Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries. Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning. We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions. And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats. It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement. We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all. This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement. Let's get to work now. Your host, Sam Wakefield.

Well, all right. Welcome back to Close It Now. Sam Wakefield here. And today I am honored and blessed to have a guest on that. Rumor has it you may have heard his name before. I'm going to go down just a couple of the things that he does and his organization does and I'm sure we're going to dive into some things today. And I want to start it out with this quote. This quote is right towards the end of his second book, which we'll name here in a second. And it says we have the responsibility to grow at the fastest, fastest rate we can grow. And I love that. And it's actually going to become, it's going to come go right here on my wall as because it is a responsibility as we grow both as people and our businesses and the things we're doing. So that is the quote. It is by Tommy Mellow. As everyone listening. If you don't know who he is, he is the founder of A1 Garage Doors. He has written to author of two books, I'm sure working on many more, Home Service Millionaire and Elevate. He also is runs the Home Service Expert podcast and hosts the Home Service Freedom event. Among I'm sure other things, please add if I missed anything. And he is of course one of the most, the biggest influencers in the home service industries right now. So thank you for Joining me today, Mr. Melo.

Glad to be here. It's going to be a fun podcast.

I'm looking forward to 100%. 100%. So yeah, so let, let's get going, man. I know that, you know, in, in all of the trades you've, of course you've been very intentional about being, you know, really public with a lot of things and, and really putting a lot of content out there which we're very grateful for. But there are still people, of course, who don't know your history, don't know your story. So typically an interview session like this, just give us a quick highlight reel, tell us a little bit of the struggle along the way and how did you get to where you are or just the highlight reel of how you got there and then a philosophy that really drives you to have that mindset.

Yeah, there's, there's a lot here, but I'm just going to jump into the meat of it. I'm from Detroit, moved out to Michigan, from Michigan to Arizona when I was 16 in 1999. Parents got a divorce when I was 7. Learned to work hard as a kid if I wanted something. And when I was young I knew how to make a lot of money. I just didn't know how to keep it. And I had a landscaping company, I knew how to sell very well. It was, I'm allergic to grass. So that was tough. But 2005, my roommate had asked me if I knew how to paint garage doors. And I did not know how to paint garage doors. But I learned very quickly. He gave me 100 bucks per door. He managed a pretty big garage door company. And I went through the yellow pages and called every garage door company, every single one of them became their primary painter. So I could paint 10 doors on Saturday, 10 doors on Sunday. And my profit for those two days was about 1700 dollars take home after gas, tape, paint. And I kept meeting with technicians and I learned really quickly that they were making great money. And this is as Phoenix and Vegas were just on fire.

Sure.

So we started a company, me and my other roommate called A1 Garage Door Specialists. And you know, the economy tanked. We didn't know we were doing. I knew how to form an ein number and start an llc, but didn't really understand how to make it in a. Almost a depression. It was the great recession and. But I knew how to build relationships and that got us through. And then 2010 we went our separate ways. I kept the business, I just renamed it A one Garage Door Service. I got my mom to move out from Michigan. She answered phones. My stepdad did payroll and did the stuff I hated. I focused marketing sales. 2014, I got a great integrator, but lots of mistakes along the way. I say the biggest thing I Learned is in 2008 when one of my mentors, he's a CPA, he only worked with 10 clients, all 100 million dollar plus clients. And he said, I don't know why kid, but I think you're going places and I want you to read this book. And I would consider working with you at no charge if you read it. And it was the E. Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. And I, I smoked this book. I mean I read it in two days and it, I said, can I have another book? And I returned that book. And he, he gave me the red Bible, which is Chet Holmes ultimate sales machine. Came back two days later. He gave called the Richest man in Babylon. And after that I was just on a learning spree. 2014, I found there's a book called Rocket Fuel that came out later. But I found my integrator and he was like very good at the things I hated to do. And 2017 I found service titan and found the best mentor I've ever had or will will ever have. His name's Al Levy with the seven Power contractor.

Love it. He actually was a guest recently on here.

He's, he's a lot of wisdom. I'm a lot more animated off the wall. I'll probably yell a little bit, get really passionate. My tonality changes a lot. He just had me sit down and focus.

Just.

Racehorses wear blinders. Shut the hell up. Let's finish your manuals, your SOPs, your, your checklist. Let's get everything dialed in. Let's build out your order chart and your depth chart. And he really just, he made me sit down and focus and he made me think about systems versus, you know, the firefighter. I was right. But I, I always had this mentality of I'm going to focus only on grassroots. I'm going to plan a lot of seeds in a lot of markets. Hindsight, I wish I would have gone all in on the markets. I did instead of, I thought if I plant seeds, water them, nurture them, and it's worked out pretty well. I can't complain. I had to close down four markets. I just didn't have the right leadership in these markets. That was a tough, tough day. I've had to walk out of two more markets recently that I didn't think I had a potential to get to 3 million of EBITDA. I've had to really, I've had to change my org chart quite a bit because the company will only grow as far as the people grow. And a lot of times there's the law of the lid.

Sure.

