The Home Service Expert Podcast - Scaling Your Business with Robust Marketing and Strong Systems

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire and the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $200 million-plus home service business with over 700 employees in 19 states. Through HomeServiceMillionaire....com and the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy shares his experience and insights to help fellow entrepreneurs scale their businesses.  In this special episode of the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy answers your biggest questions about service agreements, business growth, marketing tools…  

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Starting point is 00:00:00 What types of systems should we have that will help our company grow? Well, even when you get your house cleaned, it should be a system. There should be a system for laundry and dry cleaning and where things go. And there should be a system for how you like your clothes. Do you like them pressed? There should be a system for where your shoes go. There should be a system for every single thing should have a spot. So business is about creating systems.
Starting point is 00:00:26 It's not about doing the work. It's about creating systems around things. You know, most people don't have a business in the sense it's something like 89% or something of people are less than three employees that have businesses. I don't really consider those businesses. Yes, you have an LLC and you have an EIN number, but do you really own a business? A business works when you're sleeping. A business works when you don't go to work. So I really, I don't know the Webster dictionary of business, but a business in my definition says, if I don't show up for a month, it's still running and it's still successful, which is it's a hierarchy of systems and the way communication flows.
Starting point is 00:01:08 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.
Starting point is 00:01:59 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. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert, guys. I literally just got off an interview with one of the top techs this last week. And what I try to do is interview the top techs. Each of my managers create a form. I got a bunch of crappy notes. I was just scribbling on there.
Starting point is 00:02:32 But I make a lot of my notes to do later after the interviews. We share awesome stuff. I spend a lot of time and energy on these interviews. I'm trying to give them an opportunity to share what they've learned, their mindset, their abundant mindset. So I just share the wealth, be positive with the people, try to share the good things.
Starting point is 00:02:58 I'm more of a cheerleader now than I am of a CEO. And if you could become that person that's always looking for good in people and always willing to give them a chance and just make sure they've got drive and make sure you help them find that drive, you'll be way more successful. I was with Joe Polish earlier. What an amazing guy. I was on I Love Marketing podcast. There was about 300 people out on there. I think we were dropping some really good bombs. But one thing I know about Joe Polish is he's the best networker I've ever met. Your network is your net worth. You guys should be
Starting point is 00:03:30 networking as much as possible. I can't stress it enough. Networking is the key to success. So many great things happening. So many great things. I've got the Audible book coming out. I think it should be in less than two weeks. It's recorded. It's edited. It's getting ready to get published. So the Audible of Elevate is coming out. If you haven't got the book or maybe you didn't just get all the free stuff, I put out a lot of extra stuff that people have been asking for. It's called elevateandwin.com. You can just fill out the form. If you already bought the book, just say, hey, I bought the book. Here's the receipt or whatever. Spent like weeks building that stuff up. So make sure you go to elevateandwin.com if you haven't got the other stuff I give with it, which took me a long time. And I think it's well worth it to get that stuff with the book. We happen to partner with one of the coolest families I've ever met. Such an amazing family. But what these guys have been able to do in the last two years, like they started in Garage Door Freedom.
Starting point is 00:04:31 They read every book. They listened to every podcast. They joined the best practice group, Garage Door Freedom. And I'm not going to go into details as of numbers, but let's put it this way. What Vince did with the Johnson family and his kids and the way the process of the deal worked, they're never going to worry again. Such an amazing family. We're so honored to be part of their team. And they're going to teach us a stuff we're going to learn from them and then we're going to turn on the marketing machine and uh had a meeting with our pe group you know i don't think you guys probably understand
Starting point is 00:05:14 when you're doing we go through there was uh 109 slides and a lot of financials a lot of reporting you know people ask me what would I do if I went back in time? I would have really focused on my numbers. I would have learned so much more about CFO and bookkeeping and KPIs and just had the right people around to help me dial these things in. So important. Can't stress that enough. The people, I always say this, but if you can't grow organically in the three or four markets, I don't this, but if you can't grow organically into three or four markets, I don't recommend acquisitions. It's so much more difficult. But when you can master acquisitions and still grow organically, it's like two plus two equals 10. So you need to have
Starting point is 00:05:57 your business to where I can pull out any market. This is any market in the company. Let's just pull a market. Here's Orlando. And I've got a little cheat sheet here on what's going on in that market. What do these numbers mean? You know, leadership change in the market, starting to show positive upside. Here's what's going on. Here's month over month, year over year. You've got a month to date, year to date. All these calculations, like you got to be disciplined. You got to know your numbers, period, period, period, period. If you guys aren't in the Home Service Expert page, we're starting to put out a lot of content and it's going to only grow more. We're doing a big show. I'm speaking of the Spanish show next week in Houston. It's going to be off the charts.
Starting point is 00:06:41 It's going to be amazing. And we're starting to just share so much more on the Home Service Expert page. So it's free, Facebook, check it out. Favorite thing I do is these Q&As because there's so many things I've learned from them. So many things that when you're teaching and you're answering questions, you're also remembering
Starting point is 00:06:58 and you're also making sure to implement things. So I want to answer a couple of questions. Do they walk you through your EBITDA? I'm not sure what that means. Zach said, what are your most valuable KPIs? I own a Christmas and landscape company and I struggle to identify what KPIs to track. Well, I mean, what can you control? You can control your leads. So you got to get attribution for your marketing, right? You need to know, Zach, you got to know your numbers with the leads that are coming in and are those converting into jobs and how much is that job average ticket? So is there a conversion problem with your technicians? Is there an average ticket problem? Is there a call center problem? Are you answering all the forms? good job. And this is what I'm excited to announce. And I wasn't going to announce it today, but we're starting the Home Service Freedom Group. We're going to have coaching. We're going to have every industry. We're going to have the pioneers of the best, I don't care if it's Christmas light
Starting point is 00:07:51 landscaping. It's starting November 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in Orlando. I'm going to be going there this week to shoot some videos. Mark those days off on your calendar. I promise you there'll be lots and lots of people. It'll be bigger than anything we've ever done. It's called Freedom Event. Freedom's going to be just a big, big, big meetup. And we're going to be talking about what we're doing. And I promise you, you know, this is unlike any other best practices, buyers group or anything.
Starting point is 00:08:19 It's so much more than that because we start with the end in mind. And I think that's one of the things I've really realized this last year is just, what are your dreams? What are your goals? How do we get there? What needs to happen? And we're going to help you get there. And I think a lot of people go, I know I need to do an org chart. I know I need to track KPIs. I know I need to understand what OKRs are. I know I need to read this book. I know I need to build a new training center. I know that the vans, we've had a hard time getting them, but I need to get a better deal. And what's working?
