The Home Service Expert Podcast - The Leadership Skill That Gets More Valuable as AI Takes Over

Episode Date: May 16, 2026

🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ The biggest myth in home service technology? That software solves problems. It doesn't. People do. Tommy sits down with Richard Kohberger — the go-to ServiceTitan expert and founder of Blue Collar Nerd — for one of the most honest conversations about technology, leadership, and what it actually takes to build a great home service company in the AI era.In this episode you'll learn: — Why most companies use ServiceTitan wrong — and what it actually looks like when you use it right — The truth about AI replacing CSRs and what to do about it before it happens to you — Why adding more AI to your business means your people need MORE human attention, not less — The four metrics every home service owner should know cold — Why emotional intelligence is the most underrated skill in home service leadership -- 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 🕐 -- 00:00 - Introduction  00:34 - Richard's Background and Blue Collar Nerd Origin 03:08 - Why Investors Are Rushing Into Home Service 06:02 - Advanced ServiceTitan Integrations 10:31 - When to Get on ServiceTitan 13:50 - AI-First Software and What's Coming 17:46 - Tommy's AI-Written Radio Ad Live 21:16 - Social Media vs Traditional Advertising 28:03 - The A1 Garage Model vs HVAC 32:28 - Which Industry Would Richard Build In? 36:12 - Tommy's 2017 Trifecta and Podcast Origin 38:49 - SOPs: SweetProcess vs Trainual 41:13 - AI Supporting People Not Replacing Them 44:41 - Technology Changing Leadership and Culture 47:52 - Longevity Science and Fasting 51:03 - Skills the Next Generation of Operators Needs 54:14 - EQ vs IQ in Leadership 58:42 - Rapid Fire: The Four Metrics Every Owner Must Know 1:09:08 - Die With Zero and Tommy's Philanthropy Plans 1:13:53 - Get Clear on Your WHY 1:17:35 - Is "I'm Doing It for My Family" Really True? 1:23:39 - Meditation, Facing Fears, and Final Thoughts 🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ Tiktok ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook ⟶ https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/ Tommy Mello Millionaire ⟶ https://www.youtube.com/@officialtommymello 

What's the biggest tech myth in the trades? That software solves problems. Humans still want to connect to other humans. It's important to still find ways to do that while not ignoring this important tool, because if you don't use this important tool, people who are using this important tool are going to run you over. There's a balance to be found here. The more that we introduce silicon as sort of brain replacements into our companies,

I do think that the humans are going to need extra special attention to make sure that they still feel valued. Maybe help them out a little bit. And someday later, that will pay you dividends. But don't do it for the dividends. Do it because that's another human being. There's so many people that understand the trades, but they have no idea where technology is going.

I think at A1, we're running 23 different software as right now. Yeah, yeah. Everything from the cameras and the trucks to make sure you're driving okay, to inventory, to automations, to email sequence. to, there's so many different software. So tell us what you're excited about, what got you to where you're at now, and yeah, just the passion stuff.

I mean, now's a really exciting time to be somebody interested in technology. I mean, I come up in the trades. Like you said, I worked at my dad shop in the Atlanta area. And I worked in all sorts of roles there, right? So I was a technician for a while. I moved into the office. I mean, I was trying to find my place, right,

because like it was something to do. It was like a skill to learn while I was in school learning film and theater. Like I didn't really fit in this world. And so when I started getting involved in it, I was trying to find my place because like I don't look, I don't speak, I don't act like the other contractors when my dad takes me to these sorts of like events and, you know, best practice groups and all these things. I always felt a little bit alien. but I also felt like if I can figure it out, if I can just figure it out, I've got something to offer here.

Because I was just weird and it's kind of good to be weird because I had these skill sets that didn't quite overlap very often and very many people. Where I was learning all of this stuff about the trades, you know, working out in the field, working in a business. And then also being this sort of, you know, theater nerd, technology nerd, just like totally what you would typically think of as a different. person, but I was building both of these skill sets. And I was like, these worlds don't talk well together, but they're about to have to. Now, this was maybe 10 years ago. So I was like, you know, surface setting was coming up really big. And technology was just kind of starting to encroach its way onto this, onto this industry. I was like, I don't, I don't know that this group of people speaks this language, but they're going to have to figure it out. And I feel like I can help.

So that's when I started the YouTube channel, Blue Collar Nerd. Well, I still let my dad shop and it was just talking about technology and the trades in general, but we use service Titan and so service site was one of the topics. And those videos in particular just really got traction. So, you know, some steps in between. I did service site and consulting for a while with mutual friend Tom Howard, who now also works with me over at Service Titan. He's the head of my department. But it's been an exciting journey to see it all happen. See technology get so incorporated into the trades and to see where it's headed now with AI. It's a really exciting time. I'm just excited in general. I don't necessarily have all the answers of like what does this exactly look

like in 10 years. I have some ideas. I have some theories. But I don't pretend to know for sure. I'm just really excited to see. Yeah. Listen, it's a good time to be in the trades. I'm talking to real estate agents, brokerages, developers, and they all want to buy an Atrecht business. They're I want to get into plumbing an A-Jack. And I'm like, the problem with most of these people, they're super smart, but they don't have any idea how to run this business. I mean, there is so much to it. And I'm not going to belittle them.

But I mean, I know CIOs all over the place that run big, big, big businesses from GE to, you name it. And they're amazing at what they do. But you've got to have certain skills to be able to recruit A-plus players that are blue-collar. Some of these guys didn't have a good mom growing up or their dad left or they don't know how to manage money. And I think it's our turn, though. I think COVID changed the game, and that's why everyone's looking at this industry going.

It's not going anywhere. 10,000 baby boomers a day retiring, 12% of them own a business. And, you know, I interviewed ARA in, I think it was 2017 or 2018, and he goes, I just wish people would use the software the way it was intended to be used. We got the best practices, and they always try to make it their own. But now you have to. At a company our size, we've got all kinds of custom things that no one else does. And like wrench group and service champions and these massive companies, Apex, I guarantee you their software setups don't look the exact same.

And there's different things you could do. It's a pretty robust software. When you're talking to most people that are just getting into the game with service tight, what are the hardest things to get going on? I mean, like you just mentioned, they're trying to help people understand especially if they're transitioning over from a different software, that service site and works a certain way. It's one thing when we're talking about wrench group or something like that, you know, a big PE company, having certain customizations like that makes sense.

But that's not typically, when I'm talking to people, I'm typically talking to a smaller shop, you know, 10 million or below. And when they're transitioning over, they have a lot of preconceptions about this is how we do things. This is how we've always done things. Using it the way that it's meant to be used is just going to be easier for you long term. Just let the little things go and use the software the way it was intended because there's a lot of huge successful companies using service type and right. Like using it within its constraints. There are constraints within any system, any software. wear any frame of anything.

If you use it within those constraints, you're just going to have an easier time versus banging your head against the wall, trying to figure out a million workarounds for how do I do it the way I used to do it within this new system. It's just not worth the hassle. Yeah, no, you're right. You know, what we recently did is a couple of years ago, we extracted all the information for every main thing intact, Sam Serra service time and build a data. like so we can manipulate the data how we want to see it into power BI.

Is that something you see a lot of companies doing when they reach a certain size? Yeah, I mean, that's great. I mean, integrations is different. And it's also once you hit a certain point, once you've used service site and to do everything that it can do, then you start to understand better. Okay, what what does it really not do that I actually truly need? Not just because it's a habit, not just because I don't want to retrain people, not just because it's uncomfortable to go through a new learning curve.

But what do I actually need? That is a gap that needs to be filled. And then you can start to do these more advanced things like integrating into like a PowerPI. Or I used to use Zapier a ton at my dad's company. Zapier's sort of API system, it's a software that lets you connect other softwares. So I would use that to connect service tight into Slack, for example, which was our communication system so that anytime certain event, occurred that weren't you know tied into Service Titans native alerts I could

send an alert and to a manager in Slack like this particular technician was at this particular job for a suspiciously short amount of time and they left with zero dollars hey manager maybe you want to call them real quick and and check like why are you there for 15 minutes and you left with no money what happened that sort of stuff but but you know when you're ready for that and you have to have somebody in your company who can do that or you have to have a good third-party partner who can do that for you. I find that most companies don't have that person.

That person, I luckily had Adam Cronenberg in 2017, and he was obsessive and learned how to use the system and build the price book. You know, there was no price book pro for garage stores. We were the first garage store company on it. Yep. You know, Ara and Vi both told me they think their number one failure point is getting people on the system. it's difficult.

And service Titans a big company and there's a lot of different use cases. There's roofers getting into it now. There's commercial. There's every business. There's, you name it.

