Why Downsizing is the Dumbest Thing You Can Do When Work Dries Up | Ep. 139 | Toolbox for the Trades

Tommy Mello, you are the owner of a one Garage Door, the host of the Home Service Expert podcast, author of two books, the Home Service Millionaire and Elevate, and Al Levy, you are the founder of the seven Power Contractor. Welcome back to the show, guys. I'm so happy to have you.

Thank you so much for letting us come back and visit.

Thanks, Jackie.

So you guys have been around before. I think this is now my third interview with both of you, respectively. It's later in the day that I normally record, so I think the audience is going to get a nice loosey goosey podcast from the two of us. But we are going to be talking about a very serious subject that you guys emailed me about because you wanted to bring it to the toolbox for the trades audience. So tell me, what are we talking about today?

I'm going to lead off with Tommy and I have spoken for years about everything is cyclical. You know, your ride to the top was pretty steep and it was good and you didn't have to be really great. But here's what I can tell you. Things are slowing down and if you don't know it, you're already behind the curve. You're not ready. So I shared a story with Tommy years ago when we were working together is that in one of these cycles when we were on the down cycle, I said to my dad, I said, this is pretty awful. And he looks at me and he goes, bless the slow times. To which I said, what? What do you mean? He goes, well, up to now you've been very sloppy. And this is when you get a chance to tighten up the ship, get rid of the excesses that you've been doing, the things you weren't very efficient about. But the whole idea was to create efficiency and siphon off money to be in a reserve. Because what he knew from so many years in business before we showed up was that during the downtime was when we made our greatest growth spurt, when everybody was hiding under the table or under their bed, you know, because they were fearful, they stopped marketing, which is one of the dumbest things you can do.

One of the dumbest things you can do.

One of the dumbest things you can do. It's exactly counter. So it's kind of like, oh, I want to go buy a house and the prices are so high. And then all of a sudden the prices come down and go, well, now I don't want to buy a house because the prices are falling. So, like, when do you buy a house? The same thing applies to buying companies. So acquisition, it never will be better than in this downturn. And the same thing goes for marketing. You get way more bang for the buck. And Tommy's got phenomenal ideas on that.

Yeah. What I would say is it's turning into a buyer's market. It's been a seller's market for a long time. And what does that mean? We got spoiled with COVID I mean, anybody who's anybody was out there saying, I can't find enough people. Right. We were hiring anybody that could fog a mirror. And we had more jobs than we could handle. We stopped doing the things that got us here. We stopped doing BNI meetings. We stopped doing yard signs. We didn't need them. Everybody was stuck at home working on their house. We were fortunate. We were essential. And now things are going back to previous demand levels, pre2019. And everybody's going, what happened? I built the training center. I've done everything right. And especially in H vac. They're saying it was a late summer. They're planning. Everybody's behind budget. I happen to know a company in 100 markets and none, not one market is hitting budget. And it's. It, it's an opportunity if you see it as an opportunity. And it's defeat if you see it as defeat. And what I would tell you right now is this is when you do exactly what else said. You top grade. You work on your systems, you work on your manuals, your process process your org chart, and you go get it. Because right now is the best time to grow. You look at guys like Donald Trump, forget political here, but he grew. When times are bad, you look at the billionaires out there, Warren Buffett, everybody grew much more in bad times because a lot of people give up. And I would tell you right now, get, get, get, get down to brass knuckles on your business. Get down, make the cuts. Don't wait for it, for it to be too late. And also do not stop marketing. Because the first thing people usually do well, yeah. Is they slow down their marketing, but they try to feed everybody and make sure they keep all their people. B, C, D players. Top grade, get the right people on the bus and continue to double down on marketing.

Yeah, I love it. You know, I always talk about the seven powers, you know, the seven powers of my book and stuff. But if I only had an elevator ride, I would tell you there's two things you always have to focus on, Good times and bad. That's making more techs, which Tommy's so great at because of the training and the training center and making his own people. But the other one is more calls. And the idea that I always go back to is it's. You're trying to fill a bathtub full of the right calls from the right customer at the right time. And actually, you're trying to way overflow that bathtub with that. Because if you do that, even though it feels stressful, then you decide how much to charge. You decide what kind of work you're going to do and for who, and it forces you to grow. And here's the hard part, because it's counterintuitive. This. This time, right now, and the time that's just ahead of us is the exact time where you want to ramp up marketing the right way, not just throwing money at the wall and seeing what sticks. And then it's about acquisition. And anybody goes, well, I'm not big enough to do acquisition. And so Ellen Rohr and I, years ago, got our stuff together, and it's mild to wild. I can buy a phone number. I can buy an owner operator. Where. Where's an owner operator going to go? Tommy and I talk about this. I don't want your job. I already got a job. I need a company. They get to 50, 60, 70 years old, and they can't stop working. So either they're really interesting. Yeah, they shut the doors, Jackie. Or you come along and give them a better life, which is. Look, I'll take the phone call. When it converts. I'll send you a check. That's why Ellen calls it mailbox money. Not that anybody writes checks anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. So this is great. I love that you guys came to me with this topic. This is going to air at the end of August, most likely. So not only are we talking about the figurative slow season for a lot of companies like H Vac, where it starts cooling down. People aren't concerned about their H Vac system as much as they are in the hot summer. But it's also, the COVID boom itself is actually slowing down. And I get what you say about counterintuitive, right? Because you think about us as mammals, as folks that want to survive. Resources are going down, so we want to hoard. We want to keep our little stuff safe. And what you're saying is basically do the opposite. Go out there, spend money in the right way, and cut off. I hate to say this, but, like, cut off any dead weight.

