The Home Service Expert Podcast - Leading Your Home Service Business with Power

Episode Date: January 29, 2018

Mike slogged for many hours before he found the key to success and built New Jersey’s largest home services company. Last year, he sold off the business to focus on helping other business owners. In this episode, we talked about business mindsets, marketing…

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. 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. Today, we're going to be talking to Mike Aguilera. Some of you out there might just know him as the

business warrior. Mike really has helped his clients grow their service business, utilizing his $32 million blueprint, which teaches them how to achieve massive wealth, freedom, and market domination. He's the author of Secrets of Business Mastery, also the author of Secrets of Leadership Mastery, Secrets of Community Mastery, plus he is the host of CEO Warrior Podcast and publisher of Home Service Max magazine. Check them out at www.ceowarrior.com. He literally took a struggling two-person service business with a broken down truck and turned it into over $30 million service business with 190 employees and 145 trucks. They grew to become one of the number one home service companies in

central New Jersey, earning more than $30 million a year. You know, I really like this guy. I've been following him for a while now, and he's just, he really is a fun guy to talk to, and he really has made it on his own. He felt like he was failing and was able to overcome that and actually look in the mirror and decided to do something about it, and I'm so excited to have Mike on. So without further ado, Mike Aguiarro. Mike, how's your day going today? Awesome, man. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, super excited to have you here. If we could just start out, Mike, I like the listeners to get to know a little bit about you and what you've been through and who you are. I've obviously already introduced you,

but let's go ahead and run through your story and let them know how you know what they're going through and what you specialize in. Yeah, awesome. So, I mean, I'll start back a little ways back. I'm just a vocational school kid who graduated in 1988. I'm learning how to do some electrical work. I understand, you know, the pains that people go through. I've been on my own since I'm 15 years old. And I started my business when I was 23. And so at the age of 23, I thought I had it all figured out starting an electrical contracting business. And to cut a long story short, like I found out that the next 10 years, not only would I work hard, but I would kind of get burnt out, fed up, frustrated, a lot of pressure, a lot of stress and really learning to not love what I was doing.

I mean, I downright started to hate it. Can you got to wake up every day and you're going to work. And it's just it's a tough, tough, tough, tough industry to be in when you feel that way. And it's it's rough. How'd you get over it? Yeah. And you know what? I'll share how I got over it. But if I had to hear one more person tell me it was mindset, right? Oh, it's a mindset thing. It's like, man, really? I mean, I read all kinds of stuff on mindset. Why was I still stuck? And everybody was telling me it was just a mindset game. And I said, well, that's so weird because I'm very positive and stuff wasn't changing. What really happened was I think that actually I know it got to the point my business

partner came in one morning. We had to go do a big job he came in and he said to me he says um I'm done he said Mike um I'm done and I was like oh okay I'll see you tomorrow I thought I thought he had the uh the craps or something you know I thought he was just gonna go home and and come back tomorrow. And he says, no, I'm done, man. I'm out of here. I can't take it no more. I'm burnt out. I'm fed up.

I'm frustrated. And I said, well, if you're done, I'm done. I'm out of here too. I don't need this anyway. This is, I'm burnt out. You're burnt out. So after a couple of days of us kind of just thinking through things i said to him i said hey i got an idea what if we what if we did it completely different what if we found some of

the smartest people in the world we really invested in ourselves from people who figured this stuff out and what if they told us what to do and we actually did it. Are you willing to take a chance? And so we both agreed that day. We said, yeah, we will take a chance. Now, I mean, look, I spent over the last 10 years, I spent over a million dollars on my own education. Now, some people out there might be saying that, but I'm going to tell you, there's no blowing smoke on that. I've trained with the greatest on the planet from the executives at Disney, the top executives at Zappos, everybody in between from Cameron Harreld to Dan Kennedy, you name it. I've given them money of mine to learn how to be the best on the planet.

And wouldn't you know the theory that everybody says success leaves clues, that smart people, when they tell you to do things that you would never know when you actually do it, everything starts to change. 100% agree with that. I mean, I've trained with Joe Polish. I've trained with Frank Kern. The biggest internet marketers, I do marketing, and I really love marketing and sales. And it sounds like you've got to invest in yourself. And just by people listening to this podcast and listening to Mike right now should really see that half the battle is just getting the education.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Listen to what's working already. And, you know, I'd like to go into depth a little bit more on that. So, Mike, you've trained. You've done all this training. You guys went out there. You decided you're going to do what's working for other people. And you listened to the best.

You trained with the best. Tell me where it went from there with your partner. Yeah, definitely. And it's funny you say that because, you know, just like you, Joe Polish, he calls it a pay to play, right? I mean, seven or eight years ago, I paid him $20,000 for eight hours of his time. And Frank Kern, I don't know, $20-something thousand to spend two days at't know. Well, what's the outcome? 10 years ago, we're under a million dollars. Last year, we closed out at over $30 million. I've done over $200 million the last 10 years. I've served over 125,000 customers in the last 10 years. I had over 145 service vehicles running around the state of New Jersey. And three months ago, I sold my

business to a $40 billion company. So I've learned that applying the right wisdom, the right knowledge at the right time, surrounded around the right people, you can create an amazing ass business that's in the top 0.01% of the world, and you can sell it for, I sold it for, sign the paper, walk away the next day for one of the biggest sales in the last 50 years in my industry. Wait, how much was it for? I'm sorry, cut out. Yeah, so I can't say the exact number I sold it for,

