How AI Is Closing Deals for Home Service Businesses with Chiirp (Ryan Fenn)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Home Service Expert
Episode: How AI Is Closing Deals for Home Service Businesses with Chiirp (Ryan Fenn)
Host: Tommy Mello
Guest: Ryan Fenn (CEO & Founder, Chiirp)
Date: March 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into how artificial intelligence and automation—specifically via Chiirp—are transforming the landscape for home service businesses. Tommy Mello and guest Ryan Fenn share personal stories, practical examples, and actionable strategies for leveraging speed, authentic communication, and data-driven follow-up to close more deals, scale operations, and outpace the competition. Throughout, they address common pitfalls in automation, reveal inside secrets about AI’s growing power in sales conversion, and discuss the shifting importance from just technology (the tool) to expertise, community, and personal brand in business success.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ryan Fenn's Backstory and the Birth of Chiirp

• From Windshield Repair to Automation Innovator
  • Ryan started in 2010 with a windshield repair business born out of necessity and quickly discovered the value of speed in lead follow-up (03:20–06:02).
  • A pivotal moment: switching his customer pitch at the gas station from “Can I wash your windshield?” (9/10 said no) to “As a courtesy, we’re washing everyone’s windshield” (9/10 said yes), leading to an 80% increase in conversions (09:20–09:35).
  • “It's like that Bible story—go wash in the river. It’s too simple of a solution.” (Ryan Fenn, 07:14)

2. Automation Myths—Why Speed and Simplicity Matter

• Contractors often look for complex solutions, but the biggest leap comes from fast, consistent follow-up—“The fortune is in the follow up.” (07:14–09:35)
• The key: Make follow-up serious, learn what words work, and always A/B test messaging (10:05–10:24).
• Tommy's insight: “If you just sat down and really thought about everything wrong with your business… the automations could handle almost every problem in the business.” (Tommy Mello, 06:02)

3. Data, AI, and the Power of A/B Testing

• Chiirp aggregates hundreds of millions of text messages, enabling powerful AI analysis (13:06–14:53).
• AI can detect patterns, word choices, timing, and regional variations that drive conversion rates up—e.g., estimate rehash messages sent Monday mornings perform better (13:07–13:56).
• Small contractors can now tap into big data and AI-driven best practices without needing vast in-house data.
• “Now I have hundreds of millions of text messages... AI is finding the words that work and the words that are killing your business.” (Ryan Fenn, 13:07)

4. Overcoming "Demo Fatigue" & Lowering Barriers to Adoption

• The home service industry is overwhelmed with “AI” demos and new software, much of it primitive compared to what Chiirp offers (15:46–16:14).
• The focus is shifting from offering complex tools to providing partnerships: expert coaching, tailored playbooks, and hands-on support to help businesses plug leaks and scale, regardless of their size (16:14–18:51).
• “Contractors are saying: I know I need AI, but I need somebody I can trust to take that part off my plate.” (Ryan Fenn, 16:14)

5. Who Chiirp Serves—From Small to Large Companies

• While the biggest companies can pay for custom solutions, AI now lets smaller contractors access previously unavailable tools and strategies, scaled to their needs and budgets (20:14–21:58).
• The value proposition: Chiirp isn’t selling just software, but outcomes—actual revenue and conversion improvements.
• “We’re not selling software. We’re selling outcomes.” (Ryan Fenn, 22:47)

6. Why Choose Chiirp Over Competitors?

• Decades of focused experience, a vast proprietary data set, expertise in strategies that have been real-world tested—plus, an engaged, “inner circle” contractor community (23:15–24:36).
• “The tool itself is becoming more and more irrelevant… What they don’t bring to the table is the fact that I’ve focused on this one thing for over a decade.” (Ryan Fenn, 23:27)

7. Brand, Community & Scaling Authenticity in a World of Commoditization

• AI will make the technical side of software easy, so business success increasingly depends on personal brand and authentic connection (27:50–31:05).
• Memorable lesson from Paulie Shore: “The only reason people laugh at some of my jokes is because they love me… The only thing you have that’s unique in this world is your personal story.” (Ryan Fenn, 28:35)
• Use video messaging, blue iMessages (higher response rates), and automation to maintain genuine relationships at scale (31:05–33:06).

8. The New Chiirp Platform and AI "Agents"

• 2026 brings a revamped Chiirp built around AI-powered “employees” (agents) for each key task (e.g., converting different lead sources) for clearer visibility, easier A/B testing, and continuous campaign optimization (34:32–36:50).
• “You can log in and you have individual agents that are very clear on their task… Now you can see each agent and go, cool, what am I going to focus on right now?” (Ryan Fenn, 34:32)

9. The Reality of Scaling & Why Referrals Alone Can't Grow Your Business

• While referrals convert best, they’re not scalable—high growth requires paid advertising, robust follow-up systems, and a willingness to pay more per lead than competitors (37:32–38:04).
• “He who can pay more per lead will always win.” (Tommy Mello, 37:31)
• Training teams for different types of leads and building resilience for top-of-funnel conversion is vital (39:52–40:25).

10. Leadership, Team Building, and Personal Growth

• Getting the “right people on the bus” is critical to scaling, but requires relinquishing some control, providing clarity, and empowering top talent (42:24–48:25).
• Both Tommy and Ryan discuss their growth as leaders in giving feedback, handling confrontation, and balancing love and respect for the team (48:25–54:55).
• “If you want more power, give more power away.” (Ryan Fenn, 42:53)
• Firing or letting underperforming team members go is ultimately an act of service, to both them and the organization.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

The Simplicity of Winning Words

“When I simply shifted the words from ‘Can I wash your windshield today?’ to ‘As a courtesy, we’re washing everybody’s windshield,’ I went from one person saying yes to nine people saying yes.”
—Ryan Fenn (09:20)

The Impact of Fast Follow-Up

“It wasn’t until I discovered that if I texted them very, very, very quickly—in under a minute—that I would get a higher response rate… I could make the ads profitable.”
—Ryan Fenn (04:42)

Why Automate?

“The automations could handle almost every problem in the business. And it creates a system.”
—Tommy Mello (06:02)

AI’s Leap Forward

“Now I have hundreds of millions of text messages… AI is finding the words that work and the words that are killing your business.”
—Ryan Fenn (13:07)

Personal Branding in Business Success

“The only thing you have that's unique in this world is your own personal story… You have to sell your story first and have them love you then they’ll buy whatever you want from you.”
—Ryan Fenn (29:41)

Referrals and Scaling

“Referrals are the best lead source—but you’re never going to scale [with them alone]… He who could pay more per lead will always win.”
—Tommy Mello (37:31)

Leadership and Growth

“If you want more power, give more power away… That’s the key to attracting the right people.”
—Ryan Fenn (42:53)

AI is a Tool—Not the Threat

“AI is not coming for your job, but somebody…leaning into AI and taking advantage… is coming for your job.”
—Ryan Fenn (25:08)

Optimism about the Future

“Be excited about the future… Engage with [AI], get into it… Those that do [will] see the people who don't embrace it see that gap just grow.”
—Ryan Fenn (62:29)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Ryan’s backstory & founding Chiirp: 03:20–06:02
• The importance of automation in home services: 06:02–09:35
• Words that convert vs. words that kill deals: 09:20–10:05
• A/B testing and AI-driven insights: 13:06–14:53
• How AI identifies regional & timing-based patterns: 13:58–14:53
• Demo fatigue & making software easier to use: 15:46–18:51
• The democratization of AI for small contractors: 20:14–22:47
• Moving from software to outcome-selling: 22:47–23:15
• The unique edge of Chiirp: 23:15–24:36
• Community, personal brand, and scaling authenticity: 27:50–31:05
• Video, blue iMessages, and review strategies: 31:05–33:17
• Introducing AI “agents” in Chirp: 34:32–36:50
• On scaling and the limits of referral growth: 37:32–38:04
• Team building, leadership, giving up control: 42:24–48:25
• Firing with love—balancing feedback: 48:25–54:55
• Closing thoughts & optimism about AI: 62:29–62:51

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Conclusion

This candid and high-energy conversation between Tommy and Ryan delivers actionable strategies and sobering truths about what drives growth in home services today: speed, consistent follow-up, A/B testing, authentic story-driven communication, and leveraging the power of AI. For owners and operators, the message is clear—embrace rapid change, focus on outcomes over tools, and don’t be afraid to lean into both technology and the personal side of business. The future belongs to those who adapt, innovate, and keep fine-tuning every step of the way.

