The Home Service Expert Podcast - Sales and Marketing Secrets of an 8-Figure Roofing Entrepreneur

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

Lee Haight is the CEO and owner of RRCA (Roofing & Reconstruction Contractors of America, LLC), a renowned company specializing in commercial roofing restoration services, and is the leader of one of America's top 25 roofing companies. He has trained over 3000 people in the last three years at SkyDiamonds University, the first online university for roofing contractors. Lee also founded The Blue Collar Empire - a network created to help all home service contractors acquire talent, get customers, and extract profits. In this episode, we talked about employee management, roofing services, sales coaching…

Most people will love the money and use the people. They think that going into business is about making money and then getting people to work for you and use them. But the idea is that you got to love the people and you got to use the money to love the people. And, you know, like sometimes that's been, like honestly being too nice, not putting boundaries on people,

giving people too much. That's been one of my biggest weaknesses in business. But, you know, I'd rather have that be a weakness than constantly thinking small, thinking everybody's out to get my piece, unable to grow. I see these people being the most miserable. I've been coaching people for a long time. And the scarcity-minded people are the least into personal development. They have the least quality of life. I don't care how much money they're making. They're miserable. Everyone that I talk to that's scarcity-minded, and that's the same contractor

that's still stuck with the belt on or still writing all the estimates or selling all the jobs, he kind of becomes a slave to his own business. And he's got this identity crisis where he identifies as that guy, but he hates that guy at the same time. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, all right, all right.

Late is good because Lee is casting checks and breaking necks. He's a dealmaker. Lee Height is an expert in roofing, sales, recruiting, leadership. He's based out of Fort Worth. Roofing and Reconstruction Contractors of America. He's the president. Roofing Professionals President from 2013 to present. Used to be a sales manager from 2005 to 2013. Lee is the CEO and owner of RRCA, Roofing and Reconstruction Contractors of America, LLC, a renowned company specializing in commercial

roofing restoration and is the leader of one of America's top 25 roofing companies. Lee has trained over 3,000 people over the last three years at Sky Diamonds University, the first online university for roofing contractors. He founded the Blue Collar Empire, a network created to help all home service contractors acquire talent, get customers, and extract profits. He's also known for his philanthropical efforts as he actively supports various charitable causes, particularly disaster relief and community development. Lee, me and you have known each other a long time. I follow you all over the place on the internet. I think you follow me back because your shit pops up.

Yeah, I follow you back. We've been helping each other out for a long time. The home service millionaire meets Sky Diamonds. That's right. Listen, dude, I love your marketing. I love what you guys are doing. Feels like to me, we got to make this quick. We're going to just jump into some good stuff, but feels like to me. I got so many good questions. Listen, I literally, this is like a coaching call as much as it is as a live podcast. I'm very excited about opportunities in our industry. Now what's up with this home service gold rush and all the private equity being interested in our space?

Why? Well, the fact is COVID happened. And right before COVID happened, people understood the blue collar industry is something you can't take away. You know, hotels shut down. You had all these other things shut down, right? You had movie theaters. You had salons. You had all kinds of stuff. Well, we became essential. And what happened was, is there's a difference

between a platform company, and you don't have a platform unless you're in four markets doing 20% bottom line. I don't care what anybody tells you. And you've got to have a system to recruit and train technicians. You've got to have a marketing go-to-market plan. You need VPs of corporate development. You need to understand all aspects of business. A lot of people are like, oh, I want to expand. Oh, I want to do a franchise. Well, you don't even own, you're still in single digits of your market share. So I think private equity woke up and said, wow, this is a sophisticated business. They know their KPIs. They understand systematically. You know, we've got BI tools like Power BI, which is business intelligence tools.

There's Domo. There's Grow.com. And when it's sophisticated with a great CRM, you can kind of predict the cash flow. I can predict my payroll within 2% each week. So I think we happen to be at the right place at the right time. And that's why I love acquisitions now, but I also love Greenfield. And I don't know, what have you been up to? I know you're a big trainer, but as far as getting back into the business. It all started with a mission to sell Grant Cardona Roof. I didn't have this vision to be like this coach online.

