The Three-Letter Secret That Took This Business From Zero to $600 Million with Tommy Mello

And my favorite 3 letters in the dictionary are ASK, in that order. Just got to ask. I'm going to be the first one. If I feel like I'm at all in the wrong direction, I'm asking for help. Knowledge without implementation is nothing. The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Unemployable Podcast. I'm Jeff Dudan. If you started with a beat-up truck, a borrowed ladder, and a garage door company you built from zero, if you scale that company past $300 million in revenue and turned it into a masterclass for every home service owner watching. If you wrote the book Home Service Millionaire and then launched a podcast with millions and millions of downloads to prove the blueprint works, your name can only be the incredible Tommy Mello. Welcome, Tommy.

Hey, pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Yeah, excited. I've known you for a few years. I was on your podcast maybe 3 or 4 years ago, then got a chance to break some bread with you a few weeks out in Phoenix on your home court. And just again, just amazed at what's happened for you over the last 3, 4, 5 years. If you don't mind, I'd like to just hear a little bit about, you know, how you grew up, anything you care to share. Who is Tommy Mello?

Yeah, I know it's a great question and I like this, this question. I'm, I'm from Detroit. I born and raised till I was 16. Mom and dad got a divorce when I was 7 years old. Father went through a lot of stuff but was still there for me. My mom worked 3 jobs, really lower to middle income. Figured out a way to make it work. She and I were born on the same day, March 4th. She's 1954, I'm '83, kind of 41. But I learned to work at a very early age. You know, I was mowing lawns, shoveling snow, started washing dishes when I was 12. I learned if you wanted something, you gotta work for it. And so I moved to Phoenix when I was 16, finished up high school, started a landscaping business. I was busing tables. I mean, what I figured out really quickly was when I wasn't working, I wasn't making money. And I, I, I've always heard wealth is actually when you actually make money when you sleep. So started to figure that out early on, and I knew I wanted to be my own boss. So started a landscape company, did water conservation analysis. That went really good. I was able to kind of have this kind of a blue ocean strategy that I could save people a lot of money in water. And it was a big deal at the time here in Phoenix. So was able to convert a lot of deals. I was bringing in about $30 grand a month, which early 20s, that was a lot of money on top of bartending. I was flipping Bowflexes, I was flipping cars, I was flipping houses, I was, you name it. And one of my roommates said, do you know how to paint? And I said, I know how to paint, but what are we talking about? He goes, can you paint garage doors? I'm managing a company. And I go, a garage door company? Yeah, I can paint. Roger's how much? He's like $100 a door. But you got to, you got to buy the paint. So I went to Home Depot and I found this thing. It's called Glidden Speed Coat, and it cost $12 a gallon at the time. This is 2005. And he said you could probably paint 2 or 3 doors a day. So I hired this old man. I remember the guy was in his— it wasn't that old, but, you know, in his late 60s. And he taught me how to fan it on and spray. We used his sprayer. I paid him a few hundred bucks a door. He taught me on 3 doors. And I walk into Home Depot, I buy a, what the heck is it called? It was a Max 5 painter. It was about a $500 machine at the time. And I got to the point where I could paint 10 doors on Saturday, 10 doors on Sunday. I go meet these technicians and they hand me the samples. I called every company I could find in the Yellow Book and I became their painter of choice. And I said, guys, why don't I just do the color match of the house? It'll actually help you. You could upsell it, charge the customer $400, give me $100 of it. And so they all did it. And I'd meet these technicians, and this is when Phoenix was blowing up, right? And they're like, yeah, I'm making $100 grand a year. And I'm like, man, maybe this is something I need to look into. So my other roommate and I started a business, didn't know what we were doing, made every mistake in the book. I mean, I got in the Yellow Book pages. That's why we named it A1 Garage Door Service.

Yeah.

20— 2010, I got my mom and stepdad to move out, help me with the business. Broke up with the partner. Still best friends with him. Just things weren't going. I felt like I was working more than he was. He was smoking a lot of weed at the time. And 2014, I found a really good right hand. I found my integrator. 2017, I got on the service side and started a podcast. 2018, I met Al Levy. Uh, the 7 Power Contractor who has been my best consultant. He helped me set up manual standard operating procedures and org chart, come up with a really operational excellence and, uh, really started grinding these last few years. And we, we took some chips off the table last year, ended up getting just under $600 million, and I rolled half of that back into the business. So the goal is in 2 years, uh, should be a billionaire. But I, I'll tell you this, I'm humble. I'm still super hungry, very modest. I, I never, I don't drive a Lamborghini. I don't, I don't flaunt the money. I've never tried to be conceited about what I have because in a lot of ways I was lucky. The multiples were through the roof. I had an amazing team. I wouldn't have been able to do it with all the great people, but that's, that's who I am today.

You know, a lot of people say that, Tommy, and what an incredible story. You know, a lot of people say that about the people, but My experience with you is that you live it. You just mentioned Al Levy, and if you go into your book Elevate, you give props after the key chapters to people in your company that I assume either own those areas of the business or they contributed to helping you create excellence in that business—recruiting, marketing, systems, culture, leadership. And, you know, that's rare, right? Because usually, you know, a lot of people like to take credit. for, for all of it. And, you know, you clearly pay homage to the people that help get you there. Um, so, so you, you had a partnership and, um, you know, you, you had the courage to, to end it. Uh, you know, a lot of people, we, a lot of people stay in toxic relationships, both in personal and in, in business situations. What was it that made you, uh, made you end that relationship with certainty? Why were you so clear about it?

Well, one day he went outta town and I handled all the phone calls. Usually he was on phones and I'd go do the work and we tripled our booking rate when he was gone for a week. I mean, I fought for every job. I did not miss a call. You know, they say CSR is the best of the best, book 90%. I booked every fricking call like my life depended on it. Like someone was gonna die if I didn't book it. And that's how I started the business. I was hungry. And I mean, I went to war. I mean, I, I'd make sure I got a 5-star review before reviews were even a thing. I was getting videos with an old-fashioned cam, you know, that you put the memory stick in before we had phones like this. I was, I was just super, like, I learned, I had other companies training me. I'd pay them to train me on stuff I didn't know how to do that we'd say no to. So I learned how to do it. And, uh, it was like he was my best friend, my roommate, and my business partner. It was almost like a marriage except we were not doing anything. It was just good friends. And, uh, you know, it was really, it was probably one of the hardest points in my life to kind of, there's been a few times in my life that I had to really find the inner part of me because I'm not good at this stuff, man. I'm very like, I don't fire people. I'm very loyal, but this time I just knew I had to make a change. And so, um, my mom, I called her up and I said, I'm gonna need help because I don't really have anybody I could trust that I needed inventory payroll help. I'm marketing, sales, and motivation. I'm not good at payroll. I don't like inventory. I had to do that stuff for a while and I hated it. I hated it. So my mom, And stepdad moved out and they helped me build a business. I paid my stepdad $65,000 a year, paid my mom $15 an hour. And my mom made great money. She was a realtor. She figured out ways to make money, but they did it because they loved me. And, you know, they're millionaires now. They're retired. But it was tough, man. I'll tell you. I had a really, really— I remember the day I went up to them and said, listen, we've got some debt on the business. I want to continue to be your best friend. I'm gonna either give you the business, you take the debt, or I'll take it. And he thought about it and he says, I want to move to Montana with, to be with family. So yeah. Yeah. That's how that went.

