Turning Around the Victim Mentality | Podcast Ep. 115 | Toolbox for the Trades

Tommy Mello, you are the owner of A one Garage Door, the host of the Home Service Expert podcast. You are the author of the Home Service Millionaire, and you've got a new book coming out called Elevate. Welcome back to Toolbox for the Trades.

Glad to be here. Jackie, good to see you.

It is great to see you. So I kind of pitched this new format that I'm playing with, and you so graciously accepted it. And I have to tell you, I was looking back at the first interview we did about three years ago. And, and my first question for you, which is a very funny one. Last time we spoke, one on one, a one garage door was worth $30 million. So what's changed since then?

You know, we've been really working on acquisitions, and we bought a company last week, the week before, and another one's closing next week. And it's really a play on arbitrage. Some of these companies are great companies, great leadership. They just, we've noticed sometimes they close at 5pm they're not open weekends. They, they didn't really have any formal training in place. So we examine their key performance indicators and do the best to integrate them and leave everything better off for the employees. So everybody wins. That's the new book, Elevate. But, you know, we're closing in on 200 million and got some big goals for next year. We, we've got 60 NDAs signed. So it's just figuring out integration that's the hardest part about acquisitions. But it's a fun problem to have. And, you know, it's about 600 employees that we're going to triple that next year. And, and I just, I'll tell you, I'm having fun doing it, which sounds crazy because it's, it can get a little chaotic. But we're, we're standard operating procedures, checklist manuals, thanks to Al Levy, who, you know, it's an organized chaos, but it's fun. And a lot of companies that grow this fast, they're, they're headed to crash. So it's really strategic planning and making sure we're, we're building the culture and keeping the culture as we start to accumulate and grow these companies.

Nice. And are they all garage door companies?

Yeah, we're in garage doors, but we're getting into flooring, garage flooring and garage storage, overhead storage, and then we're looking at getting into front doors because they're all the same family. You know, I always say there's three ways to make money. You get more customers, you keep Customers coming back more often. Or number three is you could charge your customers more and hence the promotions we offer with the financing. So we focus on all three of those. The first one is we do really good on marketing and we do a good job marketing for people. The second one is we sell service agreements. We sold 2400 service agreements last month and that's how we keep customers coming back more frequently. And then the third one is, obviously by taking the ticket price up and helping the customer alleviate some of their problems, we could do a lot better. And it becomes a lower cost of revenue as a percentage when we're able to sell more to the client. Dang.

Did you ever think you would get to this point of running an almost $200 million business and having 60 NDAs out and all the amazing stuff that you do?

It's been a long journey, man. I think about a decade ago that I was still running the calls, literally. And really what I focused on is hiring for my weaknesses and understanding that I'm not the best at a lot of things. And the people I get to work with allow me to continue to have a vision and they follow me. And that's what's so satisfying, is the fact that I've got people around me that actually care and they're running at the same goals I'm running at. And interestingly enough, we hired a dream manager about a year and a half ago and her full time job is to literally sit down with with my co workers and work on dreams. And it's crazy when, when you think about their dreams and reverse engineering it into what they need to do each day, week, month, quarter and year. These hard conversations are easy to have. You told me you wanted to take your kids to Disneyland. You mentioned you wanted to buy a house. We had three new homeowners last week. As we start to understand their why, it's a lot easier for them to. My dream's gonna come true if their dreams come true. So it's a fun conversation to have. It's a different way of thinking about things. Instead of saying you didn't hit your KPIs, we're gonna put you under performance improvement plan. So I'm having a lot of fun still. Surprisingly, I talked to owners doing 3 or 4 million and they're just burnt out. And I think that's because they haven't hired the right people. Like Adam started in 2014 and that's when I got out of the truck.

Yeah, yeah, Quick joke. I really would love to buy a home. So Can I work for you?

Yes, you should.

Okay, great. I'll send in my resume after we're done with this. Just please don't tell Ara. So the premise of this particular interview series that I'm doing in Toolbox is there are so many folks in the industry, yourself included, who are just titans. And I'm not just saying that as a play on words of as of service titan, but literal titans. Like, I know there are listeners right now on Toolbox for the trades who are thinking, how the f is Tommy making $200 million in his creating? How has he built a $200 million business? And how is he not completely burnt out, tearing his hair out, all that stuff? So I would really love for you to get vulnerable with me and tell me about a day that you almost quit. Like, was there ever a day that you just felt so hopeless, you almost shut down the business and called it a day?

