HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed
Welcome to HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed, a podcast dedicated to revealing the success secrets to create and unleash the ultimate HVAC business.
HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed
EP: 236 Tommy Mello w/ A1 Garage - Performance Pay Recruiting and Hiring
🚀 Exciting insights from the latest episode of HVAC Revealed with guest Tommy Mello! Whether you're an HVAC business owner or aspiring to become a leader in the industry, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and actionable strategies.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
Lead from the Front 🚀: True leaders don't just delegate—they also share in the challenges and triumphs of their team. Tommy emphasized that leaders should take responsibility for their decisions, from hiring to creating standard operating procedures.
Business Success & Resilience 💼: It isn't just about good times. Tommy shared how preparedness to succeed, despite external conditions like political changes or economic downturns, sets apart thriving businesses. Staying flexible and agile is key.
Invest in People & Culture 🌟: Tommy elaborated on the importance of building a positive work environment. From improving the condition of business vehicles to fostering a welcoming culture with activities like social gatherings and volunteer work, investing in your team pays dividends in loyalty and performance.
Don't miss out—catch our full conversation on HVAC Revealed! With takeaways that can transform your business, be prepared to lead with positivity and accountability.
#HVACRevealed #Leadership #BusinessSuccess #WorkCulture #Resilience #Podcast
Find Tommy:
On The Web:
https://get.homeservicefreedom.com/freedom-event-2024
https://a1garage.com/
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Presented By On Purpose Media: https://www.onpurposemedia.ca/
For HVAC Internet Marketing reach out to us at info@onpurposemedia.ca or 888-428-0662
Sponsored By:
Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
Elite Call: https://elitecall.net
Service World Expo: https://www.serviceworldexpo.com/
On Purpose Media: https://onpurposemedia.ca
If you're not able to help yourself first, you're not going to help anybody else.
Evan Hoffman:Hey, welcome back to another HVAC Success Secrets revealed with Thaddeus and Evan for a very special edition. We had Tommy reach out and asked to get on the podcast. Unfortunately, we had a conflict earlier this month, but we wanted to do something really special with him. I've been doing some recruiting. We know comes up a lot in the group chats and it's questions. I think he wrote about it in his book. It's chapter five recruiting with Elevate. So I'm super excited for this conversation because it's something that we've been talking about more in our organization, too. I know Tommy's got his event coming up as well, and he's got Jocko Willink coming out, who talks a lot about bonus structures in his book as well. So I'm super excited for the conversation. It's all about A players and as we move towards a time in the economy where it's a little bit of uncertainty, and you don't necessarily know what's going to happen, and the election's coming up down in the States, too. There's just so much disease in a lot of the home services space and a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs just unsure of what to do and the number one thing that you can always focus on is your people. And going deep with them. So I'm stoked for this conversation, dude.
Thaddeus Tondu:It's a lot of fun. And look, your people are the most important asset into your business. It's people over clients and, people, product, price and you've heard me say that numerous times on our show. And if you take care of your people, guess what? They're going to take care of. I read something the other day that it's not sales calls. It's not the economy. It's not all these external factors that determine the success of your business. It's the choices that you make and making the right choices and obviously taking care of the folks in your organization is the easiest choice to make for all. Of course our special edition would not be possible without our sponsors. We have Elite Call Chiirp, Service World Expo, and On Purpose Media. All so now let's start off with these guys. So have you ever thought about outbanding your database to fill your dispatch boards with lucrative service and sales appointments and boosting your memberships too? Enter an Elite Call, a U. S. based call center that does just that. For over 20 years, their dedicated teams don't just make calls, they directly integrate appointments into your CRM and fill your dispatch boards. Don't let your competition get ahead. Let Elite Call connect with your customers first. Visit elitecall.Com. To learn more today, by the way, super important. It's coming up. I read something that August is like slowing down right now for a lot of HVAC contractors. So this is a super important thing to be able to get on.
Evan Hoffman:Absolutely. And as the fall comes, of course, filling your dispatch boards is incredibly important. So we got one of Tommy's partners, Chiirp as one of our sponsors as well. So transform your home service business with Chiirp, the ultimate automation toolbox, capture more leads, connect instantly and skyrocket your sales. Chiirp integrates seamlessly with platforms like Service Titan and Housecall Pro, offering automated text message, text messages, emails, and even ringless voicemails. Boost your Google reviews and customer loyalty with their proven rehash program. Schedule your demo today and get an exclusive 25 percent off. Visit chiirp.com/hssr to book your demo today.
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Thaddeus Tondu:See you on the other side with one Tommy Mello.
Evan Hoffman:Tommy, welcome my friend. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to come and join us. I know you just finished your Q& A session. You got two lives this week, plus you're hopping on with us. It's just an average week for you, but super excited to have you on my friend.
Tommy Mello:I love this, man. This is my favorite thing in the world. I love sharing with the world all the mistakes we make. Cause I make a lot of them.
Evan Hoffman:That's it. And it's learning from it and continuing to grow and continue to move forward. And, I asked the question a couple of weeks ago, how often do you stop to pause to think and document what it is that you do in your business and the mistakes you make, the lessons you learned. So I'm going to ask you, how often do you stop to pause to think and just take a break from all the garbage and the noise that surrounds us to just sit with your thoughts and game plan and move forward and create new ideas?
Tommy Mello:Actually four months ago, I decided to work on my health at a whole new level. And a lot of that meant time reflecting, it meant time doing the sauna, it meant time doing walks alone with no music, just literally meditating and thinking through things. And I'm a big fan of there's either no system, the wrong system, or the system's not being followed. And this way of thinking, it's like tunnel vision of systems. And instead of thinking like why, understanding why something went wrong and fixing the system instead of Saying we got to do better. A lot of people complain about the way things are going, but it's never systematized with checklists and standard operating procedures and manuals. we're always getting back to the fundamentals. The easy, it's not easy but Al Levy taught me in 2017 how to be system focused. And I'll never forget the teachings. And I still call him at least once a month, if not once every other week. And he just what's going on with the manuals? What's going on with the SOPs? What did you change? A mistake made more than once is a choice. And I don't think people understand that.
Evan Hoffman:No, they definitely don't. Yeah, I was gonna, when you said, as soon as you started talking about systems, I was the first person I thought of, and you can see his book just over your your shoulder there, the seven power contractor. We need to have him on again, cause he's brilliant around systems and operations. When it comes to recruiting though, you take a very different approach and a very active approach. in recruiting and being able to build a real system around it and a process around it because you document everything. What is your approach to recruiting and making it an active activity versus something that's passive and just putting up an ad on ZipRecruiter?
