He Lost His Company as a Minority Partner. Then Built It Back From Zero.

Summary

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The Home Service Expert Podcast

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Guest: Justin Feitcher, Founder of Providence Roofing

Host: Tommy Mello

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Overview

This episode offers a raw and instructive look into the "in-the-trenches" journey of building a blue collar business from scratch, featuring Justin Feitcher, owner of Providence Roofing in Central Florida. Justin shares the real-life challenges of nearly going under as a minority partner, starting over, and reengineering his entire business—from pricing and process to content marketing—all while embracing transparency and leveraging social media. Tommy Mello and Justin swap insights on sales, managing overhead, the wild reality of home services, and creating content as a growth engine.

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Main Themes & Purpose

• Rebuilding from Failure: Justin details the aftermath of losing his previous company as a minority partner, and the process of regaining ground and reconstructing Providence Roofing.
• Blueprint for Blue Collar Entrepreneurs: Real-time, honest discussion on the operational and financial pitfalls faced in the startup phase, with actionable lessons.
• Content as Leverage: Deep dive into how Justin uses social media to drive business without a massive budget, including content trends and customer education.
• Community & Mentorship: Both speakers emphasize learning from others, hiring, and giving back to the broader home service industry.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Justin’s Backstory & The Restart (00:00–05:00)

• Justin recounts almost shutting down after a brutal first year—underscoring pricing errors and the reality of operating without enough systems.
  • “I was talking to my dad and I was like, man, if I don't sell at least 10 jobs next month, we're going to have to close.” (00:00, Justin)
• He credits his family’s work ethic but notes his error: fundamentally misunderstanding overhead and pricing as a startup.

The Home Services Landscape: More Than Neighborhood Wars (02:39)

• Shift from “contractors fighting over neighborhoods” to “fighting over attention” via social media—a new reality for home service businesses.

Entrepreneurship & Lessons from Failure (03:30–10:00)

• Justin’s career in construction, sales, and the key learning: “Revenue is vanity. Profit is king.” (04:16, Justin)
• Tommy’s perspective: "First five years [of any business] is full of mistakes, long hours and hard lessons…shit's gonna go wrong." (06:08, Tommy)

Niche, Focus, and Saying No (06:08–08:00)

• Tommy urges entrepreneurs to specialize: "My best advice is stay focused and say no and realize where your profit's coming from." (07:48, Tommy)
  • Cautions about being lured into side jobs—"opportunity can be a trap."

Pricing, Overhead, & Surviving Financial Missteps (07:51–09:35)

• Justin shares his mispricing journey:
  • “I was 70, $80 a square short of where I needed to be to actually make a profit...” (07:58, Justin)
  • Swung the other way, priced too high and lost sales.
• Now finds a “sweet spot” and avoids insurance work for more control.
  • "If you're building an insurance-based business, you...depend on something out of your control." (09:05, Justin)

Systems, Delegation & Key Hires (10:21–12:03)

• Justin’s turning point was hiring a detail-oriented team member to take over admin and paperwork so he can focus on strategy and fieldwork.
  • “She probably is the key person that I brought on...just changed everything for me." (11:19, Justin)

Mentorship, Drive, and Technology’s Impact (14:15–18:40)

• Both read widely; Justin highlights “Never Split the Difference” and “Building a Story Brand.”
• Future-proofing blue collar trades: "I think this industry...is the new gold mine...it’ll be a while before a robot puts a roof on." (15:20, Justin)
• Tommy: "But there's going to be a lot of competition...you stand out by building content." (16:19, Tommy)

The Grit Factor and Value of Blue Collar Work (16:16–18:40)

• Discuss why white collar professionals may struggle in trades: “Try to get that guy [software engineer] to come out and do 14 hour days...that’s just life.” (17:31, Justin)
• The “managed chaos” of home services vs. controlled environments like McDonald’s or Subway.

The Real Cost of Business Ownership (19:30–21:34)

• Overhead is a “silent killer” for startups, from trucks to wasteful spend.
• Pricing must cover materials, labor, and overhead. “That's where I screwed up.” (19:30, Justin)
• Book recommendations: "How Much Should I Charge?" by Ellen Rohr; "Where Did the Money Go?"

Labor, Fulfillment, and Bottlenecks (22:29–23:39)

• Justin still manages most client relationships and fulfillment—but acknowledges, "the biggest hiccup or bottleneck in their business is them." (23:21, Justin)

Early-Stage Hustle & Transitioning out of the Field (23:39–24:15)

• Both describe the sweat equity and late-night grind of the first years.
• Tommy: "You're probably underfunded and you're going to put the sweat equity in for the first five years..." (23:39)

The Art of Sales & Building Value (25:42–29:05)

• Handling price objections:
  • “The moment we as businesses start negotiating on price...is the moment we lose.” (25:42, Justin)
  • Tommy pushes “options, not ultimatums.” Offer value-adds instead of discounts.
    • “Conversion rate is so important because if you paid $500 to get that lead...you want to figure out a way to build an experience, give them options and earn their business." (27:21, Tommy)
• Turning the script: When a client brings up a competitor’s lower bid, ask why they didn’t go with them; often, the answer reveals what truly matters.

Customer Experience & Relationship Mindset (30:33–33:14)

• The real asset is not the sale, but the relationship:
  • “That sale is just the first transaction. The relationship is the actual asset.” (31:00, Justin)
• Tommy’s focus: huge service agreement base; recurring revenue as a stabilizer.

Technology, CRM, and Leveraging AI (33:14–37:04)

• Justin is building his own CRM/customer portal tailored for roofers—even as Tommy warns of the risks around proprietary systems.
• Technology as a competitive advantage: From recruiting to inventory, to advanced proposal/presentation tools (Mantle, GoPro site walkthroughs, APIs).
• On selling financing: "Your average ticket will go up by about 40% when people use financing." (38:03, Tommy)

Managing Trucks, Assets, and Tax Strategy (40:16–43:55)

• "I used to run trucks to the wheels fell off," Tommy says, explaining the advantages of leasing and turning over trucks for tax and morale reasons.
• Deep dive on the true tax burden for blue collar business owners—and the importance of getting savvy support.

Winning the Sale: The In-Home Experience (44:00–49:07)

• Tommy’s hyper-detailed walkthrough of building rapport:
  • Offering coffee, paying attention to cues, using humor, showing testimonials and handwritten notes.
  • "Smile. Absolutely. Smiling is free." (47:39, Tommy)
• Justin: "Homeowners don't really know if they bought a good roof. ...They know how the experience made them feel." (44:51, Justin)

Standing Out & Differentiation (49:42–51:21)

• The best companies are usually also the most expensive—because they add value, carry custom parts, and invest in culture.
• Tommy: "If you can't be different than everybody else, then you're competing on the same stuff. What's the point?" (50:43)

Objections, Closing, and Lead Quality (57:13–63:25)

• Strategies for being the first vs. last in estimate rotations.
• Tommy’s view: better to be first if you educate, add value, and give the prospect reasons to trust you.
• Close rates: For social media referrals, Justin closes 65%, making it a powerful channel.

Social Media: Building a Brand with Limited Budget (63:25–67:13)

• Justin began making videos out of loneliness—evolved into a documented journey, known for humorous, relatable content and memes.
  • On relatable content: "We get all kinds of crazy texts from customers...Put it to song." (67:35)
• Justin’s viral moments and why authenticity matters: “If you can build a presence where people actually recognize you, you're building a brand at that point, you're not building a job." (65:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "There's enough business to go around." (00:12, Justin Feitcher)
• "Shit's gonna go wrong...what could go wrong will go wrong until you really sit back and say 'I'm going to be a systems guy.'" (06:08, Tommy Mello)
• "I did not understand how to price in overhead. Even as a startup, like a small company." (19:30, Justin Feitcher)
• "People hate to be sold, but they love to buy." (36:00, Tommy Mello)
• "Smile. Absolutely. Smiling is free. And it's contagious." (47:39, Tommy Mello & Justin Feitcher)
• "If you can't be different than everybody else, then you're competing on the same stuff. What's the point?" (50:43, Tommy Mello)
• "If you double down on content, you'll absolutely kill it." (65:01, Tommy Mello)
• "Being a business owner is lonely...so it kind of became almost a video journal." (63:25, Justin Feitcher)
• On social media viral moment: "He looks at me and he's like, I think you're the guy that I saw in a video hanging from a roof...It's so powerful." (63:48, Justin Feitcher)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening struggle & turning point: 00:00–02:00, 10:21–12:03
• How to price for overhead: 19:30–21:34
• Content strategy & customer attention: 02:39, 63:25–65:34
• Handling price objections: 25:42–29:05
• Building recurring revenue/agreements: 31:13–33:14
• The home visit experience: 44:00–49:07
• Discussion of humor/viral social content: 67:13–72:21
• Business goals and path to growth: 72:25–74:02

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Tone & Language

The dialogue is candid, irreverent, and mentorship-driven—heavy on "real talk" about the struggles and strategies behind blue collar entrepreneurship. Both share stories of failure as well as actionable advice, while Justin’s DIY and content-centric approach is especially relatable for small operators. The banter is authentic and includes laughs about fast food analogies, hands-on customer experiences, and tongue-in-cheek responses to classic objections.

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Conclusion & Takeaways

This episode stands out for its honesty regarding the messiness of building a service business, with Justin providing a true "in-progress" case study. Listeners get a blend of street-smart tactics (overhead management, hiring, leveraging technology and social media) and philosophy (focus, value creation, building relationships over transactions). Both Tommy and Justin stress the importance of learning from mistakes and leaning into content creation as a low-cost, high-impact growth strategy.

