We're going to spend $4.3 million this month in marketing. And here's what I've learned.
Tommy Mello. Tommy Mello. TOMMY MELLO. The founder of A1 Garage Door. You're doing this blue collar thing, but at this really big scale. And I love that combination. A1 Garage. We fix, we repair, we maintain, and we replace garage doors. A1 from day one. The original valuation was now the business is north of 80 million of you.
No, I've read hundreds of books on sales and even more on marketing.
So, ring ring, I pick up. What are you telling them? You never say the cost, you say the investment. You never say the most expensive, you say top of the line. You never say the cheapest, you say builder grade. These words matter. Tommy, giving us the sauce.
What other businesses have you seen in the services industry that you are shocked at how big they are?
Most of what I've done is repeatable. It's not like this crazy thing that only works in garage doors. Don't overcomplicate it, dude.
I've known you for 27 minutes and I love this guy.
Tommy, what do you suck at? Where's your weakness right now?
I was going to go broke. There was a stripper living in our Dallas warehouse with my manager.
We were doing so well and then Tommy went to jail.
There it is. There's the weakness.
Tommy, have you ever listened to MFM, My First Million, this podcast?
Yeah, we listen. I listen to a dozen.
I love the come-up stories and like I hate how every single guy is pushing entrepreneurship because it's cut out for 45% of the population. Like you won't be able to handle this. The rejection, the failure, the 5 years, the taking a loan against your house, the people that quit and cheat and lie, the canceled appointments, the long drives, the hard nights, the walking out of the movie theater to go run a job. Like I just I don't feel like everybody's cut out for it. And some people that invested in Bitcoin early like they don't know what it's like.
So who do you think is cut out for it? How do you know?
Well, there's this thing called Driven. It's a book. My buddy Gary wrote the book. And it's actually if you're a hunter, it's in your DNA. It's literally a different chromosome. And there's so much more. Usually it's ADD. Usually you're dyslexic, some people. But it just means you have a high tolerance for failure. You're okay working a lot. You don't ever mention the words work-life balance. You're off balance on purpose and there's seasons of life and you actually have a bigger why. And by the way, you can't quit. The goalpost always moves. There's no finish. There's no end zone. So if you're going to start from nothing, the chance of success is less than 10%.
So for the audience, you started this thing called A1 Garage, which at this point I think does north of 300 million in revenue. You took some chips off the table. You sold about half or a little bit less than half of the business recently for I think north of a billion dollar valuation. Is that right?
The original valuation was about 540 million. We were at 27 million of EBITDA. Now the business is north of 80 million of EBITDA. So now it's worth close to 1.7.
Wow. And how long ago did you start the company?
2007. So the first 10 years were practice.
And explain what does the company do so people understand who you are and what you do.
A1 garage doors. We fix, we repair, we maintain, and we replace garage doors. And we do this in now 23 states, 37 markets. We run on average 25,000 jobs a month.
And give us the origin story. We don't usually like the origin stories because you can get those elsewhere. But I gotta ask, I gotta know this is I mean the end point is so interesting. I got to know the beginning.
You know when I was a kid my mom was a real estate agent. My dad had a transmission shop. He didn't pay the IRS so that got taken. They got a divorce. So I learned to shovel snow, mow lawns in Michigan. I got a job when I was 12 washing dishes at $4.50 an hour. And I always had the entrepreneurial gene. I started a landscaping business when I moved to Arizona. And I was living at this house, $700. We paid rent for three guys. I paid 200. My other roommate paid 200. The guy with the master paid 300. And one of the roommates was manager at a garage door company. He goes, "Dude, I cannot find a good painter to save my life. If you guys know anything about painters, they're pretty unreliable." And so he's like, "Can you paint garage doors?" By the way, I'm busting tables, serving tables, and bartending, and I'm flipping Bowflexes. I'd buy them on Craigslist, sell them on the Arizona Republic. I've sold over 300 Bowflexes and then I did Total Gyms and I sold over a thousand cars. Buy them, fix them, clean them, sell them. And so I'm doing all these things and I mean I am hustling. I am like the epitome of hustler at this point.
