The Home Service Expert Podcast - How Having Tunnel Vision Can Catapult Your Business Growth

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

Joshua Latimer is the CEO at SendJim, and the founder of RadiusBomb.com and Automate Grow Sell. Years after taking the brave step of building his own business from the ground up, Joshua takes his efficient, optimism-fueled approach to entrepreneurship and helps small business owners worldwide in understanding how to use business systems and automation to achieve success. In this episode, we talked about systems, customer service, relationship marketing...

Engaging your employees, culture, that stuff didn't used to matter 50 years ago like it does now. And now it's becoming a requirement. And gamification dovetails perfectly into that. Gamification is about pushing your culture in the direction you want it to go. So small business owners are really good at getting ticked off and mad at employees when they don't do things correctly. But they're pretty weak when it comes to rewarding people for doing the right things that they want. Now this is not a philosophy based on everybody gets a blue ribbon or everybody gets a participation trophy.

That's not what I'm talking about. And I think people get confused. They're like, well, I'm not going to reward them for showing up to work on time. Okay, well then don't reward them for showing up to work on time. But what it does is it's a subtle way to get everybody in the boat rowing in the same direction,

focused on the same things. And it's kind of just the way that it is right now. It's powerful. It makes it harder for people to hide in your organization who are underperforming. It makes it easier for people to shine who are Rockstar A players. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Million millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today I have a returning guest. His name is Joshua Latimer. He's a good friend of mine now. He's from my home state, which is Michigan, and he absolutely kills it at everything he does. He's optimistic, works with hundreds, if not thousands of businesses, just does amazing things. And pretty much everybody's heard of him. He's got a company called Send Jim. He's the founder of RadiusBomb.com. He's the founder and host of Quick Talk Podcast. He's the founder at Automate Grow Seller and then the founder at Birds Beware

Window Cleaning, which the window cleaning is what got him into the home service space. He realized there was a need to help other companies and that's what he did. Lots of kids, amazing wife, amazing family. Josh, it's a pleasure to have you on again. Tommy, you're one of my favorite people in the world to talk to. So I love hanging out with you, man. I can't wait to see where our conversation goes. We've talked a lot over the last couple of years and you're really good at building a tribe and really good at helping people and just putting these things together. And I know you really started to go a lot more about helping families out and you've got a lot of things, irons in the fire. Tell me a little bit

about what's happened since you had your window cleaning business and what you're working on. Sure. Well, the brief synopsis is just like a lot of people listening, I wanted to become an entrepreneur. I didn't know exactly what that meant. I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, thought that I was all set to go. Of course, that's not the case. I was living in a trailer park and had just left my amazing career as a pizza delivery driver to launch a window cleaning business. And that's kind of where it started for me. So after several years of pain and suffering, which I don't know if anybody can relate, but I always joke that I have a bachelor's degree in pain and a master's in suffering.

I'm hoping that I don't get the PhD and whatever comes after that because it will be painful. I mean, I had a car repossessed. I had my electricity shut off and my basement flooded because I couldn't pay the electric bill. I had groceries left on our doorstep. That's how bad it was in the first few years. And the reason it was bad is because I didn't understand this concept of systems and business systems. And so around the third year of my business, I kind of got introduced to just that basic level, that Michael Gerber style work on, not in kind of stuff. I didn't even know that that was a thing. The business started to work after that. So I took that little cleaning business and turned it into a nice little profitable, fully automated company. I didn't have to work in it day to day. It produced a great income. We had 25 to 30 employees, depending on the time of

year. It wasn't nowhere near as big as your company, but it was my first real business. And we did $180,000 a month. The month that I sold it, that's about where we were at. And I sold the company. I got an unsolicited offer that really overpaid for my business a little bit. And I took it. I moved my family to Costa Rica and just continued my entrepreneurial education. When we were in Costa Rica, I launched a software company. I launched a podcast that has almost a million downloads now. And I started automategrosselle.com, which is really the education for home services when it comes to systems and things like that. So that's kind of the journey compressed, but the long and short of it is pain and suffering is an excellent teacher.

And it forced me to get more obsessed with systems. And even when it comes to your family, we need to look at family systems because things run so much better. There's so much more growth and you can really optimize any part of your life if you're using the right systems. You know, what's interesting is I've got Greg in town who owns the window cleaning business in Idaho, and he's pretty obsessed with your software that you could use for anything. He's here right now in the training room, and I'm going to go have him show me it because he's obsessed with it. Well, it could be a number of different things, but SendGem is the primary software. It's a marketing software.

It lets you do some really unique things with direct mail. For example, you can use like a Google map and you can circle one single house on the map and send that person a whole sequence of postcards or a single postcard. Or you could trigger it to where all of your current customers, they don't get a postcard, but all of their closest neighbors do. And it's a really unique targeted way to market from the inside out. But it does even more than that. You can send brownies and gifts. We have another software called Revenue Buddy. Revenue Buddy is a free tool to help business owners understand their natural revenue curve in their market, right? So there's times of the year when people buy and times when they buy less and sometimes times when they don't buy at all, depending on your industry. And it helps you set your goals, your revenue goals, and helps you understand the gap that

you have to close through sales and marketing. And that's actually just a free resource anybody can use at revenuebuddy.com that I built that's been useful. So is it one of those tools or is it something else? Yeah, I think it was to do certain tasks, like if you want your kids to clean or something, I don't know. Oh yeah. Can't believe I forgot an entire app that we built. Wow.

So that's called Automate Motivate. We use it in our family every single day, but we also have hundreds of small businesses using it all over the world. And it's an employee gamification app. It's awesome. It's super simple. You basically reward your employees with points for doing things that you want them to do. So if they get a five-star review, they just touch a button in the app and it gives them points and tells them, great job, woohoo. And as they accumulate points for cleaning out their truck on time, their paperwork correctly making an upsell whatever

They get these points and then they can redeem the points for rewards inside the app whether it's a paid day off or it's Arizona cardinals tickets or it's cash or whatever That's the base of what that's for but it just happens to work really good for for kids as well when it comes to chores So our kids can't play video games or anything unless they purchase blocks of time to play games by spending their points. And they get points by doing things around the house. So I think gamification is the key to success in this 21st century. And, you know, gamification only works for competitors.

And my second core value is aspire to be number one. And I think millennials definitely, and I'm right on the borderline, 1983. And gamification has been huge for me and my company. How do you see it working at home and through other businesses that you're working with? Gamification is gonna become basically a requirement of any successful company, I think,

because an entire generation has been raised on the concept of gamification, unlike ever before in history. Have you seen the statistics, right? Where, you know, our grandfather's generation would work a job for 40 years. And then even if they hated it, they'd show up, they had integrity,

they were awesome, they're BAs, And they'd work this career and then retire. Well, that doesn't happen anymore. And in fact, I think the average millennial has like nine different like careers as far as the stats we have so far. And so there's a lot of moving around. So engaging your employees, culture, that stuff didn't used to matter 50 years ago like it does now. And now it's becoming a requirement. And gamification dovetails perfectly into that. Gamification is about pushing your culture in the direction you want it to go. So small business owners are really good at getting ticked off and mad at employees when they don't do things correctly.

