't get a business up and running to be more profitable than you would have been by working hard for somebody, I love the idea of entrepreneurship. I think that's what makes America such a great place because I came from nothing, absolutely nothing. I worked three jobs my whole life. My mom worked three jobs. We made things work.

The church helped us out with Christmas and Thanksgiving. That's where we got our turkey dinner from. She never went for food stamps, and I love my mom because of that. The church was able to help us, but now I'm'm like and it was hard work but don't think that you people overestimate what they could do in one year and underestimate what they could do in five or ten and that's that's the sad truth to it like i can't get behind a founder and say get a three-year plan i could go behind a business that's already doing two million and say dude why do you want to get to 100 million well you did it why can't i do it? I said, you could, but at what cost, what are you going to do when you get a hundred million

dollars? Let's say the business is at 15%. You're going to get a 10 X it's 150 million. Where are you going to spend that? What can't you do with 10 million? Right. If you get 10% on 10 million, that's a million dollars a year. And you're still, now you've got a pot of gold and trust me, opportunity will find you. It's a really sad day when you sign your business away, but the next day you're like, holy shit, now I got 20 more opportunities. And the business didn't define me. I defined the business. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. And yeah, and I think that was the way that I felt. I've had other exits too. I've been fortunate to that. But I do look at this, Tommy. Even if it was the fact of Google money never having to work I still would do I can safely tell you this what I'm doing now I would still be doing that's great well you're helping a lot of people I'm in a position there is nothing else that I would rather do than

what I'm doing now and we put on other events we have got a huge event coming up our signature event takes place in September. It takes place at Arizona State University Sky Song. We take the largest hall. People fly in from all over the world and it's full access to people and it's unlike anything that they've ever attended before. In fact, yeah, there's a co-founder of Guitar Hero will be there,

Oculus, as I mentioned. We've got a number of TV celebrities, red carpet. But here's the thing what it's not. It's not where you've got one speaker speaking the entire time and off they go into a separate room. This is full access. So even if you're in the crowd, there's people well-known probably sitting next to you.

And it's not based upon, you know, hey, you have to have this requirement to attend. You've got to be this rich or whatever it may be. It's full access and the magic happens. That's on September. I'm going to tell you September 10th. To find out more information, go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com.

That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. Alliance is the only place where entrepreneurs align. But Tommy, I got to tell you, I couldn't do this alone. And I'm not doing it alone. It's the community that makes it possible for me to be able to come and do what I'm able to do. And it's because people are getting a lot out of it. And they're helping one another. They're assisting one another.

And they're getting assistance. And that's been part of the magic of it. I think it is. And I think getting around. I had a couple of people come over this past week. And I never joined YPO. None of the magic of it. I think it is, and I think getting around, I had a couple people come over this past week, and I never joined YPO, none of the things. Yeah, I've never been part of it. Tiger 21, none of that.

And this guy came in. He just sold his business for $165 million. We were whiteboarding in my game room. And I learned so much from this guy. And I'm like, I literally think you become, he goes, Tommy, I only allow three people to get it or five people to get advice on any particular year. He goes, here's my list. There's two there. Would you be the third person? I said, I'd love that if we can share ideas together and getting in the right rooms is half the battle because so many people

are willing to help. so many people help me when I didn't have a pot to piss in when I was nothing for some reason if you ask great questions and you're genuinely interested they're glad to tell their story and pay it forward and I've been very fortunate to be that younger younger guy almost a kid taking notes and I don't know why they did it but now I feel like it's an obligation to do it back and but i still love being in the rooms where i'm like man that guy's everybody in here is so far advanced i'm curious you've done a lot of interviews you you've seen a lot of speakers a lot of celebrities what's the one person that you were like blew your mind maybe

switch your perspective on something no god, God, that's a challenge. I've done, yeah, probably over 1,000 interviews now, maybe even more. Let me think about that for a minute. That's a challenge. I'm going to kind of tell you this is each one that I've interviewed, I've gotten something out of it, something unique. You know, one of the interviews that stands out most to me, and I'm going to tell you why it stands out most to me was because it really kind of set me straight. I interviewed Richard Branson, which you all know, Richard Branson, and I did it in

a hotel room. I was with my son on vacation and this was the time that Richard Branson could do it. So I'm like telling him, and he's maybe seven, 10, maybe nine, eight, nine, something like that. And I'm like, I'm going to be interviewing Richard Branson. He's like, okay. I'm like, no, the Richard Branson. He's like, okay. So I'm like, we have to do this in the hotel room. So we're doing the interview in the hotel room. My son's in the back and he's doing all those bottle flips, you know, where you take the bottle and you flip it and all this and it's making the noise. And I said, here, I throw my wallet at him. I said, you know what? Just be quiet for the next 20 minutes. You could have what's ever in there and stuff like that. But here's the thing that

struck me afterwards. And it was a great interview. We had a great time and stuff. It struck me at that point is, is my son didn't care. He was having a good time with me. He didn't care who I was going to speak with. It didn't matter. And I think what mattered most is that we were together. It wasn't a thing as is that doesn't define you. And I kind of said it at the beginning as is a lot of us, we define who we are based upon the work that we do. It shouldn't be that way.