But literally, dude, I was trying to close this big deal and I got a $10,000 a month coaching bill. And I was like, oh shit, I need to start coaching to pay my coaching bill. And that's how I got into the coaching space. That was about seven years ago. Since then, you know, like being a part of masterminds, being a part of events, talking with people like you has really been the biggest differentiator in my life. I was sort of an average door-to-door guy that traveled and chased storms for a lot of years, for like 16 years.

No, probably less than that. Probably like 14 years. The reality was learning direct response marketing, adding social media, figuring out how to become the type of leader where, you know, it was a book called Good to Great that helped me kind of identify what I could be best in the world at. Like, I could be best in the world about introducing people to the opportunity and roofing, training their success. And what am I most passionate about, Tommy? I'm most passionate about getting leads, opening the door to opportunity, recruiting salespeople into organization. I hear you talk about recruiting and how you bring people in and how you bring light to the trades and make the trades cool. And that's where we're like a brother from another mother, because my whole life I've been on a mission to make home service or roofing or the trades industry cool to the top talent in the country.

And, you know, it's like whether you start working with your hands as a technician or you start working with your hands knocking doors, it's blue collar. You know, I don't think about blue collar anymore because I've got a guy that came in, Bree's cousin, amazing dude. His name's Micah. And he's doing landscaping. He's got 43 lawns. He just turned 18.

And I said, let me fly you out here for a day. So we recorded it all. And I'm going to be releasing a lot of this content. But I can't tell you how much I loved it because I saw myself in him. He's working right now 69 to 72 hours a week. We broke out the math. He's making $11.88 before he pays for machinery, gas. He's a one-man army.

So I said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to call some of your clients to get your pricing right. And none of them answered. But basically, I gave him the script and I said, listen, we're going to get you to the point where you're charging $60 an hour when you're working on the, because you got to pay for the machines. You got to get labor. You got to like, look, dude, most of you'll lose 30%, but when we raise your prices, but you got to give the best service, you got to clean up the dog poop. You got to make sure you're doing fertilizer as part of the service. You got to make sure to fix all the sprinkler heads. You got to go

above and beyond. You got to bring them a wreath for Christmas. You got to do things different, get different, be different, and give that amazing service. Because I always tell people, you got to be priced right, but not the same shitty company you are today. Because right now, your employees look like shit. They have felonies. And don't get me wrong. I think I'm a big believer in second chances. There's no brand on your trucks. online reviews are horrible i walk into your building it smells like poop and you wonder you are charged appropriately for what you are today but if you want to go to the right dimension of where your business needs to be you got to charge right but you also got to put the money back in the company and not buy you know no offense to you because i love your boat but don't go out by motorcycles boats and everything

else until you take care of your people amen and there's like uh at the conference there's a guy two years ago myron goldney spoke he said dude most people will love the money and use the people they think that going into business is about making money and then getting people to work for you and use them but the idea is that you got to love the people and you got to use the money to love the people. And, you know, like sometimes that's been like honestly being too nice, not putting boundaries on people, giving people too much. That's been one of my biggest weaknesses in business. But, you know, I'd rather have that be a weakness than constantly thinking small, thinking everybody's out to get my piece, unable to grow. I see these people being the most

miserable. I've been coaching people for a long time. And the scarcity-minded people are the least into personal development. They have the least quality of life. I don't care how much money they're making. They're miserable. Everyone that I talked to that's scarcity-minded, and that's the same contractor that's still stuck with the belt on or still writing all the estimates or selling all the jobs, he kind of becomes a slave to his own business. And he's got this identity crisis where he identifies as that guy, but he hates that guy at the same time. I know a lot of those people, Lee, and you know, there's a lot of people out there that really hate their home service business, but they want to

coach and they want to coach for the right reasons. That's great if they're out to help a lot of people. What I find is most people don't want to be the leader. They don't want to lead by example. They do not want that. It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of work. There's a lot riding stress it's a lot of work there's a lot riding on you that's it's a lot you know 700 employees for me and they're feeding three people so that's 2,800 people that you figure it out i i can't really screw off much i gotta make sure i'm here representing in 40 markets and i'm telling you right now i i'm just getting started and i'm just having fun that's what i respect about you more than like all the rest of these guys. You know, we've been talking.

