Crafting Systems for Success: Mastering Implementation To Fast-Track Your Business Growth
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So one of the really important things, the most important thing to help people implement consistently is community. Most people don't have the community around them. They don't have they're not part of a membership program like you have and like I have where they can get the support, the encouragement, the accountability.

I mean, listen, people used to go to church for a different reason. Speaking of church, most people are going for information nowadays, but that's not what church is supposed to be about. Church is supposed to be about community, right? And we're there to support one another, encourage one another and help one another be accountable. Most people, business owners are...

Solo operators, even if they have a big company, they're still really a solo operator because all built around them. So you got to empower people. And every human being on the planet has a longing for belonging. They want to belong to something that means something.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, we are live with the one and only Howard Partridge. This guy is a legend.

He's all about building a phenomenal dream team. He's about everything phenomenal, getting a business that runs for you when you're not there. He's an expert in marketing, management, new business development. He's based in Houston. Right now, he's in Florida enjoying the beach in his summer home. But how the hell are you? Phenomenal, of course. I love it, man. Good to be here, man.

When I first heard you speak and you just went through, you make things look so easy. Just like disc, not to understand necessarily your clients, but to understand your team. Yeah. And just putting the right people on the bus. Yeah. You know, tell everybody, most people should know who you are. You're on massive stages. You worked really closely with Zig Ziglar. You have quite the resume. So why don't you share some of it?

Sure. Well, so I started my first business out of the trunk of my car when I was 23 years old. Originally from Mobile, Alabama, grew up poor on welfare, got kicked out of the house when I was 18 years old, got to Houston on a Greyhound bus with 25 cents in my pocket and started my first business. And like most small business owners, I became a slave to that business, worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And then I learned how to build systems in my business. And I got that business turnkey where I don't have to be there. I still own that business today, makes a lot of money and got a great team, great staff, great systems in place. And people want to know how I was doing it. So I started coaching people on my systems.

And then I met Mr. Ziegler, of course, and started working with Ziegler. And that opened up a lot of doors, of course. And so today we serve, let's see, about 100 different industries in about 20 different countries. Written a bunch of books. I see you got one of my books on your shelf right there. This one's not even available.

Like you have seven, you got 78 of these books. It's not even available. You can't even find it anywhere. So anyway, I'm really proud of this book right there. And so that's what I do is I help business owners improve their leadership skills so that they can build the team that they need so they can have the freedom that they've always wanted. I know it. And you know, I think one of my favorite books ever as well as, um,

You're talking about one of my books? Yeah. FTI. That's the one. FTI. You love FTI. Yes. Let's talk about that for a minute. Sure. Okay. So the thing is, is that people know what to do. They know how to do it.

They just don't do it. Right. So you were telling me earlier you're in the gym at 430. You're an implementer. The reason that you've been so successful is because you are an implementer. And the reason that people don't reach their biggest dreams and goals, the reason people aren't more successful, the reason their business doesn't grow is because of what I call FTI, failure to implement. Right.

And so the thing is, is that there's reasons for that. And in that book, I uncover the reasons. There's a lot of books. I had Brian Tracy out in May, I think it was. And I'll probably see him while I'm out there in San Diego with you guys because he's out that way. Maybe I'll have dinner with him. But anyway, he wrote a great book called Eat That Frog. But the thing is, is that before you implement, you got to understand why you don't implement and you've got to

And so that's what I get into in that book is that you have to figure out what's keeping you from implementing. And what I've found is that people only change through desperation or inspiration. Problem is with desperation, you are probably going to slip back into your old ways once you get comfortable again. So you have to move past that to inspiration, right? And so that's,

When you have Mr. Ziegler said that the secret ingredient of success is desire and desire comes from a vision. Most people don't have a vision because they don't have belief. So then I believe, therefore, they don't have a vision. They don't have they're not inspired. They don't have that desire because they don't have a vision that they can believe in. And we all need that.

And everybody's got different goals. You know, I don't build, I don't build businesses as big as you guys do, but I've also been on my favorite beach for the last four months. So,

Well, that's the plan for me. I mean, look, I just decided I think there's seasons of life and sometimes you're off balance on purpose. And I started working a little bit with a guy named Dan Martell and he wrote Buy Back Your Time. And he just told me, pretend like you're 80. What did you do when you turned 42? Where did you go? Who'd you do it with? Like, really? Yeah.

Kind of close your eyes in a dark area. Grab a notepad and start writing down. Did you go to Italy? Where'd you go? Did you not? Did you work that year? Did you start prioritizing? When did you get married? When did you have kids? Like put down the year, but be very, very descriptive. Like if you went to Italy, where did you go? Who did you go with? What did the plane look like? Yeah. You're going to buy a house. Be like, what street was it on? And so.

You know, it's a tough, it's really tough to do that, but it starts to align with your values. And I'm just, I tell people, they're like, how do you work so much? And I'm like, I know my schedule looks crazy, but it's my schedule. It's my schedule. I don't put out fires anymore. I don't answer phone calls. I'm in fun meetings. I'm in podcasts. I'm doing shop tours. I'm leading. I'm telling people how awesome they are. Like, this is not a job. Yeah.

