Profit & Grit with Tyler

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 alon...

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, a...

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 a...

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...

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 c...

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 ha...

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 towar...

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 ser...

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 g...

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 buil...

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...

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, p...

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 Partn...

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 operati...

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, cleanin...

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...

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 pri...

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...

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 mo...

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 f...

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 e...

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 scho...

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 bus...

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...

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 a...