Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan
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You are in control. Every decision that you make, every action that you take determines the slope of your line. It determines the velocity of your business. It determines the quality of your life. And you can do that in a franchise model. You can do that in your personal life. You can do it in direct business. But at the end of the day, man, it's body of work.

And every action that you take or every inaction that you should have taken that you didn't, it's a plus or a minus check, man. And at the end of the day, there's a tally. At the end of the week, there's a tally. And at the end of your life, there's a tally. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

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

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company

and 22 States. Just go to elevate and win.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the home service expert today. I got a good buddy in town. You're always in town. He's Jeff Duden, the CEO of home front brands. He's an author podcast speaker, expert at franchises. He leads a

One of the largest franchises I know of, and here's what's crazy about franchising, Jeff, is the more I learn about it, a lot of people start a franchise, but the same amount of franchises exist every year. So that means people are failing just as quick as people are coming in.

Now, are you talking about franchisors or franchisees? Franchisors. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So 4,000 actively growing franchise brands, 90% of franchisors fail within 12 years. And there's good reason for that. So, yeah, every day roughly one comes into business and every day roughly one goes out of business.

Which is crazy. But I don't know. Is that any different than traditional small business, stuff like that? Maybe not. But look, franchising is a – it has to be a certain passion play because there is so much collaboration that has to happen with these franchise owners.

They all have, they come from different places. We have a high sophistication, high net worth franchise owners, and then we got people coming out of corporate America for their very first business. And you've got to be able to meet them all where they're at. So a lot of times people franchise their business and they don't realize that

It's going to take upwards of maybe a couple of million dollars of investment ahead of their revenue to be able to build the systems and the processes and put the people in place to meet these franchise owners when they're emerging. So unfortunately, a lot of brands get lost.

5, 10, 15 owners, and then they realize what it is, and then maybe they decide to discontinue it. But ultimately, look, franchising is accelerating at an accelerating rate. There's 829,000 franchise establishments in the United States. One out of every nine people employed

works by or for a franchise system, almost 9 million people. And it's a significant part of small business GDP, which is generally 46 to 60% of our GDP. So, you know, franchising is giving people entrepreneurial opportunities on Main Street USA for their families. So, you know, when you're scaling a big direct business, you can go fast because

because you make the decisions. You say, we're going to implement this. I'm going to pay for this. This is the way it is. But if you took your employees here, your cross-section of your employees, from your C-suite to your directors all the way down to your techs, and you gave some random 50 of them a franchise, think about what you'd be dealing with. Oh, no. Well, here's the biggest thing, Jeff, that I think about is –

It's not uncommon that I'm at an event or I'm at a meetup or just around a company and they say we're thinking about franchising. And like it should be a passion project. Here's what I know is going on in their mind. I can't make it in the real world. I haven't taken market share. I'm going to franchise because people will pay me for my business idea. And then I'll get to take 7% off the top.

And they don't have a website that works correctly. They've never taken market share. They only got one location. You should have at least a few franchisor-owned to prove it's possible. I just, if it's for the right reason, you know, I'm good buddies with a guy named Kevin Wilson, Mosquito Joe's. Yeah. Sold to Neighborly. Yeah. And I'm friends with, really good friends with Mike Davis. Yeah.

And he just took over as a COO of Neighborly. And I just think you've got to start a franchise, but you need to know you're no longer in the garage door business or the roofing business or the gutter business. You're now in the people turnkey business. That's right. And I think that's just –

I don't think people are starting. Some people do. I think you started it. You knew what you were getting into. You started it for the right reasons. You knew. You got with the right lawyers. You built the right systems. You have the right meetups. You have the right prizes and gamification. But most people, they just say, I can't make it in the real world, so I'm going to franchise and I'm going to sell a bunch of them. And also, they sell to the wrong people. Like, if I started a franchise, it would be almost possible. You'd have to have all these prerequisites to even buy a franchise. Right. Because it's like one franchisee could screw it for everybody.

Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Look, franchising, like let's think about like retail based locations. OK, if you if you want to make real money in franchising, if you're in a retail based location, it's hard to do it because a fitness studio or a sauna or something like that might have five hundred thousand dollars of revenue. So if you want to do what some of these now there's a lot of big multi-unit owners in there.

inside of these retail so they'll have you know 100 or 200 or 300 restaurants or Hardee's or restaurants things like that so you can make real money in retail based franchising you can build a big team to support all those things and people do it all the time especially in food haircuts you know retail all these lash lounges and things like this all these retail services the service side on the other hand well before I get off a retail

think about the risk and the investment of just doing one because you've got a $500,000 to $700,000 build-out. You've got a $500,000 to $700,000 lease guarantee. You've got a business that might do $500,000 to $700,000 in sales, right? And if you hold your mouth right and do everything perfect, you're going to make a certain amount of money on that. What's your goal of a retail ROI, five years to get your money back? So the standard is a good franchise should be able to demonstrate a 30-month payback, cash on cash. 30-month.

Yeah. 30-month payback, cash on cash. That's what you're going for. That's retail or that's everything? That's retail. But, I mean, I think it applies to everything. So when private equity comes in, that's one thing that they're looking for. So think about what's happened with construction costs over the last few years.

and cost of leases and things like that. So you've got a business model that is inelastic in what it can charge. I mean, people will... Fitness is funny, man. Like, you go from $129 to $149 and, you know, people are going bananas, but then they'll go spend $400 a month at Starbucks and spend $400 a month on supplements. So...

It's different, but yet they want 30 or 40 hours of service from you for that $129. So it's very inelastic. So you can't really raise price, but now your cost to get into business has gone up. So that's a big challenge. But that's why I love service franchising. I mean, if you look at some of the big platforms like Neighborly or like Authority Brands,

You know, there's a great example of a kid that was 28 years old in Central Florida and bought an electrical franchise, you know, first time in business. And eight years later, he's 36 years old, he had a $70 million electrical franchise, right? Wow.

And what's happened is private equity has gone – first of all, private equity loves franchisors. Yeah, I think the multiple is even higher than – I've heard of it going into the 20s. Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because think about it. 20x on EBITDA, 25x on EBITDA, crazy numbers. Yeah. So think about it, the diversification of risk. You've got –

Hundreds or thousands of families that are out there. They're deeply invested in the business. They're deeply invested in their communities. They're working hard. And I mean it's hard to kill a franchise system because everybody is out there with the ownership mentality right at the point of attack.

So, you know, once at scale, franchise systems are very profitable. They're very durable. But the great thing about property services, and I mean, like you've proved it to an extreme, is that these businesses can get large every year by taking more market share. And I mean, our businesses cost $150,000 to $200,000 to get into every year.

So it's not – and there's no big lease guarantee. So people can get into business in a home front brand and they can liquidate their investment relatively quickly. And then really it's this monopoly game, right, where – and you'll see it over time as we evolve and you'll get people that are buying their neighbors or they're stacking more than one home front brand on top of each other, building $5, $10, $15, $20 million businesses.

When I first started franchising really in earnest in 2006 and 2007, there wasn't a big private equity market for the boxes. But now if you can cobble together some amount of EBITDA and some amount of top line, they love it being in a franchise system because of the leverage and because of the systems and that.

