The Home Service Expert Podcast - Motivating Your Employees to Grow Your Business To The Next Level

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Mike Dahlke is a serial entrepreneur, business coach, investor, and turnaround specialist. After leaving the financial world in 2011, he jumped into entrepreneurship, and now focuses on both home service companies and business turnaround situations that require strategy and capital. A featured speaker across the United States for different organizations, he built Blue Skies Services from $60,000 of revenue to over $3,000,000 in six seasons. Currently, he owns equity in over 15 businesses in 8 different states, and has completed over 10 acquisitions. In this episode, we talked about strategic planning, leadership, mergers and acquisitions, business finance...

Well, I think from our standpoint, the leaders and the CEOs that have done really well, what has made them, if I could sum it in one word, it's obsession. They obsess about the business. They obsess about the people. They obsess about giving. They obsess about getting results. They obsess about productivity. There's an obsession to it. And not that they don't go out and have fun or they don't focus on their family, but when it comes to business, they're obsessive about it.

There is no way that they're obsessive about it. There is no way that they're going to let somebody say, you can't do this, or there's no good people out there. You can't make Yelp work. Well, there's some way to figure it out. Somebody's doing it. So the number one thing that we found is that obsession. And we found athletes in general are obsessed with being the best or winning and we like that on our teams we want people to be as obsessed as possible when they're at work and then go home do their thing and then come back and be obsessed again the next morning 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. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. Today, I have a guest coming from Nashville, Tennessee. He is an expert at strategic planning, financial modeling, leadership, mergers and acquisitions, business finance, customer service and relationships. He is the coach at Automate Growth Sell, Red Hook Investments entrepreneur, investor and coach from 2016 to now. I had Scott Incorporated, CEO from 2012 to

2018, ASB Screening LLC president from 2011 to 2014, Northwestern Mutual Financial Network from 2004 to 2011, a serial entrepreneur, investor, business turnaround specialist, and business coach. Mike left the financial world in 2011 and jumped into entrepreneurship. His focus is on both home service companies and business turnaround situations where strategy and capital are required. He owns equity in over 15 businesses in eight different states and has completed over 10 acquisitions. He built Blue Sky Services from $60,000 of revenue to over $3 million in six seasons. He's also been a featured speaker across the country in various different organizations.

Mike Dolke, welcome. Well, thank you. That was way, sounded way cooler than I actually am, but thank you. I try to make people feel super cool. My team, they just do this amazing job. I had somebody on yesterday and they said, you are the most organized person I've ever met. And I said, you haven't even met me. That was my team. I said, I'm not great. You know, thank God for an amazing team. Yeah, I agree. The thing I

always say that people ask for, you know, who am I or what the introduction is. And I say, I'm just a down to earth guy who likes hunting deer and listening to country music. This happened to do some cool things in business too. You know, I like drinking beer and going hunting and listening to country. See, I added beer to it,

but whiskey for me. I just love entrepreneurship. It's, it's just a big passion and I'm so passionate about it. And you know, the worst thing is when I get on a podcast, and it's very rare, usually it's with accountants, and there's just the tonality of the call. I'm like, engage, let's have fun. But there's C-type personalities, and they're just, it's so difficult, and you're pulling

teeth. But you got to realize how to communicate to people like that, but they're no fun, but they're super smart. But I take fun over smart any day. I take somebody that knows how to communicate, that knows how to win friends and influence people. Right?

Absolutely. So the audience, some people I'm sure have heard of you, but you've got a lot of experience in finance and entrepreneurship. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey, what your passion is, how'd you end up where you are today? Yeah, so I'm extremely passionate about entrepreneurism, same as you, as well as investing in entrepreneurs. So where it started for me really was I was at Northwestern Mutual, I had a cushy sales job, I made good money. I had a

very easy life and I got all crazy inspired to buy businesses that were in distress. And me and two partners bought a background check company, which you listed ASP Screening, and then bought a struggling window cleaning company that was decreasing in revenue. And we sold the background check company for way too much money and started focusing on the window printing company. When we bought it, it had 60,000 in revenue. It had one employee that we had to fire because he weighed 450 pounds and couldn't go up and down ladders legally for OSHA. His first day I met him, he wore a cutoff t-shirt that said, this is my beer drinking shirt. So while I'm a fun guy too that was probably the

inappropriate shirt to meet your new boss in so it had one creepy old man that was maybe worth five thousand dollars it had one pressure washer it was just a disaster I walked away from the closing table after giving him a check for thirty thousand dollars with a bucket of recipe cards with customer names on it and that's how we started we grew that company to 3.6 million after that we left and started to do some turnarounds we did a startup in Nashville and so now we have 18 will be 19 likely next week equity investments in various different companies and really where that came from was we decided that while we love giving away resources to charity and things like that, what could be a better place to give your money than to entrepreneurs who need strategy and capital? They're going to take care of more people long-term than the charity will. You're

going to give $100 to charity. They're going to spend it on food and give it away. It's gone. If we can give $100 to an entrepreneur who's on fire for his people and is going to take care of them, the impact of that was outstanding. So we said, we're going to invest in entrepreneurs. We're going to invest in people who are going places. We're going to invest maybe in some situations nobody else will. But our philosophy is we're going to put that money to work. We're going to give them strategy. We're going to resource them. And if it works, we're going to make an enormous impact in the world. And if it doesn't, we're going to look at it as we gave the money to charity, and we're not going to get it back anyway.

So it's been a wonderful journey, and we've had a ton of fun along the way. You know, there's that old saying, you give a man a fish, he'll eat for the night. You teach a man to fish, he could live forever off of that. And I love the idea of charity. I love the idea of kind of flipping on it and saying I'm an investor that's helping businesses expand and feeding multiple families. So I never looked at it that way. You know, that's really interesting to me because you're a specialist in finance and that's everything I see people fail at. And I made so much fricking revenue. There's days, years ago that I made $200,000 in a day. Okay. Revenue. But my credit cards kept stacking up and my payroll was just super out of control.

So I didn't know how to look at it. And I got a master's degree in business, but still, I was used to looking at Fortune 500 companies, looking at an annual report and looking at certain trends. I wasn't used to looking at a home service business and in the right bucket. So it's kind of like they don't teach you finance and accounting at school the right way. They don't teach business owners. And I really want to spend some time on this because what's your take when you get these small businesses? There's obviously a lot, but let's first start with the financing and the accounting and how do you get that right? When you go in, what's the plan? Yeah. So for the home service businesses we invest in, a lot of them are using Dan Flat Eye Blue Sky Services now. And he's got those buckets kind of laid out for people where he can say here's

where you should be based on industry average but for example when we go into a turnaround we've done a large turnaround on an electrical contractor and what we did was we called around all the electrical contractors for sale and we asked them for a financial saying we're thinking of buying them and we were considering it if it was a great deal, we would, but we really wanted to see the P&L. Then we called all of the friends we knew that we could find that had electrical contractors, and we broke it down and said, okay, based on all of the people that we talked to

and all the P&Ls we looked at, what are they spending to acquire customers? What does their sales team cost them on average? And we found out that was between 9.2 and 11.6% of revenue. Then we went and said, okay, well, what does it cost to run the office, the operations, the admin team? And we found out that range from 9% to 10.2%. Then we went and said, okay, what does it cost to get sold? What does it cost to go out and put in electrical systems or lights or whatever it would be?

