The Home Service Expert Podcast - Why the Wealthiest Investors, Nobody Talks About, Are All in This Industry

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ 💎 Top 5 Takes for this Episode! 1. People overestimate what they can do in one or two years — and massively underestimate what they can do in five to ten. Stick with the boring work. 2. Blue collar is the new rich. AI won't replace the trades. Private equity loves scalable home service. Most people couldn't name three flooring companies. That's the opportunity. 3. The real game isn't revenue — it's enterprise value. Lifestyle businesses extract cash. Legacy businesses build an asset worth selling. 4. Master the mundane. Discipline over dopamine. Repetition over inspiration. That's the only secret. 5. There's nothing more dangerous than a wealthy man who gets bored. The same hunter energy that builds empires can destroy everything. Channel it right or it eats you alive. -- 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 🕐 -- 00:00 - Introducing Cody Sperber — The Clever Investor 01:30 - From Navy vet to flipping houses off a napkin 03:39 - 14 months, $30K in debt, and one deal that changed everything 04:57 - Collapsing time: 14 months to 2 months to 3 weeks 06:09 - From wholesaling to rentals to real estate education 07:47 - Why real estate teaches entrepreneurship faster than anything 10:03 - Real estate is a people business — AI can't replace that 11:36 - Why Cody was the best marketer in real estate 16:02 - Why blue collar is the new rich  17:16 - Why Cody chose flooring: most people can't name two companies 18:10 - Selling the education business: first time playing the right game 18:27 - Enterprise value vs. lifestyle business 19:00 - Getting emotional at the Service Titan debate about private equity 20:03 - Why taking chips off the table was about parents, not profit 22:01 - The American dream is still real — immigrants prove it 41:24 - Why authenticity beats selling courses every single time 46:17 - Having kids doubled his income — the hunter mindset intensified 46:42 - The upfront conversation every entrepreneur needs with their partner 48:34 - The system that made marriage and business work together 50:37 - 18 years and a divorce: 'We friendzoned each other' 52:06 - The most dangerous thing a wealthy man can do when he gets bored 53:26 - Having everything on paper and feeling completely empty inside 55:11 - The year and a half that rebuilt his character from the ground up 58:05 - One piece of advice for your 20s: Master the mundane 58:35 - People overestimate 1-2 years. They underestimate 5-10. 59:22 - Why Cody loves failure and what he tells his team 1:00:47 - If you had $10M and your network — what would you build? 1:22:29 - Floor Daddy at 2 years: three crash and burns, $1M+/month 1:23:53 - Tommy's close: financial discipline and the 15% EBITDA rule   Check Out My Social Media: Tiktok ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook ⟶ https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/   My other podcast: Tommy Mello Millionaire ⟶ https://www.youtube.com/@officialtommymello Live Q&A submission form: https://homeserviceexpert.com/questions

You might be the man 99% of the time, but inside your home, you're not the king, you're the joker. You're going to be like me crying in your underwear and your theater room at 3 in the morning because you have $700,000 in bills and $400,000 in your bank account. And you're like, none of this shit makes me happy. The cars, the houses, the money, the brand. But inside, I felt dead, empty, and scared to master the mundane. The millions are in the boring work, the repetitive work. It's all about discipline.

I'm not the smartest guy. I'm just disciplined. Welcome back to the Home Service Xxper. Today I got a special guest in the house. His name's Cody Sperber. Great buddy of mine, we invested in a company called Floor Daddy. Cody, AKA the Clever Investor, is one of the most recognized names in real estate education, a Navy veteran. Thank you.

And an ASU finance grad, WP. Carey Baby, he went from zero to flipping 2,000 properties worth over 500 million. He found a clever investor in 2010 scaled it to an ink 5,000 company with over 100,000 plus students and successfully exited in 2023. He's also a founder of six eight-figure businesses, a bestselling author, and was the number one most followed real estate account on Instagram. Cody, welcome to the Mello Millionaire. Thanks for having me on. So let's just start with a little bit of the origin story. You went from a Navy vet to ASU finance student to flipping deals from your girlfriend's kitchen table with zero cash. That's a heck of a story.

Let's dive in. Yeah, I mean, the short version of it is I got lucky. You know, I was going. I came out of the Navy. I really wasn't 100% positive what I wanted to do. I went back to my favorite human on planet Earth. My dad, I said, what should I do, dad? And he said, go to ASU, use the MGI bill and get a degree in finance.

And I'm like, dude, I'm horrible in math. Like, what are you talking about? He goes, that's the language of business. It's the biggest regret of my life. I should have majored in finance, maybe accounting, something like that. So you could figure out business. I said, okay. And as I was going to school, I got lucky.

A friend of mine flipped a house, made $80,000 and bought a cool car. I didn't care about the house or the money. I cared about the car. And so we were hanging out. I said, how did you get the car? And he literally pulled out a napkin and penciled out. It was the first time I ever was exposed to creative real estate investing. Right.

I always thought you needed a license, deep pockets, you know, a fancy watch, a suit, the whole thing, connections. And here he is, the guy was doing it as like a little side hustle. And he could explain it on a napkin. And anything that's simple enough to explain on a freaking napkin, my brain can wrap. its head around. And so I took that napkin with me. And it was the concept of wholesaling, aka no money down, house flipping, where you're not really buying the real estate. You're just controlling the real estate and flipping it. You're very familiar with this world because you've done a lot of real estate stuff, a lot of lead generation. And so anyways, yeah, I just,

I got turned on by it. Back then, you got to go way, you know, 23 plus years ago. No social media, no Tommy Mello podcast to get mentoring from. Like, I was just figuring it out, flying around. I would look in the back of newspapers and see little classified ads for a real estate seminar, Reno, Nevada, Sheridan Airport in, $500. And I'd get my butt on a plane and I'd go and I was scared to death and I looked like I was 12 and I had no money. And here I am believing that I could flip houses and buy a Mercedes or something, you know? And it took me 14 months, man. It took me 14 months to do my first deal. I don't know very many.

I look back now and I'm like, dude, you're just crazy enough and hardheaded enough and relentlessly. list enough to believe that you can do it. But I didn't have much of a choice. What was my alternatives? We had no money. I was broke. I was going to school. I really didn't even want to do finance. I wasn't enthusiastic about that. I was just kind of going through the motions of life because that's what my dad told me to do. And this real estate thing was the first thing I ever lit up over, like where it was like, I'm running towards the seminar room. I'm figuring out how to pay for the ticket. I'm, you know, staring at all these people up on stage going, I want to be that. I want to be that.

I want to get celebrated like that, like for all my wins and stuff. And so I just stayed the course. I quit and unquit a thousand times. And then finally one day it freaking happened. I was able to do my first deal. It was a very complicated deal. Thank God. I had a mentor.

His name was Lyle Wall. And he helped me through that first deal. And at the time, I had run out of money. I went and got a job as a bookkeeper while still going to school and I had about 30,000 in credit card debt from flying myself all over the country for for 14 months and I had this deal and I was just praying that this thing went through and and in and in Lyle helped me through it it was a bankruptcy of foreclosure and a divorce all in one deal very complicated I didn't know what to do Lyle coached me through it it was my first time

ever really being truly mentored by somebody and uh thank god I listened thank God I did it because that first deal paid me $40,000. I was making $34,000 at the time as a bookkeeper, shifted my belief, kind of like Roger Bannister running the four-minute mile. All of a sudden, it was like, this thing happened, and I was like, oh, I could do this.

And maybe I could do it again and again for the rest of my life. And one deal, I started to collapse time. One deal took 14 months. My second deal only took two months. My third deal only took three weeks. And boom, boom, boom. Next thing you know, I looked up, and 10 years had gone by.

I've done, you know, 2,500 deals, became one of the biggest wholesalers in the country, eventually started cherry picking out deals and rehabbing and taking, having the courage. Doing the full process. Doing the full renovation. Because a wholesaler's only job is to find deals for guys like you. Yeah. Like somebody who has more money than time that doesn't want to go hunt for deals. That just wants me to serve them up on a silver platter.

I make a little fee. 40 grand was, by the way, 40 grand was a big wholesale fee back then. My normal fees were like five grand, seven grand, eight grand. And so, you know, once I had the courage to take them down, I started, you know, renovating. And then that renovating turned into, okay, this is kind of a pain in the butt. Let's start building from the ground up because there's less unknowns. And then I started, my mentor kept yelling at me. He's like, dude, you're not actual real estate investor, Sperber.

My first year, after I did that first deal, I made $1.3 million within 12 months. It was first millionaire in my family, first multimillionaire in my family, first person to graduate. college, you know, in my family. And so it's like, I was like working this, but I had no freedom. I just kept working. I was young and I had a lot of energy and I got good at something and it was a great skill to have. And I what I tell everybody is real estate and real estate investing is such a great business to be in because you're going to learn how to be an entrepreneur real quick. You're going to learn how to set up systems, how to do marketing, how to negotiate and talk to people, how to influence and persuade, how to build relationships, how to raise capital. Like there's so many

elements to that world that now helped me in Florida and my oh snap business and my other companies. But, you know, I was just, I was just kind of working my way up the food chain. And eventually I started spec building luxury homes and I got pretty good at building. And my mentor was yelling at me. He's like, you've got to keep more of these. And so I started taking them down and I built a rental portfolio. And that's when I was really in the game. That's when the game started to change where I was able to take longer and longer vacations.

I was able to see a path to retirement where, you know, I had mailbox money coming in. And yeah, that was the origin story that kind of everything else that I've ever done in my career, all the education business, all the masterminds and things that I've ran, the flooring business, everything else was all real estate money that I had coming in that I was able to start other things with. But I didn't do that. I stayed consistent for over a decade, just doing one thing over and over. Yeah, living below my means. Yeah, I mastered it.

