The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A with Tommy - Implementing Checks and Balances To Set Your Business Up For Long-Term Success

Episode Date: April 28, 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 500 employees in 16 states. Through HomeServiceMillionaire.com and the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy shares his experience and insights to help fellow entrepreneurs scale their businesses. In this special episode of the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy answers your biggest questions about onboarding, employee discipline, advertising, insurance, operating manuals, sales...

I wasn't very good at sales, but I was good at relationships. I gave everybody my all. I didn't make a ton of money, but they told 10 of their friends. They left me a video testimonial. This is back when I actually had a camera set up a phone and I have to plug in the memory card and all that stuff. So if you've got a passion, if you've got a will, you'll be good. But what I would recommend is a lot of audio books.

Work on the way you look at somebody in the eyes. Have a conversation. Tell a story. Be genuine. Find what's important to them, what's in it for them. Find out what they like. People like to talk about themselves.

Use their name 10 times in the sitting. Instead of talking to them in their garage where it's either really hot or really cold, say, is there a spot where you could go sit down and discuss some options? Be the only one sitting at their kitchen table or living room sofa. These little things,

always play with the dog when you walk in, smile more, practice your tone and delivery. Truly do listen. 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. We are live back to the home service expert. Let's get today blasted into overdrive. Hope you're having a great Wednesday and a great middle to your week. Happy hump day. You guys know about my original book, The Home Service Millionaire. You can pick it up at homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. But also I'm very excited to say my new book Elevate just came in. It took me a long time to really write this book and very, very happy with the way it came out. I had a lot of help. I had some co-authors of it and it discusses the five major pillars that I came up with. Took me a long time. Leadership, culture, marketing, recruiting, and systems.

Mark Victor Hansen endorsed it. He's been helping out too. He's an amazing guy. Brian Davenport wrote a section all about scorecards and how important they were to changing our company. There's just so much that we put into the Elevate mindset of finding out that everybody could win. Build a business where everybody wins. help others accomplish what they want, and you will truly in turn receive what you

want. It's also got the paper copy. They're both the same. One's just a hard copy. One is a hard copy. If you go to elevateandwin.com, you can pick up the the book. You get it on Amazon as well, but I recommend there's some freebies. There's five bonuses that we worked hard on me and the team to make sure we got you guys more value for the purchase of the book. So I give away lots of cool stuff. Check out the page at least, see if it's something that intrigues you. Going to be trying to drop some bombs here. So there is a lot going on and I'm just getting started, man. I'll tell you guys a little bit about what I'm working on. I'm moving into a new house for me.

I love the house. Absolutely overly pleased with it. I'm doing a new basement. I'm putting a massive recording studio, a decent sized gym, putting a golf simulator, putting the things I want in there. I just put a chair. If you guys see my Facebook page, I put a chair for a barber chair to get my hair cut.

They're going to come to me. I'm really trying to 10X my efficiency. I think that's the main theme of the next 90 days is I'm going to be speaking at a few events, but I'm going to start speaking less because I need to pour into my people. And I enjoy speaking. I like sharing my message and the message of A1. I think the main thing that I'm realizing is once my efficiency goes up, I think I can do a lot. But I need to get the core principles, the standard operating procedures.

Being in a new house, I just need to get my groove on. And I've only been home three weeks this year, trying to contribute as much as I can. I really do. I try. But the less of both evils is I pour into my people and when I'm not here, I can't do that. And they deserve gratitude and recognition. I want to practice what I preach, do that. And they deserve gratitude and recognition. I want to practice

what I preach, spend more time acknowledging them, working on the core principles of this business, just 1% a day. There's a lot of things I'm working on as far as special projects. And as I get these knocked off my list, I just know the company will 10X. If I can get one project done a week for the next six months, that 10X is the company, guaranteed. So I got the house, building a new office next door for things I got going on. We've got another recording studio. It'll be a lot nicer than my office. Podcast is going strong and join that. We've got a content manager helping me with, you know, my brand Tommy Mello, just dropping bombs. If you're not part of official Tommy Mello on TikTok and Instagram, and you're not looking at my LinkedIn and you're not on YouTube looking at

it. I'm really, when I get to build content, it's like my meditation. It helps me kind of figure out what I can do to help business owners because I see a lot of problems in the business. There's always going to be issues. I'm eating healthier. I'm working out. Actually, it's weird how when you get bigger, things get easier. You got a lot more people that you can depend on.

Leadership. I got to tell you guys that you can depend on. Leadership. I got to tell you guys, I'm as happy as I've ever been. Finnegan's happy, Bree's happy, working on a new executive assistant, working on a personal assistant, because look, efficiency is everything at this point. So that word's going to be very common for the next three to six months. And I was telling somebody earlier on a podcast, I said, I grow like this, then I plateau, re-systematize, recalibrate, maybe a couple of new habits, and then grow like this. And I made a list here of every single thing I wanted to do at Executive Assistant. I got a plan for how I whiteboard. I got a plan for the organizational files online, how we handle email. I got a plan on how to communicate with

different people, how I want my dinner plans to go, how I want to travel. All these things that I've been realizing as they're going on, I make a note of it in a Google doc. They're not hired yet. We've got a really great interview tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. And I think she's going to be a game changer if it works out. I want to make sure that I'm right for her too, because I'm a lot to handle. I'm a big cup of tea. So I'm entrepreneurial. I have some ADHD in me and I move quickly. I'm not great at patience.