What are some of the biggest hurdles to accomplish when you get into service tight? Yeah, I mean, onboarding is tough. Like you said, the challenge partially stems from the fact that service Titan,

it's a huge software that serves a lot of different verticals, a lot of different industries, and a lot of different contractors do things different ways. And Service Titan is now not as new a company as it once was. I mean, that sounds stupid to say, but like there's a lot of like old stuff laying around that like people will tell you, yeah, I use this. And there's just so many like back end features, back end ways that service Titan can be configured. to customize it as much as possible, that it starts to become cloudy to a regular everyday user

what Service Titan can and cannot do. It's a tough challenge to overcome. This goes even beyond onboarding. You could be on Service Titan five, six years and then be talking to somebody else and look at their Service Titan account and say, what's that button? Why do you have that in your menu?

What does that do? Why aren't you using this? You don't have that? Like that's just a super common experience that I don't personally have a good solution for. Like even if I were in charge, I don't know that I can tell R&B, hey, hey, you guys just need to do this. It's tough because there's so many different feature sets that serve so many different types of people. And onboarding is always going to be tough just because change is hard. Learning a new system is hard.

It's scary. It's just kind of a terrifying thing because all of your company is funneling into this thing. it touches, you know, by design, it touches every piece of your company, including financials. It's a tough thing to be confident enough going in to say, okay, I know how to do this. Everybody knows their role. Everybody knows what they're going to do. And here we go, we're going to pull the trigger. And I also have that all happen in a reasonable amount of time that works for both

Service Titan and you the client. We make it work, but it is very challenging. It is in a lot of people. I've met a lot of companies that should be on Service Titan, but they think, think it's too expensive. And I know they're never going to be a big company. Right. I mean, they're a decent-sized company. Ideally, nothing's expensive because ideally you're getting an ROI on everything that you're, that you're putting your money into. Ideally, it makes you money. That's the problem is they don't look at it as an investment and they don't understand

attribution when it comes to marketing and inventory control. I will say service day has some work to do on inventory, but I know that they continue to impress me every single month, every single quarter. I mean, I can see how it's almost like there was a rebirth. I watch ARA. He calls me all the time more than he's ever called me. Vahey takes my calls and he's like, we're going to make that work. Like I had a lot of problems with Schedule Engine, which, you know, scheduling pro. And no one had a solution. And Vahey goes, we're just going to give you the, we're going to give you the whole setup, build your own. As long as we could use it before develop, we'll give you the keys.

And you can build it however you want. And that's pretty cool that we have the opportunity to work with the founders that are still that engaged in the business. You know, what do you say to somebody that's, I must get 10 calls a month. I only got four technicians, but I want to get on service tape. And typically I'll just call Tom Howard to get them on. But what is that magic number of when they get on to service day? I don't know that there is a magic number. I think there's a magic mindset.

I think it really depends what your goal is and are you really clear on why you want to do that and if that's really what you want to do. Because I genuinely don't think there's anything wrong with just owning and operating a small company. And maybe if you're just owning and operating a shop where it's you and maybe one other guy that helps you out. And it's just to support your lifestyle and you're happy with that. There's genuinely nothing wrong with that if that's what you want, if you're really clear on that. And it's also there are nothing wrong with wanting to scale a huge multi-generational, you know, nationwide franchise that you're going to eventually sell to a PE firm. There's nothing wrong with that either,

as long as you clear about why you want to do that and really clear about the fact that's truly what you want to do. I think you have to understand where you sit to understand is service tight and right for you. And if it is right for you, then just plan as if you're going to go on service Titan from day one. Maybe not everybody has, you know, I don't. know what the number is. If service site and has an internal number of like you have to have this money managed text before we'll let you on. I think that number exists, but I'm not,

I'm not familiar with it. It's not my department. And maybe not everybody has the connection to just like get in when they're first starting. But if that's your goal, if that's your plan, just know you're going to end up on service Titan at some point and go with something that's going to transition over well to service Titan. That's most things because it's in service Titan's best interest to make sure that whatever software you're coming from, they're able to get that data over for you, but don't go looking for something super new, super niche. Don't just look for the cheapest thing because it's like, oh, this guy just came out with the software and like, let me use that. And then it's going to be difficult for you to transition. Just use one of the other ones.

Just if House Call Pro is a big name, use House Call Pro for a little while, transition over to service site and when you're ready. I've heard a lot of smart people that have been around at a lot of, I've been hanging around with Goldman Sachs a lot. And this common theme seems to be coming up. build a software that's AI first, that it starts out with AI, and it's built with the agents, and it's built to run the HR department. What are your thoughts just looking into the future a couple of years? Things are changing. Look, the LLMs are getting smarter.

Google is still very important, but not quite as important. I trust Chachabit more. I don't use it for demand services. I still use Google, but where do you see the future going as far as software? It's an interesting question. I'm not 100% positive, like I kind of alluded to at the beginning, how this is all going to shake out. It's a big boom right now where like everybody's AI first. Everybody wants to be AI first.

The stock market is very focused on AI. If you're not saying AI on your earnings call at least once, like nobody's interested. And that can't last forever. At some point, this is going to shake out, and some of this stuff is going to fall to the wayside, and some of this stuff is going to be the way of the future. And I'm not 100% sure where that sits, but I am sure that it's not a fad, right? Like, I don't think AI is going anywhere. I'm just not 100% sure what's going to stick.

I look at some of this, you know, the social media stuff. I think if you're using over leveraging AI for like your ad copy and stuff like that, I think that sort of stuff is probably going to fall to the wayside. And it's going to become more a tool that you sort of use a little bit to help you build creative and help you come up with stuff. But I think certain aspects, a human element to it is really important. And people kind of get grossed out when that's missing. Like for example, Coca-Cola has been taking a lot of flack for one of their holiday ads.

I don't know if you caught wind of this, but they put out a holiday ad that was like very obviously AI generated pretty fully, you know, AI generated. And it wasn't good publicity for them. People pushed against it pretty bad. They did not like it because it's one of those things where people still want a human element. People don't just want, you know, you to put in a prompt and then feed them. Here's this, buy my product. Humans still want to connect to other humans. It's important to still find ways to do that while not ignoring this important tool,

because if you don't use this important tool, the people who are using this important tool are going to run you over. There's a balance to be found here. And the only way to find it is to start playing around. Do you think that that's going to hurt Coca-Cola because are people not going to drink it because they didn't like an AI commercial? Or do you think any news like that, get some on headlines, get the news talking about them? Now they're popping up all over the world.

Wall Street Journal and every major, you know, Seattle, New York. What are your thoughts when something like that happens? You could say that. I mean, you could say any publicity is good publicity, and maybe there's some truth to that. It's hard to say because it's Coca-Cola. You know, they're a enormous company, and so the hit that they're going to take from some people getting upset about their AI ad is like a little drop in the bucket that you could just attribute to a margin of error, like just looking at their bottom line. You're going to say, was that because of the AI ad? Is that because any other million factors, this tiny little fraction of a percentage drop, who cares? But it matters more for smaller companies, I think.

When you're trying to build a name and a local community, a hit like that could be more noticeable and more meaningful than it would mean for Coca-Cola. You want me to read you my latest radio ad? Yeah, let's do it. So I don't ever try to do like this must sell today. You know, need to sell for cheap. We're doing a close out. I'll do it real quick. And it's kind of written kind of like Ken Goodrich.

So it's called Garage of Dreams. And the ad is about a Kawasaki. And it's a warm nostalgic tone. And you hear the rev up of 125cc dirt bike echoing inside of. a garage. When I was a kid, my dream wasn't a mansion. It wasn't a yacht. It was 125 Cc Kawasaki sitting right there in the garage. Chrome handlebars, knobby tires, smelled like oil, grease, and freedom. That garage, that was my castle. Today I'm Tommy Mello, founder of A1 Garage Service, and I'll never forget that feeling. We don't just fix

garage doors. We bring the dream back to life. Where dad's tinker, or kids daydream, or bikes get tuned up, and memories get made. Your garage isn't just a door. It's a gateway to everything that matters. So whether your door is stuck, squeaking, or screaming for help, A1 will be there. Fast, friendly, and always ready to roll. Because somewhere out there, there's a kid dreaming of a dirt bike, and a garage makes that all possible.

I like it. So did AI have a part in helping write that? Yes, it did. But it wasn't, but you didn't just put a prompt into chat Chb-T and say, that sounds good, and then put that on the radio. No, what I did was I asked Chachabit to ask me 100 questions pretty much twice a week. And what I started doing- Great. This is the right way to use the tool, right? It's to collaborate with you.

