The Home Service Expert Podcast - The Intersection of Technology and Marketing in Business with Jim Leslie

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

In this conversation, Jim Leslie discusses the journey of navigating business challenges, the importance of technology and marketing in scaling a business, and the need for a supportive community. They emphasize the significance of focus, execution, and creating value for all stakeholders involved. The discussion also highlights the common pitfalls that business owners face and the necessity of surrounding oneself with the right people to achieve long-term success. Don’t forget to register for Tommy’s event, Freedom 2025! This is the event where Tommy’s billion-dollar network will break down exactly how to accelerate your business and dominate your market in 2025. For more details visit freedomevent.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Cold Open 00:00:16 Title Sequence 00:00:36 Show Notes VO 00:01:22 Intro Into Interview 00:32:23 Insertion 00:33:32 Interview Resumes 01:01:38 Outro  

People would say, well, how's the business going? And I'd fake it. Oh, yeah, things are going great. But in my head, I'm calculating, all right, how many more weeks can I stay afloat? I got to make a payroll? Can I get another job? You know, what's going to happen?

And when I finally realized that I needed to get around the right people and get help, that's when everything changed. Welcome to The Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text, notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you

haven't got your copy of my newest book elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 States. Just go to elevate and win.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right guys, welcome back to the home Service Expert. Today's going to be amazing. I got a good friend of mine, a business partner in the studio, and it happens to be a record early day I've ever done a podcast. It is 7 a.m. on a Saturday.

Jim, how the hell are you? Good, good. That's how we roll. I put early. The early bird gets the worm, right? Yeah, I guess so. I mean. That's how we roll. I put early. The early bird gets the worm, right? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, today's a fun day. We've got a lot of companies in town talking about scaling their businesses, doing a shop tour, talking about how they can open up multiple locations. We had Dan Miller here yourself. I went up there. We had the famous L. Levy. You know, we've been, how long have we known each other?

I don't know, four plus years? I was living at the apartments. I know that when I had met you because I was walking around the cemetery. The first day or the first time we talked on the phone, somebody had set up the call and they said, oh, you're going to get on the phone with Tommy and it's going to be a 15-minute call. I get on and you're like, yeah, I'm riding my Segway, walking the dog around the apartments like – you're going like a mile a minute. I was like, holy heck.

Yeah. I remember I was like, man, I need to put this guy in a different role. So I think I was like, you need to start working right away. And then slowly but surely you came into town, you came to A1. And that was amazing. I mean, you want to explain a little bit about your history, how you've been obsessive about learning your whole life and how we got to know each other. Yeah. I'll keep it short.

But I had an unusual background, right? My family was a trade contractor and I was kind of in that business from an early age. I was 16 years old and keeping the books with QuickBooks and just doing all that stuff. But my dad said, Oh, you don't want to work like this for a living. You need to go to college and get an office job. I went and majored in computers, math, and it's going to be an actuary of different things. But got out of school, and it's like, I can't really sit still.

And I ended up back selling roofing, doing a couple different things before I started my own home service business. But just a weird background of growing up in the trades, getting a lot of knowledge and technology and different things and then coming back to apply it. And then you had, you know, I don't know what happened, but you had got on our list of HSC back in the day and reached out because you were kind of you're the CEO of a company.

I was running a company and I went back because I actually didn't remember how I got on your list and one time I went back and like tracked back. So and I was you know I was a CEO running this company. I was trying to hire people and looking for resources for that. And you had some guide on the internet, Tommy's 5 Tips for Hiring or something, and I downloaded that. That's how I got on your email list. But that was like a year before we even connected maybe.

So … And then what I really saw is just this ability to – initially, it was the technology side that you understood. This is before AI, but you could just make things work. You understand Zapier, APIs, how to get outputs. And then it turns out really any role I could put you in. I don't think I ever thought about putting you in a CFO role, but now you understand probably more than most CFOs. But I realize you know a lot about marketing. And marketing is recruiting, marketing is getting your avatar client, marketing is being able to get lead aggregators, it's Google, there's just so much to it. I think if everybody learned marketing, that's what I'm telling

my niece and nephew to do is learn marketing and learn door to door, so you don't be afraid. But you seem to just figure all this stuff out. Yeah, some of that was out of necessity. I was talking to a guy yesterday, one of the companies we were meeting with, and he said, oh, that's an unusual skill set. People that are usually technology,

don't understand marketing, and people. And I'm like, well, it was born out of necessity because when I launched my first business, it's like, all right, how do you get a customer? I have no idea, right? Well, I used the skills that I had, right? I could build a website. I could do online marketing. I could do all that.

But the technology, part of it is just half of the story, right? It's like how do you get the right headline? How do you get the right offer? How do you build those things? How do you target the right customer? And so I learned all that just sort of through, you know, through sheer necessity. You know, I think what people are missing about me and you is I've probably hired two dozen consultants. There's not a mailing list you're not on. There's not a book you haven't read, whether it be Dan Kennedy, ClickFunnels. You've used all these technologies. There's not a mailing list you're not on. There's not a book you haven't read, whether it be Dan Kennedy, ClickFunnels. You've used all these technologies. There's

hundreds of technologies that you've implemented, and you've done everything from meta to lead ags to every single thing on Bing to paid to organic. And it goes on and on. And I always ask you, I was like, Hey, have you seen this? You're like, yeah, I've already paid for that course. And we spend millions and millions and millions of dollars a year learning. And what I love about it is there's a lot of organizations out there that do a lot of cool things. A lot of them were made for HVAC because those guys started

sharing a lot in the 80s. And I feel like a lot of them were made for HVAC because those guys started sharing a lot in the 80s. And I feel like a lot of other companies never really had a chance to learn about financing, budgeting, service agreements, and the list goes on. Why should you buy new vehicles? And as you start studying these things, and me and you started hanging out a lot, I mean, what are some of the biggest breakthroughs you feel like you've learned since HSE, HSF, but really, there's a lot you came in and did with A1. Yeah.

