Huge Transformations

2: The Tommy Mello Episode

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)
Facebook
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
TRANSCRIPTSid (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.

1: The Michael Dahlke Episode

In this episode, host Sid Graef interviews Michael Dahlke, who took a failing $60K window-cleaning business and transformed it into multiple service companies now surpassing $40 million in annual revenue. Dahlke shares how he went from “chief firefighter” to a true leader who empowers others through structured growth opportunities. He dives into the mindset changes at each revenue milestone—overcoming the early chaos of 100-hour weeks, developing a people-first culture for scaling past $2 million, and focusing on accountability at the executive level once in the eight-figure range. If you’re aiming to grow beyond seven figures and want a leadership philosophy that prioritizes long-term thinking, personal development, and relentless learning, this conversation is packed with actionable insights.
SHOW NOTES
E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber
Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell: 
Extraordinary Popular Delusions & The Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
Leadership & Personal Growth Influences
Craig Groeschel (Life.Church, Global Leadership Summit)
Marcus Aurelius (Stoic philosophy, Meditations) 
Tools & Systems
ServiceTitan
Jobber
Bloom Growth
Freedom Operating System (Huge Mastermind framework)
Huge Insider (Free Newsletter)
Huge Foundations Education Platform (120+ hours of training)
The Huge Convention 2025 in Nashville, TN (Aug 20–22): 
The Huge Mastermind (for $750K+ aiming for $1M, $5M, $10M+): 
TRANSCRIPTSid (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.
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, this is Sid with Huge Transformations Podcast and honestly, I couldn’t be more excited to start off this podcast with this particular interview today. I got to interview Mike Dahlke. Mike and I have been friends for about seven years. We first met at the Huge Convention, I think in 2017, and Mike is one of those guys that speaks with a quiet wisdom. He doesn’t like to be on stage; he likes to be behind the scenes, and he’s a very wise and astute business operator. And he’s wise way beyond his years.
Interesting story, fun fact: he started his company when he started a—he purchased what would be considered a failing window cleaning company, literally on its last gasp of air. And it was a company that had done about $60,000. And that’s not a ton, as we both know. In a few short years, he built that up to a company with multiple locations with over $5 million in revenue. And in the few short years that have passed since then, he and his partners have built their companies from zero to over $40 million in revenue. That’s not—I don’t say that, and he would never say that to brag because he likes to be behind the scenes. But the fact is, it’s important for you to know who you’re listening to during this interview with Mike. Again, he’s been incredibly successful. He’s very wise. And one of his greatest strengths is finding and building leaders. He’s a great business operator, owner, investor, and teacher. And he’s also a big part of the Huge Mastermind, which you’ll hear more about as we go along. I appreciate you joining us today. Please meet Michael Dahlke.
Sid (Host):All right, I’m here with Michael Dahlke. Michael, of course, business partner of mine. You’re part of the—you’re primary owner of the Huge Convention, you’ve been in window cleaning, you’ve been in house cleaning, you’ve been in all kinds of services, electrical, and more probably—dozens of businesses that you’ve been invested in and currently own. But I want to hear just the story in transition from starting with literally a box of index cards like, “Here’s the business you just bought,” to flying on private jets with a billionaire in 12 years. Now that’s a broad spectrum, but origin?
Michael (Guest):Well, the origin is way more exciting than the ending. We got a call from a business broker that we had done a previous conversation with, and they said, “I’ve got this amazing window-cleaning business for sale. Would you be interested in something like that?” And I said, “Yes.” They said, “It’s so awesome that it’s lost almost all of its revenue, and it’s down to about $60,000. Of course, they didn’t say that, but that’s what’s going on. It has two employees, one who will never show up to work, and the other that will be 350, 400 pounds, so large that he’s not able to get on a ladder for safety reasons. And to make that a little bit better, there’s no CRM, there’s no phone number, there’s no physical office space, and about six years later the owner will go to jail for flying marijuana across straight lines in a skydiving plane. Of course, they didn’t tell me that or know that either. So I thought, “Hey, what could go wrong?”
We bought a window cleaning business, at that time it was doing $60,000 in revenue and it had lost its biggest account. It was down to almost nothing. And the—I met with the, call the employee that was 350 pounds, didn’t know that at the time, and he showed up for our very first meeting so I could meet him with a cut-off T-shirt, cut all the way down the sides, and it said, “This is my beer drinking shirt.”
