The Home Service Expert Podcast - The 4 Pillars of Leadership with Paul Kelly

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

In this conversation, Paul Kelly discusses the secrets to success that many people overlook. Tommy and Paul emphasize the importance of thinking critically and making informed decisions, which can lead to better outcomes. The speakers also highlight the value of ongoing training and the potential for individuals to improve their thinking skills, ultimately transforming their actions and results.   00:00:00 Cold Open 00:00:07 Title Sequence 00:00:26 Show Notes VO 00:01:12 Intro Into Interview 00:30:47 Insertion Edit 00:32:02 Interview Resumes 01:02:12 Outro

Whatever you do, dominate it. Be a big fish in a small pond, not a small fish in a huge pond. Small fish get eaten. 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 ask the team to take notes for you. Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S, to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states.

Just go to elevate and win.com for slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, today I got a special guest, and this is going to be amazing. Paul Kelly is an expert in sales, business, and accounting. He's based right here with me in good old Phoenix, Arizona. He's the author of Tricks of the Trade to Success, the magic of creating your to-da in business cent in life. Paul Kelly's the president and owner of Parker and Sons one of the largest and most successful home service companies in America generating well over 110 million in annual revenue

from a single market in Phoenix, Arizona, with more than 35 years of experience in the A-TAC plumbing electrical industries. Paul's journey has taken him from CPA to contractor, from crunching numbers to creating exponential growth. Since acquiring Parker and Sons in 2004, He's grown the business from 7 million to over 200 million, proving that success isn't magic. It's the result of doing the right things, keeping it simple and leading great people. Paul's also the author of Tricks of the Trade of Success, where he reveals how the secrets of magic mirror the principles of leadership discipline and execution in business. Wow. I don't know if I can even live up to all that, but it sounds pretty good.

It's always fun to talk to you, Paul. I've learned a lot from you over the years. Thanks for coming in today. Oh, no, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I don't know where you want to start. I mean, you were a CPA, Parker and Sons great company back in the day, been around since the 70s. And then you took it over and you've had quite the run.

I think you've got, what, four turns now? Yeah, yeah. We just had our fourth turn. Maybe it's been a year and a half two years ago now, I guess it was. But no, sold the business in, what was it, 2016. So I sold it well before everyone started jumping into this business. And the PE firms got all excited. But, yeah, sold it.

And then it flipped within a year. It flipped again within two years and flipped and flipped. And so it's been a crazy ride. I love it. I bought it when it was $7 million. It'll do, if I counted Tucson, which is a Parker and Sons there, we'll do $270 million. That's incredible. So it's a crazy story, but it's not my story.

It's a whole bunch of people's story. And I'm proud to be a part of it. That's for sure. What do you think your core is? Obviously, you understand the numbers because of the CPA background. I think a lot of business owners don't have that background. And it makes it tough because they don't know the score. They don't know how to read a balance sheet income statement, P&L, cash flow.

They don't understand accrual versus cash accounting. Where do you love? If you got to pick just to walk in back and go back to 2005 or 2004, if this is the only thing you're going to do in the business, what would it be? You know, it's funny. My background is accounting, CPA, all that. But what I really love is the monthly. marketing and the driving sales aspect.

That's my passion, and I think that's one of the reasons why we were able to grow, you know, eventually 10, 20, 30, one year we grew 40 million in a year in 2022, right on the heels of COVID. And so, yeah, my passion is growing the top line, but it would be no fun growing the top line, and you've seen contractors grow at the top, but the bottom shrinks. Yeah. So it's got to be top and bottom and getting a nice profit at the end, not for any reason other than you deserve it. Your people deserve it.

You should share it. And if you have investors, they deserve it as well. You know, a lot of people have been talking to P.E. companies. I think it's been kind of the COVID effect. you decided to do it a lot earlier. What are the pros and cons? There's horror stories. We tend to hear more of the horror stories than the success stories.

But when you came to terms with you were ready to do, take an opportunity to sell. What went through your mind? What would you warn people about what kind of things they need to have it like in place? You know, I did it for different reasons. Some people are going to retire and they're older and they want to sell. But as you've seen and we've all seen, the average age of somebody's, selling nowadays where it used to be 65 or 70 is now 35 or 40. Right.

And so it's it, for me it was really, I didn't want to leave the business. I didn't want to quit. I just wanted to take some chips off the table. So it was like if I was winning in Blackjack and I was up a lot, I'm, I'm conservative enough where I, you know, I don't want to bet it all on one hand or whatever. I want to run up to the room, put some money in the safe, go back down and keep playing blackjack. So it was just a way to reduce some of the risk. And there are some people out there that are considering selling that that might be part of their equation is how do I reduce the risk

of something that I built that has been successful. And then there's others that aren't quite as successful as they need to be that need to up their game and get it to a point where they can sell it. Everyone has their own reasons. I think most people jumped on the bandwagon of selling, not because they're ready, not because they wanted to take more chips off the table. It was strictly because the multiples got crazy high. And you start doing the math when the multiples are high enough. As I always tell people, it's better to keep your company, even if the multiples are higher. It's better to keep your company.

