The Door to Door Millionaire's Unstoppable Sales System with Lenny Gray
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It's going to depend on the time of day. Like you said, like my target for my reps and for people that I train is you want to talk to seven people an hour, whether you're setting solar deals or you're trying to close pest control, landscape lawn care, pressure washing, painting. We can go down the list of all the companies that I consult for in the home service industry. But we want to talk to at least seven people an hour.

is the goal. And the only reason we'd be under that goal is if we're closing deals or we're setting appointments, because those take a little bit longer to wrap up. So that's the target. So I have what I call, and I write about this in my book, but I have kind of a three-door policy where if I've knocked on three doors and I haven't spoken to anybody, then I'm going to shoot for a door where I know there's a high probability of somebody being home. Maybe the garage door is open. Maybe the front door is open. Kid's playing in the yard. I'm looking for signs of life, right?

So again, to me, the main target in door-to-door, it's a numbers game at the end of the day, right? The more people you talk to, the more people you sell. You don't sell anybody anything if you don't talk to prospective buyers.

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.

1-299 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.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert. I got a really good buddy of mine, and I must say to the audience and to Lenny, very sorry about last week, it was like we've never done a podcast from my house, and I didn't log in, and Gianni happened to be somewhere like Holland or Denmark, and it just...

I apologize, but Lenny's here. Lenny is a great friend of mine. He's excellent. Probably the best door-to-door guy in the world. So hopefully you guys are tuned in and focused because very few people in the world know how to generate business. I know how to get business.

edit search engine optimization, and they come to me. I mean, we book 18,000 calls a month. But Lenny and I started working years ago, and he's just a valuable asset, one of the best. He got me actually in the field to knock on doors with him one time, and that was a learning experience. Lenny's an expert in cross-function team leadership, entrepreneurship, and conflict resolution.

He wrote The Door-to-Door Millionaire. He actually wrote two books, The Door-to-Door Millionaire and the second version. And we'll get into that. He's the CEO of that company. He owns a pest control company, Rove Pest Control. Done a lot of other things. Snap Finance was one of the companies he did a lot with.

Lenny Gray is the door-to-door sales expert and current CEO of Door-to-Door Millionaire, a business that helps door-to-door reps find the most fitting work expertise and experience for their success. Along with running his own companies, Lenny has consulted a variety of other businesses and taught his sales techniques and methods to a multitude of audiences.

He's the author of The Door-to-Door Millionaire, Secrets of Making the Sale, a collection of sales tactics to help people improve their communication and overall sales skills, a must-read for new and experienced sales reps. Lenny. Sounds good. You're here. Let's go. You made it.

I know. I think I told you last week, I'm like, you know, Tommy markets when he doesn't even mean to market. Like he built this up because we went live and then it kind of got cut off. And it was like, well, now we're just building the intensity and the anticipation for this. So you're a marketer when you don't even try to market, Tommy. That's what I love about you. Well, I had people texting me about how much of a failure I am, but we're here today. So we made this work. So Lenny,

Tell us a little bit about, you know, obviously I feel like every door to door guy is a Latter-day Saints or at least started out as Latter-day Saints in Utah. And you happen to be part of that, part of the same mission there. So how did you get into door to door? Let's just refresh the audience of,

how you got into this and how you perfected it. Yeah. So yeah, I served a two-year mission for the church and went to Washington, DC and I literally knocked doors seven days a week, seven, eight hours a day. That's what we did. And when I got back home, started up at school again, at college, I had a high school buddy reach out to me and he's like, "Lenny, I've got this great opportunity. You go door to door and you sell pest control

And shoot, I'd never heard of pest control before. I didn't, you know, I grew up in Utah. We didn't have pest control. I couldn't afford it probably if we needed it anyways. So, yeah.

He talked me into just trying this out and he said, hey, why don't you come with me this summer? I think he went down to Albuquerque or something. And I'm like, listen, man, I don't believe that. I don't think it's real. You probably have to lie, cheat and steal your way to do it anyway. So why don't you do it? You hit me up after the summer if it's legit and I'll think about it. So sure enough, Matt calls me right after the summer, like in September. This is 1997.

And he calls me up and says, man, I made like 25 grand. I'm going to be managing a team in Birmingham, Alabama next year. You have to come and sell with me.

And so, you know, I got married that summer that he had called me and I said, hey, you know, talk my wife into it. So we packed up our Nissan Altima with about everything we owned and we drove across country to Birmingham, Alabama, set up shop, ended up being the top rookie sales rep in the company in Orkin Pest Control. My first year sold for two more years after that just got better and better and

And yeah, a couple of years after that, after they hired me to be their full-time kind of sales trainer guru, started my own pest control company that you had alluded to back in 2003. So we've been going at this for a long time. And bring them all. How old were you? So I was off my mission, I was 21. So I probably started knocking doors when I was 22 years old.

How many kids do you have these days? These days, I have five. We have a nice spread. This is one of the coolest. God's miracle. The Lord...

did this. We did. We got blessed. So we've got a 21, a 19. They're both in college. We've got a 17 and 15. They're both in high school. And we've got a two-year-old in diapers. So we go to college, high school in diapers. We've got all across the board. We're learning how to parent again. And this little girl has all of our hearts and she's amazing. So yes, she's a miracle and we love having

The reason she's a miracle, and I don't want to be TMI here, but you got a vasectomy and the chances of having a baby with that are what are the odds? So the odds are about one in a thousand, which I was a little disappointed in hearing because growing up, my mom always told me I was one in a million, but I guess not. So one in a thousand, you know, it happened. It was supposed to be. And I'll tell you what a blessing it's been for us and our family. It keeps everybody healthy.

a little less crazy and noisy. We've got these teenagers, these young adults, and they bring friends over and it could be crazy, but I actually really like not only the joy she brings the house, but just the level of craziness in the house as well. Because when she goes to bed at nine o'clock at night, everybody knows it's time to be quiet. So friends, family, they all know. So we have bedtime. I think that story is amazing. Well, I want to talk about some fun stuff before we get into the meat and bones. So

One of the things that happened, how long have we been working together now? We've been working together three and a half years. It was the, can I tell, I got to tell the story, Tommy. So it's the summer of 2020.

And I get a call. We have a mutual friend, Tommy and I, and we were talking and apparently, you know, he's like, hey, this guy wrote the door to door millionaire. Tommy wrote the home service millionaire. It's like we've got to get these two guys together. And Tommy had this great idea about a door to door campaign for his garage door company.

And so he flies me down to Phoenix and I go into his office and he takes me on the tour. And, you know, Tommy, he's like a million miles an hour and he's introduced me to all these people in my head. I mean, I'm just spinning. And we probably spent six hours together and most of it in your office, just talking, getting to know each other.

And I came out of that and I was like, I got to call my business partner because I'm not sure if Tommy is crazy or he's a genius. I'm just not, I'm not sure. He might be both.

And so I get on the phone with my business partner and I say, when's the soonest you can book a flight down to Phoenix? Because I need you to meet this guy to kind of confirm what I'm thinking here of what we should do. And sure enough, McKay got on a flight the next day, flew down. Tommy took him through the same process.

And I just, I loved it. And I've loved working with Tommy ever since. It's been, like I said, three and a half years and we're building something special. We hit seven figures this year in our program. And it's just been a ton of fun and great to work with you. Okay, one other quick story I got to tell about Tommy before we get into anything else.

One of the things that I really appreciate the most about Tommy is when we first started working together, he was living in this apartment complex that he had bought to fly his technicians in to go through their training. And his house, he was renting out. I think he had several houses, Tommy, and you were renting them out. You just weren't in a house.

And so you and we were living in this eighteen hundred square foot two bedroom apartment. And I flew out like when we got this thing started. You remember, I was in Phoenix every single week except for Christmas and New Year's for that first year. And as we were putting this together and working together, well, I live in these apartments as well. When I when I come down for a few nights every week.

