The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A with Tommy - Mastering Effective Branding and Performance Improvement Strategies to Increase Your Sales

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire and the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $100 million-plus home service business with over 400 employees in 16 states. Through HomeServiceMillionaire.com and the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy shares his experience and insights to help fellow entrepreneurs scale their businesses. In this special episode of the Home Service Expert podcast, host and A1 Garage Doors owner Tommy Mello answers your biggest questions about quoting prices over the phone, effective branding strategies, how to find an Integrator, dealing with unethical competition...

here's the secret sauce. If you guys want to hear it, he used to be at 36% conversion rate. He's worked on his standard operating procedures, his systems, his checklists, and now he's at 71% conversion rate. You cannot spend that kind of money unless you have a high closing ratio and you charge the right amount of money. Most people, you know, I was talking to this guy that's worth about 800 million that spoke at the event, and he said, most people don't have high enough pricing because they have low self-esteem, is what he said. Most owners don't charge the right prices because they have low self-esteem. Think about that. Low self-esteem equals low prices.

I'm not saying I'm the biggest, best believer, whatever, but I believe in the product. I believe that we offer a service that no know, whatever, but I believe in the product. I believe that we offer a service that no one else does. I truly believe that. 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're going to do a Q&A real quick here. I wanted to catch you guys up on this past week because it was amazing.

I had the opportunity to join this club called the 100 Million Mastermind. And you got to pay $100,000 a year to be part of it. And you got to be doing $100 million a year, which I'm not quite there yet. But I met some amazing people, some amazing speakers, just a great networking event. And during my meeting, I kind of talked about one of the guy's speeches. He's an amazing guy. His name is Marshall Silver. And he said, hey, guys, who wants me to change your life today?

Put your hand up if you want a volunteer to come on stage and I'll change your life. And one guy put his hand up. And a little bit later, he said, listen, guys, let me ask this question again. I am going to help change lives. I am going to give you the best year of your life. This next week, you're going to be unstoppable. You will become a billionaire. He goes, you will have the best sex.

You'll become the best parent. You'll become the best husband or wife. He goes, this is your year. You're going to have the biggest, hairiest, audacious goals, and you're going to stomp those goals. And he just went on and on. And he goes, now, let me get a hell yes if you guys are in to come on stage. And everybody had their hand up. And what that taught me was I always teach people, ask.

You got to ask. You never ask. Ask for the sale. Ask. You know, ask for that never ask. Ask for the sale. Ask. You know, ask for that prom date. Ask for anything. Ask for a discount next time you're at a restaurant. Ask for an upgrade at the hotel. Ask for an upgrade at the airline. If you don't ask, you'll never get it. But there's a way, the purpose behind the ask matters. And, you know, we had this meeting and I'm getting text

messages all day. I'm not the best day ever. I've had the best day ever. I'm doing the best day ever. And it's amazing when we ask, when people actually believe and they believe in themselves. You know, I was talking to the guy. I have this beautiful thing here. You guys can read it. I will be, I will be, I will be, I will be. He says, you've got to make that I am. You just haven't deposited the money yet. I am, I am, I am, I am. So I'm going to get this read done and put I am, I am, I am, I am. But if you guys got questions, this is a Q&A. I've got a list of ones that are already out there from the people that have asked.

So we're going to go into it. Questions from the core students. A lot of my competition charges a service call fee to avoid tire kickers. How does that work doing a free estimate instead? We used to charge a $50 service call and we went down to a $20 service call, but I don't charge one for free estimates. I don't think you should charge one for new construction, but I do think for a service call, if you need your stuff serviced, gas prices are up. I think people expect it. You charge a $20 fee, but then you can always say, listen, are you serious about getting the work done today? If I get a guy out there today and the price is right, you're happy

with the work. You're happy with the guy. You're happy with the price. You're happy with everything. Are you willing to get the work done? You are the decision maker. Then I don't care. I'll take that call. But it's your dispatcher's job to give you the best opportunities to the best guys with the least amount of time on the road. Okay. Let me repeat that. It's your dispatcher's responsibility to give you the best opportunities with the least drive time that you could get. Right now, when you can't keep up with demand, it's okay to have a service call. I'd rather just have a higher price.

Depends on how quick you get out there. If you're two weeks out, you know, charge a higher service call. I get it about not giving a quote up front. What about those customers that seem to require before they let you in the door? Well, I tell people, listen, how am I supposed to diagnose your car over the phone? I need to get at it and I need to look at it. But here's how much it costs to basically, if everything you're saying is correct and you've got it all narrowed down, but I cannot say that until I get a pair of eyeballs on it. I cannot give you an exact price. That's like saying, let me hear your car noise and I'll tell you what it's going to cost. Now, if you ask me for an oil change, I better be

able to quote that over the phone. So if the client calls in and they say, I've got a 10 by 10 wall, it's got this type of drywall on it. It's got this type of whatever mud on it, and I need it painted. And I got the color. I know exactly I'm going to buy the paint and you can't give them a quote, then shame on you. But if you expect them to diagnose it over the phone, you just say, listen, let me get a guy out there and take a peek at it. I don't know what we're looking at, and I don't want to do a bait and switch like my competitors because they're going to come out there and say, oh, I didn't know about this. So that's my advice for that. You said penny chasers tend to leave lower reviews, and they may not be the best customer to go after.

