The Home Service Expert Podcast - The Nine Pillars of Building a Sustainable Home Service Business

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Michael Disney is a co-owner and the COO for CEO Warrior, a business consulting, training, and mentoring firm that uses proven methods to help small businesses overcome obstacles and achieve success. ...He began his career as an automotive electrical specialist and later worked as a lead generator at Gold Medal Service in 2013, contributing to the company's highest record-sales month at $3.5 million as Director of Sales. In this episode, we talked about recruitment strategies, lead generation, financial freedom…  

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I think people recognize there's opportunity to improve your business at a rapid scale if they're willing to do the work. That's the key component. Are you willing to do the hard work? Are you willing to put in the time and effort? And if you're willing to put in the time and effort, the recipe is pretty simple, right? Are we priced appropriately? Is our organization structured the right way?
Starting point is 00:00:20 Do we have this ability to communicate at the level your business needs for your vision, not for where you are today? And then really building into what your painted vision is, what your core values are, how you represent yourself, what your expectation to the market is, all those things that you were talking about earlier that lead you to attracting the quality talent, attracting a quality consumer, a really perfect avatar for you. What does that look like? Half of us just, and I don't want to say half, it's way more than half of the people that own home service businesses that are actually willing to put in the work to get the results that few are seeing. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class
Starting point is 00:01:00 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. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello, and today I have Mike Disney. He is the CEO of CEO Warriors. He's an expert in lead generation business consulting and sales. He's based in New Jersey. He's also part of the Master Coach Program. He was Gold Medal Service Director of sales from May 2015 to September 2018,
Starting point is 00:01:47 sales manager before that from June 2013 through 2015. And he also was the owner of Edison Generator Exchange. Mike is the co-owner and COO for Sea Warrior, a business consulting training and mentoring firm that uses proven methods to help small businesses overcome obstacles and achieve success. He began his career as an automotive electrical specialist and later worked as a lead generator at Gold Medal Service in 2013. He became director of sales, contributing to the company for the highest record sales month at 3.5 million. In 2015, he joined CEO Warrior as the master coach and was eventually promoted to the chief operating officer in 2019. So four years ago. So Mike,
Starting point is 00:02:32 it's a pleasure to have you on here. It's good being with you, man. Thanks so much. I didn't know you knew all that stuff. I had to go back in time. Remember all those little nuances there. Good stuff. I get that a lot. We do our research. So, you know, I guess the best part to start is tell the audience a little bit about you, a little bit about your history, where you're at today, where you're looking to go. Yeah. So I think the bio really kind of tells the story of what, you know, what got me into the home service world, what puts me in my position today. First and foremost, you know, I'm a dad. I have five kids. I'm born and raised in Baltimore, moved up here to New Jersey. Kids give you roots and then you find out where your future goes, wherever they want to be. So having as many kids as I do,
Starting point is 00:03:16 staying in Central New Jersey was important. I owned an automotive business where I had the fortune to meet two guys that had a really great business in Central Jersey, and I was able to manage their fleet and really get to see their culture live. A lot of people talk about a great culture. I got to see these guys that are just breaking their ass out in the field, working hard days, and then they come to me because their truck's failing, and they all had a great attitude. Life happens. I had some challenges in my personal stuff. Get a divorce. I go and get an opportunity to go work at Gold Medal, work for Rob Zadotti, who was a friend of mine, one of the founders of Gold Medal and CEO Warrior. And then ultimately working with Mike Aguilera, who a lot
Starting point is 00:03:54 of you guys probably already know, who was founder of Gold Medal as well as CEO Warrior. And then just being able to take some of my abilities that I had as a business owner, as a salesman, selling everything my whole life. I tell everybody I was the best paperboy that ever lived and the reality of selling things for years and years and years. And for me, getting into this position, obviously being through two private equity churns, obviously the home service company, and now here being with Corridor Capital and somebody just dedicated to the client journey, it's really what it's all about for me, Tommy. I mean, where am I at today? What am I
Starting point is 00:04:29 doing? I'm focusing on taking our content to the next level. What is the next layer for that for us? I'm building out different trainings that are really predicated on the complexities of today's world. What does that look like for our clients? How can they leverage that and grow their businesses? Our main focus here at CEO Warrior is always going to be our client journey. We're fortunate enough in the eight years that CEO Warrior has been around to represent a billion dollars in revenue growth for our clients. And with all the market interest, we've had 34 of our clients in the past two years exit to private equity and multiple looking at generational wealth, which we're super proud of that. And I
Starting point is 00:05:05 think playing a part in their journey and what that looks like, that's what it's all about for us. And for me, that's really where I'm at right now, just building out a better tomorrow for all of our clients. Love it. Got an opportunity. And look, I'm good friends with Julian at Nextar. Sure. I got an opportunity to speak at Service Roundtable recently, and there's all these groups that do amazing things. And he said, you know why we picked you? And I said, no clue. He said, because look around this room.
Starting point is 00:05:33 You're probably one of the youngest guys in here. And the mentality of the millennials is quite a bit different. We want to be valued. I'm right at that borderline. Sure. We want to be valued. We want to be involved. We want to know what's going on. We want to be valued. I'm right at that borderline. We want to be valued. We want to be involved. We want to know what's going on. We want to invest in ourselves. We want to feel like
Starting point is 00:05:50 we're part owner. And then I think this is bullshit because this is what I don't agree with is the work-life balance because I think I enjoy what I do. So work is fun. But it's crazy to see that room. And, you know, I'm sure a lot of people are listening that we're in that room, but really business is evolving faster than ever. More baby boomers are retiring now. It's like, I think 20,000 per day, 12% of them own a business. And a lot of people are looking to exit and not all of them have the opportunity to go to PE. You know, PE looks specifically for platform companies and they bolt on companies, but they look, there's different strategies. You try to
Starting point is 00:06:31 buy great businesses, but you also buy ones you know you could add value to. But a lot of people don't have a business. And I hate to say that, but when they're not there, the business fails. And that's no way to do a business because most of us started out as a technician. And then we started a business and said, if i get enough leads and do all the work i'll make more money but at the end of their 30-year career they're just worth what their phone number is worth because they make 140 grand a year and to replace them is around 100 grand so there's no really multiple there of ebita there's no there's nothing there right So I think it's important to get involved with groups like you to understand how to build a real business that functions when you're not there.
Starting point is 00:07:10 Yeah. I mean, for us, that's really... I mean, we get people when they come in, they're pretty green to business management. They're probably excellent at whatever their trade is. They're great plumbers, great HVAC guys, and you know the story. And they come in and they don't even know what a P&L is. They don't have a clue where their finances arrive. They don't know what cash flow is. Half of them, they have a gut feel on whether or not they're making money or not. And that's a really bad practice in business today. Creating sustainability, creating financial awareness, doing the work. I love a lot of the stuff that you're talking about, watching some of your things where you're like, there's no magic pill, man. There is zero magic pills out there. There's no silver bullet.
Starting point is 00:07:48 You got to put in the work, but it's got to be controlled, right? You got to be with somebody who's probably either been there before or has a really good depth of understanding of what you need to put in place because there is framework. I mean, you're not going to get to where you are and your size of your business without framework, discipline, and knowing how to do it. And how do you get there? You talk to the people that are wiser than we are. They've done what we've done. And you learn from them and you implement their processes. I mean, I've had coaches that have just blown my mind and given me insight into what's the next level here. What do we do here? And how do we do that? And if you're not having somebody to kind of guide you
Starting point is 00:08:23 to where you're going, you might get there, but it'll be painful along the way. And then for most people, they might not have anything. Like you said, they might not have anything to share once their days are over. Once they stop working, the whole business just crumbles because there is no foundational pieces. You know, I know if there's a really shitty owner is when you go out there for the first day and they tell you how they fix things better. They tell you how to work on a Linux or, in my case, a Clopay door. They figured out an easier way to fix something. It's like, and they're proud of it. That's the sad part. I got a master's degree from University of Arizona. And I did studies of financial reports, case studies.