Well, and you're also in a season, you're in the build phase right now. You guys are building something new.

A lot of stuff. Amazing. Right. But anyway, that's the essence of that book and that training that I do. And I share 10 principles of what I call phenomenal performance, because if you're going to win, you got to perform. But you got to figure out, first of all, why why you're not implementing and uncover that. And then, you know, you got to get a coach. You got to get training. You got to do all that stuff.

So I'm at a different season of my life. I'm 63 now. So I'm starting to sort of wind it down, you know. What's up? So what does the future look like? I mean, in a perfect world, let's just say, pass forward a couple of years. Are you still speaking? What's the plan?

Yeah, I'm doing some keynotes. I have a membership program and I teach once a week and I'll do my weekly broadcast to my team. I mean, to my membership, my team does the rest. I'll do, you know, monthly meeting with my team to share the vision. So that's sort of what I'm working into now. I'll write more books. I'll keep writing books. I love to write books. I'm writing two books right now. So.

So tell me a little bit about the eight steps to building a phenomenal dream team. Well, first you got to find people. And what I found is that most small business owners ignore people.

So what you got to do is every people that if you're well, it starts with being a phenomenal leader. OK, so if you're not a great leader, people are going to be attracted to you. But once you got the leadership stuff down, which I'm going to talk about at your conference, and it's also in this book is once you understand leadership, you understand how to attract people. Now, you have to do is.

You have to find people. And for a smaller business, not one that's, you know, growing really rapidly like like you guys are. I'm not talking about finding 52 technicians like you guys are training right now. But everywhere I go, I notice everybody in my space.

Everybody that's in my space, I'm going to ask them what their name is. I'm going to ask them what their story is. And I'm going to ask them, do you know you're phenomenal? I'm going to have the phenomenal talk with them. Right. And so if there's some sort of synergy there, then I'm going to exchange numbers with them. If they're a person that I want to have on my team, I'm going to pursue them and I'm going to attract them to our team and then I'm going to recruit them.

How do you do that all the way down from level to level to level, depending on the size of your company? Because, of course, you're charismatic. You give great eye contact. You're optimistic. Yeah. I think a great leader. I recruit all the time. Right. But it's hard for me to get other people that actually are like proud and like people always say, you must be the owner. I don't have an owner thing on me. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, you know, Alan O'Neill, right? Yeah. Abacus plumbing. So they do that really well. So if their plumbers are at a gas station, he's like,

Another plumbing company better not pull in that gas station because they're going to get recruited. So you have to train people to recruit for you. It's just like you have to train people to get referrals. You have to train people to upsell. You have to train people to get Starbucks on the way to the client's house. It's a system. It's a process just like anything else. So the question is, did you see somebody today? Did you find out what their name is? Did you find out what their story is? Did you find out

you know, how to add value to them. And so that's the next piece of it is the way you attract people is you add value to them and everybody needs something. Everybody needs something. And everybody has a hot button. Everybody has something that they like. I just read giftology. You knew John ruling, right? I think you posted on John, right? Yeah. I was a part of giftology. I knew him really well. I mean, he stayed at my house.

Wow. So I just got to know him like a couple of months ago and I just talked to him right before he passed away. And we're going to have him come and speak at my conference. But I just got done with this book. And one of the things that giftology teaches you is to find out what people like and the things that you give them, the way you serve them is uniquely them. Right. And the only way you're going to find out what they like is

is by talking to them and asking them good questions. Good leaders ask great questions, right? So once you find out about people, you find out what they love and find out. For example, I have a new team member who's been with me about six months and now I've gotten to know her family and her mother loves hearts. So I saw this heart-shaped bowl on Facebook the other day, boom, order it, send it.

Just, you know, it can be what John Rulon called it was planned spontaneity, planned spontaneity. Right. So you're already planning to send something. You're not going to send things on Christmas or, you know, when Thanksgiving, when everybody else is sending stuff is spontaneous. Right.

And my wife is really good at that, too. She's actually got gift closets of gifts that belong to people that she doesn't even know who it's going to go to yet. But she's got golf stuff. So, oh, I got this client or this new friend I met that that plays golf. So, boom, they're going to get some golf stuff, you know. So, yeah. Yeah. I'm just taking a bunch of notes. It's like sometimes when I'm on great podcasts.

All these things come to me, all these little things. I've already started taking a lot of notes. When you went to my seminar, you took more notes than anybody else in that class. And you're the guy, you were the most successful guy in that class. And you're just like, and you had half of it implemented before you left. Everybody else is sitting there like, oh, yeah. They don't, you know, people...

