The Home Service Expert Podcast - Using the 'Market Acceleration Technician Training' To Scale Your Business

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Tommy Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire and the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $200 million-plus home service business with over 700 employees in 19 states. Through HomeServiceMillionaire.com and the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy shares his experience and insights to help fellow entrepreneurs scale their businesses. In this special episode of the Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy answers your biggest questions about the performance pay model, team building, management strategies…

It's amazing when cash will allow us to hire great people with the equity incentive program. There's profit sharing. There's great bonus structures. And when that's done properly, you could find some of the best, most elite people that are just looking to go do what they've already done because they have fun.

You know, they'll go from working at a $200 million company back to a 10 million because they know exactly how to get back to 200 million. So once again, building your team, that's the most important thing. Get the CFO who's been there that understands the banking relationships, the tax benefits, understand the COO that will help bring on the right people, the trainers and the recruiters, and understand how to get your call center dialed in. Don't be everything for everyone. Be what you're best at. Understand your superpower.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you.

Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert Q&A. I'm in a new location here at the new studio next door. I love it. It's soundproof. It's amazing in here. Xavier's about to give me a pen and we'll be in business.

I kind of went over the question, so I'm pretty prepared today. Very exciting times. I'll tell you guys a little bit about what I've been up to in the last month. A lot of things happened to me personally. My cousin Rachel had told me that she was not impressed with the way I was taking care of myself. And she's got a doctorate in physiology and anatomy and that. And a lot of training and getting people in shape. And then I saw Andy Elliott talk.

And then Ishmael Valdez was posting that he was working out. And then I went and visited with Travis Ringy, bought a place in Sandpoint, Idaho that we're building on. And he's just in the most amazing shape and just culmination of several things. And then my cousin, Michael, was like, dude, he's like, let's have a contest. I'll bet you 500 bucks to see who can get in the best shape by Halloween. And it was like all these signals that I just decided, okay, I got to quit drinking, at least for, you know, several months to where I'm not drinking several days a week. That was a downfall of mine.

So I haven't drank in about 40 days. I've been working out every day. I'm on four peptides, getting regular deep tissue massages, whole sculpting, getting my teeth whitened, on all kinds of different supplements. I'm probably taking 10 vitamins a day.

And I feel like I could literally fight down a bull. Like I can't even explain my energy level. I just ordered the, uh, the ice tank, the really nice plunge XL. I got the infrared sauna. And so that's going to start here next week.

I'm really taking care of myself. I kind of just looked at it. Like I read a lot of books. I speak really taking care of myself. I kind of just looked at it like I read a lot of books. I speak at a lot of events. I podcast all the time. Podcasting is like my nutrition. It's like how I learn. And I literally take off my shirt. I feel so much better about myself. My self-confidence is up. And my brain is just so much clearer. I went and got an IV the other day. She's like, I've never seen you so content. And literally like this fire in my belly, like my workouts yesterday, I was on the bench. I've got an amazing trainer.

And he's like, all right. He put on 225. We did it for 12. And then he put on 245. And then he put on 265. And it was just, it wasn't very hard. And I'm sure a lot of it is the stuff I'm taking and the clean supplements and this, I haven't lost any weight. I weigh 242, but I went and got what's called a DEXA scan. And, you know, I started thinking, you know, the money, lots of money in the bank, family's great, been able to get full-time house cleaner, landscaper, great executive assistant, getting a personal assistant, content team is amazing, hence this whole recording studio. But getting in the right health, so I did a saliva test, the blood test,

the urine test, and I had this thing called leaky gut. And it wasn't really bad, but that's getting fixed. And the diet's just 100% locked in, getting about 250 grams of protein a day. And I'm only a little over a month into it, but I'm like, what am I going to feel like and look like around Christmas? So it's something where people just, you got to decide one day that it's just time and you got to be ready to look in the mirror and love yourself. That's where I'm at. And I like to share everything I'm doing with the podcast. So I figured I'd let you guys know I got a great doctor. There's been nothing downfall of anything. I just, I can't explain the way I feel, but it's focused and it's right on point.

So thought I'd share that first and foremost. It's amazing. You guys haven't read the Home Service Millionaire. You know, I went through the book again recently and just the 12 co-authors I have in there that explain the process in which to do things. Hopefully you guys have read it and implemented it. It is a great book. And I'm not the one that really put it all together. Getting Al Levy part of it and helping me pick

great people like Alan Rohr and Ara, the founder of Service Titan, or at least the CEO. There's two founders. Just the people in the book, what they put in the book, Darius Liver is one of the smartest guys I know in home service. Hopefully you read that book and then Elevate. We've worked on elevating with the Dream Manager program.

And I realized that I'm going to need to build software to be able to handle a staff of 800 employees to make sure we're keeping track of how they want to be treated, what their dreams are and making, hold them accountable to themselves and their dreams. So I'm working on that internally. And if it, you know,

if it's something that somebody wants, of course, it'll be available. But I, I, I build things that I want for my company and for us and I want to make it available for everybody. And if you haven't checked out the book Elevate, it's elevateandwin.com. It should be available right now. What we did is we put it out on Vimeo, putting it out on Vimeo with all the extras. You guys will start seeing that if you're in the Home Service Expert page on Facebook. You'll start seeing that appear. I really think you guys should seriously listen to the book

I add a lot of value when I recorded it and that's done and then it'll be available on Audible in about 6 weeks I figured the reason we wanted to send it out on Vimeo and get access and it's really organized in a great way is because we want to be able to give you guys

all of the extras that I did with it. And so highly recommend. You're going to see that popping up. And let's go ahead and get started with some questions. So now we were all on a fitness journey. Well, I went and got that excess gain. I was 26.7% body fat. I was disgusted with myself. And, you know, I'm going to be below 10. And they say you could do about 2.5% a month. And that's what I'm going for.

So got a lot of several months. It took me 20 years to get this body. So to unpack, it's going to be about six months. But I want to be the full, like every part of my life is successful. We's going to be about six months. But I want to be the full... Every part of my life is successful. We started going to church. We go to this place called Impact Church. Impact Church.

And Travis Hearn is the pastor there. And the message this Sunday to just switch topics was amazing. He was talking about building your team. And when you're in this race, and a lot of it was faith-driven, but a lot of it applied to me in business and my personal life and everything. It's just you're only as great as your team. And they could only go as fast as...

Usually, I'm the one racing. And I need people that could race with me that want to get things done. And it was just an amazing sermon. If you guys get a chance, go to Impact Church and just listen. It's online. You can listen. It's only 45 minutes, but I think you really get a lot out of this sermon. And it's just fun. It's not like you go to church and you're not speaking in Latin. Nothing wrong with that. But this is just a great

message for those that are trying to put a good team around them and how he used to stack the deck when he'd play pickup games with basketball. And I think you're only as strong as your team. So it's great things happening. Great things right now. Hopefully you guys are coming to the home service freedom event, freedom event.com. It's going to be so amazing and change your lives. And you guys are going to have a amazing and change your lives. And you guys are going to have a whole new outlook on your business and how the order of operations that need to be done.

And the whole point of the Freedom Group that we're forming and getting all the right players from the lawyers to how to set up the equity incentive program, to the books you should be reading, to setting up the financing, the reporting that you're going to need to be able to manage your company and how to have the buy-in and the culture is there's an order of operations that you need to do

and then build a company that you could sell. You don't have to sell it. But a lot of people don't know what their life looks like. They're like, wait a minute, I sell my business and they lose their identity. Well, I sold a portion of A1 and I did the best thing in the world. It's such an amazing group. I'm learning so much every day. I'm a sponge. I love to be the dumbest guy in the room and these guys make sure I am. And I'm

around great people, introductions, bringing on great resources. And I'll tell you what, when you could build a business and change your family's life, your parents' life, your siblings' life, bring the borrow $20. And his dad is like, I work 70 hours a week. You know, I make $25 an hour. Why would you need $20? He's like, no big deal. You know, if you could loan it to me, that'd be great. And the dad says, why don't you just go to bed? And he's, he's really just kind of beat from the day at work. And his mom tucks him into bed. And the dad really feels bad. So he walks in the room and says, hey, son, I thought about it. And here's your $20.