And that's why I helped train this person to get them up to speed. So i'm fast paced I move quickly. I got a busy schedule, but I get a lot done and I enjoy it I enjoy what I do. I wouldn't be on here I wouldn't be at work if I didn't want to be because we have options now and I enjoy what I do I enjoy showing up so I've got some questions here and then i'll get caught up. Let me just look here. There's quite a lot of people on here. This is amazing. So Kara Wagner asked, what processes or procedures

does your fleet follow at the end of the workday, i.e. ban, clean out checklist? I'm curious how your team streamlines and standardizes the process in the order to be set up for success every day. You know, we've got two people in our fleet that handle everything. We've got dual cameras and every single day before you start your day, the dispatcher is supposed to review your van and make sure everything's in place. We've got general maintenance because we pay for that through enterprise. So they go in every time there's a problem with the OB2 sensor, it pops up. We look at your windshield, your tire pressure. You know, we go around the van and there's screenshots and stuff on our checklist

of just, it's cleaned out. This is taken care of. I think once a week, they actually take the pictures. And once a day, they just go around and show that it's clean. That's a lot easier to do for my technicians and installers. And I just get so bummed out when I walk outside and I see like a dent or like a dirty truck. And it's my pet peeve. We're a premium company. We should have clean trucks. We found a company that actually does a waterless cleaning. They do a great job and it usually lasts two, three weeks, maybe even a month, depending on the weather. And it's something I'd recommend. It's an investment, but it's an investment into your brand. And if you've got a great brand, you want to show it off. Who currently maintains the entire health of your fleet? That's the same thing.

I've got a great team. We've got checks and balances. One of the things that I'd really like to discuss is how much are you putting into checks and balances and systematizing things? You see, I get a lot of ideas and the ideas are pretty solid. I mean, literally I could come up with a checklist, but how do I make sure that the people involved in that checklist, not just the technicians and installers, but how do I hold the people that are accountable? Make sure they're doing it. Make sure there's checks and balances. And I think if you're going to create a system, you need to make sure it's getting followed.

You know, Jerry Eisenhower and I talk a lot about it. I've got it all over my building now. There's three reasons why a system fails. Either there is no system, the current system is not being followed, or it's the wrong system. So I find a lot of times the system is not being followed. And there's got to be checks and balances. There needs to be a way to track these things.

And that's your data integrity team. That's what I built. And we've got a lot of work to do. And that's going to be a huge project, the data integrity team, because I want all the interviews to sound the same. I want the mojo calls to have pep and fire and vigor in them. And I want the Thursday morning meetings to sound the same if you're in Detroit or Wisconsin. There are different people giving the meetings. So there's a coaching opportunity.

I want to make sure every one-star review gets managed. The customer gets taken out, got a hold of. I want to make sure that in a system that's noted, it goes to the right managers. And I want to see what the discussion was that was recorded with that technician to make sure it happened. Now, people say that's micromanaging. I say it's just making sure the system gets done. I'm working on an overseas team to make sure all these things happen. And, man, when I get done with this next

project, people are going to be like, holy crap, we need to make sure we're doing our shit because there's a lot to it. And I think a lot of people, they don't follow the systems and they say, no one's watching. I'm just going to do it my way. And it's okay. Sometimes they get results, but it's not uniform. How am I supposed to get to an expected outcome if you don't have checks and balances on, let's train the trainer and hold them accountable. Adam said, what are your thoughts on Sarah's software? I've looked at it. I think he did a lot of amazing things when he built Sarah. I think he's still building it out. I think it does amazing things because it helps you stay on budget. It helps you understand numbers that other CRMs don't.

But guys, I'm not going to play preferential treatment. I think finding a CRM that works for your business at your size, I say, pick a CRM that you can grow into. But there's a lot of great ones out there, different ones. HubSpot does something completely different than Service Titan. It does something different than Service Fusion. There's so many good CRMs out there. I think what you need to do is make sure you have a dedicated team to make sure the price book and the main KPIs are dialed in before you

start wondering about some crazy finance reporting tool that comes out of it. Because if you don't get the core right, none of it works correctly correctly and the core is your booking rate your average ticket your cost per acquisition and your conversion rate average ticket cost per acquisition and average ticket and if you can't get those out of it you're not managing the court and that's where you find a lot of issues on the last podcast i was on i was talking about the abandonment rate and how I figured something out when I was looking at the reporting. And it was amazing when we fixed it. It took three weeks to fix, but it changed the revenue substantially. Let's go to some questions here. There's a lot of questions. Let's see. How do I keep all my stress and anxiety in check? Well, I make sure I get enough sleep. After this, I've got to work

out with the trainer by my house. It's right on my way home. I've been focusing on eating the right foods. I'm not perfect by any means, but being healthy, there's two things I can't buy. It's time and health. So I'm doubling down on those. And actually, it's kind of funny. I'm whiteboarding processes that I can live by. You see, I don't know if I'm going to take a cold plunge every day or hike a mountain or do a 10K. I don't think that's possible to do every single day when I'm traveling. What I do know is I can intermittent fast.

I can stay away from sugar. I can drink less. I can drink more water. I know that I can work out 25 minutes a day. I know that I can walk the dog further. I know that I can park at the furthest parking spot than the closest parking spot and not lose a lot of time because a lot of times I'm on the phone. It's not a lot of work. I get my cardio when I get my steps in. You know, I think a lot of people that I know, they create these impossible things to maintain.

I will work out two hours a day, cold plunge, must go in the sauna for the infrared. I will read two books per day. I'm going to run. I'm going to, it's crazy what they think they could do. I'm thinking to myself, is that really maintainable? There's these fad diets, don't eat any red meat for, you know, if I want a piece of red meat or I want a pizza, I'll have it. But what I found is I need to have checks and balances for myself. When I sleep good, I make better choices about eating. I drink more water. I just do better things. And if I'm thirsty during this time that I'm intermittent fasting, I just have a cup of coffee. It's an appetite suppressant and it does well. So let's see.