Final thought:
"Fail fast, fail often, but don't make the same mistake twice and you'll, you'll do amazing things." (78:53, Tommy Mello)

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Guest Contact:

• Website: providenceflroofing.com
• Email: [e-mail]
• Phone: [phone]

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Transcript

[Justin Feitcher]

I was talking to my dad and I was like, man, if I don't sell at least 10 jobs next month, we're going to have to close. We were able to sell exactly what we needed to keep limping along. Then it's like, okay, now what are the processes we've got to change. The thing I did not do well was I did not understand how to price in overhead. Even as a startup, I'm just not afraid to talk about the struggles. It's real and let's talk about it and let's not hide it and help each other out. There's enough business to go around.

[Tommy Mello]

Welcome back to the Home Service Expert podcast. I've got Justin Feitcher here. He's an expert in roofing sales process, pricing strategy, social media, content, homeowner education, blue collar entrepreneurship. He's based out of St. Cloud, Orlando, Florida. Founder and operator of Providence Roofing. Started his first company at the age of 13 and Providence is his sixth three generation roving family. His dad Rick was roofing before Justin was born and his son Miles is already part of the business. Nearly went under one year in one year and had to completely rebuild how he prices, sells and operates. Now focused on speed, transparency and educating homeowners instead of pressuring them. Still in the field every day running jobs, selling roofs and managing crews. Active content creator on Instagram and TikTok shells shares the real journey, including mistakes, faith driven business. The episode thesis is not every great podcast guest is someone who already made it. Justin is in the trenches right now building a roving company in Central Florida, nearly going under in a year and rebuilding everything from pricing to process to content strategy on the fly. This is a real time look at what it takes to build a blue collar business from the ground up. Plus a deep dive into how one roofer is using social media content to grow without a massive marketing budget. Justin, I started following your stuff, brother. And I was like, we gotta get this guy on. He's funny, he's amazing, he's he. You just make me laugh because like the fast food shit, like, yeah, I brought my own chicken nuggets. You know, I was wondering if you could give me. Oh, I don't like the burger. Can I bring it back? It's like no other business other than home service home improvement does this.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, it's true man, it's true. Thank you guys for having me. Honestly, super, super stoked to be here and also get to learn from you, man. It's going to be good.

[Tommy Mello]

So have you ever heard of the podcast.

[Justin Feitcher]

Oh, yeah. Yep. Read your books. Yep. Listen to the podcast. So it's pretty neat to be reached out to by your team. And I was like, this is crazy. At first I was like, this is probably spam. And I looked everything up like, no, it's legit.

[Tommy Mello]

So now it's great, man. You know, I think content is such a cool thing when you just. You don't even have to be. You're great at it, but you don't have to be great. You just gotta be consistent.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, it's true. What's funny? So your bio is pretty good, just to clarify. So my dad, he was roofing before I was born. He roofed mobile homes, actually, in the factories. So he would put roofs on mobile homes as they were being built in factories. But then he migrated out of that and he's been a pastor now pretty much my whole life. Moved from construction and farming to being a pastor. But one thing you said that is fascinating, that I think we need a shift in perspective is used to be contractors would fight over neighborhoods, and now the marketplaces, we're fighting over attention. And so social media is critical, like you said.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah. So tell me a little bit about the business. What's going good, what's not going good, what got you into it, what you're excited about, what you hate.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, that's good, man. No, so I've always been entrepreneurial. Grew up, was homeschooled. And so I've got a younger brother and then three older sisters. And me and my brother, we started a couple businesses similar. Similar to you. You started pushing lawnmowers and I think you said shoveling snow and similar. I mean, I'm here in Florida, so landscaping. I just asked my mom today because I. To make sure I had my timeline right, but I started picking oranges for an orange man down the road when he had an orange grove when I was like 9 or 10. And mom would drop me off and I'd work there a couple hours on the weekends and stuff. And so just work ethic has always been something that my parents ingrained into us and always knew I wanted to start something. Didn't know exactly what that would be, but got into construction. Been in construction and in sales pretty much my entire career. And so finally made the jump, kind of really around Covid time, I was like this, decided I'm going to start something. And I know roofing. And so I started another roofing company with two partners. And that actually we built that up pretty quick. It was successful, and then kind of got pushed out of that because I was a minority partner and so kind of forced me to start Providence Roofing just over a year ago. And to your point. Yeah, we first eight months in, like, realizing this, I got my pricing all wrong. Like, I don't have the systems in place that I need yet. But now, I mean, we've been in business over a year, done over 1.2 million in revenue, which revenue is vanity. Profit is king. But we're. We're operating at about a 10% EBITDA, which is okay, but there's. We've had a lot of stupidity taxes that we won't be repeating next year. And so that's kind of where I'm at. I don't know if I answered all your question.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, so 10% profit, and that. That's after you pay yourself a good salary, right?

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

So you're paying yourself.

[Justin Feitcher]

I kind of. Obviously it's this first. First year in. I'm pumping a lot back in business. So it is. Yeah. So, I mean, not as much as I want to be making eventually, obviously, but good enough to pay the bills, so. And I'm unemployable. I think any of us entrepreneurs are like, we just people forever have said, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Stop trying to change things, and done it this way forever. And we're visionaries. We want to change things. And so if I don't pay myself great money, I could make more money working for somebody else for sure, but I wouldn't be able to be in control.

[Tommy Mello]

I always say, look at. If you. If you do this, quicker power to you. But usually the first five years is full of mistakes, long hours and hard lessons that really. You know, my dad always used to tell me, I wish I knew then what I know now. And I'm like, just tell me. He's like, you know, I wish I was that. I wish it was that easy. But you're gonna have to make the mistakes. And each mistake, as long as you don't make it again, you start really building momentum. But it's like, shit's gonna go wrong. Your suppliers are gonna screw you, you're gonna get stolen from, you're gonna get lied to. You're gonna get canceled at the last minute. Like, what could go wrong will go wrong until you really sit back and say, I'm going to be a systems guy, and I'm going to start the business by saying, no, you know, you're going to have an opportunity to be a supplier. You're going to have an opportunity to go after new construction. You're going to have an opportunity to go after storms. You're going to have an opportunity to go after retro. You're going to have an opportunity where someone's going to say, can you do the siding? Can you do the windows? And you're going to be like, well, I'm not going to do windows, but you know, I'll do it for 100 grand. And all of a sudden you're going to go, man, 100 grand, it only cost me 40. And then you're going to mismeasure some windows. And then it's going to be like, the aluminum siding is going to have an issue, it's going to start falling apart. Cause you tend to say yes your first couple years. And my best advice is stay focused and say no and realize where your profit's coming from. They're going to say, man, I'm making a fortune doing storms. I'm making a fortune doing this. And the insurance work, I'm making a fortune doing this. And I started doing commercial instead of resi and I'm making a ton of money until I had a buddy of mine do the commercial job. And dude, he damaged four cars. It was a cluster. There was warranty calls up the ying yang. I feel bad for the guy. He got it all taken care of. He paid for everything. But it was out of his, out of his normal business. And you just got to learn to say no more and really figure out where your profit is.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yep.

[Tommy Mello]

When you were.

[Justin Feitcher]

No, that's good.

[Tommy Mello]

What were you, you know, what were you pricing jobs at and how, how far off were you when you, when you first started?

[Justin Feitcher]

I mean, well, it wasn't just pricing, right. It was just seepage, miss, even mismeasuring, not ordering correctly, being overcharged by suppliers, finding different suppliers. So my pricing was really, initially, I mean, I was 70, $80 a square short of where I needed to be to actually make a profit. Breaking even, sometimes making profit, but a lot of times we weren't high enough. And then you go the other way, which happened for about two months, August and September of last year, which also the market has been a little bit unique. But then I raised my prices too much. And then now every job you're going into, you're the highest bidder. And it's not that that can't be done. But when you're a brand new baby company and you're coming in trying to be the top dog with no reputation, it's hard to sell. And so I Have to find that easy medium. So now I'm right around about 490 to 500 a square for shingles. And it's about the sweet spot. And I don't do any insurance. It's all retail. Too much opportunity to. You can't one, you're building a business dependent on something out of your control. In my opinion, you're, you're waiting for storms. Like if you're building an insurance based business, you, if a storm doesn't happen and you don't know how to do retail, you're in trouble.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah.

[Justin Feitcher]

Is that. You guys do much insurance work, Tommy?

[Tommy Mello]

No, we don't do any. I mean in the future we will. I mean look at this point we service 28,000 jobs a month. 28 houses, no commercial, no new construction. So we're in 24 states, about to be in 25. And you know, we keep doing what we're doing. I mean we're already number one in the industry. Question is, how do I get to a hundred thousand homes a month and how do I add value and how do I dominate on the LLMs and the lead source which we're going to talk a lot about leads. Was there a moment when you realized I'm doing this completely wrong? What was the like epiphany that you were like dude, my life, I got to make some drastic changes?

