Tommy Mello‘s twice-weekly interview show, recorded from inside a garage-door company he built from $50,000 in debt into a 36-market operator, is recognized as the most influential podcast in the trades, ahead of shows backed by software companies and consultancies with far larger media budgets
TAMPA, Fla. – August 28, 2026 – HG HomeClub, a national media platform dedicated to curating the most valuable stories, rankings and resources for the home improvement, home services and outdoor living industries, today announced that The Home Service Expert, the twice-weekly business interview podcast hosted by Tommy Mello, has been named the No. 1 most influential podcast serving home improvement, home services and outdoor living professionals. The recognition places The Home Service Expert at the head of a list that includes shows produced by national software platforms, consulting firms and trade associations, and marks it as the longest-running owner-hosted business show on the ranking still published by an operator running a company at scale.
A curated media platform built on “informed transparency” chooses the podcasts that actually move the trades forward
HG HomeClub was created to address a gap its founders identified in home improvement media: too much noise, not enough signal. According to the organization’s own description of its mission, HG HomeClub was “created from identifying a need in the home improvement media space to champion media back to its original purpose of ‘informed transparency.'” The platform pursues that mission by curating the top stories, headlines and “can’t miss” information across the home improvement, home services and outdoor living industries, spanning articles, videos, podcasts, webinars, events and product recommendations from working professionals, in one easily consumable destination for homeowners and contractors alike.
Why a ranking built on substance rather than download counts put a garage-door operator’s show at the very top
That mission extends to original editorial rankings, including HG HomeClub’s list of the 25 most influential podcasts serving contractors and home-service business owners. Rather than ranking shows purely by download counts, figures that are inconsistently reported and rarely independently verified across the podcast industry, HG HomeClub’s editorial team evaluated each show on practical value to contractors, industry influence and recognition, the credibility of hosts and guests, depth and originality, consistency and longevity, and reach across audio, video, social media and industry events. Under every one of those six criteria, The Home Service Expert scored at or near the top of the field: it has published continuously since January 2018, it is hosted by an operator who still runs the company he is describing, and its guest roster spans national investors, private-equity-backed executives and single-location contractors in the same season. HG HomeClub’s editorial assessment credits that combination – durability, operator credibility and range – as the reason the show occupies the No. 1 position rather than any single audience figure.
What “nail it and scale it” actually sounds like: the operator’s habit of showing his own math
Most business podcasts in the trades are built by someone who sells services to contractors. The Home Service Expert is built by someone who buys them. Tommy Mello founded A1 Garage Door Service in 2007 and still runs it, which means the tactics discussed on the show are, in most cases, tactics he is currently deploying, has recently abandoned, or paid for the privilege of learning. That distinction shows up in the texture of the episodes: the show is unusually willing to publish the failure alongside the framework.
Asked by ServiceTitan about the biggest constraint on his own growth, Mello put it in terms most contractors recognize immediately. “My biggest challenge, and it’s not everybody’s, but I know how to make a lot of revenue. I just didn’t know how to keep a lot of it,” he told the company’s Toolbox for the Trades program. He described the specific discipline that changed it: “We were spending more than we were making doing all this stuff, and I just realized focus is everything.” And he compressed the lesson into the phrase that has since become the show’s most quoted piece of shorthand: “Focus on one, get so big at one, then you can take on a new branch. I think you could do both and be successful, but you’re only going to grow so big. ‘Nail it and scale it,’ is what I say.”
The same interview contains the sort of admission that rarely appears in contractor media. “We didn’t have manuals or standard operating procedures, so everything was chaos. I was the dispatcher, I’d pull over to answer the phone…there were no systems in place,” Mello said of the company’s early years, telling ServiceTitan that “people talk about building culture, but when you’re a small business, you are the business.” HG HomeClub’s editorial team identified that willingness to narrate the mistake before the method as the single clearest differentiator between The Home Service Expert and the broader field of home-service business podcasts, many of which function primarily as extensions of a sales funnel.
Twice a week since January 2018: the archive that turned a side project into a reference library
The Home Service Expert has been publishing since January 2018 and now runs roughly twice a week, a cadence it has sustained for more than eight consecutive years. Its official Apple Podcasts page lists 502 episodes, placing the archive among the deepest in the category and well beyond the point at which most business podcasts stop publishing. The show also lives on a dedicated YouTube channel, on Spotify, and on aggregators including iHeart, with full show notes and episode indexes published at homeserviceexpert.com.
