How I Built a $1.7B Business Repairing Garage Doors

23:52My day starts in six hour increments and I work three of them in 18 hours. And I'm like, dude, I don't respect anybody that works harder. I know there's people shoveling poop somewhere on a field that are working way harder than me. I look at skill way differently. There's certain people I hire that can handle the task of three people, 40-hour work weeks in 10 hours. And so I came up with paying for performance and paying for outcomes. And I will be very transparent that I am the dumbest guy on my team. I mean, when it comes to the C-suite, VPs, directors, I'm just a visionary. I dream really, really big.

24:29I love sales and I love marketing and I love relationships and culture. I am not gonna be a specialist. I live in a different planet. I don't live within the walls of this company. I'm creating a personal brand. And by the way, there's 62 guys training next door. 50 of them found me on social media and said, I want to work for that guy. So building a personal brand for your business really matters. And the thing I ask now is what I work for you, what I buy from you, what my grandma buy from you, and what I go have a beer with you. You tell great stories. You don't shake my hand like a limp fish.

25:04You make eye contact. You smile a lot. You're interesting. I'm going to ask you tough questions to see how you figure things out. There's no right answer. And so I started thinking about this about five years ago. It's who, not how. Who is the right hire? Not what's my strategy, not what system. Systems are super important. But what's the next hire that I bring on the bus that'll take me to the promised land? And when you start thinking like that and you stack the deck with A-plus players, your job gets easier. Like it's gotten so easy. And whenever it gets easy, we explode. The business explodes.

25:37to go through these peaks and valleys. And I'm like, I will tell you guys, we did 315, 315 million. And I'm like, there's no reason we can't be at a billion in two and a half years. And so I got to set that vision and people are like, dude, you're crazy. And then I got to map it out and show them this is all that would need to happen. The average technician is at 700 ,000 now. And so what would need to happen for us to do this? We would need to have this department, this department, this department. We need to make sure we got trucks on command. We need to make sure we got a good greenfield strategy.

26:04And you start reverse engineering your goals. you create some accountability and consistency and all of a sudden you wake up and it's there dude that's awesome i love hearing you talk i get excited guys i love entrepreneurship and i run towards failure uh i don't really care what people think i'm not gonna lie to you guys and say i really do care what a lot of people think i care what my parents think i care what the people i work with i'm not the guy that just says i don't care at all what anybody thinks I'd love to pretend that's the truth. But I guess now I think I'd rather be respected than loved.

26:37But by a lot of people, I choose love first. Yeah, but do any of your employees actually think that you're a dick? I mean, you come off as like a pretty caring, empathetic person. Dude, I've known you for 27 minutes and I love this guy. Yeah, like who thinks that you're disrespectful or rude? You might be a guy who says, look, it's not working out, unfortunately. But I think they would still have love and respect for you. No, I don't fire anymore. I had to fire five people that were direct reports to me this year, this past year. But when Adam started in 2014, I said, you're going to be the bad cop because I'm not good at it.

27:08But I do have to have these fierce, hard conversations with people. And it's not easy, but it's for the best of them. Like if you think about who changed your life, was there, like I had a coach that literally made sure I got a warm mill. Like I, I respected him. I mean, he literally told me I'm not going to play. Like if my grades weren't good, if I didn't show up, would give it 110%. So he didn't play me two games, but he made sure, listen, three nights a week, he was going to buy me a meal with dinner because he knew my mom was working three jobs. And I found out I respected him more than I loved him, but the respect turned into love.

27:41And that was a lesson for me is I gotta be straight up. I'm gonna tell you what you're doing great, but I'm also gonna tell you, you're not living up to your potential. I see something better in you. And it's my job to pull that out of you. And I'm either gonna pull that out of you or I'm gonna force you to quit or you're gonna not have a job here. I'm going to give you the invitation to go work for one of my competitors. Me and Sean were talking about these inspirational leaders and stuff last episode. And I told a story about how I had a cross-country coach that was like, this year you're going to learn how to be better men and we're going to do it via running.

28:13And that's kind of the same energy that you have, which is, you young technician, you're going to learn how to be a better man this year. And I'm going to do it by teaching you how to smile when you meet a customer, how to say, yes, ma 'am, no, sir. how to, you know, like, it's like more so we're going to learn how to live great lives and be great high class people, but we're going to do it via, you know, serving the customers wonderfully. It's a hundred percent, right? I used to find fours and try to make them sevens. Now I have sevens and try to make them tens. And so now I've got a much harder way to get into the company.

28:44So I did orientation yesterday with 62 people. And I said, you should feel proud because it takes 50 interviews to even get one of you to this room. But now the hard part starts and we got a bell you could ring if you tap out. We get about two people in class that just say this is, we don't, they got to clean after they're done. They got to show up. If you're late one day, there's a good chance for sending you home. There's a bell. So during training, anybody can just go literally ring a bell and quit? It's the same as the Navy SEALs. Are you ex-military? You have that vibe. No, I'm not in the, I never was in the military.

29:18Okay. You mentioned this guy, Al, in passing. You said my mentor, Al. and I'm always curious about mentors because I think everybody wants a mentor. I think few people ever end up with that special kind of relationship with a great mentor. But one of the great things is when somebody has one, they can kind of share a story that kind of becomes our mentor too. And so can you tell me a great Al story? What did this guy kind of make you realize or teach you about? So he was the second guy in my podcast and he wrote a book, it's on my shelf over here. It's called The Seven Power Contractor. explains the different stages of the home service industry.