Should I consider that even if I'm trying to get my startup and I need every customer? That's a really, really interesting question. I got to tell you, what I've learned in the past is some customers I don't want. Right now, you're going after everything and I get it. Right now, it depends on how much money you have. If you've got money, you've got more resources, you can afford to do better marketing that attracts your avatar, your best customer. Defining your customers half the battle.

In fact, I don't even have mine perfectly dialed in. We're working on our unique selling proposition and who our avatar is. It's really, really... A lot of people say they have it figured out. I love those people because they're usually wrong. And they got everything dialed in, apparently, but you go in their business and tear it apart. One thing I can say is try to be as humble as possible is this business needs a lot of work. So I have some answers because I've experienced them firsthand. I'm hearing the grind every day,

but anybody could walk in my business and give me 25 tips. Trust me. When we're doing a squad analysis, I love hearing the weaknesses and opportunities. I don't need to hear anything about our strengths. So everything you hear is just based on my point of view. And I've been through a lot of this stuff, but listen, I go visit $500 million companies all the time because that's who I aspire to be like. But we're growing so fast. I can tell you this, $500 million, I think we're going to surpass in two years because we're doing a lot of acquisitions. So it depends on where you're marketing to get those penny pinchers. I think every single source could be good. Even Craigslist, even OfferUp, even Facebook leads. You could do stuff even on Groupon or Living Social. They're not my favorite leads, but it gets you going. You want to stay productive. You need to have a busy day.

Let me read some of these questions here. How did you break out a minimum call performance of some techs? Well, you got to get them on a performance improvement plan. You need to have ride-alongs. You need to get them working with the best. Today, I made the comment, if you don't have the top five guys in the company on speed dial and learning what they're doing and call them after every call, you've got issues. I'm calling five smart guys every day, asking them for advice. I surround myself with people that are better than me at a lot of things. I don't need to be the best at everything. Not when I got a go-to person. So your technicians that aren't as great, a performance improvement plan, it's called a PIP. You need to get them on a PIP.

Speaking of PIPs, I got these forms that I use for pips and I need to order. And they're the perfect pips. Actually, I got them from Al Levy. Let's see here. What are the one or two things you did that made the best difference? Three things I can tell you. I've been reflecting. There's three big things I thought of this week that really mean a lot. I'm going to write them down first, but these are the game changers. You guys are anticipating what I'm writing, aren't you? So networking, hiring, and systems are standing operating procedures. So why would I pay a hundred thousand dollars to go to a freaking mastermind? What is that? Crazy? Well, everybody there is doing a hundred million. Everybody there is millions or billionaires. And it's the networking. Grant Cardone said it the

best. Hang out with billionaires, you become a billionaire. Hang out with millionaires, you become a millionaire. You hang out with your normal friends, take your five closest friends that you hang out with, divide their income by five. You'll be within 20% of that almost every time. I hate to say this, but if you want to change, change the people you're around, you tend to be them. So you got to do a performance improvement plan. Why can't give prices and plumbing on the phone? My CSRs aren't plumbers. No, you don't have to get prices over the phone. But if someone calls in and says, how much is a new toilet? And you say, I will not at all give you anything over the phone. You seem like a sheisty ass company.

So if somebody says exactly, no, no, no, we don't give price over the phone. Here's what I'm doing. Let me ask you, Mr. Jones, how are you today? Listen, let me ask you something. What is your cross streets? Oh, you're off of Higley and Southern? Well, look, let me just see one thing here. Mr. Jones, I've got a technician that could be out there today between 5 and 7.

Now, I don't want to tell you something that could be incorrect, but I'll tell you what I could do. I could have him swing by. He'll be there in those two hours. And if you like what he has to say, he'll have everything on the track to get the job done. Do not get prices over the phone, but if you must, if you must. Okay, let me tell you guys how I do it. We've got level one and level two CSRs. Level one takes everything.