So it's really – and I guess that comes down to like – I mean I sold my business in 2019. I was a restoration contractor, built a national and even international restoration business and then decided to franchise it. It was a personal family decision because I was – we were working in the Caribbean and Hawaii and Canada and all over the place. And I had three small kids and I decided that I wanted to be home.

So I decided to risk all of that and really turn it into a franchise system. And then we ended up over nine years, we had about 160 owner groups operating 240 markets and I sold it to Home Franchise Concepts in 2019. But coming back to operate again, it is all about being outcome focused, right? So I'm sitting here in 2019, 20, I'm comfortable.

which I fight every day. I'm comfortable. I'm doing investing, advising. I'm taking equity. You had a large exit after this post-exit. Yeah, it was good. So you got lots of millions. Yeah, I had plenty of money. But I'm sitting here and I'm like, all right, do I want to take my chits and run off to the golf course and to fishing? Or do I really want to? I'm looking at the country and I'm looking at everything that's happening in 20 and 21. And I'm like, you know, capitalism and families need businesses because they're a high class asset.

And, you know, we're looking at 100 to 150 million more people in this country by 2050.

There's increased migration. Is it about 350 right now? Yeah, 339, I think, or something like that. So there's a housing shortage in all of these hot markets where the markets are growing. So there's going to be massive home building. There's going to be retail. There's going to be hospitals, infrastructure, all of this stuff. So you'll never find a home front, Brant, nestled comfortably between a Blockbuster and a Curves, right? Because there's no obsolescence building into home services. Right.

So I know with confidence that if I look a franchise owner in the eye and if I'm committed, I can say, if you put your shoulder to this, if you follow the plan, if you make this a priority and if you execute this,

You can build a material business inside of the Homefront Brands platform with this one that you're starting with or additional ones. And we're never going to run out of opportunities to compete in property services. So to me, it's the most durable segment in franchising. And it's uncapped because you're not capped by a number of seats in a restaurant or a number of spots in a fitness routine or anything like that. And that's what gets me up every day. But at the end of the day...

You have to be really, really focused on the four-wall economics for the franchise owners. You have to care deeply about these people because in the example that I used, like we get a cross-section of the population. We've got people – we got one guy that built a $50 million business building MRI setups in hospitals.

Multiple businesses. Guy's been successful over and over and over again. He came in and did a big buy with us, and he's like, I like the model. I like the space. I like you guys. So we have a lot of people like that. We have private equity refugees investing in our businesses. They need to playbook. They don't know. It's not easy, by the way. A lot of these PE guys, they're very smart. They're systematic. They understand financial engineering, but they don't understand what it's like to manage a blue-collar worker. That's right. And it's –

It's so funny because they're so smart. They got their master's degrees and they come in and they just... But they talk down to people. And a lot of them are... They have this inferior... What's the word I'm looking for? Like this complex that they're just...

I know a lot of my guys didn't have a good mom growing up. A lot of my guys didn't pass 10th grade. A lot of my guys aren't happy with their smile or teeth that are screwed up. And that's different for most people, but I like it because I can talk to the white-collar guys. But I love the blue-collar because I'm a part of it. It's my DNA. You know what was so great? So I do – I'm in the franchise industry kind of like you're in the home service industry. But I got to go to this RhinoX event with you and with Cristiano yesterday. Yeah.

Man, it felt good to be amongst contractors again. Yep. I mean, like, that's my DNA. And all of these guys are building, you know, $20 to $400 million businesses in there. And, you know, they started in their garage. And it was, I mean, it was really great to be in that room for that. It is great. And it's great, like...

I get a lot out of this, and a lot of it for me is just reminders. Like sometimes you forget the simple things about business. When you said no retail store, one of the things I talked about when I briefly was on with Tom Howard was the way you pick your Google My Business location matters. Right. People, when they lease...

a building, they're looking for something that's going to suit their needs rather than thinking about it as a marketing play. And I just feel like if you knew, you don't want to be close to big competitors with 10,000 reviews. You want to be in an affluent area where you can get a lot of clients. And that's the gift that keeps giving. You can get 15 to 20 leads a day if you pick the right location for your Google My Business page to get enough reviews and citation sites to make it rank. Yeah. Well, one of the things that you've demonstrated over and over again is this concept of regression analysis.

You know, many people start in business and I, you know, if you think back to when you started and probably I think back to when I started, it was the same way. I was trying to figure out, OK, what's the next step? What's the next step? What's the next step? If you work backwards from a very specific future. Yes. It'll be a completely different set of steps than had you tried to work forward to it. And that's just it. It's like, OK, well, I'm going to pick the location not based on a proximity to a highway or traffic or storefront or drive bys. It's like, where am I going to get the business from?

Yeah, and it's just – but here's the one thing, too, is I give it all away. A lot of people go into a situation of how do I win? Yeah. And I think about, like, how can I help them win? And I think that that's, like, the hostage – or not the hostage negotiator. That's Chris Voss. Michael Francini. Yeah, Francini, yeah. So –

I said, hey, listen, I got a really good podcast. It's number seven in the country for business. I'd love to have you on. And if you like me, maybe you'd have me on yours. Yeah. But I said, we'll see how that goes. I go, what's your email?

And he gave it to me. Worst case scenario, he says no. Right. I don't care. I don't care if you say no. Yeah. Because I'm not afraid to ask. That guy, he's cool. I know. You're doing what I'm doing on health. And we sometimes, you know, I'm a social drinker. You're a social drinker. Tell the audience here the line you told me because this is hilarious. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So you broke after 37 minutes. I did. I was so like, look, so I've done three things in the last probably 120 days. I've cut my alcohol consumption down by like 97, 98 percent, which wasn't a ton, but I still don't recover like I used to. I mean, I got a good 15, 16 years on you and I need every bit of energy that I got.

Started that journal that I shared with you and cut my screen time down to an hour. Right. And it's so like part of our job as business owners is to create space so the universe can organize itself and we can calm the swirl around all the opportunities that we have.

And so, you know, I shared that with you and you had shared something similar with me. And then we're at this great party. Right. And I was I held off for a little while. And then I and then and then it's like we went to the VIP dinner and it was a special drink paired with a special. So I had I had to have five drinks with five courses. Right. So that was out the window. Right.

And I, and I, he said, how'd you do last night? Well, you know, I. He said, look, I, I, I tried to make it, but I broke. Yeah. He started laughing and tell, tell the line. Yeah. I said, I, I, I tried to stop after one, but it was actually one 30. Usually it's one 30. Yeah. I tried to stop after one, but it usually lasts till one 30. That's.

So good. It was so fun. My other one was I tried to figure out if I could make an old-fashioned last night, but I couldn't make one. But I could make four. That's great. You know, you were saying about gyms. I know this company called TSG, and they invested in Planet Fitness. And the model there is like, let's give it away for nothing, but no one's going to come.