I got so many freaking questions. I don't even know where to start. But let's just start with, you know a guy named Doug Hopkins? One of the best humans on planet Earth. Yeah, I was at his house recently in Mesa. He recently built it. And what's interesting is he's like the guy that'll buy your house all over 1,800, sell fast, or whatever it is. And I watch him all the time because we, you know,

used the same company, the same company, Larry John Wright, right? And he's like, yeah, I don't take any of those down. He goes, I got like three buyers. I sell them all too. And it's interesting because you think of real estate and really it's the best marketer. I mean, it is almost every industry is the best marketer. Of course, home service, and I got a lot of questions about this, but Doug Hopkins, he's a really wholesome guy, really, really cool. But then I realized, man, he doesn't even take him down. He's got his own radio. He was on T. He's at his own TV show. And just what's your thought? Because I think really what it comes down to, especially in real estate, is like Carlos Reyes, I used to get mailers all the time when I was like in Arcadia of him and his family and the handwritten

letters. And I mean, Jared, you know, Jared Vidalas and, you know, Danny. Like, this is the game, but it's gotten hard now. Games changed for sure. But it's just changed. It's still, the game. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, can you play the game with the new set of rules? But I don't think it's ever going to go away, you know, creative real estate investing is beautiful because in real estate, you're never going to have a money problem. You have a creativity problem. And if they move the puck on you, okay, you just got to shift your your views and your skills and capabilities and get out in front of it. You know, so right now they, they're trying to make things illegal and changing legal rules and stuff. It's like, okay, get your real estate license, do things better, do things cleaner.

It's not that difficult. It's just, are you nimble enough and have enough grit to figure it out? You know, I have a really smart guy in town that's like a master of AI for service tight. And he goes, you see these guys create these things like overnight and they say I've created a $5 million app. And they never really get it working right to commercialize it. And my point is, I see a lot of these real estate gurus, and I see them in every industry. And all of a sudden, they switch 100% towards teaching versus doing. And my question for you is, like, at least Carlos is still taking down properties.

You know what I mean? I'm wondering from your perspective, because it seems like real estate, like we used to talk a lot about Tom Hopkins and land contracts and these different things. And then what happened in 2008-9 does not necessarily work in today's market. So my question is, does it kind of stall out, but it works so they got the history that they could still sell courses? Or what's, in your perspective, these gurus that made a lot of money that have a track record that switched 100% towards teaching? Yeah. What's the purpose of that? Well, here's my thing.

The good thing about real estate and real estate investing is you can't fudge the numbers. I could give you my LLCs. You can go to the county recorder's website. You can see every property I've ever taken down in my life, every property I've ever touched and been associated with. Right. track record is there. Yeah, you got the real. You know, and so.

But you were a better marketer. Like, you got with your son in front of the Lambo. Yeah. And you were like, you put the check of the commission you got. Yeah. And you're like, we just picked this up for the dealership. I remember those clever investor commercials like yesterday. And you'd have like the green Ferrari and then a lambbo and the different things.

And that was, you were a better marketer than everybody. Well, you know what it is? Right now, there's an epidemic going on with social media. Every ding dong with a ring light and Chad GBT thinks that they're a guru. Yeah. And that's really what you're trying to say is like, where's that line? And I think it's up to the consumer, the person to vet. A savvy entrepreneur always does their research in its entirety before making a sound business decision. And when you have, when you're broke and you have a lot of hope, it's easy to get preyed on. It's easy for somebody who's a slick talker that can, you know, say a couple magic words to think you're going to push a button and money's going to rain from the sky from some new AI super tool that's going to do all your deals for. you. And that's not how real estate works. It's a people business. You have to learn how to talk to people, write offers, negotiate, build relationship, like it is what it is. Yes, can we go faster

using technology? Absolutely. Our students have a competitive advantage, an unfair advantage, because we have spent the last 10 years building out data and tech for our students. That's cost us millions of dollars. They can spend 97 bucks a month and get access to it. They don't have invest. So, like, even in the home services space, I call you all the time saying, where's it going? What you're, you're like, to me, Tommy, you're the, you're like all roads lead to Tommy Mello. You know, it's like you're in the know because you've been in the game for so long. Everybody brings you their stuff first of that and try and see. Yeah. And you get to pick and choose which ones work and play around a little bit. A lot of software. I mean, we're running 25 different

softwares in A1, which is sounds like a lot, but there's just Sam Sarah's for the trucks just to track of the geolocation, see if they're rolling through stops, see if they're getting on their cell phone. Like, that's important because a couple guys flip a truck, all of a sudden you start taking that shit really seriously. That's just one software we're running for the fleet. That's one fleet software. Then we've got another one to tell when we trade in the vehicles at the right time to get the maximum value. There's all these. We got one for a proposal tool. We've got one for a follow-up campaigns. We're created a new one just to show the health of the garage. We've got an, like, it's out of this world, but we've got 1,200 people now.

But I know you, and I don't have to go through what you're going through. You're my mentor. And by the way, I wouldn't have anybody get on all of these until your call centers dialed in and your training is set it up. Like that's the main thing is like your training, training, training. And the businesses ran on systems. And I got a lot of questions about that because a lot of people think home service is like this new. It's great. But coming from real estate, I'm just curious your perspective.

I got so many freaking questions. I don't even know if we're going to have time in this podcast. I haven't even started my real. I got so many like just. So real estate, you are like the guy, the clever investor. You've had hundreds of thousands of students, whatever. And you're like, dude, home service. And when I talk to you, you're like, I don't want 30 million.

I want 300 million. You're like, let's build something great. And I said, well, look, I'll tell you, I want you to fall a lot for the first couple years. And because you're the type of guy like me, like you're going to have to experience. it, and that's how a lot of people are, but you're going to fall fast and you're going to get back up, and then you're going to say, like, I needed to be on my last dollar to give Al Levy in 2017, even though I was doing 17 million. I needed it, and I listened to him, and I

listen to every single thing he said, but coming from real estate to home service, and you're still involved with real estate, and you're still working a little bit in that, but what did you expect versus what you kind of experienced these first 18 months? Yeah, and I mean, like right now, I have over $200 million worth of commercial development going up. I have three funds. I'm opening up my fourth fund. I'm never going to go away from real estate. I love, I just graduated to the next level in playing a bigger, tougher game. With home services, what was funny about it is, you know, in the real estate space, I get fired every time I complete a project. I have to start over, like, every Monday. That's how it feels. It's like, yeah, my real estate portfolio eventually got

big enough to where I have enough mailbox money. I'm not worried about my bills. Yeah. But I'm not where I want to be. I feel like, you know, like I've always had this vision. Like I want to be, I want to be a certain place by a certain age. And I have these financial goals. It's real estate's a very long, slow game. It's not a fast game, no matter what you think or see on social media.

But on my real estate journey, I started running masterminds. And I would, I would, you know, have these huge masterminds. I had a mastermind where people paid me $100,000. and there was a hundred spots available. And we filled it up instantly. And these were high-level entrepreneurs. And I'm like meeting these people. What do you do?

I sold my plumbing company for $40 million. Oh, cool. What do you do? I sold my roofing business for $110 million. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I just kept hearing it over and over and over all of these. I'm like, blue collar is the new rich? Like, what is going on here?

Like my brain was like frying. I thought it was all tech and AI and software. And I just over half of it. of our members were hardworking blue-colored guys that understood systems, understood marketing, and figured out how to scale and get out of the day-to-day grind of just doing the business, being the technician. And I learned a tremendous amount from that. I learned a couple of things. Number one, with this AI thing coming, you want to be in an industry that AI is not going to easily disrupt, but it's going to complement. You want to be in an industry that's scalable.

Like my competitors at Floodaddy is, you know, besides a couple big ones. There's like two or three big ones. And my research was this easy. Can you tell me a flooring business? What's the one with the jingle? Express, 1-800. Okay, yeah, it's Express. Or maybe Flore and Decor or Home Depot or Empire. They couldn't name, most people couldn't name two or three. Most can name one. And I'm like, oh, most of my competitors are Bob's flooring. You know, it's like, nobody knows them. Nobody knows any of their story. So as a marketer, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, over $160 million worth of online education starting in 2010 until today. It took me a tremendous amount of self-taught direct response marketing skills that I had to learn in order to get on a

camera and sell that volume of courses and mentorship. So I had this unbelievable skill set in real estate for lead generation and education for lead generation. And I'm like, okay, AI's on my side. it's scalable. I can outmarket all the competitors, and private equity loves it. It's a very buyable, sellable business. And when I sold my education business, I realized for the first time in my entrepreneur journey that I was playing the wrong game. The real game is, can you start to scale and flip a business?

Build an enterprise value. That's what it's all about. And this is where a lot of business owners fail because they live a pretty extravagant life. They're part of the yacht club. They've got their golf membership. They've got all the vehicles. their kids are all on payroll, and it's a lifestyle business. But if you knew that asset within five years could be take care of everybody,

you live below your means for a while and not extract cash out of it. Because that cash turns into investment, which turned into EBIT, which turns into enterprise value. Church. Take me to church. Let's go. I just think a lot of people out there, like, you got to live below your means. Yes.

Now, with what I did is I half-aceted the business. Now, that money went into other buckets, and I started living a little bit and taking care of mom and dad. That was my number one priority. I got to a debate at Titan, Pantheon's event, which is Service Titan, and it's a good buddy of mine. Chris and I debated private equity or not. And I was standing up there at the podium, and I got really teary-eyed and tears just started rolling down my eyes. I said, my parents are in their early 70s.

When I got the money, they were in their late 60s. I said, I have an opportunity. I had money, but I didn't have a few money. I didn't have enough money to just go buy them a house and send them on the best vacations and spend quality time with them. I don't have kids yet, but quality time with them, my kid's life hopefully going to be a long, hopefully they bury me.

And hopefully I bury my parents. So I just said, look, I wanted to have enough money that they're taken care of. And my niece and nephews and form of trust and do some cool stuff with my sister and my brother-in-law, but really what it's about is my parents. Yes. And so I'm up there and I'm kind of crying.

And I look at Chris. And he's like, dude, I don't even have done response to that. He's like, I might change my view on what I'm going to do because my parents are really important to me too. And we live in this grind where we're building. And then at what point, you know, in business, most of the time, like real estate for you was probably 90-something percent of your net worth. I mean, but you had them a different, but you have this one asset, which is for me, A1 garage or a service. And I wasn't diversified. I didn't have much money in the S&P. I had some Roth IRA.

money, some different stuff all around. I had some real estate. But overall, for me, I just said, man, how much time does my, the average lifetime is 80, right? And it's younger for a man. So my dad's like 76. He's 73. So I'm praying that I get another 15 years, but you never know. Tomorrow's not promised. So for me, it was like, how do I make sure they're living their best life? So my dad's a mild house in Scottsdale. I shot with him yesterday. And that's important to me, You know, and if you really start to prioritize things, you can't get that time back. So, like, for me, it was, like, more about them. And which is phenomenal.

