Self Made Millionaire Interview: Tom Mills – CEO of HS Brands – A Mystery Shopping Company

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Tom Mills – CEO of HS Brands – A Mystery Shopping Company

Tom Mills has a great story of working at Staples, and then creating his own successful company. He talks about what he learned in sales, (how his Boston accent helped at first, and then hindered his sales skills) and what traits and actions made him successful.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• EO – Entrepreneurs’ Organization

Check out Hsbrands.com

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Any questions or comments on the podcast let me know!

Transcript:

Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you, the eventual millionaire.

Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and today we have Tom Mills on the show. Tom is the CEO of HS Brand, an international mystery shopping and loss prevention company. He also created the first web-based mystery shopping software. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Tom.

TOM MILLS: Hi, thanks Jaime.

JAIME TARDY: First tell us a little bit about your background. How did you even become a business owner?

TOM MILLS: I think I got the phone call that every 24-year-old guy wants to get which was we need someone your age to go and watch some bartenders and we'll pay you and we'll pay you to drink. At the time, that was about the greatest thing I think that could have happened to me. Actually I thought it was a joke when the guy that originally called me, he was a friend of mine, and when he said that to me I said, "Come on, Bruce. You're kidding me, right?" He said, "No, I'm not kidding."

He knew someone that he introduced me to and he said we work with some local bars and we need someone that can fit in with the crowd that's in their early 20s, then go in and just check for customer service and cleanliness and sales skills and obviously if you see anything with cash or underage people being served or intoxicated, people being served, you know, report on that also. That's how I started off and I did that for a couple of years as just sort of a fun thing to do on the side, as I was working with Staples. I was a retail manager. I didn't want to do that. I wasn't a very good employee so I had to figure out something else.

It was kind of funny. It was one of those things that what turned into just sort of a hobby and something fun on the side to do and something that basically just impressed girls because I could bring them to dinner. I wouldn't tell them I was mystery shopping and I would bring them to this dinner and they'd say to me, "Geez you can afford this?" because I would take them to like a fine dining place that I was mystery shopping and I would say, "Yes, don't worry about it, I got it." Little did they know I was being reimbursed and I probably didn't have $50 to my name at the time.

It was pretty great. I did that for a couple years. It was like I just woke up one day and said, "I don't know what I want to do with myself but this seems like a pretty good gig and I wonder if I can make something more of it" and so I just went to that guy. His name was Howard and I said, "You know, Howard, it seems like I have been doing the same things for about 3 years for you and I don't know how you get new accounts but if you want I'll start making some phone calls and try to get you new accounts. If we get them you can pay me commission or something." It kind of started from there.

JAIME TARDY: So you went to the guy that you already sort of worked for and then asked him. Tell me more about that then.

TOM MILLS: Yes, it was quite interesting because he was actually a security consultant and he kind of fell into it because he was asked by this local bar chain to put cameras in to watch for safety and the owner came back to him and said, "Howard, you know what would be great is if you came in and just had dinner once a month at each one of my places so that you could also let me know what was going on and then if you saw anything I could go back and I could review the video camera tape and we can see what was happening."

It's funny, he was, mystery shopping was somewhat thrown at him and then just being one person he couldn't do it himself so he started asking some of his friends and it was one of his friends that asked me when it became evident to him that he couldn't do this younger guy stuff because he was, not that he was a lot older, but he just didn't really fit the profile really of someone that went into a late night bar or nightclub as much as I did. He was more in his mid 30s when I was in my early 20s.

It started from there and he was really a technical guy. He was a guy that knew about cameras and safety and mystery shopping was just something that kind of grew on him over time because it was fun. So we became partners. Actually we worked together until about '98, '99 where I was starting to get a lot of pressure from my wife saying, "Okay this once very cool job is not paying the bills. We got to figure something else out here." At this point, I haven't worked at Staples or really even done anything constructive in about three years and I don't really have any skills to go off and do anything else. I kind of backed myself into a little bit of a corner where it was either be successful or I was going to be in trouble.

JAIME TARDY: When did you quit Staples?

TOM MILLS: I quit Staples in '95 I believe. I was there from I think '93 to '95 and then I found, I tell you I have been incredibly lucky. It's like the stars aligned for me. The next job that came along, well I wanted to find a job that would work nicely into me trying to be this mystery shopper. Working retail hours was not the way to go. I had a guy approach me when I was working at the copy center in Staples one day and we got to talking as he was waiting for his order and he said to me, "You know, you got the right personality, have you ever thought of doing sales?"

I didn't tell him what I was doing at the time on the side, this mystery shopping thing. I said, "No, why do you say that?" He goes, well, you know, I work for Prudential Securities and we sell everything from life and health insurance all the way up to mutual funds. That kind of interested me and then the more I looked into it I realized this could be very interesting because these hours could be much more flexible than the retail hours. I got very, very lucky because basically over the next year, when I left Staples, Prudential paid me to do nothing but study.