Well, Tommy's point is you're not doing one. You're doing both. You really have. This is the time when you have to sharpen it up to get the money and the right people and bring it back, like my dad said, which is sharpen it up so that you're starting to build up this pile of cash so that when everyone's turning away, you're ramping up your marketing, you're stepping up acquisition, which is just. The two ways to go to market are organic and acquisition. There's a million ways to go to market, but ultimately it's just those two things. And if you're really good, you're doing both.

Yeah, I want to get to acquisition and smart marketing in just a second. But before we do, you both are very. You both have very strong personalities. I have not worked with either of you personally. We just know each other through the trades. I don't know if you could tell by me, but I am a little softy and I struggle with hurting people's feelings. I struggle with not helping people as much as I can. So from two people who I feel are probably very decisive and maybe make hard decisions like firing people that aren't working out, even though they may be nice. I perceive you two as being someone, as being people who can do that easily. What would you say to folks like me who may be listening, who have a couple techs or maybe a dispatcher or CSR who they love, who's great, but oh my gosh, they are not converting. So tell me a bit about that.

I'm going to go first with this and let Tommy, you know, go take it to the next level. But when I was young and coming into the business full time, not, you know, as an eight year old tagging along and doing the work that you always do. So I loved hiring people and it was great. We're growing. It's great. It's all going to be great. And my dad walks in and says to me, you cannot hire one more person until you learn how to fire people. He gave me an ultimatum. And I was very shy, which of course I've gotten over. Jackie, I am no longer shy, but I took it to heart and I hated it so much that I created what Tommy knows, the four steps of Corrective Action. I created a whole objective set of manuals, as you know, everything, because I hated to have to fire this person. Two things. Don't do that, Tommy. I'm not kidding. Next time you do it, you're in trouble. Don't do that. Really. Tommy, stop it. Don't do that again. It's kind of like talking to Tommy, like as a kid, right Pretty soon, if I just say that over and over again as a person, what does Tommy know? If I never do anything, I have no backbone, it doesn't mean anything. Or I never talk to Tommy. I talk to my brothers and I. And I go, can you believe what Tommy just did? Yeah, it's awful. We should do something about it. Really? What did he do? But we never speak to Tommy. So finally he does something so horrific that we go, you're out of here. And we haven't done four steps of corrective action. There's nothing in. Used to be a folder, but now of course an electronic file. And we were in trouble as hr. Hr, you know, Human resources. You can't do that. And it would always become back a problem. So what I learned to do was create objectivity and these four steps of corrective action. Because I hated firing people that much. Here's the test to this. We got so good at it. The person at my office who was there to protect the other union members walks into my office late one night and he says to me, you know, I've been thinking, Al. I said, what are you thinking about? He goes, we don't fire anybody anymore. We give them four warnings. Whatever they don't know. We say, we'll take you outside and train you. You're forgiven. Whatever you don't know, it's on us now. Say so based on that, they just choose not to work here. And if you're like you're talking about Jackie and others that are listening like you do what I'm saying, make it objective, Give them the discipline of four step corrective action. But Tommy will tell you the one exception to four steps of corrective action. When do you not get four steps, Tommy?

If you lie to cheater.

Still, he nailed it. You lied or cheated, steal, you're out of here. Or worse.

Yeah.

What I would tell you is I recently I talked to Al about it. I talked to a lot of mentors about deciding if I wanted to bring on a partner and I could either have the money to 10x. I had a delayed draw term loan for 20 million. I had more opportunity than I had money for. So I could 10x the business or I could try to double it up by myself and just not have the money to grow. So we did, we took the opportunity. Great private equity company called Cortek. And what they really forced us to do and alone did a lot of this along the way with me. But we really got really good at looking at data. And the first thing we figured out is our average CSR was taking 17 calls a day. And that was unacceptable for them. They wanted us to get to 40. We're at 37 and a half right now. So they said, you got a right size. So we had to make a decision. And it was the data led us to this decision. We had to get rid of 20 CSRs. And the data led us to that conclusion. And what happened was, is the csrs that made it, they're feeding, they're making more money than they ever thought possible. Why punish everybody else in the company that's kicking ass. A players hate B and C players.

Yes.