Thinking back, there were some times that I felt like it was the. The inmates running the Assail Asylum. It was. I walked in, and this is. My mom was working for me two buildings ago, and everybody's smoking a cigarette. My mom's got three lines going. She walked out on me that day. And I'm sitting there going, okay, we've got payroll issues. We got people stealing parts and toilet paper. We've got. You name. It's Murphy's Law. Whatever could happen would happen that week. And I don't necessarily think I wanted to give up. I just felt like a little bit of burnout and a little bit about reexamining what my why was. And I realized I didn't care enough and I didn't love people enough. And I think that happened a few later years. What I really thought about is, why am I doing this? What's the outcome? What's the outcome? And key results. And, you know, I always had 100 million in my mind, and now it's more legacy. It's literally, the trades are cool. We're teaching financial literacy. We are helping literally 600 employees each taking care of for three people. That's. That's total of 2400 people. And that's just the way I look at things now. And I feel like I'm just getting started. But I always recognize my weaknesses, and I try to hire for those weaknesses and continue to focus on my strengths. But it can be tough. Anybody that thinks business. Most businesses fail, and a lot of them, we talk a lot about revenue, but revenue is for vanity, and profit is for sanity. And I focus on the bottom Line more than I ever did because when I was doing 15, 20 million, I wasn't taking much home. And I would be like, I've invested it all back into the company. And then I realized that was just in a scapegoat to say I didn't make any money this year because I'm really not doing very great. I'm focusing on the wrong things. It's the people. So it was a scary day that day. I got my mom to come back in the next day. I said, please come back. And I have nowhere else to go. I can't do this alone. And my stepdad was working for me and we had about five or six technicians and a few internal employees. And. And it's just looking back at those days to see where we're at today, it's. It's mind boggling.

Yeah, that's incredible. How many years ago was that?

She worked on the phones from 2010 to 2012. So a little over a decade ago. Wow.

Wow, man. I'm just. I just. I don't want to poke, poke at a wound, but man, to have your own mom just be like, I'm done. Goodbye. Like, that must have just. That must have hit in a certain way, right?

No, she. She can't handle. There's a lot of stress and anxiety that goes into this stuff. And when she sees somebody take advantage of me, it breaks her heart. And I can't tell you how many times she's called me and cried and just say, I hate seeing people do this to you. When I said, mom, well, let's look at the good side of things. For all the things that have gone bad, nine things had to go right for one thing to go bad. So I've been. Somehow I'm able to put things in certain departments in my brain and focus on the optimistic things rather than always think about what's going wrong. I tend to really want to say what's going right and then hire and build standard operating procedures. Be a lot more methodical in my thinking.

Yeah, totally. Thank you for clarifying that. Now, you mentioned that you had to re examine your. Why that was the way that you pushed through and you found out that you didn't love enough, you didn't care enough. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Well, in this particular office, there was this horrible virus came out called Covid. And we didn't know how bad it was until I literally built a concession plan of me getting back into the truck. We rated every single employee on an Excel sheet And just I was prepared for the good of the company and the families that still work here is not to destroy the company. And when people walked in one by one, several technicians asked for a demotion to get through this process. And I had CSRS dispatchers warehouse people giving up all their sick. They said, I want to donate my sick time to the people that need it. And that's when I kind of looked in the review mirror and said, I'm so focused on the future. I need to live in the now and really understand how to sometimes reflect. And when I realized how I could reflect a little bit more, I said, I need to show up a little bit more. I need to definitely become the mascot and congratulate and recognize people. And that's what I'm working on. I make a lot of videos recognizing individuals. I don't have time to have a half an hour connection with 600 people. But what I can do is say, I see you, Jackie. You're doing an amazing job. I appreciate you. And I just wanted you to know. I don't get a chance to tell you enough, but you're such a great asset to the company and I love you. And I think it's important that you know that you're an amazing person and I see you out there and these little things are a little note. It just goes a long way. And as much as I say I'm trying to do it, it's never enough because I think people need to feel wanted and included. But that's really the pivot point of when I started to really start to reflect more and be a little bit more humble and really appreciate more. And I think that's. It's something where I'm trying to systematize it. It's. It's easier said than done. But it's an interesting concept to tell people that you really care. And it's not something that happens when you. I hate the word corporate, but it's. Some things tend to get corporate and you lose that. That's why I love the word family business is because they care. And to not lose that in the growth is hard to do. But that's what we're focused on.