Tommy Mello:There's a lot of places to put ads on Craigslist, Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, there's Monster, there's LinkedIn there's, Sites popping up every day for recruiting. I think being on those sites and actually cleaning your profile and putting videos and filling it all out and getting reviews from happy internal customers is important because just like people go to Yelp and Google to check you out your future. Employees or coworkers also go to those places just to validate that you're a decent company. So even if you're recruiting from other places, having everything filled out and trying to get user generated content, which is reviews is important. But I feel like you want to be where your people are hanging out. And most of the people that I'm going after on Instagram, they're on Facebook. They're on Tik Tok. Also, I was talking to Leland a couple of weeks ago and he's just one of the most amazing guys on the planet. I was talking to Tom Howard. I was talking to Aaron Gaynor. I've been doing a lot of podcasts with some of the biggest names in home service. And everybody, Chad Peterman, we figured out you've got to train. Paul Kelly literally sat me down for 30 minutes and explained this to me. He said. How much time do you, you do a lot of sales training, right? I'm like, of course we do a lot of role play. He said, how much time do you spend teaching your guys on how to recruit? Like how much time do you actually like role play recruiting and actually going through the fundamentals of, we just expect people to just call their friends and recruit, even though we give them 1500 bucks and we're changing that to a much larger amount of money. They're going to have an override for the first 90 days. Plus the 1500 what's in it for them, but teaching them how to do it. I can't tell you like my top top guys in the company. They've recruited a lot of clients. That's your best. You go out to a job, the person's amazed by our service. They want to work. They choose that. They want to work here. Another thing that's helped a lot is my personal brand. People, they'll actually be in line and they'll say, even if it takes six months to get in the door, we want to work for a leader like, and. We want to come in. We know the earning potential, but we also know we're not just a cog in a wheel. We're not just a piece of a flywheel. We're not numbered. So personal brand has a lot to do with being on podcasts, writing books, just talking at seminars, networking, even if I'm not speaking. But it's an omni approach. We do TV, radio, billboards. We do email blast. We do ValPak. We do Clipper. We do all kinds of social media. One of the biggest things we're pushing for. And this is the number one thing by far in the company is recruiting talent and A plus players. I want to know that they're going to look me in the eye. We recruit on personality and we train. We get trained on how to fix a garage door and how to examine a garage door and diagnose a garage door. But. It's this idea of I'll always hire somebody if they're the right person, even if we don't have a spot for them, even if we don't have enough leads, because we know that person will have a higher conversion rate. They'll get five star reviews. They'll have a higher average ticket. They'll get more fun. They'll get more reviews on everywhere. Yelp, Google, Nextdoor. They'll get social media. They'll do selfies. They'll put yard signs. They'll get the HOA president's name, which you guys did last week that called me up and said, I got a great big HOA for you. So it's this idea of always be recruiting instead of always be closing, the Glenn Gary Ross always be recruiting. And every one of your marketing the things you're doing in marketing, whether it's in the newspaper, which we do a lot of you need to mention that and you need to have a website dedicated that are on your website, have a click to go to another website. This is things that we're actually heavily focused on. We've got 43 guys here training this month. We've got 44 coming in next month. I will next year get to a hundred badass Silt Team 6 big smiles, great stories, great people that respect themselves. We will get to a hundred people a month.
Evan Hoffman:You didn't start there. So for the guys that are at a million, three million a year, who are still very much in the business. And not taking as much time to work on the business as Michael Gerber talks about. At what point did you start to transition from needing to hire skilled tradespeople to being able to hire for attitude, character, and values, and being able to train into the position?
Tommy Mello:The day I met Al Levi, the day I hired Al Levi, the day he came into my shop and said, No longer will you be a prisoner. That must only hire experience and take somebody else's crap. You're going to build a training center and you're going to teach them your values. And you're going to show them the right way to do it. Because what he did when he went on ride alongs is he said, I went on four different ride alongs on four jobs each and every single guy, not only sold differently, they did the work differently. Some guys did it with the door open. They did the Springs. Some guys use different tools then he said, you got to buy the same trucks. You got to have the same tools, exact same. It was an investment. So I learned this. feels like yesterday, but it was seven years ago. And he said, every company that I've worked with, whether it's windows, kitchens, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, it's a little bit longer investment if it's HVAC plumbing, because you got to spend time getting a journeyman and like being certified and getting licensed. But he said it pays dividends because they don't leave. Think about this. If your ads are always, I pay more and you're actually getting people in the door, that means I could beat you. If I'm the PE company that comes in and says, I even pay more, they're loyal to money and that's why in the HVAC industry, it's like, Oh, I'll pay. It's they're just here for two months here for two months here for three months. And I think that's the biggest challenge is there's no loyalty when it's all about the money. People want to know that you respect them. They want to know that their wife is respected. They want to know that they took a chance coming to you and they gambled with their family and their future. So you better respect that. And I think a lot of owners are like we got these guys now. I've seen companies literally triple the next year, go to one 10th because their talent leaves. When they're, when they start with you, when they come up with you, when they're respected, they stay. And I think that's why building from the ground up makes a lot of sense. And I love finding people at restaurants and hospitality and people that just they actually make eye contact. They tell a great story. They want more. They got a chip on their shoulder. That's something that's, I've really been analyzing the top people in the company. And it's just they're out to prove something. They're there to tell mom and dad that they could do it. They're there to tell their wife they're more than what they were. They want more than they've ever had. they actually value themselves when they look at the mirror and they say, I deserve this, but I need to work for it. And so it all changed in 2017. But what I can tell you guys is most business owners problem is they want to do it all. The first thing I did that set me free is get an executive assistant. And what I learned was I don't need to be doing 25 an hour. I need to be focused on building a company. I need to show up. I need to do the orientations. I need to tell people how great they're doing. I need to lead the meetings in a bigger way. If I'm looking at email all day, having chats about stupid stuff, about a vehicle breaking down and, onboarding and off boarding and doing payroll and doing everything that an owner does in the early stages at a million dollars, like why would I be doing all tasks? I could hire somebody that's more qualified, that's better at doing it. And I could be doing the things that are going to build the company. And I know you got to put in sweat equity in the early days, but you shouldn't be doing 25 an hour work. And most people got to take three months, hit pause and train somebody. And, if an EA doesn't work out, look in the mirror. Cause you say you would have done a better job of it. Yeah cause you've been doing this your whole life. Of course, you're going to do a better job. You've got to train Dan Martell calls it the camcorder method. I call it the zoom method. Every time you're doing something that's minuscule, identify that, record yourself doing it and turn that into a training and say, here's how I booked my tickets for flights. Here's how I talked to payroll and make sure this is happening. Here's my vendor relationships that I got to make sure that this gets done by this day. I'm not, look, I don't even know how to log into payroll. I don't even know how to log into Intact. I barely know how to log into Service Titan. That's not my job. And when I understood that I, there was a time where I did all of it. And all of a sudden I said, there's somebody smarter than me. And this is another big clue. Don't do things, don't hire people at the C suite, VP, or director level that are not smarter than you. Hire people that have been where you want to go, that are way smarter than you. Sometimes you got to pay more and just because you're paying more doesn't mean it's the right person. If they come with a big bill, you got to pay them a lot of money because I've hired people 200 grand a year that weren't there, they weren't good. But if somebody's been where I want to go and I'm able to recruit them on the leadership level and they enjoy doing what they're doing, it changes everything. You're only one or two good hires away from like quadrupling the company.
