The Guy Behind Tommy Mello's Emails Only Sends 4 A Month For A Reason | Zac Garside

- So you're just never going to talk to your customers again? Is it? You're just never going to say anything? You're never going to remind them to take care of that thing. You sold them. It's over. It's done. They're probably going to go back to Google and call again. And you're going to have to re-buy that customer. You already have to leave. You already have to list. You're already paying for way to send something to them. Let's go up all that low-hanging fruit that's there. All right, welcome back to the Home Service Expert today. I got Zach Garcide with me. He co-founded Sended Email Marketing, a partner with Chris Yano. - That's right. - Who built Rhino Strategic Solutions to $90 million and today they've been growing Sended. He works with some of the biggest contractors in the country, including us at A1 helping them turn their existing customer list into consistent revenue through email campaigns that actually drive service calls and sales. Today, he breaks down why most contractors are ignoring the most profitable marketing channel, how to build email campaigns that actually drive service calls and sales and the research framework that reveals what your customers actually want. - That's right, dude. - It says, Zach, just tell us a little bit about you where you've been, what you're excited about. - Well, I'm excited about everything. I'm very easy to get excited about stuff. I do e-mail marketing for a living, you know? I spent eight years in the trades with power selling pros, you know, trading in CSRs. But every contractor always asked me the exact same thing. How do I get my CSRs to do more outbound calls? And eventually I was like, what about email? Do you guys use your list when you want to get jobs? Do you have any kind of campaigns you can send to get people to call in like in a quick search? I pretty much nobody I talked to really had like a solid strategy for email marketing in the trades. But in industries like e-commerce, coaching, software, email is one of the top profit drivers. So I basically just said, what would happen if I took the email strategies that those industries use and applied it to the trades? - Yeah. And so that became at first just zacarset.com. You know, a little freelance email marketing business. And then I partnered up with Chris like a year ago. We started sending it. And now all we do is go in and help contractors who have enormous lists of open estimates, membership customers and past customers in general. And we run campaigns to help them book jobs when they need them. - So capacity planning plays into that big time? - Oh for sure. I mean, yeah, when we sit down every month, it's like, where are you short, right? Which markets do you need jobs in if you're multi-location? If you're single location, which service lines are you in need of jobs for right now? Oh, it's not HVAC, but it's plumbing. Or, you know, we need to get more tune-ups on the schedule so we can give our techs opportunities to turn something over, planning what you want, who you want to send it to, and then creating content that's just second to none, right? Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, man, I hope I get an email from my garage door company. - Yeah. - But that doesn't mean they can't be glad they did get one. You know, if you write something that's entertaining and funny and insightful, make some think about something new they didn't know before, most people are just too boring. You know, if they send an email, they go, "Oh, that didn't work." I'm like, "Well, of course, it works." It's boring, you know? - Yeah, well, how do you make it to the inbox? I mean, Google's different than you think about the hotmail, AOL days, and each of them get harder and harder to get into the inbox without going to spam. - Yeah. I mean, the easiest way to get in the inbox in status spam is write stuff that people actually look forward to getting. I mean, people, if they're looking forward to something from the guy who came to their house. Right? You're not just any company. You're not any commerce business that's selling trinkets for 10 bucks. You went to their house. You know, you pet their dog. You met their kids. You commented on the painting on the wall. So when they get an email from you, it should be something they look forward to. Right? If you send them a follow-up on that estimate or if you send them, "Hey, we came out and did this six months ago, now let's do this thing for you." The first way to stay out of the spam is just be someone that they appreciate hearing from. The second thing is you got to be consistent. It's really hard to avoid going to spam if you've never emailed your customers. - Yeah. - If it's been 10 years and all of a sudden you're like, crap, we're desperate for jobs. Let's send out a blast to our customer list. - Yeah, the blast. - No, you're probably going to go to spam because people are going, "Wait, who's this guy?" I don't remember. Do you remember this, babe, talking to their spouse? So be someone they like hearing from. Be consistent. Be a person of value. And then obviously send emails from a reputable platform. Don't copy, paste your customer list into your Gmail or Outlook window and try to send them some follow-up from the inbox. - Yeah, use a legit email sender. - Do you ever burn down a server? For sure. When I first was getting started, I worked with a company that it helps you, they help you buy your car when you're in a lease. Like, "Oh, I don't want to be in this lease. I want to own the car." And they purchase lists from like big, big data brokers. And we burn some servers in the early days, learnin'. - Yeah. - Learnin' to trade, for sure. - What do you think? So obviously, they say in everything it's the subject line of the first sentence, right? - Yeah. - So what are some of the things that you've seen like best practices work the best? - Well, in the subject line, like the subject line, the job is get an open. That's it. All you're trying to do with the subject line is get somebody who's going through their inbox to see it and go, "Oh, what's that?" Most companies will do something way too direct, like 49, or 29.95 tune up, act now. The problem is you're giving it away. You're not creating any intrigue. You wouldn't let your technicians give a price before going out to the home, right? You want them to go out there and create the experience with the subject line. You're trying to do the same thing. Create some intrigues and curiosity. So, for example, I wrote an email for an HVAC company once about how the husband and the wife are constantly fighting over the thermostat. She sets it to 68 degrees to overcompensate because she wants it to feel like it's 71 degrees. So the subject line was overcompensating question mark. That's it. And that reaction, that's what I'm going for. The nose breath, well, that's what I call it. When somebody is looking through a piece of content, looking through their inbox and they chuckle a little bit. But even more important than the subject line is the front line. Who is it from? Because if it's from a name, they know I can trust. Yeah. They'll open it regardless of the subject. If your mom sent you an email today and she literally forgot to put a subject, you still open it. Because it's from your mom. So how do I use a name at the company that has so much trust or like the founder or the team at? Never just the business's name, but either the team or the founder and then a subject line that creates that open loop so that someone goes, "What's this?" And then they click through. And that's like a slippery slide. First sentence makes them want to read the second. Second makes them want to read the third. Next thing you know, they're calling your business. Now you guys, I'm jumping probably way ahead, but you like to give a guarantee. We like to. I got to make sure we can give it for everybody, but I want to be able to guarantee the result. And what does that look like? Companies got to have at least 5,000 past customers. Okay. For me to confidently guarantee, "Oh yeah, you're going to see a good result here." If it's less than 5,000, we still have a lot of clients in that range who do great. And it's something like five times that you spend or something. Six times. Six times what you spend. Six times what you spend with us. We guarantee you'll make back in the first 60 days. Which is a good comp. I mean, it's a really warm list. Yeah, ironically. Like it's, I don't want to keep our money right if it doesn't. Yeah, it's not going to last 'cause it's a client. It might as well part ways. Yeah, exactly. So you got past clients that were happy that probably need maintenance checkups. You got non-closed estimates. How do you segment? And how do you know when to hit when? I'm just thinking about A1, but I think about A-track. And obviously season L, it doesn't apply as much to us. But like there's a lot of segmenting. I mean, you probably just don't. Like we use Clavio. Yeah. Where is Service Titan? That's good stuff for this or probably not. Yeah, every platform has ways to segment, ways to say. It's easiest to start with. What are your