They're not allowed to know pricing. Level two is really freaking good at what they do. They're good at booking the call. They're good at not giving away all the information because we truly cannot diagnose a garage door over the phone. So level two tries the second time. And if they got to give a little price, they give a variance that they could go between this and this. And if the customer says, I can get it done for this, say apples to apples, call around everywhere you can. Apples to apples, we'll do a price-to-be guarantee. Same warranty, same product. But we carry oranges. And I like

to sell oranges when people are selling apples. I know you have other garage door companies come out and tour your facility. How can we get someone set up to come out and do that? I'm having a garage door show for the trades, November 3rd, 4th, and 5th. We're going to be doing a shop tour. I'm going to be showing them all my trucks. We are going to show everything there is. We're taking the, I don't know, the drapes, the curtains, and we're going to show you guys everything. We're going to show you guys how we do what we do, and it's going to be phenomenal. And we're creating a buyer's group.

So everybody's going to save a shit ton of money, November 3rd, 4th, and 5th. So the event's going to be called Vertical Track. It's going to be killer. Can't wait for it. It's just going to be the best thing ever. So I'm going to put this right now in the group. So if you guys want to come and you're garage door guys, this is going to be the game changer. If you can't afford to be here and take time off, then you're nuts.

That's the whole reason you need to come out. That's the whole reason you need to be here. Hi, Tommy. Is there a way for a small business? I'm a man in a truck to become a dealer for a garage or a company. Clubhouse sent me to buy the dealer in my town. I won't sell to me direct. I can't be competitive with dealer prices, and it's hard for me to sell doors like that. What should I do?

Come to my show. I promise you it's a game changer. Service time is going to be here, too. So let's go over some more questions here. What are your current COGS and do you include sales commission in it? Yeah. Anybody doing the work need to go into COGS. So how much does it cost to complete a job? So you need to have your direct, you can't charge your CSRs and stuff like that, but you're going to put any direct labor

on that job into your cogs so yeah you definitely want to include that that's from john any materials and any labor that went into that job and any anything that goes directly under the job if there's a permit involved that goes into the cogs was branding a100 than you thought let me tell you guys about yesterday. This is a pretty cool story. Yesterday. Those of you who live in Phoenix, there's a guy named Brandon Raffi. He's on every fricking bus stop. He's all over the place. He's everywhere. He's on every billboard. He's on other buses.

He's on the bus stops. He's on the small signs, the big signs. He's on TV. He's on the bus stops he's on the small signs the big signs he's on tv he's on the radio well my trainer my physical trainer i was talking about him one day and he goes oh he's my client and i said dude you gotta hook me up you gotta get me to a lunch with him so i met with him yesterday and i said dude you're just murdering it just what's your deal and he goes well tommy the strategy is you go into a market so hard that people are talking about you. This guy's like a celebrity. They were like, they gave me 15 minute wait time. He walked in five minutes later. They sat him.

It was crazy. And maybe there's a little bit of, I don't know, celebrity there. And I don't care about that. But when you do the right media buys, TV, radio billboards, here's the secret sauce. If you guys want to hear it, he used to be at 36% conversion rate. He's worked on his standard operating procedures, his systems, his checklists, and now he's at 71% conversion rate. You cannot spend that kind of money unless you have a high closing ratio and you charge the right amount of money.

Most people, you know, I was talking to this guy that's worth about $800 million that spoke at the event. And he said, most people don't have high enough pricing because they have low self-esteem is what he said. Most owners don't charge the right prices because they have low self-esteem. Think about that. Low self-esteem equals low prices. I'm not saying I'm the biggest, best believer, you know, whatever.

But I believe in the product. I believe that we offer a service that no one else does. I truly believe that. So that's the goal. The goal is to get to the point where, you know, he's getting 800 contracts a month. When Lerner and Rowe's only getting 550. It's freaking insane. I'm so happy for this guy.

He's killing it. But what's nice is he's like, just come into my shop. We'll work together. I'll show you everything I know. It's the coolest thing ever that he's willing to open his mind and his business to me. A lawyer. Think about that. A personal injury attorney. My show's going to be in Phoenix, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Yep, this is it. It's the Brandon Raffey Law Group. Boom. Let's see. Tommy, marketing agency to creating home service branch. Should my concrete coding company have commission sales? I don't like the word commission. I like performance pay. Don't base it 100% on commission. Start thinking about how you help the customer out.

The problem I hate about commissions is on, for example, on, let's see, we're in August. So August 30th, commission salespeople, if they got to pay rent, they tend to do things that are disingenuous. So when you pay commission or performance pay, I think it should be rated off a few things. Customer satisfaction needs to be a big one. I think not getting warranty calls is a big one. I think putting a yard sign out is a big one. I think sales matter. So I would do that. I base it off a conversion rate too. We've got a scorecard that we base our stuff off of that gives you different brackets. And that's how we do our pay because I want a well-rounded performance pay, not just straight commission.

