From the Yellow Chair

Send us Fan Mail A lot of contractors are out here doing marketing — posting, running ads, sending emails — and still wondering why it's not working. The answer usually isn't the plan. It's that there was never a strategy behind it. In this episode, Crystal and Emily break down the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan, why one has to come before the other, an...

Send us Fan Mail Building a Legacy of Purpose | Featuring Trapper Seales What does it mean to build a life that creates lasting impact? In this episode, we sit down with entrepreneur, speaker, coach, and author Trapper Seales for a powerful conversation about purpose, leadership, resilience, and the legacy we leave behind. Through personal stories and hard-earned lessons, Trapper shares how advers...

Send us Fan Mail He Said, She Said: Is It the Tactic or the Team? When a marketing strategy underperforms, what's really to blame? The tactic itself, or the team responsible for executing it? In this solo episode of From the Yellow Chair, Crystal tackles one of the most common frustrations business owners face: investing in marketing efforts that don't deliver the results they expected....

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of From the Yellow Chair, Crystal sits down with Gary Woodruff of Boxed for the Trades to discuss why so many maintenance programs fail before they ever have a chance to become profitable and how contractors can build a membership strategy that actually supports recurring revenue. From CRM setup mistakes and missed billing to overdue maintenance visits, monthly ver...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of From the Yellow Chair, Crystal sits down with Nick Miller of VIIRL Marketing to discuss why slow lead response is costing home service companies valuable revenue and how contractors can build a complete speed-to-lead strategy. From missed calls and after-hours inquiries to AI answering services, call center support, and automated lead response tools, Crystal and...

Send us Fan Mail If your phones aren't converting, your marketing spend is going to waste — and you might not even know it. In this episode, we sit down with Michelle from Pink Callers to tackle one of the most overlooked revenue leaks in home service businesses: call handling. Whether it's missed calls, slow follow-up, or a front office experience that leaves customers unimpressed, your...

Send us Fan Mail Your marketing is generating leads — but are your techs and salespeople closing them? If not, you're basically lighting your marketing budget on fire. This week, Crystal sits down with Sam Wakefield, founder of Close It Now and a 20+ year HVAC veteran who started as an attic rat in the Texas panhandle. Sam built an average ticket triple the industry standard and now trains co...

Send us Fan Mail Why "Maintenance Plan" Is Killing Your Signups (And What to Call It Instead) Are you losing recurring revenue without even knowing it? The problem might not be your offer — it might be the two words you're using to sell it. In this episode, Emily reveals why the phrase "maintenance plan" is one of the most conversion-killing terms in the home service indus...

Send us Fan Mail Culture is the make-or-break factor for maintenance programs, and if your team isn’t excited to offer your membership, the offer won’t move no matter how good the pricing looks. I’m riding solo to talk through how to build team buy-in for maintenance clubs and any new initiative you’re launching, especially in home services like HVAC, plumbing, and pest control where great technic...

Send us Fan Mail Your maintenance club might be the most valuable asset in your home service business and you’re probably underusing it. We’re talking about how to turn one-time HVAC and home service customers into loyal members who stick around for years, book proactively, refer their friends, and call you first when something goes wrong. That’s how you grow lifetime value without living on the d...

Send us Fan Mail PPC has a reputation in home services: expensive, unpredictable, and somehow always blamed when the phones aren’t turning into booked work. We sit down with Brett Hansen from WebFX to make pay-per-click advertising practical for contractors who want revenue, not vanity metrics. We talk about PPC the way it really works, as a Google Ads auction, and why the same budget can either b...

Send us Fan Mail Your email marketing is talking to customers every month, but do you actually know what it’s saying in the data? We sit down with Jocelyn from the Mailchimp Academy team to decode the metrics that separate a “we sent it” newsletter from an email program that steadily builds brand awareness, website traffic, and revenue for contractors and home service companies. We dig into open r...

Send us Fan Mail Marketing vendors love acronyms because they sound precise, but they can also hide the only question that matters: did this effort create profitable revenue? Recording from an airport, I break down the alphabet soup in plain English so contractors can read marketing reports with confidence and push back when numbers do not connect to real jobs. We start with ROAS (return on ad spe...

