B (3:01)

Yeah.

A (3:02)

To a lot of people. But now I'm starting to like it.

B (3:05)

Yeah, once you start making money, it starts to become more fun. But those early stages are like you're pulling your hair out going, why did I do this more? Most businesses don't survive five years. Actually 33.8%. I just read a stat earlier. Make it through the five year mark. It's crazy. Home service right now Globally is a $6.7 trillion industry and expected to 5x by 2030. Because I was comparing home service, home improvement to automotive. Automotive is supposed to double. We're going to 5x. It's the right industry to be in. What made you excited about home service?

A (3:43)

Yeah, it was just kind of some of my, I mean not that exciting. But it was some of my early clients and my early clients that I liked and that I hung out with and I was kind of doing video for them. So I was the video guy. I was, I was kind of early on that though. I was the, I was running around and on roofs and you know, in attics and stuff like that. And I enjoyed that part. That was really, really fun. But it's hard to scale and it was really early and no one was doing video like as aggressively. So it was like kind of harder to sell. So. And that was in addition to my background in web design and SEO. But I wish I kind of love video, man. I feel like I love video and I wish I know that it's getting more and more popular to do that. But I think that was part of what led me to home service because I would like take a picture of myself up on a roof, you know, with my client and then like people, more and more people thought it was just like that visual anchoring. So our positioning got better and better as I was out in the field with people. And so that's why you can see to this day like you're seeing me like install a water heater, like get in a trench is because I am actually I learned a hack is positioning, right. Positioning with people, not like outside and above them, which is a lot of like, you know, sometimes marketers kind of don't get in the trenches enough. So that's. It's been a really good thing for our positioning as far as, like, the types of people. I just enjoyed being around the contractors I was working with a little bit more. I wanted to spend time with them. I kept on upselling them, and I kept on hanging out. So as time went on, it was just like, you know, a coach was like, stop doing the other stuff. So our business really started. I think I almost think of it as the real second start is in 2021, when we started saying no to anything that wasn't home service contractors. And that's when it kind of went, you know. So once we started saying no, it opened up a ton of stuff for us.

B (5:46)

I think home service is a great industry, and I think roofing is probably one of my favorites to date, because I feel like its garage doors were. It's just such a massive ticket. It's not organized. So many people are so focused still on insurance, but that game's slowly ending, and there's rules and regulations. And I think I look at the guys around me. Chad Peterman, Cristiano, Travis Ringy, even Ishmael.

A (6:11)

Shoot.

B (6:13)

Chris Hoffman. I mean, there's not a lot of people. Tom Howard, everybody in my group that the LSD group is involved in roofing now, except for me, but they obviously know it's a massive opportunity.

A (6:26)

Come on in, Tommy. The water slide. You're gonna love it here. Come on in.

B (6:31)

You know what? There will be a time and a place for that, but right now, I just decided if I do one thing better than everybody else could do, and I negotiate with my vendors better than anybody could do, and I could make a great technician. We've got 52 guys next door training their first month. We've got 50 coming in next month, 50 coming into the next month. If I wanted to start a roofing company, I'd have to. I know a lot of stuff, but I'd have to rebuild. And by the way, you don't need to know the trade to master it, but you got to get. That takes years, and it takes camaraderie, and it takes building a team that you trust. And I think it's foolish for people to just jump into everywhere there's an opportunity because there's. In the same place they were 10 years ago, you know, they're making a buck, they're living a nice house, but they're not creating enterprise value. And in my. In my history, the only reason to be in business is not for profit is to build enterprise value. And so many people choose a lifestyle business and they go, hey, it's paying the bills and it's getting easier. And I'm like, yeah, you're stupid. And, you know, a lot of people listening might not like that, but this is my podcast, so.

A (7:37)

I'm a pretty big proponent of sticking to what you know. Now, that being said, I just entered H Vac hard this last few years as far as niching, but an agency, right. Still agency model and then rocking it. I'm. I'm looking at plumbing, man. So those are my three. Like we, you. We love all home services, but those are like what I'm pushing, like marketing ourselves hard to. And I think, honestly, I think you could take a marketing company to 40 million just with those three trades. That's how I feel. But I mean, like, I'm not going to say no to other home service contractors, but.

B (8:10)

Yeah, well, it's smart. I mean, if you, as you build the ad campaigns and understand, you know, the SEO and what's doing well, how do you feel about two clients being in the same market for H vac or plumbing or roofing?

A (8:25)

Yeah, in general, we try to keep it to like one per 500,000 people. That's kind of our benchmark as far as like having multiple in one. It's such a hard. That's like the hardest question to ask because there's an element of. Our answer, because there's an element of if you're going to be a niched agency, you're going to this, it's going to be imperfect on that front or else you're just not going to grow. So what we've done is kind of have that benchmark. And then that was part of the reason I branched out into H Vac and plumbing, Tommy, is because I was like, if we keep on going on roofing, we're going to have every single market. And I was saying no, like a lot to contractors where I had too many in one spot, you know. So, yes, we said generally 100, 500,000 per. It's not a perfect answer. No one's gonna like that. But it's ultimately like we're trying.

B (9:16)

Yeah, well, no, keep going. So you're trying to do what?

A (9:20)

Yeah, there's. We're trying to have some balance there. Right. Like where it's like we can continue growing and, and that's why we've pushed into H Vac and plumbing. And maybe you would have talked to me two years ago and whether or not I should have pushed into H Vac. I could have that discussion. It was very time intensive, very resource intensive for me. And for me, resource intensive is like a hundred thousand bucks, right? It was a lot of time for me as a CEO to spend on that. But part of the reason was this exact question was trying to be a balance of not just being all roofers and feeling like that overweight. So some people were like, hey, Tim, did you switch? Are you doing more? Because you know, you didn't do that well in roofing. You know, we've done very, you know, anyways, we've done well in roofing. Roofing. So it was more just like trying to answer that question better.

B (10:15)

What, what do you, when you meet an owner, a founder and their marketing team, maybe their general manager, coo, and you start to talk to their CMO or VP or whoever's ahead of marketing, what are some things you can't stand that you're like not going to work with that company? Talk to me about the worst. Talk to me about the best.

