The Home Service Expert Podcast - Increasing Key Relationship Value by Mastering the Power of Gratitude

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

John Ruhlin is the co-founder of the Ruhlin group, and is the world's leading authority for maximizing customer loyalty through radical generosity. An entrepreneur and international keynote speaker, he is also the author of Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention. In this episode, we talked about company culture, human resource management, franchising, relationship building…

I would just say that it talked about cold plunges and whatever else a lot of people have. The gratitude journal. Hey, I feel gratitude. Gratitude isn't a feeling, it's an action. So if there's relationships that have helped you build a business, get you a job, pass professors, teachers, coaches, go take once a day and show gratitude and do gratitude to the people that have. Get where you're going and the people that are joints that get you to the next level. Go do it. Don't talk about it. Don't just feel it. Take action. 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. All right, we're live here in St. Louis. John Rulon just brought us coffee. Amazing. Listen, I love what you're doing out there. I love getting to know you we met at 100 million mastermind and uh i'm like man i read your book i was just started shooting the shit in the four hours we ended up talking quite a bit and it seems like there's a lot more than just giftology because you're a connector if you had to pick one word to describe john rule and what would it be? I mean, great dad, it would be daddy maybe, but outside of family.

Outside of family and being a husband, father. I mean, connectors, I think a part of it, but I think at a core level, like a great life is great relationships. And so I would say, I'd probably put uncommon relationships. I think that the quality of somebody's life tends to be loved ones, yes,

but employees, clients, friends, mentors, advisors. It comes down to people. It comes down to relationships. So whether you're in garage stores or private equity or gifts or masterminds, what's the common denominator amongst anybody that's doing great things? They're not doing it by themselves. Yeah is cool but even like a google how many employees do they have how many people do they have 80 now they just think they just let go 13 6 of their force uh 12 000 people but man it's free so tell me a little bit so i read giftology and i love this story you filled up a guy's whole hotel

room with what store was it yeah he was staying at the ritz ironically which is where we're at right now the ritz st louis i mean think about like their whole mantra is surprise and delight right yeah it's like how do you show up in unexpected, uncommon ways, whether it's somebody's favorite bourbon, coffee, chocolate, linens, the temperature in the room, whatever it is. But yeah, Cameron is known as the CEO whisperer. And so when I met him at an event, I was like, I don't want him just to be a client. It's cool to have somebody as a client. It's cool to have somebody as a contact. But when somebody is like in your corner,

mentor, advisor, close friend, like that's a whole nother level. And so, yeah, I found out he loved Brooks Brothers. I found out what his sizes was. And I bought the entire fall collection. It was like $7,500 really close. And so when he checked into the hotel room, he didn't want to go to dinner.

He didn't want to go to the ball game. Like you'd tell, like he flew into Cleveland at the time. And it was like, dude, just give me like, it was one of those travel days from hell. Like he just wanted to go to bed. Like get a shower, go to bed and not go to the ball game. You'd tell like he flew into Cleveland at the time. And it was like, dude, just give me like, it was one of those travel days from hell. Like he just wanted to go to bed. I get a shower, go to bed and I go to dinner. He came back down from that experience. He came down like 20 minutes later,

he saw his hotel room. He's like, John, I've already texted three authors to change my most amazing customer experience story. I'm changing it to this. He said, whatever you want to talk about first of all, if you want to talk about it, I'm all ears. So that relationship though, here's the kicker. So 7,500 unclosed, probably another $20,000

over the course of a decade. And people are like, dude, why did you add him at Hello? Why did you keep doing that? And it's like, when you show up for a relationship repetitively when you want to, not because you need something or you have to, that's when it means the most. So Cameron has worked with over 300 CEOs of call it 10 million to a billion dollar companies.

He's been the COO of three different companies that grew to nine figures. To get him in your corner is difficult, to get him to actually advocate. But the reason I invested that was that if I want to hire Cameron as a sales rep for a year, it cost me a couple million dollars and he'd still turn me down. He's all my 10, 20, 30, 40, $50,000 speaking gigs. He got double booked. There was no giftology book. He'd say, go book John Rulon.

And he'd be like, who the hell is John Rulon? And he'd be like, just trust me. So people are blindly booking me to speak on their biggest stages because Cameron became a sales rep for giftology before there was giftology yeah Cameron Harreld he was on my podcast he what's the big company is that he's known for 1-800-GET-JOHN yeah you know this is funny because when we were in Texas this this is all that the Roy Williams, the wizard of ads, he still works with Roy.

I'm sure he does. Yeah. And they're out of Canada. Yeah. They're out of Vancouver. So they started a moving company. They said, wow.

One day painting. Were they on, I was watching, what's that show? We always watch. Were they on Shark Tank? I don't know if they were on Shark Tank. I think they were on Shark Tank, too.

