The Home Service Expert Podcast - Fueling Business Growth with Proven Digital and Local Marketing Techniques

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

Chris Yano is the CEO of RYNO Strategic Solutions and has been leading the company since 2008. He is an experienced business owner, investor, and philanthropist with a heart for the trades and a successful history working in the home services digital marketing and advertising industry. Chris is also the host of the popular “To The Point Home Services Podcast,” which offers marketing solutions to help more companies grow. In this episode, we talked about customer relationships, private equity, lead generation…  

Yeah, you get involved. I'll bet you, no matter who's listening right now, whatever neighborhood or area that you live in, no matter how small it is, probably has some sort of like a Facebook group for that community. Oh, yeah. Get involved in it. And just don't sell in it. Just go and give a bunch of free information, educational stuff. So, one of those like two major things that Gary Vee taught me in our like three years together was you either need to educate someone or you entertain them. And if you could do both,

if you can entertain and educate them both, then it's like the perfect storm. So because we are in businesses that people don't necessarily want to have to reach out to us, right? If they don't have, like nobody, like when I hit my garage door and had to have you guys come out,

I was like, damn it. I think you had us out of, Yes. Not because I hit the garage doors, listeners, okay? I only did it one time. It wasn't my fault. But, and then I got upsold and I it one time. It wasn't my fault. And then I got upsold and I loved it.

That's the best upsell of my life. Next thing you know, I could open my gates and all my garage doors from my phone. It was beautiful. But you can just own your backyard, own your little communities, get involved in your groups, get involved in the schools. But you can't just like throw some money to sponsorship

and then just let it sit there and then do nothing with it and think it's going to bring in a bunch of business. You got to get involved, like find the boosters and things like that at your school. We're talking like grassroots shit right now. 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. Hey guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today I got Cristiano in the building. If you guys haven't heard of Rhino, one of the top marketing agencies in the country for home service. And he also runs one of the best events of the century. Three years now, Rhino X. And just legends of the space come and tell us their wisdom. And I've been there every year. Chris is an expert of digital marketing, advertising business. He's based here with me in Phoenix on the north side. That's right. He's the CEO from 2008 to now. I've got a lot of other stuff here to go back in time.

The t-shirt shop. Really? Yano Motorcycles. Motorsports. Geez, you're going way back. Motorsports. Sequoia Technologies IMS. And AT&T Advertising Solutions.

Which is an interesting story about Bill Roussel and Lance Botkin. Sure is. Chris is the CEO of Rhino Strategic Solutions and has been leading the company since 2008. He is an experienced business owner, investor, and philanthropist with a heart for the trades, as well as successful history working in home service, digital marketing, and advertising industry. Chris is the host of the popular podcast, To The Point Home Services Podcast, which offers solutions to help companies grow. And me and Chris are good buddies. He showed up to my 40th, and I think we drank about a bottle of Rumpelmints. I kind of cast it out of my memory. And was fun So, Chris, you've been through a lot here in the last few months Yeah

You know, tell us a little bit about you I think most people know who you are But there's a lot of listeners Tell us what got you into the home service trades Where you're at today What's new and where you're going Yeah, man, good to be in here in the new studio Not in Tommy Mello's office

Yeah, we go way back I love that you read that like we don't know each other. And you brought up some old stuff, like you were digging in the crates. We dig in the crates. Yeah, so I'll give you a quick 30,000-foot view for those who don't know who I am or don't know who Rhino is. From 2008 till today, well, I guess a couple months ago, built and owned, bootstrapped together, Rhino Strategic Solutions, which is a digital marketing company specifically for home services,

which is how ultimately you and I met. Grew it from Anna and myself. Really, you know, Anna is the, she's my wife, she's the CEO of the company today. And our strengths complemented one another, which is how we were able to grow this thing. I was good at sales and marketing. She was good at finance, operations, things like that.

And so it worked and we knew we really wanted to do a good job for contractors. And in early 2010, we had an opportunity with Carrier Corporation based out of Indianapolis. And that led us down the path of focusing on HVAC and mainly because HVAC requires so much attention. We decided, you know what, let's just focus on HVAC. We had a lot of opportunity there with the manufacturer bringing us to their different distributor meetings or dealer meetings and things like that. Fast forward all the way to this day, and now we've got about 180 RINOs. We did bring on a private equity partner. So I've actually, you missed one of my new roles. I know. So now I'm the CMO of our new private equity partner. I did that for a couple of reasons. One is I didn't want to give up the leadership over what I can and can't do, you know, with Rhino. And so I thought, well, as long as I can, if I can secure the CMO role for my private equity company, then I don't have to tell myself what, I don't have to ask somebody for permission to keep doing the things I want to do that's been working.

But it's been fun. So today still, I mean, I still am running Rhino. I'm the CEO of Rhino. We did bring on the private equity partner. You know, I didn't, I retained 30% of the business. So I'm still in it, still going strong. And really it was a big growth play for us. And I know you and I had this conversation

is I was trying to do acquisitions on my own, one that you got done that I didn't. I'm still bitter about. But I've tried to do them on my own with our finance team and our attorneys. And it was like really just being disruptive to us running the business. And I realized, you know what, like this is why you bring on, you can bring on some private equity partners that can do some of these things for you. And that's what we're doing. So we brought on the private equity partner in the end of April.

And so now I have a boss. I just had my first board meeting. That was interesting to go through, to be on the opposite side of the table for a board meeting. But so far, post-transaction, they're doing everything they said they would do. They're supporting us in every way they want to support us. And we're still growing and kicking ass. So today, even though we're so heavily focused on HVAC, plumbing and electrical, which we call the Holy Trinity in my world. We started focusing on roofing the last three years because of all the private equity partners getting in, our customers that are private equity partners getting involved in roofing.

And then after a few years of testing with some of the garage door guys, we started dipping more into the garage door business. And then finally, after a couple VTs, I was able to come to Vertical Track and then give a good presentation there, which was able to come to Vertical Track and then give a presentation there, which was a pretty cool event. So thanks for having me again for that. But so that's where we sit today, man. Are you guys picking up in the garage door space? Yeah, like slowly but surely,

still trying to feel out who's a good fit for us and who's not. Those who will actually make the calls and commit to the calls and actually hold themselves accountable internally too. But like we onboarded, the first three that we kind of onboarded in the beginning are still customers today. All of them that you know.

Yeah. Jeff is amazing. Yeah. Jeff Sanford is one of them. We have Josh Yeager, smaller company in Chicago. I love him. Yeah. Like growing that thing a little bit.

And then Vince down in Absolute. So those three guys have been great. He does HVAC plumbing, garage doors, because he was absolute garage doors for a minute down there. So he's in all of them, which is cool. You know what's interesting about that is he said to me, I've been talking to him for years, and he goes, dude, he goes, I spent the last decade figuring out garage doors to get to $10 million. He goes, my second year in HVAC, I did more. And he goes, you hear all these people saying, oh, yeah, you know, I know HVAC, so I can make it in the garage door space. But he goes, I'm making way more money in these other trades than I was making in garage doors.

So I don't know if the myth is true. I think what I'm starting to learn, and I've heard this from a lot of people, is big tickets is easier. You know, it really is. If you build the system right, I got to go through 17,000 customers a month. I'm in a good spot and I'm not complaining. But I've got guys that do a tenth of the customers and they make way more money. So I don't know if there's a silver bullet when it comes to picking industries. I think you can make it in anything.

And HVAC is getting tough because there's really not a lot of acquisitions. A lot of them got eaten up already. I just had a meeting this morning, too,, I don't know how I feel about it. So let me just say, I just had this conversation because I had a franchise from a pest control meeting this morning and I've kind of avoided pest control because it's such a low, like it's the lifetime value is not big. Right. And you're talking residential $80 a month or commercial $350 a month, give or take. And a lot of their big wins in the pest control space are like rodent stuff or termites and they were like scorpion, like one-off scorpion stuff or whatever. I just didn't go down that path because I would rather have had the bigger average ticket.