Best Next Step:
Those interested in Chiirp’s data-driven automation should visit chiirp.com and sign up for a free Revenue Optimization Analysis for actionable, customized insights.

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Transcript

[Ryan Finn]

There's hundreds of millions of people sitting on social media looking at their phones all day, every day and you can be in front of them in a few seconds. And if you play that game, the sky's the limit.

[Tommy Mello]

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes. But I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes N O t e s to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299 and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward/podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right guys, big day for me. I got Ryan Finn in the house. He's the CEO and founder at Chirp. He's based out of Eagle Mountain, Utah and knows a lot about automations. I met Ryan years and years ago at a Vertical Track Rozdor event that we were hosting and he and I and one of his major developers, Kevin, said, we can make this work for your company. It was very complicated and now hundreds and hundreds, if not millions of dollars a month we're adding back to the bottom line. He's the CEO of Chirp and the host of the Windshield Hustle. He's got a home services marketing platform built with one core belief, speed and personal connection. Close more deals. Ryan's entrepreneurial journey began out of necessity in 2010 when he had a newborn son and just $500 to his name, he launched a windshield repair business to support his family. That experience taught him the power of immediate follow up and authentic communication. After successfully scaling his home service business, after successfully scaling his service business and selling for over $2 million in online education, Ryan founded Chirp to help contractors instantly respond to leads through automated texting, email and multichannel. Follow up. Today, Chirps thousands of home service businesses and home improvement businesses. Integrates with leading CRMs like Service 10 and Housecall Pro and generates over $10 million annually. Ryan remains passionate about helping contractors capture, convert and close more opportunities without working harder. And the coolest thing is I happen to have a lot of inside knowledge. We're getting on the newest UX and the latest technology. And the one thing I asked you, Ryan, is I need to be able to a B test. We know Russell Brunson, we know the top marketers on the planet, they're going to a B test till they're. It's just a never non stop cycle. And when you a B test, you can do more than anybody. And I'm excited to be on the new platform. That's what we're going to talk about today. So just tell us a little bit. You know you've been on the podcast before, but give a quick overview who you are, what you're excited about.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah, super excited to be back. Thanks for having me, Tommy. Honored. Last time I was here, I was 30 pounds heavier. So if you go back.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, you've done great on that journey.

[Ryan Finn]

If you go back to the old, the old video, you can tell quite a difference. Yeah, super happy to be back. Yeah, we've spent the last. So. So for those that, you know, don't know, I, I'm not traditional software guy. I came from the trades like you said. I started my first business back in 2010 as a windshield repair guy and I would do that, you know, gas. I started off going door to door. That was how I would get my first customers. And then I got into a gas station. I, I saw this girl doing it when I was visiting my parents in California. I saw her doing, she was washing windshields and I was like, dang, she's, she's smarter than me. She's. She's letting the customers come to her, right. And, and so I went, I went home, went to the nearest gas station. I said, hey, can I, can I do this? And the guy's like, yeah, sounds good to me. And so I'd stand out there and I would ask people if I could wash their windshield as a courtesy for coming in to get gas. And then that gave me the opportunity to look at their windshield and see if there was any chips in it that I could fix. And if there was, I'd offer the service. And that first Saturday, I made like 1200 bucks doing that.

[Tommy Mello]

Did you charge the insurance company or did you just charge cash?

[Ryan Finn]

I'd offer Both so you can charge the insurance for it. It's. If you go on any of the websites, it's a, they waive the deductible. So it's. You get paid 60 bucks to do a repair or I'd say, hey, or, or if you just want to pay for it, it's 50 bucks and then it take about 15, 20 minutes, do the repair. So, and then, and then from there, you know, we scaled, we went into like nine gas stations. Some dealerships invited us to come into their service drives. Was working at the Toyota dealership, Honda dealership. And then kind of does that to the early Russell Brunson days when he started, you know, click funnels and courses. And I got the idea to start a course how, how to start and grow your own windshield repair business. And from there, you know, I was generating, I was generating leads through Facebook ads, but they weren't converting. And it wasn't until I discovered that if I texted them very, very, very quickly in under a minute that I would get a higher response rate, a high enough response rate, I could make the ads profitable. And I was Getting about an 8-10x return on ad spend when I shifted into that. And so, so I started to create automation around that, started to create how to, how to follow up consistently with these leads as they were coming in, kind of piecing together multiple softwares to make it happen. And that's how CHIRP was born.

[Tommy Mello]

So, you know, a lot of people misconfuse automations. They're like, so many people are like, why do you run so much software? And I'm like, well, I got a CRM. I got the cameras and the vehicles, I got inventory tools. I need Sage intact for financials. It goes on and on. I got Power BI for data analytics. I use Chirp for all the automations, which you could do text message, voicemail, blast, which I think are underutilized. You could do email and speed a lead. And you know, the people listening right now as if you just sat down and really thought about everything wrong with your business. Maybe you're not booking every call, maybe you're not following up enough. Maybe you're not getting the manufacturer's warranty, maybe you have an upsell that your guys are mentioning. When you sell something, you could just text the customer when that sold in service tightened and you could have it automatically text the client. And the automations could handle almost every problem in the business. And it creates a system. And why is it that you think so many contractors get on it and they're like, we don't even know what we want to automate.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah, it's, it's crazy because often, like the most, like the most impactful changes you can make in your business are so simple that you kind of don't think that they're gonna, they're gonna work. Like you said, it's like, oh, you could just have it send a text. You're saying like the biggest thing where people don't realize and they go, oh, that's the fix. I kind of, it's like that Bible stories is go wash in the river. And it's like too simple of a solution. That's kind of how I go to this. Where you go, it's like, it's like when I say, all you got to do is do this, all you gotta do is text him. At this point, it's too easy. And contractors are thinking, I need some giant thing that's going to like some big revelation. And it's really just no contact. Your leads, faster follow up more consistently trigger the right things at the right times. We think of follow up as like this afterthought when we've all heard it a thousand times. The fortune is in the follow up. And people aren't focused on the thing that's going to bring them the fortune. They're focused on marketing. Marketing, marketing. More leads, more leads, more leads, more leads. And they're not fixing the one thing that can increase their profit hugely by just simply going, oh, you know what if the fortune relays in the follow up, let's focus some effort there. Let's actually take that seriously. Let's learn what words work, what words don't work. I'll give you an example. When I was in the gas stations, right? I'm there at the gas station and the cars would pull up and they would get out to pump their gas. And it's weird to have somebody approach you at that point, right? It's like, it's like, you think it's like this a homeless guy, you know, going to ask for money kind of thing. And I would go up to them and I would say, hi, thanks for coming in. Can I wash your windshield today? And nine out of 10 would say no. Okay? Nine out of 10 customers would say no. And I would get one person to say yes. And then I could wash their windshield. So if I saw 100 cars that day, I had 10 opportunities when I simply shifted the words from can I wash your windshield today? To as a courtesy, we're washing everybody's windshield. Today.

[Tommy Mello]

Yep.