They were on Ellen. They pitched it on Shark Tank. I'm almost positive. That's funny because I know who these guys are. They were both on my podcast. Brian and Cameron both. Yeah, Brian started it. I mean, he had the idea, like a McDonald's drive-thru.

Like, I should start picking up junk. I mean, he's been offered a half a billion dollars and he's turned it down like he's growing out this whole like speed of brands but cameron was the guy who took him from 2 million to 127 million no debt no outside funding in about six years so he's a smart dude yeah so both those guys you know but they have a franchise model they do and the difference is when you're looking at it, everybody says, why don't you do a franchise? Why don't you do a franchise? Why don't you do a franchise? And I've thought long and hard.

I mean, either you're gung-ho all in on franchises or you're not. And it's so hard because will I do a franchise one day? Yes. But you've got the Federal Trade Commission up your rear end. You just got a lot of stuff going on there. And what I've heard about franchises, and I'm kind of pivoting here a little bit more about business, but I want to go back to relationships. But ultimately, you get out of the business you love, which for me is garage doors, and you start having to focus on people. And then these people come in, they pay $25,000, $50,000, $100,000. And then they say, I want you to do this for me.

And you say, well, I need you to do a few things. In my opinion, this is almost how I want to run my business. I need you to go out there and meet the people. I need you to go out there and show up at the chambers and the B&I groups and smile and get involved in the hockey community. I know you play, you like hockey. You get involved in the community because we can't do that from Phoenix. So I think that that's important. And it seems like a lot of franchisors,

it's rare to not have there be an adversarial relationship between the franchisees and the franchisors. You're right. You have these guys that are paying a bunch of money plus a percentage of profit and so they're like, why am I paying all of this? I'm running this business. But they don't understand the systems and processes that allow them to have a business. But I remember

being at NASCAR and the subway franchise owners hated the corporate headquarters. There's always I think you've been able to control culture because you guys are all the same team. And it's not like, hey, go off and do this. It's like, no, we're going to buy and build and do this together versus I think a lot of...

Not every franchise is this way, but I think there's a lot of them that there's a big disconnect. So I think you're smart. I mean, if you look at Chick-fil-A, one of the best run companies on the planet retail wise, they're not franchising, they're owner operator. And these owners do not make a lot of money. And it's so hard. They've got the most requests out of anything to be able to make $100,000 a year. And they don't own the property. They don't. Well well you know what it costs to open up a chick

filet it's very fairly low i believe yeah it's five grand yeah but there's a thousand applicants for every one that they open yeah i know guys that are lawyers and doctors and former college d1 coaches that are begging to be an owner operator now i mean i know some of the guys that are running them some of them like it used to be like if you did a few million dollars as a Chick-fil-A, that was a big deal. Like you got guys now they're doing 10, $15 million from one location and they're not making a hundred grand

and they're not making $5 million either. But I think that they're doing, they're in that mid six figures, call it four to 600 grand, which for somebody that only had to put up five grand. It's great. But also I've heard, you know, Alex Ramosi talks about it

and I've heard a lot of people talk about the franchise and how many people I've read about it. And that's interesting. Speaking of Alex Ramosi, what I've realized is a lot of the best guys that become influencers, I'm talking Bradley, I'm talking, you can go on or not,

they structured a team. I'm going to bounce around a lot here because I want to talk to you about a lot of things, but Bradley, all these guys that are doing great, they've got researchers. Someone's going out and getting this information. I guarantee you,

Alex is not being like watching a thousand tick tocks a day. He's going on Instagram. People are researching fun, interesting things, whether it be the, this new AI tool. Yeah. You know, it's Instagram. People are researching fun, interesting things, whether it be this new AI tool. It's great. And I'm doing the same things. I've got a whole team dedicated. I'm also getting

a content manager. Now I've got three videographers. The third one getting hired should have been on this trip instead of this janky setup, but it works. It works. Well, if you look at Vaynerchuk, he started with one dude, DRock. Yep. Full time. And then now, atuk, he started with one dude, DRock. Yep. Full-time. And then now, at least this was a couple years ago, DRock said, dude, the team is like 35 people just for Gary's personal brand.