Yeah. I mean, what is it, $15? Yeah, I mean, they'll do $1.5 million to $2 million in a location, but they'll make $500,000 or $600,000. And just on, you know, who cancels $10? Nobody. That's the cool thing. What do you think my service agreement costs a month? Yeah. $12.95. It costs you more in gas to drive over there and cancel. Yeah. Than it does to cancel. And nobody, like, it's not a gym if you're really serious about working out. I hate to say this because it's not like a bad gym. I know they got nice equipment, but it's not something –

That I want to be involved in because there's not enough free weights. It's not made for like a bodybuilder. Right. But that's okay. And it's affordable. And it's a decent gym. I mean, what's cool is like we worked out a special deal with them through our HR department of like we even get a better price for our employees. Healthy employees that are working out. They think better. They produce more. They're happier in general. Let me ask you a question. I was thinking about this because my mom asked me.

this question years ago. And she said, when's enough enough for you? Like, what's the goal here? And I said, Mom, don't you understand? She says, understand what? I said, Mike, Tiger Woods won four majors in a row. Did his mom tell him to stop golfing? I go, this is my, I'm Tiger Woods, but I'm in business. I'm not Tiger Woods, you know, that's kind of cocky, but that's the, I said, Mom, this is what I love to do. You,

You're pretty close to the Tiger Woods of home service. Yeah. But not to glaze you like a donut, but. But but but. OK, so so the fourth thing I did during this last hundred and twenty days and part of it was, again, creating the space. Then I was coming home from Vegas. I was out there doing Ryan Pineda's podcast. And I got I got covid.

Oh, you did? That was just two months ago. Yeah, I got COVID, and I got walking pneumonia after that. So, like, I was down. So what I did was I went deep into David Goggins. Yeah, we had that written down, Goggins. Can't hurt me. Yeah, so here's the great thing. He says –

you know, you're performing against your own standards. And he goes, if you can perform against your own standards, void of any purpose, most people go to train for a marathon. And then that's because, oh, I'm going to train because I'm training for a marathon. No, man, you just train, you just push yourself. So, you know, really, it took me a good bit to understand, because he says the same thing just over and over and over again. And it took me a good bit to understand. But like, we are just competing against our personal standards. I'll give you an example from this morning. And I

Probably shouldn't, but I'm going to do it anyway. All right. So I get checked out of the room. Great workout this morning. Got up, worked out. I had a sauna. Great. I get my stuff packed together. I'm like, all right, I got just enough time to grab something to eat and then to get over here and be on time. So I go down to this little kiosk and I get a breakfast burrito and a cup of coffee, which is sitting right here.

And I shove that thing down my face, and I'm heading back into the hotel to go down to the first floor and catch an Uber, and there's a homeless guy sitting there. And he's just got one sign that just says, food, question mark, and then he's got this dog. Yep. Okay? And I go in, and I'm standing at the elevator, and I'm like...

Right outside is a kiosk. They have these beautiful sandwiches or I just go and I make sure that I'm here five minutes earlier And I'm like screw it. What are my personal standards? I put I left my luggage there I went out and I bought - I said you have anything for dogs. They said no I said give me two ham sandwiches and he's beautiful big fat ham sandwiches there and I just walked him over and I gave him to the guy I just did it because like number one take an action and

And number two, what are your personal standards? You know, and like probably nine times out of 10 or before 120 days ago, I'd have been, I'd have thought it and not done it. But like you do it, man. You do it. By the time you get a thought, I try to delegate almost everything unless I could do it quicker than I can delegate it. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Like if I, if I will call my assistant to do an email, uh,

And I could have done the email in the same way. And by the way, I don't do email anymore. Right. I'm email-less. And by the way, this cell phone, I'm keeping this cell phone, but the phone number is going to online. You have to do that. Well, I'm giving up control, which is hard for a lot of people. And it means a lot of trust. Or are you taking control of the rest of your life? That's a good way to frame it. But most people will go, number one, privacy. Number two, what if they screw up? Number three, what if somebody important texts me and they don't get back in time? Right.

Here's what I figured out. When I go on vacation, this is what I figured out about 15 years ago. You think the company's going to fall apart. But if you hire the right people, they actually do better when you're not there. It's like all these problems, they're forced to solve them themselves. That's right. And they don't call me anymore. They say, Tommy's not even going to have the answer. I can't even log into payroll. I've never logged into the payroll software.

I don't even know how to get into it. Why would you? Oh, well, the thing is, is there's a lot of people that still say, I'm the smartest guy in the building. I like to walk into my building and say I'm not the smartest guy. There's a lot of smarter people that are focused on one thing. And I'm trying to make myself useless in the company. I'm struggling every day to hire amazing people to say,

there's no way I could have a better idea than this person focused on the CFO or the controller or the COO or whatever. Like, the whole goal is to make myself obsolete. And I don't think people understand that because they want to have a meaningful, like they want to be part of the business and meaningful. And so it's almost like,

It's contrary to what most people think is like you want to feel important in your business and feel like the main person. I'm like, listen, if I just had made TV ads and radio ads and kissed babies and accepted trophies, my life would be amazing. Yeah. That's a business that like built to last by Jim Collins. Right. He wrote a whole book about it. Yeah. So I got two things on that. Number one, you pay people here by the hour.

I know you pay a lot of commission because you allow people to make a lot of money within your organization. Performance pay. Performance pay. But we get paid by the conversation. Yeah. You know, the quality of the conversations we have, the caliber, with the right people in the room, that's when everything moves forward. I mean, I met the founder of Chirp. We're back and forth. Like, you know, and I said, well, we would like to use Chirp, but it doesn't integrate with our thing. He goes, oh, don't worry, I'll do it.

I'm just meeting him yesterday. And he said, oh, OK. Well, then he'll do it. The second thing is one of the things I think that's rare about your company is the execution and the implementation. Like ideas are great, but ideas unimplemented mean nothing. So the ability to – so when things are going well for you, OK, you can move your gaze out farther strategically, right?

and think about new opportunities, new businesses, your water treatment business. But when things start falling apart, business owners have to go in. They've got to jump back in. You've got to get right back down and figure out what spring or what sprocket fell out to allow this to happen. So now the more capable organizations we build, the more time that we get to spend out there

going to places like this. Because my job in our platform is to be out and understand. Visionary. Well, what's cutting edge? I actually hate that visionary word because it's just like, you know, I love it when people put it in their LinkedIn title.

Well, yeah. I'm a visionary officer. I'm a visionary and I'm letting you know that I'm telling you to call me that. But but, you know, like like our our job is to be on the cutting edge. Like what's you know, we're both in the genius network. Like what's happening six to 12 months from now that we need to make sure that we're ahead of. Yeah. Well, that's that's what I do is like.

So Dan Martell, I had to meet with my team to explain who I was because my team doesn't really understand this entrepreneurial itch. And he goes, I'll tell you one thing about Tommy, and Tommy doesn't even know this about himself. But Tommy, anything you ever tell them to do, you never forget. Some days you wake up in the middle of the night and remember it, and did it get done? And how often do you remember? I go, every freaking time.

He goes, now, guys, listen, he needs to feel heard and he's to get documented and it needs a plan. It might not even be important. It might not even be. You might have to tell him it's going to start in six months, but you got to document it. Now, here's the deal, Tommy. Your team is going to help you buy back time. Your job is not to fill the void every single time like I know you do today. You fill the void every single time.

And you make yourself busier every time they buy back your time. So this is something I've been working on. But I'll tell you, Dan Martell taught me to... I'm very good at business, but he said, why not get a driver? And I said, because I'm humble. He goes, Tommy, how often do you drive? We did some math. It was 10 to 12 hours a week. He goes...