And when I notice somebody's at their peak, unfortunately they don't. But they might need a different seat on the bus or they might not fit the organization anymore. And that's a Tough call to make. Covet happened. Best thing that ever happened. I know that sounds bad.

No, I 100 agree.

And we, we invested all the PPP money back into the business and got really, really good. Look, I've been at the right place at the right time a lot of the time. We ended 2022, got a partner, Cortech. We love them. They were in town all day yesterday. You know, the business got to north of 27 million of EBITDA. Now we're going to hit right between 62 and 70, depending on how couple these small acquisitions go.

Sure.

This year. And it's a great relationship. And you know, there's been a lot of. I would say this. I'm the type of guy that I build the parachute on the way down. People say, ready, aim, fire. I'm fire, aim, ready. You know, I might miss the target a few times. Then I hit the target. Then I hit the bullseyes before the other guys even got the gun out. So I move fast. We make a lot of mistakes. We make a lot of mistakes and we learn from them. We don't make the same mistakes. That's the difference. I think we've done really well is we've learned from our mistakes. There's a lot of people that know they're doing the wrong stuff, but they continue to do it because it's hard to change. It's hard to do it differently. It's hard to hold people accountable. But yeah, I mean, what you talk about is radical responsibility to grow yourself. I was literally last Thursday, we call it Bring the fire. All 800 employees.

Yeah.

And I made the statement. I said, guys, I need you to work on yourself more than you work at this job. And I said, if any of you guys feel like this isn't the right position, I'll write you a letter of recommendation. You can put in your two weeks and then we'll see you in two months because the grass isn't cleaner. But leave on good terms because we've got our fourth guy that came back in three months.

Wow.

And they left on good terms. And I love it when they come back because they're a changed person.

Sure. Now they know the difference.

It's been a fun ride. You know that. That's the sum of it. I mean, God's been good. I've been focused a lot more. I used to focus only on finance, making money, and now I focus on family fitness. Finances is still a big one. And faith. I was not well rounded at all. And I lost a lot of Relationships. In the process of building this business. I'm not married enough, kids, never been engaged. So a lot of people come up to me, they're like, I want to do what you did. And I say, are you married or do you have kids? And they say, yes. And I say, well, I don't think it's fair to your family to do what I did.

Sure.

Even my sister and my mom and dad. I just, I don't think I was the best brother, best son or uncle. So it came at its. It's pretty expensive lessons. It's easy to say I'd like to change these things, but I don't know that I would. I think I would have been a better uncle and a better son. But business is hard. I always say I'm an overnight success of two decades.

Right.

People just say, if he could do it, I could do it. I say, absolutely, you can. And you can probably run a 4 minute mile if you spend the next 10 years. But why are you doing it? Because why would you? By the way? Money ruins people. It ruins them when they're not ready. And I would say I've had to learn this last couple years on what, how to keep money and how to invest in family office and trust and do everything right. Because making money and keeping money are two different responsibilities and completely different, you know, they're just different skill sets.

Sure, absolutely. So I saw some. This is. I love that we went down this road because I saw something recently on your social media and thank you for being so public about a lot of your personal life because it's very, of course, inspiring and it's great to see someone in your position. If we only see the highlight reel, everybody just thinks it's magic and all of these things that no one could ever achieve. But when they see your life, of course, and I saw that you were recently baptized in church and made a big decision there. Would you care to share a little bit about that? I love to give people a platform to talk really about anything that's important to you. And how has that affected some of what we're talking about right now?

Faith is a big deal to me. I believe in Jesus Christ and I could tell you a lot of stories about that. But when I was a kid, I was, I believed in Jesus. I just, there's times of my life that are off balance on purpose and you know, get, you get close to God and then you get away and, and then, you know, I got a grave lesson that I made a deal with God when my dad had Covid. And, you know, the deal was, is if you let my dad live, I'll be a better son. And I'll always exalt you. I'll give it to you because you're the one that put me here. And a guy called me up. My dad lived. He's doing great. And he called me up about a year and a half ago, two years ago, and he said, hey, you don't know me very well, but did you make a deal with Jesus? And I got really weird because no one had known this story. And I said, yeah. And he goes, I saw you on your hands and knees, crying. And he goes, I've just. Just take this for what it's worth. But the deal that you made, if you don't honor it, he'll take it away just as quick as he gave it to you. And it was crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was like goosebumps and, like, really weird out of body type experience. And, you know, that always. It always kind of reminds me of like, he's just, tomorrow's not promised. And, you know, I got my Life is Fun tickets. It's like, live each moment, enjoy the journey, enjoy the hike. And so I had an opportunity. I called my mom and dad and I said, do you remember getting me baptized? And they're like, your sister did, for sure. And I go, that's an important one. I might want to do that. So we go to this church called Impact Church. Travis Hearn is the pastor. He's actually coming on my podcast soon. And, you know, me and Bri talked about it. We're like, let's. Let's do this. And, you know, and. And I'm very open with my faith, and I'm not trying to convince anybody to believe in Jesus. I want them to watch me and they. I want people to say, I want what that guy's got. There's something going on. There's some type of inner peace. There's something that. It seems like he seems very contented and. And everything. He. He manifests a lot of great things. And I'd rather them ask me because I'm leading the life they want, than try to convince people through a debate to believe in Jesus or get closer to family or get their body in shape. But I know if I do it and I lead in the right way, that everybody kind of knocks on my door and says, what. What's. You know, can I go to church with you, or can I come to a workout with you, or can I meet your. Your mom and dad? Because I've heard a lot about them. Meet Bri. So that's the story. And, you know, I think it's important to find a church you actually enjoy. People go to church because they want to go to heaven. I got a church because I get a great message, and I actually enjoy, you know, this. This calm peace that I. When I leave. And I enjoy the whole sermon. I mean, I. I wouldn't say the worship is like, I'm not up there with the, you know, the tambourine. Sure, I do praise God. But I like the message the most of it.