It's easier to be successful, you know, in our world and show a good return on investment. But I still believe that even with like with Vince's business, we'll use him as an example. I still believe you can raise it all. Even if you are trying to do quality over quantity, like type of methodology, I'm still a fan of doing both and trying to, you know, maybe you focus more on the bigger ticket items, but you don't forget like the other stuff, the stuff that's kind of gotten you there. And I think that's kind of a little bit what happened. You know, what we realized in the garage door industry is I've studied whether it's Ken Goodrich, Ken Haynes, you know, I can keep going, going, going. There's so many people that have helped from the HVAC industry to learn

what a turnover is and learn that new equipment is where it's at because that's not how it's been in the garage door industry. It was service, get in and out, go to the next job. And it's a lot harder to install a garage door because you've got to measure it right. You've got to get it from the manufacturer. And it's not like I've got a bunch of five-ton units sitting in my warehouse. I've got to order the right door with the right size, with the right insulation. So, you know, I want to talk to you a little bit more about this acquisition. Because a lot of people, I've been on like 10 podcasts in the last week.

And everybody's asking me, what's it like? Is it different than you thought it would be? And everybody's asking me, what's it like? Is it different than you thought it would be? And from my personal view, I have no regrets. I'll tell you what. Same. I thought I knew what living was. I was like, I've always had houses. I've had a really healthy retirement fund. I've always had a lot of money in the bank relative to what I thought. And I have always considered myself like, I don't have stress. I don't have anxiety. But now I'm like, man, I'm living. I'm having fun with my parents.

I'm having fun with my niece and nephews. Me and Brie are going to Hawaii in two weeks. It's like, I wouldn't change it for the world of everything that's taken place. And I know you just bought a new house and I saw a picture, I think yesterday or maybe Sunday of the beautiful house and just gorgeous. What do you think?

A lot of people say they lose their identity. They wonder what their purpose, you're still the CMO now, but What do you think? A lot of people say they lose their identity. They wonder what their purpose, you're still the CMO now, but what do you think? Explain to me the process and how you felt going through it and how you feel today. Yeah, it is still a big misunderstanding of, of like, you don't just have to sell your business and move on. Like there's a lot of different options. And I'm going to say, I didn't know that either. Again, I was looking at this for how can I continue to stay the course, but with more intellectual capital and take some chips off the table from the 15-year business that Ann and I have built. And what are the options for me? Can I keep going? Can I still run my business? Like I just said, I had to report to a board for the first time. So like beyond that,

like everything else has been really, really good. But to me, it was, I still stand by it. Like, and Ann and I were having this conversation last night and this was, we made the right decision. We feel great about it still because all it did was allow me to focus more on what's most important to the business and growing it and scaling it. And part of that is acquiring other companies and bringing them into the fold. And that requires a ton of attention. You know, you've been down this road and it takes a lot of bandwidth, which then takes me away from growing and scaling Rhino because that is my job.

I am still the CEO of Rhino. I've just accepted the CMO role at Everservice, which is the parent company that now owns Rhino. And it was to, they really thought, hey, the Rhino marketing playbook works well. Let's implement that across all the other business units. So I took on that role. Listen, like we still travel a ton. When we had bought the new place, we'd already been thinking, we were talking about this when you started, like maybe a couple, even a couple years ago, when we were trying to get you guys to come to Northside up by us, you know, and we were looking on this mountain forever trying to buy land and build. We've, you know, we had paid off our house before we got our deal done. So we've been really financially responsible.

But it's just, it like springboarded us into what was already a good life into like a really great life. Like we, it's different in a challenging way, which to me is like I need to be challenged because I've been doing the same thing for 15 years. It's making me smarter. I've got more of a pool of people to pick from. You know what I didn't realize is when people would say, like the rich get richer, it can be seen, it comes across like negative, but I understand what that means. And it's not so much a negative thing,

it's that once you start to get in this like mindset and with this in the right circle of people who like are also bringing you up and you can learn from them and you're able to be vulnerable enough to know, getting involved with private equity, didn't even know that was something I could realistically do. We've got a great friend group between us and our circles and some of the text message groups that we're in. Everybody's challenging each other all the time and supporting each other. But you also learn, I didn't even know that was an option. Or you might give yourself more opportunities by going down this path to

get involved in more investments along the way that you didn't even know. So I didn't even know that was an option. Or you might give yourself more opportunities by going down this path to get involved in more investments along the way that you didn't even know. So, like, I didn't even know what ultra high net worth was until a few, until about a year and a half or so ago. It's pretty interesting. We're in a thread with Ishmael, Chad Peterman, Aaron Gaynor, Tom Howard. Hoffman. Chris Hoffman. Gaynor, yeah. Yep, Aaron Gaynor. Great. Great. We're all great friends and we all challenge each other. And I'd say 80% of it's nonsense and 20% of it's really good stuff. But if I'm on a plane or if I'm on a long drive and not the driver, I'll get really into it. And you guys probably see that, but I mean, these guys go all day and there's a lot of value given there. But one of the things is, uh, you know, Ringy, he's in there and he started working out a long time ago.

And he's always been pushing me when I go to Idaho and visit. And then Ishmael started working out. And I've had a lot of other things kind of come into my way that I'm like, I got to get myself in shape. And you just started working out pretty hard the last couple of weeks. Yeah, I'm feeling it right now. Still, we were just talking about that. I spent so much of my time the last year and a half just prepping the business for this next phase. And I wasn't doing any working out, no cardio, nothing now because I'm not like a big guy. You look in shape. I mean, you're not overweight.

Well, and that's part, that's actually the negative part of it is because I never felt like, oh, man, I'm out of shape. Or, you know, I was like, I joke and say I look like the Grinch because like the Grinch is like a little skinny dude with the belly. Starting to be that at 44 years old. But I'm like relatively appears to be in good shape. So I don't like have anything that would trigger me to do it. You know, like to be like, oh, God, I'm turning into a fat ass. I need to go and go to the gym. And I can eat like crap and I can drink beer and I can do whatever.

And this doesn't impact me until I went to day one last week. And then I almost died that day because I'm going home and laying on the floor. When the dog comes in from the heat and lays flat on the tile, that was me. Yeah. But today was week two, and I feel better, man. Like, and it makes you like sharper, you know, in the morning. Like I love to get up in the morning and just kind of sit for a minute and be by myself before the kids get up and chaos starts.

And then after that, I go to the gym and then I went to the office. So like going in, I've been feeling sharper and you just feel better about yourself, man. And that does make it, it sounds like cliche, but it totally makes you feel better. It makes you feel, make me feel sharper going into meetings. You know, that group, it's just a guy's text messaging and I love it. We post our numbers every month. We talk great. We give advice. We talk shit. And it's just, it's great to have groups like that. You know, I lean on Al Levy. I was just in Lake Tahoe. Ken Goodrich went fishing.

Ken's been a great mentor to me and you both. And it's true, the rich get richer because, you know, part of what I realized is there's a good book by John Warlow called Built to Sell. And I don't think I've ever understood the meaning of that until I actually took on a partner. And it's mind-blowing. Like, I feel like just this insurance policy of if everything fails, I'm still good. My family's still good. My life is still not going to change much. And I don't plan on ever failing. Nobody does. But Tom Howard flew out here eight, you know, now a year ago and said, you know, the IPO market's in ruins. It's half of what it was. And, you know, what do they say and said, you know, the IPO market's in ruins. It's half of

what it was. And, you know, what do they say? Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And I didn't really know what that expression was until I saw a lot of people just, there's deals that have happened that haven't gone through. And there's people, I don't know when this is going to end, but we happen to be, I tell people I'm very lucky. I happen to be in the right place at the right time. The multiples went through the roof with COVID. Same. Like it worked out for me too. All my customers were essential businesses and home services. It's crazy. PPP, the employee retention credits, and it just was like a catalyst. Yeah. I will say that when you get into this process, you just got to remember that once you take a dollar, things change, right?

