The Power of Alter Egos: Shaping Success by Creating A Winning Identity
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So human beings will always act through whatever they associate themselves with. Your identity shapes your reality. So while habits are important and beliefs and your behaviors, all of that stuff gets stacked upon an identity. And because I'm someone who likes speed, when I could come in and shift the identity of the athlete,

And when I change that identity, now all the habits, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that I need that person to have are actually already embedded inside of the identity of the way that they're going to go out there and show up. While everyone else is trying to do an outside-in approach of, well, let me just work on these habits. And again, some people just need to tweak in habits.

That's all I do. But if you're someone who's trying to aspire towards and achieve something that is not normal for your world, your family has never done it before, or you're going through a major shift in transformation, well, if I can help you build a brand new identity that's custom built to help you win in that new phase of your life, going from 2.5 million in your home service business to 10 million, 'cause that's a different self. That's a different person.

That's a different level of thinking, right? You're going from hustler and founder to CEO thinking. 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.

All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert Podcast. Today's going to be awesome. I got Todd Herman in Phoenix at the podcast studio. And Todd's an expert of coaching, speaking, and writing. He's based out of New York. He's the founder of Herman Global Ventures, and he started that in 2007. He's got another company called UpCoach. He was the co-founder from 2020 to present, the 90-day year creator of 2014 to present,

and The Peak Group, founder from 1997 to present. Todd Herman is an author, speaker, and coach focused on mental toughness, leadership, and peak performance. He's been featured on the NFL films, Fox Sports, PBS, Entrepreneur, and on the Today Show. His training programs have been delivered to over 2 million people and have won numerous awards, including the Global Leadership and Skill Development Program of the Year twice. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal and international bestselling book,

The Alter Ego Effect, The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life, which has been translated into 11 languages through his 90-day year company. Todd's system for entrepreneurial performance has been implemented by more than 250,000 small businesses since 2014. And here he is. My man. Yeah. It's great to get your big energy in my life. I have a lot of energy. Let's bring it today. Okay.

So, you know, I guess tell us about the book. Tell us about how you got started, where you're at today. Yeah. And what your goals are, where you want to go with your life and what's going to be changing over the next decade.

So I started the Peak Athlete, which was a mental game coaching and training company in 1997. I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I grew up on a big farm and ranch in Alberta, Canada. I live in New York City now, but I never kind of had a vision of being like a big business owner or something like that. I was coaching at a high school football team after I got done playing college football. And

And, you know, I was spending a lot of time talking to the kids about their mental game because that was kind of my special. I'm not I'm not built like you, Tommy. I'm not six foot four and twenty four to two hundred forty five pounds of solid muscle. I had to fight for it with the six inches between my ears. And anyways, I was just spending more time talking about their their inner game stuff, which was the stuff that I needed to do. I kind of fell into that rabbit hole of developing my my head game when I was in it when I was a teenager and.

And they started getting some great results. And then parents started coming to me and said, hey, would you mentor my son or daughter? And I was like, yeah, sure. And I'll never forget Debbie. She was the first person. Most of us don't forget our first client, right? And so Debbie said, okay, Todd, how much? Because I was just going to like do it for free. And I was like, how about $75 for a package of three sessions?

- And when was this? - 1997. I can tell you right now that ain't my price, but when you're cheap, you get a lot of clients. And I stayed at that price until 2000, but it got me a lot of reps. And I think this matters for the world we live in now because there's a lot of people on social media that posture with a lot of expertise, but there's absolutely nothing below the surface.

Right. Oh, yeah. Most coaches out there, they can't make it in the real world. So they teach. And not to mention, you look at their balance sheet and they don't make money. They never really were really accomplished in their life. So coaches, course creators, you put whatever the description is at the front of it.

So, anyways, I'm a big believer in mentors. And Jim Rohn was an early mentor for me. I met him randomly at an event. And he helped me out early in my career. And then I approached the Yoda of baseball, Harvey Dorfman. He wrote the Bible of the industry called Coaching the Mental Game, worked with all the biggest names in sport, cold outreach to him.

He called me back and he said, you don't want to live with me, kid, do you? Because I asked about coming down and spending time with him in North Carolina during the baseball off season. Finally, he said yes. And I spent 33 days with him. And on the seventh day,

Roy Halladay came in to spend his day with him, you know, hall of fame pitcher. Next day was Andy Pettit. Next day was Craig Biggio, all the biggest names in baseball. And so I got to see the master of the mental game world work with the biggest names in baseball. And that accelerated my, my understanding of like peak performance and mindset work. And then I ended up growing that company to the largest in the world and sold it to Real Madrid in 2014. And,

And we had 2 million athletes come through our programming a year at that point. Wow. Yes. And I mean, along the way, I worked with the biggest names I built. You talked about the book, but what I found along the process and the way was the best athletes that I worked with would all use personas and their identity as a very specific way that they would show up on that court or that field.

I built the Black Mamba with Kobe in 2004 when he was going through his challenges off the court and he had what I call an ego death. No longer was it innocent Kobe, the high school kid, because he got to kind of use that identity in his early stage of his career. That was no longer the case anymore.

And, yeah, so that became the accelerant to the company was building, well, I call it identity-based performance and then using my alter ego method as the way. And then I wrote the book, The Alter Ego Effect, which is kind of unpacking the science of it, how to use this, and so that you can show up with far greater intention in your life.

Yeah. I mean, I've gone through the book. I didn't get a chance to read the whole thing, but I got the synopsis. And this is going to be a book I'm going to study. And Joe Polish called me up and said, dude, I got Todd in town. You got to get him in the podcast. And I relate so much of business to, you know, I played every sport. We used to practice 10 games. We did two a days to play one game. You know, I was with Larry Fitzgerald and he said his whole life changed when Kurt Warner said to him,

I'm not going to throw the ball to you. You're the most talented guy in the field, but you don't follow the plans. You're so athletic. You're the best player, but you're not following the plays and I can't trust you. He said, till I can learn to trust you, you run the plays. You don't, you don't just go on your pure athleticism. You go after the plays I throw the ball to. And Larry said that changed my life forever. I became an MVP. I followed the exact play. And he goes, I've made a hundred times more catches in practice.

than I did in the game. But in business, especially home service, we say, you're going to ride along with this guy for two weeks and you're on your own forever. I mean, I'm a KPI guy. I study the plays and I find out what's working and I don't really study the bad players. I only study the best and I emulate that and I see how far I could take this top guy. So many people spend all their time with the bottom performers.