It's tough. It's tough because as much as I say that, it's like, I'm still trying to, I want mom to move closer, especially because next year I want to have a kid. And, like, it's important that if I get a few five, maybe seven more years of quality, like their life, they could still walk and go on, you know, go on trips and not have to worry about them. Because once you hit 80, it's like, you know, you start slum. going down a little bit. Even 70.

Think about it, Tommy. I've never seen a U-Haul behind a hearse. We can't take this stuff with us. This is legacy. You built, you're the one. You know, like my good friend Ed Milette wrote a book,

The Power One. And you're the one, man. You broke out. You had the right timing, the right gift, the right circumstances. God, divine. And it's like you took advantage of it.

How many people squander that opportunity? You know? And that's why it's like, you know, I love watching immigrants come to this country and light up and break through. American dream. It's the American dream. And I really believe it's still there.

You know, I see people that come here with English as their second or third language. It's very difficult. They don't have any resources, a few bucks in their pocket. And they make something out of themselves. They don't make excuses. They have discipline. They grind through it. They're resourceful.

They're all the things. And yet here we are some fat-ass American that's sitting around squandering their opportunity, being negative, glued to the news, all toxic. And it's just like, dude, I don't have time for none of that. I'm the one. Yeah. I believe I'm the one. And it's like, I'm the first millionaire in my family. I retired my parents that that that year I made $1.3 million. My first move was retire my parents. Yeah. So I love your mission. And I, I don't blame you at all for takes of chips off the table. And you still build something that's a legacy. It is so great what you've done that and so respectable and unique. And you haven't even scratched the surface of your potential. Dude, you're so young.

Like A1 is not your story. It's part of your story. It's not the whole story. Yeah, you know, it's interesting about this whole thing is, Ken Gooderis with Gettle called me up. And he goes, Tommy, he goes, you're one of the most elite of the elite in home service. He goes, I know that.

But you know what you know nothing about? The other half. You don't know how to raise capital. You don't understand how debt works. You don't understand how P.E. goes out and actually functions and cash on cash returns. You really don't know how to hold up the right monthly meeting or the quarterly meetings for your stockholders.

And he goes, what I want you to do is when you learn that other half, you're going to be deadly because you're going to learn exactly how to form of board. You're going to learn exactly what HR looks like at this next level. And he goes, Tommy, when I learned how to do that, it changed everything. And that's that. So every time the PE guys come out, they stay in my house, they're like, dude, why a hundred questions? Why do you have a notebook out? Why are you?

And I'm like, I'm just curious. And that's the most important trait is I'm curious. I'm taking notes and I'm asking them. So I'm like, wait, you went to the Middle East? And like, well, we didn't want to take too much money from it. And I'm just asking a million questions. And I'm like, so what's a good return for private equity? Like two and a half is a home run, anything more than that.

And they're going after this. But as the deals get bigger, it's harder to compound and the flywheel's got to be on. And then you've got to look at the Tam, the total addressable market. And I'm like, Tam, and I'm like, cool. And I'm like, writing all this stuff down. And I'm like, this is amazing. And I got obsessed. There's a good book by Adam Coffey called The Private Equity Playbook.

I'm on a plane and I'm reading the book and I took a selfie of reading the book on the plane. And he called me immediately. He goes, dude, I don't know who you are, but my goal was to be next to somebody on a plane reading my book. This is the closest thing because it just came out. He's like, I'll do anything you want. You want me on a podcast, whatever. And then I got close with him. And now he's telling me all this stuff about cool sis.

And I asked him originally, I go, so they're all commercial A-track, right? And he's the CEO. But I said, what's CRM are you on? Because I don't know. He goes, I don't know what CRM we're on. He goes, I'm a hired gun to just go roll up companies. And that to me was like, holy shit. And then he wrote Empire Builder and these other books that I got obsessed with

and I still talk to him regularly. And that's the deal is like, I'm still, I still believe I'm in the first inning because I'm like learning this game and I'm like, man, it's crazy. But the one thing I know is every time I get sidetracked. And every time with A1 specifically and I like don't, I don't focus like race horses because we're blinders. Every time I was like, I'm going to try a commercial. I'm going to go into some new construction. I'm going to go to this box store. I'm going to go into this home warranty. Like, we're a different company now. We can probably handle more of that, but like it's always been to my

detriment is like stay focused. We own less than 2% of the entire market. It's pretty easy, pretty easy to get to 10. And I mean, with just what we're doing today, don't change it. Yeah. Like, you could try things and experiment. Like, that's one thing private equity taught me is like, hey, try it in one market and prove to us mathematically that it's a possibility. Then you got to prove it in three. Then five, because we're in 43 markets, 24 states now. I want to go back to real estate for a minute. Then I want to talk about your life because it's crazy.

Like, you've got a lot of ups and downs. So I'm just going to throw out a few people that I wrote down. So Grant Cardone, look, you could be controversial. You could say whatever in your heart of hearts. what do you feel about him? He's obviously known for real estate, more multifamily type stuff. Yeah. As far as marketing, I think Grant is world-class, best of the best,

but, you know, gold standard. He knows how to carry a conversation. He knows how to take the oxygen, the marketing oxygen out of the room and focus it on him and whatever he wants it to focus on. I think that's a tremendous skill set that's very difficult to do. He stays consistent. He surrounds himself with killers.

He keeps the sales energy out front always and always. So there's a lot. I don't know. And he does a lot of big, huge real estate things. He was the first of us to break through. You know, we all kind of started. I was lucky enough to be at the beginning of the social media world. You know, I was the first real estate influencer.

Back then, he was doing sales training. He wasn't doing the real estate stuff. So I hit a million followers back in like 2013, 14 on Instagram. First real estate. true real estate guy to do it. You know, when Periscope first came out and like, like, you know, live streaming and all that, I was on on day one. I'm the one who handed it out to all these guys.

I was texting all of them, say, get on this, get on this, get on this, get on this. So it was like we were kind of all starting at the same time. And it was like a small group of us. It was me, Grant, Andy Fricela, eventually Ty Lopez. Like, there was just like this batch of like internet guys that came on. and we all were making noise and some of us just went further than others. And I can't believe he set a standard so high that it kind of broke my brain. I was like, oh, that's possible.

I wasn't thinking big enough, you know. And so from that standpoint, I've always been grateful to him. He's been kind to me. I don't have, but I have never invested with him. Yeah. I don't have, I never bought a course from him. Yeah. So there is that side to his reputation.

But from my perspective, you know, I like his team. I like him. things are good. Okay. So I love that. And I, yeah. I like that thing that you said about sales energy

because that's super important. So what about, you know, I had, I don't know, probably six months ago, Pace Moore, but I don't really know him very well.

Yeah. Seems like a really bright guy. I had my event for vertical track, small garage room event. And then his event was going on right next to mine at, I think it was talking stick. Yeah.

And like, he's got students that go out and find him deals. Like, what do you think about his strategy and overall? Yeah. So, you know, I've been lucky enough to have been mentoring Pace for a very long time.

Not just from the real estate side, you know, more from the education side. You know, I put Pace on his first big stages and stuff like that. And I've always saw something in him that was very special and unique compared to everybody else. First off, I love his family. I love his wife. He's a solid human being just to his core. He's loyal.

He's hardworking. And he's willing to do things that nobody else. is willing to do. You know, Pace, when he first came, he wanted me to publish him. And I said, no. And I was like, no, I'm not really doing that anymore. I published Josh Altman and I did stuff with Barbara Corkren and all these, you know, reality show stars. And so I had a publishing thing at Clever Investor. And he wanted me to publish him. I said, no, he ended up going with my old team members. All of Pace's world is my old team. Everybody birth through Clever Investor. And so I've architected his entire universe from that standpoint.

But Pace, his unique skills say, he came to me very early on and said, like, what's going to set me apart? And I was like, dude, you're the one, bro. You're going to take this industry further than anybody else. You're going to build the biggest, baddest community. None of us are willing to do what you're willing to do. He's willing to go live and just build relationships. He's willing to just get in a car with one person and bring him along with him wherever he goes.

He'll go live for 48 hours straight, peeing under the table. Like, he's crazy. He's obsessed with building community. And that was his one unique thing that set him apart. It was like, he knew he's not going to be a better educator than me. That was my thing. I broke the internet by being the best marketer and the best educator. I prided myself on tactics, strategies, data, getting results, action.

I invented labs where people were actually doing deal-making workshops. Like his whole model is my model amplified times a thousand bigger and better than I ever could imagine because pace is that guy. He could see something and magnify it and he's willing to do thing. He just went on a tour where he rented an RV and traveled the country and stopped at like 75 spots building community. He would go live and say, this is where we're meeting next. A thousand people would instantly show up. Nobody else in our industry can do what he's doing. And he's the biggest, the best, and he's the gold standard right now.

Yeah, that's interesting. You know, as an entrepreneur, I'm like, I'm thinking about, like, your influence matters. That's why everybody comes to me when they got a new, like, tool. And they're like, and then I got a whole team that vets that we test out. Like, and half the time they don't work. Half the time they do, it's a home run. It just literally pours on EBIT and revenue. Robert Kiyosaki.

Yeah, shit. And I know it's controversial. He's getting older now. He's crazy. You know, I've met Robert a bunch of times. He spoke on my stages. We've done a bunch of stuff together as far as, you know, book giveaways and fun things. I respect him for what he's done.

That was the first book I read. My dad bought that for me when I was in the Navy. It planted the seed of assets versus liabilities. I had a bigillion questions after that book. I think he's such a crazy character. anybody who does life his own way like that is interesting to me. I don't necessarily agree with a lot of the stuff he says, but it's always very interesting what he said. Yeah. You know, first time I was hanging out with him, you know, we were talking about real estate for maybe

20 seconds. And he was like, I'm really proud of what you've accomplished. I've been watching your career. And you know, like, we're just kind of like talking, getting to know each other. And in the middle of it, he goes, and you know what, fuck these communists. And he goes on a 20-minute rant about communism. And I'm just standing there, staring at him like, what in the fuck is going on? I heard he could go. He just went, went, went, and then, you know, God love him. The second a pretty woman came in the room, he pivoted away from me, all laser-focused

on her. And I was like, okay, we're, I'm obviously not important anymore. No, I, I've never got the opportunity to meet him. Joe Polish introduced me. and like I've seen him just walk out of podcast. Just I'm done with this. He's his own person. You know, Carlos is working really close with Ishmael.