Yeah. I'm thinking as you're talking how. Because you. And what you've just talked about in the last couple minutes is really consistent with what you spoke about three years ago. You know, you're not just thinking about your employees, you're thinking about their families. So you've got 2,400 people that rely on the business Being successful, you rely on standardized operations procedures, and you're just finding ways to scale. And I can see how you would lose that bit of humanity. You do it. And so it must be a hard thing to juggle of being present with your employees while also maintaining this laser focus on how can we grow in the most sustainable way possible.

Yeah, it's really. Being ADHD on top of being a visionary could sometimes be challenging. And I know I'm not easy to work with, but at the same time, HDH ADHD could be a superpower. That's going to be my next book after Elevate is the power of adhd, when you could wear blinders. Because racehorses actually wear blinders. If you ever go to the Kentucky Derby, all of them are wearing blinders to focus on the wind. It's loud, people are screaming, they're throwing stuff. And so I've had to say, no, but focus. And the one thing by Gary Keller and just really understand. And it's a challenge every day. I'm not going to say I've mastered it. It's always challenging because I don't have an off button. I don't just go home and say, all right, I'm done. Put up my work jacket. And so being a little bit more deliberate on how I put things into the computer, how I respond to email, how I build systems has been the key, because I'm disorganized. Bri is amazing, organized, perfect schedule. And if I surround myself with my weaknesses that are really good now, they become my strengths, even though somebody else doing them, it's crazy what you could do and. But it's important to say I'm not good at a lot of things. And it's important to say that I've got smarter people than me all around me, and it's important to try to be the dumbest guy in the room. And I don't mind talking about it. I really don't. It's not something that I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be really hard to talk about. And you're going to school to be a therapist, so this is perfect.

Oh, yes. I mean, I would love for you to tell me a little bit more about your ADHD and how you've. How you've, you know, stepped into the superpowers of it, but then also how you learned your limitations. I mean, you said, I know I'm not an easy person to work with. I think you're the first person I've ever spoke to who's Acknowledged that on this podcast.

Yeah, you know, I get a lot of ideas. Sometimes I don't have patience. What you'll find is when you're entrepreneurial and you have adhd, that a lot of times people ask me, I'm doing a million or 2 million or $3 million. I'm not taking. I'm taking 3% home. And I say, well, do you have your CRM dialed in to tell you where you should be spending your time? Where could you make the deepest, most thoughtful impact in your company? And without numbers and adhd, autism, they all have something in common that we usually understand numbers. And we can work through numbers. And the numbers guide you to say it's very simple math. Problem is, what is your average ticket, what is your conversion rate, what is your booking rate? Or what does it cost you to acquire a customer? And pretty much other than culture and financing the finance department, that's all your time should be spent. But knowing that you could trust your numbers. So I've got to be very calculated on where I'm spending time because, you know, I've got this weird plan of world domination. And knowing your next five moves and what you're going to do next is key. But having people around you to help take your ideas and get them to manifest.

Yeah.

And so the adhd, I don't take any medication or anything. You know, there are times that I go out and drink to just stop my mind. It's kind of pathetic, but I'm working through a lot. But also, I get to work out every day. I got the trainer coming in later that's scheduled to come into me. Me going to work out would be tough, but he shows up to me and holds me accountable. So everything I do according to ADHD is I force myself to comply by making it very simple. And the best example is a trainer showing up to me.

Sure, sure. Do you meditate at all?

Not in the sense I pray, but. But it depends on what you consider meditation. But I don't sit there and do yoga and just close my eyes and take deep breaths. But I do some things that really calm my nerves. For me, it's. It's a simple game of playing golden tea or Big Buck Hunter going bowling. It's living in the moment and trying to shut down my thoughts in a way that I'm not. A lot of times I need a whiteboard. I'll wake up in the middle of the night and whiteboard. But that's not. It's not a deficit. It's not a. It Actually could be a skill. That's what I was trying to explain is no one else is thinking about the entire picture and can multifacet in their brain all these different moving objects. And when you could contain it is when it becomes a power.

