The Home Service Expert Podcast - The Unbreakable Rules Of Multi-Million Dollar Entrepreneurs

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

Sean Castrina has started over 20 businesses in two decades, and runs a multimillion dollar service company along with other startups. He is the host of The Ten Minute Entrepreneur podcast, and is the bestselling author of the books 8 Unbreakable Rules for Business Startup Success, The Greatest Entrepreneur in the World, and World’s Greatest Business Plan. In this episode, we talked about entrepreneurship, small business, leadership...

I'll give you a secret that I think you'll love anyway. It's called layered marketing is what I'm convinced of. It's no one thing. I'm doing a Broadway play. I was talking about this in my podcast yesterday. Good marketing is a Broadway play. There's a hook. There's a trailer that gets you to watch my movie or come watch my play.

Okay? Then I introduce to you a hero, our company, a villain, the industry, my competition, an obstacle, a tussle, why you're not getting what it is you want. Okay. And then the story has a happy ending, how we're going to deliver it. So all my marketing kind of takes you through that. And when we do radio, it's purely testimonial, no call to action. All you hear is Mrs. Smith saying, oh, they were the greatest company. They came on time. They stayed on budget. They were so good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's all I want Mrs. Smith to do. You're going to hear Mrs. Smith through an entire year. That's a hero in the story. Then I'm going to give you other little things. Then I'll do a

radio commercial that'll create tension. Well, the other company that came, they didn't show up. They didn't do this. I'm telling a story. And every story, we're the hero. We can solve the problem. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name's Tommy Mello, and today I have a guest visiting us from Virginia. His name is Sean Castrina. He's an expert in entrepreneurship, small business, and leadership. He's the best-selling author and still entrepreneur. He's been doing this since 2000. Sean Castrina has started over 20 businesses in 20 years and runs a multi-million dollar service company along with other startups. He's the host of the 10-Minute Entrepreneur Podcast. He's the best-selling author of Entrepreneur Podcast. He's the best

selling author of eight books, Unbreakable Rules for Business Startup Success, The Greatest Entrepreneur in the World, and The Greatest Business Plan. The World's Greatest Business Plan. Sean, sorry about the difficulties, but it's a pleasure to have you on here. No, it's great to be on the show. So do you want to just get us started here? Tell us a little bit about your journey about becoming a serial entrepreneur and what you've been up to the last 20 years? Yeah. I mean, one, you know, it's, I never know quite what shows I'm going to be on, but obviously this is the home service expert. I've made millions and millions and millions of dollars in home services. And if my, like, if I was ever on like, you know, the undercover

billionaire service companies are my go-to, you billionaire, service companies are my go-to. That's definitely my go-to move. But no, I lost my job like 25 years ago, newly married, beautiful house, new child, and had to kind of start over. And so I took a job temporarily. And then I started a company, built a direct mail business that did really well. And I wanted to get a home office built in our house. And I had a really, an incredible company going in my, you know, my late twenties. And I tried to get a dining room converted into an office and I couldn't get anybody to do it.

Trying to find a decent handyman was like literally trying to find a one-eyed leprechaun. And I lived in a nice housing development. Like I should have just went to my neighbors and everybody said, Oh, it's Jimmy John or you know, whoever it is, couldn't get anybody. And so my brain said, well, there must be a need here. And I can't assemble a three-piece birdhouse to this day. I have a plastic toolbox upstairs. And so I'm like, I'm going to start a handyman company because I know how businesses work. They're really business for everybody who's listening. Anybody who thinks it's really very difficult, there's only three things in business. If you do these three things, you can't fail.

If you don't do these three things, you will fail. But these are the guaranteed three things. Number one is you have to attract customers. I know how to market. I know how to make a phone ring. Number two is you've got to be able to sell people. If you don't sell people, whether it's a store or a service company, you're not going to have business.

Number three is you got to fulfill fulfillment. You have to be able to provide what people paid for and the service end of that. But that's the only three things you have to do. So I knew regarding a handyman company, I'm like, okay, I can do, I can hit these three things out of the park. And I knew there was a need and our six six-week in business, I still had the magazine in 23 cities. I started as like a passive business. I wanted just to pay for an absurd golf membership at this club called Farmington that was outrageously expensive. My wife's like,

if you could create a business to pay for it, have at it. I'm like, all right, I can do that. And my friend gave me the seed money. He was going to be my 50, 50 partner. And, you know, within five weeks, I had like 54 phone calls in one week for business. And I knew then I'd hit the Holy grail literally. And now, you know, we do, I do about 120,000 a week at eight divisions and literally print money. And just. I'm doing a beta test with a college student, my best friend and best man at my wedding. His son's at Liberty. I'm like, I'm going to do the same thing in Lynchburg. I'm going to rinse and repeat and show you that I can do it with a college kid who wants to be a marriage counselor. I can do it with anybody. Service companies are

so simple that I'm beta testing it just because we've got to do three things. Yeah, I mean, I'm in the garage door business. We'll do $100 million this year. I'm in 15 states. Garage doors are gold. I have a guy in Lynchburg who goes hunting with my friend. He's in garage doors. Garage doors are gold.

You know, if I could go back in time, people always ask me. HVAC is number one uh windows and roofing are number two garage doors are good average tickets not quite where i like it to be and i don't think the repeat the only thing i'm just thinking my garage doors like i have the guy back about every five years to align something like the hvac is repetitive to service as a year you know you're going to replace them in 10 to 12 i could see where that would be good yeah there's you know i like the garage door business because i feel like we're changing an industry i study hvac a lot more they're kind of the next level uh as far as

acquisition model and the way that they they grow through acquisitions and the multiples that they're getting i mean are upwards of 18 times EBITDA right now, which is hard to believe. But with private equity, they're not going into hotels or restaurants. They're flocking to home services. So right now is a hot time for companies to be selling. And it's a hot time to be acquiring companies too, especially if you've got the platform company.

But I'm curious. There's a lot of people that are listening going, okay, you know, I have a Christmas light business and I thought, shit, it's Christmas lights. It can't be very difficult. And I don't think it is difficult. You know, we did over a million dollars this year if you include yard lighting,

but it's never quite that easy. You got to be organized. You got to have system. You got to have keepers and syndicators. You have to have a CRM. You've got to have manuals. And I just feel like there's two things I hear every single day, Sean, either I need more jobs or I need more good people. Cause it's one of the two, I need more work or I've got too much work on another right employees. Yeah, no, no, I agree with you. And listening to you talk, you're obviously highly versed in what we're talking about. Like I've rarely talked to somebody who's on equal footing on the subject.