Starting point is 00:08:47 LSA, GMB, PPC. There's all that shit. I know about it. Trust me. But really, starting with the end in mind and then building off of that. And you want to be there November 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in Orlando. So let's see here. Like I said, what I really look at too is for a Christmas light is
Starting point is 00:09:05 drive time, landscaping pools, pest control. You want to make sure to start hitting really as much in one neighborhood as possible. So I spend more to acquire a customer in the areas where I have less drive time. And I also focus on the right neighborhoods. And then I focus on the, one of the biggest KPIs of Christmas lights is how long is the customer staying with us? Because if you've got a business that's seven years, that only lost 20% of the clients, maybe they moved or you can put the reasons why they stopped. You've got a business that's sellable. So pay attention to those KPIs. Numbers are so helpful.
Starting point is 00:09:38 They are helpful. How do you feel about SEO? Well, let's put it this way. There was a guy that I worked with for a long time that was internal. He worked for me. He was the head of my marketing. I brought him back as a contractor now because he's a busy guy, and we're paying him lots and lots of money for SEO, for link building, for content creation. But now it's completely different. There's ChatGPT, there's pictures, there's Upwork, there's other ideas. We're basically building out all kinds of things for content portals. You know, I do a pretty good job. I think if you guys follow me on Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn or Facebook or, you know, Twitter or official Tommy Mello, you're seeing a lot more content, but you're going to start seeing 10 times more for A1 very soon because we're going to have a content portal where everybody is putting into that. And we're sharing it because I'm going to build each and every person within the company into
Starting point is 00:10:35 a marketer. And they're going to get an employee-generated lead, and they're going to make money even when they don't run the calls. And I love Google. It's helped build the business, but I don't want to be reliant only on one marketing source. We're starting to get very, very, very into the weeds as far as the details of what zones in ValPak or Clipper or what content or what has the highest conversion rate or what's the best average ticket, even if it does cost a lot of money for PPC. The numbers will set you free, I promise you. I love SEO.
Starting point is 00:11:07 I think it's so important. I think having a great website with a lot of education, getting it to match your wraps, to match your billboards. Dan Antonelli does a great job with this. He's a genius. I love Dan Antonelli. You guys know that. You can't express what he's done just with the A1 brand
Starting point is 00:11:23 or what it's done for the company. You know, if you had to go back in time and look at Dan Antonelli, what Al Levy did, even the guy was talking about Shannon did on our SEO. Al, you looked at what Adam did, and you looked at Service Titan, and I could go on and on. When Joe Cressara came in with sales, and the culmination of it all, a lot of people said, I got that. I used him. I did this. I did this. But mashing it all together and then focus on great training and an elevate mindset, which is letting everybody win, the vendors, the employees, the customers, and even I get to win. I think it just changes the mindset of so many people are like, I'm doing this next. I'm doing this.
Starting point is 00:12:05 I'm going to get this trainer. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. But it never gets fully implemented. And you'll have a great month. And then it goes back to normal. The ultimate sales machine talks about that.
Starting point is 00:12:18 I think you just got to figure out how to keep things implemented properly and have checks and balances. Let's see. Abe, how do I scale my business from one employee to five in terms of finances and when to hire a manager? Well, me personally, I'd say, even when I was still in the field, I'll manage five employees. I think the great thing about hiring, you know, five employees, I want to still be in the field, building the training manuals and still making sure that my top couple of guys got it down to the best process. Their numbers are amazing. And if I'm beating them, then I'm going to work with them. If they're beating me, then I'm going to study them.
Starting point is 00:12:57 So I think that's important. And then start to build manuals and start to get great people to help you out in your financing. I'd get a really advanced bookkeeper at five employees. I probably wouldn't be screwing around with payroll. I'd hire a company for a few hundred bucks a month. I probably wouldn't be screwing around with HR things. I'd probably wouldn't be, I'd be focused on marketing. I think that's the one thing that's taken us to where we are is I think we've out-marketed a lot of people, but not only marketing, but we marketed for great people. Jody for RapidHire, are you kidding me? With what we did with them and turning on the faucet for great employees that we could take from other industries,
Starting point is 00:13:33 he was a big factor of our success as well. I mean, Vanessa, let's see, literally always on the timeline. That's a good thing I'm trying to be. What types of systems should we have that will help our company grow? Well, even when you get your house cleaned, it should be a system. There should be a system for laundry and dry cleaning and where things go. And there should be a system for how you like your clothes. Do you like them pressed? There should be a system for where your shoes go. There should be a system for every single thing should have a spot. So business is about creating systems. It's not about doing the work. It's about creating systems around things. You know, most people don't have a business in the sense it's something like
Starting point is 00:14:18 89% or something of people are less than three employees that have businesses. I don't really consider those businesses. Yes, you have an LLC and you have an EIN number, but do you really own a business works when you're sleeping? A business works when you don't go to work. So I really, I don't know the Webster dictionary of business, but a business in my definition says, if I don't show up for a month, it's still running and it's still successful, which is it's a hierarchy of systems and the way communication flows. And there's checks and balances for everything. So systems should be everything from the manuals to the checklist to the standard operating procedures to how you drive your truck to how you check the truck each week to make sure there's no issues with it. Tire pressure,
Starting point is 00:15:05 windshield cracks. The systems get built by mistakes. And to rejoice in people's mistakes is a good culture to have because then you can build a system and a standard operating procedure about it. So many owners get mad, but it keeps happening over and over. The definition of insanity is doing it over. So they allow themselves to get chaotic at business and they allow their doors to get open and just their time to get hijacked. And then they wonder, literally they wonder, they go, why can't I get anything done? It has a lot to do with being a great leader and taking the time. If you had a personal assistant or an executive assistant and you didn't take the time to explain of how things need to be and how you do things and how you like things in your order,
Starting point is 00:15:44 it would take a long time to teach somebody that. But it would take 10 times longer to keep doing of how things need to be and how you do things and how you like things in your order, it would take a long time to teach somebody that. But it would take 10 times longer to keep doing it all yourself as you grow. So what's hard for business owners to do is slow down enough to train somebody that's going to be efficient and proficient at what you're trying to ask them to do. And it goes back to LDB steps of delegation. But it's not that complicated. It's pretty vanilla. Keep an eye on your numbers you retrain constantly retrain you constantly are creating systems within
Starting point is 00:16:12 the business and great things keep happening and the reporting we're at now i mean the percentage of bottom line that we're taking is unheard of the The numbers and revenue and I still think we're just getting started. A lot of people are like, man, that's a big business. I'm like, no, no, it's not. Not what my dream is. It's not even close to what we're going to be. My goal is 100 million. We surpass that. People say, when's enough? Enough is enough
Starting point is 00:16:37 when I'm not having fun anymore. And the more lives we change, the more fun I have, so I don't see it getting old anytime soon. Pick a book on the shelf behind you that you recommend. All right. The Four Disciplines of Execution. Amazing book. How to Win Friends and Influence People. One of my favorite books. Yes. 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. Double Double's a great book. I have the older version of Double Double. Who was a great book for hiring? Oh, one of my favorites. You guys probably know about this.
