Next Level Pros
#131: 3 9-Figure Businesses in One Room? How Tommy Mello, Chris Lee, And Daryl Kelly Grew Their Businesses to Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
Tue, 21 Jan 2025
Welcome to a new episode of Next Level Pros! In this episode, we're thrilled to have Tommy Mello, the mastermind behind the highly successful garage door service company join Chris Lee, a dynamic leader known for his innovative approaches in the fitness industry, and Daryl Kelly, who has made significant strides in the health and wellness sector. Together, they share invaluable experiences and lessons on navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship, building sustainable business models, and the importance of creating a culture of trust within their organizations. Tune in as they unfold the secrets to their success and personal growth, providing you with actionable insights to elevate your professional and personal life. Apply to be on the show: https://forms.gle/hwDijQPFyKCEtHNs8 Highlights: "You're only as good as the team you build around you." "Entrepreneurship is about adjusting the sails when the wind changes direction." "Leadership means being a visionary, not just a manager of the status quo." "Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together." Timestamps: 0:00:00 - Introduction: Sales and Visionary Mindset 0:06:09 - Challenges and Success in Business 0:14:49 - Cultural and Personal Growth 0:24:32 - Building a Strong Business Partnership 0:32:22 - Leadership and Team Dynamics 0:41:56 - Paradigm Shifts and Business Growth 0:49:12 - Cultural and Operational Excellence 0:57:24 - Adapting to Change and Overcoming Challenges 1:05:05 - Building a Sustainable Business Model 1:18:43 - The Importance of Health and Self-Care Want me to teach you how to grow your business? Text me! 509-374-7554 Want access to more of my content? Click the link below for all of our latest updates and events! https://linktr.ee/nextlevelpros Want to be a guest on our show? Apply here! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YlkVBSluEKMTg4gehyUOHYvBratcxHV5rt3kiWTXNC4/viewform?edit_requested=true Watch my latest Podcast Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-level-pros/id1687030281 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=95980cd4e55a437a YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@NextLevelPros
Chapter 1: What is the visionary mindset in entrepreneurship?
That's sales 101. It's how to win friends and influence people. Get people to buy into your dream. Us entrepreneurs, we really are good at that. We're really good. I'm an optimist. I don't care if the cup is empty. I make it half full. But people are like, dude, that's not even real. Like there's no way that's possible. I'm like, there is.
Well, it's funny. Like I had this picture. It was like four different garages. It showed the Google garage, the Facebook garage. And we had the soul gen garage and we would always be like, look, this is us.
Here's something interesting though. When I, when I grew up, it was common to say, you know, be a man of your word. Yeah. I realized like as a visionary, you can't be a man of your word. You got to be a man of your vision. Right. Because if you're a man of your word, like you got to know how to fulfill on what you're saying.
All right, guys, we're doing a double podcast here. Chris Lee and Daryl Kelly are here. We've got the founder podcast. He's the home service expert.
We actually just rebranded. What is it now?
Next Level Pros, baby.
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Chapter 2: What challenges do entrepreneurs face?
Next Level Pros. Let's go. Come on.
So I'll just do an intro. You guys know I've got the garage door business.
Yep.
Things are going really, really well. I don't care what size you get to. There's new challenges. Like people are like, man, I'd love to be where Tommy's at, but it comes through two decades of failure. And still the anxiety and stress. Luckily, I could take this. I can take it on the chin. It doesn't really affect me. But I really feel like we're just getting started.
Like I know people that are like 5 million. They're like, that's it. I hit my cap. I'm done. I want out. I'm going to make enough money to live the life I want. And depending on your age and what you want. But I'm a home service guy through and through. I'm blue collar. My mom was a realtor. My dad was a mechanic. We came from a really, really modest house in Michigan.
Not low, low, low income where we were like didn't have clothes to wear to school, but definitely not doing great. And I just love helping people, man. And I'm glad we get to do this podcast.
Well, that's the cool thing. I think we all come from very similar backgrounds, right? Daryl grew up in a double wide with eight kids. You know, my dad was a school teacher. Mom was a stay-at-home mom. Like, all of us really came from, like, basic essentials, right? We all had shirts on our backs and, you know, food on the table and good loving family or whatnot.
But we've all built something pretty amazing. You know, it's interesting what you're talking about. So, like, the whole premise of our new show is with Next Level Pros is that, like, no matter where you're at, there's always the next level. You always have the ability to level up. And frankly, success and happiness come from when you are leveling up.
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Chapter 3: How do cultural values influence business growth?
When you're plateauing or leveling down, no matter how much money, how much success you've had, that's stressful.
