The Home Service Expert Podcast - Mastering Arbitrage and Turning Small Acquisitions into Big Gains

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Travis Ringe is the President of ProSkill Plumbing, Heating & Air, the Phoenix Area's Premier plumbing, heating and air conditioning service contractor. Proskill Plumbing was established in 2008 by Travis and his brother Tyler, who both grew up in a family of tradesmen. In this episode, we talked about arbitrage, roll-up strategy, health and fitness, customer retention...  

You know, I think we go to these events and hear people talk and you watch them on the groups. And it's a lot like Instagram that we're comparing ourselves to. Oh, yeah. People are giving you all the highlights, but there's no company that I've ever toured or been intimately involved with that is perfect. They've all got their issues. They're all working through things. They're all trying to overcome obstacles.

So I think that there's a lot of thought that everybody, again, has it down better than me. But in reality, they're facing the same structure or problems. I think it really comes down to who is taking the next step and taking the risk versus who is sitting in their comfort zone and thinking the business is going to grow on its own. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service

Millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states.

Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now, let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today, I have a great friend in town. He actually lives here now. He lived here, moved to Idaho, moved back. His name is Travis Ringy. He's an expert, and he's really an expert in plumbing.

That's his claim to fame. But he's also got really big into HVAC and leadership. He's the president of ProSkill Plumbing, at least. He did sell a piece of that. And he got into a lot of things. He's a big part of Nuve. He's a big part of metal recycling, which is twisted metal. He's doing some stuff in the

roofing space uh just a go-getter and really really hard worker great friend how are you today brother doing good tommy doing good thanks for having me yeah so i always tell the story we were in idaho and um this is one of like 10 signs that if you open your eyes big enough you could actually see the signs we're on his really really, really fantastic, like $800,000 boat. And he's got a bunch of friends there and everybody's tossing beers around. And I, uh, I opened one and handed it to him. He goes, I'm not drinking right now. And, uh, he had a shirt off and I'm like, yeah, I could see why. And that was like just a little bit of discipline. And then the other day we were in Idaho and he's like, yeah, I'm taking the year off.

He's like, yeah, I don't need it. And it's like when I watched him making decisions like that, it was like kind of like a wake up call. Like he's successful, but yet he takes care of himself. He doesn't blame the success of I'm too busy at work to take care of myself. And I really appreciate that because I took that very seriously. And now I'm really looking out for my health. I had a buddy yesterday, John Rulon. We got a call. John Rulon wrote the

book Giftology, mid forties. Dude takes care of himself like you don't believe. He was taking NAD, going to get in the full spectrum. Went on, I died. He's dead. Holy shit. My brain does not deal with death. I was just four little daughters and his wife is sick. And I can't. It's so bad. And I would just tell everybody,

you don't know if tomorrow's coming. You don't know if mom or dad's tomorrow's coming. And I keep telling myself this. I got to do a better job with my family. Because listen, if myself this, I got to do a better job. Yeah. Like with my family, because listen, if I die, I think I'll be in heaven,

but if they die, it's going to be really tough. Yeah. It's always harder on the people that got to deal with the aftermath, right? Yeah. Like,

look, I'm not ready to go, but I wouldn't say this life was unfulfilled. I mean, I still think the best is yet to come. Yeah. I mean, the Batmobiles,

the Tumblr. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I wish I could say that, you know, I've think the best is yet to come. I mean, the Batmobiles. The Tumblr. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I wish I could say that, you know, I've taken care of my body the whole time. But, you know, I started in the mortgage business, but then I went in, my brother and I started our business. And, you know, I was drinking thirst busters of Dr. Pepper all day long and eating fast food,

just like most techs do. And when we exited our company and into 2020, I bought my dream boat that you're talking about, and we're in Lake Havasu running it. And I woke up after the first day and I couldn't move my hands. I was like, what in the heck? And so I was a little sick, not with COVID on the way up. And so I went home, went to the doctor and they're like, oh, it could have been like some arthritis related to being sick. And I never went away. And so all of a sudden, I couldn't walk very well, couldn't move my hands. I was in pain 24-7. And finally, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. And that really was like the catalyst for me

to start actually taking care of myself. So I lost the weight. I was going to the gym, took the gym a lot more serious after that. And I was really bummed and kind of fell into this depression of like, man, I'm gonna have to give up the gym. I was really just getting in a cycle there. And the doctor, when I asked about it, they said, actually, the best thing you can do

is stay active because the problem with this disease is people get sedentary and then all of a sudden their joints start cramping up and you get this scar tissue buildup. And so I doubled down on the gym. You introduced me to Dr. J, did a full gut cleanse. And luckily now I have it fully in control. It's not gone, but it's in remission. It's dormant. Yeah. Yeah. And so I owe a lot to... I didn't take care of myself, but now that I do, it's a total lifestyle that I can't give up. And one of the reasons I don't drink very often is

it's very inflammatory to your body. And there's like a 36-hour period to clear that inflammation and alcohol from your system. And so at the same time as it's inflammatory, it also slows down your metabolism for that same amount of time. And so it messes with your testosterone, your hormones, your gut, like your sleep. Alcohol does like, man, it's so great in the midst of it, but a little bit of discipline changes everything. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, I enjoy a drink like anybody, but I just took the year off to, you know,

my wife, when she was pregnant, was always like, you don't understand how hard it is. And so, you know, I'm kind of a person that likes to challenge. So I was like, I'm going to give it a year. And now, you know, I'm seven, eight months in, I stopped drinking December 27th. And, uh, you know, I've noticed I don't miss it very much, but I do fill in, like, I'll still get, you know, a margarita without alcohol. Like I, I learned that I really liked the drink more than the effect. So. Well, that's great. And, you know, I look up to you in a lot of ways because of that, the discipline. And it's, I talk a lot about motivation

versus discipline now. And it's like this new chapter of like yesterday, I swear, dude, everybody part eight. And I didn't want to get out of bed. I mean, the alarm went off at 520 and I'm just like, get up, go do something. And I started jumping rope and I started, did my hour and a half walk. Yeah.

And dude, the accomplishment, those little highs are so much better than just the eating of the chips. And then they're gone. And then you're like, now I look at labels and I'm like 680 calories. That's an hour and a half walk. Yeah. What a waste. Yeah.