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, I mean I think I, it was definitely summer of last year. I was just like we looking at numbers and I can't give you the exact moment but I mean looking at numbers and just realizing we are if we do not. Actually I remember the conversation now. I was talking to my dad and I was like, man, if I don't like sell at least 10 jobs next month we're gonna have to close. Like that's our minimum like to get us out of supplier debt like that we had, we had built up from a Net30 account and didn't. Wasn't paying them on time. And I was like if we don't like we won't have the money to keep going. And so but we did and we were able to sell exactly what we needed to keep limping along. And, and then it's like, okay, now what are the processes we've got to change? What are the systems we need to implement? Hired a key person who's now doing. I, I'm very much a big thinker. Long vision, right. Strategic. But I'm not a numbers guy. To, to be the guy to sit down and do the paperwork and, and do the Detail. Detail things. It just. Those types of things I'm not great at. So I hired a gal who is phenomenal at that. She's great at numbers. She's great at keeping the details in order. And that has been critical so that she probably is the key person that I brought on. That, like, man, has just changed everything for me because I'm not wasting three hours a night when I get home from running estimates or running jobs trying to do paperwork. Now I can let her actually delegate that and let her do it and do it better than I can do it.

[Tommy Mello]

No, it's great. I mean, keep an eye on the money, man. I mean, there's two things you can never let go of is marketing and your numbers. If you keep those two things only, you'll be a success. Hey, Colin, can you come in here for a sec? I just. We're going to edit this.

[Justin Feitcher]

That's what my question was. So how does this. How does this normally work? Do you guys like this whole conversation?

[Tommy Mello]

You edit it together and chopped up and it'll be great. And if we screw up or want to redo anything, we could do it. Do you think he should put a light on.

[Justin Feitcher]

So on my screen? Yeah, he definitely doesn't look that dark on my screen.

[Tommy Mello]

Okay, good. And then secondly, is there a way sometime in this that we could play some of his videos and he could comment on them?

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

Can you pull those up? And then we'll just do a session of that where he could comment. After, we'll play a bunch of his top five, and then he'll be like. Because I remember when you were out at an estimate, and you're like, dude, I didn't even want to get this guy's business. Like, I think we should play some of those. Yeah. So we'll cut right back into where we were.

[Justin Feitcher]

So cool.

[Tommy Mello]

So you started your first company at 13, and Providence is your sixth company.

[Justin Feitcher]

I don't know where you got that, actually.

[Tommy Mello]

Oh, that's not true.

[Justin Feitcher]

So you better edit. Edit that out. No.

[Tommy Mello]

Okay, so we're gonna edit that out. That's a mistake. Okay. Okay.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah. This is this. This first solo, like, company I've started. Well, my dad's. My dad's a partner with me in it. Like, he helped give me the investment to start. But I run the company. But as far as. Yeah. I mean, apart from. If you count your landscaping as a kid. Yeah. And random stuff like that as businesses, then sure, maybe.

[Tommy Mello]

No, I don't.

[Justin Feitcher]

But real business. This is my second business. I started Roofing. The first one was the one with two partners that I got pushed out of. I was a minority partner. This is my first business I've started myself, myself.

[Tommy Mello]

Who do you look up to? I mean who are the, do you go seek out answers? What made you want to do roofing? What, what was like, who do you look up to? What books do you read? What podcast? What are you trying to do with the business?

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah. So mentors from Afar is what I call a lot of the, the authors that I listen to I really like. Obviously you like your stuff. Grant Cardone Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss is a phenomenal book. I'm, I'm naturally a sales guy, so I listen to a lot of sales books. I also really enjoy marketing. So build you'd story brand is a phenomenal book. Yeah. Storytelling, obviously the classics think and grow rich. But so we in, in blue collar and in the trades, we have a ton of drive time. At least I do. So I, I spent, I was on the road 80,000 miles last year in my truck, put 80,000 miles in my truck just driving around like crazy. And so it's a ton of drive times. So I listen to a ton of audiobooks. But your question, where do I see this going? It's a big question, right? I think that this industry, home service in the trades, with the exponential growth of technology and AI displacing a lot of intellectual jobs, I think this is the new gold mine. I think that we will see in the next two to three years. I think we'll see 50% of median middle position white collar jobs just eliminated. But it is going to be a while, I think, before robotics and AI can put a roof on. Right. It may happen one day.

[Tommy Mello]

But let me ask you some questions though because, yeah, you know, as these white collar jobs disappear, the doctors, the lawyers, the dentists, you know, they've got a lot of Money in their 401k. Where do you think they're going to go? You don't think they have the potential to learn about some of the trades like us and get into them?

[Justin Feitcher]

No, they do. Absolutely.

[Tommy Mello]

And so, you know, I know a lot of private equity guys that are like, I'm just going to go start a business. Unfortunately, it's not for the fainted heart. I mean, nine out of 10 businesses fail. There's a lot to do with how to treat a blue collar person that didn't maybe have a good childhood, maybe they didn't pass 10th grade. Maybe they need, they need their confidence built up and you know, I just had 70 guys next door that, that are in our training program this month alone I had 48 guys last month we got another 70 coming in next month and I do a three hour orientation and I think unfortunately I've seen a lot of these white collar guys go try to start in this industry and they don't have the grit, man, they think it's easy. They're like, man, if I could work in somebody's mouth and I went to school for 12 years, I could handle this. And power to them, man, I hope they could. But I know that there's going to be a lot of competition. So it's how do you stand out in a crowded world? And I think you're doing the right thing by building content. But it's like getting great reviews every day. How do you go from 3 reviews a day to 20 reviews a day? And how do you get multiple Google my business pages? How do you win awards to feed the LLMs? There's a lot of things to think about and we could dive into some of this stuff. But I want to pivot to your dad here. He was putting on roofs and mobile

[Justin Feitcher]

homes, what he was a dairy, dairy farmer before that. And he's, he was just, he was, he's a hard working man. Still is. Like he moved us to Florida when I was just really young from Indiana to start the church that he's still pastoring today. And like I said, my mom homeschooled all five of us kids. So I had a phenomenal upbringing. Much of my success and who I am is attributed to them. They raised us well, they raised us to respect people, to work hard and that's it. Your question about doctors, lawyers coming into blue collar. Yeah, they can. But I think most like you look at software engineers, right? No shame on them. They are very smart and, but the, the, the job that they have is work from home behind your computer and it's all mental. Try to get that guy to come out in the field and do 14 hour days, five, six days a week. And that's just life. Like, yeah, I just, I don't know if I don't. It may happen, but I don't know.

[Tommy Mello]

80,000 miles in a year, that's, that's a tough one, man. And I will say there's a lot of, you know, right now our biggest probably opportunity as a company is capacity planning. Because when you graduate 70 technicians, that means you need 210 new leads the day they go out in the field. If you get 250 crazy. You're burning them. If you get 180, it's not enough. So it's, it's a lot more complicated than people think. Like when you start a franchise like McDonald's or, you know, Subway, you can control what's in those four walls really easy. When you got supply houses, gas, driving, insurance, camera systems, reviews, there's just so many outliers. It's, it's a lot. It's managed chaos is what it is.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And you're, you're gonna, you're gonna learn, man. I love that you're in this. I'm rooting for you, brother.

[Justin Feitcher]

Thanks, man. That means a lot. I think for you. Like exactly what you said. All of those things become, they, they float to overhead costs that in essence can be, can be tracked and are somewhat predictable. But that's where I screwed up. Anybody that's listening that, like is starting out, you're new, like, you don't quite understand your pricing. Like, the thing I did not do well was I did not understand how to price in overhead. Even as a startup, like a small company, couple months in my startup costs were like crazy. Like buying equipment, like getting the truck, getting the truck wrapped, like, and then you waste money on stuff that you don't need. But then as you're pricing out month to month, how much does it cost to be in business? And it's not. You don't price a job by materials and labor and profit. You gotta include the overhead. And I think that is hard to sometimes figure out and figure out what that number is. How did you guys do it?

[Tommy Mello]

Well, I made a lot of mistakes.

[Justin Feitcher]

And how do you continue to do it?

[Tommy Mello]

Well, I'll tell you this. There's a couple good books I think anybody listening should read. One is How Much Should I Charge? By Alan Rohr. And the next book is where did the Money Go? Because I think everybody gets to the end of the year, the CPA calls them, says you owe 200 grand and you go, I don't even have that in my account. And pricing is probably the hardest thing because, you know, my clients are buyers. We started advertising to the people that aren't trying to. Your advertising sources make a big difference on what kind of talent you're going to attract. If you got a broke down truck with just stencil letters, and we do roofing, if you don't stand out in a crowded market for quality, it's like, I'm building a really, really nice house in Paradise Valley. The tile work is 17 bucks a foot. Now I know where I can go to get it for a buck fifty a foot.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yep. But you know, you know what kind of work you're going to get for the buck 50.

[Tommy Mello]

I mean, look, at the end of the day, I know what it's like to buy premium. And that's, that's how I buy. I used to. You know, I always say my favorite place costs a thousand bucks for a couple to go eat, but guess what? They're booked out three weeks. And guess what? It's hard to get a reservation. But you're going to get your martini shaken three times. You're going to get. Is there any special occasion? The, the, the plates are 400 degrees, and when I go to McDonald's and eat like a king for 30 bucks with my date, you know, my fiance, so. But I don't want that. I want an experience and I want people. Like, when I buy something for my house, I want the warranty. I wanted stuff not to leak on a roof. I want to know that it's quality. I want the people at my home to be safe around my family. And do you, do you fulfill all your stuff or do you have a team, Like a team, another team to kind of fulfill it?

[Justin Feitcher]

Me.

[Tommy Mello]

You do all these.