[Ryan Finn]

I didn't ask anymore. I would just say we're washing everybody's windshield. I went from one person saying yes to nine people saying yes. So if I saw 100 cars now, 90 opportunities.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, 80. 80 more.

[Ryan Finn]

Right.

[Tommy Mello]

80% increase.

[Ryan Finn]

That switch completely changed my business. And so when people are sending out text messages in their follow up, they may be sending out the first version and not realizing they're losing 90% of their opportunity because they didn't. Like you said earlier, ab test and go, oh, you know what? This combination of words is better than this combination of words. They're in their head going, I followed up, I did the thing right. And that's not enough. They're not focused on the one thing that could be driving customers away or driving hordes into their business.

[Tommy Mello]

And you know what, I've read enough books. I think my favorite is Robert Chattidi and influence in using those. But Chris Voss would say something along the lines of, hey, Ryan, have you given up on finding a new garage door yet? And just bam, shut up. That alone have you given up on.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah. Challenges them.

[Tommy Mello]

But what's nice is I could take Robert Ciardini, I could take Simon Sinek, you take, I could take, you know, Brian Tracy, I could take all the bests. And through Chirp, and it's the only tool because I was like, Ryan, the only thing I need just let me a B test, let me run. And because we have so many jobs, I could actually run a real sample size. That's the big problem too with a small contractor. If you're not going to find out a lot of data on 5, you got to have a real, like, if you learn anything about stats, statistics, you got to have a real sample size. So you could run 500 to one client, 500 is another. And that could be what you just said, an 80% increase. And the what, what really sold me is when you said, hey, I turn on a campaign for Aaron Gaynor and I think it was like $280,000 his first week.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And I called him and I'm like, dude, I don't think you got every KPI dialed in your business. Because if you're missing that many calls and not booking that many calls, but it was real.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And Aaron Gaynor is one of the best operators I know.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And the fact is, if he can make that kind of money through just some simple automations, the biggest problem too is, I will say Chirp was a little bit complicated for the average user. And I think you Guys have fixed that.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah. So let's talk about that data for a second. And that's a hard part because a lot of people, they like, they say, well, Tommy has all this data that he can draw from, right? He has all the, he can test an A B, test quickly and make changes. I'm not that big. I can't get that information. So. And you go, how? This, this, this. When I say this to people, it tends to give them a lot of anxiety because I say, I say things like, you might be saying one word that's driving everybody away from your business and you can't know what that word is because they're not, they're not calling you, saying, hey, you said this, and that's why I'm not doing business with you. They just disappear. And you don't actually know why that revenue is leaking from your business. It's really hard to find. So what's really cool is if you are a small contractor, we've spent the last seven years doing this, right? We've been sending text messages every day. Hundreds of millions of text messages have gone through the CHIRP system, many of them being yours, many of them being a lot of the biggest contractors in the country sending these text messages, right? And all these text messages were storing up in my database, in the CHIRP database. And I had no idea how I was going to get that, extract that information because there's hundreds of millions of text messages. What am I going to do? Hire a bunch of people to sit there and read them and go find the, find the words that work and find the words that don't, right?

[Tommy Mello]

AI changed the game.

[Ryan Finn]

AI changed the game. So now I have hundreds of millions of text messages and all I have to do is I'm deploying AI and it's reading the text messages and it's finding patterns within those text messages. It's finding the words that work and the words that are killing your business. It's finding the timing of when you should be sending text messages out and when you shouldn't. We just had like a revelation come through. Who would have thought AI came back and said, did you know that when you send an estimate rehash message between 7 and 9am on Monday morning, that gets the highest conversion rate, that gets the highest response rate? Like we would have never known that little piece of information had we not plugged that into the data?

[Tommy Mello]

And so there's days of the week as well.

[Ryan Finn]

That's one of a thousand examples I can give you, right? It's saying it's saying all kinds. We're even finding that certain cadences in the south are better than in the North. And in the east coast and west coast, there's different regional cadences that work better. And AI is finding these little tricks and going, oh, this is the better cadence. And so now if you're a small contractor, you don't have to be going, well, how am I going to get this data? You can now draw from that AI that we're training to say, do it like Tommy does it. You know, do it like the best guys in the industry do it. And you're able to use that data to. To then train our AI to follow up with your leads without you having to go, okay, how am I going to find out what word is killing my business? Right? So you can rely heavily on what's already been done over the last seven years and allow AI to train what you're doing to. To better follow up more, to become more surgical in your follow up.

[Tommy Mello]

You know, it's interesting because I used to. If you're a small contractor, you got to play this game of called spray and pray, right? You don't really know who your target demographic is. You just don't know. And. And there's this world that we're living in is getting so much fun, but so scary for most, right? I'm so enthusiastic because I feel like I'm close with you. You come over to the house. You know, I got people coming in all the time. Aaron Gaynor's at the house, and he's trying new things all the time. And we're a B testing things. And the one quality, if I have anything, is I talk to a lot of people. I mean, I'm a curious guy, and I just think these tools, they're gonna make or break. And a lot of people are reluctant because one thing you told me yesterday that I think is so true is, how about another demo?

[Ryan Finn]

I get.

[Tommy Mello]

Do you know how many people call me and they say, I solve world hunger, Tommy, I need you for a demo. And I look at it, and it's the most primitive thing I've ever seen. It's like, I'm following up on Facebook for you. I'm like, dude, I've had this with Chirp for years. But. But you know, what do you tell a contractor out there that's like, dude, it's like, man, I'm supposed to get on service tight, and then I'm supposed to get on this, and now I need a finance company, and I need this and this RILLA thing or Ciro or whatever.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

Or Field Spark Plug.

[Ryan Finn]

So, yeah, so we're getting, so we're getting. That's what say we got demo fatigue. Right? Like, people are just like, okay, I, I've heard AI. Everybody's saying AI. Like my grandparents are talking about AI. Like, everybody's heard it a thousand times. Right. Like, how do, how do we, how do we use this thing? And part of the problem we had when I built this system seven years ago was I didn't know how. I had a complex idea, a complex solution, and I wanted to give that to contractors, I wanted to give that to business owners, but I wasn't able to build it in a way that was just really easy to use. That's the hard part in software is taking a very complex thing and making it easy so, so chirp you'd get it. And it's like, it's very powerful. It's made a lot of contractors hundreds of millions of dollars. But there's a big learning curve and there's a lot of things you have to do. So I've taken the last year to take that data as well and say, what makes this hard to use and how can I make it easier to use? I've used AI to guide me through the process of making it easier to use, for one. But we're also shifting into more of a. As tools become more and more irrelevant, as software becomes easier to develop because of AI, we're getting to this point where contractors are saying, I know I need AI, but I need somebody that I can trust that can just take that part off my plate. Like a contractor doesn't want to be thinking, is my AI running? Is all this stuff, Is all the follow up happening? Is all this stuff going on? He doesn't want to have to learn it, he doesn't have to think about it. And, and so what we're implementing is more of a relationship based kind of partnership where you can come in and we say, these are the strategies that we know work. This is the playbook. These are the three areas in your business where revenue is leaking. And we are going to deploy AI and follow up in those areas based on all of the data we have. We're going to tweak it to your business, but you're going to have a coach. This shows you exactly where the revenue leak is happening. That coach is incentivized to make sure that he's helping you plug those leaks in your business. And so instead of going, okay, I need this tool I need this tool. I need this tool. You have an expert who can say, okay, cool, this is, let's do an analysis on your business. Let's find the leaks and then let's patch those holes and then let's move to the next part of the strategy. And, and, and you'll march through these strategies until you've plugged these leaks and then we go into the, the a B testing. Right? Because you can always be better. Until we're a hundred percent close rate, we can always be better, right?

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah.