29:53And he had gone through every master class and just studied how to build a business. And he had a business with his brothers and his father. And one day they just got fed up. And his daughter, he had his camcorder on the back of the room recording his daughter at a play. And his wife comes up to him and says, Al, you know what your daughter says she wants at school today? She says she wishes her dad was around more. And he goes, Natalie, and it gives me goosebumps, but he goes, Natalie, I'm going to disappear for about a year. I'm not going to be around as much, but I need to systematize this business.

30:29I need to get SOPs. I need to make sure that I can spend time with my two daughters and you. And so we're going to go on a vacation for two weeks in one year. And I'm not even going to look at my pager. I mean, this is back in the day. And Al, he met me for lunch and I handed him the book I was working And I'm the home service millionaire. He flipped through it and said, this is garbage. He goes, you need to rewrite it. And I said, okay. And he goes, the thing that I wanted to work with you originally, Tommy, is you brought a notebook and you wrote down everything I said. He goes, that's the only reason I thought about working with you.

31:04He walked into my shop that day. He goes, can we go do a shop tour? I said, sure. He goes, why do you have all the calendars on the wall? Haven't you ever heard of Outlook or Google Calendar? 2017, that was around then. It was early stages of Google Calendar. but he goes, I tripped on a cord that you had a microwave plugged in at. He goes, dude, this is not organized. And he goes, I could have stolen your whole warehouse. The garage was open, no cameras. Your forklift was sitting there. He goes, show me your manuals. All I had was this like onboarding manual. He goes, well, how does anybody know how to win?

31:37He goes, how do they know? Are you allowed to get tattoos on your face? Are you, what happens if your truck breaks down? Like, who do you call? What happens if you lose your gas card? What happens if you need PTO for Christmas? He goes, how do people know this? He goes, it's all in your head. He goes, what I'm going to ask is you're going to pay me$150 ,000. And by the way, I didn't have$150 ,000 to give him. I had to take an equity line out of my house. So that's why I had to pay attention. And when I walked in there, if I started talking or talked about a book, he goes, stop. You're going to listen to what I'm going to teach you or I'm going to quit.

32:13You're going to figure out exactly what I'm going to teach you. And you're going to do this. Perfect. You're going to stop reading books. You're not going to do stuff any other way than what I teach you. You're going to turn your cell phone off when I'm in this room and you're going to get your two top guys. We're going to sit here. We're going to work through each and every scenario, every manual. And then you're going to read these manuals out loud with every employee, have them initial every single one. And then you're going to read a page out of the manual every week in your meetings. And man, I was ADHD.

32:40I still am. And he's like, you are going to focus. You're going to be all here. And we're going to sit in this room for eight hours, three days a week. The dude drove a Mercedes. He'd pull back in the same spot really slow. It was always detailed. And every time he left, I'd get$43.38 was how much he paid in gas. I'd get a bill for it like this. I mean, he was just high CTA personality dialed in like it's my way or the highway. And that's what I needed. He was tough. and he'd bring in a consultant to get us our financing, figured out that he trusted. And she's like, I don't know if I want to work with this guy.

33:18I said, listen, I'll be quiet. I'll do whatever you say. And he goes, trust me. He goes, he'll do whatever you say. I'll make sure of it. And that's what I needed. And it was tough love, but he set me up for a lot of success. Was he, are you now, I've never heard type C personality, but are you, whatever that personality type is of just paying attention to the details, Are you, it sounds like maybe you're a three out of 10. What are you now? Are you like really high or are you just improved? Well, I was pre-dental, so I love math. I took advanced calculus and I got obsessed with geometry and calculus and algebra.

33:57So I'm a numbers guy. I've always been, but I'm still a macro guy. I still look at the big picture. I'll dive into certain areas. I always say I live on Mars. I look at Earth for volcanoes and earthquakes. but I'm still not the details guy. I don't, I love my CFO and my controller and I love my HR team, but I don't really interact with them very often. I am working on operations and marketing and culture and always driving sales. And quite frankly, I don't want to be good at these other things. I want to go continue to be the best at what I'm great at and continue to hone these better skills and delegate the rest.

34:39I don't want to be well-rounded. I never want to be good at that stuff because it tortures me to have to do that stuff. Like for me to do payroll, which I had to do for a long time, I mean, it was like pulling teeth. So the first thing I got rid of, if you set up your org chart and you wear a lot of the hats, first thing you do is circle what you hate. So now when I come into work, I love coming to work. I'm like, man, I'm on a podcast right now with you guys. Everything's getting handled. I just got back from Costa Rica for 10 days. You think we lost money? You think when the owner, founder, CEO left, the things didn't go right?

35:12We set records the whole time I was gone. Like, I don't need to be here. And that's what we set up is, we go on the pinnacle trip, my whole C-suite. All my directors, my area managers go. My top 40 technicians and installers go on this trip. Do you think we lose revenue that week when we leave? We've never lost revenue. We've talked a lot about in this systems. I think if we're playing a drinking game and somebody said, if you're taking a shot every time we said systems, they're dead now. But it strikes me that you really harp on this because that's what was hard and broken for you. And you really had to put in work to get great at that.

