The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A with Tommy - Outselling Your Competition Without Lowering Your Prices

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

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 equity sharing programs, pricing, performance pay programs…

most competition looks at the marketplace to see what everybody else is that offering they take the average they go slightly below to remain competitive and then they provide their competitors offers with a little more they end up with a value proposition more for less and the big secret the competitors they are copying are dead broke so why are you copying them the competitors everybody's copying are crap. The guys that are giving away the pharma and the mailers on the coupons, I don't want to follow those guys. Find the biggest guy in your market.

You go find the biggest HVAC, biggest roofer, biggest plumber, biggest whatever it is, they're by far the most expensive. Told you guys that a million times. Never want to be the cheapest. 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. Hey there. Check out the book.

You can buy it at homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. And if you haven't heard of our course yet, it's course.homeservicemillionaire.com. And then we got our free group. It's a home service expert group. So be sure to search that if you are on Facebook. And got a lot of cool things today. Lots of epiphanies, lots of things I've been working through just in my mind here through the holiday season, been traveling all over the place, making some huge leaps for next year. Right now we are $700,000 away from hitting our budget, and it looks like we're going to hit it dead on. So it's crazy to be coming up to December 31st

and hitting the nose on the head for the budget. I want to talk to you guys about one of my new favorite books. It's called 100 Million Offers. This book is really, really good. I'm going to just read some stuff for you. So outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom and a conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a 10% chance of 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time, but you're still going to be wrong nine out of 10 times. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you're going to strike out a lot, but you're also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball is a truncated outcome

distribution model. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you could get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate and you swing, you could score a thousand runs. The long-term distribution of returns is why it's important to be bold. Big winners pay for many experiments by Jeff Bezos. So we are going to rock out here. I'm just going to tell you some amazing takeaways from this book. So here's a great story. I love this. A marketing professor asks his students,

if you were going to open up a hot dog stand and you only have one advantage over your competitors, which would it be? Location, quality, low prices, best taste. The students kept going and going until eventually they ran out of answers. They looked at each other waiting for the professor to speak and the room finally became quiet. The professor smiled instead, a starving crowd. You could have the worst hot dogs, terrible prices, a terrible location, but if you're the only hot dog stand in town and a local college football game breaks out, you're going to sell out. That's the value of a starving crowd. So figure out where the starving crowds are. There's a quote in here by Dan Kennedy that I really liked

a lot. Charge as high a price as you can say out loud without cracking a smile. When you decrease your price, you decrease your client's emotional investment since it didn't cost them that much. When you decrease your price, you decrease your client's perceived value of your service since it can't be that good if it's so cheap or priced the same as everyone else. You decrease your client's results because they do not value your service and they don't value their investment. You attract the worst clients who are never satisfied until your service is free. Destroy any margin you have left to be able to actually provide an exceptional experience. Hire the best people. Invest in your people.

Pamper your clients. Invest in gross. Invest in more locations or more scale. And everything else that you'd hoped in the goal of helping more people solve whatever problem you can solve. I know that didn't make much sense, but lots of great things in this book, man. I just really enjoyed this book. It's an amazing book. Another book that I have here as I'm writing my new book is The Coaching Effect. You guys heard me talk about it, but that's amazing stuff here. So working on a buyer's group right now with A1, the Garage Door Freedom Group

is going to be an amazing group where we're negotiating right now with shirt providers that are going to be under 12 bucks. These really nice shirts that never fade that are amazing, embroidered everywhere from your Milwaukee tool set to QuickBooks to ServiceTite. We're working with a lot of these different vendors. We're working with vehicles right now that nobody could get. We're working with vehicle wraps. We're working on getting deals with, I've got a list here, anything from QuickBooks training to how you're going to use financing. There's so many things. Anything you guys could think of that you're using on a normal basis, certain things with ValPak, certain things with the way you do mailers, certain things with media buying.

Every single thing you guys use on a regular basis, I'm working on deals for. So that's the buyers group, but I'm doing it in Garage Door Freedom. And then I'm also running this group through Garage Door through a home service expert, which is going to be amazing. So lots of things coming. I'll tell you guys, I've got so many marketing initiatives and technology initiatives. When you guys hear some of the technology stacks that we're working on, the biggest thing I'll tell you about this book, and I'm just going to go to my file if I can find the file that I have from this book that I love the most is talked a lot about speed. And I'm just going to read you guys out of my mind here what it said so I don't have to find it because it's a whole book full of stuff he said people will pay for speed over cost meaning the dmv if you go to one of those

paid dmvs you pay 75 bucks you get it done right away rather than waiting in line three hours you pay for i don't know hulu or any of those things rather than going to the old blockbuster you go to a uber rather walk. There's a lot of things that are free, but you'd rather pay for it. And I'll tell you one thing I'm realizing is right now with supply chain, if you can start getting supplies from multiple vendors and getting them all to report into one system to know what's in stock, only sell what's in stock. Now, air conditioning, you're buying a five ton unit. It doesn't really matter. But with garage doors and other things, if you're doing types of windows and stuff like

that, you want to do what's in stock. So there's a lot of perceived value there. For example, I'm going to start advertising to people with a 16 by 7 door and make sure I have several different options in stock. And I'm only going to give them the option I want to sell them or a couple other ones that I have in stock. I get it done within 24 to 72 hours. And the coolest thing about this whole setup, if I get it done right away,

is the technician gets paid out right away. It gets installed right away. And I can build in to my price. You might say, well, I pay way more to the other manufacturer. Who cares? Sell it with financing and charge the customer. They don't care. People want it done tomorrow. That's just the world we live in. Let me go through a few of these questions, then I'll zoom up here to some of these. There's a lot here. So, Dimon Melleman, can you please tell me more about equity sharing program for key employees? Who can provide me more information about it, a CPA or a lawyer? How long is the process and how does it look? So there's what's called fandom shares and then there's what's called an equity incentive

program. So what would happen is you get with a lawyer who specialized in this, and I could hook you up if you email me. I use a company called Foley. They're a very good law firm. And what happens is equity works. You get the value of the company and then you get key employees involved. So let's say you get it at $50 million. You say your company, well, let's just say $5 million. Your company's worth $5 million today. What they could earn is money after that value. So let's say you brought on a private equity company at $20 million value. If you gave them each 1%, there's five of them, your company's worth 15 million leftover off that 5 million. So 20 million minus 5 million is 15

million. 1% of that would be $150,000. So that's how much money they'd get. Or if you gave 5%, they'd get 750,000 because each percent of 1515 million is worth $150,000. Hope that makes sense. Now, there's an interesting podcast actually by Alex Ramosi that I heard recently as well. And I'll just tell you this podcast. It was about 20 minutes long. It's called The Game by Alex Ramosi, episode 324. A billionaire told me how to make a billion dollars. Here's the plan. I found it very interesting. It's 20 minutes. And it was very cool about how to give equity and if it makes sense to do it. Have you done strategic planning for 2022? Are you inviting top management? How is the session organized?