Thaddeus Tondu:Well, and I want to go to two ways. One is the, like the 25 hour per work. And now you mentioned Dan Martell and one of the things that he does in the buyback your time book, great book, by the way. Is you take a look and you can do it over a one week or two week period is write down every single task. It's yeah, it's up on your, right up there by Back Your Time. Great book. Write down every single task that you do. Every single one. Like you do a time on it for one or two weeks to know what you're actually doing. Then after you do that, you put a dollar sign beside it. 1, 2, 3, 4 on the ones that make the company the most money that light you up the most. Or they make the company the most money. And then after that, you go and you write down the ones that highlight the ones that light you up the most. And so now you can find the ones that you can actually offload first, because now that's going to be able to focus you in the business, not. you on the business, not in the business, which is great. The other part you mentioned little bit earlier is people that want to be here. They want to come there. They want to work there. They want to do these sorts of things. And this, plays well into, when we get into the performance in a bit and we can save that for a little bit later, but what are some of the things from a cultural aspect that you do? Because you are right. People will stay loyal to a company and they will take less money to work somewhere. If they feel valued, if they feel like it's a great culture, if they're enjoying where they're at, what are some of the things that you guys are doing in your business? And also what are some things that a business one to 3 million can also do? Cause some of the things that you guys do, might not be available for a one to 3 million per year company. So let's take a look at those different aspects of things.
Tommy Mello:Yeah. So I want to go back to one thing, not only make the calendar an old fashioned calendar and highlight the stuff, but take an org chart and put your hat on each and every one of them. Take a magnet and put your hat on and put the description and the KPIs and OKRs and what that entails, how much that role should take and start saying the ones you hate the most that have the most critical Like a CFO or a bookkeeper or a call center manager. And if you hate when the phone rings, even though you know that's potential money, hire that one first. I think people are trying to hire is that like actually what we've been really good at is hiring recruiters, professional recruiters that actually go on LinkedIn and they steal people. They do not go to the job boards. They steal the leadership C suite. And that's, you do not want to put an ad on anything to hire someone at that level. Of course, technicians, installers, CSRs, and dispatchers. But when you're looking for a C suite or director of EP, you've got to recruit them.
Evan Hoffman:They're not looking for work.
Tommy Mello:No, they've already got a great job. You got to give them something better. And that goes into what do we do? Like last week I was telling the guys on my orientation last four hours about how they're cold pledging at sauna. And I go, you know what guys? Who wants to sign a cold punch with me? Cause the week before I had a mobile guy come in here and say, I could come in for 500 bucks for three hours and you could get a lot of people. I'm like, we're going to set that up. So last week, that's what we did. And that was 500 bucks. The guy did it for free for our first time. I gave him a hundred dollars tip. He's I know if you post stuff about this, more people will, but I'll tell you the number one rule. It doesn't cost anything to have. To go to Costco and buy some eggs and bacon and get a barbecue with your people, invite their wives and family. When they start celebrate. Tell them how, roll out a red carpet and get excited for them. Throw a party when they graduate. Take them bowling. Everybody can afford bowling. If you can't afford bowling, you probably don't need to own a business. People make friends outside of work. People want to know it's fun. It's exciting. You can afford Bisquick. Make your people pancakes. The more you cook, the more you're showing up from servant leadership. Do fun stuff, dude. We volunteer to save the, we pack kids for the hungry children. Today I'm headed to Make A Wish Foundation. We raised, I think like 190, 000 bottles of water for the homeless. We paint the YMCA, we plant trees. Now, people might say, yeah, my people don't want to do that, but it's also a fun experience if they could get behind the good cause. And it's a way for them to bond and get to know each other. When they come in, they stay at the same apartments and they got a roommate. And they get to know those people. I feel like doing things outside of work, getting the family involved are some of the easiest low hanging fruit of how to build a community and a culture. I was at Annie Elliot's event. I know a lot of people don't like them. I really don't care, but the first four letters of culture are cult. And cults could be a good thing. If you're like, don't cheat on your wife, be there for your family. When you're there with your family, be all there become a better person. And that means working on you first. Eat the right food, get the right sleep, drink enough water, make good decisions. That's okay to create an environment like that. And I just feel like it's a leader's, obligation to do those things. And here's the coolest thing guys, is we make a lot of money. I'm not going to be shy about it. We're extra profitable. I could take the guys to Mexico. I didn't start this way. I could do a pinnacle trip and by the way, vendors pay for a lot of our stuff. Because we've, we're big enough and we do everything we say we're going to do that they're like, we want to know your guys more. Like, why not pull your vendors in and say, would you come in and meet our guys and show us where your best product mix is? Show us where you guys make the most profit. Give them a little TLC and pick up the bill for the breakfast. Get to know our people more, even if you got three guys. With three guys, they can spend quality time, educate them more. And you'd be surprised. Most people don't even want to ask. Most business owners are like, we're not big enough yet. They got every reason why they're not going to they don't even know who we are really. Have you ever asked, have you ever called them and built a relationship with your vendors because they'll pick up a lot of the tab for a lot of the stuff.
Evan Hoffman:What's the worst they can say?
Thaddeus Tondu:No.
Tommy Mello:Worst thing I can say is no. But I tell you what I get a nose all the time. No, it doesn't mean no. It's a speed bump. Yeah. It's you got to reframe it.
Evan Hoffman:Yeah.
Tommy Mello:You got to reframe it and say, guys, listen, I'll tell you guys what? Pick up this breakfast, pick up this lunch, take our guys to a comedy show. And here's one thing. When they respect you, they'll start selling your products. They'll start believing in your company more and you show us the product mix that you want us to sell that'll make the company money that'll make you guys more money. Give us a chance. Cause we're three now. We'll be 10 next year. We'll be 20. Let's get the foundation set. Cause we are small. We're more limber. We're a speed boat. We can ship faster. You build, you show them how great of a vendor you are. They're going to sell your products only because no other vendors doing what you guys are willing to do. And it's really good because you're planning a seat early. And so I just reframed it in a way that they're like, shoot, we got budgets for this. We could do that. We can put it on the expense card.
Evan Hoffman:No,
Tommy Mello:a
Evan Hoffman:hundred percent. It's well, it comes back to what you said earlier, but always be recruiting, right? It's not just something that you do just to bring someone in. It doesn't stop at the hire, right? It's something that you continue to do throughout the process. You're always recruiting to get them even more bought into the culture, even more bought into the team, more bought into the vision. And then can we continue to expand them and grow them up the org chart. You did mention the org chart. When you say to do that exercise and layout that team and that, is it the vision of what our team is going to be that you're saying to do? Or is it the team currently?
Tommy Mello:No. When you're smaller, you're probably wearing a lot of hats. You might be involved with payroll and better relations. So you might even be the one coaching the CSRs. And what you've got to do is circle the ones. Number one, if you're a KPI driven company and you actually have factual KPIs, If you're not passionate about the call center, it's a chore. So figure out what it would take to get someone badass in that role and take that off your plate. Cause what, like you guys said earlier, do what you love. So when you look at an org chart, you say these two things are critical. I'm going to hire these two things first. Cause I love sales training. I love marketing. Those things fall under me. I walk into work and don't feel like I'm going to work. You know what I mean? So I really don't like dealing with lawyers at all. Like I hate it. got a couple of guys at the company that don't mind it. And they got a really professional relationship. I'm just a blue collar guy. I got an MBA, but that doesn't mean shit. I don't like those role. I don't like, I've never really loved lawyers. I don't like the lawsuits and the frivolous shit. They get, it's a necessary evil, but sometimes we're just looking at, are we allowed to do this or not? Is this, are we allowed to pay this way? We'll get into performance pay. But I just don't, you go to them and they're like, yeah, we'll get back to you in a month. We got to do our research. I'm like, no, you just want to bill me. You should have the fricking answer. This is we're not the first one to ask these questions. You're a payroll expert. You're a lawyer. It's they've got the answers. They just want to bill you more. So I just don't deal it.
