The Home Service Expert Podcast - From Turf to Triumph: A Leader's Journey with Dillion Georgian

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

In this conversation, Dillon Georgian shares his journey in the turf industry, emphasizing the importance of leadership, operational efficiency, and the balance between family and business. He discusses his transition from retail to distribution, the significance of equity incentives, and the need for a resilient mindset in entrepreneurship. Dylan also highlights the role of technology and systems in modern business, the importance of purpose, and the desire to give back to the community. His insights provide valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and established business leaders alike. 00:00 Leadership and Personal Growth 03:09 The Journey into the Turf Industry 06:02 Operational Efficiency and Cost Management 09:04 Incentives and Equity in Business 11:57 Preparing for Business Exit and Growth 15:02 The Balance of Family and Business 18:11 Starting New Ventures and Market Opportunities 21:14 Scaling and Transforming Businesses 23:56 The Home Service Industry Dynamics 27:11 Technology and Systems in Business 29:53 Mindset and Resilience in Entrepreneurship 32:55 Leadership Style and Team Development 36:01 The Importance of Purpose and Giving Back

I understand what my people's goals are, and I take that very serious. And my job as a leader is to be able to develop my leaders and my people. And I'm failing out my job unless I do that. And if it's just all fluff and you can't get in that real conversation, I'm not going to be able to make headway. 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 ask the team to take notes for you.

Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S, to 888-5-26-1299. That's 888-5-26-1299, 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 elevate and win.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.

Now let's go back into the interview. All right, welcome back to the home service expert. Today we got Dylan Georgian. He is an expert in artificial turf distribution and installation. former C, I guess you're the CEO now, in Boise. Dylan is a trailblazer in the artificial turf industry, building multiple category leading companies,

including turf distributors, artificial grass liquidators, built right, and artificial grass recyclers. Starting from a humble beginning, he helped scale TD into a national powerhouse by focusing on innovation culture and customer-centric solutions.

Dylan is known for spotting market gaps early, developing vertically integrated businesses, and pushing the turf industry forward through sustainably and operational excellence. Today he continues to lead new ventures and expand the future of the turf life. Yeah, thanks, Tommy. That was a mouthful.

Yeah, it was. There's a lot going on there. So tell me a little bit about what got you into turf. You started when you were 18. Where you built the company, what you're excited about. Yeah, for sure. So started back when I was 18, worked for a guy doing turf, was working in the yard,

had an opportunity to partner with him in Temecula, California. And so the whole model back then was we go to the manufacturers and buy scraps of artificial grass for pennies on the dollar and sell it on Craigslist. So did that with my partner for about three years and then had the opportunity to buy them out. And from there, scaled through like multi-retel channel, opening up our own retail stores, selling to homeowners,

and then learned in the supply business, the contractor game is really where it's at. So then leveled up, made some nice showroom, sold to contractors, and then 2018 really moved out of retail, sold those retail stores, and got fully into distribution. And so now we supply artificial grass companies really across America. So you do B2B? Yeah, currently do B2B. That's one of the main businesses I have. And is there like tax credits involved with moving artificial grass? There is. And like Vegas currently has like a massive one right now. So what are you accepting? excited about you jumped back into the CEO seat. What, uh, what was that like? Yes, it's different,

right? Um, I think, uh, us as people and entrepreneurs, like a lot of our excitement comes from like running a business, right? The, the highs and the lows having your back against the wall. It's always exciting. And, uh, like I promised myself when I turned 30, um, and hit, I hit nine figures, uh, by the time I was 30. And I have two little daughters and I said, hey, I'm going to kind of take the back seat and I want to spend time with them. Like, in the life's not all about money. It's not all about building a big business. I really designed my life to be where it is today. Grind, build a good size company.

When my kids, you know, at a certain age, I just want to kind of set back and hang out with the family. So as exciting as that sounds for everybody, everybody listening, it wasn't that exciting. I love my family, right, but I feel like I lost myself in it a little bit. Like I wasn't excited, didn't have the energy. And, you know, yeah, I lost my CEO in the deal. So I was out for like eight months and there's a little bit of transition. But good for him.

The guy's with me for 10 years. He got to move through our business. Got recruited by like a master manufacturer. So it was really good for him and his family. Like I love the guy and jumped back in and this time's a little bit different. You know, I got to kind of sit back on the side and watch it happen. And then when you, you know, jump back in and take control, you could change something. So we've made massive movement.

I've been able to. not only grow revenue, but I shaved my overhead about 40% in a 12-month period. Where do the overhead come from? Labor or from materials? It's all in labor, just on the P&L, like looking through every single piece of the expense line. So when you think about chopping labor, what did that exercise look like? I'm curious because I think a lot of people have way too much bulk. Yeah, for sure. So its efficiency is like when your backs against the wall, right, you're not turning the profit you need to have. And a lot of people look at business and say, especially in smaller business, like, hey, I'm profitable. And I don't look at it

that way. You have to have a healthy net margin. If case you ever want to exit, if you want to get investors, if you need to get a bank loan, whatever. So I set the standard of our company of having a healthy net margin. Anything under that is that's like losing money, right? And so we went line by line on really like what we should have and what we shouldn't have and have those hard conversations. and give the leaders of the business a budget to work within. And then it was just we have P&L calls with each group every single, the first Monday of every single month and just cut out everything we can. And so you're extra lean right now.

Extra lean, but we're running better than ever. Sometimes they got a 350 people at one point and just the minutia in the time that everybody's spending of just the, I guess, internal political agility, right? Yeah. A lot of wasted time goes down there. So yeah, we're running lean, but we're highly efficient. You know, I've always said 1A equals 3B. If you pay, let's say you paid an A player 50 bucks an hour. Okay. And you have 3B players that you're paying 30. That A player will run circles around the 3B. You're paying him 50 or her 50. And you're paying the other 390. And you're actually saving money because you've got efficiency. Plus, A players love other A players. That's right. Changes the whole workflow. That's right. And so like speaking to that a little bit on like how we run because a lot of our stuff is like we don't have much labor. It's just what's in the distribution, not on not really on the installation business. I have a company that does that but they sub all their labor, right? Okay. And so one of the biggest things that that helped us get to the reducer overhead and maximum profit was bonusing like all of our key leaders that can make decisions. They all have their own P&L and the qualifier to get their bonuses EBRA. So that. That net profit has to be where at that healthy state that we want to be at.

