The Home Service Expert Podcast - How to Optimize Every Stage of Your Marketing Funnel for Maximum ROI

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Jim Leslie was the former Chief Technology Officer and Chief Marketing Officer of A1 Garage Door Service. He is Tommy’s go-to guy for building software needed by A1, and is also a great contributor to the success of organizing Vertical Track and the Freedom events. In this episode, we talked about talent acquisition, lead conversion, marketing and operations...

are you capitalizing on the leads that you have first, right? Everybody wants more leads, but they rarely look down the funnel and truly have it maximized, right? You know, take pay-per-click, for example. A lot of people say, oh, you know, we're doing everything we can do there. We just need more leads. But you go and look and, you know, they're dumping campaigns straight to their website homepage. They're not using landing pages. They're not using call tracking. They're not monitoring conversions.. They're not using call tracking. They're not monitoring conversions. They don't have conversion tracking set up.

There's a hundred things that aren't right. So, and that's one small example. And I look at anybody's pipeline and just start deconstructing it. I can almost always find 10 things that could be optimized. So it's easy to say more leads, but I think most people, if they look in their backyard, there's an acre of diamonds in just tuning their funnel.

And then from there, move out to like, all right, more lead sources or more budget or all of that good stuff. Well, I think the point is you got to figure out how to put a buck in and get a buck 50 out. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million

company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today is a big day because I've got one of my favorite people on the planet. His name is Jim Leslie. A lot of you guys know him. He's a savant. He is TMV's managing director.

That's Tommy Mello Ventures. He put up the whole thing for HSF, the whole freedom event and everything we're doing to help your business grow. He was also the CMO slash CTO at A1 when we were doubling each year. Big part of the process of why we got such a high valuation. Jim is located in Pittsburgh, Alabama. No, I'm kidding. But Jim, how are you today? Doing well. How about you?

I heard you had a cold plunge at 6 a.m. Yeah, we did. You know, I woke up this morning. Well, we've already talked this morning, but I woke up at 3.50. And my mind was racing. I just said, let's go up and walk. So I walked for an hour and 30 minutes. I made several phone calls.

I called Dan Farr in Detroit, listened to some music, caught up on social media, just did, you know, listen to part of a book. Great walk. I feel great. I just worked out. And here's the best thing. It's barely 8 a.m.

Like half my day, I've been up for four hours. How much did I get done? Today's a big meeting with Cortec. We'll go through the slides. They'll be happy. I'm sure they'll find something to complain about, but that's kind of what they do. That's what they're good for. It's just part of the process. So Jim, you've been busy. Why don't you tell us a little bit about, you've been in home service a long time. You've also done a lot of other stuff. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself, where you came from, what you're doing these days. Yeah. I started with A1, I don't know, like three years ago now. It's hard to believe. Initially in marketing, building out a lot of systems and processes and all that fun stuff, local search, just a ton of things we dug into in those early days. But recently, I've been spending a lot of time working with Al Levy,

7 Power Contractor, kind of picking up what Al's doing there as he semi-retires. I don't think Al will ever retire, but he is taking a vacation this week. So 7PC and, most importantly, Home Service Freedom, you know, the program we're building out to help contractors grow scalable, sellable businesses. So that keeps me busy, you know, working with hundreds of members there, just helping them dial in and what they're doing and tuning their business. You know, we've been going, doing these mini events across the country. And I feel like I see a lot of the same faces. One of the things I've kind of really,

I've had an epiphany this last week of like, I'm a calculator risk taker. Like I jump in head first and almost to a fault. I think a lot of people around me are like, dude, hold up, like slow down. And that's how I've always been. And I'm just, I'm the type of guy that jumps out of the plane and builds the parachute on the way down where most people don't even get on the plane. And I think it's to a fault. Like, I'm not proud of myself. I'm not saying I do everything right, but I'd rather fail quick than never ever get started. And I feel like a lot of people, they're like, I don't know, they're like in limbo. They've always got an excuse. They don't realize

there's 168 hours in a week. They can't find the time. They're not prioritizing. They're not creating their top 100 board. You know, the stuff at Levy, top 100, top 30, top 5. They'd have zero delegation skills. They're the smartest guy in the room or gal. What is your take on...

There's a lot of great businesses we work around. Don't get me wrong, but there's some people just that are always seem to be stuck. Yeah. And it seems like they're getting ready to get ready. Like they know all the information they're downloading a bunch of stuff. They're in six different programs. They're trying 15 different things, but you know, nothing, nothing ever gets off the ground. And I, I think we're kind of the same way, you know, where like, Hey, launch it and build the plane while we're flying it. And sometimes you hit a few bumps, but you get way more done, way more accomplished than

people that are just getting ready to get ready and never get stuff out of the gate. So, you know, I talked to whether it's Adrian or Luke or Brian here at a1, and it's always like we're just not ready to do that yet. We're not ready. And I will admit when we rolled out flooring, one of the things that I think my largest mistake was, and I think Luke does it a lot as well, is we give the busiest team, whether that's Scott or Travis Rackley or Mike Bailey or other people, like they're already working 65 hours a week and we hand

them something and expect it to get done when they're already, because we trust them and we know they'll try, but they're already buried. Yeah. I don't know if you remember, that was a question I used to ask you all the time is who owns this? Who's responsible? Who's managing it? You know, and it would sometimes wasn't super clear. I'm like, okay, that's, that's something we got to figure out or else, you know, if nobody's responsible, then nothing happens. Or if everybody's responsible, nobody's responsible. I think the biggest thing I'm learning is it's all about the talent you bring in. And how do you motivate that talent? Do they have a track record? Have they been where you want to go? I do think bringing people up from within is important, but for c-suite i don't believe you just have

to find somebody within the company to move up to those certain roles of specialties that already have world like real life experience you know what i mean and not all the time if it's like a possibly vps and regionals and stuff they gotta know the industry i get that but more than ever now i'm a big fan of bringing people from without in from outside of the company yeah on the opposite end of the spectrum i know there's a lot of companies in the audience that it's maybe an owner and a couple technicians or they've got an office manager but you know the owner's wearing all the hats and they just haven't figured out how to delegate stuff to that first you know person and that's that's a a key milestone because they get stuck in this loop where they're trying to

do everything. And there's only so many hours in the day until they can kind of master that and get that off the ground. They just sort of stay in the same place. I think the epiphany I made, and I really learned this a lot following Tom Howard and just looking at what he did with Fetchatech. He had a few key players there. They bought an older company. They rebranded it. They really monetized the list. They had a guy named Phil and Brent Buckley.

