The Home Service Expert Podcast - The Highest ROI Marketing Tool for Home Service Businesses (Tim Hilcove)

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Email [e-mail] to get your first wrap FREE! Tim Hilcove is the founder of SmartWrap, a Phoenix-based vehicle wrap and branding company he launched in 2009 alongside his father. Over the past 15+ years, Tim has helped businesses across the country transform their vehicles into high-performing marketing assets: combining design, messaging, and strategy to generate real, measurable growth. With a background in design, production, and marketing, Tim has built SmartWrap into a full-service operation, producing and installing thousands of wraps annually through an in-house model that prioritizes speed, quality, and consistency. His work focuses on helping small and mid-sized businesses stand out in crowded markets by turning everyday vehicles into mobile billboards that drive visibility, brand recognition, and inbound leads. Whether you're in home services, local business, or scaling a growing company, this conversation offers a practical look at how to maximize your marketing dollars and turn your brand into a lead-generating machine. FOR MORE GREAT EPISODES: The Mello Millionaire - https://open.spotify.com/show/1jsZaiMgWe0EGaPfLtelDW?si=3de6091af58d41b4 Check Out My Social Media: TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/

How much time do you have to be reading wraps while you're trying not to drive into the person in front of you? They're not going to be reading your five-star review. Welcome to the home service expert, built for blue-collar entrepreneurs who are ready for more. When your customer says yes, stop talking. You find that the pursuit of a goal, at least for me, is a source of my happiness. You're never going to be a successful doing what everyone else does. New episodes every Monday. 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 888-5-26-1-2-99, 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 forward slash podcast to get your

copy. Now let's go back into the interview. Welcome back to the Home Service section. Today I got Tim Hillcove here. He takes care of my vehicle wraps and he does a fantastic job. He gets it done with quality. He wrapped my personal truck. If you're watching this, I got a little souvenir. But he keeps up. We've got 42 guys training. They all need new trucks. We've got 60 coming in next month, hopefully 90 the next month.

And not a lot of people know this, but I used to have my own rap shop. And we used to have Moonlighters. We did a good job, but we could probably handle 10 a month. And we just got backed up. And Tim seems to always find a way. Super great quality. What I love the most about Tim is he's a special. list. You do fleets. You don't, you could do anything you want. You did my truck, but you do such a

good job with fleets. It's quality work. You do the second layer, the reflection. Smart wrap vehicle wraps and graphics is a full service design, print and installation company specializing in high impact vehicle wraps for businesses nationwide based out of Phoenix, Arizona. I go on and on about the alcalades, but he started it with his dad in 2009, inspired to help businesses grow through impactful branding and high converting vehicle advertising. Two decades experience, marketing, design, and production. Tim is turning a company's identity into mobile marketing assets that drive with real results. This episode is most businesses overlook one of the most effective, cost effective and powerful

tools available, which are vehicle wraps. In this episode, Tim's going to break down how strong branding, clear messaging, and strategic design can turn everyday vehicles in elite generation machines. So, Tim, dude, I've known you a long time now. You take care of us. You do a lot with Enterprise. You do a lot with Renee, too. You're just really good at what you do.

How's life? It's been busy. It's been amazing. The last 18, 20 months has been unbelievable. Unbelievable growth. Yeah. So explain to us a little bit. I know there's a lot to it because I was in the business.

You don't just buy a printer. I mean, there's so much craftsmanship to it. There's quality involved, 3M versus all the other stuff. Talk to us a little bit about how the company's grown, what you love about it, and where you're looking forward to. As far as growth, since, I'd say, June of 24, we've almost doubled. We've doubled staff.

We've doubled revenue. Where we're going, I'm going to take this as big as it'll go. don't have a hard number at this point, but the next stop is keep this going. Just keep it going for now. You don't need a lot of clients. You need the right clients, I think, is the name of the game. How do you wrap a vehicle,

and let's say someone calls you from Florida or Texas or Washington? How does that work? Well, we'll design it or use their already made design, you know, either from whatever agency they used or what they have now, print it, proof it, send it out to a local place that we've worked with before, or, you know, start doing some calling around, you know, ask the trick questions that most places that don't know what they're doing won't be able to answer. And just to go from there.

It's been really helpful with Gettle and also with A1. And we've forged a lot of relationships in all of the markets that you're in. Yeah. So that's been helpful. Yeah, we're in a lot of markets. I mean, always quality. You know, your brand is your calling card. And I learned a lot from Dan Antonelli.

He said, I mean, the studies that he's done based on a great rap that's differentiating yourself. But the quality of the rap matters. So many companies, they do it a shade different. They put cheap stuff on. It burns. It just doesn't look good. they skip out on stuff. What have you found are some of the shortcomings

that most other companies seem to miss? It's been real interesting to see what's available, not just here in Phoenix, but what, I don't know, what people let pass or is good enough. The thing that bugs me, and I'm assuming it bugs other people that get wraps,

eventually it'll really bug. is putting seams right in the middle of the door. Yep. Putting seams where they shouldn't be. You might not notice from 25 feet away, but I notice. Yeah. It's kind of like how Steve Jobs said, if you open up the back of a MacBook, he wants it to look like perfect, even though nobody's going to see it.

Yep. And if you open up the back of like a PC, it's just who cares, right? Like, it just works. Yeah. But this is a piece of artwork when you're never going to see it. So seams bother me, bother other people. Putting relief cuts is another thing that just really ruins the design. You can imagine your face on the wrap or say the ghetto wrap, right?

Yep. That area that's inserted in the van where the window would normally go is a bit of a deep channel. to, I don't know why people do this, maybe they don't know how to do it without doing this, but they cut a one inch white strip around there and, you know, it goes right through the middle of your forehead, ruins the design.