Yeah. I had the same situation. So I started with 4 partners. I ended up buying 100% of the business in 2004. And, but it was that, that, that third buyout or the second buyout that the guy before the last one was my roommate from college. We started the painting business together. We cut our teeth in the hurricane business together. And then we, we, uh, we found these other two guys to start this business with. But it was to that point, it was like we couldn't get to a number. And finally, and I thought I was bringing the majority of the value to the business, similar to you. I think I was, I was leading the business. Our com— our office was growing. We were really doing all the thought leadership and, and all of that. And I just basically said, look, I mean, the, the goal, you know, my thinking was they didn't, I didn't think they would think they could do it without me, but I knew I could do it without them. So I basically, I said, look, you're either gonna take, you're gonna, I'm gonna write a number and you're gonna pay it, or I'm gonna pay you, but that's the number. And, you know, thank goodness he took it. Uh, cause I ended up buying the last guy out and then, you know, growing the business. So, um, so at some point, uh, you, you're, you're on your own now. You're moving forward and then, you know, you're a sales and marketing guy and you're probably outselling your ability to produce. And then all of a sudden, you know, the business is growing and, or you correct me if I'm wrong, but then you have this $100 million brainstorm where you basically say, you know, and I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but oftentimes I see people at these inflection points and and they're, they're like, they're so tired of the stress. They're so tired of like the, what's not working right. That they basically just take all of their self-limiting beliefs and they say, screw that. I'm, I'm not, you know, we're just gonna go for it. We're gonna, we're gonna create a vision that's so big that everybody's dream can fit inside of it. And then I'm going to make it happen and I'm gonna take these people with me because you said it, man, like you spend your entire life going through life trying to find those few people that you can actually trust. And when you find those people and you can get alignment with them inside of your business and you can get clarity inside of it and it's your vision and it's big enough, that's when big gains can happen. And you've 100x to 1,000x your business in a very short period of time. And that only happens when you have people that believe in you. and that trust your leadership. So, so you tell us about that $100 million brainstorm, like what, what led to it and, and what did it look like when it happened?

Yeah. One other comment that, uh, when I did sell, I sent Gabe a, uh, my old partner, it's nothing much. I sent him $250,000. I gifted him $250,000. I didn't need to do it, but I just, I wanted to make sure when he saw our success, that we were nothing when he went away, by the way. We had a little bit of debt. We owed the Yellow Book. The business was not doing much. So, um, so, you know, I, I realized when Al Levy walked in, we were doing $17 million, I think. And he said, man, you're a firefighter. You're one of the best firefighters I've ever met. He goes, you know everything about this business. He goes, but you're the only one that knows it. He goes, you got every answer to every question and you are capable of doing anything. But he goes, you don't empower your people. He goes, you're the problem solver. He goes, Tommy, if I work with you, you're not gonna have any problems. You're gonna get bored and you're gonna grow and you're gonna grow so fast that you're gonna have more problems and we're gonna get it organized again. And then you're gonna grow again and you're gonna empower, empower, empower, get the right people on the bus as Jim Collins would say. And the systems actually pick the people. So people say the people are the most important thing, but the systems are who pick the people. So one day I'm in my office and I whiteboard, I take this big whiteboard and I wrote $100 million on the top right corner and I pulled out my calculator. I said, let's just say the average technician does, um, no, I wrote, I'm trying to think that I start with $100 million. I, I think I wrote $100 million and I said, If I could get each guy to do $500 grand a year, and this is 5 years ago, or maybe even a little more, I said we would need 2,000 technicians. So I wrote 2,000 technicians next to $100 million. And I said, where are we at today? We were at like 60. And I said, okay, so what are we gonna need? We're gonna need a training center. We're gonna need full-time recruiters. And I put down a list at the, so I wrote a, drew a line all the way down of where we were today. And I know this is hard to see, but I wrote a line backwards all the way to the beginning, the left corner. And I said, here's where we're starting from. What needs to happen in year 1? What does it look like in year 2? What does it look like in year 3, year 4 to get there in 5 years? So I wrote down everything and I called up 3 of my managers, walked in and they looked at the number at the top right. And they, they kind of laughed. They're like, what have you been smoking? $100 million in the garage door industry. And I explained it to them and they walked out of there going, we're gonna do $100 million. They bought into my dream. Yeah. They figured it. I'm a math guy. I, I write down equations of formulas. I live with a calculator. I usually carry a TI-83 with me. And so we just, we had a very concrete plan and we just executed. And, um, you know, like I said, most of home service is all about capacity planning. You need enough technicians and enough leads. And I'm really good at getting leads. And I shifted during COVID my thinking. I thought, how do I get new customers? How do I get new clients? How do I get new customers? How do I get new clients? And then I said, how do I get better people? My internal clients. How do I get A+ players that'll do $1 million a year in revenue that'll get 5-star reviews and recruit for me and pick up shifts and not steal and stay organized. And when the shift changed and it took place, everything changed for me. And I started loving my people way more. And I started smiling more and I started enjoying Mondays more because I worked around people that were handpicked. They were fun. They tell a great story. They look you in the eye when they talk. And that's how we're building the companies. We're so focused on the people and it's the systems that help get the people. So many people say, I can't even get a good guy to just fill out an application. I'm like, Yeah. You think you're gonna find everybody on Indeed and ZipRecruiter? No, you're working for someone. That's the unemployment, that's the unemployment line coming to you there. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So that's kind of when it all changed.

Yeah. 3, 3% of people are unemployed right now and, and those are the people answering your ads. Like you gotta tap people on the shoulder. You gotta get their attention. Something's gotta snap their head around and they need to see something, uh, that they can get into that that serves a need or feeds a desire that they've got. But, you know, generally people want to be part of something. Like, as long as people know where they stand, they're usually okay. It's when they come in and it's different than what they expected, that's when people get upset. So as long as, you know, you can give people a realistic and clear picture as to what's going to happen, and then you can deliver on that, You know, you can get some people, you can get loyalty. And that's fantastic.