Thank you guys for reading the book. I appreciate it. I really do. I hope you get something out of it. Do me a favor. I hate to ask her this because I don't ask her a lot of stuff. I really, if you think the book was good, leave a review on Amazon. If you think the podcast is good, please get on your Apple phone or your

Droid, go whatever podcast you're listening to and just drop a like and leave a quick review because what it does is it really tells me that it's good. And that's all I want. I want to keep delivering good content. I mean, this is my passion. This doesn't take a lot of time. You know, I need this time. This time helps me focus. This thing helps me prioritize. This is my passion. This doesn't take a lot of time. You know, I need this time. This time helps me focus. This thing helps me prioritize. This is my meditation. Some people do the, um, buddy, um, buddy, um,

they listen to all this weird noise. They breathe in really deep. This is what I enjoy doing. I mean, this is my most exciting day because there's great questions. And if I could help you guys figure out one thing to give you a little bit more time with your kids or your significant other,

or one breakthrough in the company that helps you make more money. That's the best gift I could ever give because I'm in the fight with you guys every day. I'm in the home service biz. I've learned a lot. I've made a lot more mistakes than I've learned. Larry Fitzgerald said, for every one good catch you see me make during a game, I've made 10 in practice. And we practiced a lot. We made a lot of mistakes. So I'm going to share those with you. Let's see. Alivi said, plateaus are an important part of the continual climb as they allow you to get ready for the next climb. Absolutely. Okay. Andrew said, how do you think about and define cross-sell? Oh, well, cross-selling, up-selling, I hate those words. There's two things I think

about when it comes to sales. You need this or you're going to want this. I was doing something earlier with Dale Steele that works at Gettle and the piece may have was here, but he said, there's a problem, there's a consequence, and there's a resolution. The problem is simple. Your brakes are squeaky. The consequence is your calipers and your rotors are going to get damaged if we leave them like this. The resolution is we spent $200 today to replace your brakes. The other consequences are that you're going to spend $2,000 if those other things are damaged. So they call it a torsion system on a garage door because the parts work together and I can give a good warranty because one part is not going to

fail and cause the other parts to fail. I always tell people, I sell things people want. You want peace of mind that your garage door is going to be safe. You want to make sure that everything in here, I can give you some amazing storage capabilities. We could take all this stuff. We could organize your golf clubs, your Christmas tree lights, your Christmas tree, your Easter basket stuff. I give a lot of options. So cross-sell, up-sell, whatever. I just, listen, I let people make the decisions. I was listening to Grant Cardone's book, one of like the 10X Mentor or something like that. And he said that there's salespeople and there's closers. And a salesperson just offers things.

People say yes. A closer takes a no and it turns to yes. Big difference. And closers actually love objections because it kind of explains what the problem is. You know, I got to talk to my wife. What do you think she's going to say? She's going to say it's expensive. Well, there's for what you problem is. I got to talk to my wife. What do you think she's going to say? She's going to say it's expensive. Well, for what you asked for, you wanted an insulated door. You wanted it to look beautiful. You wanted a new opener. You wanted it to talk to the internet.

You wanted the 100,000 cycle rollers. You wanted this. Which one of these should we leave out? Because this is something that only we offer. But if it's a price you want, let's give you another option. Let's see. What services do you cross sell? Everything. Anything and everything to do with the garage. Decorative hardware, bottom rubber, surge protectors. But I like to call it giving options. And I believe in every product we sell or I wouldn't sell it. The biggest problem is you need to look customers in the eye when you're talking. You need to make sure your body language, you can't be afraid of no. If you're not giving options, if you're not going over things, if you're not getting to

know your clients and telling them why you work at A1 Garage or Service, you know, Mr. Jones, I can work anywhere I want in the United States of America. I chose A1 Garage or Service, not only because the way they treat me, but the way they treat our family. I've been able to support my family. I'm going to be here for a long time. This is my career. I chose A1 Garage Door Service, not only because the way they treat me, but the way they treat our family. I've been able to support my family. I'm going to be here for a long time. This is my career. It's been tough learning a new industry, but I love this job. Tommy seems to be a really good guy. He's on our calls. He shows up. He seems like a fun guy. We've hung out a couple of times. The managers, the people I report to, they're there.

There are times where a door didn't get installed perfectly in time and they make it right. They do. I trust A1 Grocery Service with my family. And I think Mr. Jones, you should trust them too. They got to believe in the company. They also got to believe in the technician. So if you're not hitting these things, if you're not asking the right questions, if you're not looking out for the client, if you're just going for the biggest sale every time, hey, I'm moving. Hey, you need to get this lifetime warranty piece of whatever. Well, I'm moving.

That's not best for me. You didn't even listen to my circumstances. You came with me with your solutions, not my solutions. I'm the client here. I should be able to ask the client a bunch of questions to figure out what's best for them. And it's not always the same choice. I might have six customers with six different options because we have six

options. Very important. Do your CSR schedule the appointment times or the dispatchers? Well, I don't have to go to the second part of the question because we book two times, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Now, here's the secret sauce. None of those jobs are scheduled in the morning very early. They all get scheduled that morning before anybody starts. To optimize the schedule, make sure we got the right calls for the right guys. And when a new job comes in, the reason we have this five-hour window is because we can move things around really easy. I want my technicians spending time in the garage.

I don't want them spending time driving. So I never give them a set schedule. Two-hour windows don't work. I've did that for eight years. Five-hour windows work. Now, if somebody says to me, listen, I need a two-hour window, I'll make that work, but it's one out of 10 customers that need that. So these skills and ideas and thoughts and standard operating procedures developed over time and it works. You know what the gas company says? We're going to be there Monday or Tuesday between 6 a.m. and 12 midnight. So I think people could understand a five-hour window. Now we have after hours. We have the guys that work nights and weekends and the guys that work weekends enjoy working weekends. They really do. Both decision makers are at home. There's a huge advantage. There's no traffic. They can run more calls. They can make more money. Somebody's always winning. That's one of the things. That's the book.

This is a bad example, but stock market took a hit, then it came back. Well, someone was shorting stocks. Someone bet on the market. There's always a winner and a loser, but it came back. Well, someone was shorting stocks. Someone bet on the market. There's always a winner and a loser. But in the game of business, Simon Sinek wrote The Infinite Game. And what I've learned is there doesn't need to be a loser with your vendors. They don't need to feel like you're just lowballing all the time. The partnerships don't need to feel like you're taking advantage of them. The employees don't need to feel like it's the Tommy Mello show only. They feel like maybe there's something on the outcome for me. And if they feel that way, they'll stay longer. They'll be happier. They'll build a career, have a happier life and you win in return. And there's a lot of ways in business to have everybody win.