And I was like, "Sure, how much you going to pay me?" He's like, "I can pay you $100 to paint per garage door, but you got to pay for the paint and the tape and the paper." So, I was like, I had a G20 Infiniti in '96. It had 120,000 miles on it, and it was cheap on gas. And by the way, 2006, 2005, this is when the real estate market was booming. And so, I hired a painter, this old man, and I paid him $300 per door to teach me. He taught me on three doors. I went to Home Depot, bought a Magnum 5 paint gun, and I was off to the races. And I got good. I could paint 10 doors a day. I went through the yellow book and called every garage door company. I'd say seven out of 10 I became their primary painter.
And does the garage door company mean like I install a new garage door or your garage door needs some type of service and I fix it?
So the garage door company does both. They fix them and they replace them. So every time they replaced one, if it's an HOA property or a house paint match, I was the guy. They'd grind out a little section. They give it to me. Usually the owner would meet up. I'd get 10 from one guy, three from this guy, and I go knock them out. And I'd literally use MapQuest to build my routes. I mean, this is back in the day before GPS.
You mentioned that you called all the garage companies and you became the primary for whatever, seven out of 10. So, what was the pitch? So, ring ring, I pick up. What are you telling them? And what worked there? Because it sounds like just being a reliable guy who's going to do what he says he's going to do was a differentiator here. What did you say on the phone?
Yeah. So, I mentioned the company that my roommate worked for. I said, "I've been painting garage doors for several months. I show up on time. I work the warranties if there's any," which is rare because I spend time with the clients. I'll pick up the samples myself. I'll pay for the paint. I'm only charging $100. That includes drive time. And all I ask is that I get paid when I finish the work. I clean up after myself. I'm very reliable. And most of these guys didn't have that service to offer. So I said, "It's just one more thing. You could charge 300. Give me a hundred out of it. You know, this is another way to make money. It's another way to go into HOAs." And they're like, "You sound hungry, kid. Yeah, let's meet up. I'll give you a couple. We'll see how you do." In Arizona, it was easier in the summer because it dries real quick. In the winter when it's kind of wet outside and it's cool, you got to go on real slow. It takes a little longer. And you got to tape the windows. If there's windows, it could be a pain in the butt. But I got really, really fast and efficient. And so I'm meeting up with these technicians and every technician because half the time I met up with the technicians to get the sample and they're like, "Dude, I just made three grand this week." And I'm like, "You made $3,000 as a technician?" And by, like I said, the real estate market was booming. People were just like, their real estate was going up so fast, they were just like, "Fix it." I went out with a guy, he charged $150 per remote. And I'm like, "Who would pay? Go to Home Depot, pick them up for 10 bucks at the time?" So, my other roommate got a job working for him as a technician and he approached me. His name's Gabe. And he goes, "We should start our own business." And I was like, "Well, dude, I'll form the LLC. I'll get the EIN number. I'll get us going. I know enough. I can handle the marketing, but you're going to have to teach me how to be a technician." He didn't know much because their training was crap. So, I went to all the manufacturers and got trained. I had the business with Gabe for three years. He also smoked about a pound of weed per month at the time. So that was like it was like he'd be eating and by the way he's still my best friend but he'd be like listen after I finish lunch I'll give you a call back and I'm like I watched him answer the phone. So every time he went out of town I take the phones and man we made a lot of money when I took the phones but I also ran all the calls because this is when I quit the busboy job. All I kept was a bartending job. 2010 I gave him an ultimatum. I said dude you're my best friend. You're my roommate and my business partner. You take the business and the debt, I'll start my own. Or you could give me the business, I'll take on all the debt. You're in the clear. He goes, I want to move to Montana. I want to be closer to my brother. I said, great. And at this point, just quick little to top it off, I had six employees full-time, two 1099s. And by the way, people were stealing toilet paper. I didn't have a real office, so I rented my first real office. We were working out of our house. And I was kind of like just at night just holding my hands over my face going, "What am I doing? I can't I don't trust anybody." So who do you what are you doing? You don't trust anybody? You call mom. So I called my mom in Michigan. I said, "Mom, I don't know what to do." I said, "I could really use your help, but I don't have enough money to pay you good money. I can afford to pay you 15 bucks an hour. I can pay my stepdad 65 grand," which by the way, my mom's best year in real estate, she sold 55 houses. So, she's done well. She's like, "Tommy, I don't know." I'm like, "Listen, Mom. I'm your only son. I need your help. You think about it. I love you." She called back in two weeks said, "We're going to sell our house. We're going to move our lives to Arizona."