Well, what I will tell you about that is, you ever see somebody like, you watch a movie and it's detectives in New York and somebody is retiring and they have the cake and they go have beer and they party, they go do karaoke. Sure. I said, why don't we do this when they decided to work here? And so throw a celebration that they are willing to gamble their entire family and take a big chance to come work for you. This is their life. You spend more time working than you do with family than you do sleeping than anything. So we got a red carpet. We do a champagne toast. We, I write a handwritten letter to the family. We, we celebrate them coming. We, we don't just say, here, you're gonna follow this guy for the next 2 weeks. Here's your manual. Go have fun. We actually want to get involved, get to know them, meet their families. Uh, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'll never be 100% happy. I'm always gonna be working on getting 1% better. But I'll tell you, I do get excited to meet these new people and get to know them a little bit. And I don't, I, you know, now there's gonna be, after the next 3 months, there's gonna be almost 1,000 people here. I wish I had a relationship like I used to have, but, um, and that's why we hire managers to do the same thing that look and generally care about people. And wanna see them win. I mean, we just got back from Pinnacle trip in Mexico. We took 61 people with us. Such a great time. And my, my meeting this morning, I said, listen guys, we work 260 days a, a year. Let's say we average 3 jobs. Multiply that by your average ticket. You need to have $1,670 to make Pinnacle next year at 3 jobs. You could, run 4 and we can pull that number down, or you could run 2, you can move that number up, or you can pick up a shift on a 6-day. There's no reason none of you could do this, right? All you got to do is ask. I got ride-alongs, we got Rilla Voice, we've got— come back to Phoenix and train. We've got extra training, we've got the Market Acceleration Technician training. Every one of you deserve this. When you look in the mirror and you don't say you want it bad enough, when you say I'm not worth it, I don't deserve it, you shouldn't work for A1. Go work for my competitors. But if you work here, you deserve it. You are welcome to, you're allowed to make money. And some people say, well, I don't sell things people don't need. I go, that's bullshit. I sell things people don't need all the time. I sell things people want. Nobody needs a Mustang. Nobody needs a Rolex. Nobody needs a water filtration system. They wanted it. So we offer things people might want. Like the myQ on the phone so you could open and close your garage. No one needs to open and close their garage from their phone, but they want it. Right. And so I, I, I remove excuses. That's what I'm really good at. And I say, what are your dreams? What are your goals? And then I say, that's not big enough dream. I don't want you to own a house. I want you to buy a house every year. I don't want you to go to Disney World. I want you to go first class and cut all the lines. I want you to take a month off each year. And enjoy your family. So let's remind you of what your dreams are and let's take those down to KPIs. And let me give you a reason. I'm not gonna put you on a performance improvement plan, man, because you told me what you wanted. You looked me dead in the eye and you said you wanted this more than life. So let's freaking, let me help you get to what you want and what you deserve. Yeah.

Fantastic. That's awesome. Who was Al Levy? Um, how, how, how can people find an Al Levy to walk into their life? Was he a business coach, a business consultant, a friend? How did, how did you find him?

So Al was a huge consultant. He was number 4 on my podcast, The Home Service Expert, and I don't know why he found a liking to me. And I was confused at the time, just a hard worker.

Maybe it's the energy.

Could be the energy. I don't know what it was. And he said, hey Tommy, I guess he was probably 64. He just turned 70. He was 64 at the time. And he said, why don't we, uh, go out to lunch? I live in Scottsdale. So we go to lunch. I hand him my book, The Home Service Millionaire. He looks at it and he says, this is garbage. We need to rewrite it. And, uh, he says, would you mind if I came and did a shop tour? So he comes into my shop and he goes, can you show me your manuals? And I give him this old dusty book of nothing. And he goes, why are all these calendars on the wall? Haven't you guys ever heard of Google Calendar or Outlook? And he tripped over a cord and then he said, I could have stole your whole warehouse with your own forklift. There was nobody in there. And then he said, would you consider working with me? I said, I'd love to work with you. And over the course of the next 2 years, I gave him $350 grand. By the way, I didn't have the money at the time. I was good at making money. I just didn't know how to keep it. So he got me the right financial help too. His friend Alan Rohr and Gail, her sister. So they came in and helped me and, and Al and I sat in a room with two of my best guys, Adam and Brian, and we built the manuals one by one. And he did ride-alongs with my guys and said, every one of your guys do springs differently. I'm gonna show you how to get them to all do it the same way. He goes, you've got 25 different trucks. He goes, we need to make one truck and one van. And he goes, you're gonna spend a lot of time building this, Tommy. And I'd walk in there with a new idea every day and he said, stop. No ideas till we build the fundamentals. Turn off your damn cell phone, put it in that bucket. We had a bucket we put our cell phones into and we just worked. We figured out, can you have facial hair or not? What's our tattoo policy? What happens if your truck breaks down? The manuals were 75 pages each. It gave you how to play the game and the KPIs are how to win. And he was super influential. He said he's trained hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of companies. He retired after me. He said, you're my best student. He goes, you're gonna take this to a whole new level that no one else is gonna be able to keep up with. And if you go to 7powercontractor.com, he does the manuals for people. It's like $7,000, $8,000, $10,000. The way I built the business, he gives it all away. He automated the sequence. But Al, without Al, he just turned 70. I, I would not be where I'm at. He is, uh, not only a mentor, but he is like a second dad to me. And I love my dad more than anything, but Al took me under his wing, protected me. He— one day he walks in and he took a picture and it was of my van and it was black and white. And he goes, Tommy, tell me what you do from this picture. Like, if you just looked at it. And I'm like, it's not very good, is it? And I had a lot of pride in my raps. He goes, there's this guy, Dan Antonelli. It's called Kick Church. He did ghetto. He goes, you should probably talk to him. And so I talked to Dan and Dan was like, yeah, that'll be like $25 grand. And at the time I thought that was a lot of money. We were at $40 million at that point. We'd have been working with Al for a while. And, uh, Dan ripped me apart and I said, all right, I'm just gonna do a leap of faith. I'm gonna trust you. And we built a caricature of me on the van and I had no idea. Like I saw it and I said, Dan, I want it to be like an old school feeling, like kind of like the Wells Fargo. Like I want it to just a trustworthy feeling that when you pull up, I want it to be vibrant, bright, and I want it to look like no other competitors. And he built the perfect brand. And I didn't have Angie's List on the side. I didn't put everything, springs, rollers, cables, bearings. Uh, he just said, no, we're gonna put your brand on it. It's gonna not be affected by anything else. You don't even need a phone number on it. He goes, it's, it, people will know who you're, you are. And when I got the brand done, Trusting Al Levy and Dan Antonelli, my prices went through the roof. I started charging more 'cause people expected a premium company to show up. I started recruiting way better 'cause now my website looked like my billboard, looked like my Valpak. Everything was my signature strip on my email. Now had, I had all the color codes, right? Yeah. And my stickers, everything. And, uh, you know, then we got the whole building done by Dan Antonelli in the, the training center. And these are the little things that I, I coach people on that, like, I went through the hard knocks. If I knew this stuff when I, in 2007 when I started, I'd be like $10 billion right now. It's like you get the structure set up, you get the right branding done. Donald Miller wrote The StoryBrand, and like your, your brand has to tell a story. And so Al was just, I mean, he's helped me over and over and over. And I know when I call him, he'll have the answer. He doesn't listen much. He'll just tell me. And I've, I, I talk a lot, but I'm very silent with him. I just, he does the talking.

So you, you learned fortunately at a, at a relatively young age and you're still a young man for what you've, what you've, where you are, of course. And You learn the value of listening to experts and getting in the right room and putting the right people around you. You wouldn't be where you are without Al today, or you might get there, but it might've taken longer. What other areas have you found where you've been able to put yourself to get in these rooms and around the kind of people that have made a difference for you?