Send us Fan Mail Your next customer is probably meeting you on Google before they ever see your website and that first impression is your Google Business Profile. If your hours are wrong, your address is outdated, your categories are messy, or your reviews sit unanswered, you’re not just slipping in local rankings, you’re losing real jobs to the competitor who looks more active and more trustworth...

Send us Fan Mail Burnout is not a badge of honor, and it is definitely not a requirement for scaling a contracting business. Crystal sits down with Chuck Staskowitz, a former plumber who started from a garage with a $2,000 van, grew to more than $22 million in revenue with 130 employees, and later sold his company. The story is inspiring, but the real value is what he learned the hard way about sy...

Send us Fan Mail You don’t have a lead problem, you have an opportunity leak. If you’re staring at revenue goals while open estimates pile up and missed calls vanish, the money you want is already in your database, you just aren’t collecting it.  We sit down with Ryan Finn from CHIRP to talk about estimate follow up that actually works for home service contractors. Ryan shares how a tiny change in...

Send us Fan Mail If you’ve ever said, “We tried billboards and nothing happened,” this conversation is for you. Mass media can feel silent and hard to measure, but when it’s done with the right frequency, consistency, and creative discipline, it builds the kind of brand homeowners trust in a stressful moment, the exact moment they need HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or another home service fast. I’m...

Send us Fan Mail What if the best marketing isn’t a silver bullet but a well-practiced routine that wins attention, builds trust, and creates real momentum? We sit down with Jimmy Gibson—a magician-turned-marketer—to unpack how stagecraft maps to standout messaging, community presence, and measurable growth for home service businesses. From the first spark of curiosity to a satisfying “reveal,” yo...

Send us Fan Mail Most marketing reports tell a neat story that isn’t true. We peel back the layers with Jeff from Provalytics to show how real customers actually find and choose a contractor—and why single-source attribution keeps leading teams astray. Think of it as a tour through the “dash” between first touch and last touch, where attention becomes awareness, awareness becomes preference, and p...

Send us Fan Mail Need customers to choose you before they even search? Crystal lays out a simple, gritty playbook for brand acceleration that doesn’t rely on massive ad budgets: creative messaging that sticks, social content that compounds, and community presence that earns trust. If your feed is silent, your offers look generic, and your booth shows up empty-handed, this is your reset. We start b...

Send us Fan Mail A 65-year family name can open doors—or hold you back. We sat down with Derek from Shanklin to unpack how a third-generation HVAC company protected its legacy while building a brand that finally fit today’s homeowner. The story starts with a strategic pivot: moving from “we do everything” to a focused residential service and replacement model. That clarity shaped every design choi...

Send us Fan Mail What does it take for a 70-year HVAC company to break free from a look that blends into the crowd? We sit down with Rowell, a third-generation business, to explore the bold leap from familiar red-and-blue to a disruptive identity built around deep green, hi-vis orange, camo, and a proudly local mascot named Gage the duck. Keeping the family name preserved decades of trust, while e...

Send us Fan Mail Ever watch a hometown brand go from “just another contractor” to a neighbor everyone knows by name? That’s the journey we explore with Royal Air Systems, a second-generation HVAC company that faced a rebrand in the midst of loss and still found a way to earn real community trust. The shift didn’t come from bigger ad budgets. It came from empathy, patience, and a bold choice to sta...

Send us Fan Mail Growth stalls when we expect marketing to fix what’s really an operational problem. We dig into the honest math of margins, staffing, and process with Joe O’Grady of Team SPG, and we map out how to turn ad spend into predictable revenue without lighting profits on fire. From budget benchmarks to tracking discipline, the takeaway is simple: more dollars won’t help if your systems c...

Send us Fan Mail What makes a brand memorable isn’t volume, it’s precision. We sit down with James Erskine, CEO of Rocket, to explore how one product can hold multiple stories—and why telling the right one to the right person is the difference between being noticed and being ignored. From children’s publishing to home services, we break down how kids crave characters while parents want proof, and...