And not that I talk about home services. Normally, I'm always talking about business in general. So this is kind of fun. Because we've done holiday lighting before. It's easy money. It's a great three months. You know, start a little bit right around thanksgiving end of january take them down so i'm just i'm just reminiscing with you

no i agree but you know there's really good owners can do two things good and average people do one thing good if they're lucky and you can't fix that. You can't fix that. You and I both know you got to acquire customers and you got to hire talented people. I'm on a talent search every single week of my life for new people. It doesn't mean I even have an opening. I have the opening for the guy who might leave me. I keep applications in my office. My secretary just scanned one to me. She said, somebody just came in. I said, email it over to me. I'm the CEO of the company. I want first eyes on that thing because I'm still in a talent search. Yep. I've got four full-time recruiters right now. That's all we do is recruit four full-time recruiters. I got five full-time trainers

and four full-time recruiters and their whole job is to literally look at resumes. And then we go through this thing called spark hire. I interview them virtually and then we watch them. I can tell you within one minute of watching somebody if, and I'm not going to say I don't judge it. I'm going to tell you, cause I have the thing called the walrus walk. I can see a guy from my office, my conference room. I can look down the parking lot and see him walk from his car to the door. I can count how quickly he comes up the steps to see if he's already in the bottom 50 of something like, unless somehow he absolutely shocks me, but there I can get a feel, you know, just can you know you can just like i know i

tell my secretary it's a walrus walk it's not fast enough you know what's interesting is there's a lot of things and i keep getting worse and worse as far as my expectations i want more and more so there's been a certain point now where i'm like, I tell every one of my area managers and my lead technicians, I want you to take him into his significant other. And typically it's a guy we've got two girl techs, women techs, but I want you to take their significant other out to dinner or lunch. And I want you to have them to drive randomly.

Just tell them, Hey, can we take your car? I want you to look at their car. I want you to look at how they treat each other. It's something I learned from Dave Ramsey by reading his book. We put $20,000 of training into each new person that works here. So we want to make sure we pick the right people.

And I think talent acquisition is kind of a secret sauce that really a lot of people don't give enough credit to. My top producers will produce over a million dollars. A bottom producer will produce around 300,000. Now, is this a person who's selling garage doors? I just want to find the key person. Let's say this. There's three main categories in any home service that I call the triangle of communication. You've got your CSR, your dispatcher, and your tech. Each one of these people produce over a million dollars. I mean,

look, I always do this. You'll find this interesting, Sean. I'm just going to write on this piece of paper. No, I'm taking notes. Listen, I love learning. And I talk about this quite a bit on the podcast, but you've got two CSRs. One of them, I want you to write down CSRA is at 60% booking and CSRB is at 90%. Okay. I want you to pretend the average ticket is $500. So write down 500 underneath that. And then I want you to write down, they each take 20 opportunity calls a day. And then finally, how many days out of the year do they work?

Let's just put 300 days. They're workaholics. So 20 opportunities a day, 300 days. The CSRA lost you 940,000. It's been a while since I calculated that, but it's right around a million dollars. And I don't think there's enough process put around people that answer your phones or the people that are dispatching. So we've come up with a score for our customers and i call them clients we've come up with a score to match the most equipped best technician for that opportunity which means sales fulfillment tools equipment on the truck and so dispatching is an art in itself but just like any puzzle i say dispatcher has got to be good at puzzles but what do you do when you start a puzzle sean

you start with the end pieces. Yeah, the corners. The end pieces. Yeah. You put every color together. So there's a rhyme and rhythm behind every puzzle. So technicians are worth a ton of money to me. I got a guy that'll do. It's funny because probably one of the guys listening to the podcast right now is a garage store business.

And I respect the hell out of the guy. He said, humble beginnings, but now'm at six people in my company and about to break a million dollars. And I was in the same shoes too, but I'm thinking to myself, I've got one guy going to do over $2 million now. One guy. It's just interesting to look at that, to say I've got one guy to do more than most 10-person companies will do.

But this is what I mean about talent acquisition. I'm looking at every busboy. When I walk into a paint store, I'm looking at the people across, looking at servers, bartenders. I'm looking at who's cutting my hair. I've given my cart the other day at CVS. I went in there to pick up some cough drops. The guy walked me to the aisle. He said, hey, our smart customers, or you wouldn't have to be a CVS member. I said, yes, I am. He said, our smart customers go and print out the coupons before they come in. I said, I don't need the coupons, but man, you are good. I said, you ever looking for a career? I said, cause you'd be great working with me. And those are the differences.

Like you said, you're always looking. And I think there's so much to be said about stacking the deck with the right people and giving them the tools they need to succeed. Because a lot of times people go, what the hell's the matter with these people? And I'm like, well, if they were so smart like you, you'd be working for them. Yeah.

I mean, the problem is, is we know number one is a lot of people can't identify talent. Number two is a lot of people can't attract it and keep it in their leadership style. And what I've always learned is a six can only attract maybe a seven if they're lucky. A six never going to keep a nine. Just not.

They're not. A nine's going to leave or start their own company. So the problem is you got to keep that number high and too many people, they don't pay enough or they're not sharp enough themselves to ever bring on that guy. Like the guy that you have that's doing 2 million, it's because you're a 2 million guy. So a guy like you can attract a guy like that. He would probably devour other people. Oh God. I mean, the goal is I had a guy in here earlier. He's a pest control, really, really great guy. And he just wanted to hang out and go to lunch and ask me a bunch of questions. And I was just thinking, you know, he's in pest control.

And he said, Tommy, I can only pay my guys $40,000 a year. And I said, well, how much do you pay him to recruit people? I give my guys $1,500. Any employee that recruits anybody, I don't care if it's a cleaning lady. We do have a full-time cleaning lady now. I'll give him $1,500. So you recruit a guy a month that'sits anybody, I don't care if it's a cleaning lady. We do have a full-time cleaning lady now. I'll give them $1,500. So you recruit a guy a month that's $18,000. I said, but what about lead generation?

How much do you spend in marketing? You know, the first thing they do in an MLM program, Sean, is they said, go after your friends, neighbors, and family. And guess what? Why not do that in the home service spot and give them a piece of every ticket they don't even have to run the call we've got a thing called schedule engine or we've got 4 000 call tracking numbers one per employee in different marketing sources like valpac and all this stuff but why not pay them so i can have people out there generating leads off of social media whether it's tiktok a lot Facebook, a lot through Instagram and all

that. And if they can produce 10 leads a week, that's an extra roughly 700 bucks a week in their pocket. So you can get away with paying $40,000 a year for their, you know, I pay my people a lot better than that overall. Every single thing in my company is performance based. So this thing is merit. You don't get to get tenure in my company, but if someone can make that kind of money, I mean, now you've got a well-rounded employee. They're not just good at sales, they're good at recruiting, they're good at self-generating leads. I don't know how much you pay your people, but it sounds like there are so many people that are going to be listening to this podcast, pretty happy. We're getting around 35, downloads a month i want to get it to 100 000 downloads but

you said that home service is easy and i think it is i think a restaurant's a lot easier though i think a restaurant is as convenient if you gave me a restaurant i'd give it back i think it's the hardest business in the world it's got the lowest level employee i'm trying to be nice about it well think about this sean I can control what happens. You have to have the doors open. This is the problem with a restaurant. And I love it. It's good.

Yes. Because I've been offered opportunities to be a partner in a restaurant. And I literally said, you could give me the equity. You give it to me and I give it back to you. Because you got to start prepping at like four in the morning your food. By the time you get out of there, it's one o'clock in the morning. By the time you put everything away, it's got absolutely super high turnover and there's just never a down. So restaurants make my brain explode. The thing I like about

service companies, I think that there's very few people that do service companies at a level like you do it and a level like I do it because we do a lot of the ancillary things really, really well. But at the end of the day, what makes our business different than anybody, and my business specifically, I only have to attract customers. I have no inventory. I have no inventory. I have no dead money. I don't have to lease any retail space.