And we found out that on average, that was between 62% and 68%. So we knew that's where we should be. We knew what best in class was. We knew what worst in class was. And what we found was it was costing us 27% to acquire a customer. Big problem, right? So we are way spending too much in sales, which means our sales team wasn't productive. And now our sales team is 25% of what it used to be because those are the only people that were producing. We then looked at the operation

and said, okay, well, we're way outside of that nine to 10.2 level. we're at like 16 or 17 percent so we know that it's possible to get that percentage cost down inside that bucket because everybody else is doing it but us so then we would make the cuts and we would do the things that require to get it in once we've got those in we knew we were going to be make between 15 and 20 percent on that contractor and that business is now doing somewhere between 10 and 15 million in revenue so a really profitable company now but we had to get those that cost structure in line first it was really really crucial we found it by doing research we figured out where best and worst class

was and then we made the changes so that we were in line with everybody else. I like that because every industry, even though it's home service, is different. And I like to look at that and at least say, how the hell are they getting their whatever number down to that? And I've always been a little bit more aggressive on the marketing side. I like 10 to 12. And when you get it in a new city, maybe 15, I'd even go to 20 as an investment because certain people will pay a lot of money to buy a company. I figure if I could double down on marketing, hire my own crew, do my own recruiting, instead of paying this guy $2 million for his business, I could put that extra $2 million into marketing. And I feel like I could buy this business for $2

million with six good technicians, $2 million. I can build a group of 20 guys and do the marketing and build a brand. So there's, there's always this, you know, and I've talked to you about it. Do, do I, do I grow with acquisitions or do I grow organically? And it's, it's so tough in this world because we get so many opportunities to franchise, to license, to there's all these things out there. But what do you think? And this is there's not a right or wrong answer because it really depends on the home service business. But what's an aggressive amount of money percentage wise to take home? I think 22% is a nice, very strong number to be like, to work towards.

Some people say 30. Ken Goodrich with Gettle Air Conditioning said 30. I hear other people, Nextar with the eight, you know, they do HVAC plumbing and electrical. They say 15. So where do you think is a good sustainable average number? So I'm going to give an answer that's a cap on. I'm going to say it depends how much you're trying to grow. If you're still in rapid growth and you're taking home 2%, I consider that a super awesome success. We've got a company that we're investing in and purchasing out right now that we hope doesn't make any money and plows all its money back into growth for the next three years to get it to a mature place in the market. But a mature company, Tommy, I'm with you.

We've always said if that number starts with a two, we're really, really happy. If it's got a three, we kind of feel like we're probably not marketing as much and growing as much as we could. And anything under a two is still okay. But a 22%, 25, 28, that just feels super healthy as far as cash flow goes. That's always been our target. So I've been very fortunate to meet some really good lawyers and CPAs and been able to keep a lot of the money that normal people would pay to Uncle Sam. And I've been really strategic with my investments. And I call it paying it forward. Because I'm spending the money on vehicles and forklifts. And there's these new laws about accelerated depreciation.

Very cool things. Especially, it's going to be coming soon. You know, if Trump stays president, we don't know. But I guarantee you, there's going to be coming soon. You know, if Trump stays president, we don't know, but I guarantee you there's going to be a lot of stuff coming out to give entrepreneurs an accelerated benefit to investing back into their companies rather than divesting. So tell me a little bit about your strategy, because I think a lot of business owners, I guess I got to clarify the question. A lot of business owners, they start making money the first few years. They buy a second home.

They buy a big truck and a Ford Raptor. Then they go ahead and they buy their favorite motorcycle. They always get a Harley Davidson. And then they're flying around. Then they become real estate investors because they specialize in real estate now. And then I'm like, why don't you just go back to your core where you made the money, reinvest it, and be retired in 10 years. And then buy'm like, why don't you just go back to your core where you made the money, reinvest it, and be retired in 10 years? And then buy everything you want.

Because a lot of young entrepreneurs, young in the business, I mean, they say, I deserve this. And they don't have enough. You should have at least three months of bills in your bank account for your payroll and your overhead for rent and everything. So what's your take on that? Yeah, I think if you told my wife three months, she would laugh. She thinks two years is the appropriate number we need to have in savings to make sure we're good. But we took a very aggressive approach, maybe even reckless to grow in the business. We didn't take much money out. We busted our butts every second of every day. And at this point, our lifestyle very still very low compared to that we

don't buy the second home and all that kind of stuff even though we could so our perspective is it's not about what you make it's what you keep and so if we were to make a bunch of give it a ton for Sam because we weren't as strategic with the accountants and lawyers we didn't keep as much so we want to do some things with various investments in the company and outside the company to make sure we're maximizing depreciation you can buy a billboard and get 179 for depreciation on it and wipe out a big chunk of your income tax in one given year wait a minute hold on I gotta stop you explain to me this billboard thing so you got to get with your CPA because I'm

not a CPA I'm not a tax guy but if you put in play into a new billboard it is fully able to be 179 if you put it into service so you can write off that as a depreciation and now you get the triple benefit you get income from the billboard you get appreciation as it grows in value and you get the triple benefit you get income from the billboard you get Appreciation as it grows in value and you get the tax benefit of it right now So it's a you never I've never you know, there's out from media. There's big ones Never heard of anybody buying their own space and billboard. Is that something that you hear a lot about? have two friends who are big in the billboard business and they do a lot of independent stuff and they'll go out and they'll find locations where they can build billboards

or they'll acquire abandoned billboards that you see on the side of the road that are overgrown and don't have anything on them. And it is amazing tax tool for your personal income if you can figure out the appropriate way. So we've done a little bit of that kind of stuff. And it's been a really fun way for us to save the money that would be going to Uncle Sam that we can now reinvest back in our business for growth or put away for reserves for the next acquisition or target we do. I love that. I love that. So there's a movie I'm thinking of called, oh, it had Richard Gere and the girl was a redhead. Pretty woman, are you talking?