JAIME TARDY: So it wasn't just a commission? Usually those are a lot commission base specifically.

TOM MILLS: That was the thing. It was going to turn into a commission-based job but because I couldn't really sell anything until I had all my licenses, I made a deal with them where they paid me, I don't even remember what it was at the time, I want to say it was like $500 a week or something, to just study and I had milestones where I had to have my life insurance certificate, then my health and I had to have a Series 6 and then a Series 63.

So I had to pass these tests every couple of months and as long as I did, you know, I showed up at a couple of sales meetings here and there but basically I just goofed off for the better part of eight months and I did the mystery shopping thing probably three-quarters of the time but yet I was getting a paycheck and I was getting my licenses. So it was kind of ironic. As soon as I got my final license with Prudential and was ready to sell basically everything, is when I quit.

JAIME TARDY: I don't need you anymore.

TOM MILLS: Oh yeah, it was great.

JAIME TARDY: So they paid you to learn. Good. Now you're smart. Now what?

TOM MILLS: What really makes it great is that it's amazing how much this affected my life because in this summer, the summer of I believe it's '95 or '96, I think it's '95 actually, in that summer, I had so much freedom and I had so much time to myself. One of my buddies came to me and he said, "I'm thinking about getting a place for the summer down in Newport, Rhode Island. I was going to ask a couple of the guys and my girlfriend was going to ask a couple of her girlfriends, do you want to go in on it?" Now here I am, I'm getting $500 a week, I don't have any expenses. I was still living at home at the time.

So here was a summer down in Newport. It turns out I met my wife there. We started dating on the backend of the summer and a few months later we moved in together and then a year later we were engaged and a year later we were married. Had I not had the circumstances that I had and couldn't spend the time down there that summer, I probably don't marry my current wife.

JAIME TARDY: Let's talk about that for a second. Do you think that's luck? Do you think it's luck that somebody came to you in Staples and offered you something that apparently worked out really well? That you went to Rhode Island; do you really believe in luck or what do you feel?

TOM MILLS: Well you are speaking to someone that lives three and a half months a year in Las Vegas. Luck is an interesting term to me. I believe that if you took everybody in the world and you added up all the good things and all the bad things, you would find that some people have more good happen to them than others but I think that's just because that's the random part of life. I believe a little bit in luck. I don't believe that there is somebody that just all good things happen to them and no bad things.

What typically happens and this actually applies to me is that my friends consider me lucky because of some of the things that have happened to me in my life, but they don't pay attention to the unlucky things because the unlucky things don't work well into the lucky persona that I have. I believe that there are some people that have a little more than others, you know, good and bad, but in general, I think it's more about putting yourself in a mindset of opportunity. I was built for risk and when you're built for risk, you'll have lucky things happen.

So when that guy comes up to me at the copy center, I had friends that I had grown up with since I was 12 that had gotten the job at Staples with me at the same exact time. They wouldn't have taken that conversation seriously. They wouldn't have cared about it. In their mind, they were in a fast growing retail company and their goal was to go into corporate or was to be a store general manager some day and this random guy saying, "Hey, you know, would you like to sell insurance?" They would have blown it off. I don't consider it lucky, I consider that I was just willing to listen to anything at the time and I kind of still am. I'm not afraid of risk.

JAIME TARDY: Tell me more about built for risk because we always want to know, as entrepreneurs, are you born that way or how do you handle risk and that sort of thing. Tell me about your thoughts on that.

TOM MILLS: I think it's probably a little bit of born and a little bit of environment. I think that my father has a little bit of that personality so I probably got some of it genetically that I am a little more risky. I can see it in my daughters. I have one daughter that seems to be like me and that other daughter is very conservative. My mother is very conservative and my wife is conservative. I think there's definitely some little genetic piece to that but I also think it has to do with your friends and your environment and things like that where had I gone to Harvard and graduated with a law degree, well I was going to be a lawyer.

Now maybe risk would have taken me down different paths that way, but it was almost fortunate that I was a knucklehead because had I really known what I wanted to do with myself in high school, I wouldn't have had sort of the real wide open I just don't know what I want to do with myself post high school life that gave me the ability to fall into this. So it's kind of weird. It's amazing the amount of events; like here's an interesting thing. When I was 21, my dream was to be an actor. I really wanted to be an actor just like every idiot 18 year old. I want to be an actor and I had started saving money saying some day I am going to move to LA and I am going to be an actor.

Now granted I wasn't taking any acting classes and I had been a drama major at UMass Boston for about three months. But somehow I had it in my mind that I could do it. So I convinced one of my buddies, my best friend at the time, to jump in the car with me and we drove around the country for six months. We lived in Las Vegas for three months which tells you a lot about my personality. I was supposed to go to LA but I liked Las Vegas too much to leave. It turned into a six-month vacation but in my mind, at age 21, when I got in the car that day and I drove out of Holbrook, Massachusetts, I was going to LA and I wasn't coming back and I was going to be in movies a year later. In my mind, that was going to happen.

