The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A with Tommy - Dominating the Home Service Market through Continuous Growth

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire and Elevate, and the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $200 million-plus home service business with over 700 employees in 19 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 answers your biggest questions about investment opportunities, leveraging manuals, loan management, growth strategies…

my biggest skill in life is asking for help reading and educating and being a student and being the dumbest guy in the room. And that's the secret is continued education, like elevating yourself. You might work a 60 hour work week. How much are you putting into time to grow your personal development? If you're not putting in several hours, hopefully a day, but a week at least, then you're really missing out. How did you learn the garage door trade? The heart of Knox, the tough life, man. I learned, I paid the distribution centers to teach me. I saw a guy out there doing scrap metal that rode a truck. I paid him 200 bucks a day to train me on things I didn't know how to do. I hired guys to learn from them. I mean, you're never

going to learn a whole industry by a couple of weeks of ride-al them. I mean, you're never going to learn a whole industry by a couple of weeks of ride-alongs. I mean, look, if you don't have a mentor, a strategy, a group to belong to that talks about branding, marketing, hiring, inventory, CRMs, and I could dive so much deeper into it. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you.

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

to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, we are live. Welcome to the Q&A podcast for February on the Home Service Expert. I had to run over here. I was on the line with John Ruhlin with Giftology. I don't know if you guys ever heard of that book,

but it's a pretty cool book. Learning how to gift in a way that's not for Christmas or birthdays. It's pretty sweet. So I just want to catch up with everybody, tell you guys what I've been up to. I had a podcast, Gino Wickman. It'll be coming out in a few weeks. He's the EOS guy. And he wrote a book called Traction. He wrote Rocket Fuel. He wrote a lot of different great books. And I was talking to him a little bit about just four and a half years ago, he sold the EOS platform. He still owns 12 and a half percent. And I said, he goes, what's new with you, man? It's been a while. And he's from Michigan. We got a lot in common. And he said,

four and a half years ago when I sold, there was still a big void. The money was great. And he goes, as an entrepreneur, we're one of 4%. I mean, we're the 4%ers. We're hunters. We like to build stuff. But we leave this black trail behind us. We really never cope with anything that's happened in our lives. We're just... We're constantly thinking about tomorrow and building and growing and money and experience and just tracking KPIs and are we branded correctly and what's up with the local service ads and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I've been talking to a lot of entrepreneurs, my buddy, Jonathan, we call him J Cron, took Kajabi from 6 million to a hundred million. You guys know Damon John was just at the house and he's been reaching out.

And there's one common theme I see here, and I feel it as well, is the destination is not where you want to be. You got to learn to cope with what's happened in your life. Some people need therapy. Some people need reflection. Some people just need time to really figure out what their inner soul is. And as I was talking to Gino Wickman, he's coming out with a book called shine. And this podcast is going to be one you don't want to miss. But if you go to the 10 disciplines.com, he kind of walks you through,

you could pre-order his book. I'm not like an affiliate or anything with him. I'm just telling you guys, like for me, I'm going to start going through some mental journeys of my own. I think I got a lot to figure out. I'm very, very happy. I mean, I couldn't be happier with my life. I got to tell you, I've got the best family. I mean, A1 is a gift, literally. I'm here every day. I've been traveling a lot for the company. We've got a hiring event. We just did one in Houston. 14 guys signed out for letters. We're going to hire another 7 probably. We've got a massive... We got

to hire 15 guys in Denver, 20 in Phoenix. If you guys know anybody that's looking for an opportunity, we're doing Vegas. We're doing in Indianapolis. We're doing Ohio. We're doing Minneapolis. We're doing Detroit. We're doing Milwaukee. We're looking for guys in a lot of markets. We got a big one coming up in Nashville. So I just want you guys to start thinking, why did you start? I think you all started a business for the same reasons a lot of us is we wanted financial freedom. We wanted our personal freedom. We wanted to spend more time with family. And how many of you guys are doing that right now? And I always say this on stage. I can look at your credit card statements in your schedule.

Are you really, I mean, is that really, are you going to spend another decade living this life? I mean, what does it look like? I'm getting trained right now through Dan Martell, and I'm really working on this North Star, looking back on my life and being very specific on what I want. How much am I going to go fishing? How much golfing? How much time am I spending with family?

And I got to manifest that. If you say you're going to Disney World, write down the rides you're going on. Really be specific. And I'm okay asking for help. I'll tell you guys, I'll probably start seeing a therapist. I don't have any blockages.

I don't even know what I don't know yet. I'm sure there's some screwed up stuff in this brain, but I want to be really happy and content in the now. That's what I want to get to. I mean, I think it's so hard to just, I woke up the other day and I'm like, man, I'm going to be 41 on March 4th, 41 years old. And I was thinking, damn, like time's flown by. And I know I'm going to blink my eyes and then I'm going to be 70 and then it's going

to be over. And so how could I live the best life? And I got to tell you guys, I got friends and family in town all the time. I'm enjoying this moment more than anything. We went on the Can-Am, which me and Bree flipped. I flipped it. It was super fun though, because I was with all my homies that I get to work with. And we just had a blast. One of them had a wench. We flipped it back over. Brand new Can-Am caused quite a bit of damage, but me and Bree are great. So a lot of things to think about here. If you guys aren't part of the Home Service Expert Group on Facebook, you should be joining that right now. Most likely you're watching it there. I got this really cool home service thing for my mic.

But it's the Home Service Expert Podcast, the Home Service Expert Facebook Group. I'm going to go through the questions on here. Then I'm going to scroll up here and look at these questions. So let's just walk through some of these. Alex said, Tommy, what percentage of revenue do you allocate for labor costs, technician labor only? I'm trying to create a performance pay system, but I'm not sure what percentage of sales I should use to determine their bonus. So I went and talked to my CFO before this. I really wanted to be prepared. And it's 17% to 18% we spent on the field labor, technicians, installers, maintenance techs. 17% to 18%. And as a company, we're at 32%. Our payroll is 32% of revenue. So hopefully,

those are some good guidelines. Depending on the business and the cost of goods, I mean, if you're drain cleaning, you're probably going to have higher labor and you don't have any cost to parts. You got to scope it out and clean the drain. So window cleaning, power washing, there's very little Christmas lights. You got the initial cost,