Okay, so that's an incredibly important distinction. And in the entire length of this podcast, that statement would maybe have gotten lost, but it needs to be, when you edit this, replay it a few more times because that is the type of content then, Tommy, that shows up in the self-help, personal development, and leadership books that are out there. When we were talking earlier about

the people who go out there and start teaching others how to do things and yet they haven't gotten the reps in or they haven't actually built something to a certain level as well. That's the story of how a lot of books are written as well, by the way. And that's important because

I do big events and the only person who can get on my stage, I call them a practitioner. They have to be practitioners. I will step away from the biggest quote influencers, people that, you know, badge value wise, people would go, oh, like he's going to have that person come. They're not going to get on my stage because I know that fundamentally they haven't actually executed the stuff that they talk about other people with. And so to bring this back around to your statement,

So many books are regurgitated ideas from other people because nowadays people just want to write a book so they can have some sort of authority, right? Yeah. It's the world's greatest business card. Yeah. And now with self-publishing, it's even easier for people to do that. And so, hey, if that's your aspiration, great. But write something that's worthwhile of print. And most of the self-help books out there are borrowed.

from people who work with average, like a lot of the coaches out there, they work with average performers, right? You have a very, very different psychology and the way that you look at things than the person who's got a $2.5 million a year service business. And by the way, no knock on you. Congratulations, $2.5 million. That's an amazing threshold to get to. Absolutely. But someone who's doing quarter of a billion and gotten a business to there without a

dad's money or whatever else, like you hustle your way to get there. That's a different beast. - Right. - And I say that because I've worked with some of the most elite humans on the planet. And I can tell you between the six inches of their ears, the ideas that cross through them are very different than what's talked about in personal moment and self-help books from people who just regurgitate other people as ideas.

It's just different. Yeah. It's just different. Like they're, they're super ego that they have. It's really important to me. Like, I mean, some of these shitty ideas trap so many good people that have aspirations because they feel like they're doing it wrong because, oh, like I need to be more humble or I need to be a, um, a team player, or I need to have more sportsmanship when I'm on the field. Listen, my guys, they're fricking killers.

There's a guy that I worked with. He's going to go down as one of the greatest athletes in his sport ever. And his attitude towards not only his competitors, but his teammates is when I step on that field, I feel like it's my duty to show them just how far they have to go to even sniff my cleats. His exact quotes.

Now he's going to share that with me because A, I signed a non-disclosure agreement with every single private athlete client that I've worked with since the year 2000. Yep. Why? Because everyone wants something from these guys. And if I'm doing mental game work with you, I need you to know, Tommy, that you've got that...

Like I've got your trust. - Right. - 'Cause what I need from you in order to get you to the next level is complete honesty with what's going on between your ears. - Right. - And you're also gonna then be honest with me about what you're actually thinking. Like what's your actual attitude towards your approach? Because that's important for me so that I can then take that and then the stuff that I write for other people is born out of the shit that's actually happening. - Not some facade. - Not some facade.

Because is the pro athlete going to sit at the interview table after the game and let the reporters know what he actually is thinking when he's out there or how he actually prepares before the game? No. Even when he writes his book, nine times out of 10, he's never even going to say it because it's going to make him look like he's crazy to other people because the average stuff that's in the culture that we have doesn't accept the elite person with the way that they actually think.

Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing some of the things I think to myself.

Because I think I played a different game Although I do want to bring people up I wouldn't have gave a hundred million dollars away to the company to the top 25 people that I gave an equity incentive profit shares - yeah Actually, I did it. I could have not done it I've done the math every way from Sunday and we grew faster stronger better with giving away part of the company and now when I work with companies I say you got to have an equity incentive. You got to take the people with you You've got to change family trees

But I'm like, one of the things I realized is I was always hiring people that were less than me.

And I had this fear. If I hired somebody that's better than me, I'm not going to be able to keep up. They're going to take control. They could steal my employees. And I led with fear. And I let fear take the wheel and steer. There's an Incubus song about it. And now I'm like, I'm going to hire the best damn people. I am a team builder. And if they're not light years ahead of me in their particular, whether that's the CFO, the COO, the different C-suite, the director level, VPs. So I'm building a team.

I'm a team builder and I'm a motivator and I'm going to live in that lane. I'm going to be super extraordinary at what I'm great at and hire everything else around me.

And I'm not going to become the best at everything. I'm not well-rounded. I'm off balance on purpose. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's very few and far between because people are like, I know I need to get more balanced. I know I need to learn more about all these different things. And I'm like, no, you don't. What's your superpower? Stick to your superpower and become the most extraordinarily best at it. Yeah. And there's athletes out there. Michael Jordan probably wouldn't have been as great without Dennis Rodman rebounding the ball. Yeah. Michael Jordan had four personal coaches. Plus he had Phil Jackson.

And he had Scottie Pippen. And it was a really well-done team. And he knew what he had to do on the court. But, man, that guy hated to lose. And he had this willpower. I love watching Tiger Woods, man. I love watching Tiger Woods because I'm like, you put money on the line. You put me in a competitive atmosphere.

I perform 10 times better. You should see me shoot pool. I'll shoot okay. Yeah. About a thousand bucks a game, literally. Yeah. You'll watch something come out of nowhere. Yeah. You'll watch my precision. And I do better under pressure. I'm so good under a pressure cooker. And I love that. Yeah. A very few people, when they play the game, have the ability to perform better than they did in practice.

Well, I mean, that's you developing another like key superpower, which is the superpower of self-awareness. Like knowing what triggers work for you. Like, and then if someone comes along and says, yeah, but Tommy, you know, do you really need to be motivated?

Because of the last minute nature of something or the pressure or whatever. And then they get you to try and optimize that. And all it does is just grind up the gears on the inside. Look, there's something that was innately built within you that allows you to handle that in a very different way than other people.

