Tommy Mello From A1 Garage Door Discusses His Book - ELEVATE With Jim Klauck

A friend of Jim Klauck,  Tommy Mello, founder of A1 Garage Door Service joins Jim today on this episode of Bring On Success.

Tommy's latest book - ELEVATE was released this past week and is available with this link - Tommy wrote the book ELEVATE : Build a Business Where Everybody Wins - ELEVATE.

This book will change the lives of many home service business owners.  On this episode, Tommy tells stories of how he has built a $200,000,000 home service company through elevating his team!

Enjoy!

Here’s a fraction of what you’ll learn from Tommy's book:

 

✅ The structure to Elevate your team and build a company that runs by itself. In their best day they sold $512,000 and Tommy wasn't even there.

 

✅ Why most advice about Culture sucks, and the right way to build a culture of A-players for your company. Tommy has 700+ employees in 19 states, and his company’s retention rate is through the roof.

 

✅ How to create a magnet for talent, so you'll have the best employees begging to work for you. Last month Tommy hired 50 new technicians.

 

Go get your copy now at:

 

➡️ https://book.elevateandwin.com/jimklauck

 

Podcast Episode Transcription:

 

My friend Tommy Mello is joining me here on the bring on success show hey Tommy how are you good Jim pleasure to be here I always love these intimate sessions with you yeah with you buddy you know it's great so just read your new book it just came out everybody's talking about it elevate the five pillars it's you know really kind of a simple you know simple idea the way you set up the book and it's all about elevating your team of course you have to build the team and you elevate them and you reward them talk a little bit about the book yeah so it's five pillars leadership culture marketing recruiting systems and it really is about elevating your mindset and everybody around you I just did a shop tour with three companies and I was just explaining what is your guys's goal what do you wanna be what's your dream what's your life look like when you hit what you want you gotta have a meeting of what you wanna hit you gotta have a mindset and the book is really about just elevating build the business where everybody wins the employees win the clients win I win my partners win the vendors win and the whole industry wins and I think that in life we're taught we went and lose I just had one of my buddies Jake that's out of California um he said I can't put your book down my mind is racing it won't stop I want to grow just not my business but the people involved and you know the message goes on and on it's a couple of paragraphs but it's the ultimate compliment when somebody reads it and it's not a big book I mean it's easy to digest yeah it's easy to Lev was in the book and he said Tommy I read your book 3 hours from soup to nuts and that's what I wanted to keep it simple concise I love I I've started to really enjoy writing books and this book took Me 2 years and I think I'm gonna get faster because coming up with systems but you know first I had to figure out what the biggest things that wanted people to take and those were the pillars and these five things are just going to they're going to blast people through their mindset and the walls they have no absolutely OK so in chapter two that's the first pillar it's leadership when you touch upon what people would find in that chapter yeah so I tell stories throughout the book Tom how wrote the foreword I think the main goal of the leadership is you gotta lead by example lead from up front you know that there's a lot of chapters in the book I just are finishing the audible and it's interesting I tell a story of just we recently partnered with me and what P is able to do to accompany a smaller company by putting in systems and getting the right leaders it's amazing I feel like everybody's getting tested right now to make sure they're at a level that could go to a billion dollars and it's about growth mindset and leaders look Simon cynic wrote a book leaders you'd last and leadership is not just about tracking KPI's it's about building relationships and it's about caring and that's really what this whole book is really all about yeah and then culture is a bad word marketing is my passion and marketing I look at as recruiting marketing is very similar people don't look at marketing the same way for recruiting and it's a shame yeah no this is important um you know the recruiting piece is critical and HR is generally the most expensive piece of any business labor there's no question no almost every business it's also often for the leader for the business owners and some managers the most difficult thing because people aren't machines they have emotions they're all different they're not all motivated by the same thing and that's where I believe a lot of businesses struggle is managing people because just because you're a good technician as an HVAC guy and you leave the company to start your own so now you so you were a tech and now you start your own business and now you're like well I'll still be a tech and I'll hire people and I'll manage people then you find out well I don't like to manage people and how come people don't listen to me and how come they're not like me and how come I tell them to stay at home because I can do it better you've done something amazing by finding hiring and training and then managing a great team yeah you know what I learned this from Levi he says you've got to recruit you got to Orient well recruit hire Orient train and then retain and I our levy share some stories in there about him and his dad working for his dad and what just the nightmare the business could be without systems and processes in place you know bringing on Jody