Yeah. It doesn't have to be that way. There's a lot of people that cut corners when it comes to wraps. They do a partial wrap. Some of the guys do lettering and they put everything they do in life. So many businesses that are listening right now,

they're so proud of their rap, but they don't realize that's the lifeblood of their company. The brand is they don't spend the money on the brand, they don't spend the money on the wraps. What happens when you cheap out on material and the gloss that goes over and everything else? The thing is, I don't think, well, I hope they don't go to the rap places and say, can you get me the cheapest material possible

because I'm super cheap? They probably are just uneducated and say, well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. It's less than this other person. place and you won't know until nine months later everything's turning black and now now you've got a real problem on your hands more so than that though even if it's you know materials to materials you know even like you said the the partials and the and the lettering and stuff like that I just get the impression that doesn't look like you're fully committed to your business or your brand.

Maybe what's the homeowner's impression, especially in, you know, the home services industry or those clients, right? You're looking for somebody that believes in what they do, right? Like, they're like, well, I kind of have to do this and also I'm a realtor and I, you know, do Bitcoin and stuff. And, you know, I like to say that the hallmark of an unlicensed contractor is not a full wrap for sure. Yeah. And it's probably lettering at best. Yeah, I'll tell you this, it's funny how I talk a lot about getting the right finance person in your company to understand your numbers, get the right brand, pay attention to the call center. and a lot of people out there are like,

we're going to spend the money here, here, and here, but they're missing the boat. And I remember when I got rebranded and we actually did quality, change your email signature, change your yard signs, make sure that your billboards look like this, put the brand within the company in the building. All these things,

and what I didn't recognize and realized at the time, was yes, the client started calling and begging us to come out there. They're like, we're only going to use you. The cancellation rates went down. The conversion rate went up. The average ticket went up. But also people wanted to work here. And those vans, we buy new ones.

We don't buy used ones because we understand accelerated depreciation. And we turned them back in after five years. The truck's still worth a lot of money. Apply that towards a new truck. Keeps the morale up. Not a lot of breakdowns. It keeps you busy. Because I don't know how many trucks we turn back in now that we've kind of cycle through.

But a lot of them. It's a lot. Yeah. I mean, how many are you doing for us on a rate? basis. I have no idea. It varies, but, you know, somewhere between 30 and 60 a month. Sometimes it's 30 and half a month. Yeah, what's crazy is this going to speed up and it's only going to get busier.

And, you know, there's one thing we're committed to buying late, like the latest one is we're going to buy the latest and greatest best tablets. We want the best most pristine wraps. Don't we still doing the second layer? Yep. So can you explain, I think this is awesome. Can you explain that second layer and why we do it? Yes.

So part of the, and this is just for the A1 brand, the part of the logo and the phone number on the side and the back is reflective, and it's an overlay. I'd imagine a lot of what you do is not always during daylight hours, especially farther north where, you know, it could be winter. and it's nice to see, like, I actually took a... It pops. It totally pops, yeah.

Like, my neighbor was getting his garage door fixed one day, and it was nighttime, and I drove by, and my lights, like, completely lit it up. I took a picture and sent it to you, and I'm like, yeah, look at that. It's no other, very few other companies do that. It's just one of those things that differentiate us. Originally, when I got the vehicles designed, not the wrap, but we do the top, the tubes up top. And then we really deck out the interior.

And we learned a lot. But I like the tubes wrap too. I like it to just look like that's a pristine company. Like I always think about Maytag back in the day where the guy's kind of sitting around waiting for his job because it never broke down. Exactly, yeah. And I just think people are like, yeah,

we're not going to call A1 for the cheap. We're going to call him for when we want it done right and they'll show up right away and they're going to be safer on our family. And that's really where I told Dan I wanted to get this wrap to be. And then Dan calls me up seven times a week. Not every week, but he's like, dude, there's no good rappers out there. He loves you. He knows you do quality.

And it's very hard to find because you get the wrong printer. It puts out the wrong red. And now you've got all these different colors out there and the sun's beating on them. It's changing the color. There's nothing worse than when somebody shows up and they don't have a clean truck that looks great. And, I mean, it's a rolling billboard. Yeah, even as a homeowner, you're very, like wondering, well, who did I call over here?

Like, I thought they looked professional on the website. This, this doesn't look that good, right? And then on top of that, like, what do you think's going to happen when you show, like, there's a bit of a competitive bit situation, right? One guy has a brand new, nice looking rap. One guy has an okay rap, and one guy's got lettering. You can pretty much guarantee the guy with lettering is going to get beat up on price, right? Oh, yeah.

He looks like he needs the money. I'm going to see how low. And you're just not going to do that with somebody that shows up professionally or you're less likely to have that happen. I think one of the best things we do is we attract affluent clients that are willing to pay us. We give them options. We could beat competitors pricing. But at the same time, they're like, I just wanted that right. You guys seem like your license, bonded, insured background checks.

You show up prepared. The trucks are absolutely immaculate. And it makes a big difference in who we are and what we stand for. and each employee feels valued because that's their office. So they drive around all day long and they're not driving some used hootie. I mean, I take pictures of vans and I'm like, man, I would never call that company.