For 2022, I didn't even get myself involved. I let them plan it because I've got my own goals and I call them Tommy goals. So when you let managers and the top management, the key players decide where we're going to go, you could hold them accountable. But I told a couple of key players exactly where I wanted to

be. Our budget next year without any consolidation, and this is not my Tommy goal, is $151 million. But here's the key. What's your bottom line going to be? Is it 16%? Is it 20%? Is it 10%? I want 22%. Now, when you're growing from 74 million, this is without our acquisition we just did, which will be, we actually, with our acquisition, we did 81 million. I didn't hit my goal, but I realized now this last month I've had to reflect what needs to happen to double the business by February 1st. We did 311,000 yesterday. We will do 600, by february per day so i had to kind of figure out and it's through right now i have 11 million dollars sitting out there of doors not getting installed because they haven't been in stock so why not just charge the client more

because they want it done who cares if you ever go into a nice steakhouse and paid triple, but you just wanted it, I've got reservations to a lot of places that are two months out because I want to eat there. And I pay a big dollar. People want it now. That's the world we live in. So strategic planning is budget planning. And there's certain things you should probably talk about getting a board of directors, possibly. You should talk about getting the bank involved with strategic. There's a lot of things. What you got when you got a board is plausible deniability. How have you found your first leaders in the company? How have you found your first leaders? Well, I'll tell you what. There's a gal named Blair who does an amazing job of finding top C-level employees. And what you got to do is listen to Al Levy. First, you got to make a bucket and understand the exact org chart. And I'd work on

a six-month org chart, figure out what that looks like, put every role in there, and I focus. I'll show you. I'm not looking for a CMO, but I'm looking for somebody similar. So I'll just show you guys a file here, CMO file. So here's what I came up with. They don't need a ton of experience in media buying, just need lots of direct response experience. Branding, brand manager, organizing system builder, capacity planning, delegation, team building, Google, SEO, LSA, GMB, and understanding of BPC. Social media marketing, content creation, not producer of videos and letters. Affiliate tracking, get things to the finish line.

Analytical person, micro-influencers. R&D, understand R&D. Spreadsheets and reporting, LMS for employees, motivating others. Scale 100 brands, that's some person that I'm working on. A strong attribution model, process opinion test numbers, organic versus acquisitions. And I started talking about a lot of this stuff. Understanding capacity planning is a big deal in that role. So follow me here to find who it is. And then what I want you guys to do is for C-level employees, I do recommend a recruiter, but you need to find the right recruiter. I use the gal named Blair and she's killer,

but she'll understand what your needs are. And she'll tell you exactly what you should be paying. Now, you guys have heard me before. Listen, you get a guy at a hundred thousand dollars a year and he's a, let's just say a CMO. Cause we were just talking about that. Here's my question. You could get that guy for 50 hours a week, 200 hours a month. But now let's just pretend you pay somebody 500 grand a year, And you only get him for 10 hours a week. Now, 10 goes into 40. It's 25% of the time. So it's 25% of 500, 125,000.

So you literally only got 10 hours a week. So instead of getting 200 hours, you're only getting 40 hours a month. But I'd rather have that 500,000 that's been where I want to go that can literally split the seed for me and tell me exactly what needs to be done. So these critical roles are just so important that you get them right. One thing you don't want to do ever is hire somebody exactly like you. Like me, I can't get another visionary. I can't get an idea guy. If I had 10 idea guys here, I can't get things to the finish line. I need somebody to hold me to the ground. But I'll tell you what, I get one thing to the finish line that I'm working on. It's an extra a hundred grand a day. I get the big thing I'm working on right now is 300 grand a day. I get

the four things that are most important to me. We'll be doing a million dollars a day by the end of March. True story. And that's only getting started. This is the basics. I'm not even kidding here. What are the most important APIs for general manager? I've got a whole manual on general manager, but it really depends. Are they involved in mostly operations? Obviously your call center matters, your booking rate, the empathy involved in the call center. It depends on the business. I want to see what your installation rate is. Anything operational is really general manager. You're involved with the mission and vision of the company. So I'd say a general manager, you want to really, really hold tight, tight items and build processes with everything. But here's what I look at. I look at revenue.

I look at profit. Those are two great KPIs that you want to look at. And is it above last year? And it's hard when you're working out to get really, really muscular and get very, very cut up. So you're talking about cut up, meaning ripped. That's your EBITDA.

That's your profit. And when you're getting big, that's your profit. And when you're getting big, that's your revenue. But believe it or not, with the right managers, you can do both at the same time. It's just hard to grow 200% in revenue and also double your profit margin. It depends on how you're doing it. Through acquisitions, you can go way faster than greenfield, but it also is a lot more expensive. Let me read some questions here. I love this stuff, Q&A. Tommy, I know you're the home service expert, but I love listening to your content and using in my commercial door business. Do you recommend using the same performance

paper technicians in commercial? I think anything that motivates what I would do on commercial is to, my dad used to run transmission shops. He used to own one in Michigan and I would do sold hours. That's what I would do. I would say, look, I would look at it more. Relationships are different in commercial, right? So I would say if this job pays three hours and they finish it in an hour and a half and their efficiency, and then I would put a little thing into upsells, but you don't want to piss off commercial clients. They want to run and they want you out there quickly. Commercial door business. Let me give you an example of how to make a shit ton of money in commercial doors. You go to every firehouse in the city,

in the county, everywhere. And you go to every commercial place out there, firehouse. And this is a plan that i plan on doing in just maricopa county is i'm gonna go show them a max life spring that's 100 000 cycle springs and i'm gonna get the first one in there and they're powder coated red like the firehouses and i'm gonna show them the difference of the freaking long it's gonna be rated at 100 000 cycles i get it engineered i get it powder coated and And then I get the a hundred thousand cycles, Z bearing rollers. The thick ones at three inch because they're bigger doors. And then I give them an extra set for each door and I charge them, I don't know, three grand a pop. They got five doors.

So that's 15 grand. They'll pay it like this, but I get interviews and I show people before and afters and they hear the doors and they see how quiet they are. And've got an extra set of everything included in this price so if someone else has to go out there they'll get it done the same minute same day now i know you could clip the springs but it's little ideas like that i was at a manufacturer's in cincinnati and he goes i'll tell you guys you know what i don't need that many secrets. Shit, we're a big company now. We're 400 people. My secrets get out. So I just like to tell you guys. He showed me a 14-gauge hinge, and it was powder-coated white. I said, I like this. He goes, well, would you want some of these? And I said, no, make it 11-gauge. And I want a piece of plastic running through it to make it quieter. And he goes, oh my God, why would you do that? I said, because no one else has it.

I said, i see 14 gauge hinges all over the place i don't see commercial for a residential door and i said on a two-inch urethane door i'd rather see that on my door i said i like the way shit was done in the 60s and 70s when there was thick metal there was no plastic crap i've seen openers open up doors with broken springs that's the kind of quality i want that's what i want on my house so i said let's do something no one else has so when you sell stuff sell stuff no one else has i try to be as much different as possible i recently opened my own electric company so i basically do everything right now i'm guessing i know my own value when it comes to doing my work. I charge for what I know, not for what I do. Should I be charging high? I want you to charge the highest damn prices possible and give the

best service you've ever done before. If they want you to install new light bulbs, you freaking install new light bulbs. If they want you to hang their Christmas lights, you hang their Christmas lights. If they want you to replace their garbage disposal, even though you don't do that, you do that. You figure out a way to get it done. You do quality work. You charge for it, but you got to be your brand. You can't just show up there in a shitty truck with a crappy uniform that no one's ever heard of you. You know, here's the thing. You wonder what it costs. I went out to lunch yesterday with my trainers. I have seven trainers, seven. I have a class less than 20 coming in in January because nobody wants to work. We're going to get a class of 50 here by March. So I've got one trainer for

every two to three guys. That's this next class. But here's the deal. We're also involved in recruiting. I've got all these recruiters too. The reason why I'm telling you this is because if you don't think it costs money to have full-time trainers, full-time recruiters, a huge training center, buy the guys their tools, but drive new trucks, have the best CRM, have the best dialing system, the VoIP system, have a payroll system. Like these guys, you said you do a lot of the work yourself. So listen, you don't need to make the same amount of money that I do. You need to back up into your gross margin, and that's how you should do your pricing. A guy like you, I'd say 65%, 70% gross margin is what I'd want.