with Brad and hire really helped me understand that I was going fishing in the same spot everybody else was so looking outside of the box to find people and understanding attribution models of creating framework for hiring that we could actually compare to people because we interviewed the exact same way and it's crazy 18 player could run circles around 3:00 or 4B players yeah when you started acquiring a players and giving them systems the business becomes fun and al always calls it vanilla because you know you're not firefighting there's everything's kind of running smoothly and every time I get to this point of vanilla I decided to grow and I grow and right now I'm buried because we're going I'm gonna 10X this business again and the framework of 10 Xing is into this book it's can't get rich wrote some stuff on the back I mean it's um Danny Kerr wrote some stuff in here with repeat a breakthrough Academy I mean that it took a few people um because it really hit the points I wanted to iterate in the book and it's really just a lot of great stories it explains you know there was a hockey game and during a power play they were way down 3 three or four enough and it's amazing what a team could pull through when you're when you when you got to get things done and you got the goals and you got the mindset correctly it's really that simple you know if you think about big machines like a McDonald's any big organization has to have systems and if you don't have systems you have chaos you have a bunch of employees running around managers putting fires out and when things are systematized and everyone knows what to do and how to do it there's just less chaos and fire you know I was on this show called American I forget the name of it was years ago American entrepreneur or something like that and I said where were you guys tell me an interesting story about where you guys were recently and the American dream I think the show was called and they said well we just got done with Kentucky fried chicken and KFC now and they open a new store every 11 hours and so my brain started just it went into a new phase of thinking where I was like what would the systems need to be you would have to have a blueprint for this building you'd have to have a leasing you know understanding how to buy the property the site plan the recruiting I mean all in 11 hours how robust that could be and then be able to get the marketing to keep that place slammed it's just absolutely phenomenal when you figure out you look at McDonald's or KFC or subway what they do and how they work their model I was watching something by ray crock about how he figured out you know you probably watched the movie with that came out but the founder figured out that that owning the property where the money's at and how do you grow with the franchise model works and it's never been my cup of tea but it works out well when it's in confined space I think restaurants are a lot easier than home service because we actually we've got people from East Coast to West Coast we gotta drive we gotta book the there's a lot more capacity planning bad city planning at KFC is do I have enough chicken you know and oil not exactly yeah no you're right and the franchise system is actually a great example of one that has to be perfect because the people who often buy a franchise are not necessarily entrepreneurial and they often you know buy a job so they have to plug themselves into a system that is foolproof systems you know people always ask there's that that that show called the prophet and it's Marcus Lemonis says people product process and people ask me which ones my favorite and I would say process because the process picks the people I mean you're right process to ride along forms the checks and balances the background checks the drug tests the driving record tests I mean it makes it simple you know we've got formulas that we know this how many people we need to interview to get the right person and it always changes over the course of 1/4 because we get better and better at putting materials out there that attract eight players but any players find work they're talking to people like gas stations they're asking for the HOA president they're out there to be an I meeting representing you they're recruiting for you at a restaurant it's amazing when you build a team but they need to have structure they need to have a a manual and a handbook and they need to understand well how to ask for PTO and they every single one of my employees has a scorecard and the manner stand where they're at and comparison to their team and we take the mean we let them know we have monthly one on ones and we're changing that student to buy every two weeks so I think the one thing too is I see a lot of businesses they criticize all the time and in public we'll say we need to be better at driving we need to do this we need to do this that's for a private conversation you should only be saying the great things in public because if it's always a drag to go to one of your meetings where you're just you're getting down on everybody it's not a good culture which is discussed in the book culture is key getting back to recruiting I like the way you recruit a lot of people look for people who are desperately looking for a job you don't necessarily do that with the system with Jody you are finding people who are generally employed but are looking for something better which is always a better hire 83% of people say they'd be willing to leave their current company they're at for a better opportunity the opportunity is not always money and that's what people think it's always about money well they you know they've been proven studies over $60,000 doesn't change much for an employee over 200,000 changes 0 um for the way employees