So yes, absolutely. The majority of your people should be based on commission, but performance pay. I think everybody in the business, your trainers, every single person eventually at A1 will be. Those programs are harder to come up with than you think. You can't just throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks. You got to really work on what's going to motivate people to do the right things. My goal is to keep people not necessarily working harder, but more efficient. One of the things I took out of this, it's called the 100 million mastermind, is the guy said, look, guys, you guys might not have the money yet, but you shouldn't be doing anything when it comes to cooking your own meals. You should not be doing your own laundry. You

should not be doing cleaning your house, doing your landscaping. You should have a private jet. And his whole point was, is your time best off doing those miniscule tasks that you can get minimum wage for? Now, obviously getting a pilot on a plane is a different story, but he said, depending on how much you travel, you can be burning several dozens of hours a quarter, if not a month, depending on going through security. And so a lot to think about. And some people say, look, I like to make my own bed. I like to clean. I like to do this. If you enjoy doing it, don't stop. I'm not coming to you telling you, if you love mowing the lawn, freaking mow the lawn. If you want to be a better dad and just show off to your kids that you still give 100%,

I'm fine with that. But you want to make your life as efficient as possible. You know, I have the trainer come to my work in our gym because number one, it's very, very easy. I can't make excuses like I can't go to the gym. And he gets really, really mad if I don't work out. I mean, he's a good trainer because of that. But just think about ways to think about how you can make yourself accountable. Let's see here. Would you share your average ticket today? I'm in service tightened. Now this doesn't see what i don't like about service

tighten it doesn't account for zeros so we got to take it and export it to excel do some stuff but if you don't include this zeros today our average ticket with door sales and we sell a lot of freaking doors is 1330 our average service ticket today Today, with zeros, $591. If you guys aren't charging enough prices in this economy, you are effed. You're effed. You will be out of business within one year. If you're not raising your prices, Biden just approved, well, the House Democrats just approved $3.5 trillion. Okay?

If you don't think inflation is about to go rampant and here's the deal, I don't think they're going to be able to raise interest rates right now because the economies can't do that with COVID. So low interest rates, a lot of money entering the market, basic economics, rapid inflation, better raise your fricking prices, man. I'm telling you today, I'm telling you right now, raise your prices. You're getting your prices raised, right? I don't even want to go into it, but I just, you got to raise your prices. You're getting your prices raised, right? I don't even want to go into it, but you got to raise your prices. Let's see. I'm quoting you on that right now.

Do you mix repair tickets and install tickets for an average ticket or keep them separate? I just told you I kept them separate. What's next for A1 Garage? Richie, long time, brother. Well, we're in 19 states. I think we'll be in 40 states here within the next two years. My plan is getting into garage door flooring as well as garage door storage solutions. Got some big plans. The only way to get past a billion in revenue is, I think, to get into a couple other things like floor coatings and storage. So we're going to be

starting that in Phoenix. And I'm still obsessed with garage door expansion for what we do. I think it's a lot easier to stay in one industry and grow while we develop the other industries. We'll nail it in Phoenix and we'll scale it. Hell yeah, great job. Tell us every other trade makes the markup. Yeah, every other trade makes a markup. Look, dude, I don't understand. If you guys can't afford a billboard, if you guys don't have a nice office,

if you guys can't afford a COO that makes a couple hundred grand, if you guys don't have new trucks and a nice brand new iPad for your guys and be able to have recruiters and a nice training center and be able to buy lunch for your own employees, then you're not effing charging enough. I'm sorry. Look, you can't have same-day service. You can't be all three.

You can't be the best, the best timing, and the cheapest. It's impossible. In fact, you know, I'm by far not the most expensive. I promise you that. Trust me. HVAC guys are getting in the industry and charging $2,200 for an opener. I'm not even bullshitting. I got invoices. So that's where we're at. I think everybody needs to make sure they charge accordingly for their own business.

What do your marketing meetings look like? So marketing, we have a bunch of KPIs. We look at supply and demand. We look at capacity. Are we getting the right amount of jobs for the technicians? And then I look at this. I need to know who's in the hopper. I need to know who's on a pip. I need to know who's not going to be here in a month because after the third performance improvement plan, we might feel it's better to go separate ways or make you another position

in the company. So I've got to understand there's a perfect balance. And that's what we're always thinking about is how many guys do we need here? When do we do? I've got three levels of marketing. One is just basically reputation to his mailers and other things like Google. And the third one is billboards, TV, radio. You can't afford to do those things. If you don't have high conversion rate and good average tickets. You just can't. So the three levels. So we talked about when we're going to hit that third tier, we're going to be doing that in Tucson, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Vegas here in the next six months. Tommy, what you're doing is everything. Awesome. Thank you. I'm a visionary.

How do I find a great integrator? There's a great book that talks about this called Rocket Fuel. In the back of Rocket Fuel, they tell you how to find an integrator. The best way to find an integrator is to find somebody that's already doing something similar, maybe a similar business. You go there and you steal them. You give them something better. You say, you know why people get behind me is because they see that I'm hungry. They see I have passion.