A (10:34)

Yeah, yeah. I think just kind of, you know, it's. I used to get eager when somebody was talking a lot of smack about their last marketing agency. I would get like, ooh, we're way better than ever. You know, like that early pride. And then now I'm just like, okay, so how many have you had in the last couple years? And if it's like five, I'm like, we're trying to see ourself out of that conversation because that's going to be messy. They're going to hate us. I mean you, you're not going to love us if you just had five agencies in two years. So that's something that I see. Obviously call answering systems. We're always trying to like partner with people to like help, you know, the homies with power selling pros. Like I'm trying to like figure out what else could be part of this to be helping people with that. You know, at the end of the day, data is a scary double edged sword for an agency, right? Like if there is a abundance and it's just a pure like PE play, sometimes they get a little like six months is not. They can't handle six months for ROI and like SEO. Right. And then on the other hand, I think it's worse when somebody has no data and doesn't know because even if the math works out for, you know, close rate and booking rate and amount of leads and their goal, sometimes you lose people just because they're unsophisticated. And they, they're not understanding the roi, which is our job at the end of the day. And that's what we're trying to get better at, is be a little bit more consultative. So as time goes on, hook and like any agency kind of just has to get more consultative and like coach people better on the actual numbers. And as time goes on, hopefully those are, you know, you're getting better with those numbers. And in our case, I think the only thing that will hold you back as an agency or a home service company is like, if you don't want to look at them, if you don't, if you want to like hold your nose when you're looking around the numbers. But otherwise, if you drill in on them, even if it doesn't look great right at the beginning, you have to keep looking at the numbers, which is something that I've had to learn, you know, like Ellen Rorsch style on, on Money. Yeah, I, I took pride that I didn't sign into my bank for a year. Like, I don't take pride in anymore, in like ignorance of money.

B (13:05)

So I was there once too. I, I'll tell you, you know, I, I kind of worked this out in the last three months because we, we use a special media buyer. We, we've got somebody that specializes in GMBs. We got somebody that, a different company, PBC, a different company, organic, a different company, LSA, a different company does PFP. Then we've got Valpat Clipper. Then we've got. And so I meet with them once a month and basically what I told them is, look, number one, I need you to hold us accountable. We're in so many markets, right? And I, I don't think it's because of the booking rate, but if the conversion rate or average ticket's off, I'm going to need to pull back. I'm going to need my VPs on this call. So we have this come to Jesus conversation and most of it's about internal communication and accountability. But then I also say if this isn't working, we're either going to have to lower our spend or find another partner. Because if we got the best KPIs in the industry, I feel like, and not in every market, but I'm like, I know our ticket averages, I know our conversion rate, I know our booking rate. And I'm going, if you can't make it work with us, how are you going to make it work with Joe Schmo that, that's charging a third of us that doesn't answer his phone. Nights, weekends, early morning, they get a bunch of abandoned calls. Like the problem I have with ppc. My CFO came up to me the other day. He goes, how could it be competitive? How could we have to pay $200 for a CPA or cost per acquisition? And I said, because nobody knows. They just say, any jobs today? They just see like you did. They don't look at their bank account. They're saying, I want calls. And so that's set to bid at whatever it costs. And I'm like, Adrian is my cfo. I'm like, trust me. They have no idea what they're paying per lead. They have no idea what they're paying per acquisition. They're just like, I don't have work and PPC is the easiest thing to throttle a switch. And I think PBC is pretty expensive if you're, if you're just straight doing broad terms like garage door repair, H vac repair, or fix my roof or whatever the search terms are there you're going against a lot of companies that either have it turned on to max bid or they're sophisticated and know higher quality scores. I mean, what Is your take? SEO vs PPC vs LSA vs Optimize your Google? My business page.

A (15:24)

Yeah, I like to kind of do the look down the search result page and like order your efforts there first. Unless it gets too expensive, basically. So LSA and then Maps, you know, I think ads and then Google Maps and then organic. That's kind of the way I look at it. It's like in, in order, but it's totally like if somebody's swimming in leads, they have to. And you know, some people are just like booked out a long ways. Yeah, yeah.

B (15:53)

Then they got hiring issues, cancellations, and they can't book the call. Yeah.

A (15:59)

So those people I might push to more organic because you should be investing somewhere. You shouldn't stop marketing, you know, so organic and brand, you know what I mean? Anything with brand. And first, of course a kick charge or like somebody that's really good at branding. But then also the brand heavy community marketing stuff. That's kind of what this book is about. And I'm not trying to get into that yet, but this like so much of it is talking about those, those blue ocean community marketing things that you can do. And just like that, 101 for other folks. The red ocean is where everyone's already competing and then looking for blue ocean. Right. And what it where is, where are people not spending all their money already because it's hard. And honestly, it's hard. And a lot of it's about local, super hyper local stuff because it's hard for P to compete with you. There's. And they don't even know half the time. So it's like you have to go into these little blue oceans and try to find inventory. I'm going to put that in quotes. Inventory, things like events and things like relationships with, you know, organizations in your community and kind of just finding inventory that doesn't exist on a spreadsheet, you know what I mean? That type of stuff. And that's, that's kind of the, the mood here is about finding the blue oceans for marketing and kind of giving a list of a bunch of blue oce. And yeah, your chapter is really good. I just read it this morning in review.

B (17:30)

Well, it was short, it was narrow. I appreciated what you put in there. I mean, I enjoyed being part of the book. I was going to ask you, when you wrote how to Become a Hometown Hero, what were some of the largest takeaways? What'd you enjoy the most about it? When you got to meet all these people, I mean, you've got myself, Roger Wakefield, Tim Medley, and the people go on and on and on.

A (17:54)

Yeah, so there was a ton of. There's a lot more charitable, community driven stuff than I think I thought I was gonna put in this book to begin with. It's probably a little bit more like, hey, you should be giving back than I thought it was gonna start as. But I think as I tapped into like the more community marketing stuff, a lot of it is related to giving. So that surprised me. I think I, I was pleasantly. I feel like I was driven into my kind of understanding my ideology on marketing a little bit more, which is, hey, ChatGPT 5 just came out today. How cool is that? But everyone kind of thinks they're going to hack their way with, with AI and I think that, hey, we should be doing everything we can to learn that and get agents and all this stuff. We got to try all this stuff. We need to do all the things. But it, it is helpful to understand the fundamentals, the emotional core of marketing and what's persuasive communication. So I think really trying to understand better what persuasive communication looks like in home service marketing and then also just learning more persuasive communication for myself. Writing a book, right? It's a challenge to write a book. It's try. It's hard to fit. As much as I'd love to fit in There. But it's a challenge, kind of boiling it all down and try to give the most important pieces.