will work and the way they'll do things so how do they feel valued and communicated with them do they have an opportunity to move up in the company and it might not always be money it might be a larger challenge and understanding what people are looking for should be when somebody interviews and they ask me a million questions see you all over the Internet studied your company I want to work for one I wanna career those are the best hires because they say exactly what they wanted Jody and I talked quite often and he's like Tommy you should see these people follow you on Instagram and on TikTok and on Facebook and LinkedIn and they know everything about you they want to work with you and I wish I had the personal relationships I had ten years ago with everybody but you know we're at 700 employees now and unfortunately I can't build the price spent 5 minutes with every person 3500 minutes there's not much that time in the year sure it works so I'm sure there's been a year yeah so like yeah so Tommy what you just said is what I tell people in terms of sales which is you don't want to sell to someone you want them to buy from you which means they're already interested in you so if someone contacts you on a form online or calls in and they say I want to purchase or I you know I need a new garage door I need a new air conditioning system they've already decided that they wanna hire you versus you doing a call saying hey can we come out and look at your garage that's right so it's a lot easier when that employee or the prospective employee says Oh yeah I've heard a lot of things about Tommy Mello and a one and it's a great place to work I hear and so they're already in the mindset of I can see myself there yeah you make a great point you know I used to do indoors for radio ads with that's right up your alley I mean I you know I used to do several people going back I mean there was different people but that that they have a loyal audience and someone could call in and they say hey I heard you going back I'm buying up the door from you come out I want to buy the best package I believe in you guys I believe in what you do and that's influencer marketing in a nutshell really and there there's a huge opportunity I mean look I'm still in The Beatles stages of this business I know I'm just getting started and it feels like a different company every year because of the growth and I'm more in the technology business style than the garage door industry but I got a lot of work to do and I'm still enjoying Mondays and that's my key of why I'm going to stay in this industry for another five years decade because I don't mind going to work on Mondays I love Saturdays but I also love Monday and I think a lot of people they when you start hating Mondays is when you might want to start looking at a new career yeah so for the business owner that doesn't like Mondays and they're really having trouble liking people in the office that's often when some people decide to sell to get out and um you know you hear about it all the time there's different reasons why a company may sell or an owner may sell and that's one of them you know the other there's too old they want to cash out but some people just go ahead yeah well most business owners they did the work they were the technician and they say I could do this good as long as I could keep the phone ringing and a lot of these businesses they had just enough success to stay in business but not enough to wanna cell because the business not might not be worth a lot So what I tell these people when you're getting into business you need to start thinking about a mindset of what people want to want to work for you your goal should be to take yourself out of the business unfortunately we don't have a lot of money when we start a business so we put in our sweat equity which is 2345 years of hard work and the biggest mistake that I commonly see is the owner and his wife are the owner and his or her husband will go out and they'll say we deserve this Harley we deserve this second house that's not making sense because you're not running it out and you take the thing that finally gave back to you and you divest it instead of putting it back in and this is the key to my success was area and I had the late gratification and I was able to make some tough choices to not divest into the one thing that I finally had enough money to make investments back into the business rather than divest and that's how you go it's amazing what people think that you've done in the year but underestimate what they get done in 5 and so that's why I think knowing what you want and having clear goals on how to get there they you should know exactly how many phone calls you need the three people three companies here I went through and it showed them how to budget and I said you want to make $10 million divide that simply by your average ticket that somebody calls you need you gotta divide that by your closing rate and your booking rate and then you just multiply that by your cost to acquire a customer and then that's how much your marketing budget is and then I could tell you exactly if you guys are running three to four calls a day how many technicians you can need so now you know exactly what you need to hit to be at a $10 million company is the example I use for them and I said now you guys understand in your mind exactly what the numbers need to be now I said let's tweak a few things let's raise your average take it a little bit let's increase your conversion rate by 5% and your booking rate by 6% your marketing budget literally just cut in half hmm sure and it's crazy how it works and it really is an easy formula once you do it in the plans but I just love business and I'm just getting started I really feel like so many people are