Well, that's what I'm the best at. I mean, if I had to have one skill, I was telling everybody this morning, my dad and my grandpa, would go 3 hours in the wrong direction before they asked for help. They were men of men. They didn't need help. They weren't gonna ask for help. They could take apart anything and put it back together and fix it. And when I watched them, I decided I'm not gonna be like that. I'm gonna be the first one. If I feel like I'm at all in the wrong direction, I'm asking for help. So the first thing I did is I looked, I studied so much. I've read thousands of books. I've got over 1,200 on Audible and I said, who's the most successful industry in home service? And the way I figured that out is who has the most private jets and it's HVAC. So I found the biggest HVAC companies around the country, right? Air conditioning, plumbing, electrical. Usually they do the three. And I humbly asked them, I said, I'm a big fan of yours. I read your book. I'd like to come in. I'll fly out there. I wanna be a fly on the wall. I'll buy you guys lunch. But I was very humble about it. I didn't say, I know everything. I'm gonna be a billionaire. You know, a lot of people now are like, ah, I just said, hey, I'm just a guy doing garage doors. I'm in Phoenix. I love who you are. I look up to you. I'd love for you, and I don't want to take a lot of your time. I just kind of want to be a fly on the wall. If I could talk to some people, that'd be great. And Ken Goodrich, Ken Haynes, Leland Smith, Keegan Hodges, these guys all let me into their home and they answered every question. They let me meet every single person on their team. I could spend time with the CMO, the CFO, and I extracted all this knowledge and I'd fill up a spiral notebook. The difference is with me versus a lot of people is I put it into effect the day I got home, is I actually implemented it because knowledge without implementation is nothing. So I went and I just said, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna apply this stuff. And people thought I was crazy cuz they're like, great, what shop did you go to now? What book did you read now? And I've kind of had to tame, tame the, the pace of how much I do stuff. But, uh, that's all I did is ask very humbly. And my favorite 3 letters in the dictionary are ASK in that order. Just gotta ask. Yeah.

Have you taken advantage of some of these, um, networks, YPO, Vistage, Genius, these types of things?

I'm in the Genius Network. I just joined that because Joe Polish is probably one of the best connectors on the planet. I'm in his $100K group. I'm not in YPO. I was in Young Entrepreneur Council for a long time. That helped me get into Forbes. Now I'm a regular contributor for Inc. You know, Inc. magazine. I write an article every week for them. And that builds domain authority, by the way. I've got the highest website ranking out of any home service company. I can't find anybody even close to me other than 1-800-GOT-JUNK and River Pools, which is Marcus Sheridan, that is really good at SEO. So yeah, I think there's a lot of value to be added into those groups. I've traveled to Nexstar. They let me come into their home. They let me see everything. I stayed at Julian's house, who's now the CEO, and I started my own thing called Home Service Freedom. We've got a couple hundred members. It'll be a couple thousand here in the next 2 years. Because the formula works. Everything that I'm talking about works. Everybody that I've coached in the garage door industry has tripled within their first year. Performance pay, branding correctly, recruiting the right people. And, and my buddy Jody started a company called Rapid Hire, and I hired him and he taught me how to recruit. And we use social media to recruit. Uh, Rapid Hire is something I think everybody should look at because without them, and they're the They're the salt of the earth. I will say this. I don't have any enemies. There are so many people in this industry, home service and home improvement, that hate each other. I talk to everybody. I don't ever— when I shake your hand, I come through with it. I don't have to look over my shoulder ever. And I'm friends with everybody and they all, they'll all give me help and I help everybody. If someone wants to come in and learn, I just invite them in and I have no— if I— people are like, why don't you hold anything back? And I'm like, because I got nothing to lose. I'm already— by the time 3 months comes, this is going to be a different company. You know, I'm here to help. Yeah. And if I can help people grow and change their families and change their communities and change the way we do things in the home service industry, the blue-collar industry, I'm giving back that, you know, people have given to me. For the last decade. This is the least I could do to pay it forward. And that's why all these other guys helped me because they got help. They all had a mentor that helped them, some of them several mentors. And that's what we do when we're successful.

We pay it forward. You know, people, uh, people will give you $10 for every dollar you can take from them. Uh, I, I believe that I, I've been in business with people and, you know, they're, they're transactional people and they're take, take, take, and they just burn relationships as they go around. And, you know, ultimately, They, you know, I guess they never run out of people, but they never get big. I mean, people wrapped up inside of themselves make very small packages and we do the same thing. So we run these Meet the Team days and where we bring in candidates and, you know, we'll have 15 to 25 candidates in twice a month and, you know, nice size events and all of that. But more often than not, I'll have 2 or 3 emerging brands in the back of the room. People I've met at the conference, somebody that saw me speak. Somebody that just reached out and I'll say, hey, if you're an emerging brand and you're trying to grow your franchise, the best thing that you can do is come here, come to our Meet the Team Day, see how we do it. Because at the end of the day, like, if they don't do it well and, and they cast dispersions on our industry because they're not doing it the right way, then that, that reflects poorly on everybody. We get regulated, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, we're interested in expanding the reach and relevance of the sector. And that means people doing it responsibly and people doing it well. And I've got, I mean, I, you know, I've been involved with 30 or 40 different brands, uh, in some capacity or another consulting, advising, investing, or whatever it is. But man, there's probably been 100 brands that have been through here over the last 15 years. And you never know, like, and, and by the way, something always comes back. Uh, some of these people, uh, actually have one guy that's a president of two of our brands that built a brand with his family, 113 locations. In the estate sales space, sold it, went to work there 2 years, and then he came back and he said, hey, I'm done with this contract. I want to, I want to come to work with you. So you never know what's going to come back, but like paying it forward, it's, you know, and if nothing ever comes back, look, maybe that was our contribution to the universe because I never give in the thought of, you know, I'm not the Godfather.

One day I'm going to call you, you know, I never had that expectation. You know, Dan Martell was sitting next to me in this very room and he said something to me. He said, and it really stands out as a, and it's not quite on the thing we were talking about, but he said, you know, Tommy, I charge for my time. And he actually is one of my coaches and he wrote the book Buy Back, Buy Back Your Time. And he said, it's amazing to me how many people I've talked to over the last 5 years. He built SaaS Academy, very successful guy. And he said, it's amazing how many people you give 'em your price and they, they try to haggle with you. And you know, he goes, I'm really, I'm not cheap. And he told me his price. I wired him the money the same day and it was lots of hundreds of thousands for 1 hour a month for 1 year. And he said, I buy how I want to be bought from. He goes, I attract the top clients ever because I pay full price. I don't haggle. I just, and one day I called him up and I said, you know what really bothers me is I've got plumbers that would do stuff for me at a great price, and I've got people that take care of my houses and my investments and they don't call me. And he goes, what are we talking here? I'm like, well, just yesterday I could have saved 10 grand. He goes, who cares? $10,000 is a rounding error. He goes, that's nothing. He goes, I understand how you were 10 years ago. That's a big deal. He goes, think of percentages instead of dollars at the size you are now. Number one. Number two is he goes, just remember, and I start now, I buy whole, like I've learned this in the last year. I buy differently. Like Bri wants a nice purse. I mean, we just went and looked at one the other day. It's $36,000. That, that I didn't do. but you know, I'm like, everybody has rules. I buy how I want to be bought from. And it's amazing what the world does to you. It's amazing how like some people go to a seminar and they're afraid to spend $1,000 and yet, you know, then, then they go, how do you attract customers that spend 30, 40 grand? I'm like, because I put it out there, I attract it. I put it out. It's whether it's karma or it's divine intervention, it's Jesus. I just, I have this ability because I attract people and clients that wanna do business with us. They call 3 companies. I had a guy call me 2 days ago, Justin Tatum. He goes, the other company was $6,000. We were $16,000. And I said, well, so what happened? He goes, they went with us. That's not, that, that's a $10,000 gap, right? But we built value. We told 'em how the process is gonna work. We showed 'em the difference. We have different materials, we have trademark parts. And a lot of people, that's the kind of people I attract. Those are my clientele. And I think that's an interesting story because so many people, they won't spend money on manuals, they won't hire the right consultant. They want everything for a deal. They'll end up getting a fractional piece of crap somebody, and it'll never happen for them because they're looking to cut corners everywhere and get a deal. And they wonder why all their clients want deals from them. That's right. Yeah. It's crazy how that works.

