Tommy Mello - $1 Billion Company Founder | Why Control Keeps You Small

Summary

Success Story with Scott D. Clary

Guest: Tommy Mello - $1 Billion Company Founder | Why Control Keeps You Small

Date: December 31, 2025

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Brief Overview

In this episode, Scott D. Clary sits down with Tommy Mello, founder of A1 Garage Doors, to break down how Tommy built a $2 billion home service empire from scratch—even while buried in debt and lacking connections or early support. The central message revolves around the transformation from the obsessed, control-everything “hustler” to a master delegator and culture builder. Tommy explores purposeful leadership, the importance of systems and equity, why happiness requires balance, and why curiosity and delegation are the true unlocks for scaling a business and a life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Tommy’s Rags-to-Riches Story

• Family Background & Early Hustle
  • Grew up in a modest family—parents worked multiple jobs, experienced divorce, and economic hardship ([03:22]).
  • First jobs: washing dishes at 12, landscaping business by his teens—even though he was allergic to grass ([03:14]).
  • Early lessons: "If I wanted to do anything, I had to shovel snow and mow lawns. Back then, it's hard work." — Tommy ([03:22]).
• Entrepreneurial Genesis
  • Moved to Arizona at 16, worked as a busboy, lifeguard, continued hustling ([03:22]).
  • Fell into garage doors by painting them as a side gig—scaled to painting 10+ doors/day ([04:37]).
  • Started garage door business with roommate, staggered under debt ([05:50]).
  • Took over the business and $50,000 in debt, called his mom for help; ran it all himself for years ([05:52–07:04]).

Control, Delegation, & the Power of Systems

• “The hustler had to die for the leader to be born.” — Tommy ([06:57]).
• Realization: doing everything oneself caps growth and breeds chaos ([07:04–12:05]).
• Key inflection points:
  • Hired his first “integrator” (Adam Cronenberg) to run operations ([07:04–09:31]).
  • Invested in systems: CRM, process documentation, manuals, repeatable processes ([07:04-09:31]).
  • “That was when I found an integrator and the business started to fly.” — Tommy
• From putting out fires to "feeling less stress at $300M in revenue than $10M" due to the right team ([12:05–13:43]).

The Art of Extreme Delegation

• Tommy’s legendary principle: “You will never out-delegate me” ([13:43]).
• Deliberate decision to delegate everything except culture and marketing:
  • “Ask yourself...could this be delegated?”
  • Culture and direct technician relationships are non-negotiable for him; everything else delegates ([14:29–15:33]).
  • Creates ownership throughout the company via equity incentive programs ([16:07–17:45]).

Ownership, Equity, & Culture

• Remarkable act: Gave $100M in equity to 24 employees during a major exit, all based on merit, not tenure ([15:33–18:24]).
• “This ownership mentality changes everything. It’s called equity incentive programs.” — Tommy ([16:07]).
• Explains the need for fairness, motivation, and having a North Star for teams ([16:25–18:25]).
• Argues that traditional “founder keeps it all” models breed resentment and lower performance ([17:51]).

Leadership Evolution & The Need for Continual Growth

• Founder skills must evolve at every business stage; who got you to $50M is rarely who gets you to $500M ([19:23]).
  • Tommy: “I want to be the dumbest guy in the room.”
• Importance of identifying and supporting people’s dreams, not just numbers: “Some people's dreams unfortunately are too small. Some are bigger than mine...” ([19:23–21:16]).
• Encourages leaders to ask “what would you do if you had $10M?” to get at core motivations ([19:23]).

Sacrifice, Balance, & The Myth of Happiness

• Early years: total imbalance, relationships and health sacrificed for business ([21:16–24:31]).
  • “You give a piece of your soul away for a temporary time. Sometimes it’s two years, sometimes ten.” — Tommy ([32:12])
• Warns: “If you look at most billionaires, they’re not happy people…they’re obsessed with the wrong things.” ([24:31])
• Now prioritizes balanced pursuit—purpose, not just growth: “I could do six hour days of focus. I’m still exploring things.” ([24:31-25:44])

On Growth, Competition, and the Future

• Emphasizes the necessity of curiosity and a learning mindset: “Be more curious. Go learn more.” ([01:54])
• AI, automation, and industry shifts—Tommy is deeply future-focused:
  • “The big are going to get massive...more losers than winners.” ([47:37])
  • Says most service industries are unprepared for technological disruption ([46:47–48:36]).
  • “You better be a forward thinker, you better be curious, you better be asking questions… Every single thing you could do. Because it’s the people that just put their head down and say I’m going to go to work, they’re missing out.” — Tommy ([47:37])
• Business is now systematized enough that most fires have been eliminated ([48:44-49:50]).

Delegation, Failure, & Building A-Players

• Most executives struggle to delegate properly, even at high levels ([49:50–51:36]).
  • “You should race towards people failing. If your EA screws up, that’s a lesson learned.” ([51:36])
• Advice for hiring senior people: trial periods, set expectations upfront, ensure cultural fit ([52:20–53:20]).

Self-Mastery: Health, Relationships, Mental Resilience

• Tommy’s formula for balance: ruthless time management, continuous improvement, purposeful delegation ([54:13]).
• “There’s 168 hours in a week…every single person listening, focus on time management.” — Tommy ([54:13])
• Delegation isn’t dumping: explain the why, the resources, the outcomes, and accountability ([54:13–55:38]).

Lifelong Learning, Mentorship, and the Value of Humility

• Tommy notes the importance of being humble and always asking questions:
  • “Go learn, study. Go find somebody that’s in your industry…pay it forward.” ([55:40–56:29])
• Approach mentors with curiosity over ego: “Come in humble…implement what they told you before you ask for more.” ([55:38])

Meaning & Purpose Beyond Business

• “You become who you hang out with…when you’re curious, be curious to the right people.” ([64:47])
• “Never feel like you’ve arrived. The day you feel like you’ve arrived is the day you could throw me in the casket.” — Tommy ([65:03])
• Purpose isn’t just business: “You gotta manifest it. Everything that I do is by design…You don’t just wake up and it’s all there.” ([61:55])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Leadership Evolution:
  • “The hustler had to die for the leader to be born.” — Tommy ([06:57])
• On Delegation:
  • “You will never out-delegate me.” — Tommy ([13:43])
• On Ownership:
  • “This ownership mentality changes everything…it’s called equity incentive programs.” — Tommy ([16:07])
• On Culture and Merit:
  • “I like meritocracy a lot more than tenure. No one got it because of tenure.” — Tommy ([17:51])
• On Sacrifice:
  • “You give a piece of your soul away for a temporary time. Sometimes a temporary time is two years, sometimes it’s ten.” ([32:12])
• On Purpose and Happiness:
  • “If you look at most billionaires, they’re not happy people…they’re obsessed with the wrong things.” ([24:31])
• On Curiosity:
  • “My favorite three letters that I teach everybody is ASK. Go for no. You’ve got to ask more questions. Be more curious.” ([64:47])
• On Self-Improvement:
  • “Everything that I do is by design…You don’t wake up one day and it’s all there.” ([61:55])
• On Identity Post-Exit:
  • “A lot of people sell their business and they find this empty void…their work has become their identity.” ([57:15])
• On Mentorship:
  • “Come in humble…I’m not going to call you again until I do what you told me to do. I’m going to first implement what you did before I call you back.” ([56:29])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Origin Story & Early Hustle: [02:30–05:50]
• Realization About Delegation & Systems: [06:57–09:31]
• Culture, Equity, and $100M Employee Payout: [15:33–18:25]
• Levels of Leadership and Team Evolution: [19:23–21:16]
• Sacrifice, Burnout, and Reclaiming Balance: [21:16–25:44]
• AI, the Future of Service & Tech Disruption: [44:05–48:36]
• Delegation Tips & Executive Level Lessons: [49:50–53:20]
• Time Management & Personal Mastery: [54:13–55:38]
• Mentorship, Humility & Learning: [55:40–56:29]
• Purpose Beyond Wealth/Identity Crisis After Exit: [57:15–61:11]
• Advice to Next Generation: [64:47–65:03]

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Final Advice

Tommy’s closing lesson, aimed at his future kids but applicable to any aspiring entrepreneur:

“Be more curious. Go learn more…Hang out with people with a common future, not just a common past. Manifest what that future is going to be…and never feel like you’ve arrived. The day you feel like you’ve arrived is the day you could throw me in the casket.” ([64:47])

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Where to Find Tommy

• Tommymello.com
• Podcast: Home Service Millionaire
• Social: See Tommymello.com for all links

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The essence: Replace control with trust, ego with curiosity, and hustle with leadership if you want to build something massive—and if you want happiness to come along for the ride.

