Build a Home Service Business into a Multi-Million Dollar Empire: Tommy Mello & Joe Polish

I've created my own system and I don't need to read a book. And I read. I've read over 2000 books. I have 1200 on Audible. I don't need this like the other person's system I've created it on. That works for me is all I'm saying. And I've always lived well below my means. I mean, this is the first new truck I had is three years old now. I lived in the apartments. We bought a 20 plex. I lived there for four years. I got to hang out with all the techs while they were training. And I was just delayed gratification. I would say, listen, I don't owe myself anything right now while I'm building the business until we plant a seed and water it so much that it's putting out so much fruit. I can take a little bit of the fruit.

Let me introduce my good friend Tommy Mello here. What's up, brother?

What's going on?

Yeah, this is a great story you're gonna hear. Then, Dean Jackson, I'm gonna have you say a few words and then me and Tommy are gonna talk about all kinds of cool stuff. So for those of you that have never heard of Tommy, he started a one garage with $50,000 in business debt, which is $20,000 more than me. I started with like $30,000 in debt. Well, actually I went $30,000 in debt, but that was way back in the early 90s. And today he's about to cross the $200 million mark in revenue with over 650 employees in 19 states. As he grows his business, he's done everything from sales to marketing to hiring. His experience running one of the top garage door companies in Arizona, probably the world, provided him with many of the answers that up and coming business owners need to help them succeed. Tommy's advice has been regularly featured in top publications like Inc. Magazine and Forbes. And he's also the host of the weekly POD Service Expert where he interviews top entrepreneurs in the industry to find out what they made them world class and what they do. If you like what it is we talk about. He has a brand new book called Elevate Tommy Melo M E L L O And we'll put a link where you can order this book on Amazon. And I think he said the audio will be ready in like Audible.

Two weeks.

Two weeks.

Cool.

So you're running one hell of a business. And before I start, Dean Jackson, how would you. What should you say about Tommy that I have not yet mentioned?

I'm Excited to see you again, Tommy.

The.

You know what I was excited about with this? I think the greatest thing is that you're running a business that can't be digitized. You can't digitize a garage door. And it's just proof that everybody's all the rage right now is AI and virtual reality and all these things. And you've built this amazing business. One of the most practical things that you could imagine, somebody's garage door, and you look around you and everybody has them. And I love what you say about that. Your garage is like your smile of your house.

Smile of your home.

The smile of your home. It's so. It's such a great thing. Everybody's got one.

Well, if the garage is like the small of the home, would the driveway be like the tongue or how would you describe.

Yeah, maybe the tongue and the shutters are your jewelry. I don't know.

So. All right, so this is great. Well, here's what I want to share with everyone. So not only you run into business doing. You did over 200 million in sales this year, but you're netting like, you netted over $50 million last year. And I think it was right.

Yeah, that's right near there. We did 22% last month. This month we'll do 24%. I think we'll get to 30% Q3. And we're buying a lot of companies. We just closed the biggest deal we've closed last week, and we're buying companies. We're still growing organically and the team is just building. It's crazy what's going on in the company.

Yeah, yeah. Which is awesome. And I've spoken at 2 at Tommy's events. He's got a big one coming up in November, which we can put a link or tell people how to register for that later if they want to. It's for service businesses. And here's what I want to share, though, with everyone that has either been listening to. I love marketing, because those of you that are here live, this is great. We're also going to put this up as a podcast, and we're also going to put it up as a video on YouTube and whatnot. But Tommy, back in 2011, approximately, would come to the I Love Marketing meetup groups that were. That we held here live in this room when you were kind of starting out and you would kind of sit in the back and I mean, you.

Just tell stories and talk a lot about piranha marketing and some of the things. But I just took what you Said with what you built in the 90s and applied a lot of that, hence Garage Door Freedom. The networking group and the company that we bought that was massive, was part of my group. And they did everything the same as we do. They had the same KPIs, they had the same operating system, the CRM. They literally were like a clone of us, just a smaller version. So the guy goes, listen, my dad wants 20 million for the company. I was like, if you do what I say, in six months you'll be at 20. We could give you 20 million. And they did everything. We gave them everything they wanted and they rolled equity into the new company, which is ours.

Wow.

Wow.

Okay, awesome. Well, so what I want to start with then is, is really some just foundational, fundamental things of how the hell do you build and grow a company? Because not only have you done it to yourself, but you're now teaching other people how to do this. And what I love is because I started out in service businesses, I mean, we. I've helped tens of thousands of them, as have you, and that's what you're kind of doing. And so to Dean's comment, how have you used technology in your company today and where is it? Just simply providing great customer service, showing up in the home, doing all these things. I'd love to have you speak to those.

So, you know, Service Titan is the leading CRM and home service. And we have 6,000, actually 7,000. I'll call tracking numbers. So every marketing campaign and you have a few of them here, from Google PPC to LSA to our GMB to our organic site, every single Valpak zone zone is 10,000 has a unique number for attribution. I've got more KPIs on the business. I've got a scorecard for every employee. We've got the numbers now I know where every guy's at. I know how to do faster routing. We dispatch for dollars. But it's so important to train. We double down on training every day. I got guys traveling the country, we call it polishing. We've got a market acceleration technician training where we got six guys that'll fly out and work with each team. We're in 40 markets now, so a lot of it, the numbers tells us what we need to train. But we double down on training all the time. Like we're constantly training. I always tell people I did two a days in football, five days a week to play one game. But for some reason in business we say you train for two weeks and you're good to go for the rest of your life. That'll be the last you hear of us. There's no one on ones. There's no. We got a daily morning mojo call. We've got two one on ones each month. We've got a Thursday morning meeting that goes an hour and a half called Bring the Fire. We've got the teams traveling out. We got guys coming back to Phoenix every week to retrain and polish. And I think the training is where we win is because we focus a lot on eye contact, tonality. Body language is 55%. Tonality is 38. 7% is the words we use. So we focus a lot, all three of those. But most importantly is just smiling more and being excited and enjoy your job and stop hating Mondays and getting the right canvas and recruiting the right people that are willing to learn and want more for their lives and want to elevate, buy a house, put their kids in private school if they choose to, you know, renew their vows in Hawaii in 10 years, figuring out their why. Instead of saying, you got to hit your KPIs, you're going to be on a performance improvement plan. We say things like, you told us you wanted to buy a house by November. You told us you were gonna take your kids to Disney World. This is what needs to happen to make that happen. And you told me you want us to hold you accountable. So it's an easy conversation. Remember why you're doing this. And if they don't have a real reason, you gotta help them peel that onion back to find the reason.

What are your thoughts on people that have desires and goals and are intrinsically motivated or aspirational versus people that just don't show up? They don't live into the opportunity or the suggestions or the advice that you're providing. I mean, the bigger question is, when do you give up on someone or do you never give up on someone?

Well, if they got a will, I'll find a way. And they gotta have goals. Better your best. If you're better than last week, if you really want it, we'll help you get there. But there's certain people in the room, they'll sit at the back of the room and they hope they're not last. They're like, yes, I'm not the worst. There's other guys in the front that say I need to be number one. So one of our core values is aspire to be number one. So they're out there learning. And I say, if you're not learning outside of what we teach. And you're not trying to better your. Read more books, listen to podcasts. We are always putting podcasts to listen to. Some guys are like, dude, I just listened to that podcast. It changed my life. And some other people are like, nope, I never. I just kind of floating through life, waiting for life to happen to me, waiting for that lucky chance, scratching off that lottery, hoping one day that luck finds me. And it's just never really. Those are the guys that I'm like, and gals that I'm like, do you want more? Because let's write down your goals, and let's think a little bit bigger. Not just one house, let's think about five houses. I got a guy with four rentals in his house, and he. He's. He's 40 years old. He's got. I got a guy that's 23 and a half, because when you're in your 20s, you still count in halves. So he's 23 and a half, and he's like, he bought his house. He paid 30% down. He bought his dream car. He's been with us two years. And he goes, my goal is to pay the house up before I'm 25. And he's just. That mindset, and he's like, listen, I'm gonna continue to be better. I'm gonna continue to ride myself, and I'm gonna continue to hang out with the best. And sometimes the best aren't within our industry. Sometimes it's calling an H Vac guy, having him come in, talk about what's working with financing and using other people's money. One of the things we say is, did you want to use your money today or did you want to use our money? Then we just smile. And these things we focus on repeating, repeating. You look uncomfortable when you say that. Smile more. Have fun. You know, every time I'm with a customer, stand up real quick. So if I'm selling you a part.

Yeah.

I'm just going to say, hey, Joe, let me show you this part.

Yeah.

I'm never going to go, hey, Joe, right? You know?

Yeah. You don't want to be intimidated.

Yeah. These little things that just make a huge difference that we practice over and over with the body language. And if it's a woman, usually I'll come to her like this, where I'll man up and square up with a guy a little bit differently. And we always get both parties on the phone. My husband's at work. My wife's at work. Okay. Is there a chance we could give Her a quick call, then we give a compliment. Hey, listen, you got a beautiful home. Your wife is absolutely amazing. She just offered me iced tea. I'm sorry. Excited that we get to serve you today and just have fun. And we say mellow the customers. One of our five green lights is mellow the customer. What that means is, you know, I can work anywhere I want in the country, in the world, with a garage door. I chose a one because they're here for my family. They've been here good times and bad, and they showed up. And I trust them with my family. Here's my kids. You should trust them, too. So they got to believe in the company, Then they got to believe in you. And that's just putting booties on when you walk in. Giving compliments. Never say this is the cheapest option. We say this is the most economical. But I go back to getting the right canvas. I don't hire people from inside the trades very often. I hire a lot of busboys, a lot of bartenders, a lot of Amazon delivery guys. Like, we just find people that smile and enjoy what they do and then teach them our trade. So many people are waiting. Hey, if I got that perfect guy at that other company, he'll come build it for me. And a lot of times the people that are great at another company won't be great at ours.

Yeah. Because they're bringing over the culture and the learn business.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's all about money, money, money, money. Money is a KPI that we track in my bank account. Now. We're pretty well, you know, the company's doing great. I'm doing pretty great. So now money is just like, how are we doing with money? But Simon Sinek, what is it? The game, the infinite game of just. We're not here for just this year or next year. We're here for long term. So what's this company going to be? It's going to be the largest, I think the largest home service company in the world. And I think we could take the same concepts. They're exact same. It's just a different widget, whether it's carpet or whether it's roofing or gutters. And right now, the highest multiple that I've ever seen other than software, which is coming down rapidly, is home service. And that's why all the PE groups, private equity, venture capitalist, all the money's rushing into home service.