[Justin Feitcher]

Whatever. I don't. No, sorry, no install labor. I've got cruise. Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And they're 1099 for my labor.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yep. Yep. So my crews are 1099. It's the same two crews that I consistently use. But I've got more available as I grow. But yeah, other than that. As far as like logistics, though, like ordering, even PMing jobs, I trust my guys, though. Known them long enough that they do good work. But homeowner management, that's. That's all me. So for now, obviously, as I, As I continue to grow, I think there's a point when every business owner, I think, comes to the point where they realize the biggest. The biggest hiccup or bottleneck in their business is them.

[Tommy Mello]

Yep.

[Justin Feitcher]

And in. So it's like you've got to realize the business is only able to grow to the level and capability of the leader. And so got to get better every single day and then learn to delegate, have the money to hire the right people, and that's when scale comes.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah. No, you're right. One of the things I tell people all the time is you're probably underfunded and you're going to put the sweat equity in for the first five years, which I had to do. I mean, I, I started, really started the business in 2007, in the first five years I was running the vast majority of the calls. And then the next two years I was kind of the on call guy if we were having trouble with payroll.

[Justin Feitcher]

There you go. Yeah. Is you can work cheaper than the rest of the guys.

[Tommy Mello]

I got cheaper. Higher conversion rate, higher reviews and higher tickets. And I could run more calls because I'd work till midnight. I didn't care.

[Justin Feitcher]

Exactly. Yep. Now that's.

[Tommy Mello]

How do you handle when a homeowner. Go ahead.

[Justin Feitcher]

I was gonna say one nice thing. Yeah. For you guys is you. You can work inside and you can work late. Doesn't. Darkness doesn't matter for you because you're inside a garage. So you probably have crews that actually have. Do you have. How do your crews work? Are they on revolving shifts, your technicians?

[Tommy Mello]

Well, right now we're. We're testing some stuff out on a split shift. But you know that we've got guys that'll work till till midnight. We got guys that'll start at 6. So right now we're running a 6am shift, an 8am shift and then a one that starts at noon and then it's a 10 hour shift. And that allows us to be a lot more fine tuned on the capacity planning and that's very hard to do. There's a place in Charlotte called Morris Jank as they run till midnight seven days a week and they do H vac, plumbing, electrical. And they murder it because people know that's their claim to fame is we'll be out there same day till midnight. And they absolutely.

[Justin Feitcher]

Do you guys have. You guys have on call rotations?

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, we've got on call. We pay the guy an extra hundred bucks to ring the doorbell and most of the time we could do it. I don't really love the on call shift. I try to get. That's why we're trying to schedule up to 10, 10pm because if an emergency shift comes out, we could pay the guy extra staff till midnight. Most of my guys are fine doing it. How do you handle it when a homeowner says your competitors. A few grand cheaper.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah. For me, the moment we as businesses start negotiating on price, I think is the moment we lose. So it's always a matter of. I. I am so sorry. I. My value that I'm providing you. Could I build your roof for $2,000 cheaper? I can absolutely build you a roof $2,000 cheaper. I won't do it because it's my reputation and the materials and the quality of that product. I can't warranty it. But if that's what you're looking for, then, I mean, probably not the contractor for you. So I call it the takeaway. So basically, they say, can you do it for $2,000 cheaper? And you don't say, you're an idiot. Which is what a lot of times we want to say. But that's typically the route that I take with it.

[Tommy Mello]

So. There's a book I want you to read by Joe Chrisara. It's actually right here. It's called what should we do? And you should read this book as soon as you could listen to it on audio audible. And he came in and taught us a lot of things, so I'll throw it off to him. But. Well, what I figured out is to start giving options a set of ultimatums. Do you want the builder grade? Do you want a good warranty? Or do you want top of the line? And I've got five. I've actually got six options for garage doors now. I got one through five star in our signature series. And I got three different style springs through two year, five year and lifetime. And when they go, that's just more than I wanted to spend. I said, let's just pick another option. I'm here to earn your business.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And I want to be your garage door provider for life. And what I've learned is little things to add value. So instead of giving that $3,000 discount, say, I'll tell you what I could do. We do a coating on top of these shingles. That'll give them an extra 10 years. Normally we charge about $3,500 to do this, but I'll go ahead. And I'll go ahead. If that's what's gonna it's gonna take to earn your business, I'll go ahead and include that. Now, that might cost you 200 bucks. You just spray on them. You know what I mean? But a conversion rate is so important because if you paid 500 to get that lead, which if you're not paying a great amount of money to get leads, they're not great leads. You could go to lead as you go to Angie's List, you could go to next door. You could do a lot of cool stuff. But if you're getting quality leads, you want to figure out a way to build an experience, give them options and earn their business. And. And I appreciate the fact you're willing to walk away because that's what you should do if you only got one price. But, you know, I offer three. Offer you offer 3 mm. And then when they're going to the cheapest one, they still want it cheaper.

[Justin Feitcher]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I think that's just free market. And people that don't know how to. Don't know how to properly price there will always be cheaper, cheaper people, cheaper companies. But it's Chuck in a truck. And so normally when people say that, it's like, did you get a price for $3,000 cheaper? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, why didn't you hire them? And then they start to sell themselves. And it's like, we just had this feeling. And it's like, well, I mean, you had that feeling for a reason. And I'm here now, so if you want it done right, grab your driver's license and we'll get this taken care of. Extend your hand and close the deal. So, yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah.

[Justin Feitcher]

That's pretty cool, though.

[Tommy Mello]

They do sell themselves. When you ask them, you know, why don't you go with them? And a lot of times we'll be like, I've got a. I've got an uncle's buddy in the. In the industry, and he could do it for a better price. I'm like, I'm just curious, where's he at? Like, well, he's out of town this week.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And I'm like, that's typically how it goes. Is a lot of times these guys are hard to get a hold of after the work's done. And what's interesting is my favorite clients, and we get these dozens by the day, is the client that calls me up and they go, I've had the same company out three times in the last six months. Can you guys just come fix it correctly? And it's just storytelling. And you say it happens all the time, is they don't show up. We'll come out nights, weekends, holidays, doesn't matter for us. We've got availability. We're here when your door has an issue. We run warranty calls ahead of new. New clients. And I mean, the lifetime value of you as a client means much more to us than picking up a new one. So, yeah, you get. You get kind of what you pay for when it comes to this stuff. And I think we're a far better value than the cost. And we believe that the value should by far exceed the cost of doing the work. So that's where we win. I mean, and by the way, all of our messaging, our tv, our radio ads, everything, even the way we wrapped our vehicles, is that people understand that we're not going to Be the discount company. But we're going to be out there right away and it's going to be fixed Right. With somebody that you could trust in your house, with your family.

[Justin Feitcher]

Absolutely. And I think that's really the key mental shift that has to happen is we, all of us as home service companies, we got to realize, and you talk about it in your book, building a fence around your customers, and I love that. But we got to realize the roof, the garage door, that sale is just the first transaction. The relationship is the actual asset.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah.

[Justin Feitcher]

And so that was going to be my. One of my questions for you, Tommy, is how, when you're selling, what's your warranty on your. Your standard garage door?

[Tommy Mello]

It's one year, like, but what are you selling?

[Justin Feitcher]

Like, what are you telling them? How long will this last?

[Tommy Mello]

Oh, a garage door, depending on the use, and hopefully your kids, you know, when your daughter turns 16, we might have an incident. But as long as. You know, I try to make the clients laugh, but yeah, yeah. I like to say, look, if you get a service agreement, we come out each year, we lubricate, adjust, tighten everything on the door, make sure it's balanced. And that's going to give you a warranty as long as you're under the service agreement. And it's our parts. So we try to build. We got 50,000 service agreements, which is not near what I want to be, but they pay 15 bucks a month and, you know, the lifetime value is there. And then we credit all that money they spend on the monthly towards a new door.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah. That's amazing. And for you, so 50,000? You said 50,000? Yeah, 50,000 right now is how many you have. That's awesome. It's nowhere near 750. $750,000, though, in annual reoccurring revenue. A month?

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, a month. Yeah.

[Justin Feitcher]

So that's awesome. That's what I was going to say is like my. My thing I've been really thinking through and trying to figure out is when we're selling these products, like a roof supposed to last 20 years. So repeat business is hard, right? Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

But the average person, every five to six years. So that's how you get five to six years.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah. If we're staying in front of them.

[Tommy Mello]

And I think that's like, there's data you could buy from Valpak at any given moment, as your database starts to build, 15% of them are moving. And to just be able to move in and give them a free inspection on their new roof would be super powerful. I Mean, there's so many opportunities where people don't know where to look. But those aren't the things that be focused on now. I'd be focused on getting more leads, getting a higher conversion rate with a bigger, higher average ticket by building value, be focused on that simple funnel and getting a five star review with a video and a picture in it and just using your social media skills like if you go hard in the paint for three years, you're gonna have a very solid business.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, absolutely. And one cool thing, me and my brother in law were building my own CRM which I'm stoked about. So we're building it ourselves and building a customer portal to be able to force that fence around them so that all of the photos and everything can they, they have access to it, they download the app, which is something that I'm, I'm pretty stoked about. So. And I think if it's built specifically for roofers, there's a couple out there already. But it'll have processes in place that guys can just immediately plug and play instead of having to get it customized or do long onboarding calls. So that's one thing that pretty exciting. So.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, we'll talk, we'll talk in six months. I think it's very difficult. You know, a guy I know that's got a very successful roofing company, they've really, they've used service diet and changed a bunch of things with a bunch of APIs. But it literally, it literally automatically bids the job. It literally like it knows when you opened it, it follows up, it knows if you looked at financing it, auto finances, like some of the technology now, I mean you could rebuild anything with Claude and open claw super quickly.