35:51And it's kind of like you feel the benefits of having not everything on your shoulders. But I got to believe that in order for your company to succeed, you don't grow because you have a great operations manual per se, right? You grow because you're great at sales and marketing. You sort of survive and thrive if the operations can back that up. And I'm guessing it sounds like that the sales and marketing were things that were more in your core competency. You did a good job of early on and you haven't been as demand constrained. But I want to know more about that. So I want to know, what did you do to kick ass in sales and marketing that was different than the average service company?

36:31What were the things that you did that made you guys rock and roll in terms of demand? Well, step one was naming your company A1 so you show up first in the white pages, right? Yeah, well, that was stupid because there's 93 other A1s, even though I've got an irrevocable, uncontestable trademark. So that's my biggest mistake was being A1, honestly. You know, sales cure everything. And to get sales, you need good leads. And I'll tell you this, I'm not afraid. We're going to spend$4.3 million this month in marketing. Not afraid to spend a lot of money. And here's what I've learned. I was$30 million.

37:06I met a guy named Dan Antonelli that Al Levy, my coach, he referred me. He goes, Tommy, he goes, I think your wraps are garbage. Wraps as in car wraps, trucks. The vehicle wraps. Yeah. And he goes, the best way to do it is I took a picture of your truck. I made it black and white. And tell me what pops out of you. He goes, that's the best way to see like what pops out. You got Angie's List, Yelp. You got your phone number, your everything. thing. You got springs, rollers, cables, bearings, all this crap. He goes, I want you to go to this company called Kick Charge and I want you to use Dan Antonelli to redo your brand.

37:43I call Dan Antonelli and he gives me an estimate. Guess how much it cost me to get a new logo and new brand on the trucks? $35 ,000. And at this time I'm going, I'm$30 million. I'm like, dude, it's working. Why would I switch? And I just, I trusted Al and I bit the bullet and I did it. And then Dan called me this guy. And we got a caricature, like the logo is awesome. He studied every one of our markets. We don't want to look like any other thing we want to pop. We don't want our phone numbers or website on it. You don't even need any of that or Angie's list or what we do. It's just garage door service.

38:19And he goes, I want you to change all your email signatures with this. Every one of your yard signs, every one of your coupons, every single thing needs to be this brand. And I remember three weeks later, there was a line of people that wanted to work for us. I was like, man, this is like, you know, I'm putting everything on the line, all my time, energy, effort. But I had such a crappy brand. And now I spend a fortune on TV, radio. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's what it was. Oh, yeah. Look at how crappy that is. What is that? I can't even see it. What is that? Above the red wall. It's like the bricks of a ground.

39:03garage just like the the outline yeah that's that's like two garages that are carriage style with like like brick rod and then you have white on white on white text it's horrible and then you go to this yeah so i said dan i want that old-fashioned feeling like the maytag in the 70s when you trust the guy to come out and it's like it just it pops and it's trust trustworthy And so if you walk in my place, Dan designed, we brought the brand inside. So we've got all the brand inside of the building too. Like we live and breathe the brand. And people don't talk about this stuff, but like Nike is a brand.

39:41That's why they pay Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. And like the brand is what you can buy a t-shirt the same as Nike for 20 bucks, but you're willing to pay$120 because of the brand. Right. So what does our brand mean? It means my dad taught me you could do three things in business. You could be the best. best warranty, best technicians, best quality, best, you know, everything. You could be best timing. If it happens today, you bring your car in, we can fix it today. Or you could be the cheapest. He said, pick two out of the three. You'll never be all three. You can't be the cheapest, the best, and on their timeline.

40:17And I got this guy in Milwaukee, best mechanic I've ever met. He's the cheapest. He does me right. Right now he's four months out. I can't use him. He's four months out. So I called him up. I said, Hey, why don't you triple your prices? I'll pay triple because you're honest and you do great work, but this is the hardest thing for people to learn. You want to start out and be the cheapest, but then you realize you don't have enough to hire people or pay for the right software or buy new trucks or invest in great inventory. And I'm not saying like one of the things that I learned a long time ago in sales is I don't give yes or no.

40:52Like if I walked up to you, I'd say, listen, these are the three options of what we have for Springs. We got the one year, the five year in the lifetime. You might say, hey, that's too much. I say, let's just pick another option. Let's make something that works for you and your family. I'm here to earn your business. And then I shut up and I've got other options of everything we do. I don't give yes or no questions because that's stupid. Either you're going to say yes or no. I'm going to say, listen, let's just pick something that makes sense for you and your family. And I've studied, I've probably read, I've read hundreds of books on sales and even more on marketing.

41:25And that's where I go to all the Google events. I show up to different offices. I like I speak on a lot of state, like I live and breathe marketing and sales. And honestly, I hate that word. Honestly, I shouldn't have said that. I always say that's a no, no. I hate a lot of words, but you never say the cost. You say the investment. You never say the most expensive. You say top of the line. You never say the cheapest. you say builder grade. You never say you could cancel at any time you say you have the right of rescission. These words matter. But what matters more is the way I say it. When I'm making eye contact, would you go to a doctor if the doctor walked in and just looked at you and said, hey, here's your medication.