If only you can swallow the risk and the things that go along with owning your own company. because one day you could wake up and something may have changed. That could be something in the industry changed it, something in the economy changed it, maybe a competitor changed the landscape for you, or maybe you had a big accident or whatever. But as long as you can stomach that, I think it's always better to keep the company. But when you're ready to sell, I think you've got to pick the right people,

the right people to partner with. You've done that. I've done that because in the end you don't want, in the end, there's always whether you retire or you quit or someday you leave your company, there's people left behind and you want to make sure they're all taken care of. And I was very careful about who I partnered with. And I'm glad that I partnered with the wrench group. It's been a great opportunity for a lot of people.

They, along with me and a whole bunch of others, have made a bunch of people very successful, rich, and have changed their lives in a way that maybe wouldn't have happened had I just kept it. Yeah, you know, I ran out of money in a lot of ways for my growth appetite. So I had a delay-drell term loan in place, and I needed a partner with deeper pockets. And the multiples were high. and I've rolled a significant amount more than most to about half of the chips. And a lot of millionaires became, you know, over 24 millionaires came out of it. So we'll do it again. And yeah, I really think not selling a company could be selfish if you're taking all these draws all the time and everyone else is barely living.

Depending on how you pay and how the bonus structures work. But once you could use P units or an equity incentive program, it starts to, you got to kind of have a finish line where everyone's racing towards. Yeah. But it's not easy. I mean, the job of a PE company is to push you as hard as you're willing to be pushed because they got LPs to answer to as well. Yeah. And they need an ROI on that money. And the thing that scares me is taking six or seven times leverage on the business because, you know, Parker, if you took seven times leverage, still has to make those payments.

Right. Which is cash flow. Right. And there's some companies still taking draws out of the business, which I think is a massive mistake, because that should be growth capital. It shouldn't be other than to pay the debt. Yeah. Well, and, you know, as we were growing along the way before I sold, we started off at about 17, 18 percent EBITDA. And then it went to 16.

Then it went as we grew. Then it went to 15. Then it went to 13 and 12. When it got to 11, now I was still making more money because the top line was growing so large. But the percentage was shrinking. Then I called time out one year. And I said, okay, we're going to. getting back up to 17, 18 percent. And we did it in one year. And what we did was we set up a

profit sharing plan for people. So you talk about sharing, or I keep hitting this mic here. But in that one year, everybody started thinking about, hey, one, how do I benefit? How is the company benefit? How does the customer benefit, all three of those? And we started looking at what we were spending, what our margins were. I obviously have an accounting background. I knew I could always get it back up, but to do it in one year, it was a team effort. And sharing your success with your employees and partnering with a PE group is one way to do that is in the end the most rewarding thing you can do. You have more money than you'll ever spend, I'm sure. And I do. And I do okay. But really the people that you have, your key people all the way down to the last warehouse

person or whatever, they all deserve to do well when the company does well. And so I always felt that was an important key ingredient in anything I did. I'll get a bigger kick out of the team members or the employees making money than the company making money. It doesn't mean the company He doesn't want to make more money. It just means when the employee is able to do stuff for themselves or their family that they weren't able to do working for somebody else, that's what satisfies me. And that's what I get a kick out of. No, it's true. I agree with that wholeheartedly.

I would say, and I haven't felt this from my industry at all, but some of these HVAC plumbing guys, they're demanding that they make a million dollars a year, that they earn a lot of the P units. Sales are what make the world go around. Sales of marketing. We know that. But the more I hear some of these, and they're A-plus players, don't get me wrong, they know how to sell. And they still get five-star reviews. But, I mean, do you feel in any way like this is kind of a bubble when you got developers and people from real estate talking about the home service industry? Now, everybody in their brother is trying to get an A-track.

And, like, it just reminds me of the dot-com era. Like, this is almost too good to be true. And usually, if something sounds too good to be true, it is. Yeah. What are your thoughts over the next few years of where things go? Oh, I think there's definitely a bubble and it's already, I wouldn't say bursting, but it's already cracking. Renovo just went out of business. Yeah.

The BlackRock Company. Yeah. There's a few groups not doing well. I know. I know them. Yeah. And so is that going to continue? Yes.

There's too many people that hopped in our business too quickly who maybe didn't know the business. well enough. And it just, everyone can't do well forever. At some point, the cream will rise to the top. And I know you're part of a group that'll do that, and we are too. But in the end, not everyone is going to survive this at the level that they have the last few years. There's a price to pay, and there's a bubble that will burst. And I think it's coming soon.

It's already started. Next year is going to be a big year for a lot of companies making deals. So I think that'll be good news. I mean, I think guys like champion group and rents are doing great. I talked to Ken actually on Sunday. He was watching a football game. I was talking about Atlanta because he knows the Atlanta market.

I'm really trying to figure out the marketing that will work there. And he just mentioned just in purchasing, you guys are finding a massive amount of money in the next year. That'll go to the bottom line. And that's something that I've heard can talk about. I've heard some of the best players in the industry is how you buy procurement. How much does that play into building a big business and just renegotiating contracts, even with your vendors that you use for marketing?

Yeah, no, I think there's a huge opportunity there. Now, I will tell you that that's never been part of the formula thus far at the wrench group. each location made their own buys, whether it be media or whether it be equipment or parts or whatever. And there is some risk whenever you centralize or you move all your business to one vendor in order to get a good deal. One, there's risk that that vendor may not be able to provide the same kind of service that maybe the local people did before. Right. They could have a catastrophe of their own. We've seen that at Lenox in different things where, you know, Mother Nature can take out, you know, a manufacturing plant or whatever.

