Transforming Conversations into Conversions: Strategies for Sales Success
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When people are not sure about the value of something, the service you provide when you do the stuff for them, when you diagnose the whole system, the service of making the prices, the premium mid-range economy choices, the service of helping people bring it to a conclusion. I'm not sure if you call that sales, but I would call it the most important thing that we can do when it comes to after the doorbell rings. I firmly believe the branding is number one.

Number two is marketing. Number three is sales. Number four is operation. The operation can't work unless we sell something. That's the big part. And then financial is number five because the financial is only a result of what we sold. So basically, what I would say is that you got the hierarchy right. I believe that branding and marketing is number one because we do need opportunities. Once you get an opportunity, don't fumble the ball. That's what we're talking about.

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, here we go. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert, Joe Crisara. He's an expert in sales education, customer service coaching, HVAC. He's based in the Los Angeles area. Contractorselling.com, service sales coach. He's been doing this since 2006. He was the CEO of Big Time Business Development and the owner of Crisara Home Comfort.

Joe is called the America's Service Sales Coach and is a worldwide sales educator and entrepreneur with over 40 years of contractor experience with strong expertise in performing pure motive selling. He co-developed www.contractorselling.com, a sales education firm and website for HVAC plumbing and electrical contractors. Now, Joe holds weekly meetings, morning sales meetings for HVAC techs and comfort advisors through his virtual coaching program. He's

He's his third book titled, what should we do? How to win profit and grow your home service sales. And I read the book, actually, you allowed me to write the forward and it's such a great book. I literally like, I read a lot, a lot of books. I've probably read the majority of sales books out there. And

And you've handed me several books to read, like Maximum Influence and several other books. And this book just, it's all stories. It all goes into the pure mode of selling. It all talks about those magic moments. And it's giving options, not ultimatums. It's everything that we've learned how to do. And you've actually been out to Phoenix a countless amount of times to coach us. You've spoken at all my conferences.

different vertical tracks and home service freedom. So it's a pleasure to have you here, Joe. Thank you, Tommy. Thanks for inviting me. And of course, I do want to set the record straight, though. It's not just HVAC. I did do HVAC, plumbing, electrical, but we also now garage door is probably our biggest growth industry. And then now flooring, I tell you, we are now killing it in the flooring industry.

and landscaping and things like that. So definitely anytime you have a service business and the new name of the website is servicemvp.com where you can get free lessons and stuff like that. So a contractor selling, we've sunsetted. You won't be able to sign up for that anymore.

Service MVP is a new one we have. About four years ago, we rebranded, so you probably have some dated information, but I'm here for you. And definitely, it's an honor, though, Tommy, that you include me in these events. And to be here today, it's an honor to help you today. And I do hope, sincerely, that that's 460 pages of stuff in that book. And we left nothing out, as you can tell, Tommy. It's not watered down, leaving you with things that you can't do.

with things that are not wanting more. If you get the audio book, you're going to have yourself a sales, the same sales lessons you would get for spending $4,000 in a week. If you listen to the audio book, it's 10 hours on the audio book. It's a lot of content there, you know? Yeah. I, at first I read it, then I actually on stage, I pulled it up the other day. Just, I love the, the beginning of,

When you tell the story about the lady with her kids and the tires and just walking into that tire company, giving options, doing what's right, changing the presentation to do what's going to keep your family safe and on the road. We learned quite a lot of things from you and just...

You go over the options and you let one pick one they like, and you're a servant to the client and you're making the magic moments. And as we started to implement these things, we've always given three options, but the science, I believe you said six options is the best. Is that right?

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, the options have to be organized in a certain fashion. If you only give one option, like the car, like the tire store, you know, people came in and said they wanted to patch their tire. Hey, I need to get my tire fixed. How much would it cost? And everybody said, it's $89 to patch your tire. All right, go ahead and do that for me. And that's, they did most of the time. The average sale was $264, I believe it was.

Then I said, when a client says they want to fix it, how do they want to fix it? More permanently? They got 173,000 miles. And that lady who, Lisa, who had that tire, tires that 173,000 miles. She brought her kids to Palm Springs every weekend or every back to Santa Barbara with her mom's house. I said, I don't want to see you on the road getting stuck in the mountainside with flat tire. Let's go ahead and replace all the tires and do the

suspension and oil changes and everything for five years and 75. So she bought it for $5,972, which she bought the first time she ever bought all that stuff at one time. But if you do the premium mid-range economy prices like I did with her, then 89% of the time people will upgrade to the premium and mid-range option if you did that. Does that make sense to everybody? So if you give one choice, it's the weakest.

Good, better, best is the second weakest. You're going to upgrade 40% of the time. Premium, mid-range, economy, starting with the best one first, 80% upgrade. And if you do two premium, two mid-range, and two economy, 89% upgrade. So that's the thing about it. Yeah. So, you know, I heard about you a long time ago. And after story, after story, after story of just you going in and changing the atmosphere of the sales organization, we hired you.

And, you know, talk to me a little bit about how you got just let's go back to the beginning. So you had your own contractor business. You were selling things for cheap, barely getting by. You went out and you decided, listen, I'm going to build this whole thing into a sales organization and talk about some of the things you've been in the last decade and what you've done for companies. Well, I wish I could take credit for what you did, Tommy, which is to build a sales organization.

I did it just for mere survival. I was about ready to, I was $471,000 in debt. My method of pricing was finding out, doing secret searches on all my competitors and finding what they charged. And I thought the only way that people would buy from me is if I charged a little bit less. So my paradigm, I call it, and if you look at Dr. Stephen Covey and the seven habits of highly effective people,

A paradigm is the way we see life. I saw life like the only way somebody could see value in me, in my service, if the service was a little bit less money. So I tried to find out what my competitors prices and come in just a little bit less.

And, you know, I had some success, but just barely enough money. Well, if you do it that way, you're going to be struggling day to day, hour to hour to try to make payroll, try to make, then you get hit with a tax bill at the end of the year for all this stuff. And you wind up being devastated, right? So I wound up $471,000 in debt.

One of my clients, his name was Dave. In the book, I talk about Dave. He told me, he said, Joe, why are you always trying to go the cheapest thing? Why don't you show us the premium thing? And I said, Dave, nobody buys that. And he goes, Joe, I live in a golf course on a condo. I paid like $250,000 for 1,200 square foot condo. I don't even have a garage. I got a carport. He goes, I pay five times more than you have for your house.

but I get all these services. I get a golf course. I get the, you know, the clubhouse. We have a restaurant here. They cut my grass and things like that. So Joe, I pay more money for all that. That's why I pay more money because I'm getting better service. He goes, I suggest you do the same thing. So he showed me, he was a pharmaceutical salesperson, Tommy.