People don't want to do the work. They just, they don't want to do the work. They just, they don't want to do the work period. You know, I always tell people I started for the physical benefits, but I stayed for the mental benefits. And you know, yesterday's a great example. I just drove home from Idaho, long trip. I was kind of cranky and I don't want to go to the gym. And my wife's like, I think you should go to the gym. Like you're, you're kind of on edge. And I came out of the gym with a whole different mindset. Like I had to apologize to my kids for being short with them, apologize to my wife.

And so I think it's like going to, you know, they always said about church, like you never want to go, but you're always happy. You did. I say that every time I go, I'm like, ah, then I walk out and I'm like, hallelujah. So let me ask you something because I tell people, I really like it when people say,

wow, you work out and I feel good taking my shirt off at a pool, but I wouldn't say I'd want to give that up, but man, this fully alert, no brain, like full focus. It's like the things I'm remembering,

the tasks I'm getting done, the mood I'm in, I say that's at least five times better. I don't want to give one for the other, but man, and like all my health, the DEXA scan and everything's getting lined up to where like, they're saying like, you're extra healthy. Like your blood pressure is perfect. Like that doesn't matter until it does. Right. Yeah. Like it got to a point with you. What do you think about that? Because you get a lot of compliments. I've been around you and people are like, they're googly-eyed. Thank you. I can't say that that's something that I've seen a whole lot of, but I do get

some compliments and it's nice to be acknowledged. But I'm a really transparent person. Even in my businesses, I was super transparent. And I dealt just go on there. I dealt with depression really bad a lot of the time, anxiety, depression. And I feel that I like beating that. Well, two things. I did ketamine therapy that really helped change my mindset. And then that mental fortitude at the gym. And so if I'm feeling down, I hop in the gym. And so I would take that benefit over the physical. A little bit of vanity, really. But I'm good with it.

I mean, everybody has it. I mean, if you've got Instagram, you probably have some vanity. They only post... People are their best of their best of their best with the perfect lighting, and they pick out a thousand photos. And then we're supposed to be like that. I think women really struggle with that too. Oh, it's horrible.

People are comparing themselves to almost unattainable goals unless you're on the gear and stuff. And then it's really just a highlight reel. But I try to use it as motivation still. Yeah. I mean, look, I never will be where I want to be. I don't think... It's weird how entrepreneurs are like, dude, you got everything you ever wanted. I'm like, dude, I'm just getting started. The goalpost moves. Chris Hoffman shared that with me. And he said, the first time I ever talked to him, he goes, what you're going to realize, Travis, is that the goalpost just keeps moving. You're never going to actually be like... Arrive. Yeah. You never arrive to the destination. I want to get into a complicated subject. I was talking to Megan Lykes last night,

and I talked to a lot of people about this and this idea of private equity and really understanding how this works. And I want to kind of take this into two different lanes here. There's a type of PE that invests in separate companies and keeps them separate. And then there's one that does a roll-up strategy and you go under one roof. And you did a deal with service champions. Right. And wrench group is the same way. Is they want to buy great companies that all are under one company.

Right. And, you know, there was a lot of questions that didn't pertain because I was explaining that who cares what the cap table looks like and who has what shares because everyone gets diluted when we buy a company that rolls into it. That really doesn't make a difference of who owns what. Right. Because it's not generating new shares, it's creating dilution. And if you're average guys listening to this, like seven years ago, I didn't even know what arbitrage meant. Right.

So this is like me... Now it's your favorite word. It is my favorite word by far. But understanding, how do you explain this is in simple terms as possible to like, if you were going to sell your business and there's two different strategies, you know, can you take a stab at this for me? Like which way you should go? Well, no, not which way, but just understanding, you know, how arbitrage works. And like one thing I really realized, because I went to the LP meeting at Cordatech in Manhattan and these LPs were like, the sophistication of P over the last three years has 10 X. Yeah. We don't buy Frankenstein's for the same multiples.

Obviously the multiples have gone through the roof, but you buy one wrong acquisition and don't show growth. That's going to hurt you. Even if you bought 20. You buy one that's too much new construction, too much commercial, too much of a big client, that if you lose that client, it'll really affect the EBITDA. And I know we're talking in these crazy terms because to me, it sounds so simple. But no one that's ever heard these terms. I just want to make it very simple. I think the easiest way in my mind that arbitrage

works is that one plus one doesn't equal two, it equals five, right? One plus one, one plus one equals 11. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, people like if you take multiple small companies and you're buying them for two times their profit, let's use simple terms, and you put enough of those together and systematize all of their processes. Which is integration. Integration, right? And so they all walk and talk the same. Well, all of a sudden, instead of two to three times their profit, they're worth 10 to 12 times their profit. And the gap between there's the arbitrage. And that's really what private equity thrives on,

is that they're going to put a lot of smaller companies together into a big portfolio. And then they're going to organically grow those to the portfolio. And so they're going to get arbitrage both off of the organic growth and bringing multiple companies in and continuing to buy the profit. Well, you know this, and I'm saying this as humble as possible, but we pretty much were right at the tippy top with a few other companies as a record. And really what was the key determining factors were how much were we differentiated? Was it demand driven? What did your C-suite look like? What does the future look like? What's the market cap? There's a lot of things that went into that. I think there's this other strategy. And I hear a lot of guys come out of the private equity, financial banking world. And they're like, we're just going

to go into home service. We don't know anything about it. We're just going to mash five HVAC companies together. And then they realize, oh shit, well, how do we do the call centers with these different brands? Even on, by the way, if you're not on service time in the HVAC plumbing electrical garage world, your multiples are going to be the same. It's like they will give you more if you're on service type. If you're selling your company to private equity, there's a private equity playbook that you got. If you want top dollar, you have to implement. And I don't think a lot of companies can. I do believe. Can you make arbitrage? Absolutely. But I just think... You know, I've been on with Ken Haynes. I've been on with Frank DeMarco.

Yeah. And one of the things that we should talk about real quick is... Because you've been part of it. Is, you know, Frank was very open on the podcast. He said, dude, I had to take... I don't know. It was like a year or 14 months off of buying. Because we were buying from different suppliers.

We had different healthcare, different call centers, different service agreements. And everything was like, yeah, every company was good, but there was no strategy. There was no, and the best word to describe it, words is economies of scale. Like how do we work together to make everything more profitable? Like when you have a CSR and every single market, they can book 15 calls coming in that day. Versus if you roll them all up, they can book 40. They're doing two and a half times. And that's how you get that economies of scale. And it's very hard to do because you're buying a bunch of owners that are still involved. And that's the hard part I've had to do is you're not in the owner's seat anymore.

