The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A with Tommy - Fueling Employee Engagement With Equity Incentives

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire 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 onboarding, employee discipline, advertising, insurance, operating manuals, sales...

Well, I've said this a few times on these Q&As. Number one, I never hire the unemployment line very rarely. Number two, I spend a lot of time getting our employees reviewing us on Indeed and Glassdoor because of those show ratings. Number three, we do a lot of social media. We try to get our people to post a lot. Just like you have a lot of clients coming in, I want to be able to pick from 100 employees to find one. And I was just doing a podcast earlier with my boy Brian. And he said, if you walk in the room and you're interviewing somebody and your mood doesn't go up, if it's like just kind of lackluster, if it's just kind of like, it's okay. A lot of people are hiring anybody with a pulse. Hire A-plus players, and that's for attitude, eye contact, tonality, smile, stories.

And what you'll find very, very quickly is these people are just, they're the best. They go above and beyond all the time. They'll help you hire. They'll work a night. They'll work a weekend. They'll pick up a holiday. They'll get their family involved. They'll be networking you at church. Like, don't settle, especially right now. It's harder to get leads. It's going back to pre-COVID times. You can't afford shitty people. You can't afford, hey, if I work with this guy for two years, maybe he'll be better. You can't do that. There's 8 billion people on this planet. You can find some good people. Trust me. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right. Today's my favorite day. We are live home service expert podcast. We call this the Q and A and I'm in Bree's office because my computer just turned blue

and needs to be replaced. So you guys have not heard of the Home Service Millionaire book. You've probably been on another planet. So make sure to check out Home Service Millionaire. You go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I got my original HSM course, course.homeservicemillionaire.com. It's a pretty great course. But I will say Elevate is coming out on Audible. It's been submitted. So I'm just waiting for them to click it and it should be available. It's all recorded. Everything's done. And if you haven't joined the Home Service Expert group,

you need to join it. And you guys have probably heard we've got the Freedom Event coming up very soon. It's in November 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Lots of amazing speakers. This is going to be the best event I've ever put on. Bill Roussel is helping. We've got great people that are really assisting to make this event take off. I have so many friends in Garage Door Freedom that have gone and 5X'd their profit.

And they're buying new trucks, and they're training their guys, and they're recruiting better, and they're dialing in the CRM. And these are the things I kept getting people to come to Vertical Track. And I was like, you know, we don't really help with other home services. So we just decided to do it. We decided to put on an event and really try to help other home service companies. I learned through the hard knocks, man. I did everything wrong. You name it. I wasn't hiring correctly. I didn't have scorecards. I didn't have dialed in CRM. I didn't have new trucks. I didn't have the right logos. I didn't have the right manuals.

And I bring in all these people that have taught me. Al's turning 70. He's an amazing guy. He's still got a lot of great knowledge. And you got Dan with Kick Charge. You just got Jody. The list goes on and on of the people that I want to bring to really be able to help the people that have helped me. And I feel like if you're still a slave to your business, you got to come to Home Service Freedom. It's afreedomevent.com. It's scrolling at the bottom here. If you don't like it, I'll give you your money back. If you don't enjoy it, it doesn't matter. I'll give you the money back. You text me, you'll get the money back in an hour. So I know this is going to change your life. I know it's going to change your business. Can someone, you guys could hear me good, right? Thumbs up, I guess. Let's see here. What do we got? What's up? Bunch of zeros. Very nice. Shout out from Houston. Any

recommendations on advertising? We use Google ads guarantee. Anything else you recommend? Right now, I'll tell you this. We're getting an equal amount of leads from GMB to LSA to PPC. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of money on PPC. We're trying to get up below 20%. People could say they could get their advertising PPC costs down. But if you're using it, the only way I think to drive PPC down is to drive brand, which costs money, which is wrapping the trucks, TV, radio billboards. But it's an investment. So I'm taking five markets over the next six months and I'm putting a ton of money into branding. And we're actually going to start to build an algorithm for our company that says if we apply this much money now you got to look at ad

quality you got to make sure you're putting new ads out funny things people are interested they'll leave it on they'll remember you so we're going to spend some money we're going to do some influencer marketing but really dial in things from the next level to make sure we're taking market share. And what will happen is PPC will come down, click-through rate will go up, ValPak will pay us back more money, Clipper will do better. Everything does better when you invest into the brand. And a lot of people don't have a brand. They have a logo and they have a shitty business name and it's not a brand. So if your name does not resonate, it's not a great brand that stands out.

A1 garage door service was a mistake. I did it in 2006 and I couldn't turn it back. Dan did the best he could with it. But if I go back in time, I was just telling someone earlier, there's no way I would have picked A1 garage door service period was a mistake. It needs to be more distinct.

It needs to definitely have the name garage door service, garage door repair in it, but it would have been something way just unique. Tell us about your scorecards. Well, a scorecard is a lot like a report card in school. Typically, they'll talk a little bit about attendance and then it'll talk mostly about the grades you got in five or six grades. Anything more than five or six things you're tracking, you got to be very careful on a scorecard because you don't want to put things like, what are the things you don't want on a scorecard? You don't want driving.

If you're screwing up driving, you need to get fired. You're a risk for everybody. If you're speeding, you're not paying attention. We've got camera systems in there. Everybody wants to add all these things under the scorecard, but what's going to make the biggest impact? Average ticket, conversion rate, service to sales. For us, getting the customer pre-financed

and getting comfortable with that. So we added that to the scorecard. On CSRs, I care about booking rate percentage. I care about tonality. I care about double checking the information, data accuracy. Every role, there should be four or five, maybe six things, tops. I think you start with three. And then you just tell people, well, these are going to change possibly month to month. But usually we change it every quarter. We don't like to change things very often, but we know what matters. Callbacks matter.

So we added that to the scorecard for the technicians. We don't like callbacks. No one makes money when there's a callback. So they keep an eye on that. They make sure they fix it right. What up, Tommy? Love listening to your podcast. I own a pet service company called Duty Defense Pet Services LLC and launching a second business, Stinks Extinct, a product launch. Extinct. We are bottling product like crazy, even though I'm in a different business.

I get so much from you. Also good friends with Brackley. That's awesome. Congrats. I love hearing that direct mail via the home mag that works. We've worked out lots of good opportunities with the home mag. So what's definitely a shitty business name? You know, I think something generic.

I think a shitty business name is um never named the city name so many people are like let's say Denver's HVAC services it's like I just I don't love those names a lot of people try to beat Google by putting in like garage door repair Phoenix is the company name it's just you want to be distinct enough to make it stand out like one of my buddies owns a pest control company called Moxie. Moxie is a great name because Moxie means something. So come up with something clever. Do your trademarks.

If you go to a lawyer, they're going to search every single what you want is an uncontestable trademark. So you can expand with that name and make sure no one else has got it. Yeah. So you pick four to six. You can pick three different things on your scorecard and you track them. And our guys get scored next to their name is a number where they're right out of 300 technicians. So if you've got a 267, you're 267 on the scorecard. We grade everything against the mean. No one gets a, we graded out of a

thousand. The top guys at 663, no one could get it's on a curve. So we don't come up with where you should be. We take each and every metrics and grade it against the mean. We started doing that three years ago. So we don't come up with what the metrics should be. We let you know how you're doing amongst your peers. And I think that, you know, job average and conversion rate is weighted. Ticket average is weighted 40 percent%. That's the bulk of it. If you're not giving options, you're giving alternatives. If you're not giving people, getting them comfortable, they called you out with something broken. I wish people gave me more options when they come fix stuff in my house, but they don't.

I don't buy more. But if they said, hey, I'll get your shower hotter, faster. And by the way, I could give you a much harder wash. I like a lot of pressure. No one ever offered me that. I just switched to tankless units, but I wish you would offer me 10 more things. And he didn't, I would have bought everything, but he didn't offer it to me.