You're doing the work yourself. See, the problem I hate, and listen, I did it myself, is I had to put sweat equity into it. If I could go back and I know what I know now, or if I had somebody like me consulting me, that snaps me out of stuff, I'd say go out there and get a $300,000 loan and blow the company up. But the problem is I've talked to somebody the other day and I said, man, I've made every single mistake, man. I've hit every dead end. You don't even know. I can't even explain how many times I mess up. Over and over and over and over. And the reason now we're able to hit these magic numbers, and listen, I will be a billion dollar company here shortly.

There's a lot of companies that want to team up with me. Why? Because they're going to become rich. Because the guys that are making 300 grand a year, they're really not. You ask a guy, how much did you bring bottom line? He says, well, a CPA gave me this. It count 300 grand a year? They're really not. You ask a guy, how much did you bring bottom line? He says, well, a CPA gave me this, the accountant 300 grand. I go, show me the money in your bank. What if I make you a multi-multi-millionaire and give you the dream job? That's what I want. So that's how I'm able to buy companies. But yeah, that's going to be happening. Lots and lots of companies. I've been running a lot of customers that try to tell me what I should be charging and the electrical work should be done anywhere under a thousand dollars. What do you recommend? Well, number one, I had a guy call me up the other day. He goes, dude,

he goes, I'm so sorry. He goes, I'm striking out left and right. And he goes, boomsticks, you get them on Amazon. So I said, how many times are you striking out? He goes, literally, I'm closing six out of 10. He's like, keep going to all these DIY guys. I said, here's what I want you to do. I talked to him for 15 minutes. I go, here's the key to DIY guys. You take your time. You give them show and tell. You talk about quality. You show them this versus this. You show them the pictures of accidents. You tell them that we can't get parts. You tell them to go to Home Depot.

Out of stock. Amazon, have it out of stock. The prices. It's all done from China. We're not buying China parts. You explain to them the warranty. You explain to them the catastrophes that could happen from a non-licensed guy. And also, you make sure you're not advertising to the dipshits.

Because that's a big deal. You advertise to a McDonald's guy all day long about your steakhouse. You think he's going to be upset when he has to buy a $60 steak yes he's going to want a crappy burger for five bucks so the deal is advertise the right people but when you're showing them show and tell people want five things they want a sensitivity they want to know that they're getting the best deal. But here's the thing. You got to build value. You got to show them this cost this. You're buying sale. Hopefully you're buying all your parts at really, really great pricing. You're going to do your wiring better. You're going to have a better warrants. You're going to show them the difference. You're going to include things that no one else is including. Now, if you're going to be the same as everybody else and just do the basics, I got nothing to say.

You should just be cheap. If you want to be the same rate as everybody else, it's a race to the bottom. People want to pay for fast and they want it done right. And they want a good warranty. They want to see the difference. They want value. Look, read this book. This is an amazing book. And I don't endorse a lot of people. He's not paying me anything. He should be. This guy's making a lot of money. He brings in bottom line, a couple of million dollars a month. So smart dude. Taylor, thanks for your input on the junk removal company. I've already implemented the commission door hangers, testimonial videos. This next year is going to rock. How do I make the most of Google ads when ad spend average in my industry junk removal city

is insanely high. All right right check this out number one long-tailed search terms find every company that's went out of business and start ranking for their seo no one's doing that stuff you should have a content and a link building strategy on organic when people want to do research here's the beautiful thing oh my god micro influencer marketing dude if I were you, I'd go after every hoarding company, every single hoarding site gets sponsored ads for a 10th of the price. Think outside of the box. Jay Abraham, Jay Abrams or whatever. This guy teaches you to think about other industries that could be a referral partner. First thing I do is go after long-tailed.

I'd make sure that Google my business. I'd open up a junk removal shop that shows people classes and have two locations so I could have multiple GMBs. I do paid GMB ads. I would do a long-tailed PPC. Here's the deal. PPC still works great, but I like LSA and GMB way better. Here's the thing. I got to see this genius guy the other day. His name is Roy Williams, and he wrote the book, The Wizard of Ads. I highly recommend if you're spending money on marketing, especially media, TV, radio, billboards, that you listen to Roy Williams and pay to get certified in all of his classes. Once again, this is a recommendation. I got a lot of those, as you guys know. I'm getting ready to implement four more softwares. It's crazy. But I'll tell you guys, there's so many things you could do. If you advertise on TV and radio and remnant space

and only bid on your own keywords, which is a fraction of the cost of the high quality score, that's another thing. With PPC, is you increase your quality score. How do you increase the quality score with pay-per-click? What Google looks at, they want to give the best results to the best people looking, right? So if I search for Pepsi and Coca-Cola is the top spot, Coca-Cola is paying a hundred times more for that ad. Now, the reason Pepsi pays less is you found what you wanted. So they're going to allow you to pay way less money because you found what you were looking for. They look at time on site. So how long did you click on there?

They look at did you play with the videos? There's heat maps. Google knows if you found what you want by certain things. And if you look up quality score of Google, you'll find that as you increase that quality score, you'll be paying less per click. And here's the other thing. I don't care what the hell I got to pay for a lead. I'm charging the customer the cost of the marketing or I'll go broke. So he who charges more per lead will always win. He who charges more per lead will always win, or not charge more per lead, charges more per customer. You get more money.

If I could pay more per lead, that's what I meant. He who can pay more per lead will always win. So I cannot pay anybody. Why? Because I can get it done right away. Because all my guys are drug tested and background checked. Because we created a great reputation. Because we care. Because we treat every single person like mom. That's one of the things I'm beating to the teeth. Treat everybody like mom. Do you pay each of your staff performance bonuses or do some of them have strictly hourly?

Let's see, dispatch, CSRs, my guys in door 48. The only guys I can think of that are only hourly are certain guys in the warehouse and they're still got some motivations. There's certain things we pay them extra for, but it's not a direct bonus structure. But I'm trying to think, you know, there's really HR, there's certain roles in the company that get some type of hourly and accounting. I'm not like, oh my God, you did it right. You followed general accepted accounting principles bonus time

I mean accounting is a tough one, too but almost every single person is there's a bonus because It should be but you got to have analytics You got to have tracking to see what they're working on and know that they're getting stuff done So it's so important. Thanks so much so much value. Thank you. Appreciate you guys Do you find it important to have a specific product to set your company apart from others? Is it something that I can implement in our company if I have the ability? But what is it worth?

I tell people apples to apples. I sell oranges. So, yes, to have a white-labeled brand, to be able to hold up this and this and say, look at the difference. These are the same pen, but here's the deal. You want a better warranty? Now, when somebody says, sell me this pen, just so you know, you're supposed to ask questions. What kind of pen are you looking for? What's your budget?

When are you going to be using it? How much are you going to be using it? Do you ever lose pen? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in this case, if you're comparing apples to apples, I want an orange. This is not apples to apples. This pen is way different than this pen. So I'm going to tell people you want a pen that's got a better warranty. Plus, if you buy today,

I'll give you a bonus with this pen. I'll give you a second pen with it. So you got to realize what can you do? Better warranties, faster installation. I got a lady that I work with, amazing lady. Her name is Robin. And she said, when we clean houses, we've got a lifetime supply of cleaning. You don't have to pay a cleaning supply again. When you run out of your window spray or you're disinfected or you're fantastic, we replace it for you. No more cleaning fees. No more supplies you pay. Now, does she charge more? Oh, yeah, she does.