Once you take a dollar from someone, things change. So finding the right person, finding the right team makes such a massive, a massive difference. There's horror stories. There's horror stories of guys that do a deal and they're like, I mean, I hear quite a few buddies we know that are just like, this is horrible, you know, late summers, whatever. But at the end of the day, it's finding the right partners and making sure you, it's like a marriage understanding. You don't tell somebody after you get married that, you know, by the way, I don't want kids if the other person wants kids. You can't just, so you got to know what you're doing before you go into it. And I think that you got to treat the investor like that, but you're right. If they've got a board, they report to as well. They've got their

investors. And if they don't give an ROI, the whole fund and raising capital turns into, they got to pick winners. And I didn't understand that until I sat down with these guys and they're like, we've got to just, we got to have a plan to be able to tell our investors because they meet weekly with their board. And if they don't report back, if we're losing money right now, it's okay because we're investing in infrastructure. We're getting the right people on the bus. We're going ahead and spending the money on the branding, whatever that is. But they want to know the report down to the decimal. They want to understand the plan. They want to know your thinking. What's your strategy of doing this? It was a change, but I was up for it. Yeah. Forecasting isn't a guess. Forecasting is like closest to the cup.

You need to be as close as possible. It's not like your best guess at what you think numbers are going to be. You got to get close. I've learned some of these things too. I was always nervous because you always hear the horror stories about, oh, you got to report to a board now. It was different, but honestly, I enjoyed it. If the business was failing, maybe it wouldn't be so enjoyable, but the business isn't failing because our customers are doing great. So it's easy to go and talk about it. It's just getting in the cadence of it, right? You're doing something different. And once you can kind of get okay with it, really the business is, I don't have a majority anymore. So, but the reason I chose our partner

was because I believed that they could take me further and make us better for our customers and our employees faster. I mean, listen, every day the company got bigger was the size of business I'd never run before. And at a certain point, we weren't the right fit to lead it to the next phase. And I had to like swallow my pride and

recognize that and then make the decision and same as you like this is what's kind of cool about our circle of friends is that we all kind of did these things similar timing so we all could relate to one another but i was probably one of the later ones to the you know to get my deal took 14 months to get done from start to finish. It's nerve wracking too. It's like you're waiting. Because it's interesting when you go to a private equity and we are a people first business, so at Rhino, we are reputation over revenue mentality. It does flip when you get into the PE game to, you know, like I should say our mentality doesn't flip, but when you go to a board,

all they really care about is, well, how healthy is the business? I say, let me run it the way that we've always run it. Just give me the intellectual capital, help me with the leadership I need to put in place, which by the way has been critical to keep running and scaling these businesses the way that we do it, just support us. And that's what they're doing. But we took our time to negotiate that, you know, into the deal. So Ever Services, what are the companies, they're kind of rolling up marketing companies, right? Well, I mean, the reason we chose them is because one of my good friends that runs Blue Corona, Ben Landers, who we, you know, he's been in the business the same amount of time as I have. So over the last decade or so, we would, you know, we would talk.

Like we were respectful competitors and we both been, we're like OGs in the digital marketing space for home services. So whenever I was considering it, I saw that they had went the Everservice route. They chose Everservice. By the way, it didn't exist prior. It's just the name they came up with. The private equity behind it is Sunstone Capital. So, but they were the first ones. So they were the guinea pig into it.

And I said, hey, a year later, man, is it what they said it was? And they said, yeah, like it's what it was. It's what they said it was. And it's scaling and growing. And I was like, cool. But we had 84 people in the beginning throw their hat and their name in the hat that wanted to come to the table.

So that's sort of the process. You guys did a SIP. Yeah. And basically an outline. It's like 30, 40 slides of what your business is. Market size, strengths, opportunities, threats, all that, weaknesses, threats. Yeah, it was the SIM. Yeah, that's what we're talking about.

So they throw that. And then, by the way, like, that sounds great. And obviously, we were floored. But then once you whittle that thing down, we ended up with like 22 still, which was a big number, which is much larger than we thought. But that's when we knew we had all the negotiating power, much like a lot of the contractors had so much negotiating power going through this whole process because there's so many people at play that want them. Even today, it's still there. But it allowed us to have all the leverage going into it and get what we want. And the CMO role, what is that? If you had to just give us

a snapshot of your daily functions and what you're responsible for quarterly to the board, monthly, quarterly, yearly. Obviously, chief marketing officer. Is it about getting new clients? Is it about acquisitions? What is all encompassing in that role? Yeah, man. Really, MQL is the game I'm in. Marketing qualified leads. I'm really all things top of funnel. So I have a team of people at Everservice that report to me. But the whole job is for the other business units. And Everservice has the home services business unit, legal. Yeah, that's right. And then also healthcare, which is the newer one.

So by the time this thing rolls out, they will have finished an acquisition with another legal marketing company. But basically, I'm the one that's running the playbook, calling the plays for all things marketing. But, but everybody has their own teams and they execute just like Rhino does. Like I don't do all the things at Rhino. We have our marketing manager and our marketing team in place, just like every service has in place. So is this different because this role sounds more B2B and you're used to doing B2C? Correct. Yeah. But I do pretty significant amount of B2B because

I manage all private equity partnerships, majority today, not all today, but the majority of them, all the manufacturer relationships to this day, I've take lead on it still. But there's still plenty of people like, even though I'm in these roles now, like at Everservice, there's 750 employees as a whole. My job really hasn't changed a lot. I mean, I'm working more hours than I was. I was already working a lot of hours because I'm trying to learn

all the things. Right. But really to like tighten a little bow to make this thing as easy as possible. My whole job is lead gen. Like, what am I doing

to get top of leads into the top of the funnel for all the different business units, including still doing that for Rhino? You know, a long time ago, at your first event, RhinoX, you had Gary Vee, and I know you did some work with him in the past. And I know to a lot of people, that's like their legend. And I'm not going to go too deep in the details of how you guys work together, but what was

your biggest takeaway? Was there one, I know you started a podcast, you said that was a huge deal. And then you had Rhino X was a huge deal. Did both those come from Gary? Both of them came from Gary. What has that done? Well, I mean, you've been a part of them. Like the podcast blew up and I will give credit to a few different people. One, Goodrich was super influential on that. Come on. He was like our first real guest, but I took all these relationships I'd had because I've been in the space for 15 years. I knew all the players. A lot of my customers have been acquired by different private equity companies. So I had really good guests to bring

on to the podcast. But these were his ideas. And historically, how it would work is we have a voting process if we're going to do something like add a podcast to Rhino or to have RhinoX. And typically, I would get shut down on these things because it would be myself and then our chief experience officer, Mike. I think you've met Mike. Tattoos, everything. And it's like, which one wins? And I committed to a vote unless I really, really wanted to fight for something. But we were in New York at Gary's office, and we had a meeting, and he was talking about, you should do a vote unless I really, really wanted to fight for something. But we were in New York at Gary's office and we had a meeting and he was talking about, you should do a private event. And

I was like, booyah, because I was talking about wanting to do a private event. Didn't know it was going to be called Rhino X, but that's how we landed on that one. And then Anna never agreed to wanting to do the podcast. Like I slipped that one in when she was out of town. Like I bought all the stuff, slipped it in, got it set up and had recorded the first one while she was gone that week. Like, and she was unhappy today. We still joke about it. Like she didn't want me to do it.