And then or it's the competitive nature of the way that you are when money is on the line. It's like, do you really need to? And this is what I'm talking about with a lot of the books that come out that really all they do is they make people feel shit about themselves because they're

The books just sort of judge you like you're somehow less than because you know what, though? I feel like I do have a bit of a killer inside of me when it comes to being hyper competitive. I need to be more of a team player when the fact is you're the best on the court. I don't think LeBron feels like he takes the ownership of the game into his own hands when the clutch moments. And guess what?

He probably misses more than he makes it on the buzzer. But you don't remember the times he missed it. You remember the times he made it. He knows how to go for it. He handles defeat just as well as he handles the win. And that's honorable. Even going back to Kobe, Kobe had a competitive nature amongst... It was when Shaq was there. That was around the time that I was working with Kobe. Yeah.

You know, he did need to develop some in the locker room people skills. And he did like by the time he ended his career, he was not only a killer on the court, but he was also an absolute legend in the locker room with people to, you know, mentoring them up and coaching them. And, you know, so he did develop that skill set. But when he was on that court, like if he didn't think that you could sink that shot, you're not getting the ball. Yeah.

Yeah. And they become the coach. You know, it's great. Who do you fire when there's an NFL season that's lost twice in a row? Well, it's the head coach. You fire the coach. Yeah.

And I tell people all the time, look in the mirror. You want to know where all your problems are, all your culture, why top performers don't want to come to you? Because you don't take responsibility for your own two. You look in the mirror, you say, I'm going to get in shape. I'm going to become a better husband, a better mother, a better whatever it might be. And guess what? You lie to yourself every freaking day. I was with Andy Elliott the other day. You know who Andy Elliott is? No, I don't. He's a motivational sales guy. He's great. And he goes, Tommy, don't meet your heroes.

He goes, don't meet your heroes. Don't meet the authors. Don't meet the people you look up to. Yeah. Because they're not anything. They lie. They live this facade. They're nothing like they say. And I can give you a lot of my heroes that I've met that I'm like, oh my God. Yeah. It lets me down so much. Yeah. And it's sad really because you're absolutely right. They're not the people that they write about.

They write these words, they got a good ghostwriter and they put these things that people want to hear. Yeah. And it's pretty sick. I still, and I'll never stop doing it. I mean, my favorite role that I have in my business world is that of a coach. Like I'll never stop working with people one-on-one. And the reason is because the moment I remove myself from the field of play,

And the private field of play, like there's, there's a different level of honesty that happens when you're working with someone, mano a mano. Plus there's a different level of pressure on me because I'm a performance guy. Like I only get paid and you're only going to stay with me if I'm helping you get a result. Right. Correct. And, but honestly,

What most people will do is then they go and they stand on stage and they talk to a group of people. Well, now you got groupthink. You got someone in a Tony Robbins seminar that raises their hand and says, yeah, I did last night's meditation too. And then, you know, the person who didn't do it feels like shit because, you know, 1200 other people are raising their hand and really seven people went and did it. Right. That night. And so, but that's what happens. And so people walk away from that story going, oh,

you know what i need to do a meditation every single now listen i've been the biggest flag waving guy on meditation since 1997 and yoga wasn't even freaking cool meditation was seen as being massively woo woo but i looked at it pragmatically because the science said that listen meditation is the uh

the barbell curl to the frontal lobe. And this is where focus sits and concentration. And so if you want to be good on that field, Larry Fitzgerald, and be able to have your focus and concentration last throughout a 60-minute game in an intense environment,

When your amygdala is constantly getting kicked in because you've got Ray Lewis coming through the middle of the field, who's going to take your fricking head off. That's a very different level of focus and concentration skill. So this is why we do meditation then Larry Fitzgerald is because it only helps you perform. Right. So going back to the whole one-on-one reps thing, I'll never stop doing one-on-one because in that

What's born out of it is the real stuff that's practical and useful to help everyone else that I want to go and make an impact on with real content or real books or real posts on social media. Not me hiding behind a veil of talking about these wonderful ideas that make you feel good. Another one is affirmations, Tommy. Okay. So I will, I will do this. I will be this. I am this. I am. I will. Yeah. Well, here's the science behind affirmations.

University of Waterloo in Ontario, UCSB, University of California, Santa Barbara, Stanford Neuroscience Research Lab, King's College over in the UK. Tons of different universities and colleges have done studies on this stuff. What the science says is if you say affirmations to yourself and you don't believe what you're saying, it will actually put you into more of a depressive state or even depression, God forbid. Because fundamentally...

Your self knows that you're bullshitting yourself. Conversely though, because nothing can't be just bad. There can be also something good in it. Right. Because that's what nature says. So affirmations when said to the self...

when you already have a level of confidence with it, only it's like strengthening the steel. It's like wrapping another wire around it, strengthens it, develops the confidence and the belief in it. So I'm not saying affirmations are only bad, but if you ain't got it yet, standing in front of the mirror and saying it to yourself, while it's really lovely to see the four-year-old sitting in front of the mirror, saying it to herself, and it's a cute little viral video that goes up on social media, there's nuance to it. And yet,

tons of different influencers or self-help experts stand on stage and tell you to do affirmations. Well, I can tell you, if that's what you're going to build your career on and try and go work with the best of the best in the world, they're going to laugh you out of the room. I said, I will be a billionaire, but I said, to be a billionaire, I need a billion dollars of revenue. I told all my managers that. They said, how? I said, I need 2,000 technicians doing 500 grand a year. Yeah.

And I said, here's how we're going to start. We need trainers and recruiters. We need a world-class training center. Here's how we're going to do it year one through five. Here's the hockey stick of when it takes place. And here's my plan and I'm going to execute and I need your help. They walked out of there going, we're going to be a billion dollar company. And the fact is, I call it OKRs, outcome and key results. And back in, you find where you want to go and figure out how you get there.