but the next 10 years, if you buy a good Christmas lights, there's really no parts. So you're probably going to have a little bit higher labor costs. But in demand type services, when you got parts and you got labor, it's 17 to 18 is where we've been kind of falling. Joel asked, what percentage of my gross revenue should I budget to spend on marketing with a goal to grow 60% this year? And what percentage of my budget should I allocate to which marketing avenues? Currently, I've been putting all my eggs into Google ads and direct mailers. My customer acquisition cost last year was $1,231. My company offers very high-end landscape construction and maintenance

to high-end homes. So right now we're spending between 11% and 12% of revenue. I don't look at it as a percentage of gross profit. I like to look at it as a percentage of revenue. When you're trying to take market share, you're going to go up probably north of 15% to 20%. If I were to greenfield organic growth into a market, I'd probably spend 25%

because I'm killing my profit. I'd kill the profit. To take market share, I'm willing to go that year with zero profit to eat into that market, to brand myself correctly, to do the radio TV because that's what truly investing back into the company means. A lot of people reinvest in the company. The best way to reinvest is in the marketing. And not just marketing for new clients. It's building the team. You know, a lot of you guys

that are really making a huge profit, you don't have enough people. You're still the company. You might need a COO or a GM or a really, really great CFO. And so reinvesting in the company means I brought on the right people on my team. It means I've hired the right people. I've top created if I needed to. And I put a lot of money into branding, brand recognition. Let's get through. Ammon said, I had a window cleaning business and I'm realizing that it might not get me to my overall goal. From coaching programs and events I've attended, it looks like the top people

in exterior cleaning are barely hitting a million dollars. I'm considering adding gutter installation guards to help us level up. I know you say roofing windows, HVAC are some of the main businesses too that tend to do well in the home service space. Just wondering if you guys have any insight on gutter guards as a business, or if I should look into any other service to add. I'm not necessarily aiming for the 200 million mark like A1, but I want to have a business that I can really grow and offer people leadership positions in.

Thank you. So the deal is there's a company called Gridiron and they own a company called Leaf Fitter and they are blowing it up. Gutters are amazing. The business of gutter cleaning and installation and the Leaf Fitter, there's a ton of money. I mean, if you master that... Now, let me just tell you something. We do a lot of outbound looking at other industries, just finding out their sequences and how they do it. What these companies have mastered, Leaf Filter, the right roofing company, is if you leave a form fill,

you mentioned that you might want, or a solar company, they're not going to call you once or twice. They're going to text you, call you, email you 10 times a day. They're going to get you on the phone and they're going to get you on the phone and they're going to figure out a way to get an appointment. Like to the next level, like this is something that I've not mastered yet. They've mastered social media form fills, Angie. The time that you fill out the form

to the time they respond is automated. It's like, bam, bam, bam. Their job is to get an appointment and then they got a whole rehash team to close that. And yesterday, this whole week, and you guys, there's other things other than Chirp. There's several other softwares out there, but we built seven campaigns that we're working on to A-B test. I had 2000 unbooked calls last month. I had 997 abandoned calls, which a lot of you guys don't even know what abandoned means. It means you didn't get to the phone in time to even answer it. I had 727 customer courtesy calls. That means we went out there because a GFI went out,

wasn't our fault. So we're using Chirp for that. We're literally changing the way we do things to get everything that we can out of every campaign. And I think a lot of you guys are just wasting money, not answering the phones, not answering forums. You're on Angie or HomeAdvisor waiting for 10 minutes to respond. I mean, I'm guilty of it too. What are you doing to save the unbooked calls? What message are you sending them? What automations do you have? I mean, like I mean, I'm guilty of it too. What are you doing to save the unbooked calls? What message are you sending them? What automations do you have? I mean, like I said, there's Chirp. There's another big one out there. Then there's HubSpot. I mean, there's other automations that you can build with other tools. I don't care what you use. It's just kind of nice because Ryan is letting us get behind the scenes and develop our

own stuff into Service Titan. And it's going to be A-B tested. We're going to figure this out. I promise you guys. I interviewed techs from other companies and I interviewed a guy out of Vegas. I'm not going to go into details because I don't want him getting harassed. But he's going to do $24 million himself this year in HVAC. You might think I'm full of shit. You might think he's full of shit.

But this is the real deal. I'm sorry. He's the real deal. And he's not like dressed up nice with a bow tie. He's like me. And I'll tell you this. You guys think you have these great technicians. What are you doing to change. Are you training your people? I mean, we use Real Voice. There's other tools that if you get the right wording, the right training, and you're managing people correctly, I'm just telling you guys, if you guys aren't investing in some of these softwares, these automations, these AI tools, you're lucky you're listening to this podcast right now. Because if you don't make a move today to start thinking about what you're going to be doing, and there's lots of different tools, but if you're sitting there saying, how do I get my next, like we've taken, I just seen this post and there's a lot of messages coming through. So I'll make, I'll jump on these questions, but I got my A1 family. That's only A1 technicians.

So I'll just go to A1 family here. And Scott Cola said, I ranked 226 in the technicians. So I'll just go to A1 family here. And Scott Cola said, I ranked 226 in the technicians. Thanks to Vincent, keeping me accountable and all my brothers for checking in on this old man. He's moved to number nine in the company because literally, I don't know, there's two computers here, but every single person's got a scorecard. I mean, do you guys know where they're at at any given moment in the company? I doubt it. Phil, and look, guys, I've been doing this almost 20 years. I've had my blinders on.

I've been focused. Yes, I speak at events, but it's open doors. Like, if you guys are running the side hustle bullshit and you say, I need to run a side hustle. Imagine if you spent all the time in your core business of your stupid side hustle, like seriously get focused. Like really start saying, no, it's a muscle start flexing it. Just say, no, it's time for you to say no to everything else. Give your people the time. And I'll tell you what, the cup will runneth over. The cup will explode into new opportunities. You'll have so

much money and time that you'll be capable of taking on more. But until that time comes, I mean, I had a great event happen. I've got all the help I need. We're hiring all the right people. And here's the biggest problem with that. And I'm going to go off on a rant. And then I'm going to answer questions, these questions for 30 minutes. My buddy Keegan is a really good friend of mine. And what he was talking about is he goes, it's amazing that people that have made a lot of money, but never put these processes in their life. They didn't buy back their time. They didn't create a manual for their house. You know what happens when you got a cook that does everything perfectly and they quit or something happens? It sounds like,

oh, poor them. They could afford a cook. I know what you guys are thinking, but you get these people to run your life and help because you got a lot of other people are like, man, money must make it easier. Talk to anybody you know that's super wealthy and say, does it get easier? Yeah. So they want to live in a small house, close down their doors, not take on anything else. If they want to retire and golf, yeah, maybe it gets easier. Maybe. But I don't think it got easier. I think you take on more.