[Justin Feitcher]

Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And you know, it'll be interesting because everybody that I know that builds a CRM, the one thing that's interesting, the guy interviewed yesterday, super successful guy, he built his own CRM for this, he's from Israel and he built his own merchant services. Built a big company and he goes, when I sold it, I was the only one that knew how to use the software. So it devalued it. Like the big companies in H Plumbing, electrical, flooring, you know, specifically garage doors, H Vac, plumbing, electrical, when they're not on service T and they go to sell, they'll lose a lot of value on the multiple because they're not on a CRM that's always being worked on with a full time team. But you're right, if you could build something custom that makes Sense for you. I mean, I think it'll be really impressive if you pull it off.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, that's for sure. As far as the, the competition you guys run into, I'm curious, do you feel like a lot of your competition is adopting technology even remotely the same as you or do you feel like that's a big piece of your guys success? You have leaned into technology adoption heavily.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, I think that's part of our success. I think the bigger piece of our success is the way we recruit. It takes 50 people to hire one, 50 interviews to hire one. And then we train. We train, we train, we train, then we train again, then we train again, then we train again. We record every conversation in the field, we record every phone call on the call center. We use dispatch tools to get the right technician out for the right job. I mean we're running 25, 25 or 27 different technologies right now in the background. I mean from recruiting to what we do in the trucks, to how we take inventory, to how we. One of the coolest things that I look into, if I were you is Mantle. Mantle is an amazing software and I mean the guys are killing it in the roofing H vac industry. We started using that. Our conversion rate went up 15%. Our average ticket went through the roof. And it's just people hate to buy, people hate to be sold, but they love to buy. And the presentation takes care of it. And the presentation tool really matters. The best roofers I know spend 90 minutes on the proposal. There's a guy named Rodney Webb used to do gutters and he kind of trains on how to take a GoPro look at everything and talk about the differences and circle the video and really walk them through every little detail. And it's, it's a big purchase and you got to use the right financing. You know, if you can't get it financed, I, I don't know a lot of people that have an extra 20, 30 grand line around just to put into it. So do you got a second and a third chance finance company to look at it if their credit's not above 600?

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

Do you figure that one out, you guys?

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, I've got a pretty. I don't have two or three. I have to. One option. I got rid of one of them. I won't name them, but one of them was a financing partner. That standard, they charge you crazy high dealer fee. It's like 10% of gross. And so that's just, you can build that in, but it just hurts every time. So Now I'm working with a local launch credit, credit union, rather, and they're local here in Central Florida. And they're actually. They don't charge me any. Any dealer fee whatsoever. They'll actually pay up to 2% of the. Of the finance amount to me if they have good credit. So that's been pretty good. Surprisingly, though, like, I don't actually run into as many finance deals as you would think, so.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, the way you do that is

[Justin Feitcher]

clientele.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, there's three types of buyers. No interest, low interest, low payment. And your average ticket will go up by about 40% when people use financing. And the question I'd ask is, did you want to use your money or our money today? Because, you know, gas prices are through the roof. Who knows when this. Ukraine, Russia, now we got Iran, you know, a lot of uncertainty in the world. The good news is there's no prepayment penalty. I could get you the Taj Mahal installed for 149 bucks a month, pay it off whenever you'd like. And all of a sudden, the conversion rate on that higher end, that best unit you're selling or best shingle unit, you'll have a much higher closing rate.

[Justin Feitcher]

I love that.

[Tommy Mello]

Who makes the most money at a car dealership?

[Justin Feitcher]

I think the finance manager.

[Tommy Mello]

The finance manager. You're right. At every major company, the guy that is the best selling financing. And I don't have a problem with that, because if I financed a Harley Davidson, I know you're losing 40% when you drive it off the lot. When I finance a roof, that's an investment into your home, your family, your. Your house's home value, that's an investment versus a cost. So I don't think you're doing anything shady by offering people a promotional, promotionary offer to make it affordable for them.

[Justin Feitcher]

Mm, I guess. So you would say just simply in your experience, for the sake of closing more deals, by offering financing or almost pushing financing, that's kind of a must.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, what's going to happen is you're going to run them through a quick thing, and it's going to say you qualify for 60 grand. And then all of a sudden, the client's gonna go, well, look, how much is it per month? And they're like, let's just do that. And everybody's coming into money in the next year. So they're like, yeah, I'll pay it off. And the average person that does a 10 year is paying it off in 3.6 years. So you don't have to feel Bad about it, but it's higher conversion rate. They're gonna pick better options and you're gonna have happier clients. I just know for a fact the biggest, best roofing companies, 80% of their jobs are finance.

[Justin Feitcher]

That's crazy.

[Tommy Mello]

So something I think about.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, absolutely. No, Great, great feedback there.

[Tommy Mello]

What do you say to you guys?

[Justin Feitcher]

Do you guys do your own or are you planning to do your own actual in house financing? No, at some point?

[Tommy Mello]

No, I don't.

[Justin Feitcher]

No.

[Tommy Mello]

Unless we get with another partner that has that. Like this is the problem is saying no more often, like I said earlier, saying no to everything you could. I used to wrap my own trucks. I had my own wrap company. I used to have two full time mechanics. I used to have a team to go ahead and take the metal apart with the aluminum and the copp. And all of a sudden I'm like, I'm just going to be the best at one thing, the one thing. Gary Keller wrote a book. I'm going to get rid of all the crap. I'm going to lease my trucks to own. I'm going to turn them in at 100,000 miles or four years, whatever comes first. I'm going to get the highest value for them. So if I pay 65,000, I'll turn them in at 45,000, still get a high value. My guys are always driving new trucks. It's all under warranty. It's got a fresh new wrap on it. They feel great. So their mood's great. The culture is great. The clients love our trucks in the field. They're always clean. And I said, then I learned about accelerated depreciation and just the tax advantages. And that's why I got a great CFO and controller and FP and a team. And when you're small in business, you're like, I'm just going to run this truck till the wheels fall off. I mean, I was buying $3,000 Dodge Dakotas and wrapping them. That's all I had to start with. And I didn't realize the tax ramifications. And under trump, accelerated depreciation on the weight of these vehicles. £6,200 or more. And it just makes sense to play it like we're doing it. You know, out of the Fortune 500 companies, 550, 598 lease their trucks to own them.

[Justin Feitcher]

I did not know that.

[Tommy Mello]

That's crazy. Companies, these aren't like mom and pops because they understand the tax codes.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah. Which taxes, man. That's, that's the other thing. It's it's amazing like how much you gotta. To your point earlier, keep, keep on the numbers and realize anybody that says, oh, it must be so nice, you must be making so much money. It's like taxes alone. You end up spending 35% of everything on.

[Tommy Mello]

That's not even close. You pay a sales tax, you pay a tax. When you buy a vehicle, you pay taxes on your W2s, you pay taxes to the 1099s, you pay taxes on the insurance, you pay taxes and taxes and taxes and taxes to where it actually comes out to 70%. I mean, people crazy. You take the money home, but then you got to go spend it and then they get taxed when you spend it.

[Justin Feitcher]

And then if you buy an asset with it, like a house, when you go to sell that, you're taxed again. If you invest it and your investment grows, you're taxed on the growth. So it is crazy.

[Tommy Mello]

It's. There's, there's two tax codes and the rich people live off of one. And they understand depreciation, they understand tax advantages. They understand things like in the stock market, when you sell something for a month, you could keep forward those losses. So it's called tax loss harvesting. And these are the things that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and some of the larger companies know how to do is it's mostly the wealthier get wealthy. The wealthy get wealthier because they understand the tax code. And as small business, we don't really get these lessons. So you learn the hard way until you get a really good person to understand tax strategy. I mean, a guy like you, I mean, your kids should probably be under payroll. They should have a trust. There should be. I mean, you could write off your gym membership, you could write off every meal. As long as you're talking about. I mean there's a lot of stuff as a small business when you're on cash accounting versus accrual that you could kind of do, that's legal. It's just there's a fine line in the sand where, you know, you want to be audit proof, but taxes are a big deal. What do you say to. What do you say to. In the first 60 seconds when you get to a homeowner's door,

[Justin Feitcher]

hey, whatever their name is. Justin, we spoke on the phone. Here to take a look at your roof real quick. Remind me, was it leaking anywhere? Let him talk. In what I actually do, I. I don't tend to go inside. I make the first interaction pretty brief. Reason being I want to get on the roof because if I warm up too much in the beginning, when I'm done and I'm done with the roof, they'll say immediately, so what do you have? Or so what? What's the cost? Right? Because we didn't we already. If we, if we warmed up too fast before, like I actually got up on the roof. I just found that then you can't really have any kind of a warm up relationship build. And so that's, that's what people don't really know. Homeowners don't really know if they bought a good roof. They don't really know if they bought a good garage door. But they know how the experience made them feel.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah.

[Justin Feitcher]

And that's what they're buying. So they're buying that trust that you're able to build. What about you guys?

[Tommy Mello]

So we offer coffee on the way. So let's, let's say I'm offering you coffee right now. So. Hey, Justin, Tommy Mello here. You probably got my profile from our software. I'm running off, I'm running to your house right now. I'm gonna stop at Starbucks. Can I grab you anything? So go ahead.

[Justin Feitcher]

Sure, yeah, you're probably gonna come.