Dang it. And, you know, he was this guy that he'd go by failing companies. He'd almost do a hostile takeover and he'd fix them and sell them. And what do you look for in a company? Because I'm sure you look for things that you could fix, but there's also ones that you're like, man, they got a lot of bad debt. They've been breaking the law. They're not paying their tax. What are some of the things that you say, this is what we're going to be good at? Yeah.

So it's a really simple equation for us. Is the problem an internal problem or an external problem? So external would be from a retail perspective. Retail is getting crushed right now because of COVID. They can't solve that problem. They're getting crushed because of Amazon. That's a tough problem to have. If you're a yellow book salesperson and that's the business,

probably not going to invest in that or look to turn it around. Yeah, the demand is going the wrong way. But if it's an internal problem, and usually it's one of two things. One, somebody screwed up really bad. They committed fraud. They made an investment. They bought a business that was a horrible deal. They made one really large mistake. Or it's the wily entrepreneur who's never looked at his P&L and just said, revenue, revenue, revenue, revenue, and racked up debt, acquiring revenue, revenue, revenue, and doesn't make any money. Those two scenarios we're really good at. Those are fastballs right down the center of the plate, and we can knock them out of the park every time. Gettle, speaking of Ken Goodrich, Gettle got into some big trouble. They got into the attorney general doing some stuff,

and they got known as a little bit shady. So the first thing he did was went to the city, went to the attorney general, went to the mayors and just governor, and he said, if I take this over, here's my plan. He got so much done and rebuilt the reputation and bought it for a huge discount. But Ghetto was, they've been around since the 20s and they were a great name for a long time. So I think it's really smart to find people that are in trouble and say, it's a win-win because you're going to make money. You know, I get a lot of opportunities to buy companies and I don't like it when they have a commercial

division because I'm just going to shut that down. So I say, break that off and keep it. But that way it's not added into the EBITDA multiple. But I want to hear a few different strategies because I kind of want to buy them outright. But then some of them are like, listen, I've had people come to me and say, I'll give you my business. Just give me part of the revenue or part of the profit for the next 10 years. And I'm like, well, I got to go fix your crap. I got to dig this thing. I got to hire. You know, you got a website, you got some good stuff, you got clients coming in, you're making some money now. But with what I'm going to do, the juice isn't worth the squeeze for me to do what i have to do and pay you on top of it so what are some strategic different ways to

do of mergers or acquisitions well i'll tell you the most creative deal that we did that worked out really really well for us and if we want to talk more i can talk some other fun deal structures to use but we found a gentleman uh that had a maid service and he had done very well, but he wanted to exit and he wanted to focus on marketing and consulting and other stuff, but still wanted to have a hand in his business. And we were a window cleaning company in the same market. We said, we don't really know how this is going to work. If we buy you, I have no idea how to run a maid service, and I don't know if it'll make any money. This is way too big of a risk. And he proposed to us, why don't we do this? We'll split the profits 50-50 on this business for the next five years, and that'll be the payout. I'll work for a year and help transition everything, No salary, no payments, everything. But I'll split the profit with you 50-50.

You'll never lose a dollar then because you can only be accretive as far as cash flow goes. And then after that five years, I'm bought out, I'm done, I moved on. If we crush it, we're both going to win. And if we suck, we're both going to lose. And we did that and we're still going to lose. And we did that.

And we ended up buying Portion back. And now we've been long-term partners in two other businesses together. So we've decided we really like working in the sandbox. So splitting the profit 50-50 was really awesome because it put us on the same side of the table. What we've done in all of our deal structure is say, hey, you know what? This can't be unsustainable for me. And right now it's unsustainable for you. You don't want to do this anymore. I also don't want to pay a price where I can't get out of this. So let's get on the same side of the table and let's make a sustainable solution for both of us

where if I win, you win. And if you lose, I lose. Let's get on the same table and work that way. And it's been phenomenally good for us. Yeah, definitely. That's kind of how I do my payroll is I'm like, why do I get mad when this person gets a huge raise? I'm like, when my sales guys who are performance pay make a ton of money. I jumped for joy. And so I said, I'm not doing this right. And I remember this feeling. I was sitting down in my last office at my desk, and I said, I need to get excited when everybody makes a lot of money.

So I switched to performance pay, and that's basically the way you structure your deals, is if we win, we win. So I'm on performance pay. Believe it or not, if there's no money in the bank, I didn't make shit. So let's everybody be on the same field I am am and that way we can win together and celebrate together yeah what we found is a negotiation in this traditional world you say i want to pay as little bit as possible and they say i want you to pay as much as possible and then you fight

to this point where everyone's unhappy well let's just flip that and let's start in the middle and let's get in a position where we're both working so we're both happy and that's been so much better everything we do is performance pay now whether it's acquisitions technicians sales people even our office people have some incentive where they are winning if the company wins. Yeah, you know, and I think that there's certain roles where I don't cap certain roles because typically if you ever, you know, Mike, every place I've worked, the sales team usually has the most potential.

Sometimes you see CEOs making less money than the top sales guys. And I love the idea of kind of eating what you kill type thing and I don't have a problem with my guys making a quarter of a million dollars because it's all a derivative of their performance and production so it's so funny to see people that get so mad when their employees make money it's like like you made this much money I pay you too good and I'm like wait a minute they're awesome unless you i see a lot of people they get on a whiteboard and they don't do their their kpis and they make mistakes their performance

structure and it's really hard because you're going to lose your best employees because you give it to them it's like me giving you medicare and social security and saying oops got to take half of that back didn't realize we were gonna So that's what I was stressed to people. Get on performance, but really go lightly. What is your best tips to really come up with a strategic game plan to pay? Because you could always go up, but it's hard to go down. Yeah. So a couple of things. One, we want to pay value transferred for value received. So I'm going to transfer to the employee the value that they bring into the company. So if it's a salesperson, that's typically pretty easy. To your point, one of our sales guys is on pace to make four or

$500,000 this year in a company where the CEO makes 150 and maybe gets a $30,000 bonus. He's crushing it, but he's bringing in $5 million of sales. Don't really care what we pay him. In fact, I'm his biggest cheerleader. I hope he makes a million dollars a year. That would be amazing to me. So value transferred for value received. When you're taking it down to a technician

at a window cleaning company or a carpet cleaning company or a garage door, we have three criteria, quality, production, so the value they bring in and typically sales what's the up sales so they're bringing in more value to the company the company is giving us some upsell we'll give you some of that you're doing a great quality job so that we know this customer will repeat we're going to give you some compensation for that so we always want to look at what's creating the value and how much is that

worth to the company. And then we're willing to share that with our, our teammates so that they can make as much money as they possibly can. That's really important. I really liked the idea of just celebrating as a company and bringing it all together. Because I remember the days where my CSRs hated the technicians. They hated each other. But if you can make them both win where they go,

what if you guys got to work together and win together and made money when the technician makes more money, you make more money. And there's ways to structure stuff to make it so that everybody wins and you find this harmony, this communication that we call the triangle of communication because you got the dispatcher, the CSR, and the technician. And you got to let them communicate and open it all up. I was on a forum two days ago about brand and building a brand. And one of the things I've realized over the last few weeks, I've been talking to a lot of advertising agencies. For some reason,