And then that qualifies them into their metrics that they must hit to go ahead and get their bonus. Have you ever thought about doing anything with, and this doesn't work unless you plan on selling within five or seven years, but a form of equity incentive program or phantom equity or there's a lot of different terms where there's profit units? Like bringing somebody in or doing it with our just doing it with the internal people. Yeah, absolutely. So all my key people have. an equity stake. So not, I've done phantom stocks in the past. I don't have anybody with phantom stocks today. The problem with that is when you do phantom stocks, unless you put something in there of like, hey, unless you're with the company, that's the only way this works, right? Which a lot, it's not that incentivizing. The last thing I would want to happen when I looked at

the phantom stock option was give somebody phantom stocks and they exit or you term them or something goes wrong and you go into court or whatever happens, right? Then, they don't work for your company anymore, but they have stock of your company. The goal of like an entrepreneur, the reason you give out stock is you want to take some responsibility off you and you want your team to go ahead and carry that and drive it forward so you're not tied to the company as much. Well, that's one of the things. Yeah. Well, and you want them to think like you and perform like you, right? And you don't want them to quit. If they get a better offer, they're going to go, if I quit, I lose all this equity. That's right. And then the other thing is,

yeah, you said you act like an owner. And the reason why you're going to be a better. And the reason why phantom equity or eIP works is it's very hard when there's a bunch of people at the table with real equity they all get voting rights and they'll got to pay a shit ton of taxes that's right and now you're going uh sorry this is supposed to be a good thing but we made a lot of money and you got to pay taxes that's right and so there's and this is the deal with stock options if you're a public traded company they never give them stock they say the stock's worth $10 today it's an option you could buy it 25% a year for the next four years so it goes up to 100 you can buy 25% of that option.

She'll make the $90 and they can get a loan for that. And they're not leaving because the stock's continuing to go up. So it's the same thing that home service, a lot of companies should be doing. We went from $12 million to $29 million in 18 months of EBTA by doing an EIP program. Wow. That's amazing. They start sprinting. Yeah. So I have everything on an earn out now. Okay.

So if the company sells or if the majority of shares. Yeah, the majority of the company of 50.1%. Yeah, then they could cash out if they want to cash out. But I have it listed as if we sell or the majority interest changes. That's exactly what I, that's the only way to run them. So I tell people, if you don't have a plan to sell, that means nothing to anybody. Right. Like, we don't really have a plan.

We're just going to keep running it. And then I'm like, it's kind of selfish not to want to sell if you've got that structure because now you're taking all these draws. Oh, look it. He just got a new Beamer. Right. Oh, he must have took a drawl. And that drawl. So we don't take trolls.

I don't take any money out. In fact, I'm trying to move my salary to $5, minimum wage a year. Interesting. I don't even want to take a salary. There's no point. I pay 45% taxes. And the CEO a lot of times when you're the founder, what's the point of taking, I've got enough money? And all of a sudden, let's just say I'm paying myself 300 grand.

Yeah. Let's say the multiple is 15x. I own half the company today. So let's just do some simple math. 15 X times 300 grand is 4.5 million half of that comes to me so it would be smart to get rid of my salary

right I'd have to have a no salary going to the next till too yeah yeah makes sense I love this math equation because it's like every dollar I save I make 15 or I could use a 12 multiple or an 18 or whatever you want what are the multiples like in your industry yeah so in distribution currently it's about a 7 7 yeah

And I don't know if you want to telegraph this across the world, but do you have a plan? Is there like an exit strategy you're building? Yeah, I'm prepping the company to always be, if I want to sell, like, the financials are always good to sell. Because in the beginning, it was for a very long time, I'd make money or I lost money to grow, like, revenue. I didn't really know better. Right. I didn't know financials. Put it all back in.

Let's grow revenue, grow revenue, grow revenue. Yeah. But then you start having responsibilities and like kids and all that kind of stuff. And you look at things differently and like, hey, I have to have like security. Like this, this has to work, right? And so, yeah, there will be a day when there's most likely be a day when we sell the company. Have you done any deals where you sold any companies? No.

Just like the retail storefronts, those were like simple. Hey, pay us $100,000 and buy a product from us for five years, you know. Oh, that's great. Yeah. That still works out. Yeah. So we do like different strategic deals like that all the time. So, yeah, I think it's interesting when you start.

talking to bankers, the best advice I could give you is find the bankers that have done great big deals, similar businesses like you, and go talk to the go meet with them like Q1 of next year and say, what are some of the leading indicators? How do I get the multiple from seven to eight? What would they, is there reoccurring? Do I have to change my contract structure? What things can I do? And all of a sudden, if I didn't meet Eric Van Damme in 2020, I mean, he laid it all out. He told me, you need a president. You need a president. You need a. build your HR team. You don't have an FP&A team. You don't have this. Interesting. You got to build that up. I was a little under $5 million of EBITDA when I met him. We got the 27 and a half when I did the

first deal. It's amazing. And it's like, they got all the answers because they do so many deals. They know exactly what buyers are looking for. Yeah. So they really give you the roadmap. Yeah. And say, look, if you did this, this, this, then they'll tell you, like, he told me you got to be north of $20 million to get the multiple you want. Yeah. Interesting. So. Yeah. I mean, I love what we do. I'm working on building some other brands because like the hardest thing is the people, right? And getting people that you trust and could work well with you. You got to go through some teams and get the right team. And so I'm currently building that.

So if I do sell, I'm not starting from scratch. Like I have a whole management company and moved a lot of my key people in there that don't that don't run that brand. Let's say HR accounting, all that kind of stuff. So that always stays with me as I sell a brand. So that's what I did. I formed a family office. So I got a lot of smart people in the family office that could come into any business and help run them. Yeah, and it's mostly tax planning and then the diligence.

Because the best thing I think is to buy a business and make it better. I mean, currently, I think once you build a great business and a platform, it's better to be able to greenfield and just grow organically because then you can call your own shots. Right. But so tell me, you know, you said something really interesting. I want to dive into. So what did you think it was going to be like, I got two young daughters, I'm happily married, I'm in Boise, I'm going to step back. And then you were like, well, that's not what I thought it was going to be. Yeah. Well, like, hey, I'm going to rewind a little bit from there. It's like you go and build a business and you think of like, I want to be this entrepreneur and have this crazy life, right? But that life comes with a lot of responsibilities, a lot of pressure, different things like that. So it changes a little bit. Then you go to the other side. I'm like, okay, I got business. I'm making money like what's it look like to not work, right? Let's go have fun. Let's go use the toys, do all that different stuff. And it's only exciting for so long. And then you-

How long do you think? Ah, dude, three weeks. Three weeks? Three weeks until I was like looking at like, okay, what else can I go do? Like, I'm not a guy who could sit on the beach or sit at a bar. Like, I got to go do so. Or, you know, what about golf or fishing? I can't really golf. Like, I'll go play a couple holes and I'm like, I got to get moving. Okay. Yeah. So that started. I need to learn that. I need to learn how to slow down a little bit. I think we all have that. And that's what's interesting about the world we're stepping into.