They want to be somewhere where they can grow and where they can that I'm hungry. They see I have passion. They want to be somewhere where they can grow and where they can deal with the owner. I met a brand new guy here. His name is Daniel this morning. He's on my marketing team. And he said, Tommy, he goes, one of your employees came out and he talks so highly of the company that I knew I wanted to work here. He goes, quite honestly, I feel like I'm home because this is only my third day. I said, listen, man, listen, you take myself when you call me anytime you come up with an idea, come into my office. I mean, book it with Bree. I just don't want him to walk in. But I said, listen, I'm available via text. And then I saw him see the technician and they ran up and gave each other

hugs. And that's the kind of place we have here. It's the energy, it's the passion, it's everything. And I think it's really, really important. And I'd rather make a little bit less money, but have a place that people would really appreciate coming into that they felt welcomed. They feel like the owner is still part of the business because I would rather not own this business if I wasn't going to be part of it. Honestly, at that point, if you don't have the passion, there's a great book called Build the Last.

And I would definitely leave the next leader. I'm not saying I want to be a part owner of it, but I'm having too much fun being part of it. What days of the week do you meet? How long are the meetings? What are the goals and the metrics you look at? We meet once a week on marketing. There's a couple other meetings that go into recruiting and stuff like that. One of the biggest things I try to figure out is what is our cost per acquisition? And the more affordable it is, the more I want to grow that market. See, I look at percentage of revenue we're spending in that market too, because I'm spending less than 10% and it's a low cost per acquisition. Then I want to figure out a way to get a lot more calls.

There's always what's called the lull of diminishing returns. You're considered you own the market at 15% to 20%. It's hard to get above that. No matter how much more money you spend, it's not going to give you a big ROI. So you got to make sure when you start to plateau, I can't have 400 technicians in Phoenix. I think I can get to 150 probably, because we're damn good at what we do. We've got amazing employees that get people to come work for us because they're in their garage. Talk about an amazing employee. Great employees equal great customers. See, I always got it wrong. I always thought, how do I get customers? Now I see, how do I recruit internal customers? How do I become better on Glassdoor and Indeed? How do I make it the best place ever to work? And I got to tell you,

I'm light years away from where I want to be. It's not perfect right now. I got a lot of work to do, but I genuinely, truly, honestly, whatever you want to call it, I really want people to change their lives. I want them to have a better relationship with their kids. I want them to go on vacations that matter. Those are the things I want here. We're allowed to make money at the same time. Some people think you can't have both. The business has got to make money because I got a fiduciary responsibility that this company doesn't go under to every employee here. Appreciate the insight, Tommy. can you interview a residential electric service company entrepreneur that's doing really well absolutely i'm residential electric company we work we work for big home

builder i'm having some issues raising prices but not being so overpriced that the builder hires someone else so we aren't losing you know i just got a book that you need to read. This lady was on my podcast. She's amazing. Her name's Carolyn. Quit getting screwed. The deal is if you don't have the right contracts in place with an escalation clause in there, you could get really screwed by your builder. I think the main thing that you got to realize is you need to show them the supply chain and you need to move with the supply chain. Look, my buddy's a builder. His name's Zeke. And I had to pay just small spot, 12 grand to replace a roof. And he said, dude, here's the cost. Here's the cost of the flashing, the ply board, whatever. I mean, look, it's out there right now. Everything's expensive. The builders should understand that

they know what's going on. They're going to take your prices and mark them up anyway. Should we just hold on and wait for this shortage COVID thing out? Or should I demand more money if I don't get it leave? Most customers will, trust me, they understand. And I don't think you leave because you paid for the acquisition costs. You got to figure out a way to earn their business. This COVID thing ain't going away. Supply chain is not getting fixed.

It's not going to get fixed in the next six months. It's not going to be fixed in a year and a half. I'm sorry, but nobody can get raw materials. Most of the factories are still shut down. They can't hire. So if you think this is just going to flow down by, unfortunately, and I mean this with all due respect, but it's not. We're not done yet.

It hit way too hard. There's still factories shutting down. Supply chain's getting worse. Next month, it'll even be worse. Those guys are out of springs. There's still factories shutting down. Supply chain's getting worse. Next month, it'll even be worse. Those guys are out of springs. It's not getting any better. I'm sorry, but it's getting worse. The air conditioning units are going to get worse.

