The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A with Tommy - Building a System that Attracts and Rewards Great Employees

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire and the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $100 million-plus home service business with over 400 employees in 16 states. Through HomeServiceMillionaire.com and the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy shares his experience and insights to help fellow entrepreneurs scale their businesses. In this special episode of the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy answered some of our listeners’ most pressing questions about answers your biggest questions about the Vertical Lift Garage Door event, running a one-man operation, CSR performance pay, building a recruiting system, and more...

See, if you're truly a leader, your plan should be the business should run better when you're gone. And I love that. And to brag that you are the only one that can do this stuff, that makes you a poor leader, a poor trainer, a poor human being, in my opinion. If you say everything evolves around me, then shame on you until you can train somebody to be better and be such a good leader that you're taking the time. That's like saying, hey, my kids will never be as good as me at math. I'm not even going to teach them. They're idiots. Well, that's your employees. Why would you treat them any different than you would treat a family member or a child of yours?

Teach them to be better than you. Make them better, stronger, faster. If you can't do that, then you're a failure as a leader. 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. I'm going to dig right in. We're working on some cool stuff and it is freaking awesome. Never been more excited about the business than now. Just seems like recruiting is getting dialed in. It seems like the finances is just killing it. It seems like our profit through the roof

on a new vendor that's saving us lots and lots of money on garage door parts. Putting a group together, literally the biggest group that you guys are ever going lots of money on garage door parts. Putting a group together. Literally the biggest group that you guys are ever going to see in the garage door niche. It's going to be everything. November 4th, 5th, and 6th. I haven't sent out invitations. I'm going to be in Door & Access magazine. I'm going to be in garage door news.

We've rented the facility. We're going to do it. We're going to be doing shop tours. This thing's going to be massive. I've already negotiated a deal with Service Titan. We're signing that tomorrow. Just some grassroots.ris. We're negotiating everything from how you get your equipment.

For grassroots companies only, how you get your equipment from the tools with Milwaukee, negotiating how you get your tablets, how you don't get a contract when you buy your tablets. And Verizon, if you're on Sprint, if you're on AT&T, you got that all figured out, no contracts. We got the trucks, the workman's comp, the insurance. There are so many things. We've got how you're going to run your QuickBooks, how to make profit, how to train your guys, how to recruit people. It's going to be the be the baddest thing that's ever happened to an industry i think and it's really cool because it's all kind of happening together right now and taking shape what else is going on let me see here so figured out a way to

rank gmb's way better um actually legally with citation sites and actually make them rise at the top that's going to be killer. I'm going to be going out to Florida myself to help launch Orlando. And I'm going to be pulling in a lot of leverage. I'm going to be pulling in some of my top technicians to get out there and start kicking some ass. I think Florida, Texas, SoCal, we're really understanding the markets that are going to make the most money that we're not even in yet. It's crazy. Oh, I'm working on this platform that's going to send out three videos per day to every technician. One was going to be about motivation. One's going to be about recruiting. One's going to be sell with financing. My buddy Darius Livers said, never call it financing, call it promotions.

See if people qualify for the promotion. It's killer. Just things are starting to take place that I just can't explain how excited I am. So let's go through. Let me see here. Can you send me an invite to the event? It just says Facebook user, but hopefully all you guys are going to come that are anything to do with garage doors. We're really trying to get companies with five technicians or more because otherwise it's really tough to get them off service Titan. We're building some really, really cool shit, though. Everything from A to Z.

Lead gen is through the roof. I mean, things are just killing it. So Michael had a question. Is running a one-man operation, running three to four service calls a day within a 10-mile radius from home with the goal of making a thousand dollars a day sound feasible i'm kind of missing the context here is running a one-man operation running three to four service calls a day with a 10 mile radius from home with the goal of making a thousand dollars sound feasible so i'm guessing you're talking about garage doors you're talking about plumbing or hr you should be making a hell of a lot more money. I was the guy running jobs myself. And I made a lot more than a thousand

dollars a day. You're running your own calls. In 2010, I could easily bring home a shitty day for me was 2,500, but I was a marketing machine. On every call, I had a computer that swang over kind of like a cop. I used to post ads on Craigslist, upload videos that I just took onto YouTube. I mean, literally you can still find some of the videos on YouTube. I think a thousand dollars a day is very easy to do. But the question is, is that what you really, really want? A thousand dollars a day. And to every time you go on vacation or get hurt or something happens, or you'd want to go on a date with your wife that you're answering calls. Now think about this. You should hire everything that you hate first. Let me repeat that. Everything that you hate to do when the phone starts to annoy you and it sounds like an alarm clock and you get annoyed, hire somebody to take the calls.

We're going to this awesome call center right now as a secondary call center. And we've got a third call center. Hire all the things you hate. One of the things I can tell you, I'll even do it right now. I was at the bowling alley and these guys always take care of us at the bowling alley. That's where we do our graduation. So I'm just going to open up my phone. I'm just talking about tools here that I use. And this one is one you should be using. It's called Expensify so it's going to open up there's some violations there it says fixed violations now all i'm going to do is it was 15.39 i tipped 20 so it's 35.39 like i said the guys at the bowling alley take care of us they give us a bunch of free cards a1's paying for the rest of it but this is also a work event i didn't drink

i bought a couple people a beer so description is going to be bowling drinks for managers there's a couple managers there just got him a couple beers and then it goes classes now i'm in arizona there's all these different classes and then i click click. So right there, save. And it says expense created. It automatically goes to that chart of account. Everything gets reconciled. Boom. Because there's a picture of an itemized thing makes it into the garbage.