I had other friends, like I have a friend George, that was valedictorian. He got a scholarship to go to Villanova. He was a math major. I mean he kind of knew what he wanted to do at age 16 and he did all the right things to get exactly what he wanted. Had I don't that, I probably don't end up the way I am today because it was my lack of direction that got me here.

JAIME TARDY: This is really interesting to me because you seem very, okay 16 years old or 18 year old, you seem so sure of yourself. Is it that you open yourself up for opportunity and then when you do go after something you really go after it full force and you really believe that you can do it? Do those two things work together?

TOM MILLS: Yes, I think what it comes down to is confidence and probably, that's a good word to use. I guess oblivious would also be a good word.

JAIME TARDY: I love that. I'll describe you as confident and oblivious. That's great.

TOM MILLS: Yes. I didn't realize, I shouldn't say I didn't realize, I had no fear of the future at all, which was a negative in some ways but obviously a positive. My parents would say to me, what are you doing? You're in the hardest classes. The teachers say you are one of the smartest guys in the room, why are you bringing home all C's? Unfortunately I just had this mindset that it just didn't matter. When I need to turn it on and I need to flip the switch I'll do it and I never worried about what will happen if you graduate high school with all C's and can't go to a good college.

When I started going to college, I never wondered what's going to happen when you just graduate from the lowest state school. I never worried about it. In my mind it was always, I'll be an actor. I'll figure something out. I'll think something up. You know what I mean? I never ever really gave a lot of consideration towards what if I end up stuck in my home town pumping gas the rest of my life. It never crossed my mind that that was even an option, even though I was doing all the things that would lead you to that.

JAIME TARDY: Is that innate? So that confidence, do you think that's innate? You just sort of grew up with it because it sounds like you're not, you know, some kids are worriers and stuff like that but it sounded like you were just innately confident.

TOM MILLS: Yes. That had to be genetic because I was that way at an early age. I think I did get one great quality that has helped me out enormously which was I like to be the leader and people seem to be fine with that. So whether it was the kids that were tougher than me when I was 10 or whether it was my best friends in high school some of which were valedictorians and went to Villanova, in general, I shouldn't even say in general, in my life, everything has always been controlled by me. I plan everything that I do.

If we go on a guy trip, I plan it. We pretty much go when I want to go. We go and do what I want to do. Everybody around me has always been very comfortable with me being the decision maker and I think they like it so that they don't have to deal with it. I like it because I want things to be my way and it has been that way since I was like 10. I've just been fortunate that I've always run into a group of people that, you know, I think they like that.

JAIME TARDY: Do you have the feeling that it always works out? Now you have a family. You have a wife; you said she's not as risky as you. You have a family. Do you sort of still feel like no matter what it will all work out?

TOM MILLS: Yes, I mean I think worrying too much about whether things will work out can make you conservative and make you take the safe route because you need to. You believe you need to. I think that yes, maybe you can have more extreme ups and downs or highs and lows, but I think that if you know you're smart enough or if you know you come up with enough good ideas or if you know people want to rally around you, when you get to a certain point where you realize some of those things are there, I don't think, like I wasn't worried about when I was making $14,000. I just wasn't.

When my wife said, "Okay, enough is enough" I need little things in life like that. I needed those little back you into the corner moments that made me put a little more effort in to spur something to happen. Like my wife saying, like here's the best example, this is probably the biggest change for me ever, in my life, was that when she said, "Okay something has got to give," you know I think from 1996 to 1999, I had probably made a total of about $30,000. I had racked up like $50,000 in credit card debt and we had now just gotten married and she's basically paying all the bills.

I don't know if you do the same thing, but a lot of times especially when you are in your 20s, people the night before Thanksgiving will go back to their hometown and they go to the local bar. You see all the people you went to high school with and then you're having your Thanksgiving the next day. Well I did that in '99 and while I was sitting around my house, my mother said to me, she says, "Are you going to head up to Michael's?" That was the name of the bar. I said, "I don't want to get there that early. I think if you go this early you only see the kids you saw in detention when you're in high school. I want to wait until later when I know everybody is there."

I just sat there and I started thinking about what's holding us back. What's our problem? I decided that I would just get a piece of paper and I would write out everything that happens on a mystery shop so that I could better really visualize what could be done to make some of these things better or more streamlined because, at the time, mystery shops themselves are being filled out in Microsoft Word and any statistical analysis or data that we were sending to a client was being compiled in Excel and they weren't working together. It was literally a manual process of filling one out and then plugging the things into the other. It was really, really time consuming and labor intensive.

Now meanwhile I am scheduling mystery shops and trying to find mystery shoppers. I am billing clients. I am literally doing everything that you can possibly do. So I write this all out and I go into my partner Howard the next week and I said, "Look I wrote this out and I am wondering do you think that we could bring some companies in and maybe somebody could do something to Word or Excel to just make this easier on us because we're using those two programs over and over and over again. There has got to be some type of formatting or someone that just knows better than us about how to use the software to make it better."