What is going on? I think it's so important. And I stress this all the time, but people still, they try to do their own, they try to cut corners. You know how many pictures there are of me on the side of trucks a little bit modified? I mean, we've got three,

in the last month, three cease and desist going out. of they took almost my exact character cross like this and a garage drug company just copy it and I'm like you don't realize that we have trademarks and copyrights on these things it's what do they say imitation is the best flattery or something but I'm still like guys what do you think I'm going to do not

defend my yeah there seems to be more bad coming because of AI you have to be really really careful yeah you want to be distinctive you want to be different than everybody what is an HVAC company do almost every time. What colors? Red, white, and blue. Red, white, and blue. That doesn't stand out anymore. Yeah. And it's great. It's patriotic. But it's every other company. So you want to be distinctive,

get different. Pop out if you're at a home show. Pop out when you're on the highway. You want people to look over. And, you know, there's a couple of companies that have done well over time by not doing the brand, but they've been around 40, 50 years. Like, if you're going to go make a difference, you've got to get the right rap. You've got to get it dialed in. And how long does it take a good, one of the guys that works for you to become an expert? I mean, how many years of experience do most of your people have? It's actually very difficult. It's not super easy to train people.

There's, we notice that some people just immediately start to get it. And within, say, three to six months of doing it, eight, nine hours a day, five days week, they are starting to get it. Um, the quickest guy, one of the quickest guys ever seemed, he looked like he took about two months to do it. But other people, a good solid year, you, I mean, you can learn enough in a week to set, to put rapper on your resume. Yeah. And, uh, and, and, and be dangerous. But it's not something that's, it's not super easy to learn. It's, It's a physical skill. Yeah.

Rather than, you know, I'm going to, I'm putting this over here. Yeah. That's like strength or whatever. But this is sort of like, I don't know. It's in art. Yeah, it's like painting, right? Like going back to maybe when you're painting the garage doors, right? If you didn't have the right technique, where the paint's going to build up on the edge and run down.

You'd have runs and all kinds of look like crap. It takes a while. It takes a while. It takes a while. Yeah. Let me just ask you real quick, because I remember back when I was, kind of in the industry. 3M was not only the most expensive,

they had the best warranty, but Avery was making, Avery had a really good product too. What do you feel about products and you swear by it? Do you have a couple or what do you think about? Well, without, you know, running down anybody, I believe there's two major manufacturers

that seem to be top tier. For what we're trying to do, with the seamless wraps without cutting the relief cuts, ease of install. You know, we want stuff that's going to be quick to install. You know, if we're thinking 25% longer because the film has limitations, doesn't help you, doesn't help me, doesn't help anybody.

We've been using, yeah, we've been using a film for, really, when we started with the Gettle Fleet, the film that we're using before just did not perform. It could not perform. And, you know, we made it, we made a switch and I've never looked back. And I will say, I wouldn't say, you know, I don't want to go too much into pricing, but if someone's got a big fleet and they're going to come to you, I will say. And I don't mean to say this the wrong way, but you are, you take care of us.

And you are affordable. You're not the cheapest, but you're not the highest. but you're not the highest and I think you're the best. I appreciate that. You know, I think it's different if you got a one-off. I mean, you get so many of our trucks,

you probably just like, I mean, it's like, you've done so many now. It's almost always the same trucks. I mean, we've got some Ford's, but now we're mostly Dodge. Yeah. And I will say this, a lot of people complain about Dodge or Chrysler or Ford.

You know, the deal is, if you buy the right warranty on the drive train and you're turning them in in time, the Dodgers have been great for us. And I really don't care. Some people have bad experience, but I got 600 on the road plus. I'll have a couple thousand on the road by the end of next year.

So, you know, we really pay attention to Fleet. Katie's a badass. Absolutely. She's on her stuff, man. We got Sam Sarah installed in every truck. We've got inventory. We've got the chargers underneath. What is that called?

to be able to charge you plug into it. We've really thought... An inverter? We really thought hard to make sure we have the perfect trucks. We didn't skimp out, but we buy so many we get volume. Runei does a really good job at Jempspar or taking care of people, too. Yeah. And she's always advising you because you figure out a way to get it done.

And I'll tell you this, there's nothing more annoying in the world waiting on a route to get done. You guys, when we're graduating all these guys, we need the trucks available. and I didn't go through one or two or three or four rappers. I went through a dozen and then said, I got to do this myself. Wow. And we did it. But then we outgrew what we were capable of.

And I think you've got the right network out there to get it done. Your slogan is branding isn't about getting noticed. It's about being remembered. I really like that. Yeah, I trademarked it. So I like that too. Yeah. Yeah.

I just thought, man, like, think about all of, you were probably driving and say yesterday. There was a lot of things you noticed, right, in order to not crash or to know where you were going. You noticed a lot of things. But at the end of the day, very little of that is remembered. You know, it's very rare you remember anything. You almost drive subconsciously. You stop at the stop sides. You go on the screen.

You know, you know your way home. but if you could pop and stand out, there's a book called Purple Cow. And it's all about that. That's why I put all my billboards upside down for a while because people were calling like crazy. A guy screwed up. He only had one job.

But everyone noticed it and it stood out in a very busy world. And that's what we try to do, stand out. That got them emotionally invested. They're now, because they're not going to call if they're just like, well, that makes logical sense. Right? They're like, I'm mad. That guy's thinking.

things upside down, now it's stuck in your brain, like you only, I believe you only really remember emotional type things, right? Yeah. Then you justify it with, well, you know, it's got this, that, and the next thing, and that's why I made a smart decision. But the first thing that happened was you were like zapped by emotion. Yep. And that's why, you know, it has to be memorable.

And definitely memorable in like a positive light, right? the amount of people that you will tell about something you don't like is quite a bit higher than what you do like. Yeah, it's true. That's why the news reports on negativity because it goes 10 times further. It's kind of fascinating. I thought about this the other day.

Like, we have like social currency, right? We're trying to help other people or warn them or look good or build up. I heard one, at one point, it comes from like our caveman experience, right, where you're climbing over the hill and you're like, oh, there's a lion over there. Yeah, kind of fight or flight. I better tell. You know, I'm going to tell 10 people because that's danger.