42:10No, the doctor walks in, he smiles, he says, let me ask you a few questions. How's the alcohol? What's the stress level? are you, are you any recreational drugs? How much are you working out? I'm going to run a few tests here. We're going to look in your eyes. We're going to look up your nose, your ears. I'm going to have you call if we're going to run a few tests. And then the doctor says, listen, what's, what's better for you, CVS or Walgreens? All right, here's your prescription. Here's what's going to make you better. Do you ever go, I'm going to need a few estimates, doc. No, because they're the authority.

42:42They diagnosed the person before the problem. They spent the time. they asked the right questions and they nurtured you along the way and you believe them and they didn't say um like you know well uh but um no they said here's exactly what we're gonna do to fix you up and we're the doctor the minute we step in that garage and that's what that's what i train the guys and i go over and over like i don't believe you i don't believe you because you don't seem confident you don't either you don't believe in yourself or you don't believe in the products or you don't believe in me and the company? Which one is it?

43:18And let's work on, let's work on it. So you, this is, I could do this all day. And I love, I love training guys because I'm like, smile more, offer coffee on the way, play with the dog, get to know the clients that they love Bernie Sanders. Talk about Bernie Sanders. If they love fishing, ask them what kind of fish they like and what kind of pole they have. But you got to be genuinely interested. don't fake it. If you hate babies, don't talk about babies. You know, find something you love and you correlate well to them with and you'll enjoy every minute of your life. Dude, play with the dog is so true.

43:54I've had a couple of guys come over and do some work and the ones who play with the dog instantly, I'm in on them because they're in on me and the most important thing that they saw in the house so far. I had a guy come in to do a repair and as soon as he walked, I have a tiny dog, like an eight pound dog. And he goes, Whoa, killer. And then he goes, I don't want no, I don't want no problems. And I just immediately love the guy. He could have sold me anything. He was like there for the heater. He could have sold me a washer and dryer if he wanted to. Now that's great. I always say, listen, we don't, we don't ring the doorbell because strangers ring the doorbell.

44:26Friends knock. These simple little things. Listen, I'm sorry, I'm going to have a 7-Eleven. Could I grab you something? Get you a coffee? No, no, no, no. thinks, listen, you come to my house, my fiance is going to cook for you. Don't make me guess. You like Green Monster or should I get you a coffee? And I want to bring you something because no one that ever fixed your house brought you something. Wait, so you guys order coffee for, or you, you, you have like a system for ordering drinks or, or whatever. So they could order, I got guys that order donuts and apple cider in Michigan and, and Wisconsin.

44:58And all you do is expense it. You take a picture of the receipt and it comes back on your check that next week, including the taxes. So you could buy, I mean, we try to say keep it under 30 bucks, but literally I don't, we don't really check. Like my goal is that every single person gets offered something on the way. Have you seen the average customer value or a customer order go up because of, so what you're saying, by the way, is like a world famous, it's the rule of reciprocity. It's Robert Cialdini's book, Influence, which is basically like, if I do a favor for you, so me and Tommy are next door neighbors, I go, hey, Tommy, can I borrow a cup of sugar?

45:33You give me a cup of sugar. The next day, Tommy comes to me and goes, hey, Sam, can I borrow your car for a day? Because of the rule of reciprocity, I feel in debt to you. And I will do something, even if those two favors are not equal, I will do something to get back to sober even because we want to feel even. And so the idea here is if you bring a customer a coffee, even if it's a$2 coffee, they're more likely to spend an additional$500 in garage doors. And so my question is, have you seen the average order value go up just because of that simple trick? It goes up dramatically. And it's not a question if you're going to use this, it's how much are you going to spend.

46:04Robert Chirini became a good buddy of mine, him and Bob. No shit. There's seven rules of influence. I got, I studied him at U of A in my master's program when he's an ASU professor, their arch nemesis. I got to meet him. He comes to the house. Now my COO and head of sales just went to his conference here in Tempe, Arizona. And the more we could apply those seven principles, we're always looking to apply more and more. And it's not to manipulate people. By the way, he says, you got to use these for good. And I mean, I ask him questions all the time. He needed a garage. And I'm like, dude, this one's on the house.

46:43You know, like it's going to be the Taj Mahal too. And that's just, he's just one of the smartest guys I've ever met. All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes. And then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution.

47:15After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money. I can pay invoices. I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to Mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column A, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. One of the many interesting things about you is basically a lot of times that courses kind of get shit on.

47:48People make fun of courses and people make fun of seminars and stuff like that. And books fall in that category. But it seems like you are prolific when it comes to hiring coaches, hiring consultants, taking courses, taking seminars. Things that people would say, even at$17 million in revenue, they would say, but Tommy, why are you paying money to come to this course? course what courses uh and books have like uh really moved the needle for you in your life it sounds like you've consumed a lot well i'll tell you that the the latest one was buy back your time and dan martell he goes let's just do this he goes when when do you think you're gonna sell so we wrote it down he goes how much you think you'll make and i wrote the number down then he goes how many hours do you work a week i go probably 50 we did the math he goes do you know how much you make per hour?

48:34And it's like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he goes, you got a great business mind. He goes, tell me you got a good chef. And I'm like, a chef? I don't need a chef. Like he goes, what do you normally eat? I'm like Uber Eats. He's like, Tommy, you don't understand. He goes, if you want to become the best for your people, he goes, you have a driver, right? I go, what? Why would I, me a driver? He goes, how often do you drive a week? I go about 11 hours. He goes, what if we could buy back 11 hours for you to be productive? And he got me to look through a whole different lens.