Hey, Tommy, really appreciate your podcast and voice. Thank you. I'm the owner of Huge Handyman Home Service in San Diego. How would you approach a business that has a lot of varied jobs? Carpentry, tile, painting. It's very hard to scale because the variety. It might be because I don't have much in the way of SOP. We have six techs and one admin trying to rein in the chaos. So there's no way I would have one guy do everything. I mean, if I was to have a business that touched up paint as a handyman, I might have two people that they have three business that touched up paint as a handyman, I might have two people that they have three strengths. They can install fans, they can install new locks,

and they could do paint. And their trucks would be set up that way. I wouldn't have a jack of all trades. And if I did have a jack of all trades, I'd charge a lot more per hour because not a lot of people could do everything. So you should be charging 250 bucks an hour. No, people won't go for that. What they will do is I'd have a checklist when I walked in and say, this is everything we specialize in. Garbage disposal doesn't sound good. The fart fans sound noisy. The switches don't work really well. They've got the lights in here that are very inefficient. I can prove out by just changing the light bulbs for a client. I could save them 300 bucks a year. So you get your money back after three years. These are 15 year light bulbs. I would come up with things that I do very, very well after the customer chooses to use me.

And I wouldn't take on jobs that are just really oddball. If I wasn't prepared to do them, I might have the guy to say, listen, I got this oddball thing I need you to do. Well, I got to charge everything else I could get done for you for the $75 an hour, whatever your cost is. I don't know. But that oddball thing, that's a separate line item. I need to charge you this because there's not a lot of people that can handle that whole project from soup to nuts. And I charge for it. And I'd have this checklist to go through and say, we're going to replace all the toilet, easy things that just make a lot of money. I mean, I would not go after a lot of customers. I'd really start marketing to

the affluent. And I'd say, I'll be the guy to come change your air filters. I'll come keep an eye on this, this, this, this, those little bug things by all the doors. I'll replace those. I would build a book of business that I'm the ultimate handyman for. They're paying me a monthly fee plus a little bit every time I need to come out. You pay me 300 bucks a month. I'm going to come check your light bulbs. I'll go through this whole. Read the automatic customer. Don't be everybody for everything because you're a jack of all trades, a master of none. Run an AV company, five techs, one admin, just hired an operations manager. How would you suggest the best way to transition him in?

I run operations and all other business functions and overwhelmed every day. Well, the first thing that I would do, Jared, is I would find out what is excruciating, painful for me. And I would talk about it with him over dinner. And I would say, this is the one thing that kills my morale when I come in. This is why I hate my employees. I'd say, if you could take this one or two things off my shoulders, what I'm going to do is I've got a whole plan for you A to Z. We built you a manual.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to pay you for this next six months. I'm going to pay you a lot higher salary, and then it's going to bump down to 55. And then I'm going to have five KPIs you need to focus on. I need time because I haven't had time to work on this stuff, hence why you're here. So I'm giving you a little bit more while I get my shit together. So we're going to go over the five things in about six months. And I promise you, you'll have the ability to make well into the six figures. When you win, I win. I promise you that. I have no problem paying you more if you're fix some payroll again, fix some payroll again, fix some payroll again. Here I am. Interview, interview, interview, interview. I'm interviewing seven people today. How much was it going to be my work done? I'm going to have him learn payroll and learn how to interview. And I'm going to have a system. These are the exact five questions.

Here's how we do the background check. Here's how we do the ride along. Now you don't have to start out with this complex system. Start out with an easy way that anybody could do. Like I talked about working out and eating right. Say this is not super complex. It's a form. They fill it out. I might listen to one out of five of them because they'll be recorded. Maybe they'll be in Zoom. Whatever way I want to have checks and balances because the last thing you want is to delegate to somebody something with no checks and balances. Then you find out you've hired a bunch of felons. So you got to have some way to keep your eye on the ball so you can sleep at night.

But you find the right number to the right person to integrate for you. Your life will be a hell of a lot less chaotic and you'll be able to focus on the business. And the best way is to introduce them and say, you're going to do a ride along for the next three days. This is a technician that I really love. two of the days you're riding with him he does have his faults because we're still implementing manuals this is a guy that doesn't even come close don't tell him i said that but ride along with him and you'll see the differences these are some of my challenges now we're working on a crm and i hired somebody to help implement

that but i need you to be in the circle. So I want you to sit down with this person. I've already arranged an hour and a half for you to sit down and see how we're rolling this out. What I'm going to do is you're going to be drinking out of a firehouse for the next two weeks, but you'll have a good idea on what I'm facing. And after we get done with these things, the best thing I could tell you is I'm going to have you take out some of the biggest hurdles of my day. and this will allow me to help fix some of the other things which will inevitably make both of our lives easier. That's what I would do. How many levels of management were between you and the person with the least responsibilities? Obviously, this is a larger question, but I'd like to know

where you felt most productive. Well, there's an apprentice. There's a junior tech, tech, senior tech, lead tech. There's the market manager. There's the VPs of regions left and right. Then it goes to the COO. Then it goes to the president. Then it comes to me. There's not saying that people don't have direct access, but it's not easy. I don't mind

jumping on a phone call, telling somebody how amazing they are. I don't mind jumping on a hard call. The problem is I don't know a lot of the answers anymore. You tell me you need PTO, you haven't been getting it. I wouldn't know the answer. And that's designed that way. If you went to Elon Musk and said, Hey, there's a mess in the bathroom at your Dallas location, he'd say, you know, there's obviously that's an extreme situation. But there's got to be levels and hierarchies and you got to respect the chain of command is what I could tell you. Now, have I disrespected the chain of command? Yeah, I used to all the time. And man, it came back to bite me in the ass so i had to really focus on

making people understood that they're in charge and i couldn't go behind their backs and say mom said no but dad's here yeah go ahead that's just not the way i do business so hopefully that helped feels like every time i have a podcast there's like waste management of the landscapers here it's inevitable murphy's law hey tommy is there a reason a1 doesn't have multiple locations within a metro area as a gbp strategy we are we do have multiple locations Once we get the one ranking where I want it to be, and I feel like we've got enough jobs in that area, I've got 12 markets with multiple locations inside of them. Phoenix has more than that. We've got one of the Scottsdale Design Center. I think we got five or six here. So I do agree with that strategy, but you got to make sure you're

following the terms and conditions of everybody, google so setting that up appropriately systems on that look our systems are not perfect but they work and they're always being refined all the time it's interesting there's a buddy of mine ryan meachum that just focuses on systems and what he says is and i know this is off topic of your question, but yeah, we are putting more into one location. He says reward people for finding problems. And actually he's in the book. Reward people for finding problems.