like man you've made it you you've made a lot of money you're huge and I'm like no nothing I I just I feel like I'm just getting started like I dip my toe in the water it's all relative and you're an entrepreneur you love business you love the game and you can go down the list of people whether it's a Donald Trump or an Elon Musk or any of the greats they're all still every day doing it because that's what they do if they lost everything they get it all back real quick it's amazing how quickly they can get their billions back isn't it and so I'm just reading a book that that said if you were to give just disseminate all the money across equally the same top 10% would have the money back with them for years that's because that's the type of athlete they are that that's the athlete they are they're a player and they know how to do it they will never starve they will always be prosperous and it's because of who they are and understand everybody not everybody can be that player not everybody wants to be that player Tommy Mello is that player it's who he wants to be in it's relatively easy for you I'm not saying you don't work hard but it comes easy to you just like there are some natural athletes that can run circles around me it doesn't matter how much I train OK I was never going to be a Tom Brady he had a lot of innate qualities and he worked on a scale and he became arguably the best quarterback of all time or at least you know in recently he is he's definitely the best quarterback he's and he's got the proof the proof is in the pudding the Super bowl rings I mean alternately my biggest challenge and this is something I discussed with the president of the company yesterday for five hours is I need to make sure that I enable people and get the right leadership because unfortunately some of the things I'm working on now is super complex you know Elon Musk said he needed to be the rocket science artist for the first two years till he found the right person so I think one of the things I find in common about with billionaires and people living their best life and just because you're a billionaire doesn't mean you living your best life but typically you get a lot more choices money gives you choices uh they're the best networkers and I'm in this weird position in my life where there's three things that I'm kind of looking at that I'm looking at the networking and the speaking the podcasting the I'm putting a lot of content out and then the second piece is just the love and it just recognition of my internal customers that you can't put a price on and then the third one is the KPI's the things that run the business checks and balances systems processes manuals and so I'm just like i feel like sometimes it's too much time over here not enough time here maybe too much time here not enough there so that it's this balancing act then - It's not easy I'll tell you I’m my own worst critic and don't feel like I'm where I need to be but I also I just turned 40 and I'm happy where I'm at 40 I mean obviously I'd love to have kids and get married but um as far as my professional life and what I'm doing on a daily basis I enjoy my life and I think that not a lot of people would say that not a lot of people could say that I have fun because I'm the visionary and I get to work on the vision of where we're going and how we're going to get there and how to make a better situation than in the department and it's fun when it's working together and you know you're only as strong as your weakest link but if you get that weakly strong and start building those links out the system just starts perpetually growing and it's like it's pretty and pretty passionate about it and I know where I wanna go and uh building budgets doing financial quick checks getting involved in the finance side of the business I'm getting I would say I had an associate’s degree in understanding how money worked and he now I'm getting a master’s degree hopefully I get a doctorate and that's you know Ken Goodrich told me when you partner with a company that understands financial engineering you're going to be a freaking you are going to be a lethal weapon after the next two to three years and I'm like all right let's go so you have grown a tremendous amount since you started a one so let's step back in time let's go back to the beginning days when you are painting garage doors if I'm not mistaken that's what you were doing I could be wrong you're right and you had a partner back then and this wasn't that long ago I mean it it may seem that to you but people who've been around for a while they're like that wasn't all that long ago tell us about the conversion because when you look back at the Tommy Mello in the beginning of a one you weren't the same guy as you are today huge change yeah you know I think the fact was I was in the field every day although I never was a garage door technician for another company I was a technician within the company I would answer all the phone calls I was a CSR I'd do the payroll so I was in the payroll division that I would do the inventory so I learned every facet but back then I would say I never wanted to spend the money to get a great employee I was good at creating revenue not good at keeping it revenues for vanity province for sanity and over the course of the 10 years that I started I started reading I read the e-mail the album sales machine the richest man of Babylon and I just started to read and then I started to go visit very successful shops in HVAC because HVAC were the godfathers of home service they were getting the biggest multiples these the guys with the private planes in 1991 next door started it was called something 5000 and Frank Blau got together and they decided partner up with a lot of companies and really focus on