So it's really a one-man operation. Yeah, I'm telling you, that's not a business, though. A one-man operation running three to four calls is not a business. It's a job. I hope you understand that. A business runs when you're not there. A business is a live organism. It's not a business. I call it a good job that I got to work every day or I don't make money. That's not a salary. That's not an expected outcome, but it's where a lot of us had to start. And that's where I had to start. You see, I've said this a million times, but if you don't have the money to invest in a

company, you got to put in sweat equity. It took me 10 years of sweat equity before I really could start making money because I didn't have an investment. Share your CSR performance pay. Well, I can tell you this on the CSRs. Whether the CSRs work and Angela's the pioneer of this whole program is they make minimum wage. Plus, when you book a call,

you make about $5 and then we've got attendance on Mondays is a buck. You've got CSR error report, which is a buck. And then you've got like tonality, which is a buck. So you can make $8 a call. So if you book four calls that hour and you're over 90%, that's how you get that $5. If you're 80 to 90, it's $4.

If you're 70 to 80, you're going to be on a performance improvement plan and you'll get a few bucks, but it really matters. Are you above 90%? So you make $8. Let's just say you do four, that's $32 an hour. You work an eight hour day. Now, the cool thing about A1 is we get the calls, but then there's slower hours that we add a little bit of money per, I think it's like $1.20, and then it goes to $5.50 because they're not going to get as much volume, so they can't make as much money. But then we do a round robin. A round robin goes A, B, C, D, and does fair, but then we do a weighted round robin. So it goes, this person's available. They're going to get the call. Because we care about booking rate.

We care about attitude. We care about zero errors. And Angela just does a fantastic job. I'm telling you guys, if you ever come visit, you want to talk to Angela. What's the plan for the event in November? All right. So we're creating the biggest buyers group that there's ever been formed in the industry. Number one, you're going to save money on everything.

You're going to save money when you buy batteries. You're going to save money on your phone, but you're going to save money on your insurance. You're going to save money when you buy trucks. You're going to save money. You're going to get better finance deals, better deals through every single thing. So we're going to go through that. Number one. Number two is I've got the best.

Joe Cassara is going to be talking and speaking about stuff. The best sales guy in the universe. Chain number 50, $10 million plus producers in the HVAC industry. You got Darius Livers who does 65% of their sales comes through financing. We have 4%. My goal is to get to 40. You are going to learn all about service titan systems, KPIs. We're going to talk a lot about manuals.

Al Levy is going to be there talking about every manual that we going to talk a lot about manuals al levy's going to be there talking about every manual that we've created this is all manuals we've got 35 manuals now we're going to talk about how we're able to sell bigger things so we've got special coupons i'm going to save you guys money on bell pack and money mailer and clipper look i got ken goodrich going to be talking about how to make a lot of money. We're going to talk to the largest plumber in the universe. Aaron Gaynor is going to tell us exactly how he makes 35% net, higher than any other industry. He just kills it. My goal for this whole thing is to talk about how garage door companies can catch up to plumbing, HVAC, and electrical.

And we're going to be talking really, really high level. We're going to be talking to a couple guys that have companies that have teamed up with us. We're going to talk about how we train. We're going to talk about dashboards that matter, how to keep reviews happening, SEO, pay-per-click, new strategies, what's going on with Nextdoor, how to post on Craigslist every day if that's your goal. I don't like those customers. We're going to talk about how to make more money, how your company should be feeding 15% of the bottom line on a daily basis. This year, we're going to do 84 million. Next year, we're going to do 200 million. I'm here to share it all. I hope you join because everybody's going to make more money when we do

this together. That's a little sneak peek. The tech videos, yeah, the tech videos are going to be freaking badass because they're going to learn on a daily basis from their peers kansas city is going to hear from a guy from michigan and then hear from oklahoma and you're going to hear the kansas guy talking to the guy in albuquerque and the vegas guy is going to talk to the phoenix and flagstaff guys and we're going to be hearing messages with passion excitement and ways that help them get over. Your first 30 days, you're like, who are these people? What's going on? You're going to be getting messages from guys after the first 30 days saying, look, I was in your shoes.

I made it to Phoenix. Phoenix was like this. Here's what to expect. You're going to be meeting managers. You're going to know when you walk in here, you're going to know who everybody is because you've got the videos. You watch three, three minute videos every single day over the course of a month. And the next month you're here in Arizona learning about what happens in Arizona.

The next month, 90 days, you're getting tips and technical training, how to recruit better because you get $1,500 if you recruit a friend. All these bad-ass videos, because I got the best marketing team anybody could ever have. They're awesome. You should see what we did to the photo center there. So it's like a green screen and just, I forget the media center, whatever they call it. I'm still interested in learning about setting up training. Ryan Browder said,

I'm still interested in learning about training. You need to come here. We are setting up the garage door Bible. We're having video training. We're having, I'll tell you what, we are setting these guys up with an LMS. That's second to none. You learn how to load garage doors in our training center.

You learn how to take out parts. You learn exactly A to Z. And I can't tell you how to train. You need to come experience it. And that's one of the big things in the garage door show. On the 4th, they're going to come see 50 freaking guys. 50 guys here training. And they're going to see the new clips we got on our belt for gloves.

They're going to see the steel-toed boots. They're going to see everything. The $3,000 tool set they get from day one. They're going to understand how it all works. And it's an assembly line to make badasses, to make million-dollar producers. That's right. Million-dollar producers. You know what Aaron Gaynor told me?