Well, that's a big question. I think the biggest thing was like figuring out the intersection between technology, marketing, sales process, how all that relates together. You can have a great marketing campaign, but if you're booking rates off, conversion rates off, your ticket averages aren't right, you're not making the right offers, everything has to be downed in together. And how all of that stuff converges, how you can use technology to influence these things, I think over the last couple of years, that's the been one of the biggest revelations.

You know, I know we do these budget meetings, and we do a couple of them a year. And you work with Alan Rohr, you work closely, you know, Adrian, very well, you work with a lot of different people on the accounting finance side, which, frankly, is the boring side that I used to hate. And if there was money in the bank and I said, what good is a budget? How do you predict what TV radio billboards or SEO is going to do? But when I learned these things, life started to change dramatically and the bottom line started to get better.

And I learned what ad backs are on pure EBITDA and how to really go after the biggest hole in the ship. What is it about most people like myself that just it's not fun it's a lagging indicator but it's a necessity. You have to learn it. The balance sheet income statement cash flow. Yeah. I mean I work with hundreds of companies and that's one of the first questions. Hey, can we look at your P&L? Can we look at your balance sheet? Can we see what's going on? Like half the time, people were like, well, yeah, we've got this but we're not sure

if it's right. We don't have confidence in the numbers. So there's an element of reporting but you're right. It's backwards looking. It's like what happened and I have tons of friends in the finance world and not trying to offend them but it's like it's backwards. It's reporting what happened, modeling what's going to happen in the future. All finance people are super conservative, right?

We're trying to take businesses and double them and triple them and they say, well, I mean, how many budget meetings internally do we sit through where everybody was telling you that can't be done, right? Yeah, no, it's true. And once you really understand the fundamentals of business, it gets a lot easier. But I will say, the team at A1 and you watched because you seen Lee Ann come in, the right FP&A, and I didn't know what FP&A meant, financial planning and analysis. And when you get these high level people that could actually go through pay structures,

bonus structures, hey, if we did this, if we change this route, we could save gas. I mean, I had no idea just crunching these numbers and coming up with these things would make such an impact in the business. And you were not only part of it, you were super involved and you would build out your own pivot tables. And I... Yeah, we did a ton of modeling on capacity and call handling and tons of analytics on what was happening in the call center.

I mean, again, this was before a lot of the AI tools that are out there now. But there's a forward-looking element that you have to have, but you can't be constrained by what most people think is practical if you really want to grow. So you've visited probably a countless number of shops, and you've dealt with hundreds, if not thousands, of business owners in the home service, home improvement sector. What are some common challenges that you see? And probably put this into categories, maybe under five million, and then however the different ranges of revenue and profit. Yeah, that's a great question.

And we were at dinner last night, I showed you that app that logs your flights or whatever. I've put like 200,000 air miles in the last like two years, most of that going between our events, meeting with the owners, touring shops. So I've started to see so many that I've kind of forgot where I've been. But there are definitely common themes that have emerged, right? You know, zero to one, maybe two million,

you know, a lot of it is the owner doing the heavy lifting and people get stuck there where they can't figure out how to build a team and start to make the right hires. You know, three to five million how to build a team and start to make the right hires. You know, three to five million, they get a team, they get some basic people, you know, but again, they get stuck on, you know, not having the right systems, not having manuals, processes, not having the right org chart. You know, a common question there is, you know, who's the next person should I hire? Should I hire this person? Do I need some person to do that?

And, you know, at that level, the org chart is really your roadmap to what's the next person to hire. 10 million and above, there's these natural breakpoints, a million, 3 million, 10 million, 30 million, 100. Every one of those, you have to reinvent the business, and it requires thinking in a different way. And I was talking to somebody yesterday saying, that's the one thing that Tommy's been great at is,

in each of these plateaus where somebody might say, hey, I'm a $10 million business or I'm a $30 million business, I'm doing good. Maybe I could do 5% more next year, 10% more next year. You looked at it and said, how do we re-engineer this to double? And that's what's required at each of those levels is how do we fundamentally change, you know, the team, the processes, the approach, the offering, whatever we're doing, how do we

change that to go way beyond it? Yeah. And I'll tell you this, although business is not easy, the problems are way different. They're more fun now. I don't worry about guys showing up drunk. I don't worry about if there's enough money in the bank to make payroll. I don't worry about is a vendor going to show up when we need it most or a door delivery or a marketing campaign. But, you know, we got 70 new technicians starting next month. And, you know, I remember that story about KFC opening a new store like every 19 hours or whatever it is.

Right. I mean, it's crazy to look at what you can do in 10 years. And people, I've always said this, they overestimate what they could do in one year. They don't have a plan. And they underestimate what they could do if they stick to it and focus. And I think most entrepreneurs, and I think you would agree, is we get a lot of ideas, a lot of stuff comes down our pipeline, and we start saying, man, I could do that.

And we all can't. I mean, if we applied ourselves and put the time into it, and you know Dan Martell. You were out there with me with him. And this idea of focus on the one thing, buy back time, and stick to it, and avoid distractions or not to say, no, I think that's a common issue with most people, whether your brother-in-law tells you, let's start flipping houses, or let's add on a different sector, let's expand

faster, or there's all these ideas, or let me start a wrap company because I'm buying so much trucks, or I'll hire a bunch of mechanics mechanics or I want to make sure I'm getting all of my recycled metal money and all these things are distractions. And for the record, you did a lot of those things, but I did all those things. But you know, I think I think you had that realization that, you know, hey, this isn't there's an opportunity cost, right? The time like I don't know if you remember, you and me took a trip to the scrap metal place one time, right? And

it's like, there's an opportunity cost to time that like, hey, we can recover some dollars here, but we're tripping, you know, we're picking up dollar bills and tripping over hundreds, right? So, you know, I, what is it about the elite of the elite that you one of the things that I've noticed in our meetings is everybody that's killing it they implement quickly they show up they participate they're always on screen they're they're not saying I can't go on screen because I'm not at work they're always at work they're working on a lot more facets of life you know they're

working on their marriage they're working on their lot more facets of life. You know, they're working on their marriage. They're working on their parenting. It's like, if you do one thing good, you do everything good. What do you see the common traits of people? Because you've told me, and I know this to be a fact, there's a lot of people that went from 30 million to 100 million that are involved with us. Or, you know, maybe like 88 million. I don't think there's a ton of people at 100 yet, but.