You start living this new life. Things come easier. You don't have to do this stuff. You don't have to clean the toilets or mow the lawn, but it gets harder in a lot of ways. Phil said, can you please suggest some training techniques and resources for techs? They have the knowledge on what's required to solve our clients' problems, but are lacking the sales skills to navigate through the sales process. Thoughts on commission for techs when they sell or upsell jobs? Well, Phil, that's the only way. Commission or pay for performance. What are you going to do?

Pay somebody hourly and expect them to do what's in it for me. What are you doing for me? How can I move up in the company? Like, how do I get to buy a house? If I work harder for you and I get five-star reviews and I'm passing my card out recruiting people and I'm getting zero recalls and I'm leaving the stickers everywhere,

whatever your business is. Like, you're telling me I can't make more money? You're just going to pay me the same shit you're paying everybody else? Figure out a way to do performance pay, which commission is one of those ways. There's a happy line between paying commission and doing the right

thing. I don't care. Commission is one of those things that's really looked upon badly because it's like, if I screw over the customer, I get paid more. But when it's done correctly, it'll change the game. It'll fix the door or whatever service you're in the correct way. And I think it's the only way. Your CSR should be on performance pay. Your dispatcher should be on performance pay. Your management should all be on bonus structures. Every single thing in your company should have some aspect of figuring out a performance pay. It might not be

today. You might not have the attribution. You might not have the numbers for every role. But this is the only way to grow is what's in it for them. That's the only way. Dave said, best platform software to build an in-house training system for a home service company. And what's the process you take to build out this training program? Well, number one,

you think building a training program like Trainual or there's a million different training tools, Kajabi or, I mean, there's Bradley's stuff. Nobody wants to take your stupid course online. None of the blue collar people want to take a course. I've sold courses. No one goes through them. I see how many people logged in and actually went through them. It's kind of bullshit. And I listen, I'm on one of these today. I'm excited. I had a great day so far. Great week. I've been literally more productive this week than I've been in a long time, but I'm just here to tell you the myths of this business, the fake news. It's creating a program for everybody to log into and just, it's, I don't know. I mean, listen, there's a lot of people I look up to in training. I think Joe Cressara does a fantastic job. I mean, his biggest thing is give options

to create the magic moment. I think you look at a guy like Andy Elliott, I really enjoy him because he's not only mindset, but he also helps you become a better person when you look in the mirror and take accountability. I think Jeremy Miner's got it really figured out. The NEPQ, who we're having a podcast coming out here soon with the different tones and how you got to be. But if you think there's one book or one person that's just going to take you to the top with all of your guys, remember, when I was in first grade, there was five reading classes. I was in the last one. There was only me and one other kid. And soon he moved up to the next one. So it was just me. I was the worst reader. I went and

seen a tutor and he knew how to work with my skill level, my personality type. When I went back to second grade, I was the best reader in the class, literally. And what I want you to remember is I needed to be fed at the pace I could be fed at. So there's not one course, one book, one mentor that's going to bring you through this. My biggest skill in life is asking for help reading and educating and being a student and being the dumbest guy in the room. And that's the secret is continued education, like elevating yourself. You might work a 60-hour work week. How much are you putting into time to grow your personal development? If you're not putting in several hours, hopefully a day, but a week at least, then you're really missing out.

How did you learn the garage door trade? The heart of Knox, the tough life, man. I learned, I paid the distribution centers to teach me. I saw a guy out there doing scrap metal that rode a truck. I paid him 200 bucks a day to train me on things I didn't know how to do. I hired guys to learn from them. I mean, you're never going to learn a whole industry by a couple of weeks of ride-alongs. I mean, look, if you don't have a mentor, a strategy, a group to belong to that talks about branding, marketing, hiring, inventory, CRMs, and I could dive so much deeper into it. Oh, how did you learn how to be a billionaire?

Well, look, I just wrote a few pages on that. Just read this and you'll become a billionaire. Like this is a lifestyle. This has taken two decades. So just understand it's going to take years. People don't understand that. Like, I'm just going to start a business. Okay. Well, who's taught you leadership? Who's told you how to show up in life? And not to mention the sacrifices that's so much sacrifice. Hey, Tommy, what will you choose Monday or service Titan both to do the same

would you choose Monday or service Titan both to do the same we are trying Monday does nothing like service Titan Lewis Monday is a project management tool that it's not even close to service Titan it's not Monday's not a CRM it's a project management tool it It's not even close to ServiceTitan. Monday's not a CRM. It's a project management tool. It's the same as Basecamp or Trello. There's a lot of them out there. There's Asana. Monday's just project management. Get all your thoughts in and build the projects and prioritize them and keep track of them. You can send emails through that. It's nothing like ServiceTitan. ServiceTitan is dispatching. It's price book. It literally talks to your QuickBooks.

It has nothing to do. You need a CRM. You need a payroll system. You need QuickBooks. And we use Intact. And then we still use Monday. Monday's where all of our projects live and who's accountable and who's assigned to things. They're just not even in the same hemisphere it's not even in the same it wouldn't be if this is

earth Monday's over there if service ties right here on earth it's a different planet and I'm not knocking you I'm just if you want to have a conversation or ask a deep detailed question I can go into details Chris said said, I'm looking at starting up an HVAC business. The owner of the company has been a great boss, but I have not made great financial choices. So I'd like to get something going so I can have a company worth selling or a company that can keep income coming in. Right now, I do side jobs after work, getting jobs done to pay off my house. I do not want that debt over mine and my family's head when I start this up. I was wondering the advice you would offer someone in my position.

Well, number one, go talk to Dave Ramsey, start reading books, start getting control of your spending. I had a whole meeting on this today. Get your shit together. Get a plan. Learn financial literacy. Learn discipline. Learn consistency. Do not spend your money on stupid shit. What are you spending it on? You're keeping up with the Joneses? I'm not coming down on you, but this is everybody around me. It's like, have you ever heard the eighth wonder of the world is compound interest? You stop off at a gas station, you spend 40 bucks on top of filling up your tank. It's called discipline. It's called get your shit.