So what’s the thing about first impressions? It was awesome. So he didn’t last long. The other employee never showed up, never came to a meeting. And I remember walking out of the business—I had just bought it—and I got a box of index cards with people’s names on it and a price and whether it was in and out or outside only, and a thumb drive. And I still don’t know where that thumb drive is or what happened or if there’s anything of value on it. But as I was walking off, we had the phone number forwarded to my personal cell phone, and somebody called to get their windows cleaned, and I didn’t know how to book a job, I didn’t know how to clean a window. I had no idea. And so I had to say, “I’ll call you back.” And so that first year was the window cleaner, the bookkeeper, the phone answers, the whole shebang. So there was no silver spoon in my story. There was no big business education. It was literally, I had to do everything and I learned every key component of the business and took it to where it is today.
Sid (Host):Well, all right, “This is my beer drinking shirt” is still my favorite story. It’s unbelievable; it’s special. So you’re kind of thrown to the wolves at the beginning, and you had to learn everything. Let’s talk about how your mindset changed as you grew. What was your mindset when you started, when you crossed like your $2 million, and your mindset when you got into eight figures, like?
Michael (Guest):Yeah, so the mindset in the beginning was, I thought it was going to be easy, if I’m being completely transparent and candid. I thought, “Oh, it’s just window cleaning, it’ll be super easy. It’ll be scalable.” Then from a competition standpoint, it wasn’t super challenging, but what I didn’t account for was having to do 100-hour weeks, learning how to schedule, dealing with employees. So that scaling from $60,000 to $2 million was 100-hour weeks, it was nights, it was weekends, it was answering the phone, grinding your teeth so bad that you gotta go to the dentist and have holes filled, it was super stressful. So the candid answer and the true transparent answer is it was really hard and I thought it was going to be a lot easier.
From $2 million—my mindset at that time was no longer that it was going to be easy, but I was deathly afraid of staying at $2 million forever. I was completely afraid. I think partly was that I wouldn’t reach my God-given potential. I had done this because I had felt like I was being called back into leadership and business, and I wanted to realize and be the best I could possibly be in business. And so if I stayed at $2 million and that was the best, that felt like I didn’t quite get there, or it was really disappointing because that’s all I was going to be able to do. And so I was driven by that fear of not realizing the potential, and it sounded worse to me to stay at $2 million than it did to go through the pains and all of the extra work that would take to get to the next level.
So that was one mindset I had. The other mindset at that time was that I was starting to understand systems and processes. I was starting to understand leadership better. I was starting to understand that you can’t scale human behavior, and you needed to really treat people and love people well. So instead of being a steward of the business at that time, I started to realize that my job was to be a steward of people, and if I could help them escalate, we would go. And that was kind of the secret sauce to the company scaling. We invest in the people more than anybody else that I know and still do.
And we’ll get to the eight-figure mindset. When you’re in that spot, you’re like, if it’s investing in stewarding people, which is really unique perspective, did you build core values around that, or was it like…?
Sid (Host):How were you…?
Michael (Guest):Yeah, so we were hiring a lot of people out of addiction recovery. There was a faith-based addiction recovery center, and we were seeing that people are coming out with tons of talent that had to get through different things, and they were in a program that was designed to get them to this point where they could come back in and hopefully stay clean. That program was over a year, and then there was other programs at that time that were 30 days. And the success rate of somebody who was in a program for a longer period of time was better than the 30 days. So in talking with a lot of people, we decided to invest in three different programs. We created them from scratch. One was called the Personal Development Program. They read three books. They listened to some podcasts. They met with me each week and we helped them talk and learn about basic things. E-Myth was a book they had to read, Raving Fans. The second level was the Leadership Development Program—or, sorry, the LDP we called it—and that was growing people into leaders. So they read 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, we took them to one of our other locations, we took them to other businesses to open their mind and expand their horizons. And then the last one was what we called ELP, the Executive Leadership Program. And we didn’t do a great job at that time; we do better at it now. But there was other books and investments we would make. We’d take them to conferences and different things so that they could grow. And so some of those employees are still with us, still in management roles, or they are now leadership roles, and to see them grow from a technician with a squeegee to running a $2 million business, there’s nothing better. So it was a really cool experience. So that’s really what we did. It wasn’t core values; it was a program that takes someone from here to there. And sometimes they said, “I don’t want to keep going on that path.” And sometimes they said, “I’ll go as far as you’ll let me.”
Sid (Host):Okay, so then we start up mindset, $2 million mindset in it, we’ll just say $8 million when you crossed into the eight-figure mark, like, what’s the mindset at eight figures or now?
