How I Built a $1.7B Business Repairing Garage Doors

We're gonna 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 of you. No shit. I've read hundreds of books on sales, and even more on marketing. So ring ring, I pick up. What are you telling them? You never say the cost, you say the investment. You never say the most expensive, you say top of the line. You never say the cheapest, you say builder grade. These words matter. Tommy, given us the toss. 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 over-complicated. Dude, I've known you for 27 minutes, and I love this guy. Tommy, what are you suck at? Where's your weakness right now? I was gonna go broke. There was a stripper living in our Dallas warehouse with my manager. We were doing so well, and then, I mean, 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 all. On a road, let's travel next. Tommy, have you ever listened to MFM? My first million? This podcast? Yeah, I listened to a dozen. What do you think? I love the come-up stories. I hate how every single guy is pushing entrepreneurship because it's cut out for 45% of the population. You won't be able to handle this. The rejection, the failure, the five years of taking a loan against your house, the people that quit and cheat and lie, the cancel appointments, the long drives, the hard nights, the walking out of the movie theater to go run a job. I just, I don't feel like everybody's cut out for it. And some people that invested a bit quite 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 this thing called driven. It's a book by 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 okay working a lot. You don't ever mention the words work like balance. You're off balance on purpose and there's seasons of life. And you actually have a bigger why. And by the way, you can't quit. The goal post 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 evaluation. Is that right? The original valuation was about 540 million. We were at 27 million of EBITDA. Now the business is north of 80 million of EBITDA. So now it's worth close to 1.7. And how long did you start the company? 2007. So the first 10 years were a practice. And explain what does the company do? So people understand who you are and what you do. A1 garageers 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 snowmobileons and Michigan. I got a job when I was 12 washing dishes at $4.5 an hour. And I always had the entrepreneurial gene. I started a landscape in business when I moved Arizona. And I was living at this house, $700 we paid rent for three guys. I paid 200 by the roommate, 200. I think I have the master paid 300. And one of the roommates was manager to Graschor 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's like, can you paint Graschor's? By the way, I'm busing tables, serving tables and bars, sending and I'm flipping bullflexes. I buy them on Craigslist, sell them on the Arizona Republic. I've sold over 300 bullflexes. Then I did total gyms and I sold over a thousand cars. I fixed 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 are you going to pay me? He's like, I could pay you $100 to paint per Graschor. But you got to 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. Tommy on three doors. I went to home depot about a magnum five paint gun and I was off to the races and I got good. I could paint ten doors a day. I went through the yellow book and called every Graschor company. I'd say seven out of ten I became their primary painter. And does the Graschor company mean like I install a new Graschor or your Graschor need some type of service and I fix it? So the Graschor company does both. They fix them and they replace them. So every time they replaced one, if it's an HOA property or a house, paint match, I was the guy. They grind out a little section. They give it to me. Usually the owner would meet up. I'd get ten from one guy, breed from this guy and I go knock him out and I'd literally use map quest to build my routes. I mean, this is back in the day before GPS. You mentioned that you called all the Grasch companies and you became the primary for whatever, seven out of ten. So what was the pitch? So ring ring. I pick up. What are you telling? 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 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 paying Graschor 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 a hundred out of it. You know, this is another way to make money. They're like, you sound hungry kid. Yeah, let's meet up. I'll give you a couple. We'll see how you do an Arizona. It was easier in the summer because it drives 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. I think I got to tape the windows that 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 three grand this week. And I'm like, you made $3,000 as a technician. And like I said, the real estate market was booming. People were just like their real estate was going up so fast that we just like fixed 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 bucks at the time. So my other roommate got a job working for him as a technician and he approached me. His name's Gabe. We should start our own business. And I was like, well, dude, I'll form the LLC. I'll get the EIA number. I'll get us going. I know enough. I get handled 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 three years. 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 my way is to my best friend, but he'd be like, listen, after I finish lunch, I'll give you a call back. And I'm like, I watched him answer the phone. So every time he went out of 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 bus boy job. All I kept was a 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 out all the debt. I'm here in the clearing. He goes, I want to move to Montana. I want to be closer to my brother. I said great. And at this point, just quick little to top it off. I had six employees full time 210.99s. And by the way, people were still in 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. And what am I doing? I can't, I don't trust anybody. So who are you doing? You don't trust anybody. You call mom. So I call my mom and make she again. 