I can remember last time we talked on the phone. I was working a hurricane. I was on the road with my team. You know, it was response mode. And it's like, dude, we have 400 employees. And like, believe it or not, even though I was Mr. Sales and Marketing, I didn't have the basics of core values, the right type of basically meeting structure. And still one of my biggest, I'm very revenue oriented. I'm very, very passionate, but sometimes dealing with the personalities and leadership and being the CEO on the highest level,

I have to kill parts of my old self all the time. Me being emotional and being able to kind of get through a hard day in sales by getting myself charged up doesn't always work during the meetings when I'm running the whole team. And how many times do we see these guys get to a point? And last year, we did $65 million. But this year, we've acquired four companies. Organically, our company is going to do about $100 million with all the companies that we've acquired $150 million. And what you're doing out there has made me pay attention. What Lance is doing has made me pay attention. And I'm also trying to get to that platform level, which,

like you said, there's a lot of prerequisites. I'm in about, we're in Ohio, New Hampshire, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, but we are still, you know, sharpening up, you know, between all companies. We're about $12 million in EBITDA and we're on this mission to create as many millionaires as possible and build up a company worth a billion dollars. And so I'm also eager to learn all the different trade secrets from industry like yours. I think roofers get away with murder because we have high profit margins and we have high ticket jobs. And whenever you have to squeeze every nickel out of every lead and maximize profits the way HVAC or some of these other service industries, I look forward to learning a lot from every

different industry because I also, I'm opening up my first HVAC business. We added solar to roofing and we always did general contracting like when it came to insurance restoration. But, you know, in coaching contractors, what I say makes the most money, roofing, solar, windows and doors. You know, it's funny that you were able to dominate a niche garage doors that really no one really wanted to be a champion of, but you put it on the map. I like looking for things that's not sexy, but I'll tell you this, Lance, Tom Howard, Dave Geiger, Travis Ringe, Ishmael, they're all getting into roofing. And I'll tell you this,

it's the hottest, latest, and greatest thing because it's such a high ticket. And it's not that complicated. I understand. I've talked to a lot of people. I went to Win the Storm. What I can tell you there is I met some amazing people, some real, real, real good people. And Paul Reed, there's some people that I met that are just, they know the industry. And I think it's a huge opportunity. I'll tell you this. I got to stay focused on what I'm doing. There's a lot of opportunities to invest. God's been good. The money's good in the bank. I can invest in a lot of things, but the fact is you got to keep your blinders on, you look at racehorses. When you're doing too much. That's right.

You're right. My niche is roofing and your niche is garage doors. Hey, guys. I hope you're enjoying this podcast interview. Before we go ahead, I want to let you know about the next Freedom event that's going to blow your mind. In my latest book, Elevate, I shared with you the ideas that helped me grow my garage door business to over 200 million in revenue. But at the Freedom Event, I'll take you through the next level by giving you access to the people who actually helped me turn these ideas and systems and processes into reality. These experts helped me build an amazing culture at my company and recruit A-plus players that I have with me

today. So if you want to learn from the source and connect with the people who can truly elevate your business, make sure to get tickets to the freedomedomevent.com. Freedomevent.com, that's freedomevent.com, and I hope to see you in Orlando. Now, let's get back to the interview. One time in the Home Service Millionaire book, I wrote, my buddy Dave, I used to tell him I need to put my eggs in a lot of baskets. I got to be prepared for something to fall. I got to be a hustler. I got to have a side hustle. I read essentialism. I read the one thing. I've listened to a lot of people. What I've realized and what Dave told me back in the day was, if you put your eggs all in one basket, it'll overflow. And that's what it's doing. It's

overflowing into different opportunities. But ultimately, the good thing I do well is now I understand the lawyers, the quality of earnings, the audited financials. I understand what it's like to get on and get a huge transaction done and also roll a lot, a lot of equity. I still don't have the company. So I think that's what I know. I heard the details on this. I heard multiple nine figures, 47 percent. You got 10 companies.