He said, "You know, yes, sure. Let's look into it." In an incredible case of luck, the one month that we looked to find programmers was the one month that this one particular company ran an ad in the Boston Business Journal. We called five companies. They were one of them and four of the five that came in said, "Yes, you know, we'll take Lotus Notes or we'll take Microsoft Access or Excel and we'll do this, we'll do that" and they will customize these things to do what we wanted but this fifth company, Surf Merchants out of Boston, they came in and I liked them first of all because they seemed like knuckleheads like I was.

One guy got lost on his way to our office. They seemed like a couple of guys that had just started their company but wanted to make us believe that they were more substantial than they were which was basically what I did every day.

JAIME TARDY: I was going to say normally that's a bad thing for people, but for you, you liked it.

TOM MILLS: I loved it because it was like meeting me. It was like I was meeting what I would have been like, if I were them. But they had the greatest idea and I didn't even know what it meant but they said, "Listen, we're going to write this in web language" which meant nothing to me. The thing that I loved about it was that they described it as if we write it in web language we won't have any restrictions. I'll never call you up and say, "Tom, I can't do that because Excel can't do that. We can do anything. It's just going to take a lot of code."

I thought that was interesting. We went back to them. We made a deal on how we would pay them, which was incredibly favorable to us. Howard and I both had to borrow money from our parents to even make the down payment and over the course of the next year, they built software that ultimately was called Sassy. Sassy came out in I believe early to mid 2000. Now keep in mind, at this point, we're probably doing about 300 mystery shops a month just in the greater Boston area. Sassy comes out in 2000. Over the next two years, with me doing nothing more than just calling companies and just sending them what Sassy could potentially do in some cases, in other cases what it could do, just by the visuals that Sassy created, it was unbelievable.

All of a sudden it was Bebe, Sketchers, Brookstone, Sharper Image, Timberland, like Forever 21, accounts were coming in at a rate that was insane. The good the bad of that was that now it brought on a whole different set of problems which were I didn't know how to hire, I didn't know how to train, I didn't know how to manage people. I didn't know how to run a company. I didn't know how to do anything beside from mystery shops.

JAIME TARDY: You could drink beer really well.

TOM MILLS: Yes, right. I could drink. It was one of these things that I just was not built for what was now hitting us. What was funny about those two years is that although we did grow quite substantially, we also contracted much of the time because of just screwing things up. It was a real big learning couple of years where it was like how do we do this? How do we do all that? I shouldn't have hired that person. I don't know what I was thinking. It was two years of just, you know what it was, it was like getting thrown in a pool and being told you got to swim. That was again one of those back me into a corner moments where I had to just do it and that helped a lot.

The next part of the story is now what happens is, you know, we had been finally taking a little bit of money ourselves but we have had to pay our parents back. We're still paying the software company. Even though we've got accounts coming in, we're still not making any money. Now I'm getting lots of pressure at home. It's now 2002. Yeah, you're really busy now, but still, show me the money. What happened was Surf Merchants came to me and they said, "We're at an impasse. We need a lot more money from you. You guys are adding adjustments and add ons and things to the software like crazy and you're saying you can't pay for them."

I had this idea where I just said, "Well how about this? There's a whole association of mystery shopping companies now called the MSPA." I said, "What if I introduced you and I promoted you as an interesting solution. Maybe other people would want software and if you can get other people to use it, that's fine. Just make all the things I want you to make for free and never charge me to use it forever and we're good." That was the deal we made and that basically changed everything because little did we know at that time, there was no web based software anywhere in the mystery shopping industry, even with companies that were doing $30, $50 million a year. They were still using Access, Word and Excel.

It was crazy. All of a sudden from 2002 to the current day, now Surf Merchants through Sassy has, I don't know, 80 to 100 customers. It's in like 20, 30 different languages. It's used all over the world. It's the most widely used software in mystery shopping by far.

JAIME TARDY: First that's amazing. You created the idea and then just said they could go sell it because they created it. That's kind of crazy. So you don't own Sassy at all? You just created it.

TOM MILLS: No, I have some interesting little like blockers, you know, things to protect me from any issues with Sassy, you know, like if they sell, they have to sell my deal onto the next person that they were to sell it to. There is a lot of little things that just protect me from not having my deal. But yes, the deal was basically go ahead. See what you can do with it and I'll even help you try to sell it but I just don't ever want to pay to use it.

JAIME TARDY: Wow, that's crazy. Would you do anything differently, if you could go back?

TOM MILLS: Oh yes, sure. Because I didn't know what I was doing then. I mean if I knew now, if this was me now in that situation, I would have raised the money. I would have known who to go to to get it and I would have bought up the software myself, because I would have known what an interesting advantage that was. I probably could have gotten funding, being the only guy with that software, I am sure I would have had VC's throwing money at me.

JAIME TARDY: Were you getting sales? Like you said, Brookstone and all that, were you getting the sales because of the software, at the very beginning?