And Tommy is the same guy if he's living in an 1800 square foot apartment or if he's in his mansion right now in Paradise Valley. He's the same guy. He's always been the same guy. We'd hang out, we'd play games and go to dinner and just have a blast. And so that's indicative of who you are. Sometimes people have a different impression of you, Tommy, but you are genuine and you are real and it doesn't matter your circumstance. And I love people like that. And I think that's why we've got along really well. And that's why we've been working together for the last several years.

How to share that. - Yeah, well listen, I think staying humble and remember where you started is the most important thing. And that's why, to a fault, I take more time with people that haven't been as fortunate in business because I was that guy. I mean, I worked in the business

for six years in the truck every day. And on weekends, on holidays, nights, I walked out of movie theaters to go run jobs. And I'll never forget those days. So don't forget where you started from and pay it forward because enough people took the time to pay it forward to me. Even you paid it forward. When I met you, you were like, dude, I get like 10 opportunities a week.

And you were like, it's hard to dissect which ones I should jump on. We're doing something pretty special in this industry, but there's so many opportunities out there right now. It's just, it's really disciplined of seeing what's the right, even buying companies. I was on a really great podcast yesterday with Adam Coffey. Have you heard of Adam Coffey? Oh yeah, yeah, I've read his stuff. So he's got a new book out and man, the guy's a genius when it comes to buying companies and private equity.

But one more fun fact. Tell me about your obsession with castles, because I really want to do something with you on this. Like, I really think it would be an amazing opportunity. I want to hear from the comments of who would be into this. Yes. So, again, we all have dreams. We all have things. And several years ago, I went to the UK with my wife and my in-laws.

And we were doing all these castle tours and that. And I just had this revelation. I'm like, I got to own a castle one day. It's got to happen. Got to buy a castle. And so I was telling this to Tommy and Tommy's like,

I've always wanted to buy a castle. We need to buy a castle together. And so, you know, I have a realtor out there in the UK and Europe, and they kind of hit me up every now and again with some places. And Tommy and I go back and forth on what about here? What about there? Or what do you think about this one or that one? And so, yeah, I just think it would be incredible to buy a castle and live there for a couple of years and then probably do a VRBO thing and rent it out and that. But yeah, I've had this obsession with castles. So there you go. I want...

I want a castle that's super old with like a story. Each room has like a story in it. But, you know, castles are a lot of work too. I mean, to upkeep, I heard it's more an upkeep than the castle costs. Yeah. So you got to have a lot of people to live on the site and kind of upkeep it.

Yeah. And you've got to just because of the age and yeah, there's a lot of upkeep on them. And I've been doing some interesting things with a lot of them, especially in Europe over there is just upgrading and updating some things, but you don't want to lose the integrity of the structure either. And you want it to have that history and that story and that richness. I think that's what makes it appealing, you know, not just for me, but for other people who may want to, you know,

want to stay in a castle. We would have a facility like Roy Williams has in Austin. This really cool facility. You know Dan Pena? Does that ring a bell? No. We're going to have to look him up together. He runs his stuff out of a castle I think out of the UK. Let's jump into some stuff, Lenny, because a lot of people wanted to listen to this. They wanted to understand what... It's such a cool thing for me. Literally learning about

going and getting the business versus just having it come to you. Like, I love...

incoming calls. Like, I don't think there's a whole lot of people that do it better as far as SEO, PBC, LSA, GMB, the magazines, making sure you're optimizing every single flyer that goes out, making the people call you. But door-to-door and cold calling, it's like a different model of creating business where it doesn't necessarily exist. And you guys have been really able, you set yourself apart so dramatically. Like, there's a couple great people in the space that speak at a lot of events, like Taggart,

I don't know where you guys are, equivalency or whatnot, but I know you don't speak as many events, but you do a lot more in the field training. What do you think, what made you the number one guy back when you were 22 years old? What do you think it is? Because a lot of people get a bad rap.

They lie, cheat and steal. They sell solar for crazy. You've done it the honest way. What do you think sets you apart? When I started my first year knocking doors, the one thing I remember we had to submit a do or die goal is what the guy called it. This guy running this event. And there was back in the day, the company that I'd worked for as the main marketing arm for Orkin Pest Control, they were the king of door to door. They have thousands of door to door reps like some of the companies do now. And we

We sat down in this big group of people and they're like, okay, you got to write your do or die goal and then you got to turn it into your regional or whatever. And on this piece of paper, I wrote the number 442. And I went up and I didn't think much about it. I mean, I had kind of why I was going to get there and what I was going to do.

And the reason for 42, my favorite football player of all time was Ronnie Locke. Safety for the 49ers also played for the Raiders there for a little bit. And so I turned this in and this regional took this piece of paper and he looked at me and he's like, you're a rookie, right? And I'm like, yeah. How in the world are you going to do 440? Nobody's ever done that before as a rookie.

And I said, well, what I need to do is I need to do this every month, this every week, this every day, actually this every hour. If I do this many sales on an hourly basis, by the time my 16 weeks is done, I'll hit 442. And I knew that for me, it was all about just working, putting in the time, just like anything. Like I played sports in high school. It's like you just got to put in the time. You got to put in the reps.

And so I'd go out every morning. Our meetings were at 11 o'clock in the morning. I'd go out at 10 o'clock every morning. I'd knock on a few doors, talk to five people was my goal, go to the meeting, then go after and realize that I can control my work ethic. And the more I spent times on the doors, the more I'd learn tendencies of people and more I'd learn the system and process.

And that's what I do today. That's what I teach. That's what my books teach. My online courses teach. That's what my one-on-ones that I teach other people is this process. I didn't feel I was anything extraordinary in terms of just personality or, you know, you see some of these people on the doors and you're like, holy, they just blow your mind. They're like so slick and so smooth and they can respond to anything right away. To me, it was like, I just developed a system.

and a process to where if somebody says this, you say that. To start a conversation, you have these five bullet points that you go through. And really just taking this, I call it the sales flow process, but the sales flow just takes you from they open the door to they close the door with a signed agreement. So for me, it was just learning to control what I could

control, you know, how much work I could put in and then just learning door after door. I mean, I've talked to hundreds of thousands of people, sold thousands of accounts, and I've been told no than probably anybody more than anybody else that's out there knocking doors. It's been knocking doors because I'm still doing it. I'm still trained people to do it.

And so for me, it's just a matter of learning that process and that system to say, I'm going to give myself the highest probability of making a sale on doors. I'm not going to sell everybody. It's always funny to me. I go on the doors with people and I'll knock and I don't qualify somebody. And I turn around and walk away and they're like, what? I thought you're supposed to sell everybody you talk to. You're the door-to-door millionaire. And it's like,

No, actually, that's not how it works. Like what I try to do is after my initial approach, I try to qualify people, find out who's worth my time to talk to and who's not. Because I see so many reps making that mistake of talking too long to people that there's no chance to sell their Tom Cruise. Right. Mission Impossible. It's not going to happen. Or they talk to people too briefly that actually they do have a chance to sell.

And you see a lot of that as well. So I developed this process where these three main qualifiers and we know who's worth our time to talk to and who's not. So anyway, it's just, it's a matter of hard work. It's a matter of learning a system and then just following through on all those pieces of the puzzle that get you to, again, making the highest probability of making that sale. You know, what's interesting, Lenny, is going into this year, I told every one of my technicians, and we're going to be working very hard at this in January and February, is

How much do you want to make this year? And why do you want to make that kind of money? How much would you need to do in sales? What do those KPIs need to be? What needs to happen today? Not this year, not this quarter, not this month, not this week. Because if you don't start January correctly, you're moving uphill the whole year. And you're chasing a goal that's hard to hit. But you got to have a big enough why. Like you hit that 440. And is that what you ended up hitting on the nose?

So actually I did 474. So, you know, it is what it is. And I figured I'd sell a little bit more. So as far as retention goes, so I sold 474 accounts and I got paid for 468 of them. So I ended up being better than 442. You know, it was, it was good. So pest control. So real quick, go into the biggest layers of what you think works well, because I

Garage doors was going to be a flop, everyone said. There's no money to be made. But the goal was the sticker. That's kind of the caveat that we put on it. But, you know, you see solar, you see pest control, you see windows, you see cable, you see alarms. And windows and solar are expensive. So you might have one in a month and it could be a jackpot. I don't know really what the numbers are supposed to be. Pest control is probably a lot easier because...