People are going to come to this freedom event in September and they're going to learn so much and take so many notes and FTI, like they don't have a plan to get it on the calendar. And someone was asking me the other day, why does that happen? I'm like, well,

The energy in the room is so high. You're building relationships. You're getting knowledge. You're taking notes. You're planning. And then you go back home and something's going on in your personal life. And the guy just quit. And the CRM is not configuring payroll correctly. And you're like, then you shoot right back into old mode and you don't have a right-hand person. You don't have an executive assistant. The one thing I've learned is

And this is super profound. 168 hours in a week. You spend 50 working, 50 sleeping. You spend 10 working out.

you still got 60 hours left yeah and people say i don't have the time i'm like you go on a date with your wife twice and take each kid out for two hours each night you can go out with your buddies you can go to church you can spend a lot of time eating great food and still have 30 hours left yeah like right what do you mean no time you just don't manage your calendar and you're still doing minimum wage jobs all day long yeah yeah that's true that's true so

So one of the really important things, the most important thing to help people implement consistently is community. Most people don't have the community around them. They don't have they're not part of a membership program like you have and like I have where they can get the support, the encouragement, the accountability.

I mean, listen, people used to go to church for a different reason. Speaking of church, most people are going for information nowadays, but that's not what church is supposed to be about. Church is supposed to be about community, right? And we're there to support one another, encourage one another and help one another be accountable. Most people, business owners are...

solo operators. Even if they have a big company, they're still really a solo operator because it's all built around them. So you got to empower people. And every human being on the planet has a longing for belonging. They want to belong to something that means something. I start every one of my team meetings by reminding our team why we're here.

Because we're making a difference in people's lives. I don't care what kind of business you have. You can make a difference in people's lives. See, when someone gets their garage door fixed or replaced or whatever, they got a choice in the marketplace and they choose someone else that doesn't care about them. That's going to affect their life. Right. And that can go to the extreme.

But they choose you, and now they have someone who cares about more than their garage door, cares about their life. And in many cases, business owners become really close with their clients. And, you know, you can make a profound difference in people's lives just by the way you treat them and your people as well. Yeah, you're right.

I interviewed two of my top technicians. Doesn't mean top in sales. Could be anything. Could be reviews. It could be conversion rate. It could be different things we look at. And the managers all vote each week on who, what to I interview. And there's a common theme of...

I really do care. Like if grandma needs help getting down the Christmas tree, I'm going to do it. If, if I see a client whose tires low and I got an air pressure gauge, I'm going to fill it up. That's it. That's it right there. It's doing it because you genuinely, and here's what you find is you meet people that you kind of notice. It's just, I think that the thing that four seasons does is,

is when you meet somebody at Four Seasons, they're like, hey, can I get anything for you? I don't feel like they're told to do that. I feel like they recruited somebody that enjoys helping others and wants to see them. You know, you're spending money to be here. This is a great experience for you. How can I make it better? Yeah.

Absolutely. In fact, they have it even on their intake when you make a reservation at the Four Seasons. They ask you about your likings and how you like things. And of course, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is famous for that. My friend Joseph Michelli wrote a book called The New Gold Standard many years ago.

And shared the practices of the Rich Carlton Hotel Company. First of all, they call them the ladies and they call their team members, the ladies and gentlemen of the Rich Carlton Hotel Company. They're not employees, not even team members, the ladies and gentlemen. They have a credo card in their apron that has their I think it's six different values on it.

They are not allowed to just point to the restaurant or point to the restroom. They have to walk you until you can physically see it.

And they willingly do it. It's not, you know, they have to do it, but they want to do it. They want to do it right. And that's the kind of team members you want. And that's what I talk about in this book, too, is, you know, the kind of people that you want to hire. You want to hire people who love people. You want to hire people who want to help people. You want to hire people who want to grow. They want to do it right, right?

So anyway, at the Rich Carlton Hotel Company, any team member, any one of the ladies and gentlemen, the Rich Carlton Hotel Company can spend up to $2,000 on a guest to solve a problem without any authority from their supervisor. They can make that decision. So they have been empowered. Yeah, no, it's...

I've heard of a lot of people giving the empowerment and doing certain things to solve problems. And it's just, there's nobody better to solve problems than the workers that are doing the work. A lot of people, here's the funny thing, is I find that most people, when they have to micromanage, especially when you start getting up to like a C-suite or a VP level, if you find yourself as the leader of these people and you got to micromanage them, it's because you found somebody that wasn't as good as you.

See, I always make sure I can't even keep up with the people that I have. I can't keep up with my CFO. I wouldn't even know how to look at the stuff he looks at and interpret it. He's so good. He's reworked so many things. And so many people, they say, yeah, I'll just move them up or I'll hire them because I'm comfortable with them. Or if I hire them, maybe they're going to take my whole company and steal everybody. So they stay the smartest person in the room too long. I was on a call the other day with Leland Smith.

And he goes, Tommy, you know, the secret sauce that like made me get to, you know, well over 500 million of revenue is I hung around with smarter people, like bigger companies would share financials and ask the right questions. Yeah. And, you know, I'm bigger than everyone. Yeah, it's true. In fact, the greatest life lesson that I've ever learned is get around people who are already where you want to be or they've already been where you want to be. That's the secret.