but you can imagine selling a $30 million business. I sold it for more money, for a higher EBITDA than anybody has sold in the last 50 years in the industry with a walkaway offer, which means I signed the paper the next day. I was pretty to do what I'm real. My passion is with the CEO warrior, teaching people how to grow their companies lightning fast with less stress. So, you know, real quick, I'm going to I'm going to there's so many things I'm excited to talk to you about, Mike, and I'm going to take you on different ways with this direction. But what most of these guys don't understand, what I get a lot of, I was just at a Clopay. It's a garage door manufacturer convention. And the biggest class that they brought us to, the one that there was 20 people lined up in the back,

was all about how to sell your business. It was all baby boomers. And it was learning how to prepare to sell your business. And when we talk about EBITDA, basically, that's just a fancy way. It's earnings before interest tax and appreciation. And basically, that's a fancy way of saying profit. So what people like to see for a company is they want to see a healthy profit. They want to know that you have a lot of customers, not just one big customer, three big customers. And they want to see the fact that you've got a good history. You don't have a lot of debt and you have a business that runs itself. Knowing that if I pull you out of it, Mike, and I pull a couple other key players, it's going to run itself. So typically, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but in the home service niche,

between a million, 2 million, 3 million, you're probably going to do two to three times EBITDA. It goes up 5, 10 million, you're going to get five to seven. And if you're doing 100 million plus, sometimes you get 10 to 12. And that means 10 to 7 and if you're doing 100 million plus sometimes you get 10 to 12 and that means 10 to 12 times profit and the average profit in the home service industry is right around 18 to 20 so i don't know those are the stats that i have what is your take on all that stuff because i love to hear other points not too far off from that a lot of things you said are really important to have in place here's what what I always tell people, knowing what I know now, if I'd rewind time, you don't say you're going to get ready for sale in the future. You treat every single day like you're going to sell because if you treated every day like you were going to sell, you would never tolerate poor managers.

You would never tolerate poor processes. You would never tolerate bad marketing bad customer service um on top of having a company that can run itself you need a powerful ass brand that's very competitive in the market and you need to build a wall that someone wants to get in and that's what i did i built a wall where the person who ended up buying us could not penetrate into that wall, but there was really only a choice, keep fighting against my brand,

my marketing fence I put up, or to buy me. So I think it was a very smart strategic move for them to do. I mean, crap, we did 3.5 million in June this year and 3.1 million in May in a mild app in a summer that was not hot at all. It was a very mild summer. So does that help answer a couple of things? Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. I mean, you know, you've done, you've done it, you've made all the mistakes and you know what I used to get? I hated this when I was a kid is I wish I knew then what I knew now. And I used to look at my dad and my uncles and everybody and I say, well, tell me, what the hell are you talking about?

And there's you cannot trump experience. And you go you get the lows. You go through the lows and the smart people, they just don't make the same mistakes twice. They learn from their mistakes. And it's just like kids. You know, you got to let them grow up and make their own mistakes and hope that they're going to realize them. But my question is for you. You know, you grew this multimillion-dollar company. And I know this is not a one-answer question.

But tell me about some of the struggles. Tell me about how you overcame them. Obviously having a partner, I had a partner. He smoked a lot of weed. He didn't answer phone calls. He didn't like to work. I got, I hate to say this. I mean, he's still one of my best friends, but we just went our separate ways in 2010 and he's doing amazing. He's got a great job. He just wasn't made for the home service industry. He wasn't a self-starter, but now he's killing it. He's got a beautiful wife. He goes golfing every day now. I mean, he's doing much better, but real quick, and I want to get back to your question, but this morning I reprimanded an employee in Michigan. We're in nine states. And I said,

you have one of the lowest sales, but I said, maybe I failed. Maybe we failed in your training. Maybe you'd be better off in another position within the company. But I said, maybe I failed. Maybe we failed in your training. Maybe you'd be better off in another position within the company. But I said, let me ask you this. If you were in a marathon today and your wife asked you to do it, what position would you be happy being in? And he said, I'd be happy, you know, if I was in the top of the first half, I go, well, if I trained for a marathon today, no offense, but I'm not training unless I'm training to be number one. If you don't have the skills and the want to be number one, then why the hell are you doing this business? Because I hate to say this, but your paycheck is commission-based.

There's some fixed costs. There's some gas, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, it's partly commission and partly salary and a mix because I do a hybrid. But, you know, I just get really frustrated with the guys that don't like to do this. And the perseverance and the will to survive is what has to be there. And I get so passionate about it. But anyway, going back to the question, because I love talking to guys like you, it's my passion to have this conversation, to hear about what you went through. So tell me what you went through and how you overcame it.

Yeah. And I mean, so when you look at all the pieces we went through, you know, being in business for 23 years, I had a third partner. So I went through, uh, and it sounds like your partner might've been my partner, right? Like not working as hard, golfing a lot. So I know what it's like to buy out a partner for millions of dollars to make them go away. I know what it's like to go through an economy where people say it was the hardest economy next to the Great Depression, which we never had it down here, never had a flat year. And we always made at least the minimum of an extra million a year in the company. A couple of things that I learned, and some of it may sound foo-foo-y.

