The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A With Tommy - Refining Training Programs to Recruit and Retain A-Players
Episode Date: November 22, 2024Tommy 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 22 states. Through HomeServi...ceMillionaire.com and the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy shares his experience and insights to help fellow entrepreneurs scale their businesses. In this special episode of the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy answers your biggest questions about business intelligence, employee accountability, development programs...
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I found that when my desk is clean, their desk is clean.
I find out when I show up prepared to meetings,
they show up prepared to meetings.
What we're building is into with some scorecards,
is what you say you're responsible for.
You're going to pick your own goals,
and we're going to approve them,
and then you're going to sign off.
Then we're going to put them in a space where everybody sees it,
and you're accountable to your brothers and sisters of the company.
What is called in Robert Chitty,
and he talked a lot about it is commitment.
This idea of being committed
to what you say you're gonna do.
And I said, hey guys, I need you to keep your commitments.
Not to me, not to your brothers and sisters in the company,
but to yourself.
You created this goal.
You said you were gonna do it.
And then I'm tying those commitments,
not just KPIs back to the company, but back to
what it means for you.
How much money are you going to make?
Are you really setting goals for yourself, for your physical, for your faith, for your
family, for your future knowledge?
And another thing I said at this meeting is I'm going to work on me a lot harder so I
could help you.
Welcome to the Home Service Expert,
where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs
and experts in various fields,
like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership
to find out what's really behind their success in business.
Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.
Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you.
First, I want you to implement what you learned today.
To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes,
but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview.
So I asked the team to take notes for you.
Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299.
That's 888-526-1299 and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.
Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.
I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200
million company in 22 states.
Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.
Now let's go back into the interview.
All right.
Welcome back to the Q&A section of the Home Service Expert Podcast.
I'm in San Diego.
Bree's birthday was yesterday, she's 26,
and we are going to rock and roll.
We've got a wedding later tonight, should be great.
So lots of things to discuss today.
I'm gonna start out with just saying,
last week we had a internal meeting
of all the marketing companies we work with,
including our own marketing team.
The first thing I started with was, what are we responsible for? What are you responsible for?
And we discussed a lot about accountability. We were making commitments to one another on what we were responsible. Who's responsible for what? We need to make sure we're booking every
call. We need to make sure we're hiring for capacity planning. We needed to make sure we're booking every call. We need to make sure we're hiring for capacity planning.
We needed to make sure that we're using Dispatch Pro properly.
We're writing big tickets on every job.
They're responsible for a lot.
And I told them, like Tom Howard told me, is, listen, if I had to fire my own mom for
the best thing for the company, I would do that.
I'd make sure she had a lot of money and lives her best life. But I'm making decisions based on what's good for the company. And if the
vendor does not fit in right, they're not good for the company. And so we're going to this next
level of tracking. And we're working on the latest algorithms of Google. And there's a lot of things
that we're responsible for as a company. Like getting reviews, not just from Google, but from Yelp Nextdoor, the BBB.
You know, some of our vendors allow you to get reviews, we need to make sure we're getting reviews on there. We need to make sure they're everywhere and often with pictures in them.
You know, the craziest thing I've been hearing lately is everybody's been like, telling me like they think they're going to make their next best hire and change in the company. And here's my best advice, instead of pointing
your two index fingers out at people, start pointing your thumbs at yourself. Literally,
I think that you got to be accountable to what you're working on.
You've got to stay accountable. And I've never been more passionate about A1 garage door service.
We've got to stay accountable and I've never been more passionate about A1 Garage Service. We've got so many meetings coming up to define the future of the business.
2025 is going to be a massive year, just breaking every single goal I've thought possible.
It's never good enough for me.
I was talking to a buddy of mine yesterday, and actually it was Aaron Gaynor.
You guys know who he is and he said,
when we get 360 reviews, especially owners,
it's never good enough.
Like you always want more.
You're always looking for the next best thing.
You're always flipping the page.
And that's just who we are, we're hunters.
That's my DNA.
But one of the things that I'm going into this new year
is I gotta celebrate the wins way more.
So what I told my entire team
was how do I know if the warehouse guy is winning? Right? How do I know if someone on the marketing
team is winning? I want to be able to call everybody and say you're killing it, you're doing
amazing, you hit your project deadlines, you're doing amazing. And plus I want you to have the
ability to know someone's doing great.
It's easy to see if a CSR dispatcher, a technician or installer is doing great.
Then another thing is each and every role, including my role as a CEO, including my
COO, my CFO is going to have a manual.
And the way that I describe this to them about manuals with what I learned from
Al Levy, and they're like, how do you create a manual for a CEO or a COO
or a CFO or a VP of corporate development?
Well, you got to start, right?
You got to start creating what your day looks like, what your responsibilities are.
How do you know you're winning?
Because if you can make a detailed manual, eventually we're going to highlight
things on your manual and hire you an EA. And then we're going to hire another person under you to take a lot of those tasks
off the manual and the SOPs and the pictures and the processes.
So the way I'm describing it to my team is if we've got manuals and standard operating
procedures and checklists for your role, I can find someone else to come in and help
you right away. So now they're like encouraged to create these processes.
So going into the future of 2025, we're hiring the best consultants,
the best vendors and asking more than we've ever asked for our vendors.
We're going to say if it's not an A plus player, can we get them to an A plus player in three months?
If not, how do we offer more of them? We're starting to realize we've got to say a lot
of great things to people and acknowledge when they're killing it because most of our
meetings tend to talk about what we need to work on. So we're going to start the meeting
with amazing things. I'm going to start texting and calling people a lot more on every team
instead of just my technicians and installers and my senior management. And if
I do it, I know everybody in the company will start doing it. What I found is when I started
working out, everybody's working out. I had one of my favorite guys in the company, Chad just
texted me, he's down 13 pounds. Luke, our CEO, is down 10% body fat, getting ready for his wedding
in January. I found that when my desk is clean, their desk is clean.
I find out when I show up prepared to meetings, they show up prepared to meetings.
What we're building is into with some scorecards is what you say you're responsible for.
You're going to pick your own goals and we're going to approve them and then you're going
to sign off.
Then we're going to put them in a space where everybody sees it and you're accountable to
your brothers and sisters in the company.
And what it's called in Robert Chitty and he talked a lot about it is commitment.
This idea of being committed to what you say you're going to do.
And I said, hey guys, I need you to keep your commitments.
Not to me, not to your brothers and sisters in the company, but to yourself.
You created this goal.
You said you were going to do it.
And then I'm tying those commitments, not just KPIs back to the company, but
back to what it means for you.
How much money are you going to make?
Are you really setting goals for yourself, for your physical, for your faith, for
your family, for your future knowledge?
And another thing I said at this meeting is, I'm going to work on me
a lot harder so I could help you. And Jim Rhoads said that, let me help me so I can
help you. And what I'll say as well is that as I said, guys, I'd rather you focus on yourself
more than you focus on A1. Truly, I'd rather you get educated, go do shop tours, go listen to podcasts.