What could you be doing in that 10 to 12 hours? Do you love driving? No, I don't. Yeah. Okay. Then I got a chef. And so everything I've done in business, he said, why don't you apply this to your personal life? And I'll always have coaches around me. And by the way, I'm always going to be curious and I'm always going to ask questions. I'm always going to have mentors. The day I stop is the day that I want you to be like, okay, Tommy, he's lost his purpose. Like, I want to be the dumbest guy in the room. And there's a different mountain to climb every time.

Where was the inflection point where you were an operator of a garage door business, and then in the next day or the next week, you were a business builder, a visionary, and an entrepreneur? I got to $17 million by brute force. And then I met Al Levy, number two on the podcast, Home Service Expert, which we're on right now.

And Al did a tour of my shop. Then he said, you remind me. He goes, you're one of the best firefighters I've ever met. He goes, your mind is incredible. The fact that you could solve these problems, you know how to handle every single thing. He goes, is it documented? And I go, you're looking at the document right now. And he goes, and he just pointed all this stuff out. He goes, you know, Tommy, would you mind if I worked with you? And he just reminded me of this two weeks ago.

He goes, do you remember how much money you were paying me? I go, Al, I paid you hundreds of thousands of dollars. He goes, do you remember where that account was? He goes, that was your personal account. He goes, you didn't have enough money in your account when you were making $17 million to pay me out of the business. Wow. He goes, the reason you did everything I said...

is because you were paying for it personally. You had to implement it to save your business. You had to put systems and SOPs, and we call it the triangle of communication, and the checklist together, and the safe way to do things. And are you allowed to have facial hair? Are you allowed to get tattoos on your face? How do you get PTO? All these things needed to become documented, and my team continued to develop. And here's what I needed to do is take my pride out of it. I'll tell you this. Pride? Pride?

It's probably the one reason is I started hiring people that I couldn't control. They were smarter than me and they'd say no to me and they'd give me reasonable explanations why I were not doing that. And now if you walk into the next door building, I've got a lot of no people. They say no to me. But they give me they don't say no because I said so.

They give me empirical evidence of why we're not doing something. They show me the data. Right. And I say, great, because I can't handle no. I can handle no and here's why. Right. So most people don't have a no person in their life. And they read a new book or listen to a new podcast or they go to a seminar like RhinoX and they come back and they got all these ideas. No one in that company has ideas because you're literally going to RhinoX by yourself.

I didn't bring anybody to this event, but normally at every event I go to, there's seven to ten of my coworkers.

And they're at Pantheon. There's 25 of them at Pantheon. Wow. And not only that, they're listening to the podcast. They're reading the same books. They're coming up with the ideas now. So it's not the Tommy show anymore. Right. So I can't take the credit. I try to give them as much credit as I can. But also, I love what I do. I love podcasting. I love going to visit markets. I love going to visit shops. So I started bringing them with me. And

And now they're curious. Yeah. And now they want to learn. And now it's like I leave. We're taking 40 guys made Pinnacle. We're going to Cabo next week. I'm taking my top producers and all my managers and every single person that makes decisions in the company is going to be gone for a week. We're not going to skip a beat. Revenue is not going to be impacted. Right. Because all the technicians say, I get the good leads because the good guys are gone. Yeah. And it's crazy because you think...

All of the business is leaving into Cabo, but we're not going to skip a beat. And that's what I'm the most proud of. Nice. That's like, it's a feeling of like, and here's one thing that no one has that I have, is I have the ability to imagine the craziest numbers possible. They're like, where did you come up with a billion numbers?

And I'm like, well, we just need this many leads based on our conversion rate if we change our average ticket. So my job is to make them dream again and believe that we could do it. Yeah, they can't see it. Because if they got the belief, it changes everything. Right. And they're like, dude, you're nuts. But when I explain to them the math, they're like, we're really going to do this, aren't we? And I go, yeah, but how do we do it quicker? Like the company will grow without me.

But I don't think it'll grow at the same pace. Yeah. Best business question. Gun to your head, if you had to do twice as much in half the time, figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's the deal. Dan asked me two months ago, he said, Tommy, if you wanted a 20X next year, this is right before the new year. He said, if you wanted the 20X, what would need to happen?

And he goes, don't answer. Think about it before you answer. And he basically made me build a guide to 20X. Yeah. And now it's possible, but it had to be really deep thinking. It was about the question. But here's the deal. You got to think outside of the box to do 20X. Anybody could double. Right. But to 20X, now you got to start thinking way different. You got to start doing stuff like not normal. Yeah. I love... You can tell how passionate I get. I just... This is like...

And here's the deal. I talked to Gino Wickman a while back, and he wrote EOS, the whole idea of how to systematically change your life and business. And he said, when I sold EOS, he still owns 12.5%. He goes, I feel like I lost a piece of me. He goes, I was, like, super depressing. Like, I was depressed. And he goes, I lost purpose. I had a pot of gold. They gave me a lot of money. Right. But I lost purpose. And a lot of people, when they sell their business, I don't know, did you feel this way?

Initially, because you said I don't want to disappear to the golf course. Yeah, no, I was ready. I'd built the business for 25 years. I was 50. I knew that there was more to do, but I was not good enough to extract myself from the business. And plus, man, you have a business for 25 years. All my personal real estate was handled by my business office. I mean, everything was – mine was really – actually, for as well as we did –

It was a lifestyle business. I mean, I probably worked the minimum that I needed to build that company. I coached all my kids sports. I prioritized my family. You know, I did all of that kind of stuff. And now if I knew then what I knew now, it didn't have to be mutually exclusive. I could have built five times that business if I had the right attitude that I have right now.

And still not sacrificed any of the other stuff that I felt was important to me. So, you know, but I knew – but I didn't make a decision to sell the business until I got into something called YPO, Young Presidents. And then what I realized was everybody in YPO had sold the business. So I just hadn't been in the right rooms. You know, because I was, to your question, man, when I went to sell the business, like –

It was a no-brainer, and I never thought twice about the decision, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hard to basically take my identity and strip it away from this business and then go into nothing. And I did fill it with a lot of business activity in which I learned some stuff, but I probably should have followed some advice and maybe taken six months sabbatical and

But I took three days.

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Now, back to the episode. What would you tell yourself if you could go back 15 years? What would be the advice for younger, I guess? Oh, I would have focused on, look, we franchised our business, and we didn't hire one person that had experience franchising. We figured it all out. We went and got the guidelines from the government, and we wrote our own thing. I mean, it's like we were so proud that we were doing it ourselves, which was the stupidest thing on the planet. So if I would have just got two or three people

Like you're a guy that came in here. If I would have been humble enough, smart enough to do that earlier, everything would have been different. Now I have no regrets. Like I'm big on this concept of body of work, OK? Every action that we do every single day, every conversation we have, like it's either additive or subtractive to who we are in our body of work. And at the end of the day, at the end of our life, like we got to be good with it.

Like we we it's just this huge it's just this huge ledger of pluses and minuses. How do you spend your time? What do you do? And, you know, your body of work, you know, like like you're you mentioned it. You're very giving. You got you got home service freedom. You got your vertical track. You like you're like, hey, if you can execute on what I do, God bless you.