Michael (Guest):I think there’s still a bit of trying to make sure I realize the potential that I have and that I could grow, and I don’t ever want to stop growing. So that’s still definitely there. But I think the big thing now is that it’s more about the people and even less about me than it was when I was running a $5 million business. I’m not operating in all of our businesses; I’m not going—I’m still going there, but I’m not going and putting nails in the cabinets in our cabinet manufacture. I am leading leaders and developing people that run whole businesses and go through sizable change. So that is probably the biggest mindset is, I’ve got to be really good at leading leaders. And I’ll tell you that the one thing that is probably the biggest struggle is I love those people, I care about them, and when they’re not doing a good job, it’s really, really hard to let them go. And it is the biggest struggle that we have right now is leaving people in roles too long. So we’re trying really, really hard to get great at selecting those people, great at developing those people, but also really, really good at saying, “This might not be the right fit for you.” And we’ve really struggled with that.
Sid (Host):Yeah, well, I mean, when you’re emotionally tied to something, it makes it really difficult. But there’s that saying: what got you here won’t get you there. So at some point you…?
Michael (Guest):The snake has to shed its skin.
Sid (Host):Yeah, the eagle has to renew his feathers, like you’ve got to let things go—people, what else? Old belief systems?
Michael (Guest):Yeah, so much. And you and I have talked about this offline. In the last year, my biggest study has been King David in the Bible going from being a warrior to a king. I also studied Marcus Aurelius. He went from, not necessarily a peasant, but he became a king, and he had all these meditations, and there is so much wisdom in that. So David took down Goliath, he was a warrior, probably the best warrior ever in history, and then there’s this gap where he doesn’t go to a battle, doesn’t take responsibility, and then he’s king. And in that gap, he makes this huge moral failure with Bathsheba, and he abdicated responsibility and all that stuff, and then later he becomes a king, he has forgiveness, and all those types of things. And there’s a big difference from being a warrior and a king. And I don’t want to use that word “king” like that’s something that I’m trying to be, but there’s a different mindset, there’s a different position that being on the battlefield making sure that every window is cleaned and that all the trucks are running on time, versus where we’re at now.
One of the biggest things about that is, there’s parts of you that you can’t take into the season; it’s just got to die. One of the ones we’re talking about right now is, at this level you face a lot of criticism. You’ll make a lot of decisions that are unpopular because you’re in charge of making really big, hard decisions, and you can’t get offended no matter what. Both Marcus Aurelius and King David, no matter what insult came their way, they never took it out on that person. They looked at that person way above what that insult was. And so that’s one of the things is, you can’t get emotional at insults or little things like that. The highs and lows have to be about your people, and they can’t be about you. So there’s a whole bunch more there, that study I’m doing right now, more than we have time to talk about, but it’s something I’m passionate about and something I’m learning.
Sid (Host):Right, yeah. With, you know, having a grounding framework or foundation, because King David wrote so many of the Psalms. So his anchor was God and the Almighty, and Marcus Aurelius had a lot of Stoicism and wisdom. Then some people—like, I interviewed somebody earlier today, and their directional controls for making those kinds of changes, because they’re hard. You realize, like, “I’ve got to let somebody go who’s been with me for 20 years and has done a good job, but now they’re ballast. And the vision and direction of the company is so precise or so clear it’s like, in order to go there, we have to make these changes.” So all of those… I guess the question in here is, you’re really good at taking things and putting them into principles. Have you developed a principle, or do you have generally a method, where if I have to let somebody go just because we’ve outgrown them, how do you do that?
Michael (Guest):Yeah, so I don’t know that we have a principle for it. We have a ton of principles. You’ve seen a lot of them as a friend and a business partner. But when it comes to CEOs that we have to let go, or even just people that we have to let go because the position has outgrown them, our typical move is to let them know well in advance. We’ve had this conversation, we’ve tried to grow. You’re familiar with our principles of the wise, the foolish, and the evil. A wise person, you tell them the truth, they change, they adjust themselves, and they grow, and they become something different. A foolish person is someone who you tell the truth, and they shoot the messenger, like “Well, you did this or you did that,” or they externalize the problem. And then an evil person we don’t even need to talk about—they’re easy to let go. We’ve all been foolish, and there’s some challenges there, and we’ve all been wise, and there’s an awesome chance for growth and things. So while somebody is growing in that category, you’re resourcing them, you’re developing them. And then all of a sudden, if they stop growing but the organization keeps going, if you’re in regular communication from a leadership standpoint, you can say, “Hey, Sid, we’re going real fast right now, and it seems like the business is outpacing you. Here’s what I need out of this position from a core-value standpoint and a performance standpoint. Right now, we’re not achieving that. How can I help you? How can I serve you?” You work with them, and by the time that it’s three months, six months on the road, and those things still can’t get done, the conversation isn’t as hard if you’ve been doing the work up front to say, “Hey, Sid, we’ve had some performance expectations, and for the last six months we’ve been working really hard. We haven’t been able to do that, so we’re going to have to eliminate your position here or we’re going to have to move you to a different seat.” If we have to move someone out of the organization, we’re going to have to move them out of the organization. We’re going to let you stay for a while, we’re going to make sure you have a generous severance. We’d like you to stay, we’d like you to be here for as long as you need to be, but we want you to know that we’re going to have to make a change. And if you’ve got a great relationship built on trust, those conversations aren’t hard.
