The Home Service Expert Podcast - Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

In this episode, Jeff Dudan delves into the intricacies of franchising, emphasizing the importance of personal control and decision-making in business. He discusses the high failure rates of franchisees, the passion required for successful franchising, and the growth potential within the service industry. He also touches on the transition from being an operator to an entrepreneur, the significance of personal standards, and the quest for purpose beyond business success: the importance of community and the positive effects of successful business practices on individuals and families. Don’t forget to register for Tommy’s event, Freedom 2025! This is the event where Tommy’s billion-dollar network will break down exactly how to accelerate your business and dominate your market in 2025.   For more details visit freedomevent.com   For more information about Jeff Dudan, visit https://www.dudangroup.com/founder   00:00 Taking Control of Your Business and Life 02:39 The Reality of Franchising: Success and Failure 05:50 The Passion Behind Franchising 09:06 The Growth of Service Franchising 10:56 Transitioning from Operator to Entrepreneur 19:23 Finding Purpose Beyond Business 32:43 The Importance of Personal Standards and Growth 38:51 The Importance of Choosing the Right People 42:00 Navigating Franchise Business Dynamics 44:42 The Value of Long-Term Thinking in Business 48:20 Understanding Equity and Control in Deals 51:07 The Role of Leadership and Accountability 55:40 Teaching Financial Literacy and Generational Wealth 01:01:04 The Impact of Money on Relationships 01:06:11 Encouraging an Outcome-Focused Mindset 01:09:13 Celebrating Success and Community Impact

You are in control. Every decision that you make, every action that you take determines the slope of your line. It determines the velocity of your business. It determines the quality of your life. And you can do that in a franchise model. You can do that in your personal life. You can do it in direct business. But at the end of the day, man, it's body of work. And every action that you take or every inaction that you should have taken that you didn't, it's a plus or a minus check, man. And at the end of the day, there's a tally. At the end of the week, there's check, man. And at the end of the day, there's a tally. At the end of the week, there's a tally. And at the end of your life, there's a tally.

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 team to take notes for you. Just text notes N O T E S 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 elevate and win.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 got a good buddy in town. You're always in town. He's a Jeff Duden, the CEO of Homefront Brands. He's an author, podcast speaker, expert of franchises.

He leads one of the largest franchises I know of. And here's what's crazy about franchising, Jeff, is the more I learn about it, a lot of people start a franchise, but the same amount of franchises exist every year. So that means people are failing just as quick as people are coming in. Now, are you talking about franchisors or franchisees? Franchisors. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, so 4,000 actively growing franchise brands. 90% of franchisors fail within 12 years. And there's good reason for that. So, yeah, every day, roughly one comes into business, and every day, roughly one goes out of business. Which is which crazy but I don't know is that is that any different than? traditional small business stuff like that

maybe not but look franchising is a It has to be a certain passion play because there is so much collaboration that has to happen with these franchise owners They all have they come from different places. We have a high sophistication, high net worth franchise owners, and then we got people coming out of corporate America for their very first business. And you've got to be able to meet them all where they're at. So a lot of times people franchise their business and they don't realize that it's going to take upwards of maybe a couple of million dollars of investment ahead of their revenue

to be able to build the systems and the processes and put the people in place to meet these franchise owners when they're emerging. So unfortunately, a lot of brands get 5, 10, 15 owners. And then they realize what it is. And then maybe they decide to discontinue it. But ultimately, look, franchising is accelerating at an accelerating rate.

There's 829,000 franchise establishments in the United States. One out of every nine people employed works by or for a franchise system, almost nine million people. And it's a significant part of small business GDP, which is generally 46 to 60% of our GDP. So franchising is giving people entrepreneurial opportunities on Main Street USA for their families. So when you're scaling a big direct business, you can go fast because you make the decisions. You say, we're going to implement this.

I'm going to pay for this. This is the way it is. But if you took your employees here, your cross-section of your employees from your C-suite to your directors all the way down to your techs, and you gave some random 50 of them a franchise, think about what you'd be dealing with. Oh, no. It's just, well, here's the biggest thing, Jeff, a franchise think about what you'd be dealing with. Oh, no well, here's here's the biggest thing Jeff that I think about it is

it's not uncommon that I'm at an event or I'm at a meetup or just around a company and they say we're thinking about franchising and Like it should be a passion project Here's what I know is going on in their mind. I can't make it in the real world I haven't taken market share I'm gonna franchise because people will pay me for my business idea and then I'll get to take 7% off the top and They don't have a website that works correctly. They've never taken market share. They only got one location You should have at least a few franchise or own to prove it's possible, right? I just if it's for the right reason, you know, I'm good buddies with a guy named Kevin

Wilson, Mosquito Joe's sold to Neighborly. And I'm friends with really good friends with Mike Davis. And he just took over as a CEO of Neighborly. And I just think you got to start a franchise, but you got need to know you're no longer in the garage door business, the roofing business, the gutter business, you're now in the people turnkey business. That's right. And I think that's just I don't think people are starting. Some people do you I think you started it. You knew you were getting into you started for the right reasons you knew you got the right lawyers, you built the right systems,

you have the right meetups, you have the right prizes and gamification. But most people they just say, I can't make it in the real world. So I'm going to franchise, and I'm going to sell a bunch of them. And also, they sell to the wrong people. Like, if I started a franchise, it would be almost possible. You'd have to have all these prerequisites to even buy a franchise. Right. Because it's like, one franchisee could screw it for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair.

Look, franchising, like, let's think about, like, retail-based locations. Okay? If you want to make real money in franchising Like let's think about like retail based locations Okay, if you if you want to make real money in franchising it if you're in a retail based location It's hard to do it because a fitness studio or a sauna or something like that might have five hundred thousand dollars of revenue So if you want to do what some of these now, there's a lot of big multi-unit owners in there Inside of these retail so they'll have you know 100 or 200 or 300 Restaurants or hardies or restaurants things like that. So you can make real money in retail-based franchising. You can build a big team to support all those things. And people do it all the

time, especially in food, haircuts, you know, retail, all these lash lounges and things like this, all these retail services. The service side, on the other hand, before I get off of retail, think about the risk and the investment of just doing one, because you've got a $500,000 to $700,000 build out. You've got a $500,000 to $700,000 lease guarantee. You've got a business that might do $500,000 to $700,000 in sales. If you hold your mouth right and do everything perfect, you're going to make a certain amount of money on that. What's your goal of a retail ROI? Five years to get your money back? So the standard is a good franchise should be able to demonstrate a 30-month payback,

cash on cash. 30-month? Yeah, 30-month payback, cash on cash. That's what you're going for. That's retail or that's everything? That's retail. But I mean, I think it applies to everything. So when private equity comes in, that's one thing that they're looking for.