And without the Brandon Colbys and the Robins of the world at A1, we sit in these meetings each month with Cortec in these weekly meetings internally. And I finally hear Roberts, and I think he's got a valid point. He's like, we don't have enough money to market in that market. I'll never give you the numbers you want as a percentage of revenue. Because number one, our capacity's screwed up. And number two, the guys are just blowing through jobs. And I think the biggest profound thing I've seen is it takes, we're thinking about relocating technicians that are in the top 10% to those markets, giving them a really big relocation package. Because it takes

someone seeing it every day in their own market to believe it. And I want to talk to you about lead generation, but I don't think we can talk about it without the favorite things I talk about, conversion rate and average ticket and booking rate. And I think part of it's that four-minute mile concept, right, where people don't believe it's possible until they see it. And then everybody's doing it. It's kind of like the story you tell about sending Robin to Detroit a long time ago where we can't hit those sort of numbers here because it's our market, but you put the right guy in the market

and everything changes and all of a sudden everybody's able to do it. And it's modeling and seeing the right things done consistently that produces the results. You got to see it to believe it. You got to see it with your own eyes, in your own market, with their own weather and everything else going on. And people say the time, the seasonality, people say it's a political

year. People say inflation, Bidenomics. Everybody finds a reason why they suck. That's what I realized. I find a reason to just say, this is why we're going to win. Yeah. I mean, there's clearly some stuff going on in the marketplace. Like a lot of people are feeling it. I mean, lead costs are up on certain channels. Google's big LSA price increases over the last six months or so, but none of that should be an excuse, right? There's ways around it. There is so many opportunities. There was this phrase on this wall. I went into this massive company and this had to be eight years ago. This guy had this phrase on this wall. I went into this massive company and this had to be eight years ago. This guy had this phrase on his wall and it was printed. It said, he who could pay more per lead will win. Because listen, I got that written that down here. They

said questions Tommy might ask you, what is it that most people don't get about the home service industry? I wrote down whoever can pay the most for a customer wins. It's literally the most important thing I wrote down. I think you can pay more for that customer, but you got to think about lifetime value and retention of that client. And I think most people miss that. And when I talked to Leland Smith with Service Champions, 40% of their revenue comes from existing clients. And it might have been even higher than that. But I was literally like, tomorrow we're going to Morris Jenkins to study capacity of how they stay open until midnight, seven'm getting back. You know, it's crazy. Have you ever read a book like the E-Myth or the Ultimate Sales Machine or the Richest Man of Babylon or, you know, my books? There's a ton. Have you ever reread it and got a different, like a completely different message? Yeah, there's about a dozen books I try and reread every couple of years. You know, it's like the seven.

Napoleon Hill. Yeah, exactly. That kind of stuff. I literally, when I talk to Leland Paul Kelly, I talk to Ken Goodrich. I'm going back to the basics. I'm going back to tripling down on training. I'm going back to grit and relationships. I'm going back to visiting those guys. I'm going to go visit all the guys I used to visit.

Again, it's like there's a rebirth happening. And I think this happens in businesses where you grow and then you kind of catch up because what happens is too many people get too many direct reports and there needs to be new systems that are born, new positions that are born. And I feel like we're going through that right now. We're not seeing dramatic growth, but I'll tell you what i mean in all accounts this year we'll be up about 55 to 60 percent of ebita and i don't consider that a failure yeah i don't think anybody considers that a failure that's that's phenomenal so the it's not it's not a to Tommy goal. Let's put it that way.

Yeah, that's true. It's not tripled. I don't know. I think another thing along the lines of that that I preach often to our members is you got to shift your mindset from becoming a doer of the thing to a marketer of the thing, right? Like a lot of smaller companies, you know, Hey, I'm in the garage door business and they get really involved in like, you know, what kind of gears and sprockets and motors and all that stuff. And then marketing is kind of relegated to, you know, to a side thing. And, you know, they say, Oh, I don't, I don't want to be a marketer. I don't, you know, and it's like, well, do you believe that you have the best service, the best products, the best? Don't you want more people to know about that?

I mean, you want to increase your business, right? Well, the way to do that is marketing and shifting that mindset to putting the emphasis on getting the word out. It seems really simple, but it's a powerful shift where most people don't see themselves in that way. You're 100%. And I think at times me and Luke and some of the guys at A1, I would say I do it probably not as much as them. But when you're the smartest person in the room, and me and Luke had a long discussion about this, is if you find yourself micromanaging somebody, it's because you hired somebody way less smart as you, whether that's EQ or IQ. And a lot of people do this. I've seen Luke saying, I'm just going to do it myself.

I can do it faster. We try to get him an assistant. And I love Luke. He's amazing. But he's like, dude, it'll take me three months to train this person. I'll just do it myself. I'll do all my own email. I'm just faster at it.

I'm efficient. This was Adam, too. I mean, they want to do everything, and it's okay. That's why Cameron Harrell wrote the book Double Double, because certain people in the company only have the really, they have the, I don't know what you want to call it, but the ability to double their business twice. And then they kind of run out of bandwidth. Yeah, 100%. And that's what a lot of the HSF members are kind of up against is hiring the right people, maybe not people that know everything, but that can learn, that they can bring up. But it's more the mindset of being able to hand stuff over so that they can focus on more important things. It's a big challenge.

And Cameron, when we were on the podcast last week, I was in Vegas. He's like, you're an orchestrator as a COO. And that's what he trains as COOs. He's like, your job is not to do the work. It's to make sure the work's getting done. And that's the same job of a CEO. And that's most of the C-suite. It's to orchestrate everything.

It's not to do the work. It's to make sure the work gets done and make sure you got talented people underneath you. It's like a coach that's running the plays, but he's not in the game. And I think people miss that. They always get into the game. They're like, put me in coach. But when you're in the game, it's hard to call the plays because you don't see what's going on as much. You don't see the whole real picture. You know what I mean? Yeah. that's the way I felt in a lot of companies is somebody has to have a perspective of what's going on and all these different silos and companies get siloed to where, you know, they all, you know, each department or dimension has their own specific goals and objectives that they're running to, but somebody has to integrate all the pieces and make

sure they all fit together and something you know one department's chasing might be undoing you know somebody's doing in another area without that visibility and somebody you know like you said conducting the orchestra you know doesn't work there's a youtube video where um they show uh an orchestra playing and they say this is perfect everybody hits all the right notes then they play the same song again and they say, this is perfect. Everybody hits all the right notes. Then they play the same song again and they just say, okay, we're going to hit, everybody's just going to hit two or three wrong notes in the whole piece. And it sounds like crap. There's thousands of notes and it's just each person, a couple things

off because somebody is not conducting them, you know, and it turns into a mess. So it's a pretty powerful illustration of what can happen in a company when somebody's not conducting the orchestra. There's so much going on here at A1. And there's so many opportunities and impact zones that could be moved in a better direction. But what's crazy is me and Luke always say there's so much to be done here. It never ends. It never ends. I don't care what size company you are.

