Profit & Grit with Tyler

Fast growth can look exciting from the outside, but inside the business, it usually means something is being tested.

Systems get exposed. Hiring standards get challenged. Pricing has to be revisited. And the owner has to decide whether the company is going to keep reacting to problems or build the discipline needed for the next stage.

In this episode of Profit & Grit, Treasure Boston shares how she and her husband acquired Cline’s Heating and Air in Spokane, Washington, and helped turn a trusted legacy HVAC company with outdated systems into a faster-growing, more disciplined op...

Lawrence Castillo helped grow Brody Pennell from a roughly $6 million HVAC company into a business approaching $70 million in annual revenue.

In this episode of Profit & Grit, Tyler Martin sits down with Lawrence to discuss what changed inside the company as it scaled. He shares the challenges he found when he first arrived, the systems that were built along the way, and the operational discipline required to support that level of growth.

The conversation covers recruiting, branding, technician performance, customer experience, pricing, leadership, and the daily metrics that helped the company make better decisions as it...

For many trades owners, trucks are one of the biggest expenses in the business, but fleet decisions are often made by habit instead of strategy. A paid-off truck can feel like a smart move until repairs, downtime, fuel, maintenance, and lost production start costing more than expected.

In this episode, Tyler sits down with Renee Milum, Fleet Advisor at JumpSpark, to talk about how HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and home service company owners can make better decisions around their vehicles. Renee explains what a fleet advisor does, how to think through lease versus buy, and why the true...

After building and exiting a $100 million company, Dustin Marx chose a very different next move: buying a small plumbing company doing around $15,000 a month.

In this episode, Dustin shares how that business grew into a company running at roughly a $10 million pace, and why the growth came from listening to the field, building around the right people, and creating a culture where the team understands the numbers. He talks about why Mother Modern Plumbing focuses on one trade, how they put plumbers at the top of the org chart, and why open book management has helped the...

After 40 years in HVAC and plumbing, Darren Yarbrough has built Yarbrough & Sons from a small family-run shop into a multi-trade company with more than 50 team members.

In this episode, Darren shares how he started the business in 1988 with no big plan, just a need to provide for his family. He talks about growing through word of mouth, getting stuck around the $5M mark, and how the company changed when his three sons joined the business in 2018.

We also discuss adding plumbing, why electrical did not work the first time, how the team uses open numbers...

Private equity has been buying up HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other home service companies for years. But Dillon Caraway believes trades owners have more options than they may realize, especially when financing is used as a growth strategy instead of a last resort.

In this episode, Tyler is joined again by Dillon Caraway from Live Oak Bank to talk about how service business owners can use lending to fund acquisitions, buy real estate, access working capital, and prepare for succession. Dillon explains what banks actually look for when evaluating a business, why profitability matters more than top-line...

At 24, Mark Paup bought a plumbing company from a newspaper ad with four trucks, five employees, and no real plan. More than 25 years later, that decision has grown into Golden Rule, a multi-location, multi-trade business with over 150 employees.

In this episode, Mark shares how he went from working two jobs to growing a company across Des Moines, Omaha, and Salt Lake City. He talks about the lessons that came from early setbacks, adding new trades, expanding into new markets, and learning to lead through systems, numbers, and consistency.

We also discuss the KPIs Mark watches...

After years of advising service businesses on growth and marketing, Mike Venidis is now stepping into the owner-operator seat with Good Golly Garage Doors.

In this episode, Mike shares what it’s been like to go from giving advice to actually building a business from scratch. He talks about the emotional weight of making the phone ring, buying leads, answering late-night calls, and learning that even great marketing still takes daily consistency and real-world execution.

We also get into why Mike and his wife, Jacqueline, chose to build in the garage door space, how they th...

Being busy isn’t the same as being profitable, and in a lot of service businesses, that gap is bigger than most owners realize.

Jason Noel from CEO Warrior joins the show, bringing more than two decades of experience helping HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies improve performance and turn around struggling operations.

In this episode, we break down why so many service businesses look successful on the outside but struggle financially behind the scenes. Jason shares what he’s seen inside companies doing millions in revenue with little to show for it, and why...

Marketing in a home service business doesn’t fail because of a lack of tools or agencies. It breaks down when there’s no strategy, no accountability, and no one owning the outcome.

Adam Rich, founder of Rich Ideas, joins the show to share his perspective after more than 15 years helping HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies improve their marketing performance and decision-making.

In this episode, we break down what actually drives results in marketing. Adam explains the common traps business owners fall into, from relying on vanity metrics to trusting agencies that prioritize spen...

Scaling an HVAC or plumbing business gets difficult when systems, structure, and leadership can’t keep up with growth.