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 bucks an hour. I could pay my step dad 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. We call back in two weeks that we're going to sell our house. We're going to move our lives to Arizona. Oh my God. Big move. Baller mom! Hey everyone, really quick. If you're enjoying this episode on CEO stuff, so delegating, having hard conversations with your team, hiring, then I've got something for you. So the team at HubSpot, they actually went and fit together a bunch of best practices that Shawn and I use in our own companies. And they put it together and something that's really easy to read and understand. And so if you want to just save yourself 10 years of headache and heartache, then you should check it out. I wish we had this long time ago, or to help me a lot. There should be a QR code on your screen that you can scan or a link in the description. So check it out. It's totally free and totally awesome. At the time, the business is doing what roughly? So like, you know, because that's a big leap of faith. It's a million and a half bucks a year. It's, and by the way, like a lot of people have a tough time hitting a million, but I was the highest ticket writer for seven years. And then I finally started to delegate. Like anytime we weren't going to pay roll, 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 two jobs today. And then it's 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 two grand one week and then not pay me for two weeks and then give me like 1200 bucks 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 a practice. So on your 10th year of business, what was your revenue and profit? It was 17 million and that was out of grit. That was just like working nights, weekends and holidays, just overworking. And I remember, I all came in and said, let me tell you something, buddy, I'm looking at your PNL, I'm looking at your Belsie, your income statement. Revenue is for vanity and profit is for sanity. You're not making any money. You're just a squirrel running around in circles. He goes, we need to figure out how to make serious profits. So I was 17 million. Everybody's like, man, and I'd pump my chest out everywhere. 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? 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 wasn't super lined up. That's one thing that changed my life is getting control of the money. And you said, as you were growing, how many markets are you in to do that, you know, that type of scale to do 17 million in revenue? I started at Phoenix. Then I was at Tucson in 2012. 2014, we're in Wisconsin and Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Vegas. And by 2017, I was probably in seven or eight markets, but Phoenix was just massive. By the way, I had to close down four markets a year later. I had to close down Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Tampa. And if you want to talk about somebody having to swallow their pride and basically say you're a failure, but I was going to go broke these. I mean, I just didn't have the systems in place to scale as quick as I thought we could. And what I tell people now, they're like, what had a change? I said, the hustler had to die for the leader to be born. And I truly mean that now I'm a systems guy. Now I sit down and I work on systems and processes. And if the system's broken, either there's no system, it's the wrong system or the system is not being followed. And that's like, I mean, I'm a student for life. I'm the most curious guy. I walk and I take notes. I try to stay super humble. And I'm always learning. I've always got three to five coaches at one time. I need help all the time and I extract and then I implement. 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 four stories. So the technician who you used to call, your integrator, your mom, and service Titan, where you convince them to do something special. Were you always convincing or did you like have to read to get in good with words? I mean, how, how, like, the way that you're telling these stories, I'm like, this seems like a no brainer. This also seems like this person is incredibly persuasive. I don't necessarily know if I learned that. My dad, when I'm five years old, I remember this day vividly. I was in Royloaf, Michigan and this 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 picked it up and I'm playing with the antenna and I got the little, I'm like, 505, oh, and I'm like, just talking into it and I put it back and we walked back to the car. My dad looks to 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 five. 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 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 five steps. And I walk up and I mean, man, I had, it was like, I was anxious as hell. And I go, man, 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 done on what knee. She pulls out the Scotch tape. She takes the five and presents it to me. And I'm telling you guys, the radio was awesome, but I walk back and I learned a lesson that you'll never lose in life. You 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 that 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. They're going to be more successful, but don't worry. This is the world we live in. Continue to run. They're 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 always 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. I'd be like, how do we get rid of this mess? My dad just was like, I want to teach you sales. I'm going to teach you persuasion. And so the combination is just, I think it turned me into like a 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 going to 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, he walked out of it for $20. And he's like, watch this. And he's like, they're like, said, you are no, no, no, it's me, me in the middle, 100. And he's like, Tommy, we're out of here. And like he meant it. He's like, I don't need the jacket. You don't, one day we, we rebuilt a C 10 truck. And I mean, I spent the whole summer sanding this down. We got a pain in me. 