He said a good plumber makes $400,000 a truck a year. I said, I want million dollar producers. You know, most million dollar producers, you understand that most garage door companies have six or seven techs. They don't do a million dollars. That's what I call bottom feeders. And don't, don't feel bad if you're a garage door company, because we're going to make you better. We're going to make it, you know, there's a great guy in Canada that started listening to the podcast. It's done a lot of the stuff, implemented a lot of stuff we talk about. I talked to him about three months ago and he goes, Tommy, he goes, we're running a real business now. I'm excited. He goes, one day I plan on partnering up with you. He goes, no longer am I making just enough to scrape by a good living of 80, $90,000 a year, which is fantastic by the way, but the company made zero. So to me,

I'm like, holy shit, dude, that's awesome. You're killing it. You see, just because I make money doesn't mean you can't. The worst mentality in the world is the victim mentality that I make money. So you fail. That is so not true. I compare it to taking a five gallon bucket and going to the ocean and saying, here's my water. And you say, well, you drink all, what's the fricking ocean. Here's the thing. I hate hearing companies talk about, well, what's the market cap. I'm changing the market cap. You realize this we've got an $8,000 package, eight K. We had 10,000 customers take Take 10%. That's 100 customers. I'm sorry.

That's 1,000 customers. 1,000 times 8,000. 8-0-0-0. That's $8 million. If you could sell that package to 10% of your clients. $8 million. Not to include the other 90%. That's just taking 10% now when you get good at financing. And I plan on busting the cap open

on all the secrets, whether it comes to sales, how to do payroll in less than an hour with 350 employees, payroll in less than an hour. Those are the things we're talking about. How to make sure you're reporting the right stuff to the IRS and building a company you can sell. These are all the things that I'm in love with. But Ryan, you definitely, I'm telling you, the invitation's open for you guys to come check out what we're doing. And I can get you in front of other guys that are very successful while you're here. I can take you to 10 great shops. In fact, my buddy does 175 million at Parker and Sons down the street, Josh Kelly. He was on the podcast. I can take you to Georgia Brazil. I can take you to my buddy, Sean McGraw, who's killer, runs the best solar slash insulation company in town.

He does windows too. mean it's we'll go see some cool call centers i got my buddies travis over there that does everything with pest control lenny gray's got the door-to-door system he's in town all the time i mean you can't beat some of the stuff you're gonna learn by the way lenny's killing it i love the guy let's see here family vacation arizona in November My brother, absolutely Where do you sign up? The group is going to be called Garage Door Freedom The event's called

Vertical Lift Because Vertical Lift is a garage door thing And my team loved it You guys will be able to sign up I'm going to be going ham, nuts, crazy On the marketing for this thing. I love the manual. Ryan, of course, you're going to be there. Hi, Tommy. You always

have some great reads and some awesome books from your guests. I'm looking for a new book. Here's the deal. I'm going to give you guys some books right now. Write this shit down and don't think twice because this is about to change your life. Number one, I just read The Ultimate Sales Machine again. That book never gets old. You could read that book 10 times and get something else out of it. Fierce Conversations, Grit, Purple Cow, Atomic Habits I just read on this vacation. It's freaking amazing. If you haven't read that book, cut that to the top. Sales Management Simplified. Badass book. Scaling Up.

Unbelievable. The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. Unbelievable. These books are game changers, my friends. Today, one of my technicians came in and graduated. You know, I got all these books here. And the Compound Effect, I got a bunch of copies, so I gave him that. By the way, if you guys don't

have this book you need to read this book this is the number one book you need to buy 5900 ways to reward employees and it's all without money and it literally says 1.7 million copies sold i probably bought 20 of them so i contributed but you know this button is not the one i marked up but the one i marked up looks like it got kind of just tossed around somewhere on my shelf look at this how cool these look so this was uh the july and then you learn about the 895 club membership what do you get when you're a club member free search protector on each motor to prevent power surge issues free annual tune-up. We call you.

No need to remember to call us. 15% off all future work. Our absolute best discount to new customers. 15% off today's work up to $100. Priority frontline dispatching. Half-off emergency service comes down to $65. Lifetime warranty on any part we have replaced. The labor comes with the part, unlike most companies that have this bullshit.

Extended warranty on lift master operators that anyone installs. That means we're going past the manufacturer warranty. I mean, this thing is absolute killer. And let me ask some more questions here. Oh, by the way, Ryan Lucia is coming. I talked to him. He's going to be one of the speakers i'm having a few garage door guys talk about it i'm going to have joseph roberts there hopefully

i'm going to have an economist there to talk about the future of what's happening over the next three years i'm going to have a big ice sculpture we're going to have a comedian there i'm pulling out all the stops service tight is going to be there with all the top guys help board of directors i'm gonna have guys talking about all the private equity companies and how to build a company that you could sell, succession planning. We're going to talk about the power of many. What are the group names again? What are those group names again?

Group names, group names. I don't know what groups I was talking about. Do you listen or read books? I listen to a shit ton but i enjoy reading too so if i read a book see this book that i have you'll be able to see how much i mark these things up anyways let's see here fourth turning is awesome i'm trying to get this guy that he's coming on the podcast wrote this book, Built to Sell. Let's hear from Ernesto.

My company cannot just depend on me anymore to be the only tech installer. I had some callbacks and wasn't really happy to leave my family up for on July 4th to go address them. My only problem will be hiring my first employee and then keeping them busy during the off season. I'm really afraid of hiring of awesome staff only to let them go in a few months. How did you overcome taking the first step when you were in my shoes? Look, my biggest thing in the beginning was hiring somebody I could trust to have my back. I think one of the big things about me that's different than most is I can make the phone ring off the hook and sell. I just had a problem keeping the money. And that comes with your financial side. So people are like, dude, you know how many people are getting into the garage door industry because of you? I'm like, awesome. It's just someone else

I could buy. The deal is for me. And by the way, a lot of my technicians are going to be talking as well. I'm going to have them come talk about what it's like to work here and whatnot. But the deal is for me, I could worry about all these other garage door people starting garage door companies, HVAC guys getting in because Tommy Mello. And if Tommy could do it, anybody could do it. Fine. I'm fine with that. But don't think I'm not coming for you guys.