And people hate that about A1. They're like, but there's got to be, like in the military, there's a hierarchy. And that's what somebody wants to buy is like, who's in charge of this? Yeah. Well, that's who is in charge. And that's the best advice I can usually give. I've coached a lot of people through selling their business. And it's like, if you're selling your business, do you want to stick around? And a lot of people are like, oh, yeah, I'll stick around. Okay. If I can be honest with you, you don't. After you're selling your company, you're not calling the shots anymore. And that's a hard thing for people, entrepreneurs to accept. And so I always tell them that.

A lot of guys are like, oh, I'm going to go platform. It's like, well, to be realistic at $10, $15 million in revenue, you're not a platform. You don't have... Even $10, $15 million of EBITDA, you barely fit the platform. Right. Especially if it's not in multiple markets. Yeah. So that's what... I went with Service Champions, Leland. I looked up to a lot, respected them a lot. And I knew that they had the processes down. One of the big things for me is how I was going to take care of my team that helped us build the company. So I rolled

equity on their behalf. And so I wanted to put in a really secure investment that I knew that they would get that bite eventually. And so I was... I didn't want to take a lot of risk on that. There was better offers on the table, but that was the one that I felt was the most secure. So that's why we went with that. I mean, me and you are hearing stories and I could go into it, but we know that these unsophisticated PE companies are actually willing to pay more. Of course. They have to. But they don't really, they don't have a track record.

Their lending works differently because they don't have a track record. There's a lot more problems with their lending because these loans are getting called. Right. Especially with the fluctuations in interest rates. And, you know, everybody listening right now, I really wanted to talk about this just because I wanted you guys to have some... There's a lot more I want to talk to Travis about.

But some people think I'm stupid for even discussing these things. But it's so important that people understand this because the one thing, Travis, that I don't think anybody understands, and this is super important and you do, is a lot of people go, well, listen, I'll sell to you at A1 or Service Champions when we double. And I'm like, when are you going to double? In 18 months? Well, you don't think we're going to double?

That means if you're going into us, every time our share price goes up, now we adjust it either on a big transaction, meaning we buy a big company, we'll adjust it, or on July 1st and January 1st. Those are the two dates where our stock gets re-evaluated. So if A1's growing organically and we're doing acquisitions and you're going at the same pace, if you plan on rolling and we're pretty nice about letting

people roll as much as they want. I mean, for the right company, you could roll 70%. I mean, that's one thing that I think we do very well. And then someone says to me, well, what if I was to triple next year? And anyone doesn't. Well, you got to understand because you're part of the main company. Yeah. If we're buying out companies, you're getting that arbitrage too. We're not trading at the same level.

So like we're literally, if we buy 10 small companies and none of them roll, we're taking debt, but we're obviously turning the knobs and making that very profitable. So you're getting that piece too. Yeah. And this is so complicated without drawing it out and explaining it in layman's terms. But this is the financial wizardry.

Is that even a word wizardry? It is now. It is a word now. Yes. So this is like the financial, like it's crazy. And it seems like it shouldn't even be legal. I always say that I'm like, how is this even work? But the deal is if I'm going to invest in a big company and I know if the CEO disappears, the CFO has a hits the lottery leaves. The company has so much depth. Yeah. It's not going anywhere. It's got a proven, tried and true. They made it through COVID.

They made it through the 2009 housing crisis. This company is here to stay. And the larger it gets, the more or less impact if the owner decided to leave or something happens to a key role. Well, and that's a risk everyone has to... Our GMs could walk away at any point, right? But that's also part of partnering with someone like A1 or service champions is their depth charts are crazy. Their network is crazy. And so they've got next man up the next day. There's people that can step into that position.

And so, yeah, I think that people often want to maximize their exit, but don't play the long game of that arbitrage game because they don't fully understand it. But I would take a little smaller amount today. Well, and I did, frankly. People don't always understand that. When we sold ProSkill to Service Champions, it was really our first time making 20% on the bottom line in our trailing 12 months. And we sold it at that point. The next year, they did an extra million and a half. So we sold at 3 million.

And then the next year, they did like 4.5 million. And my brother and I are sitting there scratching our heads like, man, we should have kept this. We're six feet from gold or whatever. But it's like, I'm not upset about my deal. I got paid handsomely for the company. And I've got a lot of equity still in it. And that's why, you know, one of the deals we turned away, they only wanted to give us equity in our company. Yeah. And it's like, that's not a good investment for me. My whole point of selling this is like, I want to spread that risk across multiple great companies so that if we have a little pullback, these companies make up for it. Right. And so I don't think people understand

that either. Yeah. So the first thing I tell people and what people don't always understand about even the arbitrage play, you know, I lost money when service champions flipped because I closed on December 7th or 12th and they closed with Odyssey on December 31st. And as you know, Tommy, most people don't know the fees come out of the stock price, right. And so I bought my stock at like $550 and it went down to like 475. So Leland calls me and he's like, Hey, great news. We sold by the way, you actually lost money. And I was like, Leland, no, you, you told me I was going to get two to three X on this, right? Well, Leland being the guy that he is, he made up the difference. He wired us the difference to our accounts because he's a great person.

That is something that most people wouldn't do. Yeah, he's a stand-up guy. But now we got in at the bottom floor again, right? So we were buying back at $100 a share. It'll sell probably somewhere between $300 and $500 a share. And we get to ride that with them. And the great part is that all the time that I'm sitting here working with my best friends, you, Ishmael, Jerry, on different projects,

they're out there making money for me, right? And this is the key that I want people to understand is the money you take off the table is still working for you in other investments. I think a lot of people miss that piece. Let's just say you rolled 25%. Let's just say you got the 2 million, got a 5X, so you're getting $10 million. You sold 75%. You got a $7.5 million now to put the work. At Goldman, I'm getting 5.4, 5.5%

just on cash on cash. Now you put that in a decent investment, PE, most good companies are going to get you 20% IRR, which is awesome. That means you 3 to 4X after seven years. And another thing that I always coach people on is I would have taken half the money if I realized how good I was going to sleep at night. You know, like I was a ball of stress running my business. And it was like, I would, I give the illustration that the day that we close and you know, you have that awkward call where everyone's on it and you have to like, yes, concur or whatever, concur a little catch me if you can phrase. But I walked down as like when the day I graduated high school and we all walked down through

