The Home Service Expert Podcast - Q&A With Tommy - Using Technology and Training for a Stronger Team and Bigger Profits

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire and the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $40 million-plus home service business with over 200 employees in 9 states. Through HomeServiceMillionaire.com and the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy shares his learnings and insights to help fellow entrepreneurs scale their businesses. In this episode, we answered some of our listeners’ most pressing questions about training, sales, automation, marketing, financing and growing your business, and more...

You know, I had an angry, angry customer. I won't go into names. He's pissed off. And he told Adam all this stuff. And he's like, I'm going to get him. I need to talk to Tommy Mello. I looked him up and I said, hello, Mr. So-and-so. It's Tommy Mello. And if you give me a quick second, I want to explain a few things. Then I want to hear your side of the story. I said, first of all, I realized we made a mistake and I'm very, very sorry. In the past few months, COVID almost took my dad's life, but he's doing amazing now. We can't seem to get our suppliers. The metal price is shooting through the roof. We're four weeks out on doors. I got a call from the COO of the

biggest graduate company in the world telling me he can't give us springs. I said, we need to do a better job. And I'm the owner and I'm embarrassed that we let you down. And now I want to hear everything you have to say. And he goes, oh my God. He goes, no one's ever done that before. He goes, I want to be your friend. Would you come over and check the workout? And I said, I'd love to. I'll take you out to lunch. And the way that I flipped it is I took complete ownership of the failure of our company. And I looked at it as a learning opportunity. 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.

Okay, we are live. This is the first time in the history of the podcast that I'm going Hans solo. So I'm going to be answering some questions. I'm going to be talking about A1, some of my plans. Really looking forward to doing this. This is the first time I've done this. So hopefully, I wanted to remind some of you guys, I did write a book. If you order it from homeservicemillionaire.com

forward slash podcast, you'll get the hard version. I had 12 co-authors. Al Levy talks about how he builds manuals. I had Ara talk about Service Titan and CRMs. We had Alan Rohr talk about how to set a budget and the financial quick check. We learned about service agreements. We learned about how to sell your company. Everything's in this book. If you order it from Amazon, which is a great spot, it's not a hard copy and then finally it's on audible and i recorded it myself yours truly so if you guys get a chance please come say hello

feel free to ask questions about the business because i've got a lot of big things i want to talk about and then i got that home service millionaire course and that's course.homeservicemillionaire.com, course.homeservicemillionaire.com. And then I have a free Facebook group. It doesn't cost anything. There's a thousand members. Just search Home Service Expert Group. You should be listening to some of the stuff we're putting out there. So got a lot to talk about, a lot of cool things. I'm going to create a garage door buying group it's a network that's going to be everything from service titan to buying parts springs rollers cables doors rebate programs we're going to do recruiting training my plan with this

best practices group and it's not going to be free because we got to pay. I'm going to have coaches. We're going to help companies figure out succession planning, how to get their finances correct. We're going to help them figure out things like their books, income statement, balance sheet. And then we're going to explain to them how key performance indicators work and build a business that they can sell and make a ton of money and actually get their business to give them the lives they wanted. I have all my area managers in town. They're actually headed to Topgolf right now. And one of the main things I shared with them is I got an opportunity to read this book, Michael. Thank you for giving it to me. It's called The Coaching

Effect. And I want to talk about a few things in here, then we're going to jump into questions. So the number one thing that they found, we've discovered that the successful coaching activities and behaviors could be quantified, taught, and implemented by those that are willing to change. In spite of our excitement of all these discoveries, one discovery was more significant than all the others, and that's the discomfort factor. Just like my manager, Mitch, or tennis coach, Renee, high-growth coaches are not afraid to push, to demand, to challenge, to get their teams to perform.

Developing people that are uncomfortable is what matters. Your comfort zone is where your dreams go to die. There's some other cool things in this book, page 63. I'm not just going to quote all this book. I've got a lot of other things to share. But of all the tasks and duties that a coach can perform in a week, month, or year, and there are many, these four are the most important. One-on-one meetings, consistent, structured, individual meetings with your teams, meetings that matter. And so what I do in a day one is we're building a scoreboard for every position in the company. It's simply like a report card when you were in school. It shows your tardiness, your absence, every grade you're

getting, and really gives a highlight on the performance that they're doing. And then we coach on that one-on-one meetings, team meetings, consistent structured meetings with everyone on your team, performance feedback, objectively documented analysis of an individual's ability to demonstrate the key skills that are proven necessary to roll success. And then number four, career development plans. Individual sessions with team members to discuss, prepare, and document career growth. What do team members need from a meeting? Here's five core things.

Bring in more speakers to monthly meetings. We need more exposure to success stories and ideas sharing within the team. Share more best practices. We need more collaboration amongst my peers. And we need training and more time for training. So if you get a chance, check this book out. Other books that are sitting here on my desk. If you guys haven't read the sales boss i

talk about it a lot and then the visual cell by marvin sheridan is a really cool book i'm going to answer some questions i have here then i'm going to come over here looks like there's a couple dozen people on hopefully uh more comp so let's go through some of these do your technicians have a type of career growth please Please share what it looks like. So when you come in and start for me, you start as an apprentice. For 30 days, you got a ride along form and we are preparing you to come to Phoenix. We've got 51 rooms with queen size beds. So when you come to Phoenix, we'll take care of the flight.

We'll get you here. We'll get you all your tools you need. The apprenticeship is where you start. Then it goes to junior tech, and this is what we learned from L.E.V. Junior tech, technician, senior tech. Then you can move up to a lead tech field supervisor, then you can move up to an area manager. So there's absolutely a way to grow in the company. How many managers do you have

for technician? So the way that it's structured is we've got field supervisors that are remote that help answer questions. And then you've got the trainers that actually work with the guys 60 days after they leave Phoenix, and that's turning into 90. And so you can call the trainers or the field supervisors at any given time. And then you can call the trainers or the field supervisors at any given time. And then you've got a lead tech in your market, and then you've got the area manager. So you've got a lot of resources. And right now we're taking the bottom 30% on the performance goals of their report card. So that could be callback ratios, not selling enough service to sales, too many refunds. There's just so many things we grade and look at.