[Ryan Finn]

And so we look at each step and we go, okay, cool. Now we've gone through, we've deployed all these strategies, let's go back and start a B testing and let's look at them and go, could we do better? And now with the data, as a B testing starts to kick in and you go, okay, cool, I've got a campaign running for speed to lead or I've got a campaign running for estimate rehash and it's converting at X percent. Could we do better? Let's test that against something else and see if it drops. That's not right. If it goes up. Cool. Now we're in another position to be able to say, let's do it again. And we just keep chipping away.

[Tommy Mello]

Let me ask you a question that I, We've never talked about this. Let's face it, I work with a lot of small contractors and I'll be honest, there are 10% of them that you want to work with that are the up and comers. But a lot of them have given up on themselves. No software is going to save their life.

[Ryan Finn]

Right.

[Tommy Mello]

They're not listening to this podcast right now. They, they already know it all. They're running, they're running chaos.

[Ryan Finn]

Right.

[Tommy Mello]

But still they hear about you. Some of the biggest companies I know are not taking on those clients anymore. They're going after the behemoths and they're charging them way more money, but they're getting way better results. They're putting resources, they're doing the ab testing for them. They've got the content writers, the creative writers. Now you were a small, I was a small guy. I was a one man truck. You were out there fixing windshields.

[Ryan Finn]

Yep.

[Tommy Mello]

Is it because you care about the small guy or is it because. Was there a reason you wouldn't pivot to go, look, I'm going to go to the behemoth, the pe, the massive franchises and put my time and energy. Where do you think Chirp fits? Because it can fit every, every company it could fit even outside of home service.

[Ryan Finn]

Well, the, the cool thing about AI and software now is that there's not as much of a moat. So what I mean by that is a lot of people were investing a ton of money to make those big guys happy, right? They, they, they go, that's, that's where I'm going to put all my effort. Well, waterfalls down typically, and that's where I put all my effort because those are the guys that can afford to pay for software. And so all the resources were being poured there and it's very expensive, it was much more expensive to develop software and to do these things. And so you had to focus on those big guys because they could pay the big ticket. But now we're looking at it going, wow, these tools that were once only available to guys like you and, and, and these bigger companies are becoming more and more accessible and we're able to move much quicker because of AI. We'll be able to develop these things much quicker and we're able to provide tools that were once inaccessible to everybody. And so now these smaller companies, the ones that are going, I want to, I want to take advantage, I want to be like the tommies of the world, I want to be bigger, I want to be better. They can now take advantage of tools that they couldn't do, they couldn't do before. And so we're able to move much, much quicker and we're able to provide solutions for those guys at a, at a, at a rate that makes sense to them that, that they can actually get an ROI in their business. Because I can't go to a 2 or 3 million dollar shop and be like, hey, you know, it's going to be ten grand a month to do this kind of thing. You know, it's going to be too much, too fast. But if we can say, hey, look, we're going to start you off on a strategy, we're going to prove an roi and then we're going to move to the next strategy before we even talk about spending more money, right? We're going to prove that this is actually working with Speed to lead. We're going to prove that this is working on your follow up and that you're getting a good roi. And then we're going to talk about estimate rehash, we're going to talk about customer loyalty. And now you can see through this, you can go, cool, of course I'm going to, of course I'm going to do this. If I just, if I just implemented Speed to Lead and it made me an additional $100,000. Why would I not implement the next strategy and go to the next thing? Right? So it makes sense now to take it from this approach of outcomes versus software. We're not selling software, we're selling outcomes. You come to us and we're going to say, we are going to show you. We're going to, we're going to help you increase your lead conversion. We're going to help you increase your estimate. Follow your, your, your estimate rehash and your estimate closes. We're going to help you increase your reviews and your repeat customers, your loyalty. And the outcome is what you're buying. You're not buying. You don't care how. I mean, you do, obviously you care about your business, but it's not as important as the how. It's the what are you getting and the outcome of it.

[Tommy Mello]

There's obviously some competition. A lot of the things are blending into each other, service times, working on stuff. And there's a lot of companies. Why, why you? Why chirp?

[Ryan Finn]

So we are. We've been doing this longer than anybody. I've been doing text message automation since 2014. So we're going on 11 years, hundreds of millions of text messages. So the tool itself is becoming more and more irrelevant. Like you said, people are developing against us. People are developing different things. What they don't bring to the table is the fact that I've focused on this one thing for over a decade and I have learned what works and what doesn't work. And I have the data, I have the hundreds of millions of text messages that nobody else has that I've got. I have the biggest companies using it and sending out the messages. And so you can come to me and go, cool, if I went to you say, hey, here's a text message tool. You go, well, there's 100,000 other text messages, tools. Why you? I go, well, the experience of my team that I bring and the, and the coaching and the strategies that we put together, that's the difference. That's the key difference.

[Tommy Mello]

And the community that you're working on,

[Ryan Finn]

the community we're working on, like, it's all inner circle stuff, right? It's like, you come to me, we have a direct connection. You go, what's Tommy doing? I can go, cool. I call Tommy right now, we'll figure it out, right?

[Tommy Mello]

I don't have a whole lot of secrets. Look, it's. You know what I will say that's a little controversial is I hope leads get really expensive Right. Hope it gets really hard to hire people. I hope they pass a lot more regulation. Not even getting into business. The harder it gets, the better we're going to do.

[Ryan Finn]

Right.

[Tommy Mello]

Because I don't fear that I got guys competing with me at a 9% margin. Yeah. I got 9% to blow and I could still be at 20%.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And it's like, because I've got economies of scale and that's why I do believe AI is going to make the big into giants.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And there's going to be a lot of people falling.

[Ryan Finn]

That's why I say it's like people are like scared. They're like, oh, AI is coming for my job. And you go, no, AI is not coming for your job. But somebody who loves AI and is leaning into AI and taking advantage of all of the things that we have is coming for your job. I'll give you an example. My dad, he's been in construction my whole life. He built home. I come from a trades background. He built custom homes in our town, growing up in Lake Arrowhead. Amazing builder. Builds multi million dollar homes. Built a temple for our church in Rome, Italy. He was there for a long time. Really, really high end, really cool St. He recently came to me, last year he came to me, said, he said, Ryan, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm a little, I'm a little burned out. I don't, I'm pushing 70. I don't want to build houses. I don't want to build houses. Even though he absolutely loves it, it's just like, it's like, it's a lot of, he's ready and well, I said, well, you know, what are you gonna do like in a Chirp? Because he was like, ultimately was asking for, you know, how he could work at chirp. And I said, I, I went to, I went to my director of operations, Jared. Super good dude. You know Jared, he's had a ton of experience in software. He goes, you know, construction managers. At our last, at the last software company I was at, they always made the best project managers when they would make that switch. So I went to my dad, I said, dad, sit down with, with AI. Sit down with chat. GPT. Tell it who you are. Tell it your whole story. Say I am a construction worker. I've been doing this, you know, tell the whole thing and then say, I want to bridge the gap between construction management and software project management. And he sat there for a month and went back and forth and learned the ins and outs of software development, management Project management. And we hired him on, and I can tell you confidently that he has revolutionized the way that we deploy, the how fast we move. And to me, if somebody at that age can use AI to reinvent themselves, to shift that quickly in a place where guys like that are going irrelevant, right? That don't, that don't, that aren't taking this seriously. For me to see that has been so inspiring to me and to go, holy cow, what can somebody do if they go, I'm going to lean into this a hundred percent and take advantage of what's there because you can learn whatever you want. You can sit there and go, I want to learn how to do this thing. Talk to me, talk me through that. And if you know how to do the right inputs, the right prompts, you can learn whatever you want.

[Tommy Mello]

You know, I'm going to switch, pivot, pivot here. A lot of speculation is AI is going to commoditize a lot of things.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And that's something you're talking about. That's why you're building a community and you're kind of doing it done for you. What are your thoughts?