Yeah, I mean, we've had some dramatic, you know, success stories, right? But the key trait between all these people is, you know, they're open-minded, and they don't assume that they know everything, right? It's like I'll talk to a $5 or $10 million business where, you know, frankly, the owners know it all. They, you know, they read some stuff on the internet. they saw some things on Facebook, and now they know, they know everything. And look, I don't know everything. You don't know everything. We've always been great about saying like, we don't know what we don't know. Let's find the right people

and figure it out. And, you know, that's why we share what we know with people who are trying to get where we are. But we're looking up the pyramid saying, all right, what's the next level? And there's so many people that are just like, oh, you know, I've got this figured out. I don't need your help. Or I don't, you know. You know, I've had I've had consultants come into town. I've had shoot, I was with a guy yesterday that's doing 150 million EBITDA two days ago. And I think my best quality, there's two of them, is I'm still humble and I'm genuinely curious. And when I get around these people, I don't brag. I don't say I got it figured out.

I say how much I respect you and what you've done. And I take notes and I say, would you please guide me? And it seems like the smaller, more unsuccessful people, and I don't care what it is in life, it's like the person lecturing you that's been through five divorces on marriage. You know, I don't care what it is in life. What I see is success leaves clues. And if I go to somebody humbly and respectfully and I honor them and I honor

them on stage, I honor them on podcasts, and I send thank you letters. They'll give me so much because they're just like, he's actually doing stuff and he's given me credit. And I think that's what Al Levy loved about me is I gave him a lot of credit and you give a lot of credit. I mean, the stuff you've learned, I hear you talk and sometimes I hear a piece of me, a piece of Al Levy, a piece of Al Roar, a piece of your history.

It's like we take these things and half my quotes that I think I made up, I'm sure I've read somewhere. And I think you're a very humble guy too. Yeah. Everybody can learn from somebody else, right? It's not like, hey, A1's 200, whatever million, we've got it all figured out. I look sometimes at million-dollar companies, 2 million, and they're doing one thing like really good.

It's like, hey, that can apply elsewhere. Jim Rhodes said once, you can learn also from the people that weren't successful, right? Take the person out that – like you said, hey, they've been divorced five times. They can tell you what not to do, right? Big, big, there's big lessons to be learned anywhere if you're open-minded and that's the biggest problem I see is people just, hey, we know everything. It's all figured out. We don't need help. You know? Yeah. A lot of people are like, could I come drive with one of your guys for a day or shadow you for two days? And I'm like, you're not going to learn a lot. Like you got to understand that our business functions completely different than any other

business. And they think, man, if I just drove with his techs, if I just saw Tommy's schedule, you look at my schedule and be like, I don't do payroll. I'm not in the business. I don't want to be in the business day to day. I'm looking, I'm looking 10 years down the road. I'm meeting the right people. I'm always getting educated. I'm looking 10 years down the road. I'm meeting the right people. I'm always getting educated. I'm reading books. There's this great book that you're very familiar with because we know both authors, Who Not How. I'm looking for that next who. I'm looking for the next big breaking point. And it's thinking differently. There's a good book called Get Different by Michael McKellowitz. And I feel bad for people if they think they're going to watch

my schedule and be like, if you went back they think they're going to watch my schedule and be like, if you went back seven years, you might look at my schedule and learn a lot more. But I remember what that was like. And that's the biggest thing is doing a time study. You know, what do you see from smaller, more unsuccessful shops that the owners are still doing, that they're just getting in the way. Yeah, I mean, it's everything, right? They're trying to drive everything. And what's weird is, is they'll admit, like, you know, they could hear that conversation, say, yeah, oh yeah, you're absolutely right, Tom.

I understand that. And then they turn around and do it, you know? I've seen big shops where like, you know, we talk a lot about execution frameworks, how to build out workflows to work on the business, not in it, right? Everybody says that, oh, you gotta work on the business, but nobody teaches you how to do that, right?

And so we've concentrated a lot on teaching people how to work on the business. Here's the tools you need, here's the processes, here's the framework. And I show that to people, and then the owner will run off and try and do all that themselves, and come back a month later, two months later. Well, I haven't got a lot done. I'm like, do you think that you're the one that should be doing this? Like, don't you have a project manager on your team or somebody? Why are you trying to do this? Why are you trying to write

manuals? Like, you didn't sit down to write manuals, right? I mean. Well, me and Al Levy worked on the first few, and then the team worked on more of them. I wanted to understand the basic concept, but you got to understand when I met Al, I wasn't very profitable. And he got me to start working on the business. You're absolutely right. I just meant if you sat down and you said, okay, Tommy, you need to write 57 operating

manuals for every different position in your business, would it ever have gotten done? No, it doesn't get done. It gets, you get started with a lot of things, but nothing ever gets to the finish line. And that's who I am. I mean, rocket fuel, right? I'm a visionary. And a lot of people say they're both, but yet they get stuck.

And it's a story of Walt Disney and his brother Roy. Walt Disney, Disney Universal Studio, all this stuff in Florida, California wouldn't have been there without Roy, and people don't understand that. And we've got this big head that we could work, we could get it done if we think we can, and we just don't. It's getting the right people on the bus. Jim Collins talks about this. Every book I've ever read talks about being a talent magnet and giving them an invested interest in the success of the business. And I'm telling you, me being the owner, I've been the guy in the way almost every time. I'm the guy in the way. And so I've learned to get out of the way and let my people execute and praise them. And yes, I do have a lot of ideas. And sometimes they, they say no, and here's why.