Oh, yes. Well, that's why you're holding the Freedom Conference. Well, it's a lot. It's not only about business. You know, that's one thing is like I want people to understand. I was I wasn't ashamed of shame, but I wasn't happy with myself when I looked. I wasn't the best I could be. I wasn't going to church very often. I had every excuse. I didn't have a whole lot of business excuses.

Because I've always kind of showed up there. Yeah. But I didn't have the family, the faith, the fitness. Yeah. I had the business work now. But I wasn't complete. And I'm not saying everybody's going to be perfect, well-rounded.

But I talk about that stuff now and I try to inspire, but I try to do tactics and systems and I try to help people bond and say, look, look around here and go talk to somebody. Find out. I don't have breakouts as much as I know you do breakouts and people get to really interact a little bit more.

But I'm like, one of the things that made a mistake years ago with events is I jam packed it without any time for them to go meet and mingle and talk to vendors and just spend time with one another. But if you bond and build relationships at these events, that's the fastest thing that'll change your life. If you start hanging out with successful people. No doubt about it. Absolutely. You know, Tom Howard and I were talking the other day and he said,

There's a weird conundrum going on right now in service Titan. The data shows that 80% of companies are on the decline and 20% are shooting through the roof. What are you hearing out there, Howard, as far as your clients and what are you seeing in this economy right now? It's not COVID days when everybody's calling and you hire somebody, they can fog a mirror. Well, unfortunately, the 80% follow...

They not only follow mentally what the water cooler talk is, the media, whatever. But once you put that in your mind, you believe it is going to show up in your actions. Right. And the 20 percent are going to figure out how to be successful no matter what.

So most companies are going to just go with the trends. Maybe it's because they're just doing what everybody else is doing. Right. One of the things that I do is I build my business through relationships and I have a very strong referral program. So I have a little company in Houston. It's a it's a service company, home services company does four million dollars a year.

A million dollars a year in new business just through referrals because of our referral system. No ads, no money on advertising, zero. So back in 2008 that we had that big recession, we sailed right through it. During COVID, we sailed right through it because all of business and all of life is about relationships. Now, I can't scale up something like super fast,

Uh, like we talked about, we're at your shop with my, with my guys, but, but it's solid over time and it's going to endure the ups and downs of the economy. So it's, you know, it's a real thing, but it's how you respond to it. It's not what happens to you. It's how you respond to what happens to you. And, uh, one of the things I say often, it might even be in this book, but

Planning is not predicting the future. Planning is preparing for the future. We know that we're going to have another economic downturn. Now, the sources that we follow in my community, I can't tell you the exact group, but I work a good bit with the Great Game of Business. I don't know if you're familiar with those guys or not, but Ellen Rohr introduced me to them. And they have a source that's had great track record.

And so they're saying that, hey, it's going to stay relatively strong all the way to 2030. And then it's going to get like really bad. OK, I don't know if they're correct or not. They've been correct all these years, but I don't go by that. I don't go by what the media says. I don't go by what the water cooler talk is.

It's not slow out there. It's not the slow season. It's the opportunity season because there's always a way to pivot. There's always another move. And so the 80% are listening to the 80%. That's the problem. I had a big discussion about this this morning is if you understood how ill you can get

If you let the negative sink in and you're always complaining, you're going to die younger. Your brain actually listens. When you start thinking this way and you're negative, you attract it.

And like, you just got to bounce out of it. There are days I don't want to get out of bed. There are days that my body aches. There are days that things don't go right. But that's a moment in time. Not the day, not the week, not the month, not the quarter. Some people just live in this. Like, it's a weird occurrence for the see them smile and be in a good mood. No, no.

Yeah. I'm like some of the people that I work with, even I'm like, be happy. Like, look at this. We move our fingers. We go walk. Our families are healthy. It's a miracle. It's of America. Right. It's a miracle. We're so we are blessed. I, you know, Kamala or Trump, I will kill it.

no matter what. If the stock market goes down, I'll murder it. If the stock market goes up, I'm murdering it. Like, I don't care.

If the economy goes bad, it's a buyer's market and I go buy every company. If it does great, I grow organically and I scale. It doesn't matter. Exactly. Because those 80%, when it gets really bad, they're going to be looking for somebody to buy them out. And guess who's going to buy them out? You are. And you're going to get their assets for pennies on the dollar.

And here's the deal, Howard. 10,000 baby boomers a day are retiring 12% on a business. And the majority of them don't have a plan. They don't know what to do. They got no next of kin. They're trying to figure out, even if the business is worth something, they don't know how to find a broker. This is the golden era. And I'm proud to be a blue collar guy. I'm so glad to be in home service. It's not an embarrassment. I think 20 years ago, it was tough. You might've said, hey, I'm a garbage man. I'm a gutter guy. I'm a garage door guy.

Now it's like an honor. Hey, we're essential. Look at us. Right. That's right. I love every minute of it. So you're really good at this relationship, building teams. And I think that, you know, you're very big on loyalty and you spend time with people. There's a certain point where people are like, man, when I was 10, 10 coworkers, I

They'd come over for dinner. We'd go bowling. I knew their kids' names. It was like, I remember their birthdays. And the systems, you're right, the systems help you do that. But the relationships don't stay the same, unfortunately.