Yeah. And for the record, meditation takes a bunch of different forms. I mean, I know that you pray and that you're religious, so that's fantastic. But being present and just playing Buck Hunter, that can be a form of meditation. Doesn't have to be sitting crisscross applesauce on the floor and oming yourself for the, for like 30 minutes. And I was thinking too, as you're talking about your adhd, you know, I think you're the only, one of the only contractors I'm aware of who is not only running a hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Right. But you also got a podcast, you've got a book, you got another book coming out. I don't see, I see how that ADH ADHD brain could really help that. Right?

Well, there's a lot of things going on even more than that. I mean, just the speaking events, just what I'm trying to do on social media. But by giving somebody one task, one goal, with standard operating procedures, with deadlines, and then holding me accountable and working on with my personality type, it really takes the right kind of person to work with me that just could speak my language. Sometimes people will come in and they'll be like, bri, what did he just say? And they call it speaking Tommy. And so be like, let me break this down for you. What he wants. But to have those type of people around me is so important because if I had to go, Jackie, here is what I would like. Now you get a guy like Jack Tester, I would drive him crazy because he's so calculated, methodical, he's got an agenda, he's got a certain way of doing meetings. And one of my main goals is really building myself into a way that's much more organized, even more than today. It's efficiencies. And so how do you get to a billion? How do you get to 10 billion? You've got to always be working on yourself and you've got to have a plan and you've got to be methodical in the way you move. But without, without the brain and the vision, all this stuff, it doesn't really move anywhere. There's a lot of people that are C type personalities sit there and go, we're just going to do this. But they don't have the liveliness and the fun and the smile and the encouragement and the leadership. So there's definitely attributes I need to work on, but I tend to just really focus on hiring for those weaknesses.

Yeah, I mean, you keep hammering that point in over and over and over again, which I. Oh, yeah, I've said.

That a few times. Yeah.

And I wasn't a criticism by any way. It's just, it reflects on how I think genuine. You're showing up in this conversation because that is something that is so forward in your mind. Like, I know I have deficits and I need a hire to fill those deficits so that we can all be successful as a whole. Because you're not just thinking about yourself, you're thinking about those 2400 team members and their families and how they want to, how you want them to succeed and fulfill their dreams. My question to you now is you've been so honest and open about your ADHD and how you unwind. What would you say to contractors who are thinking about quitting their business right this very second? What would you say to them?

There's a good book called Three Feet from Gold. And what he explains in the book was he bought a gold mine and there was supposedly supposed to be a lot of gold in there. And he kept digging and digging and digging and then he quit and he sold it out for pennies on the dollar. And then the new guys came in, the brothers, and they dug and they were three feet. They hit the gold, they hit a fortune. And I always say some people spike it on the five yard line right as they're about to score a touchdown. And what I would say is it's persistence. It's not for the faint at heart. This, to be an entrepreneur means a lot. And I think you give up a lot. You give up a lot of relationships. You give up a lot of things in the, in the course of being successful. And I don't think people look at entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, for example, and they say, oh, he's the richest man in the world. The guy doesn't sleep, he gives up relationship. He cares about humanity. And then you, you got the employee. And I've been both, so I could talk about this. And sometimes you don't realize the struggles you go through because if you wanted to do it, then just go do it. And, and I listen, without, without my co workers, it would be impossible to be where we are. But it's persistence. It's, it's, it's decompressing everything and taking action. What I Find a lot of people don't do is they don't initiate it. They take a lot of notes, they write a lot of stuff down, and they never revisit those notes. I think they put it under the pillow for the note fairy to come, make it all come true. And they don't take action, and they don't pull in the resources they need. They're cheap about it. They won't spend a thousand dollars on a course. They won't buy a book. They won't listen to a podcast. They don't have discipline or consistency. And without those attributes, it's hard to be successful because there's a new idea that's popping in their brain. But. But there's no action. And so all I would say is focus on the one thing you need to be working on today and go out there and get help without Adam. So I'm an. He's. I'm a visionary. He's an integrator. And without having a lot of integrators around me, all these ideas go somewhere to die. And I think it's important that learning how to take action quickly and focusing your attention on where the call center is the number one thing I see most companies failing at. If you just. Everybody's saying, how do I get more leads? How do I get more leads? Well, you've already got a big hole in the boat that you're. You're literally sinking the boat because you're not booking the calls you are getting. You're not booking the forums coming from HomeAdvisor, Angie, or just your online chat. You've got so many things that you're not taking advantage of today. But a lot of people, and I don't, I don't tell them to give up, but some people make better entrepreneurs than entrepreneurs, and they do great within a company kind of confines. But they got to understand sometimes they want to be able to put up their work jacket when they get home and not bring it with them. I'm on a vacation talking work. And I. I love. I love what I do. I really do. I wouldn't change anything for the world. There's a quote here that I'm going to tell you. The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is Always doing both.