Oh my gosh.
Big move. Baller mom.
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At the time the business is doing what roughly? So, like, you know, because that's a big leap of faith.
It's a million and a half bucks a year. And by the way, like a lot of people have a tough time hitting a million, but I was the highest ticket writer for seven years. And then I finally started to delegate. Like anytime we weren't going to hit payroll that my mom would call and say, "Hey," because I'm working on marketing and hiring and training, she's like, "I need you to go run two jobs today." And then in 2014, I found a good integrator. The dude was super smart and he still tells me the stories. He's not here anymore. He's kind of retired now. He was younger than me. He goes, "You would pay me two grand one week and then not pay me for two weeks and then give me like 1,200 bucks the next time." He's like, "We didn't even have any type of payroll worked out the first year." I was like, "Yeah, dude." But 2017, we got on the right software. And man, all of a sudden, we were doing 17 million, but keeping hardly any of it. Next year, we did 30 million. Next year, we did 50 million. And we've never lost money in profit or revenue. Well, basically since the beginning, but 2017, we were just on a rocket ship.
So, you made a joke that the first 10 years were practice. So, on your 10th year of business, what was your revenue and profit?
Revenue was 17 million. And that was out of grit. That was just like working nights, weekends, and holidays, just overwork. And I remember Al came in and said, "Let me tell you something, buddy. I'm looking at your P&L. I'm looking at your balance sheet, your income statement. Revenue is for vanity and profit is for sanity. You're not making any money. You're just a squirrel running around in circles." He goes, "We need to figure out how to make serious profit." So, I was at 17 million. Everybody's like, "Man," and I'd puff my chest out everywhere and I'd say how much revenue we're making. Revenue means nothing. I don't even talk to anybody about revenue anymore. The name of the game is you got to make profit.
Well, do you remember your profit on 17?
I was paying myself 150 grand, taking a couple hundred grand out. There was not a lot of money left. And by the way, we didn't have a great CFO or controller at the time. It wasn't super lined up. That's one thing that changed my life is getting control of the money.
When you said as you were growing, sorry, how many markets are you in to do that, you know, that type of scale to do 17 million in revenue?
I started in Phoenix, then I went to Tucson in 2012. 2014, we're in Wisconsin and Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Vegas. And by 2017, I was probably in seven or eight markets, but Phoenix was just massive. By the way, I had to close down four markets a year later. I had to close down Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Tampa. And if you want to talk about somebody having to swallow their pride and basically say you're a failure, but I was going to go broke. There was a stripper living in our Dallas warehouse with my manager. I mean, I just didn't have the systems in place to scale as quick as I thought we could, right? And what I tell people now, they're like, "What had to change?" I said, "The hustler had to die for the leader to be born." And I truly mean that. Now I'm a systems guy. Now I sit down and I work on systems and processes. And if the system's broken, either there's no system, it's the wrong system, or the system's not being followed. And that's like, I mean, I'm a student for life. I'm the most curious guy. I walk in, I take notes, I try to stay super humble and I'm always learning. I've always got three to five coaches at one time. I need help all the time and I extract and then I implement.
