The Home Service Expert Podcast - Home Service Niche Growth Strategies with Tim Brown

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

In this conversation, Tommy Mello and Tim Brown discuss the intricacies of home service marketing, emphasizing the importance of niche marketing, community engagement, and the balance between SEO and PPC strategies. They explore the challenges faced by home service businesses, the significance of building relationships, and the value of enterprise planning. The discussion also touches on the role of humor in marketing and the necessity of understanding one's market. Tim shares insights from his book, 'How to Become a Hometown Hero,' and highlights the importance of giving back to the community while building a successful business. Don’t forget to register for Tommy’s event, Freedom 2025! This is the event where Tommy’s billion-dollar network will break down exactly how to accelerate your business and dominate your market in 2025.  For more details visit freedomevent.com 00:00 Introduction to Home Service Marketing 05:02 The Importance of Niche Marketing in Home Services 09:41 Challenges and Opportunities in Home Service Marketing 14:46 Navigating SEO, PPC, and Local Marketing Strategies 19:35 Community Engagement and Building Brand Loyalty 24:37 The Role of Humor and Persuasive Communication in Marketing 29:42 Building Relationships and Networking for Business Growth 34:22 The Value of Enterprise and Long-Term Planning 39:09 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways

I think we always underestimate how much market there is, and we think everyone knows us, and they don't. 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 888-526-1299. 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 elevate and win.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview.

Welcome back to the home service expert today. I got a buddy of mind. He just wrote a book, How to Become a Hometown Hero, a powerful guide to the Home Service marketing. He's an awesome guy, Tim Brown, visited my shop probably five, six years ago, run into him everywhere. He's an expert in sales, business, marketing. He's based in Minneapolis. He's a CEO of Hook Agency. He's an expert in Google paid ads, SEO, and web design.

It's gone from one person to 30 and six years champion roof companies, H.F. companies and home service businesses. Tim has consulted in helping them drive more traffic and leads. Content strategy, persuasive web design, and actionable small business marketing are his biggest areas of expertise. Tim, it's a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you. Keep going. No, I'm just kidding. I like it. That's a great intro. So why don't you just tell everybody a little bit about why you got into wanting to start an agency and why you wrote the book and what you're excited about.

Yeah. Sure. I really like marketing. It's fun. And I think there's like an element of playfulness that we have to keep in all of our marketing. I think it's the best when you can. can be a little bit playful and data and data i know i love data too but i think um playfulness and humanity and emotional stickiness also really help and i've seen your recent commercial the delorean playfulness right you you got some playfulness and your guys is advertising i think it's really good so i love i love uh marketing and i've also i'm starting to like um entrepreneurship. There was about five years there where I was like, I cannot recommend it to a lot of people. But now I'm starting to like it. Yeah. Once you start making money, it starts to become more fun. But those early stages are like you're pulling your hair out going, why did I do this?

Most businesses don't survive five years. Actually, 33.8 percent. I just read a stat earlier, make it through the five year mark. It's crazy. Home service right now globally is a $6.7 trillion dollar industry and expected to 5x by 2030 because I was comparing home service home improvement to automotive automotive is supposed to double we're going to 5x it's the right industry to be in what made you excited about home service yeah it's just kind of some of my I mean not that exciting but as some of my early clients and my early clients that I liked and that I hung out with and I was kind of doing video for him so I was the video guy I was I was kind of early on that though i was the i was running around and on roofs and you know in addicts and stuff

like that and i enjoyed that part that was really really fun but it's hard to scale and it was really early and no one was doing video like as aggressively so it was like kind of harder to sell so um and that was in addition to my background in web design and SEO but i wish i i kind of love video man i feel like i love video and i wish uh i know that it's getting more and more popular to do that um but i think that was part of what led me to home service because i would like take a picture of myself up on a roof you know with my client and then like people more and more people saw it was just like that visual anchoring so our positioning got better and better as i was out in the field with people and so that's why you can see to this day like you're seeing me like install water heater like get in a

trench is because I am actually, I learned to hack as positioning, right, positioning with people not like outside and above them, which is a lot of like, you know, sometimes marketers kind of don't get in the trenches enough. So that's, it's been a really good thing for our positioning. As far as like the types of people, I just enjoyed being around the contractors I was working with a little bit more. I wanted to spend time with them. I kept on upselling them, and I kept on hanging out. So as time went on, it was just like, you know, a coach was like, stop doing the other stuff.

So our business really started, I think. I almost think of it as the real second start. It is in 2021 when we started saying no to anything that wasn't home service contractors. And that's when it kind of went, you know, so once we started saying no, it opened up a ton of stuff for us. I think home service is a great industry,

and I think roofing is probably one of my favorites to date because I feel like its garage doors were. It's just such a massive ticket. It's not organized. So many people are so focused still on insurance, but that game's slowly ending. And there's rules and regulations. And I think I look at the guys around me,

Chad Piederman, Chris Yano, Travis Ringy, even Ishmael. Shoot, Chris Hoffman. I mean, there's not a lot of people, Tom Howard. everybody in my group that the LSD group is involved in roofing now except for me but they obviously know it's a massive opportunity come on in Tommy the water's fine you're going to love it here come on in you know what there will be a time and a place for that but right now I just decided if I do one thing better than everybody else could do and I negotiate with my vendors better than anybody could do and I could make a great technician

we've got 52 guys next door training their first month we've got 50s coming in next month, 50 coming in the next month. If I wanted to start a roofing company, I'd have to, I know a lot of stuff, but I'd have to rebuild, and by the way, you don't need to know the trade to master it, but you've got to get, that takes years, and it takes camaraderie

and it takes building a team that you trust. And I think it's foolish for people to just jump into everywhere there's an opportunity because they're in the same place they were 10 years ago. They're making a buck, they're living a nice house, but they're not creating enterprise value. And in my, in

My history, the only reason to be in business is not for profit, it's to build enterprise value. And so many people choose a lifestyle business. And they go, hey, it's paying the bills and it's getting easier. And I'm like, yeah, you're stupid. And, you know, a lot of people listening might not like that. But this is my podcast, so. I'm a pretty big proponent of sticking to what you know.