It should be the type of person that you are, not the work that you specifically do. And that, you know, and I continue and I think about that. So it wasn't so much as what did I get specifically from Richard Branson, but it was more of the thing is my son's like, so what? That, you know, that nice, but it doesn't define you as a father, doesn't define you as a person. And that's when I figured, you know what, you're right. It doesn't.

So now he's a little bit older. He started college and stuff. Now he talks about Richard Brands. He's like, yeah, you know, tell me more about Richard Brands than you interviewed and stuff. I love that story. You know, as kids, I think there was a a study done and don't quote me exactly on this but but it's pretty close is they tested kids at five years old and ninety percent of the kids tested as genius because their creativity was still intact and the world changes us the world

has this look at popularity and fame and money and you, you know, my brother-in-law went to India. And he was GE Healthcare, 25 years, the CIO. Managed $7 billion, over 3,500 internal developers, 3,500. He's part of my team now on the TMV, Tommy Mello Ventures. Genius. And I remember him telling me in India, there was all these kids packed in this volkswagen bus and they're all screaming out the windows and singing they're all broke they don't

have shirts on and happiness is defined in the eye of the beholder and uh we like to create things we like to have self-worth but uh i think, you know, in the United States and a lot of other countries, we might have got things wrong. Because there's a story of this kid and his father. And his father is very, very wealthy. They live in a mansion. And he says to his son, hey, I want you to go down to the village where everybody doesn't have money. And I want you to live there for a week. And I want you to come back to the village where everybody doesn't have money. And I want you to live there for a week. And I want you to come back and tell me your findings.

He comes back in a week and he goes, dad, you're not going to believe it. They don't watch TV. Instead, they have bonfires and they dance. He goes, dad, you're not going to believe this. Instead of cell phones, they go out and they fish. And they fish all day and they cook up the fish at night. And his dad's like, well, do you want that? And he goes, it was so amazing.

I just went to the Masters recently. He couldn't bring a cell phone out there. I'm like, what am I going to do? No cell phones? They had like this old Kodak, you know, the Insta Flash that like you could actually turn it in and get your pictures back. I haven't seen one of those in 20 years. Wow. And I'm like, no phone, no no camera no checking up on goldman sachs no nothing no sarah right and the first two hours i was like this sucks and then i was like boom all of a sudden

everything changed and i'm like no phone and like i just remember leaving the masters going i just want two days to have no phone. And it's really hard to get to that point. And I don't know if we're just perfectly aligned. We both like to build things. We both like to help out communities and take care of our coworkers. I just think there's more. And I do want to live in this world where I can live in the now.

And it's not easy because my brain races a million miles an hour as you can suspect. And I love that story about your son because you know, everybody is the same as me and you. I mean, Tom Cruise is a great actor and he's famous. You know, Jim Carrey said, I wish everybody

was rich and famous so they realize that that's not the answer beautiful yep yep you're right yep well we're always striving i think it's in human nature you know of how can we continue to build i mean we are builders we're all contributors in some way and i think everybody can contribute in some way and that's kind of the beauty again going back to the alliances community the way that it's formed and the way it's built and the beauty, again, going back to the alliances community, the way that it's formed and the way it's built and the reason why it's been so successful is not because of me, but because of people who are part of it. And the process is very simple. Anybody who's

doing, you know, building things, anybody who's doing any events that are out there, I always get the question, how do you feel? How do you do this? How does it happen every single week? Plus other events. We got another event right after this actually to do. How does it work? The thing is simple. Get people to the event and give people a reason to come back. Get people there and give people a reason to come back. So if you're doing business, those of you that have any business,

get customers and give them a reason to come back. Because if not, they're going to go somewhere else. And it's the people that make the community. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're right. You get the right people in a room. It changes lives. You know what? Tell me a little bit about DocuSign Global Advisory Board. Yeah. Great. So everybody's pretty much familiar with DocuSign. And I was appointed to be on their global advisory council from the CEO of the company. And that came to be actually we got to know each other from doing an interview. So it led to one thing, another. And really the positions has evolved over time and more it's more now just promoting DocuSign.

DocuSign started off as this. Here's how DocuSign actually happened. I asked the question to, this was to the CEO and founder of the company, and I said, you know, you're doing something that has always been done on pen and paper. You know, they've had it where any contract that you needed signed had to be done, you know, where you actually had to sign it. I said, how did you know this would hold up, hold up in court? And he said this, and this was very important. Are you ready for this listeners?

Nobody said that it wouldn't. Well, it was never tried before, but it was the point is, is nobody said it couldn't. So they ran with it. And that company has just gotten significantly huge. How big is that company? Huge. Oh, I don't even know. It's in the billions.

And there's other competitors that are out there. And now they're looking to do it for notaries. There's a way to now do notaries where you don't have to. In the past, you had to go somewhere. Someone had to validate. Now they're doing things where you can validate that stuff through cameras and different things. So the technology is continually enhanced. But I use, I mean, have you used DocuSign? Oh, yeah. And others have tried to

get involved with it and stuff. So, yeah, great. And what's interesting about it is other people that serve on the Global Advisory Council is, for example, the NASA administrator for the And what's interesting about it is there's other people that serve on the Global Advisory Council. For example, the NASA administrator for the past three presidents. And once you know it, he's part of the alliances community too. So everything becomes a small world. You get to know people within your field. Like in the home care, I knew pretty much all my competitors.