35 people. So, I mean, the amount of content that he's drinking at that level, on top of running what now, like, how many different Vayner companies are there? Seven, 10? I mean, you can't do things without a team. Like, you're not going to be able to do it. top of running what now like how many different vayner companies are there seven ten i mean you can't do things without a team like you're not going to be able to do it at least not at a high level and be able to operate a business on your own but i mean you gotta start somewhere yeah and he started with d-rock and d-rock's still with him which kudos to gary for being that long in that position it's amazing i just feel like now i've got the right you know

my whole mentally since we partnered with cortec my brain just goes okay now how do i go get the right people like how did you select them by the way so there's a lot of people that were clamoring yeah no we had a part of things and what was the courting i'm just i mean we've talked loosely about it but i don't think you ever said like hey look to all these companies these guys were the right partner based upon this this this and this so it's interesting because my good buddy can't go to rich on skettle and he said tommy he goes these guys are kind of no bs can i introduce you to him before you start your process? And I said, sure. I said, Ken, any friend of yours is a friend of mine and vice versa. And he said, okay. So I met this guy,

Doug. And Doug said, listen, if I come in, if I like this business, I'm going to run at it. There's one thing about me you need to know. I will never lie or cheat. If I tell you I'm going to do something, I'll do it. And we had Garage Door Freedom going, and we had the Vertical Track event. That's the buyer's group. That's the buyer's group, and it's the culmination of a lot of Garage Door guys. A lot of people come to this. We had 500, 600 people last event, and he said, do you mind if I stop

in for a day? Then he sat down with Doug. This is Doug from Cortec. Doug sits down with all my top managers and he goes, I'm blown away by your team. He goes, we only

invested the number one platform in an industry. Obviously he goes, the air the number one platform in an industry obviously he goes the air conditioning is a different model because there's like 50 platform companies but he goes we would never go into this industry unless you guys owned it and you know we did the normal thing you go out we had uh 90 companies that looked and uh out of the 90 i don't know how much I should say, but more than half of them came in and wanted the business and gave us an offer. And then you narrowed the list down to six or seven and all of them came in pretty aggressively. And then it was down to the management meetings. It was, who do we really like? And we use a company called Cowan. And

Cowan just said, you're kind of married after this. So find somebody you can live with. Ask them a lot of questions, go hard in the paint, ask them how much meetings they want, what the reporting looks like. Because some PE companies will come in and be like, we're changing everything. These guys are like, just keep doing what you're doing. But like off. What do you need help with? They come in every week. We get on a 45-minute call. What do you guys need help with?

Once a month, it's three hours. And they say, what they really are interested in though, and this is something that's really important, is who are you buying and why? Because we're headed in for a recession. What's the plan? And I've got a lot of ideas. And they're like, they said, we don't like new construction. And I said, well,

do you realize some of these new construction companies get 70 service calls a day, but they don't like to run service. So I'm not necessarily buying the new construction. I'm buying the service side of it. And yes, the new construction company with it. And, uh, do you make any money on the new construction or is that just like a break even at best? There's money to be made there, but it's, it's really fluctuated with the economy. It's the one thing new construction or is that just like a break even at best there's money to be made there but it's it's really fluctuated with the economy it's the one thing new construction

travels with the economy so 2009 everybody lost everything then their company shut down and that's the scary thing new construction is always following builder trends which is the economy and really what i wanted to talk about briefly because we talked about franchising one of the things we talked about is a lot of these people want more than their work and the way you structure a deal is with an earner meaning they stay on three years this is the 30 or 40 companies that you're these are older companies and a lot of times the owner says listen i want more than that and you say listen we're gonna turn on this this and this our problem we're having right now is we like things to be our way.

And we don't really mold and gel into what they did. We don't like to buy good businesses. We buy the businesses that could take our model. Because imagine if you took, and this is one of my buddy's theories, Brent's group. This is all he does. He goes out and he buys good companies leaves everything the same and he just puts steroids on he lowers the cost of buying stuff he puts they come under the umbrella they come in at the certain things like they got to report on financials and stuff but my theory is if i find a better company let's learn from each other and

then let's make everything that way. And my cousin Ryan called me last night. We just bought his company in Colorado Springs and he went off. I mean, he's like, I'm not coming. He's like, I'm treated. And I said, what we promised Ryan, and he was not going to come to me until the cap fell off. I mean, it was like an eruption. And he goes, look, you guys got me. I'm used to owning a company. I mean, it was like an eruption. And he goes, look, he goes, you guys got me.

I'm used to owning a company. I'm used to having help. I'm used to working my own hours. And I'm working 12 hours, 14 hour days. No one's directed me. I mean, I lost it. Not on him. I lost it on the other managers in the integration team.

What I realized from this is, first of all, when you go through a transaction, it's the hardest six months of your life. I don't care how big you are. It wasn't a huge company. It wasn't a tiny company. He deserved to have two weeks off. Didn't get that. And then he's used to not opening the store in the morning. He hasn't had to do that in a decade. And now to say, hey, you're a market manager. No, he's an earner, owner. And we need to develop this. And the cool thing and the language matters probably to him, how he's treated, what he's called or all that kind of stuff. Right. I mean, well, yeah, your identity is tied to you almost want to give them the freedom they've always had.