It's to help bring the ideas out of you, not to do it for- That's all real. I had a Kawasaki once, it was a 1970s, but it was like my dream. And so I don't lie to people. Which is beautiful, right? That keeps the human element. That's that's about you. That keeps the authenticity. You're just using the tool to like help bring the ideas out of you versus using the tool to give you ideas. I think that's a totally different way to use it. And I think that's probably the better way to use it for something like that. You know, you, I just had a company out here that does YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and they don't know how to do LSA or PPC. They don't run service. They just run mini splits in HVAC, and they're doing about 10 million to the bottom. And they said they use AI to help produce 10 new ads a day, and then they figure out the one that work, and then they run with it. You got really involved in YouTube a decade ago.

How big is your YouTube channel? Well, that's a complicated question because now all of my service Titan related YouTube content goes on the Service Titan YouTube channel. So the Blue Color Nerd YouTube channel doesn't really grow that much because it's pretty rare that I'm actually putting content up on there. I still do. But most of the content now goes up on the Service Titan YouTube channel, which is mixed in with other stuff.

I love how you did that. How important do you think, I guess, question is, do you think entrepreneurs should still be investing in classic advertising, or should it just all be social media and online advertising? I don't think it's an either or. I think it's yes and. I will say that to truly do like social and especially like YouTube right, it's not just like something you sort of throw some money into or let an ad agency handle for you. To really do it right, it's a job in and of itself. It takes a lot of effort. You've either got to hire somebody.

or you've got to be that person yourself. I think it's really cool if you can be that person yourself. Like you're pretty good at this, Tommy. Being the face of the company, being the one on the camera, being the one, like that really helps build that personal trust with, hey, that guy owns this company and I trust that guy. Like I've built some rapport with that guy. It doesn't have to be that way, but I do think it helps.

But I will say that like if you're going to do, quote unquote, do YouTube or even Instagram or Facebook. YouTube's the hardest. Facebook and Instagram are still hard. You have to make really actual, helpful, genuine pieces of content. 99% of like contractors if I just go on their socials. It's just like ads. It's just like, you know, pictures, you know, $99 tune up and Merry Christmas and Happy Valentine's Day from ACE heating in it. And it's just like it's not serving anybody. That's not that's not content that anybody cares to see. There's got to be. value there. If I, as a member of your community, don't get any value out of following you, then why would I do it? It's just kind of pointless. And at that point, if that's all you have

capacity for, I would say don't bother, like put all of your attention to the traditional advertising, put all of your attention into the PPC, put all of your attention into figuring out how, you know, you can best leverage AI LLMs and stuff because they're, you know, they're recommending things and they're eventually going to have to figure out how to monetize recommendations. I'm not too excited to see what that looks like, but it's probably coming. So you might as well like start heading down that road and figuring that stuff out. If that's what you have the capacity to do right now, I think your time is better spent there. If you're really going to do social and especially YouTube correctly, that's a job. Somebody's got to have that job and it takes effort. It takes

time. It takes creativity. It takes a lot of your attention. You're right. We started working with, you ever heard of the book, Endless Customers? Sounds familiar, but I don't think I've read it. Marcus Sheridan, his first book that he came out with was they ask you answer. You know, the things that AI is looking for to make it simple is schema data. You've got to make it easy for the AI engine to read. And they look for five major things, but we're getting ready to load it in all of our background checks. We're giving the machine as much possible things to know we're credible.

Anytime we win the best place to work. Anytime we win anything. Anytime we get a great, like, we're submitting so much. We're like, let's let the machine know us more. And some of people are like, oh, there's a lot of people out there that are just anti-technology. And my guesstimant is they're going to get buried here in the next two years. Yeah, it's not a good time to be anti-technical. I mean, it has never been a good time to be anti-technology.

I think that was a real losing strategy from the beginning. It was always very frustrating for me. There were some people like that in my dad's company when I was coming up. up because I came in, I started getting my hands on operations, and I'm a technology guy. I was introducing new technology-related things, and the people who would really push back against that never really had a good reason. They were just like, well, Richard, I'm old. I'm like, okay, you're still in the workforce, right? Like, you still want to provide value, right? This is what the workforce looks like now. And this is only going to get more true as time goes forward. You can't just say,

while I'm old, I haven't been paying attention. And so, therefore, that's my excuse to not have to learn new things. That's not a good winning strategy if you really want to be, you know, moving up the ladder here. I know what you mean. I mean, that's a prerequisite. You've got to be able to be comfortable with an iPad if you're going to work here. I mean, that's that's simple. How should owners think about the ROI on service time beyond just we bought the software?

Yeah. Yeah, it's important to understand, right? Software doesn't solve problems for you. That might sound kind of weird for me to say, but like software solves problems in so much as that like a nail gun builds a house. It's a tool. You have to understand how to use the tool. It's a lot easier to build the house with the nail gun than without it. But you can't just, you know, buy the nail gun and then be like, what the hell? Where's my house? I bought the stupid nail gun. Like I gave you the freaking money, service Titan. Like, why isn't this all done? Why isn't this taken care of? Why isn't my? price book perfect why isn't this and that it still takes a ton of effort it takes a ton of effort on your part to get it set up the way you need it to be set up to to use it as on a day-to-day

basis and you've kind of got to let go of this concept of being done it's just not how it works it's it's actions it's things that you do as part of running your business service tighten is part of that service site is part of your business it's it's never done you're using it you're maintaining it you're doing it every day. Like when are you done brushing your teeth? When are you done going to the gym? Ideally never. It's just something you have to do. And so I think that's the right mindset to have around it. Make sure that you understand to get the ROI out of it. It's not just, hey, I bought this thing. You know, pro products too. You know, hey, here's the money service. And that this sounds great. Obviously, we want things to be as automated as possible. And that's only going to get more of the case going forward.

as AI gets more and more involved. But even so, you've got to remember, you're competing with other people probably also on service site, and you've got to be bringing something to the table. If everybody's dispatching with dispatch pro, what's your special sauce? What are you doing?

There's ways to configure dispatch pro. There's still strategy involved in how you're going to set that up to best serve you and what you want and what your goals are. And you have to learn it. You have to understand how it works in order to properly utilize it to stay competitive.

So I think that's really just the most important thing is understanding the ROI doesn't just come from the fact that you put money in and then it's a magic box and more money comes out. You put the money in and then you have to do the thing, then you have to learn it, then you have to do the work, then you have to figure stuff out. And don't be afraid to play around with stuff. I think a lot of people are really concerned with breaking things.

And that's just part of the process too. you probably will break things, but it's okay. That's the only way to figure it out sometimes. You know, we're in 25,000 homes a month. Not the best ticket average compared to HVAC plumbing electrical. And, you know, a lot of people are like, man, you got it easy. You're in the garage industry. But the cost to book a call is only about $100 bucks less than HVAC.

But the tickets are massively different. So, you know, I look at the different founders out there, the different CEOs, and I'm like, you know, without sounding cocky, I'm like, once I'm able to sell something for 20 grand, don't get me wrong, we have plenty of $20,000 door sales that go in a week. But it's kind of expected that a five-ton unit's going to go from 14 to 20 grand, depending on what it comes with and whatnot. I'm just excited because the whole model that we built translates to every other industry. so we can plug and play. We've been very, very disciplined to stay in our industry. But when you're in 25,000, 30,000 homes a month,

the capabilities are endless. The hard part about HVAC plumbing, HVAC in particular, and roofing is the seasonality. You know, and you had to kind of work around that. And I'm talking to some of the biggest players in the country, and they typically lose money a few months out of the year because you want to keep your installers on board.

They might not go to lose very, very much, but their goal is to break even. It's just interesting. It's another battle that I've never had to deal with. Coming from the HVAC industry, what are the pros and cons? Pros are that there is a lot of money in it. The cons are that there is a lot of variability in it. It's kind of just like what you just said.