Brandon Saiz, owner of NCB Mechanical in Albuquerque, shares how he went from getting fired at 19 to building a multi-million dollar HVAC and plumbing company after starting during COVID with his own money.

In this episode, we break down the real challenges of growing a home service business. Brandon walks through costly mistakes that shaped his journey, including a $23,000 workers’ comp audit, a $50,000 CRM decision, and losing a $250,000 contract due to lack of structure and scheduling.

Growth in a home service business doesn’t break because of a lack of leads. It breaks when communication, structure, and leadership can’t keep up.

Janeen Norquist joins me, president and co-owner of Just In Time Heating, Air Conditioning, and Plumbing, a growing HVAC and plumbing company based in Illinois. After spending 16 years at 3M, she stepped into the trades and helped build a business alongside her husband from the ground up.

In this episode, we get into what it actually looks like to grow a home service company beyond the early stag...

You’re booking the job… and still losing it. A lot of home service companies think they need more leads. In reality, the leak is what happens after the phone call. The appointment gets set, but the customer keeps shopping, cancels, or never fully commits.

Brigham Dickinson joins me, founder of Power Selling Pros, a company that helps contractors improve how they handle calls, coach their teams, and convert more opportunities into revenue.

Brigham has spent over 17 years reviewing real customer calls and working with hundreds of HVAC, plumbing, and electrical comp...

The biggest missed opportunity in most home service businesses isn’t leads, it’s what happens after the lead comes in.

Ryan Fenn joins me, founder of Chirp, a platform built to help contractors improve follow-up, communication, and conversion without increasing ad spend.

Ryan comes from a sales background and built Chirp out of his own frustration with inconsistent follow-up. Today, his team has analyzed hundreds of millions of text messages to understand what actually drives responses and closes deals.

In this episode, we break down why most follow-up fails before it even star...

Most contractors think they have a sales problem. In reality, it’s usually a process problem.

Drew Cameron joins me, a longtime trainer and consultant who has spent more than 25 years helping home service companies build better sales teams and stronger customer experiences.

Drew grew up in the trades, helped run and sell a family HVAC business, and now works with contractors across the country on how to improve performance through better structure, coaching, and accountability.

In this episode, we break down why sales calls fail before they even start, and how the be...

Building a $20M HVAC company didn’t start with investors or private equity. It started with a family taking a chance.

Cody Martinez joins me from Cowboys Air Conditioning and Heating in San Antonio, a family-owned business that has grown to more than $20 million in revenue. 

The company began after Cody’s father was laid off on Thanksgiving. Cody’s mom and uncle started the business with his mom cold-calling from the kitchen table while his uncle ran installs. Cody’s father later joined and became the leader who shaped the company’s culture and direction.<...

Going from rock bottom to revenue growth isn’t a marketing tactic. It’s a mindset shift.

Justin Judd is the VP of Partnerships at Chirp and one of the most respected voices in lead conversion inside the home services space. But before sitting in rooms with industry leaders and speaking on big stages, Justin was a recovered heroin addict who hit absolute rock bottom, including a stroke that left half his face paralyzed.

In this episode, we unpack the revenue levers most owners ignore. Why more leads isn’t usually the real answer. How speed...

Going from $600K to $10M didn’t require moving cities. It required changing how they led.

Alyssa Rogers is the Vice President of Rogers Heating and Cooling in South Boston, Virginia, a town of under 10,000 people. When she and her husband took over the family business in 2018, it was doing about $600,000 in revenue. Today, it’s an eight-figure company with multiple locations and a clear path toward a $100 million vision.

In this episode, we unpack what really happens between $1M and $10M in a home service business. The messy early years. Hiring without structure. Learning lead...

Revenue looks stable when you’re buying a trade business. What’s unstable is everything underneath it.

Ryan Williams is a longtime operator and co-founder of DivvyShares. After reviewing more than 100 deals, he acquired a residential plumbing company and stepped straight into what most buyers only discover after closing: year one exposes everything.

In this episode, we talk about why most home service acquisitions don’t fail because of the market. They fail because of overpaying, owner dependency, rushed decisions, culture problems, and cash flow strain that shows up fast once the deal closes.

Ryan...

Keeping great people gets harder as your business grows, especially when wages stop being enough to hold everything together.

Chris Buttonham is the co-founder and CEO of Reins. He grew up inside a small contracting business, watched firsthand how retention and succession issues limit freedom and value, and later built a platform that helps owners give key employees real skin in the game without giving up ownership or control.

In this episode, we talk about why most retention problems aren’t really about pay, how alternative equity and profit sharing actually work in practice, and wh...

Growth gets harder after $5M because effort stops being the constraint and leadership, systems, and financial clarity start to matter more than hustle.