And he goes, let me show you what I do with medical clinics and doctors and hospitals. I say, here's the premium package. Here's the mid-range. Here's the economy package. The premium package, we come in and restock everything for you. You don't get your staff. Doesn't have to do all that. We just come in every week, look at the shelves, restock it, and you're set to go every week. You get the lowest price when you do it that way and you save money. You can buy them one at a time and just have your nurses call us as they need it. That's the very bottom option, right? And he showed me what to do. And I'm like, okay, that makes sense. So I tried it.

And I sold 10 times more on the very first call. I would have sold an igniter for 75 bucks back in 1991. And instead I got the whole ignition system for $1,250. I had a thing on a, I wasn't started out with an HVAC, right? I had a pump, had a bad couple. The next call would have been 125 bucks. I,

I made 3,800 bucks on showing people all the pumps and relays and everything and just redoing all the pumps because they're all 28 years old. Right. So, and I've helped garage door people too, like that, right? Like, Hey, we can fix this garage door and put a lipstick on a pig, but look, the door is like ancient. It's like, we're going to put this new opener in this old door. Let's just look at the whole door and everything we can get there. So if you offer the options, cause how are we supposed to do otherwise? Push the premium thing on the people or just show them the economy one. So when you will,

pre-select the option for the client, that's even un-American, Tommy. That's like socialism. It's like somebody in a socialist country came up with that way, right? It's like, here is the thing you're going to get. The government has decided for you. It's like, dude, no, the American way is let people choose for themselves. Premium, mid-range economy. The good news, American, we are premium people.

And we will choose the premium one if you put it in front of us. That's the key thing there. Make sense? It does make sense. And Giuseppe, just grab these. This is your book. I'm ordering these for all my technicians. Anybody that comes on...

yesterday. I said, they said, what book should I be reading? I said, listen, I said, I want you guys to read this book first. We read the book go for no, I said, maximum influence. And I said, what should we do? And I'm getting this book. I'm going to get it on audible. It kind of describes, we were building something similar, but nowhere near the magic moments, nowhere near the mentality that you have just,

And the way the gratitude you express, like when you're with a teacher, you know, what grade are you teaching? Oh my gosh, eighth grade. I remember my eighth grade social studies teacher, Mr. Walerski. Can I take a picture with you? It's just amazing that teachers like you, you've always led with gratitude. Even with me, you're like one of my best friends. You've done so much for me. Like you do this in your life with everybody.

And it's like a force to be reckoned with. And the way you do it is you make people feel so great. Well, you're going to make me cry right now if you keep saying that, Tommy. So you better watch it. But I'll tell you one thing. Every time somebody like, Tommy's got Andy Elliott. You see that? Or Tommy's got Jeremy, all these people. I'm like, dude, aren't you mad at Tommy? I'm like, guys,

If I had, I can never repay Tommy Mello for everything he's given me. He was exploring sales stuff before he got to me and he's going to continue to explore it after me. He's going to keep doing it. And I hope I don't hope there's no after me. I hope I'm part of it. That's why I want to be part of the journey with you, Tommy. And you said before, you know, he said, he said, I got a heart so big that everybody can fit inside a dream so big that everybody can fit inside that dream. And you know what?

that is true. And I tell you what, I have no jealousy or envy of any kind. I really feel that there's room for everybody in this, under this Tommy Mello dream. And so I, I welcome all the other people that are in it. I have no negativity about anything. And all I do have is gratitude because seriously, I,

how would all these people be listening to you right now if it wasn't for you? So definitely, it's not just fake gratitude. It's how could it not be authentic? It would be, I'd be silly not to even do that, right? So thanks, Tommy. That is how I operate. And my first thing, even when I get a customer concern, Tommy, like you guys didn't do this or this. I'm like, you know what? Thank you.

Because now we are aware of it. We were unaware. We had a blind spot. And so let me get back on track. Can I get back on track with you? Can we get on backtrack together? Because that's what I want to do. I always tell my client, if I'm off track, you tell me. And then together, we will get back on track if you want to join me. If you don't want to join me, I understand that. You can always tell me no. But if you want to join me, we'll get back on track. And everybody says, yes, I wanted you to get back on. That's why I told you. I want you to get back on track. So even when you get a customer concern, Tommy, it's an opportunity to

for a sales call or for something where it could be an opportunity to purchase something. Because the reason people are unhappy is probably because something doesn't work that you did before, right? And that's telling you you should have a more premium option to begin with. You know, going back real quick, I just want to set the record straight here. You know, Andy Elliott for me is like a David Goggins. And his whole deal is if you're not your best self, if you wake up unhappy, if you're unhealthy and you're eating McDonald's all day,

He's more of a motivational speaker than sales. Yes, he talks to auto dealerships and stuff like that because that's what he did.

And, you know, Jeremy Miner is more B2B. But yes, Jonathan Wissman wrote The Sales Boss. I mean, I read a lot of books. I've studied voice inflections, body language, everything. And yes, do I read a lot of books? Do I listen to a lot of podcasts? Like, I hope everybody goes out there and educates themselves. Do I use Rillo Voice? Do I use Sherp? Do I use Service Titan? Do I get the best of the best? Do I hire consultants? Do I hire speaking coaches? Yes. I don't just have one speaking coach.

I've got several. I believe in, I will invest into myself. I've got Dan Martell, buy back your time. I'm trying to figure out my personal life and how to create balance and make sure that I'm feeding myself all the time. I mean, Joe, you are the home service guy. You are the master. This is the Bible. This is in home service. I believe this is the real deal. I don't endorse things that I don't believe in. And I have used you for a long time and I continue to bring you in.

And I hope you don't ever feel like it's like a shot towards you. It's like, I want to continue. Never. I never feel that way at all. I never feel like, you know what? I'm honored with some of the big names you're talking about. Now you're right. I do think even Andy Elliott motivated me when I saw him. I was like, man, I got to get my shit together. This guy is

I got to get in shape, right? It's like, what am I doing? At least can we start walking every day, right? So truthfully, I get something from everybody. And guys, how do you think I got to all the stuff I got here? I did it the same way Tommy did it. Investing in myself. And it's not unusual every single month of the year for me to, like they probably should have put me on a subscription for like $350. Because that's about what I average, about $350 a month on Amazon, buying new material and things like that or audiobooks.

I just devour it. I go on a plane trip. I got to listen to something. I want to feed my mind something new because what you feed your mind is what...

comes out in your actions. Does that make sense? Your first place imagination begins, everybody, is in your imagination. You have to be able to imagine a vision for something that's better than what you're doing right now. And that's what I think this information does. Not just my information, but even the maximum. So the maximum influence is a good one because this kind of templates right over the top of that. It takes that information. Here's how you put it into action. That's really what I love about it, right?

To the point where, you know, Jack Canfield, one of the authors I follow, he saw my book and he's like, Joe, I need to interview you. He actually called me to Santa Barbara. Tommy, what a shock. Jack Canfield's organization who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul, you know, Mark Victor Hansen, who helped you with your book and things like that.