And the kid jumps on his bed up and down with the $20. He asks his dad how much he makes per hour. And his dad says $40 an hour. And he goes, great. So he says, can I borrow 20 bucks? And the dad comes and gives him $20. And he grabs $20 from under the bed, counts out $20 bills. And he goes, why didn't you tell me you saved $20? Why did you need to borrow 20? And he goes, dad, he's like, I'd like to buy an

hour of your time because we haven't played catch all year. And all I want is one hour of your time so we can play catch again. And the dad fell down to his knees and realized that he failed to spend time with his most important thing. And that's what I'm trying to get more people's mindset to is spending time with your families. Quality time, not just going to movies. Not just being at the football game or the recital, but being present. So, you know, this podcast is turning into a lot more than home service. It's a vehicle to get us our dreams and get everybody around us the dreams and the elevate mindset. So anyways, let's go ahead and listen to some questions here.

Tommy, you're the man. What percentage of your revenue is allocated to rent? My dad and I are currently doing everything out of our residential home garage. Percentage of revenue, it's such a small amount. I believe total, we have like 40 buildings. I own several of them. It's still a percent of a percent. But what I would tell you, my best advice is do a year lease, no more. A lot of people do three or four year leases and they get too big. I make sure to have a lawyer look over like we do. And I make sure you're able to sublease. So when you move into a building, you have the ability to sublease if you grow out of it. And number two, what I would say

is pick a building you could grow into. Don't pick something that's great for the next six months or a year. Pick something that you know you're going to scale. Because if you're following me, and if you're doing half of what I recommend, you're going to be scaling your business fast. And make sure you build a training center. Obviously, I'll leave you, Tommy, all that. And then what Dan Antonelli did is designed

the walls in a way that you feel like it's part of the brand. And it's so important. We got our core values. We got nice rugs with our core values. We got the place wrapped in a certain way. We got a timeline of where the business is today and what happened, the major events.

So make sure you encompass that into your whole, your whole culture. It makes a big difference. So pick the right spot. Try to get somewhere that's going to rank good for your Google My Business. Residential will not work. Try to get something with a lot of traffic

and something that you wouldn't mind bringing customers in. And when the people come apply for you, they're like, oh my God. It doesn't even need to be a big space. It just needs to be beautiful. It needs to be lit up. It needs to get...

The energy needs to be there. When I walked in Gettle's office for the first time, it was like, pow, it was amazing. And you could just see the productivity go up. So don't have a gringy, nasty, make sure it's perfectly clean. Get the floors redone. Put nice things in there that clean up well. Have a kitchen, have a fun video game for the guys to play. You can pick up games for cheap. It's not expensive, but just have a coffee machine. a fun video game for the guys to play. You can pick up games for cheap. It's not expensive, but just have a coffee machine. Keegan walked in my office, I don't know, five years ago, and he goes, where's your coffee machine?

And I said, you know, I got a Keering in the other room. He goes, no, you need a really nice coffee machine. Your people need that. And so we invested in that, and it was the best thing I've ever done. And so that's what I have to tell you about the facility. Let's see. Mr. Dave, congratulations on the health journey. Question.

What are your thoughts on company owners, directors, driving company branded trucks? Appreciate everything you're doing. You know, I don't think you need company trucks for every single person. I think it's an added bonus. But I don't think of their customer face and you don't think you need company trucks for every single person. I think it's an added bonus. But I don't think if they're customer-facing, you don't really need that. I think what you do is you say, I'm going to give you a purse for their windows, make a license plate things. But I don't think anybody should have a vehicle unless they're customer-facing.

Why? That's just an expense. I think a 401k, PTO, weekly pay, there's so many other things that come above that, that I don't see a real reason for that unless they're driving to job sites often. Sita looks good. Thank you.

Tommy, I own Mr. Electric with an expansion plan to take us to 15 million in three years. We do about 6 million at the moment. My question is, how do you secure the funding needed for such rapid growth? So there's a thing called the delay draw term loan. And you want to get with the bank and you got to have accrual books and you need to make sure your finances in order. And for that kind of growth, I'd say 30% organic is a good baseline to want to grow.

So if you go to six, next year you go to seven. I'm sorry, 30% on six would be 7.8. Then the next year you go 2.4. Without acquisition, that's going to be very difficult. Unless you bring in, like I said, like the church, bring in some more talent. Because what got you here won't get you there. So unless... I'd love to hear the plan, but a delay draw term loan is the vehicle to get you there. And you got to be very careful about growth. Too fast a growth could put you back really,

really bad. Make sure you stay focused on your growth. Make sure you got a plan and a good budget and make sure people know that they can hit the budget. Don't set these really unrealistic goals. If you hit something way more than your goal, that's great. But make sure they're the goals that are smart goals. They're realistic. So Kylie said, what kind of advice would you give a girl like me who has had the opportunity to be led by amazing leaders, coached by world-class people, and are no longer with the company who brought you to such seminars. A girl who knows better, knows enough on how to treat people,

dominate anything she touches, but can't seem to find herself happy working for less than like-minded business owners. It's me. I'm that girl. Well, Callie, you should call me. We always have a spot for great people, but I'm sure everybody listening right now has a spot for a great person like you. And you've got to really sit down and decide on what you want. What does your dream life look

like? Really figure that out. Find out what you loved about your last job. Find out what made you cringe. And you got to make a plan. You got to reflect. You got to think about it. And you got to say, what's going to get me excited for Mondays? What am I going to feel valued? Where am I going to be able to move up? Where am I going to be able to possibly earn ownership in a business?

Or start your own. But we'll have to talk more about that. Good for you getting this seven levels of life health going, Tommy Mello. Well done, sir. Thank you. I'm excited for freedom. I am too, Sean. Not sure if you want to chat about this subject, but I know you just sold a chunk of the company and I also sold my company in November. I received a large amount of money and I'm sure you did too. Did you go through any emotional glitch or have struggled with that reality at all? Again, could be talked about offline too. Well, it's an important subject and I'm glad you asked.

You know, a lot of people lose their identity. You see, I'm still the CEO of this company, but I've been doing this 16 years and it is a piece of me and my face on the side of the truck. I feel like I've been here every step of the way. There's nobody that's been more involved than me in the growth. I'm not tooting myself. There's nobody been more involved with me

in the mistakes either. So what I can tell you is, if you let your business define you and don't realize the great things, opportunities are finding me. The interest alone on the money is just fascinating. And we're having so much fun. I was in Lake Tahoe last week with my niece, my nephews, great human beings.

My dad, we went golfing with Nate. My stepdad, my mom, all in the same house. Interesting. We were working out. We were fishing. We were jumping off the cliffs into the lake. We went putt-putt golf. We went bowling. We went to restaurants every night. We played this game, this golf game on our phones.

Just so much fun. I don't think I'll ever let a business define me. And I know it's not easy because you're used to growing things, but there's so many more chapters of your life. If you ever want to talk about this, I'd love to really talk deep into it with you. But what's next? What does the future hold? You know, a lot of people say, I'm going to retire. I'm going to go on this beach.

They get there two, three weeks. They want to get back into the game. So many opportunities. If you need opportunities, you want to get back into a business. I've got plenty of opportunity. Jim said, the company has changed the culture of my team and it gives them tools to work towards their personal lives and mindset.

It's called psisseminars.com. I've said the majority of my team to it. It's the best thing I've ever done for them. Well, thanks for sharing that, Jim. I'm sure a lot of people will check that out. We do a lot of stuff like this. I don't know every single one, but we've got all kinds of leadership training. I've got three sales coaches right now. I've got two speaking coaches right now. I've got the physical trainer. I'm always being trained by 10 people. Always. There's so many resources out there and I just try to take all of it and use it. As long as we've got the same mindset, you know, when I shake somebody's hand,

I come through with what I say I'm going to do. I like to have a track record with people that I trust them. And I know they're looking out for us for the longterm. And if that's the company that this is, I'm sure it's a great company. I'm a GM, a bit of a busy restaurant. Break my back for almost nothing.