TOM MILLS: Yes. There was nothing special about me. I mean I was just this, what was I at the time? Probably, this was 9, 10 years ago, I'm 31, 32 years old. My selling skills didn't all of a sudden just become fantastic. I had the newest widget that nobody else had. It was during that time that I think I got better at selling because what was interesting is from like 2000 to 2002 to 2005, well now you've got a lot of companies that are starting to use my software so I am kind of competing against myself. Now I've got to be a better salesperson because now I have to beat the thing that was my best quality. I think that's what actually made me, again backed me into a corner or turning me into someone that had to become a better salesman.

JAIME TARDY: Let's talk about that then. Now you're a better salesman. Give us some tips and advice on how to become a better salesman that you've learned.

TOM MILLS: Well, I think and I know a lot of people would disagree with this, but I don't think there's a real manual for it. I know there's a million books that tell you how to sell and I think that they all give you little bits and pieces that you can take, but I don't believe there's any one blueprint for saying do this and you'll sell well. Maybe there is, in certain industries, where there's just a certain way of selling certain products, but I think in general, the more you find the best parts of your personality and stay on those and avoid the things that you know you're not good at, that makes you better.

I think that's why a lot of young people struggle in being a salesperson is because an older person tries to turn them into them. But you can't do that. You need to be you. What was interesting is that if someone said to me what were your key parts of being a salesperson early on, I would say my Boston accent was one of my top two pieces.

JAIME TARDY: Really? That's great.

TOM MILLS: Oh yeah, if I walked into a room and I said car or park or I have a great idea, if I just said all the classic Boston things, that became half the discussion. Everyone thought it was hysterical. So I didn't want to turn that off. Now what's funny about that, as an example, is that as I got a little older and the game started to get bigger and the people that I would meet, the meetings got bigger. I started to find that I hated it because by the time it was '06 or '07, then it was like I was a circus act. I'd say a word and I would see people giggling and I'd look at someone and they would say, "Oh he's just funny because you said betta." Something like that.

I wanted to get away from it so what I started to do is I started toning it down. I still would, there'd be no doubt that when I came into the room you could tell that I was from the Northeast or maybe even from Boston, but now I stopped sounding like the guy that grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts where ever word that came out of my mouth said Boston. I wanted to tone it down a little bit because I wanted the seriousness to start to take a little more of a center stage than my show that I was. There you go; again, that's just an example of I knew that that was something that people liked so I played it up because that would make me walk out of the room with everybody liking me.

JAIME TARDY: What I am hearing too is that you are really adaptable. When it worked for you, you went with it and when it didn't work for you, you stopped.

TOM MILLS: Yes, sure.

JAIME TARDY: That's awesome. If you were to sort of go back and stuff, what would you tell your younger self, as you were getting into business, when you didn't have any real experience and you were just sort of going through it, what would you tell yourself then?

TOM MILLS: I wish I could have gone back and done the software thing over again. That whole VC story I said a minute ago, that would be the number one thing. You know, it's weird. I've had many people ask me, if you went back, would you have tried harder early on or would you have done anything to speed things up so you didn't have that long period of time where you struggle? You know, I probably wouldn't only because again I never really worried. I always thought it would work out. I don't know why. There'd be no evidence along the way to think that it would have, but I definitely believed that it would and I wouldn't want to get rid of the fun that I had with all the freedom that I had.

It's kind of this weird thing where, you know, racking up $50,000 in credit card debt, there's some people that would kill themselves over that. It never really bothered me. In my mind, I thought someday I will be able to pay it off. No matter how out of control those things got, no one could have ever said to me would you like to go back now and not do what you did and rack up all this debt and make more money. Well no because that would have kept me from going out and having fun. Going on trips with my friends that I technically couldn't afford to go on but I went anyways because I just didn't care.

I wouldn't want someone to say, I guess here's the best example is that you see people that have kids at a really young age. My parents had me very, very young and I'll say to them, "Was it tough? You were teenagers with a kid and you're living in the inner city and living in the projects. All of a sudden you went from having fun all the time to not. You have a child and you got to stay in." My father would say, "Well, you know, life hit us quick. We had to grow up quick. Your mother had to get a better job and I had to get serious." I just think to myself, wow I wouldn't have wanted to do that.

I had ten years of good times before I had to worry about anything, before I even had to get serious at all whereas they had to get serious at 19 and 18. It's weird. Even though I was in a bad position technically, for many of those years, I don't know that I would want to go back and do it any differently just because I enjoyed myself.

JAIME TARDY: I think that's key. I think that's what a lot of people are missing too is that we're working so hard towards something, right, and then not enjoying now because of that. I love your attitude. I don't like the debt, because I paid off $70,000 so I know what you're going through, but to me it worried me. I wasn't as carefree as you were around the debt, but the fact that you sort of allowed yourself to have fun during it all, even though you weren't rich, you know what I mean, you didn't let that stop you from having fun and I think that's a key piece.

