The Home Service Expert Podcast - How A Burned Out Owner Set Up His Company To Run 6 Months Without Him | Dan Kuschell

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://freedomevent.com Dan Kuschell grew up on welfare in Detroit, built a direct mail company to $1 million in its first year at 22, and now helps home service companies grow through Breakthrough3X. In this episode, Dan and Tommy break down the one message method, why "know, like and trust" is the wrong model, the five pillars Dan found across 5,000 companies, how to ask for introductions instead of referrals, and the family photo mailer Tommy sent to 3,000 neighbors. Get Dan's free gift package for home service owners ⟶ https://breakthrough3x.com/tommymello Growth to Freedom Podcast ⟶ https://www.growthtofreedom.com/ -- 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 🕐 -- 00:00 - Introduction 03:23 - From Welfare In Detroit To A Million Dollar Mail Business 05:05 - The Coach Who Blackballed Him And The Mailer That Fixed It 10:04 - 34,000 Leads A Month And Why Recruiting Comes First 14:44 - A 1 In 500 Surgery Two Weeks After His Son Was Born 16:19 - The Questions That Rebuilt His Life 18:49 - Tommy's Grandmother And The Good Hours 24:18 - The Question That Took Six Weeks To Answer 27:33 - When Being A Man Of Your Word Holds You Back 31:20 - Could You Take 30 Days Off Your Business 34:17 - The One Message Method 39:06 - Five Pillars Found Across 5,000 Companies 42:36 - Why Know, Like And Trust Is Wrong 45:01 - One Post A Week And $5 A Day 46:00 - Agencies That Own Your Website And Ad Accounts 48:28 - Answer Every Lead In A Minute Or Less 52:39 - Why Hiring Ads Bring In Customers 55:35 - Be The Chairman, Not The Technician 1:00:14 - Is Branding A Waste Under $20 Million 1:02:34 - Partner Gifts That Create Referrals 1:08:44 - The Truck That Does Everything And Stands For Nothing 1:09:27 - Fix Your Pricing First 1:13:22 - Stop Asking For Referrals, Ask For This 1:17:28 - A Family Photo Mailed To 3,000 Neighbors 1:20:55 - Where To Find Dan 1:25:38 - Two Books That Shaped Dan 1:26:57 - Play A Bigger Game 🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://freedomevent.com Check Out My Social Media: Tiktok ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook ⟶ https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/

I realized that I had built my own version that was a misleading version of success. I was given my health left over. I was over 85 pounds heavier Tommy than I am today. I was not giving my family much time. You know, I was hardly home, you know, 90, 100 hours a week. When I went through this heart procedure for four plus days, you know, it scared me is what it did. And I came out of there. I'm committed to make some shifts. And you talk about it in your book, elevate a lot. Who do you got to become? And so I sat down and identified, you know, what do I really want? Welcome back to the home service expert. I've got a guest today who's going to rock your world. His name is Dan Cushel. He grew up on welfare in Detroit, watching his dad

fight to find clients. At 22, he started a direct mail company for health clubs, hit a million dollars in revenue his first year, and eventually grew that business to over 200,000 clients with 170 employees before selling it. He's built 12 companies since then, served as the CEO of Joe Paul's Genius Network, who helped over 5,000 founders across 180 industries. Today, he works primarily with home service businesses. Dan joins us for this episode to break down his one message method for landing ideal clients, a referral system that generates without ever asking for it.

And why most companies are selling wrong. It's kind of funny, Dan. I did a three-mile walk with Joe this morning. No kidding. That's amazing. Yeah, he's always a hoot. I mean, the problem is I ask him for one referral, he'll send me 40. You know, he just knows everybody.

So he gave me a few referrals this morning. He's one of the, you know, he wrote the book on it. You know, life gives to the givers, takes from the takers. And, you know, he's always been that way. I've known Joe for about 20-some years. even before he started Genius Network. But that's his superpower. He's just amazing.

So Dan. Well, I want to share something that leads right into our unique system. You talk a lot about process. And so we wrote the book on this, which is called direct response branding. It's the merge of those two things. It's not one or the other. It's do both. Bring them together.

And then magic happens and you hit that bullseye. Anyway. I love it. You know, I've read a similar book by Dan Kennedy, called no BS about direct marketing. And I've studied that book. And then no BS about marketing to affluent clients. And the idea being is, you know, I'm not in the richest of the areas of the United States yet. I mean, there's pockets in Phoenix. There's pockets in Michigan. There's pockets in Milwaukee. But I just know once I get into South Florida and some parts of California, it's like

you don't need as many clients. We're going to talk about all this stuff, Dan. I just want to, I always get to know the audience has got to get to know you, but I wanted to get that out. my chest. So, and I want a sign copy of that book. You got it. So you grew up on welfare in Detroit watching your dad fight for clients. I did as well. My dad had a transmission shop on Grashit, which you know because you're from Michigan and I'm from Michigan. At 22, you started your direct mail business for health clubs and hit a million dollars your first year, which back then was a lot of money, not saying you're old, but it's just 22. It was a long time ago for both of us.

How did you go from welfare to figuring out direct mail marketing? Well, here's a story. I don't think I've shared very many places, Tommy. So out of necessity, number one, watching my dad's struggle. I was 10 years old when he lost his first business, which was a restaurant and bar in the intercity of Detroit. It was a bad location. He didn't know how to market.

He didn't know how to run a business. And we went on welfare. We were on food stamps, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, man, this is painful. I don't like this. And so, you know, this was also around the time. because of that, I was going, I started my own landscaping business in the area and shovel and snow in the winter, you know, lawns, et cetera, and started earning money and started

understanding that side of it just at a grassroots in the trenches kind of way. And then my dad started another business and I was a big into sports. So I thought my real dream was going to be to play pro baseball. And things were heading that direction and then I had an injury of my senior year of high school. But along the way, my dad started that second business, a printing company in Livonia. You probably know Livonia. So he added in Livonia, it was called Minuteman Press, and things were gone. But I watched my dad not be able to market, and he didn't know how to run the business again. I was a little bit older, and this was when I started studying. My dad had got me excited about biographies, and most of it was sports-related, Tommy. You know, people like

Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Pete Ron. And I started seeing the characteristics the qualities you talk a lot about that in in your book elevate and also in home service millionaire you know the qualities and care who do you have to become and i was fascinated with this as well as psychology and then my senior year of high school my high school coach blackballed me and said i'm not going to promote you to you know the pro scouts that are reaching out or the big colleges that are reaching out because i was playing for uh another coach in the summer and i felt betrayed and all this sort of stuff so what do you do you do you you do what you can do. You control your controllables. My dad certainly instigated this, but we literally

put a direct mail campaign. My dad just passed away last year about this time, but he actually had the direct mail campaign, the resume I put together, the video, and we sent this thing out to hundreds of coaches all over the country. And it ultimately created so much demand that my high school coach was going to look like a total, you know, idiot. If he didn't talk to these coaches. I had Clemson fly into town and pulled me out of school. And I did a a private workout for them. I had pro scouts kind of do similar things, all off the back of market yourself, control your controllables, get in front of your perfect customer, because I didn't go after tens of thousands of colleges, Tommy. I went for the ones that I really wanted to focus on

and felt I had the best chance to connect with. And lo and behold, I found out something surprising. Not only can you do this in sports it, I was 16 years old when I did that. You can do it at 22, you can do it at 42, you can do it at 52, you can do it, you know, any business, anywhere, small, big, anywhere in between, small budget, big budgets, and anywhere. So that was really the genesis of my beginning. And then my sister, when I was in college, during the summer, she got me a job at a marketing company in a direct mail company. And again, I got fascinated.