Yeah.

Like crazy. The multiples are insane.

Well, why? Because there's just a complete lack of people getting training in it. And it's so needed for the infrastructure that's pretty much dissolving in so many parts of the world with not enough people to do it or what.

There's a lack of people doing it because nobody grows up and says, I want to be a garage door guy. You got to work with your hands. Our guys love what they do, except when it's 120 out or 0 degrees in Detroit or Wisconsin. But I think the real deal, what brought so much value is they seen a lot of the equity groups and the private money coming in. They said these guys could actually run really sophisticated businesses. And it's essential. During COVID hotels, nail salons, movie theaters, everything fell apart. And that's when the multiple started to go up. It was like, whoa, everybody's gonna need a plumber. You don't know what to do when your stuff's flooding and the hot water heaters bursts all into the home. So what are you gonna do if your roof's leaking? Are you gonna just say, listen, kids, just deal with the leaks when you're sleeping, or are you gonna say, listen, we need to get this done? And then you got the home as equity, you got the home to back up. If you need to get a loan, they can put a lien on the house. Whereas in this day of software, with AI, everything else, I mean, we're applying some AI and experimenting with it. But overall it goes back to the core principles. Put an ad out there, get the phone to ring, book the call, get a conversion. Average ticket needs to be where it needs to be. We don't sell things people don't need. I don't sell anything people need. I sell things people want. And people like, I don't sell things people people don't need. I'm like, I don't need a new iPhone. I didn't need this house. I don't need a new car. I sell things. People are like, wow, that storage, that bottom rubber that keeps all the bugs out. Yeah, I want that. That'll make sense for me.

Yeah, totally. Well, so let's back up to when you were the first month of your business, when you first started, what year was that? Because certainly, I don't know if you were thinking about exiting companies and buying up different companies and all the stuff you learned today. Not at all. Like, what year was that when you first started?

2006.

How old were you?

22.

22. And let's talk about what were you doing wrong? What were you doing right? Because there was something that you learned, something you discovered A behavior you applied, a mindset that you had a bunch of things that I think would be really helpful for everyone watching and listening to understand how you went from where you were to where you are now.

Well, I was the guy that did everything. I took the phone calls, I'd walk out of movie theaters, I ran all the jobs, I did all the inventory. I hired my first employee. I had to be the HR guy if something went wrong. But there wasn't a whole lot of HR back then because there was just one, two, three people. And the mindset was, I'm the best one to do everything. No one's going to try as hard as me. And the other mentality was I didn't have enough money. A lot of people, they've got to be the employee for a long time because they don't have the money to invest, so they got to do everything.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was. I was the whole chief cook, bottle washer, that whole thing. I remember cleaning carpets back and I started my carpet cleaning business in 1990. And there was no Internet back then. So when I had to drive somewhere, there was no gps. It was Thomas guides with maps. And I would drive. And it's so funny how people today, they can't even navigate five miles down the road to get to a restaurant without, you know, it's so hysterical. And I'm glad I grew up in that time because I had to figure out how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy. And in a lot of ways, you're kind of in the same boat. There's necessity, but people don't hope that they need a new garage or hope that the garage breaks or that the cat pisses in the corner or the boss is coming over for dinner. There's all these reasons that cause people to take a look at stuff. But I equate, you know, my carpet cleaning business like going to the dmv, you know, it's the necessary evil that comes with driving. You got to go get a dmv. For people that are not in the United States, it's the Department of Motor Vehicles, one of the many bureaucratic organizations that are incredibly inefficient. And I agree.

In the post office, yeah, there's so many.

But, you know, so you got into this non sexy, non glamorous business, as did I. But non sexy, non glamorous is from the outside. I mean, I've met some of the greatest people on the planet that do work that from the outside people would not really see as high status. Or high esteem, but some of the most awesome humans that really enjoy their work. So when you're looking at the first 30 days, what do you wish you knew then that you know now that you could share as a suggestion, advice, insight to the people watching? Because I think what you're doing now is you're helping people not have to go through the pain and the angst that both of us went through when we were starting our businesses. The same reason I started teaching carpet and upholstery cleaners, I was like, what is the hell that I went through that if I would have known that I would have been able to shorten the pain curve.

So there's a few core things. Number one is have a plan, have a budget, have goals. Not just yearly, quarterly, monthly, but this week and today. Have a business plan. Understand your marketing. The numbers matter. And I'd say if I had a CFO or even a really, really high end bookkeeper, I would have made a lot better decisions. And I think the biggest mistake is that people, you start making money because you're working your butt off. You're doing every job. You're bound to make six figures. Number one is how much is the business making versus you because you're allowed to pay yourself six figures and the business should still make 10, 15, 20%. Bottom line EBITDA. The next thing is live within your means. You owe it to invest back in the thing that's making you the most money. A lot of people say, I worked my butt off for the last five years. We deserve a Harley. We deserve that second house. We deserve, we deserve. Their way of living goes up exactly as the business is going up. So they can't hire that great cfo, they can't hire a great coo. They can't hire someone doing their numbers in the background, a great CMO doing the marketing, because they can't afford to. So they say I got to continue to do it myself because we live this lifestyle now. And sometimes it's a husband, sometimes it's a wife, sometimes it's both of them where they're going on this vacation. And they can never reinvest in the thing that brought them the money because their lifestyle is changing with the business. And I've always lived well below my means. I mean, this is the first new truck I had is three years old now. I lived in the apartments. We bought a 20 plus. I lived there for four years and got to hang out with all the techs while they were training. And I was just delayed, gratification I would say, listen, I don't owe myself anything right now while I'm building the business until we plant a seed and water it so much that it's putting out so much fruit. I could take a little bit of the fruit but it takes nurturing and, and it takes reinvestment into that to grow, grow, grow until it turns into a machine.

I think that's a really important point. There's a lot of people that not only never delay gratification, but they live in a way that is not at all conducive to ever creating wealth. What is the difference between making money and managing money from your perspective?

Well, the real way to make money is your revenue and profit. Got to go above your spending and you got to have a budget. We work on people's personal budget all the time. I had a girl come up to me at dispatcher, she said I want you to sit down. She says I'm not making enough to cover my bills. And that's another thing real quick is if you want to get a raise from me, we'll talk about what's important to me and I'll pay you an unlimited supply of money. Let's work on if I do this, this, this, this, there's don't ask for a raise because you think you deserve more. Say what's important to you and if I'm able to get you 10 self generated leads a week and recruit you two people, can you give me an extra 60 grand a year all day long? And so let's work on both winning. That's the reason the book elevate is build a business where everybody wins. My suppliers got to win, the clients have to win. More importantly, I think my internal clients have to win the employees. And when they're winning, they recruit more. They'll pick up an extra weekend shift though. They'll help train another person. And it's this place where everybody wants to work because right now not a lot of people want to go to work. And so I don't go to the unemployment line to pick them up. Most of the time I get them to change their job they're at now. And I know you asked a certain question, but managing money is difficult. I can make as much money. I've always been able to make a lot of money. I can make a lot of money. I just didn't know how to keep it. And when I didn't show up to work, we wouldn't make a lot of money. Now I've been on 113 trips in the last 383 days. So I've been living on a planet. I've been more outside of Phoenix than I've been here. And I'm doing that as an investment into myself. I'm doing that because I'm on a lot of stages. I'm writing more books. I just passed my millionth download for home service expert. And more importantly than the business, setting goals and making millions and millions. You know, the business is worth a billion dollars right now. It'll be worth 2.2 at the end of 2025. That's how calculated we are. But it's more important when somebody says, dude, I just bought a house, and I'm able to make it to my daughter's soccer practice. I don't care what record in the world we hit that I had a day. We hit the best revenue ever. Two weeks ago, the guy called me, said, I just put my down payment on my. My house, and I'm finally building a life, that I could be a better father and a better husband and a better son to my parents. And I guarantee you, that was more special to me than every record in the world, because we're helping to build people up. And that's what we're about, is, like, you can make it on your own. You're gonna accomplish your dreams, your goals, whatever you want out of life, and raise really great children to come into this world and show up for them, show up to their soccer practice, be there for their symphonies. And I think that a lot of people say, what's in it for me? When you wrote that book, I was like, I've been saying this for years. Go into an opportunity. What's in it for them? And what I like about your book is there's certain people that pull the life out of you. Sometimes it's even in your marriage. But you got to get away from those people that just suck the life out of you. And we're teaching these things. I have a gal that works for me. She's like, have you ever heard of what's in it for them? I go, I'm actually on a podcast with him. I talked to her on Friday. She's like, I'm going through it, and, you know, we share a lot of stuff. She actually picked it up, and I didn't realize. I don't know if it was from me or not, because I posted about it. You know, I bought a lot of copies. You sent me some copies, and it's a great book. But that's. She's Like, I just got this person that's breathing the life out of me, and I work with them. I'm like, we got to get you out of that situation.

Right, Right.

No, totally.

I mean, like, the. The the not to do list is more important than the to do list. And the not to do person or the not to do half people, the hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating people need to be pruned. So you are left with more easy, lucrative, and fun people. I want to come back to something you said about people, and I want to kind of have you break down your rules of engagement with you. And how do you either attract or train people to work with you? Because you said something really important. When someone that I've hired, especially very early on, comes to me like, I need to make more money, I want to make more money. And it's the and who doesn't? No matter how, I've never been in a room of millionaires and asked, you know, how many of you don't need to make any more money? No one raises their hand. Everyone perceives they need to make more money. So this is just a human desire. But when someone comes to me that works for me and says, I need to make more money, attached to that is nothing about, well, I need to make more money in order to pay you more money, what's in it for, in this particular case, me. They need to think what's in it for them, right? And so if they're asking, you know, I just need to make more money, then they're just thinking about themselves. And what I think is so annoying to most business owners is that so many people that work for a company come to seminars. Everybody does the arithmetic. Nobody does the subtraction. They just look at the amount of money that's coming in from a job, and they think that, like, all goes to the business owner. They don't realize insurance and payroll and buildings and equipment and a million other things that cost money. And so when you said, if someone you'll pay people money all day long if they attach it to you, I'm often surprised when we employ people where unless you're a jerk, unless you're a total asshole. And there are those bosses, the number one job of your team not only is to service the customers, but keep the person happy who's actually paying you. Not happy. Like a smile on their face by flattering them happy, by making sure the business is profitable, making sure the business is functional, making sure it works. So in my company, there's unlimited amounts of money to Be made for anyone that helps create customers. You know, Peter Drucker said the primary purpose of business is to create customers. Marketing and innovation produce results. All other business functions are cost. And so there's people that make money, there's people that save money. And if people don't make you money or save any money, if they at least make your life easier so you can go out and do the things where you're most skilled at, you will reward those people?