Hey, guys, I hope you're enjoying today's podcast. A quick reminder, the Freedom event is happening on September 25th to the 27th. In today's tough economy with PE firms invading, lead costs spiking, and customers cutting back, it's time to protect your bottom line and your future. At Freedom, you're going to learn how to bulletproof your business from home service legends like Paul Reed, owner of Northwest Roofing, a $30 million a year business.

Aaron Gaynor, the owner of Eco Plumbers, a $75 million business. Ken Goodrich, the chairman of Gettle, a $250 million business. And Leland Smith, founder of Service Champions, a $500 million business. Listen, you can keep doing what you're doing and hope for the best, or you can arm yourself with the proven strategies I've used at A1 Garage Door Service. Get your tickets at freedomevent.com. That's freedomevent.com. Now let's get back to this episode.

I've had people say, man, I miss hanging out. Right. And I'm like, I get it. And I promise you, I'm not goofing off. Yeah. I promise you. I'm not, not inviting you to stuff and got other bowling friends or anything. Right. Right. Right. Right. And it's hard to deal with because I'm a lot like you in the way that I appreciate a good relationship and I want to have relationships. Like every single person is allowed to come to my house. I don't, I'm not like, you can't see this house. And I never like,

I'm like, you helped me buy this house. You could have a house like this too. I just, I want to share the experience, but it's hard sometimes. And I know a lot of people listening, they're like,

how do you have relationships with the people you work with yeah well yeah that's the thing is that you you can't have a strong relationship with a large group of people in fact there's uh there's something called the span of control that says that you can only lead uh effectively it's a military term i think the guy's name is greg span if i got that name right the span of control

I learned this through from Gary Keller, Keller Williams Realty, the one thing, that whole work. And so the average person can only manage or lead effectively five people. Some people three, some people seven, maybe Tommy Mello, 10, 12, right? The average is five.

Okay, so what you have to do is you have to build these values in the people that you lead to build relationships with other people. I have a long background in cell churches. And one of the most fascinating things about cell churches, largest churches in the world, by the way, is they're organized in cells, right? So let's say you have a cell, a leadership team of five people

And each of those people is developing five people. Each of those people are developing five people. You know, there's no limit to the growth. Yeah. And the development because it's five people in a pod or 12 people, whatever it might be. But, you know, average of five. So that's really important because the problem that we got in corporate America, you know, you got the leadership team.

In fact, I have one of my team members is here in Destin and her best friend is here, works for a really big company. And there's just so many people, but they don't have it organized in a way where, you know, you can you get lost in a shuffle, right? You're you're a number, basically.

And it kills the relationship. I'm also reading, rereading the book. It's the manager. I'm sure you're familiar with that one, right? It's by Gallup. So the essence of it, you know, the Gallup employee engagement poll reveals that

70% of American workers are disengaged, right? And 18% of that 70% are actively disengaged, which means they hate their job. So they're on the phone, they're texting their friend how much they hate their job and whatever, I can't wait to get out of here, whatever. So 30% are really pushing the company forward, moving the company forward. Well, so they give those statistics and

And then their further research has determined that the reason is the person that they report to. It's the manager. So the manager is the most important part of the whole system. So we have to develop, find, attract, hire, develop people who

have the same values that we do that care about people that understand that just like they've been developed, I need to develop my people and I need to have a relationship with them. Doesn't mean that they have to come over for dinner, right? So everybody at my company is not going to be my friend, all right?

And that's okay. We're going to still have a good relationship. I'm still going to pour into their life. I'm still going to develop them. I'm still going to give them the training, the tools that they need. I'm still going to be kind to them. I'm still going to, you know, bless them. But, you know, the fact is, is that some personalities don't, you know, don't hit it off. It's okay. Right. I'm not going to be everybody's best friend. You're not going to be my best friend. I still love you. You love me. It's okay. Right.

But the thing is, is that we have to we have to take that down into our leadership team. Our leadership team then has to take that down into the field personnel, the people that are in the office. It's just it's simply called culture. Right. And it comes from the top being intentional about how we treat each other and that we we care about each other.

That's the other thing I get into my leadership book under those three keys of support, encouragement and accountability. What that really looks like. Right. So it's really three levels. You start with support. As my mentor, Mr. Zig Ziglar said, you can have everything in life you want. If you'll just help enough other people get what it is that they want. So you've got to find out what people want.

You help them get it. You support them. Make sure they have the tools. They have the time. They have the resources. They have the right environment. Simon Sinek said that a leader's job is to create the right environment, right? And if you don't give people what they need, you're not going to move to the next level, which is encouragement, right? You don't want me to speak into your life and give you advice and encourage you if I haven't given you the basic things that you need, right? Who do you think you are? Like,

All of a sudden you want to give me advice? No. Right. So people, it's the law of reciprocity. You give, people give back to you. You build a relationship. It grows to the next level. And Mr. Ziegler, in fact, he said, also said that, that hope, that encouragement is the fuel in which hope runs. Today, we're in a very hopeless society. We got a lot of people who don't have hope today.