Starting point is 00:17:12 Alex Ramosi's 100 Million Offers. Lots of great books on there. E-Myth is up there. The Pumpkin Plan's up there. Listen to books to fast. Just build a pattern of listening to them in the car whatever you need to do there are times where i listen to like a lot of books and read a lot in a week there are times where i don't really listen any in a week depends on what i got going on when i'm traveling i'm reading a lot oh thanks miguel yeah howard partridge was amazing so eric asks eric hope said we are an electrical contractor working to grow our service department and stop relying on commercial and residential projects and new construction. What are some things we could include in a service agreement still working on to get us in every
Starting point is 00:17:59 home every year and provide some value? Service agreements are not the answer of getting great marketing. We still don't even know the lifetime value of a customer in the grocery industry because they haven't run enough service agreements because we really got good at them last May. And so we really started running a ton of them in May, and it's going to take us a year to get that data point. And we're going to get better and better and better at what the LTV is of that client. So yes, I do agree that service agreements are great. But if you don't have great marketing, average tickets, conversion rate, and booking rates, don't even be thinking about service agreements.
Starting point is 00:18:35 If you can't acquire a customer and be number one on Google and be figuring out, talking to other businesses about how they're number one, here's a little clue. Talk to businesses that are number one in your area for roofing or talk to businesses that are number one for HVAC. And then go meet their CMO or their VP of marketing or just the marketing company they use. You hear me talk about service agreements because we did really good at marketing.
Starting point is 00:18:58 We're getting a lot of new clients. Service agreements are amazing, but you got to have a hierarchy of what comes first and i don't think service agreements come before conversion rate and i don't think service agreements come before getting a five-star review on google yelp next door and facebook i think service agreements something you should put into your arsenal but i had a service agreement three years ago i didn't sell any of them we weren't ready for it yet. So people are like, man, if I just had service agreements, well, the monthly income of service agreements is okay. Ultimately, that's not why I sell them.
Starting point is 00:19:34 I sell them because there's an opportunity to build a fence around the customer. They're going to want stores. They're going to want flooring. They're going to want, hopefully we get into the front door industry and they're going to want a new garage through down the road. So just go into service commitments with the right intentions that it's not going to pay out for a long time. It might be seven years, could be two years, could be five years. But just go into service commitments with the right expectations. Matt McGrath said, at what point of business do you hire someone to answer the phone for 40 hours a week versus an answering service? Are there tasks for them to work on when they're not answering the phone? See, that gets tough. If you hire somebody that needs to do a lot of stuff,
Starting point is 00:20:11 I think it's best to have an in-house person and they're getting your mail. They're helping out with paying the bills. They're more of an office manager. Look, I did it when I was less than a million bucks. I mean, all day long. I think it's great to have someone in the house to build an SOP and have recorded calls and to build something that'll be the foundation for a large call center. Because you're not going to get that. Now, listen, if I'm a dentist and I'm just taking messages, it's different than building an SOP. And even if I'm going to use a call center, I'm going to first hire my own.
Starting point is 00:20:43 I'm going to use myself, for example. I answered all the calls. Then I built small checklists, and then it got better, better, better. But how are you going to hire a call center, a third-party call center, without answering the calls yourself and setting the expectations, giving them exactly what you expected? Do we take calls on Saturday? Do we take calls on Sunday? How early are the calls? Are we getting pricing over the phone? You need to get all that stuff into a manual. I run a graduate business in Canada and would like to ask, what is the disc profile for your best technicians? Well, you know, our guys take it, but there's not really a right or wrong answer for that. I care more about the disc assessment of our clients, but I'm a high DI, but I'll tell you this, I've got high Cs that do well, but you can't
Starting point is 00:21:27 have a high DI train a high C or a high SC. So what we try to do is learn the personalities and let them learn. There's ways that work. You could be quieter. You could be a little bit more submissive. You could be just way more eye contact. could be way more joking you could explain things way deeper but you know i've got a whole different group of guys at different personality types here in phoenix that are trainers i would try to just mesh the right people with the right personality that they'll adapt to and say i can do that because you can't teach this guy to go be outgoing and all of a sudden tell a bunch of jokes and be loud and then you can't tell this loud guy to be very very you know very very, very, very quiet and reserved. It's just, it's
Starting point is 00:22:08 not possible. What do you offer for a graduate service agreement? When we come out once a year, we lubricate, adjust, tighten everything on the door. It's 151.2 and up. You're going to save some money today on your service ticket, but I'm not going to combine a coupon. You're also going to get a free service protector. You're also going to get a free service protector. You're also going to get a head of service. You're also going to get, if there's a service call within this year, we're going to give it to you for no service call to come back out. It's going to give you extended warranty on everything you purchase. If something breaks that it's not covered, you also get a discount or anything going forward, 15%. It's all for under 15 bucks a month.
Starting point is 00:22:43 And if you think you're going to replace your garage door in the next five years or have any other issues or want to program cars or anything, it just makes sense. Do you have insurance on your phone? Do you have homeowner's insurance? This is the largest moving object in your home. Every time it goes up and down, you're using a cycle. You probably use your garage door like your front door. I think anybody who's smart would purchase this. It's not like it's an electric piece of equipment that costs $200. This goes into the safety of your family.