Absolutely.

So my question to you, is it built in, in, is it factory equipped? Or do you have a way that you instill that in people? Or some people have it and others don't? Because I honestly don't know. I mean there's this. I have a guy who works for me named Jarrah that says for those that get it, no explanation is needed. For those that don't know, explanation will do. And so some people kind of get it and other people don't. But I'm wondering because I think for people watching this right now, if they could attract people who showed up and they're like, first off, how do we make this person's life easier, better, more profitable? How do we focus on the ball? How do we identify what that person wants, hear what the person says and just do it, it would be game changing. And I'm saying this for myself too because I'm genuinely interested how you go about instilling that.

So almost every employee, which are my internal clients at work have a scorecard and we always take the mean and we show them. If you want to make you go to calca1garagetools.com as a technician, you want to make 200 grand, we can reverse engineer your KPIs and to do that you need to know what needs to happen today. And I'll give you all the help because I'll give you a guy that's hitting that KPI. And it isn't about we're going to sell the socks off of grandma. It's about we're going to fix the things correctly that are worn out. And we go to like this with every single opportunity and say, listen, we don't just give you one way to make money. If you recruit somebody, you get $1,500 self generated leads, get 7% of the ticket. I will show you guys how to be great marketers. Your wife goes to a B and I meeting already because she's a realtor. Let's talk about how to get her to sell some garage doors. I'll pay for anybody's bi meeting. We'll talk about social media, we'll talk.

About business networking international.

Here's the deal. We were all spoiled the last three years. If you didn't make money especially in home service last three years, you shouldn't be an employer, period. So we were spoiled. We were really spoiled. So everybody's going, they're blaming it on the marketing. And I tell people there's three ways to make money other than cutting costs. Get more customers, keep your customers coming back more frequently or charge more to your current customers. So we're at 28,000 service agreements in the last year. So that's frequency. Every year we go out with lubricated, just tighten everything on the door. We do 151 point tune up. How are we going to raise the ticket? Well, we're going into selling storage now. We're going to go into front doors, we're going to go into the flooring, polyester espartis or epoxy. How do we get more clients? Lead sources. But we focus on when a lead came in, having attribution to understand where the leads are coming in order to 90% booking rate. No one that I know in home services at a 90%. We've got a whole rehash team for on book jobs. We have a Spanish speaking sector of the business. We're going bonkers in about three months on all the Spanish campaigns, pay for performance, all the stations, all the newsletters in Spanish. We're building the whole website in Spanish and then we're sending links, we're giving backlinks to rank and then we're putting, you know, Hispanic people in those pictures because people like to do business. 40% of area Arizona speak Spanish as a first language. I want to do business with who I communicate with the best.

Yeah.

So these are all things I'm not, I'm not blaming marketing. I'm going, listen, we could be better. We could book more calls, we could get more conversion rates. We look at. One of the biggest things I do is say, listen, Joe, we're fixing your door right now. We've already got a lot of it fixed. There's still a few things, but have you ever thought about our new door? Let me just show you. 40% of your curb appeal remodel magazine came out six years in a row. This year it said 102.7% return on investment means that if you spend the money today, you're actually going to get it back in equity. When you sell the home and when you educate people, you're like, listen, I never really thought about that, but actually, that really looks good. And these are the little things that I think are so important when I'm dealing with a person wants to make more money. I got 10 ways. If you sell a service agreement, you get a buck a month. You sell 20amonth, 20 a week, that's 80 bucks a month. You do that for a few years, you're bringing in thousands a month. We call that mailbox money.

Right.

And there's so many ways to make money at the business. And I'm just continuing to find more sources. The old saying is, what happens if I train them and they leave? And my reaction to that is, what if I train them and they stay?

Right, right.

And now I got really great people that show up. And, you know, there's going on over 700 of us now. We're in 23 states and we're picking the markets and we are working with PE right now. And we had a great meeting yesterday. And they said, how are you going to take market share? How are you going to own 15 to 20% of the market? And that's not an easy task. And there comes a point of diminishing returns where you're spending more than you could for a lead to get the ROI you want. But then there's years where I say, we're not going to make anything in this market. We're going to make a minus 2% because that's long term, but we're going to take market share. So it's long term thinking. But I think with employees, you just got to understand, set the expectations up front, have a manual, have an sop, have a scorecard, make sure they understand it, can read it back to you. People always say it on these podcasts and different webinars. They're like, I'll outwork you all day long. I'm like, you could outwork me, but I'm gonna out delegate you. Because I hire for my weaknesses. I don't care who's gonna outwork me. I work nights, I work weekends, I work holidays. But at the end of the day, I'm not keeping track of my hours. I'm focusing on getting the right executive assistant. Assistants. I have two. I'm hiring a personal assistant. I'm buying back my time and I hired one of the best trainers. I got a new nutritionist starting. I got the people cooking my meals. Actually, the gal you introduced.

Okay, good.

So we're meeting her this week. Ultimately, I'm like, where are my weaknesses? I know what my Strengths are. I'm gonna focus on those. I don't want to be well rounded. Yeah. I don't care about well rounded. I'm not gonna ever be a cfo. I'm never gonna love a pivot table and be like, ooh, look at this, look at this balance sheet item. I know how to read it, but.

I don't know who's mumbling in the background there. Was that a question or someone just excited. Okay, well, you know, I love what you just said about I will out delegate you because there are a shit ton of people that follow these gurus. Yeah. Most of them are high strung, super addiction, Yelling, screaming, barking. Haven't dealt with their childhood traumas. And they're ranting and raving, you know.

Like, I'll outwork anybody. You know, it's like, why You're a one man soldier. You can have people around you, but you'll never train anybody to do as good as you. I hope that everybody around me becomes better than me. And people say, what happens if they do leave? And I say, I hope they were just a better person by knowing me. But I cut you off. I'm sorry.

No, no, no. It's great. The one person, you need an army of people that are supporters. So with the sheer amount of people that your company is servicing in the beginning, I think the perfectionistic attitude, you want to do everything right. You don't want to have anyone complain. You want everyone to be happy. Inevitably. There is no way for you to have 28,000 jobs that are delivered and not have something go wrong either. A technician messes up, you have an unreasonable customer, you know, acts of God, weather, you know, all kinds of things, you know, supply problems. How do you handle when things go wrong?

Things go wrong all the time. And I put in layers, just like the military. I don't take on everything. There's layers that come to me in general, they know to protect me from anything bad because I focus. I'm very happy. I'm more of a leader that I try to spread the good word, the gospel. I'm constantly applauding team members. I've got a whole thing, a1Winner.com, where you go and I'll send a video to different people throughout the day of just to let you know, I love you, I'm proud of you. I don't get as much chance to see you as much as I used to. So they protect me from the negative because I don't like hearing the negative. So they know, listen, let's not even Tell Tommy, let's just fix it. But really what you focus on is I created an eight step, an eight step process in 2010 that works every single time for my technicians. And we created five green lights before you sell a garage door. Both decision makers know they're pre financed, they've got options. We know that they mellowed the customer. We've got all these systems in place and the systems are not forever. They get tweaked over time with technology and we embrace technology. I got a dual camera system in every vehicle. I know when there's a tire that has an issue. I know when it needs a tune up, it's automatically. I know when guys need to switch vans because one guy's putting more miles on a van than another guy. I know the perfect time to trade them in to get the highest value ROI on the vehicle. All these systems, we're, we're, I tell everybody we're going to change who we are. We're the best we've ever been, but the worst we'll ever be because tomorrow we're going to be a hell of a lot better. Yeah. And just know, I tell everybody in my orientation, I do a three and a half orient hour orientation each month. I say, guys, what you're coming into, it won't feel the same in three months. It'll be the same culture. We're gonna show up for you, we're gonna smile a lot, we're gonna celebrate, we're gonna break bread with each other. But just know, don't get comfortable with what today is because it won't be the same in three months. And I think that's the hardest thing is people have to be willing to adapt. And that's the culture we built. And if you don't plan on your culture, your culture will get built without a plan. And that's the worst thing you could have.

And if that happens and someone needs to reinvent their culture. Any recommendations?

Yeah, you know, I think the main thing is explaining that there's SOPs, and a lot of times what the owner says is, these people aren't good. You know, they'll never work as hard as me. Well, that mentality of just, I'm the best. I go in and I say, listen, I'm going to train you to be better than me. I hope you're better than, than me and show up. You should praise just as much as you criticize. And never criticize in public and just spend time with people. Quality time. We went skydiving three weeks ago with 15 of the technicians. We got a Pinnacle club. We brought, I don't know, about 50 of US technicians, wives, and other important key players in the company. We went on a really nice. We went out to the park. We bought food. We had volleyball at the skydiving adventure. That was a different time.

How many people out of the 50 jumped out of the plane?

Only 12. And there was a guy that didn't show up, and they said, you want to go? I'm like, not really, but I'll go because. And you went.

I went, okay, good, because I've jumped out of planes twice. Scared.

It's scary.

I'm afraid of heights. And it was one of these things to try to get over my fear. But I was just curious. So, like, if you got every one of the people to listen, There was.

Another 20 that said they want to go. I said, bring it on. And right now, in that one week before that, we went to a baseball game, and we went to topgolf in every market. You know, Bree, her job is to set up these events all the time. Because if I get to know you and your kids and your dogs and your significant other, you build relationships outside of work. I'll tell you, the trick of keeping a business where people don't leave all the time is there's a stat. It's like 90% of people will not leave a company because they have a best friend within the company. They don't make that best friend at work. They make it outside of work. So having those outside activities and letting them get to know each other not always make it. Hey, guys. What the hell happened today? Like, we never, ever get up at a meeting. We talk about the great things going on in the business. We had the mojo call every morning. We talk. We don't ever say, you guys really suck at the bottom. We're like, listen. Tell me the mindset of how you had your best day ever in the company's history since you've been here. What mental breakthrough did you have? What ceiling did you have to break through? And a guy I don't know a year ago, he's like, dude, I started wearing work boots instead of tennis shoes. We have. You got to wear an A1 shirt, but you can wear shorts. It's 110 degrees out. So a guy says, I started wearing work boots, and people started thinking I'm a worker, instead of, like, I guess they used to think I was a salesman or something. And the next week, every guy had work boots on. And I was like, whatever works. But it's as little things to let them tell you. I don't tell guys what to do. I let the winners that are making these breakthroughs talk about what's working for them. Yeah, that's.