goals? Right? Like what are you trying to accomplish right now? Mr. Business owner. Over the next 90 days. Over the next 12 months year. What do you want to see more of on the calendar? And then we work backwards from that. So it's like, dude, you have a massive list of open estimates. First of all, let's hit that. Because those are people who you've gone out giving a quote to. We should do something consistent there. You should have automated emails for your open estimates that are falling up, hitting all the objections, letting them know about warranties and financing and the quality of the service. Once a month, at least, you should be hitting your open estimates as well with an offer. Something to get them to take that next step. Then I look at memberships after open estimates. Okay, now that we've got a plan for open estimates this month, what are we going to do to reactivate memberships? How many of your members are on the verge of expiring and we need to get them to renew, right? If you're in the 11th and 12th month of a membership. Have they used it? Have they taken advantage of this? A lot of people, I'm writing a book out of memberships right now and they can't even fulfill their memberships. They get too busy. I mean, that happens almost every time. Can't go to his right to section of my book. It's like, we couldn't fulfill even half of who are lucky. And so that's where some of the technology comes in. It's like new Bay or like the. Yeah. There's a center, what is it called, the sensor AC. I forget what it is. Oh, I don't know. I think that's where technology could come in a lot. Say after this many cycles, we're going to call you and we're going to come out and do it. Yeah, yeah, there's a problem. We have a time. I think there's also when it comes to how email marketing plays into memberships. An often overlooked benefit of memberships is the perceived value the homeowner gets of just having it. Even if they don't use it. Because you have customers who are paying you every single month for maintenance, but they're not taking advantage of it. But they would still say it's worth it, because you are reaching out, you're offering advice, you're sending them reminders to get tune-ups done, they see you as, "Oh, I'm paying this company," and not only will they do the work, but they're giving me things to think about, they're giving me knowledge and insight. That's one of the sequences we set up with a lot of our clients is, "Hey, you've got members. We're going to do a year-long drip sequence." And every month there's a new tip, there's a new piece of advice, a new cautionary tale. So now, that information becomes part of the benefit of the membership, even if those customers aren't taking action, right, and that helps to keep them. I'm a bad client because Ashley opens up my email because my, "Yeah, I stopped doing email a couple of years ago." I just. No, it's not. They still get open and they still get sent to me if they're important, but it's like obviously I'm pretty busy, I've got a lot going on and I just can't be bothered. So how do you stand out when you just be bothered all the time? Well, there's a difference right between a business owner who has somebody checking their email address and a homeowner who's keeping an eye out on their inbox every day. Yeah, it's a lot less email. For receipts, they're trying to return something to Amazon that they purchased, they got to look out for those confirmation. So business to business email and business to consumer are two very different worlds. I would. If you were a homeowner that on a list, that's a different mentality than me trying to contact a business owner. So with homeowners, I've seen lots of research out there. I know, and I can't like. I'm not on a research committee or anything verifying any of this data, but it's something like 60, 70% of people who check their email, like first thing when they wake up in the morning, first thing when they get into the office, just like everyday people going about their lives. I know my wife checks her email all the time to see what deals she's going to be able to get from her favorite clothing store, she was checking for receipts for clothing that she bought and then sent back. So homeowners aren't a different mentality to receive email than a business owner, because I get that a lot, dude. A lot of business owners, they're like, "Oh, dude, but I don't check my email." Well, we're not sending emails to you. We're sending emails to your homeowner, customers, to their Gmail address, not to your at business.com address, right? Yep. So, I really have been studying a lot of e-commerce and one of the things that I find, number one, if they don't have the. What is the e-commerce built on? That's a fun shop, so it says shop, and if I can't click shop on an e-commerce site and boom, boom, done. I don't really care. I don't need it next day. I just wanted to be easy. I don't want to have to put in my address, my billing information, bam, I hit two buttons. I'm out. But what's crazy is all of them are getting my SMS as well, and it's like you're getting a discount on front. But that list is like gold, and I'm thinking like 800 contacts, it's a KKR company, 50% of all the contacts online are sold through them, and they know when you're running low on your contacts. They've got this dated engine behind it. And how much time they put on just A/B testing the website, and A/B testing the scripts, and A/B testing, to 50% of a contacts also online, so I don't think any of us really obsess about, what do you think potentially you see a road where you're getting the opt-ins for SMS and running that as well? Oh, 100%. In a perfect world, I want to do email, I want to do SMS, I want to do direct mail. I think our creative approach to email would crush on direct mail. With SMS, there's a lot of legal compliance that makes it different. It is tough. You got to have the opt-ins. It's a double opt-ins, it's a whole different game from a compliance standpoint, and I think you see a lot of platforms that businesses are having a hard time using because they're not compliant with the laws of SMS marketing. I feel like I talked to a business owner once a week who's like, "Oh, yeah, we went through a lawsuit because we were texting customers without-" That's all the time. And it's just a mistake. We got a lawsuit because the company and I'm not going to name them. The person instead of staying stopped, set opt-out, and this is one of those people, but this is all they do, issue, and they're very good at it, and it's like, "I almost kind of want to do it, but I'm not a break," but yeah, I think that there's. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on direct mail. I mean, what do you think you would do differently than most do? So one of the things that works so well about our email approach is that we have placed really heavy emphasis on, it comes from a friend, right, that mentality. When you open an email marketing message that we created, it doesn't scream, "I'm an ad." I look like advertising, whereas a lot of messages people open, it's like, boom, discount, code, coupon at the top, obvious product placement, yeah, it's clearly not from somebody who you know I can trust, you know, you're between Robert Shalvini, you know him, right? Very good. Very good talk. Okay, everybody loves Influence. Influence is awesome. I like pre-swashing even better. Dude, that book is amazing. You've seen the story, they went to the grocery store, they're testing out new soda flavors, and they're like, "Hey, do you want to try this new soda?" And people go, "No, no, no, no, thanks." But they changed the question right before they asked to, "Hey, do you consider yourself an adventurous person?" Of course, yeah, of course I'm adventurous. What do you want to try this new soda flavor? And the response, 10Xs, right? I apply that same mentality to email. What is email but the ask before the ask? It's, "I'm trying to create an emotional transformation before they get on the phone with your CSR, so that they're already excited, already enticed, already thinking fondly of your brand. I want to do the exact same with direct mail. Somebody gets a message that is like a personal relevant, looks like a letter from the contractor. You know, "Hey, this is Tommy Mello with A1 Garage Door. Six months ago we came out at your home. I want to check in. How's it going?" And so that you know, here's the list of other things that we do. Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. I just want stuff that looks like it comes from a friend, not something that looks immediately on site like an ad. You've got the A pile, the B pile, when you check your mail, right? Well, I'll tell you what I just did and you're going to dig this. Hey guys, today's the day. The discounted hotel block for Freedom of 2026 in Mandalay Bay closes to night. After today, rooms go back to full price and honestly, the bigger issue is the hotel's just running out of space. Once the block's gone, you might be scrambling to find a room anywhere near the event. No reason to pay more or worse, end up somewhere offsite because you sat on this too long. From 2026 to October 26th through the 28th at Mandalay Bay, go to FreedomEvent.com right now and get your room locked in or call us or text us at 602-581-7563. That's 602-581-7563. Get it off your plate today. Now, let's get back to this episode. Well, I'll tell you what I just did and you're going to dig this is I'm going to go to the very advanced handwriting company and they just, they just took my handwriting. It's the first time they've done this. My handwriting is like a two-year-old. What I did was I put, it's a real envelope with a real address. It says, "You're a neighbor but it's got this address." And I don't want to put my real address, but it's a real stamp. It looks like a birthday card and I put a picture of me and Bri holding our dogs in front of a truck in front of my garage. And I said, "From your neighbor, I sent it out to 3,000 people, so far it's done $225,000." I'm telling you, I'm telling you, direct mail awesome. And the thing is, it's done correctly. And the thing is, is it was like, "Hey, I just want to make sure you know I live in your neighborhood. I want to make sure everybody's house is safe." It was from a friend. Exactly what you said. And I called Robert Chaudini on this one. And of course. Oh, when you were making it? Yeah. Yeah, he helped me write it. Oh, that's cool. And literally we went through 10 scripts and I said it's not perfect, it's not perfect. I just don't like this. And then I said, "PS." If you ever need anything, just call your neighbor. I'll take care of you because we're friends. And I'll give you 20% off of any work. And I just put a QR code. But it was real handwriting. Now what I'm looking to do with this company is, "Can we build a smear system?" What should I mean by that? But when you take it out right at the end, there's a, like something damp that just smears the ink. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I didn't. Or push his heart. Or push his heart. And you could see if somebody writes hard, it's indented for sure. Because now they're getting so good at printing handwriting, this is what Anderson Renoul does. But I love the idea that now we're building a campaign that hits everybody on their street. But here's what I'm working on. You're going to love this. Zach, would you mind if I sensed something to your neighbors on your behalf? Here's exactly what I was thinking because everybody should have a beautiful garage door. So they approve it and it says, "From your neighbor, it's a letter from Mr. Anderson." And then it goes out and they've already approved it. So they say, "Hey, I had the boys that A1 come fix my garage door. They did a fantastic job. I ended up replacing it." I didn't know that the garage door was almost 300% return on investment. These guys did a great job. They're going to be in the neighborhood for the next month, they want to work. They want to do this. Because now it's from a friend. Now it really is. So you're talking about a friend from their neighbor on the street. Yeah. I've always thinking, and by the way, I love Robert, the dude is, I love that guy because I'm just fascinated. He comes to my house and then there's several times and he's like, "Now, here's the interesting study that you're going to like. Now, wait a minute." And he's a perfect joke. And he goes, you know, things like what they did is, well, it's very interesting. So many stories about Robert, but what they used to do and the people that used to come give you the flower, and they used to just come pin you up with the flower and say, "We're just trying to raise $5 for the cause." So from that was born, this is Zach, I'm stopping up. stop and off at Starbucks, gonna grab you something. No thanks, listen, I'm good. Listen, you come to my house, my wife's gonna feed ya. Don't make me guess, are you a caramel frappuccino, espresso, or green tea? All right, and if not, I'm still bringing you something. And what Robert says, just make it easy. Give them a guide to make their house safe. Just a simple guide, it cost you about 27 cents to make. I say, hey, I thought I'd give you this. There's been around my neighborhood, there's been some burglaries. I mean, they always come to the beautiful neighborhoods like yours. Here's a guide on us, and I think it'll date it. It's just a few quick steps that you need. And like, another idea I have, I just wanna share with y'all, 'cause it's gonna get your brain going. - Yeah, I love this. - It's, you know, I'm really close with the chirp guys I invested in chirp. And I can get accounts for probably better prices than most. It's give every painter, every epoxy company, a free chirp account that I pay for. And the five things you need to note, so that the sale is done on painting your house. Five things that you need to know before we come paint. And number four is, make sure you check your garage room for dense cracks. If it's not insulated, check out the trim in the bottom rubber. By the way, the boys at A will garage your service will come do it for no charge. Take a peek at it to make sure it's ready. And so I'm paying for the account, I'm controlling the messaging. And then after three months of the results, I'm covering 20% of it. Like, these little things, but no, no. Even if people hear it, they're never gonna do it. That's the problem. They're like, you, they're like, what we've been thinking about getting the email marketing going? And you're like, well, listen, when were you planning on doing that? And how many years ago were you planning on doing that? And when were you gonna have somebody sophisticated this monitoring the results? I think you said your results of your clients are 30 to 50% email open rates. The industry average is 60%. - Yeah, that's one. I mean, open rate is the first indicator, right? We just got to make sure we're giving eyeballs on it. 30 to 50 were pretty consistent at. 20 to 30 is good. I was like to set that expectation. Like, hey, if you have an email in a long time, 20 to 30% is good to get to. Everything you just mentioned, that's like, that pre-sweights of power, right? Like, the thing that happens before the ask or before. Setting, planting those seeds along the way, here are five ways to make sure your home is safe. If you're a contractor who has never emailed your list before, that is a perfect way to get back in good cases with those people. If you're going, man, I've got 15,000 customers that I've never emailed before. I've never reached out to my past customers before ever, five ways to keep your home safe is a perfect way to get back in touch. Hey, this is Zach with Awesome Heating Air, Awesome Garage Door Repair. We came out at your home once upon a time. We never stayed in touch. That's on us to reach out again and kind of rebuild this bridge. Here's five ways to keep your home safe. I was thinking about you wanted to make sure you had this. Boom, now you're back in business with your list. That's how you get to like a 30, 40, 50% open rate. It's just me, somebody that people look forward to hearing from and they know, oh, when he sends me something, it's going to be useful. It's going to be entertaining. What do you think about, what do you, restaurants do a really good job of getting birthdays? And the secret sauce of the birthdays, you get a free meal. Who goes on their birthday to get a free? Who goes by themselves? So, you know, you probably got 20 people with you or at least a family. So, I've always thought like, how to make people really feel special is hit them on their birthday on Christmas. You know, my buddy John Rulan, he passed away but giftology. He said, hit people when it's not a special time. You know, everyone gets Valentine's Day and birthday cards, like hit somebody to just say, hey, I'm just thinking about you. Same thing as blue fishing. Steve, you ever had blue fishing? - I don't think so. - Oh, no. It's like he's on these trips. He passed away too, dude. There's lots of few good buddies. And so he's on this trip and he's at this restaurant, and I think it was Italy. And he goes, listen, do you have coasters with the recipes on the back? He goes, could I take a hundred coasters? And he goes, I do got coasters that are paper, like with our logo on it, but I don't have the recipes on the back. And he goes, can I write the recipe on each one of these? Can you help me on tip you? So they wrote the recipe down. And all he did was put it, the recipe on the back and said, you gotta try these margaritas. Next time we'll have one together. And he sent it to all of his clients. And just for the hell of it, just to say, hey, listen, thinking about you. Next time I hope you come, this is one of the best margaritas I've ever had. And just acts of kindness when you don't need to do it. And I just love that idea. I mean, I'm obsessed with Robert Shuddy. In fact, I'm gonna make, I read his books all the time, but there's one like getting the yes, I think it's called. But, and then he's got this like 99 steps. Like people love babies and they love their pets. By starting a pest control company, I'd go to every vet in this city. And I'd say we're taking care of your pets for free. This is why to use us, we spend extra time making sure it's safe for our kids and pets. And then I'd say, I'm gonna give you a 10% marketing