My guys want to make 400 grand this year. What's your conversion rate need to be? What's your average ticket need to be? How many service agreements do you need to sell? And I built a calculator and they compute what they need to do. What does it need to happen this year? Not this quarter, not this month. Today, what needs to happen when you go to work tomorrow and get your wife and get your kids, get your parents involved?

Because if you get that support from your home and at work, it's never going to happen. Yeah. And what's going to end up happening is you're going to walk differently. Your eye contact is going to be different. You're going to have different sincerity in your voice. You're going to look into the blackness of pupils when you talk. Your head's going to go a little bit higher. And here's the deal. If you don't surround yourself with these people that are going to help reinforce this, it's a cage. The people around you are going to hold you down.

And I believe that the people, your closest five friends, and we hear this a lot, but I'm living proof of it. If you do not surround yourself with people that are going to make you better, and this happens when I go out on the golf course, this happens when I wrestle people, this happens if I am going against somebody, I'm just going to win.

It's not, I don't peak. I don't play my best. I play with people I want to beat. I'm in a group with seven people. All of them are doing north of a hundred million. And I'm always, it sounds bad, but I'm always competing. I always want to win. Yeah. And I bet impossible bets. I bet I was going to be at a billion by next, by 2025. And I knew it was an impossible bet when I took it. I don't think I'm going to hit it in that timeline unless they do something pretty crazy. Yeah. But I bet 250 grand.

- So you just said something around getting your family around you if you're gonna set this goal of 400 grand.

Yeah, 100%. They need to know what you're doing and why you're doing it and understand. But what's the reason? Because I want to take you guys to Disney World first class because we're going to buy that second home you wanted because I'm going to put the kids in private school because we're going to renew our vows in Hawaii next year for a 10-year anniversary. This is why we're doing it. It's not for the money. The money is a KPI. It's an outcome. But we're doing this because this is the life we want to live. And I want you to get behind me on this. We're going to practice selling financing, which we call promotions together, because you're going to help me and support me because your life's going to get better.

better. Our kids' lives are going to get better. And we're going to take advantage of my mother-in-law, which is your mom, God forbid. Yeah. Yeah. But how did you come to that?

realization that it was so important that you made your technicians understand that. Like, did something ever break in the process for you as you're scaling A1? We were like, oh wait, I need to get their families around them. - I watched a guy go from $30,000 a month last month, he did 220,000 in just door sales. And he said,

My wife waits outside the door and asks me how many doors I sold. She understands she wants to go on the pinnacle trip.

She wants to go to Mexico for that week. It's kind of like a rite of passage, but it also gives them equity in the company. Yeah. And people are like, you give your technicians equity? I'm like, hell yeah, I do. They did 1.2 million. They get a piece of the company and it changes their family tree forever. Yeah. And to get their buy-in from those people to understand, why are you going into work on a Saturday? Why are you missing Thanksgiving? I don't want them to miss work all the time. I want them to show up for their family in a deep, deep way. Yeah. But that means some sacrifice along the way. And it means...

Two things I talk about all the time, a little bit of discipline and a little bit of consistency because you can brush your teeth all day. As Simon Sinek will say, your teeth aren't going to get any better, but a little bit each day and watch what happens. And when they started to believe and see the results, it's contagious too. Other people see it and they go, I want that. Yeah. Well, I was curious because when someone who's actually building an enterprise like you are says something like that as someone who also, you know,

coaches and does mentoring with like CEOs and entrepreneurs. I'm always like, oh, that has to be born out of some sort of pain. And was it like, oh, I had technicians that said that they wanted these things, but then they were getting a hard time from their significant others. A hundred percent. That's exactly what it's born out of. It's like, why are you going to work on a weekend? Why are you, you got kids at home and they put in long weeks, but it's a little bit of sacrifice in the process. And once they get it,

and they get to understand how to get there. Yeah. It's like, so then do you help them realize as well? Like it's almost like a three circle Venn diagram of this is the one thing that I notice amongst, whether it's the friends that I'm around or clients is they're extremely focused on priorities. And so I've got family in one of those circles and

And then I've got the work that I do in another circle. And then the one that has like a dotted line around it, meaning it's the one that can sometimes get adjusted a lot is friends. Now I'm an extrovert and I love being around other people. You seem like you're pretty similar that way. But when there's major projects or a major goal, I'm not doing the barbecue then with the friends. And that's where I see

kind of the group that would be in your technician group, they would have a hard time with saying no to watching the football game on Monday night. So now I'm going to leave work early because we're on the Pacific Coast time or we're on mountain time. And, you know, the game starts at four o'clock or four thirty or five o'clock and I want to go and meet my buddies. And it's like, well, listen, how can you hit this this goal that you have of going to Mexico or being in the pinnacle group?

Yeah, it's getting them to really understand that they really want it. And I've got guys, I call them hikers and I call them campers. I've got mostly hikers that want to grow to the top, that aspire to be number one. And then I've got a lot of guys that are campers and that's okay. And there's a purpose for them. And I just need to identify who they are. And some of the guys, I had a guy that really bad performance on Fridays.

And I figured out he'd go, he'd burn through his jobs because he wanted to go camping. I just said, just, I'll give you a four day work week. I don't care. Yeah. But I was able to see through, see around the corner. And I think most people didn't see, I saw the performance. It's just like the back of a football card, baseball card, hockey card. Yeah. And you can start to learn about, and I, I talk a lot about KPIs, but they really are what guide me to make decisions. Yeah. Were you always a numbers guy? I was always really infatuated with math.

Really? Yeah, like advanced calculus. Like I've taken all the math. I like think math. But I've got obsessed with just performing. Like when I got into really good shape just four months ago,

I called the number one guy I know in great shape, 45 years old. Yeah. 8% body fat, has pizza if he wants, has a few beers, but doesn't do it out of control. Yeah. Works out 20 minutes a day, every day. Yeah. I called him up and I said, what do I got to do? He said, let's meet up. He goes, go talk to my doctor, blood, saliva, urine. And he goes, find out the work, the food you can eat. 90 days off of alcohol, one gallon of water a day. This is how much protein, four peptides, and you're going to have energy and you just got to stay consistent. A little bit of discipline. It's not going to be, I'm not going to make this hard for you.

for you yeah I guess what I lost 12% body fat four months and I'm not even close to where I'm gonna be yeah but now I'm like I have everybody calling me what are you doing how you doing it I'm like it's not that hard it's just staying consistent yeah and so success leaves clues but very few people have the ability to stay disciplined enough to do them I mean I'm going off here 100% I want to know a little bit about the ultra ego because I

One of the things I started thinking about as I looked through the book and really studied some of my notes is I have a lot of different alter egos. I have the alter ego who I am as a son. And it's different between my mom and dad, who I show up with as a brother or an uncle. Yeah. And a leader within the company of A1 Garage Door Service. Talk to me about this persona and how you could use your alter egos to accomplish great things in your life.