I don't know. Can you talk about those and tell us the differences? Yeah. So the average, if you look at statistically across the board in door-to-door, the average closing ratio is under 3%. It hovers between less than 1% to about 3% in most industries. And that's who answers? Is that who, if they answer the door? No, that's actually closing. That's making a sale. So that's the average closing rate is under 3%. So if you think about it- Yeah, but what I'm asking is,

If it's under 3%, is that every person you talk to? Is that every door you knock? Yeah, so that means that I'm going to make three sales for every 100 people I talk to. So I think-

Yes, that you talk to that are a qualified or not even a qualified buyer, but just a potential buyer, right? The homeowner, for instance. So I think one of the biggest statistics that people that do door to door that are just it's irrelevant is how many doors knock on. Like, who cares? Like if I if I can knock on a thousand doors, I don't talk to anybody. I'm not making any sales. So many typically of that. And I want you to go deeper. But just while we're on the subject.

How many answer their doors? And I know it depends on the time of day, but I know COVID really threw things in a mix because a lot more people were home. But typically in a normal environment, how many answer their door?

It's going to depend on the time of day. Like you said, like my target for my reps and for people that I train is you want to talk to seven people an hour, whether you're setting solar deals or you're trying to close pest control, landscape lawn care, pressure washing, painting. We can go down the list of all the companies that I consult for in the home service industry. But we want to talk to at least seven people an hour.

is the goal. And the only reason we'd be under that goal is if we're closing deals or we're setting appointments because those take a little bit longer to wrap up. So that's the target. So I have what I call, and I write about this in my book, but I have kind of a three-door policy where if I've knocked on three doors and I haven't spoken to anybody, then I'm going to shoot for a door where I know there's a high probability of somebody being home. Maybe the garage door is open. Maybe the front door is open. Kid's playing in the yard. I'm looking for signs of life, right?

So again, to me, the main target in door-to-door, it's a numbers game at the end of the day, right? The more people you talk to, the more people you sell. You don't sell anybody anything if you don't talk to prospective buyers. And when it comes to the solar versus lawn care or pest control, what do you think the difference of the sales reps are? Like when you get into that high ticket versus lower ticket, what are some of the things you look for and what are the differences?

So what I love about what I've created is I've created a process for the C player, let's say, even a D player or two. I can't teach work ethic, right? I can't control some of those things. But as far as just getting people to succeed,

I don't care what industry you're in. If you're setting appointments, you certainly don't need to be an A player. But if you're closing appointments on $40,000 solar deals, you probably better be an A player. And so I think what's great about door to door is you can take all levels. If you have the system and the process in place, you can take all levels of ability or non-ability and you can take all those people and you can put them into a box somewhere.

And what we've seen is maybe we put somebody in a position where they're doing like we're doing at A1. We're putting them in a pretty high closing ratio potential on the doors and we're putting them in that situation. And then all of a sudden they get really good at it and they're like, well, what's next? What's more? What can I sell now? And so if you have the opportunity to start somebody at a lower level, they can matriculate their way up through the ranks, so to speak, to where they're maybe now feeling very comfortable closing a $600, $700 pest control account.

And then eventually it's a $15,000 interior paint job or exterior paint job. And then it's a $30,000 solar sale. So it really, there's a lot of different opportunities in door-to-door where you don't even necessarily need to sell. You could do a door-to-door marketing campaign. You could do, like I said, door-to-door setting.

But I think if people, my thing is I always tell people, Tommy, is if you're willing to knock doors, I can make you able, right? Like there's a process and there's a system. You just have to be willing to go out and do it. That's one thing we can't do for people is go knock doors for them.

What are those three qualifiers that you kind of see that they'd be? You mentioned three qualifiers. What are those three things that you look for? Yeah. So what I did is I kind of reverse engineered every sale I've ever made. And I said, what is consistent with every sale that I've ever made? What happens at least one of these things, if not all three of them, what happens consistently at every door? And what I found was this. First and most prominent is somebody asked me, how much is that?

If somebody asks the price of something they're interested, right? So for instance, if I'm at the mall and I need a new pair of Jordans or whatever, and I go in and I walk in one of these shoe stores and somebody's like, hey, just so you know, men's dress shoes are 50% off. If I have zero interest in men's dress shoes, I'm looking for basketball shoes, then I'm not going to even ask, well, how much is 50? I don't care.

And so if I try to bait people, so to speak, into asking me, well, how much is that? If we're offering some kind of a discount, some kind of a special, well, how much is that going to be? I know there's a level of interest. It may only be this small, but it's something I can work with. Now they qualify. Now I can get into value building. I can spend more time trying to put together the perfect value build that fits their situation perfectly. If they don't ask me how much, I don't spend time with them because they're not qualified.

So that's the first one, that's probably the most prominent. The second one is if they admit to me they have a need for what I'm selling or I observe that need. Now that's gonna vary from industry to industry. So if I'm selling pest control, I can look in the eaves and I can see spider webs, I can look in the yard, I can maybe see some ant beds. Or if I'm doing paint, if I'm a painter, I can see if the exterior of a home anyway maybe needs a fresh touch up on some paint or a new paint job. If I'm selling an interior house cleaning service,

I have no idea. Right. So they're going to have to admit to me that they need that versus me trying to get them to, you know, just show them that there actually isn't. So need is the second qualifier. The third one is if they already have what I'm selling slash if they do it themselves. Right. So I don't have to sell people on the idea of, hey,

you need this lawn care service. Because if they tell me they've already got a lawn care service or a company doing that, then they already see the value in what I'm selling. Or they tell me, oh, I do it myself. Well, now there's value there.

So now I just got to explain to them through my value build, how we're going to team up together with what they're already doing. And we're going to supplement that through our services, right? And so those are the main three. How much is it? There's a need either expressed or I view the need and point that out. Or obviously the third one being they do it themselves and they already have the service themselves. And if someone's already got pest control, since that's your core business, I mean, I know you guys are really good at

figuring out ways to get them to change. How does that conversation work? Yeah. So the switchover process, again, and this goes into all my steps. There's sub-steps to every step that I have in my sales flow process. When we talk about switchovers, we're really talking about painting a picture for somebody and asking a lot of questions. Like a lot of times people think when I teach my switchover system, and I'll kind of go through a high level with you here, but a lot of people think you have to kind of

discredit other companies or tell them, you know, hey, your company, oh, that's a horrible company. Like I would never do something like that. But what I do do is when I find out somebody's with a company, I ask a lot of questions because I want to find out what I do differently in my company versus what they do differently.

So, oh, yeah. OK, so you're using, you know, ABC pest control. Oh, fantastic. How long you been with them? You've been with them for a few years now. Oh, fantastic. Now, did somebody knock on your door or did you look them up online or how did you get in connection with ABC? Well, we yeah, we looked them up online. OK, great. So what kind of pest control needs were you having when you look them up first? Was there anything on the inside or just outside bugs? Oh, we were having some outside bugs. OK, more spiders, ants. What were you seeing?

OK, well, what have they been doing to control those? And so I'm just asking a series of questions to see if there's any chinks in that armor to go, hey, here's how we're different. Here's our differentiators from what you're doing now versus what we're going to do for you. And that's kind of at least part of the way that we go through that process to get people to switch over. Because it's not and you talk about this all the time in your podcast. It's not just about the price. I don't want to come in as the cheapest. I just want to be better.

And so I'm going to find out if you can imagine if you've got a team of five door to door reps and they're talking to seven people an hour, each one of them, and they're working five, six, seven, eight hours a day. It doesn't take long until you should know everything there is to know about your competition, everything that there is to know.

And then before I start asking questions now, I can actually start making statements with people the better educated I get on my competitors. So that's the switchover game is huge, but you have to be knowledgeable. You have to be confident and you have to talk about those differentiators. You might discuss some similarities, but really emphasize those differentiators of what your company does better than what they're currently using.