I heard kind of the play byby-play and i'm really impressed and i want to say congratulations yeah thank you listen i'm only as strong as my team and literally my team is everything i'll tell you you know if you took it all away and you left me my core team members i'd have it all back again within two years. Because one of the things I think I do exceptionally well is recognize my challenges and the things I'm not good at. And I've been very fortunate to attract the right people. The worst thing you want in your life, Lee, is to say, let me go handle that because I'm the only one that understands it and I'm the best. If you're saying that at your company, you got to ask yourself, do you not have the right compensation programs? When I wrote the book Elevate, I explained an equity incentive program. That's

why I gave $100 million to employees. And that's why on this next deal that's going to happen in the beginning of 2026, we're going to make 150 millionaires. And I think it's important to bring people with you. And it's important that they run in the same direction and everybody knows what's going on. Because when that happens, and everybody's got an they run in the same direction and everybody knows what's going on because when that happens and everybody's got owner next to their name and they understand that there's an event and when it's going to take place dude your whole mind will be blown you'll never see i'm in the middle of the fucking grunt work okay i'll be honest with you going from 65 million to 100 million cost of goods goes up everything is really crazy i mean i do a combination of insurance and retail.

The reality is like, it's so funny from the outside looking in, you know, in order for you to make that big play, what did you have to risk? What does it take to have this type of insane growth? And, you know, I kind of know what it takes, but I like everyone. Sometimes you don't hear the hard side

because like, let me just walk through a little bit of my hard side, Tommy. Hurricane Ian happens. It's a blessing. I love hurricanes. Okay. I'm prepared. This is where I get to really add a lot of market share and grow. And dude, I go out and land these big old commercial jobs, like these big insurance restoration projects that cost a million dollars to fund. And next thing I know, I got $4 million in hard cash deployed on the streets and emergency services. But here's the thing, you know, that money all comes back in time. It comes back usually by the third quarter. And here we are in the third quarter this year and $8 million in roofing contracts with large amounts of money come through in a

time period where, dude, we needed the flow. And it's like every construction guy that goes into building growth, you better figure out how to be disciplined to never get in front of the money. You better figure out how be willing to leverage all the different relationships that you have. You better figure out sometimes run lean and sell your ass off to keep motherfucking gas in the airplane. And so with me, like you said, forecasting what costs are a very important thing, but it's always about keeping up the front end with the back end. No matter how big of a company you are, you either got tons of builds and sales issues or, you know, build issues with tons of builds and sales issues or build issues with tons of sales? What is a regular contractor that wants to grow big not seeing that we had to go through? Well, first thing is identify your

strengths. And that's where you should be spending 98% of your time and understand your weaknesses. Also, there's two things that always happen. I need more leads or I need more great people. There's always that teeter-totter. When I went through the transaction, I didn't sleep very well. It was very difficult. It was a lot of pressure. And I actually lost, I got alopecia, lost a little bit of my hair. It's coming back. But it's stressful. And right now, I'm taking some supplements. And I've realized my cortisol levels are really, really high at night, which is hard to burn fat. So I'm doing everything right now.

I stopped drinking for at least the next foreseeable future. And I'm just trying to get myself in the right area to think right. And I don't mind telling anybody, you know, I just got my DEXA scan. I was 26.7% body fat, which is officially obese. And I don't know how, but I dexa scan i was 26.7 body fat which is officially obese and i don't know how but i'm going hard in the paint nine days through i think you got to be right your body needs to be right you need to be thinking correctly i have a visceral fats 4.5 i'm going to get that below one and i've got a bunch of bets going on with buddies and i'm holding myself accountable and putting it out let me give you the tip bro the tip, bro. Let me give you the pro tip, dude. The boxing fitness,

no matter if you get in there and fight or not, I don't give a fuck if you fight, dude, it burns fucking fat. And I literally almost five times a week have 800 calorie workouts. A lot of people are all like, I used to love runners high, but like running made me skinny. So when I did 75 hard, I went through the same issues. Like I stopped drinking for 75. As a matter of fact, I failed 75 hard four or five times. And so finally, you know, lifting weights was boring. I found myself in a boxing gym and it was boxing fitness. And next thing I know I'm doing kickboxing. Next thing I know I'm doing jujitsu. Now it's like a community. It's a place where I can go and my mind shuts off. It's therapeutic. I'm in the best shape of my life.