Another truth you spoke was problems. I remember thinking, I'm not good at business because I can't get rid of these problems. And then I went to a Tony Robbins business mastery event. And one of the biggest takeaways was you always have a new set of problems as you grow. New set of opportunities, new set of problems. And those are always changing.
Once I understood that, it changed everything for me.
Changed your outlook. Yeah. You know, I just played a video to my entire company, 800 people. And it's called Bring the Fire. We do it once a month. And the video, I took 13 minutes, made it into three. Giuseppe edited it. And it said, everyone wants a great life. You want to fall in love. You want a great sex life. You want to have your faith. You want to have the best body.
You want the red seat apart when you walk in the room. But what harder are you willing to accept? What struggle are you willing to accept? Because studies show over and over again, none of these things come without their obstacles. Everybody wants the views. No one wants to take the hike.
Absolutely.
And not a lot of people are cut out for this. Everybody says, I'm going to quit my nine to five because I want to be an entrepreneur. But that comes through. The number one word that comes to mind is delayed gratification. People want the possessions. They want to show off to their friends. They want to keep up with the Joneses. One of my best things is you will never save money.
If you can't save money at $50,000 a year, good luck at $200,000, $300,000. Money really does become, when they say money is not the, the love of money is the root of all evil. But the fact is that people secretly love money. They love the attention. They love the Ferraris. They love showing up to their friends. In fact, I'm getting in the best shape of my life.
I love walking in and people being like, what the hell is going on? But that's the main thing, though, is I feel incredible. Like literally, like I feel like I could take on the world. And this thing about faith, fitness, and family, I always had the finance figured out, but I was missing the other three. And I was not only off balance, but I was like really tilted to one side.
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Chapter 4: What makes a strong business partnership?
Yeah, it's pretty crazy how like everything really, you know, trickles over to one discipline always trickles over the other, right? Like when you, especially when you start getting your fitness in check and your relationships in check, right? Like that helps you be a better, a better coach. you know, influencer on the side of the business, right? Or in your society or whatever it may be.
And like, that's really, I mean, the culture that we've always been about in creating, like when we were creating SoulGen, it was always like focusing on the whole human approach. And if we can actually develop these people more than just their financial aspect, more than just a paycheck, right? Like help them be better spiritually, help them be better physically or whatnot.
Like the loyal, the trust that was built within our organization is absolutely incredible. So, I mean, I think that's probably one of the biggest keys that most business and entrepreneurs miss, right? Like they're just about solving financial problems rather than the other aspects.
How did you guys, you know, I'm curious, you guys, you basically said you guys are like soulmates. I mean, when you guys started in business, tell me a little bit about your relationship. Who handles what? How do you guys grew together?
So it's interesting. We always refer to, well, I refer to Daryl as my work wife. Right? Like, we have to figure out how to work together the same way I have to work with my wife. Just no sex, right? Yep. And, you know, it's been interesting. We've known each other for a long time. We first met when I was, I think, 13. Daryl was 15. His oldest brother married my oldest sister. Wow. Yeah.
So that's where the initial introduction, but we didn't have this immediate connection of best friends or anything like that. In fact, we didn't hang out, I think, what, six years later? Eight years later?
Quite a while later.
Yeah. So you were 21, you were 23. Yeah, yeah. So I was 21. I come home off a two-year mission, right? And Daryl was like, hey, dude, come sell with me. And immediately, we got this really good flow as far as balancing out each other, right?
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Chapter 5: How can leadership dynamics affect team performance?
Well, I think that initially, for me, what attracted me to Chris was I was super ambitious, and I would talk about things. And then all of a sudden, Chris was talking about things in a bigger way. And I'm like, wait, I'm going to talk about it even bigger. And it was like this flow of- You push each other up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so, I mean, for the last, you know, almost 20 years we've been doing business together in one aspect or another. We had two divorces along the way, which I think any good relationship has to go through hard times, right? Girl, you're in your third marriage. No, I'm kidding. But, yeah, I mean, we broke up from a business standpoint a couple different times, like didn't talk to each other.
I think the longest point was, what, 18 months or two years?
Yeah, it was about two years. And I think – and looking back, it was just a maturity thing. We didn't know how to communicate our differences. We didn't know how to, like, work through it. So we just – that's what we did. Yeah.
It's tough. It's tough having a partner in crime.
Yeah, and I think some of the struggles is, like, I'm a big voice in the room. You know how it is. Oh, yeah. Yeah, me and you. We're, like, pushing each other.
When I watch him on stage, I'm like, he starts walking out of the crowd. I'm like, my move.