Yeah, 100%. I wanna talk a little bit about tools and, uh, you know, underneath everything that we've talked about today is a tool. Uh, you've got pay for performance, you've got, you got, uh, recruiting tools, you've got systems, you got all of these things. Like when did you, uh, start to really create your own toolkit? Uh, because like when you go to, when you go to these different groups or you go to these different people, man, it's like they've created this system, they've created this process? More often than not, really, really simple, easy to understand, easy to implement, easy to execute. It's just a matter of people actually following through with it and getting the right toolkit. You know, I'm interested to know your thoughts on, you know, the tools that you build and how you share those with people and how you use those, you know, to create, to create the outcomes that you're looking for.

Yeah, well, when I got onto ServiceTitan, I'll tell you, it's a pretty cool story. Um, after my exploration with HVAC, um, I was on my 5th CRM. My first one was, uh, called Paper. Uh, my second one was called Excel. And then I got on, uh, several other CRMs and I was looking to go to Salesforce to build my own custom. I was gonna build a Frankenstein and API webhooks and build this. Yeah. Monstrosity and it was gonna be very expensive. And I looked at this demo and this thing's called Service Titan. And I'm like, man, I need this. So I call up to the sales rep and he's like, okay, great. You're big enough. I could onboard you. And so I'm, I'm onboarding. And then he goes, what's your email? I say, tmellow@a1garage.com. And he goes, A1 Garage, that's a weird name for an HVAC plumbing company. I go, no, I do garage chores. He goes, oh dude, we don't, we can't help you. And then I, I was like, I was obsessed with getting on this software. So I called the next sales rep. I tried to get my way in. I tried to try to even fool being an HVAC company to get on. Right. Yeah. And no, no, no, no, no. Finally I'm like, I'm gonna do a Hail Mary. I LinkedIn to Ara Modessi and the founder, and I sent this email, this, this LinkedIn to him and he calls me back and he goes, hey man, I got your message. He goes, I'm sorry, you, you, you gotta understand, we're really focused. We're trying to take over HVAC, plumbing, electrical. We're really trying to stay in our own lane here. And I said, Ara, you could go out there and get 100 more HVAC companies. They're not gonna be as big as my garage door company. I will get hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of garage door companies on your software. Don't bet on 100 people, just bet on one. Bet on me. And he goes, dude, you're crazy. He goes, I'm telling you, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. It took him a couple of days. He said, I'm sending out 10 product specialists. I only send out one to companies. You're getting 10. We're going to— if anybody's going to make it work, it's going to be you. So let's give it a shot. And that was when they went into— and then I got them their first painter, their first roof, their first gutter company, their first and you know, I never, I never was big into attribution with him about getting credit because he sends out money all the time. And the, the company's grown to 3,000 people when its valuation is well over $12 billion now. And people always ask, do you own ServiceTitan? And I'm like, hell no, I wish I did. I don't have any equity in it. None. But that was the first time I realized the technology was so important. And now we use Rila Voice. Now we use Chirp for automations and it's solving so many problems. Now we use Power BI. Um, so I've got AI, I've got the business intelligence tools, and I've got the automations. And here's the deal, and I'm very friendly with all my competition. I've got Garage Door Freedom. I'm friends with all these other home service companies. This is, I'm saying this in the nicest way, but I don't think anybody has a chance. I don't think, you know, Ray Kroc said, when your enemies are drowning, stick a hose in their mouth. And I don't try to do that, but I believe that, that I, I believe we could be a monopoly. I believe we're probably gonna be some type of rule that they're gonna have to break us up here the next 5 years because we're playing at a whole new level. I always got an open ear. People are always calling me with a new technology, a new system, and I'm open to it. And we implement quicker. And we, we, we just, we make it simple. Like you said, keep it simple, Simon. Yeah. And, um, I'm having a lot of fun, man. Every day I'm just more energy, more pumped up. I mean, I feel like this is my first day of work. I really, I don't feel like I'm going, I like Mondays. I'm not going to work because everything I hate doing, I've hired people that love doing those things. And I get to be me. I get to go into my office and do everything I love. I mean, shoot, it's Thursday today. I'm sitting here on a podcast. I, I love this stuff.

Yeah. When did you start doing events?

My own events, probably 4 years ago. We, we wanted something in the garage door space and so we called it Vertical Track. Yeah. And all of a sudden it was made for the garage door industry and all of a sudden I'm like, hey, who are you? He's like, oh, I'm a plumber. Then I met an HVAC guy, then I met pest control, then I met a painter and I'm like, this is for garage doors. They're like, we know. Well, we like your podcast. We like your content. We just, we bought a ticket. And I wasn't like vetting them to, I was like, you can come if you want. And it just grew into something bigger. And then now we have Home Service Freedom, but I started going to a lot of events and then people started saying, hey, would you mind speaking? I remember the first event I spoke at, it was, uh, send out cards, Cody Bateman. And it was, uh, in Salt Lake City. And he goes, would you speak? I got like 1,000 people. And I'm like, yeah, I'll speak. And he met me and he's like, dude, you'd kill it on stage. He goes, I've just, he goes, I've never seen you speak. And in my head I'm going, I've never spoke. And 1,000 people, way to like lose my virginity of the speaking world. So he, they told me, they're like, it's 45 minutes. Whatever you do, don't effing go over. And whatever you do, don't go under. So I'm in the hotel room, you're gonna land it right on the dot.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I'm practicing and I'm like, and I got notes written all over my arm and I'm sweating. I mean, I'm wearing this light blue shirt and I walk out and it was like a heat lamp and I'm like, all right. And I just started and I told stories. That's all I did is tell stories on stage. And I ended perfectly. And Cody comes up, puts his arm around me and he's like, dude, You could come back every year. You just blew everybody out of the water. And I mean, now I just get up there because like, it's like a muscle. You grow it. And now it's like, I don't care if there's 10,000 people, I'm gonna bring the heat. I know as long as it's my subject matter and I love it. I was on stage on Tuesday and a couple people, Josh from Parker and Sons, Josh, uh, Kelly, he walks up to me. He's like, I've seen you speak. So many times he's like, that was the best you've ever done by far. He's like, but here's the difference. You made us laugh. You made us cry. You were so passionate. You were all over. You made everybody feel like they were the only one in the room and you had fun. And he goes, that takes talent. And he goes, great job. And it was the best compliment I've ever received on talking and a speech. And it was like, I never do a keynote the same thing. I really try to taper it to the audience I'm talking to, but, uh, I really have learned to enjoy it.