Okay. Well, you should call. The best. So Gary Finney, he just had a bit of an opportunity himself. The best part of who I am, my family are number one. We struggle, but they know the love I carry for them. That's amazing. Colin said, I have a year and a half old business and it's growing. Six-figure growth.

Any insights on how to keep the ball rolling and maybe faster if there is such a thing? Well, the biggest mistake I see with a young entrepreneur, and it doesn't mean young, their age, it means newer to business. It could be 60. Look at KFC. You tend to want to be the guy that knows everything, the guy or girl that knows everything. You tend to want to be that person that's like, I got the ideas. I'm the only one that understands this because typically, we don't have a lot of money when we start business, so we can't hire these people that have been where we want to go. It's amazing when cash will allow us to hire great people

with an equity incentive program. There's profit sharing. There's great bonus structures. And when that's done properly, you could find some of the best, most elite people that are just looking to go do what they've already done because they have fun.

They'll go from working at a $200 million company back to a 10 million because they know exactly how to get back to 200 million. So once again, building your team, that's the most important thing. Get the CFO who's been there that understands the banking relationships, the tax benefits, understand the COO

that will help bring on the right people, the trainers and the recruiters and understand how to get your call center dialed in. Don't be everything for everyone. Be what you're best at. Understand your superpower. Freedom event is going to be the bomb. So I got a lot of questions on my Q&A here.

I'll go through these. Brandon said, I own a six-figure residential glass company based in Phoenix with four other locations in different states. We give out incentive bonuses quarterly, but would love to switch to performance pay. How do you pay if there is a go-back? When opening a new market, do you use remote employees from Phoenix to help? So we've got what's called a MAT team, Market Acceleration Technician Training that travel. And the goal when you enter a market is you should have a full-blown plan

month one through three, month four through six. The first three months are just literally get the location and get a ton of reviews. It's getting the word out there, going to every event, getting into every B&I group, going to every chamber meeting. It's about relationships. It's getting the word out there, going to every event, getting into every B&I group, going to every chamber meeting. It's about relationships. It's about meeting with realtors. It's about getting the word out. Nothing better than word of mouth. It's about getting reviews with pictures in them. It's about being the cheapest. I hate to say this, but you want to go in there and just have, for the first 90 days, we're going to make it known. We're going to beat every coupon out there. We're going to do crazy things. We might lose a little bit of money, but you want to have a great impact

to get that GMB ranking, to get the reviews, to get everything dialed in. And there's a whole checklist of a lot of things that need to happen. But we'll take guys out from Phoenix and other markets to open up a market. And we're going to be greenfielding

eight more markets. Our mentality is greenfield into the markets, get the licensing done, get the naming conventions done, get all the advanced approvals through Google, go in there, market like crazy, take market share, get our reputation, and then start to build that market.

And then we can do add-on acquisitions. They're a lot easier when they're add-ons than going and buying a company straight out in the market. We find that it's easier to do a bolt-on when you buy three or four and do an existing market that already has all that stuff done. Makes the integration so much easier. Dave said, ideas of fun things to do with my guys under $1,000. Always looking for ways to keep building company culture. We've done bowling, hatchet throwing, golf, ball games. And one time

a year, we have a lake day, which costs about $2,500. Well, I brought this book. It's called 1,501 Ways to Reward Employees. And it's awesome. And I've got a bunch of pages highlighted here. There's 1,501 ideas. Great things you could do in this book. And they're very affordable. Everybody says, we don't have the money to spend on the employees that you have. And I'm like, there's so many things you could do in this book. And they're very affordable. Everybody says, we don't have the money to spend on the employees that you have. And I'm like, there's so many things you can do. In the book, Five Languages of the Workplace, there's a quiz in the back that's free if you buy the book that kind of says, what kind of person you are, the five love languages, but you could have other people at your facility take it. And you understand if they enjoy gifts, if they enjoy time on stage,

if they enjoy just quality time. And understanding how people want to be acknowledged is so important. And it's something that you should definitely look into. Mr. Ryan Browder, my man, when paying performance pay on a monthly basis, do you job cost it? How do you incorporate it into jobs profitability or to the company in

general? I would consider it to be considered cost of goods sold rather than an employee benefit. So yeah, our complete structures, corporate is based on a bonus. We bonus 100% of our C-suite. So if they make 100 grand, if they bonus out, they can make 200 grand. And it's along KPIs that matter for the company because they are the C-suite, right? They're going to affect the EBITDA. They're going to affect the growth. There's two things I'm really, really wanting is the amount of growth and the monetary figure of that. So percentage of EBITDA goes up to 25%. That's great. We hit a big goal. And also, do we get the growth we wanted?

And if we do, let's just calculate it in. Now, for the pay for the technician CSRs dispatch, their bonus structure goes into COGS. So this is a CFO question, but you definitely make a lot of money. But those A-plus players make you tenfold when they're on performance pay. Adam said, how many years did it take you from going to working in the business to working on

your business? Implementing system takes time. Getting employees trained more time and there is only so much time in a day. How did you go about it? What would you recommend to be an overwhelmed business owner of an established company, one to three million in revenue, looking to refine their systems and make changes for their employees. One to three million. I mean, I got it to six million before I found Adam in 2014. And I was pretty, I was running crazy, crazy.

2017, I found out Levy and I figured out business could be a little bit more vanilla if you just sit back and work on systems. There's a few departments today, one that I think we need to really work through systems, technology, and it should be so easy that a 10th grade or B student should be able to,

or a 10-year-old B student should be able to do it. So I think when we're under the $20 million mark, we tend to want to be the problem solvers. We're always putting out fires. We're got a minute managers. Instead of walking away from the business day to day, which means you need a good leader in charge, a good COO, general manager, and you get to work on the processes. You get to go through L.E.V.'s training. You get to really set up the org chart. You get to build a business plan. Keep an eye on KPIs. Know where you should spend your time. When you walk into a business and you're in it every day, you just get inundated with issues and you're going to solve them because

every issue to you is important, but there's no order of operations in that. So you need to really understand the biggest things. Now, if you had 10 holes in a boat and you were trying to get 10 miles away, you'd probably want to solve, plug the biggest hole first. And you'd have someone probably emptying water out at the same time. So you got to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. But you need to solve the biggest problems if you're the founder and the owner or a manager. And a lot of people, they take care of a lot of the small problems and avoid the big ones, like the technology and the CRM and making things talk to one another. A lot of people throw people at it.

They say, we'll just hire five more people for payroll. And it's not systematized. So you really got to work on a process to build systems in the business. And now, Levi, help me with that. Tim said, I work with DoorPro to grow our service department and want to grow the same way you did. No franchising. I want to own it and run it in open stores, but not have to show up in person ever.

I want to know how you did it and how you can manage all that with new locations and hiring. Well, it's pretty simple. My team, I don't have to do a lot of this stuff. I haven't had an interview in a long time. I've interviewed a few C-suite levels, director levels,

but ultimately that's just to see if we get along and we're a match because I'm pretty high energy. Just want to make sure they could deal with an entrepreneur like me because I'm pretty crazy. I try to let people do what they do best. I've got a lot of ideas, but prioritizing my ideas and seeing what's going to make the deepest impact. You see, when you implement an idea and I've got a lot of ideas, but prioritizing my ideas and seeing what's going to make the deepest impact. You see, when you implement an idea

and it brings in a lot of money, that will be able to pay for your next idea. So understanding how you could make sales and marketing where I spend the majority of my time. And what is something that I could do that nobody else could do? Well, I'm the only person that could call from a CEO owner perspective and say,

you're doing a great job. I'm still the largest investor in this company. And when I pulled on Cortec, I just decided I could grow much faster with them than I would have. Let's just say I was able to double each year by myself and take all the risks. Or I'd have the banks were tightening up. I mean, I'll go through this story at the Freedom event, but the fact is I'm very happy with the way things turned out. And it's not easy until you get the right people.