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 out from me. And he said, I'm not going to be a man. I'm not going to be a man. So I said, Chris, can you jump on a call for about an hour and give me the good bad and the ugly about the marketing? What's important in St. Louis? And by the way, worst case scenario, he says, no, but he's like, Tommy, absolutely. He goes, I'll even give you my heat map. I'll tell you what's the cause of this. Stay out of I'll show you. Stay out of the the East part. He goes this north area and he literally gave me the keys to the city. He saved me a year of mistakes. And so what I've always said is success leaves clues. If you want to find out how to be number one on Yelp, go find an H. Hacker Roofing company, pick the phone up and you call them and you say, my name's Tommy Mello. I want to let you know, I'm super impressed by your company. I read your book. I've used your business. I wanted to buy your whole company lunch today. My cost 400 bucks, right? You buy it. Get them Chipotle. If I can get an hour of your time, I promise I'm not going into your industry. I got a lot to share with you as well, seeing a couple opportunities, but I want to understand how you dominate Yelp. Then you do that with the adges list, thumbtack, Google, LSA, PPC, success leaves clues. They're right in front of you. It's right around the corner. All you got to do is ask. So my favorites, three letters in the world are ASK. So I did this. I learned how to sell membership. See when I had the podcasts, I can get the best to the best. I started it early 2017. This is before podcasts were a real thing. So I'd be like, man, I'm having problems with payroll. So I'd find like the top person that wrote the book on payroll. And I, I mean, my podcast was simply selfish. It was like, man, I got a question for you. If you got a W2 versus a 1099, and they need to show up to me and they'd be like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And then I'd get like, okay, what happens cash versus a crew? I get a CPA on. And then I go, okay, what happens when you want a green field versus biocompany? What's your integration checklist? And I don't know why, but almost everybody was excited to just give me everything. They're like, dude, you're just in the grocery industry. They're like, sure, take it. You could have it. And I've always just been super humble with, especially like the people that have been where I want to go. And I walk in and I'm like, man, I am so impressed. Like I will do whatever it takes to like, you really are like, you're not like most guys that come up like you don't think your shit doesn't stink. And I'm like, man, I come from very humble beginnings. I'm just trying to get ahead. I care a lot about my family. I'm just literally, I'll do whatever it takes. If you need money, if you need me to introduce you to somebody, if you want me to come all your lawn, whatever you need, I want to learn from you. So I told Sean a story about a buddy of mine from my high school who bought his parents HVAC company and that 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 he 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 going get shit done, that actually kind of holds you back. And I'm going to 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 the 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 hustler day for the leader to be bored. And I'll tell you, I delegate to elevate people. I was like, dude, I'll outwork you remember I had my let's say and I could work three days and one day my day starts in six hour increments and I work three 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 three 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 a visionary. I dream really, really big. I love sales and I love marketing and I love relationships and culture. I am not going to 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. Fifth of them found me on social media said, I want to work for that guy. So building a personal brand for your business really matters. And you know, the thing I asked now is what I work for you? What I buy from you? What my grandma buy from you? And what 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 going to 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 five 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 three 15 three hundred 15 million. And I'm like, there's no reason we can't be at a billion in two and a half years. And so I got to set that vision. And people are like, dude, you're crazy. And then I got to map it out and show them this is all that would need to happen. The average technician is a 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 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. Only 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 a fire five 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 mill. Like I I respected him. I mean, he literally told me I'm not going to play like if my grades weren't good, if I didn't show up and give it 110%. So he didn't play me two games. But he made sure listen, three nights a week, he was going to buy me a mill with dinner because he knew my mom was working three 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 got to be straight up. I'm going to tell you what you're doing great. But I'm also going to 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're we I told the 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, nine or sevens to 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 two people a class that just say this is we don't they got a clean after they're done. They got a show up. But if you're late one day, there's a good chance for a set in 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. He 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 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 in my podcast. And he wrote a book. It's on my shelf over it's called the Seven Power Contractor explains the different stages of the home service industry. And he's he had gone through every master class and just studied how to build a business. And he here. 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, "Hell, you know what your daughter said she wants at school today? She said she wishes her dad was around more." And he goes Natalie, and 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 could spend time with my two daughters in you. And so we're going to go on a vacation for two weeks and one year. And I'm not even going to look at my pager. I mean, this is back in the day. And hell, he met me for lunch and I handed him the book I was working on, the home service million or 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 out everything I said." He goes, "That's the only reason I thought about working with you." He walked into my shop that day. He goes, "Can we go to a shop tour?" I said, "Sure." He goes, "Why do you have all the calendars on the wall? Have you ever heard of Outlook or Google Calendar?" 2017, that was around then. It was early stages of Google calendar, but he goes, "I tripped on a cord that you had a microwave plugged in." And 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? Are you allowed to get tattoos on your face? 