So, yes, you know, that's what we decided to do. And it wasn't an easy decision, but we made the decision. And now the. I'll tell you this, one of the things that Doug always talks about who's runs the fund at Cortec is the mistakes happen in these four walls. And if you don't make decisions based on data, key performance indicators, you're making a huge mistake. And one thing I wanted to go back on about opportunities. This is a time in our lives that I don't think will ever repeat itself, because it's the end of an era. And the era is baby boomers. And in the next five years, 2,200 people are retiring each day. And out of that 20 212% owned businesses. It's a golden opportunity. People are looking to make decisions, to find a great home for their life's work, which is their business, and their family, which are their, their co workers. And now is an extremely amazing opportunity. And people are looking for companies that are going to take care of their baby, which is their business. And if you could do that without disturbing and firing and, and wrecking businesses, which certain investors do, you got a good opportunity. And like Al said, there's a lot of businesses out there that get 10 leads a day. It's a two tech company. And if you could integrate that properly and you could take those guys and teach them your exact process. We train every new technician on every acquisition for four weeks. They come to Phoenix, they learn our way. And I'm proud to say, eight companies in the last 12 months, we've only lost two technicians. The CSRs are still here, the dispatchers are still here. Other than that one right size and right sizing is the right word. Because, Jackie, you would do it a lot easier if you said the whole company. We have 800 employees. And if each employee is taking care of three people, that's 3200 people. So would you rather make the decision for 3200 people to. To right size and get rid of a few bad actors, or maybe just somebody that's not performing or find a different bus on the seat, or would you rather the whole company go down and everybody loses? And if you look at it that way, objectively, you really see very quickly you're making the right decision.

Yeah, again, that's a good way to think about it, Jackie. At a union shop, when we finally changed the direction of how we operated, guys would come up to me and go, you kept Tommy on. Why did you saddle us with Tommy? This is their union brothers. They're going, like, next time, don't do that. Do what you said. Be disciplined and get rid of them. Because we have to clean up all of his messes. So there's people out there you owe an opportunity. Ellen has a great. If you're shy, like you mentioned, or you don't want to fire somebody, Ellen came up with, probably what I think is one of the best ways to do this. Tommy, based on the KPIs, you're not performing, and that's not good for you or for me or for the team. So here's how I see it. We're at a decision point. You and I can work together for the next two weeks. And if we're able to get you to where you need to be, it's going to be great for both of us. And if not, we can part as friends. You in? Because I'm in. And it's so, first of all, a very high.

That feels like a hug. That feels like a hug. That doesn't feel like. That doesn't feel like a pit or a.

Let me tell you something. Everyone thinks I'm the axe murderer. It's Ellen. Ellen was the axe murderer, not me.

She showed me where the bodies are buried.

I always tried to save people. I feel you're all owed a chance. You're just. And here's where that comes from, Jackie. So when I showed up the last of the boys to the business, my dad says to me, I owe you an opportunity, not a guarantee. And that's really the same to your employees. Not in a mean way, not in a vicious way, but we're all pulling on the rope, and if you can't pull with us, that's a problem. The other analogy I used to use is, look, if you get in the rowboat and I teach you how to row and you row with me, we're going to go a lot further to where we want to go. At the very least, if you can't do that, don't row at all.

Row them back direction. The way that I look at it is anybody customer facing. A lot of people hate this word, but you're in sales. And we really try to find somebody from a competitive background. Whether they played sports, whether they were a farmer, whether they played the flute, whether they were in karate, they knew how to be passionate about something. And what we do is we rank every single employee in each division and we take the mean, and that's kind of the expectation. We don't pick arbitrary numbers. We say, this is what your cohort is doing. So we didn't pick a number out of a hat and say, here's where you should be for your KPIs. We say, this is what everybody's doing. We, and I think a lot of companies, they set these wrong expectations. So we just say the proof is in the pudding. You want to get better. If I want to get better at golf, I hang out with really good golfers if I want to get better at anything. So we say ride alongs are free. We pay you. This morning, I said at my, my morning Thursday meeting, we call it Bring the Fire. I said, I will fly you guys to wherever you need to go. I'll pay you, I'll put you up in a hotel. All you got to do is ask. My favorite three letters are ask. If you want more for your life, more for your family to go further, then all you got to do is ask. But you got to want it. And hourly, people are so content, they need to make 60,000, they don't need to make 70. So anything in between, they don't see a reason for wanting more. And Garage Door Freedom, we've had several people go to performance pay and they lost their entire technician staff, all of them. One guy, wow. I won't go into detail. I won't go into.

And Garage Door Freedom. Garage Door Freedom, real quick. Is that your training, your training center, or what does that tell Roger?

Freedom is interesting. It's something similar to Next Server for garage door companies. They come in, they learn great a lot what El teaches, we teach our technicians, but mostly how to use Service 10 effectively because nobody knows how to onboard to the price book and understand automatic payroll and the, you know, their call center software and everything that service time does. So this company went from $30,000 a month of profit to 100,000 within six weeks, going to performance pay. And a lot of people, this is what we're talking about at the Freedom event, we're going to show people how to come up with performance, pay that works, come up with scorecards that work and get their price book right. And the problem, Jackie, is a lot of people say raise your prices, but don't raise your price without raising the service and value you provide, which are same day service, new trucks with trained technicians that you could trust around your three and four year old daughter. And I think that that's important if you're going to charge a premium price, give a premium service.