And not always are the best deals done at a national level. Sometimes they're done at a local level. And so you just have to be careful and you have to know, you have to have the right people negotiating it. doing the right thing and thinking through it the right way. But there is a huge opportunity, that said, to do deals in a number of areas that can save the company a lot of money and potentially bring some things to the table that maybe weren't brought before. And so I know the ranch is exploring those now, and I think that will pay off big dividends

down the road. It's always interesting. Leland had talked about the same things. And you guys, I know, I know Ken Goodrich, Ken Haynes, Leland, and, you know, Christiano, I know all the goats. Those goats, yeah. And then I'm talking to the biggest goat in our industry right across from here. No, I learned a lot.

Literally, I spent a lot of time traveling, just going to different shops and learning how Aeach did it and plumbing. And, you know, we like to buy it from two manufacturers, not lean all in on one. and they continue to fight for our business all the time. They get a lot of our business. I mean, we're spending $60, $70 million a year in just parts. But I do think you get economies of scale when you switch to one call center, one purchasing department, one type of insurance provider.

Not everything, like you said, local could be still good. But if it truly is a platform and you want it to be one roll up, meaning that it's reporting the same, you read the KPI's the same, you talk the same jargon, similar mission, core values, stuff like that. I just don't see how you could do it just buying good companies in a bunch of markets and run them on your own. Like you need intact and service tighten and you need the right HR company. And with all those things not reporting the same, like you can never lend your employees to other

companies if you're under the same ownership structure. That's the way I look at it. And if I was going to build any type of roll up, it would be this is the fundamentals. We're agreeing that we're going to do all this throughout. Otherwise, you might have Morris Jenkins doing different than this and this and this, the next gen, you know, and it's hard to get a system of the output to be the same. Yeah, I think as you try and set up a group to flip or to go public or whatever, you've got to have some commonality among the locations. But I will say that said that there's always risk whenever you centralize things. Because the more that you take away from a location, the more risk there is that that thing you took away.

One, it has to be handled as good or better than who you took it away from. And also, the more you take away from a location. the more identity and the more the less control there is by that location. And you just have to be careful. I totally agree that doing it makes sense. It will always make sense on paper. It's whether it does in practice. And it's usually going to depend on the person running that thing,

not on the idea itself. Right. You can centralize the call center. And all the calls are answered across the whole nation in one call center. If only that call center is as good or better than the call centers that were already out there and the person running it is the best. And I see a lot of companies and, you know, everybody struggles with when you centralize something. Sometimes it doesn't always go the way you want it to at the beginning. Right.

Right. And if it goes on long enough, then you can lose the locations drive to, hey, they took this over. And now my revenue went down a little bit because of it. That wasn't a good move. Well, it probably still was a good move. It just has the wrong person running it. And I see that, I see that out a lot of locations. So you just have to be careful. Yeah, I look at this business that you're in and I'm in, Rens Group. I'm not quite in the same. We don't have as many companies that you guys have and the revenue, but I look at it like a franchise model. And I think the more of the franchise or could control some of the things. Now, I've seen franchise or that don't know anything about marketing.

They don't understand call centers. They probably shouldn't be picking those things. But I look at an average CSR that could take 45 calls a day. If you're in a smaller market, your CSR, because in the morning and afternoon calls come in at different times, they might only be able to take 10 calls a day. So all of a sudden, you're getting these economies of scale if you do it correctly. And you're right. You need great people. That's one of my next questions. A lot of leaders talk about scaling, but very few have done it in such a controlled single market way.

Why is it important to master one market instead of expanding into others? And I do have some leadership questions as well. I mean, one, there's so much business in a Phoenix, Arizona, or a Dallas, Texas, or, you know, any number of cities. There's so much business to get. That to try, for me, that's the best place to start to try and dominate. I would rather be a $250 million company in Phoenix, Arizona, than be a, you know, $25,000, you know, $10 million. businesses all over. It's easier to control, and now there's more risk because if... Summer doesn't get hot, we don't have to worry about that here. Yeah, we don't have to worry about

that here. But so I think, you know, for me, it was always, it always made sense to expand the services that we offer because we only offered HVC and plumbing in the beginning, and then we added water, and then we had an insulation. We added electrical. We recently added solar. Once somebody trusts you, you can definitely get them to use you for other services. And I'd rather grow that way first. Now, some of those businesses are a little bit different, but they're all home services.

Yeah. Home improvements. Yeah. And so they have a commonality. And so that's the way I always grew. It can go either way. We expanded down into Tucson, and we'll do 30 million. in Tucson in year four.

So it, you know, you can open up and do very well in another location as well. So I think you can do either. I think for most people, maybe that are listeners to this podcast, grow your own business first. If you're not good at that yet, if you're not dominating or, you know, in your own market, But figure that out first. Don't expand. I always tell people. Why are you expanding when you're not even making 15% and you don't have market sure in your current market?

