How I Built a $1.7B Business Repairing Garage Doors

We're going to spend $4.3 million this month in marketing, and here's what I've learned.

Tommy Mello.

Tommy Mello. Tommy Mello, the founder of A1 Garage Door.

You're doing this blue-collar thing but at this really big scale, and I love that combination.

A1 Garage Doors, we fix, we repair, we maintain, and we replace garage doors. A1 from day one. The original valuation was— now the business is north of $80 million a year.

No shit.

What other businesses have you seen in the services industry that you are shocked at how big they are?

Most of what I've done is repeatable. It's not like this crazy thing that only works in garage doors. Don't overcomplicate it, dude.

I've known you for 27 minutes and I love this guy.

Tommy, what do you suck at? Where's your weakness right now?

I was going to go broke. There was a stripper living in our Dallas warehouse with my manager.

We were doing so well and then Tommy went to jail.

There it is. There's the weakness.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel.

Tommy, have you ever, uh, listened to MFM, My First Million, this podcast?

Yeah, we listen. I, I listened to a dozen.

What do you think?

I, I love the come up stories and like, I hate how every single guy is pushing entrepreneurship. Because it's cut out for 4 to 5% of the population. Like, you won't be able to handle this. The rejection, the failure, the 5 years of taking a loan against your house, the people that quit and cheat and lie, the canceled appointments, the long drives, the, the hard nights, the walking out of the movie theater to go run a job. Like, I just, I don't feel like everybody's cut out for it. And some people that invested in Bitcoin early, like, they don't know what it's like.

So who do you think is cut out for it? How do you know?

Well, there's, there's this thing called Driven. It's a book my buddy Gary wrote the book, and it's actually, if you're a hunter, it's in your DNA. It's literally a different chromosome. And there's so much more. Usually it's ADD. Usually you're dyslexic, some people, but it just means you have a high tolerance for failure. You're, you're, you're okay working a lot. Uh, you don't ever mention the words work-life balance. You're off balance on purpose. And their seasons of life and you actually have a bigger why. And by the way, you can't quit. The goalpost always moves. There's no like finish, there's no end zone. So if you're going to start from nothing, the chance of success is less than 10%.

So you— so for the audience, you started this thing called A1 Garage, which at this point I think does north of $300 million in revenue. You took some chips off the table. You sold about half or a little bit less than half of the business recently for, I think, north of a billion dollar valuation. Is that right?

Wow. And how long ago did you start the company?

Uh, 2007. So the first 10 years were practice.

And explain, what does the company do so people understand who you are and what you do?

A1 Garage Doors, we fix, we repair, we maintain, and we replace garage doors. And we do this in now 23 states, 37 markets. We run on average 25,000 jobs a month.

And give us the origin story. We don't usually like the origin stories because you can, you know, you can get those elsewhere. But I got to ask, I got to know. This is— I mean, the end point is so interesting. I got to know the beginning.

You know, when I was a kid, my mom was a real estate agent. My dad had a transmission shop. He didn't pay the IRS, so that got taken. They got a divorce. So I learned to shovel snow, mow lawns in Michigan. I got a job when I was 12 washing dishes at $4.05 an hour. And I always had the entrepreneurial gene. I started a landscaping business when I moved to Arizona and I was living at this house, $700. We paid rent for 3 guys. I paid 200, my other roommate paid 200, the guy with the master paid 300. And one of the roommates was manager at a garage door company. He goes, dude, I cannot find a good painter to save my life. If you guys know anything about painters, they're pretty unreliable. And so he is like, can you paint garage doors? By the way, I'm busing tables, serving tables, and bartending, and I'm flipping Bowflexes. I buy 'em on Craigslist, sell 'em on the Arizona Republic. I've sold over 300 Bowflexes.. And then I did Total Gyms and I sold over 1,000 cars, buy them, fix them, clean them, sell them. And so I'm doing all these things and I mean, I am hustling. I am like the epitome of hustler at this point. And I was like, sure, how much you gonna pay me? He's like, I could pay you $100 to paint per garage door, but you gotta pay for the paint and the tape and the paper. So I was like, I had a G20 Infinity in '96.. It had 120,000 miles on it and it was cheap on gas. And by the way, 2006, 2005, this is when the real estate market was booming. And so I hired a painter, this old man, and I paid him $300 per door to teach me. He taught me on 3 doors. I went to Home Depot, bought a Magnum 5 paint gun, and I was off to the races and I got good. I could paint 10 doors a day. I went through the Yellow Book and called every garage door company. I'd say 7 outta 10, I became their primary painter.

And does the garage door company mean like I install a new garage door or your garage door needs some type of service and I fix it?

So the garage door company does both. They fix 'em and they replace 'em. So every time they replaced one, if it's an HOA property or a house paint match, I was the guy. They'd grind out a little section, they'd give it to me. Usually the owner would meet up. I'd get 10 from one guy, 3 from this guy. And I go knock them out and I literally use MapQuest to build my routes. I mean, this is back in the day before GPS.

You mentioned that you called all the garage companies and you became the primary for whatever, 7 out of 10. So what was the pitch? So ring, ring, I pick up. What are you telling them and what, what worked there? Because it sounds like just being a reliable guy who's going to do what he says he's going to do was a, was a differentiator here. What did you say on the phone?