Well, the one thing you already hit on is something that, you know, very few other, I've done over 400 interviews on the topic. We were talking before, like whether it's Tony Robbins or, or Bill Hughes podcast, and very few people have said and used alter ego in its plural form like you did. Because some people think it's just only one. And that's the trap of identity is like, we use words in our language, like, you know, my authentic self. And, you know, we pointed someone, you know, like, how's your week? Right.

And in my head, it's like, well, which you are you talking about? Are you talking about the dad me? Are you talking about the athlete me? Are you talking about? So I'll go back first and say that when I'm standing on stages and I'm talking about this, I say, you know, human beings will always act through whatever they associate themselves with. Your identity shapes your reality.

So human beings will always act through whatever they associate themselves with. Your identity shapes your reality. So while habits are important and beliefs and your behaviors, all of that stuff gets stacked upon an identity. And because I'm someone who likes speed, when I could come in and shift the identity of the athlete,

And when I change that identity, now all the habits, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that I need that person to have are actually already embedded inside of the identity of the way that they're going to go out there and show up. While everyone else is trying to do an outside-in approach of, well, let me just work on these habits. And again, some people just need to tweak in habits.

That's all I do. But if you're someone who's trying to aspire towards and achieve something that is not normal for your world, your family has never done it before, or you're going through a major shift in transformation, well, if I can help you build a brand new identity that's custom built to help you win in that new phase of your life, going from 2.5 million in your home service business to 10 million, because that's a different self. That's a different person.

That's a different level of thinking, right? You're going from hustler and founder to CEO thinking, where you're trying to empower other people. And you're playing at a completely different level with the motivational factor that you're trying to throw into it and the empowerment that you're trying to do with your team members as well. So the alter ego became the method that I would use. Why? Well, when someone says, be your best self,

It's a nice term. I get it. How do you do that? How do you do that? Who is that person? Okay. Well, 70% of our brain is dedicated to the visual cortex. Okay. So that's kind of important to know because you've got a vision for yourself and your business. It's clear in your mind. You were talking about the billion things, even that alone, it's a number.

that you've got. But creating a vision for who this best self is, it's too amorphous. What does that mean? But when I give you the concept of an alter ego, which becomes this anchoring point or this image that you've got in your mind of, oh, I'm going to start activating the rock. Or for Kobe, it was the black mamba. Or for me as a dad,

I'm a challenger personality type. And it's because I work with some pretty big personalities and have over the last 27 years that I've been doing this. But is that really all that I am? No. No. I'm not just challenger. And I mean, this version of you probably wouldn't be the exact same way that you'd be around kids. No. Right? And I mean, because it's going to get exhausting as a parent. So when I'm going around my kids, the identity and the alter ego that I borrow from is Mr. Rogers and my own dad. And I imagine them

being behind me and I have, I don't wear my glasses. These glasses are part of the uniform that I have in business, but I don't wear them around my kids. I have a bracelet that I have that Molly and Sophie, my two oldest daughters made for me. And it's got, it's a colorful beaded one out of a $2 like bead type collection box. And it's got their initials MS and then my son, Charlie. So MSC, and it's got my wife's name Val on it. And it's got the words only love and it's sitting on a hook.

And I talk about the people at the highest level, everyone else can play around with habits and routines. At the elite level, you have rituals, not routines. Rituals are different. Rituals add meaning and story to the activity or action that you're doing. Why is that important? Because we're storytelling people. This is how we're built. We add meaning and story to all the things that we do. So why don't we leverage that? So I have this bracelet on a hook.

And when I'm done my day, I go to the hook before you enter the house and I put on that bracelet. But before I do, I start to imagine behind me like a cloud appearing and Mr. Rogers is there and my dad and now they're with me. And then I put it on and I snap it into place. And now that's me in that moment recalling and remembering what's the type of qualities and traits and attributes I want to bring to my kids now. I'm retiring challenger Todd. Right. Right.

Because I don't know, like, I mean, if you ever try to challenge your kids, they can, they've got some serious perseverance and grit as well. But I want to be more playful, fun, creative, loving, and patient with them. And that's my intention for how I want to show up. So you said alter egos, and that's useful because we have many roles that we play in life. And so the concept itself is so useful because A, it's very playful.

And that's one of the secret keys that unlocks peak performance and really the zone and flow state. It's really hard for you to get into the zone and flow state when you're activating too much of your frontal lobe, if you're trying to take things too seriously, if you're too critical, if you're too judgmental.

Even if you're trying to focus too much, it can't unlock what the flow in the zone state can deliver for you, which is all of your freaking capabilities coming out of you. Like you would have had that experience many times in sport where you get done the match or the game or whatever. And you're like, who is that guy? Like, I want that guy to come out every single time. Yeah. State of flow is like something it's hard to describe, but it's like everything just seems to

It's like the time flies by and you're in the zone, really. Yeah. And it's incredible in times like that. In business, I absolutely, like some people love sports. Some people talk and they live through others. I call it living through others because they never really were great at sports. So they go watch Sunday football. I tend to be like,

I enjoy business. Like there's nothing more exciting to me. Even if you're 15 years old, I'm talking about your paper route. Yeah. And I'm like, well, what if you hired a kid underneath you? And my mind, this is just my brain. I'm like, give me a whiteboard and let's talk about how I could double. Yeah. I just can't help it. It's like fun for me. I mean, Bree's cousin is 18 and we was talking about mowing lawns and I'm like, let's go through every one of your clients. And what would happen if you doubled the price?