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, 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 yourself on 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 a 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 eight hours, three days a week. The dude had drove him or satis. He pulled back in the same spot really slow. It was always detailed. And every time he left, I'd get 43, $43.38 was how much he paid in gas. I'd get a bill for it like this. I mean, he was just high seat day personality dialed in like, it's my way or the highway. And that's what I needed. He was tough. And he bring in a consultant to get us our financing figure 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 it was tough love. But he set me up for a lot of success with he. Are you now? I've never heard type C personality. But are you? Are you whatever that personality type is of just paying attention to details? Are you? It sounds like maybe you're a three out of 10. What are you now? Are you like really high or you just improved? Well, I, I was pre dental. So I love math. I took advanced calculus and I got obsessed with geometry and calculus and an algebra. So I'm a numbers guy. I've always been, but I'm still a macro guy. I still look at the big picture. I'll dive in to certain areas. I always say I live on Mars. I look at earth for volcanoes and earthquakes. But I'm still not the details guy. I don't, I love my CFO and my controller and I love my HR team. But I don't really interact with them very often. I am working on operations and marketing and culture. And always driving sales. And quite frankly, I don't want to be good at these other things. I want to, I want to go continue to be the best at what I'm great at and continue to hone these better skills and delegate the rest. I don't want to be well rounded. I never want to be good at that stuff because it tortures me to have to do that stuff. Like for me to do payroll, which I had to do for a long time, I mean, it was like pulling teeth. So the first thing I got rid of if you set up your oral chart and you've got you wear a lot of the hats. First thing you do is circle what you hate. So now when I come into work, I love coming to work. I'm like, man, I'm on a podcast right now with you guys. Everything's getting handled. I just got back from Costa Rica for 10 days. You think we lost money? You think when the owner found her CEO left the things didn't go right? We set records the whole time I was gone. Like I don't need to be here. And that's what we set up is we go on the pinnacle trip. My whole C suite, all my directors, my area managers go my top 40 technicians and installers go on this trip. Do you think we lose revenue that that that week when we leave? We've never lost revenue. We've talked a lot about in this system. So I think if we're playing a drinking game and somebody said, you know, if you're taking a shot every time we set systems, they're dead now. 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 it and worked to get great at that. And it's kind of like you feel the benefits of having not everything on your shoulders. But I got to believe that in order for your company to succeed, you don't grow because you have a great operations manual per se. 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. Well, 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. Yeah, well, that was stupid because there's 93 other A1s even though got an invocable and contestable trademark. So that's my biggest mistake was being A1 honestly. You know, sales cure everything and to get sales, you need good leads. And I'll tell you this, I'm not afraid. We're going to spend $4.3 million this month in marketing. Not afraid. This spent a lot of money. I was $30 million. I met a guy named Dan Hensonally that Al Levy, my coach. He referred me. He goes, Tommy, he goes, I think your wraps are garbage wraps as in car wraps truck the vehicle wraps. Yeah. And he goes the best way to do it is I took a picture of your truck. I made it black and white. And tell me what pops out of you. He goes, that's the best way to see like what pops out and you got Angie's list, Yelp. You got your phone number, your everything. You got springs, rollers, cables, bearings, all this crap. He goes, I want you to go to this company called kick charge and I want you to use Dan Hensonally to redo your brand. I call Dan Hensonally and he gives me an estimate. Guess how much it cost me to get a new logo and new brand on the trucks. $35,000. And at this time, I'm going, I'm $30 million. I'm like, dude, it's working. Why would I switch? And I just, I trusted L and I bit the bullet and I did it. And then Dan called me this guy. And we got a character like the logo's awesome. He studied every one of our markets. We don't want to look like any other thing. We want to pop. We don't want our phone numbers or website on it. You don't even need any of that or Angie's list or what we do. It just grossed our service. And he goes, I want you to change all your email signatures with this. Every one of your yard signs, every one of your coupons, every single thing needs to be this brand. And I remember three weeks later, there was a line of people that wanted to work for us. Like I was like, man, this is like, you know, I'm putting everything on the line. All my time, energy, effort, but I had such a crappy brand. And now I spent a fortune on TV radio. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. Oh, yeah. So how crappy that is. What is that? I can't even see it. What is on what above your above the red wall? It's like what is the grids of a garage? Just like the outline. Yeah, that's that's like a two grids that are a carriage style with like like brick rocks. And then you have why don't why don't you really text? Why is horrible? And then you go to this. Yeah. So I said, Dan, I want that old fashion feeling like the May tag in the 70s when you trust the guy to come out. And it's like it's just it pops and it's trust trustworthy. And so if you walk in my place, Dan designed, we brought the brand inside. So we've got all the brand inside of the building too. Like we live and breathe the brand. And people don't talk about this stuff, but like Nike is a brand. That's why they pay tiger woods and Roger Federer and like the brand is what you could buy a t-shirt the same as Nike for 20 bucks, but you're willing to pay $120 because of the brand. Right. So what does our brand mean? It means my dad taught me