Yeah. So I mentioned the company that my roommate worked for. I said, I've been painting garages for several months. I show up on time. I work the warranties if there's any, which is rare because I spend time with the clients. I'll pick up the samples myself. I'll pay for the paint. I'm only charging $100. That includes drive time. And all I ask is that I get paid when I finish the work. I clean up after myself. I'm very reliable. And most of these guys didn't have that service to offer. So I said, it's just one more thing. You could charge $300, give me $100 out of it. You know, this is another way to make money. It's another way to go into HOAs. And they're like, you sound hungry, kid. Yeah, let's meet up. I'll give you a couple. We'll see how you do. In Arizona, it was easier in the summer because it dries real quick. In the winter, when it's kind of wet outside and it's cool, you got to go on real slow. It takes a little longer. And you got to tape the windows. If there's windows, it could be a pain in the butt. But I got really, really fast and efficient. And so I'm meeting up with these technicians and every technician, because half the time I met up with the technicians to get the sample and they're like, dude, I just made $3,000 this week. And I'm like, you made $3,000 as a technician? And by the way, like I said, the real estate market was booming. People were just like, their real estate was going up so fast. They were just like, fix it. I went out with a guy, he charged $150 per remote. And I'm like, who would pay? Go to Home Depot, pick them up for $10 at the time. So my other roommate got a job working for him as a technician, and he approached me. His name's Gabe, and he goes, we should start our own business. And I was like, well, dude, I'll form the LLC, I'll get the EIN number, I'll get us going. I know enough, I can handle the marketing, but you're going to have to teach me how to be a technician. He didn't know much because their training was crap. So I went to all the manufacturers that got trained. I had the business with Gabe for 3 years. Uh, he also smoked about a pound of weed per month at the time. So that was like, it was like he'd be eating and by the way, he's still my best friend, but he, he'd be like, listen, after I finish lunch, I'll give you a call back. And I'm like, I, I watched him answer the phone. So every time he went outta town, I take the phones. And man, we made a lot of money when I took the phones, but I also ran all the calls because this is when I quit the busboy job. All I kept was the bartending job. 2010, I gave him an ultimatum. I said, dude, you're my best friend, you're my roommate and my business partner. You take the business and the debt, I'll start my own. Or you could give me the business, I'll take on all the debt. You're in the clear. He goes, I wanna move to Montana. I wanna be closer to my brother. I said, great. And at this point, just quick little to top it off, I had 6 employees full-time, 2 1099s. And by the way, people were stealing toilet paper. I didn't have a real office, so I rented my first real office. We were working out of our house, and I was kind of like, just at night, just holding my hands over my face going, what am I doing? I can't— I don't trust anybody. So who do you— what do you do when you don't trust anybody? You call mom. So I call my mom in Michigan. I said, mom, I don't know what to do. I said, I could really use your help, but I don't have enough money to pay you good money. I could afford to pay you $15 an hour. I gotta pay my stepdad 65 grand, which by the way, my mom's best year in real estate, she sold 55 houses. So she, she's done well. She's like, Tommy, I don't know. I'm like, listen, mom, I'm your only son. I need your help. You think about it. I love you. She called back in 2 weeks, said, we're gonna sell our house. We're gonna move our lives to Arizona.

Oh my gosh.

Big move.

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At the time, the business is doing what, roughly? So like, you know, because that's a big leap of faith.

It's $1.5 million a year. It's— and by the way, like, a lot of people have a tough time hitting $1 million, but I was the highest ticket writer for 7 years. And then I finally started to delegate. Like, anytime we weren't going to hit payroll, that my mom would call and say, hey, because I'm working on marketing and hiring and training. She's like, I need you to go run 2 jobs today. And then in 2014, I found a good integrator. The dude was super smart and he still tells me the stories. He's not here anymore. He's kind of retired now. He's younger than me. He goes, you would pay me $2,000 one week and then not pay me for 2 weeks and then give me like $1,200 the next time. He's like, we didn't even have any type of payroll worked out the first year. I was like, yeah, dude. But 2017, we got on the right software and man, all of a sudden we were doing $17 million but keeping hardly any of it. Next year we did $30 million. Next year we did $50 million. And we'd never lost money in profit or revenue. Well, basically since the beginning, but 2017, we were just on a rocket ship.

So you were— you made a joke that you— the first 10 years were practice. So on your 10th year of business, what was your revenue and profit?

Revenue was $17 million. And that was out of grit. That was just like working nights, weekends, and holidays, just overworking.. And I remember Al came in and said, let me tell you something, buddy. I'm looking at your P&L. I'm looking at your balance sheet, your income statement. Revenue is for vanity and profit is for sanity. You are not making any money. You're just a squirrel running around in circles. He goes, we need to figure out how to make serious profit. So I was $17 million and everybody's like, man. And I'd puff my chest out everywhere and I'd say how much revenue we're making. Revenue means nothing. I don't even talk to anybody about revenue anymore. The name of the game is you got to make profit.

Well, do you remember your profit on $17 million?

I was, you know, I was paying myself $150 grand, taking a couple hundred grand out. There was not a lot of money left. And by the way, we didn't have a great CFO or controller at the time. It was— it wasn't super lined up. That's one thing that changed my life is getting control of the money.

When you said as you were growing, sorry, how many markets are you in to do that? You know, that type of scale to do $17 million in revenue?

So I have a ton of questions on the courses and the seminars and stuff because you've talked about them a bunch and I'll get to that in a second. But first, you mentioned 4 stories. So the technician who you used to cold call, your integrator, your mom, and ServiceTitan, where you convinced them to do something special. Were you always convincing or did you like have to read to get good with words? I mean, how, how is it like the way that you're telling these stories? I'm like, this seems like a no-brainer. This also seems like this person's incredibly persuasive.