fee for everybody you recommend. And it's gonna become a second income that goes directly to you. And all of a sudden, what's, do you have dogs? - I don't, no. - No cats? - No, I have six kittens who live in my backyard right now. - Six kids, no, they're not. - Dogs are like, I mean, kids are way more important, but dogs, they be very kids. - I've got my four kids, I've got the stray cats. - So you're gonna make sure you get clean, like pest control. - Oh yeah, do pest control every month for sure. - Yeah, I find out my buddy, my buddy saw this pest control company and he goes, we used to put 15 gallons of product down every time we'd visit. The company that bought us, switched to backpacks, but three gallons. Think about that. They were gonna run five more routes per guy per day. And they saved seven bucks a house of product. But it freed them up to run five extra calls. But they cheapen the experience. It's just, it's interesting. You know what I think the next wave of marketing tools is gonna be? I think you've had over the 2010s or the 2020s, it's all been about follow up. Tools to follow up, tools to stay in touch, which obviously we're a stay in touch agency, right? But I believe the next wave of tools for marketing in the trade specifically is all personalization. Taking your customer experience to a level of personalization that the industry just hasn't seen. The way that we are recording all of our phone calls, the way that we're recording all of our technician visits, the amount of data we are capturing from those conversations that we just need to build a bridge a way to take that info and use it in our follow ups. When you talk about birthdays, first of all, I can't, I think it might have been your team. There was another, there was a contract last week. I was talking about setting up birthday campaigns with, but the big roadblock was, how do we bridge? How do we bring the data in? Like how do we get their birthday? That's what I was asking, how do we get it? How do we bring all this info that we know? Even if it is, you notice they have a dog or you notice they're Cardinal's fans or whatever little things you're catching when you're in the course of talking to that customer. I envision tools that capture all that information and help us follow up with insane personalization on your website, somebody comes to your website, welcome back, Zach, like it's been six months since your last service, here's a $20 off coupon, right? For your next, why aren't we doing that in the home services? You know what I mean? Because it's really hard to do all these things so they make it easier, but what's interesting is like, you even met Joe Kressara a bunch of times, I'm sure. Joe came and trained us plenty of times and he goes, what I want you to do is listen for the little things, like little Tommy wakes up every time I leave for work because the grocery store is so noisy. So he said when you're going through your options, say option four, that's, I call it the keep Tommy sleeping and dad leaves for work. Yeah, that's beautiful. Super personalization, right? Like, you know, listen, the listeners, they love these ideas that probably write in some down, they probably, but the problem is it goes, and sometimes it gets started, but never stays started. And so that's why I like using companies like you, I really do, is like set it and forget it, you're monitoring and my team's always, like it's just one more thing and I don't have to pay, I don't pay your payroll taxes, I don't pay you, FICA or Medicare. I don't have to pay for your PTO, I don't pay your, and I'm not saying, I have 1,400 people, I'm glad to pay for it, I mean, they're great people, but a lot of people think everything needs to come in house. And also, what I've always liked is specialists. I don't like an agency that does everything because they started the agency doing a few good things, right? Then they hired for this, this, this, and they're okay at everything else and I hate to say that, but it's true. They add the SEO into the package, they give you this package, do. Email SMS, Google Optimization, PPC and I'll say, and the PPC they're breaking even on. They're spending Philippines building a couple of backlinks, your site's not getting any best, or they're not building anything. And what I've noticed is, I mean, it's just, I've got specialty for everything, that just are the best at what they do. And I think that's important and you guys have really spent the time and no results. You know, Leland Smith spends a lot of money on direct mail to his members. - Oh yeah. - And his members. So one day Victor Rancor worked for him, you know, Victor. - Uh-huh. - He had his best sale ever, working for Champion Group. - Yeah. - And Leland calls him and says, "You did a great job, 30 or 40 grand on that paycheck." And he goes, "Yeah, boss, you know, really great. "I'm really excited." He's like, "You guys tell me well." He's like, "But did you sell them a membership?" He goes, "Well, I just got a $40,000 sale he goes." Well, if you believe in the company, we sold a membership, right? Leland wants membership sold, especially in Southern California with no weather, more than he wants big tickets. Isn't that interesting? - Yeah, that's crazy. There's so much debate about that right now, you know, like so many people, "Oh, memberships are dead." No, memberships are more alive than ever. I'm sure. - That's why I wrote a book on it. - I wrote a book on it and it's, it's 180 pages. And I'm also writing a book on equity center program that's almost done. - Oh nice. - And what I figured out what I write about is where I get the most questions. So if you could actually have the recording in the garage of like, you know, I always wondered if Amazon really does deliver in the garage. Wouldn't that be the best to use on email? Is have the AI analyze what most clients are asking about? - 100%. - And actually write about those subjects that people are like, did you know this many people are stealing in your neighborhood? And you can't, that stuff's so easy now with Claude. - Exactly. One of the things we're setting up with your team right now, I mean, I guess I shouldn't share trade secrets. I don't know if it's a trade secret or not, but you got like a, I think Walt, he came and he said, we noticed that the two year anniversary of a new spring being installed is when most people come back for service once it been two years. So we're like, perfect, what are we gonna do now? We're gonna set up a flow. So that once it hits that two year mark, boom, email campaign going out with a special for service, letting them know, hey, it's a two year anniversary. Since we see that 80% of customers, they come back for service after this. Again, taking that personalization, using the data you have in your CRM to send something relevant personal from someone you know I can trust. It really is very simple. Do you have a way to send emails to your customers? Do you have something interesting to offer them, something interesting to say about it? And then just being wildly consistent, being there when they need you. Everybody knows what times of year they're gonna be slow. Everybody knows what times of year they're gonna get certain service calls more than others. So just anticipate that and prepare messaging that gets you there before somebody else does. Because let's face it, you can put your sticker on the equipment in their home that you work on. You can leave behind an invoice with your logo on it. They're probably not gonna remember. They're probably not gonna remember though. They're probably gonna go back to Google and call again, and you're gonna have to rebuy that customer. But if you're staying in touch, yeah, if you're using the data you have and being consistent in a way that's valuable, then you increase the chance significantly that they only think of you when they do need service. Who am I gonna call when I need service again? Oh, how about the company that's been showing up every week in my inbox for the last year with Insighting? >> I don't know, that's why membership works. That's why email works. You know, one of the things that I told the crew yesterday in a big marketing meeting is we will not, we will take the user ID and it's based on a lot of things. Now it's got advanced that we know it's coming from that IP address and other things to be sure. And we block it for the next year. But now what we're doing is sending a V card to the customer for the store, but now I'm blocking it right after because guess what? If they go to PBC, even on our own search terms, we're paying a couple hundred bucks for that. So these simple little things, I'm like, how's your PBC costing so much? And then I'm like, well, let's do this, this, let's send a V card where they get stored and say, hey, and you make it funny. And you're like, store our number. And when they have to save it, they remember that it's in there. I did, I could talk, I just, you don't understand it. As much as I love sales, I could talk, we could go for hours. You know what, I was, I was sitting with Brad Bradley. You ever heard of, he's out of thing, it's Bradley, he's, I feel like I've seen his name on my Facebook feed. Yeah, he's all over. He's a bit of a picture right now. Yeah, he's like, dark hair. He interviews people all the time and what was it going with this? Oh, man, I told you about marketing for hours. Oh yeah, he asked me, he goes, what's more important? Marketing or sales? Grant Cardone asked me that actually. And I'm like, well, and I was thinking about Tom Howard with what he done with Fetchage Tech. I'm not an answering back question with him. Well, the thing is, is I go, well, sales, I mean, I think about what Tom Howard did, is just buy lists, outbound call them, send fill or Brent Buckley. And he built a $75 million company by just being really good at sales with a couple A+ home run hitters. But really, what's the most important thing? Marketing is, so the question you got to really think about, let's see, you got the 10 best salesmen or the 10 best marketers. 