Starting point is 00:09:02 We learned balance sheets. We learned how to examine a company, none of which I used in the home service space, none of it. I mean, there are certain terms and I learned how to network better and I wouldn't have done it differently. I love sitting with these private equity. The reason I went is I sat down with Kent Goodrich. I've sat down with Leland Frazier, David Geiger, my buddy Keegan. I mean, you name it, I went out and visited him. Aaron Gaynor. I've been around the biggest shops in HVAC. I studied plumbing. And I learned to mold that into my industry.
Starting point is 00:09:31 And what I learned was, especially from Ken Goodrich, is he said, look, you think you're good, but when you get around a really good PE mind, I hate the word PE just because it almost is frowned upon. The guys that I'm working with at Quark Tech, and this isn't a pitch for them, but they said, you need to take complete ownership. We're not telling you what to do. We're helping to open your eyes and ask you the right questions. We're asking you tougher questions that you haven't looked at.
Starting point is 00:09:59 Never say the PE guys made us do this and they're destroyed. You're running the company. You're the CEO, Tommy. And don't place blame. If you're going to do this and right size your CSRs, which we did, we had to make a decision with 15 of them because of performance and because it just, it didn't make sense. Then own up to it. Take ownership. Don't say, well, I'm sorry, guys, the investors. No, this is the right thing for the business because you're entitled to make a very healthy profit. And what Ken Goodrich explained to me was just, look, dude, you think you're pretty good and you are at a lot of things, but if you want to learn financial engineering and
Starting point is 00:10:34 how the bigger game works, this is the next step. I just turned 40 and I'm like, that was probably the most compelling thing for me is that I've got so much more to learn. Once I know this, I'm going to be what? 43, 44. Yeah. In the brightest days of my life. You know, I, I'm really looking forward to my forties. I missed my thirties a little bit, missed my twenties even more, but that's the way it goes. And, uh, there's so many people, there's so much opportunity.
Starting point is 00:11:00 I mean, in the next six years, I think the majority, the large, large, large, vast majority of baby boomers will be retired. And that means all this opportunity. And I just want a piece of it. Yeah. I think it's a crazy amount of opportunity to go back to like the investor focus, right? Getting it. We just had our board meeting and I was out in LA with our private equity firm and man, just being around them and watching how they look at the numbers and how they kind of create actions with you. And I mean, it's a whole nother level.
Starting point is 00:11:31 I think that's the excitement for me, right? Like been through in the journey, now we're in it again. And hearing these guys put out these structured actions, like, hey, if we did this, then this would happen. And just recognizing everything you do is touching a lever, moving something along the way. There's so much to learn. And I don't think there's ever a level where you feel incredibly confident that the next level doesn't need some kind of teaching or somebody that's there who's done it to give you some insight. I mean, I learn
Starting point is 00:11:59 from my clients every day, but boy, my investors, some of the things that they're thinking about, and I'm tracking numbers, I'm tracking data like I never thought was possible. I never thought we would ever track certain things like that. And all that stuff puts me in a position to just think incredibly different than I ever thought before. Well, what happens is they force you to get more granular and they're asking questions like how come you had just as many non-opportunities come in as opportunities well people checking to reschedule or they want to know an invoice or they got a question now we're using technology this is what i love about this new day is i can build i mean i've got so many developers that can build anything i want now
Starting point is 00:12:42 and perfect is the enemy of everything, really. I mean, we just need an MVP. Get something going and then we'll perfect it over time. I watch a lot of people in this company and in a lot of other businesses, and I look at their IQ versus EQ. And EQ wins every day. Their personal relationships, how they could have conversations, their eye contact. I meet the best IQs in the world. And the one thing they always forget about is the people.
Starting point is 00:13:09 They don't know how to have great conversations. They don't know how to be sincere. They don't understand just how to make a customer and our internal customers, which are our employees, my coworkers. And that piece is so important. I think it's the most important piece. And I watch all these guys coming into my office. I have a lot of people that come in and there was my buddy Jace came in yesterday and he's talking to me. What if I could use AI and I could show you what I could do and I could predict this and know this to take for HVAC, I could bring in the humidity factors and I could tell you
Starting point is 00:13:40 exactly how to do better keyword research. I said, what if I put my top 10 guys in any market and you gave me shitty leads and you put me in the middle of Mississippi, I'd still outsell any garage or company in the world because you're missing the other half of the equation. Right, right, right. Tell me how you do personality profiling, how you motivate your people every day because you might be great at lead gen. A lead gen is a big piece of building a great budget. But without the conversion rate, the average tickets, the five-star reviews, the customers that become raving fans, without people recruiting not only customers,
Starting point is 00:14:15 but other co-workers to join our team, we have nothing. And I think that's a missing piece of home service. Yeah, I think the good companies get it, right? They invest in their people. They make sure that their people live quality lives. I think I saw the thing, I saw one of the speeches you gave where you literally called some guy out and you were like, well, tell me your CSR doesn't have bald tires on her car, right? I love that because that's the reality. What's the quality of life of the people that you're supporting and serving on a day-to-day
Starting point is 00:14:44 basis? What quality of life do they have and what's your impact to your community? And we live that at Warrior, right? Like, how do we create, and dude, you know it, I know it, the home services present the most charitable people in the world. And if they have opportunity because they have a great sustainable business, they're going to create amazing communities and their people are going to live great lives. And I think that's the real key equation, right? Like how do you attract great people? Have great people work for you and make sure that they understand the value of you and what you bring to the table as their leader and how you support that. We preach that, man. I love that. I love that so much. I had a guy, we had 700 grand the other day, like 740 grand. And
Starting point is 00:15:23 everybody was like so happy at work. And then I had a guy call me later that night and said, Hey, I'm getting into my house in 15 days. And it's the first house for my family. And you know, my kids, 16, 12 and six. And I wish my 16 year old got to live in this home. And the phone call from that guy that works with me, buying a home and so much more than that $740,000 a day. I can tell you it was 10 to one. And I just did it. Well, that's, you know, I said, guys,
Starting point is 00:15:54 I got enough to retire 10 times over with me and my entire family. I show up every day here because now it's about, you know, and I always say this line is a Zig Ziglar said, you could have anything you want in life. if you help enough people get what they want. And there's a bigger reason for me being here. There's a bigger why that keeps me coming back. And I feel like I'm in the fetal stages, but I feel like I've got the right intentions. I kind of feel that way a little bit here, right?
Starting point is 00:16:19 Because there's so much impact we make on business by business by business, not only my employees and I'm growing that and scaling that, but also the people that we touch, the communities that they touch. And I got to be honest with you, like being able to, you know, as I hear you talk about the guy buying a house, you know, going back to gold medal days, hearing these kids that work for us, having kids now, buying homes, just developing families and then being rich in opportunity that's there. I mean, the opportunity is just unbelievable today. And being able to present that to people is really, that's the juice, right? That's what keeps us going. And I love how you're like, it's like,
Starting point is 00:16:54 I'm in the fetal, you know, of my why and what that looks like. Look, the journey is great for me. Being able to take over for some really great guys that have been in the industry forever, who are finding different things for them to do, allows me to kind of put a footprint on this organization of where we go and really map out the vision for what I want. And I mean, I want nothing more than to serve not only my employees at the highest, highest level, because I know they know I fight for their livelihood, but everybody that they impact with a conversation is really, really important. I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions here. In my orientation, I pull up a slide of a cartoon and on the top half,
Starting point is 00:17:29 it's got a dad and his son and he's planting a seed and there's a little sprout coming out. And he says, son, one day you'll appreciate the important things in life. And then on the bottom, it's got the big tree now and the dad pushing the kid now as his son. And it's got, I'm looking into the sky saying, thanks dad. Yeah. How great is that? And I said, guys, if you don't have a team behind you, if you don't get motivated by your circle, it's a cage. You know, you, have you ever noticed when you put a bad fruit next to a bunch of fruit, all the whole baskets bad. Yeah. I'm like, you need to include your family. Stay around the people that'll move you forward. You want to become a better golfer, hang out with a better golfer.