So think about what's happened with construction costs over the last few years and cost of leases and things like that. So you've got a business model that is inelastic in what it can charge. I mean, people will – fitness is funny, man. Like you go from $129 to $149 and, you know, people are going bananas, but then they'll go spend $400 a month at Starbucks and spend $400 a month on supplements So it's different but yet they want 30 or 40 hours of service from you for that $129 So so it's very inelastic so you can't really raise price

But now your cost to get into business has gone up so so that's a big challenge, but that's why I love service franchising I mean if you look at some of the big platforms like neighborly or like authority brands You know as a great example of a kid that was 28 years old in Central, Florida and bought a electrical franchise You know first time in business and eight years later. He's 36 years old. He had a 70 million dollar electrical franchise, right? So and what's happened is private equity has gone, private equity, first of all, private equity loves franchisors. Yeah, I think the multiple is even higher than,

it's like in the, I've heard of it going into the 20s. Oh yes, yeah, absolutely. Because think about it. 20X on eBay, 25X on eBay, crazy numbers. Yeah, so think about it, the diversification of risk. You know, you've got hundreds or thousands of families that are out there, they're deeply invested in the business, they're deeply invested in their communities, they're working hard and I mean it's hard to kill a franchise system because everybody's

out there with the ownership mentality right at the point of attack. So once at scale, franchise systems are very profitable, they're very durable but the great thing about property services And I mean like you've proved it to an extreme is that these businesses can get large every year by taking more market share And I mean our businesses cost 150 to 200 thousand dollars to get into so it's not and there's no big lease guarantee So, you know people can get into business in a homefront brand and they can liquidate their investment relatively quickly and then really it's this monopoly game right where and you'll see it over time as we evolve and you'll get people that are buying their neighbors or they're stacking more than one homefront brand on top of each other building five, ten, fifteen,

twenty million dollar businesses. And when I first started franchising, really in earnest in 2006 and 2007, there wasn't a big private equity market for the boxes. But now, if you can cobble together some amount of EBITDA and some amount of Topline, they love it being in a franchise system because of the leverage and because of the systems and that. So it's really – and I guess that comes down to like, I mean I sold my business in 2019. I was a restoration contractor,

built a national and even international restoration business and then decided to franchise it. It was a personal family decision because we were working in the Caribbean, Hawaii, and Canada and all over the place and I had three small kids and I decided that I wanted to be home. So I decided to risk all of that

and really turn it into a franchise system. And then we ended up over nine years in about 160 owner groups operating 240 markets. And I sold it to Home Franchise Concepts in 2019. But, you know, coming back to operate again, it is all about being outcome focused, right? So I'm sitting here in 2019-20.

I'm comfortable, which I fight every day. I'm comfortable. I'm doing investing, advising. I'm taking a large exit after this is post exit. Yeah, it was good. So you got lots of millions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had plenty of money.

But I'm sitting here and I'm like, all right, do I want to take my chits and run off to the golf course and to fishing? Or do I really want to? I'm looking at the country and I'm looking at everything that's happening in 20 and 21. And I'm like, capitalism and families need businesses because they're a high class asset.

And we're looking at 100 to 150 million more people in this country by 2050. There's increased migration. So 350 right now. Yeah. Three thirty nine, I think, or something like that. So there's a housing shortage in all of these hot markets where the markets are growing. So there's going to be massive home building. There's going to be retail. There's going to be hospitals, infrastructure, all of this stuff. So like you'll never find a home front brands nestled comfortably between a blockbuster and a curves, right? Because there's no obsolescence building into home services.

So I know with confidence that if I look a franchise owner in the eye and if I'm committed, I can say, if you put your shoulder to this, if follow the plan if you make this a priority and if you execute You can build a material business inside of the home front brands platform with this one that you're starting with or additional ones and You know, we're never gonna run out of opportunities to compete in property services So it's it to me It's the most durable segment and franchising and it's uncapped because you're not capped by a number of seats in a restaurant or a number of spots in a fitness routine or anything like that. And that's what gets me up every day.

But like at the end of the day, you have to be really, really focused on the four-wall economics for the franchise owners. You have to care deeply about these people because in the example that I use, like we get a cross- section of the population. We've got people, we got one guy that built a $50 million business building MRI setups in hospitals, multiple businesses. Guy's been successful over and over and over again. He came in and did a big buy with us and he's like, I like the model. I like the space. I like you guys. So we have a lot of people like that. We have private equity refugees investing investing in our business

They need to playbook they don't know it's not easy by the way a lot of these p.m. I's they they're very smart. They're systematic. They understand financial engineering, but they don't understand what it's like to manage a blue-collar worker That's right and it's It's so funny because they're so smart there they get their their masters degrees and they come in and they just but they talk down to people and they get a lot of them Are that they have this inferior? What's the word I'm looking for like this complex that they're just I?

Know a lot of my guys didn't have a good mom growing up a lot of my guys didn't pass 10th 10th Great 10th grade a lot of my guys aren't happy with their smile their teeth are screwed up Yeah, and that's different for most people, but I like it because I could talk to the white collar guys But I love the blue car because I'm part of it. It's my DNA. You know it's so great So I do you know I'm in the I'm in the franchise industry kind of like you're in the home service industry But I got to go to this Rhino X event with you and with Christiano yesterday Man, it felt good to be amongst contractors again. Yeah.

I mean, like that's my DNA. And all of these guys are building, you know, 20 to $400 million businesses in there. And, you know, they started in their garage. And it was, I mean, it was really great to be in that room for that. It is great. And it's great, like, I get a lot out of this.

And a lot of it for me is just reminders. Sometimes you forget the simple things about business. When you said no retail store, one of the things I talked about when I briefly was on with Tom Howard was the way you pick your Google My Business, location matters. People, when they lease a building, they're looking for something that's

going to suit their needs, rather than thinking about it as a marketing play. And I just feel like if you knew, you don't want to be close to big competitors with 10,000 reviews. You want to be in an affluent area where you can get a lot of clients. And that's the gift that keeps giving.

You can get 15 to 20 leads a day if you pick the right location for your Google My Business page and get enough reviews and citation sites to make it rank. Yeah. Well, one of the things that you've demonstrated over and over again is this concept of regression analysis. Many people start in business. And if you think back to when you started,

and probably I think back to when I started, it was the same way. I was trying to figure out, OK, what's the next step? What's the next step? What's the next step? If you work backwards from a very specific future, it'll be a completely different set of steps than had you tried to work forward to it.

And that's just it. It's like, okay, well, I'm going to pick the location not based on a proximity to a highway or traffic or storefront or drive-bys. It's like, where am I going to get the business from? Yeah, and it's just, but here's the one thing, too, is I give it all away. A lot of people go into a situation Of how do I win? Yeah, and I think about like how can I help them win? And I think that's like the the hostage or not the hostage negotiator. That's Chris Foss

Michael Michael fan see ya for a CD. Yeah, so I said hey listen. I got a really good podcast It's number seven in the country for business. I'd love to have you on. And if you like me, maybe you'd have me on yours. But I said, we'll see how that goes. I go, what's your email? And he gave it to me. Worst case scenario, he says no.

I don't care. I don't care if you say no, because I'm not afraid to ask. He's cool. I know. You're doing what I'm doing on health. And we sometimes, I'm a social drinker, you're a social drinker. Tell the audience here the line you told me because this is hilarious.

Oh, yeah. So you broke after 37 minutes. I did. I was so like, look, so I've done three things in the last probably 120 days. I've cut my alcohol consumption down by like 97%, 98%, which wasn't a ton, but I still don't recover like I used to. I mean, I got a good 15, 16 years on you,

and I need every bit of energy that I got. Started that journal that I shared with you, and cut my screen time down to an hour. And so part of our job as business owners is to create space so the universe can organize itself and we can calm the swirl around all the opportunities that we have. And so you know I shared that with you and you had shared something similar with me and then we're at this great party right and

I was I held off for a little while. And then it's like we went to the VIP dinner and it was a special drink paired with a special, so I had to have five drinks with five courses, right? So that was out the window. And I, he said, how'd you do last night? Well, you know, I. I said, he said, look, I tried to make it, but I broke. And he started laughing.