But they're pretty weak when it comes to rewarding people for doing the right things that they want. Now, this is not a philosophy based on everybody gets a blue ribbon or everybody gets a participation trophy. That's not what I'm talking about. And I think people get confused. They're like, well, I'm not going to reward them for showing up to work on time. Okay, well then don't reward them for showing up to work on time. But what it does is it's a subtle way to get everybody in the boat rowing in the same direction, focused on the same things. And it's kind of just the way

that it is right now. It's powerful. It makes it harder for people to hide in your organization who are underperforming. It makes it easier for people to shine who are rockstar A players. Yeah, and I think A players are the key to success. And I'll tell you,

this is a crazy thought that I've been going through with my trainers this past week. I've got two full-time trainers. I've got 15 guys right now that are being trained for either technicians, door installers, or guys that sell doors out in the field. And our goal is to get to 50 a month. But one of the things we've been talking about, and this is kind of off topic of where we were, but gamification is key to get the right guys. But my idea used to be find somebody that's good and confident and good at sales.

And sales just means to me, you can look me in the eye, you can have confidence, you're excited, you can BS with me about anything. It's the gift of gab, if you will. And then, you know, one of the guys recently said, dude, I agree with you. And then the other guy said, no, no, no. Give me a good tech. Give me a guy that knows a drill that could get the work done and is very confident in the job he can do and finish the job efficiently and fast. And I'll give him the process on how to sell. You know, you're not

going to make somebody look at you in the eye if they have no self-confidence. But he said, these guys that are great mechanics, they have confidence and they're a tech. And, you know, in my industry, in air conditioning, plumbing, electric, roofing, and there's a lot of them out there that I'm pretty much now to the point where give me somebody that's going to give it 100%. I don't care if they're the best at everything or if they're not a great salesman. Just give me the will and I'll find the way. And get the person that's personality is just, I want to win. I want to be number one.

I'm going to come in and do whatever it takes. I'll work weekends, nights. I want to be your all-star and I want to grow with this company. Those are the people that I find just shine every time. What is your take on that, Josh? It makes me excited when you talk like that. I think that the one thing us as employers can never produce in another person is hunger. That is the one thing you want to look for.

They don't have to be a person that has it all figured out. They don't have to be perfectly eloquent and have all the skills developed today. But if they have that fire in their belly, that's who you want. You know, in my opinion, you want someone that's hungry because I can't create a desire for a bigger and better life. I can't create desire for someone to be successful or buy their first home or, you know, be an epic dad. Like you just want someone who wants to grow. And then when we use systems, we can give them the opportunity to thrive and give them the tools and the scripts and the training and the accountability and the oversight and the processes and all that stuff. So I think

you're hitting the nail on the head. And the thing is, Tommy, how do you know you're getting good advice, right? I ask people, how do you know who to listen to? It's really, really easy to know if you're getting good advice. Number one is you have to look at the results that that philosophy or advice or knowledge produces. And someone like you, when you make a statement, it's not just a statement. You're producing millions of dollars a month in revenue. It doesn't happen by accident, right? So if someone's listening to this and they desire to produce a similar result, they just need to model the knowledge that you're giving them. I mean, we can debate all day till the cows come home on whether tech should be sales guys or, oh, should you have such a macho culture? Well, if you want a $50 million company, do the same thing in your own way and model it because

the results speak for themselves. Everybody has an opinion, but not everybody has competent advice. So I think what you're saying is spot on, not only because I know you personally, but because of the results that you're producing. They're extraordinary. Yeah. You know, someone asked me the other day, might've been Brandon Vaughn. I think I told him when we were out to eat, your partner. I was in Portland and we went out to eat. And I think he might have asked or his wife asked ordering and be like, oh, no, there's not even a price on that. That's market fresh. And don't get me wrong. I'm not like flaunty with it.

But I think that there was a day and a time in my life that wasn't that long ago that I remember being ultra conservative and just not being able to go out to eat or buy nice things. And I still have a lot of that in me, that frugalness. But I think that when you reach a point of success and people say, well, what's the next step? Why do more? What point's enough? I remember this guy in Tucson, really big garage outfit. The guy is in his late forties and he said, but why? Well, who cares? Why do you keep going? And I'm like, because I'm at the fetal stages. That's like saying, you've already won the Olympics. Don't try again. Don't try to better your best. For me, it's just something burning inside. It's a passion to say, if I was already like pulling my hair out, and literally I was working 20 hours a day. And literally, people are quitting.

There's people dating. And I'm getting lawsuits at the yin-yang. And I just, I've had enough. I'd be like, dude, I'm going to set this thing up to sell really quickly. But for me, I'm like, this is just the beginning. Things are starting to fire on eight cylinders. And I'm getting ready to go in a 12-cylinder truck here. And as it all comes together, you've got to ask yourself, I've had a lot of people,

Josh, recently that want to sell to me. And they say, I've reached my capacity. I'm bored with it. I'm sick of it. I'm disgusted by it. I'm not having fun anymore. I can't take it to that next level. Can you come in and help me? And I just think with great power comes great responsibility. We've got several hundred employees and we're ready to move it to that next level. So why not? And the people that walk away, I don't have a problem with people that sell to be with their family. I mean, you've got five kids, right? Yep. We have five kids and a dog. You've got a big family. I mean, I'd love to hear your take on that. And you've dealt with companies that are selling that have been at their max. You've coached a lot of people. What's your perspective on just the individuals that decide to sell or grow or what does that look like? This is a really big topic. I'd love to spend a lot of time going back and forth on this because there's all kinds of problems in people's heads.

Number one, I see people, they follow the Gary V's, they follow the Grant Cardone's, they're probably following you. And they think that they're supposed to hustle and grind and grow and push and win, but maybe they're not. And so like with a lot of coaching advice, when I'm working with a company, the answers to questions depend. Like there's so much stuff that's situational. What I mean by that is not everybody is destined, designed, or equipped to lead a huge organization. They just don't have the hardware in them to do that. That's not their gifting. That's not their thing. And so it can lead to a lot of misery, unhappiness, stress, shorter lifespan, heart problems, when you're kind of maybe in the wrong seat on the bus, or maybe

you're on the wrong bus entirely. And what I mean is, is if you have a business, should you build it huge? Should you be obsessively consumed with growth? Maybe, it depends. Should you automate it so you can do something else? Maybe, it depends. Now, on the flip side of that, the reason that most small business owners don't push harder, in my experience, is because of fear. And so then they use as an excuse, this false piety of, well, money's not everything. Jeez, when is enough enough? But if we're honest, when you dig deep in there, they're not pushing because they have this holier than thou, you know, I want to be with my family. That's not even true. They're using that as a mask to cover their own fear, their own inability to execute. And if they were honest with themselves,

they would come to that conclusion really quickly, right? So I see there's like two sides of the extreme. I know people that are super high achievers. I have a lot of friends with businesses even a lot bigger than yours. And some of them are happy and some of them are not. And then I have people that are broke and struggling that I'm friends with.

And some of them are happy and some of them are not. So the question becomes, what are we trying to do? And what I think everybody's trying to do, Tommy, is they're trying to be happy. They want to have joy and fulfillment in their life. And so the way that they go about getting the happiness is kind of all over the place. But a lot of times they chase revenue in their business, they chase status, they chase the next goal that they want to hit. Or on the other side, they're paralyzed by fear and they think they're destined to always be unhappy.