I've owned retail businesses. I have no five-year leases anywhere. I could put my business in any lower- a, you know, in any lower end space over on the outside of town. So all I have to do is attract the customer, service the customer, rinse and repeat. And if I brand really well, you know, I understand marketing and all that. Only again, I'm benign to this. I'm not saying whatever I've, I've owned businesses, 20 different companies. I'm just saying from startup, it's the easiest one I've ever had making a dollar the fastest. And it had the least amount of moving pieces.

Now, obviously your business may have a lot more moving pieces because you have products and things of that nature. I'm just saying none of mine have that. Well, you know, when you say attract customers i love this you know what i love podcasts that we could just freaking just jam that we're not like dude i hate it when i i like reading my questions my team spends a lot of time and i want to dig into your books in fact i'm loving this i haven't had a just a true except for one of the guy with the garage door on a hunting trip you

know i i rarely have these conversations because to be frank with you i have not met three people in home services that can talk the talk walk the walk and are at my level and you can so i mean typically they're intimidated by the fact you know because i mean i joke i mean you know you're making tenfold of what i'm making but i don't work really a lot, to be frank with you. I don't have to. I've never picked up a tool. It's a completely passive business. And I make more money than the president X times.

So in my business model, life is really good. I've got no dead money, you know, in the sense. Let me explain a couple quick things to you audience he's getting ready to start swinging this is very no no this is interesting because the reason i love taco bell and mcdonald's is because you stand in a freaking spot you got a camera looking at him you make them wash their hands 10 times because there's a code. You can build a manual and scale Papa John's or the subs, you know, Freaky Fast. And I can have a thousand sub sandwiches within a year because I can contain what's in a small room. So I buy brand new vehicles. I wrap them. I train a guy for two months and I do have to carry some inventory.

It's not inventory list, but I've got my manufacturer. I worked out a deal with them to carry everything. Even my white label parts. They just, they charged me an additional anywhere from 10 to 30%. But that way I don't have to have huge warehouses. And they deliver to the jobs or to you? So we bring our tool. We've got a full warehouse van.

And then our trucks are, we order on demand as far as we don't know what doors people are going to want. So, so for the most part, that's custom ordered. And right now we've been having some problems with the supply chain and the real money, just like HVAC is taking a service call and turning it into a door sale where most companies in the home service space, especially garage doors, don't do that because it's a lot of work to order the right door with the right headroom, the right color, and not have it damaged when it shows up. But there's so much more money in it. But the thing I want to tell you, though, is I'm not going to go into too much detail, but I got off the phone with a realtor and I'm adding a bunch of showrooms because Google My Business locations, and then there's local service ads. Local service ads are the Google Guarantee Program. So although you don't necessarily need a brick and mortar, Google wants you to have a brick and mortar to be able to trust you that you actually have a location. And we have that.

We're a Google landmark in our city. Our office has been located. It takes up an entire corner of two major streets. I mean, I'm savvy. So you said the three things, takes up an entire corner of two major streets. I mean, I'm savvy. So you said the three things and I want to go into this. Yeah. Attract customers. You got to be able to sell people and fulfill what you sold them. What do you find as far as marketing? What's your go to your top three? Okay. Number one, I own a digital marketing company. That's incredible. And that's one of my holdings. And I bought it because there was synergy there. So digital marketing, number one, we ran a Super Bowl ad. So we do a lot of TV. I did like a ton of TV during the election, obviously during that. And I still do Fox, MSNBC,

CNN from four o'clock to eight o'clock every night, three testimonials, pushing three different characteristics of our company. So again, I'm in Charlottesville, Virginia. It's a town of 60 to 80,000, but it's very wealthy. UVA, The Rock has a place here. John Grisham, Howie Long, very wealthy area. Reputation, image is important. So digital, TV, and then I think a ValPak or direct mail, absolutely, because it's just

the law of numbers. People are moving in all the time. There's no downside of 60,000 people getting a slip of paper that says we do A, B, C, and D every single month. So that would be my order of three, would be digital first. Digital. So digital first. Absolutely. So pay-per-click, you got the LSA ads,

you've got organic, you've got your Google My Business. One third of our business, one third of our business is repeat because I'm a fanatic. I get a dashboard every single day at 4.30. While I'm sitting here, there's going to be a text to my phone and it'll show me every lead that came in and where it came from. What CRM are you using? My guys have all that. So I don't even know. I don't even know the answer to that. You said it like six times. I'm like, I know I'm supposed to know that, but a customer. No, no, it's just, you know, I use service Titan and people use everything from house call pro. I mean, there's a million different CRM. The way that we do, I do everything old fashioned. It's through an Excel spreadsheet and it comes to me and it's just works with my simple brain. And I have an amazing staff that we do, I do everything old fashioned. It's through an Excel spreadsheet and it comes to me and it just works with my simple brain.

And I have an amazing staff that does that. But this is what I've learned. Again, the biggest thing, and I'm OCD about tracking things. One third is repeat. A healthy company, one third is repeat. 15% is referral. And then 50%, you got to go beat the hedges. You always got to be bringing in new people. However you accomplish that, I think my strength is marketing. I'll run a Super Bowl ad

and own a digital marketing company and own a direct mail magazine in 23 cities. That's the only thing, I mean, that's the one thing I'm pretty good at. And however you do it in business, you want to acquire target customers for the least amount of money. There you go. I mean, that's marketing. I want to get the person who's most likely to buy what it is I sell fastest. I don't want, it doesn't take three sales calls or whatever, you know, target customer able to buy what it is. And our ideal customer can say yes today and write a check today. So we don't do a realtors. We don't do commercial work. I don't work with builders, none of them. I work with customers that can say, yes, we want that done today. Yes. We'll write you a check. That's our target customer.

So what we do works for us. And then our conversion rates, 50% of everything we look at. Really? Now the secret to that is everybody who sells for my company is a partner. They're not salespeople. Who runs my construction division, roofing and siding, he's an engineer. He's smart as a lick. He doesn't even come across like a salesperson. But when you're around him for five minutes, you know you want him overseeing your job. My guy who does my handyman and painting division, graduated UVA, sharp as a tack, 50 years old, been in this business.

Person who does my kitchen division, ran the biggest kitchen company here in Charlottesville, 60 years old. He's a chef. He's a genius with kitchens. I've franchised my company from the inside out. So all those guys that I told you about, and I have an on-staff designer, all those people that I told you about, I tell them, I said, we already have a yes. Everybody wants to use us. It's just whether they can afford us. You're going to the job. All you're finding out is whether they can afford us or not. If they're calling advantage, it's because they want to use us. We have an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. We've won every award you could possibly win. They hear testimonies every single day about us. And we're on the Super Bowl.

I'm curious to hear. So tell me your TV plan. I love TV, by the way. I love TV. I love bookends. And I was buying TV when the pandemic hit at a fifth of the price on national TV and getting five times the exposure. TV is gold. I'll give you a secret that I think you'll love anyway. It's called layered marketing is what I'm convinced of. It's no one thing. I'm doing a Broadway play. I was talking about this in my podcast yesterday. Good marketing

is a Broadway play. There's a hook. There's a trailer that gets you to watch my movie or come watch my play. Okay. Then I introduced to you, you know, a hero, our company, a villain, the industry, my competition, an obstacle, a tussle, why you're not getting what it is you want. Okay. And then the story has a happy ending, how we're going to deliver it. So all my marketing kind of takes you through that. And when we do radio, it's purely testimonial, no call to action. All you hear is Mrs. Smith saying, oh, they were the greatest company. They came on time. They stayed on budget. They were so good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's all I want Mrs. Smith to do. You're going to hear Mrs. Smith through an entire year. That's a hero in the story. Then I'm going to give you other little things then I'll do a radio commercial that'll create

tension well I the other company that came they didn't show up they didn't do this they didn't I'm telling a story and every story every story we're the hero we can solve the problem and so I do it all like I said I do radio for testimonials

I do TV for branding like the Super Bowl had no hooks in it it was just purely we're great Like I said, I do radio for testimonials. I do TV for branding. The Super Bowl had no hooks in it. It was just purely, we're great. We're great, period. And we can afford this ad. When you buy a Super Bowl, obviously it's not a national company. No, regional.

