Transcript of The Highest ROI Marketing Tool for Home Service Businesses (Tim Hilcove) New

How much time do you have to be reading raps while you're trying not to drive into the person in front of you? They're not going to be reading your 5-star review.

Welcome to The Home Service Expert, built for blue-collar entrepreneurs who are ready for more.

When your customer says yes, stop talking.

Find that the pursuit of a goal, at least for me, is a source of my happiness. You're never going to be successful doing what everyone else does. New episodes every Monday. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learn 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, N-O-T-E-S, 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 in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com/podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today I got Tim Hillcove here. He takes care of my vehicle wraps and he does a fantastic job. He gets it done with quality. He, he wrapped my personal truck.

If you're watching this, I got a little souvenir, uh, but he keeps up. We've got 42 guys training, they all need new trucks. We've got 60 coming in next month, hopefully 90 the next month. And not a lot of people know this, but I used to have my own wrap shop and we used to have moonlighters who did a good job, but we could probably handle 10 a month and we just got backed up. And Tim seems to always find a way, super great quality, What I love the most about Tim is he's a specialist. You do fleets, you don't, you could do anything you want. You did my truck, but you do such a good job with fleets. It's quality work. You do the second layer, the reflection. Smart Wrap Vehicle Wraps and Graphics is a full-service design, print, and installation company specializing in high-impact vehicle wraps for businesses nationwide based out of Phoenix, Arizona. I go on and on about the accolades, but he started it with his dad in 2009, aspired to help businesses growth through impactful branding and high-converting vehicle advertising. Two decades experience marketing, design, and production. Tim is turning a company's identity into mobile marketing assets that drive with real results.

This episode is most businesses overlook one of the most effective, cost-effective, and powerful tools available, which is vehicle wraps. In this episode, Tim's going to break down how strong branding, clear messaging, and strategic design can turn everyday vehicles into lead generation machines. So, Tim, dude, I've known you a long time now. You take care of us. You do a lot with Enterprise. You do a lot with Renee too. You're just really good at what you do. How's life?

It's been busy. It's been amazing. The last 18, 20 months has been unbelievable. Unbelievable growth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So explain to us a little bit You know, I know there's a lot to it because I was in the business. You don't just buy a printer. I mean, there's so much craftsmanship to it. There's quality involved. 3M versus all the other stuff. Talk to us a little bit about how the company's grown, what you love about it, and where you're looking forward to.

As far as growth, since, say, June of '24, we've almost doubled. We doubled staff, we've doubled revenue. Where we're going. I'm gonna take this as big as it'll go. Don't have a hard number at this point, but the next, the next stop is keep this going. Just keep it going for now. Yeah.

You need, you don't need a lot of clients. You need the right clients, I think is the name of the game. How do you wrap a vehicle? And let's say someone calls you from Florida or Texas or Washington. How does that work?

Well, we'll, you know, design it or use their already made design, you know, either from whatever agency they used or what they have now, print it, proof it, send it out to a local place that we've worked with before, or, you know, start doing some calling around, you know, ask the trick questions that most places that don't know what they're doing won't be able to answer. And just go from there. It's been really helpful with, with Gettle and also with A1. We've forged a lot of relationships in all of the markets that you're in.

Yeah.

So that's been helpful.

Yeah, we're in a lot of markets. I mean, always quality. You know, your brand is your calling card. And I learned a lot from Dan Antonelli. He said, I mean, the studies that he's done based on a great rap that's differentiating yourself, But the quality of the wrap matters. So many companies, they do it a shade different. They put cheap stuff on, it burns, it just doesn't look good. They, they skimp out on stuff. What have you found are some of the shortcomings that most other companies seem to miss?

It's, it's been real interesting to see what's available, not just here in Phoenix, but what, I don't know, what people let pass or is good enough. The thing that bugs me, and I'm assuming it bugs other people that, that get wraps, eventually it'll really bug you, is putting seams right in the middle of a door.

Yeah.

Putting seams where they shouldn't be. You might not notice from 25 feet away, but I notice. Yeah, it's kind of like how Steve Jobs said if you open up the back of a MacBook, he wants it to look like perfect even though nobody's going to see it.

Yep.

And if you open up the back of like a PC, it's just who cares, right? Like this is just— it just works.

Yeah.

But this is a piece of artwork when you're never going to see it. So seams bother, bother me, bother other people. Putting relief cuts is another thing that just really ruins the design. You can imagine your, your face on the wrap or say the ghetto wrap, right?

Yep.

That area that's inserted in the van where the window would normally go is a bit of a deep channel to— I don't know why people do this. Maybe they don't know how to do it without doing this, but they cut a 1-inch white strip around there. And, you know, it goes right through the middle of your forehead, ruins the design. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that way.

There's a lot of people that cut corners when it comes to wraps. They do a partial wrap. Some of the guys do lettering and they put everything they do in life. So many businesses that are listening right now, they're so proud of their wrap, but they don't realize that's the lifeblood of their company. The brand is— they don't spend the money on the brand. They don't spend the money on the wraps. What happens when you cheap out on material and the gloss that goes over and everything else?

The thing is, I don't think— well, I hope they don't go to the wrap places and say, can you get me the cheapest material possible because I'm super cheap? They probably are just uneducated and say, well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. It's less than this other place. And you won't know until 9 months later everything's turning black. And now, now you've got a real problem on your hands. More so than that, though, even if it's, you know, materials to materials, you know, even like you said, the partials and the lettering and stuff like that, I just get the impression that doesn't look like you're fully committed. To your business or your brand, maybe what's the homeowner's impression, especially in, you know, the home services industry or those clients, right? You're looking for somebody that believes in what they do, right? Like they're like, well, you know, kind of have to do this. And also I'm a realtor and I, you know, do Bitcoin and stuff. And, you know, the— I like to say that the whole— the hallmark of an unlicensed contractor is not a full wrap for sure. Yeah. And it's probably lettering at best.