B (19:25)

It's a. It's a really thick book with a lot of great stuff. I haven't gone through it yet. I mean, I, I did, I did go through it, but I haven't read it word for word yet. You know, I know there's this craze about AI. It's the most common question I get, what are you doing with AI? And I kind of had an epiphany a while back and I said, you know, I'm gonna go double down on traditional TV and radio. When everybody, it's kind of like a magician. You're looking over here and I'm doing this. And we're getting involved more in community and nonprofit and we're getting involved so much in social media. You know, one of the guys you really had spot put in this book a lot is Marcus Sheridan. And I'm a big, big, big fan. I mean, I talk to him all the time. And I think he also wrote a book called Endless Customers, which came from they ask, you answer. And it really is what we're doing for our organic plan of growth and giving people more answers. A lot of people are self service now. 80% of our clients, they want to understand, you know, if I was looking for a watch and I'm looking for a Rolex, I'm not looking for the cheapest price, but I want to see a price. I mean, it's literally like if you go fill out a form to get a price, that used to work. It doesn't like people are like, I'm gonna get my answer somewhere. There's so much more content available where people are just putting it all out there. So we decided we're gonna put it all out there and we're working hard on that. What, what do you think of Marcus Sheridan? How'd you become buddies with him?

A (20:53)

So he became a client of ours after he found us on ChatGPT. So he works with us with the pool company and on ppc. And so that was first of all, can you imagine? Like, I, I love Marcus Sheridan. Like, I'm a huge fan and you can see it all over our website. Like we answer all the questions, even if they're uncomfortable generally on the website. And you can see all our videos are embedded. So like when he came through as a lead from ChatGPT, you could have met. Like, that's so cool. And then, and then he just invited me to go offshore fishing with him one Day, so. And I just, you know, picked his brain. You can imagine, I just picked his brain on all the things I'm trying to do. I'm trying to learn how to be a better keynote speaker and all this stuff. But like I said, persuasive communication. And I feel like I'm learning so much from him. We're. We're also consulting with his question first group for our ams to get better at consulting, essentially, and basically being curious, but then also on keynotes. I think this is good. You'll like this. I think maybe this doesn't apply to everyone, but maybe because it's persuasive communication, it all applies. He's got this system where he asks questions, the clear path question method, where you ask questions but you know the answer. You know what I mean? And you lead the audience with questions. You know exactly where each one is going. It's like a mad lib, but you know the answer. And then you lead them. So then they come to the same logical conclusion that you wanted them to. But you didn't do it through, like, preaching. You did it through asking good questions. And so just picking up, man, it's so fun to pick up stuff from folks like that that just have mastered communication to such a degree. You're just like, boom. You know, I feel the same around you sometimes. And I. I think that, yeah, that's a big thing for me is just getting around people that are killing it. And I. I just got to get Hormozy. Just 10 minutes on my business only. Dude, that was crazy, dude, like, two days ago, like, in literally seven, people in the group got to answer questions or ask questions specifically about their business and him specifically on our business. He's like, you're going the right direction. I'm like, yes. And your. Your homies. Lips electric. Electric. Were there lips electric. And they were talking so much good things about you and Alev systems and home service freedom and. Yeah, I don't know, man. Just getting around people getting like, I paid to be in that room. It's good to pay to be into. You know, people have said it before, but paying to be in bigger rooms with crazier getting around the right people, learning from them.

B (23:44)

Dream big, you know, I love Alex Hermosi. Big fan, big follower. Buy every one of his books, listen to all his content. The one thing that I'm not so sure of is the people that go to that event@acquisite.com. and I would tell this to his face as at the end, it becomes, how do I get in bed with you on your business. And that's okay because to be completely transparent, there's a lot of home service companies in the next five years, I'm going to want to invest in whether they're part of freedom or not. But I know my lane. I'm not going into real estate. I'm not going into hairdresser and salons, and I'm not going into dog walkers and, you know, poop shoveling. And I feel like he's like, I've got a system that works for everything. And I feel like I really, really, really understand home service. I understand how to raise capital, how to use debt to make the deal better, how to negotiate with vendors. I understand the, you know, the truck side of it or the advanced depreciation, how to build the manuals. Some of these things are universal. But now it's like a one size fits all. Whatever your business is, I'm going to be in bed with you on. And I just, I think that's a jack of all trades, a master of none. And I think you. You disappoint a lot of people. I was just watching this thing called Baller Busters, and I looked at every video, and they're all about certain individuals that I know.

A (24:59)

Are you looking for yourself? Yeah. You know, yourself in there one day.

B (25:03)

I don't think. I think it would be hard if they really researched me because I don't make these crazy promises. I don't. You know, they had recently Brandon Dawson, and you know he's going to sue them. And the point was that all they did is use his own podcast about. They used it against them. So I got to be. What happens, Tim, by the way, is you got to be careful what you say as you start to grow. And, you know, I really do care what people think about me. Not. Not the random strangers and the people that live in their mom's basement, but the people that meet me, they shake my hand, they get to know me. They might spend time with me at the office or the house. I care probably too much about what they think. Everybody says, don't care what other people think. And I'm like, but they got to get to know me. And then if they don't like me, I'm like, well, did they really get to know me? Because I'm super humble. I try to pay it forward. I genuinely want to see them win. And it's hard for me. And I think you're a little bit in the same direction is like, you might say, dude, losers Haters gonna hate. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think you care.

A (26:03)

Yeah.

B (26:04)

Quite a bit what people think, too.

A (26:07)

Yeah, absolutely.

B (26:12)

But I, you know, I've lied to myself.

A (26:16)

Yeah. Oh, I totally care. Yeah. And I mean, like, I, you know, you go viral every once. I'm sure you get, like, bigger videos and, like, those people that have no clue who you are.

B (26:26)

Yeah.