So I know. I actually looked it up yesterday. Super Bowl commercials for 30 seconds on a national level are about $4.5 to $5 million. I told you it is regionally. You'd probably fall out of your chair. I pre-buy it. I got mine. They came back because I'll pre-buy it and they know my money's gold.

I got mine for $4,300. And I got a Super Bowl ad before the end of the first half. Now, I bought it three months ago, but my money's gold. That's the one thing about nobody has to chase anybody. Nobody has to chase Sean Castorina's check. Well, you see, everybody watches Super Bowl commercials. You got, I remember when GoDaddy came out, that put GoDaddy on the map. The hot chick, and it was controversial, and it got more news.

But I thought it's all national on Super Bowl. How do you get four minutes? There's like every local person because honestly, the local venue, you know, they're still selling ads. So everybody gets like four minutes. Now they get four minutes of local. Yeah, they get like four minutes local or it may have only actually may have only been two minutes. So they get four commercials. Oh, OK. Or 30. Actually, it may have only been two minutes, so they get four commercials. Oh, okay. 4.30.

They get like two minutes, four local, and I'm an easy yes, and I'm going to prepay them so they love me. Interesting. That's really cool. I'll give you another secret. Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods is as good as the Super Bowl. When I get his golf schedule, Saturday and Sunday, if you can buy everything he's on, it's 100th the price of the Super Bowl. When I get his golf schedule, Saturday and Sunday, you can buy everything he's on. It's 100th the price of the Super Bowl, and it draws a target audience just as good. Mail buyer,

homeowner, over the age of 30. I mean, it's gold. In your demographics and mine, Tiger Woods, gold. Any major golf outing is gold and they're cheap pretty good information and you know what i found is um monday tuesday bookends they're the 15 second bookends and when i started someone told me this 10 years ago and i didn't do it and then i tried it two years ago and it's crazy some people say tv is just it's a way to brand, but I believe you can get direct response if you do it right. Yeah, you can. I mean, it does. If people need what you want, this is what I say. Anytime you come across credible and people know what it is you do, you succeeded. I mean, at some point something's going to break, the garage door is going to break.

It's top of mind. Yeah. You got to be in their their psyche you got to be in there i want real estate in their head you know what's funny is i've got an loi out right now and i can't go obviously with the nba can't talk much about it yeah but i'll give you an overview of uh but a few years ago the guy was spending a fortune on outdoor between billboards, TV, radio. And two years ago, he did it again. And then he replaced his managers, got out of all of it. And last year, hit 25% net. But I don't think he understands that it was the years leading up that created that.

That's the layer. Remember what I just talked about? That layer marketing, residual effect of reputation and residual. Like I did great during the pandemic. We killed it. We killed it. I mean, you know, billboards, I didn't know. You know, what's funny is I started, I put about 40 billboards in Phoenix.

And you're talking traditional billboards on the side of the roads, right? Yeah. Yeah. I love them. I love them. It's a trapped audience. You can't turn it off. Well, the greatest thing about my billboards is they're very simple. They've got A1 garage service, A1 from day one.

And it pops out. It's red. And then we've got the character coming out of the top of it. And that's all it says. What I noticed is all of a sudden when those billboards came out and i measure everything all of a sudden we got five times well we've got a customer count went way up but i looked at the people applying and for some reason and then i actually walked out and there was like 10 people waiting to apply and i said hey guys i

was like how you guys doing today they're dude, we see you everywhere. You guys are like getting busier when everybody else is putting people out of work. We want to work for you. And I was like, dude, that's so cool. I thought about it. Like, you know, what happens if I pick up another $2 million producer that sure customers matter, but if your conversion rate sucks and your average ticket sucks, what's the point? I agree with you. Listen, in my business, the number one thing in construction for me to hire somebody, what I typically hire is somebody who's probably owned their own business. They're 40 years old or tired of running around working 40 hours a week, then doing estimates, doing paperwork on Saturday.

That's my ideal person I want. What I offer to them is we'll handle everything for you. And you never, ever have to look for work. You will never sit home a day because they're all afraid of, you know, running out of work. Every construction guy's afraid he's going to sit home in the winter. That's what massive branding does. Cause even the guys who apply, like you're saying, they're like, man, I've seen you everywhere. You know, we hear about you everywhere. And you know, there's a ladder, there's a ladder for you to move up quickly. And that's what I like. If you give me an effort,

you start out as an apprentice, you move up to a junior tech, then you move up to a tech, then a senior tech, then you can move up to either a lead tech or a field supervisor. And then you can earn up to a area manager. And means you're running 20 30 guys and sometimes 40 and the tech just so i understand like this understand the tech is person would come to my house and look at my problem and possibly sell me something better bigger or stronger yeah you know people hate the word sales i don't mind the word sales in fact i love the word sales i'm doing an orientation tomorrow i don't have it it's upstairs it's a two-hour orientation I do with every new group. There's 30 guys that just flew in. They fly into Phoenix for a month. And I've got this bowl that

you pass around at church for tithing. I pass it around. I'm like, hey, guys, just donate whatever you can. And everybody looks at me like, what are you talking about? And I grabbed the ball back. I'm like, listen, if my preacher or the priest could talk about collecting 10% from you sales, then I'm allowed to talk about sales. Do we agree? Don't take it for granted that I'm going to talk about giving people options. And it's not up for us. It's an eight-step process that works every single time. Do not skip a step and follow my process. It will work every time. And the customers will love you for it. It makes it so easy.

We started doing role-playing and videotaping these guys. And finally, they actually get it. And I'm like, no, let's look at your eye contact. Look at you. Look at your body language. Look at your tonality. You didn't make me believe you. And when we go into these things, it gets fun.

You know what I'm saying? It's funny about sales. I love sales. And I joke with my staff because I oversee one of the divisions. And my team just cracks up because I'm not your typical construction guy. AI driver, Mercedes. What I say to people as soon as they look out the doors, if you sue me, you get something. That's my opening line.

Because I don't look like I'm'm not wear a polo with a pink on it and all the rest. And I've told my staff, I said, I'm going to try this next week. I'm going to limp talk with a list, maybe a stutter, and I'll still close more sales than everyone. And they're like, no, actually, I think you probably would. I love selling. If the customer called me, they have a need. It's fair game. Because I'm a fanatic about fulfillment or A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, I want them to do business with me because I know the experience is going to be better than any experience they can have. To me, selling is just talking about what you're going to do for

them. They want it and you can do it. And I love to this day. I mean, I don't, that's my, still my favorite part of it. I love selling. You know, I have three calls every morning. One is my full supervisor call. One of them I call my mojo call. One of them is a manager call 15 minutes each. And today I said, the worst thing I could hear is everything works. Okay. They don't need a new door. And I'm like, wait a minute. How old is the door? That's the first question I was thinking though, Tommy, that was the first question I was thinking when you were saying, I'm like, well, the deal is I don't care if it's brand new. Is it an insulated steel back sandwich door? Unless it's a perfectly real and very,

very few people have this door. Is it a still back door that's going to last a long time, save them money on their energy bill each day? Is it going to have the rigidity to have three kids going in and out of it every day? Does it have the technology to be able to open and close it from their cell phone? Because if it doesn't, then how could you say they don't need? I don't know if people need anything. They don't need a garage or they don't need a house. You know, first of all, second of all. I buy because I want. I buy once. Do you need financing?