I knew all that. Just like in the garage industry. You know everybody within it. It becomes that small bubble. And that's why, again, going back to the alliances, what's so unique about it is that you don't know everybody because it's everybody from all of these different industries and different

ethnicities and religion and cultures. I mean, it just, it's a whole... It's that. You know, the world seems to get a... I keep seeing the same people in the same places, and success leaves clues everywhere. The one thing I really want to get more familiar with is I understand business in the United States and Canada pretty well. I don't understand business in Europe.

I don't understand business in China. I've been to China, been to South America, but it's a whole different, but there's so many advantages. I just, I'm going to Australia for my second time and I'm like, this is like taking candy from a baby. Like the algorithm still works from 10 years ago. Like number one, Australians have like, I think every day in Australia is a holiday. And I think they're very into unions and they're very into, like, if you have a baby, you get seven years off. What? No, that's not true.

You get an eight month leave. And it's like, listen, I'm like, oh my gosh. So if we actually had people that worked, we would automatically win. Just five days a week. Because no one works there five days a week. They love their leave.

I've heard a lot about, like they've got this thing in Europe for like lunch called a, what is it called, Giuseppe? A siesta or something? Siesta? Siesta. Like they just eat for four hours. They shut down their businesses. Right, right.

And they go eat. Like we're not going to work for four hours. I'm like, what if I just took a two-hour siesta? Right. I'm like, I'd kill everybody. Right. And like, you know, when you sign up to do business, it means you're going to be available when your clients need you. Right.

I was actually mentioned that. I was traveling through Europe, backpacked through Europe, and I was at a restaurant, and that took place. And like I'm eating there still with somebody and like, you know, the chef and everybody, they're at the table together and they're all having their meal. And I was like, well, what do I do? How do I order? Well, you're going to have to wait until we're done. It's just, it's such a, it's so different. Yeah. Right. Americans. Yeah. We want it. We want it now. We want it 24 hours. We want it on demand, and we want it right.

You know, I love the United States of America. I'm proud to be an American. Given the chance, I would fight for this country. I stand up for everything we are. I think it's a weird time right now. I think it's a very weird time, and I know people have said that since the beginning of time. But just watching, like, I do believe, you know, I don't want to go into the politics and that I believe I'm truly a male, but it's just a weird time to be alive. Hey, guys, I hope you're really enjoying this podcast.

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That's freedomevent.com. Take a pen or put it in your phone freedom event.com just make sure you do it before prices go up on august 5th now let's get back to today's episode you know you're a pretty skilled negotiator yes and um i love negotiation i'm actually meeting with chris voss i've met him a few times he's jumping on the podcast What are the key principles you emphasize in your training programs and consulting for individuals and businesses? What kind of negotiation skills do we need? Well, I think it's, I mean, that's a great question. And I am, I feel I'm a very good negotiator. In fact, we've formed, you know, formal alliance ships where it's a sponsorships and partnerships, which I never thought would take place before. We had a,

at one point we were with, with ASU Sky Song. We've done it with the Phoenix Suns, the Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Rattlers. I mean, we're not even a sports team, right? Arizona Coyotes. And I think the thing is, is along with others, which, uh, caliber co, let me make sure I'm not forgetting anybody too, is, um, you know, this, the, uh, yeah, there's probably a couple out there, but anyways, it's important, I think, to look from their standpoint is, is what's in it for them. I mean, we all, you know, they let, they tune in with them, right? Well, yeah. What's in it for them. Um, and I think that's important. And also too, is being extremely genuine, genuine with what you could do and what you could provide

and then over delivering it. And these were put together to help the people in our community. I mean, that was it. And it's, it's a delicate part. It's a delicate way to go about doing it. I've been successful at it. I think a lot of it just comes from being very genuine. Yeah, keeping your promise. And when you shake somebody's hand, it's gold. And over-delivering. I really like that.

I'm going to have to look up some of these others too. You know what? People ask me, they're like, how do you get the answer so quickly? Like they ask me, how do you know how to just dominate Angie's Lister? How do you figure out Pinterest? I'm like, just go to the number one company on Pinterest when you search for countertops. And if they hold the whole page,

call that company up and ask them who they're using and how they're doing it. Right, absolutely. I'm going to go back to that. So let me tell you the other sponsors that we have too. And of course, you know, I, these are extremely important ones to max six train you will caliber money radio, of course, uh, the Phoenix suns, uh, oxygen for life, all Remo, all very important ones to the ethos of the community. So let me go back to Angie's list.

I interviewed the founder of Angie's List, Angie. I interviewed the founder of, let's see, Craigslist, Craig. I wanted to bring them both together, but it's interesting. And you know, I'm just going to tell you a short story as many people don't know is, you know, Angie was the one doing the commercials for it. She did not want to. She wanted to be behind the scenes. She's the shy one, actually. And they said, well, you know, it's going to be best for you to do it. She did not want to, she wanted to be behind the scenes. She's the shy one actually.