Tell them they did good. Can you imagine the assembly line in the 1910 1910 whatever it was you think henry ford's sitting there overseeing it going hmm maybe he did a couple days in the beginning but then he said wait a minute this guy does this all day every day it backed in 10 12 hours a day if he said i could go four times as fast with a second person that would be a good investment because I got to go grab this tool. If somebody else had this tool sitting right next to me, we get 4X. You're only doubling the payroll, but you're 4Xing the output. That's a

win-win. And you'll make my job a hell of a lot easier and I'll be more efficient. I'll be happier and get moved up. Well, do you think Henry Ford should have said, no, I don't want a Forex for two times the payroll. No, he would have said, great. I should probably reward you. So a lot of times we don't talk to the people in the middle of the tasks that are doing the work for us. We actually shame on them and say, oh, you're just coming to bitch again. But what if they're not coming to bitch? What if they got a really good idea? What if it's going to help become more official? They're the guys in the front line doing everything.

And if you really have a full circle where they're able to communicate things to you, unfortunately, just a lot of managers don't want to hear it because we always have those employees that are like, yeah, you know, I want to raise. I've got to figure out a way to make extra money, but they don't want to work hard. They don't want to work a full schedule. So we get burnt out with people's ideas. But what if we truly did give a $100 gift card and we made everybody know that this idea was insightful, was thoughtful, it made sense, and we awarded it and made it company-wide? Did that happen? You start getting really good comments.

Maybe you put some structure around that. What are your thoughts on email marketing, social media marketing for long-term nature campaigns on three-month buying cycles? It's one of those things where if you don't figure out Google and make sure your KPIs are dialed in, I don't really care about those. But after you dominate, you could do amazing with ValPack. You could do amazing things with Nextdoor. You could do cool things with Houzz. You could do amazing things with Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. You could murder it with email marketing. But don't do it all. Pick something, master it, get the results you need, go on to the next one.

I think a lot of times people are like, this isn't working. Well, you gave it two months. You didn't look at the KPIs. You didn't make good decisions on what actually works. You decided, I'm just going to dip my toe and go on to the next leg, dip my toe and on to the next leg. Then you wonder why it weren't successful. So figure out what's going to make the most impact in the business, double down on it, and make sure you let the numbers guide you. Don't go with a gut feeling. Go with what you know is working. So we do have Vertical Track coming up, and it's in May. So it's about a month and a half away. And what I can tell you guys is Vertical Track is going to be solely for garage doors. And I've got some very, very special big announcements. But in November, we're having a new event called Freedom. And Freedom is for every home service company.

And we're going to collaborate. We're going to win together. We are going to elevate the mindset in the home service industry. Vertical Track, you guys know I partnered up with a company called Cortec. It's private equity. And what we wanted to focus on is Tommy Mello can do anything he wants, but really what we're trying to do is become the largest, most trusted browser company in North America by far. And we're going to bring a lot of companies with us that win, that become multi, multi, multi, multi, multi millionaires. It's going to be a win-win scenario to where they feel happy and and trust it to do what they need to do in their company with some of our sops manuals and and training so vertical track was an amazing event that's now called freedom vertical track is repurposed into just garage door companies

and the deal is vertical track has a lot to do with garage door freedom i want people to just show up to vertical track in the garage door industry. You know, someone told me, you guys remember Woodstock, one of my buddies, Jake out of California, he said the first vertical track was like Woodstock. We had a whole different mindset. We didn't know that business could exist this way.

We didn't understand. We were just trying our best. We weren't putting systems in and understanding the price book and understanding how much it really costs to do business. And he goes, you'll never be able to create that again but i think we could at freedom because a lot of home service companies didn't come and i think vertical track made sense for garage doors it doesn't make sense for garage doors it's going to be for garage doors but freedom is going to be like pretty freaking cool because we're we're here to share and i know here's

what's so cool about this is let's just say we get 1,000 people to show up to Freedom. I'll win because someone's going to recommend a garage door company that's a pest control company in Idaho. Someone's going to talk to someone that they know that knows a cousin that has a garage door business that wants to become a millionaire and own a piece of the big company and become a multi-multi-multi-millionaire. I know that there's a lot of companies going to use A1 that are going to come. I'm not doing this because I have any intentions. You don't have to use A1. You don't have to use Don's, a company

we acquired. You don't have to use anything you don't want to. If you choose to, I'd appreciate it. But ultimately, you'll make your decision. I think you guys will love our process. But putting myself out there networking, that's the key. Billionaires, the smartest, most successful, happiest people I know, they spend a lot of time networking and connecting. There's a lot of human interaction. And that's what I've really found a passion for. What appointment cancellation percent do you try to stay under? We seem to be losing a lot from being booked out.

Well, cut your marketing. Keep cutting it so you don't lose any cancellation. There shouldn't be a whole lot of cancellations. I mean, a few percent tops. If it's more than 10%, don't spend money marketing. And make sure you have attribution models with your marketing to understand where the paying customers and new customers are coming from. You know, you should be keeping track

of what marketing sources brought you a new customer versus a repeat customer. But cancellations because you have too much capacity means you need to hire. So slow down marketing. The good news is you turn back on that marketing after you hire a couple of people.