So here's something that's pretty controversial that you're super familiar with. You guys, you know, the guys, Austin and Travis and Moxie. Yeah. They built the business. I remember the first year because they were in my complex. This was three buildings ago. And I'd walk in and they were doing their door to door. They'd have 25 reps and they'd be whiteboarding and talking about objection handling and whatnot.

And Austin came up to me and said, you know, we're moving away from that. It built the core business and it got us really good. And, you know, Paul Giannamore, you were one of the guys that introduced me to him. And there tends to be a fall off. I mean, what is it? How much is the perfect mix of door to door? And I think that you can build a whole business that's sustainable. I'm not knocking door to door. I'm just curious your point of view, because there needs to be a demand leads coming in as well. What's the perfect mix and why is it?

sometimes devalued of a company because there's higher turnover, I guess. But talk to me about that. You got to do it the right way. And I love Paul again. Yeah. Paul's our mutual friend that obviously introduced us. And Paul actually wrote the forward in my second book. So to try to get the guy to lay the audio track down, if you're listening, Paul, like shame on you. Like I've asked you for years, like it's my voice reading it, but it'd be so much better if it was the sweet tones of Paul Giannamore, but that's okay.

So, yeah, the key is there have been some companies in the acquisition world, especially in pest control, that have really almost been hoodwinked a little bit in thinking these door-to-door accounts were as solid as they were. And you have to think about it from the perspective of, we always say it's like the legs on a stool, right? It's like door-to-door should be a leg on the stool. It shouldn't be the leg of the stool. Because if it is, I think, of

acquirers in the pest control space, especially have kind of wised up and said, if 100% of your new growth is door to door, and yeah, that attrition level can be it doesn't have to be depends on the training, right? Depends on who you're hiring, how many you're hiring, what your protocols are for keeping customers, what kind of service you have, are you a good service? You have good technicians, can you actually sustain that growth long term and not just for that one year service agreement, let's say?

But if you have that systems and processes in place, then you shouldn't see the fall off. I mean, our company averages well over 80% in our door to door retention of accounts. And a lot of companies, it's well under 50%, right? Probably there's companies that do 90 plus percent. That's fantastic.

So there has to be that mix, but it's important to note that door-to-door shouldn't be the only arrow in the quiver for growth. And that's why in our company, I think we call it the golden goose age, where for us, it was when we knew we would grow without a single door-to-door rep. Because our companies were built, when we first started in 2003, we started in Utah. In five years, we were the largest residential pest control company in the nation, or not in the nation, in the state, sorry.

not even close to the nation, but in the state. And then ServiceMaster Terminix came knocking saying, "Hey, we don't like when people are bigger than us." So they made us an offer and we were acquired by ServiceMaster in 2007.

And all of our accounts were door-to-door. And this was well before a lot of these crazy things started happening with just door-to-door accounts. Well, in the meantime, we started realizing that, wow, yeah, maybe acquirers aren't valuing door-to-door accounts as much as they used to because of some companies getting burned by some acquisitions that they just lost their butts on. And so we decided that we were just going to start to market in all aspects, just the traditional type of marketing and try to grow in other ways beyond door-to-door.

And as we've done that, again, we've just put other legs on this stool to solidify it. So we hit this golden goose era when we realized it's probably been six, seven years ago now. We don't need to have a single rep knocking doors and selling accounts and our company is still going to grow this year.

We can proudly say that ever since then for every single year. And sometimes we have a lot of reps knocking doors for our pest control company. And sometimes we hardly have any. And it really to us is a matter of being able to go through and hire the right fit for our company versus trying to hire anybody with a pulse and, you know, just anybody who's going to maybe come in and not be the ethical type of, you know, it's got to be that fit where they're going to do it the right way and be okay to do it the right way. And if not, it's not a big deal.

what we're going to grow, you know, regardless of a door-to-door program. And, you know, that's a great question because a lot of people listening are probably like, how do I even get started? Who is the avatar that's going to knock doors? How old? And I know you've had all different ages and walks of life, but really, if you're going to build a program, where do you recruit them? What are you looking for in a candidate?

Yeah, there is an avatar there. Probably somebody in their late teens to late 20s is probably where you're looking. People that are competitive, people that are willing to learn, people that are humble. It's probably different for different companies. I mean, that's one of the reasons that I know I do this, but I hold regular webinars that are free. And I tell people what they look for. What does recruiting look like? What does hiring look like? What does onboard training look like? What does the summer sales or just a door-to-door sales team look like in general?

And so I hold these webinars because I want to teach people how to do it the right way. That's my passion is teaching people to do it the right way because I love what door-to-door has done for me as a person since the late 90s to now. We're 25 years into door-to-door and I would hate to see it go away because of people just doing it the wrong way. And so that's why I hold these things to kind of

teach business owners who don't have the LDS connection, as you say, Tommy, or they haven't done missions. It's like, one of my proudest moments, I will tell you, we had a group of reps in our Michigan office one summer, this is several summers ago. Not a single one of them served a mission or were members of the church or anything like that. They were in a program at Western Michigan University and we went and recruited them. They were our top office that year. And

And they outsold any other group that we had. We had four or five other offices, other teams going. And these guys mostly were from Utah or Idaho, LDS kids, return missionaries. And this crew in Michigan just blew the socks off of it.

And it was awesome because it was like, I taught them how to do this. And so it's not a prerequisite to have those connections in Utah with the church or whatnot. It's really about just finding the right people and having that system in place. I can't emphasize that enough. If you have the right systems in place, that's

then it's going to be successful. It's going to work. You just have to be willing to kind of put your foot out there and do it, which I think is cool for a lot of home service business owners that I consult with on a weekly basis is most of them don't have those connections, but they're already growing. They're already successful businesses. I mean, I just got off the phone with a pool guy that's doing 13 million. And he's like, now I want to incorporate door to door and keep going from there. And I'm like, that's awesome. That just blows my mind because

To get to 13 million takes a long time if you're just starting doing it, knocking doors. But this guy's already done that. And now he wants to add door to door. Well, let's just throw gas on the fire. You know, he's going to go crazy. You know, when we were recruiting initially, when we first started together, one of the things, and maybe this is true, maybe it's not, but finding really popular, well-networked individuals because they help grow the team.

People see success with this individual. They have a great network of friends and family. All of a sudden, they got five more reps. And if you get the right compensation to where they get paid to recruit, but they got to have the recruits got to perform for them to get paid. So they're looking for the right people. Is that an important aspect when you're recruiting is to look for? I wouldn't say popular, maybe well-networked. I don't know what the right term is.

Yeah. And that's a great point. And it kind of it's snowballs. Right. And that's the key with this is there's this snowball effect where if somebody has a good experience, I call it the three R's of a good door to door program or a good sales program in general. And number one, the people need to see results right away. Right. Your people, if they're trained right, they need to see results right away because because they statistically they say 74 percent of sales reps fail.

And the reason 74% of sales reps fail is because they don't have good training, right? They don't have good onboarding training, so they don't know what they're doing. They're learning as they go. And it's really tough. If you think about knocking, you know, a hundred, you know, talking to a hundred people and only selling three, what if you talk to 800 people and didn't sell any, you know, that's brutal. And so you've got to get results. And if you get results, you're going to be retained. And that's a great thing about, you know,

seeing people succeed is now they're going to stick around. They're like, wow, I'm selling, I'm doing this. And then if they're retained, the third R is they're going to help you recruit because now all their peers and their buddies and everybody that they know in their network, they're going to go, this is an awesome company. This is an awesome job. I got great training. I'm making great money. I have this lifestyle where I can go out and knock doors and I'm outside and everything's different and new and fresh. And I don't have to sit behind a desk or type. It's a different type of a

person maybe that's looking for that freedom that door-to-door offers but if you can get them with results you're going to retain them and then they're going to help you recruit and then like i said it's that snowball effect now you're getting people from all over the place because shoot you know people are succeeding people people have had success with what what you're doing and how you're doing with them have you seen those kids on tiktok that they go through the store they're like all i need is a squeegee they wash the windows and they say hey where the uh

We're the guys, we're giving discounts to somebody wearing a black collar D to D shirt. And they say, and they're like, we don't want to buy anything. And they're like, well, we're not here to sell anything. Actually, you're two neighbors. And then they say the names like you do. And they say, we actually, and they get them to walk outside with them. We actually take care of all this. And then we're going to take care of the shutters as well.