I'll pay for future education. I'll get you a personal consultant to work with you at
the one thing you're responsible for.
The scary thing about hiring a bunch of consultants is none of them roll in the same direction.
So you're going to have one like Keith Mercurio works with service tiny, make sure everybody's
running the same direction.
So we got to plan for that.
I'm going to get into Q&A here because that's why you guys are here.
But I like to catch you guys up on what we're thinking about within the company.
And people think I'm crazy.
I talked to an amazing guy, Kevin Comfortford earlier, very successful part of the rents
group.
And I go, you know, I'm very honest.
I tell people everything that we're doing.
He goes, it doesn't matter.
You know as well as I do, nobody's gonna do it.
And I said, now I really think some of the people
that pay attention and they read between the lines
are actually gonna do the work.
He goes, Tommy, it's 1% of 1% of 1%
that listen and actually apply the knowledge.
I have people reaching out every day.
They're reaching out for both. They want me to be on their board. They want me to be involved in
their PE company. They want me to invest in their software, their company. I want to tell you guys
one other thing that's pretty interesting before we get started. You think money is the solution for everything.
I had 12 million in our account.
I was invested in a lot of property.
I had a big Roth IRA and other investments,
but when A1 did a transaction,
a lot of money came in.
I didn't even know what to do.
Luckily, I had really good people around me,
Goldman Sachs, Dan Miller told me how to set up the trust.
I had Jim Weiss, I had all these people
that I could confide in.
And I had to learn what to do with it.
And it's different from making money to keeping it.
And I jumped from one mountain to this massive mountain.
And I had to learn what it was like
to be on the top of that mountain.
And now that I learned it, I'm headed to the next mountain.
And I'll make this statement that the circle I'm in and the circles that I've been in,
unfortunately, I'm at the top of most of the circles now.
So I got my buddy Sean McGraw coming to work with me.
And he's introducing me to all these companies doing two, three, four billion dollars.
And what I figured out is I'm going to be the bottom guy in that circle.
Because we're not doing that much revenue yet or that much profit.
And so they're going to teach me how to hike to the top of that circle, that mountain.
And then guess what? I know who I am. Let's face it, I'm going to find the next mountain.
But instead of taking a week to hike that mountain,
I'm gonna do it in hours
because they're gonna give me the cheat codes,
the right trails to hike up.
But if you're very careful what you wish for,
money is not the answer.
I know it's easy for me to say,
but you think all this work that you do
and the money comes and everything changes for the best,
there's a reason there's a phrase more money more problems now you got
people reaching out you don't know who's real I don't really have that problem
because I've had a lot of friends before the money came but I know that it's it's
it's very difficult and then people want to be these influence now these
Instagram Facebook they want to be, they want to be recognized, they want to be famous.
As with Jeremy Minor the other night, and he said, dude, he's not like super famous,
right? But he's known for his sales ability. And when you get to that point, you need to
have non-disclosure agreements when people come to your house. You need to be careful
that no one knows where you live. You've got to
be careful that when you're with somebody alone, that they don't make up and get you
canceled. So, I'd be careful what you wish for is my point here. I just, you know, you
think you know what you want. And then when you get it, you're like, this is not what
I expected. I'm by the way, I'm super happy. I'm super happy.
If somebody recognizes me, they say, dude, you helped out the business a lot.
I got a better relationship with my wife and my kids, or I'm doing more for my technicians
than I've ever thought, or my CSRs are able to make more money.
I enjoy what I do, but I decided I don't want to be Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks.
It's just too much.
And people listen to this podcast and they say,
they know me very well. They might have listened to 300 episodes, they listen to 300 hours of Tommy
Mello. So when I see them, I give them a big hug. They know who my dogs are. They know everything
about Bree. They know every player on the business. And it's a good thing. I really understand that
this is... I'm trying to make impact here.
So I'm going to start with some questions here.
I'm working on a couple books.
I'm working on an internal A1 book.
I'll explain that later.
I think I'm going to write a quick book.
It's going to be gold of what I would do if I wanted to grow a business or buy a business
and scale it quickly.
All the things I would do right away.
I used to say I'd look at the KPIs and the org chart first.
Now I look at the software first.
Because without the right software, the KPIs are not trusted.
And I'm going to have a cheat guide to build a big business.
A lot of people are stuck at a million, want to get to 5 million.
A lot of people at 20 million are wondering how to get to 50.
A lot of people at 100 are looking to get to a billion.
Well, we're well on our way. I mean, we just what's so cool with 20,000 customers a month, soon to be 30, is I shipped
a couple things, I'm already at a billion. And in my mind, it's already been done. So
the next book I'm going to write, and this is going to be my masterpiece of life is called
pay them what they're worth. That's what I'm gonna be working on is uh,
If you pay people performance pay you got to be very careful
If you do an equity incentive program, you got to be very careful if you do the wrong things
It could destroy your company. I had a buddy of mine, you know, you guys know, Gina Wickman
He wrote the book all about EOS and built a massive massive business strategy for
Millions of companies.
My buddy said he got destroyed by EOS,
literally it broke him.
So I don't wanna break companies.
I want you to go into these things,
understanding that there, you gotta do it right.
So my first question is from Brianna.
What software do you use to consolidate
and view all of your reports and data from all
of your software and systems?
So I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the major things that we use.
So how do you, you know, there's all these different things, right?
You've got your fleet management, you've got your gas cards, you've got the Monday board,
you've got UKG, which your payroll software or Paylocity or whatever it might be.
You've got Intact or QuickBooks.
You've got Servicetime or Housecall Pro.
We realized this was a problem at the beginning of last year.
So we used something called Power BI.
There's another thing called Domo.
There's Grow.com.
Those are three stoppers where they pull in all the information into one dashboard
that I can view. And actually, all the data, by the way, means nothing if you don't act on it.
So when you look at your data, and this is what happened with General Electric, because a lot of
my team at the Tommy Mello Ventures came from GE. They get all these fancy reports, but they didn't
do anything with them. It was like more reports, more reports, more reports. You've got to have a report that you glance at and build
action steps of what to do about the big holes with the data. So we're pulling in things from
UKG all about trying to learn about what's the turnover rate? When
are the anniversaries and birthdays? What's the healthcare? There's all these KPIs that
come out of that.
In-tact, I've never logged in. My CFO does all of that. And my, you know, Leanne, which
is financial planning and analysis, I got three people now with that and they're dissecting the numbers,
but I'm getting a feed from that.
And in service time, there's a lot of feeds.
So I say a data aggregator is a big one.
So Simon says, hey Tommy,
I watched a few of your shop tours
and looks like you use apprenticeship stages.
You please walk through your training framework stages and
what assessments and outcome trainings need to compete and
move through the process to graduation.
If you have any resources or people to look into,
that would be great.
We're rebuilding the way we bring people in.
A lot more personality profiles,
we're checking every reference.