our binders in the air, you know, it was like, I finally felt like a sense of relief and it didn't seem real. But I used to wake up in the middle of the night, make notes on my phone. Oh, did I forget to do this? I don't even look at my schedule for tomorrow now. I didn't know I was doing this podcast. I knew I was doing the podcast. I didn't know what day it was. I looked at my schedule last night. I was like, oh, I got to go to Tommy's tomorrow. And so I think that is also probably why I got the arthritis is that my body was so

used to that cortisol constantly. All of a sudden, it took a sigh of relief and had to find something else to replace it with. And I know a lot of guys that I've sold came up with health issues shortly after, which is just a weird phenomenon in general. I lost a patch of hair through the process, like alopecia. Yeah. Literally, I didn't even feel it. But I was like, they're like, it's in the 30-day lockup. And I'm like, what should I do?

They're like, just don't leave your house. I'm like... It would take a lot to get out of the deal when it's in that lockup phase. Yeah. But I'm like, just don't leave your house. I'm like, it would take a lot to get out of the deal when it's in that lockup phase. But I'm like, I don't know. I just turned the page and said, now I made a promise to a new company and now I got to go back to work. And I love it though. Like a lot of people, and I think, you know, this, like our buddy Keegan is like, dude, you can't run a hundred million dollar revenue company. And I'm like, dude, I'm going to run a hundred million dollars EBITDA company. But he said it with best intentions.

Like, you got to know there's a lot of people that your mouths you're feeding. Like, you got to go into this all in and show up for your people and make the extra effort. My problem is, is that when there's projects going on and I cannot get them done faster, I got to be preoccupied because I will kill somebody. I'll be like, dude, I stick my foot down someone's throat and I'm like, dude, get this done, get this done. And I always say like, what would it take to get it done faster?

And the problem that I'm realizing now is that certain people are already at their bandwidth. Like, so how do we find the next person? Who, not how? How do we build up the C-suite? And, you know, Chad Peterman said this yesterday, and this is so profound. He said, Tommy, what I figured out, if you find yourself micromanaging somebody, you're the smartest one in the room. And he goes, dude, no one has ever got ahead.

If you're micromanaging to one of your direct reports and having to run everything and be on all over them, it's the wrong person. They're not the guy. They're not the right person. And we stick around with these people saying they're nice. They listen. They're amusing and they're giving their best effort. But I want people to come in that have gone where I've like that enjoy this aspect of the business and can take that have already been here instead of just saying, hey, come

meet me and I'll tell you the whole plan. Yeah. It's them to say we've done work and I've done all the R&D. And we've got three options. And this is the one I say we should go with based on this and my previous experience. Yeah. Yeah. And as you grow A1, there's fewer and fewer people that fit that mold, right?

There's very few people. And Tom Howard and I were having a conversation as I was driving home. And he posed an interesting question and he said, Travis, would you rather have 10, $10 million companies or $100 million company? And I know the answer to this. Well, so I would almost guarantee you we have different answers. Yeah. Mine's a hundred million.

Of course, because you have the operational experience there. I don't, right? And so I'm going to choose 10, $10 million companies. I know what needs to happen in that $10 to $30 million range. That's within my expertise and my comfort zone. $100 million, there's a whole different... But the $100 million, here's what people don't understand. I can't get rich about this. The $100 million company, your COO is more of a general manager.

Shit's already working. I don't have to show up right like the 10 million dollar companies you've got to show up and you're still grinding yeah like you've got to make sure you got to be a good talent recruiter you've got to make sure like you don't have the infrastructure yet that like dude if i left for 90 days i promise you that we wouldn't skip a beat yeah the. The difference is I feel like I'm still the accelerator. I'm still the one acquisitions wouldn't happen the same. The next talent wouldn't come in. The marketing wouldn't run the same way.

I'm a CEO, by the way. There's CEOs that fit three molds. The CEO that was a CFO, the CEO that was a COO, operation specialist, and the CEO that was a CMO, the marketing. Yeah. I'm by far over there in the marketing. Marketing, for sure, yeah. Like that's where I fit. Yeah, and Tom said the same thing that you just said.

He's like, Travis, I'm in Hawaii right now with my kids. I'm not worried about what's happening at Lease. They've got it. So he's like, and it goes back to the operational experience. If you had run a $100 million company and seen how it ran, you would choose that company all day long.

But because your experience isn't there. And so I attribute even going from my brother and I in a truck to whatever pro skill, $25 plus million in revenue. Most of that was through seeing how other people did it. the LSD group and people are networking more and more. But man, I still feel like people underestimate the value of going and seeing somebody doing it. Because I think a lot of people think that they're the dumb guy in the room and that everybody else is so much smarter than them. It's really just taking the steps. And I don't want to go through all the cliche terms about building processes and procedures, but there's no huge secret to business. It really is those things. Trip up and duplicate. R&D. Yeah, exactly. So get out there, see how somebody's doing it and build that.

Well, here's something, you know, Eric pretty well, the family office CFO. He's like, Tommy, dude, I've been under the hood at so many big companies. And he goes, dude, they're a mess. Like you look up to a lot, not you, but the people that are listening. I would say we're running so many concurrent projects. Things are not perfect. We're looking at a service time. Do we, you know, we've got all these different ways we could go, but we need economies of scale. So we're kind of patching things as we go. And I'm investing in the infrastructure, like a lot this year, like getting the right people on board. And a lot of people don't want to do that. They're so focused on profit. I'm willing to take three steps back to take 10 steps forward.

And you got to retool at different dimensions of the company. Yeah. I think we go to these events and hear people talk and you watch them on the groups. And it's a lot like Instagram that we're comparing ourselves to. Oh, yeah. People are giving you all the highlights, but there's no company that I've ever toured or been intimately involved with that is perfect. They've all got their issues. They're all working through things. They're all trying to overcome obstacles. So I think that there's a lot of thought that everybody, again, has it down better than me. But in reality, they're facing the same structure or problems.

I think it really comes down to who is taking the next step and taking the risk versus who is sitting in their comfort zone and thinking the business is going to grow on its own because it's not. Well, I think there's this thing that happens to people when you're going into uncharted territory where you're letting fear take over. Yeah. Thank God, I don't feel that. I'm not like, what if this, what if this, what are this?