The best companies in the world charge more. I mean, here's the deal. You've got to figure out how to deliver more value. Value is the key. Why should you charge so much it hurts? Most competition looks at the marketplace. They see what everybody else is offering. They take the average. They go slightly below to remain competitive. Then they provide their competitors offers with a little more. They end up with a value proposition more for less. And the big secret, the competitors they are copying are dead broke. So why on earth are you copying them? The competitors everybody's copying are crap. The guys that are giving away the farm and the mailers on the coupons,

I don't want to follow those guys. Find the biggest guy in your market. You go find the biggest HVAC, biggest roofer, biggest plumber, biggest whatever it is. They're by far the most expensive. Told you guys that a million times. Never want to be the cheapest. How are you selling the after the job services like warranty and technical assistance for the equipment that is installed? We deal with automated gates, which can be overly complicated for the standard homeowner. How do you sign the after job services like warranty? Well, what I would do is I would charge a service agreement with it for sure. And what I would do is I'd build in some easy to do instructions. First thing I would do is I'd print out stuff for the homeowner. So I'd find the top three questions of the homeowner and I'd freaking make sure my training goes over that once,

twice, three times, four times, five times. The next thing I do is that I printed instructions that are all logoed with my name on it. I'd have automatic gates. I'd have a real nice rivet system that I'd rivet the plates directly into the gate. And I'd have directions on there that blended that don't look, you know, obtrusive. I'd go into detail plates directly into the gate and I'd have directions on there that blended that don't look, you know, obtrusive. I'd go into detail with these people. And what I would do is have a hotline that's set up for somebody full time to just handle that and make sure there's customer satisfaction. And what I would also do is open that hotline up to other companies. And I charged by the call because I don't want to lose money. Just, I want this guy busy,

find a retired guy that's 68 years old. That doesn't want to be on his feet anymore. That's an expert. You can take a couple of videos, create an app, you know, show me your video and I would create something badass and I charge other companies for it and make it a revenue center. That's what I would do. How do I run a GMB ad? I know how to run the free stuff in my LSA ads. You're doing fairly well, but I'm not sure. You know, it's been a while since i've been in the google council but uh it's in the same area as lsa ads and so what they'll do is it'll say sponsored on the map section and it'll be a different color if you search for it sometimes it's not there because no one's buying it but it's the best hand you could put i'll tell you another thing you guys can do is literally you got to really give incentives and do gamification. One of my big things that I'm

going to be buying for the company is a gamification tool to catch somebody doing something right. So every time you submit a name and every time you receive recognition, it throws you into the bucket. So all everybody's nominating each other to get in this bucket. I'm going to be giving gift cards all the time. I'm going to be giving trophies out. I saw this trophy called the Dundee trophy from the office. I think that's what we're going to do. Let me go into more questions here by John Hartle. With the holiday season coming up, what does day one for the holidays and employees in terms of party and bonuses? You know, I don't want to go too much into bonus structure. We did some stuff for

certain people, but really what we're trying to do is we're getting a lot of different things. Gift cards. Every market gets to throw a holiday party for, I think it's a hundred bucks per tech. So you got 15 techs. The guys in Milwaukee chose to go to a cheap bar and drink. Well, what else would you expect in Milwaukee? What we're doing is hopefully not a lot of A1 people are watching this, but we've got our employee party coming up. We're doing a big casino night, and then I'm having a comedian come, and then we're going to be raffling off a bunch of free

cool dinners and stuff like that. So, one of the things I can tell you is Al Levy put this in a post. I hope you guys are paying attention to Al Levy's post. If you could, when he posts something, make sure you comment on it and make sure, because the guy's a wealth of knowledge. He's always posting on Home Service Expert. And what he said was, align your bonus structure for the year at the end of the year.

So if you hit your numbers and we hit, there's a couple of ways to do it. Revenue, profitability, a couple other KPIs, we're doing it on those. We make a lot of money. If you guys can figure out 20% of 150 million, it's 30 million. So if I got a bonus out an extra 500 grand, I'm okay with it. That's not even close to the Tommy goal, by the way. I'm trying to figure out outside of the box on how to attack different better goals and how to acquire a lot more companies to make a lot more people rich beyond their means. And I don't want to make people rich. I want to make them wealthy. The difference between rich and wealthy, if you inherit a bunch of money, you're rich. If you're wealthy, you're making

money while you sleep. So when I partner up with companies, my plan is to get them involved in investments. I'm part of a small family office that we really are going to help them understand tax strategy, how to do the most with the money they're going to receive. So in a perfect world, let's just pretend you're a garage door company. You're beautiful. First thing I want you to do, you guys are going to freaking love this. I'm giving you guys so much freaking badass stuff here. And listen, I hope you're a graduate company because I'm going to make you

more money than beyond. So first I want you to get on my payroll system or CRM or VoIP system and our financial system. The next thing I want you to do is get your warehouse to look exactly like ours, our training center. The next one I want you to do is get audited financials. I want you to use our recruiting software. I want you to get on Expensify. I want you to get your truck set up like us. I want you to get background checks, buy the same tools we buy, get the gamification stuff, get the SBA qualifications. And then I want to buy. And if you look here, it's pretty cool. I'm going to have a whole certification process all the way through Black Belt. And I'll pay a little bit more for you than the average bear. And then I'm only going to buy 50.1%. Then I'm going to give you a better multiplier

for the next 30%. And then the last 20% will be worth more than the company was ever worth. So you're growing the company and I'm finding out that you actually have the potential to actually get shit done. And you walk, talk and act like us. You got audited finances. I can pull you in quick and I can make you super, super, super wealthy. And let me tell you, all the guys that say, I don't need your help. I don't need Tommy's help. The deal is the industry is changing. The marketplace is changing. Technology is changing. Unless you've got a master's in technology and you've got a fricking shit ton of people working for you and figuring out systems and inventory systems and negotiating on a daily basis like I am and getting, you're going to

Mexico like I was in Mexico working on getting trucks and we ordered 600 of them. Unless you're doing these things, you're better off partnering with us and I will make you rich and I'll make you very, very excited. I'm going to give you a lot of money to do it. So we started Garage Your Freedom. And the greatest compliment I've ever received is watching people build training centers and getting manuals through Alevi. You know, they're going to be getting our manuals and they're getting on service type and we're donating our price book to them and we're showing them how to use this stuff. The difference is when a company is doing two, three, five, 700 million, do you think

I'm getting better buy rates? We answer the phone every 24 7 do you think we've got a better process do you think kfc has a better process than that mom and pop shop in the corner that's why it's hard to compete home depot literally when home depot came into town they shut down every little screw shop it's just it's hard to compete my goal is not to shut them down my goal is to work with them because the most beautiful thing in the world is some of these guys are bringing in 40 leads a day. And they're averaging $300 a ticket. A guy said on Facebook group the other day, he goes, I don't understand. I have four or five calls. I'm only doing two grand on a good day. I said, I was doing that in 2008.