I don't necessarily know if I learned that. My dad, when, when I'm 5 years old, I remember this day vividly. I was in Royal Oak, Michigan, and this is the longest driveway I've ever seen in my life. And there was a yard sale or a garage sale. My dad always stopped at those. And I found this CB radio and I'm picking it up and I'm playing with the antenna and I got the little, I'm like, 5050, and I'm like just talking into it and I put it back and we walked back to the car and my dad looks at me and he goes, hey Tommy, you really wanted that, didn't you? I looked at him, I go, yeah, Dad. He goes, here's $5, go get it. I go, Dad, there's a Scotch tape on it that says $20. He goes, I know, go get it for $5. And it didn't make sense to me. He goes, just go up to her. I want you to smile. I want you to point at me and say, my dad and I were wondering if you'd take $5 for this radio. And I'm talking, this was like, I was worried. I'm looking back at my dad and he's like, keep going. And he's waving and he's like, keep going. And I look back at him every 5 steps and I walk up and I mean, man, I had, it was like I was anxious as hell. And I go, ma'am, I was just curious, would you take $5 for this radio? And I go, that's my dad over there. And he's waving and smiling. And she gets down on one knee. She pulls off the Scotch tape. She takes the 5 and presents it to me. And I'm telling you guys. The radio was awesome, but I walked back and I learned a lesson that you'll never lose in life. Like, don't be afraid of rejection. You go up there, you ask, you just go for no. And I think that he taught me at a young age. I watched him negotiate things I never thought possible and just, you know, he used to say, I wish I knew then what I know now. And what he told me is like, don't be afraid to ask the girl out. Worst case scenario, her loss. Don't be afraid of what people think about you. You're living in your own world. He goes, a lot of people are going to have contempt. They're not going to like you. You're going to be more successful. But don't worry. This is the world we live in. Continue to run. Like, look, hang out with people. You got a common future instead of a common past. Figure out how to get in the right circles. And so, and my mom, I would say my mom gave me more love. She said, you could do anything. I'm going to get behind you. Like, if I went to prison, she'd move next to the prison. To see me every day. Like, my mom loves me. If I said, mom, I got in a really bad wreck, the person's not okay, she'd grab a shovel, be like, how do we get rid of this mess? My dad just was like, I'm gonna teach you sales. I'm gonna teach you persuasion. And so the combination is just, I think it, it, it turned me into like of the belief system that I have somebody no matter what. That's why my mom and stepdad moved out. And then my dad was just like, you're gonna have the skills because you're going to be around me. And he was good at it.

You said he used to negotiate things you didn't think possible. What do you mean by that?

We went to Mexico and there was a jacket for $250. Lesnar, he walked out of it for $20. And he's like, watch this. And he's like, they're like, señor, no, no, no, meet me in the middle, $100. And he's like, Tommy, we're out of here. And he meant it. He's like, I don't need the jacket. You don't— one day we rebuilt a C10 truck, and I mean, I spent the whole summer sanding this down. We got it painted. Me and my dad rebuilt the engine. We put the transmission in, and it was sitting in my front yard. And I said, Dad, a guy came by, offered me $10,000. He's like, take it. He's like, you haven't driven it in 2 years. And I go, Dad, me and you did this together. He goes, take a picture of it. You'll remember it. We could do another one. He goes, you're not driving it, sell it. And I love that because I was like, man, I was all sentimental about it. He's like, Tommy, it's just material things, dude. You could buy another one. We'll do another one. Take a picture if you want to remember it. But that's just always how he is, you know.

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So I told Sean a story about a buddy of mine from my high school who bought his parents' HVAC company and has since blown it up. And Sean made fun of me. He goes, you're not even the most successful person from your high school. Well, that person is Chris Hoffman, the person you just referred to, Sean. He's done the same thing where he's like blown this up, these services businesses. But what I've noticed actually about Chris as well, but I'm actually— Chris has this trait and I'm inspired more so that you have this trait, Tommy, because our listeners of MFM are like Sean and I, and we have this attitude where we're really good at starting stuff, but sometimes you stay scrappy and you stay as a hustler and unfortunately, after some type of mark, I don't know, the $10 million in revenue range, the $5 million, the $15 million revenue range, that hustle, that scrappiness, that like just go and get shit done, that actually kind of holds you back. And I'm going through that right now with my company of like being systems focused. And you have done a really good job of showing how a person goes from like being a hustler to systems and scaling and hiring a good team and being an executive, I would say. And you actually have this really good quote. I think you said that in order to scale, I had to kill the hustler inside of me or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. The hot side of the knife for the leader to be bored. And I'll tell you, I delegate to elevate. People are always like, dude, I'll outwork you. I remember I had my let's say, and I could work 3 days in 1 day. My day starts in 6-hour increments and I work 3 of them in 18 hours. And I'm like, dude, I don't respect anybody that works harder. I know there's people shoveling poop somewhere on a field that are working way harder than me. I look at skill way differently. There's certain people I hire that can handle the task of 3 people. 40-hour work weeks in 10 hours. And so I came up with paying for performance and paying for outcomes. And I will be very transparent that I am the dumbest guy on my team. I mean, when it comes to the C-suite, VPs, directors, I'm just the visionary. I dream really, really big. I love sales and I love marketing and I love relationships and culture. I am not gonna be the specialist. I live in a different planet. I don't live within the walls of this company. I'm creating a personal brand. And by the way, there's 62 guys training next door. 50 of them found me on social media and said, I want to work for that guy. So building a personal brand for your business really matters. And, you know, the thing I ask now is, would I work for you? Would I buy from you? Would my grandma buy from you? And would I go have a beer with you? You tell great stories. You don't have— you don't shake my hand like a limp fish. You make eye contact, you smile a lot, you're interesting. I'm gonna ask you tough questions to see how you figure things out. There's no right answer. And so the, I started thinking about this about 5 years ago. It's who, not how. Who is the right hire? Not what's my strategy, not what system. Systems are super important, but what's the next hire that I bring on the bus that'll take me to the promised land? And when you start thinking like that and you feel, you stack the deck with A+ players, Your job gets easier. Like, it's gotten so easy. And whenever it gets easy, we explode. The business explodes. So you go through these peaks and valleys. And I'm like, I will tell you guys, we did $315 million. And I'm like, there's no reason we can't be at a billion in 2.5 years. And so I gotta set that vision and people are like, dude, you're crazy. And then I gotta map it out and show them this is all that would need to happen. The average technician is $700,000 now. And so what would need to happen for us to do this? We would need to have this department, this department, this department. We need to make sure we got trucks on command. We need to make sure we got a good greenfield strategy. And you start reverse engineering your goals. You create some accountability and consistency, and all of a sudden you wake up and it's there.

