The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A With Tommy - Maximizing Local Leads and Clicks for Your Business

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire and Elevate, and the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $200 million-plus home service business with over 700 employees in 19 states. Through Home Service Freedom 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 marketing investments, equity programs, advertisement spending…  

I love the idea of buying a company, especially if they've been around for a long time and they got a lot of phone calls coming in. Going back, I don't think I'll ever start another business from scratch. There's 10,000 baby boomers retiring each day. 12% of those own a business. So I'm highly, highly, highly focused on acquiring businesses. There's a lot of opportunities out there. You just got to know what you're doing. You got to have a marketing plan. You got to have a recruiting plan. You got to have a plan for culture, how you're going to get your trucks, how the organizational chart is going to look,

how much you want to spend on budgeting. What's the ultimate goal? What do you want the business to look like after one year, three years, five years? How often are you going to be working in the business? Who's going to help you run it? Do you have a great integrator? These are all things I'd really think about.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my

newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. Okay, guys, we're live for the Q&A. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert, and it is April. I'm going to answer a lot of questions here. I don't know if you guys always good to bring this up. Secret of the trades. You go to Tommy Mello dot com forward slash news. You get

three copies of this. This is the secrets of the trades and it's pretty cool. Lots of different people I have in here in this one. I was talking about the Black Mamba and some of the trainers that went into that. And just have some great information in here. I'm writing a new book about... It's a simple, easy book. Everybody keeps asking about performance

pay. So that's going to be coming out. I'm doing the audio version. It's very simple on how to form performance pay. So that's going to be a smaller book. And then my next book I'm going to write is Pay Them What They're Worth, where it talks about equity incentive programs. It talks about profit sharing. It talks about setting up performance pay. It's going to talk about a lot of stuff. I'm almost done with the ADHD book. I'm writing another book just for A1 people that want to work here. It's going to be about 50 chapters, real short chapters. This is the secret of the trades. I was talking about this earlier. If you want to get a few free newsletters, go to TommyMello.com forward slash news.

I got a lot of questions here. Here's where I've been in the last week. I went out and did a shop tour for the Freedom event that somebody won a shop tour. And it was Lee Downing. Such a great, great company. He's in Memphis, Tennessee. Super smart people. They're really, really... Their call booking rates through the roof. They're absolutely murdering it. If I was going to bet on a home service company, he'd be one of my top picks. The guy is just phenomenal. Got stuff dialed in. He's part of a franchise model. And I love going and doing shop tours still because I always learn just as much as I'm there to kind of give constructive criticism or feedback. If you guys want to come visit the shop,

just go to TommyMellow.com forward slash shop. And if you go to TommyMellow.com, you'll see where I'm at on all of the social media, whether that's LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, TikTok, I'm kind of everywhere. YouTube channel. I'm really trying to blow up the YouTube stuff. I've got a meeting later with Dan Martell, kind of learning how to really give you guys more information. Just finished this book. I don to really give you guys more information. Just finished this book. I don't know if you guys got a chance to read it. Really cool book, Joe Crisar, What Should We Do? How to Win Clients, Double Profit, and Grow Your Home Service Sales. My buddy, I had a phone call this week from a guy that I talk with. His name is Taylor. I talk with him once every 18 months. And he's

like, dude, I spent a lot of money in marketing. I'm over 20%. And I was like, he goes, if you were me, where would you be putting the money? I'm like, well, how's your LSA leads? He's like, they're okay. And so LSA works out of an algorithm. You got to answer your phone calls, have the messenger turned on. The messenger leads are half the cost. And we just talked a little bit about LSA and then his GMB. I said, call my buddy Kellen. And Kellen's got this business called pin, P-I-N, parrot.com. So they'll show you where you're at today and the little bubbles where you rank. Well, it turns out two of this guy's three gmb's were not ranking at all so callum's working with him to get those ranking

and we started using callan robert hired him robert was super excited about this i think it's been about six or eight weeks and i'll just tell you callan's a really solid dude. We're seeing amazing results. We only started with six GMBs. He did the Scottsdale one for free just because he wanted to prove a point. And now we're adding every single one of the GVPs or GMBs. Something that I think you guys

should be thinking about. I said, I wouldn't do a whole lot of pay-per-click if you're spending over 20% in marketing except to bid on your own keywords. But just finding those little things, I think he's got an opportunity to double just because he was in a big area and he was not getting found.

So Colin's helping him with that. I don't know exactly what he's doing, but what it does is it pulls pictures out of service to enter Jobber or Housecall Pro and it posts those to your GMB page. And it's unique content. And if it's set up correctly, it starts to rank more and more and more. And realistically, within a couple of months, you'll probably double the amount of calls you're getting because you're ranking more on that three pack. So good opportunity there. I was at the Rilla Voice

yacht party, such an amazing time. I mean, there was a class act. I mean, it was amazing. And I just started talking to people that are actually using these AI tools to record the conversations in the home. They're literally like what it does. If you guys don't know, there's several tools that do this. But Rilla, you set your iPad down or you got an iWatch or Apple Watch, and it'll record the conversation. And I think there's 12 states that require you tell the client that it's recording, 38 states. You don't have to do that. You don't need consent. And the people that have dove in, I was talking to Bill

Rissell earlier, the people that are all in, they choose to use this as the foundation of their company, it will change the sales of your business. It will. We're super focused on this. We still are trying to get all the guys to record the calls. So that's where it starts. And then study and focus on KPIs and look at the scorecard and have them focused on things. So we're building all this infrastructure about Rilla. It's not only the technicians and installers, it's the managers, the one-on-ones, when you do a job interview, recording the interviews, it's the mojo calls, it's the Thursday meetings. We want to take this data and make sure we sound the same. If I'm in Lansing, Michigan, or if I'm in Oklahoma or Nashville, Tennessee, or Nalbuquerque. I want to make sure we provide the same experience.