Some of it may sound foo-fooey some of it may sound um like everybody talks about it but I think talk is cheap application is where it comes in is like you know one I learned to not tolerate anybody weak in the culture so our culture was a culture of warriors I mean if you looked at the movie Spartan 300, like that was my culture. I refused to baby people. I refused to sugarcoat things. I've been always willing to give a hurtful truth instead of a comforting lie. And so our culture was always driven. Number two, we always knew the target that we were headed for. I mean, people say to me, did you know you would get to 30 million? Yes, it was written on paper, right? I stared at it every day. I wrote 30 million on my hand every day for God knows how long. So every day I embedded that on my skin. So, you know, what I would tell the listeners is this one make sure that culture the culture that's driven towards the target like it is a viking a viking team getting there

to make sure you know where the target is three course correct is needed people today i was talking to someone today they said to me yeah we're not where we want to be like the game was over i'm like you do know like there's three months left right like slam into the new year don't some of these guys they start having a tough year they crawl into the new year and my belief is slam into it so so there's a couple things right there and i'll be glad if you wanted me to go deeper or ask me another question. You know, I have so many different people that listen to this podcast and there's so many different people at a different level. Some of the people are saying, is business right for me? Should I go into business? And some of the people are going, is it okay to move into another state? Which to me was a huge challenge and you have to have excellent key performance indicators. You got to have a great CRM. You really have to have a great

training policy and procedure. But, you know, it sounds like to get to where you've been, you went through a lot of trials and tribulations. You didn't have to go through the economy dump in 2007, which was really, really bad. Tell me a little bit. And I just like I said before, it's just fun for me to have a conversation with you because it sounds like we're on the same page on a lot of this stuff. You teach a lot of the same guys I teach. And, you know, tell me a little bit about, and one thing I wanted to come back to too, you said it was a $40 billion company. There's a company in Phoenix that I actually just picked up as a client for Legion. They're called Direct Energy.

They run Punctual Plumber, Benjamin Franklin. They run Mr. Electric, Mr. Sparky, all that stuff. We're going to be doing, we're their exclusive Legion. They do a lot of stuff on their own. They spend hundreds of millions a year. They got 1,400 people in their call center, 1,100 are inbound, 300 are outbound. It sounds like it was a pretty large company that might have bought you, probably similar to them, right?

Yeah, so they're not the ones that bought us, but of course they're a monster in the industry, right? I mean, they just, I'm pretty sure they just acquired whatever. I don't know if it was Clockworks, maybe they. Yeah, Clockwork. Yep, they did. Yeah, so they're a monster company monster company smart people they know how to do the game world-class brand kudos to you for for working somebody of that caliber they're they're top notch in the industry but yeah these guys if you look at what's going on today it's

the movie the purge right i mean except except the largest companies are picking up big companies now, like they're bubblegum. I mean, they're just picking them right up. And the other thing is the small young companies are smarter and move faster than ever before. So I would tell everybody who's in any service industry or almost any business, the purge of retail is happening, the purge of big conglomerates, the purge of Amazon and Google. You're watching the perfect storm. And if you're smart, you're going to win.

And if you're not smart, you're going to feel massive pressure. So get smart. I wholeheartedly agree with that. You know, when I sit down with the top executives, I'm talking to the number three guy in the company that runs the whole the secret. He goes, we'll pay way more for an acquisition. I go, well, how can you afford to do that? He goes, because we're not in there selling electric. We're in there selling plumbing, electric. We're in there selling HVAC. We're working on everything in that house. And then we're selling them a home warranty plan. And he

goes, how often do you go to a garage door repair? I go, well, I try to go twice a year because we came up with a service plan. But he goes, you're one of a million. He goes, nobody does service plans except for the HVAC companies. He goes, we've got all this stuff laid out. He goes, he who could pay more for an acquisition or a lead will always win. And it's 100 percent from my from my expertise. I spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

I spent over 100,000 just on pay-per-click. And now they got the Google Guarantee out, which we're jumped on that bandwagon right away. They do background checks and drug tests and all that. But not drug tests, but we do that internally. But long story short, it's so true. So one of the things that we did, and I want to hear what you've done, because I'm sure you've done stuff like this, is there's three ways to make money. You get new customers, marketing. You keep the customers coming back for more, the service plan, and you charge the current customers more money, which is what direct

energy does, which is I'm going to start selling garage door storage solutions, screen doors for the garage doors, epoxy, all these different things that can offer a surge protector into their main junction box. We're getting licensed for that. So instead of my average ticket being 500, I'm going to get it to 2000. And I want to hear what you've done because I think that's so important. And I'm learning this from the top guys, like you said, get the advice from the top people in the industry. Okay. Yeah.

So here's what I think that's real important for everybody to know. And the big box stores have been teaching us to this about synergies right i mean you could go to walgreens today or cvs you can get eggs you can get slippers you can get medicine you can see a doctor by helping lawnmower get a car and if you look at what the market has done they have trained us that the most important thing is two things. One is convenience of time. I want to make sure I don't have to go to multiple places to get what I need. And number two is I want to make sure I trust that vehicle. And that's what direct energy is showing you an example of, right?