We're really looking for unicorns now,
that's what we're going to be doing, is all unicorns. So we're rebuilding all the technology
and the process in which we get people and the different places. We're building this ultimate
attribution. So first is get the right people. A lot of times they're not an Indeed Glass
Tourism recruiter. I want to be able to get in front of hundreds of A players a day and pick the cream of the
crop.
And I'm willing to pay people a lot more than I've ever been.
I'm willing to give them a lot to come on board because I got to shift them to come
to us, but it's going to be paid throughout the first year.
So get the right people on first.
Next thing is they do ride alongs and they do training within
their own market for a month. They're trying to learn. We're trying to learn about them.
Do they show up on time? Are they sober? Are they scrolling on their phone the whole time?
Do they smoke? Is their car messy? All these things. The first month is more of a trial,
but they're learning the basics of garage doors. When they fly to Phoenix, they got
to do this comprehensive test to find out how much they've learned.
They get a bonus if they test well.
So they usually come in prepared.
And then we're looking for them to learn three things that Al taught us.
Technical, operational, and sales.
And I hate the word sales because it's just really making the right offers to the right
customers at the right time. We're teaching them gross close rate, how to sell financing, how just really making the right offers to the right customers at the right time.
We're teaching them gross close rate, how to sell financing, how to park in the right spots.
And they take 2 more tests and they do a practical which is
they're working and doing a whole sales process with our trainers. We're even bringing on new trainers. We're hiring a bunch of a lot more trainers right now. So, and then at the graduation, we've got a really nice graduation where we stamp it,
I sign it, we frame it. It's a big deal. We got their families watching from social media
into the group. We do a champagne, it's like apple juice, but we do a toast at the end.
I do a ceremonial speech. and then they still need another couple
months of polishing. Just because they graduated doesn't mean hey they're out on their own forever.
This is where they're going to find out where their weaknesses and strengths are.
Jesse said, how do you know your revenue potential in a market? Example, we are in a rural market
of a county with 70,000 population? How can you calculate the revenue potential
without having to add markets?
So Tom Howard actually figured this out with Tyson. And what I could do is if you email
into homeserviceexpert.com forward slash questions, I can send the video out to Tom
Howard made, but literally we're in 43 markets, so we can
pretty much tell based on Google search terms.
There's Google Trends, there's SEO, Moz.
There's all these tools to be able to see what are people searching.
And just from the search data, you can get a pretty good idea of what the jobs are going
to be based on the competition in the market.
But we're in places that are 100,000 all the way at like Sarah, Vista, Arizona, all over Kingman, Arizona,
Lake Havasu, Arizona, Prescott Valley,
all the way up to millions and millions and millions
like Phoenix.
So because we've got all these examples,
we pretty much know.
But the revenue potential, what I would say is,
how good are you at converting tickets
with your opportunity job average
in comparison to the norm?
That matters.
Cody said, I'm a historic masonry restoration artist offering two services with an average
ticket of 10,500, an hourly rate of 381 and a 29.5 conversion rate.
I work solo with support from virtual and personal assistance plus outsource tasks to
buy back my time.
I charge $300 for consultations targeting high-end clients with pre-1930 historic homes.
My KPI showed $300 consultations convert better than free estimates, but based on the time spent, the fee should be $950.
Set two years ago before reading Alan Rohr's books.
Am I losing opportunities with the $300 fee or should I stick with this approach? set two years ago before reading Alan Rohr's books?
Am I losing opportunities with the $300 fee
or should I stick with this approach?
You know, here's the thing.
I think people make a big mistake
by charging a lot of upfront fees.
I would weed them out a little bit more, Cody,
in the process in which they come through,
not by the price, but by finding out if they're very serious.
So I would fill out a questionnaire
to make sure they're very serious buyers.
And just to say something like,
most of the estimates I give end up costing around this,
I would build a weed out funnel
because you want to start out knowing
people are getting in good shape.
You want them to commit.
We got to get that conversion rate up. How do you get that conversion rate up? 29.5%.
You got to get a better filter. So figure out a better filter and I wouldn't use price
to do that. Hey, we're going to charge you $1,000 just to sit down with you.
If you're slammed, and I mean you are really, really, really busy and behind, then raise your price
to a thousand bucks.
But if you need more work, I'd keep it lower, but I'd put a better filter in there.
And then here's what I would also do.
What's going on with the rest of that 70?
You think they're not getting the work done somewhere?
Maybe some of them aren't.
But I'd have another person you could work with and sell those leads for an extra grand or two.
So listen, I've got another alternative. This guy does great work. This gal does great work. This
company does great work. I'd almost sell it for them and take more like 70% of your leads are
going to someone else. Why not monetize them? Travis said, I've been at one of your events.
I had some good takeaways, but what happens when
you need a hands-on coach, a mentor, and been robbed by the training groups that gets you nowhere
and want to teach your techs, shady sales techs, who can you go to for a mentor?
Here's a little thing Travis said I need to tell you. is every piece of free advice I've given away
has been useless because very few people do the work. I have a buddy that used to do a
lot of events. He said I used to give away free tickets. 50% of the people didn't show
up. There was no value. He said I started charging $3,000 a ticket,
and maybe I get one person not show up and I'd refund them.
I think for some reason,
it's not the consultant,
but it's the person getting consulted that needs to pay a lot of money
for it to actually resonate and sink in.
We were taught our whole lives,
if it's valuable, if we paid more,
like the experience that you experience it more. I'm a big fan of Dan Martell that says,
buy like you want to be bought from. I'm hiring right now so many amazing consultants for different
pieces of the business and different things I have going on. And I'm recruiting, I'm getting consultants,
I'm getting into the right groups.
You know, I don't have a perfect answer for you,
but I'll tell you this,
if you find the right consultant
and there are a lot out there,
most of the time it's not the consultant's problem,
it's the consultee's problem.
They don't do the work, They're looking for a miracle.
They literally want you to come do the work.
Like, thank God, L. Levy came to my shop and sat down with us.
He did the ride-alongs.
He notated everything.
He helped us write the manuals.
You're not going to find it.
I got really, I will say, very fortunate.
God blessed me with a guy like L. Levy.
I mean, I'm sure if you paid enough money,
you could probably pull him out of retirement, but most people don't have the money that he would need.
I mean, I'd imagine if you gave him half a million dollars, which I've always looked at,
I'm probably going to pull Al out of retirement one of these days for other things that work or not.
But you're never going to get him full time like I did. So if you're looking for somebody to pay 10 grand a month,
you're never going to find anybody.
The right companies that'll come do the work for you,
they're not cheap and unfortunately, but they're good.
So I'll leave it at that, Travis.
Tristan said, what's the conversation in
service setting presentation like for attempting to
flip a customer to a repair to a new garage you're installed. What's the conversation like is here's what you need to do. Here's what you
should do. And if you were my mom, this store is old, it's dead. The parts are worn out, the bottom
rubbers were out. You realize this is an uninsulated door. Did you know the garage door is 193.9%
return on investment? You know, most of the clients we go out to, they've had another company
after the last three years, and it's 500, 600 every time they miss a day of work.
Have you ever thought about just resetting the clock? Because I can make this door and
work perfectly, but you can only put lipstick on a pig so much. Do you want to continue
to kick the can
or should we reset the clock and put something
that's going to last a long time,
that's going to be insulated,
that's going to lower your electric bill,
that's going to have all the technology,
it's going to be quiet, it's going to be safe,
it's going to have a high ROI, it's going to look beautiful.
40% of your curb appeal, the smile of your home.
These things are what customers want.
They ask us, they say, what would you do?
This is another thing. I have to have my people believe that it's the right thing. So we're getting ready to say,
Hey listen, you go buy your mama door. We'll do it at cost. 600, 700, 800, 900 dollars.
Use the green sky financing. Use the, you know, we use a lot of the different financing.
We really mostly use GoodLeap.
But I wanted to walk through the process, number one, of using GoodLeap. Number two,
I think their parents deserve it. I wanted to get a lot of selfies, show the customers
that's what they do. We'll make it very cheap for them to pay it off. In fact, after a year
with good performance, we'll just pay that loan off. I wanted to go through the process.
I wanted to start to install it. I want to take a video with their mom. I want them to use that at every call.
So I think there's a lot to be said about going
through the process yourself and having my cue on your phone
and showing clients, this is what I did for my own mother.
This is her right here.
Here's a little testimony of what I got done from mom.
And I love my mom.
It's not shady, it's a good thing to do.
You should take care of mom.
In fact, if my mom's watching right now, mom, we're getting ready to replace your door.
Make sure you follow up with Bree with the door you like.
Let's get it past the HOA.
And by the way, that's going to be a new commercial for us is me going to replace mom's door that's
only three and a half years old.
No problems with it.
Carlos, you mentioned handyman often struggle
because they don't specialize.
I agree with this point.
You also highlighted that customer attention
is critical to a successful business.
My question is number one,
I'm considering creating a service membership package
that offers benefits like seasonal inspections
and quarterly maintenance services.
Do you have any experiences
with similar programs in your business?
Yes, we offer a service agreement.
I call it a protection plan.
Here's the deal, Carlos.
Why would you buy it today?
It's got to be such a great offer that it just makes sense.
What do I get today?
Do I get some type of gift card?
Do I get a discount?
I'm learning from Robert Ciannini that it should be a gift card.
First of all, how do I convert to get the service agreement?
Second thing is why do I keep it?
The emotion wants me buy it.
What is the logic backing it up for me to keep it?
Could you provide more details on how you structured the pricing and
marketing for these packages?
What has been the customer feedback and retention rates
since implementing these services?
So my best advice, Carlos is don't do do service agreements until you're not booking 92%.
If you don't have a high average ticket, if you don't have a brilliant high conversion
rate, if you're not have attribution perfectly figured out and your prices aren't at the
top of the market.
Everyone tries to do a service agreement, Tom Howard will tell you, out of every client
on service 10, he's only been able to find two that has monetized them correctly. Everybody talks
about it, but very few people could figure it out.
So I wouldn't... It's kind of like, Oh, I need a dream manager program. Oh, I need that
cool training program. Oh, I need to do all this stuff. I think the main thing you need
to do is have a good work chart manual, standard operating procedures.
Figure out your price book.
Use your CRM like it's meant to be used, but hopefully service type.
I think get everything else dialed in.
Make sure you've got new trucks.
Make sure you understand how depreciation works.
Make sure you go through Dan Antonelli for kick charge.
Get the brand right.
Get the SEO started.
Get reviews coming in every day.
Service agreements should be the very last thing.
And I know A1 has been selling them.
I think we've got 70,000 members now.
It's a massive, massive amount of money coming in each week, each month, I should say.
We started 1295 or 1395, 12 or 1395 a month.
And we got work to do.
And it's not an easy task.
I think it could be a great one if done properly, but I wouldn't focus on it until everything
else is done right.
All right, now I got a lot of questions here.
Let's see what we got.
Does your performance pay for installers vary from service sales tax?
Of course it does.
Technicians got to score acard that are based on average
ticket, believe it or not, and that goes into conversion rate. We do look at memberships.
We look at, did you use financing because financing tickets are higher. We look at callback
ratio and your average review. We pay a lot of attention to the scorecard and then they
get a percentage of the total minus the parts.
That's also how they move up in the company.
There's three levels they can move up.
And then if they want to turn into a traveling tech with Matt team or on the verse team,
or they want to move to a product specialist, they have to have the right scorecard.
Then we look at turnover rate, obviously, we call that gross close.
For installers, we do sold sold hours so we look at a
job and we give them kind of a benefit of the doubt this takes two hours we'll give them an extra
hour and then there's an opportunity to still sell if you're an installer and they get a hire.
See the technician already sold everything so if the installer goes behind him and sells more
we pay quite a bit more on that. We're trying to incentivize deco hardware, search protectors, little things, adding a strut, an oversized bottom rubber,
anything we could get the installs, but they just don't like to sell only like two of them
out of like the 50 I got sell. So it's built like a mechanic with sold hours. And if you
ever look at like Kelly Blue Book on how like you can go through, there's like 10 different things that you go through the page.
And this is this transmission takes seven and a half hours.
The mechanic is paid seven and a half hours, even if it takes nine or if it takes six.
So great mechanics can make a lot more money.
Sir, I'm going from one location to a 3 million to three locations next year.
What's your best advice?
Well, Angel, I can tell you, I wouldn't go from million to three locations next year, what's your best advice?
Well, Angel, I can tell you, I wouldn't go from one to three, I'd go from one to two.
Make sure you're getting a lot of reviews. Reputation is everything. Make sure you get advanced verification done. Make sure the reviews are everything when you go into a new market.
You've got to go into these markets. Let's just say you wanted to do 10 million. I would be putting $3 million into branding and marketing my first year.
30%.
Knowing I'm not going to make money my first year, but you got to get the brand, you got
to get the reviews, you got to get the jobs, you got to get the vehicles, the rolling billboards.
I think a lot of people, they go in and it's going to take you 10 years to build a market
unless you put the money into marketing and branding.
So there's a little bit of advice.
I've established ambitious goals for the company this year,
but I find myself questioning their realism
when we fall short.
My managers often say that nothing is enough for me,
but I just see the potential of the company
and I'm very ambitious.
This is why we call it,
we've got three goals for the company
then we've got the Tommy goal.
See, if you were doing every role in the company,
Vitaly, if it were you working every position,
yes, it would be possible,
but nobody else has honor next to their name.
I think one of the biggest issues I see is that
your kind of goals and your dreams assume that
everything goes right. And what I've learned how to do over the last few years is set a budget that
somebody could hit. You know, this year we're about 35% even in growth, not where I wanted to be.
In fact, I think it's a failure, but we're beating budget.
When your team helps you build a budget, they say it's safe to grow at 10% to 15% a year.
I would not plan on growing much more than 30% to 40% a year.
Now don't forget that your budget is how you pay your yearly bonus structures.
If you set a budget that you can't hit, one of the things my CFO told me is, you know, Tommy, my main goal is being the CFO of this company is to make sure we hit budget.
And it's a reasonable budget. It shows really, really strong strength. We're beating every other
company in home service. He goes, but if we continue each and every year to hit budget,
typically, when we go into our next deal, somebody will pay us out for the entire year,
the budgeted number, because we've never missed budget. So you want to say something you can hit that challenges people,
but also they know they can hit everything doesn't need to go perfect. And like I said,
all me and all my buddies, we tend to push, push, push. And it's never going to be good enough.
And you're just going to have to deal with that. By the way, it will never change.
You would think, let's just say the company next year does 90 million of EBITDA,
it's probably worth a billion and a half dollars.
Half of the company's mine.
You would think 750 million is pretty good.
It's a lot of money.
I don't know, it feels like monopoly money,
but it's not even close to what I feel like
we could be doing.
So I had a great conversation a couple days ago with my buddy Brian Kay.
And he said, I want you to sit down and this is what he does with people because so many
people are focused on revenue instead of profit.
So many people.
If you're not focused on profit and you're not at 15-20%, don't even talk about
revenue. Downsize the company a little bit and focus on profit. But how much money would
it take for you to live in a beautiful house, have the cars you want, live a good life,
help out your family? Work towards those goals. Because it goes by a quick man. And you'll
have another decade go by and you're still chasing a dream that you don't know why you dreamt it.
You're like, cause I could, cause I should.
And that's okay, I guess.
But I always say, do you have kids or do you have a wife?
Because Dan Martell tells a story
of he shows up 12th date night in a row
that he was late for dinner three hours
and his fiance at the time,
the wedding ring was sitting on the
table and they had a note that this was the last straw.
I love you, but we're not going to get married.
And he calls her up and says, I'm doing this for us.
And she said, no, Dan, you're doing this for you this was never our dream
this was your dream so when you set big ass goals and they're crazy you better make sure they're
for you both and your family and your kids are running in the same direction. And you better make sure this isn't a 10 year project
and you walk away after 10 years
with nothing to show for it.
So I would start working backwards from what's gonna make
your life a lot of impact.
And that includes family and faith and fitness as well.
Popsicle Air, remember the name.
Let's go, Zach.
How did you learn working through people? What skills did you
have to develop? And what make you go with Dan Martell rather than Patrick Pett David?
Well, I met Dan Martell. I mean, look, I'll probably work with Pat, but David, I'll probably
work with all the guys. I mean, at the end of the day, the funny thing is I make more
money than all of them combined,
but they've got each things to be learned from.
And I love these guys.
They're very smart.
And I got something to learn from them.
I'm genuinely curious from everybody I meet.
I find mentors and I extract.
Like Dan told me, he goes,
I worked with a mentor for a year.
I extract everything, I implement it,
and I go on to the next one.
And now I'm at the point I could have three or four. So I'm just pulling it all in.
What's nice about this podcast is you guys are getting all of it.
You pay attention and you implement and you read between the lines,
you're getting a million dollars poured into you every year.
I think the major thing I learned to do is find people that bought into my vision.
If they buy into my vision, and they get some type of equity incentive program, and
they're willing to run hard, I ask everybody to give me one Saturday out of the month,
take off a Tuesday.
They need to understand how I work, which is relentless.
That's the best way to say it.
If they're bought into this, we'll do well together. If they're not, I know about that right away. Then you got to delegate and they
use LEV's eight steps of delegation. We're starting to make a lot more commitments to
one another and I got to start from the top. And deadlines and proper communication and
documentation and signatures on things.
No one's going to do the job as good as you.
So just understand that we want to talk very seriously about business and moving forward,
but people need to know they're doing good.
They need the data boys.
See, I don't need that.
That's why I'm at the top.
You know, I guess Jesus is a Jesus Quartet gives me a few attaboys, but I don't need
it. I never needed it. The hardest person I have to deal with is myself in the mirror.
And knowing that I'm giving 110% to the right things, what I'm trying to do is focus on
where my time's going right now. Because often it gets misguided. My mom asked me last week,
how she gets an appointment on my calendar and
sometimes I take time for people that are actually on this podcast and I'm
robbing from my mom. I want to help everybody out but I don't want to rob
from Bree. Anyone needs me. I've got partners that need me. Family that needs
me. Dogs that need me.
So I'm going to be harder to get ahold of because I want to use this
forum to answer questions and I want people to respect that.
And a lot of people have ideas they want to run by me.
But we had two hundred and thirty five thousand downloads last month.
If 10 percent of the people wanted to run ideas by me, that'd be
23,500. I'd have to listen to a month. If each of those took five minutes, or whatever,
that would be over 100,000 minutes per month I'd be listening for the 10 minute idea.
So the reason I'm saying this is getting very focused with your time and understanding can
I delegate this or do I need to do it?
And I'm starting to delegate a lot more.
Let's see.
What can you recommend on how to interview and hire the right attorneys to assist in
building an EIP structure?
Or is there a different professional service provider
you would recommend?
You know, Tate, just email me,
I've got a good lawyer for this, you get the wrong one.
You're playing with fire.
Equity is not something you fool around with
and get the cheapest lawyer.
My lawyers have done this a lot.
They're conservative lawyers.
They're not cheap.
It cost me a lot of money because they built a cookie cutter because I sent so many people
to them.
By the way, lawyers can't give you a kickback.
It's illegal.
So don't think I'm fattening my pocket by giving you their name.
It's lawyers.
It's a fiduciary responsibility.
They're not allowed to give anything.
But I would at least talk to them and find,
you know, here's why I would ask.
I would ask them, like, look,
here's what the business is today.
They might tell you it's not the right time
to do an equity incentive program.
So just email me, you know,
go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash questions.
Met Dan Martell last week.
I suggested the future Colab project that could be Tommy Martello Ventures or Dan Martello
Productions.
That's great.
I love it.
If you ever listen to Dan, by the way, he's very good.
He's got this photographic memory where he reads books and he knows how to apply them
quickly.
Dan is a combination just like I am
of a lot of good mentors and books, but the difference is Dan applies it very well.
Dan and I want different things. Dan wants lifestyle businesses. I want to create companies
to sell because here's what happens when you sell a company. A lot of people get generational wealth
and break the curse. He wants to help them make money along the road and just continue to build this lifestyle
business.
But you know, he's doing what he wants him doing what I want.
Gerald said our conversion rate is around 75%.
Currently, I don't charge a service fee because we're trying to get as many calls as we can.
But my guys are converting pretty good.
So I always ask the conversion rate service versus sales, and you got to separate those
two.
If you're over 60, 65% in product sales, raise your prices.
And services should be over 90%.
Someone calls you with something broken, you got to get the job started and fix it.
You shouldn't be shooting for this guy on service tickets.
You should be starting the reason they called you out and they give them options afterwards.
Tommy, how do you stop your employees from leaving you and opening garage door companies
and being your competitor?
How much competition did you already create?
How much?
You know, there's a few companies.
Here's what I realized about a lot of my technicians.
They're very good at what they do.
They don't know how to form an EIN number or an LLC.
You know how hard it is in marketing right now
with what Google's doing?
You know what I told everybody
in yesterday morning's meeting for Thursday,
bring the fire, all 800 employees?
I said, hey, we got another great guy
that came back to us after two months.
I said, if you don't believe in yourself and me and this company,
give us your two-week notice, please.
Please give us your two-week notice.
Leave on good terms.
Go leave for two months and we'll see you in two months.
I said, I'll even write you a letter of recommendation.
I said, because when you find out what it's like,
that feast your family would have a great
week and a zero week, everybody thinks, oh man, they have no idea how many smart people
are on the A1 team working and running in the same direction.
You've got HR, you've got taxes, you've got CRM setups.
And people are like, look, I don't need all that.
I can have a small business.
I can have five employees.
Well, you better pay them good.
Have we created some competition?
Very little compared to like Precision and Garage, you know, GDS.
We pay more.
We give them equity.
We take them on pinnacle trips.
We have meetings daily. We show them if they're doing great or not. We give them equity. We take them on pinnacle trips. We have meetings daily.
We show them if they're doing great or not.
We give them paid training.
You know, we give them a new truck.
We buy their tools.
We cook for them.
How do you keep them?
Well, I want you to write down for me, Igor,
write down 100 reasons why somebody would work for you
and ask yourself this, why would I work for me?
Are you a great communicator? Do you tell them you love them? Do they have opportunity to move
up or out of the truck? Do you give them new trucks? Do they get paid training? Do you ever
recognize them with a gift card to their favorite restaurant? Do you ever call their wife and tell
them how great they're doing and you're so proud of their family? I don't do all these things,
You know, you're so proud of their family. I don't do all these things,
but Lord knows I'm trying and I'm actually getting better.
And I will be doing them all come January.
Thank you.
Carlito said, you're the best Tommy.
I really appreciate that.
How much man should I have on the road
before I pull out of the field and become a full-time manager?
You know, I'll leavevy would probably tell you five and you become a field
supervisor and you still got a van, but you're just checking in.
I'll tell you this.
Michael Gerber said, work on the business, not in the business.
What I did is I always had a vehicle that I left at the house for three years.
Whenever we were having a bad day,
Adam would call me and say, Hey dude, we needed some major sales to come in.
I said, line me up. I go run three jobs, murder them, get a referral,
get the reviews, find out the HOA president, go talk to the neighbors.
I was like the secret weapon you'd put in when you needed like some serious,
serious conversion revenue.
So that's probably what I would do if I were you.
So Justin Tarsten, talk about how PinParrot works.
It's funny because I just had a company in town
doing a shop tour and we were sitting down
in the conference room,
they got about 30 minutes of my time and they said,
dude, PinParrot, literally, we had the wrong locations.
So sometimes your locations are wrong.
So Callan's pretty smart.
I'll tell you where to put the locations.
You got to claim your location pages right.
You got to get the right citation sites.
There's certain things that set up the GMB correctly, that PinParrot kind of does for
you.
And then it hooks up to your CRM.
So when pictures are getting put into your CRM, the software posts the pictures.
It tells Google you were there.
And it expands the search query when people are searching for HVAC or roofing repair,
garage repair.
And what happens is you go from a few calls a day on your free Google listing to 10, 20,
30, 40 calls.
Then he helps you to find other locations, set up more showrooms and training centers.
So I mean, it's kind of the unfair advantage.
PenParrot is the unfair advantage.
Jimmy said, thank you, Tommy.
I appreciate everything you do.
It's exciting watching your mindset shift
to how much time we have in life to enjoy our family.
Well, I'm an overnight success, Jimmy,
of two decades, remember that.
When opening a new location,
do you promote from within or do you hire green?
I'm willing to pay somebody a crazy amount of money
to move to a new location.
If I know a guy's killing it, I can breed technicians in Phoenix.
I need to get them to move to another location.
That's like, I have to have that.
So you want your top guys moving to a new location to believe in the mission and the
vision of the company.
Vincent Johnson, my main man, invaluable coaching.
Yeah. Looking good, man.
Thanks. I got a shave.
I didn't shave yet today.
We're in San Diego here.
It's hard to see, but it's beautiful out there.
Yeah. Dude, I'm about to get chiseled.
I'm putting on 10 more pounds of muscle by the end of the year,
then I'm going to get cut. It feels good. I'll tell you this.
I feel like I got a lot of energy.
Super awesome presentation at mile high. Need to get together soon. Let's go David.
I have two years with my HVAC company.
Hardest thing for me is finding clients.
For that, I think I need marketing, but I don't have enough to pay for marketing.
Any idea how you can get out of this loop?
Yeah, well, here's the deal.
I mean, that's the hardest part about getting the business up.
You've got to network more.
I guess it's Juan Carlos.
When I didn't have a lot of money, dude, I'm knocking on the door, bringing donuts
to realtors.
I'm showing up to B&I.
I'm at the Chamber of Commerce meetings.
I'm always meeting somebody.
I could build a business in your market in six months where I am busier than hell with
zero marketing is through relationships.
I see people just like, it's almost like you're sitting here by the phone waiting, praying,
bring, bring ring go do something
I'm i'm gonna be this is tough love one carlos
Get your ass up and freaking go get what you deserve. No one's gonna give it to you. You want a six-pack?
You better work out me, right?
Tough love brother go out there and get it
Thanks lisa
What a reasonable goal for new what is a reasonable goal for new locations on the first year compared
to established like half? A reasonable goal. So depending on the industry you're in, pick a goal,
three million or five million and spend a fourth of that at a bare minimum in marketing.
But you got to do the marketing right. Do you know how hard it is to greenfield? That's why private equity loves the companies that
can greenfield. The people that I know that greenfield, they've got machines. You can't
even imagine they got outbound dialers, people knocking on doors, they're buying information
and email blasting. Like they create a machine. If fill out an applicant an application for getting like a the fitter
You're getting a call every five minutes for the first three hours the next day. You're getting a call an email and a text
They got a four month campaign
They're gonna come knock on your door and you guys are saying I call them back once and they didn't answer
then
Look, you've got to have a machine and
the machine needs to be robust and automated.
This is something that Sherp could help with.
But Sherp is not all of it.
You got to have a lot more than just Sherp.
I mean, Sherp does the heavy lifting,
but you still need to have a machine.
I've been in business for three years.
I have a ton of commercial accounts that
feed me and take care of my two guys.
I spent a ton on marketing companies
to get my residential side going. I've used Scorpion and other large companies. They hit
me up every week. As well as small companies that say they're specialized in plumbing,
all seem to struggle with getting things going. I have given eight months each time. They seem to tell
me the same thing we need to up the budget to get more. But when I get started, they period, period,
period. Well, I'll tell you this. Look, I put hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of dollars just in SEO. When you compete against me, how do you win?
Well, how do you eat a, uh, elephant one, one bite at a time?
I mean, listen, what can you do better than the large companies, relationships,
BNI meetings, asking questions, you can get more reviews.
What I would do is go out for free.
Like free snakes, plumbing snakes.
I go door to door.
I say, listen, I'm in your town.
I'm a small company. You can get the big companies that'll charge you 10 times more.
Let me snake your stuff. Let me put a sticker on your hot water heater when you need me.
Let me give you guys, if you guys, if your flanges are going, let's not wait for your toilet to leak.
All I ask is, let me know if you think I did a great job. If you're slow, you go out there and do the work
and get the ton of reviews.
You could win at these things.
But I'll say this, but I know no one's gonna do the work.
I hate to say it, but you want leads
and the problem is if you're not charging enough,
you'll never have the marketing dollars.
I mean some people say I want a $2,000 marketing budget. I spend a million a month just on paper clip. That's not even including anything else. How do you compete? It's hard. You got to play
in a different game. Pull them into your arena where they can't compete, the David and Goliath.
So think about everything you could do that the big guys can't do, but you can't compete
on ad dollars.
You just can't because your tickets aren't high enough.
You don't have enough training.
Yeah, you might be able to have two guys, but you can't have 40 guys in the market that
could compete against my guys.
How could you?
I've got managers on top of managers.
I call them coaches.
We've got trainers in the field.
We've got ride-alongs. They're coming back to the warehouse. They got daily meetings. They got back and
pay them way more. They got better insurance. They got new trucks and tools. I started like
you, but I had to work my freaking tail off seven days a week, nights, weekends and holidays.
A lot of people say I went into business to have freedom. Five years of sweat equity minimum
and then you got to reinvest everything in for the next 10 years for an ROI. To do what I do.
What's the name of the company again? I'm not sure what company. I named a lot of
them. Just post in the comments the question. Diverse and measurable lead gen.
Strong conversion rates and gross profit per project. Solidity but turnkey
systems effectively implemented.
What other key factors should I place
to maximize the multiplier on equity transfer?
I mean, I think you named it.
You gotta have the highest booking rate,
the best follow-up systems in the league.
And I would make sure you got a recruiting system.
You can recruit A plus players quickly.
And then how long before they turn into
an A player and how much are you turning over. The HR side of it's important. The next thing I talk
about is what's your ability to get vehicles and iPads and tools when you need them? Like how quick
can you do it? Then I look at what's your reputation? How much are you focusing on reputation?
Gotta focus on reputation. By the way, I want to test something out. I got 19 likes here.
Can everybody where they're watching,
hit the love button and show some love.
I just want to see if we can make this jump up 100 real quick.
It's at 19 and that's 19 is weak sauce.
19 is Steve Iserman's number.
There we go, 27. It's moving.
It's moving. Let's go. 35, there we go, 27. It's moving. It's moving. Let's go.
35, there we go.
More jumps, more jumps.
In Georgia, we are at the same point,
used a few companies and not much results,
about to start pen pair to see what happens.
So pen pair is gonna help people.
Like, look, guys, what if I told you
the yellow pages still works?
What if I told you Angie's List works, Yelp works?
What if I told you my paper performance works? There? What if I told you Angie's list works, Yelp works? What if I told you my paper performance works?
There's a science to each of them a little bit.
It's not like a one size fits all approach.
Even Facebook ads work really, really well.
In fact, we're starting these out
and I think we're gonna be able to generate more money
from Facebook than we do from Google.
But what I can tell you is,
sometimes it takes six months to figure it out.
And it's not this pray and pray approach. I did TV, I did radio, I tried this for six months.
I was talking to a billionaire from Anderson's Renewal, owns a bunch of areas. What he told me
was, dude, when I do mailers, I got to hit these clients up 10 times to get them to buy. You know,
he's got a big average ticket, you know, an average ticket of 38 grand. But everybody thinks, man, I ran an ad for two months and it didn't work.
See, it's almost like you're running, you're running towards the end zone and just right at
the five yard line, you spike it right before all the leads turn on. So you got to figure out what
you could afford and stay consistent with it and on that audience. Thank you, Tommy. We all love the knowledge that you share.
I would like to know how to replicate this in the automotive repair services.
Brandon Dawson. Yeah, good.
Well, there's a guy I should tell you about Miguel.
If you want to know how to do it in the auto services,
I just spoke in Nashville. Aaron Stokes, man, Stokes, look him up.
I can get you an intro to him.
The dude is the one of the smartest guys I've ever met.
He's a business genius.
He understands exactly how to, uh, the automotive, by the way, my dad owned a
mechanic shop, a transmission shop.
I know a lot about automotive.
And here's the problem with automotive, man. It's like, dude, I brought Breeze car and they wanted 30 grand. I got my DeLorean fixed. That was 30 grand. I don't mind spending the money,
but do things above and above. Detail the car. Make it smell good. Restore the leather. Add
some type of value when you do stuff. Make them remember you forever.
restore the leather, add some type of value when you do stuff, make them remember you forever.
Man, I'm still in a situation where I can't get enough work to get a full-time crew, purchase more equipment.
Josh, when Ara called me the other day with Service Titan, he told me,
I'm one of the few companies that he sees in the entire system that's up. He said,
since Service Titan has started
and Service Titan has the best,
biggest, largest companies, 12,000.
He said, this is the first year, Tommy,
that I've ever seen a massive decline
in all the companies, except for 18%.
So this is kind of like being in the housing crisis.
This is where it's gonna shake out all the people
that really, they're not willing to do the work.
You've got to go after the relationships. I'll say this till I'm blue in the face. You
got to go meet the people. You got to be doing outreach on Facebook, posting in the city
pages, asking for business, networking. If you're not a networker and you're not comfortable
in front of an audience introducing yourself and you're not willing to work on your days
off, you're not going to build a business, not in this economy. audience introducing yourself and you're not willing to work on your days off.
You're not gonna build a business, not in this economy.
Two years ago you could fart in the wind
and it would spray money at you.
You know, you could literally,
I see you fart in a jar and sell it.
And that's what Bre does for her birthday.
I'm kidding, she's sitting right there.
But it's not easy to make money.
Listen, it's not easy in this economy
to make a lot of money.
I will help.
I've got a lot of ways to do it, but the first one is get your ass out there and meet the people.
When is it time to hire a CFO? Well, you need a really good bookkeeper and I would hire a fractional
CFO. Fractional CFOs you can get for far less, but they can give you a half a million dollar
system to plug and play. So you need to get your numbers dialed in dialed in I got a good guy I'm probably gonna pull into the HSF group to help
everybody love meeting you at Pantheon thank you Amanda I appreciate it
pen parent it's not pen parent P I N parrot PR-O-T dot com. Power Selling Pros is definitely worth it
if you have two CSRs because a shitty CSR
is booking at 50, 60%, they'll get you to 90%.
That's a 30 to 40% uplift.
Hell yeah, it's worth it.
They charge you based on per CSR, so absolutely.
Sign up, listen, if you sign up for Power Selling Pros and you're not making way more money,
call me. I'll get them to get you a refund.
I know bring them really, really well.
I know those guys well. Sign up for them.
Have them work for you for 90 days.
If you're not saving your buttload of money and booking more calls,
then call me up and I'll see what I can do.
Mobile fleet maintenance for home service companies,
advice from a one-man show in the field,
still looking to grow and get out of the field.
To focus on sales, what are
some big picture items that I should focus on?
I have a hard time managing B2B sell cycles with
these companies when still out in the field.
Harrison, the first thing I would do is hire somebody
like the top guy you can find in the world and let them be your protege.
Hire your wife or your girlfriend or his girlfriend to come film everything.
Start making videos and cataloging everything, transcribing those and building your manuals.
You need to get a trusted person that you can groom exactly the right way.
How to talk to clients.
You need to duplicate yourself first.
Focus on that and record it all, the camcorder method.
Start to log all these things.
Make sure you got somebody tied in
that's not going anywhere, you could depend on.
That first hire is gonna be very, very important.
Spend the next year training them.
Make sure you give them the tools
that they can train other people.
Then you get into the office and you build the business.
That other person runs the jobs.
Now they got to protege.
So now the next year, they're training the protege.
Now you got a couple.
The sad part is when you don't treat them right, you teach them all the stuff and they
leave.
Or they get hurt or something happens.
But most of the time they stay.
Buying a small two-man show business in a service area that we are not currently in,
what is the best way to go to market with that company after it has been purchased?
So the best thing is to take the existing customer list, email, text, write a handwritten
letter to every customer. Next thing is to call every single client and get on a, you know, offer
a very affordable tune-up. The next thing you want to do is go through their Google My Business, call
every one and two and three star review.
You can track it back to the database and tell them it's under new ownership.
We're embarrassed about what happened.
We're going to do whatever it takes to change your mind about our company
because the owner is just really, he's on top of this and he wants to see what
we can do to earn a five star instead of this one or two or three star.
That's a good beginning.
Then you got to get regular reviews coming in.
You got to retrain the technicians.
You got to get them smiling more, making more eye contact, getting the right tools.
Rewrap the trucks.
Highly recommend like Lance Bachman does like I do.
You buy all the Antonelli brands.
You don't have a shitty brand.
So you re did the brand.
You got the GMB. You got rid of all the negative reviews. You ret't have a shitty brand. So you re-did the brand. You got the GMB. You
got rid of all the negative reviews. You retrained the guys. Now you're going to start other
marketing and hire a couple more guys. And you've re-monetized the list.
I believe you have said that if your marketing is not done effectively, it should not only
solve your lead problems, but your recruiting problems as well. Can you provide a couple
specific examples
of what is included in your marketing content
that are creative, lead design for that purpose?
Well, listen, I just, this last few months,
I've been getting testimonials from all my guys,
my top guys.
I've been getting their wives involved.
You gotta create a funnel to get great people.
Go onto your website.
One of the things we're redoing is,
how can you apply here?
It's massive.
On your ads, are you putting, we're hiring and have a QR code and say, if you know anybody
looking for a great job, we're hiring.
Just a little thing on all your marketing.
Are you getting reviews on Indeed and Glassdoor because that's where your future employees,
which I consider coworkers, go to find you.
These things are important.
And I don't think people take it very seriously.
You've got to figure out how to build a funnel and make sure there's a high conversion rate.
Just like your marketing dollars, you need attribution.
You need to find out how quick it is to respond to an application.
Same things happen for employee leads.
You guys are looking at the same way as marketing leads.
Listen, guys, I got briefed in here.
We got a wedding later.
I got to get going.
The first thing they wanted to do was cancel this.
And I'm like, we don't cancel the Q&As.
It's an amazing group of people.
And it wasn't being canceled for long term,
just, hey, we're on kind of a trip, kind of a vacation.
But it's a Friday, it's a work day.
So here we are.
I hope you guys get value.
I want you to understand one thing.
When you go to the doctor and I go to the doctor
and Bill goes to the doctor and Gina goes to the doctor
and Rebecca goes to the doctor,
most likely the doctor is giving a different prescription
depending on how you're feeling, your age,
how much you're working out, what's your diets like.
Each and every one of you need a little bit
of a different prescription.
Some of the things I say holistically, you need reviews,
you need to get an order chart, you need manuals,
you need to get out the right CRM.
I recommend new trucks with the right branding.
But I don't have a one size fits all.
The last thing I wanna do is give you advice
that might hurt your reputation,
or like I was talking about my buddy that did EOS ruin your business.
I like to tell you that this is all generic.
I'll tell you this.
I was talking to Jim Leslie earlier.
Jim Leslie, if you go to homeservicefreedom.com
and just fill out a form there and talk to Jim.
Jim's really good.
He's worked with me at A1.
He was my CMO.
He just gives you these little things to turn.
And he doesn't charge to just have a conversation.
I think we should do a webinar each month
of how these things are applied
and where to start at the right time.
But HSF, we're doing a lot of cool stuff, man.
I'm gonna be hiring fractional CFOs,
getting you guys focused on profit,
making sure you got a plan to get reviews,
building API hooks, getting the things like PinPair
and the other 80 vendors we have
that we get you guys rebates.
I don't know if you guys understand,
but just the program you get my newsletter,
you get the rebates on all the vendors we use.
Another thing I wanted to say is,
I don't take a paycheck from HSF.
I hope you guys understand I get paid zero.
I hire more people to help your business.
And the facts are down the road, most likely, the people that do the program and are successful
that do all the right stuff and show up to the meetings, I'm going to invest in.
I mean, for me, it's a way to find out who's real or not.
A lot of people, they talk the talk, they got all the ideas in the world.
Not a person out of the 100 on here right now
don't have great ideas and thoughts.
Very few of you do the work.
Very few of you show up.
Very few of you implement.
So when I find somebody that's an expert implementer,
I wanna do business with them.
So I hope you guys have a great day.
I hope you have a great weekend. I hope you have a great weekend.
I hope you guys, I know there's a lot of issues.
This is a tough economy.
We're going through an election.
Interest rates are dropping.
I think next year is going to be a great year.
So appreciate you guys.
If you guys have any more questions, I didn't get to all of them and I apologize.
Just go to homeservisexpert.com forward slash questions and leave them there and I'll get
to them on the next round.
You guys have a fantastic day.
Appreciate you.
Hey there.
Thanks for tuning into the podcast today.
Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.
I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states.
The insights in this book are powerful
and can be applied to any business or organization.
It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build
and develop a high performing team
like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.
So if you wanna learn the secrets
that help 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 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.