I know one thing. You give me two years, same as financing for anything. I'll do it on groceries. You give me two years, 0%, I will finance my groceries. Trust me. I will finance any smart. People think that financing is only for people that are broke. And I'm like, no, no, no. That's for rich people. See, people think that financing is only for people that are broke. And I'm like, no, no, no.

That's for rich people. Rich people understand it. We love looking at our own cash. This is what I've learned. This is what I always tell people about financing. Number one is this. When you need money and there's a problem, nobody will give you money. Banks don't give you money when it goes to crap.

Just so you know. So you take everything you can when you can. I still love cash. Look, I'm working right now to get about $35 million for acquisitions. And you know what's so beautiful about investment banks is they will loan up to four times EBITDA to anybody as long as you're a good platform company. So my goal is just… I'm going to plead complete ignorance. You've used a word twice that I don't know the name of EBITDA. I write books and speak at colleges and I feel like a five-year-old right now. So basically there's that earnings before interest tax,

depreciation and appreciation. So what that means is basically it's your profit and then you get some ad backs. So if I hired you as a consultant, Sean, and I hired you for six months only, I could add that back to expenses. If I had some one-time things that I did, I could add those back. Those are called ad backs. So typically in most home services, whether it's HVAC, plumbing, electrician, garage, most industries go off of a multiple of their profit. But in this case, we talk about EBITDA. And, you know, what's crazy is these numbers that they're getting.

I mean, private equity companies, your goal in the home service space, if you have the ability to do it, should get the $20 million profit through acquisitions. And then you get these multiples that create generational wealth. And like, if I get to 20, which I mean, realistically, I should be there after this next acquisition, 20 would give me 15 times. That's 300 million. Isn't that fascinating? Now, here's the crazy thing. Now, this is what I love to teach people, Sean, and you probably heard of this word. So far, there's two words I haven't known the definition to yet today, so maybe not. This is the favorite word out of everything. It's called arbitrage. Now, arbitrage is when I buy a company for five times. Okay, five times. Okay. Five times. Now guess what? I'm worth 15 times. So that 10 extra times, that's all the money I made just by buying the company. So it's better than dealing drugs.

It's better than doing anything you could imagine. Sean, if you go buy a company and you pay three times their profit. So let's say they're a million dollar company making $150,000. I buy it for $450,000. So you buy it for $450,000. You paid three. Now let's say you're worth 10. That's $1.5 million. So you've got $1,050,000 that a company will pay you. And all that money is called arbitrage. They used to have a thing called Google arbitrage that you could do. And then Google closed the gaps. Okay, so this is a bad example. I've never felt stupid on a podcast.

I've done 300 of them. Went to graduate school. I've written, my fourth book is coming out in a month. I honestly can say, I've been on the most famous podcast in the world. I've never felt less bright today than ever before. I'm in my studio. I'm so glad none of my staff is around me because they think I'm really smart.

And right now I don't feel very smart. No, you're very smart. I don't feel it. Hey, listen, listen, I'm going to tell you, though, it gets so exciting because I got this guy on my podcast. I got a lot of books here. I love that too. I buy a book for any time somebody's on my podcast that's an author.

My habit is to buy their book. I just do it. At the end of the week, I go through and buy it, and then I keep creating these bookshelves. Well, you know what? So this guy, Adam Coffey, he's the private equity playbook he wrote. And he's with all these private equity companies and they put him in charge and recently he's the ceo of the largest commercial agent company in the world and the whole sole goal of his him and his team he's got 20 people on his team the company's thousands of people

but their sole goal is to identify acquisitions and just tuck them in and that's how blockbuster got i mean that was the blockbuster model when they sucked them everybody's model i mean yeah yeah i mean blockbuster did it they played pac-man they never realized that oh you could actually stream a movie or you know they never caught on to the end of it but that's what i love about your business my business is in my opinion is unfortunately it's made me personally wealthy. I could either franchise it, which doesn't really get me excited, to be frank with you. Yeah, franchise is not great.

I don't like 4%, 6%. It's not enough. It's too much aggravation for that. I'd rather own four of them in four great cities and make my $5 million you know, bringing on a partner like that. So I don't like that model. And like you, you have a specific product per se. I mean, it's we sell, we fix garage doors. We do a variety of different things. I'm not sure how scalable, you know, it's anybody can do what I do. You know, we're unique, but it wouldn't be hard to be unique in any city. Any person can do what I did if they're halfway bright. I don't know, man, you make it sound easy. What was the hardest

thing for you? I mean, you've been doing this now, you said over 20 years, by the way, this is, yeah. Yeah. No, I think the hardest thing is initially was you don't have to be an industry expert. The one thing that I did different than most people is I don't understand construction and I don't understand digital marketing and I own two extremely pretty good companies. So I got past that. Number two is you don't have to quit your job. I had a great job and I didn't, you know, when I was building the magazine, that was fun. I didn't have to quit my magazine to go get into the startup thing. I think a lot of people do that. So the hardest thing was hiring people, like getting myself out of it, knowing I could not be in there all day, every day, because I had other things going on.

So I had to really trust other people. And I had to create a model that I could replace people quickly because I couldn't sit in the office for three days and do their job. So if I lost somebody, I needed to be able to put somebody in there. My model is this, Tommy, is that if I've got to be able to replace every single person in my organization within 48 hours on a Craigslist app, that's my business model. Number one. Number two is I want customers that can say yes today and write a check today. There's my two pillars of business in the service business. Well, how do you replace, you know? Yeah.

I know because you do recruiting and I know that's crazy to imagine. But my business model, I don't want to try to find one eyed leprechauns. OK, so a handyman, you got to be pretty good. You could change locks. You could do fans. You could do a garbage disposal you might be able to install a bed of you know i mean we do high-end incredible remodels incredible kitchens bathrooms we have guys in every area of it i'm always running ads when i tell you i'm always running an ad i'm always running an ad always looking for talent we can only keep so many people i mean we have a team that's filled you I'm always running an ad I'm always running an ad always looking for talent

we can only keep so many people I mean we have a team that's filled but I'm always looking for that next person and I'm gonna hire it and put that person you know three quarterbacks deep I know five years that person might fill into that spot I genuinely look at like a GM of a sports team I'm building my bench out I bring out players players that can, you know, they're okay now. They're like an extra set of hands, but they're really smart. They come to work every day. You know, they're strong physically. Okay. That fits in my system. Then I've got the guy who's 40 owned a company. I mean, I've got handymen that work for me. I don't even want to say the handyman because my guys are contractors, whatever. Then I pay a hundred. I have two

of them pay a hundred grand a year. Now average person i'm glad they don't listen this make 40 why do i got two that make a hundred you know why because i just have to blink and point and they solve that problem for me when they come to me it's like we took care of it they already took care of it like sean we already took care of it for you i called my guy on christmas day i had a problem sean it's done don't worry about it but i pay him a hundred thousand dollars and i've earned i helped him buy a house i mean in other words i go the x in other words when i have what i call mvp talent somebody who can solve problems for me and his skill is one and a half times faster than the other person. 100 grand. See, my guy called me up.

