The Home Service Expert Podcast - The Belief That Separates the People Who Win From Everyone Else | Evan Carmichael

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ Evan Carmichael started with $300 a month, dead-ass broke, too afraid to  tell anyone. He sold his company at 22, built a YouTube channel from nothing, and reached 4 million subscribers by helping entrepreneurs believe in  themselves. But the most powerful thing he said in this conversation had nothing to do with YouTube: "We don't care who watches the video. It's a relationship." Evan breaks down the exact content strategy home service owners should be  using — not to go viral, but to build the referral relationships that 5-10x  their revenue. Plus: why your purpose comes from your pain, the neuroscience  behind serving others, and the real reason most billionaires aren't happy  when they finally get there. 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 05:48 Team Mentoring as Content 11:35 The Office Hours Method 19:10 Borrowed Belief 26:03 Identity & Standards 34:05 Built to Serve 44:27 Catch Them Doing Something Right 51:12 Just Start and Keep Going 57:44 Content as Relationships 1:02:44 Buyer Breakthrough Videos 1:17:36 Book Recommendations 🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ Check Out My Social Media: Tiktok ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook ⟶ https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/

I love saying, yeah, I'm an overnight success of two decades. And the first 10 years were practice. And I said, listen, guys, what did go wrong can go wrong. I'm the biggest failure in the room, but here's the thing I kept failing forward. Why did the Hollywood actors not move to YouTube? They don't want to start over. Why do people not switch platforms? Why did the MySpace people not switch to Instagram?

Like, they don't want to start over. Starting a YouTube channel, it's like you're starting over. And most people don't want to do it. They don't want to start over. But then they miss the climb. Today I got Evan Carmichael. This dude is a maniac. He's a YouTube sensation, no social media.

He's connected. He's coming from Canada. He's a CEO and co-founder of Evan Carmichael Communications, author of The One Word, and Built to Serve. Evan Carmichael is an entrepreneur, investor, and best selling author on a mission to help people believe in themselves. Come on now. He's an Inc100 leadership speaker and 40 social marketer

with over 4 million YouTube subscribers. After building and selling a biotech software company at the age of 19, he went to become a venture capitalist and later one of the world's leading voices for entrepreneurs on YouTube, reaching millions globally. Through his books like Your One Word and Built to Serve, he teaches purpose-driven success. It's amazing to have you on, brother. Let's go, man.

Here we are. I'm glad you're doing this. It's fun, man. You know, you're a giver. We met through Joe Polish. When I just sent her the Genius Network, you were upstairs with him kind of just brainstorming. Okay.

And you guys, you became really good friends. I mean, Joe is probably the biggest connector and the giver I've ever met. He's a fun guy. He lives right next to me. I get about 77 messages a day from him. Okay. I'm just kidding. But why don't the audience just get to know you a little bit, tell you about how you came up,

tell you what you're passionate about, tell you what you're looking forward to doing? Yeah, I mean, entrepreneurial tendencies my whole life, but, you know, I thought I wanted to be a banker. And then in university, I had the choice between, like, go get my dream job or start a business, and I chose start a business. Not that I thought it would work out, just that I didn't want to live with regret, you know, like, hey, who knows what will happen. But that company struggled in the first years of making $300 a month, too afraid to tell

anybody I was struggling, you know, my entrepreneur friend, or my friends went off and got the jobs and they wanted to go hang out and they're like, I can't, I'm busy, I'm hustling, grinding, but really I was just like dead ass broke. Eventually we turned it around. You know, I had an exit and went to VC. And I started making content at the beginning just because I sold my business at 22, you know, not a huge exit, but like, not like world changing money, but like decent. I didn't have to go do something for a while.

And I got asked to do a bunch of speaking and represent Canada at like different events. And I just let me down the content game. And I think ultimately your purpose comes for your pain. I think whatever you struggled the most with is what you want to help other people through. And I struggled so much as an entrepreneur that now I try to help other entrepreneurs not struggle as much. So I built the channel up and then in the process started helping some of the people that I used to look up to, you know, like they came on and did interviews with them and then I sort of helping them their channels and then past I don't know seven years, 10 years have been more pushing guys like you to like, hey, make content. Like the guys who are actually building the businesses were not making the content. And now, like, you guys finally are, which is awesome.

Yeah, content is a, it's an acquired taste. It's hard to be, like the Kardashians, I've got to give it up to them to be on camera all the time. What I found for me is I don't want to come in here and do a days worth of content. I want you to just film me in my, like, film the lion in his habitat rather than in the cage. What's your best advice to business owners that just haven't got a knack for it? They haven't practiced. They haven't gotten comfortable in front of the camera. So whenever we're working with people, first has got to be fun.

Like, you've got to find a thing that's fun. Like, if you're not the kind of guy who just sits around the table and likes a chat, then, like, don't do that. Right. So what is actually going to be fun to stick with? Especially someone like you who, like, you don't need to do this. Like, your business is going. You're growing. I mean, is it smart?

Yeah, but you also don't need to do it. Like, a lot of the guys I work with are super successful. They don't need to do content. You know, like, will it help their brand? Yeah, but, you know, they've already made millions of dollars. And so if it's not fun and it's not leading the business growth, like, they stop. So it's got to be fun and it's got to help grow the business, right? Yeah, that's the thing.

Talent, talent attraction, like differentiation. Like, for me, it's like so many people with 62 guys graduated last month. 40 of them were like, Tommy, we wanted to come work for you. We love you. We follow you. We've read your books. We love your Instagram. Like, that's real.

Yeah. It takes a while to get through critical mass with, like, that starts to, you start. you start to see that impact. So you're already doing it. I mean, I love that you're doing this. I mean, we chatted like a couple years ago. It's been hard to put this team together. And I thought I could build it on my own.

And I thought I could do all the stuff. But literally, like, getting the right team of people that it's their whole strategy. I'm a data guy. I'm a metrics guy, KPIs to run the business math. What's your YouTube? But I never did that. I never did that on YouTube or Instagram. I never looked at the views, never played around the titles or the hooks or anything.

And I never applied what I know. and never looked at it like a business. You know how to build team. You just never decided that you were going to do it, right? You know, I'm the same as everyone else out there as I'll get to there. I'm just, you know, and I never made it a passion, never had fun doing it. And now I'm like, dude, I'm like excited to do it. Yeah.

Well, that's great. But it's just like, what do you love doing and then how can you film the process so people can see it? So like, this is great. You bring guests in. You talk to them. You love connecting people asking questions. Awesome. But what else you do?

Like the amount of times that you tell stories about the guys that you tell stories about the guys that you helped on your team. Like from knowing you for a bunch of years, like you actually care about your team and seeing them grow, like as humans, right? Not just, hey, here's, it's business, but it's like they become your family. Yeah.

But that should be captured on content. Right? Whether that's mentoring sessions, whether that's like they come into your office, whether that's they follow you around and you're doing something, whether you have team coming in and like, I don't know what you're doing that flows.

Yeah, even orientation is a, is a fun one. Orientation. How do you do that in a way? So, Evan, you work for me. You're struggling. You got a lot of stuff. Like, I'll give you an example.

I got a guy in Milwaukee. He called me recently. He goes, dude, I just had a baby. My energy's down. I just feel like I'm not enough. Do I say, do you mind if I record all this? I mean, what's the best way to kind of not make that intrusive to be like, this is somebody coming with personal shit.

But that's the best stuff. But I also don't want to just say, let's go viral with this. I'm going to say, I would truly want to help you. You, you, how many people, how many people are at A1 right now? Almost 1,400. Okay. So, like, access to Tommy is impossible, right? Like, you do your best, but you're, you're doing a million things.

You're doing deals. You're flying everywhere. So you set, you set office hours for team where they can apply to have time with you. Yeah. Where there's, like, an hour a week or like whatever. I mean, typically what people do is, like, block off a morning a month or something. Like an open door policy. Well, but, but they, like, you schedule it in.

It's scheduled in. So you can go back to back to back to back to back. You fly them out here or they're local, whatever, right? And whatever is it, I don't know if this is the best set for it. Like maybe you're just having lunch. Maybe you're going for a walk. Maybe like whatever puts them at ease versus like an official like. Yeah, with the lights and yeah.

Right. But you set it up so that they know in advance that this is going to be done for content, but they get access to you, which otherwise you wouldn't get. Like you might answer their text or their phone call or whatever, but if they're really going through something. And just because you may not go on somebody's show and do it, doesn't mean that they won't. Like look that people go on Jerry Springer and all the shows, right? And you're going to actually help them instead of trying to make them look bad.