[Tommy Mello]

Most homeowners say, no, I'm fine. So go ahead and say, no.

[Justin Feitcher]

No,

[Tommy Mello]

you'll say, no, I'm fine. Listen, Justin, you come to my house, my fiance, Brie, she's going to feed you. This is just the way I grew up. I grew up in the Midwest. Don't make me guess, are you a green tea guy or a caramel frappuccino? Because I'm bringing you one. And then you'll be like, oh, man, just bring me a double espresso. I want to bring you something. And then we expense that onto the job. The technician pays nothing. And then when I show up, I knock the door because strangers ring the doorbell. I've got my tools with me. I look like a worker. My breath smells good. I've got a big smile on my face. If a dog comes out, I'm playing with the dog. And then I'm going to start asking questions. You know, there's a beautiful home. How long have you lived here? I'm actually we now we look at Zillow to find out when they moved in the home. Have they been there for two months or 10 years? And usually they'll walk us through the house. I'm looking for their family pictures. I'm looking to see if they got a nest. If they got a nest. They're into home automation, so they probably want an automated garage door. And then I walk in the garage and then I say, so what's going on out here? And then I see their Harley Davidson and I'm like, how often do you get out on the Harley? Now listen, I'm genuinely interested. I never want my guys to talk about something they're not interested in if they're not into it. If they got a razor or fishing poles or whatever it is, we're in their garage. So usually there's some cool stuff out there. Never pretend to be something you're not. And usually I want to spend a half an hour saying, how often do you use the door? When's the last time it was looked at? Who sleeps upstairs? Do they. Do they wake up when the door goes? And I'm just trying to learn who else. So how many kids do you have? How often do they use the door? Do they use the keypad to get in? Is the noise an issue? When you come out here and it's. It's the wintertime, does it get freezing in here? Does it actually stay a pretty good warm temperature, the same thing in the summer? And we're just asking questions, and then we ask what's going on with it? And they'll say, we heard a loud bang and whatnot. And we'll say, okay, well, listen, we'll go ahead and do a little bit of an analysis on what's going on. It looks like you got a broken spring. Let me go ahead and do some measurements, then I'll come grab you. And then I only want to start with what they called us out there for. I don't do the huge inspection to just startle them with the price, but you got to get to know the clients, be friendly. If they offer you an iced tea. Sure. I love an iced tea. And smile. Absolutely. Smiling is free. And.

[Justin Feitcher]

And it's contagious.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, it is. It's contagious. And well mannered. Absolutely. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. No, call me Tommy. All right, Tommy. I appreciate that. And now you use their first name. Hey, Tommy, can I grab you for a minute? Come take a look at this. And let them be the detective. Show them the good parts, the bad parts. Show them. Why never say things like recommend that'll kill you. Like I say, this parts. These parts are no longer good. They're unsafe, they're dangerous. They've used. We've used their, their. Their cycle life already. And, and then we start the process. It's a little bit different than I would do on a roof but the roof. I'm going to spend at least an hour and a half. I'm going to show them what we do, what makes us different. I'm going to show them testimonials. I would have a written notebook. I'd have every single client write me a written letter, and I'd go through and just read out some of the letters with them because no one else is doing that. I show them some before and after, show them a couple videos, and I say, look, I just want to do it the right way, not the easy way. Here's some lawsuits that have happened. Here's some of the guys in. I'm not. I've kind of blurred out their name because I'm not going to look them, make them look bad. But I'll tell you what really matters to me is not only do we do it the right way, but if you do have an issue, we show up the same day. And if you do it correctly, you know, I know guys. Their average roof is $60,000 in a neighborhood in areas that the average other guys are 25,000.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. My average ticket size is about 16,000 right now.

[Tommy Mello]

16.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yep. For shingle metal roofs, which I do, that's closer to 30. So. But, yeah, I mean, there are definitely some competitors that I know of that are 40% more expensive than me. And I think one day I. What's that? And they're busy. Yep. They've also been around 20 years.

[Tommy Mello]

I bet you the. The one. If I had to ask you, who's the number one company in your market, you could probably think of the name. And I'm not going to ask. And I'd ask you who's the most expensive? And they're almost always the same.

[Justin Feitcher]

And it's. Yep. Pretty close. Yeah, it is fascinating because you guys are also. You guys are the most expensive in your market, but you're also the best.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, I wouldn't say we're always the most expensive because we give the options. And, you know, the difference is we carry custom parts and we've trademarked the parts. It's not like other people couldn't get them. But we build a Frankenstein out of the garage door. We don't just give you the factory parts that every other garage door company does. We literally add in all kinds of value. And, you know, if you want something plain. Jane. Flipping the. Flipping the house. We could compete with our competitors, but apples to apples, we sell oranges. And if you can't be different than everybody else, then you're competing on the same stuff. What's the point?

[Justin Feitcher]

Yep, I think that is the key. Figuring out what your differentiation is. When a homeowner just expects a roof, how often do you guys get. How often do you guys get. We don't. We don't need the. The Cadillac. We just need the. The basic. Initially, right off the cuff, you're like, okay, know what I got?

[Tommy Mello]

No, we get that. And then we say, did you know the garage door adds 268value? 268. So if you spend ten grand, you're going to get $27,000 value. When you go to list the home, I. Every time I go to the casino, if I could put a dollar in and take a 270 out, I'd keep playing that machine. It's 40.

[Justin Feitcher]

You'd never lose.

[Tommy Mello]

You know the garage door, Justin, it's the smile of your home. We trademarked that.

[Justin Feitcher]

That's awesome. That's cool. There you go. Yep.

[Tommy Mello]

I mean, I love what I do.

[Justin Feitcher]

That's awesome.

[Tommy Mello]

And I'd love to be back out in the field. I mean, I. I'm just so busy. But if I had an opportunity to go back in the field for a week, I would freaking love it, man. I miss the days. I've even thinking about calling clients up that we don't close on and just saying, like, look, I want to figure out a way to earn your business. Here's the deal. My vendors, they have extra shingles, they have extra doors they can't sell. You find you. I would go with my vendors and say, listen, the vendors got this shingle, best warranty in the field, but they actually brought in a new type of shingles. This color is probably not the coolest color they've ever carried, but they're willing to give it to me. If you're willing to do this and you just wanted to get the shingles put on and you wanted a really good roof, I'll show you what it'll look like. I make my vendors play game. Like, they gotta. They gotta play ball with me. Like, if they got 20 doors that are 16 by 7, a two car garage, I want to take that list of doors and we get a list every day. And the clients that don't want to buy, I say, Listen, I got 20 doors that our vendors like, mismeasured, wrong color, whatever it was. These are awesome doors. They got the best insulation. These prices don't work for you. Let me call them and let's see if one of these will work for you. Like, I gotta figure out a way to earn their business. Because I paid for the lead. I sent a guy out there, you know, make your vendors play ball, say hey, do I got another. Do you got anything that I could sell that you typically don't carry that's gonna give a good warranty? You don't have to degrade the value or the, the warranty. Like sometimes they have all kinds of stuff.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

You know, you go to SRS and some of these places, they have all kinds of lying around.

[Justin Feitcher]

Oh yeah, absolutely. They really do. You're right. And that's the thing I think is figuring out the more I'm realizing the more smooth your operations are and the more you understand every aspect of the business, the more you can cut costs that don't need to be costs. Which means then your profit just immediately goes up. And I'm still figuring that out like every day learning new things.

[Tommy Mello]

And so I got some people the best advice I could give you is I got some people in the industry you could go out and visit. And it's hard to do when you're in business but if you could add an extra million dollars a year by making a two day trip and just. It's hard to do it when you're. You're running solo. But I went and I spent. I probably did 40 trips to go visit H VAC companies and I was in and out in 24 hours. I'd fly there, go with an empty book of notes, walk with. Walk away with a full book of notes and just learned so much. I learned about service agreements and financing and how to hire and how to do a really good tune up. And I took all H Vac because garage doors were all losers. They didn't have their together. There was no big companies that were doing things the right way. So I said HVAC's kind of got it figured out. So I went to every hundred million dollar shop and they all let me in. They said you're just a garage door kid, come on out dude. And I'd buy them. And that was how I got educated is success leaves clues. So if I were you, anytime you want to meet somebody, I could set you up with some really good people that don't take advantage of their clients but they offer value and they get to make a profit. Because why go into business if you can't make a great profit?

[Justin Feitcher]

Absolutely. And that's the funny that was one of my videos I think you had seen was just letting you know construction companies are not non for profits, we're for profit. Businesses. But every homeowner thinks, like, they're always like, you're making money. And it's like, yeah, I'm making money. This is my job. Like, they almost get offended when they find out we're making money. I just think it's hilarious.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, I went to Home Depot and I priced it out, and I could do it for this. Yeah, but then you have to do it. And what if your. What if your particle board underneath is rotten? And what if this. And what if this. And, you know, if it doesn't go right? And think about the tools you'd have to buy. And what good is a better price if it doesn't get done on time or if it's got a leak or there's a great book called. That's by Janie Smith. There's one called. The competitive Advantage. And there's another one.

[Justin Feitcher]

Okay.

[Tommy Mello]

Relevant selling. Read the book. Relevant Selling. It'll change your life by Janie J A Y N E Smith. Janie Smith. Relevant Selling.

[Justin Feitcher]

Okay.

[Tommy Mello]

She kind of explains the pricing model. So the honor.