This was two months ago. He goes, Tommy, you're going to laugh at me, but don't laugh. And I said, Russ, tell me what's on your mind. And he goes, I want to make a million dollars for you next year. And he was talking about 2022. And I said, OK. I said, roughly, you need to produce $10 million. So I said, here's what I want you to think about. Every 2 million you produce, we're going to get you an assistant. And I said, here's what you're going to need to do. You're going to need to get

into seven B&I groups. You're going to need to have a plan to hit every major builder. I'm going to have to get you some type of membership at a golf course or top golf, which I already got. I said, let's really think about how you're going to go get the business because the only way you're going to do this is getting huge custom. I don't like the Shea homes and Pulte homes and the guys. I like guys that pay to say, I'm going to build a custom house and I don't care if I got to put a $10,000 door on and I'll pay you in advance. And there's a lot of them here in Arizona. Yeah. And that's what I'll deal with. There's a few people we'll deal with. They already know,

Sean, we have the check. This is what we want. You don't have to come twice. You know what I mean? They already know my standard. And you know, so many people that I meet are busy right now. I mean, obviously there's a lot of, a lot of garage companies are busy. Some of them aren't as busy, but, but the bigger are getting bigger. And I'm like, this is the time to grow. Like this is the best it's ever been. And although there's a lot of people out of work, I can't tell you, like our prices just got raised 5% and another 7% by the manufacturers. They did it across the board. There's not one. We had the same thing. We had to go to people that had contracts that are going to be enacted in 2021

and we're like hey yeah this is gone up i'm sorry and here's the deal i raised my prices seven times in the last 12 months and my people are like dude we're going up again and i go that's a raise for you don Don't worry about it. I mean, clearly, again, I'm glad I've done a lot of interviews. This has been one of my three most enjoyable interviews I've ever done. Only because I never get to talk about home improvement space

or home services, because it's like, you know, everybody wants to talk tech companies and they want to talk my day. I don't. And this is what I tell people. They're only going to build more houses, people.

Amazon can't do what I do. A robot can't do what I do. I don't. And this is what I tell people. They're only going to build more houses. People, Amazon can't do what I do. A robot can't do what I, if a robot does what we do, we're all done because then I can have my wife too. I love this. Well, think about this. You know, Amazon could do some pretty cool stuff. You know, Amazon gets as many searches as Google gets for garage doors. So if they learn to be the middleman, they can be successful. But number one, everybody wants to Uberize home service. And I'm like, where are you going to get the talent? Where are you going to get the training? Where are you going to get the good trucks? Where are you going to get, I've got

dual cameras in every single vehicle. I literally, the way that my truck, I got two trucks. I got a van and a truck and every one of them get done the exact same way. I've got my own wrap company. Everything's made out of aluminum that we've got all the containers. Everyone's the exact same. And it cost me eleven thousand dollars to outfit correctly. It's got the five tubes on the top. Everything is structured. Amazon will love me because I can handle whatever they can give me. But don't think you're going to come in and take all the margin. See, that's the problem is Home Depot, Lowe's, Amazon. They think they could just come in and just say, it's not like driving a car. Everybody and their brother has a car and a driver's license. Everybody's like, well, what's going to happen when Amazon comes in?

They can't. They failed. I was the prototype. I was the beta launch. Both times they try to launch and it's shit, it's garbage and it sucks. And they know they launch. Both times they try to launch. And it's shit. It's garbage. And it sucks. And they know they suck. They need someone like me or you to come in there and go, guys, pay them well. Be the highest. And be the fastest.

Because my dad taught me you can be three things. And he'll change the shot. You can be the fastest. You can be the best quality. And you can be the cheapest. Pick two out of the three, Sean. And here's what you get. Because you're and you could be the cheapest pick two out of the three shot and here's what you get three no i love it i've told you know the thing about is is that robots are not going to be able to go to a person's house climb up on that roof and do an analysis that the face is rotted that the gutter is dropping whatever the case may be

and i said if it ever gets that we're unnecessary at that point so it's a the world is rotted, that the gutter is dropping, whatever the case may be. And I said, if it ever gets that, we're unnecessary at that point. So it's a, the world is going in a direction. I will be irrelevant at that point. The analysis of what it requires to do a home project, nobody can, you know, it's just, you're not going to be able to do that. Here's the deal. I think we're going to get to a spot where if you get a chance, read this book, it's by Marcus Sheridan. It's called They Ask, You Answer. And what it does is it answers the pricing questions and really gives a lot of details and answers. It's a buyer's guide, basically. And I think as time goes on, we'll get a lot more technology and people could take a picture and I could give them a roundabout price

on certain things. And I think it is going to get more automated. It's going to become a little bit more commoditized. But that's how you got to figure out every single day. I say, how can I differentiate myself? Could I get better guys? So the talent pool, it's the presentation. It's the software that sends a profile of the technician on the way with a video about him and his family. It's asking the customer, Mr there, Mr. Castrina, listen, I'm stopping by 7-Eleven. I'm picking up a coffee. Is there anything I can grab you

while I'm there? Water, Gatorade, anything for the kids? Who does that? Nobody, but you're going automatically. You probably got the text message of who I am. Listen, I get there. I'm going to fix that garage door. It'll be better than new. Literally, it will be better than new when I get done with it. It's going that extra. So I always think about commoditization. And then I think about how do I completely change that? What products could I carry? What different could I do with the talent pool? And what kind of presentation could I give that's immaculate? I've got a buddy of mine that owns a really big rug shop at the design center in Scottsdale. He rolls out the red carpet only deals with you know millionaires for high-end

rugs and the presentation he literally puts on white gloves and they treat them like a certain way and he deals with a lot of high-end interior designers and he goes tommy these are the hardest people in the world to deal with but when you lock it down and you do it right, I mean, he's millions of dollars a year in profit. I mean, selling is still, I don't know, I'm a simple guy. And you create pain. You reveal pain points. They have to trust and be confident that you're the person who can solve the problem. I mean, the basics of it are still the same.

Like, how do we do it? We charge little things that aren't big. We do no material markup. I always tell people, it takes us the same amount of time to install the $5,000 pottery barn vanity as it does a Lowe's vanity. See, to an average person, that makes sense to them. So that's one positioning point that we do. No material markup. Number two is I wouldn't put anybody in your home, Tommy, that I wouldn't put in mine.

All my ads show my beautiful family, wife, kids, and dog. Everybody knows I wouldn't put anybody in your home because obviously handyman have a reputation of being a little, you know, not the most, whatever. So I wouldn't put anybody in your home. Next is we do a complete turnkey project. When we start your job, Tommy, we do not stop until it's finished. We come back there every single day. We work eight hour days. What's the biggest problem with handyman? They start, they don't finish, whatever the case may be. Notice, I've picked every pain point that you could have in a home improvement experience and solved it. And I go, listen, one of the things that we find couples, there's a lot of tension when you got to go pick everything out and you want everything to look great. My designer is going to work with you.