Like, are you personally budgeting? Like, I'm sure you're probably bringing in 150 to 200 grand. And if you don't have a shit, if you don't have 100 grand in your account, there's a huge issue. And by the way, don't pay off your house. I mean, literally, if it makes you sleep better at night, but if you got a 3% loan, keep the money in the bank account. Right mean, literally, if it makes you sleep better at night, but if you got a 3% loan, keep the money in the bank account.

Right now, you can make 5.6%. Literally, I got that going on at Goldman right now. So most people can't get that. I can help you get it. But that's why money makes more money. Navy said, or Navi, I run multiple restaurants, try to do everything right towards my employees, but they still shit on me and leave without notice.

I understand mine isn't a home service business, but do you have any advice for me? You want to hear the best advice, Navi? What are you doing with these people? Are you creating a family? Are you hanging out with them outside of work? Like they shit on you. They leave because they don't feel wanted. Everybody, millennials want to just know they're part of the game. There's a plan. There's a ladder to move up in the company that the owner cares.

I look at every market. I had a whole meeting today on this, literally 30-minute video that Giuseppe created. And I did two interviews and we talked about when people start hanging outside of work and they feel like they're part of a family, And there's, in our case, a brotherhood. Those markets go straight to the top. They hold each other accountable. They go work out together. They may have a beer together. Are you cooking for the people outside of work?

Are you inviting them to your house? Most people go, oh, you can never invite somebody to your house. Well, I just say the same thing. Wait till I come into your market and they're allowed to come to my house. They're allowed to meet my family. They feel like they're wanted. It's kind of bullshit. I look at a lot of owners out there. You have no right to call yourself an owner. You treat people like shit. You shit on everybody around you. You have no right because you got an LLC. You're not a good leader. You pay yourself first instead of last. You literally care only

about yourself. And if that's the case, I hope you fail. And I'm not saying that about you, Navi, but I just hope you understand that they got to feel wanted. They got to know you're going to show up. They're going to want to know that leaders eat last and you're the last one there to close up the doors because you show up. If you want a lifestyle business, it's going to be very, very tough. You got to hire a manager that's going to act like the parent in that establishment and show up for the people. And by the way, that manager will have the keys to the city. If he wants to go start his own restaurant, they'll follow him. I meet all these people that say, I want a lifestyle business. I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to franchise,

but they don't even show up to work. You want a lifestyle business? Great. Do e-commerce. You don't have to go to work for that. You can do a software company. There's a lot of other things you could do other than a place where people want you to be there. Pick a different industry. Fun, fun. All right. Let's look at some of these questions. We are hot today. Let's go. How do you establish performance-based pay structures for both employees and managers? Well, employees are more driven towards the action. What happened during the job or the call booking? Or employees are a little bit different.

And everybody's an employee. I call them my co-workers. But managers are driving forward the goals. Usually, it's going to be gross profit for my case, because things are structured in a really great way that I don't advise doing for a company under 100 million. It's based on EBITDA. So I might do 60% or 70% based on EBITDA or gross profit,

and then 30% based on what they can control under their exact management. But if you base all your managers off of just their performance, the company gets siloed. And it's only focused... They won't talk to other departments. There's conflict between departments.

They're not moving. It's five dysfunctions of a team. They're not moving together. I've got a whole thing in the HSF. If you email... If you go to homeservicefreedom.com and you ask, just submit a submission form on our guide to how to form performance pay, we'll send it to you. I own a kitchen remodeling company. What are the best things I can do to differentiate myself in

the market for homeowners to call us instead of getting three quotes. You know, people always talk about these differentiators. Reed Relevant Selling, I believe is one of them. And her name is Janie Smith, if you look up Janie Smith. And you come up with these things that people say, well, we're open later, we train better, we got five stars on Yelp, who gives a shit? Like everybody has that. You know what we do?

I mean, literally, if it was me being you, I'd walk into the customer. I go, you know why we do so well? It's because we care. Here's all the pictures we take. Here's when we follow up through the process. You're going to have a manager stopping by to check it. You're going to have a line to call directly to me the whole time

to be able to make sure this remodel goes perfectly. I'm going to show you the difference of quality. Here's some pictures of the other guy, and I'm not naming exact competition, but here's some of the complaints. And I wouldn't take down another company. And I say, I just want to inform you this decision you're about to make. This is an investment into the home and you want it done right. You want it to last. You want to make sure that if something goes wrong, that you've got somebody to rely on. I'm going to take you down this path of using the other guys, then I'm going to take you down a path. And when you make it so much about the reasons why they're doing it, why are you doing a bath remodel? What do you hate about

this? What do you love about it? Are you trying to build the value of the home? I mean, here's the deal with Real Voice. What we figured out is the top guys talk 45% of the time. The customers are talking 55% of the time. Think about that. And this is a trained skill. It's how to win friends and influence people. And I could actually do some fun stuff with this.

Tommy Mello, your business model rewards top performance. And I could actually do some fun stuff with this. Tommy Mello, your business model rewards top performance, and that is great. As people get older, their ability to do the job will decrease, especially in a physically demanding job. How do you balance that with being loyal to your employees? Okay. So this is one of the coolest things about A1 Garage Door Service. Number one, you got a path out of the truck. You want to be a virtual product specialist? You can be. You want to be a trainer?

You can be. We've got three managers right now that used to be technicians out of the field. Your obligation to your people is to grow big enough that you need more support. Virtual products, I've got a team of two guys right now that just help when a technician can't figure out the problem. And it'll be three, then it'll be four, then it'll be five. need more support. Virtual products, I've got a team of two guys right now that just help when a technician can't figure out the problem. And it'll be three, then it'll be four, then it'll be five. I mean, literally, there is so many roles within the company that if you don't need to be in the truck, you can move out. And these guys deserve it. Their experience is outstanding.