[Justin Feitcher]

What I love to do when. When I actually just had one the other day. An old couple, and for this sake, let's call them John and Mary, right? And talking to John about the process for the roof, and he's like, well, a little bit more than I was expecting. I really just keep thinking about, I know I can do it myself. And he's like, 69. And I looked at Mary and I said, mary, I bet he said that about that light, that he'd fixed that for about two months, hasn't he? She's like, yeah, because the light was broken. And I was like, yeah, John, I think you need to just let me get this done for you. Just bring it back to reality. And we did. So, but it's just funny when they say that because, you know, in their mind, they're like, yeah, good stuff.

[Tommy Mello]

I've got a guide that shows all the injuries of the garage door. It's. It's literally 40,000 reported a year. And then only that tenth of them get reported. 400,000. You'll lose a finger. You'll break a neck. Like, this is a loaded weapon with. With 200 pounds of torque on it. I'm like, you do not want to mess with this. That's why handymans don't touch springs, because it is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

What. How do you handle the. The homeowner that wants three quotes before deciding

[Justin Feitcher]

that one is actually twofold? Right. I Don't I understand it as a buyer, right. But when I set the appointment, if I go there and they have other bids coming, and I didn't know that part of that's immediately on me for setting, setting the appointment wrong. I didn't do enough research on the call when I called him to Justin, I'm following up with you regarding your request here for an estimate on the roof. Get to talking to him a little bit. And just so I'm not stepping on anybody's toes, have you had anybody come out yet? No. We have two more guys coming out on Tuesday and Thursday. That's actually perfect. I don't have any availability until Friday. Would it be okay if I came out on Friday? I prefer to be the last guy. In that way they have nothing to say that they're waiting for. But I could be wrong. I know some guys definitely want to be the first guy in because they'll sell on value, and that's great. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I found that if they have less excuses to possibly have being the last one in the door, they have zero reason not to pick me. But I'm curious to hear you learn from you.

[Tommy Mello]

I used to be the same way. Now I'd rather be the first one. And I'd rather. I. I can tell you I've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of quotes where they said, I always get three estimates. I'm a smart shopper. And I say, of course that's what you should be doing. That's what everybody that's smart does. Well, listen, I'm here right now and I want to just really guide you through how this is going to work and where other companies could cut corners. And then I try to build the little things that add a lot. This is what Rodney Webb does so well, is if I were you, I'd have other things like, look, number one, we're going to replace the boards underneath the drip edge. Number two, we're going to make sure this is sealed right, because this is where we get a lot of the problems. Number three, number four, Number five. And then they're like, you know what? That kind of just makes sense, especially if it's finance, because if you get them at a good rate, they're like, let's just do that. I could afford that. Because, listen, most guys, you're going to spend 3, 4 hours, by the time they get on your roof, come down. Look, I know how important your time is. Let me just figure out a way to earn your business today and they're like, you know what, we really like this guy. Let's just go ahead and go with him. Let's just go ahead and cancel. And a lot of times I'll say, you know, if you don't mind, who else is coming out. And a lot of times they don't want to cancel because they already set the appointment. I go, look, you already gave me the names great companies. I'm just going to go ahead and cancel for you.

[Justin Feitcher]

Absolutely. Yep.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah. What's your close rate?

[Justin Feitcher]

That's just depends on the lead source. If it's an Angie lead, it's about 30% of leads I get a hold of. If it's a referral upwards to 65, 70%. But if it's a lead through social media, those are actually closing about the same as my referrals. So 65%. But what's been really cool about social media and one, the networking has been awesome. I can't tell you how many, how many small business owners reach out and just get connected with guys. And a lot of guys are just getting started out. I don't have all the answers by any means, but I'm just not afraid to talk about the struggles. And so people naturally just are like, dude, what are you doing? I'm just like, man, I'm just living like it's real and let's talk about it and let's not hide it and help each other out. There's enough business to go around. So. Yeah, but close rate Angie has is hit or miss, though. You guys use Angie too, right?

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, Yeah. I had the CEO at my house last month.

[Justin Feitcher]

Really? Okay. That's awesome. It seems like I don't know exactly their model, but the forms that drive leads in some months like it. Like this past month, it's like all of my leads were mobile homes for the most part. It was amazing. I was just like, huh. So like. But so. And you just, you don't control the quality necessarily. So I think you said it in your book, every lead is. I can't remember how you word it. Didn't you say something in your book? Every lead is either trash or every lead is fire.

[Tommy Mello]

You know, for me, at least in my industry, every lead's a good lead because, you know, the only ones that are bad is landlord tenants. You know, they're not the decision maker. It makes it hard. But when I go out there, I used to pride myself on going to the cheapest, worst neighborhoods, the brokest areas, and I just, I know how to get those jobs done. And they don't mind spending the money. And I don't like, look, end of the day, our tickets, not 50, 60 grand. So it's a lot different. I mean, on those calls, you might walk out with, you know, 1500 bucks. Our blended average ticket, including zeros and door sales is about 1200 bucks. So it's a much different sale. And plus I'm going to people that are stuck. So, you know, it's way different. It's apples and oranges, but I love my industry. I just, we got to run 28,000 jobs a month, so lots of infrastructure. If I was doing H vac and I was good at it, I'd already be doing $2 billion a year of revenue. We're going to do 410 million this year. So I got to a shit ton of jobs. And you know, anybody that thinks you're going to get in the garage industry, you can make a great living. But it's going to take 10 years, like to rebuild this company. You give me 500 million bucks, it would still take me 10 years. Unlimited money because just camaraderie, building the sales programs, the KPIs. Now with technology, like the good news is through the podcast and all the speaking I do, people come to me when they're as an answer. Like the software companies put me as a priority. They build things directly for me and I've got pretty deep access. You know, you've, you've done a lot on social media. What, what made you want to start social media?

[Justin Feitcher]

I think just realizing that it's. Well, really, actually it kind of just started out with, it was an avenue. Being a business owner is lonely. Like I think you probably, at least in the early days when you're in the hustle phase, everybody's like, hey, you want to hang out? And you just, you lose friends, you lose people because you're working all the time. And like I got a wife and three kids. And so it's like the free time that I have, I'm trying to spend with them. And so it's like I didn't have really anybody to necessarily talk to. So it kind of became almost a video journal. Starting out is what my social media was initially. But then I started realizing, you know what, like this is where people go to consume nowadays. People still watch tv, but primarily social media and we're fighting for attention. And it's so funny when I go out to a job and I made a video last year, me hanging from a roof and acting like I was falling off this Roof. It was a marketing video and happened to go to a guy's house an hour and a half away from my house here. Just a random guy that called in. He was an Angie lead and went to his house. And he looks at me and he's like, I think you're the guy that I saw a video hanging from a roof. And I was like, I am. And I pull up the videos like this. Yeah, that's you. I was like, yeah, that's crazy. And like, so that moment, I was just like, man, it's so powerful because if you can build a presence where people actually recognize you, you're building a brand at that point, you're not building a job.

[Tommy Mello]

I love what you're doing, man. And you just need. If you double down on that, there's a guy, Roger Wakefield. Follow him in the plumbing. Follow that guy. He ranks number one for everything, and he's a YouTube sensation. Here's what I want to do, Justin. I want to. I want to play some of your videos, just have you react to them and walk through it. So I'm gonna have Colin pull some stuff up and we'll watch. We'll watch a few of them and we'll have. We'll have some fun here.

[Justin Feitcher]

Sounds good. And then you have to tell me which ones you're. You have to tell me which ones you're gonna re remake.

[Tommy Mello]

I don't know yet. I got. I got some good ideas.

[Justin Feitcher]

Do you hear sound?

[Tommy Mello]

Not yet. He's gonna get it coming. No,

[Justin Feitcher]

we'll let it all this out, right?

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, he's. He's gonna edit the. Out of this.

[Justin Feitcher]

That's good, man. This is actually so much fun.

[Tommy Mello]

Seriously.

[Justin Feitcher]

Thank you for having me on.

[Tommy Mello]

It's always.

[Justin Feitcher]

You're such a wealth of knowledge. Yeah. Will you guys happen to send me any clips from any of this that I can post online?

[Tommy Mello]

Oh, yeah, we'll send you a bunch of clips. Yeah, it'll be great. We're gonna highlight you big time. All right.

[Justin Feitcher]

Now if you get a chance, though, do you guys have any kind of. Do you do any. You do some TV commercials and stuff or not?

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, lots of tv.

[Justin Feitcher]

If you guys. Your team probably already knows about it, but Suno, which is how I made this song, it's just this AI app that you just type in the lyrics and type in the style, and it's free and it'll spit out options of immediate songs, and that's how I made this.

[Tommy Mello]

Oh, that's great. Let's listen to this one.

[Justin Feitcher]

That actually Happened.

[Tommy Mello]

That's so good. So what made you think of that?

[Justin Feitcher]

Really? It was just a. A moment. There was a trend actually going around of people doing that with a text from their wife or their husband. And I was like, dude, we should do this for business owners that get all kinds of crazy texts from their customers. And some of them are just insane, but we get them all. So put it to song so you

[Tommy Mello]

know, I'm going to make a good song. Let's do this next one.

[Justin Feitcher]

Like, you ever miss being an employee? Like, no. I'll never go back to a 9 to 5. I love working 132 hours a week whenever I want.

[Tommy Mello]

32 hours whenever I want.

[Justin Feitcher]

A little bit exaggerated, but yeah, pretty much. Man, it never stops. We don't turn it off.

[Tommy Mello]

Let's keep going. These are great.