And we'll send you back to Phoenix. My goal is to take the 25 percentile and put them in the 70 percentile, meaning that growing what we already have is important and get them uncomfortable. Way more ride-alongs, way more training opportunities. Typically, my area managers are managing three or four markets. Their goal is to have a one-on-one with each technician for at least an hour a month. And the one-on-one is very, very structured. Adam's done an amazing job. We built a really, really nice performance pay structure with a report card on every single technician. And we go through that and we manage the way that they go through it. They got to see that today. Scheduling is a pain point for us. We are a small four-person company and from time to time we have large projects that we are on for an extended period of time that take up the bulk of the manpower.

In that time, we have clients calling us for smaller service call issues and we can't seem to be able to take care of these. What can we do in those situations? Thank you. That was from Ted. The one thing that I've done that I love is we built a training center and a recruitment department. Being able to make technicians is probably the one thing that's going to make us grow the fastest of any other home service company in North America. I mean, we've got five trainers. We're going to have seven. We've got three recruiters. My brain thinks now, how can I recruit more? My marketing brain just goes into how do I get KPIs and dashboards all on recruiting? The number one thing you could do is you got to be able to hire more people. And what does that

mean? You need to be able to pay more. I sat down with a bunch of other garage door owners and i asked them we went through how much an hvac unit costs 2200 bucks and they sell for 15 000 that's a seven times multiple then i said a hot water heater a tankless hot water heater then we went into roofing and painting and different things and i said so let's just say six times let's say a door costs us a thousand dollars and an opener cost us 400 we'll just say six times 1400 times six is 8400. uh how many of you guys are charging that zero hands went up how many guys are charging five thousand no hands four thousand we went through this and they said yeah that would be ripping off a customer and i said well how many of you guys get insurance for your employees how many of you guys have brand new trucks and vans with new wraps on them how many of you guys have brand new trucks and vans with new wraps on them? How many of you guys have the latest iPads? How many of you guys get PTO? No hands were going up. And I said,

so you think maybe I'm charging the client too much by giving them exceptional service. And you're literally not taking care of your own backyard, your family and your employees. And I said, you think I'm the bad guy because I could afford to do a billboard and keep my people busy and have really great service from drug tested, background checked, amazing human beings. And I'm the bad guy. You guys need to reprioritize the way you treat your family and your employees. And they all walked out saying, we're going to raise our prices. So great. By the way, when they came out, it was 15 or 20 companies. They're just really, really great people. Great owners. I just think that they didn't see things from my point

of view because I truly believe that the culture, the leadership, the team building is the most important thing in a company. So you got to build a place that you'd want to work for. And that means great leadership. And on that note, I would say that I'm not great. I'm not the greatest coach. I'm a great visionary. I'm a 10 out of 10. Integrator, I'm a zero out of 10. So I need to surround myself with people that are not like me. I don't need more visionariesaries I've got a lot of strengths but I've got plenty of weaknesses so I hire for my weaknesses and I think more owners need to do that and a lot of people say I'm well-rounded and there's a good book by Dan Thurman called off balance on purpose is I don't want to be well-rounded I want to be the best of the best

of what I'm great at and then I want to get everybody else on the org chart around me that I need to be the best of the best and continue to develop their leadership skills, develop them as human beings. And I think too often we don't take the people we have and develop them. Now, some people are not willing to go for that ride. That's why they say some people that will take you here don't take you here. But I've got a lot more questions. I'm going to read some of the ones on here. What tips do you have when it comes to explaining and proving the value of you and your company? Example, why should I buy from you when you are more expensive than the other guy? Well, one of the questions I always ask, and this is from Joe Casara, is, well, what do you do for a living? I say the reason that you should buy from us, and this is, if you guys get a chance to read the book, oh boy, relevant selling. You know, I had the Janie on my podcast, not that long ago. You guys,

you got to state the facts. Well, number one is when we fix it, we're done. You know, there's a lot of garage door companies that come out and they're every year, they're coming out to your home. And we explained that. Number two is, I don't know if you've seen, but fuel prices are up. Insurance is up. Home values are up. We can't even get the product now. We're four months out. If you don't want to buy today,

call us back in two months. It's not going to be the same price. So scarcity is a big deal. If you get a chance, check out, I talk about a lot of books, but Robert Cialdini influenced scarcity is a big deal. But the biggest thing I see with my technicians, I got five guys in here retraining this week coming from all different

markets. And I said, it's the confidence level. It's literally, if I smell, if I even smell a little bit of unconfidence, when a home professional comes in my house, I own them. The first thing I do is say, I can't afford that. I want a discount. I teach the guys, when you are in the garage, that's your domain. You're like Tiger Woods on the golf course. You do not say, I recommend. You say, this is what you need to have. When a tire shop sees a bald tire, they should not tell the client.

Yeah, you'll make it a few miles. You can probably make it from A to B. You say, look, if you're going 80 miles an hour and that tire disintegrates, you're going to roll your truck and it's unsafe. So talking from authority, body posture, body language, eye contact, tonality. I think when you really get to know the customer, one of the things that Uncle Joe talks about, Joe Cressara, is he talks about making friends, building the relationship. These guys all rode along with our head trainers, really, really amazing guys. And they said, wow. They said the time they take of the job is triple to get to know the person and find out what their true ambitions are.

