447: Tommy Mello—The Secret Sauce is the Grind

The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 39.1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ ? minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tommy Mello founded A1 Garage Door Service—a 100 million-plus-dollar business. Tommy shares how he went from reselling Bowflex, cleaning pools, and painting garage doors to building one of the largest home service companies in the country. He talks about the hustle, the screw-ups, and the systems that helped him scale, including his no-nonsense approach to hiring and promoting based on performance, not resumes. It’s a real conversation about work ethic, taking ownership, and why a broken garage door—and a strong dose of meritocracy—can open a lot more than just your garage.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys, it's me, Mike Crow. This is the way I heard it. This episode is called The Secret
0:08.1	Sauce is The Grind, a direct quote from today's guest, the one and only Tommy Mello. I think
0:16.3	you'd agree. He is singular. Yes, and he makes me want to sing. They call him Tommy Mello.
0:22.6	Oh, God, really?
0:24.3	Now I got copyright problems.
0:25.9	Do you?
0:26.2	Oh, geez.
0:26.8	You know what?
0:27.4	Let's do it over.
0:28.5	I think the Mellow Yellow guys are not litigious.
0:32.6	I hope so.
0:34.0	I doubt that Tommy is litigious either because I don't think he has time to be. The guy is just a force of nature. First of all, can I say he's just jacked? I mean, that dude is jacked. He's jacked, yeah. He works out a lot. He does everything that he enjoys a lot. Yeah, and he enjoys a lot of stuff, it seems. Yeah, I honestly don't know when he sleeps.
0:57.2	I met this guy at an energy conference, of all places.
1:00.8	We were both there just because we were invited and we were curious.
1:03.6	And as a rule, I mean, I like money.
1:04.8	I'd like more of it.
1:10.9	I think it's awesome that people make money, but, you know, just because you're a billionaire doesn't mean I'm dying to pick your brain.
1:14.3	Tommy is worth a billion dollars.
1:16.1	Yeah, he is.
1:16.8	He's like 42 years old.
1:18.7	He has the body gentleman that you wish you had.
1:21.1	And ladies, you may wish you had it as well.
	...

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