And I was doing three grand a day back then off of Craigslist calls. So I said service to sales is the first thing. A good door might cost us two grand now with an opener. If you're not charging six grand, you got issues. Now, you sell one door out of five calls. Is it really best for the customer? You're damn right it's best for the customer. If you think fixing a bunch of crap and having to break down twice a year and call you back up is the right thing, you shouldn't be on this video. You should go work for another company that's going out of business. Because if you really

think it's the best thing, here's what I decided I'm going to do. I'm going to do what the hell's best for the customer. When they ask me, I'll tell them what I would do for my mom. And I do believe that putting a gear in sprocket or a surge protect or a RPM sensor or a capacitor or any of that stuff or replacing safety eyes, I'm literally delaying the inevitable. If you want me to freaking fix this old piece of crap hot water heater when I can replace it and give you a way better warranty and peace of mind, and you're out of town in Canada half the year, what happens if this thing explodes? You're going to call me pissed off. So I want to know from the manufacturers, they're going to have my back. The manufacturers don't even exist for this hot water

heater. So here's the deal. You get your head out of the gutter. You start buying things. People don't care about money. They made 22% last year, 2021. They're going to make 23% this next year. Do you really, really think, do you really believe it's not best for the customer? I got to tell you, it just bothers me. I don't understand it. I really, everybody goes, my customers don't want to pay that. Look yourself in the mirror and say, I'm not good at sales. I'm not good at sales. Your customers don't want to pay it. Pull shoulders back look them in the eyes smile and say sir this is exactly what i would do if this was my mom's and here's why you told me you

were going to stay in the home for 12 years this is not going to have any problems for more than 12 years it looks amazing you're going to get 100 return on your investment and when they tell you why they don't want to buy i I just don't have the money right now. You turn that into a sales process. What the best thing about it is you qualified for our awesome promotion. You've taken care of your credit. It was so nice. It's for $76 a month. I could get this headache, this future worry, this future days you're going to miss your kids plays in school. I can take care of everything. And guess what? I'm going to put my sticker on the wall. And if you ever need me,

here's my cell phone. Because I know the only time you're going to call me is when you move into your next house because you're going to want my service. You're never going to have to worry about it again. So talk, slow down, talk at their same pace, make eye contact, and then shut the hell up. Read the book, go for no. You should always go for no. Brian Buck, Pride More, and Kyle Martin Watson ask, you can comment on the performance pay for employees. That's a general statement, but performance pay is the best way to go. The reason why you get equity is performance pay. Anytime you do profit sharing is performance pay. Why would anybody want to work their ass off to accomplish your goals?

Why don't you give them some skin in the game so you find out what's going to move the needle? And let me just tell you something. You start doing it right. You start charging the right prices and you start getting a 65% gross margin and you build that into your prices, pay your CSRs 35 bucks an hour. I'm not paying mine that yet. But you watch on a performance pay what that does. You'll find people that can book 70 calls a day. You will find people that can multitask and run your office at that price.

So what I'm telling you is, you know, everybody calls me up. I'm having problems finding somebody. Well, I'm telling you is, you know, everybody calls me up. I'm having problems finding somebody. Well, look at what you're paying. How are you going to keep up with Amazon and everybody else? You're paying crap. Okay. You're pinching pennies. I got to tell you guys, it's disgusting. What I see out there, you think you're going to get great people. I'll tell you this, man. I'm at this point right now. You might think I charge a lot. My shit comes in, it gets installed right. I'll tell you this, 95% of companies out there are one-man armies. They're doing all the work

themselves. That's not a business. That's a paid job. 5%, the small businesses like me, I think small businesses is like 200 employees or whatever, 20 million, but we are paving the way. I find it hard. All these guys say they're getting out of business. This is the black winner for them. Literally, they're going, I can't get parts. I can't get employees. I can't talk to customers. They don't like me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They don't like my pricing. Well, you've never heard of financing, number one. You've never heard of any. You won't even pay the first three months after we install it. Okay? This is a beautiful deal. Look at 9.99% over 10 years and see how low it can be. Oh, man. It's a beautiful thing. Whoever came up with financing is just the original guy. I'd like to meet him. He's probably dead. Another question, performance

paid for employees. If they are W2, it looks like additional bonuses line applied, or how should I pay structure to keep getting more sales on fill? I don't really understand that question, but I can tell you that I don't do performance pay for any 1099s. They're only W-2 employees. I'd have to ask Adam exactly how we structure our bonus structure as far as how we do it and as far as the W-2 on payroll. You put me into payroll accounting or any other bullshit, you want to see a guy fall asleep and be annoyed? I want to know exactly in a report what the hell is going on with the company in a snapshot for 15 minutes a week? I want to dive into issues, but I'm a growth machine.

You'll see one thing about me. I want to find the holes. I'm going to fix some operational things going on right now. We're making some changes here on the org chart. We're getting things ready to freaking go straight to the moon, probably out of the solar system, actually. Shoot out of the galaxy when I get done. But the deal is we're building technology suites. It's all technology driven. It's all automation. Literally, if you call me up and I know every supplier in town, what doors are in stock, and I'm the salesman and I can

persuade you to go in a certain direction and get business all the next 24 to 72 hours. And then I can show you our parts are nothing like anybody else's because they're not. Show you our warranties unlike anybody else's. Then I can show you the last 10 companies that went out of business this year and why to do it. Peace of mind. You know, people say price, price, price, price, price, price, price, price, price. Go look at the Teslas out there. Go look at what people are buying around in their cars. Go look at the housing prices. Oh, you're not going to buy a house. You can't find a house under 600,000 in Phoenix. They're still buying. Can't find much on the market. All the excuses everybody has, they're full of shit. I'll tell you that. Alex Pavlenko, based on your experience,

what's the fastest way to grow a home service business? Contractors, 1099, or payroll employees? If you get away with 1099s when you're strapped for cash, I'd say go for it. I don't like to do that because you lose too much control. Companies fall apart quickly. 1099s have the right to just, I'm off. They're gone. Done. At least employees, you can make them sign non-disclosure agreements. You can make them sign non-competes. I would say the fastest way to grow your business is to come up with the right logo, the right wraps, the right website. I would say, do a competitive analysis, come up with a real business plan, marketing plan first, then the training and recruiting, understand how you're going to grow, build the org chart, the depth chart,

make sure you got your manuals in line, standard operating procedures, the right CRM. And then I would freaking blitz marketing and I would do the roles that I love to do and slowly find my failure points and hire around them, especially because I hate a lot of things. Can I live in Excel or QuickBooks or whatever intact? Yeah, I could. You know, somebody asked me the other day, you know, show me how to work service site.

I'm like, you think I know how to use service site? I know how to look at all my reports. You think I'm living in there? You think I need to feel like a king because I know how to do something? No, I don't give two shits if I know how to do anything. I don't need to know my way about it intact. I don't need to know.

I got people that know. I got backup people that know. You think it's good for me to waste my time living in a tool? I want to know what's in our bank account. I want to have checks and balances. But you think I need to know half the shit that happens here? I don't know one 20th, 100th of what goes on here. There's a whole detailed plan on everything.

You think I'm involved in all of it? I'm the growth guy. I'm the visionary. I don't know one 20th, 100th of what goes on here. There's a whole detailed plan on everything. You think I'm involved in all of it? I'm the growth guy. I'm the visionary. I'm setting up technology. I'm helping with recruiting. I'm helping with culture. We're building a game of vacation right now.

I'm motivation every day to pump these guys up. And this company should run without me. So if you're the person that wants to get involved in every damn thing, and you find yourself getting involved and not giving trust to your employees and your management team and your directors and your VPs or whatever it might be, don't go into business. If you want to run everything, good luck. But if you're an accountant and you're working at a business, find a good COO. Find somebody that's going to do that stuff. But if you want to be involved in marketing, operations, the technical, it's crazy. I don't know my way around intact. I don't know my way around service type except for reporting and getting the information I need.