I'm going to go in a house. You trust me. Then you'll buy everything from me. And if I know the lifetime value of a customer, my goal is just to serve you with as many things that you would possibly need to help you become safer or more comfortable in your life. And I'll become the source of one you buy everything from. So it's a it's a pretty easy model. Once you know the model, you have to be brave to do the model because most small companies are afraid to do it but for those that are brave like i was and i mean our company was on track to do 60 million by the year

2020 and we might have exceeded that and that's really people say to me well why not 100 million i said well crap i didn't have an office in the building for five years it ran itself i mean i built a lifestyle business for the last five years before i sold it and of course that's why we got a high even as that thing ran itself for the last five years right no that's exactly what you want to do is get self-sustaining an engine that's going to run itself when you're not around and that's one of the greatest questions ever and i ask that question all the time if you had to leave for a week and you wanted to go to Hawaii with your family, if you came back, what would the business look like? And most companies, and I'd say a lot of the guys out there listening to this would say they would walk into a shit storm. And it's not a problem. It's just it's getting those checks and balances. It's relying more on software. I mean, I get more and more automated every single day. And I'd love to talk to you. You know, you got a lot. You talk about your vision and to do 30 million and you wrote it

on your hand and you repeat it every day. You wrote an article on LinkedIn to remind your employees about the company vision every chance you can. Now, how important is that? And what's the best way to deliver that message to make sure they understand it? What kind of vision were you talking about? Was it a monetary vision or was it a service of excellence yeah so i mean we called it our painted vision it's off of a philosophy of like cameron harold that a lot of people talk about painted vision so our vision talked about everything i mean what will our culture look like by the year 2020? What will our customers be like? What will our brands be like? What will our revenue?

What will our profit? What will our team, like every aspect of the company, what will our leadership look like? So our painted vision covered every little aspect of it. We read it in every company meeting. It was posted all over the walls. We emailed it out every month to employees. Every one of our vendors and team partners knew about our target we were going to go to. So this thing, we always say it wasn't a written document. It was the living, breathing document that we lived by. and we've seen ourselves in the future every single

day i'm taking notes i love this stuff and it's amazing i mean talking to a guy like you that's been there and done it you know right now we did we hit a record month we did 1.8 million that's one facet of the business we We have another income revenue stream too. But, you know, we're figuring out the processes and we're recreating it and we're able to go so fast. I mean, double, double, double. And my goal is $100 million. And I'm not looking for a lifestyle change really right now because I love it. You know, I met with one of my technicians yesterday at Subway.

He said, Tommy, is there any chance you can make time for me? I said, dude, you've been with me for seven years. I go, what do you need? He goes, well, can we go to lunch? I said, how about next Tuesday? He said, absolutely. What time? So we met up at noon yesterday and I said, what is it, Dean? What do you need? He goes, I wanted to talk to you about possibly moving. I said, when? He said, three years from now. He said, my son will be graduated. I'm thinking about moving up to the Vancouver, Seattle, somewhere around there, Portland area. I said, dude, done. I said, well, I'll even start that market a year before and get a lead

technician to get the ball rolling, all the marketing dialed in. But the fact is, he said, I never want to leave your company. I believe in you. I can't believe what we've done since we've been working together. And then he went out and set a record day, his best day ever after he met with me. And I called him up that night and said, dude, you're amazing. I'm so glad you're part of this company. And it meant a lot to me. He's a badass and he's great with customers. He runs warranty calls. He doesn't complain. He'll do door installs. He'll train. He's one of my lead trainers. And those are the kind of guys we need. i made notes i said i want to book 100 of the calls even though we're not going to do that 90 would be amazing i want to do 100 million you know i

want to drive to that number so i'm making notes right now and i'm going to put them all over the dang building and i have a lot of stuff i have our processes we have an eight step sales process i have a lot of stuff and i've got a lot of success posters on the walls and stuff like that. But I think putting your goals and what you're striving to achieve and just remembering that on your mirror, even in the morning, to read it every day because you need to believe. Because if you don't believe, no one else in your company will, right? Yeah. right yeah and that's interesting what you said about the hundred percent because at my lab i run a four-day business event in new jersey where you know over four days we teach everybody we learned we teach them what we learned on how to grow a company more freedoms well more market domination

and so they told to me someone said said something like, hey, 100% is not a really practical number because it can't be hit. It's not realistic. And I said, well, that's an interesting fact. What if it's just a limiting belief? So we had 115 people here just within the last month, companies from all australia canada new zealand all over the damn globe we do a special board break where we break through these limiting beliefs it's not like just breaking a board like you see it's a whole process it's empowering it shatters crap that can go all the way back to your childhood and that night we had a couple women come up they were a little nervous and at the end i said who said a hundred percent is not practical and the guy raised his hand yeah well it's really not and

i said well i just want to point out something a hundred percent of the people participated in the exercise and a hundred percent people broke through on the very first shot and this ain't one of those balsa wood things i'm a martial artist 33 years you know this is a pine board but like it's cut at home depot it's hard as rock and if you don't believe you're not going to hit through it and i said so i'm wondering now based on a hundred percent participation a hundred percent breakthrough a hundred percent on the very first time does that possibly change your belief? And the guy says, I'll never say that again. He goes, we will go for 100%, not because we never did it, because we know it's possible.

Does that make sense? 100%. I was just going to answer 100%. And it is possible. And here's what I've learned. I work with a company called CallCap. I work with them in 10 different businesses. I don't use them for A1 now because we've got another stuff, but I believe in what they do. And I believe that the difference between, okay, obviously we get competitor calls.

We can't book a competitor call because they're shopping, right? They're trying to see what we're quoting and we try not to ever quote a price. But we also work with a company called Power Selling Pros. And the guy's name is Brigham. And I've actually interviewed him on the podcast. And he's an amazing guy. And he guarantees after a year, your CSRs will book 85%. And my number one rule is don't lose them on the phone call. Smile. Say, how's your day going? How could I make it better? Oh my gosh, I know how big of an inconvenience it could be to not have your garage door working.