[Ryan Finn]

Well, I really do think that we are getting closer and closer to software becoming an irrel, the tool itself becoming irrelevant, where you just tell software to do what you want. You tell AI to do what you want, it's going to do it. Right. But if you don't know what to tell it, if you don't know what to do, that's the difference. And I lean heavily into branding, personal branding, community. Like you said we talked to. You hear any of the guys? Russell Brunson, Alex Hermos, Dan Martel. Again, they're talking about personal brand, right?

[Tommy Mello]

Everybody's talking about personal brand.

[Ryan Finn]

And I go back, I go back to my early stand up comedy days. This is like the biggest lesson I've ever learned. I'm sitting there one night in Ontario, California at the Improv, the Ontario Mills. And Paulie Shore is performing that night. So there's a long time Bali Shore live. And I'm sitting there talking to Pauly Shore. We talked for about an hour and I said, hey, give me, I'm a young, I'm a young comedian. Teach me some stuff. You know, I don't do it anymore, but it was a fun time. But I said, teach me some stuff. And he goes, he goes, well, he says, the only reason people laugh at some of my jokes is because they love me. And they only love me because I've created a brand for myself. And he Said your joke. If you went up and told an airplane food joke right now, they wouldn't laugh. But if I did the same exact joke, they're going to laugh because they love me. And the only thing you have that's unique in this world is your own personal story. And we're getting to a point where business. The only thing we have completely. It's like way worse now.

[Tommy Mello]

Right.

[Ryan Finn]

The only thing we have is our own personal story. And so he said, you've got to get the audience to love your personal story before they're going to love you. So if you're an H Vac company, you're a plumber or you're anything, you're. You're becoming a commodity. Right. How many times, how many places can I click and just find another H Vac guy? You have to, you have to sell your story first and have them love you and then they'll buy whatever you want from you.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, I, I'm going to launch a new campaign with you of just. There's two campaigns and air. You talked about Aaron Gaynor yesterday. One is just a quick message, a one minute video, a little bit of the company story, a little flavor and just, I'm really, really honored that you chose us to even come to your home. Just a thank you for choosing our company. That comes out from me. And I'm gonna have to change my shirt a couple times because we got Don's a grocer doctor. And then that happy. Of just after the job is done. Yes, of just that. Not leave me a review because there's other things we'll do with that. But just a pure, honest thank you.

[Ryan Finn]

Yes.

[Tommy Mello]

And with integrity and just a little bit of humility. And if you do that correctly, I don't think people understand what that does.

[Ryan Finn]

That's the base. So there's two parts to this. There's two major parts and there's trust. The trust is what we're really trying to gain here. And that's the, that's the, the difficult part of all the, in this sea of, of commodities and all this thing, trust is the hard part. So there's two parts of two ways that we're solving this. You know, they always say like it's like when you're small, it's easy to have a relationship with your customers, but there's no way you're going to sit on the phone and call everyone. Your customers say, thanks for booking with us. Hey, it's Tommy. Thanks for booking with us. Hey, hey, it's Tommy. Thanks for booking us.

[Tommy Mello]

Right.

[Ryan Finn]

There's a point in your business where you can't be that guy. You can't be, oh, that's my H Vac guy. That's my garage door guy. You can't be that guy for everybody because you're too big. And so there's this coldness that comes from scaling where you lose that authenticity. And so the way that we combat that and I call. You know, it's like scaling authenticity is a very difficult thing. And. And the way that we do that is through technology, you can take your authenticity and say it to a video, to a camera once, and now you have that asset that you can use over and over and over again. When I was selling the windshield repair course, I recorded a video to sell the course, and then I used that over and over and over again, and it sold me $2 million worth of that course. So. But it was 45 minutes of my time to make that video. So when you talk about that and we send that video out, that gives us an opportunity to tell our story, to differentiate, to connect with the customer on an authentic. In an authentic way, but automated. And we do it. And what's really cool is we do it through. We're the first in home services to offer it through blue messaging, which gives this extra layer of trust, the imessage. This is a funny thing, but blue Messages have a 50 to 60% higher response rate than green messages. And so we send. You can send out a video which allows you that short little moment that you have their attention to tell a part of your story and have them connect with you.

[Tommy Mello]

You know what's really cool is by triggering different things in service titan, if they bought a door versus bought an opener versus bought a max life, I could have different thank you videos.

[Ryan Finn]

Yes.

[Tommy Mello]

And that's where the ab testing and I like to take things that people are like, this is cool. It's working. And I've heard Russell Brunson say this. If I could break even with a million dollars of ad spend, Yep. I'm gonna make a lot of money.

[Ryan Finn]

Yep.

[Tommy Mello]

Because then I just continue to turn the dials. And he's a freak. Like, the deal is. And I'll say this, I've met the guy a bunch of times. I flew out and seen him. He was in this room.

[Ryan Finn]

Super good dude.

[Tommy Mello]

He's. He's like, I'm a geek.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

I don't like to run the company. I'm not a great CEO. He goes, I like to work on campaigns. I like to work on the funnels. And he goes, so I nerd out for months just working on funnels.

[Ryan Finn]

Yes.

[Tommy Mello]

And it's pretty cool. And I think if you could really, really get passionate about what Chirp does and get really intentional, yeah, you can make a lot more money with the tool. And I, I just think it's not one of those things that set it and forget it. And if people were more intentional and really. And they want to know what I'm doing, I'm like, I don't know your business. I know my max lives. We're the only ones that have them. We trademarked it. I know what we sell. So let me build my campaigns. Let me go whiteboard. And I'm a whiteboarding freak. And I'm going to try a lot of stuff, and guess what? I'm going to try some dumb stuff to see if it works well.

[Ryan Finn]

And what we're really excited about, and this is, this is new for 2026, but we've spent the last year rebuilding the entire platform. And so, and we've built this around the idea of individual AI agents, what's called, like, employees for your business. So before, when we built Chirp, like I said, it's very complex, very difficult to understand in the concept and all this stuff. It works. It did its thing, but it's hard to go in and go, okay, I want to make a change here. I want to try this against this or this against that and that kind of thing. Now we've built it to where you can log in and you have individual agents that are very clear on their task, like an Angie lead converter, a thumbtack lead converter, an estimate converter, and then you can get down to the different types of business, the different types of offers, the garage door, the. The, you know what you were mentioned earlier, all the different things or, or, you know, different job types, different businesses, all these different things. And you can have individual agents or employees for each of these tasks. And now you can see them very clearly and go, okay, my Angie lead converter is converting at X percent. Let's go into him and see what's going on. And you can look at the data and go, okay, cool. I can test him against another thing here. And let's see if we can increase that percentage a little bit. If I. If I'm closing at 50%, let's try to get to 55% this month. And now you can actually see, because what you. If you can't see, you can't track. You can't improve, right and so now I can see each individual agent and I can go, cool. What am I going to focus on right now? I'm going to go in on my Angie lead agent and I'm going to say, let's look at what's happening and, and let's, let's try another a B test and let's see how we can improve better. And now you can see each agent and it's like going to an individual employee and be like, hey, how can we make your job better? How can we help you do better? Right? And you can manage these agents and look at each one and go, cool. I can see what's going on. I have, I have clarity into my follow up and I can improve. And you can just like Russell Brunson says, you can tweak and find how you can make it better. And that's the key. That's like everything, right? In business. It's like, like you said, if I can spend a million and make a million, now I know I've got something because now I can just go, okay, now if I just increase by 10% now I made a hundred thousand bucks. If I increase another 5%, I made another 50,000. And it's, it's a game. It becomes a game at that point.