49:09He got me. So now I got a house manager. We've got a chef. We've got a driver. Our dogs are walk twice a day. They go to doggy daycare. Huckleberry and Finn are our dogs. And, you know, these mentors, Dan Martell was a big one. I go to very, very, I go to the, all the home service ones, but you know, most people sit in this, this procrastination and indecision. There are softwares I've used that were crap, but you know, we just got on one. It increased our conversion rate on door sales by 18 % and our average ticket by 3%. And it picked up an extra 5 million of EBITDA because it eats the dealer fees because I heard about it from a buddy of mine.

49:53We were on it within six weeks. But to not do these things, so many people are like, man, one day I'm going to get started. Right after the wedding, I'm going to be on the diet. Right after the golf tournament. And they live in this world of like, we're just not ready for that yet. Man, I'm like, let's just fail. Who cares? Let's fall down a bunch of times. We're going to fail a lot, but we're going to figure it out before anybody. You said you guys sold a piece of the business and you were at like whatever, 20 something million in EBITDA and now it's 80 million. What was that big jump? Did you guys start rolling up other businesses or what happened?

50:26What went so well? So it's three years. We bought 12 companies. We've grown, I think it's 78 % organically. And then the 22 % was by buying companies. and what we did is, it's kind of funny because I call my vendors and I say, tell me how you win. How do you meet your bonuses? What is your objectives this year? For like the vendors, I'm gonna spend$80 million in garage doors this year. I say, what product mix do you need us to be at? And I say, now, if I do this for you, when do I get a bigger rebate? My growth, like if I sell a hundred doors to somebody, they're paying a different price than if they buy one door.

51:09So I work out these things. So, you know, we've got economies of scale, we've got efficiency. And, you know, the crazy thing is what a great home service business does 15 % of the bottom. We're almost double that. And I still see because of our efficiency, like you might have a call center rep that could book 20 calls a day. Mine could book 60. So let's say you're paying yours 20, I'm paying mine 35. They're doing three times the work. You know what I mean? So you get these economies of scale. And people don't like when I say this, but if you work at A1, most people will hire you in their garage door business because we've got, we buy$6 ,000 of tools.

51:48We train, we train, we train. You know, when I played football, I played two a days. I practiced twice a day for six days to play one game. At home service, you say, you're going to go with our best guy for two weeks and you're on your own forever. Training is not something we do. It's who we are. And we continue to train. It's not just in sales. It's smiling. It's making sure you're efficient. You showed up to your first job within 15 minutes. These new one-on-one forms I'm working on, I'm more excited about that than anything this month. So one-on-ones with the technicians and installers. So they're very complex to get the data I'm looking at.

52:21But what I'm building is if this is where you're at, it's a series of things to get good at. If you're not great at this, we got to get you good at this before we go on to the next one. And then there's a recipe for each one. So now it's standardized. Now in any market, This is the one-on-one form where you're going to use. And you're giving the exact same thing across the board. That you're going to do ride-alongs for two days. You're going to go back to Phoenix for a refresher for five days. You're going to do role play for one day in the training center. Whatever that looks like, we're building all that right now.

52:51And my expectation is it'll increase revenue by 40%. Wow. Has AI changed your business at all yet? Have you seen any impact with AI? Call center and dispatch and quite a few things in marketing, but call center, obviously it's, it's coming to the spot where this year, right now, uh, yesterday, my AI agents were 87 % booking rate. My real agents were at 92%. So it's a 5 % variance, but the AI continues to get better. And the goal is not to get rid of people. The goal is to go on a hiring freeze and keep the best. So right now I got 68 agents. Let's say I go down to 40. They last forever, but I never need to hire another agent because now you're just blocking and tackling.

53:40Dispatching, what our dispatch software does is regression testing. So you could feed it data, credit card score, how much did they pay off in the home? How many garage doors do they have? And then it looks for outliers and it knows what technicians do well on this type of job. And the most important thing is customer satisfaction, net promoter score and my internal net promoter score. So I'm not just looking to sell. I'm trying to create a relationship, build, you know, get you on a membership, which we call a protection plan and be your garage door company for life. I'm not trying to go wham, bam, thank you, ma 'am.

54:13I wrote a big ticket. Let's get out of here. I'm trying to say, what's right for you? You're selling the home, Ms. Jones. Let me make sure you pass inspection. We want to work on your new home. You know, that's what's important is we need to build relationships. And that's very rare in the home service industry. I never would have thought, and it's obvious in hindsight, but I never would have thought that a garage door business could be as big as you. And you seem like you have a ton of growth ahead of you. You haven't even scratched the surface. What other businesses have you seen in the services industry that you are shocked at how big they are?

54:45Or you think that most of our audience, which is largely internet or tech-based audience, would be surprised about? I'll tell you my favorite one is pest control. Tell me. Tell us about it. Well, the fact is, Pest Control is the only company that went public. And right now they're paying 22 to 25x EBITDA. So if you can get your business to make$2 million, you're going to get$50 million. And the best guys that do it, it started out the Mormon guys out of Utah would knock on doors door to door. They're very good at it. If you sell religion, and they'd all tell you this. So you start out by door to door, and then you get good at advertising on Google and radio.

