Tommy Mello 3:40
So yeah, there’s well answering the phones is it is kind of sale to this book and had it on call. So you have to be able to book phone call. So he was doing that in the matter, but he got a job as a technician and then he said, Dude, you gotta check out this business and that’s right as the economy started to tank is hungry, he started the business. 2010 I sort of bought him out kind of took on the debt and gave him some money. And then it was a just me and started hiring a bunch of people. And that’s that’s kind of how I got into garage doors.
John Corcoran 4:13
Yeah. And Arizona was really hit hard, right in terms of the real estate market in the mid 2000s. There. So what was it like trying to sell a real estate product to real estate owners at that time?
Tommy Mello 4:29
You know, it was tough because a lot of people returning their houses back over to the bank. So they’re like, I don’t, you know, I just needed to go up and down, but I don’t want to put a lot of money into it. So it was tough. It was a tough Academy, but I made every single mistake in the book. And I made a lot of mistakes in that put a lot of those in the net book. I wrote the home service millionaire, but yeah, it was. It was tough, man. It was tough. I learned how to make things work in a depressed economy, which is You know, this economy right now is unbelievable. It’s hard not to be growing in this economy.
John Corcoran 5:04
Right. So were you when you got started? were you doing the doors yourself as well? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was the I was the call center. I was the technician. I was banker payroll, I was the inventory. I did it all. There’s not a piece of it that I didn’t work in. So and how do you avoid the temptation? You know, you get in the door, you you install their garage door, and then they say, you know, can you can you do my front door to or can you do landscaping? Or can you do you know, how do you avoid that temptation to get into doing other things? Well,
Tommy Mello 5:43
there’s a good book I read about a year ago called essentialism. And basically, it hyper focus is really what it’s all about. And what I’ve learned in this last year is the power of focus and accountability and discipline and I think consistency is what it all stems from is staying consistent. But yeah, I used to be a shiny object like most entrepreneurs are, you know, some comes our way we try it out and then we realized we got out of commercial we got rid of the Home Depot’s we got rid of the lows, we just focused 100% on residential garage doors, repair and installation. And you know what I say is nail it and then scale it and stay focused.
John Corcoran 6:27
That’s a good motto. And what was it like switching from having business partners to going solo pros and cons of that change?
Tommy Mello 6:36
You know, it’s nice to have people to feedback for feedback and stuff like that. But I’d say it’s difficult. He was my best friend. He’s my business partner. We hung out all the time. We were roommates at the time.
John Corcoran 6:49
Wow. And at the time you bought him out
Tommy Mello 6:52
at the school. Basically what happened was 2010 is when I moved out and I said dude, either you’re gonna have to take the business or I’m gonna take it What do you want to do? And he ended up moving to Montana, but still one of my best friends of all time amazing guy. He’s he’s selling insurance now. So
John Corcoran 7:08
what was the reason that you decided that it was either him or you was it? Were you guys not getting along? Were you not functioning? Well? What was it?
Tommy Mello 7:18
You know, I guess in any relationship, there’s someone that gives more, and I felt like, I had to sound bad, but I couldn’t give 100% knowing that I wasn’t going to get 100% back out. And, you know, it just it wasn’t very, it wasn’t very sophisticated. We, it just whenever he went on vacation here, here’s the bummer of it. Wherever you went on vacation, the company doubled. So what I found was I booked more calls than him, and I write better tickets, and I do better marketing. So it wasn’t really a vindictive thing. It was just going forward. It was like this is it. Like I want to do this on my own. So
John Corcoran 7:56
yeah. Now I know you are big believer and building teams around you, you can’t do it all on your own. You have to have good people with you. So how what is been your approach to moving beyond the business partnership, but having a good team around you keeping them motivated keeping them all rowing in the same direction?