I will go into every home service company. Probably within the next 10 years, I'll be a part of everything. I might not be directly involved, but I will be involved with different companies. I just love marketing and sales too much not to get involved in other industries other than garage doors. So come on in and just know I'm coming into your industry. But I don't worry about other people. There's only one person I need to worry about, and that's myself.

I don't think people could keep up because I'm the first guy to get in line and ask for directions. I'm the first guy to ask somebody smarter than me. There's a lot of people getting in this industry that are super smart, but I'll tell you what, I've made it in 19 states so far. I've got other people that I want to bring with me. I'm not doing this out of selfish greed. I don't know. Some people already have picked out where they're going to travel, what boat they're going to buy, what cars they're going to buy. I don't know any of that. I just know that a billion dollars is coming faster than anybody knows. And that's thing that you do. You need to replicate yourself and learn how to delegate. And the great L.E.V. has taught me the steps of delegation here. Now, I don't think this is too proprietary, so he might get mad at me, but a lot of you guys have got his manual.

So me and him have worked on a general manager manual too, that we put together. And look at this. This is a manual we put together about two and a half years ago. It's 11 page manual for your GM. But here's the eight steps delegation. He's got seven steps. I added one. Here's what needs to get done.

So describe, put this down, write this down. Here's what needs to get done. Number two, here's why it needs to get done. You got to understand, you got to have people understand they can't read your mind. Number three, here's what you have available, the resources to get it done. Here's the priority assigned to this task. Here's what it needs to get done by. One of the things that I added is here's the meeting that we're going to check on the progress. So this is what you need to get done in August. I'm going to have,

I want to check in to see what you got done on the 10th, the 18th and the 26th. I don't want to just be surprised August 30th when you didn't get your shit done. And then here's what the consequences kind kind of the carrot or the stick, if you do get it done or don't get it done. Did you get it done? And what's the opportunity for feedback? The biggest reason I see guys stuck in the truck by themselves is because they're not charging the right money. They're not advertising correctly. So if you're always

giving stuff away, you don't get comfortable asking for the sale. You'll never make enough money. And I think it's really hard when the owner does not know how to sell. Because your whole job, my job is sales, believe it or not. I got to sell employees to come work for me. I got to be the best salesman in the company. I got to sit here and look at you and say, you're in good shoes. Your wife, your kids, the newborn you just had, yeah, I'm putting my name, my signature, I'm signing your checks. I'm telling you, you're going to be okay. And I got to be able to sell people that vision, the vision of what we're going to become and how they're going to grow their lives. They don't give a shit about Tommy Mello or A1 Garage or Service.

I promise you that. They care about succeeding for their family and them. How do they win? And when you can paint a picture and sell them on that opportunity, it's going to be much better off. So yes, there's going to be more guys coming. Have you read the dream manager? Yes, I have. I got it. It's an amazing book.

It's absolutely phenomenal. And it has a lot to do with how you communicate and, and really becoming, there's a really great book that I have in the car. And I've, I've told you guys about it before. It's all about coaching. I love the word coach over

manager because my coaches were amazing in high school and just the things that I got to learn from my coaches throughout life. Coaches always meant more to me than a manager. A coach to me was a relationship. Somebody I could confide in. Somebody that was always helping develop me as a person and in that particular skill so i like the word coach try to use that word more often but the biggest thing i see stopping the one man show is fear so until you could have the confidence and it takes balls honestly it's to say i'm number one i believe in myself i'm gonna hire somebody and i'm gonna keep them busy if i gotta go knock on doors like lenny gray does and he's shown me how to do it. I went and knocked on doors with Lenny.

I got to tell you, he just put on a vest. He's like, dude, follow me. And I was like, what if they don't like us? And he killed it. He's an amazing guy. And I tell you what, he does a fantastic job for us. So, yeah, I think getting above the fear is number one. Number two, I would say have a plan.

Start to develop a manual, key performance indicators, how you're going to inspect what you expect. Are you going to do payroll? Are you going to answer phones? Take away the easy things, answering phones, setting up QuickBooks. Take away all the things that are relatively easy to set up that you don't need skilled labor for that saves you more time more time what i would do is first things first i'd get a calendar and write down every 15 minutes what i'm doing and i'd write down where all my time goes to shit and i circle all those things and say who can i get to take on all this to get four extra hours back in the day for relatively cheap labor under 20 an hour because your time if you're out there selling jobs is actually several hundred dollars an hour because your time, if you're out there selling jobs, is actually several hundred dollars an hour. Take everything under 20 and circle it and say, this is who I'm going to hire first.

But write down a manual, write down how you want things done. Delegate the easy things first. And then you get an experienced technician when you're making the phone ring and you're going after new employees, but you've already got the hard stuff. It's not hard, it's cheap, but answering phones, dispatching, getting into CRM collections, whatever it might be, get someone who's fantastic. Your number one personal assistant, your wife, whoever it is, but it was my mom and stepdad at first, they had to be trustworthy and they had to understand me and they had to be able to communicate well. They had to be able to take it on the chin where we were having a bad day.