But I did make a list of what can really damage A1. Yeah. Google algorithm changes would damage A1. So what's my next thing? How do I remonetize my list that's just sitting there? Right. Service agreements. How do we make that more?

Like, I want to say if Google went down and Yelp went down and ValPak didn't exist, like once again, marketing, right? Yeah. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying today's podcast. A quick reminder, the Freedom event is happening on September 25th to the 27th. And today's stuff economy with PE firms invading, lead costs spiking and customers cutting back, it's time to protect your bottom line and your future. At Freedom, you're going to learn how to bulletproof your business from home service legends like Paul Reed, owner of Northwest Roofing, a $30 million a year business. Aaron Gaynor, the owner of Eco Plumbers, a $75 million business. Ken Goodrich, the chairman of

Gettle, a $250 million business. And Leland Smith, founder of Service Champions, a $500 million business. Listen, you can keep doing what you're doing and hope for the best, or you can arm yourself with the proven strategies I've used at A1 Garage for a service. Get your tickets at freedomevent.com. That's freedomevent.com. Now let's get back to this episode. I'll tell you this. I was talking to Dan Miller the other day and he goes, dude, there's not a lot of people that actually just make the phone ring off the hook like you. Like most people got to go get it. They got to do door knocking. They got to figure out how to go to parades and, you know, seminars and everything else to drive

traffic. And I got to rely on relationships, all this stuff. And I'm like, dude, I've never had to call customers outbound, never did outbound, never did door. And I'm like, dude, I've never had to call customers outbound. Never did outbound, never did door knocking. I mean, we do a little bit with Lenny Gray, but it's different. It's just to get stickers. And I'm like, I want that. Imagine if I get that side. Cause what I love about those guys, they could call their own jump shot. They could build a man where it didn't exist. And that's, that's crazy to me. Yeah. That's, that's crazy to me that you've never outbound. Yeah. Just now I never,

like we'd send a chirp has helped a lot with like reminders and just, and there's a lot to that. I mean, the automations are great, but like I'm looking at every single aspect, every single opportunity, even the yellow book, especially in Albuquerque and like someone's still making money in there. You know how to find out who, who's got the yellow book, especially in Albuquerque. And like someone's still making money in there. You know how to find out who? Who's got the biggest ad? Who's got the most billboards?

Who's got the most? And this is something too, is you want to learn how to sell higher things, higher tickets, best product mix. Just ask your vendor. Who's got the best product mix in the game in one market? And they'll tell you, they'll say, hey, I'm not allowed to give this information out. I'll call the company.

And I would say that success leaves clues. You just got to ask the right question. Do you ever hear of prompts for AI? Like you got to give the right prompt. You have to know how to prompt. Yeah. You got to ask the right questions to the right people and all the answers will come true, but people don't know how to prompt. Yep. There's college courses on prompting now. I know. It's crazy. You know, it's funny though, that you mentioned markets like Albuquerque and it is like a market by market approach. There's not one approach that fits all, you know, we bought a roofing company and Prescott, Arizona, and we went through, I got the only billboard in Prescott. You do? Yes. And it's, it's like this guy owns the property

with the billboard and I've had it for five years. Yeah. I remember I asked him, Hey, is Prescott a good market? You're a great market. And... It started out our shittiest market by far. And now it's our best market. Yeah.

Yeah. And we're seeing that. This company... We bought a company that did new construction. Why? It's like an opportunity in a small market. My brother, who is my business partner and my best friend... He is you.

He's very marketing- you know like he's very marketing minded and he's like let's just get our foot in the door and like we rebranded it and it's crazy though because there's only so i mean you know in prescott there's only so many leads available on google right like it's not a big city so we went and we started doing all my brother went out and conquested and found all the different magazines that are in the went and we started doing... My brother went out and conquested and found all the different magazines that are in the area. And we grew ProSkill the same way. We grew it through print advertising, not through Google. Because my brother is a small market specialist. If you want to blow up in a small market... I mean, when we sold ProSkill...

That's what you guys did in Anthem. Yeah. In Anthem, which we call it the 85086 is the zip code. The year we sold, we did like $8 million in revenue in that zip code. It's got 30,000 people in it. Tom Howard did the market share analysis, like 80% market share. We're really good at dominating a small area. Now we tried to go to expand onto Mesa Gilbert. We failed miserably because we didn't have that. We really did that bullseye marketing of we we start in this area, get dominant sharing it, and we just slowly expand out. And that worked really well for us.

And so we're doing the same thing with roofing and Prescott. It's going really well. They flipped all these new construction contracts, threw them away. And now we're keeping all of our guys busy and just straight retail leads. And they're doing a great job. So I love that because I'll tell you what,

one market I couldn't make work. We actually pulled out of several markets. Four were too big for the timing. Yep. Wichita and Omaha didn't work because we just figured out that we need to hit two and a half million of EBITDA. And it's, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

Yeah. But Yuma, I failed it. Yuma does not have any mailers. Yuma does not have any billboards. Yuma does not have any mailers. Yuma does not have any billboards. Yuma does not have any ValPack. Yuma does not have like, it's like, what do you do? I dominated on Google right away, but nobody used Google in Yuma. So I'm like, yeah, let's plow.

Like, that's the deal though. I pulled out right away. Like I gave it a chance. We had a good technician there. And like most people, they're too, I don't know, they're too pigheaded to just say, hey, I screwed up. We made a bad decision. Let's move on. Yeah. One person just mentioned that too. I was on a new, they called him Kenny with Call the B. Yeah. Yeah. I love Kenny.

He's been saying that like, hey, we went into some markets. They weren't good. We pulled out. We lost some money, but it's better to take those assets and move them to a better market. That's a superpower because like you said, most entrepreneurs are not willing to fail. They feel like they're a failure. They feel like... And I remember telling Keegan about the four markets I pulled out. I'm like, give me one year. I can turn those around. He goes, dude, you're bleeding so bad. He goes, you'd be at 18% if you pulled out of these four markets. He goes, he looks at me dead in the eyes. He goes, do it today. And if he didn't look at me that way and he was standing up and he was circling things on the balance sheet in those markets and he goes, you got to close

out today. Offer your guys a relocation package. And I'm telling you, I don't think if, maybe if Jesus talked to me in my dream, but other than that, I was never going to close those markets because it meant I failed. Yeah, that's a hard pill to swallow. And some people call me up, Travis, and they go, am I in the right industry? And I go, well, listen, if you're not making a healthy profit now, the numbers change when you go into a big or average ticket. I mean, that's why everybody's getting into roofing right now. Right. But if you're not making profit now, the industry is not going to matter.