Transcript

[Scott Clary]

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[Tommy Mello]

With Belay, I was washing dishes under the table for $4 an hour. I moved to Arizona when I was 16. I found a really good guy. He understood a little bit about finance and just a hard worker. That was when I found an integrator and the business started to fly.

[Scott Clary]

What starts as a small service business can become a legacy if you chase mastery instead of shortcuts. Tommy Melo began with a garage door company buried in $50,000 of debt and no roadmap.

[Tommy Mello]

The garage industry is one of the hardest industries. It's a low ticket average. If you look at most billionaires, they're not happy people. I say 80% of them because they became obsessed and they're obsessed with the wrong things. You got to be able to like reflect and think, what are the main goals here? What do I want my life to look like? But you got to have purpose. You never want to lose purpose.

[Scott Clary]

He worked around the clock, learned every hard lesson in the book and transformed that business into a $200 million home service empire with hundreds of employees across multiple states. Tommy doesn't just teach growth, he's lived it.

[Tommy Mello]

You need to love yourself first and if you don't love yourself, there's no point in doing anything. You'll never show up for anything you care about if you don't start to find that inner peace and think you deserve more. Time management is the best skill. Focus on time management. Focus on how to be more efficient with Your time and learning how to delegate. You got to ask more questions. Be more curious. Be willing to do the work no matter how good your success is. Be curious. Go learn more.

[Scott Clary]

Tommy, welcome to Miami. Thanks for coming down.

[Tommy Mello]

It's humid here.

[Scott Clary]

It is humid here. It's a little bit more humid than Arizona. I want people to know where you came from because you have a really interesting origin story, and interesting in the way that I think that when somebody looks at you and all you've built, they can make the assumption that you had a leg up or a helping hand or something that got you off the ground when you were young. Now, I know your story. I. I know that you didn't come from.

[Tommy Mello]

I'm thinking about a leg up. Right?

[Scott Clary]

A leg up, right. I know that you didn't come from. You didn't come from a family of entrepreneurs. You didn't come from somebody who gave you a handout. You didn't come from, like, a dad who got you into the family business, anything like that. You had, like, a pretty rags to riches to a degree.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So talk to me about talking about your family. Talk to me about where you came from, and talk to me about sort of how that shaped who you are.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, my grandpa worked at General Motors and retired in 1974. 12 kids. And, you know, they were all raised in a small house in Royal Oak. My mom grew up in Detroit. Very small house, five kids. Grandpa left my grandma, she knocked on doors, figured out a way to make it work. My parents got a divorce when I was 7, and my dad went through his trials. Still gonna be my best man of my wedding. Amazing. Dad taught me how to be super competitive. No second place. We don't get awards for that, but, you know, mom worked three jobs. We went to church. They'd help us out with Thanksgiving and Christmas. And I learned if I wanted to do anything, I had to shovel snow and mow lawns. Back then, it's hard work. And then when you. When you turn 12, you wash it. I was washing dishes under the table for $4 an hour. But I was happy to do it. I walked straight to the rookies clubhouse from middle school. And, you know, I moved to Arizona when I was 16. I wanted to be closer to my dad. You know, puberty. My buddies in Michigan that time, I got a job as a busboy and I was a lifeguard. And then I started up landscaping business. Got that to 30,000amonth.

[Scott Clary]

That's the first, like, step in entrepreneurship.

[Tommy Mello]

It was hard because I'm allergic to Grass. And what I used to go do is water conservation analysis and tell them how much water they could save because we're in the desert. And then my roommate, we were paying 700 and 700 total for rent in Tempe, where Asu is. And he's like, can you paint garage doors for me? I got this great job managing this garage for a company. I was like, what does it pay? And at this point, I'm bartending. I still got the landscaping company. I'm serving tables, and I'm going to school. But I still had time. I'm a workaholic. So I was like, he's like, 100 bucks a door. You got to pay for the paint. So I was taking home about 80 bucks of that, and I could paint 10 doors a day. I went through the yellow book, called every single company I could, became their number one painter. And as I'm meeting all these guys, this is 2005 and six. I'm like, how much are you making a year? They're like six figures. And I was like, man, I gotta look into this. My other roommates like, we should start a garage door business. I knew how to do an ein. I knew how to get in the yellow book. I knew how to get an llc. I understood how to pay taxes, just general stuff, but didn't really know the full grasp of business. So we made ends meet. But it was still a struggle in 2010. I was like, look, there's a lot of debt on this business. Either you could take the business or I'll take it.

[Scott Clary]

But it was a going okay.

[Tommy Mello]

It was okay. I mean, we were paying our bills. Any cash job. We took over seven years. So I could say that we split amongst each other, but it was the bills kept adding up more than we were making. And so he said, listen, you could take the business, but you got to take the debt. Anything that comes later is yours. I said, fine. And I called my mom. I was like, hey, Mom, I need somebody I could trust out here. So my mom and stepdad sold their home in Michigan, came, and I'm three years into the business, had about five good employees, but I was still running the majority of jobs. I was doing the recruiting, the training, the marketing. I didn't like doing payroll, and I didn't like the phones. Actually, the phones became super annoying to me, even though I knew it was a money job. Calling. I mean, I took. You know, I would book 15 calls a day while on a ladder at the customer's house.

[Scott Clary]

So at this point, just, you Were always. I don't know, you were just okay with hard work. You were always okay with hard work. And it's so interesting because it seems like hard work got you to a certain point, but then at some point held you back, too.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah. I always say the hustler had to die for the leader to be born.

[Scott Clary]

So at this point, you're doing every job in the business, More or less.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, listen, I was a janitor. There was people stealing toilet paper at the time. Like, I was like, mom, what happened to all the toilet paper? We found a guy who was taking all of our toilet paper, but they were taking everything. They were stealing parts, stealing tools. You know, at this point, I didn't own the trucks. So they come up. They had to provide their own trucks. And, I mean, it was. It was tough, man. Every. I walked in, this is a couple years in when my mom started there. So, like 2012, by the way, when she moved out, I said, I'm going to get a master's degree. So I started an executive master's degree at U of a. So that 18 months was. I was doing a lot. And in 2014, and there's so many other stories, but 2014, I found a really good guy. He had taken a buyout from the airlines. He was a mutual friend. He understood a little bit about finance and just a hard worker. And I said, listen, if you come in and you could be the bad cop, I'll take care of the marketing, I'll do the training, I'll grow the business. I need somebody that understands how to set up the CRM, basically work on the back end office, deal with the lawyers and different things we needed. With the cpa, he's like, dude, no problem. And that was Adam Cronenberg. Amazing guy. That was when I found an integrator and the business started to fly. 2017, I started a podcast, got on the right CRM and met the right advisor, and that was like a triple. Like, that was a home run because the advisor taught me about system, standard operating procedures, checklists, how to build manuals. So I repeated. I built a repeatable system. And then the podcast, I could get anybody I wanted in the home service industry because it was early in podcasts. So they were like, yeah, I'll come on your podcast. Like, I'd get a $20,000 an hour person for an hour for free. It just. It was my show. So I was like, teach me, teach me. And I take notes. In every 40 podcasts I've done, I'd hired somebody still to this day, every 40, that's just the average for me. Every sometimes it's every 20, sometimes it's every 60. So the CRM worked great and I started just diving into marketing. I went and visited every hundred million dollar H vac shop that there is in the United States at the time. And they let me in with open arms and they were like, dude, we've heard about you. We've heard about the podcast. I wrote a book called the Home Service Millionaire. And then a few more key hires in 2020. And you know, 2022, we did a partial exit. I sold half the business well over 500 million and there's 100 million slotted out for 24 people at a one that earned it.