Yeah, 100%. And like worst case, you don't publish the content that goes really off the rails. But they know going in. It's not like it's a random thing that didn't, hey, would you mind filming this? They know coming in that it's for a show. And why I think it's not great for everybody because a lot of people are actually not great mentors and they're not great leaders and they don't super care about random person on their team, right? It's just that that's something that you, every time I hear you speak or talk to you, you're always talking about somebody on your team.

Yeah. Somebody. You're always trying to uplift and elevate the people around you. It's like why you do what you do. On top of building, you know, a pretty thick-ass business. But if that would be fun for you, now it's like your mentoring team, but in their stories, you're also helping, like that could be disseminated through the whole company so they can learn from that guy's story. too, but also building content for the brand, but also helps the culture. Like, man, if that's the boss of this company, I want to go work for that guy.

You know, it's funny. I walked in my sales director. There's Matt Fink, coolest dude ever. And he puts his hands on his face. He goes, dude, I'm drowning. And I didn't realize that maybe you should have had a guy there is filming it, but I said, let's just sit down and talk about it. And I said, what's going on, dude?

And he's like, dude, this department. I'm working really hard, but there's like, we're losing $5 million. And I said, well, here's the best advice. Eliminate, automate, and delegate. Good is better than perfect. And I just went into it and I said, dude, let's talk through this. And I'm like, let me help you because you seem like you're suffocating. Yeah.

And this isn't that big of an issue. And, you know, first let's get some time back. And he's like, dude. And then he texts me. He's like, dude, I feel so much better. He's like, thank you for the time. But those little magic moments. And I truly do care.

I'm like, dude, you know, I'm not, I don't have all the answers. I like to ask great questions, but I've been through some shit. So like, if I've been through something, I'm like, man, you don't need to reinvent the will. You might throw new tires on it, but let's have a conversation here. It's at least worth having a go at it where you have office hours that you option one-on-ones open to the company that they know is going to be filmed, that the whole point is not to make them look bad, but to support them. and also for other people who are stuck in similar situations that they can learn from them. You use them as like a success story, right?

Like, hey, I want to see you win. I'm now more invested in your success. Because the stuff you just said is not that meaningful. In the repeat of the story, eliminate, automate, automate, delegate, okay, buy back your time. Okay, Dan Martell. It's like, it's timeless stuff. But without the story, it's kind of boring. Yeah.

But if you're there sitting, what those guys aren't doing is like they're sitting across me with this guy's story. and you know you've known him for however long and you know that he's gone through addiction or rehab, or jail or whatever. Like you sit there and actually care about the guy and then you see the impact of the advice you're giving because the limited automated automate delegate is genius

and just like I get to see the story unfold with the guys now he comes in. He's all stressed out overwhelmed and then he spends 15 minutes or whatever, however long with you. And then he's feeling relaxed all of a sudden. And you're cheering up, you're motivating him. And now he's got a game plan. and hope and belief that he can go and solve that problem.

I think a lot of it is just talking out loud. And a lot of people, when they talk out loud, they're like, I think I know the answer. But a lot of us, like, I talk to myself because every once in a while I need to talk to an expert. So I talk to myself. Right. I'm kidding. No, no, no, no.

But so here's your genius is like, the advice is great too, right? Like, there's nothing wrong with the advice. But it's like you're giving space for people. That's what's different. Like, a lot of times when people come in and it just, say, hey, I have this problem. Most of the boss, like, here's what you do. Go solve it.

Like, you're actually giving space for the person to breathe and explain their challenge and you're going to listen to them as a human. Like, I think that's one of the things that makes you, as much of a fast-moving, talker, you know, extrovert personality that you are, you're actually a great listener. And you give space for people to explain, which is a rare combination, right? And so, like, you just do that naturally, but being able to capture that on camera and show, So, like, that's why this is such a great place to work. Yeah.

Now, it's great advice. It's something I'm going to really focus on, taking good notes. It's just office hours. Like, pick one Monday every month and you have your morning and your afternoon and you can, people can nominate, like, who gets to come and meet Tommy and share their challenges, and you help them out. And whatever the most, like, you could start in here if you want, but then you'll figure out a more natural setting for people to go and help them.

Yep. Like you ever watch this undercover boss, right? It's kind of like that, but like you don't get the sense that a lot of those guys actually care. You know, like that part at the end where they're like, and here's $25,000 for your scholarship or whatever. Right? It's like, okay. I mean, it's good, but it feels more like for show. Yeah.

Right. Where for you, like you actually deeply care. Not that you have to go undercover because everybody would recognize you. Yeah. But like the actual caring for team and helping them through, like what I love about you is you help people through not. just their business problems. Like, you've changed people's lives here. Yeah. I mean, look, they've changed my life.

Sure. Okay. Yes, right? But now's not the time to be humble, right? It's like, that's a golden opportunity for not just you and your content, but for the business to get even more people in the A1, but also to show a different way of operating. Like for America to say, hey, here's, you're running a family business with, 1400 people or 14,000. What did you say? 1,400, yeah. But it's like, you run it like it's a, there's four people in the business.

Like mom and pop. Right. Yeah. Which, like, people lose that structure and culture when they start to really grow, right? And you've, you've found some magical. It's hard to do. It's hard to do. And it gets harder when you add every 100 people gets harder. So I had to build some software around it just to keep track of birthdays,

anniversaries, top performers, bad days. And I don't call people out. I try to call them up. I try to say, hey, listen, I care about you. You know, I, I, I, know your family and I know they're counting on you and I don't think I'm a good enough I'm not being a great enough leader and if I can't give you a feedback no one can and the people I respected the most my coaches I respected them and they could tell me the truth yeah and they told me you're not

going to play in the game unless you get good grades the best coaches made sure I got a warm milk because mom was working three jobs and that's what I that's what I do and they they were strong enough to have a hard conversation and I always want to give props and out of boys but I was So I want to call guys up and say, hey, man, what's going on? What could I help you with? Where am I failing? What training do you need? What could I do to inspire you?

Because you and your family deserve this. And I think those are the better calls. And when someone goes, I didn't even know you cared. And it's never been about your performance and KPIs aren't dialed in. It's like, I know you're capable of more. So if you think about like now you have your team, right? Awesome. Like you don't need to think about a show.

All you need to think about is you. being Tommy Mello. Right. You're going to show up. Somebody's going to come with a problem. You're going to do, you don't even need to put on some kind of weird hat to help them. You're just going to help them because that's what you do. Yeah.

But if you think about like American Idol. Yeah. Before somebody comes on and performs, you hear their backstory. Yep. Right? Why they do what they do, why they're here, why it means so much to them, yada, yada, yada. Then they come out and perform. That's really good content.

I like that idea. Right. But so like the performance is the one-on-one with you. but the backstory is on team to go capture. Yep. How long you've been here? Like when you tell a story about your mom? Yeah.

And how she was like the first person picking up the phones and like saying how gassing you up all the time. Right. Yeah. Capturing the backstory, why they're here, what they hope to learn from you, how they found A1, what they've learned since they've joined, like what their main question is for you and why. Like, what are they, like, the more they do, the better to get at the questions. but you're trying to get, like, capture the actual human spirit behind A1, and then the actual, the American Outperformance is the one-on-one with you. Yeah.

But then, and then capture the after, right? Like, okay, what did Tommy say? Was it valuable? What are you going to go do? And maybe even follow up two months later. But none of that needs you, right? Then that's team. Like, you don't, if you want to follow up, you can.

Yeah. But it's like, hey, Tommy told you to do this. And now your guy's overwhelmed. Then now three weeks later, he's crushing it. Right? Those are the cool stories. It is a cool story. And I'm going to have these guys listen to this podcast.

Wait, aren't they right there filming it? Yeah, Colin's here. Let me go back to young Evan. You know, you struggled in school. You even saw a child psychologist at 8. Yeah. How do those early years kind of shape your identity? So I had an undiagnosed hearing problem, and I thought it was stupid.

So like in school, and I think all launch trainers really, like we kind of struggle in school and structure and systems, but they didn't know that I had a hearing problem. And I would in like kindergarten just sit under my desk because I couldn't hear the teacher. And they thought it was just like super stupid. So like, okay, let the dumb kids sit under his desk, right? Anyway, we've got my hearing issue fixed later on. I started to learn. But I've always been like growing up, I was introvert and scared. and still am. Like I don't actually crave the spotlight. I don't enjoy speaking to speak.

Like I don't, the biggest fight I got into with my agent was like, you got to be famous. Like, I don't want to be famous. I have no interest in fame. It's like it's not exciting for me at all. I'd rather just stay home and work on stuff. Yeah. I'm a tinker. But then people don't learn and the message doesn't get out there. It's like why I said, now's not the time to be humble, right? It's like, no, now's the time that actually say, no, like America needs this. America needs this.

Yeah. Right. Not that like you're learning from them cool, but like America needs to learn from you. And they're not yet, right? It's like, how do we blow this thing up? You, your parents, just like mine, said you could do anything you put your heart into. You're going to make it. You're a good guy.