Yeah. I'll tell you this. It's funny how I talk a lot about getting the right finance person in your company to understand your numbers, get the right brand, pay attention to the call center. And a lot of people out there are like, we're going to spend the money here, here, and here, but they're missing the boat. And I remember when I got rebranded and we actually did quality, like change your email signature, change your yard signs, make sure that your billboards look like this, put the brand within the company in the building, all these things. And what I didn't recognize or realize at the time was, yes, the clients started calling and begging us to come out there. They're like, we're only going to use you. The cancelation rates went down, the conversion rate went up, the average ticket went up. But also people wanted to work here. And those vans, we buy new ones. We don't buy used ones because we understand accelerated depreciation and we turn them back in after 5 years. The truck's still worth a lot of money. Apply that towards the new truck, keeps the morale up. Not a lot of breakdowns, keeps you busy because I don't know how many trucks we turn back in now that we've kind of cycled through, but a lot of them.

It's a lot.

Yeah. I mean, how many are you doing for us on a regular basis? I have no idea.

It, uh, it varies, but you know, somewhere between 30 and 60 a month. Uh, sometimes it's 30 and a half a month.

Yeah. What's crazy is it's going to speed up and it's only going to get busier. And you know, there's one thing we're committed to buying late, like the latest one is we're going to buy the latest and greatest, best tablets. We want the best, most pristine wraps. Are we still doing the second layer? Yep. So can you explain— I think this is awesome. Can you explain that second layer and why we do it?

Yes. So part of that— and this is just for the A1 brand— the part of the logo and the phone number on the side and the back is reflective and it's an overlay. I'd imagine a lot of what you do is not always during daylight hours, especially, you know, farther north where, you know, you It could be winter and it's nice to see, like, I actually took a—

That pops.

That totally pops. Yeah. Like my neighbor was getting his garage door fixed one day and it was nighttime and I drove by and my lights like completely lit it up. I took a picture and sent it to you and I'm like, yeah, look at that. It's no other, very few other companies do that.

It's just one of those things that differentiate us. Originally when I got the vehicles designed, not the wrap, But we do the top, the tubes up top, and then we really deck out the interior. And we learned a lot, but I like the tubes wrapped too. I like it to just look like that's a pristine company. Like I always think about Maytag back in the day where the guy's kind of sitting around waiting for his job because it never broke down.

Exactly, yeah.

And I just think people are like, yeah, we're not gonna call A1 for the cheap. We're gonna call 'em for when we want it done right and they'll show up right away and they're gonna be safer on our family. And that's really what I— where I told Dan I wanted to get this wrap to be. And then Dan calls me up 7 times a week, not every week, but he's like, dude, there's no good wrappers out there. He loves you. He knows you do quality. And it's very hard to find because you do— you get the wrong printer, it puts out the wrong red. And now you got all these different colors out there and the sun's beating on them. It's changing the color. There's nothing worse than when somebody shows up and they don't have a clean truck that looks great. And I mean, it's a rolling billboard.

Yeah. Even as a, as a homeowner, you're like wondering, well, who did I call over here? Like, I thought they looked professional on the website. This, this doesn't look that good, right? And then on top of that, like, what do you think is going to happen when you show like there's a bit of a competitive bid situation, right? One guy has a brand new, nice looking wrap. One guy has an okay rap and one guy's got lettering, you can pretty much guarantee the guy with lettering is going to get beat up on price, right?

Oh yeah.

He looks like he needs the money. I'm going to see how low— and you're just not going to do that with somebody that shows up professionally, or you're less likely to have that happen.

I think one of the best things we do is we attract affluent clients that are willing to pay us. We give them options. We can beat competitors' pricing, but at the same time, they're like, I just want it done right. You guys seem like you're licensed, bonded, insured, background checks. You show up prepared. The trucks are absolutely immaculate. And it makes a big difference in who we are and what we stand for. And each employee feels valued because that's their office. So they drive around all day long and they're not driving some used hoopty. I mean, I take pictures of vans and I'm like, man, I would never call that company.

What is going on?

I think it's so important. And I stress this all the time, but people still, they try to do their own, they try to cut corners. You know how many pictures there are of me on the side of trucks a little bit modified? I mean, we've got 3 in the last month, 3 cease and desist going out of— they took almost my exact caricature cross like this, and garage door companies just copy it. And I'm like, you don't realize that we have trademarks and copyrights on these things. It's— what do they say? Imitation is the best flattery or something, but I'm still like, guys, what do you think I'm going to do, not defend my—

Yeah, there seems to be more of that coming because of AI. You have to be really, really careful.

Yeah, you want to be distinctive. You want to be different than everybody. What does an HVAC company do almost every time? What colors?

Red, white, and blue.

Red, white, and blue. That doesn't stand out anymore.

Yeah.

And it's great. It's patriotic. But it's every other company. So you want to be distinctive, get different, pop out. If you're at a home show, pop out when you're on the highway. You want people to look over. And, you know, there's a couple of companies I know that have done well over time by not doing the brand, but they've been around 40, 50 years. Like, if you're going to go make a difference, you got to get the right rap. You got to get it dialed in. And how long does it take a good— one of the guys that works for you to become an expert? I mean, how many years of experience do most of your people have?

It's actually very difficult. It's not super easy to train people. There's, we notice that some people just immediately start to get it and within say 3 to 6 months of doing it 8, 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, they are starting to get it. The quickest guy one of the quickest guys ever seemed— he looked like he took about 2 months to do it. But other people, a good solid year.