Dude, that's awesome. I love hearing you talk.

I get excited, guys. I love entrepreneurship and I run towards failure. I don't really care what people think. I'm not going to lie to you guys and say I really do care what a lot of people think. I care what my parents think. I care what the people I work with— I'm not the guy that just says I don't care at all what anybody thinks. I'd love to pretend that's the truth, but I guess now I think I'd rather be respected than loved. But by a lot of people, I choose love first.

Yeah, but do any of your employees actually think that you're a dick? I mean, you don't seem— you don't— you come off as like a pretty caring, empathetic person.

I've known you for 27 minutes and I love this guy.

Yeah. Like, who— like, who thinks that you're disrespectful or rude? You might be a guy who says, look, it's not working out, unfortunately. But I think they would still have love and respect.

No, I don't fire anymore. I had to fire 5 people that were direct reports to me this year, this past year. But when Adam started in 2014, I said, you're going to be the bad cop because I'm not good at it. But I do have to have these fierce, hard conversations with people. And it's not easy, but it's for the best of them. Like, if you think about who changed your life, was there— like, I had a coach that literally made sure I got a warm meal. Like, I I respected him. I mean, he literally told me I'm not gonna play, like if my grades weren't good, if I didn't show up and give it 110%. So he didn't play me 2 games, but he made sure, listen, 3 nights a week he was going to buy me a meal with dinner because he knew my mom was working 3 jobs. And I found out I respected him more than I loved him. But the, the respect turned into love. And that was a lesson for me is I gotta be straight up. I'm gonna tell you what you're doing great, but I'm also gonna tell you You're not living up to your potential. I see something better in you, and it's my job to pull that out of you. And I'm either going to pull that out of you, or I'm going to force you to quit, or you're going to not have a job here. I'm going to give you the invitation to go work for one of my competitors.

Me and Sean were talking about, like, these inspirational leaders and stuff last episode. And I think we— I told a story about how I had a cross-country coach that was like, this year you're going to learn how to be better men, and we're going to do it via running. And that's kind of the same energy that you have, which is, you know, you young technician, you're going to learn how to be a better man this year. And I'm going to do it by teaching you how to smile when you meet a customer, how to say yes, ma'am, no, sir, how to, you know, like it's like more so we're going to learn how to live great lives and be great high-class people. But we're going to do it via, you know, serving the customers wonderfully.

It's 100%, right? I used to find fours and try to make them sevens. Now I hire sevens and try to make them tens. And so now I've got a much harder way to get into the company. So I did orientation yesterday with 62 people and I said, you should feel proud because it takes 50 interviews to even get one of you to this room. But now the hard part starts and we got a bell you could ring if you tap out. We get about 2 people a class that just say, this is— we don't— they got to clean after they're done. They got to show up. If you're late one day, there's a good chance for sending you home.

There's a bell. So during training, anybody can just go literally ring a bell and quit.

It's the same as the Navy SEALs.

Are you ex-military? You have that vibe.

No, I'm not in the— I never was in the military.

Okay. You mentioned this guy Al in passing. You said, my mentor Al. And I'm always curious about mentors because I think everybody wants a mentor. I think few people ever end up with that special kind of relationship with a great mentor. But one of the great things is when somebody has one, they can kind of share a story that, you know, it kind of becomes our mentor too. And so can you tell me a great Al story? What did, what did this guy kind of make you realize or teach you about?