I love it and that it's so fulfilling. One of the things that I, in this podcast, I talk a lot about is your spiritual practice. Everyone has one, you know, and I've never tried to, you know, nothing specific. It's more about are you doing what is in alignment with your own core values and living in integrity with that. And if you're not, then that's a deficiency where we've got to make our lives robust and really fill out the weak parts of our lives. We know what we should be doing, but just like business, it's easy to do and easy not to do. And so that's one of the things I help people so much, is like, just do what, you know to do in those areas. Start there first, and then you can increase and grow. But let's just do what we know from the foundation. And it's kind of the same in business. Right. We know to do all of these things. What has driven you to be able to do it where so many other people seem to consistently fall off? It maybe is a good question, too.

Yeah. You know, one of the things I've been really practicing is falling off intentionally and jumping back into the saddle. Because I think everybody has something happen where they get shaken up and they fall off, and it's really hard to get right. Right back into the habits and the rituals that you go by. So I think that's a skill is, you know, you jump off and you get right back on. But this idea of discipline is. Is. Is a discipline is 10 times larger, in my opinion, than motivation. Discipline is a characteristic of somebody. And when you start with hard things and you do things you might not want to do, ask yourself what you're willing to live with that's not so good, like getting up early and doing things like cold plunge or going on a walk every day for over an hour at a fast pace that you just don't want to do. But when you get into the habit, when you start with hard things, you start doing other hard things. And it's simple as flossing your teeth three times a day and making your bed. And you. One of the things is I try to get into the state of flow and that means everything's got to be orderly. I'm adhd, so if everything's organized and everything, and I could turn my cell phone off and I could be all in, I could accomplish five times more than other people in the same amount of time.

Sure.

So. And then this idea of commitment is if you don't stay committed to yourself, you stop trusting yourself. Your brain's got a way of saying whatever you say is really a figment of your imagination. It's not real. The goals aren't smart goals. There's no time based to it. You're not committed. It's a dream, not a reality.

Right.

So my goals are all reverse engineered and they, they have a deadline and they're mathematically configured. There's an equation, whether that's macros to get in shape with workouts, whether that's KPIs and business, family and faith are really hard to like. I can't, I haven't figured out the perfect equation.

Hard to put exact metrics to those, right?

Yeah. I mean, you know, tithe and spend as much time praying. But I think that's more of something that you got to make a want and figure out is what's your why is it?

Sure.

And a lot of people say, my why is my family. And I say, huh? Show me your credit card and your calendar and I'll show you what your priorities are.

Exactly.

Because, you know, Dan Martel is one of my coaches. He wrote back, buy back your time. And he comes home one day and his fiance left the ring on the table and said, I can't do this. I'm done. And he knew it was over. And he got a hold of her weeks later and she said, Dan goes, I don't understand. I was doing this. This was our dream. And she said, no, it wasn't. Dan, this was your dream. I was happy with what we had. I wanted you. You had a dream and it was, didn't include me. And that's the hard part about being in a relationship is you've gotta, you've got to have a team. When Bree started to really go all in on her health, it was a lot easier for me. And I think people miss that. When you commit yourself to somebody, it's important with what they want to do in the future, where they See your lives growing together. And that's. It's not easy. It's not easy being single, and it's not easy being married. Choose your hard wisely.

Exactly. Exactly. That's. This is one of the things, this is what I love so much about having the ability to help people with things like communication. You know, it's fun when we're doing. When I do sales training because so I get so many stories of people that in those types of situations, like, man, my wife said she's gonna write, wants to write you a letter to say thanks because our relationship's better, because I learned how to talk to people better. So. And it's so fun with those. I love that you're speaking into relationships because it's a piece that so many people miss. I. I get so tired. One of the reasons I started this podcast, and I know you will. You will resonate with this. I get so tired of going to our conventions in the trades and the running jokes from some of the business owners is, how many heart attacks have you had and how many wives have you had? And it just has grossed me out for so many years. It's like, let's be better people. Let's live that life that's worth living. Because we, if we live, if we work to live instead of live to work, it changes everything. And I feel like it sounds like you're going through, like a huge shift into this type of a transitional phase in your life. Is that correct, or am I. Am I correct in hearing that?