Thaddeus Tondu:I want to shift into something that I think a lot of people might miss this and I don't know what the length of time is for you guys, from the second that you make an offer to the second that they start with you. There's a gap in between that. A lot of times when people start, when they accept an offer, they're leaving a position, they're starting a new one, or, they're unemployed now, starting a new job. After they accept an offer, they go through like an offers remorse sort of a thing where they're like, Oh shit, did I actually make the right choice? Did I decide to go with the right company? Is this the right move for me and my family, is this the right move for everything. And they start questioning things after that offer, usually not the day of, but like a day after. And so in that gap between the time that you guys make the offer to the time they come down to Phoenix to be able to do their training, do you guys do anything in there to be able to bridge that?
Tommy Mello:So typically what's the final call in a market's the market manager. And typically what we do is we do a ride along before we do an offer letter. So we let them, we try it before we buy it and they get the date before they get married. And we don't just tell them like, this is this is to see if we like you, we say, look, we want to give you the day in life of a tech or the day in life of a CSR. Like when I hired our president, he spent six months as a 1099 to see, he came in as a consultant, even though we knew he won't, we wanted, we both wanted it, the position we decided it was better off to see if we'll, both of us said we were going to do what we said we were going to do. And we meshed well together. And I think that's a great thing to do. Is at least some ride alongs. Let's see if you love this. And then after that, usually the market manager is following up with them. And what I really highly recommend is that you take them and their wife out to dinner and that throughout that little window, I get to know them and make sure they're dreaming big enough and make sure here's one thing I learned from Dave Ramsey. Make sure there's mutual respect at home. Make sure that the guy's not a douchebag to his wife and make sure she's not shitting on him at dinner. Because if there's no love at home you're always having to get rid of that baggage every morning and every night. It's so much harder to be successful. If you're in a really toxic relationship and you could tell by the little things that happen at dinner, just the tone, just the way they order food, just watching them. If she's behind and mostly technicians are men. So I say this if she's behind him and she's listen, I want a better life for us. And that's why we chose you. We did this decision together and we've got big goals, big dreams. And I'm behind him 110 percent that I'm okay with him coming to Phoenix for a month. I'm okay with him doing more ride alongs and getting polished in the process. Because we're going for that number one spot. He's gonna, I married a winner and he's gonna win and he's gonna have your back and I hope you have our back and that's where we come in and we tell them we are gonna have your back. We're gonna be there at good and bad times. We're gonna, we're working on more than just a 401k and PTO. We're working on trips and, acknowledgement and stature and getting involved in your life to the point that you're willing to let us get involved in it. The biggest thing is financial competence. Most of the people that come on when they start making this money, they don't know what to do with it. They don't know, they tend to buy nicer cars. They tend to blow it on boats and Harleys. And so that side of it, if you could show that I've got several technicians with three houses plus, I want every single person in the company to learn financial stability, delayed gratification. And what their future self needs to survive. And if we do that, we're not just changing a company. We're not just changing, we're changing the world. And that's the way I look at it. And we've got to be very clear with this messaging.
Evan Hoffman:Yeah. The ripple effect that it carries, and especially because a lot of, at least a lot of the people that I've talked to that have gotten into the trades and made life changing money. It's not just impacted them. It's impacted their entire family history. They were, to use Ed Milet's term, they were the one that changed everything for that family's legacy. I actually, I remember seeing you standing at the back of the room when Ed was talking at at the Profit Rocket event and you were sharing a moment with someone there and it was, it was a powerful scene. I love the taking a spouse to dinner. That's fantastic. Are you doing that with every single position that you're bringing into the team or is it specific ones that you know?
Tommy Mello:That I've actually written down to make an SOP. We do that a lot with technicians and installers, right? And the reason why I got a big heart for tech because I was a technician for seven years, even though I own the company. And some of the times, and this is bad leadership. This is what I look in the mirror and I'm very clear. And I'm exposing this to the world that I need to become a better leader. I know I need to do a better job. I wish I could tell you guys, man, I'm everything. I'm a 10 out of 10, but I'm not. And I need to do a better job with CSRs and dispatchers and showing more love and even a better job with installers. But I sit there in a room, I could get my technician super pumped. Dude, I talked to them. They know I was them. We've got the same mentality, but when I get in and people aren't making eye contact with me, like installers are, they like to do their job. They're very good at it and they're professional and they show up on time and they know what their day looks like. And they go, but I'm like, come on, wake up. So I got to do a better job with with that for sure. And I got a lot to work on guys. I take the good with the bad. I accept the trophies, but I accept all the bad stuff that happens too. And it's a leadership. It comes from the top down and I got only one person to blame. No one else but the more I work on me, the better the company does. I'll tell you that. And I've got a lot of work to do. I've got a lot of personal coaches. I'm getting coaching for my executive team. I'm going, I just was at Morris Jenkins last week with five of my executives. We're going to be traveling, going to a major shop every three months because we're still learning. I don't have it all figured out. We're going into uncharted territory and I'm learning from everybody still. And the day I stop is the day this company stops growing and I don't deserve this position anymore.
Evan Hoffman:Nothing feels like success.
Thaddeus Tondu:And it's also a good self realization because sometimes people in leaders think I know it all, I have all the answers, but there's a self realization that you don't. I'm actually curious, what is the, you as a leader, what is the, and I know you mentioned okay, CSRs and showing them the love, but you as an individual, you as a leader, what is the biggest thing that you are working on that you need to work on in the moment?
Tommy Mello:I used to know everybody. I used to have a relationship with every single person that worked here. It was a lot easier than it was 50 I met 10 people that came up to me and called me Mr. Mello last week that I have no idea who they are, what their roles are. And I was embarrassed because I do all the orientations for techs and installers. So we're putting some software together that talks to the payroll system that I have their face, what they like to do. Cool. What their birthdays are, what their anniversaries are, what their kids names are and I'm going to study that. And the only way I know how to do this is not try to study a bunch of people in the payroll system, but actually send out questionnaires and thoughtful things to get them to fill it out and study that. And make sure I'm acknowledging everybody. And make sure I'm aware when someone starts and I can at least send out a message. I might not be able to have a one hour one on one with everybody, but I should be able to send them a handwritten card and say, I'm really proud that they joined us. But the only way I know how to do this is to create a system and a system's not created overnight. So we're putting this into software because I think software is the ultimate advantage. So that's the one big thing that I know I need to do is be more involved. I think Jack Welch, when he walked on the line at you figured out people's names and asked them what was going good. What wasn't going good, what their thoughts are, how their family's doing. So that's something I'm really focused on. And then, if you ask what I'm doing as a CEO is I'm a hundred percent putting time into building a bigger funnel for talent. Because I think it's who, not how. I think it's getting the right people on the bus, Jim Collins would say. I'm gonna stack the deck. It's already been stacked pretty well. I give us a 10. I give most companies a 1 out of 10, literally. We got work to do? Man, I got more work to do. I thought it was gonna be easier. It's not. It's, the systems are more complex. It's good problems to have. Shit, our profits through the roof. Our growth is through the roof. Our acquisitions are through the roof. We're going to start greenfielding again in Q1 of next year. I'm not complaining. I'm just doing stuff. And my CFO called me. He goes, dude, what's gotten into you? You're on fire. I've never seen you this focused. And I'm like, man, I got big goals. And I'm like, I got to move quickly. And. I'm not nice when I got this, when I got this weight on my shoulders, I'm just like, I'm sprinting now and I'm making quick decisions. I'm back. Even though this company is 800 plus, it'll be a thousand by the end of October. I'm turning it back into a speedboat because that's where I do the best is in a speedboat, not a big yacht or a big ship. I need to make decisions quick and pivot and move, service side, 80 percent of their clientele is going downward. This is the time that operators and true great companies win big. When everybody starts folding and they start going out of business, they start cutting their marketing and getting rid of people. This is my best. You throw me between a rock and a hard spot. We're not going to win. We're going to crush. Ray Kroc said, when your enemies are drowning, stick a hose in their mouth. We got lots of hoses.