We're saying the right things. We're matching the tonality of the client. And just like I was the first guy on ServiceTitan outside of HVAC Plumbing and Electrical, we adopted this tool early. We're looking at some other stuff with AI for the call center. We're working with ServiceTitan on a bunch of stuff. So you guys know I'm the first one in. I use a lot of products. This month, all of our KPIs are going to be coming out of Power BI. If you don't know what Power BI is, you should probably look it up, Power BI. And you can go to Upwork to find a professional to help you pull all those reports with BI tools, which is business intelligence.

The automations that we set up, we're still getting them dialed in, but Chirp's handling that. So we got Power BI, Chirp, and Rilla are the newest things we're working on. And then we're still using RapidHire. Those guys do a fantastic job for us. 32 technicians here, 40 coming next month, hopefully 45 the following month. We're really, really, really getting good

at getting the right technicians that I would bet on to win. And these technicians are competitive. They like to win. They love the idea of Rilla Voice. They're coming into that thinking it's a great tool, not that we're using it to spy on them. So I think these tools, we're slowly becoming a technology company that does garage doors. So there's a lot of cool stuff happening here at A1. Oh, if you want to try out Rilla, they gave me a code and I don't care about the affiliate link. I just know you can save $500 if you go to

TommyMelo.com forward slash Rilla. You can save a bunch of money going through that link. I don't care if you sign up without it. It'll just save you $500. TommyMelo.com forward slash R-I-L-L-A. So let's get started with some questions. Christopher said, I currently own and operate a small electrical contracting company specializing in high and residential in New York. I also have my electrical license in Arizona. I plan permanently to relocate in Arizona in the next 18 months. I'd like to know your thoughts on the best way

to start generating solid contacts in Arizona prior to relocating my business out of New York to AZ. I'd like to focus my efforts to Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills, possibly Sedona as well. I'm a big fan of going out and meeting people.

What are those meetings called? You can meet at the Chambers of Commerce meetings, but I still like B&I meetings. I think you can get plugged into that. I'd go talk to some of the top realtors in that community. That's where I'd be focused on. Talking to small builders there. You can reach out to me.

I can tell you the people you want to get to know. But overall, it's all about going out, networking and meeting the people as much as possible. So make that the foundation is just make it a goal to meet 30 people a week and put them in your contacts and spend time with them. I like Joe Polish's group. There's a lot of people in Arizona.

It's called Genius Network. That's a great way to meet people. And then there's another program that I know people love. It's brain farting. I'll try to think of it, but it's different chapters. I'll figure out what it is later. John Wilcox said, CRM question. At what point do you know you are going to need to switch software CRMs?

Service Day has amazing marketing add-ons and most larger companies have adopted it. Sarah offers AI dispatching, job costing, and great KPI tools. I'm on Housecall Pro and it's easy to use, integrates with other software easily, and is improving quickly. I don't have to switch, but sometimes it feels like switching would help me manage the team better. They're all pretty complicated, actually. I don't think a CRM, like the API plugins, the webhooks, I just, I tend to want to go with the one that's funded the most. It's going to put the most money into R&D. That's going to have the best relationships with Google. That's going to just invest a ton into development. But if you ever were on service tight, it's not easy to use. Once it's set up properly, it's not easy to use. Once it's set up properly, it's amazing. I think Sarah's got some really cool things. Hosscall Pro is building

things very, very quickly. I think if you wanted to become, if you said, listen, I want to become 20 million plus, I mean, if you talk to anybody, ServiceTite is a really great tool for that. I don't bash other CRMs. I mean, there's some really outdated old school ones that no one's putting in the market or the development dollars they should. But I would do a SWOT analysis on each because it's easier to change while you're smaller. They get really big. It's a lot of distractions. You have to switch when you are really, really big. So I do it sooner than later. Fernando said, what is your opinion on buying a small company to start a home service business

like HVAC doing around one to 2 million in revenue of starting one from the ground up? Fernando, it depends on if you have service experience. I love the idea of buying a company, especially if they've been around for a long time and they got a lot of phone calls coming in. Going back, I don't think I'll ever start another business from scratch. There's 10,000 baby boomers retiring each day. 12% of those own a business. So I'm highly, highly, highly focused on acquiring businesses. There's a lot of opportunities out there. You just got to know what you're doing. You got to have a marketing plan. You got to have a recruiting plan. You got to have a plan for culture, how you're going to

get your trucks, how the organizational chart is going to look, how much you want to spend on budgeting. What's the ultimate goal? What do you want the business to look like after one year, three years, five years? How often are you going to be working in the business? Who's going to help you run it? Do you have a great integrator? These are all things I'd really think about. There's a great book I'd read too. Not just Joker Stars, What Should We Do book. That's great on sales, but How to Double Your Business in Six Months or Less by Bob Pfeiffer. It's an older book written in the 90s, but Leland from Service Champions told me about it and it was a game changer. So if you're going to buy a business, I'd read that book on, you can't cut

your way to the top, but there's certain things that I think you should going to buy a business, I'd read that book on... You can't cut your way to the top, but there's certain things that I think you should be cutting in a business that's not very profitable. Marcel said, I got an HVAC business under LOI, currently doing due diligence, working towards closing the deal. I have no HVAC experience. I see you are super successful in that space. Any advice for me? me yeah so i have a whole integration checklist right so when we buy the company i'm going to look at where there's opportunity zones to improve usually it's in the call center booking a higher percentage of the calls coming in i love a great crm that has call tracking numbers to have attribution of what

phone calls are coming in and how much does each ad source has a percentage of revenue. Like your ValPak might be 15%. Pay-per-click might be 22% of revenue. If your GMBs are optimized, you're still paying somebody to optimize those. That might be like 3% of marketing. So you find the big winners and you spread those out the quickest.

Then you got to look at your conversion rate and average ticket. And you got to have experience. You rate and average ticket and you got to have experience you got to have somebody that comes in that knows what they're doing so your job for a company like this marcel is to recruit some great players that come in and understand the sales side of things and uh that's what you would use an equity incentive program for by the way i was at the masters yesterday so i'm a little jet-lagged. If anybody's wondering why I seem tired, it's because I didn't get home until late last night. It was a long, long flight.