you could do three things in business. You could be the best best warranty best technicians. best quality, best, you know, everything. You could be best timing. If it happens today, you bring your car in, we can fix it today. Or you could be the cheapest. He said, pick two out of the three. You'll never be all three. You can't be the cheapest, the best and on their timeline. And I got this guy Milwaukee, best mechanic I've ever met. He's the cheapest. He does me right. Right now he's four months out. I can't use him. He's four months out. So I called him up. I said, Hey, why don't you triple your prices? All pay triple because you're honest and you do great work. But this is the hardest thing for people to learn. You want to start out and be the cheapest. But then you realize you don't have enough to hire people or pay for the right software or buy new trucks or invest in great inventory. And I'm not saying like one of the things that I learned a long time ago on sales is I don't give yes or no. Like if I walked up to you, I'd say, listen, these are the three options of what we have for springs. We got the one year, the five year in the lifetime. You might say, Hey, that's too much. I say, let's just pick another option. Let's make something that works for you and your family. I'm here to earn your business. And then I shut up and I've got other options of everything we do. I don't give yes or no questions because that's stupid. Either you're going to say yes or no, I'm going to say, listen, let's just pick something that makes sense for you and your family. And I've studied, I've probably read, I've read hundreds of books on sales and even more on marketing. And that's where I go to all the Google events. I show up to different offices. Like I speak on a lot of state, like I live and breathe marketing and sales. And honestly, I hate that word. I hate that word. I shouldn't have said that. I always say that's a no, no. I hate a lot of words, but you never say the cost. You say the investment. You never say the most expensive. You say top of the line. You never say the cheapest. You say builder grade. You never say that you could cancel it anytime. You say you have the right of precision. These words matter. But what matters more is the way I say it. When I'm making eye contact, would you go to a doctor if the doctor walked in and just looked at you and said, hey, here's your medication. Now the doctor walks in. He smiles. He says, let me ask you a few questions. How's the alcohol? What's the stress level? Are you any recreational drugs? How much are you working out? I'm going to run a few tests here. We're going to bring your eyes, look up your nose, your ears. They're going to have you call for going to run a few tests. And then the doctor says, listen, what's what's better for you? CVS or Walgreens? All right. Here's your prescription. Here's what's going to make you better. Do you ever go, I'm going to need a few estimates, Doc. No, because they're the authority. They diagnosed the person before the problem. They spent the time. They asked the right questions. And they nurtured you along the way and you believe them. And they didn't say, I'm like, you know, but what, no, they said, here's exactly what we're going to do to fix you up. And we're the doctor. The minute we step in that garage. And that's what that's what I train the guys. And I go over and over like, I don't believe you. I don't believe you because you don't seem confident. You don't either, you don't believe in yourself or you don't believe in the products or you don't believe in me and the company. Which one is it? And let's work on it. So you, you, this is, I could do this all day. And I love training guys because I'm like, smile more, offer a coffee on the way, play with the dog, get to know the clients that they love Bernie Sanders. Talk about Bernie Sanders. If they love fishing, ask them what kind of fish they like and what kind of pole they have. But you got to be genuinely interested. Don't fake it. If you hate babies, don't talk about babies. You know, find something you love and you correlate well to them with and you'll enjoy every minute of your life. Do you play with the dog is so true? I've had a couple guys come over to do some work and they, 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 he said, as you walk, I have a tiny dog like an eight pound dog and he goes, whoa, killer. And then he goes, I don't know, I don't want no problems. And I just really love the guy. He could have sold me anything. He was like, there for the year he could have sold me a washer and dryer if he wanted to. Now that's great. I always say, listen, we don't we don't ring the doorbell because strangers ring the doorbell. Friends knock. These simple little things. Listen, I've stopped having a seven to eleven. Could I grab you something and get you a coffee? No, no, no, no, thanks. Listen, you come to my house. My fiance's 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 you 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 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 keep it under 30 bucks, but literally I don't we don't really check like my goal is that every single person gets offered something on the way. Have you seen the average customer value or a customer order go up because of you. So what you're saying by the way is like a world famous. It's the rule of reciprocity. It's Robert Childe needs book influence, which is basically like if I do a favor for you. So if we're it mean Tommy our next door neighbors, I go, Hey, Tommy, can I borrow a cup of sugar? You give me a couple of sugar. The next day Tommy comes to me goes, Hey Sam, can I borrow your car for a day because of the rule of reciprocity. I feel in debt to you and I will do something even if those fake two favors are not equal. I will do something to get back to sober even because we want to feel even. And so the idea here is if you bring a customer a coffee, even if it's a $2 coffee, they're more likely to spend an additional $500 in garage doors. And so my question is, have you seen the average order value go up just because of that simple trick? It goes up dramatically. And it's not a question if you're going to use this is how much are you going to spend Robert Chitty. And he became a good buddy of mine. And Bob, no shit. There's seven 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 can apply those seven principles, we're always looking to apply more and more. And