Now, that being said, I just entered HVAC hard this last few years as far as niching but an agency right still agency model and then uh rocking it i'm i'm looking at plumbing man so those are my three i think we we love all home services but those are like what i'm pushing like marketing ourselves hard to and uh i think honestly i think you could take a marketing company to 40 million just with those three trades that's how i feel but i mean like i'm not going to say no to other home service contractors but yeah well it's smart i mean if you as you build the ad campaigns and understand, you know, the SEO and what's doing well. How do you feel about two clients being in the same market for HVAC or plumbing or moving?

Yeah, in general, we try to keep it to like one per 500,000 people. That's kind of our benchmark as far as like having multiple in one. It's such a hard kind. That's like the hardest question to ask because there's an element of our answer because there's an element of it. If you're going to be a niched agency, you're going to, it's going to be imperfect on that front or else you're just not going to grow.

So what we've done is kind of have that benchmark. And then that was part of the reason I branched out into HVAC and plumbing, Tommy, is because I was like, if we keep on going on roofing, we're going to have every single market. And I was saying no, like a lot to contractors where I had too many in one spot, you know? So, yes, we say generally $500,000 per. It's not a perfect answer.

no one's going to like that well what it's ultimately like we're trying yeah well now keep going so you're trying to do what yeah there's we're trying to have some balance there right like whereas like we can continue growing and um and that's why we've pushed into age fact and plumbing and maybe you would have talked to me two years ago and whether or not i should have pushed into age fact i could have that discussion it was very time intensive we're very resource intensive for me and for me resource intensive is like a hundred thousand bucks right like it was a lot of time for me as a CEO to spend on that but part of the reason was this exact question was trying to like be a balance of like not just being all roofers and feeling like that overweight so some people were like hey tim

did you switch or are you doing more because you know you didn't do that well in roofing you know we've done very you know anyways we've done well in roofing so it's more just like trying to answer that question better what uh what do you when you meet an owner of founder and their marketing team maybe their general manager or co-o and you start to talk to their cmo or VP or whoever's ahead of marketing what are some things you can't stand that you're like not going to work with that company what will talk to me about the worst talk to me about the best yeah Yeah, I think just kind of, you know, I used to get eager when somebody was talking a lot of smack about their last marketing agency. I would get like, ooh, we're way better than everybody, you know, like that early pride.

And then now I'm just like, okay, so how many have you had in the last couple years? And if it's like five, I'm like, we're trying to see ourselves out of that conversation because that's going to be messy. they're going to hate us. I mean, you're not going to love us if you just had five agencies in two years. So that's something that I see. Obviously, call answering systems. We're always trying to, like, partner with people

to, like, help, you know, the homies with power selling pros. Like, I'm trying to, like, figure out what else could be part of this to be helping people with that? You know, at the end of the day, data is a scary double-edged sword for an agency, right?

If there is a abundance, it is just a pure, like, PE play, sometimes they get a little, like, six months is not, they can't handle six months for ROI and like SEO, right? And then on the other hand, I think it's worse when somebody has no data and doesn't know, because even if the math works out for, you know, close rate and booking rate and amount of leads and their goal, sometimes. you lose people just because they're unsophisticated and they're not understanding the ROI, which is our job at the end of the day, and that's what we're trying to get better at is be a little bit more consultative. So as time goes on, hook and like any agency kind of just has to get more consultative and like coach people better on the actual numbers. And as time goes on, hopefully those are, you know, you're getting better with those numbers. In our case, I think the only thing that will hold you back as an agency or a home service company is like if you don't want to look at them, if you don't, if you want to like hold your nose when you're looking around the numbers.

But otherwise, if you drill in on them, even if it doesn't look great right at the beginning, you have to keep looking at the numbers, which is something that I've had to learn, you know, like Ellen Roar style on money. I took pride that I didn't sign into my bank for a year like I don't take pride in anymore and like ignorance of money so I was there once too I'll tell you you know I kind of worked this out in the last three months because we we use a special media buyer we've got somebody that specializes in GMBs we got somebody that's a different company PBC a different company organic a different company LSA a different company does PFP then we've got Valpat Clipper then we've got and so I meet with them once a month and basically what I told them is look number one I need you to hold us accountable. We're in so many markets right and I don't think it's because of the booking rate but if the conversion rate or average tickets off

I'm going to need to pull back. I'm going to need my VPs on this call so we have this come to Jesus conversation and most of it's about internal communication and accountability but then I also say if this isn't working we're either going to have to lower our spend or find another partner

because if we're We've got the best KPIs in the industry, I feel like. And not in every market. But I'm like, I know our ticket averages. I know our conversion rate. I know our booking rate. And I'm going, if you can't make it work with us, how are you going to make it work with Joe Schmoe that's charging a third of us

that doesn't answer his phone nights weekends early morning? They get a bunch of abandoned calls. Like, the problem I have with PPC, my CFO came up to me the other day. He goes, how could it be competitive? How could we have to pay $200 for a CPA or cost for acquisition? And I said, because nobody knows. They just say any jobs today. They just see, like you did, they don't look at their bank account.

They're saying, I want calls. And so they're set to bid at whatever it costs. And I'm like, Adrian is my CFO. I'm like, trust me. They have no idea what they're paying per lead. They have no idea what they're paying per acquisition. They're just like, I don't have work. And PPC is the easiest thing to throttle us with.

And I think PBC is pretty expensive. If you're if you're just straight doing broad terms like garage repair, HVAC repair, or fix my roof or whatever the search terms are there, you're going against a lot of companies that either have it turned on to max bid or they're sophisticated and no higher quality scores. I mean, what does your take, SEO versus PBC versus LSA versus optimising or Google my business page? Oh, yeah.