I had to go from Augusta to Atlanta, then Atlanta back here, and a little jet-lagged. So still happy, still fun, still cup is half full, just a little jet lagged. James Allen said, I want to invest in the company that I work for and open another branch. What's the best way to approach that process? Oh, James, I don't know the owner of the company, but you obviously would need a lot of money. What's in it for the owner to want to do that? I don't know. The owner, it depends on their age and your business plan. This is where equity incentive programs do really well. But I'd have a very serious talk with the owner, find out what his goals are. I mean, how old is he? How old is she? I don't know really much about the business, but

can't give you super great advice on this because I don't know the circumstances. I don't know what market you want to open. I don't know. Are they going to be handling all the marketing and all the recruiting and all the hiring? Are they going to be handling the dispatching? There's a lot of questions I would have about this before I could give you some knowledgeable insight. Would you differentiate between a personal assistant and a CSR? Yes. Yeah, they're completely different. CSR is answer phones. Personal assistant is helping you get your life organized, handle your email, handle your travel. There's a lot of things they do.

A lot of people confuse the two and they'll just say, you're going to do all this stuff. Personal assistant is supposed to stop you from doing minimum wage tasks that you're probably doing all day. It's arranging meetings. It's making wage tasks that you're probably doing all day. It's arranging meetings. It's making sure you show up to the barber on time. It's making sure there's gas in your truck. It's making sure that they'll set up certain things like a trainer for you or whatever you want to get set up. They'll handle all your, depending on the relationship, they'll handle your dry cleaning. It's just so you're not running around doing minimum wage type stuff. CSRs, their only job is to book phone calls.

Their job is to have a high booking rate, make sure they sound great on the phone. I think a lot of times we dump stuff on a lot of people and everybody's responsible for a lot of stuff, nothing gets done. I try to find specialists that I can put KPIs around. Dominic said, I own a business with eight Italian ice trucks and a retail store. Our net profit is 20%, which would be higher if the business wasn't seasonal in New Mexico. I've had investors reach out to me who are interested in investing in this business. I'm wondering if this is an SBA loan makes sense to duplicate what I have here, but in a state that is warm year round,

any thoughts on SBA versus private investment and input on expanding to another state? You know, I love SBA loans because they exist for a great reason and they're pretty good rates. When you're going to get an investor, hopefully it's strategic. They have a whole plan. They've done things like this. They're going to add value. If they're an investor and they're going to, depending on the percentage, if they could scale you to four states, like they work really well with you to get to this next state. And then they say, we're going to just keep doing this. And maybe they take 30% of the company, but it's got to be strategic. They got to be offering something to you. That's the big deal for me. So if it's just an investor

without any knowledge of the industry, they're not going to help you out to do the SBA. When you're trying to go to a new state, there's a lot of things. I tend to want to get set up on Google, be at a lot of home shows, out there meeting the people as much as possible. I would need to learn more about the business to give you a really, really educated idea on what to happen. But I'll tell you, I love the SBA. If you've got a great business plan and you could execute, if not, I'd look for an investor that understands what you're trying to do with the business. They could come in alongside of you and help you not make a lot of the mistakes as you expand. It's easier to expand in the current market you're in. I say, make sure you took as much

market share as possible, own that market and go from there. What are your opinions on partnerships when just starting a company? Not a big fan. Partnerships are tough. I've seen what husbands and wives get a divorce. I've seen fathers and sons never talk again. You got to be very, very structured when you're forming a partnership of who's in charge of what, what's the plan if we decide this isn't working, all this stuff. It's like these things exist for, you got to be very dialed in on who's responsible for what. I'm not saying partnerships don't work, but typically I've seen a lot of issues with partnerships. I want to win big, but fear stopped me. What to do about great operations visionary, but fear is holding me back. Fear holds a lot of people back. They're afraid to dream bigger.

Fear is a tough thing. I would tell you guys, it's very, very hard when you let fear, you're constantly worried. You're constantly thinking about what's going to happen. I think one of the things that helps me grow the most is I'm not very afraid. I've came from nothing, so you can take everything away from me and I'd still be fine. I make educated decisions on what I'm going for. But business ownership is not for everybody. That's why so many people fail. Your likelihood of failing within five years is far greater than succeeding.

And, you know, I don't get a lot of stress. I don't have a lot of anxiety. I built an amazing team around me. People that I trust, people that I love, people that I know have my back and I think that's super, super important is having people that you can trust around you. It's the most important thing

when you're trying to grow a business. Do you buy 100% of other businesses or a smaller percentage and keep the owners on to the transition easier? You know, you've got different things, but we'll buy sometimes 70% or 80%, depending on if it's a strategic owner. But yeah, you want to keep the owner available for six months. It's their culture. It's their processes. So there's a transitionary period. There's certain companies out there saying, oh, we're just going to help your business. We're not going to really change anything.

And there's a lot of companies that have tried to do this. They say, we're just going to buy a bunch of businesses in this industry. We're going to let them run solo, just kind of help the owner or founder out. They're going to stay involved. But every single company that's tried to do this has failed. Why wouldn't you want to have the same But every single company that's tried to do this has failed. Why wouldn't you want to have the same vendors? Why wouldn't you want to have the same trucks? Why wouldn't you want to have the same accounting and chart of accounts? Why wouldn't you want to have the same CRM? Talk about crazy. Everybody's running on different... One guy's on QuickBooks, the other guy's on Intech. One person's using Housecall Pro, the other guy's using ServiceTite.

Completely different truck setups, completely different pay programs. There's no economies of scale. That's really not a plan that's going to grow. When you look at the biggest, best companies in the world, they buy a company, and yes, they change over time. They learn from other companies, but you're going to take a model that you know works

and you're going to apply it. When you were at 3 million just a few years ago, what was the first decisions you made to scale the business to where it is today? Ooh, $3 million. I mean, we're probably talking about 2010, so about 15 years ago. First thing I did was my mom and stepdad moved out and I could trust them. I think going back when I was $3 million, I would have read the seven power contractor. I would have spent a lot more time back then shop, going to shop tours of HVAC and plumbing companies because they were always the guys on every billboard. They were on every front of every newspaper. They always seem to have the most money, the nicest trucks, the best brands. So obviously Dan Antonelli, I would have got that

done a lot earlier, is branded correctly with a great mascot. I think that everybody that's gone through the transition of getting the right name and the right intellectual property and getting what we call kick charged as one big. And then I spent a long time making sure I got the CRM dialed in. In 2014, I met Adam Cronenberg. I tried to find a great person to run alongside of me. If I'm Robin, he's Batman or vice versa. Getting an integrator around me that does stuff that I don't necessarily enjoy. He did everything on the price book. He handled payroll. If there was a lawyer that I needed to sign up on something, he handled that. I got to focus on sales and marketing. And a lot of that has a lot to do with recruiting as well.