What part of town are you in? And just your phone voice, you get everybody to believe in this and you gotta book the phone call. I mean, we do amazing marketing. I mean, I do everything. I've got a private blog network. I've got over 5,000 websites that I use

to make all my top websites rank number one. I mean, we do everything from posting 10,000 ads a month on Craigslist to spending hundreds of thousands on PPC to, believe it or not, I do HomeAdvisor. And we booked, we're at 87% booking rate right now at HomeAdvisor for the month, well, we just did that last month. And there's nothing I don't believe in. I do, you name it, I do it. And marketing is one thing, but booking the call is something else. And then maximizing that ticket when you're there and getting those customers back for more. You know, tell me a little bit about your thoughts on the marketing end and then the booking of the call and then getting the right person out there.

Tell me exactly how you run your business and what you coach on. Yeah, so first off, I'm a huge believer in call cap. I love Susie out there. I hope she listens to this episode. She's amazing. I've used her for voice blasting and, you know, ranking of calls and everything. So definitely awesome, awesome company and people. I love Susie.

I know Brigham for, I think, six or seven years. I think I was his number two or three client. I've helped him. I would like to think he would give me kudos for helping him grow his company now to whatever he has now. Companies. He's an amazing guy. He runs an amazing outfit and he actually like i said we were his second or third client he was my company coaching my csrs to success so i love you mentioned those guys they're both world-class companies and i never treated

them as companies they always were partners and family because i only won if they won and i love talking to you because i could see you have these same beliefs with them and what was i want to make sure i answered the exact question for you that you want to know is it about booking percentage csrs customer satisfaction well you know i just want to hear the concept because here's the questions i get all the time. First, how do I find good help? Number two is how do I bring in more leads? But I don't think it's about bringing in more leads.

I think it's about maximizing each opportunity. Sure, there's a time in everybody's company that you need to bring in more leads. But I really like keeping the old customers coming back for more. And I really like the fact of charging them more and booking more phone calls and not charging them because you're disingenuous and you don't have morals or ethics. You don't have to be the most expensive ripoff artist, but you should charge a good value of what the market will pay because you deliver a better service. And if you're going to be better than Amazon, the only way to beat Amazon is not on price. Never play price wars.

It should be on quality and value. So I just wanted to hear your take on that because I get the questions all the time. Yeah, so I think the first thing is, you know, people are filled with all these beliefs. Like you said, I'm on home advisor, believe it or not. And I'm like, well, why wouldn't I believe that? See, I'm one of those people. I don't say one thing's bad and another's good because the only difference between positive and negative is the definition you give it. And so like when everybody was getting out of the yellow pages, I was still in it and I was doing amazing. And I thanked everybody who got out of it because it made it easier for me to convert calls now one part of the world

that might be horrible another part and this list might be good another part it may not be good so I'm glad you're using home advisor because if it works it's smart business and the only way you know if things work by doing your own analysis evaluation and testing on it. So I also agree with you. So many people are spending so much time trying to say, I want more leads. I agree with you. They're not nurturing the relationship.

I call it the one-time transactional company versus the lifetime transactional company. And I was all about lifetime nurture the relationship communicate a lot deliver lots of value all the time even when you're not giving us money and then when it's time to give us money you'll hire and give a lot of your money because you trust us and we've been serving you for all these years and not trying to sell you and i don't care if it's the sub business or whatever service business or you sell today i think what we're plagued with is these poor beliefs of selling get as much as you can for it and then it feels dirty and then we struggle to hire employees because it feels dirty to employees. Our culture was the culture of

serving, deliver the very best value, the very best service all the time with respect, with the understanding that if you didn't choose to buy today, it just meant not today. But our goal was to buy from us for a lifetime. And those beliefs that helped me really well, we work now with over, they just told me we hit 170 companies this week all around the entire United States on a regular basis. And when we implement the systems and things that we think are what I would call best practices or best things to consider in company, we're seeing companies like one of my clients, who went from $4.5 million a year and a half ago to nine and a half

million here, because as you know, when you're doing it yourself, which is awesome, when you woman, they course correct and you understand frequency marketing, backable marketing and education based marketing, like the sky's the limit. Everybody can have a hundred million dollar business. Yeah. I mean, there's enough to go around and there's enough people that don't believe you know i think the number one value is passion it's caring it's caring for your employees too and building that culture i mean i gotta tell you i'm sitting here and i know i'm not a professional

and everything and i'm i'm a big enough man to say I need a lot of help from a lot of people to run this business I have a players I have a hell of an operational manager I have a good marketing assist I have an amazing call center manager I mean I gotta tell you I got props to give all day long if I wanted to but it's you know you gotta know what your strengths are and your weaknesses and you gotta have passion if you don If you don't like what you do, you know, when I met with Dean yesterday as we're walking out to our trucks, he goes, Tommy, thank you so much. He goes, I want to tell you, I wake up every day and I like to go to work. It's fun. He goes, and this is the only job I've ever had that I could say that. And I wanted to thank you. I go, you know, I like what I do too, Dean. And it really means a lot to me that you feel that way because your performance shows that you love what you do.