I want nice things. People want nice things. They want to invest in their best asset, which is their home. So I think ticket average matters and conversion rate matters. And those who don't probably don't have a successful business. That's just the way it is. How do you coach tonality objectively? Well, there's AI that could do that. We use Dialpad. Literally what it could tell is they score your voice. Are you empathetic? There's

all kinds of AIs that could do it objectively. They know they've got training. AI basically takes millions of iterations of things and it creates your voice, the intent of your voice. Are you smiling when you're talking? You don't think AI can tell that? Everybody can tell. They call me all the time. They say, I know you're smiling when you do your radio commercials. I sit there with a mirror and smile the whole time I'm talking. So you can do it objectively, sincere. We're there sincere. Oh my gosh, your garage door is broke. Your car is stuck.

I'm so sorry to hear that, Ms. Jones. Oh, Ms. Jones, I'm so sorry to hear that. That sucks. Happy hump day. Like if you don't think you can tell someone's tonality, AI will do it for you. Brandon said, we have five locations in five states right now and growing. Our headquarters is in Phoenix.

GCS Glass, startup versus acquiring. All right. Well, let's go into this for a minute. Let's talk about Greenfield organic growth. I like greenfield growth because acquisitions, a lot of business, let's put it this way. I like to stay close when I'm growing, when I'm a smaller company. I like to be able to get out there relatively quickly within a couple hours. Acquisitions is a different ballgame. You got to have a lot of money to do it or else you'll go broke. You got to have a good credit line. You got to have an integration checklist. You got to

really be able to prepare the owners. We deal with this quite a bit where the owners maybe didn't feel like they didn't really understand what they were getting into. But you don't foresee the problems. Every owner is a little bit different. Sometimes they want to go away and just retire. But the best thing to do when you buy a company is let them take a few week vacation and try to get the stuff incorporated. But here's the hardest thing is what's the owner going to do after they stop? You don't want that buyer's remorse. But organic growth is powerful. But for me, it's such a fragmented industry.

I'm looking for old companies that don't spend a lot of marketing, that I know I can increase a lot of things. I know I can increase professionalism, leadership. I know I can give them better trucks, better tools, better training. I know I can bring their sales game up. I know I can bring their booking rate up. So I'm buying companies and fixing them. I'm not growing through acquisition. I'm going through acquisition plus fixing them.

Not every company is broken, but they still don't have some of the stuff we have. And we've learned from acquisitions too. But I'll tell you, with my timeline of being three to four years, probably less than that, I got an exact date, but I'm not going to share it. But I'll tell you guys, I cannot get to where I need to be. I need to grow 30% organically and 30% in acquisitions. Minimum a year. My plan is 50-50. So I'm going to greenfield into eight more markets this year.

And the companies that are there, I'm going to go out and call a town hall with all the garage door companies. Either we can partner with them. They can join Garage Door Freedom if they like. Or we can be friendly competitors. But I'm going to tell them straight up, I'm pouring money into this market. I'm going to be at every home show. I'm going to be in every mail. I'm going to be doing direct mail, every radio commercial, every TV, every billboard you see, every bus stop. You are going to know our name. Your employees are going to know our name and your customers are going to know our name. You could join us or we're going to take market share. And it's not a

threat. A threat is something you don't do. This is happening. And we are going to own this market, period. And a lot of companies are going to want to sell to happening. And we are going to own this market, period. And a lot of companies are going to want to sell to us. And we're going to, some of them can roll equity and 5X what they rolled. And it's a great ROI. These aren't threats. This is reality. And we're nice. We're going to show you what we're doing. We want you to succeed. We believe that a high tide raises all boats. And we're more than welcome for you to make a lot of money. In fact, a lot of companies call me and they say since you've been in our market we raised our prices we're making more profit we're not quite as busy as we were but we stopped running so many calls per tech and now we're making way more profit than we've ever made and my family is able to actually we go on

vacations and my kids are happier than they've ever been i'm spending more time at home those calls mean the world to me they're a competitor but i don't look at them as competitors we all get to win we're in a good profession, home service. I wish more people looked at it that way. If I were you, I'd really get good at organic because if you're not good at organic growth, if you don't got your marketing, acquisitions are 10 times harder. So Brandon, hopefully that helps. You could ask more questions in here if you got more. Tom, I saw a post on social media pages regarding hiring and how it's a big challenge for you and you overcame it. But how specifically did you overcome that challenge and hire quality employees? Well, I've said this a few times on these Q&As. Number one, I never hire

the unemployment line very rarely. Number two, I spent a lot of time getting our employees reviewing us on Indeed and Glassdoor because of those show ratings. Number three, we do a lot of social media. We try to get our people to post a lot. Just like you have a lot of clients coming in, I want to be able to pick from 100 employees to find one. And I was just doing a podcast earlier with my boy Brian. And he said, if you walk in the room and you're interviewing somebody and your mood doesn't go up, if it's like just kind of lackluster, if it's just kind of like, eh, it's okay. A lot of people are hiring anybody with a pulse. Hire A-plus players, and that's for attitude, eye contact, tonality, smile, stories. And what you'll find very, very quickly is these people are just, they're the best.

They go above and beyond all the time. They'll help you hire. They'll work a night. They'll work a weekend. They'll pick up a holiday. They'll get their family involved. They'll be networking you at church. Like don't settle, especially right now. It's harder to get leads. It's going back to pre-COVID times. You can't afford shitty people. You can't afford, hey, if I work with this guy for two years, maybe he'll be better. You can't do that. There's 8 billion people on this planet. You can find some good people. Trust me. How important do you think networking relationships are going to be with paid marketing, lead flow, tightening up? I will be attending Freedom. That's awesome. I go back to relationships as the key to everything. I think if you're not out there

meeting the people, I talked to Cody Johnson. We just partnered with him. He's one of my favorite people in the whole world. You know, Vince and Ryan, the whole family is just winners. And I said, you know, we're changing a lot at Garage Door Doctor in Houston. They're so used to doing everything, inventory, ordering, you know, all these different things. I said, Cody, if you want to get back involved with some of that stuff, I'm fine with that. You know, I love you, dude. But what if I told you to just figure out a way to hire great technicians and constantly be motivating the ones we have and going out and meeting realtors and builders and painters and pest control companies and going to BNI meetings and just networking like crazy and building relationships and then

helping us take over all of Texas. Dallas is next. And then I want you on the road with me in about a year. And I want to start going after the 20 big markets we're going to grow in big time. And you're giving up some control. But I said, if I could get somebody at $20, $25 an hour to do it, why are you doing it? You know, you make a lot more money than that. And it's not supposed to be condescending to anybody. But if you're doing anything for me, if I'm doing anything less, what can I do that nobody else could do? Well, no one else could call from the owner.

There's no one else here that has as much equity as me in the company that runs the meetings that could tell somebody you're doing a great job. I can't have an assistant, an executive assistant do that. They can text somebody and say, hey, Tommy says you're doing really great, but that's not the same. So what can you do individually that no one else can do? You could praise people. You could work on acquisitions and show up there and say, you're buying me, you're buying us. There's a lot of things that I've really had to examine of what I can do that can't delegate.

I believe I could out-delegate anybody. I think relationships are everything. Is there a non-ROC service that you'd say is currently underserved and capable of blowing up Arizona? Register a contractor. I'm not sure exactly what services. I think, I'll tell you what, I heard a guy just made like $300 million by scooping poop, dog poop. I don't think there's industry I could ever go

into and not make a fortune. I could go into cleaning goldfish tanks. And I don't think you need a registered contractor's license. I think you got to market to the affluent of these times. Find somebody that won't get hit by the economy. There are all of my neighbors, I guarantee you got to market to the affluent of these times. Find somebody that won't get hit by the economy. There are all of my neighbors, I guarantee you, they're not going to sell their cars or go broke or stop their cleaning services and landscapers. I pay my landscaper $1,200 a month and I'm happy. I pay him two grand if he offered me more all day long. So I think finding services,

if someone come detail my cars and it was a go-getter and they came and they didn't mind running and getting an oil change, I'd pay for it. And it's something we're working on. We're working on finding people to do all this stuff. So I think marketing to affluent people that just don't care. They want the service. They want a great service with a smile. It's like the cleaning lady I talked about on one of my videos.