So I did the stuff I enjoyed. He did the stuff he enjoyed, and we did well together. How do I find a manager or an implementer? What's the key things you look for? So read the book Rocket Fuel by Gina Wickman and Mark Winters. They'll tell you how to find an integrator, but you'll take a test to find out what you are. You might be the visionary. You might be the integrator. And in the book, they say there's very few people that have both of those skills.

I don't want both. I want to be all in on one. I think it's kind of vain to say I'm both. Can I do integrator stuff? Yes, I can if I have to. I'm not great at it. I don't enjoy it. So read the book, Rocket Fuel, and you'll learn a lot on what it takes to find the integrator you might need or maybe find the visionary for your company. Tommy, how did you

know it was time for you to expand into other markets? Do you look too hot certain financial metrics or does the market tell you? Okay. So I guess the question is, when do I go to other states? When do I go to other markets? Our rule of thumb now is if you can't get to $3 million of profit in a market, so what does that need to look like? It needs to be over, you got to have a certain population size, probably over 200,000 people, maybe more. I would say there's other things that I look for. I'll do a competitive analysis and I'll say what companies are there? What's the average income? How's the credit scores? What kind of marketing is available in that market? Do they have Valpak? What kind of

newspapers do they have? Do they have paper performance? How much does media spend if I want to buy TV, radio, or billboards? We really do a lot of checking on the competition, but typically, and then I'll look at how many houses are there in that market with a garage. There might be a great market, like New York might sound great, but there's not a lot of garages in downtown New York. It's a great population, lots of density, but in the suburbs of New York, there's a ton of houses. So what's the average income? How much are people charging? There's a lot of things, but I think you want to take as much market share in your current market as humanly possible. It's way easier to take market share. I go back to the Parker and Sons model. They're going to do like 260 million this year,

just in Phoenix. They recently expanded to Tucson, but it's game changer. Tommy, thanks for taking care or taking the time today. What's your ROI calculation for ad spend? We've been striving for 3X profit, gross profit on ad spend, especially knowing the lifetime value for repeat and referrals, what works for you. So my target is 10% of revenue. 10% is where I want to be spending on marketing. If I'm trying to grow a market,

I'll go all the way up to 25% because I want to take market share that cuts the profit out of it. But if you're trying to grow a market, I'll go all the way up to 25% because I want to take market share that cuts the profit out of it. But if you're trying to grow, but I'm still measuring every piece of the marketing. And sometimes I'm investing a lot into the brand, but that means I'm ranking good on Google. That means everything's going well. I'm ranking organically. The GMBs are doing well. The LSA is doing well. And I'm bidding on my own keywords. And then I'll do stuff like we do the Vegas Knights hockey team. We think we can grow a lot in Vegas. We want that.

We want to be a household name, so we're investing into the brand. And I'm willing to spend a lot of money to take market share. Typically, it takes about a year, year and a half to invest in the brand. And then all the other marketing is doing much better. So you can lean back out to 10% after you spend the 25. But if you're taking a market share, you're probably spending more than 10% if you're just trying to stay steady growth and you're doing pretty good. 10% is a great number.

What is the best company to use for Google Ads that is familiar with the garage door industry? There's a lot of people that do Google ads, Camp Digital, Rhino, Scorpion, Search Kings does a great job. Forrest Perry does pretty good at ads. Just know that paid ads don't do very well. We've got the highest booking rate, highest conversion rate, highest average ticket in the garage door industry. We're still spending over 20% on paid ads of revenue. So somebody that thinks, you know, LSA is completely different than PPC. So if you think you're just, I use pay-per-click as more of capacity planning when I need to fill in some voids just to keep the guys with three or four leads a day. But I've seen people shut off their PPC

and make just as much money. I mean, you need a great company running those. It's transparent, that'll get you results. Marketing is one of those things where if you're not booking the phone calls and you're not getting good average tickets and converting those leads into done jobs, you're never gonna win.

So I hope your booking rate is over 85%. I hope your conversion rate on service is over 95%. And on door sales, it should be 60 to 70%. And I hope your average ticket is over $1,000, including zeros and including doors. Otherwise, the pay-per-click is just not going to work. Everyone's bidding on keywords, garage door repair, the city name. And you got to have those KPIs dialed in if paid ads are going to work. Like I've said, I think all those companies are great companies.

I would talk to all of them and find out the one that's going to do the most for you. Hey, I hope you're enjoying today's podcast. I just wanted to let you know that the super early bird tickets for the Freedom Event are now available. This means 800 bucks off the elite or VIP tickets and 20% discount on general admission tickets. Listen, if you enjoyed Freedom 2023, this year we're taking the event to a whole new level. Jocko Willick, the Navy SEAL who wrote the book Extreme Ownership is already confirmed

as one of our keynote speakers and there's still a lot more to come. So go to freedomevent.com forward slash podcast and get your super early bird tickets now. That go to freedom event.com forward slash podcast and get your super early bird tickets. Now that's freedom event.com forward slash podcast. Just make sure you do it before the prices go up on June 3rd. Now let's get back to today's episode. Tommy Michael here.

I've got a locksmith company in Phoenix looking to grow through MNA. Love Adam coffee. He's amazing. We are small, just 7 million. Nervous about changing cultures of these older companies. Advice. Yeah. So we have a big party like a Topgolf. We'll explain when we do partner with a company, what our goals, what our mission, what our vision is. We'll give them the benefits. If their benefits were better at the other company, we'll give them those benefits for six months. It's only happened once.