I mean, yeah, that describes you pretty freaking well.

You know, one of the things I was going to tell you is somehow, I mean, somehow I'm able to channel and I could read and I could speak and I could do podcasts, and podcasts sometimes go all over the place, but I could actually finish books. And that's something that takes years to develop. But it's one of the things that was a weakness that I had to focus on is actually finishing books and actually starting the books and making time on my schedule to do it. And it's not always perfect. The best time to read books is on a plane. So I love trips because I can knock out a couple of books, and I put myself deliberately in a situation that forces me with an outcome.

Yeah. So in addition to having that trainer come to you, putting yourself on flights where you need to make a connection, and hiring people that are fulfilling or have your. The strengths that you're lacking, you're able to essentially run the business the way you are now and be achieving all these incredible goals.

It's amazing how much my team has grown and the assets I have on the team that are the best at what they do. Even my cfo, he's so excellent. It's. It's. He. First thing he identified within the first month was we're giving too many discounts. And so we put a rule into place that anything over 5%, you've got to get an authorization by a manager. Elite tech. All of a sudden, that added a few points to the bottom line. That's one decision out of many that he was able to take insights through his expertise and identify. And we were able to do something with it because we act quickly. And I think that's the key is I've got a company that we're looking at partnering with, and they said, we didn't make any money last year because we didn't raise our prices fast enough. Well, when our prices were going up, we hit a button in Excel and uploaded it the same day. And then literally, we have a company called E Squared that could force the tablets to reset with the new instance of Titan, with the new price book. So we made decisions the same day when prices were going up. A lot of people said, yeah, we'll get around to it in three weeks. And they were breaking even those three weeks because the prices were raised.

Yeah, I know. That was such an issue that so many contractors, looking back, they were like, oh, crap, I should have acted on that sooner.

Absolutely, yeah.

So you've mentioned Your team now, you know, throughout this, throughout this episode. Where did you find them, Adam? Bri, your cfo, where did you find them?

Adam was through a mutual friend. Bri happened to waltz into my life through an ad. I have a really, really sharp recruiter that I use for really, really high end roles like the president of the company now and Adrian, who's the cfo. But what they do is they'll spend three days analyzing who's going to work best with me because as Dan would say, the president of the company, I'm very entrepreneurial. I like things done fast and I don't really have a big. I'm not the type of guy that says, sure, Jackie, let's meet about that. We'll discuss it next week and we'll look, take a good look at it first quarter. Because that to me is like asinine. And when you. The opposite of entrepreneurial is corporate, where things move along as they move. And yes, we've taken that into consideration. We'll definitely be researching that down the line. That answer for a guy like me is ridiculous. And I can't function in that type of atmosphere. I don't do well with it. And I got to meet some of these guys in the middle and I need to work on myself and how we go about things. But luckily I have a great guy. His name's Jim Leslie. We found him to help with my home service expert group. And I said, you're the most talented guy I've ever met. You're sharper than Einstein and you could handle more than anybody I've seen at once. And he's like my sidekick. He's my partner in crime. We were on the phone two hours a night, Saturdays and Sundays. He's in Pittsburgh. So I could call him at 5:30 in the morning, but he'll also, he's up till 1pm or a.m. and so I needed that because every person I get that's an integrator that could get stuff done at 10 times as me, it literally makes me so much more efficient. It's crazy how that works.

Yeah, I know. Because like you said, your ADHD mind is just like pulling out these like amazing ideas, dropping them, and you need people to pick it up and run with it. You don't need. All right, let's revisit that in a month. So that also speaks to. You just need people that are good in fast paced environments and are ready to grow, not people that just want to do that corporate life like you've been referring to.