That's good. So we have a question here from Vincent. So what's your question? Vincent?

Hey, can you hear me?

Sorry about that. Yeah, we can hear you. All right, perfect.

Thanks, Tommy. Appreciate all the insights here. You mentioned Dan Antonella. I just want to give him a quick plug because he's awesome and he does great work. But I'm mid-30s. I appreciate a lot of the insights you've provided. I'm an attorney, actually, but I see a lot of the, you know, what we were talking about pertains to the legal profession 100%. But interested if you have any recommendations for yourself. I guess looking back when, when you.

Were that age 35 was five years ago.

Are you 40 yet?

I've just turned 40 in March. Yeah, I think it. Even throughout my 30s, I think it was, you know, I wasn't good at budgeting. And I'd say I've really taken the time to whiteboard and become a master whiteboarder at systems and figuring out what I'm not good at and putting together the right person I'm looking for and what the scorecard is. So many times Al Levy taught me this is. He goes, you hire a person and then you build a box around them. Now I build the perfect box and find the person to fit into the box. And I don't. It sounds bad. I don't put people in a box.

But.

But, you know, whatever that sop and what they're doing is your business model, the business model box. And I would just say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm not married. I don't have any kids. You know, that's a goal of mine. But as far as what I do in business is, I'm off balance on purpose. It's a book by Dan Thurman. And when you're working all the time, you got to have a plan for when you might not be as close to your kids or you might not be praying or meditating. A lot of people say, I just want balance. I want balance. I'm comfortable being unbalanced. And throughout my 30s, to build something that was really special, that I can make a lot of people millionaires, and I could give back to a lot of people, I had to be off balance. And so many people say, listen, man, how do you do it? And I'm like listen, you can't go on over 100 trips in less than a year and stay perfectly and work out perfectly every day. And one other thing I would say because you're a lawyer is hopefully have the money, start buying back your time. Unless you love mowing the lawn, unless you love, love, love cooking, unless you love getting on the phone and working out contracts with home repairs that you need at your house or you love scheduling your own flights. I don't do any of that stuff and I'm starting to delegate way more than I ever thought possible. And my goal is to 10x how much I delegate. And there's an art of delegation that I bet you you make two or three important decisions in a day. The rest of the things you can all delegate out. And it's really hard. I just be careful on what you consider balance because people just say I want to make more money and I want to be happy. But that doesn't have anything to do with mindset of abundance. It doesn't mean to be thankful and I'm just comfortable. I know I can't work out and do sit ups eight times a day and pray ten times a day and make it. I don't have kids but make it to the kids games and also be the best boss and also put 12 hours in a day. And also it's just a lot of people have these weird goals. I just want balance. It's just you will, but it's going to be a lot less work and there's going to be a time for that. But you got people say, you know, how did you do this? And it's unbelievable what people think they could do in one year and underestimate what they could do in five. So play the long game. And a lot of people say just want to become an influencer and I want more. I and I want it to happen by next year. And I got this big goal. I know we're at 2 million. I know I could be at 10 million. It took you 10 years to get to 2 million. And yes, there are years you could double but really have realistic expectations that are numbered and don't give yourself this. I always shoot for the moon, but I have a good goal. We call them Tommy goals. We have good, better, best. And then we have the Tommy goal that's really unattainable. Every once in a while we'll hit the Tommy goal.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come Out. And if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Gotcha.

Well, does that answer your question, Vincent? 100%.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Tommy.

Yeah, thanks, Vincent.

And we'll ask. Brent has a question on Zoom that was just popped up here. Well before we ask this, so I might have you pop it up here in a minute. I want to speak to something you just talked about, buying back your time. I understand what you mean by it. I'd love for you to elaborate a little more because I think that. For instance, let me just share this quick story. So I've spent six weeks of my life on Necker island having breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Richard Branson. During most of those days, I have spent hours interviewing Richard, conducting brainstorm sessions on Necker Island. Richard has a very hard time explaining what the hell he does. He's like this intuitive entrepreneur. And so people can watch a couple of my interviews with them online if they want to, just type in my name. And Richard Branson. The best conversation I have with them, though, is me and him in the morning one day, I don't know how many years ago this was. It was a long time ago. And I said to him, you know, Richard, when's the last time you did your laundry? And he's like, kind of looks up. He's like, I've never done my laundry. And I'm like, what do you mean you never did your laundry? What about when you were a kid? He's like, well, my mom did my laundry, you know? And I'm like, okay, when's the last time you're in a grocery store? He kind of looks up. He's like, I don't think I've ever been in a grocery store. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like that. How is that even possible? What about when you were, you know, with the Sex Pistols? You know, were you buying beer for Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten? He's like, I don't think I've ever been in a grocery store. And then he says, like, joe, he goes, you hire people to do that stuff. He goes, if you make one good hire, it could save you thousands of hours in your life. Now, first off, I don't believe the guy's never been in grocery store, maybe laundry, you know, because I knew his mom before she passed away. But, you know, the point is Delegation, Right. And so today I shot a video of me doing laundry. And part of it was a kind of a social experiment. I wanted to actually. Did you see that video? If anyone wants to watch it, it's.

A topless video of you doing laundry.

Exactly. So it was all done on purpose. And I was sitting there, folded some laundry. It's on Twitter. So if anyone wants to go and look at my Twitter page. Joe Polish. Or Instagram, which is Joe Polish, or Facebook, which is Joe Polish. I literally posted the video there because I just wanted to see what the comments would be. And I did it right before we came down here. And part of it, though is there is a lot of stuff that you can buy back your time. And the whole concept of buying back your time is really, I think, the defining factor of when you go from amateur to pro. Right there. Not everything. I mean, you know, if there's certain things you like and it works and until you have the box set up so it's not a total mess. Because a delegation is when you can completely hand it off and it doesn't fall apart, right? Not there's abdication, then there's delegation. So the whole buy back your time, you know, explain what that actually means. I mean, I think most people get it, but it's so dedicated, important. And I. And I think it's one of the reasons why you have been able to leverage yourself and have built what it is you have, because you just simply understand that.

Well, I'm in the fetal stages. Like for. You've been to the house. It's an undertaking.

Oh, yeah, Big ass house.

I literally have five whiteboards front and back. So 10. And I spent three hours the other night whiteboarding the new cleaning lady we're gonna bring in. And I'm building maps of the house and putting different color markers of what needs to be mopped. And I'm building SOPs how I like my laundry when I get the dry cleaning. What's important to me about dry cleaning? What I want in the shower, Do I want to. This sounds crazy. Do I want a piece of floss out? What kind of floss do I like? It sounds pretentious. It might sound kind of sinny or cocky, but that's. These are the little things I want. What's important to me for my truck, how much gas? When do I want my gas filled? Like, you take a look at everything and you write down everything you do for a week, the tiniest little things, the most minuscule of things, and you say, how could I Put this in a system to get someone else to do it the way I enjoy it. And I think if you really documented, you got an old fashioned scheduler that had every hour and the hours were big and you wrote down everything and then you highlighted simple things by hiring a $20 an hour person and saying, these are all the things. And then here's what I'm going to do when I book my next ticket. I'm going to build a loom video or record it on zoom and I'm going to say out loud what I'm doing. I'm going to say, listen, I'm traveling to Baltimore. I prefer this flight. I prefer this time. Here's my TSA PreCheck number. If I can't do this, I'll fly on Southwest if it's less than an hour and it could get me there faster. And you're talking out loud and you're building your training videos for someone. Because here's what will happen if you don't set this up correctly. No one will do it. Up to your expectation you're gonna go, I'll just do it myself. This is BS and you gotta, you gotta kind of, you gotta step back and say, I'm gonna not. I'm gonna spend the time training other people and then I'm gonna get back tenfold time. So anything I do, I'm thinking about a system to make it more efficient. And I'm going, okay, who can I hire? What can I do? And I always know there's going to be a little bit of complication. So I got to have someone that asks great questions and will repeat after me exactly what I expect. And then I got to have an intent. I call it my data integrity teams to make sure the systems are being followed exactly. So you need checks and balances for each system you create. And it's as small as setting up the bathroom. I wear the same shirt almost every day. It's the same shirt because I don't want it to think about the shirt. Setting up systems in a way that's repeatable. And I just think if you look at everything you do, whether that's cleaning up dog poop. I enjoy walking my dogs. Sometimes I listen to audible, sometimes I'll check up on social media. I get a lot of questions about that. I like to answer personally. So I'm never gonna quit walking the dog. We do have a dog walker. She's out of town for the next two weeks. It's kind of annoying because I like to walk Finnegan 15 minutes. But he gets anxiety if he doesn't walk for an hour. So. So I'm building now. I'm building a backup plan for when she's out of town. I did laundry yesterday because I got. So I haven't done laundry in two years. And the cleaning lady that we had moved, and so we got this laundry service coming, and I'm like, well, I'm out of my. And I got, like, 20 of these. So I washed them all. I hung them up. I like them a certain way. I like them filed in my. In my cabinet a certain way. But here's the thing. If you walk in that cabinet and you got a cleaning lane, and every time, you got to fix it, and you don't have a system. The way my socks. I literally throw all my socks out once a year. I buy the exact same pairs of all of them because I hate matching socks, Right? So why not? You know, it's called going lean. It's called Six Sigma. It's called lean manufacturing the Toyota way. And it's coming up with ways to be more efficient. And your whole life, you just think about things that you love to do and other things you could delegate or become more efficient with. Yeah, I love it.

This is great. A lot of value and wisdom there. Okay, pop that question back up. Okay, so does Tommy have a training program or a group similar to nexstar?