And tell him the line. Yeah, I said, I tried to stop after one, but it was actually 130 Let's try to stop after one, but it usually lasts to 130. That's so good. Yeah, it was so fun My other one was is I tried to make I tried to figure out if I could make an old-fashioned Last night, but I couldn't make one, but I could make four That's great. You know, you were saying about gyms. I know this company called TSG,

and they invested in Planet Fitness. And the model there is like, let's give it away for nothing, but no one's gonna come. Yeah. I mean, what is it, 15 bucks? Yeah, I mean, they'll do a million five to two million dollars in a location, but they'll make five or six hundred thousand dollars. And just on, you know, who cancels $10?

Nobody. That's a cool thing. What do you think my service agreement cost a month? Yeah. $12.95. It cost you more in gas to drive over there and cancel. Yeah. Than it does to cancel.

And nobody, like, it's not a gym if you're really serious about working out. I hate to say this because it's not like a bad gym. I know they got nice equipment, but it's us to cancel. And nobody like, it's not a gym if you're really serious about working out. I hate to say this, cause it's not like a bad gym. I know they got nice equipment, but it's not something that I'd want to be involved in because there's not enough free weights. It's not made for you, like a bodybuilder. Right. But that's okay.

And it's affordable and it's a decent gym. I mean, what's cool is like, we worked out a special deal with them through our HR department of like, we even get a better price for our employees. Healthy employees that are working out, think better they produce more they're happier in general. Let me ask you a question I was thinking about this because my mom asked me this question years ago and she said when's enough enough for you like what's the goal here?

And I said mom don't you understand? She says, I understand what I said, Mike, Tiger Woods won four majors in a row. Did his mom tell him to stop golfing? I go, this is my, I'm Tiger Woods, but I'm in business. I'm not Tiger Woods, you know, that's kind of cocky, but that's the, I said, mom, this is what I love to do. You're pretty close to the Tiger Woods of home service.

Yeah, but not to glaze you like a donut but But Okay, so so the fourth thing I did during this last hundred and twenty days and and part of it was again creating the space Then I was coming home from Vegas. I was out there doing Ryan Panetta's podcast. Yeah, Ryan's the man. And I got COVID. Oh, you did? That was just two months ago. Yeah, I got COVID and I got walking pneumonia after that. So like I was down. So what I did was I went deep into David Goggins. So yeah, I got that written down. Yeah. So here's can't hurt me. Yeah. So here's the great thing He says he says, you know, you're performing against your own standards and

He goes if you can perform against your own standards void of any purpose Most people go to train for a marathon and then that's because I'm gonna train because I'm training for a marathon No, man, you just train you just push yourself So, you know really it took me a good bit understand, because he says the same thing just over and over and over again. And it took me a good bit to understand. But we are just competing against our personal standards. I'll give you an example from this morning.

And I probably shouldn't, but I'm going to do it anyway. So I get checked out of the room. Great workout this morning. I got up, worked out. I had a sauna. Great. I get my stuff packed together. I'm like, all right, I got just enough time to grab something to eat and then to get over

here and be on time. So I go down to this little kiosk and I get breakfast burrito and a cup of coffee, which is sitting right here. And I shove that thing down my face and I'm heading back into the hotel to go down to the first floor and catch an Uber. And there's a homeless guy sitting there. And he's just got one sign just says food question mark. And then he's got this dog.

Yep. Okay. And I go in and I'm standing at the elevator and I'm like, right outside as a kiosk, they have these beautiful sandwiches, or I just go and I make sure that I'm here five minutes earlier and I'm like screw it What are my personal standards? I put I left my luggage there. I went out and I bought two I said you have anything for dogs. They said no I said give me two ham sandwiches and these beautiful big fat ham sandwiches there

And I just walked them over and I gave them to the guy. I just did it because like number one Taking action and number two. What are your personal standards? You know and like probably nine times out of ten or before 120 days ago I'd have been I'd have thought it and not done it But like you do it man. We do it By the time you get a thought I try to delegate almost everything unless I could do it quicker than I could delegate it You know what I mean? Does that make sense like if I if I will call my assistant to do an email and

I could have done the email in the same way, and by the way, I don't do email anymore. Right. I'm email-less. And by the way, this cell phone, I'm keeping the cell phone, but the phone number is going to online. You have to do that if you- Well, I'm giving up control, which is hard for a lot of people, and it means a lot of trust. Or are you taking control of the rest of your life? I take- that's a good way to frame it. But most people will go number one, privacy. Number two, what if they screw up? Number three, what if somebody important texts me and they don't get back in time? Here's what I figured out when I go on vacation. This is what I figured out about 15 years

ago. You think the company is going to fall apart. But if you hire the right people, they actually do better when you're not there. It's like all these problems, they got it. They're forced to solve them themselves. That's right. And they don't call me anymore. They say, Tommy's not even going to have the answer. I can't even log into payroll. I have no, I've never logged into the payroll software. I don't even know how to get into it. Why would you? Oh, well, the thing is, is there's a lot of people that still say, I'm the smartest guy in the building. I like to walk into my building and say I'm not the smartest guy. There's a lot of smarter people that are focused on one thing and

I'm trying to make myself useless in the company. I'm struggling every day to hire amazing people to say there's no way I could have a better idea than this person focused to the CFO or the controller or the COO or whatever. Like, the whole goal is to make myself obsolete. And I don't think people understand that, because they want to have a meet, they want to have a meaningful, like, they want to be part of the business and meaningful. And so it's almost like, it's contrary to what most people think is like you want to feel important in your business and feel like the main person. I'm like, listen, if I just had made TV ads and radio ads

and kissed babies and accepted trophies, my life would be amazing. That's a business that, like, built to last by Jim Collins. He wrote a whole book about it. Yeah. So I got two things on that. Number one, you pay people here by the hour. I know you pay a lot of commission because you allow people to make a lot of money within your organization. Performance pay. Performance pay. But we get paid by the conversation. Yeah.

You know, the quality of the conversations we have, the caliber, with the right people in the room, that's when everything moves forward. I mean, I met the founder of Chirp. We're back and forth, like I, you know, and I said, well, we would like to use Chirp, but it doesn't integrate with our thing. He goes, oh, don't worry, I'll do it. And just meeting him yesterday, you know, and I said, oh, okay, like to use Chirp, but it doesn't integrate with our thing. He goes, oh, don't worry, I'll do it.

And just meeting him yesterday. And I said, oh, OK, well, then he'll do it. The second thing is, one of the things I think that's rare about your company is the execution and the implementation. Ideas are great, but ideas unimplemented mean nothing. So the ability to, so when things are going well for you, okay, you can move your gaze out farther strategically and think about, you know, new opportunities, new businesses,

your water treatment business, you know, you can, but when things start falling apart, business owners have to go in. They got to jump back in. You got to get right back down and figure out like what spring or what sprocket fell out, you know, to allow this to happen. You gotta you gotta get right back down and figure out like what what spring or what sprocket fell out? You know to allow this to happen so now the more capable organizations We build the more time that we get to spend out there Going to places like this because my job in in our platform is to be out and visionary what's cut

Well, what's cutting-edge? I hate actually hate that visionary word because it's just like, you know I love it when people put it in their LinkedIn title Well, yeah I'm a visionary and I'm letting you know that I'm telling you to call me that but yeah But you know like like our job is to be on the cutting edge Like what's you know, we're both in the genius network Like what's happening six to 12 months from now that we need to make sure that we're ahead of?