Jennifer's fantastic. She's going to guard your money like oxygen. She doesn't get one penny. If you spend more, if you make this job bigger, whatever you spend at the store, all she does is consult you. She gets a set fee. She'll take you to Lowe's. She'll take you to Pottery Barn. It doesn't matter. I've taken away everything they're concerned about right there. I took who's going to be in their house. It's going to be completely turnkey. I'm going to walk them through the process with my designer from the New York Institute of Art. You know what I mean? It's like it's cherry picking.

I picked all their pain points. I've solved all their pain points. It's just, do you want to write me a check for what I need? So in that book that I mentioned, we're building a buyer's guide. And we're in the midst. It'll be done in two weeks. How much does a new garage door cost? When to consider a new garage door versus a repair? Will an insulated garage door make a difference? Pros and cons of adding windows to your garage door. Have there been any advances in garage door parts? What's the

latest trends in garage door styles? Anyway, what Marcus figured out, and he was on my podcast, is when you educate the customer and you get a confirmation that they will go through the buyer's guide, and it also says the A1 difference. It also explains there's a letter from me in there. When you get a validation from the customer that they will take the time to watch the video go through the buyer's guide, your likelihood of closing the customer goes above 80%. Now, if price is an issue, number one, you're advertising the wrong people. Number two is we have that finance options and all my finance options. I can get qualified with a five 50 or better. So, yeah, I mean, that's not even a credit score. Five 50. Yeah. I mean, you basically got, it sucks, but as long as I can keep a garage door. Look, it depends on how big you're financing. You're financing probably $40,000 jobs with a good kitchen. I'm financing up to $10,000.

And listen, most credit card companies, as long as you've got a good job that you can prove certain things in the underwriting, they're willing to do that because you own a home. They're going to take that number one spot of the mortgage. So, I mean, look, you know what I love about garage stores? It's 40% of your curve uphill. It's the only thing on your home that gives 102% return on investment in Remodel Magazine four years in a row. And it's the smile of your home. And it's the most underestimated thing on the house. And I'm wondering why I'm not selling them here in one of the city that was voted the nicest city in America, two out of three years to live in, in Money Magazine. I'm wondering why I don't own a garage store company. You should. Hey, listen, I'll come in there. You know,

tell me a little bit about the eight unbreakable rules. Oh, do we really care about my book? We're talking about other things. The whole audience can have it for free and all sincerity. Seriously. If you go to SeanCastrino.com, I have it set as the download. You can download it for free. So that way I have nothing to gain here on this podcast. My goal is always to give away a million books. So SeanCastrino.com, you can get the book for free. You know, what it is, is I've had some success in business.

So I was on a beach vacation with my buddies, and I started writing down like one sentences of things I did that are different. Like one sentence axioms, little rules, like better the devil you know, than the devil you don't know. I don't just fire people. I better have somebody that can replace them. I never switch horses in the middle of a race. Like you have guys working on a job, just get them to the goal line. I've done that before where I fired a guy right in the middle of a job, made my life a living hell. It was just little things like that. And then it just, at the end of it, it just came out to be like eight rules. Knowing what I now know is know why you want to be an entrepreneur in the first place. Some people are employees. My daughter's a school teacher. My wife's a nurse, nothing wrong with

that. If you want to be an entrepreneur, wife's a nurse. Nothing wrong with that. If you want to be an entrepreneur, there's a different wiring there. Competitiveness, you want to have flexibility, you want to have unlimited income. Just know why you want to be an entrepreneur in the first place because you're not going to make money quick. You know, I'm not going to get into politics, but I don't mind getting into politics. My cousin is a hardcore liberal, and's fine i appreciate his views but i said you know i've been an employee 10 different times and i've also been a business owner so i can speak to both of them and i said can you speak to being a business owner because the chance of us being successful is very very slim and if you get, if you take away, Sean, my reason for expansion,

and I'm going to say I'm a little bit selfish in the fact that I'm not going to take a big chance and a big risk, continue to grow as hard as I could sacrifice relationships and continuing to sacrifice everything I have to grow. If there's not any prize at the end, if you can't tell me, so you want to tell me the harder I try, the more you're going to take. I haven't, don't even get me started. I try, the more you're going to take? Don't even get me started. I mean, you and I are preaching of the same choir book. I mean, listen to me. I have a hard time with somebody who's the only paycheck you've ever gotten has been as an employee or the government. Stay the hell out of small businesses and businesses. You have no platform to talk. And that's my problem is you were government and of course

dude when i go to the dmv or the mvd or secretary of state so you know they call it everything else different state when i go to the usps i am efficient it's slow efficiencies they don't have a smile they're not friendly they're off every holiday. And I'm like, you know what? We work every holiday. We work nights. We work weekends. We don't love sleep. Whereas they got, look, how in the hell can they preach to us is my question.

Oh, no, it's insanity. Thank God I haven't been in a lot of lawsuits. Usually it's because my competitors, there's another A1. A1, believe it or not, is probably not the best name for people because it fell first in the phone book. That's why mine was Advantage. Same thing. I took Advantage because it was A in the phone book.

You know what? Advantage is a good name. I'm actually going to look up your commercials because I'm curious. They're great. Yeah, my commercials are great. Advantage Home Contracting. They're great. Let me ask you this.

If the people want to reach out to you, what's the best way to get a hold of you? Oh, dear God, don't find me. No, I'm joking. Social media, I'm just joking. But get a free book. If you want to learn about, like, I'm good at teaching business in short increments, listen to the 10-Minute Entrepreneur Podcast. It'll help you more than anything because I'm very granular on every single part of business.

So I would listen to the podcast. It's free. I'd get a free book at my site. I'm verified on Instagram, but that and a dollar will get you a dollar. I don't really care. I'm verified on Facebook yet. I've never been on my Facebook page in 10 years, but I have a team that does a great job with it. So I'm not a social media guy. I love business. I love starting companies and I love helping people do that. That's what excites me. I really, really love people who have a desire to be an entrepreneur. I think it's the greatest profession in the world. I share with everybody this one statistic. The Forbes wealthiest 400 people, there's only one thing they all have in common. They're either an entrepreneur or the heir of an entrepreneur.

There's not a lawyer on there. They own, it's a business. Okay. If they're a doctor, it's because they started a pharmaceutical company. There's no, no employees on that. They were either got major stock options, like a Steve Ballmer or something like that. But my point is this, is that no government workers, entrepreneurs created that list. And you don't have to have a degree. It's the greatest profession in the world. Yeah, I think we're both diehards. One of the things I always ask, Sean,

is can you give me three books that have made a big difference in your life? Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Here's my books. I always keep them. I like the book, The One Thing by Keller. Yeah, Gary Keller. I always read that. Very good. I read one that I really liked by Patrick Bet-David, Your Next Five Moves.

Really good. Really, really good. And then this is another one that's great, and it's under the radar, Speed of Trust by Stephen R. Covey. It's Stephen Covey's son, actually actually incredible book for anybody who owns a business speed of trust they're my three the one thing by keller your next five moves by patrick bett david and speed of trust by all right speed of trust all right man i got it and and here's the way i kind of end things

shannon i'm gonna do this again with you soon because we got a lot more to talk about. It was fun. It was fun. So there's a lot of people listening everywhere from pest control. I mean, I've got a lot of chimney sweepers that listen. There's a lot of people that do window washing. And you got big HVAC companies and home remodelers and window companies and roofers. But I always like to leave them with one last gold nugget to kind of take and put into action.