And they said, well, you know, it's going to be best for you to do it. So again, kind of like me being an introvert, you would never know. Uh, she ended up being out there and doing the commercials. I think maybe she recently sold the company. I'm not sure. Home advisors. She sold the home advisors to home advisors. So everybody's got a great story, you know, and Tommy, I think I, you know, one of the things that I loved about you is, is cause this kind of ties to my family too, is, is it, wasn't it your mom that was answering the phone? My mother. Yeah. Your mother answering the phone. So my mother comes to as many of the alliances events as she can. And for some reason too, when my family's there or my mother's

there, I'm more comfortable just from the fact is, is, you know, look at, you know, this is, and I think that's cool that, you know, she was answering the phone. I was listening to your podcast. You're like, I showed up. Basically everything was already done. Yeah. My mom's like, you can't believe, you know, your mom goes, you know, yeah, I'm going to send over this great person, et cetera. They're going to really, I'm going to make sure that they help you out and everything. And you said something like, well, the sale was already closed. Like I just showed up. They'd give me a hug.

They'd be like, who's that lady? She's amazing. And I'd go, wow. And that's completely like you look back at your experiences and you're like, man, mom, the genuine, the over-delivery, the caring, what she said and what you were just saying is just so in line. It's like you hear people try to fake it. And then you heard my mom literally give a shit.

She's like, oh, my gosh, honey, I couldn't even imagine. I am so sorry. I'm going to send our best technician out. She'd never say it. I'm going to send our best technician out. She'd never say it. I'm her son. And I'd show up at the, like, whatever the door needs, just, I've never had customer service like that. You know? That was me clapping. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with my mom, my dad, my stepdad, and they all got involved. My sister had worked for me

for some time. And what's nice is the family still stayed intact and a lot of families can't say that right and I think it's difficult and I think that brings to one of the keys is the success of businesses is being able to have the right people surround you the right people you know work with you or work for you and that and I've been very privileged of those that have worked with me, and it's because of them that I'm here where I am today, and I'll never forget, and it's so important, so important. Yeah.

You know, my brother-in-law, I kind of gave him an ultimatum. I said, listen, you're my sister's husband. You're my niece and nephew's father. I want to give him an ultimatum. I said, listen, you're my sister's husband. You're my niece and nephew's father. I want to give you an opportunity. You don't have to do it, but I'd love for you to come with me. Wow. And he said, I'm in. He said, as long as you let me build my own team, because I know how to build teams.

And I said, I'll give you anything and everything, whatever resources and money you need. And he goes, we're going to make billions. And I believe him because he's very high up the corporate ladder. And he goes, just never make me go back to corporate life because I hate it. He goes, I like that I can come to you and get a decision. And there's not racing at the quarter to make sure that certain people had their stock price and options. And you worked in both. You worked in an entrepreneurial setting and you've worked in corporate settings. Yes, I have. Yes. Talk to me about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

You know what? Every job that I've ever had, I've treated it like gold and I've done the absolute best that I could possibly do. You know, I, when I, I was working at IBM and when I was working there, everybody talked about, oh, you know, the, you know, cause I was in sales and marketing. Oh, you know, those consultants have it so easy and everything of that, you know, God, those consultants are so, you know, they great. They just go and they service, they consult. I ended up getting sponsored by IBM to get my MBA. Got my MBA and ended up getting recruited from one of the top five accounting firms in the United States. Went to work for them. And now suddenly I was on the consulting side.

I'm like, things aren't that great or easier on the consulting side. And ended up, fortunately, again, building companies and doing things from scratch and starting companies. I think everything has its pros and cons. But let me just tell you something, Tommy, is even for me, when I worked even, for example, at IBM or any of the companies that I worked for, I remember going, here's one of the things I remember. I was with a coworker and he said, God, this is a great job at IBM.

At five o'clock. I'm done. And I'm thinking, God, do we work for the same company? Because afterwards I'm here every day late, but I enjoy what I'm doing. I'm thinking about work on the weekend, probably doing some work and stuff of that. So it wouldn't matter whether I'm doing my own doing it, which feels like almost 24 hours to working for somebody. I take it on myself. doing my own doing it, which feels like almost 24 hours, to working for somebody. I take it on myself.

And it is certainly, some of it is by choice. Of course, some of them, there's deadlines and things that are due. But it could be by, you know, it is by choice. But it's a passion. It's a passion. You know, it's a passion. I enjoy what I'm doing. I've always enjoyed what I've done. I've made it good of whatever job that I had.

And part of it, I believe, is to be a mindset. Why are there two people that come in? In fact, it happens at alliances. Two people can come in. They can come in within the same industry. One goes, hmm, this was great. It was a nice meeting but you know I really couldn't connect with anyone the other one same exact thing within that and

they go this is a goldmine this is the best thing I can't believe everybody there's so many people I want to talk to I don't even know where to start and I'm thinking did they both come to the same place why is that well it's part of mindset so if you're in a job right now and you're like, ah, I hate this job, find something you like about it, figure it out. Maybe it's something that you can do then on the side and grow your own. Do it the way that you want and continue to work there. I'm no different. It's no super skill. I had a challenging school. College wasn't easy. In fact, too, is when I was going for my MBA, I had to work full time, got married in between that, and go to school at night.

But it worked out. And not everything does, but it worked out. You know, I'd like to think it's a little bit different than you probably do. I partner with a company called Cortec. So technically I'm an employee. I'm the CEO of this company. Okay. I'm the largest investor in the company. I own more than Cortec does.

