How I Built a $1.7B Business Repairing Garage Doors

**Tommy Mello** (0:00)
We're going to spend $4.3 million this month in marketing. And here's what I've learned.

**Shaan Puri** (0:04)
Tommy Mello!

**Sam Parr** (0:04)
Tommy Mello!

**Tommy Mello** (0:05)
Tommy Mello! The founder of A1 Garage Door.

**Shaan Puri** (0:09)
You're doing this blue collar thing, but at this really big scale. And I love that combination.

**Tommy Mello** (0:13)
A1 Garage Doors, we fix, we repair, we maintain, and we replace garage doors. A1 from day one. The original valuation was, now the business is north of 80 million of you.

**Sam Parr** (0:26)
No shit.

**Tommy Mello** (0:26)
I've read hundreds of books on sales and even more on marketing.

**Shaan Puri** (0:29)
So ring ring, I pick up, what are you telling them?

**Tommy Mello** (0:32)
You never say the cost, you say the investment. You never say the most expensive, you say top of the line. You never say the cheapest, you say builder grade. These words matter.

**Shaan Puri** (0:41)
Tommy, giving us the sauce.

**Sam Parr** (0:43)
What other businesses have you seen in the services industry that you are shocked at how big they are?

**Tommy Mello** (0:48)
Most of what I've done is repeatable. It's not like this crazy thing that only works in garage doors. Don't overcomplicate it.

**Shaan Puri** (0:55)
Dude, I've known you for 27 minutes and I love this guy.

**Sam Parr** (0:57)
Tommy, what do you suck at? Where's your weakness right now?

**Tommy Mello** (1:00)
I was going to go broke. There was a stripper living in our Dallas warehouse with my manager.

**Shaan Puri** (1:05)
We were doing so well and then Tommy went to jail.

**Sam Parr** (1:09)
There it is. There's the weakness. Tommy, have you ever listened to MFM, My First Million, this podcast?

**Tommy Mello** (1:23)
Yeah, I listen to a dozen.

**Sam Parr** (1:25)
What do you think?

**Tommy Mello** (1:26)
I love the come up stories. I hate how every single guy is pushing entrepreneurship because it's cut out for 45% of the population. You won't be able to handle this. The rejection, the failure, the five years of taking a loan against your house, the people that quit and cheat and lie, the canceled appointments, the long drives, the hard nights, the walking out of the movie theater to go run a job.
I don't feel like everybody's cut out for it. But some people that invested in Bitcoin early, they don't know what it's like.

**Shaan Puri** (1:55)
So who do you think is cut out for it? How do you know?

**Tommy Mello** (1:58)
Well, there's this thing called Driven. It's a book. My buddy Gary wrote the book. And it's actually, if you're a hunter, it's in your DNA. It's literally a different chromosome. And there's so much more. Usually it's ADD. Usually you're dyslexic, some people. But it just means you have a high tolerance for failure. You're okay working a lot.
You don't ever mention the words work-life balance. You're off balance on purpose and there's seasons of life. And you actually have a bigger why. And by the way, you can't quit. The goalpost always moves. There's no like finish. There's no end zone. So if you're going to start from nothing, the chance of success is less than 10%.

**Sam Parr** (2:43)
So for the audience, you started this thing called A1 Garage, which at this point, I think does north of 300 million in revenue. You took some chips off the table. You sold about half or a little bit less than half of the business recently for, I think, north of a billion dollar valuation. Is that right?

**Tommy Mello** (2:57)
The original valuation was about 540 million. We were at 27 million of EBITDA. Now the business is north of 80 million of EBITDA. So now it's worth close to 1.7.

**Sam Parr** (3:12)
Wow. And how long ago did you start the company?

**Tommy Mello** (3:15)
2007 So the first 10 years were practice.

**Shaan Puri** (3:19)
And explain, what does the company do? So people understand who you are and what you do.

**Tommy Mello** (3:23)
A1 Garage Doors, we fix, we repair, we maintain, and we replace garage doors. And we do this in now 23 states, 37 markets. We run on average 25,000 jobs a month.

**Shaan Puri** (3:36)
And give us the origin story. We don't usually like the origin stories because you can get those elsewhere. But I gotta ask, I gotta know. I mean, the end point is so interesting. I gotta know the beginning.

**Tommy Mello** (3:49)
You know, when I was a kid, my mom was a real estate agent. My dad had a transmission shop. He didn't pay the IRS, so that got taken. They got a divorce. So I learned to shovel snowmolans in Michigan. I got a job when I was 12 washing dishes at $4.05 an hour. And I always had the entrepreneurial gene. I started a landscaping business when I moved to Arizona. And I was living at this house.