If you don't have a path for people to get out of their current role in the field, then better get a plan to build that role. When you hire a new marketing company, what are you putting together? A marketing plan? What are the right questions to ask about the plan? What they plan on doing and will they get the best results? What would you do to get the quickest results in marketing? Well, number one, find a specialist, Tony. I don't think there's one marketing company out there that knows about the best ways to buy TV and radio. They also know they're the best in the world

at local service ads. They also know how to do the best SEO and build backlinks. Most of the people just say you're spending $1,000 and some of that's going to your organic rankings, but they're not even building links. They're putting out one press release. By the way, PR is part of marketing and none of these companies offer PR and the ones that do are lying. Find a PR specialist. You think you're going to find somebody that just says, we're going to design all your ad copy. We're going to come up with your jingle. We're going to come up with all the content. We're going to build backlinks. We're going to design all your ad copy. We're going to come up with your jingle. We're going to come up with all the content. We're going to build backlinks.

We're going to make sure your reviews are coming in. We're going to make sure to fight your bad reviews if they don't follow compliance. We're going to be diligently working on your capacity planning on your pay-per-click. We're going to make sure that we optimize your newspaper ads. We're going to look and do a competitive analysis of every time you come out with a ValPak. We're going to look at every single, like, Tony, it's going to take an army

to be a specialist that are the best in the world at what they do. An army. You're going to find a company that can handle, if you find a good company to handle Google, I'd say, show me the results. Show me who you work with. I want to talk to people that you're working with today. I want to know how often do you communicate? They're going to say every week, twice a week. And so I want you to build out a schedule for the next three months that you're going to book those appointments. And I want them to come up with what you're going over.

What do you go over with your other clients twice a week? I want you to say, show me the results. I want a list of 50 of the companies you work with, not your top three. I want you to say, show me the results. I want a list of 50 of the companies you work with, not your top three. I want 50. And I want you to show me exactly what you're doing for them. Show me how their cost per click went down,

how their conversion rate went up, how they're getting higher tickets. But here's the deal. Marketing can't fix shit most of the time because you're not booking the phone calls. You're not answering the form fills. You're not training the guys. You're not selling memberships.

Tony, most marketing companies don't even understand that the problem is not what they're doing. The problem is the owner, the company, the CSRs, the dispatchers. Are you even classifying your leads to grade them? That you know if it's a better lead and sending the better guy out to that lead? And I'm not trying to... Look, this is a conversation, but everybody's waiting for this marketing company to come in and save the day. I'd be curious what your conversion rate and ticket average is versus mine, because that's where we win. And I hire better people and they don't quit very often and they make great money. And this is a lesson for everybody, because if you don't have the highest booking rate in the industry and the highest conversion rate, and you're not selling a lot of doors and you're not selling service agreements, how do you stand a chance? I mean,

literally, and marketing's not going to solve the problem. Marketing will not solve the problem until you're literally the cow. You're getting all the milk out of every single lead. And you're monetizing everyone. And you got a rehash program. And everybody's connecting to MyQ. And you're getting your dealer number and all those. Don't talk to marketing is all I'm saying. You know, I love you, buddy.

What was the first GM's responsibilities when you hired him? Well, look, the first guy I hired was my stepfather. And then Adam came on. And Adam said, I'll help you get control of the CRM. I'll handle payroll. I'll make sure inventory is done. I'll help you with hiring and firing. And he worked a lot with the CSRs and processes. And he went through in 2017, Al Levy's program with me and Brian Davenport. And he was educating himself all the time. And he was educating himself all the time. And he let me handle the marketing and sales training and run the meetings and help with recruiting. And he did almost everything else. He knew I hated dealing with lawyers. He knew I hated

payroll disputes. He knew I hated anything that happened with the ROC, even though I took the tests. I mean, he was the right hand that did everything I hated. And I said to Adam, when he started, you will be the bad cop. Are you okay with that? You're going to be the asshole. I have a hard time being the dick. So you, you will be that asshole for me. And he said, I have no problem being the asshole. I mean, it's not like he like said, please let me do this. But he said, I have no problem firing somebody. They're not performing or they're lying or cheating or stealing said, I have no problem firing somebody. They're not performing or they're lying or cheating or stealing. He said, I have no problem getting into the inner depth of the CRM. I mean, the dude was a genius at Excel. I think you want to get somebody, he's not quite the

visionary. He was an integrator. Graded Excel, typed 120 words a minute, got back to people quickly, could handle more than, I mean, Adam's biggest, like he can handle anything and take on as much as you wanted. And he was, he was a gold mine. He was the best find I think I've ever found. I just said where you go for performance pay, just ask for it, go to home service freedom. I'm looking for a mentor accountability partner who is in management. Do you know of any local groups here in the Valley? I don't know of anybody. A lot of people I know join YPO is a big one. I would look at joining YPO. I think it's a great program. I meet so many successful people in YPO. I'm going to stop speaking at every single thing everybody asks me to, although I love it. It's my favorite thing in the world. I need to be boots on the ground here.

I need to be spending time in my markets in these hiring events. My goal is that you guys, some people that like when I talk, I'll speak at every HSF event, but I'm hoping that you guys realize when I speak, it's going to be much more, I want to spend'll speak at every HSF event, but I'm hoping that you guys realize when I speak, it's going to be much more. I want to spend an hour for every minute I speak. And right now,

if I keep speaking at all these events, I can't pour in the time it takes to give you guys the best possible speech and plan and a handout and how to get started and the things to bit that I'm thinking about. So I'm just reading all through these. There's quite a bit here. You don't need more leads so you can handle the leads properly. How valuable is video content for marketing and brand awareness?

It's everything. TikTok just took over more searches than Google. I mean, listen, this right here is being videotaped with a high definition camera. And all you need is a really good iPhone. Video content is the new king. It is so important. It's more important than anything in marketing.

Like shooting the right content. Look, the new currency is how many followers you have. It's some people look at or they used to look at the blue check mark like you're a billionaire. I mean, you could lead people. People will follow you. I think it's so important. It's not something like, I don't view my success on how many followers do I have and who's commenting. I mean, I think it's important, but I'm a lot different than most people.

I mean, I still like to view my success off of profit because a lot of people brag about their revenue. And I think profit's more important. Tommy, let's talk about evolution. This industry standard installation materials is 100 years ago. Customers want a better solution. More door companies need to offer this industry's first new high standard overhead garage mounts.

Absolutely. I started a small network in my area to other contractors that are new in business. What do you believe brand new businesses with no employees need to focus on first? Financials, operation processes, sales process, brand. Well, I did an interesting video that'll be coming out soon. So hopefully you guys are following me on YouTube, official Tommy Mello. And you're watching the TikToks and Instagram and LinkedIn and soon to be Twitter, which is X. And I do a ton on Facebook. I'm literally going to be putting out like I'm answering hundreds of questions a month that I'm putting out on content.