You—

I mean, you can learn enough in a week to, to put rapper on your resume.

Yeah.

And, and be dangerous. But it's not something that's— it's not super easy to learn. It's, it's, it's a physical skill. Rather than, you know, I'm going to coordinate, I'm putting this over here. Yeah. That, that's like strength or whatever, but this is sort of like, I don't know, it's an art. Yeah. It's like painting, right? Like going back to maybe when you were painting the garage doors, right? If you didn't have the right technique, where the paint's going to build up.

Oh yeah. You'd have runs and all kinds of look like crap.

You have white spots. Yeah.

Let me just ask you real quick, cause I remember back when I was kind of in the industry, 3M was not only the most expensive, they had the best warranty, but Avery was making— Avery had a really good product too. What do you feel about products and you swear by? Well, you have a couple or what do you think about?

Well, without, you know, running down anybody, I believe there's two major manufacturers that seem to be top tier for, for what we're trying to do with the seamless wraps without cutting, the relief cuts, ease of install. You know, we want stuff that's, that's going to be quick to install. You know, if we're taking 25% longer because the film has limitations, right? Doesn't help you, doesn't help me, doesn't help anybody. We've been using— yeah, we've been using a film for really when we started with the Gettle fleet. The film we were using before just did not perform. It could not perform. And, you know, we made it, we made a switch and I've never looked back.

And I will say, I wouldn't say, you know, I don't want to go too much into pricing, but if someone's got a big fleet and they're going to come to you, I will say, and I don't mean to say this the wrong way, but You are— you take care of us and you are affordable. You're not the cheapest, but you're not the highest. And I think you're the best.

I appreciate that.

You know, I think it's different if you got a one-off. I mean, you get so many of our trucks, you probably just like— I mean, it's like you've done so many now, it's, it's almost always the same trucks. I mean, we've got some Fords But now we're mostly Dodge.

Yeah.

And I will say this, a lot of people complain about Dodge or Chrysler or Ford. You know, the deal is if you buy the right warranty on the drivetrain and you're turning them in in time, the Dodges have been great for us. And I really don't care. Some people have bad experience, but I got 600 on the road plus. I'll have a couple thousand on the road by next, end of next year. So You know, we really pay attention to fleet. Katie's a badass.

Absolutely.

She's on her stuff, man. We got Samsara installed in every truck. We've got inventory. We've got the chargers underneath. What is that called?

A—

to be able to charge, you plug into it. We've really thought—

An inverter.

An inverter. Yeah. We really thought hard to make sure we have the perfect trucks. We didn't skimp out. But we buy so many, we get volume. Renee does a really good job at JumpSpark taking care of people too.

Yeah.

And she's always advising you because you figure out a way to get it done. And I'll tell you this, there's nothing more annoying in the world waiting on a wrap to get done. You guys, when we're graduating all these guys, we need the trucks available. And I didn't go through 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 wrappers. I went through a dozen and then said, I got to do this myself. Wow. And we did it, but then we outgrew what we were capable of. And I think you've got the right network out there to get it done. Your slogan is, branding isn't about getting noticed, it's about being remembered. I really like that.

Yeah, I trademarked it, so I like that too. Yeah, I just thought, man, think about all of you were probably driving and Say yesterday, there was a lot of things you noticed, right? In order to not crash or to know where you're going, you noticed a lot of things. But at the end of the day, very little of that is remembered.

It's very rare you remember anything. You almost drive subconsciously. You stop at the stop signs, you go when it's green, you know your way home. But if you could pop and stand out, there's a book called Purple Cow. And it's all about that. That's why I put all my billboards upside down for a while, is people were calling like crazy. A guy screwed up. He only had one job, but everyone noticed it and it stood out in a very busy world. And that's what we try to do, stand out.

That got them emotionally invested. They're now, because they're not going to call if they're just like, well, that makes logical sense, right? They're like, I'm mad that guy's thing's upside down. Now it's stuck in your brain. Like, you only— I believe you only really remember emotional type things, right?

Yeah.

Then you justify it with, well, you know, it's got this, that, and the next thing, and that's why I made a smart decision. But the first thing that happened was you were like zapped by emotion.

Yep.

And that's why, you know, it has to be memorable and definitely memorable in a, like, a positive light, right? The amount of people that you will tell about something you don't like is quite a bit higher than what you do like.

Yeah, it's true. That's why the news reports on negativity, because it goes 10 times further.

It's kind of fascinating. I thought about this the other day. We have social currency, right? We're trying to help other people or warn them or look good or build up. I heard at one point it comes from our caveman experience, right? Where you're climbing over the hill and you're like, "Oh, there's a lion over there." Yeah.

I better fight or flight.

I better tell.

I better tell hierarchy. Yeah.

I'm going to tell 10 people because that's danger.

Yeah.

But if I see some pretty yummy berries over there, that's not dangerous. Maybe I'll tell one person, right? Because I'm going to get much more out of warning them of something that is life-threatening. And although we have all this technology and we drive vehicles and can go to the moon, we're still—

we still got primitive brains. Yeah, we're still like, we still got that, you know, 95% subconscious that's really running things.

Yeah.

It's an interesting thought. I mean, I would highly, highly— look, if I bought a business, there's a competitor out there that only buys great brands of mine, and he'll only buy if it's so much because it says the owner has a decent head. It's expensive to buy a billboard. I mean, on a street— ghetto was on this, and it's usually a diamond broker, but it's $30,000 a month for this billboard. And it's right there by the Pita Jungle off of— I think it's like 44th Street and Indian School or something. But these trucks, I mean, you get endless amounts of business. One of the newer things we're going to be doing is when the guys are off for 2 days, we're going to have them parking at Costco's and like busy locations as well lit up right up front because it's all about getting eyeballs.