And I had to learn how to do that as well. So that number one hire is able to take it on the chin when we were having a bad day. And I had to learn how to do that as well. So that number one hire is there to help you with the easier tasks that you don't need someone to learn how to go install a garage door or a gasket if you're a plumber, whatever it might be. Get the people that are going to help administratively and take care of all the nonsense that you probably don't love as an entrepreneur. Would you pay $3,000 a month for 80 calls a month? Are you freaking kidding me? Yeah. 80 calls. If they're opportunity calls, would I pay 3,000 a month? Call me up. I want that company. I'll buy that company. But at $3,000, when's the end of that contract? I feel like that's one point of 20 that I need to know about. I want to know where

the leads are coming from. I want to know when they turn off all their marketing and stop spending money, if that will continue. I don't want to sign a contract that's loosely made. I want guarantees from them too. Dimitri said, when you are paying partners commission- what would be the rate oh partners i think 10 is where i'd like to be i'd like to pay people that can generate sales uh 10 that's a good marketing fee 10 straight to their bottom line they don't have to man the calls they don't pay for the trucks they don't pay for the gas they don't have the insurance they don't pay the the mod score the workman's comp they don't have to pay for anything they don't have to do anything wrong we run all the warranty calls it's not on on them. So 10% to the bottom line,

I'll tell you right now, most of you guys couldn't raise your hand saying I'm making 10% as a company after I pay myself. So if I'm giving 10%, that's awesome. It's a killer deal for them. So I think 10% is where I'd like to be. And that's where I'm going to be. I won't go above that. And some deals, maybe I got to negotiate lower, but also I need to make it a win-win for them. I don't want them being like, man, Tommy got the best deal on this. I want us walking out smiling and saying we both won together. That's the best way to have a deal. Mitch Shipman, do you rent or buy real estate in new markets? At what point do you buy? Well, I'm not in the real estate business. The reason it made sense is because we had the money to buy a building. We knew we were going to be here. This is the headquarters. Now,

there are opportunities down the line that if I do end up getting an investor, most investors, private equity, capitalism, family businesses, whatever it might be, they are not going to invest in the real estate. So if I invest in the real estate, pretty good deal because I could sell that real estate with a 10-year lease for 1.4 times what I paid for it. What does that mean? I paid a million, I can sell for 1.4 million because it's got a 10-year lease that's tied to the business. So interesting how that works. But if you got an opportunity, you're going to put it in a separate LLC. You're going to pay yourself rent. That's separate. Now, my buddy, Daryl, told me to buy a building and I did it. Everything he's told me to do, he's in the garage business, by the way, everything Daryl told me to do, I did. And I've been very fortunate that he was able to help me out. He's been in the business 22 years

and he helped me grow, not only as a businessman, but as a person. And he gave me advice that's only done great for me. So I enjoy buying real estate if you could afford it, but you got to ask yourself, you should have three months bare minimum of all the expenses in the company. Because you know what? No one planned on that pandemic and a lot of people are shut down. Have three months worth of payroll, everything in the bank. Buy versus lease work trucks. What happens to the wrap when switching vehicles which way is better for business i go through a company called enterprise once again daryl help me with this one this is from nazaree simanuk i'm sorry if i pronounced that wrong but i leased to own so

at the end of five years i paid five dollars i own it after five years the wrap looks like shit i also buy the drive train warranty through enterprise, which is about $80 a month. They'll cover windshield wipers. They'll cover brakes. They'll cover. I've had a couple of motors go bad. A couple of trannies go bad. They're going to cover radiators, hoses. They don't cover the tires, but after five years, those things are going to have started having issues. And I want to rewrap a new truck anyway. So let's say I buy a truck for 40. Right now, the new prices, I was at 37,000 after I get the wrap and all this stuff installed on the inside, which is all aluminum cargo things. Now I'm around 52 grand. So 52K, drive it for five years. At the end of the lease, I own it.

And then I get 18 grand for that. That 18 grand goes for in five years, I'm guessing the price is going to be 65,000. So I pay 47,000 in payments. And then I add that insurance piece. But with the laws that Donald Trump passed, I could do accelerated depreciation and write off more against today's numbers. Now there will come a day that it all catches up if I don't buy a lot of vans. But the fact is, is I've grown almost a hundred percent every year. So I have no intention of slowing that number down. There will come a time. One of the things that definitely help you guys look for right now is buying a building in an opportunity zone and then putting the business in that name. If you're starting a business and then over 10 years, you don't have to pay taxes

on that business. If you do it right, not easily done done but talk to a cpa do not go off my word i'm not a licensed cpa so um there's a lot of cool things you can do with a tax attorney with my wife handling the phones that hits deep i need to get an office yes i understand that this is the toughest part about business is teaming up with your wife or your parents or your brother or your sister is, is you guys got to have everything. I, you know, I'm a, me and my buddy are doing something right now and his wife and we're doing some businesses together. And the first thing I said is you're my friend more than anything. I'll never let business destroy our relationship. So because I love you, we're going to talk to a lawyer and outline everything that works for both of us.

And I said that in the most kind way because I want him and her to know that everything's out there. We put it all out there. We agree to this. There should be no arguing. We agree to this to go with because someone's going to have animosity at one point. Your mom's going to get mad at you and say we deserve more if the things aren't spelled out correctly. Luckily for my mom, she's amazing. And I got to get mad at you and say we deserve more if the things aren't spelled out correctly luckily for my mom she's amazing and i gotta get them a boat cody johnson for businesses that aren't used to constant price changes for manufacturers how should you adjust your pricing example if a hot water heater costs a thousand and i charge the customer two thousand for it installed how much should i charge the customer if the cost of water heater goes a thousand and I charge the customer 2000 for it installed. How much should

I charge the customer of the cost of water heater goes up to 2000. I'm kind of a seize the day carpe diem type guy. Every time I get a price increase the day, I get it the day that my price will changes. Some people say I do it every quarter. So you're going to lose money for the next two months. If it's only the first month, That's stupid. And I can't wait to go into your market because everybody knows prices have gone up. The average price of freaking 20% just at the grocery store. You're seeing gas prices double. I told you my price went from $37,000 to $51,000 just the last six months on trucks. You're seeing it with wood.

It went up five times. And you're worried about charging your customer more. If I get a $1,000 item cost me $1,200, it went up five times. And you're worried about charging your customer more. If I get a thousand dollar item cost me 1200, it went up 20%. And my price is 5,000. I'm adding a thousand dollars. I'm adding 20% on the sale price. So my margins are going up because everybody's used to prices going up and I can make it affordable because I sell financing. That's the F word. Financing is bad. So you say payment options.