What I appreciate about Carlos is 40% of Arizona speak Spanish as a first language. You go to Texas, go to Florida, go to Nevada. Like you start real out of California. If you really, like, what I love about them is they became like the champion of the Latino community. Yep. And there's a massive following out there. And I think, you know, Andy Vassel, went political. Carlos is starting to go way political.

I think I was talking to Pat but David yesterday, super political. That's not where I want to go, honestly. It's so divisive. And like for me, I think it's a great subject and I'm entertained by those. But I really want to be known as like home service. I figure, what do you think about with home service? Maybe Bob Vila. Maybe Mike Rowe.

Maybe Tim the Toolman Taylor from Home Improvement. I want to take that and just be like, look, this is what's possible. I'm a giver. I'm curious. And I'm still a work in progress. But I don't need to be the political, the Bitcoin, the AI. You know, Dan Martel decided to pivot straight to AI. Like, you look at these guys and great, and they're doing wonderful.

I just want to stay in my lane and own it. So what do you think about Carlos? I'm very proud of him. Him and Sal have done a great pivot. Yeah, they've done a great pivot to focusing in on building their community, which is the Hispanic Latino community. And he saw an opportunity to build, because they're great marketers, great operators of businesses. They do a lot of real estate stuff, but they're more than just that.

They're just good operators, very system-driven people. And once they kind of found their niche and Carlos got his voice of, okay, I'm going to help companies scale with better systems and better marketing. And then if I see an opportunity to partner with them or get involved in their business, It's like an investment tank that he's kind of like a little shark tank thing he's got going on. He can pick and choose who he wants to get involved with. And so I think they're great. Carlos used to watch me when he was bagging groceries on Periscope, whiteboarding, how to flip houses.

You know, I've been part of his journey. I put him on his first stages. He's been a very loyal friend. There's nothing bad I've got to say about them other than I'm proud of them. And I think that they also haven't scratched the surface of their potential. They're just starting to figure it out how far they can go with it. And I think they're going to do big things in the home services, home improvement business. Because let's be real, a heavy part of our labor workforce is Latino community,

Hispanic community. I mean, you speak Spanish, especially in the Southwest. It's going to help you out a tremendous amount. We're getting ready to break into that market. And it's not just like we're going into the Spanish market. Like there's a lot of things that go into that. And I know the guys that have successfully executed that. and it's a massive, massive, massive impact.

And that's what Ishmael did so well. And you take care of those people that, you know what? In Southern California, where it's the home of lawsuits and the home of class action lawsuits and the home of those litigator attorneys, like there's 101 litigators in Southern California. Like you're going to win. Like I just had a guy over. He's like, you know, just paying $20,000 every week for these frivolous lawsuits. But these Latino, like the Hispanic community, they don't really see.

They're like, they're putting food on our plate. Like, no one's going to ruin that. They're taking care of us. They're feeding us. They're feeding our families. Do you take great care of them? You give cash out here and there. They're like, no one sues them.

And no lawyers are going, it's just so cool because Ishmael never got sued. And that's what I love about it is you take care of these people. They're very loyal people. Ryan Panetta. He's doing this golf, golf thing. Yeah, I've had nothing, but. Have you, have you bumped into him much? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I spoke on his stages. He spoke on a few of mine. I've helped him out with some of his funnels and some of his offers and stuff like that. I don't have anything bad to say or really great to say, to be honest. You know, he's cool. He's been kind to me. We've always just kind of, when we bump into each other, it's just like seeing a buddy in the industry. So what about it?

I know he had, look, if I'm being real, I've always just kept my phone. fucking head down and done my thing. I never ventured out into other. A lot of these guys started with you, which is interesting. Well, they all came through me because I was, I'm the older guy in the group, you know. I just been doing it longer. But the reality is, you know, they fell victim to their marketing capabilities. They went off and tried to do e-com and sell fucking Amazon stores and all the dumb shit. And I kept screaming at everybody. This is not the path, guys. We're real estate guys that are great marketers, stay focused. This fat is going to come and go. It's going to get ripped out and you're

going to get fucked when it happens because it doesn't work. It's a shiny object. Other than Josh Chenele, that I was partners with a long, long time. No, there's some stores. But that's all he does. Okay. That's what he focuses on. And that's where Paneda got hurt. Yeah. Carlos. Everybody ventured off into these other little things. And they realized very quickly that is not it. And they got their bruises, got their ass kicked, and they came right back to the center, and now they're locked in. And that happens. The last guy, then I want to go to your story is, and I'm impressed by him. I've never met him in person.

I've texted him a bunch, Alex Ramosey. And, you know, he just put out an ad. I want to help garage drawer guys. I saw that. And I'm like, and I think as much as I put out there, everyone's getting into the garage drawer industry. And I'll be honest with you, Cody. I hate that I just said that because I'm always honest. and I always tell people never say to be honest or truthfully.

But I want people to jump into this industry. It's only going to make it better. But if you think that A-TAC plumbing, flooring, roofing is not 10 times easier because my average blended ticket, I run 25,000 houses a month. I generate 34,000 leads. There's no one else. There's no number two. There's not even anybody close that's integrated.

There's a couple franchises. But I'm like, you think this has taken 20 years. If you gave me $500 million to restart today, it would take me 10 years, literally. And by that, the marketing's changed. Everything's changed. Like, I got the stickers. I've been doing this 20 years. So Alex Ramose, the thing I got to say is he's a genius.

He's smart. He outworks most people. I just think with this idea of just going after everything, hair dryers, like every single thing, kind of like Cody Sanchez. Yeah. But Alex has been doing this. long time. He's got bestsellers. Like he's a, he's definitely a household name. But what's your take on him? Because he's, he's really into real estate now. Like Grant Cardone that convinced him like all the money he

makes goes into real estate. I don't know if people know that. Yeah. I'm not super close with Alex. We've talked a couple handful of times, bumped into each other. He came backstage at one of my events and hung out with his wife. Look, man, I'm not an entrepreneur supremacist. I really don't give a fuck about your hustle. You know, everybody's got their own path and their own thing. I think he's a great marketer. I don't like, you know, I could take any one of these books and put a new fucking cover on it and sell it. Yeah.

But it's not my, I didn't create that. That's not my inter, I'm just repackaging it in a better way. When I see his books and shit come out, I'm like, dude, Dan Kennedy, Russell Bruns, all these other people said the exact same shit long before him. He just did it in a better way. you know, I don't agree with the I don't sell courses thing for four years and then you go live and you sell $100 million worth of courses. It's just like, dude, you just did a different strategy.

I sold $160 million worth of courses. We both landed at the exact same place. Yeah. You just did it different. I'm not comparing it. I don't know how far he's gone. He's probably way more successful than I am. But like, to me, it's just like be authentic.

Be real. Don't do the I don't sell courses thing and then sell fucking course. That bothers me. Yeah. You know, just be real. I don't sell courses daily. I don't sell courses on my content. I'm not, you know, but at some point, I'm going to enroll you in all of my shit because

that's all he's doing is selling. Like, to me right now, authenticity wins. Enthusiasm and authenticity. And I think people are smart enough to see through all the noise and the bullshit. And eventually, if you watch somebody long enough, you're going to realize who's, who's playing the long game and who's just trying to do money grabs and all this shit. When I see somebody who's selling flashlights one day and garage doors the next and teddy bear's the next, I'm just like, whatever, bro.

That's you. That's your hustle. It's not my thing. I lock in, get laser. I want to be the best in the world at the thing that I'm focused on. And it's always for me. And right now, it's real estate and Florida Addie. And that's it.

You think about like Cardone, probably one of the best course combined with Dawson. As I think their training's worth about $800 million. And they've done some cool stuff. But for me, the reason Home Service Freedom exists is like we truly help companies. But here's the deal I know who shows. up. I know who does the work. We've got access to all of their systems. And we pioneered most of those systems. And the fact is, like, you see the guys that show up every week. They don't miss a webinar. They don't miss an event. And they're doing the work. And they're not coming up three

years later. And they're, hey, man, still in one of those growth years. You know, we're going to get there eventually. Like, you know those same people. I watch the guys growing. And I'm like, this person is easy to get along with. And potentially, it's somebody I'd want to do business with. because look, it's hard to do business. You've done real estate deals with people he didn't want to. And you're like, was that really worth it to not sleep at night and to worry and get screwed at the end and have a guy sandbag you, get the lawyers involved?

So, like, doing business with people is like, I think the education side of it is who's going to show up and do the work. So for me, it's kind of a, it's kind of just who's going to show up and do the work and who do I like to hang out with? Because if you could do business with your friend, with good people that you know that's going to be a great outcome for everybody, Then it's like, but that's kind of like the prerequisite of like, did they do the work? And there's a lot of people we kick out of that program.

Like they pay us a ton of money and we're like, no. Yeah. But just like this is not working. You're 90% of our problems and like a fraction of a percent of the revenue. And it's just not worth it to have a hard time sleep at a night because you bitch so much and complain. Yeah. Education's a funny business to be in mentoring, running masterminds, live events and stuff. I've learned to realize that I don't judge a book by its cover.

You never know who's going to show up and just light the world on fire. Yeah. You know, I let everybody in and I give them everything I got. And at the end of the day, it's up to them. I'm not dragging your ass up a mountain. You know, I'm just showing you. I'm like the Sherpa. I'll show you the path.

I'll give you all the tools. I make sure you're supported on the way up there. But you got to do it. At the end of the day, you got to do it. And I don't know. It's like Justin Waller. said something on a viral clip that, you know, he really doesn't have friends. If we're, something along the lines of, you know, I only have friends that I make money with.

And there is some element of that at this stage in my game. It's like, I want to be around people that are gunning just like me, that I can connect with, that I can lock arms with, that we can do big things, create experiences and money together. Yeah. You know, I'm not really looking for new friends. I'm not looking to hang out and just veg. I don't watch fucking sports. I'm not wasting time.