But if you're making 15%, I think you can make 15% just way bigger tickets. Everybody says, you don't understand the competition in my industry. I go, oh, there's 600 guys or companies here in Phoenix. If you count all the one man shows that I see. Yeah. It's like, I don't want to hear. Everybody says the same stuff. You don't understand my market. You don't know i'll see yeah it's like i don't want to hear everybody says the same stuff you don't understand my market you don't understand our vendors you don't understand nobody

wants to work you don't even know what it's like to have millennials i'm like dude you're talking to the wrong guy because i know all that stuff and you're talking to millennial yeah yeah i think that people like to make excuses for their lack of action. And I think that if people would just take the first step a lot quicker and be willing to fail, they'd get a lot further. And that's something that's really hard for me. We were talking before we got on here. I'm someone who wants to perfect the process. We launched Nuve.

Ishmael is just like, to the sky, launch everything, doesn't matter, we'll fix it. And I learned a lot from that because I was the brakes. I'm always the brakes. With my brother, I'm the brakes. With Ishmael, I'm the brakes. With Twisted Metal, I'm the brakes. And sometimes I think that's needed. You need that yin and yang of the pusher and the brakes.

But what I learned with Ishmael is that if we take the first step and something goes wrong, that's an opportunity to fix something and make it better. It's not a failure necessarily. And so that's something that really opened my eyes. Get started. Yeah. Get started. Like, dude, the thing is, dude, everybody wants it to be perfect. I mean, I love, dude, I love Adam Cronenberg, but he's like, we're not ready. We're not ready. And I'm like, dude, I'm doing it. Yeah. And I'm like, we're probably going to shit the bed the first three times. Yeah. And it's a lesson we're going to learn, but let's make it small.

Let's test it out in Phoenix. And I'll tell you what, there's times that I, like we launched a couple of things that didn't take off, but I'm like, I need operations. I need help. Yeah. Like the deal is like, I'll make the leads happen and I'll get the guys to do the work, but there's a lot of operational excellence that needs to go into that. And when your top guy or your top three are already at their tipping point, to delegate it to one of those guys is a mistake. It's like I talked to Paul Kelly, right?

And Paul Kelly, one of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet in home service. He said, dude, it takes a leader of that department when you add it that knows the business that gets entrenched with it. And then it takes endless amounts of training and then it takes gamification. And then it takes like, it's not just like, we're going to add this and it's, we're going to just add this layer on top of everybody else. You got to build a department for it. Yeah. Well, and it can't be, you can't be the brainchild of the idea and think you're just going to hand that idea. Everybody wants it to fail when you're there not part of the idea

is what I've learned as well. They're like, F you, you're going to give us more work. Yeah. A risk reward, right? Yeah. And so I got to take each one of them and say what's in it for them.

Exactly. Yeah. It's like raising your prices, right? Like everyone wants to fight raising prices until they realize they make more money when you raise prices. But our comfort consultants or project managers always were like, oh man, I'm never going to be able to sell a project at that. And then they go and sell the same amount of projects and they just make more money. So sometimes seeing is believing,

I think. Well, I always, whenever we do, we're doing a price increase this month. And I know there's like 30% of the guys that are going to be like, oh God, we're screwed. There's probably another 30% that are going to be like, Well, we'll see how it goes. And then the rest are like, Hell yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the crazy things is we launched ProSkill. And I say it's like the first time we put 20% on the bottom line when we sold.

But my brother and I, we launched in this little market. And my brother went to a PSI, Plumbing Success International meeting and learned all this stuff about how you should look and how you should do service and this and that. He's working for another company at the time. He's like, bro, I got this idea. We're going to look just like George Brazil and we're going to roll out the red carpet and we're just going to do it in this little market. And I'm like, okay, cool. So I left the banking industry to come do it with them. And we took a lot of pride in offering the top tier service.

There was already good companies in the area. As far as the work they did was fine, but the service wasn't there. And so that's where the void we were trying to fill. But we also went and undercut all their pricing while offering better service. Yeah. And that's very common when people are starting their business. And to a point, I can't really fault it because it got us a ton of market share. Right. And so... And then you were able to turn the knobs later.

Right. And so it ended up that, like I said, we wore it as a crown. It really became a crown of thorns. And after 9, 10 years of doing that and just stressing out, we made like 6% or 7% the year before we sold. And I tell this story because it really goes back to me being risk-averse to my brother, like being the gas and not afraid. I walked in and I was the early bird. I always saw the installers off. I'd get there at 5.30, 6 o'clock. My brother would roll in at 9, 10 o'clock and stay a little later. And I walked into... And our office door was open. We share an office. And I was like, that's not good. Who's in our office? It was my brother. Really surprising. It's like six in the morning. And I said, what are you doing here? And he said,

I'm raising all of our pricing. I said, dude, you can't do that. We're going to... We work all in a small community. We're just going to get out. We're going to go out of business. We're just going to hurt our reputation. And he looked at me and he said, did you look at the P&L that I looked at? And I said, yeah. And he goes, what the hell are we doing this for? I'm not going to sit here year after year,

making no money, stressed out all the time. It's not worth it. I'm either going to raise the prices and actually get paid for what we're doing. We are offering far more value than we're charging for. We need to meet the value with what we charge. And that's what we did. And all of a sudden, it was like the best thing we ever did in our business. We could pay more. We could start investing even more in the company.

You retain clients. Yeah. Or you retain your workers. Your workers. And we had an awesome culture. People love working at ProSkill because it was a culture of excellence, but it was a lot of fun too. We had great pay plans. But my brother basically said, we're either giving the money to the technicians or the customer, but we're not getting any. My brother and I were paying ourselves $60,000 a year and had a company truck.

And that's a year before selling. And so... It moved up quick. It moved up quick. You guys were on the train all the way up the elevator. We got to ride to all levels. Yeah. Which is part of the story and the fun part.