10 best salesmen are sitting around waiting for leads. The 10 best marketers could send an average salesman and make me more money. So I do think marketing is, you know, there's a tough one. Marketing and sales overlap a lot, for sure. I think the best way I ever heard a put, Gary Vee said this. He might have said this on Chris's show. I don't remember. But he basically said, marketing people will not win as much as salespeople. But salespeople will never win as big as marketing people. Like when marketing wins, marketing wins big. Yeah. Salespeople win consistently, right? They have to go out win every day. When the marketing team wins, it's like. Holy crap. It's an egg of meat. Alex Ramose took the quote off of Jeff Bezos and Jeff Bezos said. In baseball, the best you could get is four runs, right? You got bases loaded. You had a home run. You got four runs. But in business, every once in a while, you could get 1,000 runs or 10,000 runs. And so I look at marketing is that thing that engine that could get like, I've been obsessed with marketing people. I was like, how could I recreate that? I was like, you got to get obsessed about marketing. Llevy taught me two things. Get obsessed with your financial KPIs. Get obsessed with marketing. Never hand that off. You need to know that stone cold. Everything else could be worked out and delegated. So you talk about three buckets. Campaigns, tactics and automations. Most contractors don't know the difference. August through each one. Yeah. If you're listening to this and you're going, all right, maybe we should take our list more seriously. Maybe we should stay in touch with our customers. There's some money there. You have broadcasts or tactics, which is a one-off email. You get in, oh no, we're low on jobs today. We need plumbing jobs. We need repair jobs. Let's send out a broadcast. People usually call it a blast. I hate the word blast, but that's a one-off email broadcast. Then you have sales campaigns, which is a series of emails working together to achieve a goal by a deadline. So you say, now through September 31st, you can get $500 off a new garage door. Here's how to take action. So you do a series of emails, six or seven, building up to it, teasing the deadline. I don't see any companies in the trade that do that until we come in and show them how to do it. Because most people send out an email, they don't get a lot of calls, oh, it doesn't work. Yeah. Dude, you've got to run a campaign. You've got to overcome objections, make a case over a series of emails. And then the third type is automations, which are emails that trickle out when customers meet a criteria. They become an open estimate, boom, series of automated messages. They become a customer who finished a job that did not sign up for a membership, boom. Series of follow-up messages. So one-off broadcasts, sales campaigns, they have a deadline, and then automated emails. - Yeah, I think that's what you learn a lot from scarcity is another thing about influences. Like, hey, we got three slots open next week. - Yes. - You know, that works really, really well. And it's gotta be honest. You know, he talks about integrity. But I mean, yeah, if you do that correctly and you just tell people, like we're only giving, we're gonna give 10 doors out. We've overordered. Like, I do this all the time. I've got 10 doors for a 16/7. And the customer ended up canceled 'cause they had to go out of town, or whatever. You use real reasons, yeah. And say, you know, even like the kick-down approach I was telling you, listen, you don't wanna use our company great because we give a lifetime more to do this, this, this, this. There's a builder company we know, does great work. And because they don't have any of the overhead, they offer this at this price, but it's a little harder to get under schedule if you're not in a hurry. Like, how do you take every single thing and obsess about it? From the way the lead comes in, to how you handle the call, to how you convert that to a client, to how you build the average ticket by giving more options. See, the reason why I think email is not as effective for us as it would be for a multi-trade, is if I just did your HVAC unit, I could come out and do the plumbing and electrical. - Exactly, yeah. - And for us, we're like, we just gave you a lifetime warranty on everything we just did. We don't even need to be out there the next five years. You know, there's nothing. Last guy I wanted in my house is a salesman that I just bought from two years ago. The gave me a lifetime warranty to find something else to shove down my throat. - Yeah. - So I try to look at it from the customer's perspective, but once I do garage flooring or some of these other trades like installation. - Yeah. - The email. - Oh my God. - Well, that's, you're a hundred percent spot on. Multi-trade is such an obvious fit, right? It's so easy, 'cause you sold them product A, what about BCD, what about all these other things you do? There's also something to be said for the referral component though, for a single trade service. Like, you talked about, hey, can I send a message from your neighbor? You can't send it directly to the neighbor, but you can set out incentives, you can set out reminders. I love sending out reminder emails for single trade services. Like, hey, this is your reminder to perform this routine maintenance. Change your filter, do this regular thing. Reminders are awesome, 'cause people go, oh yeah, that's super helpful. And then when their neighbor asks them, who did you have come up for your garage door? They're like, oh, A1, they send me these reminders. It's super helpful, they're great. So there's a value as well for even a single trade business to just stay in top of mind period. Sometimes people kind of bark at it, right? And they go, well, I don't know about the ROI for us. I don't know if it's worth it. And my question in return is always, so you're just never gonna talk to your customers again? That's it, you're just never gonna say anything. You're never gonna remind them to take care of that thing. You sold them. You're not gonna send them any helpful advice, any tips at all ever again. You just, it's over, it's done. But at the same time, if I ask, do you wanna have a long-term relationship with your customers? Everybody will say yes. Like, wait, the key to long-term relationship is stay in touch. Yeah, keep coming. - Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, I want you to read this book. A chat home, ultimate sales machine by chat homes. - There you go. - It says about it's Dream 100. Then there's a several book called Dream 100. And what I want people to think about. right now is that I've built software for this. But I haven't added this piece to it. But think about 100 people in your life that some of them are close to you. It could be a vendor. It could be your supplier. It could be somebody that helps you get ahead in life. It could be your preacher. But you put this tree in 100 together and some of the people you don't know. So how would you get to know somebody that you don't really know yet? Well, on their social media, you always are the one liking and commenting, right? And you're like a fan. But not in a fan way that you wanted to get a picture with them, like not just like a weird-- You want to have a really genuine comment and say like, I really appreciate your stuff. And all of a sudden, you stand out. And then you send up-- you're constantly-- Chad Holmes talks about it. So he says, he sends a tape measure to like this one client could be my biggest client, could pay payroll for 10 years. So he sends him a tape measure with a logo on it. It says, are you measuring the result with so and so? Then he sends him a Rubik's cube, a small one. And says, I'm still puzzled why we haven't met. And there's a drip. But in this dream 100, you're constantly staying on top of people sending them a letter. It's certain people you want to stay in touch with. Other people you want to get in front of to get in touch. And I just love that stuff. And then some of that sales, some of it's marketing. But it all really, for me, drives into marketing. I mean, people like-- people buy it from people they like. People like-- People, you know, it's good about-- I've played this video yesterday. I'm just going to pull it up because we're