And then everybody else is sprinkled somewhere in the middle. Does that make sense? Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly that happiness comes in waves. I've seen the pictures of people in India. There's 20 of them in a small car and they're singing a song and they're happy. I get the happiness part. And the different people, they don't know what they want. They don't understand. And they're just not risk adverse. Almost no one knows what they want. Hardly anyone knows what they want. The first question I asked someone I work with is what

do you want? Why did you give me a whole bunch of money? Why are we talking? What do you want to happen? And almost no one can articulate it. Now they can tell me what they don't want. Well, I don't want to struggle anymore. I don't want to be stressed out. I don't want to work so many hours. Everyone knows what they don't want, but very few people know what they want. But I do know everyone wants to be happy. Now people like you, who's an A-type high driving person, you actually get fulfillment and joy out of growth for the sake of growth, which is good. God made you that way. You're a builder. The world doesn't exist without people like you, right? But there's other types of people in the world too that are equally but different in terms of their importance. And so the mistake I see people make is when they don't

clearly define what it is that they want in the first place, they wind up chasing whatever the world tells them they're supposed to chase. Whether it's a million bucks or 10 million bucks or whatever, they can spend a lifetime chasing it. If you're a Tommy style personality, you need to chase it. But here's what you got to understand is people like Tommy, and tell me if I'm wrong, I'm speaking for you right now. You get fulfillment, joy, and happiness out of the growth itself. It's not over hitting the mark. It's not hitting the next milestone. It's the growth itself. And that's why every time you hit the milestone, you move the bar. And you'll continue to do that until the day that you're dead, probably. You're going to move the yardstick

over and over and over because the growth itself. And really, for anybody listening, think back of a time that was hard in your life. When you grew and expanded, you leveled up, whether it was in fitness or it was in your relationships or it was in your business or whatever. You probably went through some really hard times because growth always equals pain at some level. And it sucked during the time you're going through it. But then what happens when we look back and think about that time? We romanticize it. We say, oh yeah, back in my day, I used to walk to school uphill both ways, 10 miles in a blizzard, right? Why do we romanticize things that were actually painful? It's because human beings are designed for growth. We're

supposed to grow. And that's where people get hung up. The people paralyzed by fear, they're never going to have growth. They can never feel fulfilled and happy. And then on the other extreme, you have people that think that growth only means revenue and money in the bank. And that's the other side of the deception. Because it doesn't. There's lots of areas of our lives that we need to grow.

You can be an absolute world master at business and be a total failure as a father. There are different skill sets. There's different categories. But I think happiness comes from growing in general, not necessarily from achieving goals. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff there. As far as growth goes, I think that I have a philosophy that it's really hard to be sustained. I'm just going to be comfortable where I'm at. I kind of said that if you're not moving forward, if you're not loading your sinking type thing and you're right, I do. I do set new goals.

No matter what to be content is the scariest thing that ever happened to say, are you happy? Yes. I look back and say, Josh, I look at our team. I look at some of the stuff we've been through. And I say, that's great. The way I look at it is, is that's like saying, were you happy when you were in seventh grade, how fast you could run? Or can you do better now?

And maybe I was fast, let's say fourth grade. But my point is, yeah, I was happy with what we did. But I still think we've got mountains that we can move together. And I really like where you're going with the systems because I look at these businesses and the first thing I look at, the first thing if I was a coach, and I've coached a lot of companies, is I ask them for certain stats. And what I've noticed is I'm buying out companies, Josh. This is huge. None of them have the correct software to run a successful business that actually lets you inspect what's wrong with the company.

Because for me, if I'm in a boat and it's leaking really, really bad, I need to patch that biggest leak. And that could be your call booking rate, your average ticket, your conversion rate, your marketing cost to acquire a customer. And there's tracking tools that you need to be able to be 100% confident that you're looking at the right stuff to make them changes. Because I see a lot of people, Josh, and they come into their business and they never do the things that are the most important. They put them off because they suck at it. And me, even though I've done a lot of school, taken a lot of finance classes, taken years of accounting, when it's my business, it's so much different. It's a home service company. It's different than doing

an annual report on a public traded company and everything I've ever looked at. So now this last year has given me so much more insight as I've got this new controller CPA, basically allowing me to look at a balance sheet. And I've got 17 markets and I look across each one and I say, wait a minute, why is this number so much higher? And then I could go in and fix it. And it's amazing what happens when you've got a system to get accurate data. And then you can build systems to make sure those numbers stay where they need to be or get better. And as you talk about systems, I see a lot of people and they just keep doing the same thing over and over. And when they leave, the company falls apart. And that's what I think it's time to downsize. It's time to get your foundation set up, get manuals, build really,

really nice job want ads for each role you're going to hire. It's finding out where you exist. And as Gary Vee always says, do what you do fucking great. Excuse my French, but he's the one that swears all the time. So I'm okay. But he goes, do what you do and be the best at it. He goes, quit trying to do, I'm not a bookkeeper. I'm not the best at doing that, you know, Excel and doing pivot tables and everything else. So I just really wanted to talk about that a little bit because these businesses, they don't know where to spend their time. They walk in, they get flustered.

And when they, you know how many people I've met and they say, Tommy, when I work from home, I get way more done. And I'm like, that's because you have no control over your day. You have no time control. You let your time get stolen from you. So what's your take on that? Because there's a lot there. Yeah, there's a lot there.

Here's the first little mind bomb for people. Every single person listening to this already has a fully systemized business. The question is not, oh, should I try to do systems and learn about systems? No, no, no. Our whole life is fully systemized. The way that we talk to ourself is systemized. The food we put in our body every day is systemized. The way we discipline or don't our kids, like literally every single part of our life is a system. The real question is, are the systems that we currently are operating, are they serving me well? That's a question we have to ask ourselves. And I see it, I see it a little different, I think, because have you ever heard the phrase, the quote that you can only see the world through your own eyes? Have you ever heard someone say that? Yeah. Okay. So what that means is someone that's a thief, they are skeptical that everyone around them is a thief

and is going to steal from them. Someone who's an adulterer is super paranoid their spouse is going to cheat on them, right? And someone like Tommy, who has screamed past all the self-limiting beliefs a long time ago, and you're going a hundred miles an hour on your rocket ship or a thousand miles an hour, it's hard to really see the world through a different set of lens, lenses than yours. You're like, why aren't you just doing it? Understand your numbers. What's wrong with you? You just want to like choke them in a loving way and smack them across the face, pull yourself together. And the reason you feel like that is very clear to me. It's because you're looking through a particular lens going a thousand miles an hour. For most people, and you are not one of these people because you are not most people. For most people, they listen to podcasts like this. They buy courses and books. They try to watch a Gary Vee. And there's this knowledge going in their head. And they understand it abstractly, but nothing ever seems to change.