So nexstar focuses on H vac, plumbing, electrical. Julian Scadden's a great, great friend of mine. I stay at his house when I go there. He's in Twin Cities, Minnesota. We're taking everything they've built, and I didn't think. I want to build it for every company, whether you're pest control, roofing, gutters, whatever it might be. Joe knows a lot about it. Joe showed me everything he built in the 90s, and we're duplicating it in a lot of ways. And I asked for Joe's help because he's a mentor, and so I don't want to make the same mistakes he built. You know, the genius network. Not only the money flowing through here, but there's a bigger reason for me is these guys. Why do you build a business? One of three reasons to die and have the government take it. Two, to sell it, or three, to give it to your kids. Your kids don't want your business as much as you might believe. They love it. That's a way. It's a means to an end for them, and they know it because dad or mom did it. So we're teaching people. What's your goal? You need 10 million, 20 million, 30 million. What do you enjoy doing? What does your life look like in five years? Do you enjoy golfing, fishing? Let's make sure we build a life you want and then let's get you there because you got to have that end in mind. So mine's more focused on how you're going to sell your business and getting the right systems, whether that's the chart of accounts. Making sure you've got the right SOPs, making sure you got the right KPIs, making sure you got the right the balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, you're on accrual accounting. All these things that I've made mistakes of. How to get a delayed draw term loan in place, how to do acute quality of earnings, all these things that companies don't know about. Getting the right lawyers, we're going to help that. But that's not the only reason we're doing it. But what better reason would you want to have a network to train you than to get to your destination, your outcome of the perfect life. No such thing as the perfect life, but there's a life you'd enjoy a lot more. With family, friends, they will say, what's the perfect life? With your mom and your sister, your niece and nephews. I'm like, I love them but I don't want to go back when I was a kid, 6 years old, mom, dad and Kia. I want them around as lot, but I want it to be quality time. I want my phone turned off. And money does buy time in a lot of cases because listen, we're having a chef, we're going to Lake Tahoe and we're renting a boat, we're getting a guy to drive the boat, we're getting dinner. And I'm like, this is great. That's quality time. Because I don't enjoy going to the store like we talked about, like Richard getting the stuff, someone's running over here, someone's taking the garbage out, someone's cooking. And finally we have a 30 minute dinner. Now everybody's going out. Let's enjoy the full day together.

Yeah.

So it's a lot like that and I admire what they built. They do amazing things. So there's a lot of things we're going to take from that. I never was part of that group, but I know a lot of people that are and they've done amazing things. So I admire what nexstar has built.

Mike, if you can put the Zoom gallery up There so we can see everyone. Dean Jackson, I'm going to ask Tommy about marketing and I'd like you to pipe in. Is there anything that I didn't ask Tommy or bring up that you would like to since, you know, I've been doing I love Marketing with Dean 2010, by the way.

You introduced me to Dean. I got to go to Florida and Giuseppe was the camera guy. We had a lot of wind and it was out there. But I love what he did in Canada with the real estate. He's like, dude, I wanted to be in Florida. He's like, I wanted to be here. I wanted to be in the perfect spot. He built the perfect life. He's happy. You cannot find Dean without a smile on his face and you could tell what he's done. So I thank you both for spending time and hooking us up.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Dean, I was going to say.

Joe, this whole thing, like, Tommy is so on track here. Just singing my song, you know, I mean, loving this idea of delegating as much as you can. And time is time. People often, they feel okay to delegate stuff at work begrudgingly, but then they're at home cutting the grass and doing the laundry and doing all the things. They don't value that time differently than they value time at work. So I look at this as trying to. Trying to maximize three things. Daily joy, abundant time, and financial peace. And we're trying to dial all of those up to 11. And so much of it is just starting with what brings you joy. Tommy talked about all the systems at home I'm showing here. This is my house. We've got. We've lovingly call our home the Four Seasons. Valhalla. And Valhalla is the neighborhood where I live in. And we went through an exercise of thinking what would happen, what would it look like if the Four Seasons came and took over the management of your home? What would that look like? And they bring with them everything. What would the food and beverage department look like? And the maintenance department and the, you know, all of it. The concierge, the events, everything. And Joe, you remember you and I, I tried to set you up with the binder for that. Trying to imagine the operating system for your house. So I think you're right on track with that, Tommy.

I think it's funny, Dean, I have to mention this because when you show the cup that Tommy. See, what you notice about Tommy, every good idea, he captures it. And he's going to have cups made branded for his new house, which is really badass.

And as soon as you said the.

Four Seasons, if they. If they manage everything, which is absolutely hysterical. And, you know.

You know, it's interesting, Dean, because I had a really good buddy. He's got one of the largest plumbing companies in the country. And he's like, dude, where's your freaking iron? So I ordered irons for every room. Irons and ironing boards and steamers. Because I'm like, that's kind of annoying. I get that. So these little things, they don't. I can't predict everything, but somebody's going to say, I need an iron. And someone's going to go find the iron in one of the rooms versus me. I act. I do. I don't wait. I don't, you know, I don't wait for the perfect timing. And tomorrow's going to be a better day. And I'm going to next month. I'll get started. I get started. I fall down all the time. Time. I guarantee you guys, if you've seen a guy make more mistakes your life, I'd be surprised who it is, because I fall all the time. I just get back up. I don't make the same mistakes twice. But I'm not afraid to get started. So many people are like, I'm going to start that diet next week. I'm going to finally start working out. This is the day to get started. Start now. Don't wait. Because if you wait, it just gets. You procrastinate. But I also have the trainer come to me. I also am working on the nutrition plan that works in my life. I'm working on somebody that, you know. Giuseppe follows me with the camera. He's great. But also I'm like, listen, I don't eat right. So I had my assistant literally put times to eat. The bottles of water end up on my desk. The vitamins that I need. She's going to my doctor's appointments with me on just getting at the healthiest nutrition vitamins that I need. Because I'm like, how do I make it? How do I make this so easy for me?

Right?

That's what I'm thinking about all the the time.

You know, I have to comment on this too. And then we'll come to the marketing in a moment, I promise. Like Joe Decenta, who's the founder of Spartan Races. So he came to one of my hundred K groups and he was sitting right over here in this room. And I totally know this whole gig because I've known him for a while. He's interviewed me for his podcast I've been a speaker at, you know, the Spartan World Championships, all this stuff. So he lugs around and a kettlebell with him, and he comes to speak here. The guy's company just surpassed $100 million a year in sales at this time. And he has a luggage tag on a kettlebell, and it's just sitting there. And of course I knew why it was there, but I wanted to have this be a prop for him to give a talk. And so we got all these people in the dollar group running giant companies, a lot of people running just very, very big companies. And I said, you know, Joe, what's the whole deal with this kettlebell? Why do you check a kettlebell? And he's like, yeah. He goes, it's a way to remind me to never let my life get too soft. So it's a pain in the ass to carry this thing around, but it reminds me. So here's the thing, though. The reason I bring this up is there's different reasons in different contexts why people do the thing things it is they do. Like I just had Dr. Doug Brackman, who wrote the book Driven, and there's like, you know, 5% of the population has the D2D4 hunter gene and the rest are farmers. I mean, you and me are totally hunters, right? And the vast majority of the world is farmers. And so there's a certain drive, like a. Gary Vaynerchuk is a. You know, I've interviewed Gary in this room. He is a full blown hunter. So a lot of people that are farmers, they see Gary ratting and raving. They're just never going to be like that. They're not wired like that. And so my whole thing, you know, doing laundry, like I actually turn laundry into a ritualized system. I can either listen to podcasts or I can just think or I can do it. But at the, you know, I'm sitting here listening to.

Huh.

I loved what you wrote down. I'm going to go do a whole new audit of things that are ways. The whole tracking every 30. I used to do this starting back in 1998 was the first time I started a coaching group with a guy named Jeff Smith, and It was called 2x+1, where how to double your income and take an extra day off a week if you want to do that. So it's like, how do you actually do that? And one of the things is we would have people for two weeks track literally every 30 minutes and everything in between, but it was broken down where they could. Right. Every single thing they did. How many phone calls they did when they used the bathroom, when they ate meals, when they brushed their teeth. Like, everything so that people could audit and evaluate. What are the shit that you could have other people to do that you don't want to do. So my whole view on this is like, Doug Brackman was just here at Genius Network on Thursday and Friday, and he was talking about David Goggins, who wrote a book called Can't Hurt Me. He goes, well, yeah, you can't hurt him. But he beats the shit out of himself all day long. He hurts himself because he's so damn driven. So it was this whole. But I sit and listen to everybody and I'm like, you know, some things are right and work for that person and for other people. That's not all there.

No. I'll tell you this. I don't get up at 4 in the morning and do an ice bath and go through torture. You gotta do something you hate every day, you know, man. Works for some people, and I'm okay with that. And they want to put themselves through torture so they can appreciate the fine things in life. I'm just straight to the fine things in life. I'm like, listen, make it. Make it fun and interesting for me. No doubt. Like, make things. I like to be challenged. I like to win. I'm a competitive sob.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, you know, would be better than me working out would be give me something competitive to do that would be building something. Have me, like, just something that. That I enjoy. Like, what's a sport you love that you could go have a swim, races, or if you like, mountain biking. Make sure you find a compatibility and accountability partner at home and at work. That's one thing we do with every employee, is finding accountability partner at work and at home. Because people that know, if your wife or husband know exactly what you want to accomplish and what's in it for you.

Yeah.

And the kids know. They're like, eric Parks comes over from work. They're like, dad, did you sell a door today? His wife's like, don't come home until you sell a door. It's like. So I just. I don't go through the torture of these things that some of these people are like, you gotta just push yourself to that extra limit. Like, listen, do what you're comfortable with and do things the easiest way possible to get into an ice bath if you don't absolutely enjoy it. I enjoy cryo better than I like ice baths. And I know maybe you don't get.

Maybe that's because you're just kind of, you know, weak and timid. I don't know.

That might be. But I'll tell you guys, at the end of the day, I don't mind doing something you don't like. There's going to be stuff your whole life you don't like, sometimes going to work. But one thing I do say is make sure you enjoy Mondays. Because if you start to hate Mondays and you hate the majority of your life, you go through and one day you wonder where to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Ferris Bueller said it at the end of his movie, he's sitting there in bed, he goes, one day, if you don't start to wake up and smell the coffee, it's going to go by. And I think that's probably the best lesson is time, health and money. And it goes like this. Health, time, then money. Money could help both these things if you do it right. Money is just a tool. It's not the love of money. The Bible never says that the root of all evil. It doesn't say that in the Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil. Money is a great thing. So don't look at money and say, God, I just. You can't praise money, but if it buys you time and helps you become healthy and more quality time with the people that you love, you're winning.