Sid (Host):Right. And what about the idea—I’ve heard plenty of people say, I’ve experienced it too—like, you’ve got to let somebody go, but you stress and struggle, you know, but then once you do it, I’ve never heard anybody say, “I should have waited.” They’re always like, “I should have done this a long time ago.”
Michael (Guest):Yes, oh yeah.
Sid (Host):So you alluded to it, but what are some of the keys?
Michael (Guest):We’ve all done that, right? And that’s usually because you haven’t had the conversation, you’ve just been avoiding it. And you haven’t lifted up the rock and seen all the squiggly things under it, and you just put the rock back down. That’s when it’s problematic.
Sid (Host):Okay, so let’s shift gears. In the context here is going from seven to eight figures, a home service business. Let’s just talk about growth mode. How do you balance growth versus stability? How much money are you putting into marketing and sales? Because you’ve got to feed your family, so…?
Michael (Guest):Two separate answers. First, for many years, I took a $40,000 a year salary, and I didn’t always get the salary because I had to pay payroll. We lived a very humble, frugal life; we didn’t go out to eat, we didn’t do anything because we were building this business. Second part as far as how do you do that: the two keys that I would say we were really good at are, every single 90 days for the last probably 10 years, I reviewed what I did the previous quarter and looked at the next quarter and said, “How can I make sure I’m eliminating the things that no longer fit the vision for my life, and how do I do more of the things that do fit the vision of my life?”
In the middle of that is how do I delegate various different things. There’s someone sitting in the room who’s taken a lot of that delegation and been amazing and completely life-changing for me. So as I did that, I did less stuff that wasn’t going to help achieve the vision and more stuff that was. Whether it became I used to negotiate media contracts with radio stations—now somebody else does that. Now I might negotiate a deal to purchase a company or to have a great strategic partnership or larger economic events. So taking every 90 days, I’d say, “What doesn’t fit my vision? What can I delegate, and what do I need to do more of?” That was one of the key things to help me personally. The other thing was realizing that if you align the incentives and the KPIs of the organization top to bottom, and everyone hits their goals, you hit your goals. If one of our goals might be to grow revenue by 10 percent, well, the technician should have an upsell goal of 10 percent. The manager should have a goal that ties to achieving revenue. So if you lay out the math to accomplishing those objectives and everyone hits them, so does the business. I used to just say, “Oh, we’ll get to $5 million someday, we’ll get to $10 million, we’ll get to $20 million,” but there was no plan. It was just my feelings and my emotion. And if I just cast that vision enough times, it’ll magically happen. Then once you do the math and say, “These are the resources I need. I need to get this many jobs, I can pay this amount for a job, I have this amount of money, I can do it, I need to have the technicians upselling.” If you do the math and then hold people accountable to the math, the business stuff takes care of itself.
Sid (Host):That’s great. Last question, so we wrap it up, and you’ll see where I’m going with this. You’ve done acquisitions, you’ve done turnarounds. Think of it like a turnaround. Anybody watching, say they’ve got a strong seven-figure business, they want to go to eight, but you’re the turnaround guy stepping into their business. What do you look at first, and what are the key areas that either have to change or be strengthened?
Michael (Guest):Yeah, so we could talk about this for a full hour. It’s surprising, but factory turnarounds are factory work. It’s the same formula almost every time. The very first thing you look at is the cost structure: are my costs of goods sold in line, is my marketing in line. I’m going to look at the cost and say, if I compare my window cleaning business to Sid’s, where do my key categories on my P&L—how do they align. How is he beating me? Sid’s not that good at business; how could he beat me in this? Well, there’s a really easy way to find out: I can call Sid and say, “Hey, Sid, so when we did a turnaround in the electrical space or the cabinet space, we would call friends and friendly competitors and say, ‘Hey, what are you doing in marketing, how are you doing in cogs?’ We’d go to industry events, and you figure out, is my business aligned, and what are the ways that they’re growing, and then we would test those different things.”