The problems change, but it never ends. But it's like, people don't really understand. It's crazy that we could be about 24 and a half to 25% of the bottom line, growing in the way we're doing and still see so much opportunity. And I just remember, Jim, 2017, when I met Al Levy, we were at 17 million and it was through pure grit. But I would say that we listened well. And Al told me, you got to stop listening to other people. You got to get the fundamentals. You got to get the manuals done. You got to get your top five. You got to live, die, and breathe by the top five.

You've got to stay grounded. And he basically told me he didn't want to work with me if I was going to continue to listen to the fake gurus out there because there's a million of them. Yeah, that's the key point now because there's all these guys running around and I won't name any names, but I mean, there's hundreds of them, literally, not just in our industry, but across everything that they're a coach, they're a consultant, whatever. But they've never actually run a substantial business, not even to five million, let alone, you know, 200 million. Right. So but everybody thinks, oh, this is the dream job.

I'll just get in and help companies. And but it's not easy doing the actual work, you know, and you know, what we've seen at a one from, you know, where you were to hundreds of millions of dollars. Now my previous company going from 5 million to 20, you know, it's, it takes a lot of effort, you know, and it's not just something you read out of a book or take an online course, or you have a couple of little job experiences and now you're a coach, right? You know, I did my, for the group, you know, I do the Mondays where I just tell them, welcome back to Monday. And I just do a two, three minute video. I talked about the compound effect by Darren Hardy. And it's crazy when you start compounding things, whether that's working out every day. You know, Simon Sinek talks about you can brush

your teeth for 48 hours straight. You're not going to have any healthier teeth. It takes you brushing your teeth three times a day, every day. It takes you coming into work and hustling. It takes you focusing on the big things, not getting trapped and not putting out fires. It was funny. Me and Bree went to a comedian. We went to Sebastian. But there was this, you know, the comedian that comes out first. And he goes, yeah. He goes, I got it.

You ever meet those guys that are working 24-7 and you're like, dude, how did work go today? He goes, dude, oh, long day. Buried today. And he goes, yeah.

What projects did you work on? He goes, dude, so many things. I put out so many fires you know you know how it goes he goes no no seriously what did you get done today and he's like oh dude you know yeah just meeting after meeting no but what did you do and it's like it was we were all laughing because me and brie especially because how many people do you meet that's like dude slam today i'm still i am putting in more hours than I've ever put in. I'm working more than ever. And you're like, well, what are you getting done? Like what exactly, what systems are you creating?

What processes, what vision are you fulfilling? Or is it just busy work that you just say, I lost all my time for another month, another quarter, another year. And I meet these guys that come to the same shows, the same meetings, the same events. Three years later, they're exactly where they were. You know, the economy and inflation and it's like they didn't get anything done. I don't understand that. What do you think that is? Yeah. I mean, there's a few that I've talked to you now over the years that like, fundamentally their business hasn't changed in three years. And I guess if you're like, Hey, this is what I want to do. I don't want to, you know, whatever. And that's your goal. That's great. But you know, for people that say, Oh, I want to, I want to grow my business and

make more money, but they're in the same place three years later, just doing the same things over and over. And then you tell them like, well, Hey, here's three things that I would fix. Just do this, do this, do this. And in a way they almost say, Oh, well, that's, that's too simple. Or they're worried about some complicated, I got to figure out AI or this or that, or it's like you said, getting back to the basics. Right. And sometimes people think they're above that or it's too simple or just, you know, and they don't do the basic things, right? That's why I preach Al Levy's top five board. Like you got a whiteboard with the five projects in the company. It's posted out there

where everybody can see it. It seems dumb, but people don't do it and then don't understand why nothing happens, you know? yeah no i'm i'm getting back to the basics 100 i i love it when people say listen i think we it's time to start training again and you know we have a morning mojo call we have thursday meetings we have ride-alongs we have the math team we have some of the best trainers we do ride along. Like it goes on and on and on. But I feel like you look at Brian Burton, for example. I really love that guy. That guy trains every morning for an hour. He does role play.

And I like to call it practicing versus role play. I think role play is just kind of like technicians don't like that. Every time he talks to me, he'll call me for something quick. We'll be on the phone for like an hour. And we'll probably have at least We'll be on the phone for like an hour and we'll probably have at least three role plays on the phone like, hey, what would you say if somebody said this and we'll go back and forth?

He lives it, breathes it, dies it. That's what you have to do. That's why he's top of his game. Well, it's funny. Those guys like me and you get along really well because we both love marketing. I really, really, really enjoy marketing. I got to tell you, whenever I'm working on campaigns,

whether it's talent acquisition or whether it's acquiring clients, I actually really enjoy that. I enjoy that. I think I enjoy that more than sales. I love making the phone ring. I absolutely love figuring out ways to attract better talent. Now, what I love about it is it's ever-changing. And technology changes, Angie's List changes, the way we acquire relationships change. And it's such a dynamic

world out there with machine learning these days and algorithms getting stronger. And just staying at the top of your game, figuring out what Google wants and figuring out, you know, this is one of the things I've been really thinking about. I was walking with Sean McGraw last night and I said, what would you consider a garage door? Is home improvement or home service? He goes, both. He goes, it's one of the only industries that I really know of that qualify as both. And we're really in home service is what A1 is designed to be. And I really want to that qualify as both. And we're really in home service is what A1 is designed to be. And I really want to start shifting to home improvement because I want to start getting

those $100,000 clients. Let's say I want three brand new doors and it doesn't really matter what it costs. I just want them to look beautiful. I've got a $10 million house. And that switch, once we master it, I feel like it's less work for more money, but we'll never get rid of home service. That's kind of in our DNA. It's bringing on this new home improvement side of things. And I'm just absolutely fascinated by it. And it's changed a lot. And I think people are wondering, what do we do now for leads? And I'm just curious when people ask you that, because that's been a common question across the board from every company and every industry, what is your answer?

Yeah, I think, are you capitalizing on the leads that you have first, right? Everybody wants more leads, but they rarely look down the funnel and truly have it maximized, right? Take pay-per-click, for example. A lot of people say, oh, we're doing everything we can do there. We just need more leads. But you go and look and, you know, they're dumping campaigns straight to their website homepage. They're not using landing pages. They're not using call tracking. They're not monitoring conversions.