Yeah. So Jack, Jack Canfield calls his, he puts me, I got Jack Canfield wants to talk to you, Joe. Uh, like when, like right now he wants to talk. I'm like, what? He's on the line on the phone. I'm like, yeah, Joe, I need you to come up to Santa Barbara. I want to do an interview. I saw this book and I see you got the success principle. I thought that was a legal trouble. Like,

Joe, I see you got the success principles. It's all inside the book. The book I wrote, the success principles, a lot of the materials in here, you know that E plus R equals O. And I said, I know I gave you credit for it though, Jack. He goes, I know that's what's getting me. I want to make sure I come here. So

I have an interview on there now that just came out on with Jack Canfield breakthrough success. And what an honor, right? Cause it's like, uh, I've got to pinch myself to say, I got Tommy Mello is one of my college, uh, alumni, one of my mentors. And I got Jack Canfield as a mentor and people like that. I just, uh, I got to pinch myself, Tommy, seriously. I can't even believe, uh, if I had, if you had to tell me 10 years ago, I'm at, I'm at where I'm at now. I'm probably be like Dan Antonelli. We'd never, we could never could have imagined it, but it's like,

because of people like you and Jack and other people like that, it makes our dreams come true. And that we're here to make everybody else who's listening to this, make their dreams come true too. It makes sense.

Listen, I think you have the servant attitude. And, you know, I feel like sales, if I had to pick what's more important, sales or marketing, I think marketing is 10 times more important because you're not in front of clients. I think the only scalable thing is to get in front of more clients. But sales is to sell as human. You know, Daniel Pink wrote a book. We all sell. I said, do you want to see the best salesman? You should have went to church on Sunday on Easter and watch the best salesman in the world.

go in front of a 10,000 people and collect 10% of everybody's savings for life or their revenue. And I said, and I believe in Jesus. And I mean, he's my Lord and savior.

And I'm not trying to say it's a bad thing, but because they got to make money. No, there's a benefit to it. You're not selling something that's not needed, Tommy. When he gets up there on the Easter service, he's selling salvation and peace of mind that people feel like they are taken care of. What you get from that is you feel like our Lord and Savior gives us care, respect, and support. But if the pastor doesn't send the message, he's the messenger. How would we know

that it exists if he doesn't tell us about it. Make sense? And there is a financial reality. The financial reality is it costs a lot of money to have a church. It's not cheap. And so he doesn't bring up the profit and loss statement of the church. He just tells you, hey, we need some help here. Hook a brother up. Because you've got to pay the light bills and you've got to pay the power bills and stuff like that. I learned along, I used to sell the churches. So I realized my mom is a good one, Tommy. My mom

I got her to start a new thing for churches called the Pig Roast. So I had her, she did a pig roast for St. Matthew's Church in Lake Zurich, Illinois. Enough money to buy an air conditioning system for the whole church for $150,000. And then I said, mom, you should sell this to other churches. So she went around to other churches on doing consulting and teaching them how to do a pig roast. That's where I got this consulting opportunity.

background because she would teach other churches and she would even charge hardly anything. She'd say, give me $100 for my gas and I'll come out to Wisconsin and show you how to do this thing. I'll give you all my stuff. So she was responsible for doing a similar thing, selling the reason why, come to the pig roast, learn about our church, learn about the people. And we're doing the same thing here with A1 Garage Door or with any company here. We're going out to the house to learn about

learn about our company, learn about our solutions, and then choose the one that's right for you. That's really what it's all about. In my heart, my mom was a great example of service. When I was at my lowest point, I realized that I would just give these people this advice. Service, like my mom and dad gave, and like I give, and like Tommy gives, and everybody else who's listening to this gives, service is the knife that cuts through the fog of uncertain value.

When people are not sure about the value of something, the service you provide when you do the stuff for them, when you diagnose the whole system, the service of making the prices, the premium mid-range economy choices, the service of helping people bring it to a conclusion. I'm not sure if you call that sales, but I would call it the most important thing that we can do when it comes to after the doorbell rings. I firmly believe the branding is number one.

Number two is marketing. Number three is sales. Number four is operation. The operation can't work unless we sell something. That's the big part. And then financial is number five because the financial is only a result of what we sold. So basically what I would say is that you got the hierarchy right. I believe that branding and marketing is number one because we do need opportunities. Once you get an opportunity, don't fumble the ball. That's what we're talking about. Keep the ball. Most people don't get sales, Tommy.

they lost the sale because they simply didn't know that we need to get people prices right now, or we need to get the diagnosed the whole system and give them the price. Does that make sense? So most of the time we don't win a sale. Somebody else lost it and this dropped right into our lap. That really is the fact of life.

You know what a lot of people say, Joe, and there's a lot of Facebook forums out there of a bunch of guys that don't actually own a business. They own a job. And they say, man, I see your trucks everywhere. You charge crazy prices. And you always sell stuff people don't need. And I go, wait a minute.

I give them the option of replacing high cycle, like their stuff's worn out and we do show and tell. You didn't even need a garage door. You don't need a new Apple phone. You don't need an Apple watch. You didn't need a new house. What does that mean? I give them options. You didn't need a new door. I could have made the old one work, but you wanted one. I think that's, it would be disingenuous if you came into my shop

Joe, and I owned a Toyota repair shop and you had a 2007 with 190,000 miles in the transmission blue.

And the engines probably got another year left on it. To not give you an option of look, you're gonna run into more problems. This engine, here's the problems with the engine. We need to replace the transmission. It's probably a good idea to, everything's messed up. Your brakes are not good. The car doesn't look good. The interior is not great. It's weathered. By the time you put the money into this, would it be better off replacing this? And I think that's the right thing to make offers.

And let them choose what they want. I replaced every hot water heater. By the way, Joe, you're more than welcome to come over anytime. I have eight hot water heaters. I replaced all of them. If he would have gave me more options, if he would have said, listen, if he would have said, Tommy, I'll make the water get warmer quicker. I will give you higher pressure. If you want this, I would have taken all of it. He didn't offer it to me. I buy like I want to be bought from. I want options. And I'll always take the premium because I've gone with non-premium. And guess what happens?

