Tommy Mello's $600M Garage Door Empire | Business Growth and Leadership Secrets | #112

Welcome, everybody. We are on the home front with Jeff Duden. And today we have the super entrepreneur and business builder Tommy Mellow. Welcome, Tommy.

Hey, pleasure to be here. Thank you.

I've known you for a few years. I was on your podcast maybe three or four 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 three, four, five years and excited to share that with all of the people on the home front today. If you don't mind, I'd like to just hear a little bit about, you know, how you. How you grew up. Anything you care to share. Who is Tommy Mello?

Yeah, no, 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 three 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 lawn, shoveling snow, started washing dishes when I was 12. I learned if you wanted something, you got to 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'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 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. I was a lot of money. On top of bartending. I was flipping bow flexes, 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 Rogers. How much? He's like 100 bucks a door. But you gotta. You gotta buy the paint. So I went to Home Depot and I found this thing. It's called Glidden Speed Coat. And it cost 12 bucks a gallon at the time. This is 2005. And he said, you could probably paint two or three 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 three 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 for the house? It'll actually help you. You could upsell it. Charge the customer 400 bucks. Give me a hundred of it. And so they all did it. And I'd meet these technicians and this is when Phoenix was blowing up. And they're like, yeah, I'm making a hundred 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 a one 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 titan and started a podcast. 2018, I met Al Levy, the Seven 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 really started grinding these last few years. And 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 two years. Should be a billionaire, but I'll tell You this, I'm humble. I'm still super hungry, very modest. I don't drive a Lamborghini. I don't flaunt the money. I never try 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 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 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. So, so you, you had a partnership and you know, you, you had the courage to, to end it. You know, a lot of people, we, A lot of people stay in toxic relationships, both in personal and in business situations. What was it that made you, made you end that relationship with certainty? Why were you so clear about it?

Well, one day he went out of 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 going to 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 five star review before reviews were even a thing. I was getting videos with an old fashioned camp, 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 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 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, 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 my mom, I called her up and I said, I'm going to 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 grand a year, paid my mom 15 bucks an hour. And my mom made great money. She was a realtor. She figured out ways to make money. But they, they. They did it because they love 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 him and it said, listen, we've got some debt on the business. I want to continue to be your best friend. I'm going to 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 to be with family. So, yeah, that's how that went.

Yeah, I had the same situation. So I started with four partners. I ended up buying 100% of the business in 2004. But it was that third buyout or the second buyout. The. 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.

We found these other two guys 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. Our office was growing. We were really doing all the thought leadership and all of that. And I just basically said, look, I mean, 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 going to take. You're going to, I'm going to write a number and you're going to pay it or I'm going to pay you, but that's the number. And you know, thank goodness he took it because I ended up buying the last guy out and then, you know, growing the business. So at some point you're on your own now you're moving forward and then you're a sales and marketing guy and you're probably outselling your ability to produce. And then all of a sudden the business is growing or you correct me if I'm wrong, but then you have this hundred million dollar brainstorm where you basically say, and I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but oftentimes I see people at these inflection points and they're like, they're so tired of the stress, they're so tired of the what's not working right that they basically just take all of their self limiting beliefs and they say, screw that, I'm not, you know, we're just going to go for it. We're going to, we're going to 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 going to 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 100x1000x 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 tell us about that hundred million dollar brainstorm. Like what, what, what led to it and what did it look like when it happened?