Yeah.

And I just think people, they really— they're so pigheaded that they don't understand. Like, there's a reason we're going to do over $400 million this year. And it's not all the brand, but a lot of it is. I will say that because I paid $30,000 some odd 7 years ago. We were $30 million, but I knew it had to change. Alibi convinced me. Ken Goodrich convinced me. You know, I used to— when Ken was in the heyday, I mean, I'd hear him on the radio 7 times, see his truck, then I see a billboard and it just stuck with you. And it's hard to spell, but it'll keep you cool. And it's a cool image of him as a kid holding the flashlight.

Yeah, that's, that's actually really an interesting story there. I've never met or seen any other company that went to The Wizard of Eds first and got in, you know, their, their brand story dialed in before they even had a logo. And the brand story dictated the logo.

Yeah. Smart way to do it.

Yeah, it's— I've never seen it done again. Most of the time it's like, oh cool, we've been in business for, you know, this long. It's what is our story? And then the logo is not part of that.

Well, there was a long story with Gettle. I mean, it was truly one of the first HVAC companies in Phoenix, and his dad did used to sell it. It was known for quality. So he had to go off of a legacy company. You know, the biggest mistake I see that I made is I had Yelp 5 stars, A+ BBB. I had Angie's List. I had all my vendors on there. And, you know, the vendors, they usually pay half. Of the wrap if you'll put their logo on there. But I learned very quickly, this is my wrap, this is my business. Like, they're gonna go to the website, but they're gonna remember that brand. You don't even need a phone number. You, a billboard, you're gonna drive by it. You wanna stick out in a very busy world.

Exactly. I mean, how much time do you have to be reading wraps while you're trying not to drive into the person in front of you? And not only that, but Even though you're not supposed to be doing this, if you take a look real quick, people aren't even looking at the road. They're looking at the radio or their phone or something. So they're not going to be reading your 5-star review. You've got about 1, 2 seconds to stand out. And you've got to do that hundreds and hundreds of times before when the time comes. Yeah. Because it could be within the next 3 years, not right at that moment.

I feel like— I hope we're making sense to people. You know, I'm trying to get some of my vendors that have proven themselves month over month, year over year, who I use. I think you're honest, you have integrity. I'm sure— how many wraps do you think you peeled off and redid it because you weren't happy with the quality? A lot. A lot.

A lot. Yeah.

You're not gonna let something come out of your facility that's not top-notch.

Absolutely.

And you'll warranty everything.

And then if that means you know, rewrapping the whole vehicle because what if this just— well, that didn't turn out. And now the— well, actually, you know what, just let's just do the whole— like, the whole thing needs to be redone.

And even you're willing to lose money to make sure it comes out right. Right.

I mean, at the end of the day, you don't like it.

No, but that's what it takes. Quality is the number one thing.

Reputation, right?

Like reputation.

I would imagine it's similar with, with you guys. Well, identical, right? Like it is never gonna— it's never gonna be worth it to, to, to, I don't know, cheap out on that when doing the right thing. I mean, just do it, right? I don't understand. Just do it.

I think there's— man, I know so many, you know, I was this guy, buy used vehicles. I think they look great. I had two full-time mechanics, I had two hoists. And I remember 2016, I sat down with a mentor who we ended up purchasing And he goes, dude, you're doing it all wrong. I was at Topgolf. And he goes, you need to buy a building. I made more money on buildings than I made in the business because I upgraded, upgraded, upgraded, and they always appreciate it. I paid myself rent. And he goes, Tommy, you got to do new trucks. When we bought Don's Garage Doors in Denver, I had 13 technicians sitting in the training center. And the only question they ask is, do we get new trucks? Because we don't get paid when they're broken down. And are they reliable? And so new trucks accelerate their appreciation. The tax game with a good CFO understands how to do it, but quality is everything. And if you're going to be a quality brand of people, you know, I've already said this, but really, how do you get 25,000 amazing customers a month? And it's because our brand says quality.

You know, you see our guys, we've got a pretty good dress code. We try to stay super clean. We try to let people know we're honest. We try to message them on the way, offer them coffee, give them a profile. And those trucks are our calling card. That's what everybody sees. They're like, we see you in the neighborhood all the time. We're just going to use you because our neighbors use you. But if you don't stand out— I know a company, they're very big, and he goes, man, I saved $1,500 by doing a partial wrap. And it looks okay. But I'm like, man. And they're like, you know, there's all these people on Facebook, probably some of them listening right now with so much pride with their lettering. And they're like, I'm busy as can be. Yeah, you are busy. How much profit are you making? That's what I go back to. Are you making great money in your business that you could afford to pay well, invest into the business, hire the right people, invest into training, invest into the right marketing, building a legacy. Because people brag that they're busy all the time because they're just, they're the cheapest and they're always going to attract that.

And people that buy cheap attract cheap clients. When you start spending the money to get stuff done right, you start attracting those types of clients. Dan Martell, the guy that wrote Buy Back Your Time, taught me that. And it's 100% true. Uh, what do you want the listeners to know? Because I know this isn't an exciting thing, but it's exciting for me. Because I think it's the lifeblood of the company and I'm very passionate about this. But some people are like, oh great, Tommy's got another thing we need to do. And I'm like, well, if you want to grow, this is your number one asset. It's more than your house. It's your family's future. It's cutting that generational curse.

What do you want the audience to know right now about vehicle wraps in general or specifically?

Yeah, vehicle wraps.

Well, a number of things that you said you, I believe, like, yeah, you, you had to work much harder than you would have had you started with, you know, Dan's brand right off the bat, right?