In fact, some of the biggest companies I know are buying every brand. Instead of the one loyal brand that they got the best multiplier, they're buying from everybody. Question, how do you hold a challenging employee accountable i rid myself of challenging employees unless he's like super important to you if he's that much work or she's that much work you need peace in your life you don't need anxiety and stress you already own a business that's enough how do you hold one accountable? Checks and balances. When I was at my buddy's, just now his name is Leland Smith. He's got a dispatcher that calls on every single call and makes sure that they go over with the customer everything that

guy should do, why that guy's still in the home working on the HAC unit. It's amazing the processes of a $500 million company. I just got to tell you guys, it's very interesting, but checks and balances are how you do it. Can you share one thing that helps the company culture be more positive? Well, I can share a bunch of things. I think having an open line of communication, being able to talk to me, being able to talk to a manager. I think having people's ideas and actually running with them. 25,000 bottles we raised today. We hit our target. 25,000 bottles of water for the homeless.

That wasn't my idea. That was one of our technicians' ideas. Have a place that's open communication. Just do nice things. You know, we bought lunch for everybody yesterday. Here you go. Here's 1,501 ways to reward employees with little to no money. Buy this book if you want to learn

this isn't my main copy my main copy is in my house but uh this is an amazing book if it was my main copy the whole back of it would be notes where do you generate the majority of your leads from joe johnson i do the majority of mine from google but when i was at this hundred million dollar mastermind, they do a new strategy that I'm going to get ahold of the lady. I might go visit her in Tampa. It's called micro-influencers. And there's a lot of ways to generate leads. Listen, I'll give you any source possible. I don't care if it's Yelp. I don't care if it's Angie's List or Angie Home Advisor. I don't care if it's Groupon. I don't care if it's Angie's List or Angie Home Advisor. I don't care if it's Groupon.

I don't care if it's Living Social. I don't care if you got a paper performance with your newspaper. I don't care if you're Craigslist posting, social media. I can make money posting on TikTok. Everything works. It just depends on what your strategy is and how much time and effort you're going to put into it. I like customers that go straight to Google when something breaks. They look for the best company. Hopefully, they search my company because my brand popped out in them. So TV, radio, billboards,

but there's got to be a combination. You got to have a wallet to be able to do that. You got to let it work for six months. I haven't had much success with ValPak. It's not right for me. Is it not right for me or is there a better strategy to make it work? Depending on the business, there's a lot of crappy ads. So I learned how to make a great ad. You always put the offer on the right-hand side because people flip through it. They hold it tight on the left side. They flip through it and they look at all the stuff on the right. Number one. Number two is make less clutter. Clutter, clutter, clutter, clutter, clutter. I see these ValPaks and I'm like, what the hell do they even do? You can't even figure it out.

Have your strong, you might want to have a loss leader that get in the door stuff, like a tune-up or something. I think that Valpak works when it's sitting on the counter because they just got the mail. So it's got a two to three day shelf life. And if the garage door, the carpet needs to be clean or whatever before it makes it in the trash, it works. But don't expect it to be your everything. When you do ValPak, you want to make sure that you are doing pay-per-click, just like

if you do radio, TV, or billboards. You got to put on your own keywords and make sure when they go to check out your reputation that you pop up. My competition likes to say things about my company that are not true. How do you combat those unethical operators? Well, you can confront them or get a lawyer, but I don't think it's worth it. I think they kind of put themselves out of business over time. I'm too busy focused on me to focus on my competition or the industry changing company, not them. So of course you're going to talk to people. Tell you this, they either love me or hate me. My competition, they love me. It's a lot of them because I

welcome them into my company and we open the door to them and we're nice to them and we want to work with them. I have a lot of great friends in this industry that they share with me and I share with them. Then there's the guys that say, oh yeah, forget Tommy. He's just, oh yeah, he's a cocky dude that thinks he knows everything. Look, that's not the case at all. The reason I have the podcast is because I get to talk to really, really smart people and ask great questions. I think we got something special here, but it's not me. It's our employees. The employees make the company. They are the culture. There's no such thing as a one person culture. So the guys that don't like me, they're not willing to take free advice. They're not willing to learn from a $100 million, damn near $100 million company.

That's fine. Let them be in their one truck, driving all alone, being lonely, working 12-hour days, seven days a week. One guy tried to convince me that wraps weren't good. I said, great. What market are you in? I'm coming there next. It's a freaking joke.

Guys just, they got too much pride. I have zero pride. I'll walk into any shop to pride. I have zero pride. I'll walk into any shop to learn. I'll come in with a pad of paper, like something like this, and I'll have a million notes. That's the difference. Give us some details on Vertical Lift events. Thank you, Cody.

So here's the deal. Vertical Lift is going to change the industry. We are going to teach everybody how to do marketing, how to do sales. I'll just tell you guys some stuff here. So some of the things we're going to have, we're going to learn about SEO, LSA, VA service, citation sites, ValPack, Clipper, PFP, dope marketing, P ppc call cap how to do tracking numbers backup call centers background checks drug tests just the most amazing systems in the world zip recruiter you're going to learn how to get out of permit pulling vehicle insurance workman scott we're going to be talking a lot about how these tools i use to dominate the competition. Look, the guys that can't afford to be at this thing are going to get crushed.