They don't have conversion tracking set up. There's a hundred things that aren't right. So, and that's one small example. And I look at anybody's pipeline and just start deconstructing it. I can almost always find 10 things that could be optimized. So it's easy to say more leads, but I think most people, if they look in their backyard, there's an acre of diamonds in just tuning their funnel. And then from there, move out to like, all right, more lead sources or more budget or all of that good stuff. Well, I think the point is you got to figure out how to put a buck in and get a buck 50

out. I mean, if you could get that going, then it's just fuel on the fire. What's that? Or three bucks or two bucks or three bucks. Yeah. Sometimes you can get that. I think right now what's going on is, is using tools, whether that's pin parrot, you know, pin parrot.com with Kellen or understanding how Rilla voice works to make sure you're tracking what's going on in the field, or just really optimizing your service type and price book, which we just really went through a huge overhaul or even getting this best pro to where it's learning the right stuff and you're running the right campaigns through it. And what I mean by that is just, it learns off a job type. So if you don't have the right job types, you can't have 40 job types,

but you can't have two either. It can't be just service or replacement. It needs to be a little bit more quantified for the machine to start learning. There's a lot of software technology. Yeah. And I'm all for AI. I mean, I was dealing with machine learning before anybody knew what it was, you know, neural networks, all that good stuff. But there's a lot of like sort of fact versus fiction now where people think, oh, AI is going to solve everything. And I think as you've seen, you know, there's humans behind it that are informing it. If they don't have the right job types, if they're not classifying the jobs right, if things aren't, it's garbage in, garbage out. If data is not classified right, if people aren't, it's garbage in, garbage out. If data is not classified right,

if people aren't working with the system in the right ways, the AI can't do its job. And so I just don't, I like to not lose sight of that fact that, you know, technology is great, but you need the people doing the right things behind it. You know, we see that a lot in hiring where people think, oh, like everything can just, AI will just fix all my problems. And to get thousands of leads a month in recruiting, it takes a lot of people firing on all the right cylinders. You know what's nice is we hit a certain economies of scale where vendors, whether that's ValPAC or even like Clopay, they come into the table and they want to see us win. Because number one, I think

there's a couple things going on. They realize that we influence a lot of people and I like that because quite frankly, I don't lie to people. I tell people what's working and when we do shop tours and when we talk to people like they want to see us win because I don't recommend anybody

that doesn't help us win. Like I'll straight up tell, I don't bad mouth any companies. I'll just say, yeah anybody that doesn't help us win. I'll straight up tell... I don't badmouth any companies. I'll just say, yeah, that didn't really have the right ROI we were looking for. But if they ask me a serious question, I'm like, that works great for our company. I think everything works, whether it's Angie, Valpac, Clipper, PPC, everything works. It's just at what extent and how much time are you putting into it? I feel like sometimes people spray and pray.

They're like, dude, I tried radio. I tried the Val pack. But they don't have consistency. I mean, I still think the yellow book works, or they wouldn't be putting it out there anymore. You know what I mean? Yellow book works in certain, especially in like elderly 65 plus or 55 plus. We have, at least when I was last there, we were still running some yellow page ads for A1s and a couple of market that work great there. So yeah, everything works.

You know, marketing is a science experiment. It's not a cut and dried, like, you know, if it was simple as like, tell me where to get the leads and just go sign up, everybody would do it, right? It's cracking the code for the channel, for the market and for your company, right? Things that work for A1, you know, might not make sense for a smaller company, right? Conversely, there's things that work for a smaller company that might not make sense for A1 because it doesn't scale. You know, that's an advantage that I tell, you know, a lot of the HSF companies, you know, members, hey, there's marketing things that you can do right now that makes sense when you're smaller. You know, you can go put flyers on cars and parking lots or just canvas neighborhoods or do

things that, you know, we couldn't execute at scale across 35 branches easily and use all that stuff to your advantage, right? 110%. It's hard to really be indoctrinated into a community. It's easier in Phoenix. We got a member who... So you have those billboard trucks in all the big cities, right? They go around and you pay to put your ad on there and they drive around right well they're all apparently the companies that run those they're all converting to digital ads now because they can run like digital displays they can run you know more ads and make more money and so they're dumping like all these trucks and they're like barely used like the old ones with the vinyl and he just bought a couple and like he drives them all around his neighborhood to and

from work you know blah blah blah you could never do stuff like that as a big company but he you know he's getting thousands of impressions from a used billboard truck you know so well it's funny with cameron harold he was talking to his 800 got junk people and he's like i'm not changing any of the marketing until you guys start parking correctly i think i that must have been a term in the past, but I thought I put it in the HS Home Service Millionaire book. But parking in busy areas, like the most affluent Costco, like have a truck near the front. And this is something I've been giving a lot of thought to as well, Jim,

is where does your GM be? Because you should have it in an affluent area where your guys are meeting up there and all dispersing in those neighborhoods. Unfortunately, one is near the airport and it's not in the most, it's more of an industrial area. But I thought a lot about, like I literally told Luke, I'm going to start, because we've got other locations with offices, I'm going to start having separate meetings in Phoenix, in Scottsdale. Yeah. I'm just thinking in my neck of the woods back in the day, there was an old timer in the concrete business and he would buy those utility trailers, like cargo trailers, maybe like a six

by 10 or like a couple grand. He didn't have them wrapped. He would let her on the side, but you could get it wrapped for a couple grand, probably just a small trailer. But he had probably like 50 of them. And I think he was going to like just businesses in his area and saying, Hey, can I give you a hundred bucks a month to park my trailer here? And you would just go in the trailers were like everywhere. Like where can you own a billboard for 4,000 bucks and a hundred dollars a month. And I just think he just every few months bought another one and another one and got them out there pretty soon. I swear the guy had more billboards than Lamar with these mobile trailers. You know,

I think that's a great idea. And you know, it's good getting back to the grassroots strategy. I think it was easy when everybody was spending time at home because of the damn virus. And I think we got a little spoiled. And I think the people that are coming out of this, is that ServiceTime data says 80% of their clients are on decline.

Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying today's podcast. A quick reminder, the Freedom Event is happening on September 25th to the 27th. In today's tough economy with PE firms invading, lead costs spiking, and customers cutting back, it's time to protect your bottom line and your future. At Freedom, you're going to learn how to bulletproof your business from home service legends like Paul Reed, owner of Northwest Roofing, a $30 million a year business.