So every turnaround starts with that. The second thing immediately is getting critical mass around new thinking. There’s almost always some stinking thinking that’s going on, where people are kind of a groupthink around crazy things. There’s a really good book called Extraordinary Popular Delusions & The Madness of Crowds about when people were selling tulips for $30,000 a piece and all these things. But once a crowd gets groupthink, it starts to happen. In a turnaround, it’s usually not that bad, but if your whole organization isn’t thinking about going from seven to eight, you’ve got some of that groupthink. If your P&L isn’t optimized, you don’t have the cash to reinvest. So those are the first two. The last one, I would say there’s seven things that we always did, is aligning the accountability chart and the incentives top to bottom in the organization. Here’s the CEO’s bonus metrics. Everybody down the line has something that ties to that same metric. So we align the KPIs all the way through the organization and the incentives so everybody’s drawing in the same direction.
Sid (Host):Perfect. Yeah, that’s a great way to end and wrap it up. Thank you for your time.
Michael (Guest):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, and listen—anything that was covered, any of the resources, any of the books, any of the tools, anything like that is in the show notes. So it’s easy for you to find and check it out.
And also, I want to let you know the mission for the Huge Convention and for this podcast is to help our blue-collar business owners like you and I to gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. And we do that in four ways: number one is our free weekly newsletter, it’s called Huge Insider, I hope you subscribe, it is the most valuable newsletter for the home service industry, period—paid or otherwise—and this one’s free. Next is the Huge Foundations education platform—that is, we’ve got over 120 hours of industry-specific education and resources for you, and every month we do a topical webinar and we do question and answer with seven- and eight-figure business owners, and it’s available to you for a $1 trial for seven days. Next, of course, is the Huge Convention, if you haven’t been, you gotta check it out, it’s every August, this year it’s in Nashville, Tennessee, that’s August 20th through 22nd in 2025, and it is the largest and number one rated trade show and convention for home service business builders. We’ve got the biggest trade show so you can check out all the coolest tools and meet the vendors and check out the software to run your business, and it’s got education—world-class education and educators and speakers that will teach you how to run a better business, and it’s the best networking opportunity that you can have within the home service business. And then lastly, if you want to pour jet fuel into your business, check out the Huge Mastermind. Now it’s not for everyone; you’ve got to be at over $750,000 of revenue and you’re building toward $1 million, $5 million, $10 million in the next five years. And it is a network and a mentorship and a mastermind of your peers, and we help you understand and implement the Freedom Operating System.
We’d go into more detail, but you can get all the information on all four of these programs and how we’ll help you advance your business quickly just by going to thehugeconvention.com and scroll down and click on the Freedom Path, or, of course, you can find the links here in the show notes.
So sorry, I feel like I’m getting a little bit wordy, but I just want to let you know of the resources that are available to you to help you accelerate and advance your beautiful small business. So keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing. And if you like the show, go ahead—I mean, if you would go and take 90 seconds and give us a review on iTunes, then subscribe and share it, man, it would really mean the world to us, it would help other people, and as we continue our mission to help people just like you and me. So thanks again for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode.

0: In the Beginning

In this special “hosts-only” episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, Sid, Gabe, and Sheila gather to share snippets of their personal business journeys and what led them to the podcast. They reveal how a single chance encounter, a divorce and lawsuit, or a basic need to cover rent all became inflection points pushing them to build thriving home-service companies. Their stories highlight a common theme: early struggles, eventual breakthroughs, and a passion for learning from peers. This dialogue sets the stage for future episodes that dive into transformation stories—from six- to seven-figure (and beyond) businesses—demonstrating that anyone can achieve major growth with persistence, mentorship, and real-world tactics.