[Scott Clary]

And like I need, I think people need to understand like the, the level that you're playing at now you pay 24 people $100 million.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, well look at the end of the day now, the company's worth over 2 billion. And I feel like we're still in the fetal stages. Like now that I understand the rules of the game, I understand arbitrage, how multiples work, how EBITDA works. Leverage, that's like huge amounts of leverage. Yeah, the garage industry is one of the hardest industries. The reason why it's a low ticket average, it's not like an HL unit, you're selling for 15 grand a roof, you're selling for 30 grand, a hot water heaters, 7 grand. And people are like, yeah, well you go to Home Depot and buy it cheaper than that. But that's what they charge to come to your house the same day and fix a leak. You know, I got a buddy in Ohio that does really bad leaks with like under your concrete. I mean he's charging 40, 50 grand a pop. My average tickets, 1200. So I run 25, 000 jobs a month. I mean we've got a, we've got a thousand fifty employees. So. And the crazy thing is we're, we're this month we got 54 brand new technicians and I don't see it slowing down. So we'll probably go to 60 to 70 next year. I'd like to hit 100amonth by the probably Q4, 100 brand new guys coming on, learning the trade, getting a brand new van, getting the tools and having the work for them to be able to support them.

[Scott Clary]

So what now? Now you have built a business that is bigger than most people will ever build. Not many people build a two point, what was it, 2.4 billion, 2.2 billion.

[Tommy Mello]

So right now we're at, you know, the multiples are really high in our industry because it's demand driven. Covid doesn't slow it down. Nothing, really.

[Scott Clary]

But the point is, give yourself some. Give yourself a little bit of credit regardless of the multiples.

[Tommy Mello]

But I will say the teamwork makes the dream work. And, you know, I've got a lot of ideas. I'm very patient now. I'm disciplined, but my team is everything. Like, I can't take near the credit of what they do. They run the business. I'm here in Miami with you. I'm more of the thought leader, and I'm really close to my technicians and installers.

[Scott Clary]

Like, 17 years into the business, $17 million. Like, you need some systems to get there. You can't just build that through just sheer hard work. So what is he looking at that you, as a young entrepreneur at the time, think is systems? Like, you're saying, like, you know, you don't have security on the, on the, on the warehouse, and people can steal your stuff. But what is the difference between a system that gets you to 17 to 20 million versus a system that gets you to 500 million over 1 billion? Like, there's different systems for every level you thought, because I know you thought you had some at the time.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah. So here, here's the deal. I'd worked 24, 7 on holidays. I was putting out fires constantly, and I was like, the. The problem is when you get to that level of that kind of revenue with really crappy systems, it's always a dog fight. It's always. You walk in and there's always bad news, and there's a guy that's driving on a suspended license, a truck flipped over. The police are here because, you know, the drug test. We didn't get the drug test in, and we hired a guy three months in, the drug test came back, there's a felon we hired. We didn't. We didn't have. We didn't document things properly. And either there's no system in place, the wrong system, or the system's not being followed. And I think it was all three of those things. And, you know, looking back, it was really, really stressful. You know, we're going to do well. Well north of 300 million this year of revenue, really, really healthy bottom line. And I feel no stress. And it's who, not how, with. We've got the right team. We got six people on fpna financial planning and an analytics. We've got seven trainers. We've Got just, We've got a whole fleet department. We know someone's speeding or goes to get on their cell phone. Like every single week, I get a notification of the drivers that got flagged and small speeding and stuff that I don't like. They get a warning. But if it comes to me, I'm reaching out to each and every one of them in a mass text saying, I need you guys to cool it or you're suspended for three days. And all that stuff comes to me because they really. I've worked hard to create a bond between my team, especially the guys out in the field. We have a relationship where I'm going to give my all. You got to give your all. And if you're not, this isn't the right company. Go work for a competitor.

[Scott Clary]

But it's interesting because you're talking about how at 300 million top line, you still feel less stress than when you knew, like on the, on the comments, way less stress. So you've obviously delegated a ton. And I know, like, I think you said you will. What did you say? It's. I love this quote. It was something along the lines of, you will never out delegate me. Like, you will never out delegate me. Which is a great quote. Right. But the point, the point I want to make is there's still some things that you find super valuable to be, you know, involved in yourself. So when somebody's speeding, that's going to you and you're having that communication, the conversation with the person because you built that rapport. So how do you figure out which stuff in the business you should delegate versus which stuff is still important for you to take on?

[Tommy Mello]

So you got to ask yourself and every single thing, could this be delegated? Could I delegate? If I said, scott, you know how much I appreciate you and your family, what you do for this business. Could I have my executive assistant, Ashley call you up and say that? So culture is really, really the big thing. The next thing is I'm fascinated and in love and very curious about marketing, especially in the day of large language models like ChatGPT. And I go on and on about that. Search engine optimization, social media, tv, radio, billboards. Like, I still get involved with most of the marketing. I'm not knee deep in it, but I'm very, very. That's the number one thing I focus on after culture. And I want to recognize birthdays and anniversaries and great days. If you set a record, I'm not there to call you out, I'm there to call you up. So a lot of times I'll reach out to somebody and say, hey, dude, is everything okay? You know, I just noticed you're slipping. You haven't been showing up to meetings on time. I'm looking at your first arrival to your first job's not been great. I'm not, I'm not going in there going, I'm going to put you on a performance improvement plan. I'm going to say, are you all right?

[Scott Clary]

When you look at culture, I think that you are an incredible example of building a good culture because I've met the guys on your team and I've met the people you work with, and they're incredible people. But you go above and beyond. So I'm going to say this one more time because I don't think this is something that a lot of companies do. You give $100 million to 24 employees when you had that first exit. That's like above and beyond culture. So what are you, what are you achieving with that? Like, like what? Why did you make that decision? Because you didn't have to. Nobody forced you to. I don't think the private equity firm that came in required you to do it. This is something that you did out of like the goodness of your heart. That's a significant amount of money for anybody.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, this ownership mentality changes everything. It's called equity incentive programs. If you think about it, every public traded company has stock options for their leadership team. Sometimes they do ESOP or it goes all the way down. I don't like an ESOP because everybody gets equity. But the greatest people working the hardest don't get enough.

[Scott Clary]

Explain that just so people understand.

[Tommy Mello]

It's a way to set up. Instead of a C Corp or an S Corp, they'll set up an esop. But what I do is an equity incentive program where goes all the way down to the technicians. Now. So if they hit pinnacle, which means their KPIs are dialed in their whole scorecard, not just sales numbers, but they don't get any recalls, they get five star reviews, they drive right. All the major things they could earn their first, they earn 200,000, $75,000 after that. So if you're there for four years, you're going to make 425 grand at a transaction. Now that's at a technician level, installer level. There's a lot that I try to make sure it's fair for everybody. It's kind of like Social Security, though. Once you give it, you can't take it back. And no one's Ever really happy with it. Because literally at the end of the day, if you do the math, I own 48% of the business. It's a healthy chunk of money. So I got to figure out how to be fair and make sure everybody feels like. But I want to keep them motivated to go the next round. And because I still got an obligation to the investors because by the way, the private equity company, they work with teachers, pensions and firemen and police officers and they've got their life savings in there. So I got to be obligated to them as well. And the best thing is do, do the right thing for your internal clients, which are, you know, the employees, which I call them, my co workers. And do the right thing for the homeowners and you'll win every time. And everyone wins.

[Scott Clary]

A lot of businesses don't do this though. I, I don't think I see many people handing out $100 million in every.