it's not to manipulate people. By the way, he says you got to use these for good. And I mean, I asked 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 going to be the Taj Mahal too. And that's just he's just one of the smartest guys I've ever met. All right. Let's take a break because I got to tell you story. Let me tell you at 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 in a 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 bank solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money. I can pick 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. Bank of services are provided through choice financial group, call them in a and evolve bank trust members, FDIC. One of 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, 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. Well, I'll tell you that the latest one was buy back your time. And Dan Martell, he goes, let's just do this. He goes, when do you think you're going to sell? So we wrote it down. He goes, how much do you think you'll make? And I wrote the number down. Then he goes, how many hours do you work a week? I go probably 50. But did the math? He goes, do you know how much you make per hour? And it's like hundreds and hundreds of thousand dollars. And he goes, you got a great business mind. He goes, tell me you got a good chef. And I'm like a chef. I don't need a chef. Like he goes, what do you normally eat? I'm like Uber eats. He's like, Tommy, you don't understand. He goes, if you want to become the best for your people, he goes, you have a driver, right? I go, what? Why would I? Me a driver? He goes, how often do you drive a week? I go about 11 hours. He goes, what if we could buy back 11 hours for you to be productive? And he got me to look through a whole different lines. He got me. So now I got a house manager. We've got a chef. We've got a driver. Our dogs are walked twice a day. They go to doggy daycare, Huckleberry and Finner are dogs. And these mentors, Dan Martell was a big one. I go to the home service once, but most people sit in this procrastination and indecision. There are software's I've used that were crap. But we just got on one. It increased our conversion rate on door sales by 18% in our average ticket by 3%. And it picked up an extra five million of ebit because it eased the dealer fees because I heard about it from a buddy of mine. We were on it within six weeks. But to not do these things, so many people are like, man, one day I'm going to get started right after the wedding I'm going to be on the diet right after the golf tournament and they live in this world of like we're just not ready for that yet. Man, I'm like, let's just fail. Who cares? Let's fall down a bunch of times. We're going to fail a lot, but we're going to figure it out before anybody. You said you guys sold the piece of the business and you were like, whatever, 20 something million and even now it's 80 million. What was that big jump? Did you guys start rolling up other businesses or what happened? What went so well? So, it's three years. We bought 12 companies. We've grown, I think it's 78% organically and then 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 that I'm going to spend $80 million in Grazor this year. I say, what product makes 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 orders of 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 is 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, my book 60. So let's say you're paying your 20, I pay my 35. They're doing three 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 a one, most people will hire you in their Grazor business because we've got we buy 6,000 hours of tools. We train. We train. We train. You know, when I play football, I play two a days. I practice twice a day for six days to play one game at home service. You say, you're going to go with our best guy for two 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 showed up to your first job within 15 minutes. These new one on one form. So I'm working on a 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 along for two days. You're going to go back to Phoenix for a refresher for five days. You're going to do role play for one 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? Call center and dispatch and quite a few things in marketing. But call center, obviously, it's coming to the spot where this year right now yesterday, my AI agents were 87% booking rate, my religions were 92%. So it's a 5% variance. But the AI continues to get better. And the goal is not to get rid of people. The goal is to go on a hiring freeze and keep the best. So right now I got 68 agents. Let's say I go down to 40. They last forever, but I never need to hire another agent. Because now you're just blocking and tackling dispatching. What our dispatch software does is regression testing. So you could feed it data, credit card score. How much do they pay off in the home? How many grozers do they have? And then it looks for outliers. And it knows what technicians do well on this type of job. And the most important thing is customer satisfaction, not promoter score. And my internal net promoter score. So I'm not just looking to sell. I'm trying to create a relationship, build, you know, get you on a membership, which we call protection plan. And be your garage or company for life. I'm not trying to go wham bam. Thank you, ma'am. I wrote a big ticket. Let's get out of here. I'm trying to say what's right for you? Your son, the home misjones. Let me make sure you pass inspection. We want to work on your new home. You know, that's what's important is we need to build relationships. And that's very rare in the home service industry. I never would have thought and it makes it's it's like obvious in hindsight. But I never would have thought that a garage door business could be as big as you. And you seem like you have a ton of growth ahead of you. You have an even scratch 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 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. Well, well, the fact is pest control is the only company that went public. And right now they're paying 22 to 25 X EBITDA. So if you get your business to make $2 million, you're going to get 50 million. And the best guys that do it, it started out the Mormon guys. How do you talk with knock on doors door to door? They're very good at it. If you sell religion and they don't tell you this. So you start out by door to door, then you get good at advertising on Google and radio. And you just you optimize for routes, but anybody could do it. I mean, you're literally there spraying. You're looking out in Arizona. You're looking out for scorpion spiders. Making sure there's no page and stuff like that. 