Looking back, I always tell people you're struggling right now, but don't forget these times because when you get where you want to go, remember, these are the best parts to reminisce about. You know, I was just at this conference. This guy, Aaron Stokes, through 1800 people, all mechanical shop owners, some of them like Amco type stuff. Some of them dealerships, some of them just oil change. And I looked and dude, I was one of the youngest people there. Right. And I watched them walk up to Aaron over and over again and go, dude,

you changed our life. We tripled in the last year. Yeah. But I guarantee you what they were telling themselves about Aaron is he charges too much. The whole time they're like this con artist, this guy is like, how could he charge these prices? Cause I see that in the garage door industry, but they don't know the bills. They don't know what I pay the COO and the CFO and the new trucks and the cost of the $5,000 tools, the cost of the apartments and the cost of the keeping the air conditioning cool here in the summer and using service time, the latest, greatest softwares

and being able to run nights, weekends, and holidays and how much it costs to send a guy to urgent care and everything else because our insurance is different. Like how is someone feel good sitting with a company that they run all the calls, answer the calls themselves, their wife works for free, they work from home and compare themselves. That's not a, I hate to say this,

it's not a real business, but when they see the light, they feel stupid. They're like, dude, I was wrong because we deserve to make a profit. We deserve to take care of our clients and the business should run without the owner there. I can't tell you how many times I was never going to do something, never going to be that company. And then the light went off. It's like, Oh, that's why they do it. I didn't want to sell any memberships, right? Like we're, we are an anti-memberships, no be that company. And then the light went off. It's like, oh, that's why they do it. I didn't want to sell any memberships. We are an anti-memberships, no service charge company.

And then all of a sudden, we started having people calling us saying, hey, can you come out and see what's going on with my AC unit? Yeah, no problem. And I was outspoken. Hey, if we deliver such good service, we don't need a service charge because people are going to use us anyhow until they didn't. They started using us for free diagnostics. Oh, your capacitor is bad. I don't want to pay the $175 at the time for the capacitor. And so I'll just order it on Amazon. And that happened over and over. We literally had a person say, Oh yeah, my buddy called me and said, you guys will just tell me what's wrong for free. And then I can fix it. And I'm like, all right, this isn't working. So we became a service charge company and memberships. One of the reasons that we were able to do so well is that we were servicing all

of these units that were over 15 years old. And we took a lot of pride like, hey, we can keep your unit running. Then we started doing the math of like, we're literally doing a disservice to this customer. Their payback is five years on a new 16-seer system, an affordable system. And instead, they're putting in thousands of dollars every couple of years to keep this old system going. Yeah, they're going out. They don't have AC at 110 degrees. Yeah, exactly. And the opportunity cost is my clients, the ones that I want to attract, say, listen, I want this to be safe. I want it to work when I hit the button. Yep. And I do like nice things. I would like the camera

system to be able to close the door when I'm not home to see if I left it open. And I would like Amazon Prime to deliver in my garage. And I do want to make an investment because this house is where I got a lot of my equity sitting, my retirement. Let's protect my investment. Dude, I love this stuff. So you are going to be at the Freedom event. It's September 25th through the 27th in San Diego. I do think there's several events that go very well. I like Pantheon. I think Next Star. I think they do a class act.

Yeah. I think Cristiano is a little more intimate, but very good. Yeah. And I'm really trying to make ours like world class. Like I want people's lives to change. But the difference between, I think what we do is you got me, you're one of the people that got me into like taking care of myself and actually like respecting myself. When I look in the mirror to be a leader for everybody

around me to lead from upfront, to make sure my family's taken care of and I spend a quality time. I see you do that all the time. In fact, I got your son a little red rider. We were just shooting that in Idaho again. I love it. And you're a great dad, a great husband, a great leader, great to your people. And I think that this event is not only tactical and strategic and it's still going to make mindset, but it's going to be the full package. I mean, when Bree started working out and started getting serious about not drinking and getting all the food out of the house, that's when it was so much easier for me yeah and i know you have that too so my wife without her support i couldn't do it so you know she works and she's a phenomenal interior designer but she also takes the lead at the home and the kids and that allows me the time to work but also

to get to do the fun stuff as a dad well you guys you guys have a lot of fun. And that's what's so cool about it. It's like, dude, I'm enjoying the business career, but I feel like I'm one of those guys where I'm not just business or pleasure. I like both. Yeah. And they can be simultaneous. Yeah. And not everybody likes that. They're like, just get me.

I don't want to touch a phone. I don't want to be involved with a CRM today. I'm like, dude, I want to look at what's going on all the time. But I also don't want to get to the point because I've worked a lot of 12 hour days for years. And I'm like, I don't mind it though. It doesn't feel like work anymore because I do what I want. That's the clarity on the backside though. I think of doing a transaction is that I get to control my schedule, but still stay involved. It's the perfect balance where when I was running it full time, I didn't have that balance. I mean, you can ask my wife. I missed a lot of stuff with my kids and I wasn't there

to support her. And it's one of my biggest regrets. So that's why the timing was right. My kids are still just six and eight, but I wasn't there enough early on. And so now I'm making up for lost time. Well, yeah. And I know that a lot of people say that, but who was it? Jimmy Hiller was on a panel with Ken Goodrich, Ken Haynes. I think who else was on that panel with them? Wyatt. And there was one other guy, Paul Kelly, maybe. And they're all going and Jimmy Hiller is like, I wasn't there for a lot of things, but now all my grandchildren are going to have houses. They get to live in a beautiful house. We get to go on vacations. We don't think the same that we used to. We don't live in poverty. We're out of this. And the lives have changed for the good of everybody. So I took sacrifices. And if I didn't take those sacrifices,

we wouldn't have this. So you can't have your cake and eat it too. You've got to take that time. And there's seasons of life. Yeah. And I would not regret that. I'd say, look, I think they'll understand because they get to go on this great boat. And you're still watching them before they're even teenagers. Right.

So I wouldn't kick yourself too hard for that because, look, you worked hard. You learned a lot. And now they're like, dude, Idaho is amazing. Like, I went over 10 different lakes to find that lake. And I was like, dude, this is the jewel of Sandpoint. Yeah, the jewel of Sandpoint. But I understand there's regrets. But I also understand that... And I don't know that I would do it any differently. I just want to be there now. And partnering with Service Champions allowed me to do that. And so I'm really happy about that.