You know what I told him? And I made the mistake is I didn't relay this message to all my managers. As I said, pick out your dream job. You're allowed to have as much PTO as you want, as long as things are running right. It's going to be front load. So we've got to hire another 10 technicians. We've got to do this, this, this, and this. And this is what's great is a lot of people look at me, they're like, man, everything just goes right for that guy. Trust me. it doesn't go right. It goes wrong big time. But then we, I will never make that mistake again.

That's the difference. I call it a scar. It's another scar, you know, that's hypothetical. But for me, I'll never forget last night, ever. And I'll never make sure an owner ever feels that way again. I don't cousin or not. That has nothing to do with it. Yeah.

So on the acquisition side side so these guys are you're working on the buyers group though a lot of guys are coming on board and leveraging the same technology and systems and processes before they ever get acquired so they're better than their companies right well are they even if somebody wants this target the fact is if they come in there's no company out there other like a1 or anybody that's going to buy a company that's not on service tight for the same world they're just not going to do it you look at every company you got to be on the right crm and service tightens the one number two you got to be buying from the right like your marketing you got to look at your marketing you You got to look at the vehicles. Like if I'm buying a company, I'm like, are they driving new vehicles?

And if they're not, what they tend to say is, listen, I don't want to spend the money. But then you understand they don't understand depreciation. They don't understand the customer aspect of what a new vehicle looks like. They don't, you're not charging the right price. A lot of these guys say service agreements won't work in my industry. So you're looking at a three, four times multiple for a company that's not really sophisticated. They could drive double, triple that if they really

knew what they were doing. I learned this the hard way, but $20 million is the magic number to get a really good multiple of EBITDA. $20 million of EBITDA. None of the guys are requiring that anywhere close to that level, right? I can't talk about this company, but we're under the diligence period. 20 million of EBITDA. And none of the guys are requiring that anywhere close to that level, right? Oh, good.

I can't talk about this company, okay? But we're under the diligence period. And they're like, we're doing 7.5 million of EBITDA. And we were giving them a smoke. And we worked out an amazing deal. Well, then we got the diligence team, less than four. That's what they're really doing? Yeah.

Because most of these companies don't have good books. They don't even understand what EBITDA or profit really is. Were they part of the vertical track? They came to vertical track. They just started with GarageDog Free. And it's just interesting to me

because, look, $4 million is a huge accomplishment. It's a lot of money to make as a profit so it's just weird because but it's cut in half yeah it's like it you know so how are you working through well the ego and the pride it's impossible to do that but you say this is the facts they didn't really know where they were at they knew that and now you know they seem to have this value stuck in their head what the business's worth. But what a lot of businesses don't understand is even if you get private equity, you're still taking a loan. You still

have to have people say yes. And you will not get money. You know what they're giving us? They're giving us four to five times EBITDA. The rest of it's got to come out of our savings account or out of the fund, which dilutes the equity. So dilution is bad for everybody. It could be good. Here's another scenario. Let's say I found a 20 million EBITDA company. So we're going to let you roll in 40%. Let's just say we gave them eight times. So 160 million. And we said, we're going to give you 40% of this to roll. So 64 million goes in. We can look at the value of it then. Now, in hopes that we can help bring it up 10% a year for the next four years,

but in hopes that the multiple is going to be way bigger as a team. So that 40% might only become 3% of the new go, but that 3% will be worth triple of the 40%. If I had a whiteboard, I could show you how all this works, but if I get diluted with my shares and I still own half, let's say I walk out and I have 35%. That 35% is worth four times more than that other 50%. But are these guys that you're acquiring, are they excited about the second part of the app will be even bigger than the first one?

They are. They are. And a lot of these guys know for a fact that... They have to trust you and that private equity company. You're actually going to be able to put everybody together and actually execute. So there's execution risk from their side, right? There are, there are, there is execution. So when I look at if it's a big company, like four or five million of EBITDA,

I say, keep doing what you're doing. Here's what we need to change. We need to change everything on how you guys, the payroll needs to match. The price book needs to match. The benefits need to match. Other than that, we'll help you with marketing. We'll train your guys. You run through our training center. We'll get you new trucks. We'll rebrand you your company. But you guys are a good company. I can't have a guy making completely different money and way different price books. So the goal is not to go in there and be like, we're going to change everything. It's just, we're going to match the same benefits package.

If for some reason they have a better benefits package, we'll buy out six months of that. How often is that the case? We've only seen one company three months before we bought them, decided to get insurance for everybody and pay for the full thing. And I'm like, why didn't you do this the last 20 years you own the business? Like you decided to get insurance

right as you're about to leave? Was that their way of trying to take care of their employees? Yeah, it's always easy to do it when you're selling, right? Here's some interesting things. We were talking about the power of a good executive assistant.