I can tell you this, without the right CFO, with Dan Miller, the president, Luke Martin, the COO, without our great controller, without guys like Gianni and Xavier and Jim running with this podcast, you're only as strong as your team. If you stack the deck in your favor, a lot of people you're sitting there with mediocrity, you're not motivating the people, they don't have any invested interest in the outcome. There's a good book called A Stake in the Outcome. If you guys are not seriously figuring out a way for somebody to get excited about you winning your goals and company setting records of what's in it for them, then what's the

point? They're not going to ever work. You're never going to get them to work as hard as they can. And most of the time, people that you first hire, we're not going to be able to take you where you want to go. We went through four different CFOs to get where we're at today. And before that, it was two bookkeepers. So six people. You want to find people that could run when you're not there and get you the results. And those people are not easy to find, but when you find them and you do the right thing and you set them up for success, your, your company will grow in spades. Brent said, hello, Tommy.

I'm so pumped for the event in Orlando. I'll be coming all the way from Kelowna, Canada to attend this event. I own a plumbing and HVAC business. And I'm curious, will you ever offer a membership similar to Nextar? Yes. Something very similar, but it's designed a lot differently. I love Nextar. I love what they do. So that's what's coming in November. It's something to where it's a rebate program and it is going to be something special. We're getting on all the right people. I think it's going to be amazing because people always ask, how do I afford all these things to buy, afford Dan Antonelli services and to get the manuals and to hire the great people you talk about? Well, first thing we know what we need to do is get it organized, know your

KPIs, know what things we could shift and dials we could do to bring more money coming. And there's two things that really do that quickly, sales and marketing. Getting organized, owning your schedule, sales and marketing. Xavier, take a note of that

because I'm going to be talking a lot about that. Getting organized, owning your schedule, understanding your KPIs, sales and marketing. There's five. CJ said, I've heard you mention whiteboarding on numerous occasions. Can you take us through what your typical whiteboard session is like from planning this meeting? During the meeting and how the action items are delegated and followed up. So we use a system called Monday.

And when I delegate, I'm sorry, I keep walking away from this thing. So when you're whiteboarding, you're typically finding out what's called an OKR, an outcome and key result. You know, whether you're speaking, you got to define what you're trying to accomplish, and that's the outcome and key result. And then you work backwards. So you might work down if you're on a whiteboard. You might work from the left or the right side to the left side. And then you bring in all your ideas and you just write them down and circle them and put stuff around them to keep them organized, different colors. And then you think about, is this a technology?

Is this a person? What is their day-to-day? What manual could I build? And then you start thinking about the price book and their compensation and what their job title looks like. Or can you out, does it need to be insourced or outsourced? What tools could I bring to them? Like when I'm thinking about the cleaning lady

and what I'm having her do is I'm building a whole map of the house and just ways to make sure she knows what rooms we use, what beds we use. I mean, it's a beautiful house. I've got three people spending the night tonight, part of my team.

And I've got my whole family coming in this weekend. So there's certain things that you need to work through. And then it's a process. There's on my phone. I'll show you guys my phone. The way it looks is each whiteboarding session. I don't know if you can see this, but these are all Google shortcuts. The different things that I got going on.

They just keep going. There's like seven pages of them. And for like cleaning, if my boxers aren't put in the way that I like them, or I like my shirts folded a certain way, and I like them in a certain pattern, I just make a note and add that to the manual. It's very simple. And when you'll get used to these systems,

it sounds so stupid. Like this guy does this at home, what's wrong with him? But to have that kind of order and that kind of organization and to be that effective and to be that efficient, it just changes everything. And if you're not organized at home, you'll never be organized at work. What P-E-O firm do you use? GNA Partners is the one I use for the family office. Josh Richardson said, I've been trying to find out for weeks now what type of blood tests I should take and where to start. I heard on the podcast I need to get healthy. So my doctor just messaged me at homeserviceexpert.com forward slash questions. Josh, I'm trying to get something to go with my doctor because I think he's the best.

And there's a lot of people out there. I'm getting real good supplements, the real deal with real good advice with the saliva, the blood, everything. And I've already introduced them to 10 people. Aaron Gainer is using them now. And I just, get yourself, this is it. This is the time. Your brain, everything. People say, yeah, but you don't know. I got to work 12 hours. Everybody's got an excuse. Everybody has an alibi. I spent a lot of time recently with Joe Polish. Everybody's got this alibi of why they can't. Why not give me all the reasons you can do it? You know, you say, I don't have enough time to exercise. Can you talk on a phone call? Can you?

Can you park a little bit further away at the grocery store? Can you play some sports with your kids? It doesn't need to be full-blown weights. You just, and you need to be on a caloric deficit if you want to lose weight. You need to, instead of eating that dessert. And you need to be on a caloric deficit if you want to lose weight. You need to... Instead of eating that dessert, people overeat. They binge eat.

They don't eat more often enough. Their body goes into fat storage mode, conservation mode. I'll tell you what. Not drinking has been easy. Eating as much food as I have to in a day has been the most challenging thing. Always eating. Rick Lewis said, family over business or business over family.

I'm stuck in a moral dilemma and I need some advice from somebody who's been there and done it. Well, Rick, I don't think there needs to be a choice of business or family because your family will struggle without you working. I don't think they'd appreciate it if they were living in an apartment that had a leaky roof and you weren't able to put food on the table. I think from the way I was raised,

I understand dad and mom both had to work to make ends meet. And that's why I had new clothes every Christmas. I had gifts. We went to the church three different years for gifts because my mom didn't have the money. But providing for your family is very, very important. Building a business that can bring them the opportunities they might not have is important to never forget that. A lot of people say, I wish I got all my time back. And I listened to Jimmy Hiller talk

about recently at RhinoX. And he said, you know, everybody on this stage has so much they miss and they should have been there for their kid's graduation. You should be there for your kid's graduation. But he said, all my grandchildren are taken care of. They all got enough to go to school. Every one of my kids has a house that the company was able to buy. We spend quality time together. Business is not for the faint at heart. You should read Acres of Diamonds. You're entitled to make a profit. And I find it hard for people to say, you work too much. You do this, you do that. Well, I don't work a day in my life.

I enjoy everything I do. This is my family. It's part of my family. It really is. That sounds cliche, but it's really a part of it. So, you know, I think the biggest mistake of when you start a relationship with a woman or if you're a woman and start a relationship with a man is you don't tell people that this is important to me. Grant Cardone lives a really good life.

He told his wife, I want to stay busy. I like to build things. This is part of me. Let me chase my dreams. Now, you also got to spend quality time. You need to put your phone down for two hours. You need to have a plan to be able to spend real time with people. But anybody that's giving you a guilt trip for trying to build something special, maybe you didn't discuss that going in. Maybe I don't know all the circumstances. There's mom's story. There's dad's story. There's the real story. What I would tell you is to build something really special that'll

give you dividends for the rest of your life, there's no such thing as balance. It's not easy. If it was easy, everybody would have a business and no business would fail. It's not easy. And it's what you signed up for. And hopefully you had a lot of discussions with your family about it and they agreed with you. But doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, coming home after 12 hours, having no money, having no energy, spending zero quality time,

that's a life that nobody else, I would get mad if I was your family too. Try to be the dumbest guy in the room. Try to implement short, easy things to give you some time back, give you some sanity back, get the right sleep. That's another big thing. Get the right amount of sleep.

Sleep is more important than nutrition because if you don't sleep, you're going to not eat right. If you're tired, you're going to be drinking coffee. You're going to be eating a candy bar for energy. Sleep is more important than supplements, more than working out, more than your water intake. Sleep, eight hours a day will give you everything you need. Different subject, but yeah, I think there's a happy medium in between, but it's front-loaded.