And those magic moments. And I got to tell you guys, we buy from people we like. And I'll tell you this too. A lot of buyers are liars. They say they don't have the money when they do have the money. So I wouldn't make it a big deal. We have a great way of showing our value. And we talk about, come look at our van. Come take a look at this. This is what we do here. Day one, come look at my tools. They spent $2,700 on these tools for me. We go through 30 days of apprenticeship, and then we go through another 30 days of training in Phoenix. And it's all on how to fix your garage door the right way. I tell my people all the time, do what you would do for your mom. Forget about the pricing. I make the pricing so we make a

profit. But do what you would do. Put the best parts on. Make sure that door is fixed right. And if you would replace it for your mom, let's replace it. But if your you would do. Put the best parts on. Make sure that door is fixed right. And if you would replace it for your mom, let's replace it. But if your mom's selling the home, you're probably not going to go and do everything. So do what you would do if she was selling the home. Do what you would do for your HOA president. Whatever it is, do the right thing. Don't be afraid of the customer. This is your domain. We talk about this stuff all the time. Every day, I'm consistent and I preach the same message. So I think that's very, very important. Hey Tommy, I love your content.

Thank you. This is for a more seasoned company. We do heating and cooling, so it's more seasonal. It's just me in a van and an installer. My trucks are wrapped and we have an office. How do I go about hiring and actually being able to keep them busy? Just getting overwhelmed with just trying to run the business and the business is running me. What I can tell you is another book is called Rocket Fuel. And what I think you're going to need is either most likely an integrator. You're going to need to have somebody and raise your prices, be able to afford a really good person to come in and help you run your operations. So get somebody that's very, very

good at running operations, that they can focus on a lot of these things. You want to be able to run in the business, work on it, not in it all the time. So what I would say is when you're smaller like that, there's a lot of advantages. It's a David and Goliath, right? You could ask each customer for 10 reviews, get one on next door, get one on the BBB, get one on, yeah, get one on Angie's list, get them all over next door. You want to get more reviews from each customer because you've got more time when they're at the house. The people that should be recruiting are your current employees. I've got a really good all-star guy that works for me. He brought in two amazing, amazing candidates that we hired in the last two weeks. And the one thing is you got to ask. The

one thing I always say is you got to ask your customers, ask them, but you also got to ask the employees that you have for help. Say, listen, do you know anybody great? And I told my area managers, give your guys a day off and say, I want you to bring me two candidates later this week. Pay them. And say, your number one job is to go out there, go to a B&I group. Here's my patient B&I groups. Ready? My name is Tommy Mello. I own A1 Garage Door Service. We do residential service and we do sales. So if you need a new door, call me. I don't know if you know this, but the garage door is a smile of your home. We actually trademarked that. But enough about garage doors. I'm really a recruiter. I'm looking for amazing people.

If you know a busboy, a cousin, a good friend, if you know anybody maybe working in a warehouse, I want to get to know them. If they smile and they're a bright light when they walk in a room, I want them to come work for me and enjoy the family we have at A1. So if you know anybody, and I'll pay you $500 for anybody that we hire. If you send them my way, we've got a way to track this stuff if you're interested. Here's my cell phone. So a great lead for me, obviously anything with a garage door, but a great lead for me is amazing people. If you know anybody, hairdresser, whatever it could be, that's who I'm looking for. Thank you so much. So that's my B&I pitch. So hopefully you guys understand my whole being now is marketing

and finding amazing people. When you got amazing people working for you, you know, Donald Trump had this little thing on TikTok and he said, I don't like good employees. See bad employees, you fire good employees. They kind of just, they keep you humming along. They don't make a lot of trouble, but the great employees are what move you forward. Bad employees get fired. Great employees pull you ahead. Good employees keep you on a steady, just normal. So I think a lot of times when you're smaller, you accept mediocrity more. And I think that that's a big mistake, but also you're not a leader. You don't develop your people. So a lot of times we might say we don't have the right employee, but they're

not getting the right leadership. They're not getting the right coaching. This is very important. Coaching your people, letting them know what your expectations are, having a manual that sets up the game, teach them how to play the game, performance pay. So important. So, so important. Is there a base size revenue that you're thinking you need to support the overhead of a dedicated trainer? You know, you can take a lead technician and make them into a trainer, but you got to have curriculum. So in the 30 days, we need to get this many bottom rubbers done. They need to learn this many struts, operator brackets. At least start to put together, you know, Angela and her call center.

Look at this. The CSR playbook. Look at this. This is the answer phone for A1, where you can make 30 bucks an hour. So hopefully you get an amazing person as a lead technician. And they've got the skills and ability to train. You see, when you have kids, you're patient. You help them do their homework. Even though you know, three plus three is six. You're not going to do the homework for them. Hopefully not.

And the interesting thing about that is we're patient. You know, you're patient with your kids. You've got to realize that lead technician is losing money by training. They're taking their time and they're letting them do the work and it's taking longer and they're frustrated. They're asking questions. So you got to pay them to do that. So what I recommend when you're smaller, I don't have the perfect size for every single industry because certain people, like for example, HVAC, you got to get certified plumbing.

You need to be certified. There's apprenticeship you need to follow. So I don't want to throw out there something that I'm not an expert maybe in your field, but I would say this, the better training and recruiting you can get, it's going to make a huge difference in your business. Recruiters and trainers. Train, train, train, train, train. If you read the seven power contractor, you'll find that Al Levy says the biggest thing to success is being able to recruit. If you look at Zoom drains, they do an amazing job of recruiting, orienting, training, and retaining. So that's the key to success. Let's keep going through here.

How often is sales training for the techs? Every morning, 15 minutes, they got to fill supervisor call at 730. Then at 745, we have a morning mojo call. On Thursday, they get an hour of training. There's ride-alongs happening every single week. Sales and training is happening all the time. It's not like a one-time event. It's happening all the time. It needs to happen every single day. You need to put pressure. You need to put goals. You need to micromanage. If you own a business, it's not easy. This is an ecosystem. If you're the guy in the truck still, it's easy. You own a job. If you travel for a month and the business doesn't run itself, you don't have a company. I'm not trying to be condescending. These are facts.