You said, what is it, Bonnie? When you're working with higher level affluent hedge funds or pro sports teams or A-level actresses, really, I mean, the guys that are even hanging out at $100 million mastermind, you think about the caliber of people that are there, it's a different person than somebody that's an executive assistant, just XYZ person. So Bonnie was an assistant for Olympia Dukakis, which is, she's a celebrity, she's been around for forever. And Bonnie was like, this is impossible. What do you do when somebody says, yeah, I need to charter a private jet and

host this event for 75 people a week from now in Tahiti? Like, who do you even call that can pull off miracles like that? And I mean, I'm assuming you've asked Brie to do some crazy things. I mean, you asked your team and people around you, like, hey, let's just make this happen. So she was like, what if I got together all of the top assistants of all of the top CEOs, Michael Bloomberg, you name the person.

And she'd started. There's now over 250 celebrity assistants just in New York alone. And they're like a brother, sisterhood. If they need help, pulling a favor, opening a door, getting tickets, hosting an event, anything's possible when you have the right relationships and even on the executive assistant side. And so now she's now spun out, she's written books, she goes and trains Fortune 100 type executives and their assistants. How do you work it well together? Because a lot of times, myself included, you might have an amazing assistant, but you don't even know sometimes

how to leverage that person or how to empower them or what's even asked. And so understanding both sides of it, but she's one of the best, I think, in the world. You know, you just said earlier, Gary Vee has 35 people with this personal brand. I think when you're, I'm looking at an executive assistant, I'm thinking, okay, I don't necessarily know if this person is going to handle all my travel because there's so much more to it. If you think about it, we're in St. Louis, you have somebody coming to me here. I mean, this person that I'm going to have for travel and content management is going to say, what's the biggest prize for a company in St. Louis? You're going to spend an hour meeting that guy. What's something

cool that St. Louis, we're going to take the little elevator through the arch. There's a lot to this. And with everything I got going on, I want a specialist. What I'm trying to figure out is I don't want a person responsible for everything. Like what I've noticed is I hate when I travel, I can't stay in connection flights. That's why I'm going private to a lot of stuff. There's another thing like we screwed up the other day and I wasn't

pre-checked. So I had to go through and take off my shoes and my belt. And if you're tight for time, you could get messed up. It's super annoying. So now I'm looking for ways to get more efficient, but I want a specialist. I want somebody that said, you gave me enough time to make sure this is perfect. I understand your schedule. Sometimes you want to go over. So I built in a buffer. It's so crazy because I'm not really like a micromanager. I'm not. I really don't ever want to do that. But even the way I get ready in the morning for the cleaning lady, we're getting a newer cleaning lady at the new house we're moving into. But I like my boxers

not rolled up. I hate that. It's the little things. It's crazy. I like a piece of floss waiting out of the morning. There's all these little things like where the sad thing is, she's not doing anything wrong. And the other sad part is I don't speak Spanish. I can't even communicate, but I'm like, but I just can't wait because I never knew how much I care about a person that helps with the house.

So I went through this the last six months and I'm like, why isn't this in this fridge? And like, what happened to the shoes I wear every day? Why are those in an upstairs closet instead of on the shoe rack? And I know this stuff sounds stupid. It's like, dude, really, there's more important things in life. But when it's all the time and you're searching for the jacket you wear every day and it's hidden somewhere, like these little things add up into a big deal.

And I'm sure they do in all relationships. And I'm not even mad at her because I don't communicate. And it's my fault. But trust me, my life is about to change. How are you going to find that person? Or how did you find that person? Well, this person we found from church, but ultimately what we're going to do is find another person.

And this goes through the Goldman Sachs person because they got to go through background checks and all this stuff now because there's bigger risks now what we have. I mean, people get kidnapped and I'm not worried about that. But so they literally it was funny because the guy in my family office, he had a whole report. And this is Jeffrey Epstein. And forget everything with this sick MSR. Yeah. But it showed everything that his cleaning lady had to do. And it's 10 pages. And it said, when a guest comes, here's what you offer. I mean, it was down to like every single thing. When two people come over, when eight people come over, here's how we handle this. Here's how this is done.

Here's the room you stay in when company. But what I realized is it's just like a business. There's standard operating procedures. There's checklists for everything. There's the lighting in the house. There's the alarms, what you do when we're out of town. There's how I want my stuff set up in the morning. There's how to make the bed, what sheets I like, what sheets I don't like, what pillows

I like on my side. These things make your life more efficient and easy and i never knew how much power this would give me until like i hate getting my bag ready like this is what i need every day when i travel i just bought this bag it pulls up into like shelves yeah but i'm like these little things though you get used to it. I just think it's going to make my life so much more efficient. Look, I don't care what I eat. I really don't.

Just give me something that's going to give me a six-pack and make me live an extra 10 years. You know what I mean? By the way, you need to... The guy who is Jake Paul and Mr. Beast and some of the biggest influencers in the world's doctor is Joel Marion's doctor.

