Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast

If you’ve ever felt stuck because your business outgrew your leadership team — or rushed a key hire just to relieve the pressure — this episode is for you. In this episode of Owned and Operated , John Wilson sits down with Brendan Aronson, Founder of The Military Veteran (TMV) , a recruiting firm that places military veterans into executive and operator roles. They break down what it really takes...

Every home service operator has a failure story. In this episode of Owned and Operated , John Wilson sits down with Jack Carr (CEO of Rapid Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Electric in Nashville) to break down the biggest business mistakes they’ve made — and what those mistakes actually cost. From a $13,000 ad spend weekend that only generated $7,000 in revenue… to overpaying vendors for an entire...

If someone handed you $5 million… would you buy an HVAC business or a security/alarm business? In this episode of Owned and Operated , John Wilson is joined by Stephen and Collin from the Entry Exit Podcast to debate where they’d place the bet. HVAC has massive buyers, big platforms, and strong exit demand — but it’s also weather-driven, cyclical, and much less “truly recurring” than most operator...

Firing employees is one of the worst parts of owning a home service business — and the bigger you get, the more often it happens. In this episode of Owned and Operated , John Wilson is joined by Jack Carr (Jack Acquisitions / TriR) to break down a practical framework for terminations that’s fair to the employee and protects the team . They walk through how to diagnose whether performance problems...

Is direct mail actually back in 2026 — or is it a dinosaur channel that should stay extinct? In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Sam Preston (CEO of Service Scalers) to break down how the best home service companies are using direct mail as direct response, why some operators get 14x ROI while others lose money mailing the same market , and the exact levers you can pu...

Should Home Service Companies Stop Buying Vans? In this episode of Owned and Operated , John Wilson is joined by Nashville operator Jack Carr to break down one of the most overlooked expenses in home services: Fleet decisions. With service vans now costing $60,000+ and fuel and repair costs climbing, John and Jack make the case for a radical shift: Ford Mavericks for service… and trailers for inst...

Does Google PPC still work for home service businesses—or is it just an expensive mistake? In this Clicks to Calls episode of Owned and Operated , John Wilson sits down with Service Scalers CEO Sam Preston to break down the truth about Google Ads (PPC) for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies. Some operators swear PPC is dead. Others are spending six figures a month and winning. The difference...

How do you keep growing fast without breaking your business? In this Owned and Operated supercut, John Wilson pulls together his favorite moments from recent conversations on what actually snaps when you scale: cash, leadership bandwidth, and the frontline experience that drives revenue. You’ll hear why growth is expensive (in trucks, infrastructure, and overhead), how disciplined operators reinve...

How do you stop wasting money on marketing… and start building a lead engine that actually scales? In this episode of Click to Calls , John Wilson sits down with Service Scalers CEO Sam Preston to break down one of the biggest mistakes growing home service operators make: Hiring a marketing person too early — and expecting them to do everything. They walk through what your first real marketing hir...

This episode is a supercut of standout moments from multiple Owned and Operated episodes , focused on one theme: how great operators build, scale, and eventually sell home service businesses . John Wilson pulls together some of the most valuable conversations from past episodes—covering acquisitions, exits, org structure, leadership at scale, and what actually changes when you stop running a singl...

In this episode of Owned and Operated , John Wilson is joined by Sam Preston (CEO of Service Scalers) to break down how smart home service operators should budget for marketing in 2026 . They explain why one-size-fits-all marketing budgets don’t work, how to reverse-engineer spend from the number of leads you actually need, and why most companies don’t have a lead problem—they have an execution pr...

If you want to play the game on hard mode… randomly pick an industry and hope it works. In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson and J ack Carr break down exactly how they’d build a home service business in 2026—and why the old 2016–2020 playbook is dead. They go deep on research-first market selection , avoiding late-stage consolidation traps, picking “boring” services with clean SKUs,...

Most security & life-safety companies don’t get stuck because they lack hustle—they get stuck because they lack measurement . In this special feed drop of Entry & Exit , Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble (Alarm Masters, Houston) walk through their 2026 planning process: how they set revenue/RMR/EBITDA goals, translate them into departmental KPIs, and use actuals vs. budget to decide when to...