And then we'll buy those benefits out. We want to make sure we're giving them something better than it was before. You know, feed them more often. Give them opportunities they didn't have there. We've got a recruiting program. They make $1,500. We got tech-generated leads. We give them 8% of the ticket.

Like, there's all these other ways to make money. And they've got to buy in. You know, we've got a whole training program where the technician has got to come train and there's other companies out there saying, yeah, you got to learn it the A1 way. Well, the A1 way has changed a lot. When we partner with a company, we learn a lot of what they do and we bring those things in, but to not have a training program and to just say, keep doing it the old way. Here's the deal.

If someone's got a better KPI than I have, like conversion rate or average ticket or more service agreements, we're going to learn their way and we're going to push it in. We're going to adapt it for everybody. That's the good thing about buying companies is you're going to find somebody that's like, man, I figured out this marketing strategy. Well, then you're going to use that for all of it. And that's what's nice about being in a lot of areas. We've learned a lot from the companies we've partnered with. And you take the best of all worlds and then you apply it to say, oh, no, we're just going to leave it running status quo. We're going to leave everybody on a different process. You're never even going to be able to recognize the difference of A and B company.

That's not a strategy for winning. And anybody who says it is, frankly, either is uneducated or they're lying. And I think there's a lot of both of those going on. I think traditional PE guys, they go, we're going to get into this industry, going to buy a bunch of EBITDA, see if we can get it all in the same systems and then sell it. But they lose the culture. They don't have efficiencies. They don't have economies of scale.

And they lose because of that. A LinkedIn user said, if you could give advice to someone just starting out, building on a business and brand and home services, what would it be the first thing you would do of starting from scratch? Yeah. So L. Levy, most people that know me know, starting out with manual standard operating procedures, the org chart, the depth chart, the triangle of communication. I'd read L. Levy, seven power contractor, make sure I got the right foundation, the SOPs, the triangle of communication. I'd read L.E.V.'s seven-power contractor, make sure I got the right foundation, the SOPs, the checklists, make sure there's processes, the businesses running off of systems, not the one-man army that could do everything that's just a firefighter the whole

time. The next thing is I'd get branded correctly. I was just talking to Darius Liver's massive, massive company, and we were talking about how important leadership is and how important your brand is. If your brand screams out, we're cheap. We do it for less. Discount our us. That's the kind of clients you attract. I want to be the premium market to the affluent. There's a good book by Dan Kennedy called No BS About Marketing to the Affluent.

I'd read that book. I'd read Al Levy's book. I'd read. reader all the time, the ultimate sales machine. I'd read Buy Back Your Time. I would read Dale Carnegie. I would read Napoleon Hill. I would read... All of Dan Kennedy's books are great. There's a new book that's a quick one that I just, Alex Ramosi posted it, and I just read it yesterday. Very good book. It's not by Alex Ramosi. It was by Patrick Licioni. I sent it to Luke, my COO, to read it.

So I'll find it there. It's called The Motive. The Motive by Patrick Licioni. And I spent a lot of time visiting really successful shops, calling them up, reading the founder's book, buying them breakfast and lunch a couple of days, going in with a lot of great questions, seeing if I could do a shop tour. That's how I learned a lot early on. And I talked to their CFO, their COO, their CMO. I talked to their trainers. I talked to their recruiters. And I learned a lot. But more importantly, I learned how to network and I learned to give them stuff

too. They say, hey, I saw that you do a lot of this type of marketing. And I tell them everything I know. We just started to share everything we know. And we both won because of it. Why do you choose not to use Facebook and Instagram? We have been running them for eight years and have a cost per acquisition of $350 for a $2,500 average ticket. So we're starting to use Facebook and Instagram more. I think it's a different buying model. I think it's a different marketing. It's a different life.

It's a different client journey. And I don't think anybody goes, man, my HVAC is going bad. Got to go on Facebook. Man, my garage door is having issues. Got to go on Instagram. I want to own the demand work first. And then I think more of the home improvement side is like, I want to replace my garage door to make sure my house is beautiful. So do I think it works? Absolutely, phenomenally well. I mean, if you're at $350 for a $2,500 average ticket, you're still above 10%. So we're bringing that in right now. We're spending a lot of time, energy, focus on social media.

Getting it to work, that's the challenge, right? And we're starting to realize what's working, what's not working. I think social media does an amazing thing, but if you're not dominating on Google first, organically with link building and interesting things on your website and mobile load speeds and your GMBs are not ranking well, you don't have great reviews and you're not doing the right stuff, bidding on your own keywords on pay-per-click and you're not doing LSA appropriately, I don't think social media is the place to get started, personally. I find a lot of businesses that don't do well on branding and on Google, they tend to go to

social media. And there's ways to make money on that, but that's not where I'd start. But I do believe in it. Hey, Tommy, I saw you at Sales Boost and implemented performance pay for our first employee after your speech. We hired him. And after your speech, we did 140K our first year. Any tips? I don't really understand. Our first year, 140K. Huh. I don't really understand the question, but the best tips on performance pay is to get one guy to where they're making great money. You build the process around your top guy. You make sure they have a high conversion rate, high average ticket. I mean, it's a variation of commission.

Will you look at their callback ratios? Did they get five-star reviews? There's a lot of things I look at. But performance pay is like what's in it for them. Why should they kick butt? Why should they move more efficiently? Why should they make sure they're going above and beyond for the client? What would want them to help grandma get the Christmas tree down if they're just getting paid hourly? Leave that amazing customer experience. And if they do all these things and they're doing a great job of them, you're winning and they're winning. They're making more money.