It's really tough, especially, you know, it is seasonal, and there's variability depending on where you just happen to be in the country or in the world. You know, the shoulder seasons look different in Georgia than they do in California than they do in New Jersey than they do in Florida. There's just a lot of variability. And it's hard to know exactly what that's going to look like. You can do yourself a lot of favors. Like if you're going to, if you're thinking about opening up an HVAC company, you know, you're between California and Florida, you're going to have probably an easier time in Florida. just it's hot all the time really humided you know especially as the further south you go like there

are just advantages to being in different parts of the world in that particular business it's also like you alluded to very tough to balance what do you do in those slower seasons it's it's difficult on people's mental health to be honest with you like it's it's tough when you come off of that summer when things were looking so good and move start moving into those shoulder seasons even though you kind of know know, especially once you get some experience under your belt, like you understand this is the nature, this is the flow, we're going to lose money these few months or whatever, we're going to barely break even. But it's still tough on people. I see it kind of where people thin, the anxiety builds up because it, you know, you only live in the present moment, right? Like

that's the only thing that's real, that feels real. And so when the money's not coming in, it doesn't feel good. It's a tough mental journey to go on to, to, to, to really. really come to terms and be at peace even when the money is not coming in because it's all a part of the plan. You can logically understand it and it's still weigh on you a lot emotionally. It's also an emotional way to worry about your employees, you know, when you have this team that you built up and people that, you know, you respect and respect you and trust you. And then there's no work for them. And they start getting anxious. they start getting concerned. If you're not already in a good, you know, solid, peaceful mental place,

that's also going to, you're going to feed each other in that way too. Your employees are going to be more anxious. You're going to be more anxious. You're going to have to find the balance of like, well, I don't want to just hire people in the summer or just to let them go in the slow season. That is one strategy. Some people do do that. But some people just don't feel good about it. It's finding what's going to feel good for you and still be, you know, productive and make you the money you want to make and give you the life that you want to live. So if you had to quit right now, you don't work on the blue-collar nerd or service tighten, and you had to pick one industry, and you were going to just make a bunch of money, what would it be? I mean, it would probably be HVAC just because

for the simple fact that that's what I already know. And there's a cost to learning. something new. Like if this scenario was like, I'm going to go start the company. I don't want to, I don't want to start a garage door company. I don't know enough about garage doors. Tommy would, Tommy would crush me. I don't know that I want to start a plumbing company. I don't know anything about plumbing. I need to find somebody with a license. I got to get a license myself. HVAC, I already know. So for for that reason, I would go HVAC, not because I think it's necessarily the easiest thing. I don't know. That's that's just what I did. That's just the company my dad happened to start in 1992. And so that's what I happened to learn. And I think it, it pays to just lean in

to your competencies versus getting real attracted to shiny objects. And, well, that guy's making a whole lot of money over there. What's he doing? Selling stock options. Let me, let me learn about that. What's, what's a, what's a covered college? Something covered. Like it's a whole different world. If you don't know anything about it and you're making decent money doing what you're doing, you just need to lean more into it to really accelerate it. You know, to some degree, you know, there's the entrepreneurial mind is a little bit ADHD by default. And we can't,

we just can't help but to play with the shiny object that we see. I think that to some degree that's okay. And you feel that pull, you know, like you're doing a podcast right now. Like that's not garage doors, but it's, it's a thing. Like, it's just, it feeds you. I'm sure I don't want to speak for you. But this is when I feel like, yeah.

When I feel a creative poll, I don't. Yeah, right, right. It feeds you in a different way. So I think it's good to understand those things about yourself and not push against it when it's actually serving you. Because for me, when I get random creative endeavor hairs up my butt all the time. I'm like, I'm just going to go do that and I just can't help myself. And that's okay.

As long as I'm real clear about what am I getting out of this and what am I not getting out of this. If I feel like starting another YouTube channel purely for the goal of, you know, making millions of dollars, that's maybe a different conversation I need to have with myself about why, why that and why do you want those millions of dollars? Like really get clear on why I want that, why I think this is the right path. I know this is getting kind of outside of the question that you asked, but this is just where my mind goes. I think staying in your core competency is good if the goal is maximizing, you know, return. If the goal isn't maximizing return, which is okay, by the way, sometimes you're really burnt out on what you're doing.

And it's just time for a change. That's okay too. But when you make that change, just understand you're probably going to take a financial hit for a little while because you have to learn something new. That's okay. But you have to understand those things going in or else you're just going to keep jumping. It's just going to give up really quick. My goal is just to make a lot of money. So I'm just going to go over here.

And I don't even really, I haven't really had the conversation with myself about why I even want to make a ton of money. I haven't really had a conversation with myself about what this emotion is that's making me feel uncomfortable with what I'm doing now. But that guy's making a lot of money. Let me go check that out and see what he's doing over there. Pause, figure it out, understand a little bit better why you're feeling that pull, why you want to make that money, and then decide, is that what I really want to do? I like it. I like it. Sounds like something Mercurio would say. Yeah, we're a kindred spirits, I think, me and me and him. I'll tell you, 2017, 10 years into the business.

I always tell people 19 years into this industry, the first 10 were practice. We got on the service site and I got to meet all the legends in the space. They invited me out. I actually asked them, can I go to your shop? Every $100 million shop I went into. I learned so much from Leland and Ken Haynes and Ken Goodrich and Paul Kelly and Keegan Hodges and you name it. I mean, I was out at their shops learning. And then I started the podcast.

and every 30 podcast I hired somebody as a consultant. And then I met Al Levy in 2017, and he taught me about system, standard, operating procedures, manuals, and checklists. So 2017 was like a trifecta. And I'll tell you, the podcast has helped the business grow probably more than any other thing. Because if I'm struggling with payroll,

not even like a service-tight payroll question, but just trying to understand pay for performance, I'm going to get that person on the podcast that wrote the book on it. You know what I mean? Or if I'm having a real big HR turnover issue or internal net promoter score, the podcast has done well. I'm not like world class interviewer, but the good news is it's got the audience that people want to get on it. And that to me, I mean, selfishly is the coolest thing because I know there's a thousand other people, maybe 10,000 need to hear the same thing.

And so one guy told me, man, you were 17 million when you're. started the podcast, if you want to grow to 100 million, listen to the first 100. If you want to go to 200 million, listen to the next. So you can kind of go through there and figure out what you need because I've had every which thing. And I love talking software, so I'm glad you came on. Typical questions I always get is everyone seems to get stuck around $5 million. And I think it's a trust issue. And I think they don't learn out to delegate and they hire people that are below them instead of that are better than them. But what is your take on the $5 dollar sticky point. Maybe I'm not the best person to ask because by the time I left my dad's

company, we were about that at that $5 million sticking point and having trouble pushing past it. I've always been a process guy. I think lack of process is part of the problem. Once you start to scale at a certain point, the whole like this person needs to ask a question and the next day somebody else has a different question, let me put out this fire, put out that fire, answer this question answer that question, that has to go out the window. There has to be some other way that people understand how to do their jobs that removes all of the he said, she said, that removes the shame of having a question because, you know, that's part of what processes do too is like remove shame and embarrassment for people that are like, I know that this my boss told me how to do

this yesterday. I forgot. I don't want to ask them again. Like it's if it's on the, if it's in the process. And there's different softwares for this. I happen to like one called sweet process and one called train you or the two I typically recommend people. Just a place to house your processes that searchable. So that when people have a question, they don't have to go to you. They don't have to go to the manager. They can go somewhere and figure out what is it that I'm supposed to do. And then it helps managers too. When there's a failure, it becomes not an individual's fault as long as the individual followed the process. It becomes the process's fault. We remove all of that. He said, she said crap. We remove all of that. I told you how to do it. Well, no, you told me how to do it that

other way. No, that's not how I told you how to do it. Forget it. Did you follow the way that it's written here? Yes. And something still went wrong. That's not your fault. We have a problem in the process. That's fine. We're going to write something new in the process with that next time this doesn't happen. We've learned something. We can't account for everything, every scenario in the process from day one. that's okay we expect this sort of thing and it just removes all of that guilt and shame and blame and anger we don't need to do any of that stuff if there's a process in place that's that's really my number one tip and really the only one I feel qualified to give just based on where I exited a company I know train you'll really well I'm going to look in the sweet process

what I like about if you're already familiar yeah trainual is probably a little bit better Sweet process is a little bit more cost effective. It just depends where, what stage you're at. If you're just starting and you're like, isn't Google Docs good enough, go a sweet process. It's going to be less expensive for you and it's going to do the job just fine. If you're really at a point where you're trying to scale

and get the best of the best, Tranuels probably. And I've got a video on Tranul by the way, if you guys want to check out the Blue Collar Nerd YouTube channel and you're interested in Tranuel. I've got a video on it. You can check out exactly what it does. I love it.

How can automation and AI be used to support people instead of replacing them? It's a big question because it's so broad. I think it's very context-specific. I don't think, yeah, go ahead. I know all my competition, and I know all the competition and A-check and everything I'm looking at in the future and roofing and gutters and pest control. It's usually those who are willing to fail and take the first step. So I didn't make the company go 100% AI voice. I don't think it's there yet.

You got service science came out with some great things. You got broccoli, avocca, lace, same day. The question is, when has it become better than the human? And you still need humans, but you need to do top grade. So the question is, you got a huge heart where you're just going to make room for everybody because the largest companies on the planet have cut 70% of their HR team. because of AI. And there's things going on that I will just say your feelings,

and this is, I'm kind of stretching here from the question, but I understand what it is to be loyal, but I also understand what it means to be loyal. If there's 1,250 people at A1, and we've got to move away from 30 because it's the better good of the other 1,120, is it the right thing to do? That's how I condone it in my brain.