We've got this really good opportunity going on right now. We've got this promotion going on. You want to see if you qualify for it? It's awesome. Anyone's going to pay for everything. You make small payments. You don't pay any interest. So 20% increase from $1,000 to $1,200.

I go from $5,000 to $6,000. Net $800 extra. And every one of my employees gets a huge bonus. They're making more money now than they ever did because they get paid on the margin. And by the way, I'm so sick of guys telling me, oh, yeah, commission. I hate commission because you're selling stuff. You make commission as a business owner. You make money off of sales. That's how you make money. If you hate it so much, then go tell the government to pay you on hourly or move to freaking the socialist society. You're not a capitalist. If you're afraid to pay people for performance when they kick ass, when they do the right thing for the customer by giving options

and not buying out of their pocket, you buy out of your own pocket. The customer makes the choices. I'm so sick of salesmen or guys that work for me or guys that work for the company saying, yeah, they didn't need that. What the hell on earth do they need? They don't need a new paint job. They don't need a house. They don't need a car. They don't need, they need water and oxygen and food. That's what you need in life. Don't ever let me catch you saying they didn't need a new opener. It's not your choice. If you listen to Aura, the CEO of Service Titan, he wanted to buy the most expensive HVAC unit for his beautiful house in California. The salesman, he called his biggest customer in HVAC, goes out there and says, yeah, you don't want that unit. He goes, no, no, no, I've done the research. I love this unit. I want it. He goes, no, no, no, it's too expensive. You

don't need that unit. And so Aura called the owner of the company and said, what the hell? I did all this research. I want this unit. I'm here to pay in cash. I'll pay. He goes, I'll be out there right away. He goes, don't listen to that guy. The customer decides what they want to buy.

I hate it when people say they didn't need. They don't need a garage. They don't need a hot water heater. Look, back in the day, they used to warm up water. You take one bath every six months. You don't need anything. Get that out of your head. So I raise prices as I get them raised. And guess what? People understand it. They understand it because it's happening in every industry. Inflation is here, my friends. Dimitri said, what resources do you recommend for finding the best talent superstars for your team?

Number one, everywhere. Build a recruiting system and build a forum so that when someone gets to recruit, you say, can you vouch for this guy? Are you endorsing this person? Now they're going to have a ladder up. But here's the biggest mistake with recruiting. If it takes you more than 72 hours to schedule the ride along, get the drug test the background check and get the person in then you're losing all the best talent the best talent interviews you you don't interview them you got to get endorsements you want to find out what references they have what recommendations who their last job are they rehirable you need to do the diligence and it needs to be done in a vast amount of time now i failed on this at every level. Well, guess what?

We're fixing it. And I'll tell you this. Our class was 15 graduates. It'll be 20 the next one. It'll be 50 the next one. Get excited about this stuff. So the best thing you could do is get your hiring cycle. I'm going to be over TikTok, all over, all over Facebook, all over Snapchat, all over

Indeed, all over Craigslist, all over ZipRecruiter, all over the newspaper, all over, all over Facebook, all over Snapchat, all over Indeed, all over Craigslist, all over ZipRecruiter, all over the newspaper, all over to our customers, sending an email to every one of them that we're hiring. I've got the best. I give my guys $1,500 if they find somebody. I hand out my card all the time and I book an appointment for them to come in here and do a walkthrough. I've got another full-time guy that just is calling military. If you make hiring the most important thing of your company and you get the right people to give them the right vision, the right reason to work, you're going to grow your company so fast. You won't even know what to do with yourself. Hire for your weaknesses. When something's not going right, go ask for help.

The reason I'm really successful is because I'm the dumbest guy in the room and I'm asking for help 18 times a day. And if you're not asking for help today, I was taking up all your time and causing you to breathe hard and blood pressure and not sleep at night. If you're not asking a million questions and reading books, listening to podcasts, you're losing the game every minute. When somebody invites you to come out, you go out there and you check out the place and you freaking learn. You say this, when my guys do ride-alongs, I say, you just made an extra $40,000 by doing those five ride-alongs this year. You made an extra 40 grand because you said you couldn't afford it. How could you afford not to do it? Get excited about this stuff. Any tips on setting up a training center as an electrical contractor? Where to start,

absorb all the costs, or have a tech fee? What company has an amazing one that I can learn from? I know a lot of plumbing and HVAC ones. I don't know of an electric one. What I would do is I would literally call up one in a city. If you got to fly out, go to Atlanta,

go to a big city, go to Houston, go to Dallas, go to Detroit, go to wherever, Phoenix. And I would go tour the facility and say, I'm interested in learning about your facility and make it a, look, say, listen, you got to make it a win-win. And I, I can't give you for instance, but I'd say, listen, I want to do a write-up. We're going to post an article for you and pay for an article to get posted about them, go there, learn about it. But for me, for me garage door school has never been done there's a couple crap shit shows out there that do them do shit that i'm surprised they call themselves a school

i mean even the ida unfortunately is not where it should be my stuff is like you're going to learn where to scan what to say how to say it you're going to learn how to personality profile you're going to learn how to load a garage door on your truck you're going to learn every tool how to use it safely you're going to learn on everything from a garage tour on your truck. You're going to learn every tool, how to use it safely. You're going to learn on everything from A to Z, why a driver's license is deserved on the check because you get the attorney general involved. You're going to learn all the spam out there, all the guys that are lying and cheating and how we're not like that. You're going to learn what to do the right thing, diagnose the person before the problem.