Starting point is 00:23:13 And this is an insurance policy. This is going to back you up every time you have an issue. And our job is to make sure it's safe, it's quiet, it runs smoothly, and that you're protected. That's the best way to sell service agreements. What is the best way to handle email accounts for all employees and cell phones for communications? Does everyone have an at A1 Garage email and provide cell phones with numbers registered for the company? So I haven't been too involved in this in the last year, but yes, you get an at A1Garage.com. And we do have call tracking numbers. We also have short codes for schedule
Starting point is 00:23:48 engine. So when techs give out their number or CSRs do, they can get an employee-generated lead and get paid on that. That's one thing that I'm working on. Once again, I'm not quite there to be heavily focused just yet with all these other things. But when I build this out, it'll be by the end of the year. It'll be a machine. We've started doing it, but I want every single person, at least them or their wives, to run to a B&I meeting. I want to set up all these different things to be other lead sources and also lead sources for employees. They make $1,500. But you got to have good attribution. If you want to see somebody that does amazing in attribution, her name is Amanda Tress. Look up Amanda, T-R-E-S-S, and type it after that micro influencer. You'll find her in Forbes article. You can read about it. But what I would say,
Starting point is 00:24:36 Brian, is that's important, but I'd still go to look at what else are you looking at. I use How's It Called Pro for a CRM and NiceJobs for reviews. What do you think? I think Housecall Pro does great. I think every business is different. I look at businesses as demand versus non-demand. I think NiceJobs does great. I think all of them work. I think Podium works. I think BirdEye works. The biggest thing that I find with most software is most people are underutilizing it. They're not taking advantage of everything it could do. They got you onboarded. You're not as important as you used to be. They're looking for new clientele. So you got to actually reach out to them and say, what else does this do? When is the new
Starting point is 00:25:18 updates come out? Could I get the data of what it's going to do in the future? And I would just say, how many clients do you have? Because a lot of the times they don't have enough clients to build an R&D team and build on more software to make it do more. And I always ask, what are you going to do in the future? What kind of AI are you bringing in? What are you going to do for me? How can you extend my bandwidth?
Starting point is 00:25:37 How can you extend my bandwidth? All important questions. Let's see here. John said, I have a window cleaning company and a steer wash company in California that we started in 1989. I moved to AZ recently. Question, I would love to ask you, is advertising or acquisition for the location here in AZ? Question, I would love to ask you, is advertising or acquisition for the location here in AZ? Not sure what that means.
Starting point is 00:26:04 I think, John, you texted me earlier. I just bought a truck out here from Kelly for testing. The dirt is much different here for house washing, so we have to have been dialing in the system for this change. I was wondering if I should consider an acquisition of a smaller company here or use money for advertising instead. That's a tough question. Well, if you're just buying one company, there's a difference between saying I'm going to get into acquisitions or buying one
Starting point is 00:26:28 company. One company, I think a lot of people could do, depending on if the owner's staying on, is the staff staying on? There's a lot of questions I would ask. I would say, what are you going to pay for? Are you getting a good deal on it? Is there an earn out? Is it an asset purchase or is it the whole company that you'll get the EIN? If it is the company you're buying the stock purchase, then is there liability coming with it? I don't have the answer without enough data. But what I would tell you is the only reason I think it's good to buy a company, especially in a new market, is there's some really big, subtle changes. Then it makes sense. But for me, I mean mean i go greenfield in
Starting point is 00:27:06 the 15 states without even considering buying a company because buying a company is way harder than organic growth way harder you're like i'm just gonna go buy even put it all together it'll be worth a lot more money bullshit you're gonna have a lot of fallout you're gonna have people quit because their policies their hr changes the the insurance changes. You got a payroll set up. I went from weekly to biweekly. Where's my new van? Everything's going to work. How do you get new licenses? How do you put their data set, all their services, everything into your CRM? It's not just like, hey, I'm just going to go buy companies. I meet all these entrepreneurs all the time. Very good. They work for a hedge fund. Like, I'm just going to go buy five HR companies. I and raising debt. I'm like, oh yeah, how are you going to motivate them?
Starting point is 00:27:48 What's your training? What's your CRM? What's your reporting? This is why I think I win at most cases when it comes to even a franchise model, which I'm probably going to do here in the next few years. I never wanted to franchise. I wanted, I don't need the money to grow now. I can put all my investment in on every location. But the difference is that like a franchise model, just so you guys know, as a franchise model, I can interview great owners that have money to invest, to grow and follow the systems. I would handle all the marketing, the hiring, the training. We need somebody to know the community,
Starting point is 00:28:22 have their kids grow up for soccer and football and hockey. I need somebody that's going to be at the B&I meetings. It's going to talk to the guy, you know, at the restaurant. I need boots on the ground of owners. So down the road, I would look at not for garage drawers, but definitely I think franchising is a good model. And I'd also own the real estate and I'd also get paid for the call center. And we'd have a national call center and I'd give a lot of flexibility. Then I'd study the winners and I would not care necessarily about the losers because I'm only studying the winners to get better and better SOPs and then continuing my training to get better that's how you win in a franchise but that's how you win a business
Starting point is 00:28:56 the e-myth is about the franchise model whether you have a franchise or not let's see here I'm in the process of acquiring an alternative heating company, but it needs an entire cultural makeover. How would you go hear your ideas. Now, hopefully you have a team to help with that. And I want to know what was going good. What did you hate the most? What can we do better? You need to start giving people money to come up with ideas and it's going to cost you some money, but you need to say, listen, guys, we're going to sit down and think about your dreams or we're going to build a custom plan for you to hit your dreams. And I know that if your dream comes true, I promise you I'm going to be rejoicing because when your scorecard is good, I'm making money. When you're buying houses, we're making money. But more importantly, I get a lot of gratitude. I love the feeling when somebody's winning. I think I like that more than anything else in life is watching other people
Starting point is 00:29:59 win. And that took a lot of time. But when you could actually feel that and they could read it and they see that you're showing up every day. And it's not just this dog and pony show for one month. It's like years. And you actually, you're not in Hawaii every other weekend and you're not on the golf trip. I've had so many employees that walked up to me. They're like, why are you here all the time? We know you do great. And I'm like, well, I went on 93 trips in 383 days. So to understand that would be, I'm trying to spread the word, but the guys know that if I'm in Orlando, I stopped in the shop and I spent time with them and I talked to them.
Starting point is 00:30:36 And it means a lot because everybody wants to see the owner and hear that they're doing okay and doing good and showing up. I meet a lot of owners that they're like, and doing good and showing up i mean a lot of owners that they're like i hate my business i don't show up oh yeah well you suck just because you don't have to show up doesn't mean you shouldn't and if you hate work that much why you start the business why don't you make it fun when you go into work because if you're not having fun at there why the hell would anybody else be having fun it's like a prison sense when you walk into work look this place the lighting sucks that The refrigerator looks like people, you know, skunks died in there. The bathrooms, you know,
Starting point is 00:31:10 have been torn up. It smells funky. The walls are messed up. Like if you can't build a place where you love and you expect people to want your business to succeed, that's crazy. So start showing up and caring. People know I live a busy life, but I'm here every day. So think about that. Can you let me know what is considered a good conversion rate, booking rate, cost per acquisition? I'm in the HVAC industry. Well, there's service and sales and conversion rates.
Starting point is 00:31:39 Someone's got it broken. You know, Tom Howard would be the best one for this. I'll interview him on a podcast. But I'll tell you, his average ticket's through the roof. He trains well. He recruits well. I think a booking call should be 90%. I don't think you charge when it's new equipment. So a goal to aspire to go to is 90% booking rate.