Yeah. But if they see some pretty yummy berries over there, that's not dangerous. Maybe I'll tell one person, right? Because I'm going to get much more out of warning them of something that is life-threatening. And, you know, although we have all this technology and we drive vehicles and go to the moon,

we're still. we still got primitive brains. Yeah, we're still like, ooh, bad, you know. 95% subconscious that's really running things. Yeah. It's an interesting thought. I mean, I would highly, highly,

look, if I bought a business, there's a competitor out there that only buys great brands of mine. And he'll only buy if it's so much, because it says the owner has a decent head. It's expensive to buy a billboard. I mean, on a street, ghetto was on this, and it's usually a diamond broker, but it's $30,000 a month for this billboard. And it's right there up by the Pita Jungle off of, I think it's like 44th Street in like Indian School or something.

But these trucks, I mean, you get endless amounts of business. One of the newer things we're going to be doing is when the guys are off for two days. We're going to have them parking like at Costco's and like busy locations that's well lit up right up front. Because it's all about getting eyeballs. Yeah. and I just think people, they really, they're so pig-headed that they don't understand, like, there's a reason we're going to do over 400 million this year. And it's not all the brand, but a lot of it is.

I will say that because I paid $30 some odd thousand dollars seven years ago. We were $30 million, but I knew it had to change. El Levy convinced me, Ken Goodrich convinced me. You know, I used to, when Kenner was in the heyday, I mean, I'd hear him on the radio, seven times see his truck, then I see a billboard. And it just stuck with you. And it's hard to spell, but it'll keep you cool. And it's a cool image of him as a kid holding the flashlight.

Yeah, that's actually really an interesting story there. I've never met or seen any other company that went to the Wizard of Eds first and got in their brand story dialed in before they even had a logo. and the brand story dictated the logo. Yeah, it's a smart way to do it. Yeah, I've never seen it done that again. Most of the time it's like, oh, cool, we've been in business for, you know, this long. It's what is our story?

And then the logo is not part of that. Well, there was a long story with Gettle. I mean, it was truly one of the first H-TAC companies in Phoenix, and his dad did use to Sada was known for quality. So he had to go off of a legacy company. You know, the biggest mistake I see, that I made is I had Yelp 5 stars, A plus BBBB. I had Angie's list.

I had all my vendors on there. And, you know, the vendors will usually pay half of the rap if you'll put their logo on there. But I learned very quickly, this is my rap. This is my business. Like, they're going to go to the website, but they're going to remember that brand. You don't even need a phone number.

A billboard, you're going to drive by it. you want to stick out in a very busy world. Exactly. I mean, how much time do you have to be reading raps while you're trying not to drive into the person in front of you? And not only that, but no, you're not supposed to be doing this. If you take a look real quick, people aren't even looking at the road. They're looking at the radio or their phone or something.

So they're not going to be reading your five-star review. You've got about one, two seconds. Stand out. And you've got to do that hundreds and hundreds of times before, when the time comes, yeah, because it could be within the next three years, not right at that moment. I feel like I hope we're making sense to people. You know, I'm trying to get some of my vendors that have proven themselves month over month year over year, who I use. I think you're honest.

You have integrity. I'm sure. How many wraps do you think you peeled off and redid it because you weren't happy with the quality? A lot, a lot. Yeah. You're not going to let something come out of your facility that's not top-notch. Absolutely. And you'll warranty everything.

And then if that means, you know, rewrapping the whole vehicle, because what if this just, well, that didn't turn out. And now the, well, actually, you know what? Let's just do the whole thing needs to be redone. And even you're willing to lose money to make sure it comes out right. Right. I mean, at the end of the day, you don't like it. No, but.

If that's what it takes, quality is the number one thing. reputation right like reputation i would imagine it's similar with with you guys well identical right like it is never gonna it's never going to it's never going to be worth it to to to i don't know cheap out on that when doing the right thing i mean just do it right i don't understand just do it i think there's man i know so many bit you know i was this guy by use vehicles i think they look great i had two full-time mechanics i had two oise and everything remember 2016, I sat down with a mentor who we ended up purchasing. And he goes, dude, you're doing it all wrong.

I was at Top Golf. And he goes, you need to buy a building? I made more money on buildings than I made in the business because I upgraded, upgraded, and they always appreciate it. I paid myself rent. And he goes, Tommy, you got to do new trucks. When we bought Don's garage doors in Denver, I had 13 technicians sitting in the training center and the only question they ask is, do we get new trucks?

Because we don't get paid when they're broken down. And are they reliable? And so new trucks, accelerated their appreciation, the tax game with a good CFO understands how to do it. But quality is everything. And if you're going to be a quality brand of people, you know,

I've already said this, but really, how do you get 25,000 amazing customers a month? And it's because our brand says quality. You know, you see our guys, we've got a pretty good dress code. We try to stay super clean. We try to let people know

honest. We try to message them on the way, offer them coffee, give them a profile. And those trucks are our calling card. That's what everybody sees. We see you in the neighborhood all the time. We're just going to use you because our neighbors use you. But if you don't stand out, I know a company, they're very big. And he goes, man, I save $1,500 by doing a partial rap. And it looks okay. But I'm like, man. And they're like, you know, there's all these people on Facebook probably some of them listening right now with so much pride with their lettering and they're like, I'm busy as can be. Yeah, you are busy.