I had a mentor. You talk about Al in your books quite a bit. And I had a mentor named Marshall, who took me under his wing. 18, 19 years old. And he started teaching me. And he's like, marketing. Market is the first word. You've got to be very selective on who you go to, right? Who you go to. And so he taught me about buying lists and list segmentation and focuses and affluent markets and different things like that. And then we had the direct mail back then. The internet didn't exist. So we had to be very choiceful of putting out a stamp, a letter, mail, like real hard cost of this stuff. And we would

send out these campaigns to health clubs. And he taught me how to do this. And lo and behold, the company that I worked in, they were very set in their ways. And I thought, you know, hey, I'm 22. I can do this better. And so that really led me to start my first company. And I rolled in a software. I hired a guy from Apple who had retired cashed in his chips and hired him to write a assessment program where like if you own a health club, we'd come to you first of all, Tommy. And we'd go, it's so irresistible offer. We'd go, hey, Tommy, if we'd, if we'd, could show you a way to generate a couple hundred new clients and it won't cost you anything out of pocket up front we'll pay for the radio we'll pay for the tv we'll pay for the direct mail and um

if we could do that after we generate profits we'll split the profits together would you be open to it right yeah of course so that was the infancy right and that was a door opener and then we'd run a basically analysis of their market in depth and then come back to them with this essentially proposal and performa to show them what could happen. And we'd have usually out of 10, we'd get seven that said, yes, they want to know more. And then out of the seven, we'd pick three because of a lot of market factors. So it was client selection. And again, I was so young. I didn't realize what I was really learning. Today, I realized what I was really learning, you know, the science, you know, what you're so good at teaching, the math, you know, the York chart,

you know, the different key pieces of leadership and all these sorts of things that matter to acquire a customer, even Sharon said it had cost to acquire the customer. So many people are blind with that, but I learned this at such a young age. I took it for granted, I think, in the beginning, but you know, certainly learned a lot more of this doing this for over three and a half decades. But that was the real start. And as much as I'd love to paint a picture that it was all, you know, like million dollars in the first year and it was all great, just as fast as I got it, I realized I didn't know how to run a business. I knew how to market. I knew how to sell. I did not know the side that you're so dang good at, which is ops and systematizing and being able to

develop the roles. And so the business imploded essentially, and I had to regroup many times, which is part of why it took, you know, a few companies to ultimately get to the big education company that grew that it did in a media company, both they grew to eight figures. I had some painful learning lessons of running the ops side of things to get it to work. So that's the genesis that leads us here to today where we get to help people like Joe and, you know, some of the other people that you've already brought up, that we've been able to help them grow exponentially. You know, what's interesting about all this, Dan, is

if operations works correctly and you recruit the right people and you invest in the people and care for them, the marketing becomes the easy part. And I just say that because I've always been pretty good at marketing. We get 34,000 leads a month. We're in 27,000 homes a month. Not every leads created equal, and we're going to discuss that.

But, you know, people are like, you can never do that in A-Jack because it's got a big shoulder season. I'm like, I can do this with anything. That's the cool thing about marketing is I market myself, I market the company, I market the people. And I don't think, here's one big kind of aha moment I figured out not so long ago, as if you applied all your marketing skills towards recruiting and got the right.

people on the bus and empowered them and accepted failure, running towards failure, letting them learn through their mistakes that we all have and embraced it and learn from your mistakes, the company would grow exponentially because in home services, as you know, and I want to talk about this, is its capacity. You need enough leads for enough technicians. You need enough technicians to hire and train. What made you choose to run into home services? Well, I got pulled into it. So one, my dad, you know, he was a blue collar worker. He was a mechanic by trade and also worked the lines at General Motors over at Turnstead.

I don't know if you remember where Turnstead was over there, the plant. So he's a blue collar guy. And, you know, he... How old was your dad? When was your dad born? 44. Okay. My grandpa retired from General Motors over there.

But he was 1910, so a little bit earlier. But go ahead. So 44. And then he was at Turnstead, the plant off of Springwells and Fort Street in southwest Detroit. And then he got moved to Saturn. You know, he was part of the new build at Saturn. And then he retired from Saturn. Got it.

You know, overall. But he was a blue collar guy that, you know, just had this blue collar work ethic. And so I learned a lot from my dad's work ethic and just mentality, grit and persistence, all the, he just demonstrated. He didn't teach it as much. He just demonstrated it, Tommy. And so he was also connected to a lot of guys that were very similar. You know, kind of, you know, you talk about an elevate. Lots of people talk about you become who you hang around. And so he was also around, you know, other mechanics, people that, you know, ran in nature, like one of my dad's best friend who became my childhood best friend, his dad owned an AC company. His name was Al Kovacs. And so he was just

an amazing guy. And so I also looked at him like a mentor as well from the AC side of things. And then, you know, I went about my way with the direct mail business, health clubs. And then ultimately, you know, working a client of ours, Joe Polish, Genius Network, we were helping Joe grow the community that he's got. And one of the people I connected with there was a guy named Mike. And you might even know, Mike. I think I've seen him highlighted on your show in the past or what have you. But he ran a company called Gold Medal out of New Jersey. Yeah, no, I know Mike. Well, Mike Aguilera. Yeah. He's a exactly. He's a beast, right? And so Mike, when he saw what I was doing with Genius Network, he's like, hey, do you do this for it? I'm like, yeah, this is our business. And so he's like,

I'd like to. And so we connected around the time he was at the tail end of gold medal and taking it to another level. And then he sold. And then he built this other organization that was a training business. And he said, hey, could you help me build that? And we did. And we did. And we did. And we. He helped him grow to, you know, 30 million a year. He sold that business as well, right? So I got a chance to then reconnect with the blue collar trades. And like we got in the trenches and like we've been able to help so many people. So that's the journey and the genesis.

And we have a lot of fun in the community because you know what it's like. I mean, you teach this. You live it. You breathe it. You take someone whose margins are so razor thin because it's more technician operated versus running it. like the chairman or the founder type. And you help them grow profitably. Many times it doesn't just increase their profitability. It saves their life. It saves their marriage. It saves their health. You know, you see these people that, you know, they're stressed and, you know, they hold their

weight. And then all of a sudden, you know, they look as fit as you do, right? And they're in their 60s looking as fit as you do in your 30s, right? And it's amazing to see this metamorphosis. So it's just something that, you know, I think my dad was the instigator, Tommy. then Al Kovacs, if I were picked the two things. I love that. Now, listen, in 2007, when I started my business, actually, you were running five companies when your son was born. Two weeks later, you were on an operating table with a one and 500 chance of dying.

What changed after that day? Good to great mentality. I thought I had something good. outside look good, revenue look good, numbers look good. But I was beat up truly. Like I'd love to tell you again, it was perfect. And I, you know, everything was, you know, I realized that I had built my own version that was a misleading version of success.

I was given my health left over. I was over 85 pounds heavier, Tommy, than I am today. I was not giving my family much time. My daughter was two. You know, I was hardly. home, you know, 90, 100 hours a week, just grinding it, hustling, burning it. And when I went through this heart procedure for four plus days, you know, it scared me is what it did. And I came out of there, you know, just, I'm committed to make some shifts. And I got one of my other coaches involved,

and she really helped me. And you talk about it in your book, Elevate a lot. But who do you got to become? And so I sat down and identified, you know, what do I really want? Right. You talk about this. Don't do what I do because you think that's what you need to do, decide what you really want. You talk, I think it's in your first section of leadership. It's so critical. Like this little thing is such a big thing for most people, because I see the same thing. It sounds like you identify with, which is so many people are, you know, they're just doing stuff to do it. They don't know why. Why are you doing it? So for me, she got me to really get clarity, Tommy, on what do you want and what do you not want? Then she got me to get clear on who are you?

Not like fancy pants, like, oh, your CEO and founder and been featured in all these places and did all this stuff. But the human being part of it, like, what do your kids say about you? What are your cousins say about you? What are your best friends say about it? What do your team members say about you, right? Those human being things, not the human doing stuff. And then the third one that she got me to really look at Tommy was, what do you stand for? so many people profess company values.

I know you talk about it in Elevate. Another great linking exercise that I, for me, took me to another level was in addition to the company values is what about our family core values? What about my core values, right? And you're really narrowing down to get those three. And for me, that really set the pace. It also is part of why I believe we were able to take our systems from good to great to then make the company more valuable as truly asset driven.

sales system, marketing system, hiring system. It was like we built a university in the five main departments of a company, recruiting systems, made it more valuable and then allowed us to sell the companies. And for me, then, I was able to recalibrate and choose what I wanted to do. And at that time, which was some time ago, I chose that I wanted to run a business, but I wanted to be more available for my kids. I wanted to be available to coach their teams, which I've been blessed to be able to do football and different sports for my daughter, be available to go to their stuff, all of it. I didn't want to be that person on call, and I believe you can design it, right?

In one way or another, I think I see in the work that you do with all the amazing people that you work with is you show them how to build something by design, not by accident. and for me that's what that process really even though i'd been you know spent and invested millions of dollars of different trading over the years and you know on the outside it looked pretty successful but it's not successful if you feel like you're giving your kids leftovers your health leftovers you're burned out you're overly stressed anxious etc and there's just a a new better way and that's what i love about the work that you do you know because you help people break through that i just had posted this minutes ago. When I was a kid every week, I went to my grandma's house, which was in Detroit that I was talking about. She was a single mom of five. She worked multiple jobs to provide,

and she was the most resourceful person I've ever known. I went to McDonald's or Burger King, and she'd grab every ketchup packet she could get her hands on. Napkins, too, not because she was cheap, but because nothing was ever wasted. Croger had a sale, she bought the shelf. She stretched every dollar further than anyone I've ever met before and since. But here's the part that sticks out to me. Every birthday, every Christmas. there was a card with $50 in it. A woman living in a tiny house in Detroit, saving ketchup packets, and she found 50 bucks for each and every one of us every single time.

And she gave us something worth more than that. She showed up two days a week, every week. She cooked for me. She was a second mom. She wasn't giving us whatever time was left over. She wasn't giving us whatever time was left over after everything else in her life got handled. She was giving us the good hours. She taught me to be frugal.