Starting point is 00:31:57 Cost per acquisition, I'm hearing right around $2,000 to $2,500 in the HVAC world. But closing rate, you know, we're at around 60% on door sales. I think that would be good. Service calls, we're right up there pretty high around 88, 90. So that's where I'm at, Patrick. Thanks. I'm not even going to post that out of here. So Miguel said, talk about why we should get five different bank accounts and if they need to be savings or checkings and what each account should be named so this is just Michael Michalowicz profit first and the reason why Dave Ramsey says you should pay everything off is because 99% of business owners or homeowners or Americans can't handle money. I never needed five bank accounts
Starting point is 00:32:45 to save money. What they said was pay yourself first. And I believe he's right. I believe if I went back into business, not knowing what I know now, I would set up five different accounts. And Michael McElwitt, you're going to have to excuse me. I haven't read the book in a long time, but profit first. Basically, the process, Megan likes is really good at this, is one's going to be a savings account you never touch. One's going to be a retirement account. And you pay yourself first because there's a thing called the Parkinson's law that says you'll use what you have available. So most people see it in their bank accounts, so they use it. They don't plan for taxes. So you've got a tax account. You don't plan for anything because if it's there, you might as
Starting point is 00:33:23 well use it. It's kind of like toothpaste. If you ever get a new toothpaste, you'll triple layer it and you'll use it. And as it starts getting lower and you're taking it and rolling it up, just enough. You'll make that little toothpaste last. The little bit left, you'll make it last just as long as the whole tube. And the same thing happens in your bank account. Same thing happens with toilet paper. You guys have been there. So remember, Parkinson's law, if you run a huge facility, eventually you're going to use up all the space. It's Parkinson's law, and it's pretty damn accurate. As a one-year-old handyman business looking to grow, what steps did you take in the beginning for funding? Personal credit, business credit. Well, this is important. Personal credit, you're going to have to need a couple of credit cards and run them up. Don't pay them up every month. Pay a little bit more than your payment. You got
Starting point is 00:34:14 to build credit, right? Then there's for professional business credit, you're going to do Duns and Bradstreet. You're going to figure out what it's going to take to build business credit. You're going to have to get with your vendors. You're going to have to have bank letters. You're going to want to build that side of the credit. What I would also do just from a handyman perspective is don't do everything in the house. You say, here's the 10 things we do and set up vendors that you could get all this stuff for pricing.
Starting point is 00:34:37 And yes, if you're going to do something above and beyond, charge the right price. Because I find it hard to be efficient at everything. If I'm doing all locks and installing fans and installing a garage door opener, fixing the door leak, fixing, taking apart the dryer to fix it. I'm also doing, you know, replacing a couple doors and I'm doing a little bit of tile work. I would actually probably say these are the 10 norms. Let me do all this work and anything else, make a list. And I'd say I charge a differently hourly rate. And I'd actually, you know, believe it or not, I charge more for things I'm not proficient
Starting point is 00:35:13 out because I'd be losing money if I didn't. Because if I could charge $50 for the things I know and be efficient at them and go to the next calls, you give me something I don't know, it's going to take me forever to figure it out. This is a weird-ass fan you bought from Germany. I'm going to have to charge you more because this is the first time I put it together. And customers, as long as you get them to commit to the most of the stuff,
Starting point is 00:35:35 they'll pay all the extra fees you want. I had a guy come over. You know those hoses? I got a retractable hose you can put on the outside of a stucco on the wall. I bought four of those. And I said, I need you to fix can put on the outside of the stucco on the wall. I bought four of those. And I said, I need you to fix the lining on the front door. All the things I could have done.
Starting point is 00:35:50 I said, I got a little seat for in the shower so you can put stuff underneath it. I don't really ever sit in the shower, but I bought that just to have it because I'm an idiot. I wanted to sit down for cold showers instead of stand and just kind of sit there. That was the plan of it. What else did he do? He, he fixed three doors and he was there from seven 30 in the morning till one.
Starting point is 00:36:17 And he also ran to the store to get the screws he needed. And I said, how much? Cause I know I'm really good. He goes, how much cash you got? Now, what is it? What do you want? He goes, 500 bucks. I said, 500. There you go. Pay him cash. 500 bucks. No big deal. I didn't pay him for his hours he worked. I pay him for what he got done.
Starting point is 00:36:40 None of that shit's going to pull out of the wall. None of the stuff he fixed will break. I paid him because he's the most efficient, badass, handyman I've ever met in my life. If you came up with 20 things for him to do with this office, he'd have them done by the end of the day. Or I could have bought some hourly guy and had him take his time, fix things funky, go smoke cigarettes outside, show up unprepared,
Starting point is 00:37:02 smell like shit, hungover. I'm like, let me just pay him a lot of money because I don't really care because it would take anybody else way more than $500 for what he did. I can't get mad at the guy. I'd be a hypocrite to not pay him $500 for what he got done in a day. What's the first step in training your technician to build the ticket? Well, the first step I'd say is to start the work. You never want to go in and offer everything. You go in and say, call them while you got called out for. And then we have the second knock and the third knock. The second knock is everything that goes
Starting point is 00:37:37 into the system. So if I was selling you brakes, I'd talk about the calipers and the rotors. And then on the third knock, I'm talking about, hey, I noticed some other things. Your windshield wipers aren't working correctly and you got a muffler leak. So I'm solving the first thing you called out for the brakes, then the brake system, then everything else after that. That's the best advice I could give on building the ticket. If you could go back and do one thing differently when you started out, what would it be? Let me answer that in a not just one thing. The first thing I would have told myself is start reading and listening to more podcasts and hanging out with other winners that have an elevated, abundant mindset. I would have said do that from day one. Don't work as many hours.
Starting point is 00:38:19 Spend more time networking. Spend more time going to the biggest, best shows that have to do with home service. Not the bullshit of the dog and pony show with all the fancy, famous people. I could give two shits about that. Readers are leaders. I would have told myself, know your numbers, and I
Starting point is 00:38:37 would have hooked up with L.E.V. If I could track him down 15 years ago, that would have been the first thing I would have said. Go meet L.E.V. I don't know if L.E.V. knew what he knew 15 years ago, that would have been the first thing I would have said, go meet Al Levy. I don't know if Al Levy knew what he knew 15 years ago, five years ago, probably.
Starting point is 00:38:50 But what I would have done is definitely try to partner with somebody like Al Levy and get his feedback because without him, I wouldn't be here. So, but I had to make sure that I'm also make sure I'm coaching like what I do now with this podcast, because I think people are more willing to share and the people that are listening and they're around me, they're willing to help me.