It's always gone downhill for me. It's never got... I want it to work when I hit the button. I don't buy the drill bit. I buy the hole. I want it to work every time. And everybody that I go out to, they want to hit the button. They want it to work. They want to make it to their kid's play. They want to make sure they get their kids...

to school on time. And I just think a lot of people don't believe in themselves. I think a lot of people don't think they're worth it. I think a lot of people just, they lie to themselves and say, I could never sell something for that because they don't have any expenses. They're the owner operator. They work out of their house. They drive a used truck. And that's where I started, Joe, by the way, you know, I drove a really old piece of junk, dented up truck. I didn't have the money to buy nice tools. I worked three jobs to make this work. People are always like, I want to be like Tommy Mello. I'm like, okay, yeah,

Go live in an apartment. Pay everybody else first. Take a blood test to get a life insurance policy. You want to take sacrifice? I'm the epitome of that. It didn't come overnight. Right. Well, I tell you what. And when I see what you just made, you hit on a really strong point there. A1 Garage Door and what you guys have done there and other companies too, not just your company, Travis Smith and other people, Any Hour and the companies that I work with, they're

They were successful before I got there. Why were they successful? Here's the element. You just mentioned a big element of it. You believe in what you're doing. If you believe in what you're doing, I would think the company should spend time in getting their people to believe in what we're trying to do here, right? If you believe in it, nobody can tell you no. And also, here's the opposite thing. If you don't believe in what your company is doing, if you don't understand why they're doing what they're doing and what's in their heart,

then most likely you're going to fall apart during the middle of the sales call. You're going to wind up giving in or trying to lower the price because you can't justify the value, right? You don't believe in the value. So when you believe in, here's the thing, the salesperson can never sell something they don't believe in. And on the converse of it, nobody can be stopped when you believe in it. You're not going to convince me about something that I believe in

to change my mind about something I firmly believe in. Like pure mode of service we teach, I firmly believe in the quality, reliability of a system. I believe in the safety and health of the family.

I believe in the customer service to anticipate what people need before they ask me. I believe in customized relevant solutions. And I believe in honesty, even if it's painful and people don't want to hear it. I believe in telling them the truth and I will warn them. I'm going to tell you the truth now. You may not like what I'm about to say to you, but are you okay if I say it? I'll make sure I get permission to say it and then I will tell them the truth. And that's why I'm with the consulting. That's why I think we're known as one of the best

because we don't tell people. And Tommy Mello said, come up here and do it. There was like a little moment where Tommy tried to get me to do what he wants me to do. And I said, Tommy, have a seat. Hold my beer, okay? I'm...

I was at A1, I said, and then he had to say, I got to get out of here, Joe, because I want to teach the class too. I said, we can help me. Maybe if we learn the material better, you can help teach a class, Tommy. Right now, let me teach it. You hired me to do this. Let me do this. And I told him, I said, Tommy, sit down. Let me teach this thing. You can stand up and ask questions or whatever.

to say anything you want to say, it's your company. But when I'm doing my thing, it's my thing. Right. And so there was a moment where he tried to get me to move the certain way. I said, Tommy, no. He tried to, he tested me on the options. And I'm like, Tommy, here's what's happening. Okay. Do what you want to do when I'm gone. But here's what is happening when I'm here. And I tell you what, when we were there that week, you had record. I only had a few minutes with the sales team. I remember 15 minutes talk. Here's what we're going to do. Make a friend.

make the options, make them personal and bring it to a conclusion. Yes, no, another appointment. And you said at the end of the week, record week they had that week just because of that message for 15 minutes. That's called the small, big Tommy, the small message that sends a big result and reverberates throughout the whole organization. Does that make sense?

I mean, listen, everything you put out there works. I mean, I'm a living testament to what you do. And the way the book was, there is no fluff. It's a big book. It's a large audible. But you tell stories and people remember stories. And, you know, you worked with Helena.

And I met Helena through Elle, and she probably won't work with me again because I've got a little bit of ADHD. I'm all over the place. I couldn't come to a conclusion. It was my first book when we wrote The Office Millionaire. But she's amazing. And you wrote, it's literally gold. And I think it's going to be the lifeblood of the podcast.

the new companies that come in, anybody should read this book, no matter what industry you're in. And every stage I've been on, since you came out with the book, I've mentioned it. And I've literally like, I played the audible on stage of the tire of the tire scenario that you did. And what really, what, what got you to just finally sit down and write this book? Because this one is absolutely phenomenal. Well, it took us over three, almost three years, uh,

We did have the advantage over you, which is that we had thousands of hours of audios, which I tried to give her. She wanted to put about 500 hours of audio and video content, which I had to go over that. And then she attended the classes. She came to our training classes and went for a week and graduated. So she did everything, right? And then she wrote in my voice,

when, listen, Tommy, when I read that book, I'm like, that's exactly the worst. Like I did the audio audible book. I did it for cost. It took me six weeks to do the audible at about six hours for three days a week for six hours a day. And I was reading it. I'm like, man, that sounds exact. Like it was easy to do the audible truthfully. Just, you know, but when you do audible, you've probably done it before where it's like, uh, you get about three or four cents. They tell you, Hey, stop and say it again. Like you mean at this time, you know, so your cat, the, the,

The effort it takes to do that is difficult. But truthfully, she made it easy because she wrote it exactly in my voice. So if you're reading that and you know me, you're like, that sounds exactly like Joe Corsera when I read that passage. It's not like some author that wrote it that doesn't sound like Joe. That's her magic. And Helena Boucher, she writes the book as if you're talking in your own voice. That's what I like about your book, Tommy. That's why I knew it was like, I felt like I was listening to Tommy Mellon when I read your book, not Helena Boucher. She just is a great person who does that.

I've got great people around me. I mean, I put out a newsletter. I do a lot of things. I give the context. I'm not the best writer in the world. I'm not going to pretend that I am. It's all my stories. It's all my voice. It's just it's written in a better way. It's not a ghostwriter. It's all our content. It's not like somebody's writing messages that we don't talk about. It's all our words. If you read my writing, you'd be like, holy cow, this doesn't even...

So they just put it in a format that's better. But yeah, no, it's an amazing book.

Well, even Elevate, when I read Elevate, I mean, Julie, we changed our company. Listen, you think you're a consumer. We changed this company based on Elevate. Julie's like, we got to do this part, right? She was like, it was her Bible. I wish I had one in back of me. I don't have one here, but she had that. My wife, Julie, is like your hero. She takes the material and teaches everybody we need to do on this stuff. So I wish she was here to tell you how much meaningful that book Elevate did for us. Yeah.

And she uses that as the Bible of building this company again. Hopefully we will someday be worthy of being part of the Tommy Mello Nation here at Service MVP so we can merge forces to dominate this industry. I think that's something that I want my highest regards. Listen, I'm not getting younger. And definitely I think we need messengers like you to help us get across the goal line. I think this will be going on for generations to come.

AI, you know, you could have instead of chat GPT, you could have TGPT, which is Tommy's GPT, write all this stuff for you. But truthfully, there's no message like Tommy can send it. When he's on stage, we all know you speak from the heart. We all know that you care about people, even if there's little stumbles and we hit our head on certain things.

in your heart, you know, you want to make it right. And that's really what I think is the message from Tommy Mello. And by extension, I think we have that as well here at ServiceMEP. That's why I think, you know, together, you told me before, how do you build a great business, Joe? And you told me, I asked you, how do you build a business like this, Tommy? He goes, well, Joe, we do it together. We don't do it by ourself. That's how we do it. Make sense?

Yeah, and I'll tell you this. I've had a lot of discussions the last week, Joe, about what's the common themes of a really great home service company. We all work for the technicians and installers. I work for them, the CSRs, the dispatchers, the warehouse guys, the COO, the CFO. We all work for the technicians.

