CEO Reveals: Why Smart Leaders Are Often The Problem | Tommy Mello DSH #893

You should be investing in yourself and find the best.

You want people that want to go where you haven't been, especially in the C-suite and the VP level.

And a lot of times, what they're learning with you, it's actually going to really slow down growth.

And one of your direct reports that means you're the smartest one in the room.

That's a problem.

You should have great bringing out people that are teaching you and reporting to you and doing the RD and giving you three options and telling you this is the best option based on my experience.

All right, guys, Tommy Mellow here today.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Excited to be here.

Yeah, you're on a little PR tour, I noticed.

You know, I'm out here for the Morgan Wallen.

Did I really lose Morgan Wallen?

But just what I learned from Dan Martell has killed 10 birds with one stone.

So yeah, he's a good one.

He's doing great.

You know, he's learned a lot from a lot of people.

I call it R ⁇ D, ripoff, and duplicate.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You could apply his teachings to any industry.

That's what I like about what he teaches.

Yeah.

Because he did it with software.

Yeah, he did it with SAS Academy.

Now he's doing it with muscles and working out.

And but what I like about him is he actually lives it.

He actually is like,

he actually has his personal time.

Right.

And he's a good dad and a good husband.

Yeah.

Because a lot of these coaches are just all in on business, but they don't have the full three seconds.

No, you look behind the curtains.

A lot of these guys are not that happy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Money won't do that.

You need more than just money.

It's true.

And you're speaking from experience.

I mean, you got over 700 employees now with garage door business.

Yeah, you know, we got one other big acquisition coming this year.

I think we'll do about 270 million, but I used to really get excited about revenue.

And then I learned revenues for vanity, profits for sanity.

So we're at 25% of the bottom line.

So that's, that's what I'm prouder about.

Yeah, at that, at that level, that's unheard of.

Yeah, a lot of things.

We got a lot of economies of scale.

I think when you...

When you grow this size, a lot of people still have things siloed.

You know, we've got one call center.

Any one of our techs can go to any market, 40 markets, same price book, same truck, same tools, same shirts.

Yeah.

It's like, well, that doesn't work in our market.

Well, we've kind of, we've taken the top 10% of our guys, sent them to every market to prove that it's possible.

It's, we're in America.

Absolutely.

So I was listening to one of my favorite shows yesterday, a diary of a CEO.

Yeah.

And the CEO of Netflix was on there.

Yep.

And he was explaining how the people that start the company aren't necessarily the ones that are good for the growth when you're in the later stages.

So do you have the same team that you started with?

Well, you know, who could take you here and not necessarily take you to the next level?

I sat down at a board meeting, kind of like this conference table, but bigger.

And the owner of Gettle, the founder of Gettle, not the original, but he took over and like grew the hell out of it.

Ken Goodrich, he lives out here.

He said, Listen, guys, Tommy's podcasting.

He's at every seminar.

He's reading two books a week.

He's literally like got four coaches.

He calls me up at like 11 o'clock on a Saturday learning.

He's like, if you're not willing to grow at his pace, he's going to outgrow you.

Then I'm going to, my best advice is that, Tommy, you fire those guys, everybody around this table, unless you're going to put, you've got 168 hours in a week.

You spend 50 sleeping, 50 working.

That's 100 hours.

You spend, or no, yeah.

Well, you can spend 50, 50, that's 100.

Spend 10 hours working out.

You still got about 60 hours left.

You spend two hours a night with your family.

You still got 20 hours to put into your personal, like to learn and grow and have mentors and have coaches.

Michael Jordan,

Colby, Wayne Gretzky, they all had four coaches other than their main coach.

Wow.

So like you should be investing in yourself and find the best.

And it's right because you want people that want to go where you haven't been, especially in the C-suite and the VP level.

And a lot of times what they're learning with you, it's actually going to really slow down growth.

And if if you're micromanaging somebody at one of your direct reports, that means you're the smartest one in the room.

That's a problem.

Absolutely.

You should have bringing out people that are teaching you and reporting to you and doing the R D, giving you three options and telling you this is the best option based on my experience.

Yeah, it's a tough dichotomy because you want to be loyal to those that were there early, but at the same time, you want to grow fast.

Well, it doesn't mean they got to get kicked off the bus.

Just

I had this meeting with my COO recently.

I said, I think you're going to be better off as their chief revenue officer.

Oh, so you just moved him around?

I haven't moved him yet, but I'm letting him kind of decide because I said, you've got 10 direct reports.

You're spending all your time.

So you're the bottleneck now.

The visionary is rarely the bottleneck, but a lot of times the visionary doesn't dream big enough.

It doesn't have the right people, doesn't have the integrators.

And that's when they get stuck.

Like, I feel like I'm just starting out.

Literally, I feel like this is the first day I'm in the business.

You're doing hundreds of millions in revenue.

Yeah, I mean, it's a lot, but there's so much room to grow.

We're only doing garage doors.

We could get into hot water heaters in the garage.

We could get into water water purification.

We could get into storage.

We could get into floor.

We match your garage to the front door.

There's three ways to make money.

More clients, which is marketing.

You charge your clients more, which is other services that they want.

And the third one is more frequency.

And that's why we sell service agreements.

And we want to be there out there once a year to lubricate adjusting everything on the door.

And if they're loyal to us, after a few years, they end up replacing the door and wanting more from us because we show up when we say we will with a smile and built a relationship.

Have you not scaled other services because because you wanted to master just garage doors first?