And that thing's a monster today, but Gary came on twice and that certainly helped when he came on and, and helped push it all the guests. So today it's been crazy to see like what it's become, you know, and it is another full-time job. You know how it goes, but you just work it into your day. I mean, for me, the events, this is what's weird. And I don't know if you're like this, because I know a lot of people,

it's a lot of stress and work. I've got a great team, but speaking at events, having our own event, the podcast, that's what I look forward to. I'd rather be doing this. I love our meetings. I love coaching people. I love A1. But I really, this is my like therapy. This is where I come to just have a discussion, learn new ideas. Yeah, you get educated on these things too. Like I learned so much by having these episodes. It's great. Jeff Sanford, Stanford, Sanford. Yep. He's like, dude, I listened to 1 through 30 and I realized how you got to 15 million. And I listened to 30 to 60, I realized how you

got to 25. He's like, all that stuff is in your... And I was really bad, but I would... Like, look, horrible mic. I was typing in the background. I didn't know what I was doing. I just... I did it because I said I want to learn, I want to share, and it got better. I don't think it's great by any means, but I always discuss my problems.

I posted yesterday in the Home Service Expert group. I just was curious how people are getting leads, and it was a lot. I've never posted anything in that group with so many responses, and it was all gold. I actually told you posted on there. I had my EA, Allison, who's amazing. I told her to put every one of those comments into an Excel sheet. And I want to do some R&D on that stuff. And I'm just curious, when I talk to people, I say, you got to start with a brand. And then you want to own the search engines, Google in

particular. There's four algorithms on Google, LSA, PBC, GMB, and organic. But there's so many other things. There's TikTok, there's YouTube, there's Twitter, there's yard signs, there's TV, radio billboards, there's all these things. There's mailers, there's direct, there's Valpad Clipper, there's you and your home, welcome home. There's event marketing, there's referral business, and they all seem to work. You got next door. There's so many things, but I think it's overwhelming for people that are just getting in their first five years of business to say, okay, what do I do? And since you've been doing this so long, you've worked with more companies than I ever have in marketing. What do you think is the

core? Where do you think you need to own? And then when do you get into the TikTok and the Facebook ads and, you know, maybe Thumbtack and HomeAdvisor? There's so many. Well, I mean, this is probably the question I get asked the most. And because I do so many keynotes and breakouts and from speaking at so many meetings over the years, this is probably the most common question that I get. And I still stand by this. There is no one size fits all,

but there are some things that you have to do. And because I live in the digital marketing space, I'm not going to speak to things that I don't do, like traditional, say TV, radio, things like that. But you mentioned it just a second ago, and I've been saying this, like right now in the digital marketing space, it's an absolute dogfight. It is a dogfight. It is getting more expensive. More people have money that are spending money that didn't before on marketing. And some that have private equity money backing them are even spending more than normal. So it's driving up all the costs. So you got to be really, really good at digital marketing for that specific industry to know what

ads are converting at what rate to save money and things like that. It's a bunch of nerdy jargon, but at the end of the day, I'm just saying, this is where we excelled by being hyper-focused on these industries for so long because we don't have to guess on what to do to go and get a service lead or to get an install lead for an HVAC company or a drain clean lead for a plumbing company. But you have to have a frigging good brand, man. That brand is so incredibly important. I've been saying it. Brand equity has never, ever been more important than it is today, right now. So during the pandemic, when that hit, I said the same thing. I was like, man, if you had a good brand, because people are already like, don't know what's going on. And I was like, man, it was so important to have a good brand. If you

haven't start focusing on it, then clearly you understand the importance of it for a couple different reasons. So did I. But it is the foundation of everything. So, okay, if you're listening to this podcast and you're newer and you don't have maybe the money to shell out on a brand, or maybe you do, but it's still new, like you still have to build brand equity and that just takes time. There's no like silver bullet for it. Own your backyard, man. Like get involved, get involved with Little League stuff. I'm huge into community service. I do a ton of community service, though. And I don't do it for the recognition of Rhino, but it's a byproduct of what happens from it. We do so much. Like, still every one day a month, every Rhino customer, every Rhino employee goes and does community service because that's part

of our core values. But again, the byproduct of that is, you know, you're doing good things. It shows people what kind of business that you are, like the DNA of your business. So if you post it on social and people are considering using you and they see that you do these things, it certainly helps like with the conversions. But making sure like your Google My Business listing, your GMB, your GBP, your Google Maps, whatever the heck you want to call it, that doesn't cost anything. Just go in there and make sure it's filled out correctly. If you're in garage doors, make sure you have your category right. If you're in homes or if you're in HVAC, make sure that when you're going into winter,

you change your major category to heating versus air conditioning. When you're going into winter or summer, make sure you change it back to air conditioning versus heating because that's the season that you're in. That's what people are searching for. But just make sure that thing is filled out correctly. And by the way, there's a lot of marketing agencies

that will come and give you an analysis and give you these things. Like, just give it to you. That way you kind of got a roadmap and you know what to do. And they won't, you know, they might try and pitch you, but hopefully most just give it to you. But own your backyard.

Like, do the little things that matter. Get involved in parades. Use your trucks to tow, you know, to tow floats while you're in parades. Like, simple little things. Word of mouth is huge. Dude, I don't know when the last time you went to, like, a B&I thing is or those networking things. Word of mouth is huge. Dude, I don't know when the last time you went to like a B&I thing is

or those networking things. It's been a lot of years since I've done that. I'm not going to them today. Like those, I go to bigger ones. They work. But get involved with them, man. They work really, really well, especially when you're local. Like you mentioned Ringy.

I live up in Anthem. That's how we built this business. Yeah, you get involved. I'll bet you, no matter who's listening right now, whatever neighborhood or area that you live in, no matter how small it is, probably has some sort of like a Facebook group for that community. Oh, yeah.

Get involved in it. And just don't sell in it. Just go and give a bunch of free information, educational stuff. So one of those like two major things that Gary Vee taught me in our like three years together was you either need to educate someone or you entertain them. And if you could do both, if you can entertain and educate them both,

and it's like the perfect storm. So, because we are in businesses that people don't necessarily want to have to reach out to us, right? We don't have like nobody, like when I hit my garage door and had to have you guys come out, I was like, damn it.

Is that a- Yes. Not because I hit the garage doors, listeners, okay? I only did it one time. It wasn't my fault. But... And then I got upsold and I loved it. Best upsell of my life.

Next thing you know, I could open my gates and all my garage doors from my phone. It was beautiful. But you can just own your backyard, own your little communities, get involved in your groups, get involved in the schools. But you can't just like throw some money to sponsorship

and then just let it sit there and then do nothing with it and think it's going to bring in a bunch of business with you. You got to get involved, like find the boosters and things like that at your school. We're talking like grassroots shit right now. Well, that's what most people need to hear. I think the biggest thing that the owners do is they don't have a marketing background. And that's one of the things, there's two things I think you need to keep your eye on is marketing and your financials. Because if you don't really know when to hit the gas and when to hit the brakes, you don't

stand a chance. And marketing is, if it's not top down, then it's really hard to just get a, well, let's just say you hire a good marketing strategist. There's so many different things like, you know, I do a lot of TV, radio billboards, and it's kind of the Kent Goodrich or Wizard of Azroy Williams approach. I think that works because it also helps. Like, I just heard your jingle, then I saw your truck, and then I seen a yard sign. And it helps, but the community piece is a piece that's missing from most companies.