I consider myself the glue. In fact, I'm probably not going to be the CEO in two or three years. And what is my position going to be? I just came up with it this week. I'm going to be the tech whisperer. I get along with my techs and installers more than anybody.

Like I care about all my people, the dispatchers, the C that we don't work unless we all work and the marketing has got to work and you put them first and you make sure they're look, I've gone to the wrong address. Some, some CSR would put drive instead of Avenue and in Phoenix, that could be an hour in the wrong direction. Everything's got to have checks and balances and systems. And your approach to sales is a systemized opportunity to,

And there's one thing I tell people, I don't even have to teach guys sales because they look me in the eye when they talk. They're sincere and they believe in the product. They do the same thing for their mom's house. If they shake my hand like they mean it, if they're humble and they're hungry, there's no such thing as sales. You're just being a good human being. You believe in the product. You give me the right attitude, the right body language that you believe in yourself.

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So go to freedom event.com forward slash podcast and get your super early bird tickets. Now that's freedom event.com forward slash podcast. Just make sure you do it before the prices go up on June 3rd. Now let's get back to today's episode.

I told the guys yesterday, there's two things you need to be if you work at this company and you're going to be my coworker. You got to be extremely confident, extremely, extremely confident. And you got to be extremely competitive. Those two things are a winning formula because you got to believe it like you said. And I don't know about you, but I've tried to teach certain guys

This methodology that you teach and they're just, they're not made to like, they don't believe in themselves. They look in the mirror and they don't, they stumble and there's, um, yeah, you know, like, and they just don't believe they don't have that confidence level. They don't want to win. It's like, they never tried it. Anything in their life. Like I asked these guys yesterday, how many of you have played anything competitive in your life? And like,

Continue to try to get better at it every day. And that just shows the testament of how we recruit now. Because I'll tell you this, I'm sure you've gone into shops and worked with guys and you're like, oh my gosh, this guy's going to take two years just to get him to believe in himself. What are your thoughts on just the recruiting side of it? Well, I would say that is important that, you know, I would say the biggest part of it is people who take responsibility. Like if I ask somebody when they're looking for a job, so Joe, what happened at the last place?

And then what I'm really looking for the person to say to me that the highest, the highest form of response I'm looking for, the best response I would like to hear is somebody who says, well, well, Joe, the last place I work, I wish I had known what I knew when I got there. It's really on me. I thought the job was one thing and it turned out to be something else that I wasn't comfortable with, but that's really more me. It's really not. The company is very successful and they're probably going to be successful without me, but

Really, it wasn't a good fit for me, and I should have realized that when I first joined it. But I'm looking for somebody to say is take responsibility because taking responsibility is really what this book is about. When you got to quote, what should we do? It's taking responsibility to diagnose everything, to make that relationship, to do everything the right way, to make the premium mid-range economy. You have to be able to respond, which is responsibility. So what I'm looking for when I recruit people is are they –

Are they self-aware and are they taking inventory of themselves? Because that kind of person, I don't have to make them aware of the fact that they're going to take two years. I just try to help those people who are unaware. I say, well, let's examine yourself. And why do you think, why are you uncomfortable with this? Like, what would you do? What system would you use? Why just give them the cheapest price? They would tell me. I say, well, so you would hide the other prices. Don't you believe in highest quality reliability?

I do believe in that. Well, it's not going to be the highest quality reliability if you do the cheapest thing. Yeah, I get that. I said, why don't you think about that? So sometimes in a couple of minutes, you can get people to change their mind on that because you start attaching it. So if you're trying to get people to say, I need you to sell more, that's not going to work, Tommy. But if you tell people, I need you to believe in quality and reliability to work at A1 Garage Doors, can you do that?

I can do that. Can you believe in the safety and health of people? Yes. Can you believe in serving people before they ask you? I can believe in that. So those are the things now we believe in together. So we're doing it together. You can't go at it head on, Tommy. It's got to be like a different avenue that winds up at the same destination. Does that make sense? Like you try and take the expressway and sometimes it's clogged up with traffic. So sometimes you have to take the mountain way.

And you wind up there faster, even though it's a little bit longer mileage. Does that make sense there? So I think that's a lot of people don't realize is that some people take a longer journey. Some people try and go in the express lane and they have the, they're already kind of built into their DNA and they take the fast lane, but there's thousands of other people who take the mountain way or the way down by the lake or take the exit ramp and do it, go on a side road to get there. But everybody winds up getting there. I believe that.

I believe that everybody will believe in what we're trying to do because I think it is so pure that it's something that you, it's not, it's like if you argue with me, you're arguing with Benjamin Franklin or Socrates or Plato, you know, ancient history of people who have like a Socratic questioning is the methodology that over 2000 years ago, Socrates questioned, is the sky blue?

The sky is blue, that's without question. And then Socrates would say, well, what color are the clouds then?

Oh, they're white. See? So they're not all blue. Most of the sky is white. Look at all the clouds. So the bottom line is that you've got to question things. The biggest thing we should all question is ourself and our paradigm. The way I see the world, we have to question the way we see the world and is it accurate? Because most of the time, what we see is something that we grew up with and something that's not actually true.

I have a thing called the inner belief prison, which is in the book, which we think that there's walls around us that confine us, but really there's no wall. We could walk right out of those walls and do it. I just got to get a test that though, the only way we can break those walls is by testing it, by taking action to try it on. So so many people who do break through like that, Tommy, my advice would be with all the people here, it's called five, five and five. And I got that from Oprah of all people, five, five and five means you're,

You make them read it five times on their own, something you want them to do. You make them read it out loud five times, and then you make them do it by memory five times. By the time you do it 15 times, then all of a sudden the belief starts to change because they hear the words come out of their mouth, and they're like, yeah, I can see how that would work. You're helping them imagine what this would look like. So if we don't role play it and make them do it, though, Tommy, it's

they're never going to change their beliefs. So the key is take action because the universe rewards people who take action. It doesn't reward people who just think about it and stand still. Standing still, the status quo is not the way to be successful. You can't save your way into success and you can't stand still to be successful. You got to be moving forward. And that's what I think all leaders, because you should require of their people, is let's try it. Let's do the five times here. Let's do the greeting five times when you walk into a house. Let's try it now.

out loud. Now let's try it in real life at the garage door. Let's go ahead and do it that way. It makes sense. So you got a five, five and five, everything. And the time we get to the 15th time, you start to say, I can see how this would work. Does that make sense there, Tommy? Yeah, a hundred percent. In your book, you talked about kind of,

At the circus, they take an elephant and they put it on a rope and they put the rope around the neck like a leash and they have it run around in circles. And eventually the elephant gets so big that no rope could contain it. But the elephant's always, it's a metaphorical leash that they just, they stay in that confinement. That's what the way they were trained.

And they don't realize they can do whatever they want. Now that's a training technique, but I think a lot of us are confined by our belief systems. A lot of people don't dream big enough. They don't have these big goals. They want to be, they say, Joe, man, if I got to $2 million, I'd be happy.