understanding the budget and understanding manuals and building processes and hitting making six figures and still making 15% for the company so I studied these companies in I take away 10 gold Nuggets every time I visited and I just started going more and more where every week I was going visit any other company and I'd go apply it then go again go apply it then go again and then I got some really smart people to start working with me and I slowly task about the things that I hated because they loved it you know like I don't love you know a pivot table on an excel sheet but there's certain people that just they really love that doing that it's like makes them it fulfills them it's a bright it's a brain puzzle for them to do these things and I just I've built the business that the one that I enjoy you know it's so important to understand that too that not everyone is the same that's why we may put our people through you know a disk program to really learn who they are they may not know themselves you know are they D and an I or an S and that's helpful to everyone including management and so you're right there's different players on the team not everybody can be quarterback and not everyone should be and that everybody wants to be some people you know rather block some people rather you know receive you know it's true so there's just different players and you've done a great job Tommy and number one going back to what you're saying educating yourself you basically got on the phone or e-mail said may I come see your facility give me a tour I want to learn right can I fly here and do that and so you pushed hard to get to know other people and to see how they operate you made a lot of friends in the process then you bring it back home to a one and then you put the right people in the right place and it's it seems like magic and to some extent it is but most people can't do what you do because they get in their own way they don't know when to say it's not all about me yes today I can do it better than my hire but I've got to get these new hires training because we all think when we start a business and no one else can do it no one else can do it like me get out of the way I'll do it right I mean how many times have you done that and you know back in the day look don't even show up look when my partner would go out of town I love it because I would book the phone calls and run the jobs with our booking go up 25% and we make more money than ever and I didn't realize though how to coach people and also you gotta let people fall down and get back up like I did so in the interim you might lose some money in the course of taking yourself out of the business and people don't want to deal with that they've got beer and there's another thing is a lot of people are afraid to let go of the top guy because they depend on that revenue but sometimes you make those decisions now everybody comes up and they say man this guy serious he's not gonna let that guy roll his eyes at the meetings that guy was a pretty Madonna that always put the meetings down and always you know didn't show up on Fridays and they and you left this stuff faster than everybody else sees it and it's it could be the destruction of a company very quickly so don't let the uh inmates run the insane asylum yeah you know we hear about the disease or cancer running through an organization you need to cut it out cut out the cancer I I've spent a lot of time with many of your team members some of them I consider friends and it's truly remarkable um it's almost as if do you remember the show font well you wouldn't remember fantasy island but then they say the island came out back in the late 70s OK and it was about these people who would fly into this island and when they arrived the host Mr. Rourke would say smiles everybody smiles so when the guests came it looked like everything was a happy place and everything was utterly it's kind of like when you go to a one everyone's like that but they're not told to do it that's just who they are the harmony the family everyone wants to help everybody and it's almost unheard of I mean you're on the top point something percent of organizations in the country I think that have that type of culture in any industry and so I want to compliment you on that and it's just amazing I don't know what to say it's um like I said I feel like I could be better you know it it's can't get her sat down with me years ago and said you're growing yourself everyday outside of work you're spending the time and unfortunately you're gonna grow people because of how much time you're investing into yourself and I was sitting there you know obviously I took some chips off the table it was a significant amount of money and my buddy Keegan he's you know lots and lots of money and he's buying a private jet he's doing all these things he's got a beautiful house in Naples right on the ocean and he said you know Tommy I've got some pretty unfortunate news for you he goes your circle is about to get a lot smaller and he goes because everybody's gonna say you're changing but the problem that they don't understand is they're not changing they're not growing he goes so people say I've changed but the fact is it's because I'm reading every day I'm learning and I've got great mentors around me and he's accelerating his life I mean his neighbors are multi billionaire in these 2 hours a day together talking about stocks and investments and how they do that and as these people around you they don't grow unfortunately I think it's the people around you sometimes that are going at the pace and yes what it's like if you ever went golfing and you continue to get better you got a 20 handicap it's not as fun when you hit five your handicap becomes five the golf with those people