I talk about this lady who showed up and she'd always do something different. She'd clean the baseboards one day behind the toilet the next day, the different times she cleaned the fan blades. And she'd always bake cookies. And she'd write a handwritten letter of how much she appreciates the business and what she did to go above and beyond her duty. And she had more business organically just through word of mouth than that she created raving fans. And what I got to tell you guys is when you market to the affluent, when I got in the garage door business, I said, everybody's my client. That's not true.

If you can't afford, everybody at the garage door is not my client. If you don't want a nice garage door and fixed right, someone else could have that. I don't want it. I just, not everybody's my client. And I can live have that. I don't want it. I just, not everybody's my client. And I can live with that. I'd rather have a lot of great clients that appreciate what they're buying and aren't sensitive to getting the cheapest thing possible. They're not your Walmart customer. I'd rather just, I thought, we've gone out to houses with over 100,000.

Those are your happiest customers. It's the cheap customer that got a coupon that's going to be the one star on Yelp and Google and Angie and HomeAdvisor and Porridge and one star on Yellow Pages and one star on Nextdoor and one star on Facebook. Audible version of your new book is coming out any day. It's submitted to Audible. It's all edited by yours truly. It's my voice. I'm hoping by Friday, but just look out for it. It should be coming soon. We have a hard time moving to performance pay, vessel, service, plumbing, HVAC, and comfort consultants. I got a garage door company that I just talked to out of

Portland a week ago. They went from 20,000 profit to 105,000 profit. And they've been doing it for seven weeks. That's per month. If you're having a hard time doing it, you got the wrong people. And most people that switch to performance pay have to redo their whole staff because you got people that just, they'd say, I feel more comfortable making hourly. I'm not comfortable selling. I don't like to sell. I don't sell things people don't need. No, you don't do shit. You're lazy and you don't offer anything. And if you offered shit, you make a fortune and you're not doing the customer a service by band-aiding shit. It's so annoying. So you're going to have to fire your entire staff. Probably not, but you're going to

have to find people that are motivated, that want to perform on performance. A lot of people don't. They're like, my wife, she's just not comfortable because it's not guaranteed. Well, listen, this isn't right for you. So you're going to have to literally, I know about a dozen people who have got rid of their entire staff. The difference is you're profitable. The people are happier. They're making money. They're buying houses. They're buying cars. They're looking you in the eye. They have self-worth. You're changing people's lives. You just got the wrong people. I hate to say it, but it's true. What financing do you lead with? Low payment or 0%? Never lead with 0% financing.

Talk to the GOAT, Dale Steele. He'll tell you how much are you paying for a credit card? I just got one in the mail. 24.5 percent. We cut it in half. We got stuff at 11.99, but here's the best part. There's no prepayment penalty. Zero percent, you're paying 12, 15 percent dealer fees. You better not be giving discounts on top of 0%. That should be illegal for your company. And smartest companies I know, I just talked to Aaron Gaynor, they're getting rid of all the 0% because in this economy, you can't afford to pay huge dealer fees. It's just not possible.

Hi, Tommy. We just started our pay-per-performance with our techs. Since you have shared, it's a huge change in the garage door business. For the business and for the tech future, how long would you say it would be to make it as you're explaining the things, you're motivating them, you're coaching them. You should be rewarding the right things. When someone makes a great paycheck, Bree, I want you to go on Amazon in the second window that you're watching this. And I want you to buy one of those big checks for like 20 bucks. It's like a big whiteboard check. And on the front of it, I want you to write how much they made in a week with the technician's permission. And then I want you to write down on the back of it on just a piece of paper the things that made that work and i want you to whiteboard and say here's what he did and then i want you each day celebrating

those wins and what will happen is people start to go wow i never thought of that i never tried that i never played with the dog i never smiled i never got to know the names of the kids. And what you'll find is the more and more they realize that what's in it for them, the more and more they'll start rejoicing together and the more money they'll make. And then the bigger your bottom line. You all win. That's the point of my book, Elevate. If you were to weigh against the mean and not the target, how do you align scorecards with paid for performance? So my paid forperformance works like this. They get a percentage. I take the total ticket minus the parts cost and the tax. And then I pay a percentage. Different depending on what level you're at. And if you're an installer versus a tech, there's junior tech, tech, senior tech,

there's mat team, tech, there's virtual virtual product specialist but when you get a promotion you move to a different level so in a way it's commission but if you get a lot of callbacks you we don't bump back down we used to bump back down but at that point we're having a one-on-one with you and we're talking to you about things to improve and my biggest thing is do you believe that this is right are you going to give it 100 Are you going to show up every day? And they're like, listen, I want this more than anything. You give me the coaching. I'll be there. I got the will. You help me find the way. That's somebody I'm going to work with. But if they're like, yeah, I mean, I'm making enough already. It's like, if they don't have the right attitude and mindset, then they're not going to last.

So hopefully that sheds some light on that. What sales training do you recommend? Every sales training. Sandler, Joe Crisara, Al Levy talks a lot about some stuff. My sales training, Dale Steele helps me, Andy Elliott, Tom Hopkins. If you look at the majority of my books, I read the sales boss, Jonathan Wissman, I'm having dinner with tonight. What sales training don't I recommend? It's one thing that you got to keep feeding and learning and testing. Times change. Sales training is everything. Sales training is how you're going to get married and get a date. Sales training is how you're going to make friends and network. Sales training is Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people. Sales training is going to deepen your relationships. It's going to help you

become a better listener. It's going to help you be able to actively pursue your goals more. Like sales has got such a bad word, but it's such a great thing. As long as you don't use it for bad things. Sales is amazing. You should always be learning how to sell sell yourself people love to buy but they hate to be sold educational and information sell informative selling is prescription and build your skill of listening and the ability to show empathy absolutely how would you take a new construction focused business and garage doors roof roofing, et cetera, and rotate the mix into existing homeowners. I mean, it's in repair. Oh, new construction. That's a tough subject because, you know,

you were able to make money in new construction and garage doors and roofing when no one could get the stuff so you could charge more. I think the main thing to understand is you got to learn about marketing and you got to have people on performance pay and you're going to have people on performance pay. And you're going to need to get the right price book. Now, the price book, as I always talk about, is the derivative of all the costs.

The pricing should be able to be the price book dictates the pay. They all work in uniform. This is a big thing of when you don't have a direct correlation between your pricing and how much you pay somebody, there's a big issue there. That's why hourly sucks. You don't get an expected result. Now, what I'll do is sold hours, which is completely different than hourly. If the job takes on average four hours and I pay for four hours, I don't care if you do it in two or six. If you do it in six, we got to retrain you.

We got to work on you. We got to get you more efficient. If you do it in two and you don't get any warranty calls, power to you. So sold hours different than hourly, but there's a lot of things that need to happen correctly in a business to price correctly in the repair and retrofit installation side. I look at new construction people and their pricing and they're like, I went from 200 to 300 in Springs. I'm like, well, can you afford new trucks now for that extra a hundred dollars? Can you afford four trainers and two recruiters? Can you afford to

buy your guys tools and put, send them on paid vacation with a 401k and great insurance and pet insurance? We got pet insurance. You can't because you're still not priced right because you're scared. And I've been scared too. So I'm not, I'm preaching to the choir here. But if you're not willing to get priced right to buy all the things the company needs and be on billboards and hire trainers and keep, build a great training center,

which if you knew the stretch you guys are, they're like, how could I ever charge that? Well, if you want to make money, why'd you go into business? If you want to just, why don't you just sign up for a 5013C and be a nonprofit? If you're not worried about making 20% of the bottom line and taking care of your employees, then just go join a nonprofit. But if you're not, then charge real prices and a truck is going to cost you 65 grand wrapped. And tools are going to cost you 4,500 for your guys. And PTO.

And we got, we got, we pay for a portion of everybody's half-lack. I mean, but I'm not having problems getting people because we pay the right amount. And the people got to be good drivers. They got to be good looking, presentable. They have to care. They have to have a good technical aspect. They got to be good at sales. They're not easy to find. You don't pay them right. Back when it was Joe Schmo in 1960s, it just go fixes the problem. It doesn't give up any options. And blue collar workers weren't allowed to make more than this day and age, 40 grand. Back then, probably 10 grand.