The format has settled into three recognizable modes. The first is the long-form guest interview, typically 45 to 70 minutes with an operator, executive, investor or specialist, structured around a single problem rather than a biography. The second is the recurring “Q&A with Tommy,” in which Mello answers submitted questions from business owners on subjects including lead generation, delegation, financial literacy, hiring, insurance, operating manuals and employee discipline – episodes that function less like interviews than like open office hours for the trade. The third is the field-report episode, in which recent operating decisions inside A1 Garage Door Service are dissected with the numbers attached.
Recent episodes indicate how directly the show tracks live industry pressure rather than evergreen advice. Its Apple Podcasts archive shows August 2026 releases covering artificial intelligence and workforce reduction, the anatomy of a service call with sales trainer Jeremy Miner, founder of 7th Level, and scheduling discipline for burned-out owners with Danny Morel. The archive’s practical density is what HG HomeClub’s editorial team weighed most heavily under the criterion of practical value to contractors: for an owner working through a specific problem, the back catalog functions as a searchable reference library rather than a feed.
A 4.7-star rating across 792 reviews, and 1.1 million video views: the documented audience behind the ranking
Podcast audience data is notoriously difficult to compare across shows, and HG HomeClub does not rank on download claims. Where The Home Service Expert is unusual is that several of its audience signals are publicly documented rather than asserted. Its Apple Podcasts listing carries a 4.7-star rating drawn from 792 ratings – a review volume that few trade-specific business podcasts approach, and one that reflects sustained listening rather than a launch spike. Its YouTube channel, which has been publishing since December 2015, lists 11,300 subscribers, 966 videos and 1,159,928 lifetime views.
The show’s own description, published on its Apple Podcasts page, states its ambition plainly: “The Home Service Expert podcast is the No. 1 podcast for ambitious home service entrepreneurs, whether they are in plumbing, HVAC or another niche.” Mello’s own LinkedIn profile describes him as an “Apple Top 50 Podcast Host.” HG HomeClub treats claims of that kind as unverified positioning rather than measurement, and its ranking does not rest on them. What the editorial assessment does credit is the combination of a high, high-volume rating on a public platform, a video library that has crossed a million views, and an eight-year publishing record that has never gone dormant.
From $50,000 in debt to 36 markets: the operating company that gives every episode its authority
The show’s authority is inseparable from the business behind it. Tommy Mello founded A1 Garage Door Service in 2007, and by his company’s own account began with roughly $50,000 in debt, reaching $25 million in annual revenue by 2017, as described in his company biography. A1 Garage Door Service announced in March 2026 that it now employs more than 1,000 team members across 36 markets in 18 states, describing itself as one of the largest independently owned garage door service companies in North America, in a statement announcing his selection as a 2026 Most Admired Leader. A separate announcement in November 2025 stated that the portfolio of companies Mello has built over the past decade collectively generates more than $250 million in annual revenue and employs more than 1,000 people, per the announcement of his 2025 TITAN Business Awards.
That growth has been substantially inorganic, which matters to the show’s content: A1 Garage Door Service runs a standing acquisitions program with published criteria, and the mechanics of buying, integrating and cultural due diligence are recurring subjects on the podcast rather than abstractions. Episodes on valuation, seller psychology and post-close retention are informed by a buyer who has closed transactions, and the company’s news page documents the deal flow behind them.
Mello’s account of the period before that scale arrived is unusually unvarnished for a business host, and it is a large part of why working contractors trust the show. Describing a consultant who forced him to shut down four struggling markets in a single day, he told InspiredInsider: “We were doing a ton of revenue. I wasn’t keeping any of it.” He described writing checks against a home equity line to make payroll, driving a salvage-title truck with 270,000 miles on it, and refusing to buy a new one until every technician and installer had one. “There’s so many things through adversity, a lot of things have gone wrong, but I fell down, I fell forward and I got back up,” he said. Asked what he would tell owners in the same position, he was blunt: “You put me between a rock and a hard spot. I’m going to fight and you’re going to never watch anybody work as hard.”
Recognition that arrived after the operating record, not before it
Mello’s industry standing extends well beyond this ranking, and the honors are documented rather than self-conferred. In November 2025 he received two TITAN Business Awards – Visionary of the Year, described as the program’s highest distinction, and Transformation Leader of the Year at the Platinum level – in a season that drew more than 5,200 entries from 65 countries. “Being recognized by the TITAN Business Awards as both Visionary of the Year and Transformation Leader of the Year is a tremendous honor,” he said in the announcement, adding: “These awards reflect the work of so many people across our companies and communities who show up every day with passion, integrity, and a drive to make a difference for our customers and communities.”