55:27and you just, you optimize for routes, but anybody could do it. I mean, you're literally there spraying, you're looking out in Arizona, you're looking out for scorpions, spiders, making sure there's no pigeons, stuff like that. What pest control company is public? What's the big one that went public? They bought so many companies, but Terminex went public. So, all right, I'm looking up at Terminex. They have, it looks like nearly a$5 billion market cap. So pretty shockingly big. Yeah, well, that's the deal. and then they have subsidiaries on top of that. And when you go public, it's like, how many companies can you buy because you're raising capital from the investment pool?

56:03And it's almost like you've got to eat. When you go public, you got to eat, you got to buy. I mean, that's one of the prerequisites if you do an IPO. And there's a lot of advantages, but then you got Sarbanes-Oxley and all this other things. Like this is the kind of stuff I get really excited about. But you think about, here's something to understand about home service, home improvement. Is it demand generated? Like if your pipe breaks, you're calling me today. You need a fix. Windows, you know, I want new windows. Maybe a window broke. I'll get the glass fixed. But windows, so the multiple of a demand-driven industry where I need it done, and pest control is one of those that's not necessarily needed it done, but because that company went public, they're paying a lot more and it rose the market cap.

56:46But a window company might get eight to 12X, whereas HVAC, plumbing, electrical, garage doors, There's just these must-dos are getting 15 to 20. When you get past 20 million of EBITDA. I remember during COVID, those multiples were going in. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears as though that there was a pre - and post-COVID number. The post-COVID number just exploded, those multiples. Here's exactly what happened. Think about it. You're a venture capitalist. You're a PE. You're going, man, all of our hotels are failing. No one's going to Airbnbs. The nail salon just shut down because people aren't leaving their houses.

57:24The movie theaters went bankrupt. Where can we put our money? And they looked at this simple blue collar that we were like, we were like second class citizens. And they go, wait a minute. These guys have predictable income. They're needed. They've shown month after month, year after year that they can continue to grow. And they're sophisticated. They use things like Power BI. They use things advanced analytics. And when they realized that the money started shooting in like crazy. There's miracle stories. And the multiples are still really, really high. What they did learn is you got to keep the founder involved because the founder, you know, is kind of the glue.

58:00And if you pay the founder a lot of money, are they going to stay on and get happy and keep the culture? Because imagine giving a guy that worked his ass off$100 million and having him, hey, dude, I want you to stick around and be the same. I want you to work harder than you worked before. It's few and far between. I mean, so they're getting pretty sophisticated now, but there's a lot of home service industries, man. I'm telling you this, like the future of A1, many splits in the garage, garage flooring, EV chargers, pest control, front doors and windows. Like if I could get into those, I'm running 25 ,000 jobs a month.

58:3617 % is finance. It'll be 35 % this year of our revenue, which is low. It needs to continue to improve. But hey, you qualified for 20 ,000. Do you want me to make this garage door livable? And you can set up a gym. We'll do the floors and we'll put, you know, it'll be warm in the winter, cool in the summer. And by the way, we noticed all these spiderwebs in your garage. You want us to take care of that. And by the way, the garage, probably you want it to match the front door and you qualified for it. We can make it a low payment. You know, the garage door, I got really lucky because Remodel Magazine eight years in a row said garage doors are the number one investment.

59:08Wall Street Journal came out with two articles last year. 268 % return on investment. You put a buck in, you take 268 out. and then we trademarked the garage door with a smile of your home. So I'm going into the garage and the plan is to create other opportunities in the garage. Dude, this is fascinating. This is not at all what I thought this episode was going to be. You're this mix of a bunch of things that I really love. You're, you know, one third, just pure hustle and common sense. You're one third self-development, personal development, you know, learning machine. just how can I learn, grow, and be better?

59:46And then one third is basically like, I'm going to play big. So you're doing this blue collar thing, but at this really big scale. And I love that combination. That is a lot of fun to me to have this conversation. So I'm glad you came on. Check this out, Sean. So I've been following you, Tommy, for about two years now. And you get me amped up. I'm not in your space at all, but I feel like I'm learning so much. But I also feel like I'm getting amped up. But Sean, Google Tommy Mello Conference. So he has this conference called the Freedom Event. And whoever's listening, Google that and go to the page.

1:00:21The video is him with his arms out and fireworks shooting up with him on stage. It's pretty awesome. But Tommy, obviously, he has a behemoth of a business. But then it looks like you have a side hustle of being sort of like a home services influencer. And if I had to guess, like your conference, and I think you had a course or a community, something like that. If I had to guess, that's doing all right too. Yeah, we had 1 ,500 home service contractors at our last one. This year, we'll have 3 ,500. And the average person that's worked with us increases by 70 % their first year. And that's profitability because that's what we shoot for.

1:00:57And basically, most of what I've done is repeatable. It's not like this crazy thing that only works in garage doors. It's knowing the numbers. It's paying attention to the important things. You don't need to be good at 50 things or 500 things. You need to be good at five things a thousand times over. So it's understanding, don't overcomplicate it. It's pretty simple. Wait, wait, wait. So can you explain how this media side of your business, so forget the actual nuts and bolts of what you're doing. So you have the podcast, you have media. And so explain how this, why you do it and how the, how the sort of like from a business perspective, um, why do you do this and how does it work?