I like to kind of do the look down the search result page and like order your efforts there first unless it gets too expensive basically. So LSA and then maps, you know, I think ads and then Google maps and then organic. That's kind of the way I look at it as like in order. But it's totally like if somebody's swimming in leads, they have to, you know, some people are just like booked out a long ways. Yeah, yeah. then they got capacity issues cancellations and they can't put the call yeah so those people i might push to more organic because you should be investing somewhere you shouldn't stop marketing you know so organic and brand you know what i mean anything with brand and at first of course

a kick charge or like somebody that's really good at branding but then also the brand heavy community marketing stuff that that's kind of what this book is about and i'm not trying to get into that yet but this like so much of it is talking about those those um blue ocean community marketing things that you can do and just like that 101 for other folks the red ocean is where everyone's already competing and then looking for blue ocean right and what it where is where are people not spending all their money already because it's hard and honestly it's hard and a lot of it's about local super hyper local stuff because it's hard for p to compete with you there and they don't even know half the time so it's like you have to go into these little blue oceans and try to find

inventory i'm going to put that in quotes inventory things like events and things like relationships with you know organizations in your community and kind of just finding inventory that doesn't exist on a spreadsheet you know what i mean that type of stuff and that's that's kind of the the mood here is about finding the blue oceans for marketing and kind of giving a list of a bunch of blue oceans and yeah your chapter is really good i just read it this morning and review well it was it was short it was narrow i appreciated what you put in there i mean i i enjoyed being part of the book i was going to ask you when you wrote how to become a hometown hero what were some of the largest takeaways would you enjoy the most about it yeah when you got to

meet all these people i mean you've got you've got myself roger wakefield uh tim medley and the the people go on and on and on yeah um so there was a pun of there's a lot more charitable community driven stuff that i think i thought i was going to put in this book to begin with it's probably a little bit more like uh hey you should be giving back than i thought it was going to start as but i think as i tapped into like the more community marketing stuff a lot of it is related to giving so that surprised me um i think i i was pleasantly i feel like i was driven into my kind of understanding my ideology i'm marketing a little bit more which is hey chat chitb five just came out today how cool is that but everyone kind of thinks they're going to hack their way with with i i think that hey we should

be doing everything we can to learn that and get agents and all this stuff. We got to try all the stuff. We need to do all the things, but it is helpful to understand the fundamentals, the emotional core of marketing and what's persuasive communication. So I think really trying to understand better what persuasive communication looks like in home service marketing and then also just learning more persuasive communication for myself writing a book, right? It's a challenge to write a book. It's hard to fit as much as I'd love to fit in there. But it's a challenge, kind of boiling it all down and try to give the most important pieces.

It's a really thick book with a lot of great stuff. I haven't gone through it yet. I mean, I did go through it, but I haven't read it word for word yet. You know, I know there's this craze about AI. It's the most common question I get, what are you doing with AI? And I kind of had an epiphany a while back. And I said, you know, I want to go double down on traditional TV and radio. When everybody, it's kind of like a magician, you're looking over here and I'm doing this.

And we're getting involved more in community and nonprofit. And we're getting involved so much in social media. You know, one of the guys you really had spot put in this book a lot as Marcus Sheridan. And I'm a big, big, big fan. I mean, I talk to him all the time. And I think he also. wrote a book called Endless Customers, which came from They Ask You Answer. And it really is what we're doing for our organic plan of growth and giving people

more answers. A lot of people are self-service now, 80% of our clients. They want to understand, you know, if I was looking for a watch and I'm looking for a Rolex, I'm not looking for the cheapest price, but I want to see a price. I mean, it's literally like if you go fill out a form to get a price, that used to work. It doesn't like, people are like, I'm going to get my answer somewhere. There's so much more content available where people are just putting it all out there. So we decided we're going to put it all out there. And we're working hard on that. What do you think of Marcus Sheridan? How did you become buddies with him? So he became a client of ours after he found us on chat GPT. So he works with us with the

pool company. And I'm on PBC. And so that was first of all, can you imagine? I love Marcus Sheridan. Like I'm a huge fan. and you can see it all over our website. Like, we answer all the questions, even if they're uncomfortable, generally on the website. And you can see all our videos that are embedded. So, like, when he came through as a lead from Chad GPT out,

you could imagine, like, that's so cool. And then he just invited me to go offshore fishing with him one day. So, and I just, you know, picked his brain. You can imagine you, I just picked his brain on all the things I'm trying to do. I'm trying to learn how to be a better keynote speaker and all this stuff. But like I said, persuasive communication.

and I feel like I'm learning so much from him where we're also consulting with his question first group for our AMs to get better at consulting essentially and basically being curious but then also on keynotes. I think this is good. You'll like this, I think. Maybe this doesn't apply to everyone,

but maybe because it's persuasive communication, it all applies. He's got this system, right, where he asks questions, it's the clear path question method where you ask questions and, but you know the answer, you know what I mean? And you lead the audience with questions, you know exactly where each one is going. It's like a madlib, but you know the answer. And then you lead them.

So then they come to the same logical conclusion that you wanted them to, but you didn't do it through like preaching. You did it through asking good questions. And so just picking up, man, it's so fun to pick up. stuff from folks like that that just have mastered communication to such a degree, you're just like, boom, you know, I feel the same around you sometimes. And I think that, yeah, that's a big thing for me is just getting around people that are killing it. And I, I just got to get Hormosey just 10 minutes on my business only, dude. That was crazy, dude, like two days ago.

Like, and literally seven people in the group got to answer questions or ask questions specifically about their business and him specifically on our business he's like you're going the right direction i'm like yes uh and your uh your homie's lips electric electric were there lips electric and they were talking so much good things about you and all evy systems and home service freedom and uh yeah i don't know man just getting around people getting like i paid to be in that room it's good to pay to be into you know people have said it before but paying to be in bigger rooms with crazier people and learning from them.

People dream big, you know, I love Alex Ramosey, big fan, big follower by every one of his books, listen to all his content. The one thing that I'm not so sure of is the people that go to that event at Acquisition.com

and I would tell this to his face as at the end it becomes how do I get in bed with you on your business? And that's okay. Because to be completely transparent, there's a lot of home service companies in the next five years. and we don't want to invest in, whether they're part of freedom or not.