And I have been eating bad here recently. So I've gotten probably a little bit of not quite the ripped, chiseled fucking self that I was when I walked into the cage last. But the reality is, man, fuck, dude, this shit right here is a cheat code, Tommy. And I want you to come, dude. I don't know. I should have reached out earlier. But September 1st through 3rd, we're having my Muay Thai coach. He's going to break down in the middle of the event and run a Muay Thai little boot camp. We're going to have Gilbert Burns run a jujitsu seminar and all the fucking influencers are going to run. Because doing grappling, Lance is into wrestling and there's something really therapeutic about getting a a workout in with your bros and when everybody's

trying to strangle each other and then you get to talk afterwards, there's actually a little camaraderie. And I don't know how many people are actually going to participate, Tommy, because all the jujitsu community in Florida, they're coming in. We're holding a fight for 25 grand. Some of the top grapplers are coming in. Last year, I did it with one of the influencers in roofing. Jocko was there. Dustin Poirier was there. It was not a cage fight. It was submission grappling. I didn't punch in that because handling a conference, fighting, doing all that at one time, it's a lot to deal with. I took a jujitsu match not a um striking match but the point is dude this shit right here it's a fucking cheat code man and uh i would just say man i would love to have you i'd put you on the stage we'd give you the fucking time and i'd love

to have you out there listen send me a text i'll see if i can make that but here's the deal man i don't care what you got to do some people people, Dave Carroll's running like a madman. He loves it. Whatever you got to do, all I know is that my cousin Rachel looked at me and she said, Tommy, she's got a doctorate degree

in physical therapy. She said, why are you so good at so many things, but you don't take care of yourself? And that hit me like a ton of bricks. And I'm in, dude. And I'm not, that's not even a challenge to me anymore. I set myself up. I'm getting all the tests. I'm on four peptides. I'm on everything you could think of that'll make me healthy and get my body where it needs to be. But more importantly, dude, listen, at the end of the day, what people got to realize is you got to have a team running with you. You got to hire for your

weaknesses. You got to get people that are smarter than you and you got to build a culture. If you don't build the culture, the culture will build it for itself. And that's not a fun culture to be around. And it has to do with your brand. It has to do with your core values. It has to do with your mission and vision. It has to do with living and breathing it every day. It has to do with how you motivate others. It has to be, do you lead from up front or do you lead and whip the people up front? That's bullshit. So I'm all in. I've got a plan. That's why, Hey, the only reason why I was late, listen to this, listen to this. So I had a meeting and I was going to be able to get there and get back, have plenty of time to drive. And so it's an acquisition. It's a partnership on a $20 million company. And this is us signing the

deal, us meeting with the wife and basically no one else could do it but me. So I'm there and I'm going to be doing a training with the guys. And so I said, okay, I can knock like two doors after the training to demonstrate what I taught you. And then I got to go. And the first door I knocked, the lady told me, no, we had 10 people at the doorstep. And sure enough, she let us all on the roof, 10 people on the roof, 10 salesmen. And so then we got down and sure enough, she had to sign and she did. But when she signed, she brought her husband out with dementia. He's saying all these things i'm trying to be sweet to her and i'm thinking you know how you've scheduled this and how i'm a jackass and i i know i pissed you don't worry about it man i was demonstrating to 10 people

hey but the point was is like that was the circumstance where you would think that why the fuck would the ceo ever knock a door well i'm I'm acquiring a company. The guy after I was done, he said, dude, I'm a fucking believer. He's like, dude. And my sales leader, he was with you. He said, we've been doing it all wrong. And so sometimes just the demonstration of it, the willingness to get your hands dirty while you're teaching, you can get two for one. And as a leader, it shows that you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, which, you know, you don't want to get lost in the grunt work. But when they see you do the grunt work and you're teaching, they love that shit, man.

Listen, there's five things I'm focused on. Five. Personal brand opens doors left and right for A1. I can't tell you how much it's meant to be speaking, podcasting, continuing to educate myself and networking. Number two, attract the right people. You stack the deck with eight players, you can't help but win. And sometimes that means top creating something that means firing the top guy in the company because he's got a bad attitude. Number three, I'm finding the best companies in the world to buy and partner with. And I'm letting them roll equity.

And anybody that partners with me wins every freaking time. Guaranteed. Number four, I'm finding the right leads. I got to go after lead sources because, quite frankly, I'm a marketer. That's my jam. I love marketing. And number five is I got to motivate others and tell them how much I appreciate them kicking ass. And I haven't done enough of it.

So now I'm joining different mojo calls. I'm jumping in in the meetings. I'm literally setting gift cards. Like the fact is we're gamifying so much more. I just want the people to know that are doing excellent at this business, how much I appreciate them. And I want to 10x that. I mean, 20x that. You can sense that. On all your content, I don't hang out around you, but I can tell you care, man.