Yeah, you know, a lot of people say, Man, I could do this, this, this.

I'm really, really like racehorses wear blinders.

They want to win the race.

A lot of people say yes to everything.

And they're a jack of all trades, a master of none.

So I chose instead of owning my audience, I'm going to own my industry.

And they both work.

I'm really happy the route I went.

Going back in time, I probably would have went HVAC or roofing,

a much larger average ticket.

We run run 20,000 jobs a month.

Holy crap.

And I'm here.

That's the beautiful thing.

I'm going to be out of town most of the next two months.

I'm still on meetings, but the business, the bigger it gets, the easier it runs.

I don't have to worry about guys showing up sober.

Everything marketing, there's three types of CEOs.

The one that started out as a CFO that's just obsessed with the numbers.

The next one is operations, that COO mind that like loves to get involved in operations.

The next one is the marketing CEO.

I'm by far like, how do I market to get great clients and how do I market to get great people?

And that's not in the unemployment line on Indeed Glassdoor, Zip Recruiter, or Craigslist or Monster or LinkedIn.

It's going out and actually finding people and recruiting them.

Old school.

Yeah, I like people with jobs.

I like people that already chose their career and they say, I could build a better one under this, this company.

Interesting.

Another thing you do with employees is scorecards.

Yeah, big into scorecards.

That's really cool because a lot of people don't track their employee output.

I mean, kpis are what i live by but a scorecard lets them know how they're doing you know if you go look at a back of a baseball card i i apply everything to sports you'll notice that in this conversation it's like who's winning and who should trade me like who's got the highest conversion rate who's got the highest booking rate who's the best dispatcher dispatching for dollars and what are they doing so you could study the best and then you could share it with everybody because No one loses if everybody else does their job better.

Like if one guy gets a better average ticket because he offers better things, it doesn't hurt the other player.

And I don't think people understand that.

A lot of people are selfish about what, like, what's making them win.

Right.

And that's not the culture we have at A1.

Yeah, it's easy to get selfish, want to get promoted, want to make more money than your coworkers.

I'd rather lift somebody up that's willing to share.

But not everybody in sales is meant for management.

I learned that the hardware about 10 years ago.

What happened there?

As I took some of my top people and I'm like, you need to manage other people, but they're kind of lone survivors.

They want to go, they're very good at generating revenue, but they're not great at listening to people and coaching them.

They want to find their perfect alike person.

Sometimes they're extroverts and you got to be able to train an introvert.

Sometimes, you know, you got to be very patient.

Teachers are special.

Right.

And then I do always say those that can't make it in the real world, usually they teach, especially when it comes to.

social media.

Oh, yeah.

There's a guy that flipped houses for two years and now all of a sudden he's a VRBO expert or something,

You know, and then they don't make it in the real world.

They brag about how they made $10 million, which was revenue, not profit.

They sold 20 houses.

And then they decided to build a course around it because if they were that good, I'll be honest, I make all my money in my garage doors.

Yes, I put out courses and other things.

I'm building a team.

And I'd rather not take the money I'm making in my garage door business and feed this when I could sell like tried and true.

I'm still in the game.

And every business I get involved in goes straight up.

And it's pretty simple simple math.

If I increase their booking rate, their conversion rate, their average ticket, and lower their cost per lead,

it's undeniable that I'll double, triple, quadruple the company very quickly.

So you can enter any business.

Dentists, I could go to any country.

I could go to any type of profession, restaurants, I could go to online, I could go to e-commerce, anything you could think of.

And that's a skill.

How did you learn that?

Well, one of my coaches years ago, his name's Jim Krautkramer kind of showed me this matrix to figure out your marketing.

And when I did the math, I mean, my most open app on my phone is probably my calculator.

Really?

Like, I'm a mathematical guy.

Like, all the time, I'm just doing the numbers.

And when you got your numbers dialed in, you figure out you put a dollar in, you take a buck fifty out.

So you just need to put more dollar bills in.

And I think that's why I love marketing so much.

Right.

But at scale, those numbers can change, right?

Yeah, I mean, there's obviously a kind of,

there's, uh,

when you get really big in a market, there comes a time where there's diminishing returns and you got to go to your next market or find something else to sell.

Right.

You cannot squeeze blood out of a turnup.

Like there's certain, like in Phoenix, we'll do, we're monsters there and we just bought another company there.

And so what's the next step?

We're going to go commercial.

We're going to start doing similar to residential, but it's just B2B.

Similar doors, but just a little bit bigger.

But I know everybody in Phoenix, so like, we'll turn it on.

We'll do 10 million in commercial within our first year.

Damn.

And that's a higher margin.

Yeah, that's impressive.

So, you're just buying smaller garage door companies?

We're greenfielding, which means organic growth to new markets.

We're buying, which is acquisitions, and then we're growing organically the existing markets.

So, this could scale into a billion-dollar company.

Yeah, I mean, a billion in revenues,

it's just a math equation.

It's not that hard.

But really, where the cool math comes in, if you're at, let's just say you go down to 20%, that's 200 million of EBITDA.

If it's integrated properly, everything's good.

You're going to get a high teens multiple.

Wow.

High teens.

Yeah, let's just say it's 15.

And let's say you got to that 200 million.

That's a $3 billion company.

Holy crap.

And, you know, my goal is to get it to 15 billion.

But I'll get diluted along the way.

I'm not going to own 100%.

Yeah.

Right now, do you still own a 49% bank?

I own 49% right now.