Tommy Mello 8:16
Yeah, well, the secret sauce is compensation programs. I figured this out about a year ago as well. But I used to get really excited when a technician got a big paycheck. I was like, because it’s commission, right. So, you know, they got paid a lot. They made the company a lot. So I met this guy, and he specialized in compensation programs. And he spent 12 years in Silicon Valley. And he said, You got to have a bonus structure that could give them at least 200% of their base. So we wait boarded and spent months figuring out the compensation programs and
John Corcoran 8:50
let’s use round number. So it’s like their basis, let’s say 50,000. Does that mean that they have the potential to make 150
Tommy Mello 8:56
correct. And I’m actually going so most of my people They’re basis 45, so they can make 135 and then taking it to 300 next year. So I’ve got these key performance indicators. And one of the ones we use is sales less materials for my call center. I use their booking rate per call. So last week I had a gal make $33 per hour. So you get the bonus, or you get minimum wage and half my staff last week got minimum wage and as a CSR, then my dispatchers have a whole different set of KPIs, but I don’t care how much they make if they could. Potentially my CSRS, the people that answer my phones, I want to be making 60 to $70 per hour, but that means they’re booking a lot of phone calls all day. Hmm. So the conversation programs are really, really big. And then the biggest mistake I see is people they hire when they need somebody that you should be people say ABC always be closing and say always be recruiting. Don’t go to the normal places like Craigslist indeed. careerbuilder yeah those places are find ziprecruiter but go to other places little honey holes like this guy tire. I met one of the guys I recruited. I’ve gotten busboys, I go to Circle K. And if they’re really, I had this gal one time, I didn’t hire her, but she was amazing. And she was smiling every day I saw her so this was actually a quick trip. So I walked out handed her a card. I said, if you’re ever looking for a career, this is for you. But I say always, always, always, you got to find other places to go find people. You shouldn’t just hire them from a job board because it’s definitely someone else’s failures. boards.
John Corcoran 10:37
Yeah, so always be on the lookout, and then how do you you know, make your company stand out other than the compensation piece, or maybe it is entirely the compensation piece, but you know, I mean, it’s not a sexy industry, you know, replacing garage doors repairing replacing garage doors. So how do you say, you know, you should come work for us.
Tommy Mello 11:00
Well, we offer benefits. You know, I say the garage door is the smile of your home is the largest moving object of your home at 40% of your curb appeal. So, you know, we tell people, when I write an ad to hire somebody, I typically write everything that we offer. We build leaders from within, you’ve got a career path, we go bowling together, we’ve got amazing things we do all the time. We just went to a son’s game last week with 20 employees, and try to do fun things all the time. And then at the bottom of us, and by the way, we do garage doors. And so many times when people write their ads, it says must be only eligible seven hours, seven days a week and all this stuff and drug test background check and we do that stuff, but we don’t put all that stuff in the ad. I think having a great place. We’ve got three massage chairs now. We’ve got pinball machine, we’ve got golden tee, we’ve got air hockey, we’ve got foosball, I just got her. What does that the bags game cornhole, we just got that. We just try to have fun. We bought a basketball net last week. So the technicians always are out there shooting now. Just try to have a fun, you know the culture. Yeah, it’s just it takes a while to build. But generally speaking, we get rid of the cancer right away. And everybody seems to be really, really, really happy here. Yeah, I love coming into work on Mondays because I love catching up and just get, you know, love seeing everybody. And that’s as long as it’s fun, and I’m having a lot of fun right now.
John Corcoran 12:30
Yeah, it sounds like you’ve taken your cues from some of the Silicon Valley companies that do that sort of thing that have the foosball tables that have those sorts of bells and whistles that, you know, that make it a more fun place to be.
Tommy Mello 12:43
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I learned a lot. I learned from a lot smarter people than me and I read a lot a lot of books.
John Corcoran 12:51
Yeah. And is it is it really hard to recruit people in today’s market with a competitive low, you know, low unemployment rate, and everything.
Unknown Speaker 13:00
You know, it’s it’s,
Tommy Mello 13:02
we pay really, really good we get benefits, we get ptl unlike most other companies, we give them a brand new truck when the technician starts. And I think our compensation program, it’s designed for winners. It’s designed that you can make a lot of money. But it’s also designed to get the bad people out because we get paid minimum wage, and I didn’t want it to be anything more than minimum wage. I want people that they love performance pay, they say I’m going to win at this game. And we give them their manual a checklist everything and then we got a lot of winners in this Compensation Program attracts winners and it’s not uncommon for a technician to make 8090 100 hundred 20 grand
with all the benefits as well,
John Corcoran 13:46
you said you’re going to change the compensation structure to 300 grand Do you have people in mind do you think will hit that?