And I'm like, Joe, if I don't get to 15 billion in the next four years, I consider that a failure as far as the worth of the company. And I got all these haters on TikTok and Instagram going, oh, yeah, but how do you even bullshit? And I'm like, OK, you don't know anything like you're a kid living in your mom's basement. Don't talk to me. And I don't know why I still get mad about stuff like that. But I love that analogy that people they literally have their own walls.

And if you just were able to dream bigger, Tommy, there's a difference between ignorance and stupidity, ignorance, just not knowing. I can't really get upset with somebody who doesn't know. And they come, they attack me. I'm like, ah, poor guy just doesn't know. Uh,

But if you know, and you're still not doing it, you know something that's going to work and you don't use it, that's stupidity. Make sense? And so there's four levels of learning. First is unconsciously incompetent. We have no idea what to do, and so we don't do it right. Then we know what to do, like Tommy or me, we teach you something, or Al Levy or somebody teaches something.

But then you still don't do it. That's called stupidity. Like, you know what to do, but you don't do it. And then there's consciously competent, which is I know what to do and I'm grinding out to do it. I'm doing it and it's working, but I got to grind it. And then there comes the euphoric time of,

where we have unconsciously competent. We don't got to think about it. We just every day, like when I see a one garage door, Luke, Brian, the people who work in the training for Travis and the people, Adam and these people there, they are unconsciously competent. They make it such a fricking hard thing to do that you guys do over there, but they make it look so easy. Like somebody from the outside comes in like, man,

this place runs like so easy. It must be easy to run this. Oh, it just looks easy. Believe me, they're working their tail off, but they do it so well that they're unconsciously competent. And that's the thing. When you go to see a one garage door and you see what home Tommy, Tommy's doing with this home service freedom. I recommend it because I believe that they're going to get you to that unconsciously competent level where you can't even think of another way, like going back the other way, there's the opposite of,

getting people off the block, once they get to the point where they're unconsciously competent, you could never get people to go back the other way at that point. Now they have a new belief and you've got, you hit that belief right there, but it does take time, right? That, that unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent, consciously competent and unconsciously competent. That's amazing. That's where, that's where I believe that. That's why I kind of remind myself I need to be sometimes when I'm having any part of my business, where am I at? You know,

Yeah, it's great. I love that. And I got, I know every guy's number is practically by heart. I mean, we keep track. We've got a number next to their name. It's restarts every month.

Then I could predict our payroll within 2% every week. It's interesting because Alan Ferguson, I met him years and years ago, and he had a really massive Australian HVAC plumbing company. And he sent me this sheet of paper and he said, I want you to fill everything out. And at the time, it was really old. It was probably out of the 90s. And it had, how much is your pager bill? How much is your yellow book ads? And I had to change it up, right?

And he said, so many people, they price stuff off of just out of thin air. And if you actually add up all your bills, your air conditioning bill, what it costs you a CSR with PTO, what it costs for service tight and all the different stuff we use,

And you add up everything and you divide it by the hours you spend in the home because there's training there. There's morning mojo calls. There's drive time. The calculation years and years ago came to, you've got to charge between four 50 and 600 an hour.

to cover your profit. And people are like, how is that possible? Well, we've got iPads, we've got cameras in the vehicles, we've got insurance. There's so many things that people don't add up. And what makes my pricing work is that it was designed through expenses to make a profit.

And I think people don't need to charge as much as me because they don't have full-time trainers, full-time recruiters. They don't go, they don't take the trip to Mexico with all their top performers. 61 people. We just went to Mexico. You know, they don't feed their people every day and that's okay. I'm not saying you have to, I'm not saying you have to hire Dan Antonelli. I'm not saying you have to hire Joe, but when you hire these amazing people and you're making advancements, someone's got to pay for that. The company is going to stay profitable and that's how your pricing should be formed.

And everybody's like, well, how'd you come up with your pricing? I'm like, success leaves clues. You look at the balance sheet, you look at the income statement. If you're not making a profit, your pricing's off, especially if your conversion rate and your booking rate and your marketing is where it needs to be. And you're having high success in those KPIs. Now, if your conversion rate's 30% and your booking rate's 50%, don't raise your prices. You've got other issues. You've got operational crap going on.

That's good. You know, and, you know, I do agree that, you know, the 450, you know, you find your break even exactly what you said, take all the expenses you got divided by the amount of time you have available to do those things. And it's going to come up with an hourly rate. I agree with that. Here's the thing that Dan Antonelli and I do for the company.

Dan Antonelli bridges the gap of expectation. You see the brand, it's like, oh, that is worth more money. I can see that's going to be a better company just by the way it looks. And we bridge the gap of the prices being $4.50 to $6.50 an hour, $7.50

But the way we communicate being like 200 bucks an hour, we have to communicate like it's seven or 800 bucks an hour. Does that make sense? The communication skills that we teach bridge the gap to make that price a reality and to make the 650 an hour seem like it should have actually been more like, you know, like you said, the guy who sold you to water heaters, he didn't realize he left money on the table. He could have, you could have done more and you probably think, man, he should have charged more for this.

but that's okay, I got a good deal for this time. But truthfully, there is something missing, which is probably the service that he's probably not gonna perform. And I think we all fall short of that. We find people who we do for a lower price, but then we know we're not gonna get service. So now we wind up using somebody else to service it. So it becomes like a tapestry of different service providers to do one thing. Or we could have had one company do the whole damn thing. And that's really the better way of doing it, you know?

Well, I used to tell people, raise your prices. And I'm like, don't raise your price if you're not going to give a better experience. If you're not going to be out there the same day, if you're not going to deliver your promise, if you're not going to give them the best quality, if you're not going to make sure that everything's great,

You know, raising your price is not the solution for a lot of companies because, quite frankly, they don't deserve to raise their prices. Their guys don't care. They don't show up with a truck that they look like they respect themselves. They literally like they're writing paper invoices. And we were more than triple the price of the other competitor. Now it was what was apples and oranges. Who do you think the client went with? You.

And we had another quote last week. My guy was there for seven and a half hours because we take you off the schedule to be with that client. We're not trying to get you in and out of a job. We're trying to let you build a relationship and understand the needs of that particular client. And like you say, give them options.

And people are like, well, that's just how could you charge that? And I'm like, you don't know what it cost me. You don't know the way where our trucks are set. How dare you tell me what to charge? I don't go into your company. I don't know what it costs you to operate. But I know to do the things we want to give people six figure incomes and have PTO and have a 401k and have great insurance and dental and do the things that these people need to get them out of living in an apartment and out of the gutter.

And therefore, they're going to give a much better experience, more reliability. And we're out there the same day if you've got a problem with your unit.