I don't know my way. I mean, we must be running 25 softwares now. I don't know anything. People are like, well, don't you want to learn? Why? Why? Why do I need to know? When I have people, you know, I figured out if everything goes to plan just without me buying companies, I make $13,000 an hour. It's crazy. I did the math. I don't know. You just do the math of the millions and millions and millions. I'm not bragging. I could give two shits about the money. Literally, I'm going to reinvest all of it. But why the hell would I spend time doing a $20, $30, $50, $100 job? Really? Think about that. Are you doing stuff right now in your company that you should have other people doing? Figure out what you make

per hour and freaking have somebody else come do it. These are all things that I'm commenting on that nobody had questions. So I hope I'm not pissing anybody off. What are some good examples of tax write-offs at the end of the year to lower your taxable income? Number one, accelerated depreciation of the vehicles. Number two, prepay anything you could in marketing. But here's the deal. I negotiate with every marketing company, all my mailers. I prepay the crap out of all my advertising. Okay. Prepay, but do not prepay guys that you're going to fire. Don't prepay your SEO. You can't prepay Google. But prepaying a bunch of stuff, look into something that I've told you guys about a million times, the Augusta law. You could buy a building and do a cost segregation study.

Anything you guys need, you cannot write off materials you buy. You can't buy more inventory until you sell that stuff. But any marketing, you can prepay the shit out of that. You could accelerate the depreciation of the vehicles. Look, registrations, you can prepay them. Find every single thing you're going to have to pay this year and prepay, but negotiate it down. So for example, this is not even one, but I'm just throwing one out there, Clipper Magazine. Let's just say it costs me three grand a month. These are completely fictitious numbers. So 36,000. I'm going to pay 28,000 in advance. Then I'm going to be able to write out that 28,000. But here's the one thing, if you're going to pre pay for marketing, first, you need to tell them, I want the right side of the magazine up

front. Cause you know what they're going to do? They're going to bury you somewhere as a remnant spot. And if you don't think ahead, if you don't get with them and say, here's what I want to do. And trust me when people get used to getting prepaid, they love the money. And you guys have till Friday. So you guys have all day tomorrow and Friday to figure this shit out. All you need to do is have the check written on the 31st

and you're fine if you mail it out. It doesn't need to clear. I like a more in-depth view of offering financing easily and understanding our cost of using finance, incorporating into CRMs. I use Housecall Pro, but also BookAP. The cost of doors and parts have gone up 110%, and I believe financing will become much more effective. Tell you this, I hope our prices double.

Please, Lord, let our prices go up another 110%, maybe 200% this year. Please let them go way, way, way, way, way more up because no one else knows how to sell like we do. No one else is offering financing like we are. It's pretty simple. You go to Good Leap. You go to Green Sky. You go to Service Finance. They'll give you a calculator. You type in the price and you start offering it. If you've got a good CRM, it'll toggle the monthly fee. And even better yet, make it a daily fee. If it's $30 a month, hey, it's a buck a day. Hey, if it's 90 bucks a month, it's three bucks a day. It's cheaper than a cup of coffee. You guys have heard that before. The deal is there's a threshold in my mind that I've set. $5,000.

Anything over that, people like to use financing. Now, if it's same as cash and you don't pay for the first 90 days, voila, bingo. Now, the only thing I'm scared of is interest rates as they start to go up. It'll be a little bit more competitive as interest rates go up on the financing rates. And we eat it as the dealer, but we don't eat the 9.99%. Oh, man, let's see here. Stuck owning a job. one person with a neatly branded van low voltage stuff like security cameras alarm systems and audio video i've hired a few subs along the way but never an employee one of the steps to break away from the building company

what comes first to hire the marketing afraid to overwhelmed and not have the text afraid to have the text and i don jobs. Well, first things first, it's find out every single thing that you make a mistake. You train the guy, you write the manual of training. You get him to where he's running the job with you. Yes, you're going to lose some money. He's not going to do things as good as you. Boom. There you go. Then I'll give you these levers. Yelp is a lever. PPC, a lever. Sponsored Google My Business, lever. Local service ads, lever. Groupon, lever. Living social, lever. Clipper, lever. Bellback, lever. I can give you a thousand levers. So what I want you to do is test a little bit. Try this, try this,

try this, try this. Because I'm only asking you to learn what your cost per acquisition is. People say, don't try a lot of things. This is a different example to understand what you could do and then understand what the customers are like. Build a profile of the customer. This customer was cheap. This customer would pay whatever I wanted. The Google customers pay, especially if you're number one. If you want to get the best customers, find the ones that want you out today. Emergency. First, same day service. Those customers you start advertising for that stuff, they're not going cheapest coupon. They're not typing that in. They're typing in fast. Fast pays more money. So what I would say is you train your guys,

you build the manuals, you do the marketing plan I talked about earlier. You hire your first guy, you make sure he's good at what he's doing and you start bumping stuff up. But you're going to say, I'm not making as much money. You think you're going to make as much money as you made when you ran all the jobs? Shit, I had a safety deposit box full of money back in the day. I was making bank 10 years ago, 15 years ago, whatever it was. You lose money the first few employees. You're not going to make the same you did, but you're not going to have to work.

It's going to work while you you did, but you're not going to have to work. It's going to work while you sleep. But then you start scaling. And then you start figuring out profitability. You find out an area. You start negotiating better with your vendors. You start getting a better CRM. You start building a brand.

All of a sudden, profit, profit, profit, profit. The hardest thing is managing people. And it's almost impossible for most people. Because you're so busy that you've been an employee so long, trapped in your own business. No one will ever live up to your expectations. Vincent, my man, what books would you recommend for your technicians to read? Go for No.

I give it to every single guy. Read Go for No. What are some other books? I recommend Michael Michalowicz's Profit First and anything Dave Ramsey, obviously. I don't believe in Dave Ramsey myself, but I really like to give my guys

books on how to invest. Literally, I try to get my guys figuring out not to make the same mistakes, how to build their credit up. I want my guys to drive new trucks. I want them to have a great build their credit up. I want my guys to drive new trucks. I want them to have a great education for their kids. I want them to be able to go on great places with their family. I want them to be able to own a home. First thing you want to teach them

about is to invest an appreciating asset versus a depreciating piece of shit. Go rent a motorcycle. Don't buy one. You think you deserve this because you worked hard? You worked so hard that you don't get to pay your future self. I'm 38. My 48-year-old self deserves a lot. My 58-year-old self deserves more. 68-year-old, if I get that far, he deserves a lot of stuff too. So let's make sure he's making money along the way rather than being selfish and not thinking about my future self. What books would you recommend your CSR read? You know, there's a book right here by Brigham Dixon called Pattern for Excellence, How to Engage Your Team for Wow and More Customers. CSRs. And then a good book for

everybody is called Who Moved My Cheese? And then there's another good book the consistency chain and then another good book that i recommend raving fans raving fans is probably the top book for all of you guys all right let's see here are you using it the referral do you recommend it where we are using it the referral get we're getting into it right now you know here's the deal i found my guru i found the guy that's going to really help me. That's literally an integrator and he's helping me with every business. So I have a lot of different things going on and I got him to hold me accountable. I have an accountability partner now. I have him to hear all my ideas. See, let me tell you guys something. There's two theories here and

I'll show you mine, the third one. So the first theory is you tell everybody, let's just say you wanted to build a new CRM, a CRM with a lot more webhooks and APIs. You tell the developer, I want this, this, this, this. I need to make sure it has this, and I want to make sure you have this and this. Some developers are going to go, you're nuts. That's crazy. So that's the worst answer you could get. Now, number two is you don't tell them a lot. You say, listen, I'm

going to let the developer start it out and just get to a basic functioning MVP, minimum viable product. And then you tell them that you want this, this, this, and this. And they go, why in the hell didn't you tell me that when you started? If I would have known that I wouldn't have built it like this. So my philosophy is you tell everybody up front but you give them listen i'm gonna give you everything i'd like you to do then we're gonna arrange them from priority level and how it's gonna make more money so there's an axis bar i'm gonna show you guys something pretty cool so you draw a cross right now just split your piece of paper up into four quadrants and on the top left here's what i want you to do i want you to write So you draw a cross right now. Just split your piece of paper up into four quadrants.