Yeah, well, people say money can't buy happiness. Also, I haven't given enough of it away.

I've been using that. I've been using your line, you know, I'm going to speak at two events next week. And these are the type of things, doing this and being part of this and taking some knowledge. You guys drop on me. I use this stuff and I make sure I use it. I'll go home, take notes, put it in, I'll create. I use slideshows to keep me. I know you don't like slideshows. I just use them to keep me my time, right?

Oh, no. I use them once in a while too. Whenever I. Yeah, because it keeps an add person like me on track. And Joseph, you know what's so great is we're going to shoot a video video of me and you in an ice bath. An actual real ice bath.

Even though you probably hate it.

But that'll make sense.

I'll do it. I'm not afraid of it. I just don't. I'm not the type of guy that wakes up at 4am and they're like, what's Your morning routine. I'm like, I don't. I'm a night owl. And people are like, your routine is who wakes you? And I agree, there's a lot of things you could set yourself up for, what you do the night before to prep. There's all kinds of things you could do to make life go easier. But there's. People are like, what do you study? Do you study eos? Yes. I know Geno Wickman. I've had him on my podcast. I know Mark Winters. I've had him on my podcast. I've created my own system. And I don't need to read a book. And I read. I've read over 2000 books. I have 1200 on Audible. I don't need this like the other person's system I've created it on. That works for me is all I'm saying.

No, I mean, I think that's the great way to take information is you figure out what do you need solved? How does this apply? How do you utilize this and take what you like and leave the rest. That's a great line out of, of 12 steps. And, you know, I was interviewed yesterday for my book the Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery. And one of the first things I opened up with, I said, look, I'm mostly nocturnal. I mean, I wrote the Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery with Hal Elrod and Anna David because a lot of people were using the Miracle Morning for their addiction recovery. And Hal said, can we do a book together for people in addiction? So we did one specific. But I said to the, the guy, I go, it's really about the rituals. I don't care if you do them at 10am it doesn't really matter to me. The fact is, if there's something here that would be helpful, you design a life that works. Because at the end of the day, does it work or does it not work? Because when people try to adopt someone else's value system and they hate, doesn't expand them, it contracts them, discard it. Just live your life the way you want to live your life. And like you said, no one's going to be perfect. I mean, you're either on track or you get off track. And I think success is. It's not that the treadmill of shit never disappears. It's constantly there. What happens is your ability to navigate it, your ability to be resourceful. Because the things for successful entrepreneurs, if you had to deal with like before 9:00am Every morning, you deal with stuff that the average employee probably doesn't deal with in the Entire week, month, maybe year. And if you were dealing with some of the same stuff the first week you started out that you deal with today, it would have crushed you. So you've developed all these capabilities and all these skills over the years. So let's talk about, let's see, hold on, let me see if Kaylee's question. What advice can you offer to someone starting their business when they don't have the financials to get things going? Okay, let's answer that and then we'll come to the marketing.

Yeah, you know, a lot of people, that's the biggest downfall I see is they don't have any money, they don't have any access to a loan, they don't have a credit score on the other end, they have a ton of money. So they make big mistakes and lose a lot up front. So I like going in because you're more hungry and you don't have a lot. But you got to set a plan. First of all, you got to set a personal budget to have enough money to get started. And you're going to be the worker. There's no doubt about it. You can't hire a labor when you don't have money. But you got to create the systems. The nice thing about going into a small business and designing it yourself is you'll make the mistakes. If you document appropriately, you'll build checklists for people so they'll say, shoot, if you're starting a pie company, you'll say this is what not to do. And here's how you make sure you don't burn the pies. So I think there's advantages. But what I would tell you is if you don't have the financial, I don't recommend like a lot of people do, lean on your network. Because I don't think it's right to go to mom and dad or anybody else to get going. I think you have to have a plan to get started. Set a budget in one year and say here's how much money I'm going to go into it. And the best thing, the best advice I've ever given is find a business to what you want your business to look like when you're small. You might go to a million dollar company. Then I'd go to five million dollar companies. Then I spent a lot of time at $100 million companies. Now I'm going to billion dollar operations to find out what it looks like. The air is different, the SOPs are different, the org charts different. But if you don't know exactly and could visualize what your business looks like, spend time learning that. But I think you got to save some money. You don't need a lot of it because you are going to be the employee for the first couple years, most likely. But I think there's a lot of opportunities that come from that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So on ilove marketing.com me and Dean have a report called Breakthrough DNA, which goes through the eight profit activators. And if you need money, you got to figure out how to make money. Like, I've never built a company by raising capital because a lot of times people that are raising money, they have no idea how to sell something. So they're raising money in the hopes that they're magically going to figure out a profitable business model. So whenever I need money, I figure out what people want to buy. I create marketing that puts information in front of anything that I'm selling. And that's what I first started doing with consumer awareness guides and free recorded messages before the Internet. I mean, you advertise everywhere. And I think getting better at marketing and figuring out, you know, there's a line on the wall that says, any problem in the world that can be solved at the right sales letter by Gary Halbert. And when I first heard that line from him back in the mid-90s, I was thinking to myself, well, there's lots of things that can't be solved with a sales letter. What if you need a love relationship? What if you have a child that needs a kidney transplant? What if you are unhealthy? Well, the more I think about it, you actually can write a sales letter for almost anything.

You can get a kidney.

Yeah. I mean, you could advertise for pretty much almost anything. Or at least you can open the door and let people know what it is you're looking for. May not give you the immediate solution, may not give you money, but you can do a lot of things by putting messaging out there. So I had this sugar packet that I always reference. Years ago, I was in a small town, like a little diner, like Trading post sort of place, and there was this packet of sugar on the table, and they had all these captions, and one of them said, advertising. And the captions said, he who has something to sell and whispers in a well is not as apt to make the shiny dollar as the guy that climbs the tree and hollers. A lot of people have stuff to sell, but they whisper in a well. They don't advertise it, they don't promote it. And the fact is you advertise everywhere you have built. I mean you do a lot. What's your advertising budget a year? Do you have any marketing advertisements?

Let's see, this year I will spend around $25 million in marketing.

Okay. So I think you're qualified to speak to what works and what doesn't work or at least how to think of it. So how would you even define marketing? Why do you love it if you're spending as much money on marketing as your company is netting? And it's probably netting that because you're spending that money on marketing.

Well, the way I define marketing is look, you got to drive leads, right? You got to get people that need your service. So there's a few things you could do. You can get them to buy other products which is might be a cheaper acquisition cost to you. But most of all, we track everything we know. Tv, radio and billboards. You know, no BS about direct response. Marketing is fine. But I know if I do tv, radio, billboards, my Google click through rate goes up, the branded search terms go up. When I get branded searches searching A1 garage door service, they see my vans, they see the yard signs, they see the ad you just pulled up. Not the Val pack but the other one. That's pay for performance. I pay zero ads. They put me everywhere. Yeah, I don't pay anything for that. I pay a percentage because I got such good attribution. We sent a report daily to all the people and it's called pay for performance. Anytime I could get performance pay, I'll do it. And now I can get it with tv, radio, billboards. I get performance pay in a lot of things and then I sell performance pay. I'm working on a mailer or I'm putting the 10 best companies. When you move into a house, you need your locks change, you need to change your garage door codes, you need to get your pull service, you need to get your cable. So I'm going to send it for free for them. But all attribution models that I'll get paid, my goal is just to break even. Yeah, but, but now I'm going into.

Flooring because you're wanting to acquire require a client.

Yeah.

Yep.

So Google what I found on demand like service is the best. Whereas you'll have my buddy Josh owns snow the teeth whitening. You know, you see them all over his is better for social media. So storage will be better for social media than I think Google will be. But hitting the right avatar at the right time is half the battle. Like when you first Move into a house. I don't necessarily want to market to you, but unless you're looking for flooring and storage. Now, I do want to market to you, but you don't have any garage door problems if it's a brand new home. So it's understanding your target audience. And like I said earlier, there's a point of no return where it's diminished returns. But I will do that because stickers. I know I don't always need to make a profit, but I got to have a plan and I got to make sure I'm testing that plan. So if I don't make a profit, but I'm growing market share, I always tell people when I worked out, I used to be a trainer at Gold's Gym. When you're trying to put on mass muscle, it's hard to get ripped. Putting on mass muscle is putting on revenue. Profitability is getting chiseled. Have you ever tried to gain 20 pounds of muscle and get ripped at the same time? You're gonna spend two years, you get big, you watch the guys work out, they get big, then two months before they get chiseled.

Yep.

And it's hard to do both.

That's a great analogy. It really is.

Yeah.

Could just kind of bring it in. So I think you have just tested so much. And so, by the way, I don't care if someone uses direct response or not. What I care about is if what they're doing is working or not. And in my experience, for small business owners, pursuing a big brand recognition when they don't have a big company is often money that is massively wasted. And they don't even really understand what building a brand is. When you have all of the different. Where you're everywhere, every time someone sees you, be it a billboard or wherever on tv, it is just deepening all of the other things that you've planted seeds for. So I look at your companies, you've put a lot of seeds everywhere. There's a lot of different things and they're all integrated. So the integration is what makes it work together. Because I think some people, as a standalone, if they were doing many of the things you're doing, just doing this but not doing that, they wouldn't have the leverage that these things you have. And plus, because you're doing so much, you're buying this advertising, either you're negotiating deals where you're not paying anything for it and it's what you just explained, or you're getting discounted rates. So for all of the companies that you're buying and all of the people that are in your network. I imagine you are setting up really great advertising fees for groups like that too. Correct?

Yeah. So obviously I get economies of scale. I could buy better. And you buy a lot. I think Google's the main thing you start with. Because when your garage door breaks, the difference is are they searching a one garage door service? Are they searching garage service repair Phoenix? So understanding the four algorithms on Google, pay per click, there's local service ads, there's your Google my business page with your hours and reviews, and then there's organic search dominate. Those four get really good at them. I think I see these billboards. Rafi is a good. Brandon Raffi is a good friend of mine.

Yeah, he's everywhere.

Yeah, he does a great job. But he literally. They call it the Rafi effect. I came up with the, the term the Rafi effect literally in my last seminar. I did. Because the Rafi effect is you go into a market and you just. It starts to be a tornado, but you gotta have a lot of money to do it. And he's got, he said, tommy, when I went from 59% to 70% conversion rate, meaning that I got a phone call and it turned into a Done. He's an accident attorney.