But I know my lane. I'm not going into real estate. I'm not going into hairdresser and salons. And I'm not going into dog walkers and, you know, poop shoveling. And I feel like he's like, I've got a system that works for everything. And I feel like I really, really, really understand home service. I understand how to raise capital and use debt to make the deal better, how to negotiate with vendors. I understand the, you know, the truck side of it or the advanced depreciation, how to build the manual.

some of these things are universal but now it's like a one size fits all whatever your business is I'm going to be in bed with you on and I just I think that's a jack of all trades a master of none and I think you you disappoint a lot of people I was just watching this thing called baller busters and I looked at every video and they're all about certain individuals that I know you're looking for yourself you know what I think I think it would be hard if they really researched me because I don't make these crazy promises. I don't, you know, they had recently, um, Brandon Dawson and, you know, he's going to sue them. And the point was that all they did is use his own podcast about they used it against them. So I got to be, what happens, Tim, by the way, is you got to be careful

what you say is you start to grow. And, you know, I really do care what people think about me. Not, not the random strangers and the people that live in their mom's basement, but the people that meet me, they shake my hand, they get to know me, they might spend time with me at the office or the house. I care probably too much about what they think. Everybody says, don't care what other people think. And I'm like, but they got to get to know me. And then if they don't like me, I'm like, well, did they really get to know me? Because I'm super humble. I try to pay it forward. I genuinely want to see them win. And it's hard for me. And I think you're a little bit in the same direction is like, you might say, dude, losers, haters are going to hate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

but I think you care quite a bit what people think too. Yeah. Absolutely. Maybe you don't, but I, you know, I've lied to myself and say I don't give a shoot. Yeah.

Oh, I totally care. Yeah. And I mean, like I, you know, you go viral everyone, so I'm sure you get like bigger videos and like those people that have no clue who you are and they're like just talking smack. Who cares? Who cares?

But then, yeah, it's the people you know and the people that have actually met you and I mean like the truth is is so many people talk nice about like everyone can say the nicest things on the planet but then there's one guy who's like you know saying something weird hey don't do that we're watching but uh there's somebody doing that and you're like what but it's often to enrich themselves there's you know what I mean like it's often to like use your brand to kind of level themselves up so i think people like use like kind of a hater aid thing to like kind of hey you know this guy also and i don't mean like you know just got to be careful about all that well you but i mean like okay so can we talk about the grand card on thing or no yeah i

don't care what we talk about yeah oh okay i just like there's definitely been a lot of people with them coming in a home service or like roofing and stuff like that there's been a lot of I mean, I don't know. You're talking about a genre. Let's go to genre. There's a genre of person coming into home service that is not from home service. And they're kind of trying to, it's just a capital play. It's a little bit more of a capital play than I,

then I like, they shouldn't, they maybe shouldn't be teaching the seminar. Well, my problem is a lot of these guys, the only way they make money is by teaching the seminar. They don't actually, when the businesses get involved, very few of them have success. so they make money on the education. If you think about it, that's what a lot of these people do. You know, Jim Leslie flies to our boardroom members, there's 12 of them, and spends three days with them, and actually gets invested into their business

and finds the biggest holes. And what we're proud of is, like, if we can't make massive impact, one guy was doing 22, million, 3% of the bottom line, this year he's going to do 47, 18 to the bottom line. That's one year. And so we've really let the right businesses. And by the way, I don't want to be, I want to say more than I say yes. And by the way, if we hate doing business with you, you know what was crazy at last year's freedom is there was like 15 people that came that were just trying to sit in the back of the room and pull people into theirs.

And I told Jim, who cares? I really don't care because at the end of the day, these networking things, that's what they do. But I think our things stand up to anybody's. And I think Jim's a genius and the team's a genius. and, you know, we partnered with L. Levy and Alan Roar, and we've got the best of the best. And not to mention, we built it off the model of A1 on what works. And if we can make 25,000 calls a month work at an $1,100 average, that's including zeros, door, sales, and service, I know there will be a time I'm in an HVAC plumbing, electrical roofing.

And, you know, I say this as nicely as possible, and I'm trying to stay humble, but no one's going to stand a chance. There's no operator out there. There's no marketing team. I don't think once I enter those industries, and I say this to be the nicest as possible, but when people find out I'm in those industries, I'll negotiate better with the vendors. People will come work for us that are better

because they'll be owners of the business because I do equity incentive programs. And I just know if I'm able to do 25, people are like, well, yeah, it's harder in A-TAC. Well, how much does it cost to generate a leader in A-track? Because most of the time, we're looking at a $200 acquisition cost. maybe you're at 3 or 400 but your ticket average

and the money you're taking home is 10 10x so do the math so I just can't wait I can't wait to spread my wings but right now keep your head down focus you know there's a reason race horses you actually put that in the book race horses wear goggles

is because they need to focus on winning the race you know they wear blinders right they're blind they're so focused and so many small businesses man they're like, maybe I should invest in real estate. Maybe I should invest in that bar. It's time to get the second house.

They have no idea how to, they don't understand discipline. That's tough. That one's tough, man, because you'll see somebody whose business is good and then they're just pulling out too much money and trying to do three other businesses. And it's like,

I don't think you can, at a certain point. And we're all up and, like when you're in those first chunk of years, you're all up and down. you can't just be shoveling money out of the business trying to like be an investor that early and I know that there's there's exceptions but God that's a tough one because it's like people I'm rooting for and then they get pulled into a bunch of different businesses and then

all of them fail they're juggling and you drop everything and you're rob and Peter to pay Paul and everybody you know you hear Gary Vee you got to have a side hustle my problem is with a side hustle and that's why I love Dan Martell he's like how much do you make per hour at that business. And if it's the most amount of money, don't focus on anything else. Gary, what's his name? The one thing, Gary, Gary Keller wrote the one thing is focus. And I would say the hustler had to die for the leader to be born is once I started committing

all my life and energy to one thing, everything changed. And I would tell all the people out there go all in on what you're working on. don't don't don't live above your means if you're not willing to downgrade your if you're not willing to downgrade your lifestyle for a few years to live the lifestyle you want you care too much about what people think yeah no absolutely I agree and there's there's a lot of that like not only on the personal life side but in business right like if you have a bad year like the ability to be flexible on the up and down you know what I mean like to be able to let go of people people quickly. Let's just say it. You have to be able to be willing to not get attached

to your current head count if something's, you know, not right. Hey, guys, hope you're loving today's episode. We're just five days away from Freedom 2025. And I keep getting asked by people, Tommy, how will networking at your event translate into real results for my business? It's a great question. Here's the simple answer. The people you'll meet at Freedom have been there and done that. Want to learn a new lead generating strategy. you'll meet a guy who went from 50 leads a month to 500. Curious how someone scaled their team from 5 to 50 techs in two years without compromising quality, that owner will be sitting right next to you.