I've just networked and they all want to talk to me and they're just not even to work with me, to just kind of pick my brain. And one of the things I've noticed is there's really two types of leads. There's those ones that literally come to you because of your brand. It's literally like top of mind awareness. It's, they came out and they searched A1 garage door service. And there's ones that look garage door repair. And those ones are finding me at the top. Maybe they see my name and recognize it and click on it. But how important is a brand? Because I, here's what I told them. I said, a brand is important, but you don't need to have a brand to make a lot of money. Look at Service Magic. Now they're home advisor. They created a brand. But you can get on Amazon today with a new product. If you

market it right without a brand, it can still do amazing things. There's just not a lot of value there. But talk to me about a brand and talk to me about what your thoughts are to build a brand. Yeah. So we've paid a lot of money to people to what your thoughts are to build a brand. Yeah, so we've paid a lot of money to people to build brands. It's definitely not the thing that I could say is my fastball, but what we think about when it comes to brands is that we're going to be in these businesses for the next 50 or 100 years. And the brand is really your reputation. And you can build that up. And every decision you should make is about that reputation for the long term should you give that customer the extra value on that repair because you screwed up the first

time should you do this should you do that what should your brand stand for the way that i look at it is if you're going to build and you're thinking i have 50 years to build this brand the short-term things don't matter if you think I've got to build this brand in the next 50 days, it's going to be really hard to have a really strong brand. So in the short term, we're marketing like crazy. We're going to do everything we can to get those customers that are searching garage door repair. In the long term, we want the A1 garage door brand to be like Kleenex or like you know, like Zoom now. Nobody says I'm going to go Skype anymore. They always say I'm going to go Zoom, right? It's synonymous with video conference. That's what we want in the long run. In the short run, we're going to market the

heck out of everything so that we're continuing to grow. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the biggest misconception that I think people miss is they believe that they can either brand or do marketing. And I say like direct response or not. And I think that there's some truth that maybe a billboard is not going to make your phone ring off the hook. But what it does is it gets conversion rates higher on Google. I mean, but some people put everything they do

on the side of their van. Some people put a billboard with a phone number and a website, like, yeah, I'm gonna really try to grab that stuff. And then some people, you're like, you look at it, you're like, what do they even do? I think that's a mistake. And some of it's for vanity.

I'll tell you this, because they get 10 phone calls the first time they're on the radio and they go, it must be working because people are calling me and you walk up and you're hey you're the bigger big radio guy hey look I've been seeing you on tv and I'm like are you making money I mean when you walk into these businesses let's just say this you've done a lot of coaching there's probably the top three things that you see and you hear all the time. And one of them, I'll tell you, I'll just tell you two of them that are just boom right there. Number one is I can't get out of the field. It's like I'm struggling. And then the second one is I can't

find good people. So I can't get out of the field because if I don't do it, it doesn't get done right. And then number three is you talk to these people and you're like, why did you get into business? You know, nothing about marketing. You're nothing about culture. You know, nothing about hiring. You know, nothing about inventory. You don't even know what a key performance indicator is. That's how I got into it. So I can't complain, but it's a tough road when you don't know anything about business because we all went in saying, I'm a good tech. This guy's making all the money. I can be the technician to make money.

So tell me your perception and just your experience in that. Yeah, I would agree with everything you said. You see that over and over again. I can't get out of the field. I can't find good people. There's no good workers out there. And I got into business. I have no idea. The people that have been most successful that I've been around share two really simple qualities. One, they're extremely humble. And two, they don't make definitive statements like there's no good people out there.

So they don't pigeon. They say, where are all the good people? And I can't get out of the field, but Tommy got out of the field. Why don't I call Tommy and ask Tommy how he did it? I can't tell you how many whiskeys and lunches and breakfasts I bought just to ask people, how did you do this? And then just stole it and did exactly what they did. And it worked.

So in all of the coaching that we've done, in the all the coaching that we've done in the turnarounds that we've done, the number one problem is just a pride or an inability to ask the questions on what to do. Because like you said, the vanity, they want to be the big radio guy. They want to be this. But if they ask the questions and they have humility and to say, Hey, tell me what to do and I'll do it. Those are the people that I find that have really been successful at AGS and have been really successful in the turnarounds that we've done. If they say, yeah, you know what,

but I really need an 18,000 square foot warehouse to house my two trucks because it makes me feel good, it's not really gonna be a situation where they make money. If they say, well, how did you do that? Here's one of my favorite examples, Tommy. We had a business where we were taking equipment back and forth at a huge warehouse. We had someone whose job was literally taking the materials to the jobs and dropping it off and then driving back and forth all day. So we were spending $140,000 for the warehouse, the truck, and the guy to get this stuff out. And I kept saying, man, I don't know how to do this.

And everyone said, you can't do it any other way. There's no other way. This is the only other way. You're going to spend this $140,000 forever. And I took a guy out for dinner, bought him his favorite bottle of rum. And I said, how are you guys doing this at your company? And he said, we're buying Connex boxes, construction storage boxes. We're putting it in the driveway of the location and

we're having our suppliers deliver it there for free, giving them the code. They put it in and they lock it back up. Costs 150 bucks a month. So I cut $140,000 expense because I bought somebody a bottle of rum, got him a little drunk and asked him how he was doing it and had the humility to say, there's a better way to get this done. You know, there's a good book. It's called Ask. And I'm reading this book and it's called Objections.