TOM MILLS: You know, it's funny; my trip around the country is really a great microcosm of my personality because I am still very, very close with the guys that I grew up with in Holbrook. I moved from Somerville to Holbrook when I was 13 and the Holbrook guys, I still hang around with them every day. The guy that I took the trip around the country with, he actually died just a couple of months ago, in a real freakish set of circumstances. He basically died because of preventative chemo and not telling his doctors that he was sick and he got a virus because of having a case of pneumonia and it's a long story. It was a horrible, horrible time. It was the first person in our group to die. Obviously, we are only in our early 40's so it was shocking.

What's interesting is that, when that whole scenario driving west came up, there were five guys in the room. We were drinking and having a good time and I turned to them and I said, "You know what, I'm moving to California." Just off the cuff. Hadn't said anything to my parents; nothing. I don't even know that I had thought about it the week before and they said, "What?" I said, "Yes, you know what, I want to drive to California, see what it's like. We hear how different it is and I want to see if I can be an actor. You know, we're only 21. Who's in? Who wants to come?" At the time, all five guys were going.

I said, "All right, well the only way I know we're really going to go is if we pick a hard date. We can't have a discussion about when we're going to go. We just got to pick a date." Some of the guys were like we can't go until after the semester is over. I'm in my senior year or I've got to save money, I can't go. I'm like no, no there's no excuses. We just got to go. They were like where are you going to get the money? I'm like I don't know; I'm not worried about the money. I don't have any money. It won't matter. If I say I am going to save up the money, I won't save the money. It's more about the date.

So I took the calendar and I took out October, November and December and stuck them in a hat and I pulled out November. I took November and I ripped it into four strips and I pulled out the second week. I took the second week and I ripped it into seven squares and I pulled out a Tuesday and that Tuesday, November 10, I think it was, was the day I was leaving. There wasn't any getting around it. I remember going home and telling my parents and my father saying, "What do you mean? You can't go anywhere on November 10, school doesn't end until December." I went, "Yeah, I know but that's too bad. I got to go on November 10 or I won't go."

JAIME TARDY: Because I picked it out of a hat. That's awesome.

TOM MILLS: Yes. I looked at it like I'll make a million excuses not to go but if I say I am going and if I say it's this day and I plan for that day, then I'll go. So little by little all the guys dropped off until there was one guy left ? my friend Mark ? and he and I, like I said, we get in that car that day, we didn't know when we'd ever come back but what was interesting is that he was very conservative and I had to basically convince him over the course of the next like six weeks to go.

I'll never forget, because we were gone for about a month, and he turned to me one day, in Vegas, and he just said, "You know, I can't thank you." He didn't say these exact words but something to the effect of I can't thank you enough. I didn't think I'd go and you just convinced me to go and now I am so glad I went because we got to see everything. We drove through 20 something states. We got to see the Grand Canyon. We went to Mardi Gras. We went to Daytona Spring Break, lived in Las Vegas, went to LA for weeks. Driving through Utah was amazing. We spent a couple days in Chicago, couple days in Denver. I mean these are guys that are 21 years old that had never really done anything outside of New England.

To this day, the single greatest moment of my life, even though I really didn't have any money and I didn't accomplish what I wanted to accomplish and I basically just partied for six months, definitely the best time ever.

JAIME TARDY: It's so funny; you don't let the logical stuff get to you. You don't have any excuses. You just keep moving forward no matter what. That's a great story. That's excellent. Tell me about where are you now. What does your company look like now? I know you said you live in Las Vegas, of course, for three and a half months. Are you in Boston the other time or in Massachusetts?

TOM MILLS: Our office is in Taunton, Massachusetts. What ended up happening was is a couple other little interesting things. In 2005, the state of Nevada decided to enforce a law that is really on the books of every state but no state applies it to mystery shopping, but Nevada decided to apply this private investigator law to Nevada. Now one of the interesting things about my situation is that almost all mystery shopping companies are born from market research people because they kind of go hand in hand whereas because my partner Howard was a security consultant, we came from a security and loss prevention background.

He was a licensed private investigator and because I worked for him for more than ten years, I qualified to get my own license. I got a PI license in Massachusetts and then when they enforced this law in Nevada, it opened up a great door for us because now we could get a PI license in Nevada and could do mystery shopping, when almost none of our competitors could. So competitors started coming to me and the reason why they did and they trusted me was because I was the Sassy guy. I was the guy that they knew came up with the software that many of them were probably using.

So they started outsourcing their Nevada business to us. Then at the same time, I started thinking to myself, all right if you need a PI license to do stuff in Nevada, who's working with the casinos? So we started calling on the casinos and the nightclubs and flash forward six years, we've got an office there that has been there for six years and we work with many casinos in Las Vegas. We work almost the entire nightclub industry out there and we work with about 50 different casino properties all over the country that are all managed from the office that's in Las Vegas.