Here it is. The 1% or the 3%. Yeah, so you don't even have to worry about giving everything that you know because you know darn well that almost nobody's going to be able to do it. Everyone knows how to get a six-pack, but they don't do it. They're waiting for the magic watermelon diet. Yeah, and nobody's going to catch you, so you're fine. But what's nice is, dude, people like me and trust me because I don't hold back.

Hold back. And I'm like, dude, I'll give you guys everything I know. And you're not grabby. Yeah, the deal is, is like in the future, I promise you what Joe Paul has taught us is easy little could have been fun. Yeah. I'm going to be business partners with a hell of a lot of people. Yeah. And I won't do it unless I think I could improve their lives more than it is today. People say, what do you want? And I say, when I die, I want people to say when I shook Tommy's hand, he meant it.

And if ever I screw somebody over, I'm just going to give them the money back. Like, let's separate. We're going to have a prenup in every deal I do. And if it's not fun and it feels like something's not working, I'm out. I don't want your money. Right. I want to have fun, and I want to be a blessing in your life. The rule I always give Jeff is when you look at your phone –

When you see somebody calling the caller ID, you get excited. Are you like excited and going, what's up? Yeah. How's your day going? Like, what happened today? Or are you like, ah. Like, I understand family, you can't get rid of them. But, you know, but when you got businesses, when you get that feeling.

then you need to make a change because your life's going to add prematurely with that stress, anxiety, and depression of just dealing with people like that in your life. Yeah, man. So like body of work at the end of it, you want to go back and you want to be in business with people that you like. You want to have made a difference. You want to have impacted their lives. You want to, I mean, so, you know, everything we do, man, is, um, uh, and, and, you know, people are so sloppy and lazy and undisciplined with how they invest their time and energy and their money. And, uh,

You know, so, yeah, man, 15 years ago, I would have given up so much more to get the right people around me and focused on growth. You said you gave up a lot on this new deal. You said you were almost too nice about the way you gave money out on this. It's been, yeah, I don't have any heartburn about it, but, like, you know, it's, yeah. So you almost went in the opposite direction. Yeah.

Yeah, and we have great people. We've got really strong brand presidents that are proven in the industry. We've got a really strong C-suite. And, you know, honestly, that's one of the reasons that, like, fundamentally, whenever it is at the end of the day, when whoever it is looks at this business, like private equity, this thing is ticked and tied from day one.

Every document legally – I mean usually when you get into emerging franchisors, like everything is a mess. Territory policy is a mess. Like they've just – like I tell whenever I talk to emerging people, I'm like the decisions you make in the first six months are going to – if you make the wrong decisions in setting up your program and then you go out and award 100 franchise owners –

You've just cut 75% of your exit off just because of the structure of what you've done. You had the territory policy wrong. You didn't charge right. You made all these concessions, and it's just a mess. So we did set the foundation of this business up with excellence.

And, you know, we haven't been perfect in everything we've done. I mean, there's definitely some marketing things like we got, you know, you launch five brands, you got to rebrand four of them. And all of a sudden, franchise owners just start pouring in. You're chasing your tail. And the interesting thing, one of the probably the biggest difference between a direct business like yours and a franchise business like ours is, you know, if you want to roll out Chirp, you just roll out Chirp.

If I want to roll out Chirp, you know, those, you know, I need to have some sort of a consortium of franchise owners that are going to get on the program with that. So, you know, we do, you know, if I'm willing to pay for it, then I can do it.

But in our model, like there's things that the franchise owners need to pay for. And again, you've got this wide distribution of people that have different outcomes. You know, some people are like, hey, I want to build a $500,000 or a million dollar business. And I want to make a couple $300,000 a year and have a nice lifestyle and manage three or four people. And then there's other people that just want to be monsters and want to build a $50 million business. So you have all of that. And they're all going to take a different approach when I say we need to do this.

So if I really want to do something, then I got to shell it out. And then, you know, over time, you can make it mandatory, but it has to have proof. Yeah, that's one thing is like, I think I'll end up doing a franchise. And I'll definitely, if I do it, it'll be most likely alongside of you. I mean, I don't want to do it. I like Kevin Wilson. I like the guys I know that have been in the business. But I'm not going to go learn it. But...

I'll tell you one thing. One out of 100 people that actually have the money to get in will actually make it in because I will be very, very selective. My goal, I will not rate my success on franchises sold. It'll be franchises that do over budget every year as a percentage of the whole. And yes, it might take longer, but people underestimate what they could do in five years and overestimate what they could do in one year. And I just keep reminding people like, dude,

I'm going to be 42. Yesterday I was 21. Tomorrow I'm going to be 70. So, you know, we want things like we're the type of country and people that we tap our foot at the microwave for 30 seconds. Yeah. There's no patience.

And the one thing that China does very well is the art of war says they don't want to use any weapons. They do it over time. Right. And that's one thing is like so many people are like, man, I want to do 100 million. I think I could be there in three years. I'm like, the one question I ask them is why? They say, because you proved it could be done. And I go, yeah, but why? Like, what are you going to do? And the problem is people say, well, I want to do this with the money.

And I'm like, see, I don't even view money that way. I got to make money. I plan on spending the money off the compound interest, not the principal. And people don't understand that concept at all. People write down when they're going to make, and they write down their cars, their houses, what they want to do, where they want to travel. Yeah. And they blow it all. Like, I know half the people you saw in that room yesterday with an exit don't have any money. They've got a lot of assets, but they don't have, like... They're not liquid? It's crazy to me. Like, I'm super, super, super liquid. And, um...

I know I can make more IRR if I put some of the money in a PE, but after I did my deal, and it wasn't too far after your deal. It was 2022, the tail end of 2022. I'm addicted to deals now. Everything I'm going to do is run towards the next deal. Yeah. Everything. Yeah. They got a hold for three years, private equity. Will we get paid at the closing table? No.

But here's the deal. Everyone else gets paid. All the P units, all the equity incentive programs, everyone else gets paid too. So I think it's selfish of people not to want to sell because they're like, I make enough. I do a draw every year. I take $500,000 out. I'm like, yeah, but what about your team? How are you going to change their life? Yes, they make $120,000, but how are you going to really impact their life? It's through a close, through a change of control.

And people are afraid because they make a lot of people make the wrong deals with the wrong people. Well, that's true, too. And that's it. You hear the nightmares, but there's also really good stories. Yeah. You got to be really you got to be careful on your rollback. Like you have to know what you're rolling back into. You got to there's things that. What do you wish you? This is important. I want you to chat about this for a minute. Like, what did you learn about rolling? Yeah. So, yeah.

I had the top two people that were in my deal at the end. One was paying a little bit more, but what I didn't really fully appreciate that we were a tuck-in prior to them reselling. So my hold time on my rollback was short, whereas the second place person, I probably would have somebody else sold to them about the same time and they 5X their rollback.

So, you know, like just that one little thing. And I rolled back eight figures. Right. So, I mean, it was a big chunk of money and it would have. Yeah, it would have sat in there for another three or four years. But like I would have five X that money knowing looking back at it. I don't.