I mean, with artificial intelligence, a lot of people don't want to talk about it. But you can't just, you know, the industrial revolution, you could go get another job. Right. I mean, hey, the farmers that weren't as in need as they used to be. They had to run the machines so you get like a massive piece of equipment. It could do the job. 50 people. Yeah. They just learn another trade. That's right. With AI, there is no other trade. It took over that and it's taking over this and it's taking over this. Yeah. And I mean, this is not like a a crazy, crazy like doom and gloom story because I think we're going to go through Utopia. But what the hard part for me is, I love running a business. I feel like this purpose. Yeah.

And it's like you, the same thing is like you wanted to get back into the saddle. Would you do the next seven months. So you took about it a little over eight months. So after that first month kind of wore down, what, what were you thinking? What were you doing? Because you had another CEO. Yeah, I started looking at other opportunities, like all over the place, like anything I could think of. Because I've landed in turf super young. I didn't know what I was getting into. Yeah. So when you do business for a while, then you step back, you're like, okay, if I do this all over again, what would it be? And so that's where I spent a lot of my time of just geeking around on stuff, learned how to cook, just like random things, you know? But what were,

really got you excited that you were looking at. What were some of the things like, where were you looking and what was like no way and what was like, I could see myself doing that. Yes, I looked at a few different, like four different things. One was like racing simulators and building like an experience center where you go in and you go race and create up at like a circuit where people can make money doing it through a machine versus an actual car. Okay. So that sounded fun. Got into the golf card industry because my family and I loved to cruise a golf car around. Yeah. Floor tiles just because it's simple. It's a niche market.

So that business actually doing pretty well. These are things you started all this stuff? I started on the same thing, pulled back. But the floor tiles, yes, the golf carts went pretty big on that business. So yeah, those two are up and moving. Wow. So you start all the, when you start these businesses, where do you start? You build a business plan.

Like what are the foundational blocks to get something up and going? Yeah. So that's really, I think my specialty is because I've started from nothing with really no money and I've had to rub pennies together to go build ground up, right? And that's what I really thrive in is I grab an idea and making something happen. So really you need to understand like the financial of the business and what's out there. Like can you make money doing it? I think a lot of people get into business thinking it could be exciting.

And then they don't make any money doing it. if they quit or whatever. So I really go look to see what the financial outlook could be, and then I would see where my entry is. Is there room for somebody else in the market? Like, you could always go find room and make it happen, but like, I don't want to have to go face 10 years of like battling it out with some people, right? And so the golf card industry, I noticed like nobody's built a brand. Yeah. It was just like, hey, there's, here's a golf cart, right? Nobody's built like a lifestyle. So I thought that would be a good entry. Nobody's done it very, Nobody's done e-commerce of golf carts.

They're only 15 to 20 grand. But if you could build a brand well, people could order online. So nobody's done that. It's all you have this heavy margin of manufacturer, distributor, dealer, and consumer. And so my model is, okay, it looks like there's a good margin for what I could get these carts at and sell it. I'm going to cut out everything in between and go all the way direct. And so, yeah, it's going through the numbers and then where you could add value to an industry that somebody else is not capturing it. So do you start from the beginning of buying like the wholesale tires and all the parts and assemble it?

Or do you like what's the best way to think about it? Because that's a lot. Yeah. They're completely different things. Like you're putting it together. Like you could go find the plastic and buy the molds too. Like how far do you take it? Yeah.

I don't go that deep. So there's manufacturers that do that that will, you know, they'll build you really anything that you want. And they build the product. You slap your brand on it. So I start from there, so I don't have the liability and the risk of setting up a manufacturing plan. Right. And like my whole MO, because I got my butt kicked like a lot in business is like revenue before expense. No matter what startup, I don't care how much money you have.

I don't care how well the business is doing. We could build a great plan for next year. And if there's expense in there and that revenue is not proven, it's not happening. I love that. It's a way to try it. Make sure your thoughts and your beliefs are aligned with what's really going to happen. It's a testing period. That's right.

And I do the work myself. Like, although I have a lot of people I work from my other companies, like when I start something new, like I'm doing every piece of it to understand the business in and out and then I hire people and hand things off. What are you like the most about doing business? Are you a marketing guy? Do you love digging into the numbers? Do you love the operational side?

I like all of it. I like really the challenge of it. I like having to figure something out that really seems impossible and getting people together and just saying like, hey, here's here's. a problem, here's an opportunity, how do we go make it happen? So with TD, it's become one of the largest players in the industry. What were the inflection points that allowed this company to scale so quickly? Yeah, so the big piece was the retail to distribution. So that was a massive milestone for me and I'll explain. When I was in retail, I went through a period of time where I wasn't

making any money. And I didn't have cash in the bank either. So like you're, you're going month to month type of deal, right? And I did it for a year. And everything, most of my retail outlets were in Southern California. And so when you're at a spot of you're not making money and you're having a very hard time, you have to figure out different ways to do things. So I grabbed my whole team. I had like 10 leaders at the time and I said, hey, like this isn't working. And I'm going to propose something to you know, if we're going to do, we have to do it quick and it's going to risk everything. But it's not working anyways. And so what I propose, instead of having these retail locations, with operations on the back of them.

I said it's consolidate the operations into one centralized distribution hub, sub-lease all the warehouse space, consolidate our resources so we could pay, you know, the right people to get the job done versus a general manager that's hardly making any money that we're asking them to run operations and sales. And so we made that move, did it within 30 days.

The industry is used to like going into a store, paying for turf and picking it up. And, you know, 30 days later, they can't do that, right? And so the contractors, then we're pitching the value you don't need to go sit in a will call line. Go take your kids to school. Go check on jobs.

We'll deliver the turf for free because we had all the savings from doing it. And that changed the profit of my business immediately. So I did that for like three months and I'm like, hey, there's something bigger. If this worked for us, why can't it work for other people? So I started going to my competitors that did other things, not just turf. And I'm like, how do you like turf? I'm like, I don't like it. I'm like, what do you mean?

And they just said, well, I have all, you know, there's a lot of costs involved. I have all these scraps. Like at the end of the day, I'm not really making money. And I said, okay, what if you could get rid of your whole operation and cash yourself out? Because a lot of the money and distribution is in product and equipment. Cash out of it was put my samples in your showroom. I'll deliver directly to your customer with a white label truck. And like, well, how much is going to cost?