What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, the good news is that we're in a industry where a significant portion of our workforce works out in the field, and AI is no significant threat to them anytime soon. When it comes to like a CSR, I think it becomes important to start, if your intention is, I like these people and I want to make sure that they have a place in this company. I think you're still going to have CSRs. For the foreseeable future, I don't think zero CSRs. ours is the move. I think you could. But yeah, I don't think I don't think zero is going to be the move for quite some time, if ever. But it's going to be probably fewer. Like that's the whole point, right, is that these these tools relieve some of the excess so that people can focus on other

things. So you have to figure out as an owner, as a manager, what are those other things going to be? What other things can these people do and learn that would provide more value than this other thing that now a machine is pretty competent at. And so they don't need to do it. At least they don't need to do it as often. There are still plenty of things. It just depends on what is that person interested in? What are you?

Where are your gaps? What do you need filled? Like we were just talking about earlier, hey, if you're going to do like social media truly the right way, that's going to be like a big job. That's going to take a lot of attention. Cool. Maybe that's something that, you know,

somebody in their 20s and 30s, maybe they're their CSR for you right now. That might be right up their alley. Maybe they went to school for marketing. Maybe they maybe they have always aspired to like do on-camera work and stuff. Cool. Like that's the perfect scenario for them. But it depends on the person.

Somewhere else on the bus, I agree with you 100%. Yeah. No, 100%. When it comes to leadership roles in the home service space in the next decade, how do you see technology changing that? Sorry, for like leadership space. How do I see technology changing leadership? Leadership, yeah.

Leadership, I'd probably throw culture in there. I mean, I think it's going to become really important to nurture human relationships more intentionally. The people in your company that you really want to be a part of your team long term, make sure that they're not feeling too threatened by anything that you're doing. I think there has to be a certain amount of empathy and care when implementing things that there is fear around AI. Like there's excitement and there's fear. So if you're implementing things that you have reason to believe might make some people in your company nervous about being replaced or not being needed anymore. And that's not what's in your heart.

That's not your intention. I think go ahead and get ahead of that conversation because otherwise, the fear is going to take over and people are just going to start getting squirrely and looking around and seeing what else is out there and what else they can do because they're just nervous. So I think empathy really becomes important. I laugh because maybe it sounds a little cliche or cheesy or corny. But it's truly what I believe is that the more that we introduce silicon as sort of brain replacements, into our companies, which I'm not against, by the way.

But I do think that the humans are going to need extra special attention to make sure that they still feel valued. You want to hear something really scary? Yeah, yeah. One of my buddies, Robert Chowdini, he goes by Bob. He wrote the book, Influence, a lot of great books. And he believes the future of human evolution will be. to become 100% silicon?

It's possible. I mean, hey, I'm really into like longevity science. And one thing that truly excites me about AI is, is the implications for longevity. This might sound really crazy to say, but I don't think it's impossible for a human being to at least biologically live forever. Now, if you get hit by a bus, obviously, that's still going to do it. But I don't see any evidence or any reason why biologically, like, if we can figure it out, if we can delay the processes,

um, the, everything that I've seen points to that should be possible if we figure it out. Um, now I don't, maybe you want that and I, mitochondria and cellular regeneration is the key. Yep. Um, uh, immune regulation stuff also super important. A lot of aging is related to breakdown of,

of the immune system. Um, I take, I take a drug called rapamycin, is typically used in like organ transplant donors. But it shuts off something called mTOR temporarily. MTOR is really important for like building. It's your body's building mode. So if bodybuilders talk about mTOR a lot, and there's nothing like mTOR is good. You need mTOR, but as you age, it has a tendency to get stuck in the on position, which is problematic because when mTOR is on, autophagy is off. And autophagy is your body's cleanup process where it goes in and eats away.

at old cells that aren't behaving correctly, becomes cancer, becomes all sorts of things. So stuff like that just really interests me and I think that the introduction of AI to develop new drugs, I mean, just getting a taste of it with the like GLP1 agonis, ozempic, triseptide, those things that are helping people lose so much weight. That was a fantasy not too long ago to just have this thing that you inject once a week and the fat just melts off of you. That's real now, and that's just a tiny taste of what I hope is coming, maybe off topic, but that's the sort of thing that really gets me going when it comes to AI.

Now, I'm about to, by the end of the month, I'm doing a five-day fast, and during day four and five, you're a maximum metaphagy. You're basically in keto phase. And that's, and if you do that once a year and a few other things, you really significantly reduce your chance of cancer. True. Yeah, I've done a three-day fast. I've never quite gone to five. Three, three was, three was my, my maximum. And I, I don't know. I'm sticking with the rapamycin for now. I'm kind of hoping that that handles the atophagy to the degree that I need it to. This is all like early science stuff, right? So I can't like point to a study and say, look, rapamycin is just as good as fasting. Fasting is a more guaranteed way, but it's also, it kind of sucks. How do you do with it? Like, by the time you're on day four, five, do you just kind of forget about it? No, I've only gone four days, so five's going to be a pain.

But I'll tell you, your body starts to really just, your brain turns onto this crazy level where you just think clearer. And you're not as hungry, but you're running on, you're running on pure ketones. And it's a kind of a cleaner burning fuel. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's going to be fun because I'm also, I've had a boot on, because I screwed up my, two ligaments of my ankle.

So I had a boot on for a few months. So now I just getting back to my 220. I'm 230. I was 237 this morning. So that's part of not just the atophagy, but part of just getting. Also a little quick, quick hit of diet. Yeah, that'll do it. I'm already skinny by default.

So when I did a three-day fast, I was looking kind of anemic. I had to bulk up a little bit. Yeah, that's the thing for me is I lose the weight in my face. And I just want to make sure I don't get like 220. is probably the perfect weight. You know, we talked a little bit about the ratios. You talked about a lot of the guys out there are doing the work. They're not going anywhere.

I think the most important thing that I'm looking at that I haven't paid attention to is improving that ratio. People out in the field collecting checks from the client versus the support staffer or indirectly. And that ratio should continue to grow for the next few years. And that's very, very important. I don't think most people track that. it's one of the things I'll leave you time

and just start looking at. Yeah, it is important. It's especially important right now, right? Which is kind of going back to your other question of like, what do you do with excess office staff? The answer can be nothing, but you just have to grow that ratio. If you grow that ratio,

it kind of levels itself out anyway and you're just overstaffed for a little bit. So that's kind of one strategy to deal with that. What skills will the next generation of operators need that weren't required before? I mean, AI, using it as the obvious one but I think going tying directly into that is like better human skills I'm a millennial my generation really had a quite the the drop off on

the like soft skills we just we just broadly speaking obviously there's exceptions but very anxious generation not very good at talking to people if there's a self-checkout I'm using it it's it's been a challenge for me in like management roles for sure. And I think because I grew up with technology and I don't know what future generations are how they're looking in that department, but I imagine it can't be much better because the technology just keeps growing and growing and the necessity to interact with other human beings. You can just order a door dash if you want some food. There's just less and less reason to have to look a stranger in the eye and hold a conversation. And when that's not something you kind of,

built the skill of doing, it starts to become really uncomfortable. It gives you anxiety. It's something I'm actively working on in my life is like anxiety, just like anxiety over speaking with another human being. Something like this, for example, this is uncomfortable for me. Like having a conversation recorded on edited. When I make a video, I have full control, right? Like I'm editing that thing.

If I feel like I don't like the way I worded that or I said that weird or I embarrassed myself there, I just cut it out. I can't do that here. If I embarrass myself, I embarrass myself. And coming terms with that is a skill. I think it's a skill that's going to be important for newer managers to have and what new leadership to have is dealing with that, dealing with other human beings, you know, having conversations with other human beings interacting, relating to them, picking up on signals, like just basic social stuff. that sounds stupid to say, maybe for somebody who grew up not having to really think too much about that. But for me and for other generations, I think building those skills pretty intentionally is going to be important.

You know, you talk about IQ versus EQ, which is emotional intelligence, and it's few and far between I see people. I mean, I work with a lot of people, and I'm like, I think emotional intelligence is trying to view a situation through the other person's eyes on how they're being treated. And it's a way of looking at yourself and kind of just, judging yourself and saying, am I living up to par? Am I treating them with respect? And, you know, there's so many people within this company right now.

I don't even know their names. So I had to create a software. Yep. It talks to our payroll software. I know their birthdays, their birthdays, their work anniversaries, their kids' birthdays, their kids' names. And I also know when someone had their best day ever or their worst day ever. I think it's important if they have their worst week or worst month.

that I just say, hey, is everything okay? Instead of coming down on them and saying you're going to get a performance improvement plan, you know what I find out? If someone's sick, their mom's really sick, they're not thinking straight. They might be going through a divorce. Their kid might be sick. Their kid might be going under surgery. And I think when you can see these things, and the information tells a story.