I probably could have – I don't think anybody could have known. But what I – the fact that I did have is that this one was – I could have got the information that they were already in process and that we were a tuck-in and that we were – whatever I rolled in was going to roll back relatively quickly. And I could have acted on it and said, well, this $8 billion private equity firm is really growing this other thing. I would have been one of the first people.

investments in there. And now you come in early. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was relatively early and now, you know, they're a $2.2 billion company. They're the, they're the ones that own a clockworks and everybody. So, um, yeah. So like I would have been third company in at the beginning. Yep. And you know, and, and so like that, that different, the, the, the amount of economics that, so like know who you're selling to, um,

You know, and there's another private equity company that I recently met. Now, you know, there's probably one of the – like one of the more famous ones and –

They do a lot in franchising and they're huge and all of that. Now they want to fly in and meet with us. And we're not in the market or anything like that, but they just try to get to know you and all that. But, you know, in that particular one, I mean, they have 10, 15 and 20 year fun lives. Now much longer. So what they talk about is long term greed.

Yeah, long-term, which I heard you talk about the other day, which I was going to ask you about. But the reality of it is then if it's not going to flip in three to five years, when are you going to get your second? You've got to build liquidity events. They'll explain to you how to build within there. Because your COO, people don't want to wait 12, 15 years. That's right. Here's the deal. If I could 10X my money and have three liquidity events alongside of there, which I'll build into, I'm glad to do a 15-year long-term.

Yeah. And by the way – You're probably talking about Blackstone. And anything I do – no, close. But, you know, anything – but they've done a great job, by the way, with their investment in ServPro. I mean, they've 3X'd – ServPro's massive. They've 3X'd their revenue. So they've done a really, really good job with them. But – I can coach people. This guy came up to me yesterday. He goes –

I'm about to get this much money next week. We're closing. I go, why in the F did you not call me? And I go, I want nothing to do with this deal. But I'm like, how much are you rolling? He goes, 25%. I go, did you read the private equity playbook? 35% minimum you roll if it's the right company and you're in love with them. And I go, what is it going to do? The extra 10%, will that change your life if you rolled that? I go, that's the bare minimum. And I'm telling him all this stuff.

I asked to roll 60%. Now, they were still going to have control no matter what. Some people think it's a control thing. They said, the size of our fund, we need to make it equitable for our limited partners that have invested. So we'll give you 49%. Mm-hmm.

And people thought I was nuts. They're like, dude, you're kind of – a lot of your net worth is still wrapped into one thing. You're not diversified. Yeah, but nothing is going to change your life from here on out. That's the deal. It's like – You might as well go big. I mean, here's the deal. It's like now it's like my buddy Dale went to California to visit a friend of his. And he goes, you know what everybody says about you, Tommy? He goes, this guy, you don't even know who he is. But your hope –

Your hope that somebody in a blue-collar industry, you're a garage door guy, could potentially become a billionaire is you are walking hope. And everybody's cheering you on. And you got to hold yourself and make the right decisions to prove it's possible.

So I'm freaking, I'm sprinting, man. And I'm making all the decisions and I'm pulling in help. And I'm the first one to ask. Listen, my dad and my grandpa, they're manly men, man. They don't ask for directions. They take stuff apart and fix it. I'm the first one to beg for help. And if I get a no...

If I get a no, okay. I'm okay with it. Some people don't say yes to me, some people. They're too busy. They literally say, sorry, kid, I can't help you. And that's okay. I don't take it personal. It doesn't mean they hate me. They don't even know me. So I don't take offense to it. But so many people, they're so afraid to ask because they don't want to get let down. Yeah. Do you think it's rare that your equity partner gives you this much latitude to do whatever it is you want? Or was that the deal going in? Well, what they always tell me.

is we didn't buy A1. We invested in you. That's right. We wouldn't have done this deal without Tommy Mello. Not a chance. Sure, sure. And they said you were a, they said to be honest, you were an uneducated gamble because nobody knew if they were going to be able to tame Tommy Mello. Yeah. And they, you know what they told me is 10 PE companies called him afterwards. After six months of stuff, what it's like to work with that dude? Were you able to even, does he listen at all?

And one of the guys goes, dude, he not only listens, but he calls and asks for help every day. And he takes our advice and he runs with it. And I don't know if I should say this, but a lot of these other companies flew back out and they said, we're sorry. We should have bid more. You would have been a great partner. And here's the other thing is... In hindsight. Well, the fact is the results speak for themselves. After two years in, now they're like, they trust me. Right. But if you had a bad first year, they're going to come in and, you know, look...

I'm fireable. It's very hard to fire me, but my contract is very, very hard. But if I'm getting bad results, there's no other choice than to get rid of the leader. But believe it or not, it all rises or falls on me. I'm not going to take the credit for doing great, but I would have to take the credit for failing. Right. I mean, it was a team that brought us here. And it's a team that fails too, but literally, like, if there's anything bad that happens in the company, all rolls up to me.

And I got to face that. So it's hard because certain times it sounds like I might take the credit, but I try to pay it forward to my team as much. And guys like Al Levy, guys like Joe Polish and Yano that helps me out and introduces me to people and the network. And I think it's important. And I hope you open your doors. And I know you're teaching the next generation and you should be teaching out a franchise too. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I'm probably rolling out an education business in that space just because I

You know, I do care about expanding the reach and relevance and the professionalism of the franchise industry. I mean, I've heard you say before, you know, hey, it's a lazy way to do it. If you can't do it, you know, it's a lazy way to build a business. I think that's 90 percent of them. But the 10 percent that do it for the right reasons are incredible. Yeah. And while people get big eyes. Right. And they say, well, I got this donut shop and, you know, there should be a thousand of these donut shops.

but they really don't understand what it takes. But, you know, they get around somebody that, and the bottom line is families get hurt. Like many franchise owners invest their life savings in a business. And it's really important that it's done well. Let me ask you this, man, three years from now, who's the CEO of A1? So I've been doing a lot of thought on this. Like my team came to me, my whole C-suite, and they sat me down and they said, why do you feel like we need a president? Or why would we need a chief of staff?

And I looked at them and I said, you know, potentially, you know, I'm not married. I'm about to be married. Yeah. Congratulations, by the way. I want kids. Thank you. I want to be a great dad. I said, you guys don't need me to run this company, but I'm not going to be able to give you what I give today. But I need to make sure the vision stays because it's a growth mindset. And so there's a few choices I have. I could be the head of the board.

I can switch to a chief growth officer. Or my preference would be to be a co-CEO, where I'm the glue. I'm the orientation guy. I'm still handling the marketing side and going to look at deals and still inputting. But I'm not flying out to New York, to Manhattan, to go to all these quarterly and monthly PE where they're talking about the financials. That's not fun for me. So the deal is, as the way I see it today...

You know, I've got a family office that A1 pays. Tens of thousands of dollars to a month. That team does a lot for A1. Like, I've been able to use this instrument to make A1 grow faster and excel way quicker. So the question is...