He should be who he is. Is that the Grant Cardone guy? No. I mean, they're both in Miami, ironically enough. What's that guy's name? Gary Brecker is who you're talking about. Yeah, I just saw him the other day.

Gary's awesome. Gary's like a biologist. He's not really, I should say not really, he's not a doctor, but Gary's awesome. His company's 10X. Dr. DeAndre is who if you see the stuff that jake's done in a short amount of time training wise like he's got i mean he's insane he'd be the dude if you're trying to figure

out like how to dial in live longer catch things earlier all that stuff like he's the guy well then so i hired this group called the Pinnacle Healthcare. Is it like with Mayo Clinic or something? No, no, no. This is next level. Literally, it's a concierge service. I talked to BMO. I talked to Goldman Sachs.

It's crazy. All the high up with family offices are talking. These guys are multi-multi-billionaires. They all use Pinnacle. And I talked to the doctor and he goes, now you've got East versus West, right? As far as medicine. Yeah. He goes, I've got a hospital that, or a doctor, I want you to go see in New York.

And he goes, there's something similar in California, but it's much different in a lot of ways. He goes, they're going to look at your, bless you. He's going to look at your chromosomes. They're going to take a deep dive into hereditary. They're going to look at every single organ. And the difference about this New York company is they're dead on and they'll tell you exactly what food to eat, when to eat it, what to do on weekends. But you also tell them, this is how I travel. This is what I enjoy. I might have a cigar these days. And they'll tell you, listen, fair enough. We're going to work around you. But he's like, this is the most accurate.

And listen, I'm on the cutting edge. He goes, I don't care if you want to do PRP or if you want stem cells. He goes, I'll just tell you where to get them from. And he goes, I'll tell you how to save a lot of money at the same time. He goes, I don't care. We're into longevity. We're into making you live a long time. And I'm like, look, should I be doing this testosterone therapy? Okay.

He's like, look, you're going to have all these questions. And he goes, we don't have an answer because he goes, quite frankly, he goes, it's hard to get 10,000 people over 50 years to do a case study. He goes, but we know what we know is damaging. You know, if you're going to take, we talked about some stuff, Nat and Nad. Yeah, NAD. So the NAD stuff, like. The different drips and IVs and peptides and all that.

So I'm trying, look, you've got all these nutritions. tried it. Look, you've got all these nutritions. I mean, listen, you've got all these healthy supplements. It's crazy. And so part of this personal assistant I want to get doesn't only handle all travel, but they handle all my workouts and they handle all my dieting and they handle when I go get an IV. And does the IV come to me? Because the president of our company said one thing that stood out. He goes, Tommy, there's two things in life that I want you to think long and hard about

this that you can never get. And that's time and health. You can't go by 10 hours and you can't buy health when it's deteriorating. So he goes, I want you to be set up at a whole new level for your time management and your health. And that's really what this year is all about. Well, dude, I would just say get a second

opinion on whatever pinnacle. I'm not familiar with pinnacle. I know Gary. I know... No, they'll recommend you. What it is, is like my mom has something going on. It's basically like a doctor on call yeah like a concierge it's a concierge so it's not even expensive unless i mean it really wasn't really leveraged are you guys doing that you're doing like dna scans and all that kind of

stuff to be able to like well i'll get a hold of deandre and i'll let them know yeah they're doing dna they do chromosomes like they want to find out what you're susceptible from. So I talked to DeAndre yesterday. He's like, I want to do a gift for somebody that's important to me. Drake is one of his clients. But what I think is cool is guys like Mr. Beast, who's doing really, really well, he's putting his entire C-suite on a program with him. Because he's like, I want my entire team to feel as good as I feel.

And just be as sharp and accurate and whatever else. It's like one of the first times where an entire company, like the entire C-suite is getting access to the peptides and to the IVs and whatever else. Which to me reminds me of something that you would do saying, hey, I want Jim and all the guys that are leading this company to be, it's not just you, like your team needs to be at that level too. You know, it's interesting. And I talked about this a lot on stage recently in Tulum. I'm like, you know what happened when the people started going with around some of the influencers and

authors? You know what happened when I started inviting them on these trips? It's all of a sudden they broke through walls mentally. They were like, they were thirsty for knowledge. They wanted more. And now they're like, can I go on this trip to go visit this company? And they're in their own little mastermind groups with other COOs or CTOs, whatever it might be. And I'm like, and then here's what I realized

is I used to get in the way. I used to go, no, no, no, no, no. I've been through this. Instead of letting them make their own mistakes, which is very detrimental in the short term, but amazing how much someone could grow in the long term. And now I'm like, listen, if you don't mind confiding in me