You lose 40% of your clients, you said. So you make 120% for 60% of the work. Wow. Let's think about doing that. What do we need to do to make that happen? Yeah. And what would that do? What would that do to free up your time? And we talk about these things and this is what I'm infatuated with, but very few people, you know, one of the things that I see many business owners, they have a hard time seeing themselves being successful or getting to the next level.

What's up with that? A lot of times they say, I wish I had what you had, Tommy. I'm like, you want to write yourself checks to make payroll? You want to live in a small apartment? You want to drive a 20-year-old truck on a salvage title? Yeah. I'm like, do you know what I did to get here? Yeah. I lived well below my means and I reinvested into myself and into the company over and over and over until it started to just, the compound effect took place in a whole new way. Yeah. But I needed to change who I was.

And I had to look in the mirror all the time. I had to take complete accountability for what was going on in my life and never scapegoat. Not say I'm in a bad market or a taxi, you know, April 20th is coming or, oh God, we're in a recession and we're going through two wars and inflation. And everybody's got a reason why they can't until they say it's me. And why is it that people can't envision themselves as this, to create that ultra ego? Well, yeah. I mean, the crux of that for me that I've seen is

The you that you're bringing to your business isn't built for the goals that you have anymore. And it keeps on getting in the way. So that's the identity side of things.

You say that you want to grow it to $10 million, but you keep on taking the same actions that the guy that got it to 2 million or 3 million. Like our ability to shed our identity and step in and transform ourselves is one of, it's sort of an overused term, but it's such a cheat code for success. So we get in our own ways.

And some of that is born out of the type of information that you've taken in. It's shaped your view on the world, the type of people that you're around. You talked about engineering the people around you to help support you in the process of hitting the goal, right? Well, your ecosystem and your environment is one of the most underrated parts of achievement and success.

And it is one of the, I think, simplest ones for people to change because it's actually nothing about you that's changing. You're just simply changing the inputs around you. And the process of osmosis will actually change you, getting you inside of that right environment.

Right? You talk about with like Michael Jordan, that environment and that ecosystem they had around him with, you know, Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman and all the other guys, that entire ecosystem helped to create the success. He was just the one that led them there as well. Right. With his relentlessness that he had. But I mean, there's, of course, there's so many reasons why someone can't get to whatever that next level is for themselves.

But for me, the easiest place to start is just take stock of who is the guy or girl that's bringing themselves to this field of play that I want to dominate in. And am I right now custom built to win on that field? Am I custom built to win inside of a $10 million business anymore? That disassociation, to disassociate yourself just for a second and say, this business and you are two different things.

And so here it is out here. Am I built to win at this thing that I want? And it's not to beat yourself up. I mean, we all find roadblocks within ourselves, every single one of us. And it's like, if I'm not built to win at this game, what do I need to bring? Do I need to stop trying to be the executor of all the things inside of my business? Should I be going out there installing everything? If you're unwilling to give up control of parts of your business, you will stall out.

I mean, you can still build a sizable business, but you'll be working 18 hours a day because you'll be out there executing too much because you don't want to give up control. Right. So that's the whole empowerment part. So one part of you that needs to change is you need to learn how to empower people more. One part of that is you probably need to have better management in place. The purpose of management is to make sure that we hold people accountable to the processes and systems that we've put in place. You know, um,

I read Darren Hardy's book about how he wrote down 100 things he wanted in a woman. And he wrote down these 100 attributes. And he read these out loud and goes, I'm not worthy of a woman like this. There's no way I could get a woman like this. So he wrote down, he flipped the page and wrote down 100 things he needed to focus on to become in order to even be worthy of a woman of such great attributes.

When I read that, I wrote down 30 things I needed to become to be the leader that I would have to strive to be to, you know, to get to, to be worthy of a company that I wanted to be. Yeah. And I wrote down great communicator. Listen, celebrate the wins. Yeah. Nobody cares what's in it for them. If I say we got to hit this record this week, nothing. So I talk about what are the big wins for you? When I'm coaching somebody, I say.

Remember what we talked about? Remember you said your dad's the most important person. You meant that. And you said you wanted to take him camping for two weeks. And we figured out a way to get you to this. Make it about them. What's in it for them? Make it about, and I call it an elevate mindset of having a dream so big that every single person's dream could happen if we hit this.

And I think it's such more motivation when you celebrate the wins. So many people get up in front of their group and they say, we could be better. We could do better. We could do stronger. Come on guys. Instead of saying, come up here. You just set a record this week. You implore everything, all the values that we've discussed. Talk about what it feels like to win. Talk about you bettered your best for the last month, every single day, every single week. And the data proves that. Talk about how you feel. And then everybody's going, oh,

That's real. Yes. And then we're, instead of talking about the big losses and guys were falling short of our goals and we could do better conversion rate, blah, blah, blah. We talk about the wins and everybody starts to like, osmosis was a great word. It starts to ooze in. It starts to like seep in. Yeah. The other thing too, like you, I'm glad I didn't know that Darren talks about that, but cause I have other friends who they say, Hey, I've got my shopping list of what I want in my significant other as well. And I'm like, you're doing it wrong, man.

- What's the experience that you're gonna give someone else? So there's the, what you want, that's what you're gonna see out there, who you're gonna become, but even in that becoming part is, what's the experience that significant other is gonna have when they're around you? Like, how are you gonna make them feel?

Like when I want my, I want my wife to know, cause I travel and she is completely secure in our relationship to know that no matter what, and whoever comes up to Todd, I'm the only apple in that eye. Yep. Right. And so that's an experience of security and safety that she has. And that's, so I need to make sure. And they need that. Yes. Yes.