That's impressive at this stage.

Nice.

What revenue is Gottl doing?

Because I see their bands everywhere.

No, Gettle does

about 250 million.

I mean, they're struggling in California.

Oh, so they're doing similar numbers to you.

Yeah.

I thought they were the biggest.

Are they the biggest?

At home service?

Yeah.

Well, seven out of the 11 major solar companies just went under.

Holy crap.

The largest company in the United States in home service is probably Parker and Sons in Phoenix.

They're going to do 280 million just in Phoenix.

Damn.

Just in Phoenix?

Yeah, but they don't.

They don't just do HVAC plumbing electrical.

They do like garage remodels.

They'll do like air quality.

They'll do like,

I bet you if they ask them to do a pool, they're doing solar.

They do, they'll like, their idea is you own that client and you offer them, but he's really smart.

His name's Paul Kelly.

And his son's super smart, Josh Kelly.

Those guys bought the business, an old business in 2005.

And just, Paul Kelly was a CFO.

Like, he understands that side of the business, but he's a great marketer as well.

Got it.

So their LTB is just insane.

Yeah, that's the key.

Yeah, that makes sense.

They put everybody on service agreements.

They go in and they sell them more stuff every time.

Why is solar getting right now?

I haven't heard that.

Big time solar is in bad because interest rates are up.

Do you know it cost me 30% just to sell solar because the finance company is going to take 30 off the top?

Holy crap, for solar?

Yeah.

So it's almost not even worth getting it for your house then.

Well, let's say you had your, if you could buy your own equipment, then it starts to become more economical.

But at interest rates, you see, interest rates really matter for lending purposes.

With a car, they'll pay you.

like if you got an automotive shop or a dealership they'll pay you okay but the lending company will charge us a dealer fee because they can't just go repo a garage or a solar system it's very hard to get that stuff off so they charge us what's called a dealer fee fluctuates anywhere from two percent all the way to thirty percent if it's same as cash for 25 years and it's solar i mean there's there's a great chance you're not going to get that and then everybody's counting on all these there's there's what's called the inflation reduction act it's 30 tax credit but the the laws aren't very clear.

And everybody's balking and all this other stuff.

They're like, well, I could get you this HVAC unit.

I can get you the insulation.

I'm going to add this roofing stuff.

And you got to be very careful because some of these companies have only been around six months and they are Wild West.

And they've got.

it in their wife's name because they're felons.

Holy crap.

And they figure out a way to make a lot of money really quick in a few years, rip off a lot of customers.

They go under.

And it takes a while, but it always catches up to them.

Yeah, the get money quick thing what what's your stance on that because i've heard some interesting opinions there well i would say i'm an overnight success of two decades you know i stuck stuck to something and uh stayed very focused but i i don't know anybody the lottery most people aren't ready for the money when the money comes they're so busy thinking about how they're going to spend it versus retain it

like it's one skill to make money and i know a lot of people that make money I know a lot of people that make a lot of money, but they don't keep it.

I tell all my guys that work with me, my coworkers, I say, if you can't save money at $50,000 a year, you're not going to save money at $200,000 a year.

Because the more you make, all of a sudden you buy the Harley, you buy the second house, your kids are in private school.

And like the minute you start making more, you figure out how to spend it.

There's a great book by Michael McKellow.

It's called Profit First.

Teaches you to keep separate bank accounts that transfer into a savings account.

Just never look at that account.

Smart.

And you might transfer it to a spending account.

And you might make sure there's 10 grand there once a year for your family vacation.

You might have seven accounts.

You might just divvy it up to different accounts.

You might have one for your daughter's

18th birthday to put her in a college, whatever it might be.

But

very few people have discipline, especially when it comes to money.

They're like, oh, but I need this, you know, and it's like,

we really deserve this.

And especially business owners.

They're like, we deserve, we worked our butt off for five years.

So they start divesting out of the one thing that's making them money that they put all this weck equity into.

They're like, we're going to go flip houses like our friends.

We're going to invest in this bar.

Let's make sure we got money in the SP 500.

Oh, that's a good deal.

Let's buy that.

And then all of a sudden,

like, they're divesting out of the one thing.

If they just had a delayed gratification, it would double, that it would triple, that it would quadruple.

And it's the gift that keeps giving.

It's your number one asset's your business.

Yep.

And people always are making the mistake of divesting.

I always say the hustler had to die for me.

Don't be a hustler.

Don't have a side hustle.

Focus.

Like if you're putting all your eggs in one basket, actually,

the basket overflows very quickly.

You know, and people don't understand.

They're like, dude, I'm a hustler.

I always got a side gig.

I'm like, yeah, but none of them seem to be working because you're dropping all the balls all the time.

Yeah.

Shiny Audrey Syndrome.

Yeah.

It's a real thing, especially on social media.

Yeah, a lot of people get ideas.

I mean, it's so hard because there's so many, a lot of things will work, but they take time, energy, and focus.

Right.

And social media makes it easy social media you know i know a lot of guys making millions of dollars i don't see a lot of people on social media that are like unless they got a real business like all these masterminds popping up and there's a podcast around every corner most podcasts don't last they don't make money it takes

you got to be continuous i've never missed a podcast since 2017.

Wow, that's impressive.

Yeah, I just saw Hermozi posted just to get to episode 21, you're in the top 1% podcast.

Yep.

And I mean, Hermozi is a content machine.

He's got a pretty good thing going.

I read something last week that he makes about $500,000 on his YouTube page a month.