at a 20 handicap they don't challenge you and it's not an insult but if they would apply the same practice and mindset to their golf game and try to get better with you then you know what do they say about high tide raises all boats or something like that but literally I think that's um it's it's it's unfortunate but it's very good for me to hear stuff like that because I want to be friends with everybody but there's certain people that I've literally had to try to pull out of the circle not best friends these guys are going to be my lifelong friends but I'm just saying it's certain people it's like success leaves clues everywhere you add up your closest five people you hang out with them your incomes usually within 20% of theirs and so it's I'm not choosing my friends based on income I'm not that's not who I am but obviously it's kind of nice to be able to say hey listen let's go to Australia it's 10 grand the ticket it's nice when other people say that's fine this stuff you know so I like spending time with you but it's tough keeping up with you so I don't want to be taken out of your circle so I'm gonna work as much as I can to keep up with Tommy Mello you know along those lines you know when someone grows up in a small town and then they go off and maybe they go to college and they study and they become an entrepreneur and they go back 20 years later to the high school reunion and the townies are like who do you think you are you know that's that type of thing right cause you've changed you've left the town and you grew you know it's an interesting point I think the people I grew up with are pretty happy you know it's crazy what Facebook and some of these social media sites do to watch people progress they seen the hard work the blood the sweat the tears that went into it they knew it wasn't always this easy I went to my master’s program with grease on my hands every day and they look at me like I was a peasant what's this garage door with the rape man doing here had some lettering on the side and it was it was kind of a joke and I'd smell like grease and I knew I did and you know some people really just they didn't wanna be around me because they were trying to move up a promotion of Honeywell and I was sitting there just trying to get my bearings and I was doing it for me you know that's interesting so I moved into a new house I'm building a new office I just got some acreage and we're building another house in in in Sandpoint ID and right now the biggest thing for me that I need in my life is order I need new habits I'm getting someone to help us with meal prep where I'm gonna have the trainer that shows up to me even though my guy does he's gonna busy all these things once I get the order back once I don't wanna have rock to get dressed I want that stuff laid out for me like a like a Lieutenant in the army I want I don't wanna pack I don't want to worry about food or vitamins and the special the things because I can't buy health and I can't buy time so those are something I'm working on so once I get the organization and the right people and the new executive assistant and I've got the content manager now like I'm going to grow 10X inefficiency and it's hard for people to comprehend that because you know Elon Musk has the same amount of time in his day that we both do Warren Buffett was talking to Bill Gates years and years ago like probably 15 years ago and he said hey OK said I'd like to get on your schedule in three days I wanna go over a really big opportunity and Warren Buffett takes his uh schedule hands it to him and he opens up the planner and he goes well you got nothing tomorrow you got nothing on Thursday you have one appointment on Friday because then you make 4,000,000 a year and he goes yeah I've got great people that work for me I assure myself where it's needed and that's it you know my schedule is still really busy but the plan is to really start to focus on the business and I'm always doing stuff and I'm letting my team do them but the more I focus on the systems and the technology and whether that be AI or data mining I see leaps and bounds but I know I need to give the love and attention and recognition each person needs and I still don't need time for networking so it's just sitting down and getting stuff done and finding a conclusion and then applying it and I think that's very hard for a lot of people they don't know what to do when they walk into their business they say no I'm supposed to make manuals and they not supposed to dial in the CRM and I should have a training center I need to hire for this person the first thing is you need some help you need to find someone good at doing some of the things you're not and that should be your top priority and to give yourself your time back start hiring for what's pulling the most of your time so you're spending 20 hours a week on payroll that's the first person you need to hire you get 28 to 20 hours back yeah you know if you're an entrepreneur and you're a sales and marketing person like I am like you are too maybe you need a good operational person that makes sense right because you see that's not my strength I'm a visionary I'm an entrepreneur I'm a sales and marketing guy and I'm a networker I'm a connector I have a piece of you and me and we end up you know often being at the same event sometimes and sometimes speaking on the same stage because we like doing that and it's also good for our business and our brands and I really don't like the minutia I'm not an operations guy and I have people who do operational stuff for people like oh you know it's amazing what you do with these podcasts for contractors and stuff and so how does this work I'm like you'll have to talk to Amanda because that's what she does I I don't know but so it's good