Like we believe in you. How powerful is that reinforcement in the moments where you didn't even believe in yourself? Yeah, I used to have this conversation. So my two sisters always got straight A's and I was like, the B and C student. I wasn't failing out of school with like Bs and C's when my sisters all got straight A's and every report card had to have the conversation, the talk, go to my parents' room, sit on the bed, to have the talk about my grades and how, you know, they were expectations, but they never made me, like, forced me to do anything. But they always, the only thing I remember was they would always

tell me, you're Evan Castrilli Carmichael, you can do anything you believe that you can, right? My mom's last name is Custrilli, my middle name is Custrilli, right? She was born in Italy, came to Canada. So you're Evan Castrilli Carmelical. You can do anything that you believe that you can. And that's still just, even now, just six with me. And sometimes you have to borrow belief, right? Like when you don't believe in yourself enough to do the thing, you have to borrow belief from somebody else. Right? And so I borrowed the belief from my parents. You go to my home office. It's like there's five pictures of people on the wall. Like the one in the middle is me and my parents where I'm like eight or nine years old and they're on the other side of me. It's just a reminder. They're not entrepreneurs or the

least entrepreneurial people like you're ever going to meet, but it's like it's the belief in me that they instilled. And so same thing of what you're doing. Like why do people love working with you? Well, because you're, when they don't believe in themselves, they're borrowing your belief in them. 100%. Yeah. Some borrowed belief is a strong, strong thought. So we get that from our parents, right yeah you might get that from books you got some nice books there on the side you might get it from youtube like all the best teachers are on youtube now somebody's watching this video they hear your story it shatters some of the excuses like oh i can't make it yeah but did you see what tommy did yeah right yeah right because you're not supposed to be here right yeah you look at where you were

like 15 years ago to say you'd be here it's like that's impossible yeah you would say it's like to yourself it's impossible and yet you're here so you've already proved to be an impossibility to yourself imagine what you can do for the world 100% Your secondary school teacher, Ms. Farr, became a turning point for high school. What did she do differently that unlocked your potential? Yeah, she was my French teacher. So, like, not even a very valuable, you know, like useful skill. I haven't used French since I left high school.

But she just, she just, again, believed in me. We met every week outside the staff room, and she just chatted with me. And as to like shy introvert kid without a ton of friends and just not talking very much, she just gave me similar to what you do with your team. Like she just gave me space to share. Like, oh, this person with, you know, authority who's, you know, a teacher wants to hear what I have to say. And like, what's on my mind and what's going on? And it was more that she just, she gave me space to talk and she listened and she believed

in me. And she was, along with my parents, you know, that last year, I, I ended up getting straight 90s in school. Not that that really means anything in the entrepreneur world, but it was just a shift. It's like, okay, if all these people believe in me, maybe I can do something more than what I'm doing right now. Really awesome.

A few repeat questions I ask every single person on this podcast. What's one piece of game-changing advice that you wish you knew in your 20s? It's the same advice I'd give to myself probably now, just believe more, right? Yeah. Like imagine if you believe more in yourself in your 20s. Jesus.

Yeah, I mean, I guess my dad, you know, my mom did the same thing. My mom was always like, Tommy, she just gave me the love. She's like, I'm going to love you. She's like, just do what you do. I mean, I was in dance class, gymnastics, karate. I played every sport.

I was in drums, guitar, violin, piano. I played the trumpet. She's like, just keep going. Find something you love. And she's like, either way, I'm by your side. What would you tell 20-year-old Tommy? You know, I had this question asked recently, and the only thing I could come up with is you don't have to be the smartest guy in the room.

There's people that are specialists that could run circles around you. And when you learn to hang out with people, you have a common future versus a common past, everything will change. Right. So, you know, I used to hate that question. Not that I hate it. It's just like, I can't go back and talk to 20-year-old Evans. So, like, who cares, right?

It's not practical. Well, there is some 20s, you know, there is some people that listen that. that really love this podcast that are in their 20s, and I think that's where the advantage is. Got it, but, like, where it actually is practical is,

like, if you take that, you take that piece of advice of, like, hey, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room, 80-year-old Tommy Mello would tell you the same thing right now. Yeah.

No, it's continued in life, like you said, same thing I'll tell myself right now. Yeah. Which then is actually extremely practical. Right. It's like,

because you're doing, because everybody would tell you, you're already doing it, man. Like, you're interviewing billionaires, you're hanging, like,

You're surrounding yourself with people way smarter than you. But 80-year-old Tommy is not impressed by what you're doing right now, right? It's like, bro. No, 80-year-old Tommy would say, dude, it's time to start a family. You're 42. So I'm getting married in January. There you go. They're going to say, look, you can have all the money, be the home service, millionaire.

You could be the mansions you want, but there's nothing more important. You're not, the pain of regret is going to be so much stronger by not having a family, but not being close. Mom and dad aren't going to be around forever. And so, like, Sunday I made sure I'm like, I didn't feel like it. I was just getting over a really big cold. Bree was super sick. And I had to fly out that night.

And I'm like, I'm going to my dad's to shoot some pool. I'm like, because I lost a really good friend in a plane accident in his own plane last week. And he's 47. And my dad, he's 72, man. I'm hoping he's got 30 more years. Yeah. But I don't know if tomorrow's promised for me, especially don't know for them. And that's the scariest thing in the world because my son.

sister's healthy. My brother-in-law, my niece, my nephews, my parents, I'm super close. And that's something like, and my doggies, I would say if I lost one of them, they're like kids, you know what I mean? But like, man, that's like, that's a big, like when I lost my grandma, man, it was like a second mom, but like she got old and she started forgetting and it was like a slow process. It was a little bit easier to deal with. But man, I just can't imagine waking up and being like, man, the regret. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the thing that got me to do the business instead of the investment, like I wanted to be investment banker. It was my dream in university.

And then I got the job, but I said no to go be an entrepreneur and own 30% of a company where I made 300 bucks a month, right? But it was a hard decision in my life. And the thing that pushed me over was Jeff Bezos as his regret minimization framework. Yeah, we just talked about that today. Right? So it's like, okay, he wasn't going to leave the investment banking world. And he went out and started Amazon.

Yeah, yeah. So it's like live life without regrets. So like it's a very useful exercise to think about. like what were you saying before when you need genius advice you just talk to yourself yeah right I don't know if you use genius but expert advice is like okay well hey you know who's even a better expert than than 42 year old Tommy 80 year old Tommy yeah right like talk to him and see what he has to say yeah you know what here's the thing with guys like me is we get ourselves so busy our we got great executive assistants we plan every moment of every day and I'll give myself space

and I wouldn't consider myself a big left brain guy. But like a little bit of time like to say, like now I'm saying I am statements. And then I just read Atomic Habits again with my accountability partners. And one of the biggest takeaways is like, is I'm not going to walk 15,000 steps a day. I'm telling everybody I'm a long distance walker. I'm changing the own persona of myself.

Instead of saying this month I'm going to do 15,000 steps is I'm changing who I am. I'm not just going to go on a diet. I'm a healthy person that eats healthy, that cares about myself, that use my body as a temple. And the more I condition myself and the more I change my identity, I don't know why I keep doing this, but it's just... You're moving into a new state. Yeah, moving into a new state, but man, that's powerful stuff. Yeah.

Well, and the thing that, like, you learn that, but then you go and teach it, which is cool. Yeah. No, I try to teach as much as I can, and here's what I've learned to teach. People want to know about the failures. Like I love saying, yeah, I'm an overnight success of two decades. And the first 10 years were practice. And I said, listen, guys, what did go wrong can go wrong. I'm the biggest failure in the room.

But here's the thing. I kept failing forward. And I learned a great lesson in every failure. So if you listen to me, pay attention because it went wrong most of the time. But when it did go right, I mean, I've made more failures in a matter of weeks than most people will take the chance of years. Yeah. And falling down, just you get back up.

And it doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. So I'm like, yeah, there were days I had to, literally mortgage my house, the only position I had, I had to go walk out of a movie theater on a date to go run a job to make payroll. I mean, those are tough circumstances, but actually I look back and I'm like, man, those were the fun days. Yeah, I mean, you don't have to convince me but believe. I think it's incredibly important. And I think of Dan Sullivan, who's a fellow genius network member who, one of my favorite, he's got lots of quotes. One of my favorite ones is the greatest gift you can get people is your standards. So your stand. So your stand.

of trust is higher than other people and so they learn that from you. Your standard for what a relationship looks like is higher than other people. So they learn that from you. The greatest gift you give people's your standards. But as you're building out your kind of Tommy Mello brand and Mello millionaire and the show and everything, if you think about what if I believe in Grant is 10x and, you know, buy back your time is Dan and Mel is five second rule. What's the, what's the Tommy Mello?