Starting point is 00:18:09 You ever notice when you golf with people that suck, you just don't care and you just shoot a 90 or whatever you might shoot. And I'm like, the same thing exists here. And I'm like, guys, here's what I promise you. Here's my oath to you. I will show up every day. I'm going to give you new trucks. I'm going to give you the tools, the training, the operational skills, the technical skills. You'll be able to give people, look them in the eyes. You'll be able to talk about an investment versus cost. You'll understand the best finance tools in the industry. We'll give them a promotion instead of a financing deal. But I said, the one thing I can't do is have you look in the mirror and think you're worth something
Starting point is 00:18:46 And look in the mirror and smile if you don't have a great smile right now. Maybe your teeth isn't perfect That's the first thing we're going to fix you're going to be proud when you smile And my goal is that you guys have more self-esteem than you've ever had. But listen, I can't do that I can't build that for you So we're going to work on that together I think what we're trying to do here is build amazing people. The byproduct of amazing people being the best version of themselves is attract better customers, recruit better people, market to the affluent. I don't mind showing up to a $10 million house. I'll walk in there and I'll close a $45,000 deal, but it won't be,
Starting point is 00:19:21 we don't say the word hundreds or thousands at this company. We just say 45. Then we smile and shut the hell up. And we work on these things over and over and over and over and over and over. Some people call it role play. Some people call it practice, but I used to play two a days in football practice. So we practice 10 times to play one game. Yeah. Think about that. We practice 10 times for one game, but in home service, we say, you're going to go on a ride along with my best guy for two weeks. Then I'm going to put you in the wilderness by yourself forever. Boy, two weeks would be nice for some of these guys. They're hiring because they're desperate. Of course. Always be recruiting. Always. If I meet a bus boy, that's got a smile, he's hustling, he's checking in on me,
Starting point is 00:20:06 I take a selfie right then and there with him. And then I text him. And then I text him a question mark for a ride-along for the next week. And I'm telling you, every single time, I think I'm 100%. It's not this week, it's not this month, but one day he's going to walk in and say, man, this is a dead-end role. I'm going to call that guy that I met. Because he seemed very excited. He seemed energized. Seems like he runs a end role. I'm going to call that guy that I met because he seemed very
Starting point is 00:20:25 excited. He seemed energized. Seems like he runs a good outfit. I see him everywhere. And instead of taking the leftovers that you recruited for $10,000 for your four month season, and you're willing to pay 20 grand to get a good guy because you can't keep them busy in the off season because you don't know how to sell service agreements. We just passed 26,000 service agreements and I have a garage door business. Yeah. nice. Perfect. So let me ask you a few questions here. Can you tell me some of the strategies that you guys have deployed to achieve those results in the home service, whether it be gold medal or CEO warrior? Yeah, well, I think for us, and I'll talk about CEO warrior, right? I think everything is a
Starting point is 00:21:02 continuation, if you will, from where we work, Old Metal to CEO Warrior. So everything kind of envelopes itself into CEO Warrior. Mike Aguilera, our founder, wrote a book called The Nine Pillars. That book has been our foundational pieces, right? Starts with mindset, ends up and talks about skill set, action set, clarity, alignment, accountability, and talks about coaching, training, and managing. And for us, that is really the kind of foundational stuff that we teach. At every one of our events, we have a layer of the nine pillars. So if you don't have the right mind, if you're not focused on what you're doing, if you don't have clarity
Starting point is 00:21:33 and alignment on the expectations, if you don't have accountability or people that are accountable above you, there's some challenges around that. And if you're not coaching and training and managing to a better tomorrow, there's real failure that's in the way. So obviously, that's the key for us is starting with those foundational pieces. And then we roll into non-negotiables, right? Because I think people recognize there's opportunity to improve your business at a rapid scale if they're willing to do the work. That's the key component. Are you willing to do the hard work? Are you willing to put in the time and effort? And? Are you willing to put in the time and effort? And if you're willing to put in the time and effort, the recipe is pretty simple, right? Are we priced appropriately? Is our organization structured the right way? Do we have this
Starting point is 00:22:14 ability to communicate at the level your business needs for your vision, not for where you are today? And then really building into what your painted vision is, what your core values are, how you represent yourself, what your expectation to the market is. All those things that you were talking about earlier that lead you to attracting the quality talent, attracting a quality consumer, a really perfect avatar for you. What does that look like? Half of us just, and I don't want to say half, it's way more than half of the people that own home service businesses that are actually willing to put in the work to kind of get the results that few are seeing. Because if you look at the grand scheme of it, very few people are on that top end that are experiencing generational wealth and exit strategies that mean a lot to them. But for us, it really comes down to the core
Starting point is 00:22:58 principles of the nine pillars. And then it talks about the basic non-negotiables that we offer our clients. You know, that's interesting because a lot of people are willing to put in the work, but everybody that walks through for a shop tour and comes to my meetings and gets involved, Facebook questions, there's a million ways people are reaching out these days. Yeah, for sure. They just don't know what to do. They're good at firefighting. They're some of the best problem solvers and they're used to being a problem solver.
Starting point is 00:23:24 But Al Levy told me one day, he goes, what if I told you that with these systems and processes, it's going to be very vanilla. It's going to seem boring. You're going to get bored, Tommy. I said, I don't think you can make me bored. He goes, I'm going to make you so bored. You're going to get sick of it. And he did. So I said, we got a 10X. And then we got to grow again and again. And as we grew and grew and grew, different problems, greater problems that I actually enjoyed. Not as the guy going to show up drunk today. Not as
Starting point is 00:23:53 this guy going to come into work. Not as a truck going to break down. Who's going to get hurt on the job? Those were the problems I faced year one and two. Now I'm like, okay, how do we get enough vehicles in time for this, whether it's greenfield or an acquisition? The problems I'm having now are like, well, how are we going to get past a billion in revenue? I mean, these are great problems to be thinking about and looking
Starting point is 00:24:15 at market share and market caps and what we could do and how to differentiate ourselves. The stuff I think about now is just, it's light years above where I was, but it's still fun for me. I still enjoy Mondays. And people go, well, if you could do it, I could do it. I said, yeah, I'm just a guy from Detroit. My mom didn't have a lot of money. She worked three jobs to save our house. I didn't get anything from my parents. I got a job washing dishes when I was 12. And you're absolutely right. If he could do it, I could do it. It's just, the fact is, I think my biggest asset is I've been the dumbest guy in the room all the time, asking a million questions, reading books, going to seminars and implementing. A lot of people have great ideas and they go back into the firefight of the business. And one thing you said is you went
Starting point is 00:24:53 through a divorce and I'm not trying to bring that up, but a lot of people, man, I'm telling you, I met a guy yesterday that I've worked with for a long time that does investments in multifamily. And he's like, dude, that my ex-wife was the devil. He's like, I was toxic. I had to get out of there and I'm not married and I don't have kids yet. I have two dogs, but man, that's tough. I think I hate to say this cause it sounds bad and I do want kids. I really, really do. I'm not going to have kids to have kids. I'm going to have kids cause it's the right person. Right.
Starting point is 00:25:24 And so I don't know, man, talk to me a little bit. And I hate to do, if you don't want to talk about this, you don't have to, but it's hard raising five kids, being the best you could as a husband, a dad and a business to your employees. How do you balance that? Well, I'll tell you what I have no problem talking about. I think it's something I cherish the opportunity to talk to people about. I've often said to people that if I could be a court advocate, I'd be fucking amazing at it because there's this opportunity to make people think straight when they're in a position of turmoil. My greatest accomplishment are my children.
Starting point is 00:25:57 There's no doubt about it. Hands down, my greatest accomplishment. They are everything to me. They're all of that. The 17 years that I was married to their mother was not always blissful, but man, what an amazing journey to provide and build life for these kids that we have. I will tell you, it's my greatest failure in life, my divorce. Absolutely, it's hands down my greatest failure, but I will not let it define who I am in the future.