If the company doesn't run without you, you simply have a very, very stressful job that you're working 24 seven and on the weekends. And you're putting your family through a lot. And I'm not saying you're a bad person, because you're exactly like I was. But I do think there needs to come a change. I do think you've got to start working on hiring and charging and advertising properly and having an ecosystem that can live without you. And that means developing yourself as a leader and building trust amongst your peers in your company and hiring amazing people. And it's the hardest thing to go from one employee to 10 employees. It's easier for me to go right now from 360 to a

thousand than it is for you guys with two people to go to 10, believe it or not. So it's happening all the time. Day one must have for a business about to launch. Dan Antonelli, you got to build your brand. You got to have a badass logo, cool shirts, good hat, make them all the same. So many people, I had 20 different colors shirts. I didn't have a brand. I thought my truck looked good. And then Dan ripped me a new one. I got to know him really well. I learned a lot about building an amazing brand and then build an amazing website. And then day one is friends and family people. You call everybody you know, friends and family, and you practice on their house.

And you ask them to leave 50 reviews and tell 10 friends and put a yard sign out there. MLM, multi-level marketing. The first thing they do is tell you to go get your friends and family involved. And yet you guys have a huge network and don't even take advantage of it. First thing I would do, I'm guerrilla, man. Guerrilla marketing. I go to the B&I groups, every single one of them, and I would ask for employees. And I would say, any of you guys that want us to come out, I'm doing half off. All i ask is you tell us how we did online and i'll give you the five places i want you to leave a review build your online reputation first get the links being built on your site i use matthew woodward he's killer there's a bill rossel is really really good there's amazing people that do this stuff you want to go to the

source but build a brand figure out the exact truck don't get 20 different trucks people say, you got to start somewhere with used trucks. And there's all these guys in these Facebook books. I'm like, do you understand tax strategy at all? You could do a hundred percent depreciation on that truck right now with the laws that are in place. And if you're going to make money, there's a very good way to do this stuff. And one guy, one guy was bragging on a Facebook group that he doesn't do a wraps because he's busy enough and it's a waste of money. And I said, you're busy enough still running jobs. You're still in the field every day. No wonder you don't have a wrap truck.

You don't even have a company. I mean, the reason you don't have wrap trucks and you're so busy is because you're charging too little money. And you're getting around word of mouth because you have an expensive job and people would rather come to you, but they don't know this yet because customers are stupid. But the day your truck breaks down, you're not showing up to the job. You're done. The day you go out of business, the day you go on vacation, there's no one else. You know, I love going to Steak 44. It's a great restaurant. I spent 600 bucks with three people the other day in there. I did it for the experience. So if you pride yourself on being cheap, that's great. I'm proud of you. Continue to do that. It makes it easier for me to grow. I'm trying to be nice about this stuff, but I'm passionate. Damon says he loves to hear it. I appreciate that.

Is an awesome facility showroom a priority or stay in a small industrial space to keep it cheap i have mixed feelings about this when you're a small business money matters a lot when i go into a new market i'm planning a seat so i'll get a smaller building and now i have an excel sheet that crystal worked on and mike bailey and i did a little bit but they did the bulk of it and we went and opened up our first exact shop in Omaha. And we made a list of every single thing we bought from toilet paper to fantastic, to floor tiles, to the wall signs, to the computers we bought. And now every single facility, the ping pong table,

every single facility looks and feels the same. So we made all the old shops. We're spending $22,000 per location. And what you got to do is what I would recommend on every single lease looks and feels the same. So we made all the old shops, we're spending $22,000 per location. And what you got to do is what I would recommend on every single lease is make sure you can sublease it. And you got to start out at this level and then move to the next level and move to the next level. But we're going to do $25 million in Phoenix. So yes, we need a showroom. We need a place to bring people. Now, when you're small, you can bring the showroom to the people. So I don't think you need to have that.

You need to do whatever Google requires for your industry to get it past Google advanced verification. So hopefully that answers your question. How do you build a multi-million dollar concrete coating company? Well, I think, Ryan, you're onto something. Number one is you've learned how to manage virtual assistants and figured out a way to market on social media, which is light years ahead of most companies. The biggest things I could tell you to build a multi-million dollar business is learn how to

find amazing people. Find people with a canvas and give them the skills they need to succeed and give them performance pay so they got skin in the game. Those simple little things, becoming an amazing coach will change your life. If I get an opportunity, don't just say, here's my card. You should come work for me. You say this, George Red Everett, you say this, here's my card. Let me get your number. And what do you say you come in on Tuesday at noon or Wednesday at 3 p.m.? I want to take you for a ride along and take you for a walk. And I want to show you how we can build a career together and you can join our family. I think you're going to love it. Too often we pass out cards. We expect the business to just

come to us. Be proactive. So many people are reactive. They hire when someone gets fired or quits. Be proactive. Go out there and get it. You want to see me? You come into town and we'll go recruit five people together. First place I'm going to start is Quick Trip. I'll stand out there and get it. You want to see me? You come into town and we'll go recruit five people together. First place I'm going to start is Quick Trip. I'll stand out there. I'll talk to other people. There's no shame in my game. I'll tell you that. Let's go do it. Figure out a way to make great people. Do you do commercial work and break away from it to focus on residential? Did you do commercial? We still do a little bit of commercial. I do it if it's a an overhead door and a lot of people i know in phoenix but for the most part commercial think about this commercial completely different truck setup completely different the way you pay is different the

skill level is different the accounts receivable is different the vendor relationship is completely different it's not even in the same hemisphere and the garage door world. And I'm like, why would you do both unless you were a monster? Vortec does not do residential. I don't do commercial. One day, maybe I'll bring it in, but it'll be a whole division that specializes in that. And I always ask people with a commercial business, how much of your business is commercial and what's the profit margin? And they don't have a freaking clue. All they see is the big dollars coming in, very low profit. How do you feel about Angie's List?