And the way to change it is not by using their willpower to look at their numbers more accurately once a month, like that could, because it won't sustain, it won't keep going. All the work that has to be done to get these guys out of these, these ruts is in their brain. It's all in their head. It's all the inner work that has to happen, not the cheesy woo-woo inner work. I'm not talking about that. I'm just saying the things that we believe, the identity that we have of ourselves, what we believe to be true about the world, the frame that we look at the world every day, the fear that we have, the anxiety that people have. That's why everybody's stuck. They'll listen to this podcast for five years and not even grow

their business. Or they're just perpetually stuck and it's a mental issue. It's an internal issue, not an external issue. You're not struggling with that issue right now. So you're in full external conquer mode and you're setting and achieving goals at warp speed because you are confident you are surrounded with people that are even further ahead than you. Like a lot of your friends, you're the cute little kid in the, in the group. They're like, oh, look at Tommy's business. That's so cute. And you're in go mode. So for me, when I'm- Well, that's all the time. You're right. And I surround myself. I want to be the dumbest guy in the room. And I'm willing to move to that level every single time it elevates me. I remember, it wasn't long ago, Josh, that I had no clue what a KPI meant. It was a KPI? I have no idea. I was sounding it out.

I'm like, what the hell is a KPI? I mean, if I could talk to myself in 2014, I would be speaking Spanish the whole time. And the point is I accepted it and I implemented it and I've integrated it. And I'm always the guy on the podcast asking questions, not saying I know everything. I'm asking to learn new ideas.

And I want to take one gold nugget, but the difference is I'm also not the guy to say, hey, I learned something new today. Let's implement it and have it fall apart. It needs to be thought out. It needs to be team driven. It needs to be everybody's all on hands on deck and not have 15 things we're trying to do right now. And there's, like I said, there's so many things here, but I'll tell you one thing. The most important thing for me is being around people that are better than me. And a lot of things when I go golfing, I hate it when I'm the best because I don't play as good. I don't even care. But when there's other people, I take my time.

I'm focused. It's like everything. I like to play people that are better than me. I like to go to shops that are better than me. And there's a lot of them out there, mostly air conditioning and plumbing and electrical, but I'm learning a lot from these guys, you know? Well, let me ask you a question. Are you using your willpower to be like that? Is it, do you wake up each morning and say, all right, come on, Tommy, you put all my energy into being motivated or are you just like that? Because I already know

the answer. You, you have a fire. I don't even need to try to do that stuff. I enjoy it. Exactly. That's kind of my point is you are built to be a fighter jet. And there's a really great fighter jet analogy. And I'm a fighter jet too. I want to change the world. I want to go big. I want to give away a hundred million dollars before I die. But what I've realized as I've gotten older and I've worked with so many business owners is that not everybody's a fighter jet and that's okay. But fighter jets are like very, very important people. All innovation, all positive human change comes from an entrepreneur who takes a risk, who's going out high drive and doing the stuff you're

doing. And every dollar in everyone's pocket comes from someone who sold something to someone. Every single dollar in the planet in circulation. Tax pocket comes from someone who sold something to someone Every single dollar in the planet in circulation tax money came from somebody who sold something to someone for profit like Salespeople entrepreneurs we run the world in that in that regard and we make the world better But fighter jets get very frustrated when they're surrounded with crop dusters, which is a different type of airplane Crop dusters are super useful. We need them, but they fly super, super slow and they're low to the ground. And if a fighter jet does that, it'll feel like he's dying, right? He'll fall out of the sky like a rock. So I think also with people like you, you're very clear on what you want. And this is the biggest hangup is that people don't know what

they want. They incorrectly articulate to me what they want. I'll say, what do you want? They'll say, oh, I want to get to four trucks and a million dollars in revenue. And they're just saying it because they think they're supposed to say it. They don't actually mean it. They don't feel it when they say it. What they really mean is, is that they're stressed out and they want to pay off their credit card debt. Okay. Well, there's easier ways to get that than getting four trucks and a million dollars in revenue. And so I think people like you, anybody who's a high achiever, who's going really fast, usually, almost always, is super freaking clear on exactly what they're trying to do.

You want to build a billion dollar company, and this is how you got to do it. And so decisions to you are binary. If you see a new system, it's very easy for you to say, does this system move me closer to that outcome or further away? Does it make me go faster or slower? And you can make decisions differently. But for the average small business owner, they literally do not understand what they want in the first place, either because they're in survival mode or they've just been in a rut for 10 years. They can't articulate it. So how do they make decisions? Should they invest in the other software? Should they not? They don't know. And because they can't effectively make decisions, they're stuck. And I hope that wasn't too all over the place, but the issue. I think one of the things that I've gotten really, really, really good at is asking

for help. Like right now, there's two things in my mind. So the beginning of the year, I said, how do we create a training center? I got a recruiter. I got a recruiter assistant. I got two full-time trainers. We built an amazing training center. So the next big thing was, how do I get 500 applicants per day? Then I'll be there in April. 500 applicants for technicians. The next big thing, so now I got to have the technicians that are trained, that are great guys, and then I got to have the leads for them. So in my mind, I have two major things to think about. Getting the right guys and making sure I got enough of them and making sure I got enough

leads. Those are two hard things. Those are the two biggest things. Josh, you've been doing this a long time and you hear two things the most. I need more jobs or I need more guys. It's either one or the other. So I needed to create a machine to create guys and create jobs. And right now that's my life. People say they like looking outside of the bubble. I mean, I'm on Jupiter looking down on earth and I'm going, okay, this is broken. It's so easy for me

because the company runs without me. But as far as getting to a billion dollars, I'll tell you what I did, Josh. I wrote down a billion. So you write down one billion. I got a piece of paper right here. And I said, what's a good technician? 500,000. Since then, it's changed to 700,000. But it's 500,000, right? So 500,000, if I get two technicians is a million, 20 technicians is 10 million, 200 technicians. It was 2000 technicians. Yeah. 2000 technicians is a billion in production, right? So I need 2000 technicians. So I said, okay, over three years, what do I need? So here's a simple math. I need to get to the point where I get 50 guys a month. That's 600 guys a year. That gives me 1800 guys in three years. So I worked backwards and said, okay, I know I need to get to 50 guys. I know what I needed to produce.

I probably need 60 guys to do it in three years, but that's an aggressive plan. But what do I need to get to 50 guys? I need the apartments. I need the trucks in production. I need to make sure I got my Sprint or Verizon iPads. There's all kinds of things that could stop this from happening. So I need to make sure there's a system and plan in place for all this stuff. And then the hardest part that people struggle with is go, that's great. You'll hire 2000 guys. If they're each trying running four jobs a day, you need to come up with 8,000 jobs per day. So there's a lot that goes into that. So my mind, I'm busy every day. I've got, I'm working on how do I get to Google my business page up? What's the newest cities to go to? How do I get more involved in social media? How do I get involved with things like you're

working on? Send Jim. How do I figure out the perfect avatar? How do I create demand where no demand exists? Like now Amazon's putting something on your garage so they can leave a package. The bottom number is the number one place the bugs come in. The number one ROI project on your home, including your kitchen and bathroom,

is your garage. You get 102% ROI. So these are things people say, well, it seems like you got it all figured out. You don't have to work that hard. I'm like, I don't if I just wanted to stay content. But to get to that billion dollar company. So I've created a way in my head.