Don't have a two-year-old and a three-year-old and start a business and expect to say, I'm spending 20 hours with my family. It's just not possible unless you've got millions of dollars to put behind it to get the right people. Let's go back to some of these questions. Before we continue this interview, I wanted to remind you about something important. We're a few weeks away from the event that could change your life. Do you have a clear plan for your business in 2024? Do you know who you need to get on board to achieve that plan? Do you have the connections to turn that plan into a reality? If not, the Freedom Event is your opportunity to change that forever. But every day that passes, this opportunity is fading away.

And I don't want you to regret not being here because hundreds of other business owners have already made up their minds and got their tickets. They've made a decision to step up and learn from the brightest minds in the home service industry. Not just learn, but also build a network to help them turn their notes and their notepads into actionable items. I'm talking about the opportunity to connect with the same people who helped me build my $200 million garage door repair and installation company. So which side of the fence do you want to be on? The one side looking from the outside or the one joining us in shaping the future of the industry? If you're ready to elevate your business, create more freedom for yourself and your family, and make a bunch of money in the process. I invite you to join us at the Freedom Event this November. Go to TommyMello.com forward slash freedom and get

your tickets today. That's Tommy Mello, T-O-M-M-Y-M-E-L-L-O.com forward slash freedom. Don't sleep on it because tomorrow might be too late. Now let's get back to this awesome interview. Hi, Tommy. Love your work. It's very helpful question on your performance pay structure point percentage system. How do you determine what is the top salary for the position? So on my performance pay for technicians, there's no top. There's no top. If you decide you could work four jobs in a day and you want to work six days a week,

I don't ever top out. It's all earned. If you go run more jobs, work harder, sell more service agreements, have more five-star reviews, you've got untapped potential. Why wouldn't you? Why would I ever cap somebody that's doing non-performance pay? Let's just say you had a performance pay and this takes a lot of time to develop and I don't recommend doing this right away. Well, let's say you brought in a really good marketer and you said, I'm going to give you $3 for every lead you get on Google My Business. And they are the guru of Google My Business.

They figure out a way to optimize it. And they go from 3,000 leads to 10,000 leads and you're paying them $30,000 a month. Who cares? It's three bucks per lead. It's 10 bucks. It's 20 bucks. It's 30 bucks. Who gives a shit? It doesn't matter. There's no cap of great results. The hard part is getting attribution because what if you were doing TV, radio billboards and you were spending 500 grand and all of a sudden the GMB started getting way more. Well, that's, I came into a dilemma with that because I spent a fortune on TV,

radio billboards, wrapping the trucks. And I was working out, working out performance pay with one of my marketing guys. This is like six or seven years ago. And he said, well, the lead volume is going up. And I'm working out performance pay with one of my marketing guys. This is like six or seven years ago. And he said, well, the lead volume is going up. And I'm like, well, we've spent millions of dollars on TV, radio, billboards. So you got to have attribution to make sure it's their work that they're getting credit for. And that's what's hard about building performance pay is building that system. And that system needs to make sure that that can't be scammed. Because I promise you, every single person, including myself, would figure out a way to make sure they're maximizing the system.

And if there's no real defined processes in the system and attribution, then people are going to take advantage of it. Freedom event is different than vertical track is because vertical track was based mostly around garage doors. Freedom just, it's a different mentality. What I'm trying to do at Freedom is get companies ready to sell in the next five years, which means quality of earnings. It means getting an audit and financials. Depending on the size that you are, there could be opportunities for companies to partner up and double their EBITDA, get a bigger multiple. Garage door freedom is still an amazing thing. And that's something that we're still, we're going to grow intensely.

And the reason I decided home service freedom because half the people that would show up were outside of the garage door industry. Not enough garage door companies have the mindset right. A lot of other industries are coming to these events saying this is right up my alley. And I just wanted to do something for the whole trades. And you know, when I'm around people that are doing something cool and plumbing or pest control or roofing or

gutters or air conditioning, or I can keep going, I learned so much. And where do you learn the most and freedom will be part garage or freedom will be part of this, obviously, but garage or freedom is, is really tailored to garage door companies. It has a lot to do with the price book setup for garage doors, the service agreements for garage doors. But we realized we could do this with any home service company. So it's just a great opportunity to be networking and learning what other industries are doing really great.

I sell the business and I want to know so I don't owe taxes. What investment do you recommend me do? I sell the business and I want to know so I don't owe any in taxes. Well, I hired Goldman Sachs and I hired the best tax strategist in the country. And we've got, normally you'd pay capital gains, which is around 22.5%, 23%. We were able to get that down quite a bit with the way we kind of set things up. So whenever you're going to sell, this is, the reason why this whole freedom event

is what it is, is I understand what it's like to be, take chips off the table. I understand what it's like, what's your life afterwards. I understand that you've got this lump sum of money that you don't know what to do with. No one cares after the transaction's done. You lose everybody, but you won't lose me. And we'll have a plan and we'll show you what life looks like. And it's a lot better than you think. Now I'm still involved with the company and I'll always

be involved with this company. This is my baby. I don't care if I own 0%, I'd still be here because it's my everything. I love this company, but is my baby. I don't care if I own 0%, I'd still be here because it's my everything. I love this company, but it doesn't define me. And as far as you're not paying taxes, I mean, you get with a good guy like mine, you set up the things correctly and you minimize your taxes. You still got to pay Uncle Sam. I paid them several tens of millions of dollars. Very happy to pay because it was an amount that I was happy that we got it to. But there's no way around taxes. You just have a strategy behind it.

Do everything above board and you'll be good. Tommy, I've been running my business as you would, as to what you refer in your book as a firefighter. How did you go from creating a financial plan when you had your struggle? Thanks for all you do, Tommy. I hate to say this. I mean, I tell him all the time, he's coming over tonight, Mr. Al Levy. Without a plan, without manuals, without being able to recruit somebody that never had experience,

without understanding your org chart, the way your building's assembled, without understanding the seven powers, I chewed it up and I owned it. We recited it and we lived by it. It became vanilla. Then we grew. Then it became vanilla again and we grew.

And then we were faced with different growing pains, right? Different growing pains. But at $2 million, the company should not be struggling. It should not be just you. You don't have the right people on the bus is the problem. And you're probably not paying correctly. Your price book's not dialed in. Going back to day one, if I had to start over, I spent all the time on the price book, the score

cards, and the pay structure. It would attract A-plus winners, and it would detract B players or anything less. And then I would make sure that I'm a premium brand in the marketplace, that the people know that when we call them, they're going to show up the same day. They're going to do great work. They're going to be honorable. They're going to tell great stories. They're going to listen to my needs. They're going to take care of us. Most people make it about the cost if you make it about cost. If you make it about value and you make it about the opportunity cost of not using us, you'll really... I think a lot of people are priced wrong and then they try to raise their prices, but they don't raise their service. They don't do better phone calls. Raising your prices does nothing without raising your training, raising your processes, getting the manuals, investing

in the brand. Even the Jonathan Wissman's predictive predict. I mean, bringing these things out before we use that, we use the predictive index and it was great, but it was nowhere near where the next thing was, but it takes money to do these things. So there is an order of operations. I have been doing barbecue cleaning for six years, still in the truck in New York. What is good line to add to work? Oh, what's a good line to work year round? Well, barbecue cleaning. I mean, it seems to me that fireplaces are the opposite side of New York.

Seems to me you're dealing with the same things, igniters, dealing with gas lines. I got a buddy of mine, Lee. He's in Texas. He runs a great company. There's a lot of these guys that do a fantastic of mine, Lee. He's in Texas. He runs a great company. There's a lot of these guys that do a fantastic job in that line. And the Winter is also part of a great company

that does Christmas lights. I could help you out with that. There's a lot of opportunities. I'd have to hear more. But some people like to go six months on and work their butts off and take the next six months off. I'd really have to ask you

a lot more questions on that. Where does the most amount of business come from for your business? Google and referrals and past customers. There's four algorithms on Google. There's your website, organic traffic. There's the GMB, which is the three-pack

with your hours of operation reviews. There's local GMB, which is the three-pack with your hours of operation reviews. There's local services and there's pay-per-click. That's where people go when something's broken and they don't know who to use. We've got a sticker program where guys go put stickers out. That's door-to-door. Lenny Gray runs that program. It's going great. We do a lot with ValPak. We do Clipper. We do performance-based marketing. So Gannett, we work with them. They put us all over the newspapers and everything they own. And we report to them daily on the jobs that came from them and they make a percentage of the job.