Yeah, well that's what I do is like, so Dan Martell, I had him meet with my team to explain who I was. Because my team doesn't really understand this entrepreneurial itch. And he goes, I'll tell you one thing about Tommy, and Tommy doesn't even know this about himself. But Tommy, anything you ever tell them to do, you never forget. Some days you wake up in the middle of the night, remember it? And did it get done? And

how often do you remember? I go every freaking time. He goes, now guys, listen, he needs to feel heard, and he needs to get documented, and it needs a plan. It might not even be important. It might not even be you might have to tell him it's gonna start in six months But you got a document and now here's the deal Tommy your team is gonna help you buy back time Your job is not to fill the void every single time Like I know you do today you fill the void every single time and you make yourself busier every time they buy back your time So this is something I've been working on but I I'll tell you, Dan Martell taught me to... I'm very good at business, but he said, why not get a driver?

And I said, because I'm humble. I don't... He goes, Tommy, how often do you drive? We did some math. It was 10 to 12 hours a week. He goes, what could you be doing in that 10 to 12 hours? Do you love driving? No, I don't. Okay. Then I got a chef. And so everything I've done in business, he said said why don't you apply this to your personal life?

Why and I'll always have coaches around me, right? By the way, I'm always gonna be curious and I was gonna ask questions I was gonna have mentors the day I stop is the day that I want you to be like, okay Tommy He's lost his purpose. He's like there's like I want to be the dumbest guy in the room and there's a different mountain to climb every time So I was your inflection point like where was the inflection point where you were an operator of a garage door business, and then in the next day or the next week, you were a business builder, a visionary,

and an entrepreneur? I got to 17 million by brute force. And then I met Al Levy, number two on the podcast, Home Service Expert, which we're on right now. And Al did a tour of my shop. Then he said, you remind me. He goes, you're one of the best firefighters I've ever met. He goes, your mind is incredible.

The fact that you could solve these problems, you know how to handle every single thing. He goes, is it documented? And I go, you're looking at the document right now. And he goes, and he just pointed all this stuff out. He goes, Tommy, would you mind if I worked with you and he just reminded me of this two weeks ago he's remember how much money you were paying me ago I paid you hundreds of thousand dollars he goes you remember where that account

was he goes that was your personal account he goes you didn't have enough money in your account when you were making 17 million to pay me out of the business Wow he goes the reason you did everything I said is because you were paying for it personally. You had to implement it to save your business. You had to put systems and SOPs, and we call the Triangle of Communication and the checklist together, and the safe way to do things. And are you allowed to have facial hair?

Are you allowed to get tattoos on your face? How do you get PTO? All these things needed to become documented. And my team continued to develop. And here's what I needed to become documented and my team continued to develop and Here's what I needed to do is take my pride out of it. I'll tell you this pride Is probably the one reason is I started hiring people that I couldn't control They were smarter than me and they'd say no to me and they'd give me reasonable explanations Why I were not doing that and now if you walk into the next door of a building,

I've got a lot of no people. They say no to me. But they give me, they don't say no because I said so. They give me empirical evidence of why we're not doing something. They show me the data. And I say great, because I can't handle no. I can handle no and here's why. So most people don't have a no person in their life and they read a new book Or listen to a new podcast or they go to a seminar like Rhino X and they come back and they got all these ideas No one in that company has ideas because you're literally going to Rhino X by yourself Like that I didn't bring anybody to this event But normally at every event I go to there's seven to ten of my co-workers and

They're at pantheon. There's 25 of them at pantheon Wow and Not only that they're listening to the podcast. They're reading the same books. They're coming up with the ideas now So it's not the Tommy show anymore, right? And I so I can't take the credit I try to give them as much credit as I can but also I love what I do. I love podcasting I love going to visit markets. I love going to visit shops So I started bringing them with me and that now they're curious Yeah, and now they want to learn and now it's like I leave we're taking 40 guys made pinnacle. We're going to a Cabo next week I'm taking my top producers and all my managers and every single person that makes decisions in the company is going to be gone for a week. We're not going to skip a beat. Revenue is not going to be impacted

because all the technicians say, I get the good leads because the good guys are gone. And it's crazy because you think all of the business is leaving in the Cabo, but we're not going to skip a beat. And that's what I'm the most proud of. Nice. That's like, it's a feeling of like, and here's one thing that no one has that I have, is I have the ability to imagine the craziest numbers possible. They're like, where did you come up with a billion? And I'm like, well, we just need this many leads

based on our conversion rate, and if we change our average ticket. So my job is to make them dream again and believe that we could do it. Yeah, they can't see it. Because if they got the belief, it changes everything. And they're like, dude, you're nuts. But when I explained to them the math,

they're like, we're really gonna do this, aren't we? And I go, yeah, but how do we do it quicker? Like the company will grow without me, but I don't think it'll grow at the same pace. Yeah, best business question. If you, gun to your head, if you had to do twice as much in half the time, figure it out. Yeah, yeah, well, that's the deal is,

Dan asked me two months ago, he said, Tommy, if you wanted the 20X next year, this is right before the new year, he said, if you wanted the 20X, what would need to happen? And he goes, don't answer, think about it before you answer. And he basically made me build a guide to 20X. Yeah. And now it's possible.

But it had to be really deep thinking. It was about the question. But here's the deal. You got to think outside of the box to do 20X. Anybody could double. Right. But to 20X? Now you got to start thinking way different.

You got to start doing stuff like not normal. Yeah. I love... You can tell how passionate I get. I just... this is like And here's the deal. I talked to Gina Wittman a while back and he wrote EOS the whole idea of how the systematically change your life in business And he said when I sold the OS he still owns twelve and a half percent

He goes I feel like I lost a piece of me. He goes, it was like super depressing. Like I was depressed. And he goes, I lost purpose. I had a pot of gold. They gave me a lot of money. Right. But I lost purpose. And a lot of people, when they sell their business, I don't know, did you feel this

way initially? Because you said I don't want to disappear to the golf course. Yeah, no, I was ready. I was, I built the business for 25 years. I was 50. I knew I built the business for 25 years. I was 50 I knew that there was more to do but like I couldn't I was not good enough to extract myself from the business and plus man Like you you have a business for 25 years all my personal real estate was handled by my business office I mean everything was mine was really a lot actually for as well as we did

It was a lifestyle business. I mean I probably worked the minimum that I needed to build that company. I coached all my kids sports. I prioritized my family. You know I did all of that kind of stuff and now if I knew then what I knew now it didn't have to be mutually exclusive. I could have built five times that business if I had the right attitude that I have right now and still not sacrificed any of the other stuff that I felt was important to me. But I didn't make a decision to sell the business until I got into something called YPO, Young Presidents. And then what I realized was everybody in YPO had sold the business.

So I just hadn't been in the right rooms. Because I was, to your question, man, when I went to sell the business, it was a no-brainer. And I never thought twice about the decision. But that doesn't mean it wasn't hard to basically take my identity and strip it away from this business and then go into nothing and and I did I did fill it with a lot of business activity but in which I learned some stuff but you know I probably probably should have followed

some advice and maybe taken six months sabbatical and but I took three days hey guys hope you're loving today's episode listen I have a couple of quick and maybe take him six months sabbat back. But here's the good news. You can still grab your Freedom 2025 ticket and lock in our Early Bird bonus bundle worth over $5,246. I'll be straight with you. These bonuses aren't just random freebies. They're the exact strategies and systems that helped me grow A1 into a $220 million company. My marketing playbook that keeps the phones ringing. Our Freedom 2023 sessions on premium branding from guys like Dan Antonelli. My Elevate book that teaches you to build a business where everybody wins. These were all designed to help you start implementing what works today, not six months

from now. And when September rolls around, you can be in the same room with Kevin O'Leary and Al Levi and my entire billion-dollar network of business owners who've built everything from 10 million to 500 million dollar businesses. The early bird offer won't be around forever and when it's gone, both the discount and bonuses disappear. Go to freedomevent. com today. That's freedom event dot com and grab your ticket While you still can now back to the episode. What would you tell yourself if you go back 15 years? Be the advice for younger. Oh, I would have I would have focused on I look we franchised our business And we didn't hire one person that had experience franchising. We figured it

Oh, no, we went and got like the guidelines from the government and we wrote our own thing. I mean, it's like we were so proud that we were doing it ourselves, which was the stupidest thing on the planet. So if I would have just got two or three, like your guy that came in here, if I would have been humble enough, smart enough to do that earlier, everything would have been different. Now I have no regrets. I'm big on this concept of body of work. Every action that we do, every single day, every conversation we have, it's either additive

or subtractive to who we are and our body of work. At the end of the day, at the end of our life like we got to be good with it like we we it's just this huge it's just this huge ledger of Pluses and minuses how'd you spend your time? What'd you do? And you know your body of work, you know, like like you're you mentioned it. You're very giving You you got you got home service freedom. You got your vertical track you like you're like Hey, if you can execute on what I do, God bless you. Here it is.