[Justin Feitcher]

Welcome. Can I take your order? Yeah. Hi. I want to do a double cheeseburger, but can I just get the. The double cheeseburger for the price of the single cheeseburger and then I'll do a 10 piece nugget as well. But since the fryer is already on, you guys already have the nuggets. Can you just drop in like six more for the same price? If I just bring you guys nuggets, can you guys just stick those in the fryer for free? Before I order it here, I want to make sure. Can you guys supply me proof that it's real meat in your food? And then if I don't get full after I eat the food, you guys give me more food, right? You mean the drink's not included? Have to pay for that? My grandpa told me that you remember

[Tommy Mello]

his order in here when he was

[Justin Feitcher]

younger and he only spent $5 for his meal. Can you guys match that same price? All right, thank you for the free information. Can you just give me a receipt? I'm gonna take it down to the restaurant down the road and see if they'll eat the price.

[Tommy Mello]

So good. Oh, man. This is all. Dude, let's listen to a couple more. So what made you do that with just the fact is that

[Justin Feitcher]

a lot of it Service? Yeah, exactly. Well, it's just objections, right? It's the objections we hear all the time. And also I think what the industry needs is. We talked about it earlier, but kind of retraining customer expectation in minds because you. You don't go to the doctor in talk and ask for the same things that people ask for contractors like no other industry.

[Tommy Mello]

The prescription. You don't go. I'm going to need a few estimates on that.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, exactly. You're coding. And before they, they zap you, you're like, wait, I got to get two more bids. Like, no, there's a problem. You're going to say, yeah, Doc, fix me.

[Tommy Mello]

You know, let's go ahead, let's do a couple.

[Justin Feitcher]

So just so busy. Like, I've gotta hire somebody. Like, the phones won't stop ringing. The work just coming in. Like, everything is terrible.

[Tommy Mello]

No work.

[Justin Feitcher]

Nobody wants to buy anything. Nobody has any money. I'm gonna have to close this month is crazy. Like, I think I'm gonna have to get like three more offices and just like expand across the nation. Like, this is so cool. Nothing terrible. This is terrible. I'm just gonna go be an employee.

[Tommy Mello]

Oh, it's so true, man. When it's hot, it's hot. When it's cold, it's cold. Especially those early years. I like this blue collar math one.

[Justin Feitcher]

So you've heard of girl math? Have you heard of blue collar math? This is for you wives. When you ask your husband what time he's getting home, you gotta add two two by fours, a broken drill bit, two monsters, three trips to Home Depot, an oh, crap buffer, which equates to roughly three and a half hours later than what he said, or simply until the job is done. Welcome.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, and add a couple, A couple Kansas in there.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

[Tommy Mello]

We're good, brother. Hey, listen, you keep making magic. How do you. Do you just follow trends and stuff? Or how do you, how do you stay on top of what you're going to do next?

[Justin Feitcher]

Honestly, man, it's some of its trends for sure, but a lot of it's just I'm driving and I'm like, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that. And I just shoot from the hip on most of it. And I'll throw a lot of my ideas, I've got a whole thread on chat. Just anytime I have an idea, I throw it into chat and it remembers it, it's saved in memory, and then I just reference back to that and then kind of build out my idea for it and then ask chat to help me build out kind of a content map for it. Build out a little bit of a script. And so it's amazing what AI can help you.

[Tommy Mello]

So.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yes, sir, I love it.

[Tommy Mello]

I love it. Well, listen, what's the, what's your goals? What are you going to change this year? What, what is, what is the next steps? What's 2026 going to be?

[Justin Feitcher]

Well, we're gonna do. I think we will actually hit 3 million this year pending. We don't get a storm. If we get a storm, friggin 7 million very, very easily. Just because demand flies up if a storm comes, that's awesome. But we haven't had a hurricane now in Florida in four or five years here on the east coast so we're overdue. But doesn't look El Nino. I don't think we'll get one. Biggest thing for me is kind of have a goal to work through the summer and I'd love to, I'd love to get to a certain number here in the bank for the business and then hire some key hires. I need. I've got another sales guy that's starting, got one now and then another sales guy that's starting, that's also 1099 here in two weeks. Start pumping them with leads and then get me out of the field, out of, out of project management sooner than later. But probably in August or September. But that is a hard cost. Sales guys are 100 commission so there's still an opportunity cost and a marketing cost that is associated with them. But I don't put them in a truck until they've done a million in revenue or been with me six months.

[Tommy Mello]

I like your goals man. Dream for the stars and keep making great content Justin. And look, I'm always here. I'll make sure Phil gets you my cell phone number. I'll send you a couple of books. I think the, the what should we do would be great and relevant selling and I think you need to listen to them because you drive so much. But yeah, absolutely will. And then if you ever want to contact, you ever want to go out to a different market, I mean I know guys in Florida but if you ever want to see like some of the technology, see what they're doing, see how they're getting leads, you know, the more I pay per lead, the higher quality it seems to be. And that's just the nature of the beast. I mean it's a big industry. I got 570 competitors. Just here in Phoenix there's 13,000 garage door companies. So I mean a cost for a lead for me on Google is about 300 bucks just for an appointment. I mean so it's not much. I mean I'm sure on Google you might pay 3, 4, 500 bucks. So if you, if it takes you three to close a deal, it's still not a bad combo. You just got to build that into the pricing. But 1500, $2000 not a bad ratio, but you just got to get good at closing, man. And I'll tell you, the bigger you get, the more you can negotiate with your vendors. And that's where you really, the buying power makes a huge difference.

[Justin Feitcher]

Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's, that's the thing though, that like, you guys are big enough now. Do you have anything you're. You're building out to build out your own, your own lead aggregates and build out your own lead networks?

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, we're working on that right now. I mean, there are great companies. The problem is if you get too reliant on those, they just got to be a fraction of the business because I like to own the marketing channel. So if you get somebody that's really good at providing leads, you go grow with them. I mean, now that we're in 24 states, it makes a lot of sense, but we do. I mean, look, we spend four and a half million a month on marketing.

[Justin Feitcher]

It's so crazy. Yeah, absolutely.

[Tommy Mello]

And I.

[Justin Feitcher]

And is that across?

[Tommy Mello]

That's across.

[Justin Feitcher]

Primarily. Is that paid for leads.

[Tommy Mello]

And by the way, half of that campaign goes to TV and radio. I want to.

[Justin Feitcher]

What's your attribution? Which one, which one converts more for you guys?

[Tommy Mello]

I mean, radio is the cheapest way to own clients. I mean, if you blast but don't own, own one station on one demographic, a good, you know, if you go to Larry, John Wright, my buddy Sam, I think he's one of the best in the business. He's like, this is what it'll cost to own this station. And there's no competition. And this is your perfect avatar. Like, you got to hit the right stations and channels and literally put the money in to own those. And, you know, one of my favorite things is to get an amazing, one of the best sponsorships of somebody that's got a great reputation. And then the first thing I do is go to their house. I mean, I had a guy at my house this past weekend and I go to their house and we just give them a bunch of free stuff. And I say, look, if any of your clients that ever call up and we don't take care of them, I'll give them 100 money back. And the deal is, when you go golfing with those sponsorships and you take them to a basketball game, they're Talking about you 90% of the time for free. They got all day. They're on a three hour program. They're like, dude, I went out with Tommy Mello, man. The guy's cool, like we went out, we watched this, we did this. So there's a whole strategy. I mean, look, they're very cool people. They're very networked. They'll bring you a ton of clients. It just, it costs money to make money. There's this guy I met like a decade ago and behind his desk said whoever pays more per lead will win. Because it's like, look, if you could afford to pay more per lead, you know, there's eventually Grok and ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude. They're all going to have a paid model. It's going to start at 100 grand a month. And when they do, we're going to be the first ones on. We're going to make a lot of mistakes, but we're going to make them quick. We're going to fix them.

[Justin Feitcher]

Well, I think that's awesome though, because, yeah, SEO is still a thing, but AI optimization is really people. People now are going to chat GPT or Grok, and for Gemini even, for sure, but they're asking questions there like people used to Google, and Google's still being used, but I think very much it's going to migrate that way and figuring out how you own that channel. Like you said, that's the future. That's awesome, man.

[Tommy Mello]

It is, brother. Seriously, this has been awesome, Justin, You're a real treat. Listen, anything else? How do people get ahold of you, Justin, if they want to reach out?

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah. So check out our website, providenceroofingfl.com you can shoot me an email, Justin, providenceroofingfl dot com or you can call us 407-338-6106 and we'll answer. So. Yep. Happy if you're in central Florida and you need a roof for your guys,

[Tommy Mello]

I love it, man. Well, look, you're a great brother. I wish you all the success in the world. Let's make sure we follow up and keep putting out the great content. And just don't make the same mistake twice. That's the best advice. Fail fast, fail often, but don't make the same mistake twice and you'll, you'll do amazing things.

[Justin Feitcher]

Thanks, man. Yep, I, I believe it. So thank you for the, the wisdom and the, the insight here. So it's gonna be pretty, pretty exciting to continue to build. And maybe one day I'll be, I'll be at a 100 million, 200 million like you very soon.

[Tommy Mello]

Easy, easy peasy. Those are small goals. Dream a little bigger. Yeah. I appreciate you, dude.

[Justin Feitcher]

It's awesome.

[Tommy Mello]

All right.

[Justin Feitcher]

Yeah, absolutely, man. Thank you, guys.

[Tommy Mello]

Take it easy, brother.