They've got more job comfort, you know, in your workplace. I think performance pay, it's like anything else. You know, you're on performance pay, by the way, if you're the owner of a company. Company doesn't make any money, you don't make any money. You know, athletes, they get paid more money the better they do, don't they? Like whenever you look at somebody and say say what's in it for them? And you could go to you know, you go to communist china you could go to russia and it takes two hours to even not all the time, but

If they don't have a way to make more money, they're just doing there's no motivation for them So what's going to motivate people to recruit for me to do self-generated leads to get five-star reviews to not get a call back To make sure that everything was cleaned up properly. There's checks and balances in place. There's a lot of pictures we require in service time, but then there's what's in it for them. And I think just figuring those things out that make my life easier, high conversion rate, good average tickets, great reviews, recruiting for us out there, representing us in the community, good driving, all those things are stuff I think about. I'm 22 years old and would like to build a large company like you one day. Where should I

start? Well, you start by reading. Reading, get yourself in shape, make sure you're best self each day. You have energy, you wake up with a purpose, with passion, you get excited. I think if you don't believe in yourself and you don't look in the mirror and smile, it's going to be really hard to win. So you work on yourself first, your readers. Readers are leaders. You go visit shops. I went to business school. Didn't really help me a whole lot, but I became much better, more comfortable public speaking. I would say join a BNI meeting or join... What's the thing that hit the bell every time you say, um, or like, oh man, it wasn't my favorite speaking, but forget the name of it right now.

Someone will post it, but I would become a great speaker, make sure I'm working on taking care of myself at a younger age. And then watch who you hang out with. Be very careful because you kind of become who you hang out with. If you hang around with cheaters, people that don't love their parents, with people that just are drinking all the time, you're going to become that person. So I'd say the best advice is be careful who you let in. I'd guard that. I'd be very, very careful. And there's this quote on my wall. It's like, what the heck's the quote? Eat while they... I'm telling you guys I'm jet lagged. I apologize. It's like three things. Work while they sleep, earn while they take vacations, and live like

they dream. So you're 22, you've got the world at your fingertips. You just got to get started. And the more you read, the more you're educated, the more you do shop tours, the more you get comfortable public speaking, believing in yourself, watching shirt, making sure you're smiling as much as possible, focusing on positive things, wake up with energy and you get passionate about projects. You'll be successful. If you want to come out, come do a shop tour. I have a $2.5 million commercial painting company in Omaha, Nebraska. I have a GM in place and I want to start something new in the future, like a roofing company. When should I do this? So I've got all these things in here. I want you to listen to this.

A lot of people, they take these side hustles. I would sell my current business if I wanted to start something else until you reach a certain size. So listen to this. When I was in my early 20s, I had nine income streams and I was poor. And the reason I was poor

was because I was spreading myself between nine different things because I thought that I had to have lots of income streams because that's what rich people did. But it turns out that rich people have many income streams after they made all their wealth with one. Rich people, wealthy people make all of their money with one thing and then they invest in a lot of stuff. It took me about 18 years now in the garage door business to make the kind of money that I've made. And then people are like, well, you're doing other stuff. You're investing in other things. Yes.

You know, the company did really, really, really well. You know, Corey tech partner with us. They gave us a lot of money. Now I still got a lot of money in a one. I love this company. I'll always be part of this company. I don't spend any time in the event. Like I'm not like investing in things that I need to go babysit for them, become the CEO of that company. I invest in things that are great investments that are going to give a really high return on investment. My whole goal is building teams and putting trustworthy people in place to work together to grow something. I mean, look at Elon Musk. He took everything from PayPal and then went out and did a few different things.

He's got Tesla. He's got Twitter. He's got SpaceX. And He invested in all these things. He's got the satellite dishes because he had enough money to get the resources. Look at Virgin Records. All these companies that they invest in, they made all their money from something, and then they figured it out on how to invest in other things. You shouldn't have a bunch of side hustles until you make a lot of money with the one thing you're focused on. Gary Keller wrote a great book called The One Thing. Focus on the one thing.

Not a bunch of side hustles that everybody says to do. You'll waste a lot of time and energy doing that. Here's another video, too. Nobody who got rich got rich from multiple streams of income. The way you get rich is through doing one thing really, really well. Then once you break through the wall, you diversify, you put your money to work for you where your money creates money. If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. So you guys hopefully understood. Everybody kind of understands this. You don't divest in the one

thing paying you the most money. What I would do for that roofing or your company for commercial painting, get it to a million dollars of EBITDA, then sell it for 6X. Now you got $6 million to go all in on the roofing company. Why would you want, well, I want the passive incomes. No, you got a job over there. You're going to have to work your butt off and you're going to be distracted all the time. Build a company that's worth selling, become a multi-multi-millionaire, invest in a home, have some money in your Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley account, and then have a lot of chunk of money that you could go get the right people, get the right trucks, get the right trainers, get the right CRM. I would not start another company with a $2.5 million company. I'd grow that one for the next 18 months as big as I could get it. I'd have a plan. I'd

have it get set up so I could sell it. Then I'd make all this money to invest in this other new venture I'm going in on. I've sent an A1 application and got rejected. I'm assuming that happened because I don't have a US permit. I'm hungry and willing to relocate. I want to work for you as a technician. How can I do that? I have a team that looks at this stuff. I mean, realistically, hit me up on Facebook. If you don't have a U.S., can't work in the United States, I couldn't probably hire you. You got to have a clean driving record. You can't have a felony that involved anything that would get a client upset. I mean, if you wrote a bad check 15 years ago, probably fine with that. But I'm really interested in bringing people

that are hungry and they want to win. But I'll tell you, like, we do background checks. We do drug tests. We make sure you can drive. We make sure you're able to work in the United States because I just, at the size company we are today, I just can't take a risk on anything. We got to be compliant, do everything above board.

So hit me up. I don't know why you got rejected, but I'll look into it and see if we can make this happen for you. Kevin said, pulling the information in and out of service time for performance pay can be an animal. It can be an animal. I mean, that's why you need great people. I mean, if you don't have a controller or a CFO, you don't have anybody. We've got three people now in the FP&A position to

basically draft up different data the way I need it. And then now with Power BI makes it easier. But, you know, this quote that I heard a while back, it's super awesome. The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. If you could find somebody that's great at just taking the data and figuring it out, maybe you're not great at that, but performance pay just works better. I mean, it just does. And there's, this isn't even a discussion. This is not a debate. It's just, there's nobody that could say I've got everybody winning on hourly. I mean, maybe you could pay hourly where you're paying hours. This job takes four hours. They do it in two, they get paid the four hours. That's still performance pay.