And on the top left, here's what I want you to do. I want you to write high impact, low effort. On the top right, I want you to write high impact, high effort. On the bottom right, write low impact, high effort, and then low effort, low impact on the bottom left. I want you to focus on the top left, high impact, low effort. That's where you write down everything into that box. Then I want you to write down high effort, high impact. You should be going after all of the high impact areas first. But sometimes you could do, I mean, the low, you don't want a ton of effort to get the biggest

result, but I'm not saying something's not important, but hopefully that all made sense here. Trying to tell you guys, this guy is literally deciphering. I'm giving them everything, whiteboards, different ideas, how this is going to work with this. And I finally found somebody that could keep up. Not somebody that says, oh my God, you're nuts. They could actually go, okay. Every time we talk, he takes notes, vigorous notes. Now, listen, you're not going to find this for 60 grand a year. Okay. But you want to find somebody that could actually keep up. I don't know. You try to keep up with me. It's impossible. I'm not saying you're not smart enough, but I'm going

25 miles all the time. I'm thinking, taking notes. It's all organized now, but there's all these things. It's sometimes it's hard to find every single thing because there's 80 things going into this a day. And I finally found somebody that could actually take it apart, organize it and prioritize and work with me on it. And I respect him. He respects me. So we work together and we find out ways of doing things. And he goes, geez, he goes, this, this will get us the 5 billion in like less than three years. And I show him how, and he goes, wow, holy shit. And then I show him something else and he goes, oh my God. And I show him the proof that I've already tested it. And he sees it and he goes, wow. So Walt Disney had Roy to kind

of do this for him. You know, I've had Adam and Adam's done it. You know, we hit our budget this year. I'm saying I've got a lot of stuff I'm working on. Lots and lots of great stuff. Gianni helps me a lot. There's a lot of people that have my back. Breeze my backbone. But I finally found somebody that can sprint at an incredible rate. We're

going at 12 miles an hour as fast as the treadmill will go all day, every day. I don't stop from when I wake up to when I go, and I wake up in the middle of the night and start whiteboarding. So I got a disease. I don't know. I got to hear more cowbells. But let's hear what some of these things are here. Currently, I'm working to put six months of expenses and payroll aside for emergency fund.

Should I get that completed before I start spending money on marketing rebanding? Yeah, no. Get a line of credit, build a three month contingency plan. If you need that to sleep and you're all worried. Yes.

But here's the deal. You start hitting a negative income, start getting rid of people. I'd work at six months. Hell no. Start figuring out, start rating your employees in Excel sheet and say, this happens. You make cuts as fast. I raise prices the day our prices got increased. I would like to kick of a total rebrand, kick, I guess, kick off a total rebrand of the business.

Should I save up the money and spend the money now to do a complete professional rebrand? I don't know. I'd have to see your P and L. I'd have to see what you have in the bank, but hell yes. But I had a guy do a complete wrap and rebrand. Then he didn't have enough money to do marketing. I'm like, look, you tell me what's in your budget and let's figure this out in phases. I use Dan Antonelli for a lot of stuff and just say, listen, let me work on a payment program. You give me my trucks first and then let me pay you three months and then you give me my website and then you give me three months.

Then I want all the other stuff with it. And maybe I find a buddy of mine that needs it and a buddy of theirs and the three of us, maybe we work on a better deal with Dan. I don't know. I mean, he's behind because he does such good work. But I think branding, I start out with that number one, because why the hell would you run with a white car to a house? You look like a piece of shit. You want to double your ticket average, wrap your vehicles and look like you care about yourself. You want to have somebody

really dislike you wear a shirt that doesn't fit with a hole in it. You can't respect yourself. They're not going to respect you. They're not going to pay you crap. Should I look to creating a website that will allow residential customer to look up and the estimate? I like the idea of a customer going to your site because the more they hit their site, the better. But I think there has to be some type of login. There's a new company that came out, a new CRM that he insisted that helps SEO. What I'd rather do is have it automatically text message a copy to their cell phone that they have it. And if they need it, there's a quick way to just get it through the IVR on your dialing system. On the cash flow side of things, where are you

keeping retained earnings? The emergency fund for the business and the cash for any business employee benefits you might offer, like earn bonus that are paid out at the end of the year. This would be cash savings. I think it's in retain earnings. I'm going to have to look at our balance sheet. I mean, honestly, when we do our financial quick check every Friday, I look at the money in the bank, all of our expenses. I don't look at how we categorize it, but I have four guys that meet up twice a week to figure out the best tax strategy, the best way to make sure we have enough money. There's certain warranties you get out there. Like if I give you a great warranty, there's certain things we need to keep in the bank for to cover those warranties,

but mine's not excessive. But I don't really like the idea of an emergency fund. If COVID bad happens, what are you supposed to do? You make tough decisions. Six months? months i mean that's ultra ultra conservative that's all i would say how do you handle buying the uniforms is it something that is offered as a benefit to the employees or are there times when they need to buy uniform okay so i got a whole uniform company online i give them five shirts i give them an allowance every quarter anything over that they can buy cups they can buy jackets they can buy You can buy whatever the hell they want. It's all A1 logo. We require that they wear A1 stuff, shirts, jackets, anything. We make sure that they buy it too. We give them enough money to buy that stuff. If they want to buy more, some people will buy all their gear. All they wear is

A1 stuff. I love that. And I'm starting to bonus people on the store credits. That's a great way to incentives. So they buy A1 gear and maybe after they buy so much gear, maybe we just, they buy a thousand dollars. Then we start giving them Amazon gift cards to buy whatever they want. Tools the employee use. We don't necessarily have specific tools that we can package and give to employees yet. We are working on building that next year. So how do you handle getting the right tools in the hands of your guys out in the field so that they get the job, get to a job, and are unable to complete the work because they don't have the right tools? I buy all my guys the tools now. They start out at a different rate. So now I made a different rate for the guys that start out.

So I worked with my lawyers. They said, you can't demand that they get any type of tool. So I said, F it. I'm just going to buy it myself. And now they're on a certain commissionable. I don't like to say commission because they're not really on commission. There's a lot of other factors. It's performance pay, but it's a little bit less than the other guys. The tools cost about three grand. They end up paying about two grand, but I get the tools back within 90 days if they don't last. So, you know, if the guy lasts two months, I get those tools back and I've never not got them back because they understand this. We're very, very, very upfront about what we expect and how it's all going to work.