And they back it up. And I think that that's something that most people can't handle. They're like, I'm the business owner. I took all the risk. You're going to do what I say. Yeah, I mean, once once you get to a certain level, it's it's about building the right team and the right people. And, you know, no, no one person, you know, creates a $300 million company solely by, you know, their own, you know, you can't turn every nut and bolt, right? You have to have the people working in each of the departments and people great in each of those roles and that's a big part of it where a lot of owners get wrapped around the axles of just, you

know, they think they know how to do it versus you delegating, okay, here's the operations team. You know, they're great at it, come up with a plan, let me look at it, you know, but run with it. You know, as I speak to Dan Martell, who works with Richard Branson and studied under, you know, people like Oprah, this idea of every business they go into now, they hire the leader and the leader hires top down. But most of us, we don't have enough money

to get this $350,000 leader and build the business. So we gotta start from the bottom up. And that's where I started. And the most important couple roles for me, believe it or not, was an executive assistant. Somebody that was gonna handle all the minutia of the day to day. Tell me where I need to be. Get me there on time. Check emails. Make sure the little things like I'm getting my haircut on time or my travel is booked correctly. And I found myself doing so many minimum wage

jobs early on. Yeah, there's there's people out there listening to this that are like, you know, oh, you can't book an airplane flight or something, right? And, you know, but, you know, when you really get to that point and you realize like, hey, the amount, everybody has 24 hours and all of this is time wasted, you know, that things that other people could be doing. time wasted, you know, that things that other people could be doing. I hear that constantly from owners like, oh, they're booking their own travel, they're doing this, they're doing that. Well, nobody can figure out how to get the flights right or whatever, you know. And it's like the bigger the bigger you get, sometimes it feels like the less that you're doing because it's big picture. It's it's just getting the right people in place the right, you know, the right direction for things. But that's that's a big part of it. You know? Yeah, I come in sometimes and people are like, man, are you working 12 hours a day? I'm like, well, if you consider, I get it.

Unfortunately, in Phoenix, I'm very close like brothers to the guys. So they still call me quite a bit. And I enjoy those conversations. It's usually good news. But for the most part, I don't work near as hard and stay as busy as I used to be, but I'm always, I take that time now and learn because the law of the lid. Do you want to explain the law of the lid? Yeah, I mean, you can never advance beyond, how does he say? The level of, in which the founder or business owner and the same thing as the

COO, the double-double idea. Usually most people could double the company twice and you need to move on unless they're elevating to the level of which the founder is. So the faster I learn things and have these conversations and study and hang out with guys like you that are studying, the quicker I can grow. There's an inverse correlation between success and the amount of work that you're doing or at least how busy you feel, right? Meaning back when I was in a truck doing the work, working 12 hours a day, nailing cabinets

to a wall, sweating, I was super busy and I felt like, oh, I'm accomplishing things. I'm successful, right? But the financial numbers didn't add up to it, right? And now that that's kind of turned, it's like, well, I'm not doing physical work. And hey, 15 years ago, I would have been building the website and writing all the code. And now I have people that do these things. And there's this inverse correlation that most owners don't realize, and they want to just hold on to everything. Whether that's booking the travel or things that an EA could help with, or whether that's like, hey, marketing or something in the business, they want to just grab on to all of of it and they can't move past that level.

Well, I think the biggest issue I find with most business owners is trust. They've been burned in the past and really what it comes down to is not being a talent magnet, not paying right, not having checks and balances. Cause you get those three things, inspect what you expect and you hire right

and you give them a stake in the outcome. But you got to learn to trust and my mom cried, my dad cried to me, Bill used to cry and say these people are taking advantage of you and this goes back to the old thing is what happens if you train them and they leave? What happens if you train them and they stay and give them a reason to stay and be a good leader and show up and smile and praise them? I was thinking about this this morning actually. I was telling somebody in the car right over here, it's all a mirror.

The biggest lesson that I learned was your success isn't a function of how hard you work or how well you know your trade. It's a function of the value that you bring to other people. A lot of people have heard things like that and say, oh yeah, well, I do great for my clients, right? But it's not just your clients. It's your vendors. It's your partners. Every everybody around you, right? Your employees. You have to create value for everybody. It has to be a win and you know, so many people that I hear say, oh, I can't find the right employees, you know, they steal from me. I got the wrong people.

Right. Look in a mirror. What? Oh, I can't keep the right people. I can't attract the right people. I can't hire. We're paying a ton of money. We can't hire the right people.

Look in a mirror. Why is that happening? This isn't a metaphysical like crazy woo- you know, woo woo thing, right? What you put out into the universe is what gets reflected back at you. If you're creating value for other people, you know, you'll get value back. And again, it's not this metaphysical thing. It's like, people recognize you for what you are. If they don't want to, you know, if you can't hire, it's because people don't want to work for you because they've, they figured you out. You're sucking value out of everything and not creating it for the right people.

You know, there are a lot of people that really feel like, and I've heard story after story, like this is my business. No one can make more money than me. They focus so much on their weekly pay and their yearly compensation and they're, they're, they're joining a country club and putting their wife and daughter on payroll rather than creating enterprise value. I don't think a lot of people understand

that it's not very hard in home service to create a $30 million business if you put your head down. But so many people are worried about comparison. I've always said, don't let my dream become your dream. Why would you want my dream? Like, listen, look, I've always said, don't let my dream become your dream. Why would you want my dream? Like listen, look, I enjoy, I'd rather do this podcast with you than be on the golf course, watch a movie. Like people don't understand this is my fun.

This is what I was built to do. This is like my brain. And it's a really weird thing and I don't advise it for anybody. I can't help it. This is what God made me to be. But people are like, well, if you could do it, I could do it. I believe that you could do it. But do you want to do that? First thing I ask is how many kids do you have? Yeah, this, I mean this stuff is what I enjoy too. You know, we're built the same way, you know. People ask me, you know,

what's going on with sports team or football game? I used to say I hadn't seen a football game since 1997 when the Steelers were in the playoff. That was the last one. But unfortunately you broke that streak. We went to a Cardinals game one day. But prior to that, I don't watch sports. I don't watch TV. This is my hobby. This idea of putting someone else's t-shirt or shirt on, whether it's Wayne Gretzky or Brett Favre, I want to put my own shirt on. I mean, this is Home Service Freedom.

I got another one that says, you know, Mellow Estate, you know, whatever. I've got a collection of shirts too. Yeah. But it's like, you know, I just I love sports, and I don't mind watching a good game. But some people, that's their life. Some people's life is watching Bitcoin. Some people, they're just waiting for their day. How many times have you heard, I'm in the wrong industry.