[Tommy Mello]

Private equity does what's called profit units. But they're kind of forced to do that to keep. Because that keeps your attention. But for me, it was like, dude, I could have been lonely, the top of the mountain, kept all the money. There would be a lot of anger and just resentment. And they work so hard. I mean, certain people probably got too much. Certain probably people didn't get enough. Some people probably didn't get anything because the business wasn't small. I mean, it was 400 people back then. So I like meritocracy a lot more than tenure. No one got it because of tenure. I just don't believe in tenure based.

[Scott Clary]

On what they were able to.

[Tommy Mello]

I've got a lot of loyalty with tenure. You've worked with me, you stood by my side. Don't get me wrong. But that doesn't mean you should just. You get paid plus you get a bonus. Like this is above and beyond because people have the ownership mentality. And now everybody's sprinting towards the same goal. The North Star.

[Scott Clary]

Tell me something though. When you give it that kind of money and you are not out of the business, just so people understand, like you are still in the business.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

You sold a minority piece, Correct.

[Tommy Mello]

Technically, they're the boss. I could get fired. It would be very hard to fire me. But they can't take away my equity. But when it's not founder based of a company like mine, it tends to kind of fall apart.

[Scott Clary]

My point was when you give those kinds of, those kinds of dollars away, do you retain that talent like the best of the best? When I don't Know what the, you know, do 100 million divided by 24 is probably not even like.

[Tommy Mello]

No, it wasn't even.

[Scott Clary]

No. The first, the top five people, are they staying with you or are you over incentivizing them to retire?

[Tommy Mello]

Well, I'll tell you this, there's different seasons of the business and the people at 50 million are different at 200 million, are different at 500 million. Now I don't think I'm the smartest guy by any means, but I've learned how to delegate. I've learned how to be the face of the company and I've learned how to negotiate like crazy and I've learned how to keep the morale up. So as the founder, I want to be the dumbest guy when I enter the room. Like I've. If the right CEO came across my path, it'd be very hard because they'd have to understand the culture. So I might be like a co CEO or chairman of the board, but I'm not going to give up because I still haven't fulfilled my promise. I need everybody that stuck by me to win big. And what does that mean? Everybody's got different goals. We've got a full time dream manager. I really like to know what everybody's dream is. And we're building this software understanding. Some people's dream unfortunately are too small. And some people's dreams are like, they're bigger than mine. And maybe they just. But, but when anybody says a dream, I'm like, what would you do if you want $10 million? What does that even mean? I don't want to hear about the money. I want to hear about what you want to do for your family, what you want to do for your kids, what experiences you want to have. Like, I want to know everything, but not a monetary number. We could back into that number. But what is it that you really want? Some people are like, dude, I want to do what you did. I'm like, okay, so what does that mean? They're like, well, I want to get to at least 100 million. What would you do with that kind of money? Well, I haven't thought about that, but I know it's possible. Well, do you have kids? Yeah, I've got kids. Well, you don't want that because there's no way I could have raised a family and been around my wife and made her happy if I was doing that kind of stuff. Like literally I was working crazy, crazy hours and on holidays and on weekends and skipping. Like, I broke up with so many girls because this work. They were like, listen, if I'm going to hang out with you, I'll just ride with you in the truck. I can't. Those were our dates at the time. Like you're going to come with me on jobs.

[Scott Clary]

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[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, look at the end of the day, working. If you look at most billionaires, they're not happy people. Most, I say 80% of them because they became obsessed and they're obsessed with the wrong things. So you gotta, you gotta be able to like reflect and think. What are, what are the main goals here? What do I want my life to look like? But you gotta have purpose. You never want to lose purpose, especially as a man. Like, you want to be a provider, you want to go do stuff, you want to use your brain, like, easily. I could fade into the sunset and golf every day in Hawaii. And then all of a sudden I just become a lush. So I, I still want to maintain purpose, just focus, purpose. And I don't need 12 hour days. I could do six hour days of focus. And I'm still exploring things. I'm podcasting a lot, I'm learning new ideas, but I bring so many ideas now. We're not ready for all my ideas yet, but the company will grow into a company that's ready for everything. I got to give. Because, listen, we're just doing garage doors now. 20. You know, there's certain months we run 25, 000 jobs. What if the person said, listen, I think about putting a pool table in here. We could do the floors and put it in a mini split, keep it nice and cool in here in the summer, warm in the winter. All of a sudden, that ticket for 3,000 turns into 20,000. And there's so much opportunities. We've maintained a lot of discipline and focus, and so I release certain things at the right time. And I think our teams.

[Scott Clary]

Did you get that from Jeff Bezos? There's a. There's a Jeff Bezos story about this as well.

[Tommy Mello]

Jeff Bezos, the best story in the world.

[Scott Clary]

And you know, the story about the. About the too many ideas and.

[Tommy Mello]

Well, yeah, he had a partner.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

That basically came in early, an advisor, and said, hey, Jeff, you'll bankrupt us if you go to the whiteboard again. You will. Literally one hour in the whiteboard will bankrupt this company. And he said, well, what do you suppose I do? He goes, I want you to keep your ideas, keep them in a file, ruthlessly prioritize. Give them to us when we're ready. And I played that to my team. I played that on stage, like, that is me. And he's like, why don't you build a company over the years that's ready for all your ideas? And so, yeah, I just took his and put my own little. Everything I do is. I call it R and D, rip off and duplicate.

[Scott Clary]

I love it.

[Tommy Mello]

There's no really authentic ideas here.

[Scott Clary]

What do you think? Because I know, like, when. When you were very young, you were hearing your parents fight about money.

[Tommy Mello]

Oh, yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And you never wanted that ever in your life. And I'm. I'm assuming. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm assuming that's why you worked hard, that's why you hustled. That's why you sort of built your own thing. I'm gonna make sure that money's never a problem in my life, with my family, whatever. You have more money than you need at this point in your life. I mean, you can make the argument that you can keep going and keep buying fancy new things, but I think you're doing. You're doing pretty well. What drives you now?

[Tommy Mello]

Well, you know, the weird thing is when you start out at an age hearing Your parents? I used to stand on the toilet because the bathroom was next to their bedroom, so I could hear through the drywall. I used to stand on the toilet and hear them argue. And just this broke. It was like, we don't have money. And my dad was very generous and took a shopping and would spend it faster than he was making it. And I guess I still sometimes feel like I could lose it. And I don't really know why, because I see so many people in my life, they made money, then they lost it. And I'm not doing stupid stuff. I'm not a gambler, I'm not a drug user. I just, I don't go down those things. And, you know, I've got a fiance, so I'm set there. This idea of success and working out, or like, even faith or like sometimes it's just continued. Like, how much better could you get? Like, I've never arrived at anything. So now it's like, how. Because I gave up, I didn't go to church every Sunday, I didn't hang out with friends. I didn't see my family enough. I didn't focus on my fitness. You know, I didn't have a lot of fun. So now I'm trying to catch up for those years. You know, I. I really want to do a lot of stuff for a lot of people. But one thing I don't want to do is just pass out fun tickets to people. I want to invest in their dreams, especially the close people in my life, my cousins and my family. Like, look, look at. If you're past 70, I'm going to help you out. You don't have to work anymore, but if you're, if you're my age, 40 or younger, like, let's invest in your ideas. I'll help you along the way. I've learned a lot in the process. And I'll tell you something stupid. I'm going to ask you a million questions. I don't need to tell you anything. I could ask you a question. You'll come to your own conclusion based on the questions I ask you.

[Scott Clary]

But you think that, because you mentioned, you mentioned something that, like, you know, most billionaires are not happy, which I agree with, but I think that they.

[Tommy Mello]

Got too much to worry about. More money, more problems.

[Scott Clary]

But they also, I think they've lost like that original purpose. I think there is definitely half.