Like, I get it. But now we're a professional service. Why do you think PE is crawling all over every company that matters? Why do you think venture capitalists and banks are loaning? It's like, we're a good industry. Home service is the right industry. It's great. And now they need us more than they ever thought.

Thanks, Steve. Appreciate that. What if your credit score has tanked? If your credit score has tanked, well, there's Don's and Bradstreet, which is your professional credit. You should get a hold of them and get your credit dialed in. And I've got a company, if you guys want to know about, that could help fix your credit. So there's a lot of companies that do it. Some of them do it quick. But you've got to be careful. You You got to pay off the majority of your balances, not all your balances. I've learned a lot about credit and credit's super important.

When you acquire, are you paying just for the customer list? Surely you don't want to pay for all the equipment or systems that aren't aligned with yours. No, no, I'm buying their website and I can 301 redirect that, or I can keep their name. I'm? No, no, I'm buying their website and I get 301 redirect that, or I can keep their name. I'm buying all their vehicles. I'm buying a lot of their parts that I see I offer good, better, best. And some of the parts are still used, but I'm also buying every sticker they've ever had. I'm also buying every review they've ever got. I'm also buying all the great employees they have. I'm also buying the relationships they have. I'm also buying if they've got 500 reviews on Angie. I'm also buying if they rank good on Nextdoor. What I'm doing is saying I'm going to buy what you're doing

at a certain multiple, right? So I'll give them a multiple of EBITDA. And I'm saying I know I can fix their booking rate. I like companies that are already getting a lot of EBITDA. And I'm saying, I know I can fix their booking rate. I like companies that are already getting a lot of calls that are spending a ton of money in marketing. They've been around for a long time, they're ready to retire. I win every single time when that happens. Now, if there's a company that blitzed marketing for three years, they're spending 30% of revenue on marketing and they're staying busy, they're probably not making a very good profit. So I pick that up for a huge discount as well. But it takes time to figure out who to buy and what you can really do something with. How to maintain a net profit

margin stable while growing business to $1 million to $5 million. You know, net profit margin, you're talking about growing from $1 million to $5 million. I think what everybody should do right now, this is a great exercise I have people do. I want you to write down how much money you need to live the perfect life without working. I don't want you to retire, but this is an exercise. I want you to say, listen, I want to take care of my brother, my parents. I want you to put a number down. I want you to start talking to somebody because if you have no idea what you're building to, because here's the deal. I'm growing 30% and I'm not dipping at all in EBITDA.

If I was to grow 100%, I might, but I'm also getting resourceful and the whole team's aligned with us. But pick a number where you need to hit. Maybe it's 20 million. And your goal should be to have everybody lined up, your family around you. You should get employees involved. You should do an equity incentive program.

When they know you need to hit 20 million, everybody's running and there's something in it for them. And I just think when you know where you have to go, one to five million, this is what I used to do is, what is my goal? Maybe it's 200 million. Maybe I need a 10-year plan, but it's nice to know what I need to do and reverse engineer the plan into that. But I think you can still make a lot of money if you got five, depending on you said 1 million to 5 million. Is that in a year? I mean, I'd love to hear the plan and see it because as I've been

well thought out to grow 500%, I just would like to know the marketing and your performance pay and how you plan on getting the amount of leads. Because when you stop getting easy low hanging fruit, it becomes more expensive to get leads. And it's a good goal to say, I wanna go from 1 million to 5 million, but what's your timeline on it?

Are you setting smart goals? Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timeliness. Tommy, I own a pool construction and maintenance company on Long Island, a second home area. Your performance pay has text meeting with the homeowner and presenting options. We hardly get a chance to speak to the homeowner in person. How would you present options and promotions if you were in the backyard but not face-to-face? Very simply, I'd hire a really good dispatcher to make sure that I could be home with the homeowners and I'd make sure both

decision makers are home. I would have people working different hours and I'd find out what the target, you're saying that they don't live in the area, so I'd probably get them on a Zoom call, but I'd give them a half an hour presentation where I'd get a GoPro and I'd make a video and I'd have simulations made. And I'd just surpass everybody with the presentation. And I'd have the 10 things you need to know about to look out for with a company. Number one, if they promise you this price, you're probably looking at getting it done in 2029. Number two, we've had 10 guys fall. They started to work and they went bankrupt.

You got to educate your people and get them. You got to figure out, hell, if it's big enough, do I fly out? Whoops. I fly out to see them. If you market to the affluent, what percent of your customers are affluent? How many non-affluent would you lose if the economy took a dip? Well, let's just think about the word affluent. Affluent means they're well off. So my buddy Josh Campbell in Dallas, he really focuses on people with two HVAC units or more. Why? Because he knows when one's put on,

the other one's put on, and he can sell two units. So he specializes in marketing to be able to, you know, you got a bigger house, you got more taxes, you can afford more. I think there's a lot of money marketing to the affluent. It's not for every single trade. Some make a lot of money in plumbing. You know, Ken Goodrich with Gettle says the majority of his money comes from dual income husband and wife marriages that they each make about 80 grand so i'm not saying necessarily every home service business should market to the affluent i mean in florida i'm going to be selling 100 000 jobs 10 times a day here soon but But what I'm saying to you guys is if I wanted something that was economy proof,

something where I'm not going to have any flack, think about it. I could go clean somebody's car. I got a million things I could be doing. I love garage doors right now, but I wouldn't have to worry about anything. The question was, what do I need without an RRC earlier?

And I guarantee you, there are people that if you talk to the right realtors, certain realtors that don't touch anything below $2 million, you come up with a service that helps them and helps their clients. You're a shoe. And wait until I come out with these new storage racks. We're already selling them. But when we get really good at installing them, I'm already selling them. It's all going to be through relationships. I'll get the audio book.

After you spoke, sexy business summit, you crossed out Mike and signed the elevate you were holding. Oh, yeah, no. Hey, that was cool, brother. I loved meeting you, Tony. I signed up for the VIP for Freedom of Enter Orlando. What does the agenda look like and what speakers do you plan other than yourself? Keith Mercurio is going to be there. We've got some really cool guest speakers that no one's ever, at least in my events, seen before. Al Levy is going to be there. We've got a list of a lot of people. And the VIP night is going to be amazing. And we're still

getting more people. But I can tell you this, when you hear what this event's really what it's about is learning how to build a business. You can sell for lots of millions of dollars. Now what that looks like with lawyers and what it looks like to get it all, you know, it might be 10 years out, but I feel like there's no real, there's nobody out there that's been through the lawyers

and they understand quality of earnings and they understand how to do the taxes. They understand what buyers look at and they understand how to build your org chart out. And they just know how to drive performance in EBITDA and build a really, really big business. There's a lot of great groups out there, but they don't really have... We just want to improve you every year, but they're not working towards a goal. So my goal of this deal is to help you think about what your life looks like, what your plans are, what your bucket list is, who you want to help, what employees you're going to take with you. I'm not saying it's over, but you know how

you make a lot of money is you get a multiple of EBITDA and then you roll 20% and then you make more and you go start something else. You know, my buddy Keegan always told me, he's like, you don't make your money, your real money till you sell. And, you know, I had $10 million in our account when we sold. I own a lot of property. But when I got real money, real freedom stuff, I'm going to Lake Tahoe this weekend with my mom and dad and my stepdad and my sister and kids. Real money, several million in the bank. And I think more people should understand what that's going to do for them.

Because they say, yeah, I have plenty of money now. I made 200 grand plus. They take a withdrawal each year. That's not real money. That's not real freedom. And my goal is just to show you guys what can happen in this event. And then I'm just going to have you guys meet all the people that changed for me. Dan and Sally is going to be there.