going to add it to this podcast. So I'm going to play this video. And you're just going to listen. And I think you're going to dig it. So-- The number one rule of sales is to come to like your customer and show them. And as soon as they see that you like them, all the defenses come down. Because we know that the people who like us are going to do well for us. So honest praise are giving people a compliment. Also, showing people that you like them because you have similarities to them. Really, you weren't born in Michigan. I was born in Michigan, or my wife was born in Michigan. Show them. So here's the deal. I'm thinking about this, right? Kind of playing this all morning. I played it in my morning interview with my staff. I call them co-workers. And I was like, I had this epiphany in my garage or a freedom call. Then I'm like, you got to love your clients. Like, when I went out with my clients, World War II about it took the rest of the day off. I talked to them about World War II. I walked in a guy's house with a cagerator. I was like, dude, I'm on the clock. But I can't-- can you show me how you make beer? This is the coolest thing. The guy had seven fishing poles. I'm like, show me your biggest fish. I had a guy with a Bernie Sanders shirt on. This is way back when I was in the field. I was like, I want to learn more about this guy. What do you love about him? Genuinelyly interested. So then I said, I'm doing this all wrong. I took this epiphany off of that. What if I hired people that I genuinely liked? That I was like, I got so much in common with you. And I showed them every day. And I saw them. And I'm like, dude, how about that volleyball game? How about that golf tournament someday? How about that game the other day? The Patriots got smoked. What if you hired people that you genuinely liked? How easy it would be to build a culture? Instead of being liked, you liked them. So therefore, does that make sense? Have you heard of the 10 greatest salespersons? It's a really old book. It's like maybe 80s or 90s. It's pretty hard to get a copy now. I just managed to find one. 10 greatest salespersons doesn't have a book. It's super old. I recently got my hands on a copy like a couple months ago. The first chapter of the book is about a guy named Joe Gerard. Oh, I know Joe Gerard. The best salesman, great salesman. Yeah, there's a book called The Greatest Salesman. Okay, yeah. That's it. The greatest salesman. And all he did was stand contact with people. They came coming back for their son's car. All he did was send out cars. He spent more time reaching out to clients in the past and then he built a book of business and they'd come back. We need another car. And he finished every interaction with. And remember, I like you. That's what he said to people. I really like you. He literally said it as his clothes are literally he's going away from him. I have that book. It's literally, if you look at my book, that book is so underlined and circled. Yeah. 10 greatest salespersons has nine more chapters on like other people like him, but he's the first chapter. So the greatest salesman in the world is just on hit him and it's still available. It's just a paperback. Then there's what is it? The greatest secret. What is the one that man? There's another book by it's a really good book, but it's like the greatest gift. I forget what it's called, but anyways, so someone is listening and I get back to this for a minute. They've never done email marketing. How do they get started from scratch? Step one, step two, step three. What platform do they send up for? How do they get their lists in there? What do they do first? Step one, got to have a way to send emails. That's number one. You got to have a way to send emails to your entire customer list. Again, no copying and pasting, putting it in your outlook or Gmail window and trying to send all your customers from there. You don't have a legitimate platform, MailChimp, ConstantContext, ServiceTitanMarketingPro, Clavio. Is there anyone you like better? At this, I used to be pretty strongly opinionated about it. Now I recognize every software has its trade-off, so we use whatever our clients have. If somebody doesn't have something, I'll typically refer them to customers. I use HubSpot2. So have a way to send messages to your customers in the first place. The second thing is decide who the emails are going to come from. Who's name is going in the front line? Is it the founder? Is it a president? Is it a mascot? Who do we use? The team at A1. That's your offer. That's where we use with you guys. So you have the founder's name, a name of a personality or the team. We should A&B test putting Tommy in A1. For sure. It was just building a separate. Yeah. I think it's great of you. Never just the name of the business, always have a name of a person or people. So the second thing is sit down and plan one email week. That's it. One email week to a different segment each week. So week one of the month, every single first week, send a follow-up to all your open estimates. It can be two sentences. Hey, what's up? It's Tommy with A1 Garage, you had an estimate with our team in the last six months? What should we do? What should we do? What should we do? Are you still sitting on that? Should we close this out for you? Have you given up on this? I love that. I love that. Yeah. That's right. I love those. Again, it's a personal conversation. That's my point. It's just make it feel like it's coming from a person because that is. Second week of the month, do some kind of reminder message to all your past customers in general. Hey, what's up? This is just your monthly reminder to make sure you get your tune up or you take care of your filter or you take care of XYZ. Make sure your sensors on your garage door are working. Here's how to do it. Third week of the month, send something to all your membership customers, get them to take advantage of their benefits or make sure they don't cancel when the end of their contract comes. Fourth and final week of the month, do a hand razor campaign. It's what you mentioned with we have five spots left, ten spots left, or we have a limited amount of availability this month. Would you like to claim one of these spots? Let me know ASAP and then you have your call to action. Just do that. One, two, three, four. Every single week. Open estimates, reminder, members, hand razor email, done. That's your email marketing strategy. If you do that, first of all, you're probably already paying for a way to do it. Most companies already do have a way to send emails just now using it. They're just burning $1,500 a month on whatever software they have. If you just do that, you're going to be really surprised at how many people reach out, book jobs, when you need it, like, hey, let's get one of these campaigns out right away because we need some jobs in this market or we need some jobs in general. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how many people go, oh, I really like this. I was talking to a garage door company that we worked with just yesterday. And he goes, dude, you've turned me into like a little celebrity in town. When I walk around in town, I get customers who say they read my emails. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's really, really cool. If I reach out to my buddy that had an AI company, did I send you his contact? I think I did at one point. An email AI. So what it did is Joe Paulish introduced me, really smart guy, big company, doing like 10 million a year or something, and what it would do is look at the email and where you went to, where you spent time. One of my buddies goes over, he goes, you know, Joe Paulish's email. He goes, they're so effing good. But every single time they were built for that guy of what he liked, because the emails were like 20 pages. And so he'd go narrow on in this, and that's where he was spending his time. So the AI would know focusing on these areas to be customized, personalization. Personalization. Yeah. Personalization. I'm telling you. You know what I've been really pushing, and I haven't done it yet, and it's been very hard for me to do with my vendors, but why would my vendor want to give a discount to me cheaper than the price? Well, wouldn't they rather their equipment go in versus someone else's? So if I was able to prove to them this customer did not buy. And I had the CEO of that company, the vendor, make a quick video, and I gave him the script that was like, simply, look, we weren't closely with A1, they spend a lot of money with us, they're the largest company, so we only do this for them. But we have a lot of doors that customers have canceled in our warehouse. And what we're willing to do is give those for a much better price to A1 and A1 only, and then extend that discount to you. And have them, the vendor make the video, send it out in an email. If I see that, and I like the company, it was just more than I wanted to spend, but it's got to be true. Everything that I just said has to be true, but that's one thing I'm going to work with you on. I'm going to need to get more involved with data, it's like. I can't-- 168 hours a week, I would say to myself, but it's like, where did it