And it's hard to make the time to do that, but it's just you got to set it up to where it's systematic. And it's an easy one to win, and it's sweat equity. You know, maybe you have to invest like a couple hundred bucks or something into like a sponsorship or whatever, but it's sweat equity. And we all can afford to do that just if you want to do it. But listen, if you need to build something, you don't have the money to do it. Like you're doing radio and TV and billboards everywhere. Like obviously I see you all over the place. And I would say the majority, not that they can't do it, they just can't do it right now. Like, you have to be able to have the cash or the money to be able to do those things. So, you know, part of how what made

internet marketing so successful is it's demand, man. It's like people are actively searching for somebody looking for, you know, garage door repair. If they were looking for A1, they would have typed in A1, you know, in this market or whatever. And most do put that out there. But if somebody is actively searching for garage door repair, garage door installation, whatever it is, that means they're looking for somebody. So why not you? But the problem is, is that there's so, like, even in my industry, there's so many people that give us a bad name, you know, because you've had shitty internet marketing companies who don't, you know, over promise, under deliver. And even as big as we are, 800, you know, contractors or 800 contractors as customers, like, we get things wrong. You know, human beings are involved in it. But finding someone who, one, knows your industry

is incredibly important that you trust. And then number two, you always got to make sure that you're asking about reporting. Because to me, especially when you're growing a business, if you're listening to this, you most likely want to provide for yourself and your family. And then your employees, you want to provide for them and their families. And you're the one that accepts the role of either leading the business or being a leader in the business. Or if you're just working for a company, no big deal. If you're an owner or a leader in a company and you're trying to do marketing, you got to know what the marketing is actually doing for you to be able to make any sound decisions, meaning, was it really new leads? You need attribution.

You got to, and you got to attach, like, you got to know what levers to pull with real numbers. Yeah. So, like, the reason that a Jeff Sanford or Vince or Josh Yeager, even a small company like him, he was sub 2 million whenever he came on board with us, which is not typically, you know, in our wheelhouse, is they knew I spent X. Here's how many leads I got. I closed it. I booked, you know, I booked at X percent of those. I closed this many and here's the revenue attached to it. So we didn't have to guess on what worked.

And now here we are three years later and we're scaling all of them. And that's why we even chose to go down this path as I was like, cool, we can do it in any market, but we got to have the right people who are engaged. Before we continue the interview, I wanted to let you know about something crazy we're putting together for the Freedom event. We're calling it the Freedom $81,000 giveaway. And this is real. During the event, you'll have an opportunity to enter an amazing promotional drawing and win one of the following five amazing prizes. Price one, we're going to do a full rebranding package with Dan Antonelli's agency kick charge over a $20,000 value. Price two, we're going to give away Al Levy's operational manual systems. That's over

$9,000 that you would pay. Price three, we're going to do a one-day sales trading with the famous Joe Crisara. That's $12,000 of value. Price four is a two-hour consulting call with my right-hand guy, one of the smartest people I know, Jim Leslie. That's over 10 grand. And price five, I'm going to come to you. I'm going to fly out and spend a half day in your office, meeting you, looking at your operations and showing you the path to elevate your business. That's a $30,000 value. So listen, this is going to be the event of the year, the freedom event. And if you're still planning to go to the freedom event, but haven't got your tickets yet, you can go to Tommy mellow.com forward slash freedom and get your ticket.

Now let's get back to the interview. I got a question. So when it comes to SEO, I did look at Rhino, I don't know, about six months ago, and you guys have some of the strongest backlinks, you know, scorpions up there, but there's not for a brand of what you guys do in just home service. It's pretty high. What, what do you guys, doions up there, but there's not for a brand of what you guys do in just home service. It's pretty high. What, what do you guys, do you got a whole strategy behind out there getting links and putting out, you know, blog posts and is that something you're still involved in? I'm not, I mean, I'm not involved in it like myself anymore, but in the beginning I was, cause SEO is where my core competency was like me personally. Um, I learned that back in 2004,

forever ago. I don't remember if you ever knew this or not, but my sister went to go work at Google in 2001. I didn't know that. Yeah, like right at the end of 2000, she was Tony Stewart's PR girl, Tony Stewart, NASCAR guy. Yeah. Because we're all Indiana guys.

We all raced together, you know? And then, but she went to go work for Google early on. And that's how I kind of got interested in even the Google route and learning the things. But a backlink plan is 100% something that we do every single month for every single customer. But it's not like you go and buy them. That was an old school thing, buy as many as you can. It certainly is a quality over quantity, but it takes a lot of man hours of reaching out to different publications or.edu's and things that have value to build them.

SEO is straight man hours, man. It is a ton of hours and people don't get it. To get really good rankings, you got to be able to do the work. In order to do the work, you got to have the people. You know, I was talking to a buddy of mine who's like, you have no idea if you could do a sponsorship for, let's just say, the Arizona Diamondbacks. And if you looked at their homepage and they were just going to have one link out, but it's super expensive. But he was telling me because they're like 94, 97 in the rankings,

he's like that one link, if they've only got one external link from that, it could literally put you on the map big time because it's just their best outbound link that the whole league has. I think you could buy some, but you're not out there buying links. This is more buying a sponsorship and they'll put you on there. Sure. But there's a lot of small ones you could get that you need to have too.

You can buy some of these things. We wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't beta test, right? But they're so damn expensive. It is. I want to say one we spent was like we dropped dropped 15 grand, you know, on this link. And that was a big chunk. But I started looking at it like, if this thing produces four new customers, new installs for this client, it's worth it. Because that will, I mean, I'm trying to look at it from their perspective.

They're not going anywhere. At the end of the day, I have to produce lead volume for anybody, no matter what. So that means it cuts into my profitability until year two. That's fine. Like people aren't leaving after year one. So I can defer that until next year because I'm providing value to them and I'm providing leads. And now I got the ranking and then you know how it is. Once you get the ranking, whether it be in maps, the three pack of maps or it's organic ranking, then your cost per lead starts going down and revenue is going up and lead volume is going up. whether it be in Maps, the three-pack of Maps, or it's organic ranking, then your cost per lead starts going down and revenue is going up and lead volume is going up.

So it pays off. But if you don't have the money to do that, you got to old school grind it out, pick up the phone, start dialing the people. And you can't just launch press releases, by the way, and hope you're going to get a bunch of valuable links because you don't. Yeah, it's a tough game. And I think a lot of people don't realize how critical SEO is. And just having a website that explains, it's a good book by, what is it? They Ask, You Answer,

Marcus Sheridan, where he just, he blows me away with what he did. He started writing an article a night and it was really, and he has a company called River Pools, highest rankings I've ever seen for just a service company. And he's two years out. He can't take any more leads. And I think a lot of people, they're like, I don't need to learn SEO. And a lot of people, especially small companies, they say, I've already got enough business. They don't wrap their truck. And I'm like, yeah, but you do all the work. Of course, you're going to make 150 grand, but your business is still worth zero. And when you say the rich get richer, here's the fact. I will always now build a company with an exit. If I can't, what's crazy is a lot of companies are coming to me for investments or to just give me equity. And I'm like, show me your five-year plan when you plan on exiting.

Or at least you could roll. But if it's not under five years, I just, what, what do you got, a 20-year plan? Like build a company. And if you don't want to sell it, you can make that choice. But make something worth a lot of value. Where else are you going to get a multiple of profit? And if you get it to $3 million, 6X, that's $18 million. And people can't even fathom that. They're like, yeah, but then what do I do?

And I'm like, what do you want to do? Well, that's the thing is I tell people, what do you want to do after this? Who do you want to spend time with? Who do you want to, do you want to take care of any employees that helped you get here? Do you want to do anything for your parents or your siblings or your kids? Do you want to set up trust? What is your life? Design the life you want. What do you love to do? What are you passionate about? And if the hard part is a lot of people can't dream anymore. They can't envision their life without showing up the 9 to 5 and coming in there and answering the phone on the weekends. They've almost become addicted to it. And for me, I'm like, I love it.