The one percent, the one and three percent. Yeah, so you don't even have to worry about giving everything that you know because you know darn well that like almost nobody's going to be able to do it. Everyone knows how to get a six-pack but they don't do it. They're waiting for the magic watermelon diet. Yeah, and nobody's going to catch you. So you're fine. But what's nice is like, dude, like people like me and trust me

because I don't hold back. And I'm like, dude, I'll give you guys everything I know. And you're not grabby. Yeah, and the deal is, is like in the future, I promise you what Joe Paul has taught us is easy, little, good, and fun. I'm gonna be business partners with a hell of a lot of people and I won't do it unless I think I could improve their lives more than it is today. People say, what do you want? And I say, when I die, I want going to be business partners with a hell of a lot of people, and I won't do it unless they think I could improve their lives more than it is today.

People say, what do you want? And I say, when I die, I want people to say, when I shook Tommy's hand, he meant it. And if ever I screw somebody over, I'm just going to give them the money back. Like, let's separate. We're going to have a prenup in every deal I do. And if it's not fun, and it feels like something's not working, I'm out. I don't want your money. I want to have fun, and I want. I don't want your money. I want to have fun and I

want to be a blessing in your life. The rule I always give, Jeff, is when you look at your phone, when you see somebody calling the caller ID, you get excited. Are you excited and going, what's up? How's your day going? What happened today? Or are you like, ah, like I understand family, you can't get rid of them. But you know, but when you got businesses, when you get that feeling, then you need to make a change because your life's gonna add prematurely with that stress, anxiety and depression of just dealing with people like that in your life. Yeah man, so like body of work.

At the end of it, you wanna go back and you wanna be in business with people that you like, you wanna have made a difference, you wanna have impacted their lives, you wanna, I of it, you want to go back and you want to be in business with people that you like. You want to have made a difference. You want to have impacted their lives. You want to, I mean, so, you know, everything we do, man, is, and, you know, people are so sloppy and lazy and undisciplined with how they invest their time and energy and their money. And, you know, so, yeah, man, 15 years ago, I would have, I would have been, I would have given up so much more to get the right people around me and focused on growth. You said you gave it up a lot on this new deal.

You said you were almost too nice about the way you gave money out on this. It's been, yeah, I don't have any heartburn about it, but like, you know, it's, yeah, it's- So you it's, it's So you almost went in that opposite direction. Yeah, and we have great people. We got really strong brand presidents that are proven in the industry. We got a really strong C-suite. And, you know, honestly, that's one of the reasons that like fundamentally, whenever it is at the end of the day, when whoever it is looks at this business like private equity private this thing is ticked and tied from day one every document legally I mean usually when you get into emerging

franchise or it's like everything's a mess territory policies a mess like they've just you know like I tell whenever whenever I talk to emerging people I'm like the decisions you make in the first six months are going to if you make the wrong decisions and setting up your program and then you Got an award a hundred franchise owners You've just cut 75% of your exit off just because of the structure of what you've done yet the territory policy wrong You didn't charge right you got you made all these concessions and it's just a mess So like we we did set the foundation of this business up with excellence

And you know, we haven't been perfect in everything we've done. I mean, there's definitely some marketing things like we got – you launch five brands, you got to rebrand four of them and all of a sudden franchise owners just start pouring in. You're chasing your tail. And the interesting thing, probably the biggest difference between a direct business like yours and a franchise business like ours is if you want to roll out CHIRP, you just roll out CHIRP.

If I want to roll out CHIRP, I need to have some sort of a consortium of franchise owners that are going to get on the program with that. If I'm willing to pay for it, then I can do it. But in our model, there's things that the franchise owners need to pay for it then I can do it. But in our model like there's things that the franchise owners need to pay for and again you've got this wide distribution of people that have different outcomes. You know some people are like hey I want to build a 500,000 or a million dollar business and I want to make a couple of 300,000 dollars a year and have a nice lifestyle and manage three or four people and then there's other people that just want to be monsters and they want to build a 50 million dollar business. So you have all of that and they're all gonna take a different approach when I say you need we need to do this

So if I really want to do something then you got to shell it out Then I got to shell it out and then you know over time you can make it mandatory, but it has to have proof Yeah, that's one thing is like I think I'll end up doing a franchise and I'll definitely if I do it It'll be most likely alongside of you. I mean, I don't want to do it. I like Kevin Wilson I like the guys I know that have been in the business, but I'm not gonna go learn it, but I'll tell you one thing One out of a hundred people that actually have the money to get in will actually make it in because I will be very very selective My goal I will not rate my success on franchises sold. It'll be franchises that do over budget every

year as a percentage of the whole. And yes, it might take longer, but people underestimate what they could do in five years and overestimate what they could do in one year. And I just keep reminding people like, dude, I'm going to be 42. Yesterday I was 21. Tomorrow I'm going to be 70. So we want things like, what are the type of country and people that we tap our foot at the microwave for 30 seconds? Yeah. There's no patience.

And the one thing that China does very well is the art of war says they don't want to use any weapons. They do it over time. And that's one thing is like so many people are like man I want to do a hundred million I think I could be there in three years I'm like the one question I asked them is why they said because you proved it could be done and I go yeah but why like what are you gonna do and the problem is people say well I want to do this with the money and I'm like see I don't even view money that way I got to make money I do this with the money. And I'm like, see, I don't even view money that way.

I got to make money. I plan on spending the money off the compound interest, not the principal. And people don't understand that concept at all. People write down what they're going to make, and they write down their cars, their houses, what they want to do, where they want to travel. And they blow it all. Like, I know half the people you saw in that room yesterday with an exit don't have any money. They've got a lot of assets. But they don't have like... They're've got a lot of assets, but they don't have like, like they're not liquid.

It's crazy to me. Like I'm super, super, super liquid. And you know, I know I can make more IRR if I put some of the money in a PE, but after I did my deal, and as it wasn't too far after your deals 2022 they had the tail end of 2022 I I'm addicted to deals now everything I'm gonna do is run towards the next deal yeah everything yeah it's they got a hold for three years private well we get paid at the closing table but here's the deal everyone else gets paid all the p units all the equity incentive programs yeah everyone else gets paid too yeah so I think it's selfish of people not to want to sell

because they're like, I make enough. I do a drawl every year. I take 500 grand out. I'm like, yeah, but what about your team? How are you going to change their life? Yes, they make 120 grand. But how are you going to really impact their life? It's through a close, through a change of control.