And you said earlier today, Mike, that you used to hate what you did. And how did you get over that? You know, that's so important to me to understand and that the listeners here is how do you make it fun again? How do you get rejuvenated? Yeah, so, you know, going back in time, I hated what what i did i hated what i didn't figure out yet right i hated the struggles but then i learned to love it because i knew there was a solution to the struggle so it was really the stress that i hated i loved the electrical work i loved doing the physical work i actually love i mean i've climbed in more attics and smelled more cat piss and crawl spaces than most people on the planet.

Pulling electrical wires. But I loved it out there because it was man's work. I know there's some women, but that's the reality is it was all men for us. And we worked hard and we had fun together and we laughed. So I would say what got me the passion back was working with people who knew how to do it that made sure that when a problem I was struggling with got me motivated on solving it versus complaining about living with it, if that makes sense. Yeah, well, that's the whole point is tell me you want to get better. I don't need you to be perfect. I just want to see progress. I want to know that you want to do better. And that's, you know, we're preaching the same stuff here. You talk about leading with power in one of your articles. And I want to know exactly what you mean leading with power, because I say lead by example, but I want to really understand from your perspective what leading with power means. Yeah, so I think everybody, when they were young and started their business, most people were brave. You couldn't hurt them. They ran night and day. If you took

an image of yourself at 17 or 18 years old on a motorcycle skateboard and you could put yourself in that moment you were brave you were powerful if someone told you you couldn't if they told you you can't put your arm in fire and survive you would do it even if it burned your flesh off just to prove to them how strong and powerful you are but along the way you get a business a family a marriage house you start to get risk and you start to lose your power you get a few maybe you get a lawsuit you lose a good employee a van breaks down you get sued and what happens is your power goes away and you become deflated and you could see it in society today just stand in the mall and you'll see a whole bunch of deflated and you could see it in society today to stand in the mall and you'll see a whole bunch of deflated people shoulders forward head down victims right oh yeah you could also tell

someone who's walking like a ufc fighter or somebody who's lived with passion they're the victors and the victor walks around shoulders back, chest up, no ego, no attitude, but breathes really strong and he feels confident. He wakes up with a purpose and that's what power is, having that purpose, that passion. And when you put purpose and passion together, it equates into the formula of more personal power inside of you and inside your mind. And I think a lot of people, and I'll talk from a man's perspective because I'm a man, but I'm with my wife over 31 years, my goddess. But I want to talk from a man's perspective because I think a lot of men need to just hear the message, step up and stop being deflated and really go for it. If you go for it and burn up in smoke at least you could

say you gave it really everything you got instead of sitting there and failing and then saying i gave it a half effort and this world is full of half efforts you know 100 and you know they expected to come to them and i'll tell you this if the guys out there that are listening to this and gals, if you're competing with a guy like me or Mike, you're going to lose unless you're going to give it 100%. And don't come to the race if you're not planning on being number one, because I'll tell you what, I know how many faults I have. And I work every day to make sure to find somebody better than me at what I'm not good at. And knowing what's going on in my business is half the battle. I mean, I know my booking rate every day. I know my top performers,

my low performers. I could click on a tab. I could see with my user interface, I can literally see my lowest performer click on every ticket and I call him up and I say, what happened here? Why didn't you call a manager here? There's so many systems. And I'm excited to talk about this because you are all about systems. And you talk a lot about it. You talk on a LinkedIn post. Since you only have a limited capacity for decision making, the very best thing you can do in your life and in your business is to avoid the sense of overwhelm. And that's to create systems. So tell me a little bit about what kind of systems that you would like to implement in a lot of different home service companies and what's your biggest and best,

most important system? Well, here, you know, I'm going to come from probably a left field thinking here about systems because I know a lot of people with systems. Every time I hear someone say it, they throw the number one system guy out there, right? Gerber and E-Myth. They're like, oh, I read the E-Myth and E-Myth visited and the future E-Myth book. And I'm like, it's awesome. What did you implement? And they're like, nothing.

Here's my belief on system the system you want to build next is to solve the number one thing that is either costing you from making money or saving money or delivering uh lots of stress to you whatever that is no matter how simple it is that's your next system so if it's how my guys park their truck or how they do paperwork or how they answer the phone or the call, the sales process, whatever it is, whatever is costing you money from making more or saving more or causing you stress. That's the number one system you build. So then people say, well, what happens after that? I say rinse and repeat, baby.

Just what's the next thing causing me stress problems and build it? Because I get a lot of companies. They're like, oh oh i have 970 systems in this book i said build them well i got all these systems and implemented them i've said so that doesn't make sense to the system for a problem that's never happened and never created it seems like a big waste of damn time to me. I believe build a system, solve a problem you know, break it down to your core, right? You got to get down to your core. So what's the core for me?

Obviously, I have my CRM, which is Service Titan. I have my call center booking rate, my call center attendance. I can break it down to 15, 20 core principles. And then I'm going to say, where are we bleeding? Where are the holes? And I can tell you, if you get software and you know what your booking rate is, and if you're below 50%, even 60%, you're bleeding. Okay, if your sales average is, and it's tough depending on the industry, but if you're one of those guys that say, I can never charge a customer that. Let me just explain something to you. That's not the right way of thinking because you don't need to think you're ripping people off.

