Oct 6, 2026 · 58 min · 9 segments
In this episode of *The TMA Connection*, Tim Markland sits down with Shawn Mallonee, founder and CEO of SM Mechanical, covering HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and whole-home performance across Central…
Tim MarklandHost
You know, throughout your journey, you certainly had to put more people in place to grow.
How long was it after 2009? How long were you on your own before you decided to have your first hire?
So, you know, when you're working, you know, I started out working out of my garage, like literally.
So it was just a matter of like for me, there's just this build up and drop off, build up and drop off.
And what I mean by that is you're doing all the work yourself and you kind of bring on a helper.
And the idea is to get to the point where you grow up the amount of work that you have and then it's almost like unsustainable.
then it's like okay now i hire somebody that's going to drop me drop me back down on the amount of work that i'm doing and it's also going to drop my my money down a little bit because now i have to pay somebody but then let's grow it back up then you get to the point where it's like okay now it's too much work for me and that person yeah let's hire another person and now you're you're basically making the same money as you were making before working less yeah and then just so on and so forth and then you get to the point where you're not doing any of the physical work yourself you know that's the goal and then you have enough work for other people to do it then you delegate then you start kind of building around that the resources and you know, getting into an office.
We started at like, you know, I call, I always call it the shoe box, you know, a little tiny office.
And then we, obviously we outgrew that little tiny warehouse, added people, office staff, you know, just all the parts that kind of go into it.
And I always looked at it like, you know, especially since we come to your home, right? It's not like a storefront where people come and see your office.
So we can kind of get away with that, right? We had an office that there's an address.
But the idea early on was always, let's start making the steps to where you can't tell the difference whether we have four employees or 400 employees.
lettered trucks you know like our contracts the way they are you know like literature things like that the website right if you have a good website and your trucks are lettered and guys are wearing shirts i mean you could be you know bg home you could have you know hundreds of employees but it's just a matter of the service right
and then you know kind of i've always had a chip on my shoulder and a lot of that again going back to my grandfather when you know he said to me when i was young i probably did something stupid or whatever And he's like, boy, you better stay in school because, you know, you'll never make it working with your hands.
You know, throughout your journey, you certainly had to put more people in place to grow.
How long was it after 2009? How long were you on your own before you decided to have your first hire?
So, you know, when you're working, you know, I started out working out of my garage, like literally.
So it was just a matter of like for me, there's just this build up and drop off, build up and drop off.
And what I mean by that is you're doing all the work yourself and you kind of bring on a helper.
And the idea is to get to the point where you grow up the amount of work that you have and then it's almost like unsustainable.
then it's like okay now i hire somebody that's going to drop me drop me back down on the amount of work that i'm doing and it's also going to drop my my money down a little bit because now i have to pay somebody but then let's grow it back up then you get to the point where it's like okay now it's too much work for me and that person yeah let's hire another person and now you're you're basically making the same money as you were making before working less yeah and then just so on and so forth and then you get to the point where you're not doing any of the physical work yourself you know that's the goal and then you have enough work for other people to do it then you delegate then you start kind of building around that the resources and you know, getting into an office.
We started at like, you know, I call, I always call it the shoe box, you know, a little tiny office.
And then we, obviously we outgrew that little tiny warehouse, added people, office staff, you know, just all the parts that kind of go into it.
And I always looked at it like, you know, especially since we come to your home, right? It's not like a storefront where people come and see your office.
So we can kind of get away with that, right? We had an office that there's an address.
But the idea early on was always, let's start making the steps to where you can't tell the difference whether we have four employees or 400 employees.
lettered trucks you know like our contracts the way they are you know like literature things like that the website right if you have a good website and your trucks are lettered and guys are wearing shirts i mean you could be you know bg home you could have you know hundreds of employees but it's just a matter of the service right
and then you know kind of i've always had a chip on my shoulder and a lot of that again going back to my grandfather when you know he said to me when i was young i probably did something stupid or whatever And he's like, boy, you better stay in school because, you know, you'll never make it working with your hands.
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