How much profit are you making? That's what I go back to. Are you making great money in your business that you could afford to pay well, invest into the business, hire the right people, invest into training, invest into the right marketing, building a legacy because people brag that they're busy all the time because they're just, they're the cheapest. And they're always going to attract that. And people that buy cheap, attract cheap clients.

when you start spending the money to get stuff done right, you start attracting those type of clients. Dan Martel, the guy that wrote buyback your time, taught me that. And it's 100% true. What do you want the listeners to know? Because I know this isn't an exciting thing, but it's exciting for me

because I think it's the lightblood of the company, and I'm very passionate about this. But some people are like, oh, great, Tommy's got another thing we need to do. And I'm like, well, if you want to grow out, this is your number one asset. that it's more than your house, it's your family's future, it's cutting that generational curse. What do you want the audience to know right now?

About vehicle wraps, or specifically, yeah. Vehicle wraps. Well, a number of things that you said, you, I believe, like, yeah, you had to work much harder than you would have had you started with, you know, band's brand right off the bat, right? Oh, yeah.

Like, not everybody's capable, of doing that. They have, you know, other, they have a family, they have like, the amount of, like, brute force that made this happen. The headwinds could be a lot easier with, with a decent looking wrap.

I know that for sure. Well, you get, you know, on Google, you get people searching your name more often. Less cancellation rate, higher conversion rate, higher average ticket, more reviews. People, the biggest thing that I think people take for granted is people like, dude, I see you everywhere. I want to work for a growing company.

I want to be part of something bitter. And you become a magnet for talent. Yeah. I like it when customers call back and they're excited. And they tell me, people are telling me they see my vans everywhere all over town. And they only have one van. They only have one van. So they look like a national brand.

And they think they're everywhere. I really like that. The anecdotal feedback I get, I find that really cool. And I can just tell, but, you know, after doing this for, you know, that long, it's not my opinion. I'm just looking at who's coming back and ordering more wraps. Who's having them removed because the company went out of business and the vehicles are being auctioned? What is the difference between the graphic design?

A lot of times it's pretty obvious. I think people put too much on their wraps. They tell everybody, like, you know what we do? Of course, we do sales installation and repairs. We don't need to put that on the vehicle. That's one of Dan's like no-nows. But at the end of the day, it's got to be super simple, easy to remember. And hopefully there's a slogan or something simple.

But done correctly, you're going to make more profit. You're going to make your employees feel special. And the clients, you're going to make yourself stand out for them. You know, I know, I know. have an offer for the listeners. It's a pretty crazy offer. And I don't know exactly how you do this, but sounds like you're giving a rap away. Well, what I'm doing is I'm looking for long-term relationships, such as the one, you know, we have with A1. And really take the first step and prove that for qualifying companies, obviously there's, you know, some qualifications to that.

But I'm willing to, if you want to try it out, I'm going to do the first rap for free if you qualify. And it just probably means you got more than like you're, you're not just getting started. You're going to add and give you more work. I mean, I'd give somebody their first garage garage or if they said, we got 99 more to order. Exactly. But I mean, if somebody says, hey, I don't have any money, give me a free garage drawer. It's a difference. So of course, there's got to be some qualifications. Yeah. Well, listen, I got a lot more questions here, but I think, you know, your bio says, I help small business owners make sense of who they are and who they want to be.

And I think it takes a certain eye, and I don't think there's a lot of people that understand this, but to stand out in this busy world, it's difficult, man. And I love it. So this truck, I got a TRX. and it's a Dodge and I wanted Dan to do something special and you didn't hesitate but it's different than all the other things

and it came out freaking fantastic and I can't tell you I started parking on the corner of Scottsdale Road and Lincoln every day for two weeks and then I got my guy Raul that drives me in so I drove my truck he picked me up I picked it up at the end of the day I got three to four text messages a day

saying Tommy I see you your truck, are you here right now? I want to come say hi. I mean, that's how much this stuff stands out. And it came out absolutely phenomenal. And I got a lot of pride in what we've done and the quality that you do. And I do think people out there, if you're looking for just a second opinion, you want quality, you want it to last, you want to learn the game. Because a lot of people ride it to the wheels fall off. And that's a mistake too. Is I want to turn it back in, make my guys excited that they're going to get a new truck. And then I can turn it in for a high value.

And then they pull off the wrap and they resell it secondary market. I don't deal with a thing. And there's Holman, there's Renee, there's Enterprise. But you work with all of them. Yeah. And they'll, and you work with the secondary payments if somebody's got a fleet department, like they're going through an enterprise. And you work with all of them.

And you're, I know you're the favorite of everybody. I mean, they just know you get it in and you take care of it. It's just a natural sense of urgency, I suppose. Being family background is in McDonald's restaurants. And so there's a sort of, you know, somebody's asking for something. They need it now. And having done that for a while, you know, that's just the way to do it. I don't know how to do it any other way.

I don't think it's a good idea to have people waiting four weeks. Well, three years ago you came to me and you said, you know, this is kind of private, but you're like, I'm not really making money, but I'm taking care of clients. And that meant everything to me because you're like, I go to work, I work a lot of hours, and I'm making ends meet, but barely.

And you roll the storm, and you're doing really good now, and you deserve everything that's coming, because every once in a while we got to ride the storm, but you took care of me, you took care of Gettle, and Kent Goodrich, and you took care of the clients, and you didn't cut corners. And that's what I appreciate the most, is you're a man of integrity.

And you go to Impact Church with even a bonus. Pastor Travis is the best. What else do you think the audience do you see here right now? Well, you know, it comes, I don't mean this in a sort of like, and I know you don't either, like, we're coming down on people, and we're, you know, we're trying to be enthusiastic and say, you know, these are some pretty big mistakes that people are making.

Before you continue making them, or if you're going to, here's some pointers on, you know, on ramps, on, like you said, on vehicles, on all kinds of stuff. There's a certain amount of, I would, maybe it's pride or something. and, you know, I do recognize it's pretty hard to start a business to do all this different stuff, but man, if you just do a few things differently, I just know it's going to work. I can see it.