Starting point is 00:39:11 I got two buddies in Houston that are helping me a lot with some call center stuff. Hopefully I'm going to get to invest in their business and they're amazing guys. And I won't go into details, but not in garage door related. And I think it always comes full circle. So go out and do more. Yeah. I would have created an accountability partner in business and probably somebody a little bit more outside of business. And you guys got to remember, I didn't come from anything. I didn't get a golden spoon. I didn't have a ton of money. So I don't think you could make the mistakes that I've made. People always say, how do I raise more money?
Starting point is 00:39:50 I'm like, just take your time and make more money and make the mistakes smaller, because when you get the more and more money, you've already made the small mistakes, because if someone gave me a million dollars to start out, I would have blew it all the first five years, because I would have had to make much bigger mistakes. I would have tried out a marketing campaign. Instead of putting $2,000 on the internet, I would have put $20,000. All my mistakes would have been 10 times bigger, and I would have learned really hard lessons. So I learned small lessons along the way, lots of them. And now I can take on lots of money and
Starting point is 00:40:17 make it work. One of Alex Tremosi's biggest teachings is around creating an offer that is so good, it leaves you with a negative customer acquisition cost. Removing customer acquisition costs is a bottleneck to the business. I've been thinking a lot on how to apply that in our industry. What is your main offer? Does it result in a negative acquisition cost? What do you think is a great leading offer to a window cleaning or exterior company? Well, he always said, free offer, the power of free, right? Alex Tremose, he's a really, really smart guy. He's selling something similar to window cleaning
Starting point is 00:40:52 and exterior cleaning, which was gym membership. Gym is just, you got the equipment, you got to maintain it. You come in there, it's all about memberships and it's all about selling more than the membership. Sell them livelihood livelihood a plan for their lives more energy this that so you know you got to really think when you're talking about jim secrets which was his first book he's selling a lot blue ocean right it's different so for me
Starting point is 00:41:18 selling windows i've spoken a lot of events about this stuff is that i would look at saying listen i want to get you under an agreement we come out after every dust storm to cover this that and the other and make sure there's a small fee attached to at least cover my costs and um our goal let me know when your parties are we want to make sure everything's perfectly clean i want to make sure there's no spider webs because when there's spider webs the bugs come in make sure there's no dirt because when there's dirt the stucco goes bad or the brick goes bad. I get with every one of the manufacturers, the gutters, the exterior of its siding. I get the cement, what kind of coating is on it. And I start showing them their warranties void if they don't get it cleaned this often. I start thinking really outside of the box. And that's
Starting point is 00:42:00 one of the things I try to do is say, I'm going to protect this stuff that costs a lot more. That porch you have, that big wood porch in the back of your house or the deck, if we don't maintain that and treat it on top of what we wash it down and then treat it, you're going to lose your warranty. And to replace this is probably 15 grand. So you can pay me for the next 15 years, all maintaining, you'll still have a beautiful porch and it'll look beautiful all year versus it's going to deteriorate over the next 10 years and you're going to have to replace it. So think it outside of the box. Should a sales manager be incentivized and receive a percentage of his team's sales?
Starting point is 00:42:35 Yeah, sales managers should be incentivized for sure. I don't think I would incentivize them. I incentivize them on revenue growth and gross profit. You know, Al says you need to get certain base. You know, what's interesting about Al's teaching is he let Aaron Aror teach the financial aspect of the business. And I think the financial aspect of the business is one of the most important. So he says, once you're at a certain threshold where you're making ends meet, still making a profit, you can share part of it with people. But what I would do is model your business of what happens if all these guys are doing this. What I find, I bought a
Starting point is 00:43:10 business in Colorado. All the guys were making tons and tons of money because they had a team of five. Their sales were less than every guy on their teams because they were kind of just floating. They had no reason to increase. So whatever business model and KPIs and the scorecard you come up with, I would recommend just saying, this is probably going to change every 90 days. You're going to get paid out the three months we agree on, and I make them both signs saying this could be changed. And then I model it for years as it grows, as prices goes up, as you need more people to help that sales team. Because all of a sudden, that guy's making 120 grand and you say, well, I need a sales coach on top of just you. I need a
Starting point is 00:43:51 new trainer and I'm going to need a recruiter for the new guys. Well, that's fine. Just don't take my 120. Well, no, I need some of that money to hire the next guys. So now you're going to give me 70. I've worked my ass off to get to to 120 now you're going to cut my pay when i've done everything you've asked i find that most people that create incentive programs they fail they didn't build them to scale i think you start out smaller and you leave yourself some wiggle room and you incentivize the right things gross profit and revenue growth are always two safe things because especially if you've got gross profit in the 60% plus. Pay for results.
Starting point is 00:44:28 I learned that the hard way. Yeah, thank you guys for listening. Eric's residential garage door service and install company in Southern California in a two-year operation, spending $4,500 on PPC, and it's only yelled at five bookings this month. Cost per click has been as high as $250. Marketing companies tell me this is the most competitive market they've worked in. What's your recommendation for incorporating PPC into a new company for marketing plan? No PPC. In fact, we're looking at turning PPC off in a lot of our markets. PPC works really, really well when you have a brand recognition.
Starting point is 00:45:08 If you don't have everything working great and you're not getting calls from customers, whether that's home warranty companies, property managers, great deals with apartments, you haven't worked out opportunities with realtors and painters and pest control companies, and you haven't focused on reviews, and you've got to get leads from PPC. You know, right now, what's tough about HVAC is we've had a late summer. And these HVAC guys are going, and I know a lot of them, they're going, it's not getting hot. And we were spoiled the last few years.
Starting point is 00:45:40 Plus, people were stuck at home with COVID. We all thought this was going to keep going. I mean, should you have? Should you have said, I'm not ready to make a deal yet because I know I can get more? Yeah. If everybody's locked at home and we have the hottest summers every year, yes, maybe that's true, but that's not going to happen. So what happens when we have a bad late summer in HVAC? Well, let's see. I built up a team to run the calls because last two summers, three summers have been crazy. So I got the people ready to go. I make sure I'm ready for demand. Uh-oh, weather's not good. I need to get jobs. I need to spend more money in marketing. What does that do? Drives the cost per click up. You got smaller amount of leads,
Starting point is 00:46:21 more people bidding, cost you way more money. It's a death spiral. It doesn't look good. So what I can tell you is PPC is only supposed to help with own your branded terms, number one. And number two, it should only be for capacity planning, meaning that if you need to keep another guy busy, you keep your guys on the road, still make money on PPC, but it's going to be one of the most expensive marketing sources you have. LSA and GMB are so much better. And organic, it takes years. But when you start now, you'll say, I won't do organic because it takes too long. What if you start now?