Yeah, one other comment that when I did sell, I sent Gabe a, my old partner. It's nothing much. I sent him 250, I gifted him 250 grand. 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, you know, I, I realized when A.L.I.E. 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 going to have any problems. You're going to get bored, and you're going to grow, and you're going to grow so fast that you're going to have more problems. And we're going to get it organized again, and then you're going to grow again and you're going to 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. No, I wrote, trying to think that I start with 100 million. I think I wrote 100 million. And I said, if I could get each guy to do 500 grand a year, and this is for five years ago, 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 going to need? We're going to need a training center. We're going to need full time recruiters. And I put down a list at the. So I wrote a, a line all the way down of where we were today. And I know this is hard to see, but 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 one? What does it look like in year two? What does it look like in Year 3, Year 4, to get there in five years. So I wrote down everything. And I called up three 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 a hundred million dollars in the garage door industry? And I explained it to them and they walked out of there going, we're going to do $100 million. They bought into my dream. Yeah, they figured I'M a math guy. I write down equations of formulas. I live with the calculator. I usually carry a TI83 with me. And so we just, we had a very concrete plan and we just executed. And 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 my new customers? How do I get new clients? How do I get new customers? How to get new clients? And then I said, how do I get better people? My internal clients, how do I get A plus players that'll do a million dollars a year in revenue that'll get five star reviews and recruit for me and pick up shifts and not steal and stay organized. And when the, 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 hand picked. 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 fill out an application. I'm like, yeah, you think you're going to find everybody on indeed. And ZipRecruiter. No, 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 that they can get into that, that serves a need or, or feeds a desire that, that they've got. But you know, generally people wanna 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, 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, that's fantastic.

Well, what I will tell you about that is you ever see somebody like you watch a movie and the 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.

They.

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 going to follow this guy for the next two weeks. Here's your manual. Go have fun. We actually want to get involved, get to know them, meet their families. You know, I'm not, I'm not. I'll never be 100% happy. I'm always going to 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 going to be, after the next three months, there's going to be almost a thousand people here. I wish I had a relationship like I used to have, but. And that's why we hire managers to do the same thing that looked and genuinely care about people and want to 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 year. Let's say we average three jobs. Multiply that by your average ticket. You need to have $1,670 to make Pinnacle next year at three jobs. You could run four and we could pull that number down or you could run two, you could move that number up, or you could pick up a shift on a six 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 a 1. 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. And so 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 going to put you on a performance improvement plan, man. Because you told me what you wanted. You look me dead in the eye and you said you wanted this more than life. So let's freak it. Let me help you get to what you want and what you deserve.

Yeah. Fantastic. That's awesome. Who was Al Levy? 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 four 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 work.

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 or 64 at the time. And he said, why don't we 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 her and he says, this is garbage. We need to rewrite it. And 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 two 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 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 going to show you how to get them to all do it the same way. He goes, you got 25 different trucks. He goes, we need to make one truck and one van. And he goes, you're going to 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 going to take this to a whole new level that no one else is going to be able to keep up with. And if you go to 7powercontractor.com, he does the manuals for people. It's like 7, 8, $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 would not be where I'm at. He is not only a mentor, but he's like a second dad to me. And I love my dad more than anything. But Al's 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 Dan ripped me apart. And I said, all right, I'm just going to do a leap of faith. I'm going to trust you. And we built a caricature of me on the van. And I had no idea. Like, I saw it. 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 the 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. He just said, no, we're going to put your brand on it. It's going to not be affected by anything else. You don't even need a phone number on it. He goes, it's. 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 because people expected a premium company to show up. I started recruiting way better because now my website looked like my billboard looked like my Val pack. Everything was my signature strip on my email now had, I had all the color codes right?

Yeah.

And my stickers, everything. And 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 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 story brand. And like your, your brand has to tell a story. And so, and 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 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 have 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?

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 three hours in the wrong direction before they asked for help. They were men of men. They didn't need help. They weren't going to 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 going to be like that. 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. So the first thing I did is I looked. I studied so much. I've read thousands of books. I've got over 1200 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 H Vac. So I found the biggest H Vac 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 want to 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 going to be a billionaire. You know, a lot of people now are like, oh, 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 don't 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 going to do. We're going to apply this stuff. And people thought I was crazy because they're like, great, what shop did you go to now? What book did you read now? And I've kind of had a tame, tame the pace of how much I do stuff. But that's all I did is ask very humbly. And my favorite three letters in the dictionary are ask in that order. Just got to ask.