Basically, the who's who. Tom Howard is going to be there. Aaron Gaynor is going to be there. You name somebody that's big in home service, they're going to be there. And, you know, a lot of people come to these events and they just get to talk with one person and they get a whole new perspective. My main thing is you guys develop outcome and key results. What's the outcome you're going for? How do we get there? And that happens through marketing, that happens through sales, that happens through culture, that happens through leadership. We're going for how do we get there and that happens through marketing that happens through sales that happens through culture that happens through leadership we're going to focus on a lot of those things and we want you to take people with you you know we want people that

that are watching your back we want people good lawyers we want people that know what quality of earnings look like we want to get your chart of accounts dialed and everything we'll be talking about performance pay scorecards all that stuff so all i promise you is if you don't get your socks blown off that'll give you the money back how would you do performance-based pay in a teamwork environment multiple people working on the same project well you always want a lead that makes a little bit more then you might have two helpers you want someone like the form and someone in charge of the project. And then what I would do is I'd say, the lead gets 50%, the other two guys get 25%. And what I would probably do is say, there would be a set amount

that I budgeted into the price for them. And as long as I did my pricing correctly, which most people don't, and I knew what I was doing right, because it's a project, you just, a lot of people just say, I think 12 hours should cover it. They have no real way of doing the estimates. In garage doors, it's a lot easier, but the best people in the world of landscape projects, pools, they know exactly how to square

this many square foot. This is the machinery. They got a bidding tool that does that. But I would say the performance pay is something where there should be a project lead. Maybe it's 40, 30, 30. Maybe there's different ways to do it, but I'd have, you know, another thing I'd be doing is making sure there's one guy setting up a video stand,

making a video of it, using that on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. It's one thing I'm getting really big into. How do you recommend for sales training for these companies that are switching to pay-for-performance? I know good sales training made the difference for myself. Oh, who would you recommend for sales training? There's not a sales trainer I don't like.

What I've learned is people internalize things differently. There's some people that are so good, they're outgoing, they're really in your face. Those are going to be great with D-type personalities. There's other people that explain more and they do their diligence and they talk on facts and case studies. Those are better for C. I don't think there's one person.

I think there's a lot of great books. And I think if you read The Coaching Effect, you'll hear you should always be bringing in different people to talk about sales training. The core principles, I mean, I took a lot from Joe Crisoro. I like Andy Elliott. I mean, I don't like to choose my favorites because everybody kind of adapts differently to the training. I know that's not a great answer. If I had to pick one person, it just depends on the industry, the size of your company.

Do you have comfort advisors? Are you doing roofing gutters? I'd go find the number one company in your industry and go talk to what they're doing. That's how I got into Sandler training. How many hours a month do you put into your techs in the training center? New and experienced. New guys spend seven weeks training.

There's lead techs that do Q, they do a lot of role playing. Our guys, between the mojo calls, the Thursday morning meetings and ride-alongs, they're probably getting 15 to 20 hours a month of training. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this podcast interview. Before we go ahead, I wanted to let you know about the next Freedom event that's gonna blow your mind.

In my latest book, Elevate, I shared with you the ideas that helped me grow my garage door business to over 200 million in revenue. But at the Freedom Event, I'll take you through the next level by giving you access to the people who actually helped me turn these ideas and systems and processes into reality. These experts helped me build an amazing culture at my company and recruit A-plus players that I have with me today. So if you want to learn from the source and connect with the people who can truly elevate your business, make sure to get tickets to the freedom event.com freedom event.com

that's freedom event.com. And I hope to see you in Orlando. Now let's get back to the interview. I have an HVAC business and grown pretty well over the last five years. The next steps are we're planning for growth is we'd like to add another home service like plumbing. Do we take that money and just expand our current HVAC market or do we go into another area for HVAC? Any suggestions? I don't really understand the question. You're wondering if you expand HVAC to another market or if you add plumbing. I think plumbing and HVAC go together well because plumbing is a great thing to do in the non-season, right? So that's why most plumbing, like that's why service time, all they did was plumbing, HVAC, and electrical.

So I'd say those three do well together. Get those dialed in on one market. Make sure your brand explains you do all three of those. And once you get good at all three and you own that audience, then go to the next market. You know, with what I did with garage floors, garage floors and storage is not very close related i guess it's in the same family but i decided to own all the garage doors that were in 40 markets next thing i'm going to own is the garage storage and then i'm going to own the garage floors then i'm going to own front doors but in the meantime i'm expanding into the garage doors across the country

we are a service plumbing company and pay by commission. How do we switch to performance pay? Well, it's already right there. You change your commissions depending on different things. So you add five things and that depends on the tier of the percentage you get. So this is a longer conversation, but I might say I got the three different levels, 15, 17, 19 sales list materials. The hard part is screwing with people's pay. You don't want to screw with their pay very often. You want to do it one time and do it right. And to do that, you need to look at Excel. You need to look at their past payments. You need to find out what's going to win. And it needs to be methodical. If I were you guys and I hire a fractional CFO to run two weeks of pivot tables

for you and find out the things that'll help you make more money, then I could help you. It's really a case-by-case. I just don't think there's a generic answer to this. I don't have any conferences in California, but I might. We're trying to expand home service freedom. I'm not buying in California right now, but if we do, it'd be great. But if you go out of California, you might learn something. You might want to get out of there now and then. I'm an owner of a social media advertising company and I keep running into I'm fully booked and can't hire

because there isn't enough talent objection. What's the inside scoop here? Well, that's a lie. I think people are dying for leads uh last year they might have been looking for talent i gotta tell you guys uh with the technology and the stuff jody and vanessa will do as much as you give them to do the problem is if you're not responding to applicants with i'm talking about rapid hire if you need great people just go to Jody and tell them what you need, but actually call them back and have them A-B test stuff and be involved. They don't have this magic wand that if you do effing nothing, they're going to get you a bunch of people. A lot of people say, I need people. You're hired. They don't respond to emails and then they don't meet the people and then they don't get the ride along as they said they would. And then they say, well,

the guy fell off. He didn't call back for three three weeks he didn't get back to him with his drug test or background check like this is a two-way street these people that everybody ldv dan antonelli joker sarah everybody i've used my entire life they're not going to do the work for you they require you to do stuff back and this isn't anything towards you i mean i know you're trying to find companies to market with but typically they're like yeah i got work. That's just a copped out. You know, I think when you ask that question, I said, listen, do you realize social media is the number one way A1 Garage or Service gets great talent? What happens is a wife will see somebody with a $65,000 job and say, I keep seeing these guys.

They look like they're happy. They look real. I've had so many people's wives tell their husbands to come work here because they already have a job. I don't know if that helps. I got some questions here I got to read. There's a lot of questions today. I love it.

In Elevate, you talk about employee equity incentive program. This is a big one. And honestly, there's a lot to this. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to have Foley come to. I'm going to have them explain this program, soup to nuts at the Freedom event, because I've been getting thousands, like literally, of questions. Basically, an equity incentive program goes like this. Your business is worth 10 million today. So you put a line at 10 million, that's yours. And you hire people and you say, I'm going to get a CMO, a great CFO. I'm going to get a great COO.

And then I need someone in SF, whatever, different roles. I need a great trainer. And then you figure out how much you want to give them. And then it turns into, it's not equity until you sell more than 50%. So let's say the business goes to 25 million, you gave away 5%. You're giving away 5% on that 15 million, right? So you're giving away 750,000. So it helps people to run in the same direction, but just giving money away to give it away because you feel like people deserve it. It's not a great thing. You want to be able, it does a lot of things. Number one, people do.

It's the right thing to do for certain people. Number two, it's easy to acquire great people when you're giving them stake. Number three, everybody's running in the same direction. And number four, you want to be able to attract, you got golden handcuffs. People aren't going to leave because they got a big payout coming. As long as you know when the finish line is. See, the equity incentive program means nothing. If you're like, we're just going to give it a really good five years and see where we're at.

And then I got an owner that's like, people complain about this all the time. There's an owner that says, we're not ready yet because they're making so much damn money. They're not going to sell. Well, you're a bastard to do that to your people. I'm making enough money. Unless you're giving some type of profit sharing. Like if you guys build a plan and everybody executes and you change your mind, you just got the worst reputation in the home service and hopefully they do quit. So you got to set a plan, but you need to figure out the number. And if you don't hit the number by the plan, then you say, we got to go two more years. That's understandable. But when you hit the

number and everything's kosher and they're expecting a buyout, a payout, then you got to do it. Jimmy said, I'm a one-man tiling business looking to grow my average job size and get an employee on board. What tips do you have for increasing the job size? Also, how many weeks wages would you have before taking on employees? I'd have three months wages on hand. I'd have an SBA loan backed up. And what I'd recommend is marketing more to people that want nicer things. So there's a couple of things here. Number one is where are you advertising?