go? So you were the CEO of PowerSline Pros. Well, let me ask you one other thing. So you developed something called The Will Won't Research Framework. I didn't develop this. I learned it from a guy named Eddie Schleiner. He's-- he's-- Eddie Schleiner. Eddie Schleiner. Schleiner. Schleiner Schleiner. Eddie's mother. SHL, EY, and EY. SHL Schleiner. Yeah. In my opinion, he's the best copywriter in the Dan Kennedy. In the Dan Kennedy? I think Dan Kennedy would probably look-- I think he might know Dan Kennedy, actually. I think Dan Kennedy would probably look at him and be like, I approve. So Eddie, I recently hired him for some coaching and I went through a new training he did. He has this brilliant research method where you basically go through AI. And you're like, here's my customer base. Here's what I'm trying to sell. I want you to find me real voice of market data, not blog posts, not editorials, real voice of market data from Google, Reddit, Cora, wherever customers are talking in actual forums on what they struggle with related to my service, what pains they have. And it gathers all this voice of market data. In incredible amounts of quotes, things customers actually are concerned about when they're purchasing garage doors or air conditioners. And then you say, OK, rank the mass desires. What are the desires that these talking points are revealing from the customers? And it will come up with all the markets mass desires, things that people really want when they're purchasing these products. And then the final step of the research is, I want you to compile a-- you'll love this. I want you to compile a will and won't analysis for me. For each mass desire you have found in this voice of market data, what will customers admit about that desire? What will they say? And what won't they say? Because it's too painful or tied to their ego. In the case of garage doors, one mass desire is to be treated fairly by the company that comes out and serves me. A customer will say, I need to shop around, or I need to look at this and make sure I'm getting a good quote. What they won't say is, I don't want to look like a fool in front of my spouse. I don't want my spouse to come home and think that I got taken advantage of by a contractor. They won't say that out loud. They won't admit that. But that's data. That's information that you can use in your marketing messaging. Another mass desire would be, I want a high quality product. I want something that works consistently like it's promised. They'll admit that out loud. But what they won't say is, I've been burned in the past, and I'm too insecure to say, I have no idea how to fix this. It would break. I'm completely-- if this breaks, I'm either going to look like an idiot because I have to fix it or look like an idiot because I don't have the money to pay for it. So when you have all this will and won't table, I basically go in when I'm writing campaigns. I'm like, this just wrote my ads for me, because I'm just going to dramatize the will statement in my hook. And then I'm going to call out the won't statement. So people feel like I'm reading their minds. And then I'm going to put my product as a solution at the end. And that's my framework for how to craft these messages. I love it. It's powerful. I would like to see it in action. Well, we'll jump on a couple calls in the next month, because I want to learn more about this stuff. So at PowerSign Pros, you were training customer service teams across the trades. What did you learn about why customers say yes? Or know that most contractors still don't understand? What did I learn about why people say yes or no? I learned that confidence and enthusiasm is an incredible selling tool. I think confidence and enthusiasm might be the most underrated tools of selling in your arsenal. When I was at PowerSign Pros and even now today, I've listened to thousands of CSR phone calls. And you've got two CSRs who are saying the same things. The words coming out of their mouths are identical. But one's book in 90% of their calls, and the other's barely getting past 50 or 60. One of them has confidence and enthusiasm. They're excited about it. How do you think I built an email marketing best test? Like, nobody's going around with the same level of enthusiasm for email marketing as I am, not even close in the entire industry. I have the most confidence in enthusiasm about this particular channel. And I firmly believe that's been probably the number one asset for me in growing and acquiring customers, improving this out to people. Because I'm just really enthusiastic about it. That's something I learned there, coaching CSRs, even now working with our sales team. I'm like, the most enthusiastic salesperson usually wins, because they give the customer the most confidence. You know what's interesting is I've gotten to a lot of events have been on stage. And I'm like, do you guys realize that the garage door at the smile of your home? It's 40% of your curb appeal. Exactly. It's literally 268% return on investment. I'm like, listen, when I'm watching a James Bond movie, I'm looking at the background of that garage door. Like, I've learned to love it. And I bought a company from one of my mentors, a garage door company in Phoenix. Been around a long time. Great guy. I walk in his winter house, and he's got stacks and stacks and stacks of uninsulated doors. When I go, why aren't you selling stillbacks? He goes, Tommy, it's just a garage door. And oh my gosh. I might, my hardster, I just, I was just a garage door. I'm building a cathedral. I'm like, this is like, this is so important. And it was just crazy because you see a guy that's on a business for that, and that he doesn't believe. And I think the difference is belief. And if you could sell the belief, and you could have people believe like I believe. Like, I'm working on this stuff with Marcus Sheridan. Basically, to help rank the LLMs. And he's giving me all these questionnaires. And I'm like, I truly believe my hard hearts that most people deserve to have a new garage door. And it's an investment into their home and their family and their safety and their security. And that it's the best thing to do. It'd be like, you know, obviously, it's cheaper than a roof for an HVAC unit or a hot water heater. I think the price is right. And I don't think being the cheapest is a solution. But if you can offer people flexible payments that make it affordable, I think that's where you're going to win. You talk about the emotion marketing. Emotion marketing, making customers feel something. And not just CNN. I know some service companies, which most people think of transactional, create an emotional connection with their clients. You know, a lot of what we talked about, I think kind of helps with that. Again, when I'm creating a campaign, I always sit there and think to myself, I know for a fact that nobody's looking forward to like, nobody's expecting this email today. Nobody's expecting any email from their HVAC company. Nobody's expecting email from their garage door or their window cleaning business. But how can I make it so that they're happy they got it anyway? Nobody goes around thinking, I really hope I see an ad for water today. But when you see a liquid death ad, you can't help a smile a little, right? When you see Ryan Reynolds on a mint mobile ad-- Or the Dollar Shave Club, I just saw the Shave Club. Yeah, man. Jesse Kohl's Savannah Bananas. Nobody was clamoring for-- He's an attention guy. Trickly baseball. Yeah. But nobody's mad about it either once they see it. Right? Yellow. There's so many different ways to do it, right? You could tell stories, you could answer questions. You could just be one of our copywriter's Pat. He is the man. He wrote this awesome email for a company that's going to go out next month, right before Halloween. It's a company that sells generators. So how do you surprise into life? How do you create some entertainment value here? So the email is painting a picture of the first scene of a horror movie. Lights go out. Life walks out. She sees the shape of an axe. All downhill from there, right? But not if you had a generator. A generator could make every horror movie irrelevant in three seconds. It's just a really entertaining, funny email. As you're going along, you're like-- I didn't wake up thinking about generators today, but that's delightful. That's an amazing surprise. It's a story. I was studying the Wizard of Hats. Oh, dude. And the story-- so I've been telling a lot of stories. And so the stories I've been working on is-- I wish I had it in front of me, but it's like, when I was a kid, all I dreamed about was a 250 C.C. Kawasaki dirt bike. And that's my ad. And it goes, it's something along the lines of chrome handle bars, and it's going through it. And it's like, every dream starts in a garage. There's something like that. Oh, yes. But it didn't say discounts or anything else. And it was like, and people called me. Everybody had a new call, and they're like, dude, that. And then I go with the next one. I got these TV ads, where this little boy-- he's got all the neighbors going, thanks, Tommy. And he goes to his friend, Darla. She's like, thanks, Tommy. So he's fixing