So he was the second guy on my podcast and he wrote a book. It's on my shelf over here. It's called The Seven Power Contractor, explains the different stages of the home service industry. And he's, he had gone through every masterclass and just studied how to build a business. And he had a business with his brothers and his father, and one day they just got fed up. And his daughter— he had his camcorder on the back of the room recording his daughter at a play. And his wife comes up to him and says, Al, you know what your daughter said she wants at school today? She said she wishes her dad was around more. And he goes, Natalie— I mean, it gives me goosebumps, but he goes, Natalie, I'm going to disappear for about a year. I'm not going to be around as much, but I need to systematize this business. I need to get SOPs. I need to make sure that I can spend time with my two daughters and you. And so we're going to go on a vacation for two weeks in one year, and I'm not even going to look at my pager. I mean, this is back in the day. And Al, he met me for lunch and I handed him the book I was working on, The Home Service Millionaire. He flipped through it and said, this is garbage. He goes, you need to rewrite it. And I said, okay. And he goes, the thing that I wanted to work with you originally, Tommy, is you brought a notebook and you wrote down everything I said. He goes, that's the only reason I thought about working with you. He walked into my shop that day, goes, can we go do a shop tour? I said, sure. He goes, why do you have all the calendars on the wall? Haven't you ever heard of Outlook or Google Calendar? 2017, that was around then. It was early stages of, uh, Google, uh, Calendar. But he goes, I tripped on a cord that you had a microwave plugged in at. He goes, dude, this is not organized. And he goes, I could have stolen your whole warehouse. The garage was open, no cameras, your forklift was sitting there. He goes, show me your manuals. All I had was this like onboarding manual. He goes, well, how does anybody know how to win? He goes, how do they know? How do they know? Are you allowed to get tattoos on your face? Are you? What happens if your truck breaks down? Like, who do you call? What happens if you lose your gas card? What happens if you need PTO for Christmas? He goes, how do people know this? He goes, it's all in your head. He goes, what I'm going to ask is you're going to pay me $150,000. And by the way, I didn't have $150,000 to give him. I had to take an equity line out of my house. So that's why I had to pay attention. And when I walked in there, if I started talking or talked about a book, he goes, stop. You're going to listen to what I'm going to teach you or I'm going to quit. You're going to figure out exactly what I'm going to teach you and you're going to do this perfect. You're going to stop reading books. You're not going to do stuff any other way than what I teach you. You're going to turn your cell phone off when I'm in this room and you're going to get your two top guys. We're going to sit here, we're going to work through each and every scenario. Every manual. And then you're going to read these manuals out loud with every employee, have them initial every single one. And then you're going to read a page out of the manual every week in your meetings. And man, I was ADHD. I still am. And he's like, you are going to focus. You're going to be all here, and we're going to sit in this room for 8 hours, 3 days a week. The dude that drove a Mercedes, he'd pull back in the same spot really slow. It was always detailed. And every time he left, I'd get $43.38 was how much he paid in gas. I'd get a bill for it like this. I mean, he was just high CTE personality dialed in, like, it's my way or the highway. And that's what I needed. He was tough. And he'd bring in a consultant to get us our financing figured out that he trusted. And she's like, I don't know if I want to work with this guy. I said, listen, I'll be quiet. I'll do whatever you say.. And he goes, trust me. He goes, he'll do whatever you say. I'll make sure of it. And that's what I needed. And it was tough love, but he set me up for a lot of success.

Was he, are, are, are you now, I, I've never heard Type C personality, uh, but are you, are you, whatever that personality type is of just paying attention to the details, are you, it sounds like maybe you were a 3 outta 10. What are you now? Are you like really high or are you just improved?

We've talked a lot about in this systems. I think if we're playing a drinking game and somebody said, you know, if you're taking a shot every time we said systems, they're dead. Head now. But, but I, but it strikes me that you really harp on this because that's what was hard and broken for you and you really had to put in work to get great at that. And it's kind of like you feel the benefits of having not everything on your shoulders. But it, I got to believe that in order for your company to succeed, you know, you don't, you don't grow because you have a great operations manual per se, right? You grow because you're great at sales and marketing. You sort of survive and thrive if the operations can back that up. And I'm guessing it sounds like that the sales and marketing were more things that were more in your core competency. You did a good job of early on and you haven't been as demand constrained, but I want to know more about that. So I want to know, what did you do to kick ass in sales and marketing that was different than the average service company? What were the things that you did that made you guys rock and roll in terms of demand?

Well, step one was naming your company A1 so you show up first in the White Pages, right?

Wraps as in car wraps, trucks, the vehicle wraps. Yeah.

Oh yeah.

So look at how crappy that is.

What is that? I can't even see it. What is that? What above your— above the, uh, the red wall? It's like, what is that?

Bricks of a garage. It's like the, the outline.

Yeah, that's, that's like two garages that are carriage style with like, like brick rock and then you have white on white text. That's horrible.

And then you go to this.

Dude, play with the dog is so true. I've had a couple of guys come over to do some work, and the ones who play with the dog, instantly I'm in on them because they're in on me. And the most important thing that they saw in the house so far I had a guy come in to do a repair, and as soon as he walked, I have a tiny dog, like an 8-pound dog, and he goes, whoa, killer. And then he goes, I don't want no problems. And I just immediately love the guy. He could have sold me anything. He was like there for the heater. He could have sold me a washer and dryer if he wanted to.

Now that's great. I always say, listen, we don't ring the doorbell because strangers ring the doorbell. Friends knock. These simple little things. Listen, I'm stopping off at 7-Eleven. Could I grab you something? Get you a coffee? No, no, no, no thanks. Listen, you come to my house, my fiancée is going to cook for you. Don't make me guess. You like Green Monster? Should I get you a coffee? And I want to bring you something because no one that ever fixed your house brought you something.

Wait, so you guys order coffee for, or you have like a system for ordering drinks or whatever?

So they could order. I got guys that order donuts and apple cider in Michigan. And, and Wisconsin. And all you do is expense it. You take a picture of the receipt and it comes back on your check that next week, including the taxes. So you could buy, I mean, we try to say keep it under $30, but literally I don't, we don't really check. Like my goal is that every single person gets offered something on the way.