and asking me a few things, but I'm not, like I told you earlier, I'm not going to micromanage you, but at least let me, like I looked at a lot of things and I'm like, these guys don't want to bother me on a lot of stuff. And I'm like, guys, I've been doing me on a lot of stuff and i'm like guys i've been doing this 16 years when we're looking at this company i'll give you another example

they got 300 contracts with builders and they're like we're going to get rid of new construction i'm like we're not letting go of 80 dollars i'm like i'm sorry what we're going to do and i explain the whole process and they're like i'm like i understand'm sorry, what we're going to do. And I explained the whole process. And they're like, I'm like, I understand that Dan calls me entrepreneurial. And he almost sounds like it's a disease. He's like, oh, he's very entrepreneurial. And it's like, you know, just realize this work environment is very entrepreneurial. And I always say, well, I'll take entrepreneurial if it takes 10 weeks to make a decision, if that's what's corporate.

Like, I make decisions and I sprint. I wonder what the opposite, what's the antonym of? Of entrepreneurial? Yeah. What would that be? Bureaucracy? Bureaucratic. Bureaucratic.

Decision by committees? Yeah. And, you know, I confide in a lot of other people. But I got some more well let's dive into some more stuff because i love this stuff you know giftology is all about really you explained it to me pretty well you said listen these are it's to deepen relationships but ultimately as well you're like if you got somebody that you think you could help and they could help you and it's a mutually beneficial relationship you got to remember that they've got three or four gatekeepers around them

like i've got brie i've got jim i've got all these people yeah to break through to somebody like you or to break through to your owners or to the people that are hosting events mean that your suppliers like the average person or executive is getting hit with 30,000 messages a day. 30,000. So people are like, man, why don't I get a text back? Why don't I get a phone call back? Why am I not getting referrals from that person? We have a good product. We have a good service. Why am I not getting more deals? Well, dude, you have to be like-trusted. And the key is top of mind. But not top of mind like cheeseball like top of mind like man i love that guy i love that gal i love that company how does that happen well it

doesn't happen with you know banners on websites or whatever else that happens because there's a one-to-one connection and really what giftology does is helps people like you're getting facetime right now with me which means the other 9999 people that want to get face time with you your face time doesn't scale but with what we're talking about i hit you with a crazy 5 000 10 000 knife set yeah was i in phoenix when i did it no i did it from afar were you the only one that received something like that no i mean i'm my gifting budget's three quarters of a million dollars this year. So I'm able to hit and help my clients scale their time and their influence and their impact from afar. Not that there's... We're going to have cigars

in a couple hours. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be fun. But you're going to be on to the next city, grabbing the next dinner, going to the next hotel, going to the next event. But when you go home, what's staring you in the face every time you go into your kitchen? And for Brie, what's she drinking her coffee from? The $2,000 mug. We got to take that out of the case. You got it like you brought it in the display

case, right? I still kept it in the display case. Dude, that's, I mean, that's cool. But I will tell you this. It's one of the first things people go, what's in the case it's almost like that's the key is think about you there's a handful of people when you go to hang out with you know ken goodrich or whatever you're telling stories of people you've hung out with things that you've done and we all have our go-to story what giftology has allowed us to do

is to help people create stories that are replicatable. Like the knife set that you got is the same knife set that Tony Robbins got. It's the same knife set that Dean Graziosi got. Same knife set that Ed Milef got. Yep. Same delivery mechanism, but each of them are thinking about whoever gave them the set. You know, Pete Vargas is the person who gave Tony Robbins the set. So we've built systems and

mechanisms on how to stay top of mind, how to make somebody feel a certain way. And at the end of the day, we want stories to be told about us when we're not at the Ritz, when we're not at the Mastermind, when they're not at the conference. That does not happen for most people unless they're there and present. So they're not scaling their ability to have stories being told about them all over the country. And for somebody like you, having the people that you've acquired businesses from, somebody's going to go and say, hey, was that a good time to treat you right? What story are they going to tell? Your suppliers that you're buying stuff from, what stories are those people going to tell

when you're not around? We all want people to speak well of us, but most people don't have an intentional way to say, hey, I see you, you matter, I care about you. I'm in your corner. It might feel that way, but they don't have a mechanism of, and that's really at a core level

what we're teaching people. And then also providing, you want to send 10,000 people something and make them cry? Most people can't send one person something and make them cry. Well, that's one of the things that you're here today is I'm going to not only set a budget, but we're going to set a cadence. And part of my personal, as personal says, different than executive, is working on giftology.

But also, listen, there's one main goal I have that I haven't been doing a great job. And that's just a simple video message. Every single day, 30 of them, that takes me less than 15 minutes. It's showing up to the mojo calls. But I'm telling you right now, when life gets chaotic, what you need to do is step back and figure out a way to, who do I need to hire? What do I need to do to get it back into a cadence? And that's my biggest thing is being there for my people in a new way better way you said there's a training program for customer service you said disney has one and then you said there's just now we're talking about cameron's coo alliance so every mastermind every group every vististage, EO, YPO, Tiger, who are they attracting? Founders and CEOs.