You're going to learn exactly how to get a review, how to put a yard sign, how to sell financing. You're going to learn all of the hard part, technical, operational, and sales. And very few companies will teach you all that stuff. And here's the key. You don't need to nail it the first try. You just need to continue to grow better and better. The next class has to be better than the last one. See, I'm the worst I'll ever be, but the best. We're the best we've ever been, but the worst we'll ever be. That's my claim to fame that I think I made that up. I don't think I stole that from anybody. I might have. But I'm pretty sure I came up with that.

We're the best we've ever been and the worst we'll ever be because next month we're going to be a hell of a lot better. What's your morning routine before work? What's your evening routine after work? I'm a nighttime guy. When I go home, Bree's got emails. She's going to give me a stack this big. And I go through these emails. Here's a stack of them.

A couple of them. Follow up with Luke on this big. And I go through these emails. Here's a stack of them. A couple of them. Follow up with Luke on this one. Set a meeting for tomorrow. Send this one with a Luke. Add this to the meeting. And each time I added 15, then I added seven, then I added seven. So I had about a 35-minute meeting with Luke today on four different emails. This is two of them. Two of them, he got back and I asked him particular questions on them. He probably sent new emails. I've got a routine on how I handle emails. My morning, I wake up, shower, do all my stuff. I mean, it's not as beautiful as I'd like it to be. I work out during the day. I have the trainer that shows up to work. I want to start doing cardio more in the morning. I just got my stem cells done. That's all the conversation. So I was in South America, but the deal is I have three meetings usually in the morning. The third one is not every day. It used to be,

but 730, we have the supervisor call. All my guys are on this 15 minute call. We're talking about the big wins for the day, given information on how to get your conversion rate up, how to smile more, how to ask more questions, how to be more polite. Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. How to clean up your truck better, how to look good on the road, how to be able to be a better recruiter, how to get yard signs put out, you name it. Then I got my mojo call, which is all my Phoenix texts, which is Phoenix is a monster. It's a $25 million market. So they got the best, the best on this call. These guys are bad-ass. And we try to get some of them to volunteer. Brian goes over every number from yesterday, what the guys did. He usually picks on somebody. Adam gets to talk usually about something operational, whether it be inventory, how to do something in service. Luke will talk

about door sales, how much availability we have for installs today, what we have in stock. And then I'll come on and usually drop something about just eye contact, body language, tonality, whatever it might be about creating a better environment because i want to treat people like i want to be treated so we give advice on how to be more successful and i love it when guys call me the night before we go through a couple things they go through a breakthrough we have them voice that on these calls then i come into work usually i gotta i mean i don't even want to show you guys my calendar, but it's, I mean, there is no time on my schedule. So this morning started off before seven 30 and I got a meeting at seven. So that'll go to eight.

You know, some people brag on how they work so much. I don't even work. This is all fun for me. This is me having a good time. I built it so that I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. If you consider this right now, this podcast, talking to you guys work and sign me up. This is the best day. This is amazing. I'm having a fun time every single day. I got a guy waiting for me out there that's in town from Michigan. We're having a blast.

We were at the bowling alley. That's why I was late. I kicked some ass. I had four lanes done. I missed one of the spares. I had two spares and a strike. Anyway, I was going to win, but I had to be here for you guys. I was five minutes done. I missed one of the spares. I had two spares and a strike. Anyway, I was going to win, but I had to be here for you guys. I was five minutes late. I apologize.

So that's the stuff from Luke. I'm going to toss that because we've already been over it. So the morning routine, you know, if you guys get a chance to be in the 5 a.m. club, there's great routines. The biggest mistake I see, there's actually this woman that writes down the one big thing she's got to get done in the day. I want to start doing that again and write that one thing down and then go into work and knock out things that make you money. Don't procrastinate. See, a lot of minor meetings

is how to motivate. It's how to increase the bottom line. I just told you guys how I can make $8 million for 10% of our clients. So what do you think I'm doing right now? I'm writing a job description for someone that's going to specialize in teaching full-time how to sell financing, how to sell payment options. Oh man, Ishmael's on this call. Lovely. Ishmael, Tommy Mello's the smartest guy. Yes, thank you. How do you lease the right space that you can grow into but isn't too big for overhead cost projections? Pretty easy. You sublease it. You get something bigger. You automatically set up a sublease and you set on a short-term sublease with the idea that you're going to grow.

And you tell the people, listen, I'm going to slowly grow into this area. So get something oversized and sublease. Right now it's a hot market everywhere. It's not hard to release a place. Make sure you have the ability to do a sublease on that. Jiu-jitsu for cardio? Of course, jiu-jitsu. So yeah, I think we talked about a lot of good stuff, guys. I can tell you guys this. I'm more excited than I've ever been. And it's the passion, the vision, it leaks, it oozes from me. And if you guys don't have this, I challenge you to either go figure out how to be happier and make your people motivated or don't do what you're doing. There's other opportunities out there. You might be better

off as an employee if you're not excited every day about what you're doing. And I, you know, some people hit this wall. You know, I said 84 million this year and the deal is, is I'm just getting started. This is getting easier and it's getting year. And the deal is, is I'm just getting started. This is getting easier and it's getting more fun. I got to say is the passion, the excitement, the waking up and knowing today's going to be a great day. I don't have stress. I don't have a hard time sleeping.

This is fun. This is killer. And if you can't say that, then you need to make some changes. And I got to tell you, it's getting easier. You know, I talked to my buddy Dan here and he goes, dude, you don't have to do a whole lot. He goes, you're the only owner. He goes in a long time. I've seen that's not involved with every freaking decision. He goes, in fact, it's amazing how little you have to put your head into it. Don't get me wrong. I go into big areas and try to get things right. And I noticed big things. I mean, ask my buddy Jody.