You know? Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. I think that's a, that's great idea. And here's the thing I would tell you, you're right. I'd say charging a higher price, but doing the same crappy stuff you were doing before and not given the PTO and not the thing, the things that you're trying to do, if you're doing the same thing, if you just raise the price without doing anything, anything better, that's the kiss of death. So doing the same thing as your competition's doing, uh,

But charging more money than the competition is the kiss of death. You're not going to win that way. The reason why Tommy charged three times more, it wasn't for the same thing. It was for a different experience. For instance, they had the prices ready to go. Because I'm going to guarantee you guys, I've seen this. I had a garage door repair here and there's no A1 garage door near me. I would have hired you. But basically...

The guy's like, I need to email this stuff. Yeah, your torsion spring is broken. I said, I figured that because it's not opening. I said, he goes, yeah, let me email you the price. I'm like, just go ahead and tell me the price. Tell me the prices. He said, I feel uncomfortable telling you the price, Tommy. And I said, just tell me the price. I said, are there different kinds of springs, by the way? Is this a really good one you're going to give me? What kind you got?

Uh, no, we just gave you the standard one. What's the best one? Oh, should I have to look that price up? I don't have the price. So bottom line is this guys, uh, just the fact that you have to, that Tommy had the price ready to go on the, on the spot. It's worth three times more because they realize this is all happening now. He diagnosed the problem, uh, created solutions on the spot, made that relationship. And that's, what's different. What's different is you're diagnosing, not just the problem with the spring, but the door and everything. And the, the,

the coating on the floor and everything could be looked at, right? And then you're doing the thing where you're making a friend that nobody else has taken the time to do that. You're making a personal presentation, right, to the client right there on the home. You've made the prices personally for them. See, that's worth three times more by just doing that alone. We're not even talking about the workmanship, which I think all the work

Workmanship would be probably on par. But I tell you what, if you sell something three times more, that workmanship is going to be better because now we can afford to use better resources and better people because they get paid better and they can hold them to a higher standard because they got paid more. That's really what the idea behind charging three times more is. You got more resources for the client and they're doing a better job, more instant service, not waiting to email something. So if you're emailing prices, your service is crap.

If you ask the customer, would you like me to email the price or show it to you right now? A hundred percent of people would say, show it to me right now. And that would be it. So that's, you got to think about their time. That's why it's three times more. I wanted people to get the idea that you're charging three times more, but the experience is five times better, not just three times better. Does that make sense or Tommy? Well, Joe, I get my custom parts and yes, people could probably duplicate what my trademarks are, but I,

I went and found the best cycle on the market, which was 25,000. I went to 80,000 in powder coat of the Springs. And that's the only thing we sell is double Z bearing lifetime self lubricating rollers. I built the Frankenstein of a door for our best package of the best of the best. Yeah.

I would not do anything else for my mother if my grandmother was still alive. If my best friend needed a door, this is what I would be putting. I want the Deco hardware. I want the oversized bottom rubber if my concrete's not level. I'm looking at all the things. I want to make sure I'm keeping those bugs and rats out. I want to make sure that I'm giving you, it's a tight seal. I want to make sure you've got the latest technology. So if you forget to close your garage door, you go on your phone and close it. I want to make sure it's quiet. I want to make sure it's reliable. I've partnered with companies, Joe.

And I've literally talked to founders and they've said, Tommy, it's just a garage door. And I go, it's the number one ROI on the home, Remodel Magazine. It's the entryway to your castle. You probably use your garage door like your front door. Right. And it's not just a garage door for me. It's so much more than that. And I think that's why I believe in what I have a lot of conviction in what I talk about. And I didn't sell them apples for apples because I don't sell apples to apples. I sell oranges.

And I never want you to be able to compare. You can't compare us with anybody else because we don't sell the same stuff. Well, you know, the idea behind getting multiple bids is not to get a lower price. It's to get different ideas on something that's better, to get higher quality. When I get multiple bids on getting pants, I'm not even thinking about the price. I'm thinking, which pants fit better? And what's going to look better? How do I feel in these pants?

And do they seem like they're tough enough to hold up? And does it have a class where I got a button? You know, those are the things I'm thinking about. I'm not thinking about

Then I look at, oh, after I find something I like, I go, how much does it cost? Oh, that's why it costs $150 for these pants because they're perfect, right? And it's like, you know what? It's too much for pants, but I'm going to get them anyway. I just bought socks for $84, Tommy, because I'm like, let me try these. The guy goes, oh, if you like good socks, try these or we'll try them on. I'm like, oh, man, these are great.

nice. They slide right on my foot. There's no resistance. And how much are these? Like, oh, they're $84 a pair. I'm like, all right, give me three pairs. Let's do it. And so, you know, the bottom line is if you get something that works, then the price seems worth it because it fits, right? You got to make it fit first before you get the, before the price, the price is the last thing that's people consider. The thing to consider is this, is this company a fit? Is this person who's selling to me somebody I can trust? Is this company going to support me after I get the job done? How do they know that?

They know it because of the sales process is the first, the sales process is the first demonstration of your competency. If you're not able to diagnose a system, make a relationship and give me the prices right now, most likely you're not gonna get the job done right either. Make sense? - Yeah, a hundred percent. And Joe, they literally did this all by a third party and they found that price was number 10 in the consideration of who they were gonna choose. Price was the 10th thing.

After, first they want to know if somebody's safe. You got your daughter out there and your wife. You want to make sure there's somebody you can trust to be in a home when you're not there. They want to know the reliability. They want to know, did they clean up after they left? Did they keep their time commitments? How was the warranty?

I get a little upset, Joe, because I talk to people all the time that just don't believe in these things. And I understand now from your perspective that maybe they're just unaware. Maybe they're just ignorant because they don't know any better. And I'm sure you're a lot more patient than me. I just look at them and I'm like, man, I just feel bad for you because I guess I was the same way when I started. So I can't really talk bad about them because I competed on price as well, just like you did. Right, right.

Well, I'll tell you one thing, Tommy, what I think now when I see somebody who's ignorant, who's ignorant, doesn't know, I'm thinking, man, they came to the right place. I'm here to help them with this, uh, to give, give it. Cause that's really literally my job is to teach people the things I know. And, uh, and I look at it, it's an honor to have that. So as somebody who's,

in front of me. I don't ever say they're ignorant. You don't know. I don't tell them they don't know. I just like, you know what? I just know inside my brain that this person is uninformed. He doesn't realize that's okay. I'm going to help him right now and give him a couple of lessons for free. And truthfully, that's why the book, I mean, seriously,

There's $25 for the book or $19 for an audible. I mean, everybody questioned me like, Joe, aren't you giving away too much information in this thing for $19 or $25? And I'm like, well, here's what I want people to know. I want people to know that I'm here to serve first.

And what I want people to do is get value from Joe Cresera and Tommy Mello and Dan Antonelli and Al Levy and everybody you work with here in this universe that Tommy has created of unbelievable service providers. I want everybody to get the value first. When you hear Al Levy go on stage and tell you about how to do...

you know, designs and systems that he has in there. You've already got value before you even bought anything because now you realize what a system looks like. And I think that's really what, Tommy, you do. You show people the possibilities and the vision.