It goes up dramatically. And it's not a question if you're going to use this, it's how much are you going to spend? Robert Cialdini became a good buddy of mine, him and Bob Babbitt. No shit. There's 7 Rules of Influence. I got, I studied him at U of A in my master's program when he's an ASU professor. They're arch nemesis. I got to meet him. He comes to the house now. My COO and head of sales just went to his conference here in Tempe, Arizona. And the more we could apply those 7 principles, we're always looking to apply more and more. And it's not to manipulate people, by the way. He says you gotta use these for good. And I mean, I ask him questions all the time. He needed a garage and I'm like, dude, this one's on the house. You know, like it's gonna be the Taj Mahal too. And, uh, that, that's just, He's just one of the smartest guys I've ever met.

All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes, and then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. Uh, after asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is 2 clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Callum A., and Evolve Bank Trust, members FDIC.

One of the, the many interesting things about you is basically a lot of times that courses kind of get shit on. People make fun of like courses and people make fun of seminars and stuff like that. And books fall in that category. But it seems like you are prolific when it comes to hiring coaches, hiring consultants, taking courses, taking seminars, things that people would say even at $17 million in revenue, they would say, but Tommy, you— why are you paying money to come to this course? What courses and books have like really moved the needle for you in your life? It sounds like you've consumed a lot.

You said you guys, uh, sold the, sold a piece of the business and you were at like, whatever, $20-something million in EBITDA and now it's $80 million. What was that big jump? Did you guys start rolling up other businesses or what, what happened? Uh, what, what went so well?

So it's 3 years. We bought 12 companies. We've grown, I think it's 78% organically. And then the, the 22% was by buying companies. And what we did is, it's kind of funny because I call my vendors and I say, tell me how you win. How do you meet your bonuses? What is your objectives this year? For like the vendors, this, I'm gonna spend $80 million in garage doors this year. I say, what product mix do you need us to be at? And I say, now, if I do this for you, when do I get a bigger rebate? My growth, like if I sell 100 doors to somebody, they're paying a different price than if they buy one door. So I work out these things. So, you know, we've got economies of scale, we've got efficiency. And, you know, the crazy thing is what a great home service business does, 15% of the bottom, we're almost double that. And I still see because of our efficiency, like you might have a call center rep that could book 20 calls a day. Michael books 60. So let's say you're paying yours 20, I'm paying mine 35. They're doing 3 times the work, you know what I mean? So you get these economies of scale. And people don't like when I say this, but if you work at A1, most people will hire you in their garage door business because we've got— we buy $6,000 of tools. We train, we train, we train. You know, when I played football, I played 2 a days. I practiced twice a day for 6 days to play 1 game. At Home Service, you say you're gonna go with our best guy for 2 weeks and you're on your own forever. Training is not something we do, it's who we are. And we continue to train. It's not just in sales, it's smiling, it's making sure you're efficient, you're showing up to your first job within 15 minutes. These new one-on-one forms I'm working on, I'm more excited about that than anything this month. So one-on-ones with the technicians and installers. So they're very complex to get the data I'm looking at. But what I'm building is, if this is where you're at, it's a series of things to get good at. If you're not great at this, we got to get you good at this before we go on to the next one. And then there's a recipe for each one. So now it's standardized. Now in any market, this is the one-on-one form you're going to use, and you're giving the exact same thing across the board. That you're going to do ride-alongs for 2 days, you're going to go back to Phoenix for a refresher for 5 days, you're going to do role play for 1 day in the training center. Whatever that looks like. We're building all that right now. And my expectation is it'll increase, it'll increase revenue by 40%.

Wow. What has AI changed your business at all yet? Have you seen any impact with AI?

I never would have thought— and it makes it— it's, it's like obvious in hindsight, but I never would have thought that a garage Dor business could be as big as you, and you seem like you have a ton of growth ahead of you. You haven't even scratched the surface. What other businesses have you seen in the services industry that you are shocked at how big they are, or you think that most of our audience, which is a largely internet or tech-based audience, would be surprised about?

I'll tell you, my favorite one is pest control.

Tell me, tell us about it.

What pest control company is public?

What's the big one that went public? They bought so many companies, but Terminex went public.

So, all right, I'm looking up at Terminex. They have, it looks like nearly a $5 billion market cap. So pretty shockingly big.

The, the, I remember during like COVID, those multiples were going in, like if, if, correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears as though that there was like a pre and post-COVID number, like the post-COVID number just exploded those multiples.

Dude, this is fascinating. This is not at all what I thought this episode was gonna be. You're this mix of a bunch of things that I really love. You're, you know, one-third just pure hustle and common sense. You're one-third self-development, personal development, you know, learning machine. Just how can I learn, grow, and be better? And then one-third is basically like, I'm going to play, play big. So you're doing this blue-collar thing, but at this really big scale. And I love that combination. That is, that is a lot of fun to me to have this conversation. So I'm glad you came on.

Check this out, Sean. So I've been following you, Tommy, for about 2 years now. And, uh, you, you get me amped up. You know, I'm not in the, I'm not in your space at all, but I feel like I'm learning so much, but I also like feel like I'm getting amped up. But Sean, Google Tommy Mello conference. So he has this conference called the Freedom Event. And if you, and whoever's listening, Google that and go to the page. The video is him with his arms out and like fireworks shooting up with him on stage. It's pretty awesome. But Tommy, that obviously he has a behemoth of a, of a business, but then it looks like you have a side hustle of being like sort of like a, a home services influencer. And if I had to guess, like your conference, and I think you had a course or a community, something like that. If I had to guess, that's doing all right too.