I can tell you care about your customers, yourself, your clients, your people. And that's one thing that, you know, for me, like it's just a great example of constantly having everything behind you be an excellence. Now, I'm the sales and marketing guy. I'm constantly figuring out ways to build the new relationships. And in the past, it has been sometimes not paying attention to the money or not building the culture that has been the places where I've fell. But like you said, you got to know your strengths and your weaknesses.

I've hired around my weaknesses. I've been in business 20 years. And you being able to do what you were able to do, it's really like I've sold like $20 million in coaching on the internet. But over the last two years, your focus on partnerships was probably way more valuable. And the idea is that moving forward, I'm in the mergers and acquisitions business. The coaching is just a stepping stone. And it helps me really get to know if I want to work with somebody. And it tells me if they're coachable. And so I want to encourage like, you know, you to keep it up, dude. I see the book is getting marketed.

I want a copy of that book. You're doing a good job marketing. I see the event you got coming up. I would love to be a part of it. You know, the idea is like, dude, come to my event, speak on my stage. I'll help share my platform and whatever. Just know one thing, dude. We got to spend more time together.

We got to win together, man. And I'll tell you what, I want to have you on the podcast again. platform and whatever just no one thing dude like we gotta spend more time together we gotta we'll win together man and i'll tell you what i want to have you on the podcast again this is more of a teaser but uh because i want to take a deep dive into this and i know roofing's the hottest commodity right now just because it has not gone through what hvac plumbing electrical did and all i did was hang out with hvac guys but i didn't just hang out and take a lot of notes and write pages and pages and pages. In the midst of taking notes, I was making actions. I was calling my marketing team. I was getting mailers going. I was building a training center. And I owe a lot of it to Al Levy because he really is. And people are like, why do you always give him so much credit? Well, what can I say? I was doing just below 20

million when I met him, but I wasn't keeping much of it. We barely made a loan to get into this building less than five years ago. I had money in the bank. I had houses. I had some assets, but I didn't know how to keep it. And when I learned how to be purposeful and build org charts and hire the attitudes and train. Al was a huge part of it. I hired Jody Underhill to help me find people during COVID. He murdered it out of the park. I hired Jonathan Wistman to help me with personality profiling.

He changed the game for me and the right people to get under my training. It's not just everybody who's a good salesperson fits my company and our company. So luckily, I asked for help. And the difference between me and most people and you and most people is we implement. We freaking work. We're good students. I mean, I'm a damn good student. What makes me a good leader is I'm a good follower. I've always been asking you questions, seeing you as an expert, coming to you, trying to learn how I could apply your secrets to my industry from the very first time I saw your book and content. So what's funny to me is when these guys, they are so adverse to really investing into coaching, into doing the action and being a follower. Cause some of them will invest, but it just like, if it's not their idea, they can't get behind it.

And I don't give a shit whose idea it is. I just want to win. You know, Brandon Dawson called me on Sunday. We talked for a long time. He's like, dude, he's like, whatever you're doing. He's like, I feel like we're competing. He's like, I want to sit down and talk with you. And that's Grant's right guy and i'm like listen i got a purpose i got a mission and you know it's going to be hard to sway me from anything yes i think we can help a lot of people out man and listen it starts in your own backyard i'm not that interested in making everybody else a millionaire until i get hundreds of millionaires out of a1 and i i think that's the right mindset and the right where your heart should be and yes i do care

i never want to look over my shoulder i'm friends with this i'm friends with victor i'm friends with lance lance is coming into town to hang out i'm going out to see dave carroll this weekend i'm out everywhere i like anthony although he you know there's certain people that hey he's good it's what he does it is what it is i mean I mean, the guy, you know, he's got his strengths, he's got his weaknesses. It's all good. I just said, listen, I never want to look over my shoulder. I never, I lost an employee a couple of months ago for another company we acquired and it didn't go down very well. So I just, I sent this individual 10 grand out of my personal money.

I just never want to leave anybody in a bad place. I want to be able to shake their hand and tell them I'm always looking out. Things might not work. Sometimes people don't grow as fast as we grow. Sometimes we don't grow as fast as other people, but I'm an open book and I'm just literally, I want everybody to win. And you know what? I want contractors to win. And I want high school kids to understand there's a different route. I'm going to be doing so much more to grow. I think people that don't have any idea what the trades are.