But they do have the right to fire me. If I really screwed up, really screwed up, they've got limited partners and investors. And some of these are pension funds that rely on the success of this company. The reason I did it is because Ken Goodrich called me and said, can you imagine how much you're going to learn about how they raise capital, about the things that go in on that building, about their LPs when you speak at their events? And for me, I was like, you know, when Luke started, he had his own company, our COO. And he said, man, I've learned so much in the last six years. I could go do anything.

Right, right. And so some people I just feel like, and I just go back to this, is like, I went from a completely sole entrepreneur business. I was the decision maker. Now if there's really big decisions, I've got to confide and ask. You know, I don't necessarily ask permission because they bought me. They bought the decision maker. Now, if there's really big decisions, I got to confide and ask, you know, I don't necessarily ask permission because they still, they bought me. They bought the decision maker. They like the decisions I'm making. I don't feel like a piece of me was taken. I really don't. They really trust me and control. But at the same time, there's a board and, you know, the normal stuff.

And so I actually, maybe in some people's minds, took a step back. Maybe they save for the money, but I really looked at this and Ken's like, dude probably Tommy I'll give you a PhD in in home service but he goes you're a kindergartner when it comes to deal making acquisitions understanding integration processes knowing how to raise capital understanding the PE white color world and I looked at and I said you're right right. And I said, so I'm going to take this next three years as an opportunity. And I'm going to be deadly. And so I don't necessarily think that you need to go out there and figure it out on your own. Because if you don't think I could buy 10 books on private equity and learn how to raise capital, or I could watch

it be done and watch them what they do, and they shake hands and how they work because there is a lot of, like, relationships in it. Like, I don't care what you know, it's who you know. And this has put me on a map in a whole new way. And that's one of the things I was going to ask you, too, is, like, you've seen a lot of successful people. And I don't just success off money or fame. I judge it off of, like, you know, I want to see, like, if you've got a lot of money and fame and you go to the strip club every day cheating on your wife and never showing up for your kids and haven't talked to your parents in 10 years.

Is that really success? There's a lot of people that commit suicide that are billionaires that have the fame. So what attributes do you see of the successful? And we can just talk about business in general or you just talk about people in general. but what do you see when you when you go? Wow, this guy's really got it Or this gal, you know when I say guy it could be guys or girls Yeah, that's I mean, I think that's a very good question to ask what I see is is a lot of it is is the drive to be able to do something better that either is better than something that is perhaps being already done.

You know, the list just, because the people that I've interviewed, you're right, it is. And each, by the way, each person that I've interviewed, I do take something away from it. You know, I mean, even, for example, I recently interviewed the founder of GoDaddy.

Yeah, I want to join his golf course. Yeah, right. Yeah, I can probably hook you up with him. He's local too. Yeah. You know, and his thing was, again, it was almost the same point. Somebody said, well, you know, how are you going to be able to do what you're going to be able to do? He's like, I'm just going to go ahead and do it.

I'm going to try it. I'm going to see what happens with it. He had an interesting story. I don't want to get too much off track of your question, but he had an interesting story because his aha moment he shared with me is, is he was getting his car parked by a valet driver and he was all pissed off because he went from, I don't know, 60, whatever it was, gazillion dollars to basically like 30 million or whatever, all that. And he's like, eh. And what his turning point was is he saw the valet guy, and the valet guy was so happy.

And he knows, he's like, this valet guy is making $12 an hour, and here I am, 30 million, 40 million, whatever it was, millions. And he's like, I'm just not happy. What is the problem with this? And that was his aha moment is this, something's got to change. But I see the successful people, it becomes a mindset. It really becomes a mindset.

You know, I can't say, oh, you know, because they have this education or because they came from money. A lot of them didn't. You know, even, I mean, Richard Branson, I mean, you know, he had a history. I mean, his history was he was explaining to me his mother got mad at him while they were driving the car he was doing something, threw him out of the car.

He's like, nowadays, he's even told me this on the air. He's like, you know, she probably would have gotten arrested. But you know what? I learned a lot from that. So I think we learn a lot from the positive that happens with our childhood. And we learn a lot, too, from the negative of it. And I was a latchkey kid. I came home. Nobody was home. My mother had to work. Parents were divorced. And, you know, I came home, had to figure out very young age. And OK, how do I make my own sandwich, do my own thing? Now I look at it like that was one of the best things that happened and i'm very very close with both my parents you know so so you can't say you can't tie i don't think tommy you could tie it to specific things in general and i think the thing is is you know someone may always say again either i don't have enough money i didn't have the right upbringing you didn't have this that yet you look at people who are people who

i've interviewed who have come from various backgrounds and socioeconomic, and they've been successful at it. I think it's surrounding yourself with positive people. I think positive is the biggest thing of ever. And it's just like, too, at the roundtable that we have every single week. And again, guests are invited. I can't wait for you to attend. Everybody's got crap going on. And the thing we tell them, just like I told you at the beginning, that's fine.

Leave it at the door. This is the oasis. This is the oasis for entrepreneurs. The bag will be out there when you leave. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's definitely, it's real. And I think, you know, I had these guys over. One's at $2.4 billion.