Normally that's $395, but we drop the trip charge. And because you're a neighbor, we drop it down to $250, all the way down to $250. And they record all this and they post it on their TikTok channel. And I love watching it because most people are not interested and they're like, so you get this done for $250. When can you do it? And they say, we got two houses. When did you need it done by? And they're like, we can get the crew over here, all forms of payment. And

these that they're younger kids probably late teens early 20s and they're making 250 it takes them about a half hour they hit everybody on the block and you know hindsight and people ask you know that that show um that grant cardone was on it's like you know he's gotta get dropped with 500 and figure out how to make a million dollars because it's like for me i don't have your skill level but i would go door-to-door selling garage doors i would say listen

This is how much the companies charge. I buy the basic tools and I go buy some springs and rollers on most common doors. And I say, I'll do this for this price. And I get to where I have 20, 30 grand. I could invest it in something else. But I even thought about just...

Let me just do your sidewalk for the emergency. I charge $25. I'll put an American flag. It's so 911 knows this address and it's posted on the side of your street. Of course, I got a bunch of haters on TikTok that are like, well, if you don't have any money, how could you afford the stencils and the paint? I'm like, it's 18 bucks. But it's pretty cool to watch these young guys do this. I love the idea of going out and getting it. And I think it's something that every kid, when you and I first talked, I love the idea of somebody saying,

We're going to teach your child or your kid values. We're going to show them how to look people in the eyes. We're going to get them to talk with confidence. And they're going to learn stuff that will bring them through life a lot easier. We're going to tell them what it's like to work hard. We're going to tell them the value systems, how to have integrity, morals, and ethics. And I think it's something that I wish I would have done when I was a kid. I didn't have an opportunity to do it.

And that's probably the payoff. One of the biggest payoffs for me is, in fact, this was like less than a month ago, I ran into one of my old door to door guys and he's in the oil industry and he's killing it. And I ran into others that, you know, they were paying for law school or med school and now they're doctors and attorneys. And they they'll go back and say, you know what you taught me. Like I use that in the courtroom. You taught me that on the doors. I'm using that now with my with my clients, you know, in the medical profession.

And so, yeah, these communication skills are lost a lot of times because, you know, everybody's scrolling. I always tell my new reps now when I do training, I'm like, you don't even have to express how you feel right now because there's an emoji you just send for that. You don't even have to express that anymore. There's a picture. Just send a picture. This is how I feel. Right. And so for me.

So yes, watching people grow in a way that differentiates them from normal human beings, I guess right now, or average human beings, I think door-to-door is it. And I will tell you, I'm the first one to say door-to-door is the armpit of all sales opportunities. If you can drum up business cold calling on people that may have never thought about what you're selling before, you can go do anything else, anything else you can go do and be successful at if you've got the gumption to do door-to-door.

So tell me this phrase you start out with. Share a little bit about, hey, there, I'm just the. Yeah. And the interesting thing. So we call the initial approach, right? It's probably the first 20 to 45 seconds of when somebody opens the door. And it has to be perfect. Right. You think, you know, old school, you think about the Bruce Lee thing where he's like, you don't want to practice, you know, 10,000 kicks once. You want to practice one kick 10,000 times. That to me is what the initial approach is.

It has to be perfect because that's that first impression. Somebody opens the door and you've got 20 to 45 seconds to make this impression, to see if you can't qualify them, to get them actually to start a conversation with you. That's what I always say. The point of that initial approach is, is actually start a conversation with somebody. You're not trying to sell somebody. You're not trying to do anything, but just get them to start talking to you, kind of grease the wheels, so to speak.

So when I go through that, you know, the funny thing is to tell me, you know, funny enough, I can teach this up and down and then I'll go on the doors with a rep who I just taught this to. And the first thing they're going to do is the biggest mistake. I'm going to I'm going to just say it right here. The biggest mistake door to door reps make right here, right now. This is I'm dropping this and I guarantee it's going to happen to you if you go out and knock doors today. Somebody is going to answer the door and you're going to say, hey, how's it going today?

That is the worst thing you can do as a door-to-door rep. You have two strikes against you. You were not invited to that house. Those people do not know you. So that's your second strike. Your third strike is if you give up control of the conversation by asking a question like that.

And you don't really care. I mean, I've heard, I've literally heard reps say, Hey, how's it going today? Well, good. Well, anyway, my name's, you know, and they kind of get into, they didn't even wait for the person to answer. It's kind of like this just reflex where we see somebody for the first time. Oh, Hey, how's it going? You don't do that in an effective initial approach, an effective initial approach. You state who you are. And it's literally a run on sentence. It's 20 to 40 seconds where you're just talking and you've got five points you need to hit that, that are going to get that person to start a conversation with you.

And those five points are, you're going to do that introduction. Hey there, just Lenny. I'm just a garage door guy in the neighborhood. And everything, it's like, I peeled the onion back so many times, Tommy. Everything, the word just in there, that's important. I'm just the garage door guy. I'm just the pest control. I'm just the sewer. I'm just the painter in the neighborhood. I'm just the pool guy.

And the reason we say that is because we don't want to be a threat to people. Right. And now if we're just whoever we are, now the sudden people go, oh, yeah, no need to worry. Just a cool guy. So so that's important. Right. So you make that statement. Hey, there. My name is Lenny. I'm the I'm the I'm the pool guy in the neighborhood.

The reason I'm in your neighborhood today is because I was talking to you and then we get into the name drop. You mentioned that earlier. It's got to be a relevant name drop. One thing that I hate that reps do is when they make up names. Well, you know, the Smiths or either the Johnsons. I hate that. And it doesn't work anyway because if they don't know, because here's the thing. Think about this. People treat you differently if they know you know who they know. If you follow that logic there, people will treat you differently. I get caught up in this. I have door-to-door reps knock on my door all the time.

And if they name drop one of my neighbors, I know the trick. I know what this is all about. But then I want to listen. I'm like, well, what are the Sorensons doing? Hmm. What's going on over at the Farnsworth house? Like, and I want to listen to them because they've dropped a relevant name drop. So it's got to be relevant. It's got to be either a customer or somebody you just spoke to. And you love getting your door knocked. Yeah. Oh, I'm all Tommy.

Like my kids know my wife, if the door it's a salesman, dad. And I am, I'm in, I had a guy the other day doing solar. He was a setter for solar brand new guy. We're for a company called blue Raven. I know the guys that started blue Raven. So I'm big fans of theirs and you know, I'm like, okay, so what kind of training did you get with these guys? How they, how they doing that nowadays? And you know, he's kind of telling me he's got a, you know, he's decent. I can give him like a five or six and I go, so,

what kind of books do you read for a job like this? And I'm thinking, got to say my books. And he's like, nah, haven't really done much reading. And he gave me a couple of books that he had read that I wasn't even familiar with. He said he was writing his own book too. So whatever. And I was like, oh, okay. I says, have you ever heard of door-to-door millionaire? No, never heard of it. And I was like,

Bro, pull that up on your phone right now. He's like, does it come in audible? I just like to I like to listen to books. I'm like, pull that up on your phone right now. OK, OK, cool, cool. And he kept calling me Larry. So he has no idea. And he's like, OK, Larry. And he pulls it up. He's like, OK, you ever heard of that author? He's like Lenny Gray. Nope, nope. Never heard of him.

I was like, okay, well, I actually wrote that book just so you, I'm not a big self promoter, but I was just having a good time with this guy. And I'm like, I actually wrote that book. And he's like, oh, Lenny. Oh, your name's Lenny? And I'm like, yeah. Anyway, maybe worth the read. And anyway, we kind of sent him off and this, that, and the other. So yeah, I love when door to door reps come to my door. But yeah, going back to the five step. - So you sent him just the guy and then you dropped the neighbor. That was that step two. And you're in the middle of a run on sentence at this point.