SHOW NOTES
Hosts:
Sid (Host): Founder of a successful window cleaning business in Montana, overcame “bare-minimum hustle” to build a system-driven, culture-focused company
Gabe (Host): Co-founder of Right Hand Rhino (route work window cleaning across multiple states), started from a random coffee-shop meeting and door-to-door sales background
Sheila (Guest): Owner of A+ Pro Services in Southeastern North Carolina, turned sudden adversity into a thriving 25-year-old multi-service home care business
Key Discussion Points:
Unexpected Starts: From a bucket-and-squeegee hustle to a random partnership that led to major growth
Industry Connections: How associations like the IWCA or events like The Huge Convention sparked learning and legitimacy
Turning Points: A divorce, a big lawsuit, or new city relocations forced reinvention, leading to serious business-building
Mindset & Mentorship: Hiring coaches, networking, and simply asking questions helped each host overcome hurdles
Future Focus: Each host aims to spotlight real-life transformation journeys—showcasing both the mistakes and triumphs that shape business success
Why It Matters:
Encourages new and experienced home-service entrepreneurs to see challenges as springboards
Illustrates how forging strong relationships, mentorship, and a passion for service lead to scalable, sustainable businesses
Takeaways:
Embrace Industry Support: Events, conventions, and associations can provide mentors and solutions
Progress Over Perfection: Get started with what you have—no business or marketing knowledge required initially
Celebrate Milestones: Each host recalls going from small revenue to surpassing their old yearly totals in a single week
Leadership Evolution: Early days of “on the truck” eventually transitioned to hiring, delegating, and systematizing
FULL, UNABRIDGED TRANSCRIPT(All speaker labels are in the same font size; only bold text used for headings.)
Sid (Host):I had to figure out how to record on the first one. Okay, it's recording and we're live. So, hey my friends, it's Sid with the Huge Transformation podcast and I'm really excited today because all of our co-hosts are together. So I got Sheila Smelter, we got Gabe Torres out of Nashville, and we're all just hanging out, catching up. It's a, it's a cold day where we are. Sheila, how are you? It's good to see you. It's been a while.
Sheila (Guest):I'm wonderful, thanks Sid. Hey, Gabe.
Gabe (Host):Hey, what's up, Sheila? What's up, Sid? It's nice over here in Nashville, too. It warmed up a bit. It was freezing earlier this week.
Sid (Host):That's cool. So you guys actually—Gabe, you said, you know, a week or two ago, you had almost eight inches of snow in Nashville.
Gabe (Host):Eight inches in one day, and less than 48 hours later, it was all gone, which is why I love Nashville. We get to have fun in it, but we're not stuck in it.
Sid (Host):And Sheila, where are you? I know you're in the Carolinas, but what—where are you?
Sheila (Guest):Yeah, I'm in southeastern North Carolina on the coast, just north of the South Carolina state line. So I'm sandwiched between Myrtle Beach and Wilmington.
Sid (Host):Okay. And how often do you get snow there?
Sheila (Guest):Never, except yesterday we got snow. We got three inches of snow, everybody freaked out, schools closed down—it's like anarchy.
Sid (Host):Yeah. A great thing to do on a day like that is just stay home, like you don't have any place to go that's not important. That's cool. I'm out—I'm in Missoula, Montana, and it's supposed to be cold and snowy here this time of year, and it's not. It's a little cold, but... But listen, what I want to do—this is the Huge Transformations Podcast, and the whole point of this show is to interview people that have gone from bootstrapped to billions. I'm just kidding. I don't know anybody that's gone to billions cleaning windows, but we've got some really successful friends and associates in business that are—they've got a seven-figure business, we've got eight-figure businesses, and they're doing really well, and we want to share those stories. Sheila, when you interview people, Gabe, when you interview people, it's the same type: it's like, how did you start, what were your biggest problems and challenges that you faced and overcome, how'd you win in that scenario, and where are you now?
There's a lot of reasons for doing that. The main reason is, anybody that is newer in business or you haven't achieved the level of success you want, or revenue, or whatever—to give you some examples of how to avoid some of the pitfalls that other people have already encountered. It's like a minefield, it's like if you've got somebody that knows where the mines are buried and they can show you, then you don't have to step on them and get blown up.
We were talking a week or so ago, Gabe, and I realized that the three of us, like we all have a transformation story. So I want everybody to have the opportunity to hear that and get to know you better rather than just the person that's interviewing, to understand and recognize your story. So I hope you don't mind, Sheila, I'm going to pick on you first.
Sheila (Guest):Yeah, sure.
Sid (Host):Ask you to tell the story—your story of how did you get into window cleaning business, what was it like when you started, and like where are you now?
Sheila (Guest):Yeah, great. Well, I'm on the right podcast because I love telling my story and I love hearing other people's stories. And you know, really the stories that we tell, it's our life, right? It's our life story. And so I'm just really passionate about being true to that. And we're all so uniquely different, and so—and just like you said, we have so much to learn from each other. So yeah, thanks for the opportunity. So I'm Sheila Smeltzer, A+ Pro Services in southeastern North Carolina. Go back to 1999. My ex-husband and I moved to North Carolina from Breckenridge, Colorado. I was a total ski bum for six years after I dropped out of college at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. And I was a backcountry tour guide—loved the outdoors and, you know, worked service jobs and labor jobs, that's what I did.