In March 2026, the Phoenix Business Journal named him a 2026 Most Admired Leader, selecting 25 honorees from more than 160 nominations on the basis of community leadership, professional accomplishments and personal achievements. “Leadership has always meant putting people first,” Mello said of the recognition. “This recognition reflects the incredible team we have built at A1. Every day our employees show up committed to serving our customers, supporting each other and giving back to the communities where we live and work.”
The publishing record surrounding the show is similarly established. Mello is the author of Home Service Millionaire, published in December 2018 and subtitled “How I Went from $50,000 in Debt to a $30 Million+ Business in Seven Years,” and of Elevate: Build a Business Where Everybody Wins. He writes as a contributor for business publications including Entrepreneur, and his Apple Podcasts creator credit identifies him as a columnist for Forbes, Inc. and Entrepreneur.
A guest list that runs from national investors to the operator down the street
What distinguishes The Home Service Expert from a single-lane interview show is the deliberate range of its guests, and HG HomeClub’s editorial team weighed that range heavily under the criterion of host and guest credibility. Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Leary Ventures, has appeared to discuss why acquisitions fail and how operators command premium pricing. Cameron Herold, founder of the COO Alliance and previously chief operating officer of three companies that passed $100 million, has been a repeat guest, most recently to dissect the revenue band between $3 million and $10 million where home-service companies most often stall. Jeremy Miner, founder of the sales-training firm 7th Level, has broken down the structure of a residential service call line by line, and real estate investor Pace Morby has walked through deal structures with the numbers exposed.
The show’s own description names earlier guests including Terry Nicholson, a former national trainer at an NYSE-listed home services company, and Craig Smith, then president of HomeAdvisor, according to its Apple Podcasts listing. Operators have been equally prominent: Trey McWilliams, president and chief executive of McWilliams & Son, has discussed running multi-trade home-service operations, and Ken Haines, a senior home-services executive and former chief executive of the Wrench Group, has brought a private-equity-scale perspective on consolidation. The show also reaches deliberately outside the trades – Kent Yoshimura, co-founder and chief executive of NeuroGum, has appeared to discuss brand-building and product development.
Read as a pattern, that roster is the argument for the ranking. A show that books only celebrity entrepreneurs produces inspiration; a show that books only local contractors produces a support group. The Home Service Expert alternates between the two in the same month, which is why its episodes are cited both by owners approaching their first million and by executives running consolidated platforms.
The events that grew out of the microphone: Freedom, Vertical Track and a buying group
The podcast is now the front door to an ecosystem, which is the clearest available evidence of its influence off the feed. Home Service Freedom, a national membership organization for home-service contractors led by chief executive Jim Leslie, offers members a collective buying group, training and a peer network – the sort of infrastructure that ordinarily belongs to a franchise system or a trade association rather than a podcast audience.
Its annual conference has become one of the larger owner-focused gatherings in the industry. Freedom 2026 is scheduled for October 26 – 28, 2026, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, with organizers stating that more than 3,000 contractors are expected and that the 2023, 2024 and 2025 editions sold out. The 2026 program lists Mello speaking on building a $200 million-plus home-service business and what he would do differently, Jim Leslie of Home Service Freedom on marketing during a slowdown, and Robert Herjavec on building generational wealth. Prior editions have featured Kevin O’Leary of O’Leary Ventures among the keynote speakers. The event page also carries the kind of operating claim the podcast increasingly examines: “My techs used an AI tool to get better at selling and they doubled their average tickets in just 30 days,” Mello says of his own field team.
A second event, Vertical Track, takes a different form – a smaller, operations-focused gathering held in Scottsdale, Arizona, whose 2025 edition ran October 8 – 10 and included shop tours of the A1 Garage Door Service corporate offices and training academy. Tommy Mello Ventures, his growth-focused investment and advisory organization, extends the same activity into capital and advisory work with larger home-service companies. Taken together, HG HomeClub’s editorial team treated the membership group, the two events and the investment platform as evidence under the reach criterion that the show’s influence is measured in industry behavior, not only in listens.
Why a methodology built to reward practical value keeps returning to the same show
HG HomeClub’s editorial team has been explicit that this ranking is not a measurement of audience size. Comparable download data does not exist across the podcast industry, and the criteria the organization applies instead – practical value to contractors, industry influence and recognition, host and guest credibility, depth and originality, consistency and longevity, and reach across audio, video, social media and industry events – are designed to reward substance that compounds over time.