Tommy Mello 13:53
Well, 300% So what’s going to happen is the 135 Oh God being 190 got it. One ATM, sorry. So basically what’s going to end up happening is, I have three managers that I think will hit that next next year. But this is it’s kind of complicated, but we look at every opportunity as sales less materials, that’s the total amount of the job. And as that number raises up, that’s how they hit their bonus structures. So just to give you an example, the last six months, we moved our average ticket up $70 net, which 70 times 7000 jobs per month is 490,000. That’s a lot of money. So barely continue to keep moving that markup. So if they get it up another $55, they will end up making that hundred and 90 Next, but it’s paid quarterly.
Unknown Speaker 14:45
Right, right.
John Corcoran 14:48
And you also mentioned that about half of your CSRS make minimum wage. So for those who are hitting minimum wage, month after month, you have a benchmark like if it’s three months in a row, you’re out You wait for them to quit? How do you handle those who are underperforming?
Tommy Mello 15:07
We have performance improvement plans. So each manager so I have, it’s really we call it the triangle of communication. We’ve got our technicians, our CSRS, and our dispatchers, those are the three main focus groups. And yeah, they, they, when they don’t hit their quotas, they get on a performance improvement plan. And the plan is to either manage them up or out one or the other. And it typically if someone really isn’t going to make it, I mean, they end up quitting, typically, because we kind of get on them. We micromanage them a lot. But the compensation program is designed to, you know, they know this, they know what they’re getting themselves into, because we go through all of this in the interview process, and we explained to them that it’s going to be sink or swim, but you actually have to be good at what you do at this company. But you can make a lot more money than other places. So there’s no yearly review or anything like that we’re reviewing every single week. And people can make. You know, I had someone the other day say, I wish I been here three years, I wish I would make more, I said, you got the opportunity to make as much as you want, unlike any other jobs. They didn’t really understand that, but I love performance Bay. It’s like the secret sauce, I think to everything.
John Corcoran 16:25
And is that is everyone on the performance pay formula? Or like is the person who’s answering the phone? The person who’s sweeping the floor is not? Um, you know that
Tommy Mello 16:35
not every single it’s hard to do that in accounting? Yeah. But but because I’m looking for accuracy. So data accuracy, and then I’m looking for to get the reports out fast. But the majority of the companies on some type of performance pay.
John Corcoran 16:51
Interesting. And so let’s talk a little bit about your approach to marketing the business because you started a whole nother Business lead geeks about lead generation. And I know that building your online reputation for the company has been really important. So talk a little bit about that. You know, how you’ve evolved and how your approach has focused on on building the reputation online and whether it’s paid lead generation or organic or all those different things?
Tommy Mello 17:24
Well, I’m a big fan of Google 70% of all services are finalized. 70% of those are Google. So half of your attention should be on Google. We’re getting into a lot of data analytics. Data is king. So for lead geeks, one of our data partners what happens is they’re the biggest data partner for Quicken Loans, they give them all their leads. Well, when someone goes to do a refi, or get a second mortgage, sometimes they get turned down. And this data company has that data and they know they got turned out so they say Hey, would you like a cash offer on your house for a quick close and that’s one of the ways we get leads, so reputation we use a company called birdie. There’s a lot of them. There’s podium, there’s probably 20 different. There’s review kangaroo, there’s all these different review systems. But getting reviews online is called user generated content. And it’s so important. So the businesses that are listening to this what I recommend, here’s what I do when I go to a new city, I get the technicians, and hopefully they’re pretty big on social media. I like the guys that are super, you know, strong on social media. So I say, write down 100 friends, neighbors, family, acquaintances, hundred people with houses with a garage door. And then we go and we service that those garage doors for free and then it’s half off of anything that they might need. So literally half off springs, rollers, cables, bottom, rubber, whatever. Did we ask them to leave five reviews. So we want to get next door we want to hit Yelp. We want to get Google reviews. We want to get Facebook we want to get better business bureau. There’s a bunch of other sites that we get The whole point is, typically your friends and family are going to give you a pretty good review based on your relationship. But hopefully you did a great job too. You know if you’re right, but think if you hire Five Guys, and they each have 100 people and they easily five reviews. Yeah, that’s 2500 That’s crazy. Yeah, the math goes nuts. So,
John Corcoran 19:23
but it’s a significant outlay of capital doing all that for free. Not for free.