And people are afraid because they make them, a lot of people make the wrong deals with the wrong people. Well, that's true too. And that's, you hear the nightmares, but there's also really good stories. Yeah, you gotta be really, you gotta be careful on your rollback. Like you have to know what you're rolling back into.

You gotta, there's things that I've learned. But what do you wish you, this is important. I want you to chat about this for a minute. Like what did you learn about rolling? Yeah, so, you know, I had the top two people that were in my deal at the end. One was paying a little bit more. But what I didn't really fully appreciate that like we were a tuck-in prior to them reselling. So my hold time on my rollback was short. Whereas the second

place person, you know, I probably would have somebody else sold to them about the same time and they 5X their rollback. So just that one little thing and I rolled back eight figures, right? So I mean it was a big chunk of money and it would have sat in there for another three or four years but I would have 5X that money. Looking back at it, I probably could have, I don't think anybody could have known, but what I, the fact that I did have is that this one was, I could have got the information that they were already in process and that we were a tuck in and that we were, you know, whatever I rolled in was going to roll back relatively quickly.

And I could have acted on it and said, well, this $8 billion private equity firm is really growing this other thing. I would have been one of the first investments in there. And now you come in early. Yeah. I mean, I was relatively early. And now, you know, they're a $2.2 billion company. They're the ones that own Clockworks and everybody.

So yeah, so like I would have been third company in at the beginning. Yep. And, you know, and so like. And so the amount of economics, so know who you're selling to. And there's another private equity company that I recently met. Now there's probably one of the more famous ones. And they do a lot in franchising. And they're huge and all of that.

Now they want to fly in and meet with us. and we're not in the market or anything like that But they just try to get But you know in that particular one I mean they have they have 10 15 and 20 year fun lives now much longer So they what they talk about is long-term greed yeah long-term which I heard you talk about the other day Which I was gonna ask you about but but the reality of it is then if it's not gonna flip in three to five years When are you gonna get your so you gotta be a liquidity events? Yeah, they'll explain to you how to build within there because your COO the people don't want to wait 12 15 years

That's right Here's the deal if I get 10x my money and have three liquidity events alongside of there which I'll build into I'm glad to do A 15 years sure long-term. Yeah, which I'll build into, I'm glad to do a 15 year fund, long term. Yeah, and by the way. You're probably talking about Blackstone. And anything I do, no, close. But they've done a great job, by the way, with their investment in ServePro.

I mean, they've three Xs. ServePro's massive. They've three Xed their revenue. So they three X'd or, you know, their revenue. So they've done a really, really good job with them. But, um, I can coach people. This guy came up to me yesterday. He goes, I'm about to get this much money next week we're closing. I go, why in the F did you not call me?

And I go, I want nothing to do with this deal. But I'm like, how much are you rolling? Yeah. Because 25% I go, did you read the private equity playbook? 35% minimum you roll if it's the right company and you're in love with them. And I go, what is it going to, the extra 10%, will that change your life if you rolled that? I go, that's the bare minimum. and I'm telling them all this stuff I Asked to roll 60% Now they were still gonna have control no matter what so people think it's a control thing They said the size of our fund we need to make it equitable for our limited partners that have invested

So we'll give you a 49 percent. Mm-hmm And people thought I was nuts They're like dude, you're kind of that a lot of your net worth is still wrapped into one thing You're not diversified, but nothing is gonna change your life from here on out. That's the deal is like like but here's what go big I mean here's the deal is like now. It's like my buddy Dale went to California to visit a friend of his And he goes you know what everybody says about you Tommy he, this guy, you don't even know who he is, but your hope, your hope that you that somebody in a blue collar industry, you're a garage, you're a guy could potentially become a billionaire

is you are walking hope and everybody's cheering you on. And you got to hold yourself and make the right decisions to prove it's possible. So I'm freaking I'm sprinting man and I'm making all the decisions and I'm pulling in help and I'm the first one to ask. Listen my dad and my grandpa they're manly men man. They don't ask for directions they take stuff apart and fix it. I'm the first one to beg for help. If I get a no, if I get a no okay I'm okay with it. Some people don't some people don't they don't say yes to me some people they're like they're too busy you know they literally say sorry kid I can't help you. That's okay I don't feel I don't

take it personal it doesn't mean they hate me they don't even know me so I don't take offense to it but so many people they're so afraid to ask because they don't want to get let down. Yeah do you do you think it's rare that your equity partner gives you this much latitude to do whatever it is you want? Or was that the deal going in? Well, what they always tell me is we didn't buy A1. We invested in you. That's right.

We wouldn't have done this deal without Tommy Mello, not a chance. Sure, sure. And they said you were a, they said to be honest, you were an educated gamble because nobody knew if they were gonna be able to tame Tommy Mello. And they, you know what they told me is 10 P.E. companies called him afterwards.

After six months, they said, what it's like to work with that dude? Were you able to even, does he listen at all? And one of the guys goes, dude, he not only listens, but he calls and asks for help every day. And he takes our advice and he runs with it. And I don't know if I should say this, but a lot of these other companies flew back on. They said, we're sorry. We should have

bid more. You would have been a great partner. And here's the other thing is- In hindsight. Well, the fact is the results speak for themselves after two years in now they're like, they trust me. But if you had a bad first year, they're going to come in and you know, look, I'm fireable. It's very hard to fire me. Uh but my contract is very very hard. But if I'm getting a bad results, there's no other choice than to get rid of the leader because but believe it or not, it all rises or falls on me. Uh I'm not going to take the credit for

doing great but I would have to take the credit for doing great, but I would have to take the credit for failing. Right. I mean, I, it was a team that brought us here and it's a team that fails too, but literally like if there's anything bad that happens in the company, all rolls up to me and I got to face that. So, um, I, it's hard because certain times it sounds like I might take the credit, but I try to pay it forward to my team as much and guys like L Levi guys like Joe Polish and Yano that helps me out and introduces me to people and the network I think it's important and I hope you open your doors

And I know yeah, you're teaching the next generation and you should be teaching out a franchise, too Yeah, yeah, actually, I'm probably rolling out an education business in that space just because You know, I do care about expanding the reach and relevance and the professionalism of the franchise industry. I mean, I've heard you say before, hey, it's a lazy way to do it. If you can't do it, it's a lazy way to build a business. I think that's 90% of them, but the 10% that do it for the right reasons are incredible. Yeah. And while people get big eyes, right?

And they say, well, I got this donut shop. And there should be a thousand of these donut shops, but they really don't understand what it takes. But they get around somebody that that in the bottom line is families get hurt like many franchise owners invest their life savings in A business, and it's really important that it's done. Well. Let me ask you this man Three years from now who's the CEO of a one? so I've been doing a lot of thought on this like what my team came to my whole C-suite and They sat me down, and they sat me down and they said, why do you feel like we need a president?

Or why would we need a chief of staff? And I looked at them and I said, you know, potentially, you know, I'm not married. I'm about to be married. Yeah, congratulations by the way. I want kids, thank you. I wanna be a great dad. I said, you guys don't need me to run this company, But I'm not gonna be able to give you what I give today

But I need to make sure the vision stays because it's a growth mindset And and so there's a few choices. I have I could be the cheap, you know the head of the board I can switch to a chief growth officer mm-hmm or I can switch to a chief growth officer. Or my preference would be to be a co-CEO, where I'm the glue, I'm the orientation guy, I'm still handling the marketing side and going and looking at deals and still inputting.