Yeah, yeah, I know. And for people that don't know, he's talking about. This is a local attempt attorney in the Phoenix, Arizona area.

He's doing 800 cases a month. He's doing 500 in Tucson. And it's hard for even a fathom. And the way you get those numbers is you go and you take over. But you got to have those KPIs out. You got to have your. I could figure out anybody's business. You give me your revenue goal, your, your average ticket, your conversion rate, your booking rate and your cost to acquire a customer. I'll give you your marketing budget. Budget. And then I'll take those KPIs and we can move them to show you where you need to be. But you gotta have a high booking rate and a high conversion rate. Otherwise they don't care about new customers. Because we're seeing the customers come in that we're wasting. And a lot of people confuse that. They go, I need more. You know what weak minded people do is they say, I need more customers right off the bat when things start to go, they don't look at, well, what's happening with all your form fills? Why aren't you responding to Angie's list? What? Why don't you Have a chatbot on your website. Where are all these opportunities? I don't even need to be good at a lot of things to make a ton of money. And I'm just refining certain things. But I'll tell you this. I gave radio a year before I said I do all these things. My radio ads, my billboards, my yard signs, my website. They all look my wrap of my vehicle. They all feel like the same company. It wasn't always like that. That was Dan, Anthony, Ellie helping me brand correctly. You can't get more than five words on a billboard. That's why I don't even have a phone number on my billboard. People are like, and one. One year, I put all my billboards upside down. People are like, what in the hell are you doing? People were coming in saying, you guys screwed up. I'm planning on hiring somebody to vandalize all my billboards. But I wanted to be able to wash off because then the media is picking it up. So, you know, there's of a lot, lot of ways you could be. Every time haro help a reporter out, we're. We're doing things. There was a lady that got ripped off. They was on national news that we went and gave her a free garage door. I'm keeping an eye on what the media is doing and always being there for that. And we're doubling downing on everything. But there's a system in place, and I nail it, then I scale it, Then I move the next one. I'm not like, I'm gonna scale it.

Move to the next one.

I don't go into all these things. And I'm like. Because I see so many people, they're like, I tried radio. I did Valpak for a month. You know, I tried pay per click. I've done social media. I'm on my third different social media guy. I'm like, what have you stuck with? Have you stuck with anything? My podcast just passed a million downloads. It got 20,000 downloads the first two years total. But I just did it every single week. And I used that as therapy for myself. And I'm like, wait a minute. You tried it for two months and it didn't work? Really? Have you ever brushed your teeth for a full day and expected to have perfect teeth? What have you tried in two months that actually has worked, like, great? Nothing. You got to stay committed to it, and you got to figure out how to be better and how to tweak it and how to attribution and make sure that it's getting a little Bit better each week. That's great.

That's great. All right, who do we have a question for? We're going to have one and then I'm going to see. Who is this? Brent, how are you?

Hey, guys, can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you fine.

Okay. Yeah, I'm on up in beautiful British Columbia, Canada here. It's right now. Tommy, you're a beauty, buddy. I've been following you for a while. I think you guys might have actually answered my question, but I'm actually in the office and there was hectic stuff behind me, so I didn't hear. So regarding, like all this stuff you're talking about is just gold. And I'm the one who reached out to nexstar Network, but I actually have a competitor who works. He's actually a friend of mine, but he's my local competitor. He's been part of their network for the last eight years and his company, ever since he joined them has just blown up and they're all systemized. His whole company is systemized. I'm looking for. I know I need to get systemized, but I don't know where to go to do it. I'm taking the company over me and my sister from my dad who was just a blue collar guy. And you know, at the end of every month, if as long as he had enough to pay his mortgage and pay his employees, he felt like he was successful. And I think a little different than that. So I'm looking for a network similar to nexstar that I can join and tap into this knowledge every day and sort of implementing these systems and having training to help me do that because I know I need it, but I.

Don'T know where to go to get it.

Well, that's good. So Tommy actually has a whole process for that.

So, yeah, we're starting something in November. Joe's going to be speaking. It's November 2nd, 3rd and 4th in Orlando. Respecting over a thousand people. And it's going to be, you know, the event. There's so many people that get the, they get the football player on stage. You know, I think you have to have a little bit of what to do, a little bit of inspiration, not just one or the other. Nexstar actually had made that mistake. I heard, I talked to a lot of people at Nexstar and they said, said sometimes they focus on KPIs and morning rituals or whatever. The other times they'll just, they'll have, you know, Joe Montana come and there's a happy medium. But we're putting systems in that I know work that'll build value into the company, that make your life easier, get your time back. And also, you know, in my book I talk about an equity incentive program. I talk about open book management, not having secrets. You know, I have two of my best managers at my house. People are like, I can't have them over my nice house. I bought that house for relationships, to be able to build memories. So my program, it's not even my program, it's a culmination of a lot of great people. And Joe's going to be hopefully very involved with it. Is designed in a Nexstar way. Nexstar's goal is 15% bottom line for their average client. I think we could do better than that. But you know, I look up to those guys and I never want to. They're such great friends of mine that run that program. They're employee owned. It's not like a esop, but it's similar to a board. I think we got a little bit more flexibility with what we're doing. And I hang out with the biggest guys in the industry. You talk about the biggest roofing, biggest plumbers, biggest a tract. The reason I went to Bolo H vac, plumbing, electrical and roofers is because those are the guys with the private jets. So I was like, let me learn by the guys that actually have assets to prove it because everybody says, oh, I'm killing it. I got the guys that did the Terminix deal, they're flying into town. Terminix is trading at 30x30x EBITDA. I mean, success leaves clues. I've just been there to pick up a lot of them and focus on them. But I would read the book the Seven Power Contractor, Al Levy. I met him in 2017. I hired him. He always jokes around because I say I paid him a lot of money. Gave him about a half a million dollars. Best half million dollars I've ever spent in my life. Because he got my add under control, got me to sit down in a room and work on systems, put manuals that sound annoying, but they were. So how does a person win in your company? You say, just do good. Or they say, here's what's expected, here's how you win. You gotta have manuals, standard operating procedures and checklists. And that's the beginning. You got to have an org chart. What does the company look like, who reports to who? How do I win? How do I move up? Where's the ladder to success? So we're doing That I don't know how patient you are, but by the end of the year, I promise you our program will compete with any program out there. As much as I like Nexter, we want to be the best of the best in every industry. And I'm pulling in my buddies from every industry to help be the mentors to give feedback on what's working, working out there. And I'm not talking about 5 million dollar companies. I'm talking about billion dollar companies. And those are the type of people we're bringing in.

Yeah, that's great.

That's great.

So if there's a link, put a link for Tommy's book which is called Elevate Build a business where everybody wins. And here I'll just read the table of contents. So you kind of have a gist of what it is. So the intro is the hundred million dollar brainstorm, then embracing the Elevate mindset that then it goes through the pillars. The first pillar, leadership. The second is culture. The third is marketing. The fourth is recruiting. The fifth is systems. And then chapter seven is getting started. So you will find this book really, really valuable. Go ahead and buy a copy of that. Also when Tommy, if you are interested in Tommy's event in Orlando, just go ahead and put it in the chat that you, you're interested or you know, how would we actually. Do you have it? Do you have a link?

So the link will be live this weekend. It's freedomevent.com and a better place to get the book because I give away a bunch of freebies like I spent a month building stuff I just wanted to give away but I can't get it through Amazon.

Right.

It's elevateandwin.com elevateandwin elevateandwin.com but yeah, freedomevent.com It'll be up this weekend. And you know, literally I have an opportunity to learn from Joe and how much. You had Bill Phillips, you were giving away cars back in the 90s. Bill Phillips did like a ridiculous amount of money. And you were helping coach him.

Yeah, 300 million back in 1999 is what he sold the company.

300 million in 1999. So I want to use. Joe took me down to this secret room with a little library downstairs and he pulls out all these three ring binder notes and pictures. And then he came to my house, brought a couple, you know, that was amazing. And we started whiteboarding. And what I'm learning from Joe is just how this whole thing works. The room we're in The Genius Network. I'm telling you guys what. What I believe about the Genius network is your network is your net worth. And I believe you surround yourself with great people that will always put you forward. And I told Joe, listen, man, Joe's like, you got to start coming to these meetings. And I'm like, listen, if I could get them planned six months and ahead because I've been on the road a lot and it's hard because you know how it is. Yeah. And you took a sabbatical for a year and I think that I don't need that anytime soon. But you said, I'm just going to slow down. You only spoke to one recovery center. But my goal is to be here more often. I think what Joe does. Joe is there's two reasons I want Joe involved. Three reasons I love Joe. He's amazing. Number two is he created something I want to create. Number three is because he's down for what we're trying to do. He came from the grassroots, he came from home service, and he's done it. So I surround myself with people like that. It's hard for me to go wrong because he steered me in the right direction and. And I think he stared you guys in the right direction as well.

No, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And so, Dean Jackson, what would you say, what did I not ask Tommy that you would like to ask him or any discussion point you'd like to bring up before we wrap up in a few minutes.

Holy cow.

Value per minute index. It was a KPI very high on this one. Yeah, well, I think that's fantastic. I just think you don't. My observation is there's. This is something that Tommy has done is, you know, our profit activator number one in the breakthrough DNA book is select a single target market and focusing on one single minded thing. Garage doors. Nothing but garage doors is a big, big piece of this. It makes all of your decisions very easy when you wake up in the morning and your obsession is that we're going to be the not only the number one garage door company in the world, but riding that to be the number one home services company in the world. It's exciting. You know, I've been. I look at him, I look at. I don't know if anybody has been following Deion Sanders at Colorado University. And I just love everything about what Deion Sanders is doing at Colorado University. And I think that a lot of those things, I think Tommy's got a lot of those same mentalities there. His number one Focus is waking up every morning. How is this going to make, you know, how is this going to help me develop our team, develop our structure, develop our whole environment around achieving this one goal in a way that everybody around me can help achieve their goals too. So, so good, really. Thanks for contributing all that, Tommy.

And just like what is something or a couple things right now that you are trying to solve that you haven't solved yet? Because I think it's interesting for people because I think what you've shared has been so damn useful to so many people and what is something that you're trying to solve. Just to get a idea of how you keep building this bigger future.