The stories, uh, as long as you stay inside of the stories, man, it always seems to go well. It just, you know, like talk to what you know, give 'em your strength, share your experience. I was just doing an interview for, uh, Liberty University right before we got in here, and she asked me this question. I was like, oh, these would be some good questions to ask Tommy. But you know, they were a little academic and whatever, but you know, her question was, You know, tell me about your, you know, tell me about the challenges or, you know, some of the, you know, kind of this broad softball, you know, type thing. And, you know, I, I thought about it for a good bit and I said, you know, my, my thing is, is never ask for advice, never give advice, just share experiences. And, you know, if somebody's telling you something that they've never done, man, the chance of them being wrong. Is high. Or if I'm giving you like my opinion on something that I've never done, man, you probably shouldn't listen to it. So, you know, stories like I've got, you know, I got 35 years worth of stories in home services, man. It's— we've screwed everything up. We've gotten shot at. I mean, it's like, you know, going through disasters for 30 years and all of that. I mean, so, but, you know, sharing experiences with people, it's like even just thinking about it, man, it makes me light up. And, you know, I've You know, done more speaking lately and, you know, it's, it's something that I've really, you know, doing, like you said, doing this podcast, getting to go out and speak, man. It's, it's my favorite stuff to do. And I also think it brings a lot of value to people.

It's great. You know, my dad always used to say, because he's like, man, if I went back to high school, he goes, I did good in high school. I asked every girl out and he goes, if a girl said no, I was persistent. And he always said, if I knew now, But if I knew then what I know now, and I used to hate him, I was like, tell me what you know. I, I can still use it. That's right. And now I'm like, metaphorically, I've got all these bruises and scars. I remember when that happened. I remember when that happened. I remember, oh, don't do that. Yeah. Performance pace. Spend more time on the process of making sure— there's 3 reasons why a system fails. No, no system, the wrong system, or the system's not being followed. And most of the time it's the third one. The system's not being followed. The performance pay, me and Adam used to sit down, pick up a six-pack of beer and come up with a new performance pay. And man, we'd have to change it every 3 months. We didn't plan on this. We didn't know this. So now I'm really good at it. And, uh, it's like you, you can't take away experience. You know, these guys come out of an Ivy League school. They think they know how to run a company. They do not have the skillset of the experience that we have. And we're, I speak to blue collar people. I can't sit in a boardroom and talk. Graphs and hypotheticals. I'm good at what I do. I know my place. I know what I'm good at, and that's where I stay. And I know there's people that are brilliant, that are smarter than me. They, they're better at a lot of things, but I've got a lot of experience. I've been through it. I've been through it. I, I lived in an apartment for 4 years. We owned the complex, but it was, you know, 900 square feet. And people were like, why do you live in such a small place when you own 7 other houses? I'm like, I wanna be close to my technicians. And they all stayed there. And we lived in this tiny apartment. I drove a 2012 salvage title Titan, a Nissan Titan. And they said, why do you drive this? I said, till every single technician installer has a new truck, I'm not gonna own a new truck. And that's the whole deal is like I had delayed gratification. I was disciplined and I stayed consistent. And, uh, you know, and I listen, my grandma said she, she, I was her favorite grandson. My grandpa said I was his favorite grandson. Son, because I listened to their stories and I sat there, even if it was the same story for the 12th time, I'd still laugh. I still listened to it. I had an ultra respect for my elders. And we'd walk, my grandpa and I would walk around and I hear 8 stories were the same, but I'd always hear a new one. And I just learned to listen instead of just hear. And I think that I'm more excited about what I'm going to learn here in the next few years than what I'm going to teach. And when you teach, you learn your stuff better. You become more of an expert at it.

Yeah. Yeah. I was watching this Netflix documentary on Arnold Schwarzenegger over the weekend and it was pretty cool because it had 3 seasons of life for him. It had his bodybuilding career, you know, and, and by the way, like who had the camera when he was 14 years old in Austria? Because there was a hell of a lot of footage of this guy. He loved the ca— like he loved the camera like way back then because there was tons of pictures and videos. So then it went all the way up through, you know, him being body, you know, Mr. Olympian all those times and just a great career. And then, and then, oh, by the way, like he was trying to break into acting, but, uh, he was doing real estate. So he was a big real estate investor. He ended up with multifamily, uh, office buildings, all that kind of stuff. He had an office and, and he was doing all that. So like he, he had his bodybuilding money, he had his real estate now. Then he went in and then he crushed and him and Stallone are going back and forth for like, who's the best leading man in action films. And he had just this huge box, you know, over billions and billions of dollars at the box office. And then politics. So he's had 3 lives within a life, 3 lives that any one person would kill to have. You have an amazing life right now. I think I know what's next for you. You're 41 years old. It's pretty clear in, in what you've said here and also what you've said when we've talked offline that, you know, you, you've got like, this is going, this is just the beginning for A1 and, and the other things that you're affiliated with. Do you have aspirations after that to do anything else, or have you thought that far about it?

Well, one of the things I've been working on with Dan Martell is he says, you're 75 years old. I want you to think back to you're 41 now. What did you do with your life? He said, what did you do? And I want you to be super descriptive. Family. Religion, community, business. So we, we started working on this and he says, if you're buying a plane, I wanna know what color it is. I wanna know the, what the seats look like. I want you, where did you visit in Italy? Who are you with? I want you, I wanna see what your daily life looks like throughout every year. When do kids happen, if that's in your DNA for the future? And so I, I've been working on this and You know, the one thing I'm always— I really admire Elon Musk because he's trying to change, you know, whether it's satellites and bringing third world countries internet or going to space and going to Mars or even, you know, Tesla running non-fuel. Just the things he's doing is just amazing. And, you know, there's 2 billion stars in our galaxy and 4 trillion galaxies in the known universe. And that just blows my mind. And that stuff is something that just fascinates me. I don't think I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna like be in NASA or probably ba, you know, join SpaceX. But that kind of stuff is politics. I, I'll probably be a big, I'll get behind big I, I, I just see that is just, it's a dirty game and people change and they gotta kind of conform. And I'm not, I don't conform well. And politics, I'd probably be great in, but I probably got too many stuff in the closet that would get exploited. So yeah, politics is probably out. I'll get behind some big people, but I just love the, the idea of space and that, you know, that's a lot of the stuff I've been thinking about and just, we're building a nice house in Idaho. Expanding our house. And I bought a— people are like, why'd you do that? You're this humble guy. And I'm like— and I really mean that from the bottom of my heart. I had my dad's 70th birthday. Every one of his brothers and sisters, a family of 12 kids, were there. I had— we have so much fun. And before, at the apartments, this was like— I wasn't able to do that. And now it's like, how do you build experiences? Because those are what I'm going to remember. I won't remember the day I worked the 12-hour day and burning the midnight oil. I'll remember all these experiences. And that's what I'm doing in Idaho. And every one of the people that, that work with my coworkers, they're allowed to come. People say, don't let anybody see your house. They built the house. So they're allowed to bring their families. They can go swimming. They can spend the night. They're going to be allowed to come to the Idaho. Like, it's not like, oh, no one could see how much money you've made. They know how much money. They know what we do. We have an open book policy. They know how, they know if we hit our goal each month, they know how much we made. We don't hide anything. They know everything. Every single person knows that. I mean, every person that I work with, my coworkers know where we're at.