I think one of the biggest strengths of a1 garage door service is our ability to make technicians csrs dispatchers and installers and i learned that from uh l evie we learned it from l evie i'm starting a new garage door epoxy business from zero how do i hire somebody that can help me with sales? I'm not good at sales. Is there a software company system that can help me with that? Look, Jonathan Wissman wrote The Sales Boss. I thought it was great. Joe Cossar does a lot of sales. I've got a lot of great books for you, more than I could just keep going. But one of the good books is Raving Fans.

You create raving customers that love you. I wasn't very good at sales, but I was good at relationships. I gave everybody my all. I didn't make a ton of money, but they told 10 of their friends. They left me a video testimonial. This is back when I actually had a camera set up a phone and I have to plug in the memory card and all that stuff. So if you've got a passion, if you've got a will, you'll be good. But what I would recommend is a lot of audio books. Work on the way you look at somebody in the eyes. Have a conversation. Tell a story. Be genuine. Find what's important to them, what's in it for them. Find out what they like. People like to talk about themselves. Use their name 10 times in the sitting. Instead of talking to them in their garage where it's either really hot or really cold, say, is there a spot where you could go sit down and discuss some options?

Be the only one sitting at their kitchen table or living room sofa. These little things, always play with the dog when you walk in, smile more, practice your tone and delivery. Truly do listen. Remember that you got two ears. I wish you had four because if you listen 4X, you'd be a lot more successful. So listen to people, bring up their concerns, give people options. If you're not giving options, you're giving ultimatums. Practice over and over again, practice using financing on your wife, call it a promotion. Never say the cheapest option, say the most economical, never say the most expensive, say the top of the line, never say, here's our contract, say, okay, the paperwork. If they say, I got to talk to my wife,

say, what time will your wife be home? I'd love to come back and show her. I think that's only fair. These things are very simple when you hear them every day and you live it and breathe it. But if you need help, you know, I'll do a whole podcast on sales, and there's amazing guys out there, and I subscribe to a lot of people on that. How can I get signed copies of the books? You might have to come see me. I'll definitely have them at the event in November, but we will have signed books.

One way or another, we'll figure it out. How do you have a performance pay based on sales volume with fluctuating costs on parts? Well, interesting question. Within one minute of a sales change, I could change my prices. If the price goes down, I'm not changing my prices lower. But if you're getting a ton of fluctuating prices all the time, I'd really look at my vendor and say, I need something a little more consistent. But ultimately, let's say our price goes up 10 bucks. I could change that like this to every

single part that changes throughout the price book. A text message goes out to my technicians, reboot. We've actually got a company called e-squared that goes in and reboots their tablet and it redoes the whole price book it's that simple i get a price increase today i call luke have a make a couple but guess what tomorrow morning it's changed not hard systematized how do you stay focused on the most important task for the day with my mind jumping all over with different ideas and being interrupted often by others. You know, you're going to need some more project managers. You're going to need to prioritize what Al Tommy did on a Trello board many years ago

was come up with all your ideas, put them on a Trello board, and find out which five things are going to make the big difference. Believe it or not, there's certain things with the right people in the room, with a whiteboard and the eight steps of delegation, that you could just masterfully get done with more projects than you think. Hiring people, consultants are amazing. They specialize in one thing and they're great at it. They've seen all the mistakes. Some of these people you got to pay for, but what's the opportunity cost of learning it yourself? And a lot of people don't have any money. So unfortunately, you're going to have to work in the business

for a long time to build up some savings. But when you start hiring the right people, you find out there's an opportunity cost to hiring the wrong people. You start really doing your research, hiring right, making sure the results are written in concrete. And as long as you're willing to give it your all, they're willing to go all in and they're not going to see you fail and become an

advocate for them. You know, the whole elevate mindset is to say, listen, I'm not only going to, when you help me with this one task, setting up my CRM, creating better manuals, I'm going to go do a testimonial for you. That's going to be unbelievable. I'm going to have footage. I'll give you all the raw footage. I'll hire a guy on Upwork. We'll make a killer video. I'll give you as many reviews as you'd like. I'll be your conduit for if you need to close a deal. After we have success in this one thing, I want to be the guy to talk to them and be the guy to help you get them over the hump to close. You go into that kind of relationship, you'll be surprised what people will do for you. But if you go in saying, what can I do for you? Are sales good? Is there any customers that are on the fence that I could help close? You got a good video testimonial?

You give me one hour, I will come up with a hundred things I could help somebody. And they might do it for free because you're helping them if you don't have money. But if your mindset is fixed and you don't have a way to figure out what you can do for them, good luck. I'm starting an epoxy floors company from zero, assuming you don't have enough money right now to hire a salesperson. What can I do to increase closing rate? Closing rate, follow up with people. You'd be surprised what happens when you call them up and say, listen, why would I do business with you? Write down 10 reasons I do business with you. And it can't be because we're open late and we're the best. Have something that's above and beyond. Read the book, A Hundred Million Offers by Alex

Ramosi. Tell people, you know, have different options. We move everything out of your garage for you. We are quicker. We do this. We actually paint the garage. No other companies are painting the garage. When you're smaller, you got to come up with better value. And the problem that you're going to have is you can't afford to market to the people that I can. And so you're going to have to go above and beyond to build value. And you might have to be the discount company because you need a close ratio. If you're spending any money, you need that job closed. You need to say, listen, Mr. Jones, I want to tell you something.

My name is Tommy Mello. I've got a family that depends on me being out here. My last job, I decided to risk it all and come out here. And I'm giving my everything I got. My wife and kids depend on me being successful. And I want to earn your business got. My wife and kids depend on me being successful. And I want to earn your business today. I wrote down 10 reasons of why I believe we deliver a better investment for you. I need to earn your business. You please tell me what I need to do. Because I want you to put a yard sign up.