Lance Bachmann has built, scaled, and sold multiple companies across home services, technology, and marketing. Today, he partners directly with business owners to help them break through growth plateaus, install real operational structure, and build companies that can scale quickly and profitably.

In this episode, we talk about why so many owners get stuck between $5M and $10M, the leadership behaviors that quietly cap growth, and why financial literacy is often the...

Most family-owned trade businesses don’t struggle because they lack opportunity. Growth exposes cracks in systems, roles, and communication that were never an issue when the company was smaller.

Chris Mazzini is a co-owner of Aspinwall Baystate Plumbing, a 50+ year family plumbing, heating, and HVAC business in Massachusetts. He’s lived the shift from paper calendars and day-to-day decision making to real systems, structure, and scale, without losing the culture that built the company.

In this episode, we talk about what actually makes scaling a family business hard, where friction really comes from, and what it t...

Most home service owners think their tech problems are about tools. Jenny Benbrook would argue they’re about structure and intention. She’s spent years inside contractor tech stacks, and what consistently creates chaos isn’t bad software, it’s under-utilization, single-point failure risk, and buying tools without a plan.

Jenny is the founder of Powerhouse Consulting Group, where she helps HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses actually get ROI from the software they already pay for. Her background spans marketing, data, and field service operations, giving her a clear view into why most contract...

Most home service owners think their growth problems are tactical. Laura Kelly would argue they’re psychological. She’s helped hundreds of contractors grow 30% year over year, and what consistently holds owners back isn’t effort or opportunity, it’s owner dependency, unexamined rules, and decisions that aren’t aligned with the life they actually want.

Laura is the co-founder of Clover Growth Partners, where she works with HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses to drive revenue, profit, and quality of life at the same time. Her background in psychology shapes how she approaches growth, leadership, and performance, focusing o...

Most home service owners think their systems problem is a software problem. Bernie Ollila will tell you the real issue is messy data, unclear ownership, and buying tools before knowing what you’re trying to fix.

Bernie is Head of Partnerships and a partner at Titan Pro Technologies, a ServiceTitan consulting firm that works with growing HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses to clean up operations, pricing, and reporting. He spends his days inside real contractor accounts, seeing exactly where data breaks down and how those breakdowns quietly crush margins.

In this episode, Bernie explains why Se...

Most home service owners think marketing problems are solved by buying more leads. Kevin LeSage will tell you the real issue is knowing what actually turns into revenue.

Kevin is the founder of SearchLight Digital, a data and attribution platform used by thousands of HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies to track what marketing really produces. His story starts in a very familiar place, cleaning copper pipes in his dad’s plumbing business. That early exposure shaped how he views marketing today, not as clicks or impressions, but as jobs booked and dollars earned.

Before launching Se...

Most home service owners think marketing is about getting more leads. Dave Carroll will tell you it’s really about focus, discipline, and doing fewer things better than everyone else.

Dave is the founder of Dope Marketing, a software and print platform built for home service businesses that want better jobs, not just more volume. His path wasn’t linear. Dave grew up around drugs and crime, went to prison in his early twenties, and came out with no safety net, no resume, and no margin for error.

After prison, Dave started a window cleaning comp...

Most home service owners think growth is about getting more leads. Tyler Griffin will tell you growth is really about what breaks next.

Tyler is the founder of SwiftPro, a residential HVAC and plumbing company in Northern Virginia that scaled fast in its first year. He didn’t start with a perfectly built operation, a polished brand, or deep industry roots. He started from scratch after a tough private equity experience, with personal capital on the line, no reputation, and no margin for error.

Within weeks of launching, SwiftPro was shut down by Google and ef...

Most home service owners think they have a “people problem.” Kelly Rowlett Presgrave will tell you most of them have a speed, math, and standards problem.

Kelly is the founder of Work With Your Handz, a recruiting company that hires everyone from apprentices to the C-suite for home and commercial service companies. She didn’t come out of HR. She spent nearly 30 years married to a second-generation owner who grew a plumbing company from 10 techs to 170 employees, added HVAC and electrical, and eventually exited. From that front-row seat she saw what growth really takes, how much v...

Most home service owners think their revenue problem comes from not enough leads. Ryan Shank has spent years proving it usually comes from the way technicians are paid, motivated, and measured.

As founder of ShareWillow, he’s helped hundreds of HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies redesign their pay systems so techs think like owners, reduce callbacks, lift average tickets, and stop leaving money on the table.

Ryan built and sold a tech company while getting sober, lived through brutal litigation, and rebuilt himself in a way that made him obsessed with incentives, behavior, and what re...