I'm like, same price you're paying out. Like, no way. And I'm like, let's try it. They try it. And then it just started taking off. And I'm like, okay, now I have a conflict of interest of all these retail stores because I want to get in distribution. And so that's when I did the deal of, hey, I put it up on something. social media, I said I have five stores, $100,000 a piece. This has built my livelihood. I had

150 people apply to buy those stores. So then I got to select who I wanted, who was going to really buy the most product over five years, who has a best business acumen. And ever since then, it's been insane. Wow. It's a good turnaround. I mean, I've always thought about vertically integrating. The hard part is, and I know exactly what I need to do is I don't know anything about manufacturing. It's a totally different business. And there's all kinds of accounts for a Cable and just you're dealing with a different type of person. Great people. And it's like you got to be good at logistics.

There's so many different things. And you're going against some massive, you'd have to buy a really good company that knew. I walk in some distribution centers and I'm like, there's so much waste. Yeah. There's so much waste going on. You could just see it. It's like the people aren't even really work. And then you got, you know, OSHA and all kinds of.

other things. It's a lot. If I had to choose again, I wouldn't get into distribution. I have a company that's in home services called Built Right. Partners with my brother on it. We've done it for 11 years. I love that business. Tell me about it. So, you know, we, I think we're in like nine or ten different states. But if you want artificial grass installed, that's what that company does. They're partnered with Home Depot. They're partnered with Lowe. So if you go into like a local Home Depot or Lowe's, you want to get artificial grass. It's our company that goes out and does it. The reason why I love that over distribution is, you know, although my numbers are big in distribution, like, your cash broke the whole time.

You're not taking much. Yeah. Small margin, right? Yeah. Let's say you're making 20 to 30 percent margin on some deals and you have heavy growth in your business. Well, like, what's funding that? Right.

Is that net? No, that gross margins. Oh, gross. So what's the net of that? It's low single digits, right? Yeah. Yeah, you're running low single digits. I mean, you could, like, I've had years at zero and I've had years at, you know, 10, right?

if you do things the right way. But in the home service business, why I like that and what we have going on with Built Right is marketing acquisition is like a zero, right? Because we spend a little bit, but most of our business comes from big box. You have, the only really liability have is like employees, right? And so you could pair that up and down with whatever the economy and the market's doing. And then from an execution of the jobs, like I see outside, you have a ton of equipment, a ton of trucks. Like what we do in that companies, we start. all of our work. It ended up becoming cheaper or less expensive than us running crews and the management of that. So we're running hundreds of projects with two project managers. I think they have

like, I don't know, 14 sales reps and a few other people. So it's kind of like the roofing industry subs out of everything. That's right. It's very similar. Yeah. So the cash out of pocket is not, there's not a lot of liability and not a lot of cash outlay. So if the company makes money, like you get to actually take a distribution as turf, like you're only going to really get paid when that company sells. And the two driving marketing is the home depot lows. Yeah. Yeah.

The majority of the jobs come from. Yeah. Yeah. So what's stopping, I guess, some of these, the people you're hiring from going straight to the source and trying to earn that account? From, like, for Home Depot. So let's say you hire this person doing the fulfillment for you. Have they ever, like, don to Home Depot and said I could do a better job of doing all the work

anyway? Yeah, they could try. Come Deep on Lowe's has very strict expectations of the requirements and the metric. So we continue, like, I feel like every few months get awarded more and more locations just by the service. But, yeah, if they could feel freedom on. How many people are running the back end of that in your team to make sure everything's dialed? Yeah, so the salespeople that are running the appointments are also the ones that are going into the store and do the PKs and the check-ins and making sure, like, stores are happy. Yeah.

Going from running the projects and the operations, I mean, there's three people. When you think about you, I think, again, nine or ten states, hundreds of jobs. And I already say something earlier about like systems, right? It's all about technology and systems these days and leveraging AI. Like, you get a lot done. Oh, yeah. 100%. You don't need all the people.

And the problem is, is like, I know it's a sour thing for a lot of people, right? Of like, oh, like, you know, the competition's doing it. So you're either going to have to join it and lead it or you're going to get your ass kicked because as companies find ways to get more efficient, they're going to be able to work out a less margin than you can. You're going to be holding the bag. I believe, and I've been doing a lot of thought on this, like, look, I think prices will come down. I think prices have got to come down on everything. When technology gets better, this is the law of economics. I remember I went through this MBA program. I sat in the front row and I learned so much about economics. and the deal is we're going to get more efficient, more efficient, more efficient. And then someone's going to go, wait a minute, we're making 35% of the bottom. We can make less and take more market share.

And then this is going to drive the prices back down. Right. And things are going to get cheaper. Right. Because someone's going to always enter a cut. That's just the law of capitalism. Someone's going to come in and say, I can grab market share. I could go to that contractor.

I could go to that builder. I could go to this designer. I could get all this work if I could just go a little cheaper. That's not the right way to do it. You want to go off quality and timing and be fast. That's how the newcomers, though. That's how people come into the market is they don't have the brand. They don't have the review.

So they'll come in at a low price. They'll take market share. Yeah. And then they get to a point where they can't service the customer because they don't have the margin to pay for people and the right things. And so then they'll raise their price. I made a comment the other day on social media. There was a truck in front of me who had a bumper falling off.

It was just white. It was an old truck. And that's how I started, by the way. I'm not upset about it. You know, we all start somewhere, so I'm a lot of talk about it. But I'm like, what does this guy even do? Yeah. And somebody said, made a comment of like, we buy from the company all the time.

And now B to B is different. I don't care. If you got cheaper labor and it's B2B, they do great work. Right. That's one thing if you're having to go to a site and work all day. But when you're a brand and you want, like, who do I want to come to my house? Number one, I want it to be safer on my family. 100%

And number two, how does that person feel driving an old beat up truck that works for me that's breaking down every two weeks? Right. Like they feel less valued so they don't show up in a great way.

We bought a company in Denver and they're like, do we get new trucks? Because we're out of work so often and they don't pay us when we're out of work. And so I just, there's these people that want to fight about it, but I've lived on both sides of it. And I just don't agree with

having cheap, broke down stuff. It's just, when we got new trucks, looks that got the right wraps, the client's expected to pay more. Yeah, well, they're also paying, like, you brought up the brand. It's like, what comes behind the brand? Like, you guys have been around for a very long time. You're going to take care of problems when it happens. Like, your business is going to be there tomorrow. Right. And that, that, the, some of those smaller people who don't have a brand, like a lot, homeowners don't know what they're risking. Most likely, they're not insured or they don't have a contractor's license. They don't do background checks on

their people. Right. You don't know who's coming to your house. So, yeah, when you're doing stuff at your home, you want to spend the appropriate amount of money to have the right company there so you don't have to deal with something going on in the future. I mean, it's a person's greatest investment is their home. Like, why cheap out on it? I've never, well, I would say on my first house, I was the, I thought I was like the king of getting deals. And then it came back to bite me in every which way. And I think the affluent people that have bought houses understand. And by the way, like, I just was looking at golf simulators. Yeah. I didn't give a shit about the price. Right.