[Tommy Mello]

There's a man's search for meaning. You lose your purpose. You just. But the other thing is, is, like now you think about it, a billionaire, you start Questioning. Now, this hasn't happened with me. You start questioning people that want to hang out. You start questioning family members that start showing up, start breaking. Like, now you got four houses. There's a problem with the roof. The hot water heater went out. Like, yeah, well, you. So you.

[Scott Clary]

You were on Money Wise. Yeah, with Sam Farr, and this is a fun podcast. He breaks down how you spend money. And I don't think. I mean, like, I've listened to a couple of these episodes, and. And people with massive amounts of wealth, like, they talk about their. Their maintenance costs on their homes, right? And it's just an insane amount. It's an insane amount. So it's like, it truly is more money, more problems. So it never ends, you know, if.

[Tommy Mello]

You do it for the right reasons. Like, look, my cousin, his wife, they just had an anniversary. Ryan is Cheryl. Their friend Katie Klein was in town. We went and saw Rob Schneider perform. Like, if you got the ability to do great things and enjoy. Like, I didn't get the house to say, look at my house. I got it because I have family there. I've got the family office. They all stay there.

[Scott Clary]

You always invite people. You had me over.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah. I'm always gonna have, like, that's. It's a bonding spot, and I want to just have fun and I want to do cool things. So, like, ultimately, I think a lot of people are like, look what I have. And they compare, like, keep up with the Joneses, and that's never going to create happiness. And I'll tell you, there's a lot of people that buy a massive house and then they downsize. And some people don't even like to own. They're like, some of the most wealthy people in the world. Like, I don't. I don't need that liability because it turns in. It's not a liability. Hopefully, it goes up in value. The real estate does well, but breaks, and ultimately, it could be a liability. Especially, like, you don't need much more than two. Just you get nice Airbnbs flying. Private's super cool, but you got to have Internet. You got to have Elon hook you up.

[Scott Clary]

Starlink.

[Tommy Mello]

If you don't have Starlink, it's not. It's not near as fun. Like, I'd rather go first class than private if I can't have the Internet.

[Scott Clary]

The reaction that I've heard from many people that have sold for, you know, nine figures, like, high eight figures. It's like this immediate fear that you're going to screw it up. You're going to screw up some. And it's like, it's more like it's stupid because if you just invested it like in a very conservative 5% of 200 million, you're gonna, you're gonna be just fine, right?

[Tommy Mello]

You're making 10 million a year.

[Scott Clary]

You're like, you're stressed out for some reason you're gonna screw this up or that you can't do it. I don't know if this is a universal experience. I'm sure some people have an ego and they think they're God's gift to business and that they're never going to screw anything up. But a lot of the, the, the self aware people that I know that don't have a huge ego. Very, very humble, successful people. Like for a moment you're worried about all the things you mentioned, like, am I going to screw this up and I have to figure out how to invest. Just because I'm a good operator doesn't mean I'm a good investor. Now I have to sort of audit everybody who comes into my world because are they, you know, liking me for me? Are they going to take advantage of me? So all these like, like rich people problems, of course, for sure. But, but I think that, I think that anybody who's on this journey at some point, if you stay in this game long enough, you'll find a way to make more money than you even thought possible. Like in all seriousness, like again, it's like time in the game. If you stay in the game, you will make more money than most W2s ever will earn.

[Tommy Mello]

Listen, I'm two decades into this and I've already had success. So I'm like a guarantee now. But most businesses fail. If it was easy, everybody would do it. You give a piece of your soul away for a temporary time. Sometimes a temporary time is two years, sometimes it's 10. But there's a lot of problems. There's a lot of people that turn their back on you. A lot of backstabbing. There's a lot of people that, that aren't loyal. And by the way, loyalty goes both ways. There's a lot of owners that don't do when they sell for anybody in their company and they say this is mine and this is my family's, we took all the risk. And that's not so it goes both ways, you know, by the way, there's more shitty owners than there are shitty employees. Probably.

[Scott Clary]

I was alluding to that. When I talk about the $100 million being paid out, like I'VE been part of exits, and I've. I've seen a lot of friends exit. They don't all pay out their employees. Most don't.

[Tommy Mello]

Look, if you. If you do, there's still somebody that thinks they got screwed. And, you know, I just wish it was. I mean, my CFO calls me Santa Claus.

[Scott Clary]

But literally, after. After this, everyone's going to go figure out how to install garage doors, are going to.

[Tommy Mello]

Look, I'll tell you this. My buddy that I'm meeting tomorrow in Naples, he's got a garage door company. He's very successful. He exited a massive H Vac company. He goes, dude, I cannot stand garage doors. He goes, it's not even in this hemisphere. He goes, the minute my non competes up, I'm going back to H Vac. I've never met anybody that went into garage doors. Been like, this is it. It's just 20 years. If you do anything for 20 years, you're more than likely to be successful if you make it through the hard times, which is hard to make payroll. And just the times when you don't want to go and you have to go, when it's like a nightmare and you're just like, dude, can any more. I remember I. We bought this new building in the bank, gave me a bridge loan, waiting for the. I was gonna get a. A loan from. What is that called? The. Like, a Small Business association loan. Sba.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And for some reason, I got turned down. And they're like, well, this bridge loan, you didn't get the sba. How are we going to work this out? I go, well, I'm in the building. I can make payments. I kind of got all the leverage here. I didn't tell him that, but I'm like. And my COO at the time, the Adam guy I was talking about, goes, what are we going to do? And I remember me and Adam went to my neighbor's house. We were all really good friends, still great friends. And Tim's. Tim's my neighbors. Grabs us a beer, and he's like, so, how's business going? And Animal goes, he shakes his head. He's like, it's bad. And, like, that's when it all sunk in. My stomach just went hollow. Like, I didn't ever say it out loud. Like I knew what was going on. And it was hard, man. I was like, holy shit. Like, I'm taking out equity lines to pay stuff. And I tried to guarantee it.

[Scott Clary]

I'm assuming, too.

[Tommy Mello]

What's that?

[Scott Clary]

They're personally guaranteed.

[Tommy Mello]

Oh, everything. Everything. Was personally guaranteed. I mean, I put it all on the line. I rolled the dice way too many times. I doubled down, I just pushed it back in and, you know, but put me in a tight spot. That's when I do my best. Like, I got this switch that I'm like, all right. And that's when I turn into the bad cop and I. I get rid of people, I downsize, I close markets. I do whatever I have to do, because survival of the fittest and I know how to survive. I've done it too many times. But that's not a position you want to put yourself in or a position I'll ever be in again. But that's the fight or flight that very few people have.

[Scott Clary]

But I think that, again, speaking to entrepreneurs, I think at any point, every entrepreneur ever has gone through a period of that. It's not that. It's not that. It's not that they're all going to, you know, double down and take super high risk. Sometimes you can take relatively low risk and things work out and you find product market fit and you scale a little bit slower or whatever. But I think that at some point there's going to be like, a moment in every entrepreneur's life that is exactly like what you're describing where you just, like, get this feeling and you're like, shit, what do we do now? And I truly do believe that your ability to succeed is based on, like, how you react in those moments. Because I was talking to this guy. He has a publicly traded holding company. So he has like a. Is a whole shell. Yeah, shell. And he buys companies. And he's like, I thought this was going to be a good idea. He's like, scott, every single day I get more anxiety than most people would ever deal with in their lifetime. And I allow myself five minutes to be angry or stressed or whatever, and then it's just like, I gotta shut that feeling off and go back to work. And. And, you know, there's levels to. Of stress. It's first of all because he has a shell company and there's like, there's investors that he has to. And he has to, you know, deal with when the stock goes down. Whatever. Investors aren't too happy. Obviously, all his portfolio companies, if they. If they work well or not. One of his portfolio companies was a crypto company, so some of his bank accounts were getting locked out and frozen. One of his other portfolio companies was creating components for the Iron Dome in Israel. So he was getting death threats right after October 7th. So he's like it's not like just business stress.

[Tommy Mello]

There's more to it.