Oh yeah.

Like, not everybody's capable of doing that. They have, you know, other— they have a family, they have, like, the amount of, like, brute force that made this happen, it— the headwinds could be a lot easier with a decent looking wrap. I know that for sure.

Well, you get, you know, on Google, you get people searching your name more often, less cancelation rate, higher conversion rate, higher average ticket, more reviews. People— the biggest thing that I think people take for granted is people like, dude, I see you everywhere. I want to work for a growing company. I want to be part of something bigger. And you become a magnet for talent.

Yeah, I like it when customers call back and they're excited and they tell me, people are telling me they see my vans everywhere, all over town, and they only have one van.

They only have one van, so they look like a national brand.

And, you know, they think they're everywhere. I really like that. The anecdotal feedback I get, I find that that really cool. And I can just tell, but you know, after doing this for, you know, that long, it's not my opinion. I'm just looking at who's coming back and ordering more wraps, who's having them removed because the company went out of business and the vehicles are being auctioned. What is the difference between the graphic design? A lot of times it's pretty obvious.

I think people put too much on their wraps. They tell everybody, like, you know what we do? Of course we do sales, installation, and repairs. We don't need to put that on the vehicle. That's one of Dan's, like, no-nos. But at the end of the day, it's got to be super simple, easy to remember. And hopefully there's a slogan or something simple. But done correctly, you're going to make more profit. You're going to make your employees feel special. And the clients, you're going to make— you're make yourself stand out for them. You know, I know you have an offer for the listeners. It's a pretty crazy offer, and I don't know exactly how you do this, but sounds like you're giving a wrap away.

Well, what I'm, what I'm doing is I'm, I'm looking for long-term relationships such as the one, you know, we have with A1. And, and really take the first step and prove that for, for qualifying companies. Obviously there's, you know, some qualifications to that, but I'm willing to— if you want to try it out, I'm going to do the first wrap for free if you qualify.

And it just probably means you got more than like you're not just getting started, you're going to add and give you more work. I mean, I'd give somebody their first garage door if they said we got 99 more to order.

Exactly.

Yeah, but I mean, if somebody says, hey, just I don't have any money, give me a free garage door, it's different. So of course there's got to be some qualifications.

Yeah.

Well, listen, I got a lot more questions here, but I think, you know, your bio says I help small business owners make sense of who they are and who they want to be. And I think it takes a certain eye. And I don't think there's a lot of people that understand this. But to stand out in this busy world, it's difficult, man. And I love it. So this truck, I got a TRX and it's a Dodge, and I wanted Dan to do something special. And you didn't, you didn't hesitate, but, uh, it's different than all the other things, and, uh, it came out freaking fantastic. And I can't tell you, I started parking on the corner of Scottsdale Road and Lincoln every day for 2 weeks. And then I got my, my guy Raul that drives me in. So I drove my truck, he picked me up, I picked it up at the end of the day. I got 3 to 4 text messages a day saying, Tommy, I see your truck, are you here right now? I want to come say hi. I mean, that's how much this stuff stands out. And, uh, it came out absolutely phenomenal.

And I got a lot of pride in, in what we've done and the quality that you do. And I do think people out there, if you're looking for just a second opinion, you want quality, you want it to last, you want to learn the game because a lot of people ride it till the wheels fall off. And that's a mistake too, is I want to turn it back in, make my guys excited that they're going to get a new truck, and then I could turn it in for a high value. And then they pull off the wrap and they resell it secondary market. I don't deal with a thing. And there's Holman, there's Renee, there's Enterprise. But you work with all of them.

Yeah.

And they'll— and you, you work with the secondary payments. If somebody's got a fleet department, like they're going through an Enterprise and they're— that you work with all of them. And you're— I know you're the favorite of everybody. I mean, they just know you get it in and you take care of it.

It's just a natural sense of urgency, I suppose. Family background is in McDonald's restaurants. And so there's a sort of, you know, somebody's asking for something, they need it now. Like, and having done that for a while, you know, that's just the way to do it. I don't know how to do it any other way. I don't think it's a good idea to have people waiting 4 weeks.

Well, 3 years ago you came to me and you said, You know, this is kind of private, but you're like, I'm not really making money, but I'm taking care of clients. And that meant everything to me because you're like, I go to work, I work a lot of hours, and I'm, I'm making ends meet, but barely. And you rode the storm and you're doing really good now and you deserve everything that's coming because every once in a while we got to ride the storm. But you took care of me, you took care of Gettle and Ken Goodrich, and you took care of the clients. And you didn't cut corners. And that's what I appreciate the most is you're a man of integrity and you go to Impact Church with even a bonus. Pastor Travis, the best. What else do you think the audience needs to hear right now?

Well, I don't mean this in a sort of like, and I know you don't either, we're coming down on people and and we're, you know, we're, we're trying to be enthusiastic and say, you know, these are some pretty big mistakes that people are making before you continue making them. Or if you're going to, here's some, here's some pointers on, you know, on wraps, on, like you said, on vehicles, on all kinds of stuff. There's a, there's a certain amount of, I would say maybe it's pride or something. And, you know, I do recognize that it's pretty hard to start a business, to do all this different stuff. But man, if we just do a few things differently, I just know it's going to work. I can see it. I can see who's coming back. I can see who is growing. Yeah. Who's growing, who's doing it this way, and who's doing it— who's trying to reinvent the wheel and say, I know what I'm doing, I know where I'm going, you know. Do you ever look at the directions or the maps? I mean, now that we have it on our phone, it's a lot easier, right?

But that definitely translates into business. And sure, yes, we know, I know what I'm doing, but definitely not everything.