You know what I'm learning how to do is the power of no. It's easy to say yes. And by the way, every entrepreneur that's listening to this, they understand that you could probably do anything you put your mind to. And Dan told me, he's like, you're gonna lose billions of dollars of opportunities when you start saying no more. But imagine how much you'll. And there's this book called Essentialism. There's this book called Gary Go for no, not Go for no. The One Thing by Gary Keller. There's this idea of just extreme focus. And I'll tell you, look, there's been times where I'm like, man, my buddy's making so much money flipping houses, I'm going to go do that. And made a little bit of money, but it was just, it was stupid. And I think a lot of people in home service, specifically blue collar trades, there's always this shiny object on the sidelines.

Yeah.

You start taking the money out of the company right when it Starts being successful. You put all this, what, equity, this time, this effort, this energy, this money back into the business, and now it's kicking dollars. It's a flywheel. You put a buck and you take a buck 50 out and you start extracting out. Because we say to our husbands and wives, we deserve it. We deserve that, Harley. We deserve that second home. We deserve to put the kids in this expensive school. If they just have a little bit more discipline and delayed gratification, it would compound so much quicker. And this idea that Jonathan Warrilow talks about is build a cell. Your business is your best asset. When I learned how it works, it's not. It doesn't even feel legal because of how arbitrage works and how this comes together. And it's like, everybody's like, yeah, well, I don't ever want to sell. I want to give it to my kids. Every time I've heard somebody say, I want to buy it to my kids, I said, can we get your kids in the room and have a completely honest moment? And I've done this several times. Turns out the kids don't want the business, but it's your dream instead of their dream, right? Would you rather have a night and not. Not a trust fund baby, but enough money to invest if. If dad loaned you or mom loaned you the money to get your own dream? Would you rather have that and have a little bit more so you could enjoy it at an earlier time rather than getting the business when you're 37 and working on your dog?

Oh, 100. Yeah, that's exactly. Well, and the other thing, I love this. I love this concept, too, because, you know, when things are just given, it's easy. I was having a discussion with my lady earlier, and actually both of us are reading the same Ed Mylett book right now. We're just reading Max out. And she made this comment about, wow, it's so cool to see someone at this position, but hear their struggles and their story. No, you're good.

I wanted to buy the book.

Yeah, it's good. It's one of those. It gives away for free. You just pay the shipping. But it's so. It's a little snack. But it's so powerful because it reminds us that every master was once a disaster. We won't come across people that have achieved greatness that didn't have that struggle, because that struggle is what builds us into that. And it's not. If it was easy the whole time, everybody would do it, right?

No, you're right. And I just wonder what people's intentions are because they think. There's two things I found that I, I just think people are completely wrong about. Look, there's a point of money where you're. There's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So money is important, especially when you don't have a reliable car to get you where you need to go, or food on the table, or you can't go on a nice vacation. But after that, it's not as important. And people think money's the answer and they think fame is the answer. And I was with a buddy of mine, Jeremy Miner, the other night, and he was just explaining how he's got to get all these NDAs when he talks to people and he's worried about getting canceled and he's worried about coming after him, and that's. He's small, he's in sales, but that's nothing compared to like Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks. And so fame and this idea of money. Now don't get me wrong, people are like, yeah, it's easy for you to say, but they don't know that. I lived in the apartment complexes. We owned a thousand square feet for four years and drove the oldest truck, 2012 salvage title Nissan 10 with 280000 miles. Or when we went out to eat, I always had a salad because I didn't feel comfortable ordering a filet mignon because I just didn't, you know, I was very conservative with money and I started to save and I maxed out my Roth IRA till I couldn't invest in it anymore because I made too much money. I was designed to be a millionaire without a one or anything because I just. It's ordinary millionaire of like, you've invested and compound interest will do it. But this idea that this crazy amount of money is going to bring you happiness. Let me just tell everybody, you get to the top of this mountain and if you're at all like me, there's always another mountain. The difference is I go to base camp at the next mountain and people tell me how to get there five times faster. But the idea of everybody wants the views, no one wants to take the hike. And the people that do take the hike, you get to the top, there's more mountains. So if you don't learn to be happy now, you never will be.

Right?

And you think fame and money and these things are going to change, but they ruin you. I know people that get on drugs, they commit suicide, they become alcoholics, they become womanizers. You think that that's the answer. And I know it sounds so easy. Hey, Tommy's preaching here from a pedestal. But. But it. I had to relearn my life two years ago when the money came, like different type of money. And I don't have any regrets. I don't feel bad about it because a lot of people got blessed and they deserved it. And there's hundreds of people going to get blessed here in the next 18 months.

Sure.

And we're going to change the way the world. I've got big plans and it's a lot more than garage doors and it's way more purposeful, but it's a vehicle to get me to where I want to be.

When you are sitting in those flow states and you're really vision casting the future and this is something that is. We've heard so many people over the years. You've got your. Your why has got to make you cry. And you've got to write down your goals and you've got a vision cast and all of these kind of things. Can you take us through a little, especially for the guys that are like just hearing this type of concept for the first time. Can you take us through a little bit of maybe an exercise of. Because you talked about, you know, when you're writing your goals, having smart goals and deadlines and just a little bit of pointers to get these to help people get in the right direction mentally to start to think along these lines. How do we set. How do they set goals for their life and also create a vision worth chasing in their life with those goals?