So my ex-husband was a professional window cleaner by trade, literally growing up in the Myrtle Beach area—that's what he did from the time he was a kid, he was a window cleaner, and he was super good. So I only use him in past tense now because we are divorced. That was back in, I don't know, 2006 we became divorced. So in the early days, starting the business in '99, we were sole proprietors, owner-operators, I did the books and stayed home with the kids, had a wonderful life, it was great, and he was out in the field. We had one employee, and fast forward to 2006, we had good growth over the years and things like that. This is a huge retirement area that we're in, so we had, you know, our client database were people that built homes too big to take care of, right? Their retirement homes. And so that's where we came in.
So in 2006, a big ball was dropped, and that's all I need to say. Basically, the company fell in my lap, we had one employee at the time, and there was kind of a big blow-up between my former husband and I, and that employee—kind of, we had this like day of reckoning, and there was this huge fight basically, and we were... We had one truck, and we were tearing the equipment off the truck and saying, you take this, you take that, I'll take this, I'll take that. And that one employee was standing there, his name was Joel. And I said, oh, well, oh my God, I'm so sorry, what do you want to do? And he said, oh, Sheila, I stay with you.
So here I am—I have this business, and I have one employee, I didn't know how to do any of the work, but at this point, it was literally a situation where I had to provide for my children as a single mom. And I could have thought about going to real estate, blah blah blah. I said no, you know what? We've got customers calling us every day, this is an easy pathway for revenue to make money, I'm going to just do this. And so Joel taught me how to do the work. I worked like a man physically in the field, climbing ladders, washing houses, cleaning gutters, the whole thing. I did that for about seven years. I would pick my girls up—I mean, sorry, I would load my girls in the car in the morning, swing by pick up Joel, drop the girls off in the carpool line at school, go off and work with Joel, come back, reverse that order. And that was every day for about seven years. Then I started to say, well, hang on a second…
And there's a big point in there which I think is important. At that time of that day of reckoning, we were also sued for $64,000 worth of scratched glass. That led me into the industry, right? That led me into like, hey, this isn't just a business in Brunswick County, North Carolina—this is like, I am part of an industry, because I was, you know, exposed to the International Window Cleaning Association and Power Washers of North America and blah blah blah. And so, you know, when I started to be exposed to this, I saw that other people were actually very successful running companies like this, and it's like a light bulb went off. I said, wait a second, if they can do it, I can do it. And then fast forward, hired a business coach, started to hire employees, started to get my finances in place, all the QuickBooks stuff—like having the legit chart of accounts and a budget and a business plan. That's just how we've evolved.
And today, we teeter anywhere between 20 and 30 employees, we do commercial building services, residential home services, basically, I'm trying to differentiate from being a window cleaning/pressure washing company. We do commercial janitorial as well, but I'm trying to transform into selling service agreements and selling repetitive services to our clients that help mitigate the major problems that they have with their home living in the southeastern climate, which is corrosion, oxidation, mildew, mold, and algae. And so these are major problems that cost our customers thousands of dollars in repair and replacement, so what can we do to provide a service to them that will—I call it my 10x dream outcome—how can we prevent that 10x spending of repair and replacement by spending $100 with us, you save $1,000 in repairs down the line. And so I'm kind of repivoting. We just celebrated 25 years in business, believe it or not. And so, there was literally a huge ribbon cutting celebration. I woke up the next day, I'm like, wait a minute, time for something new. So I'm just a whole new forecast for the company.
Sid (Host):That's pretty—it's kind of a wild journey. And I just, you mentioned the IWCA, International Window Cleaners Association, it's kind of your first recognition that there's a whole business here, this is an industry, and you said light bulb moment, you know, things went off. I just want to toss in here for our listeners that you end up on the board of the IWCA, you were actually the president of the IWCA a year ago, and have been deeply involved in the industry, helping people at all different levels. So I think that's a big deal.
Sheila (Guest):Yeah, thanks for having me. Can I just say I've served on the Glass Education Committee for 15 years, I've been on the Residential Committee, served on the Board of Directors two times. My first time was in 2010 for three years, and then I just completed another board term, and I'm immediate past president. So I went up through executive committee. And that's been a big part of my career. It's all volunteer, right? But what I love about that is, we talk a lot on this podcast and with our interviewees about building a business, but I'm always very passionate about preserving and professionalizing standards in relationship to our craft, right? And that's where my industry involvement has been so important to me.