Starting point is 00:26:22 I recognize that was a moment of time. I think that like, and I was infantile when I owned my automotive businesses and went through my divorce. I was a lot like what you're probably thinking. I was every day, 12 hours a day, 13 hours a day. If I wasn't coaching my daughter's softball team or my son's football team, I was working my tail off to make sure we could afford what the kids needed and the lifestyle we wanted to maintain and whatever that looks like. And in New Jersey, you know, life's not so cheap when you want to do certain things when you got a whole host of kids. And so for me, really dialing into supporting them, all I ever knew was roll up my sleeves and go to work. Right. expanding the business and scaling the business in different ways would allow me to kind of have
Starting point is 00:27:05 the freedom to be a little bit more connected to my significant other and allow myself to participate. You know, because you say like, and I know there's a lot of guys that are going to listen to this podcast that are going through some tumultuous times with their husband or wife or whatever might end up being for them. I mean, like, look, the reality is when you're there, if you're truly present, it's amazing. There was a lot of years, Tommy, when I went and I'd go home and I wasn't present because I was decompressing from work and the heavy hours and all that. And you have to really kind of manage the priorities because I'll tell you one thing nobody wants to go through is a divorce. Nobody ever set out, get married to go through a divorce. And when they are in it,
Starting point is 00:27:44 they don't want to be in it. And afterwards, boy, do they feel pain. There's a lot of challenges that come with it. I'm not saying that everybody should say no to divorce. I think there's probably some reasons that it does happen, unfortunately, in today's world. But being able to navigate business, and I think that comes from having really great people around you, just like you said, being around people that can coach you through certain things, being able to take advice, listen to advice, and implement on strategies, even if they're personal strategies that help you manage your day better, allows you to be a better person. I think I'm an amazing father for my kids.
Starting point is 00:28:18 I think there was times where I was challenging along the way. I think there was times I was disconnected. But in all reality, I recognize that life has kind of built me into who I am through all those challenges. And I don't know necessarily if I could go back, I would change a whole lot. But boy, that's something I didn't think we'd talk about today. But I will tell you, I think that that's all too often a common stance in today's world. A guy works his tail off, wife has demands of his presence, not being really super connected. And then the next level is working with your spouse. And what are the caveats to that and
Starting point is 00:28:50 all that stuff? So there's some really great opportunity to kind of navigate and coach that. And we've done a little bit of that here at CEO Warrior, and we play a part in that a lot. Some clients get caught up in the stress of their business and all that stuff, and it bleeds home. And sometimes we have to coach through that and help them through that as well. Yep. That's what I talked about today. You know, I, I can't speak about a husband or being a father, but I can speak about being a son. And my dad had a lot of money and he didn't have any money. He started out having a lot of money and he went to having zero. He slept on his friend's chair for a year. And what I can tell you is when dad had money versus not, it didn't matter.
Starting point is 00:29:30 As long as I got to spend time with him. Dad with money made no difference of dad without money. I just wanted to be around dad. So to be present is everything. You brought these children into this world. You got to take complete accountability. And it's hard. I'm sitting here now kind of teary-eyed just thinking about it just because I just want dad around and I want mom around and I want that quality time.
Starting point is 00:29:52 But I'll tell you this. I listened to Jimmy Hiller and he took... Jimmy Hiller was on stage with Terry Nicholson or whatever. They had Ken Goodrich, Ken Haynes, Leland Smith, just legends of the industry, Dave Geiger. And Jimmy Hiller's answer when they said, do you regret all the work and some of the things you missed with your kids? And everybody said, yeah, a little bit. You know, they were. And Jimmy Hiller says, no, because I've got to spend a lot of time.
Starting point is 00:30:18 But all my children have scholarships. My kids have homes. You know, they've worked. It's not like they were just handed this, but you can't have the best of all worlds. You got to work. If you want to eat McDonald's every day and live on the worst diet, the worst, never go out and do fun things. My dad made enough. Just playing Frisbee with me was more than anything expensive we could have done. A lot of the things people ask
Starting point is 00:30:45 how can you afford doing all these nice things i go can you afford bisquick at costco to make your guys pancakes you go play frisbee golf can you afford the bowling alley would that be like because everybody's got the reason why they can't i find reasons why i can we had a picnic i call it a family picnic but it was all of us and and every single worker here. There's like 70 of us and we played bags and, you know, cornhole. And it's just those little things. We got to know each other a little bit more. And I just hear people constantly talk about the reasons they can't. Oh, man.
Starting point is 00:31:17 I tell you, I have some of the greatest moments of my week, of my months, whatever it is. I have a daughter, Caitlin. She's the apple of my eye. She has a disability called Prader-Willi syndrome and it's Prader-Willi syndrome awareness month. So I'll throw that out there for you, for me in May. When I walk with her, we go, like I'm in the Princeton area and she lives by the Princeton area in South Brunswick, New Jersey. We walk like a five mile track. That five mile walk is the greatest time of my month. It's the greatest
Starting point is 00:31:45 thing. And we do that four times a month. We do it every weekend. Sometimes we'll do a live video on Facebook. We'll talk about what we're talking about. It's the greatest thing ever. And then with my son, man, if I could put the fishing rod in the water with my son, nothing beats that for me. Just sitting there and not catching fish, just being in the presence of my son and being able to participate in his life or whatever that looks like is incredibly important. My other two daughters, I have one who's 17 and another one who's away at college. There's never enough time, man. That's exactly what I'm starved for. And I promise you what you were starved for from your dad, just time. I'm starved for now at this position in my life i just want
Starting point is 00:32:26 time you know i just the cat steven songs rings true man it's in the cradle and the silver spoon that's it man all you need is a few minutes with your kid to write everything that's going wrong my son was just like me yep well listen all of a sudden they get families and, you know, you can still be present, but quality time is being able to move around and still have not be Biden. Yeah. I get where you're at. Quality time is really about. Listen, it's about turning your cell phone off and you don't need three hours and you don't need to watch a movie together, but having dinner together, turn off your cell phones. And look, at the end of the day, I got to play Monopoly with my dad two nights ago. And I didn't want to play Monopoly. My dad quit. There were six of us because we were making some crazy deals. I told everybody, I said, you see where I get this from? And it was just because he's such a competitor. As a kid, I just wanted to win. And I look for that in other people that
Starting point is 00:33:24 the one thing I say is, have you ever played a sport? Have you ever played an instrument? Have you ever done karate? What are you passionate about? And did you practice to become the best? Because if you became passionate about it, I'll help you find passion in this because this is a game changer. We're going to help you build a budget. There's three things in a business. They got to understand their numbers, where they're going and how they're going to get there. And they need to be, when I see somebody pull out a spreadsheet and they know exactly their booking rate, average ticket conversion rate, how much it costs to acquire a customer, they've got a plan. They're going to go there. They've got to be able to have really
Starting point is 00:33:57 tough conversations and they got to be a talent magnet because talent's where it's going to happen. They got to be able to get great people. I'm in this orientation with 14 new guys, and I think eight of them said they got referred from somebody that works here, and they make $1,500 if they refer somebody. But that makes me proud that they're saying, come here. The grass is greener. It's a better spot to be. And I think it's more of a movement now than a place to work.
Starting point is 00:34:23 And I think that a lot of people, they've got every reason. My employees don't show up on time. Jim Crenitty, part of Zoom, used to be this type of owner in your neck of the woods. He used to say these freaking employees, they don't show up on time. They don't give a shit. And now he's like, man, these are my babies. I need to protect them. I need to cherish them.