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 cat. So pretty shockingly big. Yeah. Well, that's the deal. And then they have some sitaries on top of that. And when you go public, it's like, how many companies can you buy because you're raising capital from the investment pool? And it's almost like you've got to eat. When you go public, you got to eat, you got to buy. I mean, that's one of the prerequisites. If you do an IPO and there's a lot of advantages, but then you got starbane's oxy and all this other things. Like, this is the kind of stuff I get really excited about. But you think about, here's something to understand about home service, home improvement. Is it demand generated? Like, if your pipe breaks you're calling me today, you need to fix windows. You know, I want new windows. Maybe a window broke. I'll get the glass fix, but windows. So the multiple of a demand driven industry where I need it done. And pest controls one of those that's not necessarily needed it done, but because that company went public, they're paying a lot more and it rose the market cap. But a window company might get eight to 12x. Whereas HVAC plumbing electrical garage doors, there's just these must, must dues are getting, you know, 15 to 20. When you get past 20 million of EBITDA, I remember during like COVID, those multiples were going in like, if, if, if, correctly, if I'm wrong, but it appears as though that there was like a pre and post COVID number. Like the post COVID was exploded. Those multiples. Here's exactly what happened is think about it. Your venture capitalist, your PE, you're going man, all of our hotels are failing. No one's going to air B&Bs. The nail salon just shut down because people are leaving their houses. The movie theaters went bankrupt. Where can we put our money? And they looked at this simple blue collar that we were like, we were like second class citizens and they go, wait a minute. These guys have predictable income. They're needed. They've shown month after month, year after year that they can continue to grow and they're sophisticated. They use things like power BI. They use things advanced analytics. And when they realize that, the money started shooting in like crazy. There's miracle stories. And the multiples are still really, really high. What they did learn is you got to keep the founder involved because the founder, you know, it's kind of the glue. And if you pay the founder a lot of money, are they going to stay on and get happy and keep the culture? Because imagine giving a guy that worked his ass off a hundred million dollars and having him, hey, dude, I want you to stick around and be the same. I want you to work harder than you work before. It's few and far between. So they're getting pretty sophisticated now, but there's a lot of home service industries. Man, I'm telling you this. Like the future of A1, many splits in the garage, garage flooring, EV chargers, pest control front doors and windows. Like if I get into those, I'm running 25,000 jobs a month. 17% is finance. So it'll be 35% this year of our revenue, which is low and he's a continued to improve. But hey, you qualified for 20,000. Do you want me to make this garage or liveable? And you can set up a gym. We'll do the floors and we'll put it, you know, it'll be warm in the winter, cool in the summer. And by the way, we noticed all these spider webs in your garage. You want to stay care of that. And by the way, the garage probably you want it to match the front door and you qualified for it. We can make it a low payment. You know, the garage door, I got really lucky because remodel magazine eight years in a row, said grogers are the number one investment. Wall Street Journal came out with two articles last year, 268% return on investment. You put a buck in, you take 268 out. And then we trademarked the garage door of the smile of your home. So I'm going into the garage and the plan is to create other opportunities in the garage. Dude, this is fascinating. This is not at all what I thought this episode was going to 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 I have discovered. I'm glad you came on. Check this out, Sean. So I've been following you Tommy for about two years now. And you get me amped up. You know, I'm not in your space at all, but I feel like I'm learning so much. But I also feel like I'm getting amped up. But Sean, Google Tommy Mellow Conference. So he has this conference called the Freedom Event. And whoever's listening, Google that and go to the page. The video is hit with his arms out. It like fireworks shooting up with people on stage. It's pretty awesome. But Tommy, obviously, he has a behemoth of a business. But then it looks like you have a side hustle of being sort of like 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. Yeah, we had 1,500 home service contractors that are last one this year, well, 3,500. And the average person that's worked with us increases by 70% their first year. And that's profitability, because that's what we shoot for. And basically, most of what I've done is repeatable. It's not like this crazy thing that only works and grows yours. It's knowing the numbers. It's paying attention to the important things. You don't need to be good at 50 things or 500 things. You need to be good at five things a thousand times over. So it's understanding, don't overcomplicated. It's pretty simple. Wait, 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-- how to sort of-- 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 to 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. Why are you doing all this and how does that work? Well, first and foremost, you should just have a garage door. We realized the industry is 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 train other garage or companies. So we invite hundreds of garage or companies. And then I looked down 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 open 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, I'll leave you and all my other, you know, Dan Antanelli with branding. And we've got this formula of like the step by step. It's not for everybody. Like I said, at the beginning, that everybody's meant to be an entrepreneur. Some of them are meant to be