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That's freedomevent.com. All right, back to the episode. One of the things I wanted to ask you is you do a great job on LinkedIn. You know, we've got X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. We've got all these different places to post. Why do you like LinkedIn? So actually, I mean, we've cranked on LinkedIn. I don't know if I like it.

We spent a lot of time there back in the day. I'm actually my biggest one is Facebook. And I generally push contractors to spend more time on Facebook just because the average size. So I post there, but I don't, that's not my like biggest one. And I do think you kind of got to choose to a certain degree. Like I'm starting to get a little marketing department now. Like I have a marketing manager and a video guy. And, you know, I've started to get that.

in place for me but you kind of when you're when it's just you you kind of got to choose like your one or two that you're going to go really hard on I did it back in the day and I'll continue to have some presence on LinkedIn because employees so now like for instance like we've got a video going out tomorrow that's sick that's just our team going to a twins game and like talking about how much they love working here because I'm going to try to get talent right so when I do cool stuff on LinkedIn and even like we just did a cold plunge challenge with my team and each one of them like got to choose a charity to give 500 bucks to and like eight of them did it five minute cold plunge under 50 degrees it's called the hometown hero challenge go do it like i told you go

do it you don't have to i will do it yeah oh yeah yeah yeah Tommy too you better go do it but anyone watching go do it but um that type of stuff like sticks out so if you do things that are a little bit more casual, not that like formal on LinkedIn. It just it cuts through because everyone's used to everyone just kind of being almost not authentic on LinkedIn. And so you can really cut through the algorithm just by like doing more laid back stuff and kind of showing your culture for what it really is. I think that that's an opportunity on LinkedIn. But yeah, my biggest one I go hard on is Facebook and then second YouTube. We get a lot of business from both of those yeah i didn't i didn't bring that one up that's something where we're working on that's

supposedly the best one um you know i know that you which one is youtube youtube is we're going to start committing i mean as i love you to marcus sheridan believes youtube will be far bigger than google in five years it won't even be close yeah become the largest search engine by far so i am we're going to commit ourselves to doing better on youtube i love youtube and it's so simple i mean you know you know you You've already figured it out. You've figured it out a little bit. You're being humble.

It's like the big numbers thing. You know, it's like there's big names. Like, you know, like it's, I think one thing that's done really, two things I've done really well done really well for us. Office tours, you could do that. It's sick. It's so fun. And it's plus it's fun to go out there anyways.

And then two big number sales guys. You know what I mean? And I know that it's like your ideal person you're talking to is usually the owner. But if you get the sales guys talking about it, too, you kind of like get the owner by inference. So that's kind of my strategy has been because those just cut through. There's such a bigger audience for sales guys and especially these large numbers. So yeah, those are some of our best content on there, which might apply. You know, you're on a lot of podcasts.

You're on mine today. You're on seven figure agency, the Roofing Academy, service MVP. what are your takeaways as you sit here you learn you talk to these different people i know all those guys uh why do you do that i know i do it all the time and i got my own reasoning but yeah i use it as a learning channel i actually and i build relationships yeah definitely for me having people on the podcast it's almost like free consulting and i use i use all i use as much of it as i can right i use all that information and i apply it and i hope you've seen me apply some of the stuff you've told me over the years because you've given me a lot of time and i appreciate that very

very much being on other podcasts it's just we don't i think we always underestimate how much market there is and we think everyone knows us and they don't you know what i mean so that's why i'm aggressive with that is their audiences are different and it's the relationships and then it so the relationship side of it getting in with these people they're They could refer you, right? That's kind of my mindset. And then secondly, they have a chunk of the audience that you don't have. And ultimately, we just have to, we probably are like 10% of the market knows about us,

even though sometimes I would think it's like 50% because I like, because people act like they know us, right? They act kind of chummy with it. Like, oh, hook, you know, all this stuff. But most people don't know us. And just like recognizing that's the truth for almost all of us, It's like 10% of your market at tops knows about you, and we got to try to get it to 50. So that's why I'm really aggressive, like, getting on other people's content.

And I think it applies, even if you're not like trying to get on all these industry podcasts, you're a home service business owner, getting into other people's content around the city. There's a bunch of other home services. There's a bunch of other influencers in your local market. I think people could do more of that, like apply these principles of what you're seeing Tommy do and I do, but apply it to the local market and who are the centers of influence. Sometimes it's not like people that have influencer and their Instagram, but it's another, it's a remodeler who has 10,000 people following them on Instagram or something.

So it's like finding ways to just cross-pollinate audiences is the biggest thing for me. Yeah, I talked to a guy that's super smart years ago that said, you got to have a purpose for a podcast. And he said, you know, the ideal podcast is for listeners that are your avatar so for me that's homeowners property managers it's it's finding out people that want to know how to make their home worth more money now i haven't gone down that road because when i started my podcast eight years ago i want to learn more about the best the best in home service home improvement so i'm not i will never end this podcast i love this podcast but if you're going to build a podcast why not talk to homeowners why not educate them where people are listening to like the bob

villas. I can't think of a whole lot of influencers. You know, I like dirty jobs and all those guys. You get in front of your clients, they listen, they're going to use you. So if you could build a way to get in front of realtors, designers, architects, builders, in your space, in your market, you'll be super successful. That's the best advice I can give us. Understand who your avatar is, build value. Make sure they know you're a cool dude. That's just somebody you go have a beer with or go fishing with. And they're like, man, this guy is like, yeah, I'm going to use them. You know, I mean. Yeah, and that's like a big theme in this book, but also just in my mindset as well for our business. I think it relates to home services is like, I'm often marketing for referrals,

not just leads. I think a lot of these folks, I think they get stuck. They're posting a picture with their phone number and the website, and they want to lead every time they post. I think they're going to get a lead from them just posting on social and it's like understanding the culture of that platform and I think it's more posting to get referrals because people need to know about it's like I connect with a lot of referral like people that could refer me and that's kind of my mindset on this stuff I think it's if you're posting for referrals it also gets you leads too so it's not like it has to be either or it's just if you go for referrals leads come in too.