And the first two chapters and the whole book really is asking. And, you know, I feel like we don't ask enough. We don't ask our customers. We don't ask our internal customers. We've just got to pay attention and ask these questions. And I'll tell you what, I got a guy, one of my best friends working for me at my wrap shop. And he goes, man, your handyman's good, but he doesn't know everything we talked about. He didn't finish it. And I said, show me where the bid was. Show me the expectations. Show me how you delegated. Show me where he signed off. What dates did he give you? He goes, no,

we talked about it. I go, really? Show me the emails. I don't know. Okay, so this is your fault. Like, where's the signature? How do I know they understand? Tell me where their initials are. And so when he does wraps, I'm like this. First question I would ask is, let me ask you, what are you trying to do with this? Are you going out to the sand dunes, have a good time with your buddies? Is this your dad's favorite car before he died? He left it for you and you want to just cherish it and wrap it for something? What is your intention with this? Is it going to be parked in the sun? And then do you have a ballpark of what you plan on spending? And right then and there, you could tell a lot. I typically don't go there with garage doors. That's one of the things I'll say at the end, but what is your

take on that as far as just asking for the sale and asking the right questions to the clients? Because it's not a one-size-fits-all in any business. Yeah. One of the ways the strategic coach says that, Tommy, that I really like is what has to be true when this is done. So what does success look like? What has to be true is that you can drive it through the sand dunes and the wraps stay on. That's really important to that person is what has to be true when this is done that I have to be able to get customers from it that's a different question so if you can ask what a success look like or what has to be true when this is done I think

that that's a really important question and the example I was giving what has to be true I have to spend less than 140 thousand dollars to move stuff the locations because that's stupid so that was what I was getting at. Your buddy, if he asks what has to be true, he could probably get everything that he needs to get done. I tend to build things in people's heads. I want to create a thought without them even knowing it. Let me ask you a question, Mike. How often do you use your garage door? Every single day. Is it just you and your wife it is and what would you say you guys use it a day probably a couple times a day so wait so you're

pretty much using this like your front door yeah pretty much so you're using it on a lot of cycles first of all secondly do you work in your garage at all? I do. Do you have a fridge or a freezer out there? We do not. So one of the things I'll tell you about is energy conservation. So now I'm going to start talking to you and I'm going to say, if you don't have a fridge, we might not need this.

But if you're working out there, you want it to be cool in the summer and a little bit warmer in the winter. We're going to save you energy. I try to find out if you like to go green or not. When I'm walking through your house, I look to see your thermostat. If it's one that connects to your phone, I know you'll be interested in our opener. If you're a type of go green, you've got a big blue trash can next to the other one. You care about energy savings. So these are all things that I could pretty much.

You want your door to be safe, don't you, Mike? Absolutely. Most important. Yeah. So it's the largest moving object on your home. And by the way, it's 40% of your curb appeal. That's what I'm going to tell your wife. It's going to make the house look brand new when I do this.

But most importantly, did you know that the garage door, this is from Remodel Magazine, it's the only thing on your home, more than your kitchen, more than your bathrooms, that gives 102% ROI. It pays you more to replace your door. And I love that. And you can tell that I got so passionate about this because who would have thought garage doors? I mean, I just love this business business but I've kind of been like just ask questions and say oh really tell me more about that how did that make you feel like oh I couldn't get out this morning at an important you know how did that make you feel you know what I called this other company those SOBs oh man now it's like it's fun but exactly you know what's your intention what are your goals here

because if you start selling this really nice store and you tell them hey i do financing and look at this they go dude i'm selling this house next week what are you trying to do so if you don't ask the right questions you're never going to get to the right what's right for that client yeah first of all i feel like i got a new garage door now because i'm a ready to return guy and 102 sounds really good. The second thing to your point, when COVID hit, one of the strategies we use that was phenomenal for us is our salespeople call all of their best relationships, their best prospects, their best people, and not ask for the sale we had them ask

hey this is in the commercial world we said hey what opportunities are you trying to capture right now during this what strengths are you trying to maximize what are you most excited about in the future and we engage them in a future that wasn't about a virus or doom and gloom or covid or anything we engage them in a future that they were excited about, that they were maximizing opportunities, that they were looking at their strengths. And then we said, hey, you know what? At every one of those calls, I want you to find one thing that you can send them in the mail that's a gift, whether it's a book on leadership or it's a gift card to their local restaurant that they're so excited to get back open because it was closed.

Send them one gift at the end of that. Ask those questions, send a gift. We had our record sales quarter during COVID by 150% without asking for the sale once. We just asked questions around what they wanted in the future and what they were trying to accomplish. And we sold, I think it was $5.7 million. You know, I was going to talk to you about COVID because some people think it's a fluke. I personally think there's winners that came out of this and losers. And I told you before we got on the call, I've never been busier.

I can't hire fast enough. And I hate being the guy that I coach not to. Don't hire when you don't need them. Because I've always got 20 guys in my training center. But I'm going, holy cow. Like, we doubled down in marketing. And, man, it was like we didn't know if we were going to be working the next day, if they were going to shut us down.

I didn't know there was going to be tanks going down the street, saying martial law. But we took a calculated risk, and I got to tell you, it changed the destination of where our company is going. We pulled together. I'm doing a case study right now. It's going to be over 50 pages. Right now it's at about 45.

It's called the rise of A1, COVID-19. And it's not about good or bad or what COVID did. It's about what we did and what we can control as a business. And I'll tell you what, I was aggressive before, but now I just dump gasoline on everything I'm doing. I mean, it's like, holy cow, on my board right there, I've got managers, more managers, project managers, all these people I'm hiring for right now, because I said, if I'm going to grow like I want, I need the infrastructure. You don't want the wheels to fall off. And the big thing that I've noticed is we pulled it.

Leadership first pay I cut when I found out that we're like, we might have to let people go. You know, we made some tough decisions as I said, guys, I'm cutting my pay to zero. I've got savings. I don't even take any owner distributions. I never have. I get my salary, which is about 120 grand a year. I reinvest all of it. And I have a pretty good lifestyle. I've got multiple streams of income. I'm not bragging, but it's kind of nice because I could use all the money that most companies are pulling out. And I'm just dumping it. So I really did. I cut my pay. I cut it to zero. Adam said, I'm cutting my pay too.

I'm not going to take any of my bonuses. So he's got a big family. He's got some big obligations. He stepped up. A couple of technicians called me. They said, I want you to bump my pay for performance down a big notch. And I said, hey guys, that is unbelievable that you'd be doing that, but you guys don't need to do that right now. We're just, we're being precautionary. We cut a little bit of fat,

but the leadership, I communicated all the time on a daily email to the entire staff, let them know what was going on. We got a lot of video calls, a lot of them. And I said, guys, I'm not worried because I know one thing we're going to prevail we are going to there's one thing i know for sure we are going to come together we're going to work our asses off we will go i'll go knock on doors if i have to we are not going to go under even if i got to get back in the field and i that never really crossed my mind we had three days that i'm like whoa we're taking a pretty good hit. And then all of a sudden, it was like a rocket ship. So I just want to hear, there's a lot to do with leadership here.