And if they work for a company where they have hope for the future, you know, Mr. Ziegler also said that, that everybody wants the same nine things out of life. And so when they get that from the place that they work and you're diligent about making sure that they have the tools that they need, and then you actually care about them, they know that you care about them. You, you show, even if you can't do it personally, Tommy,

I'm gonna tell you something. I got beautiful cars, I got beautiful homes, I got plenty of possessions, but the greatest possession that I have is a box of thank you notes from my team members. When COVID first hit, nobody knew, right? At the beginning, nobody knew how it was gonna turn out. Everybody was scared, right? And I made a commitment. I said, "Look, I've been blessed financially,

And I'm going to set aside several hundred thousand dollars and put that on the table as a commitment to my team members. I'm not letting anybody go. Every single person on my team got a minimum paycheck, regardless of whether they work an hour or not. And after we got through it and we got through it very well, fortunately,

My operations director came to my house one day. He called me and said, hey, I got a delivery for you. I was like, a delivery? He said, yeah. So he comes over and there was like an edible arrangement or something like that. And I was like, oh, that's nice. I thought maybe a client or somebody drops a vendor or somebody drops something off. And I was like, oh, thank you for delivering it, right? Hands me this box of handwritten notes from my team members thanking us for

for caring about their families. And I know that's you. I see your posts. I see when you're posting what, you know, the text from your guys and how you, you know, care about them and their life and all that. That's what it's all about. You know, all of life, all business, all life is about relationships. That's the most important thing I have. It is. Sometimes I feel like we get confused at times. You know, it's really hard sometimes

When, and it hasn't been like this for a long time, Howard, but I used to come into work 15 years ago and people were stealing toilet paper. No one was showing up. A guy would show up on drugs or drunk. A guy got in a car accident. Yep. And I'd go and I'd be on like listening to a podcast and I'd hear people talk about culture and I'd go, okay.

What is that? I used to get so mad in like vision and mission. And like the core value, smell you. Like, what is this? I'm like, what are you even talking about? Like these people. I didn't realize that I was the problem. I mean, from hiring, from not doing any type of diligence, from not asking questions to their past employers, to not having any systems. And that's one of the things you're probably going to talk a lot about is systems. Is this like...

You know, I used to think people were losers in a lot of ways, not everybody. But I used to say, how is this possible that you don't understand how to do this? It's like you put the role into the calculator. It was like the simplest little things. Right. And then I realized it was me the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I don't think people understand. They want to blame everybody else. And I used to do that. I used to blame other people. You know, when things are going wrong, it's not easy to look in the mirror. I think, you know, I've never been through this 12 step process, but I'm pretty sure the first step is admitting you got a problem. It is the worst step. Yeah. So you look in the mirror and you say, maybe it's me. And nobody wants to hear that. They don't want to hear it. But guess what? Guess what?

When I talk to them at your event, they're going to find out. In fact, in this book right here on page 16, the first step is to realize that everything rises and falls on leadership and the toughest person leads ourselves. To quote my friend John Maxwell, widely held to be the world's number one leadership expert, translation is not them, it's you. Ouch.

I had to learn the same thing because what are people walk at the 80% that you're talking about? What are they also saying? They're saying, Oh man, it's slow. It's, you know, like numbers are down, whatever. They're also saying, man, I can't find good people. That's the introduction to this book. Can't find good people. Now I'm not going to go deep on building a dream team and all that stuff. I'm going to talk at your event. I'm going to talk about phenomenal leadership because I,

The fact is, is that everything does rise and fall on leadership. The problem is, is that we don't know what leadership actually looks like, because all we have to go on is corporate America, which has only 70 percent of American workers are disengaged. That's what we have to work with.

So thank God for people like you. Thank God for people like Alan. Thank God for people like the people that are going to be at the Freedom Conference because we get to see what it looks like, you know, from a small business perspective. I get to make that have that revelation, make that decision to be a leader.

But people don't really know what leadership is. And so that's what I'm going to do is share what leadership is, what it looks like, how to recognize it and get a good look at, you know, who you need to put on your team.

We're not going to get deep. I don't have enough time. I've got 45 minutes, so I don't have enough time to get into all the steps of, you know, how to build an online team. It's action-packed at this event. I think I'm only speaking. Jim told me I don't even have an hour at my own event. I love it. It's okay. You know what I just realized about leadership is I don't like to work. I mean, I literally could do stuff, but I don't do it anymore.

Because what I've realized is it's my job to enable someone else. Thank you. Yeah. Like I don't, I could do the work. I really could. I could still do a lot of things. Yeah. And sometimes if I do things,

the occasional work is because I'm creating a system. I'm like, I'm going to systemize it. So I got to do it 10 times, come up with a way and then look at the results. And then that's the system. And there's checks and balances around the system. And I still, I'm like this lazy guy that's like, yeah, I'm just delegating everything I do. But I'm like, my job is to be thankful and help bring people up and say, listen, I want you to work on yourself 15 hours a week on top of work.