Tommy Mello 19:30
Yeah, it’s really because they are selling stuff that someone’s gonna want a bottom rubber. What’s nice about that is they get the practice so they go in. It’s almost Have you ever heard of a soft opening or restaurants to this all the time? Yeah, actually. Yeah, almost like doing that and it is an investment but they’re getting the practice on friends and family. Yeah, actually their speech and how they’re going to deliver it and NLP and we studied body language and how to ask questions. correctly and how to get comfortable in the garage? So, yeah, it is it’s expensive to do it, but it gives it pays in dividends. I mean,
John Corcoran 20:08
you mentioned body language. So are you out there coaching these technicians on, you know, how they do the sales process? Are you hiring guys that are that are new to the industry haven’t done sales before. So you can coach them up or they are you finding that sometimes they’ve got certain practices or certain ways of doing the sales where you need to modify their behavior.
Tommy Mello 20:34
So I hire on usually, okay, you gotta be able to pass a physical, there’s some physical stuff to this and get on a ladder. But typically, there’s three things I look for. And it’s nobody I want from the industry. I don’t want anybody else’s people. I want to train them from scratch, but I look for eye contact body language and tonality. And then during the interview process, I challenged them and I say, you know, I’m sorry, john. Yeah. Have you this is going great, but I’m just not sure you have the confidence it’s going to take you seem a little timid.
Unknown Speaker 21:05
I love that question. And and then I
John Corcoran 21:09
love it. Tell me, tell me how many what’s the breakdown? How many people just give up right then in there.
Tommy Mello 21:16
Um, I’ve had a lot dozens of them give up. But overall usually if they make it far enough to get to me, that means they’re pretty good. And I like their reaction because actually in the book, the ultimate sales machine Chet Holmes talks about, I think it’s chapter five is really challenging people in sales and we do personality profiling. We do something called the disc assessment. And we’re really look for people that are sales motivated. Obviously, that’s for a technician, but koenings different dispatches. It is a tough job because me and you both could be right and do dispatching completely different. Maybe I’ll dispatch somebody out to a tune up instead of a spring job because I noticed there’s three doors from the Google Maps. There’s certain things that I’ve learned to look for over time, but there’s no wrong way to do it. It’s almost like puzzle solvers. But yeah, it’s it’s interesting because we’ve been hiring a lot of guys. My ultimate goal is to be able to hire 40 technicians a month. That’s the that’s what we’re working towards.
John Corcoran 22:23
And so, you’ve had to change a lot from the founding, you know, the founding the business to striving towards 100 million dollar business. Who have you learned from Do you have you had mentors along the way has you know, have their were their owners of other garage door businesses or maybe other home service industry businesses who helped mentor you along the way?
Tommy Mello 22:46
So, when I got on service Titan, which is our CRM, I was introduced to HVAC, plumbing and electrical and service chains a $3 billion company now. The CEO wrote a section in my book about CRM. But then, we got introduced to the biggest air conditioning companies in the United States. And I’ve spent between podcasting, writing the book, and really spending time at these shops with them. I learned a lot. I went out to Florida, I met this guy named Keegan. And this dude is one of the sharpest businessmen I’ve ever met. And he literally helped me a lot. Keegan ldv was also we hired him as a consultant. And he came in and helped us dial in all of our manuals, our checklists are already charter depth chart, really living breathing documents that, you know, I always tell people in their business, if you don’t have a manual, it’s almost like playing a game that you’ve never played before. And you come sit down and you’re like, how do I win at this game if no one’s going to show me and it’s the 8020 rule where we go over 80% of what your day looks like. But I think teaching people how to win the game and having a way for them to When I think performance pay is crucial, I think, you know, I think it’s the only way to go. Yeah.
John Corcoran 24:06
Yeah. You mentioned podcasting. What has that done for your business?