And that's what I really found a liking. You know, a lot of people have great nonprofits, 501c3. But look, that's what the American dream is. You are the living example of the blue collar American dream. Like me building a billion dollar roofing company, you taking your company, making a hundred multimillionaires within it. You know, the reality is like, we're just regular people. And I was a college dropout. I'm a nobody. And it all started when I decided to sell Grant Cardona roof. Now it's funny because once I became in the coaching space, like sometimes they view you as competition. You keep moving. And the

reality is, it's like you can win in your own lane. They can win in their own lane. And who's going to end up doing more? You know, my bet's on Tommy because you're the guy in the home service space. And if anybody's coming into roofing, I've worked years becoming the category king of my space. And so I have the best blueprint. I've generated 500 million in results for other roofers. I've got 400 employees. We're not making 20% net on a hundred million, but we're going to make 12 to 15% on 150. And the reality is like, it's hard as fuck. Sometimes, you know know you have weeks where it's really tight where it's really stressful if you got bald problems i got all kinds of problems but but but that's that's

genetic that doesn't have nothing to do with uh me trying to go big or go home so many people are afraid to go big or go home and that's where like Wes Watson, I hired him recently as a coach. He helped me get just a little bit more raw on social media organically. He's doing 2 million a month with three employees. He was a good coach for me. Eric Spofford, he's speaking at the event. I hired him recently as a coach, exited for 115 million.

I brought Lance in to speak at the event. Brad Lee, Dave Meltzer. We've got a whole bunch of different guys, like all my students. And so you're like, what's different about your event, Lee? Well, here's what's different. I'm a hundred million dollar guy like Tommy that has a real existing infrastructure, SOPs, culture, core values, but I'm also the number one marketer in my space. Roofing is hot, but everything that you can learn from HVAC and apply to roofing, we got stuff that we

can teach all the other home service guys too, mainly door-to-door. I'm the king of door-to-door when it comes to home service. And the reality is there's a lot of big companies out there winning with both digital and door-to-door. And so if you come to Blue Collar American Dream, that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about branding, culture, leadership. But it's about this new age shit that gives us the unfair advantage. And anyone on Tommy's team, y'all have got all these different systems, processes, technologies, lead tools, unfair advantages on the competition. And together, everybody's going to be worth more. It's the same for us in roofing.

We're excited. And we have a lot of different home service guys that come to these events. We've had Tom Reber speak there before last year, we had Jocko speak, but we do have cage fights for entertainment on networking night instead of the weird elbow conversations. And if you're on like 75 hard, just drinking water instead of beer, you get to watch people get beat up. That's fun. Also, we're doing a jujitsu seminar and a workout seminar in the middle of the event. I saw Andrew Tate and I saw these guys pay five grand and he made them fight a Russian. I was like, Jesus Christ, the bastard's crazy. I don't want anybody

to have to go in there with small gloves against the Russian. That's fucking nuts. But everyone that should come to the event should get the opportunity to train and do jiu-jitsu you can roll without any risk of concussion or hurt or injury without slaps or punches and you could do live grappling match after you've learned how to do a rear naked choke or an arm bar and try and practice it on your friends and as a matter of fact all the badasses in jiu-jitsu are coming to tap me out they're trying to make me look like a fool in front of everybody, and I'm going to let them. Get there, motherfucker. I got Megan Lice waiting, and she's

vicious if I don't. We're doing a little book club thing. But listen, here's the deal, Lee. I don't think this was a real podcast. We got a lot of great information, so we're going to do another one for the home service expert. You text me, and we'll chat this weekend. I got to run, brother, but listen. We're going to do another one for the home service expert. And you text me and we'll chat this weekend. I got to run brother, but listen, we're going to find out the books you follow.

We're going to find out how you recruit, how you build fire. You know, I hired Lenny Gray. He wrote the door to door millionaire. He's working with me. We're doing door to door on garage doors, bro. I mean, listen, we got a lot to talk about. So you told me that you were doing that like two years ago. I'm sure you've made a bunch of gains since then. So I'm pumped to talk with you again,

brother. We will listen. You have a fantastic day and make sure you text me when the event is. And I'll see if I can show up for that. I will. All right. Take it easy. See it. 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 want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team

from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast. you