Applied to The Home Service Expert, those criteria converge rather than trade off against one another. Practical value: 502 episodes structured around problems owners are actively facing. Longevity: continuous publishing since January 2018, at a cadence most shows cannot hold for two years. Host credibility: an operator running a company that has grown to more than 1,000 employees across 36 markets, per A1 Garage Door Service’s March 2026 announcement. Guest credibility: a roster that spans Kevin O’Leary and single-location contractors. Reach: a video library past a million views, a membership organization, and a conference expecting thousands of owners. Recognition: two TITAN Business Awards and a Phoenix Business Journal leadership honor inside a ten-month span.
No other show on the list scores in the top tier of all six. Several are deeper in a single trade, several are better produced, and at least one reaches a larger raw video audience. HG HomeClub’s assessment is that none combines the six as completely as The Home Service Expert – which is what the No. 1 position is intended to describe.
What the No. 1 ranking means for an industry still deciding who it listens to
The home-service trades have spent the past decade absorbing private-equity consolidation, a persistent labor shortage and a rapid shift in how customers find a contractor. Through that period, the industry’s most consequential business education has come less from institutions than from operators who chose to publish what they were learning while they were still learning it. Recognizing The Home Service Expert at No. 1 is HG HomeClub’s acknowledgment that this is now the industry’s dominant model of knowledge transfer, and that its most credible teachers are people with payroll to meet on Friday.
It also carries an implicit standard for what should come next. The reason Mello’s advice travels is that he keeps publishing the part most operators edit out – the closed markets, the outsourced call center that failed, the decade he says he wasted before finding a role model. His recommendation to owners, delivered to ServiceTitan, was to go find one: “Tell them how amazing they are, tell them you want to become just like them, tell them you want to shadow them for two days, ask them questions, and then go find 10 more and visit them once a month.” He framed the cost the way he frames most decisions on the show, as arithmetic rather than aspiration: “You might think it’s an expense, but it’s really not. It’s going to supercharge your business, and it’s going to save you a decade that I wasted.”
Eight years and more than 500 episodes into the project, he told the same interviewer he does not consider the work finished. “I feel like I’m just getting started…like I’m at the fetal stages of what we’re becoming,” Mello said – a line that, for an industry still building its own information infrastructure, reads less like a boast than a description of where the trades currently stand.
The complete ranking: HG HomeClub’s 25 most influential podcasts serving home improvement, home services and outdoor living
The full list of shows recognized by HG HomeClub, in ranked order:
- The Home Service Expert – hosted by Tommy Mello
- Owned and Operated – hosted by John Wilson and Jack Carr
- PowerChat – hosted by Greg Cummings
- Contractor Evolution – hosted by Danny Kerr
- Toolbox for the Trades – hosted by Jackie Aubel and Amanda Salvatore
- To The Point: Home Services Podcast – hosted by Chris Yano and Chad Peterman
- Waste No Day – hosted by Brian Burton and Nate Minnich
- Service Business Mastery – hosted by Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch
- The Wealthy Contractor – hosted by Brian Kaskavalciyan
- HVAC School – hosted by Bryan Orr
- Roofing Success – hosted by Jim Ahlin
- The Strong Roofer – hosted by Adam Bensman
- Remodelers on the Rise – hosted by Kyle Hunt
- Can’t Stop the Growth – hosted by Chad Peterman
- PowerTips Unscripted – hosted by Victoria Downing and Mark Harari
- Contractor Growth Network – hosted by Logan Shinholser
- Hammer & Grind – hosted by Brad Huebner
- Roofing Road Trips – hosted by Heidi J. Ellsworth
- The Green Industry Podcast – hosted by Brian Fullerton
- Contractor Fight TV – hosted by Tom Reber
- Pest Control Legends – hosted by Dan Leibrandt
- Profits for Sanity Podcast – hosted by Dominic Caminata
- The Construction Leading Edge – hosted by Todd Dawalt
- The Build Show Podcast – hosted by Matt Risinger
- Modern Craftsman – hosted by Tyler Grace, Nick Schiffer and Johnny Hourihan
About HG HomeClub
HG HomeClub is a national media platform serving the home improvement, home services and outdoor living industries. Created to champion media back to its original purpose of informed transparency, HG HomeClub curates the top stories, headlines, rankings, videos, podcasts, webinars, events and professional recommendations across the industry and presents them in one consolidated, easily consumable destination – helping both homeowners and professionals make better-informed decisions. More information is available at hghomeclub.com.