I can see who's coming back. I can see who is growing. Yeah, who's growing, who's doing it this way and who's doing it, who's trying to reinvent the wheel and say, I know what I'm doing, I know where I'm going. You know, do you ever look at the directions or the maps? I mean, now that we have it on our phone, it's a lot easier, right?

But that definitely translates into business. And sure, yes, we know, I know what I'm doing, but definitely not everything. Well, learning how to ask for help and being a little bit grateful and a little bit, you know, don't let your ego, your ego is not your amigo. And don't let your ego get in the way because of your pride. When I was $30 million and I had all these trucks, I swallowed my pride. because of Al Levy and Coodoo-Ritch. And I was probably Dan's easiest client.

If you look at the original mockup, Regis said change his nose because the nose was messed up. And I said, dude, you're the guy. And he wrote the book, branded, not blanded, and you work with him on a lot of things, and there's other good people out there.

And there's nothing worse than putting the wrong tone. And you got one maroon truck, one bright red truck. And then the sun damage, and it's peeling off, and it snows one day, and this truck doesn't do good in the cold or in the heat. Is this like, you guys got to try it and true, and it's a machine.

And you don't take on work. You say no to most things. Like, you don't do recolors. You don't do high-end cars. You just do fleet. And you're the best at it. And you're a specialist. And that's, you know, I don't take on commercial.

I don't do new construction. I don't do box doors. I do retrofit residential garage drawers. We focus. And you're a specialist. And you can knock it out and get it in. Imagine having a guy that graduates and he's waiting for his truck

and he has to wait for five more weeks because the rap shop doesn't care. They're not a big client for them and they're just waiting. Even if they are a big client, they just don't have the capacity. No, they don't have the capacity, period. Chewing on a fleet that big is,

it's easy to choke. And you'll even fly guys out to take care of stuff if you have to. Yeah, we've done it. We've got contractors across the country. They're happy to move around. They would prefer you had branches in California. They like to go to California and surf and then wrap and then surf and then wrap.

But, you know, or Hawaii, you know. Yeah, I mean, we set them all over the place. And I'm going to get you a bunch of work because that's what we do. I mean, we take care of people. You take care of people. You know, my goal is that I bring it out a lot. more of the vendors because I've already made the mistakes. I'm 20 years into this business. And because it took me so many tries and going with the wrong people and getting let down

and thinking I'm just going to do it myself and got sidetracked. Like I was going to, like, I used to think, man, we collect a lot of scrap metal. Like that was a prior order for me to get that cash. And I'm like, dude, what if I focused on training on how to sell new parts and make sure we don't get warranty calls, get a five-star review and get a membership and be able to make you know how many flat tires I used to get sending the guys to the scrap yard and how peasant that felt? Like we don't even care anymore. Like the scrap is the scrap and we get some money here and there, but I don't even keep track of that. Like the goal is to be the best of what we do and hire the best around us. And we have a lot of accountability. And then, you know, hopefully you get a lot more business because the more people you get,

the easier is going to be able to get me in and out. So, and I know we're a priority because we send you a lot of, we send you personally, probably more business than anybody. Absolutely, yeah. And I have a question for you. On the scrap metal, and do you feel like that, that you had to do that at that time to make the money to get to the next level,

or do you think you could have just skipped that part? I think it was a mistake by hiring mechanics and started my own rap shop. I think it was a mistake doing a lot of things that I did that were a distraction. you know, race horses wear blinders. You focus where the money goes.

You see so many distractions from a visionary that they get sidetracked to look at this, this, this, this. And they see all these pennies lying everywhere where they're watching $100 bills fly over their head. The scrap was nothing in comparison to just training the guys to ask more questions and offer options instead of ultimatums.

You know, what should we do by Joe Chrysarro? We learn a lot from him. And that's the difference. It's like, I know companies that say, man, I get so much scrub, I pay for my rent with that. You're like, man, if you just train an extra 10 minutes a day, you would pay 10 times your rent.

So everyone's got to get started and learn the priorities. Like, we had all these old doors hanging around here that I knew I could sell. And one day, Luke comes to me and goes, let's just scrap them all. He goes, you've been talking about selling these for years. Then we've got to discount it. Then we got to put the kits together. And then we have to have guys scrounge around and special order parts. So that was a big thing is we scrapped all of it.

it. We just said we're getting rid of all of it. I put a couple ads out there. A bunch of garage for guys came and picked up a lot of it. We gave it away practically. Smartest thing we ever did. I go to some places and they've got parts sitting there that haven't been made in 20 years. I mean, it's crazy. And they think, like, I just need that part of the time comes. Now, just replace it. Like, a client doesn't want necessarily to have their old crap with old technology, non-efficient stuff to work anymore. So I think it's just, smart to focus on winning, double down on training, know your P&L. And when people are searching for you by name because you got a great brand and you stand

out, people are coming to a plier for you because of your brand. You'll see. All we have in this life, there's a great book called The Brand Story by Donald Miller. Roy Williams is amazing. Dan Antenali talks about it, but the brand is everything. And it's half of your marketing. That's why if you go to A1Garge.com, you'll see our truck is front and center, the van. and that's why we park in the right spots

and that's why we show their home shows and it's a lot. And people are like, man, you got to be one of the largest companies in home service because they see us so much and then they hear us and then they watch us on TV and then they see the bus stops and then they see us on social media.

So it's an Omni approach, but the brand is what we're advertising. Exactly. You look at other brands and you're like, man, this is janky, but so many people have so much pride. And of course their family and friends say it looks great and they're proud.

They have no idea. They're not a pro. My customers love my rap. My customers love my wraps. I hear that so often. So, okay, we're marketing to your existing customers. That's a really good growth strategy, right? No.