And if you could look at that, but just asking the question, but unfortunately, if I spend an hour with every single person per quarter, there'd be no time left. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But I still think it's really important that you think that way. I think we can lack that in the trades. And it's a, it's not a good leadership style, in my opinion, to be super authoritarian.

And to just, we kind of forget that the people who work for us are people. And sometimes, I see it a lot, the way that people talk. about their employees makes me uncomfortable. There's there's certain like lack of acknowledgement for their humanity that like if you know when people don't like the way I'm implementing something they're fired when people ask you know question my leadership they're fired and people it's just like man let's have a conversation let's like you said somebody's underperforming they might be going through a really hard time and they might be a star employee for you later,

but right now they're taking care of their elderly grandma who's not doing very well, and it's taking up a lot of their time and they're tired. Maybe help them out a little bit, and someday later that will pay you dividends, but don't do it for the dividends. Do it because that's another human being. Well, the fact is, I'll tell you this,

would you rather be loved or respected? I don't see them as different things. Well, let me ask you this. Is there anybody that was around you, a coach, a teacher, an uncle, and a grandparent, maybe mom or dad, a cousin, a boss that completely changed your life in a good way? Like, you think about this, and they taught you a discipline or they had you face a fear. I don't need to know who, but just you have a person. Okay, so if you think about that person,

And, you know, for me, I had to respect them before I love them because they said you're not going to play in the game until you keep your grades up. But they made sure I got a warm meal every night when my mom worked three jobs. I think the thing is if you respect somebody and the book I'm thinking about that I think you should read is firm feedback in a fragile world. Is if you respect somebody, you're going to be honest with them. You're going to talk to them. You're going to communicate with them. and even when they don't want to hear it, you still got to be willing to have that conversation.

And it's not easy, especially, you know, I'm out right at the edge of a millennial, but if somebody cares about you, they're going to want to pull the best out of you. They're not going to let you make excuses. Now, the guy that's saying I'm going to fire people, the problem I have with that, as you picked these people,

you brought them on board, you interviewed them. You must be a bad judge of character if they're not living up to your expectations. And maybe you didn't set the expectations right. So every time someone does that, they've got to look deep at the mirror and say maybe you have the issue. Yeah, agreed. I want to do a speed round with you to close this out, and then I got a few close-out questions. So this is called Rapid Fire.

The most underrated service tight and feature? Dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing. And tell me what you love about dynamic pricing. It just takes so much work out of managing your price book. I'm starting to hesitate to call it the most underrated because more and more people are starting to use it. But every time I hear somebody not using it, I'm just like, what are you doing? Why not? It's just such a no-brainer to me. Give me an example of how it's super effective.

Well, you know, prices are changing a lot. Costs are changing a lot. You have to update your prices that you're charged with the customer in order to stay above water and make sure you're still hitting the numbers that you need to hit. That's a big pain in the butt to do manually, especially with how often prices tend to be changing in right now. Tariffs doing this and whatever is going on in the world. So much stuff is affecting it. When you have dynamic pricing, you don't have to worry about it. As long as you have your price book built correctly where your materials are properly tied to the services that you're selling, the price just adjust itself automatically. You don't have to think, okay, we're spending more on this. Let me go adjust the prices.

Let me go have somebody go and mess with a spreadsheet. None of that's necessary. It just takes care of itself. What's the biggest tech myth in the trades? That software solves problems. I like that one. What's one metric every owner should know just down to the decimal? Net profit.

Couldn't agree more. I also think to get to profit, you got to know your cost per lead. your booking rate, your conversion rate, your average ticket. If I was to just put out some simple KPIs, this is how we build our budget, this is how we buy companies. Yeah, let me go over that one more time. Cost per lead. Yeah, so your CPL, you know what? We'll do something fun real quick.

I'll do this with you. And I've done this on the podcast. So, well, let's just use some imaginary numbers. I'm just going to pull out my calculator. Go ahead and tell me your goal. year. What do you want to do in revenue? Oh, this year, Tommy, I'm looking to do $11 million. $11 million. That's a good goal. So you got $11 million.

Next thing I need to know, what is your booking rate? And I consider booking rate your contact center. So that includes social media, Yelp, Angie's list. I want to know what's your booking rate. Mostly the phone calls, but a lot of form fills too. Blended. What's your booking rate? Yeah, right now, Tommy, I'm at 82%. 82%. 82%. So point 82 and then let's look at your conversion rate. And conversion rate means we're face to face. So that means they knock on your door to date or in your business. Yeah, we'll say I'm at 70%.

And then the final one, oh, average ticket is the next one. What is your average ticket? Blended? Yeah, service and sales. I call it $1,200. Oh, that's going to be a problem. Okay, then what is your cost per lead? $250.250.

So I'm going to type in here, $11 million is my goal. We're going to divide that by 0.82, and you'll see the number go up because you're not converting, you're not booking all the calls. And then you hit equals, and you need to divide that by 0.7. Oops, 0.7. And then we see the number went way up because I lost 30 more percent. So now I need to do basically 19.1 million. And then I need to divide that by 1,200 because that's my average ticket. I need to run 16,000 leads.

Then I multiply that by my cost per lead, 250. And I'm spending $3.992, so about $4 million. So unfortunately, I'm spending in the high 30s, the marketing dollars, to be able to get to that. So how could I fix that? Well, I could increase my booking rate to 90%, try to get my money. I converge rate up. But the biggest thing that's outlier here for me is I got to raise that average ticket. So I look at these and say, what's reasonable? Because I could play with any of these numbers, I could probably drive down my cost for lead to $200. And I could probably get my ticket

to $2K. So let's run this again. So I needed to spend, remember, $4 million to get $11 million. So now let's go $11 million again, divided by 0.82 equals divided by 0.7. equals divided by 2000 equals times 200. Now, what do you know? I'm at $1.9 million. So all I did was take my service ticket average from $1,200 to $2,000, and take my cost per lead down a fifth to $200. And I literally cut the marketing spend in half.

Yep. And as you play with these numbers, you obviously want to increase booking rate, increase conversion rate, increase average ticket, and decrease cost per lead. So when we buy a business, the one thing usually they're beating us on is the cost per lead because they've been around for 30 years and they've got customers and stickers and their GVP are killing it.

We might be new to that market. We might be going into that market. So we buy them. And then we look at their booking rate conversion rate average ticket. And we know within 90 days they're going to be the same as ours. So we might pay seven X for that business. But the effective multiple goes down to two because we raised all those. They weren't, you know, the average client of service times back in the day,

I remember there was a report. It was 45% booking rate. So it's hard to believe. And everybody I know says, oh, I'm booking at least 90%. And I'm like, no, you're not. You're not even counting. Yeah, check those numbers again. You're not counting the parts calls, the social media stuff.

You're not counting. You're not counting the weekends, the holidays, your close Sundays. You're not counting the nights you don't answer. or oh, and then, oh, that's out of your service area. Why aren't you counting out of your service area? People go, because it's not in my service area. But if you counted it. That's the biggest thing I see too.

What's that? That's the biggest thing I see too. We've actually had that problem. We were developing. I forget which product manager I was talking to, but we were developing something that I think it was for smart dispatch, actually. We needed information about the booking rates. And we were getting weird data.

And we dug into it. And we found out that one of the reasons, we were getting that weird data was that people were falsely reporting or quote unquote falsely reporting they didn't think they were falsely reporting but they whenever they got a call that was like oh we just don't provide that service or it's out of our service area they perceived it as on bookable they would classify it in the software as like an excused call like that wasn't that wasn't an opportunity it's like but yes it was an opportunity you just happened to not want to do it that's not the same thing so we had to kind of reframe their thinking about what that what that button

did what that meant. Well, here's the question I would ask them is, why are you getting out of service areas? If you're not counting it, you'll never be able to put a magnifying glass on it and say, we're advertising in a zone of Alpack or our radio ads are hitting this area that you're paying for. So unless you know it's a problem, it'll never get investigated, number one. And number two, most people that call in for parts I can convert them into a client. So people call in and say, hey, I'm thinking about buying a hot water heater. Do you guys wholesale them?

No, we don't. Sorry. We could introduce you to our supplier. That is an opportunity to say, what are you looking for? What's going on? Why don't we come out there? Doesn't cost a thing. We'll look at it.

We could get you an amazing value. Like, I just think it's such a mistake. But anyways. You also give yourself a big blind spot to market signals. Like, people might be screaming from the rooftops that they'll, you know, throw money at you if you provided this one particular survey. but you don't. You're just not considering it an opportunity.