It's an easy path. And if you talk to anybody here, especially my senior management team, you'll hear them say that number a billion. And that's because we've created a channel. We've created this easy path. It's not going to be easy, but it's easy to see it. The vision is complete. It's not like, be easy, but it's easy to see it. The vision is complete. It's not like, hey, Josh, I want to do a billion. I want to be a billionaire one day.

Like, how? Well, there's no way to get there. You have no clue. You don't have the enterprise work that you don't know your taxes. You don't understand where your balance needs to be. You don't understand margin. You don't understand your call booking rate. So now that we've got these KPIs, it's nail it, scale it, and continue to improve it. I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but people go, well, yeah, that's great. Tell me to have a goal. And I'm like, no, no, no, this isn't a goal. This is what we're going to do. This is a reality. This is what we have to do to get there. And here's how we're going to do it. Well, you're describing kind of really what I was talking about. You have tunnel vision. And tunnel vision is a requirement to do really, really big things in

any area of life, right? I don't believe in the concept of balance, for example. Balance is a misnomer. It's a faulty idea. I mean, the concept of balance really means that you're mediocre at every single category of your life at the same time. If you want growth, if you want to achieve something, you have to have tunnel. You have to have intentional imbalance for a a season for a period of time You are massively imbalanced your tunnel vision on this outcome and you will hit the outcome. There's no doubt about it But for the average person they don't even know what they want So they can't have tunnel vision on that thing or they'll put something in place that they think they want

And as soon as it gets hard, they abandon it. And the reason they abandon it, there's two reasons. Number one, that's not really the thing that they want. It's not really the call that God has in their life. It's not the reason they're on this planet or all the internal stuff. So you're like a double threat in the sense that, and the reason it's working for you and it will work is you're super hyper obsessed and clear on what you want. And you don't battle with self-limiting beliefs in terms of believing it's possible.

I was in Dallas last week, and I gave like a keynote kind of address to a bunch of businesses. And the first thing I talked about was, you have to believe it's possible or it's not going to happen. And the truth is, most people don't believe it's possible for them. They don't believe that the success they want is possible for them for tons of different reasons. My dad was mean to me. My mom's mean to me. My market's different. We make external and internal excuses and it has to do with our identity. And those are the hardest things to break through for a lot of people, even if they do know what they want. But those are the two requirements to get a big result. You got to have tunnel vision focused so that you can reverse engineer it and measure all decisions against that vision, that outcome, that desirable result you want, the billion dollars. You have to have that clear and you have to get over your mental hangups.

Now, the way to get over your mental hangups is by doing what Tommy just said that he does, which is surrounding himself with people that don't have those mental hangups is by doing what Tommy just said that he does, which is surrounding himself with people that don't have those mental hangups. And slowly over time, it becomes normal to do bigger and bigger things. I remember when I had my first $10,000 month and it was like the glass ceiling exploded in my brain. I went from pizza guy in the trailer park to $10,000 in a month. Oh my gosh, the world is mine, right? Anything's possible. And then the next mental thing was like $50,000 a month, and then $100,000, right? And then $250,000. I don't think we've ever crossed $300,000 in any of my individual companies yet. But the point is, is there's levels of belief that you have to break through. Tommy is around people doing $10 million a month.

That's normal, right? It becomes real to you. You can borrow someone else's belief in the meantime while you're waiting to get your belief locked in in your own brain. The thing is, is I used to think, man, a million dollars. And trust me, it's not in my personal bank account. So it's so weird how I view money. Like when I'm out and I, if I got to put $2 and 50 cents for a bottle of Coca-Cola, I'm like,

what the heck? You get this at the store for 97 cents, like my brain. But when I pay a $200,000 advertising bill, it's like, okay, I guess for me, I've separated the two. And I look at, I kind of look at it like I've got more chips on the board and chess. And I use these things, marketing. The first thing, you know, I had this quote, I don't know if you saw it on my Facebook, but it says, I believe it's by Henry Ford. Yeah. He said, to stop advertising to save money is like stopping the clock to save time. And, you know, we're going through this whole virus thing and I'm continuing to pour money into marketing because this is the time where there's going to be winners and losers. And you know how many people, Josh, you know,

it's interesting. And I have people all over Facebook. I have people that have their own podcasts. I buy leads from everywhere I could get. You know, people hate me because they go into their market. I'm buying from Thumbtack, Angie's List. I've gone to Affiliate Summit. I've gone to LeedsCon. I mean, if you're a good affiliate, if you figure out how to get leads, HomeAdvisor, you name it. And they just hate the fact I go on Groupon.

I go on LivingSocial. I'm doing deals of the day on Amazon. And what happens is I've learned ex-employees, they want to see me fail. My competitors, and since I've started the podcast, I've invited people into my shop. But it's like everybody says, who is this guy that comes into these markets? And I'm like, you know what? Here's the deal. You come into my market. I don't care. Like these people go, well, this is how it's always been. And I'm like, if it's not me, it's going to be someone else.

So many people focus on what I do. And I hate that, Josh. I'm like, dude, if you spend as much time worrying on your own business as you worry about me, you might be successful. But you know what? These guys on Facebook, these guys all over complaining, these guys that are just calling everybody saying, I treat my employees great. I treat my vendors great. I treat my customers great. And here's the problem. They could try all they want to take me down.

But I'm going to, I guarantee you, if you obsess over me, I'm going to run right over you. You know what's funny, Josh, is I'm not doing anything that I don't talk about. You know, everything that we're talking about here, I'm actually doing. And the stuff that you tell me I'm going to implement and integrate. And it's like, what is it going on with these people? Why do they hate that we replaced an opener? Yeah, I could have fixed it, but it's 15 years old.

Why do you get a notch on your shoulder to be the cheapest? And just, you might do cheap quality jobs, but you're not making any money. You're putting in cheap parts. I mean, that's the story for me is so many people. It's obvious why people are like that, to me at least. I mean, people are not running towards the thing that they're put in this earth to run towards. People are living these, you know, quiet life, a desperation type of thing. That's real. People are actually like that. And people get jaded and they're living in their own paralyzing fear and they're not chasing their dreams and their goals. And so of course, they're going to throw rocks at you. You're an easy target, right? Everybody likes to throw

rocks at the big guy. What I want to encourage people to do is to figure out what it is that they actually want. And you got to go deeper on this. You got to have a vision for your life. And I don't mean just a vision. I mean, your specific vision. And I really believe is if you think it's cheesy or not, I believe that everybody was put on this planet to serve other people. And you're a job creator and a market maker. And you're a wrecking ball when you go into these markets. But you are serving a ton of people and leaving a wake of value in your trail by doing it.

By you pursuing your billion dollars, you're going to help a lot of people. Your technicians make $80,000, $90,000 a year. You're creating high paying jobs. trail by doing it. By you pursuing your billion dollars, you're gonna help a lot of people. Your technicians make 80, $90,000 a year. You're creating high paying jobs. You're crushing it. And you were put on this planet to do that. And so other people that are jealous or haters, they're just not living out their thing that they're put on the planet to do.