There's a lot to do with culture. And I think it takes time to build that. And I want to hear your take on that because I do believe leaders eat last. We did a lot of the same stuff, Tommy. I mean, a lot of our CEOs, our business cut pay. We definitely didn't take any owner distributions. We didn't do any of that. And we upped our communication by a factor of as much as we possibly could. And the communication that we kept saying is, we got your back always. So to everybody, we got your back. We will be

there for you. We're going to do something. We're also going to lead through this. We're not going to sit back. We're not going to crawl under a rock. We're going to lead. We're going to be aggressive. This is the biggest opportunity that will come potentially in the next 10 or 15 years our way to be aggressive in this moment. And if we're wrong and this doesn't work out, we're going to look back and say we did everything we could, and the chips fell where they may. We're going to say we did everything we could. So every single day, the message was do everything you can to make today successful. And if it doesn't work, so what? Then what are you going to say? Well, I wish I would have done harder. No, I did it

as hard as I could. So we did it as hard as we could, as fast as we could, as quick as we could, all the way through. And our businesses, I couldn't be more proud of the way that people led through it and took care of people along the way. When I was talking to Gino Wickman the other day on Facebook Live, and we did a podcast, one of his five rules of an entrepreneur is you got to be a risk taker. You've got to understand how to take risks and calculated risks. But people used to ask, I'm pretty proud of this and I laugh at it is they tell my stepdad, they go, dude, what's up with your stepson, man? This guy is growing pretty fast. And what's his secret? He goes, he's got balls, man. He goes, he spends money.

He goes, the kid's got balls. I remember when I was in my mid-20s, when he heard I was in six figures a month advertising, he goes, what? Are you crazy? And I go, there's an ROI and I'm tracking it. And I know everything. And people go, man, you're messing with big bucks.

I mean, my payroll is half a million a month and it's going up. It's above that now. So leadership's a really, really big deal. And I feel like there's very, very few real leaders in business these days. I love the book from good to great or built to last by Jim Collins. And it really explains to be a better leader is to leave the business in a better spot than when you had it it's saying fill the gaps fill the bottlenecks tell me what makes a great leader and how to develop yourself as a leader well I

don't know that there's one answer but I will confirm what you're saying and say that it has got to be one of the most important things in business and there's very very few when we do any deal we say do we have a leader do we have the capital and do we have the business model and the number one most important thing is the leader because you can figure out the business model you can figure out the money but if you don't got the guy to execute man that's really hard as far as development we pay a lot of money for our guys to be in different coaching programs and development programs.

We connect them with your podcast and a lot of different podcasts and books and things like that. From a leadership standpoint, there's so many resources. From an entrepreneurship standpoint, the thing that I always say is your goal is to take a resource from a lower level of productivity to a higher level that's it if it's money how do you make it more productive if it's people how do you make it more productive if it's technology how do you make it more productive and the people at the top of our business that is what I want them to focus on there's a lot of people who get

caught up and trying to do lots of funny transactions and complexity we try to stay away from that there's a lot of people who caught up in trying to do lots of funny transactions and complexity. We try to stay away from that. There's a lot of people who are just trying to build their egos. We try to stay away from that. The leaders we want are focused on increasing the productivity of the things that they are leading and stewarding, whether that's people, money or the business they're leading. You know,

I've got my core values, my mission vision. I understand our brand identity i don't try to replicate anybody else because i used to try to figure out what other people were doing and kind of sway and now i'm like we are the leader we're at the top of the mountain we are the one that everybody else spends time focusing on and i always say if you spend half the time focused on your own business as much as you do mine, you'd be successful. But I was going to tell you, ultimately, the real deal is to create a brand and only a leader, the visionary, right? There's integrators that make things happen. And you've got a visionary.

I'm so far on that visionary side of things. And what I wanted to tell you is I'm getting into this thing. I just started thinking about it. We did a blood drive. And I got to tell you, the calls I got, the way it made my employees feel, it was the best feeling I probably ever felt of they give back to the community and just the phone calls and the emails and just, it made me feel good. Like we're giving. And now I'm obsessed. It's contagious. i'm i'm like how do we get involved with every single charity i'm contacting 25 of my vendors i'm building out a massive a1 gives back a1 cares we're getting involved with schools churches we're going to do this massive thing about ronald mcdonald But look, here's what's so funny.

I talked to the number one guy in the world at SEO. He's helping us out. And he goes, Tommy, when you do that, I know this is not your intentions, but your website will automatically rank number one. Your Google videos and your YouTube videos will automatically pop up to the top. People will call you out of the woodwork. And that's the byproduct of being a good Samaritan. And that's what they say is it's a boomerang. It comes back tenfold. And I love your take on giving to that stuff. But I'm like, do you know how many calls we booked after we did that blood drive? But the nice thing is all of our employees showed up and they were all the ones sitting there. We filled up before we're giving out $20 gift cards to Amazon. My employees got them too, but I'm like,

you know, we could give the wounded warriors. We've done that. We gave up to an old lady that the last guy ripped her off. I'm just like, what else can we give? And it's just a good feeling because all of a sudden you're involved in the community and the word of mouth just starts. I don't want to rely a hundred percent on Google Google or just one relationship like a big one of our clients. I want to just, this is the one thing I think that will differentiate us. And here's what I think is going to happen. And this is my next thing I wanted to talk to you about. Is I want people lined up to work for us.

I want them to say, man, I want to work for someone like that that's changing. And I told everybody that's going to be involved in this, our employees come first. I want to pick one person every quarter and buy them a set of tires because they're a single mom or whatever that looks like. I want to make sure that everybody's got somewhere to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And every kid's got presents. And every kid's got an Easter basket. So it starts with us internally.

But recruiting is such a big thing now. And I mean, me and you have talked about it. People are making more money in an unemployment right now. I just wanted to share that because I want to hear some of this. I can't explain it. It's the first time I've talked about it. But first of all, your take on that and just what your take is as far as what you've seen, what you've done. And then how do we become better at recruiting? How do we get a line out the door that people lining up to come work for us? Yeah. So on the generosity thing, kudos to you and your team. I mean, that's pretty, pretty awesome. And it's super exciting.

We've always tried to do various things along that lines. My family has always given 10% of our income away or more every single year. Some people, my wife and I were married. And that is the best check to write every single quarter. My favorite checks are the charity checks and the bonus checks. Those are my favorite checks to write by far. So I'm with you. And I think it's really awesome. As far as good people, I think that this requires a lot of creativity. And I get so frustrated when people say there's no good people out there. And I watched one of our guys in Minneapolis. We were struggling to get people when the $600 a week thing came out.

And he said, well, here's the solution. I'm going to go get college kids because they're probably not going to go back in the fall anyway. So I'm going to go get a bunch of really good college athletes to come work for us. And he did. He hired 12 people in like two weeks because they were all friends and they wanted to work together. So now we have this college crew that can't get unemployment, who's not affected by that, and they're crushing it. We've been flying people into our electric contractor from outside the state and having them do work because we found people that were in areas where they couldn't work because they were shut down. We flew them out to Minnesota and had them work there.