Thaddeus Tondu:And that goes back to what I opened up the show with, is that it's not the economy. It's not the calls. It's bad decisions or the lack of action, lack of an actual decision, lack of movement forward and making the right calls.
Tommy Mello:Here's the deal. What's the first thing in a 12 step process if you go to AA? And I've never been through a formal process, but I know it's admitting that you're the problem. admitting you have a problem. If you never admit that there's an issue and you're it, it starts with you, then nothing's going to get done. If you're blaming everybody else but yourself, the economy the Ukraine war, the Kamala, Trump's the orange man, whatever it is, if you don't admit you're the issue, if you say inflation has screwed us up and everyone's got a low credit score, so no one's using financing anymore. It was easy to make money through COVID. It was so easy. And now people are wondering, what am I going to do? The leads? Why do you want more leads? Your hours on Google say nine to five Monday through Friday. You're not even open. No one knows you're open. You don't have good reviews. You're Indeed in Glassdoor look like shit. You drive an old vehicles that are falling apart. No technician wants to work for you because the car's broken down every, one week out of a quarter. You, in your meetings, you're so negative instead of uplifting. And you wonder why your business isn't scaling? What's your booking rate? If it's not 94%, I don't want to hear you need more leads. What's your conversion rate? It better be above 80. A new equipment, it better be above 65. And if it's not, then work on yourself and admit you've got a problem within your four walls. Everybody's blaming marketing and blaming the economy and blaming everything else, except for them. Look at you, look long and take your shirt off and look in the mirror. And I'm not saying examine your body, but just be completely transparent with yourself and say, am I the best person? Can you imagine you die and you're in heaven and Jesus comes out and he says, Hey, Tommy, I wanted to show you who you were supposed to be. This is, when I made you, this is who I intended you to be. And you meet this person happy, smiling, in shape, excited about the world, great leader, great family, hot girlfriend, hot wife. And you're like, man, I really, I'm not who I was supposed to be. And until you become that person and really start thinking about who you need to become, when the gas or the mask comes out with oxygen, they say, put it on yourself before you help out your kids, your infants, anybody else. Cause if you're not able to help yourself first, you're not going to help anybody else. And I think a lot of people they tend to point the finger at everybody else. You did all the hiring. You are the one that said this person could come on. You are the one that built the SOPs. You are the one that literally you think because you took a chance and you have a business that everybody owes you. Leaders eat last. They lead from up front. And if you didn't know that going into business, then get the hell out of business. You don't deserve to be here. This is not a little boy's league. If you think this is easy, I'm an overnight success of two decades. And I fail a lot. I fail four and I get lucky. I'm the luckiest dude that ever lived. I think I am, I've been in the right place at the right time all the time, but I'm a big fan of whether you call it karma, divine intervention or whatever, but if I treat people right, I'm transparent. I try to uplift them. I try to be a positive influence in their life. I find that good things keep happening to me.
Thaddeus Tondu:Fired Tommy up right there. You gotta be, do you gotta be good to be lucky or do you gotta be lucky to be good? And it's, the answer's both. Some people look at that and they're like, are trying to be so lucky. No, it's fucking hard work.
Evan Hoffman:And are you trying to win the game? Three, one, make three right decisions to one wrong one. Or you trying to win one 20 to one 14? The more shots that you take the higher, the likelihood is that you're going to find that luck.
Tommy Mello:Well, Alex Hormozi in his book, A Hundred Million Offers. He's got this quote in the beginning about it Jeff Bezos. And in baseball, if you hit a home run with bases loaded, it's four RBIs. But unlike baseball, when you make a home run in business, you could get 10, 000 RBIs. And what's a good. Batting average in baseball. If you're 300, that's three out of 10. That's world class. But do you think the person goes, I struck out. So now I'm never going to go at bat again. So many people are like, it's not the right timing. You don't understand. We got to start laying off. Like dude, if Kamala or Trump win, I'm fricking winning big. I don't care who wins. I don't care about wars. I don't care about anything. I do for the good of humanity, trust me, like I care about a lot of things, but it's not going to affect the business because I'll outwork, I'll outperform, I'll out delegate. I just, it's we've got enough great people here that we're going to get through anything and we're going to come out on top, there's a lot of companies getting into garage doors. I'm like, good, bring it. Good luck. Maybe you'll sell to us. If you're lucky. I've always helped my garage door. You're more than welcome. Any garage door company. Listen to this, come to a one. I'll show you everything we've got. I'll show you how we do it. I'm not afraid that you're going to, I hope you rip off and duplicate.
Thaddeus Tondu:tommymello.com/shop. Hit that up. He does free shop tours. So come check it out.
Tommy Mello:Anybody come to the shop tour. If you're in pest control, if you're a mechanic, if you're a realtor, I don't care. Because I love to brag on the team. I'm not giving you a glorified sales. Anybody that's come to my shop tours, I'm not selling anything. I'm here bragging on my team and showing them all the mistakes I've made so they don't make the same ones. Cause I know, most likely there will be a day that they're gonna read a book that changed their lives. And for some reason they're gonna say, I gotta send this to Tommy Mello. And that book will change my life too. All I ask is that if you learn something and you do something great, just keep me in mind if you come across something. Because I love to be shared with. I love it when people give me, or I love hearing success stories of, I was an alcoholic or I'd never seen my kids once at ballet or hockey practice. And now I'm their coach. That's better than money. That's better than records. once you hear that once, it's you need to do more of it. And it becomes like this, the servant leadership.
Thaddeus Tondu:And it's also time, right? If you talk about your culture and your values to be able to have a good work life balance, so your team members can enjoy their life and enjoy their family and enjoy their spouses and their kids and their events do you do the same for your business and for your life? Work life balance. I know one of the things you put in your questionnaires, that's one thing that you're really focusing on for you and your life too, is to be able to spend time with you and breathe more, have an actual good vacation and do what you need to do, right? There you go. Kenny Kenny Byrne, visit Tommy shop. Best decision you can ever make model our operation 10 X more made our operation 10 X more efficient, right? Those are the things when, right? You step, you stand on the shoulders of giants because if they've been there, done that, it's great. So speaking of failures and I do want to get into the performance pay because we did tell everybody we would talk about performance pay. So we were remiss if we've not, if we haven't, you probably came across some failures when it comes to doing performance pay in order to be able to dial in the system that you have now. Maybe you didn't, maybe you just learned from somebody else who's already doing it to be able to dial in your process. What are some of, Let's start with the mistakes first, because I always like having people talk about some of the mistakes that they've made. And then when it comes to performance pay, what are some of the mistakes you've made in putting that system into place? And then when And if you've made none because you've learned it from other people, what are some of the mistakes that other people have made in putting it in place?