Yeah, you Know the. The old office space? Oh, yeah. How about those TPS reports? That's the opposite of what we do here. And it's like a living organism. It's moving, it's adapting, it's growing.

Yeah.

And I think it's the people. It's all about the people. And some people say, how do you find somebody? And I say, it's not easy, but when they're there, you need to take advantage. Well, I'm not hiring right now. Well, every time I'm at a restaurant, I'm recruiting. Every time I'm talking to somebody, I'm asking about who they know. I need great people, and they come around us all the time. You just need to recognize when they're there.

Yeah, I agree. All right, I've got a few more questions for you. I've really loved this conversation, Tommy, so thanks for being so vulnerable, but I would love to know how you stay so optimistic.

I. I think it's so crazy because my mom and dad got a divorce when I was young, and, you know, my grandma was around to help cook for us and. And help raise us. And my sister began to not love men. She felt like my dad betrayed her in certain ways. And, you know, I got into some trouble at school, as you can imagine, and not. Not. Not like suspension or anything, but just I be. I lived in the detention area, but ultimately, I started to have to look at things a little bit differently. I said, wait a minute. I get two Christmases. My grandma's the best cook in the world. Me and my sister are closer than we've ever been. My mom is working three jobs to help hold down the fort. My dad still shows up and is my soccer coach into every field trip. So I had to get rid of that victim mentality a long time ago, and I had to turn lemons into lemonade. And I think it has a lot to do with just my mom loving me, my dad being there for. For. To help shape me into a good man. And I've got plenty of faults, but I just have a hard time getting depressed, and it's. It's. It's hard to stay optimistic, but I know everybody's watching me. If I come down in this. In this office with my head down, I'm the leader. I need to show up, and I lead by trying to be up front rather than the whip, everybody. So I think it's mindset, and it's taken a long time to get where I'm at, but I got to continue to raise the bar. Ken, Goodrich was in a meeting with my whole leadership team years ago. Gotta be two years now. And he said, tommy, I'm afraid for you because you're growing so fast. He goes, you're reading more than I've ever saw any person read. He goes, you're podcasting and you're growing. You're. You're going to service Titan trips, and you're on the phone with Tom Howard every day. And he goes, guys, I'm gonna be completely frank with you. My, my best advice for Tommy is to fire you if you don't grow at his pace, because he's gonna outgrow all of you. He goes, so if you're not giving a 40 to 50 hour workweek and then spending 10 hours working on yourself, Tommy, I'm going to be here to tell you to let go of these guys because it's going to be best for them because you're surpassing them. And he called me up afterwards and said, did I go too far? I said, well, a little bit, but, but, but everybody kind of took it like, I need to go on these trips with Tommy because he's going to visiting the biggest H vac shops. He's going to Pantheon. So we had 20 people at Pantheon at the last one. I mean, I saw. Because you guys allowed us to do that. Yes, we spent money, but it was an investment. It wasn't a, a cost, in my opinion. So it's a mindset. It's growth. And, and it's pretty easy to be optimistic when great things are happening.

Yeah, I have another question off that one. What do you do when you come across a contractor who says, tommy, I need your help. And they have that victim mentality.

It's very hard to work with them because they think they've got everything figured out. They think they're sitting on a gold mine. And they also don't realize that they're not super focused and they've got a lot of ideas. And when I meet people, the one thing I try to do is say, give me all your excuses of why you're not successful. And I want to get an obligation from you that if these three things are solved, then you're not going to come up with three more. Because then if we know you're just a depressed, unhappy person. Because if, if we fix these three things, then I'm taking away your excuses today. Right?

Yeah.

And we agree that this is the three things that you need to be successful. And so if we saw these three things, you got to make me your. Your word on this and make pinky swear promise that we're not going to come up with excuses, we're going to come up with solutions.

Yeah.

And if you could change the mindset in the fact that everything's an opportunity. We found out some things. Like, for example, maybe like here's a great example. If we were overpaying for windshields. And I, I renegotiated that for $80 less. And I said, you could bring me into these things because I'm a great negotiator. But I was not mad. I just said, well, now we get to save 80 of windshield. There's 20amonth, whatever. So that's $1600. But there's things like that all the time that I don't get. What the hell? I could. I could be so angry. Or I could say, this is a great thing going forward and it's just a mindset shift.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. Anything else that you want to talk about in terms of motivating contractors who are really struggling right now and are looking at people like you and are like, oh, my gosh, I can never be like him.