Yeah, no, it's amazing what happens is if you just got this discipline and consistency to do it all the time. You know, one of the things I was listening to the other day, it was Alex Tremozier or Gary Vee is just, it might not be perfect, just post it. It gets better. You never know which one's going to take off. You never want, no. Another one is turn your employees.

I mean, one of the biggest things that I failed at that I'm working on right now is if the employees aren't posting what they do, where they work, the best store they installed. nobody knows in their circle that they do that and if they knew that i mean everybody they went to high school what they go to church with where their kids go to school and if they just posted a video a month it'd be like that top of mind awareness and that would be a game changer what's your favorite strategy what was the one thing you were like dude i never thought about that there's probably several of them but was there anything that was like that's genius in the book there's so many i mean honestly like there's like 20 things in here that like

Like, I wouldn't have come up with myself. That's why it's like the 27 different people added a lot. One of the things I like is John Senac. He's big in roofing, him talking about incentivizing the introduction versus the deal. So a lot of people's like referral thing is the, if the deal closes from somebody, they refer. But he's pushing like, get a bunch of $50 gift cards and give it to them a. soon as they make the introduction, which I thought was pretty smart. That's definitely one that I feel like we've started to experiment with that with ourselves a little bit. And I think that

it is very relevant. But there's so many, man. There's like literally like there's, I got a ton of information by making this book, which is cool. And some of it I had to research. There's a few chapters in here. I was like, this would really flesh out the book, but I didn't know it from the bottom you know yet so like for instance like how to be more funny because I talk about funny in the book and I talk about like cute animals and babies and using all the brain chemicals right to get more memorable and the funny thing is like I'm still working on that right like I I would love to get funnier and I believe it's a skill we can cultivate so part of it was like learning and I'm still learning I'm trying to like I'm hoping in the next few months to attempt stand up you know I'm

trying to do an improv class I'm because it's so it's so valuable in communication like humor is so valuable and so anything I can do to cultivate that to me is like I just say the the funniest people in the world are not poor well one of the things that I know was always funny is of when you can make fun of yourself so yeah whenever I get the chance I I try to like bring down the room and you know, we could be talking about anything, and I'm like, yeah, well, I've got ADHD. I'm barely able to focus on this for the one minute at a time. And by the way, you've got 90 slides, and you're probably going to get lost because I can't help myself.

Whatever I could say, but what humor is to me is when you could explain a situation that people live it with you and say, yes, that's me. Like, have you ever walked into an airplane and people, you start with, everyone's been, how many of people here ever flew in an airplane? like, well, everybody. So then you start out where everybody knows or how many of you, you have ever farted in front of your wife or girlfriend? And, like, you know, and everybody's like thinking about that time.

So you have them live that moment. And it's so fun. Like I used to tell people, you know that asshole that gets up, like, right when they park in the bell and they stand up in the aisle? Like, you just, why, why is that guy standing up in the aisle? I go, that's me. I'm the guy standing up in the aisle. I'm the guy you hate.

Yeah. And so I love. And I'm not very funny. It's, I think, why do you do that? Can we just shut that for a second? Why do you do that? Well, number one, I'm six foot three. I'm six foot three.

Yeah. And the big deal is, I mean, look, I'm anxious to get out of the plane. I'm literally like stretching out. I always touch the ceiling and I put my hands straight up against the ceiling. And I'm like, I want to get my bags out. You know, the other person stands up and then you can't put the damn thing down because they're standing in the way and you're like, excuse me. And I like that my backpack on. I'm just, I just, I only sit in aisle seats.

I do never sit windows unless it's like if we're booking a flight that Ashley and Brie know I'm only aisles and I want to have just something about being able to get up David Carroll always posts memes from dope marketing shout out always post memes about about that guy and so I wonder if do you ever comment back to him on his memes or have you seen his memes on that he's like he's supposed to like he texts me a couple times a month he He's a good buddy. I spent time in him in Minnesota. He's been over my place a million times. Like, I love hanging out with them. They're great people. I enjoy. You know what's really hard is like, no matter if I do business with people or not, and I've done a lot of business with Dave over the years,

and like, I just like it. Like, look, I would not be insulted. And I mean this from the bottom of my heart. If you were in my market and you didn't choose me as a garage store vendor, like it wouldn't break my heart. Like, I put friendships so much above doing business. And I'm very fortunate because a lot of people, people, and this is the craziest thing the last two years, they don't let me know they're using my company. They just text me afterwards and say, you did a great job. You just, we just paid you $7,500. And I love that. It's like if I own a bar, I'm not going to say, dude, how do you get me in there and get me a bottle service at half price?

I'm just going to text you afterwards and say, dude, phenomenal job. I spent $5,000 at your bar. You know, I took my whole crew there. We had a blast. And I love the people that do it. and it's not, it's not, I don't expect it, though. I would never say you're not my friend because you didn't use me. I just, I think I hold friendship much above that.

And look, if you want the cheapest and you're selling your home, have you called me, I could do it for you. And I would do it for you. But ultimately, look, maybe we weren't available. I don't really care what the situation is, because doing business with friends is hard, as you know, and family. Yeah. Well, yeah, absolutely.