So, I have a ton of questions on the courses and the seminars and stuff because you've talked about them a bunch and I'll get to that in a second. But first, you mentioned four stories. So, the technician who you used to call, your integrator, your mom, and ServiceTitan where you convinced them to do something special. Were you always convincing or did you have to read to get good with words? I mean, how is like you the way you're telling these stories, I'm like, this seems like a no-brainer. This also seems like this person's incredibly persuasive.
I don't necessarily know if I learned that. My dad, when I'm 5 years old, I remember this day vividly. I was in Royal Oak, Michigan, and this is the longest driveway I've ever seen in my life. And there was a yard sale or a garage sale. My dad always stopped at those. And I found this CB radio and I'm picking it up and I'm playing with the antenna and I got the little I'm like 50/50. And I'm like just talking into it and I put it back and we walk back to the car and my dad looks at me and he goes, "Hey Tommy, you really wanted that, didn't you?" I looked at him. I go, "Yeah, Dad." He goes, "Here's $5. Go get it." I go, "Dad, there's a scotch tape on it that says $20." He goes, "I know. Go get it for five." And it didn't make sense to me. He goes, "Just go up to her. I want you to smile. I want you to point at me and say, 'My dad and I were wondering if you take $5 for this radio.'" And I'm talking this was like I was worried. I'm looking back at my dad and he's like, "Keep going." And he's waving and he's like, "Keep going." And I look back at him every five steps. And I walk up and I mean, man, I had it was like I was anxious as hell. And I go, "Ma'am, I was just curious. Would you take $5 for this radio?" And I go, "That's my dad over there." He's waving and smiling and she gets down on one knee. She pulls out the scotch tape. She takes the five and presents it to me. And I'm telling you guys, the radio was awesome. But I walk back and I learned a lesson that you'll never lose in life. Like don't be afraid of rejection. You go up there, you ask. You just go for no. And I think that he taught me at a young age, I watched him negotiate things I never thought possible. And just, you know, he used to say, "I wish I knew then what I know now." And what he told me is like, "Don't be afraid to ask the girl out. Worst case scenario, her loss. Don't be afraid of what people think about you. You're living in your own world." He goes, "A lot of people are going to have contempt. They're not going to like you. You're going to be more successful. But don't worry. This is the world we live in. Continue to run." Like, look, hang out with people. You got a common future instead of a common past. Figure out how to get in the right circles. And so, and my mom, I would say my mom gave me more love. She said, "You could do anything. I'm going to get behind you." Like, if I went to prison, she'd move next to the prison to see me every day. Like, my mom loves me. If I said, "Mom, I got in a really bad wreck. The person's not okay." She'd grab a shovel, be like, "How do we get rid of this mess?" My dad just was like, "I'm going to teach you sales. I'm going to teach you persuasion." And so, the combination is just I think it turned me into like the belief system that I have somebody no matter what. That's why my mom and stepdad moved out. And then my dad was just like, "You're going to have the skills because you're going to be around me." And he was good at it.
You said he used to negotiate things you didn't think possible. What do you mean by that?
We went to Mexico and there was a jacket for 250 bucks, leather. He walked out of it for 20 bucks. And he's like, "Watch this." And he's like, they're like, "So, no, no, no. It's meet me in the middle. 100." And he's like, "Tommy, we're out of here." And like he meant it. He's like, "I don't need the jacket. You don't." One day we rebuilt a C10 truck. And I mean, I spent the whole summer sanding this down. We got it painted. Me and my dad rebuilt the engine. We put the transmission in. And it was sitting in my front yard. And I said, "Dad, a guy came by offered me 10 grand." He's like, "Take it." He's like, "You haven't driven it in 2 years." And I go, "Dad, me and you did this together." He goes, "Take a picture of it. You'll remember it. We could do another one." He goes, "You're not driving it. Sell it." And I loved that because I was like, man, I was all sentimental about it. He's like, Tommy, it's just material things, dude. You could buy another one. We'll do another one. Take a picture if you want to remember it. But that's just always how he is, you know?