The lesson stuck. But as I got older, I realized something that she never got the chance to act on. You can save your way to a better life or you can earn your way there. I chose to earn. And I think she'd have chosen the same if the doors had opened for her like they have for me. But that's what I talk about all the time is, are you giving? And, you know, I just wrote down lunch with mom each week and making that a priority because sometimes it gets hard, you know. sometimes you say, look, I got people to take care of.

And then it's like that song that's in the cradle. And I'm a lot like you is you get so busy. And you get tied up and you say, look, I got, and soon I'll have kids. And I think the number one thing is getting my mom closer, getting her in a closer house. But yeah, that's such a. Yeah, I'll tell you, Tommy, I, I'll encourage you, whether it's your mom, your wife, your kids, your future kids, you know, the people. You know, the people that are important, I was very blessed this last four years. So my mom passed away about four years ago.

My dad got, you know, like the fourth or fifth time you got diagnosed with the new version of cancer. And it got pretty serious. But every Thursday morning for the last four years, people have asked me, Dan, how come I don't see you out at events and different things like that? A lot of them were on like Thursday Fridays. And I'm like, I do breakfast with my dad every Thursday. It's non-negotiable. And I was able to do that for four years straight. And I have a very similar regimen with my kids.

where I meet with them twice a month. We meet with our mom every Sunday, unless we're traveling. My wife and I, my wife and I have a date night. I know some people don't like using that term, but it's easy to lean into that when it's still sexy and still fun and still enjoyable. And it can just be us holding hands hanging out. We don't have to even be doing anything. For me, my gift is a curse.

I have ADHD, and as much as, again, as I'd love to say it like what I've ever done has been awesome. My first marriage didn't work partly because of all these things I'm talking about. I didn't have them. And then that good to great was getting very clear of what's important to me, not compared to everybody else, but to me and what do I want, what do I not want? And being relentless to stay focused on it. And for me, like most times when people do even an intro, I have husband, dad, grandpa leading it and then everything else because that just helps me stay in alignment with today what that version is. I think a lot of people know what they don't want, but they don't necessarily understand

exactly what they want because maybe they haven't experienced what they want. And I think going on long walks and really spending some time reflecting and just asking yourself, what was the best part of your day? And I've been very fortunate I've been able to hire for the things I'm not good at that I don't enjoy. I mean, I'm never going to be a CFO. I'm never going to be F, P&A, financial planning. I'm never going to be payroll.

I don't like inventory. I mean, some people love this stuff. Oh, yeah, exactly. I just, you know, I made a list of what I want to be when I'm 45. And a lot of it, though, is like, if I read the list, it's pretty cliche, I want to be meditating, reflecting. I want to do some yoga. Like, I really got to ask myself and think more of, like, am I, I don't, you know,

I'm just trying to. to have longevity and inner peace. At the same time, I mean, let's be honest, I like going out of the boat and drinking beer. I mean, I like going fishing. I like going golfing. I mean, so I got those on my list too. It's like, you know, but I actually, and Cameron Herald got really mad at me. He goes, dude, if you freaking tell me you like to work, that's the biggest bullshit ever.

He goes, you might find, he goes, what did you like to do before you even knew what work was? And you got to find that inner kid in you. I mean, what are your thoughts is finding what you want? So many people say I get a lot of fulfillment out of work. I hear that. I used to say that, and I still do say that, Tommy. Like, again, I'm going to show you my warts at all here is that. That exercise that I went through after I went through that hospital visit,

that exercise that I described pretty quickly in those, you know, four questions. The first question, what do I want, took me over six weeks. And I was in her office twice a week. That's how much weight was there that I couldn't get clarity. I was foggy. It was other people's answers. It wasn't mine. And finally, just like you said, reflect on it, reflect on it. Keep asking the question, but don't give the surface answer, go deep with it. What would that mean for you? And that's what she kept asking. What do you think it's going to mean for you? What do you think it would do for you? And then what actually was easier, she then said, what do you not want?

And I was able to put a list, and then she goes, okay, now what do you want? What would it mean? And so that helped create a bridge. And I think you're exactly right. I think one of our other clients, Dean Graziosi, he's been teaching that for years, where most people are very clear on what they don't want and not very clear on what they do want. But when you do get clarity, it's like total freedom, right? And it doesn't have to be complicated because I've been so goal-oriented my entire life,

you know, again, out of necessity, when, you know, you come from that kind of upbringing, I then came back and realized what were some of my limiting beliefs truly, like, what's the trauma? What's the things getting in the way? It was, you know, welfare and being laughed at in Farmer Jacks with food stamps and, you know, all this stuff as a kid. And we couldn't afford dental work. So I had all these teeth and people calling me 99 rows of teeth, right? I had bosses say you'll never amount to anything because you look terrible.

Like I had a lot of this stuff I had to work on myself, but the most important thing that has brought me peace is really getting clear of what do I want. As simple as that sounds as you're describing. And whatever it is, you know, Dan Sullivan, a strategic coach says it well. He says you don't need a flopping. He doesn't say that word, but you don't need a flipping explanation. It's just because it's what you want. No strings attached, just because.

So you like going out on a boat? Like there was a time that I like going golfing a three times a week. And then after about two months of that, I got fucking bored to death. It bored me to tears. And I want to build stuff. Like if you ever meet my wife, well, to Dan, like, because like you, we do this now because we get to, not because we have to. And I'm grateful for that. I say that very humbly and always reflecting back on that.

God's granted us, granted you, granted all of us, these tools, a gift called life. What are we doing with it? You've chosen to make a tremendous impact in people's lives in the world, and you are. In some ways, I've been able to do something similar. Like, there's nothing worse than wasted flipping talent. And I'm sure you've seen it, I've seen it, you know, having thousands of people working my companies over the years. I see the gold in you, but when they don't see it in themselves, it's tough.

Right? Yeah, it's a mindset. Yeah, that mental game. So anyway, I can keep going on this. I know, I love this stuff. I want to dive into the other stuff, but I'll just tell you, one of the things I find myself doing is,

you know, I work with Dan Martel for quite a while. And he goes, you know your biggest problem, Tommy? Is you're a man of your word? And I said, what do you mean? Isn't that a good thing? He goes, that's your core principle. And he goes, that's going to bite you in the ass. He goes, let me explain why.

He goes, you might have a little old lady around the corner that you decide to mow her lawn. And you're going to keep that promise. You're going to keep mowing her lawn. Even if there's more important things to change so many more lives because you made your commitment. He goes, so I want you to practice breaking your commitment. Not lying to this little old lady, but finding someone else that pay someone else to mow the lawn. And so I think that's one of my problems is I do make commitment. and when I make a commitment, if I say I'm going to do something, I do it.

And I think that's one of the best virtues of life. I think it's really important, but then I find myself obligating certain things and maybe overextending. I never tell somebody I'm going to do something and don't. Like, I've got a buddy of mine. He's always like, I'll be there. And then he never shows up. He's just known as the guy that's going to, like, lie.

He tells everybody yes. But I say, listen, when I get the time I'm going to make. the time I'm going to do this and I just, it's getting harder because you make these obligations and you just want to make sure you keep them. And it's hard because sometimes you're making the wrong commitments. Sometimes it's only work related. Sometimes, you know, maybe you got to do more at church, more more things to make impact. So that's something I need to work on and that's something that he told me to work on. I still have a hard time to saying I'm going to do something. Like he's like, So you committed next year to speak in an event.

Let's say you committed now. You're going to speak next around Thanksgiving. And they're going to pay you $100,000, but you're working on a decision that's going to make you $5 million. You will never break that. You're still going to show up for that because you made your word. But you've got to figure out a way, and you're going to make some people mad. And your problem is you never want to piss off anybody. I grew up in a family where I tried to be as amical as possible.

I will have hard conversations. but that's a hard thing to do for me is break my word. You know what I mean? I do. I had to work on that with one of my coaches as well. She called it people pleasing with me for very similar reasons, you know, breaking those commitments. And, you know, again, it's not easy.

But I think, you know, what Dan gave you, that advice is find another alternative is such a great road to look at, you know, in the process. And, you know, it's kind of like leaning the ladder on the right wall, right? In your books, you talk a lot about efficiency, right? Well, there's a lot of people who are very efficient at leaning ladders on the right wall. They lean it on the wrong wall, right? That's kind of what Dan, in my mind, shared with you, which is, okay, at the time, that $100,000 presentation is the,

the right wall, but that $5 million opportunity, well, guess what? You can choose, I can choose, as you're watching, you can choose to move the ladder because now it's a new wall. You know, Dan Sullivan, you know, strategic coach. For me, one of the greatest gifts, Tommy, was giving myself the space in my calendar. I had someone challenged me. Dr. Jeremy Weiss introduced us, you and us and connected us back a couple months back or whatever. And I was speaking. at one of his events and one of the people that was there is somebody, you know, pretty well known and he came up to me and he goes, hey, I know you've had a certain level of success. He goes, I got something for you.