I gym, entrepreneur, and family. Like, that's my life. And I've been able to create a world where all my favorite humans work with me. My best friends are my business partners. What a great. I flowed into work because I've been able to collect amazing humans and figure out a way to make money together with them. So I want to go back. You know, you had kids.

You got married. but you also, like my mom asks me, when's enough enough? And I go, I don't work as hard as I used to work. Like, it's still fun. Like, what, what did you have me do? It's like talking to Tiger Woods and say, hey, you've won every major tournament.

Why are you still golfing? And I don't think it's 4% of the population. Dr. Douglas Brackman wrote a book about it. He came on the podcast and he goes, you realize that your chromosomes, like you're a hunter. Like, there's very few out there. change the world, but you could also be into addiction. You could also be whatever that addiction. You could go down, spiral down faster than you've ever known. But you could go straight up too.

It's depending on how the habits and what you form. But my question for you is you obviously wanted a family. And this is kind of a selfish question because I think life is getting easier and I actually make more time for my family. But how do you continue to run at your dreams? and they become part of your dream. Don't get me wrong. But you still want your kids to see dad's still hustling. He's still working hard. So how do you find that?

I don't like the word balance, but how do you kind of strike that? Yeah, well, it's a lot different now that I'm older and more established. I have a brand and like, you know, I feel like in the beginning, it was, I didn't want a family in the beginning. I wanted a billion dollars.

Yeah. Like, the kids. kid got in the way. Yeah. But once that happened, I, I disconnected from myself. It was the first time in my life that I was responsible for another human being. Yeah. At that level.

And believe it or not, kids, if you are already a hunter and already on the path and you have a kid, you're going to double your income, maybe even triple it. Because you're just going to gun so much harder from a place that there's no excuse. Go back to that immigrant mindset. There is nothing you're going to throw it. me that's going to get in the way of me building a legacy for my kid. Nothing. I'll die. You know, that's that energy of, of, you stop making small things into big things. And then, you know, then having a great partner is the other half of that. I had to have a very serious

heart-to-heart, upfront contract, sit-down conversation where it was like, listen, my goals and my dreams are non-negotiable. So how do we do this? Yeah. It's just, we, I need your buy-in. I need to learn your love languages. I need to learn how to give you what you need so you support me in this thing. Yeah. And once we figured that out, we were able to go and build together. For a while, though, we struggled for about the first year, year and a half.

It wasn't easy because I basically told my, now my ex-wife, but my girl at the time, we were together 18 years. We built a great set of businesses together and had actually a great relationship the whole time. I just told her, listen, you're going to feel like your second or third or fourth or fifth place in importance. And you told you had these conversations. I had these conversations up front. And it was a very tough conversation.

A lot of people don't like having this. No girl wants to like look up and dream about her marriage as like I'm in fourth place. Yeah. But she understood the mission and she was able to support it in a really cool way. And then what happened is that I just, I brought them with me everywhere that. I could. I tried to integrate them as much as I could. Then I also did one power move that really helped is I hired my wife a personal assistant almost immediately, which was the, I don't want to get a phone call because what do we do all day, Tommy? We go to fucking war. Yeah. All day. And when I come home,

I want to take my armor off. And I want to relax for just a minute and freaking breathe because I have a thousand people wanting something from me. And I'm in the ultimate firefighter. And I just need a freaking minute. That's how I feel. That's not fair to my family. And so I used to have this practice where I would park in my garage and I would sit there for about five minutes. And I would decompress my day. So I would have to mentally get present and say when I walk in this door, the cooking's amazing. The house is amazing. The kids are amazing. My wife is amazing. Everything's great. And I'm not bringing this baggage from work into my home. And so I really had to fight and work with myself to get there. but also at the same time,

I don't want a phone call saying, will you stop on the store at the way home and get some milk? No, motherfucker, I'm not getting milk. I'm tired. Like, that's how I felt. And so I had to figure out the system, the family system, to make it work, you know? And I found that if I just give her the yoga instructor

to show up at our house and all her girlfriend showed up in our Fourier and did yoga in the middle of the day, she was a lot nicer to me at night. So I just found her wins throughout the day. and we were able to make it work. So I saw you at 100 million, what is that, Dan Fleshman, 100 million mastermind, yeah.

And I just noticed, I think this is right before you guys probably got divorced. And I just noticed you guys, you walked in together holding hands, but then it was like, it was like you guys weren't really trying. It was like, I don't think I saw you guys together that night at all after that. And I kind of felt it. It wasn't like I was like spying on it. I just kind of, I'm an observer. So I was just.

And, you know, I don't know if you want to talk about it, but I'm just curious, 18 years you guys built a lot of stuff together. The kids get older. And, you know, every guru that's like made their life, they're like the most important thing is picking that partner. Yeah. And it doesn't always work out. Tony Robbins.

There's story after story after story. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. You know, everybody plans on it working out. I don't think anybody says I do. and says, but what if? But what happened? We friends owned each other. That's what happened.

We stopped doing the things that make a relationship successful. And we, I made the big mistake of putting her in her masculine. You know, I've done a lot of therapy and church and stuff since then. You know, it was one of the biggest challenges and failures of my life. I'm the one who wanted the divorce. Yeah. I started to feel towards the last, like, five. years that I was sticking around for the kids.

I was sticking around, you know, and I just felt I'm not loving her the way she deserves. I'm stealing her minutes. That's how I felt inside. And I also, you said something earlier about the author that was talking about, or I don't know if it's a psychologist or author that wrote the book. There is nothing in this world more dangerous than a wealthy board entrepreneur. Because if you have that hunter skill set in you, you can get yourself into a fucking lot of trouble when you're bored. Yeah.

And I was bored. I, you know, some people hide their pain in different vices. I did it in, in overworking and pussy. You know, I just, I just wanted that hit, that fix. I wanted that excitement in my life, that dopamine. And I was still in her minutes. And even though I was communicating with her saying, I feel like I'm out in this. and we were going to therapy and stuff.

It just never, we never reconnected. And I started to break character, and I don't like that. I pride myself on being a stand-up guy. I pride myself on being an honest person. I really try to do the right thing all the time, even when nobody else is looking. And towards the end, I wasn't. And I just made a decision that enough was enough. And I just bared my soul to her.

And I just said, look, this is where we're at. I'm a human being. I'm making fucking dumb choices. I need. to get out of this feeling. My mom had just died. I was in my arms from leukemia. My dad's a disaster.

I'm looking, I have this, everything on social media, everything. I had everything. You know, the cars, the houses, the money, the clout, the brand. But inside, I felt dead, empty, and scared. Yeah. And I just said, because when you lose somebody close to you like your mom, and my mom knew what I was going through. And she kind of just gave me permission to go for it.

We had, before she stopped talking, she just kind of looked at me and said, it's time. It's time for you to do this. I know in your heart what you want to do, and I know you're scared, but you have permission. And I know you're going to come out the other end of this bigger and stronger and better for it. And so I just did some very hard things. And then I did something that was really important for everybody listening to this, because you know, we all know red light behavior is bad. We all know green light behavior is good.

It's the yellow light that fucks you up. It's the answering the DMs. I got a, my DMs are nasty. I got bad chicks in there all day long, you know, lots of them. I, it's very easy for me to come offstage to feeling like I'm the man, you know. But none of that shit's real. None of that's, you know, it's not healthy. It's not real.

And I started doing this yellow light stuff that led to the red light stuff. And I knew I was out of character out of alignment. And I hated myself for it. And the shame that I built affected and infected every other area of my life. So when I made the call to fix this, it took about a year and a half of intense therapy, going to church, going to back to the gym, getting my life back together, living my words. You know, integrity isn't doing what you say you're going to do to other people. it's keeping the promises you made to yourself. And that's where I got, I had to fight to get back to it.

And I made a decision when I was getting a divorce. I said, number one, I'm going to be the world's greatest ex-husband, no matter what. If there's a fucking poster award that I can earn, I'm doing it. And I'm going to be the world's greatest father. And I'm going to set a standard for my kids who are watching. Yeah. Of how to treat their mother through this process. And I'm very proud to say that we were able to come out the other hand.

Now she's remarried. she's really happy. I'm extremely happy for them. I'm very close to them. We're like the weird odd Brady bunch. We could vacation together. It's like those those flippers or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

I don't remember their names, but yeah. And I was able to make that work. And I went off and I was able to build my future in my life. And it kind of all worked out. But very tough time. And if anybody's listening to this and you're going through some of that, do the right thing. and just protect your character.

Just be honest. It's easier to be honest than live the lies. Yeah. Well, the lies lead to other lies. I mean, yeah, there's, you know, in 2010, I just felt, so on the business and I got, me, my partner, Gabe, he was my roommate, my best friend, and my business partner. And this, you know, we went separate directions. The only thing I felt was like, man, I don't know what to do because I can't trust anybody.

People were stealing left and right. And so I called mom. I mean, my mom's a type of woman, like, never have to worry about anything. Like, she's going to provide. She's going to be there. And so I called her and I said, would you move out to Arizona? I need you. And she's like, you want me to leave my life that I've lived in Michigan my whole life?

I'm like, well, I'm your only son and I kind of giltered her in and she's here still. But, you know, when you don't have trust, you don't have anything. That's like the core. Yes. And when you start to lose trust. And so I was on this podcast and this book called the 5X CEO and they've interviewed 75 people that did five times their investment for MOIC. And what they talked about was the integrator role with the visionary. And there's, you know, Walt Disney or Roy Disney, Wozniak and Steve Jobs.

And it goes on and on and on and these are the power teams. And I said, when does that start to fall apart? And they said when you start blaming each other saying this is your fault instead of just working through it, when there's this blame of these finger pointing. Because when you see it all unraveling, and I think that happens in marriages too. I think you start pointing the finger. When the pointing the finger happens

and this victim mentality comes in or this, I'm trying more than you instead of let's work this out together. We're a unit. We're together. We're going to go through good and bad. I think that happens. Yeah.

I mean, that's great advice, because that's real. That's real. I've got a few questions I ask on every podcast. So what's one piece of game-changing advice you wish you knew in your 20s? to master the mundane. It's the, it's, it, you, the millions are in the boring work, the repetitive work.