You don't understand my market. You don't understand this blame game. I've heard it so much that now when I speak anywhere, usually the first slide in my presentation says, you know, this will not work in my blank, right? Because people have excuses. This won't work in my market, my area, my trade. You know, I'm in the wrong business, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's all excuses. Or you know, I can never sell at those prices. You should see my competition. I hear that all the time.

I mean, you guys think that I'm in 40-some-odd markets and there's not a guy doing it for less than half. The thing that I've reflected on is, I don't remember a time, you know, when we were working closely in A1 where you came and said, look what this other company is doing, and we have to do that or we're chasing them, right? We only looked at ourself and said, how can we better our best, right? And in all the different things that I'm involved with and we're involved

with now, people will come to me and say, look what this other company is doing, look what they're doing, look what this person, I'm like, I don't care. They can be successful and we can be successful. The only people we, like that's small-minded thinking. If you're looking at your competitors, looking at other people in the industry, worried about what some random guy on the internet said, who cares? Like, who cares?

We're wildly successful. We're gonna continue to be, because it's like, we're just looking at what have we done and what can we do better? Hey guys, hope you're loving today's episode. We're five weeks away from Freedom 2025, And what can we do better? million, $50 million, even $500 million home service businesses from scratch. People like Ellen Rohr, who scaled ZoomDrain to $50 million. My buddy Aaron Gaynor, who grew EcoPlumbers to $75 million. Ken Goodrich, who took Gettle past $250 million.

And numerous other home service contractors who've made it to the top. They'll all be in one room sharing their best strategies and tactics, moves that can help you grow your business in weeks, maybe even days. So listen, you've only got five weeks left to lock in your spot at Freedom 2025. The best hotel rooms are running out and flights are getting more expensive. Don't miss out and get stuck thinking later, I should have signed up when Tommy nudged me. Go to freedomevent.com right now and lock in your spot to join us in Vegas. That's freedomevent.com. All right, now back to the episode.

Well, this old quote that I still have up, but it's probably my favorite quote that was in the break area is, winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners. And a lot of people think they could rip off and duplicate everything. I've learned I could rip off a lot of stuff, but from other industries. Even outside of home service. Sometimes I go to a restaurant, I'm like, wow, they got a special birthday. I was talking about this the other day. This guy came to my house and he goes, I ran a restaurant,

and on their birthday, I would give them a free meal, but on average, they would bring in seven other people. And he did the numbers and he realized that's a cash cow. And it's not something necessarily that could apply to A1. The lesson there is, you know, we say this all the time is to grow a business, you have to become a marketer of the business, right? You're not a garage door guy. You're a guy that markets a garage door business.

And a lot of owners say, oh, marketing, that sounds dirty, or blah, blah, blah, whatever. And it's just communication, right? How do you show your value to the world? How well do you communicate? Now, we do that through channels, pay-per-click, and LSA ads, and all this stuff. But at the end of the day, you're finding,

you work on homes, there's a homeowner on the other side and you're communicating your value to them, right? And when you realize that that's what grows the business, you have to become a student of marketing. And so I do the same thing. I study other industries. What are they doing in restaurants? There's a guy that markets law businesses that I follow. And 80% of it, 90% of it doesn't apply. And then there's

that one little thing that you're like, oh, yeah, we can take that and use it. And my team probably hates me because I'm calling them like twice a week and like, look, I saw this thing, you know, in from the auto business or over here. I think if we tweak it this way, I think we can use it. Let's test it and try it. Does it always work? No, we fail a lot more than we succeed. Right. But it's like, you know, you throw 10 things out, test them.

You find the one that works. It pays for all the mistakes of the nine that didn't. You know, what's interesting too is when you came in, Dan Miller came in, he recruited Adrian, and then he recruited Leanne. And it's crazy when I don't try to become good at the things I'm not good at. I don't try to be well-rounded.

I try to become a really focused on my superpowers. And if I get the best of the best, I mean, we jumped from get the best of the best, I mean we jumped from we over doubled the business well over double the business in 19 months and you know since then it's tripled and I will say it's been this idea of you know Jack Welch used to do a lot of turnover every year at GE and my job is not to just I don't get on this podcast and say fire, fire, fire. I say some people just,

they were right for the business at one time, probably like your uncle, you know, whoever in the family. We feel this loyalty and I love loyalty. I'm loyal to a fault. In fact, I've held onto people that I knew were not being effective in the business because I just had a guilt trip. I started crying

my stomach. We're getting knots. Not a big cry, but just super sad if I had to do that. Then I realized, is this what I bet my family's future on these people, the Keepers Test? And I look at most businesses and they got a really old-fashioned bookkeeper. They got a general manager that's answering phones. They're more worried about their air conditioning bill than they are about their conversion rate. They won't get on a tool like Lace or Chirp because they're like,

that's gonna be a cost instead of an investment. It's reversion to the mean. If you're not constantly, you know, it's back to the lava lid. If you're not constantly pushing beyond, everything reverts to the mean and businesses calcify, right? That's why I see companies even today, oh, we don't have a CRM. We're writing –

Or service tighten is expensive. Yeah. Service tighten is expensive or – I mean all of that stuff and it starts at the top. I was on a call with a buddy recently and he's probably going to listen to this podcast. And I know we got to get through a couple of other things. But I said, if you got on Pin Parrot, Lace, and Chirp, and actually spent the time to onboard an A-B test and really work on these things, like get reviews of pictures, make sure you're training your call center, and really, really training on these things. I get reviews of pictures, make sure you're training your call center and really, really

training on the stuff you're learning from Laysan. Cancellation is not booked opportunities and not following the script and really set up the automations. And I said, look, I could probably get you a good price. All these tools cost less than $2,500. And he was dumbfounded. $2,500? And I'm like, but you just spent $120 last month on marketing.