I'm really taking my time to make sure it's well-produced. But when you write a business plan, first, you got to start thinking about the org chart, the depth chart. You got to understand the processes, the right CRM. How are you going to take market share? How are you going to drive leads? Where's the training program? How are you going to recruit the people? I mean, the fundamentals of business don't change. One of the books I'd read is the E-Myth because the franchise model is scalable because it's system-based. What systems? I mean, you got to have a concrete plan.

I tell every one of the guys I get to work with and gals, I say, write down your goals, write down your daily goals, make them weekly, pick up an extra shift. You attract top talent. Tom Howard did this the best. He got Brent Buckley and Phil in Vegas. He didn't have more than 10 technicians. They bought a company with a list.

They trained on sales, sales, sales, customer experience, great reviews, remonetizing the list they owned. And he got well over a hundred million dollars in a few years from something that he bought for peanuts. So everybody's overcomplicating this 10 X your employees and the way they think and the experience for the client. Everybody's like, I just need more leads. I am so sick of hearing people say they need more leads. I am so sick of it. It's like, you're not booking the damn phone calls.

You're not answering the phone on the weekend. Your hours say closed half the time and you need more leads. Holy shit. Anyways, how do you run your busy life? How do you know what's needed to be done each day, each week, each month? Do you use a pen and paper or all electronic? I want to show you guys something. Really? I think this is important. So this is today. This is yesterday. This is the day before. This is tomorrow. I wanted to show you guys that let me count real quick tomorrow. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 things.

And there's still a gap between 6 and 7, 15 that'll get filled up. And I write a lot of things down that make it on the calendar. And I got people responsible for helping the chaos in my life. And I know, look, it's not going to get any easier until you start building systems. Until you start spending an hour each night planning your day for tomorrow. And an hour in the morning getting ready for the day. I mean, literally. And reflection.

I mean, literally, hopefully you got a top 100 list, a top 30 list, and a top five list of what's going to affect the company the most. And most of these are huge projects. They need to be in a Monday board or a Trello board or an Asana board. You need to really take the time to get your shit together. And I know I've been cussing a lot and I apologize, but this stuff, I'm just passionate about it.

I really care. I want you to succeed. So, hey, Tommy, I run a door and window company in Riverside, California. Right now the gross profit is at 60%. Our goal is to get gross profit to 80%. Could you break down your average ticket and margins? I mean, look, well, you said, yeah, gross profits. If your gross profits reach over 65%, you're probably screwing your employees over. Most companies succeed at 45% gross profit. So I'm a little bit 80% gross profit.

Maybe you don't understand the term, but gross profits at 80%. Trying to think of what makes an 80% gross profit. It's not in the door business. Garage door business, if you hit 62, 63%, you're better than 98% of companies. Windows might be that good. I don't know. But I shoot for you know, I shoot for over 60% with every business I do. And that's a good goal to have. If you're at 60%, you're making a really healthy profit. So then you just got to scale it. I say nail and scale it all the time. So, oh, so if you guys go to Tommy mellow.com and you could do four slash shop and you could do forward slash shop. And you could literally book a shop tour.

And I'm going to show you guys so much stuff. It's going to mind. Like, I'm getting very, very, I'm building like a spiral notebook for notes and all the resources and performance pay. It's going to change the game for you guys. I promise you. So go to timeout. You can find all my Instagram, TikTok,

all the links in there. And then if you want my free newsletter, I've given out three of them for free. And I always got to remind you guys, this is not a money grab. I don't need the money. I'm just trying not to lose money because they cost me, I think like six or seven bucks an issue to send out and to produce them. You just go to Tommy Mello.com forward slash news, and you'll get the newsletter. You'll get the three best issues. And these ones I'm spending 20 bucks to send them to you for free. If you like them, continue to get them. If not,

hopefully you get value out of them. I promise you, I don't produce these. It's kind of cool because when you start teaching stuff, you start to retain it more and you got to really critically think through things. So it helps me, but I don't really care if you guys order them or the free ones. If you like it, great. If not, I don't care. Tommy's fired up today. That's right. Run a personal PSL. Yeah. So we look at bonuses usually really focused on that individual for 30 to 40%.

And it really, I've got a great team that works through these things to try to get your goal is to write down the actions. When you do performance pay and bonuses, what are the three or four things they can affect? And everything kind of goes, it's modeled after the budget. A good CFO understands these things. Everything's built off of a budget. And if we hit budget, everybody gets their bonus. They might only get 70%. Take for existence our acquisition team. If they don't close enough deals and enough EBITDA, they're not going to hit the majority of their bonus. I mean, like 30% of their bonus should be based on us hitting EBITDA. But if they don't do their job, why would they get a big bonus? Like they didn't, it's almost like charity. I mean, so many people are bonusing the wrong things.

Like if they have no effect in the outcome of what they're getting bonused on, what in the hell are you bonusing them for? So for example, your executive assistant should get bonused on the profitability of the company. The CFO should get bonused on conversion rate or reviews. The cleaning lady shouldn't get boned. I think you guys get my example. In a trade like electric, where it takes three to five years to learn a one-to-one tech helper ratio requirement. What's the best way to actively recruit A-player technicians from other companies? Developing helpers from scratch is producing the best technicians,

but with one-to-one ratio, mandatory four years to get licensed. Look, there's some tools out there. I found out about one last week. It'll tell you where every single... You can look up on LinkedIn and you can look up on Facebook company names. It shows you where all their employees are. There's this system called skip tracing, where if you got somebody's name, their approximate age, where they live, you could find out their phone number. You can find out their address. You can send them mail. I'd be very careful because if you start going after one,

you can't like go to their shop and leave envelopes with offers on their window. There's some laws against that depending on the state you're in. But here's the real deal. You build videos of the happiest moments of your company and show people why they'd want to work for you. And you deal with the vendors and the vendors hear about it. You invite your vendors over to your shop. They see who the people are. They come to the barbecues. You let the vendors know that it's a great thing.