And you really, like, we don't get that. Like, ultimately, I've got like three. real for five real like closer friends right it's like i'm not squandering that anymore because i've hired people you know what i mean i don't do that i don't do that like as employees because it's scary um well i'll give you some advice your team did a job out of my house i will throw that out there you we we hired a one garage and they did an incredible job for us thank you what i really like i think i think they got away with we got away with just a repair well good it's nice and i i'm not I appreciate it like because it was like not that expensive.

I was like kind of like Tommy's company must be pretty expensive, but it was actually a really good service and deal. And the guys were super nice. That's probably the most notable thing. So whoever was at our house, if you remember who came out or whatever, I think I posted a picture, but they were just very nice.

And that's, that matters because I'm, you know, it's my wife often dealing with that. I'm like, I don't want it to be high pressure. High pressure sales guys. Yeah, no, we don't do that.

But here's a piece of advice. If you are ever going to hire friends or family, there's two things you need to do. Number one, you don't work for me. I'm going to give you somebody else to be a direct report. Number two is we're going to do this as like a prenuptial agreement. We're going to have a walk away that we both agree. And when that happens, we've got to agree we're going to still be able to have Thanksgiving together. And I'll tell you, it's the hardest thing in the world.

I hired a buddy at another company. I ended up getting him a job. And he called me 18 times a day. And I'm like, you know what I do now? when we see each other he doesn't talk to me about work and I was very clear about that about this other career that he's in but I started hitting ignore I'm like I'm never going to talk to about business period never call me unless you want to talk about life and it's tough but here's the deal you knew that going in you put down the things and if you did it correctly

because there's some great people that you know will do great and I'll tell you it's 50-50 because they know fathers and sons that don't talk to each other anymore because of business So it's not easy. And I would, I do, I appreciate your five best closest friends that you keep that you keep yourself guarded. And I think you're doing the right thing. Yeah. Hey, if we have five close friends at this age, I feel like you're doing really good. I mean, it's, it's hard as a, it's hard out here for a pimp, you know, to have adult male friendships.

I mean, seriously, dude, we made a new friend, like a new couple. friendship recently like for real friends and like we're all kind of like similar industries and talking about the things we like and stuff but i'm like this is the best it's so good when you can make a real adult friends so that's a beautiful thing and people should i think it's important super important to try you know me and brie randomly every like few months i'll be like so who's your best friend she'll ask me and i'm like you know we go through these seasons of life of course the kids I grew up with were still close and I can go through

but really what it's kind of came down to if you talk to who am I communicating with I mean me and Aaron Gainer are about as close as you come I mean he flies out his son's going to ASU we confide in each other we don't hold back from each other we never talk down about one another in public we confess to each other's dreams so she she I've learned to say who is my best friend

because I don't go like this Tim, let's Pinky swear that we're best friends like we used to do when we were kids. But it's like who you're putting time, energy, and focus into. And who's actually delivering? Like, he's like, dude, make me a deal that you're going to work out at least five days a week the next two weeks. And he goes, I'll do the same and I'll send you videos. And I say things to him to motivate him. And we want to see each other win.

And that's rare these days. It's rare. Oh, yeah. I agree 100%. Tim. Garner, plumbing, plumbing, baby. Bumming's where it's that, man, go after them. Yeah, dude, in a perfect world, I'd love to do business,

but you know what's nice about once the money comes? And I will say this, is if you partner with somebody and money's kind of off the table because you guys have done so well, it makes it so much easier. And if you're sitting almost as a board seat versus in the business, that's why I think Russell Brunson, or not Russell Brunson, what's his name, Sir Richard Branson, he just hires top down. and he's not involved.

He hires the right people. They build the team. And it's not emotional. And if you're not doing great and losing money, he already discussed, I'm going to have to replace you before you got started. That's where I want to live in the future. Tim, how does,

I think, I was going to say one last thing about that. I think all of us could do better to think of ourselves as board members, stakeholders of our business, not just CEOs. You know, I think that that's a huge unlock for me. me is I've started to like think that way and increasing enterprise value right like I think

thinking that way and not being so in it is a beautiful thing when when people can get there for sure I agree you know money is a tool but but I know what you guys do you travel around and believe it or not money is a tool to have fun and travel money's a tool for fitness to get the best trainer take the right supplements the right peptides to get the right stuff at the Texas scan that cost money. You know, if you think about family, when you want to go on vacations and, you know, it's not only money, it's time, but it costs money. And faith, I mean, if you're giving 10% to the church, that cost money. And almost everything, it's a tool. But it's like, what's nice about it is the reason I say enterprise values, if you worked hard for three years

and got your business at $2 million of EBIT and got a 6x, that's $12 million. And I just don't think, people just don't, they don't think about the end in sight. They pay themselves, a ton of W-2 money versus building real a massive exit that could it could be 5 million it could be 20 million it doesn't really matter and they're like I want to get to 100 million and I'm like why and they don't really have an answer because you proved this possible well I'm not married I don't have kids never been married and uh it's something I had to do because you know it's something I decided when I was four years old but at the end of the day don't live my life you know write down the reasons why you want to build.

Imagine your parents are at an age. You can still have fun with them and you make enough money. I've talked to you about this. I'm like, you know, a lot of people say, I'm just having fun. I don't really have an exit. I don't really. It's like saying, hey, I'm going on a trip, but I don't know where I'm going. I'm not going to pay attention to the gas.

And who cares what mile per hour I'm going? Who cares if I get a ticket? It doesn't make sense to me. Because I've been there. And the reason I could talk about this, Tim, is I've been exactly there. I don't know where I'm going. I'm just driving. and I'm just trying to learn as I go.

And now I'm very, very good at understanding the destination. And it's not a lifestyle business. It's not a career for me. There's a goal. There's a site. I want to make a lot of millionaires in the process. I want to service, a lot of homes. I want to be a trusted advisor for my clients.