You do that, we'll grow together. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, absolutely. The thing is, is that most small business owners, when you see this chart, you've seen it before, but I don't want to give it away. When they see it, they're going to go, yeah, that's me. Because they're not empowering other people. They're getting in the way. Still with my coaching company, I'm in the process of empowering my new employees.

team to take over the, I got to get out of the day to day. I got to get out of the management stuff. And guess what happens when I get involved? Just fouled up because all the communications right here, I'm not empowering people. I'm not sharing that. I'm not involving them from the beginning, right? So they come in at the end. I've been thinking about this and

working on it a little bit here and there for months, they come in at the end and I expect them to bring it all together. Well, they do, they do a phenomenal job, but how much better would it be to get them involved in the beginning and let them work it out? - You know, this is something that I've been working on really hard the last six months. And I realized I've got a lot of ideas.

And the ideas will fail without the team's involvement and their want to, they'll sabotage it. If it's only my idea. Yeah. I told you that wouldn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a secret. I get with them one-on-one and I literally confront all their objections. And I say, great idea. Let's fix this. Let's change this. We can do it this way instead. And then when I get them together, I'm,

They're all saying, yeah, that was my idea. Yeah. But because but if you do it all in public, they're going to talk to one another. They're going to all it's like a little massacre. Your ideas goes there to die. It's with great intentions. The leader goes in and says, hey, guys, I got this idea. I think we're going to kill it. But they want to be acknowledged. They want to be part of the process.

And I first heard it from Dale Carnegie and then I heard it from Great Game of Business. You know, all these quotes like this one is, you know, people support a world that they help create. Right. Because it was their idea. It's their baby now. Right.

And so I first heard that from Dale Carnegie. Then I heard it from great game of business. All these quotes, you know, were borrowed from someone else. It was borrowed from someone else. It was borrowed from Solomon. Probably, you know, you know, it's like the first time you hear a quote, you know, so-and-so said, you know, Tommy said, and then the next time you close, it's like, you know, I heard someone say one time. And then the third time it's like, you know, I was thinking just this morning,

People support a world that they helped create. You know, that's kind of how it goes. That was a joke while you were looking at your notes. Tell me, tell me if this is, have you ever heard this before? Because I'm pretty sure, and maybe it's not authentic, but I've kind of realized for the leader to be born, the hustler must die. And I don't know if it's out there. I could Google it, but when you're,

And you got a side hustle and you got another idea over here and it's going to flip houses and, Hey, I'm going to do this and I can do this. Yes. And that's who I was. I was an opportunist. Right. I was like, what if I could get tunnel vision? The one thing that you said. Yes. And focus. Yes.

And all of a sudden, you do become a leader. And I think a lot of people, man, we all suffer from a form of ADHD. Every single person that owns a business is going through 10 different things every hour. For sure. For sure. Well, you know, yeah, you're an idea guy. I'm an idea guy. I got more ideas than I'll ever be able to use. I was talking to my son one time and he's my...

critic in the positive way because I mean he keeps a fire under my behind you know and so we're sitting on his back porch one day and we're talking and we're going at it he's I mean he's really tough on me you know and he can be because he's my son and he has my grandkids you know and so

So he knows he has leverage, right? And he gets, he got so frustrated. He said, you know what? I finally figured it out. You're not, you're not an entrepreneur. You're a business owner. And I was like, exactly. Thank you. Finally, you see it because yes, I'm an entrepreneur, but just because I have an idea, does it mean I need to run, do it over here and do it over there? Like you said, I'm a business owner.

These are business systems that will make a business work. I'd rather have one working business than 10 ideas that are flopping around like a bunch of fish out of water, you know? Yeah. And you look at like Richard Branson, what he kind of figured out was I made enough money, he said one day. And he said, but I've got another idea. And all I'm going to do is build it from the top down because now I have the resources.

right get the right people on the bus right we we got ideas and we're like what can we do to do the work right he just said who not how how do i build the team let them put the right pay structures in place right right let them run with it let them go yeah and hold accountable yeah 40 an hour a month you could go through it he's the invest it's so much better to be an investor than a ceo i think i'm still a ceo but

Yeah, but you're at that point now where you're buying businesses and you're doing that, right? You're like, I like this idea. I like this business. And you're putting in the capital, but you have the person to go run it, right? And you guys can brainstorm, but they go do it. You're not trying to do all of it. It's like a guy I heard one time. He says, you can do anything you want. You just can't do everything right now.

Yeah, that's where I learned a long time ago. Yes, but just not now. Yeah, I'll do it. But just come find me in two years. Yeah. It's hard for us. Entrepreneurs, it's almost impossible. We're like, well, we could do it. We all know we could do it. We all know that if we put time, effort, and energy into it, we could do it. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you one of my biggest takeaways from this summer. I've taken about a month off from work.

my normal day to day, obviously as a business owner, it's like owning real estate, you still have responsibilities, right? And so, if you, like I have a house in Houston and something went wrong over there. So, you gotta get somebody to fix it or whatever. But mostly, all for about the last month, just to, I got burnout right before the summer.