I've seen companies build their business off Angie's List, so I think it works. I just don't feel like it's the end-all be-all. HomeAdvisor works. It's not the end-all be-all. I like to build my business based on word of mouth, relationships, builders that use us all the time, realtors that use us, inspectors that use us. Build that common ground that people are always using you. And then get on HomeAdvisor. Get on Google.

Get on everything. OfferUp, Facebook, everything. I believe in everything, but start with one and own it. And that's really relationships. Build up those relationships, get those free calls coming in through Google, which is through your Google My Business page and your Google organic, and you'll make some money.

If you're not on the LSA ads, you're crazy. Local service ads are killer. I'm a reefer tech, and I got a lead on a guy who would love the opportunity to work for you here in Phoenix. Sweet. Send them in. Tell them you saw me on here. You get the technicians in here. If they got a big smile on their face and they walk in and they're pumped up, first thing I'm going to ask them is, do you have confidence? Do you make eye contact? Do you have a good story? Are you enjoyable? What I buy from you?

That's what I care about. What does your performance pay model look like? Well, for example, the call center, if you're over 90%, you can make up to $7. Then you get an extra dollar for attendance, an extra dollar for this, that. You can make about 10 bucks per booked call if you're above 90%. What you want to do, and I've said this a lot on the podcast, is wipe the things that they can influence and 100% are in their control and then build a payment structure around getting the results that you want to make more money and then figure out a way to pay on it. You need to be pretty good at math, do Excel, and then try it for one employee for one month to see if it works

out. When we rolled out our program, we ended up saving a little bit of money. The winners got paid way more. The losers, so to speak, quit. And all of a sudden, we top graded like crazy and made a hell of a lot more money. And then we had employees that could make 30 bucks an hour. How easy do you think it was to recruit when we have our best A players? And trust me, when COVID happened, they all went home and they worked from home. And we didn't skip a beat because when they have that phone ring, they go money Money That's the biggest secret Can you talk about virtual assistants or gig workers?

I realize it's different But never used either Virtual assistants If you get a chance to read the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris Here's what I can tell you Is You know, Ryanis could probably tell you more than me but i've had 50 virtual assistants do it in a country that's not a civil war make

sure they got a good internet connection there's software that will record what's being done on their computer and make it so simple and easy there's a standard operating procedure there's no thought into it i'm not saying they can think, but a lot of times you see people like, here's what I need you to do. Go do it. You can't have people figure out ways to do this. You need to do it. You need to make it simple and a repeatable process.

For example, I'm doing things on Pinterest, Houzz, Instagram, TikTok. I'm doing all these things that are perfect for a VA. But if you say, hey, I want you to start thinking about an email campaign to send out. They don't know. Content is not the best thing usually, but there's a lot of people with master's degrees and PhDs that'll work for under 10 bucks an hour. And right now it's coming in pretty handy. Our home service franchise is worth the royalty. I've seen some amazing franchises that they've done everything. They set up everything you need to succeed. It's a turnkey business. McDonald's is amazing.

Those guys are multi, multi, multi, multi millionaires. So franchises, yeah. You know, at the end of the day, if they build you the website, if they give you the materials, if they really make it into a turnkey. So the first thing I would do, some of them take five or 10%. If they're handling a little bit of marketing for you, they're helping you train and recruit. Yeah. I think franchises are amazing. They're amazing opportunities. In fact, there might be a day that I started a franchise. It's not going to be in my garage door niche, but

I got the opportunity to go out and see Kevin Wilson with Mosquito Joe's and he ended up selling to Neighborly, but the franchise model works. It's amazing if it's done properly, but a lot of people screw it up. They think it's a quick, easy way to make a buck and they don't offer the support they need to be successful. So I would say be careful, but it works. Is 60% margin decent in the door industry?

I think in the door industry, 15% is a good number of profit. That's real profit though. I think you're talking about gross. I think that's door industry, 15% is a good number of profit. That's real profit though. I think you're talking about gross. I think that's a good number. I really look at bottom line. If you're a bigger company, bottom line is more important than top line. So I'd like to know what numbers you're really shooting for.

But I think if you're doing over 20, it's amazing. But my best technicians keep asking me to raise prices even more. I've had my prices raised five times. We're up 54% on my cost of parts. So I hope you guys are raising the shit out of your pricing. I mean, I see you guys selling center bearings for 10 bucks. You should be selling it for 50. How are your technicians paid?

They're paid performance pay, a percentage of the ticket minus the parts and taking off the tax. And it starts out, it rolls up from 13 to 15 to 17 to 19 and the way that it's structured is off a yard signs and other things like that we look at yard signs sales loss material average we look at their driving we look at a lot of things that really matter and it's not complicated once you see it and I what am i sharing it it's not a big deal I it. And I wouldn't mind sharing it. It's not a big deal. I mean, I'm sure my guys have got it out there, but it's way too sophisticated unless you have the right staff to do it

and understand Excel and understand CRMs. I wouldn't recommend or pay for anybody that's not a 50-person technician company or more. Do your techs install off the service vans or is an installer separate from a technician? I'm not sure what truck to make the fleet model. I use Nissan Frontiers and I do a full rack on top for the installers and it's freaking badass.

We took a lot of time to design the perfect truck and the perfect van. And then we use the Sprinter vans. I forget what it's called. That's something um but they're perfect they're just amazing it's think about that this is their office that they're going to be working in hopefully for a long time so we want to make it super nice and beautiful and it's aluminum and it's lightweight and i love it hell yeah raise the out of prices greatest line ever good i'm glad you guys are doing it i got a lot of other questions here i'm trying to get through them here. Michael Lott, my business currently has four employees and my guys currently need to have me there with them almost all the time.