Right, right. And so many people are so excited to expand and they don't understand they're going to be Robin Peter to pay Paul. Yeah. And it's tough. Now your top guys are going to that other market. You're losing them out of your current market. You're going to drop your current market. It's a weird situation to be in.

You said before the business isn't a magic trick. It's about keeping things simple and doing the right. things well. What does keep being as simple actually look like in practice when you're leading hundreds of people and millions in revenue? You know, everything I did, people think like, well, you probably had this master plan if you went from $7 million to $250 plus million. And I would tell people, no, I didn't have some master plan. I was basically just trying to make payroll at the beginning and trying to figure things out. But we got momentum and we, you know, kept rolling. Simplicity was always part of my formula. I'm not a complicated person. I can't implement

complicated. When things are complicated, they're hard to implement, and they're not scalable. And so simplicity in everything, whether it's a pay program, an example, our pay program for our HVAC service department, 20% of the ticket. You can figure that out. You can do 10% of by moving the decimal point and double it and you are used to leaving 20% tips and like they know they can do the math in their head real quick when they do a job, they know how much money they made. They put in a $1,000 motor.

They just made $200 bucks. So simplicity in everything we do, whether it's a selling process. I don't like 10-step processes. I don't like long things that you have to memorize and learn, this is how you say it and this order and if you do this and then you do that and then you do these other

six things, then you're going to make the sale most of the time. Like, just tell me one thing, one thing to do that would make the biggest difference. And if I have a magic in me, it's, I can take most things and simplify

them to a degree that no one else can and I can get that simple thing to work really well and it doesn't mean I won't make it a little more complicated later on, but simplicity is the key to everything that Parker and Sons does. As large as we are, things are harder to implement, not easier, and simplicity is a part of that.

I want to talk a little bit about marketing, because that's my favorite thing in business, too. I like marketing for clients and marketing for great people to come on the bus. How much should someone, and there's numbers all over the place, and we're from 5 to 20%, depending on which you're growing or not, How much of revenue as a com percentage of revenue should we be spending in marketing? Do you like to be at? Well, I can tell you what Parker's at, and it's a ridiculously low number.

And I wish you were higher, but, you know, there's some that believe you can grow your business at even a lower number. But Parker spends about four and a half percent. But I think the right number, really, for a large company, is in that 6 to 7 range. For the smaller medium-sized companies, you're going to have to spend 8 to 10 to 12. I mean, I think 8 to 10% is not unusual at all for any company to spend on marketing.

And so, you know, not spending enough and not charging enough so you can spend enough on marketing, you know, you can do anything you want in your business if only you charge appropriately. And so the number one mistake that a lot of contractors make or even some PE groups make is they don't spend enough on marketing. And so I think if you want to grow your business and look, it's really no fun unless it is growing. So if you want the best people, you want to attract them, you want to retain them, you better be a growing company, right?

And so you got to spend enough. You've got to be smart. You got to have the expertise on the marketing side. And so I think that is what a lot of the companies within the ranch group Excel at. They're very good marketers. And so I think those are the keys. Did that answer your question? Yeah, no, it's great.

I mean, you've done a lot of stuff. You used to put babies on the billboards. Yeah. That was just team, my daughter. That was her idea. She did a great job. It's one in Robert Chedini's books. He talks about that.

People love babies and they have pets. And then you've got, I've heard you guys all over the, seen you on TV radio over the years. I've seen you guys at a lot of the stadiums in the men's bathroom. I don't know about the women's. Never been in there. But what are some of the things that have worked the best over the years that still apply to today that you'd say, man, that was amazing with the results. We didn't know it was going to be that way.

But it's not just your. common things that most people know about. Well, I would say that, you know, whatever you do, dominate it. So that was one of the keys. And that's just the principle, not an actual action, but dominate what you are in. And if you're smaller, if you're a smaller contractor, that might be a neighborhood or a church or something on a smaller scale. It might be a zip code or two.

As you get larger, you can dominate a station or programming on TV or different things. But whatever you do, dominate it. Be a big fish in a small pond, not a small fish in a huge pond. Small fish get eaten. Big fish do the eating. So be a big fish. And so I think that's one of the principles that we've always used as far as what's work for us. one, I always tell people, start off with a business you already have and make more out of it.

That's where to start. Yeah. That's the best energy you could ever spend. Take that, you know, $250 average ticket or whatever yours is and make it 350, 450, 450, 550, 550. Take the leads that you get and get more of them, the system leads. Most of the businesses in the home service industry and your listeners, The large ticket items are where they make most of their money. And so make sure you're feeding that animal well,

spend more time, money, and energy on figuring out how to feed that animal. But really, I'm not sure I could point to one thing that if I said in advertising, it works. It all works. Consistency, longevity, diversity. The same message over a long period of time over a number of mediums works. The problem is all those are expensive to do. And so you have to do it on a smaller scale and you have to dominate an audience. You want them to get tired of hearing your message.

And because the average consumer doesn't use our services, but once every two, three, in some instances, five, six years or 10 years, 15 years in buying a system, right? And so you have to always be talking to that audience so that when they have the need. And there's ways to create needs, but when they have a need, you're more top of mind. I love it. Hey there. Hope you're enjoying today's episode. I get this question all the time.