to have these people right and often when people show up at work at 8:00 o'clock in the morning or 6:00 AM depending upon when you show up you're getting ready to put that fire out you know there's going to be a problem and that's your job really your job as the owner as the president the CEO of your companies to be the firefighter it shouldn't be you should be the visionary you should be the driver of the company and you need to put people in place to put out fires but ultimately and Tommy will agree you should have less and less and less fires overtime yeah checks and balances data integrity the systems need to be well thought out and there's always a system that's improving it's improved that there should be stuff always going on in the business of looking at one of my buddies Ryan Meacham he's a consultant and when he wrecked he explained is that we reward people to find problems in the process it's like would you want Henry Ford finding the problem on the assembly line or would you want the guy doing the same work every day to make it faster and figure out ways so say listen the problem is if two people did this instead of one I guess speed of the action line back in the day with the model well nobody knows better than that person doing it every day so giving your people a voice matters as well and rewarding them to find issues that that that's a crazy mindset thought is to say listen you guys do this every day how do you think we can improve and as long as your people are saying we should get a raise for this and a raise for this which happens say listen how do we make this more efficient and it's funny because my Xavier the videographer I have he said we were making content and the question was what's the right way to ask your boss for a raise and he's smiling and I say well the best way to do that is to come up with a win and elevate mindset and say Tommy if I were able to figure out a way to make you an extra $1,000,000 can I keep 100,000 what person in their right mind would say no to that if I figured out a way to get a higher conversion rate and I just want you to share with me a little bit and here's how you win so the goal of the book elevate is to figure out a way that everybody could win when I sit down with a vendor I don't say I need a cheaper price I say what's your one year go what's your 3 year goal what's your product some of this area where are you struggling are you planning on opening or closing any stores where do you want me to grow inorganically how could I help you guys you're in return after I do this would make it a lot easier and it's not always a cheaper price I need to get my guys in and out faster I need you to open a separate pay for us to hold our special materials I need you guys to help us out with coop at the home shows and it's going to help your brand so my mindset is always what's in it for them how can I help them and how can we come up with a win and it's not always price that there's so much value that's delivered on other things than just price it's so smart so many people try to beat up their vendors and the vendors doing you a favor that's supplier you can do a lot more than just supply a product or service to your point Tommy maybe you know they can hold the inventory somewhere at their expense maybe it'll cost 2% more 10% more for that product but it's making your life easier now you don't need another warehouse with workers in that warehouse because you're supplier is going to hold on to it and do just in time inventory delivery and so it's just a smart thing to do is to you know with your team members with your suppliers um and anyone that's involved in the business how can we help you every time I leave a call a phone call or in person I say is there anything else I can do for you today it's these simple things it's not all about me however we've learned the most important person in the room is me is you everyone wants to hear their name and see it in the lights and they want to be recognized and so it's important that we say you know what can we do for you how can we help it and we learn what turns them on and what they want and what they want is something that's going to help them And when it helps them it could ultimately help us and a lot of us are just going around in our own little bubbles and we're like it's good for me I don't care if it's good for you give me the best price and we're just circling our little bubbles right and it doesn't work out that way So what Tommy's done is he's opened everything up and said hey how can I help you help yourself which will ultimately help everybody and it's a real simple style it's in elevate it's a great book I've read the book if you want a copy of it you can order it through this podcast in the description of the podcast is a link and you can get it and before we go there's five bonuses can we quickly go through these I've got them right here yeah you got them in front of you I know I do we built them but yeah let's do bonus number one is winning ads and application page checklists OK can you talk a little bit about that well we came up with some of the things we've done in the company uh with the five bonuses basically I've tested everything out in those bonuses and I came up with things that people actually could use and I just look this book I don't make money on a book I I don't what I've learned is somebody's gonna read these books and I'm going off tangent here but for some reason it always comes back full circle when you help other people and some people call me and they say I've got this amazing opportunity for you because I read your book and I just I got so much from it this is a little bit of gratitude to payback and I don't go into this expecting anything but I've taken these five bonuses just things