A (26:26)

They're just talking smack. Who cares? Who cares? But then, yeah, it's the people you know and the people that have actually met you. And I mean, like, the truth is, is so many people talk nice about, like, everyone can say the nicest things on the planet. But then there's one guy who's like, you know, saying something weird. Hey, don't do that. We're watching. But there's somebody doing that. And you're like, what? But it's often to enrich themselves. There's. You know what I mean? Like, it's often to, like, use your brand to kind of level themselves up. So I think people, like, use, like, kind of the haterade thing to, like, kind of. Hey, you know, this guy also. And I don't mean, like, you know, just got to be careful about all that.

B (27:14)

Well, you.

A (27:14)

But I mean, like. Okay, so can we talk about the Grant Cardone thing or no?

B (27:18)

Yeah, I. I don't care what we talk about. Yeah.

A (27:21)

Oh, okay. I just, like, there's definitely been a lot of people with the. Them coming into home service or, like, roofing and stuff like that. There's been a lot of. I mean, I don't know. You're talking about a genre. Let's go. Genre. There's a genre of person coming into home service that is not from home service, and they're kind of trying to. It's just a capital play. It's a little bit more of a capital play than I. Then I like, they shouldn't. They maybe shouldn't be teaching the seminar.

B (27:51)

Well, my problem is a lot of these guys, the only way they make money is by teaching the seminar. They don't actually. When the businesses get involved, very few of them have success. So they make money on the education. If you think about it, that's what a lot of these people do. You know, Jim, Leslie flies to our boardroom members. There's 12 of them, and spends three days with them and actually gets invested into their business and finds the biggest holes. And what we. We're proud of is, like, if we can't make massive impact. One Guy was doing 22 million, 3% of the bottom line this year. He's going to do 47, 18 to the bottom line. That's one year. And so we've really let the right businesses. And by the way, I don't want to be, I want to say more than I say yes. And by the way, if we hate doing business with you, you know what was crazy at last year's freedom is there was like 15 people that came that were just trying to, to sit in the back of the room and pull people into theirs. And I told Jim, who cares? I really don't care. Because at the end of the day, these networking things, that's what they do. But I think our things stand up to anybody's. And I think Jim's a genius and the team's a genius. And we partner with Al Levy and Alan Rohr and we've got the best of the best. And not to mention, we built it off the model of a one on what works. And if we can make 25,000 calls a month, work at an 1100 dollars average, that's including zeros, doors, sales and service. I know there will be a time I'm in H vac, plumbing, electrical, roofing. And you know, I say this as nicely as possible and I'm trying to stay humble, but no one's going to stand a chance. There's no operator out there, there's no marketing team. I don't think once I enter those industries, and I say this to be the nicest as possible, but when people find out I'm in those industries, I'll negotiate better with the vendors. People will come work for us that are better because they'll be owners of the business. Because I do equity incentive programs. And I just know if, if I'm able to do 25, people are like, well, yeah, it's harder in H vac. Well, how much does it cost to generate a lead on H Vac? Because most of the time we're looking at a 200 acquisition cost. Maybe you're at 3 or 400, but your ticket average and the money you're taking home is 10 10x. So do the math. I, I, so I, I just can't wait. I can't wait to spread my wings. But right now, keep your head down, focus. You know, there's a reason racehorses, you actually put that in the book. Racehorses wear goggles is because they need to focus on winning the race. You know, they wear blinders, right? They're blind. They're so focused. And so many small businesses, man, they're like, maybe I should invest in real estate. Maybe I should invest in that bar. It's time to get the second house. They just. They have no idea how to. They. They don't understand discipline.

A (30:32)

That's tough. That one's tough, man, because you'll see somebody whose business is good, and then they're just pulling out too much money and trying to do three other businesses. And it's like, I don't think you can at a certain point. And we're all up. And like, when you're in those first chunk of years, you're all up and down. You can't just be shoveling money out of the business, trying to, like, be an investor that early. And I know that there's exceptions, but, God, that's a tough one because it's like people I'm rooting for, and then they get pulled into a bunch of different businesses, and then.

B (31:09)

All of them fail. They're juggling and you drop everything. You're robbing Peter to pay Paul and everybody. You know, you hear Gary Vee, you got to have a side hustle. My problem is with a side hustle. And that's why I love Dan Martell. He's like, how much do you make per hour at that business? And if it's the most amount of money, don't focus on anything else. Gary. What's his name? The one thing Gary. Gary Keller wrote, the one thing is focus. And I always say the hustler had to die for the leader to be born is. Once I started committing all my life and energy to one thing, everything changed. And I would tell all the people out there, go all in on what you're working on. Don't, don't. Don't live above your means. If you're not willing to downgrade your. If you're not willing to downgrade your lifestyle for a few years to live the lifestyle you want, you care too much about what people think.

A (32:05)

Yeah, no, absolutely, I agree. And there's. There's a lot of that, like, not only on the personal life side, but in business, right? Like, if you have a bad year, like, the ability to be flexible, the up and down. You know what I mean? Like, to be able to let go of people quickly. Let's just say it. You have to be able to be willing to not get attached to your current head count if something's, you know, not right.

B (32:30)

Hey, guys, hope you're loving today's episode. We're just five days away from Freedom 2025. And I keep getting asked by people, tommy, how will networking at Your event translate into real results for my business? It's a great question. Here's the simple answer. The people you'll meet at Freedom have been there and done that. Want to learn a new lead generating strategy? You'll meet a guy who went from 50 leads a month to 500. Curious how someone scaled their team from 5 to 50 techs in two years without compromising quality. That owner will be sitting right next to you and Nothing beats a 10 minute conversation with someone who's already solved the exact problem you're facing and can walk you through it. Over 1000 owners will be making those connections and hearing solutions on how to scale faster in just five days time. Think more profit, less chaos. The question is, will you be one of them or will you stay back and watch others grow their businesses faster than you? This is your last chance. Go to freedom event.com and grab your spot. Now that's freedomevent.com all right, back to the episode. One of the things I wanted to ask you is you do a great job on LinkedIn. You know we've got X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. We've got all these different places to post. Why do you like LinkedIn?