Tommy Mello 24:11
You know, what’s cool about podcasting is I could ask any question to any I had Matthew Woodward on the other day, he’s he’s a really big SEO guy. He’s a biggest blogger in the world. He’s out of the UK. And I could ask the number one guy in the world for blogging questions about SEO and making our website stronger. And then I hit go to the number one guy for billboards or TV and ask them questions. And then then I get people that like, have a culture with over 1000 employees. And it’s what’s so cool about it is I control the questions, you know, I mean, it I can ask them anything. It’s almost like, you might pay $10,000 for an hour of these people’s time, but then I get to ask them whatever I want throughout the whole thing. And people I think we get about 15,000 downloads now per month. And, you know, it’s nice because they’re like, Well, that was super cool. That guy was super knowledgeable. And taught me a lot about my business. And I think a lot of us, we started out as a technician, and we never really give that up. We’re still the workers. We think working is good. And what I’ve learned to do is kind of change. I delegate now the majority of my things, and I’m looking for growth. And I said this earlier, I have said this to you, but to the head, this phrase is a revenue is kind of her vanity. And profit is for sanity. And we’re getting super profitable. I think a lot of times people brag I did 50 million or 100 million, but really, what matters is how much net you did. You know, I think 100 million is going to be an easy number to get to I think, what I really think about how to get to a billion and then reverse engineer that so I would need 2000 technicians and that’s what we’re figuring out how do we back end? Start with the end in mind, how do you get to to 2000 technicians? Well, how many people will really need to hire this year? This quarter this month this week and today? What do we need to be doing? kind of back end and then that
John Corcoran 26:00
Right right now, either many books written about this, but they It’s often said that profit and growth are at at odds with each other because it takes revenue to fuel growth. And so it’s often hard to be as profitable if you’re trying to grow. Have you experienced that kind of tension?
Tommy Mello 26:25
You know, I did and really, I’m such a big fan of sales and marketing, that I never really focused on cutting, and really a good budget and kind of planning for next year. So we got this new guy. He’s in our finance department, and he’s, he took a company in North Dakota from 20 million to 450 million. So he’s kind of been where we’re trying to go. And he has really helped us do projections and set up budgets and and it’s pretty cool to see what he really really smart guy really helping us become more profitable, but you’re right. I think a real Really, really successful companies should be doing around 2015 to 20%. net. And I think this next year, we’ll get to that point, but depending on how fast you’re growing, it’s tough, especially when you’re going into new cities where no one ever heard of you. Yeah, but we’ve got some pretty out of the box thinking, new marketing approaches coming up that I think is going to absolutely change the game, I think. I mean, right now we do 7000 jobs a month, I think we could get to 70,000 with a lot of it has to do with direct letters. So
Unknown Speaker 27:37
direct mail,
Tommy Mello 27:39
handwritten cards, they get over 99% of the time, and there’s a CNC machine that uses a real pen to do it. Wow. So we’re going to start pulling data everybody that moves in a new house, that the car is going to look like you change locks on your house, right when you move into a new house. Yeah, you should change your garage or co to because the last person probably still has a clicker that could get in Well, you know, the code on the keypad, lets you get to program your car. So we’re going to be reaching out to new homeowners. Pretty exciting.
John Corcoran 28:07
Yeah, yeah. So there’s a lot of people who are big fans of going back to that old school stuff that direct mail when because so many people have moved to digital that you know, direct mail, the mailbox, oftentimes these days is not very full. Whereas your email inbox is overflowing.
Tommy Mello 28:25
Yep. Yeah, I agree. And we got stuff to that we’re building right now that will automatically instead of sending a letter, we’re going to send a letter, we’re going to do a voicemail drop, we’re going to text them, we’re going to email them and we’re going to be reaching out to the phone call. So hit them from every direction and I don’t think one’s better than another. I think they work still on different people. Like for me, I prefer a text message probably over anything because if it’s short and sweet, I could just look at it and it’s quick. Right? Right. Some people prefer email Some people prefer a phone call
John Corcoran 28:57
right now. Yeah, you’re this business is a 100% owned by you minus investors, right? You don’t you don’t do franchises or anything like that? No, no. Okay. So what is it that you get out of either talking to me share your wisdom here sharing your wisdom and a book sharing your wisdom and a podcast? You know, you seem very passionate about helping other home not just garage door, but also home service entrepreneurs. Why does that? Why is that a focus for you?