And I'm going to give you the floor for a few minutes to kind of give them something to think about or something to go do that'll change their business or maybe change their relationships. I think the thing with businesses is that most people, you get lazy when it comes to acquiring customers. I mean, you have got to be like Pac-Man. You've always got to be thinking of ways to acquire more customers. And like, if you have one thing that works, you need to find a second thing that works. You find a second thing, you need to find a third, because almost every one of those vehicles become a business in and of itself. Like I can look at my business and I could say, well, okay, ValPak will bring me this this year.

Technically, it's almost like a business in and of itself. TV is going to bring me this. Facebook's going to bring, I want 20 of these. I want 20 channels bringing business to me. If you want to be a better business owner, you need to bring in more channels into that body of water. But master the first one. Yeah.

You got to get one going. But it's true, though. I mean, if you think about it, if you acquire good target customers, a lot of the other dominoes fall. It's easier to sell a target customer. That's the person that's most likely to buy what it is you're offering. I think marketing is just so, so critical. I think we get lazy. It's my favorite thing.

I got a master's degree in business and marketing. And I swear I've learned more outside of business school. And I can tell you this, Sean, I go on a lot of Facebook pages, especially entrepreneurship. And I was on this HV Facebook pages, especially entrepreneurship. And I was on this HVAC one, really big, 40,000 people. And this question had popped up and I don't know how I found it, but it said, hey, I'm new to the HVAC industry and I'm on my own and I'm wondering which way to generate business. And 150 replies and maybe three of them had good information. All of them were go after referrals.

That's what I do. And I'm like, cool. I want to own the spigot. I want to own the spigot. I literally like Google is God when it comes to home service. So master everything with Google. Pay-per-click, LSA, GMB, and organic. The four algorithms. Number one.

Number two, direct mail number three door to door number four tv radio billboards i categorize as one yeah then i look at the other little things look i own next door i own yelp i own angie's list home advisor people say it doesn't work i freaking make a shitload thumbtack living social group on all these channels that people say you know what if i didn't hear of some little guy making five million dollars off of one of these i might not believe it but there's a spot for every one of them if you master it now if you just do a little bit of each you're going to shit the bed if you try a tv ad for one month and expect it to make you a million dollars you're wrong you know. What's the one that you find that works the best out of those, like the Angie's and all

those that you have found? HomeAdvisor works really well, but you've got to have a structure for it. You've got to have a dedicated person. Angie's List was bought by HomeAdvisor, so they literally changed their platform quite a bit. I can tell you Nextdoor works really good because they trust their neighbors. I've got this yellow sticky pad. I saw this about 10 years ago and I mimicked it. It looks like a blue pen is written on the sticky note and it's a larger sticky note. It's like two sizes of a regular notepad.

And I don't really use these much. They're kind of a trophy here, but it's two sizes. And it says for each one of my guys it says hey my name's randy i was at your next door neighbors i figured you might be interested in a tune-up or possibly the bottom of where all the nasty bugs come through anyway i'm doing it for 99 bucks and i'll do a tune-up at the same time call me if you could use my services and that kind of shit works so freaking good and trust me when i say good, I mean, it's less than a percent of our revenue. Then you look at the self-generating leads

by the technicians, and that I think is huge. And I'll tell you the number one thing, Sean, that nobody does well that I've met is partnership marketing, okay? Handyman, painters, pest control companies, pest control companies, the bottom rubber. I give them 20 bucks for every one they sell. We go change the bottom rubber i give them 20 bucks for every one they sell we go change the bottom rubber boom get our sticker in the garage what

else why would a painter paint an old ass garage door with a crack that's a non-insulated door why not replace it with something nice and then paint it so they make 10 of everything and we track it we pay them the same day it installs the same day the check goes out and we don't pay anything that's our marketing cost but but that's not coupon shoppers. They're going, hey, use this company. They're the best. Tommy, you're the first person that made me feel lazy in the last 20 years. Well, that's a God's honest truth.

No, I'm being totally serious. I am a human machine. I feel lazier than dog crap right now. Like, I thought, like like I'm an aggressive marker. I'm like, my gracious. I think I gave Angie's list the middle finger. They drove me.

I forgot what they did. They drove me crazy or something that they did. They drove me crazy that I didn't like. But yeah, seriously, I genuinely you're tenacious. I'm a division one college wrestler. I thought I was a bull in a China.

I was a wrestler too. There it is. There is that personality type. I was at one of these big convention things where they do personality types and all that. Some people are lambs, some people are this and doves and

whatever. They went to my wife and they go, what is Sean? She goes, Sean is the lion that eats the effing lion because that's my husband so i said i don't feel like that today i feel lazy you're a high d um definitely definitely well listen everybody's got to go get your book i already paid for it so then you know i love the 10 minute podcast I can't have a 10 minute podcast because it's just I can't do it. I enjoy these conversations. Oh, no, this is great.

Mine, I'm super fast talker. 10 minutes. I stay on one subject. When I interview a founder, I got to have you on my podcast because I interview incredible people. I've had unbelievable guests. When I interview people, I want to know like a founder, like why you became an entrepreneur in the first place. What's one thing you would tell yourself knowing what you now know? And then what's your one piece of great startup advice? They're like my three questions. So I can get it out in 15 minutes and we're done. Hey, it's cool. Well, yeah, I love to dig in and

just, this is a really great conversation. I think a lot of people said there was a lot of information and on our podcasts, you'll have a certain page. I want to get a lot of people said there was a lot of information and on our podcasts, you'll have a certain page. I want to get a couple of your commercials and put them on there as well. And then we'll put all your links. You know, what's cool about my podcast is I'm really into page rank and rankings, and I've not done any SEO on my podcast page. And it's, it's about 38 page rank out of, you know, my website is 61, but you know, most websites are like a five or a six as far as, cause there's so many natural links that come in. So I love podcasting, man. I got to tell you, this is like my secret. This is the secret is getting guys like

you on here, taking one gold nugget. I'm reading your books. I'm going to copy a lot of your stuff. I'm going to talk to what I'm interviewing is you're never going to have to look for work. I'm going to check out everything with advantage. I'm going to talk about the hero, villain, obstacles, and happy ending. I mean, I've got all my own notes. Tiger Woods, baby. I have a podcast. Tiger Woods made me a millionaire, and that's not a joke.

Every time he was on TV, I bought it. His commercials are one-tenth the cost of a major sporting event for some crazy reason. Golf is cheap. Can't explain it. Gold. Where did you wrestle, Sean? I wrestled at Liberty over here, obviously, in Virginia. I was a poor kid in the city.

They sent me a brochure of somebody running on a mountain. That's all I needed to see. I was recruited by all these inner-city schools. I'm like, I don't want to be in a city. I on a mountain that's all i needed to see i was recruited by like all these inner city schools i'm like i don't want to be in a city i want a mountain so yeah it worked out well well hey everybody says uh you killed it brother so i really appreciate you and next time you come on i'm gonna get through your book and uh you know this is fun so really appreciate you taking the time sorry about the technical delays. I enjoyed it.

Tommy, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. All right, my brother. Well, we'll talk soon. I'll be in touch. I might come visit you after this COVID thing dies down. There you go. I got a guest house, man. I live large.

All right, brother. We'll talk to you later. Thanks. Hey, guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe.

You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences. Tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets, basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know,

the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your lives even further.

So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.