Are you all over Google getting great reviews and all over Yelp? Because as a small one-man shop, you should be getting video testimonials. If it's you doing all the work, you should be getting five reviews on every job. You should be talking to HOAs. You should be talking to realtors. If you're very talented, you should be talking to designers and just say, I work on the most custom greatest stuff. And if you become an artist, you don't need to be more than three guys to make $500,000 a year. You know, you got to ask yourself, are you a control freak?

Do you trust other people? Are you good at delegating? Just, Jimmy, be careful on how you go about this, but you should be getting reels and videos and before and afters and your website should be blowing up and you should be out there meeting people.

So first thing I would do is I would hire somebody good that you trust, let them work with you for three months. And then I would work with them three days a week and go network the other two days. Instead, I've been selling grocers here and there for almost a year now, but I want to get into it full time. Is it right now the good time to start? I'm in southern Ontario. I hear the other local companies don't have much work and I'm pretty confident with marketing door hangers. Door knocking, we get lots of work and service and replacement. Abe, there's never a wrong time. I started in the great recession of 2008 and 2009. I started my business. So if you got a good plan and you've got a good amount of money saved up and you feel like you know the business,

do it, but do it for the right reasons figure out your why figure out your destination make sure that keeps you going every day because you can only control what you can control ken said when you acquire a business do you onboard the employees how do you onboard the employees it's a whole process ken we have a party. We get the whole family on board. We go through all the insurance. The technicians come to Phoenix for three weeks. We retrain their CSRs and dispatchers. There's a lot of work that goes into integrations.

Tim said we are currently growing 50% per year, but we are in hyper growth mode. It seems like we're giving away equity would be an expensive form of financing. At what point does it make sense to partner with a private equity company versus retaining 100% ownership and growing without a PE partner? What ways can a small business employer financing the fuel gross other than bringing on an equity partner? There's a lot of loans out there. There's government-backed loans there's sba loans when i decided to go with pe i just said i know i can buy a lot of companies i know i'm a platform why not have an unlimited pool of money because i could either you go 50 a year or what if you

built a company that you could 5x each year and you gave 60% away? If you do simple math, you're going 50% a year. So I'm just going to say you give 60% away. So let's say you were able to 3x a year with PE. Let's just say you were doing 5 million right now. So you're going to be doing 5.5 next year. And then, I'm sorry, 7.5. And then you're going to be doing 50% of that, which is 11.25. And then you're going to be doing like 17 million. Now, if you do, now if you 3X per year with a PE company, and plus you're taking chips off the table, you're 15 million, you're 45 million. Now 3X a year is not very plausible, but I'm, you're taking chips off the table. You're 15 million. You're 45 million. Now, three X a year is not very plausible, but I'm sure you're smaller because 50 percent is not easy to do when you're 200 million.

I'm going to figure it out. But I think P is a good route. But if you're not a platform company, we need to talk. But, Tim, we're the one to have a conversation with you. John Noonan said, I heard my first technicians in the lawn care field and I have them. I gave them a percentage of pay for the services complete. 40% to be exact are the total service costs. Now that I know my numbers, I realized that I actually can't afford to pay them that much. And we are growing. We are very slowly growing in profits. They are amazing people and our clients love them. So it's hard for me to fire them. So what I would tell you to do with that situation, I would tell you there is a right sizing. I'd go to 30% and I'd raise my prices. I say, listen, I talked to the

client and say, we're buying new equipment. I give them a really, really good story. And I can show you how to do that. But what I would really focus on is getting the cost raised, but lowering the percentage. So they might lose five bucks on a job, but you raise the price and you lower the percentage. That's what I would do. And I just explain to the guys, listen, guys, we're going to run out of leads. We're going to be driving old trucks.

If I don't make a profit, everybody loses. Your families lose. Like, you guys are making a little bit more than I can afford right now. So if you guys don't understand, you might lose one out of the five or whatever. But, you know, if you've got real troopers that believe in your vision, then this is a good weeding out process. I'm a small handyman service.

Currently, all of our techs are 1099, and my insurance company is telling me we need to have workers' comp insurance for all subcontractors. Other GCs have told me they charge their subcontractors for their workers' comp. I'm not sure how I would approach this. I'm not a lawyer, but if they're on your job site and they get hurt, they might need a real good subcontractor already paid for their own workers' comp. But if you've got one-off guys doing stuff, you might think about bringing them in as employees and paying them less. I think 1099s, if they're doing more than 70% of the work for you, they're not real 1099s.

They're not really a sub. They work for you. Brett Martinez, I talked to a lawyer about that. Brett Martinez, from what you learned working with Quartec, what can we do right now that will make the transition smoother if we sell? Number one is org chart dial in that org chart. Find all the weaknesses and the strengths. Number two is org chart dial in that org chart, find all the weaknesses and the strengths. Number two is get really, really good at reporting. Examine things. When you make a decision, have it factually based. Like if I'm going to lower the price in one market, what's

the goal? Or I'm just like testing the waters. They don't do tests. They don't say, oh, well, what do you feel like today? They say, what's this going to do? They want math. They want to understand the decision-making processes. I think the main goal is to identify as many weaknesses as possible and try to get those fixed and just have an open mind when you go in. I want somebody to hold my hand. Cortex graded it. Doug's graded it.

Mike's graded it. I don't want somebody that just says, keep doing what you're doing. Because I'll still grow. With the way these guys, we had a meeting yesterday. I believe there's nobody that can come close. I've met with a lot of PE guys. These guys are the best. I don't get anything for telling you guys Cortex is great,

but telling you their management team and the way we click and the support they give us, help us with negotiations, help us find the people. They're really good at what they do. My company has an offer of five times even. I'd love to pick your brain when you made your decision to go PE. Mike, send me a message. We'll jump on a call. Yan Carlos, overhead door future in wholesale instead of being a labor-driven comp? Is overhead doors future in wholesale? I don't think so. I'm not sure if I understand the question. Craig McDonald, I'm 23 and I've been running a window cleaning business in my small

town of 80,000 people. Life is great. This year we're going to do 700,000 in revenue while profiting 30% to pay myself. 210 grand. Good job, Craig. My issue is my environment and me wanting me to relocate my wife. At 23, do you think it would be worth me to move to a bigger city and restart the business? I think at 700K, if you call me, I can probably get you between $600 to a million for the business. So I want you to figure out your seven-year plan to when you're 30, figure out when you're going to get married, what you're going to have have kids if you want to be close to your parents it's a big decision so i'm not going to give you the answer to that but i don't think you you got to sell that business the way it sits and i said

have you ever considered mentoring other business owners in and out of your industry also developing an entire program for them to achieve success to get business yeah well listen i'll tell you this pancardon university i actually just met with those guys you know what i see my future doing is dominating the garage door space like it's not even going to be fair i'm we're making all the steps i sent about 50 emails earlier we are doing doing things. We are investing in things. It's going to be stupid. I literally say the way we're buying, the renegotiations we've done with marketing and their products,

the way we get equipment, the way we get trucks, like it's just, I'm still on the, I think the fetal stages of getting started, but I'm just, we're going to get into front doors and maybe get into windows. I mean, ultimately we'll see, but yeah, down the road, I definitely see myself. I think home service freedom is going to be not only a coaching program, but it's going to be a mentoring program.

So absolutely. That's the plan of the beginning of freedom event is to help other companies reach their dreams. And I know it's possible because if I just look at me, I mean, you want to talk about mistakes? Look at the first decade of me in business. If I didn't start this podcast, meet guys like Tom Howard and Auro Modesti and Vahe and Al Levy and Dan Antonelli, I should put myself out there and I'm sharing. I think I got a high EQ. And I think my EQ allows me to meet and build relationships. And I keep my word and I, my word is my bond. And if I shake someone's hand, I follow up and I make sure like, I've learned all this stuff. So I think I can help.