Tommy Mello 29:26
You know, it’s pretty interesting. It’s just for some reason, I’ve gone through a lot of, like I said, mistakes. And when I work with people, there’s nothing better. Money’s great, but they get their time back and they get to spend more time with their relationships. And when I could help be part of that. It’s the best feeling in the world to get a phone call saying I get to spend more time with my kids, and my wife and we’re, we’re about to get a divorce or something. And now it’s like, we’re happy again, and things are going great. So there’s just something about it and for me, it’s pretty simple. When I first talked to a new business, first thing is first you need to know your numbers you need, we need to get your numbers, I need to know your average ticket, I need to know how much of that is going to be in materials versus labor. And then we need to look at your conversion rate, your call booking rate, and how much it costs you to acquire a customer. Now one of those are usually pretty bad. And typically I start diving into each one of those I say, Okay, how much are we? How many discounts are we given? Right now a one we’re averaging around 8% discounts. I’m trying to get that number to 5%. But key performance indicators are what I get. I absolutely love. And what I find is these small businesses, a lot of them just they have all these subscriptions and Adobe and all these things. And I’m like, how was the last time you’ve used this stuff? So first of all, we get it clean, organized, and get rid of all the unnecessary things that they’re paying for. Another big thing I see a lot of small businesses do is they buy a lot of inventory. Well, we switch to jet Justin I’m inventory from our manufacturer. And it said the best thing ever. There’s just certain things that I just I really enjoyed. Because some of the times it’s so easy, but some of the times when you’re in the bubble, you can’t even see it. Right.
John Corcoran 31:14
Right. So is it? Is this something that you’re more passionate about? Because I’m, you know, here I am, I don’t know you really well. And I’m completely removed from your situation. But you’ve got a $40 million business aiming for 100 million dollar business. And it sounds like you’re also consulting with these other small businesses. And it seems like there’s kind of a tension between what’s the best use of your time but maybe you’re just you’re doing it because you it floats your boat, it excites you. Is that kind of the explanation or
Tommy Mello 31:45
Yeah, you know, there’s always something I get out of it. I was talking to a really small grocery company like five guys. And he told me his number one source. Now I won’t go into too many details, but I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s awesome. do that in all the states that I met. Yeah, it was just something so simple. So it was it was a, it was a manufacturer locator. Right? So you put your zip code and it tells you companies that can do the work. And I’m like, something that’s simple was given him 10 jobs a day. But a lot of the time networking and being on these calls and talking about what’s working for other companies and what’s not helps me see better into my own company. So I I get a lot out of it. I’d say I’m not doing it on a selfish reasons, but I do learn a lot. Yeah, and I have fun. And that’s what that’s what it’s all about. And I I think that if I didn’t have the podcasts and taught all these other businesses, I mean, service Titan wouldn’t be where like, we’re just every piece of the business. I have a phone call, I can make four different things that if we’re struggling with them, so you know, I’ve had a lot of consultants over the years and learned a lot from all of them. But most importantly, like I said, as leaders are readers reading a lot is probably been the number one thing I think of really driving us forward. We have a whole book club here day one. Right now we’re reading. It’s funny, we’re reading the E myth. But we’re also
we read the seven. What is it?
Seven Habits of Highly successful people seem kind of the next book we’re reading is called.
Oh, Luke picked it out. It’s
hire hire for attitude.
John Corcoran 33:27
And what does you know? emeth is a classic entrepreneurial book. What is having your whole team read a book like that? How does it help them?
Tommy Mello 33:37
Well, I think that the E myth really, it just explains that so many of us get caught in the technician, we want to do everything and we don’t delegate properly. And it’s not really a business until you can leave and it runs itself. So we tend to spend a ton of time but explaining that the systems the processes are what make a business and I can leave literally, I left for three weeks. This was about a month ago. We set a record when I was gone. And I love that I love that I don’t need to be here. And I can tell you this, you could take the top four people at this company, leave us away from the business for a month, and we’d still be the exact same now, I don’t think we would be able to grow as fast. Because I’m pretty much I always put the foot on the gas, everything. But I do think this company could go on without me and without the CEO and without a lot of the people now it might not do as great, but you know, you built something special when you can leave and it runs the same as it does when you’re there.