And I go, what's that? He goes, when are you going to take 30 days off of your business? And it was a great question. You know, a lot of people theorize it, but how many people coming back to what you just said, truly commit to it? Gino Wickman. And I said, you know, I beat around the bush, right? I beat around the bush a little bit.

And so I gave them a date. At the time, it was January of 2020. I said January of 2020. So this was like 24 months later, give or take. And so I started setting everything up so I could take a full 30 days off. No BS. And I didn't hit the goal. Embarrassing confession, damaging confession, cautionary tale, if you will.

It was February of 2020 that I took not just 30 days off, but I literally made a choice because for me what I learned about myself Tommy is I had to replace it's like when I did retirement 1.0 after selling my two companies like I got bored and I actually got depressed I wasn't ready I didn't have a backup plan I didn't have that new thing to fuel this growth muscle that like you know people that have this DNA of helping and growing and building stuff have and I went went into a lower point truthfully and what I learned through that is don't do that again so I set up my to win. How do you set yourself? How do you know yourself, know thyself, and then set yourself up to win? And so what I did is I came up with a replacement. Okay, I'm going to be out of the company for 30 days minimum. Actually, it was six months. And the way I fixed that is I took a position and started coaching high school football here in Arizona. And in Arizona, if you know much about the higher profile teams, I was lucky enough to have a connection. And so I got a role with a high profile high school in the area, and that was full time, like way more than I ever thought it could be.

And again, I chose it. But it was such a great lesson of, okay, what's working in our company, what systems, what processes for those five main buckets of the business. But also, I gave my team the ability to grow without me, to solve problems without me, to fix processes without me. And for me, it gave me a whole new dynamic and perspective of, like, you know, the things that I think are important, which they all are, right, when you're a driver, they're not in the bigger picture of things. And I've now learned that even more now a few years later where with, you know, my dad's health and family's health and a lot of people that are, you know, at our age that are that are passing forward. And, you know, at the end of the day, what matters most is you make the most of this life we've been given and go. make a difference with people. So for what that's worth.

Now it's really helpful. I love podcasts like this. I want to jump into the, you know, there's, it's funny, I wanted to say I love marketing, but that's for Dean Jackson and Joe to say. You've developed something called the One Message Method. The idea that you can create conversations

with ideal clients without complicated tech our big budgets. Let's walk through exactly how that's done. Yeah, start with the problem that people have. What's the problem they've got in their head? And you meet them there. And so a lot of people, you know, for example, go to a networking thing or even talk to people on the street, Tommy, as you know, and they, what do you do? And then it becomes this convoluted hose of fire, you know, water just being humbled out of stuff, diluted, you know, convoluted. And then all the also a big giant rush of stuff. So rather than do that is what we have found in the science and neuroscience even proves this

too is rather than leading with what you got is ask the question, do you know how a lot of people are struggling with shoulder seasons in home services? Yep. And either they know it or someone else will know it and now you got engaged, you've got them and engage mechanism. And now we get to lean in to what do you do? Well, what we do is we help and then fill in the blank. So a home service company, we work with tons of home service companies depending on the season, you know, like here in Phoenix where it's, you know, 115. Do you know a lot of people who are concerned about their AC unit breaking down? Right. It's very simple, sixth grade

language. This isn't like convoluted marketing, your traditional marketing messaging. Do you know how a lot of people are quietly wondering if they're paying too much for their electric bill. Yep. What we do is we have a, and then you can go into your process. This is also a big problem. We see most people focus on their product or their service instead of selling the process to deliver the outcome. We call it the boat, B-O-T-E, breakthrough, outcome, transformation experience, right?

And so, you know, I love Alex Hermosi. Like, he's shifted so many people in amazing ways about really thinking through their offer to be just way more compelling, kind of along this idea of a one message method, like with a question, one simple question, one simple response. My initial, which I learned when I was 18 years old and then ultimately I started my first company when I was 22, was if we could show you a way to get a couple hundred new clients and it won't cost you anything up front. and we'll front the money for direct mail, radio, and TV, and then we'll split the profits. Would you want to know more about it? Like, that's pretty simple, right? It is simple, yeah. And I think a lot of people miss that in how they communicate.

You know, nothing here is earth-shattering, but it's just simple and keeping it simple. Or as my dad used to say, keep it simple. Stupid. Yeah. So, yeah, I think most business, owners over complicate their marketing. They copy everyone else. I can't tell you.

I mean, everybody copies me. I mean, I guess it's supposed to be the kindest form of endearment. But it's like, man, whatever I do within a week, it's getting replicated, which is fine because I may be testing the shit out of stuff. And then they try to say everything to everyone. I mean, that's just the thing is that they don't really pick. How do you get them to simplify it? And what changes when they do simplify it?

Well, they attract more clients. They go from inconsistent, low-quality people to high-quality people because you can just get right to the point. You can get into the thing that matters, ultimately, like what are you or I or, you know, as you're watching this right now, if you're in home services, what do you want to get to is ultimately your pricing, right? And so, and lay it out for them and give them a great plan, a good, better best, and show them the value.

Like, you know, why do you, Tommy, you can charge three to five to ten times more than most, you know, everyday garage people? You're a premium brand, right? And we've, you know, narrowed this down into, we've even analyzed over 5,000 companies to ultimately recognize, because most people misunderstand marketing. They think it's like one technique, one message, one thing. And there's a whole lot of buckets that are there for marketing. And what we found with the biggest most successful companies, small companies that are successful at everywhere in between and reviewing these 5,000 companies, really five core pillars, Tommy, that we find that every company does if they're doing it well. Number one, they have a clear vision and growth plan, right? You can't build a 10 figure business on a seven figure plan, like number one, right? So the math. You talk about it in, I think it's elevate, but it might be home service millionaire, which is you got to know your numbers, the cost to acquire.

lead. I think you talk about in the book, $100 average per lien, and you're giving an example, right? And you gave an example, if I recall, of how a company wanted to grow to $5 million and they were, you know, planning on investing based on their lead, their conversion and backing all of that down vision and growth plan, which is a path with the math. Yeah. Path with the math will always win. And, you know, in that example, you talked about like $1.5 million to produce the extra next $5 million, right? What we do is work to help our client simplified. If someone says, I'm growth-minded, I'm sure you've seen this, I'm growth-minded, I'm growth-and-what are you investing? And in your book, I think you even talk about it.

2%. Okay, we need to really look at, are you really growth-minded? Because there's studies out there, Gartner and another organization, MIT Sloan. They've done research on the top-most- most successful growth-oriented companies. They found that high-growth companies are typically investing between 8 and 13% of their top line. Low-growth or maintenance-oriented companies are 6% or less. Right. So really it comes down. Do you want to be high growth or you maintenance or,

and of course I'm biased with what we do, right, to a degree. But the data shows it. I mean, you don't grow the way you have to a $100 million brand because you're investing 1% into marketing. Right? No one does. It's impot. So that vision and growth plan of like, again, it comes back.

What do you want? What do you not want? All of that also applies to the business. The second pillar in the business is connection campaign. Because most people try to jump from, okay, I got this idea. Now let me jump to get a customer. And you also talk about it in Home Service Millionaire, that there's a lot of branding that is like a tide that lifts the boats that can't be tracked.

Like you talk about, you know, as you get a solid foundation, use TV, use billboards, but only after you've got your solid foundation and when your Google is optimized and so on and so forth. So connection campaigns, I think people forget marketing is really relationship 101. It's like dating. You know, you're engaged debris. You probably didn't ask her to get engaged on your first date. You probably maybe had coffee or whatever. I don't want to speculate how it all went.

But there's a dating process. And I think people in business sometimes because they hear certain marketing experts and theorists, they look at marketing and they think they're going to. to bypass the normal human relationship side of things. And in order for any of us to buy anything, we got to connect first. And then there's a secondary factor to connect. So we have to connect first, because if we never connect, if someone doesn't know us, they can't go to us. So that's step one. Then there's this other fallacy, traditional marketing. I have found Tommy, and I think I've heard you describe it in your own way, that traditional marketing doesn't work. And so many people are

trying to use outdated principles. So like, for example, one that I have observed and studied and looked at the data and the science. There's a lot of experts still teaching to get people to buy from you. I don't know if you've heard this, but probably have. To get people to buy from you, they got to know you, like you, and trust you. No, they don't.

It's a flipping lie. And then if you take someone like me who's a people pleaser and I start doing that, like no wonder I'm feeling like in my early days where why won't the higher price people buy from me? I'm only getting the low level people. Because I'm building a model, a broken system on no like and trust. The true system, especially for affluent clients, they got to know you, because if they don't know you,

they're not going to you. They got to respect you. What does that mean? They need to know you solve the problem. Your messaging needs to be all over the place. I solve this problem. We solve this problem. Oh, and even better.

And you talk about this in the book, too, about reviews, right? There's a big difference between somebody who has a thousand reviews and 10. Proof. So many people don't put the emphasis on getting a system in place to get those reviews to show people the respect factor, which is just you've helped other people get the result they want. It's so simple, right? So know you, respect you, trust you. We're in a trust economy.

So when they know you trust, you, respect you, usually a byproduct that carry along to that is they will have a likeability factor, but they don't need it to buy. You, me, all of us have bought something in the last week, probably, from somebody we didn't know enough. We just had a problem. We looked at the reviews and we bought. But we didn't know them enough to whether we liked them. But we did know them.

We did respect they could solve a problem, usually with proof. And then lastly, we trusted, ideally the motive that they have our best interest to deliver something effective. So that's the first step, connection campaigns, right? And as you're watching, if you're in home show, this is one of the greatest times in human history. Gary Vee talks about it. Tommy talks about it. This is one of the greatest times in history for you to be able to compete with the big companies.

Because they're fat, they're lazy, they overdo it, and they don't do this piece. They miss connection. They're transactional. Their pre-E companies are transactional. You can win this game, and here's a way to look at it. You could go out and put out instead of what some experts teach, oh, you've got to post-forms. 40, 50, 100 times a day. I mean, there's people teaching,

go post three to 600 times a day. And I'm all for it if you have the team. But don't feel like you have to. There's a better way. There's a new way you can do this. You can post once a week, put $5 a day behind it in a few different platforms, and get just as much reach,

respect and trust built in a market in advance, romance and advance, we call it connection, for these small budget campaigns to have big amplification. So small budget, big, impact, you connect. And now when you introduce them to what you have to offer to create leads and so on, your conversions go up. And that leads to the third one, which is leads, getting a steady flow of leads. And I'll hold off on going deep on that because I know you've got a lot of content on lead generation, Tommy, but leads are the next piece. So first is the clear vision

and growth plan proven connection campaigns, lead machines. Right. I don't know if you see this, but we see this all the time. Most of our clients, they've worked with four or five other agencies or marketing people that jacked up their business, hijack their assets. They don't own their website anymore. Their ad accounts are run and managed and owned by those companies. It's a crime scene out there.

Yep. And what we do is go, hey, build and protect you and build your assets. Don't build their assets, build your assets. So start with the basics. You know, you teach us in both of your books. Google, the profile, LSA, get that basis. and then look at building your mutual fund, meeting spreading.

I know you talk about Craigslist. You've talked about other platforms as well, but we look at Bing. Bing's a hidden gem. It'll never bring you the volume that Google will, but most people are too lazy, too cheap, and they don't have the team expertise to add that one extra little.

We look at it as spokes in the wheel or lines in the water if you're fishing. You brought up fishing a little bit earlier. Lines in the water. See, if Tommy's got 20 lines in the water, which he does, And I'm a competitor and I got like my little line and my little post once a week. How am I competing with that?

Like, no wonder he dominates the market. And guess what? He shows you exactly how you could do that too in your business. And it's not as complicated as you think. You can start with small budgets and build a big impact. Lead machines and diversity. When the time is right. Tommy said it right in his book, Home Service Millionaire.

When the time is right, just go predictably from one to the other. But imagine, if you do this right, you can add about one a month. safely, low cost, a couple thousand and build up. And then at the end of the year, you look back on a year and you got 12, 13, 15 lines in the water and you go, where the hell did I come from? I tried four or five agencies and couldn't make it work. We have a client, Brendan, I think of. He came to us in a competitive market in Colorado.

He said in his own words, Tommy, he's like, oh my God, like I'm on life support. I've tried four to five agencies. agencies. I just, and we look, and that's what we do, we look at a review. We go under the hood of the business first, check out what they're doing, set ourselves up to win and set them. If we think we can help someone win, we go, we can help you win. And then we build a custom plan. It's not a one-size-fits-all. We build a custom plan to do this. And with Brendan, we started small, like $3,000 kind of budget, took him from no leads from Google profile or LSA. You know, I brought in, you know, on a $3,000 budget, like 30 to 40 leads. And then,

slowly but surely backing into the other numbers you talk about a lot, which is, you know, what were the conversions on the front? You talk about 80% conversion, right? If you do this right, and you respond into leads in a minute or less, which is a key part of handling leads, because that's a key part of it. If you don't handle it in three minutes or less, you might as well burn that lead up. And there's so many simple ways to do that with tech today, automation today, and most importantly, you even talk about it in the book. People, don't automate yourself out of business as you're watching this. So, many people are automating themselves out of business. They're, they're letting AI get in the way of

actually making money and spoiling their business in many cases, spoiling their customers, their bad experience, right? So lead gen, follow up quickly and then go through the process. So Brendan came in, and in about 180 days, we took him from him flatlining and going backwards to, you know, $500,000 months. Changed his life. Now we've expanded. We've been working in them now a couple years, but he's got like 10, 11. So when the algorithm changes, which it does, as you know, Tommy, multiple times a year and some of it can be seasonal by being diversified. He's not taken that big rip when LSA in the summer feeds him whatever, 200, 300 leads. And then it goes down to 50. We've got the other ones offsetting that. So he just doesn't see the same kind of shoulder seasons.

And many times we can even increase it in those off seasons too and by remnant space. Anyway, That's lead jet. So first vision and growth plan. Second is connection campaigns. Third are lead machines. And then fourth is conversion. Right. You're you talk about a lot about this conversion and your numbers and your average order value. Right. And then the checklist. I'm so amazed. I'm probably like you, Tommy. You know, you are amazing at processes from what I've observed. Obviously, I don't know specifically, but like you wouldn't have built what you have and you wouldn't have the following you you have if you didn't have amazing processes. Right. And just based on, you know, my initial prep for this, like 15, 20 hours, whatever it's been to prepare to just, you know, walk into this conversation and know you too. Like I'm so amazed, you know, are your reps using the checklist you go? Let me see your checklist. One, they don't have one, too. Yeah, they're using my checklist. Well, how do you prove it? Well, they fill out my form. How do they prove it? And today's tech is so easy. Like almost any home service rep could be walking around with something and not that this is the brand that you could, you have to get. But it's a little button. It just sits on here discreetly and can record them. So instead of it being theory, literally, instead of just relying on a checklist they fill out and maybe are telling you the truth or not, you can feed this stuff the data in real time. And you can even, like someone as savvy as Tommy could build a custom thing.

We've got this too where it'll coach you on what you did well, what you did it, what you could do better next time, and it will validate whether you're truly following the checklist. by using some of the simple tech, along with the human being side. So conversion and being relentless on the conversion numbers and not settling. You know, you might hear Tommy talk about 80% conversion. You might, oh, that's flipping bullshit.

I'm going to tell you, we got clients also that type of conversion. Why? Because what gets measured improves. What gets measured and reported publicly improves exponentially. One of the best things, as you're watching this right now, One of the best things you could do is put a public scoreboard up on your team's computers, if it's virtual, on a wall that's private out of customers' view. And you have people in real time marking what they're doing real time through the day.

You will be amazed at how that increases productivity, not in like a cutthroat way, but a healthy. And Tommy talks about this, about culture and his stuff, which is a healthy competition. Business is competition. We're in a meritocracy business, you know, culture. You know, you talked earlier about marketing, right? Anyway, you can see I bounce around just a little bit, Tommy. So rain, you get it is you need to.

Let me get to the fifth step. And I'll come back to the idea I had because you were talking about it earlier, about your team being a marketing arm. In fact, I'm going to do it now. Because I think it's so profound what you talk about. And I mean Uber prove this. Uber proved this when they were going through. I don't know if you remember this, Tommy, about 15, 20 years ago.

They were getting bashed. And some of the other car companies were actually running campaigns and pulling drivers and siphoning. And there was all this just shitty press about what they were doing. And then they either purposefully or accidentally, what did they do? They flooded the radio wave, serious radio and alt-satellite radio with recruiting ads. We're hiring, we're growing, we're hiring, we're growing. and the data shows it that when they did this,

and again, I don't know whether it was truly accidental, purposeful, or a little bit of both that happened, but you teach it, which you're the first person besides me that I've ever heard teach, use hiring as a marketing tool. It's one of the greatest marketing tools in the world. They flooded it. We're hiring, we're growing. So think about this if you have customers in your market

as you're watching this right now. And you're flooding the airwaves. We're growing, we're hiring, we're growing, we're hiring, we're growing, we're hiring. Even if you're a small business, but you just start putting that message out in some way, shape, fashion, or form every month consistently. And you're consistent and repetitive like Tommy teaches. Consistent, repetitive. Consistent, repetitive. They hear I'm growing, growing. And do you think at some point a customer might go, God, they're always growing? I should probably go work with them. I should get them to do my work and not, you know, cheap Charlie over here. Right. So recruiting is such a powerful

marketing arm that I think Tommy I think you speak to this really well if you treated your team like your 10 star not your five star customer but your 10 star customer in the experience and the anniversaries and the birth dates and celebrating when they come in again Tommy talks a lot about this in his work you do those basic things you'll get an advocate who will not only bring you talent you'll get an advocate who will bring you customers just as a strategic byproduct of an extent, it's an extension of your culture, not a forced culture. Is that what you want? If that's what you want, I hope you can apply several what we've been sharing here. But step one, vision and growth plan, that this ties into that, connection campaigns, lead machines, conversion and

being relentlessly focused on that and your training and coaching up your team. And then fifth is execution. Like, you probably don't need more new ideas. There's probably nothing here new, Maybe a new way, new 10-degree turn on it as you're watching this. You don't need new ideas. You need a new idea probably like you need a dang hole in your head. But you need to execute. Like why is Tommy where he's at versus maybe you? He's a master of execution.

And it's not that Tommy's doing it all. Stop thinking you have to do it all. This is the big problem, Tommy. I'm sure you see it. You teach a version of it. Stop trying to be the technician. You know, you seem to be a big. sports fan, but think about Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Reynolds, he's become famous for a lot of businesses

now, but one recently that's very public is Rexum. He bought in with Rob McElhawaini with the Rexum professional soccer team. Now, as you're watching or listening, think about it. And really tune into this, please, because this could just change the way you do business. Ryan Reynolds is not on the sideline coaching his team. he's not he's not on the field even as a player turning wrenches he's not out there kicking a ball around he's not on the sideline coaching he's not even managing as a general manager he's the chairman of his organization that has the general manager that has the coach that has the players on the team what if you're watching this right now and you got relentlessly focused on these five

coming to execution and instead of you have to you have to you have to the team what if you're watching of you having to be the one that goes runs in all the jobs, you train somebody to do that. And you then got processes in marketing, in sales, in ops, in finance, in recruiting. And you had someone responsible to you as the chairman for those and being accountable. Because there's really two ways to get most stuff done. You can do it. But my experience, and Tommy teaches us, I believe in his own way, the who to solve any problem is probably not you.

The who is not you. And most of the time we're better served, like one of my mentors who runs a billion dollar company with about 20 team members. And the rest is fractional. He said to me regularly, he says, Dan, you can hire them or acquire them. But in either case, make sure that you're getting a pro, not an average Joe. How do you do that? follow what Tommy's teaching, train them up, right? Get someone who's got that attitude walking in,

that relentless work ethic that fits your culture and your vibe, and then set the accountability with the expectations and hold them to it. Attitude, work ethic, accountability to the skills and KPIs. That's how you execute and build a big brand. Anyway. It's dead on. I mean, I think about all these marketing sources, and a lot of them don't work.

And then I'm like, just because it didn't work doesn't mean it doesn't work. So I go into this mastery of like puzzle solving. Like I've got a buddy of mine that gets 300,000 visits from his pool remodeling company just from Pinterest. So what did I do? I called him. I picked up the phone and I said, what are you doing? He said, here's who you need to talk to and here's how you do it. So now we hired that person.

It's 900 bucks a month. And we're killing it. But by the way, we needed a better content. We need to do different type of content, but it was easy to do. And then I think about some of the other things you said, like, I used to want stuff fixed next week. You know, I was on the team with my call center dispatch team earlier. And I said, let's just get this dial for Q1.

We got four months because I realized people overestimate what they could do in one year, not an underestimate what they could do in five. And then the other thing is, like you said earlier, it's a math equation. Where should I be focused? You said a lot of stuff. So the math tells us you got the biggest hole in the boat right here. Patch that hole first. And a lot of people are like, man, this is mind-boggling.

What do I do? Well, if you don't have the KPIs, don't have the math, and don't know where to apply the most attention right now, fix that first. You've got to get a CRM, and you've got to see what's the problem. The leads too expensive. And I don't care how expensive the leads are if the output on the other side of the revenue,

but it's got to go through the conversion cycle. So booking rate, conversion rate, average ticket. And if you get those things right, then you just keep pouring gasoline into the marketing. And yes, I believe in Top of Funnel, the size we are, and I believe, starting with Top of Funnel, I mean, I have a market we just opened Greenfield. $0. Google screwed us. It took two extra months to get the advanced verification.

So I couldn't even do PPC or LSA. We were busier than we could ever be. And when we turn this thing on, I'm like, I could use 10 guys in Philly. And by the way, it turns out Philly's been a lot harder to recruit than we thought. But we got more leads coming in, which is a great problem. So I'm traveling guys out there. But you said something that's interesting. You said that branding for a company under its $20 million is a waste.

And I think that's a pretty strong statement. Can you walk us through why you believe that? Well, I'm going to call it traditional branding. And absolutely believe that's the case. Traditional branding that most people teach, Tommy, is, you know, upgrade your logo, you know, colors, you know, things like this. We believe, and I think we're aligned in this really well. Again, you have one of the most unique skill sets I've ever come across and doing this for 30-some years. And branding is really about reputation and what others say about us, right?

So instead of forcing the brand, like I see so many people. with so much time and energy to try to force the brand instead of just listen to what people are saying. And sometimes that mirror can be upsetting because you realize maybe you need to improve a lot, right? But like reviews, like this even ties a little into marketing. One of the best things to do is one, get reviews if you're not and set up a process to get reviews. I mean, you talk about it as well, but I still find so many people, Tommy, that don't do this simple thing. As soon as you get a job done, send an automated text to them to make it easy for them. to do a review. That will increase your numbers immediately. Then if they don't respond,

have a live human being, call them back, and say, hey, I just wanted to follow a check in on you. Number one, do an I love you type call. Think of your first 100-day experience, and this would be like day two or day three after, whether they did the review or didn't. And then the second thing that you can do with this little process, that's a mini little process on the back that will increase your conversion of reviews is number two is do the same thing to actually get them to refer. Do you know of somebody in the area that we could offer a free, whatever your potential inspection, right? You know, there's a variety of different ways that you could offer a gift package, and it doesn't even have to be the exact service of what you offer. Hey, as a thank you,

we have this gift package. The founder of our company put together this unique thing for business owners. Do you know of a business owner where we could send them access to a gift package of tools and training and checklist to help grow. his business if you're going for commercial. If it's a everyday consumer in a neighborhood, it might be something related where you create a part. Tommy talks about this too. Partnerships. You create a partnership with a painting company in the area and you buy stuff to get them a lead, and you get a lead, you share the lead because you're basically shifting the mental game from you being just in garage doors or home services. You're a media business. You're becoming a

media empire and you control the customers in your market. That's what you really want to do is control the customers in your market. So you create a partnership with the painting company and you say, hey, if I could get you some customers, would you pay me a per diem for it? Could I offer, you know, an ability to get a discount from you if we paint their garage, paint their garage doors? Yes.

Do you know someone in the area that might have a garage door that speed up just a little bit that we could, and so now your gift package, even though you're in the garage business, would be to paint the door that you acquired from somebody else? I learned this from a friend of mine that is in the chiropractic business. He was partnered with somebody who was a massage therapist. He got one 20-minute short massage as a gift, and he would give it away, and that's how he got referrals,

not offering the thing that he offered, but offering a strategic, tangible thing next to it. It was complimentary. So as you're watching, think about that. How could you do that? Then the other part, to go deeper with this, building the brand, talk to your customers. So many people have, I don't know if you see this time. I find some people really should be doing something else because they're really like have a disdain for their clients or, you know, hate for their clients. And they're in, they have a great sales prevention department instead of a sales department.

But if you love your clients and you're in Tommy's world, you're listening to this. Chances are that's not you. So actually, for some of those reviews, pick them up and identify like a great exercise. to do is identify your top 10, 20, 30. Maybe they spent the most. They've spent frequently. They've done repeat orders in the last 12 to 18 months. Cherry pick your top 10 to 20 percent and do something extra. You know, one of our friends who introduced us, Dr. Jeremy Weiss, they have a done for you gifting package that's like John Rulin's giftology that literally for 30 to 40 bucks a package, you know, three to four times a year, you can create this wow experience, not only the first

hundred days, but become memorable to them for life. And ultimately, not just have one thing in their home, but you could own the relationship to the other providers. Anyway, so coming back to brand, what do your clients really say about you? What do you hear repeated? Like we did this exercise with Joe Polish, a Genius Network. One of the ways that it happened, as I observe it, is Jay Abraham came and interviewed, most of the clients, what's the biggest thing you get from Joe in the business? And the three repeat. competitive things out of 90% of people that did this in this process, Tommy. Connections and connection.

Godly, I just feel connected here and I feel like I get so many amazing connections. Number two, collaboration. Godly, I just feel like it's so collaborative. It's like being a popcorn. We're all popping together at a higher vibe, a higher level and playing bigger games and challenging each other. And who's not in the room is an important. who is in the room. Because who's not in the room is important because like when you're around a

nine figure earner, like there's, you've got problems that you want to discuss that don't apply to someone at six figures or whatever, right? So collaboration. And then the third out of it, connection, collaboration and contribution. Contribution factor. Godly, I feel like when I'm here, I get the ability to be seen and heard to make a contribution. And then I also getting a lot of contribution from everybody else. So as you are watching right now, branding wise, what are the three things that you hear repetitively over and over and over? And chances are that is likely your real company culture, potentially values, and brand, that you might just be sitting on a hidden gold mine.

When this became more prevalent as I view it, Tommy for Joe, he made it much easier to communicate what Genius Network stood for and therefore market it. and part of what we put in place for Joe that we've been talking about, these five pillars we put in place and help Joe triple the business and exponentially grow profits because it just became, I think it's Damon John who says, if you can't communicate innate words or less, it's too confusing. Right.

And so connection, collaboration, contribution. That's a pretty simple branding framework. And as you're watching or listening, like what are those three key words that, one, you want to intentionally get into the marketplace and start building your experience around it. And then ultimately, are you really listening truly to what they say? And one of the best ways, Tommy, and you teach this, get on the phone, get on Zoom, get on the line, face to face with them, belly to belly, bring them together, right? You talked about, I believe I heard you talk about an experience where for some firemen in an area that you did this. people together just to celebrate them. And it was a community gathering, but you get your clients to come to these kind of,

you know, client appreciation kind of events, and you get to hear them in their real words, not made up words, not marketing work. And that really is where the rubber meets the road where I feel real brand comes from. It's in the trenches, Tommy. If I were to really kind of narrow it down, it's in the trenches. What are your clients saying about you? And one of the easiest way to build that brand is get more reviews and pay attention to what we're creating in the experience.

Do that, and that's how you can outperform even, you know, $20 million businesses that are so focused on like a persona of a brand, not the real brand, not the real values, the real culture that's there. Yeah, there's a lot that you just said about just understanding the basics. I will say, though, what kills me is when I see a truck that says garage doors for less. and there's no colors that stand out. It's white and it says they do springs, rollers, cables, bearings, bottom rubber, new doors, sales, service, and maintenance. Of course you do all that stuff. Yeah, we do everything and stand for nothing. And by the way, if you're a garage row company, you do all that stuff.

No one needs, like, if you do swimming pools, we know what you do. If you're a dentist, like I see a billboard of a dentist. And it says we do root canals, cleaning, this, that, we know that. You see Rafi in Arizona. It just says Rafi. You don't even know. It doesn't even say accident attorney. Some of them do.

Some of them do. It's like. And then the other thing that I don't like is like the number one thing I was just at Gettle in Vegas. And Ken says I buy broken businesses. The number one things I do is I fix their pricing. But the problem is the belief. This old-fashioned belief that I can't charge this because no one's ever sat down.

A true accountant has never sat down with them and said, well, you've got to pay for the air conditioning. You got to pay for the CRM. You got to pay for the trainer. You've got to pay for the recruiter. You've got to have insurance. You've got to pay for great things for your employees. You've got to give them increases.

You've got the list goes on, on and on. And then at the end, you've got to have a profit, and you need to be able to price for that. And so you can fix all the stuff you talked about, but Alex talks about this. Do you have this crazy expensive price that like this is the Taj Mahal? This is like, because 20% of the people will buy that.

And then the next offer looks good. So if you're not making offers, different options you're giving ultimatums. And so those are some most intricate things I see is we just picked up a company yesterday in Detroit. And I don't want to say their name because I don't want to embarrass them. But we bought them yesterday. We ran seven calls today. The average ticket is $3,500.

Now, the average technician there was a $1099 driving their own truck doing their own maintenance, paying for their own gas, their own health care. The average technician was making $65,000, $65,000. and not to mention they were running an average of six and a half calls per day, if you do all the math and split it out. And my manager there said, you guys could run half the jobs to make double. They said, that's impossible. We're going to need to run all these calls. And they said, no, you're going to need to build relationships.

You're going to need to be able to fix the door right. We're not just cookie-cuttering it and just putting on the bare minimum to make it work for six months. We're going to fix it the right way, not the easy way. And it's just amazing. So I think one of the things that adds your list is make sure you're priced right. Make sure you get an analysis of the balance sheet and income statement to say, are we priced enough to be able to offer the best? Where do we win most of the time in home service for most of the demand driven is on speed?

And so can we build a team that can get out there the same day? Because if your cancellation, that's another thing that people are not putting into their formula. You got conversion booking rate, but you got to minus your cancellation rate. And most people don't even know this. these numbers. I mean, unfortunately, I'm at a 16% because Philly's killing in St. Louis, some of my new markets are all the way up to 30% because we can't get out there quick enough. Capacity planning. So it's very interesting. You've developed an invitation model for generating leads. Most business hate asking for referrals. How does your model work differently? The innovation model.

Well, one, let's just keep it simple here is just ask. Ask. Ask. I don't know about you, but like, and I learned this in the health co. I don't know if you remember Fitness USA back in Sterling Heights. Oh, yeah. But when I was 16, I got a job at Fitness USA. And one of the things that I remember learning Tommy from Fitness USA in the training they took us through. And I was 16 and a young kid is ask everyone. Now, they were way, like you had to ask everyone every time they were in.

And it would get a little bit annoying. But it built this muscle. And I find that most people don't have. the muscle. And so, you know, it's, it's kind, I think I heard Jay Abraham say this, you know, I'll give you a new idea when you've used the first nine I gave you. So for referrals, let's start with the basics. Are you doing a one to one ask in meaning every customer or potential customer you run out to or your team talks to internally on the phone, are you doing a one to one ask consistently and have it tracked? So if you don't have that, just start with that because

just by adding that in as a process will help you likely exponentially grow your referrals. Nothing complicated. Just, hey, do you know of somebody that, and here's the key. Don't ask for a referral. Hey, do you know of a referral? Terrible. It's almost like saying network marketing. You bring up the word network marketing and people resist.

Ask for an introduction. Ask for a recommendation. Ask for that invitation in an invitation type model. Right. So is there somebody you could recommend, Tommy, that you know of, that has, you know, maybe a neighbor of yours that's complained about their home having some issues. They're a little bit concerned about, you know, and they're just depending on the industry. You know, they're concerned about their property. They're concerned about, you know, some of the, you know, pricing that they're experiencing with their electric bill.

Let's say you're in HVag, maybe some solar. So you just think through, like, what is the simple. recommend, do you know of somebody that you could recommend? Even easier, and we teach us to a lot of people in the training business, you know, Joe was one of them. We built this in because it would not be easy. Like if you were a member in Genius Network, hey, do you know of someone who would be happy to pay $25,000 to $100,000 to be a member? And that's how some people, and I'm kind of exaggerating it a little bit, ask for referrals in home services. They go, who do you know that would buy a $30,000 AC unit? Who do you know that would get their, you know, garage completely renovated? It's a terrible way,

because now you just put all this weight on a customer, an easier one. Like Tommy, you know, for example, Tommy's got several books. Like you could go, hey, the owner of our company wrote this great book. Like, you know, if they're a business person, this would fit. If they're not, it probably wouldn't. But you go, do you know of someone in the neighborhood that we could send this free book, home service millionaire or the book Elevate, which applies to any business, that we could send as just a gift from you on your behalf to them. That's an easier ask. It's free. It's just a book, right? And of course, we know that a great book like Tommy's is a great sales letter. And it also gives you permission to follow up once you just send it. Hey, can you give me their info? Fill this out.

You can do this online. You can also do it with a physical form even, which is where I learned this at Fitness USA. But just that simple process of a one-to-one, both on the phone, or with people we're doing business with and asking, and then now with tech, what do you do? In addition to that text link that Tommy teaches, to ask for the review, you send a separate test, hey, do you know, if someone in the area, we could send a gift package on your behalf with X, whatever X would amount to? You know, it could be a tune-up depending on the business. It could be an inspection. It could be, you know, a series of the things we've talked about. you'll be amazed just by asking consistently one-to-one, you'll increase it. Now, there's, you know, Jay Abraham, he's been teaching referral strategy.

I think he's got what he calls it, is a 94 extraordinary referral strategy. But let's start with the one. Yeah, these are easy things. You know, I would say referrals are really, really good in certain industries. There's a thing called Refer Pro that does a pretty good job. I like your idea of saying, listen, we want to say, send a gift on your behalf. I like the idea of a book too. I just wrote a book called the Mello Method with 18 people, my coworkers, that wrote about it. And I think that if I could get the

book costs small enough with a letter in there saying, we'd love to be your garage or provider. This is from Don Smith down the road. He told us to send you the book. And there's another thing I'm working on that I could probably get going here within the next two weeks. Is it, can we get the words from you that it's okay to write on your behalf? So it says, says Don Smith, your neighbor with their return address with an envelope, it looks like a birthday card with the real stamp. Then it's a handwritten note on the owner's behalf saying, look, these guys are going to take care of you like they took care of me.

But you've got to get their permission, obviously. And it's so affordable to do that. I sent out, you'll love this. So I sent out a picture of me, my fiance, my two dogs in front of my work truck, in front of my garage. And I sent it out to 3,000 neighbors. And I said, I'm your neighbor. I want to make sure everything's working safe.

I'll take 20% off the ticket, and I'll come do a $29 tune-up. So far that's delivered. Now that cost me, I want to say, about $5,000. So far... That's brilliant. I think it actually cost less than that.