That's awesome. You were telling the story and I feel like the story had like the humble origins and figuring things out and then it was like zoom, we're doing 17 million, 13 million. It sped up real quick. So, I want to go back to that because you seem to me like a guy who if you don't have the answers up front, you'll find a blueprint. You find the guy to train you to do the garages to how to paint the garage. You find a coach. So, I like this word blueprint a lot because I think that people underuse blueprints. They exist. You can follow them. You can build your own thing, but it's very helpful to start with a blueprint. What were blueprints you saw? Because it didn't sound like any of the people around you initially were doing 100 million, you know, garage repair. But at some point, you got that idea. At some point, you started to figure out, oh, I need to scale this thing. I need to do this. I need to do that. What were the blueprints that made you think that?
Well, I'll give you a real quick example. We're getting ready to expand into St. Louis. I'm like, my good buddy Chris Hopkins has been in St. Louis for a long time. In fact, his parents started in like the 80s. So I said, "Chris, can you jump on a call for about an hour and give me the good, bad, and the ugly about the marketing, what's important in St. Louis?" And by the way, worst case scenario, he says, "No." But he's like, "Tommy, absolutely." He goes, "I'll even give you my heat map. I'll tell you what zip codes to stay out of. I'll show you stay out of the east part." He goes, "This north area." And he literally gave me the keys to the city. He saved me a year of mistakes. And so what I've always said is success leaves clues. If you want to find out how to be number one on Yelp, go find an HVAC or roofing company. Pick the phone up and you call them and you say, "My name's Tommy Mello. I want to let you know I'm super impressed by your company. I read your book. I've used your business. I wanted to buy your whole company lunch today. Might cost 400 bucks, right? You get them Chipotle. If I could get an hour of your time, I promise I'm not going into your industry. I got a lot to share with you as well. I've seen a couple opportunities, but I want to understand how you dominate Yelp." Then you do that with Angie's List, Thumbtack, Google, LSA, PPC. Success leaves clues. They're right in front of you. It's right around the corner. All you got to do is ask. So, my favorite three letters in the world are ASK. So, I did this. I learned how to sell memberships. See, when I had the podcast, I could get the best of the best. I started it early 2017. This is before podcasts were a real thing. So, I'd be like, "Man, I'm having problems with payroll." So, I'd find like the top person that wrote the book on payroll and I mean, my podcast was simply selfish. It was like, "Man, I got a question for you." If you got a W2 versus a 1099 and they need to show up to me and they'd be like, "Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam." And then I'd get like, "Okay, what happens cash versus accrual?" I get a CPA on. And then I go, "Okay, what happens when you want a greenfield versus buy a company? What's your integration checklist?" And I don't know why, but almost everybody was excited to just give me everything. They're like, "Dude, you're just in the garage door industry." They're like, "Sure, take it. You could have it." And I've always just been super humble with especially like the people that have been where I want to go. And I walk in and I'm like, "Man, I am so impressed. Like, I will do whatever it takes." They're like, "You really are like you're not like most guys that come up like you don't think your shit doesn't stink." And I'm like, man, I come from very humble beginnings. I'm just trying to get ahead. I care a lot about my family. I'm just literally I'll do whatever it takes. If you need money, if you need me to introduce you to somebody, if you want me to come mow your lawn, whatever you need, I want to learn from you.
So, I told Sam a story about a buddy of mine from my high school who bought his parents' HVAC company and has since blown it up. And Sam made fun of me. He goes, "You're not even the most successful person from your high school." Well, that person is Chris Hoffman. The person you just referred to, Sam, he's done the same thing where he's blown up these services businesses. But what I've noticed actually about Chris as well, but I'm actually Chris has this trait and I'm inspired more so that you have this trait, Tommy, because our listeners of MFM are like Sam and I and we have this attitude where we're really good at starting stuff, but sometimes you stay scrappy and you stay as a hustler. And unfortunately after some type of mark, I don't know, the 10 million in revenue range, the 5 million, the 15 million in revenue range, that hustle, that scrappiness, that like just go and get shit done, that actually kind of holds you back. And I'm going through that right now with my company of like being systems focused. And you have done a really good job of showing how a person goes from like being a hustler to systems and scaling and hiring a good team and being an executive, I would say. And you actually have this really good quote. I think you said that in order to scale, I had to kill the hustler inside of me or something like that.