I just wanted the best one. Like if I'm going to invest in something like that, I want it to work well. I want it to load right. I want to have fun. I don't want to have problems. That's right. And it's like, if it costs $10,000 more,

but it brings me so much more satisfaction. Like I think about a lot of things like that. We went and looked at furniture and I'm talking the most expensive furniture in the world. And I'm like, but I'm going to replace these coaches every five years and they're not as comfy. Yeah. So that's something where I'm like, it's different.

That's worth the investment. And I look at these things and I'm like, when I hit the garage door button, I mean, I'm in the industry. but if I was just a normal person, I want it to open and close every single time. And lock when it's down.

Yeah, and make sure it's safe and make sure that my kids can get it in and out. Like there's a keypad. Like, I just want that thing to work. If I get an air conditioning unit, I want it to be efficient. I want it to get the same temperature in each room. That's right.

And like, even my plumber, I was like, can you make the water get hotter quicker when I turn out the shower? Yeah. And I'll pay for it. And what do I got to do? Because it's an inconvenience. So I'm like, offer me everything.

Let me make that. That's right. Like don't look at me like I'm rich or poor or old or young. Like why don't you give me every single thing you have and let me say yes or no? There you go. Tommy, I was just talking to my team about this like literally two weeks ago because we get undercut all the time. Right. And sometimes they'll people see these big brands like these guys are just making bank. Like I'm lucky if I make 10% on the dollars we collect. Right. Like lucky. It's not a lot of money when you think about what goes on. And so I was telling my team like, can we, compete out those prices, absolutely, but this is what it looks like. We're not going to have the account managers that we have today, which is like really our sales team, right? Because our competitors don't have that. We're not going to have the warranties. We're not going to be able to have labor credit. We're going to have to take out some integrity of our product. We're not going to be able to hit every delivery on time. And so like all these things add into the price and then we put like our little margin at the end of it. And that we believe in service,

we believe in value. Because like to your point, I have also been on the other side because I used to still scraps. Yeah. Like, that's how I got in. And, uh, like, like, I really don't like to deal with those customers anyways. No. You're not making any money and it's just a problem. And here's one thing I learned is like, we give options. So, look, at the end of the day, that sounds like a little bit more than you expected to pay. Let's just pick another option. But you're going to lose some of your warranty. You're going to lose some of the time of it. It's expected to last. And I can compete with any other company because they know what parts they're carrying. So we carry those parts. It's a contractor grade part. Or we could go to the next level or we go to the next level.

Right. And it's all trademark parts. Yep. So like we differentiated ourselves. You could go buy a t-shirt for 10 bucks. You go buy Nike for 40. You go buy like an amber crombie for 80. I don't know. And people will pay for the right product. But it comes with a lot like every time I bought something nice, I'm like, wow, this is way more comfortable. It fits better. Everything washes out. Like it's just a better quality. That's right. And that's what you need to be is better. quality. What's the most underrated mindset that helped you scale multiple companies? Underrated mindset. Don't quit. Yeah, don't quit. Yeah, and I'll explain that a little bit more is everybody in business, if you're in business day, are you going to go start a business? You're going to get,

you're going to go get to a point where it's not working. And you'll get to a point of like, hey, I don't know if this is for me. I don't think this business could work. And you're going to, I don't care who you are. You will get pushed to that edge. And that's just like a testing point of what's, if you could not fall off and you could hold on for a little bit longer, you're just supposed to learn something through that and that you're going to develop a skill that you will never get unless you see it through. And so that's been really my mindset that's helped me develop to who I am is I just, I will not quit. Hey, I hope you're having a great start to 2026. I have an important announcement to make. The Freedom 20206 pre-sale is now open, and I'm giving you access

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their shops and getting great win-win deals. And number three, AI tools can now increase your average ticket and get you way cheaper leads. Check out freedomevent.com to learn more and grab your ticket at the best possible price before February 1st. That's freedom event.com. Now, back to the episode. I think there's a lot of people when they get between a rock and a hard spot, and I'm talking the world's coming down. I think the easiest thing to do is say it's not working. Let's just find something else.

I learn a lot. I got to take my losses and just move on. Versus I'm going to make massive change. I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to go through this. The world's throwing me lemons. Let's make lemonade. That's right. And I'll tell you what, it's the hardest thing in the world. It's like you're three feet from gold. You're right there. And the hardest times are like when the biggest change happens and all of a sudden you're like reborn. 100%. And well, here's the thing. So you're going to go, let's say you quit. What's telling you the next thing's going to be easier. It's a personality trait that needs to be fixed. There's always a way. If you look around in your engine, There's other competitors that figured it out. It's just what you're doing is currently not working. You just have to find a change as you talked about. Like, where's the opportunity?

What can I change? There's always a way through. You know, what's interesting is our buying power. Like, one of the things I do is I'll sit down with a vendor like you. Right. And I'll say, listen, how do you win? What is your goals last year? What product mix do you need us to sell?

Like, show me how, is it EBITA goals? Is there bonus structures? Is it product mix? Like, what's the best thing that you've wanted? win at. Smart. And if I help you win, how do we win in return? But first, I got to help you. And then I'm going through now this next month and saying, all right, if I help you win even more, what's the next tier you can unlock a little bit of savings or unlock some co-op dollars for us to market more? Or there's a lot of ways. I just called all my vendors and I still got more to go,

as if I prepay next year, can you get me 5%? If these are tried and true vendors that I know I'm staying with, we've got the cash. That's an extra 5% That's going straight to the bottom line Absolutely I used to beat up my vendors And I do the exact same thing you're talking about Is I'm like hey we're a team we're a partner

We're in this together Let's sit down and talk strategy Like we get into debt Like they know my financials I know their financials I know they need to make money And then we you know it's all about machinery and efficiency So like we've changed our ordering

To massive chunks like buy yearly now because they can now buy raw materials in bulk. And by doing that, that hits. They say money, we say money. So partnering with your vendors and getting strategic like that, like genius move. Let's just go back to, I don't know, call it your early 20s and you got to sit down with yourself for a few minutes. If I got to go sit with myself. You got an opportunity to go give yourself.

It's probably not on the personal side, just more about business. What kind of tips would you give yourself? A couple things. One, like, I would tell myself it's going to be okay. Because I think I wasted a lot of time and put a lot of stress on myself of assuming the worst that could happen, but I've never let that happen. So, you know, having confidence and trust. That's more, I guess, on the personal side. On the business side, it would be what I said earlier, like revenue before expense.