I'm happy. I love the guys I work with. I think when Ken sat me down and he said, Tommy, you're a pretty smart guy in home service, but you're probably like a kindergartner when it comes to financial. When you guys learned the modeling that they could provide, learn how they raise capital. And when you see this, he goes, you're at the time about to turn 40. And I'm 40 still.

It was just not that long ago. And he goes, you're going to become somebody so great because he goes, I would give away all my money to sit in your seat today. I would take away everything I've had, everything, to just be able to go where you're at. Because you still got, I don't think we, a lot of us don't realize, 40 used to be old for me. I was like, 40? They're over the hill.

But now I'm like, you know, Ken was right. And I am learning a lot. And I'm like, I have so much more clarity. And I don't know what you would tell somebody that's thinking about possibly selling if you got any advice. I mean, again, I think that one, you probably have more options than you're even thinking. And you might think, you know, a lot or you've read up a lot, but there's a lot of different ways to make something great happen.

And you know what people used to tell me? Some people used to tell me early on was when you think about, you don't come up with an exit plan when you're trying to build your business because now all you're trying to do is think about how am I going to get out instead of how do I continue to work on it. Well, that was total bullshit, by the way, at least for me, because I'm like, well, I do want to exit at some point. I don't want to do this always. But now that I know what I know, and I've asked this question at RhinoX a few times, when we will ask like some of the guys like Geiger or Goodrich or Leland or any of those guys, like they'll say they all would have done it faster. They all would have brought on private equity faster had they known then what they know now, because they realize what you could do with it. Here's the reality of private equity that I didn't know even say five years ago.

If you want to stay in your business and you want to continue to grow it and you need help, it's okay to find the right private equity partner that matches your core values, that matches whatever it is that you need to match, that you like, that you enjoy doing business with, by the way, that's important, who supports your vision of the business and can come behind it and add intellectual capital to help make you better, smarter, faster, and take off some of the things that you're not good at off of your plate and allows you to focus on the things that you are great at. Yep.

And all those options are available to you. Like, you know, if you're in the home services space, you talked about hitting 3 million. If you hit 3 million, you got all kinds of options. And EBITDA. EBITDA. EBITDA. EBITDA. EBITDA. Gosh, I got so sick of hearing that. Like, can you just say EBITDA? I say EBITDA. And a lot of people are like EBITDA or EBITDA. EBITDA. Yes. But by the way, you will hear that if you're getting known this process, and then you're going to laugh when you hear that because of this podcast episode. But you have a lot of options whether you want to exit the business or not. But it comes down to, for me, it was this.

Where Anna and I got really good at over the last part of our business was, you know, I've got four kids, so they weren't getting younger, and I didn't want to miss anything. So I tried to make, I mean, I miss some things. You miss some things when you're in business. Like you can't help it when you're growing and traveling everywhere. But I made the majority of their stuff, if it meant taking red eyes back or whatever. But I realized I don't want to miss things. I want to keep growing this business.

And if I could get to a spot where I could find a private equity partner that makes me smarter and more efficient and can help get me good leadership. Having recruiting has been fantastic. It does actually free up time for me, not in the sense of like, oh, great, between my nine to five, like I've got days off. It's not quite like that. It's just I can do things at different parts of the day

that still allow me to make everything, make it to Mason's football game or Berkeley soccer game or whatever. So, and it allows me to grow my business because much like you, where you and I also relate a lot is we pour into our employees, like our team members.

And I get to do that more now, like more. I know I saw like, I always tell you, I love your dream manager position. By bringing on a private equity partner, I did my due diligence. I found those that would follow what I want to do.

I worked that into the LOI. And then, by the way, you. I worked that into the LOI. And then, by the way, you want to negotiate everything into that LOI. And then I promise you, if you find the right partner, they'll help you become more efficient. They'll get you some time back where you're only focusing, not saying you get more time back, like you just get more time to spend it on more important things that allow to free, you know, that can free you up. You went to, you know, Idaho and played what, golf or something or you would, you're playing, or you're in Utah playing golf with your dad. You were like, I didn't know, like you're one place, you know, one day, the next day you're someplace else. Good for you. You did that for yourself.

Like those are called memory dividends. And those are the kinds of dividends I want to run with. No, a hundred percent. And I'll tell you what, I feel like life is just getting so much better. I don't have any regrets. I really don't. I'd love to tell you, hey, watch out for this. Make sure you do this. But luckily, we recruited Dan Miller,

the president of the company who has been through this rodeo a dozen times and just his wife is a partner at the law firm we use. And he's just like, let me handle this. Let me handle this. I'll take care of that. I'll do this. And he went in, and then he's

like, dude, he's like, I'll set you up after this, too. He goes, we'll set up your family office, we'll get you with Goldman Sachs, we'll make sure this is happening, what's important to you here? And now it's like, I feel like getting the right people is almost like a cheat code. You know, one of the things Gary Vaynerchuk

said that was very controversial, especially to Ishmael during the first Rhino X was he said, some of you guys are crazy spending the kind of money, $1,200, $1,400 a month for a billboard. And he goes, some of you guys have 100 billboards. He goes, it might take me 500 Facebook posts to find the right one, but I'll kill any of your billboards. I could out-brand you guys all day long using Facebook. And then he said TikTok and Instagram were growing or LinkedIn at the time. But what are your thoughts on that?

I'm just curious because I felt like Ishmael stood up and he's like, what do you mean? You know, but. It was a, that was an interesting moment. I got to go back and find that. I turned that into a podcast too. I remember that and thinking like, damn, he is pissing straight in his Cheerios. Here's my two cents.

I don't do everything Gary told me to do. Like, you know, just I do, I've done quite a bit, but if it were up to him, I'd have been post. And maybe I should have, maybe I would have grown faster. Who knows? I don't see that it didn't work out for Ishmael. He built the brand real quick and a very successful business real quick.

So Gary's good, but do I think that he says one thing and it means something, whatever, that it's valuable to everyone? It's like gold and it's the only way you could go. There's 10 ways to the top of the mountain. Yeah. He didn't ask him his market. He didn't ask him anything, right? He just was like, you know, so listen, you can't deny that the dude built a brand quickly and then made a phenomenal exit.

Yeah, it's a fortune. So it would be hard to say, yep, Gary was right. You know what I mean? You have your billboards all over the place too and when I wake up in the morning and see you on streaming, it's like, damn it, Tommy. I'm changing the damn channel.

It does help build a brand quickly, but you have to be able to have the money to do it. You've got to be okay with it. It's not like it's got some quick turnaround for you. You've just gotta be cool with like, it's a six months, one year waiting. And what I can tell you that a lot of people don't understand is I live below my means for a decade. I didn't move into a nice house. I didn't drive a new car. I didn't go out to these expensive vacations. I literally reinvested into the company and put it back in and hired better

people and brought on another benefit, like a 401k. Then I brought on, you know, obviously PTO, buying the tools, sending the guys to Phoenix, buying an apartment complex for them when they stay here. All that stuff costs money, but that's a business expense that I needed to put back into it. And, you know, I don't have any regrets. I just, you know, I'm 40 now. The old expression is so true. I wish I knew then what I know now. And I used to hate that when my dad and my uncle was, I wish I knew then what I knew now, but there's no way I could put this into a book. I could, I mean, I put a lot of No Home Service, Millionaire and Elevate was a fun book, but you got to kind of experience this stuff

to know what it's like to be in this situation. You can't write a book of the feelings that you go through when you hire somebody bad or when you get stolen from or when somebody totals a truck. I want somebody, you know, two guys, we had to go separate directions because they both got in a car accident.