[Tommy Mello]

I love the game. I. Yeah, you do. I was at a buddy's house last week and he's like, I want to have you over. You did my garage doors. I do all this stuff. And he had all of these guys there, his electrician, his plumber, and this guy's, I save you money on electric. Electrical was his shirt. And I'm looking at all these guys and they're all tiny. They're all going to the BNI meetings. And I had one epiphany. Referrals are the best lead source, but you're never going to scale. I met this guy a decade ago and he had this thing on behind his desk on the wall. He, who could pay more per lead, will always win.

[Ryan Finn]

Yep.

[Tommy Mello]

And you never get scale without spending the money. And so many people on these stupid Facebook groups, including mine, say referrals are the best lead source. And I'm like, yeah, you're doing $800,000 a year. We're going to do 450,000, 450 million this year. And I'm not bragging because I was them. Yeah, I go to the BNI meeting still. I went to one in Atlanta. So I'm not, I'm not trying to discount people, but you're never going to Scale, you got to have a high booking rate, you got to have a follow up sequence, you got to have great sales training, you got to have the best recruiting. And I just feel bad because these people only have a hobby.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah, of course referrals are going to be the highest converting. Like they're great, but they're also the

[Tommy Mello]

clients that say, hey, I'm buddies of Ryan's, can you hook me up?

[Ryan Finn]

Can you hook me up? Can you give me a deal? Right. And, and it's like, and, and there's just. You can't scale that. It's by definition unscalable and so. Great. Get as many referrals as you can. For sure. Of course, absolutely. But if you want to scale, if you want to be a hundred million dollar company, you have to, you have to just, you have to get to the point where you can generate on demand without relying on anybody else. And the only way to do that is through paid advertising. You know, people are people. It drives me crazy because people don't understand the power of social media. There's hundreds of millions of people sitting on social media looking at their phones all day, every day. And you can be in front of them in a few seconds. You can go and set up a Facebook lead ad that will generate a lead in minutes. I can, I could, I could sit down right now, set up an ad and in 24 hours I'd have leads flowing in, multiple leads. And people go, well, those leads suck. They're low quality. And I go, yeah, that's the game, that's the point. Because that's those, that's the opportunity. I've got to learn how to take them from. Who are you to shut up and take my money? I've got to take them through that top of funnel to the bottom of funnel. It's the same concept as the gas station. All the traffic was there. How did I take them from? I don't know who you are. Why are you approaching me to. Yeah, I want you to fix my windshield. And if you play that game, the sky's the limit. And if you learn the metrics and you learn what it takes to convert a Facebook lead versus a Google lead, the best. It's like those people are searching. Those are great. But there's small amount.

[Tommy Mello]

But they're intent based.

[Ryan Finn]

They're intent based. Now you have an ocean of leads there.

[Tommy Mello]

I will say I'm extremely spoiled. And the best advice I could give for this is create a different team for top of funnel leads because you get somebody that's used to converting at 92%.

[Ryan Finn]

Right.

[Tommy Mello]

And then you go to a social media lead without the intent, you. You. You gotta have almost like a door knocker mentality of a little bit more rejection, a little bit more fight. Yep. And that's okay. But you got to train that dog to hunt.

[Ryan Finn]

Yep.

[Tommy Mello]

And you got to train them how to close or her. And the point being, is my business, the way I need to go with this business is training for lead sources. I could have lead ags. I could have social media. I could have the. The best leads. Believe it or not, there's a guy named Phil that Tom Howard has. You know what this guy does? A year when he was in the field, he did north of 20 million himself. You know what he ran? Only he ran yearly maintenance calls.

[Ryan Finn]

The low.

[Tommy Mello]

It didn't. Ran a high demand. But these clients already used you. They already bought from you.

[Ryan Finn]

Right.

[Tommy Mello]

And that's. That's where he made all the money. And what's interesting is I've got a couple texts I just want to try out and say, hey, go run the maintenance and try this. But, you know, here's the deal. That's what's nice is most companies aren't even thinking about this. Most of them are the. They walk into this firefight when Al Levy found me in 2017, that I was that guy, and he goes, tommy, you're the best firefighter I've ever met. You've got it all. You could do everything. You're calling customers. You're making it right. You're stopping a guy from quitting. You know, you're doing this. You're checking out the driving score. You're out in the warehouse. And he goes, but that's not scalable.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And then he. He's the only man on the planet probably that could go, shut the hell up. Listen to what I say. Stop reading books. Learn the fundamentals. Build the manuals. Build the SOPs. Let's work on your org chart. And you, shut up and stop the adhd. Put your cell phone away. And he threatened to fire me twice. But I needed that. I needed the tough love.

[Ryan Finn]

Love Alivy.

[Tommy Mello]

One thing I want to talk about before we finish is you guys are hustlers. If I look at Chirp, I would say it's a group of guys with a lot of hustle. And they. They willed it into. They manifested into creation. And then all of a sudden, you woke up one day and said, it's who, not how. I got to get the right people on the bus. And I will say that I think you've got some ninjas.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

I'm not going to discount you, Justin Taylor and Kevin and the guys that founded the company, because you guys got it. But there's a lot of times my number one thing, and I just did a Facebook post is it's not going to be me. It's going to be bringing on talent. If you look at Elon Musk, if you look at the greatest minds in the world that are doing the biggest things, it's getting the right people on the bus to take you to the next level. What happened? What was that mind shift that you said? I better start making some changes. I love my team, but now I got to make some moves.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah. I mean, it did come from reading the book who Know How. It was like the first. The first step. And that's when Justin. When we. We did hire Justin, and that story's awesome. I. I was gonna. I was gonna call 100 people. My goal was I was gonna sit down, I needed a sales guy. I was gonna sit down and find. I was gonna go through LinkedIn, I was gonna call 100 people, I was gonna find the guy, and I. I pull up LinkedIn. I searched, and the first guy that pops up on the. On the search was Justin Judd. I pick up the phone, I call him. I didn't call anybody else. I got that. That's like a miracle. But. But the point is, is once you realize, once you see the power of bringing on high performers. I read this recently, and it was pretty interesting. It said, do you want more power? Do you want to gain more power, give more power away? It's the same principle thing. You want more money, give more money away. You want to work out, you want to be stronger, work out more. Like, give more away, Right? You want more power, give more power away. And I saw that as the key to attracting the right people. If I bring on an expert and I say, hey, I want you to do things like this, there's no point in bringing on the expert because I'm putting them in a box and saying, hey, do it the way that I've always done it. I'm finding people and going, hey, I trust that you are the expert for this thing. We'll consult. But ultimately, I'm going to leave the power in your hands to say, hey, this is how I think we should do this thing. And that's how you scale your team and find the killers, the absolute ninjas. I have. If you guys have met my guy Garrett, he's from Red Bull. Yep. Red Bull, Taiwan. He is the smartest marketing mind I've ever met. And people are going, how in the world did you get him on your team? Fortunately, he was one of my best friends growing up. But. But I could have never attract. You know, even that wasn't. That's not going to be enough to get him over. He had to see that he could. He could take his superpower and have freedom to do what he wanted to do within this business. And. And I. I basically said, unleash, do. Do what you want to do. He's used to being in corporate meetings, Red Bull saying, no, no, no, no, no. When he came to us, it was, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And that's. That's the key to finding the people that are going to kill that are the absolute assassins.

[Tommy Mello]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. But I want to put a. I've released the reins, and I'll never give so much freedom again because I've worked for 20 years to build the relationships on the marketing team that I've got, the vendors that I have, and I gave the reins away. We fired a lot of the people that I worked with. They built their own team. They became Rainbows and Sunshine. They turned the lights off in the marketing department. Right. The lights were off when I went in there. They didn't like to work in light.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

I didn't even know they were there.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And Valentine's Day took two weeks to set up. There was hearts everywhere in that room. And I'm a competitive sob. I'm a sports guy. I like to win. And it was more about foo foo creative than it was about results and getting results. And I will say that my failures are what give me a lot of power.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

So all I say is you got to have a close relationship with certain things. I wouldn't say the creative guy like that.