Yeah. Yeah, so my second book pretty nailed it. It's Elevate, Build a Business for Everybody wins. I mean, I invite my competitors into here. I invite my vendors into here. I think the most important people in my life is my coworkers. Because when they're winning, my clients are winning, my vendors are winning. And the competition could win.

And the last one on my list is my investors. Because they're great. I love those guys. We talk all the time, and I respect the hell out of them. But I don't need anything. Like, I respect them. They ask me great questions. We make decisions together.

But when the culture, which used to be a bad word for me, when the culture is dialed in and people feel appreciated and there's initiatives and they're bought into the mission in the North Star, everything goes well. What's the name of the book? Elevate. Elevate. Build a business for everybody who wins. It's a different framework.

And it's like, dude, you know, we didn't share in this industry. I'm like, come into my shop. Today there was 90 companies in here doing a shop tour. And I'm like, guys, I want to show you everything because if I could do it, you could do it. I was a kid with the suffered from ADHD, didn't get great grades. I was a class clown. And I'm living proof that if you put your mind to something. And I've always said, I walk into rooms.

I look at Jeff Bezos, and that's an extreme. Elon Musk is an extreme. Donald Trump's an extreme. There's a lot of extremes. But I go, you know, if they can't, why can't I? And I've always asked that question. if they can, why can't I? And so I would say, if I can, why can't you?

Who in history is the greatest elevator? For you? Yeah, that elevates. That's a good question. You know what I really respect is Tony Robbins because he does, it gets you to change the frame. He's the best frame shifter ever. And, you know, the best people I've ever worked with got me to switch my frame. Like Dan Martel said,

I told them there's no way I'm going to hire a driver. I'm not that. Like, dude, I'm not showing up to work with a driver. He goes, you say you love your people. And I'm like, what does that have to do with this? He goes, you get 12 hours back a week. He goes, you'd be stupid not to. You love to drive?

Not really. I mean, I just do it subconsciously. He goes, 12 hours back a week, what would that mean to you and the people around you? And I said, I'm not hiring a chef. He goes, well, what do you like to cook? And I said, Uber eats? and he said, what if you were healthy? And what if you ate the best meals?

And what if you showed up more energetic? He goes, it's not a money thing. And I love that Tony Robbins, and I don't think Dan's like a Tony Robbins, but just this frame reset. Like, I was looking out of the wrong window. And they got me to look at it in a whole different perspective to say, I'd be an idiot not to. But who elevates? I mean, Tony's great. And you mentioned, you know, Bezos and Trump and whatever.

But who actually, what you're doing, where you open up your doors to your competitors, where you love coming in and still doing orientation, we're like, you don't have to do that anymore, but you do it because you love it. Who is the greatest elevator of their team that you look up to and respect from historical context? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I haven't put much thought into who exactly. I mean, there's a lot of great companies out there. and none of them that I come to mind do a great job. Like I don't think everybody at Amazon would say Jeff Bezos. I don't think Apple, they would say Steve Jobs.

I think Jack Walsh was an amazing leader, and he was very involved, and he listened well. And he had a mentality of, we're going to get new people in here, but everybody's going to know the score. There's been a lot of leaderships in there, but I don't know necessarily have been following somebody's tracks. I'm trying to do something that I believe. And not necessarily follow somebody's tracks. It's just like, hey, this person is an inspiration. You know, it's a great question. And this is thought-provoking.

And it's somebody that, it's something that I need to do more deep thinking. And I'd rather not give you a half-ass answer and actually do some deep thinking and say, I'm not really sure. But it's a great thing to start thinking about. Yeah, I mean, it could be Jesus. I mean, I don't know. Well, that's the ultimate. Raise your disciples.

But, I mean, Jack was great with the CEO factory, right? Like, he trained CEOs that they didn't get it through GE. the number of CEOs that left GE to go be CEOs somewhere else because he made a systemized way of, okay, as you're on your way up, you are going to sit in another divisions. Like you're not just doing sales, you're also going to go out and understand how the trucks roll.

And he purposely put people on leadership tracks to understand how the entire company worked. So that's why GE under him was known as the CEO factory because he was the best at training leaders. So many future CEOs of different companies came out of Jack Welch because he designed a program around it. That's where like if you, you know, like that could be something cool for you. But just in general, I mean, it's fantastic what you've done just from your own intuition and trying on error. I ripped off and duplicated a lot of stuff.

I mean, I got a lot of ideas. I mean, I read a lot of books. And sometimes Evan, I don't even know what's mine. Like sometimes I thought that was like, and I'm like, I might have read this. But I think like I've came up with this bottom, the best I've ever been. the worst I'll ever be because tomorrow I'm going to be a little bit better. But there might be a chance that's my subconscious and I read it somewhere. I can't really make out for sure if that's my own. I've heard that before. Maybe you heard it from me. Yeah, exactly. In your book

Bill to Serve, you introduce the who, why, how framework. What happened in your own life that helped you kind of write this book for people? I think humans are built to serve. I saw a lot of people struggling. Like if you're not happy, it's because you're not serving. Yeah. Just period. Right?

Like if you woke up every day, and this is what you do here at A1, it's like if you gave people purpose every day, they're going to be a lot better parents, spouses, people of, you know, society. If you woke up every day and felt like the work you did was meaningful, you're going to be a lot happier, a lot healthier, everything positive. But if you woke up every day and felt like today doesn't matter, nobody cares. That's a path down to anxiety, depression, drugs, suicide, you know, jail, all of it. And some people want to serve, like you and I want to serve the world. Big ambitions, big missions help a lot of people.

And some people like my wife, she wants to serve too, but just like the 50 closest people to her. Right. She's the glue for our families, like our combined family. She's the glue, right? I'll forget stuff, but she's on it. That's Bree. But everybody wants to serve. Like we are, we are, it's, they did functional MRIs in people's brains.

It's like hits the same part of your brain as having food and having sex. It's serving people. If you're not happy, it's because you're not serving. So we all have our different ways of doing it. And you can do little micro ways. Like if you pull the door for somebody, you buy a coffee for somebody, whatever, that's a little micro win. But when you, when I say your purpose comes to your pain,

when you see somebody who is struggling with the thing that you struggled with, and then you help them through it. Like you've seen the guys come up through your program and like the radical life changes they make. That hits so much. It's better than having a record day is like watching somebody. It's the best, right? Yeah.

And so like imagine you get to do that every day now because you have such a big team. Yeah. Right? But even on a micro scale, if people can connect to service somehow, like it's not about you. Like making this show is not about you.

It's about who's watching this and what they're going to learn from it. Right. writing your book is not about you saying, hey, look, I'm an author, look at me, who's my ego, right? It's about who can read that book and change their life because of it because you've read books that changed your life, right? Now you get to pay it back. Yeah, pay it forward. You know, book is, it was interesting, my first book, The Home Service Millionaire. I don't know if this was your case, the first book, but good is never good enough. It's like, I just, I just thought about, it was like, it was never going to get finished. It was like, I wanted to make it into this.

masterpiece. Yeah. And the second book I just blew through. And the third book, I got a lot to say, but I'm really going into with this wireframes of exactly how I'm going to do it. It's not chat, GBT, it's all me. And I've learned the best thing in the world, and I'm sure you could attest to this, is stories.

An amazing, personal, descriptive storytelling. Because I'll tell you this, as human beings, we remember stories way more than we can remember statistics or facts or even anything in a book that doesn't that's not a story. So the next book I'm writing will be mostly involved with story. There's another book I'm writing called Pay Them What They're Worth that explains how to give equity to people because it's a very difficult thing. But I think done correctly, it allows a lot more people to win. But yeah, writing a book is, I think everybody should try to write a book.

I don't care. You don't have to have a whole lot of success and money to write a book. Just be, find something. you love. You can write a book about butterflies. Yeah, I mean, the easiest advice written a book is just write to your younger self. Yeah, I like that. I've heard that before, but that's really good advice. Right. It's like a lot of people don't say, a lot of people don't feel like they have anything that is inside them that is worth sharing. Like, hey, I've got nothing to say. I don't know who

wants to listen to me. But you know who would like that. Dear Tommy. Dear Tommy. Yeah. But that's how a lot of books. looks like because you, you know you could talk to younger you, right? So like with some of my clients who like a park bench exercise, like imagine you have five minutes with younger you at a park bench, right? Like you're going to go back and you, there's you, there's you at 25 or whatever. You have five minutes to sit with that person and say something.

And you just go back to a time in your life where you are overwhelmed and struggling and like you're walking on on your date to take a job because you're not going to make payroll, like whatever life challenges you've got. Don't drink and drive when you're 26. Yeah, right? So like, the thing is 26-year-old Tommy, this is where at least I get, I think, is powerful. 26-year-old Tommy was like drinking and driving won't listen to anybody. That's the hard part, too.

