Recorded live at the 2024 Huge Convention, host Sid Graef sits down with Tommy Mello, founder of A1 Garage Doors, who scaled his home service business from zero to over $250 million in annual revenue. Tommy breaks down how he went from “chief firefighter” constantly putting out day-to-day fires to a visionary leader who hires specialists, builds airtight systems, and never stops learning. He explains why he shifted from doing “all the work” himself to empowering high-level executives, adopting performance pay and equity incentives, and using data and AI to dominate his market. If you want to move from seven figures to eight—and beyond—Tommy’s insights on leadership, team-building, and relentless focus will show you the path.
SHOW NOTES
- The Leadership Shift
- Killing the “hustler” mentality so the real leader can emerge
- Delegate all but what you love or do best
- Building a High-Performance Team
- Performance-based pay outperforms hourly
- Equity incentives create real buy-in for leadership; celebrate milestones to reduce turnover
- Systems & Process Mastery
- SOPs prevent repeated mistakes
- Role-plays for sales and service, calibrated repeatedly
- Continuous Learning
- Tommy routinely visits peers (HVAC, plumbing) to see best practices
- Surround yourself with coaches and mentors (Al Levy, Ken Goodrich, Dan Martell)
- Data & AI Advantage
- Predictive analytics can forecast close rates and lifetime value
- Smaller operators ignoring automation may struggle to compete
Tools & Resources Mentioned
- CRM Systems (ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Service Fusion, Jobber)
- Chirp (missed-call text-back & automation)
- Pin Parrot (photo geotagging for local SEO)
- Elevate by Tommy Mello (book)
- Upwork / Fiverr (outsourcing admin & marketing tasks)
Additional References & Sources
- Al Levy (consultant for SOPs)
- Ken Goodrich (HVAC mentor to Tommy)
- Dan Martell (business coach; “Buy Back Your Time”):
The Huge Convention & Freedom Path
- Newsletter
- Downloadable Action Guide
- Huge Foundations Education Platform (120+ hours of training)
- The Huge Convention (August 20–22, 2025, in Nashville)
- The Huge Mastermind (for $750K+ revenue businesses)
Action Steps
- Optimize First, Then Scale
- Improve booking rates, conversion rates, and average ticket before chasing new leads
- Document & Delegate
- Create SOPs for recurring tasks; offload email, errands, and routine calls
- Invest in Team Success
- Use performance-based pay and celebrate achievements to lower churn
- Keep Learning
- Visit high-performing shops, replicate what works
- Leverage AI & Automation
- Tools like Chirp and Pin Parrot can give even a smaller team “big company” muscle
TRANSCRIPT
Sid (Host):
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations Podcast. I’m Sid Graef out here in Montana.
Gabe (Co-Host):
And I’m Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. We are your hosts and guides through the landscape of growing a successful home service business. We do this by interviewing the best home service business builders and owners in the industry—folks that have already built seven- and eight-figure home service businesses, and they want to help you succeed. You have no fake gurus on this show, just real life owners that have been in the trenches and can help show you the way to grow profit. We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100 percent experience, zero percent theory.
We are going to dig deep and reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly. Our guests will share with you the pitfalls to avoid and the keys to winning. In short, our guests will show you how to transform your home service business into a masterpiece. Thanks for joining us on the wild journey of entrepreneurship. Let’s dive in.
Sid (Host):
Hello, my friend. It’s Sid again with the Huge Transformations Podcast, and today’s interview actually took place in person at the Huge Convention in the summer of 2024. I had the opportunity to sit down with Tommy Mello, Tommy Mello with A1 Garage Doors. If you don’t know who Tommy is—like, it’s not every day you get to sit down with someone who has built a business from zero all the way to a quarter of a billion dollars in annual revenue. And I said “billion” with a B.
Interesting and fun fact: he got to about $17 million in annual revenue, which seems huge, and then he said he felt like it was just getting started. Took off like a rocket ship. In the next five years, they went from $17 million to $250 million in revenue. But here’s some things you need to know about Tommy: Tommy is driven, Tommy is focused, Tommy is charismatic, and Tommy’s got a vision and a mission, and he’s not going to slow down for anyone.
Rather than tell you the story behind Tommy and how he built it, I’m going to let you dive into this wide-ranging conversation with one of the unicorns of the home service industry. Before we get into it, I want to preface with this: part of the reason we’re doing this podcast is because I recall going to my first industry event, The Huge Convention, in 2016 or 2017, and I had a tiny company at the time, maybe 200,000 in revenue, and there was a chant, “Got to get to seven figures,” “seven figures was the holy grail.” Now, when you go to the same event, people want to get to eight figures, or beyond. But rarely do we see in the home service industry someone who built nine figures from scratch. That’s the difference—most nine-figure brands in home service are private equity roll-ups, not a single founder who started from zero and built into the stratosphere.
I hope you enjoy this. It is a wide-ranging conversation, we do not stay on point, we go down every rabbit hole. Enjoy this interview with my friend, Tommy Mello.
Sid (Host):
Part of the theme of this is going from seven figures to eight, and eight figures to nine, and hiring a team. Like who did you—this is a two-part question—who did you have to become to grow into a strong eight-figure business? Because you had to be different than you were when you were broke. And then, who did you have to put in the team, because you can’t do it all by yourself?
Tommy (Guest):
Well, the two questions kind of mold into one. Number one, I had to become inefficient. I had to become—the hustler had to die for the leader to be born. So I had to be deadly focused, pigheaded discipline. Racehorses wear blinders for a reason. And I learned to hire specialists, I learned equity-incentive programs to get people bought in, to be an owner of the company and row in the right direction—“what’s in it for them?” 25 millionaires came out of our first deal, a hundred millionaires will come out of the next deal in 2026. I’ve got a hundred notes on how I’m going to run it so I can 5X it in three years from now.