I'm looking to find people that do not need me around all the time. We currently are not at the point to have a full-time trainer, but I really liked the idea. I would like to grow that person into my business. What should I do? You got to find somebody that loves to train, first of all. I think that it's important to get somebody that enjoys training people and being a good leader. That's super, super important. I can tell you being organized is a great trait beat. We do the predictive index personality profiling and a C-type personality that's detail-oriented, that can handle a perfect schedule is important. They got to develop the training. And then the greatest opportunity ever is to use the people that you've already trained

and ask them questions on what we could have done better. And that, you got to start somewhere and then continue to add to it and interview the people and have exit interviews. So the five guys that are here to retrain, I said, what's some things that you guys think we could work on? I said, a SWOT analysis, there's weaknesses in there. And that's my favorite part of the SWOT analysis. So what could we have done better? And they said, different way we could have introduced them and hung out with the field supervisors. They had some very, very good things to say of what we could do better. And my trainers were taking notes, so props to them, but there's always an opportunity to be better, but you got to find

that dedicated person. I didn't have a trainer for a long, long time. And that's probably, it's probably one of my biggest mistakes is if I had to talk to myself when I was younger, I would have said, figure out a badass. I want you to take the number one guy in driving, sales, no warranty calls, conversion rate. Might not be your top, top guy because the top, top guy, don't make the top guy a manager. The reason they make a lot of money is because they're in sales. So you got to find someone that's detail oriented. Find somebody that's excited, that represents the culture you're trying to build and get that person to train.

Is Angie's List a great system source for you? How is the ROI? We make money on Angie's List, but when I was smaller, I paid way more attention to it. How do you open a new office in another state, new corporation? Do you purchase the property? Who hires? How do you keep the culture high? Do you open a new office? How do you open a new office? So first we look for a rental. We look for a rental, three years under 2,500 bucks. Usually it's about 1,500 square feet. Sometimes we got to go over that. We're getting one in Orlando right now. We're closing on one in Minneapolis. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to hire a couple of guys. Usually I use word of mouth, Facebook, stuff like that. And then we interview them and then they train an extra two weeks here.

So they come out for six weeks. Their job in the beginning is just to grow their reputation, run a bunch of friends and family, cheap jobs, build up the reputation, spend six months with two guys building reputation, turn things on slowly. Then I hire eight to 10 people. It looks, feels exactly like all the other shops. And that's how you build it. And they're here long enough to indoctrinate them in the culture. They get to hear me every day. They get to hear my managers, Adam, Brian, Luke, Mike Bailey. So I tend to want to lease them in the beginning. If I could buy them, that's just a different play. I want as much money in my

business for operations and for growth in my business, not real estate. I have invested in real estate. I've made great money in my main shop. I believe it's a great asset and it's grown through inflation. So Daryl from Aauthentic told me to go buy a building and I listened to him at Topgolf one day. He said, go to Enterprise for your vehicles and get new ones. And I listened to him. He's taught me a lot. And Daryl, hey, thank you for the heads up on a lot of stuff. My biggest competitor helped me out amazingly and I helped them out, hey, thank you for the heads up on a lot of stuff. My biggest competitor helped me out amazingly. And I helped them out, I hope. I think we've done a lot of cool things together. And he's an amazing gentleman. How to keep your culture high is the market manager is visiting

them all the time. And then the regional manager is visiting them all the time. And we're having them try to come back to Phoenix once a year. And we're on the phone with them on a mojo call every single day. And then they've got all these outlets to reach out to people. So it's important to spend time learning about people's family, their personal goals, and applying those personal goals to their work goals. And actually giving a shit about your employees, that actually matters. I think there's a lot of owners that blame everything bad on them.

They don't take any responsibility for their failures. You know, I had an angry, angry customer. I won't go into names. He's pissed off, and he told Adam all this stuff, and he's like, I'm going to get him. I need to talk to Tommy Amelo. I looked him up, and I said, hello, Mr. So-and-so. It's Tommy Amelo, and if you give me a quick second, I want to explain a few things, then I want to hear your side of the story.

I said, first of all, I realized we made a mistake and I'm very, very sorry. In the past few months, COVID almost took my dad's life, but he's doing amazing now. We can't seem to get our suppliers. The metal price is shooting through the roof. We're four weeks out on doors. I got a call from the COO of the biggest graduate company in the world telling me he can't give us springs. I said, we need to do a better job. And I'm the owner. And I'm embarrassed that we let you down. And now I want to hear everything you have to say. And he goes, oh my God. He goes, no one's ever done that before. He goes, I want to be your friend. Would you come over and check the workout? And I said, I'd love to. I'll take you out to lunch. And the way that I flipped it is I took complete ownership

of the failure of our company. And I looked at it as a learning opportunity. Instead of getting defensive, instead of having a one-star get out there, I didn't give him any discounts. I don't have to give money back to every single guy. So let's keep going here. Planning on opening more locations for the business. What resources are you used for new hires? I'm going to get everybody that's part of my Facebook group discount on SparkHire. SparkHire is awesome. Have a place to organize everything. We use Paylocity, but create a process to get employees onboarded. SparkHire is amazing. Ride along forums. How often are they on their phone?

Do they show up on time? Do they ask great questions? Are they smoking cigarettes like a chimney? Do they show good confidence? Would you want to work for this person for a long time? All these things matter. And to get that forum filled out every single time, do they smell like alcohol?

Then that whole month, I'm making sure they showed up on time and I want to take them to dinner with their significant other. Dave Ramsey talks about that he says i want to see if they love each other still and if they enjoy their time at home because if you hate your home life you're not going to enjoy work as much you're going to come in from a bad just a bad situation right what's your recommendation approach on budgeting on marketing when you're going greenfield growth it's organic growth you're going to spend more when you get into that market.