1:01:36What is the goal of how you're doing this? For example, are you throwing this event because you want to be the largest kind of event or trade show in your industry and that's a good business to be in? Is it because you want to have a relationship and go buy the top 1 % of these companies and it's lead gen for that? Why are you doing all this and how does that work? Well, first and foremost, I used to just have a garage door. We realized the industry is so crappy. the industry would have to improve. People would need to raise their prices and show their worth. So we figured out that we would have to train other garage door companies.

1:02:08So we invite hundreds of garage door companies. And then I looked down in the audience and it was all plumbers and roofers and pest control and even mechanics. And I'm like, this is supposed to be a garage door show. And we didn't really filter who was coming in. So I was like, look, I want to keep garage doors kind of in our realm. And then I started this other thing called Home Service Freedom. them. And the real reason is people open the door to me. People gave me the time of day. People let me come into their home, their business, and they gave me the answers. And people call me up and they're like, dude, I'm getting a divorce.

1:02:40My kids are leaving me. My dad, I took over his business. He just died. I don't know what to do. And quite frankly, Al Evie and all my other, you know, Dan Antonelli with branding. And we've got this formula of like the step-by-step. It's not for everybody. Like I said, at the beginning, not everybody's meant to be an entrepreneur. Some of them are meant to be entrepreneurs. But the other thing, the selfish byproduct is if I love a company and they show up and they do the work, I could date them before we get married. Because I know if I invest with them, I'll give them endless amount of money.

1:03:10I could personally give them what's worked in like really one-on-one because I can't coach anybody one-on-one. I got 1 ,250 people depending on me here. But the idea being, I gave you guys a bunch of other industries that A1 wants to get involved in. I like knowing trust these people. they know they're going to win with me. So it helps grow the core business too. If we ended up doing a deal, I have no expectation of doing deals. And I don't know if anybody wants to do a deal, but I know this, that if it came down to it and we loved each other and we worked well together and there was a win-win for both of us, A1 and this other business that, you know, it just makes sense.

1:03:47You know me, I know you. So yeah, there is a by-product, but the fact is now I know everybody. And guess what happens? I'll show them everything I know. Who do you think they call when they figure something out? When they figure out Google's new algorithm, or they figure out a certain thing on Meta, or they figure out a new mailer technique that I've never heard of, who's the first person they want to call? They go, Tommy, you've taught me so much. I feel indebted. I haven't come to you for three years, but I finally got something I think you're going to love. You got to try this. And I get those phone calls 10 times a week.

1:04:20I'm on homeservicefreedom.com. It looks like a community plus like you give a playbook. The headline is really good. It says accelerate five years of growth in 12 months. How much does this cost? So there's three different programs. We only got 12 companies in the top program, but you know, we got a basic one. It's a few hundred bucks a month. The next one, it's uh it's about 50 grand a year i mean it's not crazy i'll tell you we took a we took a roofing company that was doing 12 million dollars bringing home about 300 grand within one year they're doing 30 million bringing home 6 million and a lot of these things are just turning the knobs a little bit and paying attention to some things you're not looking at the data the kpis will set you free And the fact of the matter is, I'll come to you guys and I'll say, hey, what do you think your booking rate is?

1:05:11They'll say, well, me and my wife answer the phones. We're probably at 90%. I'm like, you don't understand. It should be a decimal place. It needs to be exact. It should be by CSR. Like I know every single one of my CSRs booking rate. I know exactly what we're training them on every day. I know exactly my technique. You should see my scorecards. I mean, these are world renowned. Like we spent millions of dollars to build this internally and they are the baddest ass thing you'll ever see in your life. Tommy, what do you suck at? Are you, are you, what are you bad at? Where's your weakness right now?

1:05:43You know, my, my fiance might say I'm not the best communicator. I don't talk about my feelings. I don't really practice. Like I said, I don't like to piss people off too much. Fierce conversations. I'll do it because I love them, but I'm not going to have these conversations with a lot of people. I would say with my family I like to do stuff but my mom wants to sit there and chat and I love my mom more than anything but when I was a kid we'd go to a movie we'd go bowling she'd take me like she's she got really involved and I just have a hard time because sitting there and chatting it's okay to catch up on things but it's got to be something optimistic for me I have a hard time talking about I don't go down this never anymore am I talking like I'll mention like what's going out of Minnesota or Ukraine or whatever, but I can't live in this negativity zone.

1:06:33So I'm trying to be the best son I could, the best fiance I could, the best brother I could to my sister and the best uncle I could to my niece and nephew. And I know I got a long way to go. Like at least I could say that out loud and I recognize it. Tommy Mello is Tommy dialed in. I mean, you've got it figured out, man. Like it's, it's, you're, you're very inspirational. I'm a work in progress. What's the goal? You are, you're wealthy. You did it. You pulled it off with this company. Are you trying to buy the Cardinals? Like what's the goal out here? You know, I was playing with JETCBT yesterday and I would love to tell you there's a goal.