JAIME TARDY: No wonder why you are in Las Vegas all the time.

TOM MILLS: Yes, we're just a couple weeks away from going too. We usually go sometime in January and come back sometime in April.

JAIME TARDY: Yes, when it's cold here in the Northeast.

TOM MILLS: Exactly.

JAIME TARDY: Smart man. Did you ever know, like when you were in Las Vegas, in your 20s, did you ever think you'd be coming back because you would be running that stuff in the casinos?

TOM MILLS: Well you know it's funny is when my brother was graduating from college, we were there and I happened to run into my guidance counselor from high school whose daughter was graduating. He ran into me and now I hadn't seen him in, let's see if my brother was 28 I was 38 so I hadn't seen this guy in 20 years probably. He walks over to me and goes "Tommy Mills" and I said, "Mr. Cosgrove, how are you?" He goes, "I got to ask. Are you a professional gambler?"

In high school, that's who I thought I would be. I was a numbers guy. I liked gambling. I liked games. I was the guy that sold the football cards in high school. I was the person that taught all my friends how to bet on sports. I was that guy. So I believed that I would be that somehow professionally. It was comical that he said that to me because I said, "You know what, Mr. Cosgrove, I'm not, thank God, but this is what happened" and I told him my story and told him how I was living in Las Vegas and all this stuff. He was like oh my gosh that's amazing.

JAIME TARDY: You have such a great story. Tell me if there's any resources that you turned to, any books you read, anything that you really feel like really helped your growth as you were going through.

TOM MILLS: I can tell you even though it was more recent, the last three years I went to this, I'm a member of this EO, Entrepreneurs Organization, and EO has been an incredible help to me. When I joined EO, we just barely qualified and every guy that I met knew more than I did and that was so helpful to me. I would show up one month and say, "I've got this HR issue" and five people would tell me how they handled it when they ran into that problem two years ago.

Just the resources of people being able to reach out to someone that I've never met in Denver to say what do you do about this and they would know the answer or does anyone have any key contacts at this particular company and what should I do and having resources just in the entire world to say here you go. Really the three big things I got from EO:

(A) Was that, the beginning stuff; just the rudimentary how do I run a business and how have you guys become successful? Help me become more successful. The help I got from those guys and friendships has been irreplaceable.

(B) Was because it was a worldwide organization and I got to meet people from around the world by doing some of the functions, it made me feel as though doing business outside this country wasn't that big of a deal. So many people in the U.S. are afraid of outside of the U.S. Things are so different. The money is different. The language is different. The cultures are so different that there's just this huge fear of doing business in other places and I always felt as though, you know what, I bet I can get ahead by just trying to do it. So now we've got offices in Argentina, India, Switzerland and Turkey and although it's an uphill battle and still a long way to go, I don't fear it. I enjoy it. I like learning about the different places. I love traveling the world. I mean that's been huge.

(C) The last piece is that EO does a sponsored thing with MIT through a program called Entrepreneurs Masters Program. You go to the MIT campus in Dedham, Massachusetts for three straight days, three years in a row and you're in a class of 60 people that have all applied from all over the world and they handpick 60 people and those relationships and the people that I learned from in those three years, I just graduated last year, that again just I could never put a price tag on it. Like incredible the stuff that I learned. I mean just from the smartest, most successful people in the world coming in, speaking to you for four hours about exactly how they did it and how they avoided problems, how they fixed problems, how they moved forward, how they grew internationally. How they built a sales a force, how they hire people, like every single that spoke top of the line just absolutely amazing.

JAIME TARDY: That's invaluable. I know and I love the EO network. I've gotten quite a few people, they have like 7,500 members and I'll definitely link up to them too. One of their qualifications is you need to be earning at least a million dollars a year but they also have I think an accelerator program, if you're making your revenues around $250,000, I think you can enter there, but I'll put some details because I love them too. They have been an amazing help for me too. I really appreciate it. Excellent.

TOM MILLS: Yes, it has been incredible.

JAIME TARDY: And it sounds like relationships were sort of a big piece for you because it sounds like you've made some great friendships and I made mentors in that program too.

TOM MILLS: Yes and you know what it also did is it also made me, I had always been an idea guy, like I knew that growing up I always was the guy, you know, what about this? I would always have the ideas and my friends would always be like, "Millsey come up with something else. Let's play a card game and make a game up." I was always that guy but all those things were always very, they meant nothing. It was like who cares about somebody who can come up with drinking games. You know what I mean?

They may have been fun for the time that we were sitting right there at the table, but it wasn't going to put any money in my pocket. By being around those guys, in the early 2000s, I saw how many things these other guys had going on and I'd say wow. I kind of thought because I found my thing I had to really lock in on it. Instead, I realized that I don't want to lock in on it. I love distractions and it's the distractions that make me like doing what I do. I'm not the kind of guy that works 70/80 hours a week at his job. I might work 70 or 80 hours in a week, but it doesn't feel like work to me because if I am spending 20 hours on other things, I feel like that's a vacation, even though those things may be things that are business related like I am trying to start a business.