Yeah. So you're kind of just rolling through, you know, you drop the neighbor's name, even if some of you didn't sell, Hey, I was just talking to Jeff and Jen here next door, what we're doing in the area. And then what I call in my first chapter in my first book is, is all about this idea of black Friday, this day after Thanksgiving, it always fascinated me that people would sleep in the parking lot of Best Buy to save a hundred bucks on a flat screen, you know, the day after Thanksgiving. And it's like, what,

What drives this phenomenon known as Black Friday? My mom was a big Black Friday shopper. She'd be the first one in the line to go buy a Cabbage Patch doll or whatever the new thing was that year. And I was like, what drives people to do that besides just the adventure, right? And it boiled down to three things. It was like you have a limited supply of something that you're offering at a discount for a limited amount of time.

And so I'm like, how can I bring Black Friday to the doorstep at every door? And you have to decide for your own business. This is what we create for businesses is this Black Friday special. I want my door-to-door reps to be able to offer something that nobody else in the company can offer because it's hard to do door-to-door, right? It's a tough job.

And so we want to give them this special Black Friday offer. So I kind of explained what my Black Friday offer is, right? Hey, while we're in the neighborhood, we're finishing up a route in the next couple of days. We're trying to add a couple more customers. So I'm going to give them a big discount. And again, the discount doesn't matter other than your excitement about the discount. We did a test one year with our door-to-door teams. And we said, okay, this group, you're offering $100. This group, you're offering 50% off. This group, you're doing $75. This group, you're doing 5% off. And we kind of had

like this shotgun approach of all these different discounts. And you know what we found? It doesn't flip and matter what the discount is unless you're excited about the discount.

I could say it's $100 off, just monotone and not have much emotion behind it. Or I could say it's $10 off right now and be excited about that and have that good smile. And that's going to get people to not only be excited about the discount, but also to what? They're going to ask me a qualifying question because I'm excited to tell them how much is it, right? So that's step three as we talk about the Black Friday. And again, this is a five to 10 second step. It's the longest step.

Step four, I'm going to address the common concerns that I hear. Sometimes that's industry to industry. Sometimes it's neighborhood to neighborhood. Most people say we already have it or we do it ourselves. Those are the two most common concerns, right? And so I'm going to put those right out there in front of people because I love to get in front of concerns before they become a concern. This is a theme throughout the sales flow process is addressing a concern before it's stated because that keeps you in control of conversations.

So after my Black Friday special, I might say something like, and I know you guys probably already have this kind of a service or you probably do it yourself at this point.

And then I go into step five. Again, I'm not pausing and waiting for them to agree with me. I'm going right into step five. And this is the big curveball. Okay. This is going to come completely out of right field where somebody, and this is actually really hard for reps to comprehend how to do this. I found it. It doesn't make it. There's no logic behind it other than my purpose of that initial approach is to start a conversation with somebody. And then I'm going to say something like this after I explain those common concerns, whatever those are.

then i'm going to say so in fact how long have you guys lived in the neighborhood for how long you guys been in the house or you know something to just start a conversation i feel like it's kind of a softball too everybody kind of knows how long they've been in the neighborhood or how long they've lived in the house and now they're thinking in their mind this is this is my like psychology of the customer right they're in their mind they're going door-to-door guy two strikes don't know him

Didn't invite him to my house. Oh, he's just okay. I'm not super intimidated. He's just this guy. He knows my name. Oh, interesting. Yeah, he said my neighbor's name. Yeah, I kind of know them. That's kind of cool. Okay, discount. Oh, he's excited about this price drop. That's kind of cool. Well, actually, I'm going to tell him that I'm not interested because I already do it. I'm going to tell him I'm not interested because I have a guy that already does that.

Wow, he actually said that to me. Wow, you probably already have a guy or you do it yourself. And then they're kind of thinking in their mind like, oh, crap. Like, what am I going to say? And then I just give them the softball. And I say, so how many of you guys live in the neighborhood? And they're completely like, well, we've been here about five, six years. Oh, fantastic. Are you from the area originally? And I'll ask a couple of follow-up questions. Then I'm going to repeat my Black Friday step and my step four. And then I'm going to try to qualify. So yeah, like I said, it's going to be a huge discount for the next few people that jump on the route for tomorrow.

And like I say, it's my penguins of Madagascar move. Instead of smiling wave, I smile and nod. And we just smile and nod. And we're not afraid of silence. And we let them go, okay, well, how much is that going to be? Or what exactly do you do?

Or, yeah, we've actually been talking about this. Or if I see something, like I mentioned before, I can bring it up non-confrontationally. Like, you know, a lot of the neighbors are dealing with the spider webs and the eaves. Pretty typical for this neighborhood right now. These homes are all about 10, 15 years old now. And that might be my overcoming that concern part before I get to the how long have you lived in the neighborhood. So I'm going to remind them again about maybe what I noticed. And I'm just trying to qualify people, again, to see if they're worth my time. If they're not, no big deal. Like, I will move on to the next person quicker than anybody else if I don't feel like I got a chance to sell them.

That's the initial. So how does that exit look? They're not qualified. They're still but they're chatting, Kathy, you get an old war veteran, and he'll talk to you all day because he doesn't get a lot of people to talk to. And I'm sure reps falsely identify that as an opportunity.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They don't ask me the price and that, you know, and I like people. I like to talk to people. And I, you know, I have a purpose for talking to people, certainly when I when I'm on the door selling. But my time is so valuable that I do have to be careful to get with those people that just want to talk your ear off.

And if they're not progressing in the sale, then it's a, you know, it's a, it's a pretty quick, quick one for me. It's like, Hey, I really appreciate your time. I'd love to sit and chat with you, have a beer, you know, whatever, sit on the porch, but I'm on the clock right now. I got to fill these last few spots. So again, now what was your name? My name is Lenny. What was your name? Oh, your name's Phil. Nice to meet you, Phil. We'll have a great day. Hope to talk to you again soon. Now I can go next door and say, Hey, I was just chopping it up with Phil next door. The reason I'm in the area right now is to just start, start that process over with a relevant name drop that somebody probably knew that the least,

success I can have on the doors to me is at least get a name to drop. And again, I didn't say I sold him, I didn't say anything else other than I was just talking to him. You know, 'cause again, that is a relevant name drop that I'm putting out. - So when I went out with you, you said this was like very little chance that this would happen, but everybody had a ring. And everybody's like, "Hello, how can I help you?" And you go, "Oh, shit." You didn't say shit, you said shoot. You said, "Oh, shoot."

This is not that common that we'd go to 15 houses in a row with a ring. And what does that throw? I mean, how do you get over that piece? Yeah, that was interesting when that started happening. Like I said, I've been knocking doors since the 90s, well before rings or cell phones for that matter. So, you know, the interesting thing is a couple of summers ago, I was doing some consulting for a pest company up in Canada.

And I actually sold somebody through a ring doorbell, like start to finish. The very last thing that happened is when I said, I just need, you know, some payment information, just a credit card. We can put the number down. Like literally the door opened like this much and you just see this credit card, like peek out the door. They just gave me their credit card. I'm like, perfect. You know, jotted the numbers down, whatever. So, so yeah, that does present a little bit more of a challenge, but I still feel like even at a ring doorbell, you

you know i'm not the guy like i've seen reps do this before and they start talking all choppy like like the ring's not working like they're gonna come out like i don't i don't believe in that kind of stuff but i'll just give my initial approach i will make eye contact with that doorbell and i will give my initial approach a hundred percent because i have control over that like i talked about before i knew i can outwork anybody i can give them every you know ounce of effort that i had at every door that that's kind of my thing that's where i feel like my success comes into play

And I would give that at a ring doorbell just as I would if somebody was staring at their face. So you mentioned that door knocking is one leg of the stool. What have you noticed? Because you really built the businesses door to door. And so unlike me, you started in probably the hardest thing. For what now at like Rove and like other companies you consult?