About The Home Service Expert
The Home Service Expert is a twice-weekly business interview podcast for home-service owners and operators, founded and hosted by Tommy Mello in January 2018. Describing itself as “the No. 1 podcast for ambitious home service entrepreneurs, whether they are in plumbing, HVAC or another niche,” the show combines long-form guest interviews with recurring listener Q&A episodes and operating case studies drawn from Mello’s own companies. The platform spans audio, a YouTube channel, published show notes and episode indexes, and a wider ecosystem that includes the Home Service Freedom membership organization and its annual Freedom conference. The show is produced in connection with A1 Garage Door Service, the garage-door service and sales company Mello founded in 2007 and still leads. More information is available at homeserviceexpert.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Who is HG HomeClub?
HG HomeClub is a national media platform focused on the home improvement, home services and outdoor living industries. It was built to curate the most valuable stories, rankings, videos, podcasts and events across those industries in one place, with a stated mission of restoring “informed transparency” to home improvement media, helping both homeowners and professionals make better decisions. More detail on its mission is available on the HG HomeClub About page.
2. Why did The Home Service Expert rank No. 1 rather than lower on the list?
HG HomeClub’s editorial team evaluates podcasts on practical value to contractors, industry influence and recognition, host and guest credibility, depth and originality, consistency and longevity, and reach across platforms – not on download counts, which are rarely reported consistently. The Home Service Expert is the only show on the list that scores in the top tier of all six. Several shows are deeper in a single trade and at least one reaches a larger raw video audience, but none matches its combination of an eight-year unbroken cadence, an operator host running a company with more than 1,000 employees, and a guest roster spanning national investors and single-location contractors.
3. Who hosts The Home Service Expert, and what is his background?
The show is founded and hosted by Tommy Mello, who founded A1 Garage Door Service in 2007 and remains its chief executive. By his company biography, he started roughly $50,000 in debt and reached $25 million in annual revenue by 2017. He is the author of Home Service Millionaire and Elevate: Build a Business Where Everybody Wins, writes for business publications including Entrepreneur, and also leads Home Service Freedom and Tommy Mello Ventures.
4. What kind of content does The Home Service Expert produce?
Three recurring formats. Long-form guest interviews, typically 45 to 70 minutes, built around one operating problem rather than a guest biography. Recurring “Q&A with Tommy” episodes in which Mello answers submitted owner questions on lead generation, delegation, financial literacy, hiring, insurance, operating manuals and employee discipline. And case-study episodes dissecting recent decisions inside A1 Garage Door Service with the numbers attached. Its Apple Podcasts archive shows August 2026 episodes on artificial intelligence and workforce reduction, service-call structure and owner scheduling.
5. How large is The Home Service Expert’s audience?
Its Apple Podcasts listing shows 502 episodes and a 4.7-star rating from 792 ratings, a review volume few trade-specific business podcasts approach. Its YouTube channel lists 11,300 subscribers, 966 videos and 1,159,928 lifetime views. The show describes itself as “the No. 1 podcast for ambitious home service entrepreneurs” and Mello’s LinkedIn profile describes him as an “Apple Top 50 Podcast Host”; HG HomeClub treats those as positioning rather than verified measurement, and did not rank on them.
6. What is the Freedom event?
Freedom is the annual conference of Home Service Freedom, the membership organization Tommy Mello founded for home-service contractors. Freedom 2026 is scheduled for October 26 – 28, 2026, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, with organizers stating more than 3,000 contractors are expected and that the 2023, 2024 and 2025 editions sold out. The announced 2026 program includes Mello, Home Service Freedom chief executive Jim Leslie and Robert Herjavec. A second, operations-focused event, Vertical Track, is held in Scottsdale, Arizona.
7. Has Tommy Mello or The Home Service Expert received other industry recognition?
Yes. In November 2025, Mello received two TITAN Business Awards: Visionary of the Year, described as the program’s highest distinction, and Transformation Leader of the Year at the Platinum level, in a season drawing more than 5,200 entries from 65 countries. In March 2026, the Phoenix Business Journal named him a 2026 Most Admired Leader, one of 25 honorees chosen from more than 160 nominations.
8. What role does A1 Garage Door Service play in the podcast’s credibility?
It is the source of it. A1 Garage Door Service is the operating business Tommy Mello founded in 2007 and still runs, and the company announced in March 2026 that it employs more than 1,000 team members across 36 markets in 18 states, describing itself as one of the largest independently owned garage door service companies in North America. Because Mello is an active operator rather than a full-time media figure, episode content on hiring, pricing, marketing spend and acquisitions reflects decisions he is currently making, including through the company’s standing acquisitions program.
9. Where can people listen to or watch The Home Service Expert?
The show is available at homeserviceexpert.com, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on its YouTube channel, and through aggregators including iHeart.