Every time I got myself in a mistake, it's because we built a plan and the plan's never been tested and put expense before the revenue. and the revenue didn't hit. And I've had to rebuild my company multiple times because of that. So those would be the two pieces. What do you think some of the larger mistakes? I mean, you've seen probably a lot of businesses come and go. And I think a lot of times, if you read Michael Gerber, E-Mith, we start out as a technician. So we know how to do the trade.

We know how to do the work. But we don't really know how to balance an income. We don't know how to, we don't even know how to do a budget. We don't know what workers comp and E-Mod scored. insurance. Like, there's so many things, like marketing, and I got to hire an HR. What do we need HR department for? Like, my wife could handle that.

And all of a sudden, like, we get ourselves into this because we thought the work was easy, but we realized there's all these other factors. So much. You need software. Right. And then you need another financial software. Then you got to have a CPA. Then you've got to have a tax strategy.

Then you've got to have a good lawyer. Yep. And all these things, and you're like, and then you find out and you're like, man, we made a lot of money. And the CPA calls you and you're like, wait, how much? How much you I owe? How's that possible? I think a lot of people, like their ego gets in the way.

Like, that's what stops them from growth is they start making money. They have it all figured out. They're the best of the best. And they start closing their ears and continue to open up their mouth. And that's not how you build a successful company. Like, I still act like I'm day one. I still act like I'm broke. I have a lot of humility.

Yeah, I want to get better. I tell my team that I tell my family that I ask my family. I ask my team, ask my customers of like, We want to get better. And you have the answer because you're able to see us work, right? You know, this is the interesting question that I think most people think they're going to get when they ask their clients is they want a cheaper price. I think the reason that most businesses don't ask more questions from their clients is they think it's all about the money. Right.

But realistically, it's not. Unless you're just offering on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace and you're attracting that type of client. That's right. Because then that's all it's ever going to be. And there's always going to be a certain percentage of people that just buy on price. That's right. Don't market to those people. 100%.

And so you've got to find your audience. You got to find your avatar. And once you know your avatar, you've got to exploit it and own that avatar. I got a buddy of mine that did $3.5 million dollars of EBITDA in an H-J company and two zip codes. That's great. But, I mean, he was at every school play. They were at every high school football game. They were at every gymnastics.

They donated. They were like, they owned it. Right. And I think sometimes we go like, we got to own this market, but we go wide instead of deep. And then we try to be everybody's perfect business. Yeah. No, you got to find like, as you said, like who's your fit. And I think that's a hard thing for a salesperson to understand to you because they want to close everything that's possible. And I had a similar conversation with my group like six weeks ago. And I said, like, we're not going to get every customer. And if we try to get every customer, we're going to piss off our other customers. And then we're going to have to start over. Like, this is who we are. This is the value we offer. A lot of people will believe in and buy it, but not everybody will. And that's totally okay. I mean, I see a lot of waste. If you look at your booking rate, if you're not a 90%, you're missing out.

And then you've got your conversion rate. But you also got to look at cancellations. And if you really added it all up, you're losing, if you're at 90%, you're losing 10% of your clients. Then if you're at a cancellation rate of 10%, that means, at 20% loss of clients. Then if your conversion rates, say 70%, then you lost another 30. So half the clients coming in that funnel

are gone. Right. So I'm always looking at the funnel going, can we get a little bit better? Do we need to tweak marketing? Do we have a better rehash team that's calling these customers to figure out how to earn their business? And here's a little secret. What if, instead of discounting and coming down on price, you added value? So on your turf, you could say, look, the one thing that

nobody does that costs you, like we do this extra special layer of sand. Right. And what this sand's going to do is most people are using the, I don't know what it is. Right. But this is usually, we're going to add this $1,000 of value, but it costs you like 50 bucks. Smart. And that way you're like, instead of discounting $300, you're like, I'm bringing value, value, value.

And it looks like it's a thousand. And it is a thousand retail. Right. It costs you very little. That's right. So that way you could earn a lot more clients. Yeah, absolutely. I love it.

Look, we've got a zero line you call up. And if I could add value and say, listen, you need a bottom rubber. keeps all the nasty bugs out. In Arizona, we have Scorpion, spiders, mice, all that stuff. It doesn't cost me a whole lot of money for that. Right. If we took care of that bottom rubber for you, let's just say it cost me $20. We sell it for about $7 a foot, so like $125, $200, whatever that is.

All of a sudden, the client's going, well, I'm getting $150, $200 of value. And they're like, let's just go forward with that. If you're going to do that for me. It works most of the time. Oh, big time. Yeah. They're getting something for free. What, how would you explain yourself as a leader?

I'm very direct, but charismatic. So when people work with me, they know my intention is a lot of love. Like, I love people when I want to see them do good. And I will tell them things that are true because I want to help them. And so, like, if somebody's new working with me, it's kind of a shock because not every leader's transparent. They like to make people feel good. And like if I have to have a review with somebody or whatever, I'll go into a conversation. Like, I love you and I'm going to tell you the truth because I want to see you like succeed in life, whether that's here, whether that's anywhere else.

And like, I don't hold a word back. That's very hard to do. It's hard to do. I've kind of stayed away from that other than like five people because in the early days, I saw my Indeed and my glass door and I watched people just start not liking me. and it started hurting the brand. So when I hired somebody, I'm like, can you be the bad cop? Yeah, yeah. Because I got to protect the brand.

And quite frankly, I have a hard time to be in confrontation. You lie, cheater still, my vendors, they get the wrath of Tommy. But nobody internally does. Yeah. But you're right. You should be able to have a hard conversation to help make people great. Yeah. And that's the people, the leaders that have done that with me, I respect the most.

Yeah, because people know if they're doing good or not. And they know if you're telling the truth, they're not telling the truth. because if like sales leaders do this the best like oh you're good like we're doing great and it's like bro they're not doing good like they're not hitting their numbers they're not feeling good about that they're not making the commission they want they're not having the life they want because all you're telling them is they're doing good but if you start telling of like here's what you do good here's why i like you here's why i want to have you in the team but unless you change this and do this you're going to be in the same spot do you want to change your life today yes or no okay cool

so here's what we got to go get done and so it i've shifted it to like a a place of love and I brought it into, I understand what my people's goals are. Yeah. And I take that very serious. And my job as a leader is to be able to develop my leaders and my people to get there. And I'm failing out my job unless I do that. And if it's just all fluff and you can't get in that real conversation,

I'm not going to be able to make head away, you know? So I say instead, I'm not calling you out, I'm calling you up. Yeah. Because you told me what your goals, your dreams are. And if I can get you there faster, would you agree that, that's what you want. It's perfect. Or is this really what you want?

You say you just, you do it for your family. What do you do for you? Because sometimes I find people are broken. Their wife's taking all the money and they feel just trapped. And I'm like, what do you do for you? Why don't you get the healthiest version and the person you want to become? Like, why don't you do anything for you? Yeah.