If this is one stool, what do you say are the most important stools, you know, the pegs on the stool, whatever to add? Like you had to say, look, door to door is important and it can be added at any time. But this is what I found in my journey in business that works well.

Yeah. And it's a mix, right? And you mentioned some of it earlier, your GMB, your LSAs, your click ads, like all of that. Now we all know like business owners I've been talking to in the last probably six, seven months, everybody's tired of click ads and just paying out the wazoo for those things. So that's why I think a lot of momentum, positive momentum has been rolling into the door-to-door space because people are like, well, I know door-to-door is expensive, but shoot, I'd rather pay that than pay on these click ads that are just astronomically increasing in price.

So yeah, your billboards, your radio, your TV, your affiliates, like all of those things we're doing at certain levels at a certain cost that we're trying to do with marketing, your social media stuff. Like it's kind of, you know, we know what marketing is, right? It's like an all in one. Like you can't do one without the other. Like I know I can't roll into Phoenix without seeing your face on a billboard at least every, you know, every two miles. And it's like, that's part of the branding. That's part of the marketing play.

It's the same thing with us. We try to have our foot in the door on just about anything and everything you can imagine. So it's like an omni approach. You're a little bit everywhere. The one thing I see, Lenny, that I think a lot of people make a mistake is they go, I'm going to try out billboards. And they try out a billboard.

And they try it out for two months and they try out radio, but they hit every station instead of the right stations. And they do mailers, but they didn't do any data to figure out. They're also mailing to apartments. They're also mailing to condos. They're also mailing to snowbirds. Like this data is out there, like be smart with it or your cost per acquisition is going to be through the roof and do long tail keywords. Don't just do like garage door repair. Do the long tail keywords because that'll actually bring your costs down.

Be open 24-7. Be open for emergency service. Be open on Sundays because that's when it gets a lot cheaper. And the guys, most business owners are like, I don't want to work like that. Well, then you're going to be paying up the wazoo and your profit margin is not going to be where it needs to be because business never sleeps. Garage doors always break. Yep. Yeah.

at all sorts of hours of the day and days of the week. And yeah, just about any home service business, right? Like somebody, I mean, I talked to a guy in HVAC a couple of days ago. That's, that's part of my webinar, successful guy, great guy. And he,

And he's like, I cannot believe there are actually HVAC companies out there right now that aren't open 24-7 or aren't answering their phone 24-7. And it's like, yeah, there's low hanging fruit that's sitting there in some avenues in any industry because people just don't want to put their effort into that 24-7 marketing, which you kind of need to, depending on what your goals are. You don't need to, but depending on what your goals are, if you want to grow, it's probably a good idea to do that.

My cousin is expand. Well, we ended up,

basically partnering and buying my cousin's garage door company in Colorado Springs. And he's expanding into Texas. So I do some research and I've been really studying on how to find good companies to partner with. And the BBB is actually an amazing source. In the BBB, it says how long they've been around for, if they're members of the BBB. Because if you're a nobody, the reason I love the BBB is it's old school. It's like you've been around for a long time. So you're a member of BBB and it shows like...

And I found this company, it says 1985. I said, dude, you should call these guys. And the interesting thing about the BBB is that they might not have a great rating and they might not have like have a bunch of revenues on the BBB, but it says when they've been established, their company name, their LLC. And there's a lot of data on there. And I said, dude, every single GMB that I'm looking at or GVP, they're all closed right now. Every single one of the garage door companies,

Why not have an answering service? Why? Like you might not need to be open to go run calls at that very minute, but to not have your listing is 24 seven is lazy. It's inefficient. And it's, it's, you should not be in business. And that's what you, I was at a clope convention, massive garage store company, the largest in the world. And this guy goes, well, most people work nine to five. Why should they expect me to be open longer than nine to five?

And I remember looking at the guy, what market are you in? And I put it in my phone because I'm like, I'm going to your market because if that's what you think business is about, is that your convenience when stuff goes wrong, it's just, it's just a big mistake, I think.

Well, you've just got different goals, right? Like that's the thing I've learned with consulting with hundreds of home service business owners over the years. It's one of the first questions I'll ask. Like I just do a free consultation call to anybody who wants to hit me up on my website, moneygray.com. I do a free consultation call. And one of the first questions I ask is, what are your goals for your business? Like, what are you trying to accomplish? And some people, it's a lifestyle brand, right? It's like, yeah, I just want to live comfortably. I want to do my thing. And yeah, they're probably not having a phone service after hours.

Some people are like, they hit me up with almost like my 442 where I broke it down by this, this and this. Well, in years one, we're gonna do this. In year two and three, we're gonna accelerate to this. In year five, our benchmark's gonna be this. And they've got it all figured out. And you just, you know, it just depends on the individual and the business owner of ultimately what they want to accomplish. Not that it's good or bad either way, it's just different. - You know, I ask a lot of business owners what they're gonna do. And they're like, we're gonna double next year. We're gonna double the year after.

And a lot of my questions are, well, what do you want to get to? And they say, you know, we want to get like you did for the past 100 million. And I go, why? What will that do for you? What will that do for your community, your family, your employees? What's your plan? Because without having a purpose and a why behind it, what's the point? Just because you can?

Like, what would $5 million be for your family while your daughter is still two, three, four, five years old? What would it mean to actually make the money that would change while your parents are still alive and you can travel with them? Because we all know we're a slave to our business, especially the first decade. Sometimes we get lucky the first five years. But some of the people just want to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.

And here's the deal. If you're not thinking about profit, at least 10%, then don't think about growth. Think about profitability. Most people brag about revenue. They should be bragging about profitability. And I just, I find it amazing when I ask somebody, how much do you make a year? They say 200 grand. And then I say, what does your business make? They said, I just told you 200 grand. Well, it doesn't work like that. Your business didn't make anything because you paid yourself. Your business is worth nothing. And I don't think people know that. And my goal through this podcast is

through speaking on stages, writing books, what you're doing. It's just to help educate people and have them have a bigger purpose for what they're doing. What do I want my life to look like? I'm working with Dan Martell and he's like, I want to know your North Star. I want to see when you're 70, what does it look like? What did you build the last 30 years with your family, with your religion? What did you do with your community? What did you give back? But I'm putting exact

exactly, exactly what I want to do. Like not just a thought like, I want to make an impact. That's pretty vague. Like impact what community? How? How much? By when? And it's been a lot for me because I've always been a goal setter with business, but now I'm doing it with my life. And it's actually pretty interesting. I'm actually enjoying it, but it's a lot of work.

Yeah. You know, I'll tell you, it just reminds me of something. So, and this is something I've heard you say a number of times and even guests you've had on your show say a number of times. Other people that I communicate with say a number of times. You know, it's called different things by different people. I call it a law of heaven. And that law of heaven is the more you give back to people, the more you get in return.

And it's not just like a dollar thing, right? It's not like, well, if I give this much, then I'm going to get this much in return. Like I could give compliments to people. And I get the feeling of making somebody stick their chest up a little bit and be a little proud of themselves because I told them they're a rock star or they're doing great things, right? It doesn't have to be dollar for dollar. So, okay, I got to say this. So I did a social experiment. Okay, I can confidently say this now because we're past the time. But after Thanksgiving, I decided I'm going to do a social experiment.

And what I'm going to do, a couple of things. So I say prayers regularly. I say a morning prayer and an evening prayer, just a personal prayer. I said, the first thing I'm going to do from Thanksgiving to Christmas, I'm not going to ask for anything in my prayers. I'm just going to just express gratitude. And some people, you know, keep gratitude journals and that kind of thing. So I didn't ask for a thing for that month, right? All I did was I'm just thankful for this. I'm so glad that this and just my list was just a complete gratitude and thanks to God.

The other thing I did is I decided anything I got, and this is not still applicable right now, so I know there's people out there going to connive on this, but anything that I got in way of somebody wanting donations for a charity, I was going to give, no matter what. If it was an email, if it was a text, if I was going somewhere at the store and people were asking, I just decided I'm going to give. I don't care if it was 20 bucks, if it was 200 bucks, I had everything in between. I just said, for a month, I'm just going to give.