It never hits your radar that like, oh, if we provided this service, how many extra customers would we have had? What could we sell that service for? Like you'll just miss the signal altogether. Well, I would also ask what paper click campaign? Why are my LSA clients? I do plumbing. Why are they calling for insulation or pest control?

Why are they calling for- Yeah, well, if it's totally off the mark like that, yeah. I mean, I would ask myself though, like, like give me an example of a service some would be asking for that if I was an H-AC person, I might not do. Like, why would I be getting those calls? It's the number one thing. It's like people call for duct cleaning, and a lot of HVAC people have a preconceived notion that there's no money in duct cleaning, and so they just don't offer it.

So even though they're getting a thousand calls a month about duct cleaning, they're just like, oh, we don't offer it. And they never hear the signal that people would like to have that. That's a really good excuse and a cheap call to go out and look at the system. So I agree with you. What's the best first automation to implement? First automation? Something simple.

I would say like a custom alert that server site and doesn't natively do. Okay. And then last question for this rapid fire. System or people? Systems or people? Which breaks first? Which breaks first? Systems.

Well, this is my answer. What if it's the systems that get the people. There should be a system of how you hire. And if you're not hiring the best people, you've got a broken system. So yes, it goes back to systems. Always systems. Chicken or the egg. The system is the egg. That's always it. Richard, is there any books that completely changed everything about you? Like, it could be the Bible. It could be anything. I'm a business autobiography reader. I read more self-help books than anybody, but it could be fiction. It could be anything. There's a book. Changed everything about me is strong, but it definitely made me rethink some things.

It's a book called Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. I have it. It's a great book. I think it's especially important for high net worth individuals to read, but even for myself, you know, I'm doing okay, but I'm not a super high net worth individual, but I am a saver by nature. And that book really helps reframe some of my thinking as to why am I like this? Is it really in my best interest to be the way that I'm being when it comes to how I'm managing my money? It really changed my perspective on some things. I think it's a great book.

And it's an easy read. It's not too long. I think one of the, yeah, it's a blue cover with yellow, die with zero. And one of the main things is like a trip when you're 25 is a lot different than you're 75, unless we're right about longevity. Correct. I do say there's seasons of life and let the compound interest, like, work hard in your 20s and 30s, so you're paying your future self.

But also get Jesse Hitzers big-ass calendar and make time. Slot it out. Make time for your family and your friends and make time for fun. Right. Yeah, the concept, just to give people sort of the short version, like Tommy just said, there's seasons to life. And so money is sort of more valuable to you when you were younger versus when you're older. Like, for example, it would be probably pretty rare for somebody to say that they would trade places with Warren Buffett right now because Warren Buffett's in his 90s.

Yeah, he's loaded. But who cares? But so what? Like, what good does that do? He's going to die. And his quality of life isn't what it was that our quality of life is. Yeah. So what good does the money at that point?

And so it's like if you're going to, if you have a goal to take a ski trip and to go to the opposite. you should probably go on the ski trip first when you're younger and more, you know, able to do that and go on, save the opera for later. And if you're going to give money away, you should probably go ahead and do that while you're alive versus waiting until you're dead and can't see it and have no control over how that gets spent. And the people who you're giving it to you are older and the money is less valuable to them as well. Things like that. It's a really valuable book, I think, for people to read. I've got a big plan. I'm not given to BYU like Tom Howard, but, uh,

It's a pretty good goal. Yeah, philanthropy, helping out the people in your own backyard before. I've always said, listen, if everyone's not killing it that I work with and doing well or a single mother has ball tires on our car, what's the point of helping out all these other causes? It's like, why wouldn't you want to help the people that are struggling that you brought on into your family into your business? It makes no sense. But it's hard because if you give, you're C. FO will tell you you got to charge them taxes. And so I'm working on a special 5013C.

But next question, how do people get a hold of you if they want to reach out, Richard? A few ways. Facebook is usually an easy one. Send me a message. Leave me a comment on the Facebook page. I've also got a website, bluecollarnerd.com. That's where you can buy Blue Collar Nerd's Ultimate Service Titan Guide, which is a product I've built out where it's a big video library, searchable.

where you can learn how to use pretty much every aspect of Service Titan. The challenge with my day-to-day job in Service Titan is that there's always new stuff coming out, and so my time is typically spent covering new things. And so this is something I built that let me go back and cover everything, all the stuff that's been there for years, all of the settings pages, just how to use Service Titan, full stop. Like I said, searchable, all the videos are transcribed, and so you can find what you're looking for without having to watch hours of content.

And it's meant to be a guide, not a course. And so it's meant to be something that people can keep on reference to go back and check and refresh their memory. And as they're going through a certain process, go into the guide and I'll walk them through. They're all videos of me. Just self-built stuff. No AI voices, nothing like that. So that's been my kind of latest project. I love it, man.

I'm excited to see what you do there. Finally, I'm just going to have you close us out. Any topic, anything you want the audience to hear, maybe we didn't talk about something, but you get the stage. I'll take a co-do. Do we have like five minutes? I think something that has been on my mind lately, and I've kind of alluded to a little bit in this podcast, I think it's important for people to figure out and get really clear

about what their goal is and why. Why is it that you're doing what you're doing? Tommy's sitting with me right now for an hour and 15. minutes on a Saturday. I would bet that he knows why because he doesn't have to. He definitely doesn't have to. So it's important to understand for yourself. Why is it that you want what you want? So there's this exercise that I think is important for everybody to go through where you just really sit down and ask yourself, what's my goal and why do I want it? And the answer has to tie to some underlying value of yours. So the answer can't be a thing. And the answer can't be a thing. And the answer can't

can't assume something about another human being. So for example, why do I do what I do? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is like, well, I need to make money. Cool. Money is a thing though, so I have to go a level deeper. Okay, well, I want a bunch of money because right now I'm living in this townhouse. It's great, but I would love to build or buy a nice house with like a pool, outdoor kitchen, like a theater room, a game room.

Okay, cool. house is a thing, so I've got to go a level deeper. Why do I want that particular type of house? Well, I want that particular type of house because I can entertain in it. I can bring my friends in. It's a place to hang out. It's a place to build connections. It's a place to make memories. Okay, so now I've kind of gotten to that core value. Like, that's the thing that's really driving me. It's like, I want connection with other people in my life. And that's sort of the thing that's really driving when I dig those levels deeper. Okay, cool. That's that's one of the things. What else? Well, I really value health and longevity. Okay, I need money for that. So that's another like thing

that's underneath money because, you know, whatever you think about the health care system, it's probably not great if your goal is to like prevent disease and live as long as possible. It's really geared more towards, you know, dealing with disease once you already have it. So insurance isn't really going to help me when it comes to this type of longevity goals that I have. have. And then if I'm really honest with myself, and this is why it's such a valuable exercises, because it helps you weed out the things that you're not actually, you think you're doing it, but you're projecting something else. And you have to actually divert your attention elsewhere to deal with that problem versus what you think you're doing it for. Because if I'm

really honest with myself, one of the reasons I'm, I do what I do. I work as hard as I work or whatever, is that I want to prove myself. You know, like I grew up being told, I slept too much. I was lazy. The way that I thought about work was not going to not going to work in the real world. Like I was living this fantasy. The way that I worked just wasn't realistic. I couldn't sleep in.

I couldn't work late at night. I couldn't have that sort of schedule. I was not a hard worker. And I just knew deep in my bones that that wasn't true. And I just want to prove it. I just want to show the world that like, that's not true. That's not me. Money doesn't actually solve that problem for me.

So that helps me weed that one out and say, okay, that's a different sort of issue that I need to deal with a different way. Because no matter how much money I make, that's never going to be satisfied. There's no amount of money that solves that problem because it's not something that can be bought. One other thing I'll call out is that you have to be really careful when doing this exercise. about using other people as your reason. It's not that they can't be your reason, but it's an easy thing for your kind of ego to hijack. So a common thing is like, well, I'm doing it for my family.