Like right now I'm trying to develop a card game with a guy in Las Vegas. I've got a story that I've been working on forever. I've got a guy that lives in California who is in the movie industry and I talk with him on a regular basis about movie ideas and TV show and reality show ideas. I've got so many balls, my brother and I are working on a social media app that maybe even as of Thursday we may be putting a CEO and a team together and get funding. I have so many projects going now, it's insane, but I love them because they are distractions and it makes it so that when I am doing my regular job I enjoy it.

JAIME TARDY: I love that. It's like an entrepreneur's dream, especially people that haven't gotten to the point where you are right now. They want those distractions but they don't have that main business giving them money yet so they are working on the main business to give them money but to know that that's what you can do in the future. I've interviewed quite a few millionaires and a lot of them say get that first success under your belt and then you can branch out a lot more. It sounds like that's what you are doing. It sounds very, very fun.

TOM MILLS: Plus I think you know, there's always that people, it's easier to get things to happen the more you get something to happen because it just multiplies the amount of people around you that want to help you make it happen. When you are a guy who starts a company and it is successful, well little by little the people around you realize hey his house got awfully big, his car got awfully nice. He is doing all these things so all of a sudden they start gravitating to you and you start noticing that what you say people take more seriously. People value your opinion. People call you for advice. People call you for help; like all those things start to happen.

Then all of a sudden you do a second thing and now even your business contacts look and say, "Yes, he always has good idea" or "He's got the Midas touch. He's two for two on companies and well I've got this idea. What if I told him about it? Maybe he can help me with my idea?" Before you know it, you've got these guys, like I am friends with some people that this is all they do now. It's kind of like they use their primary company as a stepping stone. Now they basically don't even do anything at their primary company. All they do is go out and try to find other ventures and other things to be involved in whether it's them just putting their name on it because that mattered or it's getting people to put money in or they put money in. Like they say, it takes money to make money.

JAIME TARDY: I love hearing the other side of it too. That sounds so fun. I can't wait. I want to have you back on and tell us all about the other stuff that you are working on too.

TOM MILLS: If all goes well with the app, the app could be an interesting conversation a month or so from now, because the applicant is quite interesting where I think our timing was absolutely fantastic with the release of the iPhone 4S.

JAIME TARDY: I got mine yesterday.

TOM MILLS: With them going to that Siri model of speaking to your phone, we had already been in development of a software or an app that will allow you to do only speaking and what's great about it is that we know that the states and towns and cities don't want people texting when they are driving. We know that we don't like talking to each other that's why we text, but there's no reason why we have to type it. There's good use for audio and Twitter and Facebook and Four Square, so we're coming up with sort of this all encompassing audio app that will allow you through all social medias to do voice versus having to type.

JAIME TARDY: You'll have to let me know when that goes live. I'll definitely tweet it out to all my people and download it for my new iPhone. That's awesome. I'd love a follow up on that. Perfect. I respect your time too. I know you were just talking to another country before we ended up chatting. For the last question, that I always ask, is what's one action that listeners can take this week to move them forward towards their goal of a million?

TOM MILLS: I would say be ready to do it. Be ready to say yes. Don't fear losing. Everybody loses but you can't win without playing the game and if you want to win a lot, you got to play a lot. But the more you play, the more you lose. You got to accept that. You got to accept that there are losses along the way but you don't let them get you down. You just pick your spots. You know what I mean? You're ready for something to happen to you. Like you brought up luck earlier, let luck happen. Let yourself be lucky because most of the time if you're not lucky it's because you are not letting yourself. You're not giving yourself any opportunity for luck. If you don't buy a scratch ticket, you can't win on them.

JAIME TARDY: That's brilliant. Excellent. Where can we find you online? Where can we learn more about and do you have something that sort of talks about your app and when we can download it and all that fun stuff too?

TOM MILLS: Right now the mystery shopping company is under the name HS Brands and the two brands are Service Sleuth, a Mystery Shopping Company and Mershimer Group, my current partner's loss prevention company. One part I left out on the story is I bought out my previous partner back in '05 and I have a new partner as of '06. So it's HSBrands.com and everything else is on the way. The card game will be called Showdown and I'll probably have an update sometime in February on that. The app will be called BabbleOn and again probably an update on that very shortly.

JAIME TARDY: Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on today, Tom. I really appreciate it. We'll make sure to link to everything in the show notes and I'll keep all my listeners updated on your cool new stuff that you have going on and hopefully we'll chat again soon.

TOM MILLS: Thanks, Jaime. Appreciate it.

Just to note, you can download the top ten tips from these millionaire interviews on the blog.

Thanks for listening. You can find out more great information like this on EventualMillionaire.com.

Tags: Business Growth, Business Marketing, business success, millionaire interview, Personal Wealth, Tom Mills, Wealth Building

Categories: Action Plans, All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Millionaire Interviews, Sales

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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