Aaron Gaynor, the owner of Eco Plumbers, a $75 million business. Ken Goodrich, the chairman of Gumbers, a $75 million business. Ken Goodrich is chairman of Gettle, a $250 million business. And Leland Smith, founder of Service Champions, a $500 million business. Listen, you can keep doing what you're doing and hope for the best, or you can arm yourself with the proven strategies I've used at A1 Garage for a service. Get your tickets at freedomevent.com. That's freedomevent.com. Now let's get back to this episode. It's not just the best operators. The best companies are actually not only

surviving, they're flourishing, but there's a lot of losers out there. And all I would say is there's no reason you can't be a winner in this market. And everybody's scrambling. They're looking for magic in a bottle, as L.E.B. calls it. He's like, everyone's looking for that one hire that's going to change everything. But it's the systems. It's like, yes, you could hire somebody great and they can help change the business. And every once in a while, that right person comes along. But I wouldn't count on that. You know, I would not hedge your bets as saying the right person is coming to save the day. Yeah. I mean, it's intense execution of the basics, right? I mean, yard signs,

business cards, knocking the six houses next to the neighbors, introducing yourselves, all of that stuff. It has that compounding effect that you were talking about earlier. Putting up one yard sign today doesn't make a difference in and of itself. But if you got 10 texts, 10 yard signs, every job, you know, each run in four calls a day, 40 yard signs in a day, pretty soon you got thousands of them, you know, even if they're coming down and it's that snowball that just, you know, makes all the difference. I agree. What do you think about social media versus Google? I mean, you always hear people talking about meta and social media. What is your take on that? And

I know it really depends on the industry. Yeah. I mean, we do a lot of Facebook advertising and stuff for events. I mean, organic social is tough now. You have to do a certain amount so people see you engaging and you're alive. But the reach made us pretty much pushing you to paid ads. I've seen some companies do some great funnels on Facebook, a lot probably more in the improvement space, right? Because nobody in the service space has a problem and says, oh, I'm going to go to Facebook and look for an emergency repair solution. Right. But on the improvement side of things, you know, quiz funnels, people, you know, hey, get an estimate immediately. But you fill out a few things on a form and you have to stick your email address in or phone number.

And then they just start calling you. I mean, there's there's a lot of potential there. You know, what's interesting is we used to kind of, I remember you would always fill out different companies to see how well their campaigns work, whether it was roofing or others. And there's just some companies that are relentless. And it's something that we've never been is we've been really spoiled. We do not work leads like some of the biggest, best home improvement companies where they're calling you every single day, they're sending messages, they're emailing, they're following up almost to the point where you're calling you every single day, they're sending messages, they're emailing, they're following up almost to the point where you're going to have to tell them I'm going to get a restraining order. Yeah. There's a company called Erie Home Improvement,

which I think like 10 years ago, they were like $400 million. I imagine they're a billion plus today. And they run this roofing funnel that's like the ad will say on facebook something like we're looking for 10 homeowners in your area like find out if you qualify so you think like a quick reading of it leads you to think you're getting like a free roof or something you go put your information in and then it gives you like a cost estimate or something but they're calling you like immediately and you know a lot of our HSF members will say like, how much should I follow up? Like two times, three times, five times, these guys would call five times in one day. Right. In fact, before the last freedom event

in Orlando, when somebody on our team was like asking about follow-up, I'm like, watch this. I go and I submit a lead form for this guys. They called me for like two weeks, five times a day, text messaging me five times a day for like weeks, three months later, they were still calling even now, maybe like once a month, I still get a call from them a year later. So whatever anybody thinks is like too much follow-up, they can probably double it and multiply it by 10. And it's, it's still not what the best in class companies are doing. You know, I want to get into HSF a little bit. Last year at Freedom, we had a pretty good foundation.

I mean, I think we had about 30 partners. I think one thing that we realized is there are some good best practices, but they only service like HAC. And they only allow really big companies in. And we wanted to build something a little bit for everybody. And I think some of the mistakes we made is we let, unfortunately, mechanics and really random things that really we could help for sure. And I want to talk about mechanics in a little bit, but where do you think we've made dramatic improvements?

Because I know we have way more partners. We've got a little bit more attribution on the accounting side for the rebates. We've got some plans that'll fit everybody and I think it pays for itself, but let's just talk about where we started and where we're at today. Yeah. What we really learned is, you know, there's a few different models. Like you said, there's, you know, sort of the industry specific best practices group that really work with just, you know, one vertical. There's other groups that are more open, but I mean, there's strange things like, oh, you know, groups or coaches want equity in your company or different things. And they're all sort of focused on like doing the work or like, here's how it works in plumbing, or here's how it works in electric. We kind of learned it's not focusing on the mechanics of doing the work, but it's like

building a scalable business. The principles are the same, whether you're in garage doors, you know, plumbing, heating, HVAC, electric. And, you know, our focus has shifted to manuals, systems, processes, helping them build out marketing systems, finance systems. And a lot of that too, is working with the right partners. Like you said, finding the right, you know, people that can support your business because you can't do everything in-house. You're not going to do bookkeeping in-house. You need a great bookkeeping partner, right? You're not going to do certain aspects of, you know, Google ad management. You're not going to have an in-house person, you know, where most of these companies are.

So we really spent the last year building a best in class solution where we have the whole roadmap of what you need, you know, trade manuals, operating manuals, staffing systems, you know, recruiting systems, training systems, finance. We give you all of the playbooks, hook you up with the right partners to do what you need to do. And there's obviously a fee for it, right? But it's so reasonable. I like to say it's sort of the franchise without a fee, right? You join a franchise system and you're paying a fee, royalty ongoing. In a lot of cases, I've seen what some franchise systems have. We're giving them way more business in a box and it's a one-time cost. So I just think we've kind of come up with a pathway that helps a lot more companies

if their mindset is to grow and scale, right? If you're just like, hey, I want to join an industry group and kind of hang around with a bunch of guys in the industry and talk about vendors and sort of complain about how things are, that's not what we're looking to do. We're looking for the people that want to grow and scale their company using your principles, what you did in A1, download that, apply it in your business and go running. So, and I really think we've cracked the code for that. I think it's been a work in progress and it's going to continue to get better, but our partnerships that we've aligned with are tried and true. We're not just going to the

highest sponsor. We only want to work with people we've had success with that actually care that we will back up for the contractor because we're for the contractor. And these guys, we've negotiated way better pricing across the board because of, quite frankly, this podcast has really put us on the map in a big way. And A1 has as well. And now we get that buying power, whether it's you need to get a fleet, you need to get onboarded to a CRM, you need some type of mailers like we've negotiated. How many vendors do we have now that we've negotiated rebates on? I think we're approaching 70.