Most contractors think they lose jobs on price. Brigham Dickinson has spent decades proving they lose them on connection, tone, and the first sixty seconds of the call. As founder of Power Selling Pros, he’s trained thousands of CSRs and technicians to book more, charge more, and lose less by doing the simple things owners overlook.

He built his company from the ground up, weathered personal and financial storms, and learned that people don’t want information first, they want to be understood. Brigham turned that insight into a framework that helps service businesses raise conversion, lift...

Most contractors think growth just means more trucks, more techs, and more jobs. Steve Carroll knows the real risk is building a big revenue number on a weak foundation. As co-founder and CEO of Kelso Industries, he’s helped turn a near-bankrupt first acquisition into a billion-dollar MEP+ platform by protecting payroll, understanding cash, and building around the right partners instead of quick exits.

He started in a small Oregon town, worked with his hands, then climbed the corporate ladder at Walmart, where he helped scale a division from 15 million to 250 million in three years. That season ta...

Most contractors think they have a marketing problem. James Hatfield knows it’s usually a speed and trust problem. As president of LiveSwitch, he helps service companies win more jobs by getting face to face faster, qualifying on video, and turning “free estimates” into efficient, high-confidence closes.

He grew up blue collar, built a painting and power-washing company, then went to business school to make the numbers plain English. That path, ladders to tech, led him to build tools that help owners sell quicker, train better, and keep more margin.

In this episode, James breaks down r...

Most contractors think they have a sales problem. Danielle Putnam knows it’s usually a pricing problem. As the CEO of The New Flat Rate, Danielle has helped service companies across the U.S., Canada, and Australia add billions in revenue by turning guesswork into systems that sell for you.

She grew up in the trades, handing out flyers for her dad’s company at seven years old, and later built a business that changed how contractors price, present, and profit. Her five-option menu system replaces pressure with psychology, helping technicians sell more without ever “selling.”

In thi...

Most contractors think shutting down a division means failure. Teddy Slack Jr. learned it can be the smartest move you ever make. After running a $3 million environmental company that looked successful on paper but was drowning in debt, Teddy made the brutal call to close it. That decision, and the lessons that followed, became the foundation for SimpleTank, a debt-free, fast-growing tank removal company built on discipline, data, and real profit.

He shares how chasing top-line revenue nearly cost him everything, why factoring and debt made things worse, and how starting over forced him to focus on...

Most home service owners think branding is just a logo or wrap, but Dan Antonelli knows it’s the difference between being invisible and unforgettable. 

Dan started painting signs by hand at fifteen, learning how clarity, color, and layout decide whether someone even notices your business. That passion grew into KickCharge Creative, a 60-person agency that’s built thousands of home service brands across the country.

After decades in the industry, Dan has seen what most owners miss—a weak brand quietly taxes every marketing dollar, keeping your booking rate low and your cost per lead hi...

Most home service owners chase growth by adding trucks, techs, or new territories. Patrick Lange learned that more isn’t always better, and sometimes growth hides real financial cracks.

Patrick started in the pool industry, growing his service company fast before realizing that bigger often meant less profit. Long routes, callbacks, and overhead ate into margins until he sold the business and turned his attention to helping others avoid the same mistakes.

Today, as the owner of Business Modification Group, he’s one of the leading brokers for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies, havi...

Most home service owners think growth means opening new markets. Matt Pozda proved you can scale to 100 million without adding a single zip code.

When he bought Sky HVAC, he thought it was a 50/50 mix of service and new construction. It was 98 percent construction. That painful surprise forced him to rebuild everything from the ground up, separating divisions, learning capacity management, and eventually spinning off construction completely.

Today, as CEO of Call Dad HVAC, Matt runs a 40 million dollar business across eight Carolina markets with a goal to reach 100 million in the same footprint. His...

Most owners think profit comes from endless growth. Mike Andes says profit comes from clarity, knowing your close rates, raising prices with intent, and building systems that work without you.

Mike built Augusta Lawn Care into 190+ locations across three countries, all while creating a pay-for-performance model that rewards A-players and keeps crews accountable. After a near-death accident with a PTO shaft, he realized his business couldn’t survive if everything depended on him. That turning point forced him to design systems, create margin, and eventually launch tools like Copilot CRM and P4P Software to help other ho...

Most owners think growth is the prize. Chris Lee says growth without discipline is what bankrupts you.

Chris went from six locations in his first year to bankruptcy and $2.2 million in debt. Ten years later, he built Solgen, a solar and roofing company, and sold it for $233 million in just five years. In this episode, he shares how ego nearly cost him everything, why designing a five-year roadmap before hiring is critical, and how charging premium prices actually created loyalty instead of pushback.

We get into the hard lessons from running on bank balance accounting...