But I'm not going to all the, I'm not flying out to New York to Manhattan to go to all these quarterly and monthly PE where they're talking about the financials. I just, that's not fun for me. So, you know, the deal is, as the way I see it today, you know, I've got a family office that A1 pays,

lots of tens of thousands of dollars to a month. That team does a lot for A1. Like I've been able to use this instrument to make A1 grow faster and excel way quicker. So the question is, can this entity live alongside of it as a sister and continue to scale it? Because look, I'm still gonna roll four to 500 million into the next deal. So I gotta stay relevant in the business. It's my face on the side of the truck on purpose.

Well, I think you're gonna be like the Empire Carpet Guy. what I'm talking about? Yeah fire today. Yeah, like five eight eight two three hundred like I grew up in Chicago That's where that guy's from and it used to be him when I was a kid. That was him, you know But now he's dead. So now it's a cartoon guy, but it's still the same guy Like one day you'll still be all over the face of this and probably many other businesses But it'll be it'll have to be the cartoon Now the cartoon it and like look they don't age Yeah, no, that's that's the whole theory of it. But you know, I I'm passionate about what I do I'm gonna build a fund for my employees that I'll actually I'm going to insure the money and I'll be putting it into really really high return and I'm gonna

and I'm gonna be putting it into really, really high return and I'm gonna implore them and I'm gonna give them bonuses through this structure that sits there. And my main goal, I did this math, I posted it the other day on Facebook. 18 to 65, you put 300 bucks a month away at 12% IRR. I saw that. You got 8.4 million dollars.

That's right. So my plan is just, if I could get them a million bucks over time Yeah, I'd give them but but it's gonna take some discipline and some consistency. It's a delayed gratification But my plan is to teach people this and I'm not their provider They everyone that's got equity in the business. They've earned it. I can't take credit for that Yeah, so I tell my kids like when they want to buy something like rims or something I'd say okay

You're gonna spend a thousand dollars on this Are you willing to give up sixty five thousand dollars twenty five years from now? Because that thousand dollars if you do if you put in the spreadsheet and you hit it with eight percent It's like right in that twenty five year range. It turns into sixty five grand Yeah, and I'm like, are you willing to give that up? Like I mean compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world I mean you're young, you know, thank God I invested in a lot of real estate young I was just a kind of a contractor and I know you did apartment buildings But I was just a building houses and owning rental property and everywhere

I went we bought an office building and stuff like that and you know, thank God. Thank God. I mean over time It was it's just you know, it's it's it's you could never I couldn't afford to buy this stuff today for what we bought it over over time it was it's just you know it's it's it's you could never You couldn't afford to buy this stuff today for what we bought it over over time And you know it's the same thing for them. They need to be putting together these these assets But like people don't do it And then what happens is right they have just enough to live and all of a sudden we go through an inflationary period People are in their 50s and 60s. They don't have the same earning potential or the energy and next thing you know like I've my mom's still living.

And she is tight. I mean, like, one rotisserie chicken, three days. But, and she's got some money. And I told her, I said, please spend your money. I'll take care of you. You know, you don't have to, you don't have to worry about running. You got your, your house is cash. We bought her a house for cash when she moved to North Carolina three years ago.

She's got money in the bank, but what year was she born? Let's see. She was born in 44 So her parents lived through the Great Depression. This is when people used to Like they looked at bad at money. They like like look at the rich folks because you know, there was very little rich I mean you you would like you were one of a hundred that would wait to see if you got a job that day just that's right you know and the deal is and that's if your family's gonna have bread that week and so like that Thanksgiving the old saying would be like look at us written like rich folks because we're being rich was bad it was evil mmm and

so people have this really bad conception of money and it's not a bad thing like now likely we're phasing out of this Great Depression mode but I'm really bad conception of money. And it's not a bad thing. Like now, luckily, we're phasing out of this Great Depression mode. But I'm like, I have an obligation. You know, one of the things I went to church, I went to breakfast with my pastor, and I'm like, man, this next turn,

I'm gonna give like tens of millions of dollars to the church, but I- 10%? I got, you know what, I'm going to give like tens of millions of dollars to the church, but I... 10%? You know what? I got a pretty big tax bill waiting in heaven because I haven't given the 10% and I made a deal and you know, it's a bad deal if I died, I got to put this in my will, but I just said, God, let me reinvest this money for you and I'll give it to you at a much bigger value. I mean, I remember praying and saying... I'll make it up to you

I'll make it up, but you can't I guess you can't buy your seats and have it You know this idea more money more problems more like like dude my houses They always have issues my cars They have issues like people don't understand the reason rich people get depressed and get on drugs and become alcoholics and don't have great relationships is I'm fine. I'm ready for it, and I'm prepared, but a lot of people, it's miserable. All of a sudden, people don't treat them the same,

they use them, they look at them as a piece of money, and I go, people are like, well, what do you think when people look at you as having all this money and they use you? I'm like, this is just, it's okay. I'm like, this is what happens, and I'm prepared for it. All right, you're already a billionaire Just not today, but it's the it's it's destined. It's the the car the dies been cast and

You get your family going by the way, you'll never regret Doing that you'll never That's my legacy I hang I hang my hat on that. We're three for three with our kids and You know, I'll never regret anything that I sacrificed for that Do you think you'll you'll so you're a billionaire you got that going Do you think you'll do the giving pledge because to your point when people get billions and billions and billions of dollars Like 75% of these people whether they're like Ryan Jumaville know Ryan no okay I need to introduce you to Ryan Jumavel I think he's sorry Ryan these probably I don't know four or five six billion dollars or

if they're the hundred billion dollar people they sign up man they say I'm giving away 90% of this by the time I die because at the end of the day I mean how many how many hundred book die with nothing I don't know man but how many how many hundreds of millions of dollars like I think was it the Rockefellers are the ones that that? Kept their money the best the Rockefellers is called the Rockefeller method and basically what they've built as a family trust that you could borrow Against against a life insurance policy so it refunds itself when you die Yeah, you can borrow against it a certain amount and you want to pay it back over your lifetime But if you die it refunds that and it's all a mechanism that has to be done this way.

And it's wrapped around a charitable trust. So they're the ones but like at the end of the day like I have two different sets of trusts they're both dynastic in nature. My daughter who's in law school right now at one time said when do we get our money out and I'm like never and she's like well why'd you do it for and I'm like I'm not sure but I want you to have enough to do something, but never enough to do nothing. No, that's a great, I like that quote.

Yeah. I struggle with this. So at the end of the day, I don't know why I made all this money. I mean, it's great, but I don't have things, I'm not a big. I got some stuff, man. I'm buying a things like I'm not a big I got some stuff man I'm buying a helicopter buying a private plane. I'm taking people with me. Here's the deal. I want to teach Amanda fish

That's the goal, but I'm never gonna go through Economy again, I want first class in life and I want my entire yeah I want I want to go to the 16th Chapel and have breakfast. Yeah, I want to do things like not VIP but Ten times better than VIP. Yeah, and and you know I agree with that quality of life and I look I also but the problem is I want to take everybody with me hmm and that that takes time energy money focus it does but also they sometimes they don't want to go. Because they really didn't go through what you went through to get it, so they're not going to get the same out of it

that you do. That's true. But it's very noble. And I think that's why you're going to be a great dad, is because you care so much about your employees. You have a massive heart for people. And I think that's one of the keys to your success. Every time we talk, it's like like my employees can be doing this for

them I'm doing that for them I want these guys to you know not only go to Disney but do the Fastpass and and like at the end of the day man givers it is givers gain you can make money and still do do right by people and I think if you do it the right way you can even do better by taking people with you and that's well, you know perfectly said I By me they they they have the ability to probably get paid by someone else I mean, there's a couple companies out there. They're getting the game that could probably pay more I think we pay I want to intentionally pay the most by far But just say somebody just decided to take a risk and pay more.