[Ryan Finn]

I'd respond to that. I would definitely say this. It's not just do whatever you want whenever you want. You've got to be the CEO. You've got to have the guardrails in place. You've got to have operators.

[Tommy Mello]

You got to check things like, hey, go ahead. We'll put. We'll put, like, what's nice about our size companies. We'll put $50,000 towards that if it works great. Maybe I'll even give you a bonus if it doesn't work. No harm, no foul. But it's all on you to make this work. And I can do that now. A lot of people can't say I could get 50,000, but, hey, you could do 2,000 to test it out on Facebook and see how we do. Yep. And now I will say Cortek has taught me, try it. Don't put it in every market, because the old time, it would be like, we're launching this in 37 markets tomorrow.

[Ryan Finn]

Yep.

[Tommy Mello]

And they're like, make it work in one market, work through the bugs, then work. Make it work in three, then 10,

[Ryan Finn]

and then launch it everywhere 100%. And that's where, you know, yeah, of course. It's not, hey, just. Just do whatever you want, whenever you want, spend all my money. You know, it's. It's allowing them to feel when they show up, to go, dude, I get it. I get to feel like my creative superpower. I'm empowered. I get to make decisions that. That made me feel good. I go home going, oh, cool. I like working here. I feel. I feel like I can thrive here. And that's been the ultimate thing. Like, you know, we have Jared, who's our chief operating officer. He's also our legal head of, you know, anything legal is.

[Tommy Mello]

And he's. He's willing to get his hands dirty,

[Ryan Finn]

and that's what I like about super dirty. But he loves doing it, and he

[Tommy Mello]

sees potential in you and the team. And, you know, I was talking to Boris yesterday, and he goes, I get these people at a third of the price to come to the company because they believe in the dream so much, 100%.

[Ryan Finn]

These guys come in and they go, I don't know what it is, but when I sit down and I. And I sit with you, when we get up after the meeting, I want to run through a wall for you. And that's leadership. Right. Where you can go, hey, listen, I'm so passionate about what I do, the vision here, where we're going. And they. And they know deep down that it's like, if I. If I'm. If I'm on this train with you, I'm going to be rewarded. Like, I trust you. And so that high level of trust, that feeling of. I feel like the person I'm working for cares about me and loves what they're doing and is passionate and convicted, they'll run through walls for you.

[Tommy Mello]

I want to talk about one last thing that's interesting to me. You know, Cortech was out recently. I've had a lot of people tell me in the last year that you're the least. That I am the least confrontational person they've ever met. I Don't like disagreement. I watched my mom and dad. I think it was the way I was raised. And I may. I kind of did this outburst the other night, and I said, I don't want to be like you. I don't want to be confrontational. I am confrontational to the select few. I have to be. But when I hired Adam in 2014, I said, you're going to be the bad cop up. And I know deep down inside you're. It's very similar. You don't like to fire people. You like to give them a chance. You like to see the best in people. Now, listen, I have no problem getting rid of a team member if they're not good for the team, because I got to work on the. The whole. But deep down inside, maybe I would like to be a little bit more confrontational. But what I realized is certain people screw it up for me that have this really, really, really low emotional intelligence, maybe, or just they take things too personal. So I'm reading all this book on feedback. One of the books is Firm Feedback in a Fragile World. Because so many people are so fragile. And this question got asked a couple months ago, would you rather be loved or respected if you could only choose one? And I, I immediately, in my mindset, I want to be loved, but I've only respected the biggest mentors in my life. Like Alivier just brought up. I respected him first, and he was tough love.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And every person that changed my life. But you've learned to be a little more direct. You've learned to be a little bit more confrontational. And there is a good time to do this. But I don't want to make my weaknesses, my superpowers. I just want to work. It's worked so far. I mean, I'm doing pretty well, and I'm having a lot of fun. So what are your thoughts for you personally when it comes to that?

[Ryan Finn]

What really made the shift for me was, yeah, I like, love is like, that's. That's ultimately what I'm trying to achieve. Like, I like my mantra is optimize for peace. Optimize. Like my life is. I'm trying to optimize for peace. And. And so, yeah, confrontation is not. I don't enjoy it. Nobody does, really. I mean, maybe some people. Some people definitely do. Yeah. I shouldn't say, but. But at the end of the day, it was the shift to learn that. That I'm doing more damage to that person's life overall. If somebody isn't a fit, it's more Damage to go. I don't want to fire the guy. I don't want to get rid of him. We're kicking the can down the road, and it's going to be worse for that person later. So that tough love is when you real. And you realize, you go, am I affecting him even more in a bad way by not doing this? And when you realize you change the lens, you change the frame, change the lens and you start to go, he's. He's better. If, if this isn't a good fit, he's better off. He's better off finding a fit somewhere else where he will fit in and be happy if he's coming to work every day. And there's that. That feeling, that vibe that's like, yeah, I can tell that I'm not a fit, but, like, I can't. I have bills to pay. And this, it's this mental state of just anxiety and, and. And it's like, this isn't good. It's just not good. And so it's that hard decision to go. You know what? Even though this on the surface today, it's going to suck and it's going to be hard in just a short amount of time, he's going to go, that was better for me.

[Tommy Mello]

I think the caveat to all this is you got to give triple good feedback. If you're not giving any feedback and it's only bad feedback and only firing, right? Like, you first, you need to know I love you and I care about you and I'm calling you up, not out, right? And if you're not willing to come up, then there's going to be a sacrifice, and that's going to mean we're not going to work together. My hard part is I can't do that with 1300 people. I could do that with 10. And quite honestly, if you talk to any of the people in my leadership team, they say he doesn't do good one on ones. You know, the first thing I know is all the bad things I'm doing and the things that I'm not going to be great at, and I can give all this effort and I can read all these books and I can become mediocre at best. I'm never going to be world renowned for feedback, right? I'm not. But I'm going to attempt to become better because I owe that to my team. But these little acts of kindness. I just bought Leanne. I walked into her office, she's got nothing in there. Same thing for Dustin. So me and Ashley Ashley did the heavy lifting. We found a great picture of their family and we framed it. And that was, didn't cost a lot of money, but it was just something to say, I see you, I think you should be able to look at your family every day in the office and just if I'm going to give you feedback, I'm going to show you three times the appreciation. And that's important to me especially with the people that are directly report to me. And then the other thing I learned actually from Cameron Herald and, and Luke was like, dude, this is Tommy in a nutshell is if it's not my direct report, I could only ask questions. I can't give direction. I can't tell them to go do something that's a chain and command violation. So I'm allowed to be a spectator. I'm allowed to have meetings, I'm allowed to do check ins. It's called skip meetings. But when I go talk to someone that's under you, I'm undermining you.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And then you say what's more important? What I was doing for Tommy or what is what I was doing for Luke? And so I, I've really had to learn to like stay in my spot because the founder is the biggest bottleneck.

[Ryan Finn]

It's so hard. Yeah. And that's the. They say is the hardest thing for an entrepreneur is to give up that, that control. Control. And that's actually, he's like moving from business owner to entrepreneur. That's the gap is giving up that control. And for me like it always comes down to. It's, it's funny how all the little things we learned as kids, all the stuff that, you know, if you're religious. I'm a very religious person. I love the Bible, I love Jesus and it's like the answers are all there. Like love is always the answer. But it's, it's, it's oftentimes harder to see the big picture because you'd say, well if I love this person, I wouldn't fire him because I want him to be. That's, that's short sighted. Right. If you love this person and if you truly are operating from a place of love, then you're going to, you're going to see the bigger picture and say I also love all my other employees and this is affecting them and I need.

[Tommy Mello]

Love is a big word.