So we are super creative. And what we've said is it's our job to find the people. That's our job. If I was not an entrepreneur and someone was paying and said, you had to get five people, And if you don't, I'm going to shoot your family. I'm going to get those five people, no matter what. So there's a way to do it. It's just how committed are you to it? If your family's going to get shot, you're going to find those people. Yeah, we're going to keep going along like it is. Well, then maybe there's a little bit more commitment and a little more creativity you can put behind it. We advertise like like crazy we do all sorts of crazy stuff but we absolutely will

not take the the answer of well you know what there's just no good people out there okay you know it's it's interesting because i was talking to another buddy last night and I said I really want to get high schools and colleges involved and I've been asked to speak at universities and I'm like you know if I went in and just said I was that guy mowing lawns I was a dishwasher I did get a master's degree in now look at me I'm in the home service space back to where and it's a great industry to be in here's my book I'm giving you guys all a free copy. Let's talk about my Facebook group. But more importantly, if you know somebody that wants an awesome place to work, so give them the advice, talk to them about savings and credit scores and

the mistakes that I made. I got my credit score down to like 600 because I paid for school with a credit card. Couldn't make the payment, screwed up my credit score, the things that no one talks about. So you go in and you say, listen, I'm here to give. I got a copy for all 300 students. And at the end, I say, if you know anybody, a friend, a brother, a cousin that wants an amazing career, send them my way. Go to workfora1.com. And let me tell you, let me just show you a video clip of what we do i got i just bought a limo bus for my employees to take them out we are going to partay i'm gonna have 50 guys coming in a month to train my training centers over there and i said i told travis

our lead trainer i said two days out of the month i want them installing doors for the mothers that can't afford it or domestic violence. I want to be involved with feeding the homeless. And when these guys come in, they're going to be involved from day one, day one with giving back to charity and giving. And it's going to be this giving machine. And I'm just so excited. I'm like, I don't know. I've never been more excited to give in my life. And it's just, I guess it's because I've been fortunate enough that the company's doing well and it's an abundance right now.

If I couldn't make payroll and I understand, listen, the people listening right now are going, dude, uh, F you. Sorry. We're not in the boat. You are. Listen, I've been in that boat too, where I'm so far in debt and this didn't even, this didn't cross my mind. You can't go to there when you're barely making your bills. I had to pay one day for Christmas bonuses. There wasn't a lot of money. I had to cash in my credit card points, go into my savings account, borrow money for my retirement.

And I'm like, man, and I'm still in credit card debt. So I'm fortunate, but don't think I've not been where a lot of the listeners are. But you said something really cool. You said we hired young athletes. And if you look at this on my mouse, there's a second one there. The one is aspire to be number one. And I'll tell you what, when you hire athletes, they're competitive. They want to win. They love winning. They love gloating. The opportunity to win is aspire to be number one. And that's why I love athletes. I think you guys, what you did there was genius because you went to somewhere that wasn't going to be unemployed and you went to athletes. So you

guys give that guy props because I think that's massive. What has your take been on what makes these guys so successful, these employees? Well, I think from our standpoint, the leaders and the CEOs that have done really well, what has made them, if I could sum it in one word, it's obsession. They obsess about the business. They obsess about the people. They obsess about giving. They obsess about getting results. They obsess about productivity. There's an obsession to it. And not that they don't go out and have fun or they don't focus on their family, but when it comes to business, they're obsessive about it. There is no way that they're going to let somebody say, you can't do this, or there's no good people out there. You can't make Yelp work. Well, there's some way to figure it out. Somebody is doing it. So the number

one thing that we found is that obsession. And we found athletes in general are obsessed with being the best or winning and we like that on our team to want people to be as obsessed as possible when they're at work and then go home do their thing and then come back and be obsessed again the next one you know I do this thing called the PI it's it's a predictive index and you really learn a lot and then they take this cognitive test too and it really shows you how quick they can learn and i really wish you could tell somebody there's certain people that i've worked around that'll work all night they live to work some people live to work some people work to live i wish i could identify the people that live

live to work because they get so much done in a day. They know timelines and they understand commitment and accountability. And then you get the ones that don't. And the ones that don't, I talk to people, I'm like, those people just need to be managed. They need to be spoon fed. They need to be led. Then there's these people that are self-reliant. And I look at it like this. Some people need to be in an institutional classroom setting Some of them can take internet school Because they're just committed They're accountable

And there's not what right or wrong I just like the people that can run on their own I said yesterday I said I want somebody I can pass a baton to And then run to my staff And someone said Can they work from their house across the country I said absolutely

And the gal goes I said, absolutely. And the gal goes, I got a couple people I want to apply for the job. I said, fine. Yes, please. Referrals are better than anybody, but just know this. I'm going to put double the scrutiny on this person. And I'm going to be looking at you. When they win, I'm going to high five you. I'm going to take you out to a steak dinner. We're going to do a cheer. Shoot, I'll even do tequila with you. But if we lose, oh, man, you are going to – I'm not going to fire you, but it's going to be a very bad thing. Don't just tell me about your family member that needs a job. Find somebody that fits our culture that's going to come in here and kick butt.

And I scared some of them, and they're like, well, let me talk to them. Let me see. Can you give me the job description? So what is your take on referrals from employees i'd love to hear that always been the best for us i mean it's 100 always been the best and the live to work i mean the people that we have that are a players they hang out with other a players and they bring them in and we are so thankful and awesome about that but we say the same thing please don't bring us your cousin who just got out of you know his uh third marriage and he's emotionally distressed and just needs a job

nothing wrong with that but it's if he's emotionally don't bring him here like we want the person who says you know i want to work there because I'm going to crush it. I'm going to be amazing and awesome. And I'm going to just get up every day and produce. That's the people we want, not the person who's on this fifth job in the last week. That's a little bit of a problem. And so we've always, always focused on employee referrals for other employees and bring them in on

the team. But we've also always use the language that please bring us the best people, not just the people that are looking for a job. You know, and I used to do this. I used to put a mirror under your nose. And if there was fog, you'd get hired because hiring because I was so desperate. And now I say people have heard on the podcast to say, always be recruiting, man. Always. Even if you're downsizing, if a great person comes along, they could be the difference of your business surviving or not. I mean, my CFO now, he gave me accurate reports. And man, when I was able to make good decisions based on data and the reports, I mean, it was like, bing, bang, boom. All of a sudden we went from losing hundreds of thousand dollars to boom, bringing in 700 profit in a month

because I was like, shut this down, open this, double down on this, do this. And it's like that one person made the biggest difference that I've ever seen in my company. And it's something that I wasn't good at. I've learned to get better at it. You know, we'll start wrapping up here, but I wanted to know, I think relationships are probably the one thing that gets you through a bad time. I feel like the relationship with my clients, other business owners, we built relationships and people try to help us out. What kind of tips can you share with the listeners about building relationships with customers and

clients yeah so to your point about getting us through tough times i think one of the things that i've been extremely fortunate to be is to be around a lot of other business owners and that has been so good my favorite thing in the world to do is to have dinner and drinks with four to five other entrepreneurs who are crushing it and moving the needle. It is so energizing. I usually go to bed on a normal day at nine o'clock. If I'm with guys, I can stay up all night and just drink bourbon and smoke cigars and talk shop. It is so impactful. So from a relationship with other business owners, I regularly am trying to set up coffees and lunches and dinners. I joined a private cigar bar, not because I smoke cigars.