Can this entity live alongside of it as a sister and continue to scale it? Because, look, I'm still going to roll $400 million to $500 million into the next deal. Right. So I got to stay relevant in the business. It's my face on the side of the truck on purpose. Well, I think you're going to be like the Empire Carpet guy.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, Empire Today. Yeah, like 588-2300. Like I grew up in Chicago. That's where that guy's from. And it used to be him. When I was a kid, that was him. But now he's dead. So now it's a cartoon guy. But it's still the same guy. Like one day, you'll still be all over the face of this and probably many other businesses. But it'll have to be the cartoon. No, the cartoon. Because they don't age. Yeah, no, that's the whole theory of it. But, you know, I'm passionate about what I do.

I'm going to build a fund for my employees that I'll actually... I'm going to insure the money, and I'm going to be putting it into really, really high return. And I'm going to employ them, and I'm going to give them bonuses through this structure that sits there. And my main goal...

I did this math. I posted it the other day on Facebook. 18 to 65, you put $300 a month away at 12% IRR. I saw that. You got $8.4 million. That's right. So my plan is just if I could get them a million bucks over time, I'd give them – but it's going to take some discipline and some consistency and some delayed gratification.

But my plan is to teach people this. And I'm not their provider. Everyone that's got equity in the business, they've earned it. I can't take credit for that. Yeah. So I tell my kids, like, when they want to buy something, like RIMS or something, I'd say, okay, you're going to spend $1,000 on this. Are you willing to give up $65,000 25 years from now? Because that $1,000, if you put it in the spreadsheet and you hit it with 8%,

it, it's like right in that 25 year range, it turns into 65 grand. Yeah. And I'm like, are you willing to give that up? Like, I mean, compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. I mean, you're young, you know, thank God I invested in a lot of real estate young. I was just a kind of a contractor and I know you did apartment buildings, but I was just a building houses and owning rental property. And everywhere I went, we bought an office building and stuff like that. And, you know, thank God, thank God. I mean, over time it was, it's just, you know, it's, it's, it's,

You couldn't afford to buy this stuff today for what we bought it over time. And it's the same thing for them. They need to be putting together these assets. But people don't do it. And then what happens is they have just enough to live. And all of a sudden, we go through an inflationary period. People are in their 50s and 60s. They don't have the same earning potential or the energy. And next thing you know, my mom's still living.

and she is tight. I mean, like one rotisserie chicken, three days. And she's got some money, and I told her, I said, please spend your money. I'll take care of you. You know, you don't have to worry about running. You got your house's cash. We bought her a house for cash when she moved to North Carolina three years ago. She's got money in the bank, but... What year was she born? Let's see. She was born in 44. So her parents lived through the Great Depression. This is when people used to...

They looked bad at money. They're like, look at the rich folks because there was very little rich. I mean, you were one of 100 that would wait to see if you got a job that day. That's right. And the deal is then that's if your family is going to have bread that week. And so like at Thanksgiving, the old saying would be like, look at us rich folks because being rich was bad.

It was evil. And so people have this really bad conception of money. And it's not a bad thing. Like now, luckily, we're phasing out of this Great Depression mode. But I'm like, I have an obligation. You know, one of the things I went to church, I went to breakfast with my pastor. And I'm like, man, this next turn, I'm going to give like...

Tens of millions of dollars to the church. 10%? You know what? I got a pretty big tax bill waiting in heaven because I haven't given the 10%. And I made a deal. And, you know, it was a bad deal. If I died, I got to put this in my will. But I just said, God, let me reinvest this money for you.

And I'll give it to you at a much bigger value. I mean, I remember praying and saying this. I'll make it up to you. I'll make it up. But I guess you can't buy your seats in heaven. You know, this idea of more money, more problems. Like, dude, my houses, they always have issues. My cars, they have issues. Like, people don't understand the reason rich people get depressed and get on drugs and become alcoholics and don't have great relationships.

I'm fine. I'm ready for it. And I'm prepared. But a lot of people, it's miserable. All of a sudden, people don't treat them the same. They use them. They look at them as a piece of money. And I go, people are like, what do you think when people look at you as having all this money and they use you? I'm like, this is just, it's okay. I'm like, this is what happens. And I'm prepared for it. You're already a billionaire, just not today. But it's destined. The die has been cast.

And you get your family going. By the way, you'll never regret doing that. You'll never regret it. That's why I was put on the service. It's the greatest thing. That's my legacy. I hang my hat on that. We're three for three with our kids. And, you know, I'll never regret anything that I sacrificed for that.

Do you think you'll – so you're a billionaire. You got that going. Do you think you'll do the giving pledge? Because to your point, when people get billions and billions and billions of dollars, like 75 percent of these people, whether they're like Ryan Jumaville – you know Ryan? No. OK. I need to introduce you to Ryan Jumaville. I think he's – sorry, Ryan. I think he's probably, I don't know, four, five, six billion dollars. Or if they're the $100 billion people, they sign up, man. They say I'm giving away 90 percent of this by the time I die because at the end of the day –

I mean, how many hundreds of millions of dollars? I think, was it the Rockefellers are the ones that kept their money the best? The Rockefellers. It's called the Rockefeller method. And basically what they've built is a family trust that you could borrow against a life insurance policy. So it refunds itself when you die. You can borrow against it a certain amount and you want to pay it back over your lifetime. But if you die, it refunds that. And it's all a mechanism that has to be done this way. And it's wrapped around a charitable trust. Right.

So they're the ones – but like at the end of the day, like I have two different sets of trusts. They're both dynastic in nature. My daughter who's in law school right now at one time said, when do we get our money out? And I'm like never. And she's like, well, what did you do it for? And I'm like I'm not sure. But I don't want to – I want you to have enough to do something but never enough to do nothing. No, that's a great – I like that quote. Yeah. Yeah, that's – I struggle with this. So like I – at the end of the day, like –

I don't know why I made all this money. I mean, it's great, but, like, I don't have things. Like, I'm not a big guy. I got some stuff, man. I'm buying a helicopter, buying a private plane. I'm taking people with me. Here's the deal. I want to teach a man to fish. That's the goal. But I'm never going to go through economy again. I want first class in life, and I want my entire – I want to go to the 16th Chapel and have breakfast. I want to do things, like, not VIP, but –

10 times better than VIP. Yeah. I agree with that. Quality of life. And look, I also... But the problem is I want to take everybody with me. And that takes time, energy, money, focus. It does. But also, they...

Sometimes they don't want to go. I mean, like you – because they really didn't go through what you went through to get it. So they're not going to have – they're not going to get the same out of it that you do. That's true. But it's very noble and I think that's why you're going to be a great dad is because you care so much about your employees. Like you have a massive heart for people and that's – I think that's one of the keys to your success. I mean every time we talk, it's like –

My employees can be doing this for them. I'm doing that for them. I want these guys to, you know, not only go to Disney but do the Fast Pass. And, like, at the end of the day, man, it is a giver's gain. You can make money and still do right by people. And I think if you do it the right way, you can even do better by taking people with you. And that's –

Perfectly said. By me. They have the ability to probably get paid by someone else. I mean, there's a couple companies out there that are getting in the game that could probably pay more

I think we pay – I want to intentionally pay the most by far. But just say somebody just decided to take a risk and pay more. I don't think they leave. They wouldn't leave. They wouldn't leave. Why would they? I have had about five people leave, and guess what? Every one of them are back. Mm-hmm.