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Chapter 6: What are the keys to sustainable business growth?
We've got two alphas just. And so Daryl has some alpha in him. It's just not as crazy as me. And so I think some of the struggles over the time is like, I've, I steal a lot of the limelight, right? I'm the loud one. I'm the crazy one in the room. Even though Daryl, like if I'm out of the room, Daryl is loud and crazy. Just, you know, it's, it's hard to compete with a Tommy or.
I think, I think what's good is, is like work with people like you. It's like, you guys are very extreme. And like that, it's like an edge that you get from someone like you guys. Right.
And so for me, like, I feel like I have a lot of ambition, a lot of drive, a lot of vision, but I feel like with Chris, it gives me like that edge, that little bit more craziness that you just don't get from anyone else. And I think that's what I've been able to benefit from is like keeping Chris in a position where he's always like a little crazy in his thoughts and his ideas.
Well, the dreams, I'll tell you what, when I'm talking to my team, they're like, What's up, dude? Like, you don't dream like anybody. I'm dreaming, like, forget the solar system. Forget our galaxy. I'm dreaming about, like, every galaxy. Like, they're like, wait a minute. Why aren't you happy? We just set a record. Record day, record week, record month, record quarter. And I'm like, I am happy.
I really am. And I don't show it right. And literally, Luke, my COO, talked to me yesterday. He's like, a lot of people take you. They don't know you like I know you. And you just bug in. And you say, what's going on here? And I say, you're right. I should say, download me on this. Catch me up. And I always take the technician side because literally I'm a technician at heart.
Seven years in the field before I owned the company, but I was also the tech. And I'm like, my dreams are not that crazy. And I told the guys I was talking to yesterday, I said, for some reason, most of my dreams come true. It's like I manifest them. I reverse engineer them. And it's hard to work with people like us.
Right. It's very, very, very hard because they're like – We rub people raw in a wrong – Oh, yeah.
And we're very rare. Right. And it's bad. It could be very, very toxic. And it's important that we recognize this because coming from a place of gratitude is hard sometimes because this is – I'm always driving forward because I'm like, who cares if we fall? Get back up. And everybody's like, it's not time. We're not ready. I'm like, I don't care. But here's what I've learned recently.
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Chapter 7: How to adapt to changes in the business environment?
What if I sat with each one of my direct reports and went through and made it their idea and actually got their buy-in? And when we sit in a room together, they say, yeah, we've talked about this. It's go time.
Yeah.
Rather than just saying, hey, I got an idea. Let's go. They're like, you get a lot of ideas. So I got to be careful to pull one off and put one in.
And I think that's, Daryl's been my strategic advantage. I mean, it doesn't appear, you've never had like a right-hand guy, right? Me and Adam were like,
We called it the T&A show, Tommy and Adam. He had equity. He did very, very well. He's got tens of millions of dollars. It's just this Cameron Harrell notion of double-double, of certain people can help you double-double. Adam was able to do whatever he wants to do, but he became a gatekeeper. And I'll say I love the guy. We're still best of friends.
But he's no longer involved. He's no longer involved. Right. So for Daryl, Daryl's always kind of been my filter, right? Because, as you pointed out, it's very easy for a guy that has our type of personality to just be like, got this great idea. Let's run. Right. And so I'd go to Darrell. I'm like, dude, got this great idea. And right.
He, he understands that like only like one in 20, we should actually go and implement. Right.
I think what's also funny is just the, the kind of damage control, right? Chris comes in with a ton of energy and it, it throws people off. And sometimes people can misinterpret things so quickly.
Oh, yeah.
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Chapter 8: What role does self-care play in business success?
Yeah.
And he did the work. And luckily I have people like that on my team. I can be really honest with, right. Because I can't do that with everybody. They'd be broken.
Yeah.
And it's so hard, but I'm like, listen, man, I'm going to be, Like, I don't have time to worry about your feelings. I'm not trying to fire you. I'm not. You're a part of my team. You're not going anywhere. And I think people that really know me understand where I'm coming from. It's not this place of, like, I'm better or you're better. It's like, what can we do together to win?
And, you know, we're a team. We're not a family. Because guess what? I could get fired. The coach? I'm under a PE company. The coach can get fired if we lose. We lose enough games. We lose enough seasons. He gone.
Yeah.
And that's how it works. And we're all. And I don't feel that way. It would be very, very hard to get rid of me. I work three weeks on my contract to make sure that's almost impossible. Like I'd have to really do something stupid.
17.
17. So it's kind of been your thing for a very long time, right? Like the one thing saying no to pretty much everything along the way.
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