Yeah, but here's the thing, right? Like, 26-year-old Tommy doesn't want to listen. He's not listening to Tony Robbins. He's not listening to any of these guys. But he would have listened to me. But that's the thing. Like, you now, 42 Tommy, can go to 26 and you actually could break through. I'd have been like asking me any question.

Because I got all the answers. But 26-year-old Tommy doesn't even want to ask a question. Yeah. But you could break through in a way that Tony or anybody else couldn't. Yeah. And so then it's under, so like that, that feels. We got a lot in common. Exactly.

But it feels like that is a reasonable assumption, right? Like if you're talking to somebody, hey, your book may not change the world. But could you break through to 26-year-old you in a way that other people can't? And it's a reasonable assumption. Yeah, I could say something to 26-year-old me that that person wasn't going to read books or listen to Tony Robbins or anybody else. But he would listen to me. I could break through to him. Great.

There's a million people right now who are 26-year-old Tommy right now, and they're not going to learn from those other guys, but they listen to you. Yeah. So write your book for 26-year-old Tommy because there's a million of them right there who need that help. I try to put myself in the perspective of you when I talk to you. And how are you viewing me? and do you understand I'm trying to come to you with a positive, the best people in my life, they told me what I needed to hear when I needed to hear.

They didn't shield me from. I feel bad for Bree, my parents, my brother-in-law, the people that are closest, my COO, poor, my, like the team around me, because they hear everything. They hear all of it. And so they get like 10 times the feedback and then other people don't get enough. What's interesting, though, is like that is a, you know, I've talked to a lot of different entrepreneurs.

and started a lot of stories. And like, I haven't heard anybody say that, that I shield myself from the bad news so that I can be happy walking into the office every day. Right? Like, those are some of the things that are unique that then are teachable. So that guy who asked you the question

at the 90-person events as well, like maybe, yes, pair down, be more, you know, cash flow instead of just being 12 million and hating your life. But also maybe you just need somebody to, shield you from the bad news so you can walk in happy and have more energy and continue to grow. You get beat down. We're not going to make payroll.

We just lost some inventory. A guy got in an accident. And yet there's so many good things going on. And if I'm the declarer of good news all the time, man, you'll watch the culture turn so quickly. Like I had a gal that works for HSF, the Home Service Freedom Group. And I looked at her, and this is unlike me, but it's something I'm trying to really flex, like make this muscle strong. is I go, Brit, you look freaking amazing. She's like, I'm down 40 pounds.

And she's got the biggest smile. I was like, congratulations. Like, wow. Like, you're really taking care of yourself. And I can't tell you, Evan, how good that made me feel. And before I was never, like, the first person to give compliments. Like, I never got a lot of them growing up. Don't get me wrong.

My parents did. But now I'm like, how many more compliments can I give? Now I'm like, and one of my managers in Vegas, he keeps 10 pennies. And he transfers the pennies to the other pocket. But it's got to be 10 compliments. Yeah. And it's a good methodology. Yeah.

And I can't tell you, you know, for the listeners, like, it makes you feel really good. You don't need anything in return. You don't need a compliment back, but you just give to give. Like a little, Andrea was out of town a couple weeks ago, and I just wrote, I miss you. You're super special. The place isn't the same without you. And I just put it on her computer. And she came back and she just gave me a big hug.

She's like, I love that message. It was free. It didn't cost a thing. But it made me feel good. good because it was true. I think what's really awesome is when you can dive into the specifics behind it because a lot of the things, you know, if you say eliminate automate delegate, okay, cool, that makes sense, but, you know, it's like it's smart, but then how do you actually do it?

Yeah, what's a use case? Right. And like, you probably have tons, but maybe haven't documented it in a way that is shareable for other people. Because what you just said here, you could just say, yeah, relationships and trust and be grateful for your team. And like, that's something a lot of leaders would say. Yeah.

But then how you do it, whether it's the pennies, then that's you, that's your guy, but still, or writing the letters or like, I am trying to give compliments like this every day. Whatever the habits are that allow you to operate how you operate, that's very instructional. So there's the mindset and belief system around it, which is cool. But then, like, what are you actually doing every day? which may take some thinking because you're just doing it. It's like it doesn't seem anything special, but it's actually very weird, very different,

and imagine if every company in America operated that way. You know, another interesting thing that I think you'll really enjoy is, I call 10 technicians that I knew were always winning. And they always had great news. And I always say in orientation, they've got great news, I want you to text me, I want you to call me. If you got bad news, call Luke.

And so they would text me all the time, like went to a $29 tune up yesterday, sold a full view $35,000. So I started screenshot and I built this little software internally. And now I send it to every technician with a little caption like, see what can happen when you don't judge the job before you go or whatever. Like I'm so proud of this guy. And now I'm getting dozens of text messages a day that they want to get shared. And the only thing that I can tell you, this is not a behavior I planned on everyone else doing, but they wanted to get recognized. Right. and now it's like, now they're hearing all the good news all the time.

I've never sent a message out, man, you guys are really shit in the bed. Or man, you guys really suck at this. Mine's always good news. Yeah. Especially if Tommy's sending out a message, it's going to be great news. sudden the whole place lifts up. And it's like, hey, they could do it. I could do it too.

And you're just sharing, I share probably six or seven of these messages a week. Sometimes 10, and on Thursday, about 20 more of them. And it's just crazy what's starting to happen. Is your watch performance just completely increased dramatically? You'll watch them take more money home. One of the things I say is dream bigger.

They're like, I want to go to Disney World. I'm like, no, I don't know. You need to go first class. You need to stay in the penthouse, and you need to cut all the lines. A little bit bigger dream. because you deserve it. And like, I really mean that. Some of these guys make $300,000 a year. Some of them make more than I do.

And I love that. And I don't get mad about it. I like, dude, that's freaking awesome. It's a great example. Like, everybody's going to say culture, culture, culture, but now you're explaining how to actually do it, right? Like, that's, again, very tactical thing that I haven't heard before. The closest I can think of is the guy who started Kinko's,

uh, Paul or Faley, I think is his name. He had ADD, the couldn't stay in his office, like hated, just managing from his office. So he went out to all the different kinkos. And what he would do is every day he'd go to different kinkos. He'd manage from the field. He's never in the office. He can't be in the office.

He managed from the field, go to different kinkos each time. And he would make a point of at every kinko's that he went to, he'd find something that that store was doing better than other people. And this is back in there was no internet. But he would then call into a voicemail and leave a voicemail on, What was so special about this location, what he loved about the manager, that then all the other managers across the country could call into every day and hear the voicemail that he left about that location, right?

Technology is way better now, but he managed from the field where every day he's going out to a different location and making a point to find something that was great about that location. Because even though they're like, you know, franchise or whatever, there's still differences in how they show up. So it could just be as simple as I was greeted with like this. the biggest smile ever by the front staff when I walked into this place. Or they did an exceptional job of like making the floor spotless or whatever.

And he would just leave that voicemail every day. And then the team would just call in and get their voicemail. It was opt in. It wasn't pushed on them. You had to call in to get the voicemail. But the managers who really grew and wanted to learn, listen to his, he just operated from the field every day. And all it was just highlight what the great.

Catch them doing something right. Yeah. And so many managers and leaders were there to catch people doing something wrong. Right. And what if you catch them doing something right? Like, if my mom caught me doing something right, she'd say, Tommy, you know how special you are? I cannot believe you made your own bed. You know, just for that, and she used to give me these great big red apples. And man, every day I started making my bed because he was so proud of me.

So when you catch somebody doing something right, it's like I'm actually trying to endorse that behavior. And I think so many times we like to catch people doing something wrong. And that's just not who I am. Like, yeah, I can find a problem with anybody. Yeah. I don't think we like to catch it. I think it's just human nature. Like it's we we look at problems more than wins. Yeah. Especially as entrepreneurs where like we're hardest on ourselves and we see all the problems in our own life and everything as opposed to like what's going well. But I think even that's a great little as I've been as you've been talking, I'm trying to think what is how do we call these things? Meloisms, Tommyisms. Right. I don't know if you have something. I didn't know. But but there's there's something in there like catch people doing something right. Right. Catch your team doing something right. Oh, I like that. I like that. It's your thing. Of course you like it.