It's, it's all about discipline. I'm not the smartest guy. I'm just disciplined. You know, that's really, it's really that simple. I repeat the mundane things over and over and over and master them where everybody else gets bored and, and, and they want those dopamine hits and they want the results yesterday and they look around on social media and they're not, they don't have. answer is when they're right in front of them and they know what to do. It's like, it's like buying a diet online. Like, oh my gosh, there's this new fruit diet. It detoxes and you go after you're going,

but it's like, what have you just, what have you got 15,000 steps a day and watch your calorie intake and hit your macros and at least got one decent workout in within six months? But you're not going to see the results next month. It's like you can't brush your teeth all day. Simon Sinek talks about this. You can't have great teeth by brushing your teeth 85 times a day. brush your teeth twice a day, you'll have great teeth. And I think that's what people are looking for that. How do I get there now? And I would say, and this is the lesson that I could tell you is people

overestimate what they do in one or two years and underestimate what they do to five to ten. And it's amazing if you stick to it, you keep your head down. You, one of the things we've done today, one is like, I love failure. When somebody walks up to me, they're like, dude, I just blew a hundred grand on this. We tried it out and it sucked, dude. I'm so sorry. I'm like, not going to make that mistake again because you're smart. Yeah.

Like we learned a lesson. And here's what I've allowed is I've been through all those. So I'm like, don't even ask me on some of this stuff. Just go through it, make the same mistakes. Because if you got to come to me, that's going to make my life a living hell. If I'm going to be the dictator, yes, I've been through it. I've been doing this 20 years. But if you could learn and you can make those same mistakes,

because I can tell you all the mistakes, just like dad told me, hey, listen, don't make these same mistakes, but he's like, I know you're going to make them anyway. You're going to try them out. I'd like to be there when you shoot your first gun. I like to be you, get on your first 200-cccc motorcycle. I want to just watch you, and you're going to fall a couple of times,

but it's going to be okay. Shoot the gun right, put it against your shoulder. Don't get too close to the scope or you poke your eye out. Like, I'm going to teach you. But at the same time, you're going to go out and you're going to venture,

you're going to fail a lot. You're going to make a lot of your own mistakes. That's how you've got to treat your coworkers. They say, look, you're going to make mistakes, but let's make small mistakes. Now a $100,000 mistake for us is somewhat small in comparison to what it back in the day, $100,000 mistake would have put me out of business.

And so, you know, when we're spending $4.5 million a month, if you spent an extra $100,000, the campaign didn't work. I'm not like, man, we know how not to do that. Then the next month they put $100,000 and it does a fucking 20x. I'm like, dude, you just found this out. This is freaking awesome. So you got to be willing to take those chances. I call that marketing stamina.

Yeah. That's stamina right there, you know. Let's go, if you had to start over with $10 million only tomorrow, but you still got your same network, what would you do with it? If I had to start over, same network. $10 million is in your account. That's it. None of the businesses are around anymore.

None of your investments. There's nothing in the S&P or real estate or your funds. You don't have any businesses. Just $10 million. I'd probably end up rebuilding the exact same shit. I'm building right now. Yeah. That's what most people say.

Yeah, because it's just like I love what I do so freaking much. It's not about the money for me. The money, I don't give a shit about money. I never have. It's a scorecard and a tool to accomplish the cool things that I want to do. You know, I brought my best friends into Florida. not because I needed them. Yes, they add a tremendous amount of value. I knew that they would be great partners. I knew that we would divide and conquer in the way we are. I did it because when the

day we exit this business, I was there when their kids were born. I watched them grow up. We vacation together. We love each other unconditionally. I want to be there that day where I was the catalyst to empower them to have life-changing event in their life. That to me is more valuable than $10 million, $50 million, $500 million. It's going to be that moment where we're raising a toe saying, we did this. Now, it's a good feeling. Yes. I got that. Now, it's one of those things where it's crazy because, you know, and I'll tell you, there's a book called Rogafuel, Gino Wickman, he created EOS, great business system, the best business is. in the world. He sold buckets of cash. I mean, just insane amount of money. And he woke up,

but the money in his account said, why do I feel so empty? Yeah. And there's another guy I met, sold for $3 billion. He goes, I'd give the $3 billion back to get what I had. And so this idea, I'll just tell you this, enjoy the journey, because enjoy the process, enjoy the mistakes, enjoy those tough days and journal about it and celebrate the wins along the way because you get to the destination and you're like awesome now what yeah because we're hunters we're not like oh man we made it like i never wake up like god's been so great and i'm thankful so much and i do write down like how great god is and how much my life is but i'm like okay and people are like what are you most excited about i'm like time like spending time with the people i love like i haven't started the

fatherhood chapter yet but i'm excited to be out on the boat and go fishing and just entertain people and build memories. Yeah. Because memories are all we got. And mom and dad and my sister and my niece and nephews and that's all we've got. So that's like, that's what it's about. And people are like, well, why don't you make the time today? And I'm like, because I've already signed, I've already made a commitment. And I don't, like, I will break a commitment.

Like if I promised my old neighbor that's 90 years old that I'll mow her lawn for the next 40 years, sorry, Grandma, I'm going to have to break that commitment. But I'm going to make sure your lawn's mowed. Yeah. And it's some people, what Dan Martel goes, you know, it's so dangerous about you, Tommy, that I'm worried about you, is your word is your bond? And he goes, there are times that you're going to want to help somebody out. But Bree, your fiance is more important.

Your kids are going to be more important. Your parents are going to be more important. And you're a giver. And you're going to trap yourself by making commitments because you want to help people that have been in your shoes 10 years, 15 years ago. But you're going to be cheating out the people you care most about. And so that's a tough. That was like, he goes, I want you to practice breaking promises.

But don't screw people over in the process. process. I mean, that's a, that's a definite psychological software shift. It's like, yeah, you want me to practice breaking promises? He's like, just don't think because you obligated yourself. He goes, so you invested in a landscape company, right? That's literally their mowing lawns. And now it's doing $200,000 a year. And by the way, I want to do this with my buddies in Michigan. And I will. But the fact is, that's more of a passion project and I'd give them the money anyway, rather see them compound it and say they won rather than say, hey, I'll give you some money to go on this trip, say you made your own money. I invested in your dream. But like there's other things

out there that like you say, you know, what's hard for me is like the guys that used to, I used to go bowling every week with some of the guys that work here. And like, I used to go do baseball games and stuff. Now like, what happened to my buddy? I'm like, dude, that was when we were 50 people were at 1,200 and like, dude, like, you're going to do well. But like, I've got Brie. I've got like a lot of other things. It's hard for me because I didn't make an obligation, but it's very tough. And Dan's a real guy. I mean, he told me what I needed to hear. The way I feel about that, especially when it comes to business, you know, like, you know, right now, Florida Daddy's at 37 internal team members. Yep. And we probably have another two or three dozen installers. And the way I think about it is

I'm driving a bus. We're going down the street. And I'm picking people up. And sometimes I'm dropping people off. Yeah. And I'm moving people around in the seats of the bus. But at the end of the As long as I leave them better off than I found them, then we're good. And it's up to them how long they stay on the bus. By the way, those people are better off getting off the bus, and they can be extraordinarily well and respected and actually get further in their career and other companies some of the time. And loyalties earn both ways.

I show up. I do the work I need to do. And I expect it, and it's earned every day. I don't look back. There's no such thing as tenure. It's meritocracy that's earned every day, every week, every month. every quarter. So to come in and say, dude, look what I've done for the last 20 years. I deserve this. No, no, no. It's what do I do next week? Yeah. So I can't come in here and I'm

going to expect the same from you. And I'll give you 60%, but you're going to meet me 40. That's, that's my role. Like, I'm not going to go super further than you and meet you every single time when you're not. Whatever you've done, you've got paid for, you've got bonus for. Some of you earned equity for. But at the end of the day, it's vested to a certain amount. You're going to get paid on that. But you might not make it because here's the deal. I might not make it. And guess what? If somebody comes in, I'm an employee now. If somebody comes in and does the job better than me, maybe I'll be on the board.

Maybe I won't be. But it'd be very tough because I've got the vision. I'm the visionary. And if I want to go ride with a guy in the truck each day, I get to know my customers more. I'm allowed to do that. I don't have a bunch of meetings going about KPI. I know every major meeting. I'm in the weekly.

I'm in the monthly. But my job now is how do we get to 500 million of EBITA? And I've got a clear path in my mind, written down exactly how to get there. And I tell people, all the investors, what comes first is my people, then the next thing is my customers. First my people, then my customers, then my community, then my vendors, then the investors. And I tell them that. And I'm like, you listen to me, we will do this. You sidetrack this business.

You want to get me in Manhattan or San Francisco all the time and distract me? We're screwed. A couple more questions to close us out because we've gotten plenty of time. And by the way, this is one of my favorite podcasts. You're just the realest emotional. like you tell it real. And it's a pleasure to have you on. Like I really, I really love this.

You know, one of the things you, you get introduced to a lot of people. I mean, you probably know Tony Robbins and all these guys. And I think sometimes people want the fame more than they want anything. And I think Jim Carrey said it the best, you know, I hope everybody's rich and famous

so they can understand that's not the answer. And then all of a sudden, you worry about all the fake stuff and you're worried about perception and how you view, viewed online and but but networking i've always said your network is your net worth and you can't take these relationships away i got al levy not probably the he's not a billionaire but i could call him up he'll give me honest advice and he treats me like i'm his son and he doesn't bullshit uh

and i got these people that i know want to see me win how important is building the right network everything really is everything you know like i'm not here because i'm so great i'm here because great people locked arm with with me and helped me me at certain stages of the journey. Yes, I put in the work. Yes, at the end of the day, I had to make the final call. But, you know, I was really scared the first time I spent $7,000 to join a entrepreneur group, a mastermind. I was even more scared when I spent $100,000 to join a group. Both of those moments, I got massive, massive ROIs on my investment because when I showed up, I was in a room full of other like-minded individuals all gunning and playing the game to win.

In our real lives, sometimes your friends, your family, they don't get it. They're not connected. Your high school friends, they don't understand, you know, the Cody Spurber that just got turned on to create a real estate that's changing his language from let's go partying and chase bitches to, I'm locked in. I want to get rich. I want to do these things. I want to be better. I want to have better skills.

I want to this. And they're like, what happened to party, Cody? You know? And so it's just, you have to find new friends and hire new friends and get around the right people. Proximity is power. You guys know this stuff.