I think you need to think outside of the box a little bit, people. I was on a podcast with Ken Haynes, who owns the Rent, who's the CEO of the Wrench Group, and there was a guy that commented and said, I can't even compete with you. I really can't. On. On paper, click. Because you guys bid the. The keywords up. And he said, well, only 10% of companies are ran by PE. That means 90 of the companies are still smaller operations and, you know, maybe family. Family businesses. And he said, and we. I went back to. Told him, I said, it's David and Goliath. David won that fight because he could spend longer with customers. He could get four reviews instead of one. He could be more relationship focused. It's something, when you turn to Goliath, it's hard to do as a business. So there's an opportunity. All you got to do is really think about it and find out, where can you beat Goliath? Where can you excel where other people can't? Because maybe you could train better. Maybe you could give a better culture. Maybe you could treat employees you could appreciate more. Because I can't call every employee anymore. I just. There's not enough time in the day. And I think if you really focused on your strengths and it all comes back to relationships. Without Tom Howard Ara VII at service time, I couldn't have got a lot of the stuff done. And, you know, Ara said no to me, straight up. He said, you're not coming under Service Titan. And I didn't take no for an answer. So being persistent and just using the skills that I have, and you remember why you started. Remember what you're trying to do. You know, a lot of people say this, Jackie. They say, I want to make more money and I want to spend more time with my family. And I say, now show me your plan. Show me how many phone calls do you need in a month to hit that goal? They go, I. I don't have. I don't have it written down. And then they say, I just. I know I'm going to try harder. I'm going to make it. And I say, without a plan, the number one thing entrepreneurs fail at and the same thing with employees is they just say, I want to do better. I want to better my best every day. But they. They don't have anything written down. They don't have a budget, and their budget is asked backwards most of the time because no one ever. They never asked anybody for help. I think that if you talk to Adam Cronenberg, he'd tell you, Tommy's superpower is he always is asking for help. He's always going to the best. The best. Some always able to book a meeting, and then he actually does it or he delegates it well and it gets done. And I'm always searching. I'm a student for life. And I can tell you there's a lot of opportunities out there. If you just open your eyes and you ask, you ask if I ever have a son, I'm going to say, listen, I want you to walk up to, you know, maybe they're 14, going to their first dance. I want you to smile, put your shoulders back, make her laugh, bring her a rose, and ask. You got to ask. And if she says no, you're going to tell her, I'm going to come back tomorrow and I'm going to get you. And if you stay persistent, if you stay persistent, you stay optimistic, you got the world at your fingertips. All you got to do is take advantage of what's there.

Tommy, I always enjoy talking to you. I really do. You're such a. And it's been so great knowing you. In my career at Service Titan, we've known each other, I think, since I first started, so it's a delight, as always, to talk to you. I've got a final question for you. If you had to choose a song to be the soundtrack of your life, what would it be?

I thought you should know.

I thought you should know by Morgan Wallen.

But but maybe it's My Life by Gwen Stefani. But either way it's. There's some other great songs. But maybe it's I'm too Sexy by Right said Fred. But but also I do want to tell people, if you want to really think about why you started and this isn't just a plug. I wrote the book elevate, build a company which everybody could win and it's coming out soon. And it's book.elevateandwin.com and I put my heart and soul into it. L E V Jody Underhill put some into there and a couple other. I had Brian, my regional manager. We poured our heart and soul into that and I really think it's going to make a lot of good change in home service businesses. And really a dentist, a real estate agent could understand the topic of just caring and understanding the bigger picture and build a dream so big that everybody else's dream could fit in inside. And as I reflect, I just say, ask for help. It's all around you. You guys are willing to lend a hand every time I've called you, you're more than willing to step out of your comfort zone and do something for me. And you know, you had Jody Underhill on who killed it and you know, ultimately it's just going out there. I asked Ali for help. I was his last client ever that he'd work with personally. He's getting ready to retire and if I didn't have the the audacity to ask and not be afraid of getting rejected, we wouldn't be here where we are today.

Yeah, I 100 agree and honestly, that's something I need to start implementing in my own life. So thank you for that reminder, Tommy, and thank you so much for coming back on Toolbox for the trades. I really loved this chat.

Thanks, Jackie. Appreciate the time.