Tommy Mello:So like I said I'm not good at a lot of things. One of the things that I'm not a master of, I work my way around it, but I'll tell you as I'm not very good at building pivot tables, I'm not very good at doing pro formas. I'm not a great bookkeeper. I don't really know it's pretty complex when you see some of the stuff we look at, so FP& A or going to Upwork or finding a great bookkeeper or a fractional CFO, somebody that could take your numbers of historical data and put that into a chart, a pivot table, really. And when you start playing with the numbers, Whether that's conversion rate, average ticket, more reviews, more if your CSR is higher booking rate, if you're a dispatcher, move up revenue, moving tomorrow and Wednesday's job into today. You got to look at what's going to make the company way more money. Obviously, if people don't quit, there's a lot of things if they recruit somebody. So you look at what things and you generally don't want more than three to five things, but you can look at historical data and say, if I was able to move this conversion rate up and the average ticket up, And have less call outs the same day because we lose high demand clients, whatever those things are, that'll impact the company the most. And what you say is, look, you put a one page route and say, this is where we're going to start. And you start with the one person I started. I used to do everybody at once saying we all figured it out. We whiteboarded it. It makes sense. And a lot of people get frustrated and, I helped a guy in Portland, a garage door company switched to performance pay. He lost every single technician within a month. Now he was able to rehire A plus players and he re axed his profitability the next month because now he had more money to offer. When he saw what was it capable per job. So what you got to understand is most people, the average American does not want to be on performance because they know they can't perform when you're on performance. You got to be competitive. You've got to be able to practice. You've got to be able to know how to win. One of our core values is aspire to be number one. And a lot of people just say I want to know what I'm going to get paid hourly people, I'll tell you this, hourly is for losers. It really is. It's saying I'm not worth much, I want to be able to predict what I make, I'm never going to get out of the projects and the hell hole that I'm in. If I work hard I can get time and a half. That's bullshit. That is seriously crap. That's not valuing myself. When you're in sales, and we're all in sales, you sell your wife, you sell your husband, you sell your kids every day to clean their room and become a better leader and become and have everything we do is sales, everything. Daniel Pink wrote a book to sell us human, everything. And when you're in sales, you want to know if I work harder and do the right things and get five star reviews and show up on I work hard to earn the client's trust And do the work for them. And I make offers. So I give options and I give all the options. Every time black, white, Cuban or Asian, gay, straight, young, old, doesn't matter. I'm giving the same options to everybody. Then you're winning and you win more. So when you're plotting all this out, say, how do I have people win, but win big? And then you find the one person that everybody looks up to. We're just going to call him John. You go, John, I'm going to work with you. We're going to sit at the table. We're going to start brainstorming. And here's what I'm going to do for you, John. I'm going to try this out for a month and let's just say the old way. You made more money. I'm going to pay you that the new way. If you make more money, I'm paying you that whichever's more each week, I'm paying you more. And I am going to, I'm going to flex it a little bit. I'm going to change stuff around. We're going to, we're going to work through this together. And no matter what, I might be off and I might have to pay you double one week. That's great. Just know that if I make a mistake, I want you to try to beat the system, find all the holes, cheat the system if you can. And once you're bought in, and I'm bought in, and I'm making more money, you're making more money, the company's making more money, everyone's happy, then I want, we're going to go print a big check out, and I'm going to give you a big check at the front of the team meeting, and you're going to say it took three months. But I got to tell you guys, I'm making a killing. We worked it out. We figured this out and the company's doing great too, which means we're going to put more money into marketing. We're going to have better parts. We're going to have better trucks. And here's how much money I made. And everyone's going to ask them, what happened? How's it going? And he's got to be the leader to be able to show up to them and say, trust me guys. We worked through this. It's amazing. Here's three things I've learned is you got to show up on time. You got to really do whatever those three things are. And they become the ambassador of the program. And then I would roll it out. We're in 44 markets. So I'd roll it out. one guy, then 10 guys, then the market, then get the markets buy in and then roll it out to five markets and then roll it out company. So depending on the size of your company, you want to have an ambassador of the program. And I've made a lot of mistakes, man. I made a mistake. A big mistake with performance pay is paying people to do what their job is. There's certain things that what we've learned, and this is important for California and New York and areas around Illinois and Seattle. You've got to pay minimum wage plus time and a half no matter what. So you got to keep track of hours. No one can fall below that or you're breaking the law. So whatever your CRM is, you got to make sure that their performance pay is more than what they would have made at minimum wage. But when you come up with a program, what we're, we've added is if you go above and beyond and your car is clean every morning and this, we bonus you the month. When you're able to put it into a bonus, that's earned, that's doing above and beyond. That means I never had a call out the same day. That means I'm recording every call on Rilla, every single call. And certain companies decide this is just mandatory, but you cannot say it's mandatory to not call out on a Monday. Everybody gets a sick day, but you could say, I'm going to bonus you more, but just, I don't bonus people for driving good. I fire them if they get in an accident or a speeding or go through stop signs. So be careful. You're not building your performance pay into just stuff that they should, Hey, I'm going to pay you more if you don't get a felony or flip off people at a stoplight. No, don't pay them more for doing their job and acting like a good human being. Pay them more for going above and beyond.
Thaddeus Tondu:So it's almost like finding out those baseline KPIs that you would have in your specific role and bonusing above those specific KPIs if they're going above and beyond it.
Tommy Mello:With dispatchers, You want to make sure to get in front of cancellations from high demand, really good clients. That means you got to manipulate the schedule a lot, right? You got to be looking at the schedule saying, I looked at Zillow, this is a new homeowner, but the house is 12 years old. The air conditioning unit is 12 years old. A fan blow or mo motors out, it sounds like, whatever. I don't know a lot about hvac, but they wanna get that one on today. Versus a tuneup or versus a thermostat malfunction maybe, or a, they gotta understand prioritization. And their pay is affected to not look, get cancellations on priority one jobs. And those are the type of things, each role, you gotta think about what's going to impact the company in a positive way. And here's the coolest thing, don't ever put a ceiling on how much somebody could make. If somebody recruited you 20 all stars a month, they could easily make 300 grand just on that. Wouldn't really matter, would it? If they became so good at it. I think some of the times the owners and some of the management are like, man, this guy's making more than me. This is BS. You could have that role. Like when they're that sales position, especially should never have a ceiling. And hopefully you've got an equity incentive program for your team. We pull it all the way down to the technician installer level. It's where you could earn equity in the company.
Evan Hoffman:I wanted to ask about that, but I'm also curious, do you believe in having an unbalanced commission structure where, and this was something that you mentioned Alex Hormozi, he talks about this a couple of weeks ago. Where he would have it, where, at this level you were making a 5% commission, but if you ended up hitting this level, now you got a 15 or a 10% commission or this level and so on and so forth. Up until the top where it was, it wasn't an incremental jump. It was an exponential jump for those top performers to be able to make more money and they got a higher commission. Do you believe in having a hierarchical structure like that when it comes to commission earning and bonus earning, or do you keep it even all the way up the chain.