But just simply hourly is like, I can never move up in the company. The more I put in, the less I get out. It's just not a winning formula. Tommy, I'm working on going from offering three main options to six main options for a new garage door sales. I would love to see the details you guys present prospecting a new door. Well, we sell all packages. The one-star is your basic bottom of the barrel. Then the A1 signature package, one through five star A1 signature I mean they're all packages with different types of

warranties some will have you know deco hardware surge protector it's a nicer unit so I like to sell packages that no one else has because no one can compare apples to apples I'm always selling oranges I think one day I came up with the best door I could come up with

two inch 16 by 7 steel back strut on every panel, operator reinforcement bracket, the deco hardware, the surge protector, like everything I could possibly think of. If they needed an oversized bottom rubber, I gave it to them. 80,000 cycle springs, higher cycle rollers, thicker hinges, you know, 11 gauge or 14 gauge versus 18 gauge. I just wrote down everything good I could put on a garage door. And that was my best package. And then I just pulled things off of that, that, that I thought, okay, how long are you going to stay in the home? Do you care about the installation value? Is anybody playing in the garage? How often are you using the garage? Do you

care about the technology, the MyAQ system? Do you want a jack shaft with a bolt lock on it? Or do you just want a conventional opener? There's all these questions. Is it decorative? Do you want a jack shaft with a bolt lock on it or do you just want a conventional opener? There's all these questions. Do you even want that go hardware kit? Did you want Windows? And that's how you build your packages. You start with the best and then you just pull away and hopefully your four star, there's a lot of profit in that. I mean, a lot of people are like,

I don't want to do the bottom one, but I also don't need the signature series. Let's do a four out of the five star. There's a lot of profit built into that. And very soon here, I'm adding storage into these different options. We did $148,000 our first year. We hired an employee after your speech at the sales booth. What tips do you have for our company year two?

We are out of St. Louis. Love performance phase. Been great. Thanks for that. I mean, look, your job, there's only three ways to make money. Get new clients, charge your clients more, or keep them coming back more frequently. I like to do all three. I think if you were a sales boost, you'd probably do power washing. I try to get more work that they're going to use me every six months. It's easier. And then I try to make sure I'm working're going to use me every six months. It's easier. And then I try to make sure I'm working on that street, getting a lot more property.

So I don't have the drive time. I mean, let's put it this way. I don't think I could ever go back to a business that can't do $10 million. And how do I come up with that? Because I look at the ticket averages. I think power washing and window washing are very difficult industries. There's no barriers to entry. I don't love garage doors either. I mean, I've just been doing it almost two decades and we made it work. What I love is where there's a big average ticket,

solar, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, gutters. Everybody says, oh, you don't know, there's so much competition. That's BS. There's competition in every industry. I know it out of market people. I think I could outclose people. I think I care more. So I go into the industry with the highest ticket average. You can make a great living with power washing. Don't get me wrong, but just from my perspective, looking back, if I got to talk to my younger self, I would have said, go after the largest opportunity job average. I might even have got into kitchen remodels. I don't know. I haven't really looked because I'm not changing what I'm doing because I spent so long focusing on the one thing, which is garage doors. I want to own other parts of the garage, possibly the front door.

I want to do the storage. We might even get into those mini splits into the garage that make it cool. So started a pool business 18 months ago, and we're doing about 120,000 a month, 400 five-star reviews, $2,800 average ticket, 70% CBR, but basically breaking even. What point did you hit 20% the bottom line? I didn't hit 20% of the bottom line. So I partnered with the private equity guys. These guys asked me really hard questions. Why did I have all these extra CSRs? How come accounts receivable?

You're collecting the money on the spot. Why are we collecting 100% of it? Like what they do a great job of is asking tough questions that make us have to think. And because they've seen so many businesses, they said, what marketing is not working? How do we get the marketing under control? I mean, it was at 17 to 18%. Then they started asking great questions and finding opportunity zones in the business. Yeah, I would look, if you're trying to grow a business and you're breaking even, that's great. Because if you're taking that much market share, it's growing that big. I mean, I'd say, listen, once I get to 200 grand, I'm going to start focusing on the bottom line.

How do I get to 20%? What numbers seem off? If you were to reach out to me online, I've got access to people that have done deals in every industry, like the pool business. I can tell you what your gross profit should be. I should tell you what your marketing should be at. I can tell you what's healthy, what's good. But if you're growing, growing, growing, that's great. If you don't need to make a ton of money these next couple of years, get to $200,000, $300,000 a month, and then work on getting to 10% bottom line. So you're bringing in 30 a month, that's 360 a year. And then I'd focus to 20%, which is 60, which gives you $720,000 a year. That's a pretty nice size business. You can sell that business for millions of dollars.

Tell me, what advice would you give to someone trying to dominate the Google space in a market? Well, reviews matter. Reviews every single day. I talked earlier about my buddy with the software that pulls out a service site or any other CRM. Pen or pin, P-I-N, parrot, P-A-R-R-O-T. That'll help with the GMB stuff. LSAs, you got to answer every call, have messenger on and answer every call on the first ring.

PPC, you got to work on your quality score. Make sure it's relevant to what the people are searching for. And then organic, I'd go on Upwork and I'd hire the number one person I could find probably $200 an hour to build out a whole program on how to rank. Because I think everybody's like, well, I'm paying a thousand bucks a month and they're supposed to be handling that. You go to Ahrefs and it tells you how your domain ranking tool, it'll tell you what your rank. Throw in a1garage.com. See how much effort and energy we put into that, the load speed, all the stuff we work on. SEO is about backlinks and a great blog, new content. GMBs is about having citation sites posting onto your own page, pulling unique pictures, the stuff that pin parent stuff does.