Yeah, we're trying to, with this brand that we're talking about, is reach people that have no idea who you are. They've never met you. They don't know that you're a nice guy, a trustworthy guy, but you're going to look at this rap. So we're not marketing to your mom. and your nephew and your kids and your church and your kids and your first customer you know well the people go to Angie they're going to Thumbtack look if you're going to create real value

people got to come and search for you and that's how you scale if you're going to B&I meetings I started out of B&I I started out Angie yeah same year I started out doing ads on Craigslist I had to graduate to this level and if I go back to talk to my younger self the first thing I do is get the right brand I mean, the one thing I'll cautionary people is I had a guy get branded correctly and he goes, I'm out of money. Now what? And I go, well, the brand is the first thing I do, but I didn't know you started the business with $30,000. Not to mention, you can finance the wraps with the vehicle. Exactly. If you get with any of these big companies, they'll finance at all. They'll make it super affordable for you. Some people are like, yeah, I don't like debt. This is not the time to go listen to Dave Ramsey. Get the right brand. make it affordable for yourself and get the right clients. I can't trust it enough. I'm not lying to you guys. When I partner with a company,

and I've done this a few times, the first thing we do is get it rebrand and get it rewrapped. I mean, it's the most important thing. And it's hard to do. And some people are like, well, we built such a big, look, we stayed A1 garage because that was $30 million. And there's that old phrase, A1 from day one, like it's A1 quality.

That's top tier. So we made it work, but some people have the weirdest brand, like B and I mechanical. What does that even mean? Exactly. It's, unless you're IBM, it's not going to work. IBM or Yelp or Google. Like these three word, three letter like.

We have what we do. A1 garage door service. Yeah. And you speak a lot about brand and a lot of people maybe don't know exactly what that is, right? Like they're like, I have a brand. That's, how do you put it nicely, right? Like, yeah, you have a logo and you have some colors. It's almost like you have a collection of drywall and studs and a foundation and some roofing shingles, which constitutes a house.

But it's not a home. Yeah. There's no. Rhymer rhythm. Yeah. The shirts are all different colors. I used to wear all these different polos. I had purple, orange, El Levy is like, you're going to go straight black because they don't stain.

They wash. Yeah, I like it. It's good. Yeah. So we did that. And then we started saying the dress go, still-toed boots, you got to wear gloves, got to tuck in your shirt. We're not as, we're not as harsh as HVAC could be where they got to wear the blue pants and the American logo and the Sintas type stuff. Yeah. But we're only working in the garage.

And I'll tell you, I got one of my top guys in Minnesota takes everybody out to the truck. And he shows them how it's organized. And they go, we're going with you because you've got pride in what you do. And I do look at trucks all the time. I take pictures. And I'm like, man, I can help so many businesses. You see a dentist that offers, like, we do cavities, we do root canals, a billboard. And I'm like, dude, like I look, because I'm looking out, no one's, of course you do

cavities and cleanings and root canals. Like, you're a dentist. Yeah, what's the root emotion here? Yeah, you want to get them to say, like, Rafi, he's in town, the number one lawyer. I just talked to him the other day. He bought nine acres in Paradise Valley. For a house? He's building a house there.

He's got to tear down the house. It's in the center. It's right by where we're building. And Raffey's just him smiling, and it says Raffy. There's no, like, what kind of law did you? Nothing law. You know he's an accident attorney. Because he's on every major road.

His plan is when you get an accident, you look up and call him and you think of them. Marketing is a lifeblood of every company and the brand is everything. and you see his pictures they're all the same they're not modified and he's done the same thing for the last 10 years consistency and he stands out in a crowded world

and he spends the money I mean he's spending 30% of his revenue but there's no real hard cost there's no cost of goods there's no material so that's what lawyers got to do but my best plan is for you guys to call Tim Tim how do people get a hold of you

if you want you can email me directly, Tim at smartrap.com. Tim at smartwrap.com. Pretty easy. Yeah. It's like it's spelled. Tim at smartwrap. W-R-A-P.

Yeah. W-R-A-P. There's a W-R-A-P. There's a W in there because he's not a rapper. And getting back on that branding thing too, right? Like, I often, yeah, like they have the logo, they have, but they have these colors. I see a lot of gaudy stuff, right? Oh, yeah, they've been like this muscular.

And it's like, no house mom wants that crazy godie. Like that's a cool tattoo for your tribal. Yeah. Like that you can get, like people think your rap should look like a tattoo. And they put black and all this crazy stuff. Black everywhere. No one. Oh, man, I could go on or not.

It's such a mistake. Photography. Bad mistake. Photography is a big mistake. Even if it's a drawing, I don't really, I do not want to see a, another air conditioner on a HVAC truck, literally nobody cares. Yeah.

The thing they care about is, same in your business, are you trustworthy? Are you going to fix us as, am I going to have any problems, not a distraction of, because basically what you're doing then is you're like, oh, I saw an air,

that reminds me, I'm going to go home and Google air conditioning companies, not the company I just saw that has the wrap on it, and getting back to the sponsorship stuff too. you're an HVAC company. There's American standard. Wow, that's a good brand.

I've heard that's a good brand. I'm going to go on the internet and get an American standard. Or a Linux or a goodman. Right. From not you. You just reminded me of the industry or the brand. Do that on a different piece of marketing, or not at all, but definitely not on the rap.

It's so bizarre to see more than one logo on a wrap. And a lot of them want pretty prominent. Yeah, they want half things. the wrap, but they're paying for half of it, and they're glad to pay it because it's expanding their brand. They're smart. And it's the people that I feel bad about that don't have enough money. That's why you finance it. I mean, it's just why you finance it. Look, if you felt this message resonates, it's because I'm trying to help you because I was you. Trust me, I cut corners. I thought the, I used to buy Dodge Dakota's because I could pick them up for three grand.