Tommy Mello:No, we've got junior tech, senior tech, and I believe that your top 20 percent want to eat more. I think a lot of the problem is that I learned this from Leland. You could add products pretty easily. I could add many splits in the garage pretty easily. I could add hot water heaters that are in the garage. I could add water softeners. I could add storage. I could add EV chargers. So part of my failure has been not adding stuff that we could sell pretty easily. I could add insulation in the ceiling in the garage when we do an insulated door. I could add front doors. I could add gates. I don't want to add too many things. I don't want to make sure we do it right. And there's a department dedicated, but making sure the top 20 percent get to eat more because they're the hungriest. I think the biggest problem I have with most companies is they're so focused on the next 80. Now you got to help bring those 80 up. Don't get me wrong. You, sometimes it's a leadership issue. A great coach could make a C player and a player. But yeah, I do believe in different structures and I do believe in different bonuses and gamification and we'll give away a lot of stuff. I don't give away things on selling rollers. I do stuff that's like really hard that no one's selling. I'm trying to build a culture of doing something different, of getting in the habit of doing this. So I'll have, and unfortunately for technicians, they could only see the next week or two. They don't look at a three month competition the same because if they know they're out, they stop trying. So you got to have short competitions. Competition is a great thing. I learned a lot from Paul Kelly about that. But yeah, having a tiered approach, a lot of times the guys at the top go, what else can I do? I'm already at the top. So bringing out a different trade is the next step, I think. And that's what's going to be scary. Because if I bring out one other product, One other product, I will double my EBITDA if I close 5%. One other product, I double the EBITDA. And we're going to hit just under 70 million of EBITDA.
Evan Hoffman:How do you keep the bonuses simple? This is something that Jocko Willink talks about in one of his books, and he's going to be on your stage next month, which is really exciting.
Tommy Mello:Al Levi told me that if you can't go to your wife and explain the way you get paid very simply, You shouldn't have to pull out a TA 83 calculator and get a pad of paper out and do quadratic formulas. It should be very clear. And this is where I feel like scorecards really help. And we built our own custom scorecard to know where you're at all times. You can see who's number one at any KPI and it's very transparent. There shouldn't be like, I got to talk to my boss to figure out what I made this week. You should be able to do the calculation right after you leave the job. And I think a lot of times, but this is where I don't believe you could have performance play without great technology. You know, I, I just don't believe because there's, you screw up, if you're on an Excel sheet, data entry, like it's gotta be an API that just doesn't, software doesn't screw up when it's done correctly. Now, if you don't enter the part correctly, there's things that could happen. So you gotta have a data integrity team, but I'm a big fan of just, you gotta make sure what you gotta do is check the calculations thousands of times to make sure it's right. And once it's right, you never do performance pay if you don't have accurate KPIs. If you don't really, and you don't have checks and balances to make sure the dispatcher and the CSRs are putting in the data right. And you're not making sure, and the parts are being insolved. And there's someone going after one out of 10 technicians checking that the work was completed it and we use the parts we set. And there's great track of inventory. Like performance pay is not for somebody that doesn't have it. They don't know what's going on in their company. They're not quite sure how to do payroll. They don't have any financial planning and analysis. Like I think performance pay is an evolution. And the simpler you make it straight commission's fine. And then paying minimums and maybe a hybrid between hourly. I don't think a hybrid between hourly is bad, but what I'll tell you is I think a lot of people, they overcomplicate it. The best advice I could give you is Housecall Pro Service Fusion Service Titan, Jobber, whatever it might be, use that CRM the way it was designed to be used. ServiceTitan spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it, hundreds of millions on R& D, and of course, we rigged it up. We MacGyvered the crap out of it in the beginning to make it work for garage doors. But recently, we did a complete price book redo, and we're using the system that it was designed to do. And all of a sudden, it could do so much more. People are like, ServiceTitan. Yeah, because you've got 80 different ways you're working around the system. And it's like saying like QuickBooks, I'm going to get a cash versus accrual. Like I look at these things and I'm like, man, you don't have any, your call center data is so far off. Like, how could you even bonus? If I don't trust you that you're giving me the real results, I'm quitting. Especially if my pay, my family's life is dedicated to you figure out the right numbers. And every time I come to you, you're wrong. don't do it. Do whatever is the clearest way to pay people the right way. But as the company matures, you could get a little bit more sophisticated and the software could do more. And it's a very scary thing because most people don't even know how to log in. They don't know how to type. They hate computers. And I don't think those companies are going to last, not with AI and machine learning and where the world's going. I heard that NVIDIA is probably going to get a 300 billion tax subsidy. To build more chips, more machines. Cause I think whoever's going to be the world dominator is going to have the most sophisticated AI and be way ahead of the curve. So you're not thinking about machines, figuring out the pay and APIs and web hooks and like how it's quantified, this is where getting a great CRM and going to a place like Pantheon and being around the people that are doing it and paying for coaching and getting the right person. There's software out there. That automatically does it. And even if you've got to pull it out of service, just make sure the data is correct. And don't overcomplicate it in the beginning. And I always say no more than five things our scorecards are built off of callback ratio. How many five star reviews? What's your average review? It's conversion rate, average ticket, turnover rate. And then we got to, we added one. How many times did you get pre financing? And that kind of leads to conversion rate and average ticket. So that's all.
Evan Hoffman:So that's your technician one. What about CSR?
Tommy Mello:CSR's only job is to book the phone call and it's supposed to get the data correct. And we're actually building it to where we watch their mouse move. And we're collecting the right information. How old's the unit? How many garage doors do you have? Grabbing the right information. Is it street versus avenue? Because how Dispatch Pro and how the machine learns is grabbing the right data and actually probing to get the right data. You might have to go, a lot of people don't know exactly the age. A lot of times they don't know, they might say, I got two garage doors, but it's a two car garage or they might say, you just got to make sure the data is accurate. So it's all about getting the right information. over to the dispatchers and making sure the technicians are set up because we dispatch for dollars. The best companies in the world, that's all they do. Just if you had if you guys had Matthew McConaughey that called you up for an HVAC, you'd probably want your top technician to go out there and get a video testimony. We want to make sure when we're getting the right clients, we're sending out the right person.
Thaddeus Tondu:I like Matthew McConaughey. That was a great book too. I listened to it on audible. Phenomenal to listen to it. Was it Green? Yeah, something like that. Green Lights? Green Lights. That's what it was. Green Lights. Yeah. I would highly recommend if you haven't, if you haven't read read or listened to it, to listen to it on audible because him narrating it, man, just, So soothing to the ears. You can hear him laugh when he's telling some of the stories. It's it's just like David Goggins can't hurt me. Like I he anecdotes a lot of stuff in that. So great book to listen to. Tommy, I know that you've got to go here fairly shortly. So we'll wrap things up. Appreciate you coming on. I know that you with your schedule and you're coming up, obviously quite a bit of things. A couple of things that I want to do drop. If you want to check out their website, A1Garage. com is their site. He also has a newsletter as well, an email newsletter, tommymello.com/news. By the way, we'll put these all in the show notes for after. We've alluded to it a little bit as well as he has his home service freedom event coming up in San Diego, get. homeservicefreedom.com/freedom-event-2024.
Tommy Mello:Frefreedomevent.com an easier way, but this is tracking. I just want you guys to know I'm not an idiot. I don't make these really complicated. Like I'm like, make it shorter. Just call it Freedom. I couldn't buy freedom.com, but that looks, yeah. Just it'll be in the show.