No, no, no, but like I'll give you one more example. Then I want to ask you more questions is I walked into Dustin's office. This guy is a trooper, man. He's in charge of the call center, dispass center. Such a good family guy. We hang out outside of work. I know his two daughters. I know his wife really, really well. Being her are good friends. And then I got Leanne, our FP&A gal, super hard worker. She is like, she'll be pasted in her office. and I walked in about their offices in the same day

and I'm like, man, your office is suck in my head. Like, you don't even have a picture any. This is the most mundane, shitty office. So I talked to Ashley, we got a whole of Leanne's husband and Dustin's wife, and we got a picture of their family, framed it, put this awesome picture together and wrapped it up, Ashley did the wrapping, and we gave it to him. And I was like, look, at least remember why you're here

and the people that you care the most about. And it wasn't a big deal. I wasn't like, but it was just like something, and I just love doing it. And I just, and it's not only gifts. You know, there's five languages of the workplace or five-level languages, but everybody's different. But I just really, it's these small things. It didn't cost much. I tell people, look, do you ever cook for your people?

And they're like, we don't have enough money to cook for people. Could you afford biscuit, Costco, make some pancakes every once in a while, invite the whole family? Come on much you appreciate them, let them break bread together and talk about the wins. Like, people need connection. and one day Luke came up to me and Brian and Mike and Travis and they're like we want we figured out a way to make an extra $500,000 like we're going to go to one meeting a month

and I'm like I don't like it and they floated the idea and all the technicians called me they're like this is our chance to see each other this is our chance to catch up we get to see the leaderboard we get to catch coffee and I'm like we'll get 500 grand a month for three months and then you'll watch the guys quit and fall off and it costs a lot of money to replace people so I'm not going to ever change dollars for culture.

And I think people miss that. You know, you studied a lot of Titans. In your book, the top 10 rolls for success, you studied. Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Oprah went free. What's the price you most about highly successful people? They just started and they kept going. Like, it's actually not that complicated. They often came from worse than what you had growing up.

Like you mentioned Oprah, Oprah, you know, sexual abuse, all sorts of crazy things, went to go live with her grandmother, grandparents, was so poor that she had no money for clothes. Her grandmother would sew potato bags as her dress. You imagine going to school in a potato bag? Like you think your life is hard or whatever happened to you in high school, you're showing up in school, like in a potato bag that's just been sewn into a dress. And like to go from that to what she ended up creating, people just started and they kept going. Like it's most people don't start. They have all these dreams.

Your whole like dream bigger, they just, they never start. They never get going. They know they have potential. Procrastination and a decision. It's always tomorrow. It's always tomorrow, right?

It's like they, they just don't start. And then they quit as soon it gets, it gets a little tough. And even a podcast. They know so many people, have started, didn't take off in three months. I don't think I had a listener for the first two years.

Most people never start. They have an idea. I mean, I deal with these people all the time too. It's like they're just amazing, successful, you know, huge potential. They're just, yeah, yeah, one day, one day. Or they start and it doesn't take off and they quit, right? We're like anything. You have to start and you have to keep going.

So a lot of these people, they're like, they're no smarter than you. They have a worse background many times than you do. They just started and they kept going. Yep. And they're, they dedicated themselves. They built a passion around it. And they were not going to let themselves down. And I got this little bracelet that says,

keep your commitment. And I think the strongest commitment, it's hard to keep, because believe it or not, I'm a good liar to myself. Like nighttime Tommy says, you're going to wake up at 4.30 and cold plunge and go for a jog. Morning, Tommy, not so much. So I found accountability partners that I say, you're going to hold my feet to the fire.

We're going to meet up. We're going to do this together. Like, I need that. I need commitment from you that you're going to hold me accountable. We're not going to, but I got to know your why. Like, why do you really want to do this? What's going to cause you? I'm not drinking that day.

Is it your health? Is it the six-pack? Is it that you want to wake up happy the next day? Whatever it is. And so I started working with the team, and I'm like, internal guys that I really trust that'll call me out. Or we're just getting going on this. And we read, I'm like, let's just make this easy.

Give me three commitments. The first one is we're going to read Atomic Habits. And one guy texted me yesterday because I just started. I'm like, we're getting late in the month, but I'm not going to go hard on you. We're just going to start to build these little habits and these cues to make us do good stuff. But it's interesting thinking about successful people. Then you meet these billionaires, and I've met a lot of billionaires lately. And I'll tell you something, Evan, most of them aren't happy.

Most of them, the money didn't bring them what they thought it would. They missed the chase. A lot of them would trade the money back to go back, not to buy back time, and be younger, but just to be back with the purpose, you know, man's search for meeting, Victor Frankel. What do you think about when people become extremely wealthy? Maybe they don't trust anybody anymore. People are using them.

They wonder if there's ulterior motives, but I'm sure you've met some people that had it all, and either they committed suicide, got out on drugs, or just weren't happy. The people who win the hardest usually have the hardest time of starting over. They don't want to look bad. they have a hard time we're starting over

so like for what you're doing you build a successful company you got a nine figure business it's like really hard to then start a YouTube channel and have 40 subscribers now you have more now of it but still it's 7,000 subscribers

like where you are in the YouTube world is like nothing compared to where you are in business world and for most people like why did the Hollywood actors not move to YouTube they don't want to start over Why do people not switch platforms?

Why did the MySpace people not switch to Instagram? Like they don't want to start over. People don't want to start over. Now some people break through, right? Like some athletes go off and they start to. Ronaldo now became like the fastest growing YouTube channel in the world. People do break through and go, but most people don't want to start over. So it's really hard for someone who, like you went through the grind.

You haven't, that whole, like I had to leave my date to go pay payroll. I don't know when the last time you had to worry about payroll was, but it's like been, a while. 2015. Right? It's been a while. And like it was fun and like you got to show yourself what you're made up, but you also don't want to be there.

And circumstances kind of dictated that you were there. But you're not going to willingly put yourself back there. But starting a YouTube channel is like you're starting over. And most people don't want to do it. They don't want to start over. But then they miss the climb. Yeah. And they're afraid of like what people like people are super.

worried about what people think about them. And it's not just at the lower end. It's all the way up to the top. They're worried they're going to start something new. Tribalism. And fall and fail. I'm like, ha ha, look at you starting over. You suck. And so they don't do it. They don't even try. I tend to find myself mostly on Instagram and Facebook. Maybe it's my age, maybe something. I'll go to YouTube when I want to learn something, sure. But depending on where you're at in business, should you, there's these different platforms, which ones, how do you figure out which one's going to be best for you and your purpose of what you're trying to do? So when I look at a content strategy, first is like, what's the business strategy that you're trying to accomplish? And then

how do we map a content strategy to reach it? Because just giving a content strategy without knowing the business goals and strategy, like doesn't make sense. Because like, just be famous. It's not a great. There's a lot of famous people on TikTok that don't make a great strategy, right? Yeah. So first off, We look at content through the lens of relationships. So you doing, we call it the Bizdev show, but you doing a show like this where you bring on people who could be worth eight or nine figures to you in lifetime, like lifetime value of a relationship. The lifetime of the relationship as a bit like it may be hard to exactly quantify. But anybody watching who are the people who could be worth six or seven figures to you in client or referral income to you per year?

So like these guys building up their garage door services, who are the, who are the top referrals for them besides existing clients? Oh, well, look, you know, take for example a referral is you got some of the best designers in the world. You get a designer that's designing, spending $5 million on a wealthy person's house. They're going to replace their garage drawers. That's a good referral source. Right. So there's a lot of like those type of sources, like referral sources. Great.

So if you knew the designers referred out to the garage door guys, then it behooves you to get to know all the top designers in your city. What's the best way to get to know them? They don't want to go to lunch deep with you. They don't want you to pick their brain. They'll definitely go on a podcast. They'll go on your show. Yeah. Even if nobody is watching this show yet because they need marketing for themselves too.

And so the whole point of the show isn't views, it doesn't matter if people watch it or not. It's just a relationship. because you're the only garage door guy leading with a give. I want to interview you. I want to tell your story. I want to create some content that I'll put on my brand new channel, but I'll also give to you that you can use on your website and in your marketing because all these designers are trying to build their personal brand too,

and you'll lead with a give. And so the whole point of that show is to earn trust and build relationships to grow the business, not to get famous or to get, we don't care who watches the video. It's very, it's so contrary to what most people think, and I've never heard this, but they were like, why did you start a podcast in 2017? I go, because I was selfish and I wanted to learn from people. So I got like, if I had a problem with payroll, before podcasts were a big thing, I get the top person that understood payroll. Right.