And I look at your conversion rate. I look at your booking rate. I look at how many calls you're getting on your Google My Business page. I look at the automations of jobs that you're not converting. You don't have a rehash. You don't have an unbooked campaign. There's a cost to doing something and there's a cost to not doing something. And most people don't realize the opportunity cost a lot of times of not spending that money

is 10 times greater than what it would actually cost them to buy the tool or implement the thing. Most of the time, as you've seen this with service-type, it's not easy to implement Intact, or ServiceTen, or switch payroll companies. Those are big deals. They go, well, once I get big enough, I'll companies, those are big deals. And they go, well, once I get big enough, I'll get on those tools. And I'm like, dude, it's very hard when you get really big to switch CRM.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all of these things are work. If it was easy, everybody would do it. Right? And that's what I say about home service all the time. Because, I mean, you know, there's so much investors and money and people now flowing into the space and they say, oh, they're just, you know, turning wrenches. They're just installing toilets, garages. This is a simple business, right? And it's like fundamentally, it is simple in terms of, you know, the work that's done. But to build a great company, it's a lot of hard work. It doesn't just happen easy. I see a lot of ex-corporate guys that have come in, some of them in our group and they're like, yeah, I was very successful in a corporate career.

I had some money. I bought a home service company because I thought this would be an easy way to build a nest egg and whatever and they're underwater, right? Because it's the technology, it's the people dynamics, there's so much that goes into it. And I think we have a unique perspective because we both started in a truck, right? And these guys that come into the space

that don't know how, you know, don't know what it's like to be a technician, they just totally missed the point on so much stuff. You're absolutely right. And you could be the best, most successful C-suite person from a really good career. But if you don't know how to work, this is why P companies

need us more than we need them because they don't understand the blue collar industry. They don't understand this guy had a bad relationship with his mother and his dad walked out or he didn't pass 10th grade or he might have a drug problem or

an alcohol issue. And that's our job to figure it out and help them know that they're worth it. And Blue Collar's changing a lot. Now it's an honor to be in the Blue Collar industry. It used to be 15 years ago, it was an embarrassment. Mike Rowe did a lot of things. My own dad telling me you don't want to do this.

Yeah, and that's the thing is, is I don't think people understand how much goes into this, but you do need, once you get those executives that have worked there at the highest level and you got somebody that understands the flow down to CSRs, dispatchers, technicians and installers, but that's the hardest part. Yeah. I mean, there's a difference between an executive team at a $300 million company and what that looks like and where a lot of the listeners are probably at 1, 3, 5, 10 million. There's

a difference between the people that you're trying to hire and the organization structure for sure. But it's like you have to have the perspective of what happens in the home, right? I've knocked on thousands of doors, introduced myself, walked in and sat at the kitchen table and made thousands of sales presentations to a homeowner and there's a knowledge and a perspective of that over time. And a respect factor. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

From your peers. I used to – my wife used to get mad at me because all the, you know, I'd go, I was running three calls a day. And the last appointment, I'd always, you know, I kind of made it a personal go, can I get them to feed me? Because if they had, if they were making dinner and they said, well, why don't you stay for dinner? Like I knew I had the sale, right? My wife used to text, why, you know, come home like, you know, and I'm like, you know, but that was, you know, earning that respect and trust from the customer because you're doing a great job. That's a skill that's learned that a lot of these investor types

don't get. It's like, oh, we do the work. We have the AI answer the call. We just need more technicians and the money will come rolling in. It's a lot deeper than that. It's so much more complicated. So when I started traveling to all these HVAC shops and I started really getting educated, I really felt that if we didn't do something in the garage door industry to elevate it, to bring everybody's prices up, to make them honor their coworkers, to have people drive new vehicles and get branded by Kick Charge and get on Service 10, because we were the first company on Service 10. we were the first company on Schedule Engine and probably the first company on LACE in the home service industry.

All these things that Boris came and talked to me and you at the last Freedom event, but we started this thing called Vertical Track and I invited all these companies in and a lot of people say it was like Woodstock. Their eyes opened up and they realized we don't need to be, you know, plumbers could afford brand new trucks and billboards and they, you know, HVAC, these guys are buying jets. And when we really look back and reflected, most people there said this was an awakening. Well, here's what happened at the next vertical track. Plumbers, HVAC guys,, pest control that we realized that most of the people out there weren't garage doors.

And hence the beginning of the Home Service Freedom Group. And you really grabbed that and you said, listen, I could do this. I love, I could help you from a distance. You're still an investor of A1. But at the same time, you've really just poured your heart and soul. You brought back some people you've worked with in the past that you are loyal, trustworthy, and will get the job done. And you've built

a massive team. Let's just talk about the origins a little bit and how it's grown and what the massive impact this group has made. Yeah, you know, I mean, as you know, I stayed at A1, I think it was 16, 18 months post-transaction, but that whole time I had a feeling, hey, the stuff that we've learned here, could create massive value for other people in the space. And it was just, it wasn't a light bulb moment, it was more just like, I mean,

you were getting texts every day, you know, hey, can you help me in my business? You know, Facebook messages, you know, people would send you. Overloaded. Yeah, and you were sending them to me. And in that early days, you know, I was getting on the phone with everybody you would send over what's going on in your business and trying to diagnose

their individual thing. And, you know, there was a point where I came to you and said, these people all have the same problems. If we jump on a call with every single one, we wouldn't get anything done. It's not that we didn't want to help people, but it's like, and I don't know if you remember there was a point where I said to you, there's so many people asking us for not that we didn't want to help people, but it's like—and I don't know if you remember there was a point where I said to you, there's so many people asking us for help that we can jump on calls with a certain percentage of them, but we're not really helping them because how much can you do in a 30-minute call or an hour call? And then the people that we can't get to, how is that fair to them?

And I'm like, we have to find a solution, one, to buy back our time a little bit. But two, why keep repeating the same things over and over when most of the time there's a process to how you build a great company? And all of those things kind of converged with some of the events that we were doing. And that's when I said, hey, let's build, you know, a group dedicated towards helping people.

You know, not to be another coaching business or another random consultant that doesn't have a lot of real-world experience, but how do we take the proven frameworks and the things that we've done and share that with people that need help with no ulterior motive other than elevating the industry, creating more value, right? Well, I do have an ulterior motive. I mean, literally in the beginning, I said, most of the people I meet are really not fun to work with.