So 70 vendors. But as you point out, we've kind of been quality over quantity, right? We spend a lot of time vetting them, making sure we've got the right partners, making sure we have solutions for companies at different levels. And, you know, our next phase is kind of how they're integrated into, you know, what we're teaching and the systems that we're giving people, you know, hey, here's the right vendor for this at the right time. So. You know, what's crazy, Jim, is I went to this Nashville event and spoke to 1,800 mechanics that own their own, whether it's a brake shop, a transmission shop, some dealerships were there. And Aaron Stokes leads this group up. And I realized I was the youngest one there. And I'm

meeting all these people, at least 55 and up. And I'm talking to them and they're like, dude, I was so wrong about Aaron and what this is, this whole best practices. What it is, is knowing your numbers. It's actually looking at data and making decisions. It's actually getting to know your financials and understand your KPIs. And these guys, by the way, all thought what everybody thinks, especially the baby boomers. Like, oh, yeah, they're ripping people off.

No, they just know their numbers. And by the way, everybody needs a little bit of a different prescription. This is the deal. Like every single person needs to charge a different price. Their price book needs to align with their profitability and what they got to pay for overhead and pay their people and have no new trucks and get, you know, kick charged to do their branding. The reason you can't afford marketing, the reason why you can't afford a rebrand, the reason why you can't pay for your guys' tools and get trainers and recruiters, the reason you can't acquire talent is because quite frankly, you don't know your numbers.

I'm not saying you're not charging enough, but maybe there's stuff going out the door that you don't even realize. Leland told me he found like, he's able to look at things and find whether a person's not doing anything and he needs to let them go, or they were paying 10 grand for garbage removal. He realized the garbage place was 10 minutes away, 15 minutes away.

And he says, how much does it cost to dump? 20 bucks. He said, how long does it take to get there and back? It takes roughly 45 minutes. So he's spending three hours a month doing that. And it costs 800 instead of 10 grand. And I just think people just don't have a clue where they sit financially.

And here's the most interesting thing is there's a lot of haters out there. And the reason there's haters is because you're doing something right. People are going to make a decisive decision that they don't like you because they think you're charging this price. But the fact is, and I've always said this, you're holding your people down.

You're making sure they live in the projects. You're making sure they can't buy a new car. You're making sure they can't put their kids in a good school. And these simple little principles, when you know your numbers, you understand your booking rate, conversion rate, average ticket cost per lead. You know where you need to be. You're actually making decisions that will change your business dramatically because you and your wife or your husband and your family deserve to make a profit. That's why you're in business. It's not to make a living. And everybody listening right now, if you just think your job is to have a business that you don't go in and it's just a lifestyle

business, you're looking for that a hundred grand. I don't know what programs for you. Like, I don't know why you got into business and that's okay. If that's what you want. I mean, I don't know a program out there that's for you that someone doesn't want to grow because with the changes going on, the innovations, you know, we're finally moving to the 21st century on a lot of home services that were stuck in the 20th century for the last two decades. Things are changing rapidly. If you do not choose to make a decision to want to grow your business and thrive, I got bad news for you. 100%. I mean, we've seen that like almost every vertical. I mean, HVAC PE has been a big thing

for a long time. There's been how many generations of roll-ups in HVAC, but as that becomes more and more competitive, they've branched out into other industries, other verticals. So a lot of people who are thinking, oh, I'm immune pretty quickly, they're going to have big, powerful competitors with really smart guys and deep pocketbooks operating in their backyard. And I think, you know, there's a window where as a small company, you can get a foothold, get to a certain scale where you're going to be around in the next 10, 15 years. But beyond that, I think it's just going to be a bunch of huge companies, right? You know, have you looked around and seen how many car washes there are? When I was a kid, there were neighborhood car washes owned by some local guy all over the place. Now my little town has three PE-backed car washes there.

They've just gobbled up the whole industry. And that's what's been happening in home service and what's going to continue to happen. And this is the time now to start making moves to solidify your company in your area. And if you don't make a decision, that's fine too. But like you said, you're going to get edged out. Well, it's data-based decisions. And it's knowing your numbers. And I think we can help a lot with that.

I'm really excited. This event, it's September 25th. And every time, I've been doing a lot of podcasts, as you know. And people ask, what's it all about? And I say, it's not just tactical or strategies. It's also, like, there's a lot of motivation, but it's not one or the other. It's like, and there's a lot of networking.

And there's not an open bar in every corner. It's not a drunk fest like most of these other home service things. It's literally like you come there, you network. You got Eleanor Rohr, Howard Partridge, Darius Livers, you got Jocko, you got the industry icons like Paul Kelly and Ken Goodrich and Leland Smith. And it goes on and on. Tom Howard and Aaron Gaynor is going to be there. And the guys that I'm coming up with, like this new generation of home service legends. And I just think, dude, I thought last year was mind-blowing. I was impressed by the people I met and what they were doing and the things I learned.

One of the things I've done a great job of through the years is implementing. And almost to a fault, probably too many things at once. But I just go. Other people, they take a lot of notes. they get inundated with information the first two weeks they come back motivated another problem Jim is nobody brings their team like they're not bringing their team so they come back all motivated and they wonder why doesn't my team get behind me if it's not part of your team's ideas if they don't have a say in some of the innovations you're making in the projects they're going to make sure they fail so the best advice I could give if you're making in the projects, they're going to make sure they fail. So the best advice I could give, if you're coming to the Home Service Freedom event,

September 25th in San Diego, the best time to go to San Diego, bring a few colleagues, bring somebody that's going to help implement change. And that's a leader within the company, whether that's call center, dispatch center, whether that's even in your warehouse, like bring four or five people if you can. Jim, tell me a little bit about. Yeah, I mean, we've been doing these events for a while. And, you know, I know, you know, I keep in touch with some of the people that I met

at the very first one we did, right? And the ones that have made the most success, they came once, they're like, oh, this is cool. The next time they brought their team, right? And everybody's bought on, you know, they bring their key management, top technician, whatever. It's easy to come to an event. You go back as an entrepreneur and tell your team, I saw all this stuff and we're going to do this and that. And they're just thinking, wow, this is a crazy guy. What's he talking about? Right. But you bring them, you show them, they see, you know, what's really possible when you're in the right room. And I think we added it up. The total of all the people we have speaking, you know, it's almost $2 billion of revenue, maybe more at this point in the space. All these minds, you get your team in that room and seeing what's possible.