Insurance claims, storm chasers, and broken incentives — welcome to the dark side of roofing. In this episode, John Wilson sits down (again) with Adam Cherup to unpack what really happens behind the scenes in roofing — from “deny, delay, defend” insurance tactics to the storm-chasing playbook that leaves homeowners stuck holding the warranty bag. They also get practical: seasonality, lead gen, cas...

In this episode of Owned and Operated , John Wilson sits down with Adam Cherup , a “disaster roofer” who’s built a niche, high-margin business installing shrink-wrap temporary roofs after hurricanes, wind events, hail, and fires. Instead of blue tarps that fail in weeks (and often aren’t covered more than once), Adam installs a manufacturer-rated wrap that can last up to a year (or longer) —buying...

Referrals are still the #1 growth channel in home services — but most contractors treat it like hope marketing. In this episode, John Wilson sits down with Murphy Nadauld (ReferPro) to break down how the best operators turn word-of-mouth into a systematic, trackable, ROI-positive referral engine . They unpack why 83% of customers are willing to refer , yet only 29% actually do — and the three leve...

This is the literal easiest lever you can pull to add leads tomorrow: turn on (and properly run) Google Local Services Ads (LSAs). In this episode, John Wilson sits down with Sam Preston (CEO of Service Scalers) to break down why LSAs are still absurdly underutilized in home services—and how a simple setup + consistency flywheel (answer calls → book jobs → earn 5-star reviews) can ramp a business...

We’re heading into 2026 with one goal: stop losing money. Not “grow at all costs.” Not “try harder.” Just: build a healthy business that actually cash flows. In this episode, John Wilson and Jack Carr break down what they’re cutting, tightening, and renegotiating in 2026 to go from ~13% EBITDA to 20% EBITDA—and why they’re also targeting 10% net profit after realizing how big the gap can be betwee...

We break down how we tripled our HVAC average ticket—from $5,000 to $12,500+—and finally made sales profitable. In this episode, we walk through the painful mistakes, system overhauls, and process changes that turned HVAC from a money-loser into a real growth engine. If you run a home service business, this episode is a masterclass in why “selling harder” doesn’t work—but selling better systems, e...

We reveal the real cost of running a home service business in 2025. In this full debrief, we open our books to show why plumbing business growth exploded while HVAC stalled, and exactly how we navigated the hardest summer in years. If you run a contractor business, you know 2025 was volatile. HVAC shipments cratered 49% YoY, forcing operators to face a brutal reality. In this episode, we break dow...

In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Sam Preston, CEO of Service Scalers, to break down one of the most overlooked (and misunderstood) marketing channels in home services: Nextdoor. They unpack why Nextdoor feels annoying—but works incredibly well when used the right way. From neighborhood recommendation posts to organic storytelling, this platform behaves less like Go...

In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson and Jack break down what “smart investing” actually looks like for home service operators—starting with the truth most owners miss: if you run a business, you’re already an investor. You’re investing money, attention, and people every day. They start with a practical framework for P&L investing (software, headcount, SG&A): if your business...

In this episode of Owned and Operated , John Wilson sits down with Aizik Zimerman of Jay Blanton Plumbing (Chicago) to break down the remote staffing playbook that most home service operators still aren’t using. John and Aizik start with a real-world story from a contractor event—how one company allegedly went from $0 to $6M using yard signs, and how Aizik tested it immediately (including the “don...

In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Sam Preston — CEO of Service Scalers — to talk about the marketing asset that still quietly outperforms everything else in home services: your Google Business Profile (GBP).  John and Sam break down why AI hasn’t disrupted GBP the way people expected, how Google reviews are now getting pulled directly into AI search results, and why...

In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Ken Goodrich — legendary home services operator, turnaround specialist, and former CEO/Chairman of Goettl Air Conditioning & Plumbing — to unpack what it really takes to build, scale, and successfully exit a home service business. Ken shares the origin story that shaped his entire career: buying his first HVAC business at 25, ge...