A (33:45)

So actually, I mean we've, we've cranked on LinkedIn. I don't know if I like it. We spent a lot of time there back in the day. I'm actually, my biggest one is Facebook so and I, I generally push contractors to spend more time on Facebook just because the average size so I post there but I don't, that's not my like biggest one. And I do think you kind of gotta choose to a certain degree. Like I'm starting to get a little marketing department now. Like I have a marketing manager and a video guy and you know, I've started to get that in place for me. But you kind of, when you're, when it's just you, you kind of gotta choose like your one or two that you're gonna go really hard on. I did it back in the day and I'll, I'll continue to have some presence on LinkedIn because employees. So now like for instance like we've got a video going out tomorrow that's sick. That's just our team going to a twins game and like talking about how much they love working here because I'm going to try to get talent right? So when I do cool stuff on LinkedIn and even like we just did a cold plunge challenge with my team and each one of them like got to choose A charity to give 500 bucks to and like eight of them did it. Five minute cold plunge under 50 degrees. It's called the hometown hero Challenge. Go do it. Go do it. You don't have to.

B (35:05)

I will do it.

A (35:05)

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. Tommy too. You better go do it. But anyone watching, Go do it. But that type of stuff like sticks out. So if you do things that are a little bit more casual, not that like formal on LinkedIn, it just, it cuts through because everyone's used to everyone just kind of being almost not authentic on LinkedIn. And so you can really cut through the algorithm just by like doing more laid back stuff and kind of showing your culture for what it really is. I think that that's an opportunity on LinkedIn. But yeah, my biggest one I go hard on is Facebook. And then second YouTube. We get a lot of business from both of those.

B (35:45)

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't bring that one up. That's something where we're working on. That's supposedly the best one. You know, I know that you. Which one is YouTube? YouTube is. We're going to start committing. I mean, as I talk. Marcus Sheridan believes YouTube will be far bigger than Google. In five years it won't even be close. It'll become the largest search engine by far. So I, I'm. We're going to commit ourselves to doing better on YouTube.

A (36:11)

I love YouTube. And it's so simple. I mean, you know, you've already figured it out. You figured out a little bit. You're being humble. There's, it's like the big numbers thing. You know, it's like there's big names like, you know, like it's. I think one thing that's done really two things I've done really well, done really well for US office tours. You could do that. That's sick. So fun and it's, plus it's fun to go out there anyways. And then two big number sales guys, you know what I mean? And I know that it's like your, your ideal person you're talking to is usually the owner. But if you get the sales guys talking about it too, you, you kind of like get the owner by inference. So that's kind of my, my strategy has been because those, those just cut through. There's such a bigger audience for sales guys and especially these large numbers. So yeah, that's been. Those are some of our best content on there, which might apply.

B (37:06)

You know, you're, you're on a lot of podcasts. You're on mine today. You were on Seven Figure Agency, the roofing academy service mvp. What are your takeaways as you. You sit here, you learn, you talk to these different people. I know all those guys. Why do you do that? I know I do it all the time and I got my own reasoning, but yeah, I use it as a learning channel. I actually. And I build relationships.

A (37:33)

Yeah, definitely. For me, having people on the podcast, it's almost like free consulting. And I use, I use all, I use as much of it as I can. Right. I use all that information and I apply it. And I hope you've seen me apply some of the stuff you've told me over the years because you've given me a lot of time and I appreciate that very, very much. Being on other podcasts, it's just we don't. I think we always underestimate how much market there is and we think everyone knows us and they don't. You know what I mean? So that's why I'm aggressive with that is their audiences are different and it's the relationships and then it. So the relationship side of it, getting in with these people, they could refer you. Right? That's kind of my mindset. And then secondly, they have a chunk of the audience that you don't have. And ultimately we just have to. We probably are like at like 10% of the market knows about us. Even though sometimes I would think it's like 50% because I like. Because people act like they know us, right? They act kind of chummy with like, oh, hook, you know, all this stuff. But most people don't know us. And just like recognizing that's the truth for almost all of us, it's like 10% of your market at Tops knows about you and we gotta try to get it to 50. So that's why I'm really aggressive like getting on other people's content. And I think it applies even if you're not like trying to get on all these industry podcast, you're a home service business owner getting into other people's content around the city. There's a bunch of other home services, there's a bunch of other influencers in your local market. I think people could do more of that, like apply these principles of what you're seeing Tommy do and I do, but apply it to the local market and who are the centers of influence. Sometimes it's not like people that have influencer in their Instagram, but it's another. It's a remodeler who has 10,000 people following them on Instagram or something. So it's like finding ways to just cross pollinate audiences is the biggest thing for me.

B (39:30)

Yeah, I talked to a guy that's super smart years ago that said you got to have a purpose for a podcast. And he said, you know, the ideal podcast is for listeners that are your avatar. So for me, that's homeowners, property managers, it's. It's finding out people that want to know how to make their home worth more money. Now, I haven't gone down that road because when I started my podcast eight years ago, I want to learn more about the best, the best in home service, home improvement. So I'm not. I will never end this podcast. I love this podcast. But if you're going to build a podcast, why not talk to homeowners? Why not educate them where people are listening to, like the Bob Vilas? I can't think of a whole lot of influencers or, you know, I like dirty jobs and all those guys. I. You get in front of your clients, they listen, they're going to use you. So if you could build a way to get in front of realtors, designers, architects, builders in your space, in your market, you'll be super successful. That's the best advice I could give is understand who your avatar is. Build value. Make sure they know you're a cool dude that just somebody you go have a beer with or go fishing with. And they're like, man, this guy, he's like, yeah, I'm going to use him. You know what I mean?

A (40:39)

Yeah. And that's like a big theme in this book, but also just in my mindset as well. For our business, I think it relates to home services is like, I'm often marketing for referrals, not just leads. I think a lot of these folks, I think they get stuck, they're posting a picture with their phone number and the website and they're. They want to lead. Every time they post, I think they're going to get a lead from them. Just posting on social and it's like understanding the culture of that platform. And I think it's more posting to get referrals because people need to know about us. Like, I connect with a lot of referral, like people that could refer me, and that's kind of my mindset on this stuff. I think it's. If you're posting for referrals, it also gets you leads too. So it's not like it has to be either or. It's just if you go for referrals, leads come in too.