And like, I'd want to understand like this marketing channel. And like, I'd get them on and they were like happy to come on. And all of a sudden, and it's weird, Evan, I'm up to like 500 podcasts for a home service expert. Yeah. And one out of every 30 to 40 I've hired as a. personal consultant. Like Dan Martel came on. The day was at Genius Network. I'm like, dude, I think you got some good things. Like, I'd really like to learn. So I extracted what I could. And, you know, now I'm working with Pat, but David and Ed Milette. And like, I work with these

different people and I extract as much as I can and move on. But it's just interesting because I didn't mean to do what you're saying, but it's kind of happened. Right. That's another angle, right? That's like, I'm trying to learn something. So the easiest way to learn is to bring the expert on and we turn it into a coaching session for me. We're doing it right now, giving you content strategy. Yeah, that's great. But what I'm talking with, the biz dev show is specifically about,

I'm trying to get referrals. And build relationships. Right. So I want, if I'm the garage door guy, I want, I make a list of the top 50 designers in my state or my city, just depending on how big the state is,

I guess, but in my city or area that if they knew me, like me, trusted me, could five or 10x my business. Yeah. So then I launch a show. It's like you're a 100 list.

Right. But of referrals, not just like, I wish I could meet Tony, Robbins or whatever. No, but yeah, you really think of if I got close to this person, they sent me all their business. This would change my life. Those designers are not

we want people who are in high demand in your industry, but low media demand. Nobody's asking them to go on shows. Yeah, no, that makes sense. But they're in high demand. So low media, you're not going after influencers who are going to look at your view count. It's a brand new show. Who wants to sit

there and listen to a designer and talk about not many people? What you do? I don't care about, why do everybody care about, there's such vanity metrics. I mean, it might not even be your ideal customer. Like, they get a 500,000 followers, but I know everyone that's like a key to get in, and I'm like, whatever. But for some people on the way up,

they, nobody, some of these designers have never been interviewed about anything ever. So it's a huge honor to be, you want to hear my story. And now, chances are they already have a number one guy they're sending business to. So the ask is, I'd love to, I'd love to be your number one garage.

I'd love to be your number two. I'd love to be a second opinion. Yeah. Any deals you got, I'd love to take a look and just see maybe we can help with anything. And they might have a deal on the table right now for you. It's crazy how that works, isn't it? So the asses to be the number two, right?

So that's the way of using content. Like, that's a YouTube show. You need to have a podcast, right? So, like, that's content, but we don't care. You are asking more like audience questions, right? Like, where is the audience? They're going to watch this? That's, we don't care about the audience.

It's just a relationship. The second content, we usually start here because, like, if we can grow the business through content. You're going to stick with it versus like, hey, make these 40 videos, nobody watches them, and then you quit. The second type of content we call buyer breakthrough videos where this is more for conversion content. So you think about your website, whatever, everybody has like an FAQ page or whatever. You're like nobody's going to read your three lines of text. Make a video about it. Yeah. So any FAQ question, what's a common question people ask in grocery? Why isn't my garage? So noisy. Right. Every one of your guys

should make their own version of that video that they have on their website. They don't have to be the most like production quality, right? Have you ever heard of Marcus Sheridan? Maybe. They ask you answer. He's like, when people are asking you questions, you build the answers. And this is how the LLMs pick up everything. He wrote a new book called endless customers, but it's the whole content strategy.

Like when people go to look for these things, you want to be there. You want to be the best. It doesn't need to be a perfect video. but needs to be well described in an easy solution. And I look for stuff all the time. So search is one thing, right? And that will definitely help. And LLMs love YouTube videos.

So that's a whole other thing. But I'm even just talking for conversion, for your own. People are already going to your website. And what's the biggest event? You, right. And this is the easiest content to make. Because the average A1 guy knows how to answer that question. Yeah.

How many times have they answered that question? Thousands of times. Versus if you made him like, okay, I need you to come up with like the top eight ways to blank. Yeah. They're like, I don't know how to do any of that stuff. Because they're not content creators. But to say, how do I stop my garage and being so noisy? Oh, I can answer that.

So they've already answered the question, so it's easier for them to do it on camera. And it's great conversion content for the website. So you look at the top 20 to 40 questions that these guys are asked over and over and over and over again. It lives on the website, so we're not losing people because some people visit the website and never call. Right. But now they can see you. If I even have staff, like you may not be able to get a whole of the person right away. So they have support staff, right?

They have receptionist. They have people answering the emails. Whatever that question is, the receptionist knows how to answer that question to, but here's the video of our founder talking about it. So they make that video once. Like that question, does the answer to that question change very often? No, no, it doesn't. Great.

So you make that video once and you use it for the next five years. That's pretty high leverage. Now we're converting a lot more of our leads to save. But again, we don't care about how well it lives. That's a YouTube video, but we're not trying to get views. If we get views on that video, cool, it's fine. But the whole point is conversion content to build trust and storytelling with our audience, because they're coming to the website, they don't know anything about you.

Now they're going to learn. And it's high value content because you make it once. You make those top 20 to 40 videos once, and then it lives for the next three or five years, right? So that's usually the starting place for people who already have a business, the biz dev show and the Bio Breakthrough videos. videos because it generates immediate sales, which is what these guys want. They don't want like to be famous and have book deals and travel across the globe talking about garage doors.

No. They want to grow their business, right? That's, so those are the two places we start. From there, then it's ambitions, right? Like, are you trying to do a book deal? Are you just trying to show up in search when somebody is searching for like your local area? Um, if I gave some blanket rules like short form content is more inspirational and

entertain it. So are you funny? Can you inspire people? be that takes a certain personality to do it well, YouTube is going to be more education and buyers, right? So it just depends on the aspiration of what you're trying to do. So if you have to put information in front of the sale, it's YouTube all day long. It's not that the other ones can't help, but people are going to learn YouTube is the best teachers are on YouTube. You know, there's certain, I've had a couple of guys come in and shoot videos where they

would change the setting. They asked me a certain question, and these videos went viral. I mean, like, crazy. Okay. And I just think it's so interesting. And one of them is called the upflip. I don't know if you ever heard of Upflip. Okay, yeah. But, and then I had that guy come ask me a hard-knock school of Hard Knocks a year and a half ago.

And then he's come out to visit a couple more times. But I'm like, dude, somebody got famous by just stop people in their car. I was going, how did you buy this car? What do you do? Yeah. And now that's kind of like, there's certain methodologies out there that you could take those exact things and just replicate them. Do you believe in kind of like taking what already works and just making it your own? Or do you always say be original?

I think those, like that's a lot harder thing to scale. If you're looking at the A1, right? Like that's a lot harder thing to scale across the company. It works well for you. And also, well, it's harder to track. Like, it goes viral. Okay, but what did that do for your sales? Right.

It's very hard to get attribution for stuff. Right. But a biz dev show where you're talking to the, really, designers. Yeah, no, that's really,

really smart. Let's start with the end in mind. What's going to grow the business? Oh, I love that. Building relationships,

building that relationship, giving them their moment, asking them questions, hearing their story. It's like a lot about reciprocity. You know how growing close to is Robert Choudini.

Oh, yeah, he's great. Such an amazing guy. Yeah. I love him in Bobette. Yeah, another genius member. I don't know

who Joe hasn't worked with. Even some of the guys that are out, it's like, it's crazy. So it was like one day I met his house. He's like, who didn't want to talk to? I was like to talk.

I just read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He's like, oh, I'll just call Robert Kiyosaki. He's like, who do you need to know? He's like, I just want to help. Yeah. And I love that mentality. Life gives to the giver. So whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, right?

It's like for you, if culture is important, you want to show what a great place to work A1 is, then you back to the top of the show, you have office hours where you are mentioning the team. Yeah, no, you're right. No, I want to get that. And I think, tell me what you think about this, because I think this is probably the most inspirational, is who really is going to get you to change what you're doing? It's probably your wife.

I mean, you're pretty dedicated. So if she came to you, she said, Evan, listen. So, you know, I have a lot of, I've heard hundreds of these stories. You know, we're at this pinnacle trip in Mexico, and they're like, you know, Mike was, he became, he wasn't the guy I married. I married this guy with him. So here's the story.

Mike wasn't the guy you married? No, no, no, no. So this is coming from the wife of an A1 employee. Oh, okay, got it, got to. So Mike took this job. He was working 70 hours a week. He showed up, defeated. You know, it wasn't the dad that really I knew he could be.

And this opportunity came but seemed too good to be true. But, you know, Mike's valued now. He's the husband that I married. We paid off our house. We paid off our cars. He's making it to every soccer practice. He's at every dinner. or he's focused, he's got energy.

And man, life is good. And I'll tell you, you know, A1 got him the opportunity. Now, Mike did the work, but he was at a dead end job, but we didn't even realize it. Doesn't that speak to some people out there that say, man, this guy's working his butt off? He's making $30 an hour trying to get 20 hours overtime. And he's a hard worker. He's dedicated. And he's the guy, you know, but you're talking to the woman.