Starting point is 00:34:44 I need to hold them. I need to be them. I need to hold them. I need to be there for them. In a way, we become their parents. A lot of the people that work for us, a lot of them didn't have a good upbringing. I hate to say that, but it's true. They look for us that I do okay. Am I doing okay? They need the feedback. They want to know. I think a lot of business owners still have that mentality, man. There's not enough good people. We can't find people that care. I think people still have that mindset. I think the reality is, is they wouldn't care about their business because it wouldn't provide them that next layer or level they're looking for. And in today's world, you know, and I know
Starting point is 00:35:16 everybody can walk out the door down the street and find a job somewhere else in a minute, in a heartbeat. And so you got to cherish those people. I think being a talent magnet, the way you say it like that, that is absolutely the number one thing. You can be really dialed in on your numbers and have processes in place. But if you don't have talent to deliver it, man, you're going to have challenges. And in today's world, yeah, there's talent out there. You just got to find it, cultivate it. And the law of attraction, having eight people in your business provide eight more opportunities. How great is that? Well, that's just this month. That's just with technicians. That's not including installer CSRs, dispatchers, you know? So I look at this and I go, you can't find great people. It's because you're not great. Who would want to work for you? Look at you. All you do is bitch
Starting point is 00:36:00 and complain. You come in here. If it's not done my way, it's the highway. You don't care about anything. You artificially hold your people down so you can give your clients a good deal. So no one's allowed to make it because you're afraid that if you pay them too much to leave, which is a mindset of scarcity, not of abundance. No doubt. Frankly, it's pathetic. When people say, how do you charge that? I say, well, what do you do for your employees?
Starting point is 00:36:23 Nothing. They drive a used truck. They don't get any tools. They don't get any training. I don't have a 401k. I don't have any PTO. I can't afford billboards. How do you justify being such a fucking loser is my question. You said it right. They have that mindset of scarcity. They don't understand what they don't understand. And those guys need to have, unfortunately, some transformation in life. And quite frankly, depending on how long they've been doing it, may never, ever experience that. I mean, there's 9 million plus people that live in the state of New Jersey. You think I would have a hard time finding somebody to work here?
Starting point is 00:36:58 The only way I would have a hard time finding somebody to work here is if I didn't do the work to get somebody to work here. People hire because they're desperate. Well, a guy walks out, they need a new guy, they pick the wrong guy because if they don't, they're going to end up back in the truck. And then why not bring on a good guy? Because a great person, guy, girl, black, white, Cuban, or Asian, doesn't really matter. A great person in your company will pay for themselves in dividends. So they'll always be hiring.
Starting point is 00:37:23 Go out and hire the person. Go out and hire the person, go out and hire the thoroughbred, and then take on the pressure that comes with hiring a thoroughbred, going out there and supporting him with opportunity. That's what your job should be as a critical owner today. Here's the biggest mistake I see is going to the unemployment line and expecting great people. Yes, somebody might've moved here that's looking for a job. But if you want to find the best people, you know the best person to advertise to, and it happened with the Dollar Shave Club, the Dollar Beard
Starting point is 00:37:52 Club, they advertise to women. And I advertise a lot to women because someone, the guys I want they're dedicated. They're hard workers. They're not looking for another job. And then their girlfriend, the wife, says, listen, I don't know if this is real, but these guys genuinely see like they're having a good time and living their best life
Starting point is 00:38:10 because that's the person that makes sense in the family. They're the, the woman's the decision maker, whether we like it or not. They're the ones pushing the buttons. Yeah. We had at gold medal. We used to, um, we used to send the spiff list home to the wives, let them know where the opportunity is. That would drive the results, right? On the opportunity of what we were spiffing out.
Starting point is 00:38:30 Ah, that's gold. So there's this guy I have. His name is Eric Parks. And, you know, we do the torch program. We pass the torch. It's basically a fancy way of saying turnover, service to sales. Nice. And when Leslie figured out how much money he makes with door sales, guess what his conversion rate is service to sales 40%.
Starting point is 00:38:51 He's the number one in the company. Cause every day he goes home, she goes, don't come home without a door sale. I love it. She pushes him. He went to pinnacle club. We went to Mexico.
Starting point is 00:39:02 We went to Tulum. He's got everybody in his corner in his family. Think about that, to have every single person around you, your friends, your co-workers, your family, pushing you to succeed. And that's the biggest thing. I said, you need to go home and get everybody in your corner. Get them on your side. Explain to them what this means for your family. Financial freedom. You're doing the best things ever in your means for your family, financial freedom. You're doing the best things ever in your life. You're out there working for them. Yeah. I love that. That's great. How rewarding is the job for him knowing he comes home supporting all that and
Starting point is 00:39:35 people are fighting for him to do the little things in his day-to-day practice. That's awesome. It's got to be super rewarding for him. Wow. He's living his best life for sure. Love it. So what are some of the big mistakes you see in businesses when they generate leads? I mean, a lot of people are doing marketing. Everybody's calling me right now. I need more leads. I need more leads. I called all my buddies with marketing companies.
Starting point is 00:39:56 I said, I hate to be you. They need more leads because it was easy the last four or five years, especially through COVID. It was like you could trip on a rope and find leads. Everybody said, I need more workers. I need more workers. And now it's like there's always a paradigm that backs the leads. Totally. I always find when, and we always hear that, right?
Starting point is 00:40:16 It's always the number one thing we hear. I need the phone to ring more. I need more. I need more. I need more. Reality is half of them aren't grinding down the numbers and aren't looking at what they're doing. They're not looking at their success.
Starting point is 00:40:25 So where's the challenge? Their operations isn't delivering what more leads can produce for them. And so we can't get you more leads. It's like you said earlier. Go back and fix your operations before we can market a different way. And so you've got to make sure that you have the ability to convert, make sure you have the ability to flip, turn leads over, make sure you have good average ticket, good revenue, all those things. Selling memberships and putting a fence around your client and offering them the upside to future lifetime value that comes. I think really tracking the numbers and really the results is the biggest
Starting point is 00:40:58 challenge. It's the number one thing that we see people aren't doing. And in today's world, I mean, you know, with ServiceTitan and FieldEdge and Housecall Pro, everybody has this layer of tracking mechanisms, yet people act like they don't trust their numbers, they don't care to look at their numbers on a repetitive basis or a reoccurring basis, and then they just go, I need more calls, we're slow. Well, that's the easiest answer. When you have a 30 or 40% conversion rate in the house, you don't need more leads. You don't need more leads.
Starting point is 00:41:30 And half of them, and I won't say, I say half, but I don't know why I say that because more than half, a lot more than half, aren't tracking and they're not really knowledgeable of where they're being successful or not successful. And then that holds them back from the ability to repeat the really great stuff that they're doing in their business, if they're doing great stuff in their business. I love old mindsets. I love buying a company that says, you know, Tommy, when I signed up for this, I didn't sign up for nights or weekends. That's why my GMB says I only work 430. We turn off the phones. We're not open weekends, bro. And I'm like, okay, good. You're perfect for me. I love you. Because garage doors don't pick when they break. Air conditioners don't
Starting point is 00:42:12 choose when they go out. It just happens. And when you buy a business, it's crazy. And I don't know, look, I'm not going to say the older mindset or younger mindset. There's good and bad versions of both. Every single millennials, baby boomers, all of it, Gen X. But I will say that businesses need to be cared about. And I see a lot of young entrepreneurs. Man, ADHD is real, and I have it. And I think every entrepreneur does. And we get the shiny light.
Starting point is 00:42:43 There's a next shiny light. There's a next thing, a next thing, a next thing. If you just get the fundamentals dialed in, your booking rate, your average ticket, your conversion rate, you pay attention to your cost per lead. You hear all these things. I've got a dream manager program.
Starting point is 00:42:58 I'm looking. So the other day we're sitting with the guys that invested with us. I created 10 new slides to add to our slideshow next month. And one of them was, we took the pie of all of our payroll and 14% of our revenue is just support staff. Meaning that it's the CFO, me, our president, there's a lot of us involved. This doesn't include CSR's dispatcher warehouse. And so I asked these guys, I said, you look at great businesses, where should we be? They said, you should be about 9.5%. So I'm in the midst of
Starting point is 00:43:30 looking at something that no one else probably is looking at. Now, sure, if you've got a small business and you and your wife are running it, it's probably like 1% of revenue. Don't be proud about that. Just know that you should be 9.5%. Know that you need to build infrastructure then. Most people are on the opposite side. I've got too much infrastructure. Right. And so for you looking at opportunities to improve that, to say, how do I get to a more standard that makes sense? I mean, that's crazy. I think a lot of our clients, when it comes to really kind of evaluating where their money goes, what their op-ed, like they're not looking at hardly anything. And so when they come into our world,
Starting point is 00:44:09 there's always this incredible challenge. And then getting them to philosophically understand the financial responsibility they need to have in their business, that's always the heaviest thing to overcome because a lot of people, they just don't feel like they have the ability to do that stuff. But boy, in today's world, there is an absolute responsibility to that. And that's the number one thing that will create sustainability in your business. You know, it's a scary thing now. If I was to get back into business day one in this world, it would be very scary because I think I could make more money working for somebody.