I find that a lot of people like, I'm doing this all for my kids. I'm doing this all, you know, I'm happily in love. And I'm like, that's bullshit. I'm like, what about you? You've heard the. oxygen mask comes down and help yourself first if you want to help out anybody else. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so true.

And when I get into my orientations with everybody, I'm like, guys, we got to figure out what you need first. That's good, Tommy. I love this stuff. I want to share some stuff with you that I just heard this podcast that it was really good. And I want to hear what you think about these things. So in private equity, they take some of the best companies in the world. and these people had a 5x return on the investment.

So if they invested 500 million, they got $2.5 billion back. And they only interviewed the CEOs of these companies and the P.E. companies. They said there's five components that make every company great and only five is all they needed. Strategic clarity, what winning looks like. So, like, defining what winning looks like and the whole team knows. Scalable talent. Meaning you have eight players and you have people backing them up if somebody were to win the lottery and leave tomorrow. Relentless focus, two to three value creation models, not all over the place saying I'm going to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and no one knows.

Discipline execution and energized culture. They said if you could get those five things right, you're going to be on a rocket ship. A lot of those are true. The only thing I would add is like systems. Like that's like it would say if I was going to buy a company tomorrow Systems are very important because a lot of companies like their whole business is stuck isn't yeah and somebody's brain and if you lose that person or you know A and B like you're in trouble Yeah that stuff you need key man insurance of that's the case but that's why I met

I'll leave you in 2017 he's like dude you are a great firefighter you know everything where's your manuals where your standing operating procedures where's your checklists Like, how do you make sure it's being done the same way every time? What are your checks and balances? And when I learned about that, I was like, oh, my gosh, you can get the same output every time. And if you train correctly, things become very easy. And I almost got sick of the fires going away. I was like, this is getting too easy.

Yeah. So then I just grow fast. Right. And then all of a set of challenges, I had to systematize it. Bam, it got easy again. And then I see a growth spurt. And that's kind of at least A1 garage versus service grew. is when it got easy, it was growth time.

When it gets hard, we slow down. And we got to kind of reinvent ourselves. Yeah, absolutely. And that's how it is. You go up and go down and they go up and go down. What do you see happening in the next 10 years? I mean, as far as what do you want? What are your goals?

Do you want to go start a bunch of other businesses and do what you've done? Or do you see going deeper into some of these businesses or where are you at? Yeah. So on the personal side, like what's most important to me is like I make the most memories with my family. Yep. Everybody tells me, like, it goes quick. Like, I take that very serious.

The days are long, the years are short. Yeah, like, I've, I've given up, like, my, a lot of my personal interest to make sure my kids and my wife have the best life ever. Then when my kids are 18, like, I'm going to go live for me. Right. And so, like, I just, I want that. The second thing, when you come into, like, the business side of it is, um, I want to continue to create businesses from the ground up and build successful companies.

but all the new stuff I'm building, I'm building them to sell. Like, there are five year plans. Whatever, wherever that EBIT is in five years, it is what it is. I'll take what I can get onto the next. Instead of like going through, I don't know if you've seen this, your business. You go through the ups and downs. I mean, that first five years is usually all up, like move on. Yeah.

And not be emotionally tied. The turf business, I started young and we have a good foothold in the market. And that feels good. And so I want to continue to just conquer. that business and you know we'll see uh i don't know like if selling selling is it that if time's right time's right but i do want to most likely acquire like other companies and and grow like i just want to have the story for really america and like all the young people listening today of like like i was before i got in a turf i was washing dishes at 18 years old i had no education i'm nothing

special um i've just had good people like around me that i lean on to to learn from you know and so i want to be able to show like the American culture that like the American dream is true. You could go in with the right mindset, the right hustle, be broke doing it and grow from the bottom to the top. Like I really want to accomplish that goal. My goal has always been to get my net worth to a billion dollars. I'm far from it. That's really what I'm chasing on like the financial side. I, you know, it's funny to hear that number a lot. I was talking to, uh, who was I talking to recently? Uh, dropping bombs. Okay. I know exactly. you're talking about. Anyway, he's like, this was a while back. This is probably two years ago.

He's like, dude, it's chasing that billion. A lot of people are chasing that billion. And I'm like, so here's my question to everybody that says that. So you get a billion, then what? But where does the money, like, see, I've got a pretty good plan with almost every single thing I do. Like, who the money's going to, what charities, and it's all not nonprofit. Like, this is going to go to real estate. This is going to go into a P.E. fund. This is going to go here. This is going to go. And I got a whole tax strategy around it. It's good to have a pursuit. When you really understand exactly where it's going and what's going to happen and whose lives you're changing, all of a sudden it becomes like, I need to do this. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Like my family doesn't need it.

I believe for me, I have it because it's almost like that it seems impossible. Yeah. It's just going to, it's going to keep me driving, you know, keep me young. And that's an important word. driven. I wouldn't say everybody out there. People listening to this, yes, but most people don't have the stomach nor the risk tolerance to go into business and continue

to go through sometimes a decade of pain, relationship strife. You're married to your business. You're working nights. You're working weekends. You're ready to fail. You're borrowing against your house if you have a house.

Sometimes you've got to take a loan from people you never want to take a loan from. You hit rock bottom a lot. lot. Days don't go well. People lie. People cheat. You start not believing people. You start maybe not trusting the same you used to. You realize the world could be a pretty dark place. And I would say there's probably five to 10 percent of human beings that can handle that kind of torture. It's torture, like spot on. And then when it comes, the success starts happening. The other 90 percent go, well, why do you get it all? Like, why can't you share? Yeah. And

And the fact is, I do believe in sharing just not through bureaucracy. The government's getting rich. And everybody there, I'm like, I'd rather give it to somewhere, go straight to the source. Yeah. Well, and people, like, because I guess at all the time, like, what are you going to give it to your kids? And I don't think so. Like, I want to, I want to help them get going. But as much as I love, if I love my kids, like, they need to learn life without me.

Like, I'm not always going to be there, you know? I think, and I thought a lot about this, I don't have kids yet, but I want to get them started. I just want to make sure they got the fight or flight that like, hey, listen, you're not going to fall back onto this. But when things start going right, I'm like, you know, let's go to France. I'm picking it up. Yeah. I was with Kevin O'Leary. He's like, I don't get my kids much, but what I do, we go on one trip a month.

and it's inclusive. It's the Taj Mahal's private jets and they are allowed to bring anybody they want with them and that's what I do. We buy experiences and I'm okay paying for that. And that sounds like something you can spend money on. Yeah, the experience. That's exactly people. Like, why are you buying such a big

building in such a big house in Idaho? I'm like, dude, me and Bree lived in an apartment for four years. We were fine. I missed that apartment. Things were simple back then. But at the same time, we couldn't have parties. It didn't have enough room. It was 900 square feet. Yeah. And I'm like, man, think about the relationships that are going to to be built in this place.