Wow.

So the goal is to get your YouTube maxed out.

Like, continue to get followers, get engagement, have them watching your stuff, put out great content.

You want to use every social media from LinkedIn to Twitter to Facebook to Instagram to TikTok, you know, and X and all that, whatever.

But it starts paying you back to build a larger team.

Right.

So, I mean,

I want my content

more with the courses and the stuff and the books I put out to be masterpieces.

I want people to say that changed my life.

It's not just the next product, the next product, the next product, the next product.

That's a little Grant Cardoni

and Brandon Dawson, which are great guys.

I mean, I'm not into seller-be-sold.

I don't believe that.

I believe do great things for people and,

you know,

it'll come back full circle.

Yeah.

When was that shift into the personal brand for you?

Because you were running the business for years before you even considered it, right?

Yeah, you know, I think it will, well, actually, Grant Cardone said, I invest in real estate and I invest in personal brand.

The personal brand has been what built the real estate.

What's Brandon's last name from Hawaii?

Turner.

Brandon Turner.

Oh, I know him, yeah.

Yeah, like he told me that he raised $4 billion because of his personal brand.

Holy crap.

I mean,

I think the best investment you can make is people buy you.

There will be a day in the next 18 months when I say I'm looking for somebody in Atlanta and 20 soldiers come knocking on our door and say, if not today, you tell me when we're ready to come work for you.

Because literally they know their life's going to change.

And the technicians and installers that work for us could earn equity in the company.

And their whole family tree changes forever.

The family curse of no money and no options in life changes.

And when you help enough people, I always say, like, my dream has got to be so big that their dreams fit inside.

And we got to help people dream bigger.

And And I know that sounds so cliche and people are like, yeah, right.

I think so many people spend so many hours on social media and they're so unsuccessful and they just don't want to look in the mirror and say, I'm a loser.

So they ridicule other people's.

I'm sure everything I've said here, there's going to be 80 comments of people like, that's not possible and this and that, because they don't understand how arbitrage works.

Because quite frankly, the financial world and the PE world does not want people to know about how it works.

And it's out there, but it still can't make sense to people that just aren't in the middle of it.

A lot of people have limiting beliefs in general, too.

Yeah, they say, I can't get in shape.

You don't understand.

You know, I was born this way.

You don't understand my DNA and whatever.

But they don't work out.

They never go on walks.

They eat like crap.

They don't think it's them, though.

They never want to say it's the fact that I don't do anything.

And it's easy for you to say, I hear that all the time.

They don't know about the six guys i had that died they don't know about the three trucks that flipped over how i had to take a a blood test just to get in personal insurance like the 10-year insurance if i die just to be able to move into our building or or how i have to used to take a home equity line to write checks back to the business so we've made payroll wow or how the police were involved so many times because of drugs or alcohol or car accidents or you know customer they don't know about the relationships that I've gone through just because of this business.

And most people, you know, businesses fail most often.

95%, right?

There's not a good chance you're going to make it.

Everybody sits there from the corner, from the sideline, when they're in the United States of America.

You can do whatever you want.

A lot of people don't even appreciate what this country is.

They protest,

but they would never protest about the countries they're talking about because

if you protest about gay rights or any women's rights or anything, you get your head taken off.

I mean, and that's, I'm not trying to go political here but i just think that i do believe this is the best country there's ever been and i a guy like me no money growing up from michigan could come in and do this good

uh anybody could do it yeah the point no that's deep man it's all perspective

yeah and i think just people people are so it's so easy to look at the past and blame your the way you were raised and mom wasn't there and uh it's easy to say you know you were you weren't born into into money, but if you were, you wouldn't appreciate it as much.

Absolutely.

Catch 22, right?

And it is.

A lot of the most successful people you and I know didn't come from money.

No, and they say the third generation, by the third generation, they'll lose it.

Unless you set up like

a trust the right way and you borrow against it, but you got to pay it back.

And it's against the life insurance policy.

Like there's ways to set this stuff up for your family forever.

It'll end one day, but people keep re-putting in.

If they borrow against it, they got to put money back in the trust when they die, and then you don't get the 50%.

I'm not as smart as my Goldman Sachs guys that do this stuff, but uh,

but I'm just getting started, man.

Money's great, it is a tool, but I'll tell you what, it

you know, you don't have health, money's nothing, you don't have family, money's nothing.

And I have a good buddy of mine, and Bri got a phone call two days ago.

A guy wrote the book, Giftology.

Um,

He just died.

Damn.

He was hiking with four kids, John Roland,

four daughters, and his wife's not doing good.

She's been sick.

And

no underlying problems.

46.

Just dropped?

On a hike, couldn't revive him.

Holy crap.

I mean, this dude was on NAD.

He was on peptides.

He was on all the right stuff.

He was getting scans all the time.

He had good doctors.

I mean, you don't know.

Tomorrow's not promised.

Wow.

And that's why I say, listen, everybody's like, I got a 10-year plan, a 10-year plan.

The one-year plan never works because people overestimate what they can do in one year.

I think five years is about as far out as you want to go with goals, but live along the way.

I mean, I sign up for big obligations.

Like when I did a deal with PE, I said, I'm going to get you guys a 4X return in a little over three years.

And they got pension funds relying on my decision making.

So I feel obligated to make sure I do what I say I'm going to do because that's all we have in this world.

Damn.

But yeah, I'm going to get them what they want.