I want to build a legacy. But at the end of the day, yeah, the more money I make, the more people I can help. I can teach a lot more people to fish. And I just think it's totally wrong when people just say, oh, yeah, just figure it out as you go. you know things will start coming to you no have a plan i don't care if it's a six year plan eight year plan three year planned put it together build enterprise value and share the wealth

with the people that work for you to help build it and your family absolutely i got a seven year plan right now 2032 baby that's 232 but i mean like yeah i've got i've got a clear plan i want to sell this thing for 20 million so if you know anyone um and we'll figure it out and we might go past we might go past that. I think this thing could be 50 and I would be happy to overlap, you know, for a while into that, whether it be sooner than that or a little later than that. But I'm trying to, what I want at the end of the day is continuity, because I see private equity sometimes ruin stuff and I would like continuity. That's the toughest part to find is continuity between like our service oriented mindset and what we're trying to do and high, you know, customer service to what it

would be. I would, I would really love, and I would hold on to it if I can't find that continuity, really love the next buyer to like have continuity with what we've tried. Because that's what I think the brand, that's what I think brand is, is like the higher customer service, like, in being that symbol. If you're a premium premier service with great relationships, you could charge it to number one number two is private equity has more stress than you have. You might have to see I got to report to my customers. They're reporting to municipalities that took the whole teachers fund and put it in your business to make their money grow. And they've got to have weekly meetings with their limited partners. And I think people just think, oh, private equity is so evil.

No, they're investors. Just like in real estate, just like in bowling alleys and strip malls and all these other things. Like you think just be like private equities ruin it. Yeah, there are a lot of companies that say we're going to cut our way to the top. There are great ones out there, too. It's like house flippers. There are horrible ones. It's like plumbers that are horrible ones. And they just get a bad rap and there's venture capital and there's silent investors.

And there's all kinds of different investment thesis, but there's hedge funds. And I just, I'll tell you, I found a great partner. I'm going to find another great partner. And they leave me alone. They let me run the business. They give me a lot of insights when I need it. They've got a lot of capabilities. And, you know, they've got a deeper checkbook, which makes it easier to grow.

and I'd rather have a smaller piece of a massive pie than own everything. And I've learned to be very humble, ask a lot of questions and show up here and let them guide me. They've been where I want to go. So not in every aspect. They can't run this business. They know that. So I do agree with you continuity, making sure you're running towards the same, not taking advantage of everybody around you. There's a lot of people, man.

Tim, in my industry, I'm either loved or despised. They go, that guy charges a lot. But they never say how good he takes care of his employees. None of them ever say that that they drive new trucks and they get to train every day and they're buying houses and they got a bunch of PTO and we take them to Mexico and we take them to eat. We cook breakfast for them. They don't talk about that. They just say they take advantage of their clients. And the problem is they're installing inferior parts. They can't get out there for a week. They don't run warranty calls. Their cars are breaking down. They can't afford to market. That's why their guys quit because they can't keep them busy. They only talk about the little side they see and it just shows how not intellectual they are. It shows, and I was going to say, but I shouldn't call them that because they just, they don't know what they don't know yet. Yeah. Well, like you said about the cost per lead thing on Google ads, it's like if they don't know their numbers, they might be bidding it up and it's actually dumb.

Oh, yeah. It's the same with, it's the same with these prices if they're, they're being ridiculous. Some people are being ridiculous and you should not follow them. Well, I don't think you're a guy that likes the cheapest. I doubt you'd say, let me buy the most expensive. Yeah. If you said, that's understanding the investment. I mean, if I had a deck and it costs twice as much,

but they said with the type of wood we're using, it's actually a fake plywood, it never warps. You'll never have to paint it. And this is good with a 40-year warranty. We've been in business 62 years. And the average deck, if they show me the evidence, needs to be recoded every year,

and you're going to have to replace it every 10 years. What's the better investment? It's the one that was double. Financing. I'm down. As long as you got financing, I'll do it. 100%. I'll do the higher thing if you give me financing. Well, here's the deal, brother. I think you wrote a spectacular book, obviously. I got two books ahead of it, but I've gone through it. And I love what you did there. You were looking out for the small guy, looking for guerrilla marketing, looking at ways to improve their business. That's just not outspend yourself. When people want to get a hold of you, Tim, what's the best way to do that? Yeah, check out hookagency.com slash call to book a call now. And we are, like I said, HVAC plumbing, roofing, and we have some other home services as well.

But we're custom, consistent, and transparent. But if nothing else, this book is a steal. And really, we spend a lot of time on it. It's like 13, 14 bucks on Amazon. And it's got a lot of really good takes from other people, 27 home service industry, I think you will enjoy it, or you can go to Hometownherobook.com. And is there any other books that help shape your life other than the e-mith and, you know? Yeah, behind these ones.

Yeah, I've got a few that I love. We got building a story brand. Yeah, Donald Miller. Donald Miller. There's a 2.0 out now. Incredible about making the customer, the hero. Hey, this one's good, but it might not be in my normal one. The Power of Ownership.

This one's about HRV and, like, heart rate variability and taking tests to your body and the reason I'm a nutritionist now. But a few more that relate to business. These are my three favorite sales books. The challenger sale, 10X rule, and pitch anything. So those ones are all really good. One is about challenging people to change their mind. and then you own that idea in their mind for the rest of your life, setting way bigger goals and how big positioning and framing is in your pitch.

Those are my favorite three sales books. I love it. And we talked about a lot of things, Tim. I'm going to let you close us out with what's ever on your mind. Yeah, just gratefulness, man. I think so much vision, right? We have vision or lives. I think we should also have a vision for the energy and our relationships and the way we're treating people around us and also going towards our ideal state.

A lot of it has to do with fitness and nutrition and for me meditation, but it's like, what is my energy going to be like once I get all the things that I dream of? Let's say you're going to get all of. Let's say for a second, you're going to get all of these amazing things that you've put in your vision. you've written it down and you're consistently pushing on it what else could you add could you add this is what it feels like between my relationship with me and my wife and my kids and how could i show up in my relationship so a vision for relationships and personal energy not just things because i think things are great and then additionally aim bigger i love it man i've been thinking a lot about what good is all this wealth without health, you know, showing up being

optimistic, smiling, energetic, passionate. So you hit the nail on the head, my brother. I really appreciate you doing this today. It was great stuff. Yes, sir. Thank you for having me. All right, my man. I'll talk to you soon. 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 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 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.