Yeah. So I think you should try to sit down in a quiet spot without your cell phone and a pad of paper. And I think you should really write down how old you are today and write down every year of your. And pretend like you're 75 or 80 years old and you're looking back at your life. And when you're 41, what did you do? What? And you start to manifest. If you bought a house, what did the house look like? What road was it on? How many bedrooms? What was the square feet? Why did you buy it? Who did you spend time with there? You went to Italy, start picking out all the restaurants you went to and what you did. Did you go to the fifth Chapel or whatever? I don't even know that's in. I think that's in Rome. But what you start to manifest. And I, I just bought Jesse Itzler's big ass calendar to put the non negotiable times. There's Certain meetings I have to be at no matter what, committed to being there. Certain times with mom, dad, sister, niece and nephews and Bri. That's, that's planned on and it's, there's no negotiations and it's purely truly special time. It's not now, there might be three hours. I, I say in there that I'm going to do the work if, if it's a must. But ultimately what did we do to really start like have a plan that's detailed. It's not just, it's not a fart in the wind.

Yeah.

It's real. It's like we've got an agenda, we've got a time, we've got the, the flights are booked, we know where we're going. I think a lot of people are like, yeah, I want to make a lot of money. And I'm like, okay. I knew to get to $1 billion I need 2,000 technicians doing 500,000. I knew I was going to have to have the best recruiters. I knew I was going to be able to get vehicles and iPads and uniforms and tools quickly. I knew I was going the best trainers in the industry. I knew that I was going to have to be able to greenfield in a new markets like. And I built this whole thing and it became a reality because there was such a detailed plan. I knew exactly the amount of calls. So the booking rate, the conversion rate, the average ticket and the cost per lead to get there. I think people are just like, first of all, I love math. Luckily I got to the point advanced calculus. I used to carry a TI83 around. Now the calculator is the most opened app on my phone. I mean in my shower 83 right here, I, I literally like, I'm obsessed with math and that's why it's so easy for me to get in shape. It's just a mathematical equation. People know how to get a six pack but they don't have any. You know, Mel Robbins wrote the 5 second rule. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Make a quick decision to not have that beer or dessert or at the grocery store. Put back all the shit. It's this idea of like you don't have the ability to say no to the littlest things that create this little bit. It's great having a Twinkie or a donut or a cheesecake. It's great to drink, it's fun. But if you just had a little bit of ability to say no more often, the results would just be spectacular. And I just don't Think a lot of people, they're like, well, I don't want to live a life like that. I'm like, well, you. I still drink. It's just not as often. It's very. It's very few and far between. But it's planned. And I get to go in the sauna the next day, sweater all out, and go jump in the cold plunge. It's like, you can still have it. You can still do all the stuff. You just need to. Just you, you. There's no willpower. And that's what I noticed about a lot of people, is they. They want so much. But what. Let me ask you this. This is the number one question people need to be thinking about. What hard are you willing to accept in your life to accomplish the great. Because it comes through the hard stuff. And most people aren't willing to work like me. They're not willing to have their calendar organized. They'll never work with an executive assistant. I have two of them. They're not willing to delegate properly. They're not willing to fire when they know they should. They're not willing to communicate on the tough conversations. And. And this goes through all my four Fs. And the future self is the fifth F of what am I doing to learn more this week? What books am I committed to read, Reading and podcasts willing to listen to. And I'm going, like I said, I'm going on a trip to go do a shop visit. I'm sure we're going to take out a lot of great things out of there. We'll implement them, right? Because I meet people at these things, Sam and these guys and gals. I meet them three years later and they're the exact same spot. But they always have this great dream and they tell me all about it.

Here's what we're going to do, right?

Yeah. They're like, oh, man, you should see. We're gonna grow 50 this year. I'm like, have you grown 50% any year? And they're like, oh, man, that turns out the economy and interest rates were up and they've got every excuse, right? I'm like, why don't you set a realistic goal that you could commit to yourself that you could actually accomplish? And if you murder that goal, your brain's doing different things than always falling short on what you told yourself, because now you don't even trust yourself. You just don't. Never once have you set a goal you've hit. You said you were getting in shape. You're not in shape. You said you were going to start going to church. You're not going to church. You said you were going to be a better mother. You're not. You're not doing what you committed and your brain starts to not believe you anymore.

Right.

And that's the worst when you can't keep your commitments to yourself.

So starting there with keeping those so sounds like smaller goals, realistic goals that are attainable but also stretch us a little bit. But start making the set goals small enough we can make sure to hit them so we can start building the trust with ourself again and then grows from there to step bigger and bigger and bigger. Is that how I hear you correctly?

Einstein, Albert Einstein said the largest thing in the universe is compound interest. These little goals start to compound into something great. And I'll tell you, I don't love budgets or finishing our budget because I feel like it puts me in a box. But that's how everybody's bonus is structured. Every bank looks at a budget and they say can you hit your budget now? Unfortunately we're gonna, we're gonna beat our budget by quite a bit this year. But not nearly what I wanted. I've got Tommy goals. There's like your big hairy audacious gold and there's a Tommy goal. And we fell short of it this year. I'm not proud of it. But you know, I've reverse engineer next year. And the only way I hit my goals is by asking for help from as many people as possible. It's how quick I could seek out the answers.