So they got to go get tested. And they both came back with THC and they're great installers, but they're uninsurable. And so some of the stuff you just gotta, you gotta experience and the faster you could be around people that have been through it,

that could talk to you about it and you could build like our group that we text message with and their trusted confidants that will take. And it feels like we're always trying to help each other. And that's the difference is very few people get an opportunity to hang around with groups like that. I think I want to add just one simple thing.

And I wish, I've said this a few different times, and I still can't remember who gave me this advice. And it's so simple. In Houston, when you and me flew down and we were speaking at that event, American Dream event, it was the first time I ever shared the story of like Rhino. And not only Rhino, but like my life leading up to it. Yeah, a lot of it was like nine mistakes. All the failures I made. Yes, thank you.

And it was the first time I actually shared that whole story because all the way up to like a certain point, like I was ashamed of those things that happened to me. Like as I was building the business, you know, I went through foreclosures, repossessions, like things you don't want to talk about because you're ashamed of it. Would I go back and do it all over again the same?

I mean, those are pretty sucky times, but a lot of it set the stage for, that was my rock bottom. I heard you talking about hitting rock bottom from like a physical perspective on one of the things that you had posted, but my rock bottom was in that moment when I couldn't hide from it.

But somebody told me early on then, you know, Chris, whatever you do, just remember this, like doing good is good business. So you're a good guy, Chris. Let all the stuff go. Like you made mistakes, you know, but you aren't out of business, like still run the business. And part of it is, I thought, that's when I said reputation over revenue is, Ann and I made the decision at that point in time that we're always going to continue to give back no matter how bad of a situation we're in. We never had to, in the last decade of this business, have to make a decision based off of financial fear, ever. So we always made the right decision for the customer. And then as the business got bigger, we shifted

into making sure that we focus so much on our employees because without them and giving them all the tools they need and all the benefits and taking care of them and caring about them, if we didn't do those things and they wouldn't service the customer at the elite level, we needed them to do. So the thing I kind of hung my hat on was, you know, I believe I'm a good guy. I have a good heart. I genuinely care about people. I genuinely care about my employees, my customers. And so I make decisions based off of that feeling. Now I know how to pay attention to my financials, but I believe, you know what?

I do good and that is good business. And it worked out well for me. Be a good guy. Don't be an asshole. There's a lot going on in home service about, I don't know if I should go down this road. Then don't. But I'll just say, you know, the last person, and I'm not talking about an individual right now. I'm talking about just in general. There's a lot of advice out there of people that don't actually do this stuff in their own

business. They don't live it. They preach it, but they don't live it. They don't enjoy their business. And all I would say is I don't make money. My events are not meant to make money. My books are not made to make money. My podcast isn't meant to make money. It's for me. And I want to help a lot of people out with it, but I really, when I train somebody and I'm coaching them, it makes me a better person and better at what I do.

And I make my money from A1 Grocery Service. That's where my main nut comes from. And I don't need to coach anybody for money. I don't need them to get in a group. I think there's an opportunity for a lot of people to make a lot of money and have freedom and elevate their mindset. And that's why I'm doing this stuff. And it helps me.

I look forward to that like I look forward to church. I need that in my life because without it, I'm a little bit lost. Without out there figuring out my ideas, I work through them in podcasts and I talk about things and I learn things and then I apply things. So, you know, I want to get back to one thing here because you've been doing marketing so long and you've seen so many different industries and businesses. You know, there's certain metrics that you need to focus on. And I'm just curious if you had to break down three of them, but I want to talk about the elephant in the room with most businesses that aren't charging enough, because a lot of people get mad at me about this. And especially on TikTok,

these little haters that live in their parents' basements, they say, I would never pay that for anything, but yet they're wearing Jordans and they got a brand new iPhone and they're going out to $300 dinners and they're renting a Lexus. You know, you hear all these people that say, well, I would never pay that much for home service, but what's your biggest asset for most people? Their home. What's the number one ROI in the home? The garage door. So I don't want to hear their bullshit, but anyways. Hey, how do you really feel? It annoys me. I can see that. But so the question is, if you had to break down the metrics of when you're like, I'm sure you fired clients.

And I'm sure the biggest complainers are the ones that aren't focused on the numbers that just expect you to pull magic. So what would you say someone needs to pay attention to regardless of the marketing company? Then we'll talk a little bit about Rhino. Yeah, man, I've talked about this forever. And the facts, they will set you free. So, yeah, we've had to fire customers before because I'm also trying to grow my business, and I grow my business by my customers growing. But in order for them to grow, they actually have to make the meetings and go over the actual real numbers and then take accountability for their piece of the action too. But the things that I like to measure are, you know, if someone's paying Rhino,

they're paying me to bring in new customers for them by way of digital marketing. So, perfect, because I can track everything from it. So from that, I should be able to see exactly what is my true cost per lead on net new leads. Like a brand new, legit, bookable customer that was not a past client or referral. Like a legit brand new customer. Some still, I would say most, still don't track to that depth

when they're reporting a cost per lead. That's what I battled forever, by the way. So it's getting better, but battled it forever. So you have to know exactly what your cost per lead is for a new customer. Like, what did it cost to get me a new customer? Lead, not acquisition. Then you got to track your booking rate, even though I don't do, well, I do now, actually CSR coaching and development. By the way, that's not open to the masses yet. So scratch that from the record, but soon. But it's because, you know, I have a team at Rhino, everybody's in the United States of America, so I don't outsource anything. Nothing's overseas or near shore. That listened to every single phone call for our customers. So that way

they could determine one, how was the call handled, but also what was the lead quality and did the contractor book it? That way it holds us all accountable, like with the fax. So I can track booking rate on net new business. So if you have your CRMs, like your service titans or house call pros or whatever you're using, it can track your booking rate as a whole, but I'm tracking it on new business. I wonder how you're performing on new business because that's what you're paying me to do. So I like to be able to see what was the average cost per lead

and what was the booking rate. And then if you have like a service titan, we can pull the revenue out and you can attach revenue straight to that lead. So I know what my return on ad spend was. So from a pay-per-click perspective, you're looking at like cost per conversion. Like you need to make sure like, am I getting the most out of my budget? Well, what does that mean? Sometimes you have to launch ads at different

times of day. And this is where being in the same industry for so long is helpful because I can learn how to milk a budget. So you figure out what ads to run at what time that have the lowest cost per conversion, but the highest booking rates. And what time that have the lowest cost per conversion, but the highest booking rates. And that's how you get scrappy when it's in a market like it is now. But at the end of the day, if you track nothing else, and every marketing company can do this for you, by the way, if they say they can't, they're lying to you. All it takes is a call tracking number for them and for someone to listen to your phone calls to figure out where the lead come from?

One cost per, if you're doing social, use a tracking number. If you're doing paid ads, use a tracking number. If you're using direct mail, use a tracking number. And just listen to it to see what actually came from it that was a new customer. Did you book it? Did you close it?

What was the revenue, average ticket? I think you and I have had this conversation on four metrics that you're always using to go in. This is the only thing I talk to for dentists that I talk to is what's your average ticket, what's your conversion rate, what's your booking rate, and what does it cost you to acquire a customer? Yeah, so that CAC is like a – so you have those things and you can know how to scale it from a marketing perspective. The thing that's like wonky with it is when you start factoring in branding with it. That's tough. You need really good like like, call rail,

and you really need to set up a lot of things. We've finally figured that out just July. We use call rail, man. They're fantastic. By the way, you can also use call rail if you're listening, too. Like, you can get in there. Like, we've played with the different, I mean, we have thousands upon thousands of call tracking numbers.

So, but call rail has been fantastic for us. So, question. Balancing the demands. This is running through the last couple of questions here. Balancing the demands of being a CEO, CMO, podcast host, philanthropist, husband, father, son. What advice can you share to our listeners that are struggling with their work-life balance? This is going to sound so cliche, I'm going to say it anyway. You need to figure out what like realistically makes you happy.