What's, what's, what's the, what's going on in Idaho?

What's it, what's it look like? So I'm building, it's a big house on the lake. It's called Ponderay Lake. It's in Sandpoint. And me and Bri went everywhere. We went to Flathead Lake, we went to Lake Minnetonka. I know every lake in Michigan cuz I'm from there. I went to a couple lakes in Minne— Milwaukee. I went to a lake in Texas. And then we go to visit a buddy, his name's Travis Ringy. We went to Sandpoint, Idaho, and I fell in love with this lake. He's got a speedboat and he goes, hey, by the way, that's the mountain you could go skiing on. It's a beautiful mountain that just got bought by Winter Park. And he goes, you got every snow sport you could think of here. You've got every summer sport you could think of. The town's amazing. And so I go to this, he goes, that's called Springy Point. And he goes, I think the guy that owns Bottle Bond, the big bar, the most successful bar owner, I go, yeah, I used to work for Les. I go, let's stop by there. So Les walks out and he goes, oh my God, Tommy. And we're talking and he goes, you know, That property next door, 5 acres, is one of the most beautiful properties. And, uh, I ended up buying that 5 acres and we're putting this house and it's like, it's pretty sweet, man. It's, I'll send you some renderings, but it's like a dream house. And it's just a place that I just want to get away. I could go fishing. There's Gosser, which is a Jack Nicklaus course. It's a country club, most expensive in North America. And I'm joining that. I'm not big into snowboarding or skiing. I know how to snowboard. I'm not very good, but gonna get into this stuff and just, I go all in. If I'm having fun, I'm having 100%. If I'm working, I'm 100%. I got this cool poem that's outside of my office that kind of says I mix work with pleasure as well. And I don't know, I don't know exactly how it's gonna go, but I mean, right now I moved my builder up to Idaho. I bought another house to move him into. And with the footings are in, the framers are starting in 2 weeks. And it's, you know, it's 25,000 square feet. It'll hold about 16 couples. And it's, it's a dream. You can go hunting up there. The people are nice. I'll have a Golden Tee bowling alley, golf simulator, all the good stuff. So it's, I'm really looking forward to it and building memories there. Nice.

Are you going to, what's it, about 18 months to build something like that?

So the expected date was 2026. I started on it late last year. So it was like almost a 3-year build, but he thinks he's got it down. He thinks it'll be done by the end of next year, but it's 2 houses with a sky bridge. Yeah. This summer.

Oh, that's going to be sweet, man. Congratulations.

Thank you. I really, I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah. That's a dream.

Well, I, you know, I always invest in things that, that go up in value. You know, that's one of the things about me. If I buy a car, I know it'll go up in value. Like I got the DeLorean, an '81 DeLorean. There, there's only 5,000 left and it's done like Back to the Future. I bought these rocks, they were $60,000. Uh, what is the rock called? Um, what? Amethyst. And my cousin sources the rocks. And he's like, you could sell each of these for 100 grand. And so like, and these are like the, the whole peaceful Vortec type stuff. So like, you know, I definitely— I'm splurging a little bit, but by the time I get done with the house, it'll have so much equity. The house in Paradise Valley, so much equity that I'm adding to it. So very calculated with this stuff, but enjoy it. You only live once. You can't take it with you. You can take it with you. The community will last for the time that I'm alive.

Yeah, man. And, uh, you know, building, uh, there's, there's, um, you know, in my book Discernment, I talk about this balance sheet and, you know, the, the, the, uh, the relationship between creation and consumption. And, you know, I'm happiest when I'm creating and it doesn't matter what it is, man. It could be a poem, it could be a business, it could be building a house, it could be buying something or putting something together. And then look, part of it's consumption, right? You gotta enjoy the fruits of your labor. You gotta, you gotta, you know, there has to be some manifestation of all the hard work that you put into that makes it worth it. But at the end of the day, you know, I bought, I got a big house here on the lake and all of that, but it's just another house until I put people in it. And until I have people over, until we're doing something with it, then it's honestly, you know what it is for me? It's, I'm on the end of a couch. There's a refrigerator, there's a bathroom, there's a, you know, like, I mean, it's just like, that's all it is for me until, until we're doing something with it. So anytime that you can make a good economic investment and also make an investment in enriching your life and relationships, man, it's, that is awesome. Fantastic.

That's all I thought is I'm like, man, there's a lot of people that come into Phoenix. Yeah. And I've met a lot of people and I'm like, why don't you just stay with me? I mean, next time you're in town, you stay over. And that's the coolest thing ever, is whether it's a podcast, you hang out. I've got the Golden Tee, 3 Golden Tees, Big Buck Hunter, Cruising the World. And, you know, I'm putting a lot of— putting a train to the house because like Man, yeah. Oh, I probably kicked the wire. Oh, you're, you're back.

Oh, you think we lost that? Well, I don't know what you just said in the last 30 seconds, but man, if you could say it again, I'd love it. We'll cut it. We'll, we'll edit it. Yeah.

So what was I talking about? What?

I don't know, but it looked good.

We good? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, so in my— so in my game room, when people come over, I got 3 Golden Tee, Big Buck Hunter. I've got 2 card tables. I play a lot of euchre. I play cribbage. You name a game, I can play any game. Sometimes we play golf, literally the card game. We played left, right, center the other day. Big money game at the house. And we've got cruising the world and putting a shooting range. I got the bowling alley going in. I got the lazy river. And I know this sounds pretentious. People are listening to me right now going, oh, poor Tommy. Jesus. This is not what I'm trying to do. 'Cause I've ate Campbell's soup for weeks. I lived in a small apartment. I've started from nothing. No, nothing was given. I just want people to know no one paid for my college. I ended up getting a master's degree, which means nothing in the field I'm in today. But I always say I started from the bottom. Now I'm here as a funny joke when I go on stage, because if you've seen what we've been through, uh, it, it's through hard work and a lot of discipline and it's delayed gratification. And the coolest thing in the world is I'm willing to share it all. I'm not this guy that's like, look at me. I don't drive a Ferrari around and it's try to get a bunch of people. Most of those guys are living in a small apartment. And they're leasing a Ferrari anyway. I think it's good to stay humble.

People that speak abundantly and then by virtue of that, or think abundantly and then by virtue of that have success, appreciate experiences. And more often, you know, and I try to explain that to my wife, she's like, because sometimes if I go out, you know, with somebody like you or other people in my circle that are like that, they'll be like, stay at the house. Right? And my wife thinks it's weird. They're like, why do people go somewhere and then stay at their house? I'm like, well, that's just cuz what we do. I don't know why it is what we do, but it seems is, you know, the higher up that I've got in these business circles, in these groups, you know, it's almost like, hey, just, you know, stay at the house and, and, and you don't wanna waste any time. Why put somebody in a hotel? You've got all these extra bedrooms anyway. You just, you just stay in the house so you can, you know, take it because time is short. Right? So if somebody, it, You know, goes through the energy to come out to town and visit with you and you're talking about something that's good for everybody, then you wanna have as much time together as possible. So, I mean, I love it.