I don't think they would leave. They wouldn't leave. I've had about five people leave and guess what? Every one of them are back. And they came back preaching the grass is not greener, the promises weren't kept, a lot of chitter chatter, but nothing got Right. And everything I say, I gotta live by example. Lead from up front, leaders eat last, the whole thing. But I'm a work in progress. I always tell people, I'm not arrived. I'm not perfect. I can say these things, but I wanna talk the talk,

I walk the walk too. But being on here saying these things also holds me accountable. It does. This is the nice thing, when you commit yourself publicly, and I talked about this yesterday, and you write it down and you tell your team you're going to do something, you kind of have to do it.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I love this, man. So, you know, you're the franchise king. You teach people, you know, everybody, I know how much you care too about your franchisees. I do. What, if someone wants to just reach out to you, get a hold of you, ask you for advice, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, well, I used to say my LinkedIn, but man, I got a company working in there now and I don't, I just, a lot of messages get gone, but should I get my email out on a show this big? I'm not sure. Ah, you know what, do you got somebody screening it? Yeah. Okay, then you're good. All right, well, hey, you can just reach out to me on a show this big? I'm not sure. You know what? Do you have somebody screening it? Yeah.

Okay, then you're good. Alright. Well, hey, you can just reach out to me at jeffatdudin.me. And Instagram's a great way to message me, just jeffdudin. If you go to jeffdudin on Instagram, and you want a free copy of my book, Discernment, The Business Athlete's Regimen for a Great Life Through Better Decisions, there's a link in there. You give us your email address and we get an electronic copy immediately. Or you can shoot me a message on YouTube and on the Homefront Podcast, just there.

But not hard to get a hold of. Instagram's good. So if you're hanging out and you're at home and you got an hour a day, are you on Facebook Instagram LinkedIn? Tick-tock YouTube what what's your choice? Okay? My choice is probably is Instagram and LinkedIn. Okay, Instagram and LinkedIn Instagram and LinkedIn and usually I'm just in there Just checking for anything that I need to do any engagement that I need to pay attention to you know How things are performing or whatever it is an hour a day between Facebook Instagram and LinkedIn is enough time to check but not enough time to get to scroll

I say majority is Facebook for me Yes, and the problem is I got to get Facebook up because I still handle my own messages If you're always like this can't be really Tommy Mike is really pathetic yeah What? What other the other question I always ask is, is there any books other than like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and E-Myth and you know, the famous, famous Dale Carnegie and the point hill books that really shaped you

and you really think that the listeners should get a hold of? Oh, God shaped me way back. I know the David Goggins. Yeah, man. Can't God shaped me way back. I know the David Goggins. Yeah, can't hurt me is great. You know, good to great was something early for me. Five Dysfunctions of a Teen by Lencioni was something that was very instrumental for me early. Man, I'm big into Dan Martell.

Buy back your time right now. I mean, if I had to if I had to pick one book for people to read right now, that might be it. Listen, we talked about a lot of stuff though What I like to do is give you a few minutes to just finish this up on anything you want to talk about Oh, well, hey, I appreciate it gosh, I Don't know I don't know man. We we went all over the place here. I love to do Yeah, I mean, I think I think if anything

You know just encouraging people to be outcome focused, encouraging people to, we heard this great thing about internal external locus of control. You were talking about that earlier, like I'm in charge of this, I'm in charge and letting people understand that like you are in control. Every decision that you make, every action that you take determines the slope of your line. It determines the velocity of your business. It determines the quality of your life. And you can do that in a franchise model.

You can do that in your personal life. You can do it in direct business. But at the end of the day, man, it's body of work. And every action that you take or every inaction that you should have Taken that you didn't it. It's a plus or a minus check man And at the end of the day, there's a tally at the end of the week. There's a tally and at the end of your life There's a tally and you know just for God's sake stop worrying about what other people think Stop making decisions based on ego. Don't and we talk about a great conversation this week, man

People there's these HVAC guys and some of them have 11 locations And they're like yeah We should have stayed in one location because it was our ego that drove us to open up other cities and they weren't fully committed So I mean you know I hate that I have to be 56 years old to continue to learn hard lessons Making mistakes, but man just take care of your business, raise your, like only care about your own standards, do things like that when nobody's looking, like I brought the guy, the Scammer just today.

Yeah, good example. And just, you know, people should have a great life. I don't understand why everybody can't, within their own capabilities, within their own skill, from wherever they sit, have a great life. And I would like to leave people with that. At Homefront Brands, man, we are 100, it used to be, there's lots of different things in franchising people, responsible franchising or autonomy or freedom. Like we are focused on outcomes. Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes. I want you, if you're a normal person,

it's your first business, can you build a three to five million dollar business in five years and sell it for several million dollars and make it be that first chunk that you have to give yourself that little bit of freedom? Break the generational curse. Yeah, yeah. And then like, you know, can you, chunk that you have to give yourself that little bit of freedom. Break the generational curse. Yeah. And then, like, can you win the next opportunity

by succeeding than the one that you're in? And business is an infinite game. So if you can come to us, and it's hard, and you can learn these business skills, and you either expand within our platform on this monopoly board that we call Homefront Brands and you start building hotels and grabbing territories or you sell your business with us and you go on and do something great. I had, I'll tell you, I'll leave it with this.

We're at our industry event last week in Vegas and one of our, they award franchisees of the year. So if you have award franchisees of the year. So if you have a franchisee of the year in your system, they give about a hundred of these out across the 4,000 brands. So one of our top real fence franchisees, Bob Stewart from Richmond got franchisee of the year. And he walked across the stage with these other people and

I'm walking out of the room and I see a woman that I recognize kind of smile at light face lights up. And then I see the young gentleman with him and I recognize it was one of my AdvanaClean franchisees. I saw you interview them. Yeah, who was there getting franchisee of the year. They're from another country, right? Yeah, so he was an E2 visa. They were in Argentina.

The economy was falling apart and they came to AdvanaClean and they brought their entire extended family over. He was one of the young brothers or sons or nephews or whatever it was there's about ten of them that came over Built a great business in South, Florida they half of them sold it made really good money and went on and built an import export business and Mariano is still operating there and I mean What impacted we did that little advantage Clean business make in their life and the

fact that we see each other, we tell each other we love each other? And then one of the executives from Advantage Clean came up to me and he said, hey, I've been trying to get in touch with you. I go around to these offices with Advantage Clean and they've all got the pictures up on the wall from the conferences that you had and all of that. And part of it is how can we get the culture back when Jeff had it? And he asked me to do a video to play

at their owners' conference. Oh, wow. So I did the red eye. I got home and I'm like, oh, he said he needed it today. I hadn't slept all night. And I'm like, well, let me put some preparation H under the eyes. And I did just a three or four minute video.

He asked me to say a few things, but just to encourage them and just to just to praise them and let them know like they're carrying on a tradition. It's 31 year anniversary we just had last week. That was the same day that I met Muriano. And like, okay, body of work made a difference in that life. That's so great. Yeah, so, and that's at the end of the day, man, like, Yeah. So and that's at the end of the day, man, like we can't take it with us, but like just it just matters what we do while we're here and who we do it with more than anything. I love it, man. Well, this was fantastic. I appreciate you sticking around to do this. Yeah, honored. Yeah, man. You're an amazing guy. I'm going to come visit you soon to East Coast Charlotte, Charlotte area. Right?

Yes, sir. All right, man. Well, listen, I'll let you get out of here. I appreciate it. This is groomed. Thank you guys for listening and we'll catch you on the next episode. Thank you, sir. 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 help 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.