And,

you know, I made a lot of other good investments and I want to live along the way, but I'm never going to be like, it's time to disappear to a beach.

Yeah, it's important to live along the way, man, because I put my head down for 18 hours a day for five years straight, didn't take a single vacation.

And I wouldn't do that again, to be honest.

I mean, I sacrificed a lot of personal health and relationships for that.

Well,

I think there's a season for that.

And a lot of people jump on my podcast and they're like, Tommy, I wish I didn't miss my son's basketball games.

And I wish I didn't wish my daughters, you know, graduation through elementary school.

And I'm like, so if you went to that stuff,

would they have the freedom they have to go on the vacations and see dad now a lot more?

You didn't have anything, right?

And they're like, yeah, you're right.

And so you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You got to, money works.

Einstein said the largest thing in the universe is compound interest.

When you can actually start saving and using it, putting it in wise investments and starting a good business,

it starts returning larger and larger amounts.

It's the compound interest.

And I think that

you got to be willing to take sacrifice.

You got to be willing to be disciplined.

But it doesn't need to be that way forever.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's a season for it.

You got to find that balance for sure.

You were 50K in debt at one point.

So I

bought my partner out.

We weren't doing anything right.

2010.

We were called A1 Garage Draft Specialist.

We got into the yellow book in 2007, and that was the last year it was really valid.

Good old yellow book.

And we were doing Val Pack, and, you know, we had some debt.

And I said to my partner, I'll take on the debt if you give me the business or vice versa.

You could have it.

I said, I just, you're my best friend.

You're my roommate.

You're my business partner, but I just want to go different directions.

It was a tough conversation.

And he said, you take the business.

It's not much right now.

Called my mom, said, hey, I need you to move to Arizona.

I need help.

Where she lives since 1954.

Wow.

In Michigan.

And she picked up everything with my stepdad and decided to

take a chance.

Your mom?

My mom.

Dang.

Shout out to your mom, dude.

Yeah, my mom would.

I'd call her right now and say, I got somebody to bury in the Las Vegas desert.

She'd be out here.

Her back's not great, but she'd be digging.

Love it.

You got to check in on that old partner, too, see how he's doing.

Yeah, he just got in a a pretty bad wreck.

I sent him money when we did our deal.

Oh, so you're still on good terms?

I'm really good friends with him.

Oh, wow.

A lot of people would have resentment.

Well,

would you have resentment if

you owed a bunch of money and someone took it on?

Like, we didn't know what we were doing.

It was it.

I took on debt.

It was nothing.

It was a phone number.

Right.

Like, I went through, I got a master's degree when my mom moved out here and ran like all the calls that my stepdad had helped manage.

And, you know, I already had a decent business, but it was still in debt.

And I made a lot of mistakes along the way.

I kept falling forward, but I made a lot of right decisions.

And it's not like this one day where everything changed.

It was a combination.

It was like a magic potion of things.

The right guy came on board in 2014.

And then I got in the right software in 2017.

I got introduced to HVAC.

And then I started studying HVAC.

And then I got the right mentor, Al Levy.

He wrote the Seven Power Contractor.

And he taught me about manual standard operating procedures and checklists.

And then I did a really good recruit in 2021 and he taught me about keeping the profit.

And,

you know, there's a lot of things that happened.

And next thing you know, we're, we're, we're a decent size today.

And I, I still am super humble.

Like, there's still so far, much further to go.

And I still listen to people, whether they're bigger or smaller than me, I can learn from them.

Really?

Yeah.

Do you talk to anyone?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I'm very open.

I learned a lot of things.

One day I was on this conversation a few years ago with a guy with four four technicians at the time.

I had over 100.

And I spent 90 minutes with him and he goes, you know, Tommy, I noticed there's a major brand on an opener.

It's called Lift Master.

It's a Chamberlain product.

And he goes, I noticed you're not on the store locator.

I know you buy a lot more units than me.

You should look into that.

Well, I called him up, got on the store locator, 35 more leads a day.

Damn, just from just from a phone call to helping the guy out.

Like I said,

what's his name?

Zig Ziglar said you could have anything you want in life if you just help enough people get what they want.

Yeah, you know, a lot of knowledge.

Are you still reading two books a month?

Well, it was two a week or two.

I'm nowhere near at that level because I'm podcasting so much, but I think I like podcasting more than reading, although they're both very great.

I mean, there was a point where every book on my shelf and every audible was read.

I'm not there today because I get probably 10 books a week and there's no way, but there's a priority on my nightstand that I go through, but it's probably a couple of books a month now.

I've gone through that phase too.

I learned through podcasts now, though.

Yeah, podcasts, you can ask any questions you want.

Dude, there's some phenomenal shows too, like CEO of Netflix.

When did you have that opportunity to learn from a guy like that?

Yeah, I mean, that's next level.

There's a whole new game that's played at that level.

Like when you're dealing with hedge funds and open market,

the CEO position changes.

There's public CEOs, and there's what's called Sarbanes-Oxley, and there's all these financial requirements.

But they're really the vision, but then there's the chairman of the board and the board.

There's a lot of things, and there's what's called hostile takeovers.

I've heard about.

And when you get to a certain size, like think about this.

I think

like what happens with PE companies when you go public, they got to still get their limited partners, their money back.

So the hedge funds short the shit out of it, keep it low till then it sells off and then it goes straight up.

Like there's all these things that go on and it's a whole different game.

And that's the problem I don't like.

I hate the word corporate because as you hit different levels, people are incentivized completely different.