There's social media we're launching. We're getting into the Spanish markets. We're doing all these things. But if you don't own Google and you don't have a great brand and you're not leaving stickers, if you're a garage door company, I don't understand what you're doing. Not focused on spiking those four algorithms with Google. Your family statement hits close to home. Launching a second business on top of a successful business, I find myself consumed with

work. Four kids and three of them older now. I didn't spend a lot of time with them. However, making up time where I can. My youngest son, Connor, is my sidekick and I try to find time. Thursday, we are headed out to feed the homeless with an organization, Trevor Vision. The work life balance is so important, especially when the children are involved. I agree. Bree said, thank you, Tommy, on your advice on celebrating our first paper performance. Big check our technician made. It has our other techs motivated. Do you advise that you put your CSRs

and dispatchers on paper performance? If so, how does that work for their roles? Yeah, I do. CSRs are paid mostly on their percentage of booking rate. And then we do quality assurance, making sure they're getting the right information. And then our dispatchers are paid on getting the right technician to the home. So we look at the revenue brought in per dispatcher because they can affect the outcome. Let's say you have...

Smart companies have priority jobs, like an off-track door or a spring job where they can't get out of the garage. So the first thing we ask is, are you able to get... Is your car stuck in the garage or not? Are you able to get out? Can you leave your house? If they can't, that's a priority job. They're calling somebody else. The dispatchers have to figure out how to reroute other people that need a remote control or add a keypad, or they can still get out of their garage. So the dispatchers, they understand

how to get the right guy at the right job at the right time. So I can go through these bonus structures a lot more in detail. But what works for me won't work for you. The way we're set up, the way everything works, the way our service tagging account is, but basically what you want to do is whiteboard and say, what are the three

most important things that this role is going to do? And then you just look at the last three months you've paid them and you say, if they were able to reschedule this and get the top guy out to this job, and then you run it, run the new program and see what it would have done for you. Run them simultaneously to make sure it gets the results you want. What we found when we switched our performance pay in the call center with what Angela did, we actually saved money by paying performance pay. Plus several people quit. We were able to top grade.

And then we started paying more money, but our revenue doubled. So call center and dispatch are very important. Tommy, to say what you accomplished is impressive would be a massive understatement. Respect. Thank you for all the resources you offer back to the community. I do take them in and find great value.

Many of us watch what you and others like you have done from afar. Often left questioning, what am I doing wrong that prevents us from also being able to scale in a similar manner? Do you have any thoughts or suggestions to owners like myself in this situation? Well, just know I started in 2007. I actually got started in 2006. It took 16 years. Really got motivated when I found Adam because he was like my partner in crime. We called it the TNA show, Tommy and Adam. We were able to do a lot together. And then we found ServiceTite. And then we found Al Levy. Then I found myself networking all the time, finding answers. And what I could tell you is if you're not making time for yourself

to work on the business and taking days for yourself and really spending time focusing and making sure you're stacking the deck with the best people you're going to struggle. Performance pay, equity incentive programs, great training and recruiting, all these things play into it. But I think a lot of you guys just, you don't have the dream big enough

to want to make more money. And you might say you do, but your price book doesn't look like it, that you're not reaching out to the right resources. You know. I'm in this group with Ishmael, Tom Howard, Travis Ringe, the list goes on and on, Aaron Gaynor. And these guys are just constantly asking questions to me and I'm asking questions to them and we're working with each other. It's an accountability group and that's why we're all getting into shape. has been sending shirtless pictures of man men's bodies and uh it's pretty interesting but it's funny but i'm just saying we you know reach out to people make friends get the advice you need to

be able to be successful the definition of insanity is continuing to do what you're doing so you got to change things and a lot of people aren't comfortable with change. They say, that's not the way we do it here. Listen to the podcast I had with Ara years and years ago. He said, so many people, they want to do things the old way they've always done it instead of making the software do what it's built to do. We've interviewed and watched only the billion dollar companies and that's what we built the platform off of. But people still want to do their wacky ass pay when the system's not designed to do that. It's designed to do it like this. Success leaves clues.

They studied the clues. And so be a sponge and be willing to make changes and implement quickly. A lot of people have ideas. You know, Alex Tremosi says, we sell them the answers and the ideas, or we give them all the answers and the ideas. We sell the implementation. And in a way,

that's what Home Service Freedom is going to do is I think we're going to be able to really, really move the needle for a lot of people. And it's not expensive. The rebates are going to pay for it. So I don't have the key and the answer for everybody. We're just going to assist people. But trust me, I've been where most people are. I've been a slave to the business. I've walked out of many movie theaters to go run a job. I've left the house at 2 a.m. many times to run, to do it. And a lot of people, they spike the ball right at the end zone. They get to right when they're about to make money and they give up.

So just hang tight. Success leaves clues everywhere. You just got to open your eyes. Read that book, Acres of Diamonds. It's right below your nose. Do you love God? Yes, I do. I love Jesusonds. It's right below your nose. Do you love God? Yes, I do. I love Jesus Christ.

He's my Lord and Savior. Sean said, we just switched to a sales install model after 14 months of a new business model. I'm concerned that we are too small to make this happen with six trucks. Well, I got a buddy in Garage Door Freedom, and I'm not going to say his name, but he switched to performance pay. And they're about your size. And he went from $30,000 profit to $100,000

in two months by switching to performance pay and taking some of the guidelines we put out for him. He did all the work. I'm not taking any credit. Like everybody in Garage Door Freedom, these guys, they do the work and the money shows. So I don't think you're too small. I think if you tell yourself you're too small,

you're too small. If you tell yourself you're too big, you'll be too big. If you tell yourself you're sick, you'll be sick. If you fill your head up with this negativity of, you know, we're just not ready yet. We're just too small.

You might be. But if you don't say that, and you keep the optimism optimism and you say, I'm going to make this work no matter what, I've got willpower. If I stay consistent, it's going to work itself out. I'm going to call every technician and find out what we can do. It's hard to take change with an old group of people. That's why everybody that switches to performance pay could go on and on. They've lost all their old employees, but yet they're making more money and happier than they've ever been. The mentality of an hourly worker says, I got to make 60 grand, but I don't need to make more than 65. They're so content with their lives. They just need stability. That's why they wanted that job. They're not the right people to pay

performance pay. You're going to see a lot of turnover, but you're going to see you attract winners. Why is the event in Orlando? Well, everything's been in Phoenix so far. And Orlando is a great venue. It's a great place to bring your family. It's great to be there in November. And we just wanted to find something that was going to be the best possible event where you could enjoy yourself at the same time.

And I never had anything more of the East Coast. So this is where we decided to have it. And I promise you guys will enjoy yourselves. It's going to be the most amazing home show, home service you've ever seen. And it's really about freedom. And you need to define what freedom is to you. But for me, it's what I'm living today.

It truly is. Shane said, Tommy, with companies, are you dabbling with? What companies are you dabbling with? Are you an HVAC on the down low with someone? Or are you staying just in garage doors? I'll tell you this. I'm not an HVAC right now. But there's other opportunities. As long as I'm working full-time all the time at A1. I'm the CEO of this company. It's my largest investment. It's going to do the best ROI. This is what I care about.

But I'm also looking at other opportunities because I need to let my money work. And if I could help other companies compound themselves with some of the stuff I know in my team outside of A1, then I'm doing it. So there's opportunities I've invested in and I think I could actually affect the outcome. And I look for great entrepreneurs that have their willingness to change and they got big goals and I could affect the outcome. Recommend the, Path to Liberty, Thomas D. White.

Another hidden gem. Thanks, Tommy, for what you do. We have churned your book into a weekly meeting agenda. My management team discusses a chapter at each meeting. That has also helped us change our culture. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's really good to hear.