So let me tell you how I met Jim Leslie. He's my right-hand man who helped me scale A1 to $250 million. A few years ago, Jim came to Phoenix for a small event I was hosting. What sold me on hiring him as A1CMO wasn't his business success. It wasn't even how smart he was. It was what he told me behind closed doors. Jim started his own home service business at 22, built it to a couple million, and then he burned out hard.

One afternoon, sitting in his truck outside a customer's house, his hands shook so bad he couldn't even turn the key. He could have quit, but instead he kept going. He doubled down on learning. He built systems that led him skilled to $10 million without burning out and eventually took his shop to $20 million. I loved this story so much that I hired him on the spot. He helped me implement a bunch of systems at A-1 and the rest is history. Now, Jim's doing a one-day boot camp in Dallas, Texas on December 12th where he's teaching those same systems to a small group of contractors.

Check it out at homeserviceexpert.com forward slash boot camp. B-O-O-T-C-A-M-P. That's homeserviceexpert.com slash boot camp. enter Dallas at checkout for 50% off, only 90 spots. All right, back to the episode. In the book, you write about finding your to-da moment, that spark that makes your business and life stand out. What does that mean to you personally

and how can leaders find that magic in what they do? You know, I got into magic years ago, and now that I'm kind of semi-retired and working a lot less, not involved in the day-to-day at Parker and just kind of consulting with the wrench. I've been able to get back into some magic stuff, and I'm starting to practice again. But to me, that ta-da moment are the things, it could be little things that you can just say to yourself, ta-da, or you can celebrate. Obviously, getting married can be a ta-da.

Having kids is a huge ta-da. I'm going to tell you right now, having grandkids is maybe even a bigger. to-da. And so love those grandkids. And you're certainly buying a business, having a business, a great month, a great day, making a sale that you didn't think you would make. All those are ta-da moments that you should celebrate. And you can celebrate in a number of ways. To me, my last ta-da in this industry might be something that you're a part of, even though it's a small part of in the fact that if I'm a goat and raising goats. Yeah, and you're a goat and we know a lot of goats, how did we become a goat? Like, we're, there's not really, I mean, maybe you feel you are

to some degree or whatever, but I don't feel like I'm that special to, to think that if I, only I can do something. I think if I did it, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, never say anyone because I've met a lot of people that would never, ever be able to do this. But a lot of people, a lot of people could do exactly what we did. If only, they knew the secrets. And I've identified, I study you, I study a lot of people. And I've figured out four things that people are really good at. They're a part of this class that we're going to teach.

You're a part of that class. And those four things, you want to go through the four things? Yeah, let's go through them. Yeah, raising goats. It's how to be a better thinker. All the great goats, all the great people in our industry that have an amazing story. They're really good thinkers. They can think through problems, not just the benefits of solving a problem, but the consequences of making decisions and problems. And I feel like in this class and some ongoing training as well,

I can get somebody, we can get somebody to be a way better thinker. So thinking is key. If you think differently, you'll act differently. If you act differently, you'll get different results, better results. The second thing, which is an Achilles heel of most contractors that are probably listening, and even an Achilles heel for Parker and Sons or an A1 garage or whatever, it's always a struggle is implementation. Most contractors aren't good at implementation.

So they can go to the freedom event. They can go to a seminar, or they can go to a conference, or they can hire a company, and they can get a mentor, and they can talk to whoever they want. They can read tricks of the trade to success. Boy, can they implement.

And I've found some tricks to implementing. We talked about one of them, but I'll really show it in the class. It's about simplicity and how to break something down so simple that it just makes it easy for people to implement. So implementation, and then to be a better operator, we're going to hit the highlights of what to know in each of the categories in your business, from marketing to financial, to, sales, to operations, to dispatching, to the call center. You know, we're not going to talk about everything. We're going to talk about the simple things, the things that matter the most, that there's one or two things in each thing you just have to get super good at. And so being a better operator. And then the last thing, which you have in spades as well, is being a better

leader. And, you know, and how do you get people to follow you? I tell people at Parker and Sons or ranch or as I talk to people all the time, the litmus test of whether you're a good supervisor or manager or leader is can you get the people that report to you to do what you want them to do? And if you can, you're probably a great leader, at least to some extent. If you can't, you're definitely not being a great leader. It doesn't mean you can't become one. And so you've got to get people to do what you want them to do in the end. And so we go through in the class and then afterwards we go through what that means, what it looks like, what it feels like, and how to improve it. You'll walk away in that class. The first class is in March. You'll walk away from

that class being better in all four of those pillars, I call them. And it'll 5x, 10x your company, both top and bottom line in a very short period of time. So that to me is going to be my biggest to daub, because I believe everyone talks about shortage of technicians. And there is, shortage of technicians. And we all solve that in some way. but the biggest shortage is a shortage of leaders. Yeah.

With the right leaders, you get the technicians. You get that. And so it is about how do I, and if I can do it and you can do it and other people can do it, how would we all pull together and get somebody from A to Z in a very short period of time to be just a goat in the making in a sense? And that's probably what is exciting me more than anything I've ever done, including Grown Parker and Sons, because it's a way of giving back. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting. You know, I like mentoring people, but I still love the game too much. And, you know, if I was to restart today, I always asked this question. If I restarted today, what would I do? Well, the hard part is I didn't have any money when I started. So I had to work three other jobs. So that was a few years of working nights and weekends and maybe.

because I needed money to invest in growth. And I couldn't hire great people because I didn't have the money. I was the janitor, the call center, the dispatch center, the trainer, the recruiter, the accounts payable. I did the payroll. I was on the phone with the different lawyers to make sure this was okay. The terms and conditions on the website, you know, I was making sure the reviews were coming in good.