Well, learning how to ask for help and being a little bit grateful and a little bit, you know, don't let your ego, your ego's not your amigo and don't let your ego get in the way because of your pride. When I was $30 million and I had all these trucks, I swallowed my pride because of Al Levy and Kurt Goodrich. And I was probably Dan's easiest client. If you look at the original mockup, we just had changed his nose because the nose was messed up. And I said, dude, you're the guy. And he wrote the book Branded Not Bland. And you work with him on a lot of things. And there's other good people out there. And, uh, And there's nothing worse than putting the wrong tone. And you got one maroon truck, one bright red truck, what, like, and then they're the sun damage and it's peeling off and it snows one day and that this truck doesn't do good in the cold or in the heat. Is this like, you guys gotta try it and true, and it's a machine and you don't take on work. You say no to most things. Like you don't do recolors, you don't do high-end cars, you just do fleet.

And you're the best at it and you're a specialist. And that's, you know, I don't take on commercial, I don't do new construction, I don't do box stores. I do retrofit residential garage doors. We focus and you're a specialist and you can knock it out and get it in. Imagine having a guy that graduates and he's waiting for his truck and he has to wait for 5 more weeks because the wrap shop doesn't care. They're not a big client for them. And they're just waiting.

Even if they are a big client, they just don't have the capacity.

No, they don't have the capacity.

Doing on a fleet that big is— it's easy to choke.

And you'll even fly guys out to take care of stuff if you have to. Yeah, we've done it.

We've got contractors across the country. They, they, they're happy to move around. They would prefer you had branches in California. They like to go to California and surf and then rap and then surf and then rap. But, you know, or Hawaii, you know.

Yeah. I mean, we send them all over the place and I'm going to get you a bunch of work because that's what we do. I mean, we take care of people. You take care of people. We, you know, my goal is that I bring out a lot more of the vendors because I've already made the mistakes. I'm 20 years into this business and because it took me so many tries of going with the wrong people and getting let down, and thinking I'm just going to do it myself and got sidetracked. Like, I was going to— like, I used to think, man, we collect a lot of scrap metal. Like, that was a priority for me to get that cash. And I'm like, dude, what if I focused on training on how to sell new parts and make sure we don't get warranty calls, get a 5-star review and get a membership and be able to make sure— you know how many flat tires I used to get sent to the guys at the scrapyard and how peasant that felt? Like, we don't even care anymore. Like the scrap is a scrap and we get some money here and there, but I don't even keep track of that.

Like the goal is to be the best at what we do and hire the best around us and we have a lot of accountability. And then, you know, hopefully you get a lot more business because the more people you get, the easier it's going to be able to get me in and out. So, yeah, and I know we're a priority because we send you a lot of— we send you personally probably more business than anybody.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I have a question for you on the, on the scrap metal. And do you feel like that, that you had to do that at that time to, to make the money to, to get to the next level? Or do you think you could have just—

I think it was a mistake. I think it was a mistake by hiring mechanics and starting my own wrap shop. I think it was a mistake doing a lot of things that I did that were a distraction. You know, racehorses wear blinders. You focus where the money goes. You see so many distractions from a visionary that they get sidetracked or looking at this, this, this, and they see all these pennies lying everywhere where they're watching $100 bills fly over their head. The scrap was nothing in comparison to just training the guys to ask more questions and offer options instead of ultimatums. You know, What Should We Do? by Joe Cristallo. We learned a lot from him, and that's the difference. Is like, I know companies that say, man, I get so much scrap, I pay for my rent with that. And you're like, man, if you just train an extra 10 minutes a day, you would pay 10 times your rent. So everyone's got to get started and learn the priorities. Like, we had all these old doors hanging around here that I knew I could sell. And one day Luke comes to me and goes, let's just scrap them all.

He goes, we— you've been talking about selling these for years. Then we got to discount it, then we got to put the kits together, and then we have to have guys scrounge around and special order parts. So that was a big thing is we scrapped all of it. We just said we're getting rid of all of it. I put a couple ads out there, a bunch of guys came and picked up a lot of it. We gave it away practically. Smartest thing we ever did. I go to some places and they've got parts sitting there that haven't been made in 20 years. I mean, it's crazy. And they think like, I just need that part if the time comes. No, just replace it. Like, a client doesn't want necessarily to have their old crap with old technology, non-efficient stuff to work anymore. So I think it's just smart to focus on winning, double down on training, know your P&L. And when people are searching for you by name because you got a great brand and you stand out, people are coming to apply for you because of your brand. You'll see. All we have in this life— there's a great book called The Brand Story by Donald Miller.

Roy Williams is amazing. Dan Antonelli talks about it. But the brand is everything, and it's, it's, it's half of your marketing. Uh, you know, that's why if you go to a1garage.com, you'll see our truck is front and center. Yeah, the van. And that's why we park in the right spots, and that's why we show up to home shows.

And it was—

and people are like, man, you got to be one of the largest companies in home service, because they see us so much, and then they hear us, and then they watch us on TV, and then they see the bus stops, and then they see us on social media. So it's an omni approach, but the brand is what we're advertising. Exactly. Look at other brands and you're like, man, this is janky. But so many people have so much pride. And of course, their family and friends say it looks great. And they're proud. They're proud. That's— they have no idea they're not a pro.

My customers love my wrap. My customers love my wraps. I hear that so often. So okay, we're marketing to your existing customers, that's a really good growth strategy, right? No. Yeah.

We're trying to Craigslist ads. Yeah.

We're trying to, with this brand that we're talking about, is reach people that have no idea who you are. They've never met you. They don't know that you're a nice guy, a trustworthy guy, but you're gonna look at this wrap. So we're not marketing to your mom and your nephew and your kids and, and your church and your kids, the, and your first customer.