I mean there's a lot of things and my brother in law come in and I look at my Fleetwood. We're building a new fleet management system that actually the worst thing in the world is we're a premium company. To have a broken mirror or to have a wrap coming off or just a dirty truck. Like I'm working on software to solve that. Another thing is social media. I'm creating self generated leads that you could have, whether it's going to a B and I meeting, getting your daughter's soccer league involved. Like creating attribution models where everybody becomes a marketer within the company. I wanted to tell a quick story because this is. I love marketing. Do you mind, please? So in the book Elevate, I wrote a story how Covid happened. And Darren Hardy wrote a book a long time ago, Compound Effect. He wrote it in a lot of things. He wrote down 100 things that he wanted in a woman, you know, and he looked at this list and he goes, well, I don't think I could pick up a chick like this. So he writes 100 things he would need to become. And when I read that, I wrote down 40 things that I would need to become to become a great leader to be worthy of the people that I wanted to attract. And when Covid happened, I had a line outside of my door and the first guy walks in and says, can you cut my pay in half? My wife's got a good job, I'm not looking for anything in return. He goes, till this whole nasty virus gets done with, I'm good. And I'm like, I don't, you know, I didn't know what was going to happen in the PPP money. There was things. If we didn't do that, then everybody. Then I had another person give us all of his sick time. And then it was. And I walked out of that thing and I realized one thing. I'm a really good marketer. I know how to get so many customers for any home service company, really for anything. I could do any E commerce, you name it. But then my marketing brain shifted after that day and it said, how do I attract the best people? Because 1A player will run circles around 3B players. So how do I get this perfect canvas? And just A players are so special and to attract the right people that they're willing to leave their current job and come to me, come to us and come to the culture and come to A1. So I would just tell everybody, if you want to build a great business, start focusing on the people you want on your team almost more than getting more clients. Because if you build a funnel for great people, you can't help but make a lot of money. The money comes, the time comes, the happiness comes, the abundant mindset comes. And you love Mondays again. So my marketing brain has completely shifted more now to being there to make sure we're attracting the right people to grow the business. I love that.

Yeah. And I also love the gist, even the statement, you'll love Mondays again. Because if you're involved in a business where you just are completely disengaged and you're not able to tap into, you feel completely disconnected from it. Life sucks. And we've all said as an entrepreneur, inside every entrepreneur, someone slowly going crazy almost all of the time. But when it's continually sucking all the time, you have to figure out, how do you make it not unsuck. And there's a book written in the 90s by Anthony Greenback. And I've said this quote a lot because I think it's a great quote. I won't say it exactly right. I'm not sure the order, but it goes like this. It says, in order to get through an impossible situation, you don't need the reflexes a Grand Prix driver, the mind of an Einstein, the muscles of a Hercules. You simply need to know what to do. And so, you know, oftentimes we don't know what to do and we grapple with it and we're in the dark place or we're not making enough money or, you know, and this could be personally and professionally, but the fact is there are people that know what to do. And the reason I bring someone like you here is you certainly have known how to build a. An incredible company. You are, you know, every single. How many, how many, how many jobs are you doing on average per day?

We do about 18,000amonth. Weekends are a little less than weekdays.

Yeah. I mean, so this is the amount of people that your company is just servicing and all the employees, 600. Plus that you're. I mean, there's a lot here, so you certainly need to know what to do with it. And you also said you surround yourself with, with amazing people and you're always looking how to build in great team members. So this is. I would like everyone that is watching this live on Zoom. I would like on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most valuable, 1 not being valuable at all, or useful. I'd like you to just post so I can share this with Tommy. How would you rate this and what would be. Can you see all these over here?

Oh, wow. Yeah, you can put a nine if you want. They're great.

So that's really good. So that being said, let's keep this going. Read Tommy's book. After you've read his book, at some point in the near future, I'll do another session with Tommy. We'll invite you back onto this and it'll be good. And if you've got any aha's or insights, please share what your greatest aha or insight was from this. And I will also print this out and share it with Tommy so he can read what other people are getting out of this. Because I think that's always a good policy. When people come and contribute their knowledge, their wisdom, their capabilities, their time, I like them to be able to see what it's doing for other people. And for those of you that are listening online, get a copy of Tommy's book. How do people follow you on social media and listen to your podcast, home.

Service expert, 22nd Top Business Podcast. We'll get to the top 10. You can follow me on any social media. It's official. Tommy Mello. And you know my favorite quote of all time, and I believe this, and I live by this, is you could have anything you want in life if you just help enough people get what they want. Zig Ziglar. So if you. If anybody needs anything, get a hold. Joe, get ahold of me. I'm easy. Social media Tommy Mello no W. I'm on Twitter, I'm on all the social medias. We're trying to grow that because we're trying to be something really big to help millions of people. And that's the home service space. But really this stuff applies to any business. But Joe, I love marketing and I love being here.

Yeah, no, it's so great and thank you. And I want you to. And also Tommy's in Genius Network. So if you're interested in genius Network and there are some genius Network members on here right now, so geniusnetwork.com and if you. If anyone wants help building an elf business, we have the elf coaching group that we have. And so I'll ask any of my team to put a link if someone wants to do a short discovery call to just evaluate if it would be a right fit for you, then go ahead and click on the link that I'll have my team post and you can explore that. And I will probably ask Tommy to be on an ELF coaching session for the members because I think that would be pretty useful. Is there anything else that I didn't ask you or anything that you wanted to share that we did not cover?

I don't think so. I think the mindset of my dreams got to be big enough to fit everyone that I work with. Dreams inside is so important. I don't focus on my goals. If I could accomplish their dreams the way that I pay their scorecards, the performance pay is focused on. I win automatically when they win. So I just think it's so important of the mindset of what's in it for them. Hence Joe's book of just having this mindset of have a bigger dream, dream a little bit bigger. I watch people, they go, I hope I can do 2 million in five years. I'm like, I hope you could do 200 million. Dream big, focus on other people's goals, build the right compensation programs. You can't help but win.

Yeah, totally. All right, so utilize what everything that we had discussed today and, and think of this when we're leaving as today is the last day of the way you used to be. There's so much insight here that you can go and apply. So whatever was the biggest idea, Give yourself a few minutes to just write down a couple of actions or things that you can do or things that you can stop doing, buy your time back. Whatever sort of insight you got from Tommy, put it into play and go look at the people that are the most valuable and important relationships in your business, personally and professionally, and give them some appreciation, give them some love. And I think if you do that, things are going to get a lot better. And oh, there was one thing we were going to. We were going to show the. Do we have that video of the backpack? So this is funny, Tommy. I was like, for instance, I have my buddy Pat here and we're going to. You met him right before we started. And I'VE known Path forever. And we're going to set up like a concierge follow up service with literally calling people on the phone, texting them, doing all this to ramp up our touch points with people. And we have one room where we want to actually put this as an office. And I got a whole bunch of stuff there. And my team's going to have a website with this 90 second video on it and I recorded it yesterday. But let's just play this. Let me say this going to play this video and if you actually want one of these backpacks, I'm like, let's just play it here. Because if they donate $200 or more, I'll fill this backpack up with some incredible stuff, including a signed copy of Tommy's book and including a signed copy of my own book. And this. If anyone donates, we'll do this for whoever. The top ten biggest donations are. My buddy Joe Sugarman, who unfortunately passed away recently, his daughter called me and said, I've got some inventory of some of his books that on Amazon, this book is selling for around 100 bucks. Triggers. And this one, the seven forces of success. When I was looking, it was like there are used copies selling of this for up to 300 to $500. And I actually have copies here. So what? Include those in the backpack too. But let's, let's just go ahead and show this. Okay. Behind me is one of the many rooms at the Genius Network headquarters. We've got a ton of books from some of my friends and members. We have got. No one really wants a Joe Polish doll, do you? We have got backpacks, we have got shirts, we have got all kinds of weird stuff. I mean, we. What are these things called, Mike?

Oh, a horn megaphone.

Is it even really called a megaphone?

I think that was digital.

So we've got all kinds of crap in here. Bottom line is we. It's not crap, actually. It's priceless material. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to do a little bit of a test here and do a fundraiser. We're going to anyone that makes a donation for 200 or more to geniusrecovery.org we only do 10 of them, right? 10 of them. And we're going to send a Genius Network backpack, a Genius Network shirt, and I'm going to pick some box books and some materials, plus a special product. You might even get a Genius waffles waffle maker. So what I'd like you to do is click the link. If you trust Me. Just click below, make a donation to Genius Recovery 200 or more and you will get a care package sent to you in the mail. And the bigger the donation, the more awesomeness it's going to be filled with. And if you, if you don't want to make a donation to 200 or more and just want to make a ten dollar donation or whatever, then you can do that too. Any, any donation over $10 will get a what's in it for them? Pair of socks.

See, I want to wear a pair.

Of socks and say, what's in it for them Personally, they're very cool. So click the link below and go ahead and fill that. Fill out the information. We'll send you one of these awesome things and thank you. And that's a bunch of confetti, confetti in there in case we.

There's your first something.

That's heavy. I love it. Thank you. And sharp edges. Okay, bye. So there you go. So Tommy just gave me $200.

This is fantastic.

So he gets the first backpack.

Well, I wanted those books.

Here you go. There. Yours.

That's it.

No, these books are fantastic. And so by the way, so yeah, if you want to make a donation, I think my team will put a link for geniusrecovery.org in there. And by the way, anyone that struggles with addiction, Genius Recovery. The goal is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share it with the world. We have a blog that comes out twice a week for anyone struggling with addiction. And that could be either you or a family member. And we have one of the top, most brilliant therapists. Been doing it for years, Ken Wells. He's worked with more billionaires and more famous people than anyone I know, but just a lot of everyday people. And the guy's awesome. So he writes the blog for us. It's awesome. People love it. And it's not written by AI, it's written by real humans. So any donation you make will go to support helping with what we're doing with Genius Recovery. And I will, like I said, I'll put a copy of a signed copy of my book and of Tommy's book, elevate in there. And for the first 10 people, just go to geniusrecovery.org, make a donation and we'll know who those people are. And we just need a physical mailing address for you and we will send you out a backpack. And if it's less. If it's $10 or more, I'll send you a pair of socks and maybe some other stuff. So, as usual, Tommy, thank you so much. Thank you. You're awesome. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here.

Do it now. Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.