Like, right now, if we have 70 in EBITDA, I just got to hit 112.5—that’s the target, 112 million, 500 thousand of EBITDA. Then I roll half of what I got now, so I’ll be 25 percent, building a whole pot for the new staff I’m bringing on. That trickles all the way down to the technician level. Then we’ll go public, and from everything I see—Terminx is the only case study—I believe it’ll be a 28–30X multiple if we go public. But going back, the point is, I hire people who’ve been where I want to go. A lot of people don’t understand what got you here won’t get you there, so the decision-making changes. But I still say I like to make decisions like I’m in a speedboat, even though we’re a ship. Elon Musk can make a decision in 30 minutes that takes other companies months. Speed is power.
Sid (Host):
You talk in Elevate, your book, about compensation. You’re really big on taking care of your people. Could you elaborate?
Tommy (Guest):
Easiest for a company is to look at gross profit and bonus off that. Because if you focus on EBITDA, the founder might say, “We greenfielded into two markets, so we didn’t make net profit.” That’s their decision. At my size, we do focus on EBITDA. So my C-suite can get a 100 percent bonus if we hit the target, and 200 percent the following year. If you make 250, you can get a 500k bonus. I think hourly is for losers—losers pay hourly, losers work hourly. Yes, it’s controversial, but I believe in having a stake in the outcome. Hourly is like letting everyone play, but if you want to win, you reward performance.
I interview someone, I ask about their dreams, not just at work. I love people with a chip on their shoulder, who want the nice things, the big life. If your dream is to do something else, I’ll find a KPI to drive that for you. If you want more time off, we can do three days with ultra-efficiency. Or two months off. Money isn’t everything; some want recognition, some want to feel loved. So we attach KPIs to that.
Sid (Host):
You have 800 or 900 employees, that’s big. How do you make it feel like family?
Tommy (Guest):
Communication and leadership training. No one should have more than five direct reports—Jesus had 12 disciples and He’s the Lord, so that’s my logic. Also, I’m creating a software that ties into payroll, so I know birthdays, anniversaries, marriages, kids’ birthdays, best week, best day, everything. I can pre-program birthdays and achievements with handwritten notes, postcards, videos, text messages. They’ll feel appreciated. That’s how you keep them from quitting, how you build real loyalty.
Sid (Host):
You’re also into data and AI?
Tommy (Guest):
Yes, I’m going to a knife fight with a bazooka. We built software that can predict if we’ll close a job, how much we’ll close it for, 97 percent accuracy. That’s what real AI does: it interprets data. We can even build AI for hiring. If you can’t memorize your lines, you can’t fill the role. So that’s what we do, at a big scale. But if you’re under 5 million, get your booking rate, conversion, and average ticket set before you chase AI.
Sid (Host):
So for someone at 1 million aiming for 5, blueprint them.
Tommy (Guest):
Number one, a good CRM. Could be ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Service Fusion, Jobber. Make sure your pricebook is dialed in, your team is role-playing to present it. Next, use a tool like Chirp—everyone I turn onto Chirp, they see results. Miss a call? Chirp texts them. Didn’t close a job? Chirp sets up a text/email/voicemail drop. Another tool is Pin Parrot, which geotags your job photos for local SEO. That can get you in the top three of the local map pack, which is 15–20 calls a day.
Software matters, an org chart matters, mission, vision, core values matter. Live them. Also, get yourself out of the day-to-day and hire a right-hand person. If you can’t afford a personal assistant, you can’t afford to be in business, because you should be focusing on the big moves, not errands or emails.
Sid (Host):
You once said new vans are cheaper than old vans because of accelerated depreciation, downtime, morale.
Tommy (Guest):
Yeah, a mentor taught me that in 2015. I didn’t realize the cost of breakdowns, driver morale, lost capacity. You think you’re saving money, but you’re not.
Sid (Host):
We’ll wrap it up with one last question. After hearing you, we’re taking notes. One last piece of advice?
Tommy (Guest):
Look, even at 300 million in revenue, I traveled to North Carolina to see someone else’s shop. I’m bringing 25 people to Pantheon. I’m still learning, visiting shops, seeing how they do it. And if you’re not willing to do the same, you’ll be stuck. If you visit a top shop, you’ll see what’s possible. Then go home, pick your top three to five priorities, and nail them, then scale them. People try to chase 50 ideas. Focus on finishing a few.
Sid (Host):
Nail it and scale it. Thank you, Tommy.
Tommy (Guest):
Anytime, Sid.
Sid (Host):
Hello, my friend, this is Sid. Thank you again so much for taking your time to listen to today’s episode. I hope you got some value from it. Anything covered—books, tools, references—is in the show notes, so you can check them out. The mission of The Huge Convention and this podcast is to help home-service business owners like you and me gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. We do that in four ways: number one, the free Huge Insider newsletter; two, the Huge Foundations education platform with over 120 hours of industry-specific education; three, the Huge Convention every August—this year in Nashville, Tennessee, August 20–22, 2025—and it is the largest and top-rated trade show and convention for home service builders. We have the biggest trade show, plus world-class educators and speakers, plus unbeatable networking. And finally, The Huge Mastermind, if you want to put jet fuel in your business. You have to be at over $750,000 in revenue, aiming for $1 million, $5 million, $10 million in the next five years. It’s a network, mentorship, a mastermind of peers, and we help you implement the Freedom Operating System. You can find it all at https://www.thehugeconvention.com. If you liked the show, please take 90 seconds to rate, review, or share it on iTunes. It helps us reach more people. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode.
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