But really set things up. You've got to do things lean when you're going into a new market. When you're opening up a new market, think like you first started. Yard signs. You're not going out there and spending a fortune on PPC and doing billboards because you go broke. Unless you've accounted for that and you plan on taking a loss for the first couple years. You got to go really, really, really lean strategy to get it up.

What systems are you using for financial reporting and management? Is it tied up to your CRM? So yeah, right now, believe it or not, we're still using QuickBooks and we're getting ready to switch to Intact. And yeah, it talks directly with an API and do our CRM. Intact is who we're switching to. Then we've got Paylocity for our payroll and that's how you request time off and do a lot of things on the back office side. Questions about ServiceTitan. How long did it take you to gain your return on investment? ServiceTitan, it cost me less than 1% of our revenue. So they've come a long way on the onboarding. I can tell you that. When I get people on ServiceTitan in the garage industry,

it's going to pay incredible money back. I can tell you guys that. I think that there's other softwares out there that do a pretty good job, but I really like ServiceTitan. How is the QuickBooks integration? It works well, but in-text the next level up because we had 11,000 transactions last month. So when you get to that size, QuickBooks is not designed for that. How did implementing ServiceTitan affect your business practices and how did you adapt? Well, we were already using a CRM. Some people were used to carrying around an iPad or an Android tablet. So it didn't affect us a whole lot. I think that there's a lot of training. You can't just dump on people. You've got to go in and train the crap out of them and you got to build

simulations. So have them do it a hundred times in front of you and create one-on-ones. When you have a CRM rollout, teach them one-on-one and spend a day with each employee. That's what you got to do. You can't group teach it and expect everybody to get it. People learn at different rates. They have different questions they want to know. And make sure there's 20 ways to skin a cat or there's eight ways to get to the top of the mountain.

Just make sure you're creating the process and writing it down and with pictures they can emulate i think a lot of people they just say i taught you what's wrong with you i gave you the lessons what efficiencies did you gain from the software call tracking of marketing with 4300 individual call tracking numbers i was able to renegotiate almost every point of form of marketing and have the best. There's so many things that I can do now. I know exactly what zip codes I'm getting the highest tickets out of. I could see when Wayne Dalton start breaking because I could see the neighbors. There's so many things on the marketing side that I love. Payroll became an hour a week instead of 40 hours a week. It does a lot of things.

The one thing I'll tell you is listen to my podcast with Ara. They built the CRM from the best companies in the world. And because you don't do it that way, doesn't mean you shouldn't change it that way. If you would just adopt the things that a CRM is built for and change the pay structure, the modify it the way that it'll accept it, you'd be way better off. And I know people hate change, but if you change, you're going to save hundreds and hundreds of hours a month. What's your team's biggest pain point with the software? Is there anything you would change about ServiceTitan? No, because I don't want ServiceTitan to be the end-all be-all for everything in the company because I want them to be the user

interface. And what I would say is I'd like them to have a really more of a robust API, which they're working on. I like HubSpot a lot because it handles more of my marketing brain and my employees are going to get handwritten birthday cards and brownies and another year anniversary of birthdays. Like I would say there's really not a lot I would change about it there's a few things that the inventory they're working on i don't know that the schedule engine is a program that we use on top of service time we're starting to spend a lot of money i mean i'm looking at podium even though we use marketing pro between podium service titans schedule engine quickbooks to be intact i'm probably spending more a couple percent on software, but I don't really care because it's a drop in the bucket for how much we make.

I recently saw a video with Schedule Engine. I'm greatly considering bringing it into our workflow. I'd love to know what your experience has been like and whether you find your customers fully use automated booking or prefer the basic contact form. You know, Aaron Gaynor is an amazing guy with a huge plumbing company in Ohio. And he said he's had somewhere around 40% of his customers are booking through the online booking. The millennials bought more houses in the last couple of years than baby boomers.

People like to get straight to the point and book. I think it's amazing. And every one of your mailers have a QR code where they can book on every one of your websites, your Google My Business location. Yes, yes, yes, it works. I'm also starting my garage door service business in SoCal. I realize I'm in for a ton of work. What's the number one piece of advice you would give me? Come visit me. Come out here for a day. Do a a walkthrough i'd say once you become big enough i'm really going to put a limit on this it's got to be a certain size to get into this best practices group one of my requirements is you can't be the guy in the truck anymore because

you can't ever work on the business if you're still running all the calls so come visit me see how it looks here i'm not the company, but we got some good things going and hopefully you can take those. The best thing to do is go find the best, biggest owners that you could find, find out where their mindset is and see if you can duplicate your mindset to start matching theirs.

Surround yourself with successful people, make new friends, join groups. I'm joining a group that costs $100,000 a year to be part of. Every single person there and over 90 owners do over a hundred million. So it's changing the mindset of who you hang around with. You take the five closest people you spend the most time with, add it up, divide it by five, you're within 20% of that most of the time. So read more. You guys hear me talk

about books. They're surrounding me right now. This is the guy that does a lot of the advising to me on my money and my unrevocable trust. If you get a chance, check out Jim Dew. This book is beyond a million. It's on Audible. What's your favorite book on acquisitions? I'll tell you right here. Private Equity Playbook is around here somewhere.