I hardly ever do because I wanted to meet the doers and the movers and the shakers who could write that check and be in that club that I could hang out with and learn more from them. So I really believe in investing in relationship. We sent a lot of handwritten thank you cards. We send a lot of gifts. I've probably bought more bottles of whiskey than I care to admit for people and other things like that. As far as clients go, we've always said, if we show up, do what we say we're going to do. We treat them with respect. We honor their property. We do all the little things. The relationship's going to be there. Our repeat rate is through the roof. So we really focus on just doing all of the little things right. But to your original point about being around other business owners to help us get us through this, man, that was so important through COVID. We were just talking

about how are you leading through this? It was never a, what are you going to do if you have to shut down? It was, what are we going to do next? What's awesome? Where's the opportunity? Where's the money flowing? Where's the public money going? What's the PPP thing? It was so energizing to be around a group of great guys and gals who own businesses. There's a good book, if you haven't read it, it's called Blue Fishing by Steve Sims. And he talks about giving people just top of mind awareness. Hey, so he talks about he's in like Italy and he goes to this place and it's like this awesome drink and the guy says it's got the recipe with a napkin so Steve Sims got like a hundred huge clients he writes wish you could be here to enjoy

this drink with me if you're ever in Italy check this place out make this drink and I miss you buddy and he steps in an envelope and he tells the guy, give me 200 of these for whatever. I'm going to send these out to my clients. The guy said, fine. Yeah, they'll come visit. But that top of mind, it's just the small things in life. And Blue Fishing is an amazing book. And that gets me to my next question. If there are three books that you'd recommend, look, I always tell people it could be fiction, could be Dr. Seuss, it could be the Bible, but something that really inspired you, something that really changed your mentality. And there's so many out there. You know, I'm a book

reader, but if you got three, what are the three that you'd recommend? So the one that's used in the Bible already, the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes have been extremely important to me. Ecclesiastes is to break my emotional connection to my business and realize that at the end of the day, it's people that matter, that the business isn't as important as the people. And Proverbs is just all the good wisdom. The other ones that jump out to me are Boundaries for Leaders from Henry Cloud. It talks about setting up boundaries with your employees and how to deal with that guy, if you've ever had

that guy. Well, I got this guy who's doing this thing. It's really, really good. Good to Great is on my list as the top. And my favorite book of all time, which most people won't read because it's really, really long, is called Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. And it's about Abraham Lincoln's presidency and how he took all the people who went against him and put him on his team to lead the nation. So all the people who wanted the presidency and didn't like him and who were his rivals, he convinced them to be on his team to lead through the Civil War. And it's one of the reasons why they did such great things. I just got goosebumps. I love it. So how do people get a hold of you, Mike? Someone wants

to reach out, ask you some questions, get to know you more. What's the best way? Probably the best way is to go to our website, redhookinvestments.com and fill out the contact form right there I'm not on social media in a big way or on any of those platforms so that's way for me I'm still old-fashioned and pick up the phone and give people a call so I someone wants to reach out if they've got a turnaround or a situation they'd love to discuss having to discuss with them just go to the website and fill out a contact request and we'll get all the of you awesome and then i'm going to leave the the floor to you to kind of give one gold nugget one last thought maybe one thing to take action wow you put me on the spot so the one thing

that i would say from an entrepreneur standpoint knowing who your audience is, is I would consider for the next 90 days, thinking about the things that you need to eliminate, delegate, and do more of. Make a piece of paper and write down three categories. I need to eliminate doing this. I need to delegate it. I need to do more of it. Anything that frustrates or annoy you, immediately put that in the eliminate category. If it's walking your dog, put it in the eliminate category. Get rid of all of the things that frustrate you and annoy you. And then delegate the stuff that you feel is just okay. So it's okay that I check my email. It doesn't annoy me, but really does anybody pay me to check my email? No. So I'm going to hire somebody. I'm going to hire somebody. I'm

going to delegate that. And then focus on the things that you do more of, the things that just motivate you to no end. For you, it might be the marketing levers or teaching the salespeople or hiring that next day player. What are the things that are super exciting to you? For me, it's being around other entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurial investments and talking about deals and things like that. So take a piece of paper and over the next 90 days, eliminate the things that are annoying to you and frustrating for you to do. Delegate the things that are just okay and do more of the things that are truly fascinating and motivating. And in 90 days, you're going to wake up a whole new person and you're going to be happier. You're going to

be more productive and your team's going to go to a whole new person and you're going to be happier. You're going to be more productive and your team's going to go to a home event. You're going to live your best life, right? There you go. I think that's what I do. People say, how do you do it? Do you sleep? And I say, yes, I sleep all the time. It's not even hard. I say, this is too much fun. If I was driving myself crazy and burning the candle on both ends, I'd say, I don't want to do this. But I'm like, I'm just getting started. I just bought that book, The Team of Rivals. It was 65 bucks on Audible, man. It's a long book. It's like 750 pages, but she's a great writer and I think you'll enjoy it. But it is fascinating to think of people who literally wanted you to fail and you convince

them to be on your team, to undertake one of the hardest things that was ever done. I'll end with this, but you just made me think of what's in it for them. If you start changing your mentality and say, what's in it for me? If you can put yourself in their shoes, how do they win? How do they start being the disciple of yours? How do they spread the good word? And if you tend to really think like that, if you could really change your paradigm and say, people say, you know, this guy, he's an asshole, and I say, well, what are you doing for him? And have you ever looked into the mirror at yourself?

So I can't wait to read it. I got, man, I can't even keep up because I get guys like you that are really smart giving me books, and then I do this all the time, and people go, what do you get the time to read? I'm like, well, now that I'm not flying as much, it's really hard. But I just got to commit to 20 minutes a day. So anyways, Mike, I really, really,

really appreciate you coming on. I've got, we're going to have to do it again. I can't wait to see you face to face and go over some stuff, but appreciate everything. Absolutely, Tommy. It's been my pleasure. All right, buddy. Thank you. Hey, guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and

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

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