It's funny that he mentioned that. Actually sounds like he was in the car when Ellen and I were Talking about this 20 years ago, which he was not. And so maybe he was.

Maybe he was. We don't know, we don't know what kind of superpowers Tommy has.

He got his. He's got his shoes messed up. Usually you're tongue tied. He is shoe tied, shoe tied. I don't know how he. This is. I hope this stays in. Please don't cut this. Anyway, I mean I'm gonna. Yeah, you just go get your shoes off camera. Yeah, so.

Well, while that's happening. Well, that's happening.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, I finish your anecdote.

So Ellen, Ellen always, always, always said raise your prices, raise your prices. She grew up on frank blue elves, you know, price prices and budgets and things of that nature. And I go, if you stink, you don't get the right to fix your problem by raising prices to me. So here's what I want in our combined where we work together. I'm going to make you good, really good. I'm going to make you better than anybody else. You're going to be able to show up neat and clean. You're going to be able to go through a process. You've already been trained in your house, your training center, not my house. Because Jackie, that's the evil truth that most of us contractors will never admit. We're coming to your house and you are paying us to learn how to do our job. That's what on the job training is. They can call it any name they want, but that's what it is. So when we dedicated ourselves to a training center, training curriculum and becoming better trainers ourselves, which is what Tommy has done to an astronomical level. But it's all based on serving customers better than anybody else. Then, then, then, then you are worth more money. And so our simple thing was, you know, you need to not act like, smell like, do like anybody else to be worth more money. And then, yes, pay Attention to Ellen. Raise your prices.

Well, what do most people do, Jackie? If you really think about what most people do when they get into business, we have a technician mindset. A lot of businesses start out as a technician. We say let's call every company, let's find out the average price. Let's offer a little more for a little less. But what they don't realize is they're copying companies that are flat broke and you're not. If you make your business a commodity, it will be a commodity. If you're always the best price. It's so hard to build a training center, get the right staff on board and build a company. You're entitled to a profit or you shouldn't be. In business. We give up relationships, we give up weekends, we give up holidays. And you're entitled to make a lot of money and bring everybody with you and create a career that people admire to be at right. My coworkers, they enjoy this because they're homeowners now. They get to raise their kids in the best way. When they take we force pto, I want them taking their dad to Alaska on a fishing trip. I want them taking their kids to Disney World. I want them to live their best life. And that's one of the things I talk about. What's in it for them? They all taught me that line six or seven years ago. And if you come from the perspective of why would somebody work for me? What I've learned to do is look in the mirror every time something bad happens. And I take complete accountability, and it happens a lot. And I've got to be accountable, because if I'm not accountable, nobody will be. I show up a lot of owners, when they hit 5 million, they decide, I'm not going to show up to work. I will be here every day. I'm accountable to every single person, and I only want the best for them. I want them. You know, a phrase that I put in the book Elevate is my dream's got to be so big that all their dreams could fit inside. And if that's happening, we're all winning.

I'm going to reel it back because we promised today.

Well, I was going to say, I did the podcast do the best. As I asked you a question, we went on a tangent. It was a great tangent. I had fun. And I'm going to blame the fact that I listened to Theo Vaughn's podcast today, which has me in just a chatty mood. But we were talking about how people can prep for this slowdown. The COVID slowdown. We got the COVID boom. It's coming down. We also have the historical slow season for a lot of trade businesses out there. So you were talking about smart acquisition and smart marketing. So tell me a bit about that.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead, take the smart marketing.

Yeah. So for marketing, I think you got to have this. There's one thing that's never failed, that's never changed algorithms, that's never changed over time, and that's relationships. Going out there and meeting the people. You know, one of the biggest things for me, there's two things that I consider the biggest catalyst of my life. Starting the podcast, which led me to Al Levy. And the second one, which don't get a big head about, but was going to Pantheon and meeting guys like Tom Howard and Darius Livers and being around different trades that I could say, wait a minute, service agreements, learning how to use financing, learning how to get everything that service time has done. Really what they did the best was put us all in one room together. And they got great people there. And I was just a guy asking everybody, can I come visit your shop? Can I learn from you? And they said, who's this small garage door guy? We were the first garage door company on service side. I'm really proud of that. Ara. He put his money, he bet on us. It was a great bet, and we're very fortunate. And taking advice from others willing to be the dumbest guy in the room, willing to say, you need help. It could be a shot to people's pride. But I tend to do that, and I still do it, and I'll always do that. The day I stop asking for help, you know, put me on an island somewhere and just, you know, say goodbye because there's so much more. And Service Titan is. I'm really not trying to do this, but Service Titan is the elite. You guys, you came up when I had R on the podcast, he said, tommy, he said, do what we ask you to do. Because we've studied the billion dollar companies and use the tool and make the changes. And that's why when we talk about marketing, Service Titan gave me attribution. I've got 6,500 call tracking numbers. We know exactly where the dollars are coming from. Relationships. And then guerrilla marketing, getting back into BNI groups.