My relationships are my biggest asset. I mean, guys like Ishmael and Cristiano and Chad Peterman and Aaron Gaynor and Tom Howard and the list goes on and on. I call these guys all the time. We're always helping each other. Your network is your net worth. And if I could share the network and have you guys learn this stuff, I think I like Grant Cardone and I like Brandon and I like what they're doing. I just think we're better. I like what Nexter does. I like a lot of these businesses. I just think we're better.

I think I could do it with any company. I think Julian is the best CEO ever. But it's a membership-owned business and I don't like the business model. So I think there's a way that we've developed that's still a work in progress, but everybody's going to win, period. Employees are going to win. The customer is going to win. The business owner is going to win. I get to win. Everybody's going to win. And when you negotiate from that standpoint, I'm good for life. I'm done, but I'm having fun. So might as well have a little bit more. You need a project manager when you roll out a new system. And you need to A-B test the system.

And then you need to award people to poke holes in it. So I'd give people $50 gift cards to find problems with it to make it better. Then I'd make sure I have a data integrity team to make sure the system is being followed. Referral reward programs. That's going to be the lifeblood of A1 GarageBus service next year, Miguel. I think they're amazing. Yeah. I wouldn't give them 10%.

I'd give them something really heartfelt. Find out where their favorite dinner is. You give them 10%. No one wants cash. You think a customer says, oh, great, they spent $1,000, I got $100. What, are they going to pay their gas bill? Find out their favorite restaurant where the husband and wife go on a date and get them a gift card. But then they'll remember the experience when they think about you.

What is pricing correctly for you? A multiple of celery and cogs? I like to take burden costs. I know how much it costs to acquire a customer. I know my overhead as a percentage of the ticket. When you get really good and scientific about your pricing and you get your guys trained correctly, you can't lose money. Now, the biggest trick is getting the customer to go ahead and do the work and start the job. And then that's when we give options and build a relationship that we call mellow the customer.

But our prices are designed in a way that's not very formulaic to what HVAC plumbing would be. And here's why garage doors are a little bit different is because I can go buy a garage door opener from Home depot but i'm not touching springs so you can't charge the same multiple of what i charge a lot more hundreds of percent for a spring than i do an opener but you know we've got a really smart cfo we've got a very smart controller and we had to work on this stuff but uh if you build out an Excel table, I could almost guarantee you, you're all the right stuff. And your price book should lead you. You got to take in your burden costs, your gas, all these different things. And it's easy to do with a small company. It gets harder as it grows. But really, if you know your balance sheet and income statement, and everybody's making the right amount of money and your marketing is good and your conversion rate is good and your call booking rate is good and your cost per acquisition is good and you don't have a lot of profit, you got to raise your prices.

That's the easiest way to look at it. And every time someone says you can't raise your price anymore, I do it and nothing changes. It's all the perception of the technicians. Who in your team has access to your social media accounts? I don't know. I got like 10 people. Oh boy. Lots of stuff here. High level for home service businesses. I like go high level for automations. I don't think that's who you want to use. I don't like Salesforce or go high level. I like them for automations. I don't think they're great for a home service CRM. I do Christmas lights have a ton of older customers

that raise their rates every year, but a ton, get a ton of leads during the season that I charge a lot more. What should I do with all my old customers that don't pay near what I get from my new customers?

I would tell your old customers straight up, hey, I love you. And I'm going to do this year for you. And you've been my client for a long time. Here's what you would be paying if you were a new customer. But what it turns out is that I have to pay people a lot more money because it's obviously seasonal. And with unemployment low right now, I'm not going to be able to afford to do this house next year. But what I wanted to do was give you a better service.

So we're going to give you a free wreath this year. Add more, get a better offer. It doesn't cost you hardly anything. And then say, here's where I need to be, but I'm still giving you preferential treatment. And I'll tell you what, let's say it's $200. It's normally going to be 400, but I'll tell you what I'll do. If you leave five reviews and post this on social media, on Facebook and Instagram, I'll do it for 300. You see, I think you can get customers to do a lot more for you.

I used to have a Christmas business, stay off the roof. Heather's going to be there. Boom. What are you trying to push for financing? Do you give them the monthly payment would like? Would you like to see if you could qualify for our promotions? Your payment would be 300 a month. You know, what's really interesting about the best finance guys in the world is they're able to take different plans and lower the monthly payment. I can pretty much add storage and flooring and get you a lower monthly payment. I just push it out to 20 years. I've got a 20-year plan. No prepayment penalty. It's affordable. You can get you everything you want. It's 100% ROI when you sell the house. For some reason, some people always are coming into money.

Hey, I'm getting a raise. Hey, my aunt's giving me Christmas money, whatever it is. But the best finance people are able to get the payment down. If that's what they want, there's three types of buyer personas. No interest, low interest, low payment. Not everybody is low payment and no interest. So remember, there's three different buying personas. Everybody falls into one in the world

and it's your job to figure out what they are we do shop tours twice a month just reach out to uh allison or brie or you could email us at home service expert and we'll get you set up i have a small garage company in or pnW really want to dive into branding, what steps would you recommend to getting the brand out there? Well, you got to talk to Dan Antonelli, get your trucks wrapped, get your website, get your yard signs, get your stickers, get everything to look the same. That's where it starts. The business cards, the shirts,

you get them all branded, right? And then what I would say is you got to meet people. You got to be always out there networking. And if you can afford to, you don't. Radio is still one of the best. You get a sponsored ad on radio. You try to buy remnant space. And you just, you got to stick to things for six months.

You want to figure out where your audience. So the radio stations, the TV stations, they break down the demographics. If they're homeowners, what neighborhoods they live in in they break it down into 10 personas you figure out what your persona is and then you blast them i don't want you to hit 10 different personas i want you to hit one or two a lot and make them remember you equity incentives well are they necessary well let me ask you a question. Does every private equity company with three to $10 billion funds do them? Yeah, they all do.

Why would a $10 billion fund always have an equity incentive program? Why would a public traded company always have stock options? Is it necessary? No, a lot of people don't do it because they're assholes. They don't want to give anything to anybody. They think they deserve everything. So if you want to run faster, go higher, have people rejoice, like literally get their families behind it, you would do it. Now, is it necessary? Absolutely not. A lot of companies

have been selfish and not done it. What's up out of Texas? We're in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston. We'll be in Dallas. We just started pushing memberships in our plumbing company at 27 a month. We were thinking of giving eight a month per membership. How do you incentivize your people for memberships? Well, we sell ours for $12.95. We give a dollar, but it's on their scorecard. They get a dollar in perpetuity. So they get perpetuity, a dollar,

but we really harp on this a lot on the morning mojo calls and Thursday morning meetings. You got to coach on it. And the question is, what's in it for me? Well, let's say you're on 20 jobs a week. Let's say you work for us five years and you sell 50%. We got guys selling 50%. So if you take 20 times 50, that's a thousand. You cut that in half because you're not selling everyone. So that's 500. That's $500 a month coming in. You work two years, that's a thousand dollars a month. You work five years and we're raising the price. We'll raise it for the tech. So it turns into mailbox money, but also what they know it does is it creates more opportunity. When that unit becomes over eight years old, they might be set to do the maintenance agreement on that house.

And it might be we're working on certain data that will allow us to know it's a good turnover opportunity to sell a new door. So they're actually setting themselves up for the future. They got to buy in and see what's in it for them. The money's great. They get paid the full amount for that month, but really they get the extra 13 bucks, but they're easy to sell. You just got to mention it. They get the perpetuity mailbox money. Then they get a future opportunity to sell a new door. How do we find more information on our conferences? I'll work on that one. I mean, I got a great team. I'm going to be doing a lot more small conferences too. I know you share your book about sharing equity with your staff to get a true buy-in.

At what point in your business did you start doing this? I just started an equity incentive program about three and a half years ago. I didn't know what it was until I figured out PE was doing it. Is there a set up we could offer our clients that they recommend us on social media? For example, when someone requests a recommendation on Facebook book, what's happening? And then our clients go and recommend us. No, I don't think that's going to work. I think you want to find influencers.