[Ryan Finn]

It's a huge word.

[Tommy Mello]

And if you love somebody, let me ask you this. Your dad's a really, he's a really good guy. He's not on Drugs or alcoholic. But if he was. I won't use your kids. Let's just go to dad, okay? This is a tough one. If he needed money, but you knew it was going to go to a habit that might not be conducive to his health or his well being. And this is the hardest thing in the world. I mean, you hear people going through AA and the, the, the, the bridges they burned, right? But you know it's going to be better. But you're seeing them and they're, they might be even on the street, right? That's, I'm just going to real. This is like you love me, right?

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

What do you do?

[Ryan Finn]

It's that.

[Tommy Mello]

Because they got to want to help themselves. Because as much as you want to help and get them into a clinic and pay for and get them clean. You know what I mean? Love as you have, you can't control other people. Except for you.

[Ryan Finn]

Once you understand that that's not love and that's the problem. You should be working. It's understanding to a deep enough point in you that giving them the money is not love. It's not going to help. It's the bigger picture. It's the longer term. And you have, there's a point where you have to go until you're ready to accept the help. The help's not going to, it's not coming. It's not going to work. It's never going to work. I can't force, I can't take away somebody's agency, their God given free will to fix themselves. And you have to be okay with that because you're ultimately stealing from them, their agency, their ability to choose by trying to force them to be better. Right. When you try to force an employee who's not ready to be better, you can't, you're, you're doing them a disservice by taking away their ability to, to get through something. I had, I had a really close friend of mine deal with really deep mental health issues and he was just not ready to accept. And I had to step. I, I wanted to. Every time he would talk about something, I would try to force. When he, when he was kind of like going, he has really bad ocd, like going crazy, I would try to like force the answer and say, no, you're wrong. But his mind wasn't ready to accept that I had to step back and allow him the space to solve the problem on his own. And sometimes that's with what happens with employees. You say, I, we're gonna have to step back and you're gonna have to it, you know, reflect on your life. And if you choose to improve, great. If not, you're gonna have to continue until, you know, we'd say the rock bottom, whatever.

[Tommy Mello]

No, I was just gonna say rock bottom because everybody I know that has this miracle come up story say I. I had to hit rock bottom.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And I needed to know what really bad looked like. Yeah, I know what really bad. You know what's funny is I'm a driver. And as successful as this company's been, and I've been enough is never enough for a driver. But I know where I don't want. I know what I don't want to happen. I know where I've been. And I know when I gotta order soup, when I'm on a date. Now I'm engaged, but back in the day, if they got a filet. If she got a filet, I was eating soup, right? And I was like, before I'd go on that date, I was looking what I had in my bank account, right? And it's so funny when these haters go online, by the way, and it annoys me because they don't know where we've been. Right. To be able to judge. Yeah. You had a golden spoon. You don't know what like. And it's like. But then you've learned most of these people are undercover fans, right? And you got to tell your story.

[Ryan Finn]

And that's always projection. That's just unhappiness in their own life.

[Tommy Mello]

I'm like, why do. Why do people even comment, right? Like, you know, Andy Elliot's a buddy of mine. People love him and hate him, and they're like, oh, yeah, trend. King of trends. And I'm like, but. But who cares, right? You know, you can do trying to still look like shit, you know, whatever. I'm like, that's called jealousy and envy.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And the comparison is the worst thing. It's a thief of all joy.

[Ryan Finn]

Well. And I think the world's starting to recognize the comment section as being a place, a mirror for people where. Yeah. You know, and people are starting. I love the comeback when people say, are you okay, bro? Like, that's like. Like when they just respond to a car. Are you okay? Like, dude, you're.

[Tommy Mello]

I need to start doing that because it's still. People are like, why are you even commenting with me? These losers.

[Ryan Finn]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, don't engage there. Don't engage. But when somebody does that, are you okay? Like, hey, bro, like we get what you're doing. Like we don't. You're pissed off about your own life. It's not. You're. You're. Yeah. So.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, if somebody wants to learn more, what's the best way to do that?

[Ryan Finn]

Well, this is, this is what. Exciting. So, so we are shifting, like I said, we're shifting away from this culture of come do a demo and buy my software. Right. We want to actually dig in. We want you to see we do what's called a revenue optimization analysis. So you'll, you'll come to the website, you'll sign up for a free revenue optimization optimization analysis. Our, our trained AI is going to do some cool stuff with your website. It's going to figure out some stuff about your business. You're going to sit down with a member of my team. We're going to go through this. Revenue. Revenue opt. Roa. It's kind of hard to say and, but we're going to show you where the leaks are in your business. We're going to offer a prescription for those leaks, whether or not you go with us or not. Great. If you like it, we're going to hand you that revenue optimization analysis for free. You can take that, go do what you want with it. We will obviously offer some really great solutions. And if you decide to work with us, we would love to have you within our circle and say, hey, this is, you know, this is part, you're becoming part of the CHIRP community. Not just, hey, here's your software, good luck. But either way, the analysis is very valuable. You'll be able to walk away with that and go, cool, I can make some decisions. So what you'll do to do that, go to chirp.com C-H-I-I-R-P.com Sign up for the analysis. Takes just a few minutes and then we'll get you set up.

[Tommy Mello]

I love it. Close us out, brother. We talked about a lot of cool stuff. I love walking away from these. When I got a lot of notes, I got a lot of ideas, I got a lot of things to work on. The problem is I got too many things to work on and I. One of the things that I think is the most important thing is ruthlessly prioritizing. What can you delegate? What do you hire a 1099 for? How do you get things into motion? Because living in the idea of indecision and procrastination is how companies fail. So a lot of people listening right now. I know there's a lot of opportunities out There you're wondering, do I do the manuals? Do I get kick charge branding? Do I do this? Do I do this? But fix the leak first. I do think chirp probably is the number one thing that you should do because it's not expensive. I mean, it's not like you're paying for a CRM, like service type.

[Ryan Finn]

Well, yeah, and you get to see an instant roi. It's like low hanging fruit. We can immediately see.

[Tommy Mello]

I've never seen you not 10x yeah,

[Ryan Finn]

people coming in that. Oh, freak dude. Like immediately. There's holes in the business, so that's obvious. But to close it out, I would say like, like be excited about the future. Like, everybody's like, so, like, they've got this like anxiety around all this stuff. It's not like, look, we're human beings, we solve things, we fix problems, we always figure it out. Nothing ever just ends. It's not like AI is just gonna go, oh, cool, all the jobs are gone now everybody's hungry. Like, that doesn't, like, that's the end. That's what people think is gonna happen. It's like, it's like, be excited for it, engage with it, get into it and go. And those that do, it's like the people that go, oh, you're gonna be dumb because you won't be able to do math anymore because these new calculators coming out there, you know you're going to be dumb and, and it's going to take your. It's like, it's like that's the, that's what I hear when people say, oh, AI. You know, I wouldn't, I would. I don't trust it. It's like, that's the same to me. We've learned how to calculate words. It's the same. It's like this mega computer that can calculate words and that's a huge advancement and it's really cool if you, if you lean into it and you can, you can take advantage of it or you can sit back and watch this gap just grow. So be excited about it.

[Tommy Mello]

I love it, man. I always appreciate you coming on.

[Ryan Finn]

Thanks, Tom.

[Tommy Mello]

Thanks for being here.

[Ryan Finn]

Have a great day, man.

[Tommy Mello]

You too.

[Ryan Finn]

Thanks, everybody.

[Tommy Mello]

Hey, and if you're feeling like you want to leave me review, now's the best time. Don't procrastinate. Leave a review for the podcast. I don't have endorsements, I don't pay for advertising on this thing. If you leave me a review and share it with a buddy, I'd be honored. Thank you. Guys. 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 winner 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 A1 garage door service. 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.