You know, it's a formula. This is not very complicated, right? It's like pick a vehicle that actually is scalable, sellable, and valuable. Right? It's like I could sell t-shirts for 20 cents a t-shirt, you know, or I can be in a better vehicle.

Like, you know, I tell people all the time, I'm like, they're like, what would you do if you were me? And I go, I have a two-year plan to sell that business because quite frankly, the best you're going to get is a 7x and you're going to work 10 times harder. Yeah. And there's no real multiple in that industry. And it's kind of cool that you started out when you were 19 to build a business. Yeah. But you're a grown-up now. And I'm like, I look at enterprise value.

And I say, if you're going to go after country. customers, where's the largest tickets? Where's the lease competition? How can you differentiate yourself the fastest? I think flooring's great. I think roofing's great right now, and I love A-TAC still. They're all similar, but very complicated. Think about that.

Your passion has nothing to do with being in the right vehicle. I don't really care. I don't love floors. Yeah. Who loves floors? You know, it's like, but it's everybody is my customer. So therefore, I like the vehicle. It's a high-ticket item.

I like that. Like you said, get good at the mundane and the boring things. I never love garage. I didn't know I was going to love. And how I do, I'm like infatuated with them because I think it's sexy. I feel that way about real estate. You know, it's like I obsess over real estate and architecture and stuff. But, but yeah.

So, you know, it is a formula. And being in the right room is a large part of that because, you know, like I used to throw these events. And I would make like a million dollars event, sometimes a million and a half. I'd have a thousand people there, maybe 1,500. And then I went to one Tony Robbins event where I saw him make like $22 million in three days. And it broke my brain. You know, and then I got to know Joseph McLennan and Tony.

And I was able to go backstage and I was able to get on a whiteboard and they showed me influence theory. And I was like, this is how you do it. My next event, I did $8 million. Big difference. Just knowing the right people. And I'm only bringing that up because you mentioned Tony. You know, I was his number one affiliate for some of his launches and stuff. And I've got flown around and we've had lots of quality time together.

And it's just like you can't unsee certain things. I'm in a room. This had to be a decade ago. And I'm Frank Kern, Ryan Dice, Perry Belcher and Roland Frazier and Roland Frazier. Oh, geez. And I'm talking to them in Vegas, right? We're having a drink. I'm talking about the garage industry.

And they go, don't be an idiot. We don't do not care about stages. Do not let your pride and your ego. They're like, you've got a winner. Who's the guy that is the founder of Home Depot? I go, I don't know. They go, exactly.

They go, no one knows. Yeah. And by the way, these guys, you stick to this. He goes, I think it was Perry Belcher. He goes, we got to come up with like, now we're selling fucking handkerchiefs and like buttons on the, he goes, we got to come up with the new hustle every year. We got to, like, he's like, stick to this. Focus.

He's like, if you let your pride cometh before the, like, it's just like, you've got to stick with this and go all in. That was the best advice. Starve the ponies, feed the stallion. That's it. That's it. And I wanted to tell you one phrase I've heard is hang out with the people you got a common future instead of a common past. And I think most people during orientation, I play a little excerpt of like people act like a victim and a problem. they cause. And a lot of the people that you came up with, by the way, very loyal still,

the guys I grew up with, we know everything about each other. We were so innocent back then. But now I'm like, and by the way, I'll take their calls. I'll help them anytime. But I like to hang out with people I've got a common future with and not the people that are like, what happened to my old friend? And my buddy Jimmy's over, great friend of mine, man, I do anything for this guy. And I just talked to them the other day. And he goes, dude, I showed on my schedule. He's like, dude, that's so stupid. He's like, why would you want to work like that? I'm like, What if I told you I enjoyed it? Number one, number two, do you like this place that you're at?

Do you like the chef? And I said, I'm not trying to sound like an egotistical maniac, but I go, there's a reason you'll never work this hard. And by the way, it's not your DNA. And you love your life and you're happy. This is what I love is I love building. I love growing. I love getting myself educated and being around the right people. And I'll tell you this, it's going to hit a lot harder at 50 for a lot of them to go, man, I still got, man.

I had to figure out how to pay my mortgage, and I'm going to be like, guys, let's go to Europe. Like, I'll pick up the trip, but they're going to be like, I can't leave. I got too many, too much obligations. What was the best day that you were other than your kids being born? Like, what's the best day that you were like, man, that day was like, if I could recreate that day over and over, that'd be having? You know, it's probably one or two things. It's either the day I came clean to my ex-wife and went to therapy. and let go of all that shame and guilt because it was the only time in my life I ever put

myself in that position. And it felt amazing knowing that I'm taking back ownership and control of my future. Or if I really think back, it was the simple times when I was in the Navy in one of the hardest scenarios of my life. I thought it was so difficult. I look back now, some of my best memories are travel in the world, seeing new things, being with my brothers, you know, and just so young and hopeful for a future that you just knew that the world was anything you wanted to be at that moment.

Now it's pressure and bills and kids and everybody, I feel like I'm the sun. Everybody's orbiting around me, you know, and the reality is it was just so fun and simple back then. The simplicity. There's a movie in like 1939 and I just watched it for the first time. and it's about this guy who it's going, this guy's got the biggest mansions and the monuments built after him. And it shows him as a kid with a sled.

I'm trying to think of the name of the movie. But at the end, it shows his last words were Rosebud. And it was his sled burning. Oh, yeah. I do remember this. Yeah. What movie is that? I'll think of it in a little bit.

But the thing was is it was his innocence. It was the world is yours. It was there was no worries. Like, I remember just mom worked three jobs, but I just didn't really feel like I got a job I'd mow lawns and I just was like I don't want to be a nuisance for mom but I'm like man I really I don't have anything I don't have really a whole lot of responsibilities and I think that's what you're talking about well I mean look Tommy we work really hard you're you know sometimes especially when you're in a relationship like my wife want my ex-wife wanted a nicer house like I made more money she wanted another nicer house you better car cooler tires better trips more this more that a chef a guy that waters your plants of this, of that. And all of a sudden, I looked up one day. I'm spending about 130 grand a month of my lifestyle, and I built a luxury prison. Yeah. And I felt like I was in prison. I'm sitting in, you know, and people don't understand. For every new level, there's a new devil. It does not matter

how much money you're making. You're going to run out of money. You're going to have cash flow issues. You're going to have personal issues. You're going to be sued. You're going to have all these problems and challenges, health, whatever. Life throws at you. That's life. And you might be the Man, 99% of the time, but inside your home, you're not the king. You're the joker. And you're going to be, like me, crying in your underwear and your theater room at 3 in the morning because you have $700,000 in bills and 400 grand in your bank account. And you're like, that's my life. I got to figure out how to sell my way out of this.

Like these things happen and you just look around and you're like, what is all this shit? Why do I have all these cars and toys and things that I don't barely use? None of this shit makes me happy. And one of the best feelings was unwinding all that. Yeah. It really was. I mean, I remember the apartments. I drive a used truck with 285,000 miles on it, Nissan tight with a salvage title.

We go to the tiny apartment, me and Brie a thousand square feet. We didn't have a cleaner. Like, it's funny because they're like, we're going to get you two full-time basically maids for Idaho. I'm like, no, you're not. I'm like, I know how to make sheets. I can make bets. I know how to do laundry. Yeah.

I'm like, I want to go back to a little bit. But like I love the help, but I love to be able to focus. But there's a little bit about me that's just like, you know, some of it's like, I buy back time. And that's really, really important. But at the same time, I'm like, this is a fun place. Like, everybody could pull their sheets out and throw them in the freaking, in the washer before they leave. And like, I'll help them make their bed. And I like, some of that's kind of.

And the simple times, but like, it's hard. I don't necessarily want to go back to the apartments. No, no. But there is a healthy balance. And at the end of the day, whatever makes you happy, dude. I still have a, I just bought a brand new Lamborghini, Euris Perfamante. I am a kid again. I sold my Rose Royce.

You know, I had a ghost with Tiffany Blue Interior. I hated it. You know, it's like, you know, whatever makes you happy. It is, and it changes. I'm grateful for every cool thing that I have, but it's not it. Like the boat's going to be super fun, but that's going to get old. Like, for me, it's, it's moments. It's, it's experiences.

And you know what I've learned is I've listened to a lot of people that have done big, big, big exits. And it's like, don't invest it all. Keep some liquidity. Keep the rainy day. Make sure there's a bunch of safe money that you just can't touch. Because I'm literally planning on my life at 45 and then beyond of like, how much will it take to live this lifestyle if everything else crashes? And that's what's important is like there will be a day that I'm always going to be part of A1. Everybody asks me like, what's going to happen to you is a, are you going to be, till the day I die. I'm part of this company. Like my face on the side of the truck. Like, dude, like I will be part of this company, but, you know, and I'm going to be coming into work probably until I'm 90, but just maybe just Mondays, maybe just Tuesdays, maybe just Fridays, who knows.

What's one book that changed your life? The greatest salesman in the world. Is that Gerard? Is that this car salesman? No, it's called the greatest salesman in the world. It's, I'll think of the name. I can't remember the guy's name. What, tell me about it.

I think I have it. I have it in my phone. But yeah, it's one of those books that just I read it once a year. I'm going to find it here in a second, but I read it once a year. And it's a great story and lesson just about shifting your mindset to understanding, you know, what, understanding what's actually important in life. and how to get wealthy by shifting your mindset

to the core foundational things that actually get you wealthy. You know, so many, so many people chase the wrong rabbit. God, I really want to tell you the... Another great book has never split the difference. That's a great negotiation book. Yeah, that's right.

It's on this shelf there, right there. Chris Vos became a good buddy. Oh, he did? It wasn't he on your podcast or something? Yeah, he was a couple times, came to the house, been at my events. The psychology of money.

That's a great. Morgan & Pousel. That's a great book. God, why can't I find? Oh, here it is. O.G. Mandina. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I read that book.

Yeah, yeah. It's a small book. It's like two bucks. It's easy. It's easy to get through. I read it. I listen to it once a year. It's kind of the pronunciation of the words.

It's like the and like, yeah. Yeah. It's a good book. He had a few books. He has several books. It's an old school analogy about, like, you know, it's like a young man trying to figure out his way in life. and, you know, kind of getting mentored by these different lessons that you learn. And each lesson unfolds the next level.