[Scott Clary]

He's like, we had to install like metal detectors, armed guards at the, the front door of our office because people were saying they're going to come kill me. So this is extreme examples obviously, but the point is you just learn to either deal with it or you just can't play this game. I've even thought about like, you know, love him or hate him, like the amount of stress that Trump deals with, I think he is immune to feeling stress anymore. I mean most people don't get indicted and then jump on stage the next day and you know, give this little talk when you're running for, for president of the U.S. i don't know what.

[Tommy Mello]

Was going through his mind, but that dude is a soldier and he's, he's. This is the difference like between a lottery winner and. Where I'm at is I was bred through life's challenges to be able to understand compound interest, money and to be able to say, look, everything I, for the most part, like mostly everything is appreciating. It's going up in value.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Tommy Mello]

And like I don't go out and like even the boat I'm building.

[Scott Clary]

You're building a boat?

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, it's called a Standcraft. It's an all wooden boat.

[Scott Clary]

I didn't know you're building a boat.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah, it's in, it's in Coeur d'. Alene. But like that boat is an art piece that'll go up in value. I was going to tell you, you.

[Scott Clary]

Know.

[Tommy Mello]

Jim Carrey once said, I hope everybody gets filthy rich and becomes famous, then they'll understand that's not the answer. And you know, there's certain people. My brother in law worked at ge now he's the CEO of the family office and he would go to India and he'd tell me stories about these little kids that were basically homeless, but they'd be in a car and the like eight of them in a tiny car and just yelling out, singing and, and you gotta understand like you really need to sit down with yourself in this quiet dark place and just really think about what gets you going. What gets you. What is those happy moments where you feel like amazing. And a lot of people that work that I work with say like it's, I do it all for my family. I'm like, that's you should be doing it for you. You need to love yourself first. And if you don't love yourself, there's no point in doing anything. Like you'll never show up for anything you care about if you don't start to find that inner peace and think you deserve more.

[Scott Clary]

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[Tommy Mello]

Out. Yeah, you know, taxes. I remember getting my CPA. He's like, dude, you owe 300,000. I'm like, I don't even have that in my bank account. Let me look at those tax forms. He's like, no, but you made this. I'm like, there's not money in the account. How did I make it? And he's like, well, you bought all those new trucks and you got a warehouse full of inventory. You can't write off inventory. Here's what I figured out. If you're doing cash accounting, which most people should be doing, accrual, what I would do is call all my vendors in December that I'm doing marketing with all the mailers, every single company, and say, could I prepay you for six months? And I could prepay them, get a better fee. So I'd negotiate it down.

[Scott Clary]

30. Yeah, because you're paying them up.

[Tommy Mello]

Front. And then I'd pay it and I'd get that written out. But you can't do that with inventory. You could do that with marketing. And so there was some cool stuff I was able to. You now with. When you do accrual. That's why.

[Scott Clary]

Banks. But you learn this by going through the fires.

[Tommy Mello]

Man. I was like, dude, I'm going through the.

[Scott Clary]

Fires. They don't teach you this in.

[Tommy Mello]

School? No, no, none of this stuff. I got a. I got an mba. I didn't know any of this stuff. I was taking apart annual reports for Home Depot doing useless stuff that didn't deliver I learned how to network, I learned how to public speak, and I hung out with the right guys in my mba and I learned about search engine optimization and editing videos and like Yelp and what Yelp meant and a little bit of psychology. But overall, would I do it again? Probably. But I. I don't know if I'd. Well, here's what I'm nervous about. AI. I mean, I'm cautiously optimistic, but the world's about to change. Like combine the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell combined. So the telephone, the industrial revolution, which was able to feed and farm everything, combined the handheld cell phone, which is a computer in your pocket. Combine all those things, it dwarfs what AI is going to do. All of them put together times 10 still dwarfs what's about to.

[Scott Clary]

Happen. Yeah, I know, I know. But so tell me why. Because a lot of, you know, white collar knowledge workers, for sure they're going to be in trouble. Why does service based, like, what's. What are you scared.

[Tommy Mello]

About? Well, my whole marketing is like, look, we dominate on everything we do. And it's like, here's the deal. If you were going to be number one in the nine, in the 80s 90s or the early 2000s, all you had to have is the triple truck and the yellow book. You were guaranteed if you were the first one in with the double page, then they did a triple truck with.

[Scott Clary]

This. Can I say something too? I know that you named it.

[Tommy Mello]

A1. Yeah. You wanted to book. It's like, like anything.

[Scott Clary]

Alphabetical. OG.

[Tommy Mello]

SEO. Yeah, anything alphabetical. A1 pops up. The only thing that is. It beats AAA. A1 comes before AAA. The only thing that beats A1 is 1A. And 1A doesn't really mean anything. A1's like A1 from day one. Dude, I'm top notch. So, like, this whole world's about to change and I'm ready for it. And I've got enough network that we're on the cutting edge of everything. We're looking at everything right now. We're learning. I don't care Reddit. I don't care what we're doing. We're going all in on everything. Thumbtack and Angie. And now it's like, this was our marketing. We knew how to do it. Now it's opening back up to all these things. And anybody that says they know how to beat the system, it might last for 60 days, but you got to have an omni approach. You got to be a B testing. You got to be looking out. And am I worried? Not really, but am I like, wait a minute. Bill Gates just came out and said in five to six years you're not going to need to work. Robots are coming out next year, $20 trillion market cap that Elon Musk. Now there's 10 other ones. I was with one of the founders of Bessemer, one of the largest investment in software companies on the planet. Venture capitalists. He said there's 10 companies working on fusion. We're betting on a one of them. Fusion is the answer to all of energy problems in the world, which is great. Getting away from oil and everything else. Windmills are, solar, I mean it's just all.

[Scott Clary]

Everything. Yeah, but this is like the next three.

[Tommy Mello]

Years. He said in the next two there will be a solution. And then I was with the old CEO of Google at a Goldman Sachs event. He goes, look, Silicon Valley in San Francisco. We believe in the next three years there's going to be things that happen that change everything, the way humans interact and do everything. And he didn't allude to what it was. But I'm like, because I would love to live in a utopia where we could just. But, but I'm trained to like purpose, purposeful stuff. Like I want to do fun things that like I win. And some of that's business, some of that sports, some of that's just working out. But like I can't imagine a world where there's just like well what are you going to do today? Well, whatever we want. I mean I have days like that. I have a lot of vacations and fun.

[Scott Clary]

Stuff. But like for the rest of your life you lose purpose, you lose. But I want to point something out too, like you're, you are a service based.

[Tommy Mello]

Business. We're not going anywhere anytime.

[Scott Clary]

Soon. No, but I think that, I think that most people in like service industries or like legacy industries or whatever you want to call them, I don't think that they're paying half as much attention as they should. Like I think that the average SaaS startup is paying attention to AI, is paying attention probably to if you have an issue for like shipping logistics and you're an early stage startup, you're wondering, okay, how do we incorporate our solution into like a robotic workforce for example, and how do we deploy that? Like I know there's a company figure and the CEO is Brett Adcock and I think right now, if I'm not mistaken, I think it's BMW. They already have robots that are replacing people, factories, robotics, 500,000 jobs, Amazon. Yeah, warehouses. So all these forward looking companies are researching this, but there are so many industries that are going to get, they're going to get.

[Tommy Mello]

Screwed. So here's the prediction of everybody. And by the way, I don't know what my team thinks. I think some of them know what I'm doing. But I'm out being curious and asking questions, going in the right doors and meeting the right people. And I'm a forward thinker and I'm not thinking next year, I'm thinking five, 10 years down the road like autonomous vehicles. What does that do for garage doors? Like, I'm thinking about a lot of things and the big are going to get massive. The, the early winners will start eating everybody's market share and just gobbling up businesses. There will be way more losers than winners and the winners are going to win massively. So if you're not paying attention, this is your wake up call. And you better be a forward thinker, you better be curious, you better be asking questions, you better be paying attention, you better be reading, you better be showing up to the right conferences, you better listen to podcasts. Every single thing you could do. Because it's the people that just put their head down and say I'm going to go to work, they're missing out. And don't get me wrong, I enjoy focus, but you got to be exploratory. You got to be learning new things every.