It really makes my day to hear that stuff. What is the thought process for choosing the top salary on your position performance pay method? What is the thought process for choosing the top salary on your position performance pay method? Luke, I don't understand the question. What is the process for choosing the top salary? I just don't understand that. I'm sorry. I do $600,000 a year with four B players. All my techs have been with me for the last five years,

and they seem too comfortable and unwilling to change no matter how I try to coach them or involve them. You know, I've said this. Some coaches, you'll watch teams trade. You'll watch an all-star trade to another coach and there'll be a B player. So some of it, you got to look in the mirror and say, is this my fault? Really, you got to look in the mirror and say, why am I allowing B players to stay here?

Why am I not top grading? What am I doing? When they start, here's the deal. A players want to work around other A players. When they come into an atmosphere where there's a bunch of B players, you come to Phoenix, you meet my team in Phoenix, you look at my technicians, you can't help but succeed. Same thing with Milwaukee. There's a lot of markets like that for us.

You get in this area where losers just can't handle it. They don't want to talk. They don't want to sit up front. They don't want to be involved. They don't want to talk. They don't want to sit up front. They don't want to be involved. They don't want to talk in the morning mojo calls. I mean, you know what's crazy about what I've done and the team has done, I should say, in the garage door industry is, you know, if you know how to bake a cake, could you bake it in Australia? Could you bake it in South America? Could you bake the same cake if you had all the ingredients? I can make any home service company do what A1's doing, but it's going to take the right people. And it's going to take people that listen and it's going to take checks and balances, systems, but it's easy once you've done it. And sometimes it takes money, which the Lord has blessed me with. So, you know, I could bake a cake

wherever I go and do it in any different home service company, all of them. But it's all about systems. It's all about an expected outcome. How involved were you at the Christmas Light Installation Company or other investments? I'm out of the Christmas Light business.

I let them just pay what I had into it. At the time, there was licensing and just things that were not getting adhered to that. I was afraid that I would be the reason they got sued because they knew they could, you know, whoever sues us could get money because I was on the thing. But, um, I've got a whole team behind me and I'm not trying to get super involved. I'm trying to just give the right coaching for companies. Uh. I'm not going to come in and be the CEO of another company, but I know exactly how to create revenue and keep it.

Marketing, sales, great financials. And it's a system that works every time. And I don't need to be involved 10 hours a week. If I want to call for 30 minutes a week, I could really affect the outcome because of the things. I don't give people homework either. I just try to tell people this is what you should be doing. You've grown in this market. You're at a good percentage. Here's how you get the next market. Here's how you do an acquisition. Here's how you do your integration checklist. Here's what we need changed in the CRM. Let's renegotiate this price. You do a few of those things a month. Before you know it, you quadruple the business. There's businesses I think I could take from 7 million to 50 million in a matter of

four years. But they're great founders, great owners, and it's a great business and they know the business well. It just needs a few things and they're going to get there. So those are great opportunities. I'm happy to invest in things like that. And they're happy to have me. If they implement and do everything that I believe they're going to do, then everybody wins. Yeah, Luke, I'm sorry. Send me the form.

I got to go through it. Love you, Cody. New resi company in San Diego in month 12 of operation. PPC and lsa have become cost prohibitive yell thumb tech and networking is working for us what would your marketing approach be well this is what i talk a lot about is going out there getting meeting the people teaching your employees how to be marketers, posting on

social media, going out to events, talking to realtors. Down the line, I think I'll probably start some franchises. And this is years from now. But the main thing I want to look for within an owner is do they have the ability to get the community involved, show up to meetings, be the best version of themselves to reflect what the company is. Because that's hard to do. The reason we do so well in Phoenix is I'm showing up to events all the time. Everybody knows.

I wear my A1 shirt to dinners at Steak 44 just because people are like, oh, A1, and I give them a card. It's constantly networking. So the best thing to do is put yourself out there. It's meeting the people. It's building relationships. That the best thing to do is put yourself out there. It's meeting the people. It's building relationships. That's what the first three years of business is. And that's what you should be thinking about. PPC and LSA would not be expensive if they were

searching your brand. And how do you do that? You get yourself out there more. How did you first implement attribution? Well, I've got 6,500 numbers in Service Titan. And then our CTO worked with our marketing team and he's really stepped in with that. And really, we use CallRail on something similar to CallRail for pay-per-click. There's a lot thatM with call tracking numbers. Online is a little more difficult. And then you're not going to ever get great attribution from TV, radio, billboards. You look at TV, radio, billboards. So they help increase your brand's awareness. So people are searching your brand more than they're searching Garage Door Repair Phoenix. We're able to tell that now. Can you mention one more time the three things you would have done if you started all over?

Yeah. So I mentioned work on the price book and make sure I'm priced more than most companies. But I offer more. I bundle a lot more things and package things in a way that are better for the client to see the value. I work on the scorecards. So each department and each individual has a scorecard, especially CSRs, dispatchers, technicians, and installers. And then I would work on the compensation program. So the performance pay is how people get paid. The

scorecard is how they get graded. And the price book is what they charge. And they're all interrelated. They all are connected. Olivia mentions planning power. I feel as if plans tend to never be looked at again. Should a good plan be combined with a financial budget or plans for a CRM? Absolutely. You know, Al had us set up a Trello board, you know, six years ago. I put our big five, our big 30, and our big 100 things and always be moving them around and focusing on the biggest ones. They call them big rocks in EOS.

What are the biggest things they're going to move? Move the needle and have a plan. Understand what needs to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next quarter, next year. A lot of people plan for the year. They don't plan for the quarter. They don't plan for the month. They don't plan for the week. And stuff never gets done.

Trust me. I've seen it. Especially when you hire corporate people that are like, yeah, that's on the roadmap. And then it never gets started. I try to get things done. I try to get them started. People wait for perfection. They say, we're just not ready for that.

Bullshit. You're never ready. You're never going to be ready if you're not ready now. So many people come up for the reasons they can't do something instead of the reasons they should do something. Tommy, you're amazing. Thanks, Lisa. What is the name of the group?

What group is that? Oh, it's not a group. This is just a text messaging thread. Just a bunch of buddies, share best practices. You know, we text each other. These guys goof off 90% of the time, 10% is business. So we talk a lot of crap. Talk about meeting up at different spots, going golfing.

It's just a set of buddies that hold each other accountable, that have great businesses. I'm the only garage door guy. Lots of HVAC in there, but that's what I realized I needed to hang out with HVAC guys. I looked at the industry that had all the private planes

with all the owners and I started going from shop to shop to shop learning. And because I was an outsider in a garage door business, never going into their trade, they said, oh, we'll just give you the playbook. And as I looked at dozens and dozens of playbooks and modified them and met Al Levy

and met Dan Antonelli and learned about these things and found Jody and just implemented different things, it just became easier. And it's fairly easy these days. My life gets easier every great hire we do. It makes it a little bit easier. Lots of good stuff here. Yes, the events for anybody

in home service. It has a lot of relevance for people in Australia. Absolutely. It should come in November. Remember, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Orlando. FreedomEvent.com. Do you currently sell any of your systems? Are they taught

at the Freedom Event? Yeah. 100%. I mean, there's no particular one system. People are always looking for this magic pill. It's showing up with energy. It's showing up. A lot of people want to manage from afar.

It's prioritizing your day. It's getting efficient at home. It's having accountability. It's staying consistent. You know why this podcast does well? Xavier, how many podcasts have I missed? Zero Since I started Zero

How many Thursday mornings do you think I've missed? For the videos I make With the interviews and the texts Other than Xavier screwing up on an email, zero, miss none, zilch. Some of you are like, yeah, I tried that. It didn't work. It didn't work?

You tried it for a month? I tried a podcast. I did it six months. I didn't have a follower listening for the first year. Like, listen, I'll show you guys. I'm writing more books. I'm putting stuff out there. I give it away for free. This is just a group to hold you accountable and the resources that we've pre-negotiated 70 companies deals. It's going to be amazing. I promise you. I don't want anybody to think we're just going to come in with all the answers. We're there to help guide people.