And it's never too late. I just encourage people to get a vision for their life. You gotta catch a vision. That's what gives you the hunger. The difference between perpetual motivation and willpower is if you're moving towards the vision for your life, it's automatic. People that have a self-identity as a fit, healthy person, they don't struggle to not eat birthday cake for breakfast. It's not work for them. It's not draining for them to be on the keto diet. That's who they are. Tommy Mello is not taking all of

his willpower to put these things in place and to move really fast and to constantly want to learn more and to constantly network and negotiate and go deeper. He can't not do it because he's living in that future vision. He's running towards it. All of us need to do that. The problem is, is people start running towards Tommy's vision. And maybe their vision is they're supposed to start five orphanages in Africa. And maybe, but they're over here trying to chase down a $10 million business. That's not your thing. You got to ask yourself, am I in the right bus? Am I in the right seat on the bus? Like, is this the vehicle that I'm put here to be in? To me, that's the key. And then the last thing I'll say that I think is a mind bomb for people is to understand the difference between knowledge and wisdom. We live in a crazy world where there's opinions everywhere. There's lots of noise. We know that, right? You go on fake book or I call it fake book because it's all bull crap. But you go on there and everybody has an opinion, right? And we try to accumulate this knowledge. Now, my friend Myron Golden, who I don't know if I introduced you to him, but he's one of my mentors. He's phenomenal. He gave me

his definition for knowledge and his definition for wisdom. I think this is profound. Knowledge is the accumulation of truth, okay? So in business, in garage door business, that's a very specific vertical where you can accumulate truth specific to that thing, right? With health, with parenting, with everything, there's these different things. But if we're talking about business, you got to accumulate the right truth. So if you're listening to this podcast right now, congratulations, you're accumulating very specific truth that is definitely applicable to your business. And you should do that. We need to accumulate knowledge. How do you know if you're getting the right truth? You got to look at the results that the truth produces. So if you're getting opinions on Facebook, you don't have any way to vet the

opinions. Don't do that. Just go right to the sources, the people that are ahead of you. One quote to remember when you're accumulating truth is don't take advice from someone you wouldn't trade places with. That's a good rule of thumb. But see, that's only half of it though. There's a lot of really smart broke people, Tommy. A lot of them. There's a lot of really dumb, smart people too. You ever know someone that has a lot of truth? You could talk to them about world history and economics and the monetary policy and the gold standard. You can talk about all kinds of complex things for hours, but their whole life is a mess. Everything's in disorder. They have no results in their life. That's a problem. And that's how a lot of business owners are, is they have knowledge, but they're not

applying it. And that's where wisdom comes in. Wisdom is not the accumulation of truth. Wisdom is the application of truth. And when you were talking last, you just kept talking about all the action you're taking, how you're implementing, how you listen to, if you get a nugget out of this podcast, you're going to implement it in your life somewhere. That's where the rubber meets the road. So screw the haters. They're irrelevant. They always have been. They always will be. But I want the haters to have this epiphany for their own life and for their family's life. And if they can catch their own vision and accumulate the correct truth for that vision, and then use wisdom and apply that truth,

even if you're scared, even if you don't see the whole picture, but you know the next step to take and you're not taking it, you take it anyway. If you do that, you can't fail. It's impossible. It's impossible. If you accumulate the correct truth,

keep iterating, and you apply that truth, the application's where everybody fails. You're home free, but just make sure that you're running towards the right vision in the first place. I'd love to go to garage door companies. Unfortunately, this industry is just archaic. It's still stuck in the 20th century. There's just no innovators. There's nobody really flying high. And I don't think I'm near where we're going to be. So I think I still got a lot to learn. But as I go to these HVAC companies, I'm just going to use HVAC as an example. You know, I walked away and I remember thinking to myself, how good would it be if I

could have my top producers and a top producer for me means they get zero callbacks, very rare. They get good money on the call. They get a high conversion rate and they get a five star and service setting takes care of that for us, our CRM to make sure to get feedback from every customer. So customer satisfaction has always been number one. Conversion is number two. And obviously, fixing every darn thing to make sure we don't have to go back to the next 10 to 15 years is the next one. Or the fourth one that we've come up with is replace the door. Like if you worked on my car and I had a 1996 Nissan Altima,

and you said, dude, by the time you put a new engine in here, might as well get a new car. So we're learning how to do that. But the stuff I've learned, here's the thing. This is what I love is it's failed. And guess what, Josh? It keeps failing. It keeps failing over and over. Our turnovers we're trying to do, selling service agreements, it's not been great. I'll tell you this, selling financing, you'd think it would take off. No. There's selling from one spot, having my best guy on every single call. All of it has failed, but here's the one thing I can tell you, is there's so many things that failed a thousand times in this business that we continue to pursue. And when we nail it, we scale it, and we're not giving up. The problem is sometimes we have

too many balls in our hands and they all fall. So you got to focus in on that one thing. I talk a lot about essentialism and the one thing by Gary Keller. And I learned these things. And so many people, they get this idea and they go try to implement it and it fails. And they go at it for a couple of weeks and then it fails. They go to this conquer summit that you put on, they go to it and they come out and they try this stuff and it fails. And the thing for me is every single failure is a step closer to being successful. I'm learning what not to do. We're making a mistake, but here's the thing. I never scale with everybody. I pick out three people. And the one thing that's funny about me is people are like, how much do you work? If you think about it, Josh, I work 24 seven. I mean, literally, I'm on the phone all night with my guys, but I don't even look at his work. I'm not like,

well, I worked a long shift today, 12 hours. I must be nuts. I'm like, no, this is fun. This is great. But all I'm trying to say is people come out of these things and they learn from me. And then they go, yeah, that's a good try. It only works like you said, only in your market or only this or that. There's stuff that I've learned will never work in this industry. If I actually said that to myself, but I'm taking this and going, wow, what if I was a pioneer? What if I was the guy to make it work in this industry?

What if I changed the world? Garage doors are in every single country. Garage doors, what if we change an industry? Right now, that's my goal. garage doors are in every single country garage doors what if we change an industry and right now that's my goal and then beyond that and this is going to get a little bit deeper but you could remember that to kind of talk about that but beyond that i love what elon musk and richard branson are doing man i love to be part of changing humanity i love leaving a legacy i love saying we did something that no one else ever did i love the idea of saying i know i'll spend my money way

better than the government could ever spend it i know that I'll become a philanthropist. I know that the harder my money works for me, the more I'm going to be able to do good in this world. And yes, I do. Tommy Mello wants to leave a legacy as a great person. When people see me at my funeral, I hope they say, at least this was a guy that had a big heart, passion, compassion, gave back and wanted something better. But you know, money's important now. The money that works for me now is going to be great one day, but watch what I do with it. That's really what it's going to come down to. But I always go a lot, you know, that's part of my problem is I'll talk for four or five minutes and just go on and on. But I love it. I just,

your fire, it's contagious. And that's why people are drawn to you. Really, what I heard you just say is really my entire point when I talked about wisdom. And I'm glad you said what you said, because I want to clarify something. People think that the application of truth, which is my definition of wisdom, they misunderstand and they think that what that means is that they need to try stuff. That is not what it means. Trying things is irrelevant. But most small businesses try things and successful businesses master things. The goal is not to try to find your first employee or to try that new marketing, whatever. It's to attain mastery over something. The application of truth by definition is iteration. It's trial and error. It's the Thomas Edison 10,000 wrong light bulbs to get the right light bulb.