I used to think I was doing people favors and then they'd call me back two months and say this broke. And then two months later, this broke and I'd have to charge them every time. And they say, Tommy, I know you're a good guy. I know you're definitely genuine, but can you just fix it right? Because my times were something too. And finally, I started you're definitely genuine, but can you just fix it right? Because my times were something too. And finally, I started to change my mindset. The whole paradigm shifted and I'd say, you know, right, I'm not doing these people any favors by not replacing the parts that are somewhat worn out. That's like if I took my car to the mechanic and he said he didn't tell me at 90,000 miles, a belt might be going and, you know, I'm going to bend all my valves. And then 2,000 miles later, I got a bad engine.

I'd be pissed. So I just don't like the guys. You hear all these guys, and I know you're familiar with them, Mike. They say, I can never sell for that. We'll say a guy that used to do coaching for me, actually. He was a one-on-one coach. He said, Tommy, who's the biggest company in Phoenix? The biggest air conditioning company. I named off a couple. He goes, who charges the most? I go, well, they do.

He goes, do you realize that that's the case? Do you think that they're scumbags? I go, no, I know the owners of both those companies. They're not scumbags. They just charge a lot because they offer a good service. They do background checks. They hire good. They pay good. And he's like like so get that whole thing out of your mind if you charge a lot of money you're a bad person and don't you agree with that mike yeah i agree 100 you know look most people are charging out of fear you want to charge one that the value is worth the charge right i mean there's a lot of guys in station wagons trying to charge what the big company does? I mean, there's a lot of guys in station wagons

trying to charge what the big company does. Well, do I think that's ethical? Probably not, right? I mean, you want to have the structure, you want to have the support system for the customer, you want to have the level of service, the level of guarantees, the quality of product. And if all of that aligns,

then you always have a choice, right? You could be the Nordstrom's company or the Walmart company. I ask people, who thinks Walmart is not a good model? And I'm always surprised when someone says, no, they don't think so. I say, Walmart's an empire of the world. It's a volume model. Now, it's not the model I chose to be in, but it's still a model. I just chose the Nordstrom model. Very best service, very best product, very best delivery all the time. And that's why we were allowed to charge and feel real comfortable about our prices. You know, that's what you got to decide. Are you going to

go in there? You're going to be, but there's what's called a price. What is that called here? A brain farting, but basically it gets us in the door. And it's a loss leader. There you go. And I have some different loss leaders to get us in the door, but I keep those customers coming back. Do you know, I met with a buddy of mine. He runs a $55 million advertising agency.

His name's Scott Harkey. And he owns a company called OH here in Phoenix. They're going to be by far the biggest ad agency in Arizona. And he said, Tommy, do you know the lowest hanging fruit by far in your business? I go, tell me. He goes, are you following up? Are you doing email follow up? I go, yeah, you know, we do some email follow up. And that's an answer that a lot of businesses do. They say, yeah, we try to do an email blast here and there. But what I've done is I've automated all of it. I do voicemail drops, text messages. I do send out cards.

And it all evolves within a CRM because we do API integration. And we let the systems do the work. And I'm going to tell you that we connect with this customer five different ways. And that's why we're able to do this. I mean, it's crazy how many calls we could actually book because we're doing follow up and we're reaching out to them via phone, too. And that's I think what you were talking about is you guys were able to you work with Susie on voice or voicemail drops and stuff like that. And I love Susie. Susie's helped me out so much. It's crazy. We know all the same people probably. But, you know, a lot of the people that are really successful,

huge companies, they know the same people and they're using the same systems. So the biggest thing I see is we talk about a system. The number one system that I think you got to start thinking about as a home service provider is getting the right people in the door and employees, because if you've got the right employees, you don't have to work as hard and they're going to make your business grow for you. So if you're going to build a system, figure out how you're going to post for a job and how you're going to do your interviews. And, you know, you, you know, it says here, recruiting A-plus employees is number one, right? You preach that. So I love how you do the recruiting nights to test to see who could rise for the occasion.

Tell me a little bit about all your recruiting secrets and what it takes to get the right people under the door. Yeah, I mean, here's my number one recruiting secret. I always set people up for the kill, and I say, who wants A players? And everybody raises their hand. And I say, I don't want A players because A players are very hard to find. They're high demanding.

What I want is B players, and I'm the very best in the world at taking a B player, an ordinary person, and creating them into extraordinary people. So number one, I've always looked for the B player, and I always looked at ordinary people as they were very extraordinary. They just haven't found a leader that was powerful enough to help them become the level that they wanted to be. So that's one of my core beliefs. Number two core belief is I believe everybody interested in an opportunity deserves a conversation and a really good conversation. And if I was to give you my belief on recruiting is it's actually my belief on life. I could share it with you. My belief on life is to leave every person when i have a conversation with them better off than before we met i want every conversation with any person i ever have

if they're looking for an opportunity as a career and i just had a guy actually a warrior today who will be helping with communication to new people to come to our four-day event and stuff and my goal with him was first serve him so he's a better person tomorrow than he was today and number two see if there's actually an opportunity for him my other thing is probably number three is everybody answers the damn question and you're in this game very deep you're very good at what you do but you tell people what should you never stop doing they say recruiting but the reality is most of them lie they don't talk to everybody they don't talk to the person at dunkin donuts or quick check or target or home depot they don't tell the whole

world on social media they don't blast out there we're always looking for the best. And, you know, people tell me, you know, the number one thing that's hard is recruiting. And I said, no, I haven't had a problem in 10 years. We had 200 employees and I never struggled to find employees. Why? Because I just told you, right? Like I always left everybody better off after I met them. I told everybody we were always looking for amazing people. And I seen everybody as an A player, just they weren't there yet because they were around weak ass leaders and poor leaders and companies.