Sid (Host):Yeah, you and I share that. I've served on the Glass Education Committee for 8-9 years, a lot of volunteer hours. But it also helps the industry at large. It's got a far reaching impact, not just for the business owner and stuff. And case in point: two of my employees, who you've met, Darby and Cole, they're a great part of my team. They went to IWCA a couple years ago, they met you, but they started getting glass education. We do a lot of safety training, we teach people about scratched glass, tempered glass, how to be safe, how not to damage stuff. They came back and taught me some terminology because we used to just help. If somebody was like, "What's wrong with that window?" I'd go, "It's got a blown seal. Can you replace it?" And they're like, "Don't say that, that's a failed IGU, Sid Graf." This is how you explain it. I'm like, oh. It's a small example, but a great example of increasing the professionalism of an industry through education.
Gabe (Host):Well, I feel like we should give applause to Sheila for 25 years. That's so cool. And still evolving 25 years later, you know, that's really cool.
Sheila (Guest):Thanks. I'm the slow and steady, I'm the slow and steady.
Gabe (Host):Yeah, I'd say I'm probably the slower and steady.
Sid (Host):We're in good company then, Sid.
Gabe (Host):Within 25 years, and you said you're about to— you want to make a shift and change. I think you're talking about within the industry or with your business, but the first thing that popped into my mind is, is there a way you could combine your time as an outdoors guide with the—could you start doing tours and guided tours for people climbing ladders and walking on roofs, that kind of thing?
Sheila (Guest):No, but you know, what's so important about that question is that everything that we've learned in our past has contributed in some way to what we do in our future. Right? So I'm an example: those old jobs that I had gave me my unique skills that made me good at what I do today.
Sid (Host):It's true how it layers. Steve Jobs said you only connect the dots when you look backwards. I think it's definitely that way. So Gabe, you have a story. You started your route window cleaning, but you come from a door-to-door background. I'd love to hear your overview.
Gabe (Host):Yeah, yeah, real quick. I grew up in—I got out of high school, ended up in door-to-door sales, traveling around the country each summer, different products: pest control, security. And it opened my eyes that you can make money in these random ways. Then I started a gym with a buddy after college, but parted ways when we realized I wanted bigger scale, he didn't. My wife and I moved to Nashville with no plan. Then from a random coffee-shop meeting, I met a guy who introduced me to the Mike Dahlke. We hit it off. Dahlke was not investing in that guy's business—didn't pass muster. But Dahlke and I ended up connecting. Six months later he sees my Facebook message, calls me up. We talk about a route work window cleaning business. We both think it's possibly a bad idea, but let's do it anyway. We had a third partner, Brandon, who loved the name Right Hand Rhino. We launched it about seven years ago. Now we're around $1.8 million, have four markets, including Vegas, which was chaotic at first. It's a fun ride.
Sid (Host):I love hearing that story. Just a random coffee shop, message on Facebook, a handshake, and you have a multi-million dollar enterprise. So let's do a quick version of my story. I'd just come back from living in Greece for a year with my wife, dead broke, in Florida, looking for a job. My neighbor was a window cleaner. I asked to go with him for half a day. Loved how simple it was. Borrowed an old squeegee, found a bucket in a dumpster, started knocking doors. My very first job was a convenience store with 25 windows, I quoted $4 for exterior. The manager said yes, took me three hours. A little over a buck an hour. But that got me going. Moved to Montana, did it for years on a small scale, just me, a helper. Went to The Huge Convention around 2016, realized I'd never truly built a business. So I started learning from real business owners who are bigger. Now we have a system-driven, culture-focused, seven-figure business that runs without me. It's a small team but an excellent one. The big takeaway is how a major shift—from hustle to real business structure—can happen if you find mentors and a bigger vision.
Sheila (Guest):I love that, 30 years total, but business for only eight. I can say similarly, 25 years, I've only truly been “in business” for about nine. The industry events, relationships, the mentors, all of that keeps us growing.
Sid (Host):Yes, so that’s why we do the show. The transformations for both the owners and the listeners—hearing real stories of struggles, breakthroughs, and building a stable business. I'm excited we get to share it. So thanks for being part of it, guys.
Gabe (Host):Yeah, it's gonna be just as educational and fun for me as it is for everyone listening.
Sid (Host):All right, Sheila, I'll see you next week, Gabe likewise. We'll talk about what we learned last week and what's new in the industry. 'Til then, thanks for tuning in to the Huge Transformations Podcast.
Sheila (Guest):Thanks, Sid. See ya.
Gabe (Host):See ya.