And you might say, well, you know, making money makes me happy. Well, me too. But giving up time with the kids would make me less happy. So they're getting old fast. And we asked Goodrich one time and he's like, dude, I'd give it all up. Like I miss so much stuff. And he's making up for it now, which is great. I love that he's doing that. But, you know, I just chose my non-negotiables where like, I'm not going to miss this thing. If that meant I missed out on a big opportunity, then I missed it. And by the way, that's very, very hard to do. But more often than not, it panned out. But you can't get the time back.

No. You know, you just, you know, like a perfect example is, you know, Bill had that scare with the stage three cancer. And it's like, those are nice reminders of like, you just don't know, man. And you don't want to have regret and leave it to your family, your kids, your wife, your mom, whoever, like that you didn't take the time with them. And so I just chose to have non-negotiables. And I said, you know what? And that was hard. These are my non-negotiables. And I'm going to continue to scale this business and pour into it and to all of our customers and to our employees, but not at the expense of losing relationship with my family.

And that's what I did. One of my technicians in Sedona sent me a text message of this country song. And it's called Until You Can't. And he goes, this made me think of you. I was like, it's like you can put a ring on her finger until you can't. You can hang out with dad until you can't. And I'm like, what the hell, dude? But he's like, in a good way.

And I was like, I don't know what that means. But have you ever heard that country song? I thought you were going to say try that in a small town. Until you can't, you got to listen to that on the way home. So this will be pretty much last question. So with Rhino, why should somebody reach out? Who's your avatar? And who could you help grow their business enormously that should be reaching out today? And if so, how do they do that?

Yeah, thanks for asking me that. But my sales guys have it easy. Because we don't outbound ever to anyone. And everything is inbound for us. And that puts us in a really great position to be very picky on who we partner with. But you kind of heard me talk a little bit about it is we really only want to work with people who are engaged in working on the business too. Like, you know, I get under some of you might still be out there running calls and things like that. But you still got to take time to actually work on the business.

And that means if you're going to, if you legit want to scale, like, I want to grow too. The only way I grow is if my customers grow, like have a recruiting plan in place. Like the simple things when we ask those questions, like, don't just say, I want as many leads as you can get me. If I had to give like an avatar, you know, like, I always hate saying this because it's like, it sounds bad, but you know, I've learned a lot about the size of a business and what they typically will do, you know, and how their businesses will function. But like I took on Josh Yeager, man, he was sub two million. I took him on because I believed in him, you know, and he was doing all the things. And so I was like, cool, I want to help that person. Like that's why I got into this

business. So at the end of the day, I would just say this, like for us, whomever you talk to on my team, my sales guys have, and gals, have great hearts. They get nice commissions on retention. That way nobody is, you know, selling. It's a different model. They're not, they're selling based on what was doing what's right for the actual contractor and not just getting some big quick sale and moving on. But if you legit want to scale and grow the business and you legit are willing to put in the time every single month to go over all the metrics and you're legit good with holding yourself accountable

and your team accountable for your shortcomings, I'm not saying we'll nail it every single month, but we'll get it right 90% of the time. But you also have to be along with that right. And you not saying we'll nail it every single month, but we'll get it right 90% of the time. But you also have to be along with that ride. And you can actually do things about it. If your booking rate's low, get some CSR coaching. Or if you just have an office manager,

like have her listen or him listen to their calls. And you got to actively do things to make the business better. So you got to really want to grow and be committed to that. And that's because we can't work with, you know, five people in the same place. We got to pick wisely too. So thankfully in garage doors, we're pretty well wide open right now. So we've only got, I think maybe a dozen or so garage door contractors on board, which by the way,

was great from Vertical Track. Thank you. It's hard in garage doors to get the kind of money that roofing and HVAC has, but I love the industry. And if someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that? I mean, easy to say, like, if it's me, by the way, I live my life on the record, so it's pretty easy to connect with me. You can find me on social media personally, but if you want to connect with Rhino,

it's pretty easy. Go to R-Y-N-O-S-S.com. That looks like it says Rhinos, but it stands for Rhino Strategic Solutions. So R-Y-N-O-S-S.com. You can follow us on social. You can also listen to the To The Point Home Services Podcast,

which is Tommy's real favorite podcast. He'll say it's not, but he's funny. Great podcast. What do you guys, how many, you guys just passed a million or something or a million and a half?

We're just past the million and a half, you know, and since 2020, like, but again, Gary was a big part of like bumping that thing up and getting the subscribers

and things up too. So, it's gotten really, really big. But we share a lot of these same tactics on that podcast. I mean, you've been on there a few different times. Yeah. And we share a lot of these things too and bring contractors on to kind of share some of their stories, a lot of similarities to what we do. But yeah, so a lot of the things I'm saying, like little key metrics, like we just, you know, paying attention to your answering services, after hours answering services, like paying attention to your CSRs, like things, even though I don't do them, I see how they impact people's businesses. So I try to bring light to it

and figure out who can help them. So, but Rhino SS, that's how you get in touch with us. Find me on social media. Go listen to the Point Podcast, save it to your favorites. Great singer. He's also a great speaker. Last thing, Chris, I close out with this is that maybe we talked about a lot of things, your new career, where you're going, family life balance. Maybe there's something we didn't touch upon. Maybe there's something you want to close out. Leave the audience with. I'll give you a few minutes just to kind of close this out.

Wow. Okay. I thought you were going to ask me about a book, and I was going to be like, damn. No. Elevate. I skipped that because I remember you don't love to read. I'm still waiting on that audio version. Soon.

Soon. It should be out. I don't. I will say. Gabriel figures. I will. I'll say this. I think most people who do know me know that I'm a, I am a, I'm a peacekeeper, right?

Like I, I, I want things to, I want people to do well. I believe that Rhino was the platform I've been given to serve the masses. And I feel like I was a very good steward of that and still am a good steward of it. But I would say anybody who's in business, whether it's your manufacturing relationships, your supplier relationships, your employees, your whatever, don't be an asshole. Be nice. You get a lot more people come to sugar than it, more people come to sugar than vinegar? I don't know what that is. I probably fucked that all up. But just be kind, you know.

Lead by influence, not intimidation. Let's just go with that. But, you know, respect people. Have fun while you're doing it. You know, I have some of these different private equity partners that I have that I dread getting on the phones with them. And like, if they weren't so large of customers for me, I will probably fire them. Like what happens with some guys like that? I mean, just, you know, the way that they talk to somebody, like degrading somebody or talking to somebody or just being very

disrespectful and rude is something I don't want to deal with. I don't think my employees deserve that. You know, it's not worth it for me. So I'm telling you, like, I would want to jump through more hoops for that person if they treated us a little bit differently, just like I do the others that actually have respectful relationships. So, you know, I mean, I have manufacturers as partners, you know, that I'm a part of, And they treat me with respect and we help one another. So everything is difficult and I will finish with this. So one, be nice to everybody. Like, things will get you much further faster. Number two, do not forget that being vulnerable enough to ask for questions is an absolute superpower. We look at it as shame. Like, we look at it as

we can't let our pride go. But let me tell you, once I started asking questions and I let that go, like I let go of thinking I knew everything. Even when you get with your buddies, like in our text message groups, like I'm certainly I get my chops busted like everybody else does. But I don't mind looking like an idiot and asking questions because it gets me from point A to point B faster. So be vulnerable enough to just not know and be okay with people knowing that you don't know. You'll get there faster.

And I think you're going to find that most people want to help. Chris, I love you, buddy. Thank you. Great work. Thanks, brother. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me back.

Thanks for listening, guys. If you love this, leave me a review. I'd really appreciate it. 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.