Starting point is 00:46:54 You're going to be saying in 18 months, I'm not doing organic because it's going to take too long. Would it already be done if you started today and built a great website, started getting links, adding content, adding videos? Just read the book they ask you, You Answer, by Marcus Sheridan. Start putting great articles. Start guest blogging. Put it back.
Starting point is 00:47:10 Put organic search back on the map because it's still super important. Technician performance pay. Do you have any insights? Is it better than paying hourly? How would you structure it? Yeah. Yeah. I think hourly sucks for any position.
Starting point is 00:47:26 You're motivating them to stay longer at a job. It's not better for the client. You're not motivating them to be any more efficient. You're not motivating them to leave a great experience. You're not motivating them to not get a call back. You're not motivating them to... Let me ask you this. If I was hourly and I was working at my mother's door, I'd probably just fix it.
Starting point is 00:47:43 But I know the best thing for my mom is a new door. But man, that's a lot of work. I got to do all these measurements. I got to call another guy out here. We got to go pick up the door. Hourly, I'm not really motivated. But to do the right thing for mom, I know it's replace that door. I know it's go out there, do all the measurements, get the radius or track, put in the right stuff. I don't think hourly has worked out great for any company long term. In fact, if I had Baskin-Robbins and I was a franchisee, I would come up with hourly plus performance or just performance. It would be, did you offer a waffle cone?
Starting point is 00:48:12 Because waffle cones would make a little bit more money. Did you offer the third scoop? Because on the third scoop, it's almost all profit. Did you even offer it? Did you get a five-star review before the customer left? There are people asking for you by name. What have you done to bring people in here? I'd hire influencers and say, Did you get a five-star review before the customer left? There are people asking for you by name. What have you done to bring people in here?
Starting point is 00:48:30 I'd hire influencers and say, how many people can you bring in a day? I'd guarantee them an hourly rate, but I'd say performance is going to be way better. They brought in two friends. They hired them. They brought in 20 friends when they got out of school that day. They got the third scoop on half the ice creams. And I don't feel like you're doing anything wrong. See, you would never get mad at me if I told you, would you like a third scoop on half the ice creams And I don't feel like you're doing anything wrong See, you would never get mad at me If I told you, would you like a third scoop?
Starting point is 00:48:49 But performance pay would help me want to say that But people wouldn't go, oh my god Every time you pay performance pay They sell the third scoop It's like, everybody thinks performance pay Gets you to do the wrong thing But that's not true If it's straight commission
Starting point is 00:49:04 There's definitely some issues I could see that can arise. I still think it's much better than hourly. So I would look at callback ratios, the reviews you generate. I would look at average tickets. I'd look at conversion rate. I'd look at reviews. That's how I'd start the scorecard. I'm in Phoenix looking to buy my parents' heating business in Connecticut.
Starting point is 00:49:24 They're very old school, and they don't want to let go of control. They want the business to keep running their way. It's not scalable how it is now. Do you have any podcast episodes or books you can suggest on how I could go about this and get them to pull out of the way without turning it into a family feud? Here's what I would do. I don't know of any particular podcast. I'm sure I have a lot on this, but I can't name the exact and I can't think of any books. But what I can tell you is,
Starting point is 00:49:49 you know, Cody Johnson is a good example. Vince ran a great company for a long time. Cody and Vince kind of found this podcast around the same time and they told each other we should start listening to this. And what they realized, they both say they found Tommy at the same time. It sounds weird, third party, third person. But they both said, wait a minute, there's a better way. You know what I would do is I'd bring them here for a shop tour. I'd show them they're allowed to make money. They're allowed to have freedom.
Starting point is 00:50:20 And you'd get them in front of a guy like me for a shop tour. We do two a month. We have them all at once because it's more efficient because if I did a shop tour for everybody once at a time, I'd have 70 a month and that would be impossible. So bring them out here or you can have them call Vince or Cody and just get, find somebody similar to where, you know, Vince got on QuickBooks. He got on ServiceTen. He rewrapped his trucks. I know a lot of the things he probably didn't love to do. I called up Vince one day. He might be listening to this. And I said, hey, it's time to let Cody get out of the truck. And he goes, well, Cody's my top producer.
Starting point is 00:50:53 And they ended up doing it. And I'm not going to say I was right. They made everything happen. I gave them suggestions. I asked them good questions. They did everything. They did all the work there. They created their own destiny. But the best thing to do is until you can get them in front of a person that's already lived it and done it i recommend you just put them in front of a guy like me or vince or cody and there's a lot of other people i can get you in front of al levy's probably one of the best because he can relate to old young black white cuban asian male female doesn't matter so al levy is a great person to get on a phone call for somebody like that. But obviously, they want it their way because they don't want to see their life's work go down the
Starting point is 00:51:28 tube. So you got to say what's in it for them. Say, listen, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make you a deal. Three months, six months, nine months, and one year. I want to set off some expectations. We're going to look at employee engagement and happiness. We're going to look at profitability. We're going to look at this. But I want you to give me three months to get going on my way. And if I don't have something better at the end of two quarters, so you give me a three-months leeway. So if I'm not where you need me to be in nine months, I'll go back to your way, which is going back to stapling papers and putting stuff on the wall and using fax machines. I don't know what it's like, but I like to look at it. It's me. I love you, my friend. That's Cody.
Starting point is 00:52:05 He's on here. Cody said, you need an eye opener. See the shop and see the culture. Happy internal clients. You'll see it's possible. Oh, we never knew this was a possibility. You call me. He put his number there.
Starting point is 00:52:17 So that's in the notes. We're only getting two LSA leads a week. Well, do you know LSA runs off an algorithm? And if you don't answer your phone on the first ring and you don't answer the forms, you're never going to ring. So you need to get really good at answering your phone on the first ring. And if it takes you a call center to help you with that or a friend, then you need to do it.
Starting point is 00:52:36 There's so many things I'm learning. So many little things. You know, when we went to Houston recently, Vince walked up to me and he had a few things and comments. And first thing he said was how our calls transferred. It took a while. So we fixed that. And then he didn't like this call. Maybe we already recorded it for quality assurance purposes.
Starting point is 00:52:56 So we got rid of that and just doing it over the phone now. Certain states only require one person to know. A lot of them need two. So I'm not telling you guys how to run your business because this is legalities you need to talk to your lawyer about and then there was some confusion about one of my buddies that did their marketing and i said i want any bad taste in their mouth so we made it right but the good news is these guys are great business owners they got a lot of key insights everything that they told me i agreed with them we made, you know, when you partner with a company, you've got to hear their ideas. It's not your way.