Starting point is 00:44:39 I could be an entrepreneur. I could actually be able to put my work jacket up because there are so many things and I've got so many great people. I can't imagine that I could do it again if I had all the money, but starting on ground zero and knowing I'm going to have to put in the sweat equity. Now, if I knew exactly what I know now, I know I could do it with very little money, but I'd have to go back into the field to get the money to be able to afford the people I want. I'd have to go out and recruit some people just don't have the money to invest. You can't get a loan. You can't get an SBA loan. There's nothing there. You don't have a two-year track record. It's going to be a decade
Starting point is 00:45:14 commitment. And I got to tell you, it's not for the faint at heart. What do they say? One out of five businesses fail within the first two years or year? Or four out of five fail. People just think I'm just going to be a business owner. I want to be like you. I'm like, just get ready for sacrificing relationships, walking out of movie theaters to go handle a call, working nights, weekends, holidays. Be ready to travel. Do what you need to do.
Starting point is 00:45:37 Because if you think it's just you're born successful, it takes, I'm the biggest failure almost in every room I walk into. I've failed more than I've succeeded, but I get back up failure almost in every room I walk into. I've failed more than I've succeeded, but I get back up and I learn a little lesson. Sure. Well, I mean, I think like, look, bottom line is for everybody, you know, wants to be a business owner, it takes sacrifice. Just like you said, that's the biggest thing. What are you willing to give up to get what you think is freedom or whatever you think ownership means? I think in today's world,
Starting point is 00:46:04 I think you're right. If you wanted to open an HVAC company, you'd have to go out for five years, grind it out as a comfort advisor, make a ton of cash, save that money, and then build it into your discipline of whatever that looks like for you. I think in today's world, there's tons of opportunities. Guys making a ton of money working for people. And you may get into the groove where you may never want to work for yourself because there's no risk on the table and the opportunity might be sky's the limit. And so there's a lot of comfort advisors, a lot of sales guys, a lot of really good service experts that are making a ton of coin, hustling and doing some really great work that probably had in their mind, let me do this for a little bit, see what the business is like. Then I'll open my own gig. Some of them never did. Never did because they recognize being somebody who can work for somebody is,
Starting point is 00:46:48 you know, it's a little bit easier on the risk management level. I have an equity incentive program. PE gives profit units usually 10 or 15%. When you are a public traded company, they give stock options. So I fully agree with that process. But when somebody comes up to me who's made me very successful, and I've had a lot of these people in my life and they go, I think I really feel like I deserve more of the company. The answer to that is you took no risk. You didn't have your mortgage tied into the business. So you only want the upside.
Starting point is 00:47:17 And I just, the reason I'm saying this is the business owners that are listening right now, if somebody comes up to you and feels like I helped build this business, your name, they took my blood for the insurance program. They literally, I had to sign, I had to get a $2 million insurance policy. So when you think about it, you didn't take the risk. That's why we get what we get because the chance of failure, the chances that my house could have been taken is high, just like nobody wants a divorce. But the chances of a divorce are higher than 50% these days. Yeah, it's crazy, right? I will tell you, that's what we teach our clients. And we teach it from a different perspective. Recognize that your employees will never understand the risk you put your personal self under every day. Recognize that that leverage that you have
Starting point is 00:48:06 that's against you, if you will, or maybe it's for the really good performers, that leverage is what propels them, right? Like you, the leverage of failure is like, that's never going to happen. I'm not going to allow it to happen. So that risk management and that evolution of risk for you as an owner, your employees can never understand that. They can't fathom what that is because they're not in that playground. Like one tragic accident with your truck, what could that mean? Well, we are insured up the yin-yang. I mean, for most small businesses, that's not the case, right? And so just because they believe they should have more of the ownership, what does that even mean? What does that mean? Well, if somebody wants to make more money, I said this to all the guys today as I'm doing
Starting point is 00:48:48 the orientation. I said, you know the best way to ask your boss for a raise? Very simple. You come up to me and you say, listen, Tommy, here's where I'd like to be financially. And I'm not asking you for this today, but I want to know what you need me to become and what I could do for you to be able to be worth this. And I'm on performance pay. You know, Mike, the fact is, if the company doesn't make money, I don't make money. So I've given almost every position in the company performance pay. There's no tenure at this business. So somebody comes up to me and says, I think I want to make $140,000.
Starting point is 00:49:23 I'll work with you to figure out a way. I'll give you $36,000 extra to recruit two people a month. That's $3,000 a month times 12. There's $36,000. You sell a service agreement, you get $1.25 per service agreement. You'll be making $2,000 a month after three years. And I'll show guys, but I've got to show them the math how how it works, because if they don't know how it works, so I've got a calculator, calc.a1garagetools.com to show them if they do this, here's how much their income is a year. And then I got an annuity on top of that. Then I show them what their 401k
Starting point is 00:49:55 could do. And then I tell them, listen, I don't want you to own a house. I want you to own five. Right. Yeah. We teach that from a compensation too. Like what is the overall compensation? What's it look like? Performance pay is everything today, right? Getting people, you know, if they're going to be successful for you, you're going to give them more, right? I love that. I think we talk about it here at Warrior.
Starting point is 00:50:14 When somebody wants a raise, we share with them the ascension. What is the model? What does it look like? So if a guy comes in and says, I want to make another 1400 a week, or I want to make another 50 grand a year, I want you to make way more than that. Let me show you how to get there. Here's the stepping
Starting point is 00:50:29 stones. Here's the building blocks. Everybody should have an ascension model of what's the next layer for them. What's the next evolution for them, their lifestyle, their family. And I think if you have really great people and you don't offer that, you shortchange the people in your life. A hundred percent. hundred percent a salary hourly wage was put in place to suck the soul out of people that's what they rage listen hourly wage people say they want this this minimum wage to be a livable wage why i was making four dollars and five cents in 1995 washing dishes you know what there's so many grants there's scholarships there's government assistance to get an education do whatever the hell you want. There's trade schools because here's what happens. This is the dumb thing that people don't realize. I don't want to go on a rant here, but let's just say I had to pay every single person at least $25 an hour. What is that going to do to my pricing? It's going to blow it through the roof.
Starting point is 00:51:30 I guess what's going to happen, I'm still going to make a profit. It just causes fast inflation, which we're seeing today. Totally. And people say, first of all, most people's work are alienable, meaning that I could have anybody and everybody that are lining up to work for us. And at the end of the day, I don't want to have to put an ad out there. People come to us because they're treated fair and because we actually do give a shit. I look out for people inside of work and outside of work. And I got a lot of work to do. I'm nowhere near the leader I want to be. And I'm not going to say I've achieved. I arrived. I'm not there yet. I don't think I'll ever be there. If I'm ever there, please buy me a casket because it's time to go to bed forever because
Starting point is 00:52:10 I got a lot of work to do. And if I ever think I've done it, I'm happy about what we've done. We celebrate all the time, but we have a lot of serious meetings. We don't go over accomplishments in these meetings. We go over what we need to work on because we're not here to party all day. We have a lot of trips we go on. So I think that people need to get very serious about looking directly into the mirror and taking accountability for what their life is and their business that they built.
Starting point is 00:52:35 Well, we teach it here that every position you're in right now, congratulations, you earned it. So if you don't love where you're at, just fix it. I think there's an opportunity of improvement. I love how we talk about here at Warrior, we talk about the layer, the level of mastery. What's the level of mastery, right? Are you ever a master at certain things?