Thaddeus Tondu:Freedom. We'll just do this. I just typed it out. There we go. We'll switch to, there we go freedomevent.com redirects to that same URL. That's why I like tommymello.com/shop actually, you can actually see the end of the URLs longer than before. I'm also a big fan of that. Check out their event. It's going to be a good time.
Evan Hoffman:Why
Thaddeus Tondu:don't we, why don't
Evan Hoffman:we take some time here, Tommy, tell us about the event. Let people know what they can look forward to. You've got an incredible lineup of speakers Titans in the industry. across a variety of different home service verticals. What can people expect to get out of the event?
Tommy Mello:Yeah, it's pretty special to me. You guys probably know that these events are not a profit center by any means. It's really about networking with the right people. Tom Howard is a great buddy of mine. Darius Livers. Ellen Rohr taught me about finances. Howard Partridge, Steve Sims, Jocko Willick about discipline. But I got Ken Goodrich, Leland Smith
Evan Hoffman:Paul Kelly.
Tommy Mello:Just, I go on and on with the people that, that decided to come to this event. And what I'll tell you is I've studied events now for a while. Yeah, Paul Kelly's going to be there. Chad Peterman and Aaron Gaynor, my boys. Ishmael of course will be there. For me, it's really about not just tactical and systems. A lot of it has to do with becoming the best person and living a life of fulfillment. Like I think family is number one, obviously finance and fitness. And I do think you, you got to have faith is one of the big fours. And, I want to share a lot. I'm going to be pretty vulnerable. We've got some good things we're going to discuss with marketing. We're going to discuss performance pay. We're going to discuss the things that most places don't talk about. It's like drinking out of a firehose. The main thing that I care about is that you come there with an open mind and a network, because most of the people that come to these events, man, if they got an open mind and an open heart, they change very quickly. They decide when they leave that things are going to change and they're, they come out more disciplined and they come out with they don't just want to change their business. They want to change everybody in their businesses lives. They want to change their client's life. They want to help out their vendors. More importantly, they want to spend more time with their family, become a better mother and a better father. And they want to become a better leader and they want to show up to their parents in a bigger way and help give them the dreams that they might've not been able to live when they were younger. That's a lot and it's, I never would go into an event, not saying I want to deliver all these things. And, Jim hates it when I say this, but if you come to this event and you're a couple of days in and say, this is garbage, we'll just give you your money back. I don't, I think San Diego, September 25th is a spot to be. It's beautiful. And I plan on overing over-delivering. I really take it personal. If I don't do what I say I'm gonna do, so I think this is gonna be world class, believe it or not. I'm only speaking for about an hour and a half at the whole event. That's how crunch time we have it. And I want people to have fun. I want people to bring other people. When I went to Le Leland's place and when I went to Paul Kelly's and spent time with Ken Goodrich and went out to Keegan's and just was in Morris Jenkins. I learned really quickly that I can't be the only one doing this. You gotta bring the team and get the fire burning in everybody. And this isn't just a pitch to sell more tickets, it's get the leaders to come here and see the vision that you're trying to bring back and have them decide. One of the biggest mistakes is I was always The executor, I was the decider and no one would get behind me. But when everybody's behind you and they see what you're trying to do and it's their decision as well, you move forward 10 times faster. And I think the problem is as people go back and they get hit in the side of the face, when they go back to work, there's fires to put out. And they lose the edge because their team doesn't know what they've learned. So that's the deal, man. really praying to God that we change lives, that people decide they're worth more when they leave, it's a mix of Tony Robbins, Service Titan, it's everything. It's like. All the people that I built this company and I've learned from are going to be, and I just promise you that I'm going to give everything my heart and soul into this event.
Evan Hoffman:It's,
Tommy Mello:and I'm
Evan Hoffman:glad you mentioned that last part too, about how it's easy to leave an event and have that let down afterwards. I've often heard the two worst days of an employee's life for Mondays and the day that the owner comes back from an event, because it's a fire hose. They're just it's constant, but the letdown of coming back and you're no longer in the room with a, just a different energy and being surrounded by people who are driven and have purpose and vision. One of the things you put out a video actually, was it, I think it was on Saturday. Talking about surrounding yourself with the best people and top quality people.
Tommy Mello:Yeah. I was at the breakfast table. I always say the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you figured out why you were born. And I'm hoping a lot of people could see the light when they come to this thing. And it's a lot more than just a successful business. Cause when I die, I don't want it to be in a room in a closed casket. I want to be outside. I want there to be people wearing the most colorful things in the world. And hopefully rejoicing that I'm in heaven and saying that he had a positive effect on my life. My buddy John Rowland wrote the book Giftology. He's 46, just passed away with four daughters. And I don't know, tomorrow's not promised. Tomorrow's not promised for my mom or dad, my sister, my niece and nephews. And listen, I don't only have so much time here and I'm not going to skip another decade and wake up and I'm going to enjoy the journey. And I want to share this and I got baptized about four months ago and it's not only about Jesus. I'm not going to try to push my religion on anybody. It's not my place to do that, but I'm going to share some of that and I'm going to share the journey and I'm really enjoying my life the most I ever have. And I had to go through a lot of stuff, man. I almost closed the company a couple of times. I had to close four markets in one day. I've had six technicians die. I had to write checks back from a home line of credit to the company. I had to give blood to get into a loan to even get this building. And it's not always been great, but it was worth it. And I hope people understand you're three feet from gold and hopefully they can understand that when they leave this place. This event in San Diego.
Evan Hoffman:Well
Tommy Mello:surround
Evan Hoffman:yourself, the people who are going to keep you motivated to continue to push through and persevere and get through those difficult times and hard times so.
Tommy Mello:This
Evan Hoffman:health journey,
Tommy Mello:man, my focus is like deadly now. Like I walk into a room and I know I'm worth it. And a lot of people don't think they're worth it, especially when you're a small company, you're trying to figure out what's going on. And you're like, I didn't graduate 10th grade and know everybody I ever loved has never been there for me. You'll find a, you'll find your home here. You'll find people just like you. And I think I'm worth it. And I couldn't say that my whole life. I didn't think I was worth it. And now I do. And hopefully people understand that when they come here, that if I could do it, I promise you I'm from Michigan. We had the church helped us out for Christmases. I wasn't anything special. If I could do it, you can too.
Thaddeus Tondu:Love that. Sounds like it's going to be a transformative event if people's hearts and minds are open for it. So definitely get your tickets at freedomevent.com. Tommy normally we ask our last question. I know you're coming up to your next your next engagement here. So it won't take much more of your time. I just want to say thank you for coming on. Thank you for dropping the knowledge as always. And just being a true downright awesome human being. So thank you so much.
Tommy Mello:Thank
Thaddeus Tondu:you guys.
Tommy Mello:I really appreciate this. And thank you for doing this for me. I know you guys didn't have to, and it means a lot to me.
Thaddeus Tondu:Nope.
Tommy Mello:Appreciate
Thaddeus Tondu:it. Thank you very much. And for our listeners. And until next time. Well, That's a wrap on another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. Before you go, two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed. The other thing, if you took one tiny bit of information out of this show, no matter how big, no matter how small, all we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it. That's all one person. So they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Until next time. Cheers.