They know every single employee at every single company for the most part. You let it be known on social media. The average person spent two and a half hours on social media. The average person's spent a two and a half hours on social media. You make it a great place to work. People will find you and they'll hear about it. And you got to go above and beyond. You got to do press releases. You got to put out the social media. You got to let the vendors know. Yeah. It's, it's a game changer. Do you offer installation upgrades? Yeah. What are you kidding? Absolutely. There's all kinds of upgrades. I get six options for every time I do something. Installation upgrade. Yeah, it's important. I mean, here's the deal. When you're offering upgrades, you can't have 25 things. You can't say we're going to do this, this, this, this, and this. I mean, everybody's coming after me right

now saying, Hey, I got a product. I got a product. I got a product. I got a product. I got a product. If you guys aren't good at selling their core, which are garage drawers and springs and rollers and cables or whatever you do, I would not even take on anything else. I really wouldn't. They got to learn how to sell on finance terms as well. But the deal is, I mean, not a lot of people are buying the most expensive garage doors from us, which is our A1 signature package. They're just not, they don't really care. They want like,

they want something good, but not great and not bad. They don't want builder grade, but they don't want the top, top, top. So I think a lot of people, they start to get to the point where they're selling too many things.

And, you know, here, here's what I look at. What does it cost me? If a roller cost me two bucks and i could sell it for 15 i want to sell a lot of those because i can pay the guys great on it they're super they make really great money when they sell that part but if you're paying 20 for something and you can sell it for 80 i mean the markup isn't close to springs, rollers, cables, bearings, bottom rubber, struts.

So some people are like, hey, carry these lights that we could add onto your garage drawer. They cost you 200. You could sell them for 350. Why? Like why? Like my guys are, I want every guy to sell rollers, cables, the stuff that matters to make the garage door work than these accessories.

Like if you're not selling things at really, really high margin and getting really good at it, don't sell anything else. Like openers don't make, openers, we triple the price, right? But because rollers and cables and springs are so dangerous and people lose their fingers and you need special tooling, that's where you make your money in the garage door industry. Not a lot of people will agree, but here's something I love to tell you guys. To all my haters out there, I've never seen a hater ever that's more successful than me. Ever.

I've never seen a hater that hates the comments they leave, the shit that they comment on, the things they say behind closed doors, the people that talk behind my back. I've never seen anybody who talks crap even come close to my success. So I'd love it for you to continue that because you can live in my shadows for the rest of your life. Needed to say that. Shooting content, consistency, not just random content. Absolutely. There is an art to how you're going to produce content. How long does it take to get leads flowing for PBC in a new market

for a brand new brand? Paperclip is pretty easy to get it flowing. I mean, obviously you got to get your quality score up and that's just going to come through clicks, but depending on, I mean, you can make paperclip work no matter what. How much money do you want to spend per acquisition? I mean, I could literally come up number one for Coca-Cola if I want to spend $5 million a minute. So it just depends on how much you're willing to spend. The leads don't suck. You suck.

Let's see. Yeah, you can schedule eight to 10 people. I'll just tell you this. If you come, I really do love shop tours. I like to keep them to 30, 40 people so I can answer questions and really, I mean, one of the things is Elise is going to help me with the shop tours and I'm going to come up and answer questions. And we're getting very methodical. Like you guys know, I've been on 17 trips this year since January. I want to open up the doors. I want to get you guys what you need.

So we're going to make it happen. And I'd like to be here when you come if possible. So just that's the plan. Oh, the dates. You can go to homeservicefreedom.com and it has all the dates. CSRs, let me explain something about call center representatives or call service reps. You don't want them doing inbound, outbound, answering form fills. You want to set a specialist. They're doing outbound. You want to just, you don't want to say for every outbound call you do when you're slow, you do

this, you do this, you do this, you do this. When everybody's responsible, nobody's responsible. Remember that, number one. Number two is get a specialist. Get one outbound person just bombing the outbound calls and start to create a cadence. What I'll do literally still is I'll jump on the call and see how much I can do in an hour. And I don't think anybody's going to be as... I'm not an experienced outbound dialer, but I do carry some stash when I say, hey, it's Tommy Mello. I'm actually the owner of A1. I'm just literally calling out clients, getting to know the outbound side of this, just to let you know this, this, this. But I hire a specialist. I've got a gal, Catherine, coming in. They're going to be focused on outbound calls. They're booking 70% of their outbound calls. The difference is, I'm a dumb guy. I ask a lot

of questions. So I found the best person in the industry. I mean, the guy that's going to do 24 million in HVAC. You don't think I got him coming to stay at my house to teach me a few lessons? You don't think I made those phone calls? You don't think I show up and I ask questions? You don't think I find the best person in the world? Want to know why I win so much? Because I get the best training, because I read the most books, so I get access to the most people because I'm not afraid to pay. A lot of people are afraid to spend $1,500. It's amazing to me. You want all these great things. You want customers to buy from you, but you won't spend anything. Wow. Talk about a hypocritical move. You don't even want to buy a

book. You don't even want to enter in a best practices group. Look, it's not mine. I don't really care. I really don't. But it's like, nobody wants to spend, but they want people to spend with them. It's kind of counterintuitive, isn't it? Yeah. Amanda, listen, explain in more detail how you plan the next day. Well, I've got an executive assistant who's moving into more of a different role. I want to have her kind of moving into a chief of staff, attending a lot of the meetings, focusing on a lot of the success rate in the business, handling lots and lots of meetings, getting me... Instead of people taking up an hour, I like to get back to people, but I just need five minutes. So let's get to the... She's going to save me a lot of time. Bree's super involved and Jim's super involved. And I've got

other people that heavily get involved in different types of meetings. So I've got access to a lot of things, but I think the best thing is to train an executive assistant to take away your email. Any minimum wage jobs, anything under $25 that you're still doing, you better hire somebody today

or get an ad out there today to handle those things. You're still doing emails, Shame on you. If you think your time is worth doing emails, and if you're scrolling every night on social media, looking for your answers, looking for the guy with the private chat, remember this. Follow people you want to be more like. Follow people with a successful story of business that walked away with a hundred million bucks. There's a lot of liars out there. Just remember, you want to live in the footsteps of somebody. If you want to be a better dad or a better mother, you better hang out with good moms and dads. You know, that's the crazy thing. There's a lot of people willing to give their advice out there.