One just sold for $165 million. You know, just a day whiteboarding with these guys for a few hours. Now, it hasn't been done yet, but it'll be done by the end of Q3. We're going into Q3. I added $10 million to EBITDA just by adding these few things easily. And it's just these little things that make the company better. Just things that I haven't thought about, just a different way of looking at things. Just one little thing that'll add $4 million in the next month, literally to EBITDA.

And I'm like, yeah, no, I didn't think about it that way. So you never know. And it's really important because I always go, you know why you can't come to my event? I got an event in September 25th through the 27th called Freedom. It's in San Diego. And I say, you know why you can't come? Because you can't afford to.

Because if you leave, everything's going to fall apart. And then a year's going to go by and you can't afford to come again. And then, you know, five years go by and you're sitting there going, well, this guy came in and he marketed better than me. This guy does sales better than this guy. Or you got every reason why you're not winning. And, you know, I was on Grant Cardone's podcast and he asked me a question and I was strong about one answer. And coming from your background, I think you will be too. But what's more important, sales or marketing?

Oh, God. Well, which one is the physical part where you're actually seeing or talking to someone? Right? Is that on the sales part? I mean, you know, are you considering that on the marketing part? Well, I would say. I mean, they're both important. What would you consider this right now this podcast is this sales or

marketing i think on the marketing end it's marketing you know so i don't care if you're rico suave the best salesman that ever lived here the wolf of wall street or whoever you want to say i will out do you if i'm a better marketer i don't need to be good at sales because I'm getting in front of 100,000 customers. I'm in front. We are closing 20,000 jobs a month in the garage doors. So even if you are really, really amazing at sales, unless it's like getting a big account, it's the gift that keeps giving, right? You got outside sales. That's a little bit different, but that's a form of marketing in itself, right?

If you're doing door-to-door sales, that's marketing. You're the marketing source. I agree. I know you get a really great sales guy. You don't need a lot of opportunities to make a lot of money. Jeremy Miner and I were together.

We went and got an AMG this weekend. That's her birthday and Christmas present. Hopefully she sleeps with the keys for the next three years. I was like, I got about a week on this, so I'm going to take advantage. She's happy, so I'm happy. But it's an important question, I think, because I became obsessed with marketing,

and that's what I attribute to the success of this company. Sales is super important, and I love sales, and I love learning about it. Well, what's the key aspect for marketing that's done for you to make it so successful? Well, what I think is, number one, I needed to realize every garage store owner is not my client. Number two, I needed perfect attribution. Number three, I needed perfect attribution. Number three,

I think starting the podcast and I think putting myself in rooms and asking more questions is what made it. And now out of there's 42 guys training next door in our training center, brand new. Half of them wanted to come be my coworker. They knew about me before they met me. They wanted to come work with us because of me. And I'm hoping one day, I'm just going to say, listen, we're hiring in Nashville and there will be a hundred Navy SEAL, SEAL Team 6, badass people that show up and say, Sir, yes, sir, I'm ready to come aboard. Great. And I think it's really, you know, I've had to switch. Here's what really happened for me.

Is I used to market for clients. Now I market for internal clients. Because if you get the right people on the bus, you know where you're going. Right. And so my marketing brain had to pivot and say man what if I just stack the deck and I think a lot of people miss that and by the way I don't hire anymore I recruit hiring is just putting an ad on Craigslist and deep blast or a monster and zip recruit or whatever uh I try to go to someone that's already got a job that's already already happy, that's doing what they love, and say, I'll give you more, and I'll make you happier, and I'll pull your whole family in on it, and we'll focus on your success.

That's the LFA mindset. I got to tell you a quick story. I went to a dry cleaner. This is one of my earlier companies. I went to a dry cleaner, and this lady, actually lady, it's a young girl, and she approaches me when I come into this, you know, to drop off my laundry, pick up my laundry, whatever it was. And I couldn't believe how much she treated me like gold, like as if I was some famous person coming in there.

She worked for this cleaners. And I had never experienced something like that before. Made me feel so welcome. Guess what? I hired her. I hired her because it was such a feeling. It was a feeling and she did phenomenal. But it was, it was interesting again, being on the lookout for people that are like that.

Again, she wouldn't have never had the opportunity she says you know here drop off your thing but i felt like the most important thing and you know what i i didn't hire on the spot but i couldn't stop thinking about it and not about her but the experience yeah walking in there opening the door and i was like you know welcome to you know and it was just a cleaner's place. But it was interesting. It was attitude. It was attitude. Attitude determines altitude, right? We've heard of that. Yep. I recently had an event and, you know, we're in the business of not only growing greenfield strategy and organically, but partnering with companies. And I talked to our VP

of corporate development and I said, there's a lot of companies that want to partner with companies. And I talked to our VP of corporate development, and I said, there's a lot of companies that want to partner with us. I said, you were four seasons, and you wanted to give a world-class experience. What do you think they would do? They'd probably be calling you on a Saturday. How amazed we are by you. Booking a flight to come see you.

Wine and dining you. Laughing at your jokes, taking notes, painting this vision. And I said, they wouldn't probably wait till Monday. They'd probably paint the picture. They'd answer all your questions. They'd make sure it's the right fit. They'd make sure to tell you the good, the bad, do a SWOT analysis.