Yeah. The hustler had to die for the leader to be born. And I'll tell you, I delegate to elevate. People are always like, "Dude, I'll outwork you." I remember Ed Mylet saying I could work three days in one day. My day starts in six hour increments and I work three of them in 18 hours. And I'm like, "Dude, I don't respect anybody that works harder. I know there's people shoveling poop somewhere on a field that are working way harder than me. I look at skill way differently. There's certain people I hire that can handle the task of three people, 40-hour work weeks in 10 hours." And so I came up with paying for performance and paying for outcomes. And I will be very transparent that I am the dumbest guy on my team. I mean, when it comes to the C-suite VPs, directors, I'm just the visionary. I dream really, really big. I love sales and I love marketing and I love relationships and culture. I am not going to be the specialist. I live in a different planet. I don't live within the walls of this company. I'm creating a personal brand. And by the way, there's 62 guys training next door. 50 of them found me on social media and said, I want to work for that guy. So building a personal brand for your business really matters. And you know the thing I ask now is would I work for you? Would I buy from you? Would my grandma buy from you? And would I go have a beer with you? You tell great stories. You don't shake my hand like a limp fish. You make eye contact. You smile a lot. You're interesting. I'm going to ask you tough questions to see how you figure things out. There's no right answer. And so I started thinking about this about 5 years ago. It's who, not how. Who is the right hire? Not what's my strategy, not what system. Systems are super important, but what's the next hire that I bring on the bus that'll take me to the promised land? And when you start thinking like that and you stack the deck with A+ players, your job gets easier. Like it's gotten so easy and whenever it gets easy we explode. The business explodes. So you go through these peaks and valleys and I'm like I will tell you guys we did 315 million and I'm like there's no reason we can't be at a billion in two and a half years and so I got to set that vision and people are like dude you're crazy and then I got to map it out and show them this is all that would need to happen. The average technician at 700,000 now. And so what would need to happen for us to do this? We would need to have this department, this department, this department. We need to make sure we got trucks on command. We need to make sure we got a good greenfield strategy. And you start reverse engineering your goals. You create some accountability and consistency and all of a sudden you wake up and it's there.
Dude, that's awesome. I love hearing you talk.
I get excited, guys. I love entrepreneurship and I run towards failure. I don't really care what people think. I'm not going to lie to you guys and say I really do care what a lot of people think. I care what my parents think. I care what the people I work with. I'm not the guy that just says I don't care at all what anybody thinks. I'd love to pretend that's the truth. But I guess now I think I'd rather be respected than loved, but by a lot of people I choose love first.
Yeah. But do any of your employees actually think that you're a dick? I mean, you don't seem you come off as like a pretty caring, empathetic person.
I've known you for 27 minutes and I love this guy.
Yeah. Like who thinks that you're disrespectful or rude? You might be a guy who says, "Look, it's not working out unfortunately." But I think they would still have love and respect for you.
No, I don't fire anymore. I had to fire five people that were direct reports to me this year, this past year. But when Adam started in 2014, I said, "You're going to be the bad cop because I'm not good at it." But I do have to have these fierce hard conversations with people and it's not easy, but it's for the best of them. Like if you think about who changed your life was there like I had a coach that literally made sure I got a warm meal. Like I respected him. I mean, he literally told me I'm not going to play. Like if my grades weren't good, if I didn't show up and give it 110%. So, he didn't play me two games, but he made sure, listen, three nights a week he was going to buy me a meal with dinner because he knew my mom was working three jobs. And I found out I respected him more than I loved him. But the respect turned into love. And that was a lesson for me is I got to be straight up. I'm going to tell you what you're doing great, but I'm also going to tell you you're not living up to your potential. I see something better in you. And it's my job to pull that out of you. And I'm either going to pull that out of you or I'm going to force you to quit or you're going to not have a job here. I'm going to give you the invitation to go work for one of my competitors.