B (41:37)

Yeah, no, it's amazing. What happens is if you just got this. This discipline and consistency to do it all the time. You know, one of the things I was listening to the other day, it was Alex Ramosi or Gary V. Is just. It might not be perfect. Just post it. It gets better. You never know which one's going to take off. You never want. No. Another one is turn your employees. I mean, one of the biggest things that I failed at, that I'm working on right now is if the employees aren't posting what they do, where they work, the best store they installed. Nobody knows in their circle that they do that. And if they knew that, I mean, everybody they went to high school with, they go to church with, where their kids go to school, and if they just posted a video a month, it'd be like that top of mind awareness and that would be a game changer. What's your favorite strategy? What was the one thing you were like, Dude, I never thought about that. There's probably several of them. But was there anything that was like, that's genius in the book?

A (42:30)

There's so many. I mean, honestly, like, there's like 20 things in here that, like, I. Yeah, I wouldn't have come up with myself. That's why it's like the 27 different people added a lot. One of the things I like is John Cenac. He's big in roofing him talking about incentivizing the. The introduction versus the deal. So a lot of people's like, referral thing is the. If the deal closes from somebody. But. But he's pushing like, here, get. Get a bunch of 50 gift cards and give it to him as soon as they make the introduction, which I thought was, you know, pretty smart. That's definitely one that I feel like we've started to experiment with that with our. With ourselves a little bit. And I think that it is very relevant. But there's so many, man, there's like, literally, like, there's. I got a ton of information by making this book, which is cool. And some of it I had to research. There's a few chapters in here. I was like, this. This would really flesh out the. The book. But I didn't know it from the bottom, you know, yet. So, like, for instance, like, how to be more funny because I talk about funny in the book and I talk about like, cute animals and babies and using all the brain chemicals. Right. To get more memorable. And the funny thing is, like, I'm still working on that. Right. Like, I. I would love to get Funnier. And I believe it's a skill we can cultivate. So part of it was, like, learning, and I'm still learning. I'm trying to, like, I'm gonna. I'm hoping in the next few months to attempt stand up. You know, I'm trying to do an improv class because it's so. It's so valuable in communication. Like, humor is so valuable. And so anything I can do to cultivate that, to me is like, I just say the funniest people in the world are not poor.

B (44:21)

Well, one of the things that I know was always funny is of when you can make fun of yourself. So, yeah, whenever I get the chance, I try to bring down the room, and we could be talking about anything, and I'm like, yeah, well, I've got adhd. I'm barely able to focus on this for the one minute at a time. And by the way, I've got 90 slides, and you're probably going to get lost because I can't help myself. Myself. Whatever. I could say, no, but what. What humor is to me is when you could explain a situation that people live it with you and say, yes, that's me. Like, have you ever walked into an airplane and people you start with. Everyone's been, how many of people here ever flew in an airplane? Well, everybody. So that you start out where everybody knows, or how many of you. You have ever farted in front of your wife or girlfriend? Like, you know, and everybody's, like, thinking about that time. So you have them live that moment, and it's so fun. Like, I used to tell people, you know, that gets up, like, right when they park in the bell, then they stand up in the aisle. Like, you just. Why. Why is that guy standing up in the aisle? I go, that's me. I'm the guy standing up in the aisle. I'm the guy you hate.

A (45:26)

Yeah.

B (45:27)

And so I. I love. And I'm not very funny. It's.

A (45:30)

I think, why do you do that? Can we discuss that for a second? Why do you do that?

B (45:34)

Well, number one, I'm six foot three. I'm six foot three.

A (45:37)

Yeah.

B (45:38)

And the big deal is, I mean, look, I'm anxious to get out of the plane. I'm literally, like, stretching out. I always touch the ceiling, and I put my hand straight up against the ceiling, and I'm like, I want to get my bags out. You know, the other person stands up, and then you can't put the damn thing down because they're standing in the way and you're like, excuse me. And I like to have my backpack on. I'm just. I just. I only sit in aisle seats. I do never sit windows. Unless it's like, if we're booking a flight that Ashley and Brie know. I'm only aisles and I want to have. It's just something about being able to get up.

A (46:13)

David Carroll always posts memes from Dope Marketing Shout out always posts memes about. About that guy. And so I. I wonder if. Do you ever comment back to him on his memes or have you seen his memes?

B (46:29)

He texts me a couple times a month. He's a good buddy. I spent time with him in Minnesota. He's been over my place a million times. Like, I. I love hanging out with them. They're great people. I enjoy. I. You know what's really hard is, like, no matter if I do business with people or not, and I've done a lot of business with Dave over the years, and, like, I just like it. Like, look, I would not be insulted, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart. If. If you were in my market and you didn't choose me as a garage door vendor, like, it wouldn't break my heart. Like, I put friendship so much above doing business. And I'm very fortunate because a lot of people, and this is the craziest thing, the last two years, they don't let me know they're using my company. They just text me afterwards and say, you did a great job. We just paid you 7,500 bucks. And I love that. It's like, if I own a bar, I'm not gonna say, dude, how do you get me in there and get me a bottle service at half price? I'm just gonna text you afterwards and say, dude, phenomenal job. I spent five grand at your bar. You know, I took my whole crew there. We had a blast. And I. I love the people that do it to me. And it's not. It's not. I don't expect it, though. I would never say you're not my friend because you didn't use me. I just. I think I hold friendship much above that. And look, if you want the cheapest and you're selling your home, if you called me, I could do it for you, and I would do it for you. But ultimately, look, maybe we weren't available. I don't really care what the situation is, because doing business with friends is hard, as, you know, and family.

A (47:54)

Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. And you. You really, like, we don't get that. Like, ultimately, I've got like 3 real or 5 real, like closer friends. Right. It's like I'm not squandering that anymore because I've hired people, you know what I mean? I don't do that. I don't do that like as employees because it's scary.

B (48:12)

Well, I'll give you some advice at my house.

A (48:14)

I will throw that out there. We, we hired a one garage and they did an incredible job for us.

B (48:19)

Thank you.

A (48:20)

I really like it. I think, I think they got away with. We got away with just a repair.

B (48:26)

Well, good.

A (48:27)

It was nice and I, I'm not gonna, I, I appreciate it like, because it was like not that expensive. I was like, kind of like Tommy's company must be pretty expensive. But it was actually really good service and deal. And the, the guys were super nice. That's probably the most notable thing. So whoever was at her house, if you remember who came out or whatever, I think I posted a picture. But they were just very nice. And that's that matters because I'm, you know, it's my wife often dealing with that. I'm like, I don't want it to be high pressure.