I love that.

I think you are gonna have a conga line of cool people visiting you in Idaho, hanging out there. There's gonna be incredible stories made, memories, stories, and probably great businesses and great ideas that are spawned out of it.

I'm just going to have to get a little disclosure statement because I'm going to have all the snowmobiles and all the dangerous stuff. Yeah, yeah. People like that. I'm a little nervous about that because me and Bree just got me this $80,000 side-by-side. It's amazing. And the first day out, we flipped it. Yeah. Which is the right thing to do with a Can-Am. Yeah. Yeah.

You got to do it. You got to get it. Got to break it in.

I broke it in pretty good. And, uh, I'm like, you know, me and her were fine. We were, we were seatbelted in and everything, but I'm always worried about like, man, this, these things are dangerous. They're high performance. They go very, very fast. These things go 100 miles an hour. Snowmobiles are dangerous, man. You gotta like, yeah. I've never respected high-powered machinery more than I do now. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the story is when I first got onto that lake, Travis took us out on the speedboat. We're going 110 miles an hour. And he's standing up and he's slowing down for logs in the, in the lake. And this guy comes whizzing by us and he goes, that's my buddy and his buddy. We get to this island, he throws us a beer. And, uh, Travis, we see him whiz off and Travis calls me up a few weeks later, says, yeah, I sold the boat. And he didn't really see anything else. The next summer I go out there, we're looking at this, the new property. And he goes, by the way, that guy, he flipped that day. 6 people died. and I was like, well, why didn't you tell me? But he's like, I didn't want to tell you that he was a friend and it was, that's why I sold the boat. And, uh, you gotta be very, you gotta respect that stuff. You never know. That's one other thing that we said this morning is, you know, call the people you love and because tomorrow's not promised, you never know. You just, you never know when your day is. Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

Tommy, this has been great. Excited to have you on. Is there anything else about Elevate that, you know, what is the one thing that if somebody's sitting there and they're a million-dollar operator, they've had their business for 10 years, they keep hitting that glass ceiling, they got self-limiting beliefs, they don't believe it's for them, and they just, you know, they've gone up to a million and a half and then it seems like everything falls apart and then they shake back down to $900,000 because you've seen I've heard it over and over again. And you know, they just, they put themselves back into the size of business and the size of team that they're comfortable with. Like if you could, if you could whisper in their ear right now and tell 'em one thing that could, you know, shake them free, what would it be?

It'd be dream bigger. You know, I'm not, I, I, there's no doubt in my mind this is gonna be a $15 billion business within 6 years. Have a plan to get there. Another thing I would tell you, I've been hanging out with Andy Ali a lot, is you're a billboard. If you look in the mirror and you're not happy, you know, some people, they get very depressed because they focus on what they don't have. They focus on things they can't control. They focus on things that are in the past. You look in the mirror and you're not happy, then get up and fricking work out. Then eat right next time instead of drinking that 12-pack. Start to look better. Start to feel better. Start to get the sleep you need. And believe that you're worth more and make a bigger plan. Whatever your goal is, 3x that. It's not good enough to do. If you're at a million now, don't be 5 million, go for 20 million. Dream bigger. You're worth it. Look in the mirror and believe you're worth something. When you walk in a room, if you don't think you're the baddest ass dude that ever walked in that room, then you got a problem. Fix it. Yeah, you could fix it. If you don't think you're worth it, you're not. If you think you are, you are. You gotta decide right now if you are or not. And I believe I'm worth every penny. I believe I'm going straight to the top and no one's gonna stop me. You're gonna either have to kill me cuz I'm gonna fight trying. And here's the deal. I'm not stopping. There's no end in sight. So I, I, I hope everybody feels the same way because if you don't think you're anything, you don't think— and another thing is be where your feet are. When you're at home, be at home. Turn your cell phone off. When you're at work, be at work. Don't be thinking about what's going on at home. Go all in on everything you do. And you'll start winning. Awesome. Awesome.

Tommy, where, um, if people wanted to get in touch with you or people wanted to, uh, consume more of your content, where would you direct them today? So TommyMello.com.

There's no W in my name. So TommyMello.com. You can find me on official Tommy Mello, everything, Instagram, TikTok. Yeah.

Twitter. Nothing, nothing mellow about you, sir.

No. And I got a newsletter and I just happened to open it. I don't normally advertise this, but you get 3 free months. It's a pretty cool newsletter. There's no ads in it. I write it myself. It's well put together. It's TommyMello.com/news. And if anybody wants to come out here, I host a lot of people. I don't charge anything. You want to see our shop? You want to understand performance pay? See our training center? See what we do here? Tommymello.com/shop. And come do a shop tour, come hang out. I'm an open book. I love to host people. I think it's— it helps my team out. We stay very organized. I get to put them under the spotlight and show off what they've built, and it means a lot to them. And it helps us keep things tidy and clean because you never know who's coming in next. And Love to have anybody out. And, uh, I put a lot of content out there. If you wanna see more, uh, sometimes I'm goofy, sometimes I'm serious. Uh, I have a lot of fun. Some people like me, some people don't. I don't really care what the haters say because I've never seen a hater doing better than me.

Love it. Love it. All right. Uh, last question. Um, similar to the, to the previous one, but like if you had one sentence to speak into somebody's life, uh, what would that be? Are we just gonna go with the dream bigger?

The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. Wow. That's what I would tell somebody. I would tell them definitely dream bigger. Stay focused. Wear blinders. Racehorses wear blinders for a reason. You know, as an entrepreneur, we're 1% of the population. The best of us, we're hunters. Other people are farmers. And what I would tell you is we've got a lot of ideas, but we don't implement a lot. Stay focused. Stay focused. One of my buddies, I wrote this down in my book, The Home Service Millionaire. I said, I like to have my eggs in a lot of baskets. He goes, Tommy, what if you put all your eggs into one basket? Imagine how quick it would fill up. Then you could put eggs in different baskets. And I think wearing blinders, staying focused, focus on the one thing. Gary Keller wrote a great book. Have it in your shower. Have it when you're getting ready, have it in your car, have it on the back of your phone. Focus on those goals. Put it all in on the one thing and watch what happens. Don't get distractions. Don't get your ADD. Don't listen to your buddy that bought a bar or flipped a house or whatever. Stay invested in the one thing paying you off. So many people divest. They say, now I started making money. I'm gonna go. I'm going to move into this big house. I'm going to buy a third car. I'm going to buy a vacation home. Focus on the one thing. Stay disciplined. Have a little bit of delayed gratification and watch it compound.

Awesome. This has been Tommy Mello on The Homefront with Jeff Dudan. Tommy, thanks for being on so much. This has been incredible.

Jeff, you're the, you're the man. I'm going to come out and visit soon. Anytime you're in Phoenix, come stay with me.

You got it. Likewise. Invitation right back at you. All right. And everybody out there, thank you for listening. ¡Hola!