The nice thing about a company my size is when we're all rolling in the same direction, all the pay structures work, everyone wins.

Whereas like my brother-in-law came from GE Healthcare.

Yeah.

And he's like, dude, there's so much animosity in the corporate environment.

Like, people just don't want that anymore.

So it's almost like you can't get too big.

Yeah, once you hit a certain size, you want to break it up and have like smaller,

you, you want to break it up and make sure there's still culture there and make sure you're focused.

Because then everything becomes a number

and everybody becomes a number.

And then you're like, yeah, number 486.

Oh, this guy just left.

Okay, who cares?

We'll get another one.

I care about my people.

I want to see them win.

I want to see them own houses with clean credit and go on their dream vacations.

I want them to dream bigger.

And when they are winning, I get more excited.

When somebody buys a house, I'm more excited for them than I am about hitting a record for the company.

Wow.

So you're like investing your employees' personal lives.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I want like, dude, like, I want them to say by knowing Tommy being part of A1, my life's better.

When that happens, everything changes.

That's interesting because I would say guys like Cardone are the opposite.

You know, money,

when I watch somebody make a large lump sum of money,

you see who they really are.

And,

you know, there's this mentality of got to get more money, got to get more money.

But what's the point?

Like, when you could do whatever you want, when you want with who you want, you still want to make great investments and still continue to grow.

Because,

but it's like, so if you're selfish and you're self-centered and you're vain,

it's going to make you worse.

If you give and you listen and you care, it's going to make you better.

It just gives you a bigger pedestal to stand on.

Yeah.

Are you spiritual at all?

Because that's like a spiritual.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I believe in Jesus.

Me and Brie just got baptized.

She already had been baptized.

I don't remember getting baptized.

I went to a private school.

So, yeah, Christian school.

I did not expect that.

Yeah.

Well, I didn't go.

I finished with public school, but yeah, we were.

I believe in Jesus Christ.

He's my Lord and Savior.

And,

you know, it's

something where I do talk about it a lot, but I don't feel like because I'm a garage store guy and I talk about home service, like, I don't like it when football players take a knee when they're paid to play football.

Yeah, that was a big one.

No one really cares about their political views or whatnot.

Like we, we, they get paid to play football.

And, you know, I go on podcasts mostly to talk about business.

And I do believe in Jesus, and I will talk about it on every stage I get an opportunity to go on.

I do talk about, you know, I made a deal with Jesus when my dad was dying in COVID and I said, give me another chance with him.

And

he did.

My dad's doing great.

That's incredible.

I mean, his oxygen was dropped below 60.

Geez, you said a prayer in motion?

No, I was crying and I was screaming and I was making a a deal with God.

And a guy called me about a year later.

I said, hey, did you make a deal with Jesus?

Random guy.

No way.

Yeah.

And I said, what are you talking about?

He goes, were you on your hands and knees crying?

I never told anybody this.

I never told anybody in a public forum that there's no way this guy could have known.

Yeah, yeah, just a random guy.

And I said, yeah.

He goes, just

remember what you promised him.

And he could take it all away just as quick as he gave it to you.

Whoa.

I get goosebumps.

Dude, that's crazy.

Have you told people what the promise was?

Are you keeping it?

Yeah, the promise was I'll make sure that you put me in a position of leadership and I'll tell everybody about you.

Wow.

And I'll make sure that I give you the praise instead of accepting that Tommy's done really good and a great leader.

It's the Lord Jesus.

I find that purpose helped me elevate because I was atheist most of my life.

But aligning with spirituality really helped me evolve, man.

I don't know, man.

It's like some people don't want to believe in anything and they just believe they're dead and they believe they're an accident and there's no higher power and then there's other people that make up their own god and they're like i don't believe this part of the bible they're like i don't believe there would be a hell

well

then you don't believe in adam and eve you you read what you want to read and you like what you want but if you believe in the if you believe in jesus you believe in the bible and a lot of people say i used to believe in the bible but it's changed over the years i've heard that and there's all kinds of religions I, I, you know, you can't get mad at people will die for their religion.

So, like, it's not a great topic.

Politics and religion never bring anybody closer.

And especially someone in your shoes, you don't want to divide the company.

So, I could see why you stay neutral.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I'll never get mad at somebody for believing or not believing.

My goal is that people watch me instead of hear me.

And then they come and ask me, why am I

Why am I so happy?

Why am I so confident?

Why doesn't it seem that anything bad happens to me?

Why do I always have good spirits?

I'd rather someone come up to me and say, I want what you have, than me have to convince them with words.

Love it.

Are you the happiest right now you've ever been?

Yeah.

I mean,

things are on a roll, man.

Like, not just money, but time with people.

And I'm in the best shape of my life.

I'll be at 10% body fat by the event I got coming up, the freedom event, September 25th.

So I'll be at 10% body fat.

And that's a little over a month and a half away.

I just have more energy.

My brain's clear.

I mean, we're here going to Morgan Wallen.

That's going to be a fun one.

Yeah, it's going to be great.

And we've got friends we're meeting up with.

We just got done with the gym with a buddy of ours.

We're going with other friends tonight to dinner.

It's like,

you know what's cool about when you make a good living?

Like we bought a nice house.

We used to live in a tiny apartment.

We bought the apartment complex.

Wow.

I used to live in, but we moved in one

because I wanted to be close to the technicians that were being trained.

Wow.

Four years I lived there.

And

it's small, man.

It was a thousand square feet.