Sure.

It's not me deliberating in a room coming up with everything. It's asking for help more often.

Sure.

And then saying who do you know that could help me implement these things quicker? Because now I can pay to play now. I could pay now I just, I just say I'm gonna throw money at it. It sounds crazy but I'm gonna go to the best person in the world for this. It's done it with a thousand people and just have them do this one thing. They're. They're a specialist. I don't find a jack of all trades. I don't, I don't hire consultants anymore that are just generalist. A hair specialist. And I've got a lot of them.

Oh. Makes total sense. So in the, in that journey because so it. For context, everybody, if you have not read either Home Service Millionaire or Elevate, you must read it. Or of course Drive Time University because that's what you're doing right now on the Podcast. Throw on the audible and listen to Tommy actually narrates Elevate because I just finished it. He reads his own book, which is great. Excellent job. And what I love. So part of what I love about authors reading their own books is I could definitely hear several sections you threw in and just kind of riffed on some areas. I was like, hang on. I want to clarify this for everybody. Different than the book. Which is awesome. Great to hear the input. But elevate for everybody listening. You've got to dive into this because Tommy goes through a big part of when you're in those places and how the importance of writing your systems and a lot of how to. To write some of the systems in the book as well. So everybody listen. If you're struggling with like, I don't have a system for this, listen to this book. It will definitely point you in the right direction to get those things in order. But when we're thinking about. Because I love to reference the book real quick. I've got a couple questions about that. But in that process, when you were going through and of course you talked about working with Al and he set you down and just made you focus. And what is it when you're writing a system for something, you or of course now your team leaders and division leaders, what is the steps to get that on track? Right. Because we can write a system and it may or may not be super accurate. But you talk a lot in the book about tightening those systems up. How do you recognize when things those. We have a system, but how do we tighten it up? Right. Let's get started writing it. But the pros and cons. Little. Little best practice around systems. I know it's a really important topic for you.

Yeah. So systems. There's either three reasons something fails. No system, the wrong system, or the current system that works is not being followed. So I think the system is kind of easy. The checks and balances. To make sure the system is being done properly is the hard part.

Okay.

So. And then the opportunity to delegate it is. Here's what needs to get done. Here's why it needs to get done. Here's the resources you have to get it done. Here's the checks and balances. There's a lot that goes into delegating and signing off and creating responsibility from one person instead of a group of people. Because when everybody's responsible, nobody's responsible.

Right.

So it's effective communication and delegating the system. And then there's checks and balances built in to make sure it's being followed. And I think that's where people fail. They're like, I don't get it. I created this beautiful system. They don't follow it. But you didn't create a system to make sure there's checks and balances, to make sure it's being fulfilled. So the system needs to have, it needs to be detailed. Anytime there's a SOP or a system, there needs to be checklists involved with it and then there needs to be checks and balances. We've got data integrity teams that check on a lot of these things. And that's probably the key, is you create this beautiful system, but you did not implement the system. And when you did implement it, you wonder, man, it went great for a month, but now it's. They went back to their old ways. Of course they did. Nobody monitor. There's no praise. You know, I, I'll tell you a great example. This is probably not the best example, but it's something I learned, is that I paid 5, 3 and $2,000. 5, 3, 2, 1st, 2nd and 3rd place whoever lost the most weight. And this was a couple years ago. And I didn't talk to the husbands and wives of the people that work here. I didn't tell them about the DEXA scan. I didn't give them great diets to follow. I didn't have daily acknowledgments to tell them how we're doing and who's winning and who you should be calling that, you know, create a competitive atmosphere. There was a lot of weight loss, but I think I could have done 10 times better by communicating and, and checking in and check ins and creating a better system. I look at that as an opportunity. So those are the type of things I'm talking about. Like you mentioned the system once you went into the call center and you show them the script and you handed them a piece of paper and said, guys, use this. It's not the way a system's deployed. It's just not. And I think, look, if you just spent time creating systems and creating checks and balances for those systems, and that's all you did in your business and you had collaboration. This is the most important part, is let people make them know it's their idea, Let them put their touches on it, let them find good, bad and ugly, because then they feel like it's their idea and then they're going to want to do it more if it's collaborative. So there's a lot there. And I, I realize it's easier said than done. But a lot of people, they keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If you just have checks and balances for these things, it would change your life.

Love it. Thank you for expounding on that a bit because it is so important for everybody. Listen there. If you go back in the archives, some of the first episodes I actually did when I started the podcast, I was sales manager, sales trainer, and it's where I was writing a lot of the content that I train now at a company here. And there was something rolled out to the sales team from. From the top that was done the wrong way. And so I went through the whole process of like, this is how to roll something out. And it's funny because I love when I read that part in in Elevate. In fact, if you could just take a quick second and just give kind of a boots on the ground of what does the conversation to introduce something to the team sound like? Because it's very similar. But yeah, if you would. You've been taking a second and just kind of going over that. So I. I'm on your team. How would you introduce something to me?