Starting point is 00:53:29 It's got to be this decision-making happens together. And are we ready for it? And can we hire? Now, I'm hoping with every business we partner with, we can put them a little more on cruise control. We can give them back a little bit of their time. You know, it's still going to be hard work. And sometimes, you know, you got to make sure you, you don't want to put an agreement together and lawyers look at it. It's not for if everything goes right. I mean, literally, I invested in a restaurant a few weeks ago. I just had a guy in here, one of the most successful restaurants in all of Arizona. He wants to go to
Starting point is 00:54:01 Texas. There's so many agreements that you put together. They're not the good times they're for the bad times the agreement never gets looked at again if everything's going right the further times don't things don't work out so spelling out an agreement's making sure everybody understands and they consent to it it's not sneaking something by somebody so i think it's important to understand that uh for your parents and everything i don't know where i was going with that but tend to go on a tangent but obviously write everything down or know who's responsible for everything because that will set you free i have a small garage door business in texas and it's growing little by little you're a legend in the garage door world true inspiration brother any advice on continue to grow well yeah you know you will look at the only three ways to make money.
Starting point is 00:54:47 You get more customers, you keep them coming back more often, or you charge them more. You should always be trying to do all three of those things. And I go back to the same thing I've been talking about the last few months. Let's go out there. It's all about the relationships. It's about meeting people. It's about scheduling, owning your schedule and putting people on there to start working with.
Starting point is 00:55:04 I talked to the biggest real estate company in your market, and I go sit there and say, bring them all bagels, and bring a big smile, make sure your shirt's tucked in and you're smiling, and say, I want to be the guy when you guys sell a house that I'll go reprogram the keypad and I'll help with this, and just have a great offering where they fall in love with you.
Starting point is 00:55:24 And do that twice a week, and then add one thing else else a week and then all of a sudden you'll get so busy hire more three people to get back at that and it's a yin and yang boom boom boom but you gotta go out there and meet the people you gotta get aggressive about who you're meeting I'm calling people all the time seeing what they're doing in marketing I'm learning new styles I'm learning new stations I'm learning programmatic marketing I'm learning on little things tweaks I can do in the GMB or the LSA all these things And I'm still going back to my roots of relationships and yard signs and getting to know the people. I think that's one thing that I'll never be too spoiled to remember guerrilla marketing and where I came from. And I bring
Starting point is 00:55:58 a lot of those things back. Yeah, you can start listening to my first podcast for sure. If you listen to the first, when I was small, I started the pod. I mean, it wasn't that small. I think we were doing 20 million, but you start with the first podcast. You'll realize real quick that it'll start to relate to more or less. And they're not as good because it wasn't good at podcasting. I'm not saying mine are any good now, but it was worse before. Tommy, I met you at an event and you told me to get my numbers dialed. Then you talked to me, LOL. I did. I have 40K in my profit account from my landscape company, thanks to you and Ellen. Should I keep stacking my money or? Yeah. I mean, what I would tell you is decide
Starting point is 00:56:40 what you want. How big do you need to get the business? What timeline? I think it's so hard. I'm always in growth mode, but what I can tell you is you got to really define what you want, how big do you need to get the business, what timeline. I think it's so hard. I'm always in growth mode. But what I can tell you is you got to really define what your goals are, where you want to go in life, how quick you want to grow, because I can't answer that question without asking you a bunch of questions. You see, I could never be a good coach or a leader if I wasn't able to ask, what do you really want? What's your timeline? Are you going to expand? How many employees can you see yourself managing? Are you going to get help? Are you having any shortcomings? What I would tell you is, what do you hate the most? What pulls your energy out when you go into work and hire that person? And if it's your marketing dialed in, marketing itself
Starting point is 00:57:19 cures everything, period. What is your end goal? What is my end end goal my end goal is to keep coming in all the time until i hate it and i can't see that happening in the next five years my end goal is i'm building like a 10 people that are super important to me mom dad kia niece nephews and really figuring out how i can help them more not just money but just time and just really enjoy life. Because if you could, you should. And then that list is going to expand. And, you know, my goal is to get a lot, lot, lot more people around me to help me get things done and really just love every piece of every day. And that means not doing anything I don't want to do. It's not like I need a maid around me all times, but if I could get someone to come serve me a healthy meal,
Starting point is 00:58:07 doesn't need to be a chef, but everything I do, make it simple and allow me to continue to grow. Because that goal for me is to help millions and millions of people. And I hope that number even increases from that. So this is a start. This is what I do here.
Starting point is 00:58:23 This is a start, but help people, make life easy, keep my health, quality time with friends and family and important people. And money is going to help all those things come true. But let's see here. One more question. Typical net profit margin or an HVAC with less than 25 employees? I'd say you should be hovering around between 10% and 12%, maybe get to 15%. I always tell people when you're at the gym and you're trying to grow muscle, you're not trying to get cut. Same thing exists in business.
Starting point is 00:58:58 When you're trying to grow revenue, you're definitely not trying to squeeze out all the profit because you're reinvesting in the company. So there's different stages of business. Next year, I'm going to try to take as much market share in the United States and possibly Canada as possible. Therefore, I don't care if my EBITDA percentage is what it is today because I'm going to be growing market share. Then I'm going to grow profit or market share profitability, whatever way you want to look at it. So there's years to grow revenue. There's years to grow profit. I don't think you should be doing both at all times, but the growth needs to be a mixture of profits where you're not making, you're not breaking even, but you're not making 20%. You should, you know, six to eight to 10, maybe 12% for my business would be 15, but I'd be growing rapidly. But when I'm growing
Starting point is 00:59:47 profit, I want to hit 25, 30% which my numbers didn't used to be like that. But when you start selling storage and getting good at flooring and other things, definitely do not sell anything else in your core business until you're like my size. Get really good at what you do to go to the next market. I had guys sitting in the other room. They're like, what if I could just only the customer and sell them roofing solar, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, well, who's going to buy that? Who's going to buy your little Frankenstein pet project? There's no aggregator that's going to say, oh yeah, I want to buy that. You'll have one buyer and it's not a negotiation. You can never have a competitive bid from a really good group of buyers that want to
Starting point is 01:00:26 give you more for your business because you're a jack of all trades. You do all this shit. And I'll take over the business because it makes a lot of money. But your multiple goes to crap. So just keep that in mind. Thank you, guys. I got to go to dinner with one of the sales legends of all time. Dale Steele is a good buddy of mine.
Starting point is 01:00:43 He's a legend. So I'm going to go meet with him because I like to keep up with what's going on in the home service industry. He's always been a good buddy. So without further ado, I appreciate you guys. You guys make your businesses great. Enjoy your relationships, quality time, delegate properly, and make it a great day. Thanks, guys. 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.
Starting point is 01:01:29 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.

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