We didn't need a nice house.

But then I realized my mom's and my dad's 70th birthday were there.

Her niece's third birthday was there.

Like that's, you're buying time and experiences.

and fun tokens.

And so that house is more of a place.

I don't care about the house I care about the memories right and the things that are gonna happen there and I think that that's something pretty special yeah it is I just pulled the trigger on my first one a few weeks ago and similar mindset I could live in an apartment I could rent my whole life but I don't

in Summerlin cool it's a great area yeah but similar though like I was like I'll just rent my whole life but that security and that those memories I think are important Well, when you need to program your keypad and you need a new remote, you call A1.

I will.

A1 from day one.

Yeah, I love it.

You guys big out here in Vegas?

Yeah, we got about 25 technicians.

Damn.

Is uh, so Phoenix is your biggest market?

Yeah, there's about 90 technicians in Phoenix.

So it goes Phoenix, Houston, Tucson, Vegas, Milwaukee, and Detroit are kind of tied.

I mean, Denver is massive for us.

We've got a lot of markets, but a lot of them are only 10 technicians.

And is U.S.

the biggest market globally for this kind of stuff?

Yeah, I mean, there's nothing even close for home service.

We invested in a company and me personally in

Australia, and

it's like apples and oranges.

It's not really.

They're behind, right?

Everything's behind.

Google doesn't even work the same there, so it's easy to dominate.

I mean, it's the biggest plumbing company in Australia, but the hard part about certain countries is just the work ethic.

And there's hard people that want to work, but the government makes it tough because if they're going to pay you 80 grand not to work, and our government's becoming like that.

Well, if you don't want to work, you shouldn't have to work.

Well,

you know, you have four kids.

They're incentivizing the wrong behavior.

I mean, if you're 11, you want a family because you got a good job, great.

But when you're living off taxes, that's not your money.

Everybody needs a rock sometimes.

Like, my mom went to the church for help.

Everybody needs help, but it shouldn't be a way of life.

It shouldn't be you're going to be dependent on the government for the rest of your life.

But there's just a lot of people that say, why work when the government creates this opportunity?

Yeah.

My mom would never do that because she worked three jobs and still went to the church.

They got us, they helped us out a couple of Christmases.

Yeah, that reminds me of all these Section 8 gurus pushing that right now.

Yeah, there's a lot of Section 8 going out there because the government's just going to fund it all.

Yeah.

Why would you even worry about money if your rent's coming up?

You got the phones.

You know, my grandma used to be on food stamps, five kids.

She did work three jobs.

It was just because they needed bread.

And she had them.

I mean, we're talking about a long, long.

It was embarrassing.

You'd walk in with real stamps.

Wow.

They were like sheets of stamps and when people saw you with them they knew you were

you were on government assistance now you get this card it's like a visa card yeah you don't even know and you just scan it and

look i feel for people my mom struggled my grandma took it but my grandma wasn't on very long like they are there for a reason they're there when you hit rock bottom yeah And I just don't think it's a way of life.

I do think there's people with mental issues that need help.

but i'm not about giving drugs in front of five-year-olds in every street and having tents everywhere either no i'm not about i mean i guess it's easy for me to ridicule because i mean i've been on these drugs it's not the way man yeah doesn't help long term maybe short term if that but no zanax ruined my life so really yeah you ever go through like a mental

i drank probably too much at one point yeah but it wasn't like i say it was an issue but it wasn't like i didn't show up for work it was just like there were days where we would drink three nights out of the week, four nights out of the week, and it wouldn't be like two drinks.

It would be a lot more.

And of course, you say it's not a big deal if I could go to work, but the blank, the brain, I was just like, I was always like, ah.

And then you'd wake up with a hangover, didn't even realize it because you were good at drinking.

And then all of a sudden, now I'm like, dude, yes, life is good.

Yeah, you're probably optimized so well now.

You're completely sober now?

I mean, we drink every now and then.

We probably drink once a month, but it's not like

we went through a 12-step process.

We just, I'll tell you, the hardest part for me is getting eight hours of sleep.

I've been averaging six and a half to seven, which is still good.

Well, when you're working out all the time, you're eating the right food.

Eight hours is really the target number.

We got so much booze at our house.

It's never like I'm like, man, I really need a drink right now.

You know, we got rid of all the bad food, though, because that's really easy to slip.

It's like,

you know, if I slip at all, it's like, I think

one night, three weeks ago, I had some skinny popcorn,

which isn't that big of a slip.

That's not the worst skinny pop.

The best thing is,

is you get this ninja creamy and you use protein to flavor it.

And it tastes like ice cream, but there's no bad ingredients, it's all protein.

Really?

It is so good, too.

Like, I substitute this for regular ice cream all day long.

Damn, you just put me on.

Just look at the ninja creamy, look at a few recipes, and you'll be like, dude, you use zero fat, zero,

like this jello, and there's zero fat, zero carbs, zero calorie, zero everything.

And then you use that as the flavor.

And then you put a couple scoops of protein.

You put whatever type of milk you like.

If you want, like you could use almond milk.

Yeah.

And then you freeze it overnight.

You put it in this machine and it is like

so good.

That's like my dessert.

I got to buy one of those on Amazon when I get back.

Are you on the raw milk wave?