Yeah, smart. Fun times. Oh, absolutely. That's what you're buying. That's where we spend all my, all our money is on experience. Where, uh, where do you, where do you like to go for fun? I like, I'm a big time surfer. Oh, really?

So you go to the California? Yeah, go to California, Hawaii, um, went to Fiji not too long to go. Oh, Fiji's the best I heard. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. Um, but yeah, that, that's where I like to go for fun. I do glam us a lot out here in, in California. So, like, how we know some of my buddy.

Yeah, there's a lot of guys that go out there. Yeah, especially with him here in Arizona. Yeah, so glamorous, there was a place for sale. I think it just sold. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. It's, we looked at it.

Did he go out with Cameron? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you about Cameron. How long have you know Cameron? That only like two years. He's a good dude. Yeah, he's a solid guy. You know, I want to get more into it, but the first day when I went on my canton, I flipped it.

So now I'm very, like, safe. I'm like, drive with two hands. And I didn't get hurt. Be and Bree, we're fine, but I'm like, man, these things. And I just bought four snowmobiles for Idaho. Oh, nice. And I'm like, they're like, what do you want? And I'm like, I want them to be safe and slow.

Right. Because I don't need them to go 120 miles an hour. No, I get used to. It's something new. Dude. And I could go fast in this little bit of a rush. But when I see people getting hurt now, I'm like, I mean, I got this boot out from a volleyball accident.

But I'm like, I don't have a need for speed anymore. Yeah. I just, I don't have a need for, like, things. Like I have my hobbies and then I'll go try something new with the buddy that's an action sport and I'm like, I'm not willing to go through that learning curve of pain to get good at this. Like, do you like snowboarding? Yeah, I like snowboarding. Do you go fast? Not, I don't go too crazy. I didn't grow up really snowboarding, so I'm a cruiser. Yeah, I'm not very good and I don't want to be like mock one. I can't keep up with most people. Yeah, yeah. So look, I got a few questions

as we close out here. And I really appreciated this. I've not, I've never, not had a lot of people in the manufacturing space, but, you know, I think it is smaller margins. I'll tell you this, though, COVID with manufacturing, they started printing money. Mm-hmm. And a lot of them were PE-backed as far as garage or A-track. And they started hitting these crazy margins to the bottom, like double digits, well in a double digits. And now they don't want to go back.

And, but once again, you see. Yeah. You see it's going to, the economy forces you too because someone comes in and says, we're going to go back because we're going to get all the clients. And that's why I always have two vendors. I always will have two vendors because if they have one, they start, well, we've got to give you a price up and then you don't have any choice. What's the favorite books that changed your life? I'm a big fan of Ed Milette. That's funny. I just started work with Ed. Oh, no way.

The power of one. Yeah. So before that, he has a book called Max. It's like it's small 100 pages, but that was a very impactful book. What'd you like about that book? He puts life in perspective, right? And so, and really teaches you how to like mentally like get through some of this stuff. Like him and Andy Purcellar, like the two guys that I, I've like, man, you're not, I'm not alone. Like all the stuff going through your thoughts, like some of the stuff he go through.

There's nobody to talk to. Ed and Andy do a very good job, like walking you through. You're like, okay, this is normal. Yeah, I love it. Adam does he. I'm the one that showed up late and drove to the cancellations and it took the late phone calls and missed the opportunities. And my family doesn't think like they used to think.

You know, now they're positive. I love that. Yeah. And he goes, I'm the one just like you. Amazing. That's great. So Max out is one of them. Mm-hmm.

And then I read Tim Grover's books, like Relentless. Relent list. Yeah. Really good. And that's like, you know, when you think about like no quit in the, those types of things, it's just like, it's all within you. Yeah. And just having to really face those battles and get through it.

So that helped me a lot as well. Those are fantastic books. If somebody wants to reach out to, what's the best way to do that? Social media. Yeah, I don't post much on there, but it's at Dylan, Georgian. It's Georgia with an end. And do you ever see yourself posting more? I know.

I pulled way back. I like to live a life without an audience. You know, I had to use my social media to build my brain and build my companies. But I like to be low-key and private, and I don't want to be famous or well-known. I'd rather be kind of like the sleeper, you know? Well, that's how most wealthy people that really, really make it are.

But I will say, I kind of enjoy making content. Something about it, like, you know, the School of Hard Knocks, the kid that runs around and comes to the cars, how much money do you make? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I'll tell you this, though, it's scary because Jim Carrey, I always bring this up. Jim Carrey said, I wish everybody was really rich and really famous.

So they'd understand that's not the answer. And like, it's vanity metrics, how many views, how many shares, all that crap. But man, it's fun too. It's like, you walk up and interview somebody. All of a sudden, like I walked around a trade show with a microphone and all of a sudden, everybody's like, oh, they're like, what's going on? And they wanted to be on there. I mean, having a personal brand, nobody can buy that from you.

Right? And so you get to leverage your companies and all this stuff. and you have a personal brand, like that's worth, you can do anything you want to become super powerful. You are giving up and sacrificing a lot to do that, especially when you have kids. I've had people, you know, the wrong people show up at my house, I've had a move. Not to scare you from it, but I'm just like, man, I don't really need this, you know. Boom, that's interesting. Yeah, so I've taken a big back seat on social media.

Never thought of it that way. I got a new perspective. Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. So last thing we'll do here is we talked about a lot of stuff. I'm sure there's something we didn't hit that you want the audience to know about. So I'll let you close this out, Dylan.

Yeah. If I had to close it out in short, like really just understanding like the purpose that you have in life and what you're here to do, right? And think big picture. And then everything you do, all your actions tie into that. And I believe that, you know, like if we're given a good gift and given opportunity, it's our job to not, you know, only make that opportunity happen into a result, but then go ahead and help other people go ahead and do that. Like, we all didn't get to where we are. And you don't have to have a big business.

It could be your job. It could be your health. It could be your family. Like that didn't just show up for us. Like there's been people in our life to help us to get there. And what I'd like to see for society is like just everybody, you know, everybody has something special in them and, you know, share that gift with other people and help other people. And that's how we make the world better. I love it.

And I agree with you wholeheartedly. I appreciate you coming on today. Yeah, thank you, Tommy. I appreciate it. Listen, if you enjoy this podcast, like it, share it, and leave a review. It really helps me out. I appreciate everybody out there. And have a great holiday.

And this probably came out after the holiday, but that's okay. Thanks, guys. 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 and over 26. 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 to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevate and win.com for podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.