No offense. We're stronger together, but better buying power together. We're going to learn how to market better. I'll tell you what, if you guys come to this event and you're in the garage industry, you're going to become wealthy beyond your, you have no idea what's about to happen.

This is going to change the industry. I promise you. And if you're just saying, yeah, right, I don't want to be there. I'm fine with it. We don't need other people in this. Look, my purchasing power is $15 million a year. I get a better price than you. I'm negotiating stronger than you.

I pay less from service time than you. We understand how to use service time. You're going to learn a lot about that. We're going to be talking to companies that absolutely murder it. We're going to be talking to a guy that trained 50, $10 million producers in the HVAC industry, not to mention 7,000 other companies that aren't in garage doors. And you guys are going to get to learn how they do it.

I'm not the pro. I got all the pros coming. Al Levy, he helped save the company in a lot of ways. He taught me how to write all these manuals, all these beautiful manuals. He's going to be here. Look, we're going to have panels. We're going to have an amazing event. This thing's going to be just off the chain.

I can tell you that. This is what I've always wanted to do. I wanted to get a bunch of people together and see what we could do together. And this is what it's all about. So hopefully people start talking about it. They invite their friends in the garage door industry because we're opening our trucks. We're going to show them our KPIs. We're going to show them. We're going to log into our CRM. We're going to get the best speakers of guys that just, they understand business more than most people do. And hopefully when you come out of here, there's a few things

I want you to take away. Number one, I want you to have more freedom. So the group is going to be called garage door freedom. Number two, I want you to have more freedom. So the group is going to be called Garage Door Freedom. Number two, I want you to be able to run your business from an island somewhere in Tahiti. Number three, I want to have you make sure you have a business that you can sell one day. Because right now, I'm not so sure. This garage door industry, if cars go completely autonomous, garage doors will cease to exist, at least for the most part. You guys will struggle on the garage door industry. So there's a lot to think about there. And they will go autonomous one day.

And that means there will be no need for even to own a car because cars could basically, if there's enough autonomous cars out there, no one will own a car. I promise you. I've talked to the people. A lot of builders are going without the garage door now. Let's put it that way. What event is this R? Don't really know that one. I'm sure you meant to say the event is only for garage door companies,

residential mostly. Super excited about it. I'm going to be talking a lot about it. We're going to be in the garage door news and DASMA and all that good stuff. So working on that. Cody's been helping me out posting in his groups. That's amazing. I'll leave you guys with this.

You know, the guy asked me, what do you want, Tommy? What is your goal? And I said, it's simple. I only want three things. To do what I want, when I want, with whoever the hell I want. That means if I want to fly tonight to Alaska and go hunting and with 10 of my best friends, and some of them have to fly in from other states

they don't need my money but if i'm fortunate enough to help and the money's working hard for me that means i can do it you know i know my stepdad is looking to get a boat i'd love to do that as long as he plans on driving the days that we want to go out to have a beer i'd love to be able to do that if i want to go hang out fishing trip maybe in michigan from my hometown i'd love to be able to do that. If I want to go hang out, fishing trip, maybe in Michigan from my hometown, I'd love to be able to do that on the fly. So you got to ask yourself, what does that mean? What is wealth versus being rich? Wealth means simple. Wealth is making money when you sleep. Rich is because you made a lot of money. It doesn't mean it's working for you. And it takes hard work and sweat equity to become wealthy.

And you got to be smart. My smartest attribute that I have right now is I go visit bigger companies than me. And they're happy to help me because a lot of people don't ask. You'd be surprised how many people are sitting there that are struggling and they're drowning and they're so afraid to ask people for help. I don't get it. I'd love for somebody to explain that one to me. Would you recommend as a first employee to hire someone experienced or train someone? I'm a one-man plumbing company and having a hard time finding installers here in San Bernardino, California. The deal is when you're that small, I hate to say this, this goes against my grain, but you definitely want some experience, guys.

You'd want to find someone I'd say maybe came out of a trade school with the right attitude. You know who I'd love to find is a really, really good person that's moving into town. So you got to have your ads out there. Let me think of the platform. Indeed has a platform there that when a resume pops online and Indeed, it lets you know you pay for those, but it's amazing. I'm learning all this cool stuff on recruiting. Actually, if you guys are looking for employees, my buddy, Jody, I'm telling you this guy, I went from barely getting employees, two applicants a week in Milwaukee. This dude is crazy. Him and his wife, Vanessa. I mean,

they figured it out. They hit me up and they said, Hey, we're doing this truck driving recruiting crap. And I'm like, cool. Tell me about it. And she showed me and I was like, are you freaking kidding me? I'm getting freaking 500 applicants a day. It's nuts. It's called rapid hire dot info. You've never seen anything like it because they go to Facebook and Instagram. Like, I can't even explain it. They just figured out a software that text message people and sends emails to the people.