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus or some other solar system. But you talk about that experience that you give your top technicians when they come to the front of the room and you actually put them on top of a podium and you say, man, like that's a new gold medal, man. That's a new big win. Can you talk about that experience and what this feels like? And then what happens is the guy who might be under indexing right now sees from a peer

something that he might want. And because the peer is in the same experience

or the same level as that person who's under indexing, meaning they've got the same job, they've got the same role. And he might share something when he's up there about how, hey, this was like a realization that I had is I'm only going to be underserving my family if I don't give it 100% every single day. If I don't give it 100% with my script on every single door that I knock on. And just the way that he says it,

impacts the guy who's been under indexing for the last six weeks that you're thinking about maybe letting go. And then next week he has a personal best. Why? Because you've given your team members an experience where they get to go up on stage and be a hero

their group. Right. Because right now you're on a podium that those guys can't reach because you're like, oh, that's Tommy. He runs a quarter of a billion dollar value company. He's just built differently than me. I'm a technician. So by the way that you create those experiences inside of your company only creates more opportunity for you to what? Hit the billion dollars. Well, yeah. You know, I

I don't want anybody to ever think I want to be like Tommy because literally they don't know. It's looks, it's all smoke and mirrors. Literally at the end of the day, I've sacrificed a lot and I don't want my life for anybody. I enjoy every minute. Like now that I've gone through the hard work of 22 decades. Yeah.

Yes, it's great. But you don't know the trials and tribulations. I haven't had it that tough in comparison. I live in the United States of America. I have all my fingers. I wake up every day with no pain. That's very few people could say that out of the 8 billion people on this planet. So I'm very fortunate. But success is not easy. It's sacrifice. It's relentless.

And it's striving to be the best version of yourself every day. And there is a lot of habits I needed to adopt. And sleep was one of the biggest one. Eight hours of sleep sounds like crazy for a lot of people. Like I could survive off four. I'm like, but that's not, you don't show up at four. You don't show up like you would at eight. And you don't show up when you put the best. If you had a racehorse,

What would you be doing with that racehorse? And you are the racehorse, so picture your alter ego as... I don't think you take an alter ego and equate it to Mr. Ed or a racehorse, but...

Oh, there are. There's, I mean, Kobe's was a snake. There's no rules around the alter egos. Like whatever the source of inspiration is that you need. One of the ones in the book that I talk about is this woman who's in the, in the marketing world and hers was a stag in, she grew up in Germany and hers was a stag. And so most people go immediately to like lions and bears and something that's fierce. But you know that the, the stag,

is feared amongst the cougar or its natural predator because its massive rack that it has on it, that's what it does to defend itself, right? And so it can stand down and face down the other fierce predator that's out there. So others could be secretariat. That could be the alter ego for some people. And I don't know if I learned this from Joe this weekend or it's just top of my mind right now, but what would need to be true? And what would I need to stop doing? What would need to be true if I was a $10 billion company?

And you start to recognize, I would not take this all. You look at what somebody like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, I could go on and on, is they're really not the best at a lot of things. Billionaires are so much different than millionaires. I always say this. Millionaires, they get up early, they cold plunge, they got great habits, they're great parents.

Billionaires know who to call. They know how to make quick decisions. They're the best. Your network is your net worth. They know who to call and they don't go. I hate people that say I'm going to outwork you. I'm like, dude, outwork me. You work 24 seven. I'll out delegate. I'll out hire. I'll put in better performance metrics. I'll put in ownership structures that you can never comprehend, especially in the home service place. I feel like you take this white collar concept and you throw it in a blue collar space. It's like, it's like you're playing a,

different game. You're playing chess when everyone else is playing checkers. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I got to ask you, you know, you worked with Kobe Bryant and you're not afraid to be very confrontational with people. Yeah. And tell me a little bit about what's behind. You've shaped his, obviously, like, I wish he was still here. I mean, what an amazing guy. And you've worked with all these athletes and

And you basically worked on their personas and their egos. And I'm wondering how us business guys, especially in the home service space, could work on not only our management, but I call them my internal clients, right? My employees. How do I work on their personas? How do I even start this process?

Well, language is the way that we create our worlds, right? The choices of the words that we use every single day. And so a big part of being a great leader of other people is being very thoughtful in the way that we try to approach leveling up our team. And what I mean by that is, so I've got a guy, Joey, and Joey is not making the amount of calls that he needs to make in order to hit his numbers.

Joey, he's a good worker, but he's not coming in super prepped and ready to play the game right now. Okay. It's the equivalent of the guy running out of the tunnel who's the football player. And he's still kind of doing up his pants a little bit. We don't want that. Like you need to be buckled up. So if I'm Joey's boss, I'm the leader of this company. I go, Joey,

What's the name that we would be able to give to the part of you that shows up every day locked in and dialed in? Because I've seen you have those amazing days. Like, who is that guy? And so he calls him Super Joey. I'm like, okay. Samson. Samson. So Samson. And it's like, okay. But there's this other Joey that shows up too sometimes. And he...

He's not ready to go. He doesn't hit the numbers. And so like, who's that guy? Like, what's that guy's name? And what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to not say you suck. I don't want to point the finger. Even in the way that, you know, if people aren't watching this on video, they're just listening to the podcast. I'm trying to take my hands and put them out on the table and point to something out here. Like there's Joey over here. And I want Joey to look at this. Like, this is the best version of you.

And then this one is the one that's been under indexing lately. Okay. I don't know what's going on. It could be personal life, whatever, but I'm not a therapist. I'm not good at that stuff. So we'll let you figure that out, you know, outside the office. But the point there is if you're someone who's trying to be a very good motivator and coach to other people, it's super useful to use the language of third person. This is, you'll, you'll probably start to notice this, but

Some of the biggest athletes, best athletes who outperform everyone else, they'll sometimes accidentally slip into it at the podium after the game and they'll refer to their game in the third person. If you go back and watch old clips of Jordan, Kobe did this brilliantly because we talked about this, is yeah, he had a good game tonight.

And Kevin Garnett did this once and he got derided for it, for being egotistical. And I laughed because I'm like, no, this is what I mean. This is what I mean by the crap that gets put out into the social and cultural world that traps good people inside of average ideas. No, learn to use third person narrative.

I feel like we just did this event. Giuseppe was there. And it was a three-day event. And I'm like, man, Tommy showed up. Tommy showed up in a big way. And it was hard because everybody wanted time. And I wasn't able to give as much time. But they're like, what a kind guy. What a guy. He made everybody feel welcome. He was not judgmental.