B (48:56)

High pressure sales guys. Yeah, no, we don't do that. Here's a piece of advice. If you are ever going to hire friends or family, there's two things you need to do. Number one, you don't work for me, I'm going to give you somebody else to be a direct report. Number two is we're going to do this as like a prenuptial agreement. We're going to have a walk away that we both agree. And when that happens, we got to agree we're gonna still be able to have Thanksgiving together. And I'll tell you, it's the hardest thing in the world. I hired a buddy at another company, I ended up getting him a job and he called me 18 times a day. And I'm like, you know what I do now? When we see each other, he doesn't talk to me about work. And I was very clear about that, about this other career that he's in. But I started hitting ignore. I'm like, I'm never gonna talk to you about business, period. Never call me unless you wanna talk about life. And it's tough. But here's the deal. You knew that going in, you put down the, the things and if you did it correctly, because there's some great people that you know will do great. And I'll tell you, it's 50, 50 because they know fathers and sons that don't talk to each other anymore because of business. So it's not easy. And I would. I. I do. I appreciate your five best closest friends that you keep the. You keep yourself guarded, and I think you're doing the right thing.

A (50:09)

Yeah. Hey, if we got five close friends at this age, I feel like you're doing really good. I mean, it's. It's hard as a. It's hard out here for a pimp, you know, to have adult male friendships. I mean, seriously, dude, we made a new friend, like, a new couple friendship recently, like, for real friends. And, like, we're all kind of like similar industries and talking about the things we like and stuff. But I'm like, this is the best. It's so good when you can make a real adult friends. So that's a beautiful thing. And people should. I think it's important, super important to.

B (50:44)

Try, you know, me and Bri, randomly, every, like, few months, I'll be like, so who's your best friend? And she'll ask me, and I'm like, you know, we go through these seasons of life. Of course, the kids I grew up with were still close, and the I could go through. But really, what it's kind of came down to, if you talk to, who am I communicating with? I mean, me and Aaron Gaynor are about as close as you come. I mean, he flies out, his son's going to asu. We confide in each other. We don't hold back from each other. We never talk down about one another in public. We confess each other's dreams. So she. She. I've learned to say who is my best friend? Because I. I don't go like this. Tim, let's pinky swear that we're best friends like we used to do when we were kids. But it's like, who you putting time, energy, and focus into and who's actually delivering? Like, he's like, dude, make. Make me a deal that you're gonna work out at least five days a week, the next two weeks. And he goes, I'll do the same, and I'll send you videos. And I say things to him to motivate him, and we want to see each other win. And that's rare these days. It's rare.

A (51:48)

Oh, Yeah, I agree. 100 gainer plumbing. Plumbing, baby.

B (51:55)

I love me go after him. Yeah, dude, in a perfect world, I'd love to do business. But you know what's nice about once the money comes, and I will say this is if you partner with somebody and money's kind of off the table because you guys have done so well. It makes it so much easier. And if you're sitting almost as a board seat versus in the business. That's why I think Russell Brunson, or not Russell Brunson, what's his name? Sir. Sir Richard Branson. He just hires top down and he's not involved. He hires the right people, they build the team and it's not emotional. And if you're not doing great and losing money, he, you know, he already discussed, I'm going to have to replace you before you got started. That's where I want to live in the future. Tim. How does I think.

A (52:42)

I'm just going to say one last thing about that. I think all of us could do better to think of ourselves as board members, stakeholders of our business, not just CEOs. You know, I think that that's a huge unlock for me as I've started to like, think that way and increasing enterprise value. Right. Like, I think thinking that way and not being so in it is a beautiful thing when, when people can get there for sure. I agree.

B (53:08)

You know, money's a tool. But, but I know what you guys do. You travel around and believe it or not, money's a tool to have fun and travel. Money's a tool for fitness, to get the best trainer, take the right supplements, the right peptides, to get the right stuff at the DEXA scan that cost money. You know, if you think about family, when you want to go on vacations and you know, it's not only money, it's time, but it costs money and faith. I mean, if you're giving 10% to the church, that costs money and almost everything. It's a tool, but it's like, what's nice about it is the reason I say enterprise value is if you worked hard for three years and got your business at $2 million of EBITDA and got a 6X, that's $12 million. And I just don't think. People just don't. They don't think about the end in sight. They pay themselves a ton of W2 money versus building real a massive exit that could. It could be 5 million, it could be 20 million. It doesn't really matter. And they're like, I want to get to 100 million. And I'm like, why? And they don't really have an answer because you proved this possible. Well, I'm not married. I don't have kids, never been married. And it's something I had to do because, you know, it's something I decided when I was four years old. But at the end of the day, don't live my life. You know, write down the reasons why you want to build. Imagine your parents are at an age you can still have fun with them and you make enough money. I've talked to you about this. I'm like, you know, a lot of people say I'm just, I'm just having fun. I don't really have an exit. I don't really. It's like saying, hey, I'm going on a trip, but I don't know where I'm going. I don't, I'm not going to pay attention to the gas and who cares what mile per hour I'm going? Who cares if I get a ticket? It doesn't make sense to me because I've been there. And the reason I could talk about this, Tim, is I've been exactly there. I don't know where I'm going. I'm just driving and I'm just trying to learn as I go. And now I'm very, very good at understanding the destination. And it's not a lifestyle business, it's not a career for me. There's a goal, there's a site. I want to make a lot of millionaires in the process. I want to service a lot of homes. I want to be a trusted advisor for my clients. I want to build a legacy. But at the end of the day, yeah, the more money I make, the more people I could help. I could teach a lot more people to fish. And I just think it's totally wrong when people just say, oh yeah, just, you know, figure it out as you go. You know, things will start coming to you now. Have a plan. I don't care if it's a six year plan, eight year plan, three year plan, put it together, build enterprise value and share the wealth with the people that work for you to help build it and your family.