And he's writing another book all about acquisitions. I'm having him on the podcast again. There's a lot of books. He recommended I read these two books. It's called Move and Grow by Sandy Ogg. So these were like 300 bucks a piece. Really, really powerful books. So I love, love, love, love, love,

love learning about acquisitions. I just think it's amazing. Can you recommend any particular books I could purchase specifically for MNA? I just went through those. Anything by Adam Coffey, the private equity playbook, those books. And then I would really spend a lot of time understanding how financial institutions work and the difference of banks. There's different types of money out there. There's what's called mezzanine, understanding debt structures, structured debt, understanding the difference between franchises. There's so much to learn. I bought four books on franchising just to learn more about franchising. And anything you want to learn. I bought four books on franchising just to learn more

about franchising. And anything you want to learn about, there's books out there, there's podcasts out there, there's pros out there. So did you say you're buying all your vans from Enterprise? I do. I buy all my vans from Enterprise and I could probably negotiate a better price that you guys are paying. They handle everything. I'm a big client of theirs. I'm the second biggest client next to Amazon in arizona from enterprise i'd be glad to make that introduction right last question is it smart to use loans for your business or is it the best way to grow slow on your own revenue different strokes for different folks me hell yeah leverage the shit out of money you know that's a tough question because a lot of people say grow slower. They don't have the

stomach for debt. I'm going to go out there and borrow hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. But then again, I'm going to be a multi-multi-billion dollar company. Yes, I say leverage debt. These interest rates are the lowest they've ever been. You can get a loan for three, four, 5%. I got a podcast coming out about how to leverage sba loans but hell yeah you could buy a property you're paying four percent i got investments that get me 15 that's an 11 yield if you think borrowing money is stupid oh my gosh hundreds of millions of points i I'm just, geez. If you're not financially stable, if you got a buying problem and you go on Amazon and you just, you don't spend money in the right ways

and you're not recruiting properly, do not get a loan if you're not responsible. Don't be in business if you're not. But if you got a brain, there's a good book here. I think there's a book he wrote called Leverage, but the art of the deal, this is an oldie Trump book, but yes, leverage. The way to become rich is leverage. The way to become broke is leverage. Compound interest is your best friend or your worst enemy, depending on if it's credit card debt. But right now, interest rates are going to have to go up to

control inflation. So what do I recommend? If you've got a good business and it's going to compound the size of your business, go get a loan. If you're not responsible, don't get a loan. What are some good things to watch and read for upselling? You have changed my mindset. Thank you. Joe Crisara, man. That dude, he's got some good books. The book I'd recommend you read is called Maximum Influence. I would definitely read his book. It's called Whisper Sales Management. Let me go through here and tell you. Lenny Gray, door-to-door millionaire. He's a beast. Lenny's a good sales guy. The Sales Secrets is good. New Sales Amplified. I've got a lot of books here. I'd say half the books I read are sales. There's a good book I saw today that I haven't read in a while.

Joe Girard, the world's greatest salesman. How to sell anything to anybody. He was a car salesman. He's the most successful car salesman. He's in the Guinness Book of World Records. And it's all about relationships. Can I come check out your operation? Yes. Email me. I'll set it up with Bree. I love when I have people out here.

Pay it forward. Hey, Tommy, I got an exterior cleaning business. I really would love the opportunity to do some work for you and your family. Set up their curb appeal of your home. I would have a generous discount if you leave me a good review. Yeah, moving into a new house. Let's talk about that down the line here. I'm doing a lot of work to it.

I love me some Trump. I think we just became best friends. That's awesome. I'm hitting a wall with recruitment. Can you give me any advice how to find really good talent? Because I'm not getting any. Sign on bonuses,

make your employees the top recruiters in the company. You've got to get your employees recruiting. You've got to ask them to go find people. You've got to give them tips. You need to start meeting people and asking them to come check out. Say, when can you come look? You got to follow through. The follow-up is key. You know, my sales brain just says, how do I attract amazing people? Facebook, there's what's called influencer marketing. Look up influencer marketing. There's a cute girl on Instagram. She's got 10,000 followers. Give her $500 for every employee. I'm about to release some new stuff that I'm working with on getthereferral.com. It's going to be nuts how many referrals I get on employees. I'm working on a list of all the

books I recommend, but there's too many. It says, please make a list of all the books you recommend and share. I'll do that for sure. I'm already actually have that coming out. Do you have a succession plan? What does the exit look like for a one? This is my last question guys. Cause I've got an amazing guy waiting outside. His name's Jaime and he builds all my wood doors.

So here's what it looks like for me. I'm going to lever a couple hundred million dollars. I've already got the bank lined up. I'm going to build the biggest consolidation home service company this world's ever seen. I'm going to make it amazing. I'm going to make hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of millionaires in the process. And the exit is in three to four years.

And then I'm going to buy back in at 49%. So I'll probably end up taking 600 million off the table. And then I'll buy back in and the next check will be way bigger. And then I'm going to go do it in 10 other industries and become a philanthropist and help out lots and lots of people, hopefully, and take them on a ride with me. I'm selfish in the way that I want to bring every friend and family member I know with me on it. I think that's selfish, but it's also maybe good. I want to enjoy to do what I want when I want with who I want. And unfortunately, I love working. I love coming in here. I told somebody earlier,

I always mix business and pleasure together. I enjoy working my butt off. It doesn't feel like work. I'm still here. Everybody's at Topgolf. I have fun. Look, this is fun for me. Being on this podcast is the most amazing thing I've ever done because it introduced me to a lot of you guys. It got me to write a book. It got me to get into new shops and meet Dan Antonelli and have Unclee come out and teach us how to sell and i'm really enjoying this it's all about the uh the ride not necessarily the destination the journey i'm having a fun time with it so uh you guys thank you for watching the podcast i really appreciate it i'm probably going to be doing one of these every couple months letting you guys know what

i'm working on internally personal relationship as well as well as work. You know, me and Bree are getting pretty close. I love that girl. Just having a blast. I really do. I enjoy my life so much and I want to give back. So hopefully you guys come up with a ton more questions. Email me. Gianni helps me out. I've got a lot of great people. Helena, you know, there's a really, really good people helping me out. And I really appreciate you guys watching. Let me know what you guys need. Great questions. I'm very passionate. I'm excited. And I hope you the best on making as much money and creating success in your family and friends as possible. Let me know if you need anything. And you guys have an amazing weekend. Thank you guys.

Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review, make it four or five sentences, tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership.

It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're telling everybody our secrets, basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your lives even further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.