Yeah, that was a good book. Yeah. By the way, Citizen K-1941, Rosebud, watch that movie again. I think you'll dig it. That's it. That's right. And then here's the deal. We've had a great podcast.

You were very open. And I've really enjoyed this. I think there's like so much people could take out of this. But I'm going to let you close this out. Anything that's on your mind? Maybe we didn't talk about. Yeah. I mean, look, Tommy, I have known you for a while now.

I don't know, maybe at least a decade. At least 10 years, yeah. And we've crossed past in different ways. I watched you build a fantastic business and reputation for yourself. You're the goat in the home services, home improvement space. You've achieved exactly what I'm trying to achieve. You know, when I started Florida daddy, I was just, I had no clue what I was doing. I just, I know how to start and scale of business.

I know how to assemble a team, get the culture going. We're at a point right now where April 28th was the exactly two years ago when I took on my first customer. So we're almost at the two-year mark. Right. It's a big deal. It's a big deal that we've made it here. Two years is a really big deal. We're doing now back up to over a million a month.

I got it up to $1.5 million a month and crashed and burned is probably my third crash and burn within the two years. but we keep, you know, fighting. And I'm almost at a point, you know, around five months in, you called me and said, what the hell's floor, daddy? What is this thing? And next thing you know, we're talking. And I'm like, bro, if I can get you involved in this, I don't know when or how I'm going to need you. I just know at some point I'm going to tap in.

And when that day comes, I know you're going to catapult us to the next level. And we're almost there, brother. I'm hoping I'm making you proud. You know, I'm high. It's great. I'll tell you, like, when you learn financial discipline, and you understand this and you know exactly what's in the account, exactly the KPI is exactly the budget on a daily basis.

I know exactly that we're 0.94% above our budget this year as of yesterday, finished. I know that's one thing that I think that everybody listening in the blue collar space is missing is this financial discipline with a controller or CFO and an FPNA team. And it's hard to get that team because you're like, dude, we've always, we know sales and marketing cure everything. Yeah. But when you get the finance side, it's like, it's like freedom because it's like I thought I was making money. And then you pivot very, very quickly.

And you're like, we're not. And like on a daily basis, this is what I know. And last month we did 8.1 million of EBITA. And I'm just getting started. It gets harder and harder each year, but we never miss budget. And I got a whole plan. I got 10 levers to pull to continue to do this. And it's not hard to replicate.

It's hard to build a team and get the right people on the bus and continue. And guess what? the bus, the seats like you said, are going to change out. And loyalty is a mistake. And if you listen to the 5X CEO podcast I did last week, they said the hardest part about founders is some of the people that took you here won't take you there. And they lose because they're loyal. Yeah.

And it's the hardest thing. And it's different if it's an investor, but they got to get out of the way. I've learned that in one of my other companies. So, you know, we're locked in. You know, I believe we've made such waves in Arizona. Arizona within those two years, you know, I'm obsessing over the customer experience. Yep. I'm obsessing over every communication point, every touch point, the quality of the installation.

I know that's my Achilles heel. I have to dominate that. The marketing, the sales, that's easy to me. It's everything else that's really difficult. And just I'm so locked in a laser focused on execution right now, babysitting, managing cash flow. That's really hard when you start to scale as fast and aggressive. as we are. That's probably the hardest thing because, man, my personality is like, I want to dominate and go. And it's so, it takes so much discipline to go step back in order to go forward.

It's hard, but look, yesterday I was on a webinar with 100 people and they're like, how can you grow and make profit? And should I take a loan out to grow? And I'm like, well, my rule is if you're not making 15%, then scale back. And one of the guys was like, well, I'm only at 5 million. I'm like 15% of 5 million, 750,000. If you can't grow with 750,000, $50,000 plus you're paying yourself a salary, hopefully. That's after, 15% is after you're paying. Like, if I ever fell below 15, now it's 27% to the bottom. And the efficiencies, I got a path to get to 35%.

And you say, well, maybe you're charging, but AI is taking over. Like, I don't need as many people for payroll. I don't need, like, I don't need all these other admin jobs anymore. Like, we were building, I got a whole AI arm now building all these things. So you get there through efficiency. Plus, I'm spending $70 million a year with my on product. So do you think they give me a better price? as long as I help them win.

So that's how I win. And then eventually probably I'll horizontally or vertically integrate. So now it's like I'm basically taking wrong. That's when no one could win. That's when. And the bigger I get, now Home Depot's reaching on my door. Now Angie, the CEO was at my house the other day. The CEO of Angie.

Like they're flying in to see me because and they're going, how quick can you expand? Chamberlain. How quick can you expand? How quick? So now our training center is doubling. Now we can handle 110 people a month. So we've got 60 coming in next month, 90 coming in the month. after. 90 brand new technicians coming in in one month. So here's my question for you. And this is,

I need some mentorship on this. You know, installation is one of the hardest things because we're, we're outsourcing to, you know, different crews. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like roofing. You know, different flooring crews that, you know, they run their own thing. They, they have their own insurances and licensing. And it's really hard to get them to adhere to our standards and quality. So my question is, do you think it's possible to do what you did here at A1 garage doors where you have a, literally a school for your sales and installation team? But to do it in flooring where we are creating our own standard of flooring installation specialists. Yeah. So what I would tell you is there's a reason I'm going into a new construction in Phoenix because it's harder to build an installer in a training center.

It's easier to build a technician that could fix. But I'm teaching them operational and technical and sales. So operational and sales could be taught in this. The technical side, I could do it in the training center for a technician, hard to do for an installer. So what I would say is I would possibly, and this is not a road you should go down now, but the reason new construct,

there's no money in new construction unless you're using it to train people. And you're keeping the quality. So you're saying once you graduate from new construction, now you're at the caliber. I've got a format coming out, checking the work, checking the spacing, making sure the hollow spots. Like, because I just talked to Mitch, my guy in Idaho. I go, dude, I remember I was getting tiled down to my flips for a buck of foot.

Yeah. It wasn't great quality. He's like, you know what we're paying here? 17 bucks a foot. You know what the bathrooms cost? 30 bucks a foot. He goes, but it's, this is a different house. This house is worth $30 million.

Yeah. And so those are the clients we want to attract. It's just, you got to find the marketplace. Who's the avatar? Is it these wealthy people that you could charge that? because you can't have the same crew running at five, six bucks a foot that's running the $20 a foot. Yeah. There's just different.

There's like one of my mentor is Ollie Sean Ruggs, right? He works with all the designers, the ASID designers. And he white, red carpet, white glove. Like he sells these rugs for $30,000 a piece, right? And he works with all the designers. And he goes, now, Tommy, I let them charge whatever they want to their client. and they call it a marketing fee. And he gives them.

So he's got, but he goes, if I'm late, if I show up to a customer's house with a $20 million house, he goes, if the dog pisses on it, we take it back for free and clean it. Like they're just a different level. Yeah. But if it's a dual income, $110,000 dual income in Chandler at a $400,000 house, that's different than going into a $20 million house. And you can't serve everybody when you're the first five years. You got to pick your avatar.

If you're going to be top, top, top market, you don't need as many clients. But it better be perfect. If you want the ton of clients, if you want the bottom feeders, harder to make money there. You know what I mean? And you were one of them. I was one of them that I just said, do it for less. I'm going to give you a bunch of business. So I think knowing who your avatar is and really defining your client is where it starts.

And then nailing that. And then you scale from there. Our size now we can handle more things because the business has grown and we can handle more. But really, we just do residential retrofit garage doors. We don't do commercial. We don't do new constructs. We don't do the box doors. We don't do a home warranty.

But anyways, Cody, I will answer any of your questions offline and we will sit down and I will be more involved. I think that two-year mark is coming and that's what I wanted to do. And the good news is Matt and Jacob on my team are numbered inches and I'll tell you exactly where it's at because getting the financial stability and knowing the score is everything in a business. And you know that. It's different in real estate because you can mathematically kind of, that's your space. This is like, there's all these other things. You got to look at your EMOT score. You got to look at your safety score.

You got to look at your callback ratio. There's all these things that I'm monitoring. And now I got a team that does it. But dude, it's my job to keep the motivation, continue to build the dream, to keep everybody. Like, I got to keep the people together. That's not my COL job. That's not my integrator's job.

That's me is to inspire. Like you said, you said what Grant does is he creates a sales energy. And you're great at that. Yeah. Sales will only get you so far if you don't fulfill. correctly. 1,000%. I'm handling it all.

I mean, look, I love it. I feel like guys like us are built for this. So, you know. Look, I'm 20 years in. So we always want to figure out, can we buy our way through five years? But the experience is like, my dad used to tell me, and I'll close with this. And then I'll let you say whatever. My dad said, I wish I knew what I knew now back then.

And I'm like, what does that even mean? Why don't you just tell me? And he's like, Tommy. He's like, I can't because it. takes the experiences of what I went through. He's like, I can't tell you, like, when the guy freaking hit on your mom to just walk away, instead of breaking a beer bottle over his head. And the stupid shit I used to do, but just these things that you get wiser and you learn,

you made that mistake before and you reflect. And it's not something you really think about. You just know it. And so, and I depend a lot on my team. And that's one thing is the camaraderie of the team has taken a long time. Like, our CEO has been here seven years, you know. but you're going to get there. It's going to be Uber successful.

It'll sell for more than $300 million. I think just take market share here before we go into Tucson, New Mexico, and Vegas and everywhere else. You don't want a bunch of small, like, it creates more chaos. When you're like, man, the minute you say I'm getting bored is when you expand. The minute you say, man, my phone, the shit's going wrong is when you tighten up and you don't expand and you tighten up. But when you say, this is easy. We're just bringing in. It's like clockwork.

I've always exploded the business, created more problems. And then it starts getting easy again and then I exploded again. That's how it's worked for me. And that's the feeling like when you feel like, man, we're putting so much money away, things are dialed, expand. But when things aren't that good. And guys like you and me, the hunters were like, let's expand, expand, expand, expand. We'll figure that out later.

But profit is the key word. Profit is what creates great recruiting. Profits is what creates great marketing. Profits what creates truck expansions are going into new markets. Focus everything I get you to that 15, 20 percent. and all the answers will come. And when you understand profit and you start focusing on profit,

everything changes. Everything changes, and it's so hard for guys like us to realize that. Great advice. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. You did so good, man. Thank you.

Appreciate it. All right.