You know, suddenly people change their goals from like, oh, we did a million last year. We'll do 1.1 this year. Now they see, no, we should do three. We should do five, you know, because here in another market, this guy with the same type of business has done 20 or 30. Right. So it's, it's a massive perspective change. And, you know, the more people from your staff that you have there, the more likely you are to see results. I want to see the guys that are doing 80 million to 150 million. I want to see the right people showing up to this event that are super inspired by winning in a bigger way. Because a lot of these guys come, they're just looking for an answer. Like, how do I do an org chart? How do I get on a service tight? I want to see the guys that are like,

I'm working on algorithm changes. I'm working on Power BI. I'm putting in better, more information to make better decisions. Because when anybody gets around those people, they get inspired. I mean, I still get inspired, whether it's a $20 million shop

or a $100 million shop. Like, I just went out, we gave away an HSF ticket to go to a shop tour. And I went to Memphis and I went there to teach lessons and do a shop tour and try to give advice. And I took more advice than I gave. And I was like, you're at a 94% booking rate. And I sent Luke and Amy out there to go study those guys. I mean, I was really, really impressed with their call center and the way they do things. You know, Jim, they're booking each CSR is booking 60 calls a day and doing 40 outbounds. Wow. 40 outbounds, 50 booked.

And, you know, I talked to bring them at power selling pros and he's like, dude, they're real. Like I work with them. I didn't believe them. So I went out there. They ring the bell. They'll pass the phone over to the supervisor. They'll fight for every call. And that's what I love is like, dude, we're not in a league of our own. We could learn something from everybody. There's so much to be learned at these events. If you come in with an open mind and open attitude and you want more for your family and your business, and by the way, the people in your company, your co-workers are your family, and you should want more for them. You should want them to win in a bigger way. And that's why we brought back the dream manager. I don't know if everybody liked that here day one. You know, obviously that's an expense, but I felt like we needed to have it.

Yeah. I mean, as far as the event goes to, I mean, how do you get this much, you know, talent, industry knowledge connections, you know, all in one place rounded up, you know, where you can just approach people and meet them. You see legends walking around the hall and in the food line, you know, you can tap them on the shoulder and just ask these questions. I mean, where else can you get that? So a lot of it's just getting in the right room, getting the right mindset around the right people that can make a change in your business. I know people that pay these guys 10 grand to go visit them. $10,000 just for a few hours of their time. You're going to have access. These guys have been through the thick and thin. They've bought companies. They've integrated companies. They've made exits. They've got a lot of the answers because they've been where you're going.

They've been where you want to go. And I just feel like a lot of people, they're stubborn. If someone can't make it because their business is struggling, that's the worst. They're like, I just, I can't afford to leave right now. How can you not afford to leave? It's like a technician gym that says, I need to continue to run calls versus get trained. They got the lowest ticket average, the lowest conversion rate. They're not getting good reviews. Their wife's about to leave them.

But they say, if I take time away to do ride-alongs and get retrained, I'm not going to make the normal money. I pay $175 a day and they're not going to get rich. But how can you afford not to make $800 in a week to double your pay? It's asinine. That's right out of one of those books that I said, there's a handful that I reread every couple of years, right? It's habit number seven, sharpen the saw. You have to stop and take time to make improvements. And the name sharpen the saw comes from the story. There's two guys cutting

down a tree, you know, with a saw and somebody says, why don't you take time to sharpen? And he says, no, I'm busy cutting the tree, right? You're cutting it with a dull saw, right? You have to take time to stop, make improvements, you know, figure out which way things are going, learn new stuff, get around the right people. Once you do that, changes happen faster. But if you're stuck in just doing the same old, same old, nothing ever changes. And what I like to see here at this event is I'd really like, I want to make a really nice, and I know you've been working on this, but I really want people to put down their goals. And I want them to put down the next 10 things they want. I want faith. I want family. I want finance and I want fitness. And I want them to put down the next 10 things they want. I want faith. I want family. I want finance and I

want fitness. And I want them to understand and I want them to write down as many as they could. I want them to circle four and I want them to understand what they need to do to get there. And I really, you know, I've never been a big fan of activities at events where they got they hand out, you know, a lot of these guys, they do this to try to get people talking at tables and introductions and networking. But this one, I feel like, and make those SMART goals, specific, meaningful, attainable, realistic, and timeliness. And if we could do that, I want people to be dead focused and relentless. But here's the problem. Some people say they want things, but they really don't. They just say the words, but they're being.

One thing that I've learned, Jim, is the people that win have a chip on their shoulder. They want to prove to the world they're ready to go. They're ready to compete. They aspire to be number one. They want to win. And it's something inside of them they want it so bad that nothing's going to stop them.

There's a lot of people that are like, well, yeah, that sounds nice. I think we'll do that. And it's like, what do you mean you think you'll do it? Like you're going to do it or not. And we're here to help, but your attitude sucks. It's like, you can wake up and get up. Like, here's the deal. You can stay in bed and continue dreaming. You can wake up and pursue your dreams. And very few people want to wake up and do the work because it's hard. And most people, we know business is not easy. You sign up for it. It's not a nine to five.

In fact, you're going to burn through relationships. It's going to be a struggle, but is it worth it? Absolutely. It's worth it. I can tell you firsthand that I've experienced some of the toughest days of my life in business. And is it worth it? 110%. 110%. I would do it all over again. And I'd make all the same mistakes because I'm not going to make those same mistakes again. And you come here with an open mind and you come here and you want to win. There was a lady that weighed 180 pounds. She's I think in her early sixties. And I said, listen, you're not happy when you look in the mirror, whatever that is. And I kept going on about, like, the changes I'm making. And she said, I kept saying hereditary in my jeans and, like, my jean pool and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And she's down 50 pounds. And she's like, it's not too late for me. And, like, I want people to just open their mind. I mean, I went and got baptized. And this is not about finding Jesus Christ at this event, although I believe in Jesus Christ. And I want people to believe in something, whether that's Allah or whatever. Get serious about belief and manifestation and creating what you want. I watched this study being done, Jim, and it was all about how negative thoughts.

What do you think is more influential? Positive thoughts? I'm thinking positive all the time or getting rid of negative thoughts. Well, I think, yeah, the answer is if you're always thinking about negative thoughts, that tends to what happens in your life, right? It comes from a study or something. I read that it's three times you're going to be three times worse off letting negativity enter your brain and starting to talk those words out loud and trying to say things like it's the economy or it's ukraine or it's israel or it's the political year or it's

tax season or it's inflation and you start living you start literally your brain is amazing it starts believing it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy right oh the you know the economy is bad so business is going to be bad and suddenly you aren't putting in the time or you know it manifests in the physical world by you just subconsciously not doing the things that you need to do so but, listen, here's the deal, Jim. I want to end this on a good note here a little bit. I really want to tell people that you need to come to this event. I just straight up, we spend a fortune and I don't like to talk about like how much we spend on food and like speakers, but these events are not built for like this profit

center. They're built to make change in your business. You know more than anybody, I've done well. And A1 continues to flourish. And I make my money in the garage door industry. This is a way that I figured... I haven't been to a lot of shows that even come close to ours. Not even in the same hemisphere.