[Scott Clary]

Day. Okay, so then people, and I'm making an assumption, people in service industry are not as forward thinking. When you talk to your peers, are they all looking into AI or are.

[Tommy Mello]

You? Well, I surround myself with only a select few that we could, okay, competitors. But no, when I'm talking, these aren't even, you know, there's a couple companies that might be, they're in a stage. Most people I know that they're like having so many issues and so many big goals and they're falling short and the weather is not right and all these things. I will say that the business that runs solely on Systems and our CSRs have scripts and we got script compliance and we've got exact script compliance in the field where we've got tools that listen to the conversation and, and like we know if you drive wrong, we, we know exactly where inventory, when it shows up, where it's at. Like the pizza being cooked in the oven, that shows you we know all those things. So I'm so forward looking because I don't have the fires anymore. Like we don't get distractions like we used to get. Like somebody's getting a phone call saying all hell just broke loose. We don't get those calls.

[Scott Clary]

Anymore. You don't. You, you have the.

[Tommy Mello]

Time. We, we have the time. And I would say, look, I won't say that for everybody on my team. My COO works very hard in a lot of meetings and that's one thing he knows he's got to do is start being shorter meetings. Instead of an hour meeting, make it 10.

[Scott Clary]

Minutes. Yeah, he's got a, he's got a. Take a page from your playbook and fire himself from some of the things he's probably doing. But yeah, I think that that's it. Like if you, if you, because you can build a business and be a firefighter for a significant part of the journey when you're building that business, but then when an opportunity comes up, you don't have the mental bandwidth to go figure it out. And then there's going to be some startup that does have the time and the energy and the mental bandwidth to go figure out that's going to take your.

[Tommy Mello]

Shit. Well, how do you hire people smarter than you? And I would say most of the people, they're very, very smart on my team, the C suite, and they do a pretty good job. But one wrong hire that you put the trust into could set you back six months. I mean, it was very hard to get my cfo, my CEO, my CFO share an ea. I couldn't get him to hire any for years. I'm like, guys, how are you still looking at.

[Scott Clary]

Your. Why do people have such an issue delegating even at that level? Like you're, you're a cfo, CEO of a, you know, like a, a billion dollar company. I mean, at that point you should be having an.

[Tommy Mello]

Ea. Well, the deal is, is like off your table. What are they going to do? I got to look at the email and respond. How they're going to respond for me, like, they're not going to know how to book the tickets. I don't like to sit in the aisle. I like to sit in the window. That is not me. But everybody has. It only takes five minutes to book, book a flight and book a hotel. Another five minutes. It only takes me about an hour to check all my emails and respond to them. And like, what are they going to do? Like, how do they know? So it takes three months to train and that's to get somebody barely up to speed. So you're like, and then you're putting all this trust. What if they fail? What if they make a mistake? How they know how I think and so there's a lot of things that they go, man, if I delegated this, what if it doesn't get wrong, done right. And most people, like, you should race towards people failing. Like, if your EA screws up, that's a lesson learned. That's never going to happen again. If you hired right. And then what's. What system did you.

[Scott Clary]

Create?

[Tommy Mello]

What. How do you make sure that no other plane gets booked? If I got. Why do I have three layovers? Never do that again. Then it'll never happen again. And then you never have to do it again. So you. It's very tough to go through the pain. And then the worst is you get somebody that's dialed and everything's perfect now. And then something happens. They quit, their husband's got to move, whatever it is, and then you just lose all trust. And I've been through that, and I'm like, are you better off delegating and trusting and failing or better off just continuing to run the road on your own? And it's so much better to put trust in people and you get screwed over a little bit. Things happen wrong. But it's all a learning experience. Race towards.

[Scott Clary]

Failure. I like that. How do you find the A.

[Tommy Mello]

Players? Well, usually at our size, A players find us. I mean, I'm very fortunate. But in the early days, listen, you got to find the right person. It's very hard to do really great interviews, and you got to check who they work for, why they leave. You got to ask the right questions. And then here's the best news. I learned this from Kevin o', Leary, and I've done this. I did it before he even said it, so I knew I was on to something. But if you get a really important person said, listen, we're going to try this out for 90 days. I want to make sure you love me, I'm a hard person to work for, and that we get along good. And I'll pay you more as a 1099 contractor than I will as a W2. When you come on, you'll get all the benefits. But here's my expectations of you. It's a few pages. It's pretty clear. I want to know what your expectations are of me, how to really lead you in the right way and make sure we get along great. And if we both love each other at the end, great. But let's just agree right now. If something doesn't go right, it's no big deal. I'll still. I'll still tell people how amazing you are. Maybe we just don't click. So you get that trial and you try it before you buy it for both.

[Scott Clary]

Parties. Last thing I want to, I want to go into because like you've built again massive business. But there were points in your, in your journey, like where you let your health go. You mentioned before where some relationships didn't work out. I know now this is like a broad, you know, topic, but now you're, you're a little bit closer to God than I think you were certain parts in your journey as well. So the point is I don't like when people build and then they let their physical health, mental health, relationships, spiritual, all that go to shit. I think that that's, I think that, I don't think it's necessary, but I know it happens to a lot of people. I, I truly do believe that there's ways to may at least maintain. I don't think you're always going to be like killing it in every single bucket simultaneously. But I mean, argue with me or not, but if you agree, then what would you do differently while you were on the come up so that you don't let all those other things sort of go by the.

[Tommy Mello]

Wayside? Yeah. So there's 168 hours in a week. Have you spent 60, let's just say you spent 70 working and 50 sleeping. You still got, you still got 50 hours left. Every single person listening to this podcast, focus on time management. Focus on setting your alarm clock versus your bedtime alarm versus your alarm clock. Focus on how to be more efficient with your time. You know, there's certain, certain things you could do that you think take an hour, but you could get it down to 5 minutes. Continuous improvement on your schedule and learning how to delegate. Don't dump delegate means here's what needs to be done, here's why it needs to be get done, here's when it needs to get done by. Here's the resource you have available, here's what you get if you get it done. Here's the time we're going to meet up to discuss if it's getting done so you don't procrastinate. And if you delegate and document delegation correctly and it's not easy to do, these are new habits that you've got to learn. Everything comes easier. And I've just got this memory I don't forget. Like if I want to get something done, I'll wake up in the middle of the night be like, did we get that done? And people know that about me. They're like dude, how do you remember all this stuff? I'm like, look, I sent you this email, and I don't send emails anymore. But, you know, if anything, you communicate with me through text. That's about it. I mean, maybe a Facebook message there and there. But I'm to the point now where if I could delegate text messaging, I would. They would be like, you'd have my number. I probably have 150, 200 people, because literally, like, I get more text messages about, hey, what do you think about.

[Scott Clary]

This? And I'm like, it's all about delegation. Well.

[Tommy Mello]

Yeah. Have you read my book? Like, have you, have you listened to my podcast, People? Like, if you were me, what would you do? I was like, go learn, study. Go find somebody that's in your industry. That's because when you become successful, you want to. You want to pay it forward. You're like, most people are like, but you don't want to do it for the dumb people that ask dumb questions, that don't listen, that tell you how good they're going to be and how amazing. And I'm going to be just like. And I'm like, dude, you come in humble. Like, I used to walk in there with a notepad into these big shops. I'd smile, I'd be respectful. I buy everybody lunch and I'd learn. I'd go hang out, watch them take inventory, watch them train. And they were like, yeah, you really enjoy this stuff. And I'm like, listen, I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to call you again until I do what you told me to do. I'm going to first implement what you did before I call you back. And they just respected that. Everybody, all my mentors were like, you're the real.

[Scott Clary]

Deal. That's how you track the people that are actually going to point in the right.

[Tommy Mello]

Direction.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. You don't disrespect their time.