Starting point is 00:52:53 Mastery simply means now you can begin again, right? What's the next layer? What's the, and I love that for like, for you, everybody listening to this, you're incredibly accomplished. A lot of people are like looking at what you've done and go, wow, I can't wait to, you know, I want to just do a portion of that. That's it, man. You get to the pinnacle of where you're at. Now it's a new level. There's a whole new identity for who you are. There's a whole new growth. There's a whole new mindset. There's a whole new scalability. And what does it mean? I mean, I think that that's
Starting point is 00:53:19 some of the biggest challenges business owners have today. Like when you think about a $1 million business to five to 10 to 20 to 50 to a hundred, man, you got to redefine who you are each and every level because the business demands you to be somebody different. And we talked a little bit about that at the very beginning that you've got more problems now. They're just, they're just fundamentally, they're more of where you should be at. You're not worried about the guy showing up late or drunk to work and all that. You're focusing on growth and scalability. That's the reality of business today for all of our clients too.
Starting point is 00:53:50 What is that layer? How do we get them to understand that? And how do they get away from the bullshit of, I'm doing everything perfect now and everything's okay? Because every tomorrow needs a better you. And I love the mirror concept. We teach that. The mirror is everything, man. If you're not looking in the mirror, you're not really challenging yourself. What are the top three things you see, Mike, that when you see,
Starting point is 00:54:15 you've seen a lot of businesses, a lot of home service companies. When you sit down and you speak with somebody, I'll give you a quick example. There was this guy in the 1950s, a psychologist that could sit in a room for five minutes with a man and wife talking and tell if they were going to be married within 10 years. And he was 98% correct. But what he found was mutual respect, the way their tones were and how they went about their conversation because they followed these people for a long time. There's probably some things you just you look at and you're like, dude, this is magic. This is going, this is going to go up. Is there some things that you're like, man, this is like, this is what I see. And I know this is a winner.
Starting point is 00:54:54 I think the number one thing that I see when, when you run into an operator, a true operator who can make shit happen, when you, when you find somebody who can delegate with purpose, man, it's really kind of easy to see him growing and scaling that thing. I think like we talked about it earlier, the hardest thing, I think the hardest thing in home service business is to get out of the truck, right? So if you're a HVAC guy and you're listening to this and you're working in the truck, I recognize you're at that position where it may be the most difficult journey to get out of it. But when you get out of the truck and you start delegating
Starting point is 00:55:25 with purpose for implementation, I can see growth and scale in you just by hearing how you talk. Sitting in an office and watching a guy make things happen quickly by asking somebody to do something in a really great purposeful way that's going to deliver a result, you can definitely understand that that business is going to scale pretty rapidly. I think that's the number one thing for me is to really kind of a leader who can delegate with purpose and make sure that he's focused on that stuff is really, really important. I mean, look, in today's world to be really, really successful, you have to be really incredible at networking. You have to know people, you have to know who's in your market, you have to have an affection for those people. My father-in-law, I bought an automotive business
Starting point is 00:56:09 from my father-in-law, let's just say 20 some years ago. He was always the old school thinking. He's true old school, Tommy, like you were talking about before. He's like, the competition, I'll burn their place down. Don't ever talk to them. They're the worst thing in the world. I bought that business. First thing I did was I went to these guys that were, and I had an automotive generator shop. I don't know if you know what that is. We've rebuilt alternators and starters. Very few of us on the planet doing that anymore. And I haven't done it in over 10, it's over 10 years now. And so I went to these guys and met them. I mean, these guys are doing exactly the work I'm doing. If they're doing something good, like, you know, why can't we band together like
Starting point is 00:56:49 lawyers and accountants always have? And so I think you have to be exceptional at networking. You have to understand the trade. You got to seek out the people that are doing it at a really great level, be inquisitive, ask great questions. But I think you need to participate in a level of networking that will enhance your business. Now, look, I'm not saying every BNI group is great. You got to go to the social stuff and all that. But you have to get really comfortable with going out, meeting people, talking to them about their business, finding out what they're doing really, really well, and leveraging that to bring it back to your business and then do that. I don't care if,
Starting point is 00:57:28 you know, I mean, you probably could learn garage doors. You could learn stuff just by walking through the car wash, right? How are they marketing to the people as they walk through the car wash? I've learned, I learned, I mean, my founder learned a lot of stuff just walking through the drugstore, you know, all the things that are there. What are the layers of, you know, being inquisitive, networking, finding out, uncovering the things that are working for other businesses, and bring them into yours? I mean, Jay brought us that over and over and over again. I love Jay. He was on the podcast. Fact is, you learn from other businesses. It's called R&D, rip off and duplicate. And there's so many things I've brought from so many other companies. You know, the reason I got really infatuated with HVAC is I kept seeing who has the private jets.
Starting point is 00:58:10 I said, I might want to hang out with those guys. And they started Frank Blau, you know, the next star group. You know, they were 1991. I mean, these guys were getting together and they paved the road. And I just said, I went and I flew and I stayed at Julian's house with him, man. What a cool guy. I know Jack Tesser and these groups have been born your group. And there's so many great groups and they all deliver a ton. I'm going to be 10 late. So success leaves clues all around us. And I just tell people, all you got to do is ask ASK some of my favorite
Starting point is 00:58:43 three letters. If you ask anybody that works here, my favorite three letters are ASK. My favorite word in the human dictionary is arbitrage. And when I figured out what arbitrage was, I said, this can't even be legal. How does that even make sense? I could buy it for this to sell it for this. We have three things at Warrior. I'll tell you about our three quicks. I think they're important.
Starting point is 00:59:06 Yeah. It kind of accentuates what you're talking about. You have to be quick to ask all the time. Just ask, ask, ask. You can learn so much. And then the next thing off of that is you got to be quick to act. And then you got to be quick to share your when and how, man.
Starting point is 00:59:20 I think those three things create a level of intrigue and interest in your business that you can't do alone. So if you really ask like you're talking about, you got to ask questions. I think it's really important to be asking as many questions as you possibly can. Soak up the sun, if you will. But then if you don't do anything with it, that's hugely problematic. You got to be quick to act and put things into motion. And then once you have some success, man, share that. Because I believe I'm a big believer in karma and all that stuff. What you push out there comes back tenfold. I believe it a hundred percent. And so that's really kind of one of those things, our three quicks. We really love talking about that. I
Starting point is 00:59:58 think it kind of exemplifies what you were just talking about. Nailed it. So you've had a successful career in sales business coaching. If you could look back and maybe make things a little bit different, what would you tell your younger self? I probably, if I could go back a long time ago, I would probably tell myself that I don't have all the answers. As a young business owner, I really felt like I was really smart. I'm a pretty smart guy. I don't think I'm a dumb guy at all in any stretch of the imagination. I think I'm going to work out hustle and work a lot of people. I think I'm pretty smart in programming some things. But man, when I was
Starting point is 01:00:36 young business owner, I didn't really listen a whole lot. I was really kind of the doer. And I would go back and listen a lot more to and to every generation. Like where I'm at right now, I'm 53, just so you know. I learn as much from the kid that just started last week as I do from the guy that's been doing it for 30 years. There's so much learning you can do. And in today's information world, we can gather information in a second. And so being available to listen and learn and
Starting point is 01:01:07 digest, I think that was my biggest challenge early on. I thought I built the plan. I had a business plan because I had to produce it. I put that together and I ran it and nothing was deviating from it. I was just running the play. When I sat back and looked at some of the failures that I had, because no success doesn't, every success comes with a multitude of failures. And for me, I hit every rung of the ladder falling off of it, right? So if I could learn from each and every one of them, it made me better. And I just didn't listen up front.