And so that's some of my beliefs. I hope that has value for the listeners. Yeah, absolutely. You know, Mike, I gotta tell you, this is so much fun. And I wanna ask you a few more things, but I just, I I got to tell you, this is so much fun. And I want to ask you a few more things, but I just I'd love to get you back on because there's so many things. And I have a whole list of a ton of questions I was going to ask. But when I'm talking to someone like you, it's hard to stick to questions because we just kind of go with it.

And I love these interviews and conversations because you've been doing it. You've been working with these guys. You know what their struggles are. And that's what's so important is we've both been there before. I mean, I've been sued a ton of times. I mean, for hiring other employees because they got NDAs and non-competes and all this stuff. And I've been sued for car accidents. And, you know, it's really easy to get upset. But the thing is, keep your head on your shoulder. Always look forward to tomorrow. And you said it the best. I mean, it's been fun. You know, you talked a little bit about the E-Myth and I preach the E-Myth just because I'm such a system driven guy. And I believe in videos and I believe in figuring out a way. My manager, my general manager, he probably made over 40 videos

in the last month. And he says, Tommy, since I started making the videos, like I've been telling him to do, he goes, people ask me questions now. And he goes, I love it because I sent him a video and I don't have to spend all this time training. And I'm always trying to think about systematizing and tell me a little bit, you know, what's your perspective on just, I know we already talked about systems, but when you read a book like E-Myth, I think the first and most important thing is to get off your butt and start implementing, right? Yeah. And I think that's important. Like, look, I love the book. I couldn't figure out how to put a system in place.

But once I learned it, the philosophies are brilliant. The concept makes sense. The strategies work but if you don't test it apply it and be willing to fail you'll never move forward on it right 100 so you know i love the e-myth i also love the ultimate sales machine i think it's an amazing book i also i mean i can give you a handful of books that i love tell me a little bit about some of the books that you recommend and why you recommend them. Yeah, I mean, there's so many good books, right? Everybody says things can grow rich, and I think that's an awesome book.

Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard I think is a great book. Every company should read. Cameron Harreld's book on eatings, I think, is an awesome book to read. Blue Ocean Strategy is a mind-expanding book to read. And then I think there's other things just to help you beyond business. Some books like Holographic Universe. And if I was going to give you two books that I felt really changed my life, which even though it's not a business book, it should make sense. The book of five love languages, I think is a book that

changes relationship. And number two is Byron Katie book, loving what is, I believe is a book that I wish I had those two books 30 years ago because they really have a fundamental understanding about life and relationships that if you got just those two books alone, Loving What Is and Five Love Languages and read those,

those will change your life and your mind forever for so many things. And you're a gift of affirmation, right? Yes. Mike, listen, I just want to close out, and I know you're just a wealth of knowledge. Listen, you've been doing this. You consult so many people.

Tell me just something in closing, maybe something I didn't ask, something that you're passionate about, something that you feel will close out the show that leaves them on a good note and something that they can take close out the show that leaves them on a good note and something that they can take and implement right away yeah i'm going to give you things that i think is one of the greatest things that i've built and i call it the nine pillars i got a brand new book that

will be out probably in about 30 days and if you use this concept of these nine pillars i'll give it to you really quick maybe another time you'll invite me on for a deep dive for it. And if you follow the steps, it will change your life and employees' life at any company. So I'll give you the first three. It is mindset, skill set, and action set. You cannot give somebody new skills without giving them a new mind framework.

And people struggle to take action on what they don't believe and what they don't know how to do so if you can align mindset skill set and active set you'll be off to the races the next three is clarity alignment and accountability if you're not clear what you want when you want it you'll get lost if you're not aligned with your family with your culture with your vendors you won't have everybody fully in and on the same page. And if you have no accountability, either yourself or anybody in the culture, then everybody fights for themselves instead of fighting for the one good. And then the last three is training, coaching, and managing.

And if you have a manager in place and you're wondering why you're failing, the result is a manager maintains results. They keep the pieces moving. Training helps you learn how to do it better, do it faster, do it in a different way. And coaching gives the motivation and the training coaching and managing and ask yourself for any person any company what's the one thing that's broken right now that changed all of it that is the crystal damn ball to solve any problem for any person company system and i've applied it to my business for the last 10 years it changed my my life. It changed my business. And everywhere I apply it, anybody that learns it gets a greater outcome. So I'd like to leave everybody with that thought.

I love it, Mike. Listen, I'd love to have you back on. Let me know when you get that book out. I'll read it. I'll buy it. And then we'll talk about it. And everything you talk about, I'm a big believer in. I'm going to tell everybody how to get more of Mike here in a moment. And Mike, again, I appreciate you coming on and I'm excited to have you on again. Okay, buddy. Yeah, thank you, brother. And you're doing a great service to help everybody take it to the next level. Keep doing what you're doing. It's awesome. Thanks, bud. Take it easy. Have a great day. This was the Home Service Expert podcast. Now listen, for the first time ever, I'm going to give away a step-by-step guide that reveals the hiring process I've used to grow my company to over 200 employees in over 10 states. If you want to scale your business with the best employees, which I know all of us want, then you need to go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash giveaway.

That's homeserviceexpert.com forward slash giveaway and get your free copy right now.