Wait, wait, wait. So can you explain how this media side of your business— so forget the actual nuts and bolts of what you're doing. So you have the podcast, you have media. And so explain how this— why you do it and how the, how the sort of like from a business perspective, why do you do this and how does it work? What is the goal of how you're doing this? For example, are you throwing this event because you want to be the largest kind of event or trade show in your industry and that's a good business to be in? Is it because you want to have a relationship and go buy the top 1% of these companies and it's lead gen for that? Is it You know, why are you doing all this and how does that work?

Well, first and foremost, I used to just have a garage door. Uh, we realized the industry's so crappy, the industry would have to improve. People would need to raise their prices and show their worth. So we figured out that we would have to other train other garage door companies. So we invite hundreds of garage door companies. And then I looked out in the audience and it was all plumbers and roofers and pest control and even mechanics. And I'm like, this is supposed to be a garage door. Show and we didn't really filter who was coming in. So I was like, look, I want to keep Garage Doors kind of in our realm. And then I started this other thing called Home Service Freedom. And the real reason is people opened the door to me. People gave me the time of day. People let me come into their home, their business, and they gave me the answers. And people call me up and they're like, dude, I'm getting a divorce. My kids are leaving me. My dad, I took over his business. He just died. I don't know what to do.. And quite frankly, Al Levy and all my other, you know, Dan Antonelli with branding. And we've got this formula of like the step-by-step. Uh, it's not for everybody. Like I said at the beginning, not everybody's meant to be an entrepreneur. Some of 'em are meant to be entrepreneurs. But the other thing, uh, the, the selfish byproduct is if I love a company and they show up and they do the work, I could date 'em before we get married because I know if I invest with them, I'll give 'em endless amount of money. I could personally give 'em what's worked in like really one-on-one. 'Cause I can't coach anybody one-on-one. I got 1,250 people depending on me here. But the idea being, I gave you guys a bunch of other industries that A1 wants to get involved in. I like, know, and trust these people. They know they're going to win with me. So it helps grow the core business too. If we ended up doing a deal, I have no expectation of doing deals, and I don't know if anybody wants to do a deal, but I know this, that if it came down to it and we loved each other and we worked well together and there was a win-win for both of us, A1 and this other business that, you know, it just makes sense. You know me, I know you. So yeah, there is a byproduct, but the fact is now I know everybody and guess what happens? I'll show them everything I know. Who do you think they call when they figure something out? When they figure out Google's new algorithm or they figure out a certain thing on Meta or they figure out a new mailer technique that I've never heard of, who's the first person they wanna call? They go, Tommy, You've taught me so much. I feel indebted. I've, I haven't come to you for 3 years, but I finally got something I think you're gonna love. You gotta try this. And I, I get those phone calls 10 times a week.

I'm on, uh, homeservicefreedom.com. It looks like a community plus like, uh, you give a playbook. The headline is really good. It says, uh, accelerate 5 years of growth in 12 months. How much does this cost?

So there's 3 different programs. We only got 12 companies in the top program, but You know, we got a basic one. It's a few hundred bucks a month. The next one, it's, it's about $50 grand a year. I mean, it's not crazy. I'll tell you, we took a, we took a roofing company that was doing $12 million, bringing home about $300 grand. Within one year, they're doing $30 million, bringing home $6 million. And a lot of these things are just turning the knobs a little bit and paying attention to some things you're not looking at. The data, the KPIs will set you free. And the fact of the matter is, I'll, I'll come to you guys and I'll say, hey, what do you think your booking rate is? They'll say, well, me and my wife answer the phones, we're probably at 90%. I'm like, you don't understand. It should be a decimal place. It needs to be exact. It, it should be by CSR. Like, I know every single one of my CSR's booking rate. I know exactly what we're training 'em on every day. I know exactly my technic— you should see my scorecards. I mean, these are world-renowned, like, we spent millions of dollars to build this internally, and they are the baddest-ass thing you'll ever see in your life.

Tommy, what do you suck at? Are you, are you, what are you bad at? Where's your weakness right now?

You know, my fiancée might say I'm not the best communicator. I don't talk about my feelings. I don't really practice. We can be, like I said, I don't like to piss people off too much. Fierce conversations. I'll do it because I love them, but I'm not going to have these conversations with a lot of people. I would say with my family, I like to do stuff, but my mom wants to sit there and chat. And I love my mom more than anything. But when I was a kid, we'd go to a movie, we'd go bowling. She'd take me, like, she's, she got really involved. And I just have a hard time because sitting there and chatting, it's okay to catch up on things, but it's gotta be something optimistic for me. I have a hard time talking about, I, I don't go down this Never anymore am I talking like, I'll mention like what's going on in Minnesota or Ukraine or whatever, but I can't live in this negativity zone. So I'm trying to be the best son I could, the best fiancée I could, the best brother I could to my sister, and the best uncle I could to my niece and nephew. And I know I got a long way to go. Like at least I could say that out loud and I recognize it.

Tommy Mello is Tommy dialed in. I mean, you've got it figured out, man. You're very inspirational.

I'm a work in progress.

What's, what's the goal? You are. You're wealthy. You did it. You pulled it off with this company. Are you trying to buy the Cardinals? Like, what's the goal out here?