I think you can share a code with your people. But when they share it on Facebook, they get paid. Very, very easy. It just builds a custom link for attribution people, but when they share it on Facebook, they get paid. Very, very easy. It just builds a custom link for attribution. They get paid to share it. I think that's icing on the cake that you send a link and you say, hey, any customers that come through here, we're going to give you a $25 gift card to Amazon, right? Or make it even better. You know, there's visas.

I think a Visa card or an Amex allows them to spend it where they want. And you might put it on there. You got to spend this on a date with your significant other. But I'm all about affiliate deals. Thanks, Connie. Talk about whiteboard sessions. Can you walk us through what it looks like? Why and when do you have them?

Who's involved? What are your goals at the end of them? I mean, listen, normally I'm whiteboarding by myself. I'm working on a software for dream managers. Oh, no, I'll tell you the latest one. I just whiteboarded this affiliate deal of who are possible affiliates, employees, customers, influencers, and places. Like I could have a whole church.

I could have a whole hockey team. I could have other businesses. So I drew that. And then I drew some must-have happens in this. If they go to a place, got to run through payroll. If they go through another person, got to have a K-1 over $500. I basically whiteboarded all this, explained it, thought through it. And then I built a recording of it and sent it over to a couple of my developers.

This is something I'm building internally for A1 because I think I can provide, I think I get just as many leads from social media and affiliates and employees and their families than I could through Google. So I'm building out software to do it. So different people are involved depending on what the session is. Usually I start off by saying, here's our options. Sometimes I do a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. I mean, if you have something to wipe or I could show you how I do it, but there's not a methodology that's just one size fits all. Would I be better off leaving the small time I'm in

and growing my company in a bigger market or build it here since it's where I'm from here? Then we go and franchise it out later. You need to be in three markets if you're going to franchise. I don't think getting out of a market, I think you should think about taking over the market you're in, prove it on a small scale

and go to the next market and prove it. You don't need to live in every market. I don't live in 40 cities. Antonelli's prices still don't serve this online audience anymore. He's had a big price jump very hard for the little guys to justify 20 000 for a logo and a truck wrap yeah damien you know there's guys that do it for less you can look at my old trucks and i can tell you i have a lot of them i think dan

was working on a plan for smaller companies but ultimately i just spent $7,000 on a plunge, Excel plunge. People buy new iPhones for $1,400. People buy Jordans for $300. This is the brand of your entire business. This is everything that's going to make all the money of your business. This is everything. This is your family's life support. And I think it's a real shame when people say, man, that's a lot of money. I'm not condoning this pricing by any means. I don't know what it should be. I'm just telling you my point of view. I paid more than that. When I had a smaller, just the way I thought was like, that's a lot of money. Then I realized, wait a minute, my company's doing $200 million and I guarantee you we wouldn't be half as big if it weren't for Dan Hinton and I and the branding. Go look at a1gross.com. Go look at the vans. Go look at the

billboards. Look at my ValPak coupons. Look at how they all, he did all that. He did it all. Look at my building inside here when you walk through. I personally just think people undervalue how much their brand is worth. They're like, man, 20 grand. Oh, for the rest of my life, my business that I'm going to sell for millions of dollars? Hey, I can't imagine this conversation with a private equity company.

Hey, when I was really small, I didn't have any money. So I went to Fiverr to get my logo. And that's what you're paying 100 million for. It's like saying, hey, I really don't have enough money to get a good CFO. So I found one on the streets. That was $40,000. I could be wrong. Everybody's different, but I don't know what's more important than your brand and your culture. And part of your culture is your brand. And I'm not trying to talk down to you, man. I know money. I get it. So I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just saying from my point of view, I did the right thing by spending the money. We're currently working on a radio station.

We're looking to expand our advertising since we have only been in business seven months. Would you advertise on another radio station as well or try to pick the value pack first? If I was seven months old, I'd make sure I'm ranking all over Google and put all my money into GMB, LSA, and the website. I would also do direct response mail. Maybe that's ValPack, maybe that's just a small mailer, like a flyer. I wouldn't be growing my brand and I'd make sure that I've got the right brand that I'm starting for radio and I've got a great tagline and A1 from day one and I've got the right brand that i'm starting for radio and i got a great tagline

and um you know a1 from day one and i've got a great jingle i'd invest in my jingle my brand my logos my website my gmb and my lsa and the right wraps before i put any money in the tv radio billboards because you'll be wasting money would you give equity to a technician or just management staff? I've already granted 14 people and everyone's going to find out about it as far as technicians. If you make the Pinnacle Club, you're going to get equity in the business.

Peace. I hear you on the value branding and kick charge. Opportunity cost for this audience. Yeah, no, I understand, Damien. Listen, hopefully Dan's going to do something for smaller companies. And I think he should charge more for PE companies. I think he should also extend his offerings.

And I think he should go into a couple of different industries. So we'll see. I mean, I get it. And I know I'm preaching to the choir here. To expand on branding costs, when is it responsible to move forward with that purchase as a newer company? If you don't have the cash in hand, is this something you would recommend financing? No, no, I don't. I think you got to become, read the book, No BS About Direct Response Marketing by Dan Kennedy.

And I don't think you should ever have to finance for marketing, not in this economy. Who manages your GMB? Do they use Local Falcon and build backlinks, etc. to the GMB? I got a lot of in-house people and I do use a couple of different agencies. We've got Lauren, we've got Joy, we've got a buddy Shannon of mine.

We've got a link building. Shannon does all my link building. But really our in-house team, we focus on pictures on the reviews. We don't use local Falcon anymore. I forget what it's called, but it's better than local Falcon. But basically what he's asking is you see your location and you see what

greens green means. You come up in the first spot. Yellow means you come up still in the three pack, but on the bottom, that means you don't show up. I don't think local Falcon is the best one. If you just find tools like local Falcon, there's a better tool. Ask me this question next week in the Q and A's. You guys go to the question page and literally,

if you guys got any more questions, just ask that question again, or I'll do the research. Homeserviceexpert.com forward slash questions. Write that down and come up with some really, really strong questions for me. And I'm going to study this before I go on. The more that I have in advance, the better. If you want to order the new book, it's elevateandwin.com. You'll get a bunch of freebies with it. I took a lot of time.

It took three days to build a damn course. It's a great course on Elevate. And then if you want some takeaways from this podcast, go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash bonus. And I appreciate you guys. This is from Breeze Computer. I hope you guys are having a great week. One other thing I wanted to tell you guys about is I've been working out a lot and I'm on a serious diet

and I'm on five peptides and I'm on creatine. So I've been 15 days. I haven't drank, not going to drink till October. And I want you guys to see what's possible. If I could do it, I want to be the guy that just says, man, if that guy could do it, anybody could do it. So I went and got a test. I got my blood, my saliva, my urine. I got my body fat and we'll see what I can do.

You guys be looking out, though, because I consider myself successful. I believe in myself. And I just want to challenge myself to be the best version of myself. So if this works out like I know it's going to work out, I think you guys are going to start seeing that if I can do it, you can do it. So stick with me here. We're going to have a fun before and after pictures and i'll do it on the podcast sometime around halloween so wish me luck uh we got a strong mind so i've got self-discipline

uh i think that uh i think you guys will be shocked got big goals made it easy on myself i put a fridge in the office i got got somebody cooking my meals. The trainer shows up to me. My assistant gets everything ready. All I got to do is intermittent fast and focus on not drinking. I work out like crazy. I already did four miles today, and I worked out for an hour and did legs and shoulders. So anyways, not here to brag or talk to you guys about anything. Just push yourselves, figure out what you can do to get yourself in the best spot. My cousin Rachel said, Tommy, you're so successful. You've got this money. You've got a great culture. People love you. You're athletic. They laugh. But why are you so out of shape? She's like, it's pathetic. She's like, you could do better. And it was that Ishmael pushed me.

Travis Ringy pushed me. Andy Elliott pushed me. Bree's been pushing me. And then just, it's just, I woke up one day and I'm like, this is not me. I'm better than this. I want more. So I'm doing it. And hopefully you guys want to do it too. Anyways, I hope you guys have a fantastic week and look forward to seeing you soon. See ya. any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn

the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast