The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A With Tommy - Stop Trading Time for Money: How to Build a Self-Sustaining Business

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire and Elevate, and the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $200 million-plus home service business with over 700 employees in 22 states. Through HomeServiceMillionaire.com and the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy shares his experience and insights to help fellow entrepreneurs scale their businesses. In this special episode of the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy answers your biggest questions about lead generation, delegation, financial intelligence…

You got to start thinking bigger. I was talking, we were talking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg. Here's why they win. They think bigger than us. And I'm not thinking small anymore. And that takes bold changes. It takes people that are willing to take very controversial decision making, extreme risks. And most of you guys don't even, you would never move.

You're in your comfort zone. You know, you don't want to change too much. You know, look, I'm going to change everything. Be comfortable with change. Get an accountability partner. Get comfortable with discipline. Set yourself up for success. Find somebody to hold you accountable.

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 elevate and win.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right. We are live. Welcome to January's Q and a 2025. It's going to be a good one today. I got a lot of energy worked out this morning, feeling good. Started up my diet again, going hard in the paint. I weighed

two forty six point two this morning, looking to get to below eight percent body fat here, going hard in the paint. And I started thinking a lot about this. Like, you know, some of you guys, I've been getting a lot of messages, lots of social media messages of how do you work so much and still motivate yourself to do these things, work out, go on vacations with your family and do these things. And I know this word gets overused and the word is accountability. It's kind of you versus you. David Goggins talks about this is it's you versus you. But accountability is when you get an accountability partner.

You can be accountable to yourself, but why not find somebody, you know, if you got a really good person in your life, they don't allow you to kind find somebody, you know, if you got a really good person in your life, they don't allow you to kind of miss, you know, when they say, Hey dude, let's just miss the gym today. Hopefully the other person's like, no, we said we were going to do this. Let's leave early. No, no, we're not going to leave early. Hey dude, you might be having a bad day.

Take some pre-workout. Let's, let's get through this. We go to the gym. We're going to work hard. We're going to work. We're going to work hard. You know, it's, let's get through this. We go to the gym, we're going to work hard. We're going to work. We're going to work hard. You know, it's such a big deal. Another big thing is I had my buddy Barry over from power selling pros and his

son came with him and his son 16. And we talked about a lot of things and he said, what's a few tips, you know, if you were 16, I said, number one, go open a Roth IRA. And I kind of explained to him compound interest. And I said, rich people, very wealthy people, they focus on the principle. They leave that there and they focus like a lot of people when they make money, they can't wait to spend it. Like if I told you I'm going to give you $100 million, you'd be like, oh my gosh, let's

make a list of everything we're going to buy. Wealthy people don't do that. They say, what are we going to invest that in? We can spend the compound interest. So 100 million in 10% is 10 million a year. I'd say we could spend five of it. We want that principle to grow, therefore the compound interest grows.

I said, always bring a notebook with you when you're talking to mentors. Take notes, smile a lot, ask great questions and always be curious. I said this idea of delayed gratification. You know, one of the things that I found out, you know, when I was young, when I was his age, is I thought I was making money, but I didn't put an hourly rate on what I was doing. I think a lot of us, we go around and we talk about money, money, money, but he's right now he's rebuilding trailers, I'll buy dirt bikes and rebuild them.

The problem with that is do you measure your time? How much did it take you to find that dirt bike? How long did it take you to clean it up, sell it? How, when you went online, posted it on a, you know, Craig's list or, or Facebook marketplace, how long did you spend cleaning it? See if the hourly rate is not, you know, a hundred bucks or more, why are you doing it? Most people don't, they don't figure out their time into the equation.

You know, I've been thinking a lot what life looks like in the future. And one of the goals is to start refining my calendar over and over and over. Like once a week, go through everything I did. And like, I'm gonna take a sheet of paper, old school, and I'm gonna say, listen, I'm gonna put a check mark everywhere I feel like

I could be delegate more. The plan is to only get to three hours of really extreme work a day. Look, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk runs what four companies as a CEO. He's working out on helping the, uh, the government here in the United States. Uh, with Doge or Dodge or whatever it is, like, trust me, he delegates most of his stuff and he hires great. So or whatever it is. Like, trust me, he delegates most of his stuff and he hires great. So understanding what money is.

And then I had this revelation this morning that I wanted to share of just, I don't pay myself a ton of money at A1 Gras or a service. It's enough that the government could sniff test me as a W2 employee, say this CEO makes about right. You know, I actually am one of the only people here that don't have a bonus because I didn't

care about the bonus. I have so much equity in the company. It wasn't important for me to negotiate that. What's important to me is I don't care about my W2. I care about the company's growth. I mean, that's everything. How do you build a company that's worth a ton of money? That's all you guys should be thinking about.

Not how do I make more money this year. It should be how do I make the company worth more money? Learning how to sell a business is the most important thing you should be thinking about. And when people tell me they want to get $100 million, it just, it still baffles me at times. If you're in the right industry and you're growing fast enough, you know, I just got off the phone with one of my marketing guys. I said, look, we got to double the leads by the end of the year. The only thing I care about, hire great people and train them, make sure the cultures where I needed to be and increase the lead flow of quality leads.

That's it. That's my job. More leads, more great leads, more great guys and gals running the business, especially technicians and installers that are trained, trained, trained, trained, trained, and people know that I appreciate them trained, trained, trained, trained. And people know that I appreciate them. And it's a great culture. Those are the three things. That's all only three, three things I want to deal with.

In fact, I'm not going to be involved in anything else. I'm going to make sure I exit myself from this business. I don't want to be the micromanager. I don't want to be, everything's got to run through me. I don't want to be the guy that's got to look at every decision and say yes or no. In fact, I don't know how to log in a payroll. I don't know how to get certain things out of service Titan. I don't know. I never logged into intact ever. I don't want to know how to do inventory. I don't want to know how the gas works on the trucks. I don't even want like, look, I know the numbers. I get these reports,

but some of you guys got to let go, man. And some of you guys have been betrayed. Some of you guys been used. Some of you guys can't trust anymore. And you got to have checks and balances. But if you are the everything for your business, the first thing you need to do is hire an EA. And a good one. And your life will change forever. But that involves a lot of trust.

You know, other than the business, I got engaged, which I'm very excited about. Me and Bree, she's on cloud nine. I'm on cloud nine. That happened about two weeks ago in Bora Bora. You know, it's a big step. I've never been engaged, never been married, no kids. So it's the next step, but this chapter I'm going in, I'm ready. Like, you know, I feel like I'm going to be an amazing dad. I feel like I've been put on this earth to be a dad. Yeah.

I want to change people's lives. I want to continue to be the best home service expert I can. But the next trial, you know, I'm not, no one's ever prepared to be a mother or a father, but I'm getting ready for that. That's going to be a big chapter of my life. Also, I want to travel more. And I'm coming to this,

the sense that I don't want to stop working, but I don't want to work all the time. So what really makes me happy, I'll tell you what makes me happy is I've got several cousins that I just love being around. I just love it. I've got a lot of family that I just love to be around. I got a lot of friends that I just can't get enough of.

So how can I travel the world, play a lot of golf, do a lot of fishing, do some hunting, play some golden tee, do some bowling, watch some fun movies, go on the lake, do some snow sports, hot chocolate on a cold day, enjoy my life, but still do a lot of business to keep me sharp, but not a ton, just a few hours a day. Take Mondays off.

So I've got to refine, refine, refine. JD, one of my managers wrote this book, Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes. So for me, it, you know, JD, one of my managers wrote this book, nothing changes if nothing changes. So for me, it's, it's literally like you keep doing the same thing. You're going into 2025 doing what you did in 2024. Oh, it was a great year. Keep going. Well, they refine your work on your calendar the most delegate a lot. If you can. I can't explain that enough. Like the delegation and getting the calendar, I'm making a note for Ashley, one of my EAs. I headed to Atlanta tomorrow, we just opened that market.

Gonna be opening up other markets this year. And what we're working on is documenting everything. That's making sure there's a checklist. And I don't think people have documented, they don't have enough information when they're just going through just to make sure everything's right. Some new technology we're bringing on,

you know, I feel like, you know, I was talking to a buddy of mine and he was talking to a buddy of his in California and he said, do you know how many thousands of contractors are praying that you pull this off and get two to $3 billion valuation? And I was like, no, I don't really know anybody that's really hoping that that happens, other than me and the team of people that have equity in the business. And he's like, no,

he's like, if you pull that off, it changes the whole industry for everyone. And I'm like, yeah, I never really thought about that. He's like, you got to do this, dude. You got the world on your shoulders. You got to pull it off. I'm like, well, if you do a SWOT analysis, there's only a few things that can stop us from doing it. You know, if Google completely shut down or change their algorithm, I mean, we do everything by the book. We were investing a lot of money in SEO, lots and lots of money, lots in a nonprofit of 501 3Cs and getting backlinks from those like investing, you know, putting money into churches,

high schools, colleges, lots of stuff this year. In fact, my goal is to donate at schools, colleges, lots of stuff this year. In fact, my goal is to donate at least $5 million over the next two years. And not to mention the time effort, you know, get involved, donate doors, use the company for wounded warriors and all those other things, not just money, but time and the whole company. But let's dive into it. You know, we've got a, you guys go to HS, home service expert and keep a lookout.

We've got a pretty big webinar coming live. Me and Jim are gonna do it. And I'm gonna be talking about a lot of cool things we're working on. If you guys know, and you guys really follow what I say, and you understand how important marketing and hiring right and training your guys and culture are, and you can live in those seats

and really just get rid of all the obstacles and stay focused and go to seminars and have accountability partners and understand how important having discipline is, you're gonna be successful this year. I mean, I get hundreds of people reaching out a month saying thank you. And I really appreciate the feedback,

but they're the people that actually do the work. It's very rare I get a thank you for somebody that listens to these, but they don't do the work. And then there's other people that they'll just kind of bounce into these and listen to the Q&A here and there. Then they'll ask stupid questions like, how do you rank on Google? That's like saying, you know, how do you become a billionaire? How do you rank on Google? Like everybody wants these simple answers like, oh, you just do this. It's not that simple. It takes like focus. How do I hire good? Well, what kind

of question is how do I hire good? Like you got to be specific and you got to like watch all my content. Like go on Instagram, go on TikTok, go on LinkedIn, like follow me on X like watch all the content I put out on YouTube and then then ask really good questions. But the questions I get are rinse and repeat sometimes. And it's like the questions don't have any, like they're just, how do I run my business? And I'm like, well, like I can't even fit, one guy asked me to be the CEO of his company for three months.

I'm like, dude, what, like I'm the CEO of A1. Anyways, you guys gotta join. If you're not in the home service expert group, just join right now, go onto Facebook and join. Hopefully you are. There's 15,000 people in there. We're gonna 10 X that. If you know anybody invite them to the home service expert group.

We're really trying to put a lot of effort into that. So let's go ahead and get some questions going. James said, I know you hired your mom to answer phones. Yes, 2010 I did that. I just put my mom on the phone for me part time. How did you set up her pay in the very beginning? What was fair to her and you? How did you transition over time? So, you know, you gotta think that was 2010. So that's 15 years ago. I paid her 15 bucks an hour. I mean, if I were you,

I pay her like everybody else. I'd be more of a performance pay. I'd say, look, I'll give you a 12 bucks an hour plus 10 bucks per book call. Or, you know, call it six bucks per book call. She could book three calls an hour. You know, that's 18 bucks. Like I would still pay performance pay. I didn't know about that in 2010. Staking the outcome and like, look,

I had my stepdad working for me too. So my mom was good. My mom just was like, how do I help you, honey? I want to get involved. She wasn't looking, they had enough money that they could live on. They sold their house for a lot of money in Michigan. They weren't like trying to make a living working for me.

They were just like, let's assist you. And in the end it worked out for them. You know, they made, you know, they got a big chunk of money and they deserve more than that. I do think they helped me out at a big time of my life. And I'm one of those guys that no debt goes unpaid. So there's, there's more. I try to do as much as I could for my mom and bill picked up a trip for them.

And my uncle to go this cruise and they went for Bora Bora. And well, you know, they're not going to make taxes for the next 10 years. I'm covering that, but it's still not enough. It's not even close to enough. So for what they've done, they sacrificed a lot, all their friends, all the family we have, they just picked up and moved to help me run the business. So I don't have the best advice. It worked out well for me.

But you hear nightmares about family working for you. Animosities. We helped grow this thing. My family, they were great. They didn't make me feel bad for making money. They didn't get mad at me that I was always at work. They understood what it was like to build a business and they're my biggest fan. So I'm probably not the best because working with mom and dad, working with your sister,

your brother, it's hard and you got to document everything. I just, Al Levy always taught me you got to be able to have Thanksgiving dinner and not talk about work together and make sure that it's productive and that it's healthy and that the relationship is still strong. If not, you got to separate very quickly. Gabe said, what's your SOP for abandoned calls and service tight? And so very interesting. You say this, Gabe.

I had Ryan and Taylor from Sherpa out here last week. We did 700700 something thousand dollars from abandoned calls from chirp. And interestingly enough, there's what's called bitly. It's a short code. It's a way to kind of like tiny URL. One third of the messages weren't getting through because the sprinted Verizon AT&T were blocking it because it looked like spam.

So we fixed that. So we're expecting over a million dollars from chirp this month based on that's one campaign from a band and goal. So very easy thing to set up, very easy thing to do for an extra million dollars a month for a company my size, which it might be 20,000, 30,000 for you. I don't know what size company you are, but it's set and forget it. It's literally that easy. And we've got four or five other campaigns should have been live already.

See, like I just get things done very, very quickly. My team, sometimes I feel like they just, they wanted to go. Perfection is the enemy of just getting started. Like everybody wants to do things perfectly. I'm like, let me just make a video. So like, I'll just play something for you. Like on an abandoned, cause I remember we have different brands. We have, you know, Don's and garage door doctor and different things like that. So here's just a quick video of like, this one might not be perfect, but

Tommy Mello owner and a garage door doctor. Listen, we were at your house recently to give you a garage door estimate. And I wanted to let you know, I'm here to do whatever it takes to earn your business. We've got a lot of different options for you. Give me an opportunity. Text me back on this number. I'm going to get my right hand guy on it. I look forward to hearing from you. It's just these messages that goes out when we don't close the door, get them on the phone,

text them back. It's all chirp. It's pretty these messages that goes out when we don't close the door, get them on the phone, text them back. That's all chirp. It's pretty simple stuff. And then you A-B test that, run a different message. And then if they're shopping, you say, look, before you buy a door, I want you to go with the best possible company to satisfy your needs.

Here's 10 things you need to know about before you buy a garage door. Because some people say we gotta get three prices. You know, that's just the way we do business. You should have the guy putting in there in the checklist and that fires the campaign on shirt. I Mean this stuff is so easy, but nobody does it like I say it till I blew in the face get pictures in your reviews Make sure there's a way to get every single job with a review It's just very few people like you get get the idea, it gets written down and then

it goes somewhere to die. Does that sound familiar? Like, yeah, but there's so many things, what should I, like, what do I do right away? Well, I would focus on the things that take zero effort from me, except a few videos and a little bit of copywriting, which is true. I mean, when you hire out Levi, it's a lot of work. I mean, I'm looking at his book, like you got to put the manuals together, you gotta read them out loud. That stuff takes your time, effort and energy and it'll have the most incredible impact in the business. But when I give you guys things very simply to do,

and you wonder why things don't change, why things don't get better, which crazy to me, but I would like our CSRs to call back every missed call. Yeah, see, I just implement chirp on that one, Gabe. Ronnie said, you mentioned developing relationships with HOAs. Can you explain that?

Are they marketing your business or referrals? And what do they get out of it? Well, an HOA, think about it, an HOA is usually the people that are like the president and the controller, everybody within an HOA, they just wanna uphold their property value. They wanna make sure there's no cars parked in the street. There's no overgrown landscaping. The roofs aren't leaking. The landscaping looks good. Some of them pay for Christmas lights. There's certain things. They

want everything to kind of stay looking good. And that means someone can't have a completely different garage door than everybody else. So it's just crazy like the outlier. It means there's color codes. So if they find a vendor like outlier. It means there's color codes. So if they find a vendor like me, and I could go talk to them about safety, neighborhood watch, you know you can take a hanger and actually manually release the garage door and break in. HOAs are very careful about safety, safety in the community. They want to make sure there's nobody breaking in.

So we talk a lot about safety, making sure your garage doors work and make sure there's a fire or any type of natural disaster you could get out or emergency, how the manual lease works. So we go in teaching them safety, teaching them Amazon could deliver it to the garage and that way there's no people stealing off your porch. We talk about that stuff. Then we say also, you know, we have, we can install an opener that's super quiet that you can actually get in through my queue. And we talk about we get the color code for the garage doors. So we find out what's acceptable. What would you guys allow the HOA votes on all the doors they allow? So then we went a client and then they send out mailers every month. And they say, this is our vendor of choice. You could call them up and they'll give you every single thing we voted on. Because otherwise you got to wait for HOA approval. Sometimes that takes 90 days. When

I get to say these have already been approved and advertised to the clients, that your HOA picked us as the preferred vendor for the entire HOA. There's preferred pricing. We got the color codes and we got the different examples of what you're allowed to carry. Especially if there's a storm, we had a bad windstorm. There was like every other door at this time. This was 2012. And I just door knocked and said, Hey, we can fix this door for you and it's HOA approved. So there's a lot of advantages of working with HOAs because you're trusted and true. I've worked with apartment complexes. Now listen, we're growing so big that I don't

focus as much because they're smaller tickets. HOAs are still decent size. But when I was hustling man, I was stopping off in every apartment. I give them a talk about because most departments don't have a side exit door. They just have the one that goes in the house. So there's this thing you could drill into the door. And it's a key that you can pull the manual release. And I install those on every door. Like I was just hustling man. I figured out a way to earn everybody's business. And that's what you got to do early in business. A lot of people are like, what do I got to do to get leads?

Get your ass up and go get the business. I'm going to a BNI meeting on Thursday in Atlanta. Tommy Mello, you know, is going to a BNI meeting. How many of you guys have said, oh, we outgrew BNI? It's crazy to me. You're too good to going to a B and I meeting. How many of you guys have said, oh, we outgrew B and I? It's crazy to me. You're too good to go to a B and I meeting or a chamber of commerce. Crazy.

Matt said, I own a junk removal business. We do clean outs, junk removal, and light demolition based in Philadelphia. Any tips for growth in a competitive landscape on a tight budget? I mean, listen, look, where can you market? It's marketing, right? I mean, look, end of the day, junk removal.

I study everything I could by like waste management and how they grew, but tight budgets, you know, you got to go out and meet the people simply like little things. Dude, like, you know, what I noticed is the guys that flip houses have the biggest mouse. They're the best networkers on the planet. You go give them a deal. I say, listen, if you keep getting me clients, they've got a whole network of people. Everyone calls them because they're like, you're the one that specializes in houses. Who do I use for this? Who do I use for this? Like think outside of the box. Where does my clients, the gift that keeps giving, where do they need me? And go build relationships with these

people. You know, there's this thing called construction monitor. It tells you everybody that's pulled a permit for anything in most counties. And if they pull the permit to remodel the house, there's going to be some junk removal. Like think outside of the box, find tools like this, ask more people. If you gave me a day just to work on things, I can give you so much you wouldn't even know where to start. But you got to test different things to see that was easy. That works well. Let's continue to do that. Let's put more resources over here. You know, I try a lot of things. A lot of them don't work, but some of them do. If one out of 10 work well and I can test a thousand things, I just got a hundred things that work well in a year. And that's the difference is a lot of people are like,

oh man, I wish we had leads today. Looks like we're not going to much. I'm like, dude, I gotta go out and meet some realtors and some brokers and some insurance agents and some people that deal with escrow accounts. They're like, I never sat at home waiting for leads. Even when the phone was slow, I'd go talk to the Yellow Pages, I'd talk to Valpac. I'd go study other people's Valpac because I could look at last month and say,

is my offer the best? You said, what are your thoughts on junk removal, clean out, light demolition industry, any insights or ideas on performing roll-ups? I mean, listen, I think you could roll up any industry. I think it's yesterday Trump got in. I think it's going to be, I text my guy from Goldman Sachs, you know how much money's on the sidelines, according to them, $8 trillion sitting in part of that is because interest rates are up. If just a part of that gets deployed, plus you got the repaid, you know,

this money comes back in from other countries for free. I'm not saying Trump's the, you know, perfect for everything. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying, I think it's going to be good to stimulate the economy. And I'm saying now is going to be like, you better start growing and get an idea on how to scale your business. A lot of people just want a lifestyle business that never made sense to me. Most people that have a lifestyle business are coaches. And they like to brag about their small business that barely makes any money, why they're trying to make money in coaching. Maybe it's an ego thing, but they, they, they brag.

I know hundreds of people that they have this lifestyle business, but then they like, I want to be a coach. I want to be on stage by the way, everybody and their brothers are asking me how to start a podcast. And I'm like, you start a podcast to meet your clients. Now I started a podcast to learn more about home service. Completely, probably not the right thing to do. Now I got an education in home service

because I was able to get the right people on, but I started eight years ago. So, you know, everybody thinks, man, I want to do what Tommy does. There's no money in podcasting. There's no money in events. There's really not a lot of money in coaching. And plus, you know, but you can help a lot of people out. There's future opportunities.

I do events because I love them and I'm friends with all the vendors and I went big at A1. Every single thing I negotiate for these events and everything I do, I'm like, just give A1 a better price. Help A1 grow more. Give us what's going on next month on the what are you guys developing to make us better? You should see everything I negotiate to just help A1. Everything I do with the back of my mind going, how does A1 win? How does my family at A1 win?

Like every stage I get on, I talk about A1. People reach out to me, 10 people a day, hey, I used A1 because I saw you you're a great company You guys lived up to the expectations When you do this stuff have it like i'm still focused on the main thing a one I run a small pool service and construction business with my father All of our service technicians are 1099 drive their own trucks And our accounting is very poor wondering

In what order should I focus on fixing these issues? Yeah, well, the first thing is you need someone that understands accounting and finance. You need to understand when you start switching from a tenant and I do a W-2, it's going to cost you way more money, but you get so much more control. I would focus on making sure your books are closed out by the fifth, not the 10th. And make sure you get onto accrual accounting and make sure your shit is accurate as can be. You got to have a known financial position every day and every week. Understand how much is in the account, what's going out. Are you guys making money? Are you priced

right? I get the really good my books dialed in, like next level dialed in, and I didn't know what that even meant till four or five years ago. Like I had good books, now I have excellent audited, great books that like down to the decimal. When you have that, you have ultimate control, especially if you're paying attention.

Get your books right and then figure out how much this person is gonna help you figure out what it's gonna cost to transition. And then what's gonna have to happen to increase some KPIs. You're going to have to have either a higher conversion rate, higher opportunity job average, bookie rate, something to give you the money to make that okay. But I never look at look in roofing, sometimes painting and sometimes other industries, sometimes construction, you get away with having 1099s, but you lose all control.

People are like, oh yeah, but there's a fine line. Very rarely do people live up, like you could get sued for the last 10 years. You could owe money back. All the taxes you haven't been paying, the payroll taxes, I've seen people literally get a $5 million they gotta pay on.

Now the government won't shut you down, but they'll say you gotta to make payments. They'll keep you in business just enough to make enough money that you still want to run the business, but not enough money. And by the way, you get sued for payroll taxes, you can't go bankrupt. You can't get rid of that. There's no way to get rid of, get out of that. Mason said, our rankings on Google maps, as well as SEO has been game changing for us over the past couple of years. We live in a small or semi-large metro.

We rank incredible on one side and non-existent on the other side. Would you recommend creating a new GBP for the other side? I know sometimes messing with this is risky. Is anything to get your listing shut down? We currently have over 400 reviews and rank great. Well, listen, I think opening up another showroom on the other side of town and actually have people working out of there.

Now, listen, you want it to be more than 30 miles away. You want to make sure you're getting a lot of reviews for it. You want to make sure the BBB, you've got to be BBB accredited for every location. That's a trust signal for Google. Get the citation sites done, get reviews with, I told you guys about pen parent with Callen have Callen running his little algorithm in the background. Yes. If I'm not existing on the other side of town is because they don't have a location there. And there's obviously SEO and LSA ads that you can run PPC. You know, when I was small, I'd run Angie's List ads and run deal

of the day ads, you know, living social, like, you know, all these things matter. Like when you're small, you got to do it all. And a lot of people, they don't remember the grassroots. They don't remember putting yard signs. Like you got a door knock. You got to go socialize with people. There's it's hard. It was easy. Everybody would be doing it. Why can't I just give more business? Cause you're lazy. You don't, you're not social. You don't know how to ask questions. You don't know how to like genuinely look people in the eyes and say, I want to take care of you. I want all your business.

And a lot of people sell on price. They don't sell on quality. That's another big mistake. So yeah, absolutely I would get another location and I'd make it a real location that you're paying rent at that you've got signs up that you're actually running people out of there to make it completely Google compliant white hat. Hey there. I hope you're really enjoying today's episode. to make it completely Google compliant white hat. on a first name basis, I had zero connections. So how did I go from nobody knowing my name to learning from the best in the business? I put in the work, I found the real players, the guys who built, scaled and sold their businesses for a massive payday.

And I gave before I asked. A handwritten note, a thoughtful gift, a quick video thanking them. But guess what? You don't have to grind for years to build a network like I did. You just got to get into the right room. That's exactly what Freedom 2025 is for. You'll be surrounded by people that are 10 million to 500 million dollar home service legends. The real deal. Sign up now and get the early bird bonus bundle worth more than $5,000. It includes some of my best resources to help you face every single challenge in business.

Go to freedomevent.com. Again, that's freedomevent freedom event.com again, that's freedom event.com. All right, let's get back to today's episode. Jose said, what are your two biggest pieces of advice for myself and my cousin who started a home service company at the age of 23? Well, I started when I was 23. Don't be afraid of mistakes. Just don't make big mistakes. Start small.

You know, when you're smaller and you don't have a lot of money, the mistakes don't cost as much still, they can put you out of business. But just don't keep doing the same things if it's not working. Don't be afraid of change. I say always put it back into the business,

but make sure you're breaking off a little piece. When you're 23 years old and you can save just $7,000 a year, you're going to be a millionaire no matter what. Start a Roth IRA, put the money away, do not use that money. You might say seven grand is not going to change your business a year, but it will change your life when you turn 50. 25 years at 10% is two at7,000 a year is $2 million. So do yourself a favor. I guess you'd be 58, but give yourself some money. Another thing is don't be afraid to ask for help.

Go in as humbly as possible, be curious all the time, and just don't get comfortable always doing the work. Get comfortable finding the people to do the work. And it might not be perfect every time. It might not have been what you've done. But then ask yourself, did I give clear direction? Did I explain how this needs to be done? Is it detailed that a fifth grader could understand it? Because if you didn't give the right instruction and it's, if you didn't get them to show you how to do it in front of you, and then it doesn't get done correctly, you need to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I didn't give the right

instruction. I think people miss this fact all the time. They go, my people always make mistakes. That's why I got to do it myself. Well, you didn't provide the instruction. It's like, if you got a little kid and you're teaching them how to play baseball and he runs to second base instead of first base, is it his fault or did he know to run to first base? So they got to be taught the rules of the game and how to win and how to keep score. They got to understand is there two strikes and then the third strike you're out. And is there two outs third out the switch? Like how do you play the game and how do you ensure it's getting played correctly? That's your job. You're the coach. Can't wait for the shop tour next month. Me either. I love the shop tours. It's Tommy

Mello.com forest slash shop. If you guys ever want to do a shop tour, month, me either. I love the shop tours. It's tommymellow.com forward slash shop. If you guys ever want to do a shop tour, love doing them. Want to get really serious about delivering more value. Hi Tommy, you look good. Proud of you brother. Question, we have a networking meeting with different business owners once a month and we share ideas, mostly plumbing owners.

We have some that do HVAC. What is your advice for us? Any ideas? Shout out from Houston, Santana Bros Plumbing. Here's the deal, Miguel. I've got a few buddies that really got together with an HVAC and plumbing, and they found big companies that they worked with. And they share, they had a rule. If you're not P back and you're big enough and you're never going to be competition, we'll share the financials and we'll do a shop two or once a quarter. And they went to other shops and they critique each shop. And they built this little alliance. And the problem with these groups is there's a lot of people that don't tell the truth.

There's a lot of people that just come there to extract knowledge. And you can tell who they are. That the guy is always writing stuff down, listening, never contributing, never talking about what's working for them. You know, I've got a group in our group, I know whether it's Aaron Gainer, Chad Peterman or whoever, we're always giving each other great advice. We're telling each other what we found. We're trying to like, hey, I got something new to share with you guys. And, you know, I feel like if you get the group of givers, everybody wins, but when it's just local competition,

you're gonna find that you're not getting much out of that. I mean, if I were you guys, I'd rather do a Zoom call with competitors from other markets that aren't gonna infringe upon your territory. They get a lot more honesty. That's what I would be doing. I'd also have other companies like other industries. I'd probably have roofers and flooring. Other big ticket items come in and talk about what's working.

From Instagram, Storm Spence, what's your thoughts on college and what's the best degree to study for someone that wants a business? I think professors have tenure. They don't know what it's like to make it in the real world for the most part. I don't think I've ever looked for a degree. I think if you look at home service and home improvement, that's what everybody's saying going into now. They used to say get a coding degree in Python or Ruby on Rails or figure out different type of coding.

Now they're like, oh, AI is going to replace that. And then you go for graphic design. Oh, AI is going to replace that. I think if I were to go back, I would spend as much time learning sales and they have sales degrees, marketing, sales and marketing is where I'd want to live. And I take some finance classes, learning how to build relationships. I'd be reading all the time, but Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people. I don't think I'd go through a formal institution.

I got a master's degree in business. The coolest thing about that was I met some really cool people. There was a couple cool instructors. I learned some basic stuff, but I can't look back at anything I was learning and like, man, I really applied that to my life. Advanced calculus, organic chemistry, economy, you know, economics, accounting, advanced accounting. Like, yeah, there's, I used to take apart annual reports, figure out if we want to invest in it, like there were classes where they give us like these fake, we can invest in companies, fake money. There wasn't anything brain chip that kept my mind busy. I learned how to study and get ready for tests and learn knowledge, but I didn't

apply much of it to business. So I would go through more like go to seminars and like invest in mentors and figure out ways to like generate leads and create a culture. I just don't think there's a whole lot. There is some things that college is useful for. I hate to say this because I went to my master's degree and I'm doing pretty good. But hindsight,

Tommy Mello, 18, no, I would take classes, but I wouldn't go for the degree. I wouldn't, you know, a lot of people say get a degree because people look at that just to say you can finish something. I don't know how important that is this day and age. Learning from a bunch of people that never made it in the real world with tenure. Losers actually, they teach, you know, equity and diversity and all that shit. They brainwash you. And I mean, I know a lot of instructors are trying to brainwash me.

I just didn't buy into it. Patrick said, hey Tommy, man commercial HVAC did 200K last year looking into marketing. Would like to grow at aK last year looking into marketing. Would like to grow at a truck and mostly find residential marketing. Patrick, here's the deal with marketing, dude. What are we doing to grow a new market?

Well, you got to get a lot of reviews. You got to offer tuneups, go and meet people, get pictures with them. You got to be willing to lose a little bit of money. If you want to take market share, you got to put 15%, 20% of the marketing. In fact, in our new markets, we're willing to put 35%. So if we want to make $5 million, we got to put $1.75 million into marketing. At 35%, you're not going to be profitable. But no one's ever heard of you.

So if you want to go from 200,000 to 225,000 next year to250,000. Yes, I understand you got to make a living. But there's another way to do it other than money. It's out there getting your ass out there, doing free tuneups, talking to your neighbors, getting the HOAs, meeting realtors, doing whatever it takes. You got to start out, unfortunately, you can't start out as the highest price.

You got to get good at sales. I always talk about price, right? But when you're nothing and nobody knows who you are and you're sub a million dollars, it doesn't work. You got to go out there and meet the people. And it's constant, dude. I'd work 40 hours in the business and 40 hours on the business.

I'd be working 80 hour weeks. Cause I used to do that. And people were like, dude, I can't do that. I got a family. Well, then why'd you start a business? If you got no money and you got no time, good luck. The business will not grow. We are currently number one organically on Google for lawn care.

Would you still do Google sponsor GLS so I can appear multiple times? Yes, I would absolutely do it. In fact, if you do organic, you show up in the maps, you show up on LSA and you show up on PPC, you show up four times and then you might even show up on the maps you show up on LSA and you show up on PBC You show up four times and then you might even show up on the top of Yelp You're gonna get picked people gonna be like this must be a sign There's been studies you can look them up that the more times you're in the top first page the more likelihood it goes up exponentially every time What percentage of revenue should go to labor related costs?

You know, I think anywhere from 28 to 32%, depending on your company and how you guys track that, but it's different for every business. Like drains don't cost anything in parts. It's much more labor intensive. So that's gonna be a higher labor cost because there's no really cost of materials, cost of goods. Can you share more about how you safeguard

A1 being misclassified as a franchise and why you stayed away from that business model? I like the franchise model, but you lose control. You're no longer in the garage door business when you start a franchise. Everybody's looking for a Cherokee business. In fact, I've talked to some of the largest franchises in the country. Neighborly, my buddy Mike is the CEO now. He used to be a CEO at Valpac.

We talked the other day on the phone for about an hour. You know, a lot of franchises, you try to get these businesses to a million or 2 million. You lose control. You start having to deal with it's the 80-20 rule. 20% of the companies are going to grow. The other 80% they never conform. Like you can't fire them because they bought into a franchise. There's all kinds of politics that go into franchising. Could it be great? Absolutely phenomenal. There's so many good franchises out there. But it's a struggle. Everybody thinks, man, I'm going to do a franchise. I got a good business concept. But they don't think about really what it takes. Not only do you got to sell the franchises, but you got to be able to get them leads. You got to be able to train their people. You got to be

able to get them ranked on Google. You got to be able to get the call center dialed in, get them to submit their financials on time. Got to make sure they're not on a tile too much and taking too many vacations. Most people that want to buy a franchise, they're looking for a turnkey lifestyle business. And there's no such thing. I'm sorry. Every once in a while you hear about a company and just everything went right. They made a bunch of money. It's just few and far between. They're not common. So I love the franchise model. And one of the interesting things are there's the same amount of franchises 20 years ago as there are today. Meaning that there's a lot that fail. The vast majority of franchises fail because somebody goes, oh, I'm just going to franchise

my business. It's not very profitable. My website doesn't rank. I don't have a national call center. I've only approved it in one market. I barely got market share, but everyone's going to want to buy this business. And nobody wants it. Oh, we're going to come up with our own CRM so we can even make more money. See the easy way to do this for weak people is to say, I've got a business that's okay, but maybe I can sell it for $50,000 a piece and take 8% and everybody else can do the hard work. That's why people go into consulting.

Hey, I've got a lot of stuff I've learned. Business is hard. I'm not gonna run a business anymore. I'm just gonna go consult and talk on stage and become an influencer. And I'm gonna start a podcast and that sounds fun. And I'm just gonna show people how to do it even though I'm not very good at it.

And I'm gonna become a teacher and I'm gonna be a franchis how to do it, even though I'm not very good at it. And I'm going to become a teacher and I'm going to be a franchise or, and everyone's going to buy my shit. I'll tell you how I really feel later, but there are some really good franchises. If I was to do a franchise, one out of 500 would actually be picked to be allowed in my franchise. You'd have to have so many credentials, pass so many tests. You'd have to commit.

You'd have to like, I'd have certain things to be able to rip you out of the franchise so quickly if you screw up our name. Like I don't look at the franchise like, oh, I want to sell as many as possible. No, protect the franchise. Make sure there are people that are winning every single buyer as a soldier out to make a lot of money, but they're going to work their butts off. They got to have like McDonald's makes you make sure you got $2 million in the bank before you can start a McDonald's franchise.

You got to be well funded. See, most franchisees are willing to take people's last $50,000 and wonder why they don't make it because they're greedy. Yeah. And these franchise salespeople that like sell franchises, they're very good at what they do. They'll just say, give me the pooper scooper franchise. I'll sell the hell out of it. They'll sell, but they don't care what happens after they got their money. Do you have

someone on your team who is in charge of upselling to current customers? I don't really understand that question. To our database, our technicians, we don't really upsell. I don't like the word upsell. We offer them different options. Or they can pick one they like. Like Joe Cicero says, what should we do? It's that simple. It's like we're not putting things on their throat. Yeah, we've got product specialists that are good at closing the deal, finding out what the customer needs based on how they're going to live at the home and what's important to them. But I would call someone specific in the company that's responsible for upsells. How would you structure performance pay for mobile detailing?

Average ticket 280, jobs per month 42. Well, what do I care about? What are the things that really matter to me? In this case, mobile detailing is all about routing, right? I don't wanna drive an hour to this job to clean the car, an hour to this car, an hour to this car. So it's kind of like pool service. You want to be able to get as many clients as possible.

So what I would do with mobile detailing is I'd have my guys put out signs and I'd have them knock on a couple of neighbors' house, especially in a fluid neighborhoods and pay them a lot of fricking money to close. Say, listen, we get this client on, we sell them a 10 pack of mobile cleanings. I'm going to give you half the money. I'd make sure that every single person doing the cleaning becomes they're posting on their social media, they're putting out yard signs, they're talking

to their friends about it. You know, their girlfriend is posting about it. They're out there hustling for you, getting more clients, because it's all about keeping close. It's all about dispatching. So you want to be in the vicinity of the next jobs. Next thing I do is just I'd have a checklist to mark off and have the customer walk through it. And if they didn't want to walk through it, I'd send the whole checklist with pictures to them. I actually have an app that we've created.

It's a checklist app if you want to know more about it. But I said every little detail, make sure the client's happy and we've exceeded their expectations. And also pay them a little bit for reviews, a video testimonial, or a review on Google, a review on Nextdoor is a big one. Nextdoor is in the community. The BBB is a big one. The Yelp is a big one. So you might say, well, they can only get one review. How do I keep paying them? Every time, hey, you let me review on Google, can you do one on Yelp for me? And every three times they clean it, ask for a different review or a video testimonial, get their wife in it. See if there's another car you could do.

Hey, listen, we have the two nice cars and we've got our son's car. Listen, can we do your son's car? Figure out if there's still profit. You're at the same job. Figure out how to get to that other car. Like I said, the neighbors, like, I would look at a few things that your

people can control and pay them on that as long as you could track it. Well, it's important that you got very good attribution that you can track it and it's going to help you grow the business. It's going to make you more money. Therefore they get to make more money. But I don't have the perfect like I would have to sit down and whiteboard it for a minute, but those are just some ideas. What are the best frameworks to get to a million starting out? I do landscaping. You know, it's all reverse engineering. Like how much you make a billable hour, how much time you put in, how many clients would you need? What's your gross profit? What's your bottom line net? Okay, so what you start to figure out is I would need this many

leads, this much on repeat business. I lose this much. It's just a math equation. It would take one hour to put together a pivot table with somebody even remotely smarter looks at your financials. You could just go on Upwork, but somebody that builds pivot tables and say, look, I didn't end up financing that understands P and L's. Let's say, I want you to show me how many leads, how many clients I needed close at what dollar amount based on my financials and what I need to get to. And then say, okay, how much do I need to spend on marketing?

How many can I close? How long does it take to get to a million? It's just, it's an accounting exercise. And there's mathematical certainty with it if you're priced right. Now what you got to be careful is in landscaping, you don't want a lot of churn. It means you got to put out, you got to get the right clientele. Churn will kill you. So just make sure you're not losing clients. Because a lot of times, when you get to try to get to a million or five million or 10 million, you're so focused on marketing, you're not keeping your current clients. And that'll

kill you. If you got a client going out the back door, every time you got a new one coming in the front door, your churn is way too high and that'll destroy a company. So make sure you're focused on keeping your customers excited and happy with the service you're already doing. How would you structure a membership program for a mobile auto repair business focused on break repair customers? Given that broke, break repairs have a high margin

and AOV below frequency. Additionally, how can I effectively capture the LTV of customers for such low frequency service? If using a membership model, what resources would you recommend to learn about developing a compelling membership program? So look up this guy, his name's Aaron Stokes. And I could probably think about this and work through it, but this guy's the master of how to get break jobs and how to do automotive repairs. He's already got, he's the largest

mastermind in the country of anything. And he already has got all this stuff figured out. Aaron Stokes is a great guy. Spoke at his event. He's just a genius. I think you'll really dig him. Really love the guy. So look him up and he'll probably have a better answer. Greg Mitchell said, would you view my website and give me your honest feedback? Yeah, leave it in here. Just said, we'll take it. We'll send it out. We'll look at the website.

There's a lot of things that I look for. How fast does it load? Does the phone number easily clickable? Does it have a schedule engine link to be able to schedule online? Is there good information that I want to learn about? Is everything there? Is it organized? Is there testimonials?

I'll look at it. Have you done Colby testing before? And if yes, what were your scores? My team's done Colby testing. I haven't done them. We're looking at some tests, but that's one that I don't think is one we're going to be focused on. Tommy, with $7,000 in my window cleaning business, one employee and an unwrapped truck, 75% of

the leads from organic Facebook posts. What's your first move to scale? Would you prioritize ads, branding, et cetera? Yeah. So me personally, I focus on Google. I build a really fast website that's mobile friendly. I make sure I'm getting more leads. And then the first thing I do after I get a really good amount coming in each month

and I'm getting reviews with pictures in them with great reviews, my Google's ranking my business page and the hours of operation. Once that's done, you know, I might hire a guy named Lenny Gray to do some door to door stuff as well. But I want to be a brand that people are like, man, this brand looks legit. This isn't just a guy that went to Home Depot and picked up a bucket. Like these guys are good. They're safe. When you're explaining what you do to build value, and I'm just going through all this stuff through the book influence with a coach, is like, don't just say we're a garage door technician.

We're a certified technician. What does a certification mean is like, otherwise you're just chucking a truck coming out there to scrub my windows. Like show me the tools you're using. Show me the, why should I hire you? And why should I pay you more than just getting a handyman to do it? Those are important questions. So yeah, the brand is important and getting more leads and focusing on google What book would you recommend? For the leadership team to read, you know, one of the books I first started out with was five

Dysfunctions of a team. I think that's a great book to start out with anything from patrick. Licioni The ideal team player's a great book to start out with anything from Patrick Lisa. Yoni, the ideal team players, a great book meeting suck by Cameron. Harold's a great book. The one minute manager is a great book. Those are great books to start out with, to read as a team. I mean, look, I can look around here. There's just, I've got so many fricking books. It's hard to pick, which is the most important, but those are some good ones.

My office has a lot more. My house even has more than the office guys do me a favor because I got my team out here saying to finish up just set me. I'd love to get all the questions where I ended. So I finished with Instagram with Jake. So the next one was Keith Massal. We just got to submit those questions into homeservisexpert.com forward slash questions. Plural. I want to end with just this idea of this accountability again. Enjoying discipline. You know, a lot of you guys don't have energy. You don't have the burn you used to have. And it might not be anything that's wrong. It might not be you. What it is, is your that's wrong. It might not be you. What it is is your body's not working.

You're not metabolizing correctly. I gotta tell you guys, if you don't call Dr. J, find a doctor that specialized in naturopath. Figure out what's wrong with you. Figure out why you go home and you're just depleted of energy. Why you don't wake up and you're energetic. Why you don't wanna go for that long walk.

Maybe you're in the wrong surroundings. Maybe because it's 20 degrees below. You need to get up and move your family. You need to be bold and this is not your life anymore. I'm just telling you guys dude you got to start thinking bigger. I was talking we were talking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg. Here's why they win. They think bigger than us. And I'm not thinking small anymore. And that takes bold changes. It takes people that are willing to take

very controversial decision-making, extreme risks. And most of you guys don't even, you would never move. You're in your comfort zone. You know, you don't wanna change too much. You know, look, I'm going to change everything. Be comfortable with change. Get an accountability partner. Get comfortable with discipline.

Set yourself up for success. Find somebody to hold you accountable. Another thing, listen, we got a huge webinar. We'll go on Home Service Expert. It's going to be amazing. Last thing is, oh, here it is. It's the free webinar, WGrowth in 2025, three critical is. It's the free webinar, W Growth in 2025, three critical moves, it's me and Jim Leslie.

I'm gonna put the link in here. We've already got a thousand people coming to this. This isn't just a sales pitch, guys. Like dude, A1 did north of 63 million of EBITDA. This company is gonna be worth two and a half billion dollars. I don't care about your money. In fact, I'm setting this thing up so I can invest in lots and lots of businesses. Like I want to get to

know you guys. Truthfully, it's probably a little bit vain of me or just conceited or like maybe I'm just selfish, but I want to find businesses I like that are easy, lucrative and fun to work with. I want to make a of investments. Down the line, I'm gonna be investing in hundreds of businesses, and I'm gonna be taking my whole team, and I've got 30 people on the team, the family office. This is the way I do it. I find out businesses that,

look, you get to a million dollars of EBIT at A-Track and still get 10 million, if you do it right with my connections. It's not hard. I had a guy in last night that's doing it right now. He's got a million of EBIT at 10 and a half million he's getting. It's crazy. So that had a guy in last night that's doing it right now. It's got a million of even a 10 and a half million He's getting it's crazy So that's what I want to do. I mean look I want everybody to make out. I want your whole team to make out too

Freedom event is going to blow your freaking minds. I got mr. Wonderful. I got a couple names I can't even say yet, but they're already signed up. It's going to be september 3rd through the 5th It's going to be in las vegas It's going to be ard through the 5th. It's gonna be in Las Vegas. It's gonna be at Mandalay Bay. I promise you there's not another event that even comes close to this, not even close, not even in the same hemisphere. You better be ripped up too.

If I see you, you better be getting ready to get in shape because that's what we're gonna talk about is getting in your best shape, getting close to your family, getting closer to God if you're religious, making sure you're trying to become the best self. You don't need to be magic overnight It takes time to do these things is you got to stay consistent. You got to say no to certain things But the results you're just so happy you just look at life differently And if you're not feeling it right now if you're not excited if you don't feel great about this year

There's something wrong with you. You need to go to counseling. You need to see a psychologist this year, there's something wrong with you. You need to go to counseling. You need to see a psychologist. You got to get your shit together, dude. Cause if you don't feel amazing and pumped ever listening to this, something's going on and maybe you got to get checked out. But listen guys, I hope you have a great month. Finish out strong.

Hopefully it's a record. We got the Trump pump going on after yesterday. So hopefully the economy starts sparking off. I hope you guys are doing excellent. I hope you continue to push yourself to the next level. I'm Tommy Bello. This is the HomeService expert. I'm signing out guys. Thank you. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you 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 the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.