They're control freaks. They don't do the work. They want to make every excuse in the book. And, you know, as you know, because you're an investor in this business, I would like to get in more opportunities down the road. And if it's easy, lucrative, and fun, and they're great people, and they got a great relationship, they don't cheat on their wife, and you know, the simple little things,

I would like to possibly do business with some of these people, but it's like try it before you buy it. But that's not, you know, it's not completely selfish because I know that me and you, if we were able to do something with somebody we love, they would simply 5X overnight. I just say it's not transactional.

I'm not looking at people saying, how can I make a couple bucks off of this guy? How could you get in their pocket or take over their company or a hostel? There's so many bad people in this industry. Yeah, it's how can we work with great people that want to do amazing things? That we enjoy. Yeah, and that's, you know, I was telling, I was telling somebody yesterday, more and more, like my number one test for hiring for, you know, for partners, business partners, ventures. It's like, do I like being around these people? Do you get excited when they call? Would

you work for them? Right. Simple little questions. And I'll tell you, they're few and far between. And so I don't, I don't look as much at the money anymore. It's just like, hey, are these- The money's a byproduct. Yeah. Are these- and that's the outcome of working with great people and doing big things is, you know, the money is how you keep score but it's not the motivation. And there's so many people in this industry that are, you know, the money, they're trying to get every nickel from everybody. And, you know, I think that's the wrong way to look at it. You know, I was with an amazing guy the other day and he goes, what's your number?

I said, there is no number. I've got enough. And I say this in the most humble way is how many majors does Tiger Woods need to win before he was retired? Well, if he stayed healthy, didn't get a car accident, he would still be winning tournament and he would never quit. That's your love. That's your passion. And so the money is the byproduct, but I love building. It's just who I am. It's who you are. It's not like this, man. Yes. Does money matter? Yes. We want to put our, I don't have kids yet and I want my kids to grow up right. I want to help out

mom and I want to make sure my sister, my niece, nephews, yes, the money is a tool, but at one point it doesn't, it's not about the money. Yeah, that's become a huge part of what's fun for me day to day is we have so many members, you know, a year or so ago we started a program that we call boardroom where, you know, I get very involved with, you know, the companies in there and it's, you. And it's limited.

There's only so much of my time. We have 10 or 12 companies, but I'm personally going out meeting with them, getting on calls. I'm available whenever they need. I'll jump on a call at 9 PM. And the success stories that have come out of that, one company that was losing money in nine months has turned around.

They're profitable. They're talking about an exit. Another one was doing $12 million. Now they're doing $35 million nine months later. And that's what's fun about doing what we do. And you watch life change. And you watch them. And it's not only what happens in business,

but you watch their relationships get stronger. I've had people call me up. literally, I've got three messages. I was this close to ending my life. I was this close to going through a divorce. Almost all of these businesses are family businesses, and there's all these dynamics. I don't want to tell anybody's personal stories, but like when you fix a business, you're often fixing a family. Yeah.

So. And so, you know, the Freedom event, I have so much pride, and you put a lot of effort and the whole team does, but it's not a big pitch. And I've had so many people say, man, I needed that, I needed that. And it's hope is what it is. We're pushing hope. Look, you need to make a living.

And everybody you hire, and the more that we can do, the better people we're able to bring on. And we've got a hell of a team. And I just want everybody to know, like, this has never been, man, what could we, do we talk about numbers and conversion rates? Yes, those are a business. That's like, I was just as Russell Brunson, like we can't spend a dollar and lose two

or we'd be out of business and we would help nobody. And I used to do so much free stuff. And then I realized nobody listens, nobody attends, nobody sees value. And Dan Martel told us this. He's like, the more that people pay, the more they implement. And it's not a question of how much could we get from you. It's how much could we help you.

But I don't like free stuff. I don't think anybody loves free stuff. I see two types of – I've done dozens and dozens of events or big events or workshops, all this. I start to see the same faces and they really kind of fall into two categories. The people that want to come, not really get committed to anything, buy a cheap ticket. They're in every event.

Yeah. They come to all these events. They never commit to anything and I see them year after year and I'm like, hey, how's the business going? And they're up 10%, 5%, they're down. There's a little – nothing is really changing in their life, right? And then there's other type of people that come and see, wow, like, you know, this is amazing. Like this could happen in my business if I'm open to it. And I don't

know what the whole path is. I don't know exactly what I have to do. But I realize getting around the right people is going to change everything. And those folks that come in and dive in and get committed, you know, I mean, one company, you know, tripled their business in a year. And it wasn't any magic, it was just implementing the stuff that we talk about. But to come to an event and try and grab some free notes, to listen to a podcast and try and do a couple things,

there's a big difference between that and jumping in, committing 100% with, we're gonna give it the all, I wanna get Jim's help, Tommy's help, how do we change this business? Well, the one key note here is Michael Jordan had four coaches. I can't tell you how many people I've worked with. I can't tell you how many hundreds of thousands

I paid out Levy, but I don't look at that as a cost, I look at that as an investment. Tell me a little bit about this event coming up September. Yeah, it's gonna be amazing it's going to be amazing. September 3rd through 5th in Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, beautiful hotel, great venue. That's just the beginning, though. I mean, we got great speakers. Kevin O'Leary, a lot of people say, oh, those big guys, you know,

I'm going to come to events, you want to stage what? What is that going to change in my life? And for us, it's been about perspective, right? Hearing, I mean, Kevin O'Leary created a $4 billion business or something that he sold to Microsoft, right? Those are big names, but there's a lot of home service people that are coming in that have been where you are. That's the most powerful.

We have a lot of our members on a panel. We have Ken Goodrich, Ellen Rohr, a lot of the members on a panel. We have, you know, Ken Goodrich, Ellen Rohr, a lot of the industry legends. Paul Kelly. Paul Kelly. We've got even A1. We've got an A1 panel. A1 panel. Yeah, and not trying to leave anybody out, but there's so many great people that I can't remember them all.