Me and Sam were talking about like these inspirational leaders and stuff last episode and I think I told the story about how I had a cross country coach that was like this year you're going to learn how to be better men and we're going to do it via running. And that's kind of the same energy that you have, which is you know, you young technician, you're going to learn how to be a better man this year. And I'm going to do it by teaching you how to smile when you meet a customer, how to say yes ma'am, no sir, how to, you know, like it's like more so we're going to learn how to live great lives and be great high-ass people, but we're going to do it via, you know, serving the customers wonderfully.
It's 100% right. I used to find fours and try to make them sevens. Now I hire sevens and try to make them tens. And so now I've got a much harder way to get into the company. So I did orientation yesterday with 62 people. And I said, "You should feel proud because it takes 50 interviews to even get one of you to this room." But now the hard part starts. And we got a bell you could ring if you tap out. We get about two people a class that just say this is we don't they got to clean after they're done. They got to show up. If you're late one day, there's a good chance we're sending you home.
There's a bell. So during training, anybody can just go literally ring a bell and quit.
It's the same as the Navy SEALs.
Are you ex-military? You have that vibe?
No, I'm not in the I never was in the military.
Okay. You mentioned this guy Al in passing. You said my mentor Al. And I'm always curious about mentors because I think everybody wants a mentor. I think few people ever end up with that special kind of relationship with a great mentor. But one of the great things is when somebody has one, they can kind of share a story that you know it kind of becomes our mentor too. And so can you tell me a great Al story? What did this guy kind of make you realize or teach you about?
So he was the second guy in my podcast and he wrote a book. It's on my shelf over here. It's called The Seven Power Contractor. Explains the different stages of the home service industry. And he had gone through every master class and just studied how to build a business. And he had a business with his brothers and his father. And one day they just got fed up. And his daughter, he had his camcorder on the back of the room recording his daughter at a play. And his wife comes up to him and says, "Al, you know what your daughter says she wants at school today? She says she wishes her dad was around more." And he goes, "Natalie," and it gives me goosebumps, but he goes, "Natalie, I'm going to disappear for about a year. I'm not going to be around as much, but I need to systematize this business. I need to get SOPs. I need to make sure that I can spend time with my two daughters and you. And so, we're going to go on a vacation for 2 weeks in one year. And I'm not even going to look at my pager." I mean, this is back in the day. And Al, he met me for lunch and I handed him the book I was working on, The Home Service Millionaire. He flipped through it and said, "This is garbage." He goes, "You need to rewrite it." And I said, 'Okay.' And he goes, "The thing that I wanted to work with you originally, Tommy, is you brought a notebook and you wrote down everything I said." He goes, "That's the only reason I thought about working with you." He walked into my shop that day. He goes, "Can we go do a shop tour?" I said, "Sure." He goes, "Why do you have all the calendars on the wall? Haven't you ever heard of Outlook or Google Calendar?" 2017. That was around then. It was early stages of Google Calendar. He goes, "I tripped on a cord that you had a microwave plugged in at." He goes, "Dude, this is not organized." And he goes, "I could have stolen your whole warehouse. The garage was open. No cameras. Your forklift was sitting there." He goes, "Show me your manuals." All I had was this like onboarding manual. He goes, "Well, how does anybody know how to win?" He goes, "How do they know? Are you allowed to get tattoos on your face? What happens if your truck breaks down? Like, who do you call? What happens if you lose your gas card? What happens if you need PTO for Christmas?" He goes, "How do people know this?" He goes, "It's all in your head." He goes, "What I'm going to ask is you're going to pay me $150,000." And by the way, I didn't have $150 to give him. I had to take an equity line out of my house. So that's why I had to pay attention. And when I walked in there, if I started talking or talked about a book, he goes, "Stop. You're going to listen to what I'm going to teach