I want you to tell your friends, your neighbors, and your family. I want you to put several reviews and maybe I can get a testimonial. You tell me what it's going to take because I'm here. If you need me to come here tonight to talk with your wife or husband, I'll do it. If you want me here this weekend, I need the work. I'll do it. My kids are counting on me. You see if that works because I'd buy from you. Shit, I'd buy from anybody that said that. And I'd be more than I'd probably give you some canned food and blankets along with it. But listen, if that's

the real story, then use that. If it's not, use what you have. Being small has a lot of advantages. When you're not busy, you got a lot of advantages. You can do a lot more prospecting. You small has a lot of advantages. When you're not busy, you got a lot of advantages. You can do a lot more prospecting. You go to a lot more events. You could be a BNI groups. You could be networking. There's a lot of opportunity. You just got to have the mindset there's opportunity. I'm in the landscape biz and do 3 million. I want to go to 10 million in five years or less. Should I look for someone that has already built a home service biz of that size and how do I find them I mean listen I was just on a podcast last week with a guy that has a 30 million dollar landscaping company Corey they're everywhere a certain podcast I was just on Keith Kelfis

on his podcast you got to know a vendor you got to know a marketer you got to know an agency that knows people. And I bet if you took 10 minutes and you really wanted to find that answer, you could find it without me. And I'm not being condescending or facetious. I'm just telling you that's everywhere. Just ask. You ask a few people, a few people in your inner circle. You ask a consultant you met. You're at $3 million. You're not small. You know who to talk to. You ask the Honda guy. You ask the Steeler Echo guy. You say, who's one of the biggest purchasers? Go out there. Ask more questions. Don't be afraid if they say no. Don't be afraid of rejection. Don't be afraid of what people think. There's someone that's

going to be there. It's going to say, come on down. I'm looking for guys that want to learn. Guess what? I'm 62, and I want to leave my legacy. So you come in here. I'm going to feed you everything I know. They're probably not from Texas. Maybe that's West Virginia. I don't know. Adam said, would you have stayed in irrigation knowing what you know now? Yes. He said, if you stayed, what would you have done differently? I would have specialized. I would have found out, you know, Al Le you have done differently? I would have specialized. I would have found out, you know, Al Levy was in a company called Zoom Drains. And they didn't choose to be in all of plumbing.

They figured out they didn't make a lot of money on toilets. They made money on drains. So he specialized. He paid for a $100,000 truck with all the setup. He got the best at it. And they got referrals from every single plumber because they were the best at it. So I become a specialist. I'd have a high ticket. I'd be known for being the best. I'd be fast, efficient, great quality. And I would specialize. I'd go, if I go into any industry, it would be to be a specialist. I interned with a dentist and he said, you've got to go into a specialty if you want to make money. So I wouldn't

do everything, you know, garage doors. We try if you want to make money. So I wouldn't do everything. You know, garage doors, we try to focus on really high-end garage doors. But quite frankly, I make money with regular HOA doors, but I prefer that they're polyurethane or polystyrene. But we make a lot of money. And personally, my next big thing, and it's not going to happen in the next six months because I've got certain priorities before this, but I want to do garage makeovers. I want to have Sylvester Stallone and Hulk Hogan, and I want to have a show. And we want to talk about amazing garage door makeovers.

I don't know how soon, and there's a lot of people I need to talk to, but I can make five phone calls in an hour. And I guarantee you, I'd have a great opportunity to get a show, but I think I'm just going to launch it on YouTube. And I've already got enough famous people in my rolodex to call and give them a hookup and then i gotta go with the vendors it's not something i'm ready to do now but market to the affluent it's great book no bs about marketing to the affluent david dance how valuable did you find insights from when big medias fill up studs big customer insights for marketing data you know i gave that to my cto jim and they really tailored a lot of the marketing i was not super involved in that i'm not going to tell you he said it was worth its weight in gold

so jim's a smart guy i would agree with him that if he said do it do it it's like one of those things though if you do it don't use it it's like buying manuals and not using them it's coming up with a CRM and saying I'm not going to use it to its full potential it's using an accounting system but none of your numbers are right the only point of doing something is that you have true intentions and good intentions of using the information that's been given from, in this case, WinBig Media. Rick said, Tommy, in another video is brought up that one has to check the name we put on the company for a trademark to see if it's not taken elsewhere in the country. How do we go about that? It's called a trademark check. Any lawyer would know how to point you in the right direction.

You just want to check to make sure that when you get that name, that there's no like names and they do. This is what lawyers specialize in. You get it done for a couple grand. And is it worth it? Yes. Especially if you want a national brand, if you don't plan on growing out of your state and it's not a lot, you could might, you know, I don't like recommending this, but I know there's that legal zoom. I mean, I'm sure they offer things like this. In my case, I would be more extensive than not. Keaton Bramlett. I'm the owner of a groundshirt company based off Amelia Island, Florida. We did $170K last year in our second full season of business. As of now, it's just my father and I. 95% of our business comes from people calling us from our Google profile.

We average 20 calls per month, 20 calls per week maybe. I'm curious what the next step would be for me to take to the next level. My main thoughts as of now are budgeting for Google LSA and taking my company to Dan Antonelli to give my brand a stronger identity. What do you think? I think that at your size, I would think of LSA and Dan Antonelli. I would definitely think about a CRM. I would definitely be out there networking. I'd be talking to BNI, I'd be meeting builders, I'd be meeting architects, I'd be talking to realtors, I'd be coming up with specials that make sense for them. Man, if I went on the road for one week, I could have enough business. I mean, if I was dedicated and I had someone helping me book just times. And here's the deal. People say, well, Tommy, yeah, now they'll take your phone call. I'm talking back in the day.

I would get out there. I'd out hustle. You know, I have a guy named Ryan Ford in Northern Arizona. He stopped at every single construction site he's seen. He'd leave a folder. It was pre-wrapped. It was waterproof. He'd say, we want to run your business or we'd go talk to the foreman. Some people know how to build their own luck. So I would make sure you're out there networking, putting yourself out there. You guys all know there's somebody that you guys call or you might be the person that if you need plumbing, if your kitchen goes out, you're calling this person, right? You're like, I know the guy to call to help. And in the home service business, we tend to call the people we know for referrals. Well, I know all those guys in Phoenix and I make

sure that they know to use my name and I'll give their people a friends and family discount. I'm not discounting my service because I didn't pay for the acquisition cost. And I'm going to tell these people I want free reviews. I want to know the HOA president. I want a yard sign. But I got a little lazy the last few years because leads got so plentiful. So now I'm back in lead, Jen. But what I did figure out when I was lazy for leads is how to get great employees and a lot of great people applying. Jody told me the other day with Rapid Hire, he said, Tommy, you know what we've realized about your company? There's one common theme to a great employee. When they walk in, they smile and they say, we've been following Tommy and A1.