That is always the path. It's not like weird that it didn't work and then eventually it worked and you got a huge reward from it when it did work. It's not weird. That's how it always works. That's how innovation works is you apply and apply and apply and apply and iterate and iterate and tweak and pivot and apply and get more knowledge. And you say, oh, there's the piece I was missing. You apply it again. It's

a hit. It works. You go. Most little businesses don't do that. A great story to make this point is early in my business, I got roped into spending a whole bunch of money I didn't have on radio ads. And it was a total failure. And radio ads are a great thing to sell young entrepreneurs because of Evo, like TV ads and radio, because you think it's really cool that your business will be on the radio or whatever. But it was a total failure, right? But I had no idea what I was doing. Well, for years, I would tell people, don't stay away from radio. Radio is terrible. You shouldn't do that. In my ignorance, I would, you know, with good intentions, tell people not to do radio until I met Michael Kaplan, who's a good friend of mine.

We're actually business partners. And he had a $20 million carpet cleaning business that he scaled in nine years, right? So he took a business from a half a million a year that he bought and scaled it to like $20 million a year in like a decade. And his primary source of leads was radio ads. So when I met this guy, I'm like, wait, what? No, like you're breaking my brain. You're undoing all this advice I gave people. And what I realized was that he didn't try radio ads like I did. He attained mastery over radio ads. And that cost him a lot of money, a lot of pain and suffering, and a lot more time than I was willing to invest in it. But he got the result of it. And he cost him a lot of money, a lot of pain and suffering, and a lot more time than I

was willing to invest in it. But he got the result of it. And he had a really viable, consistent, predictable model to scale. And I hope people can read between the lines. The goal is mastery, not dabbling, not trying things. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You know what I spell out to people is everything works. People say direct mail doesn't work. I'm like, you are gone. Direct mail. Here's the thing. You know what I'm so intrigued by, Josh, is the more I learn, I'm becoming this ninja. Like, look, I talk to businesses all the time. 85% of their business comes from past customers. They keep their customers nice and tight and they always go back and they find stuff to comes from past customers. They keep their customers nice and tight and they

always go back and they find stuff to do for those customers. And you know what? I've never done outbound. I've never done door knocking. I've never had to do the four houses, the octagon, whatever they call that, the four houses around. Never had to do yard signs. I've had enough calls come in on demand where we're just receiving people that want our service. And I'm like, man, there is so much more to be had out there. So my life, this next two years is committed to not only figure out,

that's like saying I'm only gonna get people that are applying for a job, but now I'm learning to go out and find these people that already have a job that would be happier working for me. Now I'm going around finding customers that don't necessarily need my service today, but would love for my service if they knew more about it.

And a lot of it's come from podcasting. A lot of it's come from hanging out with guys like you at your events. A lot of it's come from just visiting shops. And I think there's a lot to be said about this kind of revolution that's going on out there is I very rarely see two people put it all together. You know what I mean? I see like Ken Goodrich, he does a lot of freaking radio.

He shows up with a stuffed animal and a flashlight and he does a couple hundred million a year. He builds that brand. It's storytelling. He says, my first air conditioning unit was in Gettle. And that's why we invested in Gettle. When my dad used to fix an AC unit, I used to be there with the flashlight. And my first memory as a kid, and they feel like they know him. And the first thing they say when they show up there to the house is, is those stories true about Ken? And he's on every station and he has a whole different output about radio. But people say Google doesn't work. I have a guy that said pay-per-click is a joke. I stopped doing it. I'm making as much money. I had another guy tell me organic Google sucks. I had another guy tell me he hates Groupon and living social. And I don't think every single thing could work for every

company, but I can tell you this. I'm a testament that Valpak and MoneyMailer still could work. I'm a testament that a lot of things that people say would never work, work. And I can tell you that door-to-door knocking works. I can tell you that event marketing works. Some people say, I went to that last home show. Home shows don't work for me. No, you just suck at it. You're not as silly as your question.

They don't have mastery over anything. They're mediocre at all the things. And they'd be far better off spending the time going through the pain and suffering, earning their bachelor's degree in pain with direct mail or fill in the blank with whatever marketing lever you want. You have to attain mastery over something. And you can only do one thing at a time, but that's the path. That's the difference. It's very, very simple. If you do want to get into direct mail, you're going to commit to a strategy. You're going to use data and analytics. You're going to use data and analytics.

You're going to figure it out, change your messaging. For example, with all marketing, especially direct mail, there's only like seven things that need to be tweaked. You got your timing, your targeting, your design, your copy, your call to action, your offer, the urgency, scarcity. There's only a few things. But small businesses, what happens is when they try something and it fails, they interpret that as I failed. And it's because they wrapped their identity in their business. Talking to you, it's really, really clear that you view your business as a vehicle and you're outside of it. You're outside of it looking at it like a brand new King Ranch F-250, which is like a truck that I love, right? So you're looking at it and you're just being logical and you're saying, huh, that's weird. It won't start. What's going on? But for the average small business owner, they don't understand that what they do is not who they are. What they do is what they do and

who they are is who they are. And so when they try something and it doesn't work or they make a hire and the employee screws them over and leaves, they think something's wrong with them rather than there's something wrong with the F-250. And that's a huge stark difference, right? I think that could maybe encourage some people listening to this. What your business is, is just a vehicle to drive to a destination. And most people don't even have the destination in mind, which is problem number one. But even if you have it, you don't have to get emotionally hurt because the thing breaks down. You fix it. You upgrade the tires. You put in a chip set to make it more horsepower. Like that's what you're doing

is you're tinkering with your truck. That's how you view your business. Most people think they are the truck and they get really discouraged. Yeah, you know, they don't work outside of the business. And I got to tell you, it was so interesting being at your last event with Brandon. You were a hoot with Ruber Puddles.

If you guys get a chance, listen to Ruber Puddles. Yeah, he's got a Facebook page. It's pretty silly. It's some funny stuff. And the first day I got up there, we were talking about some stuff. And I had a lot of fun. But the second day, I got good sleep. It was funny because he got that slow motion of me falling, but I got aggressive out there.

I wanted to win that whole contest. I was the only guy that almost got kicked out of the snowmobiles, even though I didn't crash one. But I really appreciate the chance to meet everybody. I've had a blast. One of the things you said there that I was going to talk about, though, is we were on a panel. And I was really, really probably one of the best things I took out of that whole weekend. And I've said it on the podcast before, but someone asked you, you know, as being the significant other or being a kid of a business owner or a loved one of a business owner, what should we do? Josh, you were up there and you said, you know, that's interesting.

Let me think about that for a minute. And you said, OK, I'm going to put a 180 on this. You know, forget about what you could do or daughter. You went into business to be your own boss, to have autonomy, to be able to do things when you wanted to do them on your timeline. And don't forget what you promised every single person in your life, including the new employees you might've got, including your family, your wife, your kids, is you went into this business not to work 14 hours a day. You went into this business to have control of your life, to be your own boss, to not be a pawn in a game that you can't win. And I got a lot out of that. I think about people now and I go, how many real businesses? For me, I got what I wanted. I never wanted to have to worry about money again. I wanted to do what I want, what I

want with who I want. I have fun. I travel. I enjoy traveling for business and having fun at the same time. So what I set out to do, and I'm continuing to do it, but what you said to me that, and it wasn't to me, but it felt like it was to me is, why did you go into business? Are you keeping up to what you promised everybody that you would do? I want you to just talk about that because that was profound for me. Well, especially for any entrepreneur listening to this that has a family, there's a couple of things I think that are important to keep in mind. Number one is that people like us, we live in the future. Like 24 hours a day, we live in the future. It's very, very hard for us to slow down, to downshift our brain. We don't want to. And it's because we're designed that way. We're supposed to be like that. There's nothing wrong with that. A lot of people

feel bad or guilty because they're a high driver and they just want to go, go, go, go, go. God made you that way. It's fine. You're supposed to be that way. But for the people around us, that's why I think one of the biggest epiphanies I've had the last five years, Tommy, is realizing that entrepreneurs are great and they're world changers, but my God, what a nightmare world we would live in if we didn't have all the other people. What if we didn't have nurses? What if we didn't have people full of empathy, compassion, that move slow, that have patience, right? I mean, I'm not that guy, but what a crappy place this would be without these other types of people to help us, right?

I think it's important. So the people around you, they don't live in the future. And sometimes when we're chasing down our vision, we can go for years at a time, barely without taking a breath, but the people around you can't, especially your kids. So it's really important. And you can build a system for this. This is one of the family systems we talk about, is how can you figure out a way to build into your schedule strategic reset time with your spouse? How can you slow down intentionally for a period of time to be with your kids? One of the family systems I've had since for the last 10 years was special days with my kids each week. So we have Sawyer Sunday, Maverick Monday, Tucker Tuesday, Judah May Thursday, and Finley Friday. And it's an hour

each week when I'm one-on-one with one kid. We just talk about life. I'll play a video game with them. I'll lay and play Legos with them. I'll ask them what's going on. What are they excited about? What are they struggling with? I can't be home all the time because I'm made to be a high driver. But when I am home, I'm intentional to push pause for a minute and bring myself into a state of the present moment instead of only living in the future. So I don't know if that directly addresses what you're talking about, but all of us high driving entrepreneurs, when we're laying on our deathbed, I am certain we're not going to be saying, oh man, back in 1996, I should have got the in-ground pool instead of the above ground pool.

Like that's not going to be on our mind. We're not going to say, oh, I remember when I really put the squeeze on that competitor and killed his business and finally took all the market share. We're not going to be doing that. We're going to be panicking, thinking, oh my God, I should have spent more time with my wife. I should have spent more time with my kids. I should have been a better son.

I should have been more time with my wife. I should have spent more time with my kids. I should have been a better son. I should have been all this stuff. So one of my favorite quotes in closing with this point is a wise man thinks of death often. And it's not to be morbid. It's to be wise. It's wisdom is to remember that, you know, going a hundred miles an hour is awesome. But when it's all said and done, you know, 10 out of 10 people die. And when I go down, I want to make sure I leave a legacy when legacy matters the most. And there's no amount of business success that can compensate

for failure in the home. That's super powerful. And that's what I kind of wanted to hit home with you because I took a lot from that. A couple of things real quick at the end here that I do is, as usual, how do people get a hold of you if they want to reach out? Well, my wife and I are launching an incredible movement for married entrepreneurs right now. And my focus is really on that. So there's a couple of things. If you need more business resources and help with systems and education and community and masterminds and things, you can go to automategrsell.com, automategrowsell.com. But if you need to reconnect with your family,

if you're starting to succeed in business, but things are messed up, or you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but your spouse can't, if you need to reconnect, if you need to look at your family's identity, if you want to be a family with an unfair advantage who has respectable kids who understand entrepreneurship, then I invite you to check out Honor and Fire. My newest current project is Honor and Fire. You can go to honorandfire.com and there's a free family legacy quiz you can take and get on our email list. Really, really useful stuff that I just don't see being taught. And so we're bringing that out because the Gary Fee stuff, the Grant Cardone 10X Hustle Grind, all that's great and fine and dandy, but it's leaving a huge piece out.

And it's how to not burn your family to the ground in the pursuit of our business goals. So it's all entrepreneurs and it's all about family systems. It's super epic and go to honorandfire.com. Perfect. And is there any books that you've read lately that you want to share with the audience? Actually, the books I'm reading right now are super tactical. So a really good book called Copywriting Secrets I'm going through. That is by Jim Edwards. And then there's another one called Million Dollar Ads. Really, really, really, really cool. It's by Ping June. And it's really just for direct response marketing and things. So as we're launching our new movement, I'm looking at the language and the copy and our

messaging for Honor and Fire as we're going to launch all these products and all these things. And that's where my head's been at is definitely down at the tactical level, just refreshing my copywriting skills and how to frame things the right way and, you know, proprietary language and how do we build frameworks and acronyms that are powerful for use in our specific community. So that's where I've been nerding out lately. Yeah, I've got a book here called The Ultimate Sales Letter and Timeless Copywriting Secrets. There's kind of funny because I'm kind of getting tactical too. All right, well, let's close it out. I'll give you the final thought, Josh. I appreciate you coming on.

I know you've been traveling and this whole thing going right now. It's a great opportunity to start connecting back with family and getting organized and creating plans, reading, working out. You should be meditating. It's a great opportunity for every single problem. There's a different viewpoint that if you change the way you look at the situation, there's an opportunity in

every single problem. So I just love to hear your final thoughts and I appreciate you coming on again. Well, just remember that the frame in which you look at the world through is going to dictate the results that you get. And you can have two people in the same exact situation with completely different perspectives on what's happening. That's exactly what's happening right now with coronavirus. And just remember, are you looking at the world through the right frame? Are you looking at it the way Tommy Mello does, where when you called me on my cell phone yesterday just to chat, you were so excited on all the businesses you're going to buy, on all the deals you're going to make with inventory.

I mean, you're going to have all the supply and inventory and all these other companies are not going to because you're running towards the storm. That's a frame. You see it. You're like drooling at the opportunity. You had your biggest Monday ever, you said too, right? Where other people are shrinking back. They're in fear.

They're panic mode. They're more worried about getting extra toilet paper than they are about capitalizing on the opportunity that's literally all around them. And a good friend of mine, her name's Elena Ladeau. She's one of our Conquer coaches. You met her in Lake Tahoe. She has this incredible analogy and I'll just end it with this. Buffaloes run towards the storm and cows run away from the storm. And this is actually true. So what happens if you think like the Great Plains

and there's a thousand cows, when there's a huge storm head rolling in over the mountains, over the hills, cows turn around and run away from it. And what ends up happening is they end up staying in the storm for two or three times as long as they need to because they're moving with the storm. Buffalo, on the other hand, turn and point directly at

the storm and run right through it. And they get a net benefit because they get through it faster. So I just want to encourage you to run towards the storm. Open your eyeballs. If you're surrounded by people that are negative, then change your group of people that you're around and list double up on the Tommy's podcast if that's what you need to do. But yeah, it's going to suck. There might be a little pain depending on what industry you're in, but it will be temporary. There will be a light at the end of the tunnel. Just make sure that you're ready to capitalize on it when it comes. Love it, Josh. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tommy. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you, Tommy. minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest

coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here. I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book. Homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day.

And thanks again.