that I've worked on for years and I think they're going to be very applicable if I went through each one you know it's a it's minutia because they're different bonuses but let's go through the model I'll speak to them a little bit sure so the first one is winning ads yeah so you know ads that convert better and you know with all the podcasting I've done with the top marketing companies in the in North America I found out some ads that do better than others and one of the best ads is a financial adding owner new unit for as low as $27.00 a month we've been having people to respond it's a little bit longer of a process you gotta be able to answer questions but it's a great fun my bonus number two is the interview bundle learning how to interview properly I just had the author of who on my podcast and it was absolutely phenomenal I've learned so much about interviewing correctly and having a system for interviewing she compare people bonus three the seven steps to delegation I learned that through Levi al keeps coming up he's like your uncle al I love that that was great guy bonus #4 objection handling system yeah you know I learned to peel back the onion a little bit for objections you know it's not always a price thing I was explaining to the people are just giving a tour or two a lot of times I add value it doesn't cost me a lot of money so learning how to handle objections is listening and finding out a win  situation like I said I don't want to lower my prices for you from the vendor well there's ten other ways to skin this cat and finding the true objection but you might say well I want to talk to my wife about this garage door what do you think she's gonna say she's probably gonna say it's too expensive OK well we've got other options because if you're not giving options you're giving ultimatum so let's figure out something that's gonna do everything you wanted you want this to order out of any issues for 10 years you wanted to be connected to the Wi-Fi wanted to make sure to keep all the nasty bugs out you wanted it to be an attractive door from the outside what corners do you wanna cut do you want it to be not insulated we could do that we could get you into a different we could give you and do a different price bracket but we're diminishing the value and by the way the garage door delivers 100% ROI in the home it's proven six years in a row remodel magazine it's better than your kitchens or bathrooms so and to understand an objection and be able to peel it apart and peel back those layers of the onion is important an objection is just another opportunity to sell and close #5 bonus 5 is my favorite and this is probably worth the most Tommy's personal rolodex yeah so I've taken tried and true vendors and you know whether it be rapid hire or you know there's certain people on there that I just I used and it took me 10 tries to use them thought to use other renderers and I finally found the right ones that actually are proven for $200 million company and the nice thing about these vendors is I started out small and they grew with me so the tried and true and you know what I felt like I could help them out and the people the audience by getting them more work and helping them succeed in their home service company elevate is the name of the book I've read it it's fantastic and the link to order is in the description of this podcast I read Tommy's first book I think this one is a bit better two totally different books but I think as we you know move on with things we get better at stuff and I think also that book was written a few years back and Tommy has learned so much more when you look at what Tommy's learned and you know when you look at his numbers and growth you know it's not like well you know ten years ago he was doing this and now he's finally doubled the business no no no no he's like doubling it in a very short amount of time so everything that Tommy's learned over time is in elevate but EI bet most of it is probably in the last five years or less you know it's interesting take 10,000 and double it nine times so you can figure out the double a couple times a year then you spent 4 1/2 years doubling it's amazing what you could get the rule of double is just an amazing rule and it gets you to these astronomical numbers and it's harder to double when you grow but if the systems are in place it's not as hard you look at subway the first 25 years then the chart when they figured things out it's like shrink and the systems dictate the output and there's quality controls in place and that's talk about that in the book and the bonuses include some of this stuff but success leaves clues I try to give as many clues as possible if you listen to the podcast the home service expert home service millionaire book elevate build the business for everybody wins I think that's uh been very open and let people do a shop tour I'd show them everything I'm working on I I find that even open book management letting people know our numbers letting them know our profitability every single employee it doesn't matter to me my coworkers is what I call them we'll find I call them employees in the beginning and then I start calling them coworkers because I find employees that work could be belittling all my employees they're my coworkers I get the honor to work with them absolutely some people call them team members which is better than employees as well and you certainly don't want to call them tools I'm just saying OK I've heard that before as well Tommy Mello on that note thank you so much my friend I appreciate it the book is elevate it's here in the description of this podcast order it if you don't have it and then go see Tommy speak sometime bring the book with you and have him sign it that'll be an extra thank you I appreciate it!