And when they came back preaching, the grass is not greener. The promises weren't kept a lot of, uh, chitter chatter, but nothing got done. Right. And everything I say, I gotta, I gotta live by example, lead from upfront leaders. He lasts the whole thing. And, uh, but I'm a work in progress. I always tell people I'm not, I'm not arrived. I'm not perfect. I,

I could say these things, but I want to talk the talk. I walk the walk, too. But being on here saying these things also holds me accountable. It does. You know, this is the nice thing. When you commit yourself publicly, and I talked about this yesterday, and you write it down and you tell your team you're going to do something, you kind of have to do it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I love this, man. So...

You know, you're the franchise king. You teach people. You know, everybody, I know how much you care, too, about your franchisees. I do. Yeah.

If someone wants to just reach out to you, get a hold of you, ask you for advice, what's the best way to do that? Yeah, well, I used to say my LinkedIn, but, man, I got a company working in there now, and a lot of messages get gone. But should I get my email out on a show this big? I'm not sure. You know what? Do you have somebody screening it? Yeah. Okay, then you're good. All right. Well, hey, you can just reach out to me at jeffatduden.me.

And Instagram is a great way to message me, just Jeff Duden. If you go to Jeff Duden on Instagram and you want a free copy of my book, Discernment, The Business Athlete's Regimen for a Great Life Through Better Decisions, there's a link in there. You give us your email address and we get an electronic copy immediately.

Or you can shoot me a message on YouTube and on the Homefront podcast, just there. But not hard to get a hold of. Instagram's good. So if you're hanging out and you're at home and you've got an hour a day, are you on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube? What's your choice? Okay.

My choice is Instagram and LinkedIn. Okay, Instagram and LinkedIn. Instagram and LinkedIn. And usually I'm just in there just checking for anything that I need to do, any engagement that I need to pay attention to, you know, how things are performing or whatever it is. An hour a day between Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn is enough time to check but not enough time to get to scroll.

I say majority is Facebook for me. And the problem is I got to get Facebook up because I still handle my own messages. People are always like, this can't be really Tommy. I'm like, it's pretty pathetic. What other question I always ask is, is there any books other than like

Rich Dad, Poor Dad and E-Myth and, you know, the famous, famous Dale Carnegie and Point Hill. Books that really shaped you and you really think that the listeners should get a hold of. Oh, God shaped me way back. I know the David Goggins. Yeah, man. Can't Hurt Me is great.

You know, Good to Great was something early for me. Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni was something that was very instrumental for me early. Man, I'm big into Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time right now. I mean, if I had to pick one book for people to read right now, that might be it. Listen, we talked about a lot of stuff, though. What I'd like to do is give you a few minutes to just finish this up on anything you want to talk about. Oh, well, hey, I appreciate it. Gosh, um...

I don't know. I don't know, man. We went all over the place here. This is what I love to do. Yeah. I mean, I think if anything –

Just encouraging people to be outcome-focused, encouraging people to – we heard this great thing about internal, external locus of control. You were talking about that earlier, like I'm in charge of this. I'm in charge. And letting people understand that you are in control. Every decision that you make, every action that you take determines the slope of your line. It determines the velocity of your business. It determines the quality of your life.

And, you know, and you can do that in a franchise model. You can do that in your personal life. You can do it in direct business. But at the end of the day, man, like it's body of work. And every action that you take or every inaction that you should have taken that you didn't, it's a plus or minus check, man. And at the end of the day, there's a tally. At the end of the week, there's a tally. And at the end of your life, there's a tally. And, you know, just for God's sake, stop worrying about what other people think.

Stop making decisions based on ego. We had a great conversation this week, man. People, there's these HVAC guys, and some of them have 11 locations, and they're like, yeah, we should have stayed in one location because it was our ego that drove us to open up those other cities, and they weren't fully committed. So, I mean, you know, I hate that I have to be 56 years old to continue to learn hard lessons, making mistakes, but making...

But man, just take care of your business. Raise your, you know, like only care about your own standards. Do things like that when nobody's looking like I brought the guy that's today. And and just, you know, people, people should have a great life. I don't understand why everybody can't within their own capabilities, within their own skill from wherever they sit.

Have a great life. And I would like to leave people with that. At Homefront Brands, man, we are 100. It used to be there's lots of different things in franchising. Responsible franchising or autonomy or freedom. Like we are focused on outcomes.

Yeah. Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes. I want you if you're if you're a normal person, it's your first business. Can you build a three to five million dollar business in five years and sell it for several million dollars and make it be that first chunk that you have to give yourself that little bit of freedom? Break the generational curse. Yeah. Yeah. And then like, you know, can you you know, you you win the next opportunity by succeeding than the one that you're in.

And business is an infinite game. So if you can come to us and we can and you can and it's hard and you can learn these business skills and you either expand within our platform on this monopoly board that we call Homefront Brands and you start building hotels and grabbing territories or you sell your business with us and you go on and do something great. I had I tell you, I'll leave it with this.

We're at our industry event last week in Vegas, and they award franchisees of the year. So if you have a franchisee of the year in your system, they give about 100 of these out across the 4,000 brands. So one of our Topper Offense franchisees, Bob Stewart from Richmond, got franchisee of the year, and he walked across the stage with these other people. And I'm walking out of the room, and I see a woman that I recognize kind of smile, face lights up.

And then I see the young gentleman with them, and I recognize it was one of my AdvantiClean franchisees. I saw you interview them. Yeah, who was there getting franchisee of the year. They're from another country, right? Yeah, so he was an E2 visa. They were in Argentina. The economy was falling apart, and they came to AdvantiClean, and they brought their entire extended family over. He was one of the young brothers or sons or nephews or whatever it was. There was about 10 of them that came over, built a great business in South Florida. Half of them sold it.

made really good money and went on and built an import export business. And Mariano is still operating there. And I mean,

What impact did that little AdvantiClean business make in their life and the fact that we see each other, we tell each other we love each other? And then one of the executives from AdvantiClean came up to me and he said, hey, I've been trying to get in touch with you. I go around to these offices with AdvantiClean and they've all got the pictures up on the wall from the conferences that you had and all of that. And part of it is how can we get the culture back when Jeff had it?

And he asked me to do a video to play at their owner's conference. Oh, wow. So I did the red eye. I got home and I'm like, oh, he said he needed it today. I hadn't slept all night. And I'm like, well, let me put some Preparation H under the eyes. And I did just a three or four minute video. You know, he asked me to say a few things, but just to encourage them and just to praise them and let them know like they're carrying on a tradition. It's 31 year anniversary. We just had last week. That was the same day that I met Mariano. And like, okay, great.

Body of work made a difference in that life. So great. Yeah. So and that's at the end of the day, man, like we can't take it with us. But like just it just matters what we do while we're here and who we do it with more than anything. I love it, man. Well, this was fantastic. I appreciate you sticking around to do this. Yeah. Honored. Yeah, man. You're an amazing guy. I'm going to come visit you soon to East Coast, Charlotte, Charlotte area. Right. Yes, sir.

All right, man. Well, listen, I'll let you get out of here. I appreciate it. This is Groom Greg. Thank you guys for listening, and we'll catch you on the next episode. Thank you, sir. 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.