Yep. If every business rises and falls based upon not just the vision, but the execution of the vision, the implementation. Cameron's the only guy I know that coaches CEOs, but his real skill set is, how do you take the number two and put them together with other world-class, you know, $10 million to billion-dollar companies, COOs, so that they can learn from each other. So the COO alliance is for the number two. There's no CEOs allowed ever. I don't want to go. That's good.

No, but think about it. I mean, we're both visionaries like we're both the guys that yeah it's your big dreams you need integrators but you need but this number two but but we drive integrators crazy because we're how many visions how many ideas how fast we want to go so cameron speaks the language of the ceo because he's worked with ceos he still coaches got brought over by the sheik of qatar and there's 300 companies that he owns like crazy stuff but his real skill set and so anybody I talk to that's like mid-market company you know doing anywhere from you know tens of millions or hundreds of millions or billions the COO alliance

I think they're up to a few hundred COOs globally but yeah I mean dude for you somebody like you probably has more than one COO and a lot of his events are in your backyard. You know, what's interesting is the gal sold a man a dress yesterday. We met her number two. Her name is Lindsay. And she said, you want to know the person you want to go after? The number two to the number two. She goes, at every company, you find the number two to the number two.

And that is the victory. No one really understands that, right? Yeah. Who's the number two to the number two and that is the victory no one really understands that right yeah who's the number two to the number two who's the number two to the integrator because that's that person that's that's the person right in person yeah isn't that amazing and they're probably doing a lot of the work the grunt work they're probably underappreciated they're not being paid nearly as much as the COO. And they got the playbook. They know exactly what goes on, and they know how to assist in doing that. They understand what needs to be done, the nine to five. They do the grunt work, like you said. And you can probably recruit them away for a lot less money. Isn't that crazy?

It's smart. I mean, one of the things that we do is number one employee that we hire are college educated stay at home moms when the kids go back to school. Right. We get incredible talent. Not necessarily. We don't have to pay top tier. Like they care about flexibility. They care about like taking care of their kids.

They care about like being able to work from home. So like finding those little niches of key talent. How do you find those stay at home? They all know each other. What is the thing that lures them in? Flexibility? They find out that we offer house cleaning for every employee, every other. It's part of giftology.

It's the most bragged about. Like we offer unlimited babysitter on date nights. We do things that, you know, nobody's bragging about 401k or stuff that costs a company a crap ton of money, but they will brag about having a house cleaner. Like one of our employees said, both of our parents are doctors.

And when they get together, guess what they talk about? The doctors tell their friends, my daughter works for Giftology. She has her own house cleaner paid for by the company. Yeah, no, I remember this story. How many employees does Giftology have? Most of our staff is employed by our suppliers. So Cutco gives us dedicated staff, but they're not on our payroll. So we have 12 people, but we have hundreds of people at our suppliers. They're just not on our payroll. Right. Okay. That makes sense.

And that's really, really smart. One of the things that I'm working on is it's called a PEO? Yeah. Does that sound right? Yeah. Another company holds the burden that they make a fee each month. And as the company- They manage the benefits, they manage-

They manage all the hassle, yeah. So that's something we're looking at to get the ball rolling and all these other things I'm focused on. If I had to tell people what a billionaire, what people that give back, the number one thing I always tell people, it's not about cold plunging or waking up at 4 a.m.

It's not necessarily about time with family, although time with family is the most important thing anybody should be. If you don't have money, you don't get time with family. So money is a release to do that. But relationships, it's connectors. It's people that can make a phone call and get connected. That's the number one trait.

Yeah, every business is a people business and you can do that. Good things happen. I want you to close this out. Any final thoughts? We talked about a lot of stuff and this is what I love. This stuff, I've got four pages of notes

of the people listening. If you're not going to think about doing something, that's the problem. And if you do have notes and they go die, they go somewhere in a closet to die, that's a bigger problem. But go ahead and close this out. I would just say that talk about cold plunges and whatever else a lot of people have. The gratitude journal. Hey, I feel gratitude. Gratitude isn't a feeling, it's an action.

So if there's relationships that have helped you build a business, get you a job, ask professors, teachers, coaches, go take once a day and show gratitude and do gratitude to the people that have, get where you're going and the people that are joints that get you to the next level. Go do it. Don't talk about it. Don't just feel it. Take action. I love it. John, thanks for inviting me out here. Good times. Absolutely. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff.

And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts you're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on and and do me a quick favor leave a quick review it really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review make it four or five sentences tell us how we're doing and i just wanted to mention real quick we started a membership it's homesicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is

actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your life season further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it. you