In fact, I get it every day. People's two cents and all of them. The vast majority of the people in these garage door forums are punks and losers. They're never going to amount to anything in their life. All they do is complain. They don't listen when it rains outside, they complain when there's traffic, they complain. Everything about their life is a complaint. I mean, there's nobody wants to work life is a complaint. I mean, nobody wants to work for these assholes. I'll tell you that because they only care about themselves. They're afraid to charge a customer the right amount of money because nobody wants to buy for them unless they're cheap because they don't respect themselves. They literally look in the mirror and they say,

what a loser I am. And they try to make other people pull them down to be at their level. It's literally so funny, the comments that people make. Here's the problem. They'll never be anywhere. You know, they don't have anything better time than to look at someone else and criticize them, to try to bring themselves up. I don't need to go on there and talk bad. I never go on anything and try to talk bad.

If somebody charges cheap, maybe in their business, they can make that work. Walmart did. If somebody's super high price, great. They're still in business. They're making it great. Literally at the end of the day, why do people talk so much shit? Keep it to yourself if you got nothing good to say. Nobody cares on social media and your TikTok and Instagram and Facebook about your opinion, unless it's a good thing. If you're in my group, HSS or home service expert, why don't you comment on somebody, tell them how great they are. Why don't you say that's a great question I'm following.

Why don't you really try to, why don't we make a community that actually helps people and lifts up the industry rather than just literally go out and try to pull people down. If somebody is lying, cheating, stealing, leaving bad reviews for your company, just poaching every one of your employees,

I'm okay with you talking stuff. But otherwise, like try to lift people up around you. Try to be a person that actually gives back to this industry, to the home service industry. We're all in this together. I'm so sick of these forums and these groups of just people putting each other down. It's usually a lot of employees that are just, they'll never amount to anything for these other companies. So they talk bad. It's funny to me that they're so obsessed with being a technician. They never really learned about how to make friends. They learn how to fix stuff. They never learned how to build

relationships and ask better questions and create a great experience. It's shocking that their owners never taught them that sales is not a bad thing because Joel Osteen and every other church out there with 5,000 to 7,000 congregations, they don't make money unless you tithe and give 10%. But your job is only to fix stuff because we don't sell anything that people don't need. Bullshit. People want a lot of stuff at their house. They don't need home automation. They don't need a security system. They don't need. Bullshit. People want a lot of stuff at their house. They don't need home automation. They don't need a security system. They don't need a brand new garage door. We could fix it, but they want it. They didn't need a new car. They didn't need a Rolex.

They wanted it. People want nice things. So you offer it to them. Idiots, idiots. Anyways, I got to get going here. What, the dates? I got the dates here. We're going to have some killer stuff. I think I got some really good guests. I got Jocko coming to one of them. Oh, man, I just get so frustrated because I just, I don't hang out with losers.

If anybody comes to my house, they're a winner. If people come to my events, typically they're mostly winners. The people that work for me are all winners. But I just, it's just the shit talking out there. I mean, you get a guy like Andy Elliott, people just can't stop talking about his tight pants. They have no idea the way he lives and what he's doing. It's just, it's so easy to ridicule other people. Why don't you look in the mirror

and look at your pathetic life and why don't you do something about it? You know, I don't understand it. It's the only way you could get up and feel good about yourself is talk shit about this fat guy when you're fat yourself or talk bad about somebody that's acting interesting because whatever. I just beg you, look in the mirror and figure out a way that you're going to be happy with yourself. And when you start looking at yourself and nobody will affect you anymore, you won't have to look at social media to bring people down. I don't think there's a lot of people listening right now, but maybe you could share this message with people to say, stop bringing people down in these, when you're in a social media or whatever it is, or when you're in an event, I just pray that behind closed doors,

people have my back because I protect a lot of people and people that have my back. I'll go to war with them. I will. I'll go to war. So the events, we had one here in Phoenix. The next one's in March in Nashville, 25, 26. I think we got a really badass speaker going to be there. June 10th and 11th, we're going to be in Philly. July 15th and 16th, we're going to be in Oklahoma City. September is the big event. It's going to be in San Diego, the 25th through the 27th. And the budget meeting is going to be November 6th and 7th. What I'll do is I'll have Giuseppe post the picture of the events and the link in this so you can come back later if you forget about it.

And listen, I'd love to go to Canada. It's on the map. Don't worry. It's on the roadmap. But hey, guys, I know I get excited. I get passionate. I get loud. Hopefully, that's why you like this.

And I speak from the heart. I'm literally coming with everything I got. I don't hold back. I appreciate you guys listening. And look, shop tours are welcome. I love this stuff. I appreciate you guys listening. And look, shop tours are welcomed. I love this stuff. I love you when you succeed. I love watching you guys get in shape, showing up for your kids, being faithful to your wife and your husband, getting rid of those friends that literally are pushing you in the wrong way, making you a worse

person. I mean, to not talk about mindset and who we hang out with and what we do outside of work would be like, look at the people you hang out with. Like, my question is this, look at the people you hang out with. Do you want those lives? Is that the life you want? I mean, maybe it is. Maybe it's people that are with their kids all the time. They would do the best family vacations. They're around their parents. They live a very happy life. Or are you around people that are always stressed out, always talking down about people, always getting high and getting wasted? Look, just ask yourself, write it down right now. Grab a piece of paper. Just write down the people you're around a lot. Hopefully, if you're like me, it's around the people here at

A1. But write down outside of A1, write down outside of your core work. Who is it? Maybe it's a brother that's just not a good influence on you. Maybe it's a sister. Maybe it's a best friend you grew up with, but write down five people outside of your work and outside of your immediate, immediate household family, like right under your roof. Write down the five people and rate them one out of 10 if they're moving you forward in the right direction, if they're everything you want to become. And if it's not, look in the mirror, hold a sheet of paper up and say, I'm the problem. You have a choice. You're making the wrong one today. You could change it tomorrow. I appreciate you guys listening and I hope you have a super successful weekend.

I know it's going to be a record month for us because we got an extra day in February. Got 29 days. We're going to take advantage of leap year. We beat budget in January by 500 grand EBITDA. This month, I think we're going to beat it by more. We had some low goals the first quarter, so we're killing it. And then Q2, we got to rise up. So we got to do a lot of crucial hiring, got to inspire our people, got to make sure they're living their best life and their dreams big enough. We got to elevate

everybody around us. I appreciate you guys listening and sticking in there. I know you guys have busy days. You're trying to run a successful business. So thanks for taking the time. Keep it classy. Appreciate you guys and talk to you soon. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization.

It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction,

head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.