It does the background checks. It does the interviews for you. I'm going to share a story with you guys here. Hopefully you dig it. One day there's this woman. This woman is a pretty crabby lady. And one day she looks out the window, looks out the window and she says to her husband,

come over here. She goes, I don't get it. This lady is always doing laundry and hanging her clothespins. She's like, the clothes are never clean. She's like, why can't this lady learn to have clean clothes? What's wrong with this woman? And every day, same thing. She nags to her husband, nags to her husband, nags to her husband. One day, she wakes up a little late. She looks out the window and all the clothes are clean.

They're spotless. And she goes, I can't believe it. This lady finally figured out how to clean her damn clothes. And the husband goes, I finally cleaned the windows because I got sick of you nagging. The point of that story is sometimes we're not looking through a clean lens. Sometimes we don't realize what people are going through. You know, recently I had something come up and I'll tell you guys a story. My mom and my stepdad used to always call me up or she'd come in my office and she'd be crying. And she's like, I think someone's still in toilet paper. And we used to have crazy shit happen. Listen, we were a small business.

Don't put anything past me. It's happened. That's why I'm speaking from knowledge here. And I felt so bad because she'd really, really, really get down on herself and just say, I don't know why these guys do this to you. They take advantage of you. And I was like, mom, so many people are doing so many good things for me. It's hard to really pay attention to the negative. Number one, number two is I've got bigger fish to fry. I got to be honest. There's bigger issues at the time. I was trying to get an SBA loan. Things were tough. And the point was,

is I didn't get to correct the things that they wanted me to. But they had no idea what I was going through. I had bigger fish to fry, bigger decision making. And sometimes we get so mad at people when we have no idea what they're going through. We have no idea what to put ourselves in their shoes. And I think it's important to sit back and say, listen, let me get down to the root of this problem. Let me ask them what's going on. Maybe there's something going on with a loved one. Maybe there's something going on in their personal life. Maybe they got an issue from when they were a kid. Who knows? But it needs to be addressed. There's another story that Darren Hardy tells and goes like this. There's two villages, one on the bottom of the base, one on the top.

These guys are the bad guys. These guys are like cannibals, crazy, bad people. And this mountain is almost impossible to hike. These guys figured out a way to get to the top. They're just, they're relentless. This bottom one's a really nice tribe. And one day the top guy, one of the guys comes down and kidnaps the lady's baby.

And they got the baby at the top of this mountain. So they get their top five athletic guys, the best hunters that know how to go up the mountain. And these guys get up half the mountain and they decide, man, this is impossible to hike this mountain. We're sorry, we can't do anything. And all of a sudden, from a distance, they see the woman, the mother running down the hill and she's got the baby and they go, how in the hell, how, how did you get that baby? How did you get to the top? And she looks at them and says, it wasn't your baby, was it? And what that whole story is and i get goosebumps the whole story is figuring out your why or why so strong i've seen women pick up cars before with their husbands underneath it

because that the hoist fell or whatever if you figure out your true why your real passion and i love what i'm doing i love this stuff but if you figure that out you could go places that no one ever imagined you could do places that no one ever imagined. You could do things that people never imagined. You could grow beyond belief. And when I speak, I speak with passion. I believe. And I got to tell you guys, you look around here, we just have the most amazing people.

And I had a guy touring our shop today. And he goes, Tommy, everybody cares. He goes, everybody's friendly. Everybody's having fun. You got the best leaders I've seen. I go, I cares. He goes, everybody's friendly. Everybody's having fun. You got the best leaders I've seen. I go, I know. I'm very fortunate. I feel like I'm just blessed.

I mean, God is good. Let me see here. Get up, Jody, man. You guys got to see this thing. He's killing it. Well, listen, guys. I guess I could tell you guys a joke since we got a little bit more time. So there's this blonde and this brunette and the brunette goes, oh, my God.

She goes, I feel so guilty. She goes, last night I slept with a Brazilian. And the blonde goes, oh, my God, you slut. She goes, how many is a Brazilian? That's not the cleanest joke, but that's all I got. So, guys, if you need need anything feel free to get a hold of brie and uh it's not like i'm busy enough right brie but anyways thanks for watching i appreciate everybody i love answering questions i love being a help i love assisting if i could help and um i love hopefully making an impact in your life because a lot of you have made an impact in my life. So appreciate you guys.

I want you guys to have the best weekend ever. And I promise you, try hard. Be there for your people. Take care of your employees. Your employees are your internal customers and you'll be a lot more successful for it. Thanks, guys. Have a great day. Bye.

Hey, guys. Have a great day. Bye. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor. Leave a quick review.

It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences. Tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them.

So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it, to be completely frank with you guys. But I think it will enrich your lives even further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast.

I really appreciate it.