Blue Collar Ballers

Sheryl Knight is the co-owner of Aire Serv of the Woodlands Heating and Aire Conditioning, a family-run HVAC company in Conroe, Texas — about 40 miles north of Houston — that she and her husband Mike have built into a nearly $3M business over 35 years. What started in 1991 as Mike and one helper crawling through Houston-area attics stayed a half-million-dollar operation for almost two decades. By...

Tyler Taunton is the co-owner of Texas Roof Repair, an Austin-based roofing company that has spent the last decade deliberately transforming from an 80% residential business into a 75% commercial operation. He runs sales and marketing alongside his partner Joseph, who runs operations — two owners, one EOS-driven accountability chart, and a clear-eyed mission to become a world-class commercial roof...

Matthew Mahoney is the owner of Limestone Moving in Austin, Texas — a company he's on track to grow to roughly $5 million in revenue this year. But the path here wasn't a straight line. Matthew started Limestone moving people in and out of dorm rooms while he was a student at UT. After building it past seven figures, he walked away — leaving the business with a buddy, buying a 42-foot sail...

Patrick Murphy is the owner of Cascade Home Cleaning, a residential cleaning business in Bellingham, Washington that he's built to $1M in annual recurring revenue — entirely remote. He's never met a cleaner. He's never met a client. He started the company as a side hustle while working as a product manager at Amazon in Seattle, and now runs it from Chicago, 2,000 miles away from the ma...

Trey McWilliams is a third-generation HVAC operator from East Texas and the founder of Blue Cardinal Home Services, a platform group now operating in over 20 locations across the home service trades. Trey grew up riding shotgun with his grandfather — a Navy retiree who started the family business because he loved taking care of customers and didn't want to deal with employees or back-office wo...

In this episode, I sit down with Philip Crutchfield, co-owner and founder of Camber Brands in Sarasota, Florida — a portfolio of three home service franchises doing $11.5M in 2025, with a target of $17–18M in 2026. Camber houses Mighty Dog Roofing (where Philip was the very first franchisee), Blingle holiday and landscape lighting, and Varsity Zone HVAC — which he founded from a dead acquisition w...

In this episode of Blue Collar Ballers, Nate Austin, founder of Austin Brothers Fence Company in Austin, Texas, shares how he and his brother started a fence company with $2,500, a financed truck, and zero experience installing wood fences — YouTubing their first 10 builds. Fourteen years later, Austin Brothers is one of the most recognized residential fence brands in the Austin market, peaking at...

Will Sarver spent 10 years building a moving company in Austin, Texas. One phone call changed everything — a past customer told him she'd just moved again, but couldn't remember who she'd used last time. That was his company. So Will dropped $78,000 on a complete rebrand. New name, new logo, new trucks, new website. Boxer Buddies was born — and within 42 days, people were calling just...

Tony Batista is the founder of Floors 2 Luv, a multi-million dollar flooring company in Houston, Texas running 10 crews and completing over 300 jobs a year. After nearly two decades in business, Tony is now in year three of a five-year succession plan — handing the company to two of his own people with no broker and no private equity involved. The result? The biggest revenue year in company histor...

Here's the updated description with timestamps pulled from the raw transcript. These will shift after you cut the pre-roll, so adjust accordingly — the pre-interview small talk runs until about 5:47, so roughly subtract 5-6 minutes depending on your edit. Tim Leary is the founder of Handys, a full-service handyman company based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. After watching his dad grind in lawn...

Jillian Pittman is a master plumber and the owner of JMP Plumbing Services in North Texas — a $2.7 million residential and commercial plumbing company with five trucks on the road, ten technicians, and a goal to cross $3 million this year with fewer people than she had at her peak. Jillian didn't come from the trades. She fell on hard times as a single mom, moved back in with her parents, and...

In this episode of Blue Collar Ballers, Todd Wolf, Founder of Total Cleaning, shares how he went from answering his mom's phone call at 23 to building a $15M janitorial company with 500 employees across 6 states — over 36 years of learning, leading, and letting go. Based in Fort Lauderdale, Total Cleaning has become a trusted name in commercial janitorial, healthcare cleaning, and post-constru...