Yeah. Have you taken advantage of some of these networks, ypo, vistage, Genius, these types of things?

I'm in the Genius network. I just joined that because Joe Polish is a probably one of the best connectors in the planet. I'm in his 100k group. I 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 Ink Dot, 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 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 two years. Because the formula works. Everything that I'm talking about works. Everybody that I've coached in the grocery 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. Rapid Hire is something I think everybody should look at because without them and they're the, 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, 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. I. If someone wants to come in and learn, I just invite them in. And I have no. If the 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 three months comes, this is going to be a different company. You know, I'm here to help.

Yeah.

And if I could help people grow and change their families, 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, people will give you $10 for every dollar you can take from them. 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 two or three 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, you know, I've been involved with 30 or 40 different brands 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 by the way, something always comes back. Some of these people 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 two 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 have that expectation. You know, Dan Martel was sitting next to me in this very room, and he said something to me. He said, and it really stands out as. And it's not quite on the thing we were talking about, but he said, you know, Tommy, I charge for my time. He actually is one of my coaches, and he wrote the book buyback, buy back your time. And he said, it's amazing to me how many people I've talked to over the last five years. He built SaaS Academy, very successful guy. And he said, it's amazing how many people, you give them 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 one hour a month for one 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 grand's 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. There's three 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 three months. We didn't plan on this. We didn't know this. So now I'm really good at it. And it's like, 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 skill set 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'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 lived in an apartment for four years. We owned the complex, but it was, you know, 900 square feet. And people are like, why do you live in such a small place when you own seven other houses? I'm like, I want to be close to my technicians. And they all stayed there. And we lived in this tiny apartment. I drove a 2012 Salvage Titan, salvaged 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 going to own a new truck. And that's the deal is like, I had delayed gratification. I was disciplined, and I stayed consistent. And, you know, and I listen. My grandma said she I was her favorite grandson. My grandpa said I was his favorite grandson 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 ultra respect for my elders. And we'd walk, my grandpa and I would walk around and I hear. Eight 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, I was watching this Netflix documentary on Arnold Schwarzenegger over the weekend, and it was pretty cool because it had three seasons of life for him. It had his bodybuilding career. 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, 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 a 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 he was doing real estate. So he was a big real estate investor. He ended up with multifamily office buildings, all that kind of stuff. He had an office and he was doing all that. So, like, he. He had his bodybuilding money, he had his real estate now. Then he went, 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 three lives within a life. Three 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've got, like, this is going. This is just the beginning for a one. 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 year 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 started working on this, and he says, if you're buying a plane, I want to know what color it is. I want to know what the seats look like. I want you. Where did you visit in Italy? Who are you with? I want to 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'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.

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, they got self limiting beliefs, they don't, 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 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 them one thing that could, you know, shake them free, what would it be?

It'd be dream bigger. You know, I'm not, there's no doubt in my mind this is going to be a $15 billion business within six 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 beat 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. You could fix it. If you don't think you're worth it, you're not. If you think you are, you are. You got to 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 going to stop me. You're going to either have to kill me, because I'm going to fight trying. And here's the deal. I'm not stopping. There's no end in sight. So 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 if people wanted to get in touch with you or people wanted to consume more your content, where would you direct them today?

So, Tommy Mello.com there's no W in my name. So Tommy Mello.com you can find me on official Tommy Mello everything, Instagram, TikTok.

Twitter, nothing mellow about you, sir.

Now. And I got a newsletter and I just happened to open it. I don't normally advertise this, but you get three 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 forward slash 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? It's tommymello.com forward/forward/ 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 I put a lot of content out there if you want to see more. Sometimes I'm goofy, sometimes I'm serious. 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, last question. Similar to the, to the previous one, but like, if you had one sentence to speak into somebody's life, what would that Be. Are we just going to 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 going to go 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 Melo on the home front with Jeff Duden. 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.