Starting point is 01:01:38 You know, my father, really smart dude. My brother, really smart. I had all these people around me with a wealth of knowledge, and I didn't absorb it as much as I could have. And so if I could go back, that's probably the thing I would do most. I love that. And I always ask that question and I would have told myself a bunch of stuff, but the biggest thing I think I would have told myself is look, success leaves clues all around you. Open your ears, read the book, how to win friends and influence people. You got two ears, spend a lot more time listening. So I think that's great advice. Tell me a little bit about CEO Warrior. How do people find you? How do they reach out to
Starting point is 01:02:10 you? Yeah. So CEO Warrior is a training and implementation organization. We have clients all over the world, multi countries where we're supporting people and we are a best practice group. I think where we really, really kind of step out, we go over and above, we do a multitude of trainings. We do unbelievable amount of trainings per year. We do probably in the range of anywhere from 25 to 30 events per year on whether it's training or get togethers with our existing clients. We have just this unbelievable amount of master advisors with tons of experience that help people understand their financial responsibilities, understand operational at the next level, learn how to sell at the next
Starting point is 01:02:50 level. And people can get ahold of us at CEOwarrior.com. You can jump on any one of those things, CEOwarrior.com. And there's all kinds of different things you could click on if you wanted to just learn about us, if you wanted to have a strategy session with us. One thing that we do is we offer anybody who wants to have one as a strategy session. So you could get on with one of our master advisors, learn how they're coaching people. And what we like to do in those strategy sessions is give you a half hour just working on what your biggest problem is. And I think that's one of the things that obviously we feel as though we have really great insight in how to overcome some of these problems. We'll create action items off of that. And think you know you should take advantage of that if that's something you're looking for we do have events that come up pretty regularly our next
Starting point is 01:03:32 events may 19th and 20th the thing that separates our events from everybody else and i think people recognize this that have been through our events we build out a 90-day blueprint and so when you come to our events like man i love rock I love energy-filled events where we have great speakers and all that. But our events, we roll up our sleeves and we get the work. We build out a prioritized plan for your business. We figure it out. We teach an impact key of how to take the content we're delivering. How does it create action in your business today? What's it look like to put that into play? We build this unbelievable 90-day blueprint of implementation. And then we really layer that. So when you leave, you leave with an action plan. You can implement your business right away. So we're super excited about how we perform
Starting point is 01:04:14 that in our events. And so CEO Warrior really is dedicated to the client's journey. And it's here to kind of end the suffering for home service business owners who are wondering how to get to the next level, but struggling to get there. I love it. And if they want to reach out to you personally, Mike, what's the best way to do that? They can hit me up on Facebook, my phone number. I'll give everybody my phone number, 732-266-4853. You guys can text me, hit me up. If you have a question, I'm more than willing to have an answer for you. Awesome. Or if it means getting on the call, look at CEO Warrior. I've been fortunate to have two mentors and founders that built this organization into where it was a couple of years ago. And I have the honor and the privilege to take it to what the next level is. And I am super excited about what that means,
Starting point is 01:05:02 not only for my current clients, but future clients and everybody that we can impact along the way. What are the three books that really, obviously you mentioned Mike's book, The Nine Pillars. What are the books that really helped shape what you're building and what motivates you? What are some of the books? Yeah. So, I mean, wow. Great question. I will tell you there is a million, a million, there's a million different
Starting point is 01:05:25 books out there that you could dial into and there's a ton of great ones out there. So don't, whatever there are, I think Outwitting the Devil is an unbelievable one. Napoleon Hill, any book that he's writing is amazing, I think is really great. I have a whole host of different books that I kind of chisel through as I think about it. There is this breakthrough advertising book that Jay Abraham wrote. I don't know if you've ever seen that book, but that book is unbelievable when you think about marketing. It's a pretty thick book. It's a long, long read, but there's tons and tons of brilliance in there. We had Jay Abraham as a personal coach for many, many years. And so, man, I've learned so much from him. And then there's this profound book from Tim Grover that really kind of exemplified who
Starting point is 01:06:07 I have been over the past few years. And it's called Relentless by Tim Grover. There's a, there's a, there's a, and he came and spoke at one of our events a few years back. And, um, he, he has this, uh, statement that pressure's a privilege and man, that, that book hit me in the right moment. And every time I have a chance to talk, that book hit me in the right moment. And every time I have a chance to talk about that book to everybody, I talk about how profound that moment was for me.
Starting point is 01:06:31 You know, when you have a pretty dominant founder and owner that you work for, like Mike Aguilera, you know, you get into these conversations and, you know, you get pissed off sometimes because there's a demand for you to do work in action. And I told Mike one day, I was like, man, what do you want from me in a fit of frustration? And he goes, dude, I want you to have my job. And so as I look back on that profound conversation, I think about Tim's book,
Starting point is 01:06:56 I think about the position I'm in, and I love the fact that I have his job now and I have the responsibility of what that means to the future of CEO Warrior. I absolutely agree. I met Tim Grover grover great guy i love his book i love jay abraham the ceo that could see around the corner i've read his books he had talked to me gave me all of his training he just said i'm going to give you everything for free i can't get through it all he loves giving it away that's for sure his. His referral strategies, he'll give them never. Whoever will ask about it.
Starting point is 01:07:26 Last thing, we talked about a lot of things here. You guys are running a great program. You're a great guy. I love just what you talked about being a dad. We talked about a lot of things. At the end of the podcast, I like to give people just a few minutes to, maybe we didn't talk about something. Maybe there's something you want listeners to hear.
Starting point is 01:07:43 Maybe just a piece of advice, whatever you want. I want to give a couple of minutes for you to close this out. Yeah. I mean, I think I'll give you a piece of advice that I give all of my clients and anybody that's willing to listen. There's no easy way to run a business today. I think in today's world, you have to be willing to take and absorb a whole lot. But in the grand scheme of it, there is no substitute for hard work. If you're going to grow anything special, anything that's meaningful, it's going to take hard work and it's going to take passion. So if you don't have passion for what you're doing, find something else to do. And if you're going to do something like own a home service company, man, you've got to put in the work. Like you're saying before,
Starting point is 01:08:30 weekends off, I don't understand that. Not having a phone available at 10 o'clock at night, I don't know what that means. And so being present, being available, the NFL draft is over, right? And what do they say at the draft? Your best ability is your availability. And so being available to your clients, being available to your employees, I think that's some of the things that are necessary. But the hard work and just really finding somebody that can mentor you to that next level is really, really important. And I think there's a multitude of great people out there that will do that. You have to be comfortable with it. If you are going to look at a coaching group or a best practice group, regardless of whatever that is, interview them, have a detailed conversation, ask critical questions, ask about the journey, ask about the touch points. What does it look like?
Starting point is 01:09:19 What is valued there? And then make sure you're making a critical decision that can last the test of time, right? Something, and like if people haven't done it and there's no testimonials and all that, be cautious of that. I think in today's world, there's a lot of pop-up people that are willing to help whether or not they have. They never made it in the real world though. I mean, I think that's the reality, right? I mean, I think that there's some people out there that understand some good stuff, but whether or not they're perfect for you is really important for you to find out on your own, uncover that, interview that the right way, and put a demand behind it. But in all reality, the only thing I could leave you guys, leave you with if we were to give them anything, there's no substitute for
Starting point is 01:09:57 hard work. It will deliver to you every single time. You know, I've heard this so many times that there's this guy, the power of one more. And he says, I work nights, I work weekends. And I did that. But what you said earlier is I think I could out delegate anybody. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:14 And I think that's an art and it's a skill you learn over time. And there's checks and balances and there's systems that you need for the systems. You need to have data integrity, but Mike, I had a blast today. Not only that, people have to want to do stuff for you. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:30 You got to be a likable giant, right? You got to be somebody that's willing to go, my boss is amazing. I'll do whatever he asks me. The fact is leaders eat last. And if you have that mentality, if you run through a storm, I tell people, a lot of people that work with me
Starting point is 01:10:44 will take a bullet for me. It's a BB gun towards the side of the leg, but it's still. Whatever works, whatever works. It's the thought that counts, right? Mike, you've been a pleasure to have on. I think a lot of people are going to take a lot from this. I really enjoyed the time. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:58 I appreciate being on. Thank you so much for the time, man. Appreciate it. Next time I'm in Jersey, I'll come say hi. I love it. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you. Appreciate it. Next time I'm in Jersey, I'll come say hi. I love it. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you. Yeah. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with
Starting point is 01:11:17 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 helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper
Starting point is 01:11:35 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.

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