No, and the deal is, I don't like to sell this thing as like this event. I hate events in Vegas, but it's the only way we can hold as many people. It's not a drunken vest that you're used to. It's your HVAC plumbing, fun parties things. We've run into a real problem, which I have to talk to you about is like, there's not a lot of venues in the country that can hold this event anymore due to the number of people. We're down to like, okay, there's like really three places. We chose Vegas this year, but the hotel that we have, it's beautiful.

It's family-friendly. They got a shark tank in there and a marine exhibit. There's like seven restaurants. It's like a mini city and super cheap hotel rates. So it's a great place. If you're an owner trying to make a mini vacation, come to the event, bring the family, hang on a few days after it. But it's really a classy place. The one thing I will say that I've kind of been doing is talking a little bit more, and

I don't believe in balance. But I do believe there's people that have been messaging me all year that are like, I finally started getting the sleep I need. I finally will go for a little walk. I finally started to reflect. And when I made myself better and I started learning and started engulfing myself in books, it changed everything. And I do think, look, I try to really pour my heart out. I

know you do. I know everybody that comes to this event, the vendors are very successful because they're tried and true. There's no, how many vendors did we not let come that we didn't know they don't have a good product or that? Yeah, we've, we've accepted, you know, we've turned away more vendors than we've accepted, you know, we get three calls a day. You had to go to the fire marshal for four times to get the companies we love in there. Right. Yeah.

I mean just to pack in the great companies. But everything that you see at this event is curated. You can't just walk in and say, oh, I want to be a vendor and they've got a crappy product. These are all people that we know, you know, personally, either me, you, somebody on our team, people that are vetted that can help your business. So there's a great vendor show component to it, meeting, you know, the latest technology, the newest tools.

We have some technology that's gonna be released there that I think is gonna change the game. There's just so much happening, you know, in one place that you don't want to miss it. I think it's going to be a shift in the industry. Well, listen, I'm really excited. We're going to deliver so much value. I plan on talking a little bit about the future and what it looks like and what I'm focused

on because I got to live two years down the road and the business, the economics, the technology is changing, private equity is invading the industry. They've got more money they could outspend and we got to know what we're doing. And look, at the end of the day, I want people to show up ready to learn with a notebook and I want them to go apply these things. And there's no better compliment I could receive than a message of my life has changed. So is there any other things that you want to close out with Jim that we haven't talked about? First and foremost, tell people how to get a hold of you.

Tell them where to find the event. And then we'll go into some final thoughts. Yeah, www.freedomevent.com. That'll get you the latest details and all of that on the event. If you want to learn more about our group, it's www.homeservicefreedom.com. You can ping me on LinkedIn or jimathomeservicefreedom.com. Final thoughts. I know we talked a lot and we could talk about personality types, leadership, bottlenecks, org charts, recruiting, trading. We could talk about branding. The one thing that I've kind of

told everybody is I've been sued, I've been stolen from, I've had a closed six markets, I've had trucks flip over. I've been literally like you can't explain what's happened in the two decades So I understand accelerated appreciation of why I buy new trucks. There's EIP equity incentive programs We're writing a book. We're releasing it called pay them what they're worth at this next event Like there's I want to talk a little bit about growing through pain struggle and failure instead of saying look what we did and so I've been in your shoes and instead of saying, look what we did. And so I've been in your shoes, and my goal is that you could avoid

some of these massive failure points that I've done. And if I had an opportunity to go back to when I started in 2006-7 and be involved in this, you better believe that I would do a HELOC in my house to be part of this. But I'm going to let you give the final thoughts. Yeah, I mean, same thing, right? So many mistakes that, you know, I've made, you've made,

people in our network have made. Just avoiding some of those is worth the price of admission. But I really, again, going back to the value thing, the reason we do this is trying to create those success stories to elevate the industry, to expand our network, to help great people. And if you're out there saying, hey, something in my business has to change, because that's

where I was, Tommy, when I started out. Things were not going well. I remember sitting in a truck in front of a customer's house, literally shaking, couldn't turn the key just saying, I cannot do this anymore. Like I got this vision in my head of, if I have to do this for the next 20 years, like this is a jail sentence. It's not working.

And I had to admit to myself, you know, I mean, and luckily I was in my 20s, right? But I'm like, I don't know how to run a business. I need to get around the right people. I need to get the right resources. I need to figure out, because I don't know how to run a business. I need to get around the right people. I need to get the right resources. I need to figure out because I don't know what I'm doing. And people around me look, and that was the hardest thing. People would say, well, how's the business going?

And I'd fake it. Oh, yeah, things are going great. But in my head, I'm calculating, all right, how many more weeks can I stay afloat? I got to make a payroll. Can I get another job? What's going to happen? And when I finally realized that I needed to get around the right people and get help,

that's when everything changed. And from there, quickly turned around that business, got into a number of other ones, turned one around, and by all measures was very successful. And then I bumped into this guy named Tommy who first time I met you, I don't know if you remember, you had a picture hanging behind your desk that said, I'll be a billionaire. And I'm like, OK, sounds a little crazy, but there's an energy here that I want to be a part of. And for the folks listening to this, come to this event, see the energy, see what's possible, expand your resources. If you're out there and saying, man, I'm flat broke and something needs to

change in my life, email me, jimathomeservicefreedom.com. We'll figure something out. Don't tell me you can't afford a ticket when you can. That's not how to build value in the world. But I want to help people. People that need to make a change, need to be at this event, get your butt here and figure out how to 10x your company. I love it, man. My main goal is that you dream bigger, you think about the people you love the most and you got an obligation to make a move quickly. I mean, you have the biggest obligation. You got kids, you've got a wife, you've got a family, you've got a mother. Do it for them. Get out of your own way. But listen, Jim, this was an awesome podcast, earliest podcast on a Saturday ever.

I think it worked well. It did work well. They're all at they're all at 7am from now on. There we go. Seven on a Saturday. But I hope I hope you guys, if anything, you just you take some notes, you start thinking differently. If you can't make the event, it's no big deal. Love to see you there. But you, but just know that there's other people out there failing. There's other people out there wishing they had some insight and we're available for you guys. Jim, this was super fun. We gotta do this more often.

Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it. You guys have a great day out there. Thank you for listening. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I wanna let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that 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 elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.