Yes.

Going and presenting to different realtors, talking to property managers, doing the things that got you here that we've kind of neglected for the last four years is really. And then I tell people, Google is, is the God of home service. This is Demand like services people go to Google, you want to get found on Google. There's four algorithms. Gmb, the three pack, lsa, local service ads, pay per click, and then your organic website. And if you really spend the time to master those, you will be far more successful. Combined with relationships and then the yard signs of B and I groups, you'll make a lot of money. Al told me to pick the big three. Those are the three.

Yeah. And I think, you know what happens is like my dad said, we got sloppy and lazy because fish were falling into the boat. We didn't have to fish.

Yeah.

We didn't have to go out to deep water. So what did we do so well before that? We would refer. We had referrals. Enormous. What is the best, easiest, most profitable call you'll ever get? Somebody who was referred to you. So you had a great experience, Jackie, and you said to Tommy, you know what, if you got heating cooling problem, you got to call Hal. So what Tommy says, so great. And that I love because it was a lot at my company and Tommy's again done it so well, is you don't want your garage door repaired, you want an A1 garage repair. Do you hear the difference there? And so if, and like, you know, companies that I've worked with, you don't want your air conditioning or your plumbing fixed, you want Express in Boise, Idaho. Because they do everything I talk about and they don't hide it. They pull the curtain back to show you. How are these guys so good? Well, we just train them forever in our house, not your house. And these are the reasons to use you. So the better your brand is. And that's not just a good looking truck. Which of course is super helpful part of it. Because if I had to pick one of the most that changed our company when we rebranded in the dark ages of 1992. So we rebranded and I had to do this guy, my marketing guru, his name was Leo and his one mantra was trust Leo. He picked out a color green because we had to have green on the trucks by the New York City regulations. And he picks the most disgusting color green that I could look at. And I go. And he looks at me and he goes, I didn't say to wear a suit this color. What I guarantee you, you will see your trucks five blocks away. And that is the goal. And he took all the excess off of our truck. And I tell you, all of a sudden the fleet looked like we were five times more. Why is it so important? Because I'd love to tell you they do everything that Tommy says they do where they go to Google and they do all the background search and they do all this other stuff. Most people go, hey, I see their trucks everywhere. They're on the same block that we're at. And by talking about lazy, we used to go what they call Cloverleaf, where you run a call and you go to the next three or four doors. You put a hanger. We served in Tommy's house or yard signs. Cause once we had a grape looking brand, we just took a mini truck and put it in as many lawns as we could humanly do. And so you repeat the theme. And Tommy did the same thing with these, these things and incentivizing. So a book years ago, I think it's still around, is guerrilla Marketing. We used to do guerrilla marketing, but it takes work. So what do you do when you have a lot of calls? You don't do it. And if you're not willing to do that, you're gonna lose some of your advantage. That's not to say you don't spend money on the best marketing vehicles. One of the things that I've always preached about is you need a marketing budget, which is fuel in the gas tank or your marketing is never gonna work. The second thing is marketing allocation or marketing drivers. You need to pick your top three. That does not mean it's the only ways you go to market. But those three get the majority of your time, energy and money because they move the needle the most. They either have the highest ROI and certain amount of profitability or they have a low roi. But they bring in such a huge volume of the right calls and customers. And the last place that all of us mess up is marketing calendar. Me and Helen.

Marketing calendar.

Marketing calendar. Because all of a sudden, especially coming into this, because I was in the heating business only before we got into plus plumbing and air conditioning, electric. So I know all about the shoulder seasons, the famous shoulder seasons. It's great. Heating season kicks in, there's nothing but money. But all of a sudden what do we do with everybody? You can't send them home because you're never going to get them back. There's a lot of this stuff that we did. So we used it as we're either you go use your paid time off or else you're in training. Because we're getting ready for the next season. So when that season comes, we're going to kill it in a good way. Now we took in plumbing because plumbing is less seasonal, as is electrical. But everything has a Seasonality to it and the rest of it. But the more trades you can do and the more you can do what we, my company, learned to do. Not because we were enlightened, because we were frightened. And the frightened was. Yes, we were in heating.

I'll leave. I'll leave you frightened. Not enlightened.

Right. Not enlightened. We were afraid we were going to lose the basement because our customers, who loved us, Jackie, because we love the heating work. Can you also do my plumbing? No, no, we don't do plumbing.

Yeah.

Could you also do our cooling work? Nope. No, we don't do.

Master one trade before you go to the next. A lot of people.