A (55:33)

Absolutely. I got a seven year plan right now. 2032, baby, that's. But I mean like, yeah, I've got, I've got a clear plan. I want to sell this thing for 20 million. So if you know anyone and we'll figure it out and we might go, we might go past that. I think, I think this thing could be 50 and I would be happy to overlap, you know, for a while into that. Whether it be sooner than that or a little later than that. But I'm trying to. What I want at the end of the day is continuity because I see private equity sometimes Ruin stuff. And I would like continuity. That's the toughest part to find is continuity between like our service oriented mindset and what we're trying to do and high, you know, customer service to what it would be. I would, I would really love and I would hold onto it if I can't find that continuity. Continuity. Really love the next buyer to like have continuity with what we've tried. Because that's what I think the brand, that's what I think brand is, is like the higher customer service. Like you could have both. You could have both.

B (56:38)

If you're a premium premier service with great relationships, you could charge it to number one. Number two is private equity has more stress than you have. You might have to say, I got to report to my customers. They're reporting to municipalities that took the whole teachers fund and put it in your business to make their money grow. And they've got to have weekly meetings with their limited partners. And I think people just think, oh, private equity is so evil. No, they're investors. Just like in real estate, just like in bowling alleys and strip malls and all these other things like you think just be. They're like private equities. Ruin it. Yeah. There are a lot of companies that say we're going to cut our way to the top. There are great ones out there too. It's like house flippers. There are horrible ones. It's like plumbers that are horrible ones and they just get a bad rap. And there's venture capital and there's silent investors and there's all kinds of different investment thesis. But there's hedge funds and I just, I'll tell you, I found a great partner, I'm going to find another great partner. And. And they, they leave me alone. They let me run the business. They give me a lot of insights when I need it. They've got a lot of capabilities and, you know, they've got a deeper checkbook which makes it easier to grow. And I'd rather have a smaller piece of a massive pie than own everything. And I've learned to be very humble, ask a lot of questions and show up here and let them guide me. They've been where I want to go, so not in every aspect. They can't run this business. They know.

A (57:53)

Yeah.

B (57:55)

So I do agree with you. Continuity, making sure you're running towards the same. Not taking advantage of everybody around you. There's a lot of people, man. Tim, in my industry, I'm either loved or despised. They go, that guy charges a lot. But they never say how good he takes care of his employees. None of them ever say that they drive new trucks and they get to train every day and they're buying houses and they got a bunch of pto. We take them to Mexico and we take them to eat and we cook breakfast for them. They don't talk about that. They just say they take advantage of their clients. And the problem is they're installing inferior parts. They can't get out there for a week. They don't run warranty calls, their cars are breaking down, they can't afford to market. That's why their guys quit, because they can't keep them busy. They only talk about the little side they see and it just shows how non intellectual they are. It shows. And I was going to say stupid, but I shouldn't call them that because they just, they don't know what they don't know yet.

A (58:43)

Yet. Yeah. Well, like you said about the cost per lead thing on Google Ads, it's like if they don't know their numbers, they might be bidding it up and it's actually dumb. Oh yeah. It's the same with, it's the same with these prices. If they're, they're being ridiculous. Some people are being ridiculous and you should not follow them.

B (59:03)

Well, I don't think you're a guy that likes the cheapest. I, I doubt you'd say let me buy the most expensive. But if you said that's understanding the investment. I mean if I had a deck and it cost twice as much, but they said with the type of wood we're using, it's actually a fake plywood. It never warps, you'll never have to paint it. And this is good. With a 40 year warranty. We've been in business 62 years. And the average deck, if they show me the evidence, needs to be recorded every year and you're going to have to replace it every 10 years. What's a better investment?

A (59:35)

It's, it's the ones you got financing, I'm down. As long as you got financing, I'll do it 100. I'll do the higher thing if you give me financing.

B (59:44)

Well, here's the deal, brother. I think you wrote a spectacular book. Obviously I got two books ahead of it, but I've gone through it and I love what you did there. You, you were looking out for the small guy, looking for guerrilla marketing, looking at ways to improve their business. That's just not outspend yourself when people want to get a hold of you. Tim, what's the best Way to do that.

A (60:07)

Yeah. Check out hook agency.com call to book a call now. And we are, like I said, H Vac plumbing, roofing and we have some other home services as well. But we're, we're custom, consistent and transparent. But if nothing else, this book is a. Is a steal. And really we spent a lot of time on it. It's like 1314 bucks on Amazon and it's got a lot of really good takes from other people. 27 Home service industry leaders. I think you will enjoy it. Or you can go to hometownherobook.com and.

B (60:44)

Is there any other books that help shape your life other than the E Myth and you know.

A (60:50)

Yeah, behind these ones. Yeah, I've got a few that I love. We got Building a story brand.

B (60:55)

Yeah. Donald Miller.

A (60:55)

Donald Miller.

B (60:56)

There's a 2.0 out now.

A (60:57)

Incredible about making the customer the hero. Hey, this one's good, but it might not be my normal one. The power of ownership. This one's about HRV and heart rate variability and taking tests, your body and the reason I'm at a nutritionist now, but a few more that relate to business. These are my three favorite sales books. The Challenger Sale, 10x Rule and Pitch Anything. Those ones are all really good. One is about challenging people to change their mind and then you own that idea in their mind for the rest of your life. Setting way bigger goals and how big positioning and framing is in your pitch. Those are my favorite three sales books.

B (61:48)

I love it. And we talked about a lot of things. Tim, I'm going to let you close us out with whatever on your mind.

A (61:56)

Yeah, just gratefulness, man. I think so much vision. Right? We want. We have vision lives. I think we should also have a vision for the energy in our relationships and the way we're treating people around us and also going towards our ideal state. You know, a lot of it has to do with fitness and nutrition and for me, meditation. But it's like, what is my energy going to be like once I get all the things that I dream of? Let's say you're going to get all of them. Let's say for a second you're going to get all of these amazing things that you've put in your vision. You've written it down and you're consistently pushing on it. What else could you add? Could you add, this is what it feels like between my relationship with me and my wife and my kids and. And how could I show up in my relationship? So a vision for relationships and personal energy, not just things because I think things are great. And then additionally aim bigger.

B (62:57)

I love it, man. I've been thinking a lot about what good is all this? This wealth without health. You know, showing up, being optimistic, smiling, energetic, passionate. So you hit the nail on the head, my brother. I really appreciate you doing this. Today was great stuff.

A (63:13)

Yes, sir. Thank you for having me.

B (63:15)

All right, my man. I'll talk to you soon. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at A one Garage Dresser. So if you want to learn the secrets that help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.