Adriana Salazar moved to Austin in 2020 knowing almost no one, burned money on junk leads early on, and still built a multi‑crew residential painting company mostly on relationships, reputation, and reviews. If you’re a high six or low seven‑figure home service owner, this episode gives you tactical plays you can actually steal: How to turn 5‑star reviews into paragraph‑long “love letters” that pr...

If you’re still driving to every single estimate, you’re donating hours and jobs to your competition. In this episode of  Blue Collar Ballers , Faiez Rana sits down with  James Hatfield , former painting and power washing owner turned  Chief Revenue Officer at LiveSwitch  – one of the fastest-growing tech companies serving home service contractors. Twenty years ago, James was knocking doors in Nor...

In this episode of Blue Collar Ballers, Faiez Rana sits down with Jared Chapple, a multi-territory owner of Pink’s Windows in North Atlanta. Jared went from zero franchise experience to buying six territories in one of the most competitive home service markets in the country — launching three in his first year. But this conversation isn’t just about growth. It’s about what actually breaks when you...

In this episode of Blue Collar Ballers , Jordan White, Co-Owner of SeekOne Roofing, shares how he went from sleeping on a couch to building a $20M roofing business in just four years — all by age 26 . Based in Nashville, SeekOne Roofing has carved out a dominant position in some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country by focusing on high-end, complex roofing projects, elite sales execution,...

In this episode of Blue Collar Ballers , Faiez Rana sits down with James Dougherty , owner of Magnify Electric outside Austin, Texas. James shares the real story behind growing from a small commercial operation into a $3M electrical business with 24 employees , and the hard-earned lessons that came with adding residential service, upgrading marketing, and evolving as a leader. This conversation is...

Mary Guarino is one of the best operator-turned-advisors in the franchise world — a former Division I athlete who built two thriving businesses in pest control and wellness, scaled them across multiple territories, and engineered both to run on true autopilot. Today, Mary is a business advisor at Cultivate Advisors, helping owners build enterprise value, reduce owner dependency, and create the fre...

Tim Lovett is one of the most intriguing new voices in home services — a former WeWork and ResiBrands exec who walked away from corporate success to help build America’s #1 artificial turf brand. Today, Waterloo Turf is expanding nationally with 36 territories, elite unit economics, and a playbook built on speed, stewardship, and the “Groundhog Day Principle.” In this episode, Tim breaks down the...

Rick Maffezzoli has seen every angle of the franchise world — as a gym owner, consultant, and multi-unit operator. After three business exits, including sales to Gold’s Gym and Palm Beach Tanning, he’s now building a franchise portfolio with his wife Lisa. In this episode, Rick shares hard-earned lessons from 30 years of wins, losses, and comebacks — and what it really takes to build wealth throug...

Florida-based entrepreneur Angelica Negrete shares how she turned Royal Gardens FL from a side hustle with no truck or equipment into a seven-figure landscaping company —and how she’s redefining what it means to be a woman leading in the trades. We cover what it really takes to build a reputation-driven business in a male-dominated industry: how Angelica’s obsession with learning helped her go fro...

Nebraska-based CEO Tony Hulbert shares how he helped grow Horsepower Brands —a home-service franchising platform spanning nine brands and 400 business owners—from a single $800K roofing startup into a $275 million system in just five years . We cover what it really takes to build people who build businesses: how Tony’s “all-in” mindset shapes franchise selection, how his seven dimensions of life f...

Austin-based entrepreneur Ashleigh Barcuch shares how she and her husband built Mobile Auto Clinic , a $1.2 million hybrid shop and mobile-mechanic fleet redefining what it means to serve customers—and each other—in the automotive trades. We cover the real human side of running a business with your spouse: growing up together in the trades, turning crisis management into a culture advantage, and t...

Former IT security consultant, Randy Hurtado, shares how an unexpected career pivot led him from a job in IT to co-owning DT Companies—a $30M roofing and construction group—and now serving as COO of The Good Contractors List, a nationwide platform protecting homeowners with a $25,000 job guarantee. We cover the inflection points that shaped his path: from early faith and family struggles to buildi...

Former commercial banker Greg Bruns shares how he used entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA) to buy Allied Hydro Mulch —a Houston-based erosion control and hydromulching/hydroseeding subcontractor—and what he’s learned operating in the construction trades . We cover the real day-to-day after the deal: cash conversion cycles , net-30 realities, seasonality, keeping crews busy, and why he’s lea...