I have been, but yesterday I kind of had this weird breakout.

like i think i reacted weird to it because you know unpasteurized yeah yeah there's a place there's a farm in town and one of my doctors that i go to for just

he does like blood work

he's like if i were you i'd get off all dairy and that's hard for me because i love eggs whoa but i'm really cutting back the dairy damn well i know the pasteurized dairy but i thought the raw dairy was better i don't know it is supposedly i mean

you know the problem that i have is there's so many different opinions.

A lot.

There's like you go on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok and you could find a case for anything.

And everyone's got an opinion.

My best advice is stick with people that have a proven track record.

Like if you want to become a great dad,

find

two kids that are six years old that really respect their parents, that smile all the time, that aren't crying in public.

Then ask the parents.

And if you want to be really, really successful, find somebody that truly seems to be happy, even behind closed doors.

And if you want to have a great relationship, find somebody with a great relationship that's been married for a long time and ask them how they do it.

And I just don't think enough people that they go to social media for their answers instead of just keeping their eyes open and saying, wow, maybe I should ask them how they're so great at that.

I've got a,

you know, it's kind of funny.

I've got a ping-pong coach.

I've got a, what's the newest one?

Pickleball.

Pick.

No.

Bags.

Cornell.

Oh, Cornell.

I just hate losing so bad.

I hate losing more than I like winning.

So I want to show up to a barbecue and just dominate,

crack some skulls open with my game.

I love it.

Destroy people.

And I'm a competitive guy, and I like to hire competitive people.

People that are like, yeah, I don't care about winning.

It's only a game.

And I'm like, yeah, this probably isn't the right company for you.

Because we're cashing checks and breaking necks all night.

Yeah.

Winning's important.

Well, I don't hand out participation trophies.

No.

You know?

And now everybody needs to be included.

You know, it's like, what do you mean?

They suck.

They didn't win.

They didn't even try.

They just showed up.

They're just going through life blank.

40, 50 years go by, boom.

They forgot that life just blew in front of them.

I just found out yesterday the Olympics, only gold medals matter towards the winning country.

Yeah, well, that's awesome.

I think that's how it should be.

Yeah, like, because the U.S.

has more silver and bronze than everyone else, but we're not in first right now because we don't have more golds in China.

Interesting.

That's

I,

my whole life, I've never watched the Olympics.

I mean, it's on, but I'm not, I don't even know how they track the points.

And like, it's just so many different games and sports.

It would be cool to get into it one day, but.

Yeah.

Well, not this year.

Did you see the opening?

Yeah, they, they, uh,

I don't even know how they do that stuff, man.

I don't know who's sitting there and saying, man, this Bud Light needs to have this, or we should make fun of Christ on this.

DEI, maybe.

What would happen if they did that with

Allah and like Muslim?

Like, they'd be beheaded.

Like, someone would, like,

find out who did that.

They'd be pissed, yeah.

It's weird, man.

This DEI stuff, I don't know how much attention you pay to it, but it's interesting.

It should just be based off results.

Well, I'm into meritocracy, nothing else, man.

You show up, black, white, Cuban, or Asian, smile on your face, old, young, male, female.

I don't care.

You got to respect yourself.

We have great, every ethnicity, every, you know, the two genders too.

You know, like,

I don't really,

I just want eye contact.

I want you to smile.

I want to be someone that

listens and I listen to them and doesn't expect more because of anything.

If you think you're male and you deserve more or female or older and wiser or younger and more

opportunistic, whatever it is, like everybody's got something to offer.

We just got to find it.

But not everybody's a fit.

And I'll tell you what, I want a pilot hired because it's the best pilot on the flights that I just flew in for.

Not because someone said we need to have this whatever in their job.

Absolutely.

I think most people feel that way.

Yeah.

I don't know where this has all kind of come from.

No, it always made sense to me.

If you produce good results, like, let's talk.

You know what I mean?

Nothing else should really matter other than that um do you find it increasingly harder to hire people i'm hearing that it's getting difficult in the us i don't think so i you know not at all really i i don't think it's hard you don't run into entitled people on the on my generation yeah well we do but the difference is is we spend a lot of money instead of marketing for clients we're marketing for great people

And by having a personal brand and having hiring events and really having a great, great, great filter, you know, we've got 53 guys right now in Phoenix training because they fly in from all around the country.

53 this month.

I mean,

but 53 does not include CSRs, dispatchers, doesn't include the warehouse guys.

It's just technicians and installers.

Wow.

So, you know, we stay at this rate.

The company doubles in eight months.

Damn, and these guys flew in for this?

They all fly in.

They got to train in their market for a month, and then they got to train in Phoenix for a month.

We don't practice on customers' houses.

We practice in our our training center.

Wow.

Smart.

Yeah.

I love it.

Tommy, where can people find you, man, and keep up with you?

Yeah, if you go to tommymellow.com, it has, there's no W, TommyMellow.com.

And you can find all my social media.

I'm all over the place.

I wrote a book called Elevate, Build a Business Where Everybody Wins.

And if somebody wants to do a shop tour and just come meet us, we don't charge for it.

We'll show them how we build the business, how we train, how we recruit, how we manage KPIs.

It's tommymellow.com forward slash shop.

And we're an open book, man.

I really do.

I don't, I'm not trying to get somebody into a funnel and just, you know, sell them a bunch of stuff.

We'll show them how we do our stuff, and hopefully, one day, uh,

you know, I'm not the godfather, I don't expect everything I do to get return, but I know God just works that way.

I love it.

Boom, we'll link below.

Thanks for coming on, Tommy.

Hey, thank you.

I appreciate it.

Absolutely.

It was great.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

As always, see you next time.