entrepreneurs. But the other thing, the selfish byproduct is if I love a company and they show up and they do the work, I could date them before we get married because I know if I invest with them, I'll give them an endless amount of money. I could personally give them what's worked in like really one on one because 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 no one 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 to 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. And 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 mail or technique that I've never heard of? Who's the first person they want to call? They go Tommy. You've taught me so much. I feel indebted. I haven't come to you for three years, but I finally got something I think you're going to love. You got to try this. And I get those phone calls 10 times a week. I'm on homeservicefreedom.com. It looks like a community plus like you give a playbook. The headline is really good. It says accelerate five years of growth in 12 months. How much does this cost? So there's three 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 a, 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. It was doing 12 million dollars, bringing home about 300 grand. Within one year, they're doing 30 million, bringing home six 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 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 answered the phones. We're probably 90%. I'm like, you don't understand. It should be a decimal place. It needs to be exact. It should be by CSR. Like, I know every single one of my CSR's booking rate. I know exactly what we're training them on every day. I know exactly my technique. 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? You know, my fiance might say, I'm not the best communicator. I don't talk about my feelings. I don't really practice. We could 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 go to a movie, we go bowling. She 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 got to be something optimistic for me. I have a hard time talking about, I don't go down this, never anymore on my 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 fiancee 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 a lot and I recognize it. Tommy Mello is Tommy dialed in. I mean, you, you've got to figure it out, man. Like it's, it's, you're, 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 or you're trying to buy the card and I was like, what's the goal out here? You know, I was playing with GFGBT yesterday and I would love to tell you there's a goal. You know, we're building a beautiful house tonight. Oh, we're going to be doing events. And then I built in 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 house from your wealthy. I want it. I want number one, the best dad ever. And I don't have any kids yet. I'm a late bloomer. Luckily, my fiancee's 27. She's worked with me for nine years. No. No, yeah. Yeah, nine years because she was definitely 18 when I met her. I see that they do. No public bath. That's how I feel. Yeah. We were doing some well. And then come here to jail. There it is. Definitely, definitely nine 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 first. And I want to live. I want to be where my feet are. I want to go all in. I want people that don't 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 them. They're not happy. Some of them 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 to look at themselves and say, the only reason people like me is because I work my ass off and I've got money. And that's not going to be me. I want to continue to be humble. Stay the blue car guy I've always been. Remember that I started washing dishes and mowing lawns. And just creating the best for 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 in Jesus Christ every day. But I've got a lot of work on every all the listeners. 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 eight weeks ago, six weeks ago. And Sean and I, he probably is in our top five 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 short 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. - Tom, you said something earlier, you said, I used to hire twos and try to make 'em sevens. Not hire sevens, try to make 'em tens. Me and Sam, the reason we do the podcast is you find tens to make you realize, oh, you're still a seven. Give you, you know, break your frame a little bit and say, oh, that's an area I could be better in. Oh, well, he really had a certain spark. He had a certain point of view or he had a habit that I'm gonna 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 seven. There is actually much, there are more levels to that thing that you're trying to do. - I wanna 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 half. The next one is faith. And this could be in the order you want. The next one is fitness. The next one is finance. The next one is future self. And the sixth one is fun. And I want you to set goals for all these. If you don't believe in God, you can 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. It's just a big ask 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. Forest boss. And I want you to sign off on the bottom. And then I want next to each one of those six. I want accountability partners that you know are going to hold your feet to the fire. That it then I want you to put your why. And it's time is to make one on one. But it better be a big ask 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. You know, it could be going to church. It could be just the assort, just the assort. 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 got to be a strong that Chaudini 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 going to do this and it better be a huge why. And in the other thing is try to get into better circles. If you want to be a great golfer, golfer with three scratch golfers, you're going to be better. Get into the right circles. And you do what I'm telling you to on all six of those your life is planned on is reverse engineered. It's manifested and it will come true. I'm going to run to a wall. That's how I do. Say anything we say after this, we'll 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 know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days. All for 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 Fanzi Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fanzi 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 podcast.