We want to go down and check out Phoenix. I love their trucks. I love the story. I love the brand. We hear the commercials all the time. They come in and they've done their homework. They know about me. They know about the business. They make comments about some of the brand. We hear the commercials all the time. They come in and they've done their homework. They know about me. They know about the business.

They make comments about some of the management. They've seen some of the training videos. It's amazing because those people want a career here. It's like a customer that calls up and says, hey, I want A1 Garage Door service. I've seen you at all my neighbor's houses. I just want you guys. I know you're the best.

It's just so much better. So much better. What book is your executive team reading this month? We read The Automatic Customer and Luke's Been Out of Town. And I got our next book. And right now I gave it to three people. It's called Come Up for Air. And I wouldn't surprise me if this was our April book because I gave it to Luke. He hasn't read it yet. Dan read it. Jim Leslie read it. I've read it. And that's the company we're working with. So we've come up for air Cody. My 12 year old son has ADHD. And so do I, I hear you talk a lot about ADD is your superpower. My son struggles with his behavior sometimes.

And I want to let you know that I have to tell son, Remy, about you and what you've been able to use your superpower to your advantage. During one of your podcasts, I recall you mentioning a book you're working on about ADD. Can you talk more about that? When do you expect it to be published? Well, I appreciate that. And I hope Remy does amazing things in his life. And if you ever need me to talk to him, I understand. And school's not easy. In fact, if we could go back, I think Einstein wasn't able to read until he was in fourth grade, although he was amazing. And the fact is we can compute more than any other humans. We're visionaries. We think a lot. What I could tell you is it's early stages. It is

going to be the next book, most likely. And I think this book's going to be fiction. I know you guys don't see me writing a fiction book, but I think it would apply to more parents and kids and grandmas and aunts and uncles, and maybe some people that work around ADHD people, because we need to be communicated in a certain way. We need things orderly. We need things in order. We need systems. We need good habits. We need things laid out for us. And you put two great people around me that are integrators, that are orderly. I will come up faster than anybody, but there's got to be too many times in school, teachers were like, number one, they were boring.

They didn't capture my attention. They were monotone. They taught out of a textbook. I was smarter than them. I read my paper sisters that was six years older. I did her math problems. I didn't need to pay attention as much as others, but they didn't keep my brain working. This stuff that I do keeps my brain working, but Ida-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I love it. As long as my brain's working and there's order, we can accomplish anything. Anything. And race versus wear blinders. You guys have heard me say that.

Keep the blinders on. Make sure you got my attention. The minute somebody sits there and they're like, well, I don't get it. I don't hang out with those people. Their brain's got to compute fast and they got to stay organized. And a lot of times if someone's not moving as fast, I'll just take the notes and I'll put some thoughts into it and elaborate on

it later. Because if I can't continue and the path my brain is on, because I'm curing, curing problems right now. So don't F with me. I don't say that to anybody, but that's what I think sometimes. So I think it's going to be amazing. And I'm going to put a lot of time and effort into it. Mark Victor Hansen is going to be helping me with it. So it's going to be good. David said, what is the most important

lesson you've learned from your experience in content creating and how has it shaped your approach to the industry? Well, I hired a full-time content manager. Giuseppe's back working with me. Xavier's working with me. Gianni works with me. Hanna works with me. I've got about a team of seven gyms working with me on this stuff. I'll probably have a team of 20 by the end of the year of just about content. Put out great content, thoughtful content, continuous streams of content that's well thought out. There's, there's so many stories that have happened to me just this weekend, just these last couple of days that are opportunities for other people to learn from. I look at somebody like Gary Vaynerchuk, Bradley, and I literally watch

TikToks and Instagrams learning from them. I'm taking notes. I'm putting it into a file. I'm putting comments. Alex Ramosi, I'm learning. And I've got a company I work with that helps me and amazing people. And I can tell you this, I said, I'm going to be bigger than all those guys put together. There's no doubt. Why? Because I can and I shouldn't. If you could, you should. And I don't mean to be condescending. I don't need the money though. That's the funny thing. I don't do this for the money. I think there's a bigger purpose and I don't always have the answers, but I know to step in and go a hundred percent. I didn't know exactly why I started a podcast. I knew that I could get great people on.

I knew I could tell a story. I could ask the questions I wanted. There were so many byproducts. And when you do good things, byproducts happen. So I don't go into a game thinking I'm going to lose. I go in thinking I'm going to be the biggest badass MF-er that ever lived. And that's how I live. So we'll see. Time will tell. Tommy, I was wondering what the biggest mistake that you've made and how you overcome that mistake. You know, there's personal and business related. I'm going to stay business related. I, for a long time, thought I could figure things out. I got lost a lot and tried to find my way back. I went down rabbit holes because I didn't have money. There was answers all around me.

All I had to do was ask. All I had to do was read. All I needed to do was just be in a different mindset. I think the biggest mistake happened over and over again. I got lost so much. I lost track of time. I got new ideas. I didn't have order. So I think the biggest mistake for sure was just not having a plan and asking for help. That's the best thing I can tell you. But listen,

here's what we're going to do because I really don't want to be late. It's disrespectful to be late to the trainer, the celebrity trainer, Lucas. I will get back to you. I'll have a session two. I'll come out next week and we'll do it again because I like answering these questions. I don't like to leave any questions unread. There's a lot of them. So Brett, you were the last one.

I will have Giuseppe or Gianni go through and make sure the rest of these get answered and we'll do another session. So I appreciate you very, very much. Thanks for listening. Hopefully you take something from this. I hope you appreciate the podcast, Home Service Expert. I have a great time. Check out the book Elevate and we'll catch you next week. I'll make sure that gets done. Thank you. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that 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. you