He, he added, you know, I said, I've been where you're at. I've been the guy in the truck. I've been the guy in charge of inventory. I've been the guy that people have been lied to, cheated to. Yeah. And here's what I've learned. Actually, Joe's Joel, who I just did a podcast with in your seat. He said, when you talk to people, start saying you.

Instead of I and me. So imagine yourself. Imagine you're 22 years old, barely making ends meet. You're bartending, you're busing tables, you're doing whatever you have to do. And somebody commented into my Facebook group and they said, man, your public speaking has gotten so much better. I go, yeah, because I got three coaches. Yeah. Because I'm hiring people all the time. I hire more people. I go, a hundred people signed up for coaching, $1,500 a month at this event. Yeah. I go, what?

I will spend more on myself than all of you guys combined this year out of a hundred of you paying me $1,500 a month. That's 150 grand. That's $1.8 million. I will spend more this year on that with my coaching myself. Yeah. And people are like, there's no freaking way. How's that possible? Oh, it's possible. I can tell you that. I know the chart, the prices that I charge and peers of mine that, you know, when we're, when you're operating at a certain level, like, yeah, we charge a lot, but

That's the clientele that we have. Well, the great thing on stage I could say is, listen, I've invested this money and it's not like this tote thing I try to throw around, but the fact is I really do. And I'm okay with that because I know the outcome is I think the peak performers need peak coaches. And it's, the fact is the best of the best, they believe in self-help. They believe in going to that next level and to be around the people I want to become and not necessarily, you

Maybe it's an alter ego, just that one ego I want to become. It's like...

Freedom to me just means I'm bringing people with me because I already got everything I would need and want But I want everybody else. I don't want to tell somebody hey, man. I got enough money to bring you with me I want to say what is your passion and I will help you get what you want So you feel completely different about yourself because what's really helping somebody taking them on a trip with me or helping them? Create the environment that they need to be able to afford a trip like that and change their life about their dignity Yeah, their masculinity or their feminine and femininity femininity

So listen, I got to ask you a couple of closing questions because we made this thing work last minute. And Todd is an amazing guy. He's like, listen, man, I'll come do it. And we got an investor call that I do not want to miss because they would kill me. But some of the things I always ask is, first of all, how do I get a hold of you? If someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that? I mean, Todd Herman dot me is my home base on the interwebs. Okay.

Like, I mean, I get DM'd every single day from hip hop rappers to athletes to entrepreneurs. So Todd underscore Herman is pretty much most of my social handles as well. Okay. And is there any books that really changed your life? A lot of people say the Bible, but is there a book that really stood out to you in your past that you were just like stand behind it? Like the E-Myth, a lot of the people say the same books, but do you have a book that really just was like this game, this changed your life?

Yeah, there's a bunch, but I'll say one that isn't mentioned that often. It's a book called Whale Done. So the whale, the mammal, done. And it's a parable book like One Minute Salesperson, One Minute Manager. And it's all a parable around how you train a killer whale at SeaWorld to balance a beach ball on its nose. And here's what you don't do. Beat a killer whale into submission.

And the whole through line and the point of the book is most people's management and leadership style is to catch people doing something wrong. And instead, what you do is if you're training a killer whale, the killer whale is swimming around in the middle of this big pool. And he gets a little bit closer to the very center where the beach ball is. And they tap the water and the killer whale comes over and they give it a fish.

So then it swims around some more and gets near it. Tap, tap, tap, give it another fish. He goes, oh, wait a second. Every time I go around this area. Positive reinforcement. And so this time he touches the ball by accident. Tap, tap, tap, three fish. Wait a second. I touched that thing out there. I get something. Touches it with his nose this time. Five fish. Wait a second. I touch it with my nose. I get five fish. Point being is even as a parent to kids, it's so easy to look at their room and say, Molly's my oldest.

Molly, your room's an absolute mess. Clean it up now. Instead of, hey, Molly, I appreciate you hanging up your Harry Potter cape. Thanks. Meanwhile, she's looking around going, there's a wet towel over there. There's all this stuff. Or, hey, Karen,

I just want to let you know, I really appreciate you getting back to that inquiry that came in, in less than two minutes. Because that's the stuff that sets us apart from all the other services companies out there, because that person probably called three other companies and we got back to them faster than everyone else. That's an expression of our value that we have inside of our company of speed. I'm always anchoring something back to the values that we've set inside the company. And so I'm like,

A truffle pig looking for a truffle out in the hills of Italy, right? Giuseppe trying to hunt and find that one little thing that ties back to the values of my company or the values of my family. Yep.

So well done is just one book. It's very well done. Very well done. And here's the deal. I'll let you close us out with just some final thoughts of, I always like to get the listeners to think about what they could do to take action now. What's something profound that they could do to really get this alter ego effect? And you guys got to go buy the book. I mean, Todd's the real deal. I really appreciate you

be in here. It's one of the big, it's honestly, it's one for your world where you've got service professionals and salespeople out there trying to go, like it's, it's, it's a huge book in the sales world because it's just like my athletes. There's a white hot light of performance shining on you every single day. There's no place to hide. And so let's custom build an identity for you. That's custom built to win for that particular field. And so practical piece of advice for people

is one, if you're gonna play with this idea, one, just pick one role in your life that you feel like A, you're either under-indexing on or frustrated with, or B, you just wanna have more fun with.

And that could be dad at home or wife or mom at home, or it's you as a CEO. The thing about entrepreneurs is we actually have many identities that we have to play. There's a leader of the team and then there's someone, you might still have an execution role inside the business. So what's that area? And then the third thing is, is just start, hey, who's or what's a source of inspiration for,

that you could use to start modeling the characteristics that you most want to show up with. There is nothing false in this. Epictetus said it. There's nothing false in adopting the manners and characteristics of other people. We all need a point or vision to move towards. So picking an alter ego or an identity to model is just a smart, fast way to become the person you want to become.

I love it. Todd, thank you so much for doing this. Tommy, I appreciate you doing this last minute. It went great. Thank you. Thanks guys for listening. Pick up the book, Ultra Ego, and find who you want to become. Thanks for listening, guys.

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.