That's a great. That's a great point, because let me come back to that. He's absolutely right. We had mastered the heating trade, but we wanted to lock up our customers in that basement. We want to own the basement. But what had we learned? If you have operating manuals that talk about how you do it, so you can send 10, 20, 100 people an hour from your shop and do it pretty much the same way, and you have a training center built. Right. And there's much to learn about that in training curriculum, becoming better trainers yourself. Then what we did is add on these other trades by plugging a manual, a training center, training curriculum, so that we could go into each of these trades. And yes, we acquired companies in that trade because we didn't know everything we needed to know. So acquisition sometimes isn't about acquiring customers, shutting them down, making more money. Because when you do it right, Jackie, and you have this ability to make the people that are coming into your company better and fit to your mold and give them all a chance, they're going to get trained your way because you have the discipline of systems that allow you to do that. But it also allows you to jump into a trade or add another task that you don't do today that you should. So electricians out there, if you're listening, tell me that you're doing backup generators, Tell me that you are doing surge protection. Because I'm sitting here and I don't know how many thousands of dollars worth of equipment. And if there isn't surge protection on this, well, it was a good idea. That's going to go really bad in a hurry. There's just so many opportunities out there, Jack.

So you're talking about Acquisition?

Yeah, I want to move over to acquisitions. I'll just tell you one thing I want to say. Five years ago, Al came to me and he took a picture of my trucks, black and white. And he said, tommy, look at this. Does this scream what you do? He goes, you got Angie's List. You got Yelp on here. You got 25 words. And he goes, have you ever talked to Dan Antonella? I go, who's Dan Antonella? He goes, he owns a company called Kickcharge. He did Gettle. He. He did Zoom Drain. He's. He's pretty good at what he does. I called Dan up, and Dan goes, what's wrong with you? He goes, you've been doing this how long? And this is your brand? And I was actually kind of annoyed that he said that. And when he worked with me and I saw what he was able to do, you know, I talk to a lot of people that are like, I can't afford 20 or 30k. And then you look at it and you go, wait a minute. This is your baby. This is everything. This is your brand. This is what attracts not only customers, not only acquisitions, but this is your internal customers, your employees, and you're willing to do all this crap. And then Dan's been sending me, I feel like, on a weekly basis, how someone went. Their pay per click dropped 90% because of branded search terms, their employee retention went up. Like, when they created the brand, they created the walls, they created the right wraps, they created the website. And it's their symmetry. And if you don't have that and people are like, I can't afford it. I'm like, then what are you wasting money on marketing, if you don't even have a brand? And people are like, well, I love my brand. People always talk about my brand. I'm like, it looks like shit. It's not good. And Dan is just a guy that's. He's from Jersey as well.

Yes.

He'll tell you straight up how it is. He might not like it. He might not like it, but a lot of people are like, yeah. You know, we looked at him and, you know, he's busy. You know why he's busy? Because he does it the right way. You're right. L. If you don't have the wraps and the symmetry and the website, the yard signs and the Val pack and everything doesn't look symmetrical. What are you thinking?

That. That was really what Leo's message to me back in the 90s about. We repeat it everywhere once we have a great brand. And he was. Yeah, dead on. Right. But the point of it is when people say, I don't have the money to do truck wraps, and I mean good truck wraps not covering every square inch and doing all the cardinal sins. What other marketing, Jackie, do you think will be out there for four to five years in really good looking trucks which like Tommy's has, which is stand up because they're also way easier to work out of the model truck we created. And I've created model trucks everywhere, including starting obviously at my own company. But they're stand up, they're billboards, they're rolling billboards. Go to Vegas and look on Las Vegas Boulevard. What's going up and down that they pay a ton of money on a moving billboard. It's the best money you can spend.

There's multiple answers to that question.

I did give multiple.

What's going up and down the strip that they're paying a lot of money for?

Gambling. You go to the strip club, you can spend a lot of money on a lot of.

They have gambling advance.

Al is just so focused on good marketing, he can't think of anything else right now.

If you want to know good marketing, Vegas is really great at marketing. They are really great at that.

They've figured out a lot of things.

Oh yeah.

You know, Jackie, when it comes to acquisitions, the second subject, why you brought us on, and we want to talk about one other thing, but everybody wants to know what life is like after. And they're very fearful of change. And a lot of these business owners, they never had an opportunity to sell. They don't understand the process. They don't know what EBITDA is and they don't know what multiples are. And they don't understand this, this area that you get into a NDA and then what does diligence even mean? What kind of information? What am I going to be doing afterwards if I stay on? And I think it's a lot about educating and letting people know and proof is in the pudding. We've had about 15 companies now and getting those owners to say everything's going to be okay and it needs to be okay. Because if, you know, if you get one bad customer out of a thousand, that customer is louder than the other nine or 999. So you got to make sure these acquisitions go good and you make the employees feel good and the owner feel good. But acquisitions is great. But don't, don't fool yourself. A lot of people go, I just want to do what you do, Tommy. I'm going to go buy a lot of companies integrations. There's a lot that goes into it. Just getting their, their whole CRM and pulling it in and Even if they're on service site. And it's not easy just to pull them into your. Your setup. You know, we've got, right now we're running multiple instances, but we got their enterprise version. We're doing pretty good with it. But, you know, I emailed Vahe and Ara the other day and I said, well, we need to speed up this process because. And this is what it's coming to. The big guys you're going to see get a lot bigger because they got the process dialed in. Al's a big process. Document it.