And that's no way I'd want to do it. And now I have money. So if I were to start out with money, I'd hire a top down instead of bottom up. I'd get the right leaders to help build the team. Yeah. Smart. Yeah, it's never easy. And this is a weird time because Google's becoming less, you know, AI, LLMs.

What's going on with chat cheap, what's going on with just machine learning? I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm embracing it. I'm really looking at this like a whole new opportunity for us. But I think the bigger companies that invest in these things are going to get bigger. And there's going to be a lot of losers. It's almost like when the Yellow Book died. I came in right when the Yellow Book died.

I was in the third page of the yellow book. And then all of a sudden, Google became a thing. And I studied it, and I just became infatuated. But TV radio billboards help Google get more. You know, people search our name more, and there's a lot of things that come. But, you know, it's pretty complex. People are like, what's the first thing to do? I'm like, you've got to become a reader.

You got to invest in yourself. And you got to treat people like you want to be treated. And do they want to work with you? There's certain people I know that say, if you paid them nothing, but they still work for you. I'm like, I don't know anybody. and come to work if they didn't make any money. But I hope I lead from up front.

I think I'm always my worst critic. I always think I could do better, but I try to show more appreciation than I do lecturing somebody in a one-on-one of like how they could become better. I'm kind of the good cop. And I don't like to play that position of power, and I'm going to fire you and you're going to get written up. I like to come as like, look, you told me what you wanted out of life.

You told me your goals. I'm helping you try to get them. Do you want me to help you or do you just want to just be okay being okay? Yeah. And that's my job is to pull the best out of people. And if they don't want to be pulled, there's certain times where people have life events, which I'm okay with. But if you're just going to go through life half-ass, it probably isn't the right company for you. This is for people that want to excel and change their family's family lineage, you know, their family tree.

Yeah. Well, I think that's what has driven your success and a lot of others is, one, you're never happy with the status quo. That's a blessing and a curse. Yeah. You're always trying to improve, and you have high expectations, first of yourself and then of others. And I think when people know what's expected, they'll try and deliver. When they don't know what's expected is when anything will work. And I think that's part of your magic as a leader.

So, yeah. What's the legacy of raising goats? I mean, where do you see this manifesting into from your perspective? Well, I, you know, I spent a lot of time on the side, after hours, whatever, trying to figure out how to get people better at the four pillars. And I wanted to do it in record time. Most people have to have a mentor, and it takes years and years. And I set out to do it in one week.

And so I'm going to kind of floor some people with what we do in the class. but it, and there's some ongoing training and reinforcement afterwards as well. And I went through EGIA and you become part of EGIA too and you get, you know, a ticket to their conference and all of their materials as well. But I really wanted to partner with the likes of you and several other goats. We've got, you know, we've got you, we've got Christiano. We got my son Josh, who's an up-and-coming goat, Drew Cameron, Mark Madison, Chad Peterman. We've just, and there'll be others. And I want it to be something that I lead, but I really, I've learned so much from you and so much from so many others.

And I want to condense it down into something. And so my legacy is going to be, how can I on, you know, this may be, you know, this may be, something we just do once or it may be something that I do for a while or maybe others do. And you know, one of the things that people said to me is like, aren't you afraid that once people go through the class or this gets out there the way you do it and how you do it, whatever, aren't you afraid that someone's going to copy it? And I was like, I'm not afraid that they're going to copy it. I want them to copy it. Like I want it to become a movement, not a, not a a Paul Kelly thing, I want there to be a whole bunch of goats.

That would be my legacy is I started something and everyone else finished it. And so I don't care about that. I never cared about that. I never cared about beating a competitor. I just cared about getting better myself. I never cared about how someone else was doing. I only cared about how me and all the people that worked for me did. And so it, uh, keep your head down and your on and you'll be a lot happier in life, not chasing somebody else's dream, but just chasing your own. So that's, you know, this will be my legacy. I appreciate you being a part of it. I hope you'll spread it to all of your listeners. Yeah, no, I'm excited to do this.

podcast, but I'm excited about it. I'm excited to share what we've come up with. So, yeah. It's very cool. And I know it comes from your heart of giving back and you want to see people do their best. So I know it's coming from a great place. You know, you've done a lot of great things in the industry. And people come out here, they visit. One of the things you've done a great job. And I'm going to come back to raising goats at the end of how people get more information. you've been a hell of a recruiter. I think I put more emphasis now in my recruiting talents. I'm not the best interviewer.

But I've been working on that. Part of leadership is getting great one-on-ones, getting your direct reports to follow you, building leaders out of them. And I put just as much emphasis on the marketing for great people to come on board than I do for great clients because a great person coming on board,

they help recruit clients, they help recruit other people. They come to meetings with a smile. They're very amicable with everybody. and you recruited Daryl Bingham, and he's running the business, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Daryl's running it now. How did that look? How do you look for leaders and how do you identify them?