The fact is I'll get involved if I have to get involved, but I noticed big things i mean ask my buddy jody the fact is i'll get involved if i have to get involved but i don't want to be involved i don't want to call the tommy mellow show there's a great book i talk about it a lot but it's called built to last i don't think i got it on that just i got jim collins it's on my audible i don't know if it's on that shelf but built to last explains that jack welch left general Electric better than when he came. He handed it off better. See, if you're truly a leader, your plan should be the business should run better when you're gone. And I love that. And to brag that you are the only one that can do this stuff, that makes you a poor leader, a poor trainer, a poor human being, in my opinion.

If you say everything evolves around me, then shame on you until you can train somebody to be better and be such a good leader that you're taking the time. That's like saying, hey, my kids will never be as good as me at math. I'm not even going to teach them. They're idiots. Well, that's your employees. Why would you treat them any different than you would treat a family member or a child of yours? Teach them to be better than you. Make them better, stronger, faster. If you can't do that, then you're a failure as a leader. I'm sorry. Those are the straight facts.

One of the guys said, I have a great company. Did you elaborate for the E-Myth with Gerber? I heard you in the podcast the other day. You know, we've got the E-Myth. I have Michael Gerber out here. What happens is too often you become the technician in the company. It's very, very common that the employee, that the owner, the entrepreneur does not understand how to get out of the day-to-day. They only know how to work.

They don't know how to build the marketing, the sales, the understanding of KPIs to build an LMS and a CRM to actually have the business run. Look, what I love, what I love, love, love, love, love is I'm going to click a few buttons here. I'm going to click this button at the top. Boom. That's my CRM. Click this button, stores my information. This is going to pop up. Bada boom, bada bing. We're at 264, revenue, $291,000 in sales. Now, if you're not on accrual accounting, switch to it tomorrow. Well, I take that back. If you plan on getting audited financials and being worth good money, you want to start getting used to being on accrual when your small cash makes sense. My top CSR, we're at 83% booking rate right now. Not great. Dylan Lopez is at 100%.

He's booked 30 calls. Michelle's booked 25 calls. Anissa has booked 23 calls. My top technician in service is over six grand a day. 100% conversion rate. I can look at the membership sold door sales. I got four memberships sold today. Cancellations are high. I'm not even going to talk about that. I've got a lot of work still to do in the business. And that's what I love. If I walk into your business and you say, I have no problems, Fortune 100 companies have lots of problems. You're blind if you don't think you have issues with your business. And I say, I love when I find problems because they can be better next month. Are you talking about rolling up companies like the wrench group? Of course, I'm going to roll

up companies like the wrench group. The wrench group was a different apparatus of how they did it. Jim Abrams has done some things. The wrench group, Ken Haynes is involved in doing it. The fact is, of course, why would you do a best practice group? Next year I was a best practice group, but they're membership owned. Of course, I want to roll everybody up. Everybody makes 10 times more money. Everybody that I am involved with in the garage door network that I'm setting up, it's going to be nuts. They're going to become millionaires. It's going to be rich for everybody. It's all winners. There's no losers when you're involved with A1. It's just win, win, win.

That's all we do. It's nuts. So of course, that's the strategy is to roll it all up. And there's certain brands we're going to keep, but most likely it's got to roll up into a commons themed brand. You don't want 10 different logos, 10 different bands, 10 different things. A1 is great because I got an uncontestable trademark. It's going really, really good. Some people would beg to differ that. But at the end of the day, we are A1.

Walmart's Walmart. I mean, we're in 19 states. We've defended it over and over again. We've been buying out companies. Cancellations, let's see. Yeah, cancellations probably because the damn manufacturer can't get the stuff. You know, at the end of the day, I told Luke and Brian the other day, I said, I hope it gets worse.

They looked at me like I was a son of a bitch. They go, what do you mean you hope it gets worse? We're dying over here. It's just not going perfect. We're getting cancellations. I say, good. Good. And they go, what do you mean it's not good?

I said, if we're hurting, other people are drowning. And I'm not wishing anything bad upon people. Don't get me wrong. I just said, you know, if we're hurting, that some people are not going to survive. And what that does is it's survival of the fittest. And I'm not wishing bad upon any one particular company. I just know that this is going to make this thing in November that much more successful when everybody's feeling the pain, because we are answering the pain with solutions. And that's going to make this whole network stronger. The more people we get in it, the more buying power, the better negotiations. It's crazy what we're going to do. Absolutely phenomenal. So guys, I really appreciate it today. I do have someone waiting

out there in the hallway, fired up, excited. Hopefully you're the same. I need a haircut. I need to figure out how I'm going to do this before this weekend. I'm flying out to Denver, meet my buddy for a couple days. I hope you guys have an amazing night and an amazing week and you feel fortunate. I was in Columbia and we got into a traffic jam because there was a car accident and we literally were stopped. So we got out, started walking and we walked through the biggest hood I've ever been in. And it was safe because they don't like crime there because they don't want the police to come. But it makes me feel very, very humble and fortunate to be where we are in the United States. I can tell you this. There's no other feeling like I did

about when I got home and how fortunate I feel as a human being to be fortunate enough to be born into the United States. We have the best chance. There's nobody that's not rich in the United States. I promise you that. If you're homeless, you've got more money than most of the people in South America. So there's no one here that doesn't have a chance to win. And I hope all of you could realize that because I realized it firsthand. And I appreciate who we are and what we do here in the United States. And a lot of people have died for this country and I support it a hundred percent black, white, Cuban, or Asian left or right. I hope you guys could all get behind the people

that have died for this country. And I don't mean to leave on a bad note, but I tell you this, I'm glad I live here. I'm glad I'm here. And I hope you are too. We're in the best country that could ever be. We've got the most chances, the most success. And I'm damn proud to be an American. Love you guys. Appreciate it. You guys have a fantastic day. Thanks, guys. 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 gonna 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, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it, to be completely frank with you guys.

But I think it will enrich your lives even further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.