Oh, my God. Yes. I had a company on a few episodes ago, cla Services that have created their own internal Service Titan support. They have a general Service Titan support person and they have spokes in that wheel that go to all of their different locations and they've created their basically own support system and they're growing like crazy.

Service Titan is, It's. It's the. It's a. It runs everything. It's got its, it's got its hand in marketing. It's got to talk to intact your QuickBooks. If you're still on QuickBooks, which you, you, if you reach a certain size, you got to go to Sage intact, literally. Service Titan gives me my KPIs. It does. It hooks into the BI tools, you know, business intelligence, it gives me my inventory. And when you're not using a tool effectively, a lot of people go, I just, you know, we're always pushing you guys to develop more. But a lot of people, I talk to the developers, I talked to Anmol and he goes, you guys are the only one pushing us. Most people don't adopt a third of what we do. And I'm just like, no, we need this, we need this. We need an integration tool. We need this, we need this. And I think I drive animal crazy and probably vaje a little bit, but at the end of the day, no, no. They've got a big heart and an open ear and they're willing to listen and they work hard. And every time. Here's a little tip too. If you want to go to Service Titan and have them develop something, make sure it's good for the whole community, make sure a thousand companies could use it. Just don't do it for your company.

You have to leverage.

They have to leverage it. They've got, they've got a lot of.

And I'll share one thing, one of my stupid investments along the lifetime of being in multiple trades and multiple investments. I was in a computer software business, contractor software business. Yes. And here's the lesson. I can share from a 200,000. Yes. A $200,000 loss that I incurred for my family. I learned a lot of lessons. And here was the lesson, Jackie. Yeah, here's the lesson. We had really good people, we had really good background, you know, all the rest of the stuff. But the technology wasn't there yet like it is today. The other thing was people would go, hey, I want you to move it to the right column. We go, sure, we'll move it to the right column. Yeah, can you add this? And we would just had it. We couldn't support it. So when you want Service Titan to change for you, you are causing pain. Just like they used to ask Ellen when she would go there and go, can I add another column? Can I do another thing? And I said to Tommy when he brought Ellen in, I go do it her way. Because if you do one is she can compare where you are to everyone else. You've got to do the basic first. Everyone wants to run a marathon. Have you run a mile yet? Because I bet you haven't.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's the problem. And well, just I want to get back to any.

Well, this real hot tip for anyone who's a Service 10 customer who's listening, who has a great idea for a feature. If you go into the community and you your idea and you get folks to upvote it, that is like the best way to get the attention of our developers. Have people upvote it, have people comment on it. But to what Tommy said, we got to think about the. We got to think about the whole ecosystem that uses the software, not just your specific instance. So thank you for making that point. And again, I love how whenever I talk with Tommy on one of these things, I never ask you one question about Service Titan and you just naturally bring it up. You just naturally bring it up. So thanks so much.

Your checks in the mail, fan of service type. Yes. But it really speaks to platform and knowing your numbers and not being like gut. So when I used to walk into customers for the first time and what I used to call planning power to get a 360 view. So what marketing things are working for you? Oh, we do coffee cups. Everybody loves it. How much, how many dollars does it drive? It drives a lot of dollars. How much does it cost? It costs a couple of bucks, but it's like it was all opinion based is what I'm saying. Where you can finally get it to objective. Because I'm coming for you in that I'm coming for you to get to your budget, get back to percentages, get tight, so that you can start creating money into a bucket. Because if you want to play the game that Tommy and I are discussing, that is really one of maybe one of your best lifetime events. You're going to need some fuel in the gas tank, which is where this whole started marketing budget. Whether you're doing organic marketing, whether you're doing guerrilla marketing, whether you're doing acquisition. And again, want to stress acquisition is for every company. Every company. Because mild to wild the way I described it. Now, my company was big, at least big in those days, and now big is very different. But when I would, you know, our company was 17 million back in the 90s, that was a big company. And so I wasn't going to be necessarily looking for owner operators, but unless an owner operator had skills that I was looking for, brought something to the table that I needed or provided depth. Usually I was looking for what we call the brick and mortar company where there was, you know, seven, eight, 10 trucks. That was an operation that we could shut down or build or create a spoke because we were really good at spoke because we're system just like Tommy's operating. How many states are we in now?

20.

20 states.

Wow.

You better be rocking tight if you're doing that.

Dang. What's your favorite state?

Well, I'm from Michigan, but I gotta tell you, I'm a little biased. It's a little hot in Arizona, but it's not humid and there's not a lot of bugs. It's a planned city. I love Arizona. I really do. You know, it would be nice to have a lot of lakes in the ocean, but I got to tell you, cost of living is reasonable. The highways are great. It's a planned city. And the people here, I just, I love this place. I can never imagine at least the home base ever being somewhere else.