And believe it or not, I think the women are in charge of the household. I mean, a lot of the time. So this is where, like, you just saying that story is okay, but if you actually made something around Mike, where Mike is one of the guys that did the hour on a Monday morning or whatever and got to chat with you and it's like, maybe it's his first week or he's in his dead end job and he's like excited to come here, but he's like, he's in depression or whatever. But then team is pulling the backstory and talking to the wife and like, what are your dreams and how can we dream bigger and where are you going? And that's like Mike in his own... How much content creators do you need? Like, how big of a team would you... Like, look, I'm talking about if you had the money and you could afford all the resources.

What could one team... What does the team look like and what could they get done? Because there's so much opportunity. And this other bracelet says ruthlessly prioritize. Like, what would you say would... So this question gives me PTSD because... You know, Elko is in 100K? Yeah.

So, like, four years ago or whatever, he was. he asked me, if you had all the resources in the world, like, what would you, what would your ideal YouTube team be? And I gave him an answer, like, five or six people with it. But, like, the question was, if you had all the reasons, if I had all the reasons, I would just buy YouTube, right? Yeah. It's like thinking bigger, right? But I was answering, you know, the spirit of the question instead of the actual question. You staff for the goal, right?

So, like, what are we trying to accomplish? Or you want to do all those backstories, right? going to have Mike come in. You're going to do one Monday a month. You're going to spend three hours mentoring four people who are going to, however you figure out how they get to you, right? Okay. So your time is three hours. You could do three hours once a month to mentor team. It's fun, the mentor team, and you get some great content out of it, right? Okay. It's all the work around it that then somebody needs to go do a pre-interview with Mike to catch his story, to get some B-roll, right? Like, what's Mike's story?

Like some of the questions, maybe a ride along, right? You know, if you're, you ask me some stories about my parents so like I can give you pictures of my parents growing up. Yeah, very strong. Right. That kind of stuff. If now the wife's involved, they need to go interview the wife and say, hey, what do you, you know, Mike's just joining A1. What do you hope that, you know, he's been at this dead end job? What are you hoping he accomplishes here, right?

And then he meets you and you go through the thing. And then there's got to be some follow up. Like Mike now, all this stuff you said about Mike and how he completely changed his life around, imagine if that was then captured and you go see Mike, I don't know how long he's been from what, like how long has he been with you? Oh, yeah, this guy took a couple years. But I mean, like his stories, I mean, some guys turn it around very quickly. But I've got a game, Smiley, Stephen in Wisconsin.

And this dude's 26 paid off his house, paid off all of his cars, brought two kids into the world. And just an animal. And his wife is freaking phenomenal. And the dude is bringing in $7,000. What did he start? He started at a dead-end job making nothing. I mean, he was making $20 an hour. So that's the kind of summary of the story.

There's a lot of details in there, yeah. I got it. But like, what's a smiley Steve? Stephen. Stephen telling his story. Imagine he comes in. He's not smiling at the beginning, probably, because he's in some dead-end job and like he hates his life.

And he's struggling to pay the bills. Oh, it's powerful. The stories are so powerful. I mean, there's so much work I can be doing. It's just going to be prioritizing and putting a plan together and make sure we've got efficiency. Because we can spend a month on that one story. Yeah, but so, okay, at the beginning, it's not efficient. You can't prematurely optimize.

It's going to be messy because you've got to figure things out. You've got to find the flow. You need the right people that stay organized and build efficiency throughout time. Through time, but like anything else, like you can't expect. You just got to jump in. You didn't have this set. and you coach them. Yep.

And then as they're talking, like somebody brings them in before and they do a little pre-interview and you do the best you've got with what you have. Go watch American Idol episodes and see the kinds of questions they're asking people. Is there anything that you don't want? Like, obviously, I've got clients too, right?

And I don't want to talk. I love sales. And I think we sell the best products and we give options that ultimatum. And I think our value is far more than our price. But, and it could be controversial. I mean, there's as many haters out there as there are people that like stuff, right? And do you think any attention is good attention if I say, look, you're having a really big problem with sales.

We're talking about sales and a client, a homeowner is watching this going, they're teaching their people how to sell? You know, do you think that ever gives a bad rap? I mean, so I would film it and then you can see. You still have a-you-you-you-you-you-you-to-be-judge of it. It's not live streaming, right? But sales is about solving a problem. Yeah. A lot of people think it's a bad word, though.

Well, but because a lot of organizations sell in a really scammy way, Tommy, right? It's like if you're doing it differently, what a chance to actually show how to sell with ethics? With ethics. Yeah. By actually solving the problem. Like if you can't solve the person's problem, then don't sell them on your service, right? But if you are actually the best one to solve their problem, you know what their problem is, and you're actually best suited to solve a company.

You don't want them going somewhere else because they're going to. to get ripped off and not get the solution that you need, right? I had a, my last meeting a couple Thursdays ago, we had kind of a bitch fest. Like I said, 10 minutes, I want you guys to put on the board some things you're not happy with. And a lot of the guys said, you know, I feel like we used to really value service. Now we want to sell new doors. And I said, I got up to the top of the front of the room later.

And I said, guys, you know, the way that I talk to my clients is, I say, here's what you need to do. Here's what you should do. And if you were my mom, my mom worked three jobs when I was like, I love my mom a lot. She needs to get to the doctors. Here's what I'd be doing for mom. And I say, would you actually go to your mother's house or your grandmas or whoever your favorite person that raised you was and fix that piece of shit? I'm like, would you not think about an insulated door? It's a 15-year-old door. It's dented. It's cracked. It's pain oxidized. The trims falling apart. Yeah, we could fix it. We can make it work. What is that? Or would you rather I give the options and say, why don't you just pick when you like?

We've got a few options. We could reset the clock, save you on your air conditioning bill, smile of your home, 40% of your curb a pill, number one ROI in the home. And I said, I just believe this. Like, I'm not asking you guys to do anything, but the hard part, Evan, is they know what the parts cost, but they don't really know what it costs around the company. I'm trying to get my CFO to work with me to kind of explain this, but they go, we would never spend this.

This is the Cobbers kids with no shoes, the cleaning later that's got a messy house. and when you live in an apartment and by the way I live in an apartment a long time I'm just saying when you live in an apartment and you don't have a lot of money it's hard to put yourself in a situation where you would actually spend the money

to do something like a new garage door or a new A-track unit or a brand new roof where my roof right now could be repaired right but so you're not solving a problem well they're band-aiding the solution no no you're looking at the problem

through your lens not the customer's lens yeah but that's not that's not solving the problem that's not sales. Yeah. And you're right. It's just, it's breaking through to these guys

and once you could break through and help them understand and help them solve it for themselves because I can't make them believe, but I could give them the tools to show them the perspective to get them look through a different lens. Right.

To your point about like people who Tony Robbins would ever help shift the lens. Yes. But also going, how do you show them that these clients, these people who are building a $4 million house or $20 million dollar house or whatever, like they don't want some,

a crappy, non-insulated whatever garage is a disservice to them. It does not solve their problem. Yeah. You can't look at them through your lens. You have to wear, I mean, we use it. We say don't sell out of your own pocket. Just don't sell out of your own pocket. You know, I had a guy come out and replace, he repaired my freezer three times.

The fourth time I replaced it, but it cost me about 500 bucks a time. And I'm like, man, I just wish you would offer me a new one to begin with. And I got clients to call up, why didn't you just offer me a new door to begin? with. And I tell these stories all the time so they could understand. Evan, we got to wrap up here, brother. But I want you to give me one book that changed your life. One book that changed my life. For our work week, Tim Ferriss. Great book.

Yeah. Not so much because Tim, it wasn't about working four hours. It was just about not doing anything myself. Yep. That was one. Delegates elevate. My favorite of all time that was called radicals and visionaries, you just can't find it. That is Warro. It's like a thousand bucks to find a copy. It's out of print. And it basically that's what got me through my early journey as an entrepreneur. It's like it's a story of different famous entrepreneurs every three or four pages. So just read a story a day. Do you have it? I have it. I have my copy. You can make a couple copies of it. Maybe if they're not making it anymore. You could afford the thousand on a copy. That's true. That's true. You can go get one if you want.

And it closed us out, Evan, anything we did what we talked about, that was fascinating. You seem to be more of a counselor for me than an interview, which I've got more ideas now than I know what to do with, which is a great sign. I've a great podcast. But anything you want the listeners, final thoughts. First and foremost, how do they get a hold of you if they want to reach out? Instagram is probably the easiest place. Just DMM and Instagram.

Evan Carr, Michael. Get them. Lesson is like what I love about Tommy is he took a bunch of notes there and he's going to do something about him. Maybe not all of them, but he's going to take a couple of things on that list and, like, Tomorrow, something's going to be happening on there, right? Like, that's the biggest lesson. Like, I say the best teachers are on YouTube.

You can learn anything you want to learn, but watching this video was not enough. You got to take that idea and go do something about it. Brilliant, brother. Well, I appreciate you coming in today. You're a blast. Let's go. And, yeah, thank you for everything.