You know, well, the people go to Angie, they're going to Thumbtack. Look, if you're going to create real value, people got to come and search for you, and that's how you scale. If you're going to BNI meetings— I started out at BNI, I started out Angie.

Yeah, same here.

I started out doing ads on Craigslist. I had to graduate to this level. And if I go back, talk to my younger self, the first thing I do is get the right brand. I mean, the one thing I'll cautionary people is I had a guy get branded correctly and he goes I'm out of money. Now what? And I go, well, the brand's the first thing I do, but I didn't know you started the business with $30,000. Not to mention you can finance the wraps with the vehicle.

Exactly.

If you get with any of these big companies, they'll finance it all. They'll make it super affordable for you. Some people are like, yeah, I don't like debt. This is not the time to go listen to Dave Ramsey. Get the right brand, make it affordable for yourself, and get the right clients. I can't stress it enough. I'm not lying to you guys. When I partner with a company, and I've done this a few times, the first thing we do is get it rebranded, get it rewrapped. I mean, it's the most important thing there is, and it's hard to do. And some people are like, well, we built such a big— look, we stayed A1 Garage because that was $30 million. And there's that old phrase, A1 from day one, like it's A1 quality, that's top tier. So we made it work. But some people have the weirdest brand like B&I Mechanical. What does that even mean?

Exactly. It's— unless you're IBM, it's not going to work.

IBM or Yelp or Google, like these three-word, three-letter— like, yeah, what we do, A1 garage door service.

Yeah. And you speak a lot about brand, and a lot of people maybe don't know exactly what that is, right? Like, they're like, I have a brand. that's— how do you put it nicely? Yeah, you have a logo and you have some colors. It's almost like you have a collection of drywall and studs and a foundation and some roofing shingles, which constitutes a house, but it's not a home. There's no rhyme or rhythm.

The shirts are all different colors. I used to wear all these different polos. I had purple, orange. Olivia's like, you're going to go straight black because they don't stain. They wash. Yeah, I like it.

It's good.

So we did that, and then we started saying the dress code— steel-toed boots, got to wear gloves, got to tuck in your shirt. We're not as harsh as HVAC could be, where they got to wear the blue pants and the American logo and the Cintas type stuff. But we were only working in the garage, and I'll tell you what, I got one of my top guys in Minnesota takes everybody out to the truck and he shows them how it's organized and they go, we're going with you because you've got pride in what you do. And I do look at trucks all the time. I take pictures and I'm like, man, I can help so many businesses. You see a dentist that offers like, we do cavities, we do root canals, a billboard. And I'm like, dude, like, I look because I'm looking out. No one's— of course you do cavities and cleanings and root canals. Like you're a dentist.

Yeah. What's the root emotion here?

Yeah. You want to get them to say, like, Rafi, he's in town, the number one lawyer. I just talked to him the other day. He bought 9 acres in Paradise Valley for a house. He's building a house there. He's got to tear down the house. It's in the center. It's right by where we're building. And Rafi is just him smiling and it says Rafi.

There's no, like, what kind of law did you—

Nothing law.

Call and find out.

He's an accident attorney. Because he's on every major road. His plan is when you get in an accident, you look up and call him and you think of him. Marketing is the lifeblood of every company and the brand is everything. And you see his pictures, they're all the same. They're not modified. And he's done the same thing for the last 10 years.

Consistency and everything.

And he stands out in a crowded world. And he spends the money. I mean, he's spending 30% of his revenue, but there's no real hard cost. There's no cost of goods. There's no material. So that's what lawyers got to do. But my best plan is for you guys to call Tim. Tim, how do people get a hold of you?

If you want, you can email me directly, tim@smartwrap.com.

Tim@smartwrap.com. Pretty easy. Yeah, it's like it's spelled Tim@smartwrap.com. W-R-A-P. Yeah, W-R-A-P. Yeah, there's a W in there because he's not a rapper.

And getting back on that branding thing too, right? Like I often— yeah, like they have the logo, they have— but they have these colors. It's— I see a lot of gaudy stuff, right?

Oh yeah. They put like this muscular— and it's like, no, no house mom wants that crazy gaudy. Like, that's a cool tattoo for your tribal Yeah, like that. You could get like— people think your wrap should look like a tattoo and they put black and all this crazy stuff and it's like everywhere. No one— oh man, I could go on and on. It's such a mistake.

Photography, bad mistake.

I mean, photography is a big—

even if it's a drawing, I don't really— I do not want to see another air conditioner on an HVAC truck. Literally nobody cares.

Yeah.

The thing they care about is, same in your business, are you trustworthy? Are you gonna fix this? Am I gonna have any problems? Not a distraction of, 'cause basically what you're doing then is you're like, oh, I saw an air, that reminds me, I'm gonna go home and Google air conditioning companies, not the company I just saw that has the wrap on it. And getting back to the sponsorship stuff too, you're an HVAC company, there's American Standard. Wow, that's a good brand. I've heard that's a good brand. I'm gonna go on the internet and get an American Standard from somebody, right? From, not you. You just reminded me of the industry or the brand. Do that on a different piece of marketing or not at all, but definitely not on the wrap. It's so bizarre to see more than one logo on a wrap and a lot of 'em want pretty prominent.

Yeah, they want half the wrap if they're paying for half of it and they're glad to pay it because it's expanding their brand. They're smart. And it's the people that I feel bad about that don't have enough money. That's why you finance it. I mean, that's just why you finance it. I look, if you felt this message resonates, it's because I'm trying to help you because I was you. Uh, trust me, I cut corners. I thought the— I used to buy Dodge Dakotas cause I could pick them up for 3 grand. And quite frankly, that's all I could afford. Cause I didn't know about financing. I didn't know that. The brand mattered. And when we started doing it right, and the employees are so happy, they get to make great money, and their wives are happy. No one's ever bought them a new truck. They've been at 3 different companies in the past, and they're like, that's the question we get all the time. You guys have new trucks? That's an important question. And then they see them and they're like, man, we want to work there. You know how many comments I get about when are you hiring here?