I saw.

And I tell you what, I've never spent a lot of time where I was from, but I've had a lot of customers from Jersey in New York. And it's like, listen, hey, they want to pay no tax to get a good deal. I don't know if I could, like.

You know, Arizona's not.

I'm sorry, Jackie. Where are we? Very pleasant and a very agreeable people on the East Coast.

You know what? I heard that east coast people, we're, we're nice, but we're, we're in a rush, so you gotta, you gotta get to us quickly. We're In a rush, I saw a TikTok of a woman who just moved to Arizona and found a shedded snakeskin about 20 inches long on top of like, her cabinets. And I was like, no, thank you. But I've heard great things. I'm happy you're happy.

Yeah, I agree. I live out here as well.

So, Jackie, I'll tell you. Let's. I kind of want to give one last thing here is nice enough to speak. I'm going to interview Al. We're going to be in Orlando November 1st, 2nd and 3rd. And it's called the Freedom of a Home Service Freedom. And what I've learned is I took so much from H Vac, plumbing, electrical, what service tin brought to us by getting around pest control companies, just learning door to door from them. I learned a lot from painters. Getting everybody into a room and learning from each other, living your best life. A lot of people have been asking me about equity incentive programs. They've been asking me about manuals, performance pay scorecards, how to grow in a down economy. And we stack the deck. You know, Dan Antonelli is going to be talking about brands, Shawn Michael Crane about mindset and getting your health right. Al's going to be there. We know what Al does. Tom Howard, Darius Livers, Lance Bachmann, Ishmael, Aaron Gaynor, Joe Polish. We try to stack the deck. And we really. My big thing was Pantheon is the most amazing event there could be. I think this is something a little bit different, but it also, it's a great opportunity. It's a great time to bring the family. It's pretty much a Disney World, and it'd be great if you guys came.

The.

The listeners out there if you're looking to grow your business. We don't have all the answers, but I'll tell you who's going to be in this room if you can't find the answers. And. And you go in there with a mindset of meeting one or two people. You taught me this. You don't go in there passing out cards to everybody. You just find a few people that you want to bond with. And success leaves clues. I mean, Tom Howard has helped countless people and Tom Howard has helped me and else helped me and the we want to help and I'm here to pay it forward. And, you know, it's a freedomevent.com and I'm not here to just toss that. I want to deliver value, whatever I do.

Yeah, you know, you delivered a ton of value. I'm going to pull the covers back on this because you guys need to know Tommy doesn't have to do any of this. Listen to me carefully. None of it. He is doing it as payback in a good way for what has been his way. He's a firm believer that if you've been given a gift, you are owed to give back. So whatever it costs to come to this thing, to me it's a bit of a joke. First of all, I don't know what Jackie would be better than coming to see me on the stage with Tommy interviewing me. Really can't be anything better than that. But other than that, here's the reason. Here's the reason that you should leave your business. Because I was like you. It was hard to leave your business. Frankly, it was scary because you were afraid. You don't know what it would be when you get back. Jackie. That's the evil truth. You are going to this event for what you will be taking home. You're not going to listen to just speakers on a stage. Tommy is going to have things for you to take home, actionable stuff that's going to make whatever the cost that you have nothing, nothing really to come to this investor. It's not an expense. I don't get paid this. I don't get paid any of this. I'm telling you because Tommy and I are like minded. We've both been given a gift. This industry is great and Tommy wants to take it to the next level. And that's what Home Service Freedom Event's going to be all about.

Zig Ziglar said, He said this 40 years ago. He said you could have anything you want in life if you just help a people enough people get what they want. Let me say that again. You could have anything you want in life if you help help enough people get what they want. And I'm a true believer. When I see people winning, it's like it comes back tenfold. So I know we went a little over Jackie, and I know you need a drink and I know you need to get going, but we really appreciate you letting us on here for the third time. We always are here to deliver value, Al. Without L I want to be where I am today. I wouldn't be a fraction of where I'm at. So if you haven't had a chance to read the seven Power Contractor and adopt some of the knowledge he's worked with hundreds and hundreds of contractors, you're going to be 70.

Yeah.

Thank you for listen. How many listen. That means he's wise beyond our time and you should be listening to Al.

And that's another reason why you want to come see Al on stage.

Well, especially if Al's helped you out. Al's taken time. He's had a lot of one on ones with a lot of companies. He offers free advice. You can book a time with Al for a half hour. I mean, listen, Al's the man, and, and Jackie, you're the woman, so we appreciate it.

Hey, thanks. I mean, there's a reason I. I always say yes when you guys ask to come on the show, because I know you always deliver value and you're really passionate about helping the people who listen to the show, and that's what matters. So thank you guys so much for coming onto the show, giving us some advice, and I hope that everyone checks out. You know what? You give me a link. Give me a special link, and I'll make sure that it's not in the show notes of this episode so people can just click and register.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Jack.

Appreciate it.