[Tommy Mello]

Act. You're just super curious. You're not bragging about yourself. You're not telling them all your dreams. You're asking really good questions. And when they ask you a question, you could respond. But so many people, they want to talk about themselves for three hours and they never, they sit down with a guru. They never got to get the questions answered. And if you were me, what would you do? Well, you don't have any of your numbers. You don't have any business plan, you don't have any KPIs, you don't have a CRM set up. I don't even Know what's the tenure of your average employee? Like, what are your goals? And they come in and they want you to just. And everybody thinks there's a silver bullet and there are no silver bullets, dude, there are none. You hire, right? You take care of people. Those are not silver bullets because you're going to make a mistake in that.

[Scott Clary]

Process. But at the end of the day, if you do want to drive the people that are going to change your life, like show up with respect, you got to.

[Tommy Mello]

Justifying. Look, you met Gina, right? And I don't think you probably did this, but you probably were thinking, like, what? What do I want in a woman? You probably went through other relationships and you know what you didn't want. You know, if you really thought about it, you wrote down a list, you would read this list out loud. I'd be like, man, I got to become a better version of myself to even deserve a girl like this. And so when I want to attract the right people into the business, I wrote down 30 things I would need to become to even be worthy, to even attract them. Like a great communicator, have the best benefits. Make sure that I'm doing open book management, that everyone knows where we're at and I'm communicating all the time, showing them the plan, caring about their dreams just as much as my own. Like, I wrote down all these things and it's not perfect. I would say I'm a work in progress, I always will be, but I'm always shooting for the next level to become a better leader for them. And I will say it goes both ways, though. I wanted to tell you quickly, Gino Wickman, I know I'm going back to something here. Gino Wickman sold his company, Eos. It's probably one of the best management philosophies in the world. Like the, the rocks and the way you have meetings and take off a month and a lot of people sell their business and they fill this empty void of just pure emptiness. They make a lot of money. They're sitting on. There's gold bars everywhere. They got more than enough money to do whatever they want for anybody in their family. And yet there's this massive void of just nothingness, of just a loss of purpose, a loss of their identity. Their work has become their identity. And it happens with everybody. And all of a sudden you sell and you've got all this money. And he wrote the book Shine and he came up with 40 alternatives of what you do. Sometimes it's ayahuasca trip, sometimes it's deep, you know, see a shrink. But whatever it is, like, for me, I didn't lose my identity because I'm still a CEO and I built other meaning in other things. Like, I've invested in other businesses, but still my rock is still a one, and it always will be, because that's my. Like that. That. That's what changed everything. That's what changed a lot of people's life. But it changed my life. It changed my family's life. Listen, we added, through garage doors, we added the generational curse. That was literally a cord around my neck. My family, the generational curse, we snipped.

[Scott Clary]

That. But I think that actually that answers, like, in a roundabout way. I actually think that answers like my question. Because, yes, your identity can be your business, but. But it can't be, like, your worth either. So, like, your identity can be your business. It's good. It's important. Like, it got rid of this. This generational curse. But at the same time, it wasn't the. Like, you don't define yourself only like, Tommy is not just a one. But I think that a lot of people just become their business, only their business. And that's why they lose purpose when they sell. Exit, whatever. Like, even if you sold an exit, like, listen, I don't think that you would lose.

[Tommy Mello]

Purpose. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I want to use my brain, and I don't want to do it through crossword.

[Scott Clary]

Puzzles. No, I understand.

[Tommy Mello]

That. So how do you use your brain? And I've invested in a lot of things that I get to use my brain. But. But I've built so much chemistry in my business, and it took years and years and years and years. I know every single. The leaders I know so well, and I don't need to communicate. Like, sometimes I can look at somebody, we automatically know what's going to happen, and that takes years and the camaraderie that comes with that. But I will say, you know, I had a. I have a mentor. His name's Cameron Herald. And he goes, look, you know what I hate the most is when people say, what do you like to do? I like, you know, I love to work. Like, I've really built the job. I love. I love to go into work. And he goes, dude, what a bunch of bs. He goes, what'd you like to do when you were 13? He said, what were you fascinated with? Did you like to hunt? Did you like to collect baseball cards? Did you like to go to movies? Did you like to go bowling? What kind of leagues were you in? Like, find out what you love outside of what you consider working. And I was like, we were having a podcast and he goes, what do you like to do? And I was like, oh, no, I'm not gonna tell you. I like to.

[Scott Clary]

Work. Do you think that it's important to have hobbies outside of what you do? Look, I think you're more balanced than you think you're balanced. Like you. The way you come across when you talk to me, you don't sound like you're balanced at all. But I know you, and I actually think you're very balanced, which is interesting to me because I know people that are more obsessed, that don't have good relationships, that don't have good health, that don't have anything else in their life. And I actually think you have all of that. But that's what I see outside. Looking in, like, I see somebody who's built a nine figure valuation business. You say that you can't do anything but work because you have to use your mind, but I, I think you are selling yourself short. And I think that, I think that most people would look at you and say you have incredible balance for what you've built. That's my.

[Tommy Mello]

Interpretation. Well, look, I. I will say that it's gotten better every year and I'm built. I'll tell you, I got a whole file on my phone of when I turned 45. I'm 42, you might say. Why 45? Well, I still got an obligation here for the next few years, but. But it's, it's not going to change when I turn 49 and 364 days. It's got to be a plan. And this includes everything from meditation, daily journaling. It includes what my work life. Like, you gotta manifest it. This is my biggest. If you could learn anything from this podcast. Everything that I do is by design. It's setting a big goal, it's writing it down and what needs to happen. You don't wake up one day and it's all there. You don't go, man, I'm at 6% body fat. First you got to get to 15, then you got to get to 12, then you got to get to 10. And there's got to be disciplines within their macros county. You get the right protein, you got to have the right cardio, you got to have the right doctor to make sure your glands are, you know, the testosterone levels and everything else. So, like, that's everything. If you want to be a strong Christian, you don't Just wake up one day and be like, man, my faith is amazing. You got to go to church and you got to spend time with the Lord and you got to pray and you got to. You got to get involved with the community. So, like, everything I'm doing is by design. And you wonder why, like, Jeff bezos doesn't work 60 hours a week. He doesn't. Elon Musk does. But he's got five freaking companies he spent. He go. He goes into each one for five hours every other week, finds the problem, solves them, stays out of people's.

[Scott Clary]

Hair. I want people to connect with you. Where do people go to get your podcast? Connect with you on social? Where do you want to send.

[Tommy Mello]

Them? Tommymello.com has all my handles. The podcast is Home Service Millionaire, if you like Home service. If not the mellow millionaire. You were on that amazing guest. You know, you're. You've got a massive following, and you're just a good.

[Scott Clary]

Guy. So if you could only pass on one lesson to your kids, like the most important lesson that's changed your life, what would that lesson be and.

[Tommy Mello]

Why? Yeah, so my casket. I want two things. Number one, best dad in the world, which has nothing to do with your question, and I don't have kids yet. But number two, the most curious man, and my favorite three letters that I teach everybody in my training is ask Go for no. You got to ask more questions. Be more curious. Be willing to do the work. So I think no matter how good your success is, be curious. Like, go learn more. Use your brain. Don't let it just die. Success leaves clues, so make sure you're getting. Look, there's a couple of things when you're asking. Hang out with people. You got a common future instead of a common past, and manifest what that future is going to be. Get into the right rooms with the people. If you really wanted to be 8% body fat, you'd probably. I would see who your top five friends you hang out with. And you guys are eating very, very clean and everything. If you want to be, like, really close and you say you're religious, show me your five friends. If you want to be a drug addict and go to the strip club, look at your friends, you will become who you hang out with. So when you're curious, be curious to the right people. That's what I would. That's what I tell my kids, is listen, get in the right circles, ask great questions, and never feel like you're there. Never feel like the day you feel like you've arrived is the day you could throw me in the.

[Scott Clary]

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