And I will tell you that month of what's that? Every homeless guy in the street. You were just. Yeah. Like it didn't matter. Like we did. We were downtown and there's these homeless guys and I'm just giving them cash. And, you know, I was just like, I'm just for you, you, you, you come here. And so I got to tell you the funny thing. And I didn't obviously didn't expect anything in return other than just feeling good.

Right. And realizing that that comes back to me in spades, not in the money or anything like that. I just felt good about myself. And I hopefully made other people feel good by doing these small donations. Right.

So funny enough, I donated, I got an email from this recovery clinics, like this medical recovery clinic where my, one of my sons plays basketball and he'd done some recovery stuff when he sprained his ankles or whatever in the past. And they do like the cupping and they have a hyperbaric chamber and all these things. So they sent this thing out and they said, Hey, we're doing a, you know, a raffle for everybody that donates for whatever. I didn't do it because of the raffle. I was just like, Oh, okay. They're doing a donation. They're, they're, you won the raffle.

So I not only did I win the raffle, I go to pick up my gift basket and it's got this. It's like it's huge, this gift basket. And it's got this clean protein something. I forget the name. Anyway, my daughter is a big my college age daughter. She's on her dance team. National champs. By the way, I tell you, my daughter's dance team national champs. Anyway, got to give a little plug to my daughter. But.

So it's got this clean protein stuff and it's like the big bag of the greens and the protein and they got all these pouches. She priced it out. I literally gave $25 to get a raffle ticket for this thing. It was like over 150 bucks of stuff.

And so this whole Christmas break, we've all just been protein enough because, you know, we got all this protein and all these recipe books for the protein. Anyway, that I not expected at all, but it was actually just kind of cool where I was like, hey, guys, because I tell my kids this all the time, the more you give, and they always repeat back to me, the more you get. I'm like, there you go. So that was kind of a fun one. You remember Zig Ziglar, right? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah. He said you could have anything you want in your life if you just help enough people get what they want. And it's...

It's not biblical, but I think he was a great man of faith. So I think it was derived from the Bible. Lenny, how do we get a hold of you? If someone wants to reach out and know more about Door-to-Door and all the things you're doing, which they said Door-to-Door is impossible for garage doors. You made it work. We got a whole, like it's, it could work for any business. How do they get a hold of you?

Yeah, just go to my website, LennyGray.com. And again, on the website, there's a button that says free consultation. I will talk to anybody, 15, 20 minutes. Let's just hash out. I'll straight up tell you if I don't think your business is in a position to do door-to-door. That doesn't matter to me. I'm just trying to help people, like literally, and teach them the ways. I also do free webinars regularly. You can register for my webinars on my website as well. Just go to the free webinar tab and

And I'm all over social media, the Lenny Gray of Instagram. I'm on Facebook. I'm all over the place. So I'm not- And your books, they're on Audible. They're on Amazon. Door to Door Millionaire, if you guys haven't read it.

I mean, it's got everything broken down for success, but it's nothing like the real person. So make sure you get a chance to book that free consultation or at least jump on one of his webinars. Lenny, I like to close out with just giving you an opportunity. Anything? Well, real quick, any books that stand out for you this last year that really made a big impact? Yeah. Yeah. No. And you. OK, this is the thing about Tommy.

is when we were working together and I was in Phoenix all the time, I could hardly ever leave his office without him giving me books, right? You probably remember blue fishing and maximum influence. You gave me Hormozy's first book, uh, leads offers, sorry, offers leads. Tommy just give me books. I'm sure he does it to everybody, but you just give me books. So you really rev my engine up three years ago to, to really go on this quest to find really quality, you know, good books to read. So, and I don't,

hit a home run every time but probably the most impactful ones this last year uh that i'd listen to i'm mostly an audible guy but that i listened to would be a hundred million dollar offers and leads i like the whole mosey stuff the comfort crisis was a good one i think that's michael easter

We did Rejection Proof. That was a pretty cool one for those people that had this fear of actually being rejected or going to people. This guy had a social experiment himself for 100 days. He tried to get rejected. Anyway, that was a good one as well. So Who was another good one? Like you say, Tommy, always hire around your weaknesses. Well, I try to read around mine and interviewing and hiring people. Sometimes I felt like that's a big weakness of mine. So the book Who was really enlightening. Those are probably the ones that come to the top of my mind.

There's a book that I want you to read. It's a guy I had on the podcast for the third time. It's called Empire Builder, The Road to a Billion. And I highly, highly recommend it.

I read the guy's first two books. That's the next book. But he is an amazing author and just the guy knows this stuff. And it's a road to a billion. And it's pretty cool, the different levels. He's got it broken down into a pyramid of different levels of what you should be thinking about. You need to focus on hiring or leadership or what's the next step or marketing or just profitability and not growth.

So Lenny, here's the deal. We close out. We talked about a lot of awesome stuff, man. And you got me something when I turned 40 that I still got to use. You got me a trip and a chef. And me and Bree, I'm on seven trips this month. So I'm going to make sure I use that. And you're a big piece of my success. So...

I vouch for Lenny. If you guys want to know, he's the real deal. He's honest. He's compassionate. He gives, he gives a lot. I mean, he's got a big family and he still makes time for everything. So I'll let you close us out with anything you want to just leave the listeners with. Yeah. I,

Again, I look at myself and I don't have any crazy superpowers. I refer to myself as just kind of an average Joe. And I'm just I'm a guy who learned how to do something really well and developed a process. You know, you talk about SOPs all the time.

And so that's what I've created, right? I've created an SOP for direct sales. And just like anything, you should have an SOP for how you answer the phones, how you do the technical stuff, how you're performing your services. And I think if you can replicate a process, I think that's what it is. I think a lot of business owners that I talk to try to reinvent the wheel every day or every year. And it's like really the most successful people. And Tommy, you're one of the most successful people that I hang around for sure.

And it's just it's it's just every day just grinding, doing those little things every day. And that's that's what makes the magic. There's no formula that just poof, you wake up and you're making millions. But it's just it's a process. I mean, we went through that with the door to door program at day one. I mean, we talked about three feet from gold, you know, a bunch. And we had all these things that we talked about where it's like we're so close. We're right here. Just hang tight.

And then we finally broke through and it's because I just stayed true to my processes and what I've been doing and what's been working. And eventually, again, we are where we are today and it's working wonderfully. So I got to tell you, Lenny, I wrote down a lot of things and you are important. I want to let you know that you are a priority. And sometimes I think one of the things I've done the last two years is try to help more people than my own family.

And my family is the people that I want. They're everybody around me. And it's not because of I don't want to or I don't care. It's because everybody needs help. And I try to be fair and pay it forward. But sometimes I forget the people that helped me get here. So I need to do a better job of that, brother. I'm kind of getting emotional because I owe you more time.

Well, you're the man. The one thing I know about you, Tommy, this is why you're a dear friend to me, is it doesn't matter when I text you or when I call you, you pick up, you respond like you're there for me. And, you know, and I hope you can feel that reciprocated by me as well. And it's relationships that matter. That's what we take with us.

And that's the value that I place in what we've done more than anything. You know that like more than anything. I just I just appreciate the value that you've added to me. And if we work together and I didn't get paid a cent for the last three and a half years, I feel like I've gotten like two doctorate degrees for free just because I've been around you and I've known you. So to me, at the end of the day, it's yeah, it's nothing but love, my friend.

Well, unfortunately, I didn't get to read all the comments because we got a different studio set up. But this probably was the most comments I've ever seen. They're still piling in. So I appreciate everybody watching. Hopefully, you got some value out of this podcast. Take Lenny up on his offer, man. Maybe it is for you. Maybe it's not. But Lenny, you are amazing. You're one of the most genuine guys I've ever met. And I really appreciate you doing this today. And I apologize about last week. No, it's all good. It's all good. Thanks, buddy. Love you.

All right. I love you too, man. I'll get ahold of you later. You guys have a great one. Thanks for staying on this long. Lenny, I'll call you later, brother. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks 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.