And that's why you have so many great fans and why people, I had somebody at HJC guy on, uh, on Facebook. He's like, uh, not going to throw shade at the HJC guys, but my new hero is a garage door guy. That's what, that's what he said on Facebook. I'm like, I said, I said mine too. I said, I know what you're talking about. I got, I'm,

he's mine too. I told him so definitely he's my hero too. So Tommy, you're my hero right now. Cause I tell you right now, you have changed so many lives and including mine, number one, I'm a primary example of that. So thank you so much for that. Well, Joe, you're, you're, you're the real deal in anybody that kind of delaying it, or they think there's a,

Cost of not taking action. And, you know, when Travis called me up from Portland and said, I get you out a minimum of two times a year because if it's not refreshed, that was when I took the leap. And this was several, several, several years ago.

And I had you out and you, you proven yourself over and over again of your ability. It's an investment. It's not a cost. And anybody that's on the fence of using service MVP, there's a group of people that actually do care. They want to see results and it is an investment. And if you're not ready for it,

You know, I think Joe's got a great ability to get you ready and he'll explain the reasoning behind things. He's not just telling you to sell. He's telling you to give a value, take care of your clients, bond with them, these magic moments to make them feel special, to create an experience. And I'm a living testament. I think anybody that's not a part of Service MVP and they've never met you or they haven't had you out to their shop, they're making a huge mistake.

And it's the best investment you could make. I mean, I believe in Al Levy's manuals and standard operating procedures. So without income coming in and that you solve that problem, you fix conversion rate, you fix opportunity job average, service to sales, service degree, you know,

That's what you do. And I guarantee you, the first thing I look at in a company is those KPIs and they've got so much work to do. And you create this ability to spend more on your people and to barbecue with them and take them bowling and to do nice trips and to care about them more. So with you're like the missing piece that most people need. I get more people ask me about

about sales than anything. And I'm like, well, what's your booking rate? And they don't even know. But if you're not a fan of Joe, if you haven't read this book, if you don't hire him, I'll just tell you straight up. I think you're making a mistake. And I do believe in you and everything you teach. I think you've got a great group of people. You know, you were just, you had a group out here teaching us just a couple of months ago.

And I, I always liked the real thing and I can't wait to see you at Victor's event. And, um, we'll be there together in, uh, in may. I can't wait to see you again too, buddy. For sure.

I believe, listen, Joe, you are the foundation of our sales. I'm not sugarcoating it. We believe in everything you teach. Every single aspect of this book is what we preach. You've taught us a lot. And I'll never, I'm always going to be indebted to you because we wouldn't be where we're at today. We're at 25% bottom line. Not a lot of companies could hit that. And sales are a piece of it, but we do the right thing for our clients. And I have no

no apologies given for what we do here at A1 because our people come first. You shouldn't have to. It's an honor to work there and everybody who works there, the culture feels supported, cared for, and respected. And I'll just tell you this, Tommy, you know,

You kind of see where I do things. I kind of say, let's make a friend first. And then there is the part where I'm looking at the system second. And then I'm like, how do I? That was the key thing to our program. There comes a time when people make a friend as a salesperson, maybe even a car salesperson or something like that. And then they transition to the business part and the friendship part is lost.

That's why I don't want to see happen. I want to see that friendship and the care, respect, and support you have for your people extend from the time you get to that door. While you're diagnosing, you're asking people's opinions. They're still connecting even more. And when you're presenting it, you're presenting the problems in a personalized, customized way that shows you care about these problems. Like, Joe, I want this garage door to get fixed the right way because your daughter...

needs to get a good night's sleep. And right now the current roller system is too noisy and she's going to wake up. I want her to get asleep. I also did the complete beautification package on the outside door with the lights, the skylights in it and with the lights lighting in it or the windows in it because I want to make sure that you have light in that garage when you're out here doing your ceramic crafts and things like that. So bottom line is you're doing it because you care about people. When people give you objections...

This is a lot of money. I know, but I did it for your family, Joe. So what should we do? That's it. Can I think about it? Take all the time. Just remember, when you're thinking about it, this is going to help your family with an entry system or a heating and air conditioning system or a plumbing or drain system. It's going to help their life. They can focus on the things they love, not focus on plumbing or heating and air conditioning or garage doors.

They can just, they could just live their life too. That's why we're doing this. Remember, this is an investment in your family, not an investment in a one garage doors or service MVP. This is an investment in you and your family. You got to remind everybody, this is an investment in the people. When people invest in your services, they're investing in their own family. It makes sense. That's what we got to remind everybody to remember. So make sure they know that. I'm going to take this video, chop it up. I feed this stuff to Thursday meetings and I can't get enough of it. And I,

It's not just for me, it's for them. You know, they need to hear this stuff all the time and we need to get more involved with service MVP. I mean, you guys still come out often and you know, we're on your app, but I can't get enough of it. So any final thoughts, Joe, before we close out here?

Well, I just want to say to all the service providers, listen, I know it's a day-to-day struggle to try to run the company, market the company, and then things that happen, I call service chaos, happens all the time. Understand this. When you're with people like Tommy Mello and myself and other people who support you, you're

You've got a friend. It doesn't, I mean, to talk to us doesn't cost any money. If you want to talk to us on a regular basis, it does. This is an investment for that. But listen, I have not met anybody from Home Service Freedom or from anyone at any one graduate or service MVP that if you ask for help, they will help you.

and they won't even charge you to get started. And I guarantee that the information that Tommy gives you or that I give you will be enough to make enough money where you can finally afford the help you need to get on a permanent basis. So I definitely want everybody to reach out at service. We have free lessons and we're the only company that does guided graduation. So now we have a thing where we have 18 coaches. They will, uh,

play the videos, they will answer the quizzes, and they will role play with your people for three weeks straight and graduate your people. We're the only service that does that. We had, Tommy, listen to this, 945 people graduated last month from the training. Well, all the people we have with us, 945 individual users graduated and got tested on the service MVP training. So we want that to be

a million people a month eventually. With your help, Tommy, we're going to get there. A million people graduating a month in this business. That's what we want to see.

You're changing an industry and I love it. You're elevating everything. So I love you. I really do. I care about you. Tell Julie I said hi and anything you need next time you're in Phoenix, you stay with me and I appreciate you very much. Thanks for everything. Don't be surprised. Don't be surprised. We come out there and spend time in the, in the mellow mansion for sure. And I love to do that for sure. I mean, who knows? You might run into Tom Howard or somebody. He's just never know who's going to be there.

Definitely. You never know. We just might drop in over there, Tommy. So thank you so much for the invitation. And we'll definitely take it. I'd love to see Bree and everybody too. Thanks a lot, everybody. Have a great one. Pleasure to be here, Tommy. Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you. Have a great one. Get his book, Audible. Read the real thing too. Thank you.

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.