I need to work on a book list, guys. I know. I'll tell you guys, I've got so many books. I don't feel comfortable giving you guys every book until I go through every one. I can give you guys some books right now. There's so many that I've already gone over with you guys. Purple Cow is good. The Cell of the Human is good by Daniel Pink. Hiring for Attitude is amazing. I thought this book was super cool, guys.

It's go time. This guy, you know, he did such a great job in this book. Chris Hunter. But they handle a lot of different things in business. So if you haven't got this book yet, I really, really enjoyed this book. Actually, I bought a case of them. That's how much I enjoyed it. If you could get this book, The Power of Positive Pricing by Matt Michelle. Relevant

selling is amazing. I don't know if I can give you guys my whole list. You know what? I'll do a top 20. I'll do a top 20. But get this book. If I were you, I'd get this book, I'd study it, and I'd read it 10 times, and I'd buy this book, The Coaching Effect. Here's two good books. I'd read Rocket Fuel. I definitely would read Who. I'd read The E-Myth. I would read Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I'd read Napoleon Hill. I'd read The Four Disciplines of Execution. I'd read Presuasion by Robert Ciarini. I'd read Double Double by Cameron Harreld. Be Our Guest, Perfecting the Art of Customer Service by Theodore Akini is a great book. Oh, man. I've got about 10 books on generating referrals.

I've got 10 books on training. I mean, there's so many good books. So I know we covered a lot there, guys. All I can tell you guys is there's a lot going to happen next year. It's going to be a good year. What I want you guys to do is don't shoot for the stars if you don't know how to hit your goals. I want you to build a lineup in the bottom left to the top right, a line, like a slash mark. And then I want you guys to put the new goal next year. And it's pretty simple. Just put it into four quarters. Take what you did this last year's growth and figure that's your growth rate. And then put your goal in. So let's say I'm able to

grow 20% per quarter. And then you just say, listen, what needs to happen? You could analyze these goals pretty simply and figure out how much money do I have to put into marketing? That's how you build a budget is how many calls do I need? But what affects it is when you raise your average ticket or conversion rate. Now, with my marketing plan, there's no problem that I'm going to quadruple next year. You top that with a huge average ticket. Now, I hired a guy named Jonathan Wissman. If you guys have not read his book, The Sales Boss, that's a top book too. Al Levy, The Seven Power Contractor, The Home Service Millionaire, of course. But what I would say is, I mean, look, I got a million good books. I can't even keep track of all of them. I just got this book. I haven't read it yet,

but it's called The Chief Inspiration Officer. Sell different. Lee Saul's is a this book. I haven't read it yet, but it's called The Chief Inspiration Officer. Sell different. Lee Saul's is a great book. I just got this book. Well, no, I've had this book, The Visual Sale. Marcus Sheridan, They Ask, You Answer. This book just came in the mail from somebody. High time of your book recommendations have been great. Straight lineup, leadership. Let's see. This book just came in the mail. A guy just sent this one to me. He says this is the best book he's ever read. It's called Alchemy. Lots of good books. When you're able to increase your average ticket, see our marketing plan, I'll be putting out 25,000 words a day with all the writers I've got going. We're going to be putting out 25,000 words a day.

Every single article will have an infographic, several pictures, and a video. I mean, look, I used to say I'm playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers, but now I feel like I'm kind of goofing around at NASA and a lot of people are just twiddling their thumbs in the sandbox. I don't know. I feel like we're playing a different game, and that's through talent acquisition. The biggest thing I'm going to do next year that Jonathan Wisman, we're going to have hiring events. We're going to go murder it.

We're going to have 400 people show up and get on a waiting list to work here. And you know what? When I raise my prices like I'm doing, when nobody else is, I can pay my guys a lot more. When you hear how much you can get paid to work at A1, if we were ever to partner up at A1, you know what the beautiful thing is? None of your mom's stuff is going to break. It's done forever. And hey, listen, a lot of you guys that have used me, you know, I give a lot of people friendship and I like to call it a good shake, not a good deal. But ultimately, I make it affordable. I do the right thing by mom. If they're moving out of

the house, I do something completely different than staying there for 15, 20 years. The forever house, I've got the right thing. There's flipping the house. I got the right thing. They're a contractor. I got the right thing. So different people get different things and it's understanding that and taking care of them and treating them like mom. But when you could understand, you solve the hiring problem and each employee's motivated to get reviews take pictures compliment one another change the culture up i gotta tell you guys it's an amazing thing i'm really proud of my team we hit our goal and it's absolutely phenomenal it's it's crazy what we're doing and uh you know somebody talked to me at the airport the other day

they said garage doors? What the hell? It's an everyday business. We didn't do anything crazy. But we're really good at what we do. And we focus. We don't do any commercial. We don't do really any builders.

But I want to partner with a million people that build for builders. I got a guy that I'm talking to. He does, damn near $12 million a year. He's got stickers all over. He gets tons of calls, but he doesn't want any of the service work. I'm like, you're the perfect partner because you figured out something that I don't really even want or to figure out. You keep doing that real good. And what I'll do is I'll run the service department, which will turn into more sales in your new construction. That's the key guys. Service to sales. Oh my God.

Service to sales. You guys will just, people say, well, they don't need a new door. They don't need this. They don't need this. They don't need this stuff. I'm like, oh my God, you don't need a new truck. You don't need to live in a house. This is what you need. You need water, a little bit of food. You don't need anything. People tell me, I don't need it. Do you need a garage? No, they want it. Do you need a new Harley? Do people really think what they need or do they want it? Let them decide what they want, not what you think they need. Get your head out of your ass and quit saying they don't need this. Damn, I cannot believe when I hear somebody say, but they didn't need that. I. I cannot believe when I hear somebody say, but they didn't need that. I'm like, no, but I gave them a choice and they chose to get that

because they wanted it. They don't need home automation. They don't need to do Christmas lights. They don't need anything. It's ridiculous. I hate hearing that crap. Well, they didn't need that. They chose to get it. I gave them options. They didn't need heated floors when they get out of the shower either. They didn't need drapes that close the black out the room. They didn't need an 80-inch TV, but they got it. Someone offered it to them. Costco offered them an 80-inch.

Do you think they needed that? So shut the hell up if they didn't need this shit. I just, I'm over it. I don't care what people need. I want to know what they want. I get a lot of stuff I want. I didn't need any of it. Anyways, guys, I hope you have an amazing New Year's. I hope you understand when I get this voice, it's not a complaining voice. It's just more of a passionate, excited voice. But this has been a long, long show here, hour and 22 minutes. So literally, set your goals high.

Take some downtime. Organize your thoughts. Write stuff down. Make sure don't let yourself down. Don't come up. I let myself down this year, but I'm happy because my team set a goal. We hit it. But I don't feel down on myself. It just makes you work 10 times harder. See, I'm not like, man, I'm going to go to the top of a building and look down because I feel bad. I didn't hit my goal. It just says, hey,

dude, let's get a little bit more realistic, but let's reverse engineer. But I know, I know, Grant Cardone, 10X, I know. When people keep telling me it's impossible. I'm psycho. You're stupid. You're crazy Good Keep coming brother. Keep telling me that I can't wait because if I fail I still made more money in my left pinky than you'll ever make so I don't want to hear your shit But every time they tell me this stuff, it just makes me want to work harder. So I hope you guys are having An amazing day. Hope you hit your goals this year and hope you have an amazing Friday. Listen, don't drink too much. Don't drink and drive Uber. Have fun.

If you want to go out for the amateur hour and let's start off the year strong. I appreciate you guys and you guys make it a great last couple of days of the year. See you guys. 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

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. 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. you