And they'd be very upfront because I think what's world-class what's world-class what's that world-class experience and I don't think we were giving world-class experiences to our future partners and that's something once again that you know what I love about not being involved in the day-to-day is that it allows me to see beyond the day-to-day it allows me that's excellent right right that's a big deal you know interesting is is because I you know I talked about your audience how much I work and stuff that I took a two-week two-week trip from my previous company and I was nervous as hell I went international so I'm like oh my gosh how am I gonna I can't connect you know phone service sucks out here in this country and so on. Anyways, you know what? I came back and they had closed more deals than when I was gone. And when I, you know, as I was gone, then as if I was there. And I was like, okay. But I felt a little sad. I was like, okay,

I guess, you know. Well, they wanted to impress you. They wanted to show that they could do it without you. And they did. What is one piece of advice you'd give to aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners based on your personal experience? Wait, one piece? One piece. One piece of advice to aspiring ones. You know, I've done mentoring at Arizona State University, and I've worked with a lot of students that have an idea that wanted looking at launching something. And my thing is, is that one piece of advice.

Don't wait. Don't wait. There's never going to be the perfect time to launch. There's never going to be the right amount of money to have to launch. You can do all the analysis that you want, but just don't wait and just start, start, start doing it. Sounds like having kids. You know what? You don't have this perfect time.

There is never. You're right. There is not a perfect time. Well, we'll wait until we have a house. We'll wait until I'm more established in business there's not fortunate enough you know i got married and my wife's like yeah let's have kids i was like what and we did and i you know i was single i you know i have a stepbrother but uh you know i grew up alone and now fortunately we have two kids now i look back and i'm like you what? Maybe it would have been nice having more than two. Really? Yeah, yeah.

In fact, when you come to our roundtable, you'll see. You see most people when they start off an event or something, they talk about, well, you know, this person, famous person said this, and this famous person said this. I actually share a lesson that I learned from my children. Every single week. True lessons, and a lesson changes every single week. And I do those.

Part of it was is because at that time, I really didn't know anybody except those that were in my field. Now I know so many people that I can't even remember all the people of each specific lesson because there's so many. How big are those events usually? So our private roundtable that takes place each and every single week, that changes every week again, who's there and stuff, are online and in person. We have about 70 people that attend and it's more than registered, but actually attend is 70. And then our grand table

and stuff, and this doesn't include the one online, we take the largest hall and it's, I think we cap it at $250. And give me a little bit of the foundation and structure. Like who speaks and when and how long is it? Yeah, that's great. So at our private roundtable, everybody has an opportunity to present. We have a specific formula of how they go about presenting. It's called our 3G methodology. A 3G methodology.

Think of it as the improved elevator speech. A 3G methodology is, what have you got? So it's, you know, again, what do you have? What do you got? What is your give? So what are you looking to freely provide? And what is your get what do you need and we call it the 3g methodology trademarked i like that and it works and it's right to the core and all of these things were put together again kind of almost through thin air you know this was something that started i wasn't even looking at doing something this i'm an introvert i got a couple people together it ended up growing we were thrown out of one office because too many people were there. We ended up going to Panera Bread where we had this.

They gave us a room there. And what happened at Panera Bread is right when the doors opened up, we took over the whole restaurant. The manager came to me and said, you know what? We can't have you anywhere. I said, why? What do we do? He said, because when you end your session here, you're taking up the whole restaurant.

We're still open to the public because people were having meetings. But each of these came out because I was getting together a group. Here's the thing. It was for the purpose to see what I was going to do next. Little did I know that this was my calling. Yeah. And I was in the position to be able to do it. And it was the timing in life to be able to do it.

And it's made up of the community. It's driven by the community. Decisions are driven and put made up of the community. It's driven by the community. Decisions are driven and put together because of the community. And then we do many, many other events that take place. And I owe a lot to those that are part of the community, our sponsors that make it happen, because without them, I would not be able to do it. MAC6 played a vital role because when we went COVID, so we went, you know, COVID took place. Not any single week were we down. COVID took place and we were down for one week.

One week. And the first week that we were down, I remember it was March. I was getting calls from members and the calls went anywhere from something like this. God, this COVID thing. This is the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm getting government contracts moving to the front of the line. Instead of doing net 30 or 60, they're giving me net 15 because they needed face masks, things. They needed all these things. Then I was also getting the other calls of like my business is failing. We have people that own

restaurants and stuff. I don't know what I'm going to do. And there was one call that changed my entire mindset. And this is what it was. And I'll never forget this person called me up and they said, I mean, I get choked up by this said, David, I don't know what you're going to do, but you better do something. I hung up the phone. My kids were all at home, my wife. And I just was like, I was ready to cry. I don't know what to do. were all at home, my wife. And I just was like, I was ready to cry. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

Yeah. So we ended up, I ended up getting other members together. We pulled it together. We tried to mimic exactly what goes inside in person. And again, there's a whole formula. There's a process that takes place of having it in person. We mimicked almost exact of having it online, even with breakout rooms, which we got a new sponsor, which was Remo. So it's almost, it's a custom design, no different than if you were in person where you can walk and go table to table easily just by clicking in. It's called Remo.co.