But the clarity, I think, on the backside is one of the best things about partnering is that you get to live the life that you want kind of on your terms. But still, I don't think there's many... I tried the retirement thing. I moved to Idaho to retire. It was the worst thing ever for me. It was horrible. And that's why I maybe got in a little... Jumped in a little too deep. But I got into all these other business ventures. But I'm really enjoying it now. Again, I get to work with my best friends. Who gets to say that? And build projects that we're innovating in markets that have no innovation, which is fun. Yeah. But it's also a lot of learning curves and close to failure and regrouping. And

I enjoy that. But it's also a little stressful at times. It is. I mean, you put me to... I do my best and I think you do your best under high pressure. I'd rather throw myself. That's why I set SMART goals. They're very specific, measurable, attainable, and realistic and Thailand is basis. Like if I don't do that,

I've got all the time in the world. Like you give me a paper that's due on Friday, I'll crunch on Thursday. And I hate it when people do that because I'm the largest procrastinator of all. So I need to set deadlines and say, where are we at on this project? I know they'll get it done,

but I want them thinking about it throughout the process. I mean, that's the art of delegation. I love this stuff. You know, tell me a little bit about what, you know, Freedom kind of kicked off its first big, because we had before that vertical track, it was mostly garage door last year. What are some of the things you enjoyed? I mean, was it more of the networking? Was it meeting your buddies? Was it, you know, there's so many people that look up to you

and getting to answer questions. What do you think is the big kicker for you? You know, I went to events for the networking. I'm really looking to build relationships and find the people that are doing what I'm not successful for the networking. I'm really looking to build relationships and find the people that are doing what I'm not successful at doing yet and building those relationships. And so like with LSD that Ishmael put together, I learn every day in that group. I think that that's why a lot of people go.

But the content... I think the biggest part is that from the feedback that I've heard talking to people in the industry, is that we got to stop. If you have a 60-minute segment, I need five, 10 minutes of your background and then use the other 50 minutes

to teach me something, right? We can't just focus on the success stories and tell you how we got there. That's all the rah-rah. But I want to know what steps you took to get there. How are you going to help the people in the audience get to those? And so I like when people can do that and really focus on how they can help the people in the audience take something home and implement it.

I love that. Any good books lately that you've devoured? I just re-listened to How to Win Friends and Influence People. I always love that. Doug Carnegie, favorite book of all time. One of the best books ever. But it's a boring narration if you listen to the Audible. Yeah. I should redo the Audible with a little more pep. A little more pep.

Yeah. But I've been focusing on... I'm kind of an introvert. So I've been trying to focus more on relationships and body language. One of the things I'm trying to do now is even at the gym or something, talk to a stranger. I had a guy come up to me the other day. I told my wife about it. It's like, guy just came up to me and started talking. He's like, hey, man, you look great. This guy's way better shaped than I am. And I was like, man, that felt so nice. Why did this guy do

that? And it's like, if I can influence people that way and just make their day better, because that's not something I'm used to doing. I'm very like, even with the boats and the cars and stuff, I parked my Lamborghinis at the end of the parking lot and ran off after I got out of them because I don't want to talk to people about them. And so I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone a little bit. Yeah. I love that. How do people get ahold of you? They want to reach out. That's a great question. I'm on Avengers all the time, which service Avengers with Ishmael. I'm one of the admins there. People can reach out to me

through Twisted Metal, which is our scrap company. We're in Phoenix, Dallas, and Vegas right now. Or you can call my cell phone. [phone]. I love it. Yeah. You're probably going to get some text messages. And finally, we talked about a lot of stuff. I love it. Yeah, you're probably going to get some text messages. And finally, we talked about a lot of stuff. I'll have you close us out. Maybe there's something we didn't talk about. Maybe there's something you just want the audience to hear. I love this conversation because I didn't read any of the questions on my notes.

And those are always the best ones. But maybe something inspirational. Maybe something to think about. Maybe it's something they should do. Maybe it's just a thought that we didn't cover. Would this be the wrong time to plug Nuve? Plug Nuve, plug Twisted Metal, plug anything you want. No, I mean, I think I really talked about a lot of things that are near and dear to my heart

about exiting companies and the right and wrong way to do it. But one of the projects that I am working on full-time right now is Nuve, which is our thermostat that's built for contractors. And at first, when Tom and Ishmael brought the idea to me, I was like, eh. And now that we've built it out with all the features that are in it and the ability to really retain a customer... And this is where I get really excited about it. I had this... Awakening. Awakening. Yeah. I saw the light. We pay to get customers off of the market. And the market's basically Google. They have it cornered, basically. But once you pull that customer off the market, however you get them, how do you retain them? And what Nuve really does is it keeps your brand in front of the customer at all times,

whether it's on their phone or in their hallway, and you can own that wall. It makes it super easy to get in contact with you. And so you're basically building a moat around this customer that you keep them off the market. So as long as your service is lining up with their expectation, they have no reason to go to Google, which is basically hostile territory at that point. People are trying to buy your name and conquest your ad. So it's something that I'm really excited and got really passionate about, which I was surprised because I've never done any SaaS stuff and I really like home service businesses. But other than that, my biggest thing that I've learned is that you don't have to know everything up front, but you got to take the first step.

And I've applied that to Nuve. We've applied it to roofing, applied it to scrap. It's really just taking the risk and taking the step and seeing what happens. And if you fail, you fix the mistakes and move on. I love it, man. Well, listen, I always have a pleasure sitting down with you. I'm pretty pumped up. I got a workout coming in. I already did legs. I did some traps.

I was going to say, you're already at the gym. I walked today and then I'm going to do chest and trice today because, and then we're going to Morgan Wallen tomorrow. I'm super jacked. Vegas? Yeah. Oh, awesome. So we're leaving in the morning and- And you got me walking now.

You're walking. Yeah, I'm walking. Dude, it's so good, man. Like, look, I can sprint. I don't mind. I got the assault bike. I can do some cool stuff. But walking for me is not just exercise. It's thinking.

It's making a few phone calls with the headset. It's literally taking my day at the end of the day. So starting my day off right. But then I get to reflect a little bit. And it's like in Mother Nature. I don't like the treadmill, man. You know, it's hot in Arizona, but getting out there in the early morning,

getting out there at night. And I think it's a game changer for just mental focus and fortitude. Yep. I'm with you. Appreciate you, brother. Make sure you guys text Travis with anything you need. Yep. I'm here for you. Thank you for listening, guys.

Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.