And there's other things like getting reviews with pictures in them all the time, like consistently getting reviews, not getting 10 one day and zero for the next two weeks, like consistent, good reviews. Citation sites for GMBs. Pay-per-click, as I said, it's working on the quality score and bidding on your

own keywords. What do you think about the tile installation industry? I think you would have to be in a really, really... You'd have to be known for the how... I'd want to build art. My tile, it would be like, I'd only be working in $5 million plus houses. I'd be the best of the best of the best. I don't think tile is a great industry unless you're like the premier option. You're the top, top, top person. You know, I think, I think there's certain people that it's like, it's, it's all about speed. I don't want to focus on quality, like high end, like things that other companies can't do, like mosaic patterns and like things that the ultra wealthy want, because

they'll just pay for it. They don't care. They're like, no one else could do that. You've got it. And you can build your own little specialty within that opportunity and you can make a lot, a lot of money. So I think it would be a smaller tile company. It wouldn't be like, no way to work on new construction

unless it's like a custom house that's $10 million. I would not want to just, because these companies that do that they don't pay you on time you know the plumber messed up something so you're responsible for it it's just i want to go into a specialty and get paid for my time what benefits have you seen with masterminds like genius network. Genius Network's different. You know, Joe Polish, he just makes introductions. He's the best networker I've ever met.

It's amazing the people I've been introduced to, the access points I get, the way the podcast has grown from that. If you want to get into shape, there's someone that specializes in that. If you want to learn how to do YouTube better, there's a couple of guys that do YouTube optimization that are the best in the world at it. You want to learn how to dominate TikTok, he's got a guy in there that does that. So like, I can go

in there, learn about what everybody does and great group of people. I mean, that's how I got one of my, uh, speaking coaches is through, through the guy that Joe recommended that's in the program. Joel Weldon is his name. He's, he's amazing. Paid him 10 grand. He's been coaching me. He's the best in the business. So you got to show up to the stuff, which is hard for me because I'm a busy guy, but I've gotten my value back times 10. So I think Joe's a great guy and he makes the introductions that I need. So that's what I get out of it. Brian said, I'm buying your books. Don't be a door, be a window. My sales are up 90%. I'm a garage door business for 13 years and would love to work for you, but I'm in New York. What should we do? I think you need to get

out of New York. I think you could go to any other... I mean, we're in a lot of states right now, but send me a message depending on what part of New York you're going to be in. I mean, my whole deal is like, if you're with a company that would like to partner, I'll get you a finder's fee of 2% for getting the deal, and then it would be A1 RAM.

So if your owner would want to sell, just give me a buzz. If it's a decent-sized business, I could get there, and then technically you'd be working with me. Brian said, I have a $2.5 million commercial painting business. As an owner, I want to grow. Should I step into business development myself? I want to grow.

Should I step in? I don't really know the question there, what exactly you're saying. Business development. I mean, get the business as large as you could. And if it's not the business you're passionate about still, I'd build it to sell it. I'd get the two and a half million. I'd say, once I hit three or $4 million, I'm going to focus on getting to 20%. And then I'd have a buyer lined up. And hopefully it's a business with systems that someone's really, really interested in buying it. And I'd make a lot of money.

That's what I would do. Do you use unique phone numbers for LSA or the same number across all directories? I'd have to talk to my VP of marketing, but we use different phone numbers almost on every marketing source. I think we have a little over 7,000 call tracking numbers. So I know we have unique ways to tell what LSA is working and how.

We know exactly, like down to the science, down to specifically how well LSA is working. So how they get to that, it's been a while since I've logged in and looked at that piece, but we have attribution. Attribution is everything in marketing, knowing what's working, what's not. I learned a lot from Lauren at Search Kings on LSA. What is EBITDA? EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax depreciation, and amortization. It's a

fancy word of profit with their certain ad backs, but just think about EBITDA as profit. What's your bottom line? That's the easiest way to think about it. It's a fancy word, but just think about it as profit. What average ticket size would you not go below if you were starting a new business? There's going to be some work on a roof. There's going to be some work in gutters, some work on HVAC that are below $1,000. But when I see the new sale, also, what's the government investing in now? Green energy. The next 10 years is going to be crazy with some of the things that green energy is doing. So I'm sure I'd be looking at some type of thing where the government's assisting, you know, 30, 40% inflation reduction act plus the city estate refunds. So I'd probably do something where the

government's paying a good portion of it to go green. I don't think that's going to be ending anytime soon. And I look for tickets that can go above 20 grand. Might not be your average ticket, but if you're selling enough new units, it's just not efficient to take a 14-year-old HVAC unit and fix it, replace it. It's the right thing to do. It's what I would do for my own house. What was your biggest percentage growth years? And what were the marketing spends during those years? Starting a podcast with Blackboard Sales. And I would love to have you on, brother. Yeah, let's do it, man. I'd love to do it, Tristan. So I think the biggest years, I mean, as far as profitability and growth, I'd say when I was able to get the right CFO, Adrian, Dan Miller came on, we had just the right people in the right spots. We went from, you know, a little over 12 million of EBITDA to 27 million of EBITDA because all of us were running in the same direction. This is after I did my equity incentive program.

And this is when we knew we were running to the finish line. And it was only the first finish line, because now I got another finish line. But we really kicked ass that year. We've over doubled our profitability. And that was just a couple of years ago. So it's very hard. It's very hard to hit the numbers we're going for.

But it's just, it's becoming more and more process systems oriented. I think, yeah, I gotta get going here, guys. I apologize. Just, if you need to, if you got questions, go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash questions.

Like I said, Power BI, Chirp, Rilla Voice have been game changers for us. That PinParrot thing the Calendid is pretty freaking cool. chirp, Rilla Voice have been game changers for us. That pin pell, pin parrot thing the Calendid is pretty freaking cool. You guys know what Upwork is. If you needed anybody to get help with anything, go to Upwork. I think it's a great

place. Fiverr does okay. Upwork I like better. They both work well. Once you know your finances, you get the right CFO, things start to change for your company. You know where you should be focusing. You know where there's opportunity areas. But hey, guys, listen, I really appreciate it. Next time I'll have a bunch of coffee and be wide awake. Like I said, I'm a little jet lagged today, but I appreciate you guys asking all the great

questions. Hopefully this is valuable for you. And I hope you have a great, great rest of your month. Have a great day, guys. See ya. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I wanna 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.