John Corcoran 34:34
Right, right. Or maybe you’ve become your old business partner.
Tommy Mello 34:39
My old business partner, let me think about that.
Unknown Speaker 34:43
I’ve just given you
John Corcoran 34:46
Well, this has been great. Anything else that you want to share that you’re excited about? As you look to the future with your various different businesses?
Tommy Mello 34:55
Well, what I would like to tell everybody is Google is Very, very powerful. A lot of people don’t take their website very seriously. And the first thing you need to do is build a fast loading pretty website with a good sitemap on it and continue to add to that blog every single week. Mine’s thousands and thousands of pages a one garage calm. And we invest right now about 10,000 a month in just to search engine optimization. But I’ll tell you this, it delivers $1.3 million per month. So it’s the best investment I’ve ever made. And there’s what’s called your GMB. It’s the Google My Business Page. And it’s so important to ask people for reviews and set up a system to get reviews. So I’m just a huge fan of Google, whether it be Pay Per Click organic gmv. I think the piece of advice I’d give is really nurture your website, rebuild it today. Get links built to it. They share loads fast, put FAQs on there, and I do a lot of videos and my video Right pretty well, too. So I think that I think Google is the only thing I like to leave the listeners to is just really spend time and invest a lot of money into that. And you’ll see that dividends, but it takes six months to really see. Well, once you start building that, right do you are you ever feel fearful fearful that a lot of your eggs are in one basket? You know, there are a lot in Google. I wish it wasn’t as much. But this new thing with the handwritten cards, I think is going to be a game changer. One of the things I did is I met up last week with the largest painting company in Arizona. And I said, Guys, if I gave you a percentage, it would be a marketing fee. Would you at least offer doors to people that are like when you’re instead of painting a dented garage door, you know, replace it and they love the idea. And this could potentially be they do 60 houses a week. So let’s say I can close a third of those. That’s 20 that’s one company 20 new doors We’re sales a week, what company? So, I think affiliate, affiliate marketing is super crucial. And learning how to find good partners. Like another good partner, for me is a bug company that they spray for bugs, because what’s the number one enjoy bugs in your house, it’s under the garage door flap, it’s the bottom rubber seal. So they could sell those all day for me, and it makes their job better. I’ll give them 3540 bucks, and I still get into the garage. So I think what you said in the beginning is just networking in finding referral partners is a crucial part of business. That’s great.
John Corcoran 37:37
All right. Well, we’re going to wrap things up with a question that I always enjoy to ask and thank you so much, Tommy for taking the time to talk to me. So wrapping these up, let’s pretend we’re at an awards banquet, much like the Oscars and the Emmys and you’re receiving an award for lifetime achievement for everything that you’ve done up until this point. We all like to thank our family and friends of course, but who else you think who are the mentors who are the friends or the business partners who are the team that Who you didn’t acknowledge in your remarks
Tommy Mello 38:03
yet? So inside of work, I think I have some really crucial people.
Rob, Adam Ross, Luke Bryan, my assistant, Brianna, Brianna. But outside of work, I say that key and guy really helped me a lot. ldv is absolutely remarkable. I’ve had dozens of consultants and I can name a lot of them. Alan rora came out and taught us how to do financial quick checks. But Chaz is one of the guys that does our print media. He’s always helping me introducing me to other businesses. Really setting up he’s amazing networker, I’ve gone to a few different bn eyes with him and kind of gave my little pitch but I think that’s most of it is definitely LED and Keegan were some of the top.
John Corcoran 38:56
That’s, that’s great. And so a one garage. com where people can learn about you, where else what other websites would you point
Tommy Mello 39:03
out? You know, I’m pretty strong on LinkedIn. I’ve already kind of hit my threshold on Facebook from my personal account, but Tommy mellow on there. And then the website is home service, millionaire calm. And you can get the book on Amazon. It’s a best seller. I had 12 co authors on it. And the podcast is home service expert, which we got to talk about you coming on mine and
John Corcoran 39:29
I’d love to I’d love to that sounds great, Tommy Well, thanks so much. And we’ll talk again soon.
Tommy Mello 39:34
All right, brother. Thank you so much should be enough.