Then suddenly the world opened up. Well, when the world opened up, we were like, what are we going to do now? Now we have members that are throughout the world. So there goes that. Well, we teamed up with Max6 and they put together with us to be able to do a hybrid model online and in person. And by the way, as a plug for them, this is a room that you can also rent going to Max6.com where you can do and run events online and in person at the same time. It's not a bragging. It's simply the fact is we're the only ones that are doing it and doing it consistently.

And it takes a lot of work. Oh, yeah. Everything takes a lot of work. I love this. So if somebody wants to get a hold of you, David, and they want to reach out, what's the best way to do that? The best thing to do is go to alliances.com. Again, that's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. Alliances.com.

Again, that's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. Of course, you're welcome to Google my name, David Kogan. David, C-O-G-A-N. Think of like Hulk Hogan, but with a C. And there's access. There's different ways you can apply to attend a roundtable. Certainly be an honor of having anybody as your guest also come and attend. And again, that's whether maybe you have an idea, right, napkin to idea.

Maybe you're somebody who's established as a well-known CEO. And this could be from anywhere in the world. You know, all CFO may be an expert. But if you have a passion, and here's the thing, you have a passion to help others. I don't care how rich you are, poor you are. Everybody has something they can contribute. And I'm simply the talking head that, you know, helps pull every people together. But it's our community that drives it.

And that's where I take my marching orders. I love it. David, if there's a book, not the Bible, not the E-Myth, not Blue Ocean Strategy, not The Richest Man in Babylon, not Robert Kiyosaki, but a book that we don't

really know of that's like a gem that you learned a lot from. Do you have anything that comes to mind? Boy, that's okay. Let me think about that for a minute because there's been a number of books. I mean, I certainly think, you know, Rich Dad, Poor Dad comes to mind. I've interviewed Sharon Lecter. I think that's a great book. I would probably recommend that book. That's so, real quick on that. And Kiyosaki, I've met him and stuff. So my niece and two nephews, my brother-in-law's in town right now. And I said, hey, listen, I'd like to give your kids some money to read a book. And I'm going to do it each month, $400 each.

But you're going to be the, I'm going to ask tough questions. And neither, none of them are getting the same questions. And it's not going to be like, what color was the guy's hat on page, you know what I mean? And I said, if they do okay, that's $200. If they do pretty good, that's $300. If they do great, it's $400. We're starting with Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Wow, let me sign up. Yeah. That's great. So that's a possibility that you can each make $5,000 a year. Yeah. No, I think that's great. I think it sign up. Yeah. That's great. So that's a possibility that you can each make five grand a year. Yeah. No, I think that's great. I think it's good. Yeah.

I think reading is important. Unfortunately, I do a lot where I'm watching things online and stuff like that. But, yeah, those are good. Well, I'm excited about you being able to come. Yeah, we'll set that up. I'll get with my EA, and she'll set it up. Last thing I ask here, David. Yep.

We've talked about a lot of stuff. Right. We know alliances is the place to be. Yep. We understand September. Yep. The ASU Sky Song. Is that what it's Sky Song?

Yeah, ASU Sky Song. Yep, September 10th. Our grand table. So just close us out. Maybe we didn't talk about something. Maybe there's something you need the listeners to know. Maybe that's just to go do this today or think about this or just really focus on this attribute. But I don't know what it is, but I'll let you close us out.

I think for me, what it's been is, and it's a challenging thing for some people to find, is finding what your passion is. You know, you hear that word, you hear it thrown around a lot, but really, what is it that you're passionate about? And, you know, I never knew that I was good at what I'm doing now as being a speaker and I speak every single week. But I think the thing is, is when we find what we're good at, we end up liking it. I mean, I don't play professional ball, but you know what? If I was good at baseball, suddenly I'd be like, this is the best thing ever. And everybody has a skill. ball. But you know what? If I was good at baseball, suddenly I'd be like, this is the best thing ever. And everybody has a skill. Everybody can contribute something to someone. Find out what you like and make it a passion as long as it's legal, ethical, and all the other things.

And find that. Some people never find it. Some people find it, you know, as a young person. Lately, I've been taking my dog for walks, although not with the weather, but when I've been taking my dog for walks, and here's what I found. We take this walk and we walk by a school. The kids see my dog and they all come running out and they're all laughing and having a good time, screaming for fun. And it makes me just think about it going, you know what? Look how happy they are at their age. Somewhere along the line, we lose that. How can we continue to keep that?

They're at school. It's elementary school, yet they're having so fun just looking at my dog, asking a million questions, jumping up and down, having tremendous amount of energy. So find your passion, find what you like, and enjoy. I love it.

Well, thank you, David. Absolutely. That's fantastic. I appreciate it. You're great. I need you, Tommy, to do me a favor, though. I need you to be able to somehow figure out

how to bottle your energy. No, you've got this aura, and I'm not just saying it. I've been interviewed by a number of people. You've got this aura and energy. It's contagious in a good way. You got to figure out how can you teach others that part? Yeah. I don't know.

I'm going to have to work on that. I'm on it. That's what you said. Let's figure out how to bottle it. He's like,'re gonna put it in a bottle all right excellent thank you again Tommy it's been an honor you absolutely hey there thanks for tuning into the podcast today before I let you go I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization.

It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.