Well, number one, there's a huge respect factor. I try not to break the chain of command. I learned this from Al Levy. When I walk in and I start acting like a dictator and start vetoing things, it's not good for the culture. So I, I'm. I call it an influence, not manipulation. But I try to find, number one, you want to roll this out to the person that everybody loves and they buy into and it's kind of like the person you're going to follow.

You got to get Maxwell mindset with this, right?

You've got to get the freaking. The. The ambassador of the. The system. You got to find out who that person is and you got to have them be successful with it and talk about this idea of what's in it for me. What happens if you do this system? Right? Well, like, what do I get out of it? And if you start every system with is there something that they get and it doesn't. You know, there's five languages in the workplace that you. It's not always money. Everybody says monetary bonuses, this, that, and even acknowledgement and trophies and pins. But you got to get the ambassador of the program. And so I always try to say who's the leader of the pact in this department? Who is the one that's going to rally the troops? Who's the one that's going to be this True Ambassador to really deploy this because I'm not the guy going to sit in the call center, work with every csr what time I was. But I think that that's super, super important. And then again say look, here's an idea. What do you. And if you lead with questions, let them kind of come up to the conclusion. You could guide with questions where you want them to go make it their idea and say that's amazing but you've already got it. And you said why don't you do the work? You're. Because if you find yourself micromanaging a direct report, then you got the wrong person. You need to get that person off the bus if you're micromanaging people. I bring people in that could teach me. When I walk in the room with them, I'm like, I can't keep up at their particular title. They're better than me. That should be the goal that you hire people that are stronger, better, faster at that particular business concept or it might be that role.

Sure.

And so let them come up with it. Then it's their idea. Let them get the input of their team and just you can put I'm better at taking something. Well, have you thought about this? What if this changed and then they come up with it and then it's like that's great. It's my idea. I'm going to run with it. And then you create the checks and balances and you help them come up with those and all of a sudden it's their idea. You came up with it. You. It's brilliant. Let's run it. Let's run with it.

Yeah, run the play.

And I used to be the guy that would come up with everything and it was more of a dictator mindset of like I'm smarter, I know the problems even though I'm sitting behind a desk. You're out there in the field, you're. You're taking all the hard phone calls. You're the ones dealing with the one star reviews. The people on the assembly line know a lot more about how to do their job better than the person behind the desk.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I love this. Thank you for man, that is so helpful in really any every element of not only business, but I mean it sounds like a family board meeting waiting to happen. Like how do we get our kids on board with things? How do we get all just really work in this life lesson. That is a super powerful. That's what I love so much about when you truly do business. Right. We're taking care of People that just happen to do whatever the thing is that the company does and building those relationships, and it carries over so much between all of our relationships. So, man, I love this. I feel like we could go on for a long time on a lot of these topics, because, holy cow, there's so much to unpack. But it is getting close to time to land this plane. So one last question for you, which I. I love this question. What has got Tommy Mello really excited right now? What in your life is really like lighting the fire for you in this current. This current season?

Oh, there's so much to be grateful for. I will say that. A couple things if it's a long answer. So number one is, like, when I used to walk into a room in my early 20s, I used to just be able to feel like I. I was invincible. I don't know what it was, but I was walking on this aura, this magnetism of people that I make eye contact, and I felt like that's back. I feel like I have a lot of, like, pride now because I am staying disciplined, and I'm in the best shape of my life. And I felt like I haven't felt this feeling in 20 years or maybe 15 years, and it's phenomenal. I'm excited about that. And it's not about, like, girls at a bar. It's just about every room I walk into. It's like I believe in myself. I believe I did the hard things to get to this point. I'm continuing to even go to the next level. The other things I'm really, really excited for. I got a big trip coming up to Bora Bora, but. But what I'm super. Probably most excited about is we're building a house in Sandpoint, Idaho, and building another house in Paradise Valley. I was going to remodel the house and then. But I'm building another house, and I got this idea of taking the closest people in my life. And whether it's. It's. It's. Look, those are material possessions, but they're fun tickets because we could go out on the water. We could go snowboarding. We could go golfing. We could go shooting range. We could go bowling. Like, I'm just excited to bring my closest. A lot of family and the people that are, I feel like, are my family and just create these amazing opportunities, like, just have so much fun. And, like, I just want to take the plane. I want to go to Idaho, and then I want to fly back to pv, and I just want to do that five times. A year, a big golf auto with my good buddies. And I'm just more excited about those things. But I'm also excited A1's on this magical ride. And I don't think it's going to end anytime soon. And my goals have changed dramatically from I wasn't dreaming big enough and I dreamed bigger than most. But now I feel like, you know, why can't a one be a 50 billion dollar company? And I've reverse engineered how to do that. And it's not very difficult if you look at the problem through a different lens. And this idea, it's not about the money, it's about, it's about this legacy of like, it's uncharted territory and the fact that the whole team gets to be involved. I got a lot of things I'm thankful for. I'm excited about the podcast and having Travis turn my pastor on there. There's a lot, but I'm very excited. Just my, my family's healthy, I can move my fingers and my knees and I don't. My body doesn't ache. Look, sometimes you don't realize what you have until it's gone, right? And I just want to be. Smell the fresh air and say, man, I'm living a life that most people that five years ago I would have killed for this life. And I can't forget where I came from because it's all kind of here. So breathe the air and enjoy it.