What kind of skillsets do you, what kind of questions do you ask to make sure you get in the right people? Well, a lot of times the people will find you once they hear your story. And I was always someone that kept quiet profile. I was never a podcaster, and back in the day there weren't even podcasts, right? And I never made a big splash. I was never part of a mixed group. I was never, I kind of just laid low and quietly became this $200-plus million dollar company, and that's the way I wanted it.

But I think when you have a story and when you're genuine and when you care more about the people that work for you, then you care about the company or about the customers. It's the people first that work for you. Yep. It's the customer second and it's the company third in that order. I think you start to attract people. Our success was really at a high level. Darrell was frustrated.

I won't get into the particulars with what was happening at George Brazil. but I was lucky to land Darrell, and Darrell and I were a great one-two punch. I was the driver of the top line. I made sure we made money at the bottom, and he was the operator overseeing the operations. But it wasn't just Darrell. It was my daughter, well, in the early days, it was Josh,

but Justine took over in 2017 and did the marketing, and I loved working with both of them. Justine became one of the best marketers in our industry. With my tutelage and everything she's learned from other locations within Wrench even or from Wrench themselves. And it was Bob Cannon more recently. And we've just had so many great people that we've attracted.

And I won't say that it's not like I sought these people out. they kind of sought us out. And I think when you have that, you've got something special. I always say that at Parker and Sons, you can go to any company you want. And you ask the people whether they care about the company they work for. And invariably, they'll say yes. But do they care enough? It's that word enough.

And enough to take care of each other first, the customer second and the company, third. And giving enough and caring enough. enough or what I look for. I don't look for something technical. I look for what's in here. What's in here? But mostly are they teachable? Are they hungry? Are they humble? A lot of people that aren't humble. And I don't like working with, you know, people that aren't humble. Yep. And I like to laugh. I like to have fun. That's why I like hanging around you. And having fun at work and laugh. or an ingredient that I actually interview for. I'll tell a joke or two, and then I'll want them to tell me something funny.

I want to see if I'm going to have fun. It doesn't mean if I wouldn't hire them if they weren't funny. Josh will say that sometimes, but that doesn't mean that at all. But it does if all things are equal, all things are equal. I'll pick the funny one. Yeah. Or the one that I'm going to have fun with. Yeah.

Yeah. That's important. I think having that camaraderie, I call it just, will this be a guy I want to go have a beer with or a gal? You know what I mean? Somebody that I just love hearing their stories. Yeah. They have this way of just recreating a story.

Storytelling is such, storytelling is joke telling. And if you can do it right and you're entertaining, it's like, man, I want to get to know this person. He's interesting or she's interesting. And so I really think that's important because you might have the best all-star, but it might not fit your culture. Yeah. And it's got to be a culture fit.

And I think that that's important. So what do you like to do? I mean, so you're doing this raising goats. You're still advising companies, especially, you know, wrench. Right. What other things, obviously, spend a time with the grandchildren. What are some of your passions that you really, really enjoy? You know, I've played a little more golf lately.

So I got actually a golf simulator in my. garage now so I can go out and hit golf balls there and but really between you know I used to play tennis don't play that anymore I've but I am getting into magic again so between grandkids consulting raising goats I told Josh I was going to learn Spanish but I haven't got around to doing that yet but that's on the list but yeah those those are all things that I like doing that I want to do. I've got some time to do it. My wife is going through some struggles now with breast cancer, so that's eating up my time. But she's going to get through that. But yeah, yeah, I'm enjoying kind of this, I won't call it the last phase of my life. I'll call it the

third out of five phase of my life. Yeah, no, that's the right way to look at things. I mean, I think people just need a reason to keep going. I don't like the word retirement, because retirement means I don't think there'll be a day. I'm trying to build my life right now of what 45 looks like when kids come and really being intentional with time. Because time is one thing we just can't buy. 168 hours in a week. We're not going to change that. It's the equalizer to everybody.

So on my, I put, I'd like to work five to six hours a day, four days. a week with super intentional time. But I also want to go out and hang out with technicians, and I want to go visit markets and take them to dinner and go bowling. So it just, I guess it's what do you consider work is some of the, because I don't feel like, I don't even feel like I'm at work right now. This isn't, I do so much stuff that it doesn't feel like I'm ever going to work. I did three-hour orientation this morning.

That wasn't work. I enjoyed spending time with the brand new text and installers we have. But you can enjoy work too, where it doesn't seem like work. But yeah, no, I think you do. You spend three things in life, time, money, and effort, and time is finite. And so how you use it is very, very important. And, you know, do something you love that you enjoy for sure.

Yeah, yeah. And the older you get, the more you realize how, precious time really is. Yeah, you start to appreciate it a lot more. I mean, you'd give up everything you've ever done in your life to get, you know, 30 years back. Yeah. And I see people as they start, you know, like Steve Jobs, he said on his deathbed, you'll be taking your food as medicine. It'll be taking medicine as food. Yeah. Yeah. What's one piece of advice you'd give young Paul if you were to talk to 25-year-old Paul? Stay out of the bar, Paul. No, I don't. Yeah, 25-year-old Paul was a lot different than a 66-year-old Paul.