stuff, right? He's like a little handyman. And it goes, hey, kid, could you hand me that wrench? And then it's me. And then the technician does-- Oh, I've seen the back to the future when you did it. Yeah, and then the second one was back to the future. Yeah, but it's just super fun. It's a story of people-- it's got the lorean in it. It's like, dude, I just-- I just know that my colleague, talking to you right now, is like, I love being the CEO founder, but I could just be in marketing. I know, I know. And there's so many other steps to it. Like, you've got to get the call. Well, you've got to dispatch it, right? Like, you're only struggling with your weakest link. And that's just interesting, because I'm like, man, I could do so much. There's this study. I think we'll have a new balance that they said. This CEO came in. It was 80% direct response, 20% top of funnel branding. [BLANK_AUDIO] the guy flipped it. It was 80% top, 20% direct response. They stayed even the next two years. The next year, the company tripled. Because top of funnel takes a lot longer. But it's just really, really, I was talking to Alex Ramosia other day. He's like, you know that, right? I was like, yeah, I've heard about that. He's like, that shit works. He's like, most people don't have the time to patience or the commitment or, you know, you gotta pick your station and then own that audience. So Aaron Gainer uses Roy. And he goes, dude, 50% of the people know me. He goes, everybody recognize my voice. It's that I get hate mail because I get that. I advertise so much. But that's what it takes. And I, you know, I don't know where the world's going 'cause there's so, you know, I was on a call yesterday with a duct tape marketing, the dog that took it over. And I was like, dude, rad it's a good spot. House, Pinterest, Angie, Yelp. And I'm going through every LLM is great. Like, if you really think about it, marketing is this vast. There's so many, before it was the yellow book. Yellow pages, TV radio, right? Now it's like, oh my gosh, what do I do? And we're talking about email marketing. But what I love about email marketing is basically free other than paying for the service. And it's a list that's warm. Yeah, super low cost, super high ROI. I mean, you think it's the best ROI any company could do? I think it's the easiest. Like you already have the leads. Yeah, that's my whole pitch, right? I'm like, look, you already have the leads. You already have the leads. You're already paying for a way to send something to them. So let's create something the most compelling thing possible. And let's scoop up all that low-hanging fruits that's there. Have you ever heard Scott Galloway, you know, him prof G media? No, I think so. You would like his stuff. But when his team is working with him on a speech or podcast appearance, they're always putting together data. They're heavy, heavy on the data. And Scott will walk in and be like, more drama. That's his phrase when they're prepping them. It's your more drama. And I feel like that's my same with our team. It's send it when we're reviewing email campaigns. I'm looking at stuff and I just go, where's the drama, guys? Where can we add more drama here? Where can we create more of that like dreaming in your garage effect? We're gonna create more of the haunted house effect. Because with the email marketing, you already have the leads. You already have a way to talk to them. Just be consistent. Be entertaining. And good things happen. Like it's pretty, if you're consistent and entertaining, it's pretty hard to mess it up. I agree with you. I mean, I love this stuff. I'm trying to see if I have this story. Oh, me and I don't know if I have it, but it was this, it's a story I put in my book. And it's not out yet, but it's a book about, it's called The Mellow Method. And it's all I want employees like in me. And we each took a chapter. Oh, that's very cool. And there's this story in there about this lady whose husband just died. And he took care of everything. She's like, I don't know what to do. I'm going to sit by my car tonight. I don't want anybody to break in. And I really worked hard to write it into a story. And man, I had so many comments. And here's what I've learned. Is human talking into AI? Let the AI do it, and then a human rewrite it. Because AI will help with the details and get the punctuation, right? And then you've got to go in and write it, and make it your own. It's your own. It's getting fixed, and then it's your own again. That's how it's done. There's one thing that AI is terrible at with writing. There's really, I don't have an opinion strongly either way on whether people use it or not. AI is really bad at pacing, though. Pacing the story, pacing the message. It uses all the weird, it's not x, it's y, and the M-dash and stuff. But it can't pace a story well. It can't build suspense. When you go through, you've got to create a feeling of suspense, when people feel like they're slipping down the slide, lying down, learning your ad. That's the one thing that I haven't been able to figure out how to get it to do is pace it. Well, it just kind of throws the details at you immediately. It's not as emotional. It's good. It's good. You know, we almost went through the whole call with podcasts that I talked about AI. What's one piece of advice for every home service company owner listen? I think that the most important thing that we all need to remind ourselves, again and again and again, is that when it comes to marketing and sales and growing your business, trust is the most important thing that you just got to trust. If people trust you, because you do good work, because the way you communicate is clear and compelling, and your team trusts you, it's really hard to fail. I think trust, if everything could come back to one thing, I would always just say it's trust. How can you be a person of trust, communicate trust, build trust, re-earn it again and again and again, and never take it for granted when you have it? I love that. I want to give you one idea that I want you to tell people how to get a hold of you so. I shouldn't even say this, because I think it's like a secret idea. You know, I'll leave you had a great business, the Seven Power Contractor, but he was getting ready to retire, and he'd done so much for me when I transacted the first time for a one. I said, "Let me buy out your company, you stay on." And he already had everything built. He just didn't necessarily have the time effort or energy, you know, being close to 70 at the time. And, you know, GM take it, took it to the next level, and actually implemented it in the courses in HSF. And I'm like, how many people out there are there that never really did anything with their list? They might have 300,000, they might have sold books, they got this list, but they haven't done anything with it. And how many of them are correlated to, or home services? So, and how many of them, unfortunately, pass away or retire and just kind of let it dwindle? So, I'm going to build a service that finds those things and just buy it from the family. And so, let's let this legacy live on. And I think that could be massive. - Wow. - That's these little things that we get all these great ideas, nobody acts on them. They're like, "Ah, one day we'll get to it." - I will act on that idea, Tommy. - You know what? The first time I saw Zoom, it was during COVID, and I'm like, "Dude, this works really, really good." I should probably throw a million dollars in stock. It went up six times, I never did it. I'm like, you just know that it's going to go, it's a more aboveest mentality of like, if you understand how it works, and you like it, and you know, other people like it and use it, invest in it. How do people get all these act? - The easiest way to get ahold of me is withsendit.com. In fact, we came up with a free gift for your listeners. If they go to withsendit.com/expert, it's a swipe file of 20 of our best performing email campaigns and a copy-paste, open estimate follow-up campaign that they can send out and see what happens with their list. But withsendit.com is the best way. - So withsendit.com, and if they want to reach out to you personally, you are LinkedIn, Facebook, where do you hang out? - I'm on all the places, the Facebook, I think is where most contractors reach me. - Oh wow. - Yeah, so that's our side. - All right, and finally, we talked about a lot of stuff, man. Give us, there's one final thought for the listeners. - One final thought, be authentic, be not needy, and be consistent. - I love it, man. Well, this is well done. - I love that from one of your guests, actually. - What's your name? - Ben Settle came on your show several years ago. I learned a lot from him on email, and he taught me that. - That's full circle. - Super cool. - Well, just when I add that you're a student, and if you stay curious, you just get to go places that are unimaginable. Stay reading, stay reaching out to people, don't be afraid to ask, and the sky's the limit, because somebody's already been where you want to go. I always say, you don't need to replace the tie, reinvent the wheel. Sometimes you can throw new hubcaps at them. - Thanks, Zach. - Thanks. - Well done.