Where can I move to go work? At your company because they see we care.

You could probably look on a graph and pinpoint exactly the spot where you can tell you when the profit started.

You know, I was $30 million, but I wasn't keeping much. And then all of a sudden the profit, because I got the right clients that just wanted it fixed the right way.

Yeah, you can say right there on the— it goes like this, it's going up, it's going in the right direction. But as soon as you got that hockey stick, usually that's right where you got the brand right. Yeah, exactly.

Well, look, It's an investment, it's not a cost. And I think more people need to do it. Tim, close us out. What are your final thoughts?

Well, again, I appreciate everything that you've done. The people listening here, if they don't already know, Tommy's the real deal. He does help people. He's not doing this for whatever other thing. There's a lot of gurus out there that have never done it. Yeah. He doesn't need to do it. But he loves the industry, and I've seen it firsthand, so there's that. I'm looking to grow, so again, if people are looking for a good place to work, you know, you don't need to call me about a wrap. You can call me and see if you want to work here. One of the growth strategies we have this year is an acquisition as well, so That's, that's a fun, a fun new thing. Yeah.

So here's my advice. If you acquire, just make sure you're staying in your wheelhouse. You focus on fleet wraps because if I were you, I'd be calling all the people, you know, at Enterprise, Holman and all these other places and saying, look, I'm willing to pay, but I'm looking for some of the best companies you have, even the ones that were good before. Or stopped, you know, maybe, maybe the owner got older. That's going to be your best spot because they know they've worked with a lot, hundreds of companies in each market. They'll hand-feed them to you. Tell them, listen, I'll give you 2% of the transactions if you line me up. But the last thing you want to do is waste all day looking at shit companies that don't have their— they can't do a Q of E, they're not ready to sell. They've got piles of inventory they want money for. So you just go to a well-run outfit of somebody just ready to retire. Maybe they're not big, but they got great clients and they'll, they'll tell you, they'll tell you. Or you go to 3M or, you know, Avery or whoever you use and say, who's a client that was ordering a lot from you that's just kind of slowed down or late paid?

They'll find the right deals for you. You got to be very careful because you waste a lot of time and you could buy the wrong business and you think you did good and it's a mistake.

Yeah, I've got, I've got a lot to learn before I go hand out a bunch of money.

Um, but well, the great news is I think you could buy the businesses. The bank will finance the deal. They'll usually finance 4 to 5 times EBITDA, and usually that's probably what you could buy the business for even. Or you work on terms where you still have someone to pay over the next 3 years. All I need you to do is make sure we're bringing in clientele. So a lot of the owners are great at sales, but they don't know, like, the hard parts, which you've done. Is bring on the talent, work in multi-city, multi-state, and continue to get it out on time with quality. So if you know anybody looking to possibly sell their wrap shop that specializes in fleets, great. If you know anybody that wants to get into the fleet game and they're talented individuals, call Tim up. And obviously, if you want to get a free wrap, consider taking a change. At least call him up and see what he's got to offer. I'll give you some options. I think they're very economical. Like I said, it's not going to break the bank, but it's quality and it won't fade in the sun.

It's going to be the same every time. It's going to be done right. And as Ken Goodyear would say, it's the right way, not the easy way.

Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. I was going to print that and stick it on the wall, you know, 40 feet wide in our shop because, you know, I really took that to heart.

Um, well, I appreciate you, brother. It's always fun to hang out. I hope you get a lot of business from this because you deserve it. But more importantly, the listeners deserve it if they want to see the impact. Uh, you know, you should call my buddy, uh, Bueller, Jason Bueller. You know, he, he had a great company, very big, and, uh, he took a chance. It's a really standout name. It's his last name. Got the wraps done right, got the right logo. And he goes, Tommy, business tripled the first year. More importantly, the profit went way up. And profit allows you to do the right things for the business. He didn't fill his pockets to go buy 3 houses. He invested it all back in and got the right people, built the right training. And that's what makes these things take off is profit allows you to scale. Doesn't mean you should just start making draws out of the business, but it's amazing what you do. And I know you're going to be successful. It's fun watching it. And, you know, just so you know, we're in the first inning. We're going to get you a lot busier.

So it's going to be fun.

So looking forward to it. It's, it's been, it's been a bit of a long slog. Right. And I'd imagine same thing with with yourself once you get that ball rolling and now the momentum, man, it's really exciting. Like the enthusiasm really kicked up a notch and you're like, man, I could, this is great. This is really—

It's a good business, man. Yeah. It's a very good business. And you need more clients because, you know, if I were to buy your business, last piece of advice, If I look at a business and 40% of the volume's coming from one client, you've always got that. Now we're not changing, but if something happened to you, God forbid, you decide you want to disappear into Tahiti and the business changed, we may have to change, but you continue to take care of yourself. That's not something you need to worry about, but that's what an investor would worry about. So hopefully you pick up a lot of great clientele. I know one thing, if I ever called you and a client wasn't happy, you're gonna say, Tommy, I'm going to go make it right right now. And if that includes giving the money back, you do it, but that's not going to happen because you do stuff the right way. So thanks for coming on, Tim.

I appreciate it.

All right, brother. Over and out. Thanks for listening, guys. Hopefully you took something and, uh, you actually do something with it. Not next month, not next year. You make the changes today. 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 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 transform my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700+ employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com/podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.