You know, I've learned a lot. I've had a lot of mentors. I think I did this on another podcast, but I mean, a lot of my mentors I had never even met. I just watch them. I study them. I read their books and I figure out what their strengths are, and I try and emulate it and try and make it simple.

but I think when I was younger, I didn't really have aspirations to be any more than, you know, average or, you know, I was working kind of how most 25-year-olds do to kind of get by and get through the day and make pretty good money, but not be that motivated. and didn't want to take the risks that it might take to do some of the, to make bigger money or to have bigger aspirations. And so I think confidence and having the right mentors and just keeping life simple and having a drive within you. I didn't have the drive back then, at least business. business-wise. I competed in sports and I competed in, you know, other things. But now,

and for the longest time, I competed in business. And that was the way I wasn't competing against anyone. I was competing against myself for the most part. And so, you know, have a drive, be competitive, know what you want, and go after it. You can, it's kind of cliche, but you can accomplish way more than you set yourself, you know, you give yourself credit for being able to do. And don't be afraid to ask for help. Yeah, I ask you my favorite three letters in that order.

Yeah. Any books that have changed your life? Obviously, you wrote a book. Everybody should pick up Paul's book. Yeah, yeah. The funny thing about my book is I'm not a reader. I mean, I'm a listener now on Audible of Books, but I'm not.

a big reader. I'm a slow reader. So it takes me a long time, but unless it's really good, I fall asleep first. So when I was going to write a book, I went to my wife and I said, hey, I'm going to need some alone time for about five or six weeks. I've got to do things quickly. And so I wanted to write it in five or six weeks. And she goes, you need some alone time. Why? What's wrong? I go, there's nothing wrong. I'm going to write a book. She goes, you don't even like reading. I go, I didn't say I was going to read it. I said I was going to write a book. And so anyway, I mean, you name a book and I've probably read it or I've listened to it. I've, you know, I'm not sure I have a favorite. And I am a guy that can remember principles, but can't remember the name of the book or can't remember,

you know, the movie. In the old days, I would go to Blockbuster and bring a movie back. We'd watch it about three weeks later, I'm in Blockbuster. I pick the same movie. I bring it back. And Tricia goes, we just watched that like three weeks ago. And I go, it sounded familiar, but I, you know. That's great. Anyway, but, but no, read, read everybody's book. I've read yours. Yours is, it is a great book. You can see Tommy Mello all over in that book. And, uh, and it was, But, you know, most of the real successful people in our industry have written books, and there's people outside of our industry, read as much as you can or listen to as much as you can. It'll rub off.

I agree. I agree. If somebody wants to reach out to, Paul, what's the best way to do that? Well, I hope they sign up for and get signed up because space is limited to 30 of tricks of the trade, the success. They can do that. You know, you can get my book. There's, if you go to Tricks of the Trade.com, you can reach me there. You know, you can, I can, if any, your listeners need to ask me specific questions or whatever,

I'm always willing to, you know, field calls or do whatever. But, you know, I would say those are the two ways. But go to, you know, if I can put a plug in. And since you're a part of it, too, go to Raisingoats.com. Raisinggoats.com and look at the class. And I hope you sign up. And if you do, I promise you, you're going to really be floored. I didn't want to put something together as my last to-daa that has been out there.

I tried to think of what's missing in all of the training that I've ever been to, and how could I put on something, we all put on something, that would be different than you would learn from the normal person that is maybe having a class on something. And so that's what this is. It's a fairly immersive training, and you will get better at those four pillars. And it's going to completely change not just you and your company and your financials and your success,

but it'll change you as a person as well. I think you'll be a better husband, a better mother, a better father, a better brother, sister, or just friend to someone. And so I think it's some life-changing training, but it specifically will change. change your company. I guarantee you you won't walk away from this class and not be substantially better at what you need to be better at in order to grow your company at a rate that you never thought possible. I love it. Well, you said it. Go to raising goats.com and order Paul's book. He's a wealth of knowledge. And if you're ever in town, obviously we do A1 tours all the time. But, you know,

maybe you could give a, maybe if we arranged it, you could do a Parker and Sun. That's actually part of the Raising Goats training is a guided tour by myself, Parker, where you'll see the actual things we teach in the class. You'll see it live. And you'll be able to listen. You'll be able to see it going on in a live environment, so to speak. Cool. Yeah.

Yeah. I love it. Well, Paul, I really appreciate you coming by. It's always an honor to have you. You're just a wealth of knowledge. I've always leaned on you. Every few months I got a question or you give me some guidance or tell me who I need to get connected with. So I appreciate it.

Well, I can't think of anybody better that I would, and why it took us so long to do this, I'm not sure. But I consider you the goat in our industry, our industry, meaning the home services industry, which encompasses a lot of different trades. And you're one of the best connected. and most respected, most successful contractors slash leaders in our industry. And I couldn't, you ask me to do anything and I'll always be there for you. Thank you. I agree.

I feel the same about you. And I met Josh in Hawaii in 2016 through Gannett. I cannot believe that. But Josh, such a, I love the whole family. And I appreciate everything you guys do. Well, they've been wildly successful themselves, so it couldn't be more proud of him and Laura. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. You're more than welcome. All right, and we are out of here. Thanks, guys, for listening. This is a good one. 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 to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevate and win.com for 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.