Oh, my gosh, I love that. We just read in the Close it now book club recently. We read the Gap in the gain, which speaks exactly to this. We've got to remember, measure how far we've come and have that. Live in that gratitude every day. Right? Love it. Love it. Well, thank you so much.

I'm good friends with Ben Hardy and I know Dan Sullivan pretty well, so those are some great guys.

Oh, very cool. Very cool. Excellent book. So for everybody listening, great book. Highly recommend. If you're having this moment of I wish I could have or you having these thoughts of like, not happy with where you're at, there's something actually, I was reading it in the Ed Mylett book. I was talking about, he's talking about being blessedly dissatisfied. He's like, be grateful for where you're at and have gratitude, but never satisfied with where you're going. Always content, never satisfied, but so love this. Thank you so much for being on the show, everyone. So go ahead and fill everybody in on what you were talking about earlier for shop visits and that kind of thing. And Let everybody know, you know, how to get in touch and to. To schedule that and coordinate that.

Yeah. I mean, listen, the home service expert podcast, for me, selfishly, I started to learn from the greatest things when I was going through a problem with A1, whether it was HR or whatever it was, I would just find the number one person in the world, and for some reason, they say yes. So it's a compilation of growing A1. And I've learned a lot about family, faith and fitness throughout the process of the podcast. But, you know, a lot of people are like, man, how do I spend time with Tommy? How do I learn what he's doing and see what. What that success looks like in the garage door industry, that really were pioneers of the space, and I got an amazing team. So it's a way for me to acknowledge the team. When you come out and visit and do a shop tour, you know, we take you through the training center, we answer all your questions. I get to brag on the team, and people open the doors. I will say, Sam, a lot of people that didn't have to open the door for me in the hvac, whether it's Ken Goodrich, Ken Haynes, Leland Smith, you know, Aaron Gaynor, and guys like that. I've been out to Ishmael Shop ton today. I'm going out to Wyatt and Utah any hour. Morris Jenkins, like, these guys invited me into their home. Keegan Hodges, dozens, if not hundreds of people invited me and helped me. So this is a way for me to say, hey, look, I was just like you. I just was able to seek the answers very quickly. So come out. It's Tommy Mello. There's no W in my name. T O M M Y M e l l o.com forward slash shop. And bring a couple colleagues, because if you're the only one, it will never get implemented. It's. They've got to make it their idea, too. It doesn't cost anything. There's no sales pitches involved. I genuinely want to help you. I feel like the more I help, the more it comes back, like 10 times greater. I don't know how that works exactly. I know God is good, but I know if I could help you get to the next level, somehow it just. And I don't expect anything in return. I'm not the Godfather, you know, I'm not going to call you one day, but some of this one day I'm going to call you. But now that's what it is, man. Tommymello.com forward/shop and if you. If you wanna. I put out a lot of content, whether it's on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. I really try to have people learn through my mistakes, not my success. And there's a lot of that. I fall for it all the time. So just know I'm not greater than anybody. Anything I could do, the message here is you could do too. I promise you. I'm not a great scholar. I'm not the best book writer. I'm not the best leader in the world. I'm not the best marketer. I'm a compilation of a lot of mistakes that I've learned from and implemented the right way to do things. So thank you for the opportunity to be on this podcast. And it was a lot of fun. It wasn't your typical podcast. We talked through some things. I think people should really be focused on is systematizing their business and having a plan to one day sell the business and help everybody in their business. That helped them get there. Because I do think I bought a lot of businesses. Not one owner has given anything to their employees. We had 25 millionaires come out of our dealers. So, wow, that's important.

That speaks volumes. And it definitely speaks to who you are as a person and your integrity. So thank you for that very much. And yeah, it's been a. It's been a pleasure. It's been fun chopping it up on the show today. So everyone make sure tommymello.com I can't even word today. Tommymello.com forward slash shop. Correct. Awesome. Go. Go get a shop tour. You owe it to your. You owe it not just to yourself, but to your family, to your company, to your employees, everyone that you work with. Go get a tour and learn some massive nuggets and take them back. And most importantly, implement. We always say here on close it now, success happens at the speed of implementation. So thank you everybody for listening. Signing off with Mr. Tommy Mello. Any last word here?

Hey, listen, I will say the last word is your speed of implementation is the key to success. And just call somebody today randomly that you work with and tell them how important they are. And I know you're hearing this saying, sure, I'll do that. Just literally send out a text, write it on a note, do a handwritten letter, do something, just something small and watch how good you feel. Just tell everybody around them how much you appreciate them. Very rarely do we do this when we're drivers and we're hunters and we're trying to grow. Just. Just do this once and see how.

You feel love that everyone accept the challenge and take it and actually do it. That's the implementation part. So thank you for being on today. Everybody else, it's that Time Drive Time University. Go be someone worth buying from.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast. Our passion is to dive head first into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement, and at the same time covering fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all. We hope you've enjoyed the show. If you did, make sure to like, rate and review. We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find the website@CloseItNow.net find us on Instagram herealcloseitnow and on Facebook @CloseItNow. See you next time.