I'm doing it for my kids. I'm doing it for my wife. Maybe, maybe you are. But like, let's think about that for just a second. You know, sometimes you'll say that and then I'll talk to your kids. I'll talk to your wife and I'm like, man, I wish my dad would work less. I wish he was at my last play, my last recital, my last ball game. game and they'll talk to the wife and they'll be like man I wish you would work less I feel like I barely see him anymore and I'll talk to the person and be like yeah I'm doing it for them

now hang on because you can't decide that for them they have to be a part of that decision if if you're doing it for them there's got to be an actual need and they've they've got to actually be receptive to that it's a different when it's like a baby obviously they can't they can't decide but if you're if you're doing you know if you're making 200k and you're you're saying I'm doing it for my family. Let's really just like dive in and ask maybe that's true and maybe, you know, your dad was an alcoholic who couldn't hold down a job and you want to be just the polar opposite of that. You want to prove that you're not like him. And that's more about you than it is about the family that you're saying you're doing it for. I'm not saying that from

a place of judgment. But I do think it's worth analyzing that and understanding it about yourself so that you don't end up, you know, working your life. life away for a particular goal that you're never going to reach because the thing that you want isn't there. What do you think about people? I want to go a little bit further here. What do you think about people that say there's no better place than when I'm at work? I really love, I'm a workaholic and I love it. It depends. I would do this exact exercise, man, because some people, that's really true. They get something. There's something that ties to a core value of theirs that is related to what they do for work.

That it's not, it doesn't feel like work or when it, even when it does feel like work, there's meaning. There's some deep reason why I'm doing this that makes sense to them. So if you can do that exercise and you can get to that core value, valid, fine. But if you do that exercise and you get to something else that's like maybe I'm using work as an escape, Maybe I'm using work to get away from something else. Maybe I'm using work to dull an emotion because when I just sit alone with my thoughts, I don't like what comes up.

That's a different story. Cameron Harold has been a coach of mine, and he said, if anybody tells me they'll have to work, I don't even want to be there. Because the first thing I ask them is, what did you like to do when you were a kid? What did you like to do when you were a teenager? What sports did you play?

Did you love playing the flute? like find out something that you love outside of work. One of the things that I think, because I've been doing some of the same things and you've got to pill back that onion, is I write down six Saps, family and friends, faith, fitness, finances, future self and fun. And then I got to have strong goals

that are the exact recipe. And I don't set them as a year. I set them weekly or monthly. Like I'm going to get this many. steps I'm going to get this much protein per day and then I got to sign off and make a commitment to the people I care about now with faith the commitment that I'm going to go to church I'm not going to tell my workout buddies I'm going to tell the person it's a different accountability part sure so if you could create this accountability around it but yeah you know I would say

coming from a broken family deciding at the age of four that money was never going to be a problem for me and my family never getting married yet but I'm in engaged, no kids yet. You know, what I'm starting to do is smell the roses. That's why we're building this house. And that's why we just went 10 days to Costa Rica. And, you know, die with nothing. Die with zero is a good example is, you know, live your best life.

And I like to keep my brain busy, though. I will say that. Like, I like to learn. I like to read. I like to be involved. My mom always asked, why do you get on your cell phone when I'm here? I'm like, well, Mom, I really put, when I was in Coast Creek, I really thought a lot about this. Like, when we were kids, you used to take us places.

And we go to movies and we go bowling. Like, we never just sat there for hours. And maybe that's a skill set I need to work on, but you come to my place, we're going to be playing golden tier, darts or shooting pull or going out there, going for a walk. I have a hard time. I wouldn't do well in Italy. I can't just sit at the table, especially in this world where we're talking. talking about Minnesota and Ukraine and Iran and the most conversations we're having is something

that's completely out of our control and it doesn't make us happy. But anyways, have you tried meditating, Tommy? Something on my list this year. I would give it a shot. It's not that what you're saying is necessarily like flagged to me as in any way problematic. But I think it would, I think it's just a helpful thing for a person in general to do, especially in the age where like there's nothing wrong with wanting to keep your mind busy. I think where it becomes problematic is when you kind of can't help it.

Like sometimes I'll just be like sitting on the couch trying to watch TV with my partner. And I'll be looking at her and suddenly like my phone's in my hand. I'm like, oh, I don't want to be on my phone. I want to be like having this moment. So I'll put the phone down. And then a couple minutes later like the phone's just in my hand and I don't like it wasn't intentional at all. That I think is problematic.

And that's something meditation has kind of helped me with. And a lot of people will say, yeah, I've tried meditation. And it's not for me. I'm bad at it. And that's like the exact, like if you're bad at it, that's the exact signal that you're the person who should be meditating. It's like, man, I've tried to go to the gym, but the weights are so heavy. Like I can't, I struggle to even lift the lightest weight.

Like, okay, great. That's a sign that you should be lifting the weights. So like when your mind wanders off and you're like, no, no, bring it back here. and your mind wanders again and you're like, damn it, stay focused. And then your mind wanders. Like that's a rep. That's what meditation is. And that's the skill you're building.

You're strengthening the frontal lobes of your brain, which is the part that like deals with executive function and like overcoming more the amygdala, which is more like the emotional part of your brain. And us as humans just generally will like use activities to do the whims of that amygdala. it to I feel this particular emotion come up in me. And we're not even necessarily conscious of this. You have to really pay attention. It's a kind of a skill to become aware of it.

Like something comes up in me. And so I'm going to get on Facebook and scroll. I'm going to get on TikTok and scroll. It could be vices to you. I'm going to reach for the alcohol. I'm going to watch some porn. I'm going to do whatever the vice happens to be. That's like coming from that emotional part of the brain.

And the frontal lobes are what you're strengthening in meditation. And they're what, like, let you be more in control and make those decisions outside of just, like, being driven. You know, there's a guy named Gino Wickman, and he said he sold his business, EOS, sold the vast majority. And he woke up very depressed. He had piles and piles and piles and piles of money. And he felt like he was missing part of his soul because sometimes your business becomes your identity. Yeah, real common. He said, you know, Tommy, when I got the help, you could do ayahuasca, there's ketamine,

there's different chemicals, you could do counseling, you could do meditation. He said the one thing that I'll tell everybody is when you face your fears and you confront them. Most driven individuals think it's going to destroy their edge. It's going to get rid of the piece of them that built what they have. But he goes, it doesn't. It sets you free. You'll still have the edge. You'll still be just everything you were but better.

And that really resonated with me because I do need to meditate. You know, there's certain things of prioritization. But it's not hard. I own my calendar. It wouldn't be hard. The best people that I know in my life are good at meditating, so it wouldn't be hard. The good news is I do walk a lot and I live in my own head and I breathe the fresh hair and I'm in the sunlight and I get that activity.

I was pretty depressed. And I don't mean like depressed of most people. Just I wasn't myself when I couldn't go on my hour walks a day because of my boot. Because of my ankle. And that was the number one thing. Get back to your long walks. That's when I'm in the zone. That's when I go to bed.

I fall right asleep. That's when I'm smiling the most. So I will start meditating. Any particular meditation practices you recommend? It's a deep rabbit hole man. So kind of know. I would just be careful about kind of the more like app-driven stuff. I think that meditation, it's tough, right?

I generally consider myself a man of science. However, I do think it's unfair the way that we in the Western world treat, quote-unquote, alternative medicine, where we sort of define alternative medicine by all the stuff that doesn't work. And then once we scientifically validate it, then we take it out of that bucket of alternative medicine, and we just call it medicine. Meditation is one of those things that for a long time was just like kind of this hippie BS. And then science sort of validated pieces of it. And then they're like, oh, actually this isn't hippie BS.

Let's take it out of that alternative medicine bucket. And we'll move it over here. And now you'd be hard pressed to find like a psychiatrist, a psychologist, who wouldn't recommend meditation as a basic practice. But I think we've only scientifically validated like a tiny piece of it. There's a big piece of this tradition that people have been doing. for thousands of years that maybe there's something too. Maybe not.

I don't know. But I think it's still worth considering what's the other stuff? Maybe let's not just distill it down to what, you know, is in this app built by this, you know, Silicon Valley startup. And let's consider these other things that were behind it and really look into it. That's just my, that's sort of just a my personal feeling on it. I don't think there's anything wrong with it if you want to use headspace or some app like that just to dip your toe in. I think those are going to get you some benefit too. I just,

I don't know, I have a certain respect for the tradition of it too. Well, I'll tell you, we went a lot of places here, and I actually really enjoyed it. I got a lot of notes. I had a lot of fun, and looking forward to seeing you soon. I know you'll be a pantheon. Where do you live? Oh, the Atlanta area, Georgia. Well, how often do you get to Phoenix? As often as I can. I mean, I used to go to the, it wasn't Phoenix, it was tempi, but I used to go there reasonably often for Blue Collar Success Group,

Kenny Chapman. Yeah, yeah, Chapman's out here, yeah. Yeah, so when I was with my dad's company, we went out there. And I love Kenny, like me and him and Chris always got along really well. So we keep in touch, too. But I haven't made it out there in a while. I'd love to come out. Well, next time you're here, or if you want to sit something up, I'd love to have you.

And, uh, you had a lot of fun, man. This was a great time. I'm happy to do it anytime. I'd love to come again. Cool, man. Well, listen, I appreciate you. I think the audience got a lot out of this. And I hope you have a great week.

You too. I appreciate you.