And quite frankly, that's all I could afford, because I didn't know about financing. I didn't know that the brand mattered. And when we started doing it right, and the employees are so happy, they get to make great money and their wives are happy. No one's ever bought them a new truck. They've been at three different companies in the past. And they're like, that's the question we get all the time. You guys have new trucks? That's important question. And then they see them and they're like, man, we want to work there. You know any comments I get about when are you hiring here? Where can I move to go work at your company because they see we care? You could probably look on a graph and pinpoint exactly the spot where you did that.

I can tell you when the profit started. You know, I was 30 million, but I wasn't keeping much. And then all of a sudden the profit because they got the right clients that just wanted to fix the right way. Yeah. You can say right there on the, it goes like this. It's going up. It's going in the right direction.

But as soon as you got that hockey stick, usually that's right where you. That the brand right. Yeah. Exactly. Well, look, it's an investment. It's not a cost. And I think more people need to do it. Tim, close us out.

What are your final thoughts? Well, again, appreciate everything that you've done. The people listening here, if they don't already know, Tommy's the real deal. He does help people. He's not doing this for whatever. There's a lot of gurus out there that have never done it. Yeah. He doesn't need to do it.

But he loves the industry. And I seen it firsthand. So there's that. I'm looking to grow. again, if people are looking a good place to work, you know, you don't need to call me about a rap,

we can call me and see if you want to work here. One of the gross strategies we have this year is as an acquisition as well. So that's a fun, a fun new thing. Yeah, so here's my advice if you acquire,

just make sure you're staying in your willhouse. You focus on fleet rafts. Because I were you, I'd be calling all the people you know at Enterprise Holman and all these other places and saying, look, I'm willing to pay, but I'm looking for some of the best companies you have. Even the ones that were good before, but stop, you know, maybe the owner got older. That's going to be your best spot because they know. They've worked with a lot, hundreds of companies in each market. They'll hand feed them to you.

Tom, listen, I'll give you 2% of the transactions if you line me up. but the last thing you want to do is waste all day looking at shit companies that don't have their they can't do a Q of E they're not ready to sell they've got piles of inventory they want money for so you just go to a well-ran outfit if somebody's just ready to retire maybe they're not big but they got great clients and they'll tell you they'll tell you or or you go to 3M or you know Avery or whoever you use and say who's a client that was ordering a lot from you that's just kind of slowed down or late paid they'll find the right deals for you you got to be very careful because you can waste a lot of time

and you can buy the wrong business and you think you did good. And it's a mistake. Yeah, I've got a lot to learn before I go hand out a bunch of money. Well, the great news is I think you can buy the businesses. The bank will finance the deal. They'll usually finance four to five times EBITDA. And usually that's probably what you could buy the business for even. Or you work on terms where you still listen to them to pay over the next three

years. All I need you to do is make sure we're bringing in the clientele. So a lot of the owners are great as sales, but they don't know, like the heart parts of what you've done is bring on the talent, work in multi-city, multi-state, and continue to get it out on time with quality. So if you know anybody looking to possibly sell their rap shop that specializes in fleets, great. If you know anybody that wants to get into the fleet game and their talented individuals called Tim up. And obviously, if you want to get a free rap, consider taking a change, at least call him up and see what he's got to offer. I give you some options.

I think they're very economical. Like I said, it's not going to break the bank, but it's quality and it won't bait in the sun. It's going to be the same every time. It's going to be done right. And as Ken Goethe would say, it's the right way, not the easy way. Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. I was going to print that and stick it on the wall, you know, 40 feet wide in our shop.

because, you know, I really took that to heart. Well, I appreciate you, brother. It's always fun to hang out. I hope you get a lot of business from this because you deserve it, but more importantly, the listeners deserve it. If they want to see the impact, you know, you should call my buddy Bueller.

Jason Bueller, you know, he had a great company, very big, and he took a chance. It's a really standout name. It's his last name. Got the wraps done right. got the right logo, and he goes, Tommy, business tripled the first year. More importantly, the profit went way up. And profit allows you to do the right things for the business.

He didn't fill his pockets to go buy three houses. He invested it all back in and got the right people, built the right training. And that's what makes these things take off as profit allows you to scale. It doesn't mean you should just start making draws out of the business, but it's amazing what you do. and I know you're going to be successful. It's fun watching it. And, you know, just so you know, we're in the first inning.

We're going to get you a lot busier. So it's going to be fun. So looking forward to it. It's been a bit of a long slug, right? And I'd imagine the same thing with yourself. Once you get that ball rolling and now the momentum, man, it's really exciting. Like the enthusiasm really kicked up. And you're like, man, this is, this is great.

This is great business, man. Yeah. It's a very good business. And you need more clients because, you know, if I were to buy your business, the last piece of advice, if I look at a business and 40% of the volumes coming from one client, you've always got that. Now, we're not changing. But if something happened to you, God forbid, you just said you want to disappear into

Tahiti. and the business changed, we may have to change, but you continue to take care of yourself. That's not something you need to worry about, but that's what an investor would worry about. So hopefully you pick up a lot of great clientele. I know one thing.

If I ever called you and a client wasn't happy, you're going to say, Tommy, I'm going to go make it right right now. And if that includes giving the money back, you do it. But that's not going to happen because you do it stuff the right way. So that's coming on, Tim. I appreciate it. All right, brother. Over and out.

Thanks for listening, guys. Hopefully you took something and you actually. actually do something with it. Not next month, not next year. You make the changes today. 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.