And if people don't really get serious about this, the people that came to the first one will most likely come back. If they don't come back, obviously, I think they're crazy and they're not thinking clearly. They might be doing drugs. But the people that haven't experienced this, they need to come to this event because I promise you it'll change the way you think about your life,

not just your business, but your family and the things that are important to you and the things that you need to get serious about. And don't let the next 10 years blow by. Don't wake up one day and be like, man, I wish I did more. I wish I tried. I wish I had a little bit more consistency and discipline and execution and accountability, because that's what you're going to get when you come to this event. Yeah, 100%. It's not just the destination, too. You brought that up earlier, right? I think Earl Nightingale says it's the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. When we were

building so much in A1, we got to... I remember a day when we had a pretty good result and you called me and were like, now what, right? We didn't say, oh, we had this massive success and now we just sit down and turn around and rest on our laurels. It was like, all right, what's the next mountain to climb, right? And once you get that mindset, it's like, wow, anything's possible. And there's no better place than freedom to get around the right people. I believe that. Jim, if someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that? I got a short link. You can go to jimleslie.ai.

So that's J-I-M-L-E-S-L-I-E.ai. And then that'll give you my email and social profiles and all that stuff. And I'll have you close this out in a minute. But is there anything we're going to do for the listeners as far as getting to freedom event.com freedom event.com it's just like it's spelled freedom event.com and i'd like to see everybody come to this thing and i'd like you to bring some of the people that you think can inspire others that are going to lead the change that you're looking for me and you did not prepare for this i don't even know exactly what you want to do for the audience, but.

Oh man. Do we have anything? Well, I'll just make up something on the spot here. How about that? Let's do a HSE freedom 24. And I don't know. I feel like the whole theme of this thing has been like, bring your team, bring a group.

So let's come up with a group deal, like buy two or more tickets and we'll give you a great price on that one. They can go punch it in. And that way you get your team there and get everybody inspired and get them moving forward. So here's the deal. HSC Freedom 24, you bring more than two people. Like, by the way, between Jim, Britt, Bree's involved a little bit. Joe's involved. We've got a whole team. There's like, I think there's over 20 people now that are making sure that these things go correctly.

A lot of people call me up. They ask me the details. I know who's speaking. I got my buddies coming. I know the curriculum. But I'm not the one. I'm not the orchestrator of this one. These guys go out of their way and they genuinely care. We are not here to see you stay the same. The people we brought on actually understand what needs to happen. They've seen it happen over and over and over again. I think we've got a killer opportunity for you guys. I like to just see you guys there. You know, the sad thing, Jim, and it's kind of annoying is I

don't think I'm speaking more than an hour at my own event. Yeah, that's the, that's the thing. It's crazy because when we did the first event a few years ago, I just remember how much work we had a much smaller team and we were just kind of calling around, like, who can we get? Can we get some people to speak? And we had to kind of convince them like, Hey, we have this event and like, you know, it's Tommy and why should I come? And, you know, now this thing is massive and, you know, I'm, I'm in the unique position where like all of these like legendary speakers are reaching out. Can we at your event and i'm telling them no like you know i'm almost i feel bad like dude you're a legend but this thing is packed every minute and i'm like tommy's not even on stage for you know more than an hour across the whole event because we've just packed in so many amazing people. So it's a unique.

I get to be like, I want to be like the DJ. I want to go up there with Steve Sim, Bluefish and one of my favorite books, go for a stupid. He's a legend. Like I want to be up there for some of the Q and A's or whatever, but more importantly, I can't wait to sit around, talk to people at the tables and just talk to them during one of the things that we've realized is we've got to make this fun. We've got to make sure it's just more than just information. We've got to make sure there's networking opportunities that you get to make relationships. And, you know, I got to go to the DEXA scan today at three. I'm pushing to the absolute limit to get to 10%. And that's my goal. And I know there's some fitness people out there, but this is a

huge challenge. And I like the discipline and I'm up for any challenge and everybody knows that that knows me. But I'd like you to come here and have an open mind. And I'm asking you, get a hold of Jim. If something doesn't make sense, it doesn't fit your budget. If it doesn't fit your budget, I mean, they're not these tickets. You're not spending $10,000. It's very, very, very easy on the pocketbook. So I like to see you there. Go to freedom event.com and enter the code HSC freedom, 2024, bring a few people that can inspire change within your company, invite another couple of home service companies that you enjoy networking with. Do that for me. I'd be very, very, couple of home service companies that you enjoy networking with. Do that for me. I'd be very, very, very excited if you did that. I don't ask for many favors, but this would be one I'm asking you to bring people. The tickets, they're flying, but get your

tickets as soon as possible. I'm not just saying that. This isn't like a scarcity tactic. Yeah. I got to tell them, Tommy, the hotel space, they want to get in early because, you know, it's not just our event. There's a few other ones in town. There's some insurance convention or something. So the sooner they get registered, we do have a block of rooms. But you got to go through the checkout, get the passkey link, get a room booked. You want to do that sooner than later if you're thinking about coming. So September 25th, it's going to be amazing.

Jim, close us out. What else do you want to leave us with here? Oh, man, put me on the spot. No, I think the event's going to be a great time. You're going to learn a lot. It's not just motivation. You're going to walk away with actionable stuff. But getting around the right room, people I've met at our first couple events years

ago, I still keep in contact with. They ping me with questions. So I think that's what it's all about, coming, networking, getting around the right people and moving your business forward. So looking forward to seeing you there, seeing Tommy. It's going to be a good time. Thanks, Jim. Always a pleasure. You as well. You guys, thanks for listening. Hopefully you take action. Hopefully you have a great week.

Tell the people you love. Call them after this. I can't tell you enough how important it is. It's my dad's 72nd birthday. It's a big day. He was born in 1953. A lot of us don't get an opportunity to be 71. Oops, I keep saying 72, 1953.

Yes, it's 71. Just said we just corrected me. But it's a big deal, man. I just lost one of my aunts. I know Jim lost his mother recently. Get ready to make a change. Tell the people you love them the most. Remember, we're not here on this earth long.

So make the most out of it. Thank you guys for listening to the Home Service Expert. I appreciate you guys. And we'll see you at the Freedom Event. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states.

The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.