you or I'm going to quit. You're going to figure out exactly what I'm going to teach you and you're going to do this perfect. You're going to stop reading books. You're not going to do stuff any other way than what I teach you. You're going to turn your cell phone off when I'm in this room. And you're going to get your two top guys. We're going to sit here. We're going to work through each and every scenario, every manual. And then you're going to read these manuals out loud with every employee. Have them initial every single one. And then you're going to read a page out of the manual every week in your meetings." And man, I was ADHD. I still am. And he's like, "You are going to focus. You're going to be all here and we're going to sit in this room for eight hours three days a week." The dude drove a Mercedes. He'd pull back in the same spot really slow. It was always detailed. And every time he left, I'd get 43. $43.38 was how much he paid in gas. I'd get a bill for it like this. I mean, he was just high C personality dialed in like it's my way or the highway. And that's what I needed. He was tough. And he'd bring in a consultant to get us our financing figured out that he trusted. And she's like, "I don't know if I want to work with this guy." I said, "Listen, I'll be quiet. I'll do whatever you say." And he goes, "Trust me." He goes, "He'll do whatever you say. I'll make sure of it." And that's what I needed. And it was tough love, but he set me up for a lot of success.
Was he are you now I've never heard type C personality. But are you whatever that personality type is of just paying attention to the details. Are you It sounds like maybe you're a three out of 10. What are you now? Are you like really high or are you just improved?
Well, I was pre-dental, so I love math. I took advanced calculus and I got obsessed with geometry and calculus and algebra. So, I'm a numbers guy. I've always been, but I'm still a macro guy. I still look at the big picture. I'll dive into certain areas. I always say I live on Mars. I look at Earth for volcanoes and earthquakes, but I'm still not the details guy. I don't I love my CFO and my controller, and I love my HR team, but I don't really interact with them very often. I am working on operations and marketing and culture and always driving sales. And quite frankly, I don't want to be good at these other things. I want to continue to be the best at what I'm great at and continue to hone these better skills and delegate the rest. I don't want to be well-rounded. I never want to be good at that stuff because it tortures me to have to do that stuff. Like for me to do payroll, which I had to do for a long time, I mean it was like pulling teeth. So the first thing I got rid of, if you set up your org chart and you wear a lot of the hats, first thing you do is circle what you hate. So now when I come into work, I love coming to work. I'm like, man, I'm on a podcast right now with you guys. Everything's getting handled. I just got back from Costa Rica for 10 days. You think we lost money? You think when the owner, founder, CEO left that things didn't go right. We set records the whole time I was gone. Like, I don't need to be here. And that's what we set up is we go on the pinnacle trip. My whole C-suite, all my directors, my area managers go. My top 40 technicians and installers go on this trip. Do you think we lose revenue that week when we leave? We've never lost revenue.
We've talked a lot about in this systems. I think if we're playing a drinking game and somebody said, you know, if you're taking a shot every time we said systems, they're dead now. But it strikes me that you really harp on this because that's what was hard and broken for you and you really had to put in work to get great at that. And it's kind of like you feel the benefits of having not everything on your shoulders, but I got to believe that in order for your company to succeed, you know, you don't grow because you have a great operations manual, per se, right? You grow because you're great at sales and marketing. You sort of survive and thrive if the operations can back that up. And I'm guessing it sounds like that the sales and marketing were more things that were more in your core competency. You did a good job of early on and you
You haven't been as demand constrained, but I want to know more about that. So, I want to know what did you do to kick ass in sales and marketing that was different than the average service company? What were the things that you did that made you guys rock and roll in terms of demand?
Well, step one was naming your company A1, so you show up first and they get white pages, right?