I think it was about, yeah, $4,500. It's already delivered $80,000. And so now I'm like, wait a minute, what if we did all of PV? What if we did my CEO's house in Scottsdale? What if we did every technician's surrounding area? the same type letter. Now look, I'm in Paradise Valley,

so one cell could obviously be a bigger number than most. But it's just thinking of these out of box. But like, I don't want to just dabble. I want to A-B test, master it. I want to delete everything, and then I want to automate it. I'm not like this guy.

Like, the problem is people just don't know how to get started. When they get started, they don't know how to automate it. And they're like, they're like, man, it's a great idea. I had that going. And I remember when we used to do that. And for some reason, like one thing I didn't ever, I get to my head as the guerrilla marketing. I'm like, I don't forget what we started, these things that worked.

Like you said, people get bloated, they get too big, and they forget about the things that got them where they are today. And they start paying, and it's expensive on paper click to buy leads. I mean, it just is. Most idiot agencies, they bid on other people's keywords. And guess what? Those don't deliver. I've tested it.

I've looked at 100 companies. You're bidding on other people's keywords, and my keywords are more expensive. My keywords are just as expensive to bid on as garage door repair Phoenix. And the problem with that is when somebody needs to reschedule, and we figured out a way around this, but if somebody needs to reschedule, they're going automatically in picking on me. So you're bidding on those keywords to show up,

and it's just you'll pick up some clients, especially if you've got an incredible offer. But I've always found we've done a lot of tests around this. You lose money doing that. And so I send everybody a V card now after we finish the server. so they can store our numbers so they don't have to go back to PPC. And then I also don't target them for the next 90 days. So even if they search, we're not taking their ID in searching for it. I mean, these things are complicated, but they're easy when you really think about it.

Oh, yeah, totally. Man, I got, I got. Yeah, and I love your, your mailer idea, Tommy. So as you're watching your listing, I hope you take action with that. You know, think of putting a family-oriented photo. We have found that a family oriented photo typically, I'll convert in most cases, most copy things when you add it. So something like Tommy mentioned with his family

and his dog, you could model that and duplicate it and send it out in your market, you know, within a three-mile radius, two-mile radius, you know, now you can really narrow down to neighborhoods very, very strategically, like Tommy mentioned, and watch what it does for you.

You will be amazed at how much low-hanging fruit you can pick up by something simple where you're putting a twist with digital wrapped with, you know, I'll call it the old school where people go, it blows my own, direct mail doesn't work. Yeah, please tell everybody that. That way we can continue to run it for our clients because we got no competition. No one else is doing it because they're too cheap and too lazy. So I love that. Love that.

And by the way, I mean, you can build a business just off of that. I mean, you can't get the volume that we're getting. But, well, listen, I want to find out where can people find more about breakthrough? 3X and the growth, and growth and freedom podcast to connect with you. Real easy. Go to breakthrough3x.com

forward slash Tommy Mello. Go to breakthrough3X.com forward slash Tommy Mello. We put together a special gift package. If you're in the home service, you're in trades.

We put together a video series for you that you'll get plus our book on audio and the PDF. Once you go to Breakthrough3X. com forward slash Tommy Mello. You'll get the book, the audio book, plus I believe it's a six or eight series where we go much deeper into each of the five pillars and give you action steps and

mastery steps and a checklist that you can put in place. I know Tommy's big on processes. We've got processes for the marketing. And if we can help serve you, do a second review of your business. Maybe you're working with somebody. If they're doing great or not, get a second opinion, basically a second opinion service. We'll give you access to that. is a free consultation with one of our specialists to take a full review of your business, give you an audit, what's working, what's not, and give you a custom plan of here's what we would do if we were you to help you take it to that next level. You know, I'll tell you something. I gave advice yesterday. If I were you, and the listeners

might not like this, but there's a lot of self-satisfaction with fixing a company. But what if there's certain people that like to fix companies, and it sounds like you guys could go and really help a lot of these companies. But what I found is what if you go in to a mid-size, 30, 40, 50 million dollar company? Because we just kind of set it and forget it. We find great vendors and we pay on time. We get a weekly, biweekly or monthly, depending on the vendor.

And, you know, it's kind of like marketing to the affluent. If you market to the people that are easier, that enjoy your service, that don't complain, that are going to do the work, your link becomes so much easier. And you don't need to get as many, you don't need as many clients. And I just feel like, I just know a lot of the listeners.

The listeners that are listening to this podcast probably got their stuff together. But there's so many people I know that just they don't believe. Like I get, I don't even have a brand on my truck. It's a white truck and I got more business than I know what to do with. Tell me how much profit you're making the year.

After paying yourself six figures, after paying your people well. And they brag about this. idea of I don't have to do that. And you know what I've learned is it's lonely at the top. Everybody's going to criticize. Everybody's happy when you're doing all right and then you surpass and then you got a target on your back. And I was like, I'm willing to do a shop tour. You could come and I'll show you what I do. I do it to garage door companies. I got 100 members in my garage door freedom and then, you know, 700 members in home service freedom.

But I'm like, we'll just show you. But the thing is, it's like a trainer showing you how to work out. It doesn't mean you're going to have a great body. You got to show up every day and do that. the work. And that's where people miss is they're like, they got all these ideas. By the way, I've got a, I just passed 100 ideas into Asana, all my ideas. And I got 80 more probably just right here. Just little things that I need to get done. And so I got a specific project manager. I talk into Claude. It prioritizes these ideas and puts them into Asana. And then I got a team of eight people going over it. It's assigned to a project manager. Then we figure out how to get it done. But more importantly, what can we cut out of this idea? How do we simplify it? How do we simplify it?

How do we be tested and how do we automate it? And then just continue to keep our eye on it on the numbers. That's amazing. Well, Dan, I appreciate you coming out. Is there any books that or book that changed your life? Oh, this one here. It's a little biased because my dad got this to me when I was 16. I did not know that it would have the profound impact that it's had in my life.

but I had always been fascinated by biographies because of my sports background, Tommy. You know, all types of athletes, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, you know, Pete Rose, the list goes on. I mean, that started when I was 10. This book right here was really, I tracked back, besides my dad, taking me to a seminar when I was 10 at Eastern Michigan University, Ron O'Strike with the baseball team. I sat through, I was the only kid in that room. It changed my viewpoint. And I remember, I still got the manual from that when I was 10.

It said positive mental attitude. 90% of success in baseball and in life is mental. Right. So that had an impact. But this book here, I just found out that Dr. James Lour passed away. But this book is, you can find it, but it's called Mentally Tough. The Principles of Winning in Sports applied to Business. And I mean, you know, everything from the mental game to visualization,

which might sound a little foo-foo as you're watching this, not probably for someone like Tommy, but if you're watching, it might sound a little foo-foo-ish, but there's studies that show if you start to really visualize your success, you start to experience the success. You become what you think about most of the time. And this was that doorway for me, Tommy, so this book, and then, you know, another book that's had a tremendous because I don't know how available this one is anymore. I don't know that anybody can really get it. But you know what? I'm going to make a note. I'm going to see if I can get it for you. cool I made a note of it anyway but I love it so I'm just going to make a note but the other book that had a profound impact

was think and grow rich yeah a classic yeah Napoleon Hill so those two I can name another dozen but I'll stop and then Dan finally close us out with just your final thoughts to obviously anything you want to leave the audience with one final notion uh play a bigger game. Choose the game you want to play. And then realize you don't have to look at mediocrity as the game. You can choose to play a bigger game. Tommy's calling you to play a bigger game.

He's saying, hey, I'm here. I'll show you. I'll take you in my facility. I'll walk you around. I'll give you the blueprints. I'll give you the templates. I'll give you the tools. I'll give you my success formula, my framework.

I'm hosting an event coming up right around the corner. Come meet me. Come see me. Play a bigger game. Find people like Tommy and others that are playing big games. Do what they do. You'll get what they got. Dan, we got to get dinner soon, man.

This was, I really appreciated it. And I learned a lot. And I think we should do a 2.0 in about six months. I'll have Phil set it up because I just enjoy this. I can go for hours with you. This is easy. And that's a good thing. And it's a good thing when I fill out my notes because, you know, this podcast has been

probably a saving grace for me, just be able to not only remind me what's working and refresh me, but I've gotten more ideas from this podcast of these simple little principles that work. And if I could just apply one thing from every podcast, I've done 600, not to mention the ones I've been on, so I've done over a thousand. So that's a thousand ideas that implemented. There don't need to be big ideas. It could be little things.

Like, just roleplay a different way, reward a different way. You know, you can automate a different way. You can gamify a different way. And, you know, success leaves clues, and I can learn from everybody. And I think if I ever lose that ability to think I've got it and I've mastered everything, that's when I want to be buried. Hopefully somewhere nice outside on a sunshiny day where nobody wears black, but not going there anytime soon.

So, Dan, I really appreciate you. Stick around for a minute. You got it. Thanks, Tommy.