1:07:10You know, we're building a beautiful house in Idaho where we're going to be doing events. And then I'm building my dream home in Paradise Valley here in Arizona. But, you know, I've got, I got my life. I'm 42. I'll be 43 in March. And I got my life at 45. On my casket, you know what I want? I don't want the best entrepreneur wealthy. I want, number one, the best dad ever. And I don't have any kids yet. I'm a late bloomer. Luckily, my fiance is 27. She's worked with me for nine years. No. No, yeah. Yeah, nine years, because she was definitely 18 when I met her. I was going to say, dude, no public math, Tom.

1:07:47Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were doing some well, and then we went to jail. There it is. There's the weakness. Definitely nine years. and uh so i i feel like for me the next journey is like listen i want to be a great dad i want to be a great husband we're getting married next january 1st and i want to live i want to be where my feet are i want to go all in i want people to know how much i care about them i want to communicate better i want to make sure that it's not always about money and finance it's not just working out it's just becoming better every day better your best i always say i'm the best i've ever been, but the worst I'll ever be because tomorrow I need to be a little bit better.

1:08:28And I can tell you guys, I'm generally a happy person. I say once a month, I kind of get down on myself and I'm like, why do I work this much? Or why don't I do this? Or why do I do this? But you guys might look at people that are wealthy. I'll tell you the most billionaires and I meet a lot of them. They're not happy. Some of them are suicidal, alcoholics, drug addicts. They got everybody chasing them because of their money. They don't, they're not really good people. So they begin to look at themselves and say, the only reason people like me is because I worked my ass off and I've got money.

1:09:01And that's not going to be me. I want to continue to be humble, stay the blue collar guy I've always been. Remember that I started washing dishes and mowing lawns and just creating the best. I don't want a million friends. I want 20 friends that I want to be lifelong soulmates with. And guys, it sounds really good. And I do got a lot of great things going. and I thank God and Jesus Christ every day, but I've got a lot of work on. All the listeners just know that you might think being rich, famous, Instagram famous and influencer is gonna solve your problems, but that's not the answer. It's looking inside and becoming your best self.

1:09:42Have you ever seen the Savannah Banana? Yeah, yeah, they were just at an event I was at. Those guys are awesome. So Jesse Cole came on maybe eight weeks ago, six weeks ago, and Sean and I, he probably is in our top five favorite people that we've talked to. Very inspirational. And it's so interesting that you guys look very different. You have incredibly different businesses. And yet there's this spark that you both have that Sean and I find incredibly inspiring, contagious. Like it basically a conversation with you, we probably leave feeling now I know what a 10 out of 10 in terms of operating our lives are at.

1:10:18We have to step it up. Tommy, you said something earlier. You said, I used to hire twos and try to make them sevens. Now I hire sevens, try to make them tens. Me and Sam, it's like the reason we do the podcast is you find tens to make you realize, oh, you're still a seven. Give you, break your frame a little bit and say, oh, that's an area I could be better in. Oh, wow. He really had a certain spark or he had a certain point of view or he had a habit that I'm going to pick up here. And so, you know, for me, that's the biggest thing with this podcast is to just kind of continually surround ourselves with people who are excellent in some area of their life, hopefully multiple areas of their life, so that we can kind of realize, oh, you know, you're actually a seven.

1:10:59There is actually much, there are more levels to that thing that you're trying to do. I want to finish out, if you guys allow me to, just, I want you guys to think about this going into this year. And if you could, I recommend everybody write these down. First one is family and friends. That's the first F. The next one is faith. And this could be in any order you want. The next one is fitness. The next one is finance. The next one is future self. And the sixth one is fun. And I want you to set goals for all these. If you don't believe in God, you can skip faith. I highly recommend you figure out what to believe in because I do believe we're going somewhere great.

1:11:37And then I don't want you to set a yearly goal. I want you to get Jesse Esther's big ass calendar. I want you to start journaling. And I want you to use a blue pen. There we go. Blue pen and a white piece of paper. And I want you to write your goals down. And I want you to put them in your shower, your vehicle, your refrigerator on your desk. Four spots. And I want you to sign up on the bottom. And then I want next to each one of those six, I want accountability partners that you know are going to hold your feet to the fire. Then I want you to put your why. And it's Simon Sinek 101. But it better be a big ass why.

1:12:12and you better have people that are willing to tell you you're failing and you're letting yourself down and you're letting me down and I want you to post it on social media I want you to come out of your comfort zone and I want you to say this is what I'm going to do and don't set a yearly goal weekly or monthly steps it could be calories it could be body fat you know it could be going to church it could be just the answers I'm going to time block time with my family and that's what I'm putting on here first. But these simple little tools, the accountability partners, and you better meet with those accountability partners weekly.

1:12:47And it better be hard conversations. And it better not just last through March and then fall off like most people do. And it's got to be a strong, Cialdini talks about this. I got this bracelet that says, keep your commitment. You better commit and you better yell from the rooftop that you're going to do this. And it better be a huge why. And the only other thing is try to get into better circles. If you want to be a great golfer, go golfing with three scratch golfers. You're going to be better. Get into the right circles and you do what I'm telling you to. On all six of those, your life is planned on, it's reverse engineered, it's manifested, and it will come true.

1:13:23I'm going to run through a f***ing wall. That's how I do it. Sam, anything we say after this, we'll just make the podcast worse. Just do the line and let's end the pod. This is perfect. That's it. That's the pod.

1:13:45All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit, and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.