You know, I was playing with ChatGPT yesterday, and I would love to tell you there's a goal. You know, we're building a beautiful house in Idaho where we're going to be doing events, and then I'm building my dream home in Paradise Valley here in Arizona. But, you know, I've got, I got my life. I'm 42. I'll be 43 in March. And I got my life at 45. On my casket, you know what I want? I don't want the best entrepreneur wealthy. I want number one, the best dad ever. And I don't have any kids yet. I'm a late bloomer. Luckily, my fiancée is 27. She's worked with me for 9 years. No, yeah, 9 years. Because she was definitely 18 when I met her.

I was going to say, dude, no public math, Tom. Be careful.

Yeah, we were doing so well, and then Tommy went to jail.

There it is. There's the weakness.

Definitely 9 years. And so I feel like for me, the next journey is like, listen, I want to be a great dad. I want to be a great husband. We're getting married next January 1st, and I want to live. I want to be where my feet are. I want to go all in. I want people to know how much I care about them. I want to communicate better. I want to make sure that it's not always about money and finance. It's not just working out. It's just becoming better every day. Better your best. I always say I'm the best I've ever been, but the worst I'll ever be because tomorrow I need to be a little bit better. And I can tell you guys, I'm generally a happy person. I say once a month I kind of get down on myself and I'm like, why do I work this much? Or why don't I do this? Or why do I do this? But you guys might look at people that are wealthy. I'll tell you the most billionaires, and I meet a lot of 'em, they're not happy. Some of 'em are suicidal, alcoholics, drug addicts. They got everybody chasing them because of their money. They don't, they're not really good people. So they begin, they begin to look at themselves and say, I, the only reason people like me is 'cause I worked my ass off and I've got money. And that's not gonna be me. I want to continue to be humble, stay the blue collar guy I've always been. Remember that I started washing dishes and mowing lawns. And just creating the best rela— I don't want a million friends. I want 20 friends that I want to be lifelong soulmates with. And guys, it sounds really good. And I do got a lot of great things going and I thank God and Jesus Christ every day. But I've got a lot of work, work on every— all the listeners just know that you might think being rich, famous, Instagram famous, and influencer is going to solve your problems. But that's not the answer. It's, it's looking inside and becoming your best self.

Have you ever seen the Savannah Banana?

Yeah. Yeah. They were just at an event I was at. Those guys are awesome.

So Jesse Cole came on maybe 8 weeks ago, 6 weeks ago, and Sean and I, he probably is in our top 5 favorite people that we've talked to. Very inspirational. And it's so interesting that you guys look very different. You have incredibly different businesses. And yet there's this spark that you both have that Sean and I find incredibly inspiring, contagious. Like, it basically— a conversation with you, we probably leave feeling, now I know what a 10 out of 10 in terms of operating our lives are at. We have to step it up.

Tommy, you said something earlier. You said, I used to hire 2s and try to make them 7s. Now I hire 7s, try to make them 10s. Me and Sam, it's like the reason we do the podcast is you find tens to make you realize, oh, you're still a 7, to give you, you know, break your frame a little bit and say, oh, that's an area I could be better in. Oh, wow, he really had a certain spark, or he had a certain point of view, or he had a habit that I'm going to pick up here. And so, you know, for me, that's the biggest thing with this podcast is to just kind of continually surround ourselves with people who are excellent in some area of their life, hopefully multiple areas of their life. So that we can kind of realize, oh, you know, you're actually a 7. There is actually much— there are more levels to that thing that you're trying to do.

I want to finish out, if you guys allow me to, just— I want you guys to think about this going into this year. And if you could, I recommend everybody write these down. First one is family and friends. That's the first F. The next one is faith. And this could be in any order you want. The next one is fitness. The next one is finance. The next one is future self. And the 6th one is fun. And I want you to set goals for all these. If you don't believe in God, you skip faith. I highly recommend you figure out what to believe in, because I do believe we're going somewhere great. And then I don't want you to set a yearly goal. I want you to get Jesse Itzler's big-ass calendar. I want you to start journaling, and I want you to use a blue pen. There we go. Blue pen and a white piece of paper. And I want you to write your goals down, and I want you to put them in your shower, your vehicle, your refrigerator, on your desk. 4 spots. And I want you to sign off on the bottom. And then I want next to each one of those 6, I want accountability partners that you know are going to hold your feet to the fire. Then I want you to put your why. And it's Simon Sinek 101, but it better be a big-ass why. And you better have people that are willing to tell you you're failing and you're letting yourself down and you're letting me down. And I want you to post it on social media. I want you to come out of your comfort zone, and I want you to say, this is what I'm going to do. And don't set a yearly goal, weekly or monthly steps. It could be calories, it could be body fat, it could be going to church. It could be Jesse Esther. Jesse Esther's— I'm going to time block time with my family, and that's what I'm putting on here first. But these simple little tools, the accountability partners, And you better meet with those accountability partners weekly, and it better be hard conversations, and it better not just last through March and then fall off like most people do. And it's gotta be a strong— that Cialdini talks about this. I got this bracelet. It says, keep your commitment. You better commit and you better yell from the rooftop that you're gonna do this, and it better be a huge why. And, and the only other thing is try to get into better circles. If you wanna be a great golfer, go golfing with 3 scratch golfers. You're gonna be better. Get into the right circles and you do what I'm telling you to on all 6 of those, your life is planned on, it's reverse engineered, it's manifested, and it will come true.

I'm going to run through a fucking wall. That's how I'm going to do it.

Sam, anything we say after this will just make the podcast worse. Just do the line and let's end the pod. This is perfect.

That's it. That's the pod.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back.

All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.