We're there to help them grow. But ultimately, I'm not going to be the CEO of your business. I can't make you come into work with a smile and be a great leader. I can give you as much food for thought, the resources we have, the ideas, help you with performance pay, help you get the equity incentive program, help you build an org chart. You're going to have to put in the work. It's like my trainer. My trainer could build an Olympic athlete that could lift 500 pounds. But if they're not willing to work out, give it all their all, eat right, get their sleep,

their nutrition, just eat right, their water intake, their nutrition, which is eat right, their water intake, that's everything. The program's there if you want it. I would recommend it. Unless you're ready for a lot of changes and ready to scale your business, it might not even be worth coming. You don't need someone else just giving you more ideas on how to grow your business. The people that go to events every other week and they try to network, it's like, look, this is one thing that I know, tried and true, that'll grow your business. But you got to put the work in.

If you think there's this process we're going to teach you, you know, we're going to talk about morning mojo calls, getting your people motivated, building everything you need to scale a business. And how do you bring the people with you? How do you make millionaires in the process? And that's really, really important to me. That's one of the reasons I'm doing this

is I think you should share with your employees. And I'm pretty adamant about that. If you want to be part of what we're doing at Freedom, that's going to be a must. Anyone wanting to know how to create A players needs to see a tour of A1 in Phoenix. You'll leave with all your answers. Thanks, Darian.

What are morning mojo calls? Well, every morning, and I built a whole guide for this. Morning mojo calls are every morning we spend 15 minutes in each market going over the big wins, the mindset changes, who did great.

We interview a couple of technicians. We go over the numbers and we talk about, we get their day started right. We talk about fire. We talk about what's important. We talk about the questions to ask. What to get your mindset in.

And if those are done effectively, it starts every morning off. Guys get to hear their name. They get to hear their thoughts. And there's a whole oath I made each market manager sign. And it takes a lot of time to set these up to get them effective. It's not just, I'm going to go over your numbers today.

Drive safe out there. Make sure you're hydrated. I used to listen to some mojo calls and I was disgusted. They got to bring fire into the individuals that are working for you. And a lot of people that aren't motivated with those calls, if they're done properly, shouldn't be working at the company. That's it in a nutshell. Looks at all good, brother.

There's a sample of your performance pay point style. You sent me, I'm referring to that sheet. You sent me an email. I'd have to look at it. Luke. I'm sorry, brother.

Um, I think I remember that, but I need to look at it. I think I pulled Brian into that one. FYI. Weekend Arilla, it is a game changer. How do you plan on becoming

a cultural influencer? Do you plan on becoming involved in funding the arts somehow? Don't know. I'm sticking to what I'm good at, home service right now, but the next level within the next three years, a lot of

philanthropy, giving to great causes, being part of a movement. There's a lot of opportunities out there. I still got my head down focused on my internal family here, making sure that everyone here, what I just said last week, and this is something Xavier reminded me, but we're putting together a website. I'm putting $20,000 of my own money in per quarter for small things. Like if someone wants baseball tickets or wants their house cleaned, the goal is that people nominate other people at works. A mom needs a turkey

dinner for Thanksgiving or Christmas gifts, or someone needs tires on their car, or someone just needs a date night with their wife or husband that they haven't had in three months. You can nominate these people, and I'm just giving money out of my own pocket because I want to show everybody. I think it's so important you take care of your own backyard before you start looking at... I'm not trying to get a bunch of free press, free news on this stuff. I'm trying to give back to the people who've got me where I'm at today. Have you experienced more cost objections or fewer leads this year?

Yeah, there's a few or less leads. That's why we're getting innovative and going into different marketing sources. No cost objections. In fact, if I have my way, I'll do another price increase by the end of the year. It's very easy when demand's slowing down back to pre-COVID times to get distracted and get in your own head and say, economy problems, presidential problems, world economy problems. But if you keep your mind on and just continue to keep the faith and the optimism and the push, I really like listening.

If you guys aren't listening to Andy Elliott, at least listen to his TikTok and Instagram and YouTubes. I mean, that dude breathes straight fire and he believes in himself. And I think that self-confidence I do too. He's got a different way of going about things, but it's very inspiring and saying the right things, training properly. I don't really get in my own head about things.

Cause I realized a long time ago, it's not the economy. It's, It's not the area you're in. It's not because you live in Louisiana. It's not because it's tax season. It's not because Christmas is coming. Those are all reasons that losers say they suck. It's a victim mentality. I'm not saying you're a loser, by the way. Now that it's only me running a $100,000 business, I want to start figuring out what process I need. Almost done reading your book. I had to learn the hard way and didn't know my numbers. Thank you for being you, Tommy.

We all appreciate you, man. Thank you for that. There's a lot more comments. I got to run here, guys. But listen, go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash questions. Order the book, Elevate and Win. And if you want all the key takeaways from this, go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash bonus.

And come up with really thoughtful questions. I really like to be challenged. And if nothing else that you could take from this podcast is everything that I am. I motivate people. That's my superpower. I tell them the truth. I make myself available. I show up. I stay consistent. And I'm always searching for answers. I try to be the dumbest guy in the room. I try to be the worst golfer when I go golfing. I try to be the worst bowler when I go bowling because it makes me better. And I realized very quickly that I grow very, very fast and I surround myself with different people. It seems like all the time. And that's because I'm growing

constantly. And if anything I could be is just that, that guy in your corner pushing you to want more. And if just that's all I do for you, then it's worth the time to listen to this podcast. And it's also worth the time to leave me a review if you like it. Because just like I tell my technicians, you got to ask reviews. I'm asking

you guys. If this is great, drop a paragraph. Tell me what you like. It would mean a lot to me. I want to help more people. I don't make any money doing this. I'm not trying to make money. I promise you. The Freedom Group is just going to pay for the help I'm getting.

This isn't... I'm set for life. It's not a money grab. It's not putting you guys in a funnel and trying to figure out a way to scam people. It's literally if I could pay to bring world-class talent in to help you guys, I'd rather not lose money in the freedom stuff I'm working on.

So there is a charge, but it's not expensive. And there's a rebate, so it pays for itself. But ultimately, I really appreciate you guys listening. There's a lot of great comments in here. The more the merrier the questions. I love mindset. I love talking through processes. I'm going to spend a lot more great comments in here. The more the merrier the questions. I love mindset. I love talking through processes. I'm going to spend a lot more time going through this.

We're hiring a personal assistant. My executive assistant, Allison, is doing amazing. But a personal assistant is going to help me really, really be ready more. And I'm always thinking about the next person I'm going to hire. Who's going to make my life a little bit easier? Who's going to make me a little more organized? Who's going to make my life a little bit easier? Who's going to make me a little more organized? Who's going to help me get a little bit more efficient throughout the day? What's going to get me back another 20 minutes?

What's going to make my emails go through faster? What's going to make when I do a shop tour to make it more efficient and more giving back to the people that are coming? All those things I think about. And that's why I bring on more people. And it's just getting easier. It really is. So thank you guys so much for listening. Hopefully you're getting some of the answers you need.

I look forward to seeing you guys in Orlando. I'll have the DeLorean there. I'll have the Trans Am kit car from Knight Rider. Just something fun. We're going to do some really fun stuff. You guys are really going to get a lot out of this. I hope you guys have a great week. We just set a record

day yesterday. Very happy about that. It's fun coming in in the morning and knowing I knew last night that we set a record, but it's just every day gets... A lot of people lie and they say, Oh yeah, life is good.

They talk on stage and you look, they're going through divorce. The kids don't like spending time with them. Their business sucks. Every person they're around sucks. Come do a shop tour. See what I'm talking about. I'm the real, I'm real.

I'm a real as it comes. I'm not happy with my body right now, but I'm making the changes that everything, this isn't a lie. I do this because I enjoy doing it. So thank you guys. I appreciate you listening. I do this because I enjoy doing it. So thank you guys. I appreciate you listening. I hope you guys have a great week. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let

everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.