And we had so many people here this summer. I had a retreat here in Florida and a lot of guests and everything. So as I'm sort of easing out of the day-to-day management, reflecting and thinking about where I'm going, where I've been and all that. And we need to do this about once a year, maybe twice a year, is look at everything that we're doing and think about how

you know what we want to keep what we want to stop doing what we want to do more of what we want to start doing and i realized that i've got interest in too many things like i'm interested in youth i'm interested in you know the church my publisher asked me to write a book called the monday morning christian uh i'm interested in young adults the emerging adults because they got

so many things that they're facing in this world. And I'm going to have to start saying no a lot. But if I find the person that wants to run with it, I got a guy that wants to run with Monday Morning Christian. Go run. I'll show up and do a keynote. I'll get on a webinar and you get an audience for me. I'll teach. But I got to say no to more.

And, you know, get focused, stay focused on, you know, my one thing, which is, you know, Gary Keller's work. It's great work. Well, I came into this conversation happened yesterday and I called my brother-in-law, who's part of my team now, TMB. And I said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to form a committee and you're the head of it.

And my new EA coming on, my second executive assistant, everything's going to go through her. If I get a text, it goes through, going to be sent over to her.

And now every decision of anything I get involved in, other than like fun, family, it's going to go through the committee and you guys are going to choose. Is this something worth pursuing? And you're going to build a team because they are capable. They've got the resources to do it. Yep. And it keeps me out of it. And if you want time with me and there are questions about business, you're going to come on when there's a hundred other people and I'll answer your questions first because you

Like, it's kind of selfish for me to sit here and answer only your questions when 100,000 people or 10 or whatever might have the same questions. So I kind of learned to think about things in a different way, but now doing it and making sure the team could keep up and giving them the resources. And I got a meeting coming out with Sedona with all my managers, and I'm going to help them remove excuses from their direct reports.

Like what, what's, what's the three things stopping you from getting this done? And if I didn't have a little contract at the bottom, if I get this done, hold me accountable. When this is complete, you're going to be the biggest winner in life, right? There's not just going to be another three. Yeah. But I love this stuff, man. And learning how to say, no, if anybody gets anything out of this, Howard,

He's involved in a lot of things. He's a busy man, but you will get burned out and you'll probably say you got a saying, no, the power of no, very power. No. So it's not easy. It's not easy because I want to help everybody. I want to change the world. You know, I want the person I met yesterday. I want to help them reach their dream, but I realized I can't help everybody, but I can help other people, help other people.

You are changing the world. I'm really excited to see you in California there. San Diego, September 25th through the 27th. Yes. Can't wait. How do people reach out to you, Howard? If they want to get ahold of you, what's the best way? Just go to my website, howardpartridge.com. And I have a little opt-in there where they can get free business training. They'll get on my email list. They'll learn how to

you know, get involved with us, come to our, our training and get coaching and all that kind of stuff. All my books are on Amazon except for this one. So when I talked to my publisher about this one, he said, yeah, he said, we'll do it, but we can't get it out until December. And I was like, okay. And then he said, but we could print, we could print as many as you want. I was like,

That's interesting. So I wonder if even that's a copyright in here. I didn't even look. Okay. So the copyright is 2024. So, but it won't actually be on Amazon until December, but we ought to figure out how to help the folks at the freedom event, get ahold of this. Oh yeah. We'll do it. We'll do it. And I'll bring some copies for you to sign. And, uh, Howard, final question here is, uh,

We talked about a lot of things, man. You talk about a lot of different things on stage. We had a great conversation. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you going to be at the event. It'll be a big audience of people hungry to learn, but I'm going to let you just close us out. Anything you want to talk about that we didn't discuss and you want the audience to hear about? Well, we probably talked about it, but I want to reinforce it. And that is that all business and all life is about relationships.

It's who, not how. Listen, you can build systems all day long. You need systems, but you also need people to run those systems. When I first discovered systems, I was just like, man, system, system, systems, right? Because you can get anybody to run a simple system. Think McDonald's, right?

But somebody working at McDonald's ain't going to be there tomorrow. They're not going to build McDonald's for you. They're going to be gone there. Maybe they're getting through college or getting through high school, whatever. And so you got to add people to the processes. Right. All business and all life is about relationships.

And as Mr. Zig Ziglar said, you can have everything in life you want if you'll just help enough other people get what it is that they want. And every human being on the planet wants the same nine things out of life. They want to be happy. They want to be healthy. They want to be at least reasonably prosperous. They want to have friends. They want to have peace of mind. They want a good family relationship. They want to feel secure. They want to have hope for the future. And I love, love, love the last one.

Every single person on planet earth wants to love and to be loved. So love people and your life will be rich. I love it. Howard, I can't wait to see you and give you a big hug, brother. Me too, brother. I appreciate you. Listen, thank you everybody for listening. Go to howardpartridge.com and thanks for being here. Thank you, Tommy. Appreciate you, brother. You too, buddy.

Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper

to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.